Same. Half the people we hired during work from home are remote (that was never allowed before). Now all meetings are on zoom and all conversations are on slack. Being in an office is beyond pointless. It wastes time, gas, etc. the main take away from the past 2 years is working in an office is beyond stupid (at least for certain careers like developers). I drive to work, communicate with no one except on the computer, then drive home. So so so stupid.
Forgive me for this digression and for sounding selfish, but as a junior, I’ve really struggled for the last 2+ years to fully adapt to remote / hybrid working.
I’m wondering if anyone has advice on how I can continue to grow and become a top-class engineer within a remote environment?
Based on my experience so far, it’s very difficult to both onboard and mentor a junior from a remote setting. It’s not impossible, however, a lot of employers / teams still have not setup effective means for including and training the less experienced members of the team. I realise that much of this learning is of my own responsibility but I really, really miss spending time with my team and learning from those more experienced than I. I feel as though I have stagnated an awful lot over the last two years and there’s only so far self-learning can take you when software engineering is such a collaborative process.
This is the most frustrating part of being forced back to the Bay Area. Even before the pandemic, we always had distributed meetings, with people calling in from various buildings, conference rooms, phone booths, etc.
So nothing changes between last month and this month, except that managers get peace-of-mind knowing I’m calling in from somewhere on the premises, and I’m back living in a place where I can’t afford a house.
(I did have previous jobs where we worked on hard technical problems, and spending face-to-face time with a couple colleagues hashing out solutions at a whiteboard was invaluable. But that is not my FAANG job, where the whiteboards are rarely used for anything other than interview questions.)
I had plenty of interactions at Google over lunch, in the hallway, while taking a break, etc that we brought to a whiteboard and either ended up with a potentially interesting project or saved us time by finding out something didn’t make sense. These often came from a series of multiple, low stakes conversations that were much more difficult to have remotely. I don’t contend they are impossible, but for me they were at least much less frequent during wfh.
>I did have previous jobs where we worked on hard technical problems, and spending face-to-face time with a couple colleagues hashing out solutions at a whiteboard was invaluable. But that is not my FAANG job, where the whiteboards are rarely used for anything other than interview questions
I hope that I get to work on some actually hard problems at some point in my career. Sounds fun :)
As someone who has worked on startups, side gigs, and only around 6 months at a “real” company. I’m always blown away at how many meetings there are in corporate America. What are you even meeting about? Why aren’t you doing hands on keyboard work? Why does a decision need to be made in a room, with everyone pretending to listen? Why are you presenting something to me when I’ll comprehend it far better if I read it, gather my thoughts, and then send you my questions?
And don’t get it twisted. I’ve been in these types of meetings. Client meetings, project meetings, etc. It’s always been as an outsider, but they’re all the same. Small talk, people arrive, someone always has to have everyone introduce themselves, then there’s a quasi-presentation/conversation, and eventually everyone leaves. I can’t think of a less efficient means of communicating an idea than that.
Wait till you see government organisations. There are meetings to decide who needs to turn up to a meeting. I thought that was a sick joke until I attended such a thing myself.
On one project we had dozens(!) of meetings involving 5-10 people to decide what to call an API endpoint that no human being will ever see again after the initial implementation. A nearly cried. I told them that they could literally mash the keyboard and use that, it's fine, just make a decision already. Nope. Got to run it past marketing. Branding (a separate team). Networks. BAU support. Domain hosting team. Architecture team. SecOps. Etc, etc...
The same org then had daily meetings involving 10+ people to decide how to purchase $500 worth of USB security fobs. At one point a project manager broke down in tears and pulled his credit card out out, and offered to just buy it himself if it would make the madness stop. There was a stunned silence, and then somebody raised the point that yes, fine, sure, but then how would warranty returns be handled if he becomes the "supplier"? With a straight face that same guy suggested another meeting to discuss the warranty return issue.
Yeah, the company I work for recently got acquired by a US corporate. I went from one ~15min stand-up call a day to 3-4 hours of meetings per day, all mandated by the US VPs. Our company has had to double our number of developers just to get the same amount of work done that we did pre-acquisition.
I don't think meetings are really there for the informational value for a lot of people, but to give face time as a show of strength.
