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People are saying be productive but it's going to come down to company policy rather than your direct manager. Unfortunately the only way company policy is infl

People are saying be productive but it's going to come down to company policy rather than your direct manager. Unfortunately the only way company policy is influenced is if people leave

ergocoder 5y ago
Manager probably doesn't care much. It's the company policy. Now if your team is all going well, sure. If there is a problem, the first thing other people will question is WFH since it's not a norm. They will make all sorts of excuses like "that team doesn't WFH and does well" or "that team can WFH because they are better engineers". This thing is very very hard to quantify.
- e-clinton 5y ago
  My previous company didn’t have a WFH policy and I made one up for the dev department. Other teams don’t care where devs are working from as long as A) things are getting done B) devs are accessible when needed.
geofft 5y ago
Put another way: Just like you're being told by your manager that you must report to the office, your manager is being told by their manager that they have no authority to override that. If your manager lets you work from home without permission, they're endangering their own job, just like you'd be endangering your own job if you continue to work from home without permission. You need your manager to decide it's a good idea to go to their manager and ask for an exception, and so forth, until you find someone with the power to grant exceptions (or set policy). That generally requires one of two things: Either you are an extraordinarily valuable employee, such that your manager feels compelled to bring this up with their manager and feels like they have a chance of success at that argument (either because senior management knows your value, or senior management trusts your direct manager), or a whole lot of ordinarily valuable employees all ask the same thing.
codegeek 5y ago
Depends on the company size. Smaller companies have more flexibility since you can directly talk to the CEO or founder. They don't have too much red tape or HR rules as well. In that case, it comes down the candidate and their record and ability to negotiate.

People are saying be productive but it's going to come down to company policy rather than your direct manager. Unfortunately the only way company policy is influenced is if people leave

ergocoder 5y ago

Manager probably doesn't care much. It's the company policy. Now if your team is all going well, sure. If there is a problem, the first thing other people will question is WFH since it's not a norm. They will make all sorts of excuses like "that team doesn't WFH and does well" or "that team can WFH because they are better engineers". This thing is very very hard to quantify.

e-clinton 5y ago
My previous company didn’t have a WFH policy and I made one up for the dev department. Other teams don’t care where devs are working from as long as A) things are getting done B) devs are accessible when needed.

geofft 5y ago

Put another way: Just like you're being told by your manager that you must report to the office, your manager is being told by their manager that they have no authority to override that. If your manager lets you work from home without permission, they're endangering their own job, just like you'd be endangering your own job if you continue to work from home without permission. You need your manager to decide it's a good idea to go to their manager and ask for an exception, and so forth, until you find someone with the power to grant exceptions (or set policy). That generally requires one of two things: Either you are an extraordinarily valuable employee, such that your manager feels compelled to bring this up with their manager and feels like they have a chance of success at that argument (either because senior management knows your value, or senior management trusts your direct manager), or a whole lot of ordinarily valuable employees all ask the same thing.

codegeek 5y ago

Depends on the company size. Smaller companies have more flexibility since you can directly talk to the CEO or founder. They don't have too much red tape or HR rules as well. In that case, it comes down the candidate and their record and ability to negotiate.