If I had a 1.5 hour/day commute to drive into an office where people randomly show up at my desk to tell me their life story for 2 hours every day again I think I'd end up in a psych ward.
Same, plus being socially forced to have lunch with people of your team, if you don't you're kinda ruining your image... You got no freedom in an office
In addition, as someone who's easily distracted by sounds and smells, remote work is a godsend, I'm much more productive, much less stressed, and less tired at the end of the day (fighting against distraction can get exhausting). I do agree there is generally better communication in person, but it really depends on the ppl. I have worked for years with a few colleagues in office every day before covid, and we can communicate perfectly remote, we use discord and hang out in voice chat a lot of the time (just mute mic when not talking), the barrier is very low. But I do think this is not common, with most other ppl and with new ppl I don't have this kind of easy interaction.
Companies are against remote work, until they can outsource jobs to save money. In the past, Open AI has outsourced data labeling to Africa in order to be able to pay people $2 an hour.
Companies aren't here to help, they're here to make money. That's capitalism. Outsourcing is a major part of tech, has been for decades. A lot of tech moved to India since it also pays garbage. Much of my work as a SQL DB admin got moved to India. That's partially why I left that job, I could see the writing on the wall. I wouldn't mind outsourcing if it paid the same at the place it was being outsourced. I think it's good for a healthy, global economy. Where I draw the line is when you pay someone else half what I get paid to do my job. That's fucked up.
An hour of work here in my country is roughly 1 US dollar... So yeah, I would gladly work for that for 2 dollars/hour. I'm working as a full-stack developer and earn like 2.5 dollars/hour... I know it's not much, but here in Colombia things are not that great if you don't have contacts or an important family.
@@RigelOrionBeta who said they are here to help thou It’s just the sheer hypocrisy that’s remote doesn’t work while we worked remotely for like past 15 years nothing new really
Most of the objections come from middle managers and higher ups itching to get back to 2hr drive out lunch breaks and yucking it up with other middle managers about office gossip, and coming back to the office to helicopter around a cube farm while chatting up random devs asking for impromptu status updates to help give off the vibe that "real" work is getting done. These types often find it difficult to compose emails and communicate via chat and would rather just roll up to your cube and have random off-the-record conversations.
Yes, if there are no people in the office, they can't show that they are 'managing' people. People sure can work and get the work done, but managers have no people to show that they are working (aka managing people).
Exactly this. Some high level managers want to be able to survey their dominion in person to feel powerful. They can't just sit at home, they don't feel special when nobody is around, so they go to the office, and nobody is around there either, so they call everyone back into the office. Then find out that there are no longer enough desks for everyone that was hired during the pandemic.
I’m starting at a new company as an SE…Interview went like this….They wanted me hybrid drove to their office was asked how the drive was told them I got stuck in traffic and that it was a bit on the far side. Fast forward to the end of interview which went well…..they were like….if coming in to the office is a deal breaker just work from home 😂. Boom done my 7 year remote work streak continues.
Be sure to have that in writing. A friend of mine was promised he could WFH until they opened an office in the town he worked in (also a few of his colleagues who were from the same town were promised the same thing). But at some point they decided to skip opening that office, so now they require them to come into the office HQ for at least a few days every month. It's a 3 hr drive.
Remote work has allowed me to spend the 3 hours of commute time to workout, invest in my hobbies and spending more time with my family. All of these has made positive impact on my mental health. And as result, I find myself being more productive during the workday.
The problem everyone else cheating the system and not working,all games ,movie,software has been broken Af since 2020 . the worst releases have been in the last 3 year 100% Redfall,cyberpunk,battlefield 2042,grand theft auto trilogy. I could go on forever the amount of broken software in the last 3 years is batshit .
Linus Tovarlds must be lying on the floor laughing at this one. He may actually print it and put it in a frame as a meme in his home office to laugh once in a while.
It helps that everyone in Linux knows that they are building an operating system kernel. Most enterprise projects I’ve been nobody has had a clue what to build and most is pointless make-work. If companies can learn to run goal-oriented projects they won’t need in-office workers.
@@edgarmedrano2562 let's agree to disagree. working in ai here as well, i find value in working in the same place as my teammates. doesn't have to be 100% of the time, but definitely helpful in many situations to be physically in the same place
The main reason your manager wants to end remote work is that he needs to see you sitting there in order to be able to convince himself that he's useful. Also, it's hard for him to convince you that he's some kind of authority when you can see his real boss's (The Wife's) shadow looming over him
My personal conspiracy theory is that like half the managers don't want all the bs they ask us to do in writing. They can't say "but I did tell you XYZ, you just forgot" when you can prove they didn't message you.
That hasn't changed though, instead of wanting you in a seat, now they just want you to write lots of visible things in chatrooms, write wikis and there's all these little mini fake performance reviews. Peers need to constantly vouch that you're working and you're expected to vouch for them. I find remote work has shifted from once, very easy quick 10 min morning coffee chats that kept myself and my manager up to speed, to now having to write so much pointless documentation that gets stale 2 weeks later that I honestly would prefer going back to an office and dealing with a commute. hah.
We want you to code... in this open office... don't mind the sales team next to you high-fiving and cheering when they close a sale or those 3 hours when the sun is in your face because the guy next that window wants the shade up.
Aww man, my sympathies, I feel for you. Been there, it really sucks. WFH is so much better than working in an open office plan that it's not even funny.
Too true, everyone trying to talk to you every 5-15 mins, or women gossiping about celebrities, not realising you need to concentrate solidly for a minimum of an hour at a time or you will get nothing done. A few days a month in the office max
tell em to shut the f up and stand up for yourself if nobody stands up there will never be change people allow it to happen and wonder why it keeps happening?@@milkboccle
Everytime I see "remote is bad" talk it's always a person talking about their feelings about it and assuming everyone feels the same thing because they can't comprehend feelings are personal and lack basic skills of empathy to know everyone has different feelings on things.
They always talk about their feeling because no data whatsoever surfaced that would point that WFH is less productive. If there was ANY data that proved that WFH is worse than office, we'd see\hear about it every single day.
I get SO MUCH MORE WORK DONE since I was able to escape the office environment; that much is beyond any doubt. I'm not sure how to measure how creative I am, but I am suspicious that I am more creative also. These people who think they understand the psychology of uber-geeks like me, need to think again.
Tech CEOs enforce their "values" (they don't even believe in them most of the time, they just LOVE control) to people they don't know worked for them just because they can. They walk backwards from their conclusions all the time, nvm the fact that most of them became 2x-10x times more rich during COVID.
Yes, it depends a lot on who you are. I am the same way, much more productive when doing remote, bug i do understand *some* people being more productive at the work place. However, I think the former is much more common than the ladder.
Think about the workforce as a unit, not from the point of view of individuals within that workforce. An office where only half of the employees pop in every once in a blue moon isn't a productive one for the people who do benefit from it. Scattering and pandering to individual needs is what makes an organization inefficient and introduces more, not less overhead.
@@DestinyAwaitsChannel I hereby challenge any organization of office-goers to a contest: I bet introverted people like me can get 2x the quantity and 3x the quality of work done. In the time it took you guys to brainstorm, diagram your thoughts on whiteboards, argue, have a bunch of meetings, create project plans, and talk about your weekends, we have written version 1 already, learned a bunch of lessons, and already have version 2 in beta.
When I looked at the "remote" versus " on location", I found that it is the organisations and their managers who are losing out the most. There is a lot of corporate benefit from the "around the coffee maker / water cooler" where people provide tangible value to the company at no cost. I know of an employee who helped his colleague shrink a 4-day Excel macro, number crunching process to a 2-hour process. The company was immediately able to get more clients on board but none of these additional benefits went to any of the two employees, not even a one-time bonus. I realised this was one of those undocumented benefits of the "creativity" that happens in the office and translates to the top line for the company. When not in the office, every one does what they are required to do and not much else.
I work harder, longer, and more efficiently in my wfh job than before. I think it's because I was able to access a job that really matched my interests, and I'm more comfortable and less distracted
I just like being able to be a human, instead of being forced to be some kinda professional doll. Just wear what's super comfortable, eat while working, work while lying down, fart without a worry and know full well that you won't have to be stuck in the traffic every single morning. Not to mention, working remotely forces people to be way more explicit when communicating. Honestly, managers without any technical background tend to be the biggest hindrance for productivity.
+1 for the fart thing, man. I will put it in my CV. "I want to fart comfortably at home" or in order to discourage employers from forcing me into the office "I have really, really noxious farts. I'm court ordered to work from home!".
I've had an extremely difficult time working remotely since the start of the pandemic. I was relatively junior so I needed more guidence which was difficult to get properly remotely. I missed the social interactions with my team which became nearly nonexistant (I didn't like talking for hours with people or anything like that, but it was really nice to bounce ideas off each other and problem solve casually together). I had to work off of a small table in the livingroom of our small apartment while my partner was working and doing school from home as well. Eventually I quit because I was getting depressed and not enjoying any aspect of it anymore. When I was onboarded to another team at another company, it was fully remote from the start. Even though everyone was nice, I had trouble integrating into the team, I felt no connection, had no sense of the social dynamics of the people or what they were like, and I again wasn't working on anything fulfilling. It felt very cold, and it was difficult to get a hang of any processes because there was a lot of implicit knowledge that wasn't very easily accessible in documentation. When I got another job after that where I got back into an office to work with people it was the best feeling ever. The team cohesion was great, the ideas and creativity were flowing at an amazing pace and we did some amazing things together. Different people are different and I know for a fact that I work way better in an office environment instead of my cramped living room, while some people are the opposite. Personally it made the pandemic working situation very stressful for me, and the toxic rhetoric on either side of "you must come to the office or you're fired" and "anyone who wants to go to the office is a corporate shill" has become tired and annoying. I practically feel like I'm being insulted by both sides. This is a real problem that will require a lot of consideration in order to solve (if it's even possible to fully "solve"). Thanks for examining the issue with some amount of thought and reason Prime :)
You are Prime for many reasons man. High levels of critical thinking cross domain, you are my fav! I've been flourishing being remote, healthier, more focus, way more productive, bigger family, happier customers, happier life. (Ex engineering manager before covid, currently back to hard-core engineer - big corpo and many high value start-ups under my belt)
I think most of what they're actually talking about when they use coded words like "creativity" and "collaborate" is that they have some folks who miss hanging out and having fun with people in the office because their work is their life; and then some folk who can't adopt online tools to keep in touch with their subordinates and so feel like they can't manage them (hint, they probably aren't effective managers in person either). Things is as you note its a balance between choosing work as your life, and work as a tool to enable your life. Its not for everyone, but remote work really helps the balance towards life for a lot of people.
