
Netflix boss: Remote working has negative effects - Alupis
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54063648
======
icf80
When the epidemic started, we were infused by "working from home is good", now
that the epidemic seems to wind down, we are seeing headlines like this
"working from home is not sustainable or it is bad". This is how the people in
general are influenced.

From my personal experience I am a lot less stressed by working from home.

~~~
fyfy18
I wonder how many of these articles are because landlords of commercial
property et al are beginning to feel the repecusions of people working from
home. At least in the UK (this is a BBC article), most commercial properties
are owned by big landlords, with ties to the "elite" class.

~~~
sirmoveon
dingdingdingding We have a winner. Shifts in economics will have winners and
losers. We will continue to hear more from the losers and how the new way has
damaged the social fabric of x/y.

Overall, the reality of the shift has been positive for socioeconomics. More
time around the people that matters most to us and beaming into work has
reliaved environmental stress and unnecessary expenditures in commuting alone.

~~~
arethuza
Some powerful people seem seriously worried, look at this nonsense in the
Daily Mail:

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8671837/RICHARD-L...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8671837/RICHARD-
LITTLEJOHN-One-persons-Working-Home-anothers-P45.html)

Of course, what makes this particularly bizarre is that the person writing it
says "I’ve worked from home for the past 30-odd years"....

------
throwaway189262
> Netflix's chairman has said working from home has no positive effects and
> makes debating ideas harder

The only people I have heard complaining is management. It makes it harder to
do their jobs, and shows how useless many of their jobs are.

~~~
UncleMeat
I cannot possibly believe this.

Something like 60% of devs I’ve spoken to have struggled seriously with COVID
WFH. And a nontrivial portion of those are struggling in ways that are
fundamental to WFH rather than due to the pandemic.

~~~
KnobbleMcKnees
The vast majority of devs I chat to feel the exact opposite. I think the
takeaway is that this will vary a lot between companies and teams.

~~~
UncleMeat
There is clear variation in experiences and preferences here, which is why I
believe it is foolish to claim that all resistance to WFH is from managers who
want to spy on their reports.

------
tracer4201
I don’t miss my commute, but working from home has negatively impacted my job
happiness, physical health, and mental health. This morning I started working
at 9:15AM. I finally closed my Macbook and turned off the monitor around
8:30PM. I got less done than I wanted. I’m struggling to concentrate and focus
on specific tasks. People ping me on my company’s multiple messaging and video
conferencing systems throughout the day. People now set up meetings at
unreasonable hours. My job is to resolve ambiguity. My job has gotten much
harder because communication is more difficult.

I’m sure many an engineer who gets assigned specific coding tasks or very
focused design problems loves working for home, but for some of us who’s bread
and better is resolving complexity, disambiguating problems, etc., it’s an
expensive tax.

~~~
koles46
Shouldn't be that on the company policy? No meetings outside the working
hours? People could setup meetings at 7PM also while in the office I don't see
the difference here sorry.

> resolving complexity, disambiguating problems

Can you elaborate?

------
mbroncano
Sure it has! The question is, do the positive effects compensate for the
negatives? Another question is, who’s job is effectively obsoleted if most of
the work force (for this particular context eg STEM) works remotely?

------
xfour
Pretty difficult to make film and television with the level of polish expected
by Netflix Customers without being able to be in close proximity.

Seems a bit like Elon promoting ideas that just so happen to align with the
sequence of events which makes the company literally billions of dollars.

------
hamandcheese
Of course, this is the POV of an executive, not an engineer or low level
manager...

~~~
stubish
I'm astonished at the broad, sweeping statement. As if all employees do the
same job and require the same conditions. I would have assumed that roles in
Netflix where diverse enough that certainly _some_ jobs would have benefits,
if for no other reason than saving money on office space or being able to hire
people from regions that pay lower. Seems rather odd to say the person writing
the Khmer subtitles benefits from doing it in the office.

------
hyfgfh
Wow! I love when C people bring so much data!

But serious, it depends, every company will have different results... changing
to remote without changing policies will have a negative effect.

