4 ms·

What is your definition of "new person" though? If someone has been remote for years, are they still a "new person"? If you trust them enough to hire them, wh

What is your definition of "new person" though? If someone has been remote for years, are they still a "new person"? If you trust them enough to hire them, why is there a need to keep earning trust for more privileges. This just seems like a carrot to squeeze some kind productivity or control out of people.

zeryx 10mo ago
I've only ever worked remote professionally and I've got a track record, when I apply to a new role there's no question that I can adapt to working remotely at X company. If I just finished my PhD in comp sci and have never worked professionally in my life let alone remotely, going day 1 remote is a huge risk
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  I knew this was going to turn into a shoot the messenger (or downvote the messenger) situation. Look, I also work remote and have for years. This is just the situation that’s happening out there. Having 5 years of remote experience no longer means as much because some companies let everyone work remote and waited until now to start firing and laying people off. We’ve hired some real duds into remote roles who had years of remote experience, apparently doing the same thing they tried to do with us: Work a couple hours a week or maybe collect paychecks from multiple jobs. Every remote manager I know has stories like this. The remote world changed a lot since COVID and the rise of /r/overemployed and “Four Hour Workweek” junk has only made it worse for those of us who just want to work remote without shenanigans.
  - jacquesm 10mo ago
    > We’ve hired some real duds into remote roles who had years of remote experience, apparently doing the same thing they tried to do with us: Work a couple hours a week or maybe collect paychecks from multiple jobs. Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring remote? > The remote world changed a lot since COVID and the rise of /r/overemployed and “Four Hour Workweek” junk has only made it worse for those of us who just want to work remote without shenanigans. A four hour work week is very normal in plenty of countries and in some there are common constructs built around even shorter work weeks.
    - matwood 10mo ago
      > Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring remote? Bingo. I had an exec ask me once how will we know people are working if they are remote? I asked back, how do we know they are working now? Remote work is harder on management and leadership. It’s easy to see if someone is at their desk and seems friendly, it’s hard to really think about what value a person brings.
      - jacquesm 10mo ago
        I've worked at a bank where one of the oft heard jokes was that 'I spend 8 hours per day there but I really wouldn't want to work there'. It was true too. 145 people in the IT department, and absolutely nothing got done. This was a bit of a let-down for me, all these people, so much fancy hardware. I had a hard time believing it at first. The whole place was basically caretakers that made the occasional report printing program and that based their careers on minor maintenance of decades old COBOL code that they would rather not touch at all. Something as trivial as a new printer being taken into production would turn into a three year project. On Friday afternoons the place was deserted. And right now I work 'from home' and so do all of my colleagues and I don't think there are any complaints about productivity. Sure, it takes discipline. But everything does, to larger or lesser degree and probably we are a-typical but for knowledge work in general WFH can work if the company stewards it properly. It's all about the people.
    - AnimalMuppet 10mo ago
      > Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring remote? That only worked a couple hours a week and collected multiple paychecks? Probably not. Sure, they hired duds. Just not that level of dud. And if they were, they found out much more quickly.
      - jacquesm 10mo ago
        That doesn't happen remote either. Unless management is utterly incompetent, another variable a study like this should probably compensate for by increasing the sample size and pool diversity.
Aurornis 10mo ago
New to the company. Being in-person makes it easier to build new relationships, make friends with people you wouldn’t normally run into in your corner of Slack, and pick up more info about how the company works. > If you trust them enough to hire them, why is there a need to keep earning trust for more privileges. In person accelerates onboarding for all the reasons I mentioned above. It’s not a game of trust or “carrots”.
- parliament32 10mo ago
  > Being in-person makes it easier to build new relationships, make friends with people Critically, this is impossible if most of the team is already remote. You're not going to make the new guy sit around the office by himself right? I think hybrid is where we'll end up once the dust settles. Avoiding the daily commutes, but a couple days a week makes a lot of sense.
- MrDarcy 10mo ago
  This is nonsensical. Most F500 companies are globally distributed. Most of onboarding is gaining access to systems. It’s far easier and more efficient to search slack, find the person you need to talk to and DM them in your first week than it is to pester the person who sits next to you to figure out how to click the right Sailpoint buttons.
jayd16 10mo ago
Why have managers and reviews and non-automated promotions and security groups if you trusted them enough to hire them... Well because obviously that trust only goes so far.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  The “if you trusted them enough to hire them you should trust them with everything unconditionally” meme is popular, but it’s a very weak argument. Everyone has to build trust and establish a reputation at any job. Every company treats new employees as probationary, whether they make it explicit or not. You don’t get hired into a company and immediately have the same trust level as the guy who has been there for 5 years and has a long history of delivering results. For some issues with new employees you can pivot quickly: If you discover that someone is not good at interacting with databases and is causing downtime and restore from backup situations, you pivot quickly and remove their database privileges while you observe their skill growth. With remote, you can’t pivot quickly. If you’re 12 weeks in and the new remote hire obviously can’t communicate remotely or focus at home, you can’t pivot quickly and have them work in the office most of the time because remote hires don’t necessarily live by the office. So it’s a slowly earned privilege in companies that aren’t remote-first. I’m surprised this is a foreign concept. This was actually the common situation with remote work before COVID: Gaining WFH ability was something earned and negotiated over time. It wasn’t widely publicized, but that’s how many of us started working remote.
- jacquesm 10mo ago
  Building trust is a gradual thing. You give some, you get some, you do that long enough and you will have a lot of trust. You can still lose it all in a heartbeat. But you're never going to get the keys to the kingdom on day #1. 'Trust comes on foot, but leaves by horse'.
  - Aurornis 10mo ago
    > But you're never going to get the keys to the kingdom on day #1. I always tell juniors that even if their company doesn't have an explicit probationary period, they should assume their behavior and results are being carefully monitored for the first year to watch for signs of a bad hire. Hiring someone is never equivalent to having full trust in them. Reputations don't start at 100% on day 1, they start as a neutral value that you need to build up over time. You also need to avoid breaking it down. It's much faster to destroy a reputation than build it up.
unethical_ban 10mo ago
I say that hiring someone is not an absolute vote of confidence in a person. Even if someone is a veteran worker, most companies have a new employee orientation. Having a "probation period" where someone comes into the office to integrate and meet people and work more collaboratively makes sense to me. Disclaimer: While I benefit and often like a remote work or hybrid setup, I also know that my career and my ability to absorb new technologies has been crippled by the isolation of remote work. And, my success and my level of knowledge in my field is directly attributed to being physically around a lot of people and several related departments in order to ask questions and mingle with experts. Remote work sucks for learning, for me - and I know I'm not alone.

