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Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#911

Post by [deleted] »

gregf wrote: post #859
metafunctor wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My social life does not intersect much with my work life. Do you perhaps live alone in a small apartment? I can see how working from home could be tough on a situation like that. I live with my family, in a house, with a garden, and I absolute abhor the idea of resuming a daily commute. I hate our office, and I love my home. I am definitely no “social butterfly”, though.

I live in a small apartment with my dog. I don't get out enough, it does make you depressed after a while. Luckily I have a some friends that work from home in the area. We take turns going to each other's house for the work day. Gives you a change of scenery while you work, and someone to interact with while working. Although a lot of it is sitting in silence in the same room, just having another human around can bo…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#912

Post by spike021 »

matwood wrote: post #829
jjjensen90 wrote: post #781

I always thought I enjoyed remote work as an engineer/architect, I did it for 6 months by my own volition before coming back. I am extremely unhappy. I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. I've struggled deeply with overwhelming sadness at the idea of not going back anytime soon. My work has suffered from a lack of dynamic interactions. I get lots of focus time, just like I did at the office…

> I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. Are you young, single, and live in an apartment? I have noticed a divide along those lines with WFH. As an older, married person, living in a house with a yard, I haven't worked in an office for any length of time for last 10 years. None of my close friends are related to work. I like having lunch with my wife and going out back with the dogs when I n…

>Are you young, single, and live in an apartment?

Not parent comment, but yes.

However, I do have friends outside of work. Obviously right now I'm rarely if ever seeing them, and certainly not all. Very occasionally we decide on a small coffee shop to go support at the same time and talk from a couple car spaces away for a few minutes just to engage in some kind of social behavior. It helps momentarily, but not consistently.

Going to work and making friends there, while not "IRL" friends, really helps work become a more fluid environment where you don't need to stress out all the time on structure. It gives breathing room. Some jokes lighten the mood. I personally feel like it's easier to discuss important topics when I have "friends" on my team or other teams who have a respect for my train of thought.

Also, while I do have a desk and monitor now, I work in the same room as my entertainment space (living room). So I'm literally in the same room all day. And no, I don't want to setup a workspace in my bedroom, that'd be even worse.

If I had a dedicated office room that'd be nice. If I had a more normal house where I had space to walk between areas like the kitchen, dining room/area, living room that would help.

But I do not.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#913

Post by sidlls »

jjjensen90 wrote: post #781

I always thought I enjoyed remote work as an engineer/architect, I did it for 6 months by my own volition before coming back. I am extremely unhappy. I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. I've struggled deeply with overwhelming sadness at the idea of not going back anytime soon. My work has suffered from a lack of dynamic interactions. I get lots of focus time, just like I did at the office…

Most social butterflies aren’t going to experience the extreme symptoms you describe, but it sucks and I’m sorry.

I invite you now to consider that a much milder version of these is what introverts deal with almost all the time due to the norms of society (which are biased toward social butterflies). We have to learn to overcome and adapt to these difficulties early in life, and for some of us that struggle is real (and life-long).

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#914

Post by trianglem »

jjjensen90 wrote: post #781

I always thought I enjoyed remote work as an engineer/architect, I did it for 6 months by my own volition before coming back. I am extremely unhappy. I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. I've struggled deeply with overwhelming sadness at the idea of not going back anytime soon. My work has suffered from a lack of dynamic interactions. I get lots of focus time, just like I did at the office…

Then leave or find a job in a brick and mortar but please don’t whine about this and ruin it for the vast majority of us that don’t conflate work and socializing.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#915

Post by the_greyd »

matwood wrote: post #829
jjjensen90 wrote: post #781

I always thought I enjoyed remote work as an engineer/architect, I did it for 6 months by my own volition before coming back. I am extremely unhappy. I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. I've struggled deeply with overwhelming sadness at the idea of not going back anytime soon. My work has suffered from a lack of dynamic interactions. I get lots of focus time, just like I did at the office…

> I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. Are you young, single, and live in an apartment? I have noticed a divide along those lines with WFH. As an older, married person, living in a house with a yard, I haven't worked in an office for any length of time for last 10 years. None of my close friends are related to work. I like having lunch with my wife and going out back with the dogs when I n…

Speaking as a young, single and lives in an apartment person. As an introvert I've often relied on being present among people to kind of substitute for my social life. With that not being present, it really puts focus on the presence or lack of social network. I'm actually grateful in a way that it has forced me to reach out to people in my network, that I otherwise wouldn't have..

