Working Remote

[Aqua Letifer]

@taiwan_girl said in Working Remote:

(Of course, if varies by job type and person, but as a general, I think being in the office 3(?) days week at least is a good thing.)

A third of my co-workers live sufficiently close to the main office that they have to work on-site three days a week. They literally—and I shit you not—tried to "incentivize" people going in with office pizza parties. They enacted THE meme illustrating band-aid solutions to cultural deficit gunshot wounds.

Anyway, did you catch that this is only a third of my co-workers? So they go into the office, and meet and catch up with precisely nobody. The rest of us are all remote, all the time. They've effectively wasted 6 hours of their week commuting into a place staffed by hallways as dimly lit as Phibes'.

I'm all for in-office work. Makes a heck of a lot of sense for a number of jobs. I'm against some ignorant asshole telling me what's best for me because of their feels, not any experience with the kind of work I do.

[Doctor Phibes]

@Jolly said in Working Remote:

Ever work with civil service?

Are they lazier than the rest of us?

Because I kind of feel like that's the implication. Ted Cruz is basically moralizing about other people being on the take.

And he's a politician. An occupation not normally considered as the acme of ethical behaviour.

[Copper]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Working Remote:

Are they lazier than the rest of us?

It used to be that they pretended to work, and we pretended to pay them.

Now they have the best of both.

[Aqua Letifer]

@Copper said in Working Remote:

@Doctor-Phibes said in Working Remote:

Are they lazier than the rest of us?

It used to be that they pretended to work, and we pretended to pay them.

Now they have the best of both.

So you're saying that America's communist?

[LuFins Dad]

The work at home question really is fascinating. Think of the profound possible impacts to humanity if working from home became the primary model…

On the plus side - profound impacts on time and income with less commuting. Could even reduce the number of vehicles owned. Also it could release a LOT of commercial real estate that can be repurposed to residential or even just parks… What happens to divorce rates of spouses have more time together? Infidelity is almost always between coworkers. More families would home school and generally be a bigger part of their children’s education. It would also greatly expand travel opportunities.

In the negative side, we are already becoming more isolated and less social. What happens when you remove the social necessity of conforming to interactive conventions and niceties? It will also have extreme negative consequences to so many other industries. Transportation, Hospitality, etc… All of that time together could add new stressors to families. The opportunity for abuse grows exponentially, and our social filters disappear…

And that doesn’t even take into account that for every Aqua that thrives in the work from home environment, there’s a me, that wouldn’t be able to accomplish Jack working from home. Some people thrive in the isolation and others need to work in a group setting (even performing the same jobs)

It’s a fascinating conundrum.

[Aqua Letifer]

@LuFins-Dad said in Working Remote:

And that doesn’t even take into account that for every Aqua that thrives in the work from home environment, there’s a me, that wouldn’t be able to accomplish Jack working from home. Some people thrive in the isolation and others need to work in a group setting (even performing the same jobs)

Just to clarify a little here:

My job requires ideation, and staying the hell out of meetings. Meetings are never, ever helpful and destroy productivity for the kind of thing that I do.

But, the ideation stuff requires about 50/50 of isolation and collaboration. But even that second part works better remotely rather than in person.

Remotely, I'll be in a shared file at the same time as a co-worker. I can see their face and talk to them while we're working together. But, we both have access to the same digital workspace at the same time. So we can kick ideas around in real time, with both of us in the same file contributing our own part together.

This does 2 things:

1. Speed things up considerably. Wouldn't have this effect with every job but it absolutely does with mine.
2. Forces true collaboration. This is very important. Usually, there's a cat-and-mouse game at play. "You base your work on mine. No, you base your work on mine. " Etc. Real-time collaboration, that can only happen with this technology, stops this age-old debate.

Remote technology is very, very helpful to someone like me. But yeah, I wouldn't want to force everyone to do it, especially if it doesn't work for others.

[jon-nyc]

@Jolly said in Working Remote:

Texas is unique in having its own power grid and there isn't a fucking thing he could have done.

He could have, oh I don’t know, organized volunteer help for the elderly and infirm.

[Doctor Phibes]

I don't think people should have to work from home. What would be good is to give employees some flexibility, and for employees to do the same thing for their managers. The last thing I want is to work 5 days a week from home. Compromise is a great idea.

Another great idea for managers is to treat people like adults. If you assume that everybody who's working from home is screwing off, and talk to them in the way that Cruz did in that clip, then guess what, it's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're going to think you're a twat, and act accordingly.

I do appreciate that the clip is really just theatre. Still, I wouldn't want to work for that guy.

[Aqua Letifer]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Working Remote:

Another great idea for managers is to treat people like adults.

I don't think it's that, necessarily.

I've personally found that exceptions aside, technical skill diminishes drastically the higher up the org chart you go. What this means is that the more senior someone is, the more likely they are to: (1) be in a position to decide what the remote work policy should be, and (2) not have the technical skills required to know how a remote team could possibly be led effectively.

Just a guess but I'd put some money on it.

[Doctor Phibes]

@Aqua-Letifer said in Working Remote:

@Doctor-Phibes said in Working Remote:

Another great idea for managers is to treat people like adults.

I don't think it's that, necessarily.

I've personally found that exceptions aside, technical skill diminishes drastically the higher up the org chart you go. What this means is that the more senior someone is, the more likely they are to: (1) be in a position to decide what the remote work policy should be, and (2) not have the technical skills required to know how a remote team could possibly be led effectively.

