This is a complicated problem with different perspectives that no doubt will get muddled at some point. I'm confident at least the following is true:
Some people have long commutes and wfh is great
Others have small, expensive apartments they paid for shorter commutes and it's suffocating 40-50 hours a week
Some people live in palaces and offices are a step down in comfort
Some people are happy with the online interactions
Some people are dissatisfied with the online interactions and prefer to talk to humans and not text strings from humans they can't see or hear
Some people want to work from home some of the time, and go to the office some of the time, and they've wanted that before the apocalypse occurred (puts hand up)
Cities are nervous that business districts are devastated since no one buys coffee, lunches or walks home and steps into a shoe store or tailor, or to a bar for drinks with colleagues.
But like much else in our present world, things are presented in black and white, emotive ways.
Most of these are what one might call "first order effects" - i.e. factors immediately associatable with work location. For prolonged situation, higher order effects are going to become more important.
Here are some candidates -
1. Improvement in city air quality due to reduced commute - road and flight.
2. Erosion of "social credits" over time due to lower bandwidth interactions when remote.
3. Cumulative impact of serendipitous but significant learning arising from in-person interactions.
4. Impact on the body - prolonged unmoderated sitting in bad postures, eye strain due to constant staring into the screen, bad eating habits, etc.
5. Reduction in sense of belonging / identity / cohesiveness as the "molecules" that make up a cell can move more freely through the "cell boundary".
6. Impact on cognitive development during early childhood - due to school-from-home and lack of social interactions. Joint family homes are great to counter this!
7. Eroding knowledge and awareness of local geography due to reduced travel. Reduced attachment here can lead to apathy when local environs get trashed.
While everything you listed is a factor, My experience it normally comes down to if you have a actual home office or not.
People that have the luxury of a dedicated office at home, an actual room that is just used as an office, not a corner of the kitchen or living room that has the "family desk" that everyone shares, is more apt for WFH
I know many people that do not have this space, and do not have the ability to create this space in their home. For them WFH is a challenge.
On the other hand, people like myself that do have a dedicated office space that is in many ways better than the office space at the commercial office find WFH to be great and prefer it, even when factoring in your list.
In my office I would say it was about 60-70% of people that preferred working in the office and did not want to work from home primarily because they did not have a dedicated working space nor could easily create one.
One of the things I would struggle with is progression.
In my current job I'm progressing quickly and have built good relationships with my colleagues. We can take a break and just turn around and chat for 10 minutes about random stuff. When everyone is working from home it's not like I could just call someone and chat to them because I don't know if they're busy or not. I can't build the same sort of relationships as I can in person.
I'm quite introverted in a way that I find it hard to go out of my way and make friends. But the longer I spend with people in person, the easier it is and I find that I'm able to get along with almost everyone I meet.
And as with most things, it's not really what you know, it's who you know. And knowing someone IRL is much better than knowing someone remote.
And further complicated by the fact the the same person may want different things at different stages in their life. Ive evolved, like many in my workplace, to be on site in the office as needed, occasionally (we work in hardware). We've learned to do most everything from home, with a few on site activities as needed.
>Cities are nervous that business districts are devastated since no one buys coffee, lunches or walks home and steps into a shoe store or tailor, or to a bar for drinks with colleagues.
I think this is more true than a lot of people think/or care to make known.
I know the business district in my city, Nashville, is hurting right now.
This is exactly my situation, it takes me two hours of commute per day to get in the office, and the housing is prohibitively expensive the closer you get to it.
My quality of life is significantly improved by WFH, which leaves me with more quality time with my kids and to cook.
I agree things are presented in emotive ways, but I find most business decisions are made the same way.
I believe remote work is a temporary phase, with businesses going back to the "old normal" as soon as COVID no longer presents much of a threat.
My first reason for thinking this is I've found inertia is the most powerful force in the office environment. When given the option to adopt a different way of working, the aggregate whole will resist the attempt unless there is no alternative. This conservative nature is the reason why Agile fails to take hold, why compliance rituals will remain long after they're relevant and so on.