We've been gaming and doing teamwork on coms for decades now, with people we never met irl. I don't think remote work is the problem, but rather how some people adapt to it so poorly
I am a top wizard in my area, and I always work on various project work. My team members rarely work together, because all of us work like on projects. When management orders everyone working on the project from Denmark, China, Hungary, Romania, UK, Slovakia, Germany, then I will also visit the office to have a face to face with my coworkers. The 20 hours commute will suck for them, but ah well, anything for the Company!
The reason why I barely talk to coworkers when working from home vs. when working at the office is that at home I have to use MS Teams and I have to assume that literally every word I write is logged and can be seen by corporate, even in "private" chats. Like hell am I going to have a casual conversation about a shared interest when it means that HR comes shitting on my desk for not being productive because I do non-work-related things at work... Edit: I'm not a software dev at work, tho, I'm a sysadmin who pretends to devops.
Zuck’s point that it’s harder to start remote is true but mostly because companies suck at onboarding people. Remote means most things need to be formalized and documented so that they are asynchronous. You can’t just decide to be remote, you have to set up the company so that it’s easy for people to be remote. Just like you can’t just hope that your product is self-serve and put up a sign up form. You gotta actually make it easy for customers to onboard with great docs and great onboarding flow.
As an ex-Meta employee, I can say confidently, that company has the best onboarding I've ever experienced. They put so much time and energy into bringing folks up to speed long before they join a team so that members of teams can hit the ground running instead of get overwhelmed with learning process on top of code (or whatever their IC role requires). Even more so, I'm still friends with the people I met during that 6 weeks to this very day. What is implicit in programs like that is the connection building. By allowing employees to make connections across the company these people become invaluable resources later on. Oh, this data scientist who's interest is in user safety and privacy and I'm working on a project related to that now, perfect. I can ping them and start a conversation to hopefully build more connections and learn more information. Potentially, that means I can further grow my network. Sadly, what I heard from new employees during Covid, no one met anyone. It became mainly an online, at your own pace, prerecorded video checklist to churn through. So, yes, you're right that onboarding needs to change if it wants to continue remote, and Meta has changed it and adapted it. I think what they found, even after all those changes, it's still lacking. Sooooo, what do you do?! Losing out on early connections isn't something you can chart on a graph and see with clarity. It's not even something new employees would even recognize as a missing feature, because they never had it. So then it's just gone and it hurts a company's culture over the long tail.
in my company in my team the top 10 most productive employees each month are those who barely ever show up to the office. That's because when you sit at home, youre working and even if you get distracted by let's say cleaning the dishes or doing laundry, then you go back to your computer and feel like you need to work very hard and be focused now to catch up for this time you were away, whereas in the office you don't feel bad about having a coffee and a chat with coworkes for 1.5 hour straight, because everybody around you is doing exactly that. Damn even the management is doing that... Not even gonna mention smokers. This is ridiculous. People working from home be vaping/smoking whilst simultaenously working, but in the office you have to get your jacket from the locker room, get to the elevator, go down 5 floors. Then go out of the building through security gates. Walk 50 meters to the smoking area. Then you get your vape/cigarette/whatever and stand there chatting for 20 minutes straight because there are 15 other people there talking. Then you go back, through the security gates, up 5 floors in the elevator, bring your jacket back to the locker room AND come back to your desk - it's been almost an hour that you're away from your computer by this time. In 1-2 hours the smoker will obviously need to smoke again so he will do all that again and again wasting company time. But in the eyes of CEOs they are productive because they come to the office everyday. Those are only two of nonsenses of office work and there are many many more I could point that I've noticed at my workplace...
The company I'm starting at in a few weeks was like, "please come in your first few days to get to know some people and to talk a few things through but then it's mostly remote. Mondays and Fridays nobody is in the office so don't even try" haha
I worked at a Startup from 2004 to 2009. It was the booming days of early smartphones and ringtone sales. In the beginning we were 90% remote, only met with clients at their offices. By 2007 we grew to 25 people and the Founder decided we need a shiny new office. That office cost more than 2 senior salaries. Then 2008 came ... the lease was 5 years, so impossible to downsize. The company went bankrupt within a year.
I've worked in startups most of my 25 yr career, and I'm most creative at home no question. For software development most of the best actual creative work comes from individuals not teams. Most of the best software starts with a single developer. This holds true for most professional areas not just software development. But ya creating a cohesive team I think has to be done in person. I think most people who have done creative work develop a process for it. And whatever that is, you have to respect it even if it differs from your own, assuming there is a track record of results. Managers have a really hard time with this one. Saying you get more creativity in an office is just plain ignorant of how the creative process works. It's very context specific and individual.
Completly disagree. The few times I have to go to the office (regardless of the company). My impression is that most people seem to be talking about random, non-work related stuff. Constant coffee breaks and invitations to go do nothing. I'd much rather be focused on the task at hand and use my free time to be with my friends, family and dedicate to hobbies. :)
It's true, creativity does suffer. When you work remotely you can only get to 9.24 Creativity Units but in person working you can get 19.77 Creativity Units which is almost double the Creativity Units.
@@Dan_1348 I mean, if I can finish a bug or a feature in 10 minutes but my work shift is over, I'd just instantly leave and continue it tomorrow. But if I'm at home.. I'd be like "why not" cause I'd be in a good mood. However, if a company actually forces you to work longer in remote jobs, they should be sued.
I'll say this, it really does depend on the person when it comes to someone being productive while remote. I remember at the beginning of COVID, my work at the time wanted people to volunteer to work remote, but only a certain amount. I was bummed at first because I thought everyone would be fighting for it, but I was the only one in my department that volunteered. They all said they hate the idea of working from home, however I love the idea of no distracting small talk, plus now I can use my nice monitors, ergonomic keyboard, and actually utilize my sit/stand desk, also I can swap between my Herman Miller chair and an exercise ball, and when lunch rolls around I can make myself something fresh instead of the usual deli meat sandwich or going out and buying lunch.
@@handlechar568 are you asking why my coworkers didn't want to do it? They like the idea of being social. My fiancee would also never want to work remote. Maybe partial, but she gets her energy and creativity working with people face to face.
Remote working means decrease transportation costs for the employee, and increase the free time out of working hours. In my opinion the productivity issue is solved by firing who exploit remote work to work less. Team cohesion is possible even on remote, just keep your voice chat open and talk about yourself and not only about work in officials meetings. Ultimately i think it should a reasoned case by case choice whether to build a remote team. it depends on peoples you are hiring and on the type of job, there's not correct answer.
My conspiracy theory is that at least half the managers who want to get us back to the office just don't want a written record of all the bs they bother the productive people with.
@@chadabercrombie6860 Nonsense. You wouldn't last more than a couple of days working at any of the companies I worked for before someone noticed. You are also going to be in serious trouble when even one finds out because your "great idea" will unravel, they will take you to court and all the others will find out too.
@@sacredgeometry It IS legal to have multiple jobs. I also run 2 in parallel, thinking about getting a 3rd. I am a top performer for both jobs in my respective teams though, so they are getting far more than a fair bang for their bucks.
@@txdmsk Actually it is a breach of almost every single contract I have ever signed (and that is perfectly normal) and is something that would need to be explicitly arranged with your employers. Not only that but working those other jobs in your normal work hours would certainly not be something they would allow even if they allowed you to do extra work your personal time. also if you are a top performer and splitting your in work hours between two jobs then your coworkers must be awful.
My office is currently 3 hours away. I work from home with a few days (1-4) in office every month/every other month with hotel. I've never been this productive before and enjoyed my work as much as I do now. We have constant communication with each other in the team. Instead of walking over to their desk, I ping them if they got time for a call to ask my questions/get help/give reviews. I probably won't be able to switch to any other job, because I don't want to change my life back to 3 - 5 days in the office every week.
I find it so funny that all those CEOs and managers talking shit about home office, usually have contracts of "team augmentation" from off-shore all the sudden, cheaper labor is no longer a problem "being remote"
As someone with moderate ADHD, it's hard af to focus when people are talking about stupid shit all around me, or coming up to me with stupid bs. WFH makes me way more productive. If you're one of the "look like you're working hard when you're not" type of people, then remote work can exaserbate that, but if you're a decent manager, you will monitor workloads + output of your team to see if they're actually working or not. That being said, working in-office at times does lead to better communications and unity, but that's mostly due to people not having fully adapted to the internet as the information pathway it's meant to be in a healthy way
Yeah I'm just about to get a job working in-office and this is the biggest worry I have. I've somewhat severe ADHD and noise is a big distractor. I also worry that if someone does come up to talk to me I won't be in a social zone and will come across as uninterested since it takes a while to ground back to reality after being super focused on something.
It's not only about location, but also flexible time management. I'm aware btw this isn't always possible, depends on kind of work one's doing etc. When possible, it should be utilized IMO. Some ppl need more time in the morning to get going. People get a headache, hit walls, etc. Instead of staring at screen for an hour in an office, one could spend some time in a gym, take a walk, chat with someone. If I'm more productive with making more breaks, or one longer break, or working between 5pm - 11pm works better for me, why would someone want to force me to sit in a cubicle 8am - 5pm with a single half an hour break. It just doesn't make sense. For productivity at least. Btw I always found emails, mailing list and forums as almost perfect, most pragmatic way to communicate. Way better than face to face which is prone to gazillion flaws. We people are actually not that good at real time thinking. Those who think they are, they probably just like it better, or maybe figuring shit out isn't their main concern. This was in context of work like programming. Occasional F2F can definitely be useful for things like brainstorming, quickly discussing/communicating issues to higher ups etc. But I see no reason why would meeting in person work better than virtual sessions, whiteboarding etc.
