8 ms·

The best way to prevent spreading diseases at the office is to not require your employees to go to the office - assuming WFH is compatible with the company's bu

The best way to prevent spreading diseases at the office is to not require your employees to go to the office - assuming WFH is compatible with the company's business. I work at a FAANG company which was aggressively opposed to WFH before the covid-19 crisis. As matter of fact, I recently changed teams within said company and during the informational interview I asked about the team's policy on WFH - the answer was that "our team has a strong 'collaborative in-the-office' culture, so we don't encourage WFH" I am not kidding, we're talking about one of the most advanced companies in history and they required domestic travel+hotel for trivial half-day, mostly passive interview training that could have been done easily over teleconference, that's how much this company values physical presence. Fast forward a few months, everybody is WFH in the company and the sky hasn't fallen. Actually, my productivity vastly increased because I'm fortunate to have a solid WFH environment at home (despite kids/wife around). While I'm not proposing mandatory WFH for tech companies, neither saying that it works for everybody, I believe our top companies could lead and finally allow people who demonstrate that they can be productive at home to just stay home - permanently.

Analemma_ 6y ago
I’m curious which FAANG you worked at that strongly discouraged WFH. I’ve worked at two now, including the one that’s sort of notorious for treating employees terribly, and both of them were fine with WFH when necessary. I sort of got the sense that they were all more or less OK with it.
- pgm8705 6y ago
  My guess is Apple.
  - starpilot 6y ago
    People only say FAANG instead of FANG if it's Apple. Otherwise I could only see it as Amazon. But Amazon had people WFH almost immediately, since being here in Seattle it was the start of the outbreak in the US.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      > People only say FAANG instead of FANG if it's Apple. I don't think this is true. Actually, most people would like to replace "N" with "M" in that acronym, but then it sounds much worse…
      - nostrademons 6y ago
        I'm partial to "MAGA" as the initialism for the top 4 tech companies by market cap (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple). Facebook and Netflix are a tier below in market cap and size, and it also makes it clear who's really making America great again...
        WorldMaker 6y ago
        I've seen GAFAM a lot, and that's the one I tend to favor. MAFANG (maybe?) if you really want to get Netflix in there? I know some people especially in the Bay Area think Netflix is important in the acronym not necessarily by market cap, but overall head count versus turnover and thus cultural swing (policies like "unlimited vacation" that started at Netflix and then in turn influenced a lot of other surrounding Bay Area companies).
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  It could easily be Google.
  - tibiahurried 6y ago
    More Apple than Google. But yes, general speaking, the best you can hope for is one day WFH.
- kleinsch 6y ago
  I work at a FAANG. They’re OK with you working from home 1-2 days/week to run errands, etc, but not OK with 100% WFH except rare exceptions (usually people who have been at the company a while before moving). That may be what OP means. I’ll be curious to see if fully remote becomes more of a possibility based on how the next few months go.
  - acituan 6y ago
    That changes wildly from team to team. I worked for one team where there was a set WFH day of the week. I had another team where 11am standup meetings were held everyday, and this was mostly for the benefit of the people manage who was very technically disinterested in what’s going on but wanted to enforce “coherence”, needless to say WFH was impossible. In another team, manager wasn’t comfortable allowing WFH because “it would create inequality between engineers” i.e he was just afraid of making a judgement call. Finally, had a team where manager would WFH 1-3 times a week himself and was actually the best manager of all in terms of being on top of things. The sentiment that this is heavily dependent on manager competence is correct IMHO.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  It could be any. All FAANGs have their subcultures.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Sounds very much like the company which spent recently spent $5 billion on suburban open offices.
wdn 6y ago
This is a problem with incompetent managers. They failed to understand the different between productivity and sitting. Last company I worked for, the CEO said to me he doesn't care where anyone work as long as the work get done well. However, this was not the case with my own manager. He micro managed everything. He had an office manager sitting with the engineers reporting to him multiple times a day on if the engineers were sitting on the desk. You can feel you are being watch the moment you step into the office. It was an absolute shit place to work for.
- otachack 6y ago
  Managers can contribute to this but in my opinion it's a cultural inclination and we've all been thrust into it due to the pandemic. The forced move to WFH will be eye opening to everyone, managers included, and will also give credit to subordinates with cut and dry experience.
  - cbg0 6y ago
    > The forced move to WFH will be eye opening to everyone, managers included I think you're overly optimistic about this, most just see Covid as a temporary inconvenience and will go back to business as usual when this ends. Sure, some smart managers may see the value, but I'd wager most of them are set in their ways.
- folkhack 6y ago
