11 ms·

What about those who _do_ want a friendly workplace with some element of social interaction?

• square_usual 6y ago
  What about those who don't?
  • austinjp 6y ago
    Well that was the point of the comment I was replying to, which I felt was somewhat one-sided.
• me_me_me 6y ago
  hybrid model, let your workers decide how they work as long they deliver.
  • beforeolives 6y ago
    In a hybrid model the people who choose to be remote are damaging their own impact and career development. That's a tradeoff they're free to make if they want but it's the reason why I think hybrid models won't last for too long.
    • rjzzleep 6y ago
      The reality is that most people don't grow in the same company. They grow by changing employer. So what you just said here, doesn't apply to most people anyway. The ones that most like the current structure are the ones most rewarded by it as well. No wonder they don't want it to change. Most people get promoted by social acts, even in google.
    • varispeed 6y ago
      Longing for a career at a one company it seems like a concept from the 80s-90s or movies, where you start as a janitor and finish as a director. However, this indeed can impact your day to day life at a company, as managers will develop biases towards people who they socialise with. That's why I think any kind of socials are a bad idea as they may be potentially discarding people who are bad are socialising but are great workers otherwise and that comes as a negative to a whole organisation.
      • beforeolives 6y ago
        It's not just about socializing or climbing the ladder - you need to communicate with other people to get stuff done. Even if you only care about technical contribution and getting work done, if you aren't in the office and everyone else is, you'll have a difficult time.
        • varispeed 6y ago
          Could you explain why? Everyone is on Slack or Teams or even Discord and always available to talk during "office" hours.
          • betterunix2 6y ago
            Whiteboards were a huge part of my daily work prior to COVID and the lack of whiteboards had a negative impact on my team. Touchscreens have not really been the same for us, it is too much overhead when all you wanted was to quickly work out an idea with someone else.
            • varispeed 6y ago
              We dropped whiteboards in favour of collaborative editing of documents. People write their ideas and then comment in realtime. It took some time to get used to, but not many people miss it. Some people got reMarkable if they want to draw something and share - this is a brilliant tool, but unfortunately it doesn't support encryption, so the use is a bit limited, but to draw some flows etc is great.
            • austinjp 6y ago
              I completely understand this. I think best through conversation with others involving drawing on paper or whiteboards. Without being able to do this, I can really struggle to focus ideas and plans. Online just does not work as well for this, not for me anyway.
          • RestlessMind 6y ago
            If half the team is in office and half is remote on Slack, then the communication throughout (both useful and pointless) is much higher among the in person. Some simple examples: 1) quick clarification for a technical question - easier to turn back and ask your colleague 2) design minutiae which you remember after a 30/60min meeting is over - very easy to grab your coworkers in hallways or by watercooler and nail down 3) coming across interesting conversations among your colleagues by just being in proximity - not possible when you have to schedule a 30min chat for that 4) reading body language to know whether your colleague is stressed or relaxed or happy or sad - helps tailor your response which improves the communication I haven't even delved into the timezone issue yet, which matters a lot even between colleagues on East vs West coast (let alone Europe or Asia). Meetings before 8:30am PT? PT people would still be waking up or dropping kids to school. 9-10am PT? Time for people in ET to have their lunch. 12-1pm PT? Lunch time for PT people. After 2:30pm PT? ET guys are already out for the day.
    • dudul 6y ago
      I see this claim made very often on HN. Is there any data to back it up?
      • RestlessMind 6y ago
        Let's say ideal data exists in some hypothetical company which will convince you. What would it look like? Asking because this is an area where it will be impossible to get meaningful data unless a big enough company runs an A/B test over a long period of time to measure the impact on career development.
        • dudul 6y ago
          Can't we have data showing career advancement differences between onsite employees and remote employees? I don't understand your attack/sarcasm. We manage to find data to show salary/promotion differences between men and women, or between different races, why not based on the location of the workers?
          • RestlessMind 6y ago
            How many companies exist which have meaningful representation of onsite vs remote employees at various levels of seniority? Can you please name a few? FWIW, at one of the FAANGs I worked that, HR shared data (promo rate etc) between HQ vs remote offices. But those were still remote offices and not remote employees who could work from anywhere.
            • dudul 6y ago
              Fine, I'll play along and say that you're right: the data doesn't exist - which btw I never contested, I actually asked if there was any data available to back a claim. It is then equally fantasist to claim that being a remote employee at a hybrid company is either detrimental, neutral or beneficial to career advancement.
              • beforeolives 6y ago
• varispeed 6y ago
  You can be friendly without having to socialise. Not sure why those things would have to go together? Doing socials after work is such a waste of time - sure it may be fun, but this way you are using up time that otherwise you could use to maintain friendships outside of work. Socialising at work is when you develop unconscious and conscious biases and it is a breeding ground for a toxic atmosphere and disruption of team dynamics.
  • austinjp 6y ago
    Sure, a 100% remote company might be friendly, for example. I mentioned "friendly" since the previous comment mentioned "friends". Not my intention to suggest inclusivity/exclusivity.
    • austinjp 6y ago
      I genuinely don't understand why this was down voted. A comment would help. My intention was to be conciliatory and explanatory.
