Weaknesses of Remote Work That You've Experienced?
Posted by Standard-Assistance4@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 104 comments
Hello everyone,
Many people nowadays wish to work from home, especially recent graduates or those with 1 to 3 years of experience. But from the perspective of employers or employees,
what are the disadvantages of working from home?
Is everyone paid the same, or is compensation based on geography?
Thank you.
bwray_sd@reddit
I’m remote, I’m the only remote developer at the small company I work at. Prior to Covid we all did hybrid, then I moved states and my boss let me be fully remote because I had proven myself during covid.
My boss is the shit, never once has he hassled me about not being responsive or if I need to push a deadline, he always fights for us developers to get extra perks, and the rest of the company is actually super relaxed.
I’ll say it: being remote is not ideal, it’s just not the same as working in the office. Anyone saying they’re so much more productive without the distractions of the office are probably not being completely truthful, or they’ve lied to themselves and they actually believe that, there’s probably also a small % of people that are more productive.
Also, being remote means your office is your home and your home is your office…my wife works a conventional job, on weekends the last thing she wants to do is be out of the house alll weekend, but I dread being in my office/house all weekend, and I have a private space in a part of the house separate from the living space, but still, it kinda ruins the homey feel of home.
We all have a slack alternative, that’s the exact same flow killer as someone stopping by your desk to chat, and if you’re remote you need to be responsive on slack to keep up appearances, so it’s a little different than slack in the office where they know you’re at your desk working, if you’re not responsive they can stop by if they need to get an answer immediately.
Remote workers also miss the small little casual convos that build rapport with coworkers, and in many cases those small convos lead to decisions that you’re now out of the loop on.
I do get paid about the same, I’m in Phoenix, company is in San Diego, California. Prior to moving my boss said that they may consider not paying me the same due to the lower cost of living, but they didn’t.
If you’re interested in the pay differences, go check out the posthog careers site! They’ve got a calculator that shows how they pay based on location. (The rest of the site is legit, every company should follow their lead on careers sites).
Anyways, this will get downvoted into oblivion for being an honest review of remote work, but do whatever works for you.
HowTheStoryEnds@reddit
Your post makes little sense: you abhor WFH yet you're the only one in your company doing so, implying that you literally go against the grain 100% of the time. In such a case it's only natural that things so not work as well.
As for 'knowing that we are working': the rest of us has a trail of commits and software that incrementally alters to prove that. Those KPI all of us regardless should hit, yet apparently you don't.
I won't be down-voting you but honest in intent is not what your post seems to be, it reads as if it's written by a non-technical manager.
bwray_sd@reddit
I’m the only one doing it because I simply went to my boss and said “hey bro I want to move to a different state should I start looking for jobs or will you keep me on?” It has nothing to do with going against the grain and everything to do with my wife being offered a great position out of state.
And obviously there’s commits and a litany of other things to prove we’re working, my comment wasn’t about whether or not you’re actually working it’s about the appearance. If a remote employee doesn’t reply in slack quickly people start to wonder because they can’t physically verify that I’m in the office working like an in office employee.
I’m completely honest with my intent, I fully believe that others should have the option to WFH, Amazon is garbage for their recent policy change. I personally just don’t think WFH is all it’s cracked up to be and I’ve seen similar posts agreeing with me in the past.
ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit
Rule 3: No General Career Advice
This sub is for discussing issues specific to experienced developers.
Any career advice thread must contain questions and/or discussions that notably benefit from the participation of experienced developers. Career advice threads may be removed at the moderators discretion based on response to the thread."
General rule of thumb: If the advice you are giving (or seeking) could apply to a “Senior Chemical Engineer”, it’s not appropriate for this sub.
lordnacho666@reddit
The only big weakness is that there's no casual time for learning things.
In an office, you have those free moments when you hang out with people and you learn things like how the code actually runs, and so is actually in charge of the organisation.
Particularly for young people, they won't get that "roll over to the colleague's desk" experience that is often the key to tacit knowledge transmission.
