[BigJ1211]

> As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get the impression they're not working."

This really hits the nail on the head, in my experience this is accurate for employers that are anti-remote, they want to be able to see people "work". I've argued that that means they are essentially paying people to be there 8 hours a day, not that they're working 8 hours a day. You see it a lot in stale offices, people are sitting at their desks appearing busy. Work doesn't get completed in the that time and they start hiring more busy drones.

It's absolutely baffling to me that we can't look at the statistics at a higher level and recognise that it's a highly inefficient way of working.

[galfarragem]

Company's politics boil down to how the person in charge sees himself: as a boss or as a team leader. When it is like a boss, run and don't look back.

[nkrisc]

Likely they don't have any higher level way to gauge or measure productivity, which is why they fall back to something they can see: how many people are there and for how long. If they could measure how much work is actually getting done, they'd probably forget to even gaze upon the serfs toiling.

[sixstringtheory]

This seems like a big use-case for JIRA. It can do all sorts of reporting, and if you're engaged and looking at it every day you can see work as it gets done (as long as people use it in a way you've all agreed, which is a separate and simpler problem). Even a simple Trello board would go a long way (my personal preference).

Ironically, many places will use JIRA/Trello/etc, and then still have the sync meetings where you repeat all the actions you've performed on the board!

[2muchcoffeeman]

I get more work done and work longer hours when I work from home. Meetings are a good reason to turn up to the office if you have an agenda. And maybe the odd guild or two. Or brainstorming on solutions with team mates. But this only requires you to be in the office a couple days a week max. They could get 20% more work out of me with no impact to my non work life but ...

[krageon]

> we can't look at the statistics at a higher level

We can look at them and your management can too. The important takeaway is not that they don't know or can't learn, it is that their sense of control over you is more important than any measurable truth. Once you realise it's just a dysfunctional personality trait it becomes a lot easier to understand why it's so hard to change.

[alexis_fr]

It’s easy when work gets completed. I would hire anyone remotely or let them play games at work if work is done. It is more difficult when we think their work in average or has a lot of defects. Then, the contract is for them to put in the required hours with decent concentration, and they have fulfilled their part in a measurable way that satisfies the manager. And truth be told, if their work were perfect, they would be promoted.

So, home office for senior developers with awesome productivity only?

[Notorious_BLT]

Then the junior developers never get the benefit/mentorship of the best senior developers, instead they get mentored by the senior devs with poor productivity. That seems like a recipe for more unproductive developers

[pts_]

Hire juniors who can actually read the fscking code and docs.

[pts_]

Hah that's a tall order in 2020. Most of them can only watch videos and ask others.