I sorta had the impression that they were going to be WFH for the duration of the pandemic, so unless the boss is trying to prepare the ground for a change, I guess he's just complaining?
And the layers and layers and layers between Netflix' CEO and non executives probably mean he has almost no idea what he's talking about wrt general employees.
Ya, I suspect this very fact is going to keep wfh from becoming a broad reality. There is a lot of upper middle management that have nothing to do but meet with people. If talking and collaborating is all you do then you are going to push for in person.
Some things are working for some companies some not. I work from home/remote most of my life. But honestly most of companies I’ve worked was never effective as it can be. I must admit, that many companies can be more effective when people work face to face. But they never try to be productive on any reasonable level. And I’m not talking about sacrificing all time, life and energy to boss. I’m about not wasting time on visibility of work.
Eh. It’s a pretty flat org - not a lot of layers between Reed and most employees. He was pretty approachable too - could often be found mingling with employees on campus at lunch, for instance.
Yeah, I mean I assume most anyone with younger kids is going to have trouble being productive (kids stuck at home, no childcare, no babysitters, no older relatives to help, etc.) which says little about WFH in general.
Yeah. I have two kids. Now that the older is back at school and the yonger is in nursery or with her childminder when my wife is working, it is significantly better working from home. After five months of working a weird split shift pattern it's really nice to be back to a more regular pattern.
(This is in the UK, where our infection rate is pretty low now, how long that lasts remains to be seen)
Yes this nullified his argument to me. Do I think WFH is some magical solution to everything? Hell no. But to claim it has "no positive effects" is disingenuous.
I mean its sort of a blanket statement. Do I believe remote work is harder for c suite and writers? Absolutely. Is it harder for engineers? Probably less so.
What’s best for the company doesn’t mean it’s best for the individual employees. People need to focus on what’s best for them because we’ve probably all learned at this point that the company puts their needs above your own.
Is team netflix really afraid that if they made quality instead of quality that people wouldn't subscribe? $4/week for 1 excellent movie and 2 good TV shows week, for the whole household/freeloaders, including offline and HD, is a pretty darn good deal and everyone gets to sleep.
I have been remotely working for years, and had thought about applying to Netflix, but if they don't have plans for remote work to continue, then I'll consider other jobs.
So glad remote work is simply a bigger undeniable phenomenon that the suits can’t wish away.
Even a four day work week with one day remote for most white collar jobs was a foreign concept until this year. The quality of life improvement for everyone is insane. People have more time to spend with family, cut entire commutes a few times a week, getting that extra hour of sleep, or have that extra hour or two after work, it’s about as close to the mythical European quality of life Americans hear rumors about.
As a former wsj subscriber I wish I could pay a la cart for the article. Perhaps $1-2?
$37/month is high for a news source I usually read less than 5 articles per month. I already pay for Bloomberg/Economist/NYT/New Yorker but that’s because I regularly read double digit number of articles from them per month.
At the same time when social media (like hn) sends me to wsj I would gladly contribute proportionally to my utilization.
I didn't know about this, I'll give it a go! Thanks!
Edit: this is kind of interesting. I looked at Bloomberg and a few others and the subscriptions were comparable to their normal digital options. But WSJ is much cheaper on Apple News, why is this so? Is there some catch (like 2nd year is expensive)?
> But WSJ is much cheaper on Apple News, why is this so? Is there some catch (like 2nd year is expensive)?
I have no idea. I mostly got a News+ subscription for the magazines. It has Scientific American, Consumer Reports, National Geographic, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian, Wired, some Mac, Windows, and Linux magazines, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Readers Digest, The New Republic, National Review, The Advocate, and a whole bunch more in a whole bunch of categories.
I only regularly read a few of those, which is enough on its own to justify the subscription. Having all the rest there for when I occasionally want something different is a nice bonus.
I give WashP as an example because they are extremely anti adblock and most subscribers see ads too. They also have very hard ways to opt out of third party tracking.
Maybe it is copyright infringement, maybe it’s fair use. Either way it is unsurprising. When I got the physical paper it was easy to share it with a coworker (I just handed him the newspaper) or I taped it up in the office kitchen to show everyone, or I clipped an article and sent it to a friend (you know in an envelope with a stamp,) If it was time sensitive I could call someone and tell the to buy today’s paper... They didn’t have to subscribe to read one day’s paper, much less a single article. *For the record, I’m a paid WSJ subscriber.
This was recently justified to me in an interesting way. Back in the heyday of print newspapers, you had your subscribers, who had the paper delivered every day. Then you had your casual readers who would pick it up at a newsstand if they saw an interesting article.
And then you had your "freeloaders" -- the people who would read the paper at the library or fish it out of the trash or would ask to borrow it from the person on train next to them.
These links are basically for the freeloaders who would never have paid anyway.
Interestingly enough, most US libraries actually offer way to read these things for free by going through the library website, it's just not as easy as using an archive link.
Please don't do this here. There's nothing new to say, so the discussions are tedious and therefore off topic. Also, the question has been decided on HN for many years and is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
No one likes the current solution, it's just that the alternatives would suck worse.
As a small publisher, strongly disagree with your stance. I regularly find articles of ours that have been re-published years ago without our consent. Unfortunately, the time it takes to file DMCA complaints is onerous, and this is for our relatively small publication. Despite attempts to deal with this, I still find republished articles that have been around for years. These republished articles do cause actual harm to our business, as they sometimes rank higher in search engine results than the original article.
Larger publications, such as the WSJ would probably need several people working full time to deal with this situation, and still fail at catching many instances of infringement. In the case of an infringing article appearing on the front page of HN, that infringement leads to widespread unauthorized distribution.