The second is extravert culture dominates the office. Most people are extraverted (about 60% IIRC), with even higher concentrations in general and C-level management. This can be observed in the performative nature of the hiring process, the belief in open plan offices, in companies thinking of meetings as productive rather than waste to be minimised and believing in things like brainstorming sessions leading to better results despite research indicating the opposite. An extraverted manager needs to interact with someone on a personal level because they need the stimulation and social contact, and because it's more efficient for them. An introvert has no such leanings.
Third, I believe we're in a leadership crisis, where companies believe "command and control" is more important than improving employee efficiency. In order to control, you need pants in seats. When adopting that stance, you're less likely to want to delegate in the true sense: offer employees autonomy over their tasks, trusting they'll get the job done. Working from home is counter to the control scheme.
As I see it, the voices arguing for a return to the office are the representatives of the conservative, extraverted, control-oriented voices in the business community.
> Some people are dissatisfied with the online interactions and prefer to talk to humans and not text strings from humans they can't see or hear
I think this is easily resolved by audio / video calls. All of my coworkers are significantly older than me and have no issue communicating this way.
I dont mind commuting but I dont want to commute as often. I think my sweet spot would be to commute around noon once traffics no longer crazy and go back home after traffic dies down but the more I think about that the more I feel like driving altogether is a waste. I prefer to only commute when we all decide to be onsite to discuss something and work through it.
There's lots of reasons why individuals themselves might want or not want to go back in the office.
What is more complicated is why they want to take everyone else with them. My own employer is letting some people come back in the office but not insisting on it.
And all of this in the context of the trilemma: try for zero virus, accept total spread with associated medical costs, time off, deaths, and potential long term complications, or delay until the vaccines are ready and being deployed.
Greyness comes with crafting a collage of black and white?
Why must my personal position take into account a composite greyness if it means being put into an office setting I am not productive in?
Why bend myself to an arbitrary greyness?
Our social laws should acknowledge the greyness and avoid empowering a uni-culture that leans towards one choice? Efficiency != resiliency.
Rather than commit to the one size fits all dragged in the direction of currency holders. Complete lack of acceptance a nations currency is propped up by the greyness in opinions
I don’t care who has memorized what facts. The fact remains they’re not a god
My commute is 20 minutes on an uncrowded ferry, and my home office is a tiny desk in my daughter's bedroom while she works on the other side on school stuff.
My colleague has a massive house with a pool tennis court and so much space he has literally 3 never-used bedrooms. His wife looks after kids who are at school most of the day again. His commute is 2 hours each way.
People are talking home vs office people are coming from very different comparisons.
I would be in favor of a number of working arrangements, ranging from working in a Bay Area office full-time(least favorite) to working from home most-time in an area that provides me with the chance to buy a home and have a reasonable commute to a satellite office.
I am absolutely, 100% against full-time WFH in an expensive, low-quality(no sound/thermal insulation) Bay Area apartment without a dedicated workspace.
> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world
I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it.
One final point is that anyone looking to judge my WFH productivity better take into account the endless procession of major disasters taking place outside my window. WFH in a pandemic with looting and massive wildfires is not the same as WFH in a 'normal' year.
1. WFH is not for everyone. There are people with kids and no dedicated workplace at home. There are people with low motivation and self-control, and office routine just helps them to keep up.
2. You can't mix WFH with work in office. It's either one or the other. If you have a single employee working remotely - you should transform all the processes to WFH-style.
3. WFH shifts most of the burden onto management. Managers should put 120-150% of effort in planning, communication, documentation and checking. I never saw a single manager who likes WFH. And the management are the ones who decides.
When I was building back end software, I could and did work from anywhere. I enjoyed working in the same space with my team, but not all day and not every day. And it wasn't necessary except maybe once or twice per quarter.
Now I work on firmware, and I have about $6000 of test equipment that is required to do my job, as well as multiple fragile circuit boards, some that I'm afraid to touch because some of the rework wires might break. I am working at home, but I guarantee that I'm not as productive as I would be in an office with access to the EEs and MEs and the people who built the firmware for the previous version of the product. Yes, I can schedule a call or ask questions on Slack, but so much is passed to new team members by osmosis or exposure or context, whatever you want to call that side effect of colocation.
