How to achieve sustainable remote work | Hacker News Reader

How to achieve sustainable remote work

newyorker.com

98 pointsnecrotic_comp26 comments

The article talks around the issue, as others have commented, but I take from it a preview of what's to come in our own 25-person environment: a commitment to continued hybrid work policy, but not a similar commitment to remote-friendly work policies. The owner is most comfortable in an environment where they can wander by and create an immediate change-of-priority at the individual level; there are many middle managers and executives everywhere who also have grown to their positions of power/influence with the same style.

I'd read the various media coverage earlier in the week about Iceland's 4-day-workweek experiment, and can't imagine how you would even start to have that conversation at our US-based company.

Some might be thinking of a flat-hierarchy being a better fit for remote work, and certainly I think that's a step in the right direction but there are caveats there too.

You can end up with a distributed and diminished sense of ownership of the whole project, as people feel ownership of the parts they worked on but not other parts. To the point where really obvious problems, lets say a bug in the software, can linger or regress because no-one feels full ownership over that particular part of the project.

That being somewhat inevitable, you need an individual who has that full, holistic ownership who feels responsible for getting those orphaned problems fixed.

I think there is a huge value in a project manager who can effectively sit at the same level as developers, and work with them to organize and set priorities, and I've worked with a few like that and a few who prefer to elevate themselves and disconnect from the nuts-and-bolts of the work, and I can say we got more good work done with the former because we could more easily navigate complex problems in the product.

One particular PM I worked with marketed himself as a "Technical PM" and I think that's the right way to think about that role. If you wanted to demark the difference between a Technical PM and Lead Developer, I would say the technical PM has more of a stake in the end-user experience, and a lead dev has more of a stake in the technical competence of the build, but they both sit very close to the work itself and there's likely some overlap.

> The owner is most comfortable in an environment where they can wander by and create an immediate change-of-priority at the individual level; there are many middle managers and executives everywhere who also have grown to their positions of power/influence with the same style.

I worked in a mixed office/remote/distributed company before the pandemic. At first we had a lot of travel and in-person meetings to continue with some face to face influence. Like you said, the in-person meetings often felt like managers flexing their power and influence because they saved big changes for the in person meetings.

Later the company tried to reduce or eliminate travel to save money and speed up communication by making it all digital. At first I was excited to have an opportunity for full remote, but I quickly came to miss those in-person meetings. Some of the managers and executives completely lost touch with the human side of the employees they no longer saw in person. It was too easy for them to fire off Slack messages that demanded last minute changes or crunch time because they didn’t have to look us in the eye to deliver the bad news. They also couldn’t read the room or see reactions when they made unreasonable demands.

Full remote also created an environment where too many people just wanted to withdraw socially and stay hidden as much as possible. It took extra work to make sure everyone was communicating properly and to ensure that the load was being distributed evenly.

Working part-time in office solved a lot of these problems. Remote can and does work with the right team in place, but having done it (pre-COVID) I’ve come to believe that proper candidate selection and mentoring is crucial, as well as a willingness to do the hard thing and let employees go if they can’t work or communicate effectively in a remote environment even after being mentored. Remote isn’t for everyone.

> Full remote also created an environment where too many people just wanted to withdraw socially and stay hidden as much as possible.

If that’s what these particular individuals want, why do you feel like the company knows better and has to « fix » these people? I’d lean towards the fact that they’re adults who presumably know how to live their lives and don’t really need anyone else to tell them how. Maybe I misunderstood your point, but that seems very patronizing to me.

First of all, this is from my view as a freelancer that has been working remotely for about 4 years now. I realise full-time employees most likely feel differently.

> Some of the managers and executives completely lost touch with the human side of the employees they no longer saw in person.

As a remote worker I don't care too much about the human touch either. I have a business relationship with my client. I do believe most employers are reasonable however and if a remote worker /on average/ delivers good results, it'd be stupid for a company to refuse adapt around some incident in a remote workers' life.

> It was too easy for them to fire off Slack messages that demanded last minute changes or crunch time because they didn’t have to look us in the eye to deliver the bad news.

As long as the managers understand that change of plans might result in more time needed for deliverables, I think this is fine. This might be a point for the remote worker to communicate back to the manager though, just to prevent any misunderstanding to develop later on. I always try to be very clear with my clients that if plans change, my delivery schedule changes as well.