My output and motivation has probably tripled after starting to work from home. I honestly never thought I would like working from home. But once I started, I legit don't think I will ever go back to an office. For people like me, who sleep kinda late and sometimes take a little bit of time to get in the groove, being in an office just feels like ur constantly under the gun. Now that I'm working from home, there's no need to feel like the day is over late afternoon when people start packing up at 4 and ur the only one left at 5. At home, If I'm working on something and need to work till 6 or later, it doesn't bother me. When ur in the office by urself and know u got a half hour to drive home, the pressure to finish by 5 comes on quick. Working from home, that pressure is gone. And without that pressure, I just feel way more motivated.
My greatest success with my remote work has been the ability to not have to pretend to be working (read this as "typing and testing things constantly") and getting the time to go for walks and really think about programming, SQL, ML algorithm logic for an hour or so at a time to come back and just knock out an assignment in a couple of hours. Something that would've taken weeks of a dozen meetings to convince a dozen people about basic things they don't understand becomes a single afternoon with some quick back-and-forth. I have never been more productive. I've never saved more or made more money for my current company until now. I do miss going into the office monthly though - I do like my coworkers.
I miss the unwinding drive home. I miss my kids excited to see me after a long day of work (now the see me all the time) I miss talking to other adults and coworkers face to face. I miss A LOT about working in person. There should be a balance. Remotely working for 6+ years and it's catching up to me. At an office, you might go out and get paid for lunch and drinks on someones birthday. Might go do things collectively as a team. So many things. Now you just stay locked up in a basement or small room. Drinking your own coffee that you pay for.. Never to be seen. But it's not like half your audience didn't talk to people at an office anyway, so it must be the same for them.
Note that a lot of successful companies have to try to stop competition by suggesting bad ideas and also using government power. just keep an eye for who you listen to, and If they are competition there's a high likelihood that they are just trying to slow you down...
Wouldn't huge companies benefit from remote work if this was their goal though? They'd be able to snipe talent from all over the country instead of from the few areas where they have offices, which would limit the talent that can work at other firms.
I enjoy chewing the fat with my coworkers. Exploring ideas, venting some frustrations, building motivation, just catching up on life. But then I need to actually get things done. That all happens on Friday… at home.
I will quit before I got back into the office. That's actually how I ended up working from home well before COVID. I just said, "Hey, I love my job, but I'm gonna have to work from home or quit. I'd really love to stay on the team, because I think we do great work". All my coworkers said it would never happen, but I was working from home the next week and never looked back. Ended up quitting that company, working remote for a company on the other side of the country and then returned. Have positive working relationships with all people involved and I still talk to people from my previous company even though I only ever met them in person one time. Infra engineer (focus in networking).
Its easy to have in-person team meetings quarterly to build cohesion. Or have leads visit regions where there are clusters of devs. We do that. Its not hard and costs less than keeping a office. Getting good at remote is a strategic advantage but you have to have good leadership. Good leadership in tech organizations is not common.
Some people better at remote, some for in office, definitely. But another for-certain: a narcissistic authority will always demand in-office, and usually demand no cell phones in building.
Can't you ask questions by sending emails, asking in a chat room or whatever is the standard way of online communication in the company? I don't go to work to make friends. I expect from colleagues to behave professionally and do their jobs. Btw if a colleague doesn't really like you, like you're not their kind of person, asking in a public chat room would work better, because 1. everyone sees that you're trying, and 2. some might even feel some peer pressure to reply, especially if the question was directed to them. If you're with a single person in an office, and you're new, there are quite a few ways for them to screw you without you even realizing it. Doesn't even have to be intentional. Some people just suck at explaining things. That "Hey" phone conversation example sucks. Next time that happens you tell the guy "Hey, I want to see your hands, or at least the rest of your face.". Or maybe "Dude call me later when you remember the reason you called", or even better "Write me an email, so I can show everyone your train of thought approach and why I don't like it.".
I can only see this type of communication being a problem in a moment where you need immediate feedback, like you're stuck on a project and you want someone to give you some advice as you're working on it. Video calls are usually find unless there's call quality issues, which depends on each person's internet connections.
To add to your comment, written comms are superior because 1) they force people to write out something at least moderately coherent instead of mumbling unintelligible noise 2) they're a written track record that you can later look up, you don't need to rely on an imperfect memory, and it saves you the "but he said/she said" embarrassming arguments because it's all right there in writing.
@@T0m1s Hard disagree. Believing that "forcing" anyone to answer in a specific way and to a specific level of detail will lead to good communication just directly contradicts my experience. Fully written communication requires way more buyin and team good will to work well. Even small disagreements can quickly spiral into distrust and contempt when you get the option to read messages in whatever negative tone you want to attribute to the person. And "forgetting" to answer a written message is so much easier than ignoring a person at your desk. So it works in any discussion where a higher power can be called down and thankfully in situations where both sides genuinely want to cooperate. Then it enables logging, asynchronicity and very short precise requests.
I have a 1.5-2 hour commute towards my company in very dense and aggressive tragic and then later 1.5 hours back. Basically I am doing 12 hour shifts. When I am at my company the most work is done when people start to leave and I am alone.
The main benefit of in-office work is that you can more easily navigate a toxic company culture when you get to pick up on all the nonverbal cues. Me, I’d prefer a nontoxic company where I can just do the work, get paid and have enough energy left over to have an actual life.
Before lockdowns, I thought maybe 2 days a week WFH would be good and I didn't "see it". Within 2-3 week of lockdowns, I knew WFH was permanent in tech - at least for people with desired skills who can negotiate a tad. Now I'm on the verge of the next uncoupling - almost ready to become a nomad (at least until I build a home). WFH = more FREEDOM and more EFFICIENCY? Yes please.
To be fair, for an actual startup or extremely challenging new project, I do think being in person is a HUGE benefit. I've been remote my entire career, but if you want to build something completely new and critical, I want to be with my team mates.
"all this communication goes on in an office* such as body language, tone of voice" as an aspie this is what has always been challenging to me. People cannot read their tone, and I cannot read theirs, we have to meet in the middle with some good old formal fully declarative english, which would just as well befit an email. There are a lot of us in tech.
This one struck a chord with me. As a loner and a very reclusive person who loves to code, being around people while working drains all my energy. I do my best work from home
@@disguysn painfully true... more than half my time at work is spent watching crap on RUclips, and because my personal interests align with my job, I often learn valuable things to utilize at work while doing that. I'm a sysadmin tho, not sure if this transfers 1:1 to software devs...
@@insu_na it absolutely does. Learning related things and doing research before you start a big feature/project pays dividends for weeks and months down the road. It works just as well for the ops side as it does the dev side. The trick is that you need to balance the learning with the doing. Too many focus on one or the other.
Remote only, here - onboarded remote, and work remote, with occasional site-tours and group outings. I can agree that integration with a new team is harder, but I think it really just puts extra pressure on the team lead, versus anything that can’t be overcome. I think our team still manages to support each other well, despite having a geographic spread from Poland to California, but that’s because our team lead does a fantastic job of balancing the time differences, and also of connecting needs with help.
I'd disagree with this. I worked better in an office, not because of the environment being so conducive to working (it wasn't), but because I have even more things I'm distracted by at home - not even fun things really, primarily chores I need to do - and I also felt more engaged in my work as a whole. I'd talk (or just listen) to people at the coffee bar about cool technologies, things they're working on, etc., and it made me want to be good at my job, to be like these guys I respected. It was much more 'fun' to be stuck at the office working on a project late with a couple people than to be at home alone doing it and just interacting by slack or on zoom. Don't get me wrong, I have no plans to return to office; the benefits of remote work outweigh these things for me, but I definitely have to work much harder to keep myself engaged in my work and to put aside other distractions.
What they fail to mention is that all these large companies are getting tax breaks and kickbacks from the local government to mandate their people to come back in. It's always about money.
There are some managers who are narcisistic that need to be heard constantly and feel important by injecting themselves into everything. Have you noticed how it always seems to be some CEO saying how bad remote working is?
Before I went full-remote, I had to spend 4 extra hours on a daily basis commuting with a bus. Imaigne spending 12 hours a day awake from home (on sometihng thats neither free time, nor sleep), while being only paid for 8 hours.
I like working at the office because it has more interaction and meeting new people, even sometimes after office hours we go to the cafe and play some mobile games, and talk about random stuff and our freelance project. been two years since we move to the new company but we still doing the freelance project.
I am so happy to work fully remote. So much more time...all this wasted time in the past sitting in the car and driving. Can not remember how I did that. And then the amount of time having random trash talks with random ppl in the office. Only our managers and team leads and so on love to go into the office to chat all the day, doing nothing other then talking in meetings or while walking through the office and visiting each other.
Most tech companies have a global workforce these days. How would Altman expect our teams in America (multiple cities) and our teams in India (also multiple cities) to meet in person?
Some of the main reasons people are against remote work: 1. Fear Management - if they can’t see you working and micromanage you they don’t think you’re working. 2. Self-Realization of their uselessness - many managers realized how effing useless their jobs actually are and it scares the shit out of them. 3. Control - The C-Suite wants employees who are basically slaves to the company and dedicate their blood, sweat, and tears to the company. All while the useless c-suite shit heads work remotely and make stupid decisions with the company to make investors happy which then causes unnecessary layoffs. 4. Extroverts - The extroverted people who can’t go 5 seconds without talking or interacting with people wanna see people in the office they can interact with. 5. Ass Kissers & Ladder Climbers - All the ass kissers need to be in person to pucker up and kiss ass. The ladder climbers need to be in person to “get to know you” so they can find ways to backstab you and make themselves look better. 6. Useless people - All the useless workers who add no true value to the company are worried they will actually have to work instead of pretending to work. Results based environments are death to these kinds of people because they don’t produce jack shit.
And yet, when I was in an office... the number of dramatic episodes because of mis-interpreted emails /txt was ridiculous. People needed policy meetings( very productive) to be told: "Get out of your chair, and go ask them in person. They are at the end of the hall?"
Fact: most people can't communicate over text, that's why they love meaningless meetings, and scheduling calls for literally asking every single malformed question
I find that there's a subset of people that are used to body language and tone and even environment doing most of the leg work of the communication and meaning that they are terrible at expressing themselves clearly in writing when they can't rely on those things. Yes, sometimes it is an inherent limitation, but often people just don't realize how what they say can come off as ambiguous considering the medium of communication.
