8 ms·

Honestly, I still think remote work doesn't work. The sole exception, however, that it can sort of work if everyone else is also remote.

wlll 6y ago
I've been working remotely for ~12 years now, it's working just fine for me thanks. I'm incredibly productive and I am producing good work.
- whateveracct 6y ago
  It also doesn't matter if you would be more productive in-person or not. Maximizing productivity isn't some moral truth we must satisfy. Corporations for good reason try to get workers to think it is.
  - aeronaute 6y ago
    Glad to see you bring this up because I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I get the feeling that many people are on board with the idea that productivity trumps all and are willing to be like rags to be squeezed by their employers until every last productivity drop comes out. I think this needs to be talked about more with an eye towards reducing the amount people must work.
  - brandmeyer 6y ago
    Its not a moral truth, its an economic one. If you want to charge a premium price for your labor, you had better be offering a premium product, or your customers won't buy it.
    - aeronaute 6y ago
      Can you elaborate a little on how maximizing productivity is directly related to offering a premium product? For what it's worth I disagree, this doesn't seem like a truth at all.
    - whateveracct 6y ago
      It's also not an economic one. My salary is locked in. So long as I don't get fired, I get paid the same. So I can give different outputs and get paid that same "premium price." Just have to meet the bar. So it's in my interest to reduce how much work I do in order to increase my de factor hourly rate. If you factor in promotions etc, it's the same thing - just a different bar. I guess you could say I'm offering a "premium product" either way and be right, but my original point stands. I don't need to be giving 100% to get that money. And the longer I'm at a job, the more I can understand the effort bar I need to meet and influence it downward.
      - brandmeyer 6y ago
        Do you seriously think that you should get full pay for part-time work? If you only want to work part-time, then by all means feel free to pursue part-time employment. But if your employer finds out that they've been paying for full-time labor and getting only part-time labor, don't act surprised and indignant if they fire you.
        whateveracct 6y ago
        Yes I should get paid my current salary for my current work. Feedback on my work is that it is "Good" which means the employer is happy paying me for my contributions. I'm not being paid for my labor and time - I'm being paid so long as my employer thinks what I'm giving them is worth it. I'm not grifting anyone - I'm just in an at-will employment arrangement. Caring about hours worked is for bad managers, plain and simple. The biggest reason to not work in the office is that it's easier to avoid these bottom-of-the-barrel, butts-in-seats leaders. With them out of the way, you're free to tune your output in such a way that keeps your employer happy while also freeing up your life.
        brandmeyer 6y ago
        Its not about "hours worked." Its about available throughput. If you're under-loaded, then a good manager can shift the balance around the team. Maybe someone else is over-loaded. If the whole team is under-loaded, then maybe the team can deliver more features. Maybe its a good time to pay down some of last year's technical debt. Maybe its a good time to take a bet on a higher-risk research project.
  - wlll 6y ago
    To be fair, I'm also happier now than I've ever been in work too. It turns out that I produce much better work at a faster rate when I'm happier.
nsilvestri 6y ago
I think it's heavily dependent on the company and the employee and that blanket statements about it oversimplify the issue. Full-remote companies like GitLab seem to have an effective remote-work culture, while others seem to be struggling to convert their existing processes and communication avenues to remote. On the other hand, I dramatically prefer working from an office, while several of my coworkers prefer working from home.
sneak 6y ago
Lots of companies seem to be proving the opposite, from 37S to GitLab, even before the pandemic.
- wlll 6y ago
  Github too.
muro 6y ago
In a company with offices around the globe and projects all over the place as well, remote or in-office makes very little difference.
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  > remote or in-office makes very little difference (Genuinely asking) what makes you think that way? From what I have seen, remote works only if everyone on the team is remote and timezone differences are somehow taken care of. If you are the only remote member of the team and everyone else is in office in close proximity of each other, you are going to suffer mainly in terms of career growth. Here are the things remote members miss out on when a lot of team members are in office: water cooler conversations (great to forge bond and trust), quick one-minute clarifications, grabbing a minute from your super busy bosses (when they are walking from one meeting to another), grokking and perceiving things that are not said during in-person 1:1's (important for managers or leads to understand the issues of their team members) etc. If you are missing out on all this while the rest of your team members have these advantages, guess who is going to be more productive in the long run?
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  really? ever have to work on project split like that? Its easy for key features to be lost - and a lot of time and $ to be wasted. I wont mention any names but I found out today that our team should have been on a call about a major website rebuild - I have a suspicion that some key areas have been missed.
  - setpatchaddress 6y ago
    Everyone working at a large tech organization above a certain size on projects of central importance to the organization has worked on projects split like this. Does no one have a project management/coordination role for your team? It's literally their job to make sure this doesn't happen.
  - dijit 6y ago
    I can say with all sincerity, that I have been on projects like that. And because "remote' is such an incredible afterthought, co-dev production is harmed immensely as a kind of collateral damage. I have worked in companies that did this right, we had offices in NYC/London/Bangkok and we did everything over RT tickets+IRC, mostly because it was incredibly frictionless (yes, I know IRC and RT are not the best tools in the world, but once they were set up and everyone was in people preferred using them to taking in person meetings). Contrast with today: we have teams in Sweden, UK, North Carolina, San Francisco and Helsinki- and we use Jira/Teams/Confluence as our "tools".... but they're so /slow/ that we have to be dragged through the coals to use them, we much prefer in-person meetings, we much prefer hashing things out over a coffee.. and thus, our co-dev is very much out of the loop, and it's "odd" (as in, not default) to include them. So what happens is we carve out bits of responsibility and we restrict immensely the communication channels.. in fact some peoples entire job is to ensure those communication channels run smoothly.. and it's still very many shades of terrible. I want to blame the tools, but really, it's the culture, if you're more comfortable engaging over IM/Tickets w/e then it doesn't matter if you're sitting 10ft away or 100mi away.
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Doesn't work as well - I think is a fairer way to put it.
whateveracct 6y ago
Even if it's strictly less productive than in-person..you can get the job done. Why in the world would an engineer advocate for optimizing productivity at all costs instead of benefit for themselves? I'd rather get a job at 80% productivity and have control of my time instead of maximize productivity & spend more time solely focused on work than sleeping.
jpeterson 6y ago
I've worked remotely for almost a decade on my own. It works.
driverdan 6y ago
I downvoted you because this is objectively not true. Many companies have been successful at having some remote employees. If you or your company can't handle it then the problem is with you or your company, not working remotely.
hoot 6y ago
Found the L7 genius
stjohnswarts 6y ago
That's a huge assumption. There are certainly situations where it doesn't work but to have a blanket policy of refusing to do it is right up there with luddites hating the internet. Companies should be smarter than that.

