[HN Gopher] Remote work has its perks, until you want a promotion
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Remote work has its perks, until you want a promotion
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 285 points
Date : 2020-05-28 11:59 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| seph-reed wrote:
| There's three posts about how bad remote work is today:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-pro...
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-remo...
|
| https://marker.medium.com/remote-workers-just-outsourced-the...
|
| Most plausibly just coincidence, but an interesting anomaly none-
| the-less.
| xwdv wrote:
| Promotions are overrated in a remote work world IMO.
|
| Do you want more money? Get a better remote job anywhere else or
| do something else for money or keep good investments.
|
| Do you want more prestige? For what exactly? You're not seeing
| any co-workers regularly to pull rank on them and there is no
| corner office desk with a window to fight for. If you want to be
| respected in your industry commit to some charitable projects or
| give talks.
|
| Do you want different responsibilities? Ask, and if you don't get
| it go find a more suitable job.
| nniroclax wrote:
| My last role was remote. I was only promoted after a big onsite
| meeting that went really well. If that in-person meeting had
| never happened, it would have been really hard to get that
| promotion.
| khazhoux wrote:
| At this point I've mostly given up on the concept of promotions
| anyway. The amount of downwards pressure against promoting people
| is unreal.
|
| I've seen managers stuck in their level for years and years. Then
| a new candidate comes in for a Manager role, asks for more money,
| and (boom!) they're hired as a Director. Fuck everyone else who
| was already running teams successfully and trying to grow. Same
| for individual contributors. Best route is the insta-promotion
| during hiring negotiation.
|
| You want a promotion but don't want to switch companies? Gee
| sorry your scope isn't wide enough yet. You're doing a fine job
| --a good job, even-- but you have to understand that this was
| already the _expected_ job level... we need to "see more."
|
| Every performance-review meeting I've been in, when one manager
| brings up one of their people for promotion, immediately some
| other manager will jump in and say "No I don't know about that,
| someone on my team had a bad interaction with them once... nope
| not ready for promotion" and that's that. Only once in a blue
| moon does the room agree that someone should get the promotion.
| Hallelujah!
| StavrosK wrote:
| I absolutely agree with you, and this tells me one thing: If
| you want a promotion, get another job. The leverage you have by
| already having a job is fantastic, if a company likes you
| they'll give you a better position just to pull you away from
| your current company.
| betaby wrote:
| That's also a takeaway from "Moral mazes" book.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I understand your frustration, but also consider, being
| promoted over your colleagues poses its own risks to the social
| fabric of a company. Your last paragraph alludes to this kind
| of rancor.
|
| Bringing in people from the outside (or leaving to go somewhere
| else yourself when you're ready to make the jump,) has its
| benefits for what it avoids.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Internal discontentment follows from promotions being so
| difficult, and it's worsened by everyone seeing new people
| walking in at a higher level than seems justified. Then,
| having to deal with the new person once they land and it
| quickly becomes obvious (in 99% of cases) that they are not
| more accomplished and don't deliver more results than the
| internal people they leapfrogged.
|
| My first job two decades ago didn't have engineering levels
| (apart from Tech Lead designation, which wasn't a formal
| level). People still fought for raises and the
| salaries/bonuses were sometimes not perfect, but there was no
| "promotion" per se and in retrospect it was healthier for
| everyone.
| m-ee wrote:
| That sounds healthier for the org internally but I don't
| think I'd ever take the job because of the risk of stunting
| my career growth. Harder to move up the ladder at my next
| job if I don't have a decent title at my current one.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lcam84 wrote:
| You will start to see many articles degrading remote work. Remote
| work is too efficient to this economic system. We need to spend
| time on traffic and restaurants.
|
| As we saw Jorge W Bush at the moment of crisis asking citizens to
| consume, I would not be surprised to see politicians asking
| employees and companies to reduce remote work for the good of
| this economy which is based on exponential growth such as this
| virus
| zeitgeistfn wrote:
| This is why certain countries don't promote quarantine The
| powers at play want consumers to keep their businesses alive.
|
| That combined with their governments inability to do contact
| tracing and keep order with their castrated police. It's all a
| lot of work, and work is costly. Powers at play don't want all
| that unless they can profit from it.
| Jommi wrote:
| Why do you think people who work from home would consume less?
|
| Where does that excess money go to?
| ilaksh wrote:
| They consume less gasoline and other transportation costs
| which can easily add up to $4000-5000 per year.
| lcam84 wrote:
| Having more time on our hands can reduce consumption, for
| example, we can make our food instead of going to the
| restaurant or take away. We may have more time for the family
| and thus spend less on nursing homes or kindergartens.
|
| This is just my opinion but it can also reduce conspicuous
| consumption. Remote work makes it less necessary to be in the
| centre of a city or surroundings. This reduces the
| consumption used to define social status. For example at the
| moment the fashion business is in a strong decline.
|
| We are already seeing an increase in savings partly due to
| remote work.
| https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/12/investing/jobs-
| coronaviru...
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Maybe businesses will have more incentive to produce
| actually 'fun' stuff for people to spend their money on,
| rather than more and more unnecessary status items.
| brundolf wrote:
| These kinds of weird economic situations always take me back to
| this tweet:
| https://twitter.com/computerfact/status/1214869643531341824?...
|
| ---------------------------------
|
| When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail
|
| When you're the CEO of HammerCorp you are driven to turn
| everything that is not already a nail into a nail
|
| When the global economy is based solely on hammers society
| collapses as dying people chew on nails for sustenance
| runawaybottle wrote:
| It almost seems like a fruitless conversation. Has anyone ever
| beaten economic forces? It's going to happen how it happens.
| lcam84 wrote:
| It may be fruitless, but we have to talk about it. We have a
| growth addiction that threatens to deplete the planet's
| resources.
|
| Real solutions like working from home, working less, putting
| real taxes on externalities, reduce the scale of economies
| are not really taken into account because they reduce GDP, or
| generate fewer jobs.
|
| We have to think of a post-growth and also post-work society
| rightbyte wrote:
| I am not buying that. Smaller scale, less working hours and
| "green economy" equals more work to be done (less
| efficient) by more people and would lead to more jobs,
| right?
|
| E.g. buying small farm ecological fruits need more work by
| the farmer and you to pay for it -> higher gdp.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I think we're headed for a different economic system entirely
| by the end of the decade.
|
| Most millennials / Gen Z fully realize that "perpetual growth
| capitalism" has to end in our lifetimes. Even ignoring climate
| change, we simply have to consume less because we're running
| out of things to consume. At best, we're looking at holding
| global economic output relatively flat in perpetuity; at worst
| it will decline across the board.
|
| Our political and economic systems are not designed for that
| reality over any significant time span. We will need to replace
| them with ones that are, and that process will be neither
| pretty nor peaceful (the left is starting to bring guns to
| rallies too).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm not sure about any sort of radical change. I recognize
| the issues, but I also bought a house and have meager
| retirement savings in the market. Millennials and Gen Z are
| going to sink further and further into these systems,
| especially as the baby boomer money and homes come free and
| start drifting into the next generations. I doubt we'll run
| out of things to consume, we've already found the solution to
| that - digital media, with no real world substance, has a ton
| of value. If you can create items to consume out of thin air,
| you can never run out.
| keithwhor wrote:
| While access to resources is not evenly distributed (not
| everybody can consume equally), life itself is a consumption
| mechanism by design. We're currently only consuming 1 /
| 10,000th of the energy that reaches Earth from the Sun _every
| day_.
|
| I'd be hesitant to paint a future whereby consumptive
| expansion isn't feasible or possible. In this past decade
| alone we turned automated prime factorization into a currency
| just to have an excuse to waste energy.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
| schnable wrote:
| Like when San Francisco tried to ban free lunches in the
| office.
| opportune wrote:
| This is far too simplistic and cynical a view. You are not
| being charitable to people who have legitimate criticisms of
| WFH and I don't think you can flat out claim WFH is more
| efficient across the board
|
| Some legit criticisms I have of WFH (I'm not "anti" WFH, mind):
|
| If you rely on colleagues/get blocked by them, they can go AWOL
| for extended periods and block you harder. Some people are
| straight up much less productive even if they don't have kids
| in their house, probably because they need the structure or get
| distracted easily at home.
|
| Meetings are more efficient ways to relay medium-large amounts
| of information than async communication like email/messaging.
| And video meetings are still quite awkward and may never be
| able to be as good as in person.
|
| It's much harder for managers to do their job (understand the
| state of the team and communicate that upwards, track progress,
| manage wellbeing, help where it's needed) in environments that
| are more closed off.
|
| I'm sure many people are more productive when WFH but it's
| certainly not everyone. It's not at all "too efficient". I have
| directly seen how it harms individual and team productivity and
| communication
| bdcravens wrote:
| I don't think remote work is necessarily efficient in every
| case. Yesterday I filled an order with my mail order pharmacy,
| a call that takes about 5 minutes per month. This call took a
| very non-efficient 30 minutes, and the worker revealed to me
| they were working from home, and apparently her computer was
| extremely slow (the audio quality was also not great,
| presumably it was a bad VOIP link). I didn't dig deeper, and of
| course we know of a number of reasons why that could be, and
| potential fixes, but my takeaway is WFH isn't a panacea -
| there's work to be done, and it may not be useful in all
| situations.
| tlb wrote:
| Connection speed is a solvable problem. Good internet is
| cheap relative to a salary. So while there'll be a transition
| period where people discover their Comcast cable connection
| isn't enough, when people take it seriously those'll get
| fixed.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I agree, but also Comcast cable IS enough 99% of the time.
| He said she was having trouble with VOIP. You can run VOIP
| on almost any kind of connection. Definitely every modern
| cable connection is designed for that. And if it was "her
| computer" i.e. slow webpages, that is probably just a
| broken web application if it doesn't work remotely, or one
| that was designed (poorly) for an intranet.
| asdf21 wrote:
| Fixed how... Comcast is basically a monopoly in many areas
| tlb wrote:
| They have a monopoly on the existing cable
| infrastructure, but other ISPs install fiber or WiMax
| antennas.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Solvable, but not quickly. Even in the Houston area, you
| can live 30 minutes away and be in a pretty rural setting.
| Someone may have made that choice intentionally, not
| thinking they'd be required to work from home one day.
| Imagine owning a Prius as a UPS driver, and then being told
| you need to start using your personal vehicle for
| deliveries.
| econcon wrote:
| There was a point in my life when I hated work as commute,
| lunch breaks, even outside noise disruption and other things at
| my workplace like bathroom breaks were enjoyable escapements.
|
| Then I started working from home and now I am very happy
|
| I work on some interesting side projects at my home and this
| has improved my productivity on boring company tasks.
|
| But why I don't get interesting company work? Mostly because
| boring task pays well.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| Working remotely can be amazing. Today I spent 2 hours
| driving, 1 hour each way, to go snorkeling off a black sand
| beach. I did that in Tuesday also. Then I got home and
| started working at around 3p. That beats commuting 2 hours in
| traffic during peak daylight hours, only to collapse from
| exhaustion in my evening hours.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Auckland?
