[HN Gopher] Why remote work is hard and how it can be fixed
___________________________________________________________________
Why remote work is hard and how it can be fixed
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 113 points
Date : 2020-05-28 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| codegeek wrote:
| One thing that a lot of people miss in the whole "Work from Home"
| discussion is the fact that not everyone has the ability, talent,
| skills and experience to be able to work from home. It is the
| hard truth and lot of us don't want to admit that. It is
| extremely hard to work from home and stay accountable, productive
| and not to mention focussed. It is just very hard. Even for
| senior/experienced folks. It is not a one size fits all solution.
| If you are junior who needs a lot of guidance and help on the
| job, WFH is even worse.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I'm terrible at it! For years, I've organised a day a week to
| work outside the office and outside the home. I know I need a
| planned task saved for that day, and I need physical
| separation. Covid is a giant pain in the ass and I hate it
| because it makes that "not in office" time no longer special
| and focused/effective. It's just one huge slog of Slack, Zoom
| and mail hell.
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| You know you can disable notifications right? That gives you
| the same peace of mind. If it's someone important you just
| tell them hey, I'm in the middle of x, I'll get back to you
| at y time. Most bosses respect healthy boundaries, and if
| they don't that's usually a red flag.
|
| Not everything needs to be responded to right away, my mind
| was blown when I first saw an eisenhower matrix. I encourage
| you to check out this!
| https://www.google.com/search?q=eisenhower+matrix
| marinman wrote:
| I thought this was a pretty fair article that rightly addressed
| some of the major structural issues with remote work as it
| currently is set up. I've worked remotely for ~5 years and
| absolutely love it but think there need to be much larger
| corporate culture changes needed, along with technologies, to
| make it a sustainable trend for 30%+ of a modern workforce.
|
| I do also wonder if there might be some wrong lessons taken from
| this time. This isn't just "working from home" it's "working from
| home during a global health crisis." Schools are closed, people
| we know are dying, lockdowns, there's fear and uncertainty to a
| degree I hadn't before seen in my adult life ... so yeah, it's
| going to have an impact on our workflows.
|
| Like any change, it's always going to be hardest for large orgs
| who have to change vs those who have it built-in from the
| beginning.
| thrownaway954 wrote:
| this must be the 3rd fear mongering "remote work" article that
| has hit the front page today... employers must really be missing
| us :)
| menckenjr wrote:
| Or someone has a bunch of money invested in commercial REITs
| and is looking at losing it...
| iwfheveryday123 wrote:
| Most of those I know that are hardcore office are:
|
| * in a middle management position
|
| * have a home setting that doesn't work for WFH (kids, space,
| personality, etc)
|
| * have never worked from home over an extended period of time but
| are still opinionated
|
| WFH today vs. pre-coronavirus is drastically different. Grocery
| shopping has changed, working out options have changed,
| socializing. I've noticed that it's been wonderful having my wife
| here. We can get delivery or curbside pick up for groceries. We
| can focus, eat healthy and take meaningful breaks.
|
| Note: lots of anti-WFH articles recently. Commercial real-estate
| backed articles? ;)
| gopalv wrote:
| The post-covid "remote work" will be very different from the
| present day and past WFH.
|
| Right now, WFH is a struggle not because of the "FH" part, but
| because of "cabin fever" effect of being around everyone all the
| time, the complexities of avoiding the disease - things which
| were done by professionals is back to self-run, everything from
| cleaning to child care.
|
| In the past, I've WFH'd only when I have had a good reason to
| justify that. This was in the pre-Marissa era @ Yahoo and I was
| probably one of those people, if you counted VPN time. However,
| the good reasons which required to be remote are often the
| opposite of productive - my reason was that my dad was on suicide
| watch for 4 months.
|
| But with EVERYONE being WFH without choice has changed several
| people who have held similar opinions in the past about remote
| work - the managers might still consider the "from home" to be
| bad, but they might have realized that they can maintain an
| effective organization, without constantly talking to people in
| person.