> The best thing you can do in any period of change is to bet on neither black or white.
I agree, in some cases. There are still some cases where the best bet IS almost entirely black, or almost entirely white.
The long term shakeout of this will be that everybody realizes that yes, we need offices. They are spaces literally built for working. The required footprint will be smaller, people won't need to be in the office for absolutely everything, the demand for square footage of commercial real estate will decrease a bit—good news for cities who don't build b/c they can convert excess commercial inventory to residential.
But we have also found a vast increase in productivity that we probably won't see in the numbers until we can separate it out from all the other crazy shit that's been happening. The efficiencies gained in every white collar business being forced to make remote work to some degree are significant, and I think as of yet underrated.
So no we're not all going to be sipping cocktails on the beach (though more of us might) but we will be better off. Big exogenous shocks tend to find hidden productivities, even if the shock part really sucks.
I am not so sure productivity has definitely improved.
I agree there was a good head of steam where people were able to quietly and independently work through their "list" of stuff they wanted to do for ages but never had the chance to etc, or whatever had previously been planned out.
Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to dry up. Those ad hoc conversations that lead to a new feature, bumping into someone in the corridor who mentions some big issue they're having, meeting and talking to end users, the offsites to work out the strategy for next quarter, day-long workshops with UX and management and users and post-it notes galore where we thrash out ideas and concepts are a distant memory. Instead we have stilted video calls where people sit on mute 95% of the time and there simply is not as much collaboration as there was before.
Sure stuff still happens, but it feels like to me that the "spark" from people who usually generate ideas and set the agenda/work items is reduced significantly - if not entirely gone - and people are just going through the motions somewhat mechanically and "doing the best they can given the circumstances" etc.
Needing offices doesn't mean needing them centralized neccessarily. It depends on domain as usual for how close it actually has to be. A doctor's office? Yeah. But if you have accounting siloed off anyway why not just go full remote? They aren't needed there.
Yeah I’d like to go back but 2 days a week. Any more and it’s over kill really. 3 other days can be used for deep work at home. I’m tech guy working in marketing...these type of people love to appear at your desk every so often in the office. Now with Slack I can just not sign in or set my status as away and reply when I want. It’s asynchronous communication and really good for “me”.
And truth is. Everyone is different. I can respect the person that prefers office environment. What we will see is greater flexibility and just less office space in the future.
The real winner outs of all this will be local communities and businesses.
I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this comment, but it's my honest opinion. People want you in the office so they can babysit you. They don't care about performance; they care about politics. I know, I know, your company is different. You all are equal and it's about saving the world, man. But here's the honest to god truth; Karin the office manager wants to save her job and has zero leg to stand on sending out emails about the kitchen fridge being dirty if you all are from home. Accountants and paper pushers can't push more paper when they have no artificial hierarchy when you all are at home. The engineer team manager is having a hard time managing you all in your home offices. It's all about politics. I think I remember reading in Yuval's book "Sapians" that humans can only organize around 100 people until they have to have some kind of shared myth. That shared myth can be religion, etc. etc. OR it can be in the form of being a "Googleon" or "IBM'er."
“ Kirsty Allsopp led the anti-remote work charge on Twitter, suggesting that if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world. Who would have thought that a couple of months of working in shorts and a T-Shirt has made us more susceptible to being replaced by less expensive folk in India, Myanmar and China?”
It doesn’t matter if they are American or live halfway across the world. If you want amazing talent, you are going to have to pay them well. Talented people are usually well aware of the salary differences between American vs local companies of their region.
The people that tend to take the low offer are usually not in the best position to do the best work compared to their counterpart.
I have met and worked with amazing talent from all across the world. At the same time I have also worked with people that should have never been in the business and were the root cause of project delays caused by buggy features and constant rework. Whether they are American or not, the people in the latter group tended to be in a group that was not happy largely due to their pay. In the cases I probed for more information, I discovered amongst the contracting companies that placed bids, the company took the lowest bid that was offered. No fucking surprise that 8-12 months later that the project is behind by at least half a year.
