16 ms·

We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons

144 points by tate 5y ago

namanyayg 5y ago
I've run my company remotely since inception, I hate the idea of making people commute for free. But one thing I've struggled with since growing to a size where the number of employees is more than I can keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success. Can anyone share any resources on how to handle that? What sort of metrics can one use to realistically measure the performance of a developer or designer where work consists of changing requirments & lots of back and forth? How to handle employees who seem to be working low hours or slacking off? How to reward those which have been working efficiently & productively? Any advice or experiences will be appreciated.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  If you can't keep it all in your head then you could type it in a file. But sounds like you may need another manager or lead or two to help with tracking success. The other thing you can do is track team success based on project. You would not want to use metrics but rather knowledge of the actual effectiveness of the programmer. Evaluating this requires someone with programming knowledge who can see first-hand what their code is and what they accomplish on the project. Again look at the work output rather than your guesses about their hours. If they are accomplishing their tasks then they are not slacking off. If they are not accomplishing their tasks, make sure they have motivating work and autonomy. Having covered all of the above, the next step if you really have a problem is a serious warning and probably just firing them if/when they don't radically change their behavior which is somewhat unlikely to occur.
- comprev 5y ago
  Do they deliver what is expected of them? What happens if you ask for more (as a test to see if they're slacking) over a period of weeks?
  - luffapi 5y ago
    Please don’t “test” to see if people are slacking when they’re wfh. Successful wfh requires a high degree of trust. Everyone benefits from that increased trust. It’s an unspoken upside of wfh. > Do they deliver what is expected of them? If the answer to this question is “yes”, then congrats! You have a great team and shouldn’t waste your energy (and their well-being) worrying if they are working hard or not.
  - onebot 5y ago
    This is hard. Developers set expectations. How would a non-engineer manager have any idea if something should take hours vs days? Most managers ask engineers to estimate. On the flip side, comparatively, it is much easier to compare performance vs other engineers working on the same project. At least for outliers.
  - frumper 5y ago
    I'd be willing to flex a little and work a little longer to get more done short term for a cause, but if that became the new norm then I've just taken a pay cut and that's not an ok approach to it. A manager can always keep asking for more. That sounds like greed and costly employee turnover.
- Retric 5y ago
  One of the few good parts of scrum is to have developers judge difficulty before assigning work. It’s not going to be completely accurate so 800 vs 900 units over a few months is probably meaningless. However, very large differences are a sign of problems as are code quality issues etc. At a more basic level measuring value created vs what you pay someone is far more important than measuring hours worked.
- Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
  Maybe change the scope you assess, and dive if you see problem. Or find a way to create smaller team, and delegate to the team lead the appreciation? Those are my usual ways of assessing teams when they grow too big. Don’t forget also that the bigger the team, the harder it is to manage, so splitting is always a good options!
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Delegate. Delegate that supervision of some people to someone else. That's what middle management is for - there's a limit on how many direct reports you can effectively handle; someone does need to "keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success", but above a certain number (whatever that is for you personally) you can't be that someone for everyone in your company.
- CipherThrowaway 5y ago
  In addition to what others have said my advice would be to shift focus from individuals (component-level) to teams and the broader organization (system-level).
MattGaiser 5y ago
> I can't imagine another day of long Zoom meetings. The pandemic really reinforced to me that so many of these are pointless, at least for many participants. I have played games with co-workers, gone to sleep, done freelance work, had lunch (away from my desk), and all manner of other things through pretty much every meeting over 1 hour that I have had this pandemic. Especially the ceremonies like retro (exercise in taking notes and throwing them away), sprint planning (creating a faux schedule and throwing it away as code is done when it is done), and even in many cases the daily standup. Ditto for departmental meetings. We cargo culted a lot of processes to WFH and will cargo cult them back upon return to office. What WFH lets me do is opt out of them and just have the conversation happen in the background instead of me being stuck in a meeting room.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  This one, I just don't get at all. If you have nothing to contribute to a meeting, and nothing to gain from listening, why are you joining the meeting to begin with? Just decline like a grown-up and get some actual work done. It doesn't do anyone any good to have you there on mute with the volume turned down, getting actual work done in the background. Nobody is going to notice you're gone, and if they do, who cares? You think the boss is going to sit there during the yearly performance review and say "Hmm, we were going to give Joe a raise, but I noticed that he skipped a lot of meetings where he wasn't really needed in the first place. Clearly bad performance!"
  - void_mint 5y ago
    > why are you joining the meeting to begin with? At companies that misuse meetings, most meetings are not optional to attend. Of course you could say "Well just don't go", but some people don't like getting fired over things like this. > Just decline like a grown-up and get some actual work done What a condescending way to communicate.
    - ssully 5y ago
      There is also the old adage that showing up is half the battle. Even if the company isn't in the habit of misusing meetings, showing up to meetings is important for establishing relationships with different people and departments. It sucks, but people are still social creatures, and meeting and talking to people face to face can have a strong lasting impression then a well written email.
robbie-c 5y ago
I've tried a bunch of online whiteboard tools to design stuff (where stuff could be system architecture, UI, a business process, whatever), and nothing beats a whiteboard + post-its. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, it's possible, and I'd love to have some great counter-examples. Until then, I think that teams that can meet up in person will, on average, win over those who can't. Other days I just have long list of individual tasks that I want to get through without being distracted. On those days I'd love to just work from home, have space to dramatically crash on my bed to think about things, go for walks, etc. With these two things combined I think the hybrid approach is probably going to win out, either where employees can use their own judgement when to WFH, or maybe having a system around particular days of the week.
- void_mint 5y ago
  I think it has to do with expressiveness. Mice + online whiteboarding tools are always a hassle, and are far far less expressive than just using your hands to draw shapes/words on a whiteboard. I don't really think online tools can replicate this process because of how hands-on it is. It's the same reason it's harder to draw on a WACOM vs. a piece of paper. Being able to quickly draw some things that may or may not make sense, and then have someone else quickly draw on top of what you drew, and then sharing those ideas, is really hard to replicate online. I don't think any of this is an argument against true WFH, I just think you'd have to change your process to accommodate the lack of interactive whiteboarding. RFPs + doc reviews + (for really big projects) in person quarterlies are definitely good enough, to me.