But there are mitigations for that kind of thing if you're aware of them.
Acceptable-Hyena3769@reddit
Make a team zoom room thats always open, and be proactive about pair coding with seniors, and because youre screen sharing, youll learn way more than when you sit at someone elses desk. At least in my personal experience
JonDowd762@reddit
Am I the only one who organizes my life around trying to minimize the amount of time spent in zoom/hangouts/skype whatever? I spend so much time in these calls by necessity and I have no interest in adding more to my schedule. Please stop trying to make WFH a bad knockoff of in-office work. Because I want to be somewhat of a team player I will occasionally join the zoom coffee/beer/water cooler meetings, but really I don't think they accomplish much. Send me to the office or have me work from home but please spare me from the video calls.
anubus72@reddit
How does the team zoom room actually work? Do people just sit in it all day outside of their scheduled meetings? Or only join when they want to pair or talk with their teammates? I don’t really see how it would work better than just starting a meeting when you need to
Leading-Ability-7317@reddit
You can set it up like an office hours kind of thing. Seniors rotate and people can drop in and chat about whatever or pair program with the Senior. At least that is how my team handles it.
detroitttiorted@reddit
On Teams at least you get a notification when someone joins. It’s just easier than sending an invite every time to me, it’s supposed to be very informal. It has always worked well when I’ve seen it
Fabiolean@reddit
I used to work at a 100%-remote firm and we did this! It helps a lot.
no_1_knows_ur_a_dog@reddit
The main negative I've noticed is that people speak less freely on the online work platforms than they would in person. My workplace is fully remote with occasional in-person meetups and the instant we get together IRL people are joking around about the CEO's latest terrible tweets or the latest misguided management idea. But people are less off the cuff on Zoom or Slack.
I'm actively trying to start some kind of solidarity group, with a pie-in-the-sky dream of a union, and sparking those kinds of conversations fully remote is nearly impossible.
Standard-Assistance4@reddit (OP)
If staffs was working as onsite or hybrid for 1 or 2 yrs, and then working from home/remote 100%. I think it will be less negative , staff already connected together, maybe have some private group chat or small party. But if it was to start WFH/Remote at the begining, employees may share less with each other, possibly due to fears of leaking information, being screenshotted, or uncertainty about whether that colleague shares the same mindset or is someone who reports everything to the boss.
theavatare@reddit
My networking has basically become 0.
I no longer know any of the new places in the city.
I read less since I used to read books during my commute.
D4rkr4in@reddit
Hilariously, I read more now that I work from home. I block out a free hour in my workday just to read, whether it is software engineering related or business, philosophy, etc
Progribbit@reddit
yeah, reading during commute, there's some distraction.
D4rkr4in@reddit
They probably take a bus or train, I can get reading during a ride like that
PotentialCopy56@reddit
That sounds like a you problem. How do you learn about new places in the city working in an office??? You can spend all that extra free time reading hand exploring the city but instead you blame wfh. 🙄
theavatare@reddit
If not obvious from my post i use to commute in train to the city now i never go.
PotentialCopy56@reddit
And? Take that time you saved and read at home. Excuses 😂
TScottFitzgerald@reddit
...you can still use the time you save commuting to read books at home though?
theavatare@reddit
Honestly got other things to do with that time. I didn't say it was net negative just some of the weaknesses.
mr_eking@reddit
Honestly, it doesn't sound like a weakness at all. Not commuting means the things that you used to be limited to (during commute time), you are no longer limited to, so you are spending that time doing things you find more valuable. If reading were valuable to you, you'd be doing that still. That's a strength.
matthedev@reddit
The social aspects of the job can be harder to come by, but that's part of organizational culture and can happen for teams in the office full-time too and isn't necessarily true of every distributed or remote team. In my opinion, it's worse to dress in business-casual attire and then commute into an office only for everyone to be staring at a screen without interacting all day anyway (yes, some parts of software engineering obviously involve focused work in front of a computer screen).
