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Coming from a tech background, I think some of the resistance I've seen is caused by a mismatch in roles. As a developer (non game), work from home works well,

Coming from a tech background, I think some of the resistance I've seen is caused by a mismatch in roles. As a developer (non game), work from home works well, you save yourself a commute but lose out on launch with your co-workers. The rest is pretty much the same. As a manager, director or exec though, where your role is to review the work of developers, and plan their next move, you feel an added challenge from work from home. The distance makes it harder to have a grasp on what work is being done and how well/fast, and what impact. You can't as easily come in and check-in when you need too, you need to formally setup meetings or reviews. And it's not as engaging or easy for you to understand and ask questions in those meetings either. Also it's unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since your job is just meetings all day, that's your new reality. This becomes truer and truer the higher up the chain. So a dev manager might still enjoy the freedom of work from home, less commute time, able to do home chors while they work and all. But a VP will feel less benefits, since they already have a lot of luxuries, maybe they have a Nani, a nice home closer to work, etc. And a CEO will feel even less, maybe they have a helicopter, a chef, and they already chose where the office was based on where they want to live.

Volundr 6y ago
> The distance makes it harder to have a grasp on what work is being done and how well/fast, and what impact. I don't think this is true though. I can review code or a product just as effectively remotely as I can sitting in an office chair. What I can't do is walk the cubes and see who is sitting in front of their computer at the moment, and at least in my experience running IT for a moderately sized organization, this is what managers seem to have a problem with. Over the past several months I've had to fend off requests to pull reports on how many e-mails people have sent, setup mail forwards to their managers, line up VPN times to timecards, or find monitoring software for PCs, all in the name of making sure employees are "working enough". Fortunately so far I've been able to fend these off by pointing out that none of these are real metrics for what's being actually being accomplished and that's what's really being exposed here is that the manager doesn't know how to tell if an employee is doing a good job and/or pulling their weight, and is trying to use butt-in-seat time as a proxy rather than figuring out what actually matters. > You can't as easily come in and check-in when you need too, you need to formally setup meetings or reviews. I can hit the call button on teams at any time. Sure it "feels" disruptive in a way walking into their cube didn't, but in actuality I think their about equally disruptive. Managers tend to underestimate the impact of "just swinging by". > Also it's unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since your job is just meetings all day, that's your new reality. I suspect most people would agree with you on preferring in-person meetings to Zoom. If we'e doing cameras I agree with you too, but... just don't. I spent most of my meetings this summer out on my front lawn with a notepad watching the bees work the clover. Made them infinitely more tolerable than being stuck in a conference room.
- saurik 6y ago
  > I can hit the call button on teams at any time. Sure it "feels" disruptive in a way walking into their cube didn't, but in actuality I think their about equally disruptive. Managers tend to underestimate the impact of "just swinging by". I would even argue that a call is way way way less disruptive than "just swinging by" as it is was easier to someone control and manage calls (as I can turn off the notifications if I am in the middle of something super important, but I can't turn off your insistence on walking over in physical space unless I have not one, but two levels of door).
wernercd 6y ago
> As a developer (non game), work from home works well, you save yourself a commute but lose out on launch with your co-workers. The rest is pretty much the same. This pretty much. I have a long commute as a programmer and working at home with a triple monitor standing desk is so much better... but "water cooler" chats and a meeting room pow-wow is something sorely missing. Some things communicate better face too face with white boards. Everything else I think is true... face to face vs zoom to zoom has to be a hell of a change and, if I was in those shoes (Zero interest in management) I'd push for people back in the office. Personally... I'd love a 3 home, 2 in office routine. Would really afford the best of both.
divbzero 6y ago
This is probably stating the obvious but I think we’re still in the early stages of creating an effective remote conversation experience. Zoom might be something akin to the IBM PC Convertible [1], a long way from the laptops we have today. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pdimitar 6y ago
> The distance makes it harder to have a grasp on what work is being done and how well/fast, and what impact. How so? Tapping techies on the shoulder and asking "what's up with your task?" is a widely disliked management technique. Or you meant something else? > You can't as easily come in and check-in when you need too, you need to formally setup meetings or reviews. Good. I am glad there is more tension for you when doing that now. Most meetings are disruptive for the creators so the increased barrier to entry for setting them up is a welcome correction and a reality-check mechanism. You do rely on those people to produce artifacts that lead to the company's bottom line and it is known that creators utilize flow state for their best productivity, thus their time shouldn't be sliced and diced so easily. Bureaucracy is not an universal virtue, let's all acknowledge that. > And it's not as engaging or easy for you to understand and ask questions in those meetings either. What do you mean by "engaging"? That you felt an informal bond with your underlings while having status meetings in person? If so, fair enough alright but how is it stopping you having it now during virtual meets? > Also it's unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since your job is just meetings all day, that's your new reality. Also good. Should hint you to do less of those then. Find other formats: collaborative editing of documents / spreadsheets, to-do lists, milestone calendars, email + ticket tracker hooks, all of it. There's basically tooling for every need out there and most is leagues cheaper than JIRA. Use managers-only Slack channels or internal forums. There is a plethora of viable alternatives. > This becomes truer and truer the higher up the chain. [sic] ... This might sound a bit cold and I apologize if it's taken this way but... that's really not my problem as the techie and the creator. At all. You need my services, I need the pay, we both agreed to the terms, and we are so far both happy with the transaction. If you decide to start changing the deal due to factors I cannot fully appreciate or sympathize with then that new situation now becomes your problem, the VP's problem, the various CxO people's problem. They do, after all is said and done, get their money's worth out of the employees, no? Why should I be worried that they rented or bought a mega-expensive office somewhere? --- I suppose the gist of what I am saying is: the current full remote work situation highlights problems with the previous process that were always there but were never seriously challenged. I view that as a good thing. Old processes need refreshing every now and then. What do you think?
- StrictDabbler 6y ago

