7 ms·

Netflix boss: Remote working has negative effects

44 points by Alupis 6y ago

ram_rar 6y ago
Cannot agree more. If WFH, was really that effective, then most of the jobs would have been outsourced by now. Like it or not, there is location bias in workplace. Pre-pandemic, I have frequently seen remote folks working hard to be seen and "sell" their work as opposed to folks working @ office. I'm guessing once the vaccine is out, we'll eventually regress back to office.
- Ecstatify 6y ago
  Gitlab is completely remote. Google just cancelled plans to lease large office space in Dublin. WFH was forced onto companies, think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that’s it not really effective. You mightn’t like it but people in other situations do. Personally I don’t have any benefit commuting 1hr to a noisy office when all my other colleagues are located in another office in another country. WFH works well for certain people and not for others.
  - jl2718 6y ago
    Gitlab is actually the perfect WFH company because it forces them to eat their own dog food.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      I used this reasoning to convince my boss when I was working on code for embedded devices. "IF I can't fix it remotely then the techs don't stand a chance, so I need to be working from home all the time unless absolutely necessary that I need to go onsite"
  - SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
    There’s no denying that WFH works well for some folks. But is Gitlab, a company that trails its nearest competitor by a wide margin, really a good example of remote work being more effective for business?
- tracker1 6y ago
  Not sure that I agree... I will say that I tend to be less productive at home in general, but overall the people I work with have done surprisingly well.
- sg47 6y ago
  If the child care situation is solved, productivity will likely go up. My team is distributed across Europe and Asia with key members working from home. Before Covid, I didn't notice any performance difference compared to past teams that were all local. Performance has suffered to some extent due to the child care situation so I've had to make adjustments in expectations around deliverables. Time spent not commuting is typically spent working. It's hard to wean myself away from work. Meetings are harder though.
thefujin 6y ago
Good for Netflix
hamandcheese 6y ago
Of course, this is the POV of an executive, not an engineer or low level manager...
- stubish 6y ago
  I'm astonished at the broad, sweeping statement. As if all employees do the same job and require the same conditions. I would have assumed that roles in Netflix where diverse enough that certainly some jobs would have benefits, if for no other reason than saving money on office space or being able to hire people from regions that pay lower. Seems rather odd to say the person writing the Khmer subtitles benefits from doing it in the office.
mbroncano 6y ago
Sure it has! The question is, do the positive effects compensate for the negatives? Another question is, who’s job is effectively obsoleted if most of the work force (for this particular context eg STEM) works remotely?
stjohnswarts 6y ago
There's a tradeoff for everything and he's mostly wrong. I'm sure for some companies it doesn't make sense, but for a company like Netflix, other than say maybe their DVD division, there's no reason for employees to be onsite. I think the biggest cost may be to managers' egos however.
- GhostVII 6y ago
  You don't think it is valuable to have in-person meetings, or impromtu conversations with people on other teams? Maybe being onsite isn't worth the commute, but to say it has no benefit is absurd.
hyfgfh 6y ago
Wow! I love when C people bring so much data! But serious, it depends, every company will have different results... changing to remote without changing policies will have a negative effect.
xfour 6y ago
Pretty difficult to make film and television with the level of polish expected by Netflix Customers without being able to be in close proximity. Seems a bit like Elon promoting ideas that just so happen to align with the sequence of events which makes the company literally billions of dollars.
icf80 6y ago
When the epidemic started, we were infused by "working from home is good", now that the epidemic seems to wind down, we are seeing headlines like this "working from home is not sustainable or it is bad". This is how the people in general are influenced. From my personal experience I am a lot less stressed by working from home.
- fyfy18 6y ago
  I wonder how many of these articles are because landlords of commercial property et al are beginning to feel the repecusions of people working from home. At least in the UK (this is a BBC article), most commercial properties are owned by big landlords, with ties to the "elite" class.
  - sirmoveon 6y ago
    dingdingdingding We have a winner. Shifts in economics will have winners and losers. We will continue to hear more from the losers and how the new way has damaged the social fabric of x/y. Overall, the reality of the shift has been positive for socioeconomics. More time around the people that matters most to us and beaming into work has reliaved environmental stress and unnecessary expenditures in commuting alone.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      Some powerful people seem seriously worried, look at this nonsense in the Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8671837/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-One-persons-Working-Home-anothers-P45.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8671837/RICHARD-L... Of course, what makes this particularly bizarre is that the person writing it says "I’ve worked from home for the past 30-odd years"....
- ulfw 6y ago
  How is the epidemic winding down?
tracer4201 6y ago