But, I do exactly what you do - I prefer something well-written and it gives me time to think about it. As someone talking to a lot of people within the company, I sometimes get asked to go on a client call. I almost always say no. It's not my job to talk to clients (and that means being ready to look good for them) and saying whatever needs to be said in a call doesn't do much that an email can't do. While being there as an "expert" to the client is probably something that customer-facing people want, I have nothing to gain from it.
Useful meetings engage people : a fresh new idea to have everyone go research more, a way to gather the team to focus on tough questions, or to explain a point better than chat messages.
I recently started doing part time contracting dev work for a couple companies. The best part is that management doesn't invite me to these bullshit meetings because they know I will be billing them for no value being delivered.
I've been working remotely most of my career and I wouldn't trade it for the world. However I believe that "just" having a place to do your video calls or whatnot in peace and quiet can be a tremendous value offer for many if not all people. This isn't to say that I think going to the office should be mandatory. Rather, I would hope that one day more companies can start going remote first with a workspace budget where you get to choose. Whether it's choosing to go to the office and your budget going towards the office rent, or paying for a coworking space with the budget, or just getting a better setup at home, raising awareness of the topic will hopefully lead to more flexible approaches in the long run. Right now, finding a company that's good at remote and has it all figured out is still rare.
This reminds me of the time about 7 years ago when my team (in Redmond, WA) wanted to send me to Beijing for a year. I didn't agree so they sent someone else instead. He spent most of the year living in Beijing and working with a team in Bellevue, WA.
I have to wonder how long this kind of thing will last in these types of org structures before there's a collective realization that coordinating groups always has a challenging element to it, even in person in a single office location.
With distributed groups, even more "overhead," which Zoom / video calls, I think, have been proven over the last 2+ years to ameliorate to some extent.
These kinds of stories come across as almost validating the critique I've seen going around on various discussion forums - that critique would be that the return to office push when the job doesn't inherently require it is more an artifact of an organizational failure to adapt and/or an attempt to put expensive office spaces to some kind of readily visible use, rather than rational or productive management planning.
I want to come into the office. It's nice to get to know coworkers better. And I like the commute and the routine.
But it sucks.
There aren't enough meeting rooms for all the meetings. When I do get a meeting room, I have to wait for the last meeting to wrap up. Or I find out that the camera doesn't work. Or the lighting is off. And it's harder to tell who's talking. And messages in the meeting are truncated on the meeting room screen, so there's kinda a private side channel where only remote workers can participate effectively.
Our office is open plan, so I can hear people on other teams talking and I can't focus as well.
Sometimes the badge readers break and aren't fixed until the next day.
Sometimes there are evacuations.
The mail room is only open 11am-1pm, so if I have lots of meetings I have to wait another 24 hours to get my important parcel.
If they want me to come into the office, they really should make it more productive than working from home.
I was thinking returning to the office is sort of a 'prisoner's dilemma'. Everyone has to make the same choice for it to be effective, otherwise the office experience is diminished and working from home is better at that point, since you'll be in remote meetings anyway.
I still think it's a matter of control that the office is preferred. There's absolutely no reason why software problems can't be solved remotely, especially when half of the industry is outsourced to China or India.
The reason to have anyone in an office is because it makes managers and executives feel better. It’s really that simple. No one who has ever worked remotely themselves could possibly believe that employees are more productive in an office.
I think the delusion most people tell themselves about in person being better for spontaneous conversations, and better productivity comes down to just wanting human interaction. Which is totally normal. But all of the talk about how being in person is better is just a cope. Working from home is better in every instance where it’s possible.
I recently spent a week in the office with my team. First time I'd had office time with any team since mid-2018.
It was really, really, really nice.
I've been a diehard work-from-home guy for ages. Why spend perhaps 10+ hours per week commuting? It's a productivity and environmental nightmare.
But... sometimes?
Yeah. It's nice to be in the room with other smart people, solving hard problems. I didn't realize I missed it until I experienced it again. For the first time in years.
I think it also helps team cohesion. We're human beings, not robots. I think my ideal schedule would be "3 days at home, 2 in the office" per week or maybe "one week in the office, two weeks at home."
edit: I'm baffled by the polarized and inflammatory replies to this post. I was just relating a personal experience. I don't have opinions on how others should work. You want to be 100% fully remote forever? Cool. I don't think you're wrong. I'll continue to be remote a majority of the time, myself.
