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It's going to be a problem hard to resolved. It can be seen as a perk for a company to offer the possibility of remote work like bonuses or free coffee. The thi

It's going to be a problem hard to resolved. It can be seen as a perk for a company to offer the possibility of remote work like bonuses or free coffee. The thing is, some people actually hate telework and would rather impose everyone to be present because this is how they feel the most efficient or because it is just how they like to work. So contrary to the traditional employer/employees balance of power, there is also a employees/employees thing going on here. Considering those who can telework full time without any limitations (say software engineer for example) what is the ratio of those who want to telework fulltime, part-time or not at all. It's hard to trust polls on this because they are usually driven by employers who have an agenda anyway.

Symbiote 5y ago
We currently have something very similar to Apple's proposed policy (~2 days in the office per week, several weeks remote work per year). Some like it and will work from home as much as they can, others will come to the office but don't mind the flexibility. What was interesting was comments from an anonymous poll. A couple of people said they didn't like the policy since it meant they ended up caring for young children almost all the time. Previously, they would split things like taking them to/from school or looking after them if they were sick 50:50 with their partner. One person having so much flexibility meant this became 100:0. In theory we were flexible before 2020, but its only since 2020 that I've felt doing my laundry was an acceptable reason to work from home.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Not sure I get it - why would working from home mean that you need to look after the children more? You can still use whatever other childcare arrangements you were using before, exactly as if you were in an office.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    This, plus if your partner is dumping things on you because you're free, that's a partner communication issue, not a WFH issue.
    - ectopod 5y ago
      If your partner has to take unpaid leave you might both agree that it's better for you to care for the sick child. But you're still stuck with it.
  - shagie 5y ago
    Often a sick child (can't go to daycare / school) gets a "today I take a PTO day, you take a PTO day next time." When one partner has WFH, neither person needs to take an absence from work, but the person who is WFH gets all the childcare. There's also the "the person with the flexible schedule allows the other schedule to become more normalized." In the before times, one of my co-workers picked up their child on alternating days. So Monday was late in (drop off child at school) and late out (spouse picked up the child). Tuesday was early in (spouse dropped off the child) and early out (pick up child at school). This way both people were able to get in 8h days at work. With WFH, my co-worker's schedule shifted so that they were the one always dropping off and picking up the child (and having what would be considered a split shift - working a few hours in the late afternoon or evening). For my co-worker, this was overall a net positive (school was a short distance from the house compared to a long, out of the way distance from work) allowing (even with the schedule change) less time spent ferrying a child around... but it also meant that my co-worker is doing all the child ferrying while their spouse is working a regular 9-5 that have oddities of child ferrying adjustments.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  This sounds entirely like a personal relationship problem. Funny to see it come up in a company survey.
  - baq 5y ago
    No matter what they tell you, it’s a people problem.
rightbyte 5y ago
The greatest advantages of remote work are that it removes many of the downsides of a bad work environment: * No commute (not the employers fault really) * You can zone out in irrelevant meetings. * Sit down during stand-ups. * Soft 'intimidation' does not work well over the phone * No open office noise etc. Since I changed job from a chaotic place with 50min commute each way, to a tidy job within walking distance, the remote work thing seems like a minor perk, rather than the best thing ever.
- randomdata 5y ago
  The greatest advantage is that you can get other things done around the house (or beyond the house) between productivity stints. Even a short walk from the office tends to create a barrier to that.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Ye forgot that one. It is high on the list.
- haliskerbas 5y ago
  Adding two very important things for me personally: - a bathroom where I have true privacy and not someone waiting on me or able to perceive me with their senses - not having to deal with the smell of others or worry about my own
  - laichzeit0 5y ago
    I’ve always chosen jobs where I live within a comfortable “shit radius” and can drive home when needed. There is simply no way I could ever use a public toilet. My girlfriend finds it hilarious that I come home to take a dump, but I simply can’t go in public.
- btrettel 5y ago
  The commute often is the fault of the employer, if they decide to locate the business in an area will little housing or little housing that the employees want (for example, an area with only extremely expensive apartments or a bad school district).
lnanek2 5y ago
> So contrary to the traditional employer/employees balance of power, there is also a employees/employees thing going on here. We have that on my team at work too. About 10% of the people on the team prefer to work in office, but they always caveat that with, "but I don't want to come into an empty office." Meaning being, that want the rest of the team in the office too.
floatingatoll 5y ago
I only prefer working remotely as an alternative to an office with open-air seating. Give me an office with a window and a door, and I would quite willingly work from an office. My employer has, for over a decade, refused to build anything but open-air seating. So everything thinks I prefer to work remotely, because their own feelings taint their perceptions of my actions, but they don't ask my actual motivations and take for granted that I support their views. Please take care not to frame everyone who prefers working from an office as people who would "impose" their views on others. I work from home rather than impose my views on others, but your argument makes a very good point. I should probably step up and begin pressuring for better office design, since that would remove a crutch that the remote-work movement is unaware it's being propped up by. Yes, some will still prefer to work remotely, but I've done offices, and I've done remote, and it's clear there are pros and cons to each that vary per project and per team. It's time for office design to be given due credit for how it drives people into remote work, so that we can stop confusing a desire for a healthy working environment with a desire to work from our homes.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  I'm reminded of an old bit by Joel Spolsky of Stack Overflow, where he outlines — in extreme detail — his designs for the old Fog Creek offices. It's very clear that he put more thought into these designs than the work that most interior architects I've encountered have bothered to perform. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-in-private-offices/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i... (remarkable that cubicles used to be our idea of office hell, and now just seem like an unimaginable amount of personal space)
  - shagie 5y ago
    If you ever hunt up a copy of A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Mary Silverstein (the book that inspired Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software) it is an interesting read. Patterns 146, 151, and 152 get into the design of the office. For example, 146 - Flexible Office - https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA690&lpg=PA690&dq=a+pattern+language+146&source=bl&ots=S8pGqy6mbW&sig=ACfU3U3K1850NIpiyZXdh0rTlqcDdyBbsw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJh7i_y6z0AhUOH80KHS0HCYoQ6AF6BAgVEAM#v=onepage&q=a%20pattern%20language%20146&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA690&lpg=... It is a fascinating book to read (and you don't need to consume it all at once). There are things in there that helped me understand why my house (it had its stairs reversed in the 1920s) has a flow to it that leads to certain rooms getting less use than they were designed for - the staircase from the 2nd floor living space now goes to the back door (rather than the center of the house) which means 2nd floor to garage is an easy transition while 2nd floor to front door is a harder one. That in turn makes it more natural (for this design of the house) to go out the garage door and along the sidewalk past light commercial when going down town than out the front door and past neighbors through the residential roads.