If remote work wasn't a thing, I wouldn't have the job I have today. I feel that remote work gives company a larger pool of talent that they can hire from...I agree though that the connectivity is hampered a little.
sama was the president of y-combinator, he knows startups, i feel like he's probably right. also have to remember that people at openai are the very top tier, the commitment to their work is unwavering regardless of where they work. being in the office has a different dynamic, encouraging adhoc chats by being in office is the best way to generate ideas among the best people. i don't know what's best for the average person though
startups are usually a smaller team, and the smaller the team, the easier it is to know everyone and stay in contact. Startups should practice being flexible anyway.
I think it also depends allot on seniority. Senior engineers kind of already know the ropes, you don't need to tell them much and they can self organize, keep focus and deliver on the work without much help. A junior engineer might need someone to hold their hands and not get distracted with stuff that doesn't matter.
Oh god the end just killed me… was dying of laughter while cooking, the fam looked at me as if I am a maniac , but the imitation of the bad connection guy got me
some companies are doing it supposedly to help businesses nearby their office. so lemme get this straight: * they want to pay us pennies * they want us to spend what little we have on expensive food and drink * they want to control how we work I know plenty of companies are not like this (my current employer isn't) but it just drives me up the wall thinking about those that do.
"some people don't like to live in shitty San Francisco" Yeah that's fair. Same goes for Seattle, I have had to turn down a handful of "6 figure" jobs in Seattle because moving there would be an actual pay cut for me with the cost of living / travel expenses
I love how people are fine making 10 people wait 10 minutes in office for a meeting, but connecting proper mike into the phone on which they make a conference call is too much hassle. I always use same setup for calls and I rarely get complaints, and when I get them, I fix them asap. But several people can complain that calls from office are bad quality, and nothing is done about it, despite hardware being available to remedy this. Also when announces are being made and they first put just @everyone and then everyone who saw it has to wait for five minutes to see the real message :D.
I asked Chat GPT: "is remote working a mistake in the tech industry?" The Answer: "No, remote working is not necessarily a mistake in the tech industry. In fact, many tech companies have successfully implemented remote work policies and have seen positive results such as increased productivity, decreased overhead costs, and improved work-life balance for employees. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to adopt remote work as a necessity, and while there have been some challenges, many companies have found that remote work can be effective when managed properly. That being said, remote work is not without its challenges, and there are certain aspects of work that may be harder to replicate in a remote environment, such as collaboration and socialization. It is up to each individual company to determine whether remote work is the right fit for their business and to develop strategies to overcome any potential obstacles." Interesting...
That ending is so dang epic 😆 Sometimes I feel like I'm not as productive when I work from home, but that's because of where I live (sick of the place after three years) or because of the refrigerator that's in the same living room not far from my desk. Sometimes going to the office is a disaster because it can be very crowded and it can be really difficult to concentrate on work due to the noise and all the chaos around. "Sometimes may be good, sometimes may be s***". I work at a company where I go to the office once a week for a “team day” where we sit down together and discuss things, etc. I think it's good to have that level of freedom.
I cared a lot about my last company. I helped them transition a 10y hardcoded Wordpress and even came up with a full proposal to simplify Thier subscription system and meet current company goals… I trained my overseas replacements and was insta terminated
I like how nobody asks the remote worker... they ask the middle manager or the social butterfly. many of us do not want or care about our team members personal lives, and don't want to discuss their own. if you need that go to a social event. I'm here to work and get paid. currently my teammates and i have a great work relationship. i work remote and i am more productive since being able to wfh. they ask the wrong people because they want to suppress how beneficial wfh can be.
the effectiveness of remote employees also depends on their managers skills. you're not starring at a bullpen looking for which wide ass looks like they have spare time. You actually have to track who's working on what and the deliverables. I've heard horror stories of dudes getting hired and straight up never contacted at all for months, then just get randomly fired, that's not on the employee that's your management is garbage. I can't even imagine how a manager can ever be that bad at there job.
People don't want to sit in shitty offices far away from where they live, have to commute (and pay for both the commute and use of their own time to do it) - what a surprise. Just wait until people like this speshul CEO discover people are going to work to finance their life, stuff like having a roof over your head and being able to eat when you're hungry, NOT because the company is so cool and we are a big family anyway...
My office mandated working from office 3 days a week. So for compliance, I go to office on those days and return within 3 hours. It's not that there is fixed office time. I am asked to work literally any time of the day (even night) and any day of the week. But the work is from home. Office? That's more for keeping the stats and so that the company isn't wasting its money on office spaces. If they expect this, I am only doing a favor by going to the office.
In Germany, companies are starting to implement hybrid working. So you just stay at home for like 3 days and 2 days you have to be in the office, so they can always plan appointments and meetings on same days. Also need to think that some people gladly go there because they just can’t work if kids are at home and such..
If I commute 3 hours per day, the last thing I want is to hang out in the local neighborhoods. All I want is to get to my home and then relax. Also I bring my own food and drinks with me to have the shortest possible pause during the midday.
I relate so much to the 'maybe some people don't want to live in San Francisco and don't do their best work because they hate it there'. I moved out of SF a few months into COVID after living there about 5 years. I told myself that if I was required to come back to office, I could always go back, but once I cleared the city limits, I took a deep breath and knew that I would never move back, even if I had to take a 50% paycut. When I was considering moving, I had several people give me that preachy 'if you're not happy, changing locations won't change anything; unhappy people are unhappy everywhere' speech. But they were completely wrong. I get that some people just move from place to place thinking it'll change things, when the problem is likely them, but I'm not one of them. There are a lot of places I could live and be happy, a lot of places I could enjoy to varying degrees, but San Francisco is not one of them, and it had only gotten worse once the lockdowns started. The alternative way of phrasing their statement is, 'location has no significant impact on a person's life', which is obviously absurd. I'm way happier just from having moved.
08:08 I started my job remote. I made a point to talk to my team. Nah. Remote work, like other jobs, is what you make it. My team and I get on fine but you'll never catch me chatting shit with them outside of work. Having made the mistake of thinking I was friends with people and then realizing that was monodirectional, I've just accepted that it's fine and if I don't have friends at work it's cool. It'll give me no qualms about leaving. 🤷🏾
I think there is value in coming to the office at the start of a new project or feature. Also conversations at the coffee machine going like "Hej, I thought about the problem you mentioned this morning. I did not want to call because I am not sure about my solution, but here it is ..." That being said. I prefer working from home because it reduces my time traveling to and from work. At the same time for minor issues I always can video call a colleague.
It’s funny because it’s probably the complete reversal of what makes sense for a start up vs a legacy sized company. When every red cent counts not having to play overhead for an office and for your workers to be able to work remotely from home, that could be why your company worked.
I think the best way is this: once you're familiar with the environment (onboarding + some experience) you show up on monday, or whatever other day most of the meetings are, and the rest of the week you do your own thing.
A company that requires in-office staff will be restricting themselves to local talent, only. There are many talented engineers who reside in other countries and to turn up your nose to that is to cut it off to spite your face.
As a software engineer, I'd never accept a role that was not fully remote unless it was a crazy good opportunity. Teams just need to figure out what works best for them. Using the right collaboration tools also helps.
I really think the ideal is hybrid. Its nice to work from home and be productive a few days a week, but its also important to get out of the house while also building those relationships with coworkers.
Going full remote and ditching the 9-5 lifestyle was the best thing that ever happened to my career. Being able to easily manage my own hours made my productivity, job satisfaction and mental wellbeing skyrocket.
I think you are absolutely right about some people performing well remote, and others don't. I know this isn't the case in all teams, but unfortunately on our team the people who want to work remote, are the ones who don't perform well without some supervision and coaching. Others on the team perform well no matter if they are remote or in-office, but most of those want to work in-office.
It’s as if big companies can’t have IRC-style video chat rooms where shit goes on and you can tune out / in and go into private chats and private group chats at will…
"I don't know if we each have a truth, or if we're all just dogmatic accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time." Dr. Pepper Founder/CEO You Ain't Got No Legs, Inc.
If I had a 1.5 hour/day commute to drive into an office where people randomly show up at my desk to tell me their life story for 2 hours every day again I think I'd end up in a psych ward.
and you'd be wasting your time and the time of the company.
That's EXACTLY why I don't wanna go to the office
Same, plus being socially forced to have lunch with people of your team, if you don't you're kinda ruining your image... You got no freedom in an office
In addition, as someone who's easily distracted by sounds and smells, remote work is a godsend, I'm much more productive, much less stressed, and less tired at the end of the day (fighting against distraction can get exhausting).
I do agree there is generally better communication in person, but it really depends on the ppl. I have worked for years with a few colleagues in office every day before covid, and we can communicate perfectly remote, we use discord and hang out in voice chat a lot of the time (just mute mic when not talking), the barrier is very low. But I do think this is not common, with most other ppl and with new ppl I don't have this kind of easy interaction.
We don't really care if you end up in a psych ward or not.
Companies are against remote work, until they can outsource jobs to save money. In the past, Open AI has outsourced data labeling to Africa in order to be able to pay people $2 an hour.
If you're going to out source too Africa at least pay the US minimum wage of $7 dollars an hour....
It's not like that region doesn't need help...
Companies aren't here to help, they're here to make money. That's capitalism.
Outsourcing is a major part of tech, has been for decades. A lot of tech moved to India since it also pays garbage. Much of my work as a SQL DB admin got moved to India. That's partially why I left that job, I could see the writing on the wall.
I wouldn't mind outsourcing if it paid the same at the place it was being outsourced. I think it's good for a healthy, global economy. Where I draw the line is when you pay someone else half what I get paid to do my job. That's fucked up.
An hour of work here in my country is roughly 1 US dollar... So yeah, I would gladly work for that for 2 dollars/hour.
I'm working as a full-stack developer and earn like 2.5 dollars/hour... I know it's not much, but here in Colombia things are not that great if you don't have contacts or an important family.
@@RigelOrionBeta who said they are here to help thou
It’s just the sheer hypocrisy that’s remote doesn’t work while we worked remotely for like past 15 years nothing new really
@@keymatch-clovis you dont have to settle for 2.5 if you are good enough you can get a $15/hr remote job
Most of the objections come from middle managers and higher ups itching to get back to 2hr drive out lunch breaks and yucking it up with other middle managers about office gossip, and coming back to the office to helicopter around a cube farm while chatting up random devs asking for impromptu status updates to help give off the vibe that "real" work is getting done. These types often find it difficult to compose emails and communicate via chat and would rather just roll up to your cube and have random off-the-record conversations.
