71–80 of 143 posts
It's harder to tell the worker you eat lunch with every day that you're laying him off than the worker you only know via video chat.
One downside of full time working from home is that the WFH workers are faceless, and easier to cut if it comes time to lay off employees. It's harder to tell the worker you eat lunch with every day that you're laying him off than the worker you only know via video chat.
For those who are thinking of going fulltime remote, I recommend doing so at companies where everyone works remote, or on teams where everyone works remote. Freelancing and contracting can work too, if you don't mind the extra hustle needed to line up clients.
But being the only remote guy at a company full of cubicle dwellers is just asking to me left out of important discussions or being the first to be fired or blamed in times of trouble.
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And they have always been considered weird, even when respected by their local culture, and to number very few. We have a word for such people. We do not actually have a word for people who are not hermits, because that's how normal it is. We have words for being excessively group focused, like "gregarious", but not for "not a hermit". Slightly less extreme, many cultures have had some sort of monk experience, where…
Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. Do you have any sense of how many people who are forced to head to an office each day would rather not? Probably not. I know I don't. But that's because the majority controls how these people work. Working remotely doesn't mean you're a hermit. If you are, your organization has a communication problem. I work remote and am able to get social interaction insta…
Yes, I'd call it much closer to monk-like existence.
It still isn't what the vast majority of humanity is going to prefer.
The proof is that if there was some sort of massive preference for working from home, we should be seeing it now. The tech is here. The Internet is here. The computing power is here. All the preconditions would seem to be here. If what is missing isn't that humans don't generally prefer to be physically together in a group structure, what exactly is it? If the revolution is so inevitable, what's stopping it?
If the answer is "Well we need more VR that makes it feel like they are there", that's a goal post move. May be true, but still a goal post move. If the answer is "because $MANAGEMENT", what's going to change about that in the future, and why aren't the managers also eager to work from home if it's so inevitable? If the answer is "Well Americans (who are uniquely terrible in all the world) have this irrational desire to spend time in their car in gridlock because they love it so much" then I guess that's more inevitable than the move to telecommuting then, huh? I haven't got an alternate explanation for why this isn't already happening that makes any sense, other than, we are not generally psychologically suited to work that way.
I consider myself, without doubt, to be an introvert. I hate parties with a passion, and am perfectly happy in my own head compared to even hanging out with a good friend. But I hated working at home. The isolation was terrible, not to mention the challenges of working on project teams (even with Slack etc). I felt lonely and less motivated. It is funny though, because my wife is the opposite of me on the social scal…
I find the exact opposite. My WFH days are far more productive. I feel no need to go to the office at all, most of the people I work with are remote, anyhow. And for technical communication, I'd MUCH rather have everything in writing via email. No, I don't want to call someone on the phone and have them read logs at me. I want a copy of the damned log file so I can look up what's happening with each message and figur…
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Well with the time saved from your commute, you could get involved in something locally. You could talk to your neighbors...
I think this is where a lot of remote workers fail to adapt, myself included for a few years. Remote working has its disadvantages but it's not unsolvable. Nowadays, I make it a point to go to local meetups on a consistent basis, which actually allowed me access to social networks far outside the limited network within my company. What's nice is that it forced me to learn how to make friends outside of typical enviro…
I highly recommend board game meetups! There are lots programming related meetups as well.
It's interesting to see that the average earnings of people who bike to work are increasing so much faster than the other groups. There's a stereotype that people who bike for transportation are just rich spoiled white liberals. I have no idea where it came from, and I'm pretty sure that historically it has been the opposite of the truth, but it's used as a political weapon by people on both ends of the political spe…
I have spent the last two summers working remotely from Europe. My favorite office was a houseboat in Amsterdam!
Its good for my wife and kids to go on trips too. I bring a extra screen and they (mostly) respect my workspace.
I am more happy and more productive after becoming remote. Its been 4 years.
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The biggest downside to me is decreasing the ways to make a friends and being social. I worked remote for about 8 months and I got bored seeing the same room in the day and the night. Of course not having a commute is an amazing thing and environmentally friendly, but I felt very disconnected from the world. I think once working from home is the norm something will have to exist to allow for meeting new people beside…
I think you hit the nail on the head here - there are lots of folks who view work as a way to be social and make friends. I wonder if a lot of it stems from the fact that sometimes you have to relocate for a new gig, and making friends at work is easier. I suppose it's also good to have friends at work when times are tough. That's never fit my definition of work though. Work is where I go to work, to get stuff done w…
I like this. Because it could lead to some interesting demographic shifts as more people go remote and where they live becomes less important to work, and more important for other things, like making friends.
For example, I like pro wrestling. I know that wrestling fans are overrepresented in Orlando, FL. If I already work remotely, then it would make sense for me to move to Orlando to be around people who have similar interests.
This could apply just as easily to religion, politics, hobbies, and other things once income is less tightly coupled to geography.
Meanwhile 56% of people who work or study in Copenhagen commute by bicycle.
In the US we don't have the bike path system yet. Riding a bike in a US city is insanely dangerous.
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serious question: what means to be an introvert then?
One definition I've heard is that introverts become fatigued when they have too much social interaction. Extraverts on the other hand get energized by social interaction. (Social interaction requires a lot of processing.) Why ? It may be related to an organism's baseline of arousal. The idea is that extraverts may have a lower baseline arousal rate, that they enjoy raising by interacting socially. Introverts have a h…