Moral of the story companies need to pay well - regardless of the location of the person - in order to get a quality product that is pushed to the masses in time and remain competitive.
I've worked from home for 17 years, but I love to go work other places like coffee shops, libraries, etc. I would LOVE to not be at home again.
I can technically go to these other places and work again, just like I used to, because the area I live in believes this is all a hoax, but I'm just not comfortable, and I don't want to wear a mask all day, and people just aren't the same right now - so I'm a little nervous about being around strangers all day and want to avoid uncomfortable or awkward situations.
Who's going to pay for me to upsize my apartment so I can make a home office? Working from the same desk I use for my personal computer / gaming is really taking a toll on the ol' mental health? Also who's going to pay for my extra electricity use, etc? I also used to get free food at the office, would I be getting a raise to cover that as well?
My commute was a pleasant 25m bike ride I could use to listen to podcasts (which is exercise I've now lost, so losing the commute didn't exactly give me a bunch of extra free time). Seeing coworkers in person was a really nice way to not only get some social contact every day but also build a rapport with my teammates. The office was also going to be a great place for my dog to get some socialization with other dogs.
Yes, I was annoyed at the moves to more open spaces and with regular frustrating interruptions, but with those mitigated, an office with my actual coworkers (with at most 1 day a week at home) is vastly superior to what I'm doing now, regardless of how much processes change. Not to mention, employers sort of implicitly assume that any time you gained back from not having to commute or whatever are just going to doing extra work.
I have no interest in being in the office. The commute is horrid and a waste of time. The socialising is insignificant. The water cooler never has more than one visitor at a time, so the idea of it being an idea exchange is myth. Everyone communicates via chat in office, with headphones on. Being able to separate work and private life is a matter of self discipline, the other matters are not. The only thing I want is for coffee shops to return to normal.
> “There’s sort of an emerging sense behind the scenes of executives saying, ‘This is not going to be sustainable,’” said Laszlo Bock, chief executive of human-resources startup Humu and the former HR chief at Google.
Maybe that because remote working is affecting their politicking ways more than it affects people who do the grunt work on the ground.
I think ideally it should be up to the employee to return when they feel safe.
That being said, I look forward to going back to the office. It’ll be nice to see people again —- few people bother to turn on their video on zoom anymore for anything other than one-on-ones, myself included, and that is starting to feel alienating to me. I don’t think it’s wise having a policy that you must have video enabled, though, it’s nice being able to sprawl out on the couch and get comfortable for a particularly long, boring meeting.
Edit: to address the actual contents of the article, I think below is a better read that doesn’t reduce people’s concerns about remote working to wanting to save sandwhich shops:
I usually have to commute for 3 hours a day. I have to be up early and get home late, stuck on a crowded train normally standing up for most of the journey.
I was never previously a big fan of working from home, I enjoy the social interaction at the office. Having coffee breaks with people, going out for lunch etc. But now I'm used to WFH I love the fact that I can wake up at 9AM and I'm 'at work'. I finish at 5:30PM and I'm already home. Yes I do miss the interaction with people, but I have met some people outside work, and regularly have Slack convos (or social ones while gaming for example) with those people.
I feel lucky that I've been at my company for a relatively long time, so have 'work friends' who I continue talking to. I now don't talk to the 'acquaintances' or new starters for example, which I guess is sad - but being selfish, makes it feel like I have even more time to do my own things. But on the other hand, probably isn't so good for the newer members of staff and doesn't help company morale.
I am still fairly young and have seen some people mention work/life balance. That doesn't bother me too much either as my company is flexible and I know if I do a few extra hours one evening I can do a few less hours another day etc. and wouldn't have to tell or ask anyone to do that.
Until reading this post I hadn't really thought about it too much, but guess I am just lucky that it works for me. If I was older and had kids/family, or didn't have an office to work from at home I can see how it would be more of a struggle. I do want to go back to work at some point, but I don't know how often I'd want to be there. I don't know if I can handle the long commutes week in week out now.
I mean, if you simplify this to its most fundamental level, the article is about not wanting to work (not just the office part). Or it's about not wanting to do the unpleasant aspects of work. And citing some random studies to support his position.