> I'm baffled by the polarized and inflammatory replies to this post. I was just relating a personal experience. I don't have opinions on how others should work. You want to be 100% fully remote forever? Cool. I don't think you're wrong. I'll continue to be remote a majority of the time, myself.
The problem is that choices aren't independent. While they're not using this language, you can see that other people are thinking of you as a "scab" for having crossed the "picket line" of returning to the office, and that admitting there is any benefit to being in the office at all will result in their life being made worse. That's why it's so heated.
I wouldn't mind being in the office. I do mind commuting, and I definitely would mind getting COVID as my wife is in the vulnerable category.
I get where you’re coming from. I’ve been half time remote since 2017 (I.e. on one coast half the time and back near the office the other half) and full time since 2019. It is very nice to visit and have a really good in person session occasionally.
My work has moved the office to a general hoteling model where the dozen people that need the office every day are always welcome to use it. It’s mostly a ghost town but everyone is happy with how this worked out.
The most common use case is a team coming into the office to see each other for the first time in two years or the first time ever depending on when they started.
We have a rule that all calls are done over Zoom or Meet, so we will have the eventual insane looking situation of the majority of the participants in the same conference room speaking into a laptop.
The company owns several Owl cameras which did a good job pre-pandemic of bridging the gap of seeing who is speaking in a conference room. I’m not sure if all laptops open is a good policy for remotes like myself but I’m sure we’ll figure that out in a few months time.
I'm with you. I definitely miss having an office to go to.
Would I take a job that required me to be in the office every day? Almost definitely not. Would I sacrifice a bit of pay if it meant working for a company local enough that I could go to the office 1-2 days a week? Probably.
That would really be the sweet spot for me. I like working from home a lot, but being a fully remote team wears on you. I've considered taking a part time bartending job just to satisfy the desire to have in-person coworkers a bit of time a week.
“My team” are in London, Chicago, Dallas, Cochin, and Bangalore and I’m in Seattle. Commuting to the office just makes it harder to get in early enough for the morning Zoom calls.
Same here. Everyone was "happy" and "proud" about our remote performance and now they force us back to the office 50% of the time. Many people seem to see it as a great leap forward, but I don't. One of the company value is supposed to be "independent"...
This week I was supposed to go, not see my kids in the morning, waste 2 hours in the train, expose myself to Covid, just to sit alone in an office and discuss through Teams because the rest of the team was not even there. What the actual f**. I just couldn't go.
Half my friends say they work less than 1 hour a day remote. Literally attend standup, complain they are somewhat blocked or investigating something and then just work on personal projects or just game. The rest are doing chores because their spouses are not considering them working because they are "home". All kinds of chores from pick up the kids to take the dog to the vet.
Whoever says overall productivity increases, is probably talking about very disciplined individuals.
That may be the case, but if you're prone to dicking around and generally not working, there are plenty of ways to not work while your butt is sitting on the company's chair.
If I had a dollar for every person I've seen randomly browsing Facebook or similar at the office, I wouldn't need to work anymore.
Now I understand that not all people are the same towards work and motivation, and I particularly sympathize with the spouse thing. So I think the broader issue here is management attempting to impose a single One True Way for everybody, which doesn't seem to exist.
I also think that the spouse thing may be somewhat a question of habit. As in, after a while, the spouse may end up appreciating that your being at home doesn't mean you're free to do whatever. But you're still able to go start laundry when taking a five-minute break, which is still extremely valuable and couldn't be done from the office.
Imo if people can get away with doing that now you gotta wonder about these sleepy managers of yours who aren't checking if the team has a pulse. Chances are they were probably only good for 1 hour of actual work when they were in the office too if that's the state of affairs.
> Whoever says overall productivity increases, is probably talking about very disciplined individuals.
That's a very simplistic view of productivity. The kind of work most people here are doing cannot be measured in hours. I can be in an office for 10 hours, bash my keyboard, blabber away in meetings and not produce anything useful. Conversely, I could spend the whole day sitting in the garden and come up with an idea to solve a problem that has been plaguing the company for months.