|
| The next wave of this "remote work" revolution will probably not
| be people working from home, but people choosing to work in an
| area close enough to home, but far away enough to avoid the
| internal pressures of pending chores.
|
| Before Covid, my favourite "remote work" location was the SF
| public library in Potrero & the Burlingame one which even has
| private offices. Wasn't exactly WFH, but it was remote & great.
| Supermancho wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
| elric wrote:
| Adding to that: a lot of people had to start WFH with little or
| no preparation. For many of us techy types that's no problem,
| we already have desks and monitors and keyboards coming out of
| our ears. But for a lot of people, none of that is a given at
| all. There's a huge difference between reading your emails on
| your laptop at the breakfast table in the morning, and working
| from home 8 hours a day for months. Especially if you live in a
| tiny flat and have to share it with other people. If I were to
| apply for a 100% remote job, I'd make different accomodation
| choices than when getting a 100% on site job.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Yes, I think the lack of prep problem is underrated.
|
| As a freelancer, I almost don't notice lock-down other than
| the cabin fever effects, because my home office is well-
| established. But, wow, that would have been different if I
| had been put in the position of building up that office
| infrastructure over-night, as things were shutting down.
|
| And certainly the place-without-interruptions can be a
| challenge. I have lived in a home with a toddler and a cat --
| well, that isn't exactly conducive to getting into "coding
| flow". Pre-lockdown, I had a chat with a startup CEO who
| likes to work from his home office when he needs a block of
| deep-work time. It is a big source of irritation with his
| wife that "door closed means I am unavailable" -- so yeah,
| just a place to hide is nice once in a while.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Exactly. My spouse and I like spending time in the same
| room, even if we are not directly interacting with each
| other. Therefore, when arranging furniture, we deliberately
| had the computer desk go in the living room, so that video
| games would not require isolation. Now that same computer
| desk is also the work desk 8 hours every day, but it is
| still the living room.
| benibela wrote:
| I work on the cheapest 14'' laptop I could find.
|
| I bought it last year and thought I do not need a good
| computer, since I thought I would spend most on my time on
| the PC in the office anyways.
| jinglebells wrote:
| Same. I've got a purpose built office in the garden I built
| for my wife and I five years ago.
|
| We've got wired internet, power, whiteboards, sofas,
| variable desks, multiple monitors, it's great.
|
| But we built our business fully remote back in 2014, we've
| been doing this forever now. While our work colleagues are
| in their kitchens or on their sofas. It's not sustainable.
| sevensor wrote:
| > everything from cleaning to child care
|
| You cannot overstate the difficulty of putting in eight, or
| even six, solid hours of work in a day where you also have to
| coordinate your children's schooling, prepare meals, arbitrate
| disagreements, apply band-aids, do dishes, do laundry, supply
| technical support, and a thousand other non-work-related tasks.
| I was surprised that the article didn't mention this.
| m0zg wrote:
| > putting in eight, or even six, solid hours
|
| Especially considering that _nobody_ puts in eight or even
| six hours of "solid work" when at the office. That's
| something I intuitively knew for a while, but it came into
| stark contrast once I started consulting and tracking my
| time. I only bill for the time I _actually_ work. And doing 8
| hours of mentally demanding, focused work per day is
| difficult AF. That's why people slack off in the office, have
| water cooler conversations, interrupt each other all the
| time, have meetings they don't really need to have, 1.5 hour
| lunch breaks, etc. If you had to actually work 8 hours a day,
| full throttle, few people would stick with it.
|
| The flip side is the productivity of doing 8 hours of focused
| work per day is truly staggering when you tally it up at the
| end of the week (which I also do, and you should do, too, if
| you work remote - otherwise you'll be "invisible" no matter
| how much you contribute). And WFH plus mostly async
| communication is very amenable to being able to focus.