You wrote in a different comment "HN would suck worse without NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc."
That argument is effectively: It is better to allow infringement, because the articles are worth reading.
Just because something is worth stealing does not mean it should be stolen.
Maybe if HN wants to contribute to supporting journalism – or at least finding a solution to the "problem" – you'll allow the "pain" of not supporting copyright infringement. Pain, after all, can be motivating.
No one will feel that “pain” except submitters. No one is not going to sub to WSJ because they can just lurk around on HN until the article they want to read is posted. That just doesn’t make sense.
I’ve seen other sites that do the same, it’s as if they just have a paywall permanently now and only say you can get a few free articles rather than mean it.
You can never seem to trick it even if you want to...
They used to allow crawlers and Twitter and some other links through, but they're almost entirely behind a paywall now.links through Facebook or Twitter may still work, but they definitely do not work through Google anymore.
Wasn’t there a story awhile back about how Netflix does like ritualized firings, guided by all kinds of weird dark, internal politics? Probably harder to do over Zoom.
i’ve read articles that suggest the line between work and life is actually more blurred due to WFH and people just end up working longer. logically it makes sense when it’s all happening in your home.
You just need to ask any PhD grad student why work from home is harmful for work-life balance. Once the boundary between home and work gets blurred, stress from work starts seeping into your personal life. Burn out rates among software engineers will be through the roof if WFH continues for a few more months.
For some maybe, but some people have no problem separating work and personal life. My guess it that the people that have the most trouble with this are the ones that have no hobbies outside of work, so they just end up working more since they have nothing else to do.
> Once the boundary between home and work gets blurred, stress from work starts seeping into your personal life.
For me the fact that the line between work and home gets blurred reduces stress by a huge amount. No longer do I have to do all my work in a specific 8-hour window. I don’t have to be ‘on’ for 8 consecutive hours anymore. I can do a few hours of work, do some mindless chores around the house, then go back to work. If I’m stuck on a problem, I can just take a break instead of sitting at my desk going in circles. I’m more productive and more relaxed since the start of the lockdown.
In addition, just the fact that I have access to a fully equipped kitchen makes a world of difference when it comes to breakfast and lunch.
What I've noticed at my company is, the people who were massive fans of working from home are now the people who are missing the office the most, except for one or two people. Working from home has it's benefits but it's really not for everyone. I, personally, am looking forward to going back to the office full time. I can go to the office just now but without other people there it just seems pointless to go.
I never liked WFH, but even I didn't realize how much I enjoy working from office. It has made me absolutely resolute not to EVER consider remote work as an option ever again.
Probably. As long as there is one other person in the office, and maybe even without. Having the separation between work and home area is fairly important to me.
There is one guy at my company that goes to the office every day. He is often the only person in the IT department. Considering that even before Corona because was had a distributed team it's not so much different except for lunch.
I'm in that camp, but for other reasons. I live close to work, but others are doing 1.5-2 hour round-trip commutes. I was pushing for more WFH to keep them sane.
It also helps with recruitment: Your catchment area is bigger if someone only has to come in the office 3x/week vs. 5x.
I guess we need to differentiate between 100% remote, and partial WFH. Just about everyone will be in favour of the latter, but pushing everyone into the former has its consequences.
I wish people would stop thinking about remote working as a binary thing. Everyone's situation is different.
I live a 15 minute walk from my office, so for me going to the office has loads of benefits and few downsides. My brother-in-law pays £100/week to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting in and out of London. For him WFH has been a massive quality of life improvement, especially as there are few benefits to him being in the studio (he's a video editor).
We are split between two offices, one in SF and one in the UK (with everyone wfh at the mometn), and our entire front-end team is remote, it all works pretty well. Sure, there are jobs where being in the office will be prefereable, but we need to start being more flexible in both space and time.
I think we need to understand that everyone is in different situations and not force personal preferences on others.
I think allowing people to work however they want should be the way forward.
I personally don't plan on ever going back into an office. For me, WFH is the best thing that has ever happened. No commute, no open office bullshit, more sleep, more focus, more time for personal hobbies, no working in a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF, options for better accommodations (due to no commute), no waiting for people to finally clear a meeting room, no need to stand in line to go to a smelly restroom, etc. etc.
> no working in a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF
One of the things I miss most about the office is that I live in “ a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF” and the office was wonderful. I also miss the commute, which was on one of the tech busses, so I could sit back and take in the scenery.
I am upgrading neigborhoods though, so that’s something.
Fully agree. Working from home is pure hell. I can't wait to go back to in-person office, once the vaccine is out. And if my employer mandates WFH policy even after vaccine, I'll look into renting a personal office space at least 2-3 miles away from my home. Just so I can get my commute and structure back into my life.
Because the commute worked as a great buffer to get into "work mode" in the morning and then transition back into "home mode" in the afternoon. Without this well-defined separation, I never get the productivity boost for work in the morning, and nor do I get the "work done for the day" feeling at the end of the day. Commute and getting out of my home is absolutely essential for me to remain productive and happy.
One trick I learned a long time ago is take a walk around the block in the morning before walk, and do the same walk in reverse in the afternoon.
It tricks your brain into saying "this is my commute". Ideally you have a work laptop or some such that you can take out in the morning after your walk and put away at night before your second walk.
One of my co-workers setup and office in his garage for this purpose. Even though he had an "office" of sorts in his house with his computer and all, it didn't provide enough separation to switch his head-space, especially because he'd potentially be in there on his computer for reasons besides work. So he setup a separate office with separate equipment for work. When done, he just leaves the garage. The point being the commute might not need to be that long. Just a signal to your brain your done.