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| La Palma, in the Canary Islands! This place is simply
| wonderful. Here's a video taken on Tuesday by Lisa, the
| wonderful operator of https://www.oceanologico.com/ ...
|
| https://youtu.be/UdWG0f02uF4
|
| If you're wondering what I'm doing in the Canary Islands
| during Coronaverse shenanigans, I was visiting when
| quarantine started, decided to stay here, and am still
| here. I felt Spain was taking Coronavirus more seriously
| than the USA.
|
| Here's more pics from La Palma:
|
| Mar 1, 2020 / Playa Las Cabras --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/j2o62tm5ECjn4eCY6
|
| Mar 1, 2020 / Mirador de la Cumbrecita --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/A2DoNocGNVBnGsBd8
|
| Mar 2, 2020 / Petroglifos La Fajana --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/qiBeHL95PTfjpNbM9
|
| Mar 2, 2020 / Stargazing at Mirador Astronomico del Llano
| del Jable -- https://photos.app.goo.gl/oCamaWZwfH2HwykBA
|
| Mar 4, 2020 / Snorkeling At La Bombilla --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/upfnrj4dED4eYkkU7
|
| Mar 7, 2020 / Roque De Los Muchachos --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/XbGjsm5q1oSkmXG7A
|
| Mar 9, 2020 / Some Steep Ass Hike Near Puntagorda --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/1z5NMgaheCkj9uXr8
|
| Mar 10, 2020 / El Tablado --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/NWnJNcKa6uYuwiy68
|
| Mar 11, 2020 / Mirador De La Montana Del Molino --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/SRRnRhgUWSTVmUKZ6
|
| Mar 12, 2020 / Observatorio Roque De Los Muchachos
| (including GranTeCan, the world's largest optical
| telescope at 10.4m in diameter) --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/JcD1bCUb1asU9VcE8
|
| Mar 29, 2020 / Scenic Route To Returning The Car --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/Dgx9hTFsQ8HDa5sQ7
|
| May 2, 2020 / First Walk Since Mar 13!!! --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/qMbUGGShiuEPSrQT7
|
| May 3, 2020 / Walk Along The Shore --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/dxtfhDfo6VVKc8PN6
|
| May 3, 2020 / Walk Along The Shore --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/RukczW1jXbf17AU46
|
| May 4, 2020 / Morning Walk --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/RukczW1jXbf17AU46
|
| May 11, 2020 / Morning Walk --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/ndwxKH4gZNdfzmRt7
|
| May 24, 2020 / La Palma / La Fajana de Franceses --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/46PrYSdjKCMHQjECA
|
| May 25, 2020 / La Palma / Roque De Santo Domingo --
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/N1Z5PKWwESg7aTkC6
| mylons wrote:
| nice, are you in maui?
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| La Palma. See my response to the the other comment.
| ikeyany wrote:
| If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
|
| Someone can strongly think "I don't want to interact with
| others via webcam and screens all day" without having ulterior
| motives.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Emails and conference calls work just fine, no videoconf
| required. Unless you absolutely need to be on video, don't,
| it's just unnecessary stress. If your org requires you be on
| video constantly for every call, leave for a better org when
| you can if they're unable to budge on unreasonable
| requirements.
| ikeyany wrote:
| My point was more about having to use technology at all. A
| lot of people enjoy interacting in person with those they
| work with.
| dmoy wrote:
| I read GP's statement as the exact opposite:
|
| Some people will prefer more contact, especially face-to-
| face contact. Not less, as in no video.
|
| But now I don't know which interpretation is what they
| meant.
| ikeyany wrote:
| You read it correctly. It's natural to not want some
| device between you and the human being you're working
| with for a good chunk of your week.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| We don't _require_ video but it 's the norm with most of
| the groups I communicate with--especially with smaller
| calls. If I'm on a large group call that I'm sort of half
| paying attention to in case there's something I should
| know about, I'll just turn my webcam off. But for calls
| I'm actively participating in, it is more engaging if
| people are on video. I'm not sure why we'd want to have
| less engagement especially at a time when there aren't
| F2F meetings.
|
| (And, yes, it does force you to be a bit more present
| than an audio call does. But that's sort of the point.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > I'm not sure why we'd want to have less engagement
| especially at a time when there aren't F2F meetings.
|
| More engagement doesn't necessarily translate into more
| value.
|
| For example, I can focus more on the task at hand if I'm
| not having to worry about everyone judging my video feed.
| Do you need to see me if I'm still adequately
| communicating? Cognitive load is a thing.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+fatigue
| ghaff wrote:
| Personally, I'm not convinced things would be any better
| if I were on audio calls all day--although it would let
| me tune out more. But, at that point, maybe I just
| shouldn't be in those meetings if I'm just treating them
| as background noise.
|
| I admit that I'm more accustomed to the video chat thing
| than many. I work for a heavily remote global company and
| I'm very rarely in an office (even though I'm officially
| associated with one).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I appreciate your perspective.
| lcam84 wrote:
| I agree with you, remote work has many problems and one of
| them is the possibility to become tiresome the interactions
| at a distance.
|
| It can however have several ecological advantages, and if
| well managed it can be a way to strengthen family and
| community ties. My point is that although it is more
| efficient, it is not as productive as putting everyone to
| work in big cities. It doesn't produce traffic, maybe people
| feel less need to buy cars, it doesn't generate so much real
| estate speculation, etc.
| ikeyany wrote:
| We should certainly scrutinize certain industries more than
| others, such as the auto industry or those who otherwise
| benefit from having the masses commutes.
| Animats wrote:
| Page https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-
| pro... appears to be down. (Back up now.)
| sngz wrote:
| i don't care about promotions as long as I get paid more. I've
| had to ask for raises every year cause they kind of just "Forget"
| and they realize how valuable I am when I lay out what I do for
| them and accept my number every time.
| Antecedent wrote:
| I worked for a company that regularly does half in person and
| half remote employees. You could choose either or. The problem
| with being the remote worker on a partially in-person team is
| that you miss all the face-time and exposure to new opportunities
| simply because you are not a person but a task completing widget.
|
| You are never the presenter at company events. Nobody outside
| your team can recognize you. Nobody talks to you except to get
| something or clarify information. People can casually take credit
| for your work as you aren't there to defend it. You lose out on
| all the background information like conference funding
| availability or the cool new job in Innovation.
|
| You miss all the little opportunities for going the extra mile as
| you never look over your colleagues shoulder to see how they do
| their job and nobody looks over yours.
|
| So much of success is being in the right place at the right time
| to meet the right person and that can't happen as much remotely.
| zapf wrote:
| I have been remoting for over ten years now. The only rule I have
| now is to work with remote first teams. If there's an office
| where a big clique meets, you'll eventually feel left out.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Remote work means that anyone can do your job. This is going to
| make the job market significantly more competitive.
| smt88 wrote:
| It also means you can do your job from anywhere. You could live
| somewhere less expensive.
|
| This is especially meaningful to people with kids. Two working
| parents have to pay for childcare. If they can move closer to
| parents, that cost may disappear.
| p2detar wrote:
| Plenty of people that don't and won't agree to work remotely.
| Not to mention that working from home hardly appeals to
| extroverts.
| beart wrote:
| As an introvert working in an open office, I still miss my
| old schedule (3 days in the office, 2 at home).
| glial wrote:
| That's the dream...
| asdf21 wrote:
| 2 in office, 2 from home.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| 80% of jobs are filled through networks anyway, so unless that
| changes, it doesn't really change a lot except for those just
| entering the workforce or those without a strong network.
| notahacker wrote:
| A _lot_ of that 80% of jobs being filled through networks is
| 'X that I don't work directly with but enjoy having lunch
| with and happen to know is looking for...' and 'Y whose
| actual contributions I'm unable to audit who always strikes
| me as smart and perceptive in watercooler chat'.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Exactly. It often has a fuzzy at best relationship to
| actual skill but a strong relationship to social
| likeability.
| k__ wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I left my first remote job, because becoming a team lead would
| had me required to give up remote.
|
| Went freelancing afterwards, because there I can promote myself.
| donretag wrote:
| This sentiment is precisely why I have returned to an office job
| (now remote like everyone) after years for working remote as a
| full-time employee.
|
| I have specialized in a niche which made employers allow me to
| work remotely since they could not find local talent. Being the
| sole remote (tech) employee, or one of the few, means you will
| not get promoted. Remote-first is a different ballgame.
|
| I now turn down all "only you will be remote" positions that are
| sent my way. I no longer work in my niche since there is no
| demand locally, but I will not be the sole remote person again.
|
| PS: I am an extrovert
| semerda wrote:
| Promotion or Responsibility? If a remote worker is trusted, gets
| things done and is an important cog in the wheel then limiting
| their growth would be an unwise decision and ultimately cost the
| company a great employee. So why would remote work be an issue
| with a promotion -- maybe remote work is also a filter for below
| satisfactory people managers. Either way, HR will have a lot to
| rethink how they run.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| This implies a rationality that I have not often seen in my
| professional life.
|
| The places I have worked, HR has typically let the hiring
| manager decide if they want to promote an existing employee or
| start a new search. I don't expect remote work will change that
| much.
|
| Given that, it comes down to the hiring manager and I wouldn't
| feel comfortable that they are this level of rational either.
| They may have some pre-existing opinions about remote workers
| and those opinions may not all be reasonable.
|
| I think there's also reason for concern when a remote person
| has to "compete" with an in-office presence for the position.
| Qualifications and job performance aside, the person who is in
| the office every day, I suspect, has a real advantage here. I
| do think it is easier to form relationships in person, rather
| than over conference calls or Slack.
| z3t4 wrote:
| You promote peoole that strive towards the common goal, that are
| decent and loyal. You dont promote someone just because they live
| next door. Computer technology is superior for communication. The
| problem is the organisation.
| methodin wrote:
| I've often wondered what would happen to the jobscape if
| employers spent more to keep people then they do to hire their
| replacement. If jumping ship was always a pay cut, what would
| that do to both the company and employees?
| ravenstine wrote:
| These articles are hilarious.
|
| Lots of people are working remotely, and it looks like the
| #RemoteBacklash has begun because... well, everyone is different.
| But I don't think I've met a single remote worker who thinks that
| literally everyone can and should work remotely. It's a totally
| made up argument.
|
| This article is made up, too. It's totally speculative, cites
| nameless studies about "trust"(however you're supposed to measure
| that), and seems to believe that the rest of tech operates like
| Twitter and Facebook.
| prions wrote:
| Not everyone has:
|
| - long commutes
|
| - crappy coworkers or offices
|
| - a space large enough to comfortably work remotely (or the money
| to afford a bigger space)
|
| - a partner, kids, or both, which makes extended social isolation
| more livable
|
| - a rich network for career growth and opportunities
|
| God forbid some people _want_ to live in big cities and don 't
| make their choices solely based on reducing costs and bottom line
| expenses (ironic since every other day people here rail against
| big corporation bean counters). Example: Facebook's latest
| internal polling - the majority of people want to be in the
| office sometimes.
|
| People suddenly waking up and realizing the office is a huge scam
| is the current du jour opinion here. But time and time again the
| HN demographic only speaks to itself.
|
| And of course people will reply with that it expands _choice_ ,
| but that doesn't stop those from cheering that companies going
| full remote like its a universal good thing for everyone.
|
| And on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to
| point that out.
|
| edit: Going full remote is a _huge_ cost savings to companies. A
| cost that is now hoisted onto employees. So unless employees are
| receiving some equivalent compensation for blowing out my utility
| bills and refitting my office, be careful who you 're cheering
| with.