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| I'm surprised that people see going to an office as a
| solution to this difficulty though. I'd 100% rather be around
| family than in an office.
|
| I've been managing fine by being available during the day,
| not stressing and just living in the moment. I get the heavy
| lifting done early in the morning or late at night. Just like
| in the office... my most productive hours have always been
| either before everyone else gets in or after everyone else
| goes home.
| enjo wrote:
| My favorite remote work spot in Denver has been Denver Union
| Station (I'm weird, having people around helps me concentrate).
| zolland wrote:
| I miss Union Station (I moved away)! It's such a cool place
| to hang out but never tried working there. Where do you post
| up, the cafe? I don't remember there being a ton of seats in
| there.
| wenc wrote:
| I've gotten used to WFH but agree that the ideal remote work
| location is actually a "third-place" -- non-home non-office
| location -- like a library or a Starbucks or a shared workspace
| close to home.
|
| The psychological separation between home and work is so
| important.
| LeSaucy wrote:
| I keep an office and a gym in my finished basement and it
| works perfectly for that separation. Not feasible for
| everyone but if you have the space it's totally worth
| creating the division.
| papito wrote:
| That's a matter of habit. The trigger before was space. "I am
| in the office - work mode on".
|
| In WFH the trigger has to be _time_. We have a hard 9AM start
| policy, with 12 to 1PM lunch. That puts everyone on the same
| page and gets rid of the ambiguous "I wonder if anyone else
| is looking for me right now, and should I be working". You
| should absolutely know. If people don't respect it, it's
| their problem, but you should not be responding to people at
| 7AM or 9PM unless the sky is falling. No different from how
| it was before. This lack of boundaries is what really
| exhausts people.
|
| Also, create a separate account on your computer for work.
| You should do that anyway to avoid screen share mishaps (no
| one wants to see your personal bookmarks and history).
|
| At end of day, log out, killing slack notifications and
| email, and log into your work-free personal account. You are
| done for the day.
| mjevans wrote:
| I don't have a home _office_, an actual area dedicated to
| doing just work stuff, with hardware dedicated only for
| work stuff.
|
| Working remotely probably should include that.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| I have a personal desk with two monitors and a laptop
| arm... I set up my desk with a KVM (just a USB switcher)
| for the keyboard and mouse and two HDMI switchers.
|
| Three clicks and all of my IO is routed to the work
| laptop and that allows me to separate cleanly from work.
| Before work-mode is engaged, I put my Windows workstation
| to sleep and I bring it out of sleep right after
| switching all of my IO back.
| godelski wrote:
| One strategy I've found is to work in a different room from
| where I "hang out". I think it helps your brain realize that
| this is work time.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The psychological separation between home and work is so
| important.
|
| Honestly, It varies by person. I've gone into an office
| increasingly intermittently for the most part over the past
| 15 years or so and don't even have an assigned desk any
| longer.
|
| I have a dedicated office at home (which I also use for
| video/photo editing, screwing around with electronics, etc.)
| but I don't feel it has to be just a work-work room. I do
| videocalls from this room because it's where my good webcam
| is attached to my desktop system and where I've fiddled with
| lighting and background.
|
| TBH though, half the time I work somewhere else in the house
| on a laptop.
|
| But I've absolutely worked with a lot of people who pretty
| much came into the office every day even though they had no
| particular need to.
|
| My overall conclusion is that most of the "rules" for working
| remote or WFH only apply to some people.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| One thing that helped me with this is routine. So I wake up,
| take a shower, get dressed, etc. just like I would if I were
| going into the office. It has to be a different routine than
| what you do on weekends. This allows me to be in that
| different "work" mental space. Hopefully you are able to find
| something that helps you.
| ghaff wrote:
| I used to be more consistent about this. I definitely don't
| dress like I'm going into the office any longer. But it's
| like anything else. Having some formal steps can help you
| establish a routine and once you've internalized that
| routine sufficiently (some people) can start dropping some
| of the formalities that aren't strictly necessary.
| ravijain wrote:
| Remote work is changing the world with its impact and especially
| due to Covid-19 people are forced to work from home. Some say
| they have got higher productivity and some say they have got the
| lowest!
|
| What are your thoughts? Will you prefer working from home or let
| your team work from home?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Whichever that gives me the most personal space.
