So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could. By convention, people would most often WFH on Wednesdays. I liked this timing of people doing it at the same time.
But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going to be better (IMHO).
I of course miss the meals and snacks.
Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and it's not conducive to being productivity, particularly if you live with other people, if you can't get some form of separation.
Those of you who are claiming this will be some form of revolution I think are naive. I've found that advocates of WFH are mostly motivated by that's what they want to do more than anything else. I mean that's fine but it often leads to thinly-veiled, self-serving, biased arguments and proclamations of the benefits to everyone.
If you need an office anyway you don't really save anything by WFH unless you oversubscribe your work areas (eg hot-desking) and that has its own problems.
All-remote might work best. I've seen this claimed but have no direct experience with it. I do know that mixed WFH and in the office is nearly always detrimental to the remote people and the team as a whole (IME).
I just don't think a company with 50,000+ employees can operate this way indefinitely.
Welp, why bother commenting then? Also half remote half in office doesn't work. I've been working for all remote companies for the past 4 years and (asynchronous) communication has always been great. It's "just" a mindset shift.
You say we're naive for thinking this is a revolution. I'd say naive is the one evaluating the viability of remote work by looking at an incredibly noisy dataset (or a single data point in your case) during a pandemic in which companies have been forced into a paradigm that requires methodical and progressive change.
Similarly to asking someone who has never run to join a marathon and be in the top N.
Those are all perfectly valid points. However, I don't think WFH advocates are claiming that working from home is definitively better. Both options have different trade-offs.
You're right that collaboration is much easier in person, even with the latest remote work technology. But could we offset that with companies that have monthly/quarterly offsites instead? What if they invest their office budget into helping people build better home offices? Ship snacks directly to employees or let them expense meals/snacks?
The worst thing a lot of companies will do is jump into fully remote without rethinking how their culture works. This is not just a way to save money by getting rid of your office. That money has to be allocated differently to make up for the differences.
I 100% agree that mixed in-perform/WFH is the worst of both worlds.
Finally, I would note the last 2 months have been very abnormal for everyone, and it's been nothing like WFH under normal situations. I would wait to when things "return to normal" before making a decision on how you feel about WFH.
Linux (and almost all OSS ), was built from people WFH.
Follow the same processes: be as asynchronous as possible,reduce meetings to a few times a year, rely on tools and build new ones if you need them.
If you are permanently WFH, why are you in a small pad in the city? Look at what you can afford out in the country, or even another country entirely.
Yes, it should be a choice and not forced onto everybody, but after a couple of years of being remote, I get worried about needing to ever go into an open plan office ever again. There are positives to all this, but you may need to adapt to make it work for you.
50k+ employee companies already work remote. They got dozens of offices all over the world, and bunch of projects I did for these large companies involved me coming in to an office so I can be on the call with people in different offices - which is pretty idiotic and can be just as effectively done from home.
And catered meals/snacks are not the norm there either - instead, you smelling microwaved fish Bob brought for lunch, plus Karen is babbling away about how her kid didn't get into the honors program. You don't have an office, you're sitting next to bunch of other people who keep talking, walking, watching funny Youtube videos. The best option is to come in late and work late so you have a somewhat distraction-free workplace to yourself - which again is pretty idiotic.
And the communication is not really that much harder, it's actually gets much easier and streamlined the more you WFH. You learn to focus on what matters, you learn to present your thoughts coherently and in an engaging manner as people need to understand you and listen to you even though they don't see you and no one even knows whether they are listening to you or not.
Is it going to be a thing on HN now where the top thread for every announcement of a company embracing Remote Work will be from someone complaining about not liking Work-From-Home and 50+ replies discussing about "WFH vs office" or discussing their own personal preferences? I am starting to be astonished by the amount of supposedly-intelligent people who are completely missing the forest for the trees.
What we are witnessing might be a historical shift as big as Nixon re-opening with China, and the top comment is really complaining about some missing perks? How about start thinking of how many people who live in these big tech centers only because of their jobs and how many will just leave these cities once it is become accepted practice to work at a Canadian company while you live in the Caribbean? Or maybe start thinking that people who used to complain about H1B workers bringing the salary down now having to face competition from some random guy in Romania who can code circles around you and can accept a job at one quarter of your salary? Or how about we discuss the opportunities for startups that will come from this?
Also, start thinking if you are a VC and soon you will actually have to leave Sand Hill because no one will be crazy enough to move there to sleep on someone else's dishwasher hoping to make it big.
Personally, every announcement from an established company that is moving to a Remote-First (or Digital by Default, call it whatever you like) mentality is thrilling. Is anyone from Shopify here reading HN? I was already planning to apply for them but this announcement made me even more interested.
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.
