The worst thing about working in office is commute. You get 1-3 hours stolen every day by it, you pay for it out of your own pocket and its not even compensated in any way.
I commute on company time, that's basically the deal I have, and I feel awfull wasting 2 hours of my 8 hour work day commuting. I am easily distracted and working from home has saved me a ton of headache in terms of getting things done and focusing. There's just some people who like to book a bunch of meetings or just talk in the office all the time with you. I really hate it. I feel like some of the people (managers) really don't know what else to do than to manage. The best managers have been the ones that do coding on the side or actively add features when they have free time. Most managers really are just a hammer sometimes and creating a meeting is the nail.
The cool thing with AI, management tasks and all that management is becomming obsolete, You can have AI transcripe meetings and feed the transcription to a chat gpt to manage people automatically. The AI tells each person on the team what needs to be done in each sprint, if they've finished their epics and assigns them new ones based on a futrue company roadmap that all employees can agree upon 3 months in advance or even 6 months or 12 months in advance and just follow that. Management roles tend to also be the ones that cost a lot to hire, because it is deemed as a senior role. So exciting times ahead!
I work in a hybrid telework place. Tuesdays is the "office day" and I swear half the people just do a giant loop around the building yapping and socializing. I am finding I'm having to politely decline conversations more and more because I want to get my work done!
the worst thing about this issue is "company wide" policies. This needs to be per team or per department because of a lot of things mentioned in the video. I work remote or partial for more than 20 years but I know a lot of people who either don't like or are very "bad" at it. I received a lot of criticism when I was remote because being in the office was "the norm" and seeing it the other way around is just as bad
Reminds me how in my previous work place, everybody had to come in on Saturdays just because one department had a lot of pending work, which needed to be done to fulfill contracts before the end of the financial year. That ordeal lasted 3 whole months.
Yea I think a lot of the contention around this comes from people under management that wants a unilateral solution. I think it's on management to be open to a mixed policy, but at the same time, I think people are being overly aggressive about it, and that's actually preventing productive conversation about it.
My best work has been remote, my worst work has been in-person. I just have so much more time remote, I can work secret overtime until 3am if I have to, and I don't have supervisors breathing down my neck forcing me to accrue needless technical debt every time they walk by. There is a place for in-person team meetings to get everyone on the same page but when it comes time to put my head down and work 9/10 times remote is superior. If I was in a leadership position I could see needing to be in the office more for sure. But as a lowly peon I have called in "sick" just to stop detrimental meetings from happening in person. Now with better leadership I could see in-person being amazing but 90% of the time in the real world the leadership is... rough.
Yes I hate everytime some manager wants to add something just because he has to earn his position and to tell his wife what important he has done. 90 % in office is about making manager happy and to feed other parasites. The project is standing still and the others are having fun because corporations are full of parasites now.
I just wanted to say thank you Tim. You introduced me to so many new things about game development I wish I had known sooner. Your smile has brought me many smiles. You’re joyous out look on life has been infectious and an honor to witness. After the events of yesterday I can no longer stick around. But thank you for the joy you have given me while I was here. Please keep being amazing. I love you uncle Tim 🩵🤍🩷
I feel like I'm in the split on this one, personally. On the one hand, I'm one of the "calling" people who also like to be in the office. On the OTHER hand, I'm a night owl, and it feels like if you're WFH, people don't care about your hours as much, and if you're RTO, you are expected ~9-5. If I could work in the office flexible hours, I'd be there 10-12 hours a day again, but it feels like when they hit the RTO button, it tends to also come along with inflexible hours, inflexible days, etc. All of which is doubly annoying for me, as my work (Systems Administration/Engineering/Architecture) is best _PLANNED_ when other people are around to collaborate with, but best _EXECUTED_ when no one is around, so they don't get hit by outages. Really, it feels like people ought to be evaluated individually, and if that's WFH, great. If it's RTO, great. If it's hybrid? Fine. I SUPER agree about the "some people don't have homes well set up for remote work", I definitely had folks on my team that loved their houses...but their houses were in the boonies on a mountain and so it was WAY better for them to come in. Likewise, I knew folks who had fully appointed little home offices, so they had no need to come in. Different strokes for different folks, and the differences (I think) made for a better team (people at home always had good coverage during commuting hours, etc.). At the end of the day, I don't think productivity is everything. I would rather have a team humming along happily at 80% that I could ask to ramp it up to 100% in an emergency than a team pushing at 100% all the time and burning out. I say this as the person normally working 60+ hours a week. It works for me, but definitely not for everyone, especially those with kids, older parents they're responsible for, etc.
I work on an almost fully remote team at a nationally recognized healthcare institution (#1/2 in the nation on many specialty practices, healthcare leaders across the world regularly visit our campuses). It really depends on the culture of the company on whether or not it will be successful. If you work on a team of highly independent, experienced, and responsible coworkers, as well as having support from leadership, then remote work is fantastic. I still maintain a high standard of work and it feels great to work at an organization that trusts me to take ownership of projects and work independently. Most of my coworkers are parents, as well, and I see the flexibility that remote work provides for them, allowing them to take care of young kids at home, rather than paying the money for childcare and spending 1-2 hours in traffic. I personally thrive best in a remote environment without being in an office and exposed to coworkers, but I understand if others do not. As a future father, I do not think I can or will go back into the office full time, especially after I have kids. Just my perspective. Thanks for the great video.
Definitely believe it depends on where you work and what you are working on. I don't think we've been more productive any time before we went work from home. There are things that do take a lot longer when not in an office though. Instead of getting near instant feedback on something, you have to share your screen for someone that might not be immediately available when you need them, can't just look over at your boss's cubicle/office and see their availability. I'd assume people working on assets for games kind of have it the "worst". Not everyone has a color calibrated monitor or monitoring speakers to view/listen to something. I can see those types of roles get slowed way down. As a programmer, I just push to the repository, send a message to the team, turn around and put my sun glasses on as the build server explodes behind me.
The whole calling personality I think is orthogonal to someone preferring remote work vs in office, but I definitely makes them more assertive in getting their preferred work space. I personally identify as being a calling personality. While not in the games industry I am a software engineer and I very much prefer in office work. There seems to be an interesting interplay between these elements. I enjoy the fact that I spend 40 hours "working for someone else" since it forces me to go down roads I would not normally and to push through problems that would be easy for me to give up on in a personal project. I enjoy being in an office space where, for most of the day I'm in a cubicle by myself coding away, but I can also walk to people's desks or enter a meeting and be face-to-face (I'm an introvert and don't leave my house much besides for work). When I work remote my motivation drops and I feel sluggish, and I start feeling bad for not getting as much work done. I feel like I'm just not in that flow state and I very much enjoy being in that flow state. When I work remote I get the feeling that I'm being deprived of something.
People who think they work harder might be more productive individually while working remotely, but still be less productive as a group, and this is what matters.
I'm used to working from my home office, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really good at it. Structure would help me in many ways. But even then, it's better for even me to work remotely, and it's infinitely more efficient. The fact that I don't have to commute saves so much time it's crazy, and the fact that I can take my breaks whenever I feel like I need them and can even split the day if I need to is a massive help in order to be efficient and at my best when I work. And the fact that I don't feel like I'm somewhere just because and I have to be there a given time regardless of what happens, but can actually 100% focus on getting the work done and that's that, is incredibly valuable. Not only just in that moment, but in long term it's infinitely more healthy, leaves me feeling better and more motivated and energetic.
I miss talking to the art and programming teams. I have regular conversations with the rest of the designers, but never get to just casually talk to my friends in other disciplines. Honestly if we could work at home and all have lunch together in person it'd be almost perfect.
Through the pandemic and into "normalcy" I worked for a company that had been purchased back in the 2010s but was always a much larger percentage remote than the parent. We had our most profitable year ever during lockdown, but it's unclear if that was due to how we were working, or industry panic that drove sales. It's absolutely true that some people do really well remote, and some cannot do it at all. It's unfortunate that a lot of CEOs are unwilling to make use of both types though, and force everyone to be in the office. Personally, I get a lot more done at weird hours. The other thing that I observed though is that regardless of which type any given employee is, it's a LOT harder to onboard someone and introduce them to the company culture fully remotely. We hired a few people during lockdown, and none of them were still there by the end of it despite the fact that most of the rest of us were there for much longer than industry average. It's a hard problem to solve.
I think people forget that we're all different, and can operate very differently from person to person for various reasons. So, you're right about it not being a one-size-fits-all thing, both employee and the company level. Another thing to think about is that when the change happened, it was sort of forced (outside of having the 'choice' to quit or a company to layoff people). It essentially changed so many variables that it was like a whole other job, and the employee didn't get a chance to re-evaluate the company, nor the company had a chance to re-evaluate the employee, under these new conditions. That's assuming they were a good fit for each other in the first place. And of course some companies had figured out that they can use the RTO mandate as a sort of veiled 'layoff' to fix the over-hiring they did after things started getting back to normal. 😣
@@dtraindaimyo3377 I do not feel like answering that question, sorry, and that is the third time I am posting this, yet the automatic filter keeps removing it for some reason...
I’ve been working remotely for over seven years now. Sometimes, I wish I could go into the office, especially when a new project kicks off and there’s a lot of interaction with others. Overall, I think working remotely is slightly better because it allows me to spend more time with family.