  - marcind 5y ago
    Bingo - well said: "Being able to quickly draw some things that may or may not make sense, and then have someone else quickly draw on top of what you drew, and then sharing those ideas, is really hard to replicate online." This is exactly what ShareTheBoard is aiming to deliver. The last piece of the puzzle are digital annotations - those will be added in July. Please take a look and share some notes. I'm curious if our solution scratches the itch!
- dragontamer 5y ago
prpl 5y ago
People are not homogenous, and that includes both managers and employees. I’ve been working remote for the majority of 2.5 years now and I’m okay with it but it’s not great. Some coworkers absolutely lost empathy when they stopped seeing other people in person and I’m sure managing them is a struggle and the transition there has been awkward to say the least. Some are seemingly more productive but it’s not clear to be something which is sustainable/reliable because it’s not clear if they are more productive per hour worked or just working more hours because they didn’t have anything better to do. In short, I can’t exactly blame managers wanting to return to prior conditions to reduce the level of uncertainty, especially if the last year has been a mixed bag. I do think most people I know want to return to a hybrid model but there was already a significant part-time WFH culture before the pandemic (1-2 days a week). moving to WFH 2-4 days a week is probably where it will end up.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  I hope This is where it ends up. Not in some "One size fits all" solution, but management doing it's job and looking at the individual output of the contributors and asking what they prefer. Ostensibly, this is why our work places is stacked so tightly with middle management, in order to use "micro-management" not as a big brother hammer, but as a tool to help makers produce better and more comfortably. Doubtful, but one can hope. EDIT: Typo
system16 5y ago
I have a ridiculous sounding but very important to me reason for my preference to work at home: bowel movements. I worked with a small team in a small office. Everybody is typically at their desk in silence with the occasional manager or sales person on the phone. At predictable intervals throughout the day, someone will get up and be gone extra long. You know, and everybody else knows, they've gone for a number 2. Occasionally a manager will say "where's X" and someone will respond they stepped out. Nobody cares, and yes I'm being neurotic, but it is still slightly embarrassing that everybody _knows_. Again, nothing is devastating here, it's just... awkward. The fact that I can have my morning coffee and then when the urge comes, march off to my porcelain throne without anyone knowing better, answer Slack messages from my phone, etc. is one of the great joys of no longer being in an office for me.
- WFHRenaissance 5y ago
  This, and being able to shower whenever I want, and being able to put on presentable clothing for a Zoom call but then return to my sweatpants or even go topless... these sort of things are the reason I want to work from home. Maybe I'm crazy , or maladjusted, or maybe this is just the optimal way for me to work.
  - amotinga 5y ago
    Yes, agree. I can list a lot of simple things like that
- pram 5y ago
  Yeah no joke. I have IBS and I’m self conscious in the same way. It just adds a lot of unpleasant stress to my life over something so dumb. Not to mention I’ve worked in places with two bathrooms total for like 300+ males lol. Always a pleasure to be standing in line after lunch.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    Not to mention I’ve worked in places with two bathrooms total for like 300+ males lol. Always a pleasure to be standing in line after lunch. If you're based in the US, that's likely illegal. OSHA requires 1 toilet + 1 urinal per 50 employees (IIRC). CA and other states have slightly stricter requirements.
dvt 5y ago
There's a lot of vested interest in making people go back to the office. First, in large corporations, there's an entire army of middle managers that essentially do nothing but political machinations, micro-managing, and are the very definition of "market inefficiency." This has been accepted as a necessary evil of mega-corps but remote work threatens this delicate balance. Second, there's also a lot of external pressure that pushes the office building as a bastion of productivity. From commercial real estate landlords to agents to contractors: many livelihoods are reliant on the exorbitant inefficiencies of office real estate. I remember when I was working for Edmunds.com, our new offices were better than Google's (the company spared no expense on the suspended rotating Corvettes[1] and free delivered lunches). But just a few years later (I had quit a year prior), over 100 employees were laid off[2], including several friends. Their jobs may have been secure had it not been for the $XX million dollar "new office" project that mostly served as an Instagram photo op. In short, I think the argument in posts like this is oversimplified. It's not just "are people more productive from home?" -- the research has already been done on this, and we've all just been unwitting Guinea pigs for over a year now. The answer is a resounding "yes!" -- but that's hardly the only consideration. [1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/edmunds-coms-new-headquarters-makes-a-splash-on-silicon-beach.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/edmunds-coms-new-headquarte... [2] https://www.dailynews.com/2020/01/27/edmunds-com-to-lay-off-122-workers-at-its-santa-monica-office/ https://www.dailynews.com/2020/01/27/edmunds-com-to-lay-off-...
- throwaway284534 5y ago
  You’re right on just about everything, especially the external pressures that come with a fancy office. After 10 years of writing software, I’ve realized that being in an office is the opposite of productive when it comes to coding. The office is where your more career driven peers climb the hierarchy through soft skills, currying favors with each meeting and business lunch. This might sound a little like a brag but I was pretty good at playing that game. Doing it remotely is a bit harder, but it’s possible if you’re especially power hungry. Honestly though, it was stressful and not even all that fulfilling after rising up to engineering manager. Just getting to write code without bad managers who negatively affect my mood is all I’ve ever wanted, and I think there’s a lot of folks on this site that feel the same way.
lastofthemojito 5y ago
I think a lot of the responses to the straw man's questions are reasonable and thoughtful. But I think this sentiment: >I don't want to change the way I work, I just want people to join me in the office. My kids are driving me crazy. Is it weird to say I'm lonely; I miss my office friends. Deserves more respect. There are lot of types of people out there, and it seems like at least some of them are energized by being surrounded by smart people doing interesting work. For whatever reason, for some folks, exchanging Slack messages with those same smart people isn't similarly energizing compared to overhearing and jumping into interesting in-person conversations, etc. Maybe the tech giants need to be very accommodating to remote work in order to maintain their massive workforces, but I think a lot of typical companies could just say "we prefer being in-office" and find sufficient local folks to make that happen. That won't be for everyone. But there might be a sizeable enough cohort that performs better in the office that it'll be a good option for some companies.
- tablespoonsruby 5y ago
  In the same way that most people don't want to pair program full time, but it's perfectly legitimate for a company to decide it wants to be a full-time pairing shop if they think it's important enough to limit their hiring pool to people who want to pair program, it's perfectly legitimate for a company to decide it does not want to be remote.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    The problem is, as usual, one of power imbalance. Employers -- especially those in industries where unions and collective bargaining is unusual -- tend to have a lot more power in the relationship than their employees do, so they get to dictate terms, at least up until the point that labor willing to accept those terms becomes scarce. I think we can agree that if every software company decided that they were going to be a full-time pairing shop, that'd be a bad thing. In the same way, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to also suggest that it'd be bad if all employers decided that their workers had to be butts-in-seats 40 hours (or more) per week, no exceptions.