zeryx 10mo ago

I've only ever worked remote professionally and I've got a track record, when I apply to a new role there's no question that I can adapt to working remotely at X company. If I just finished my PhD in comp sci and have never worked professionally in my life let alone remotely, going day 1 remote is a huge risk

Aurornis 10mo ago
I knew this was going to turn into a shoot the messenger (or downvote the messenger) situation. Look, I also work remote and have for years. This is just the situation that’s happening out there. Having 5 years of remote experience no longer means as much because some companies let everyone work remote and waited until now to start firing and laying people off. We’ve hired some real duds into remote roles who had years of remote experience, apparently doing the same thing they tried to do with us: Work a couple hours a week or maybe collect paychecks from multiple jobs. Every remote manager I know has stories like this. The remote world changed a lot since COVID and the rise of /r/overemployed and “Four Hour Workweek” junk has only made it worse for those of us who just want to work remote without shenanigans.
- jacquesm 10mo ago
  > We’ve hired some real duds into remote roles who had years of remote experience, apparently doing the same thing they tried to do with us: Work a couple hours a week or maybe collect paychecks from multiple jobs. Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring remote? > The remote world changed a lot since COVID and the rise of /r/overemployed and “Four Hour Workweek” junk has only made it worse for those of us who just want to work remote without shenanigans. A four hour work week is very normal in plenty of countries and in some there are common constructs built around even shorter work weeks.
  - matwood 10mo ago
    > Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring remote? Bingo. I had an exec ask me once how will we know people are working if they are remote? I asked back, how do we know they are working now? Remote work is harder on management and leadership. It’s easy to see if someone is at their desk and seems friendly, it’s hard to really think about what value a person brings.
    - jacquesm 10mo ago
      I've worked at a bank where one of the oft heard jokes was that 'I spend 8 hours per day there but I really wouldn't want to work there'. It was true too. 145 people in the IT department, and absolutely nothing got done. This was a bit of a let-down for me, all these people, so much fancy hardware. I had a hard time believing it at first. The whole place was basically caretakers that made the occasional report printing program and that based their careers on minor maintenance of decades old COBOL code that they would rather not touch at all. Something as trivial as a new printer being taken into production would turn into a three year project. On Friday afternoons the place was deserted. And right now I work 'from home' and so do all of my colleagues and I don't think there are any complaints about productivity. Sure, it takes discipline. But everything does, to larger or lesser degree and probably we are a-typical but for knowledge work in general WFH can work if the company stewards it properly. It's all about the people.
  - AnimalMuppet 10mo ago
    > Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring remote? That only worked a couple hours a week and collected multiple paychecks? Probably not. Sure, they hired duds. Just not that level of dud. And if they were, they found out much more quickly.
    - jacquesm 10mo ago
      That doesn't happen remote either. Unless management is utterly incompetent, another variable a study like this should probably compensate for by increasing the sample size and pool diversity.

