My last job made me come into the office infrequently. I can say without any shadow of a doubt that I was AT LEAST 4-5x more productive at home than in office. Any time I came in it felt like I was throwing a whole day away just so I could be distracted by conversations about what we’re having for lunch or hearing some story about a weekend or business trip that isn’t relevant to me in any way. Maybe I’m just not friendly? Maybe I just like working too much? But in office definitely isn’t for me.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

totally buy that. but that makes all the sense, we are all different. i feel the opposite. my conversations help me solve unique problems or think about things differently :)

@pickyourteethup

Жыл бұрын

I feel the same, but there are also problems that are solved much quicker in person. On balance, as with all things, a mix of both works quite well. It is frustrating when you need head down time in the office and can't get that flow, but similarly sometimes I'm spinning my wheels at home on a problem that someone walking past my screen could probably fix in seconds.

@_Lumiere_

Жыл бұрын

​@@ThePrimeTimeagen it probably depends on the culture at the office as well. If everyone is driven and work-oriented, then it might be more productive to be surrounded by those people.

@nextlifeonearth

Жыл бұрын

@@_Lumiere_ also whether you're used to working in the office. If you only come once a month colleagues may be more inclined to see how you're doing and to catch up. I've got it both ways, I get distracted with colleagues, sure, but I'm not immune to distractions at home either. And no matter how much the ducks on my desk try, they will never replace a colleague to spar with on issues. Main thing for me is to just yell my question across the room and someone answering it. Or if I sigh really loud that a colleague just comes over and happens to know a solution to the cause of my sigh. I love those guys.

@badstep495

Жыл бұрын

not being in the office also means that people miss out on a lot of crucial information, which they would otherwise overhear from conversations between others. also the need for meetings is higher when working remotely, which reduces productivity. I personally found that the operation is much more efficient when everyone is at the office. I see it from a team lead perspective.

I personally hate working full remote, it feels like I'm just deteriorating on my freaking couch

Windows user... (Sent from my windows machine)

@hexerei02021

Жыл бұрын

Windows is just Linux but better

@joshbarghest7058

Жыл бұрын

@@hexerei02021 b8

@DaxSudo

Жыл бұрын

I’ve taken shits better than the NT kernel.

@hamesjetfield0

Жыл бұрын

This but unironically.

@CYXXYC

Жыл бұрын

I installed Arch (btw) with sway and so on on my 2013 laptop so I can remote to my home PC and use proper Windows

I'm in game dev, and I'm currently a junior working in a full remote company. From my experience, mentorship is practically impossible, communication is difficult, and most of the time I don't even know what everyone else is doing. We have a virtual office space and weekly catch-up meetings and such, but I think that full remote is pretty much nothing but downsides, for juniors at least. Me being 2-3x more productive isn't very useful when my productivity is at 25% of a mid level engineer.

@ianjcv

Жыл бұрын

Oh, and being in game dev, creativity is kind of an important factor, yet it's extremely difficult to be creative in that setting.

@badstep495

Жыл бұрын

I’m in a different industry, but I had that exact same feeling when we all worked remotely. I found that after the pandemic everyone sort of automatically returned to the office. Working together side by side and discussing the details of the product you are working on is incredibly effective and impossible to do remotely. You find that remotely, people work individually without collaborating/educating each other much. People get stuck with tasks and don’t ask for help.

@RickGladwin

Жыл бұрын

I haven’t worked in game dev. From what I understand the development workflow is a bit different from other software engineering. In places I’ve worked we solved the mentoring issue with a ton of pair coding - juniors are encouraged to ask questions or pair code if they get stuck, seniors are encouraged to offer pair coding or group coding sessions whenever it makes sense. Is pair coding possible/helpful in game dev?

@autismspirit

Жыл бұрын

@@RickGladwin I haven't really seen pair coding even mentioned in game dev circles, and I don't really see it helping much. What kind of issues would pair coding solve? Catching mistakes in patterns/architecture early and explaining them?

@RickGladwin

Жыл бұрын

@@autismspirit yeah, or even just cooperative problem solving, depending on how senior/junior the coders are. Or one person will know how to solve a similar problem or use a particular function or package in the language.

The Open-Source companies like Red Hat were working remotely far, far before the pandemic. Far before tools like Video meetings were a thing. When you work remotely, you should also work asynchronously. Asynchronous work is done using tools like email, documents, threads etc. In that way, taking decisions takes far more time, but on the other hand, those decisions as so much more well-thought-out. And it pays off, more and more, with the life of the project. In the end, it may turn out it is far quicker to decide on something important asynchronously in 2 weeks, than deciding on the face-to-face meeting in the office.

@rasnauf

Жыл бұрын

You’d think the heads at tech organizations would grok the concept of async working (:

My company has just gone to 1 mandatory day in the office per week, and they have openly stated that this day is a productivity write off. They want people to collaborate, socialise, have conversations, and if you get a chance, do some work around those activities. It's an interesting take, I personally would prefer not being forced in, but at least they are not under some illusion of productivity gains by being in the office.

@JackDespero

Жыл бұрын

If they truly pay me to socialize, I will socialize. However most of the time that means "we will give you a work load for 5 days, but one of the days you are forced to socialize and thus decrease productivity, so we expect you to do the work of 5 days in 4 days instead" and I ain't doing that. Boss, give me a 4 days work load and I will party at the office on Friday or whatever you want, but do not treat us like we were idiots that cannot see beyond your cheap tricks.