But jobs / companies are mechanisms for getting people to do things they wouldn't feel like normally doing, because they get paid to do it. That's the definition of work!
Of course no one wants to go back to work when they've been allowed not to for a while.
The author lists all the things he hates about being in the office. Namely the things that are work. He wants some fairy tale home environment where no one bothers him, there are no deadlines, and he gets to work on only the things he wants. For high pay and 0 stress.
If anyone has been able to find that in life, god bless you and treasure what you have. If the author was not getting paid right now, you best believe he'd have a different attitude.
Eventually people will have to go back to work. This "work from home lala land" imaginary utopia is not going to be possible forever.
Working from home has been great for me. I no longer have a 45 minute commute in both directions. I don’t have to pay for a train pass. I get to eat lunch with the only person with whom I want to eat lunch, my wife. I don’t have distracting conversations going on behind me. I can listen to relaxing music all day without having to wear headphones. I can now continue working on things during forced meetings because no one is able to see I don’t care about the conversation that before the pandemic clearly didn’t involve me but somehow required my presence. Overall, by working from my basement, I save time, money, and stress. I get more done now work-related than I did before the pandemic. I have time to take care of myself. I get to spend more time with my wife. The only thing that took a little getting used to was now I have to IM my boss to ask him to review something instead of turning to my right and saying out loud, “Can you please look at the deck and approve for release?” I don’t get instant feedback that my message was received, but, if I’m being honest, I really don’t care what happens after I have done my part.
The most fascinating thing about this crisis is how it has laid bare the importance of flexible, forward thinking leadership at every level, in every form of organization. Entities that have/will successfully adapt to the new reality we live in are the ones who have given up on the notion of a "return to normal". There will never be a "normal" again. The COVID-19 outbreak was an epochal event. Whether you embrace that and seize the new opportunities it has opened up, or determinedly force your outmoded mindset onto a world that no longer exists will determine who are the winners and losers out of all of this.
I’m all for choice. I would probably do part time in the office but I’ve been living my best life remotely working. My productivity is way up. No driving 2-3 hours a day. Helping my kids with school cooking. Been great.
[+] [-] mancerayder|5 years ago|reply
Some people have long commutes and wfh is great
Others have small, expensive apartments they paid for shorter commutes and it's suffocating 40-50 hours a week
Some people live in palaces and offices are a step down in comfort
Some people are happy with the online interactions
Some people are dissatisfied with the online interactions and prefer to talk to humans and not text strings from humans they can't see or hear
Some people want to work from home some of the time, and go to the office some of the time, and they've wanted that before the apocalypse occurred (puts hand up)
Cities are nervous that business districts are devastated since no one buys coffee, lunches or walks home and steps into a shoe store or tailor, or to a bar for drinks with colleagues.
But like much else in our present world, things are presented in black and white, emotive ways.
[+] [-] sriku|5 years ago|reply
Here are some candidates -
1. Improvement in city air quality due to reduced commute - road and flight.
2. Erosion of "social credits" over time due to lower bandwidth interactions when remote.
3. Cumulative impact of serendipitous but significant learning arising from in-person interactions.
4. Impact on the body - prolonged unmoderated sitting in bad postures, eye strain due to constant staring into the screen, bad eating habits, etc.
5. Reduction in sense of belonging / identity / cohesiveness as the "molecules" that make up a cell can move more freely through the "cell boundary".
6. Impact on cognitive development during early childhood - due to school-from-home and lack of social interactions. Joint family homes are great to counter this!
7. Eroding knowledge and awareness of local geography due to reduced travel. Reduced attachment here can lead to apathy when local environs get trashed.
[+] [-] syshum|5 years ago|reply
People that have the luxury of a dedicated office at home, an actual room that is just used as an office, not a corner of the kitchen or living room that has the "family desk" that everyone shares, is more apt for WFH
I know many people that do not have this space, and do not have the ability to create this space in their home. For them WFH is a challenge.
On the other hand, people like myself that do have a dedicated office space that is in many ways better than the office space at the commercial office find WFH to be great and prefer it, even when factoring in your list.
