12 ms·

Wow, the author has a pretty miserable company :(. That said, I share most of the opinions even though I quite like the office environment of my company. I ab

• HWR_14 6y ago
  I'm thrown by people working on a laptop. Do you have a battery powered second screen? Is there some workflow tips I should adopt to make it work better? I'm quite jealous of people who can work on laptops. I wonder the degree to which people enjoy WFH is the same as the degree to which they enjoy working on a laptop. Even the people I know with a dedicated room for work set up want to go back to the office if they prefer multiple monitors.
  • mrweasel 6y ago
    Depending on country, you’re not legally allowed to work on your laptop. You’re required to have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you cannot be hunched over a laptop for 8 hours a day. The applies both to the office and when working from home.
    • lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Which country is this?
      • mrweasel 6y ago
        Denmark. Working on laptop is only allow for short periods of time, and it can’t be planned. So you can deal with emergencies, quick last minute things. Rules have been more flexible during Covid, but people have been working from home for so long now that height adjustable desks and external monitors something the employeers need to ensure that people have access to again, even at home.
  • EliRivers 6y ago
    Even the people I know with a dedicated room for work set up want to go back to the office if they prefer multiple monitors. Well, allow me to be the first outlier. I typically use two monitors (tried three, didn't really add much to having two, for me); using two external monitors (attached to a laptop) right this second as I type this (and also a proper keyboard and mouse - the laptop to which they are all connected is under the desk, closed). I am very happy indeed to continue using two monitors at home. A chap on my team uses four monitors on his setup and he's similarly happy to continue doing so from home. Why do the people you know who like to use multiple monitors want to do so in the office rather than at home in a dedicated work room? Are they, at home, like, actually working ON the laptop? Typing on the little laptop keyboard, using the little laptop mousepad, staring at the little laptop screen?
  • rhn_mk1 6y ago
    It depends on the kind of work. Having a nice virtual workspaces setup makes it possible to switch between applications accurately and quickly (not like alt-tab), and that makes it possible to do work where cross-referencing a lot of text isn't required.
  • christkv 6y ago
    I use one of these when on the road. https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-MB169B-1920x1080-Portable-Monitor/dp/B013XFJKGI/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=usb+external+screen&qid=1617723636&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-MB169B-1920x1080-Portable-Monito...
  • folkrav 6y ago
    I have an 34" 1440p ultrawide + vertical 24" 1080p at home. That setup > all setups I've ever managed to get at work, including that triple 24" I've had once. I can't stand working off a laptop my hands, neck and back inevitably start to hurt after slouching over and typing off the tiny keyboard and trackpad.
  • chrisseaton 6y ago
    Why can't they have multiple monitors at home?
  • cm2012 6y ago
    I've always worked on a single laptop and I will never go back to the office, so that checks.
  • blunte 6y ago
    I much prefer a 4k monitor as my primary, and my laptop below it (open, as a small second screen). Going outside, working just off the laptop, is a definite shift. It usually means less coding, but sometimes it pushes me to be productive in areas I normally neglect (documenting, planning, organizing). To do real development, I am very dependent upon a big monitor. If I travel, I take one or rent one. Honestly though, sometimes I just go for a walk. And often during that walk, with no screens, my brain magically sorts through some problems and gives me new insights. If you work from home though, most people agree on dedicating some space and properly equipping it. Working always only on a laptop in a floater kind of way is something that I suspect most people cannot do with any real level of productivity.
    • gorkemyurt 6y ago
      How do you carry your monitor? this has been a problem for me during covid. also there is the work chair problem..
      • blunte 6y ago
        Le Sigh, during COVID I don't go anywhere. Carrying a monitor is not a problem. But when I traveled, many co-working spaces offer halfway decent monitors for rent. And if you're staying for a while, you can buy one locally and honestly just leave it there when you go. We're talking about $200. It's just part of the cost of being a digital nomad (which you totally make up in many other ways). Oh, but chairs for me are not a problem. I have been a very happy standing-worker for 13 years now. It started with hip and lower back pain in my early 30s, which seemed f'd up, and then some articles by a Mayo Clinic doctor who worked standing and sometimes on a treadmill. Turns out, it was good advice. Now I stand all day - sometimes 18 hours, and don't even notice. (To be clear, you always move a bit, shift your weight, etc.; it's not being a statue.)
