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Same here. I currently work at a very prestigious tech company and I’m surprised by how boring it actually is. There’s hardly anyone around in the office and f

Same here. I currently work at a very prestigious tech company and I’m surprised by how boring it actually is. There’s hardly anyone around in the office and frankly I couldn’t care less about the free stuff. They pay me enough that I can go out and buy my own snacks. What I want is a team to learn from and grow. Not some teachers pets that sit behind zoom calls making sure they know exactly what’s “on the test” so they make themselves look better. I’ll never work somewhere 100% remote or where employees don’t have an expectation of at least 3 days in the office. Mind you, being able to spend a day a week at home vs full week in the office is quite nice.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ricardobeat 4y ago
Is being in the same physical place the requisite for being 'a team'? Open-source work traditionally has been distributed, and I bet it often results in teams that are closer than the ones from work.
- holografix 4y ago
  Is a comfortable car with plenty of fuel a requisite for a long road trip? No, you can go by foot, horse, etc. it sure does help though. Open source work is a infinitesimally small proportion of *work*. No I don’t think it results in teams that are closer at all, I think (and can present no data either) that it’s just as likely to result in bickering and infighting. Guido leaving Python might be a good example.
  - hiptobecubic 4y ago
    People quit their in-office jobs all the time too.
sitkack 4y ago
> currently work at a very prestigious tech company So do, and I have also worked for scrappy 100% remote startups. The 100% remote startup had better team cohesion and better knowledge transfer with more opportunities to learn. You might get those things in the office, but pre-pandemic, at least my office environment provided none of those things. Don't conflate a good team dynamic with an office environment. I used to pair program with a guy for four hours a day and I never met him until we both left the company.
almost_usual 4y ago
> What I want is a team to learn from and grow. Not some teachers pets that sit behind zoom calls making sure they know exactly what’s “on the test” so they make themselves look better. I’m not sure what your role is but zoom calls really don’t mean anything as an IC. Not unless you’re responding to or handling an outage and debugging on the fly. What you produce and how well it works is how you’re measured. Documentation and written communication is equally as important.
- holografix 4y ago
  I totally understand your pov and it’s often the one shared by full remote folks who enjoy it that way: “I produce good work nothing else matters”. I find that a really sad, if not completely rational, outlook. See I don’t want to work with someone who outputs great work only. I want to work who can share a joke, help out, bounce ideas of, experiment with new things and fail/succeed. In other words, I like work to be joyful and productive.
  - acheron 4y ago
    I have family and friends to be joyful with. I want my coworkers to shut up and do their job.
    - maleldil 4y ago
      I completely agree. I've always worked remotely. This separation is all I know, and I can't imagine why someone would want something different. As a manager, I don't conduct "team building" exercises. I try to ensure that collaboration is flowing, but I don't care if team members are only talking about work or if they develop some social relationship. This is in stark contrast to my wife, who had worked in the office before the pandemic and continued with the same philosophy during remote work. She finds my way too cold, and I find hers too wasteful. I would dread working on her pseudo-remote environment.
  - nomdenator 4y ago
    Being able to feed off each others' expertise can be more than the sum of individuals also. Reading all the responses it seems there's advantages both to being at home or on site and the trick is to find the balance.
sodapopcan 4y ago
I'm on my second highly-collaborative, fully remote team and I'm always learning a lot and challenged. You're "teacher's pets behind zoom calls" example is very oddly specific and not a thing I've encountered.
- holografix 4y ago
  I think it’s to do with everyone getting along and working well as professional colleagues but not as a team. There’s little camaraderie though or sense of shared ownership. interactions are more transactional, deliberate, thought out. People maximise what’s best for their OKRs only. If this months it’s John on zoom or Jeff and if Mary was replaced with Sue, does it really matter? There’s a reason team events and off sites etc exist. It helps people see beyond the professional façade to the human behind it.
  - micro_cam 4y ago
    I believe this is a problem with OKRs more then with remote work. It is too easy to game the OKR process by choosing easy but showy OKRs, doing the bare minimum and declaring victory. I've been remote for 10 years and before that worked on a bunch of distributed research teams and it is perfectly possible to have a highly functioning distributed/remote team that really takes ownership. I mean look at open source projects. Further office culture tends to favor a bunch of young people who all live in the same city and have time to go out for drinks after work etc. I'll take a bunch of crazy odd balls scattered across the globe doing their own thing any day.
    - maleldil 4y ago
      > It is too easy to game the OKR process by choosing easy but showy OKRs, doing the bare minimum and declaring victory. This isn't hard to fix; it only requires upper management to recognise the issue. If a goal is easy to reach, it's a bad goal.
      - micro_cam 4y ago
hiptobecubic 4y ago
These sound like separate problems. Your coworkers being more interested in perf than work will not change just because you force them all to commute for two hours a day. My experience talking to a lot of people both for and against wfh has been that people with shitty teams hate being remote, because it's hard to do when everyone is putting in zero effort to make remote work "work." The other big group that wants wfh to end are the "my coworkers are my only friends" people. Good for them, i guess, but personally i think that's not a wise way to structure one's life. I understand why companies love it and want to foster it though. A very small number say things like "I find it difficult to collaborate with anyone over the internet."