In my office I would say it was about 60-70% of people that preferred working in the office and did not want to work from home primarily because they did not have a dedicated working space nor could easily create one.
[+] [-] Philip-J-Fry|5 years ago|reply
In my current job I'm progressing quickly and have built good relationships with my colleagues. We can take a break and just turn around and chat for 10 minutes about random stuff. When everyone is working from home it's not like I could just call someone and chat to them because I don't know if they're busy or not. I can't build the same sort of relationships as I can in person.
I'm quite introverted in a way that I find it hard to go out of my way and make friends. But the longer I spend with people in person, the easier it is and I find that I'm able to get along with almost everyone I meet.
And as with most things, it's not really what you know, it's who you know. And knowing someone IRL is much better than knowing someone remote.
[+] [-] iancmceachern|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocketpastsix|5 years ago|reply
I think this is more true than a lot of people think/or care to make known.
I know the business district in my city, Nashville, is hurting right now.
[+] [-] m-p-3|5 years ago|reply
This is exactly my situation, it takes me two hours of commute per day to get in the office, and the housing is prohibitively expensive the closer you get to it.
My quality of life is significantly improved by WFH, which leaves me with more quality time with my kids and to cook.
[+] [-] etripe|5 years ago|reply
I believe remote work is a temporary phase, with businesses going back to the "old normal" as soon as COVID no longer presents much of a threat.
My first reason for thinking this is I've found inertia is the most powerful force in the office environment. When given the option to adopt a different way of working, the aggregate whole will resist the attempt unless there is no alternative. This conservative nature is the reason why Agile fails to take hold, why compliance rituals will remain long after they're relevant and so on.
The second is extravert culture dominates the office. Most people are extraverted (about 60% IIRC), with even higher concentrations in general and C-level management. This can be observed in the performative nature of the hiring process, the belief in open plan offices, in companies thinking of meetings as productive rather than waste to be minimised and believing in things like brainstorming sessions leading to better results despite research indicating the opposite. An extraverted manager needs to interact with someone on a personal level because they need the stimulation and social contact, and because it's more efficient for them. An introvert has no such leanings.
Third, I believe we're in a leadership crisis, where companies believe "command and control" is more important than improving employee efficiency. In order to control, you need pants in seats. When adopting that stance, you're less likely to want to delegate in the true sense: offer employees autonomy over their tasks, trusting they'll get the job done. Working from home is counter to the control scheme.
As I see it, the voices arguing for a return to the office are the representatives of the conservative, extraverted, control-oriented voices in the business community.
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|5 years ago|reply
I think this is easily resolved by audio / video calls. All of my coworkers are significantly older than me and have no issue communicating this way.
I dont mind commuting but I dont want to commute as often. I think my sweet spot would be to commute around noon once traffics no longer crazy and go back home after traffic dies down but the more I think about that the more I feel like driving altogether is a waste. I prefer to only commute when we all decide to be onsite to discuss something and work through it.
[+] [-] dominotw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|5 years ago|reply
What is more complicated is why they want to take everyone else with them. My own employer is letting some people come back in the office but not insisting on it.
And all of this in the context of the trilemma: try for zero virus, accept total spread with associated medical costs, time off, deaths, and potential long term complications, or delay until the vaccines are ready and being deployed.
[+] [-] nswest23|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soc14lism00|5 years ago|reply
Greyness comes with crafting a collage of black and white?
Why must my personal position take into account a composite greyness if it means being put into an office setting I am not productive in?
Why bend myself to an arbitrary greyness?
Our social laws should acknowledge the greyness and avoid empowering a uni-culture that leans towards one choice? Efficiency != resiliency.
Rather than commit to the one size fits all dragged in the direction of currency holders. Complete lack of acceptance a nations currency is propped up by the greyness in opinions
I don’t care who has memorized what facts. The fact remains they’re not a god
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|5 years ago|reply
some bosses themselves work best in the office with people around.
[+] [-] x87678r|5 years ago|reply
My colleague has a massive house with a pool tennis court and so much space he has literally 3 never-used bedrooms. His wife looks after kids who are at school most of the day again. His commute is 2 hours each way.
People are talking home vs office people are coming from very different comparisons.
