That's definitely a big upside. Things like dishes and laundry are great background tasks. Doesn't take long to set up, then a machine handles the rest, swap out the laundry and keep going. Barely interrupts my day job, and the impetus to get out of my chair is welcome anyway.
I can settle for a public bathroom, but surely we have the technology to construct walls without significant gaps. Spend the one-time extra investment so that I can pretend I have some privacy.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I poop on company time...Love to have someone else clean up the empty bathrooms at work every day or so; shame that job was almost two hours away for the 2 days a week I had to go.
I liked this post. A lot of the pros/cons resonated well with me. Going to save this for anytime some corporate person tries to "enlighten" me about the benefits of workers returning to the office.
I feel these discussions always go the same way. Working at an office sucks because of some combination of {long commute, open office plan, team not being there}. I quite like going to the office myself because my situation is the opposite: I bike to work, where I have my own office, and my team likes to come in too. Hating the office is totally justifiable given that my setup isn't common; most people are forced to deal with crappy built environments.
Some people really dislike open offices (or just spending the day around a lot of people generally) but I'm betting commutes are the #1 reason most people have against going into an office. Unless you can walk or, for some, bike any meaningful commute is basically a not very pleasant hour+ out of your day.
I'm used to open office. Not sure it'd matter if I had my own room. I'd still get dragged into useless meetings that interrupt my flow. If I can even get into a decent flow because our DX is so atrocious.
I know a few retired guys who pay their own money to rent office space away from the house. They don't even have kids living at home any more. If you have a nice office, it's...well...nice.
I worked at a place years back that was expanding; bought a second building - 2 stories. Downstairs had semi-open cubicles, and a wall of private office spaces (8 IIRC). All empty. Cubes were full. I was in the other building, told we were needing to move over the next couple months. I asked for one of the private spaces. They weren't really that big, and had no natural light, but... they did have a door. I'd been wrestling with being in an open cube next to marketing people (trying to juggle multiple dev projects), and routinely had 3-5 people on the phone around me. Very distracting.
"Nope, those offices are for managers".
"But... they're empty now".
"We're putting together the budget for next year to hire more managers".
"So... those will sit empty for the next 6-9 months and I have to work in an open cube environment, being distracted by the growing number of people around me".
"Looks that way, but don't be so negative about it. I think we're done here. Close my door on your way out please".
I don't even need a private office. One of the best environments I've ever worked in was a hybrid office/open model. Basically a bunch of conference rooms where each team got a room, and within the room the desk walls were low. Decorate it however you want, if you agree on style then you can have ambient music, etc. It was pretty great.
But then they knocked all the walls down and put in rows of desks because they could cram more people in that way. Within a year probably 25% of our development staff walked.
Worked in a place like that - mostly open cube space for around 80 inbound call agents, and a few 'side rooms'. Worked with 5 other dev/tech folks in one of those 'side rooms' - a suitably sized office for the 6 of us.
It was reasonable, in that we were generally all quiet or talking at the same time, and was not the worst place at all I've worked. Dedicated private space still works best for a lot of type of work (obviously that's "imo" but seems a standard POV from most colleagues today).
People here talk a lot about being able to have closing doors. My experience with private offices was, barring confidential conversations or rarely going really heads down for a few hours, the unwritten policy was you kept your door open. I've never worked anyplace where private offices generally had their doors shut.
I don't have a large sample size but across multiple companies in both New Orleans and New England, closed doors sort of meant: "I have a specific reason not to be disturbed." Which didn't include I just prefer to be in "flow" or whatever. The situation is probably different if you're on a busy public corridor as can be the case in universities, etc.
Agreed, but having a door meant you could put the "do not disturb" sign up. Of course that's pretty specific to your companies culture, but if someone closed their door at my office, I'd stroll around later.
One of the biggest benefits of course is that you have a lot less sound travel. Doors open and you'll still be able to have a neighbor that has an open door meeting, phone call, etc and it won't interrupt you.
After moving from a private office with a door to a team space, I missed it severely. Now I'm WFH and when my kids aren't home generally my door stays open.
Post-covid WFH discussions have led to a collective amnesia about this. We also spent buckets of time complaining about offices before it because almost every employer made decision like yours. Most offices were terrible places to work and non-technical managers ignored common sense and science to cram as many people as possible into their existing real estate costs. We'd gone from yearning for personal rooms from our cubicles to yearning for cubicles from our loud open-plan spaces.
One side-effect of the WFH period for us (and I assume a number of other EU companies) is that once we went WFH, we also went remote; previously we had two offices and everyone worked in one of those two cities and today we have (IIRC) five and people work all over the country and take rail into the nearest office when necessary.
This has... mostly worked out OK. In any given office there's some spaces dedicated for the people who work there regularly, at least a room or two with a half dozen seats for hotdesking, but then - three dedicated, closed-door single-person offices exclusively for the executives, who of course never show up outside their home office (if even there).
That's what we've been seeing. My team were all in one corner of one room. Then "one day", we were all sent home.
Someone left, and was replaced by someone in another European country. He's nominally "in the office", but since it's not the same office as the rest of us (and we're not in ours anyway), he's free to come and go as he pleases. It's not like it makes any difference to us.
Then our manager moved on, and was replaced by someone in yet another European country. He was WFH / fully remote before "this" even started.
By time they tried to sell us on RTO, exactly 50% of the team are still here. And going to the office now, just makes it less convenient to call the other 50% of my team. (Yes, call. Call me old fashioned, but I love a good bitchfest, and a good bitchfest shouldn't be in writing.) My manager genuinely advised we ignore the RTO missive and see what happens. (Spoiler: not much.)
Then my boss's boss moved on, and was replaced by another remote position - and now the murmurs of RTO have died down.
Now we're hiring and the net has widened yet again. They need to be in a country where we have a legal presence, and need to be willing to work European hours.
It's amazing how much has changed in relatively little time. It doesn't feel like that long ago I was trying to make the case for WFH on weekends.
I think that's the situation at many places. They've had three years of hiring and organizational changes where, by and large, they didn't really pay a lot of attention outside of gross timezone or language factors to where people physically lived. So now they're in a place where they really can't just undo those three years and move back to teams being mostly colocated. At least without a lot of organizational turmoil and at least some cost.
People evidently were ignoring the rto mandate at my company too. But the VPs noticed and said they'll start docking our perf if we don't start showing up.
Also, wfh weekends? What the heck man. 40 hours M-F tops. Even that I'd like to see dropped to 4 days but that'll never happen.
Why office sucks can be for any number of reasons, I think it's more of a long tail phenomenon with a myriad of distincts personal preferences and special needs.
For instance office drinks can suck, and someone drinking 3 to 5 cups of warm drinks a day, being able to prepare delicious beverages with specialized equipement is a godsend.
