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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

#461

Post by mulmen »

_bxg1 wrote: post #436
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #412

For me too many companies use the "family" aspect of things too much. No, we're not a family. My family would let me sleep on their couch if I got fired or lost my home. Does the company plan to let me live in the office if they let me go? Are we still doing Thanksgiving? What about a family tree, whos going to keep that up after I die? But seriously, after seeing some nasty employee outcomes over a few jobs it kind…

There is also a difference between a company/management and your peers. There's no such thing as a corporate entity being your friend. Having a boss as your friend... maybe isn't impossible, but is definitely complicated. But it's entirely possible to develop real friendships with peers, even as a group. The differentiator is whether that narrative is pushed from above, or whether it's something that naturally develo…

I can count on one hand the number of actual friendships I formed with coworkers. I mean relationships that continue past the time where we literally shared an office.

Most of the people I work with are highly ambitious and globally mobile. Our average tenure is something like a year. People who have been at the company for two years are veterans. Forming friendships in that situation is difficult because at this point many of those people have moved away for greener pastures.

Most of my friends are people I met trough my extracurricular social circles. Personally I like that almost all of my friends have different jobs in different fields. There's never work talk in social settings and I get a more diverse perspective on the world.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#462

Post by [deleted] »

tibiahurried wrote: post #429
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #412

For me too many companies use the "family" aspect of things too much. No, we're not a family. My family would let me sleep on their couch if I got fired or lost my home. Does the company plan to let me live in the office if they let me go? Are we still doing Thanksgiving? What about a family tree, whos going to keep that up after I die? But seriously, after seeing some nasty employee outcomes over a few jobs it kind…

You nailed it! I never bought the "family" argument. Fully agree with you. Work is work. We are not family. I don't get it when I see people let go, writing extensive blog posts on how awesome the company "family" was yada yada. They let people go .. it means that they are only "family" for as long as it is beneficial for them. Real families don't work that way. So for younger folks out there. Don't drink the cool-ai…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#463

Post by kevmo314 »

tibiahurried wrote: post #429
chrismarlow9 wrote: post #412

For me too many companies use the "family" aspect of things too much. No, we're not a family. My family would let me sleep on their couch if I got fired or lost my home. Does the company plan to let me live in the office if they let me go? Are we still doing Thanksgiving? What about a family tree, whos going to keep that up after I die? But seriously, after seeing some nasty employee outcomes over a few jobs it kind…

You nailed it! I never bought the "family" argument. Fully agree with you. Work is work. We are not family. I don't get it when I see people let go, writing extensive blog posts on how awesome the company "family" was yada yada. They let people go .. it means that they are only "family" for as long as it is beneficial for them. Real families don't work that way. So for younger folks out there. Don't drink the cool-ai…

> Real families don't work that way.

I dunno, mine certainly does. My family extends only to where they're no longer toxic in my life. When they intrude and become a negative influence, I cut them out.

My gripe with the antagonistic "work is not your family" approach is it sends the signal that the people I meet at work will never be my family. That kind of sucks. Sure, corporations cutting people out aren't very familial, but there are other humans at the core and some of those coworkers do care if I get fired or am having personal issues. Unilaterally casting them out as a machine to further my personal interests is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#464

Post by werber »

chrismarlow9 wrote: post #412

For me too many companies use the "family" aspect of things too much. No, we're not a family. My family would let me sleep on their couch if I got fired or lost my home. Does the company plan to let me live in the office if they let me go? Are we still doing Thanksgiving? What about a family tree, whos going to keep that up after I die? But seriously, after seeing some nasty employee outcomes over a few jobs it kind…

I do not trust people when they use culture as a selling point. I made the mistake once, and did meet some great people, but I don't see a single one of them regularly. We ended up having a temporary job and basically just shared mutual trauma. I tried to stay up with the escapee Slack channel, but, it feels more like a support group for people who fled the same cult.