Another is, since people are working from home or remotely anyway, it may become normalized for people to jump on anything urgent that pops up at all hours "since people are at home anyway." This again is cultural, though, and can happen for teams that are in the office full-time during business hours, too.
cjthomp@reddit
Write your own blog
ezaquarii_com@reddit
None. Stop looking for RTO justification.
WheresTheSauce@reddit
“None” is a childish oversimplification.
TangerineSorry8463@reddit
"No weaknesses that aren't overshadowed by in-office weaknesses"
Happier?
fasttosmile@reddit
Midwit detected
B-Con@reddit
Every non-trivial decision is a trade-off, which means it has pros and cons. I don't trust any engineering opinion that doesn't acknowledge the existence of any cons.
ezaquarii_com@reddit
This is office politics, not engineering.
WheresTheSauce@reddit
I have a hard time believing you have enough work experience to be in this sub if you actually think this is so straightforward.
ezaquarii_com@reddit
Old man yelling at cloud.
anubus72@reddit
It’s actually not, and you’d know that talking to any real person who isn’t terminally online. There are trade offs, but for most people WFH is better overall
intylij@reddit
It actually saves a lot of time during periods of instability, planning scrambling , and any other stuff that involves quickly pinging ppl or trying to figure out a way forward.
This can all be done remotely too of course and its a problem if you’re doing this all the time. But for some situations folks being physically together can be way more efficient.
missing-comma@reddit
Well, that's for some situations, for the majority of situations, having folks being physically together often means you're wasting a lot of time for diverse reasons on top of adding distractions, making it harder to get things done.
intylij@reddit
Right which is why hybrid is a good option for some, especially if you’re involved in a lot of scoping, planning occurs regularly from project to project.
missing-comma@reddit
That's a good point! Although, I really dislike the hybrid "X days every week" approach.
I'm personally a fan of the model where you only go in person when it's really needed.
I work remotely and part of my work is related to embedded devices. I'm lucky because I have some really competent colleagues in office that can handle the troubleshooting processes when needed.
If this wasn't the case I'd surely have to go to office and I'd be fine with that. It'd be the only way to get the work done.
I could even spend weeks or a month or so going to office every day until we get a product ready for sale or something...
But if you had me on a 1-2 days per week in office, I'd refuse to go any extra day to office to try to fit some schedule that was decided without my input.
fadedblackleggings@reddit
Right. Get some help. Leave us alone.
Standard-Assistance4@reddit (OP)
Hi @ezaquarii_com, I would like to make sure that the new policy Wfh/remote will not bring negagive impact to the company.
kutjelul@reddit
The only disadvantage I’ve noticed is that instead of a little chat that could be had at your desk, lunch, or coffee machine, there are a lot more ‘meetings’ now
chaoism@reddit
Hard to make small talks
I do see the value of seeing people in person. It's like you instantly from some sort of bond once you see each other
That being said, it's not necessary to make things work and shouldn't be used as an excuse for RTO
Financial-Warthog730@reddit
No weakness of remote. You do things in office that you would be doing in 'home office'. Meetings ? - I bet you have a lot of them via Teams - could you not have them in 'home office' ? Standups ? Are you guys touching everyone else penises during this or what? Is in person 'necessary' or video call can make it up ? Tranings ? Is IT in any kind similiar to I dont know- some sports like Football or Volleyball or who knows what where its fucking required to have another person right beside you? From my experience there are only 1 pair of hands on your fucking computer. If you dont know something - you ask google. If you cant solve something - you have meetings you share, you get feedback. So what is this fucking post, some kind of advocacy like- I really like being screwed, paying for commute is so great, and the culture of wasting hours for going to and from the 'office' is so great!
No, it has been proven that the job in information technology is not fucking building a new apartment complex where you have workers, cranes, bricks and everythings needs to be moved physically. The work in this field is by NATURE fucking remote. You actually working remote even when you're in your fucking office. Because you still use chats, networking, everything that can be done from home.