Or people who work sitting on their bed. Or want their pet around. Or don't want to wear makeup and get out of the house at all. Those who squat during the long meetings. Those who usually need an hearing aid but can instead just push the sound up if they're at home etc.
Sure, any of those could be addressed in an office setting, but you still only have one office for hundreds of people who probably wish for different things. Most will just give up on comfort, where WFH is an option to be in a better situation.
Right. I joke that my corner in my bedroom is my home office, workbench, rec room, music room, data center combo.
The use of vertical space is real. Family of four, 2bdrm 1100 sq ft divided across three floors. I'd love another room. Do they sell those at Costco? Can I put it on the lawn?
I work from home full time, and while it was harder in the beginning, the click of the KVM button and putting my work phone on the charger is enough of a signal.
That's cool. I've known people who have had something in that general vein built.
Given that this is probably something north of $25K by the time you pay for everything though, it's not obviously a better deal than just getting something custom built from some plans.
This is my #1 complaint for WFH, if you do not have a spare room / office in your home to do WFH, then IMO your productivity tanks and you are not really working from home... you are at home and maybe doing some work likely far less than if you were in the office.
If you are sitting on your bed, a kitchen table, or some other like space then i question how much work you can actually get done.
Also people are TERRIBLE judges of their own productivity, most people claim their productivity sky rockets when at home, were alot of data shows this not the be the case as time is focused on household items, cleaning, taking care of children, laundry, netflix, etc.
people that are successful at WFH and where doing it before COVID has a dedicated space for "work" in the home. With a Door they could close to block out all other household interruptions focusing on work, and would take defined breaks just like if you were in an office.
I worked in an office, then at home where I worked constantly, then back to the office where I appreciated closing my laptop and being done.
Now I've been remote for many years and am happy to say I've trained myself to watch my hours and leave work even though I'm home. I change my slack status, minimize all work apps and walk away. When I come back to my computer for something personal in the evening I don't look at work. It took some practice, but closing things down walking worked for me.
Now if I could only stop solving work problems as I try to fall asleep...
Good for you ! You have no specific reason to really want to WFH, and that's great, probably a strong asset to get hired.
Some people will also have no specific reason to want to live alone and can join dormitories or share houses. Some don't even need a stable home and can join military camps etc.
We all have different thresholds of what we want or can deal with in our lives.
> I appreciate a hard division between work hours and personal hours
Agreed--this is why I've got an office at home, and it's bigger and better-appointed than any company would ever allocate to me, with a better desk and a better chair (when I use it, because that better desk lets me stand).
I'll spot them the rent for not having to make the commute, but I need the firm separation.
One of the nice things about working at home is that async tasks can be taken care of during the workday. Laundry doesn't need a lot of hands-on time but does have a lot of waiting time. It's also easier to get local errands like grocery shopping done during lunch than if you're at an office. Even lunch itself can be easier, with a couple Instant Pots, lunch can be ready to eat right at lunchtime. None of these tasks take a consequential amount of time away from work but they do give you back quite a bit of non-work time.
So maybe many people just really hate car dependency and long commutes which should push us to move away from such a model of urban planning. More offices seamlessly integrated into middle density housing similar to a lot of cities like Stockholm where big towers and suburban detached homes are more rare.
The RTO discussions for us in Germany (30m train commute in/to a city center) definitely begin with a very different tone than my friends in the US (60m car to an office park with a sandwich shop across the street) seem to have.
I like both pretty much equally. I also bike to work and share an office with another dev, who is very easy to share a workspace with (in terms of habits, noise, distraction, etc). But I also enjoy working at home, going for a 10-minute walk around the block to clear my mind, opening my patio door and listening to birds while I work, etc. Hybrid works perfectly for me: a minimum of 1 day a week WFH, preferably 2, but no more than 3.
If I could easily walk to or even take a modest transit ride to the office I'd probably go in once or twice a week for the change in scenery. But the only company office it makes any sense for me to go into at this point is a two hour commute each way. I would need to have a specific reason to do that and no one I work with regularly is in that office. (I'm a 30 minute drive to another office but no one I know is there, it's in a boring office park, and it's closing.)
I almost commented about how I bugged HR to let me return to office when it became available (having some months earlier signed a permanent work-from-home contract). I like walking to work and having the work-life separation. Not to mention my office is tricked out with sweet posters, mostly of the transit and active transportation propaganda variety.
The million dollar 360 views are a nice bonus though.
Of course I still work from home on days where it is really inconvenient not to, but I tend to not enjoy that nearly as much now.
Aye I'd happily go to an office every day if it was within walking distance. The problem was the commute and all the time wasted to and fro. If anyone ever comes up with working teleporters I'll go back to the office no bother
Also punctuality and butts-in-seats, but that whole thing turned out to be adhd (working from home gave me the time to figure that out!) so might not be an issue now I can get up early enough to not have a mad panic rush every morning, haha
As someone who has been remote since '12, I absolutely agree. Nothing is better than having a cool/fun office environment close to home where you have things set up to an ergonomic ideal. I've been a member of many co-working spaces because of this.
The problem is 95% of the time it's not like this.
While your setup now is great, just know that it can change at any time. I know multiple people whose companies are finding a new address for their office for one reason or another. Some of them in completely different areas. My mom, who used to live a 5-10 minute drive from her office now has to drive about 30-40. My office being at home, I'll never have that problem as long as I don't change jobs. Granted I know multiple people who had WFH jobs where the carpet was swept right out from under them and they had to start coming into the office or be laid off, which is the flipside to my argument, though it doesn't really affect me because my company has no central headquarters so some huge internal changes would need to happen for my situation to change.
Anyway, biking to work is awesome, that's a cool setup too for sure. I used to bike 10 miles into one of my previous jobs (and then 10 miles back home.)
Even if I lived next door to an office where I had a private room and my teammates there I wouldn't want to go at all, for many reasons. Off the top of my head:
- Even without commute there's at least 30-45 minutes of preparation to be decent for the office,
- The office invariably doesn't have the setup that I want and have at home,
- People are able to come "bother" you all day long.
None of those are things I'm willing to put up with.
Agree - though from a personal perspective the first ~7 years of my work life was sitting on a trading floor layout, and then I got an office and hated it, still don’t love it. I think the personal office thing is partly personality/experience, partly job function, and partly convenient excuse.
I'm a remote working veteran, having worked in that arrangement for over a decade. Recently I changed employers, to a place down the street, and I loved going to the office before RTO (we're expected to be in the office 3 days a week). Most of the team voluntarily came in every Tuesday and Thursday. We had a lot of fun. Then RTO came, and it seemed to coincidence with every other large employer in the area forcing RTO, and most of the things that were great about it evaporated overnight.
Now the campus is crowded and noisy. Parking is annoying. The lines in the cafeteria and nearby restaurants are insane and simply not worth the wait or frustration of trying to coordinate timing. There's a lot of small battles being fought about temperature control, lighting in the office, etc. ~Half the team is still geographically remote to our main campus, at smaller satellites across the country or they have long term full-time remote arrangements. So we're on Zoom regardless. And I still between someone on my team and someone on an adjacent team, and frequently find myself sitting in between them while they're on separate calls. Even with headphones on, it is fucking madness.