@sacredgeometry

10 ай бұрын

@@JackDespero Yeah that is a poisoned chalice. I worked at a consultancy once with a fantastic social culture. People were always going out to eat lunch and having a few beers multiple times a week, BBQs were had in summer, events were frequent, the standard Friday beer O'Clock etc. Often these things would happen in the middle of the day and then when people would come back to work, productivity would nose dive. Often even if you didn't participate because the open plan office would get quite rowdy. So it was fun if you didn't have any work to do. Middle management were especially fond of it. For the engineering team ... deadlines were quite tight and they were traditionally organised back to back. And I dont mean that you would be on one project for a sprint or two and then another. Often (at most levels of seniority) your weekly schedule would be a patch work of work of sometimes hourly slots that could be on completely different projects, on completely different products, under completely different management and for completely different clients, in completely different languages or stacks. It was also planned in a psuedo-waterfall sorta way so you would often just get thrown work with not much thought or care about how it was going to work and sometimes be forced to do the same to the next step in the process. Which, as much as it sucked for dev must have been especially painful for test. Suffice to say this unmovable wall of work didn't much like work overrunning it was a miracle that anything got done at all in the company. For such an on surface, relaxed and pleasant place to work it was unnecessarily stressful.

The video ended with a poll showing that only 5% prefer Full Office, and that was the prevalent option before the pandemic, now is more common half and half, that show that the full office was not a rational decision, but only one made by tradition and fear of change by CEOs that don't understand tech workers.

@chebrubin

Жыл бұрын

Work at home is a disease.

@BusinessWolf1

Жыл бұрын

​@@chebrubin for profit margins

@La0bouchere

Жыл бұрын

lol@ using a twitch poll about peoples feelings as evidence for what's better for solving problems.

@josda1000

Жыл бұрын

Just remember, Tom probably worked remotely and came up w JDSL.

@ScottBrown124

Жыл бұрын

​@@chebrubinA "disease"? That's an insane way to describe it holy shit.

We do 2 days a week in office, and that feels great. Allows us to sort out all those things that are just smoother IRL, as well as connect better as a team, while still letting people be mostly flexible. Though, we used to do it this way before the pandemic too, as a smaller company.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

this i think is the ideal

@u9vata

Жыл бұрын

@@ThePrimeTimeagen Totally not ideal for those who want to live in countryside yet want to work for / or with those companies. Before companies realized there is totally no issues with remote all time because covid had shown them its no big deal as they thought I won't ever go jump in a car to travel 40km twice daily. Just not. Neither ever would go live in city - above which I literally preferred daily travel of 2+ hours anytime before too. Not even if they would pay me 2x times the money. Just not. There were companies that tried to hire me onsite for 3x money and I just say fuck off. There were some who do the "one day per week in office" shit but from my perspective its the same need to need a car, need to waste hours of my life travelling and driving - just no. It is not worth it.

@patrickc.6183

Жыл бұрын

That's the way to go 👍.

@javierflores09

Жыл бұрын

@@u9vata context, it is mainly talking about those who have an office in a place somewhat near your house, preferably in the same city. If you don't then of course remote work is way better. That said, had your office been around 3km away from your house, would you still not prefer it?

@u9vata

Жыл бұрын

@@javierflores09 Sure, but let me give you more context: There are countless people who only live at some location because working at some company - at that location! This is especially true the bigger or more renown given company is! So what you have seen as norm for people being "close to the office" is partially because they are force moved to being close or living in a city basically. Ask around how much percentage your coworkers are not from a city originally or not from that city to see this yourself.

I’m a junior and have only ever worked remote. I love remote work because of the lifestyle it enables me to have. Everyone I work with is happy with the arrangement and I don’t see any attempts being made to return happening anytime soon. That said, I feel like my progress definitely is slower than what it would be if I were working in-office. Being around other devs to receive mentorship would be huge for me, and at times I feel like I’m missing out on growth. That said, I still am experiencing growth and absolutely love the lifestyle I have now that I am no longer tied down to any one geographical location.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

this is a healthy take :) i think you are right. some people just excel in remote and do well, but its also good you recognize the other side. again i don't think there is a one size fits all approach

Жыл бұрын

I have the same experience, I've been a junior for a bit more than half a year, and being able to work remote for most of the time is the only way I've been able to juggle working with uni and still have some free time. Also, being more of a lone wolf programmer that takes things into my own hands, I haven't really had issues growing and I don't feel like going to the office would help me that much. That being said, after I graduate I intend on being in office once or twice per week, at least to socialize and bond with my team.

@-Jason-L

Жыл бұрын

Juniors don't know what they don't know :)

@sacredgeometry

10 ай бұрын

Your seniors should be available to pair on things and give you mentorship. If they arent even when you are reaching out then there is a problem that you should raise to them and then to the business if it doesnt improve.

I have been struggling myself trying to figure out the pros and cons with remote and in office work. I'm currently working mostly remote and only going in the office like once a month and it's really comfortable, way too comfortable even. Every day at home is exactly the same, and I feel like in like 20 years I'll look back and think I lived a very monotonous life. By staying at home every day we give up so many random events, encounters and opportunities that might happen by just going outside. I think this is kind like a compounding effect, you don't really notice it in the present, or even in the span of a few years, but along decades it can make an enormous difference. The same can be said for companies, there are a lot of companies that went remote and are doing fine, but who knows what it will look like in the long run. You should also take into account how far you live from the office and how is the culture. I've been in workplaces with shitty culture or long commutes and I'd definitely prefer staying at home in that case. On the flip side, I had jobs with great colleagues and just a 10 min bike from home and those were the greatest work experiences. I even found my girlfriend and a few good friends that way.

@TurtleKwitty

Жыл бұрын

Go to the pub an extra two hours a day instead of being stuck alone in traffic for no reason, you'll have much more 'random events, encounters and opportunities" plus those people that you'd get close to will stick by you after you change jobs

@TheRealCornPop

Жыл бұрын

​@@TurtleKwitty when do you get to see your family?

