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IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

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Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#61

Post by jondubois »

lovich wrote: post #59
jondubois wrote: post #47

Having worked for both small startups and large corporations, I fully understand why remote work doesn't make sense for large companies. Large companies have a lot of trouble keeping track of what their employees are doing even when they are in the office. I've worked for a couple of large companies where some employees came into the office everyday but did essentially nothing and no one really cared. If those same e…

I can see where big companies are coming from with wanting the people they pay to do work, but if you can't tell if that's happening when they work remotely why would you be able to tell if its happening when they are in the office. The only thing they can tell accurately now is that people are in their cubes/seat/open office plan. They'd be better off coming up with some way to evaluate the output of their employees…

It's about incentives. If your employees know that they're stuck in the office all day, they have fewer options; their non-work activities are limited to browsing Facebook, reading blogs and looking at cat pictures - They can either do those things or actually do work.

If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, etc...

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#62

Post by Spooky23 »

jondubois wrote: post #47

Having worked for both small startups and large corporations, I fully understand why remote work doesn't make sense for large companies. Large companies have a lot of trouble keeping track of what their employees are doing even when they are in the office. I've worked for a couple of large companies where some employees came into the office everyday but did essentially nothing and no one really cared. If those same e…

For most workers, work from home works as long as you don't do it all of the time and never hire an asshole.

I've never seen a team with a big remote work culture that really worked unless it was part of the business where field ops make sense or when most time is interacting with customers.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#63

Post by Kirth »

jondubois wrote: post #61
lovich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see where big companies are coming from with wanting the people they pay to do work, but if you can't tell if that's happening when they work remotely why would you be able to tell if its happening when they are in the office. The only thing they can tell accurately now is that people are in their cubes/seat/open office plan. They'd be better off coming up with some way to evaluate the output of their employees…

It's about incentives. If your employees know that they're stuck in the office all day, they have fewer options; their non-work activities are limited to browsing Facebook, reading blogs and looking at cat pictures - They can either do those things or actually do work. If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, etc...

> It's about incentives.

I see being allowed to work from home as a sign of respect and confidence. Therefor I return that respect by not fucking with said opportunity.

Given the ability to schedule in chores or a bit of fun during breaks, my breaks become far more productive.

When I get stuck or something or am blocking on someone at work, I tend to browse hackernews, some forums, ... You end up with activities that draw you in more and more, potentially wasting hours without really having the refreshing effect you need breaks to have.

When I'm at home, I get up and vacuum a couple of rooms, clean the kitchen or maybe even skip out an hour to work out when the gym's calm to help clear my mind. I'm confident in saying my days spent working from home are by far the most productive of my entire week.

> If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, etc... Someone like that can just as well be expected to spend their entire days scrolling through cat pictures. Don't hire someone you think you can't trust working from home, they won't fare much better on-site.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#64

Post by jondubois »

Kirth wrote: post #63
jondubois wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about incentives. If your employees know that they're stuck in the office all day, they have fewer options; their non-work activities are limited to browsing Facebook, reading blogs and looking at cat pictures - They can either do those things or actually do work. If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, etc...

> It's about incentives. I see being allowed to work from home as a sign of respect and confidence. Therefor I return that respect by not fucking with said opportunity. Given the ability to schedule in chores or a bit of fun during breaks, my breaks become far more productive. When I get stuck or something or am blocking on someone at work, I tend to browse hackernews, some forums, ... You end up with activities that…

I'm the same but unfortunately not everyone is honest. I've met people who went to the beach during office hours and did almost no work. Then they bragged about it.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#65

Post by krzyk »

misja111 wrote: post #21
krzyk wrote: post #10

First they took free tea and coffee in the office ( http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more-free-... ) now they are taking away WFH. There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.

TIL that some people chose to work at IBM because of the free tea and coffee

It's the other way around, if all other places offer that as a minimum, why go to a place that is "cheap" in such a way? What would be next, bring your own water or a power generator?

My first job after college was in a small company (now they call them startups) that had 5 people. We worked in an old building, had low end equipment, but we had free coffee and tea (and water).

It costs them next to nothing to have that basic "benefits", yearly it is probably much less then a single travel of any of their chief officers.

If they are so cheap, then they probably won't give you big money for your work (small pay increases, or none) also, for me it is a big warning sign: GET OUT.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#66

Post by hackunomatter »

sqeaky wrote: post #53
hackunomatter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo's policy affected about 180 people. That's about 1.5% of the company. Of those 180, about 60 were allowed to WFH. "Firing" 120 people in such a convoluted way is stupid. But the Internet continues to believe in stupider things, so who am I to ask.

Why is "stupid" for businesses to attempt to coerce employees to quit rather than to fire them? Evil, or assholish sure, but I don't think its stupid. If they had layoffs they would have to deal with unemployment payments. They might have to deal with lawsuits. Dpending on laws they might even need to rehire some of them. They will certainly have higher short term expenses than if a bunch of people choose to leave. I…

Because in the end it was performance based. If your performance was good, you could continue to work from home. So you could have fired the low performers directly (if you wanted to) without going through this whole WFH drama.

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#67

Post by lovich »

jondubois wrote: post #64
Kirth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about incentives. I see being allowed to work from home as a sign of respect and confidence. Therefor I return that respect by not fucking with said opportunity. Given the ability to schedule in chores or a bit of fun during breaks, my breaks become far more productive. When I get stuck or something or am blocking on someone at work, I tend to browse hackernews, some forums, ... You end up with activities that…

I'm the same but unfortunately not everyone is honest. I've met people who went to the beach during office hours and did almost no work. Then they bragged about it.

Right, but that means you have no way of evaluating their output. On the other hand, maybe you are evaluating their output and that employee is still meeting their targets. At that point why do you care if they can fuck off half the day and get the same work done, if you aren't going to offer a pay increase?

Re: IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office

#68

Post by jondubois »

lovich wrote: post #67
jondubois wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same but unfortunately not everyone is honest. I've met people who went to the beach during office hours and did almost no work. Then they bragged about it.

Right, but that means you have no way of evaluating their output. On the other hand, maybe you are evaluating their output and that employee is still meeting their targets. At that point why do you care if they can fuck off half the day and get the same work done, if you aren't going to offer a pay increase?

In a big company (particularly in highly regulated industries) it can get very difficult to measure employee output because quite often an employee may be blocked from completing a task because of regulatory requirements, company policies or scalability considerations - This sometimes forces employees from one team to coordinate with other teams who are working on a project dependency and can lead to busy-waiting.

Sometimes employees can be moved onto other temporary tasks while the other team completes their task/dependency but this causes the employees in the former team to lose focus - Making employees context-switch between too many projects carries a cost which may be higher than just allowing them to busy-wait from time to time.

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