Comment by jsharf
5 years ago
This is a horrible "experiment".
Duuuude I was just asked to stay at home for 2 weeks because I might have coronavirus (I was in Shanghai "recently"). Sure as heck I'm not going to be productive. (I'm a software engineer in mountain view, and my company has asked me to WFH for 2 weeks)
Following reasons:
- Emotionally it's a tiny bit scary. hard to focus.
- I didn't have ANY time to setup -- a lot of my gear is still at work.
- My team didn't have time to prepare -- we still have daily standups which are hard to join from VC.
In a way that makes the experiment more interesting. You're kind of forced to try make things work under very sub-optimal conditions rather than some artifical text-book version of what we think work-from-home should ideally look like. I reckon that after a few days of poor productivity, you and your colleagues will find ways to be productive despite of these circumstances, and in fact the difficult circumstances might even yield new and better processes and habits.
I guess the only thing is it risks giving the panopticon micromanagement brigade an unfair point when some of these arrangements do go awry.
Depends how big the changes are. If you need to replace a whiteboard for task tracking with Jira, move your standups to a meeting room, and sort out the meeting room microphones that mean you can't always hear everyone well, the person might be back at work before you've finished all the reforms :)
> move your standups to a meeting room
Please don't do that. People should participate using their own PC (or phone, in a pinch). Meeting rooms make it worse for everyone.
They could priority mail you the stuff you need. They can add a laptop into someones hand or just make someone hold the phone for you to join the standup via Skype or something. The only argument I understand is the emotional one
Is this the google equivalent of “I went to a school outside of Boston”?
(Intuit also has a significant presence in Mountain View)
Perhaps but in this case I turned out to correct.
I’m disgusted at myself that I can’t say something similar about my employer.
Are you a software engineer? Just wondering what 'gear' you really need - as opposed to would like - to do your job.
I'm a software developer who maintains very strict separation between work hardware and personal hardware. I keep my work laptop at work and only take it home with me when I know I'll be working from home the next day. It's amazing to be able to commute with no bags or anything on the days I'm working in the office successively. If I was forced to WFH without notice due to Coronavirus and I didn't have my work laptop with me, I would not work at all. Someone would have to drive to my place with my work laptop or agree to pay for a new computer I'd buy for the purpose for those two weeks or so.
Every company I've worked at will not allow me to leave my laptop at the office. They all claim it's something about the office not being safe from theft in some way or another. My bet is it's just a lot easier to get people to be constantly connected if they have their work laptop with them at all times.
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> Someone would have to drive to my place with my work laptop
If sending your laptop by taxi to your home would mean two weeks of work that seems like a very cheap solution.
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Did the company mandate you to use separate laptop or you put your restriction yourself ?
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same. it's good opsec and I refuse to be the asshole that accidentally left their vpn on while streaming netflix.
Even if "regular" productive work is hard, you could use the time to learn. Read books, build prototypes, think about the hard problems you, your team and your company are facing or will be facing.
This feel like a great way to get some thinking time!
It's horrible when the employer don't lower their expectation.
We had some campaign on remote working, actively adjust the toolset/processes/expectations, and we don't usually measure by output so it's a rather interesting experience for now.
Cant you get some one to have that gear sent to you
> Emotionally it's a tiny bit scary. hard to focus.
These are just excuses. If you were going to get fired for not working or someone gave you a bonus of half a million for two weeks of work you’d sure as hell focus.