I don’t miss my commute, but working from home has negatively impacted my job happiness, physical health, and mental health. This morning I started working at 9:15AM. I finally closed my Macbook and turned off the monitor around 8:30PM. I got less done than I wanted. I’m struggling to concentrate and focus on specific tasks. People ping me on my company’s multiple messaging and video conferencing systems throughout the day. People now set up meetings at unreasonable hours. My job is to resolve ambiguity. My job has gotten much harder because communication is more difficult. I’m sure many an engineer who gets assigned specific coding tasks or very focused design problems loves working for home, but for some of us who’s bread and better is resolving complexity, disambiguating problems, etc., it’s an expensive tax.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  I started working from home years ago. My job involves almost no simple or routine tasks, and is highly collaborative. Yes, there are downsides, mainly on the office politicing/career wars front, but they can never weigh up to the bliss of noth having to commute.
- koles46 6y ago
  Shouldn't be that on the company policy? No meetings outside the working hours? People could setup meetings at 7PM also while in the office I don't see the difference here sorry. > resolving complexity, disambiguating problems Can you elaborate?
throwaway189262 6y ago
> Netflix's chairman has said working from home has no positive effects and makes debating ideas harder The only people I have heard complaining is management. It makes it harder to do their jobs, and shows how useless many of their jobs are.
- carlmr 6y ago
  I'm a developer and I'd agree that debating becomes harder. Even worse, what's missing is the cross pollination of ideas that happens naturally in an office when people overhear conversations. You don't just overhear a conversation on Skype and chime in. A lot of bad ideas are stopped in their tracks this way, and a lot of debates can gain valuable perspective this way. However saying there's no positive effect is stupid as well. I tend to be able to work more hours since it's easier to go running in my lunch time, I save the commute time so I'm less stressed arriving at work, I can concentrate on my work better since there's less office chatter (the opposite side of the benefit above). So like everything it has positive and negative effects. But yes, maybe there are too many middle managers that are twiddling their thumbs now. They probably didn't do much before either, but they felt like they were contributing, and this feeling has gone away.
- robric 6y ago
  Yup, bad management is having a hard time because they're losing hold of their false sense of control.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  I cannot possibly believe this. Something like 60% of devs I’ve spoken to have struggled seriously with COVID WFH. And a nontrivial portion of those are struggling in ways that are fundamental to WFH rather than due to the pandemic.
  - KnobbleMcKnees 6y ago
    The vast majority of devs I chat to feel the exact opposite. I think the takeaway is that this will vary a lot between companies and teams.
cylinder 6y ago
It's probably not the office people dislike, it's the commute. If your office was next door to your house and all your colleagues were there you wouldn't go? You could come back for lunch and go back and forth as needed.
- SwiftyBug 6y ago
  Definitely. Commute is hell to me. True privilege is to live at a walking-distance from where you work.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  > If your office was next door to your house and all your colleagues were there you wouldn't go? The office is 5-10 minutes away from my house, and the answer is no. Some people prefer to be alone. But of course, commute makes it even worse.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
There is a more interesting piece on this at https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/chance-encounters https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/chance-encounters
sirmoveon 6y ago
Farriers: Cars have negative effects
growlist 6y ago
One of the main positive effects for me is not having to attempt to function in an oxygen-deprived office.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  So glad to see this mentioned! I am a bit anemic, which I suppose makes me more sensitive to the lack of oxygen than average people. And so often, when there is a meeting, the organizers choose the least ventilated room in the building (I guess because the better rooms are already taken), pack it full of people, and make them spend an hour sitting and listening to... whatever super imporant thing couldn't be explained in a short e-mail instead (because for the extraverts talking is so much more fun than writing). The windows are closed, sometimes impossible to open, the oxygen level is dropping... but it will take 20 more minutes until other people become sufficiently uncomfortable. Working from home, the windows in my room are widely open. (At least during the summer.) Who needs air conditioning, when you can have actual fresh air instead.
  - growlist 6y ago
    I always wondered why the hell I would feel so wrecked at certain times of day. It's a nightmare. Thank god I WFH these days.
ilaksh 6y ago
I think there are multiple factors that determine how well people adapt or how productive they can be at home. So this is probably why there are different views in this. One big one is whether there are kids at home who are not able to go to school now. In that situation, parents may be splitting their time between watching their kids and helping with homework and working from home. This is going to be a significant loss in terms of productivity for many people. And also a big distraction. Another aspect is just exactly what their job entails and what tools they are using. If they have a job that involves a lot of face-to-face meetings and do not have a very good video chat software setup or have significant issues with internet, that is going to be a big loss for them. Or maybe their chat software works fine but there is no proper way to set up the video meetings because they haven't created a Discord or Slack. So if the software or internet is not not configured or working well, that can be another issue. A side aspect of that is if there is a manager who feels he is supposed to directly monitor and supervise (i.e. giv orders on the fly) and is used to doing so in person, but now does not have a convenient way to do so. That also can be resolved with software, simply by requiring people to be logged into a chat or something. Maybe some of the resentment is that managers are now feeling a bit of social pressure in terms of politeness to try to keep communications to be asynchronous and in writing rather than randomly interrupting people. Also what they say goes in record on written formats like chats or email etc.