One of the things I do like at my company is we have a open zoom room and Discord where we can just chat and hang out. Zoom mostly gets used for any impromptu meetings, but Discord is more for socializing, playing games in our free time, whatever it might be. I really think having an open space where people can just hop in and chat would benefit any company that allows for remote work. Sure it doesn't completely fill the hole of in person socializing, but it allows you to communicate and make friends with your co workers easier than if we didnt have it.
I'm doing my IT degree online, and it has its perks, but I'm looking forward to working in an actual office once my course is done. I feel like the structure is necessary for me. I also miss interacting with others and getting direct feedback instead of waiting for emails or phone calls.
I’ve been remote since 2021, and I honestly miss office time to some extent. I agree that working in your own home can be highly productive, and it offers a lot of perks (comfy place, no commute, no distractions if your family allows, etc). However, I miss the interaction and camaraderie, and brainstorming or just talking things over is so much easier when you can just walk over and don’t have to wait for everyone joining a zoom call. Personally, a hybrid setup would probably work best for me.
I'm doing 80% work weeks almost entirely remote, and I love it. Sure, I miss interactions and joking around with coworkers, but also, when I was in the office everyone is mostly just programming their own tasks, not very different from working from home.
Darn, Tim, very nuanced answer. I agree that you have to like it and be good at it. That’s kinda obvious. The thing is, though, there are plenty of people who like it and are good at it, who also relocated to more affordable places or places with better quality of life, and who are now asked to RTO just because. And the “just because” is often code for “other staffers are not good at it, we must bring them back in and they will cry injustice if we don’t ask everyone to RTO”. I guess that’s how it is when you are not your own boss.
I really enjoy mixed remote work, something like 2 days in the office 3 days at home. It feels like best of both worlds. There was this place I used to work at, they moved their office, it was a nice cosy place and it could accommodate something like 30% of the staff, but then they made the "back to office" decree and a few times I found myself not able to find a single empty desk to work at. Most of the times it was fine because people were rebelling against the decree.
My best pro about remote work is that it pushed me to reach out and have visibility around the world in a place with lots of studio and 24h/24h coverage. My main con is that it made it really hard to separate work and personnal life. I've had my best career growth boost and learning experience remote. But I also see people who perform horrendously.
I'm one of those people whose home situation isn't ideal for remote. Its a 2 bedroom house and while there is a den its for my elderly, retired dad to do his things. So, working remote means my bedroom is my office. That doesn't work out so well.
Yeah I definitely was in the camp of discouraging peers going back into the office, but I'm a talented independent programmer that has been thriving with remote work. I remember being surprised when Dave Lang wanted to get everyone back at Iron Galaxy. I guess we're all coming from different circumstances. Thanks for sharing!
I'm glad that wfh has become an option for a lot of people in the past couple years, but yeah, I'm 100% one of the people who prefers being in an office even if that means having to commute. I need that separation of church and state otherwise my home starts feeling like a workplace and I really don't like that. Plus I live in a country with goo public transportation so my commute doesn't feel like wasted time: I can spend it reading, playing video games, watching a show, preparing my next D&D session, etc.
yeah, I'm hybrid and generally like it - though we're 3 days a week in office now, which is more than I need personally. I'd be happy with 1 or 2 days a week in office
Hybrid is actually a more stressful model, since you now need to keep track of when you need to show up to the office and book a train etc. you need to coordinate logistically. where if you're fully remote you don't have to worry about that, you can show up to the office when you want to or every friday. where a hybrid model of 3 days a week its a huge stress factor. In-fact it is better to just show up every day to work than work a 3-day at the office model. It is horrible! and if you're somebody who commutes to the office, Busses and trains don't have a 3 day subsription, they usually offer a monthly subscription to the train or a pay as you go model. So you're totally screwed on that front. 3-days a week in the office is way worse than full week at the office.
I imagine treat it like privilege similer to a work vehicle. Start off office based, and make the offer to those interested. Performance goes up/maintained. Theu keep it. Those who dont bring back to tje office. Dealing with people tho will always remain a problem
Do you think the change in number of games and change in quality comes not from remote work but the ideal to have less crunch and create better working environments? Because that's seemed to change a lot in the past few years, too.
Agreed, and quality is highly debatable, 2023 was an amazing year, the year with most 90+ games of all time. Also games are getting longer to ship and that started before the pandemic
I work for myself but rent an office because I like the little bit of physical separation between work and home to help me switch into and out of work mode. I'm lucky that it's only a 20 minute walk each way which is pleasant! I think it helps me get more fresh(ish city) air and exercise than I would if I work from home all the time - which I have to imagine helps me with general productivity and well being 🙂 As much as my boss is a hard ass (it's me, I'm my boss 😂), I am grateful that I have the option to work from home whenever if I really wanted to 😊
I definitely get more work done from home cause I can focus better and don't get distracted from others. But when I'm in office the power in ad-hoc high bandwidth conversations that don't need a scheduled meeting is pretty amazing, a lot of good stuff happens in those moments. If you have the chance, I suggest having a mixture of both.
I work somewhere that got rid of all forms of remote work (unless you have a fancy enough title in which case go crazy). The thing I realised was that I do like working in office but I deeply miss the flexibility. If I was doing longer shifts or I had calls with people in different timezones I really appreciated being able to go home and do extra work in my pyjamas. I found sometimes for my role being at home meant people could stop distracting me for the day and I could rip through my work while listening to my own music. I also get sick so much more often because people have forgotten how to take sick days until theyve come into the office and spread it everywhere
Good points. I’m very lucky to be able to teach from home, but I think it has changed me. I’m not walking as much, or getting up as early in the morning. Still, I can take care of my elderly parents, and be close in case they need me.
I prefer remote work because of a lot of the little things I may need for my physical issues or needs that I then don't need a second copy at work or have to buy extra. I can't go fully remote because I'm an attorney and I do need to talk to some clients in person or go to court and I feel like I actually get more work done on my days home than in the office. Although that may also be the fact I have different priorities a lot of the time I'm in the office versus when I'm working remotely from home.
04:05 Thank you for that description. I had some trouble finding a proper phrasing for this. That is me.... I like networking, home labbing scripting and hell topics are really close to work, but I don't want to work where I play games or tinker around with new stuff.... I can do it sure, but after a few months I just feel bad sitting at my desk doing "fun" things. I go to the office almost 5 days a week. If I had half a room just to work then I wouldn't mind working remotely 100%
Hope this question hasn’t been asked before. Having grown up on modern games, I always thought Pac-Man was about as advanced as 1980s games got. I eventually saw Space Quest gameplay & thought it was fascinating that the game was played through through typing commands. It also allowed for developers to comment on silly commands that they knew would be typed. What other interesting mechanics from old video games became outdated & aren’t seen much anymore?
I've worked on fully remote, fully in office and hybrid. I really like working from home, but I'm WAY more productive in person. Hybrid has the best of both.
We have 10 days a month for homeworking and that is great compromise imho. We still get to see each other and interact but have flexibility to stay home when needed or wanted.
I regret working long hours (50+hrs a week). I also regret not forming a union for my work. The corporation gained all the benefits, and then let me go at 55 yo. Now I'm 60 and struggling. I prefer to work remote, and to work a set number of hours because I don't get any benefit for going above and beyond - only the stockholders and C-suite people benefit from that.
I found Hybrid work to be a good compromise for me. Working on something that requires silence a few days, then exchanging with colleagues directly later on in the week.
I enjoyed the office more than I do working remotely, but that's maybe because I was only 8 blocks away from my old office. Commute wasn't long, I could get a coffee on the way, bask in the sun a little bit before going in. Socializing in the office and team work was definitely better than it is doing purely remote too. If I had 1h+ commute like some of my team mates, I would also hate the office.
I started working remotely because of the war, and it hasn’t been what I expected. It feels like I'm working all day without getting much done. Many people imagine remote work as "working from bed," which makes sense if you don’t have much to do... I’m glad to avoid annoying, noisy coworkers with bad jokes, but I miss the cool people I used to hang out with. This topic reminds me of your video about RNG, where people think they want one thing, but in reality, it turns out to be something else.
Oh, a fellow Ukrainian! You are lucky you have a job. I only worked 1 year of my life and on a very shitty job because of my low self esteem and because my head was full of crazy fantasies in the end and after school. War only made everything worse in my efforts to find at least the lowest of the low jobs... I already lost hope.
I do civil design (CADD) and working from home I spend a lot more time working but feel far far less productive to the point it causes serious anxiety issues.
It all depends on the type of work and structure of the team. I work on a trading desk and remote work is simply not viable. It's doable on a slow day or a holiday, but if shit's hitting the fan it's TERRIFYING to be alone.
Our team is full remote. A lot of time goes into course corrections. If we were in-office, I think that would happen less. My team is busy working, but if they’re working on the wrong things or not building what is needed, that productivity is ~ wasted. That said, I still prefer it over in-office work as every office I’ve worked in was terrible for concentration. So my time is more productive but I have to accept and proactively deal with a bit of waste. We hire for remote, so that fixes the life circumstances/strong preference issue.