wlll 6y ago

I've been working remotely for ~12 years now, it's working just fine for me thanks. I'm incredibly productive and I am producing good work.

whateveracct 6y ago
It also doesn't matter if you would be more productive in-person or not. Maximizing productivity isn't some moral truth we must satisfy. Corporations for good reason try to get workers to think it is.
- aeronaute 6y ago
  Glad to see you bring this up because I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I get the feeling that many people are on board with the idea that productivity trumps all and are willing to be like rags to be squeezed by their employers until every last productivity drop comes out. I think this needs to be talked about more with an eye towards reducing the amount people must work.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  Its not a moral truth, its an economic one. If you want to charge a premium price for your labor, you had better be offering a premium product, or your customers won't buy it.
  - aeronaute 6y ago
    Can you elaborate a little on how maximizing productivity is directly related to offering a premium product? For what it's worth I disagree, this doesn't seem like a truth at all.
  - whateveracct 6y ago
    It's also not an economic one. My salary is locked in. So long as I don't get fired, I get paid the same. So I can give different outputs and get paid that same "premium price." Just have to meet the bar. So it's in my interest to reduce how much work I do in order to increase my de factor hourly rate. If you factor in promotions etc, it's the same thing - just a different bar. I guess you could say I'm offering a "premium product" either way and be right, but my original point stands. I don't need to be giving 100% to get that money. And the longer I'm at a job, the more I can understand the effort bar I need to meet and influence it downward.
    - brandmeyer 6y ago
      Do you seriously think that you should get full pay for part-time work? If you only want to work part-time, then by all means feel free to pursue part-time employment. But if your employer finds out that they've been paying for full-time labor and getting only part-time labor, don't act surprised and indignant if they fire you.
      - whateveracct 6y ago
        Yes I should get paid my current salary for my current work. Feedback on my work is that it is "Good" which means the employer is happy paying me for my contributions. I'm not being paid for my labor and time - I'm being paid so long as my employer thinks what I'm giving them is worth it. I'm not grifting anyone - I'm just in an at-will employment arrangement. Caring about hours worked is for bad managers, plain and simple. The biggest reason to not work in the office is that it's easier to avoid these bottom-of-the-barrel, butts-in-seats leaders. With them out of the way, you're free to tune your output in such a way that keeps your employer happy while also freeing up your life.
        brandmeyer 6y ago
        Its not about "hours worked." Its about available throughput. If you're under-loaded, then a good manager can shift the balance around the team. Maybe someone else is over-loaded. If the whole team is under-loaded, then maybe the team can deliver more features. Maybe its a good time to pay down some of last year's technical debt. Maybe its a good time to take a bet on a higher-risk research project.
- wlll 6y ago
  To be fair, I'm also happier now than I've ever been in work too. It turns out that I produce much better work at a faster rate when I'm happier.