If people are working an hour a day and still getting their job done then great. If they aren't getting anything done but it's not being noticed then that means they never had a job to do anyway. Being remote doesn't change anything.
> The rest are doing chores because their spouses are not considering them working because they are "home"
I finally addressed this by blocking out the hours of 3-5 on my schedule for “personal time” and then working after that. It meant I could push personal chores and errands into that window no matter when requested.
Actually my schedule is so cross time zone that it wouldn’t matter so much but locking in the time helps manage it (I also have time blocked out for truly personal things like reading HN).
There is no one size fits all. I’m a believer that office time should be optional. If I was an employer I want to get the most from my people. I want to empower them with the tools they need to get the best work done they can. If that is them working at home. Fine. If it’s having a dedicated space (office) that I pay for. Fine. They are adults and can figure out what works best for them. Why would I as an employer know how best all of my employees can work best.
I love having lunch with co-workers. It’s a great way to connect. Even though at my office only about 30% of folks are back, it’s roughly the same group each day. So I’m happy being back even if all meetings involve Zoom. At least getting a conference room for all the zoom calls is not too hard :)
Even though at my office only about 30% of folks are back, it’s roughly the same group each day.
This an area where companies will see problems with reopening offices - the people who aren't there (eg remote hires who work hundreds of miles away, people who choose not to return, people who still need to isolate, etc) will feel far less included, will see that their prospects at the company are worse, and ultimately are much more likely to leave because the social aspect of Slack will die off. Maintaining inclusion in a partially remote company is incredibly hard.
This is exactly the case for my company. Since the pandemic started the majority of our engineering hiring has been remote, because why pay Bay Area salaries when you have perfectly great developers willing to work out of Toronto, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Portland or really anywhere else in the same-ish timezones.
Now that our HQ has fully opened up and local employees are being asked to come back, how do you deal with the dynamic of up to 50% of your team not being in the same building? What would have been a 1:1 over coffee or a corridor huddle now needs a meeting room reservation, and there aren't nearly enough of them to go around.
We are in a place where we get very few of the advantages of in-person collaboration while having to bear all the drawbacks.
Have any of the pro-RTO folks on HN experienced this phenomenon? There's definitely a contingent here who do not prefer remote work, curious to read what they think of going back into the office only to have to continue to call in order to collaborate with coworkers.
Even before COVID all my collaboration with teammates was done online. (We use Teams now) I'm at the main site for my company; my boss and all my close collaborators are at a satellite location that's not within driving distance; my boss's boss is down the hall from me.
For me, the act of leaving the office at the end of the day is an effective "off switch" that I don't have while my work station and my gaming station is the same chair in the same room. And the office is an effective procrastination temptation blocker that I don't have when I'm at home and surrounded by all my toys, dirty dishes in the sink, and dirty cloths in the hamper.
WFH is the worst case scenario of "taking work home with you", which really isn't the way I want to live my life.
I prefer working from the office, even if it’s empty. 99% of my interactions continue to be remote but I like to have somewhere that isn’t my home office to do work. I don’t like being _that_ much of a hermit.
I'm not sure it will matter at FAANG. For > 15yrs meetings always had video conferencing for other offices or team members at home etc... So it's not that much different except at home I can turn off my camera if I'm disheveled. I suppose it's also easier to blow off the meeting at home.
We’ve been in-office since early August 2021. It’s been great. Since we have two offices, we dial in every day for our daily meeting.
The rest of the time we talk in person and sync up after. We’ve found it quite enjoyable so all of us come in every day.
We’re in HFT so if an action would leave money on the table, we’d prefer the alternative that grabs the cash.
In this case, we started this office because part of the team was remote in SF and expressed an interest in being in one. It costs a lot per year so we didn’t make the decision lightly.
I’ve been going into the office 3 days per week, and often times, it’s just me and the office manager in the office out of our ~200-employee company. We’ve been hiring remote-first for a while, so that maybe the way it is until our lease ends.
Like the other commenter, I just like having a place to get work done that isn’t my home. The plus side of an empty office is that I can take Zoom calls at my desk. It does get rather irritating to have to find an empty call room or conference room when others show up.
There’s something good about seeing people in person. Even if a 4 person mtg, 2 are on zoom but me and another are in the same room. It’s nice to be in the room with the other person, and talking.