| nemacol wrote:
| >Going full remote is a huge cost savings to companies. A cost
| that is now hoisted onto employees.
|
| Commuting, lunch, tons of cloths/uniforms, (likely more stuff I
| am not thinking off) is also a huge cost to employees.
|
| I know my mortgage payment is due if I go to an office or WFH.
| My car, on the other hand, requires loads more fuel and
| maintenance when I work in the office.
|
| Electricity bill goes up slightly.
|
| Heating / cooling costs goes up a bit. I was already heating
| and cooling my home though but a schedule made it so I didn't
| heat or cool as much during business hours (when I was not
| home).
|
| For lunch I am not going out nearly as much. Mostly because my
| home is not well positioned for a quick trip for lunch.
|
| Seems to me there are savings on both sides here. I could be
| convinced otherwise though - I have not read any proper studies
| where the dynamics here have been fleshed out.
|
| I feel like I am saving lots of money and a fair amount of time
| with WFH.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| You missed a big one. Choosing where to live. If you live
| near downtown SF, you might get a 15 minute commute to work,
| which is pretty great, but it'll be super expensive and maybe
| more urban than you like. Or you could live like 2-3 miles
| away and have an hour commute to work, but live where it's a
| little more residential, cheaper, and close to the beach and
| GG park. The nicer one is somehow cheaper! Prices are a huge
| function of commute. In the near term, getting to work remote
| lets you benefit from price arbitrage to live somewhere nicer
| for cheaper. In the long term, getting to work remote might
| spread the housing costs over a large enough space that
| people can get the not-crazy-dense housing so many want and
| municipalities might keep up with demand. If we're lucky, it
| could lower the average price per person at the expense of
| maybe raising the average price per square mile.
| nemacol wrote:
| That makes sense.
|
| I had not really considered moving because WFH is an
| option, other than the digital nomad dreams that float
| through my mind. :D
|
| In my case, I live in small town WV (pop < 2500) and work
| outside Pittsburgh, PA. Living in WV basically means you
| can afford a house with acres of property IF you can make
| more than 60k / year (which is a big IF for most around
| here).
|
| Back to the original point - The choice to live in one
| place over another, shorter or longer commutes, etc.. Is
| not the company shifting its operating cost onto its
| employees. is it? Do I misunderstand still?
|
| Seems to me, if anything, this is an opportunity to
| continue to live the way you did before with slightly more
| free time and potentially more money OR, as you say, move a
| bit more out of town and save even more money.
|
| This change should decrease costs for the employee, open up
| the labor market for the employer thus lowering costs for
| them as well. Shedding office space is a great way to save
| money anywhere in the country - Let alone in a hyper
| expensive place like downtown SF.
|
| I am still failing to understand how this is pushing the
| cost of business onto employees.
| babesh wrote:
| It would be only a little cheaper and you would save some
| time commuting. If it was that nice before covid-19, it
| would have been expensive already. There was just that much
| demand for housing.
|
| Where do you think all the tech people with kids moved to?
| And they are probably dual income. And the couples who
| don't have houses were saving up for houses so that the
| percentage devoted to rent was limited anyway.
|
| The beach and GG Park are mostly in the fog belt. Lived
| near both places. Nope. Must be thinking about one of the
| few really warm and sunny days. Not that nice unless you
| like surfing. If you are thinking the Marina area, well
| that is very expensive already.
|
| Generalizing, the really nice areas in California are
| already pricey. You need to make a trade off for things to
| work out such as if you love snow and skiing, then go to
| Tahoe. You trade that off for food choices that won't be
| nearly as good and meagre entertainment options.
|
| The number of people in an area drives up prices but
| provides a quality of its own. One prime example is the
| variety and quality of food. So does the
| infrastructure/wealth of the area lead to improved
| education, health care services, etc...
|
| It's as if the wealth is mostly in the people rather than
| the geography and concentrating people creates more wealth.
| chapium wrote:
| I think of my work outfit as more like a costume.
| syshum wrote:
| - No long Commute for me, less than 10 mins
|
| - Office is not perfect but better than some
|
| - I do have a home office with a nicer setup than my work
| office
|
| - I love and thrive on social isolation, going home to my empty
| house is the best part of my day...
|
| - See above... I have no network...
|
| >>God forbid some people want to live in big cities
|
| yea I have never understood those people... I live in a mid
| sized city and have a strong desire to move back to the farm
| fields. Probably more on how you grew up than anything, my
| childhood was in a town of less than 3000 people.
|
| if it was not for network connectivity issues in Rural America
| I would probably still live in the sticks.
|
| >on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to
| point that out.
|
| Sorry, this is HN it is rule to point that out :)
| Jommi wrote:
| What are you trying to say here? You seem to be agreeing with
| the OP. Different people like different ways of working and
| we should have possibilities for both.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I was also annoyed with all the pro WFH rallying on HN pre-
| quarantine. But now I am happy with it consider:
|
| - I don't want city overflowing (and price-gouged-by) wannabe
| suburbanites
|
| - With a sufficiently high carbon tax, hopefully WFH can mean
| towns not exurb hell by those that insist on leaving the city
|
| - long commutes are bad and denormalizing than as an exceptable
| part of modern life (in the USA) can help us make our land use
| less shit
|
| - We should all work less, and making work as socially
| isolating for the upper classes as it already is for many lower
| class jobs will help move things in that direction.
|
| > a rich network for career growth and opportunities
|
| This is a I think the most important one, but the ultimate
| solution is to simply make "career" less important be making a
| decent quality of life available to most everyone. I know it's
| great us here that in the last 20 years society has begun to
| value intellectual work more, but the scarcity that caused this
| culture shit is just unsustainable.
|
| In short, don't discount the urbanist accelerationist argument
| for WFH.
| gowld wrote:
| What's wrong with exurbs, if people living there don't need
| to commute downtown?
| gen220 wrote:
| I think the OP is referring to the fact that exurbs are
| currently hellish because everyone living there commutes
| downtown. They'd have a stronger sense of community and
| identity if residents spent their lives actually living
| there, rather than sleeping there: the neighborhoods would
| become more like "towns" and less like "exurbs". Some NYC
| examples would be Yonkers, most of eastern/central NJ or
| the western half of CT.
|
| Anecdotally, I've spent a fair amount of time living in
| both environments, and for me the quality of life
| difference is night and day. The lack of proper "towns"
| within commuting distance of NYC means that we have to live
| in town-y neighborhoods within the city, which are much
| more expensive to than the 'burbs, and don't come with an
| acre, a pool, and free parking. The apparent lack of towns
| means we're eventually going to leave the entire
| metropolitan area, which is kind of sad, since we like
| working here very much.
| gowld wrote:
| If wfh was such a swindle in favor of employers, why wasn't the
| norm already?
| [deleted]
| Noos wrote:
| Because employers aren't always expert at maximizing
| swindling, thank God.
| klintcho wrote:
| I fully agree. Another thing I'm somewhat surprised to see is a
| lot of influential people talking about the trend of
| urbanization being reversed.
|
| To me there are more factors than "the work is there" (at least
| in more developed country) to move to a big growing metropolis.
| An anecdotal observation I read somewhere here on HN was
| something like "have you logged on to tinder in a suburb of
| some smaller US city?".
|
| Another big factor is the environmental one, sure if we can
| reduce the commute for a majority of people that would be
| awesome, however people will not stop moving around
| (restaurants, entertainment, socializing). What alternatives do
| we have if people are going to leave the city? Public
| transportation is for the most part only viable in highly dense
| areas. Electric car is of course going to grow their share, but
| medium term expanded public transportation is an extremely
| important part of the equation.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Facebook 's latest internal polling - the majority of people
| want to be in the office sometimes._
|
| Zuckerberg was recently in the press saying he wants Facebook
| to pay remote workers less
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521). That _could_
| skew the results a little.
| ankitmathur wrote:
| While this is true, I'm pretty sure the referenced poll was
| conducted well before that was announced. In fact, I've heard
| internal criticisms of the _opposite_ direction.
|
| The prospect of a full time shift to remote was not
| communicated as context for the poll. Employees answered the
| polls thinking they were talking about how they'd go to the
| office given COVID-19 (a lot more people saying they'd do
| 50/50, when in reality, that just reflected their lack of
| comfort due to the disease).
|
| Companies should be sure not to confuse actions people are
| willing to take due to a pandemic to be what they'd do in a
| post-pandemic world. Same thing with productivity: just like
| we don't know the long term impact of this disease, we also
| don't know that employees will _remain_ as productive as they
| 've been so far.
| gowld wrote:
| And employees want to pay less rent, and _that_ could skew
| the results too.
| rodiger wrote:
| If I could live in Omaha with a FB bay area salary I'd live
| like a king
| aarohmankad wrote:
| This is a very biased interpretation. Your salary may not be
| adjusted if you work in a similar CoL area. Only if you move
| from HCoL to LCoL (and vice-versa!)
|
| Too many people assume remote work always means working
| somewhere far away from a major urban city.
| Axsuul wrote:
| In LA, a lot of people depend on their workplace for A/C during
| the summer.
| HelloFellowDevs wrote:
| I live on the east coast and I'm sort of guilty of it too.
| Nowadays I open my window but I have to mute myself when I
| hear loud traffic about to pass by. I didn't get an A/C
| because I didn't want one more heavy object to move again.
| gnulinux wrote:
| I live in Boston, which is relatively mild over the summer,
| but it still gets pretty hot, at least for me. The switch to
| running AC in my study room has been one of the biggest
| shifts for me. Since now I cannot use the AC in my bedroom. I
| moved it to livingroom so I can cool myself while working.
| But then I can't sleep well. Looks like I will have to get
| another AC and install it in my bedroom. WFH definitely had
| many unexpected short comings.
| donretag wrote:
| I live in LA, and I barely turn on my AC, even during all the
| years I worked from home. LA does not get that hot and has
| low humidity.
|
| Working from home, no AC. Too lazy to get up from my code and
| turn on the fan. Then again, I moved to LA because I love the
| sun and hate the cold.
| Axsuul wrote:
| West LA?
| prophetjohn wrote:
| Does it just cool down that much in the evening? What about
| the weekends?
|
| This is fascinating to me. I've lived in the rural Midwest,
| NYC and Texas and always had A/C everywhere I lived - only
| question was central or window unit.
| Jommi wrote:
| Yeah, once sun goes down it's actually quite cold. Tho
| depends how close to sea you are as well. Weekends it might
| be that you can actually enjoy being outside.
| ConSeannery wrote:
| Coming from someone who is a complete an utter pansy when
| it comes to humidity, 100F with almost no humidity is a lot
| more bearable than 75F and 100% humidity
| filoleg wrote:
| Can confirm about humidity being a giant factor. I was
| mostly fine outside in Seattle at 100F, but at just 75F
| in Atlanta I was soaking like crazy.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Most older (pre-1980s) buildings in SoCal lack A/C. It all
| depends on how far you are from the coast, but the evenings
| in the summer are mostly tolerable with a fan and some open
| windows.
|
| Nobody except masochists really stay inside a stuffy
| apartment mid-day in the summer though. The reason you pay
| so much in living expenses is mostly for the good weather,
| so people spend their weekends out and about. As a kid in
| the summer, I remember walking around shops in the mall
| just to stay cool during the hottest hours of the day, and
| going to the beach often. My parents would do their grocery
| store shopping on Saturdays and Sundays mid-day if it was
| going to be hot. As I got older we'd go catch a matinee, or
| hit up a restaurant or a bar.