@TurtleKwitty

Жыл бұрын

@@TheRealCornPop Literally any time I want to. If you think someone with less free hours in the day has time to see their family but someone with mire time wouldn't something is seriously wrong with your math XD

About the office/remote part. Totally agree - it's a give-and-take. I'm kind of junior to middle frontend dev, and I can totally see that working remotely positively affects my productivity, but I'm missing IRL interactions with more experienced colleagues. One of the reasons why I'm here, at your channel - you're that senior engineer that teaches me a lot and helps me to grow as an engineer and a person as well. Huge props for Javascript and `...spread` info that it's heavy on memory, which helped me to look at the programming from a different perspective. Now I'm trying to understand things that I'm working with a bit deeper. So thank you Prime.

Hey Prime, remember me ?? Love from Syria ❤❤❤❤❤❤ I did an interview with respected company in UAE two hours ago. They gave me some coding problems that I did them with ease. Then they asked me some question about JavaScript event loop, optimizing API Calls, and React Component Life Cycle.... I did answer them correctly but my answers weren't complete. I did as you said and asked them at the end of the interview in what area I did struggle and they told me that there are looking for a more senior engineer. I'm waiting now so they hit me back. I hope I would pass to the next stage. I just wanna thank you so much for the motivation the other day. And wanna ask if there is some advice where I can strengthen my skill of answering theoretical kind of questions

@SEOTADEO

Жыл бұрын

I remember you hahaha

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

really appreciated the update! with your follow up on what should you do next? Well, where were you weak on the interview? The interview is giving you direction on where you should go if you want a job _like_ that

@MayyasNakhli

Жыл бұрын

@@ThePrimeTimeagen Ok got it. Thanks again ❤❤❤❤❤❤

When the pandemic started, I felt remote work *really* fit me well. However, now my situation has changed and I am (mostly) fulltime at the office as I enjoy getting out of the house and interacting with coworkers.

I was one of those interns when the pandemic started. I can definitely agree that it's more difficult to get mentoring while remote, but I think it can be fixed by taking another approach. Having some sort of collaborative space (i.e. a shared IDE or an online whiteboard) is a lot better for learning IMO. You don't get the same personal interaction, so you're certainly losing some of the social benefits, but I honestly think it's more effective if done correctly. Unfortunately, most people don't want to take the time to do it correctly, since it's already seen as a chore by more senior people.

@jasonwhite5578

Жыл бұрын

It is definitely more effective if done correctly, well said. As a mentor of junior devs at my current job, I'll say this, if you're at a place where the people above you don't take the time to reach out to you and provide mentorship and encouragement, don't stay there. Don't let anyone ever tell you that being remote is any type of excuse for laziness when it comes to providing you proper mentoring, it's not. The good ones (senior devs) will be encouraging in whatever the work format is, because whether it's remote or not, mentorship is still work that takes effort.

When remote work became a think because of the pandemic, I was like "Wow!!! Best thing in the world!!!!!!!". As I am introvert and my social interactions are awkward. I thought it was THE thing for ME. But I feel something is lost. Now after the pandemic, we have choices, like full, hybrid or remote, but it took my two years to decide to go sometimes in the office. It got so convenient that I would wake up at home and work there, no interactions (except chat/zoom calls), no one's checking on me, no time wasted on travelling to the office, etc. So, much that while I know I should take the hybrid, even for 1 or 2 days per week, I always postponed it because it felt nice to not have to. Eventually I did. 2 days per week, then 1 day per week (the negative force of laziness). The other negative thing is that even if I go, sometimes it's just me or maybe 1-2 persons (and usually no devs, just other departments :) So sometimes I am like "why bother?". But at least it does good psychologically if you do the morning walk to the office, get out of your home for a while. Compared to working on home office, then after work doing other things in the same office on home PC, from gaming/internet to continue coding on your own hobby projects :) It feels so weird. Last time I stopped going to office for months, also because of the cold weather. Now I am considering it again. Remote work does have it's drawbacks even if you are an introvert or socially awkward. p.s. Productivity for me was about the same, whether in the office or remote btw.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

agreed. and socializing is not just a skill its also a needed human experience and its easy to avoid it (for whatever reason that is) and i don't think it does us one bit of good to do that.

I am a bit late to the party but. For me it is a mixed bag. I have tasks like "bug fixing" that is easier done alone then in the open office with everyone around me potentially disturbing my thought process. But when it is about developing a strategy to solve a complex issue sometimes written by different people or even different teams ... that's horrible to communicate in home office. Edit: I love working with a Whiteboard as a team.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

Agreed

@raphaelamorim

11 ай бұрын

Unfortunately offices and people don’t come with a mute button. Noise-cancelling headsets can only do su much :)

“ more ideas in office, more productive remote “ pretty much sums it up

My company was forced into remote work and they embraced it. HOWEVER, it's a ~20-25 person company, a lot easier to manage.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

agreed

I'd actually not mind going to office once in a while, I miss the social aspect and actually getting out of the house is nice. The thing is, my company is in a city 5hrs away so theres no way to do that. I think that might be the case for a lot of people.

I agree with the article insofar as that refusing the option of remote work seems bullheaded. While remote work is not the best for everyone, it is the best for a lot of people, and you're either cutting those people out of your potential pool, or hurting their productivity if they already work for you and just bite the bullet and come into the office currently.

Sounds to me like the ideal is a split. Some time remote some time in the office. Get the time benefits of not having transport time and a setting you can focus in, plus the benefits of the office where ideas can flourish and collaboration can be coordinated better

Thank you for having this discussion! I work remote for a great company, but also feel that lack of mentorship and the ideas/knowledge you get from just every day convos. I think a hybrid approach is ideal. Maybe add some light alcohol consumption and call it “Creative Fridays” haha. Love you bro thanks for the content, your energy is so motivational! Edit: didn’t finish the video when I wrote this, but then heard your take on creative time on Wednesday as soon I pressed send. Agree overall, I’ll stress the light alcohol consumption part then 😂

In most cases work in office looks like that: Drink coffe all day OH s**t! Almost 5pm and so much work left! Do the work in a hurry from 5 pm to 8 pm and ask for compensation for overhours. I've never seen corporation that works differently unless remote work is in place with planning, time tracking, task orientation etc. If work is done remotely all things must be written, not just said and forgotten. Teams who learn how to use tools like jira, a k etc are way more productive than teams that communicate only verbally in office.

