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His poignant take on weekly remote work is being wrestled to the ground stick me the most: > To me, although I’d certainly concede that WFH pares down meeting

His poignant take on weekly remote work is being wrestled to the ground stick me the most: > To me, although I’d certainly concede that WFH pares down meeting culture and certainly has benefits in logistics, it’s always been fairly obvious that in-person collaboration is more effective, produces a much stronger culture, and I suspect is important especially to larger orgs because it helps to even out performance. High caliber, experienced employees probably get just as much done at home at the office, or maybe more, but junior employees with less direction struggle more, and WFH provides the ultimate cover for less motivated people (which in a larger company will always be a percentage of the total) that might otherwise be held more accountable in-person. It's not just about the heavy hitters, it's about the team as a whole. In person work, though a logistical headache and social annoyance, drives team cohesion.

bink 4y ago
I'd argue that that doesn't have to be the case. The companies that are failing their junior employees and new hires are doing so not because they are remote/WFH, but because those companies did not invest the energy and resources necessary to be good at remote/WFH. There are plenty of companies that focus on remote work and have no issues with onboarding or failing performance.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  > There are plenty of companies that focus on remote work and have no issues with onboarding or failing performance. Can you please name a few of those? Mine has gone all in and sincerely trying to make it work. And it still sucks. So curious to know some successful examples.
  - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
    A couple of well-known ones are Automattic (WordPress.com) and Gitlab. Gitlab even has its employee handbook publicly available https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/
    - shadow28 4y ago
      Airbnb is another one - https://news.airbnb.com/airbnbs-design-to-live-and-work-anywhere/ https://news.airbnb.com/airbnbs-design-to-live-and-work-anyw...
    - morelisp 4y ago
      I have no problem admitting GitLab is doing a better job than we are, but they also have orders of magnitude more investment and have been doing it since their inception vs. since the pandemic. Any examples from a) non-unicorns, b) who have successfully transitioned to remote work?
      - bink 4y ago
        That last example is the tough one. IMHO most companies that tried to transition to remote work during the pandemic did so half-heartedly and then blamed the failure on remote work instead of their own decisions. It'd be like deciding to open an office in another country and then not bothering to learn the culture, language, work habits, etc. Or opening an office in another city that was completely inadequate compared to your other offices and then blaming the new city. To make remote work function you really need to follow a model like GitLab has provided with their handbook. You need to document everything and use practices that favor asynchronous work. You need to adjust your training, benefits, communications tools, management techniques, etc. You can't just "allow" half of your people to work remotely and expect things to work out. In fact, the hybrid model is often said to be the worst of all worlds as the people who work in the office often ignore the remote workers and make everyone's job more difficult.
        morelisp 4y ago
        > To make remote work function you really need to follow a model like GitLab has provided with their handbook. Right, and this requires resources (time and money) that VC hyperscalers maybe can afford to blow but the 8yo+ 50-100 person company whose HR "department" consists of maybe three people and whose non-technical sides don't understand the need to change everything because they don't need such intensive education, is going to grind to a halt for months if you try to roll this out. I don't "blame remote work" or anything, but it seems practically impossible to steer a mid-sized ship in this direction - big enough you've got fiefdoms and you'll never get 100% buy-in from the comfortable ones without a CEO going in and knocking a few heads, small enough you can't put together a task force specifically to eat the shit to manage the transition. So either we go back to the office a significant amount of the time, or we slowly die.
ZeroSolstice 4y ago
This reads to me "poor" management that everyone else needs to compensate for. I would be interested to see if moving managers back into more IC roles improves the purpose of meetings, focuses on better training, provides more push-back useless projects, etc as they are now part of the pulse verses being an observer. > High caliber, experienced employees probably get just as much done at home at > the office, or maybe more, So you remove the location and high caliber, experienced employees can adapt and probably need very little management. I think these types of people need less "team cohesion" and could probably be dropped in at any company and make the same impact. They most likely ask a lot of internal questions and look at the bigger picture of where things are going. Its usually why they know when to leave a company, they are part of the pulse and loose enough of them and you flat line. > but junior employees with less direction struggle more My understanding here would be this is why a manager would be needed, however since they have people who don't know the flow of things they need the IC's to now become trainers and perform on-boarding, while also staying current themselves. Shouldn't these struggles have come up in all the 1-on-1's and performance review's. What were all these managers doing during their WFH? >and WFH provides the ultimate cover for less motivated people (which in a larger company will always be > a percentage of the total) that might otherwise be held more accountable in-person. This one is always subjective but I'm sure a percentage of people were let down by all the interview hoops they went through and mock white-board "thought" experiments only to get to work on some mundane task that they are supposed to be "motivated" to do. Again, though would this accountability be seen in all the 1-on-1's and meetings that managers were having with people. Who's to say "less motivation" was just getting the work that was asked, done. At a certain price point compared to your peers and manager why would you go out of your way to fix processes or other items unless it made your work easier? I'm sure there was a person hired to specifically address that, what they doing?
exolymph 4y ago
> In person work, though a logistical headache and social annoyance, drives team cohesion. This is probably true, but the thing is, I don't care. Team cohesion is not worth commuting. So any company that wants people who feel the same as I do to work for them is going to have to bite the bullet on the tradeoff.
makeitdouble 4y ago
> It's not just about the heavy hitters, it's about the team as a whole. In person work, though a logistical headache and social annoyance, drives team cohesion. I've seen it as bit more circular: in person work required team cohesion and strong social acceptation. In return the best teams were often better than remote teams. I remember the pre-WFH hiring criteria including a lot more of "will you be happy sitting next to this person for the next 5 years of your life" wording for the 'cultural fit' part. The whole team being bounded had a lot of weight in the balance, and we'd go for a few lunches and dinners with potential candidates to get a better feel of the "human" part. The highs were definitely high, in exchange, the lows were way way lower, and interpersonal disputes, people leaving for social (often pretty ugly) reasons were a common thing. We also passed on candidates that had pretty low oral communication skills, and looking around I see the same kind of profile happily employed and fitting right in WFH settings. They still have issues in fast paced discussions, but most of the communication happens in written form so it's way less of an issue. Overall I think WFH has better flexibility and could help the industry with a lot of the social issues it was struggling with if the managements do it right.
baxcl 4y ago
Huge OSS projects work without in-person collaboration. In the quoted paragraph he acknowledges that high caliber people can work better at home. He is wrong about everything else. - In person work provides the ultimate cover for less motivated people, not WFH. - In person collaboration is not more effective for software engineering. - Teams take advantage of the productive persons while playing political and social games at the office.

