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The large trade-offs are kind of obvious to me. There obviously is an advantage to in-person collaboration. There obviously is an advantage to building relatio

The large trade-offs are kind of obvious to me. There obviously is an advantage to in-person collaboration. There obviously is an advantage to building relationships with co-workers. There obviously is an advantage to letting a junior hire shadow you in person. There obviously is an advantage of being able to confirm that someone's ass is in a seat and that there's a padlock on the door that doesn't open until the end of shift and that you can make all employees put their iPhone in a box to guarantee that it won't distract them while they work and to ban headphones. I think the question is: is it worth letting companies have that level of control over employees? I'm reminded of the first software job I had out of uni where I started doing push-ups and sit-ups in a spare room of the building. I got a few other software guys to join me. We'd do 100 push-ups and then get back to work, fired up. You couldn't see into the room. People just know we went there a couple times a day for 10 minutes. Well, someone decided that they didn't like us doing that and they told us to stop even though it was no more disruptive to anyone than going to grab a coffee from the break room. At 21 years old I remember being incredibly resentful that I didn't even have that level of control over my life just because I was someone's employee. Even though I was just trying to stay awake and get fired back up to do some work. And I chuckle about it now when I do a full body workout in my apartment while waiting for pointless Zoom meetings to conclude.

brookst 3y ago
I’m so happy to work at a giant company that treats employees as adults who can self-optimize working arrangements, anywhere from never in the office to 5+ days a week. I know that’s not the case everywhere and it seems bizarre. If you’re not hiring people who want to be productive, everything else is just deck chairs. And if you are hiring productive people, it’s insane to set global policies that limit their ability to optimize? It all seems like arguing which breed of horse is better for the carriage.
AndrewDucker 3y ago
You've missed the advantages of having quiet working environments where nobody interrupts you, has noisy conversations right behind you, or is otherwise doing distracting things near you. That's a pretty big advantage too.
cornercasechase 3y ago
> There obviously is an advantage to in-person collaboration. There obviously is an advantage to building relationships with co-workers. There obviously is an advantage to letting a junior hire shadow you in person. Is any of that “obvious”? It goes against everything I’ve seen in my career. The least productive people are those that “build relationships” in the office. The most productive are those who crank out code from home with little to no fuss. I’ve also seen juniors excel remotely because they have the space to research whatever they need and in a remote environment, often feel more comfortable reaching out to senior people for help than the would irl.
- rtp4me 3y ago
  To me, it is absolutely obvious. I have worked with lots of people in tech; mainly non-programmers (eg: lab managers, system engineers, cloud architects, etc). And, from my experience, many of those people prefer to talk face-to-face about detailed and difficult problems. Grabbing a marker and heading to a white-board to hammer out a tough problem is far better than a Zoom call with the drawing app. Can you do the same thing on a Zoom call? Sure, you can. But I think the results are much better in a face-to-face discussion.
- turtlebits 3y ago
  Sorry to burst your bubble, but the amount of code you write bears little on productivity. Planning, strategy and understanding the work that needs to be done is way more important.
  - cornercasechase 3y ago
    I didn’t say anything about the amount of code. I’m talking about people who produce value without fuss and hand holding.

brookst 3y ago

I’m so happy to work at a giant company that treats employees as adults who can self-optimize working arrangements, anywhere from never in the office to 5+ days a week. I know that’s not the case everywhere and it seems bizarre. If you’re not hiring people who want to be productive, everything else is just deck chairs. And if you are hiring productive people, it’s insane to set global policies that limit their ability to optimize? It all seems like arguing which breed of horse is better for the carriage.

AndrewDucker 3y ago

You've missed the advantages of having quiet working environments where nobody interrupts you, has noisy conversations right behind you, or is otherwise doing distracting things near you. That's a pretty big advantage too.

cornercasechase 3y ago

> There obviously is an advantage to in-person collaboration. There obviously is an advantage to building relationships with co-workers. There obviously is an advantage to letting a junior hire shadow you in person. Is any of that “obvious”? It goes against everything I’ve seen in my career. The least productive people are those that “build relationships” in the office. The most productive are those who crank out code from home with little to no fuss. I’ve also seen juniors excel remotely because they have the space to research whatever they need and in a remote environment, often feel more comfortable reaching out to senior people for help than the would irl.

rtp4me 3y ago
To me, it is absolutely obvious. I have worked with lots of people in tech; mainly non-programmers (eg: lab managers, system engineers, cloud architects, etc). And, from my experience, many of those people prefer to talk face-to-face about detailed and difficult problems. Grabbing a marker and heading to a white-board to hammer out a tough problem is far better than a Zoom call with the drawing app. Can you do the same thing on a Zoom call? Sure, you can. But I think the results are much better in a face-to-face discussion.
turtlebits 3y ago
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the amount of code you write bears little on productivity. Planning, strategy and understanding the work that needs to be done is way more important.
- cornercasechase 3y ago
  I didn’t say anything about the amount of code. I’m talking about people who produce value without fuss and hand holding.