|
| I imagine workers in the L.A. area will largely flood into
| cafes and co-work-esque places as businesses start opening
| back up and remote work becomes more dominant.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Where I live (coastal LA), _heat_ is required in all
| apartments, but not AC.
|
| It gets colder here than you'd think. Not "Late January in
| Chicago" cold, but averages down into the 40s are the norm
| during winter.
| ip26 wrote:
| In many parts of the West it can hit 100F during daylight
| but 60F at night, thanks to ocean breezes or aridity.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Or in London
| mc32 wrote:
| Great opportunity to cut costs at the office and offload that
| to employees!
| richardknop wrote:
| It's a very good point. I live in central London and had a very
| short commute to my office and I enjoyed coming to office most
| of the time. Now during the lockdown I am stuck working from my
| small studio apartment which is just not suited as a working
| environment and it is starting to take it's toll. Working
| basically next to my kitchen corner and bed is not ideal at all
| and I feel I would be more productive if I were allowed to work
| from office again.
| bluntfang wrote:
| If our bosses shove our faces into each others and shout "NOW
| KISS!" we may fall in love!!
| buboard wrote:
| People who write these articles assume that remote work will be
| "Secondary" to office work. Wake up, it's already primary work,
| and it s going to stay that way for about a year due to health
| concerns. Afterwards, when half the people return to the half-
| empty office, companies will prioritize remote first, office will
| become secondary, and soon after a liability. Until a month ago ,
| remote workers were the rare exception, now everyone is already a
| remote veteran. Past remote work experience is a very bad
| predictor of a remote-first workplace.
| soheil wrote:
| In case anyone wants to listen to this instead of reading it:
| https://playthis.link/https://www.wired.com/story/remote-wor...
| lucideer wrote:
| This is not just true of remote work, it's also true of "remote"
| offices.
|
| I work in Ireland for a US company. When I started in the
| company, I was constantly surprised with the competence of people
| I work with in my local office, in NY, in D.C. & in Asian
| offices, compared to those I work with in SF (our HQ).
|
| But after a while I realised it wasn't that people in SF were
| less competent or people in other offices were moreso. It was
| simply that the levels were different. PoCs for a project who
| were at a similar "level" to me were clearly less experienced in
| SF, due--seemingly--to the promotional ladder just being so much
| more accessible there. Because those responsible for promotions
| are present in person.
|
| I don't think this is an easily surmountable problem with humans,
| but I do hope that WFH becoming more common will make people
| generally more aware of the challenge.
| B4CKlash wrote:
| I've seen a number of these 'for and against' conversations. One
| aspect that I often see overlooked is the relationship between
| managers and direct reports. Managers use the 'ass in chair' as a
| proxy for work load. What time did you arrive, what time are you
| leaving, how often are you in and out of your chair? Rightly or
| wrongly, the 40 hour work week is only flexible in only one
| direction. If you improve your ability to complete your job
| duties, new job duties magically appear. To that end, it's
| allowed the average manager to 'outsource' direct management. I'm
| curious how this relationship will change and I'm hoping the 40
| hour work week will change with it. The crux of this question is,
| Why is the average employee not able to control the incremental
| value of their time? Is it possible to move to a task-based
| compensation system? and/or remote work have a positive or
| negative impact on the compensation structure - reducing work
| creep, Etc.
| falcolas wrote:
| Counter point: I've gotten three promotions (one of which
| included a significant change in my role) while only seeing my
| bosses in person about 2-3 times a year.
|
| I also, in contrast with other commenters, talk to my direct boss
| 2-3 times every week in a standup. We have weekly 1:1's. My
| successes are recognized, my failures are managed.
|
| Getting (or not getting) promotions is a function of your
| communication, not proximity. Those two-three yearly returns to
| the office don't include any more (or less) communication than I
| had previously.
| papito wrote:
| Out of sight, out of mind. That will never change.
| Arubis wrote:
| TFA, being in Wired, appears to be focused primarily on the tech
| industry. At the risk of being pithy, the best way to get a
| promotion in tech has--for a _long_ time--been to get a new job.
| Even if you do score an in-house title bump, your pay raise is
| likely to be a single-digit percentage above inflation, when
| jumping ship can easily net you 20%.
|
| If more people going remote makes this more visible, fine by me.
| angarg12 wrote:
| My cynical self loves the headline of the article. Pity it is
| only mentioned once in passing.
|
| All my career I have been moving to increasingly more expensive
| places chasing after better jobs. So far I have very strong
| feelings about what I call 'the satellite office effect'.
| Anecdata shows that my colleagues at the head office get promoted
| at a ratio roughly 3:1 compare to my (remote, smaller) office.
|
| Amid this pandemic and many companies looking at full remote, I
| decided to move to the US to a yet more expensive city. I love
| the idea of living in a low CoL area and working remote, but for
| the sake of my career I feel the need to work at the main
| offices. Even if one day I decide to make the switch, I would
| never consider working for anything else than a full remote
| company.
| dhd415 wrote:
| The headline doesn't distinguish between remote work at companies
| that are remote-first vs. companies where remote is simply an
| afterthought or tolerated option. Promotions, raises, influence,
| etc., are no issue for remote workers in the former kind of
| company but certainly can be in the latter. Even though the
| article mentions Gitlab, a remote-first company, it doesn't tease
| out the distinction. Given market pressures, I expect the best
| remote workers to gravitate to companies that are remote-first,
| not just remote-available.
| digitallogic wrote:
| > Promotions, raises, influence, etc., are no issue for remote
| workers in the former kind of company but certainly can be in
| the latter.
|
| FWIW, remote first companies are not automatically immune to
| these dynamics. A few examples of how they can still emerge:
|
| * A group of folks that all live in the same city informally
| decided to start working from the same co-working space. A
| clique emerges.
|
| * The CTO frequently travels to SF to talk to customers,
| regularly has lunch with a local employee who later gets
| promoted over better performing peers.
|
| * Same but while the CEO goes to talk to investors.
|
| * Same but the whole leadership team meets in the same airline
| hub city twice a quarter because it's easiest for everyone to
| get to. Employees in said airline hub city have better
| outcomes.
|
| * You live on one coast, and your supervisor lives on another.
| People in the same timezone as your supervisor get more virtual
| face time.
|
| There are definitely more opportunities for this dynamic when
| some people are remote and some are in a shared office. But I'd
| be wary of any organization that tells you this can't happen to
| them just because they're remote-first.
|
| These dynamics can emerge in many ways, and if an organization
| doesn't realize/acknowledge this, there's a decent that they
| could fall prey to it, or may already be in progress.
|
| edit: formatting
| MattGaiser wrote:
| The reality is that a lot of promotions and opportunities are
| simply based on getting attention and it is a lot easier to get
| attention in an office than remotely.
|
| An email is easy to ignore. The boss's boss will at least know my
| name if he sees me every so often.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| Why all the anti-remote work stories as of late? Am I just
| imagining this or have the remote work articles (up until
| recently) been mostly positive?
| mtnGoat wrote:
| maybe it was fun and games to get a few days of working from
| home, but now that its a hard reality, some might not like its
| effect on their way of life. if people no longer have to flock
| to certain cities for great pay, pay will probably go down as
| the accessible talent pool increases greatly. So if you dont
| like that SF lifestyle and pay, pushing for full remote work
| everywhere, might be shooting yourself in the foot.
| falcolas wrote:
| I chalk it down to the pendulum swing. When it was mostly
| offices, some people wanted to work remotely. Now that it's
| mostly remote, some people want to work in offices.
|
| Articles that are upvoted (which I largely associate with
| "people who identify with the sentiment of the article") show
| up will reflect the current state of the pendulum.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I suppose there could be some sort of astroturfing conspiracy
| associated with the "reopen" movements, but I suspect it is
| just that, when WFH-everywhere first started, it was of the
| biggest relief to the people who _want_ to WFH, and now that it
| has been going on for many weeks, the people who _don 't_ are
| really getting fed up with the situation.
| closetohome wrote:
| At the moment there's essentially zero debate that having as
| many people work from home as possible is beneficial to the
| people, the environment, and the economy.
|
| These articles are introducing FUD so that when companies start
| recalling employees, the opposition won't be as universal as it
| would be otherwise.
| rodiger wrote:
| Or maybe we can take a more nuanced stance and say that some
| people just prefer to work from an office with their
| colleagues.
| fredsters_s wrote:
| HN used to rewrite clickbait headlines...
| mcph wrote:
| This article (similar to the several others that have been posted
| on remote work today) didn't touch at all on how working remotely
| may affect companies' ability to combat implicit bias vis a vis
| promotions. From conversations I've had with folks in tech, it
| seems that many managers believe remote work will improve the
| fairness of their promotion processes because it removes vectors
| for implicit bias like how social a person is, what a person
| looks like, etc.
|
| But it also removes what I've experienced to be a low-barrier
| opportunity for those who are quiet or unlikely to promote their
| work to do so--in person in a one-on-one setting. Without the
| opportunity to learn by example in-person, I worry that less
| experienced people (especially shy ones) in technical career
| tracks will not self-advocate. In turn, due to implicit bias that
| will inevitably shape manager-employee relationships, I fear
| they'll stall.
|
| It's really not a solution to say that managers should be
| offering the conversations, because of course, managers
| inevitably will fail to do so in many corporate culture.
|
| We are going remote-first from the jump, but as we scale I am
| pretty concerned about how to combat this phenomenon.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| For me, remote work is a promotion so long as my salary isn't
| adjusted. If I can take my same salary and move somewhere (within
| reason) my salary goes further... that's a pretty huge perk.
| drawkbox wrote:
| Lots of anti-remote work suddenly.
|
| Remote work means companies can get the best people for that
| company anywhere.
|
| Remote work means life changes can happen and you can retain the
| best people for that company. With jobs and life, changes happen,
| people move, have families, want to be close to family, want to
| change scenery, get a new significant other, go to school, buy a
| house, all of these things can mean you might have to quit if you
| have to physically always be in the office.
|
| Even when companies have remote/different city offices, virtual
| communication is very important anyways.
|
| Clients and customers are almost always remote with some
| sprinkled in meetings but mostly virtual communication and
| communication through the work.
|
| Companies would be wise to switch to remote first thinking and
| processes with a focus on virtual communication and a nice to
| have of physical meetups, integration sessions etc.
|
| Remote work helps companies focus on their external view not just
| their internal machinations.
|
| For truly unique talents and workers, location has never really
| mattered.
|
| The world is virtual and remote now, the companies that perform
| well in that and with their external view, not internal view, and
| do the best virtual communication will win, and not just in tech.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Remote means not building genuine relationships with any
| coworkers. Remote means not sharing a meal, getting coffee,
| building friendships, or growing past an automaton that gets
| work done.
| drawkbox wrote:
| Not really, _most_ work is virtual even at an office, or with
| another office, or with a client, or with a partner company,
| or with a friend that you see on occasion but always in touch
| online.
|
| Remote work allows relationships/lunches with friends as
| well, maybe not work friends but friends, networking, local
| groups in the same focus/area, it isn't just automaton. We
| rely too much on work environment rather than our local
| environment. Remote work allows freedom to dictate your day
| more and allows for more opportunities to meet people if you
| want. Co-working spaces for remote workers are also nice.