Two things I dislike about in-office work: the commute, and people stopping by my desk. My home office is great, no one bugs me and I get a lot more done, plus I have a lot less stress because I don't have the commute. Hell, my boss blocks my work all the time asking me things he could just look up online. My company had record profits during the two years we were remote. Now that we're going back to office things are flagging a little. I agree that some people really just perform better when they can interact face to face, like my boss, but most of those people actively interfere with my productivity.
What I like the most is the hybrid style of work when there is 60%/40% split between remote and office work. Gives a chance for people to enjoy remote work but also reap the benefits of office work too.
Just give people option of going to office if they want to instead of lying about hybrid space. One job in Europe wanted me to be 2 days in office/3 days from home but I'd have to drive over 2 hours one way frommy city to their, not counting traffic, issues with parking etc. I told them if they won't change this to twice or once a month it is pointless to schedule even first itnerview.
@wiziek And that is totally fine. If a company wants hybrid work space it is expected to be often in the office, by teams that work in hybrid models. If this kind of work does not fit you, search for a remote position instead. Going once or twice in a month in the office is not a hybrid workspace. Just like before COVID companies giving 2-3 days in a month working remote is not hybrid either.
@@player1_fanatic Then they shouldn't waste time of people that aren't close to office. This is dumb requirment because as always, this would be position on Europe but having to go on remote calls with people from India, other European or America countries and no there wasn't any stuff to be done in office that couldn't be done remote, like swapping parts or operating something at site.
I also feel like a lot of the drop in productivity over the past couple years has been more attributed to many companies going all in on really big stuff and failing into mass layoffs that have broken up those teams and their workflows. Going from workflows being wildly shifted from 2020 to poor management over growth putting strain on workflows then sudden team deflation. Honestly hard to say how much effect remote work vs not remote has done when the companies that have done well managing themselves through everything. But that's just my 2 cents. To those that read all that. Thank you and I hope you have a good rest of your day.
Yep the layoffs are affecting almost every industry that over-invested in tech stacks and data teams post COVID. It is crazy to see companies come up with these big expansion plans with COVID money and then ultimately fail due to poor leadership and execution of said plans only to fire/lay off employees beneath them despite their failed vision coming from the top.
I do agree attributing any recent changes in productivity to remote work is a very, very bold claim that would need a lot more backing than in this video, even if I like the video overall.
I am not a remote worker person. In community college I had a totally online class and kinda forgot about it. ( out of sight, out of mind) Passed the first test, then dropped it for next semester for in classroom. Also didn't like the tele-class, the teacher was on another site campus. That class also didn't work out for me. Needed more in person. Still acquired my associate degree. But I realized I'm not a people person. However I work good in small teams or solo. The factory life for me.
We moved to 50/50 where I work for my local government. It sure makes our time theft more productive! Lol. Seriously though, at least on my team I’d say about 75% of our time is spent not working just waiting for things to hit our inbox. So the time theft was always there, we were just stuck at our cubicles watching UA-cam, reading etc.
I really really liked the *idea* of working remotely but after they closed down our physical office and remote working became our standard, I found 1: Nowhere in my house is properly setup so that the room is both properly cooled, properly ventilated, has good lighting, has a good chair, a good desk, and a comfortable space for setting up a modern computer. 2: Trying to work by remote-connecting to my work computer from my personal computer is a disaster because the eternal temptation of having all of my videogames and guitars and other entertainment in arms reach and ready to go in seconds means the moment I hit a slow compile or a boring lul where I'm waiting and can't *actively* progress my work, I'll switch over to entertainment and burn way more time than intended. Doesn't matter if I set an alarm or limit myself to only using my phone. The best option is to not even turn my personal PC on and go to a different room entirely if possible (if it's cool enough) 3: Internet goes out? Pay gets behind and I can't get back online until the bill is caught up? Prepare for a painfully hard week with low productivity. Or just generally if there are network issues, this is nightmarish as I don't have enterprise level contracts to get somebody to come in and fix our personal net connection. 4: Casually walking over and asking someone for help just does *not* happen online. Sometimes on Teams or in an email the team might pop in for questions, but because of the dynamics of typing, the desire to appear presentable, and how deliberate doing this is, it's really never the same and often results in people not talking at all and trying to solo-fix something that could have been done in about 2 minutes with somebody walking over and asking "hey, I don't remember how to do x, can you check it all quick if you have it open?" 5: I have this franken setup with 3 monitors, one plugged into one PC, two plugged into another, and a USB switcher with a finnicky button that sometimes doesn't work. I often end up better off grabbing my Meta Quest 3 headset and using the virtual monitors in Virtual Desktop than trying to fight through the weird distracting setup of my physical monitors. I very much look forward to when people can get this kind of thing working in a sunglasses spec so I don't have to shove this huge thing over my face. 6: The temptation to lie about time spend is strong. I already talked about how the temptation to get distracted by games is high, but the temptation to repeatedly think "I'm almost done, I'll just work a little extra and knock it out" and then bam it's been another 4 hours, I've eaten into my usual sleep time, my productivity the next morning is gonna be funky, and the timesheets are gonna look weird. I can try to move the number I actually did around to fit more neatly into the expected daily amount, but that starts getting dangerously close to time fraud and I don't wanna get caught up in that kind of trouble. 7: Family came over? Local neighborhood crisis event? Natural disaster? Congrats, it's gonna be a lot harder to get everyone on the same page on what you're dealing with compared to when it's happening right outside the office building where everyone there can see/hear it and know "Okay actually everyone just go home and stay safe."
The main reason companies are itching so bad to get people back to the office is because the executives themselves,or them and many of the shareholders, have investments in commercial real estate and so even if it is completely unnecessary and irrational for that company to have people in come back to the office in terms of actually doing their work, they want to artificially generate demand to protect their other investments. It is also that many managers want to closely monitor staff and feel a greater sense of power over them, which being in the office gives them.
A friend of mine works on a team in a large multi-national corporation (not game-related) that has supported remote work for years. Team leaders determine if their team functions well remotely or not. Recently a single person, who I assume was someone who wasn't a good remote worker, complained to HR and now the company is forcing everyone to come back to the office out of which my friend's team is based. Now team members not only have to waste time and fuel commuting, but some have to find child care and all must now deal with the noise and distraction of an office environment which has also impacted productivity (the work requires a lot of intense research and thought)... all to placate one whiny individual.
it’s crazy how we worry so much about the feelings of in person work instead of immunocompromised people or marginalized folks. there was a statistical reduction in bias and subconscious discrimination during remote work. both modalities are valid, but in person is favored and status quo. but I don’t want covid because a workplace cheaps out on safety.
Mmm, good video. I'm a heavy work-at-work advocate, personally. If I message/call someone who's working from home, and they don't reply - I know they've gone off to do their washing or have a chat with their family. The office environment itself also seems to instil a certain work ethic in people - and they just don't do it at home (no matter how much they insist they "do better at home"). I work from home at the moment, and my personal experience is that people think you're always free - so that you can be interrupted. It really slows down work and breaks flows often. Socially, people (friends) also respect you less, because they don't see your work as work anymore, since it's visually the same behaviour as someone staying home and playing a game, but that's a bit more niche.
What if you message someone at work and they went to restroom? Buy a coffe? Some snacks before or after lunch? Are during meeting? What is work ethic at office, what does it mean? Other then being outside home?
Greetings, Tim! What sorts of rewards do you least and most prefer putting in games, such as EXP, items, lore, companions, achievements, and otherwise? What parts of the critical path do you most enjoy working on, such as the start, mid, end, or post-game? What eras of gaming do you believe were/are worst and best as a game player, game buyer, employee, and company head? What are your thoughts on character build options that are intentionally "strong now, weak later" versus "weak now, strong later?" For example, Fallout had late-game weapon types that required improving skills that were barely or not useful throughout the early game. Early edition D&D Wizards were often weak in the early game but strong in the mid- to late-game, whereas martial characters were the opposite. Thankee!
My biggest issue with remote work is that I do not have a dedicated space for working. If I work on my couch or bed, my brain automatically recognizes it as a "relaxing zone", and I might end up doing other stuff like watching UA-cam videos or play video games when I should be working. When I am at office, I rarely find myself doing or thinking about things other than work. Luckily, everyone in my office is an introvert and I work in a very small company of 5 people, so all the other nonsense that I'd have to deal with otherwise is just not a factor. On the other hand, I learn much better on my own, at my own pace. If the pace is pushed too much, I cannot absorb anything. In my previous job, though, I'd wake up every day wishing that remote work was an option, because nothing I did couldn't be done at home, and my office was 25km away in a city with some of the worst traffic in the world. I work better when I have a dedicated work space, but I really dislike having to forfeit almost two hours of my day in commute.
Whenever someone talks about remote work critically they never (or very briefly) bring up family, mental health, commuting and quality of life for some reason, it's always about productivity and time management.
I think having some days is beneficial (when you behave well in remote like Tim say in its video) if you spend too much time in commute. Not necessarily all remote, but I think in my case I'm less tired even during in person work.