I've moved from using geographical boundaries to separate work from non-work to using time as the fence. Work starts at a given time and ends at a given time, very few exceptions. Laptop lid opens, laptop lid closes.
It's worked out well for me, but I can understand it not working as well for others.
Lack of clear boundary between work and home, mainly due to lack of commute but also due to spending all day at home. Lack of in-person social interactions at work. More procrastination leading to less productivity and having to work longer hours to make up for it. Etc etc.
How does someone in such a high position see things so black and white?
Either way, this world wide work from home experiment isn't even a good one because there's a massive pandemic going on that... Judge wfh after the world is vaccinated.
Exactly. I've been working from home for years. I thought this was finally the tipping point for WFH but I now starting to realize people are forming bad opinions about it but due to the circumstances, this is not really a proper "clean" WFH experiment due to the pandemic
>How does someone in such a high position see things so black and white?
The CEO of Netflix is a brand in itself. The guy is selling a message, a vision (and a book!) My guess is, deep down inside, he sees several positives of WFH, but that doesn't vibe with his overall message or the culture he's trying to cultivate.
This doesn't surprise me. Netflix was always very anti-WFH. When I was there I know of only one team that did it, and that was the OpenConnect team (Netflix's custom CDN). And the main reason that was allowed was because the team was spread all over the world.
The Netflix culture is very strongly built around in-person collaboration.
One interesting way this manifested itself was when the new HQ was built, it had a ton of 2-4 person meeting rooms, more than I've seen at any other big tech company. This was a reflection of the many 2-4 person meetings that were scheduled every day. In the old building, you'd often see a 10 person room being used by two or three people because there were no small rooms left.
Sure you can replicate this on zoom, but it's just not quite the same as sitting across from someone reading their body language.
Had about 30 of these small meetings rooms on each floor at my last company. I find that most people use them to isolate themselves from all the interupts in the office.
There were "phone booths" for isolating oneself from the office, but it was generally frowned upon to use a 2/3 person room for oneself, unless it was just a quick phone call.
The trick is to book them with a couple of like minded people. Nice quiet private office basically and your calendar looks like it’s already full so people don’t book you into useless meetings.
I agree that many meetings of 4+ people can probably be done more efficiently via email or wiki or whatever, but I've found 2-3 person meetings far more effective than any other means for information transfer and decision making.
Propose a "memo culture". That was how we managed larger meetings at Netflix (and I'm pretty sure we stole it from Amazon).
Before the meeting, everyone who has a stake in what's being discussed contributes to a memo outlining their thoughts on it. Then everyone reads it ahead of the meeting.
The meeting is then just to hash out what's in the doc and agree on which already proposed solution will be adopted.
I'd caution against memo culture, actually. I only have a sample size of 2, but in two organizations I've been in that tried to adopt something similar, this is what happened:
In the first org, there was a lot of pressure that any such memos had to be highly researched and data driven (also borrowed from Amazon, I imagine). In reality what this meant is that drafting a memo even for the smallest decisions or ideas became a large laborious effort, which nobody wanted to do and/or didn't have time to do it. The result was that everyone procrastinated on decision making, if they even participated in it in the first place, and I knew a fair share of colleagues who didn't even bother to pitch their ideas because of hating the memo system.
In the second org, it was the opposite problem: in an attempt to make memos "painless", there was much less pressure on making the memos "high quality". The result: every "memo" was a hastily scrawled together draft of random notes that didn't make much sense, and we had to spend most time in meetings going over the "memo" to decipher it and have the author explain it anyway.
If you hold a meeting, suggest using a memo? Or just ask your manager if they'd consider it? There are many ways to affect change within an organization.
No one is in charge forever, lead by example and if you’re doing things right eventually people will follow. You are as much a part of the culture as the current “boss”
In my experience, it also depends a lot on the type of information being transferred. There's a lot of information that is much off being expressed in a chat program, where the person can take the time to formulate the best way to express the idea. If the same thing was being discussed in a meeting, it would take the time of everyone there while the person went back and forth coming up with the right wording.
I haven't seen any downsides to having these smaller meetings via zoom though. Sure if someone has kids running around that would be less than ideal, but that's not so much a WFH problem as it is a pandemic problem which will eventually go away.
Big thing I miss with in person meetings is the ability to start sketching on the board. Sure you have virtual whiteboards and stuff but it’s not the same. The bandwidth of idea transmission is just lower online.
That doesn't match my observations over the last few years where every company I worked at was open office. Usually there are either nooks, rooms or just hallways away from the desks with big whiteboards.
Last year I tried a recent digital whiteboard (basically a fast 55" touch screen), and it felt really good. If those things had real-time syncing - connected to meeting software, of course - and were affordable enough, I could see them really taking off.
Can you not just use it with Zoom's whiteboard feature? A quick search online showed a few touch displays in the range of 1500 - 2500 for mid 30" to mid 50" in size. Although not sure how responsive they are.
From what I've noticed, the overall pace of zoom is meetings is slower. When in-person, the one talking can pick up subtle indications that other's get the point or that someone else wants to talk. Over zoom I've seen more tendency for people to go on unnecessarily.
I've also personally noticed an interesting subtle difference: in-person there seems to be a tendency to contribute if someone is present in the meeting and hasn't said anything. With zoom the general tendency seems to be the opposite (the longer someone is on mute, the more likely they are to stay on mute).