|
| External product/brand view is the most important thing
| companies need to learn today.
|
| Even within the office when people go in, most communication
| there is email, communication/chat, video etc.
|
| Remote and virtual communication is now how most business is
| done, even at physical offices.
|
| Offices that have ability to do meetups or have integration
| sessions are nice to haves as well. Even when it comes to
| shared desktop pair programming, you can get to know people
| not having to stand next to them. The lunches and other
| things are nice though, but they have little to do with work
| and better external products though.
|
| The best products come from people that have time to do
| research and development and more open mode versus closed
| mode, that kind of work is really hard to do at a modern
| office.
|
| Some jobs cannot be remote, the ones that can are usually in
| fields where _most_ work /communication is virtual _even in
| the same office and maybe even the same room_.
| everdrive wrote:
| I've recently moved back into private sector, and it's been
| pretty surprising to me just how little of the business world has
| to do with actual business. There are the expected things, such
| as relationship building, empire building, fiefdom building, etc.
|
| But, it also seems that a lot of the actual effort people expend
| doesn't have very much to do with the business. For example, we
| had an executive whose passion in life was clearly just to speak
| in front of people. He never did real work, but made sure to take
| every opportunity to ensure he was speaking in front of people.
| It's clear that he should have been a public speaker.
|
| I don't mean to pick on this particular executive, but it seems
| like there's a lot of this here. A lot of people, engaged all day
| in things that don't produce work. They're more about building
| some special, separate social hierarchy: determining who is in
| charge, who has influence, who matters. That seems to take up a
| lot of time in the private sector. I'm sure it's not universally
| true, but this has been my ad-hoc experience.
|
| And, I get it: this is what people do, and what people value.
| We're social creatures, etc. But it sort implies that everyone's
| engaged in a joint lie. That lie being "we're here to work and
| we're all hard workers. We're primarily interested in advanced
| the business." It seems like a more literal truth might be:
| "We're here to take part in a social hierarchy, and forge friends
| and enemies, and do enough actual work that no one minds how
| inefficient our business is."
| LordFast wrote:
| Good point, and I used to actually hold a stronger belief in
| things like that because to me they represent a larger-picture
| type of work that seemed more interesting.
|
| BUT, ever since I exited out of that game to start my own
| business, my beliefs have been shifting. Now I can see exactly
| how successful businesses come together and make enough money
| to fill payroll, and there's no getting around the fact that
| real, valuable work needs to get done. And that only once the
| real work has been done, do you then get to have the nice
| byproducts of success which is to do public speaking, culture
| building, and etc all those extra-curricular things. But the
| existence of these extra-curriculars are predicated on having a
| successful business in the first place. And no matter how
| cynical anyone gets, you won't have a successful business based
| on /JUST/ bullshit empire building alone- you gotta do real
| work and provide real value.
|
| I can also see more clearly now that if society doesn't have
| the right balance between doers and talkers, we're eventually
| gonna have nothing valuable to show for anymore, and the
| fallout from that won't be pretty.
|
| When /everyone/ _DESIRES_ to be talkers, instead of just a
| small minority, it 's a worrisome trend.
| everdrive wrote:
| I think that's very fair, and to be clear: I'm not
| necessarily even suggesting this is a bad thing, just that I
| was surprised by it, and that it seems to run counter to what
| people publicly espouse. For certain, some businesses are
| more efficient than others as well.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I am pretty senior and remote now. I would agree that the
| potential for promotion has gone down a little due to lack of
| visibility. My strategy is to carve out a niche for myself where
| I can produce high value stuff that usually doesn't get done in
| the rush of the office but can be done because I am out of sight.
| I think this works for me and fits my work style but I don't see
| myself moving up a lot.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| If you want a promotion, move to another job. Most companies make
| it incredibly slow and painful to evolve in their own walls,
| while giving big rewards to new comers.
|
| Unless you happen to work at the legenday ones that do care about
| you, don't play according to their rules. Those are here for
| their benefit, not yours.
|
| Remote or not.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| It depends on how valuable you are. There's no substitute for
| being an amazing value proposition to your employer. Everyone
| onsite company wants onsite resources until they can't hire then
| locally. Be invaluable remotely, and if you don't get that
| promotion, find it elsewhere at another company. This is
| basically similar to the advice that the easiest way to make more
| money is to take a job at a different company.
| ahh wrote:
| Humans don't have emotional object permanence.
|
| My ex-girlfriend described herself this way to me once and I
| thought it was funny, but it's in fact true of people in general:
| if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that
| you really exist as a human and a social peer. It's unfortunate
| but it's true: you are going to naturally think more about and
| have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in
| person. No, VC doesn't count. I think this is pretty much a human
| universal; the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism
| spectrum. (Even I notice myself doing this, and I'm definitely
| somewhere on that line.)
|
| Given that, I want to be in the room with my coworkers. I want
| them to unconsciously think of me as part of their tribe, and I
| want to feel the same way about them; that means we need to be
| able to perform regular in-person social petting. This is doubly
| true of my bosses. It sucks, but there's no way around it.
|
| (Also, while this is less universal, there are plenty of
| extroverts, even on HN. I'm one. It's ironic, in that I _also_
| suffer from pretty nasty social anxiety; large rooms of strangers
| scare me and choke me up. But lock me in a room by myself for a
| month and I go crazy. I am happier, by far, when I can be in the
| same room as people I like.)
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| > Humans don't have emotional object permanence.
|
| Given that, I _don 't_ want to be in the room with my
| coworkers. There's more to life than work.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I'd say it slightly differently. The thing I've observed is
| that the physical closeness creates a bias. You are more likely
| to give someone you "know" the benefit of the doubt. Someone
| who is remote is more likely to be seen as clueless or "them
| not us" even if you'd agree with someone local on the same
| idea. We as humans long to belong. It is hard to separate them
| from the rest of the experience. I think the other fact is the
| hallway and elevator are great opportunities to "get to know"
| someone when in reality it is just knowing more about someone
| not necessarily really knowing them as a person. But those are
| the things that create the familiarity and benefit of the doubt
| later.
| troughway wrote:
| >It's unfortunate but it's true: you are going to naturally
| think more about and have better feelings about the coworkers
| you see every day in person.
|
| The people who are overjoyed at the prospect of WFH, thinking
| they are in the right, are a loud minority. Most people, being
| well-adjusted social creatures, would feel very alienated if
| they are not in close physical proximity with the people they
| work with and depend on for their livelihood.
|
| There has been a massive uptick of WFH articles and how it will
| be the new norm in the future. I think Dang called it a
| "cliche". The tabloids are writing cheques basic human needs
| cannot cash.
|
| This might be flippant to say but I wouldn't be surprised if
| people who espouse remote work/WFH have a very real lack of
| leadership skills, because you're cutting your own ability to
| influence those around and underneath you when you cannot look
| them in the eyes properly.
|
| This won't sit well with HNers, and I get it, since one of the
| catch phrases around here is that "It is difficult to get a man
| to understand something when his salary depends upon his not
| understanding it." Sometimes, its not others who have a hard
| time understanding - its us.
|
| The remote work group is very niche. People cannot wait to get
| the hell out of their houses, get back to what they want to do,
| and work with their colleagues.
|
| >the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism
| spectrum.
|
| Too right mate.
| learc83 wrote:
| Perhaps we need to rethink work life balance if we need work
| to fulfill our social needs.
|
| During the lockdown, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of
| my house, but it was because I wanted go hiking, out to eat,
| to a ballgame, or just to visit friends and family.
| troughway wrote:
| I agree, but eating, sleeping, working, these kinds of
| things don't happen every other sunday. It's every single
| day. Any "work life balance" you bring to this, assuming
| you're in the 40+ hour/week rat race, will have to revolve
| around those three things, and not the other way around.
|
| The mistake people make is thinking they can make their
| work life revolve around their life life. As George Carlin
| quipped "The reason they call it the American Dream is
| because you have to be asleep to believe it."
|
| So you're there, working remotely by yourself, 8 hours a
| day, 5 days a week. It takes a special kind of left-field
| to equate this to being in an environment where you're
| surrounded by people of "your tribe", as the OP put it.
| learc83 wrote:
| >8 hours a day, 5 days a week
|
| That's the thing, I'm not. Almost no one who is doing
| knowledge work is getting 8 hours a day of work done.
| Instead of driving to the office to get 4-5 hours of work
| in and goof off the rest of the time with a forced group
| of people, I get 4-5 hours of work done at home and goof
| off with whomever I choose.
|
| I work a few hours in the morning. Leave in the middle of
| the day to walk the dog to the park, have a long lunch
| with my fiancee, or run errands. Come home do a few more
| hours of work. Or I work early and take the afternoon off
| to go hiking etc...
|
| >by people of "your tribe", as the OP put it.
|
| I don't won't my workmates to be the people of my tribe.
| I work to live, I don't live to work. Our economic system
| isn't set up to allow everyone to do this, but most of us
| on HN could if we wanted to.
|
| I've done this for about 5 years now btw. I don't make
| quite as much as I could if I worked for a FAANG, but I
| live in a low cost of living area in a medium sized city
| near plenty of mountains. I highly recommend it over the
| rat race.
| troughway wrote:
| I agree with you again, and yet your statements are
| bringing up even more uncomfortable questions.
|
| Ever since the "lockdown" started, a lot of people have
| found they have ample time, and so the thing that has
| been done en masse is to double down on work. This is
| mentally and physically (sitting on your ass the whole
| day) draining, and will lead to a huge burn out in a
| relatively short amount of time.
|
| Your work schedule is atypical, and in most work
| environments would lead to eyebrows being raised from
| management down to your peers.
|
| There is an unwritten rule that you are allowed to work
| some N number of hours every day that is less than the
| number of hours you're paid for. But you are there,
| within the ear shot of most people who depend on you, and
| if you step out for something they know you will be back
| relatively quickly in case the world around them starts
| to burn down.
|
| With this kind of a "I set my own schedule" approach,
| people would have a hard time trusting you and depending
| on you. And if you think it's a good career move to let
| them know that hey I'll be taking a long lunch (every
| day), well, I've already addressed that.
|
| As MattGaiser put it, it's as if he's a microservice
| outputting work. That's pretty much what remote
| contractors are. Nobody _really_ gives a shit about them.
| It's a hard truth to take in.
|
| I get that there's a huge swath of people who mindlessly
| browse facebook or twitter or reddit or their favorite
| ethnic news site at the office, completely not caring
| about the work because they're mentally drained and it's
| not 5 o'clock yet, but they are there all the same.
|
| >I've done this for about 5 years now btw. I don't make
| quite as much as I could if I worked for a FAANG, but I
| live in a low cost of living area in a medium sized city
| near plenty of mountains. I highly recommend it over the
| rat race.
|
| Same, although don't think that it's somehow normal or
| that because everyone is forcibly remote-working, that it
| will become the new normal.
| learc83 wrote:
| >Your work schedule is atypical, and in most work
| environments would lead to eyebrows being raised from
| management down to your peers.
|
| At every company I've worked for no one has ever cared.
| At all. I'm around to answer questions and attend
| meetings.
|
| >in case the world around them starts to burn down.
