Hacker News Reader

Comment by ricardo81 | Hacker News Reader

It's weird seeing all this content the past 3+ years about remote working as I've worked remotely for 20+ years. I'm not an authority on the matter (why would I be), just weird to see so much 'authority content' on it lately.

Maybe there are more granular and data-driven conclusions, I'm just someone who sees the benefit of communicating information over vast distances aka the web and appreciate that it's something we can do nowadays.

A message, SMS, phone call, a group call, a skype call or whatever can clear things up right quick.

Plenty times I'll send someone an email because I don't want to engage with someone and the time frame of their reply can be minutes or days. That's fine.

WFH/remote is all about trust from an employer and motivation by an employee.

You're entirely free to communicate as much as you need to whether you're physically present or not. The work gets done or it does not.

I don't really understand the confusion about this.

View on HN

>>> It's weird seeing all this content the past 3+ years about remote working as I've worked remotely for 20+ years. I'm not an authority on the matter (why would I be), just weird to see so much 'authority content' on it lately.

That type of blog post is typical from so-called thought leaders that want to assert themselves as experts on the latest trendy subject.

In real life, everything is a shade of grey but of course it makes for less of a clickbaity headline to acknowledge that.

Also, the author is a lawyer/mba and doesn't have a single experience in engineering.

There’s a difference between the population that worked remotely before and after Covid.

The population before Covid were often highly experienced, disciplined, and proven workers.

The population after Covid, was well, everyone who worked with a laptop.

Not everyone is cut for working remotely.

In addition, there’s a difference between 1 out 20 people working remotely full time and 20 out of 20.

I've worked remotely for about 9 years now. At the start of the pandemic I'd argue there's a wide gulf between those who knew how to work remotely because they've done it for years, and those forced into it and still figuring it out.

We spent 3 years in pandemic mode working from home for everyone. We've all figured it out by now. Go into the office if you'd like, but don't force everyone back to it.

And between those who don’t want remote work. Who enjoy building real relationships with people and brain storming ideas on a whiteboard. Remote work feels like contracting, and when everyone is a contractor is it really a cohesive company?

You need to build rituals to recapture that cohesion; do things online or offline that are not just about work. It is a good idea even if your company is not remote.

The problem is we haven’t all figured it out. I have some coworkers who absolutely need to be in the office. Unfortunately they don’t have the self awareness to realize that, and they heavily believe the only benefit to in office work is making middle management happy. They’re good developers, but they have a bad habit of getting sucked into rabbit holes. Left to their own devices, they’re highly likely to disappear for hours and come back with an architecture astronauts dream that technically does what they’ve been assigned but also does it in ${newest language or framework} with ${unsupported dependency} and insufficient tooling to actually deploy it into production.

When they’re in the office 3 things work to prevent that:

1) yes they are supervised. More senior devs and also management can keep an eye on them

2) They’re more likely to just randomly ask a question or ponder aloud than they are to write something in slack, so it’s more likely someone can catch them going off the rails and re-direct

3) They’re more plugged into what everyone else is doing, so more likely to keep “coming up for air” and keeping their mind focused on the main goal and not the rabbit hole.

Again, these are perfectly fine junior devs with perfectly fine skills, and even their tendency to get enthusiastically lost is just more junior dev stuff.

But they don’t know how to work remotely, they’re not self aware enough to know they need to learn, they don’t take the feedback on it very well either (again see “it’s only because management wants butts in seats”)

So the options for this are mandate them to the office or eventually fire them for being more dead weight remotely than they’re worth.

I have worked remotely for 7 years and in a few different companies in that time.

In my experience the companies that struggle with remote work are the ones the manage via attendance. One company drove me insane with random “Hows it going” messages throughout the day so I just left for another company and let them know why on the way out.

Managers that have enough domain expertise to manage via outcomes however thrive in remote environments. But, this is harder to do than taking headcount.

Remote working environments require different approaches than in person or hybrid. Change is hard and all that.

> One company drove me insane with random “Hows it going” messages throughout the day so I just left for another company and let them know why on the way out.

But this is ideal right? Their culture is asking "how's it going" throughout the day and it's not a culture you wanted to be part of so you left.

Asking "how's it going?" throughout the day isn't objectively good or bad – it's just not for everyone.

Asking "how it's going?" without following up about a specific task is objectively bad.

No it isn’t.

You may not like it, but the idea that’s objectively bad is your opinion not a fact.

What’s wrong with a company’s employees deciding they like checking in with each other and not having it tied to a specific task?

it depends on who is asking, of course

No, it doesn’t.

Again, nothing against you if you dislike being asked how things are going by a coworker — but if that is the culture of the company you work at, there’s nothing wrong with it.

It might be wrong for you, so you either get a different job or learn to deal with it.

There are common etiquettes across cultures that transcend age/location/rank, etc.

Wasting people's time is objectively, universally bad. Even if it wasn't universally bad, it would be at least overwhelmingly bad in the context of a productive enterprise, which most workplaces are.

It’s 100% fine to be someone who doesn’t want to be asked randomly by coworkers, “How’s it going?”

It’s less fine to be that person and work somewhere where the culture values being asked randomly by coworkers, “How’s it going?” But it might be something you can live with.

It might be a conscious choice to trade off short-term productivity in favor of long-term balance. It might be a way to weed out anti-social people who they don’t want working there.

"How's it going" from your co-worker is obviously different from HR or your CEO or someone X levels above you.

As a long-time WFH person I always assume I am big-time socially inept (and I definitely am) but apparently office-dwellers (you) are even worse!

To me it is clear that Bill-From-This-Mornings-Standup saying "Hey, what's up" is different from Emily-Director-Of-HR saying "Hey, how's it going today?" is different from "Kim-your-bosses-bosses-boss" saying "Good morning. Got a minute?"

Part of my point is that if the company’s culture is such that everyone asks everyone “How’s it going?” then there is no difference in who asks it.

I don't like being asked how I'm going by a cashier either, because its just insincere stupid social norms.

If you have a question, just ask. If you have a genuine interest in my wellbeing you will ask something more specific than "how are you?".

> Asking "how's it going?" throughout the day isn't objectively good or bad

Most of the time, this simple innocent question is an introduction to a work related question. It is, and has always been for me, a massive waste of time. You lose your focus, you stop working while waiting for the coworker to decide whether or not he will ask you the real question in the next 10 minutes.

I approximately lose 1 hour every day due to this behavior and it's really annoying.

I just reply with nohello.net

>20 out of 20.

tbf, if you meant the full workforce it's never going to be 100%, there's so many jobs that require physical presence out of necessity.

There's maybe some jobs where you could also argue it's required.

Emergency surgery, police, paramedics, electricity grid maintenance, plenty jobs where there's simply no WFH angle.

I'd totally agree that personality types would also clash from WFH, so it's definitely not the definitive solution, but it works for a lot of people.

I feel the same, been remote for 15 years and all this reinventing stuff and challenges seem a little weird to me. There was remote work companies before COVID that had been learning through the challenges and optimizing for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com