Hey Tim, This is definitely on the more technical/code side of things, but you mentioned about code reviews and it got me to thinking about whether you would talk a little about what you think makes a good or bad code review? I.e. what is the level of feedback that you aim for, do you go often/ever go so far as to talk about things like function and variable names, were there common issues that you found when reviewing others code? In your experience what is your favourite way to review code? And when having your own code reviewed by others what are the kinds of practices that other programmers do that bother you (e.g do you find people nit-pick about things you find unimportant?) I'm a developer myself but have always been indie, I didn't come from a formal computer science or software engineering background, and I've always been the most senior programmer in my team at any given time. So my code reviewing style has just been something I've had to build up based off what I think is important, but it would be interesting to hear some opinions from someone with as much experience as yourself.
A lot of places are international and have workers all over the world. So, "remote work" is just the way it is and has been for the past 20 years. The seated cost of someone in the US is A LOT more expensive than someone in India. I have been working for the past 10 years where no one in my team lives in my town and I live in the same town as the HQ to the business. I think that is something that I always seem missed in this conversation. A lot of tech has never had everyone in the same office. Being in the same office REALLY restricts the talent pool. Especially since paying moving expenses and benefits from a company hasn't been a thing for a long, long time.
I work as an assistant in a government institution, and what I primarily wish for in regards to remote work is more flexibility. My bosses don't have to convince me that filling out 15 page forms and processing invoices in SAP is hard on a tiny laptop monitor - we cannot plug anything of our own into the computers for security reasons, so at home I am stuck with it. In the office, docking it and having three monitors is very handy. But basic things like answering emails, media monitoring and writing social media posts? I absolutely can do that from home, and do chores or work on my hobbies in between. I am quite efficient at my job, so often I have plenty of downtime. In the office I sit around and read books, which would probably earn me many weird looks if not for a miraculous lack of dickish bosses. The nature of my organization is such that work is very inconsistent - some weeks we have 1.5 hrs of actual work per day, some weeks everything is on fire and the whole office is pulling overtime. I know there are times for in-person work, I just wish I had the flexibility to decide when to myself, not just have 1 fixed day/week.
Excellent overview. Probably the least "biased" perspective on remote work I've seen in a long time. One comment on "productivity is down", it's really not an easy metric to measure. Quality or productivity coming down can be the result of so many things, and, probably one of these things is because not everyone can work remotely, as you mentioned, and it can be a learning curve. But there are so many other things, cultural, company focus, external factors, etc... It's a bit unfair to put it all on remote work. But surely every company needs to find "what works best for them", and it doesn't necessarily mean remote work. Look at Hideo Kojima, I think his games would be terrible if he had a remote team (but then maybe some of his team members are remote and that's ok)
What I find odd is that I rarely seem to see people advocating for a mix. I have a mix basically because of a disability accommodation and I find it works pretty well - I get days where I can be present and collab with people when needed, and days when I can be left alone to do the boring admin work that requires no input. I can absolutely see why people would have a preference (for me, it's definitely the remote work days) but the hard emphasis on one or the other just seems unrealistic to me.
Just to reinforce your point that remote work isn't new: pre-pandemic, I worked on a team with three people in Boston, one person in Texas, and two people in San Francisco. The ones in San Francisco technically were assigned to an office, but they almost never went in because they weren't working with anybody else there. Very little changed for us with the pandemic.
When my job was forced remote during the pandemic it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I couldn't focus and my work suffered, i feel like it completely derailed my career.
The amount of games released only has increased since the pandemic, in fact we're at all time highs in games released in a year. As for quality of the average game, I can't say.
In my humble opinion, working more than 40 hours is fine as long as you're paid overtime for it. However, I consider doing it without being paid unethical (as well as working less, if that's what your contract says). Many people died fighting so we could have that 40 hour work week today.
I do feel more productive in they office, but my company mandated that absolutely everyone has to work from the office full time and had disconnected all remote access, and I really miss the flexibility of being at home one or two days a week.
The mention of programmers being especially suited to remote work somewhat begs the question, do people see a future where studio space is mostly taken up by designers and artists?
I do believe that creative work suffers when creators aren't sharing the same space, but I'll never be convinced that my pencil pushing clown world contractor job benefits from in-person, and I've done both
Speaking as an autistic person, the commute traffic takes a lot out of me and being completely accessible to people interrupting to talk is also really draining I'd rather work remote even if the office environment is more productive (which I'm not sure in my case)
I think a lot of people who are big proponents of remote work don't realize how their productivity has fallen. They focus on the pros, which are great - you don't have to commute, you don't have to dress up and you get to shop and cook meals on company time. But even on gamedev positions that suit remote work, like programming or art, I've noticed a fall in productivity. Writing this comment on company time from the office 👍
have you ever done a video on what a day in the life of someone working in design does? I can understand roles like programming and art fairly easily, and I can obviously see the end result of game design. but actually what game design work looks like day to day is a mystery for me
Other people are probably more disciplined than me, but when we were fully remote I very quickly just started staying up later and was net flat on sleep. Many such cases I'm sure.
@@argylemanni280 Signalis was done in free time by people working in the industry as a day job, IIRC. They said Covid was when they had the time and could do the bulk of work.
I hate working. I have had many opportunities to work at home (I'm a programmer), but during all my years of working I've never done so even once. Working is something I do just to get money, I hate every second (no, it's not the job, it's the concept, I've had several different types of jobs), and I do not want to turn my ONE refuge in life into a worksite. Home is for relaxation, pleasure and my own personal (fun) programming projects, nothing else.
There are a lot of folks who take advantage of this and it starts to show pretty quickly. Some may say more, some won't admit to less. I always hate the people who go dark and only show up for ceremonies and not provide much feedback. We do hybrid and it is working good for us.
I get lonely, and if I don't even see people that feeling of loneliness gets distracting. I might not even interact with them but it helps to see them in passing. Being able to quickly chat with people in person is also handy, sometimes really important.
@@StinkyBuster That's not what body language is. When I'm at my desk getting work done, I still might or might not like to be interrupted for an interesting conversation. People will be able to tell by tone, how I hold myself, etc, whether I'm open to conversing or not (provided they don't have some mental disability of certain kinds, in which case I'll have to be blunt).
The idea of work from home sounds nice, but it's not feasible for my line of work. It feels like hearing people talk about living in a foreign country.
"They may have a home environment that's just not conducive to working there, maybe they don't have a place to set up a home office that's quiet, um that's somewhat set apart, maybe their home is environment is too loud, maybe there's too many people, maybe it's too cramped, it's just not conducive for whatever reason to doing work there", but I thought it's illegal to live in an office?
So, you mentioned dedicated, work, home, and other spaces. Could you go into more detail on the other space? (Right now I live in work, and home, I don't know what other represents.)
Random Thing, The Dangers of the Corrupted Peaks Oh, traveler bold who roams so free, Keep well away from the mountain’s knee. The path ahead is rough and torn, Where bright gold fades to rust and thorn. The flowers here are gray with death, The wind brings not a welcome breath. And every stone, each path you tread, Knows stories of the lost and dead. In every hollow, shadows lie, In every echo, a muted cry. The mountains beckon, but beware- The wealth they promise turns to despair. For what you find in the mountains' heart, Will leave you broken, torn apart. Turn back, brave soul, while you still can- The Corrupted Peaks are no place for man.
I hear you. So why we can decide on by ourselfs how we want to work. Instead of forcing every one in the office when they dont need to be there like IT/programers?
I really dislike working from home. I'm a young person living by myself, so the idea of spending 8 hours every day alone in my apartment doing work sounds like literal Hell.
For me if I ever take non remote work thats litetally several hours I cant do work. And i only live 50km from the furthest place i could possibly commute to (moving is out of the question financially)
During the covid remote work pandemic I had to start keeping notes/a diary because I couldn't remember when things had happened. Living alone, sitting in the same room by myself day in, day out didn't give my brain enough context to attach memories to a definite time.
The worst thing about working in office is commute. You get 1-3 hours stolen every day by it, you pay for it out of your own pocket and its not even compensated in any way.
I commute on company time, that's basically the deal I have, and I feel awfull wasting 2 hours of my 8 hour work day commuting. I am easily distracted and working from home has saved me a ton of headache in terms of getting things done and focusing. There's just some people who like to book a bunch of meetings or just talk in the office all the time with you. I really hate it. I feel like some of the people (managers) really don't know what else to do than to manage. The best managers have been the ones that do coding on the side or actively add features when they have free time. Most managers really are just a hammer sometimes and creating a meeting is the nail.
The cool thing with AI, management tasks and all that management is becomming obsolete, You can have AI transcripe meetings and feed the transcription to a chat gpt to manage people automatically. The AI tells each person on the team what needs to be done in each sprint, if they've finished their epics and assigns them new ones based on a futrue company roadmap that all employees can agree upon 3 months in advance or even 6 months or 12 months in advance and just follow that. Management roles tend to also be the ones that cost a lot to hire, because it is deemed as a senior role. So exciting times ahead!
Yep. The commute to the office is over an hour each way because of horrible traffic. The commute at home is from the coffee pot to the couch.
@@zxcaaqlmao. Keep dreaming.
@@zxcaaqyou are fried
The amount of socializing and screwing around in the office was always high
I work in a hybrid telework place. Tuesdays is the "office day" and I swear half the people just do a giant loop around the building yapping and socializing. I am finding I'm having to politely decline conversations more and more because I want to get my work done!
To be honest other people socializing and screwing around are just annoying, making remote work an even more enticing proposition.