|
| I could be back home in 30 minutes if things really got
| that bad. But since I'm the principal engineer, it's
| really my job to make sure things don't ever get that
| bad, and it's pretty rare that they do. I also make sure
| that I'm not irreplaceable, so that if things go wrong
| I'm not the only one who can fix them.
|
| >With this kind of a "I set my own schedule" approach,
| people would have a hard time trusting you and depending
| on you
|
| Why? I can answer questions from my phone. What's the
| practical difference between our CEO regularly being out
| of communication because he's in a meeting that can't be
| interrupted and me being a 20 minute drive from my
| computer?
|
| >And if you think it's a good career move to let them
| know that hey I'll be taking a long lunch (every day),
| well, I've already addressed that.
|
| Again I'm not optimizing my life for work. It may not be
| the absolute optimum career strategy but after 5 years it
| feels like the optimum life strategy. I make plenty of
| money--several multiples of the median income. Could I be
| making another $50k a year if I worked 2x as much in an
| office? Probably, but that's not my goal.
|
| >As MattGaiser put it, it's as if he's a microservice
| outputting work. That's pretty much what remote
| contractors are. Nobody _really_ gives a shit about them.
| It's a hard truth to take in.
|
| I'm not a remote contractor, I manage the technology for
| the entire company, mentor developers, develop and design
| projects on my own, meet with leadership about product
| direction etc... If MattGaiser were working at my
| company, he'd be talking to me regularly. It sounds like
| he just has a shitty boss.
|
| But since you bring up remote contracting, I did that for
| a while and I had even more freedom. I never worked for
| fewer than 3 companies at a time, so I never had one boss
| that was absolutely critical that I keep happy. It was
| great.
| troughway wrote:
| Good answer.
|
| 1) Is this an off-shore set up where you don't really
| have an in-house team so you're the principal engineer of
| a development team that is located another country?
|
| 2) What was your setup like at first, ie. before the last
| 5 years or however long you've been doing this for?
|
| The reason why I ask is because Principal-esque positions
| often come with perks not available to prole Developers.
|
| >What's the practical difference between our CEO
| regularly being out of communication because he's in a
| meeting that can't be interrupted and me being a 20
| minute drive from my computer?
|
| Not to sound snide, but the practical difference is -
| you're not the CEO.
|
| >I'm not a remote contractor, I manage the technology for
| the entire company, mentor developers, develop and design
| projects on my own, meet with leadership about product
| direction etc... If MattGaiser were working at my
| company, he'd be talking to me regularly. It sounds like
| he just has a shitty boss.
|
| It would not surprise me that some of these habits, fe.
| mentoring devs, meeting with leadership, etc, are best
| cultivated in a physical space before being done online.
| That's just me though.
|
| Nothing to do with shitty bosses, but not everyone is
| exactly born with the qualities to check up on people
| regularly, ready to go out of the gate. Especially in a
| professional environment. A lot of people are very quiet,
| reserved, and are waiting to be spoken to, and it takes
| effort and practice to be a bit more vocal and proactive.
|
| I'd honestly ascribe it to being the exception rather
| than the norm.
| learc83 wrote:
| 1. Nope, but the dev team is located on the other side of
| the country from the rest of the company (and I'm in
| between).
|
| 2. This company started as just a client and then they
| made me an offer that was too good to refuse.
|
| >The reason why I ask is because Principal-esque
| positions often come with perks not available to prole
| Developers.
|
| I definitely have a lot of perks. But I had even more
| freedom when I was a contractor, and I made plenty of
| money. If someone is a decent developer with good
| communication and business skills, a similar path is very
| achievable.
|
| >Not to sound snide, but the practical difference is -
| you're not the CEO.
|
| When I said practical I specifically meant other than the
| fact that he's the CEO. My point is that a well run
| company won't fall apart if the CEO is unavailable for a
| few hours per day, and a well run team won't fall apart
| b/c one developer (or their boss) is similarly
| unavailable.
|
| >It would not surprise me that some of these habits, fe.
| mentoring devs, meeting with leadership, etc, are best
| cultivated in a physical space before being done online.
| That's just me though.
|
| That's entirely possible. But my guess is that if there
| is an effect it's small compared to all the other
| variables.
|
| >Nothing to do with shitty bosses, but not everyone is
| exactly born with the qualities to check up on people
| regularly, ready to go out of the gate. Especially in a
| professional environment.
|
| I agree with you there, but I also think those people
| probably shouldn't be managers until they have developed
| those qualities, and I don't think this is a remote
| problem.
|
| Years ago I didn't have those qualities. I was a retail
| supervisor and I used to sit in the front office and
| mostly ignore the cashiers until there was a problem
| despite the fact that I was only 20 feet away from them.
|
| Remote work does require different skills, and managing a
| remote team probably takes more skill in general, but
| honestly I wouldn't want to work in house for a manager
| that didn't have those skills anyway.
| watwut wrote:
| > Most people, being well-adjusted social creatures, would
| feel very alienated if they are not in close physical
| proximity with the people they work with and depend on for
| their livelihood.
|
| I would expect well adjusted people to have family and
| friends out of work and alto to work well with people who are
| not in close social proximity. The customers or other team
| are often in another country or at least city. I would not
| expect well adjusted people to be "very alienated" in work
| setup that is not exactly just right amount of social for
| themselves, I would expect them to be adjustable to both work
| at distance and in person.
|
| Moreover, if someones ability to convince people stands on
| him being flippant and implying that those who disagree are
| inferior, it is really preferable to deal with them on
| distance.
|
| Well adjusted people dont rely on implied insults to make the
| point.
|
| --------------------------
|
| Well adjusted people also have responsibilities and duties
| out of work or hobbies. They need to help to aging parents or
| their children or tend to garden. Well adjusted people around
| me like the saved time from traveling to work and back, like
| more time with the family or fixed stuff in houses they had
| no time to fix before.
|
| Preference for work from home does not mean asocial, it may
| just mean opposite - the work is not that persons sole
| social/emotional outlet.
| matwood wrote:
| Wow, where to start. To summarize you said I'm poorly
| socially adjusted and a bad leader. Solid conversation
| starter ;)
|
| I agree that humans are social, but I'm not sure why you
| think we all need to get our primary social interactions at
| work. Even then, there is work social interaction literally
| all day long on Slack and other tools.
|
| I think it is healthier for people to have their primary
| social interactions not tied to work. If a persons primary
| social ties are all work related it makes it harder if they
| are laid off or move to a better opportunity. I also find
| that looser work social interactions make it much easier to
| keep things completely professional. I shouldn't have to like
| to Joe in order to work with Joe and accomplish our goal.
|
| I can't wait to get out of my house either, but it's
| certainly not to head back to an office after many years of
| being remote. I miss seeing friends, going to dinner with my
| wife, and rolling in Jiu-Jitsu.
|
| As far as leadership goes, I don't subscribe to the dominate
| method of leading. If I have to stare someone down to get
| them to do something we have already gone off the rails
| somewhere along the way.
| silveroriole wrote:
| As one of those who don't have the leadership skills, as you
| put it: we couldn't wait to get as far away as possible from
| those of you who feel some need to be influencing, leading,
| and unnecessarily bothering us because you want to "look us
| in the eyes"! Remote work is indeed going great for us.
| dorkwood wrote:
| This can be a good thing, too. If you're prone to anxiety, you
| might find that people you once had a tense relationship with
| are now much easier to get along with. Since their presence is
| not persistent, their ability to cause you anxiety is greatly
| diminished.
| ikeyany wrote:
| But they lose their power over you.
| learc83 wrote:
| I don't think that's true at all. I've worked remotely for
| years and my coworkers and I get along great. We are just as
| close as work friends I've physically worked with.
|
| My fiancee is an MD, so she has tons of very close friends all
| over the country from college, med school, residency, and
| fellowship that she only interacts with remotely. She's just as
| close with many of them as she is with friends who live in
| town.
|
| Neither of us are autistic or on the spectrum.
| arkades wrote:
| > My fiancee is an MD, so she has tons of very close friends
| all over the country from college, med school, residency, and
| fellowship that she only interacts with remotely.
|
| So she remains close with people she underwent difficult,
| life-changing, character-forming periods with, who at the
| time, she was with for quite a few hours a day?
|
| I mean, med school and fellowship people stay with you
| forever, even if you don't particularly like them. And
| residency? You're blood-bound, like it or not.
| learc83 wrote:
| The argument is that without regular in person contact
| people will forget you exist as a human, this wasn't a more
| nuanced argument that physical proximity is one factor of
| many.
|
| > if you're not physically present near them, they will
| forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer.
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| How can this be? The bandwidth and sheer volume of face-to-
| face time co-located people share just dwarfs the potential
| of remote. Are you saying that you still do fine remotely or
| that remote works better than colocated?
|
| I'd also bet your MD does most of her doctoring that depends
| on deep trust and emotional connection in-person; remote just
| fails at this in comparison
| monadic2 wrote:
| > The bandwidth and sheer volume of face-to-face time co-
| located people share just dwarfs the potential of remote.
|
| How do you figure?
|
| Anyway you're pumping out HTML, not making works of art.
| Most days don't require an emotional connection to get
| anything done, and it just takes a little more effort on
| both to talk on video and get that connection. Anyway, it's
| much easier and healthier to view coworkers like future
| friends than current friends, especially your manager.
|
| You better double my pay to waste my time in person.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Anyway you're pumping out HTML, not making works of
| art.
|
| I'm pretty sure most artists do their work remotely, not
| in the office of whoever's buying the artwork.
| learc83 wrote:
| >I'd also bet your MD does most of her doctoring that
| depends on deep trust and emotional connection in-person;
| remote just fails at this in comparison
|
| She does, but it probably has less to do with needing an
| emotional connection than b/c she needs to physically do
| procedures.
|
| >Are you saying that you still do fine remotely or that
| remote works better than colocated?
|
| I'm have closer friends at my current workplace than I did
| at my last physical workplace. However, there are too many
| variables for me to say whether remote is actually better
| in that regard.
|
| I doubt it is, but my anecdote was a counterpoint to the
| argument that humans _require_ physical contact to maintain
| relationships. Not an argument that physical contact can in
| some cases be beneficial.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| I personally appreciate the people I work with remotely now
| more than when I was in the office as I don't need to
| engage in needless chit chat and so every meeting is much
| more productive.
| joncrane wrote:
| I think there's a lot of nuance.
|
| I am more toward your situation (grew up in multiple
| countries and, as things evolve over time, my closest friend
| group is a group of guys who used to skateboard together on
| the streets of San Jose Costa Rica) and remain excellent
| friends with many people from my past, and some I have not
| seen in person in many years. Maybe I'm fooling myself.
|
| However, I feel like most people aren't like that, and if I
| care about advancing my career, I have to think more like OP
| and less like you and me.
| patpatpat wrote:
| We predominantly pair and mob in our team, if anything I feel
| closer during WFH as we actually mob more as we no longer have
| to find suitable mobbing or pairing spaces.
| jupiter90000 wrote:
| I think this depends, for me at least. I've had jobs where my
| coworkers and I aren't that close at all even working together
| in an office setting. We had little attachment to each other
| during and after the shared job experience was over.
|
| Then, I have had jobs where we worked in office and for
| extended periods remote and I feel closer and actually have
| more of a relationship with them, sometimes for many years down
| the road when we don't even live near each other anymore. I
| still see them when I visit town and we talk on the phone.