I'll add to that one very important component: meetings where everyone comes prepared. Even when people are essential and/or required, if they don't want to be there then it lowers the bar for the entire meeting. Inefficiency (and laziness) can be contagious. But when everyone arrives with military precision, pen in hand and phone in pocket, you'd be amazed at difference.
Also, the fewer attendees the better, in my experience. 3-5 is a good size. 1-2 "higher ups" and 1-3 with "boots on the ground". More than that and it risks devolving into chit-chat and speculation instead of bullet-pointed queries and actions.
> Sure you can replicate this on zoom, but it's just not quite the same as sitting across from someone reading their body language.
I see this as a positive, no need to read body language for most tech company meetings - while troubleshooting a network issue, doing code review or talking through a new feature. It may be different for HR or a law firm, where its about "judging your opponent" or similar double speak but 99% of tech meetings can easily be replicated over zoom and are better of without any of that anyway.
This is a very engineering way to look at things. But it's definitely wrong. Even in a code review it's important to see their body language. How are they receiving your feedback? Are they uncomfortable? Do you need to change they way you address your concerns so they can be heard better?
Not everyone communicates like you do. If you want to be an effective communicator, you have have to tailor your output to the recipient. Body language is an important part of that.
I agree with this counterview. I manage a small dev team, I've found many inexperienced developers are less willing to admit an issue in understanding a tasks requirements (or how to complete a task) during a zoom call, especially when there is an audience (even +1 additional person).
I try to read body language to gauge if I need to explain further without putting people on the spot. I can usually can get by with video-on Zoom calls, but that's still a bit different... I can't make eye contact with a specific person and judge the reaction since they don't know who I'm looking at
I'm guessing we'll have that feature in the near future. iOS already "fixes" your eyes so that it appears you're looking at the camera despite looking at the screen. From there to detecting who you are looking at, and adjusting the image just for that person, seems quite feasible.
As long as Netflix continues paying top-of-market they'll have no problem attracting talent regardless of whether they allow WFH. It's the companies that don't pay top-of-market that have to think longer and harder about WFH.
If you consider ability to work flex hours or WFH as part of your employment package, they don't offer WFH but they do offer more money. Overall comp is still high. What additional data do you need? Relative value of WFH vs cash to various demographics?
I'm going to go against the vibe on this site and agree with him. The next Apple or Google definitely will not come from a remote working startup, and there's undoubtedly a lot of value from in-person collaboration. In a bigger company like Netflix this might be less important. A big part of this is the transfer of knowledge, which isn't as easy over Zoom calls.
The current deficiencies in remote work will create opportunities for new products to fill those gaps.
I find it nonsensical for people to commute 1 hour only to sit in front of a computer that is connected to the Internet. And, lately, that computer happens to be the same you could use at home: a laptop, making it even more nonsensical.
Saturating streets with 5 seat cars with one occupant in them, cars that do not even need to be there anyways, creates a miserable urban experience for everyone.
Working from home also makes people focus on deliverables rather than superficial aspects of work: clothes, haircut, fitness, etc.
Plus, I don't think "I want to see face muscles moving" (something you can do using a camera anyways) is a proper justification for ruining the environment. The #1 challenge of the 21st century is how to make each human have a lower carbon footprint, and working from home fits well into that narrative.
Unless you seek a physical intimacy or violence with your coworkers I don't see the need for being in the same room.
One of the big downsides I’ve found with my company being remote for about 6 months now is the nearly constant issues with tone and attitude in communication channels like video calls and Slack.
I listened to one coworker tell another that they had no sense of humor and were too “by the book” and it was disrupting the ability to communicate.
When a fraction of people worked remotely, this virtually never happened, because with only a small set of people working remotely, people had the mental bandwidth to devote a little extra time being sure to interpret their tone charitably, check for assumptions and follow up more often with them to fill in communication gaps that in-person gestures and signals would avoid.
But when everyone is remote, it’s like taking the attention and time budget you have and dividing it by a much larger pool of people. It’s simply intractable for a human to spread their attention like that and remain diligent and focused on communication metadata about every pairwise colleague interaction channel. It spreads you too thin and you run into extremely exhausting ego depletion and decision fatigue from all these little micro communication assessments you have to make that our brains are just not setup or wired to handle because we’re so adapted to analog facial and voice analysis with gestures and cues.
I despise loud, distracting open floor plans deeply, but the pandemic time period has made me deeply question whether fully remote work would actually be better. I feel way more tired and mentally exhausted from remote work, and casually I’ve noticed many, many more arguments and short fuse communication issues with everyone in my company.
I think it speaks to the evidence that the most cost effective office environments for knowledge workers, even in dense urban centers, from the point of view of pure short term cost savings to the company, are environments where every individual knowledge worker has a private office with a door that shuts, combined with separate communal workspaces for the extreme minority of people who either need a mix or need more extraverted / social work environments instead of quiet / private workspaces.
That way meetings naturally happen in person and it’s low-cost to setup meetings, grab coffee together, grab lunch, etc., while still preserving the remote work benefits of privacy and quiet.
Unfortunately though my experience working remotely has taught me that avoiding a commute is deeply not a good reason to be remote, because the costs in terms of worse work experiences and worse communication are way too high.
Their recommendation engine is beyond terrible. It sucks so bad that a flat list of all movies in alphabetical order would be much, much better.
I would say that I am able to find something I want to watch on Netflix about one out of every five attempts. The other four end with me giving up in frustration after 20-30 minutes of looking.
I wouldn't pay even a single dime for the service, myself. My partner does, and every now and then I get bored enough to give it another shot. Usually I regret it.
I suspect that they have an overengineering vision. This could originate from a culture very strongly (excessively, in this perspective) centered on engineering.
