Yet another refugee who washed up on the shore after the great Reddit disaster of 2023

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • That all makes perfect sense, and I think you’re spot on.

    There’s another factor I’ve noticed, too. Like I said, I’m a manager. Honestly, when I’m home, I get more done because there’s fewer interruptions. But many of those interruptions are employees popping in to talk to me. Sometimes they just want to say hi or whatever, but not infrequently it starts with “Hey, there’s something I wanted to talk with you about…” and they tell me about some issue or something going on. They could email/message/call me about those things, but often they just don’t.

    So I think my job as a manager is more effective when we can talk face to face. I go into the office three days a week.


  • I have mixed emotions about it. I manage a software engineering team at an aerospace company. I do see some increased quality and productivity when folks who work together and colocated. But there are tradeoffs, and happier employees for sure needs to be in the trade. Our company has sites in different states, and for years and years we’ve grabbed the skills we need from wherever they are. That is, we’ve recognized that it’s workable to have at least some people not colocated, and are willing to take that hit if it buys us something.

    We were nearly 100% remote for the better part of two years, and it was fine. Our productivity was at least adequate. My personal feeling is that a hybrid arrangement, where everyone has some overlapping days, is the sweet spot. But I’ve fought for individuals being fully remote when it made sense.




  • An interesting article with some good points. One thing I didn’t see mentioned, that I’ve noticed as an old guy, is that a given joke isn’t necessarily funny a second time, and a lot of movies and shows use jokes that have been around a while. Probably nobody laughed when they read the “boy are my arms tired” joke used as an example in the article. That joke has been around since the 40s, and the article uses it because it’s so familiar to so many people. It was probably funny once, but now it’s a cliche.

    So if I go to a movie and the jokes are variants of ones I’ve seen or heard a bunch of times, I’m probably not going to laugh, and that doesn’t mean I’ve lost my sense of humor.