|
| I work remote with some folks in another project and I honestly
| feel closer to some of them than some on-site groups I have
| worked with. I guess everyone is a little different in this.
|
| I have some non-work relationships that operate more like you
| describe and also ones that don't.
|
| It is a little offensive to hear assignment of people who don't
| operate the same way as described as being far on the autism
| spectrum.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Agreed, I think it is also one of the principles that leads to
| more success in education. MOOCs notoriously have high drop off
| rates despite offering all the components we ascribe to
| positive learning experiences. I think the human component
| gives students a community of peers that are equally struggling
| in the course, even if they are explicitly not invested in a
| peer's progress.
| DevKoala wrote:
| This is very true. The proof is in the pudding. If someone
| messages you or calls you, you might dismiss them easily, but
| if someone stands next to you and asks you "do you have a
| moment?" Will you dismiss them as easily?
|
| PS: Working with a largely distributed team, I trained myself
| to treat all of these requests the same. Even if someone walked
| from the other side of the building to ask me something. The
| priority assessment before I consider shifting my focus should
| be the same.
| iateanapple wrote:
| > Working with a largely distributed team, I trained myself
| to treat all of these requests the same.
|
| Why?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote
| coworkers simply because they're nearby, that contributes
| to the idea that remote coworkers are less effective,
| because you're _making_ them less effective.
| iateanapple wrote:
| > If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote
| coworkers simply because they're nearby
|
| So the right answer is to answer calls etc from remote
| colleagues promptly - not to ignore local coworkers who
| walk over.
|
| It's not to make local communication less effective to
| prop up remote work.
| rodiger wrote:
| If there was no way to hang up the phone you wouldn't dismiss
| them as easily. I think this is likely a feature of ease of
| dismissal rather than one of remote vs local connections
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| Everyone countering your argument is basically saying "no, this
| isn't true; my remote relationships are great". No one is
| really arguing what your saying about co-located, in-person
| working better for emotional connection and tribal culture
| building.
| learc83 wrote:
| That's because people are countering this argument,
|
| >if you're not physically present near them, they will forget
| that you really exist as a human and a social peer. It's
| unfortunate but it's true
|
| and the assertion that if you are different you must be
| autistic.
|
| The much less inflammatory argument that all else being
| equal, you are more likely to bond with someone with whom you
| share physical proximity is probably not worth arguing
| against.
| e40 wrote:
| I think that's true in the pre-Zoom world. About a year ago I
| started using Zoom for my remote team. It dramatically improved
| the effect you described, for all of us.
|
| I run a small company and for the non-technical folks we have
| lunches twice a week via Zoom. It has worked wonders.
|
| Other than the medical and economic catastrophe that is this
| pandemic, it has been absolutely wonderful for my company.
| Hopefully we'll exist as a company in a year from now.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in
| person.
|
| I honestly don't know if this is true. There are coworkers that
| I really like to work with, but I'm also happy to not have to
| spend 8 hours a day in the same room engaging in small talk,
| smelling their reheated leftovers, etc.
| [deleted]
| gowld wrote:
| "out of sight, out of mind" is the classic formulation.
| foolinaround wrote:
| Consider the relationships we feel to folks we play games with
| in virtual forums over the years.
|
| Years pass without you never seeing them, yet a lot of time
| spent in virtual proximity makes kindred spirits.
| thrownaway954 wrote:
| this is true about anyone. given enough time and distance, your
| own mother will become "just another person you know". if you
| aren't physically interacting with people, you are soon
| forgotten.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I used to believe in out of sight out of mind until I had my
| first break up.
|
| Out of sight out of mind is a function that takes a parameter
| that is not a Boolean. If the person was important enough to
| you they won't leave your mind easily.
|
| If anything, the adage exposes the strength of your
| relationships. In the business case, it will expose the value
| of physical coordination vs virtual coordination. It's not
| going to be clear cut.
|
| But you are probably right in a business context, where the
| number that's going to get passed into the out of sight out
| of mind function will definitely be low enough to return true
| for just about all of us.
|
| It's not exactly the world anyone wants to live in, but what
| are you gonna do.
| thrownaway954 wrote:
| which is why i said "given enough time and distance".
| somacore wrote:
| Funny how you describe yourself as an extrovert and I've always
| said I'm an introvert - but we identify the same.
|
| Dislikes, anxiety around large groups of (mostly unknown)
| people, preference for people we know like work colleagues and
| family.
|
| To your main point, I think it depends on the previous
| relationship. Most of these folks had months or years to form
| bonds with coworkers such that I don't think it'll be so easy
| to reduce them to the concept of a human just from a few months
| or a year apart.
| ahh wrote:
| Consider the hypothesis you have an anxiety disorder, not
| introversion. I said I was an introvert for years until
| repeated evidence (and everyone I know pointing out to me)
| convinced me that I am just happier, healthier, and have more
| energy if I'm around other people. That doesn't imply that I
| (or you!) am _good_ at being around other people, especially
| strangers.
|
| It's hard!
| somacore wrote:
| After spending a few years being a solo freelancer and then
| going back to a j-o-b, my wife has commented that I seem
| more content, happier.
|
| I chalked it up to the stress relief that consistent
| paychecks can provide, but perhaps I am anxiety-disordered.
|
| Others have mentioned similar traits: being a leader or
| mentor, doing thing on your own, tackling new
| projects...y'all have turned on a lightbulb for sure.
|
| agreed - it _is_ hard.
| cheschire wrote:
| I've taken several personality tests that identify me as an
| extrovert / leader, and it's true, I tend to lead well as
| defined by my subordinates over years.
|
| But it's exhausting. Groups larger than a few can only be
| handled in deep conversation for an hour or two tops. Also
| I get crippling anxiety before entering certain social
| situations, especially phone calls to support lines or in
| foreign countries where the cultural taboos are potentially
| around every corner.
|
| Leave me with one person though, especially one I know
| well, and I can talk for hours and hours at full speed.
| plutonorm wrote:
| I have this too. I'm 40 now and over the years I have
| come to understand it not as anxiety per se. But more as
| sensitivity. I am extremely sensitive to body language,
| emotional content, background noises... Details... When
| I'm in a large group of people there's so much
| information coming in that it quickly becomes exhausting.
| If I've slept well and am generally looking after myself
| I can do large groups for hours at a time. But if I'm
| tired, it quickly leads to exhaustion which then leads to
| confusion and anxiety. I also get classified as extrovert
| in psych tests. And I do love people, it's just they are
| generally too intense for my poor overly tuned nervous
| system. I often think I'd do well with a mood
| stabilizer/anti epileptic.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Yes, this feels very familiar. I find myself energized,
| outgoing, dynamic, etc around strangers, and then reliving
| the conversations over and over in my head days later when
| the energy is gone. I've got one or two great friends who I
| feel truly comfortable with, and so I have to rely a lot on
| them for my "extroversion."
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > This is doubly true of my bosses. It sucks, but there's no
| way around it.
|
| So many opportunities in my life have come from casual
| interactions with my bosses, i.e. they spot something in an
| email and because I am sitting nearby, they propose it to me or
| they are coming out of a meeting and mention some corporate
| goal.
|
| Working remotely, I do not even speak to my boss every week
| now. I am a microservice outputting work.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| But then what's stopping you from picking up the phone and
| giving him a call? What I noticed was the opposite: instead
| of having some rare encounters with our CEO( I report
| directly to him but we are in different buildings so we
| mainly meet in meetings only) and ending up doing something
| 'urgent' or distracting, I now have less of these. However,
| having said that, it's harder to pull out the information I
| want when on the phone versus when face to face.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > But then what's stopping you from picking up the phone
| and giving him a call?
|
| Inherently nothing. I could call him, but I have little
| reason to beyond a social chat as there is nothing to
| report, so it would be a "hey boss, how is the new baby
| doing?"
|
| I haven't given much thought to the career implications of
| remote as I expect it to be relatively temporary in my case
| so I do not feel pressured to solve the problem.
|
| > However, having said that, it's harder to pull out the
| information I want when on the phone versus when face to
| face.
|
| I don't envy our business analyst.
| moriarty-s3a wrote:
| This is completely cultural. I had a manager that I didn't
| meet in person for over a year and he was constantly sharing
| stuff like this with me, frequently multiple times a day. As
| the sibling points out, if you aren't speaking with your
| manager weekly, or really almost daily, then something is
| very wrong.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Fair, it is going to depend on the boss and how your office
| interactions were before everything went remote.
|
| > if you aren't speaking with your manager weekly, or
| really almost daily, then something is very wrong.
|
| I am someone who likes a lot of autonomy.
|
| In-office, beyond my Scrum team, I am otherwise trusted to
| deliver what I need to deliver. That leads to few check-ins
| and mostly social banter with my boss as I will be in touch
| if I require anything. No news means all is well.
|
| It is just that remote removes most of the social banter
| and problems don't pop up for weeks.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| There are alternatives. For instance my smaller team has
| a very brief daily stand up now in a video call each
| morning.
|
| Our larger department has a Monday check-in and a Friday
| check-in wherein our boss's boss speaks to each one of us
| --checks in with how we're doing, whether we need
| anything, if we're stuck or whatever, and also raises
| questions to us that have come up in their own work. That
| is often mixed with more congenial banter and chats.
| Sometimes we throw in a game of Jackbox or something.
|
| My own team has taken to at least a round of something
| like Counter Strike for the last hour of the day each
| week. Sometimes almost every day depending on our work
| load.
|
| Combined with Slack my immediate manager and higher-level
| bosses are as reachable as ever.
|
| I'm sure once things can safely open up again there will
| almost immediately be some kind of meet up for drinks and
| whatever because of course that can't quite be replaced,
| but I don't think being remote most of the time has to be
| such a social handicap.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| If I need to speak to everyone in my team daily or even
| weekly,it means the whole thing isn't working and it would
| fall apart as soon as I walk through the door. I do trust
| people in what they do and I don't micromanage. I'm always
| available if anyone needs help or any kind of support or
| advice,but it doesn't mean I'd walk around daily asking
| how's work every day. Again, this depends on a role as
| well,as for instance, I do spend a lot of time discussing
| technical aspects with the business analyst.
|
| [Edit] The above applies to office environment,where I
| could see all my team in one place and there were lots of
| 'hints' that could tell whether I need to have a chst with
| someone: difficult call, challenging situation, too much
| work,issues at home and etc.All this is almost invisible
| when working remotely. Casual calls are necessary to check
| on people and to make sure they are fine.
| lalos wrote:
| When does the line blur and it becomes micro-managing if
| speaking daily?
| ericlewis wrote:
| just say good morning?
| chc wrote:
| Micromanagement isn't about frequency of contact so much
| as the amount of control the worker has over their work.
| The biggest micromanager I ever worked for would forget I
| existed for days or a week at a time, only to come in
| tell me to throw out hours of work because he just liked
| it better a different way. The most hands-off boss I've
| ever had would drop by for a chat almost every day, but
| mostly just to get thoughts on overall direction and
| discuss ideas he was mulling.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| We could speak daily and not have it be micromanagement.
| There is just not anything to speak about most days. We
| did good morning in the chat for a while, but that just
| died after the first few weeks.
| cddotdotslash wrote:
| "Speaking" doesn't imply "managing" in a negative sense.
