3 ms·

This article seems obvious to me. Happier workers care more about their job, especially retaining their job. What is unsaid in that article is why there is so m

by cmh89 4y ago

This article seems obvious to me. Happier workers care more about their job, especially retaining their job. What is unsaid in that article is why there is so much actual pushback from managers. Managers, especially has you become further abstracted from providing real value, depend on "face time". It's their currency. Remote work really hampers that. A big meeting with the boss on Teams is going to have less chit chat and really no opportunity have side conversations or get 'face time' before and after the meeting. I think remote work is also hard for bad managers and good for good managers. Bad managers care about time rather than value and rarely understand what's actually going on. If they don't understand the value their team is creating and they don't know how much time their team is spending sitting on a computer, they really don't know anything. Good managers on the other hand understand the value the team produces and don't really care how people spend their 40 hours, so I doubt they sweat it as much. Pretty much all the concern from management is veiled ways of saying 'this will make it harder for me to rise in the organization as I can't build personal relationships as effectively'

germinalphrase 4y ago
“ Managers, especially has you become further abstracted from providing real value, depend on "face time". It's their currency. Remote work really hampers that. A big meeting with the boss on Teams is going to have less chit chat and really no opportunity have side conversations or get 'face time' before and after the meeting” A more generous take is that managers used to derive a great deal of value & information from quick/frequent/informal check-ins with a lot of different people throughout the day, and that is much harder/impossible in a remote first work environment where all interactions must be explicitly planned/scoped. In another context: it’s the difference between an educator walking around and monitoring their students progress all the time via conversation/q&a vs sitting behind their desk and only getting progress data via weekly assessments. The former is supplemental to the later and provides a great deal (perhaps most) of the educator’s understanding of their student’s progress. (The relationship between workers/managers and teachers/students is not analogous in many other ways, of course)
- cmh89 4y ago
  >A more generous take is that managers used to derive a great deal of value & information from quick/frequent/informal check-ins with a lot of different people throughout the day, and that is much harder/impossible in a remote first work environment where all interactions must be explicitly planned/scoped. I'm not sure that's true. My manager messages and asks if I'm free to talk and if I am, she gives me a call on Teams right then. Asking if someone is busy doesn't seem like a high bar. Now, I do think its harder for them to do their daily ramble around the office to chat with everybody and interrupt their work. I agree its much harder for them to get information on office politics and relationship dynamics, which is really valuable if you are a corporate climber.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Another option is to have an 'office hours' zoom room you sit in with your mic and camera off, and only turn them on when someone joins and you have time to chat. The only real issue is that joining someone's zoom is still a fairly intimidating, since you can't tell if they're in the mood to chat, and probably can't gauge how busy they are during the conversation if they don't mention it.
zimzam 4y ago
Some bad managers also want to be able to walk over to your desk, ask what you are working on, and tell you to work on something else. When things are remote this kind of sloppy management doesn't work anymore, which makes bad managers hate remote work rather than work on improving how they manage.

by cmh89 4y ago

germinalphrase 4y ago

“ Managers, especially has you become further abstracted from providing real value, depend on "face time". It's their currency. Remote work really hampers that. A big meeting with the boss on Teams is going to have less chit chat and really no opportunity have side conversations or get 'face time' before and after the meeting” A more generous take is that managers used to derive a great deal of value & information from quick/frequent/informal check-ins with a lot of different people throughout the day, and that is much harder/impossible in a remote first work environment where all interactions must be explicitly planned/scoped. In another context: it’s the difference between an educator walking around and monitoring their students progress all the time via conversation/q&a vs sitting behind their desk and only getting progress data via weekly assessments. The former is supplemental to the later and provides a great deal (perhaps most) of the educator’s understanding of their student’s progress. (The relationship between workers/managers and teachers/students is not analogous in many other ways, of course)

cmh89 4y ago
>A more generous take is that managers used to derive a great deal of value & information from quick/frequent/informal check-ins with a lot of different people throughout the day, and that is much harder/impossible in a remote first work environment where all interactions must be explicitly planned/scoped. I'm not sure that's true. My manager messages and asks if I'm free to talk and if I am, she gives me a call on Teams right then. Asking if someone is busy doesn't seem like a high bar. Now, I do think its harder for them to do their daily ramble around the office to chat with everybody and interrupt their work. I agree its much harder for them to get information on office politics and relationship dynamics, which is really valuable if you are a corporate climber.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Another option is to have an 'office hours' zoom room you sit in with your mic and camera off, and only turn them on when someone joins and you have time to chat. The only real issue is that joining someone's zoom is still a fairly intimidating, since you can't tell if they're in the mood to chat, and probably can't gauge how busy they are during the conversation if they don't mention it.

zimzam 4y ago

Some bad managers also want to be able to walk over to your desk, ask what you are working on, and tell you to work on something else. When things are remote this kind of sloppy management doesn't work anymore, which makes bad managers hate remote work rather than work on improving how they manage.