Hacker News Reader

Comment by helpPeople | Hacker News Reader

After my wife had someone lie about 15+ hrs of working at home, I stopped believing in the "work at home" trend.

I understand it works for some, but since it doesn't work for everyone, I can see how people would be offended by an "unfair" policy.

Sure, if there is a clear start and end, these things could work. But on creative work that could go on forever, it's easy to cut corners.

View on HN

If they're getting the necessary amount of output who cares if they spend those 15 hours with their kids instead of browsing reddit behind the boss's back?

The inability to track actual output levels doesn't go away when everyone is in the office. Instead you promote the person who is best at looking busy instead of the one actually outputting the most work.

It matters if they're getting paid by the hour. I used to work with someone who was good at handwaving away why his work was falling behind, and the management believed him. In reality, he was missing deadlines because he wasn't working a full 40 hour week. He'd record his commute as working hours because "he's an engineer, and thinking about his work is just as important as doing work", so he ended up working ~10 hours less per week than everyone else because he claimed that thinking about work on his commute counted as billable time.

>I used to work with someone who was good at handwaving away why his work was falling behind, and the management believed him.

So you had a management issue rather than a worker issue.

But how would the situation have been different if he'd been underperforming despite working the correct hours? I don't think that would change things, except that it might make it harder to fire him.

>"he's an engineer, and thinking about his work is just as important as doing work"

Not meaning to devalue your comment, but this is such a bs excuse from him. Like, I definitely think about solutions to work-related problems outside of work way more times than just during my commute, and I bet that's the case for a lot of people that do any sort of intellectual work (all kinds of engineers, lawyers, researchers, accountants, etc.).

Rest assured that your lawyer will bill every second he spends even thinking about working on your case.

And that's one of the reasons those positions are often salaried.

Engineers are generally salaried for this reason. Although, personally, I very much do count thinking about work problems as work hours no matter what time of the day it happens.

In practice, the only thing that really matters here is the phrase "his work was falling behind". And "he was missing deadlines".

It doesn't matter if a worker is secretly pulling 80 hours or 10 hours a week instead of the 40 (apart from legal/contract issues). If he's doing less than agreed between the parties, that's a problem. If management bought his excuses, then there's a problem with management.

1000x this.

I don't get how anti-remote persons manage to track office workers' performance.

Either you measure output, or you don't.

There are valid arguments against remote work, usually related to communication, but performance measurement? Nah

Just another point in favour of working at home friendly companies.

Less likely to be employed by someone who measures your output by hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com