        • shard 6y ago
          That's quite a lot of standing. At what point would you start worrying about varicose veins?
  • livueta 6y ago
    I like working on a small laptop even when there are multiple large monitors available - probably to do with being a very heavy virtual workspaces + tiling wm user. I also hate sitting at a desk and prefer to flop around whatever couch, recliner, or bit of lawn seems comfortable at the time, and it's harder to do that when you're dragging hardware around. For whatever reasons, I find it way easier to get in the zone working this way.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I wonder the degree to which people enjoy WFH is the same as the degree to which they enjoy working on a laptop. I hate working on a laptop screen. OTOH, I like the 34” ultrawide monitor I use at home attached to my dock better the twin 21” widescreens I had in the office, plus I get to use it, rather than a laptop, in the numerous meetings-with-computers, which were held in meeting rooms with in-person work.
  • pizza234 6y ago
    I have a minimalist approach to interfaces, and work on 1080p (both desktop and laptop). I don't have second monitors and I don't intend to add any. I don't doubt that adding screen estate has value, but in the minimalistic spirit, anything added also subtracts something :) And in the same spirit, anything subtracted adds something else - in my case, the ability to work more efficiently. Try to work on a single screen for a relatively long time (say, a few months). Over the time, you'll develop (because you're forced to) more efficient habits.
    • throwawayboise 6y ago
      I use a window manager that has multiple desktops. It's like having 9 screens, only you can only see one of them at a time. But really, that's how screens are. You can't really look at two screens at once.
      • aksss 6y ago
        Sort of, but doing a stare-and-compare, two screens beats two virtual desktops in productivity. It’s the difference between being able to set two documents side by side on a desk vs stacking them. There’s more friction in the swap than in the glance. Also, being able to have VC people on one screen while full screening content, or full screening content while playing a game is valuable.
        • pizza234 6y ago
          It depends on the use case. I frequently use two terminals side-by side; for this type of work, 1920p are enough [for me]. They're enough also for diffing source code, as long as the lines are not excessively long (around 100 chars fit on each side; comparing 2 lines long statements is acceptable).. I think a use case where a single (1080p) screen is significantly inconvenient is for windows with a fixed shape, for example, debugging a videogame.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    It depends on what I'm doing. I do video calls from my desktop as I have all the lighting, microphones, and good webcam set up. And I'll also use the multiple monitors if I need a lot of reference material. But if I'm just writing something or doing email, I'm perfectly happy just working on a laptop and probably do it more than using my desktop.
  • greedo 6y ago
    I used to hate laptops, and chafed when they were provisioned for my team. We all worked in the office, and docked them. We rarely needed to use them from home until COVID. Yet the last year has changed my mind. I have a 15" MBP from 2015 that is fine. My home office has an iMac, so I really don't want a second monitor crowding my desk. I just use the laptop's display and keyboard. Less stuff to worry about finding space for, or keeping the cats from fucking with. And best of all, when work is done, I log out of the VPN, and close the lid. Of course I have Teams/Outlook on my phone if there's an emergency, but there's also a clear delineation for my family to recognize; if the laptop is open, I'm still working. If it's closed, then they can talk/pester/joke with me without worrying about my work. And it also helps me remember to not overwork.
  • kube-system 6y ago
    These are helpful, in my experience: https://www.asus.com/us/Displays-Desktops/Monitors/ZenScreen/filter?Series=ZenScreen https://www.asus.com/us/Displays-Desktops/Monitors/ZenScreen...
  • noisy_boy 6y ago
    Having worked on multiple monitors for so long, I would find just having a tiny laptop screen too restrictive. Being able to glance at multiple windows to collate information without having to Alt+Tab is priceless. I bought a 43" (4K 3840 x 2160) and put an older (rotated) 24" right next to it - the setup works perfectly contrary to my initial worry of the main display proving to be too big. Advantage of the 43" display over an ultra-wide is that I get plenty of vertical space as well in addition to the horizontal space. That means easily having 4 80-column tall IDE windows side by side for reduced scrolling. Another advantage is that videos play full screen without any black areas on the sides. The smaller monitor is split between Slack and email - both always visible but not too distracting due to being in the peripheral vision.
