The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
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Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#2I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all.
Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something.
As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get the impression they're not working."
Until we get over this psychological attachment of management loving to visually see their slaves on the open office plantation through their private panopticon[1] offices, remote won't take off no matter how many studies get published.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#3I work remotely for about 80% of the workweek. I am most effective at home. At work people talk to me and interrupt me quite often. You get interrupted by people walking by etc or just striking up a conversation.
At home this obviously never happens for me. The only distraction I have is Slack and my dog that reminds me that it's time for a walk.
So I can attest to this.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#4I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…
This is my experience of British management over the last quarter of a century. I am an expensive contract resource but I still get paid for turning up and not so much for providing working software.
When I am working remotely, due to the organisation's inability to measure productivity, fostered by their management's "bums on seats" culture, I can't demonstrate that remote work is a benefit to them.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#5I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…
This is my experience of British management over the last quarter of a century. I am an expensive contract resource but I still get paid for turning up and not so much for providing working software. When I am working remotely, due to the organisation's inability to measure productivity, fostered by their management's "bums on seats" culture, I can't demonstrate that remote work is a benefit to them.
In mob programming culture it's not even bum on seats but bums crowding around a seat!
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#6I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all. Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something. As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get…
I call this “general wants to see his army”. I can read Wikipedia all day, but I must be present. Funny thing, all managers are allowed to work from home. Developers not! There is open office with small desks for 8-12 people in one space.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#7Anecdotal but I'm the opposite. I hate working from home and love having a team around me, sharing goals and ideas and hyping each other. Different strokes etc.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#8Except for the occasional visit to the office to give a few high fives and have some chit-chat I work remotely.
Until recently we used Toggl to track work time and the guidance was to have "6h of focused work daily".
I'm managing 5h 15min-ish, but only when working remotely. When I'm in the office that number organically drops to around 3h 40min.
Only person really doing those hours(and above) is one guy who's not into chit-chat.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#9I work remotely for about 80% of the workweek. I am most effective at home. At work people talk to me and interrupt me quite often. You get interrupted by people walking by etc or just striking up a conversation. At home this obviously never happens for me. The only distraction I have is Slack and my dog that reminds me that it's time for a walk. So I can attest to this.
I could work from home 80% of the time if I wanted, but actually prefer working at an office because I find it less distracting. The office is a 'clean' space where I'm only surrounded by work related thing. I have my work computer on my work desk with my work setup, and nothing else. There is pretty much nothing else to do here other than work. Home is cluttered and I'm surrounded by all kinds of 'distraction' not related to working.
Re: The benefits of a more asynchronous workplace
#10Sometimes I wonder if the underlying issue is that there isn't enough actual work for people to do. I worry that I'm about to sound super out of touch, but hear me out; I'm not making a value judgement about anyone's job.
It is assumed that everyone needs to do exactly 40 hours of work per week, but ask yourself this: for every person in your company, what do their next 40 hours look like? 40 hours worth of HR policies need to be created. 40 hours worth of sales calls need to be made. 40 hours worth of snacks need to be ordered for the office. 40 hours worth of website text updates need to be made. 40 hours worth of UIs need to be designed. 40 hours worth of code needs to be typed in. Isn't it strange that all these vastly different tasks take the same number of hours to complete in a week? My guess is that chattin' is what takes up whatever time remains; people are required to pretend that they do 40 hours of work every week, so they come up with their own way of filling the time. Planning is always valued (and a good idea!), so if you report "yeah I spent the week planning for our Q3 XXX" then it sounds like the money spent on your salary was worth it, and it continues to pay.
As a software engineer, I've never had the problem of not having enough work to do. Tasks are always added to the backlog at a faster rate than they are removed from the backlog. But I feel like a lot of other jobs aren't like this, and the "there is infinite work forever!" thing is most prevalent in fields like engineering, design, art, fabrication, etc.
Meanwhile, most of the people in your average office aren't doing any of those things. To some extent, they're on retainer, waiting for their skills to be needed. And, trying to optimize this is perilous. If you get employee utilization up to 100%, people complain loudly (Amazon fulfillment center workers aren't sending 1000 Slack messages a day). If you try to not pay people for the time periods where they're not being utilized, you just get the "gig economy" which is awful.
I dunno, it all makes very little sense to me. Sometimes I wonder what percentage of the US economy is about doing work that doesn't need to be done, and how many people would not have jobs if we decided "we're not paying for this anymore". I think I'm scared about it, though.