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Another factor beyond individual suitability to remote work (which certainly varies person to person and even within a person’s lifetime due to lifestyle change

Another factor beyond individual suitability to remote work (which certainly varies person to person and even within a person’s lifetime due to lifestyle changes), is the work situation itself. One thing I don’t see mentioned in these discussions much is that someone might be perfectly content WFH when given clear goals and autonomy to execute in a neutral political environment, but do a few unexplained mass layoffs, give muddy direction or tighten the leash with stricter policies or new monitoring software and watch paranoia and depression take root (this is true in-office as well but I think gets amplified over Slack due to a stronger prisoner’s dilemma effect). Unfortunately due to the power differential, any disruption to output caused by these situations will still be blamed on the individual contributor.

slowin 1mo ago
This is when you find a new WFH position. Imagine how bad it would be working in an office with sociopaths that want all of those things?
zer00eyz 1mo ago
> amplified over Slack Slack and Zoom are a massive parts of the problem. Because "my boss can read it" sure does curtail a lot of conversations. You are left in a situation where you miss out on all sorts of hints that people just aren't putting out. A string of tepid yes's on the way to get coffee is a much different signal than a string of yes's with no context in Slack. Things may be different again on zoom because of equipment quality and connectivity and peoples willingness to be a certain way on camera (and when looking at themselves). I have seen at least half a dozen work place kerfuffles in the last 5 years that would have been avoided entirely if people were regularly co-located. Unless you're small enough to get away with a very open and free culture (both business and personal) then there is a lot being left on the table that requires work to be re-gained. Many organizations are still bad at this.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- neilv 1mo ago
  Agreed, the loss of some opportunities for signal like is definitely one of the downsides. One thing that helps a lot is occasionally mixing in (non-recorded) video or phone calls, and having a lightweight way to initiate one. Text chat: "quick call this afternoon?" "3pm ET?" ":thumb-up:" <call added to calendars> For that matter, making 1-on-1 text chats mostly private reduces the chilling effect of perceived boss panopticon. The company might retain logs for various reasons, but the only access is through Legal, and only for exceptional events. (Though, there may soon be an additional chilling effect on communication within a company: people will realize it's an individual problem if the company's third-party team communication SaaS is profiling them individually in company chats "for AI training", and using/selling that various ways. There's already a lot of SOP performative and gaming behavior in our field, especially when it comes to obtaining jobs and getting good performance evaluations and promotions, so we can extrapolate what will happen.)
- Grombobulous 1mo ago
  I love my remote company for being mostly cameras off. We’re not even a small company at all. It’s so much less stressful than constantly being on Zoom on camera. I load the dishwasher and do other small chores while I have 1:1s and other non-hands on keyboard meetings. It’s amazing for my home life. Thank goodness for modern noise canceling headphones. I don’t feel like these small social cues or in-person signals are actually that valuable when it comes to completing tasks to make the company money. It’s really easy to avoid kerfuffles: hire the right people who exude the right values and don’t care for drama. Don’t hire people who are vindictive assholes.
lowercased 1mo ago
Vent ahead: I was brought on to a team as WFH - there was an office, but most of the team I worked with were in different states. But a lot of folks had left 6-12 months previous. I was stepping in to a void, and just had some jira tickets. Manager above me wasn't technical, didn't know my project, just said "get done what you can". I worked and filled out timesheet. I was pinging the ticket owner, no response. Tickets were for an external client. Asked manager to arrange meeting. Took 2 weeks. Got a meeting with the external client using the system who had put these tickets in. "That was Jeremy, he doesn't work here any more... I think he was talking to Glen". Well.. Glen left our team 6 months earlier. Emily at the client I was talking to had no idea what this was for, cause she only started 2 months earlier. Another week later she said "I don't think we need any of this - whoever asked for it is gone, and I have no info". I had recorded... probably 130 hours on a few of these tickets mostly just trying to get stuff to build. Emily couldn't update tickets because it was tied to Jeremy who had left. 2 weeks later I had some department head at our company about 4 levels above me call me on my personal phone and start yelling at me telling me I'd put the project way over budget, I was 6 months behind schedule, and was jeopardizing the entire client relationship, and she was threatening to fire me. Apparently the whole budget for the project was 60 hours - I'd more than doubled that plus whatever people before me had done, etc. But... the client contacts I had had no idea what it was for, or really even who wanted it in the first place. I remember this woman saying "the budget was only 60 hours - you blew it up!" I said "I never gave those estimates in the first place, and there's no one here who even knows what this code is to even ask". "None of that matters, we may lose this client because of your incompetence...." That was pure insanity. I left shortly after - already had something else lined up, but was on the fence about leaving (devil you know vs devil you don't). At that point, I knew I'd had enough of this devil. I left for another remote/WFH position. This was also ... towards the end of 2020 - depths of covid, lockdowns, etc. Crazy times indeed.
- ozim 1mo ago
  That's kafkaesque and reads totally surreal ... but I have seen enough to know it is possible.
- jimmydddd 1mo ago
  re: department head at our company about 4 levels above me... -- what could be going through this person's mind when they continue yelling at someone after the situation has been explained? A friend got screamed at by some upper level person for being three months behind on a project. They contined screaming even after my friend explained it was his first day at the company.
rob74 1mo ago
From what I have seen, layoffs tend to go hand in hand with pushing for more work from the office (which companies hope will help them get rid of some employees without severance), so if being in the office helps combat layoff paranoia and depression, there's that. I personally don't have less paranoia now I am in the office 3 days a week (and probably won't have less when I will soon be forced to come in 5 days a week either), but I only talk to "my" team via Teams no matter if I'm at home or in the office, because they're spread over several locations (and no, it doesn't make sense to do RTO in these conditions, but that just reinforces my certainty that all the talk about "increasing efficiency" is just BS and they simply hope to get rid of people, no matter how competent they are). In the meantime, I don't really care one way or the other, but if they want to get rid of me, they should at least offer me some money for it, I won't do them the favor of just leaving voluntarily (especially not in this economy).
- eastbound 1mo ago
  You say your team is remote "anyway", but RTO precisely is about connecting with other people OUTSIDE your team, working on internal politics, and you act as an interconnection point between the remote team and the local network.
  - techcode 1mo ago
    I think the two of you are thinking/talking about two different things. In most workplaces before ~2020 individual teams had designated desks/islands - all team members were sitting next to each other, actually every individual had their own permanent desk. And you could have a quick chat, pair program, and even adhoc whole team meeting by just removing your noise-cancelling headphones and talking to each other. Though of course bigger/longer meetings would still be better in a meeting room because of big screen, not being nuisance to other people ...etc. Most workplaces now do some variant of flexi-desks. At best a group of teams is allocated some specific area/desks, at worst it's completely random which desk you get. And to have a chat/meeting you often need to still do it via conference call, or get into a meeting room. Between that, and usually having some people from the team still WFH on that day (many workplaces don't even have enough work desks or cafeteria - for everyone to come into office on the same day) - you now need more meeting rooms than before. And for some reason they didn't add more meeting rooms, even when redesigning office buildings.