> Full remote also created an environment where too many people just wanted to withdraw socially and stay hidden as much as possible.

As an introvert I like to deal with other people as little as possible as well. I prefer people in a business relationship to mostly communicate work-related issues with me (not too much smalltalk). I'm fine with communicating every day on my work (sending out a Slack message, perhaps with a few screenshots or a build), but apart from that I like to keep communication limited. I am glad to say that my current and previous clients were happy with this mode of working as well.

> First of all, this is from my view as a freelancer that has been working remotely for about 4 years now. I realise full-time employees most likely feel differently.

I’ve done a lot of remote freelancing as well. It doesn’t really compare to remote work as an employee. The dynamic is too different and the freelancing work is more isolated by design.

I found the article misses a discussion of how workplaces are not just about making money but also power structures. I think managers are less worried about the company making less money but about losing control over their subordinates.

For those curious about Ressler and Thompson's book (referenced but without the title), it is "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It".

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/302027/why-work-suc...

Seems like the answer to this question is: a remote first company, where no one is at a disadvantage by being remote. How to transition companies that have a physical presence or product into one, that’s a much harder question and maybe not one this article answers.

I will be back at the office full time next week because I like the office.

I know though this is not sustainable after going in a few days last week. This only makes sense when all your competitors are also stuck in commercial leases.

I think ultimately, commercial leases will buy us time as a society to figure out how to build teams from scratch remotely better. Training/mentoring/team building is better in person but day to day operations once up to speed is just overly expensive to conduct at the office.

Giant tech companies with 30+% profit margin, 30+% revenue growth, ridiculous economy and no real competition can do whatever they want. They couldn't be less representative of the average business.

I don't like this kind of journalism. Lede promises answers but article is the opposite - a very long, unstructured set of stories and reflections and the ultimate conclusion is "Both sides are right, and both are wrong...". Its hard work as a reader to extract any knowledge here.

Well, he says that, but then he does answer the question in the title. He says the key is a focused, initial training of the principles of results-based work, and then retraining on a regular basis.

> He says the key is a focused, initial training of the principles of results-based work, and then retraining on a regular basis.

We didn't need Captain Obvious to let us know of such insights through 10 pages of text. It was very clear if you even worked a single month from home.

New Yorker articles should have an abstract section up front so you don’t have to read ten thousand words to find out if the article has a point.

Strongly disagree with this sentiment.

If you want to read an abstract, read a scientific paper.

The New Yorker is about writing essays. If you are reading something from the New Yorker and want a shorter piece, you're going to be disappointed.

The entire philosophy of the essay writing style is:

"Some ideas are better communicated in a long-form where you have to read the whole thing for it to make sense. A shortened abstract is not good enough."

There are some thoughts and ideas in life that cannot be treated with brevity.

This long-form essay is valuable because it is not brief, and it deals with a topic that is not suitable to be thought about with brevity.

Understanding the ongoing struggle between ROWE and the status quo in detail is valuable. A short summary is not enough.

> "Some ideas are better communicated in a long-form where you have to read the whole thing for it to make sense. A shortened abstract is not good enough."

I don't think you understand the point that we are trying to make. An "essay" should not be a fluff piece where nothing of value is said in several thousands words, which could be summarized in 3 sentences without any loss. In this piece there's just nothing but air from beginning to end, so it does not even qualify as "an essay".

Possible Tldr; Define work

Sounds like the tl;dr is to hire that consulting company and commit to having those specific trainings for the indefinite future.

You’re right.

I think there’s a surprisingly large number of white collar workers who accept that their work is the whims of the next person up the org chart. A sure fire way to create an organization full of lost souls and suck-ups.

The crazy thing is if more businesses did detail value stream analysis of how they make their money and where the waste is, they probably could or would sack half their staff.

Sure, but business isn't just doing what your doing now to make money. It's making sure you can continue to make money in the future. For that you need to have excess capacity to be able to transfer non-productive people in to productive roles without an extended lead time. People, departments, assets, etc all fluctuate in their levels of usefulness and productivity with ebb and flows of a business.

Unavoidably it is, though, because the person that defines whether you work there defines what the work you do is.

Long and boring article with little data and no conclusion.

Sounds like every New Yorker article. :)

As a general rule, it rings true, but I did remember seeing some good writing also on the New Yorker, so there are some exceptions too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com