  > He micro managed everything. He had an office manager sitting with the engineers reporting to him multiple times a day on if the engineers were sitting on the desk. I really related to this in my last role. It's the butts-in-chairs method vs output because let's be real... most of the people promoted to middle-management can't measure actual output. I've always been on the edge of being a manager vs. being IC and the times I've bled over into management I have this style: you're expected to be here early by 30 minutes for meetings, and if you wanna leave directly after to go work from your home office I could care less. I expect workers to be highly available via chat and phone during normal business hours (adjusted to the timezone), and generally flexible if something comes up where I need 'em in the mothership. To measure output and success, whelp I just get on the corporate GitLab and read everyone's commits daily. Not only do I learn a TON working with solid talent... I also know who's jerkin' me around. Does this work for every WFH-type employee? Nope. Managing devs gives you a ton of black-and-white paper trails to ensure people are working the right direction. In contrast, throughout my IC career none of my managers have managed ME this way which blows my mind. I know I'm not the most talented leader but I don't understand why dev management doesn't look at real metrics to gauge success outside of "I don't know how to read code"... =| The way I managed also bought loyalty... like a lot of loyalty. When you get out of the way of people's lives and say, "I'm willing to make this career work with you as a person" you get an insane amount of forgiveness for being a poop manager in other areas. Did people take advantage of me giving them this slack? Yep. Did I fire 'em for poor output? Yep - at will state sucka. IMO you'll get people taking advantage of the system regardless of how you wanna lead so the best way to hedge that risk is looking at metrics + engaging consistently with your team. Bad apples tend to stick out in a few months and you just gotta learn to fire fast to maintain the integrity of the team vs pumping your staff numbers.
dschuler 6y ago
Do you think your company will go back to WFO eventually or will some of the WFH changes stick?
- lozaning 6y ago
  Im curious what happens when my employer says its time to come back into the office and I just say no, don't show up, but keep working.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Perhaps they'll cut off your VPN access.
andarleen 6y ago
It’s easier to micromanage staff, and much more convenient for playing office politics when on site - hence management is usually against wfh. It boggles the mind.
noelsusman 6y ago
I worked from home two days a week before this, and moving to working from home every day has hurt my productivity. I've found it much more difficult to collaborate with colleagues remotely compared to being in the same space for most of the day. Before I used my WFH days for head-down focused work and my in-office days for collaboration. That worked really well for me.
- 01100011 6y ago
  Yep. I routinely work 2-3 days from home every week. Full time WFH sucks. There are times when I just need to be at the office. There are times when the distractions at home are too much. Now I've had jobs where 100% WFH was fine, but that's when I was in a real home with a real office, not my tiny SiValley apartment.
  - mvanbaak 6y ago
    Fulltime WFH means you can live somewhere where the housing prices are less insane. So you can have a desicated work place (either seperate room or seperate desk somewhere). Thets the whole thing!
    - maccard 6y ago
      I don't particularly want to live somewhere other than where I live right now though, I want to live here and only go into the office 3 times a week.
- acituan 6y ago
  How is your productivity now that the rest of the office is also WFH? I imagine there is an asymmetry in perceived productivity if you’re the only one WFH, but it could be a different ballgame when it is more common. This could easily carry to post-pandemic e.g. weekly WFH days for everyone.
therealjumbo 6y ago
I guess you'll have to mop up your tears with that 300k.
papreclip 6y ago
>I'm fortunate to have a solid WFH environment at home I feel this is pretty important. I am only renting a room (not making FAANG money) and as such quarantine has me spending nearly 24 hours a day in my bedroom. I can't follow the standard advice of maintaining a separate space for work
- lozaning 6y ago
  I feel you on this. I live in a studio loft, so I've only got one room total really. Time has no meaning, days bleed together and my work/live ballence has gone to shit.
  - beart 6y ago
    I've been having the same issue. One thing I noticed that helps is to at least make sure work is done on a different laptop that gets shutdown and put away after 5 PM.
  - marssaxman 6y ago
    I had a remote job for seven years, most of which I spent living in a couple of studio apartments, so - as you're experiencing - there was no way to separate work space from living space. In order to keep from having time become a blur, I had to develop some artificial rituals around beginning and especially ending the work day. At one apartment I slept on a folding futon couch. I would "go to work" by folding it up and putting all the pillows away. Ta-da, now I'm "in the office", time to work. Done with work? Close the laptop, leave the apartment, walk around the block, maybe get a snack, come back home. Hey! I just came home from work, time to relax. Leaving the apartment and re-entering it, even if I was only gone a few minutes, was a really useful signal. Later on I decided to strictly separate personal computing from work computing. No personal website logins on the work computer; no company code or email accouts on the personal computer. I also tried putting DNS blocks on my favorite recreational web sites on the work computer, so I'd be forced to swivel my chair around and use the personal computer. This way, I could carry on with email, browsing the web, and writing code on personal projects after work hours, using my personal machine, without feeling like I was still "at work" on my work machine. I don't know what will work for you, but perhaps choosing to create some artificial barriers like these will help.
bitwize 6y ago
Human beings are irrational, social animals. Showing up for work at the office, on time, early in the morning, is a strong social signal that you are committed to work. These signals matter almost as much as whether the work gets done. Ultimately you will be judged on how well the work gets done -- but the social signals are table stakes.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  When I was in law school I was fortunate enough to have a paid internship at an investment company that came with a small office. Since it wasn’t too far from school I started to use my office to study even when I wasn’t working. It was a quiet place to get things done and when I was on-site I would occasionally get pulled in to cool projects. It seemed like a good way to get a few more opportunities at work and also get my homework done without all the gossiping that happened at the library. That meant I spent most of the work week “at work” even though I was only actually working some of that time. I did all of my work and I did a good job but at the end of the year I was the only intern to get a bonus checks. Interns weren’t even eligible for bonuses but my bosses were so blown away by my dedication they decided to reward it. The craziest part is they knew I was doing homework half the time. I had gotten the okay to use my office as a study spot first and they were getting my timesheets every week. They were well aware that I wasn’t some sort full-time super intern. I think the whole concept of “facetime” pretty silly but it definitely matters even if we like to think it doesn’t.