FoeHammer99099@reddit
Zoom sucks, especially if you have more than 3 people in the meeting. There's no replacement for sketching an idea on a whiteboard (and no I don't want to log into Miro then make shitty drawings with my mouse, then get emails every day about someone trying to to look at it)
I'm worried that people who have only worked remote might develop some bad habits. My first summer internship was fully remote and it was an absolute disaster. I really needed to be shown how to be a professional in a way that I think attending a zoom meeting at 10 AM in my underwear and then not talking to anybody for the rest of the day can't accomplish. I'm one of those unfortunate souls who actually does get more done in the office though, so YMMV.
-Quiche-@reddit
This is especially true in R&D. People have touch screens but everyone just seems to prefer to write equations on a whiteboard. In office meetings always seem to convey the nuances of ideas better than on Teams.
apnorton@reddit
I've been happily WFH since 2020. I genuinely think it is a superior experience for getting work done from an employer perspective (e.g. wider talent pool, fewer nonsense meetings, etc.), an employee perspective (no commute/traffic, allows you do parallel tasks for your home like signing for a package or moving laundry through cycles, avoids expensive food while eating out, etc), and a "general society" perspective (better for the environment from commute pollution, doesn't concentrate high-salary individuals in one area driving up CoL, etc).
In the interest of intellectual honesty, though, there are three specific things that have been difficult for me:
However, there's a common thread to all of these: choices that were "automatic" are now "deliberate." All of these problems are fixable, but it just requires someone actually paying attention and choosing to fix it rather than just "letting things happen."
Standard-Assistance4@reddit (OP)
Thanks for sharing. I have some other questions
Do you feel like hiring and firing Remote employees is faster, more decisive, and seemingly less concerned about each other's feelings?
Some people I know who work for foreign companies have been denied their salary. How would you handle this situation?
apnorton@reddit
No. Hiring certainly not --- the focus in all cases is to find people who fit your job requirements. For firing, I've certainly not seen it be faster when WFH vs in-office.
You mean they were assured of a salary, but did not get paid what they were promised? That's lawyer and Dept of Labor territory, regardless of whether you're WFH or not.
Standard-Assistance4@reddit (OP)
Yes,
For example: some people are working for USA/ Europe / etc company, they are from different countries such as India, Malaysia ,etc. As I know, the Law can not touch to employers. As a result, they lost their salary or benefits.
"That's lawyer and Dept of Labor territory, regardless of whether you're WFH or not." You mean that employees is working as WFH for local companies, same country, right ?
gizamo@reddit
I've been Hybrid/WFH for a couple decades, and I agree with this completely. I'd also add that assignments on large teams can get skewed against WFH employees. For example, our fully WFH devs were regularly getting the worst jobs only because it was harder for them to push back on the Project Managers. They often didn't even know they were getting the rough jobs because they weren't in the hallway meetings when random devs would talk with the project managers about which jobs they wanted. That unfair distribution of tasks affected performance metrics, and it took a while for us to figure out why some of our best devs were struggling a bit.
Main-Drag-4975@reddit
Companies that never bothered actively developing their junior devs will find they’re learning even slower than they did in-office.
gizamo@reddit
This really depends on what and how you're training. It also depends on personalities. We've had a lot of WFH devs complete our training modules faster and better than in-office devs. A lot of that boiled down to in-office devs being distracted by meet/greets, networking, schmoozing, etc. Another significant factor was that the in-office devs were learning bad habits from devs who weren't up-to-date on our policies (or who didn't care about new policies). Imo, the pros/cons there go both ways.
Envect@reddit
Companies that never bothered to train their junior devs don't have training modules. They don't even have documentation. They just assign you tickets and crack the whip if you don't complete them on time.
gizamo@reddit
Sure, but if we take their comment literally, the companies that never bothered to train their jr devs won't notice their Jrs are training any differently....because they're literally not measuring it. Their reference for comparison will be complete guess work and fur feelings.