In a company where I worked remote they had a practice, make random calls with other coworkers even if they weren't on your team, just to have conversations and get to know them. You know, a watercooler of sorts. I loved that, I have tried that with other companies, and people like it because is the socialization we lack. In another company there was an agreement and that required to be pretty much describing your activities and asking questions with people on a team channel in slack, no individual convos and we had games once a week. In another company there was no standup because the CEO thought standups are a waste of time so the company had an app for that, can't remember the name right now, so in my team we had a meeting to discuss ideas and the tickets, it was actual planning.

I started my current (first) programming job as an intern last spring, basically full-remote. I don't think it has categorically been a negative for me like you say in the video, but I do think it made it a lot harder to build working relationships with my coworkers, though asking for help is something I generally struggle with, so I'm sure that also has something to do with it. Overall I enjoy working remote, and I am starting to get to know my coworkers better so it has been improving. I'm quite introverted so starting new jobs in general is tough for me.

@pickyourteethup

Жыл бұрын

Getting to know people over chat is a real skill, you can actually build really strong relationships via chat. It just doesn't feel as authentic until one day you realise you know more about them than they ever would have shared out loud in an office. Then again I might just be really good at getting people to overshare.

My current job is amazing in the way we built remote workflow. We actually sitting in discord channels on work server, and we often just casually chat and discuss ideas like it was in office. Also quite often we just sit and everyone muted and we work hard, but I think it’s like remote*office mix, where everyone connected, but everyone at home at the same time

The problem with half & half I see is that you might still not see a lot of ppl that you're "out of sync" with (aka they are in office when you are remote). It also eliminates the biggest benefit of remote: not having to live close to the office. What I'd actually like the most is working mostly remote and meet-up for 2-3 days straight, maybe at certain points of a project (milestones, kickoffs etc). These meetups could be every 2 weeks, once a quarter, or whatever. Really would depend on the team/project. But these would allow for building relationships and sparking that creativity at least in some concentrated times.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

yeah, i don't think there is a solid answer here. i don't want to live in the valley, i live in South Dakota (about as opposite as you can get) so... i work remote 100% but i went from 100% in office to 100% remote for netflix and it is definitely different

We have a mixed scheme where we go 2 or 3 days to the office and the other days are remote. That's the best mix for me in my opinion.

I think for seniors, remote work has almost no negatives. For me, collaboration over video call and Slack is easier and more effective than in person meetings. So far in my experience the in office people often have noise, and sometimes internet connection issues. I think it could be argued that there are bad aspects for interns and juniors, because they might need more help with the physical setup of their laptops or workstations. Though that part has never been true for me. I've been building and installing my own computers since I was a child. At this point I've worked at my current job for 5 years, and never met any of my coworkers in person.

@walidchtioui9328

Жыл бұрын

Help with workstation is absolutely underrated, especially if the given laptop is so messed up and you can't do anything about (because you're simply not allowed too). I'm going through that at the moment :(

I think the 'location' argument is being slept on. Closest city that's big enough for me to have a tech job in is 1.5h car drive away from me, obviously I've could have moved on to live in the said city, however with ever-increasing living costs it's not really worth it to me, especially that I'm living with parents and the house is basically mine as I'm gonna inherit it. I live in a suburban area that blends with countryside, it's peaceful, living costs are low and the landscape is beautiful, I would never trade it for the noise and rush of a big city. I also have high-speed internet so remote work is an ideal choice for me.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

i live in South Dakota, out of the city limits. we live similarly :)

I used to be full time office, but moved to full time remote due to my fiance getting a job 8 hours away for which she has to be in the office full time. We now live in a small town and tech isn't a big thing here. I love all the pros of remote work (no commute, better work life balance, etc.), but I can't explain how much I miss the people at the office. Not even my current company specifically. I just miss chatting to people about things related to tech...

I currently work with a remote mentor primarily because we got to know each other organically and just drifted geographically. We use tools like Figma and Miro for exchanging complex architectural concepts and workflows. We've even started building our own collaboration tools. You just have to be aware of the limitations of the individuals in your organization and figure out how they can be leveraged as strengths instead. A remote worker can be housed anywhere with any cost of living. If the pay is consistent, that allows for massive flexibility of lifestyle. If that package comes with an enhanced collaborative environment, I'm signing up for it every time as a business owner.

A problem in the in office vs remote debate is that we are taking a workplace setting that is decades old and has been studied inside and out to be improved and comparing it to a setting that a large number of companies were forced into in order to survive. Companies were spinning their wheels just trying to figure out how to make it work. As time goes on, better tools and policies will be created that mitigate the current negatives that remote work present. Better communication tools, better HR onboarding policies and procedures, better ways to mentor.

All of that impromptu creativity and spontaneous collaboration Prime is talking about - in many companies this does not happen. You book a conference room and go on Zoom, in the office, with remote contractors on your team. You also can't go talk to another team because it's an open plan and you need to stay quiet. You check the other team's calendar and book a meeting. Does this completely negate all the benefits of in-office work? Yes. Does the management still try to push you into the office? Also yes.

Not too long ago I started a new job (almost fully remote) where I had to learn a lot of things from scratch.. I found an excellent mentor outside of my team (strictly speaking even outside of our company as they are a contractor) with whom I regularly communicate via teams videochat. I don't think I would have had the same level of easy exchange with that person if I was in a office frequently.

Cracking me up. "What is it! Shaping up or getting real?!"

