Big surprise? (not)

Originally sourced from

There are upsides and downsides to it. You have to be pretty self-motivated to work in a home office for long periods without ending up f****ng off in your underwear half the day just because you can often get away with it, not everyone loves their job so much that they easily have this ability.

I like electronics and software and it's what I'd be doing anyway even if nobody paid me so it's easier for me to get motivated than some. It's also good to have a strong support network of family and friends outside the office for largely remote work, I think a lot of people like the socialization, gossip, "office politics" and even finding people to date/marry there.

I never really got the appeal of choosing from the pool of people capital forced upon me vs. picking from the very large and perfectly nice array of people out in the world whom I _don't_ share an employer with. That's a mixed bag, the reality is some people are your "friends" until the day they have to choose their mortgage and bank account vs not throwing you under the bus. Somewhat understandably they often tend to choose option A. "We're all family here at the Olive Garden" yeah, not entirely.

You can't get away with it for very long; someone is still expecting YOUR work to get one (and likely has SOME evidence to that effect).

For me, the more annoying aspect was realizing you can't just walk to the stationery cabinet when you need a pad of paper. Or, the Xerox machine to photocopy something. And *you* have to keep the printer maintained, computer maintained, network maintained, etc.

The NYT article comments that:

"In fact, it turns out that people are most collaborative and creative when they work remotely part of the week. They can use a day or two at home to focus on individual deep work and reserve the rest of the week for communication and collective problem-solving. It’s well documented that too much togetherness breeds groupthink (not to mention germs). When we spend some time apart, we actually generate more innovative ideas and make smarter decisions."

This seems to be consistent with my personal observations. Putting a bunch of people in the same room and expecting a VARIETY of different ideas to come out AND BE PURSUED "seriously" doesn't seem to happen. Someone drives the decision making process as if it was their intent to "win".

By contrast, interacting individually with others -- over a longer period of time (something that many may not have the luxury or discipline to do) -- lets ideas "stew" for a while. This lets the bad and good aspects percolate out to be more evident and addressable.

It's always amusing to see how few designers have any real interaction with their target markets! When I was interviewing blind "customers" as to the hypothetical issues that were most important to them, two points stood out (paraphrasing):

- "Don't make it LOOK blind."

- "Make it easy to clean." The former addressing the fact that most products for that market skimp on development cost by using OTS enclosures, etc. Nothing "sexxy". So, any *sighted* individual noticing that plain aluminum prism that they were carrying just assumed it was something that they "needed". No genuine interest in what it might be as there likely would be if it had a flashier appearance! (e.g., injection molded parts)

The latter addressing the fact that the user would likely be unaware of what it looked like *today*. Oils and dirt accumulating from their hands making that "sexxy" product look like it was old and decrepit. (think: "wipe clean")

I find control over my time to be the most important criteria in a "job" (or any task). E.g., having an "appointment" at a defined time is a real nuisance to me as *it* constrains what I can do in that temporal vicinity. Weekly meetings? How is that a good use of a TEAM's time? Does anything really get decided or is it just a chance to force people into the same room at a particular time?

It's not just *when* but also *how* my time is spent. I'd much rather invest in learning about some tool/technology that I think has value to me, personally (vs. the employer or client) than to do things in some manner *imposed* by others.

I started adding another line to the form: "Time to fill out this damn form!"

My boss approached me, some time later, and told me not to worry about the paperwork... clearly aware that I was unhappy with it!]

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with formal terminology (this, IMO, being one of the hardest and most important things to address in a design; if folks don't know what a watchamacalit is, then they'll never be able to follow your descriptions/explanations).

One of the key concepts in my (object-oriented, capability-based) design is a "reference" to an object (that also carries the capability). It's not a "reference" in the C++ sense. It's not an *address*. Or, a symbolic *string* (like a pathname).

It's more like a file descriptor -- that makes sense only to the task holding it. And, of course, each task can have a "file descriptor 1" so "1" is meaningless outside of the task's context.

It's portable. It's unforgeable (unlike a pathname). It doesn't rely on any external mechanisms (e.g., ACLs) but is self-contained. it is managed entirely within the kernel -- with the cooperation of other kernels that may eventually have to interact with it (regardless of "where" the referenced object is currently "backed")

I finally settled on the nebulous term "handle". But, even that fails to address names for each of the implementation levels behind it (which are necessary to name when discussing the internals of the code).

E.g., is "123" the handle? Or, the 123rd entry in the object table for this task? Or... And, what's the server-side of it called??

Goggle this too:

working from home alone depression

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I preferred working from home. I didnt have to do other people's bs. And there were less interruptions.

Cherrs

IME, most folks liked the freedom to work from home -- though they may not have liked the "forced isolation" that the pandemic imposed (i.e., visiting neighbors was avoided for much the same reasons).

As bitrex said, many people rely on "work" (sadly) for their social life. Or, to "get away from the wife and kids". (These people have problems that a work schedule will never solve; they're just avoiding those hard issues...)