Yes, if there are no people in the office, they can't show that they are 'managing' people. People sure can work and get the work done, but managers have no people to show that they are working (aka managing people).
This comment is underrated! It is exactly like this in most places!
to be fair, if they don't do those, they will get fired. without offices, they have no phsyicaly way to show they thaty work. lol
Exactly this. Some high level managers want to be able to survey their dominion in person to feel powerful. They can't just sit at home, they don't feel special when nobody is around, so they go to the office, and nobody is around there either, so they call everyone back into the office. Then find out that there are no longer enough desks for everyone that was hired during the pandemic.
this, just senior managers projecting
I’m starting at a new company as an SE…Interview went like this….They wanted me hybrid drove to their office was asked how the drive was told them I got stuck in traffic and that it was a bit on the far side. Fast forward to the end of interview which went well…..they were like….if coming in to the office is a deal breaker just work from home 😂. Boom done my 7 year remote work streak continues.
...... ...... ........ ...... ..... ... . . .... ......
Nice !
7 year? That's a dream come true!.
Awesome!!
Be sure to have that in writing. A friend of mine was promised he could WFH until they opened an office in the town he worked in (also a few of his colleagues who were from the same town were promised the same thing). But at some point they decided to skip opening that office, so now they require them to come into the office HQ for at least a few days every month. It's a 3 hr drive.
Remote work has allowed me to spend the 3 hours of commute time to workout, invest in my hobbies and spending more time with my family. All of these has made positive impact on my mental health. And as result, I find myself being more productive during the workday.
Even if you weren't more productive, it's still your employer's job to cater to your needs if they want you working for them.
@@chadabercrombie6860 Exploit early and often.
The problem everyone else cheating the system and not working,all games ,movie,software has been broken Af since 2020 . the worst releases have been in the last 3 year 100% Redfall,cyberpunk,battlefield 2042,grand theft auto trilogy. I could go on forever the amount of broken software in the last 3 years is batshit .
@@chadabercrombie6860 don't you afraid you'll end up in some kind of black list?
@@X862go all of those companies work on site bro
Linus Tovarlds must be lying on the floor laughing at this one. He may actually print it and put it in a frame as a meme in his home office to laugh once in a while.
Exactly my thoughts. The biggest software project in the planet is fully remote since 1991 lol
It helps that everyone in Linux knows that they are building an operating system kernel. Most enterprise projects I’ve been nobody has had a clue what to build and most is pointless make-work. If companies can learn to run goal-oriented projects they won’t need in-office workers.
yep, too bad building llms and Linux kernel are two vastly different jobs
@@ciuffredaluca sorry but as a person working remotely on an AI lab with an international team around the world I don't see much difference.
@@edgarmedrano2562 let's agree to disagree. working in ai here as well, i find value in working in the same place as my teammates. doesn't have to be 100% of the time, but definitely helpful in many situations to be physically in the same place
The main reason your manager wants to end remote work is that he needs to see you sitting there in order to be able to convince himself that he's useful. Also, it's hard for him to convince you that he's some kind of authority when you can see his real boss's (The Wife's) shadow looming over him
This! for the first part. No idea about the rest.
Amen! Had a manager admit this "I need to see butts in seats" then wondered why everyone quit for higher paying remote jobs
My personal conspiracy theory is that like half the managers don't want all the bs they ask us to do in writing.
They can't say "but I did tell you XYZ, you just forgot" when you can prove they didn't message you.
As an aspiring manager, you can't make that assumption for everyone.
That hasn't changed though, instead of wanting you in a seat, now they just want you to write lots of visible things in chatrooms, write wikis and there's all these little mini fake performance reviews. Peers need to constantly vouch that you're working and you're expected to vouch for them. I find remote work has shifted from once, very easy quick 10 min morning coffee chats that kept myself and my manager up to speed, to now having to write so much pointless documentation that gets stale 2 weeks later that I honestly would prefer going back to an office and dealing with a commute. hah.
We want you to code... in this open office... don't mind the sales team next to you high-fiving and cheering when they close a sale or those 3 hours when the sun is in your face because the guy next that window wants the shade up.
Aww man, my sympathies, I feel for you. Been there, it really sucks. WFH is so much better than working in an open office plan that it's not even funny.
Too true, everyone trying to talk to you every 5-15 mins, or women gossiping about celebrities, not realising you need to concentrate solidly for a minimum of an hour at a time or you will get nothing done. A few days a month in the office max
I had the issue about the sun too.
Or the god damn fluorescent lights that make my head almost explode.
tell em to shut the f up and stand up for yourself if nobody stands up there will never be change people allow it to happen and wonder why it keeps happening?@@milkboccle
Everytime I see "remote is bad" talk it's always a person talking about their feelings about it and assuming everyone feels the same thing because they can't comprehend feelings are personal and lack basic skills of empathy to know everyone has different feelings on things.
They always talk about their feeling because no data whatsoever surfaced that would point that WFH is less productive. If there was ANY data that proved that WFH is worse than office, we'd see\hear about it every single day.
I get SO MUCH MORE WORK DONE since I was able to escape the office environment; that much is beyond any doubt. I'm not sure how to measure how creative I am, but I am suspicious that I am more creative also. These people who think they understand the psychology of uber-geeks like me, need to think again.
Tech CEOs enforce their "values" (they don't even believe in them most of the time, they just LOVE control) to people they don't know worked for them just because they can. They walk backwards from their conclusions all the time, nvm the fact that most of them became 2x-10x times more rich during COVID.
Yes, it depends a lot on who you are. I am the same way, much more productive when doing remote, bug i do understand *some* people being more productive at the work place. However, I think the former is much more common than the ladder.
@@s1l3nttt Maybe office-or-not should work the way gender identity works in today's world: be whoever you want to be, do whatever works best for you
Think about the workforce as a unit, not from the point of view of individuals within that workforce. An office where only half of the employees pop in every once in a blue moon isn't a productive one for the people who do benefit from it.
Scattering and pandering to individual needs is what makes an organization inefficient and introduces more, not less overhead.
@@DestinyAwaitsChannel I hereby challenge any organization of office-goers to a contest: I bet introverted people like me can get 2x the quantity and 3x the quality of work done. In the time it took you guys to brainstorm, diagram your thoughts on whiteboards, argue, have a bunch of meetings, create project plans, and talk about your weekends, we have written version 1 already, learned a bunch of lessons, and already have version 2 in beta.
When I looked at the "remote" versus " on location", I found that it is the organisations and their managers who are losing out the most. There is a lot of corporate benefit from the "around the coffee maker / water cooler" where people provide tangible value to the company at no cost.
I know of an employee who helped his colleague shrink a 4-day Excel macro, number crunching process to a 2-hour process. The company was immediately able to get more clients on board but none of these additional benefits went to any of the two employees, not even a one-time bonus. I realised this was one of those undocumented benefits of the "creativity" that happens in the office and translates to the top line for the company. When not in the office, every one does what they are required to do and not much else.
I work harder, longer, and more efficiently in my wfh job than before. I think it's because I was able to access a job that really matched my interests, and I'm more comfortable and less distracted
Congrats on finding a job that matches your interests. I've found that it's a difficult thing to achieve
Nice
I just like being able to be a human, instead of being forced to be some kinda professional doll. Just wear what's super comfortable, eat while working, work while lying down, fart without a worry and know full well that you won't have to be stuck in the traffic every single morning.
Not to mention, working remotely forces people to be way more explicit when communicating. Honestly, managers without any technical background tend to be the biggest hindrance for productivity.
+1 for the fart thing, man. I will put it in my CV. "I want to fart comfortably at home" or in order to discourage employers from forcing me into the office "I have really, really noxious farts. I'm court ordered to work from home!".
@@txdmskI thought I was the only one for whom this was actually a big reason I really need WFH lol
I've had an extremely difficult time working remotely since the start of the pandemic. I was relatively junior so I needed more guidence which was difficult to get properly remotely. I missed the social interactions with my team which became nearly nonexistant (I didn't like talking for hours with people or anything like that, but it was really nice to bounce ideas off each other and problem solve casually together). I had to work off of a small table in the livingroom of our small apartment while my partner was working and doing school from home as well. Eventually I quit because I was getting depressed and not enjoying any aspect of it anymore.
When I was onboarded to another team at another company, it was fully remote from the start. Even though everyone was nice, I had trouble integrating into the team, I felt no connection, had no sense of the social dynamics of the people or what they were like, and I again wasn't working on anything fulfilling. It felt very cold, and it was difficult to get a hang of any processes because there was a lot of implicit knowledge that wasn't very easily accessible in documentation.
When I got another job after that where I got back into an office to work with people it was the best feeling ever. The team cohesion was great, the ideas and creativity were flowing at an amazing pace and we did some amazing things together.
Different people are different and I know for a fact that I work way better in an office environment instead of my cramped living room, while some people are the opposite. Personally it made the pandemic working situation very stressful for me, and the toxic rhetoric on either side of "you must come to the office or you're fired" and "anyone who wants to go to the office is a corporate shill" has become tired and annoying. I practically feel like I'm being insulted by both sides. This is a real problem that will require a lot of consideration in order to solve (if it's even possible to fully "solve").
Thanks for examining the issue with some amount of thought and reason Prime :)
You are Prime for many reasons man. High levels of critical thinking cross domain, you are my fav! I've been flourishing being remote, healthier, more focus, way more productive, bigger family, happier customers, happier life. (Ex engineering manager before covid, currently back to hard-core engineer - big corpo and many high value start-ups under my belt)
My man! Love to hear it. Family is so great remote. I love that part.
well of course you'd prefer remote when you switch from manager to engineer ;)
I think most of what they're actually talking about when they use coded words like "creativity" and "collaborate" is that they have some folks who miss hanging out and having fun with people in the office because their work is their life; and then some folk who can't adopt online tools to keep in touch with their subordinates and so feel like they can't manage them (hint, they probably aren't effective managers in person either). Things is as you note its a balance between choosing work as your life, and work as a tool to enable your life. Its not for everyone, but remote work really helps the balance towards life for a lot of people.
We've been gaming and doing teamwork on coms for decades now, with people we never met irl. I don't think remote work is the problem, but rather how some people adapt to it so poorly
Exactly. We're organizing 40 man raids in World of Warcraft with people we've never met IRL, and we don't even know their real names.