    • CoastalCoder 6y ago
      Sorry for the tangent, but I'm considering replacing my current home-office monitor. Mind sharing which 43" monitor you have, and any other thoughts on its suitability for coding?
      • blunte 6y ago
        Keep in mind that at some point (depending on your distance from the screen, which tends to be 18-24 inches for developers), the size of the screen grows beyond what you can see without intentionally looking off at an angle. I would argue that 32" is enough. Maybe 35-40 if it were curved. Of course, if I could have a 1:1 aspect ratio screen which was spherical, that would be ideal. Even so, you only get so much benefit from larger size. My primary monitor is an LG 27UD58 "4k". It is fantastic in terms of visual quality and even gaming. But as far as I can tell, there's no good upsize option. I'm hoping for improvements in VR style glasses which would allow me to look all around and see a virtual big screen on demand. Two monitors are nice, but then you're always looking a bit to the left or right. Two stacked monitors are nice, but then you're looking significantly up or down. There's no good answer :/, other than a neural interface which does not yet exist.
      • noisy_boy 6y ago
        I'm using the Dell Ultrasharp Monitor U4320Q. There is no other way to put it - when I first bought it, I had doubts about my decision because this thing is _big_. You'll need to move your eye (and/or your neck) a bit more for the content on the edges which you almost never have to do for something like, say, 24" monitor. However, few months down the line, this is the best decision I made for coding. The real estate makes a real difference. The quality of the panel is great and you soon get used to "bigness" and the ability to have so many split windows makes a huge difference in productivity. It'll probably really shine with a tiling WM/virtual workspaces (I use a non-tiling single workspace setup so that's just speculation though). You still have to move few inches away if you are playing content full screen (my desk is wide but not very deep). I play Youtube videos expanded but not full screen and that is already big enough for me. For movies in full screen, I push my chair a bit away from the desk and put my legs on a small stool and then the experience is great.
  • Johnny555 6y ago
    I wonder the degree to which people enjoy WFH is the same as the degree to which they enjoy working on a laptop. Even the people I know with a dedicated room for work set up want to go back to the office if they prefer multiple monitors. I can understand why people who are working from their kitchen table want to go back to the office, but for those that have a dedicated work area, wouldn't they set it up the way they want? I have a multi-monitor setup at home that's better than what I have at work since I'm not limited to IT approved hardware. Related, I also have a loud clicky keyboard that I can't get away with using at work since everyone in the shared office area can hear it.
  • JohnPrine 6y ago
    I was like you until July of last year. Started working exclusively on my laptop (I'm a c++ engineer) and I found that it forced me to be more organized. Vim + tmux lets me make full use of a smaller screen. My productivity has honestly improved as a result
  • mrj 6y ago
    Well, I enjoy WFH (mostly) but a laptop alone isn't great. At home I use a corner desk, two monitors, two phones and three laptops (one testing, one does light compiling and vpn duties). There's no way I'd be allowed this much equipment and space in the office. I had a nice-ish 27' monitor there and a small desk crammed next to another developer. As much as I miss the social aspects of an office, WFH has a lot of benefits. I realize this is not true for many, and a lot of my own money went into the office of my dreams here. But it's quite comfortable.
• protonimitate 6y ago
  I have a hard time wrapping my head around why companies are mandating 100% return to office. Cost issues aside, I've always maintained that the absolute best experience is a hybrid/flexible schedule and location policy. I'm currently full time remote (I'm on the East Coast working for a West Coast company). My previous company had its main office in my current city, but allowed a super flexible choose-where-you-work-from policy. It was the best. Didn't feel like dealing with the commute or had a ton of heads down work to do? Stay at home. Wanted to go in to be present for meetings? Easy. Start the day at the office and go home to finish off the day and avoid the commute? Sure. Of course they made it possible by actively managing it. No meetings before 11am ET (to accomodate those in different TZs). Every scheduled meeting required a Zoom/conference link. Dedicated offices were set up as "conference rooms" so remote people could call in. And of course, people all the way up the ladder worked from home at least some of the time. Being full remote doesn't work for everyone. Providing a space for those who want it is such a huge quality of life bonus imo. But the biggest factor is creating a culture of inclusion, despite your employees working preferences. This is the hardest thing to do, especially at scale.