| rb808 wrote:
| The guys on our team who have been working together in the office
| for a while are continuing to work together online. No Problem.
| The two new guys we hired get little help and they're drowning I
| suspect. Its just too difficult to help them. If anyone has
| success with onboarding new people remotely I'm interested in
| hearing tips.
| jcheng wrote:
| My current thinking is to schedule daily 1:1s at first. As they
| get their feet under them, scale it back to a few times a week,
| then once a week.
|
| If the onus is on the new team member to ask for help when they
| need it, they'll have to figure out what difficulty and
| quantity of questions are considered appropriate. That's pretty
| stressful to try to figure out remotely. Much easier for them
| to have a senior person looking them in the face and asking
| "How'd it go yesterday? What questions can I answer for you
| this morning?"
| ljp_206 wrote:
| Wow, you've hit the nail on the head about what I need as I
| continue onboarding on to a new team at work. I was shuffled
| around right when our state shut down. Indeed, figuring out
| how and when to ask what questions has been exceedingly
| difficult. It's super hard to ask for time with people I
| haven't even met properly.
| janesvilleseo wrote:
| I have been working remotely for a decade. The best way to
| onboard remote workers is to have regular one on ones. Weekly
| is easiest. Just having an open line of communication does
| wonders. Often people are afraid to ask for help but once they
| get to know people those fears dissolve.
| ghaff wrote:
| When I was last onboarded--well, quite some time ago--one
| thing my manager did that was useful was to connect me with a
| number of different people in the company and had me set up
| 1:1s with them both as a get-to-know-them thing and to start
| working together on various areas of interest. Many, maybe
| most, of them weren't in the office as I was anyway.
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| Empathy, documentation, and proper communication channels.
|
| Have you tried holding "office hours" for the newer guys? i.e.
| give them a window when they can ask their questions to the
| other devs?
|
| Have you given them an idea of what you expect from them when
| they're stuck? example here:
| https://medium.com/@JeffLombardJr/for-new-devs-how-to-ask-in...
|
| People will be on different schedules, but it is nice to have a
| weekly sync at the beginning of the week. Gitlab and Zapier
| have alot of great resources on setting up remote teams
|
| - https://zapier.com/blog/survival-guide-to-remote-work/
|
| - https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/
| buboard wrote:
| I 'm surveying people from zoom calls to figure out the trend. So
| far, here in europe, it seems that people who live in small
| apartments (e.g. Berlin) prefer to go back to the office. People
| who have larger houses, or access to outdoors have stayed home
| even if they could go to the office.
|
| If enough people stay back home after covid, remote work will be
| a self-accelerating trend: if enough people are not at the office
| , the office is boring and empty, and home becomes more fun.
| ghaff wrote:
| >remote work will be a self-accelerating trend
|
| I've been (unofficially) mostly remote--to greater or lesser
| degrees depending on what I'm working on--for quite a few years
| now. And you make a good point.
|
| I have a relatively convenient local office. But most of the
| people I work with regularly aren't in that office, mostly work
| from home themselves, are on calls all day, or are traveling. I
| can go into the office and there's a good chance I basically
| won't see anyone I know. (The company has also grown a lot.)
|
| If I could go in a day or two a week and bump into a lot of
| people I know/maybe have lunch with them/etc. I'd be perfectly
| happy to go in a day or two a week. But the reality is that I'd
| go in, grab a random desk, work and head back home. I can do
| that in my home office without a 1 hour roundtrip commute.
|
| And layer on top of that, going into the office is going to be
| a weird and awkward situation for an extended period of time. I
| certainly don't expect to be in an office even for a meeting
| for the rest of this year and very possibly an extended period
| of time beyond that.
| staysaasy wrote:
| One of the most interesting aspects of the remote work discussion
| is just how emotional a topic it is for many people - on both
| sides. I've seen die-hards in both the pro-office and pro-remote
| camps, seemingly without a clear pattern.