They have a very positive view of their recommendations, like they have of their customized thumbnails.
Yet I, and all of my friends, find the recommendations nearly useless, and I also find the thumbnails mostly ugly.
Yeah it's really bizarre just how bad the recommendations are, even after all of these years of development and data collection. Offsite lists and personal recs are the only ways I've found new Netflix shows I like.
Your confusion is because that you represent a niche use case, while Netflix optimizes for the masses who use Netflix so they can think less, not more.
Remote working has positive and negative effects. First come the positive, over long term the negatives become self evident.
Hopefully Covid-19 exposed people to the positive effects and there will be more remote work opportunities than before. People frequently working 1-3 days a week from home in many professions might become accepted norm.
> I think there are immediate negatives, like collaboration, synchronous decision-making.
This hits companies with teams who sit in the same office. Companies that are more spread out didn't suffer as much. My team of four people is spread of four cities, so we were always remote to each other.
The negatives come from equipment and socialisation:
- most homes are not equipped to be offices (anything from lack of proper chairs to lack of proper quiet places at home, especially if kids are on vacation)
- you do miss interactions with other people at the office even if they are not on your team: lunches together, coffee breaks etc. This can be mitigated (just ask freelancers how they cope), but it will eventually affect most people
- You often end up working more at the detriment of your work-life balance due to some routines just not being there. No one asks you to join them for lunch? You end up skipping lunch because you're working. People are not leaving for home en masse, you end up staying way beyond work hours hacking at "just one more bug and PR, and I'm done".
Work-life balance is really hard to maintain long term when you're WFH; and you don't have the "sniff the air" kind of awareness of politics/power-struggles/etc taking place in the office, which can easily cap your mobility, which anyway is pretty limited; you can end up stuck in one job if your lifestyle depends on WFH; and finally, it's difficult to power through when your motivation is low.
Of course that's from the employee's point of view.
From the company's point of view, I think the only long-term negative that's not already evident in the short term is that you miss chances to develop and promote your top remote talent to maximize their contribution. WFH folks tend to get stuck in a role or at least a very narrow silo. (Remote-first companies try to solve that of course, but I've never seen one up close so I have no comment.)
Source: I'm WFH for about 11 years on the current gig, which I guess counts as "long-term."
Culture and team camaraderie are likely long-term negatives. The existing team relationships can hold things for awhile but it's tough as people join+leave.
Reed Hastings just released a management book (written before the pandemic) which is heavy on traditional, in-person management styles. I think the statements in the book make it difficult for him to suddenly welcome remote work on a permanent basis.
In addition, certain (but not all) aspects of the media business such as creating media do work better in person. This is true of many industries, not just media, and may explain some of his thinking.
It's amusing reading all of the HN comments that insist that any attempts to not work remote must be some ploy by "the suits" and act like remote work is some panacea for all the problems in the world.
My very large tech company did a survey this summer about remote working conditions. Out of tens of thousands of respondents, less than one third said they wanted to continue working 100% remote. Nearly half said that their work/life balance was worse when working remotely. Over one third said they are less productive.
HN lives in a bubble of pro-remote talking points. In reality, most of the tech workforce (to say nothing of the non-tech workforce, which I assure you is much more anti-remote) does not enjoy it.
I would posit that a lot of those negative reactions to remote work is because the company culture has been sufficiently altered to support it.
Most negative experiences I've observed have come from split companies, where two classes of employee occur, or from companies who say they're "remote first" but have a culture that hasn't evolved past the office. With the right process changes and the right culture, remote work can be enjoyable, rewarding, and more productive. Not to mention the big advantage: no commute.
Nice hypothesis, but incorrect. This is at a company that has always had a large remote workforce, and if you do want to work remote, it's always been an option, and there is an actual culture to support it (and in fact, all of our internal tooling is built with remote work in mind. All meetings happen via Zoom even if you are in an office (partly because of lack of meeting rooms, but also because we don't want to disadvantage remote workers)). We've been trying to grow our remote work force because of lack of office space, but filling these remote roles has actually been hard. It turns out that there's a reason that most of our people choose to not be in those remote roles. They genuinely do not enjoy it.
>HN lives in a bubble of pro-remote talking points. In reality, most of the tech workforce (to say nothing of the non-tech workforce, which I assure you is much more anti-remote) does not enjoy it.
Absoultely. I think there's a place for remote work, and a lot of people do manage to make it work really well for themselves and their organizations. I don't think it's broadly generalizable though. People's priorities are diverse. I'm a pretty well-established person in my field, and I would hate to do WFH 100% because I enjoy mentoring junior folks, and I just can't form connections with people unless I'm in the same space as them.
I really value the option of discretionary WFH, but in reality I'd exercise it fewer than two or three days a month. I find a ton of value in being present and attentive in meatspace.
What bubble? A large part of the world is working remote, and it seems like every company didn’t fall apart from the paradigm shift. Would this discussion even be entertained otherwise? Proof is in the pudding.
Bubble ad reductio, someone add that to the list of logical fallacies.
Actually i think a lot of the arguing is because of people's conflicting interests. For example you will find that european workers are more warm to remote work, while a lot of SF workers are not. There is a large percentage of people who are invested in SF properties for example, and they are unconsciously biased against changes that will cause those values to drop.
Please don't frame comments like this as sneers at the community. Perceptions of the community are extremely subject to bias (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) and it detracts from the substance of your argument. The community here is simply divided on divisive topics—reality is that tautological.