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    Maybe they were impressed by your consistency. Whether you’re studying or working, showing up every day on a consistent schedule is quite impressive especially for a college kid. In my experience it’s consistency, more than anything else, that separates the best performers from average performers.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  One of the hardest parts about remote work is that you don't get that signal anymore. Grinding away and doing nothing can look like the same thing from your coworkers'/managers' point of view. Or, on days where you just aren't feeling it or can't be productive, you can't just look productive by sitting in your office chair. Instead you basically burn a day and it's easy to start having thoughts like "wow, they must think I'm useless." I love remote work because I love the freedom to live where I please, but this is one aspect of it that gives me some anxiety. The subconscious "I see you in the office so you must be productive" signal really is strong.
sharadov 6y ago
The FAANG's overwhelmingly employ younger folks, give them the college atmosphere - free food, drinks, laundry on site, foosball table. And they spend their entire day at work for these so-called "benefits". I met one guy who was so happy that his company provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner at work, thought it was the greatest thing, he felt bad that he could not have the same arrangement for the weekend. I was like, dude, you live once, get a fuckin life!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  It's not a terminal thing. Work for a FANG for ~10 years then retire early. But over those 10 years, hustle hard and save what you can.
  - neffy 6y ago
    As long as you pick the right 10 years.
  - muro 6y ago
    The pay is good, but if you have a family, saving enough in 10 years to retire is unlikely.
    - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
      Not in the Bay Area, but a more affordable area of the US, it's possible. And if you plan on retiring early, there's no need to live in a housing market around lots of profitable tech businesses that make housing expensive.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - sharadov 6y ago
    The smart ones are playing the arbitrage game, by living in an RV and keeping costs down.
WorldMaker 6y ago
Something I still find fascinating is how much GAFAM/FAANG invested in remote work software for their customers (all but Apple and Netflix) but never had a good handle on using those same tools internally because they didn't have strong remote work policies/cultures. Good for the goose, but the gander doesn't care to dog food. (To badly mix metaphors.) I very much hope all of GAFAM/FAANG are paying attention and learning from this situation. (I've asked about remote work policies every time I've ever interviewed with GAFAM/FAANG. I've seen such a fascinating mix of hypocrisy about remote work in such interviews.)
perseusprime11 6y ago
We want everyone in the office so we can waste their time in meetings. Peter's principle in action.
- rozap 6y ago
  That's perfectly easy to accomplish while remote, too.
  - perseusprime11 6y ago
    Folks can at least multi task remotely and do the real work.
  - cableshaft 6y ago
    The longest meetings I've ever been in were while working remote. Major sev 1 outage bridges with 200+ attendees where it takes 6+ hours (My longest was 27 hours, and that was after demanding to my boss I finally take a break to get some sleep, and the problem still wasn't resolved for another two hours. Beat my previous longest Sev 1 by 3 hours). to get the right people to join / figure out what's going on / get someone's attention long enough to work on your problems instead of other departments? So fun. /s
0x8BADF00D 6y ago
Something has to change. There is no reason why every tech company shouldn’t have a permanent WFH policy. Let people live further out from cities. It’s 2020, why are we still working like it’s the 1950s?
summerlight 6y ago
There's bunch of things other than productivity that make companies (especially for those multinational giants) hesitant to allow full WFH + remote, like tax/visa/regulatory issues. It's not impossible, but the cost adds up. I guess the benefits outweigh the costs now, so I hope those companies will more proactively consider more WFH friendy employment options.
nine_k 6y ago
If I were to WFH "permanently", for years and years, I'd like my employer to share some of the savings from not having an office with me. I would spend it on renting a bigger apartment with an extra room to use as my office. Don't get me wrong: I love my wife and kids dearly. But having anything done requires concentration and some moderate insulation from distractions. Achieving this from a coach in the living room is hard. Grabbing my kid's room only works as long as the school day isn't over, and not at all during a recess, like, say, the whole summer. My wife already works from home, so our bedroom doubles as her office. I didn't need a proper workplace as long as my employers provided me with (a piece of) an office. Now that they stopped due to the quarantine, its lack becomes a significant problem. Obviously, some would say: leave your expensive city, move to somewhere really cheap, in the middle of (almost) nowhere! Two problems. (1) What about schools there? (2) When enough people move into a cheap and convenient place, it quickly ceases to be as cheap.
duckkg5 6y ago
I was at a FAANG for years. I was the ONLY ONE on my team in the office - the rest of my team was in London. So I would literally drive to the multi-million dollar office on multi-million dollar real estate then dial up some people in London from my laptop. During my exit interview after I resigned, I told my director I was leaving partially because I wanted to work remotely more and that they should either encourage or at least allow more WFH. She laughed, said they don't do that there, and told me that I'd be back. Now they're all working from home and I'm with a new remote-friendly company with no plans on ever going back to the FAANG world. Good riddance.