It's just annoying again, and needlessly frustrating, and reminds me of why I originally sought out full time remote back in 2011.
I love the mandates to RTO to only get onto Zoom or Teams meetings with people in multiple timezones and offices all traveling to the office to fulfill the RTO mandate and yet...the only thing that changed was the blurred backdrop.
For my company, the worst thing is that we have hot desks, which wouldn't be a problem if there were enough seats if, say, 90%-95% of all staff came in on the same day and had their own seat. However, one of the floors that my company leases out is undergoing renovations and they shifted all those employees to other floors while keeping the same in-office weekly requirements. Way too many times, I've went into the office just to not be able to find a seat. We have a hoteling reservation system, but even if you reserve a seat, if you don't come in by 8:50 or so, someone will have taken it. I've complained to our corporate services team and have never received a response.
> Working at an office sucks because of some combination of {long commute, open office plan, team not being there}
Working at an office sucks because it is a massive constraint on where you can live, even if you can tolerate a long commute. If you live with a partner who also has a career your options are even more constrained. I find it miraculous such a situation works out for anyone.
Hardly. This is actually kind of insanely tone-deaf statement to make. People have uprooted their lives, spent lots of their wealth in expensive real-estate markets due to artificial demand, given up time with their families, etc etc.
Saying it's "worked out" is a really bland dismissal of the entire conversation.
Doctors are somewhat unique in the fact that they can live and practice in a wide variety of places. Anywhere there’s a hospital, you will have them. Where they will choose to work/for how much is a much wider decision matrix than it is for many white collar organizations which would have no reason to exist (physically) in a small town of 20,000 people. Such a town would require at least a single hospital employing many medical professionals, depending on how far it is from other forms of medical care.
Doctors are just one example and there are many reasons why a doctor may choose to practice in, say, the Boston area than in some 20,000 person town in North Dakota--though you're right than, in many cases, medical professionals have a pretty wide choice in where they live and work depending upon how choosy they are.
But a ton of STEM jobs do require access to labs and other facilities or may have requirements related to security clearances etc. A lot of skilled people can't just work from home and many others travel a lot even if they don't regularly come into an office.
In the context of the modern American nuclear family, the concept of both adults working is relatively new. The traditional arrangement was one breadwinner, one homemaker, and ~2.5 kids.
Which is still common these days, but not to the point of exclusivity: I work remotely, but my partner works hybrid.
What is not okay is that the work-from-office people seems to want to force everyone to work from office. (not directed at you. This is directed at the company execs)
Meanwhile, the work-from-home people advocates for everyone to be able to choose. Akin to being the pro-choice side.
It always confused me that we would sit in these large offices together, chatting with each other on Slack. It was like the idea of working from an office had greatly outlived its utility following the development of the internet, yet nobody got the memo until the pandemic forced it into our conscious awareness.
Yes great points. But most WFH advocates forget to talk about juniors or people who are just starting their careers or people who just cannot wfh effectively. The article talks about Management's arguments against WFH but fails to mention any of the points I mentioned.
The best solution in my opinion is hybrid especially for juniors and I will die on this hill.
Not sure why you can't just teach juniors how to work from home effectively, just how you teach them how to do their job. It's all part of the same thing. I've certainly helped juniors over a video call just as effectively as being next to them physically. In one case I point a finger on their screen, in another I point my mouse cursor on their screen.
And we continue to be social animals over video chat. Harder in what sense? I hear this a lot, but I rarely hear concrete examples. Feels to me more that people are just not accustomed to fully online communication at work rather than that it actually being harder. Change is hard, yes. But that doesn't mean that what you change into is actually more difficult.
Also, I'm not sure of newer generations where you're from, but here what I see is less and less want from people to have in-person conversations. Newer generations have everything done remotely. Ordering food, socializing (online video games, etc), that in-person conversations often are intimating to them. Which begs the question, have the people who say juniors need in-person help actually asked juniors what they would like? Or is it more that _you_ are more comfortable _teaching_ in-person, in which case again, the problem seems to be you, not the juniors.
All-in-all, I'm just not seeing the difficulties people seem to say they have. Just my $0.02.
The single biggest issue I've noticed is that body language communicates a lot, and in remote environments you cannot see this. You don't feel at all invested in the other person either, and I've noticed people multi-tasking instead of listening to what the other person is telling them - often followed up with a "Sorry, I missed that. Can you repeat it?"
As another example, I've worked with some people who are quite confrontational and dare I say, aggressive, on camera, and have raised their voice a couple of times in the past. This same person has very different interactions in real life, a lot more empathy, where it becomes apparent the other person is in fact, an actual person with emotions.
The disconnect is real indeed, and in my experience mostly solved with company get-togethers. After the first get-together, people have a much better idea of other people, vibe better together and thus have a lot more empathy as well.
That said, if a person is unable to conduct themselves professionally whether it is via a video call or not, I think it has nothing to do with remote work and all to do with that particular person being bad to work with.
You can be social over a video call. No one needs to suffer through all of the bullshit of modern offices just to lean over someone's shoulder to read some code.
Sorry to be all 'yet you participate in society' about it but it's notable that you're choosing to have this conversation on an international, text-only website on a Sunday rather than in a local public space. Nothing beats in-person interactions, except perhaps the ability to interact with a community with niche knowledge that's thousands of times larger than what's within a 30 minute drive.
At 3 AM when alerts are firing, documentation beats half-remembered talks with former teammates. We need to get over our aversion to writing stuff down, or at least recording our impromptu brain dumps.
I've onboarded juniors and interns remotely at a couple of jobs and it's been fine. It doesn't work well if your onboarding process is osmosis-based & you want them to just pick stuff up by being around others. But if you are invested in the success of a junior and establish good patterns around how to communicate, there's no real risk there, and if anything it's healthier and more repeatable.
For the team I am on maintaining virtual office hours has really helped in this respect. One or more (but at least one) senior+ person just working/hanging out in a zoom call where others can drop in and talk about whatever.
With remote teams you have to explicitly solve this issue rather than just having it happen like it does for healthy in office teams. But, it isn’t like this is some unsolvable problem.
The only case where being in office is better for Juniors is when the organization is dysfunctional and doesn't know how to properly do remote.
I absolutely have worked in companies where my onboarding was such a mess that the only solution for me was doing hybrid. They sucked at remote work and if you were not in the office you were not seen.
My first Junior job was in a remote-first company and it was an absolute non issue and I don't think being in office would have helped in any form.
The difference is, with remote work you need to have processes in place. You can't just stuff people in an office and hope for the best. You need a mentoring program. You need to encourage pair programming. You need to build digital spaces where socialization can happen and people can just hang out.