Spending as much time in the bathroom as possible to get away from the noise
the worst thing about this issue is "company wide" policies. This needs to be per team or per department because of a lot of things mentioned in the video. I work remote or partial for more than 20 years but I know a lot of people who either don't like or are very "bad" at it.
I received a lot of criticism when I was remote because being in the office was "the norm" and seeing it the other way around is just as bad
Exactly.
Reminds me how in my previous work place, everybody had to come in on Saturdays just because one department had a lot of pending work, which needed to be done to fulfill contracts before the end of the financial year. That ordeal lasted 3 whole months.
Yea I think a lot of the contention around this comes from people under management that wants a unilateral solution.
I think it's on management to be open to a mixed policy, but at the same time, I think people are being overly aggressive about it, and that's actually preventing productive conversation about it.
My best work has been remote, my worst work has been in-person. I just have so much more time remote, I can work secret overtime until 3am if I have to, and I don't have supervisors breathing down my neck forcing me to accrue needless technical debt every time they walk by. There is a place for in-person team meetings to get everyone on the same page but when it comes time to put my head down and work 9/10 times remote is superior. If I was in a leadership position I could see needing to be in the office more for sure. But as a lowly peon I have called in "sick" just to stop detrimental meetings from happening in person. Now with better leadership I could see in-person being amazing but 90% of the time in the real world the leadership is... rough.
Yes I hate everytime some manager wants to add something just because he has to earn his position and to tell his wife what important he has done. 90 % in office is about making manager happy and to feed other parasites. The project is standing still and the others are having fun because corporations are full of parasites now.
Always stoked to be in Professor Cain’s virtual class!
Working at the library has been a blessing. Almost no commute and a quiet space where everyone else is working or studying as well.
I just wanted to say thank you Tim. You introduced me to so many new things about game development I wish I had known sooner. Your smile has brought me many smiles. You’re joyous out look on life has been infectious and an honor to witness. After the events of yesterday I can no longer stick around. But thank you for the joy you have given me while I was here. Please keep being amazing. I love you uncle Tim 🩵🤍🩷
I feel like I'm in the split on this one, personally. On the one hand, I'm one of the "calling" people who also like to be in the office. On the OTHER hand, I'm a night owl, and it feels like if you're WFH, people don't care about your hours as much, and if you're RTO, you are expected ~9-5. If I could work in the office flexible hours, I'd be there 10-12 hours a day again, but it feels like when they hit the RTO button, it tends to also come along with inflexible hours, inflexible days, etc. All of which is doubly annoying for me, as my work (Systems Administration/Engineering/Architecture) is best _PLANNED_ when other people are around to collaborate with, but best _EXECUTED_ when no one is around, so they don't get hit by outages. Really, it feels like people ought to be evaluated individually, and if that's WFH, great. If it's RTO, great. If it's hybrid? Fine.
I SUPER agree about the "some people don't have homes well set up for remote work", I definitely had folks on my team that loved their houses...but their houses were in the boonies on a mountain and so it was WAY better for them to come in. Likewise, I knew folks who had fully appointed little home offices, so they had no need to come in. Different strokes for different folks, and the differences (I think) made for a better team (people at home always had good coverage during commuting hours, etc.).
At the end of the day, I don't think productivity is everything. I would rather have a team humming along happily at 80% that I could ask to ramp it up to 100% in an emergency than a team pushing at 100% all the time and burning out. I say this as the person normally working 60+ hours a week. It works for me, but definitely not for everyone, especially those with kids, older parents they're responsible for, etc.
Remote work is the best! I am never going back to the office prison! Life is very short, time goes by very quickly, make the most of your time!
I work on an almost fully remote team at a nationally recognized healthcare institution (#1/2 in the nation on many specialty practices, healthcare leaders across the world regularly visit our campuses). It really depends on the culture of the company on whether or not it will be successful. If you work on a team of highly independent, experienced, and responsible coworkers, as well as having support from leadership, then remote work is fantastic. I still maintain a high standard of work and it feels great to work at an organization that trusts me to take ownership of projects and work independently. Most of my coworkers are parents, as well, and I see the flexibility that remote work provides for them, allowing them to take care of young kids at home, rather than paying the money for childcare and spending 1-2 hours in traffic. I personally thrive best in a remote environment without being in an office and exposed to coworkers, but I understand if others do not. As a future father, I do not think I can or will go back into the office full time, especially after I have kids. Just my perspective. Thanks for the great video.
Definitely believe it depends on where you work and what you are working on. I don't think we've been more productive any time before we went work from home. There are things that do take a lot longer when not in an office though. Instead of getting near instant feedback on something, you have to share your screen for someone that might not be immediately available when you need them, can't just look over at your boss's cubicle/office and see their availability. I'd assume people working on assets for games kind of have it the "worst". Not everyone has a color calibrated monitor or monitoring speakers to view/listen to something. I can see those types of roles get slowed way down. As a programmer, I just push to the repository, send a message to the team, turn around and put my sun glasses on as the build server explodes behind me.
The whole calling personality I think is orthogonal to someone preferring remote work vs in office, but I definitely makes them more assertive in getting their preferred work space. I personally identify as being a calling personality. While not in the games industry I am a software engineer and I very much prefer in office work. There seems to be an interesting interplay between these elements. I enjoy the fact that I spend 40 hours "working for someone else" since it forces me to go down roads I would not normally and to push through problems that would be easy for me to give up on in a personal project. I enjoy being in an office space where, for most of the day I'm in a cubicle by myself coding away, but I can also walk to people's desks or enter a meeting and be face-to-face (I'm an introvert and don't leave my house much besides for work). When I work remote my motivation drops and I feel sluggish, and I start feeling bad for not getting as much work done. I feel like I'm just not in that flow state and I very much enjoy being in that flow state. When I work remote I get the feeling that I'm being deprived of something.
Best situation for me is when I lived walking distance from the office. It was like an extension of my own home. Even went home for lunch. Nice
People who think they work harder might be more productive individually while working remotely, but still be less productive as a group, and this is what matters.
Great looking shirt. Almost reminds me of a vault suit.
I'm used to working from my home office, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really good at it. Structure would help me in many ways. But even then, it's better for even me to work remotely, and it's infinitely more efficient.
The fact that I don't have to commute saves so much time it's crazy, and the fact that I can take my breaks whenever I feel like I need them and can even split the day if I need to is a massive help in order to be efficient and at my best when I work. And the fact that I don't feel like I'm somewhere just because and I have to be there a given time regardless of what happens, but can actually 100% focus on getting the work done and that's that, is incredibly valuable. Not only just in that moment, but in long term it's infinitely more healthy, leaves me feeling better and more motivated and energetic.
I miss talking to the art and programming teams. I have regular conversations with the rest of the designers, but never get to just casually talk to my friends in other disciplines. Honestly if we could work at home and all have lunch together in person it'd be almost perfect.
Through the pandemic and into "normalcy" I worked for a company that had been purchased back in the 2010s but was always a much larger percentage remote than the parent. We had our most profitable year ever during lockdown, but it's unclear if that was due to how we were working, or industry panic that drove sales. It's absolutely true that some people do really well remote, and some cannot do it at all. It's unfortunate that a lot of CEOs are unwilling to make use of both types though, and force everyone to be in the office. Personally, I get a lot more done at weird hours. The other thing that I observed though is that regardless of which type any given employee is, it's a LOT harder to onboard someone and introduce them to the company culture fully remotely. We hired a few people during lockdown, and none of them were still there by the end of it despite the fact that most of the rest of us were there for much longer than industry average. It's a hard problem to solve.
I think people forget that we're all different, and can operate very differently from person to person for various reasons. So, you're right about it not being a one-size-fits-all thing, both employee and the company level.
Another thing to think about is that when the change happened, it was sort of forced (outside of having the 'choice' to quit or a company to layoff people). It essentially changed so many variables that it was like a whole other job, and the employee didn't get a chance to re-evaluate the company, nor the company had a chance to re-evaluate the employee, under these new conditions. That's assuming they were a good fit for each other in the first place.
And of course some companies had figured out that they can use the RTO mandate as a sort of veiled 'layoff' to fix the over-hiring they did after things started getting back to normal. 😣
Remote work has been a blessing for someone like me, who previously struggled to keep a job.
Out of curiosity, what made it hard for you to hold an in person job vs remote?
@@dtraindaimyo3377 Sorry, I am not comfortable discussing it.
@@dtraindaimyo3377 I do not feel comfortable answering this, sorry.
@@dtraindaimyo3377 I do not feel like answering that question, sorry, and that is the third time I am posting this, yet the automatic filter keeps removing it for some reason...
@@dtraindaimyo3377 some ppl just suck
I’ve been working remotely for over seven years now. Sometimes, I wish I could go into the office, especially when a new project kicks off and there’s a lot of interaction with others. Overall, I think working remotely is slightly better because it allows me to spend more time with family.
One of the things I do like at my company is we have a open zoom room and Discord where we can just chat and hang out. Zoom mostly gets used for any impromptu meetings, but Discord is more for socializing, playing games in our free time, whatever it might be. I really think having an open space where people can just hop in and chat would benefit any company that allows for remote work. Sure it doesn't completely fill the hole of in person socializing, but it allows you to communicate and make friends with your co workers easier than if we didnt have it.