I would prefer NOT to go into office, but I don’t think it’s totally pointless. Beyond what I mentioned above, it’s great for 1:1’s. Go for a walk with someone, or have a coffee.
My ideal would be to go in when I want, which would probably net out to 1-2x per month.
I prefer going to the office at least a few days a week, because (a) I like to socialize with other humans, and (b) I want to get out of my "home office", aka corner of the living room. I work with a distributed team, so I definitely don't go in to collaborate. In fact, on days with a lot of meetings, I'm more likely to work from home.
I don't understand why we continue to legislate all these rules around cars, but yet companies that are perfectly capable of employing a remote workforce are allowed to mandate that people drive to the office to sit on a computer.
I guess it's more fun banning shit than it is building a world where we don't _need_ to drive _ANY_ car to an office. Or, a world where I can simply get on a trolley/etc to go where I need to.
[+] [-] irrational|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snakey|4 years ago|reply
I’m wondering if anyone has advice on how I can continue to grow and become a top-class engineer within a remote environment?
Based on my experience so far, it’s very difficult to both onboard and mentor a junior from a remote setting. It’s not impossible, however, a lot of employers / teams still have not setup effective means for including and training the less experienced members of the team. I realise that much of this learning is of my own responsibility but I really, really miss spending time with my team and learning from those more experienced than I. I feel as though I have stagnated an awful lot over the last two years and there’s only so far self-learning can take you when software engineering is such a collaborative process.
[+] [-] freyr|4 years ago|reply
So nothing changes between last month and this month, except that managers get peace-of-mind knowing I’m calling in from somewhere on the premises, and I’m back living in a place where I can’t afford a house.
(I did have previous jobs where we worked on hard technical problems, and spending face-to-face time with a couple colleagues hashing out solutions at a whiteboard was invaluable. But that is not my FAANG job, where the whiteboards are rarely used for anything other than interview questions.)
[+] [-] tuckerman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spideymans|4 years ago|reply
I hope that I get to work on some actually hard problems at some point in my career. Sounds fun :)
[+] [-] azth|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanSrich|4 years ago|reply
And don’t get it twisted. I’ve been in these types of meetings. Client meetings, project meetings, etc. It’s always been as an outsider, but they’re all the same. Small talk, people arrive, someone always has to have everyone introduce themselves, then there’s a quasi-presentation/conversation, and eventually everyone leaves. I can’t think of a less efficient means of communicating an idea than that.
[+] [-] jiggawatts|4 years ago|reply
On one project we had dozens(!) of meetings involving 5-10 people to decide what to call an API endpoint that no human being will ever see again after the initial implementation. A nearly cried. I told them that they could literally mash the keyboard and use that, it's fine, just make a decision already. Nope. Got to run it past marketing. Branding (a separate team). Networks. BAU support. Domain hosting team. Architecture team. SecOps. Etc, etc...
The same org then had daily meetings involving 10+ people to decide how to purchase $500 worth of USB security fobs. At one point a project manager broke down in tears and pulled his credit card out out, and offered to just buy it himself if it would make the madness stop. There was a stunned silence, and then somebody raised the point that yes, fine, sure, but then how would warranty returns be handled if he becomes the "supplier"? With a straight face that same guy suggested another meeting to discuss the warranty return issue.
[+] [-] intellirogue|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chillfox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigpeopleareold|4 years ago|reply
But, I do exactly what you do - I prefer something well-written and it gives me time to think about it. As someone talking to a lot of people within the company, I sometimes get asked to go on a client call. I almost always say no. It's not my job to talk to clients (and that means being ready to look good for them) and saying whatever needs to be said in a call doesn't do much that an email can't do. While being there as an "expert" to the client is probably something that customer-facing people want, I have nothing to gain from it.
Useful meetings engage people : a fresh new idea to have everyone go research more, a way to gather the team to focus on tough questions, or to explain a point better than chat messages.
[+] [-] gitfan86|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsnodlin|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Etheryte|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chihuahua|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zebraflask|4 years ago|reply
I have to wonder how long this kind of thing will last in these types of org structures before there's a collective realization that coordinating groups always has a challenging element to it, even in person in a single office location.
With distributed groups, even more "overhead," which Zoom / video calls, I think, have been proven over the last 2+ years to ameliorate to some extent.