nsilvestri 6y ago

I think it's heavily dependent on the company and the employee and that blanket statements about it oversimplify the issue. Full-remote companies like GitLab seem to have an effective remote-work culture, while others seem to be struggling to convert their existing processes and communication avenues to remote. On the other hand, I dramatically prefer working from an office, while several of my coworkers prefer working from home.

sneak 6y ago

Lots of companies seem to be proving the opposite, from 37S to GitLab, even before the pandemic.

wlll 6y ago
Github too.

muro 6y ago

In a company with offices around the globe and projects all over the place as well, remote or in-office makes very little difference.

RestlessMind 6y ago
> remote or in-office makes very little difference (Genuinely asking) what makes you think that way? From what I have seen, remote works only if everyone on the team is remote and timezone differences are somehow taken care of. If you are the only remote member of the team and everyone else is in office in close proximity of each other, you are going to suffer mainly in terms of career growth. Here are the things remote members miss out on when a lot of team members are in office: water cooler conversations (great to forge bond and trust), quick one-minute clarifications, grabbing a minute from your super busy bosses (when they are walking from one meeting to another), grokking and perceiving things that are not said during in-person 1:1's (important for managers or leads to understand the issues of their team members) etc. If you are missing out on all this while the rest of your team members have these advantages, guess who is going to be more productive in the long run?
C1sc0cat 6y ago
really? ever have to work on project split like that? Its easy for key features to be lost - and a lot of time and $ to be wasted. I wont mention any names but I found out today that our team should have been on a call about a major website rebuild - I have a suspicion that some key areas have been missed.
- setpatchaddress 6y ago
  Everyone working at a large tech organization above a certain size on projects of central importance to the organization has worked on projects split like this. Does no one have a project management/coordination role for your team? It's literally their job to make sure this doesn't happen.
- dijit 6y ago
  I can say with all sincerity, that I have been on projects like that. And because "remote' is such an incredible afterthought, co-dev production is harmed immensely as a kind of collateral damage. I have worked in companies that did this right, we had offices in NYC/London/Bangkok and we did everything over RT tickets+IRC, mostly because it was incredibly frictionless (yes, I know IRC and RT are not the best tools in the world, but once they were set up and everyone was in people preferred using them to taking in person meetings). Contrast with today: we have teams in Sweden, UK, North Carolina, San Francisco and Helsinki- and we use Jira/Teams/Confluence as our "tools".... but they're so /slow/ that we have to be dragged through the coals to use them, we much prefer in-person meetings, we much prefer hashing things out over a coffee.. and thus, our co-dev is very much out of the loop, and it's "odd" (as in, not default) to include them. So what happens is we carve out bits of responsibility and we restrict immensely the communication channels.. in fact some peoples entire job is to ensure those communication channels run smoothly.. and it's still very many shades of terrible. I want to blame the tools, but really, it's the culture, if you're more comfortable engaging over IM/Tickets w/e then it doesn't matter if you're sitting 10ft away or 100mi away.

C1sc0cat 6y ago

Doesn't work as well - I think is a fairer way to put it.

whateveracct 6y ago

Even if it's strictly less productive than in-person..you can get the job done. Why in the world would an engineer advocate for optimizing productivity at all costs instead of benefit for themselves? I'd rather get a job at 80% productivity and have control of my time instead of maximize productivity & spend more time solely focused on work than sleeping.

jpeterson 6y ago

I've worked remotely for almost a decade on my own. It works.

driverdan 6y ago

I downvoted you because this is objectively not true. Many companies have been successful at having some remote employees. If you or your company can't handle it then the problem is with you or your company, not working remotely.

hoot 6y ago

Found the L7 genius

stjohnswarts 6y ago

That's a huge assumption. There are certainly situations where it doesn't work but to have a blanket policy of refusing to do it is right up there with luddites hating the internet. Companies should be smarter than that.