I am a top wizard in my area, and I always work on various project work. My team members rarely work together, because all of us work like on projects.
When management orders everyone working on the project from Denmark, China, Hungary, Romania, UK, Slovakia, Germany, then I will also visit the office to have a face to face with my coworkers. The 20 hours commute will suck for them, but ah well, anything for the Company!
The reason why I barely talk to coworkers when working from home vs. when working at the office is that at home I have to use MS Teams and I have to assume that literally every word I write is logged and can be seen by corporate, even in "private" chats. Like hell am I going to have a casual conversation about a shared interest when it means that HR comes shitting on my desk for not being productive because I do non-work-related things at work...
Edit: I'm not a software dev at work, tho, I'm a sysadmin who pretends to devops.
Zuck’s point that it’s harder to start remote is true but mostly because companies suck at onboarding people. Remote means most things need to be formalized and documented so that they are asynchronous.
You can’t just decide to be remote, you have to set up the company so that it’s easy for people to be remote. Just like you can’t just hope that your product is self-serve and put up a sign up form. You gotta actually make it easy for customers to onboard with great docs and great onboarding flow.
Even in-office the on-boarding process sucks to the point I have been tempted to quit the first day.
On boarding sucks in general at most places, remote just amplifies that. If your onboarding system is good, you can onboard remote as well.
Some companies just take the sink-or-swim approach.
You can easily not do any of those in an office environment too. This argument is entirely null.
As an ex-Meta employee, I can say confidently, that company has the best onboarding I've ever experienced. They put so much time and energy into bringing folks up to speed long before they join a team so that members of teams can hit the ground running instead of get overwhelmed with learning process on top of code (or whatever their IC role requires). Even more so, I'm still friends with the people I met during that 6 weeks to this very day.
What is implicit in programs like that is the connection building. By allowing employees to make connections across the company these people become invaluable resources later on. Oh, this data scientist who's interest is in user safety and privacy and I'm working on a project related to that now, perfect. I can ping them and start a conversation to hopefully build more connections and learn more information. Potentially, that means I can further grow my network.
Sadly, what I heard from new employees during Covid, no one met anyone. It became mainly an online, at your own pace, prerecorded video checklist to churn through. So, yes, you're right that onboarding needs to change if it wants to continue remote, and Meta has changed it and adapted it. I think what they found, even after all those changes, it's still lacking.
Sooooo, what do you do?! Losing out on early connections isn't something you can chart on a graph and see with clarity. It's not even something new employees would even recognize as a missing feature, because they never had it. So then it's just gone and it hurts a company's culture over the long tail.
in my company in my team the top 10 most productive employees each month are those who barely ever show up to the office.
That's because when you sit at home, youre working and even if you get distracted by let's say cleaning the dishes or doing laundry, then you go back to your computer and feel like you need to work very hard and be focused now to catch up for this time you were away, whereas in the office you don't feel bad about having a coffee and a chat with coworkes for 1.5 hour straight, because everybody around you is doing exactly that. Damn even the management is doing that...
Not even gonna mention smokers. This is ridiculous. People working from home be vaping/smoking whilst simultaenously working, but in the office you have to get your jacket from the locker room, get to the elevator, go down 5 floors. Then go out of the building through security gates. Walk 50 meters to the smoking area. Then you get your vape/cigarette/whatever and stand there chatting for 20 minutes straight because there are 15 other people there talking. Then you go back, through the security gates, up 5 floors in the elevator, bring your jacket back to the locker room AND come back to your desk - it's been almost an hour that you're away from your computer by this time. In 1-2 hours the smoker will obviously need to smoke again so he will do all that again and again wasting company time. But in the eyes of CEOs they are productive because they come to the office everyday.
Those are only two of nonsenses of office work and there are many many more I could point that I've noticed at my workplace...
The company I'm starting at in a few weeks was like, "please come in your first few days to get to know some people and to talk a few things through but then it's mostly remote. Mondays and Fridays nobody is in the office so don't even try" haha
I worked at a Startup from 2004 to 2009. It was the booming days of early smartphones and ringtone sales.
In the beginning we were 90% remote, only met with clients at their offices. By 2007 we grew to 25 people and the Founder decided we need a shiny new office. That office cost more than 2 senior salaries.
Then 2008 came ... the lease was 5 years, so impossible to downsize. The company went bankrupt within a year.
I've worked in startups most of my 25 yr career, and I'm most creative at home no question. For software development most of the best actual creative work comes from individuals not teams. Most of the best software starts with a single developer. This holds true for most professional areas not just software development.
But ya creating a cohesive team I think has to be done in person.
I think most people who have done creative work develop a process for it. And whatever that is, you have to respect it even if it differs from your own, assuming there is a track record of results.
Managers have a really hard time with this one. Saying you get more creativity in an office is just plain ignorant of how the creative process works. It's very context specific and individual.
Completly disagree. The few times I have to go to the office (regardless of the company). My impression is that most people seem to be talking about random, non-work related stuff. Constant coffee breaks and invitations to go do nothing. I'd much rather be focused on the task at hand and use my free time to be with my friends, family and dedicate to hobbies. :)
It's true, creativity does suffer. When you work remotely you can only get to 9.24 Creativity Units but in person working you can get 19.77 Creativity Units which is almost double the Creativity Units.
unacceptable amount of creative units being long.
i kid you not, i heard of a friend who went down to 4.2069 CUs
That looks exactly as reliable and evidence based as any other KPI adored by management, lol
I'm more likely to work harder and longer hours at home. If I was at the office I would 100% bounce the moment the shift was over.
Except they want people to stay longer in the office too. None of that 9 to 5 (plus 2 hours commute) bullshit, that's not 'passionate' enough.
@@minciNashu well I have a dog to walk and other responsibilities so they can go fuck themselves on that one
That isn't a good thing...
@@Dan_1348 I mean, if I can finish a bug or a feature in 10 minutes but my work shift is over, I'd just instantly leave and continue it tomorrow. But if I'm at home.. I'd be like "why not" cause I'd be in a good mood. However, if a company actually forces you to work longer in remote jobs, they should be sued.
I'll say this, it really does depend on the person when it comes to someone being productive while remote. I remember at the beginning of COVID, my work at the time wanted people to volunteer to work remote, but only a certain amount. I was bummed at first because I thought everyone would be fighting for it, but I was the only one in my department that volunteered. They all said they hate the idea of working from home, however I love the idea of no distracting small talk, plus now I can use my nice monitors, ergonomic keyboard, and actually utilize my sit/stand desk, also I can swap between my Herman Miller chair and an exercise ball, and when lunch rolls around I can make myself something fresh instead of the usual deli meat sandwich or going out and buying lunch.
Their reasons for hating the idea of remote work?
@@handlechar568 are you asking why my coworkers didn't want to do it? They like the idea of being social. My fiancee would also never want to work remote. Maybe partial, but she gets her energy and creativity working with people face to face.
@@tinystego1836 yep, thanks
@tinystego1836 those people need friends and hobbies..
Remote working means decrease transportation costs for the employee, and increase the free time out of working hours. In my opinion the productivity issue is solved by firing who exploit remote work to work less. Team cohesion is possible even on remote, just keep your voice chat open and talk about yourself and not only about work in officials meetings. Ultimately i think it should a reasoned case by case choice whether to build a remote team. it depends on peoples you are hiring and on the type of job, there's not correct answer.
My conspiracy theory is that at least half the managers who want to get us back to the office just don't want a written record of all the bs they bother the productive people with.
@@chadabercrombie6860 Nonsense. You wouldn't last more than a couple of days working at any of the companies I worked for before someone noticed.
You are also going to be in serious trouble when even one finds out because your "great idea" will unravel, they will take you to court and all the others will find out too.
@@chadabercrombie6860 The word for that practice is "fraud". I'd advise against bragging about such activities on the internet.
@@sacredgeometry
It IS legal to have multiple jobs.
I also run 2 in parallel, thinking about getting a 3rd.
I am a top performer for both jobs in my respective teams though, so they are getting far more than a fair bang for their bucks.
@@txdmsk Actually it is a breach of almost every single contract I have ever signed (and that is perfectly normal) and is something that would need to be explicitly arranged with your employers.
Not only that but working those other jobs in your normal work hours would certainly not be something they would allow even if they allowed you to do extra work your personal time.
also if you are a top performer and splitting your in work hours between two jobs then your coworkers must be awful.
@@sacredgeometrylove to see those contract clauses.
My office is currently 3 hours away. I work from home with a few days (1-4) in office every month/every other month with hotel. I've never been this productive before and enjoyed my work as much as I do now. We have constant communication with each other in the team. Instead of walking over to their desk, I ping them if they got time for a call to ask my questions/get help/give reviews. I probably won't be able to switch to any other job, because I don't want to change my life back to 3 - 5 days in the office every week.
I find it so funny that all those CEOs and managers talking shit about home office, usually have contracts of "team augmentation" from off-shore
all the sudden, cheaper labor is no longer a problem "being remote"
As someone with moderate ADHD, it's hard af to focus when people are talking about stupid shit all around me, or coming up to me with stupid bs. WFH makes me way more productive. If you're one of the "look like you're working hard when you're not" type of people, then remote work can exaserbate that, but if you're a decent manager, you will monitor workloads + output of your team to see if they're actually working or not.
That being said, working in-office at times does lead to better communications and unity, but that's mostly due to people not having fully adapted to the internet as the information pathway it's meant to be in a healthy way
Yeah I'm just about to get a job working in-office and this is the biggest worry I have. I've somewhat severe ADHD and noise is a big distractor. I also worry that if someone does come up to talk to me I won't be in a social zone and will come across as uninterested since it takes a while to ground back to reality after being super focused on something.
It's not only about location, but also flexible time management. I'm aware btw this isn't always possible, depends on kind of work one's doing etc. When possible, it should be utilized IMO. Some ppl need more time in the morning to get going. People get a headache, hit walls, etc. Instead of staring at screen for an hour in an office, one could spend some time in a gym, take a walk, chat with someone. If I'm more productive with making more breaks, or one longer break, or working between 5pm - 11pm works better for me, why would someone want to force me to sit in a cubicle 8am - 5pm with a single half an hour break. It just doesn't make sense. For productivity at least. Btw I always found emails, mailing list and forums as almost perfect, most pragmatic way to communicate. Way better than face to face which is prone to gazillion flaws. We people are actually not that good at real time thinking. Those who think they are, they probably just like it better, or maybe figuring shit out isn't their main concern. This was in context of work like programming. Occasional F2F can definitely be useful for things like brainstorming, quickly discussing/communicating issues to higher ups etc. But I see no reason why would meeting in person work better than virtual sessions, whiteboarding etc.