> people who just cannot wfh effectively
Yeah but don't forget that for many people with special needs, WFH can be a huge blessing and allow them to work in the first place.
And yes, some people thrive more in a hybrid environment. Though often it because their home situation is non conducive for work, lacking space, too many distraction and so on. I think co-working spaces can be a great solution for that.
I spend a lot of time working with the junior developers on my team, mostly because that's part of my job. There's also a selfish component: if I don't help the new people get up to speed and improve, then I will be less confident delegating tasks.
IMHO, there is sufficient motivation for senior developers to work with the junior members of the team that are unrelated to physical space.
The underlying thing here, like in so many cases, is coercion: we should structure workplaces and workforces to treat people well (and optimize for their long-term productivity), rather than squeezing them for short-term outcomes.
Whether that means working from home or an office depends on the person, but the corporate policy is the same regardless: let people work where they do their best work.
Does your team use Slack (or something similar). Don't you get random pings, mentions or calls for help/input. Is there an expectation around for you to respond within a short period. I have been 100% WFH since last 5 years and I am only productive after 5 pm.
You can ignore those random pings of all kinds until you at a good place to stop what you are doing and help out. If you are responding to all of those the second they come in, you are encouraging the problem by building a culture of over-responsiveness.
I've been on teams where we explicitly defined expected response times. 2 hours was the typical answer on teams where I've worked.
I've also been on teams that didn't define the expectation, but nobody I work with expects Slack to be real-time. The only time we respond quickly is when we have first asked, "Hey, let me know when you have a couple minutes to chat." And then I either stick around until they have time and quickly have the chat/huddle... or if they don't respond and I need to step away, I delete my message.
It sounds counter-intuitive but you can often build a better remote culture by being a little less responsive.
My team does use Slack, but I just have it muted for most channels and check it in predefined intervals. I don't have DM's muted but we also don't have a culture of DM'ing people, calls for help are posted in designated channels.
In my opinion and experience there are very few issues that require you to actually respond immediately, I just find many teams don't understand this. Everyone thinks their specific issue is the highest priority thing going on, and I'd say product teams are especially bad about this. Asking for status updates all too often and interrupting developers days just for small things that could've been done at a scheduled time or just been an email.
Obviously this can somewhat depend on your role since your role may be something that tends to require immediate intervention. But I check Slack once every 30 min to an 1 hour or so and have no issues with my response times.
I understand why these get posted. But not everyone is in the same situation as the author.
I can bike to work, I'm extroverted, and I like free coffee. So I go into the office 2-3 days a week by choice. I have no on-site requirement. I also get quite depressed in winter working in my cold basement office with a space heater :(
But that's just me. And I don't feel like I should force my WFH opinion on anyone else.
On the flip side, if I was required to be in an office for any job, I would not be working in this industry because the only jobs in my area are paying literally $10/hr for this work and it's mostly just building brochure sites on Wordpress.
Being able to even go to an office is a luxury for a LOT of people.
"But Josh, move to a place that has jobs, duh!" Yeah, I highly doubt any place in this world is willing to not only pay to relocate me, but also my ex-wife and her family because I can promise you no job in this world is worth giving up my child for.
I even went to the library when studying for exams in college even though I didn't have to. I consider myself introvert, but I just like the physical separation of work and leisure. And I have a beautiful commute by bike.
I feel you on the winter thing. I added an electric heater to my office so I can keep the temperatures a bit higher than the rest of the house (mostly I do this for my fingers, honestly). And through the magic of LEDs I have a fairly ridiculous amount of light I can turn on. Makes winter more bearable when I can make it as bright as high noon in July.
I totally get wanting to go into the office. I would go in a few days a week if they hadn't put our new office 20 miles away. Not close to where anybody lives, but it's in the trendy part of downtown.
My only other method for dealing with it is alternate ways of getting warmer. When I don't want to turn the space heater on, sometimes I'll fill up a hot water bottle and put it under my feet. Warming the blood up there is reasonably effective at warming up my whole body and thus my fingers.
Maybe a heated desk pad, or some other kind of keyboard heater?
Can we have a quick roundup on where each of the faangs and household names are on going back to the office?
Can report that Spotify is firmly work-from-anywhere and wouldn’t have place for everyone if they went back on that. People sometimes work from exotic locations and it’s normal to not having met teammates in person etc. Productivity is generally high and not adversely affected.
I like to go into the office for the social interaction, but I also like working from home one day a week.
From the article, the con about being interrupted while working in the office applies equally to WFH. Your train of thought can be just as much derailed by a Slack/Teams message as by a colleague wandering by your cubicle.
It's interesting how my daily interactions have evolved since we all went remote. A lot of people at my company seem to have given up on email, and the go-to solution for communication now is a direct message with a request to join a "quick" zoom call.
I've had to get a bit militant about it. Some people still get a bit snippity when I tell them I don't have a moment right now but I'll touch base with them when I reach a stopping point. As if my mere presence on Teams means I ought to be available at any moment to entertain them.
I did contracting for Deere & Co, because of how close they are to my home, they requested I be on site.
Wanting to be a team player I agreed, it was only a 3 hour round trip, they even agreed to pay me for the commute. My time started the second I left my house and didn't stop until I got home.
But here's the thing. The days I was on site, I sat in my own cubicle and didn't converse with any of my colleagues except over Teams, and then when we had a meeting we all filed into a meeting room, where we got on a video call with the teams in India.
None of my reason for being on site mattered outside of them being able to claim I was there in the office.
At this point I've stopped trying to correct autocorrect when it decides a word I spelled correctly isn't the word I wanted and changes it with a different word.
I hate how autocorrect has evolved into something that tries to actually rewrite words that I've written, even after I've moved onto the next word. And sometimes the old trick of just backspacing and typing it again doesn't convince autocorrect that I in fact know what I'm typing and want to keep it.
I'd prefer to just have it highlight the word it thinks as wrong, and leave it alone. Kinda like when I'm on my computer.
yup, exactly what my situation is and a bunch of my colleagues.
A large percentage of modern physical workplaces are purposely designed to isolate people from each other for security reasons, but they keep pushing Work in Office for the "benefits of non-isolation".
Don’t forget about the often critical, but almost never mentioned directly, argument for returning to the cubicle: office spaces are essentially an investment, which may very well go down in value when the general way of thinking becomes “WFH is better, offices are obsolete”.
Totally true. And yet, if you do explain your preferences, your leadership can know their people and try to build an environment that works for them. Hard to blame them for not giving you a good environment if you've never been willing to tell them what "good" means for you.
They ask because then they bring some of that stuff into an office and then claim the office is better than WFH.
For example: One of the biggest things people pointed out at my current job was the long commute/gas money. So company offered to recompensate gas for anyone up to 50 miles or something and claimed now there was no reason to complain anymore... which is obviously untrue.