With that being said, I've made some of my best friends in boring coding jobs that only promised me money in exchange for work. It's funny now that people I'm friends from other jobs have met and mixed, that I don't even remember who I worked with where or what the hell we even did.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#465

Post by wlll »

_bxg1 wrote: post #379
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…

The flipside is that it takes a lot more intentional effort, which many of us may struggle to put forth. The vast majority of friendships are made in incidental contexts: people you just happen to be around and interact with through the normal course of life. Many adults struggle to make and maintain friendships when they no longer have school forcing them to be around peers, and become very isolated. I think your in…

It is easier than ever before to go out and meet people with similar interests to you. In many places, even relatively small ones, clubs exist for climbing, sailing, all sorts of tech, chess, reading, photography etc. I don't buy the idea that people are so feeble that they can't make friends outside work.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#466

Post by tonyedgecombe »

diob wrote: post #300
mjayhn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wfh and I won't work for a company that bases my pay on my zipcode (Gitlab). I want complete flexibility on where I live. There are plenty of remote companies that don't do that, especially now post-covid. I wish more people would reject zip code COL so that companies starting to WFH don't just take Gitlabs idea of it.

I'm glad you are principled. Get paid what you're worth folks!

All this might change if there are enough candidates that have become suitable now there is a WFH policy in place.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#467

Post by papito »

chrismarlow9 wrote: post #412

For me too many companies use the "family" aspect of things too much. No, we're not a family. My family would let me sleep on their couch if I got fired or lost my home. Does the company plan to let me live in the office if they let me go? Are we still doing Thanksgiving? What about a family tree, whos going to keep that up after I die? But seriously, after seeing some nasty employee outcomes over a few jobs it kind…

"We are a family" is bullshit. You need to be a pretty egregious repeat offender to be ostracized from a real family. A company can fire you on a whim, simply because someone with a business degree sorted a spreadsheet with salaries in descending order, and you were in the top 20.

The more correct analogy is a sports team. Everyone works well together to win the medal, but it's much more pragmatic in that sense.

Perhaps back in the age of B&W TV, when people could spend their entire life with a company, it was sort of more true. You had that one job, you had your pension. It was really like a second family, an getting let go was like death.

I am beginning to see that nowadays, even full time jobs are becoming essentially contract gigs with better benefits. You should treat it as such anyway. Be professional, be good at what you do, but also be detached and non-emotional about it. It can end at any second.

What you take from a job is not that you were "like a family". What you take from it is the experience, what you have learned from your own mistakes, and most importantly - friendships. The rest is ephemeral like a docker container. Be ready for it to go POOF.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#468

Post by kyteland »

Aeolun wrote: post #204
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am having a very hard time staying motivated in the current context. Kids at home yelling at each other, other coworkers distracted, work tasks badly defined without the ability to verbally hash things out, emotional / mental health stress due to the current scenario. I don't feel like the current scenario is indicative of a well structured WFH setup, even though we've been doing it for 2 months now. In short I hop…

I’m really starting to resent my childless co-workers and their ability to just work happily all day long. My day is basically split up into maybe 20m at a time where I can do something before being distracted. I end up working during the night to catch up (just got done), but this is unsustainable long term.

As a childless person with a great home office, this is exactly how I felt being forced to work in an open floor plan office. There was no time to concentrate on my work unless I got in early or stayed late. There were constant distractions from the crush of people around me. I would take the distraction of a couple of children over 100s of my colleagues elbow-to-elbow any day.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#469

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#470

Post by treesrule »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #333
saurik wrote: post #299

What is Twitter even doing? Like I realize they likely have an infinite number of people working for them, but are any of them doing anything important at all? This is not like the usual "I just don't see how a company needs that many people" laments: this is specific to Twitter, as they seem to have at most one engineer working on new features... it took like five years for them to implement "increase size of Tweet…

I've hung out a bunch at Twitter's offices (in both SF and NYC). It's pretty eye-opening and a good lens into why Twitter the company is so fucked up. The vibe that comes off is more of a social hangout club than a serious tech company. You meet your friend for lunch and there's professional chefs cooking gourmet meals, you hang out in the social area while the celebrity of the day comes into the office and everyone…

> Anyone with right of center political views is casually censored from the platform with no recourse

As someone half/two-thirds of whose twitter reading is right of center/right wing people, I find this comment perplexing?

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