Analemma_ 6y ago

I’m curious which FAANG you worked at that strongly discouraged WFH. I’ve worked at two now, including the one that’s sort of notorious for treating employees terribly, and both of them were fine with WFH when necessary. I sort of got the sense that they were all more or less OK with it.

pgm8705 6y ago
My guess is Apple.
- starpilot 6y ago
  People only say FAANG instead of FANG if it's Apple. Otherwise I could only see it as Amazon. But Amazon had people WFH almost immediately, since being here in Seattle it was the start of the outbreak in the US.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    > People only say FAANG instead of FANG if it's Apple. I don't think this is true. Actually, most people would like to replace "N" with "M" in that acronym, but then it sounds much worse…
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      I'm partial to "MAGA" as the initialism for the top 4 tech companies by market cap (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple). Facebook and Netflix are a tier below in market cap and size, and it also makes it clear who's really making America great again...
      - WorldMaker 6y ago
        I've seen GAFAM a lot, and that's the one I tend to favor. MAFANG (maybe?) if you really want to get Netflix in there? I know some people especially in the Bay Area think Netflix is important in the acronym not necessarily by market cap, but overall head count versus turnover and thus cultural swing (policies like "unlimited vacation" that started at Netflix and then in turn influenced a lot of other surrounding Bay Area companies).
CydeWeys 6y ago
It could easily be Google.
- tibiahurried 6y ago
  More Apple than Google. But yes, general speaking, the best you can hope for is one day WFH.
kleinsch 6y ago
I work at a FAANG. They’re OK with you working from home 1-2 days/week to run errands, etc, but not OK with 100% WFH except rare exceptions (usually people who have been at the company a while before moving). That may be what OP means. I’ll be curious to see if fully remote becomes more of a possibility based on how the next few months go.
- acituan 6y ago
  That changes wildly from team to team. I worked for one team where there was a set WFH day of the week. I had another team where 11am standup meetings were held everyday, and this was mostly for the benefit of the people manage who was very technically disinterested in what’s going on but wanted to enforce “coherence”, needless to say WFH was impossible. In another team, manager wasn’t comfortable allowing WFH because “it would create inequality between engineers” i.e he was just afraid of making a judgement call. Finally, had a team where manager would WFH 1-3 times a week himself and was actually the best manager of all in terms of being on top of things. The sentiment that this is heavily dependent on manager competence is correct IMHO.
cameronbrown 6y ago
It could be any. All FAANGs have their subcultures.
saagarjha 6y ago
Sounds very much like the company which spent recently spent $5 billion on suburban open offices.