tablespoonsruby 5y ago
It's easy to win an argument against a straw man.
donretag 5y ago
"You can choose your friends independently of your work" I have met the majority of my friends at work. Once you pass your 20s, your exposure to strangers diminishes greatly. And many of us do not have kids.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  I think this is something that society can adjust to and be better off for it. People would have to be more intentional about meeting new people (seeking out meetups or whatever), but the results are likely to be better.
  - Pet_Ant 5y ago
    I find people just want to drink at home alone and watch Netflix. Good friends I had unworn for 20-odd years. WFH I imagine many will drink themselves to an early grave.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      In my experience most people who just want to drink at home and watch Netflix do it because the commute and the office drain them.
  - aisle 5y ago
    And intentional about exercising (as opposed to walking to BART or even directly to work for 20 mins), and intentional about eating right (instead of hopping over to Mixt Greens for a complex and healthy salad). And intentional about their work area actually being healthy (adequate sun exposure, free of radon in the case of a basement office). On and on and on. There is no way to guarantee all of this stuff for remote workers. The US was already becoming too isolated. I just don't understand all the optimism about people just figuring this stuff out, or even companies being able to help from a distance, at all. We're in for a ton of downstream problems.
    - danaris 5y ago
mkl95 5y ago
I have worked at a few places that oppose remote work, middle management and leadership at these places have some common traits: - They are control freaks. They feel the need to control their employees beyond their body of work, they want to control their lives. Useless "team bonding events" and intrusive behaviour are to be expected. - They are very bad at minding their own business. These people often have a mix of extroversion, lack of self awareness, and a frivolous personality. They will interrupt developers and other knowledge workers and they couldn't care less about the thousands of €/$ that they waste, missed deadlines, etc. Ironically these are the people whose strong point is supposed to be their soft skills.
Pet_Ant 5y ago
> You might also want to learn how to handle your kids while working from home. Work was a respite from home. Then came WFH and remote-learning. "Just figure things out" smacks of privilege. For starters, (almost) no one plans to be a single parent.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  I can sympathize with WFH with kids being challenging and even needing a change in norms if it continues, but I'm not sure how it quite applies to single parents in this context. If the single parent is working in an office, then they would need to figure out daycare for their children. If they WFH, they could still use the same daycare, or even save the money of daycare if they take on the burden of taking care of the children at home while working. Unless there was an underlying assumption that the office provided daycare that I missed. Or if this was more toward remote learning than remote work. Also, If the child is old enough to care for themselves at home, I don't see the issue of being in or out of office.
  - Pet_Ant 5y ago
    It's a soft thing. "I can't, I have to be in the office" gave you an out. I spoke with a coworker who is expected to still make dinner every night because she is home during every day. There are other situations where you don't want some flexibility because it's not an option you want to openly turn down. It's complicated, buh coming into an office gave an equal slate with everyone else there. It gave boundaries for those with trouble establishing their own.
    - Buttons840 5y ago
      This all seems to boil down to "we should work in the office because some people have personal and family issues". You mentioned privilege, I would consider those who are able to set company policy based on their own personal and family problems as the ones who are privileged.
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    > If they WFH, they could still use the same daycare, or even save the money of daycare if they take on the burden of taking care of the children at home while working. Depending on age, caring for kids is a full-time job. Perhaps even 1.25-1.5 full time jobs for 12-24 month olds. And even in those blissful moments when you don't need to be doing something specifically to care for them, they are either making noise or your brain is "on call" and splitting it's attention on work-and-watching-out-for-kid. It's hard. Luckily they sleep outside of work hours so parents can rest or catch up on work.
tester756 5y ago
>But we are paying all this money for office space, I don't want to waste that. let's rearrange office into gym, pub, strip club or something else and let's increase profits! Anyway, my co-workers want hybrid approach, 1-2day office, rest home, with exceptions for ppl that have long commute (tiny minority) - they can 100% remote. It sounds relatively reasonable
anoplus 5y ago
Not an employer, but I think I wouldn't hire people I can't trust anyway. We should care about delivery, not hours
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  Better yet: you have to trust the people you hire. You're trusting them with your trade secrets, you're trusting them with your reputation and brand, you're trusting them with your customers' data... etc.
dsugarman 5y ago
I'm pretty sure if this was a comment on HN it wouldn't meet the guideline standards, one snarky comment after another, "Stupid Reasons", "Sounds like you hire clowns".... The only reason this flies is that at this moment in time, it is the popular opinion. There is absolutely no empathy for any dissent for any reason and if you can't acknowledge the validity of any tradeoffs, I can't take you seriously. If this level of spin is necessary for getting your point across, you might want to reconsider your whole viewpoint.
meh99 5y ago
I get what the author is going for but agile, scrum, process, and such are ephemeral helicoptering. When the outputs are socially restricted, it’s not as if work from home is enabling free thought and novel productive agency. IMO it’s merely step 1 to on a long path ending the aristocratic control of productive output. Somehow what we do has no value unless they can own and speculate about its financial value. I see no merit in emotional grifting by a minority. That’s the binding we need to question. Not the middle manager who is aristocratic in title only. Privus lex should be universal. Currently it clearly favors those with financial control of the planet.
librish 5y ago
"I can't let me team work from home, they might not work hard." "Maybe you should work to improve what you measure and how you encourage feedback. It is normally a good idea to have ways to tell if people are doing a good job for what you are paying them to do." Measuring this stuff is really, really hard. If you're a manager who's non-technical it's almost impossible. No-one is saying that you can't slack off while at the office, or that you are guaranteed to slack off if you're working from home, but I think the discussion would be better if some of the more rabid pro-remote people acknowledged that for a lot of people there is a big difference. In the office: - You're limited in what slacking options are available - You're surrounded by coworkers who at least act as though they mostly work which can be motivating - You know your boss is around and could stop by, so you don't want to do something too outlandish At home you could go play your xbox for 8 hours while responding to DMs, and then say "investigated the bug, think I made some progress" during stand-up and in many places get away with that for a very, very long time. I don't think some lighter version of this is that uncommon. Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking.