Volundr 6y ago

> The distance makes it harder to have a grasp on what work is being done and how well/fast, and what impact. I don't think this is true though. I can review code or a product just as effectively remotely as I can sitting in an office chair. What I can't do is walk the cubes and see who is sitting in front of their computer at the moment, and at least in my experience running IT for a moderately sized organization, this is what managers seem to have a problem with. Over the past several months I've had to fend off requests to pull reports on how many e-mails people have sent, setup mail forwards to their managers, line up VPN times to timecards, or find monitoring software for PCs, all in the name of making sure employees are "working enough". Fortunately so far I've been able to fend these off by pointing out that none of these are real metrics for what's being actually being accomplished and that's what's really being exposed here is that the manager doesn't know how to tell if an employee is doing a good job and/or pulling their weight, and is trying to use butt-in-seat time as a proxy rather than figuring out what actually matters. > You can't as easily come in and check-in when you need too, you need to formally setup meetings or reviews. I can hit the call button on teams at any time. Sure it "feels" disruptive in a way walking into their cube didn't, but in actuality I think their about equally disruptive. Managers tend to underestimate the impact of "just swinging by". > Also it's unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since your job is just meetings all day, that's your new reality. I suspect most people would agree with you on preferring in-person meetings to Zoom. If we'e doing cameras I agree with you too, but... just don't. I spent most of my meetings this summer out on my front lawn with a notepad watching the bees work the clover. Made them infinitely more tolerable than being stuck in a conference room.

saurik 6y ago
> I can hit the call button on teams at any time. Sure it "feels" disruptive in a way walking into their cube didn't, but in actuality I think their about equally disruptive. Managers tend to underestimate the impact of "just swinging by". I would even argue that a call is way way way less disruptive than "just swinging by" as it is was easier to someone control and manage calls (as I can turn off the notifications if I am in the middle of something super important, but I can't turn off your insistence on walking over in physical space unless I have not one, but two levels of door).

wernercd 6y ago

> As a developer (non game), work from home works well, you save yourself a commute but lose out on launch with your co-workers. The rest is pretty much the same. This pretty much. I have a long commute as a programmer and working at home with a triple monitor standing desk is so much better... but "water cooler" chats and a meeting room pow-wow is something sorely missing. Some things communicate better face too face with white boards. Everything else I think is true... face to face vs zoom to zoom has to be a hell of a change and, if I was in those shoes (Zero interest in management) I'd push for people back in the office. Personally... I'd love a 3 home, 2 in office routine. Would really afford the best of both.

divbzero 6y ago

This is probably stating the obvious but I think we’re still in the early stages of creating an effective remote conversation experience. Zoom might be something akin to the IBM PC Convertible [1], a long way from the laptops we have today. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pdimitar 6y ago

> The distance makes it harder to have a grasp on what work is being done and how well/fast, and what impact. How so? Tapping techies on the shoulder and asking "what's up with your task?" is a widely disliked management technique. Or you meant something else? > You can't as easily come in and check-in when you need too, you need to formally setup meetings or reviews. Good. I am glad there is more tension for you when doing that now. Most meetings are disruptive for the creators so the increased barrier to entry for setting them up is a welcome correction and a reality-check mechanism. You do rely on those people to produce artifacts that lead to the company's bottom line and it is known that creators utilize flow state for their best productivity, thus their time shouldn't be sliced and diced so easily. Bureaucracy is not an universal virtue, let's all acknowledge that. > And it's not as engaging or easy for you to understand and ask questions in those meetings either. What do you mean by "engaging"? That you felt an informal bond with your underlings while having status meetings in person? If so, fair enough alright but how is it stopping you having it now during virtual meets? > Also it's unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since your job is just meetings all day, that's your new reality. Also good. Should hint you to do less of those then. Find other formats: collaborative editing of documents / spreadsheets, to-do lists, milestone calendars, email + ticket tracker hooks, all of it. There's basically tooling for every need out there and most is leagues cheaper than JIRA. Use managers-only Slack channels or internal forums. There is a plethora of viable alternatives. > This becomes truer and truer the higher up the chain. [sic] ... This might sound a bit cold and I apologize if it's taken this way but... that's really not my problem as the techie and the creator. At all. You need my services, I need the pay, we both agreed to the terms, and we are so far both happy with the transaction. If you decide to start changing the deal due to factors I cannot fully appreciate or sympathize with then that new situation now becomes your problem, the VP's problem, the various CxO people's problem. They do, after all is said and done, get their money's worth out of the employees, no? Why should I be worried that they rented or bought a mega-expensive office somewhere? --- I suppose the gist of what I am saying is: the current full remote work situation highlights problems with the previous process that were always there but were never seriously challenged. I view that as a good thing. Old processes need refreshing every now and then. What do you think?

StrictDabbler 6y ago