wdn 6y ago

This is a problem with incompetent managers. They failed to understand the different between productivity and sitting. Last company I worked for, the CEO said to me he doesn't care where anyone work as long as the work get done well. However, this was not the case with my own manager. He micro managed everything. He had an office manager sitting with the engineers reporting to him multiple times a day on if the engineers were sitting on the desk. You can feel you are being watch the moment you step into the office. It was an absolute shit place to work for.

otachack 6y ago
Managers can contribute to this but in my opinion it's a cultural inclination and we've all been thrust into it due to the pandemic. The forced move to WFH will be eye opening to everyone, managers included, and will also give credit to subordinates with cut and dry experience.
- cbg0 6y ago
  > The forced move to WFH will be eye opening to everyone, managers included I think you're overly optimistic about this, most just see Covid as a temporary inconvenience and will go back to business as usual when this ends. Sure, some smart managers may see the value, but I'd wager most of them are set in their ways.
folkhack 6y ago
> He micro managed everything. He had an office manager sitting with the engineers reporting to him multiple times a day on if the engineers were sitting on the desk. I really related to this in my last role. It's the butts-in-chairs method vs output because let's be real... most of the people promoted to middle-management can't measure actual output. I've always been on the edge of being a manager vs. being IC and the times I've bled over into management I have this style: you're expected to be here early by 30 minutes for meetings, and if you wanna leave directly after to go work from your home office I could care less. I expect workers to be highly available via chat and phone during normal business hours (adjusted to the timezone), and generally flexible if something comes up where I need 'em in the mothership. To measure output and success, whelp I just get on the corporate GitLab and read everyone's commits daily. Not only do I learn a TON working with solid talent... I also know who's jerkin' me around. Does this work for every WFH-type employee? Nope. Managing devs gives you a ton of black-and-white paper trails to ensure people are working the right direction. In contrast, throughout my IC career none of my managers have managed ME this way which blows my mind. I know I'm not the most talented leader but I don't understand why dev management doesn't look at real metrics to gauge success outside of "I don't know how to read code"... =| The way I managed also bought loyalty... like a lot of loyalty. When you get out of the way of people's lives and say, "I'm willing to make this career work with you as a person" you get an insane amount of forgiveness for being a poop manager in other areas. Did people take advantage of me giving them this slack? Yep. Did I fire 'em for poor output? Yep - at will state sucka. IMO you'll get people taking advantage of the system regardless of how you wanna lead so the best way to hedge that risk is looking at metrics + engaging consistently with your team. Bad apples tend to stick out in a few months and you just gotta learn to fire fast to maintain the integrity of the team vs pumping your staff numbers.

dschuler 6y ago

Do you think your company will go back to WFO eventually or will some of the WFH changes stick?

lozaning 6y ago
Im curious what happens when my employer says its time to come back into the office and I just say no, don't show up, but keep working.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Perhaps they'll cut off your VPN access.

andarleen 6y ago

It’s easier to micromanage staff, and much more convenient for playing office politics when on site - hence management is usually against wfh. It boggles the mind.

noelsusman 6y ago

I worked from home two days a week before this, and moving to working from home every day has hurt my productivity. I've found it much more difficult to collaborate with colleagues remotely compared to being in the same space for most of the day. Before I used my WFH days for head-down focused work and my in-office days for collaboration. That worked really well for me.

