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Why Do We Still Commute?

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Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#81

Post by codingdave »

I worked from home for five years, and just this week started back into a job where I commute to an office. I don't love the commute, but I also don't agree that working from home is a universally better answer for me on a personal level.

Everyone knows the benefits of working from home, but there are downsides as well. Fixable downsides, but they exist nonetheless -- it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work. Hard to draw the line between your work time and your personal time. Easy to get siloed into your current job, while not keeping up with the rest of the company and enabling career growth. Easy to let poor communication habits turn into real problems. And when your entire company works from home, as mine did, you develop a culture of acting like there is no better choice, and the benefits of your personal flexibility at home outweigh any problems at work... causing people to not fight very hard to fix problems, and to stay in those jobs longer than they should because of how comfortable the working situation is.

Now, all of those things can be handled if you have personal discipline, good co-workers, and great leadership. But not all teams can truly claim those qualities. So I feel both working environments have their good and bad sides, and the choice of which situation to pursue is a question that needs to be answered with some solid contextual information about the team, the culture, and your personality to know which one is truly best for any specific individual at any specific job.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#82

Post by ransom1538 »

BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

"Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen. "

Yes. Having managed remote teams and being a remote dev, it's all about response time. If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office. If it takes 2 hours to get a response out of someone - then they are not participating correctly on a remote team. The team should work in a way they can all be online at the same time so communication can flow freely. If someone is interrupting you and you need concentration just explain it to them - like you would in the office.

Immediate responses is a remote team. Day long responses is contract work. Week long responses is open source projects and government work.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#83

Post by salvar »

BjoernKW wrote: post #14

I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office pol…

> When people say that they can't communicate as well with someone who isn't in the same room that doesn't necessarily mean that a remote setup doesn't work. It could simply mean they're just lazy and not willing to adjust to a different kind of work environment.

Let's say you're right and people are to blame for being lazy. How would you address this?

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#84

Post by salvar »

gerardflo wrote: post #76
majewsky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your boss. I had plenty water cooler conversations with mine.

I would say that is not professional. If there is anything work related, you book a meeting and then discuss. For this reason I know few people are on the look out when to go get the water without stumbling upon a boss or a manager, because they take it as a harassment. This adds huge amount of stress and knocks the productivity. Workplaces with "we are big family" approach are the worse. This should be illegal.

This seems like a very restrictive and unproductive way to do things. Does no work-related discussion take place without someone booking a formal meeting?

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#85

Post by PeterStuer »

jwl wrote: post #36

While working from home can be nice and more productive if you have some well defined task that needs to be done, I still feel I need the daily social interaction with my coworkers. Slack and Skype is just not enough. I would get depressed if I worked alone from home every day.

Or maybe if people didn't have to spend all that time in the commute and being depressed because of it they would actually have time and energy for a life outside of work and get your social fix their

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#87

Post by PeterStuer »

peterwwillis wrote: post #68

Things that happen when you're in the office: - spins around in chair, interrupts and asks coworker a question, workshops ideas for 15 minutes, comes up with solution, makes a meeting - boss comes over and tells workers there's some issue going on he's going to go deal with and he'll be available via cell only - when SCRUM ends, conversation continues in person, things get decided - walk into boss's office and make t…

Sounds to me like you're a detriment to your entire office, callously leeching people's time.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#88

Post by loup-vaillant »

jpttsn wrote: post #53
bartedinburgh wrote: post #50

I think it's connected with the rise of bullshit jobs. If your job is well defined, e.g. make an app or a website design, you can do it anywhere in the world. The app/design is your deliverable that anyone can see and judge. If your job is a poorly defined "management" or "product ownership", with no real deliverable, how can your work be judged? Your job turns into convincing other people that your job is useful. Wo…

I think it's kind of a leap to assume the value is low just because it's hard to measure. This is in general a common, elusive mistake: "We can't measure it, so it must be zero." Better to be ridiculous and say it's worth between $100 and $10,000.

It's subtler than that. Because it is hard to measure, one has to make explicit effort to demonstrate value. This wastes time and energy that could have been used to increase the very value that needs to be demonstrated.

Value is lower because of the consequences of being hard to measure.

Then there are actual bullshit jobs, whose value is difficult to measure because they have no value to begin with.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#89

Post by salvar »

gerardflo wrote: post #66
blunte wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one company I worked for (that was mostly remote workers), people who lived within an hour of each other would periodically meet up for social or work reasons. We had one guy who had a nice house with a big dining room, and once a month we'd work from there in one room. Less work got done, but some things that otherwise might never have been done/resolved got handled. Plus it was "kind of" fun. So unless you're ge…

> but some things that otherwise might never have been done/resolved got handled This is a fallacy. If something really needs resolving, the setting is not relevant.

Is the setting never relevant? Or is this just your anecdotal experience?

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#90

Post by tasuki »

peterwwillis wrote: post #68

Things that happen when you're in the office: - spins around in chair, interrupts and asks coworker a question, workshops ideas for 15 minutes, comes up with solution, makes a meeting - boss comes over and tells workers there's some issue going on he's going to go deal with and he'll be available via cell only - when SCRUM ends, conversation continues in person, things get decided - walk into boss's office and make t…

> Sometimes you can just walk around, bug people, and get shit done. It's very efficient.

This might increase the efficiency of the person walking around, and decrease the efficiency of the people getting bugged. I wouldn't say it's a net win for the company.

> But all of these things also involve communication which isn't relayed to remote workers. People either forget you, or including you in the conversation is a hassle, so they don't. You feel like the unwanted stepchild, constantly pinging people to get some kind of feedback and never seeming to reach them until much later. It's really inefficent.

Yes, working remotely with a team that has an office is awful. Working in a fully remote team is much easier, more pleasant, and more efficient.

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