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Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work

74 points by tate 5y ago

kordlessagain 5y ago
I’m going to waste my time writing an opinion article that makes a polarized claim about something I know or care nothing about. “Hacker” is being left out of news!
- 3327 5y ago
  I was about to say. Click bait title and some nonsense claim with nothing concrete to back it. I believe back in the day the term would be “hog wash”
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Can anyone enumerate "good CEO" examples? Specific CEOs of specific companies. I'd argue what will get it to happen is upping the workplace quality. The push to get people back to work is inevitable. Of course they could do what economics says to do: provide incentives to enhance the utility to the worker of going into work vs staying home. Food. Workout. Food. Commuter perks (free bus card, free bikeshare, free scootershare). Food. CHILDCARE (a whole new can of beans, who with kids does not recognize the paramount need for nationalized child care now). Did I mention food?
- tediousdemise 5y ago
  Isn’t public schooling sufficient childcare? Not too sure how I feel about my tax dollars going toward superfluous childcare for other people’s kids. Especially when I’ve made the conscious decision to not have a child myself due to the environmental impact. Echo everything else you said, though.
  - yummypaint 5y ago
    I don't have kids either and i want my tax money to pay for pre-k and quality childcare for other people's kids. They are children now but they will be our future colleagues, caretakers, and fellow citizens. We all have a personal stake in the fate of the next generation.
    - tediousdemise 5y ago
      I think the onus of childcare is on the parents, not society. If one is relying on family, friends, and society at large to raise their kids, I don’t think they should have had them in the first place.
      - acuozzo 5y ago
        I have two young boys. The older one is autistic. I earn a decent amount per year working as a computer programmer just as I did when they were born. If I were to survive a stroke tomorrow, would you tell me that I shouldn't have had them in the first place since I'd require all kinds of assistance to care for them? Would you support legislation to ensure that I don't get help?
        tediousdemise 5y ago
        This is an exceptional edge case and I absolutely think that additional assistance would be in order. But generally, emergency funds, health insurance, disability assistance, and welfare are all able to alleviate this type of situation. If you intentionally have kids, you should have had an emergency fund stockpiled long before conception.
        acuozzo 5y ago
        > This is an exceptional edge case It is, but it wouldn't be challenging to construct far less exceptional cases to consider. * workers of dangerous jobs e.g. oil rigs and mining * workers in seemingly-stable jobs that are suddenly outsourced e.g. GMC factory workers in Flint, MI * workers in industries on the verge of collapse e.g. milkmen and telephone switchboard operators * lost income after the birth of a disabled child forcing one parent to stay home full-time > If you intentionally have kids, you should have had an emergency fund stockpiled long before conception. By shifting 100% of the responsibility to the parents, you're ignoring the issue of far greater importance: the wellbeing of the children. Telling parents that they should have planned better and saved more does nothing for their children, but those children WILL have an impact on the future society you inhabit.
  - burtmurphy1 5y ago
    Is your sole reasoning for not having kids because of the environmental impact or is there another reason? If everyone that cared for the environment took this stance - the only people alive in 100 years would be those that care nothing for the environment.
    - tediousdemise 5y ago
      Environmental impact is probably the biggest factor. I also just don’t have any motivation or desire to have children. Parenting is a lifelong commitment and requires responsibilities beyond that which I am willing to commit. I think bringing new carbon generators, who are capable of profound suffering, into the world would be doing a disservice to the environment, everyone around me, myself, and most importantly the child.
      - romski 5y ago
        User name checks out
- graphtrader 5y ago
  Agree 100% What about clothing? Why doesn't the office have a nice clothing store so I can properly dress for the office? What if I need to get my car repaired? You are telling me the office can't have an on site mechanic? Oil change while I work would be a nice perk. Email me when it is done. I don't need Home Depot but what about some packages of mulch for the lawn at a reasonable price? I am so sick of this.