@Chad Abercrombie How much can you bench press?
Harder to ask or pressure employees into staying late or to pawn off work if all communication is on record.
My output and motivation has probably tripled after starting to work from home. I honestly never thought I would like working from home. But once I started, I legit don't think I will ever go back to an office. For people like me, who sleep kinda late and sometimes take a little bit of time to get in the groove, being in an office just feels like ur constantly under the gun. Now that I'm working from home, there's no need to feel like the day is over late afternoon when people start packing up at 4 and ur the only one left at 5. At home, If I'm working on something and need to work till 6 or later, it doesn't bother me. When ur in the office by urself and know u got a half hour to drive home, the pressure to finish by 5 comes on quick.
Working from home, that pressure is gone. And without that pressure, I just feel way more motivated.
My greatest success with my remote work has been the ability to not have to pretend to be working (read this as "typing and testing things constantly") and getting the time to go for walks and really think about programming, SQL, ML algorithm logic for an hour or so at a time to come back and just knock out an assignment in a couple of hours. Something that would've taken weeks of a dozen meetings to convince a dozen people about basic things they don't understand becomes a single afternoon with some quick back-and-forth.
I have never been more productive. I've never saved more or made more money for my current company until now. I do miss going into the office monthly though - I do like my coworkers.
I miss the unwinding drive home. I miss my kids excited to see me after a long day of work (now the see me all the time) I miss talking to other adults and coworkers face to face. I miss A LOT about working in person. There should be a balance. Remotely working for 6+ years and it's catching up to me.
At an office, you might go out and get paid for lunch and drinks on someones birthday. Might go do things collectively as a team. So many things. Now you just stay locked up in a basement or small room. Drinking your own coffee that you pay for.. Never to be seen. But it's not like half your audience didn't talk to people at an office anyway, so it must be the same for them.
The takeway is that in-office interactions is how you make vibrant urban nighborhoods
Note that a lot of successful companies have to try to stop competition by suggesting bad ideas and also using government power. just keep an eye for who you listen to, and If they are competition there's a high likelihood that they are just trying to slow you down...
Wouldn't huge companies benefit from remote work if this was their goal though? They'd be able to snipe talent from all over the country instead of from the few areas where they have offices, which would limit the talent that can work at other firms.
I enjoy chewing the fat with my coworkers. Exploring ideas, venting some frustrations, building motivation, just catching up on life.
But then I need to actually get things done. That all happens on Friday… at home.
I will quit before I got back into the office.
That's actually how I ended up working from home well before COVID. I just said, "Hey, I love my job, but I'm gonna have to work from home or quit. I'd really love to stay on the team, because I think we do great work". All my coworkers said it would never happen, but I was working from home the next week and never looked back.
Ended up quitting that company, working remote for a company on the other side of the country and then returned. Have positive working relationships with all people involved and I still talk to people from my previous company even though I only ever met them in person one time.
Infra engineer (focus in networking).
Its easy to have in-person team meetings quarterly to build cohesion. Or have leads visit regions where there are clusters of devs. We do that. Its not hard and costs less than keeping a office. Getting good at remote is a strategic advantage but you have to have good leadership. Good leadership in tech organizations is not common.
Some people better at remote, some for in office, definitely. But another for-certain: a narcissistic authority will always demand in-office, and usually demand no cell phones in building.
Can't you ask questions by sending emails, asking in a chat room or whatever is the standard way of online communication in the company? I don't go to work to make friends. I expect from colleagues to behave professionally and do their jobs. Btw if a colleague doesn't really like you, like you're not their kind of person, asking in a public chat room would work better, because 1. everyone sees that you're trying, and 2. some might even feel some peer pressure to reply, especially if the question was directed to them. If you're with a single person in an office, and you're new, there are quite a few ways for them to screw you without you even realizing it. Doesn't even have to be intentional. Some people just suck at explaining things.
That "Hey" phone conversation example sucks. Next time that happens you tell the guy "Hey, I want to see your hands, or at least the rest of your face.". Or maybe "Dude call me later when you remember the reason you called", or even better "Write me an email, so I can show everyone your train of thought approach and why I don't like it.".
I can only see this type of communication being a problem in a moment where you need immediate feedback, like you're stuck on a project and you want someone to give you some advice as you're working on it. Video calls are usually find unless there's call quality issues, which depends on each person's internet connections.
To add to your comment, written comms are superior because 1) they force people to write out something at least moderately coherent instead of mumbling unintelligible noise 2) they're a written track record that you can later look up, you don't need to rely on an imperfect memory, and it saves you the "but he said/she said" embarrassming arguments because it's all right there in writing.
@@T0m1s Hard disagree. Believing that "forcing" anyone to answer in a specific way and to a specific level of detail will lead to good communication just directly contradicts my experience. Fully written communication requires way more buyin and team good will to work well. Even small disagreements can quickly spiral into distrust and contempt when you get the option to read messages in whatever negative tone you want to attribute to the person. And "forgetting" to answer a written message is so much easier than ignoring a person at your desk.
So it works in any discussion where a higher power can be called down and thankfully in situations where both sides genuinely want to cooperate. Then it enables logging, asynchronicity and very short precise requests.
@@riliash I think both comments (yours and tomis's) present great arguments tbh. There is no perfect solution, thats the truth.
I have a 1.5-2 hour commute towards my company in very dense and aggressive tragic and then later 1.5 hours back. Basically I am doing 12 hour shifts.
When I am at my company the most work is done when people start to leave and I am alone.
The main benefit of in-office work is that you can more easily navigate a toxic company culture when you get to pick up on all the nonverbal cues.
Me, I’d prefer a nontoxic company where I can just do the work, get paid and have enough energy left over to have an actual life.
Before lockdowns, I thought maybe 2 days a week WFH would be good and I didn't "see it".
Within 2-3 week of lockdowns, I knew WFH was permanent in tech - at least for people with desired skills who can negotiate a tad.
Now I'm on the verge of the next uncoupling - almost ready to become a nomad (at least until I build a home).
WFH = more FREEDOM and more EFFICIENCY? Yes please.
To be fair, for an actual startup or extremely challenging new project, I do think being in person is a HUGE benefit. I've been remote my entire career, but if you want to build something completely new and critical, I want to be with my team mates.
"all this communication goes on in an office* such as body language, tone of voice"
as an aspie this is what has always been challenging to me. People cannot read their tone, and I cannot read theirs, we have to meet in the middle with some good old formal fully declarative english, which would just as well befit an email. There are a lot of us in tech.
This one struck a chord with me. As a loner and a very reclusive person who loves to code, being around people while working drains all my energy. I do my best work from home
I like how i can learn and upskill during work without worrying about looking over my shoulder all the time.
The funny thing is that bosses hate you learning on company time, but that ultimately makes you a MUCH better worker.
@@disguysn painfully true... more than half my time at work is spent watching crap on RUclips, and because my personal interests align with my job, I often learn valuable things to utilize at work while doing that. I'm a sysadmin tho, not sure if this transfers 1:1 to software devs...
@@insu_na it absolutely does. Learning related things and doing research before you start a big feature/project pays dividends for weeks and months down the road. It works just as well for the ops side as it does the dev side. The trick is that you need to balance the learning with the doing. Too many focus on one or the other.
@@insu_na but for me it's more focused learning than only waiting for Google to put things in my feed. :)
Remote only, here - onboarded remote, and work remote, with occasional site-tours and group outings. I can agree that integration with a new team is harder, but I think it really just puts extra pressure on the team lead, versus anything that can’t be overcome. I think our team still manages to support each other well, despite having a geographic spread from Poland to California, but that’s because our team lead does a fantastic job of balancing the time differences, and also of connecting needs with help.
@@chadabercrombie6860, I know the type, for sure! Stay the f**k away, but good on you.
@Chad Abercrombie doing what?
@@Ozymandias1337that guy has 31 comments. It's a bot of some sort but the intriguing question is WHY?!
As far as I can tell, the people struggling to work well remotely and the same people that struggle to work well in offices ...
I'd disagree with this. I worked better in an office, not because of the environment being so conducive to working (it wasn't), but because I have even more things I'm distracted by at home - not even fun things really, primarily chores I need to do - and I also felt more engaged in my work as a whole. I'd talk (or just listen) to people at the coffee bar about cool technologies, things they're working on, etc., and it made me want to be good at my job, to be like these guys I respected. It was much more 'fun' to be stuck at the office working on a project late with a couple people than to be at home alone doing it and just interacting by slack or on zoom. Don't get me wrong, I have no plans to return to office; the benefits of remote work outweigh these things for me, but I definitely have to work much harder to keep myself engaged in my work and to put aside other distractions.
What they fail to mention is that all these large companies are getting tax breaks and kickbacks from the local government to mandate their people to come back in. It's always about money.
That last segment, from "hey is this prime" to "I have to be pee so bad hold on" was gold
There are some managers who are narcisistic that need to be heard constantly and feel important by injecting themselves into everything. Have you noticed how it always seems to be some CEO saying how bad remote working is?
Before I went full-remote, I had to spend 4 extra hours on a daily basis commuting with a bus.
Imaigne spending 12 hours a day awake from home (on sometihng thats neither free time, nor sleep), while being only paid for 8 hours.
I like working at the office because it has more interaction and meeting new people, even sometimes after office hours we go to the cafe and play some mobile games, and talk about random stuff and our freelance project. been two years since we move to the new company but we still doing the freelance project.
I am so happy to work fully remote. So much more time...all this wasted time in the past sitting in the car and driving. Can not remember how I did that. And then the amount of time having random trash talks with random ppl in the office. Only our managers and team leads and so on love to go into the office to chat all the day, doing nothing other then talking in meetings or while walking through the office and visiting each other.
Most tech companies have a global workforce these days. How would Altman expect our teams in America (multiple cities) and our teams in India (also multiple cities) to meet in person?
Some of the main reasons people are against remote work:
1. Fear Management - if they can’t see you working and micromanage you they don’t think you’re working.
2. Self-Realization of their uselessness - many managers realized how effing useless their jobs actually are and it scares the shit out of them.