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ricardobeat 4y ago

Is being in the same physical place the requisite for being 'a team'? Open-source work traditionally has been distributed, and I bet it often results in teams that are closer than the ones from work.

holografix 4y ago
Is a comfortable car with plenty of fuel a requisite for a long road trip? No, you can go by foot, horse, etc. it sure does help though. Open source work is a infinitesimally small proportion of *work*. No I don’t think it results in teams that are closer at all, I think (and can present no data either) that it’s just as likely to result in bickering and infighting. Guido leaving Python might be a good example.
- hiptobecubic 4y ago
  People quit their in-office jobs all the time too.

sitkack 4y ago

> currently work at a very prestigious tech company So do, and I have also worked for scrappy 100% remote startups. The 100% remote startup had better team cohesion and better knowledge transfer with more opportunities to learn. You might get those things in the office, but pre-pandemic, at least my office environment provided none of those things. Don't conflate a good team dynamic with an office environment. I used to pair program with a guy for four hours a day and I never met him until we both left the company.

almost_usual 4y ago

> What I want is a team to learn from and grow. Not some teachers pets that sit behind zoom calls making sure they know exactly what’s “on the test” so they make themselves look better. I’m not sure what your role is but zoom calls really don’t mean anything as an IC. Not unless you’re responding to or handling an outage and debugging on the fly. What you produce and how well it works is how you’re measured. Documentation and written communication is equally as important.

holografix 4y ago
I totally understand your pov and it’s often the one shared by full remote folks who enjoy it that way: “I produce good work nothing else matters”. I find that a really sad, if not completely rational, outlook. See I don’t want to work with someone who outputs great work only. I want to work who can share a joke, help out, bounce ideas of, experiment with new things and fail/succeed. In other words, I like work to be joyful and productive.
- acheron 4y ago
  I have family and friends to be joyful with. I want my coworkers to shut up and do their job.
  - maleldil 4y ago
    I completely agree. I've always worked remotely. This separation is all I know, and I can't imagine why someone would want something different. As a manager, I don't conduct "team building" exercises. I try to ensure that collaboration is flowing, but I don't care if team members are only talking about work or if they develop some social relationship. This is in stark contrast to my wife, who had worked in the office before the pandemic and continued with the same philosophy during remote work. She finds my way too cold, and I find hers too wasteful. I would dread working on her pseudo-remote environment.
- nomdenator 4y ago
  Being able to feed off each others' expertise can be more than the sum of individuals also. Reading all the responses it seems there's advantages both to being at home or on site and the trick is to find the balance.

sodapopcan 4y ago

I'm on my second highly-collaborative, fully remote team and I'm always learning a lot and challenged. You're "teacher's pets behind zoom calls" example is very oddly specific and not a thing I've encountered.

holografix 4y ago
I think it’s to do with everyone getting along and working well as professional colleagues but not as a team. There’s little camaraderie though or sense of shared ownership. interactions are more transactional, deliberate, thought out. People maximise what’s best for their OKRs only. If this months it’s John on zoom or Jeff and if Mary was replaced with Sue, does it really matter? There’s a reason team events and off sites etc exist. It helps people see beyond the professional façade to the human behind it.
- micro_cam 4y ago
  I believe this is a problem with OKRs more then with remote work. It is too easy to game the OKR process by choosing easy but showy OKRs, doing the bare minimum and declaring victory. I've been remote for 10 years and before that worked on a bunch of distributed research teams and it is perfectly possible to have a highly functioning distributed/remote team that really takes ownership. I mean look at open source projects. Further office culture tends to favor a bunch of young people who all live in the same city and have time to go out for drinks after work etc. I'll take a bunch of crazy odd balls scattered across the globe doing their own thing any day.
  - maleldil 4y ago
    > It is too easy to game the OKR process by choosing easy but showy OKRs, doing the bare minimum and declaring victory. This isn't hard to fix; it only requires upper management to recognise the issue. If a goal is easy to reach, it's a bad goal.
    - micro_cam 4y ago

hiptobecubic 4y ago

These sound like separate problems. Your coworkers being more interested in perf than work will not change just because you force them all to commute for two hours a day. My experience talking to a lot of people both for and against wfh has been that people with shitty teams hate being remote, because it's hard to do when everyone is putting in zero effort to make remote work "work." The other big group that wants wfh to end are the "my coworkers are my only friends" people. Good for them, i guess, but personally i think that's not a wise way to structure one's life. I understand why companies love it and want to foster it though. A very small number say things like "I find it difficult to collaborate with anyone over the internet."