I'm listening to people lie to me all day about productivity.
Remote happy hour, garbage. Remote school, garbage. But somehow remote work is just dandy.
Wait for the next recession. All this nonsense will evaporate.
Remote happy hour, garbage. Remote school, garbage. But somehow remote work is just dandy.
Wait for the next recession. All this nonsense will evaporate.
because "somehow" there are different incentives and reason to do each. Remote work has been a thing for a long time. Wait for the next spike in gas prices, all of the chair-warming will evaporate.
During a recession companies will have to cut costs wherever they can. So they might start with high cost office space. So yeah, office nonsense will evaporate. In the same way banks cut costs with less branches, more online banking. Or how cars are now being sold without dealerships.
I spent many years telecommuting and got creative at it. I helped people troubleshoot electronics remotely, had them point their camera at circuit boards, shared screens to examine code, logged into a common remote server so we could both edit, compile, and debug the same code, and a lot more. The one thing I found difficult to do remotely was to reset hardware, I would often ask someone to reboot a computer or flip a physical switch. But that can be automated also, with a dedicated device or maybe it would be a good use case for a simple robot. You could even hire a lower wage worker to go around the office flipping switches when asked to. With good technology, interaction between people can be the same as being there in person (unless you want to create a baby). The only reason to be somewhere in person is if something physical needs to be done, or you just want the personal experience (traveling to a foreign country). This vague "value of being in the same room as the person I'm talking to" benefit CEO's talk about seems to be entirely bogus, except for specific situations (e.g., a musician in a band who needs to be able to see the other players to stay in sync.) What exactly is it the managers are learning from our body language? Next time someone talks about this benefit try asking them to quantify it in a spreadsheet or even define it in sociological or psychiatric terms. If they are forcing people to come back to work ask to see the productivity numbers, did they go down when people physically came back to the office? I think it's basically a distrust of other people ("you'll slack off if you are not here physically") and if they don't trust you, don't trust them; they are likely projecting their own inclinations.
My guess is that managers don't like remote interaction because _it_can_be_and_is_recorded_. Once everything is documented then sleazy decisions are also documented and can be trotted out when trouble ensues. Being held responsible is what managers fear, they want their dictums to go undocumented so they have deniability and so they don't look as foolish when they make mistakes. They don't want to be held to the same standard they hold their employees.
"Cost reduction" basically means the managers screwed up and haven't protected their people in case of unforeseen circumstances and have to shrink their personal empire.
The communication and workflows are different, but it is not garbage.
Why do you think I'm lying to you?
It's mainly built with people employed in bigger companies, where they have fruitful exchanges with their company peers. The contributions they push in the kernel is part of a larger effort in their respective companies. And the mailing list is the way they communicate around the kernel. They still have physical colleagues in their day jobs.
I've been playing games / hacking with people that I've never ever seen for over 14 years
and trust me, you can definitely be creative in such a environment
Or maybe it just doesn't work for adults?