  • cm2012 6y ago
    The companies mandating 100% office time are doing so because their particular executive teams are nuts about it. See Netflix.
    • r3trohack3r 6y ago
      Netflix is now hiring full time remote for engineering, reporting to the office post COVID is optional. Source: I’m a full time engineer happily working out of the PHX suburbs. Personally, I have no intention of returning to the Bay Area.
      • cm2012 6y ago
        That's cool, I guess Reed Hastings saw the writing on the wall since his September screed against remote work.
      • 6y ago
• folkrav 6y ago
  > And for the social aspect, weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal. As much as I appreciate (most of) my coworkers, on nights and weekends I want to close my computer and spend quality time with my family, not see and talk to the same people I am already forced to talk to 35-40h a week. They might be ideal to you, but you're assuming quite a lot about everyone's situations if you think they work for everyone.
  • blunte 6y ago
    In my remote experience, I definitely don't talk to my colleagues that much. But when you're trying to build a small company, one approach is to make it feel like a family. And families always have people we like and people we like not so much. But there's something special about one unit working toward a single goal. My design is for a startup with young people. This would not work nearly as well for older people and people with their own families!
    • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      I managed distributed teams long before COVID. Having people meet in person a few times a year does wonders for team cohesion. Some people handle remote communications just fine. Others were raised on a steady diet of internet flame wars and approach the screen names in their company chat the same way: As enemies to argue with every day. Putting people in front of each other associates a real person with that screen name. Everyone starts treating each other better and working more cooperatively. The transformation is almost instant. One important tip: Face to face meetings need to happen on regular company time as much as possible. Avoid anything on weekends or after hours as much as possible. You don’t want the team building to be an extra ask on top of their normal workload. It is their workload. Obviously flights and hotel stays must be an exception, but keep it in bounds of normal working hours as much as possible.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        Yeah. Remote is fine but you need to budget time and money for plane tickets and hotels. That's been the tough thing for me the past year. I'm normally remote although I could go into an office--and am technically assigned to one but I normally travel to a lot of events as well as off-sites. >Face to face meetings need to happen on regular company time as much as possible. Yep. I sometimes hear people talking about how we should have team building events on the weekend. That's a big nope. In fact, while it's sometimes unavoidable, I sort of resent it when I need to travel on a Sunday to get to some event/meeting.
• dheera 6y ago
  > weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal When you do retreats do keep in mind that not everyone will want to spend a week or weekend away from their family, and that retreats with a bunch of people who can be social nonstop for 12 hours can also be the worst nightmare for introverts. Keep it optional, make sure it's clear that it's optional, make sure junior employees don't feel pressured :)
  • ghaff 6y ago
    There's pretty much no such thing as optional if there's a team off-site unless it's "I can't" for some reason rather than "I don't want to." Multi-day off-sites are sometimes necessary but weekend is a no go.
    • dheera 6y ago
      But does your "off-site" really need to be off-site? If you're a fully remote company, sure, it makes sense, but for a company with an actual local office, taking the team to Hawaii for 3 days just to have meetings that could have been had at conference rooms at your usual office isn't always appreciated by every member of your team, especially the ones who have {health conditions, children, pets, side gigs, ...}
  • claudiulodro 6y ago
    I think it works fine as long as you're up-front about it when hiring e.g. > We get the whole company together once a year for seven days so that Automatticians can create bonds that influence them all year long. So far we’ve done Grand Meetups in San Francisco, California; La Paz, Mexico; Oracle, Arizona; Breckenridge, Colorado; Mont-Sainte-Anne, Québec; Seaside, Florida; Budapest, Hungary; San Diego, California; Santa Cruz, California; Park City, Utah; Whistler, Canada; and Orlando, Florida. > In addition to our all-company Grand Meetup, teams meet for five to seven days to brainstorm team-level strategy and bond in locales ranging from Boulder to Buenos Aires, Las Vegas to Lisbon, Montréal to Mexico City, and Vienna to Vietnam. If you join our merry band, expect to travel three to four weeks per year. > As a distributed company we also know how to connect with each other from afar, and consider day-to-day social communication at least as important as breaking bread in person. https://automattic.com/how-we-work/ https://automattic.com/how-we-work/
• tcbawo 6y ago
  I don't think it's that people in charge of big companies are not creative thinkers. I think their priorities are things other than employee satisfaction, or possibly even employee productivity. Both of those things are great, but maximizing shareholder value comes first. Big companies are applying creative thinking to marketing, sales relationships, mergers and acquisitions, strategic lobbying/lawsuits, cost cutting, etc. In my younger days, I made the mistake of getting overly invested in the companies I worked for. Always put your long term goals first. If you don't have equity, it's not your company!
