Asking a CEO for their opinion on remote work is like asking a feudal lord their opinion on democracy.
Why? My startup's CEO is pretty bullish on remote work.
Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
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Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#392I mean, for reference this is the guy who thought Worldcoin was a good idea, so I’m not sure that people need pay _that_ much attention to his opinions on random stuff. (I personally dislike remote work and won’t do it again now it’s no longer mandatory, but it seems to work for some people. Many companies have had permanent remote workers for years without the sky falling.)
> I mean, for reference this is the guy who thought Worldcoin was a good idea,
I am sure there is some neat name for this kind of fallacy. Person said X which was wrong, so what he says about Y must be wrong too.
> I’m not sure that people need pay _that_ much attention
Lol. Then why are you commenting on an article about what he is saying?
Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Where it's disappointing (to me) is that it seems he's just ... giving up. His job isn't to solve the remote work problem but to run a company effectively. Given the current job market and glut of engineers looking for jobs solving the remote work problem won't provide much if any competitive advantage. That may change in the future but right now isn't the future.
His job isn't to solve the remote work problem... He's talking about the remote work problem, and he's suggesting a solution to it...
He's also been working on a solution to the problem of having work for a lot of people.
Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#394The full quote is a bit narrower than the title implies; > "I think definitely one of the tech industry's worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn't need to be together in person and, you know, there was going to be no loss of creativity,” he told attendees. "I would say that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people c…
I agree that the title of the article is misleading, and that Sam Altman is not dismissing remote work entirely, but only for startups and only for full remote.
I think that remote work is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and that different roles and tasks may require different levels of interaction and synchronicity. For example, some activities where there is a lot of ambiguity or uncertainty may benefit from more collaborative and tighter feedback loop, while others may require more independence and concentration. Some aspects of in-person communication, such as non-verbal cues and implicit knowledge, may be lost or distorted online.
In one side, you have something like game development where outside of some indies who have been successful working remotely, you have many examples of failed or delayed projects due to remote work issues. Devops? Oh yes, let me do that from Florida or North Dakota, if you have the infrastructure and culture to support it.
Remote work has its advantages and opportunities, but also its drawbacks and risks. I think that startups may suffer from remote work if they are not careful and intentional, rather than optimistic thinking that they will figure out along the way.
Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#395I mean, for reference this is the guy who thought Worldcoin was a good idea, so I’m not sure that people need pay _that_ much attention to his opinions on random stuff. (I personally dislike remote work and won’t do it again now it’s no longer mandatory, but it seems to work for some people. Many companies have had permanent remote workers for years without the sky falling.)
> I mean, for reference this is the guy who thought Worldcoin was a good idea, I am sure there is some neat name for this kind of fallacy. Person said X which was wrong, so what he says about Y must be wrong too. > I’m not sure that people need pay _that_ much attention Lol. Then why are you commenting on an article about what he is saying?
> Person said X which was wrong, so what he says about Y must be wrong too.
You could argue that the linked post in indulging in the reverse (a form of appeal to (false) authority): Person said X which is right, so what they say about Y must be right too. Altman has no particular authority here anymore than anyone else who works at a midsized company; that anyone bothered to write an article about his take is due to him being well-known in _completely different_ fields.
> Then why are you commenting on an article about what he is saying?
The article itself is an example of a sort of broken thinking which has become annoyingly common in HN-land, and is interesting for that reason, _not_ for its actual content.
Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies are already unable to check if they are utilising their employees time efficiently. People can look awfully busy without doing anything of value. And at some point you want to use strict monitoring (perhaps assisted by AI) to keep tabs on them, they can just as easily work from home. But I doubt that's legal.
monitoring your use of company assets at home is plenty legal. like, companies can force you to keep your camera on. they already track away time, number of keystrokes per hour, and can parse your MS Teams calls and provide transcripts -- they even do this for end users. Legal Hold software already does this if you need to flag a user. It's not GPT-4 but you can get pretty good insights into what your workers are or…
e.g. not legal in Germany
Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of the article is that for team work with unclearity you are more creative by working in a physical space together. If your work can be done in isolation and doesn't require a team to deal with any uncertainty, then by all means work fully remote. However, if your work is about innovation and collaboration, then it's going to be more effective to spend time together. I think it's telling that you talk about…
Or… Just have optional office hours, Slack huddles and mob sessions every few days. Some of my engineers… - have a open huddle for a few hours a day where anyone can drop into their project while they work - others make use of our scheduled themed mob sessions (ie. Maintenance Mondays, deployment Thursdays). have a problem, idea or just want to hangout then come by? - ICs & seniors are required to host at least a wee…
Hm, remote work does not also means asynchronous work. Something can be asynchronous, something can't. In that case it's just a matter of agree some timeframes like normal office hours where anyone can easily join anyone else because anyone should be there like in the office.
It's a matter of discipline not much of physical presence.
Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's much of an endorsement of in-office collaboration if you need the power to go out to actually focus and get work done.
Figuring out what a building should look like is different from pouring the cement. It is unfortunate, but in our specific case the team likes getting that cement poured. They focus and they get a lot of work done, only then it has to be re-done as it turns out everyone actually had very different ideas. This isn’t necessarily a remote/non-remote work problem, but I think that’s why that guy in the original article t…
Again, how is that a remote problem? Sounds like a leadership, communication & project management problem. Everyone being in an office doesn't magically solve those problems.
Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure I agree. Our industry isn’t full of people that have more integrity than the general population, and “your problem for hiring the wrong people” is short sighted, or even victim blaming. I’ll share this recent HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35767280 Remote work only makes sense when everyone has integrity, but that seems less and less likely in my experience, sadly.
I see nothing particularly bad about the post you shared (it's just a personal account of someone that doesn't really care about their job), and the only thing that it tied to remote work is the mention of "multiple full time jobs". But then I have to ask - if his employers are happy enough with his work to keep him around, what is the problem there? Keep in mind, I am also the sort of guy that doesn't rage against e…
Just saw this article. The guy isn’t doing anything illegal per se, but I would call him dishonest and say he is cheating both companies with his approaches. Few people could work two jobs without needing to apply these techniques.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-genz-working-2-remote-jo...