It's hard for me to see any of the solutions as a definitive one, because there's a huge shift in paradigm between the two. I personally work better with pressure on me because I become too distracted on my own, so having a place where I know It's dedicated to work alone is very helpful for my hyperactive brain. Yet I can see why people love so much remote work because I also like it a lot, because despite my boost in productivity under pressure I'm also a huge introvert that don't like small talk, even less in working hours. At the end of the day the best a CEO can do is give both options yet not enforce fully any of them. PS: Also i don't work in tech, nowhere near, I'm a sound designer and music composer for videogames yet I love these videos lol

In one job I was working remote in the morning avoiding all the traffic and worked in the office in the afternoon, 4 and 4 hours. I get to the office right at noon and then go to lunch and socialize with the coworkers, we were working with different clients and different technologies. It was fun, and I could do it because the company was 20 minutes walking from my home. I live in Mexico city in a 15 minute neighborhood.

I also haven't read the basecamp books but I get the feeling when the author of that piece talks about remote work they are talking about allowing remote work not necessarily about going full remote. I do believe there are benefits of being in the officer particularly for certain tasks but the majority of tasks require deep concentration which can be better at home depending on your home situation (do you have other people who will also be there?) Where I work we went full remote for the pandemic and people were talking about how it was here forever and now the administration is doing everything they can to eliminate all remote work as much as possible with very little flexibility... hurray!

I hate the "either/or" premise. It's about as useful as saying "is X a good language?" or "is Y a good technology?" For what? For whom? I've been primarily remote for about 25 years. It's awesome. Sometimes I do onsite gigs. They can be fun. For a while. But remote is my happy place. I can find time to socialize, even to "work socialize" (trade ideas, etc.) with all that time I save not commuting, not getting interrupted, not dragging ass because I had to get up too early for my natural rhythm. There are some people that love the office and need the office. There are some people that hate the office and need to be remote forever. There are some people who are adaptable. All of these "remote doesn't work" articles, though, are driven by C-suite execs who, I bet, have commercial real estate in their investment portfolio if you peel back the covers 🤣. No time for their bullsh*t.

If you were programing in the mid 0's you know of basecamp - right? I thought their books are almost required reading for leads and higher more 'business adjacent' roles - though I have only read 2 of the bunch.

I started my junior position fully remotely and had to generally work longer hours to figure things out on my own.

I’m a senior software engineer who’s been working remote-first for over 13 years. This discussion has opened my eyes to some of the challenges for juniors and interns getting the support and mentorship they need in a remote context, so thanks for that. Folks keep bringing up problem solving that they find easier in person. Can someone give examples of solutions and innovations that have been worked out in person that they think couldn’t have been done through a different collaborative setup? I love remote and hate commuting, but I’m also ND AF, so there are unique downsides for me working in-office.

Remote work makes it harder to interact? Wish I knew because we use this newfangled thing call Teams by Microsoft. It’s a software application that allows us to communicate with each other. They even have cameras so we can look at each other faces. It’s an incredible new technology perhaps you haven’t heard of it yet. It doesn’t allow us to smell each other so yeah that’s the disadvantage

Where I work we can choose IF and WHEN to go to the office and although I prefer to work fully remote I personally think this is the best option for a company because everyone can do what feels best for them and no one feels forced

3 Main reasons to mandates to Returno to office: 1. Board members and investors have high exposure to commercial real estate investments 2. Manager and Executives want to be remote, but are not willing to do that across the company. So, everybody will return and exceptions will be given for remote productive workers 3. Micro Managers are freaking out not knowing what’s happening New junior employees need more interaction. Offsites are good for this

Hot take: Any organization whose DevOps pipeline doesn't allow for secure remote collaboration isn't going to survive the next three to five years.

My best ideas some from chatgpt. That's why I remote work...and the ability to sleep during townhalls.

Primes point makes sense that remote work for juniors / new ppl needing mentorship is a detriment. I am currently the new person in the company (3 months now) and I still hate going into the office, cause I don't like being around people. But I suck it up and still go because it is the practical and efficient thing to do, to mentor a new person to the company. Once I'm situated and am fully productive and understand everything maybe in 6 months then I can start doing remote work from time to time (we have to request remote work in writing beforehand and if its approved then its for only a certain amount of time). And no I'm not a new programmer, I worked for 5 years in measurement technologies development and started to learn programming 16 years ago :). But in a Logistics company I am new because the field the company works in is not something I got experience with. TL;DR: In Office mentorship is the best solution for new people. After that hybrid imo.

Hybrid is best imo, once to twice a week in office is great if you can swing it. I will say working remote during the pandemic was a big part of what got me into software. I love the autonomy

Start of this just had me thinking of the song Epic by Faith No More. What is it, what is it, what is it, what is it.

I was an intern for a company where I was encouraged to go in office and I lived 10 minutes away, but my entire team was full remote so if I went in I would never see them. I was definitely more productive at home vs in office mainly because I have my desk, monitors, better chair, no distractions etc. and I also learned a good amount. I know other interns who were in office and ended up falling behind because they would just talk to each other and there were no team members who would keep them on task. I think I would prefer hybrid though with a team that shows up at the same time

I have mentored several junior devs. Some in person some remote. I had shifted to remote work a couple of years before the pandemic. While I agree remote work isn't perfect, I think it's mostly an issue of who it's for than where or why. Some people are really better when working on their own terms, others not so much. As far as mentoring goes what I feel is lost is maybe some part of the emotional support you need to give to help juniors break through their issues, however where it's really good is pair programming. I mean I broke my back standing next to many a dev's screen walking them through problems, having the ability to both be comfortably seated, in a silent environment, being able to point out their mistakes and your own without having a manager jump to wrong conclusions based on what your saying... Those are all pros in my book. Talking about code without the urge to type myself allows juniors to better conceptualize what they are doing and understand how I conceptualize it. And I don't have many anymore, but being able to just code through boring meetings on my loud ass keyboard instead of politely sitting and listening to managers argue about a secondary design issues during the technical meeting is just priceless.