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#916

Post by devdas »

harpratap wrote: post #832
I_AM_A_SMURF wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been fully remote for about 2 years. My personal experience is that collaboration is way easier when being remote. When I need to talk to a team i just drop a line in their slack room and I usually get an answer within minutes. So much easier than walking down the hallway and hoping that someone is in the team office area (not to mention no social awkwardness involved). Also when most people are remote in your…

What do you do about folks who's first language isn't English? Face to face communication is somewhat doable because body language helps to convey the real message but communicating over text is a completely different ball game. So much nuance gets lost

I find it a lot easier to communicate with polygots whose first language isn't English. A lot of the body language issues go away because everyone actually uses words to say things.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#917

Post by AgloeDreams »

mundo wrote: post #909
wonderwonder wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked from home for the last couple of years. Prior to the Covid shutdown, I had generally enjoyed it. Once my children's school closed and my wife's work switched to work from home, my productivity has plummeted. I find it impossible to focus as every 10 minutes I have a young child running into my office, or have to listen to them yelling at each other (as all kids do). My wife has had a hard time adjusting…

My company (large-ish un-sexy software company you've never heard of) gave the software managers clear direction on this: "It's not realistic for people with school-aged children to be fully productive right now. Do not demand they take PTO or ask them to work at night. If they can only work five hours a day, that's what they can do." I suspect it's unusual that my boss actually said that out loud, but I hope everyon…

Exactly the right response. Sounds like management may be a bit sexy though, stable companies that treat their employees well are rare.

Basecamp's founders have been working hard to hammer this point (lower expectations and treat humans like humans) home lately.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#918

Post by namibj »

JSavageOne wrote: post #752
sizzle wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the…

Location should not affect salary since when it comes to remote work it is completely irrelevant.

Actually, there is good reason to be within 30ms ping (99th percentile). Half that, plus the 5ms algorithmic delay from Opus (in CELT-only-restricted-low-latency mode) gives 20ms, which is the lower end of uncanny valley for real-time interactive audio (certainly for musicians in a band, but I'll presume relevance for verbal communication to set in at the same psychoacoustic threshold).

If you introduce any amount of latency by executing the encoder/decoder pair, you'll have to subtract double the latency from your ping-allowance.

If you try to have correctly-lipsynced audio in a video call, I only know of one setup to offer similarly-low video latency: a rolling-shutter in the camera, a line-by-line display (CRT should do well), and up-to a few lines algorithmic delay for e.g. running non-buffering JPEG (8x8 DCT and an online entropy coder (no pre-analysis for optimal Huffman tables or such) to save like 80-90% bandwidth). Analog TV camera+screen hardware should also work, but it's really inefficient and not easy to emulate with digital hardware.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#919

Post by wayoutthere »

mundo wrote: post #909
wonderwonder wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked from home for the last couple of years. Prior to the Covid shutdown, I had generally enjoyed it. Once my children's school closed and my wife's work switched to work from home, my productivity has plummeted. I find it impossible to focus as every 10 minutes I have a young child running into my office, or have to listen to them yelling at each other (as all kids do). My wife has had a hard time adjusting…

My company (large-ish un-sexy software company you've never heard of) gave the software managers clear direction on this: "It's not realistic for people with school-aged children to be fully productive right now. Do not demand they take PTO or ask them to work at night. If they can only work five hours a day, that's what they can do." I suspect it's unusual that my boss actually said that out loud, but I hope everyon…

My company (large consulting firm you have probably heard of) gave us essentially the same guidance from the top. The culture was already one that discouraged micromanaging, but they flat out said they don't expect us to be as productive. Most of my team is realistically working 15-20 hours a week, and that's ok because our clients are doing the same and understand when we miss milestones.

I've actually been impressed at the amount of empathy that's been going around, at least when it comes to adjusting expectations. Hopefully it sticks around.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#920

Post by hunter-gatherer »

matwood wrote: post #829
jjjensen90 wrote: post #781

I always thought I enjoyed remote work as an engineer/architect, I did it for 6 months by my own volition before coming back. I am extremely unhappy. I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. I've struggled deeply with overwhelming sadness at the idea of not going back anytime soon. My work has suffered from a lack of dynamic interactions. I get lots of focus time, just like I did at the office…

> I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. Are you young, single, and live in an apartment? I have noticed a divide along those lines with WFH. As an older, married person, living in a house with a yard, I haven't worked in an office for any length of time for last 10 years. None of my close friends are related to work. I like having lunch with my wife and going out back with the dogs when I n…

> I like having lunch with my wife and going out back with the dogs when I need a break. I also have an actual office with a door in my house. The time I save commuting means there is more time to workout and cook healthy meals every day.

You have the life I want.

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