(I posted this in another thread, but it's also relevant here)
As a new grad, I'm terrified of a transition where WFH is the default. I recognize that I still have a lot to learn, and that I can't do it all on my own. Casual interactions with coworkers and the ability to passively absorb new information in the workplace are essential for entry-level employees like me.
Plus, personally, I find the social aspect of work to be crucial to my mental well-being. I feel a stronger sense of purpose when I can see that the people around me are all invested in the same project I'm working on.
Take an extreme example: consultants, in order to be colocated, routinely travel ~8 hours twice a week AND convince their clients to pay an extra ~2k/person/week. Why? Shouldn't firms that don't require travel have outcompeted firms that do, if it's such a costly activity? why has the industry standardized on crazy levels of travel?
(1) Personal relationships & trust - it's very, very hard to build strong personal relationships without face-to-face contact. Impact often requires trust that's hard(er) to build remotely.
(2) Casual serendipity - New projects (innovation) are hard to identify in a vacuum. It's the lunch-conversation "huh, maybe that could work" that often drives impactful change. MUCH harder to do that remotely.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323798104578455...
(3) Fewer meetings - if every interaction of substance (read: not an easy slack message) has to be a scheduled, there are a lot more meetings. Admittedly, this is just my experience, but I've seen it more than once.
Note that all of these are long-term trends. Maybe they get resolved as people get used to working remotely and new patterns emerge. But at least for me, this is why I wouldn't think most companies should go remote.
Imagine being the only employee on the team who wants to work in the office. That could be a problem. You’re young, maybe just out of college, and moving to a city hoping to form new connections with people. Yet, everyone’s now working from home. You don’t have any real opportunity to build relationships with your coworkers. Work becomes a much more dreary experience at that point. No one to each lunch with. No interpersonal culture. You’re just there to output a product and collect a paycheck.
It’s hard for many of us to say we need other people, especially when you compare it to all the confidence benefits of working from home, but it’s absolutely true. Being alone for long periods of time really really sucks (that’s what I’m going through).
Maybe we’ll see a rise in social clubs that will revitalize everyone’s social lives. But even with that, most people who are working remotely are going to be alone for 8+ hours per day.
I live in a tiny, crappy, pre-war apartment that gets cold in the wintertime, next to loud, obnoxious neighbors, and I prefer working at my company’s spacious, modern Manhattan office.
The whole argument starts with a definition of what "work" is, obviously.
For people that use a particle accelerator or make scrambled eggs work from home is nonsensical.
For people who produce computer code as their entire work output and rely on very sophisticated digital collaboration tools already work from home is mostly interchangeable with work from an office.
And then there's a really vast grey area in between. What about lawyers, or architects, or film and television executives, or whatever else you can imagine?
The answer is that it depends. But, even limiting ourselves to the subset of work where it's even plausible that it could all be distributed there are some important things to note:
A pretty relevant data point is that when there has been a genuine choice between fully remote and mostly in offices the mostly in offices approach was way more popular. To the point where Silicon Valley real estate spiraled out of control, or literally everyone with deep knowledge of cutting edge electronics manufacturing ended up in the Shenzhen region.
In any another context we'd call that a "market" and say pretty definitively that the invisible hand of that market decided that this is a more effective way to build companies.
It seems we're going to get another experiment, whereby many companies begin the experiment all over again. Perhaps something has changed, perhaps virtual technology has advanced to where this makes more sense. Perhaps the culture is at a tipping point.
Or, perhaps there's some advantage to people all being in the same place that will make companies that do it outcompete companies that don't.
It's quite plausible that this is what the market will decide, in the future. It's also a really important data point to note that it is not, in fact, what the market had decided up until now.
Your estimates are even a bit low - we don't have a grid and drop employees in from above.
With each 8 s.f., there is additional overhead for hallways (minimum width prescribed by ADA in the United States), bathrooms, and other necessary fixtures. If you counted everything in an office, it's probably at least 25% higher than that.
It turns having an an office space into a gig like economy where the burden of maintaining the benefits of an office space is on the worker. A possible result from this would be having an actual company office in a desirable location to work from turning (if it isn’t already) into a perk.
One of the biggest challenges with Remote-first are Tax and Compliance issues. In the US for example, the moment you have out of state employees even if within US, you need to do a lot more paperwork in terms of taxes, payroll etc. How will we handle for example Workers Comp. A lot of questions need to be answered.
Also, Remote domestic or Remote International ? That changes things drastically as well.
How will local governments adjust for loss of tax base as it is likely real estate values for office properties will drop and in turn the cascade effect on businesses which serve them; from restaurants to small services.
Companies that own their own head quarters and other facilities may be less willing to have people work from home. Some companies put a lot of pride in their head quarters and other facilities.
