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This post makes no sense. Author mentions Facebook's "lockdowns" as evidence that other people are killing remote work. Except lockdowns are highly exceptional

This post makes no sense. Author mentions Facebook's "lockdowns" as evidence that other people are killing remote work. Except lockdowns are highly exceptional events - is asking your employees to stay late in a disaster situation at all like asking them not to telecommute? > "It’s okay to say that. Sandberg and Mayer are giving up everything, so why can’t they ask that of everyone else?" I'm going to be frank: because I have several dozen recruiter emails piling up in my inbox, and that's just from the last week. I have people swinging large six-figure paychecks in front of my nose day in, day out, all of whom are doing interesting things. I'd take them all if I could clone myself 100 times over. That's why you can't ask me to give up everything. Free market, people, it cuts both ways. You can ask your employees to come to work every day in lederhosen, too. We'll see how far you get with that. As someone who dislikes remote work, but has no problem with other people doing it, the irksome thing about this topic is that is resembles the vegetarian/omnivore "debate". You can't seem to champion for one side without slamming the other. Proponents of remote work constantly portray brick-and-mortar offices as stodgy, inflexible, archaic, etc. Proponents of on-site work constantly portray remote work as lazy, inefficient, and for many reasons inferior. Can we just accept that people work differently? And that people who subscribe to one way of working aren't out to destroy your way of life?

mgkimsal 14y ago
> "It’s okay to say that. Sandberg and Mayer are giving up everything, so why can’t they ask that of everyone else?" They're not giving up everything. In an immediate short term sense, they're giving up some things, but they also have a far more secured financial footing to deal with the next 50 years of their life. They can, tomorrow, stop everything, and do whatever they want to. Most of the rest of the company can't, and need to balance their current obligations with their wants/desires/dreams and family life today. And if they don't, they don't have the 8 figure bank balances to fall back on.
- kolektiv 14y ago
  Quite. "I'm giving up everything in exchange for huge stock grants, a 7-figure base salary and industry wide recognition" does not allow you to say "you should give up everything in exchange for 100k and very little job security". If they want to, sure, but nobody has a right to expect that from others, in the same way as founders have no right to expect the same level of dedication from employees without the same potential for reward. [edited for minor punctuation]
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    Much better said than my original point - thank you. They will not succeed without the thousands of people working beneath them. But most likely they'll have a decent golden parachute - probably several times the value of many of the employees they're forcing the hands of.
- sologoub 14y ago
  Mayer is surely not giving up everything. She's using her wealth to balance things out in ways her employees cannot: "Alas, with her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it maternity leave and her new policy banning working from home, it feels like Mayer is throwing darts at working parents everywhere. Her stand is even more egregious considering she’s apparently built herself a set-up most moms can only dream of: a nursery — paid for out of her own pocket — adjacent to her company office. “I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set ‘em up in the cube next door?” wondered a husband on AllThingsD. His wife, a Yahoo employee, will soon have to stop working from home." Source: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-building-a-nursery-by-her-office-and-dissing-working-moms/ http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa-...
  - lambersley 14y ago
    If all parents could afford daycares and nannies to pick our children up when school calls and says, "little Johnny is sick ," I could agree with the decision to remove workplace flexibility. However, we aren't all as wealthy as Mayer. This is bound to have an adverse effect on Yahoos.
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      Right, because only remote workers can take care of their kids when they are sick. Yahoo has not removed workplace flexibility, PTO, or sick time. They restricted remote working, which has little to do parenting.
gregd 14y ago
Thank you. Finally a voice of reason. I do agree that people work differently. A large part of my job is paying attention to detail, which becomes harder and harder to do when the every day detail gets mired in coworkers stopping by my office to say hello or ask about the latest episode of Breaking Bad. Nobody has ever asked me if this was a good time... So I suffered through the distractions and the interruptions and slowly came to the conclusion that with every distraction, came a slew of insufferable minutes trying to get back into the same thought process I was in prior to the interruption. Sometimes I made it, sometimes I didn't and would have to pick up where I left off later. People without my particular mindset, may not understand this thought process as I may not understand yours. But please, please, please, let me tell you that I am wholly more productive if I can either shut my door and lock it....or telecommute and work flexible hours.
- badgar 14y ago
  > the every day detail gets mired in coworkers stopping by my office to say hello or ask about the latest episode of Breaking Bad. Nobody has ever asked me if this was a good time... At my workplace, we're allowed to wear headphones. Nobody interrupts somebody wearing headphones unless it's really worth it, otherwise an IM or email suffices. I have ADHD, so I know all too well just how important not being interrupted is - those headphones are a great way for me to signal to my coworkers "I am having trouble focusing. Please let me get in the zone before quitting time!" Given that example, have you considered that telecommuting was not the only way you could have reached a comfortable level of productivity?
  - gregd 14y ago
    Given that example, have you considered that telecommuting was not the only way you could have reached a comfortable level of productivity? Absolutely, but when your superiors had an "open door" policy, wearing headphones simply meant, please interrupt me often. But to add, I could literally sometimes get sidetracked for days on particular projects because of the constant interruptions and meetings. When I moved myself to telecommute, people's desire to interrupt became drastically less simply because it wasn't as "easy" as dropping by my office on the way to the break room or bathroom. I called it "weeding out the riff raff" because the people who needed to get ahold of me, knew how to get ahold of me. I was able to pound out coding work in a couple of days that would have taken me a couple of weeks in the office.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
1. Is it just me or why am I the only Freelancer who seems not to have a inbox full of recruiters. Its a problem I am told, sure, but a high class one. 2. I am all for Lederhosen at work actually :-). Wearing a rather nice pair right now ! 3. As a remote worker who has not actually met his co-workers, I can happily say that I am effective, but it takes more effort to stay in touch My suggestion is : rapidly cycled development teams: If we have remote workers, it is a lot easier for them to move jobs. If we have heavily decomposed applications (see micro-services) then we can bring people into a development, have them productive quickly (who cannot write an HTTP service of a few hundred lines) and bingo - what we find out is the important thing potatolicious refers to - how well do they work remotely? ANd with the team. FOr me the fit is probably the biggest determinator of productivity once past basic competance. And if we can swap people artound quickly we can quickly find really well gelled teams I envisage a world where a freelancer can "try out" in many teams till they find a really good fit, and then they can stay there and be sold as a complete development team.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  1. I think it's just you. :) For me it goes in spurts, but there's always at least a few recruiter emails per week. Most of them are not even a moderate fit for my skills, but some are. I'm not sure how people can 'gel' if they're swapped around quickly.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    The idea is not to swap people quickly, but to reduce the cost of swapping. Apparently in Google its possible to work on any internal project - you essentially have an internal market of freelancers, and the friction costs of bringing in a new guy for any project are surely dependnat heavily on how well decomposed the target sytem is. The idea is to stop companies trying to hire a monolithic team of developers and trying to make a monolithic system work and instead have smaller teams on smaller components. It is fairly "modularisation - duh" but its amazing how just this simple thing is ignored in both organisational terms and in code terms in many enterprises. Its a thought in progress - And, yeah, it seems like its just me !
jmccree 14y ago
The problem is, a remote worker can only work well on a team with a remote workflow. Teams with remote workflows don't care whether someone works on-site or off-site, and can accept on-site and remote wokers equally. Teams with on-site workflows, require on-site and exclude remote workers. For remote workers, Yahoo now requiring on-site is attempting to destroy their way of life.
moe 14y ago
What's wrong with Lederhosen?

