401–410 of 623 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not true. The article is not correctly describing the policy. I don't know if the journalist just didn't get the entire email from their source or if they put this out too fast but what is written in the article isn't correct.
What is the policy?
the problem was never remote vs colocated. it was commuting. offices are fine (though not required). travelling for > 15-20 mins to and from work is what sucks the most. we need local office hubs. work around your local community for your employer near your home.
Sort of. Commuting is one side of it. There’s also the issue many people have of not being able to do deep work in a busy open plan office.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely - in knowledge economy, insisting on physical presence is darn damn stupid. And I don't want to hang "with friends at work" I go to "work" that has to be specified clearly and that I expect to deliver with purely professional merit driven collaboration and not friendships and gangs. I have friends or would love to have friends out of the place where I work. I want strict compartmentalisation between work a…
Agreed. Some people really seem to think work looks like this: https://www.dreamstime.com/happy-diverse-office-workers-team... If any serious work is being done in a company, it does not look like that. Why do people keep pedalling this lie? A big problem in engineering is a lot of the work is done by engineers in private and the supervisors don't get to see it or experience it. So they think it happens by magic and…
I've also worked in teams of engineers that did occasionally burst into laughter while gathered in rooms doing productive work.
I've seen engineers who did no work. I've seen managers who worked extremely hard.
It's all shades of grey.
After spending more than a year remote, full remote is difficult ( not impossible ) . Most of us have settled on 3 days at home, 2 days at work, so we can socialize, make new connections or just simply have lunch. Going back to in office 100% is a thing of the past unless you are a team that has to be there - making hardware etc. For ex I cant imagine the Pixel team working 100% remote.
Not something I have direct experience of, but don't most engineers, designers working on hardware projects spend a similar amount of time working at a computer with a screen, keyboard and mouse as software people do? I assume that the vast majority of them are not in a fab/laboratory/solder station on a weekly basis.
There’s various ways to create tunnels for remote services to talk to local devices, but it adds latency and complexity to an already complex workflow.
I have been working remotely for decades. Most people can't work remotely and productively because they are not trained to do so. E.g. You are in your office (inside your home) and your wife, your dog or child enters it demanding you do some kind of non important issue right now, distracting you from your work.You need to be trained to not them let them distract you. The people living in your house need to be trained…
Worst thing is that my partner thinks sitting by a computer is not work and she feels entitled to interrupt any time she pleases. I didn't know that side when I worked in office. The first few months were difficult and she only came to terms with that when I started packing my things and said I will be moving out. I learned that this is probably wrong relationship but it is hard to throw away those years, but I can't…
You may want to come to an agreement on questions like:
- What is work time? How will my partner know?
- Are there any scheduled breaks?
- Are there any moments during work time when it is ok to come disturb?
- What is an acceptable urgent reason to disturb work time?
- ...
... says the person who is still disorganised about this after an entire year of covid-19.
As someone who's worked only remotely for several years, this makes sense. I know many will disagree with this assertion but in my estimation in-person collaboration is far better than online-only. I think the best balance is at least a couple days per week in the office and the rest remote.
"Couple days per week in the office" kind of defeats the whole point of going remote in the first place.
On your days at home, you can be just as productive as a day in the office without spending a full eight hours locked in your home office space.
When will introverts realise that their working conditions are being dictated to them by extroverts? The pandemic-driven remote working is hell for some people, and unfortunately they call the shots. I don’t mind coming into your office now and again (there’s a special dimension to IRL connections), but the reason I don’t want to work there full time is that it’s crap for knowledge work. I outspend you by 10x per hea…
For me, either I can go to the office 90% of the time or I can burn out from being alone at home and only talking to people via chat/video. My personal live is qualitatively better when I go to work most of the time. There are tradeoffs but on the whole the benefits of WFH (less interruptions) don't make up for the isolation. In the same way working 60-80hrs a week will start being more productive at the start but ev…
Also I feel for the people who's work was supporting workers in, y'know, work. I no longer live there, but even a crappy day in London for me was brightened by the countless interactions with people, the guy in the magazine shop, a new hipster pop up cafe, the street vendors selling exciting new food. Will they work from home?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they do then why don't they share it? I mean they must realise this is a pretty unpopular decision so why not share their justification. Otherwise it's just an appeal to authority - "Ours not to reason why.."
I don't know, but I think it's reasonable to assume that their primary concern is productivity, and that at a company like Google, that concern will be analyzed in a data driven way. Perhaps they don't want to insult their developers by implying their productivity dipped, or something.
That assumption has been thoroughly refuted by Google's reaction to James Damore's internal memo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely - in knowledge economy, insisting on physical presence is darn damn stupid. And I don't want to hang "with friends at work" I go to "work" that has to be specified clearly and that I expect to deliver with purely professional merit driven collaboration and not friendships and gangs. I have friends or would love to have friends out of the place where I work. I want strict compartmentalisation between work a…
Agreed. Some people really seem to think work looks like this: https://www.dreamstime.com/happy-diverse-office-workers-team... If any serious work is being done in a company, it does not look like that. Why do people keep pedalling this lie? A big problem in engineering is a lot of the work is done by engineers in private and the supervisors don't get to see it or experience it. So they think it happens by magic and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely - in knowledge economy, insisting on physical presence is darn damn stupid. And I don't want to hang "with friends at work" I go to "work" that has to be specified clearly and that I expect to deliver with purely professional merit driven collaboration and not friendships and gangs. I have friends or would love to have friends out of the place where I work. I want strict compartmentalisation between work a…
> Absolutely - in knowledge economy, insisting on physical presence is darn damn stupid. Insisting on presence is the only reason knowledge workers in western countries can claim income they have right now. Because in knowledge economy without insisting on presence, there is absolutely no reason to pay a westerner more for the same job that can be done by someone in India, China, East Europe or Africa. Unless you can…