3. Control - The C-Suite wants employees who are basically slaves to the company and dedicate their blood, sweat, and tears to the company. All while the useless c-suite shit heads work remotely and make stupid decisions with the company to make investors happy which then causes unnecessary layoffs.
4. Extroverts - The extroverted people who can’t go 5 seconds without talking or interacting with people wanna see people in the office they can interact with.
5. Ass Kissers & Ladder Climbers - All the ass kissers need to be in person to pucker up and kiss ass. The ladder climbers need to be in person to “get to know you” so they can find ways to backstab you and make themselves look better.
6. Useless people - All the useless workers who add no true value to the company are worried they will actually have to work instead of pretending to work. Results based environments are death to these kinds of people because they don’t produce jack shit.
Without a proper home office then remote working is so much more difficult, and the company productivity goes down
And yet, when I was in an office... the number of dramatic episodes because of mis-interpreted emails /txt was ridiculous. People needed policy meetings( very productive) to be told: "Get out of your chair, and go ask them in person. They are at the end of the hall?"
Fact: most people can't communicate over text, that's why they love meaningless meetings, and scheduling calls for literally asking every single malformed question
I find that there's a subset of people that are used to body language and tone and even environment doing most of the leg work of the communication and meaning that they are terrible at expressing themselves clearly in writing when they can't rely on those things. Yes, sometimes it is an inherent limitation, but often people just don't realize how what they say can come off as ambiguous considering the medium of communication.
Being against remote work is just one person's opinion against another.
If remote work wasn't a thing, I wouldn't have the job I have today. I feel that remote work gives company a larger pool of talent that they can hire from...I agree though that the connectivity is hampered a little.
sama was the president of y-combinator, he knows startups, i feel like he's probably right. also have to remember that people at openai are the very top tier, the commitment to their work is unwavering regardless of where they work. being in the office has a different dynamic, encouraging adhoc chats by being in office is the best way to generate ideas among the best people. i don't know what's best for the average person though
And unfortuntaly, companies use some of the most dogshit software for calls like teams.
Agreed, teems is cancer upon this earth
startups are usually a smaller team, and the smaller the team, the easier it is to know everyone and stay in contact.
Startups should practice being flexible anyway.
I think it also depends allot on seniority. Senior engineers kind of already know the ropes, you don't need to tell them much and they can self organize, keep focus and deliver on the work without much help. A junior engineer might need someone to hold their hands and not get distracted with stuff that doesn't matter.
I think its because there will be no office jobs ... because the bots will be the remote employee
Oh god the end just killed me… was dying of laughter while cooking, the fam looked at me as if I am a maniac , but the imitation of the bad connection guy got me
some companies are doing it supposedly to help businesses nearby their office.
so lemme get this straight:
* they want to pay us pennies
* they want us to spend what little we have on expensive food and drink
* they want to control how we work
I know plenty of companies are not like this (my current employer isn't) but it just drives me up the wall thinking about those that do.
"some people don't like to live in shitty San Francisco"
Yeah that's fair.
Same goes for Seattle, I have had to turn down a handful of "6 figure" jobs in Seattle because moving there would be an actual pay cut for me with the cost of living / travel expenses
I love how people are fine making 10 people wait 10 minutes in office for a meeting, but connecting proper mike into the phone on which they make a conference call is too much hassle. I always use same setup for calls and I rarely get complaints, and when I get them, I fix them asap. But several people can complain that calls from office are bad quality, and nothing is done about it, despite hardware being available to remedy this. Also when announces are being made and they first put just @everyone and then everyone who saw it has to wait for five minutes to see the real message :D.
I asked Chat GPT: "is remote working a mistake in the tech industry?"
The Answer: "No, remote working is not necessarily a mistake in the tech industry. In fact, many tech companies have successfully implemented remote work policies and have seen positive results such as increased productivity, decreased overhead costs, and improved work-life balance for employees.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to adopt remote work as a necessity, and while there have been some challenges, many companies have found that remote work can be effective when managed properly.
That being said, remote work is not without its challenges, and there are certain aspects of work that may be harder to replicate in a remote environment, such as collaboration and socialization. It is up to each individual company to determine whether remote work is the right fit for their business and to develop strategies to overcome any potential obstacles."
Interesting...
Remember, Sam can afford to say these things because he's got a huge piggy bank in ChatGPT
That ending is so dang epic 😆 Sometimes I feel like I'm not as productive when I work from home, but that's because of where I live (sick of the place after three years) or because of the refrigerator that's in the same living room not far from my desk. Sometimes going to the office is a disaster because it can be very crowded and it can be really difficult to concentrate on work due to the noise and all the chaos around. "Sometimes may be good, sometimes may be s***". I work at a company where I go to the office once a week for a “team day” where we sit down together and discuss things, etc. I think it's good to have that level of freedom.
I cared a lot about my last company. I helped them transition a 10y hardcoded Wordpress and even came up with a full proposal to simplify Thier subscription system and meet current company goals… I trained my overseas replacements and was insta terminated
I like how nobody asks the remote worker... they ask the middle manager or the social butterfly. many of us do not want or care about our team members personal lives, and don't want to discuss their own. if you need that go to a social event. I'm here to work and get paid. currently my teammates and i have a great work relationship. i work remote and i am more productive since being able to wfh. they ask the wrong people because they want to suppress how beneficial wfh can be.
the effectiveness of remote employees also depends on their managers skills. you're not starring at a bullpen looking for which wide ass looks like they have spare time. You actually have to track who's working on what and the deliverables.
I've heard horror stories of dudes getting hired and straight up never contacted at all for months, then just get randomly fired, that's not on the employee that's your management is garbage. I can't even imagine how a manager can ever be that bad at there job.
People don't want to sit in shitty offices far away from where they live, have to commute (and pay for both the commute and use of their own time to do it) - what a surprise. Just wait until people like this speshul CEO discover people are going to work to finance their life, stuff like having a roof over your head and being able to eat when you're hungry, NOT because the company is so cool and we are a big family anyway...
My office mandated working from office 3 days a week. So for compliance, I go to office on those days and return within 3 hours. It's not that there is fixed office time. I am asked to work literally any time of the day (even night) and any day of the week. But the work is from home. Office? That's more for keeping the stats and so that the company isn't wasting its money on office spaces. If they expect this, I am only doing a favor by going to the office.
In Germany, companies are starting to implement hybrid working. So you just stay at home for like 3 days and 2 days you have to be in the office, so they can always plan appointments and meetings on same days. Also need to think that some people gladly go there because they just can’t work if kids are at home and such..
If I commute 3 hours per day, the last thing I want is to hang out in the local neighborhoods. All I want is to get to my home and then relax. Also I bring my own food and drinks with me to have the shortest possible pause during the midday.
Imagine if you would need to commute 5 or more hours per day...
I relate so much to the 'maybe some people don't want to live in San Francisco and don't do their best work because they hate it there'. I moved out of SF a few months into COVID after living there about 5 years. I told myself that if I was required to come back to office, I could always go back, but once I cleared the city limits, I took a deep breath and knew that I would never move back, even if I had to take a 50% paycut. When I was considering moving, I had several people give me that preachy 'if you're not happy, changing locations won't change anything; unhappy people are unhappy everywhere' speech. But they were completely wrong. I get that some people just move from place to place thinking it'll change things, when the problem is likely them, but I'm not one of them. There are a lot of places I could live and be happy, a lot of places I could enjoy to varying degrees, but San Francisco is not one of them, and it had only gotten worse once the lockdowns started. The alternative way of phrasing their statement is, 'location has no significant impact on a person's life', which is obviously absurd. I'm way happier just from having moved.
08:08 I started my job remote. I made a point to talk to my team. Nah. Remote work, like other jobs, is what you make it. My team and I get on fine but you'll never catch me chatting shit with them outside of work. Having made the mistake of thinking I was friends with people and then realizing that was monodirectional, I've just accepted that it's fine and if I don't have friends at work it's cool. It'll give me no qualms about leaving. 🤷🏾
I think there is value in coming to the office at the start of a new project or feature. Also conversations at the coffee machine going like "Hej, I thought about the problem you mentioned this morning. I did not want to call because I am not sure about my solution, but here it is ..."
That being said. I prefer working from home because it reduces my time traveling to and from work. At the same time for minor issues I always can video call a colleague.
@Chad Abercrombie What do you program and in which language?
It’s funny because it’s probably the complete reversal of what makes sense for a start up vs a legacy sized company.
When every red cent counts not having to play overhead for an office and for your workers to be able to work remotely from home, that could be why your company worked.
I think the best way is this: once you're familiar with the environment (onboarding + some experience) you show up on monday, or whatever other day most of the meetings are, and the rest of the week you do your own thing.
A company that requires in-office staff will be restricting themselves to local talent, only. There are many talented engineers who reside in other countries and to turn up your nose to that is to cut it off to spite your face.
It certainly is harder to start in the tech career working away from your team, but oh boy does it get better than office as the time passes
@Chad Abercrombie for each their own
As a software engineer, I'd never accept a role that was not fully remote unless it was a crazy good opportunity. Teams just need to figure out what works best for them. Using the right collaboration tools also helps.
I really think the ideal is hybrid. Its nice to work from home and be productive a few days a week, but its also important to get out of the house while also building those relationships with coworkers.
Dude wants to replace every known job with AI and shits on remote work. fair
Going full remote and ditching the 9-5 lifestyle was the best thing that ever happened to my career. Being able to easily manage my own hours made my productivity, job satisfaction and mental wellbeing skyrocket.
I think you are absolutely right about some people performing well remote, and others don't. I know this isn't the case in all teams, but unfortunately on our team the people who want to work remote, are the ones who don't perform well without some supervision and coaching. Others on the team perform well no matter if they are remote or in-office, but most of those want to work in-office.
It’s as if big companies can’t have IRC-style video chat rooms where shit goes on and you can tune out / in and go into private chats and private group chats at will…
To me the main killer to interactions via Zoom is the latency. No amount of VR tech will change latency.
Work is a mistake
And your way of life is overrated! And RUclips to express it! Imagine!
"I don't know if we each have a truth, or if we're all just dogmatic accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time."
Dr. Pepper
Founder/CEO
You Ain't Got No Legs, Inc.