- luffapi 5y ago
  > Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking. The position to take that leads not just to a successful wfh environment, but a great work environment in general is to not worry about “slacking off”. People are either producing results, or not. Especially in software development, developers will have spurts of great productivity and plenty of downtime. Trust, freedom and positive motivation are the keys to success.
  - librish 5y ago
    I think that assumes that you have reasonably self-motivating employees and work that is often interesting which definitely isn't always the case. How do you suggest a non-technical manager tells slacking apart from when things just take unexpectedly longer?
HellDunkel 5y ago
Work from home is great and should be kept as an option. I am a little surprise though that noone mentions this option must be earned by trust and experience over time.
fosk 5y ago
The two fronts of people shouting "Working at home" vs "I want the office" can be almost always summed up by how long the commute is: * Working at home: commute longer than 30-45 minutes. * Working at office: commute shorter than 30-45 minutes. Like everything in life, people optimize for different things in life. Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want, likewise optimizing for a bigger home 60 minutes away. I still have to hear somebody who lives at a short walk to the office, wanting to work from home, because it really wouldn't make any sense at all. Remove the commute from the equation, and the office is superior in any possible way: socially, economically, mentally. Now if they were to move 60 minutes away, I would understand why they would want to work from home. It's all a function of commute, which in and by itself is a choice in our highly paid industry.
- lostdog 5y ago
  > Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want It's a choice until your office moves or your job changes (and you had to balance other priorities). Mostly I agree with you though--if getting to the office is painless, then working from the office is great--except if you need to concentrate on your work. Any task that needs focus will take 2-3x as long to accomplish in an open office.
- WFHRenaissance 5y ago
  I'll be the token "15 minute commuter who doesn't want to go back" person (20 minute walk, 15 minute train). It's not all a function of commute. AMA
  - wccrawford 5y ago
    That's a 35 minute commute. All the travel time is included, not just the mechanized portion.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - WFHRenaissance 5y ago
cratermoon 5y ago
I do feel sympathetic to the families with two working parents and kids in school when the Inside Times came upon us. Some don't have a dedicated office space at all, those that do often don't have it set up for two people to work (dueling Zoom meetings are a problem). Most people in the US can't afford or even get enough bandwidth to support two simultaneous video conferences, much less three or more if there are kids doing remote school. Don't forget that with parents in the office and kids at school, lunch was pretty easy to take care of if you could afford to eat out, and often dinner would be scattered among friends. Now you've got to figure out food for the whole crowd. Ordering delivery gets expensive. That's the skeuomorphic way of working from home, of course. While the article is on point, it doesn't offer any suggestions for new ways to work. Where are the Forbes, WSJ, CNBC, Bloomberg, etc articles on embracing remote work?
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  > Most people in the US can't afford or even get enough bandwidth to support two simultaneous video conferences ?!?! How much bandwidth do you think it takes??? Zoom requirements: For group video calling: For 1080p HD video: 3.8Mbps/3.0Mbps (up/down) (Of course, most people probably don't even have 1080p webcams...)
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    It's not the download speed that's the problem, it's the upload. For one person, the FCC definition[1] of "broadband" speeds of 3MB/s up are barely sufficient. The are lots of places that barely break that. Now get both parents and the kid, there are plenty of folks who can't do it[2]. Sure, they could watch, but they'd have to have their video off. Better hope that some program doesn't try to download an update. We're all a bunch of relatively well-paid nerds here on HN, so we have better-than-average internet speeds. I'm still betting there's a portion of us living in the 'burbs who would struggle streaming more than 2 video conferences. 1 https://www.engadget.com/senators-fcc-change-definition-high-speed-broadband-222150947.html https://www.engadget.com/senators-fcc-change-definition-high... 2 https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/united-states https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/united-states
brandon272 5y ago
What I find interesting about work from home and flexible working schedules is that it seems like we are no closer to understanding optimal policy now than 10 years ago. I've seen this discussed on HN over and over and over in the 13 years I've been registered here. A year of WFH transformation under COVID seems to not have broadened our understanding of it, but rather simply exposed more people to the overall debate. Last week I watched the movie 'Nine to Five', which was released in 1980. In it, the characters were working toward equal pay and flexible work schedules. It was depressing to realize that for many people, what was considered radical in 1980 seems just as radical in 2021.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  > A year of WFH transformation under COVID seems to not have broadened our understanding of it That's because WFH is/has been be temporary for most in management (i.e. the people who could actually drive change to procedures to fit WFH better).
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
from previous threads, "I like working from home when everybody is working from home" is not the same thing as "I like working from home when some people are working from home and some people are grabbing lunch with the boss", and I think a lot of us are about to figure that out.
- WFHRenaissance 5y ago
  LOL, but what if I told you that both my boss and the best IC on the team are perma-remote, and my company still wants me at the office?
tamaharbor 5y ago
I’m good and productive working from home… until about 3:00 PM - that’s Judge Judy time!
giardini 5y ago
In the spirit of science (and as revitalized by the Covid Pandemic): What experimental studies prove that work from home is superior to work in the office (or vice versa)?
6510 5y ago
More logical than the appeal to tradition fallacy would be to say if one needs A, B and C to do the work D should not be required, D should not even be part of the conversation. One need a place where one can work [at home] if one fails at that for whatever reason a remote place might be an option. Just like proper training for a job one has to organize that themselves. I work a lot of night shifts. My employer doesn't provide a place to sleep during the day. Productivity is regularly hurt by peoples children, construction work etc etc Should the employer now provide office style bedrooms and expect everyone to sleep there? The office primarily exists for clients and investors to marvel at the marble floors, the fancy decorations, the smoothly shaved men in expensive suits, the open floor plan and many other D type rituals that after examining the price tag can only be considered a cult. Why not replace some of that with parents playing with their kids? Or should that be: Show kids how work is done? (if we for laughs pretend nothing else is important) Which kids would end up more productive? There is an expression in the Netherlands: "Dad is the man who cuts the meat on Sunday".
taylodl 5y ago
Working at home during the pandemic != remote working. Full stop. Remote working is not about never going to the office again and not seeing anyone on your team for incredibly long stretches of time. Remote workers are typically physically present with their coworkers several times per year - often for several days at a time. Smart companies will make those opportunities available for their fully-remote staff.