How many companies who do swing to this type of work will expect reduction in salaries as compensation? Would you trade a percentage of your salary for the guarantee of working from home? How many days would you be willing to meet at a central site or would they even be a thing?
Personal experience, it took till COVID19 for where I work to make quarterly meetings available to those who are remote. For the most part they have done pretty well in this regard to even offering streaming of past events and presentations normally done by phone to using survey monkey to gather questions to be addressed.
> fly literally every employee out once a quarter and throw a giant party
Please don't! I love working remotely; but I don't want to travel for work. I don't need a party. I don't need a fancy offsite. I don't want to spend a week with colleagues in some ridiculous tropical destination.
I want to quietly work from home, deliver quality work, get paid for it, and enjoy my life. Being forced to travel is the opposite of enjoying life.
This was my stance before the era of COVID-19... Now, I'm definitely not boarding any kind of airplanes.
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 discussions I have with people are informal, either walking to or from meetings or just sitting in the office and talking for a few minutes. Communicating over video is also a lot harder for me since you miss out on a lot of the nonverbal cues that come across a lot better (and with lower latency) in person.
Outside of just being harder to communicate virtually, I really need the change of scenery and social interaction that comes with an office. Sure you can get that by joining different social groups outside of work, but that requires lots of intentional effort, and I actually enjoy hanging out at work and going to lunch with my coworkers. And the office has lots of perks like snacks and meals which can't be easily replicated at home (I mean I don't mind cooking, but I get much better lunches at work than the sandwich I would make for myself). I can't think of a working situation much better than going to an office where I have all of the food I need, a properly set up workstation, and coworkers I am able to talk to in person and go to lunch/dinner/social activities with. To me that is far better than sitting in my home alone all day (and I don't even have kids, which would be a whole other set of distractions).
People are going to change their tune once the paycuts start coming. There is no reason to pay SF money to someone living in the Midwest. $80k a year is comfortable most places. I hope remote first people like the suburbs and country because there is no reason to live in the city with no office.
The real truth though is most people are far less productive remote because it requires proactive communication and self discipline that just don’t appear because now you are working remotely.
This is to virtue signal and get out of expensive real estate in Civic Center SF in Twitter’s case. That area is a zombie apocalypse.
If you are fully remote then anyone in the world can do your job. Supply goes up prices go down. I bet execs will get paid the same though.
Right now, there is _zero_ reason for companies not to announce permanent work from home. It gets them positive attention and makes them part of the buzz. They are already paying the comp they are paying.
Putting aside the fact that these policies can change on a dime (it's really "permantnet work from home _for now_"), what's really crazy is that people are seriously planning to take companies at their word and are considering leaving the Bay Area and are assuming they are taking their Bay Area comp with them.
Ok, cases:
1. company does NOT to geo-based adjustment to any current employee, but DOES use adjusted salaries for new ones (in other words, path-dependent compensation). Two people, same job, different compensation. This is not that unusual in other industries but can be a source of serious resentment. Suppose a bay area employee moves to India..
2. company uses relocated employees to establish new comp packages for those geos - this will only go so far. many cases will be employees moving to less expensive areas.
3. company sets a "standard" compensation package world-wide that everyone gets - this is impossible to really execute on, or it will be very low relative to peer companies.
and so on. Employees who end up in a case 1 situation will find that after AVERAGE_TENURE they go looking for a new job and end up geo-adjusted. From a company perspective, this is a no-lose golden handcuffs situation and anyway the problem resolves itself quickly.
I tend to believe companies will walk this back as soon as covid-19 dies down, if not right away then as part of executive transitions where someone decides to "transform the business." But in the end it makes no difference - the long term trajectory, if it sticks around, is probably case (1) or some blend of (1) and (2). For developed nation engineers, case (3) is dire, the end of the career.
> it requires proactive communication and self discipline that just don’t appear because now you are working remotely.
My experience has been that people that struggle with these things are just as unproductive in an office, they just hide it better.
By far the most productive teams I've been on as far as getting work done are remote teams. When you're remote all that matters at the end of the week is how much stuff you can concretely show you have accomplished.
In an office you can get credit for doing nothing very easily.
So yea remote work is going to be rough for people that are currently using office culture to hide, and in some offices that is a very large number of people.
Salaries are what the market will bear (on both sides). If more companies are remote then first class remote engineers will be able to get more offers when they're on the market and thus will be able to command higher comp.
Separately, if you're undifferentiated then of course anyone will be able to do your job if you're colocated with headquarters or not. The trick to selling your time for more money is to differentiate yourself in a way that creates more value for the company hiring you. Your career is a business that rewards a continuous growth and sales process.
"If you are fully remote then anyone in the world can do your job. Supply goes up prices go down."
