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Many of these debates about work from home remind me of the arguments about “online banking” or “e-commerce” in the early internet days. One side argues that th
by cooleddy89 6y ago
Many of these debates about work from home remind me of the arguments about “online banking” or “e-commerce” in the early internet days. One side argues that the interpersonal relationships are critical and can never be replicated fully online. The other points at the convenience factor and claims a higher productivity for all involved.
The truth as always is somewhere in the middle. I do most of my banking online, but still visit financial institutions for important events (mortgages, large checks, etc.)
It does seem to me slightly odd that some people working in “tech”, aka an industry built on disruption, are adamant that WFH can never work. If anything,
remote employees are a goldmine of valuable data that can be tracked. Wondering if a meeting is valuable? In person you have to gauge people’s thoughts or rely on surveys. For online meetings just see (anonymously) in real time who’s firing up their slack or multitasking.
Obviously there’s a extensive employee privacy issues, but the bottom line is that we have all the fundamental technologies needed to provide as much data on remote employees as we do in the office.
- knicknic 6y agoEmployees will just slack on another device. A phone or something. I haven’t been in a bank in over 5 years. I have refinanced my home twice, and will probably do so again without stepping inside an office. The only reason I see to have an in person bank is if I wanted a safety deposit box, or frequently needed to get money changed.
- ghaff 6y agoFor certain types of large transactions, identity verification still sometimes makes it easier to go into an office if doing so is convenient enough. That said, I had a large transaction I needed to do fairly early in the pandemic. I'd gone into an office to do an earlier iteration on this but I really didn't want to do so in April. I was able to do it over the phone. I remarked to a friend of mine who is regularly involved in such things that "A lot of orgs are discovering they don't actually need to do their traditional processes" and she fully agreed that a lot of people are discovering they don't actually need to do everything they thought they did.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoThere's something more insidious to your analogy though. A lot of those banking jobs don't exist anymore. Any job that can be WFH will be easy to outsource. You aren't need in office so why do we even need you in this time zone? Outsource it cheap. If it really is manageable from a 30 min standup and Jira then why even bother with expensive devs? Before you had a small competitive market in a central location. Now you're opening it up. On top of that, remote work I find is starting to bleed over. I have meetings well past 5 now, quite often. I get messaged late and early. Whereas with the office it was different. People respected boundaries much more. Fully remote workforces lead to a lot more timezone issues as well. I like flex time. I want to be able to work from home when I want to, but also want to go into the office for many things that are easier to do as a group.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago> why even bother with expensive devs? Because you get what you pay for. I am yet to hear of any cases where in the long run outsourcing development to a low-wage country actually saved money. Competent engineers generally follow the money and emigrate. Why earn $10k a year in India when you could earn $100k in the USA?
- thekyle 6y agoWhat if $10k in India gets you the same lifestyle as $100k in the U.S.?
- 6y ago