Envect@reddit
Your point seems to be that the original commenter can't make that claim because these companies don't measure performance? Alright.
gizamo@reddit
Not exactly. I'm saying that my point was supplemental to their point, and that your claim that my point wasn't relevant relied on you narrowly focusing only on the literal interpretation of their point. My 2nd comment was pointing out that if you're focusing solely on that narrow window, even that is pretty pointless because there would be no data tied to it.
Envect@reddit
When did I claim that your point wasn't relevant? Maybe you should add soft skills to those training modules.
gizamo@reddit
That was the implication of your initial comment.
My comments were all soft. I was simply helping you understand what you seemed to misunderstand. I hope I cleared up any confusion.
Envect@reddit
Decent joke, I'll give you that.
gizamo@reddit
They were all soft. Dial back your sensitivity and go reread them. There was literally nothing hard about them at all. Best of luck.
Envect@reddit
Excellent advice. Worth taking to heart.
gizamo@reddit
Literally nothing I said was from oversensitivity either, mate. You're grasping at some weird straws.
Envect@reddit
You've been going on about this for several comments now. I can promise you I'm not feeling any kind of way about this except amused.
gizamo@reddit
Palpable irony.
ogscarlettjohansson@reddit
Training junior devs is like a trade apprenticeship, though.
There’s a lot to be learned from them watching others or having them watch you that is lost in remote work.
gizamo@reddit
Kind of, except trades need to be in person because they're hands-on in a physical space.That is, you can't really learn how to nail a board, cut a water pipe, or run electrical cabling by watching someone do it. Eventually, you have to physically do it to learn it. But, with code, you're coding. You can code anywhere.
That said, I'm very biased here. I help run a boot camp (not my full-time job). It's taught both in class and online. Our job placement rates for the in-class and online graduates are basically the same. However, the failure and dropout rates were higher for online. Quality is basically the same among the graduates, tho. Imo, it's definitely safe to say that online learning and work requires a certain personality, and people with that personality tend to do just as well online as the others do in person.
local_eclectic@reddit
As a woman, none. In this industry, I've always been excluded by men from extra-curricular informal events and in person banter. It levels the playing field for me when all the dudes aren't getting together without me.
intylij@reddit
Damn almost every engineer I’ve worked with are more than happy to hang and chill with women co-worker in after hour events, sorry to hear
HowTheStoryEnds@reddit
Eagerness for the wrong reasons can work quite excluding on a social level.
FewWatercress4917@reddit
Everyone has to be aligned to make it work. Some people just naturally gravitate towards in person, and it ruins it for everyone else. This has to start from the top
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
The importance of this isn’t obvious until you work at a company where the core business people gravitate to in-person communication. Then everything remote becomes a difficult uphill battle.
A split like this creates big openings for office politics, too. At my worst WFH experience there was a core group of engineers and PMs who weren’t very good, but could always win arguments and get their way by going into the office for a few days to schmooze upper management.
Every time there was a disagreement, that group would be in office for the next few days. A few days later we’d hear from upper management that the plan of record was conveniently what the in-office group wanted and it was too late to change.
gizamo@reddit
This hasn't been the case for us. Our CTO and some team members are in the office, but most are hybrid, and ~1/3 are fully remote. We haven't had any issues that weren't easily sorted out.
FewWatercress4917@reddit
Yes, I think that is fine. What I meant was everyone is aligned and intentionally doing things and behaviors that ensure success of everyone - whether they prefer to be remote or not. If the CTO prefers in person whiteboarding sessions, then those remote will be at a disadvantage
gizamo@reddit
I see. Thanks for the clarification. That definitely fits with what we've seen over the years. Cheers.
sleepyguy007@reddit
i've got over 20 YOE..... have met my current team once in the 2+ years i've worked for my probably tier below faang company.
