I know remote working for a lot of people is a godsend, but I personally am not a fan and am glad to see some companies backtracking on it.
It can work for a lot of people but I think it depends on the team. A boss at a previous role spent a lot of company time setting up a miniature golf course in his garden, and taking his sports car to the dealer for various reasons. He was supposed to be part-time in the office but never came in. Also had the nerve to complain about my timekeeping… but anyway., not what you need during a project crunch.
I’m sure there’s a lot of people which it can genuinely make a productivity gain, or improve QOL, but I’ve yet to see it.
(Yes I understand Taiwan is still in the COVID era but this is related to after, i.e. in the US and Europe now)
If you spent your time like that, you’re obviously unfit for your job. And that’s probably regardless if you sit 40h in the office or 40h at home. I doubt that guy would be working his ass off if he was just put into an office…
Thinking back, when I used to work in an office, I probably spent more time not being working compared to now working from home. Just too many distractions in a typical office environment.
Also, many teams are distributed anyway. It’s just bollocks driving to an office and then spending all day on the phone… And usually not even having enough meeting rooms or noise-isolated “phone boots”…
But at least the distractions are a result of the environment that the company has made, as opposed to distractions of your own home environment? so doing slightly less at the office feels more acceptable than doing more at home (at least in my perception)
fair point again, some calls in the office are at virtually shouting volume
I saw this and went to get pizza, fanx. Hope you are enjoying something delicious
Historically I’ve been most motivated and productive when I have a couple days a week in the office, and the rest at home (or elsewhere). Open-plan offices are incredibly dumb, and I can’t do real work if I can’t sit quietly and think. And almost no-one can maintain real focus for more than like four hours a day anyway, so making us sacrifice our lives (and our children’s lives) to an arbitrary office clock is pointless at best. On the other hand, I personally need some communal time with my team to figure things out and build culture. So there’s a balance, and generally speaking we’ve yet to find it.
A lot of this comes down to the Peter Principle. Almost no-one in mid-level management (or above) has actually made even the slightest effort to learn how to manage people effectively, despite there being sixty years of good research on it. So they make policy based on their ego, or their need to demonstrate power, or stuff they heard from some other idiot at a bar.
Elon likes to stay up for forty hours at a time microdosing LSD and having ideas. Good for him, and he’s useful, but you can’t run a whole company that way.
I agree with your statement, but if you consider a service role (e.g. IT Helpdesk) then the hours become not so arbitrary because you have an agreement to provide support between those given times. When people know you are remote, I feel like those lines get crossed. I’m sure we’ve all gotten a call out of hours with a “do us a favour, is your laptop still on?”
When you’re at work, you’re at work, and when you’re not, then you’re not. (I couldn’t think of a better phrasing…)
Fair point, I’m personally more motivated when being around my team - someone to chuck ideas at, have a bit of banter with, and even have a chat makes for a nicer environment. Also makes the effort made by the rest of the team more apparent, less intra-team jealousy and all that.
My management strategy will be wholly derived from what I’ve read on Forumosa jk ly xox - but yes, definitely agree especially when it comes to egos.
haha, true.
I think on a business level you do get a bit of division between the “lazy bastard WFHomers” and the “he just wanders around the office chatting up all the women anyway” groups.
On the other hand, service roles inherently work just fine from home anyway, and fixed shifts make the distinction between “working” and “not working” clearer. The out-of-hours thing for the rest of us is tricky, but that happens even if you’ve been at the office all day. But I definitely struggle myself to make that distinction, and there are a lot of factors – sometimes there’s a really good reason why you need to log on and fix that thing right now, but once you get in the habit it’s hard to break. I don’t pretend to have all the answers on that front.
Yeah totally. “Time in office” is a nice easy metric to measure, which is why everyone uses it, but it’s not really very useful.
And on this one, I agree, but depending on the work you’re doing, having some “closed mode” time is critical too, and it’s hard when there are people walking around, meetings being scheduled, people stopping by to ask a question.
I’m a programmer, and the best advice I’ve ever seen on how to do it well is from John Cleese, of all people:
Somewhat, but I’m a single father five days a week, and I can’t imagine my son having to sit in 課後班 for between two and six hours every day just so that I can sit in an office until 6pm. I’ve promised myself I’ll never have a fixed hours job again for that reason alone.
On the other hand, it’s less great when the schools are all closed for no particular reason and he’s at home all day.
Yes, this one. I love my kid with all my heart, but this shit is hard. It’ll probably get easier once my semester is over and I’m not juggling preparing and teaching online classes with Daddy day-care.
Yes, indeed. I’m a software developer as well but not a very good one, not had any training, just been given problems and told “fix it” (literally) so having a hive mind/someone to leech off has always been useful for me, even if I don’t speak to them, having someone around keeps the ol’ “Overwhelm” level under 11.
I haven’t heard of Pluralsight before but based on their website I’m immediately skeptical. Do a side project instead, or get involved in a FOSS project you find interesting.
Good advice, but I’m covering off stuff I’ve already used before, so I know the terms and how to use them properly. Pluralsight is mostly the “game-ification” of decent Youtube tutorials, but (some of) the trainers are better.
For example, prior to last week if you asked me what a delegate, lambda expression or an anonymous method is in C# i would have said I didn’t know despite me using them all regularly for the past 5+ years…
