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Comment by cs02rm0 | Hacker News Reader

Remote work is the only way I'd go now. Having had twins in the last year it's been vital.

It doesn't work for everyone, but a way I've seen remote-first companies get around that is to offer to rent a desk in somewhere like WeWork, so you can choose to be around other working people, away from home and then look to hire others in the same city who might opt for a desk there too, at least some of the time.

If the article is right that remote working works for, say 50% of people, a company able to attract remote workers is going to have a vastly bigger talent pool to fish in.

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> Having had twins in the last year it's been vital.

Employers that actually want workplace diversity should really consider how many lifestyles their work culture can accommodate. Some people adopt lots of kids and need more room. Some people love their families and won't move more than a few hours from them.

Nearly everybody needs flexible work arrangements from time to time: health problems, ailing family members, young children, everyone's-getting-married-this-summer, etc. Talking to your employer about a different pattern of availability is professional. But having to ask permission with forms and HR people in the room is not decent or necessary. If someone isn't earning their paycheck, that's a reasonable conversation to have. But assuming that's not the issue, let's just be decent human beings.

The problem is that not all humans are decent. The more of them you hire, the more likely one of them is the asshole who will take advantage of flexibility and ruin it for the rest.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Do you think an otherwise good person/employee with a newfound ability to work remote would become an asshole and abuse the privilege? Seems like they'd probably be an asshole to begin with. Also, if someone is an asshole and taking advantage of the flexibility, why not fire them? I'm not sure how keeping them in an office solves this issue of people being bad employees.

That's true, but I don't think the solution is to treat all humans like they're assholes.

The 'one bad apple' thing never cut it for me. If you are bad apple's manager, you have measurable metrics on her performance, and you act based on that, no more no less. This has no bearing on any of the other apples.

And what exactly do you think objective metrics for developers should be? LoC? Defects? As soon as a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure.

If one person in a group takes unfair advantage of flexibility by e.g. only going to the office half as much as the rest, it sure will have an effect on the "other apples".

Why would she need to go to the office? Work is something you do, not a place your'e at. If you, as a manager do not have any way of measuring how the people you are managing, then you have no reason to be there.

How are they ruining anything?

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