I miss being in the office so much... It's where I got most of my socialization, I've been almost completely isolated since the pandemic and i switched jobs to twitch during this time but live somewhere without a lot of twitch presence so it's not really even worth going to the wework office here. I keep meaning to though (2 years in i still haven't) to give it a shot because I don't like feeling so disconnected, but I just don't want to deal with the disappointment when I find out I'm literally the only one there. At the same time, nobody on my team lives here so it would really just be working from an office with nobody I know, even if people do go to the office. Edit: I guess I should talk of productivity too. If I'm working on boring drone work I'm more productive from the office but if I'm passionate about the project I'm working on I'm much more productive from home since I'm more likely to hop on at all hours of the night when inspiration hits.

I think that a lot of the "problems" with remote work would be fixed with a change in culture that would take a couple of years. Just like it took many years to reach to the current working culture (very different from that of even the 2000s). However, it did not work in 6 months, so "it can never work". That is BS. You do not need to communicate via Slack. If you want to talk with someone, make a Teams call. Heck, I teams call my coworkers even when we are in the same building, just because I do not want to walk up to the next story or because in a Teams call we can both share our screens, instead of me having to carry my laptop to have something to show. The only differences are that I have lost all the meaningless conversations because my office mate is bored (usually in the middle of my train of thought). I do not have to go to the super slow water fountain and wait in line for two people to finish, I can just go to my kitchen. I do not have to fight over the room temperature, I can set my own AC. Heck, my office at my home HAS WINDOWS (and I do not mean the OS), something I cannot say for my in situ office. I think that "company culture" is just a capitalist trick to emotionally attach workers to an entity that would chew them up and vomit them the moment that they can no longer produce enough of a surplus to be stolen. Your company is not your friend, so do not allow it to try to entangle you with emotions in a fully business environment. You only owe your coworkers respect and cordiality, not being their friends. I choose my friends, I do not want to be forced to be friends with people just because we are forced to share a space. I have had many friends who I met at work, but that was MY choice. I am their friend after work, on our free time. During work, I am just another coworker. I just want to do the job for which I am being paid and get the fuck out. I do not gift multibillion companies with free labour (including emotioanl labour), they take enough of my surplus already. I entertain a couple of minutes of catching up with coworkers about their children and pets, but I do not want to waste a whole hour talking about something personal with someone with whom I have no personal connection, and then having to work an extra hour to compensate. I think that that is the fear of companies, that remote workers will emotionally detach themselves from the companies and will stop giving free labour because of that. They fear that workers will treat work as work instead of life. "It is just business", according to them, should only apply when the company decides to lay off 10k people, not when those 10k do just their job (they call that "quiet quitting", which is the stupidest concept ever. "It is just doing your job and nothing else", so... doing your job??).

I like work in office and in-person interaction, but i also like to live in remote places. All decent tech companies are based thousands miles away from my lovely seaside small town.

5:50 man! That expression of yours. Love it!

When I'm on Windows I always disable all system sounds. Actually I do that for any OS.

How are you using i3 on Windows? Or that's a VM?

4:11 Not only that, depending on the type of person, Remote Working may or may not work for you (same goes for office work) leading you to hate it.

i worked as a junior developer, 3 months in office and 4 remote, i wouldn´t change the amount of fun, growth, stress and competitiveness i had in those 3 months for anything

Basecamp is pretty famous for their books among management sorts (I haven't read any of them).

100% you lose out on watercooler talk remotely. I've tried lots of things to make it happen but you just don't get it organically like you do if you're meeting up in person. I just find it really hard to justify 6-12 hours of commute every week for that. If I could teleport to the office I would have 0 issues with doing 100% office work.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

this is such a great take

first 20 seconds needs to be a short. so hilarious XD

It's a *net* positive, not a categorical win across the board. There's some give, some take, but ultimately remote work has more upside, and is improving the more that tech advances and people learn to adapt. I've been working from home since 2010, in a variety of capacities (support, sys admin, dev) and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I do love any excuse to travel to the office and hang with my co-workers.

IMHO one reason why companies fail to adapt to remote work is because they're bit stuck with "team" as their primary corporate building block. Not to say that I know what could replace that but teams just make no sense when teammates can't go get coffee or beers together whenever they want to - it just makes no sense. Thus you need to search for alternative building blocks - it could be things like projects and project based work forces. In non-profit foundation type of orgs actually these non-team based building blocks I believe are fairly common but environment there is whole lot different - they have way less open positions - typically you're expected to contribute towards project for some time before you given an offer to be paid. In corporate world nobody has yet seem figured how build corporate structure without teams as foundational blocks. I believe that likely hierarchy would need to be imposed much more strictly if you drop concept of teams. And hierarchy means you need to rely more on having very competent leadership.

10:52 - This section about mentoring junior folks is 100% correct in my experience.

I ended up being very lucky, I got into an internship that had me work and learn remote instantly. I got mentored by an excellent Senior-SWE and had all the freedom of time and resources to learn on my own. This let me grow exponentially, BUT, the reason for this is that I am someone that plans ahead and learns a lot on his own. I can see why this can cause issues, as too much freedom, and the absence of rules, can be too much for certain people to handle. In that regard, my company and I, landed a jackpot. I am almost done with my internship and I have already took over the responsibility of developing and supporting an SDK that my mentor used to work on, since he left to get his PhD. Over all, I agree with this Video to a 100%

I didn't hated doing on office work, however I did hated wasting 3-4 hours of my day in traffic.

There is a likely possibility that some CEOs just tout the narrative that 'remote work ain't all that great' and obsess about 'returning to work' after applauding record highs in productivity during the pandemic, because otherwise commercial real estate prices would plummet and would affect many other cogs in the economy. There's a reason the office spaces weren't sold out sooner. Medium sized and small companies couldn't possibly survive without this cost cutting, accelerating remote work was actually amazing for the smaller companies.

Watching you at 1.75 speed makes me feel like I am in a fever dream

i think office should be there for people who wants to go there then there should be remote people and you can just fire the ones that are not productive/creative enough and see which group has more employees

I think a good 75% of hatred of in office work comes from being stuck in traffic. I ride a motorcycle in the summer and in office is great. In winter when I’m stuck in a car it’s a drag. If you can make your commute more enjoyable or jog/bike.

