Asynchronous remote transactions are commonplace today; this is all a smokescreen for over-leveraged commercial real estate interests held by major US financial institutions.
I can see the argument that young people aren’t being exposed to older peers the same way and their learning may be stunted.
But… I haven’t set foot in an office for five years now and I’m as productive as I ever was. Possibly more.
As for his “people are distracted during meetings”, perhaps there ought to be more focus on only holding necessary meetings, rather than dragging people in when there’s no reason for them to be there and nothing to hold their interest? In my experience that’s the cause of a lot of the snark and slacking.
I agree with this, but I didn't grow up with a phone in my hand. I didn't have a mobile phone until I was about 30 years old and I didn't have a smartphone until I was in my 40s. I can't work well with people over remote calls, I hate Zoom and desktop sharing, don't like slack or teams. I find it so much more efficient to sit with another person or small group if there is a group task to be completed or a group decision to be made.
That said, unnecessary meetings are a real thing, have been a problem in large orgs forever, and Zoom doesn't fix that. Might make it worse, as invites are not limited by the physical size of the room.
To me, as someone who has deep and meaningful friendships with certain people mediated almost entirely through Discord messaging, which is basically non-work Slack, asynchronous mentorship and collaboration don't seem strange at all. I do recognize not everyone's a fan, and that there is a certain learning curve involved if you're not used to it (gamers, for example, seem to fall into virtual work naturally), but it's absolutely doable and these C-levels who say it's not are behind the curve.
I spent so many years in offices, in open plan offices where whole teams would sit with their headphones on loud, trying to ignore the presence of all other humans, that actually working in my own space has been a relief.
In my 40s now though, I work on stuff I’m interested in, and have a work ethic that doesn’t require oversight. 20 years ago I may not have been so good at it.
Genuinely, there is too much appeal to emotion from both sides of the argument and not enough substance, so if you have something here I'd be interested to read about it.
Yeah, I think there's a bigger issue with management here if this is how it was handled.
It feels like he's just old and pining for days gone by - in person meetings have people staring at their laptops and phones too. I dislike that as well, but that's not a WFH issue.
I've worked at a variety of places with a variety of problems, but I've never seen that kind of rudeness be widespread or persistent. It was corrected in different ways depending on the company culture, but it was corrected.
I don't want to totally damn them, because they have families and lives and other things going. But I've had a number of coworkers tell me they have re-adapted their code review to say near nothing (it won't be well received) and to otherwise end their own good-culture practices to adapt to really hostile remote culture.
The thing is, this isn't at all zoom. This isn't remote. It's companies that are just shit poor bad about letting bottom up knowledge trickle up. It's about terrible management that has made being in touch with their workforce hard. And in most cases, that's not the workforce: it's the management, it's the company.
It's easier to do this job of running a company in person, to spy & get information. But it's your laziness, it's your being awful at your job, that makes you rely on this in-touch layer.
Do you mean “phoning it in”?
Being “dialed in” and “phoning it in” are opposites, it was a little unclear which you meant from context.
Companies where non-contributors and non-receivers feel pressured to come to meetings just to show their faces are Doing It Wrong.
see latter part of other comment in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43056026
edit — was also going to suggest, at the start of the meeting politely but assertively request everyone turns their phone off at the start.
if it looks like someone is fucking around with their phone, pause the meeting. remind everyone about the request at the start of the meeting. resume the meeting. don’t drag it out and turn it into a rant. don’t call the individual out. just make it known that the behaviour is not okay. get back on with things. do it each time it happens.
do that for every meeting for a few weeks. some people will hopefully get the message. some people might not. hopefully enough people get the message to make a difference.
they might think you’re a dick for it, at least to begin with (it’s enforced change from an authority), but up to you to decide whether it’s valuable enough to see through.
Seems more like neither of them really actually needed to be there. If you didn’t actually miss or note their lack of contribution, then they were perhaps less necessary. I’m perfectly engaged with the meetings that meet those criteria.
i’ve had this exact conversation with my 70+ still working father so many times now. i’ve heard the rant in the article over and over again. and, like, he blames remote work too. “its the fucking zoom bullshit”.
but then i explain to him how i do remote work and suddenly gets it. like, remote working means you are required to work in a more direct and efficient way. you have to work hard at comms. you have to write everything with purpose. no “oh hey did you look at X”. instead “hey we need X done by T because otherwise Y. if you need to speak to P about it, they’re available this afternoon. contact me if anything is unclear and i’ll explain it to you on a call asap. let me know when you’ve read this please.”. like, i’ve debugged a production outage on my phone with other devs while in a doctors waiting room.
the problem is, yeah, a lot of people do treat it like a chance to sit at home doing the bare minimum.
and i think you kind of hit the nail on the head for something i hadn’t clocked. they can get away with it because “management” utterly suck at their jobs and haven’t adapted. like, i hear about people stuck in zoom meetings all the time… WHY?!? you don’t need face to face comms to work remotely. at all. it’s clinging on to the old ways of doing things!
up until now i’d been putting it down to a purely generational “can’t teach old dogs new tricks” thing. maybe it kind of is, just not in a way i’d seen before.
> but then i explain to him how i do remote work and suddenly gets it.
I don’t understand how he gets it if you have to have the same conversation numerous times.
The thing is... I've been in offices before COVID that were full of people doing the bare minimum. And they were able to do that because management, generally, has always sucked and was never good at their jobs.
(Child of the late 70's/early 80's here)
At my current and prior company everyone enjoys the freedom of adulthood. Of course there are massive productivity benefits to working in person at times. Of course there are massive benefits to working from home at times. Not productive in your current role? Move on or you will be moved on. Pretty straight forward.
What's so
For us being in a central location is not possible. But for companies with an office building I can see the human dynamic of being together is very powerful.
Even with all the chat, trackers, conference tools etc “context” is the hardest thing to do remotely.
In day to day remote work do you work together, or is it fully async with some chat-only meetings?
Let’s see him do his “difficult” job without a blank check from US taxpayers.
I swear to you that one of my teammates said hold on I have to walk into a meeting but once I settle in I can resume with us
