
We Can't Let People Work from Home Because - sixteenth
http://blog.davidtate.org/2016/12/we-cant-let-people-work-from-home-because-_______/
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eagsalazar2
TL;DR - If you ask me to work in your office, you are an idiot. Give me a
break. Somehow this kind of condescending, flippant, and blanket stance always
comes loudest and most frequently from people who just want to work from home
themselves. Almost everyone else seems to understand there is some nuance to
the issue.

(At my company we work remotely 95% of the time so I'm not in the opposite
camp either, just saying it isn't black and white and this guy's tone is super
rude)

~~~
AndyNemmity
I work from home, as well have consulted for many companies on the road, and
agree with you.

I personally, will never work in an office regularly, but there is a
tremendous amount of variation within companies on their stances on even a
consultant working in an office, or remotely.

You'd think that because they have to pay me gobs of money to fly me on site,
they'd be far less interested that I was onsite. This is wrong.

For one month, they'd spend maybe, 2000 a week to have me onsite, then adding
in my actual costs.

Seems ridiculous, but most companies preferred that arrangement. The more tech
savy the company was, the less they were interested in me being in an office.

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petepete
> But we can’t let our people not see each other, they won’t communicate well.

I disagree with this point. Yes, people can communicate effectively from afar,
but can they communicate _as well as they could if they were sat in a room_? I
don't think so.

~~~
manmal
That's also my only nitpick on the article's list. Interpretation of messages
from coworkers happens in an emotional context, and if you don't refresh that
context every now and then (weekly?), strange things happen. Like, people
start arguing because minor nitpicks expressed without any malice are
interpreted as "you suck, shame on you for making that mistake" \- or vice
versa.

~~~
maxxxxx
You can get around this by hiring level headed people. High maintenance people
will cause trouble if you are in an office daily or remote. No difference.

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greatemployee
There is a rational excuse for every bad decision in history.

When the arguments for certain practices that are highly consequential become
obvious, simple, predictable, perhaps even tautological, I usually take it as
a sign that the whole thing is likely unfounded.

You'd think some company would measure how productive their engineers are in
"open office" or strictly on-prem working environments and resolve the matter
firmly rather than blindly following the prevailing wives tales, but as far as
I'm aware just about every aspect of "management" is not up for consideration.

(Just don't let them catch on to the fact that finding someone's name in Slack
is actually pretty easy and that getting things down in writing is always a
better idea than relying on people's verbal memory for critical transfer of
information, and that the less an engineer is distracted and the more
comfortable he is the better he will perform)

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k__
Get some processes going and you're all set for remote work.

Problem is, most smaller companies don't have processes, because they have
some management that doesn't know the tiniest bit about management.

Throw a few people in an office, they will see each other on a daily basis and
maybe talk about business and things will go okay. This is was most managers
think is management. This doesn't scale, even if you have everyone working in
one office.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I think as a society we are collectively losing the ability to manage people.
It seems management breaks down into two groups... really good technical
people who were promoted, but don't necessarily know anything about or have
the skills for management, and "professional" managers who might have an MBA
or other similar training, but often don't know jack about what they are
actually managing. Both are less than optimal.