|
| This is exacerbated by the fact that people often want to convert
| others to their side. If you're pro-remote, going all-remote
| creates an even playing field. If you're pro-office, having
| everyone in the office creates the collaborative environment that
| you prefer. Managing these opposing viewpoints in a productive
| way will be an interesting leadership challenge for many teams.
| wtetzner wrote:
| I wonder if teams will end up being organized based on
| preferred work location (in office vs WFH) in the future.
| staysaasy wrote:
| That's an interesting idea that I haven't heard discussed
| yet. I think it makes a lot of sense, as the remote vs in-
| office divide is more pronounced when the experience isn't
| uniform.
| jinglebells wrote:
| If you're "Pro-office" you're dictatorial. This is a problem.
|
| The cat is out of the bag. I haven't worked in an office in
| nearly a decade, anyone saying "you have to be in the office"
| will be drawing from a dwindling pool of supplies.
| mjhoy wrote:
| I'm pro-office, and I'm not a manager or anything. I just
| prefer working in offices, and prefer when my colleagues do
| too, because I find face-to-face interaction much more
| satisfying.
| alesua93 wrote:
| Way to exemplify OPs point.
|
| I mean, I consider myself Pro-office because I like to
| personally interact with my coworkers, and I also enjoy the
| feeling of camaraderie that comes when a bunch of people get
| together to tackle a certain problem. Depending on your
| company, a lot of things can also get sorted out quicker when
| you can talk face to face to your manager/colleagues (though
| good processes and practices can mitigate this somewhat).
|
| I don't have strong opinions on whether other people should
| or should not WFH, however. I don't see the need to make this
| an us vs them issue, at least not when talking between us
| regular programmers (I am in favor of taking the fight to the
| higher-ups, though).
| whyhow wrote:
| I've seen this too. Personally I think both environments are
| really valuable. I really prefer meeting folks in person, but
| my home is nicer for hard problems that require concentration.
|
| I just want to split my time evenly between the two.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I really prefer meeting folks in person
|
| I mostly don't do that in an office but I do for
| traveling/events which are pretty much off the table for an
| indefinite time. I meet far more of my colleagues at events
| than I do at my company offices. That's the difficult thing
| for me right now.
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| There's a lot of discussion in this thread, but I think it all
| comes down to the fact that we are all individuals with
| individual preferences. What is comfortable for you, may not be
| for your coworker. Great companies try to reconcile those
| differences with proper communications channels in place, bad
| companies try to exert control over something they don't
| understand.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Article upholds author of "4 Hour Work Week" as an example of an
| ultra-remote worker. Someone who made it rich selling supplements
| of questionable benefit and with much self promotion may not be
| the best anecdote for remote workers.
| eee_honda wrote:
| > selling supplements of questionable benefit
|
| Any sources? i tried to google but i'm only finding stuff about
| the supplements he takes, nothing about history of selling them
| himself.
| sky_rw wrote:
| I believe this was heavily referenced in his original 4-hour
| work week book, where he describes his early businesses.
| majikandy wrote:
| Read the book if you haven't, it's all in there. You'll get
| much more benefit than finding out about the supplements I
| suspect. I recall something about him introducing himself to
| people as a drug dealer when asked what he did for a living.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| Like the others have said, it's not a secret: it's in his
| book. He didn't even own the supplement company or anything;
| he was just a dropshipper.
| tmaly wrote:
| I think the aspect he offers to someone that wants to stay at
| the job but do some remotely is still very applicable to
| today's WFH situation.
|
| The Parkinson's law and 80/20 rule are great. I think more
| could be written about that idea of a FAQ that is maintained by
| customer service. This could be more broadly applicable to any
| documentation or how to material both internal and external to
| a company. Knowledge management is not an easy task.
| paulcole wrote:
| Why is it hard?
|
| Because it's a huge life transition for most people and it's
| happening during one of the most stressful times in history.
| errantmind wrote:
| A simple answer is: working from home requires the ability to
| hold yourself accountable for your productivity to a much greater
| extent than if you were in an office. Yes, working at home is a
| different setting, with different distractions, but, based on my
| experience, there are a lot of extra motivators present in an
| office, like peer pressure, justifying the commute, being held
| accountable for the perception of working, contribution
| recognition, easy socializing, etc.