It's disingenuous to frame my comment as a "sneer", and censoring (via pushing this comment down, when it was previously the top comment of this thread) mentions of community self-introspection is doing this community a disservice. If it truly is not a bubble, then my post would not have been upvoted to the top comment of the thread. Clearly it was something that people wanted to discuss prior to your intervention. Living within an echo chamber is a bad thing, both for the community and for society in general, and HN should be able to discuss that without your intervention.
Your comment was previously near the top because newer comments always start near the top. It's gone down because it has failed to attract enough upvotes and newer comments have taken its place. It doesn't take a moderator shadowban for a negative comment to lose ground on HN.
I know how HN works, but thanks for explaining it. New comments are only given the top spot for a small time period. My comment was at the top long after said time period, because it previously had more than enough upvotes to stay at the top (in fact, it actually had been knocked down to middle-ish of the thread, and then garnered enough upvotes to again be the top). As soon as dang commented, it suddenly was at the bottom.
Every article that I have seen on HN about remote work (including this one) has had people strongly expressing opinions that cover the full spectrum, from "remote is awful" to "it really depends" to "remote is a lifesaver". Far from being a bubble, I've learned a lot about what the pros and cons are for different types of people.
From my experience at some workplaces, Netflix was 'a pure negative' for office work. Every time there was a popular show, which was several times a month, productivity at the office noticeably took a toll.
I particularly remember some colleagues behaving like zombies for a couple of days after spending their night sleep hours binging on the platform.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 301 ms ] threadNo positive effects for him. Maybe. And even that is pretty dubious considering we're in a pandemic and nobody is at their best.
(This is in the UK, where our infection rate is pretty low now, how long that lasts remains to be seen)
Ill have to ask one of our TTRPG streaming group who is a writer / co-producer on a netflix show.
[1]: https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastin...
edit for possible misunderstanding that I'm critisizing the OP
Makes a lot of things make sense.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Randolph#Early_life_and_e...
[1] - https://www.ccn.com/netflix-cuties-scandal/
Even a four day work week with one day remote for most white collar jobs was a foreign concept until this year. The quality of life improvement for everyone is insane. People have more time to spend with family, cut entire commutes a few times a week, getting that extra hour of sleep, or have that extra hour or two after work, it’s about as close to the mythical European quality of life Americans hear rumors about.
Maybe copyright infringement isn't an answer to that question.
Don't hijack this one.
$37/month is high for a news source I usually read less than 5 articles per month. I already pay for Bloomberg/Economist/NYT/New Yorker but that’s because I regularly read double digit number of articles from them per month.
At the same time when social media (like hn) sends me to wsj I would gladly contribute proportionally to my utilization.
You can actually effectively kind of do that by getting an Apple News+ subscription. That's $10/month and includes WSJ articles.
If you are reading on an iPad or iPhone and see a WSJ link on HN, hit Safari's share icon, and select News and it opens in the News app.
Edit: this is kind of interesting. I looked at Bloomberg and a few others and the subscriptions were comparable to their normal digital options. But WSJ is much cheaper on Apple News, why is this so? Is there some catch (like 2nd year is expensive)?
I have no idea. I mostly got a News+ subscription for the magazines. It has Scientific American, Consumer Reports, National Geographic, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian, Wired, some Mac, Windows, and Linux magazines, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Readers Digest, The New Republic, National Review, The Advocate, and a whole bunch more in a whole bunch of categories.
I only regularly read a few of those, which is enough on its own to justify the subscription. Having all the rest there for when I occasionally want something different is a nice bonus.
Also, previous discussion about WSJ: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13434938
You may not agree with their execution, and I don't think it will ever work, but I wish it did.
* [1] https://creators.brave.com/
Although Brave uses Chrome's UA, I think we can ask Brave for it's actual UA - https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/8216
I give WashP as an example because they are extremely anti adblock and most subscribers see ads too. They also have very hard ways to opt out of third party tracking.
And then you had your "freeloaders" -- the people who would read the paper at the library or fish it out of the trash or would ask to borrow it from the person on train next to them.
These links are basically for the freeloaders who would never have paid anyway.
Interestingly enough, most US libraries actually offer way to read these things for free by going through the library website, it's just not as easy as using an archive link.
No one likes the current solution, it's just that the alternatives would suck worse.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
Larger publications, such as the WSJ would probably need several people working full time to deal with this situation, and still fail at catching many instances of infringement. In the case of an infringing article appearing on the front page of HN, that infringement leads to widespread unauthorized distribution.
You wrote in a different comment "HN would suck worse without NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc."
That argument is effectively: It is better to allow infringement, because the articles are worth reading.
Just because something is worth stealing does not mean it should be stolen.
Maybe if HN wants to contribute to supporting journalism – or at least finding a solution to the "problem" – you'll allow the "pain" of not supporting copyright infringement. Pain, after all, can be motivating.
Is it X articles free per month, or do they allow only crawlers on their sites?
You can never seem to trick it even if you want to...
For me the fact that the line between work and home gets blurred reduces stress by a huge amount. No longer do I have to do all my work in a specific 8-hour window. I don’t have to be ‘on’ for 8 consecutive hours anymore. I can do a few hours of work, do some mindless chores around the house, then go back to work. If I’m stuck on a problem, I can just take a break instead of sitting at my desk going in circles. I’m more productive and more relaxed since the start of the lockdown.
In addition, just the fact that I have access to a fully equipped kitchen makes a world of difference when it comes to breakfast and lunch.
No judgment just wondering.
It also helps with recruitment: Your catchment area is bigger if someone only has to come in the office 3x/week vs. 5x.
I guess we need to differentiate between 100% remote, and partial WFH. Just about everyone will be in favour of the latter, but pushing everyone into the former has its consequences.