  - posixplz 5y ago
    Really, slippery slope fallacy over employers providing food to workers? The free food does a good job of keeping me in the building. I honestly can’t understand why anyone would be opposed to office perks.
  - schwartzworld 5y ago
    You joke, but free clothes (swag) is a pretty common thing in startup culture. > You are telling me the office can't have an on site mechanic? I worked in an office with an on-site bike mechanic. His job wasn't to specifically serve the staff but he would help us often, at a company where most people biked to work. Well-maintained vehicles break down less, and the mechanic would often make people let him change their bald tires or lube their rusty chains. No doubt it kept people from being late to work, or having to take time out of their work day to bring their bikes to a shop.
Pet_Ant 5y ago
I don't know. I started a new job right before Covid. I have never met any of my remaining coworkers (my onboarders both left). I don't care about them. I'm definitely less willing to do something extra to help them out like take a ticket so they aren't stressing their anniversary etc. I feel like remote work brings out the psychopathy in (some?) of us because they aren't real people in any tangible sense.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- echlebek 5y ago
  Yikes. I've been remote working for 4 years and I care a great deal about my coworkers, including the ones I've never met face to face. Hopefully they don't feel the same way you do.
- iamleppert 5y ago
  Sounds like you wouldn't be that pleasant of a person to work with in person, either.
- bg4 5y ago
  I think the problem here is you. I've been working remote for years and very much care about them and would take tickets for them to help them out for anniversaries or whatever.
  - after_care 5y ago
    I don’t the root comment has a problem, I think different people relate to other people differently. For some (maybe a lot) of people there is no substitute for breathing the same air as someone else.
- Otek 5y ago
  I think you got unfairly roasted on just saying how YOU feel about remote work and your coworkers. I’d like to remind some people that a job is sometimes just a job, and you don’t even have to like your coworkers, yet have a personal relationship with them. OP just said he don’t want do anything extra for them and I think that’s fair, as long as he don’t expect them to help him out.
slownews45 5y ago
God - what a random diatribe backed with no data. If we are doing anecdotes The staff on-site or asking to come back on-site at my job are all the go-getters. Seriously. It's the folks you least care about coming onsite because they are on all the time at home too, work weekends etc. The staff you have to follow-up on to know what is going on - radio silence and when there is talk of coming back to the office have extreme concerns over COVID (even though they take time to travel during the pandemic and office will be 100% vaccinated only in an area with < 1.5% positive test rates and < 3 per 100K infection rates). We've seen a pretty big split like this in the schools as well. A bunch of more energetic seeming charter and other schools - full bore for months with lots of creative solutions. The public schools - closed and remote only education. I guess those heads of school that are avoiding remote are "bad" - total BS. Let's stop with these garbage headlines and articles unless someone has some real data.
- qmall 5y ago
  Are the go getters delivering or are they present on Slack all the time? In my company, presence ("on all the time") is inversely correlated with output. Of course some of the talkers got promoted anyway ...
  - slownews45 5y ago
    We do almost no chatting on slack. We get notifications from project mgmt software that items are ready for action. We have maybe 0-2 messages a day in shared channels. Ie, basically NEVER - we do use DM's a lot during remote work for teams which then we usually launch a screen share to work through stuff together on (in pairs 99% of the time).
iamleppert 5y ago
I just checked out The Washingtonian https://www.washingtonian.com/ https://www.washingtonian.com/ and it looks like a spam content site to me. Terrible design.
jasonshen 5y ago
For those who don’t know, OP was a PM at Microsoft in the Gates era, wrote several books on innovation and project management, went back to work as a fully remote Engineering Manager at Automattic (Wordpress) then wrote a book about remote work called A Year Without Pants. So his perspective is very tech-oriented.

