4 ms·

So, just because it’s not perfect we don’t do it at all? Agree to the paradigm shift, but so far it hasn’t emerged [1] and telling people that it will never be

So, just because it’s not perfect we don’t do it at all? Agree to the paradigm shift, but so far it hasn’t emerged [1] and telling people that it will never be a replacement for physical presence, would actually quite support the crowd asking for a 100% return to office fearing that innovation and team cohesion will suffer [1] At least nothing that we didn’t have so far. And nothing of what we have so far seems to have had any real breakthrough (actually, with the exception of video calls ;)

kkfx 4y ago
> So, just because it’s not perfect we don’t do it at all? Just because is so far from perfection to a point of being just waste of bandwidth resources, a security risk [1] and an annoyance who force people a certain dress code, others with shows of decorated background and animations, others shows misery of their homes while some show their wealth status as a way to impress etc. > telling people that it will never be a replacement for physical presence, would actually quite support the crowd asking for a 100% return to office fearing that innovation and team cohesion will suffer Honestly, without much data but hearing climate in my circles and reading the press, those who want back in office are just middle managers and some old people who will retire in few years. So the crowd will be a very small one against a far bigger one who just say, as happen right now in various part of the world "if you want me back in the office I resign, go look for someone else"... You can't made soft paradigm changes, you can only change softly witch means for instance start pushing 99% remote work just to a series of jobs where people have enough money, interests and willingness to live cities and going full remote instead of pushing it worldwide "for the pandemic" and for all possibly remote jobs. For instance instead of pushing crappy proprietary platforms like Meet, Teams, Zoom developing a company infra on company iron, negotiating seriously with workers: "if you want full remote you need to offer us a spare room in your house at a given little monthly fee, like the same you get in office to eat, with possible sufficient connectivity to work, electricity and a closed door. We gives you all the needed furniture and gears, we pay the connection or we negotiate a compensation for them if you provide them and what you offer meet our demand" instead of giving craptops and craphones etc. When a first batch of humans, skilled, educated and wealthy enough to test the new model will finally arrive to a good stability than offering a similar paths to other workers also a bit at a time to make the migration possible, the softer possible, with enough experience already made to avoid making full-society-scale or full-company-scale disasters. You can't switch paradigm in small steps though, hybrid work does not work, mixed work in the same workforce does not work. It's a classic error common in countless situations, from the military where a general want a strategy another an almost totally different one and the chief finally choose a middle ground between the two making both a failure to the classic IT horror stories and anything in between. Consider a thing: there is no success without risk, you can mitigate the risk reducing the risk surface, like "hey we build masonry houses only, we want to try new materials like wood, so instead of change all houses a big risk surface, we build just some few houses to see how they work" but you can't get anything from "we start with a wood based floor and one masonry". [1] you know deepfakes need much data to be trained, the more you face/body is shown on-line the more data some model get to produce a realistic video of you stating terrorist intention or perhaps confessing a love betrayal etc realistic enough to be believed. In real life no one can hold good cam and grab data without you noticing, with modern platforms like Zoom, Teams, Meet, their owners harvest gazillions of data, and deepfakes aside what you think about holding a talk in a public place discussing works stuff? You normally want a private room, isn't it?
- thesumofall 4y ago
  Quite like this argument - ie it brings up some new points for me that I haven’t considered yet. To just provide a counterpoint to your anecdote (obviously, also nothing but another anecdote): of our team of 30 almost all came back to the office several days a week (despite it being fully optional and also management choosing various models). I think it is very much driven by the fact that the team just had a really enjoyable team spirit prior to WFH plus it is a pretty diverse team (esp. age and gender wise) which also brings up a wide variety of reasons for people opting for / against WFH
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Some teams surely are also much like an extended family, no doubt, even if I like WFH now (and not just from now) at uni time I've always preferred spend time at the uni just for the social aspects I found there, but how many teams are like that, small and harmoniums enough? IME not near-zero surely, but still not that much in percentage (opinion of course, I have no real data, just too-small scale observation and casual interpolation on that). Another point is made the environment aside: in a small/medium and spread city, with various amenities, people might like live there not just because it's near the office and once there it's a pleasure going outside. However for instance in my old big & dense city going outside was and still is definitively not a pleasure, too much traffic, pollution, noise, only the social aspect of having a big choice of people to be together instead of just accept some neighbors because there is no much choice in place is actually a pleasure, here now however I have nature around, with countless of activities, no traffic etc, so much of the issue of the city are not worth just the better social/service part. Surely, I'm not that rural, and cities are still just half an hour around... There are many things shaping life so shaping work preferences though for what I've read here and there (different posts from different sources around the world) and my personal experience much more prefer WFH, at least those who have a voice, who know how to spread their feelings and ideas, witch left me a bit uncertain about how many prefer the office vs how many prefer living in a spread and vast Riviera, WFH... No doubt however about the abundance of advantages vs disadvantages in the short and potentially, with a bit of incertitude, in the mean/long run. The dream of a less dense society where moving by flying cars is normal as now moving with actual road cars, so a society where a vast riviera is also a dense city since anything is few minutes of fly away is the dream. Potentially can be real in tech terms, but I do not know if / when it will ever be in reality, nor I know how many time, issues etc we will see before having experimented WFH enough to have a new paradigm working and tested enough to made general comparisons.