• paganel 6y ago
  For what it’s worth you have a yard, most of the people wanting to go back to the office live in a more cramped conditions. Not having something like a yard to fall back to has also make it way harder for those people in terms of mental well-being, seeing people around them instead of the same four walls would be like going back to normal for them.
  • blunte 6y ago
    This is true, and forgive me - I do forget this often. When I lived in one room of a shared apartment, I probably would have jumped off the balcony by now due to too much time with my roommate. But! If remote is the new way, then we don't have to live in the city center. Especially in nice countries with good train systems, we can live in more distant places where rents are cheaper and we can have an entire place with yard to spare. I'm in NL, and I have about 150 square meters of indoor space plus a big yard for less than 800 eur. Previously I spent 700 for 35sq meters and no yard. The difference now is that I'm in a village 2.5 hours from Amsterdam. As long as there are trains, I can go to the office on occasion.
• DrBazza 6y ago
  Unless that company is government owned, the owner is, in the US vernacular an "ass". Better facilities equals better hires equals better productivity equals more profit equals more money to invest in better facilities. It's a virtuous circle. I work in London, and the lack of commuting by train, stuffed with a hundred other people, has been the equivalent of very hefty pay rise, and an improvement in my health, such that I haven't been ill, at all, since Xmas 2019. I want to go back, but only for a couple of days a week if possible. I know I've signed a contract with my employer stating my place of employment and so on, so I'm resigned to the fact that it will likely be 3 or 4 days. But I agree with only a few of the original author's sentiments. Not having to share an open plan office with a hundred other people has massively improved my productivity and health.
• sabujp 6y ago
  this is like the norm outside of fang
• aidenn0 6y ago
  If I had an open-office setting, that alone would get me to sign on to what the author is saying. With my private office, being closer to the hardware and coworkers can outweigh the benefits of working from home.
• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Big companies lack the freedom because they have to answer to institutional + activist investors, and institutional + activist investors want to see a sweat shop. They get nervous if they think people are having a chilled time at home. This is a caste culture issue. It's orthogonal to productivity and real returns. If you set up your chilled culture, you'd better stay bootstrapped. If you take VC money, most are going to push for a less liberal line.
• Johnny555 6y ago
  As I begin to form my own company, one of my priorities is to allow my employees to have at least some of their time completely at their own discretion The only way to really give employees freedom to work from anywhere completely at their own discretion is to let them work full-time remote. If you require any face time at the office at all, then they have to live within commuting distance, or at least within flying distance. An employee may prefer to work from Bali, but if he has to go into the office twice a month, he can't (reasonably) do that.
• Consultant32452 6y ago
  I wonder if there's a strong correlation between big city/rural dwellers and the work from home joy. I live at the edge of the suburbs with a nice yard that looks out onto the woods. I have a large home with plenty of space. I love working from home. If I lived in a tiny efficiency apartment in a big city I would hate being there all day, even though I might enjoy the benefits afforded to me by living close to lots of live entertainment, etc.
• fancyfish 6y ago
  This is a great (and refreshing) perspective on how to inspire employees by crafting a truly flexible work environment. We (especially the creative class) aren’t cogs to clock in 40 hours a week and leave. We want more from our employers. The details of an ideal employee policy can be debated, but you’re right there with the 4 hours hard work, 2 hours social interaction, and the rest up to the employee. Especially a free trip with the staff every now and then to bond. Something you can’t really find at big companies anymore.