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> Remote Work Sucks > Remote work eliminates a lot of problems with office work: commutes, inefficient use of real estate, and land value distortion. But softw

> Remote Work Sucks > Remote work eliminates a lot of problems with office work: commutes, inefficient use of real estate, and land value distortion. But software development is better when you breathe the same air as the folks you work with. Even with a camera-on policy, video calls are a low-bandwidth medium. You lose ambient awareness of coworkers’ problems, and asking for help is a bigger burden. Pair programming is less fruitful. Attempts to represent ideas spatially get mutilated by online whiteboard and sticky note software. Even conflict gets worse: it’s easy to form an enemy image of somebody at the end of video call, but difficult to keep that image when you share a room with them and sense their pain. Buddy, that's either a you problem or a problem of the software culture around you. I've thoroughly enjoyed remote work. I thoroughly hate being in the office. In the office, I can't type out notes nearly as quickly. I can't read people's inquiries two or three times to understand what they were asking in the first place. Why should I form an "enemy image" at the end of a video call? I don't. But in a conference room? That is easy. I can see their faces, see when they're lying or hiding something, and it only ever builds drama. Attemps to represent ideas spatially doesn't get mutilated by online whiteboard and sticky note software. Unless you don't know how to use online whiteboard and sticky note software. You need integration, you need training to use the integration, and you need to keep focus on the topic. You need to identify the ancillary information and objects. You can do all of that online while someone else is leading or speaking. Everyone can. It's a hell of a lot harder to do that when everyone is sitting in a conference room staring at the speaker instead of typing in their computer screens. Asking for help is only a bigger burden if your culture allows information silos. Encourage your team to speak up into a common chat room. Let anyone answer the question instead of just whoever was asked. It's easier to develop empathy and watch someone grow when everyone is given the shared burden of answering questions. It's easier to identify what processes are causing the biggest problems when everyone can see the amount of questions or frustration about it. It's harder when that information silo is real. Remote work is way better than in-office work. If you disagree then you are a very different person than I am, and/or have very different experience than I have.

tpmoney 11mo ago
> Remote work is way better than in-office work. Remote work is different than in-office. And it's better for some people and worse for others. For example, while I personally find it useful to be able to type out an example when talking to someone about things, I also find that in order to get things done effectively at home, I have to ignore the notifications (or will ignore even if they're not explicitly ignored) when I'm "in the zone" as it were. The problem with this is that someone might have asked a question that I have the answer to, or even asked me a question directly, or someone else on my team may have been going down a rabbit hole that I could have stopped them from going down. But because using a chat system inherently requires context switching and your full attention, the only way to be in the loop is to be continually breaking out of where you are to go look at chat. By comparison, in the office with my team around me, I can keep one ear open to the conversation that's happening in the air around me. My screen, my literally single focus within the computer and my fingers can all be occupied working on something, and I can use my additional sense of hearing to keep up with other things going on. When someone needs me specifically, they can (with varying degrees of forcefulness) grab my attention, where as online they have one and only one way, and it has the same priority as any other notification both in my conscious and unconscious mind unless I specifically read the notification (and again, context switch). Video calls still to this day suffer from latency issues. We all, continually have the "What about - sorry - what if - sorry you go - do you want me to go?" conversation in video calls. That's objectively a worse experience than just having everyone in the same room. Even when people in the room start talking over each other, that can be resolved much faster in person than on the video call. It's also really easy to get into the habit of not paying attention in conference calls/video calls. Because of the scheduling issues, remote work tends to include a lot more "just in case" invitations to meetings and discussions. Sometimes you really do need to be there, other times you don't. So you often get courtesy invites, and you might go, and while you're listening you might do that "identifying the ancillary information", or just keep trucking on whatever you were doing before the call started because you can just listen in. And slowly over time you and everyone else starts to build up the habit of not paying attention at all. It takes conscious effort and specific behaviors to not let yourself get distracted by the big distraction box sitting in front of you while you're having your meetings. There's a reason we generally consider it rude to be on your phone or computer in an in person meeting without specific need. Perhaps more telling though is the fact that even remote work people acknowledge the importance of having dedicated working space. Even if you don't have other people in the space with you, almost everyone can agree that having dedicated space for working is important. But remote work puts the burden of paying for and subsidizing that space on each individual employee. For some of us, that's not a significant burden and for others, it's quite significant. I'd also ask if 100% remote work was objectively better for all people and all things, I'd ask why co-working spaces exist? Why do remote workers congregate in coffee shops? Why, even though the internet and online communities are "remote first" groups, do we still have conferences, meet-ups and conventions? Why do we bother with these expensive and difficult to coordinate in person gatherings if everything we would do with them we could do better remotely? In the end, remote work isn't one thing, it's many different things for each individual person and how you experience it is highly subject to your personal circumstances and your work environment as a whole. It should be entirely unsurprising that people are different and experience remote work differently and that as a result, plenty of people will genuinely prefer working in office to working remotely.
dwoldrich 11mo ago
Out of sight, out of mind. When I was a remote worker (forced to be so during extended lockdown insanity in my state), I worried constantly about how I was seen by coworkers and my manager. I felt very vulnerable to (and fell prey to) RIF's like I had never experienced in my whole corporate career stretching back to the 90's. Slack is no replacement for confidential discussions with coworkers for understanding what is really going on with the business, with budgets, with whatever demons the brand folks are flirting with. And generally speaking, informal desk meetings and socializing during breaks was artificial when forced and non-existent otherwise. It was sad to go to holiday parties and see some of the introverted young guys so hungry for in-person contact and chats. When I joined a hybrid office, I found I was very short with people in-person and was very demanding. Remote work had left me sensitive to and irritated with faults I perceived in people, and I had to consciously work to soften up with them. I know many remote workers have drunk the koolaid and are very passionate about it, God bless 'em. I personally think it's shortsighted and weakens our bargaining power. When my grumbliest coworkers eventually self-exit as the RTO announcements inevitably roll in, its partly a relief, but I worry about them and my industry.