kkfx 4y ago

> So, just because it’s not perfect we don’t do it at all? Just because is so far from perfection to a point of being just waste of bandwidth resources, a security risk [1] and an annoyance who force people a certain dress code, others with shows of decorated background and animations, others shows misery of their homes while some show their wealth status as a way to impress etc. > telling people that it will never be a replacement for physical presence, would actually quite support the crowd asking for a 100% return to office fearing that innovation and team cohesion will suffer Honestly, without much data but hearing climate in my circles and reading the press, those who want back in office are just middle managers and some old people who will retire in few years. So the crowd will be a very small one against a far bigger one who just say, as happen right now in various part of the world "if you want me back in the office I resign, go look for someone else"... You can't made soft paradigm changes, you can only change softly witch means for instance start pushing 99% remote work just to a series of jobs where people have enough money, interests and willingness to live cities and going full remote instead of pushing it worldwide "for the pandemic" and for all possibly remote jobs. For instance instead of pushing crappy proprietary platforms like Meet, Teams, Zoom developing a company infra on company iron, negotiating seriously with workers: "if you want full remote you need to offer us a spare room in your house at a given little monthly fee, like the same you get in office to eat, with possible sufficient connectivity to work, electricity and a closed door. We gives you all the needed furniture and gears, we pay the connection or we negotiate a compensation for them if you provide them and what you offer meet our demand" instead of giving craptops and craphones etc. When a first batch of humans, skilled, educated and wealthy enough to test the new model will finally arrive to a good stability than offering a similar paths to other workers also a bit at a time to make the migration possible, the softer possible, with enough experience already made to avoid making full-society-scale or full-company-scale disasters. You can't switch paradigm in small steps though, hybrid work does not work, mixed work in the same workforce does not work. It's a classic error common in countless situations, from the military where a general want a strategy another an almost totally different one and the chief finally choose a middle ground between the two making both a failure to the classic IT horror stories and anything in between. Consider a thing: there is no success without risk, you can mitigate the risk reducing the risk surface, like "hey we build masonry houses only, we want to try new materials like wood, so instead of change all houses a big risk surface, we build just some few houses to see how they work" but you can't get anything from "we start with a wood based floor and one masonry". [1] you know deepfakes need much data to be trained, the more you face/body is shown on-line the more data some model get to produce a realistic video of you stating terrorist intention or perhaps confessing a love betrayal etc realistic enough to be believed. In real life no one can hold good cam and grab data without you noticing, with modern platforms like Zoom, Teams, Meet, their owners harvest gazillions of data, and deepfakes aside what you think about holding a talk in a public place discussing works stuff? You normally want a private room, isn't it?

thesumofall 4y ago
Quite like this argument - ie it brings up some new points for me that I haven’t considered yet. To just provide a counterpoint to your anecdote (obviously, also nothing but another anecdote): of our team of 30 almost all came back to the office several days a week (despite it being fully optional and also management choosing various models). I think it is very much driven by the fact that the team just had a really enjoyable team spirit prior to WFH plus it is a pretty diverse team (esp. age and gender wise) which also brings up a wide variety of reasons for people opting for / against WFH
- kkfx 4y ago
  Some teams surely are also much like an extended family, no doubt, even if I like WFH now (and not just from now) at uni time I've always preferred spend time at the uni just for the social aspects I found there, but how many teams are like that, small and harmoniums enough? IME not near-zero surely, but still not that much in percentage (opinion of course, I have no real data, just too-small scale observation and casual interpolation on that). Another point is made the environment aside: in a small/medium and spread city, with various amenities, people might like live there not just because it's near the office and once there it's a pleasure going outside. However for instance in my old big & dense city going outside was and still is definitively not a pleasure, too much traffic, pollution, noise, only the social aspect of having a big choice of people to be together instead of just accept some neighbors because there is no much choice in place is actually a pleasure, here now however I have nature around, with countless of activities, no traffic etc, so much of the issue of the city are not worth just the better social/service part. Surely, I'm not that rural, and cities are still just half an hour around... There are many things shaping life so shaping work preferences though for what I've read here and there (different posts from different sources around the world) and my personal experience much more prefer WFH, at least those who have a voice, who know how to spread their feelings and ideas, witch left me a bit uncertain about how many prefer the office vs how many prefer living in a spread and vast Riviera, WFH... No doubt however about the abundance of advantages vs disadvantages in the short and potentially, with a bit of incertitude, in the mean/long run. The dream of a less dense society where moving by flying cars is normal as now moving with actual road cars, so a society where a vast riviera is also a dense city since anything is few minutes of fly away is the dream. Potentially can be real in tech terms, but I do not know if / when it will ever be in reality, nor I know how many time, issues etc we will see before having experimented WFH enough to have a new paradigm working and tested enough to made general comparisons.