Shopify Goes Digital by Default • Hacker News Board

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#81

Post by GhostVII » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

strig wrote: post #22

GhostVII wrote: post #11

I really hope this doesn't become a bigger trend. Shopify was a company I was seriously considering working at in the future, but this would probably disqualify them. Working from home once a week sounds great to me, but doing it full time would drive me insane. Virtual meetings are awful for me, and you miss out on so much of the discussion that happens outside of the meeting - I think most of the important discussi…

I really couldn't disagree more. While I understand the desire to work with your coworkers in person, the benefits of working from home are huge for me. No commuting, which on its own is reason enough for WFH since it's such a massive waste of time. Commuting would add an extra 10 hours to my workweek, and I don't get paid for it. Add in things like control over your own workspace, no "open office" nonsense, access t…

I think that is totally reasonable - for me the benefits of WFH don't outweigh the cost but for a significant percentage of developers I'm sure they do. I think where you get problems is cases where a company only has a minority of people WFH, or working in an office. Whenever you have a team that is primarily in an office, with only a couple of people remote, the people working remotely seem to miss out on a lot of important discussions and don't really feel as much a part of the team, at least in my experience. Ideally you would have both types of work fully supported, Stripe having their next engineering hub be remote [0] sounds like a good compromise to me. I'm interested in knowing how managers and PM's find working from home, to me it seems like being in management would magnify the problems you have with working remotely, but I've never been a manager so I don't really know.

[0] https://stripe.com/blog/remote-hub

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#82

Post by pridkett » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

smnrchrds wrote: post #64

godzillabrennus wrote: post #26

Anyone else think these companies will pull a Yahoo and undo this policy after the pandemic?

I am not familiar with the history of Yahoo. What event are you referring to?

Shortly after Marissa Mayer became the CEO of Yahoo she made it so, in almost all cases, remote working or working from home, was not an option. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2013/02/25/back-t...

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#83

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

smnrchrds wrote: post #64

godzillabrennus wrote: post #26

Anyone else think these companies will pull a Yahoo and undo this policy after the pandemic?

I am not familiar with the history of Yahoo. What event are you referring to?

[deleted]

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#84

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

johnrob wrote: post #79

tachyonbeam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible. Lots of people don't like working remotely. They might lose a lot of valuable employees. I suppose over time they might also attract people who prefer working from home exclusively, but they would be losing many older employees with valuable knowledge. One way or another, there's going to be some kind of pushback. Many people threatening to quit, many actually quitting. The cynical part of me thinks th…

For those seeking the office experience, it will feel a lot different when everyone is maintaining 6 feet of distance. Not going to be the same experience people were fond of, IMO.

6 feet of distance isn't going to be a permanent thing, though, and it sounds like Shopify is looking further ahead than just the next year.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#85

Post by diogenescynic » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

So Twitter, Square, Coinbase, and now Shopify. I wonder how many other companies will allow this and what this shift will lead to. I imagine this will lead to an exodus out of the Bay Area and possibly to places like Tahoe, Santa Cruz, Marin, and a corresponding shift in real estate prices. No real advantage to living in a tiny apartment in a city if you can't go to concerts, bars, restaurants, and now can WFH where ever you want.

My question is how companies will handle cost of living differences and if salaries will be adjusted based on locations? Or can I take my California salary to Seattle and pay no income taxes?

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#86

Post by iso1631 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #41

How does corporate security handle permanent work-from-home? It seems that there would be vastly more risks added. E.g. When Joe Employee walks into the office, we know it is him and what he does and where he works. At home, Joe Employee might have a friend who looks over his shoulder at the project launch document he is completing, at the financials that are being submitted to the CFO.

When Joe Employee works on the train on the way into the office he has strangers looking over his shoulder

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#87

Post by sequoia » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

Related: September 25, 2019 | https://torontolife.com/city/inside-shopifys-new-nine-floor-...

> Canada’s tech darling Shopify—the online platform used to sell everything online, from wallpaper to roasted almonds—has just moved into their new King Portland Centre digs. The quickly growing company (they currently have 700 employees in Toronto and have committed to doubling that number by 2022) has taken over the top nine floors of this 15-storey, Hariri Pontarini–designed tower. Shopify will be keeping their Spadina and Wellington office and plan to add a third location at the Well once that development is complete. This new office at 620 King Street West will house around 450 “Shopifolk,” which is what the company calls its employees.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#88

Post by joelbluminator » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #45

joelbluminator wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different tastes. With all due respect, for every guy like you who doesn't want to work there, there are 10 that do. I understand that remote first doesn't work for everyone, nothing works for everyone.

You are quite delusional if you think the ratio is 10:1 in favor of WFH. One thing that the recent lockdown and forced WFH experiment has revealed is that while people are strongly in favor of flexibly WFH the ratio is closer to 10:1 against having no office at all.

I don't know what the preference is for the general developers public; obviously someone who is 40 with 2 kids and lives in Ohio isn't the same as someone who is 23 and lives in SF. What I do mean, for a company like Shopify, they can do what they want. Tons of people will want to work there, whether they are 40 or 23.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#89

Post by mig4ng » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #62

I am curious about the sustainability of work from home for truly team-based work. I get to develop features independently, so if I am given the spec, I have no need to speak to anyone for the rest of the day except for a couple messages with QA. For me, it is great. But I am essentially a microservice with defined inputs and outputs. For the people who actually work in teams (rather than me who is part of a team but…

Exactly what alexbanks said, at least in my experience my team does a lot of team work that you mentioned that requires us to be in sync. For that we use remote conference tools to discuss and sometimes pair program and it has been working really well.

It also removed a lot of distractions that we had in the office yet we miss the "coffee breaks" we had to discuss and unofficial align what tasks we should address next and the best way to approach these. We are quickly adapting to these.

Re: Shopify Goes Digital by Default

#90

Post by newfeatureok » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

Remote-first is the future. I'm not sure why anyone would be against it. No one is forcing you to work from home. From a compliance and operations perspective a remote-first company is effectively forced to do a lot of things many companies do not or will not undertake:

- Make meetings accessible to everyone

- Communicate more effectively and transparently internal to the organization (and even externally, for the adventurous types)

The main "downsides" of working from home (which is not necessarily remote-first) - not seeing your colleagues in person, life work separation, etc. will be a new industry that will end up resolving itself. I've seen office space costs. It would be cheaper to fly literally every employee out once a quarter and throw a giant party than to maintain an office space sized for the same amount of people by an order of magnitude in a large, popular city (NYC office space is approximately ~$100/sqft/month - a desk sized for two monitors, a keyboard and writing space is about 2 x 4 minimum, so 8sqft, or $800/month just for a single person in a nice space)

In other words, being forced to do anything - whether that was working from home or from an office - is an oppressive activity. Remote-first simply gives back that freedom of choice. Companies can maintain more minimalist offices for those who insist, and coworking spaces will grow for those who don't like the office and want separation, and finally those who have the space in their homes can work from home.

I'd be curious to hear a good argument against all organizations that can be remote-first being remote-first.