Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
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Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
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Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#2The HN who’s hiring post yesterday convinced me absolutely no one new is going to consider work from home when this is over.
These are the companies on the forefront of technology and zero opinions have changed.
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#3The HN who’s hiring post yesterday convinced me absolutely no one new is going to consider work from home when this is over. These are the companies on the forefront of technology and zero opinions have changed.
Rethinking and rewriting job openings probably wasn't the highest priority now, so not sure it's a good indicator yet.
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#4I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home, and I'm having mixed feelings about it. As usual, there are pros and cons to everything.
Pros:
- Able to be at home all day, feel I have more flexibility.
Cons:
- I miss cycling to work.
- I miss getting out the house
- I miss chatting to colleagues
- I miss lots of indirect help from other developers.
I might feel differently if I had to drive to work, as I hated that. Now though, my commute is a 15 minute cycle down a clean, wide, and seperated cycle path which I love (especially in the sun!).
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#5Outside of young, childless tech workers, this sudden remote work experiment is not going well for most people I know.
This isn’t the controlled trial of remote work that these think pieces suggest. Instead, everyone is forcefully stuck at home without time to prepare. Parents are juggling childcare with getting work done, while fighting an uphill battle against IT systems that weren’t prepared for everyone going WFH for every job at the exact same time.
Even the remote teams I know are struggling to get work done in the middle of this 24-hour news cycle of virus news and political battles about how to address it.
I don’t think we’re going to look back on this experiment and conclude that it was a net win for productivity or even for worker happiness.
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#6Outside of young, childless tech workers, this sudden remote work experiment is not going well for most people I know. This isn’t the controlled trial of remote work that these think pieces suggest. Instead, everyone is forcefully stuck at home without time to prepare. Parents are juggling childcare with getting work done, while fighting an uphill battle against IT systems that weren’t prepared for everyone going WFH…
Yeah, I think this experiment is going to backfire. People are going to hate WFH/Remote work coming out of this it seems.
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#7I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home, and I'm having mixed feelings about it. As usual, there are pros and cons to everything. Pros: - Able to be at home all day, feel I have more flexibility. Cons: - I miss cycling to work. - I miss getting out the house - I miss chatting to colleagues - I miss lots of indirect help from other developers. I might feel differently if I had to drive to work, as I hated that.…
My job has been remote since last summer. I completely understand your cons - things which help are going out for walks or in your case cycling (I normally take a long walk to a coffee shop in the morning) and organising things to do in the evening such as meetups, dinner, a pint, etc. You have to be more active but it's nice when your social life is both good and unrelated to your job!
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#8Outside of young, childless tech workers, this sudden remote work experiment is not going well for most people I know. This isn’t the controlled trial of remote work that these think pieces suggest. Instead, everyone is forcefully stuck at home without time to prepare. Parents are juggling childcare with getting work done, while fighting an uphill battle against IT systems that weren’t prepared for everyone going WFH…
Yeah, I think this experiment is going to backfire. People are going to hate WFH/Remote work coming out of this it seems.
> People are going to hate WFH/Remote work coming out of this it seems.
The question is, what are they going to do? There are two options... demand better tooling (I'm actually surprised about Microsoft Teams!) or go back to office and put up with everything related to a multi-hour commute - infection risk in public transport, gas/insurance costs, endless traffic jams, hours lost each day that can be spent with partner/s and children instead, or simply with sleep...
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#9The HN who’s hiring post yesterday convinced me absolutely no one new is going to consider work from home when this is over. These are the companies on the forefront of technology and zero opinions have changed.
Rethinking and rewriting job openings probably wasn't the highest priority now, so not sure it's a good indicator yet.
Very true. I saw some people asking for clarification and the answers were pretty anti wfh.
Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society
#10Outside of young, childless tech workers, this sudden remote work experiment is not going well for most people I know. This isn’t the controlled trial of remote work that these think pieces suggest. Instead, everyone is forcefully stuck at home without time to prepare. Parents are juggling childcare with getting work done, while fighting an uphill battle against IT systems that weren’t prepared for everyone going WFH…
Yeah, I think this experiment is going to backfire. People are going to hate WFH/Remote work coming out of this it seems.
If it results in
1. Workers (that previously hadn't been remote) realizing that it has good parts and bad parts, that paying an extra 10%+ in rent/mortgage in order to get a proper home office can be the cost of working from home (and then the costs of utilities for a now non-empty home). That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it has pluses and minuses.
2. Companies realizing that people working from home _does_ have benefits, and it's _not_ just people sitting around in their PJs being unproductive.
Then I think we've gained something. It's not a backfire, so much as a better understanding that everything has tradeoffs.