44 points by Alupis 6y ago

Cannot agree more. If WFH, was really that effective, then most of the jobs would have been outsourced by now. Like it or not, there is location bias in workplace. Pre-pandemic, I have frequently seen remote folks working hard to be seen and "sell" their work as opposed to folks working @ office. I'm guessing once the vaccine is out, we'll eventually regress back to office.

Ecstatify 6y ago
Gitlab is completely remote. Google just cancelled plans to lease large office space in Dublin. WFH was forced onto companies, think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that’s it not really effective. You mightn’t like it but people in other situations do. Personally I don’t have any benefit commuting 1hr to a noisy office when all my other colleagues are located in another office in another country. WFH works well for certain people and not for others.
- jl2718 6y ago
  Gitlab is actually the perfect WFH company because it forces them to eat their own dog food.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    I used this reasoning to convince my boss when I was working on code for embedded devices. "IF I can't fix it remotely then the techs don't stand a chance, so I need to be working from home all the time unless absolutely necessary that I need to go onsite"
- SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
  There’s no denying that WFH works well for some folks. But is Gitlab, a company that trails its nearest competitor by a wide margin, really a good example of remote work being more effective for business?
tracker1 6y ago
Not sure that I agree... I will say that I tend to be less productive at home in general, but overall the people I work with have done surprisingly well.
sg47 6y ago
If the child care situation is solved, productivity will likely go up. My team is distributed across Europe and Asia with key members working from home. Before Covid, I didn't notice any performance difference compared to past teams that were all local. Performance has suffered to some extent due to the child care situation so I've had to make adjustments in expectations around deliverables. Time spent not commuting is typically spent working. It's hard to wean myself away from work. Meetings are harder though.

thefujin 6y ago

Good for Netflix

hamandcheese 6y ago

Of course, this is the POV of an executive, not an engineer or low level manager...