I work for an all-remote company and wages are based on the NY labour market. Anyone on the planet can apply sure, but I've not seen salaries reduce (if anything they're highly competitive outside of SF!). If you can get $150k and live wherever you want I wouldn't complain!
> I hope remote first people like the suburbs and country because there is no reason to live in the city with no office.
I feel like these kinds of blunt "no reason" statements are meaningless, just like saying "work from home sucks" or "work from home is always the best."
I live in a city and work from home, and I will continue to live in my city even if the entire industry goes to primarily work from home. There are a lot of reasons to live here, several centered on "driving sucks, according to techsupporter." I would hate to live in a suburb or out in the country, places where I've lived before and have moved away from.
This is my fear as well. Not only will I no longer have face-t-face interaction, and the break-up in my day that and office allows, but pay will probably decrease across the board.
Coming from a non-coastal state, I honestly do not understand the superiority complex a lot of coastal developers have. There are good developers everywhere, and the ones living in the southwest or the midwest are willing to do the same work for less money. But, you can be willing to bet the execs will receive a pay bump for their "cost-saving measures".
If anything it'd raise the wages for people in the low cost of living areas and eventually equalize out. You can get one person making $500k in SF (plus office costs) or hire 2 or 3 people making $165-250k/each in Suburban America with no office costs. Doubtful that people will go entirely offshore due to time-zone, quality and other cultural differences, we tried that in the early 2000s when everything went to India only to see it come right back. There's a ton of really good engineers who for one reason or another don't want to move to SF and work in Corporate Enterprise America instead. Those people are probably already at $130-150k+ in Corporate America but will job hop to Remote BigTech Company for $165k and more interesting work. Corporate America will have to compete and will raise wages. Meanwhile devs previously making $500k in SF will have to take a $275k gig as more work goes elsewhere, but rent costs should come down as well.
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 works independently), this seems to be a miserable experience.
Anecdotally, while productivity seems to remain at a high level, a lot of that seems to be enabled by employees working more hours and being always available.
I'm glad a few companies are being dragged kicking and screaming into the XXIst century. I have had to turn down attractive job offers because they wanted me to relocate to do a job that can be done just as effectively -- more effectively even -- remotely.
I spent 7 years working purely remotely with a globally-distributed all-remote team for a mostly remote company. I'm not impressed by armchair arguments of "it won't work" because I've done it and it works great. Nor am I impressed by the argument of "I don't like it so no one should do it" because I don't like commuting or working in a rigid office regime so my counter is "I don't like it so no one should do it" right back.
Also, I spent a year working in the building beside Shopify's head office and the 1-to-3 hour commute (each way) and downtown parking fees would be a big incentive for me to choose remote work if I was an employee there. So good on them.
Consider the domino effect of these decisions. With WFH culture rising:
(Disclosure, I'm 100% in favour of WFH and been doing it for past ~5 years)
- Commute time is reduced to seconds/minutes
- Driving or taking public transportation plummets
- Fuel consumption is vastly reduced, taking care of Pollution as well
- Rush hour peaks flattens. might still have traffic, but it won't be because of volume of cars. like from accidents or road work
- Cook/eat at home vs. going out for lunch solo or with colleagues
- Work from home or sometimes go to nearby cafe, the rise of nearby desk options
- Dressing up for work, replaced with pijamas! Who needs a suit or any formal wear?
- Suburban expansion, city planning project have to be completely revised.
- Location becomes irrelevant, housing/rent costs will displace huge amount of families
- Office space occupancy plummets and thus impacting commercial real estate. Might see a plan for retrofitting office buildings into residential properties which will increase the inventory of homes and reduction of housing costs in major cities
- Group meetings and gathering going digital, will also prevent spread of viruses and general sickness, impacting health care industry and pharmaceuticals
- and so many other direct or indirect dominos I haven't mentioned or considered...
= Conclusion: Savings are huge for both employees and employers but other in-direct industries will have to reinvent or disappear.
Square flew under the radar compared to Twitter coverage but it too is on the same policy as Twitter given Jack is CEO of both. Noteworthy because it has a similar number of employees, an even larger market cap, and HQ'ed in the same location.
If I had a really nice detached home with a wife & children then working from home permanently would be the dream.
I don't. I live in a flat and live by myself. The only physical people I talk to are cashiers or delivery drivers.
If your life is further on than others or you have a nightmare capital commute then I can see WFH being the way forward. But personally I like to go to the office for social interactions and the banter that happens within. Just going to the shop for lunch with a colleague makes my day. That burger that you all decide to go for in the pub around the corner and have a cheeky pint alongside, even better!
This permanent WFH is already making me feel separated and even lonelier than normal.
