A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Permanently Flipped Workplace
blog.usejournal.com
blog.usejournal.com
Really? If my employer started doing this, I would be looking for a new employer long before I'd start paying for my own travel costs.
I'm not sure there is any rock solid logic behind any of this though.
assuming you previously lived near the office and then decided to move without there being any benefit to the employer then why should they pay for your additional expenses?
unless of course they decide to cut your salary because of your new location. then it's up to negotiations again.
> Set clear guidelines for what should be communicated where (meetings vs. e-mail vs. Asana vs. Slack vs. text message, vs. phone calls) and what are expected response times on each medium. Hold everyone at every level accountable for abiding by these guidelines...
John, I noticed that your response time to Slack messages has fallen behind your email response rate and your Asana turnaround time. Is there something you're not enjoying about your new freedom?
1. Expectations are set at a reasonable level, not a “jump when I say jump, damn it!” level.
2. If someone is not meeting expectations, people check in to see if they can help. If something is not working consistently, then adjustments to the process need to be made. Occasionally the issue is the person in the job — that is, they can’t do it. This is a hiring issue that will need to be addressed. They need to be put in a position they can succeed in or they need to be removed.
How about: Hell, no!?
Video is a distraction at best. Usually it prevents discussion by emphasizing shallow sidechannels to the communication that add nothing but mislead everyone. People need to say what they think and not rely on nonverbal clues. Those only work in person, not over video. A talking head doesn't have posture. Lag means mimic and speech are misaligned.
Just treat it like a phone call, no video, just maybe shared slides or whiteboards. More happiness, more productivity, less misunderstandings.
The first team had video on and zoom calls and my current team has video off. Small anecdotal sample size, but in my experience with the video-on team there was a much stronger sense that I knew who the team was, felt responsible to them, and generally we felt more cohesive as a team even though I never met them in person.
My current team no one ever turns their cameras on, I only know what they look like from their employee IDs, and I have zero sense of camaraderie with them. Meetings tend to drag on at least twice as long, since people can easily check out and stop paying attention if something doesn’t seem relevant to them. There’s no small talk or banter, and I find I just kind of listen passively while working until I hear my name and then jump back to full attention. I definitely get the sense that’s what everyone else does as well, since very few people ever speak up unless explicitly called on. Everything feels less tight and less personal. It’s great for the individual employee’s ability to crank out work, but if you care about the actual team cohesiveness and productivity, enforced video on feels like it can make a difference.
Intersperse occasional video calls for the other stuff.
That has the potential of being a lot less disruptive than people in a real physical room chatting.
Course this will be hard to implement, just like in chat rooms where it easy to get overwhelmed by more than one conversation. Maybe have voice clues like “ask Jimmy about project Thunderdome” creating a TODO list that then are matched up with people and prompted to engage when they are free.
Sorry, but this just isn't how human beings work. Those non-verbal queues may not be important to you, but they carry a huge amount of information that is apparently passing you by. And not small, unimportant things, but big things like that quiet shy QA engineer in the corner of the room who clearly wants to say something but can't find an opening or the organiser getting aggravated by a side-discussion.
If you live in a small house or apartment, there are often going to be other people in the background who likely do not want to be on camera.
It is one thing if people choose to work from home; you can have a reasonable expectation that they should have a proper work setup at their house.
That is not what is happening now.
I don't have to shave. I don't have to put on a business casual shirt. I don't have to clean up my living room. I don't have to be aware I am being looked at the whole time - seemingly paying attention when someone rambles on about a topic which I am not involved in, not scratching my ear when I want to, whatever.
Every two weeks or so, we do have a meeting where people turn their camera on, which is fine. Every morning would be too much of a hassle with everything else going on though.
I didn't read this much further, honestly. It's exhausting to keep reading authors who don't really invest time in understanding the dynamics of what's going on.
For those who want to dive in to this particular leaf: https://theconversation.com/the-us-isnt-in-a-second-wave-of-...
It really is useful to try and understand these things so you don't go around making muddied predictions.
(Also I should note that I disagree with some things in that linked article, in case anyone is feeling like attacking other points that it makes)
While a "second wave" I don't think is a widespread phenomenon in the sense of cases dying down and then coming back in a given place, some places could be considered to have a "second wave" in the sense that their wave has or will peak later than the wave in other places.