stubish 6y ago
I'm astonished at the broad, sweeping statement. As if all employees do the same job and require the same conditions. I would have assumed that roles in Netflix where diverse enough that certainly some jobs would have benefits, if for no other reason than saving money on office space or being able to hire people from regions that pay lower. Seems rather odd to say the person writing the Khmer subtitles benefits from doing it in the office.

mbroncano 6y ago

Sure it has! The question is, do the positive effects compensate for the negatives? Another question is, who’s job is effectively obsoleted if most of the work force (for this particular context eg STEM) works remotely?

stjohnswarts 6y ago

There's a tradeoff for everything and he's mostly wrong. I'm sure for some companies it doesn't make sense, but for a company like Netflix, other than say maybe their DVD division, there's no reason for employees to be onsite. I think the biggest cost may be to managers' egos however.

GhostVII 6y ago
You don't think it is valuable to have in-person meetings, or impromtu conversations with people on other teams? Maybe being onsite isn't worth the commute, but to say it has no benefit is absurd.

hyfgfh 6y ago

Wow! I love when C people bring so much data! But serious, it depends, every company will have different results... changing to remote without changing policies will have a negative effect.

xfour 6y ago

Pretty difficult to make film and television with the level of polish expected by Netflix Customers without being able to be in close proximity. Seems a bit like Elon promoting ideas that just so happen to align with the sequence of events which makes the company literally billions of dollars.

icf80 6y ago

When the epidemic started, we were infused by "working from home is good", now that the epidemic seems to wind down, we are seeing headlines like this "working from home is not sustainable or it is bad". This is how the people in general are influenced. From my personal experience I am a lot less stressed by working from home.

fyfy18 6y ago
I wonder how many of these articles are because landlords of commercial property et al are beginning to feel the repecusions of people working from home. At least in the UK (this is a BBC article), most commercial properties are owned by big landlords, with ties to the "elite" class.
- sirmoveon 6y ago
  dingdingdingding We have a winner. Shifts in economics will have winners and losers. We will continue to hear more from the losers and how the new way has damaged the social fabric of x/y. Overall, the reality of the shift has been positive for socioeconomics. More time around the people that matters most to us and beaming into work has reliaved environmental stress and unnecessary expenditures in commuting alone.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Some powerful people seem seriously worried, look at this nonsense in the Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8671837/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-One-persons-Working-Home-anothers-P45.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8671837/RICHARD-L... Of course, what makes this particularly bizarre is that the person writing it says "I’ve worked from home for the past 30-odd years"....
ulfw 6y ago
How is the epidemic winding down?

tracer4201 6y ago

I don’t miss my commute, but working from home has negatively impacted my job happiness, physical health, and mental health. This morning I started working at 9:15AM. I finally closed my Macbook and turned off the monitor around 8:30PM. I got less done than I wanted. I’m struggling to concentrate and focus on specific tasks. People ping me on my company’s multiple messaging and video conferencing systems throughout the day. People now set up meetings at unreasonable hours. My job is to resolve ambiguity. My job has gotten much harder because communication is more difficult. I’m sure many an engineer who gets assigned specific coding tasks or very focused design problems loves working for home, but for some of us who’s bread and better is resolving complexity, disambiguating problems, etc., it’s an expensive tax.

PeterStuer 6y ago
I started working from home years ago. My job involves almost no simple or routine tasks, and is highly collaborative. Yes, there are downsides, mainly on the office politicing/career wars front, but they can never weigh up to the bliss of noth having to commute.
koles46 6y ago
Shouldn't be that on the company policy? No meetings outside the working hours? People could setup meetings at 7PM also while in the office I don't see the difference here sorry. > resolving complexity, disambiguating problems Can you elaborate?

throwaway189262 6y ago

> Netflix's chairman has said working from home has no positive effects and makes debating ideas harder The only people I have heard complaining is management. It makes it harder to do their jobs, and shows how useless many of their jobs are.