The biggest positive to companies going all digital especially at Spotify's scale is the cost savings.
The problem with companies that have started in Urban centers is that many of their employees don't have the "extra" bedroom in their house to be able to accommodate for this new work from home scenario.
This is especially true in NYC. Where apartments are usually significantly smaller than anywhere else. And if both adults in the house hold are working from home, often times one of them ends up in a closet taking zoom calls.
As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.
People have commented the impact of this shift on SF/NYC etc, but based on this announcement the impact on smaller tech hubs will be even more devastating. Why would you now open a office in a smaller tech hub when you can hire someone from anywhere ? The impact of this in Canada can be huge
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.
> 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.
Seems like permanent remote-optional is rapidly becoming the competitive equilibrium in tech.
As tooling improves, there is some point at which gains from expanded recruiting pool + real estate savings outweigh coordination/culture costs of remote. Beyond this it will be irrational to force physical presences (for many roles, at least) and there'll be no going back.
It's not just real-estate to consider. You need security guards, facility/maintenance personnel. Utility costs, including raised flooring for your in-house networking/data center. Phones for each desks, office furniture. You need Becky down in Accounting to be the person ordering the office furniture for new hires. Sally in IT keeps the VoIP phones working in-office. Bob in Networking runs cables between floors so Marketing can have better WiFi and uses top of the line Cisco WiFi repeaters. Sam in the Maintenance department assembles those sweet mesh chairs that Becky orders and also makes sure the vending machines and break room is stocked full of snacks. Karen, the contracts vendor just signed a new long-term agreement with a local ISP for full gigabit fiber connectivity to the office.
In reality, it's probably 3x savings on top of just real-estate.
[+] [-] cletus|5 years ago|reply
But communication and collaboration is just much harder work remote and you can't change my mind. I'm sure you can work hard to make it almost as good but it's never going to be better (IMHO).
I of course miss the meals and snacks.
Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and it's not conducive to being productivity, particularly if you live with other people, if you can't get some form of separation.
Those of you who are claiming this will be some form of revolution I think are naive. I've found that advocates of WFH are mostly motivated by that's what they want to do more than anything else. I mean that's fine but it often leads to thinly-veiled, self-serving, biased arguments and proclamations of the benefits to everyone.
If you need an office anyway you don't really save anything by WFH unless you oversubscribe your work areas (eg hot-desking) and that has its own problems.
All-remote might work best. I've seen this claimed but have no direct experience with it. I do know that mixed WFH and in the office is nearly always detrimental to the remote people and the team as a whole (IME).
I just don't think a company with 50,000+ employees can operate this way indefinitely.
[+] [-] chpmrc|5 years ago|reply
Welp, why bother commenting then? Also half remote half in office doesn't work. I've been working for all remote companies for the past 4 years and (asynchronous) communication has always been great. It's "just" a mindset shift.
You say we're naive for thinking this is a revolution. I'd say naive is the one evaluating the viability of remote work by looking at an incredibly noisy dataset (or a single data point in your case) during a pandemic in which companies have been forced into a paradigm that requires methodical and progressive change.
Similarly to asking someone who has never run to join a marathon and be in the top N.
[+] [-] guptaneil|5 years ago|reply
You're right that collaboration is much easier in person, even with the latest remote work technology. But could we offset that with companies that have monthly/quarterly offsites instead? What if they invest their office budget into helping people build better home offices? Ship snacks directly to employees or let them expense meals/snacks?
The worst thing a lot of companies will do is jump into fully remote without rethinking how their culture works. This is not just a way to save money by getting rid of your office. That money has to be allocated differently to make up for the differences.
I 100% agree that mixed in-perform/WFH is the worst of both worlds.
Finally, I would note the last 2 months have been very abnormal for everyone, and it's been nothing like WFH under normal situations. I would wait to when things "return to normal" before making a decision on how you feel about WFH.
[+] [-] PaulRobinson|5 years ago|reply
Follow the same processes: be as asynchronous as possible,reduce meetings to a few times a year, rely on tools and build new ones if you need them.
If you are permanently WFH, why are you in a small pad in the city? Look at what you can afford out in the country, or even another country entirely.
Yes, it should be a choice and not forced onto everybody, but after a couple of years of being remote, I get worried about needing to ever go into an open plan office ever again. There are positives to all this, but you may need to adapt to make it work for you.
[+] [-] shoulder-track|5 years ago|reply
And catered meals/snacks are not the norm there either - instead, you smelling microwaved fish Bob brought for lunch, plus Karen is babbling away about how her kid didn't get into the honors program. You don't have an office, you're sitting next to bunch of other people who keep talking, walking, watching funny Youtube videos. The best option is to come in late and work late so you have a somewhat distraction-free workplace to yourself - which again is pretty idiotic.