  • snakeboy 6y ago
    Isn't this also how a lot of friendships start? People finding themselves in a similar place/situation/habit/interests. So to me it seems a bit natural that workplace friendships would naturally develop. It's healthier to make an effort to have friendships outside of work as well, of course. Maybe I'm being naïve, but I don't see how "toxic atmosphere and disruption of team dynamics" would result from these casual friendships. If anything, I'm more likely to hold myself accountable to my team members when I know them better personally.
    • varispeed 6y ago
      Within time cliques form and some people may be coming to those events out of fear they'll be missing out instead of to have fun and some people may just not be coming and will be viewed by other team members as weirdos. From there it is natural to side with something you know and feel affection to and you may be unconsciously treating people who don't socialise with you worse than the others. Other things that may happen, often when also alcohol is involved, people may say things from their private lives that then other people may use against them or when you start talking about politics and it turns out some people have completely opposite views to yours. This is not helpful in any way.
• ilikedthatone 6y ago
  world has already been designed for __them__ for almost forever?
  • austinjp 6y ago
    Agreed. I wasn't saying exclusively. I just feel that swinging from one extreme to the other doesn't solve any problems.
• austinjp 6y ago
  I wrote a long edit clarifying a few things, and lost it on submit thanks to timing out. Damn. I'm morbidly fascinated by the polarisation that drives some online conversations. Admittedly I have probably fuelled some of that with my question, I'll try to do better in future. However, it was intended to point out that there are shades of grey here (as evident in the comments) while the post I replied to seemed very black-and-white to me. I wonder if a better question might be something like: what does a healthy, productive future of work look like now that covid has demonstrated that some people will very much want to continue working entirely remote, while some people very much do not? For what it's worth, I completely agree and sympathise with all the issues people raise here. None of remote, in-office, or hybrid are perfect. They all have problems. It seems that covid has given us the opportunity to at least try to improve things, even though clearly the answers are difficult to find. Slight tangent: I was saddened to read recently that Basecap has permanently closed their Chicago HQ [0]. I've held up this place as a model for how I'd want to build an office space should my unicorn/cash-cow finally hatch. No, it's not perfect, but I loved the fact they explicitly tried, and they explicitly recognised it might be seen by some as a waste of company funds, particularly when they also did things like deliver fruit & veg to employee's homes rather than workplace as an incentive to go home rather than stay late in that expensive office space [1]. I think there are major underlying structural issues that discourage companies from solving issues relating to worker happiness. Extortionate rent and service charges have produced homogenous high-streets, and they're homogenising the business districts too. The labels over the door of each building might be different, but the attitude inside is the same. Worker happiness is grist to the mill, productivity and the bottom line reign. I think we could do better. [0] https://basecamp.com/about/office https://basecamp.com/about/office [1] https://basecamp.com/books/calm https://basecamp.com/books/calm
• dimmke 6y ago
  Ultimately, remote is likely going to win out. Most people in the white collar work force are older, have families and live in the burbs. The commute for a lot of them is 1+ hour each way. But what you're saying is legitimate, and it bothers me the amount of people acting like it doesn't matter. American society already isolates people. Work is a big (maybe the biggest) avenue to develop friendships as an adult, just like school is when you're a kid. Not everybody gets married and then their life becomes about their 2 kids and any social interaction outside of that is incidental.
  • KptMarchewa 6y ago
    >Most people in the white collar work force are older, have families and live in the burbs. Maybe in USA, but my experience in multiple (>5) workspaces in Poland as 28 years old spftware engineer, is that people over 40 are maybe 5% of devs/tech leads.
    • dimmke 6y ago
      Software Devs make up a pretty small percentage of the entire white collar workforce
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• caskstrength 6y ago
  > What about those who _do_ want a friendly workplace with some element of social interaction? What about them? I assume they will be welcome to go back to the office one the whole pandemic thing becomes less of an issue.
• swat535 6y ago
  There is a difference between being friendly and becoming friends. The latter is dangerous and you will be fooled in thinking your coworkers actually care about you and you need to drink the corporate kool-aid, work overtime and be a true best friend to everyone. If you are going out binge drinking with your co-workers, you're doing it wrong because it blurries the lines between professional and personal life in my humble opinion. Very few deep friendships develop at work, at best they will be acquaintances you see once in a while. So by all means, be nice and cooperative but keep your distance.
• stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Then by all means go into the office and get their element of social interaction together and let the introverts get their stuff done in their preferred environment.
  • austinjp 6y ago
    There are introverts who value a dose of in-person interactivity. Some find the structure of the work schedule useful in ensuring a degree of socialisation. My question was more around whether the workplace can function better for both introverts and extroverts. There are several comments in this thread that suggest entirely remote work has issues, and hybrid models might favour the extroverts (although one interesting comment suggests they'd experience an increase communications burden, repeating messages in-person and in chat). Personally I would not want a 100% in-person workplace. How do we resolve the issues that come with, let's say, hybrid working?
• Asooka 6y ago
  Some of the best friends I have, I met online and haven't actually seen face to face. Still, you can have a workplace with a reduced (not eliminated) physical presence. I know of people who do flexible office visitation, so they have two days per week when everyone is in, and the rest of the time, people are free to either WFH or at the office. Seems to work out for them for now - those who really want to be there can be, while those who prefer to work from home can do so.