144 points by tate 5y ago

I've run my company remotely since inception, I hate the idea of making people commute for free. But one thing I've struggled with since growing to a size where the number of employees is more than I can keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success. Can anyone share any resources on how to handle that? What sort of metrics can one use to realistically measure the performance of a developer or designer where work consists of changing requirments & lots of back and forth? How to handle employees who seem to be working low hours or slacking off? How to reward those which have been working efficiently & productively? Any advice or experiences will be appreciated.

ilaksh 5y ago
If you can't keep it all in your head then you could type it in a file. But sounds like you may need another manager or lead or two to help with tracking success. The other thing you can do is track team success based on project. You would not want to use metrics but rather knowledge of the actual effectiveness of the programmer. Evaluating this requires someone with programming knowledge who can see first-hand what their code is and what they accomplish on the project. Again look at the work output rather than your guesses about their hours. If they are accomplishing their tasks then they are not slacking off. If they are not accomplishing their tasks, make sure they have motivating work and autonomy. Having covered all of the above, the next step if you really have a problem is a serious warning and probably just firing them if/when they don't radically change their behavior which is somewhat unlikely to occur.
comprev 5y ago
Do they deliver what is expected of them? What happens if you ask for more (as a test to see if they're slacking) over a period of weeks?
- luffapi 5y ago
  Please don’t “test” to see if people are slacking when they’re wfh. Successful wfh requires a high degree of trust. Everyone benefits from that increased trust. It’s an unspoken upside of wfh. > Do they deliver what is expected of them? If the answer to this question is “yes”, then congrats! You have a great team and shouldn’t waste your energy (and their well-being) worrying if they are working hard or not.
- onebot 5y ago
  This is hard. Developers set expectations. How would a non-engineer manager have any idea if something should take hours vs days? Most managers ask engineers to estimate. On the flip side, comparatively, it is much easier to compare performance vs other engineers working on the same project. At least for outliers.
- frumper 5y ago
  I'd be willing to flex a little and work a little longer to get more done short term for a cause, but if that became the new norm then I've just taken a pay cut and that's not an ok approach to it. A manager can always keep asking for more. That sounds like greed and costly employee turnover.
Retric 5y ago
One of the few good parts of scrum is to have developers judge difficulty before assigning work. It’s not going to be completely accurate so 800 vs 900 units over a few months is probably meaningless. However, very large differences are a sign of problems as are code quality issues etc. At a more basic level measuring value created vs what you pay someone is far more important than measuring hours worked.
Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
Maybe change the scope you assess, and dive if you see problem. Or find a way to create smaller team, and delegate to the team lead the appreciation? Those are my usual ways of assessing teams when they grow too big. Don’t forget also that the bigger the team, the harder it is to manage, so splitting is always a good options!
PeterisP 5y ago
Delegate. Delegate that supervision of some people to someone else. That's what middle management is for - there's a limit on how many direct reports you can effectively handle; someone does need to "keep mental track of is measuring individual performance and success", but above a certain number (whatever that is for you personally) you can't be that someone for everyone in your company.
CipherThrowaway 5y ago
In addition to what others have said my advice would be to shift focus from individuals (component-level) to teams and the broader organization (system-level).

MattGaiser 5y ago

> I can't imagine another day of long Zoom meetings. The pandemic really reinforced to me that so many of these are pointless, at least for many participants. I have played games with co-workers, gone to sleep, done freelance work, had lunch (away from my desk), and all manner of other things through pretty much every meeting over 1 hour that I have had this pandemic. Especially the ceremonies like retro (exercise in taking notes and throwing them away), sprint planning (creating a faux schedule and throwing it away as code is done when it is done), and even in many cases the daily standup. Ditto for departmental meetings. We cargo culted a lot of processes to WFH and will cargo cult them back upon return to office. What WFH lets me do is opt out of them and just have the conversation happen in the background instead of me being stuck in a meeting room.

ryandrake 5y ago
This one, I just don't get at all. If you have nothing to contribute to a meeting, and nothing to gain from listening, why are you joining the meeting to begin with? Just decline like a grown-up and get some actual work done. It doesn't do anyone any good to have you there on mute with the volume turned down, getting actual work done in the background. Nobody is going to notice you're gone, and if they do, who cares? You think the boss is going to sit there during the yearly performance review and say "Hmm, we were going to give Joe a raise, but I noticed that he skipped a lot of meetings where he wasn't really needed in the first place. Clearly bad performance!"
- void_mint 5y ago
  > why are you joining the meeting to begin with? At companies that misuse meetings, most meetings are not optional to attend. Of course you could say "Well just don't go", but some people don't like getting fired over things like this. > Just decline like a grown-up and get some actual work done What a condescending way to communicate.
  - ssully 5y ago
    There is also the old adage that showing up is half the battle. Even if the company isn't in the habit of misusing meetings, showing up to meetings is important for establishing relationships with different people and departments. It sucks, but people are still social creatures, and meeting and talking to people face to face can have a strong lasting impression then a well written email.

robbie-c 5y ago

I've tried a bunch of online whiteboard tools to design stuff (where stuff could be system architecture, UI, a business process, whatever), and nothing beats a whiteboard + post-its. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, it's possible, and I'd love to have some great counter-examples. Until then, I think that teams that can meet up in person will, on average, win over those who can't. Other days I just have long list of individual tasks that I want to get through without being distracted. On those days I'd love to just work from home, have space to dramatically crash on my bed to think about things, go for walks, etc. With these two things combined I think the hybrid approach is probably going to win out, either where employees can use their own judgement when to WFH, or maybe having a system around particular days of the week.