[+] [-] 01100011|5 years ago|reply
I am absolutely, 100% against full-time WFH in an expensive, low-quality(no sound/thermal insulation) Bay Area apartment without a dedicated workspace.
> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world
I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it.
One final point is that anyone looking to judge my WFH productivity better take into account the endless procession of major disasters taking place outside my window. WFH in a pandemic with looting and massive wildfires is not the same as WFH in a 'normal' year.
[+] [-] SergeAx|5 years ago|reply
2. You can't mix WFH with work in office. It's either one or the other. If you have a single employee working remotely - you should transform all the processes to WFH-style.
3. WFH shifts most of the burden onto management. Managers should put 120-150% of effort in planning, communication, documentation and checking. I never saw a single manager who likes WFH. And the management are the ones who decides.
[+] [-] faster|5 years ago|reply
Now I work on firmware, and I have about $6000 of test equipment that is required to do my job, as well as multiple fragile circuit boards, some that I'm afraid to touch because some of the rework wires might break. I am working at home, but I guarantee that I'm not as productive as I would be in an office with access to the EEs and MEs and the people who built the firmware for the previous version of the product. Yes, I can schedule a call or ask questions on Slack, but so much is passed to new team members by osmosis or exposure or context, whatever you want to call that side effect of colocation.
> The best thing you can do in any period of change is to bet on neither black or white.
I agree, in some cases. There are still some cases where the best bet IS almost entirely black, or almost entirely white.
[+] [-] weeksie|5 years ago|reply
But we have also found a vast increase in productivity that we probably won't see in the numbers until we can separate it out from all the other crazy shit that's been happening. The efficiencies gained in every white collar business being forced to make remote work to some degree are significant, and I think as of yet underrated.
So no we're not all going to be sipping cocktails on the beach (though more of us might) but we will be better off. Big exogenous shocks tend to find hidden productivities, even if the shock part really sucks.
[+] [-] mattlondon|5 years ago|reply
I agree there was a good head of steam where people were able to quietly and independently work through their "list" of stuff they wanted to do for ages but never had the chance to etc, or whatever had previously been planned out.
Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to dry up. Those ad hoc conversations that lead to a new feature, bumping into someone in the corridor who mentions some big issue they're having, meeting and talking to end users, the offsites to work out the strategy for next quarter, day-long workshops with UX and management and users and post-it notes galore where we thrash out ideas and concepts are a distant memory. Instead we have stilted video calls where people sit on mute 95% of the time and there simply is not as much collaboration as there was before.
Sure stuff still happens, but it feels like to me that the "spark" from people who usually generate ideas and set the agenda/work items is reduced significantly - if not entirely gone - and people are just going through the motions somewhat mechanically and "doing the best they can given the circumstances" etc.
[+] [-] alexbanks|5 years ago|reply
You said this, and then wrote the rest of your post about the opposite? Why do you think we'll need offices?
[+] [-] Nursie|5 years ago|reply
IMHO now is probably a good time to invest in meeting-place providers like Regus.
[+] [-] Nasrudith|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saos|5 years ago|reply
And truth is. Everyone is different. I can respect the person that prefers office environment. What we will see is greater flexibility and just less office space in the future.
The real winner outs of all this will be local communities and businesses.
[+] [-] x87678r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rainyMammoth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrowawayR2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happyjack|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyst|5 years ago|reply
“ Kirsty Allsopp led the anti-remote work charge on Twitter, suggesting that if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world. Who would have thought that a couple of months of working in shorts and a T-Shirt has made us more susceptible to being replaced by less expensive folk in India, Myanmar and China?”
It doesn’t matter if they are American or live halfway across the world. If you want amazing talent, you are going to have to pay them well. Talented people are usually well aware of the salary differences between American vs local companies of their region.
The people that tend to take the low offer are usually not in the best position to do the best work compared to their counterpart.
I have met and worked with amazing talent from all across the world. At the same time I have also worked with people that should have never been in the business and were the root cause of project delays caused by buggy features and constant rework. Whether they are American or not, the people in the latter group tended to be in a group that was not happy largely due to their pay. In the cases I probed for more information, I discovered amongst the contracting companies that placed bids, the company took the lowest bid that was offered. No fucking surprise that 8-12 months later that the project is behind by at least half a year.