01100011 6y ago
Yep. I routinely work 2-3 days from home every week. Full time WFH sucks. There are times when I just need to be at the office. There are times when the distractions at home are too much. Now I've had jobs where 100% WFH was fine, but that's when I was in a real home with a real office, not my tiny SiValley apartment.
- mvanbaak 6y ago
  Fulltime WFH means you can live somewhere where the housing prices are less insane. So you can have a desicated work place (either seperate room or seperate desk somewhere). Thets the whole thing!
  - maccard 6y ago
    I don't particularly want to live somewhere other than where I live right now though, I want to live here and only go into the office 3 times a week.
acituan 6y ago
How is your productivity now that the rest of the office is also WFH? I imagine there is an asymmetry in perceived productivity if you’re the only one WFH, but it could be a different ballgame when it is more common. This could easily carry to post-pandemic e.g. weekly WFH days for everyone.

therealjumbo 6y ago

I guess you'll have to mop up your tears with that 300k.

papreclip 6y ago

>I'm fortunate to have a solid WFH environment at home I feel this is pretty important. I am only renting a room (not making FAANG money) and as such quarantine has me spending nearly 24 hours a day in my bedroom. I can't follow the standard advice of maintaining a separate space for work

lozaning 6y ago
I feel you on this. I live in a studio loft, so I've only got one room total really. Time has no meaning, days bleed together and my work/live ballence has gone to shit.
- beart 6y ago
  I've been having the same issue. One thing I noticed that helps is to at least make sure work is done on a different laptop that gets shutdown and put away after 5 PM.
- marssaxman 6y ago
  I had a remote job for seven years, most of which I spent living in a couple of studio apartments, so - as you're experiencing - there was no way to separate work space from living space. In order to keep from having time become a blur, I had to develop some artificial rituals around beginning and especially ending the work day. At one apartment I slept on a folding futon couch. I would "go to work" by folding it up and putting all the pillows away. Ta-da, now I'm "in the office", time to work. Done with work? Close the laptop, leave the apartment, walk around the block, maybe get a snack, come back home. Hey! I just came home from work, time to relax. Leaving the apartment and re-entering it, even if I was only gone a few minutes, was a really useful signal. Later on I decided to strictly separate personal computing from work computing. No personal website logins on the work computer; no company code or email accouts on the personal computer. I also tried putting DNS blocks on my favorite recreational web sites on the work computer, so I'd be forced to swivel my chair around and use the personal computer. This way, I could carry on with email, browsing the web, and writing code on personal projects after work hours, using my personal machine, without feeling like I was still "at work" on my work machine. I don't know what will work for you, but perhaps choosing to create some artificial barriers like these will help.

bitwize 6y ago

Human beings are irrational, social animals. Showing up for work at the office, on time, early in the morning, is a strong social signal that you are committed to work. These signals matter almost as much as whether the work gets done. Ultimately you will be judged on how well the work gets done -- but the social signals are table stakes.

elliekelly 6y ago
When I was in law school I was fortunate enough to have a paid internship at an investment company that came with a small office. Since it wasn’t too far from school I started to use my office to study even when I wasn’t working. It was a quiet place to get things done and when I was on-site I would occasionally get pulled in to cool projects. It seemed like a good way to get a few more opportunities at work and also get my homework done without all the gossiping that happened at the library. That meant I spent most of the work week “at work” even though I was only actually working some of that time. I did all of my work and I did a good job but at the end of the year I was the only intern to get a bonus checks. Interns weren’t even eligible for bonuses but my bosses were so blown away by my dedication they decided to reward it. The craziest part is they knew I was doing homework half the time. I had gotten the okay to use my office as a study spot first and they were getting my timesheets every week. They were well aware that I wasn’t some sort full-time super intern. I think the whole concept of “facetime” pretty silly but it definitely matters even if we like to think it doesn’t.
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  Maybe they were impressed by your consistency. Whether you’re studying or working, showing up every day on a consistent schedule is quite impressive especially for a college kid. In my experience it’s consistency, more than anything else, that separates the best performers from average performers.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
One of the hardest parts about remote work is that you don't get that signal anymore. Grinding away and doing nothing can look like the same thing from your coworkers'/managers' point of view. Or, on days where you just aren't feeling it or can't be productive, you can't just look productive by sitting in your office chair. Instead you basically burn a day and it's easy to start having thoughts like "wow, they must think I'm useless." I love remote work because I love the freedom to live where I please, but this is one aspect of it that gives me some anxiety. The subconscious "I see you in the office so you must be productive" signal really is strong.