I wish people would stop thinking about remote working as a binary thing. Everyone's situation is different.
I live a 15 minute walk from my office, so for me going to the office has loads of benefits and few downsides. My brother-in-law pays £100/week to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting in and out of London. For him WFH has been a massive quality of life improvement, especially as there are few benefits to him being in the studio (he's a video editor).
We are split between two offices, one in SF and one in the UK (with everyone wfh at the mometn), and our entire front-end team is remote, it all works pretty well. Sure, there are jobs where being in the office will be prefereable, but we need to start being more flexible in both space and time.
I think allowing people to work however they want should be the way forward.
I personally don't plan on ever going back into an office. For me, WFH is the best thing that has ever happened. No commute, no open office bullshit, more sleep, more focus, more time for personal hobbies, no working in a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF, options for better accommodations (due to no commute), no waiting for people to finally clear a meeting room, no need to stand in line to go to a smelly restroom, etc. etc.
One of the things I miss most about the office is that I live in “ a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF” and the office was wonderful. I also miss the commute, which was on one of the tech busses, so I could sit back and take in the scenery.
I am upgrading neigborhoods though, so that’s something.
It tricks your brain into saying "this is my commute". Ideally you have a work laptop or some such that you can take out in the morning after your walk and put away at night before your second walk.
It's worked out well for me, but I can understand it not working as well for others.
"No. I don't see any positives," he replied
Not even a tiny bit of positive? I would be curious to know Netflix's workers point of view on this.
Either way, this world wide work from home experiment isn't even a good one because there's a massive pandemic going on that... Judge wfh after the world is vaccinated.
The CEO of Netflix is a brand in itself. The guy is selling a message, a vision (and a book!) My guess is, deep down inside, he sees several positives of WFH, but that doesn't vibe with his overall message or the culture he's trying to cultivate.
The Netflix culture is very strongly built around in-person collaboration.
One interesting way this manifested itself was when the new HQ was built, it had a ton of 2-4 person meeting rooms, more than I've seen at any other big tech company. This was a reflection of the many 2-4 person meetings that were scheduled every day. In the old building, you'd often see a 10 person room being used by two or three people because there were no small rooms left.
Sure you can replicate this on zoom, but it's just not quite the same as sitting across from someone reading their body language.
Before the meeting, everyone who has a stake in what's being discussed contributes to a memo outlining their thoughts on it. Then everyone reads it ahead of the meeting.
The meeting is then just to hash out what's in the doc and agree on which already proposed solution will be adopted.
In the first org, there was a lot of pressure that any such memos had to be highly researched and data driven (also borrowed from Amazon, I imagine). In reality what this meant is that drafting a memo even for the smallest decisions or ideas became a large laborious effort, which nobody wanted to do and/or didn't have time to do it. The result was that everyone procrastinated on decision making, if they even participated in it in the first place, and I knew a fair share of colleagues who didn't even bother to pitch their ideas because of hating the memo system.
In the second org, it was the opposite problem: in an attempt to make memos "painless", there was much less pressure on making the memos "high quality". The result: every "memo" was a hastily scrawled together draft of random notes that didn't make much sense, and we had to spend most time in meetings going over the "memo" to decipher it and have the author explain it anyway.
2-4 person meetings are great because everyone has a chance to interact and ask questions.
I've also personally noticed an interesting subtle difference: in-person there seems to be a tendency to contribute if someone is present in the meeting and hasn't said anything. With zoom the general tendency seems to be the opposite (the longer someone is on mute, the more likely they are to stay on mute).
Anyone else notice things like this?
Meetings where people are there just to listen in, or for FYI purposes are utterly useless.
Also, the fewer attendees the better, in my experience. 3-5 is a good size. 1-2 "higher ups" and 1-3 with "boots on the ground". More than that and it risks devolving into chit-chat and speculation instead of bullet-pointed queries and actions.
I see this as a positive, no need to read body language for most tech company meetings - while troubleshooting a network issue, doing code review or talking through a new feature. It may be different for HR or a law firm, where its about "judging your opponent" or similar double speak but 99% of tech meetings can easily be replicated over zoom and are better of without any of that anyway.
Not everyone communicates like you do. If you want to be an effective communicator, you have have to tailor your output to the recipient. Body language is an important part of that.
I try to read body language to gauge if I need to explain further without putting people on the spot. I can usually can get by with video-on Zoom calls, but that's still a bit different... I can't make eye contact with a specific person and judge the reaction since they don't know who I'm looking at
I know of at least one counter-example. Maybe it’s the exception that proves the rule but I’d rather see some numbers before believing it.
Yes many of the maintainers and key people are allowed to work remotely, but a lot more people work in the office.
I don't want to against the general WFH vibe, but that statement is hardly 100% true.
You don't get a paradime busting product without a tight co-located team
The current deficiencies in remote work will create opportunities for new products to fill those gaps.
I find it nonsensical for people to commute 1 hour only to sit in front of a computer that is connected to the Internet. And, lately, that computer happens to be the same you could use at home: a laptop, making it even more nonsensical.
Saturating streets with 5 seat cars with one occupant in them, cars that do not even need to be there anyways, creates a miserable urban experience for everyone.
Working from home also makes people focus on deliverables rather than superficial aspects of work: clothes, haircut, fitness, etc.
Plus, I don't think "I want to see face muscles moving" (something you can do using a camera anyways) is a proper justification for ruining the environment. The #1 challenge of the 21st century is how to make each human have a lower carbon footprint, and working from home fits well into that narrative.
Unless you seek a physical intimacy or violence with your coworkers I don't see the need for being in the same room.
