6 ms·

Remote "work" is fine (with pros and cons). The problem is lots of people don't "work" remotely. Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such th

by tgma 3y ago

Remote "work" is fine (with pros and cons). The problem is lots of people don't "work" remotely. Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such that employee would be much more responsive to interrupts/errands of their own life than to focus their full attention on the employer's concerns.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
It’s so rare to see anyone admit the truth on this topic. That’s how I know it’s BS on both sides. No one has ever admitted they exploit it - but we all know it happens.
- cultureswitch 3y ago
  One could also argue that dedicating 100% of your scheduled work time to the service of an employer down to regulated pee breaks is exploitation and should not be how employment contracts are legally written or generally understood. Besides, it is absolutely not clear that home workers "waste" more time than office workers. The number one reason people who prefer the office cite as a reason for preferring the office is that it surrounds them with other people. That is, working in an office surrounds you with distractions and occasions to "waste" one's time.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    Then take a job that you agree with. No one is forcing you into slavery.
fullshark 3y ago
What's the problem if they get the tasks required of them done? A lot of employers don't want just that, they want a control of the employee's time. Remote means they might not respond to that urgent request immediately like they need to in a face to face conversation. I believe that is the main thing that is so disturbing to these employers that lament remote work, not that productivity is affected.
- tgma 3y ago
  > What's the problem if they get the tasks required of them done? At least in Software Engineering, tasks are rarely that clear-cut and specific. Yes, as a remote employee you will have enough data to justify "I did what was expected of me," and the employer have no specific performance concerns, but at the same time, I posit that you would have likely done more stuff that was not particularly written handed down to you had you been in the office. > they might not respond to that urgent request immediately It is not just your boss that you'd respond to immediately if you were in office. It is also the random questions, code review requests, etc. from everyone else that would be prioritized and the other party would get unblocked much more quickly if done synchronously, which would lead to more work done across the team.
  - fullshark 3y ago
    Then perhaps we should be more honest about what the concern is and the requirements of our jobs. Employers are paying for you to be on call for 8 hours a day (minimum) not just for your output. You need to be responsive and attentive as part of your job, not complying immediately can result in demerits.
    - tgma 3y ago
      I have a friend who was quick to respond to Slack messages as he napped close to his phone most of the time while WFH, but in between the responses he did very little work. 100% true story. You make an interesting point. I think in the office, what you wrote is the unwritten rule and people understand it automatically. At home it needs to be explicitly written down and it appears the employer is particularly abusive if they say you are expected to sit down at your VC and leave video on. Just demanding RTO is much easier and better PR for the HR.
      - fullshark 3y ago
        I'm not surprised, part of the lessons of this great experiment imo is a lot of jobs aren't actually important and are just part of empire building efforts and HEADCOUNT. Real actual work gets done by a few people, and a lot of these organizations have absolutely no idea who those people are, in office or not. Agreed on your last paragraph, no one wants to say that, and just making everyone RTO seems to be the less offensive way to accomplish the goal: control of an employee's time. The alternative that they will go with next is probably employee spyware, in fact I imagine it's already in use at many companies.
yedava 3y ago
> Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such that employee would be much more responsive to interrupts/errands of their own life than to focus their full attention on the employer's concerns. Which is how it should be. Life is a lot more than living for your employer.
- tgma 3y ago
  That is a sensible approach from the employee's perspective, but surely as an employer I know what my priority is in this transaction. And guess what, the employer is the one making the rules. The employee can choose not to play and pressure them in the market, but they don't have much leverage to modify the rule directly. Not surprising that many employers are backtracking on remote work. Nevertheless, it proves that RTO is not bullshit, contradicting the title of the article.
gilbetron 3y ago
I see the opposite problem, while there are people that work remotely that don't work, when I go into the office, it has become apparent to me that most people in office don't work nearly as much as remote people. There's tons of socializing, and snacking, and getting coffee, and going out for lunch, and commuting, and then on top of that, everyone works in giant open spaces with all kinds of distractions. Furthermore, if your company is multi-region, then "working in office" just means you are doing zooms in office because so many people are distributed. If you like working in office, that's cool, I liked to do it when I was younger, but own the fact that it is a preference and not a superior position.
- tgma 3y ago
  You are assuming those activities are not work or benefit the company in some way. Most seemingly useless bullshit team bonding activities will benefit the company long term. [This is especially true for slow-moving large companies, e.g. FANG, where very few lines of actual code is written by each employee and most of the "work" is in fact is to ensure business continuity, replicating institutional knowledge and context in employees' heads, and of the nature you describe.] I agree there are different preferences, but it's not about employee's preference for the most part, but employer's — and the case I am making is it is not at all surprising or stupid that the employers are demanding RTO by default.
Kaytaro 3y ago
That’s not really exclusive to remote work. I’ve had office jobs where I was extremely effective at not working. At the end of the day underperforming workers will find ways to underperform no matter where they work. Also, depending on the employees home life, there could be much more non-productive distractions in office.
thinkharderdev 3y ago
I mean, a lot of people don't "work" in the office either. You're either using some sort of concrete metrics to try and measure productivity or you're not. "Bob shows up to work every day" doesn't actually tell you much about whether Bob does anything useful while he's there. I don't think figuring out who is productive and who is not is substantially different for an in-office job vs remote job. One might even argue (I'm not sure I would, but it seems plausible at least) that it is harder to measure in office. You might be tempted to rely on things like "butt in seat time" (whether they are doing productive work or just browsing reddit) or who tells funny jokes at happy hour.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  It's still much easier to gauge work in person. Like if a person complains about a difficult problem 5 times in a row in daily, it makes a big difference if I glance over and see them in the IDE/terminal/stackoverflow, discussing with colleagues, drawing on the whiteboard, cursing or even sitting in the chair, apparently in deep thought. In remote, all you see is their online status (maybe).
  - thinkharderdev 3y ago
    But you don't just have their online status. You can still talk to people even if you're not in the same room. You can ask them questions about what they've tried and see if they're making any substantive progress from day to day. When they say the problem is difficult in the daily you can ask followup questions to see if they've really thought about the problem hard. If on day 4 all they can say is "it's difficult" then they are clearly not working very hard on trying to solve the problem. Once they finally do finish you can ask details about why it was so hard and judge for yourself whether it was genuinely a tricky problem or they were just slacking off. These are all things you should do as the team lead or manager whether you are in person or remote.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      Well, basically you then need to chase them as a dev manager. And not just one person, but most of the team, because you can't really get the information passively. I bet the devs love that. In practice this doesn't really happen and the dev manager is quite blind to what's happening. And it's not just the dev manager, but generally all team members get this information passively when co-located. It's much easier to read the room when people are in the same place, and you see how they interact. When remote, devs often have no idea about other devs, unless they again chase the information (which usually doesn't happen).
sensanaty 3y ago
My anecdotal experience is that whenever I'm in the office, 90% of the people there do nothing but chit-chat with each other, half the time with screens turned off. And no, it's not one of those mystical magical watercooler chats that solve every single problem in the company, it's just idle chitchat about their weekend or whatever. My direct peer whom I work with closely every day takes hours to respond when in the office, while at home it takes him a few minutes at most. PRs take 10x as long to get done when he's at the office (even on the rare occasion I'm in the office, it actually takes longer cause all he wants to do is just chat), the PRs themselves are of a lower quality and less useful etc... > Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such that employee would be much more responsive to interrupts/errands of their own life than to focus their full attention on the employer's concerns. I mean, good? I prioritize a lot of things, arguably MOST things over work. If I had the option to do nothing yet still earn money you bet I'd do it, but since we don't live in a post-scarcity Utopia I will in the meantime give minimal effort and not let my job dictate how I live my life.