Just a guess but I'd put some money on it.

Our senior management tends to be pretty technically savvy, they've generally worked their way up from being engineers. Still, they inevitably get removed from the day-to-day stuff.

The converse of what you're saying, which is of course true, is that the folks in the trenches often don't see the bigger picture. We see the pointless office attendance and the lights going out in the corridor, but maybe we don't see the other departments with a lot of new hires who are struggling because there's a lack of in-person training and mentoring.

[89th]

Cruz should focus less on where federal employees work and more on making it easier to fire them. I’ve heard of so many incredible stories of incompetence and yet the government makes it nearly impossible to hold employees accountable. Oh how much the taxpayers would save if supervisors had the ability to get rid of the counterproductive HR bloat.

[Jolly]

@jon-nyc said in Working Remote:

@Jolly said in Working Remote:

Texas is unique in having its own power grid and there isn't a fucking thing he could have done.

He could have, oh I don’t know, organized volunteer help for the elderly and infirm.

Sure.

[Jolly]

@89th said in Working Remote:

Cruz should focus less on where federal employees work and more on making it easier to fire them. I’ve heard of so many incredible stories of incompetence and yet the government makes it nearly impossible to hold employees accountable. Oh how much the taxpayers would save if supervisors had the ability to get rid of the counterproductive HR bloat.

Local VA has two incompetent employees in a particular department, that are so bad, they compromise patient care. After administration tried and failed to sack them, they have been "reassigned" to clerical tasks. The union is quite strong at this VA, in addition to regular civil service protection.

So they show up five days a week, shuffle some meaningless papers, create reports nobody reads and play on the computer most of the day. But they are still in the organizational chart of the department that dumped them and that's the routing department for their paycheck. They'll never be promoted, unless they take a job at another VA (common in government jobs to shuffle your problem children elsewhere), but they are now effectively walled off.

[89th]

Ha, funny you mention the VA. My wife worked for that dept (less on healthcare, more on vocational and educational services) and that is exactly what I was thinking of when I made my comment. She had (black) coworkers make anti-white racist comments, other coworkers commit fraud, and many other things that would get you booted in a second in a corporate job, but nope... no way the administration can ever go after them. It's infuriating.

I guess one employee did face the music once, this is someone who worked a few doors away from my wife. The office knew what he was doing and only when his crimes became bad enough was he prosecuted. I'm not exaggerating. They all suspected he was sending veterans to quasi-fake schools in order to get kick backs (bribes) from that school: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-veterans-affairs-official-sentenced-11-years-prison-2-million-bribery-scheme

[LuFins Dad]

The more I think about this the more I realize this is a big effin deal. Cruz is absolutely right but his argument is wrong. This has absolutely nothing to do with private companies and employees.

This is the Federal Government. The Federal Government’s business MUST be conducted on Federal property using Federal equipment and resources. There needs to be transparency and accountability from all Federal employees no matter the level. I don’t care if you are simply web designer for the IRS, you need to walk past me and my friends standing in front of the entrance flipping you and the building off. Plus, all of your work and materials are public property and need to be accessible.

There is waaaaayyyy too much opportunity for malfeasance with these people working from their own homes.

[LuFins Dad]

Yeah, this is a full stop unless these employees would like to have their private addresses made available for FOIA requests and audits. Plus agree to allow protests outside of their residence.

[Aqua Letifer]

@LuFins-Dad said in Working Remote:

The more I think about this the more I realize this is a big effin deal. Cruz is absolutely right but his argument is wrong. This has absolutely nothing to do with private companies and employees.

This is the Federal Government. The Federal Government’s business MUST be conducted on Federal property using Federal equipment and resources. There needs to be transparency and accountability from all Federal employees no matter the level. I don’t care if you are simply web designer for the IRS, you need to walk past me and my friends standing in front of the entrance flipping you and the building off. Plus, all of your work and materials are public property and need to be accessible.

There is waaaaayyyy too much opportunity for malfeasance with these people working from their own homes.

Good points.

[Doctor Phibes]

We just told we're going back to working in the office 5 days a week, as of 11/6.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted. They're spending stupid money on a new building, they probably want somebody to work in it, after all.

[George K]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Working Remote:

We just told we're going back to working in the office 5 days a week, as of 11/6.

You knew this was coming, didn't you?

How long will your commute be, again?

[Axtremus]

@LuFins-Dad said in Working Remote:

The more I think about this the more I realize this is a big effin deal. Cruz is absolutely right but his argument is wrong. This has absolutely nothing to do with private companies and employees.

This is the Federal Government. The Federal Government’s business MUST be conducted on Federal property using Federal equipment and resources. There needs to be transparency and accountability from all Federal employees no matter the level. I don’t care if you are simply web designer for the IRS, you need to walk past me and my friends standing in front of the entrance flipping you and the building off. Plus, all of your work and materials are public property and need to be accessible.

There is waaaaayyyy too much opportunity for malfeasance with these people working from their own homes.

No, this is not realistic. Federal employees are known to routinely work remotely in many capacities and in many instances (e.g., FBI field agents, ATF agents, Secret Service agents, CIA agents, military field operatives). Federal government also contract out federal work to contractors not working in federal buildings, some are oversees not even on US soil. The demand that all federal work be done only inside federal buildings is just silly.

And how soon you forget, a pandemic recently forced almost the entire working population that could to "work from home." The US government needs to be able to survive this sort of crisis, and the last pandemic may not be the last one. Working remotely is one way to up the chance of survival.