I've seen this at 2 of the companies I've recently worked for where they do silly polls as to why people prefer WFH, make some small tweaks to the office that still come nowhere close to the convenience of being remote, and then claim there's no longer a reason to WFH anymore since they have made the office more preferable.
Most people who are remote will never want to go back to an office, regardless of what happens.
They might've done a bad job of it, but if they looked at how to make the office more comfortable and then implemented the suggestions, that sounds like a good thing?
I like working from home, but I definitely want to see my co-workers in person sometimes. So if they can bring some WFH benefits to the office, that's great!
I'm mostly in favor of WFH, but there are a few missing spots:
- toxic people ? if you're in a small team, or it's your direct lead, you will endure his toxicity even when remote
- dedicated space for calm/silence: unfortunately not everybody has an isolated spare room. And personally I don't mind house noises, but the person there can get pissed if not very angry very often during zoom calls and it may/will eat your energy.
Other than that the luxury of not having to commute or avoiding very bad workplaces is still something that should be the norm and part of worker union rights. If there's a coworking space and positive teammates I will come to see them very often, after all what's better than having a good team to work with closely ? but this is not the average experience.
WFH is much nicer, the toxic person will need to call you and this is extra effort. But in the office you’re few steps away, so the whole day can be poisoned easily. My stupid manager (and former brilliant technical contributor) once sat for tho hours between my and colleague’s tables and watched what we do. Because he had nothing to do between meetings. I understand, that this is not everyday’s normal situation, but still not pleasant.
yeah that's for sure, in remote you're one button away from peace :)
but when you have mandatory regular calls with the somehow just slightly too toxic but not enough to grant company action.. you know it's gonna be a long term issue
I enjoy working from the office when the atmosphere of the office is aligned and there aren't a hundred abstractions of self justification and internal status signaling, though that's very rare in most companies.
Not to mention the ability to do work holidays, where I go to the beach or whatever and work from there for a week or two. And the sick days is a big one that benefits the company. I've never once oficially taken one since WFH. I might have been mostly just standing by if I felt like shit, but still available for anything urgent.
Anytime I need to spend a day in an office now, when I finally get home and pull off my shoes and sweat soaked shoes I'm so glad I don't have to do this on a regular basis anymore.
Yeah, I used to have black office sandals that I wore with my black socks. No one noticed that they were not black shoes. I stuffed them in my office locker overnight. Worked a treat, no longer sweatty office feet...
Though it was a toss if I changed them when going out for lunch, usually I did not even in winter time (London). Though as my last non-WFH gig the team had a habit of having "lunch" standing outside a pub it was sometimes a little chilly in January..
It's not even sweat, you need to take off shoes after hours sitting at a desk because feet swell from the blood not being pushed back up as you're not moving your legs. There are few things I hate about office work as much as not being free to work on my slippers in the winter or flip flops in the summer.
The article rehashes some well-known arguments, but the most interesting part of it for me was this:
> “People need to be in the office to be a part of the TEAM”
> This gets at a much deeper issue, however. Should we be loyal to companies who would lay us off at the drop of a hat to pad their quarterly earnings? Companies who decide the projects we work on have no merit but can’t be bothered to reassign us to more critical work after spending the time and money to get us in the door? Many of us feel the need to be loyal but what are we getting in return?
The author acknowledges that team-building may be easier in the office, but the question is whether team-building is of any benefit other than to keep employees stuck to their employer.
Who is this meant to convince? Has anyone ever changed their mind as a result of reading a listicle of complaints? This seems more like something for people who already agree with the author to read and self righteously think "yeah, this is THE way"
There isn't some objective right answer here. Different people value different things, and that's ok. Companies can set their RTO policies as they see fit, and that's ok. People should try to find companies that match their preferences. Let's not turn this into yet another tribal schism...
In the long run this is how it will work out, and people will choose companies that match their preferences. In the meantime there's a culture split within many orgs, with each faction wanting their org to end up on their preferred end of the spectrum.
It's not as black and white as all that. People also just have different home situations and different commuting situations. I'd routinely come into our downtown office if I could walk or hop on the subway for a few stops. But it's a two hour drive or train trip. I'm not coming in just to keep you company.
Some people write or blog just because they want to. I have a blog I post on sometimes. Do I care if people read it? Not really. Certainly not trying to build a brand.
Up until pandemic it was impossible for me to convince mgmt that I can work remotely just fine. Then it turns out that it's viable, personally I'm happy there are people shouting about it. On the other side you have biased articles how WFH slays businesses, I see no problem with both sides being remindered about an alternative, especially in times when it's a hot topic
I don't think I wrote this to convince anyone of anything. I think its internal kickback I have that flares up when I hear about companies trying to force employees back to the office. I think the end point that I probably need to add to the post is that I believe that the way forward is for companies to actually listen to employees and allow them flexibility if they desire it, assuming the work gets done.
> Has anyone ever changed their mind as a result of reading a listicle of complaints?
Maybe they should have, because people were complaining about mandatory office work for no benefit for years, especially when open office plans, and most businesses ignored it entirely until a pandemic forced them to actually evaluate it.
Most people would rather have a choice. Being told that you will be fired unless you bring your company laptop into a loud office and do work uncomfortably that you'd do more effectively and efficiently at home was insulting. You knew there was no benefit for you, the pandemic proved that, and then forced RTO regardless of all evidence and data that your own company published showing no loss in efficiency just makes you lose all trust in management.
I think that’s the thing that’s most frustrating, is all the emails and published metrics about “great job being even more productive during the pandemic!” And then in the exact same breath saying “and you’re all coming back to the office.”
Like, if the former isn’t true then don’t lie to us, say we were less efficient.
I agree with almost everything there except the point about powering through and working when sick.
If you are sick (proper sick not just slightly under the weather) then take those sick days. That is what generations of workers before you fought for, so that you wouldn't need to.
On the subject of wfh I do 1 day a week at the office when feeling like it and my productivity usually goes right down to zero on those days. But I like that little bit of social exposure.
I suspect the author was talking more about being just under the weather with this point. There have been plenty of days where I would have called in sick to an office job, but was fine working from home where I could sit in bed with hot drinks, tissues, and access to my own bathroom.
Please acquaint yourself with the term "interrupt overhead". Then with the term "email". I can suggest a number of books on effective communication as well. Few of them recommend randomly interrupting people busy actually doing things.
I think what’s missing in these conversations is the cost of living near an office.
Housing costs are very high. If I could live 10 minutes from an office I’d go all the time. But most live much farther, which puts an untenable strain on them (and the environment, infrastructure, etc!)
Of course the C-suite class probably DOES live 10 minutes from an office. They can afford to, unlike most employees.
If you want RTO build more dense housing near where offices are located. And build solid transit and other means of getting to an office quickly.
> Just when I am deep in some twisted train of thought involving a failing JS callback or missing network packets in Kubernetes someone ambles over to my cubicle to ask me some random question about helm that they could have answered in 2 seconds using the search function of their web browser. Train derailed.