bink 4y ago

I'd argue that that doesn't have to be the case. The companies that are failing their junior employees and new hires are doing so not because they are remote/WFH, but because those companies did not invest the energy and resources necessary to be good at remote/WFH. There are plenty of companies that focus on remote work and have no issues with onboarding or failing performance.

RestlessMind 4y ago
> There are plenty of companies that focus on remote work and have no issues with onboarding or failing performance. Can you please name a few of those? Mine has gone all in and sincerely trying to make it work. And it still sucks. So curious to know some successful examples.
- doktorhladnjak 4y ago
  A couple of well-known ones are Automattic (WordPress.com) and Gitlab. Gitlab even has its employee handbook publicly available https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/
  - shadow28 4y ago
    Airbnb is another one - https://news.airbnb.com/airbnbs-design-to-live-and-work-anywhere/ https://news.airbnb.com/airbnbs-design-to-live-and-work-anyw...
  - morelisp 4y ago
    I have no problem admitting GitLab is doing a better job than we are, but they also have orders of magnitude more investment and have been doing it since their inception vs. since the pandemic. Any examples from a) non-unicorns, b) who have successfully transitioned to remote work?
    - bink 4y ago
      That last example is the tough one. IMHO most companies that tried to transition to remote work during the pandemic did so half-heartedly and then blamed the failure on remote work instead of their own decisions. It'd be like deciding to open an office in another country and then not bothering to learn the culture, language, work habits, etc. Or opening an office in another city that was completely inadequate compared to your other offices and then blaming the new city. To make remote work function you really need to follow a model like GitLab has provided with their handbook. You need to document everything and use practices that favor asynchronous work. You need to adjust your training, benefits, communications tools, management techniques, etc. You can't just "allow" half of your people to work remotely and expect things to work out. In fact, the hybrid model is often said to be the worst of all worlds as the people who work in the office often ignore the remote workers and make everyone's job more difficult.
      - morelisp 4y ago
        > To make remote work function you really need to follow a model like GitLab has provided with their handbook. Right, and this requires resources (time and money) that VC hyperscalers maybe can afford to blow but the 8yo+ 50-100 person company whose HR "department" consists of maybe three people and whose non-technical sides don't understand the need to change everything because they don't need such intensive education, is going to grind to a halt for months if you try to roll this out. I don't "blame remote work" or anything, but it seems practically impossible to steer a mid-sized ship in this direction - big enough you've got fiefdoms and you'll never get 100% buy-in from the comfortable ones without a CEO going in and knocking a few heads, small enough you can't put together a task force specifically to eat the shit to manage the transition. So either we go back to the office a significant amount of the time, or we slowly die.