I'd say the main weakness, is the networking. Whenever I finally leave this company I don't feel like i'll keep in touch with these coworkers as much as I have some lifelong friends and people who will literally get me a job if I need one that I've met at other workplaces. Its just different when you have a network of people you used to get happy hour / lunches with etc. Hell I don't even smoke now, but I made friends smoking socially with people at work. Thats never happening remote.
I don't need any mentorship or honestly help with programming at this point , but I'd guess if I was fairly junior that would also be severely worse with remote.
Southern-Reveal5111@reddit
Here are some weaknesses I've noticed:
IGotSkills@reddit
It's so terrible to be able to work when I want and where I want. I wish to be locked up in a cubicle where the office people taunt me with their lux 6x8 prison cells
moreVCAs@reddit
There are none. If there are, the benefits far far far outweigh the costs.
gojukebox@reddit
Two downsides I experience personally with 20yrs devx:
Pair programming in person with a group of devs huddled next to each other.
War rooms when things go south.
NowImAllSet@reddit
I'm fully remote. It works really well for me and my management chain, but I think it's not a straightforward win. Some huge disadvantages to remote work:
Because of this, I think that remote work should probably be evaluated case-by-case. And that remote-first employees should be hired with some sort of probationary period. As much as I hate to admit that, I think it's the harsh reality. Once again, I'm fully remote and am a high-performer in my company. But I know others who are fully remote and it's a nightmare trying to get them to do anything in a timely manner.
Sutty100@reddit
I've noticed some people who were previously a bit anxious around others have become quite a bit worse. Previously they might come to a handful of after work events etc. Now you never see these people and even on calls etc their cameras are off and their social skills seem worse.
I think some people benefited from being forced into the office/social situations... Although I'm sure they'd disagree!
NotSoFastSunbeam@reddit
Agree.
I started my career with crippling social anxiety. Working through that at the office often felt miserable, but was in fact exactly what I needed. Over years I actually became known as one of the most approachable and friendly people in the office. Being honest with myself, I've regressed some while working from home the last few years.
Envect@reddit
I've chalked it up to the companies I've been working for as much as anything. One person can't fix a culture of complete disengagement. My skills have suffered as well, but there's only so much you can expect when your coworkers make a plank of wood seem personable.
I don't have any trouble with people outside of tech jobs so it definitely doesn't feel like a "me" thing.
NotSoFastSunbeam@reddit
Yeah, I don't think it's entirely a me-thing in my case either. I have an internal predisposition to being introverted, but being in office surrounded by coworkers built some good social muscles.
Some_Guy_87@reddit
That's me, although I always have my camera on. Wasn't able to attend a single bigger event/party ever since the pandemic due to social anxiety being even worse. On the other hand though, I never liked being at those and just forced myself because that was expected of me. Felt bad days before it, felt bad during it, felt bad after it. So I'm not really sure who was losing anything here in any shape or form.
NotSoFastSunbeam@reddit
I can still absolutely understand why most devs still prefer WFH in the end.
Comp's definitely based on local cost of living at my company.
missing-comma@reddit
Honest question: Do you have a lot of people talking over one another at your workplace or is it usually quiet?
I usually focus better at home, but I mostly attribute this to being able to pick my own background noise.
And we're "forced" to stay on a Discord voice chat all day and whenever someone starts talking I lose productivity, and might as well join in and talk because I cannot really work when people are talking nearby.
When I worked at an office with Excel macros before getting a "real" developer role, people would talk way too much. Like, for real, way too much.
I probably have some attention-related disorder because people could be talking to someone else and it'd steal my focus momentarily, many times a day.
And thus my question: Was this just a workplace problem where people just talks non-stop the entire day? Or was your workplace like this as well?
I wouldn't be surprised that people that seems to prefer in office work just doesn't have to deal with these problems somehow, but I could be wrong, and I'm kind of curious.
Fun thing about the place I work on. We have people both in office and working from home.
Our team lead always says that whenever we are away, we come back quicker than when people at office leaves for any reason or another.
