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If anything working from home has completely dispelled for me any notion that working in person in an office is anything more than an unnecessary performance dr

If anything working from home has completely dispelled for me any notion that working in person in an office is anything more than an unnecessary performance drag. NOTE: Some people genuinely don't have space or peace at home to get work done, I'm not speaking about them here as they genuinely need a place away from home to get their work done. I've been there and I sympathise. But in terms of the rest of us, developers in particular, I'm getting so much more work done than I ever did in an office. I'm sure I'm speaking solely for myself here but there are people in this industry whose job function seems to mostly involve constantly distracting engineers from producing output by incessantly asking how things are coming along and filling everyone's day with meetings that achieve nothing other than breaking flow and sapping productivity. I didn't realise until I started working from home just how much of my day is leeched away like this and it's jaw dropping how much more productive I am when I can just pull my work for a day, actually do my work, and then get it committed. None of the above is me lamenting co-operating with other people or helping out other folks on a team. If anything I have more time to do that now. I read an article recently on BBC News that was interviewing a scrum master who was upset at having to work from home and was urging his company to bring people back to the office because he doesn't have as many "in person" opportunities to come up with spontaneous ideas for the product, and has less face-to-face contact with the developers in a day to ask how things are going. I would love to see a survey taken at a whole company level across multiple teams to see the balance of which roles are happier working from home and those who are not.

lebaux 6y ago
Scrum masters were supposed to be a solution for broken corporate teamwork, while in reality, the real solution is staying at home and only meeting when necessary. I bet I wouldn't be too happy myself if COVID threatened not only my very life but my job as well.
- headmelted 6y ago
  If we assume the person in question is really concerned about catching COVID, then in the scenario above they seem absolutely fine with putting their co-workers at risk for no reason at all.
sammorrowdrums 6y ago
I have calendar entries for "focus time" for 4 full afternoons a week, and I pushed almost all meetings to Monday. Also pushed for async stand-ups which we do now via a bit on slack. I do like working remotely, but regardless there is a lot that can be done in organisations where developers and non-management team members actually have some power to influence.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  > I have calendar entries for "focus time" for 4 full afternoons a week, How did this work out with your team? Did you tell them and your manager that you blocked these times out? I tried something similar but then kind of got pushback because people weren't able to schedule meetings, so I free'd up a lot of the blocks.
  - sammorrowdrums 6y ago
    My company is pretty small, and actually they were happy. Sorry to hear that didn't work out for you.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Scrum Master was never supposed to be a full time job. It's unfair to taint scrub's reputation by abusing the vocabulary :-(
- headmelted 6y ago
  There’s an entire snake oil industry built up around it now. It’s completely out of hand.
etripe 6y ago
I think it's rather a question of introverts vs extraverts than roles. Even among developers, you'll have the occasional extravert, who will probably also decry the lack of "in person" opportunities to come up with ideas.

lebaux 6y ago

Scrum masters were supposed to be a solution for broken corporate teamwork, while in reality, the real solution is staying at home and only meeting when necessary. I bet I wouldn't be too happy myself if COVID threatened not only my very life but my job as well.

headmelted 6y ago
If we assume the person in question is really concerned about catching COVID, then in the scenario above they seem absolutely fine with putting their co-workers at risk for no reason at all.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago

I have calendar entries for "focus time" for 4 full afternoons a week, and I pushed almost all meetings to Monday. Also pushed for async stand-ups which we do now via a bit on slack. I do like working remotely, but regardless there is a lot that can be done in organisations where developers and non-management team members actually have some power to influence.

randycupertino 6y ago
> I have calendar entries for "focus time" for 4 full afternoons a week, How did this work out with your team? Did you tell them and your manager that you blocked these times out? I tried something similar but then kind of got pushback because people weren't able to schedule meetings, so I free'd up a lot of the blocks.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  My company is pretty small, and actually they were happy. Sorry to hear that didn't work out for you.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

Scrum Master was never supposed to be a full time job. It's unfair to taint scrub's reputation by abusing the vocabulary :-(

headmelted 6y ago
There’s an entire snake oil industry built up around it now. It’s completely out of hand.

etripe 6y ago

I think it's rather a question of introverts vs extraverts than roles. Even among developers, you'll have the occasional extravert, who will probably also decry the lack of "in person" opportunities to come up with ideas.