ZeroSolstice 4y ago

This reads to me "poor" management that everyone else needs to compensate for. I would be interested to see if moving managers back into more IC roles improves the purpose of meetings, focuses on better training, provides more push-back useless projects, etc as they are now part of the pulse verses being an observer. > High caliber, experienced employees probably get just as much done at home at > the office, or maybe more, So you remove the location and high caliber, experienced employees can adapt and probably need very little management. I think these types of people need less "team cohesion" and could probably be dropped in at any company and make the same impact. They most likely ask a lot of internal questions and look at the bigger picture of where things are going. Its usually why they know when to leave a company, they are part of the pulse and loose enough of them and you flat line. > but junior employees with less direction struggle more My understanding here would be this is why a manager would be needed, however since they have people who don't know the flow of things they need the IC's to now become trainers and perform on-boarding, while also staying current themselves. Shouldn't these struggles have come up in all the 1-on-1's and performance review's. What were all these managers doing during their WFH? >and WFH provides the ultimate cover for less motivated people (which in a larger company will always be > a percentage of the total) that might otherwise be held more accountable in-person. This one is always subjective but I'm sure a percentage of people were let down by all the interview hoops they went through and mock white-board "thought" experiments only to get to work on some mundane task that they are supposed to be "motivated" to do. Again, though would this accountability be seen in all the 1-on-1's and meetings that managers were having with people. Who's to say "less motivation" was just getting the work that was asked, done. At a certain price point compared to your peers and manager why would you go out of your way to fix processes or other items unless it made your work easier? I'm sure there was a person hired to specifically address that, what they doing?

exolymph 4y ago

> In person work, though a logistical headache and social annoyance, drives team cohesion. This is probably true, but the thing is, I don't care. Team cohesion is not worth commuting. So any company that wants people who feel the same as I do to work for them is going to have to bite the bullet on the tradeoff.

makeitdouble 4y ago

> It's not just about the heavy hitters, it's about the team as a whole. In person work, though a logistical headache and social annoyance, drives team cohesion. I've seen it as bit more circular: in person work required team cohesion and strong social acceptation. In return the best teams were often better than remote teams. I remember the pre-WFH hiring criteria including a lot more of "will you be happy sitting next to this person for the next 5 years of your life" wording for the 'cultural fit' part. The whole team being bounded had a lot of weight in the balance, and we'd go for a few lunches and dinners with potential candidates to get a better feel of the "human" part. The highs were definitely high, in exchange, the lows were way way lower, and interpersonal disputes, people leaving for social (often pretty ugly) reasons were a common thing. We also passed on candidates that had pretty low oral communication skills, and looking around I see the same kind of profile happily employed and fitting right in WFH settings. They still have issues in fast paced discussions, but most of the communication happens in written form so it's way less of an issue. Overall I think WFH has better flexibility and could help the industry with a lot of the social issues it was struggling with if the managements do it right.

baxcl 4y ago

Huge OSS projects work without in-person collaboration. In the quoted paragraph he acknowledges that high caliber people can work better at home. He is wrong about everything else. - In person work provides the ultimate cover for less motivated people, not WFH. - In person collaboration is not more effective for software engineering. - Teams take advantage of the productive persons while playing political and social games at the office.