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Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

nbloom.people.stanford.edu

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Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#431

Post by aurbano »

myself248 wrote: post #217
aurbano wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been saying this for a while.. we are missing local communities in today’s society. People used to go to church and do religious events and things sometimes during the week - this is all gone now, and I wish we had an alternative that didn’t rely on religion, just based on the local community somehow. Community centers 2.0 or whatever, but a place where people have a reason to go. I can only think of classes whi…

I wouldn't say I was exactly _surprised_ by this dynamic in hackerspaces, but perhaps I was caught off-guard by how strong it is. The tools and projects really are secondary in a space that has a strong and welcoming community. This next bit is extrapolation on my part, but I suspect the hackerspace demographic has particularly minimal church attendance, and that may contribute to our appreciation of "third place" dy…

I've never been to one of those but it does sound great!

I'll have a look around my area and try one post-lockdown, although I feel like it'd be so much easier to join if I already knew someone who went...

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#432

Post by bregma »

jasonkester wrote: post #373
anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me. If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen i…

Amen brother.

My belief is not that people should be free to choose what they want as long as they choose exactly what I want.

I know I will socialize so much more online than in person and the 10-second commute is exquisitely delightful.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#433

Post by [deleted] »

Danieru wrote: post #134
croutonwagon wrote: post #4

The problem is multi-faceted. While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate employee behavior (even when I normally try and advise against the approach) Some more egregious than others. While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things. Maybe that’s a su…

Thank you for sharing. I find it incredible how so far all responces to your post are in-denial. Being productive while remote is hard work and requires a high level of self-awareness and self-control. We cannot "will it into existence" by denying the negative experiences of employers. Time theft is a real concept businesses care about. Business think they are buying time, with an eye to capture the results. If any o…

[deleted]

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#434

Post by ghaff »

7thaccount wrote: post #192
ashtonkem wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average Millenial worker will job hop every 1-3 years. While it’s good to be friendly with your colleagues, you also shouldn’t build friend networks that get broken and reformed with such regularity.

I wonder if that is skewed my certain kinds of jobs (Ex: retail and software) where a skill is broadly transferable to many many other companies. As a fairly specialized electrical engineer, I could still find employment at several other companies which do what I do, but I'm not itching to move (been at the same company for a decade). Is everyone on HN constantly shifting jobs?

I'm not sure it's just specialization. Outside of hands-on engineering, there are a lot of roles in product management, developer relations, marketing, finance, etc. that are pretty transferable between companies. There's just a lot of job hopping in SV--especially between often short-lived small companies--that you probably see less of elsewhere. Personally, aside from one company that went pop in the dot-com era--I've never been at a job less than about 10 years on the east coast.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#435

Post by ghaff »

rapsey wrote: post #247
dv_dt wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is because Americans spend way to much time at work, so much time that it's difficult to find time to socialize out of work. People are social animals so they'll increase their interaction there (also lowering productivity in office). I think WFH coupled with reduced hour days or 4 day weeks would be a much better combo for high productivity in the office.

Americans also start work really late. 9 to 5 takes up the whole day. Where I am at most start at 7 or 8.

"9 to 5" kind of became the expression. The reality in maybe most places that have formal hours is 8 or 8:30 to 5 with "unpaid" lunchtime in the middle.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#436

Post by [deleted] »

jasonkester wrote: post #373
anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me. If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen i…

[deleted]

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#437

Post by ck425 »

jasonkester wrote: post #373
anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me. If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen i…

The office you describe sounds like a crap office. Comparing a crap office to remote (where it's largely as good or as bad as your decide) isn't really fair. I've previously always worked in lovely offices, with lots of light and quiet spaces, at places where adhoc working from home was common and acceptable (even if we were still office first). Compared to that remote working sucks for me, particularly for the reasons the OP shared.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#438

Post by throwaway3699 »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #274
rmk wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this paper, and survey, in general, appears to be ignoring one very important set of people: job hoppers and new entrants to the job market (to be fair, I did not read thru the entire paper, just looked over interesting sections). These two categories of people will almost certainly not prefer working from home: for job hoppers, it is difficult or in some cases, impossible to on-board; for new entrants, they…

I see this a lot "onboarding is difficult remotely", but I don't know why. It hasn't been difficult at my last few jobs including the current one where many/most of us have been remote for years. You get added to the email lists, the slack channels, the documentation wiki, and the issue tracker. Daily meetings at 10am. You pair up with one person for a couple weeks and then somebody else and so on for the first few m…

You're mistaking watching somebody on your computer as actually looking at that person. It's not and your brain knows this. It's very obvious that talking with somebody in person makes a huge, huge difference with the circuitry in our monkey brains. Listening to people on zoom calls is fatiguing and makes me feel like I have permanent brain fog.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#439

Post by pelasaco »

anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

> Remote college isn't a thing and never will be

Is so wrong as "Remote working isn't a thing and never will be"

There are a lot of people that are interested in Remote studing. Sure it's not for everyone, sure not always 100% of the time, but I guess it would work pretty well and I personally would love to see "Remote college" becoming a thing.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#440

Post by learc83 »

fermentation wrote: post #281
j4yav wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working from home before and during lockdown were totally different, as something to consider. It was very social seeing my neighbors, dropping by the coffee shop, taking a stroll during lunch, and so on. Not saying you won't enjoy being back in the office, but it's something to consider that maybe you could fill that commute time and your social needs with something more local once your community reopens.

Do you think that lockdown remote work involves more video calls than pre-lockdown remote work? Another commenter mentioned they saw more meetings during lockdown as a way for their managers to feel more in control, though for “real” remote companies I don’t see this being the case.

Oh yeah. I’ve worked remotely for over a decade. I didn’t even have a webcam on my primary computer until the pandemic started.

Now everyone wants to have a video call for things that used to be emails or slack conservations.

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