Moral of the story companies need to pay well - regardless of the location of the person - in order to get a quality product that is pushed to the masses in time and remain competitive.
[+] [-] dpcan|5 years ago|reply
I can technically go to these other places and work again, just like I used to, because the area I live in believes this is all a hoax, but I'm just not comfortable, and I don't want to wear a mask all day, and people just aren't the same right now - so I'm a little nervous about being around strangers all day and want to avoid uncomfortable or awkward situations.
[+] [-] ilyanep|5 years ago|reply
My commute was a pleasant 25m bike ride I could use to listen to podcasts (which is exercise I've now lost, so losing the commute didn't exactly give me a bunch of extra free time). Seeing coworkers in person was a really nice way to not only get some social contact every day but also build a rapport with my teammates. The office was also going to be a great place for my dog to get some socialization with other dogs.
Yes, I was annoyed at the moves to more open spaces and with regular frustrating interruptions, but with those mitigated, an office with my actual coworkers (with at most 1 day a week at home) is vastly superior to what I'm doing now, regardless of how much processes change. Not to mention, employers sort of implicitly assume that any time you gained back from not having to commute or whatever are just going to doing extra work.
[+] [-] hordeallergy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noisy_boy|5 years ago|reply
Maybe that because remote working is affecting their politicking ways more than it affects people who do the grunt work on the ground.
[+] [-] mcphilip|5 years ago|reply
That being said, I look forward to going back to the office. It’ll be nice to see people again —- few people bother to turn on their video on zoom anymore for anything other than one-on-ones, myself included, and that is starting to feel alienating to me. I don’t think it’s wise having a policy that you must have video enabled, though, it’s nice being able to sprawl out on the couch and get comfortable for a particularly long, boring meeting.
Edit: to address the actual contents of the article, I think below is a better read that doesn’t reduce people’s concerns about remote working to wanting to save sandwhich shops:
https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-hidden-...
[+] [-] 7ewis|5 years ago|reply
I was never previously a big fan of working from home, I enjoy the social interaction at the office. Having coffee breaks with people, going out for lunch etc. But now I'm used to WFH I love the fact that I can wake up at 9AM and I'm 'at work'. I finish at 5:30PM and I'm already home. Yes I do miss the interaction with people, but I have met some people outside work, and regularly have Slack convos (or social ones while gaming for example) with those people.
I feel lucky that I've been at my company for a relatively long time, so have 'work friends' who I continue talking to. I now don't talk to the 'acquaintances' or new starters for example, which I guess is sad - but being selfish, makes it feel like I have even more time to do my own things. But on the other hand, probably isn't so good for the newer members of staff and doesn't help company morale.
I am still fairly young and have seen some people mention work/life balance. That doesn't bother me too much either as my company is flexible and I know if I do a few extra hours one evening I can do a few less hours another day etc. and wouldn't have to tell or ask anyone to do that.
Until reading this post I hadn't really thought about it too much, but guess I am just lucky that it works for me. If I was older and had kids/family, or didn't have an office to work from at home I can see how it would be more of a struggle. I do want to go back to work at some point, but I don't know how often I'd want to be there. I don't know if I can handle the long commutes week in week out now.
[+] [-] kepler1|5 years ago|reply
But jobs / companies are mechanisms for getting people to do things they wouldn't feel like normally doing, because they get paid to do it. That's the definition of work!
Of course no one wants to go back to work when they've been allowed not to for a while.
The author lists all the things he hates about being in the office. Namely the things that are work. He wants some fairy tale home environment where no one bothers him, there are no deadlines, and he gets to work on only the things he wants. For high pay and 0 stress.
If anyone has been able to find that in life, god bless you and treasure what you have. If the author was not getting paid right now, you best believe he'd have a different attitude.
Eventually people will have to go back to work. This "work from home lala land" imaginary utopia is not going to be possible forever.
[+] [-] NewFireStudios|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphextron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] S_A_P|5 years ago|reply