The future of work is not threatening your employees • Hacker News Board

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#61

Post by charwalker » Fri, May 07, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #34

davesque wrote: post #5

Seems like there are a lot of ways that employers are effectively blaming their employees for COVID. Some of the anecdotes in this article really resonated with me. It does feel "super shitty" when you feel as though you've been barely holding it together during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century and yet your employer seems to feel entitled to hold you to the usual stand…

I work in tech, and my company has bent over backwards to help us. Dozens of extra days off I'm having a hard time even using, an extra 4 days off a year (one per quarter) where the whole company is off, constantly reminding us ourselves and our families come first, and encouraging others to be understanding that our coworkers might be working unusual schedules as they juggle remote-learning kids, childcare, elder ca…

My manager has been very active to push sick says when needed, maybe partially as it's hard to gauge how functional someone is when you can't see them at their desk. They've always been awesome but it has shown through this past year.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#62

Post by ricardobeat » Fri, May 07, 2021, 11:22 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #31

Unpopular opinion - is the CEO really threatening her employees? Or talking more abstractly about the downsides and ramifications of people deciding to work remotely? Ie, downsides that people would face at many/most companies, not just her own. I read the original article with a more charitable assumption, and the latter is how it came across to me. "If you park in my driveway again, I will have your car towed" - ve…

It's the wording. There are no "risks" in not returning to the office other than whatever the leadership decides to inflict on them.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#63

Post by charwalker » Fri, May 07, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #42

jay_kyburz wrote: post #39

I think one of the consequences of work from home culture will be less of an emphasis on how many hours you work, and more focus on what you produce, and how that can be monetized. What this means is that a good manager will farm work out all over the place finding the right mix of quality / quantity / price. People will not be paid salaries, they will be paid per unit of work. Rather than interviewing people to join…

The future is apparently going to be impossible for new grads and people who would thrive with mentorship.

Just onboarding a skilled/experience new team member has been painful all around. There is so much you can get in a traditional in person whiteboarding session, or that one has developed the skills to teach in person. I think much of the issue comes from communication limitations or lack of skills in remote communication. That could be as simple as a senior member with 30 years of xpeirence teaching someone in person and can read body language to understand when to slow down or go over a topic again. Without that feedback source they lose a major component of their effective teaching style. Even checking work or notes can take 2-5x the time, swapping presenters or losing side by side comparison from two different views. Anecdotally, I've found it easy to get lost in what I'm presenting and forget to slow my sentences for clarity over an often poor call or connection and some of the people I work with are not even able to view meetings at home due to poor internet access.

To your point, I hope students today are learning how to learn/communicate/perform at home and building the skills required to do so in the field or these issues will be compounded after graduation. It's super easy to slip under the radar or just get by, in many cases it was like that before the pandemic. I think there will soon be lists of interview questions related to how one coped with the challenges of learning/working from home, what difficulties thy overcame, and how they did so as an individual/team/company. It's not like I'll be at a vendor conference to compare those notes with other people any time soon.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#64

Post by charwalker » Fri, May 07, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

FFRefresh wrote: post #51

> "The original headline of the piece was itself an unsubtle threat: “As a CEO, I want my employees to understand the risks of not returning to work in the office.” (Over email, Washington Post Opinion editor Fred Hiatt told me that Merrill did not write the headline. “I asked our team to change it early this morning to something I thought better captured the piece,” he said.)" As an aside, this unethical practice in…

FYI, from my understanding this is an extremely common behavior for most op-ed boards ex adding a headline when none was sent in, or editing the submission itself for length/formatting/etc. Most groups will require you sign something allowing them to review and publish the letter and may request sources or your own connections to the topic to identify and disclose a conflict of interest. This generally makes op-eds more reliable gauge of public opinion and viewpoints vs a blog style opinion article bashing an industry rival.

Some groups like NYT have retired the term 'Op-Ed' name in favor of something like Guest Essays as it better conveys the intention of the submission: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/opinion/nyt-opinion-oped-...

It's also important to note that local papers may print what is provided vs editing for spelling/grammar or even fact checking a submission. Larger publishers who by simply printing it add weight to the original may exercise a higher degree of involvement. For a look at the NYT process when you submit a piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.htm...