| It's simply a medium to convey information. Is it micro
| managing to see a direct report in the hallway or at
| lunch and casually say "Hey, Alice was saying that we
| could really use a new X, what do you think about that?"
| That level of discussion would very rarely occur over
| Slack or during a scheduled 1:1.
| [deleted]
| JamesBarney wrote:
| One thing bosses are looking for in subordinates isn't
| necessarily excellence but understanding. Do I know what
| choice they'd make and would they make the same choice I
| would when confronted with the same problem.
|
| And the best way to figure that out is to get to know
| someone.
|
| A lot of my promotions have been good reviews but some have
| been grabbing beers with the boss.
| woeirua wrote:
| Not speaking with your subordinates at least once a week is a
| pretty solid indication of a shitty manager...
| markkanof wrote:
| I think some of the replies to your comment and surrounding
| comments are missing an important point, which I'm going to
| assume you were making. In a remote work situation,
| managers need to check in for more than just directly work
| related conversations.
|
| The comment that started this thread was making the claim
| that people have difficulty comprehending others as people
| that they don't directly see in person. So managers
| (everyone really) should be checking in at least once a
| day, even if it's just to ask "how's it going" (generally,
| not a work status report), have a conversation about
| something non-work related, crack some jokes, whatever.
| Basically, maintaining that human connection sometimes
| needs to be forced a little bit, because it's so important
| and leads to a tighter knit team.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| More just a consequence of an project that is generally
| going well (or at least was) and a lot of prior autonomy.
| Plenty of weeks there has been nothing to say.
|
| We had a sprint planning (he isn't on the development team
| for that), we completed the sprint, we did it again.
| Nothing to report.
|
| In the office, it is a nice amount of autonomy to not have
| to provide yet another status update all the time. The
| project team already has enough Scrum reporting
| requirements so it works well to keep the admin burden
| down.
|
| You just have to wonder if you are forgotten when working
| remotely.
| [deleted]
| jeffasinger wrote:
| A good manager should be doing a lot more than just
| asking you for status updates in your 1:1s. At a minimum
| they should be:
|
| 1) Providing updates on things going on with the rest of
| the organization that may affect you. Technically this
| doesn't have be in a 1:1, but is often a good venue. 2)
| Learning more about any problems facing the team, and
| discussing potential solutions. 3) Giving feedback on
| both what the employee has been doing well and any areas
| they could improve. 4) Helping to set goals that will
| advance the employees career goals.
|
| While you might be able to get everything done well with
| lots of autonomy, you're probably still leaving value on
| the table by not meeting more regularly.
| binarymax wrote:
| Calling your employees "subordinates" is also a solid
| indication of the same.
| Aeolun wrote:
| How would you prefer to call people below you in the org
| tree? I'm struggling to think of a clearer term.
| watwut wrote:
| Depends how many people work in the team. But really, most
| of time you dont need to work with manager and frequent
| communication typically means the manager is dealing with
| some problem with you or near you.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. I have many fond memories of friends I
| have played video games with, even though I have never met them
| in person. I don't even know what they look like, but there are
| some I still empathize with even 10 years later, and wonder how
| they're doing with the few personal problems they had which I
| was aware of.
|
| That said, I can imagine negative relationships developing in
| many (or most) work cultures, since it's very easy for every
| interaction to be adversarial.
|
| Since I enjoy video games, I've before wished to play team
| building video games with co-workers. Perhaps doing so would be
| worth while?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| The more significant question is how these online friends
| compare in your priority to in person life friends.
|
| I've had some great online friendships as well but they
| always fade when in person life friends start using more of
| my time.
|
| The key question for work is less whether you boss will value
| you and more whether if you can effectively compete with Joe
| Office who goes in every day for space in his mind.
| ahh wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I have internet friends. It's just hard
| to treat them as first-class people compared to those I know
| in person. It was way easier as a teenager--I didn't have in-
| real-life friends! Sigh. If you were going to maintain
| primary internet relationships, close-knit as can be, I can
| imagine worse ways to do that regular team gaming.
|
| I don't think that all in-person relationships are better.
| There are people I see in person ~regularly I loathe.
| (Obviously, most such people I try not to see anymore, but
| you can't always control your friends' friends, or your
| coworkers, or who goes to your gym, or...) But they're all
| more real.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I have the opposite experience; Most of my close friends
| are online friends whom I met twenty years ago playing
| online games. It was decades until I saw them for the first
| time IRL, yet I consider them my closest friends. The only
| difference between my online best friends and my IRL best
| friends is that I mostly chat all day with the former, but
| chat in one long session with the latter (when we go out
| for drinks).
| novok wrote:
| Introversion doesn't mean you'll be mentally fine as a human
| being in solitary confinement for 1 month and a pile of TV
| shows & books.
| Hoasi wrote:
| > Humans don't have emotional object permanence.
|
| > if you're not physically present near them, they will forget
| that you really exist as a human and a social peer.
|
| You nailed it. I usually work remotely, but always try meeting
| people physically at the start of a project. There is something
| uniquely uplifting about being in the same location to create
| something. That's when ideas congregate. When people meet in
| the same place, you can feel the energy. Physical meetings
| create synergies impossible to replicate when you only meet
| online.
| monkeydust wrote:
| I may get shot down but I was experimenting with VR meetings,
| avatars created using facial images. We did a team meeting
| using this tech for fun but it felt much more like being in
| same room than a video conference call. Not same as in person
| but a step closer.
| plutonorm wrote:
| If people didn't have a weird aversion to VR and headsets
| were _way_ more comfortable this would totally be the
| solution. Once we get comfortable AR glasses with decent
| resolution, software for remote teams is going to be a huge
| business.
| war1025 wrote:
| > Humans don't have emotional object permanence.
|
| Absolutely. This is a great way to think of it.
|
| A perhaps more techie way of thinking of it is our
| relationships are in a mostly-LRU cache. The people we have
| interacted with most recently are the ones that matter most to
| us. If you aren't regularly resetting your place within that
| cache, you get bumped.
|
| What that often means is there are people that you see a couple
| times and you think you are going to end up being significant
| in each other's lives, but then in a month or so they fall out
| of the cache and are effectively dead to you.
|
| A thing I've noticed is we have a few friends that like to get
| right up to the point where I'm about to write them out of my
| life, and then they always find time for us and pop back in.
| Mildly infuriating, but I guess I'm glad to have them around
| either way.
|
| Out of sight, out of mind is one of the key aspects of human
| relationships.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Just the daily ritual of going out to lunch with your coworkers
| is immensely valuable for your work and career.
| FpUser wrote:
| I have friends and we see each other. As for work related
| socializing: I work from home for last 20 year running my own
| business making my own products and doing the same for other
| companies. Sometimes I go to business meetings (not since
| COVID) but not at any point do I feel that I am missing
| something. It is totally opposite. I am happy like a clam. I
| have some people working for me but all remote as well.
| Taniwha wrote:
| I've worked remotely for almost 30 years now, my take on it has
| always been: "it's great you can avoid most office politics",
| followed by "you always lose at office politics"
|
| It's happened at every company I've worked at - in general you
| need to have a manager who will have your back and represent, and
| have to be able to not worry about the small stuff
| [deleted]
| igeligel_dev wrote:
| The aspect of social interaction definitely has an impact on
| promotions, but what's more important, at least in my company are
| results. We act on leadership principles similar to what they
| have at Amazon and employees are getting rated against that.
|
| In my team, at the end of the day, everyone is sharing what they
| did throughout the day work-wise. You can still list things that
| are non-engineering related. What I also do is tracking these
| notes in an application and tag the notes later for a self
| review. In the end, sharing these notes gives the team some
| perspective of what the others are doing and because of the
| random stuff everyone is doing from time to time we had awesome
| conversations / ideas because of that.
| aSplash0fDerp wrote:
| Shopping your resume around will be the new promotion (similar to
| pre-covid career growth).
|
| If turnover rates start to match the fast food industry, only the
| best companies will thrive.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| No kidding. Unless you're in a "tech for tech's sake" kind of
| job, you need to get up to speed on the problem domain and the
| business. That usually takes _at least_ 18 months and if people
| bounce just as they're getting proficient you're throwing money
| into a black hole.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > you need to get up to speed on the problem domain and the
| business. That usually takes _at least_ 18 months
|
| I have always wondered about this as businesses do not seem
| to care. Everyone knows devs are getting large raises to move
| but what business is working to counteract the problem? Not
| many.
|
| Domain knowledge seems to not have much value as far as the
| people signing your paychecks are concerned.
| mns wrote:
| This also depends on the company and in the same time it
| depends on the people applying for the job. I wouldn't feel
| any motivation if I would just go to company X because of
| their great technology, but the business is something that
| says nothing to me, and same goes the other way. That's
| until somebody pays you more than enough to drop the
| idealism. :)
| vonmoltke wrote:
| Alternately, the software industry could go the way of the
| electrical and mechanical engineering industries and just not
| hire people unless they already possess relevant domain
| knowledge. It was a bit of a shock to me when I transitioned
| from EE that I could get hired in this industry with little
| to no domain knowledge on what I was being hired to do.
| __s wrote:
| Learning is a prerequisite, jobs pivot, things change
|
| Maybe in another hundred years things'll settle down
| exdsq wrote:
| I do wonder if this will happen. I reckon there will be
| some sort of catastrophic programming error which brings in
| a level of certification akin to other engineering
| disciplines. I've seen jobs advertised nearby for a nuclear
| defence company that have the same requirements as a web
| dev agency.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| The only question is whether you will be hired on those
| requirements alone.
| tpmx wrote:
| You mean like a company on this list?
|
| https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/nuclear-weapon-
| producers/
|
| (It seems to be an activist site, but it's what shows up
| when you search for producers of of nuclear weapons.)
|
| Most of these companies are huge. They may be looking for
| someone to maintain their canteens' web site. Or
| something else not very exciting.
| ununoctium87 wrote:
| So, kind of like a software bug that causes 1 or 2 planes
| to crash, killing all on-board?
| karatestomp wrote:
| Yep. Promotion? WTF. No, you weasel your way into duties
| "above" your pay grade then go get the job you've been doing,
| with accompanying title and pay, someplace else.
|
| Or you can wait around for an opening in your company and hope
| the right people know your name so you get it. If you prefer
| gambling. But jumping ship works better.
|
| [EDIT] OK in case anyone uses this as a playbook, be aware you
| may need an intermediate step at some company desperate for
| [your new role] with below-average pay so you can have The
| Actual Title for a while before moving to a place with normal
| pay, but the good news is below-average for your next step is
| probably at or above what you're already making anyway, so NBD.
| Just be sure their pay's below average because they're a
| funded-but-not-crazy-funded startup and not because they're
| terrible, though. For whatever reason low pay also seems to go
| with shitty working conditions and overwork. Go figure. And
| make sure they're likely to stay in business minimum a year,
| with two being better.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| > Shopping your resume around will be the new promotion
| (similar to pre-covid career growth).
|
| I graduated in 2015 and at that point it was well established
| this is how you move up. I wouldn't be surprised if this was
| the overwhelming sentiment for most people in my generation.
| triyambakam wrote:
| As a small point of data against this, I've been promoted twice
| at my current company. Starting salary was 100k, promoted to
| level C engineer at 110k, now level B engineer at 125k.
| [deleted]
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