For instance, Florida isn't having a second wave relative to itself, but it could be construed as a second wave relative to NY or NJ. It seems to me to boil down to a different arbitrary definition.
Essentially a lot of news reporting on this at the moment seems to be fearmongering and maybe an attempt at face-saving from politicians, who will at some point not be able to escape the reality that many of the measures they instituted were not the ones which would actually have saved lives (such as stricter policies about care homes).
One might say that space is over-invested; at the same time, it does make a startup a lot easier to operate.
"Establish and communicate clear guidelines.."
"Engage managers in building the right workflow for their respective teams."
"Do whatever is necessary to achieve executive-level clarity on your priorities, values, and goals"
"Interview team leaders and managers on what unites them as a team in both theory and in practice."
...And on it goes. The only thing I can conclude is that in this flipped-around future of work everyone works in HR.
Alright, so this is the third time I've seen this today - is it an acronym I'm not aware of, or is it a typo/autocorrect of "SaaS tooling"?
The only SASS that comes to mind is Syntactically-Awesome StyleSheets, which makes no sense in context.
I suspect over time that teams building a defined product will persevere while teams that relied upon to design a product, such as my own, will experience a gradual breakdown of trust as individuals split off in their thinking. It’s hard to find words sometimes for a concept that’s strictly a mental product and not everyone is practiced or skilled at elocution. Strong designers with poor vocal skills will undoubtedly experience frustration with remote work which is essentially a voice-primary medium.
> Permanently upgrade all employee’s work from home environments so they are the same quality as their in-office stations. This may come in the form of stipends, lump sum payments, or redistribution of office property, depending on job function.
It's extremely unlikely that a company is going to offer me a lump sum payment that anywhere near makes up for the increased floor space and altered layout of my home to give me a proper office-like environment to work in. Few companies will shell out $50,000 for me to extend my home to build an office, and I see no reason why I should work for an organisation that demands I do so myself. For many people in HCOL areas it's totally unreasonable to expect people to shell out double their rent or more to get an extra bedroom/office space.
Look, I live in New Zealand. I can tell you that this whole "everything has changed forever" attitude that I am hearing from Americans will pass, very quickly, when this pandemic ends. We will most likely see employers becoming a lot more flexible with WFH arrangements, which is a really nice silver lining. But the idea that the office is done for? Forget about it.
Did you see how quickly the networks were upgraded? Within weeks around my way... So, infrastructure was upgraded quickly.
You are probably aware of what's going on in Australia - where lockdowns are returning, with certain tower blocks in Melbourne locked in, and the army making house to house calls.
Here's why I'll head back to the office the first chance I get:
1. I don't want to live my entire life within a 750 square foot allotment.
2. I find my ability to balance work and life enhanced by going somewhere to work. The physical separation between the two creates a mental / emotional separation.
3. Socializing with a bunch of people.
4. Enhanced impact: much of the truly innovative and impactful stuff I've done in my career originated from ad-hoc conversations with people around me. It's not the same over Slack.
5. Someone on my team announced on Friday they were leaving the team and expressed how much they enjoyed working with us over the last 6 months. My immediate reaction was... wait, we worked together? for 6 months? I don't really know who you are. The only people I actually feel connected to at work are the ones I worked with before this madness kicked off.
Humans are fundamentally social animals. That's why it will end.
As for when? Once herd immunity is established, either the American way by throwing old folks and the immunocompromised under the bus until nobody's left, or a vaccine, which will likely be available in global quantities by EOY 2021 -- according to manufacturers in late-stage trials. That's when it will end.
IMO, of course.
The mistake was turning our workplace into our everything. Hail the new era, where we find our friends some other way.
1. People who are fantastic team players in an organization that does a good job of facilitating group work. I hate the term “team player”, and I think most teams are a farce, but watching an effective team work is like magic to me. This is the best outcome, imho, but I think that this will be a tiny percentage of the folks who embrace going back in (mainly due to workplace structure and incentives, but that’s a slightly different issue).
2. Extroverts. These folks just need to be around other people if you want them to be productive. This group is a push — neither good nor bad imho.
3. The office politicians. My guess is that this will be the vast majority of people who rush back to work. They look busy, but they don’t do very much, yet they know how to work the system. These folks are a tax on mid- and large-sized companies, and I think that folks who prefer being in the office will be perceived as being this type of person, rightly or wrongly.