tpmoney 11mo ago

> Remote work is way better than in-office work. Remote work is different than in-office. And it's better for some people and worse for others. For example, while I personally find it useful to be able to type out an example when talking to someone about things, I also find that in order to get things done effectively at home, I have to ignore the notifications (or will ignore even if they're not explicitly ignored) when I'm "in the zone" as it were. The problem with this is that someone might have asked a question that I have the answer to, or even asked me a question directly, or someone else on my team may have been going down a rabbit hole that I could have stopped them from going down. But because using a chat system inherently requires context switching and your full attention, the only way to be in the loop is to be continually breaking out of where you are to go look at chat. By comparison, in the office with my team around me, I can keep one ear open to the conversation that's happening in the air around me. My screen, my literally single focus within the computer and my fingers can all be occupied working on something, and I can use my additional sense of hearing to keep up with other things going on. When someone needs me specifically, they can (with varying degrees of forcefulness) grab my attention, where as online they have one and only one way, and it has the same priority as any other notification both in my conscious and unconscious mind unless I specifically read the notification (and again, context switch). Video calls still to this day suffer from latency issues. We all, continually have the "What about - sorry - what if - sorry you go - do you want me to go?" conversation in video calls. That's objectively a worse experience than just having everyone in the same room. Even when people in the room start talking over each other, that can be resolved much faster in person than on the video call. It's also really easy to get into the habit of not paying attention in conference calls/video calls. Because of the scheduling issues, remote work tends to include a lot more "just in case" invitations to meetings and discussions. Sometimes you really do need to be there, other times you don't. So you often get courtesy invites, and you might go, and while you're listening you might do that "identifying the ancillary information", or just keep trucking on whatever you were doing before the call started because you can just listen in. And slowly over time you and everyone else starts to build up the habit of not paying attention at all. It takes conscious effort and specific behaviors to not let yourself get distracted by the big distraction box sitting in front of you while you're having your meetings. There's a reason we generally consider it rude to be on your phone or computer in an in person meeting without specific need. Perhaps more telling though is the fact that even remote work people acknowledge the importance of having dedicated working space. Even if you don't have other people in the space with you, almost everyone can agree that having dedicated space for working is important. But remote work puts the burden of paying for and subsidizing that space on each individual employee. For some of us, that's not a significant burden and for others, it's quite significant. I'd also ask if 100% remote work was objectively better for all people and all things, I'd ask why co-working spaces exist? Why do remote workers congregate in coffee shops? Why, even though the internet and online communities are "remote first" groups, do we still have conferences, meet-ups and conventions? Why do we bother with these expensive and difficult to coordinate in person gatherings if everything we would do with them we could do better remotely? In the end, remote work isn't one thing, it's many different things for each individual person and how you experience it is highly subject to your personal circumstances and your work environment as a whole. It should be entirely unsurprising that people are different and experience remote work differently and that as a result, plenty of people will genuinely prefer working in office to working remotely.

dwoldrich 11mo ago

Out of sight, out of mind. When I was a remote worker (forced to be so during extended lockdown insanity in my state), I worried constantly about how I was seen by coworkers and my manager. I felt very vulnerable to (and fell prey to) RIF's like I had never experienced in my whole corporate career stretching back to the 90's. Slack is no replacement for confidential discussions with coworkers for understanding what is really going on with the business, with budgets, with whatever demons the brand folks are flirting with. And generally speaking, informal desk meetings and socializing during breaks was artificial when forced and non-existent otherwise. It was sad to go to holiday parties and see some of the introverted young guys so hungry for in-person contact and chats. When I joined a hybrid office, I found I was very short with people in-person and was very demanding. Remote work had left me sensitive to and irritated with faults I perceived in people, and I had to consciously work to soften up with them. I know many remote workers have drunk the koolaid and are very passionate about it, God bless 'em. I personally think it's shortsighted and weakens our bargaining power. When my grumbliest coworkers eventually self-exit as the RTO announcements inevitably roll in, its partly a relief, but I worry about them and my industry.