Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

scottberkun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 129 posts

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#71

Post by FromTheSteppe »

jfranche wrote: post #58

Remote work should just be for call center type jobs (where the feed of work is consistent); sales people that constantly visit clients (which doesn't happen much now ); or extremely talented superstars. For everyone else that has a bad commute and wants to be home, they should consider retiring or get one of the jobs above. If people can't don't 5 days in office, they should move to a 4 day work week and get 80% of…

I don't know why I have to commute 90 minutes just to open AWS consoles, terminal tabs, Microsoft teams and Outlook. Then any communication I have with my team members and leaders must be written before I can do anything anyways.

Do I just have to sacrifice 5% of my lifetime to corporate gods? Because I gladly sacrifice more, and there is an opportunity to negotiate for better mutual terms.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#72

Post by danaris »

pragma_x wrote: post #60

Every time this comes up I'm struck by the same thought: do these cats measure _anything_ their people do? And what in the world happens when someone takes off for two weeks to go on vacation? The solution to all this is very simple. Management needs to hold everyone, including other managers, accountable for measurable output. These are usually based on key performance indicators (KPIs) and are semi-standard in many…

While it's absolutely true that KPIs or other clear, measurable metrics of success are objectively better than having no such metrics and just going off of vibes and gut-checks...

...it's important to remember that:

a) People who are bad at creating KPIs can absolutely still make them ill-defined and nebulous.

b) KPIs do not always measure the things that actually matter.

c) Indeed, it's (unfortunately) all too common to have KPIs measure only the things that matter to the people making the KPIs, and not the things that will actually make the organization successful. (For instance, making the stock price a KPI, whether directly or indirectly, through targeting specific visible results that are likely to improve the stock price while having disproportionately low benefits for the actual core business.)

d) Even if the nature of the KPIs are chosen well (ie, they're measuring the right things), the numbers being targeted for them can still be wildly unrealistic and lead to unnecessary stress.

e) Goodhart's Law[0] applies whenever you're creating metrics. You may need to either actively combat efforts to game the metrics, or rotate the precise things being measured periodically to ensure no one has the opportunity to optimize their output too well for a specific metric to the detriment of actual productive output.

TL;DR: KPIs and other ways of clearly communicating and measuring success are a necessary but insufficient component of a healthy workplace.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#73

Post by xkbarkar »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #14
knallfrosch wrote: post #5

I don't think a May 2021 article – before widespread vaccination even made return-to-office policies possible, and before the tech layoffs – is the best starting point. Okay, calling CEOs that demand a return "bad" and "fearful" is a provocative take, but the article doesn't back up these assumptions. Much less does it actually explain the reason why bad, and only bad, CEOs "fear" remote work. With, for example, Appl…

I can't really agree with the idea that a vaccine made return to office "possible". I was only sent home (mandatory WFH in my case) because the local government told my employer there was the possibility of liability if they had me keep coming in the office. At this point, plenty of people were already getting sick and some were dying. That didn't motivate my employer to close their offices. The government and legal…

We still had country wide lockdown just a few months after a +90% population wide vaccine uptake in my home country. Omicron opened up society, not a single other pandemic measure and that includes masks.

On another note. With EU countries being so loud about green transitions I would have thought encouraging WFH would have enormous environmental benefits.

There is a plethora of green fees on every single transportation fuel source that we have come to depend on.

Whats greener than not clogging up the roads at all ?

Wonder why EU simply does not ban mandatory in office attendance for work that can be done from home, unless you can show that it is detrimental. WFH school teachers for example. Remote learning for children was a catastrophe.