I've never seen anyone abuse the "privilege" as they know it (nowadays) can be revoked in a heartbeat. Enjoy being able to schedule your OTHER life activities without the fixed 9-5 block of time chopping up your day? Then, maybe make damn sure you don't give anyone an excuse to take away that capability!

And, with cell phones, you can always be tethered to your workmates -- voice OR email/text (not the case decades ago).

One advantage that this "distance" has is that it removes the immediacy of interactions (much like email does vs. voice conversation). You can stew on a question for some time before composing your reply; you're more likely to have considered more aspects of each response instead of just "shooting from the hip".

It also took some discipline to resist the inevitable "ball park estimates that clients are so known to request: "Type up some ideas as to what you want and I'll comment on them -- and EXACTLY them -- so 3 months from now when you selectively remember PART of this conversation, I can present you with a copy of the ENTIRE conversation, including the parts you are selectively ignoring!"]

The physical presence of other people really changes things. Brainstorming works much better in person.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

A decent amount of office jobs don't actually require 8 hours of work in a day, and if you just give a relatively smart cookie a list of tasks and let them work the tasks from home without distractions they can often finish in 2 hours flat and then twiddle their thumbs, or maybe go work their second job.

Part of the reason a number of employers don't really like the work from home concept, they don't want their employees "overemployed" i.e. not being dependent on them. But there are whole subreddits devoted to the practice of being overemployed regardless, and the drama that can come with that like when both employers schedule meetings at the same time..

Highlights:

- Employees Are More Likely To Be Productive at Home

- Meetings Are Extremely Unproductive

- The Average Office Worker Is Productive for Less Than 3 Hours a Day

- Freelancers Are Productive 36 Hours Each Week (i.e., 7+ hrs per day)

- 86% of Employees Prefer To Work Alone

- Employers that implement high or “radical” workplace flexibility enjoy a 40% higher retention of high-performing staff

- The top 1% of workers produce 10% of the output

- High-quality talent can be up to 400% more productive than average employees across various fields (software development, top performers can be as much as 800% -- i.e., doing more than a week of work in a single day)

There's a different mindset "in the office" vs. "at home". In the office, distractions are more welcome as they are seen as "on the company's dime". At home, they are on *yours* -- you want to finish your tasks so you can get BACK to "your time".

I periodically meet with colleagues from around the country (offsite or virtually) to compare notes about our respective projects. As we've had all the time between meetups to stew on each other's projects (yet AVOID the minutiae of implementation details), we can usually offer meaningful insights to guide their direction -- things that would never occur to us in a "OK, let's talk about X, *now*..." environment.

Sort of like getting your best ideas in bed or in the shower -- instead of sitting at a desk or in a meeting (the mind has a chance to "look away")

I always wonder what would have happened had their been a fire or other disaster that called for an evacuation and accounting for all employees: "OhMyGosh... Where's Bob?? Is he still *in* there???"

From

Thus, an important side effect of remote work’s rise may be its scarring effects on young workers, who struggle to learn from colleagues in an increasingly distributed world. But mentorship is not free: it impedes the output of experienced workers who do the mentoring. Firms thus face a tradeoff: remote work enhances productivity today, as experienced workers focus on their own output, while sacrificing productivity tomorrow, as junior workers receive less mentorship and develop fewer skills.

Remote work stands to shift who is hired, with adverse effects for young workers. Our retailer hired fewer young workers when employees were distant from their teammates — both during the office closures and when hiring outside the headquarters campus. This mirrors hiring patterns nationally, where young workers’ unemployment rates rose alongside the rise of remote work, particularly in remotable occupations."

I.e., competence benefits from remote work as the overhead of working is decreased. Folks who need hand-holding want others nearby to hold those hands.

I wonder what will happen when those "senior developers" are AIs; will they know to "mother" the younguns? Or, will they just focus on their directives? (Will they have to be *directed* to mother the young??)

And, in the short term (where the younguns loose out on jobs to AIs), what incentive to bring the inexperienced up-to-speed when they aren't even in attendance??

I know counterexamples. (S.

There are ALWAYS counterexamples for EVERYTHING.

I had an employer, early in my career, who *encouraged* me to take whatever equipment I needed and work from home -- saving me the hour+ that I would otherwise spend on the road. No internet or email to "check up on me" other than phone calls. My responsibilities were independant of all the other folks at the shop (as was the case for all of the engineers) so nothing to be gained by sitting in my office, there.

He eventually asked me to return to the office as the other engineers, operating in nearly identical circumstances, ALSO wanted this ability.

OTOH, I've had employers who watched cars entering the parking lot to keep track of who was "arriving late" (really? is that a good use of ANY employee's time?)

Another employer confronted me for taking home some manuals over the weekend: "Are those company property?" (well, where did you THINK I got them from?) You're nervous that I could potentially be "stealing" some PAPER (nothing proprietary to the company but, rather, a tool we had purchased that I was going to familiarize myself with ON MY TIME) yet you are completely at my mercy in the design of *your* multimillion dollar systems that rely on my competence and benevolence?

Rationalize *that* to yourself when you have the time...