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> * I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. This is imho the worst part of WFH. Some people come to work at 6:00 and

> * I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. This is imho the worst part of WFH. Some people come to work at 6:00 and go home at 14:00, some come at 10:00 and leave at 18:00, and some even later. If you're in an office, the latecomer can just check the early birds office, "oh, you're here, can we ..." / "he's not here anymore, this will wait 'till tomorrow". With WFH it's constant emails and work calls, and for a lot of people it's hard to separate work/home, turn the work phone off (especially in small companies, where before the plague, if someone called you in the afternoon, it usually meant something horrible has happened). The second thing i'd miss is all the non-work activities that happen at work, from random chatter, to lunch, practical jokes, etc. Also when dealing with clients, the after-meeting-beer usually solved a lot of problems with a lot of one-on-one chats, and informal talks about rwhat the issues are,... this is hard to do on zoom/teams/..., especially if there is a higher-up present, and the engineers are afraid to honestly say what's bothering them during day-to-day work.

swiley 5y ago
I guess I should be happy that I work at a company with people in the EU. If you get up early and stop replying to emails after 15:00-16:00 (when there isn't something scheduled going on) no one gets surprised.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I work in EU too, but a lot of coders around here start at 10:00+.. especially in smaller companies.
  - swiley 5y ago
    I guess I wasn't clear, I work on the east coast of the US but having EU employees means people are used to some of their coworkers not being available all the time.
    - lozaning 5y ago
      I worked on a project for a big Korean company that required me to work onsite with a team in Dusseldorf. I happened to be there over Easter weekend and the project was behind. I inquired as to when we would meet up to keep working, and they told me the office would be closed, so naturally I asked what coffee shop/cafe/space or whatever we'd work at instead. The team there was shocked and maybe offended even, and I was informed it was verboten to work any of the next 3 days. Differences in work cultures globally are staggering.
      - swiley 5y ago
        It's not even really a culture thing it's a "the earth isn't flat so we're awake at different times" thing.
      - iab 5y ago
        Kinda interesting how “going the extra mile” in the US is viewed as ineptitude in either planning or execution in Germany. Also how the phrase “this is unacceptable” is used very differently in the same places.
      - mtnGoat 5y ago
        I’d say that’s a company culture thing, not a German thing. I lived and worked in Austria and my teams in Austria and Germany were both willing to work extra and on holidays when needed.
        aweb 5y ago
        That's definitely uncommon in Europe to work on weekends/holidays/vacation. It's quite frowned upon, and for good reason IMO. Work life balance is important, and there's other stuff to do in life than work.
      - 3np 5y ago
        Would you be equally shocked if this was Thanksgiving in the US or Chinese New Year in China? In my experience it really depends on the individual, team, and company just how strict people are with not working unscheduled overtime on national holidays to crunch a release or not. But assuming that it will happen, that's a first for me.
square_usual 5y ago
The unfortunate part of this is that once people start responding to e-mails at 12AM, suddenly everybody is expected to respond at 12AM. It's a race to the bottom when separation from work and home life isn't really mandated. I've faced this first hand as I switch from one company to another. In my previous place, we enforced a hard limit on when we could be expected to respond, and nobody ever messaged me on slack/ sent me an e-mail after that. At my new place, people are constantly e-mailing and messaging into the small hours of the night. It's tiring to watch.
- leipert 5y ago
  There are German companies where the email server doesn’t deliver Emails until the next morning. This obviously works best if all are in one time zone, but it’d be amazing if one could set: working from X to Y and emails just stop arriving after Y.
- detaro 5y ago
  The expected part is very much a culture thing that doesn't have to happen. My coworkers work all kinds of weird schedules, so there really is no basis to assume that someone will respond at a specific time if you haven't scheduled that with them, and it works just fine. I guess in a place where only a few people deviate that might be trickier to establish.
KronisLV 5y ago
> With WFH it's constant emails and work calls... I'm not sure i can agree with that. Most of the communication in my office is a quick message in Slack, or a comment in Jira. I feel like this is perhaps more of a matter between synchronous and asynchronous communication, GitLab has wrote a bit about this in their guide to remote work: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/

swiley 5y ago

I guess I should be happy that I work at a company with people in the EU. If you get up early and stop replying to emails after 15:00-16:00 (when there isn't something scheduled going on) no one gets surprised.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
I work in EU too, but a lot of coders around here start at 10:00+.. especially in smaller companies.
- swiley 5y ago
  I guess I wasn't clear, I work on the east coast of the US but having EU employees means people are used to some of their coworkers not being available all the time.
  - lozaning 5y ago
    I worked on a project for a big Korean company that required me to work onsite with a team in Dusseldorf. I happened to be there over Easter weekend and the project was behind. I inquired as to when we would meet up to keep working, and they told me the office would be closed, so naturally I asked what coffee shop/cafe/space or whatever we'd work at instead. The team there was shocked and maybe offended even, and I was informed it was verboten to work any of the next 3 days. Differences in work cultures globally are staggering.
    - swiley 5y ago
      It's not even really a culture thing it's a "the earth isn't flat so we're awake at different times" thing.
    - iab 5y ago
      Kinda interesting how “going the extra mile” in the US is viewed as ineptitude in either planning or execution in Germany. Also how the phrase “this is unacceptable” is used very differently in the same places.
    - mtnGoat 5y ago
      I’d say that’s a company culture thing, not a German thing. I lived and worked in Austria and my teams in Austria and Germany were both willing to work extra and on holidays when needed.
      - aweb 5y ago
        That's definitely uncommon in Europe to work on weekends/holidays/vacation. It's quite frowned upon, and for good reason IMO. Work life balance is important, and there's other stuff to do in life than work.
    - 3np 5y ago
      Would you be equally shocked if this was Thanksgiving in the US or Chinese New Year in China? In my experience it really depends on the individual, team, and company just how strict people are with not working unscheduled overtime on national holidays to crunch a release or not. But assuming that it will happen, that's a first for me.

square_usual 5y ago

The unfortunate part of this is that once people start responding to e-mails at 12AM, suddenly everybody is expected to respond at 12AM. It's a race to the bottom when separation from work and home life isn't really mandated. I've faced this first hand as I switch from one company to another. In my previous place, we enforced a hard limit on when we could be expected to respond, and nobody ever messaged me on slack/ sent me an e-mail after that. At my new place, people are constantly e-mailing and messaging into the small hours of the night. It's tiring to watch.

leipert 5y ago
There are German companies where the email server doesn’t deliver Emails until the next morning. This obviously works best if all are in one time zone, but it’d be amazing if one could set: working from X to Y and emails just stop arriving after Y.
detaro 5y ago
The expected part is very much a culture thing that doesn't have to happen. My coworkers work all kinds of weird schedules, so there really is no basis to assume that someone will respond at a specific time if you haven't scheduled that with them, and it works just fine. I guess in a place where only a few people deviate that might be trickier to establish.

KronisLV 5y ago

> With WFH it's constant emails and work calls... I'm not sure i can agree with that. Most of the communication in my office is a quick message in Slack, or a comment in Jira. I feel like this is perhaps more of a matter between synchronous and asynchronous communication, GitLab has wrote a bit about this in their guide to remote work: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/