These kinds of stories come across as almost validating the critique I've seen going around on various discussion forums - that critique would be that the return to office push when the job doesn't inherently require it is more an artifact of an organizational failure to adapt and/or an attempt to put expensive office spaces to some kind of readily visible use, rather than rational or productive management planning.
[+] [-] mikelward|4 years ago|reply
But it sucks.
There aren't enough meeting rooms for all the meetings. When I do get a meeting room, I have to wait for the last meeting to wrap up. Or I find out that the camera doesn't work. Or the lighting is off. And it's harder to tell who's talking. And messages in the meeting are truncated on the meeting room screen, so there's kinda a private side channel where only remote workers can participate effectively.
Our office is open plan, so I can hear people on other teams talking and I can't focus as well.
Sometimes the badge readers break and aren't fixed until the next day.
Sometimes there are evacuations.
The mail room is only open 11am-1pm, so if I have lots of meetings I have to wait another 24 hours to get my important parcel.
If they want me to come into the office, they really should make it more productive than working from home.
[+] [-] proc0|4 years ago|reply
I still think it's a matter of control that the office is preferred. There's absolutely no reason why software problems can't be solved remotely, especially when half of the industry is outsourced to China or India.
[+] [-] ryanSrich|4 years ago|reply
I think the delusion most people tell themselves about in person being better for spontaneous conversations, and better productivity comes down to just wanting human interaction. Which is totally normal. But all of the talk about how being in person is better is just a cope. Working from home is better in every instance where it’s possible.
[+] [-] JohnBooty|4 years ago|reply
It was really, really, really nice.
I've been a diehard work-from-home guy for ages. Why spend perhaps 10+ hours per week commuting? It's a productivity and environmental nightmare.
But... sometimes?
Yeah. It's nice to be in the room with other smart people, solving hard problems. I didn't realize I missed it until I experienced it again. For the first time in years.
I think it also helps team cohesion. We're human beings, not robots. I think my ideal schedule would be "3 days at home, 2 in the office" per week or maybe "one week in the office, two weeks at home."
edit: I'm baffled by the polarized and inflammatory replies to this post. I was just relating a personal experience. I don't have opinions on how others should work. You want to be 100% fully remote forever? Cool. I don't think you're wrong. I'll continue to be remote a majority of the time, myself.
[+] [-] pjc50|4 years ago|reply
The problem is that choices aren't independent. While they're not using this language, you can see that other people are thinking of you as a "scab" for having crossed the "picket line" of returning to the office, and that admitting there is any benefit to being in the office at all will result in their life being made worse. That's why it's so heated.
I wouldn't mind being in the office. I do mind commuting, and I definitely would mind getting COVID as my wife is in the vulnerable category.
[+] [-] Moto7451|4 years ago|reply
My work has moved the office to a general hoteling model where the dozen people that need the office every day are always welcome to use it. It’s mostly a ghost town but everyone is happy with how this worked out.
The most common use case is a team coming into the office to see each other for the first time in two years or the first time ever depending on when they started.
We have a rule that all calls are done over Zoom or Meet, so we will have the eventual insane looking situation of the majority of the participants in the same conference room speaking into a laptop.
The company owns several Owl cameras which did a good job pre-pandemic of bridging the gap of seeing who is speaking in a conference room. I’m not sure if all laptops open is a good policy for remotes like myself but I’m sure we’ll figure that out in a few months time.
[+] [-] mcronce|4 years ago|reply
Would I take a job that required me to be in the office every day? Almost definitely not. Would I sacrifice a bit of pay if it meant working for a company local enough that I could go to the office 1-2 days a week? Probably.
That would really be the sweet spot for me. I like working from home a lot, but being a fully remote team wears on you. I've considered taking a part time bartending job just to satisfy the desire to have in-person coworkers a bit of time a week.
[+] [-] Tagbert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dSebastien|4 years ago|reply
This week I was supposed to go, not see my kids in the morning, waste 2 hours in the train, expose myself to Covid, just to sit alone in an office and discuss through Teams because the rest of the team was not even there. What the actual f**. I just couldn't go.
I wrote about this and my feeling is still the same: https://medium.com/management-matters/going-back-to-work-no-...