I'm doing my IT degree online, and it has its perks, but I'm looking forward to working in an actual office once my course is done.
I feel like the structure is necessary for me. I also miss interacting with others and getting direct feedback instead of waiting for emails or phone calls.
I’ve been remote since 2021, and I honestly miss office time to some extent.
I agree that working in your own home can be highly productive, and it offers a lot of perks (comfy place, no commute, no distractions if your family allows, etc).
However, I miss the interaction and camaraderie, and brainstorming or just talking things over is so much easier when you can just walk over and don’t have to wait for everyone joining a zoom call.
Personally, a hybrid setup would probably work best for me.
I'm doing 80% work weeks almost entirely remote, and I love it. Sure, I miss interactions and joking around with coworkers, but also, when I was in the office everyone is mostly just programming their own tasks, not very different from working from home.
Darn, Tim, very nuanced answer. I agree that you have to like it and be good at it. That’s kinda obvious.
The thing is, though, there are plenty of people who like it and are good at it, who also relocated to more affordable places or places with better quality of life, and who are now asked to RTO just because. And the “just because” is often code for “other staffers are not good at it, we must bring them back in and they will cry injustice if we don’t ask everyone to RTO”.
I guess that’s how it is when you are not your own boss.
I really enjoy mixed remote work, something like 2 days in the office 3 days at home. It feels like best of both worlds.
There was this place I used to work at, they moved their office, it was a nice cosy place and it could accommodate something like 30% of the staff, but then they made the "back to office" decree and a few times I found myself not able to find a single empty desk to work at. Most of the times it was fine because people were rebelling against the decree.
My best pro about remote work is that it pushed me to reach out and have visibility around the world in a place with lots of studio and 24h/24h coverage. My main con is that it made it really hard to separate work and personnal life.
I've had my best career growth boost and learning experience remote. But I also see people who perform horrendously.
I'm one of those people whose home situation isn't ideal for remote. Its a 2 bedroom house and while there is a den its for my elderly, retired dad to do his things. So, working remote means my bedroom is my office. That doesn't work out so well.
Yeah I definitely was in the camp of discouraging peers going back into the office, but I'm a talented independent programmer that has been thriving with remote work. I remember being surprised when Dave Lang wanted to get everyone back at Iron Galaxy. I guess we're all coming from different circumstances. Thanks for sharing!
I'm glad that wfh has become an option for a lot of people in the past couple years, but yeah, I'm 100% one of the people who prefers being in an office even if that means having to commute. I need that separation of church and state otherwise my home starts feeling like a workplace and I really don't like that. Plus I live in a country with goo public transportation so my commute doesn't feel like wasted time: I can spend it reading, playing video games, watching a show, preparing my next D&D session, etc.
In a perfect world hybrid is the best I think, You can try to min/max the pros and cons.
yeah, I'm hybrid and generally like it - though we're 3 days a week in office now, which is more than I need personally. I'd be happy with 1 or 2 days a week in office
Hybrid is actually a more stressful model, since you now need to keep track of when you need to show up to the office and book a train etc. you need to coordinate logistically. where if you're fully remote you don't have to worry about that, you can show up to the office when you want to or every friday. where a hybrid model of 3 days a week its a huge stress factor. In-fact it is better to just show up every day to work than work a 3-day at the office model. It is horrible! and if you're somebody who commutes to the office, Busses and trains don't have a 3 day subsription, they usually offer a monthly subscription to the train or a pay as you go model. So you're totally screwed on that front. 3-days a week in the office is way worse than full week at the office.
I imagine treat it like privilege similer to a work vehicle. Start off office based, and make the offer to those interested. Performance goes up/maintained. Theu keep it. Those who dont bring back to tje office. Dealing with people tho will always remain a problem
Alot of our team was on the younger side, so our productivity actually increased by having it remote.
Do you think the change in number of games and change in quality comes not from remote work but the ideal to have less crunch and create better working environments? Because that's seemed to change a lot in the past few years, too.
Agreed, and quality is highly debatable, 2023 was an amazing year, the year with most 90+ games of all time.
Also games are getting longer to ship and that started before the pandemic
I work for myself but rent an office because I like the little bit of physical separation between work and home to help me switch into and out of work mode.
I'm lucky that it's only a 20 minute walk each way which is pleasant! I think it helps me get more fresh(ish city) air and exercise than I would if I work from home all the time - which I have to imagine helps me with general productivity and well being 🙂 As much as my boss is a hard ass (it's me, I'm my boss 😂), I am grateful that I have the option to work from home whenever if I really wanted to 😊
I definitely get more work done from home cause I can focus better and don't get distracted from others. But when I'm in office the power in ad-hoc high bandwidth conversations that don't need a scheduled meeting is pretty amazing, a lot of good stuff happens in those moments. If you have the chance, I suggest having a mixture of both.
I work somewhere that got rid of all forms of remote work (unless you have a fancy enough title in which case go crazy). The thing I realised was that I do like working in office but I deeply miss the flexibility. If I was doing longer shifts or I had calls with people in different timezones I really appreciated being able to go home and do extra work in my pyjamas. I found sometimes for my role being at home meant people could stop distracting me for the day and I could rip through my work while listening to my own music. I also get sick so much more often because people have forgotten how to take sick days until theyve come into the office and spread it everywhere
Good points. I’m very lucky to be able to teach from home, but I think it has changed me. I’m not walking as much, or getting up as early in the morning. Still, I can take care of my elderly parents, and be close in case they need me.
I prefer remote work because of a lot of the little things I may need for my physical issues or needs that I then don't need a second copy at work or have to buy extra. I can't go fully remote because I'm an attorney and I do need to talk to some clients in person or go to court and I feel like I actually get more work done on my days home than in the office. Although that may also be the fact I have different priorities a lot of the time I'm in the office versus when I'm working remotely from home.
04:05 Thank you for that description. I had some trouble finding a proper phrasing for this. That is me.... I like networking, home labbing scripting and hell topics are really close to work, but I don't want to work where I play games or tinker around with new stuff.... I can do it sure, but after a few months I just feel bad sitting at my desk doing "fun" things. I go to the office almost 5 days a week. If I had half a room just to work then I wouldn't mind working remotely 100%
Hope this question hasn’t been asked before.
Having grown up on modern games, I always thought Pac-Man was about as advanced as 1980s games got.
I eventually saw Space Quest gameplay & thought it was fascinating that the game was played through through typing commands. It also allowed for developers to comment on silly commands that they knew would be typed.
What other interesting mechanics from old video games became outdated & aren’t seen much anymore?
I've worked on fully remote, fully in office and hybrid. I really like working from home, but I'm WAY more productive in person. Hybrid has the best of both.
We have 10 days a month for homeworking and that is great compromise imho. We still get to see each other and interact but have flexibility to stay home when needed or wanted.
I regret working long hours (50+hrs a week). I also regret not forming a union for my work. The corporation gained all the benefits, and then let me go at 55 yo. Now I'm 60 and struggling. I prefer to work remote, and to work a set number of hours because I don't get any benefit for going above and beyond - only the stockholders and C-suite people benefit from that.
I found Hybrid work to be a good compromise for me. Working on something that requires silence a few days, then exchanging with colleagues directly later on in the week.
You're the best Tim
I enjoyed the office more than I do working remotely, but that's maybe because I was only 8 blocks away from my old office. Commute wasn't long, I could get a coffee on the way, bask in the sun a little bit before going in. Socializing in the office and team work was definitely better than it is doing purely remote too.
If I had 1h+ commute like some of my team mates, I would also hate the office.
I started working remotely because of the war, and it hasn’t been what I expected. It feels like I'm working all day without getting much done. Many people imagine remote work as "working from bed," which makes sense if you don’t have much to do... I’m glad to avoid annoying, noisy coworkers with bad jokes, but I miss the cool people I used to hang out with.
This topic reminds me of your video about RNG, where people think they want one thing, but in reality, it turns out to be something else.
Oh, a fellow Ukrainian! You are lucky you have a job. I only worked 1 year of my life and on a very shitty job because of my low self esteem and because my head was full of crazy fantasies in the end and after school. War only made everything worse in my efforts to find at least the lowest of the low jobs... I already lost hope.
I have a special needs son who needs 24/7 monitoring. Hybrid Work/remote is amazing for someone like my family and I
I do civil design (CADD) and working from home I spend a lot more time working but feel far far less productive to the point it causes serious anxiety issues.
It all depends on the type of work and structure of the team. I work on a trading desk and remote work is simply not viable. It's doable on a slow day or a holiday, but if shit's hitting the fan it's TERRIFYING to be alone.
Remote work has been amazing and I wouldn't trade it for the world. There is no way I am ever going back to an in-office 9-5.
Our team is full remote. A lot of time goes into course corrections.
If we were in-office, I think that would happen less.
My team is busy working, but if they’re working on the wrong things or not building what is needed, that productivity is ~ wasted.
That said, I still prefer it over in-office work as every office I’ve worked in was terrible for concentration.
So my time is more productive but I have to accept and proactively deal with a bit of waste.
We hire for remote, so that fixes the life circumstances/strong preference issue.
Two things I dislike about in-office work: the commute, and people stopping by my desk.