> Don’t talk to me about collaboration when I sometimes have to turn off slack to be able to hear myself think.
Why not communicate to the people that interrupt that they should not come to your cubicle to ask their questions, and should send you a Slack message with their question instead?
And then, if you are deep into something and you don't want to be disturbed, you can mute your slack notifications.
It feels to me, from the tone of the post, that the writer prefers WFH because it allows them to side-step issues that they could have resolved with communication. Of course this doesn't apply to the practical issues (time lost commuting, ...)
> Why not communicate to the people that interrupt that they should not come to your cubicle to ask their questions, and should send you a Slack message with their question instead?
Because then you're the weird introvert, and "not a team-player". People will get surprisingly hostile.
The second quote was the author's response to the argument that working at the office increases collaboration. My point is that some perceived benefits of WFH can be achieved when working at the office with some communication. That way you can keep the benefits of working from office.
I wonder why companies feel the need to set physical presence policies at the company level. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to do it team-by-team? Is the unspoken admission that nobody would choose to pick a collocated team if they could join a remote one?
A team composed of 4 people, where one’s in SF, another in NYC, etc is having a very different experience from one where all 4 people are all collocated.
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[ 145 ms ] story [ 3877 ms ] threadOne of the most underrated features of WFH is my own private bathroom. This is something I would never have at the office.
There are all kinds of features, with varying value to everyone and that people insist on ignoring.
The real adults are sitting in a box over there, where they were told to, doing their work quietly.
I dont think people dread going back to the office. People dread going back to the open office.
"Nope, those offices are for managers".
"But... they're empty now".
"We're putting together the budget for next year to hire more managers".
"So... those will sit empty for the next 6-9 months and I have to work in an open cube environment, being distracted by the growing number of people around me".
"Looks that way, but don't be so negative about it. I think we're done here. Close my door on your way out please".
I left a few weeks after that exchange.
But then they knocked all the walls down and put in rows of desks because they could cram more people in that way. Within a year probably 25% of our development staff walked.
It was reasonable, in that we were generally all quiet or talking at the same time, and was not the worst place at all I've worked. Dedicated private space still works best for a lot of type of work (obviously that's "imo" but seems a standard POV from most colleagues today).
One of the biggest benefits of course is that you have a lot less sound travel. Doors open and you'll still be able to have a neighbor that has an open door meeting, phone call, etc and it won't interrupt you.
After moving from a private office with a door to a team space, I missed it severely. Now I'm WFH and when my kids aren't home generally my door stays open.
Shortly after the open plan craze started. And now there's the hotdesking nightmare. I feel much less valued and respected every time.
This has... mostly worked out OK. In any given office there's some spaces dedicated for the people who work there regularly, at least a room or two with a half dozen seats for hotdesking, but then - three dedicated, closed-door single-person offices exclusively for the executives, who of course never show up outside their home office (if even there).
Someone left, and was replaced by someone in another European country. He's nominally "in the office", but since it's not the same office as the rest of us (and we're not in ours anyway), he's free to come and go as he pleases. It's not like it makes any difference to us.
Then our manager moved on, and was replaced by someone in yet another European country. He was WFH / fully remote before "this" even started.
By time they tried to sell us on RTO, exactly 50% of the team are still here. And going to the office now, just makes it less convenient to call the other 50% of my team. (Yes, call. Call me old fashioned, but I love a good bitchfest, and a good bitchfest shouldn't be in writing.) My manager genuinely advised we ignore the RTO missive and see what happens. (Spoiler: not much.)
Then my boss's boss moved on, and was replaced by another remote position - and now the murmurs of RTO have died down.
Now we're hiring and the net has widened yet again. They need to be in a country where we have a legal presence, and need to be willing to work European hours.
It's amazing how much has changed in relatively little time. It doesn't feel like that long ago I was trying to make the case for WFH on weekends.
Also, wfh weekends? What the heck man. 40 hours M-F tops. Even that I'd like to see dropped to 4 days but that'll never happen.
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/11/13/aws_prison_office...
For instance office drinks can suck, and someone drinking 3 to 5 cups of warm drinks a day, being able to prepare delicious beverages with specialized equipement is a godsend.
Or people who work sitting on their bed. Or want their pet around. Or don't want to wear makeup and get out of the house at all. Those who squat during the long meetings. Those who usually need an hearing aid but can instead just push the sound up if they're at home etc.
Sure, any of those could be addressed in an office setting, but you still only have one office for hundreds of people who probably wish for different things. Most will just give up on comfort, where WFH is an option to be in a better situation.
It’s also an option to be in a worse situation. My office is all setup for work and has the best perk, I can physically leave work behind each day.
You can also have a room setup for work at your home.
The use of vertical space is real. Family of four, 2bdrm 1100 sq ft divided across three floors. I'd love another room. Do they sell those at Costco? Can I put it on the lawn?
I work from home full time, and while it was harder in the beginning, the click of the KVM button and putting my work phone on the charger is enough of a signal.
Unironically they do - https://www.costco.com/medano-10%27x12%27-studio-shed--%E2%8...
Bad news. The front lawn is only 9 feet across. There is no back yard. Sorry for not being clear and up front in the requirements.
Given that this is probably something north of $25K by the time you pay for everything though, it's not obviously a better deal than just getting something custom built from some plans.
It is basically a shed with a nice front window, as it says on the tin.
If you are sitting on your bed, a kitchen table, or some other like space then i question how much work you can actually get done.
Also people are TERRIBLE judges of their own productivity, most people claim their productivity sky rockets when at home, were alot of data shows this not the be the case as time is focused on household items, cleaning, taking care of children, laundry, netflix, etc.
people that are successful at WFH and where doing it before COVID has a dedicated space for "work" in the home. With a Door they could close to block out all other household interruptions focusing on work, and would take defined breaks just like if you were in an office.
Now I've been remote for many years and am happy to say I've trained myself to watch my hours and leave work even though I'm home. I change my slack status, minimize all work apps and walk away. When I come back to my computer for something personal in the evening I don't look at work. It took some practice, but closing things down walking worked for me. Now if I could only stop solving work problems as I try to fall asleep...
Some people will also have no specific reason to want to live alone and can join dormitories or share houses. Some don't even need a stable home and can join military camps etc.
We all have different thresholds of what we want or can deal with in our lives.
I appreciate a hard division between work hours and personal hours, and WFH (for me) makes an already tenuous line even more leaky.
Agreed--this is why I've got an office at home, and it's bigger and better-appointed than any company would ever allocate to me, with a better desk and a better chair (when I use it, because that better desk lets me stand).
I'll spot them the rent for not having to make the commute, but I need the firm separation.
I almost commented about how I bugged HR to let me return to office when it became available (having some months earlier signed a permanent work-from-home contract). I like walking to work and having the work-life separation. Not to mention my office is tricked out with sweet posters, mostly of the transit and active transportation propaganda variety.