I am 21 yo, born and living in Brazil, and studying CS I've had 3 jobs (1 internship with a local-ish company and 2 overseas with US based companies), all remote. And I hate it. I see the benefits, I can make my own hours, don't need to commute and can work overseas getting payed better, but I miss the human interaction aspect of the work experience so much. In one of the jobs i didn't even meet my coworkers, sometimes we'd be working together and we'd still interact less than i would with a rando online. It definetelly feels like "we're working for the same people", instead of "we're working together"

I'm going to guess that most people that prefer to work from home do so not because it makes them more productive or that it is actually better for their job in any way but because it makes something outside of work more convenient.. such as: not having to wear pants, taking care of kids, not having to wear pants, not having to commute, not having to wear pants, and so on. For an intern it's absolutely terrible.

Introversion doesn't mean social anxiety or social awkwardness like many people seem to think. It means that socializing is draining. I'm an introvert but I have decent social skills, I even like being with people but I need considerable amounts of time by myself to recharge.

I hate the office, because I get bothered even more than when I’m remote. Hence I for go remote. And my customer and accepted this. Especially for the 5-6 hours a day I’m working for them, it’s not worth the hassle to travel. But I definitely see benefits for being at an office now and then. During the hobby lab flu outbreak, I took a contract at my old boss, simply because I had nothing because of the hobby flu and my old boss is nearby and they too are fearless, non-facemask wearing anti experimental jab “Wappies”. So if was fun to be onside! And see all the angry faces of the scaremongers. And I hadn’t worked on their infra for 15 years, so things were changed from how I’d left them. The guy I trained now is the TL and he could grant me access, show me little things that weee changed. And it’s simply quicker to walk by and ask: “hey Peter, how do I need to connect to so and so? What version of Linux do you prefer there because 15-20 is a massive leap. I feel like doing 3 incremental upgrade. And test if things keep working and patch them if now instead of doing the big leap. What are your thoughts? It’s just faster and we could rehash watch stories to the new intern 😂

I prefer in office work because I need the separation of home and office space to keep the time I spend on personal and professional stuff separate. Otherwise home bleeds into work and vise versa. Might just be me, but being able to just be... Done, when I physically leave the office helps a ton to me

remote work is less about productivity and more about a benefit offered by a company (imo). that said, if i could teleport to the office (and back) and bring my dog, i would be more willing to go occasionally

Did you just invite us to the barn? Be my mentor lord Primeagen ❤

isn't all great OSS all remote since like 2000s ?

4:49 I'm sorry, but your tantrums are hilarious lol

The issue with written communication is that it takes so much longer to create and then also has to be comprehended on the other side which also takes time and leads to miscommunication and things getting missed I think Hybrid is the ideal, being in the office for 2 days and being able to get that at home productivity 3days

@prestonrasmussen1758

Жыл бұрын

But you can just video call to discuss complicated things. And text chat is useful (even if you are in office) because it allows you to go back and reread explanations so you remember better, and it allows you to send code snippets and links more easily

@Ataraxia_Atom

Жыл бұрын

@@prestonrasmussen1758 discussing complicated things as a team is substantially easier in person, and more efficient. I don't disagree that having written explanations is beneficial as well as sharing code snippets but neither of those are exclusive to remote work. Exactly why I said hybrid is ideal.

@prestonrasmussen1758

Жыл бұрын

@@Ataraxia_Atom You can discuss complicated things on a call as well. That isn’t exclusive to in office work. And I feel like a hybrid model is a frankly dumb attempt to try to solve that problem if you’re having it. You can just decide what times all of your complex conversations are going to occur.

@Ataraxia_Atom

Жыл бұрын

@@prestonrasmussen1758 you can but it takes longer. Maybe you like sitting in meetings all day but i don't. I want to transfer any information and get on with creating progress. Hybrid is the sweet spot of creativity and productivity and your points haven't convinced me otherwise.

@Ataraxia_Atom

Жыл бұрын

@@prestonrasmussen1758 you discuss things differently when you're in person and simply working through a simple discussion can unblock and bring on new ideas that you would never have via remote. Maybe you're an introvert? Idk why you're resistant to working with people in the office. There are benefits you can't get remotely, but 0 remote benefits you can't get in the office

RE: Remote, I have been on teams that flub, and teams that prosper. The problems on the prospering team were more complex and harder, but they did better. I find it comes down to the team, and their awareness of each other. Pretty much every positive and negative can be solved by the team minus those put firmly out of reach by physics. But yeah, it is hard to get remoties to get personable and colab. And the teams that flub come across as weak teams to begin with. So I donno... maybe the office is training wheels for teams?

I'm more productive at the office, at home postponing is just too easy; also doing remote work in a small apartment means staying in the same place and context for everything you do, which is awful, you gotta have a "work place" even if you do remote work, which means more cost on you; I understand most people who prefer full remote work is not really due to productivity, but more frequently due to commute or they can have more time with family (which is nice, of course);

Beautiful content, from prison mike to dementors.