slowin 1mo ago

This is when you find a new WFH position. Imagine how bad it would be working in an office with sociopaths that want all of those things?

zer00eyz 1mo ago

> amplified over Slack Slack and Zoom are a massive parts of the problem. Because "my boss can read it" sure does curtail a lot of conversations. You are left in a situation where you miss out on all sorts of hints that people just aren't putting out. A string of tepid yes's on the way to get coffee is a much different signal than a string of yes's with no context in Slack. Things may be different again on zoom because of equipment quality and connectivity and peoples willingness to be a certain way on camera (and when looking at themselves). I have seen at least half a dozen work place kerfuffles in the last 5 years that would have been avoided entirely if people were regularly co-located. Unless you're small enough to get away with a very open and free culture (both business and personal) then there is a lot being left on the table that requires work to be re-gained. Many organizations are still bad at this.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
neilv 1mo ago
Agreed, the loss of some opportunities for signal like is definitely one of the downsides. One thing that helps a lot is occasionally mixing in (non-recorded) video or phone calls, and having a lightweight way to initiate one. Text chat: "quick call this afternoon?" "3pm ET?" ":thumb-up:" <call added to calendars> For that matter, making 1-on-1 text chats mostly private reduces the chilling effect of perceived boss panopticon. The company might retain logs for various reasons, but the only access is through Legal, and only for exceptional events. (Though, there may soon be an additional chilling effect on communication within a company: people will realize it's an individual problem if the company's third-party team communication SaaS is profiling them individually in company chats "for AI training", and using/selling that various ways. There's already a lot of SOP performative and gaming behavior in our field, especially when it comes to obtaining jobs and getting good performance evaluations and promotions, so we can extrapolate what will happen.)
Grombobulous 1mo ago
I love my remote company for being mostly cameras off. We’re not even a small company at all. It’s so much less stressful than constantly being on Zoom on camera. I load the dishwasher and do other small chores while I have 1:1s and other non-hands on keyboard meetings. It’s amazing for my home life. Thank goodness for modern noise canceling headphones. I don’t feel like these small social cues or in-person signals are actually that valuable when it comes to completing tasks to make the company money. It’s really easy to avoid kerfuffles: hire the right people who exude the right values and don’t care for drama. Don’t hire people who are vindictive assholes.