|
| For better or worse, none of those are as impactful when working
| from home and the worker is forced to fuel their productivity
| themself.
|
| I left my job a year ago to work on my own projects full-time and
| it took several months for me to find ways to really motivate
| myself to be consistently productive
| montecarl wrote:
| This, for better or worse, drives me to work harder. I have
| anxiety around being perceived as not working hard enough. I
| have been full time remote at the same position for around 8
| years with a large timezone difference.
|
| I have a small part of my day when I report to my team what I
| have done the previous day. I always want to make sure it seems
| like I have a few significant tasks that I completed.
| Sometimes, when things are going well, it does not take much
| time to achieve this and I feel good with 5 hours of work.
| Sometimes I get stuck on a tricky problem and work 9 or 10
| hours.
|
| My co-workers (who are not work from home) all seem to think I
| am very productive, so I guess it works!
| chapium wrote:
| It also requires you to hold others accountable to a much
| greater extent. Part of what drove me away from remote work was
| the additional effort required to get people to respond to
| anything. When you were remote, you were invisible.
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| Really? I find the opposite is true, if you aren't pushing
| commits that speaks pretty loudly.
| chapium wrote:
| It sounds like you are pushing commits and not shuffling
| tickets around a system of black holes.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I have also found that many people have problems with
| async/written communication or even just paying attention to
| email or tasks. It is related to their general competence,
| communication skills and habits, and level of interest.
|
| It is a big problem.
|
| For me if they can't handle git comments or slack then they
| can usually manage to show up for a phone call. And in my
| projects that is generally not the best, but it is good
| enough to be able to keep projects moving forward.
|
| If it was a programmer rather than manager or client who did
| not reply to chat/email or handle git properly, in my opinion
| there is no excuse and that is a fireable offense. I mean, it
| should be fireable for managers and clients too but sometimes
| keeping the gig seems worth it.
| jereees wrote:
| Mind sharing some tips or resources to learn more about self
| accountability?
| jjdredd wrote:
| I don't work at home all the time, but I've been struggling to
| find some metric to hold myself accountable for my own quality
| and intensity of work. Do you mind sharing your experience?
| ilaksh wrote:
| To some degree that is definitely true. But in the other hand
| there usually should be communication and tools such as git
| that record and communicate effort which would make a lack of
| accomplishment pretty obvious.
| buboard wrote:
| Reads like something Krugman could have written
| war1025 wrote:
| Is that good or bad?
| chrischattin wrote:
| "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's
| impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax
| machine's." -Paul Krugman
| war1025 wrote:
| The circles I follow like to rag on him as someone whose
| opinion keeps being given weight despite being wrong on
| basically every prediction he's ever made.
|
| Was just curious if that's what the commentor was implying
| or not.
| jhpriestley wrote:
| > basically every prediction
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion/things-to-
| come.ht...
| https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/opinion/running-out-
| of-bu...
| https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29krugman.html
| https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/30krugman.html
| castort wrote:
| Wow, that 2005 column is prescient. I'd never read it
| before, and I'm a fan of Krugman.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| He has a very good track record when he talks economics,
| not always as spot on outside that, but not worse than
| other pundits. He's quite condescending towards
| conservatives, so if that is the circles you follow I
| very much understand that is the impression you have been
| given.
|
| Considering that he has written a couple of thousand
| columns, it would be surprising if there weren't a few
| where he got something wrong. I didn't much more than
| check the headlines of the links below, but what was
| wrong about warning about a housing bubble in 2005 or
| saying that austerity is a greater danger to the economy
| in 2009 than deficits?
| war1025 wrote:
| I have little opinion of him one way or another. The
| original comment I replied to just said "Sounds like it
| could have been written by Krugman"
|
| The only thing I am interested in is a better
| understanding of what exactly was meant by that.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-05-28 23:00 UTC)