Symbiote 5y ago

We currently have something very similar to Apple's proposed policy (~2 days in the office per week, several weeks remote work per year). Some like it and will work from home as much as they can, others will come to the office but don't mind the flexibility. What was interesting was comments from an anonymous poll. A couple of people said they didn't like the policy since it meant they ended up caring for young children almost all the time. Previously, they would split things like taking them to/from school or looking after them if they were sick 50:50 with their partner. One person having so much flexibility meant this became 100:0. In theory we were flexible before 2020, but its only since 2020 that I've felt doing my laundry was an acceptable reason to work from home.

chrisseaton 5y ago
Not sure I get it - why would working from home mean that you need to look after the children more? You can still use whatever other childcare arrangements you were using before, exactly as if you were in an office.
- falcolas 5y ago
  This, plus if your partner is dumping things on you because you're free, that's a partner communication issue, not a WFH issue.
  - ectopod 5y ago
    If your partner has to take unpaid leave you might both agree that it's better for you to care for the sick child. But you're still stuck with it.
- shagie 5y ago
  Often a sick child (can't go to daycare / school) gets a "today I take a PTO day, you take a PTO day next time." When one partner has WFH, neither person needs to take an absence from work, but the person who is WFH gets all the childcare. There's also the "the person with the flexible schedule allows the other schedule to become more normalized." In the before times, one of my co-workers picked up their child on alternating days. So Monday was late in (drop off child at school) and late out (spouse picked up the child). Tuesday was early in (spouse dropped off the child) and early out (pick up child at school). This way both people were able to get in 8h days at work. With WFH, my co-worker's schedule shifted so that they were the one always dropping off and picking up the child (and having what would be considered a split shift - working a few hours in the late afternoon or evening). For my co-worker, this was overall a net positive (school was a short distance from the house compared to a long, out of the way distance from work) allowing (even with the schedule change) less time spent ferrying a child around... but it also meant that my co-worker is doing all the child ferrying while their spouse is working a regular 9-5 that have oddities of child ferrying adjustments.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
This sounds entirely like a personal relationship problem. Funny to see it come up in a company survey.
- baq 5y ago
  No matter what they tell you, it’s a people problem.