And the communication is not really that much harder, it's actually gets much easier and streamlined the more you WFH. You learn to focus on what matters, you learn to present your thoughts coherently and in an engaging manner as people need to understand you and listen to you even though they don't see you and no one even knows whether they are listening to you or not.
[+] [-] rglullis|5 years ago|reply
What we are witnessing might be a historical shift as big as Nixon re-opening with China, and the top comment is really complaining about some missing perks? How about start thinking of how many people who live in these big tech centers only because of their jobs and how many will just leave these cities once it is become accepted practice to work at a Canadian company while you live in the Caribbean? Or maybe start thinking that people who used to complain about H1B workers bringing the salary down now having to face competition from some random guy in Romania who can code circles around you and can accept a job at one quarter of your salary? Or how about we discuss the opportunities for startups that will come from this?
Also, start thinking if you are a VC and soon you will actually have to leave Sand Hill because no one will be crazy enough to move there to sleep on someone else's dishwasher hoping to make it big.
Personally, every announcement from an established company that is moving to a Remote-First (or Digital by Default, call it whatever you like) mentality is thrilling. Is anyone from Shopify here reading HN? I was already planning to apply for them but this announcement made me even more interested.
[+] [-] newfeatureok|5 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] benrbray|5 years ago|reply
As a new grad, I'm terrified of a transition where WFH is the default. I recognize that I still have a lot to learn, and that I can't do it all on my own. Casual interactions with coworkers and the ability to passively absorb new information in the workplace are essential for entry-level employees like me. Plus, personally, I find the social aspect of work to be crucial to my mental well-being. I feel a stronger sense of purpose when I can see that the people around me are all invested in the same project I'm working on.
[+] [-] curiousllama|5 years ago|reply
(1) Personal relationships & trust - it's very, very hard to build strong personal relationships without face-to-face contact. Impact often requires trust that's hard(er) to build remotely.
(2) Casual serendipity - New projects (innovation) are hard to identify in a vacuum. It's the lunch-conversation "huh, maybe that could work" that often drives impactful change. MUCH harder to do that remotely. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323798104578455...
(3) Fewer meetings - if every interaction of substance (read: not an easy slack message) has to be a scheduled, there are a lot more meetings. Admittedly, this is just my experience, but I've seen it more than once.
Note that all of these are long-term trends. Maybe they get resolved as people get used to working remotely and new patterns emerge. But at least for me, this is why I wouldn't think most companies should go remote.
[+] [-] baron816|5 years ago|reply
It’s hard for many of us to say we need other people, especially when you compare it to all the confidence benefits of working from home, but it’s absolutely true. Being alone for long periods of time really really sucks (that’s what I’m going through).
Maybe we’ll see a rise in social clubs that will revitalize everyone’s social lives. But even with that, most people who are working remotely are going to be alone for 8+ hours per day.
[+] [-] booleandilemma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|5 years ago|reply
For people that use a particle accelerator or make scrambled eggs work from home is nonsensical.
For people who produce computer code as their entire work output and rely on very sophisticated digital collaboration tools already work from home is mostly interchangeable with work from an office.
And then there's a really vast grey area in between. What about lawyers, or architects, or film and television executives, or whatever else you can imagine?
The answer is that it depends. But, even limiting ourselves to the subset of work where it's even plausible that it could all be distributed there are some important things to note:
A pretty relevant data point is that when there has been a genuine choice between fully remote and mostly in offices the mostly in offices approach was way more popular. To the point where Silicon Valley real estate spiraled out of control, or literally everyone with deep knowledge of cutting edge electronics manufacturing ended up in the Shenzhen region.
In any another context we'd call that a "market" and say pretty definitively that the invisible hand of that market decided that this is a more effective way to build companies.
It seems we're going to get another experiment, whereby many companies begin the experiment all over again. Perhaps something has changed, perhaps virtual technology has advanced to where this makes more sense. Perhaps the culture is at a tipping point.
Or, perhaps there's some advantage to people all being in the same place that will make companies that do it outcompete companies that don't.
It's quite plausible that this is what the market will decide, in the future. It's also a really important data point to note that it is not, in fact, what the market had decided up until now.
[+] [-] steffan|5 years ago|reply
With each 8 s.f., there is additional overhead for hallways (minimum width prescribed by ADA in the United States), bathrooms, and other necessary fixtures. If you counted everything in an office, it's probably at least 25% higher than that.
[+] [-] bigbassroller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randtrain34|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codegeek|5 years ago|reply
Also, Remote domestic or Remote International ? That changes things drastically as well.
[+] [-] Shivetya|5 years ago|reply
How will local governments adjust for loss of tax base as it is likely real estate values for office properties will drop and in turn the cascade effect on businesses which serve them; from restaurants to small services.