by tgma 3y ago

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago

It’s so rare to see anyone admit the truth on this topic. That’s how I know it’s BS on both sides. No one has ever admitted they exploit it - but we all know it happens.

cultureswitch 3y ago
One could also argue that dedicating 100% of your scheduled work time to the service of an employer down to regulated pee breaks is exploitation and should not be how employment contracts are legally written or generally understood. Besides, it is absolutely not clear that home workers "waste" more time than office workers. The number one reason people who prefer the office cite as a reason for preferring the office is that it surrounds them with other people. That is, working in an office surrounds you with distractions and occasions to "waste" one's time.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Then take a job that you agree with. No one is forcing you into slavery.

fullshark 3y ago

What's the problem if they get the tasks required of them done? A lot of employers don't want just that, they want a control of the employee's time. Remote means they might not respond to that urgent request immediately like they need to in a face to face conversation. I believe that is the main thing that is so disturbing to these employers that lament remote work, not that productivity is affected.

tgma 3y ago
> What's the problem if they get the tasks required of them done? At least in Software Engineering, tasks are rarely that clear-cut and specific. Yes, as a remote employee you will have enough data to justify "I did what was expected of me," and the employer have no specific performance concerns, but at the same time, I posit that you would have likely done more stuff that was not particularly written handed down to you had you been in the office. > they might not respond to that urgent request immediately It is not just your boss that you'd respond to immediately if you were in office. It is also the random questions, code review requests, etc. from everyone else that would be prioritized and the other party would get unblocked much more quickly if done synchronously, which would lead to more work done across the team.
- fullshark 3y ago
  Then perhaps we should be more honest about what the concern is and the requirements of our jobs. Employers are paying for you to be on call for 8 hours a day (minimum) not just for your output. You need to be responsive and attentive as part of your job, not complying immediately can result in demerits.
  - tgma 3y ago
    I have a friend who was quick to respond to Slack messages as he napped close to his phone most of the time while WFH, but in between the responses he did very little work. 100% true story. You make an interesting point. I think in the office, what you wrote is the unwritten rule and people understand it automatically. At home it needs to be explicitly written down and it appears the employer is particularly abusive if they say you are expected to sit down at your VC and leave video on. Just demanding RTO is much easier and better PR for the HR.
    - fullshark 3y ago
      I'm not surprised, part of the lessons of this great experiment imo is a lot of jobs aren't actually important and are just part of empire building efforts and HEADCOUNT. Real actual work gets done by a few people, and a lot of these organizations have absolutely no idea who those people are, in office or not. Agreed on your last paragraph, no one wants to say that, and just making everyone RTO seems to be the less offensive way to accomplish the goal: control of an employee's time. The alternative that they will go with next is probably employee spyware, in fact I imagine it's already in use at many companies.