My home office is great, no one bugs me and I get a lot more done, plus I have a lot less stress because I don't have the commute. Hell, my boss blocks my work all the time asking me things he could just look up online.
My company had record profits during the two years we were remote. Now that we're going back to office things are flagging a little.
I agree that some people really just perform better when they can interact face to face, like my boss, but most of those people actively interfere with my productivity.
What I like the most is the hybrid style of work when there is 60%/40% split between remote and office work. Gives a chance for people to enjoy remote work but also reap the benefits of office work too.
Heretic!
Just give people option of going to office if they want to instead of lying about hybrid space. One job in Europe wanted me to be 2 days in office/3 days from home but I'd have to drive over 2 hours one way frommy city to their, not counting traffic, issues with parking etc. I told them if they won't change this to twice or once a month it is pointless to schedule even first itnerview.
@wiziek And that is totally fine. If a company wants hybrid work space it is expected to be often in the office, by teams that work in hybrid models. If this kind of work does not fit you, search for a remote position instead. Going once or twice in a month in the office is not a hybrid workspace. Just like before COVID companies giving 2-3 days in a month working remote is not hybrid either.
@@player1_fanatic Then they shouldn't waste time of people that aren't close to office. This is dumb requirment because as always, this would be position on Europe but having to go on remote calls with people from India, other European or America countries and no there wasn't any stuff to be done in office that couldn't be done remote, like swapping parts or operating something at site.
I also feel like a lot of the drop in productivity over the past couple years has been more attributed to many companies going all in on really big stuff and failing into mass layoffs that have broken up those teams and their workflows. Going from workflows being wildly shifted from 2020 to poor management over growth putting strain on workflows then sudden team deflation.
Honestly hard to say how much effect remote work vs not remote has done when the companies that have done well managing themselves through everything.
But that's just my 2 cents.
To those that read all that. Thank you and I hope you have a good rest of your day.
Yep the layoffs are affecting almost every industry that over-invested in tech stacks and data teams post COVID. It is crazy to see companies come up with these big expansion plans with COVID money and then ultimately fail due to poor leadership and execution of said plans only to fire/lay off employees beneath them despite their failed vision coming from the top.
I do agree attributing any recent changes in productivity to remote work is a very, very bold claim that would need a lot more backing than in this video, even if I like the video overall.
I am not a remote worker person.
In community college I had a totally online class and kinda forgot about it. ( out of sight, out of mind)
Passed the first test, then dropped it for next semester for in classroom.
Also didn't like the tele-class, the teacher was on another site campus. That class also didn't work out for me.
Needed more in person.
Still acquired my associate degree. But I realized I'm not a people person.
However I work good in small teams or solo.
The factory life for me.
We moved to 50/50 where I work for my local government. It sure makes our time theft more productive! Lol. Seriously though, at least on my team I’d say about 75% of our time is spent not working just waiting for things to hit our inbox. So the time theft was always there, we were just stuck at our cubicles watching UA-cam, reading etc.
I really really liked the *idea* of working remotely but after they closed down our physical office and remote working became our standard, I found
1: Nowhere in my house is properly setup so that the room is both properly cooled, properly ventilated, has good lighting, has a good chair, a good desk, and a comfortable space for setting up a modern computer.
2: Trying to work by remote-connecting to my work computer from my personal computer is a disaster because the eternal temptation of having all of my videogames and guitars and other entertainment in arms reach and ready to go in seconds means the moment I hit a slow compile or a boring lul where I'm waiting and can't *actively* progress my work, I'll switch over to entertainment and burn way more time than intended. Doesn't matter if I set an alarm or limit myself to only using my phone. The best option is to not even turn my personal PC on and go to a different room entirely if possible (if it's cool enough)
3: Internet goes out? Pay gets behind and I can't get back online until the bill is caught up? Prepare for a painfully hard week with low productivity. Or just generally if there are network issues, this is nightmarish as I don't have enterprise level contracts to get somebody to come in and fix our personal net connection.
4: Casually walking over and asking someone for help just does *not* happen online. Sometimes on Teams or in an email the team might pop in for questions, but because of the dynamics of typing, the desire to appear presentable, and how deliberate doing this is, it's really never the same and often results in people not talking at all and trying to solo-fix something that could have been done in about 2 minutes with somebody walking over and asking "hey, I don't remember how to do x, can you check it all quick if you have it open?"
5: I have this franken setup with 3 monitors, one plugged into one PC, two plugged into another, and a USB switcher with a finnicky button that sometimes doesn't work. I often end up better off grabbing my Meta Quest 3 headset and using the virtual monitors in Virtual Desktop than trying to fight through the weird distracting setup of my physical monitors. I very much look forward to when people can get this kind of thing working in a sunglasses spec so I don't have to shove this huge thing over my face.
6: The temptation to lie about time spend is strong. I already talked about how the temptation to get distracted by games is high, but the temptation to repeatedly think "I'm almost done, I'll just work a little extra and knock it out" and then bam it's been another 4 hours, I've eaten into my usual sleep time, my productivity the next morning is gonna be funky, and the timesheets are gonna look weird. I can try to move the number I actually did around to fit more neatly into the expected daily amount, but that starts getting dangerously close to time fraud and I don't wanna get caught up in that kind of trouble.
7: Family came over? Local neighborhood crisis event? Natural disaster? Congrats, it's gonna be a lot harder to get everyone on the same page on what you're dealing with compared to when it's happening right outside the office building where everyone there can see/hear it and know "Okay actually everyone just go home and stay safe."
The main reason companies are itching so bad to get people back to the office is because the executives themselves,or them and many of the shareholders, have investments in commercial real estate and so even if it is completely unnecessary and irrational for that company to have people in come back to the office in terms of actually doing their work, they want to artificially generate demand to protect their other investments. It is also that many managers want to closely monitor staff and feel a greater sense of power over them, which being in the office gives them.
A friend of mine works on a team in a large multi-national corporation (not game-related) that has supported remote work for years. Team leaders determine if their team functions well remotely or not. Recently a single person, who I assume was someone who wasn't a good remote worker, complained to HR and now the company is forcing everyone to come back to the office out of which my friend's team is based. Now team members not only have to waste time and fuel commuting, but some have to find child care and all must now deal with the noise and distraction of an office environment which has also impacted productivity (the work requires a lot of intense research and thought)... all to placate one whiny individual.
it’s crazy how we worry so much about the feelings of in person work instead of immunocompromised people or marginalized folks. there was a statistical reduction in bias and subconscious discrimination during remote work. both modalities are valid, but in person is favored and status quo. but I don’t want covid because a workplace cheaps out on safety.
Mmm, good video.
I'm a heavy work-at-work advocate, personally. If I message/call someone who's working from home, and they don't reply - I know they've gone off to do their washing or have a chat with their family. The office environment itself also seems to instil a certain work ethic in people - and they just don't do it at home (no matter how much they insist they "do better at home").
I work from home at the moment, and my personal experience is that people think you're always free - so that you can be interrupted. It really slows down work and breaks flows often. Socially, people (friends) also respect you less, because they don't see your work as work anymore, since it's visually the same behaviour as someone staying home and playing a game, but that's a bit more niche.
What if you message someone at work and they went to restroom? Buy a coffe? Some snacks before or after lunch? Are during meeting? What is work ethic at office, what does it mean? Other then being outside home?
Greetings, Tim!
What sorts of rewards do you least and most prefer putting in games, such as EXP, items, lore, companions, achievements, and otherwise?
What parts of the critical path do you most enjoy working on, such as the start, mid, end, or post-game?
What eras of gaming do you believe were/are worst and best as a game player, game buyer, employee, and company head?
What are your thoughts on character build options that are intentionally "strong now, weak later" versus "weak now, strong later?" For example, Fallout had late-game weapon types that required improving skills that were barely or not useful throughout the early game. Early edition D&D Wizards were often weak in the early game but strong in the mid- to late-game, whereas martial characters were the opposite.
Thankee!
My biggest issue with remote work is that I do not have a dedicated space for working. If I work on my couch or bed, my brain automatically recognizes it as a "relaxing zone", and I might end up doing other stuff like watching UA-cam videos or play video games when I should be working. When I am at office, I rarely find myself doing or thinking about things other than work. Luckily, everyone in my office is an introvert and I work in a very small company of 5 people, so all the other nonsense that I'd have to deal with otherwise is just not a factor. On the other hand, I learn much better on my own, at my own pace. If the pace is pushed too much, I cannot absorb anything.
In my previous job, though, I'd wake up every day wishing that remote work was an option, because nothing I did couldn't be done at home, and my office was 25km away in a city with some of the worst traffic in the world.
I work better when I have a dedicated work space, but I really dislike having to forfeit almost two hours of my day in commute.
Whenever someone talks about remote work critically they never (or very briefly) bring up family, mental health, commuting and quality of life for some reason, it's always about productivity and time management.
4:00 The name of a local coffee shop just made sense to me
I think having some days is beneficial (when you behave well in remote like Tim say in its video) if you spend too much time in commute. Not necessarily all remote, but I think in my case I'm less tired even during in person work.
Hey Tim,
This is definitely on the more technical/code side of things, but you mentioned about code reviews and it got me to thinking about whether you would talk a little about what you think makes a good or bad code review?