People at the office hangs out in kitchen and other departments for a lot longer than we spend in non-work tasks at home.
And this is not a coincidence, it has been this way for 3+ years now. Whenever I need someone in office for some reason or another and they're away, it really takes longer to get in touch with them.
NotSoFastSunbeam@reddit
I'd say probably a pretty typical level of chatter for an eng department? At least half of folks would have their headphones in and I usually had some good noise canceling ones, but a few times a day there would be a conversation either with me or within a few feet of me.
As much as I miss the office, I think you're right, I definitely balanced it by working from quiet little corners away from my desk too which made things quieter as well. I'm sure it's a matter of balance for everyone, I just had a much easier time finding that balance in the office.
I'm pretty sure I'd be an example of this. I'm rarely far from my laptop when home, but I'd socialize and wander in the office. Can't speak for your coworkers, but it was still a net gain in focus and productivity for me. Walking around and chatting with people about work got me deep in a groove of thinking about work problems.
diablo1128@reddit
This is 100% me. I cannot work in complete silence and I liked the white noise of the office. I solved that by having the TV on when I worked at home, but then I would get distracted some days by an Office marathon on Comedy Central. Being in the office kept me on track more.
NotSoFastSunbeam@reddit
SAME.
2020 I used the TV a lot. Definitely comforting to have some noise. I usually just left cable news on low volume. News eventually became more irritating than enjoyably distracting though.
missing-comma@reddit
Honestly, it's hard to compare since every workplace is different.
Unless you were in-office and then moved to optional work from home while staying at the same job and doing the same work, I cannot imagine a situation where you can fairly compare both without some bias.
If you moved from company X to Y, Y company will have different processes that could be better or worse, at least in some aspects.
Given this, I'd like to highlight one important situation: working from home is a lot better if you're part of some minority groups.
I had a burnout on my first job working with IT support in an university and had a lot of trouble to get things done in my internship writing Excel macros. I did improve a lot to better handle those environments, but it wasn't perfect.
These two experiences impacted so much that I was left wondering if I could never actually find a job without suffering that much, going into yet another of the depression spirals I had back then.
The first job was really toxic and one of the bosses even broke a PC monitor by hitting it on a wall while yelling in someone's face that hadn't finished a report in time for I don't even remember what.
The second one was fine, except people talked the entire day and I couldn't focus at all. My focus would be directed at any small/random conversation and this happened pretty much for all my working time there.
We also had to go lunch together so there was no time to rest from talking or listening to people.
Then, add the fact that they loved to make the usual "guy jokes" about women/gay/drinks/soccer and whatever, and the result was that I felt uncomfortable there every single day.
Now I have a "somewhat successful" career as a developer (3y+) working from home in a startup and I couldn't have been happier.
I'm yet to try different companies like a lot of people here, but just not needing to hide who I am makes me able to work a lot better.
And, I also don't need to be forced to listen to w/e people did or what they ate or how many calories they lost during my work. I'm not interested in that and I hate that I was forced to keep listening to all this random small talk while still having people unhappy at my slow pace caused by the small talks they're part of.
If I do have to give a weakness about working from home though, I guess it's that you end up avoiding certain types of problems and learning less about yourself and how do you react to those situations.
But I do have to wonder, wouldn't it be better if those situations just didn't exist in the first place?
Since well, a workplace is supposed to be a place to get work done, instead of a bunch of other stuff.