The million dollar 360 views are a nice bonus though.
Of course I still work from home on days where it is really inconvenient not to, but I tend to not enjoy that nearly as much now.
Also punctuality and butts-in-seats, but that whole thing turned out to be adhd (working from home gave me the time to figure that out!) so might not be an issue now I can get up early enough to not have a mad panic rush every morning, haha
The problem is 95% of the time it's not like this.
Anyway, biking to work is awesome, that's a cool setup too for sure. I used to bike 10 miles into one of my previous jobs (and then 10 miles back home.)
- Even without commute there's at least 30-45 minutes of preparation to be decent for the office,
- The office invariably doesn't have the setup that I want and have at home,
- People are able to come "bother" you all day long.
None of those are things I'm willing to put up with.
Now the campus is crowded and noisy. Parking is annoying. The lines in the cafeteria and nearby restaurants are insane and simply not worth the wait or frustration of trying to coordinate timing. There's a lot of small battles being fought about temperature control, lighting in the office, etc. ~Half the team is still geographically remote to our main campus, at smaller satellites across the country or they have long term full-time remote arrangements. So we're on Zoom regardless. And I still between someone on my team and someone on an adjacent team, and frequently find myself sitting in between them while they're on separate calls. Even with headphones on, it is fucking madness.
It's just annoying again, and needlessly frustrating, and reminds me of why I originally sought out full time remote back in 2011.
Working at an office sucks because it is a massive constraint on where you can live, even if you can tolerate a long commute. If you live with a partner who also has a career your options are even more constrained. I find it miraculous such a situation works out for anyone.
There are tradeoffs, sure. But there are a lot of jobs in a lot of fields in a lot of places.
The venn overlap is not tiny.
Hardly. This is actually kind of insanely tone-deaf statement to make. People have uprooted their lives, spent lots of their wealth in expensive real-estate markets due to artificial demand, given up time with their families, etc etc.
Saying it's "worked out" is a really bland dismissal of the entire conversation.
But a ton of STEM jobs do require access to labs and other facilities or may have requirements related to security clearances etc. A lot of skilled people can't just work from home and many others travel a lot even if they don't regularly come into an office.
Which is still common these days, but not to the point of exclusivity: I work remotely, but my partner works hybrid.
What is not okay is that the work-from-office people seems to want to force everyone to work from office. (not directed at you. This is directed at the company execs)
Meanwhile, the work-from-home people advocates for everyone to be able to choose. Akin to being the pro-choice side.
I will never go back to an office again.
The best solution in my opinion is hybrid especially for juniors and I will die on this hill.
Also, I'm not sure of newer generations where you're from, but here what I see is less and less want from people to have in-person conversations. Newer generations have everything done remotely. Ordering food, socializing (online video games, etc), that in-person conversations often are intimating to them. Which begs the question, have the people who say juniors need in-person help actually asked juniors what they would like? Or is it more that _you_ are more comfortable _teaching_ in-person, in which case again, the problem seems to be you, not the juniors.
All-in-all, I'm just not seeing the difficulties people seem to say they have. Just my $0.02.
As another example, I've worked with some people who are quite confrontational and dare I say, aggressive, on camera, and have raised their voice a couple of times in the past. This same person has very different interactions in real life, a lot more empathy, where it becomes apparent the other person is in fact, an actual person with emotions.
That said, if a person is unable to conduct themselves professionally whether it is via a video call or not, I think it has nothing to do with remote work and all to do with that particular person being bad to work with.
With remote teams you have to explicitly solve this issue rather than just having it happen like it does for healthy in office teams. But, it isn’t like this is some unsolvable problem.
I absolutely have worked in companies where my onboarding was such a mess that the only solution for me was doing hybrid. They sucked at remote work and if you were not in the office you were not seen.
My first Junior job was in a remote-first company and it was an absolute non issue and I don't think being in office would have helped in any form.
The difference is, with remote work you need to have processes in place. You can't just stuff people in an office and hope for the best. You need a mentoring program. You need to encourage pair programming. You need to build digital spaces where socialization can happen and people can just hang out.
> people who just cannot wfh effectively
Yeah but don't forget that for many people with special needs, WFH can be a huge blessing and allow them to work in the first place.
And yes, some people thrive more in a hybrid environment. Though often it because their home situation is non conducive for work, lacking space, too many distraction and so on. I think co-working spaces can be a great solution for that.
IMHO, there is sufficient motivation for senior developers to work with the junior members of the team that are unrelated to physical space.
Whether that means working from home or an office depends on the person, but the corporate policy is the same regardless: let people work where they do their best work.
This means people can book meetings when people are free instead of being limited by the availability and preplanning of big enough rooms!
I've been on teams where we explicitly defined expected response times. 2 hours was the typical answer on teams where I've worked.
I've also been on teams that didn't define the expectation, but nobody I work with expects Slack to be real-time. The only time we respond quickly is when we have first asked, "Hey, let me know when you have a couple minutes to chat." And then I either stick around until they have time and quickly have the chat/huddle... or if they don't respond and I need to step away, I delete my message.
It sounds counter-intuitive but you can often build a better remote culture by being a little less responsive.
In my opinion and experience there are very few issues that require you to actually respond immediately, I just find many teams don't understand this. Everyone thinks their specific issue is the highest priority thing going on, and I'd say product teams are especially bad about this. Asking for status updates all too often and interrupting developers days just for small things that could've been done at a scheduled time or just been an email.
Obviously this can somewhat depend on your role since your role may be something that tends to require immediate intervention. But I check Slack once every 30 min to an 1 hour or so and have no issues with my response times.
I can bike to work, I'm extroverted, and I like free coffee. So I go into the office 2-3 days a week by choice. I have no on-site requirement. I also get quite depressed in winter working in my cold basement office with a space heater :(
But that's just me. And I don't feel like I should force my WFH opinion on anyone else.
The problem is that company management often does force their WFH opinion on everyone else.
Being able to even go to an office is a luxury for a LOT of people.
"But Josh, move to a place that has jobs, duh!" Yeah, I highly doubt any place in this world is willing to not only pay to relocate me, but also my ex-wife and her family because I can promise you no job in this world is worth giving up my child for.
I totally get wanting to go into the office. I would go in a few days a week if they hadn't put our new office 20 miles away. Not close to where anybody lives, but it's in the trendy part of downtown.
Every couple hours I'll thaw them out against the space heater..
Any other hacks for this are welcome. Exercises?
Raynaud’s or other similar condition?
Maybe a heated desk pad, or some other kind of keyboard heater?
https://thewritersglove.com/
When I got gloves too small their support was quick to help too.
Navigating again to their site they now have some sort of LED heater?