carlmr 6y ago
I'm a developer and I'd agree that debating becomes harder. Even worse, what's missing is the cross pollination of ideas that happens naturally in an office when people overhear conversations. You don't just overhear a conversation on Skype and chime in. A lot of bad ideas are stopped in their tracks this way, and a lot of debates can gain valuable perspective this way. However saying there's no positive effect is stupid as well. I tend to be able to work more hours since it's easier to go running in my lunch time, I save the commute time so I'm less stressed arriving at work, I can concentrate on my work better since there's less office chatter (the opposite side of the benefit above). So like everything it has positive and negative effects. But yes, maybe there are too many middle managers that are twiddling their thumbs now. They probably didn't do much before either, but they felt like they were contributing, and this feeling has gone away.
robric 6y ago
Yup, bad management is having a hard time because they're losing hold of their false sense of control.
UncleMeat 6y ago
I cannot possibly believe this. Something like 60% of devs I’ve spoken to have struggled seriously with COVID WFH. And a nontrivial portion of those are struggling in ways that are fundamental to WFH rather than due to the pandemic.
- KnobbleMcKnees 6y ago
  The vast majority of devs I chat to feel the exact opposite. I think the takeaway is that this will vary a lot between companies and teams.

cylinder 6y ago

It's probably not the office people dislike, it's the commute. If your office was next door to your house and all your colleagues were there you wouldn't go? You could come back for lunch and go back and forth as needed.

SwiftyBug 6y ago
Definitely. Commute is hell to me. True privilege is to live at a walking-distance from where you work.
Viliam1234 6y ago
> If your office was next door to your house and all your colleagues were there you wouldn't go? The office is 5-10 minutes away from my house, and the answer is no. Some people prefer to be alone. But of course, commute makes it even worse.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

There is a more interesting piece on this at https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/chance-encounters https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/chance-encounters

sirmoveon 6y ago

Farriers: Cars have negative effects

growlist 6y ago

One of the main positive effects for me is not having to attempt to function in an oxygen-deprived office.

Viliam1234 6y ago
So glad to see this mentioned! I am a bit anemic, which I suppose makes me more sensitive to the lack of oxygen than average people. And so often, when there is a meeting, the organizers choose the least ventilated room in the building (I guess because the better rooms are already taken), pack it full of people, and make them spend an hour sitting and listening to... whatever super imporant thing couldn't be explained in a short e-mail instead (because for the extraverts talking is so much more fun than writing). The windows are closed, sometimes impossible to open, the oxygen level is dropping... but it will take 20 more minutes until other people become sufficiently uncomfortable. Working from home, the windows in my room are widely open. (At least during the summer.) Who needs air conditioning, when you can have actual fresh air instead.
- growlist 6y ago
  I always wondered why the hell I would feel so wrecked at certain times of day. It's a nightmare. Thank god I WFH these days.

ilaksh 6y ago

I think there are multiple factors that determine how well people adapt or how productive they can be at home. So this is probably why there are different views in this. One big one is whether there are kids at home who are not able to go to school now. In that situation, parents may be splitting their time between watching their kids and helping with homework and working from home. This is going to be a significant loss in terms of productivity for many people. And also a big distraction. Another aspect is just exactly what their job entails and what tools they are using. If they have a job that involves a lot of face-to-face meetings and do not have a very good video chat software setup or have significant issues with internet, that is going to be a big loss for them. Or maybe their chat software works fine but there is no proper way to set up the video meetings because they haven't created a Discord or Slack. So if the software or internet is not not configured or working well, that can be another issue. A side aspect of that is if there is a manager who feels he is supposed to directly monitor and supervise (i.e. giv orders on the fly) and is used to doing so in person, but now does not have a convenient way to do so. That also can be resolved with software, simply by requiring people to be logged into a chat or something. Maybe some of the resentment is that managers are now feeling a bit of social pressure in terms of politeness to try to keep communications to be asynchronous and in writing rather than randomly interrupting people. Also what they say goes in record on written formats like chats or email etc.