[+] [-] throwaway5371|4 years ago|reply
Whoever says overall productivity increases, is probably talking about very disciplined individuals.
[+] [-] vladvasiliu|4 years ago|reply
If I had a dollar for every person I've seen randomly browsing Facebook or similar at the office, I wouldn't need to work anymore.
Now I understand that not all people are the same towards work and motivation, and I particularly sympathize with the spouse thing. So I think the broader issue here is management attempting to impose a single One True Way for everybody, which doesn't seem to exist.
I also think that the spouse thing may be somewhat a question of habit. As in, after a while, the spouse may end up appreciating that your being at home doesn't mean you're free to do whatever. But you're still able to go start laundry when taking a five-minute break, which is still extremely valuable and couldn't be done from the office.
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] globular-toast|4 years ago|reply
That's a very simplistic view of productivity. The kind of work most people here are doing cannot be measured in hours. I can be in an office for 10 hours, bash my keyboard, blabber away in meetings and not produce anything useful. Conversely, I could spend the whole day sitting in the garden and come up with an idea to solve a problem that has been plaguing the company for months.
If people are working an hour a day and still getting their job done then great. If they aren't getting anything done but it's not being noticed then that means they never had a job to do anyway. Being remote doesn't change anything.
[+] [-] gumby|4 years ago|reply
I finally addressed this by blocking out the hours of 3-5 on my schedule for “personal time” and then working after that. It meant I could push personal chores and errands into that window no matter when requested.
Actually my schedule is so cross time zone that it wouldn’t matter so much but locking in the time helps manage it (I also have time blocked out for truly personal things like reading HN).
[+] [-] janesvilleseo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darinf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|4 years ago|reply
This an area where companies will see problems with reopening offices - the people who aren't there (eg remote hires who work hundreds of miles away, people who choose not to return, people who still need to isolate, etc) will feel far less included, will see that their prospects at the company are worse, and ultimately are much more likely to leave because the social aspect of Slack will die off. Maintaining inclusion in a partially remote company is incredibly hard.
[+] [-] chii|4 years ago|reply
it is, but some people who prefer the remote world do so because they don't need nor want to socialize with their coworkers.
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
Now that our HQ has fully opened up and local employees are being asked to come back, how do you deal with the dynamic of up to 50% of your team not being in the same building? What would have been a 1:1 over coffee or a corridor huddle now needs a meeting room reservation, and there aren't nearly enough of them to go around.
We are in a place where we get very few of the advantages of in-person collaboration while having to bear all the drawbacks.
[+] [-] Apocryphon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwallin|4 years ago|reply
For me, the act of leaving the office at the end of the day is an effective "off switch" that I don't have while my work station and my gaming station is the same chair in the same room. And the office is an effective procrastination temptation blocker that I don't have when I'm at home and surrounded by all my toys, dirty dishes in the sink, and dirty cloths in the hamper.
WFH is the worst case scenario of "taking work home with you", which really isn't the way I want to live my life.
It never had anything to do with collaboration.
[+] [-] jakeva|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gernb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renewiltord|4 years ago|reply
The rest of the time we talk in person and sync up after. We’ve found it quite enjoyable so all of us come in every day.
We’re in HFT so if an action would leave money on the table, we’d prefer the alternative that grabs the cash.
In this case, we started this office because part of the team was remote in SF and expressed an interest in being in one. It costs a lot per year so we didn’t make the decision lightly.
[+] [-] bicx|4 years ago|reply
Like the other commenter, I just like having a place to get work done that isn’t my home. The plus side of an empty office is that I can take Zoom calls at my desk. It does get rather irritating to have to find an empty call room or conference room when others show up.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] xivzgrev|4 years ago|reply
I would prefer NOT to go into office, but I don’t think it’s totally pointless. Beyond what I mentioned above, it’s great for 1:1’s. Go for a walk with someone, or have a coffee.
My ideal would be to go in when I want, which would probably net out to 1-2x per month.
[+] [-] bob_roberts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remram|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chihuahua|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sabujp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttGpN5Nde3pK|4 years ago|reply
I guess it's more fun banning shit than it is building a world where we don't _need_ to drive _ANY_ car to an office. Or, a world where I can simply get on a trolley/etc to go where I need to.