4. Folks who have tight living quarters or some sort of taxing home restraints. This could be a small living space that is common in a large city, a family who is not particularly accommodating (e.g., kids or a demanding spouse), etc. I have a friend for whom going to the office and working feels like a break for him and his wife due to having three young kids at home — I totally understand.
Part of the potential stigmatization of being a politico who goes in all the time or someone who prefers WFH can be mitigated by having office time be limited to one or two days a week. This puts everyone on equal footing, while reducing a lot of the burden of working in an office. One issue with this is that it still means that people need to live somewhat in the same area as their workplace, but I think that this type of arrangement increases the radius of reasonable living places as related to distance from workplace by quite a bit.
Note that I am shooting from the hip here. I personally think that a large percentage of the innovative and disruptive companies moving forward will be some form of remote-first work. I think this mainly due to the incredible flexibility in hiring that remote-first provides. That said, it will only happen with folks who are comfortable with the format, and I think that is mostly (although definitely not exclusively) people who are (spitballing here) in their 20s or younger.
Smart companies will have very easily figured out who those people are over the last few months. Sadly there are few smart companies.
To other comments, those in small urban apartments who really want to keep living in the city--especially after restrictions let up--are also the group for whom working at home is also a crappy financial deal. For people who have decent home offices in houses and no longer need to do a long commute, this is a good deal financially. For people living in studios near the office who walked or biked to work, not so much.
>That said, it will only happen with folks who are comfortable with the format, and I think that is mostly (although definitely not exclusively) people who are (spitballing here) in their 20s or younger.
I would have thought the opposite. More senior people, used to working independently, who have nice houses in the suburbs or exurbs like ditching the commute in many cases and don't care about the office socializing. People in their 20s, in many cases, really miss being with their "team" in the office.
Good point.
Most of that type of younger folks are dead weight anyway, imo, and my comment was related to the nature of high-performing, disruptive companies moving forward.
Maybe a clearer way of saying that is that I think a disproportionate percentage of the people who flock to high-performing remote workplace environments will be younger in general.
I definitely have seen an anecdotal correlation between age and effective use of typical WFH media. 60+ typically struggles, 50-60 slightly less. 40-50 seems to be natural if they are tech-oriented people, but closer to 50-60 if not. 30-40 (millennials) mostly get it. Folks in their teens and 20s seem to thrive in it more often than not.
Thanks for the comment. It will be interesting to see how the workplace ecology develops.
I've taken the summer off work rather than continue WFH because I just don't see myself or others being very effective and it destroyed my motivation and love for what we were doing. I manage 2 teams of 10 developers and truly believe they do better work when given time to work colocated. Funny enough my best was (and is) the only true 100% remote worker. He's strong technically & domain and I see how much extra effort he puts in to make remote work; I don't believe everyone else has the foundation or work ethic to do the same.
If we don't go back to a majority of colocated working I'll probably find another job or do something independent. If I'm going to work from home I might as well do it my way...
I live in the suburbs of a major metropolitan city where we just bought a 3100 square foot house, brand new build, great school system in 2016. Total cost - $2200/month with around an $11K down payment. Any average SAAS CRUD developer making the average pay with 5 years of experience could afford it.
I balance my work and home by closing the door to my office.
In between jobs, I enjoyed freelancing at a coworking place for people in programming fields called Code & Supply in Pittsburgh. I also enjoyed a Makerspace in Miami called Moonlighter makespace which had coworking tables, 3D printers, a CNC machine and other items. I image more niche type spaces may grow if WFH continues after COVID.
People did this because it was the easiest thing.
When you work from home, you still derive a goodly portion of social interaction from work, using appropriate media. What else happens is you discover a whole world of life outside the office too, and that life is vastly more expansive and valuable in the long term.
You're not a job. You're not even a career. The cow orkers you see from time to time at the office are ephemeral friends at best as you move on to different jobs. Your family, spouse, kids, neighbours, religious or sports community, or local pub are all better and more appropriate lonog-term social commitments than your workplace.
Perhaps now people will start to socialize with their friends more often during normal working hours. Now you can drive whenever you want to see people meaning that rush hour traffic won’t kill off meeting people that are 15 miles away as it will take forever to get there. Just go at 11am for lunch.
There may be long term effects, but ... In the valley, the number of people I personally know who are moving - not talking about it, actually moving - out of the city, in particular, but also out of the peninsula, is actually quite surprising. But I saw this happen in 2000-2002, as well, and half of them moved back by 2004.