I listened to one coworker tell another that they had no sense of humor and were too “by the book” and it was disrupting the ability to communicate.
When a fraction of people worked remotely, this virtually never happened, because with only a small set of people working remotely, people had the mental bandwidth to devote a little extra time being sure to interpret their tone charitably, check for assumptions and follow up more often with them to fill in communication gaps that in-person gestures and signals would avoid.
But when everyone is remote, it’s like taking the attention and time budget you have and dividing it by a much larger pool of people. It’s simply intractable for a human to spread their attention like that and remain diligent and focused on communication metadata about every pairwise colleague interaction channel. It spreads you too thin and you run into extremely exhausting ego depletion and decision fatigue from all these little micro communication assessments you have to make that our brains are just not setup or wired to handle because we’re so adapted to analog facial and voice analysis with gestures and cues.
I despise loud, distracting open floor plans deeply, but the pandemic time period has made me deeply question whether fully remote work would actually be better. I feel way more tired and mentally exhausted from remote work, and casually I’ve noticed many, many more arguments and short fuse communication issues with everyone in my company.
I think it speaks to the evidence that the most cost effective office environments for knowledge workers, even in dense urban centers, from the point of view of pure short term cost savings to the company, are environments where every individual knowledge worker has a private office with a door that shuts, combined with separate communal workspaces for the extreme minority of people who either need a mix or need more extraverted / social work environments instead of quiet / private workspaces.
That way meetings naturally happen in person and it’s low-cost to setup meetings, grab coffee together, grab lunch, etc., while still preserving the remote work benefits of privacy and quiet.
Unfortunately though my experience working remotely has taught me that avoiding a commute is deeply not a good reason to be remote, because the costs in terms of worse work experiences and worse communication are way too high.
I would say that I am able to find something I want to watch on Netflix about one out of every five attempts. The other four end with me giving up in frustration after 20-30 minutes of looking.
I wouldn't pay even a single dime for the service, myself. My partner does, and every now and then I get bored enough to give it another shot. Usually I regret it.
They have a very positive view of their recommendations, like they have of their customized thumbnails.
Yet I, and all of my friends, find the recommendations nearly useless, and I also find the thumbnails mostly ugly.
Hopefully Covid-19 exposed people to the positive effects and there will be more remote work opportunities than before. People frequently working 1-3 days a week from home in many professions might become accepted norm.
I think there are immediate negatives, like collaboration, synchronous decision-making. I wonder what the long-term ones are.
This hits companies with teams who sit in the same office. Companies that are more spread out didn't suffer as much. My team of four people is spread of four cities, so we were always remote to each other.
The negatives come from equipment and socialisation:
- most homes are not equipped to be offices (anything from lack of proper chairs to lack of proper quiet places at home, especially if kids are on vacation)
- you do miss interactions with other people at the office even if they are not on your team: lunches together, coffee breaks etc. This can be mitigated (just ask freelancers how they cope), but it will eventually affect most people
- You often end up working more at the detriment of your work-life balance due to some routines just not being there. No one asks you to join them for lunch? You end up skipping lunch because you're working. People are not leaving for home en masse, you end up staying way beyond work hours hacking at "just one more bug and PR, and I'm done".
Work-life balance is really hard to maintain long term when you're WFH; and you don't have the "sniff the air" kind of awareness of politics/power-struggles/etc taking place in the office, which can easily cap your mobility, which anyway is pretty limited; you can end up stuck in one job if your lifestyle depends on WFH; and finally, it's difficult to power through when your motivation is low.
Of course that's from the employee's point of view.
From the company's point of view, I think the only long-term negative that's not already evident in the short term is that you miss chances to develop and promote your top remote talent to maximize their contribution. WFH folks tend to get stuck in a role or at least a very narrow silo. (Remote-first companies try to solve that of course, but I've never seen one up close so I have no comment.)
Source: I'm WFH for about 11 years on the current gig, which I guess counts as "long-term."
In addition, certain (but not all) aspects of the media business such as creating media do work better in person. This is true of many industries, not just media, and may explain some of his thinking.
My very large tech company did a survey this summer about remote working conditions. Out of tens of thousands of respondents, less than one third said they wanted to continue working 100% remote. Nearly half said that their work/life balance was worse when working remotely. Over one third said they are less productive.
HN lives in a bubble of pro-remote talking points. In reality, most of the tech workforce (to say nothing of the non-tech workforce, which I assure you is much more anti-remote) does not enjoy it.
Most negative experiences I've observed have come from split companies, where two classes of employee occur, or from companies who say they're "remote first" but have a culture that hasn't evolved past the office. With the right process changes and the right culture, remote work can be enjoyable, rewarding, and more productive. Not to mention the big advantage: no commute.
Absoultely. I think there's a place for remote work, and a lot of people do manage to make it work really well for themselves and their organizations. I don't think it's broadly generalizable though. People's priorities are diverse. I'm a pretty well-established person in my field, and I would hate to do WFH 100% because I enjoy mentoring junior folks, and I just can't form connections with people unless I'm in the same space as them.
I really value the option of discretionary WFH, but in reality I'd exercise it fewer than two or three days a month. I find a ton of value in being present and attentive in meatspace.
Ignoring the wishes of these people is not how one builds an inclusive workplace.
Listen to them and, if granting their wish, make sure tools and processes take remote workers in consideration.
It’s a far worse situation to pretend remote working is supported without proper consideration.
Bubble ad reductio, someone add that to the list of logical fallacies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I particularly remember some colleagues behaving like zombies for a couple of days after spending their night sleep hours binging on the platform.