Companies that own their own head quarters and other facilities may be less willing to have people work from home. Some companies put a lot of pride in their head quarters and other facilities.
How many companies who do swing to this type of work will expect reduction in salaries as compensation? Would you trade a percentage of your salary for the guarantee of working from home? How many days would you be willing to meet at a central site or would they even be a thing?
Personal experience, it took till COVID19 for where I work to make quarterly meetings available to those who are remote. For the most part they have done pretty well in this regard to even offering streaming of past events and presentations normally done by phone to using survey monkey to gather questions to be addressed.
[+] [-] stronglikedan|5 years ago|reply
> And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.
It does seem like they plan on forcing their employees to work from home in this case.
I think that's the problem that most people have - not having the option to work from work.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sigfubar|5 years ago|reply
Please don't! I love working remotely; but I don't want to travel for work. I don't need a party. I don't need a fancy offsite. I don't want to spend a week with colleagues in some ridiculous tropical destination.
I want to quietly work from home, deliver quality work, get paid for it, and enjoy my life. Being forced to travel is the opposite of enjoying life.
This was my stance before the era of COVID-19... Now, I'm definitely not boarding any kind of airplanes.
[+] [-] jackhiggs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ponker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GhostVII|5 years ago|reply
Outside of just being harder to communicate virtually, I really need the change of scenery and social interaction that comes with an office. Sure you can get that by joining different social groups outside of work, but that requires lots of intentional effort, and I actually enjoy hanging out at work and going to lunch with my coworkers. And the office has lots of perks like snacks and meals which can't be easily replicated at home (I mean I don't mind cooking, but I get much better lunches at work than the sandwich I would make for myself). I can't think of a working situation much better than going to an office where I have all of the food I need, a properly set up workstation, and coworkers I am able to talk to in person and go to lunch/dinner/social activities with. To me that is far better than sitting in my home alone all day (and I don't even have kids, which would be a whole other set of distractions).
[+] [-] fourmyle|5 years ago|reply
The real truth though is most people are far less productive remote because it requires proactive communication and self discipline that just don’t appear because now you are working remotely.
This is to virtue signal and get out of expensive real estate in Civic Center SF in Twitter’s case. That area is a zombie apocalypse.
If you are fully remote then anyone in the world can do your job. Supply goes up prices go down. I bet execs will get paid the same though.
[+] [-] foobiekr|5 years ago|reply
Putting aside the fact that these policies can change on a dime (it's really "permantnet work from home _for now_"), what's really crazy is that people are seriously planning to take companies at their word and are considering leaving the Bay Area and are assuming they are taking their Bay Area comp with them.
Ok, cases:
1. company does NOT to geo-based adjustment to any current employee, but DOES use adjusted salaries for new ones (in other words, path-dependent compensation). Two people, same job, different compensation. This is not that unusual in other industries but can be a source of serious resentment. Suppose a bay area employee moves to India..
2. company uses relocated employees to establish new comp packages for those geos - this will only go so far. many cases will be employees moving to less expensive areas.
3. company sets a "standard" compensation package world-wide that everyone gets - this is impossible to really execute on, or it will be very low relative to peer companies.
and so on. Employees who end up in a case 1 situation will find that after AVERAGE_TENURE they go looking for a new job and end up geo-adjusted. From a company perspective, this is a no-lose golden handcuffs situation and anyway the problem resolves itself quickly.
I tend to believe companies will walk this back as soon as covid-19 dies down, if not right away then as part of executive transitions where someone decides to "transform the business." But in the end it makes no difference - the long term trajectory, if it sticks around, is probably case (1) or some blend of (1) and (2). For developed nation engineers, case (3) is dire, the end of the career.
[+] [-] baron_harkonnen|5 years ago|reply
My experience has been that people that struggle with these things are just as unproductive in an office, they just hide it better.
By far the most productive teams I've been on as far as getting work done are remote teams. When you're remote all that matters at the end of the week is how much stuff you can concretely show you have accomplished.
In an office you can get credit for doing nothing very easily.
So yea remote work is going to be rough for people that are currently using office culture to hide, and in some offices that is a very large number of people.
[+] [-] zrail|5 years ago|reply
Separately, if you're undifferentiated then of course anyone will be able to do your job if you're colocated with headquarters or not. The trick to selling your time for more money is to differentiate yourself in a way that creates more value for the company hiring you. Your career is a business that rewards a continuous growth and sales process.
[+] [-] exdsq|5 years ago|reply
I work for an all-remote company and wages are based on the NY labour market. Anyone on the planet can apply sure, but I've not seen salaries reduce (if anything they're highly competitive outside of SF!). If you can get $150k and live wherever you want I wouldn't complain!
