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Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#451

Post by aantix »

danjac wrote: post #368
gregkerzhner wrote: post #356

I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I…

Let me introduce you to Slack...

looking forward to the next iteration of remote communication.

Async audio/video tools like Yac, Loom; those are the next wave.

VR will follow after that.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#452

Post by luckydata »

cynicalreason wrote: post #76
caseyw wrote: post #26

I’ve worked from home for a number of years. It’s all about having a normal schedule. My family knows when I’m in the office, I am at work. There isn’t anyone popping over my shoulder, and general interruptions are almost nil in my case. I think a lot of people are going to be super surprised what a quiet room and your playlist of choice can do to increase productivity. Just my 2 cents.

this is exactly the reason I prefer the office .. I have 2 kids, 5 & 2, and if I'm home they are very much used to me being around them or doing something together, working from home is not ideal

My son is 5 and he knows what my door is for. He still comes in occasionally but it's pretty manageable. The 2 year old is a different matter, but soon we'll get daycares back so no biggie.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#453

Post by squnch »

sylens wrote: post #146
Ididntdothis wrote: post #9

It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…

I would love for more companies to embrace this just to open up the candidate pool for positions. There are so many positions at Microsoft, for example, that I would have loved to apply for, but they require you to be in Redmond, and I'm just not in a position to relocate.

If you can relocate temporarily, most of Microsoft will let you go remote if you're a top performer (Top 10% roughly) after about 2 years.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#454

Post by ptudan »

WorldMaker wrote: post #246
dudul wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your anecdote reminds me of the time a company I was interviewing at flew me half way across the country for their "onsite interview", and 75% of the sessions were me, seating in one of their offices, zooming/skyping with the interviewer.

One company did that to me twice , the whole while telling me that they never allow remote work and I had to relocate to Mountain View, especially despite neither team I was interviewing with was based in Mountain View. The team I had the most face-to-face interaction with was because I managed to talk the recruiter into to allowing me to interview in the SF office, where some of the team actually worked, despite con…

Seems like your experiences with Mountain View are el camino real and the 101 to/from SJC...

Go about 3 miles west and you'll find beautiful mountain forests :)

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#455

Post by z6 »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #9

It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…

Lots of companies are followers. I appreciate Twitter taking the lead here.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#456

Post by daenz »

bhupy wrote: post #414
daenz wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a related thought: is it ethical to pay a person less based purely on where they live? I understand that there are different cost of living factors for different places, but that's on the employee's side and should be none of the employer's business. If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee, it shouldn't matter where they live, and so scaling that value seems discriminatory to me. Anyone have…

What if we took that thinking and turned it around: The minimum wage for a McDonalds cashier in NYC is $15/hour. McDonalds also operates in India, and hires cashiers that do essentially the same work. If the employe was able to pay $15/hour for the same type of work in NYC, then shouldn't they pay the Indian cashier INR 1,125 / hour? Or what about the other way around, why shouldn't the NYC cashier get paid at the In…

I disagree with both of those examples because the physical location of the job/house is the important factor affecting the cost. In the McDonalds example, the physical restaurant is embedded in the community and partakes in the market forces of that physical location. In the house example, same thing, the physical house is embedded in the community and partakes market forces derived from the demand of others wanting to live in that community. The location of the job or asset affects its value.

However, in remote work, this is no longer true to the degree of other jobs (disregarding regional taxes, paperwork, etc). The job can exist anywhere and the value derived from it (all else being equal, like worker quality, etc) does not change.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#457

Post by toohotatopic »

linuxftw wrote: post #426
toohotatopic wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to The Paradox of Choice[1], more freedom doesn't necessarily lead to more happiness. Without choice, people can grow on each other. With friends, we move on if it becomes difficult. With coworkers we have an opportunity for personal growth. In a way, coworkers are more like family than friends. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

> With coworkers we have an opportunity for personal growth I read this as an opportunity to act like someone you're not, aka, conformity. With friends, I can be myself, and surround myself with people I actually like, vs trying to convince myself to like people that I'm around.

To me, this is the other way round. Since coworkers cannot leave, there is no benefit in being somebody else. The only conformity is towards the boss because it is a non-equal power relation.

The personal growth comes from accepting somebody else the way he is.

Friends on the other hand, also choose. So if I want to spend time with them I have to conform to joined values. It's a non-issue most of the times because friends are chosen among people with similar values. Still, when it comes to conformity, it's the friendship that depends on it.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#459

Post by bdamm »

hintymad wrote: post #400
gregkerzhner wrote: post #356

I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I…

Working in office is not equal to socializing, but face-to-face communication has great values, at least to some people. I'm just not sure it's a universal truth that working from home is a greater benefit to every employee, as so many comments passionately argued here. Case in point, I'm an introvert in every way: hate going to loud places like bars to socialize, prefer chatting with small number of friends in a qui…

Absolutely. If I could have one day a week in the office and four days from home, it would be ideal. That 1 on 1 connection ends up being so important, useful, and facilitates much easier communication using remote tools after the fact.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#460

Post by satysin »

I have worked remotely (from home) for several years now. Almost everyone I work with also work remotely.

While companies can save money with smaller offices by allowing working from home the biggest factor imho is you open the potential employee pool to the whole country, if not the content or the world.

You are no longer restricted to the best person you can get within an hour or two commute of an office.

Find someone perfect for the role who lives 5 hours away? It doesn't matter anymore!

You no longer have to convince them to relocate (and put forward cash to cover the relocation as a condition of the contract).

You don't have to throw away the perfect candidate because a decade ago your company decided this is where you office should be but now you can't find local talent.

I hope when my son starts working (if he works in an office) he says to me "Dad, did you seriously have to go to the same place an hour away every day to sit at a desk and do the same work you can do on any computer with an internet connection? That's crazy!"

So much needless commuting could end if more companies embraced remote working. Not being forced to live within commuting distance of an office would mean more people can live further from "the office" easing pressure on housing, roads, public transport systems, save energy (fuel), reduce commuter accidents (vehicular and public transport), reduce pollution and give everyone more time in their day not mindlessly traveling from A to B back to A again every day.

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