Imagine the tonnes of CO2 saved.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#74

Post by chasd00 »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #57

It's really bizarre to me that people think that companies have been built on sand. It's really fucking hard to make a sustainable profit in business. Most businesses fail. Yet HN turns around and says - no, management are clueless, I, the worker, know all.

as someone who's been developing software for 25 years, software development workers are the worst when it comes to the "i know everything" mentality heh. I've always felt new college grads should spend 2 years in a small, eat-what-you-kill consultancy. There you'll learn that your direct deposit isn't a given, you don't produce then you don't eat. Also, another important thing you'll learn is that writing code is maybe only 15% of the effort to make a company work and keep the direct deposits coming.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#75

Post by throwaway22032 »

chasd00 wrote: post #74
throwaway22032 wrote: post #57

It's really bizarre to me that people think that companies have been built on sand. It's really fucking hard to make a sustainable profit in business. Most businesses fail. Yet HN turns around and says - no, management are clueless, I, the worker, know all.

as someone who's been developing software for 25 years, software development workers are the worst when it comes to the "i know everything" mentality heh. I've always felt new college grads should spend 2 years in a small, eat-what-you-kill consultancy. There you'll learn that your direct deposit isn't a given, you don't produce then you don't eat. Also, another important thing you'll learn is that writing code is ma…

Indeed.

If you're taking advice on how to run a business from someone who doesn't run a business, that's your choice, it wouldn't be mine.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#76

Post by cajunboi34213 »

sshine wrote: post #43
cajunboi34213 wrote: post #20

The hard part about remote is collaboration outside of meetings is hard. Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. For the past 6 months we've been using a walkie-talkie app that transcribes and it's pretty magical. It feels like it's solved some of the issues with unstructured collaboration. Plus the bonus is you can add anyone to a discussion and t…

> Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Chat isn't soulless. Chat being async has benefits over conference calls. > Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. Work lacks cheap interrupts, which is not a remote-only problem. In my most recent position, when working from home, I've made a habit of writing to people on chat if I can bother them for 5-20 minutes. It works great. I have typica…

The interrupt is where walkie talkie really shines. Instead of asking to bother someone, where they now may feel obliged to engage, you just walkie talkie them with what you want to discuss. They can listen in real time or they can ignore and then listen ore read when they're available. Perhaps it's because our team is global that this works as timezones are hard. The expectation is you manage your notifications, so the sender never has to worry that the message they're sending is bugging you at 1 AM.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#77

Post by cajunboi34213 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #56
cajunboi34213 wrote: post #20

The hard part about remote is collaboration outside of meetings is hard. Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. For the past 6 months we've been using a walkie-talkie app that transcribes and it's pretty magical. It feels like it's solved some of the issues with unstructured collaboration. Plus the bonus is you can add anyone to a discussion and t…

Video chat also has enough of a delay it short circuits a lot of collaboration thought forming. Creative discussions go from free flowing back and forth to queued up saying of pieces with little interjection.

in my experience, nothing beats in-person for creative discussions.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#78

Post by cajunboi34213 »

treespace8 wrote: post #68
cajunboi34213 wrote: post #20

The hard part about remote is collaboration outside of meetings is hard. Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. For the past 6 months we've been using a walkie-talkie app that transcribes and it's pretty magical. It feels like it's solved some of the issues with unstructured collaboration. Plus the bonus is you can add anyone to a discussion and t…

I've noticed teens using snapchat to just send quick videos. Just one sentence and then send. Is there anything like this for work, maybe where I can do a really fast screen recording?

we use jam for quick video recording. loom for explanations of how to do things.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#79

Post by robertlagrant »

fendy3002 wrote: post #62
robertlagrant wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Someone who's always getting Slacked with requests and keeps unblocking people won't be doing the work you're measuring, but they're helping 20 people do their work in half the time.

Then what's the problem? There'll be work record somewhere, either emails, commits (if they're software engineers) or system audit trails. Moreover if you ask those 20 people during performance review, it'll clear as day.

This seems pretty unlikely to surface. Saying "oh you do that by doing these 3 things" in Slack, or going off and fixing a broken thing in a test environment, might save someone else hours or days, but they won't report somewhere "this person saved me hours", particularly if it happened 3-12 months ago (whatever the review cycle is). Combing through emails and commits is also just pretty unlikely to happen.

Re: Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

#80

Post by rihegher »

cajunboi34213 wrote: post #20

The hard part about remote is collaboration outside of meetings is hard. Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. For the past 6 months we've been using a walkie-talkie app that transcribes and it's pretty magical. It feels like it's solved some of the issues with unstructured collaboration. Plus the bonus is you can add anyone to a discussion and t…

Could you give us the name this magical walkie talkie app please?
Post reply on HN