mgkimsal 14y ago

> "It’s okay to say that. Sandberg and Mayer are giving up everything, so why can’t they ask that of everyone else?" They're not giving up everything. In an immediate short term sense, they're giving up some things, but they also have a far more secured financial footing to deal with the next 50 years of their life. They can, tomorrow, stop everything, and do whatever they want to. Most of the rest of the company can't, and need to balance their current obligations with their wants/desires/dreams and family life today. And if they don't, they don't have the 8 figure bank balances to fall back on.

kolektiv 14y ago
Quite. "I'm giving up everything in exchange for huge stock grants, a 7-figure base salary and industry wide recognition" does not allow you to say "you should give up everything in exchange for 100k and very little job security". If they want to, sure, but nobody has a right to expect that from others, in the same way as founders have no right to expect the same level of dedication from employees without the same potential for reward. [edited for minor punctuation]
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  Much better said than my original point - thank you. They will not succeed without the thousands of people working beneath them. But most likely they'll have a decent golden parachute - probably several times the value of many of the employees they're forcing the hands of.
sologoub 14y ago
Mayer is surely not giving up everything. She's using her wealth to balance things out in ways her employees cannot: "Alas, with her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it maternity leave and her new policy banning working from home, it feels like Mayer is throwing darts at working parents everywhere. Her stand is even more egregious considering she’s apparently built herself a set-up most moms can only dream of: a nursery — paid for out of her own pocket — adjacent to her company office. “I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set ‘em up in the cube next door?” wondered a husband on AllThingsD. His wife, a Yahoo employee, will soon have to stop working from home." Source: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-building-a-nursery-by-her-office-and-dissing-working-moms/ http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa-...
- lambersley 14y ago
  If all parents could afford daycares and nannies to pick our children up when school calls and says, "little Johnny is sick ," I could agree with the decision to remove workplace flexibility. However, we aren't all as wealthy as Mayer. This is bound to have an adverse effect on Yahoos.
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    Right, because only remote workers can take care of their kids when they are sick. Yahoo has not removed workplace flexibility, PTO, or sick time. They restricted remote working, which has little to do parenting.

