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Coinbase will be a remote-first company

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#71

Post by Cookingboy »

lstodd wrote: post #69
Cookingboy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This basically means that they did not modify their lifestyle for remote work. I really can't understand how one can be this shallow minded. Maybe the life style required to make remote work effective is not the desirable lifestyle for everyone? Maybe people value different things in life? Or maybe some people actually enjoy the place of their work and the physical presence of their coworkers? >Purging office bullsh…

What I say is that _if_ they would have changed their lifestyle _then_ they would not have craved the office experience. There is nothing shallow about this observation. If they chose not to it's fine. They just missed a different and, in my opinion, a better experience. Their choice. I cannot in good faith come up with a type of work that genuinely requires being in an office. Not on a workfloor, not in a lab, not i…

>What I say is that _if_ they would have changed their lifestyle _then_ they would not have craved the office experience.

I can say the same thing about WFH. If you have made the lifestyle adjustment then you wouldn't crave to be working remotely either.

Btw I don't know what kind of lifestyle adjust you were thinking about that can magically change someone's personality or family situation.

>If they chose not to it's fine. They just missed a different and, in my opinion, a better experience. Their choice.

Exactly, it is your opinion, but not a universal fact.

>I cannot in good faith come up with a type of work that genuinely requires being in an office.

Just like how you prefer WFH even when your job doesn't require you to work from home, a lot of people can prefer to work at an office even though it's not required.

>Social aspects of offices are overrated. Less formal association is better if only because no one is forced into them.

For you, maybe. I find my social interaction at office to be neither overrated nor forced.

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#72

Post by Cookingboy »

lstodd wrote: post #66
Cookingboy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's another good reason. I know of coworkers who are single and really looking back to get back to the office because they are sick of being alone in their small apartments for days at a time. I also know of coworkers who are married with family and can't wait to get back to the office because they need to take breaks from their spouses/kids from time to time.

When I was in the same situation, I was very much enjoying working from a pub which was 20 minutes walk away from the "office". It was quiet, nice food and much socializing towards the evening. What's not to like? To think how much money the company was wasting on the office... I still cringe today.

> It was quiet, nice food and much socializing towards the evening. What's not to like?

To me the smell of alcohol would be awful? Or maybe I don't like noisy strangers? Or maybe I can't bring my comfortable chair and twin 30" monitors to a pub with me every day?

I think you've fallen pretty deep in the trap of thinking your experience and preference applies to everyone.

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#73

Post by ojr »

Cookingboy wrote: post #7

I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago, but I enjoy going to office and there is a lot of benefits that you don't get from being remote 100%. I've also made very good friends at work and I see my coworkers as much more than just another GitHub ac…

Hiring developers in far proximity like in a different country is a quick way to accumulate tech debt from my experience.

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#74

Post by maehwasu »

cjrp wrote: post #61
LB232323 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been working remote by choice for years. You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web. This is a pretty straightforward advantage of the internet. Some jobs have always been "remote". For example, writers still type their manuscripts from anywhere and mail them to editors. However, only some j…

> You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web. This sounds great, unless you have a mortgage on a house which needs paying regardless of whether you're living there, and children in school who can't be moved all the time. Although I'll admit that since my employer is looking at 100% remote, it opens…

> Although I'll admit that since my employer is looking at 100% remote, it opens the door to moving to a nicer/cheaper house outside of the office-commutable bubble.

This is the key part--many people desire a home they can build a life in, but limiting it to the commuting orbit of a few select cities really limits the possibilities of what that home can be.

The selection at a price point is worse, and the extra financial resources it consumes lower what the home can be.

This is before you get into being part of the captive tax base of a poorly-run city with little incentive to change...

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#75

Post by meowface »

lstodd wrote: post #58
sverhagen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult. Notice taken. Good for you (not sarcastic). This is why you "have been working remote by choice for years". But as the OP said: > If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago ...and he didn't. Neither did I. In the past I have worked remotely for about a year, it wasn't great (admitted that company…

> 3) all of them are desperately looking forward to going into the office again for any sort of time. This basically means that they did not modify their lifestyle for remote work. Purging office bullshit from your life requires some changes in lifestyle, no question about it. The workplace has to be established, distractions (much less than what is in the office, but still) have to be managed. Social needs have to b…

Or it means they chose to look for an office job despite knowing remote jobs were available, because they prefer having real-life interaction with co-workers or other physical benefits.

