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Comment by ariwilson | Hacker News Reader

I have a more nuanced take here. For low performing or junior employees, remote work was generally a terrible thing that led to less productivity (and more managerial overhead). For strongly performing employees with obligations at home, there were many who preferred working at home.

I fall more into the latter camp (at least I hope so) and, given I've only worked in nice offices with catered lunches, gyms, video games, offsites, etc, I enjoy a 3 day hybrid schedule works best for me.

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Remote work used to be an earned privilege.

Then COVID hit and everyone got a taste of it. Including the folks who discovered they could get paid to stay home and play video games and jackin' off during work hours.

In a way you could say this group ruined it for everyone. But that's usually how these things go.

The hammer comes down on everyone because otherwise it leads to uncomfortable questions like "why does HE get to work from home and I don't?" and people getting doctor's notes claiming they're autistic and can't be around people and that's why they can't ever see the inside of an office.

If you talk to a teacher the rule of thumb is that 2 problem children in a classroom of 25-30 can be handled, but 3 ruins the whole class.

Seems like a similar situation here.

> play video games and jackin' off during work hours.

Most of the hardest working remote people I've known, and I've worked remote at over 5 companies across two decades, often don't work standard hours. I honestly don't see the problem with someone gaming at 2pm if they're also making sure shit gets deployed at midnight.

I also have found that anytime I show up in an actual office it's hilarious how little work actually happens.

The people who get nothing done remote, also tend to get nothing done in an office they just create the illusion of it.

> I honestly don't see the problem with someone gaming at 2pm

It depends on if other team members need to be able to reach out to this person at 2pm

What if a team member needs you at 12am?

If there's a need for "core business hours" those can be established. My most recent company was evenly distributed around the globe so needing someone at 2pm PST is not much different than needing someone at 12am PST.

The vast majority of companies I've worked at remote have a strong async culture and are better for it. With some obvious exceptions, if you need a response in 15 minutes there's something wrong with your planning.

Even when I was working in an office I would sometimes take 2 to 3hours bicycle rides at lunch time because it was the best moment to be doing sport outdoors in winter.

I would just make sure I had no scheduled meeting and had people in my team available. Sometimes I would do it to make up for extra time outside of office hours. This also allowed some of my coworkers to leave earlier because they knew I would stay longer to do my regular shift.

> The people who get nothing done remote, also tend to get nothing done in an office they just create the illusion of it.

Maybe, maybe not but it surely create cost on people to come to office. Just as example person can't just use whole Friday / monday for starting, finishing weekend travel while claiming as working.

For business even if they can't monitor person whole day at work, getting them to workplace and checking status face to face is something better than nothing.

If people are slacking off at home, they’re gonna slack off at work too. This notion that a low performing employee will suddenly perform better in the office is a myth that needs to die.

> get paid to stay home and play video games and jackin' off during work hours.

Funny that I see the same things from people in toilet stall for 30 minutes at the office. (At least video games and videos..)

I'm sorry to take a belligerent tone, but this is total revisionism. People have always slacked off and bringing them into the office doesn't change that.

Maybe I'm an old greybeard as someone with more than five years experience in the workforce, but don't you remember before COVID? People screwed around all the time! On coffee breaks or smoke breaks or extended meetings or late lunches or ping-pong tables or just browsing Facebook on their desks.

I remember the pre COVID times and people messed around, but they were available. You could actually find them in the building if they were just playing ping pong or something. In the remote world it can be very difficult to reach somebody.

I prefer remote work, but not everybody is good at it and it can ruin it for everybody.

The only non-management/leadership people that like going into an office post-COVID are boomers.

> and people getting doctor's notes claiming they're autistic and can't be around people and that's why they can't ever see the inside of an office.

Continue, I’m all ears.

How would one go about making a policy that rewards high performance with remote work permit?

Times are changing. A couple of years back people would not only work from home but angrily demand that employers need to share all that office cost saving with employees who are working remotely.

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