rightbyte 5y ago

The greatest advantages of remote work are that it removes many of the downsides of a bad work environment: * No commute (not the employers fault really) * You can zone out in irrelevant meetings. * Sit down during stand-ups. * Soft 'intimidation' does not work well over the phone * No open office noise etc. Since I changed job from a chaotic place with 50min commute each way, to a tidy job within walking distance, the remote work thing seems like a minor perk, rather than the best thing ever.

randomdata 5y ago
The greatest advantage is that you can get other things done around the house (or beyond the house) between productivity stints. Even a short walk from the office tends to create a barrier to that.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Ye forgot that one. It is high on the list.
haliskerbas 5y ago
Adding two very important things for me personally: - a bathroom where I have true privacy and not someone waiting on me or able to perceive me with their senses - not having to deal with the smell of others or worry about my own
- laichzeit0 5y ago
  I’ve always chosen jobs where I live within a comfortable “shit radius” and can drive home when needed. There is simply no way I could ever use a public toilet. My girlfriend finds it hilarious that I come home to take a dump, but I simply can’t go in public.
btrettel 5y ago
The commute often is the fault of the employer, if they decide to locate the business in an area will little housing or little housing that the employees want (for example, an area with only extremely expensive apartments or a bad school district).

lnanek2 5y ago

> So contrary to the traditional employer/employees balance of power, there is also a employees/employees thing going on here. We have that on my team at work too. About 10% of the people on the team prefer to work in office, but they always caveat that with, "but I don't want to come into an empty office." Meaning being, that want the rest of the team in the office too.

floatingatoll 5y ago

I only prefer working remotely as an alternative to an office with open-air seating. Give me an office with a window and a door, and I would quite willingly work from an office. My employer has, for over a decade, refused to build anything but open-air seating. So everything thinks I prefer to work remotely, because their own feelings taint their perceptions of my actions, but they don't ask my actual motivations and take for granted that I support their views. Please take care not to frame everyone who prefers working from an office as people who would "impose" their views on others. I work from home rather than impose my views on others, but your argument makes a very good point. I should probably step up and begin pressuring for better office design, since that would remove a crutch that the remote-work movement is unaware it's being propped up by. Yes, some will still prefer to work remotely, but I've done offices, and I've done remote, and it's clear there are pros and cons to each that vary per project and per team. It's time for office design to be given due credit for how it drives people into remote work, so that we can stop confusing a desire for a healthy working environment with a desire to work from our homes.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
I'm reminded of an old bit by Joel Spolsky of Stack Overflow, where he outlines — in extreme detail — his designs for the old Fog Creek offices. It's very clear that he put more thought into these designs than the work that most interior architects I've encountered have bothered to perform. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-in-private-offices/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i... (remarkable that cubicles used to be our idea of office hell, and now just seem like an unimaginable amount of personal space)
- shagie 5y ago
  If you ever hunt up a copy of A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Mary Silverstein (the book that inspired Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software) it is an interesting read. Patterns 146, 151, and 152 get into the design of the office. For example, 146 - Flexible Office - https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA690&lpg=PA690&dq=a+pattern+language+146&source=bl&ots=S8pGqy6mbW&sig=ACfU3U3K1850NIpiyZXdh0rTlqcDdyBbsw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJh7i_y6z0AhUOH80KHS0HCYoQ6AF6BAgVEAM#v=onepage&q=a%20pattern%20language%20146&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA690&lpg=... It is a fascinating book to read (and you don't need to consume it all at once). There are things in there that helped me understand why my house (it had its stairs reversed in the 1920s) has a flow to it that leads to certain rooms getting less use than they were designed for - the staircase from the 2nd floor living space now goes to the back door (rather than the center of the house) which means 2nd floor to garage is an easy transition while 2nd floor to front door is a harder one. That in turn makes it more natural (for this design of the house) to go out the garage door and along the sidewalk past light commercial when going down town than out the front door and past neighbors through the residential roads.