Aurornis 10mo ago

New to the company. Being in-person makes it easier to build new relationships, make friends with people you wouldn’t normally run into in your corner of Slack, and pick up more info about how the company works. > If you trust them enough to hire them, why is there a need to keep earning trust for more privileges. In person accelerates onboarding for all the reasons I mentioned above. It’s not a game of trust or “carrots”.

parliament32 10mo ago
> Being in-person makes it easier to build new relationships, make friends with people Critically, this is impossible if most of the team is already remote. You're not going to make the new guy sit around the office by himself right? I think hybrid is where we'll end up once the dust settles. Avoiding the daily commutes, but a couple days a week makes a lot of sense.
MrDarcy 10mo ago
This is nonsensical. Most F500 companies are globally distributed. Most of onboarding is gaining access to systems. It’s far easier and more efficient to search slack, find the person you need to talk to and DM them in your first week than it is to pester the person who sits next to you to figure out how to click the right Sailpoint buttons.

jayd16 10mo ago

Why have managers and reviews and non-automated promotions and security groups if you trusted them enough to hire them... Well because obviously that trust only goes so far.

Aurornis 10mo ago
The “if you trusted them enough to hire them you should trust them with everything unconditionally” meme is popular, but it’s a very weak argument. Everyone has to build trust and establish a reputation at any job. Every company treats new employees as probationary, whether they make it explicit or not. You don’t get hired into a company and immediately have the same trust level as the guy who has been there for 5 years and has a long history of delivering results. For some issues with new employees you can pivot quickly: If you discover that someone is not good at interacting with databases and is causing downtime and restore from backup situations, you pivot quickly and remove their database privileges while you observe their skill growth. With remote, you can’t pivot quickly. If you’re 12 weeks in and the new remote hire obviously can’t communicate remotely or focus at home, you can’t pivot quickly and have them work in the office most of the time because remote hires don’t necessarily live by the office. So it’s a slowly earned privilege in companies that aren’t remote-first. I’m surprised this is a foreign concept. This was actually the common situation with remote work before COVID: Gaining WFH ability was something earned and negotiated over time. It wasn’t widely publicized, but that’s how many of us started working remote.
jacquesm 10mo ago
Building trust is a gradual thing. You give some, you get some, you do that long enough and you will have a lot of trust. You can still lose it all in a heartbeat. But you're never going to get the keys to the kingdom on day #1. 'Trust comes on foot, but leaves by horse'.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  > But you're never going to get the keys to the kingdom on day #1. I always tell juniors that even if their company doesn't have an explicit probationary period, they should assume their behavior and results are being carefully monitored for the first year to watch for signs of a bad hire. Hiring someone is never equivalent to having full trust in them. Reputations don't start at 100% on day 1, they start as a neutral value that you need to build up over time. You also need to avoid breaking it down. It's much faster to destroy a reputation than build it up.

unethical_ban 10mo ago

I say that hiring someone is not an absolute vote of confidence in a person. Even if someone is a veteran worker, most companies have a new employee orientation. Having a "probation period" where someone comes into the office to integrate and meet people and work more collaboratively makes sense to me. Disclaimer: While I benefit and often like a remote work or hybrid setup, I also know that my career and my ability to absorb new technologies has been crippled by the isolation of remote work. And, my success and my level of knowledge in my field is directly attributed to being physically around a lot of people and several related departments in order to ask questions and mingle with experts. Remote work sucks for learning, for me - and I know I'm not alone.