4 ms·

If you have a baby and two young children around who you also have to homeschool for 8 hours a day then you're not going to be "productive" working at home. Pe

If you have a baby and two young children around who you also have to homeschool for 8 hours a day then you're not going to be "productive" working at home. People who slack at work by hide it by having lots of meetings / playing politics are useless whilst working-from home because they don't know how operate when their productivity is more visible.

forinti 6y ago
Also, some people are terrible at written communication and just can't do without face-to-face conversations.
- srl 6y ago
  We have video meetings, though. WFH hasn't really changed the amount of written communication in my work. My closest collaborator falls pretty squarely under "terrible at written communication", but we still have sufficiently frequent face-to-face time to be about as productive as before. I'm in agreement with the general sentiment elsewhere in this thread, though. I've found nothing about people's WFH productivity that's surprising. People with kids are handicapped, but are often determined enough to find a way to make it work. For everybody else, it seems like the inequality in productivity just goes up, and it's harder to mask non-productivity by socializing well.
thomk 6y ago
Our solution is that I go to bed at 8pm and get up at 4am and work like mad until breakfast which is around 9am. Thats 5h of uninterrupted coding time, which is about the max my old brain can handle anyway. The hard part is doing 'working hours' business, but hey, I just email everyone from the potty. Sorry, ahem, bathroom.
- radicalbyte 6y ago
  We did the same and it has been a war of attrition.
analog31 6y ago
I first experienced this roughly a year ago when I was having a discussion with a colleague in China, and she happened to be at home because of the time zone difference. All of a sudden, a baby started screaming and all hell broke loose. She was so embarrassed, but we all just laughed it off and she realized that we weren't annoyed at all. When we all went on lockdown recently, I noticed that at first people were careful to create a "proper" workspace that was not only silent but also photogenic for their camera. Naturally, a kid sees a closed door with the most interesting new thing in the house happening on the other side. The only proper recourse is to bang on the door. Even within just a few weeks, things have relaxed considerably. Now, I rarely attend a meeting, even when there are higher-ups in attendance, where there are not kid noises in the background, folks going on "mute" to deal with a meltdown, even just letting the kids play in the same room. Going shopping during the work day, when the stores are less crowded, is completely normal now. When all of this started, some folks said: "Finally this will normalize working from home." Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having a real life.
- acituan 6y ago
  > Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having a real life. I absolutely love this. I love seeing my colleagues contextualized in their private spaces, that reflects their personal choices, humanity, wholeness. In the office this is reduced to a 2x5' desk. Office as a space also has a sense of self-importance to it. It is not unlike a church or a stadium where the purpose of the gathering is super-salient and the participants' rich humanity is backgrounded. Working from home, it is harder to be reduced to one's function as a worker, it is impossible to forget that you are a human with a life when constantly surrounded by the cues that remind you of that life, in the space that you live that life.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - analog31 6y ago
    Totally agreed. At the same time, I also feel that someone should be able to separate work and life if they want to. I have one colleague who never turns her camera on, which is perfectly OK too.
bb611 6y ago
This is a fantasy. I work at large B2B SaaS, middle management politickers have doubled down and are just having even more meetings, which are no longer impeded by pesky things like conference room availability, business travel or personal time.

forinti 6y ago

Also, some people are terrible at written communication and just can't do without face-to-face conversations.

srl 6y ago
We have video meetings, though. WFH hasn't really changed the amount of written communication in my work. My closest collaborator falls pretty squarely under "terrible at written communication", but we still have sufficiently frequent face-to-face time to be about as productive as before. I'm in agreement with the general sentiment elsewhere in this thread, though. I've found nothing about people's WFH productivity that's surprising. People with kids are handicapped, but are often determined enough to find a way to make it work. For everybody else, it seems like the inequality in productivity just goes up, and it's harder to mask non-productivity by socializing well.

thomk 6y ago

Our solution is that I go to bed at 8pm and get up at 4am and work like mad until breakfast which is around 9am. Thats 5h of uninterrupted coding time, which is about the max my old brain can handle anyway. The hard part is doing 'working hours' business, but hey, I just email everyone from the potty. Sorry, ahem, bathroom.

radicalbyte 6y ago
We did the same and it has been a war of attrition.

analog31 6y ago

I first experienced this roughly a year ago when I was having a discussion with a colleague in China, and she happened to be at home because of the time zone difference. All of a sudden, a baby started screaming and all hell broke loose. She was so embarrassed, but we all just laughed it off and she realized that we weren't annoyed at all. When we all went on lockdown recently, I noticed that at first people were careful to create a "proper" workspace that was not only silent but also photogenic for their camera. Naturally, a kid sees a closed door with the most interesting new thing in the house happening on the other side. The only proper recourse is to bang on the door. Even within just a few weeks, things have relaxed considerably. Now, I rarely attend a meeting, even when there are higher-ups in attendance, where there are not kid noises in the background, folks going on "mute" to deal with a meltdown, even just letting the kids play in the same room. Going shopping during the work day, when the stores are less crowded, is completely normal now. When all of this started, some folks said: "Finally this will normalize working from home." Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having a real life.

acituan 6y ago
> Maybe it will go even further, and normalize folks having a real life. I absolutely love this. I love seeing my colleagues contextualized in their private spaces, that reflects their personal choices, humanity, wholeness. In the office this is reduced to a 2x5' desk. Office as a space also has a sense of self-importance to it. It is not unlike a church or a stadium where the purpose of the gathering is super-salient and the participants' rich humanity is backgrounded. Working from home, it is harder to be reduced to one's function as a worker, it is impossible to forget that you are a human with a life when constantly surrounded by the cues that remind you of that life, in the space that you live that life.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- analog31 6y ago
  Totally agreed. At the same time, I also feel that someone should be able to separate work and life if they want to. I have one colleague who never turns her camera on, which is perfectly OK too.

bb611 6y ago

This is a fantasy. I work at large B2B SaaS, middle management politickers have doubled down and are just having even more meetings, which are no longer impeded by pesky things like conference room availability, business travel or personal time.