Anecdotal, but every letter I remember I or my family wrote to the local paper was edited in some fashion, most often for length. Short articles were the least touched, if at all, as they had the least content to make fit on a page of newsprint. I think it's also near impossible to get a non-partisan source either simply because that term is applied to basic human decency these days like how it's apparently partisan to wear a mask.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#65

Post by twobitshifter » Sat, May 08, 2021, 12:19 AM UTC

My company is on the next stage, which is vaccine threatening. I’ve already been through my first dose and will get a second, but the corporate threat to others is: if you don’t get a vaccine you may not be able to go to client sites and complete your job (i.e you’ll probably be fired.) They haven’t yet made a decision on whether vaccines will be required for the office that they’re making people return to. I endorse vaccination and would recommend it if asked, but it doesn’t sit right with me to force people into making a decision that they’re uncomfortable with. If we don’t get vaccination high enough for herd immunity it would be something that you could start to make a case for, but we have to see how the voluntary participation goes first.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#66

Post by antisthenes » Sat, May 08, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

sleepybrett wrote: post #59

antisthenes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already near impossible for people not from top tech schools. I don't know what generation you are, but for millenials, the 2008 crisis was a real doozy. Anecdotally, only maybe 20-30% of my cohort found stable, well paying full-time jobs in the 10-12 years since that recession. Many of them put their life plans on hold due to not being able afford things that a family generally requires. So the "future" is alre…

I think you are in a hell of a bubble. I've worked at several large companies over the years and would have to say that many of the engineers i've worked with have all come from vastly different backgrounds. I've certainly worked with some people with very impressive academic credentials but the majority do not.. and that could mean an engineering degree from a run of the mill school, a degree in an unrelated field o…

I'm in a bubble because my group of friends is more diverse than just tech engineers?

What a weird peak HN comment.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#67

Post by neuro_image2 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

If you haven't read it, I highly recommend David Graeber's 'The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy'

This article is just another typical example of the parasitic administrator class devaluing the people that do real work.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#68

Post by oceanghost » Sat, May 08, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

setr wrote: post #57

oceanghost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so utterly inhuman t I worked for a company once that moved offices-- literally, there was no workplace to go to for 2 weeks (keep in mind this company made hardware). The C level management sends out a company wide e-mail saying "the move will not be tolerated as an excuse for missing deadlines." God I wish I had a copy of that e-mail.

tbh that's probably not all that unfair -- whoever created the timelines should have already accounted for it, and if the timeline was created long enough ago (because the project is sufficiently long) before the move was known, there should be significantly more than two weeks buffer included for issues exactly like this. Of course, it's also that person who should inevitably be held accountable for the fuck-up (unl…

In a rational world yes... The company scheduled 8hrs/day of work on a project in its schedules-- no time taken out for breaks, mandatory trainings, meetings, etc. They wouldn't even account for things like vacation time, holidays, or even pregnancy. I remember one engineer became pregnant, and she still had a development schedule of 8/hrs a day in the estimates. This problem was pretty obvious 6 months out or so.

You'd say it is just bad management-- and it is-- but its a control technique.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#69

Post by setr » Sat, May 08, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

oceanghost wrote: post #68

setr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbh that's probably not all that unfair -- whoever created the timelines should have already accounted for it, and if the timeline was created long enough ago (because the project is sufficiently long) before the move was known, there should be significantly more than two weeks buffer included for issues exactly like this. Of course, it's also that person who should inevitably be held accountable for the fuck-up (unl…

In a rational world yes... The company scheduled 8hrs/day of work on a project in its schedules-- no time taken out for breaks, mandatory trainings, meetings, etc. They wouldn't even account for things like vacation time, holidays, or even pregnancy. I remember one engineer became pregnant, and she still had a development schedule of 8/hrs a day in the estimates. This problem was pretty obvious 6 months out or so. Yo…

I’m not sure how much control it really creates... it seems more like a recipe for slipping milestones

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#70

Post by oceanghost » Sat, May 08, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

setr wrote: post #69

oceanghost wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a rational world yes... The company scheduled 8hrs/day of work on a project in its schedules-- no time taken out for breaks, mandatory trainings, meetings, etc. They wouldn't even account for things like vacation time, holidays, or even pregnancy. I remember one engineer became pregnant, and she still had a development schedule of 8/hrs a day in the estimates. This problem was pretty obvious 6 months out or so. Yo…

I’m not sure how much control it really creates... it seems more like a recipe for slipping milestones

Well then let me elaborate... it's a gaslighting technique.

It creates a no-win scenario for the workers where the employee/team/etc is always blamed for managerial incompetence.