void_mint 5y ago
I think it has to do with expressiveness. Mice + online whiteboarding tools are always a hassle, and are far far less expressive than just using your hands to draw shapes/words on a whiteboard. I don't really think online tools can replicate this process because of how hands-on it is. It's the same reason it's harder to draw on a WACOM vs. a piece of paper. Being able to quickly draw some things that may or may not make sense, and then have someone else quickly draw on top of what you drew, and then sharing those ideas, is really hard to replicate online. I don't think any of this is an argument against true WFH, I just think you'd have to change your process to accommodate the lack of interactive whiteboarding. RFPs + doc reviews + (for really big projects) in person quarterlies are definitely good enough, to me.
- marcind 5y ago
  Bingo - well said: "Being able to quickly draw some things that may or may not make sense, and then have someone else quickly draw on top of what you drew, and then sharing those ideas, is really hard to replicate online." This is exactly what ShareTheBoard is aiming to deliver. The last piece of the puzzle are digital annotations - those will be added in July. Please take a look and share some notes. I'm curious if our solution scratches the itch!
dragontamer 5y ago

prpl 5y ago

People are not homogenous, and that includes both managers and employees. I’ve been working remote for the majority of 2.5 years now and I’m okay with it but it’s not great. Some coworkers absolutely lost empathy when they stopped seeing other people in person and I’m sure managing them is a struggle and the transition there has been awkward to say the least. Some are seemingly more productive but it’s not clear to be something which is sustainable/reliable because it’s not clear if they are more productive per hour worked or just working more hours because they didn’t have anything better to do. In short, I can’t exactly blame managers wanting to return to prior conditions to reduce the level of uncertainty, especially if the last year has been a mixed bag. I do think most people I know want to return to a hybrid model but there was already a significant part-time WFH culture before the pandemic (1-2 days a week). moving to WFH 2-4 days a week is probably where it will end up.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago
I hope This is where it ends up. Not in some "One size fits all" solution, but management doing it's job and looking at the individual output of the contributors and asking what they prefer. Ostensibly, this is why our work places is stacked so tightly with middle management, in order to use "micro-management" not as a big brother hammer, but as a tool to help makers produce better and more comfortably. Doubtful, but one can hope. EDIT: Typo

system16 5y ago

I have a ridiculous sounding but very important to me reason for my preference to work at home: bowel movements. I worked with a small team in a small office. Everybody is typically at their desk in silence with the occasional manager or sales person on the phone. At predictable intervals throughout the day, someone will get up and be gone extra long. You know, and everybody else knows, they've gone for a number 2. Occasionally a manager will say "where's X" and someone will respond they stepped out. Nobody cares, and yes I'm being neurotic, but it is still slightly embarrassing that everybody _knows_. Again, nothing is devastating here, it's just... awkward. The fact that I can have my morning coffee and then when the urge comes, march off to my porcelain throne without anyone knowing better, answer Slack messages from my phone, etc. is one of the great joys of no longer being in an office for me.

WFHRenaissance 5y ago
This, and being able to shower whenever I want, and being able to put on presentable clothing for a Zoom call but then return to my sweatpants or even go topless... these sort of things are the reason I want to work from home. Maybe I'm crazy , or maladjusted, or maybe this is just the optimal way for me to work.
- amotinga 5y ago
  Yes, agree. I can list a lot of simple things like that
pram 5y ago
Yeah no joke. I have IBS and I’m self conscious in the same way. It just adds a lot of unpleasant stress to my life over something so dumb. Not to mention I’ve worked in places with two bathrooms total for like 300+ males lol. Always a pleasure to be standing in line after lunch.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Not to mention I’ve worked in places with two bathrooms total for like 300+ males lol. Always a pleasure to be standing in line after lunch. If you're based in the US, that's likely illegal. OSHA requires 1 toilet + 1 urinal per 50 employees (IIRC). CA and other states have slightly stricter requirements.

dvt 5y ago

There's a lot of vested interest in making people go back to the office. First, in large corporations, there's an entire army of middle managers that essentially do nothing but political machinations, micro-managing, and are the very definition of "market inefficiency." This has been accepted as a necessary evil of mega-corps but remote work threatens this delicate balance. Second, there's also a lot of external pressure that pushes the office building as a bastion of productivity. From commercial real estate landlords to agents to contractors: many livelihoods are reliant on the exorbitant inefficiencies of office real estate. I remember when I was working for Edmunds.com, our new offices were better than Google's (the company spared no expense on the suspended rotating Corvettes[1] and free delivered lunches). But just a few years later (I had quit a year prior), over 100 employees were laid off[2], including several friends. Their jobs may have been secure had it not been for the $XX million dollar "new office" project that mostly served as an Instagram photo op. In short, I think the argument in posts like this is oversimplified. It's not just "are people more productive from home?" -- the research has already been done on this, and we've all just been unwitting Guinea pigs for over a year now. The answer is a resounding "yes!" -- but that's hardly the only consideration. [1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/edmunds-coms-new-headquarters-makes-a-splash-on-silicon-beach.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/edmunds-coms-new-headquarte... [2] https://www.dailynews.com/2020/01/27/edmunds-com-to-lay-off-122-workers-at-its-santa-monica-office/ https://www.dailynews.com/2020/01/27/edmunds-com-to-lay-off-...

throwaway284534 5y ago
You’re right on just about everything, especially the external pressures that come with a fancy office. After 10 years of writing software, I’ve realized that being in an office is the opposite of productive when it comes to coding. The office is where your more career driven peers climb the hierarchy through soft skills, currying favors with each meeting and business lunch. This might sound a little like a brag but I was pretty good at playing that game. Doing it remotely is a bit harder, but it’s possible if you’re especially power hungry. Honestly though, it was stressful and not even all that fulfilling after rising up to engineering manager. Just getting to write code without bad managers who negatively affect my mood is all I’ve ever wanted, and I think there’s a lot of folks on this site that feel the same way.

lastofthemojito 5y ago

I think a lot of the responses to the straw man's questions are reasonable and thoughtful. But I think this sentiment: >I don't want to change the way I work, I just want people to join me in the office. My kids are driving me crazy. Is it weird to say I'm lonely; I miss my office friends. Deserves more respect. There are lot of types of people out there, and it seems like at least some of them are energized by being surrounded by smart people doing interesting work. For whatever reason, for some folks, exchanging Slack messages with those same smart people isn't similarly energizing compared to overhearing and jumping into interesting in-person conversations, etc. Maybe the tech giants need to be very accommodating to remote work in order to maintain their massive workforces, but I think a lot of typical companies could just say "we prefer being in-office" and find sufficient local folks to make that happen. That won't be for everyone. But there might be a sizeable enough cohort that performs better in the office that it'll be a good option for some companies.

tablespoonsruby 5y ago
In the same way that most people don't want to pair program full time, but it's perfectly legitimate for a company to decide it wants to be a full-time pairing shop if they think it's important enough to limit their hiring pool to people who want to pair program, it's perfectly legitimate for a company to decide it does not want to be remote.
- kelnos 5y ago
  The problem is, as usual, one of power imbalance. Employers -- especially those in industries where unions and collective bargaining is unusual -- tend to have a lot more power in the relationship than their employees do, so they get to dictate terms, at least up until the point that labor willing to accept those terms becomes scarce. I think we can agree that if every software company decided that they were going to be a full-time pairing shop, that'd be a bad thing. In the same way, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to also suggest that it'd be bad if all employers decided that their workers had to be butts-in-seats 40 hours (or more) per week, no exceptions.