74 points by tate 5y ago

I’m going to waste my time writing an opinion article that makes a polarized claim about something I know or care nothing about. “Hacker” is being left out of news!

3327 5y ago
I was about to say. Click bait title and some nonsense claim with nothing concrete to back it. I believe back in the day the term would be “hog wash”

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

Can anyone enumerate "good CEO" examples? Specific CEOs of specific companies. I'd argue what will get it to happen is upping the workplace quality. The push to get people back to work is inevitable. Of course they could do what economics says to do: provide incentives to enhance the utility to the worker of going into work vs staying home. Food. Workout. Food. Commuter perks (free bus card, free bikeshare, free scootershare). Food. CHILDCARE (a whole new can of beans, who with kids does not recognize the paramount need for nationalized child care now). Did I mention food?

tediousdemise 5y ago
Isn’t public schooling sufficient childcare? Not too sure how I feel about my tax dollars going toward superfluous childcare for other people’s kids. Especially when I’ve made the conscious decision to not have a child myself due to the environmental impact. Echo everything else you said, though.
- yummypaint 5y ago
  I don't have kids either and i want my tax money to pay for pre-k and quality childcare for other people's kids. They are children now but they will be our future colleagues, caretakers, and fellow citizens. We all have a personal stake in the fate of the next generation.
  - tediousdemise 5y ago
    I think the onus of childcare is on the parents, not society. If one is relying on family, friends, and society at large to raise their kids, I don’t think they should have had them in the first place.
    - acuozzo 5y ago
      I have two young boys. The older one is autistic. I earn a decent amount per year working as a computer programmer just as I did when they were born. If I were to survive a stroke tomorrow, would you tell me that I shouldn't have had them in the first place since I'd require all kinds of assistance to care for them? Would you support legislation to ensure that I don't get help?
      - tediousdemise 5y ago
        This is an exceptional edge case and I absolutely think that additional assistance would be in order. But generally, emergency funds, health insurance, disability assistance, and welfare are all able to alleviate this type of situation. If you intentionally have kids, you should have had an emergency fund stockpiled long before conception.
        acuozzo 5y ago
        > This is an exceptional edge case It is, but it wouldn't be challenging to construct far less exceptional cases to consider. * workers of dangerous jobs e.g. oil rigs and mining * workers in seemingly-stable jobs that are suddenly outsourced e.g. GMC factory workers in Flint, MI * workers in industries on the verge of collapse e.g. milkmen and telephone switchboard operators * lost income after the birth of a disabled child forcing one parent to stay home full-time > If you intentionally have kids, you should have had an emergency fund stockpiled long before conception. By shifting 100% of the responsibility to the parents, you're ignoring the issue of far greater importance: the wellbeing of the children. Telling parents that they should have planned better and saved more does nothing for their children, but those children WILL have an impact on the future society you inhabit.
- burtmurphy1 5y ago
  Is your sole reasoning for not having kids because of the environmental impact or is there another reason? If everyone that cared for the environment took this stance - the only people alive in 100 years would be those that care nothing for the environment.
  - tediousdemise 5y ago
    Environmental impact is probably the biggest factor. I also just don’t have any motivation or desire to have children. Parenting is a lifelong commitment and requires responsibilities beyond that which I am willing to commit. I think bringing new carbon generators, who are capable of profound suffering, into the world would be doing a disservice to the environment, everyone around me, myself, and most importantly the child.
    - romski 5y ago
      User name checks out
graphtrader 5y ago
Agree 100% What about clothing? Why doesn't the office have a nice clothing store so I can properly dress for the office? What if I need to get my car repaired? You are telling me the office can't have an on site mechanic? Oil change while I work would be a nice perk. Email me when it is done. I don't need Home Depot but what about some packages of mulch for the lawn at a reasonable price? I am so sick of this.
- posixplz 5y ago
  Really, slippery slope fallacy over employers providing food to workers? The free food does a good job of keeping me in the building. I honestly can’t understand why anyone would be opposed to office perks.
- schwartzworld 5y ago
  You joke, but free clothes (swag) is a pretty common thing in startup culture. > You are telling me the office can't have an on site mechanic? I worked in an office with an on-site bike mechanic. His job wasn't to specifically serve the staff but he would help us often, at a company where most people biked to work. Well-maintained vehicles break down less, and the mechanic would often make people let him change their bald tires or lube their rusty chains. No doubt it kept people from being late to work, or having to take time out of their work day to bring their bikes to a shop.

Pet_Ant 5y ago

I don't know. I started a new job right before Covid. I have never met any of my remaining coworkers (my onboarders both left). I don't care about them. I'm definitely less willing to do something extra to help them out like take a ticket so they aren't stressing their anniversary etc. I feel like remote work brings out the psychopathy in (some?) of us because they aren't real people in any tangible sense.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
echlebek 5y ago
Yikes. I've been remote working for 4 years and I care a great deal about my coworkers, including the ones I've never met face to face. Hopefully they don't feel the same way you do.
iamleppert 5y ago
Sounds like you wouldn't be that pleasant of a person to work with in person, either.
bg4 5y ago
I think the problem here is you. I've been working remote for years and very much care about them and would take tickets for them to help them out for anniversaries or whatever.
- after_care 5y ago
  I don’t the root comment has a problem, I think different people relate to other people differently. For some (maybe a lot) of people there is no substitute for breathing the same air as someone else.
Otek 5y ago
I think you got unfairly roasted on just saying how YOU feel about remote work and your coworkers. I’d like to remind some people that a job is sometimes just a job, and you don’t even have to like your coworkers, yet have a personal relationship with them. OP just said he don’t want do anything extra for them and I think that’s fair, as long as he don’t expect them to help him out.

slownews45 5y ago

God - what a random diatribe backed with no data. If we are doing anecdotes The staff on-site or asking to come back on-site at my job are all the go-getters. Seriously. It's the folks you least care about coming onsite because they are on all the time at home too, work weekends etc. The staff you have to follow-up on to know what is going on - radio silence and when there is talk of coming back to the office have extreme concerns over COVID (even though they take time to travel during the pandemic and office will be 100% vaccinated only in an area with < 1.5% positive test rates and < 3 per 100K infection rates). We've seen a pretty big split like this in the schools as well. A bunch of more energetic seeming charter and other schools - full bore for months with lots of creative solutions. The public schools - closed and remote only education. I guess those heads of school that are avoiding remote are "bad" - total BS. Let's stop with these garbage headlines and articles unless someone has some real data.

qmall 5y ago
Are the go getters delivering or are they present on Slack all the time? In my company, presence ("on all the time") is inversely correlated with output. Of course some of the talkers got promoted anyway ...
- slownews45 5y ago
  We do almost no chatting on slack. We get notifications from project mgmt software that items are ready for action. We have maybe 0-2 messages a day in shared channels. Ie, basically NEVER - we do use DM's a lot during remote work for teams which then we usually launch a screen share to work through stuff together on (in pairs 99% of the time).

iamleppert 5y ago

I just checked out The Washingtonian https://www.washingtonian.com/ https://www.washingtonian.com/ and it looks like a spam content site to me. Terrible design.

jasonshen 5y ago

For those who don’t know, OP was a PM at Microsoft in the Gates era, wrote several books on innovation and project management, went back to work as a fully remote Engineering Manager at Automattic (Wordpress) then wrote a book about remote work called A Year Without Pants. So his perspective is very tech-oriented.