Voice of the DBA

Tag: work

  • Remote Work

    This is going to be the first time I’m working remotely today in over a year. I’m in Omaha, and while I’ve gone to a few cities, I haven’t actually worked remotely on a trip in over a year. I did broadcast from my condo in the mountains last summer, but that was because there was too much noise at home from some construction.

    However, this time I had a few meetings I can’t avoid and didn’t want to move. I have to coach later today, but I had time this morning, so I decided to not take holiday and work. I’ll have to do a little other work this weekend to make up time, but that’s fine.

    It’s interesting working in a hotel again, and carrying all the things I need to work. Laptop, cords, headphones, mouse. Actually, I forgot my mouse since I dropped the laptop in my coaches bag, so I’m dealing with a trackpad.

    It’s a pain, but I am looking forward to being able to get to an office again. It looks like that might be possible later this year, and my fingers are crossed.

  • Office FOMO

    There are plenty of companies that are starting to consider bringing people to the office. A few are tentatively making plans, Microsoft has opened campus with the option of 50% time at home. Google is aiming for Sept 1 and requires you to request remote work for more than 14 days a year. A few other friends are starting to go back 1-2 days a week at their companies, with the idea that this may increase over time.

    Redgate has still extended full time remote to the end of 2021, and I have no idea what things will look like after that. I’m curious, and anxious, as I want to go back to the office. Like mentioned in this piece, I am missing others, along with the interactions and the chance meetings. Grant wrote about things we miss recently, and that was my response. Not necessarily the office, but just missing the chance to interact with adults and talk tech.

    The bigger issue that I see, is that many of us may feel forced back into the office to take advantage of opportunities. The chance to get visibility with people outside our team, especially those that might be in management positions and can impact our careers. The face time, especially casual encounters outside of meetings, are a chance to impress others and give us an advantage over others.

    To me, this is the challenge of remote work when not everyone is remote. Out of sight, out of mind is an apt expression. While you might constantly contact those that you work with, who are the people that may give you a raise, a promotion, or a spot on a project that everyone wants to work on? Or the people that might decide who gets let go? If these are people you contact often, great. If not, that’s a problem, and in my experience, I don’t often get the chance to sell myself to them unless I’m in the office.

    These days I’m not as ambitious in my career, so I worry less about impressing others. I do want to see people, and that is what I miss the most during this pandemic. I do hope I can go back to the Redgate office and see people this fall, and I am hoping some events start to take place in person, perhaps with limited audiences, but in some way that allows us to have those chance, serendipitous interactions.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Finding a Break

    Microsoft was one of the companies that dramatically pivoted to remote work. They enhanced their Teams product in a number of ways to help themselves, and their customers collaborate when people are not located in the same physical space. They also started to study the way in which people worked. I wrote about this last year, and they continue to study how work has changed, even though they are allowing workers back into offices.

    There is a new article that talks about the differences between workers and managers. Managers think they are thriving, and workers are not. There may be many reasons for this, but I suspect one of these is the privilege of space. Many managers and senior workers likely have bigger residences, and can spread out. They can change their locations and experience a new environment. Since so many of them might get by with less powerful laptops, and often work on a single item at a time, it’s easy to move from the kitchen to a dedicated office, to a bedroom, or even out on a deck.

    As a technical person, I’ve often felt cramped and crippled when I don’t have two monitors where I can see a lot of code and perhaps have a document or other information on another screen. Even when working with VSCode, I like having a separate terminal or place to test code, as opposed to ALT+TABing between windows. It’s not easy to move a couple of screens around my house.

    After a year of remote work, I still find many co-workers in cramped space situations. Working in a bedroom, a living room, or something else. Most of us haven’t built houses with the idea that we’d be in them working and living full time. With less places to go, I’m sure many in apartments, shared spaces, or even in houses with family feel cramped, stagnant, and even incarcerated.

    I also think that for many workers, there is unseen, and maybe implied, pressure to get more done. While some of this has existed in office spaces, I think the lack of contact with a manager might cause many workers to feel they have to prove they are really getting lots of work done.

    Some of the ideas from Microsoft, all of which appear to be connected to digital services, seem to miss the things most of us need. We need contact with other humans, a break from the digital world, and time in the analog world. We need a way to get away from devices, screens, and digital touch.

    I’m trying to do better myself, and I am encouraging those I know to find ways to take more breaks outside, in other rooms, or even a drive in a car. Now if we could find a way to ensure more management would support this, I think that we might get better engaged and creative workers.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Easing Back to the Office

    Much of the tech world moved to remote work last year when the pandemic started. Various companies started to announce future dates during which they’d guarantee workers the ability to work from home. That was helpful, as many needed to plan for child care, parent assistance, and more. My company kept pushing the date out, and early this year (or late last) said that we would have the option through all of 2021.

    Microsoft had various announcements, but one was that employees could work from home permanently. For less than 50% of their time. The headlines downplayed the restriction, though I was glad to see some flexibility. Now, Microsoft is starting to allow some workers back to campus, noting that they are on step 4 of their 6 step dial. This is 57,000 workers, which is quite a few. Masks and social distancing are still required.

    While a good portion of employees want flexibility, and many prefer remote work, there are a good number that want to return to an office and be around other people. While Microsoft, and my employer, both want to embrace the changes of the last year, finding a balance between the past and future is hard. I thought that Microsoft’s blog on embracing a flexible workplace echoes a lot of what I hear from my company and a few others. We want to work with you, but there might be some restrictions. Certainly tax implications are a part of this for my company, and perhaps for Microsoft as well.

    I honestly am not quite sure how I want the future to work. While I appreciate remote first, and I like the idea of everyone being somewhat a peer during meetings, I also value getting people together. I don’t really look forward to going to an office and logging onto Zoom from a desk. I want to see people in conference rooms, able to discuss, debate, and brainstorm solutions for the future.

    For technologists, this might be easier. I could see more whiteboards, like Mural, in use in meetings, allowing remote people to participate in similar ways to those in the room, but I until we get something that creates some sort of virtual presence, I’m not sure that we will really see a good blend of in-person and remote attendees. I hope companies work on solutions like this, as the world has changed and in person attendance will still matter.

    Steve Jones