tablespoonsruby 5y ago

It's easy to win an argument against a straw man.

donretag 5y ago

"You can choose your friends independently of your work" I have met the majority of my friends at work. Once you pass your 20s, your exposure to strangers diminishes greatly. And many of us do not have kids.

andrewflnr 5y ago
I think this is something that society can adjust to and be better off for it. People would have to be more intentional about meeting new people (seeking out meetups or whatever), but the results are likely to be better.
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  I find people just want to drink at home alone and watch Netflix. Good friends I had unworn for 20-odd years. WFH I imagine many will drink themselves to an early grave.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    In my experience most people who just want to drink at home and watch Netflix do it because the commute and the office drain them.
- aisle 5y ago
  And intentional about exercising (as opposed to walking to BART or even directly to work for 20 mins), and intentional about eating right (instead of hopping over to Mixt Greens for a complex and healthy salad). And intentional about their work area actually being healthy (adequate sun exposure, free of radon in the case of a basement office). On and on and on. There is no way to guarantee all of this stuff for remote workers. The US was already becoming too isolated. I just don't understand all the optimism about people just figuring this stuff out, or even companies being able to help from a distance, at all. We're in for a ton of downstream problems.
  - danaris 5y ago

mkl95 5y ago

I have worked at a few places that oppose remote work, middle management and leadership at these places have some common traits: - They are control freaks. They feel the need to control their employees beyond their body of work, they want to control their lives. Useless "team bonding events" and intrusive behaviour are to be expected. - They are very bad at minding their own business. These people often have a mix of extroversion, lack of self awareness, and a frivolous personality. They will interrupt developers and other knowledge workers and they couldn't care less about the thousands of €/$ that they waste, missed deadlines, etc. Ironically these are the people whose strong point is supposed to be their soft skills.

Pet_Ant 5y ago

> You might also want to learn how to handle your kids while working from home. Work was a respite from home. Then came WFH and remote-learning. "Just figure things out" smacks of privilege. For starters, (almost) no one plans to be a single parent.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
I can sympathize with WFH with kids being challenging and even needing a change in norms if it continues, but I'm not sure how it quite applies to single parents in this context. If the single parent is working in an office, then they would need to figure out daycare for their children. If they WFH, they could still use the same daycare, or even save the money of daycare if they take on the burden of taking care of the children at home while working. Unless there was an underlying assumption that the office provided daycare that I missed. Or if this was more toward remote learning than remote work. Also, If the child is old enough to care for themselves at home, I don't see the issue of being in or out of office.
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  It's a soft thing. "I can't, I have to be in the office" gave you an out. I spoke with a coworker who is expected to still make dinner every night because she is home during every day. There are other situations where you don't want some flexibility because it's not an option you want to openly turn down. It's complicated, buh coming into an office gave an equal slate with everyone else there. It gave boundaries for those with trouble establishing their own.
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    This all seems to boil down to "we should work in the office because some people have personal and family issues". You mentioned privilege, I would consider those who are able to set company policy based on their own personal and family problems as the ones who are privileged.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  > If they WFH, they could still use the same daycare, or even save the money of daycare if they take on the burden of taking care of the children at home while working. Depending on age, caring for kids is a full-time job. Perhaps even 1.25-1.5 full time jobs for 12-24 month olds. And even in those blissful moments when you don't need to be doing something specifically to care for them, they are either making noise or your brain is "on call" and splitting it's attention on work-and-watching-out-for-kid. It's hard. Luckily they sleep outside of work hours so parents can rest or catch up on work.

tester756 5y ago

>But we are paying all this money for office space, I don't want to waste that. let's rearrange office into gym, pub, strip club or something else and let's increase profits! Anyway, my co-workers want hybrid approach, 1-2day office, rest home, with exceptions for ppl that have long commute (tiny minority) - they can 100% remote. It sounds relatively reasonable

anoplus 5y ago

Not an employer, but I think I wouldn't hire people I can't trust anyway. We should care about delivery, not hours

jfrunyon 5y ago
Better yet: you have to trust the people you hire. You're trusting them with your trade secrets, you're trusting them with your reputation and brand, you're trusting them with your customers' data... etc.

dsugarman 5y ago

I'm pretty sure if this was a comment on HN it wouldn't meet the guideline standards, one snarky comment after another, "Stupid Reasons", "Sounds like you hire clowns".... The only reason this flies is that at this moment in time, it is the popular opinion. There is absolutely no empathy for any dissent for any reason and if you can't acknowledge the validity of any tradeoffs, I can't take you seriously. If this level of spin is necessary for getting your point across, you might want to reconsider your whole viewpoint.

meh99 5y ago

I get what the author is going for but agile, scrum, process, and such are ephemeral helicoptering. When the outputs are socially restricted, it’s not as if work from home is enabling free thought and novel productive agency. IMO it’s merely step 1 to on a long path ending the aristocratic control of productive output. Somehow what we do has no value unless they can own and speculate about its financial value. I see no merit in emotional grifting by a minority. That’s the binding we need to question. Not the middle manager who is aristocratic in title only. Privus lex should be universal. Currently it clearly favors those with financial control of the planet.

librish 5y ago

"I can't let me team work from home, they might not work hard." "Maybe you should work to improve what you measure and how you encourage feedback. It is normally a good idea to have ways to tell if people are doing a good job for what you are paying them to do." Measuring this stuff is really, really hard. If you're a manager who's non-technical it's almost impossible. No-one is saying that you can't slack off while at the office, or that you are guaranteed to slack off if you're working from home, but I think the discussion would be better if some of the more rabid pro-remote people acknowledged that for a lot of people there is a big difference. In the office: - You're limited in what slacking options are available - You're surrounded by coworkers who at least act as though they mostly work which can be motivating - You know your boss is around and could stop by, so you don't want to do something too outlandish At home you could go play your xbox for 8 hours while responding to DMs, and then say "investigated the bug, think I made some progress" during stand-up and in many places get away with that for a very, very long time. I don't think some lighter version of this is that uncommon. Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking.

luffapi 5y ago
> Sure, you can take the position that it's managements responsibility to figure this out and fire you but understand that this type of thing is why many companies are against remote, especially with how vehemently most developers reject any form of tracking. The position to take that leads not just to a successful wfh environment, but a great work environment in general is to not worry about “slacking off”. People are either producing results, or not. Especially in software development, developers will have spurts of great productivity and plenty of downtime. Trust, freedom and positive motivation are the keys to success.
- librish 5y ago
  I think that assumes that you have reasonably self-motivating employees and work that is often interesting which definitely isn't always the case. How do you suggest a non-technical manager tells slacking apart from when things just take unexpectedly longer?