I.e. what is the level of feedback that you aim for, do you go often/ever go so far as to talk about things like function and variable names, were there common issues that you found when reviewing others code? In your experience what is your favourite way to review code? And when having your own code reviewed by others what are the kinds of practices that other programmers do that bother you (e.g do you find people nit-pick about things you find unimportant?)
I'm a developer myself but have always been indie, I didn't come from a formal computer science or software engineering background, and I've always been the most senior programmer in my team at any given time. So my code reviewing style has just been something I've had to build up based off what I think is important, but it would be interesting to hear some opinions from someone with as much experience as yourself.
A lot of places are international and have workers all over the world. So, "remote work" is just the way it is and has been for the past 20 years. The seated cost of someone in the US is A LOT more expensive than someone in India. I have been working for the past 10 years where no one in my team lives in my town and I live in the same town as the HQ to the business.
I think that is something that I always seem missed in this conversation. A lot of tech has never had everyone in the same office. Being in the same office REALLY restricts the talent pool. Especially since paying moving expenses and benefits from a company hasn't been a thing for a long, long time.
Hey Timothy curious if you ever thought of posting some polls on your community page?
Or reddit would be cool to see data.
I work as an assistant in a government institution, and what I primarily wish for in regards to remote work is more flexibility.
My bosses don't have to convince me that filling out 15 page forms and processing invoices in SAP is hard on a tiny laptop monitor - we cannot plug anything of our own into the computers for security reasons, so at home I am stuck with it. In the office, docking it and having three monitors is very handy.
But basic things like answering emails, media monitoring and writing social media posts? I absolutely can do that from home, and do chores or work on my hobbies in between. I am quite efficient at my job, so often I have plenty of downtime. In the office I sit around and read books, which would probably earn me many weird looks if not for a miraculous lack of dickish bosses. The nature of my organization is such that work is very inconsistent - some weeks we have 1.5 hrs of actual work per day, some weeks everything is on fire and the whole office is pulling overtime. I know there are times for in-person work, I just wish I had the flexibility to decide when to myself, not just have 1 fixed day/week.
Excellent overview. Probably the least "biased" perspective on remote work I've seen in a long time.
One comment on "productivity is down", it's really not an easy metric to measure. Quality or productivity coming down can be the result of so many things, and, probably one of these things is because not everyone can work remotely, as you mentioned, and it can be a learning curve. But there are so many other things, cultural, company focus, external factors, etc... It's a bit unfair to put it all on remote work. But surely every company needs to find "what works best for them", and it doesn't necessarily mean remote work. Look at Hideo Kojima, I think his games would be terrible if he had a remote team (but then maybe some of his team members are remote and that's ok)
What I find odd is that I rarely seem to see people advocating for a mix. I have a mix basically because of a disability accommodation and I find it works pretty well - I get days where I can be present and collab with people when needed, and days when I can be left alone to do the boring admin work that requires no input. I can absolutely see why people would have a preference (for me, it's definitely the remote work days) but the hard emphasis on one or the other just seems unrealistic to me.
As a Dev I prefer working in office with a group and coworkers. But I HATE commutes that are +1hr long even more.
Just to reinforce your point that remote work isn't new: pre-pandemic, I worked on a team with three people in Boston, one person in Texas, and two people in San Francisco. The ones in San Francisco technically were assigned to an office, but they almost never went in because they weren't working with anybody else there. Very little changed for us with the pandemic.
OR you have people on different continents or countries yet they are forcing all of you going to office, everyone making teams/slack/zoom calls.
When my job was forced remote during the pandemic it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I couldn't focus and my work suffered, i feel like it completely derailed my career.
Lol With your beard & shirt you look like the Vault 13 Overseer! 😂
The amount of games released only has increased since the pandemic, in fact we're at all time highs in games released in a year. As for quality of the average game, I can't say.
In my humble opinion, working more than 40 hours is fine as long as you're paid overtime for it. However, I consider doing it without being paid unethical (as well as working less, if that's what your contract says). Many people died fighting so we could have that 40 hour work week today.
I do feel more productive in they office, but my company mandated that absolutely everyone has to work from the office full time and had disconnected all remote access, and I really miss the flexibility of being at home one or two days a week.
The mention of programmers being especially suited to remote work somewhat begs the question, do people see a future where studio space is mostly taken up by designers and artists?
I do believe that creative work suffers when creators aren't sharing the same space, but I'll never be convinced that my pencil pushing clown world contractor job benefits from in-person, and I've done both
Speaking as an autistic person, the commute traffic takes a lot out of me and being completely accessible to people interrupting to talk is also really draining
I'd rather work remote even if the office environment is more productive (which I'm not sure in my case)
I think a lot of people who are big proponents of remote work don't realize how their productivity has fallen. They focus on the pros, which are great - you don't have to commute, you don't have to dress up and you get to shop and cook meals on company time. But even on gamedev positions that suit remote work, like programming or art, I've noticed a fall in productivity.
Writing this comment on company time from the office 👍
Im writing a fanfiction book Tim! Its in the Cyberpunk universe. whats the best waycio contact you so we can talk about writing? You're a king!
have you ever done a video on what a day in the life of someone working in design does? I can understand roles like programming and art fairly easily, and I can obviously see the end result of game design. but actually what game design work looks like day to day is a mystery for me
Have you watched My Work Pattern For Designing
ua-cam.com/video/GwVocugnoEo/v-deo.html
The extra 2 hours of sleep or self care are worth it tho. What you lose in productivity you gain in creativity.
Other people are probably more disciplined than me, but when we were fully remote I very quickly just started staying up later and was net flat on sleep. Many such cases I'm sure.
That explains why the games that came out of covid were so amazing.
@@argylemanni280 Signalis was done in free time by people working in the industry as a day job, IIRC. They said Covid was when they had the time and could do the bulk of work.
I hate working. I have had many opportunities to work at home (I'm a programmer), but during all my years of working I've never done so even once. Working is something I do just to get money, I hate every second (no, it's not the job, it's the concept, I've had several different types of jobs), and I do not want to turn my ONE refuge in life into a worksite. Home is for relaxation, pleasure and my own personal (fun) programming projects, nothing else.
There are a lot of folks who take advantage of this and it starts to show pretty quickly. Some may say more, some won't admit to less. I always hate the people who go dark and only show up for ceremonies and not provide much feedback. We do hybrid and it is working good for us.
I cannot stand the "need to talk to coworkers" people. I'm trying to do my job here and everyone is just chatting.
I get lonely, and if I don't even see people that feeling of loneliness gets distracting. I might not even interact with them but it helps to see them in passing.
Being able to quickly chat with people in person is also handy, sometimes really important.
@@PatGunn On the other hand, if everyone keeps coming over to have little chats I get distracted from my work and get nothing done.
@@StinkyBuster I wouldn't want that either, but people generally can read body language
@@PatGunn I'd say the body language of sitting at my desk getting work done is pretty clear but nope.
@@StinkyBuster That's not what body language is. When I'm at my desk getting work done, I still might or might not like to be interrupted for an interesting conversation. People will be able to tell by tone, how I hold myself, etc, whether I'm open to conversing or not (provided they don't have some mental disability of certain kinds, in which case I'll have to be blunt).
The idea of work from home sounds nice, but it's not feasible for my line of work. It feels like hearing people talk about living in a foreign country.
"They may have a home environment that's just not conducive to working there, maybe they don't have a place to set up a home office that's quiet, um that's somewhat set apart, maybe their home is environment is too loud, maybe there's too many people, maybe it's too cramped, it's just not conducive for whatever reason to doing work there", but I thought it's illegal to live in an office?
So, you mentioned dedicated, work, home, and other spaces. Could you go into more detail on the other space? (Right now I live in work, and home, I don't know what other represents.)
Here’s a great description of Third Places:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
Random Thing,
The Dangers of the Corrupted Peaks
Oh, traveler bold who roams so free,
Keep well away from the mountain’s knee.
The path ahead is rough and torn,
Where bright gold fades to rust and thorn.
The flowers here are gray with death,
The wind brings not a welcome breath.
And every stone, each path you tread,
Knows stories of the lost and dead.
In every hollow, shadows lie,
In every echo, a muted cry.
The mountains beckon, but beware-
The wealth they promise turns to despair.
For what you find in the mountains' heart,
Will leave you broken, torn apart.
Turn back, brave soul, while you still can-
The Corrupted Peaks are no place for man.
I hear you. So why we can decide on by ourselfs how we want to work. Instead of forcing every one in the office when they dont need to be there like IT/programers?
I really dislike working from home. I'm a young person living by myself, so the idea of spending 8 hours every day alone in my apartment doing work sounds like literal Hell.
For me if I ever take non remote work thats litetally several hours I cant do work. And i only live 50km from the furthest place i could possibly commute to (moving is out of the question financially)
During the covid remote work pandemic I had to start keeping notes/a diary because I couldn't remember when things had happened. Living alone, sitting in the same room by myself day in, day out didn't give my brain enough context to attach memories to a definite time.
Damn didn't you think many people with poor social live or being sick, disabled alrady lived like this? No imigaination or empathy at all.
@@wiziek I don't understand what you are trying to communicate. Can you elaborate?
Remote work let's me be available to help my chronically ill partner if they need it, so it's not something I can compromise on.