gregd 14y ago

Thank you. Finally a voice of reason. I do agree that people work differently. A large part of my job is paying attention to detail, which becomes harder and harder to do when the every day detail gets mired in coworkers stopping by my office to say hello or ask about the latest episode of Breaking Bad. Nobody has ever asked me if this was a good time... So I suffered through the distractions and the interruptions and slowly came to the conclusion that with every distraction, came a slew of insufferable minutes trying to get back into the same thought process I was in prior to the interruption. Sometimes I made it, sometimes I didn't and would have to pick up where I left off later. People without my particular mindset, may not understand this thought process as I may not understand yours. But please, please, please, let me tell you that I am wholly more productive if I can either shut my door and lock it....or telecommute and work flexible hours.

badgar 14y ago
> the every day detail gets mired in coworkers stopping by my office to say hello or ask about the latest episode of Breaking Bad. Nobody has ever asked me if this was a good time... At my workplace, we're allowed to wear headphones. Nobody interrupts somebody wearing headphones unless it's really worth it, otherwise an IM or email suffices. I have ADHD, so I know all too well just how important not being interrupted is - those headphones are a great way for me to signal to my coworkers "I am having trouble focusing. Please let me get in the zone before quitting time!" Given that example, have you considered that telecommuting was not the only way you could have reached a comfortable level of productivity?
- gregd 14y ago
  Given that example, have you considered that telecommuting was not the only way you could have reached a comfortable level of productivity? Absolutely, but when your superiors had an "open door" policy, wearing headphones simply meant, please interrupt me often. But to add, I could literally sometimes get sidetracked for days on particular projects because of the constant interruptions and meetings. When I moved myself to telecommute, people's desire to interrupt became drastically less simply because it wasn't as "easy" as dropping by my office on the way to the break room or bathroom. I called it "weeding out the riff raff" because the people who needed to get ahold of me, knew how to get ahold of me. I was able to pound out coding work in a couple of days that would have taken me a couple of weeks in the office.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

1. Is it just me or why am I the only Freelancer who seems not to have a inbox full of recruiters. Its a problem I am told, sure, but a high class one. 2. I am all for Lederhosen at work actually :-). Wearing a rather nice pair right now ! 3. As a remote worker who has not actually met his co-workers, I can happily say that I am effective, but it takes more effort to stay in touch My suggestion is : rapidly cycled development teams: If we have remote workers, it is a lot easier for them to move jobs. If we have heavily decomposed applications (see micro-services) then we can bring people into a development, have them productive quickly (who cannot write an HTTP service of a few hundred lines) and bingo - what we find out is the important thing potatolicious refers to - how well do they work remotely? ANd with the team. FOr me the fit is probably the biggest determinator of productivity once past basic competance. And if we can swap people artound quickly we can quickly find really well gelled teams I envisage a world where a freelancer can "try out" in many teams till they find a really good fit, and then they can stay there and be sold as a complete development team.

mgkimsal 14y ago
1. I think it's just you. :) For me it goes in spurts, but there's always at least a few recruiter emails per week. Most of them are not even a moderate fit for my skills, but some are. I'm not sure how people can 'gel' if they're swapped around quickly.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  The idea is not to swap people quickly, but to reduce the cost of swapping. Apparently in Google its possible to work on any internal project - you essentially have an internal market of freelancers, and the friction costs of bringing in a new guy for any project are surely dependnat heavily on how well decomposed the target sytem is. The idea is to stop companies trying to hire a monolithic team of developers and trying to make a monolithic system work and instead have smaller teams on smaller components. It is fairly "modularisation - duh" but its amazing how just this simple thing is ignored in both organisational terms and in code terms in many enterprises. Its a thought in progress - And, yeah, it seems like its just me !

jmccree 14y ago

The problem is, a remote worker can only work well on a team with a remote workflow. Teams with remote workflows don't care whether someone works on-site or off-site, and can accept on-site and remote wokers equally. Teams with on-site workflows, require on-site and exclude remote workers. For remote workers, Yahoo now requiring on-site is attempting to destroy their way of life.

moe 14y ago

What's wrong with Lederhosen?