HellDunkel 5y ago

Work from home is great and should be kept as an option. I am a little surprise though that noone mentions this option must be earned by trust and experience over time.

fosk 5y ago

The two fronts of people shouting "Working at home" vs "I want the office" can be almost always summed up by how long the commute is: * Working at home: commute longer than 30-45 minutes. * Working at office: commute shorter than 30-45 minutes. Like everything in life, people optimize for different things in life. Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want, likewise optimizing for a bigger home 60 minutes away. I still have to hear somebody who lives at a short walk to the office, wanting to work from home, because it really wouldn't make any sense at all. Remove the commute from the equation, and the office is superior in any possible way: socially, economically, mentally. Now if they were to move 60 minutes away, I would understand why they would want to work from home. It's all a function of commute, which in and by itself is a choice in our highly paid industry.

lostdog 5y ago
> Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want It's a choice until your office moves or your job changes (and you had to balance other priorities). Mostly I agree with you though--if getting to the office is painless, then working from the office is great--except if you need to concentrate on your work. Any task that needs focus will take 2-3x as long to accomplish in an open office.
WFHRenaissance 5y ago
I'll be the token "15 minute commuter who doesn't want to go back" person (20 minute walk, 15 minute train). It's not all a function of commute. AMA
- wccrawford 5y ago
  That's a 35 minute commute. All the travel time is included, not just the mechanized portion.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - WFHRenaissance 5y ago

cratermoon 5y ago

I do feel sympathetic to the families with two working parents and kids in school when the Inside Times came upon us. Some don't have a dedicated office space at all, those that do often don't have it set up for two people to work (dueling Zoom meetings are a problem). Most people in the US can't afford or even get enough bandwidth to support two simultaneous video conferences, much less three or more if there are kids doing remote school. Don't forget that with parents in the office and kids at school, lunch was pretty easy to take care of if you could afford to eat out, and often dinner would be scattered among friends. Now you've got to figure out food for the whole crowd. Ordering delivery gets expensive. That's the skeuomorphic way of working from home, of course. While the article is on point, it doesn't offer any suggestions for new ways to work. Where are the Forbes, WSJ, CNBC, Bloomberg, etc articles on embracing remote work?

jfrunyon 5y ago
> Most people in the US can't afford or even get enough bandwidth to support two simultaneous video conferences ?!?! How much bandwidth do you think it takes??? Zoom requirements: For group video calling: For 1080p HD video: 3.8Mbps/3.0Mbps (up/down) (Of course, most people probably don't even have 1080p webcams...)
- cratermoon 5y ago
  It's not the download speed that's the problem, it's the upload. For one person, the FCC definition[1] of "broadband" speeds of 3MB/s up are barely sufficient. The are lots of places that barely break that. Now get both parents and the kid, there are plenty of folks who can't do it[2]. Sure, they could watch, but they'd have to have their video off. Better hope that some program doesn't try to download an update. We're all a bunch of relatively well-paid nerds here on HN, so we have better-than-average internet speeds. I'm still betting there's a portion of us living in the 'burbs who would struggle streaming more than 2 video conferences. 1 https://www.engadget.com/senators-fcc-change-definition-high-speed-broadband-222150947.html https://www.engadget.com/senators-fcc-change-definition-high... 2 https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/united-states https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/united-states

brandon272 5y ago

What I find interesting about work from home and flexible working schedules is that it seems like we are no closer to understanding optimal policy now than 10 years ago. I've seen this discussed on HN over and over and over in the 13 years I've been registered here. A year of WFH transformation under COVID seems to not have broadened our understanding of it, but rather simply exposed more people to the overall debate. Last week I watched the movie 'Nine to Five', which was released in 1980. In it, the characters were working toward equal pay and flexible work schedules. It was depressing to realize that for many people, what was considered radical in 1980 seems just as radical in 2021.

jfrunyon 5y ago
> A year of WFH transformation under COVID seems to not have broadened our understanding of it That's because WFH is/has been be temporary for most in management (i.e. the people who could actually drive change to procedures to fit WFH better).

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

from previous threads, "I like working from home when everybody is working from home" is not the same thing as "I like working from home when some people are working from home and some people are grabbing lunch with the boss", and I think a lot of us are about to figure that out.

WFHRenaissance 5y ago
LOL, but what if I told you that both my boss and the best IC on the team are perma-remote, and my company still wants me at the office?

tamaharbor 5y ago

I’m good and productive working from home… until about 3:00 PM - that’s Judge Judy time!

giardini 5y ago

In the spirit of science (and as revitalized by the Covid Pandemic): What experimental studies prove that work from home is superior to work in the office (or vice versa)?

6510 5y ago

More logical than the appeal to tradition fallacy would be to say if one needs A, B and C to do the work D should not be required, D should not even be part of the conversation. One need a place where one can work [at home] if one fails at that for whatever reason a remote place might be an option. Just like proper training for a job one has to organize that themselves. I work a lot of night shifts. My employer doesn't provide a place to sleep during the day. Productivity is regularly hurt by peoples children, construction work etc etc Should the employer now provide office style bedrooms and expect everyone to sleep there? The office primarily exists for clients and investors to marvel at the marble floors, the fancy decorations, the smoothly shaved men in expensive suits, the open floor plan and many other D type rituals that after examining the price tag can only be considered a cult. Why not replace some of that with parents playing with their kids? Or should that be: Show kids how work is done? (if we for laughs pretend nothing else is important) Which kids would end up more productive? There is an expression in the Netherlands: "Dad is the man who cuts the meat on Sunday".

taylodl 5y ago

Working at home during the pandemic != remote working. Full stop. Remote working is not about never going to the office again and not seeing anyone on your team for incredibly long stretches of time. Remote workers are typically physically present with their coworkers several times per year - often for several days at a time. Smart companies will make those opportunities available for their fully-remote staff.