yedava 3y ago

> Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such that employee would be much more responsive to interrupts/errands of their own life than to focus their full attention on the employer's concerns. Which is how it should be. Life is a lot more than living for your employer.

tgma 3y ago
That is a sensible approach from the employee's perspective, but surely as an employer I know what my priority is in this transaction. And guess what, the employer is the one making the rules. The employee can choose not to play and pressure them in the market, but they don't have much leverage to modify the rule directly. Not surprising that many employers are backtracking on remote work. Nevertheless, it proves that RTO is not bullshit, contradicting the title of the article.

gilbetron 3y ago

I see the opposite problem, while there are people that work remotely that don't work, when I go into the office, it has become apparent to me that most people in office don't work nearly as much as remote people. There's tons of socializing, and snacking, and getting coffee, and going out for lunch, and commuting, and then on top of that, everyone works in giant open spaces with all kinds of distractions. Furthermore, if your company is multi-region, then "working in office" just means you are doing zooms in office because so many people are distributed. If you like working in office, that's cool, I liked to do it when I was younger, but own the fact that it is a preference and not a superior position.

tgma 3y ago
You are assuming those activities are not work or benefit the company in some way. Most seemingly useless bullshit team bonding activities will benefit the company long term. [This is especially true for slow-moving large companies, e.g. FANG, where very few lines of actual code is written by each employee and most of the "work" is in fact is to ensure business continuity, replicating institutional knowledge and context in employees' heads, and of the nature you describe.] I agree there are different preferences, but it's not about employee's preference for the most part, but employer's — and the case I am making is it is not at all surprising or stupid that the employers are demanding RTO by default.

Kaytaro 3y ago

That’s not really exclusive to remote work. I’ve had office jobs where I was extremely effective at not working. At the end of the day underperforming workers will find ways to underperform no matter where they work. Also, depending on the employees home life, there could be much more non-productive distractions in office.

thinkharderdev 3y ago

I mean, a lot of people don't "work" in the office either. You're either using some sort of concrete metrics to try and measure productivity or you're not. "Bob shows up to work every day" doesn't actually tell you much about whether Bob does anything useful while he's there. I don't think figuring out who is productive and who is not is substantially different for an in-office job vs remote job. One might even argue (I'm not sure I would, but it seems plausible at least) that it is harder to measure in office. You might be tempted to rely on things like "butt in seat time" (whether they are doing productive work or just browsing reddit) or who tells funny jokes at happy hour.

The_Colonel 3y ago
It's still much easier to gauge work in person. Like if a person complains about a difficult problem 5 times in a row in daily, it makes a big difference if I glance over and see them in the IDE/terminal/stackoverflow, discussing with colleagues, drawing on the whiteboard, cursing or even sitting in the chair, apparently in deep thought. In remote, all you see is their online status (maybe).
- thinkharderdev 3y ago
  But you don't just have their online status. You can still talk to people even if you're not in the same room. You can ask them questions about what they've tried and see if they're making any substantive progress from day to day. When they say the problem is difficult in the daily you can ask followup questions to see if they've really thought about the problem hard. If on day 4 all they can say is "it's difficult" then they are clearly not working very hard on trying to solve the problem. Once they finally do finish you can ask details about why it was so hard and judge for yourself whether it was genuinely a tricky problem or they were just slacking off. These are all things you should do as the team lead or manager whether you are in person or remote.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    Well, basically you then need to chase them as a dev manager. And not just one person, but most of the team, because you can't really get the information passively. I bet the devs love that. In practice this doesn't really happen and the dev manager is quite blind to what's happening. And it's not just the dev manager, but generally all team members get this information passively when co-located. It's much easier to read the room when people are in the same place, and you see how they interact. When remote, devs often have no idea about other devs, unless they again chase the information (which usually doesn't happen).

sensanaty 3y ago

My anecdotal experience is that whenever I'm in the office, 90% of the people there do nothing but chit-chat with each other, half the time with screens turned off. And no, it's not one of those mystical magical watercooler chats that solve every single problem in the company, it's just idle chitchat about their weekend or whatever. My direct peer whom I work with closely every day takes hours to respond when in the office, while at home it takes him a few minutes at most. PRs take 10x as long to get done when he's at the office (even on the rare occasion I'm in the office, it actually takes longer cause all he wants to do is just chat), the PRs themselves are of a lower quality and less useful etc... > Also, inevitably remote/async work flips the priority such that employee would be much more responsive to interrupts/errands of their own life than to focus their full attention on the employer's concerns. I mean, good? I prioritize a lot of things, arguably MOST things over work. If I had the option to do nothing yet still earn money you bet I'd do it, but since we don't live in a post-scarcity Utopia I will in the meantime give minimal effort and not let my job dictate how I live my life.