sharadov 6y ago

The FAANG's overwhelmingly employ younger folks, give them the college atmosphere - free food, drinks, laundry on site, foosball table. And they spend their entire day at work for these so-called "benefits". I met one guy who was so happy that his company provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner at work, thought it was the greatest thing, he felt bad that he could not have the same arrangement for the weekend. I was like, dude, you live once, get a fuckin life!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
It's not a terminal thing. Work for a FANG for ~10 years then retire early. But over those 10 years, hustle hard and save what you can.
- neffy 6y ago
  As long as you pick the right 10 years.
- muro 6y ago
  The pay is good, but if you have a family, saving enough in 10 years to retire is unlikely.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    Not in the Bay Area, but a more affordable area of the US, it's possible. And if you plan on retiring early, there's no need to live in a housing market around lots of profitable tech businesses that make housing expensive.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sharadov 6y ago
  The smart ones are playing the arbitrage game, by living in an RV and keeping costs down.

WorldMaker 6y ago

Something I still find fascinating is how much GAFAM/FAANG invested in remote work software for their customers (all but Apple and Netflix) but never had a good handle on using those same tools internally because they didn't have strong remote work policies/cultures. Good for the goose, but the gander doesn't care to dog food. (To badly mix metaphors.) I very much hope all of GAFAM/FAANG are paying attention and learning from this situation. (I've asked about remote work policies every time I've ever interviewed with GAFAM/FAANG. I've seen such a fascinating mix of hypocrisy about remote work in such interviews.)

perseusprime11 6y ago

We want everyone in the office so we can waste their time in meetings. Peter's principle in action.

rozap 6y ago
That's perfectly easy to accomplish while remote, too.
- perseusprime11 6y ago
  Folks can at least multi task remotely and do the real work.
- cableshaft 6y ago
  The longest meetings I've ever been in were while working remote. Major sev 1 outage bridges with 200+ attendees where it takes 6+ hours (My longest was 27 hours, and that was after demanding to my boss I finally take a break to get some sleep, and the problem still wasn't resolved for another two hours. Beat my previous longest Sev 1 by 3 hours). to get the right people to join / figure out what's going on / get someone's attention long enough to work on your problems instead of other departments? So fun. /s

0x8BADF00D 6y ago

Something has to change. There is no reason why every tech company shouldn’t have a permanent WFH policy. Let people live further out from cities. It’s 2020, why are we still working like it’s the 1950s?

summerlight 6y ago

There's bunch of things other than productivity that make companies (especially for those multinational giants) hesitant to allow full WFH + remote, like tax/visa/regulatory issues. It's not impossible, but the cost adds up. I guess the benefits outweigh the costs now, so I hope those companies will more proactively consider more WFH friendy employment options.

nine_k 6y ago

If I were to WFH "permanently", for years and years, I'd like my employer to share some of the savings from not having an office with me. I would spend it on renting a bigger apartment with an extra room to use as my office. Don't get me wrong: I love my wife and kids dearly. But having anything done requires concentration and some moderate insulation from distractions. Achieving this from a coach in the living room is hard. Grabbing my kid's room only works as long as the school day isn't over, and not at all during a recess, like, say, the whole summer. My wife already works from home, so our bedroom doubles as her office. I didn't need a proper workplace as long as my employers provided me with (a piece of) an office. Now that they stopped due to the quarantine, its lack becomes a significant problem. Obviously, some would say: leave your expensive city, move to somewhere really cheap, in the middle of (almost) nowhere! Two problems. (1) What about schools there? (2) When enough people move into a cheap and convenient place, it quickly ceases to be as cheap.

duckkg5 6y ago

I was at a FAANG for years. I was the ONLY ONE on my team in the office - the rest of my team was in London. So I would literally drive to the multi-million dollar office on multi-million dollar real estate then dial up some people in London from my laptop. During my exit interview after I resigned, I told my director I was leaving partially because I wanted to work remotely more and that they should either encourage or at least allow more WFH. She laughed, said they don't do that there, and told me that I'd be back. Now they're all working from home and I'm with a new remote-friendly company with no plans on ever going back to the FAANG world. Good riddance.