------
growlist
One of the main positive effects for me is not having to attempt to function
in an oxygen-deprived office.

~~~
Viliam1234
So glad to see this mentioned! I am a bit anemic, which I suppose makes me
more sensitive to the lack of oxygen than average people. And so often, when
there is a meeting, the organizers choose the least ventilated room in the
building (I guess because the better rooms are already taken), pack it full of
people, and make them spend an hour sitting and listening to... whatever super
imporant thing couldn't be explained in a short e-mail instead (because for
the extraverts talking is so much more fun than writing). The windows are
closed, sometimes impossible to open, the oxygen level is dropping... but it
will take 20 more minutes until other people become sufficiently
uncomfortable.

Working from home, the windows in my room are widely open. (At least during
the summer.) Who needs air conditioning, when you can have actual fresh air
instead.

~~~
growlist
I always wondered why the hell I would feel so wrecked at certain times of
day. It's a nightmare. Thank god I WFH these days.

------
cylinder
It's probably not the office people dislike, it's the commute. If your office
was next door to your house and all your colleagues were there you wouldn't
go? You could come back for lunch and go back and forth as needed.

~~~
SwiftyBug
Definitely. Commute is hell to me. True privilege is to live at a walking-
distance from where you work.

------
ilaksh
I think there are multiple factors that determine how well people adapt or how
productive they can be at home. So this is probably why there are different
views in this.

One big one is whether there are kids at home who are not able to go to school
now. In that situation, parents may be splitting their time between watching
their kids and helping with homework and working from home. This is going to
be a significant loss in terms of productivity for many people. And also a big
distraction.

Another aspect is just exactly what their job entails and what tools they are
using. If they have a job that involves a lot of face-to-face meetings and do
not have a very good video chat software setup or have significant issues with
internet, that is going to be a big loss for them. Or maybe their chat
software works fine but there is no proper way to set up the video meetings
because they haven't created a Discord or Slack. So if the software or
internet is not not configured or working well, that can be another issue.

A side aspect of that is if there is a manager who feels he is supposed to
directly monitor and supervise (i.e. giv orders on the fly) and is used to
doing so in person, but now does not have a convenient way to do so. That also
can be resolved with software, simply by requiring people to be logged into a
chat or something. Maybe some of the resentment is that managers are now
feeling a bit of social pressure in terms of politeness to try to keep
communications to be asynchronous and in writing rather than randomly
interrupting people. Also what they say goes in record on written formats like
chats or email etc.

------
stjohnswarts
There's a tradeoff for everything and he's mostly wrong. I'm sure for some
companies it doesn't make sense, but for a company like Netflix, other than
say maybe their DVD division, there's no reason for employees to be onsite. I
think the biggest cost may be to managers' egos however.

~~~
GhostVII
You don't think it is valuable to have in-person meetings, or impromtu
conversations with people on other teams? Maybe being onsite isn't worth the
commute, but to say it has no benefit is absurd.

------
tonyedgecombe
There is a more interesting piece on this at
[https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/chance-
encounters](https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/chance-encounters)

------
sirmoveon
Farriers: Cars have negative effects

------
ram_rar
Cannot agree more. If WFH, was really that effective, then most of the jobs
would have been outsourced by now. Like it or not, there is location bias in
workplace. Pre-pandemic, I have frequently seen remote folks working hard to
be seen and "sell" their work as opposed to folks working @ office.

I'm guessing once the vaccine is out, we'll eventually regress back to office.

~~~
Ecstatify
Gitlab is completely remote. Google just cancelled plans to lease large office
space in Dublin.

WFH was forced onto companies, think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that’s it
not really effective. You mightn’t like it but people in other situations do.
Personally I don’t have any benefit commuting 1hr to a noisy office when all
my other colleagues are located in another office in another country. WFH
works well for certain people and not for others.

~~~
jl2718
Gitlab is actually the perfect WFH company because it forces them to eat their
own dog food.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I used this reasoning to convince my boss when I was working on code for
embedded devices. "IF I can't fix it remotely then the techs don't stand a
chance, so I need to be working from home all the time unless absolutely
necessary that I need to go onsite"

------
thefujin
Good for Netflix