I personally far prefer WFH/anywhere. But I've always been very introverted and reclusive. I love the freedom of being able to work alone from any location, but I know many or perhaps most people crave some kind of in-person socializing; even just eating food together. I generally feel better avoiding that, but many feel worse.

People should be free to choose whatever makes them happiest and fits their lifestyle best. Everyone's different, and neither option is objectively better. There's a huge range of personalities and dispositions out there. I will always seek remote work and will prefer remote-first/remote-only companies, and many will do the opposite, and we're both making the right choice.

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#77

Post by cjrp »

eloisant wrote: post #67
cjrp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web. This sounds great, unless you have a mortgage on a house which needs paying regardless of whether you're living there, and children in school who can't be moved all the time. Although I'll admit that since my employer is looking at 100% remote, it opens…

Kids have tons of vacations, much more than the typical office worker. So you can travel for a month or 2 during their summer vacations in what would be like vacations for your kids and "working from a different place" for you. That's also really convenient if you have family in a far away country, to be able to work from there a much longer time that you could have taken vacations.

So you take the kids on vacation, and then work all day?

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#78

Post by michaelt »

baddox wrote: post #28
Cookingboy wrote: post #7

I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago, but I enjoy going to office and there is a lot of benefits that you don't get from being remote 100%. I've also made very good friends at work and I see my coworkers as much more than just another GitHub ac…

I don’t quite understand the problem. Of course I would choose to have the option to work from home or work from the office rather than not have that option. Even if I only end up wanting to work at the office 1 day a year, why would I say no to having that option?

> why would I say no to having that option?

Because the option will also be extended to all your colleagues.

And the moment a team gains a single remote worker it gains a load of process and ceremony. Every conversation becomes a scheduled meeting, every scheduled meeting books a meeting room with AV equipment, every meeting gains five minutes of AV setup time, everything that would have been a group of people at a whiteboard turns into a presentation prepared in advance by a single person, and every lightweight task tracking system gets replaced with Jira.

All of which is done with the best of intentions - you don't want Remote Person to be excluded, or unable to see the whiteboard. And the changes aren't terrible - plenty of companies use Jira quite happily. Some people would even prefer a 20 minute scheduled meeting to a 10 minute interruption! But each change makes your life slightly more like the cliches and jokes about corporate life.

It's not all downsides of course; if you get to avoid commuting or working in an open-plan office you might find on balance it's less alienating.

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#79

Post by saurik »

Cookingboy wrote: post #71
lstodd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I say is that _if_ they would have changed their lifestyle _then_ they would not have craved the office experience. There is nothing shallow about this observation. If they chose not to it's fine. They just missed a different and, in my opinion, a better experience. Their choice. I cannot in good faith come up with a type of work that genuinely requires being in an office. Not on a workfloor, not in a lab, not i…

>What I say is that _if_ they would have changed their lifestyle _then_ they would not have craved the office experience. I can say the same thing about WFH. If you have made the lifestyle adjustment then you wouldn't crave to be working remotely either. Btw I don't know what kind of lifestyle adjust you were thinking about that can magically change someone's personality or family situation. >If they chose not to it'…

> family situation

If you have a family, and you are trying to escape them to go to an office or be alone in transit for hours commuting every day (which is simply time lost from your life), something might be wrong with your relationships and you should spend some time fixing that (but like, yeah: if you are essentially feeling trapped or something because you hate your family, I guess it makes sense to do anything you can to avoid them :/).

Re: Coinbase will be a remote-first company

#80

Post by tluyben2 »

Cookingboy wrote: post #7

I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago, but I enjoy going to office and there is a lot of benefits that you don't get from being remote 100%. I've also made very good friends at work and I see my coworkers as much more than just another GitHub ac…

Been working almost (maybe 1 year total spent in an office and hated every second of it) exclusively remotely for well over 25 years; I personally find offices absolute time wasters. Noise, commute(or wasting money living close to the office), meetings, disruptions etc.
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