[+] [-] techsupporter|5 years ago|reply
I feel like these kinds of blunt "no reason" statements are meaningless, just like saying "work from home sucks" or "work from home is always the best."
I live in a city and work from home, and I will continue to live in my city even if the entire industry goes to primarily work from home. There are a lot of reasons to live here, several centered on "driving sucks, according to techsupporter." I would hate to live in a suburb or out in the country, places where I've lived before and have moved away from.
[+] [-] Ancalagon|5 years ago|reply
Coming from a non-coastal state, I honestly do not understand the superiority complex a lot of coastal developers have. There are good developers everywhere, and the ones living in the southwest or the midwest are willing to do the same work for less money. But, you can be willing to bet the execs will receive a pay bump for their "cost-saving measures".
[+] [-] CyanLite2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonny_eh|5 years ago|reply
Then why do so many Google/Facebook/Apple employees live in SF and commute for over an hour to the suburbs?
[+] [-] PascLeRasc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] addicted44|5 years ago|reply
Why not pay them 40k a year to live in India instead?
[+] [-] m3kw9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|5 years ago|reply
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 works independently), this seems to be a miserable experience.
Anecdotally, while productivity seems to remain at a high level, a lot of that seems to be enabled by employees working more hours and being always available.
[+] [-] bregma|5 years ago|reply
I spent 7 years working purely remotely with a globally-distributed all-remote team for a mostly remote company. I'm not impressed by armchair arguments of "it won't work" because I've done it and it works great. Nor am I impressed by the argument of "I don't like it so no one should do it" because I don't like commuting or working in a rigid office regime so my counter is "I don't like it so no one should do it" right back.
Also, I spent a year working in the building beside Shopify's head office and the 1-to-3 hour commute (each way) and downtown parking fees would be a big incentive for me to choose remote work if I was an employee there. So good on them.
[+] [-] bamazizi|5 years ago|reply
- Commute time is reduced to seconds/minutes
- Driving or taking public transportation plummets
- Fuel consumption is vastly reduced, taking care of Pollution as well
- Rush hour peaks flattens. might still have traffic, but it won't be because of volume of cars. like from accidents or road work
- Cook/eat at home vs. going out for lunch solo or with colleagues
- Work from home or sometimes go to nearby cafe, the rise of nearby desk options
- Dressing up for work, replaced with pijamas! Who needs a suit or any formal wear?
- Suburban expansion, city planning project have to be completely revised.
- Location becomes irrelevant, housing/rent costs will displace huge amount of families
- Office space occupancy plummets and thus impacting commercial real estate. Might see a plan for retrofitting office buildings into residential properties which will increase the inventory of homes and reduction of housing costs in major cities
- Group meetings and gathering going digital, will also prevent spread of viruses and general sickness, impacting health care industry and pharmaceuticals
- and so many other direct or indirect dominos I haven't mentioned or considered...
= Conclusion: Savings are huge for both employees and employers but other in-direct industries will have to reinvent or disappear.
[+] [-] pb7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benbristow|5 years ago|reply
I don't. I live in a flat and live by myself. The only physical people I talk to are cashiers or delivery drivers.
If your life is further on than others or you have a nightmare capital commute then I can see WFH being the way forward. But personally I like to go to the office for social interactions and the banter that happens within. Just going to the shop for lunch with a colleague makes my day. That burger that you all decide to go for in the pub around the corner and have a cheeky pint alongside, even better!
This permanent WFH is already making me feel separated and even lonelier than normal.
[+] [-] realbarack|5 years ago|reply
I'm keeping track of announcements here: https://airtable.com/shrC1mvKjwntaqocO/tbl73UY1jDmReLge7
[+] [-] raiyu|5 years ago|reply
The problem with companies that have started in Urban centers is that many of their employees don't have the "extra" bedroom in their house to be able to accommodate for this new work from home scenario.
This is especially true in NYC. Where apartments are usually significantly smaller than anywhere else. And if both adults in the house hold are working from home, often times one of them ends up in a closet taking zoom calls.
[+] [-] floatingatoll|5 years ago|reply
As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.
— Tobi Lutke, Shopify CEO
[+] [-] dmode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] testfoobar|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sequoia|5 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] rfdearborn|5 years ago|reply
As tooling improves, there is some point at which gains from expanded recruiting pool + real estate savings outweigh coordination/culture costs of remote. Beyond this it will be irrational to force physical presences (for many roles, at least) and there'll be no going back.
[+] [-] godzillabrennus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CyanLite2|5 years ago|reply
In reality, it's probably 3x savings on top of just real-estate.
[+] [-] umeshunni|5 years ago|reply
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10111935689155051 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10111936118050541/