Hacker News Reader

Comment by calcifer | Hacker News Reader

You are getting a barrage of comments telling you that you are the problem, so let me just say I completely agree with you.

I have multiple colleagues who just casually disappear from the office (sorry, "work from home") for days to weeks and it's beyond irritating and disruptive to the rest of us.

View on HN

Responding here since the comment I was originally responding to was deleted.

> grace us with their presence.

> someone deliberately absent is insulting.

It seems you and the parent comment are conflating working from home/remote with playing hookey, which might be the case for your co-workers/organization and that sucks, but for a lot of companies that's not how it really works.

For example, my organization is spread out across the country, so even if someone on my team isn't working from home, they are still working remotely (from my perspective). This means as an organization, we have to establish communication channels to avoid the pain points you mentioned. I've been in "whiteboard" architecture discussions without being face-to-face with every person on my team and I would argue our way of accommodating remote teams is far superior to your in person discussions for the simple fact that we record all of our meetings and they can be reviewed by anyone at anytime.

Maybe recording these types of meetings (or all) might be something for you and your organization to consider? It seems like it would make you a lot happier and it is very beneficial to come back to a recording of this type of meeting months later and remember why you decided on a certain direction.

I think it's irrelevant if I'm the problem or not. I'm still hired for the job and given (1) I have no communication problem when we're face to face and (2) when people wfh I observe people other me also have communication problems, the only way this can be relevant if my employer is willing to fire me -- and nobody else -- for having communication problems when people other than me disappear (I never ever wfh unless I'm sick so I have a potential to make other people at work sick).

> I have multiple colleagues who just casually disappear from the office (sorry, "work from home") for days to weeks and it's beyond irritating and disruptive to the rest of us.

I cannot agree more. I would also add that (you might not agree with this) this is not just a tiny, minor problem, inconvenience, I think this can possibly cause major problems, especially in the design phase of systems. If the design is not communicated perfectly there will be problems and the only way to ensure this is to communicate face-to-face long enough that all engineers agree design is impeccable. Call me old school.

If faces are that important to your design process, you can use video chat. There is nothing that can be communicated in the same room but not over video chat. I don't know what the problem you're encountering is — whether you're the problem or your work has implemented remote work poorly or your coworkers are just weird and pathological — but it really seems like you're misidentifying it.

Smells are key to the design process.

I don't see any reason to conclude that the parent is the problem. But if lots of people just disappear for days to weeks for no reason (that you're aware of), that's a problem with co-workers and management, not remote work in general. Yes, remote work probably makes slacking easier, but it's the slacking that's the issue, not the remote work.

In a lot of roles people juggle various tasks and responsibilities that coworkers may not be aware of. That was the point I was making.

In any case you seem to have a real issue with your coworkers wherever the actual fault lies. Doesn’t seem sustainable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com