Can report that Spotify is firmly work-from-anywhere and wouldn’t have place for everyone if they went back on that. People sometimes work from exotic locations and it’s normal to not having met teammates in person etc. Productivity is generally high and not adversely affected.
From the article, the con about being interrupted while working in the office applies equally to WFH. Your train of thought can be just as much derailed by a Slack/Teams message as by a colleague wandering by your cubicle.
I've had to get a bit militant about it. Some people still get a bit snippity when I tell them I don't have a moment right now but I'll touch base with them when I reach a stopping point. As if my mere presence on Teams means I ought to be available at any moment to entertain them.
Wanting to be a team player I agreed, it was only a 3 hour round trip, they even agreed to pay me for the commute. My time started the second I left my house and didn't stop until I got home.
But here's the thing. The days I was on site, I sat in my own cubicle and didn't converse with any of my colleagues except over Teams, and then when we had a meeting we all filed into a meeting room, where we got on a video call with the teams in India.
None of my reason for being on site mattered outside of them being able to claim I was there in the office.
I'd prefer to just have it highlight the word it thinks as wrong, and leave it alone. Kinda like when I'm on my computer.
A large percentage of modern physical workplaces are purposely designed to isolate people from each other for security reasons, but they keep pushing Work in Office for the "benefits of non-isolation".
I am not obligated to justify my preferences to anyone. Ever.
For example: One of the biggest things people pointed out at my current job was the long commute/gas money. So company offered to recompensate gas for anyone up to 50 miles or something and claimed now there was no reason to complain anymore... which is obviously untrue.
I've seen this at 2 of the companies I've recently worked for where they do silly polls as to why people prefer WFH, make some small tweaks to the office that still come nowhere close to the convenience of being remote, and then claim there's no longer a reason to WFH anymore since they have made the office more preferable.
Most people who are remote will never want to go back to an office, regardless of what happens.
I like working from home, but I definitely want to see my co-workers in person sometimes. So if they can bring some WFH benefits to the office, that's great!
- toxic people ? if you're in a small team, or it's your direct lead, you will endure his toxicity even when remote
- dedicated space for calm/silence: unfortunately not everybody has an isolated spare room. And personally I don't mind house noises, but the person there can get pissed if not very angry very often during zoom calls and it may/will eat your energy.
Other than that the luxury of not having to commute or avoiding very bad workplaces is still something that should be the norm and part of worker union rights. If there's a coworking space and positive teammates I will come to see them very often, after all what's better than having a good team to work with closely ? but this is not the average experience.
but when you have mandatory regular calls with the somehow just slightly too toxic but not enough to grant company action.. you know it's gonna be a long term issue
Anytime I need to spend a day in an office now, when I finally get home and pull off my shoes and sweat soaked shoes I'm so glad I don't have to do this on a regular basis anymore.
When I lived on a beach I didn't wear shoes for years. The combo above was the only way I could reenter society.
Though it was a toss if I changed them when going out for lunch, usually I did not even in winter time (London). Though as my last non-WFH gig the team had a habit of having "lunch" standing outside a pub it was sometimes a little chilly in January..
(I still have my last pair in black, which I am not sure they sell anymore https://www.crocs.co.uk/p/mens-swiftwater-mesh-deck-sandal/2... )
For me it's regularly putting my feet up, standing up to stretch, and looking out of the window into the distance for a few minutes.
You know, just some things you should absolutely do if you value your health. And yet, having coworkers around tends to guilt you into not doing them.
In fact, many Estonians take off their shoes inside the plan or the ferry as well.
> “People need to be in the office to be a part of the TEAM”
> This gets at a much deeper issue, however. Should we be loyal to companies who would lay us off at the drop of a hat to pad their quarterly earnings? Companies who decide the projects we work on have no merit but can’t be bothered to reassign us to more critical work after spending the time and money to get us in the door? Many of us feel the need to be loyal but what are we getting in return?
The author acknowledges that team-building may be easier in the office, but the question is whether team-building is of any benefit other than to keep employees stuck to their employer.
There isn't some objective right answer here. Different people value different things, and that's ok. Companies can set their RTO policies as they see fit, and that's ok. People should try to find companies that match their preferences. Let's not turn this into yet another tribal schism...
WFH people will always be miserable with in office people and vice versa.
I thought ‘no’, but then remembered how John Siracusa works.
If he ever reviews something you like, turn away. The previously hidden defects and problems will suddenly be very obvious.
And they really, really need you to know that because otherwise they'd have to admit to themselves that they're shouting into the void.
Maybe they should have, because people were complaining about mandatory office work for no benefit for years, especially when open office plans, and most businesses ignored it entirely until a pandemic forced them to actually evaluate it.
Most people would rather have a choice. Being told that you will be fired unless you bring your company laptop into a loud office and do work uncomfortably that you'd do more effectively and efficiently at home was insulting. You knew there was no benefit for you, the pandemic proved that, and then forced RTO regardless of all evidence and data that your own company published showing no loss in efficiency just makes you lose all trust in management.
If you are sick (proper sick not just slightly under the weather) then take those sick days. That is what generations of workers before you fought for, so that you wouldn't need to.
On the subject of wfh I do 1 day a week at the office when feeling like it and my productivity usually goes right down to zero on those days. But I like that little bit of social exposure.
Other people not knowing that he is in deep focus.
It is easier to communicate with teammates when they are near you. Both communication via words and communication via body language.
I am saying that an open floor plan would make it easier for others to read his body language that he currently does not want to be interrupted.
Is a building on fire? Yes? Interrupt. No? Email and trust the person to properly prioritize your email between work items.
Because it doesn't break your concentration to communicate via body language compared to telling someone that you can't talk right now.
Housing costs are very high. If I could live 10 minutes from an office I’d go all the time. But most live much farther, which puts an untenable strain on them (and the environment, infrastructure, etc!)
Of course the C-suite class probably DOES live 10 minutes from an office. They can afford to, unlike most employees.
If you want RTO build more dense housing near where offices are located. And build solid transit and other means of getting to an office quickly.
> Don’t talk to me about collaboration when I sometimes have to turn off slack to be able to hear myself think.
Why not communicate to the people that interrupt that they should not come to your cubicle to ask their questions, and should send you a Slack message with their question instead?
And then, if you are deep into something and you don't want to be disturbed, you can mute your slack notifications.
It feels to me, from the tone of the post, that the writer prefers WFH because it allows them to side-step issues that they could have resolved with communication. Of course this doesn't apply to the practical issues (time lost commuting, ...)
Because then you're the weird introvert, and "not a team-player". People will get surprisingly hostile.
> you can mute your slack notifications.
These things can be done from home or a remote location, what was the point of forcing them to come into the office in the first place, none.
A team composed of 4 people, where one’s in SF, another in NYC, etc is having a very different experience from one where all 4 people are all collocated.
The response was it "wouldn't be fair".
Which I thought was an interesting response, as it at least demonstrates they have some awareness that the move back to office isn't popular.