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I don't care about "us" going back to the office but I definitely want to go back to the office and I am far from alone in this.
by ThrowawayR2 6y ago
I don't care about "us" going back to the office but I definitely want to go back to the office and I am far from alone in this.
- iforgotpassword 6y agoI feel more distracted at home and miss the social interactions with coworkers. Video conferences are tiresome.
- arcticbull 6y agoI miss the ad-hoc conversations with coworkers that lead to cool product innovation. I also miss being able to mentor junior engineers in person, and receiving in-person mentorship from my seniors. I personally believe that we're all running on the trajectory and direction we scoped before the shut-down, and as we move into H1 planning next year, things are going to get much slower and more complicated.
- jefflombardjr 6y agoBut do you really need that from a company? I get that from coworking spaces. And if anything I'd argue it's more innovative. Instead of a bunch of programmers spouting group think, I get to interact with writers, artists, indie game devs, etc. Way more innovative than any programmer group I've been in.
- arcticbull 6y agoI prefer that when I'm working on my own projects, but at BigCo, I can't really do that :)
- pm90 6y agoWell these folks will probably not have much context on what you are doing though. Offices are nice because people working in them have some shared reality, vision and goals. I know that the service or tool I build or use is built or used by another team for a specific purpose. A lot of the innovations I’ve seen happening are because humans with this shared reality try to solve one others problems, or at least talk about it. Many times, others will also actually help out if someone is stuck on something. We need something to simulate this kind of shared reality somehow. Video conferences don’t do that. I’m sure there will be some innovation that might, I’m betting on cheap, high quality AR headsets. Right now it feels like in 2007... internet on cellphones was a thing but an iPhone with touchscreens had to be invented for something revolutionary to happen...
- s0rce 6y agoI couldn't really talk to random people at a coworking space unless they signed NDAs, which would be hard to enforce. Lots of IP and other secrets. Do people really discuss their work with strangers at coworking spaces? I've never worked in one so thats interesting/surprising. Maybe some more generic programming challenges could be discussed vs product/research specifics.
- Nursie 6y agoI'm the opposite. Without having to hear the two women sitting two rows back talking loudly about whatever the hell it is, or be interrupted 8 times a day by people in unrelated areas asking inane questions that are already documented on confluence... Working from home has been amazing for my concentration levels.
- coffeefirst 6y agoYes, one day someone is going to do a “this is your brain on Zoom” study and it will finally explain what many of us have been feeling.
- walshemj 6y agoEspecially if you have a regular culprit who has crappy audio and keeps harshing the mic that gets tiring very quickly.
- ckdarby 6y agoCan you discuss why you want to go back to the office?
- BillinghamJ 6y agoNot the OP, but in my case it's just down to socialising with the friends I work with, and pair programming. The latter can be done remotely but definitely isn't anywhere near as smooth or natural I find.
- derwiki 6y agoAgree on the latter, but VSCode Live Share has made it passable!
- ketzu 6y agoNumber one reason for me is the separation of work and private life. It's so much easier to keep work from creeping into my private life when it happens in a totally different place. I also miss the social interactions, discussion with colleagues is much easier in person. Lastly, I hope it will reduce the amount of video conferences that crept up considerably. edit: Not OP obviously. edit2: Note: Just to make sure, I know this is personal preference and I am perfectly happy with other people being super happy and productive at home!
- ecf 6y agoIt seems lately that most accounts arguing in favor of going back into office immediately are throwaways. I wonder why that is 🧐
- BillinghamJ 6y agoTotally off topic, but I've never seen an emoji on HN before - maybe the restrictions on Unicode characters have been lifted? Edit: weirdly it seems to just be that specific emoji, others don't work
- snazz 6y agoYeah, this seems strange. I’ve seen the black heart symbol before (not an actual emoji), but never a real emoji. Does it work for me too? 🧐
- ecf 6y agoWhat are you viewing it on? I submitted my comment using Hack (iOS) but the emoji is coming though for me as the black box as well.
- BillinghamJ 6y agoJust in Safari, same on iOS & macOS.
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- jdminhbg 6y agoFour year old account, 3k karma, despite the name.
- marcinzm 6y agoProbably because lurkers have a topic they're finally passionate about. Also, doesn't this site have a rule about assuming the best intentions from posters?
- soneil 6y agoI'm with you on that one. I actually want to go back to the office. I don't have a dedicated workspace at home, and I'm definitely feeling it. The line between working from home, and living at work, is getting very blurry. Our living room has become an office, our kitchen has become the other office. The bedroom is now the only space sacrosanct. It's not so much that I miss the office, but I certainly miss "going to work" and "leaving work". That's very difficult to replicate in the space I have - here I am on a lazy saturday afternoon, and "work" is the sleeping thinkpad just to the left of me. Obviously if this persists, I'm going to need to look into a larger living space. Either going from a 1 bedroom to 3, or somewhere large enough to have a separate dining room we can repurpose (and "young-couple flat with an actual dining room instead of a table floating in the middle of an open-plan room" seems to be quite rare.) So whenever I hear talk of how much our employers could save by not needing anywhere near as much property - in the back of my head I'm starting to realise it's just shifting that property cost from them to me.
- starky 6y agoThis is the big thing for me. I already pay more than is reasonable for a 550 sq.ft. apartment which obviously doesn't have a separate office. To get a 2 bedroom place I would have to double my rent to get a place that is even close to where my current apartment is.
- refurb 6y agoYup. My 10,000 company in the Bay Area did an employee poll and it was overwhelming “I’d like the opportunity to work from the office again”. Keep in mind it wasn’t “I want to be there 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday”. But they definitely wanted the option to work from an office for part of the work week, at a minimum. This doesn’t surprise me in the least.
- balfirevic 6y ago> I’d like the opportunity to work from the office again Is that a useful answer? Of course people would like that opportunity, even if they never used it - it's pure bonus. More useful question would be "how many times a week (or how many hours) do you plan to work from the office given the opportunity to work from both home and the office?"
- refurb 6y agoIt is useful because the company was trying to gauge how many wanted to work from home permanently and wouldn’t care if they never had an office to go to.
- sokoloff 6y agoI’m not sure it’s that useful though. Someone who wishes it was like it was on 2019 would answer affirmatively to “would you like the opportunity to work from the office again?” I like working from home right now, but I’d sure love the world to be working such that we could reasonably go back to the office.
- bob33212 6y agoPre pandemic we had a 15 person space that was available for our 30 employees, many of whom travelled We had about 10% usage.