Shopify Goes Digital by Default • Hacker News Board

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#421

Post by reidjs » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #416

guptaneil wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all perfectly valid points. However, I don't think WFH advocates are claiming that working from home is definitively better. Both options have different trade-offs. You're right that collaboration is much easier in person, even with the latest remote work technology. But could we offset that with companies that have monthly/quarterly offsites instead? What if they invest their office budget into helping peo…

No offsites please. I'd rather go in then fly around the world at this point.

How would you feel about local offsites?

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#422

Post by kaishiro » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

julianeon wrote: post #418

nucleardog wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what exactly it is you're disagreeing with him about? From my read, he's saying "no commute is good because you can do a few chores during the week and not have as many to do on the weekends". You're saying "no commute is good because you can apply that time to cleaning and the house is cleaner; but also kids are exhausting". ?

I can clarify the disagreement. He is saying: > Commuting is the big time saver, but you can also do chores you'd relegate to the weekend or after work while WFH I am saying: > If my commute time is removed, some amount of necessary chores cannot get done. I can't do chores in any time other than the commute time. There is no real 'weekend' or 'after work' time, when I can do them 'later'. All time is accounted for,…

I'm now left even more confused. Are you saying that you do a certain number of chores during your commute, and that you wouldn't be able to do these chores if the commute time was removed?

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#423

Post by the_reformation » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #314

Is it going to be a thing on HN now where the top thread for every announcement of a company embracing Remote Work will be from someone complaining about not liking Work-From-Home and 50+ replies discussing about "WFH vs office" or discussing their own personal preferences? I am starting to be astonished by the amount of supposedly-intelligent people who are completely missing the forest for the trees. What we are wi…

How is this not a "WFH vs office" post?

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#424

Post by dwild » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #11

I really hope this doesn't become a bigger trend. Shopify was a company I was seriously considering working at in the future, but this would probably disqualify them. Working from home once a week sounds great to me, but doing it full time would drive me insane. Virtual meetings are awful for me, and you miss out on so much of the discussion that happens outside of the meeting - I think most of the important discussi…

I got a new job right before the pandemic, with a big enough prior notice that pushed my first day into the pandemic. It may be related to the fact that the company I now work for wasn't doing any remote work before, but it now feels so impersonal working. In an office I can easily chit chat, get to know my coworkers, but remotely it seems so hard. I could see it happening more easily in the kind of place that has a casual channel on Slack, but most workplace doesn't push that kind of things. I may try to push some kind of virtual 5@7.

I would personally trust Shopify to do it right, to allow that kind of social interaction remotely.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#425

Post by rglullis » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

the_reformation wrote: post #423

rglullis wrote: post #314

Is it going to be a thing on HN now where the top thread for every announcement of a company embracing Remote Work will be from someone complaining about not liking Work-From-Home and 50+ replies discussing about "WFH vs office" or discussing their own personal preferences? I am starting to be astonished by the amount of supposedly-intelligent people who are completely missing the forest for the trees. What we are wi…

How is this not a "WFH vs office" post?

Because Shopify is announcing they are going Remote First. Remote Work is NOT the same as Work-from-Home. Work-from-Home assumes that the employees still live close the companies headquarters and occasionally go to the office. Remote-first companies DO NOT have headquarters. Your office is anywhere you'd like it to be (it could be at your home, but it could be any other communal space if you prefer so)

I wrote a similar answer on the thread (which suffered from the same issue as here) from Coinbase announcing going remote-first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23257935.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#426

Post by obstacle1 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 11:49 PM UTC

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #224

I really enjoy working from home however I have realized that I have become increasingly unhappy with the communication on my team. Getting answers to simple yes/no questions takes hours. Someone will ask me a question, I'll reply within a few seconds asking for clarification and then radio silence for the next 90 minutes. Personally, I also feel that I'm learning less in some areas. This is not a commentary on WFH i…

If a prerequisite to making progress on your work is getting an answer to a simple yes/no question within minutes, that's a fundamental problem with how you're planning your work, not some commentary on the nature of 'active' vs 'passive' jobs.

Expecting instant answers from others is the WFH equivalent to "I love being able to walk to my coworker's desk and ask them questions!" Sure, because being able to do that lets you off the hook for needing to break down large tasks into parallel chunks, plan phases of work in advance, juggle multiple plates for when you are blocked, etc. It's making your job easier at the expense of everyone else around you, by basically outsourcing part of your job.

WFH is a mindset shift.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#427

Post by oblio » Fri, May 22, 2020, 12:11 AM UTC

graham_paul wrote: post #343

cletus wrote: post #141

So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could. By convention, people would most often WFH on Wednesdays. I liked this timing of people doing it at the same time. But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going…

1. communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote: you are probably used to an office culture where communication happens in person and nothing is ever documented. That's understandable. in a remote culture, the written world rules, communication would be much better (asynchronous, no more pointless meetings) 2. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could: could you WFH…

Not OP, but:

1. Ok.

2. I leave that to OP to answer.

3. What if I don't like cooking and can afford to eat out?

4. What's better? Maybe I like living in a big city. Not everyone wants a house with a backyard.

5. We shall see. "Information workers" like to think they're superior to everyone else but people are ultimately social. Work is social. Companies build stuff by having people collaborate and so far there's no collaboration better than face-to-face. That's how you break down silos, for example, in many cases.

6. That's assuming that the company redirects the money they pay on offices to help employees pay for their home offices. I really doubt that.

7. Big companies pay better. Big companies have big projects small companies can't even dream of. There are many reasons to join a big company.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#428

Post by pb7 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 12:22 AM UTC

jacktli wrote: post #405

pb7 wrote: post #30

Square flew under the radar compared to Twitter coverage but it too is on the same policy as Twitter given Jack is CEO of both. Noteworthy because it has a similar number of employees, an even larger market cap, and HQ'ed in the same location.

As Shopify? 35b (SQ) market cap vs 86b market cap (SHOP), SF vs Ottawa HQ, guess 4000 vs 6500 employees (based on linkedin numbers) is fairly close, but Square and Shopify are quite different.

I was referring to Twitter and Square.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#429

Post by lowbloodsugar » Fri, May 22, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #141

So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could. By convention, people would most often WFH on Wednesdays. I liked this timing of people doing it at the same time. But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going…

>But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind.

Don't want to change your mind, so instead consider that your statement might be more accurate if you said:

"But communication and collaboration for me is just much harder work remote."

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#430

Post by johnghanks » Fri, May 22, 2020, 12:34 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #141

So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could. By convention, people would most often WFH on Wednesdays. I liked this timing of people doing it at the same time. But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going…

So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I love it. Work wasn't flexible before, so I had to commute into the office every day. In fact, everyone had to.

But communication and collaboration isn't that difficult with Zoom and Slack, you can't change my mind. You can make it work.

I love being able to walk into my kitchen at lunch and make whatever I want.

Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and and that's fine because your home is your space and you can make it work for you - even with someone else working in the same room as you.

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