I am not a fan of full-time office work, but this article is just crazy. I have no idea if I could get through initial bump and struggles as an intern/junior if it wasn't for the people in the office (not only the senior from my projects, but other juniors, people from other projects, etc), and it's not about just the technical expertise. I had a terrible habit of getting into my own head which significantly disrupted both my productivity and overall quality of life, I don't know if I could tackle this without daily face to face communication with people from my team and company, bonding and support. I know many people in tech who struggled or still struggle with the same issues. I love working remotely (especially if it's a hybrid remote/office days scheme), but saying that remote has no serious downsides is just crazy. Personal experience aside, big tech wouldn't invest billions into VR cooperation technologies if there were any significant pain points.These challenges can be mitigated to some extent in perfect conditions (org structure, personal and professional qualities of managers and devs, etc), but these perfect conditions are a rare occurrence. There is no shortage of studies addressing both the pros and cons of going remote. Frankly, this article felt like a gpt chat-generated tl;dr of DHHs and Jason Fried's articles/books. Extremely opinionated, not even trying to back up the bold claims with anything besides personal believes and bits of personal experience, not a fan.

there are a lot of "alpha managers' who think they can do all the tech work that those engineer hired to do, and if you are seeking mentorship, you can only justify it if you are an intern because your label in the workforce is that you are still not useful, and still cannot be standalone, so you are looking for one and that is fine. Since intern is temporary, intern wouldn't stay long in the company. But if you are a regular engineer, and you actively seek mentorship, a lot of management, or other co-workers will see it as a weakness and you will get fired very soon.

CEOs & CTOs are people people, they prefer watching people directly and read their body language so they can talk to someone senior and tell him "can you help the new hire" so when they are remote they don't have fear, they feel blind.

Junior dev here, 1 year exp, full remote. My PO makes me feel bad for even asking trivial questions relevant to issue descriptions (e.g. ungoogleable), my code reviews are "hey man if it works we push it to main", and I have no idea if that's bad because we're all remote or because of my company's culture. By the way, they're really trying hard to push me out of the "junior" tag as if bloating titles and rushing things would even fix anything. All I know is, without your motivation and my willingness to hit those extra 4-5 hours in a workweek day and 6-8 hours during the weekend I'd be stagnating way more.

@aarona3144

Жыл бұрын

If you're young and unattached, this is a good place to be, especially if its a start up. At some point, you will want more work/life balance. Who's giving you your code reviews? Team leads? Sr devs on your team that aren't necessarily your boss? What are you guys doing for tests? Do you feel your code can be improved on? If so, why didn't you improve it? What does the code of other Sr devs look like? Is it clean or thrown together? Overall it might seem like a culture thing also but these questions might help fill in some details. Also, whats the company size and how long have they been around? At 1 year XP, you are still Jr (imo) but at 2 years XP you might begin to consider yourself a mid level engineer.

I might actually say that as career shifter, I do not want my first job to be remote. Maybe hybrid, with a minimum 2 days of being in the office. I fucking need help and online stuff really sucks. I imagine this not happening as much layer on

9:10 Woah. Is that a drawing of Prime's wife?

9:47 You don't have to type though, you could also call and then you still have a spoken conversation. For me, remoting working drastically cuts down on distrations. Even if I'm the one being approached for a chat, I'd much rather be able to type "give me 5 mins" so I can wrap up on my current thoughts first before a call and not have to spend 20 minutes after the chat of someone physically at my desk to remember my thought process and how I arrived at where I was. That's not something I found easy to do when I have someone at my desk, how do I note a brain dump when they need a 10 minute chat about a problem right now? Sure it's not a lot of time out of the day, but when there's 2 or 3 junior devs needing a hand with something, it quickly adds up. That said, I do find some situations in office easier i.e. a physical whiteboard to brain storm or physically explain something. So I still get why people prefer being in office. It seems the way forward is hybrid, but no mandatory requirement to be in office X amount of days in a week/month (that is kind of annoying). I think the team (or a sub section of) themselves should be able to decide appropriate days where being in office would be beneficial.

I like being in the office... I just hate getting there and the time that it wastes... So optional office days is my ideal life. (Where I would mostly be working from home.)

Hey Prime, I can present my white board from home just as easily as I can from a meeting room. Now if you talking about getting out of the house time in via work then I can see why some people need to go into the office.

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

its simply not the same. it will never be the same. a huge portion of communication is body language and it just cannot be captured in a virtual whiteboard. the dual whiteboard sessions were my favorite, and the virtual ones come no where close

I'm in the pro remote camp. I've been doing it for just shy of 8 years. Buuuuut that article's arguments were terribly constructed and there are 100% tradeoffs between the two. I just wanted to call out that it also heavily depends on the type of work your company is doing. More complicated work that someone cannot easily look up a solution to really benefits from in person. Work in creative industries (games, VFX, etc) really benefit from in person. Other jobs? Less so. (I would even argue that this is most jobs, but I'm making a comment, not a manifesto) And yes, different people respond differently to different environments. I just hope that a post covid world leads us to a place where you can work in office, hybrid, or remote depending on where you work best (with some fuzziness around including what also works well for your team)

0:28 you can set system sounds volume to 2% and do not suffer from noize

@nage7447

Жыл бұрын

or 0% if you don't care

Dear Prime, the truth about brand new juniors/interns have been told. Totally agree on this one, when I started in tech I had 2 seniors siting next to me and I could ask them about whatever I want and whenever I wanted as well. Progress, BLAZINGLY FAST! Guys, remote work is convenient, thats true, but you got to know how to work remotely and cuz it ain't that easy and you can hurt urself! Greetings from Poland :)

about remote not being the best for junior dev 6 months ago i started my first job as a remote web dev working with legacy php/vue2 code. It was terrible, non one was free to ask me stuff, there's a bunch of small little things that you can't ask property (specially since being new means not knowing all the names for stuff). There was no one to mentor me beside a guy who would take more than 1hours to answer me back. And if i wanted to ask something, i would have to either tag everyone in the company on slack or tryint to hunt that one guy who knows the part of the system i'm working on If i worked on a office, those first few months wouldn't being hell. I could easily wark around asking people, showing stuff in the code and explaining a lot better my issues At least i learned a ton and i have definitely improved as a webdev, but i could have lived without traumas too lol remote is not objectively better, there's downsides as always, i prefer remote nowdays, but i wish i worked on a office when i was starting

@ThePrimeTimeagen

Жыл бұрын

yes. for me there is definitely an equation of remote work and tenure that exists at a company

0:30 Linux is a Kernel, not a Desktop Operating system, its fine to use Windows as a WDM (get it, "Windows" Desktop Manager).