lowercased 1mo ago

Vent ahead: I was brought on to a team as WFH - there was an office, but most of the team I worked with were in different states. But a lot of folks had left 6-12 months previous. I was stepping in to a void, and just had some jira tickets. Manager above me wasn't technical, didn't know my project, just said "get done what you can". I worked and filled out timesheet. I was pinging the ticket owner, no response. Tickets were for an external client. Asked manager to arrange meeting. Took 2 weeks. Got a meeting with the external client using the system who had put these tickets in. "That was Jeremy, he doesn't work here any more... I think he was talking to Glen". Well.. Glen left our team 6 months earlier. Emily at the client I was talking to had no idea what this was for, cause she only started 2 months earlier. Another week later she said "I don't think we need any of this - whoever asked for it is gone, and I have no info". I had recorded... probably 130 hours on a few of these tickets mostly just trying to get stuff to build. Emily couldn't update tickets because it was tied to Jeremy who had left. 2 weeks later I had some department head at our company about 4 levels above me call me on my personal phone and start yelling at me telling me I'd put the project way over budget, I was 6 months behind schedule, and was jeopardizing the entire client relationship, and she was threatening to fire me. Apparently the whole budget for the project was 60 hours - I'd more than doubled that plus whatever people before me had done, etc. But... the client contacts I had had no idea what it was for, or really even who wanted it in the first place. I remember this woman saying "the budget was only 60 hours - you blew it up!" I said "I never gave those estimates in the first place, and there's no one here who even knows what this code is to even ask". "None of that matters, we may lose this client because of your incompetence...." That was pure insanity. I left shortly after - already had something else lined up, but was on the fence about leaving (devil you know vs devil you don't). At that point, I knew I'd had enough of this devil. I left for another remote/WFH position. This was also ... towards the end of 2020 - depths of covid, lockdowns, etc. Crazy times indeed.

ozim 1mo ago
That's kafkaesque and reads totally surreal ... but I have seen enough to know it is possible.
jimmydddd 1mo ago
re: department head at our company about 4 levels above me... -- what could be going through this person's mind when they continue yelling at someone after the situation has been explained? A friend got screamed at by some upper level person for being three months behind on a project. They contined screaming even after my friend explained it was his first day at the company.

rob74 1mo ago

From what I have seen, layoffs tend to go hand in hand with pushing for more work from the office (which companies hope will help them get rid of some employees without severance), so if being in the office helps combat layoff paranoia and depression, there's that. I personally don't have less paranoia now I am in the office 3 days a week (and probably won't have less when I will soon be forced to come in 5 days a week either), but I only talk to "my" team via Teams no matter if I'm at home or in the office, because they're spread over several locations (and no, it doesn't make sense to do RTO in these conditions, but that just reinforces my certainty that all the talk about "increasing efficiency" is just BS and they simply hope to get rid of people, no matter how competent they are). In the meantime, I don't really care one way or the other, but if they want to get rid of me, they should at least offer me some money for it, I won't do them the favor of just leaving voluntarily (especially not in this economy).

eastbound 1mo ago
You say your team is remote "anyway", but RTO precisely is about connecting with other people OUTSIDE your team, working on internal politics, and you act as an interconnection point between the remote team and the local network.
- techcode 1mo ago
  I think the two of you are thinking/talking about two different things. In most workplaces before ~2020 individual teams had designated desks/islands - all team members were sitting next to each other, actually every individual had their own permanent desk. And you could have a quick chat, pair program, and even adhoc whole team meeting by just removing your noise-cancelling headphones and talking to each other. Though of course bigger/longer meetings would still be better in a meeting room because of big screen, not being nuisance to other people ...etc. Most workplaces now do some variant of flexi-desks. At best a group of teams is allocated some specific area/desks, at worst it's completely random which desk you get. And to have a chat/meeting you often need to still do it via conference call, or get into a meeting room. Between that, and usually having some people from the team still WFH on that day (many workplaces don't even have enough work desks or cafeteria - for everyone to come into office on the same day) - you now need more meeting rooms than before. And for some reason they didn't add more meeting rooms, even when redesigning office buildings.