NatoBoram@reddit
Managers enforcing clunky tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams instead of Discord, weakening the company culture
Managers pushing for everyone to always be working all the time with unreasonable deadlines, which prevents people from connecting organically like they usually do in office
Remote workers in other countries having sub-par salaries
Managers enforcing Windows, spyware, VPN, MitM, no root and unnecessary hurdles on programmers' computers so they're forced to work slower even if they have expertise to work faster
Managers not prioritizing tasks that would make development faster, like being able to test locally before pushing to dev/prod, even if those tasks would take a month
Managers who commit to
mainwithout making a PRManagers disabling security features like signed commits because "it's unnecessary hurdles on programmers'" when literally every single programmer except them are signing their commits
So in short, remote work is exclusively made a problem by management because they want it to be a problem. I've worked at a place where it was completely solved because management wanted it to be solved and it was glorious.
anubus72@reddit
What makes discord not clunky compared to slack? In my experience discord is literally the same as slack, just not marketed to business
NatoBoram@reddit
The UI is completely fucked when you compare it to Discord, particularly around the channel list. Discord separates private messages from channel messages, so it's clearer on that front, too.
Slack doesn't support voice channels like Discord, so you can't just hop into a #coffee voice channel before the daily and chat with coworkers there. Voice channels are a big part of solving most problems with remote work.
marmot1101@reddit
Cons I’ve seen: a small subset of people want in office and are less collaborative remote, a bit of team cohesion loss, some people burn out because of lack of disconnection, and onboarding full remote was more stressful than in office(imo)
Mitigations: hire remote capable people, have team off sites, emphasize taking time off to recharge, onboard in person.
Remote is superior IMO, but there are minor difficulties.
If a company wants to set pay rates by geography that’s a major negative to me. I wish to be paid for value delivered rather than what lifestyle the company thinks I deserve. That said, every marmot has his price and if the pay is great I might overlook that one.
Powerful-Ad9392@reddit
Erosion of company culture, and knowledge sharing. You miss learning about what other people are working on, trends, lessons, details about the business, upcoming projects and sales pursuits. In WFH you're kind of in a tunnel.
Daveypesq@reddit
So I’ll preface this with the fact that I love working from home and don’t see myself taking a job where it isn’t the standard.
That being said, when I look back to earlier in my career, I think of how much I learned by just being present in some off hand conversations between more senior devs. Could be by the coffee machine or could be two devs talking near me on a code review. Definitely not a universal one but I don’t think I’d be where I am if I did it all again remotely.
grimdark-@reddit
Remote work can be a very positive experience for some, but can also be very negative experience for others, so I would argue that the "weaknesses" mostly depend on the individual and their personal needs.
For example, some people actually like going into the office every day because they personally need that direct, face-to-face social interaction. They feel very isolated otherwise, and it can have a profound negative effect on their mental health. While I am a remote worker and have not personally experienced this, I have seen many people on Reddit talk about these feelings of isolation. (Then again, I am introverted, so who knows.)
If you want me to list objective downsides though, I don't think that is possible. Any potential downsides would depend on the company, the specific role, your remote location, etc.
levelworm@reddit
One weakness is that employees slowly get used to WFH and planned their life around that, then get shocked when the employers turn the table.
Nowadays I simply cannot RTO 5 days a week.
danielt1263@reddit
Negative impacts on the company:
Things to watch out for:
GiorgioG@reddit
The only real weakness is that companies use RTO as a way to lay off people without calling it a layoff.
SweetStrawberry4U@reddit
The biggest disadvantage of working remotely is the "Knowledge Sharing", particularly that is shared only on a "need-to-know" basis.
body-language and facial expressions convey a lot more between-the-lines.
turning on video during remote meetings helps to some degree, but no one wishes to practice that anyways.
Nevertheless, aside from all the "need-to-know basis Knowledge", practically every role responsibility associated with Software Engineering is just, use the internet to write-code and / or receive updates from reporting-people and pass-it-along onto the internet, so the demand to not have to commute several hours a day only to work on the internet is equally affirming.
NicoleEastbourne@reddit
I LOVE working from home.
I’ll grudgingly admit that missed not being able to go out to happy hours with my team though. I’d still get together with my one local colleague, but I obviously couldn’t get crunk with my colleagues in a different state or countries.
PositiveUse@reddit
Compensation is based on geography. Your colleague from Vietnam doing the same work as you won’t earn as much as you living in some high cost area.