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I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
- kazinator 5y agoThis person has never worked in an office, and has a quiet environment at home. Ah, young and childless.
- alexchantavy 5y agoThis is another interesting way to split the WFH vs WFH divide. Senior workers are more likely to have kids than junior workers, and they have the ability to set rules for their workplace and therefore prefer WFO so they can avoid the noise at home.
- zelos 5y agoI think it's the other way round: having kids means you have other demands on your time. WFH means it much easier to take the kids to school, go to parents evening/school play etc. Plus, senior workers are likely to have a larger house with room for a separate office.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoI changed my work so I could be at home when my children were growing up.
- cblconfederate 5y ago.. and alone/lonely at home, yet they still prefer it?
- wtt604 5y agoI went to the office for the first time last week, and I loved it, but I think where I work has a better attitude towards people than where that guy works. Certainly my department does. I went back voluntarily, mainly to get out of the house, and TO wear real clothes again. Tshirt and shorts, but I feel more human than the pajama man I was for the past year. I hope that guy gets a new job!
- eknkc 5y agoI’ve been working remotely more than 10 years now. I get the idea that some people prefer to be around others, to have face to face conversations etc. And some people do not have the best home environment. Maybe they have kids and would prefer an office. And maybe, they just like working at an office. That’s fine. What I don’t really understand is that people complaining about being in pijamas and being in the house all the time and stuff like that. Just becase they now work from home. At what point working at home meant that you should not shower for a week and have ketchup stains on your face? Just wear the thing you want, meet with people you like and do as you wish. What is the hold up here?
- ngc248 5y agoIt just means that for a lot of people "going to work" was the thing which was adding structure to their life and when WFH started they lost that"structure", that is when "not shower for a week and have ketchup stains on your face" these things happen. Looks like lotsa people build their life around work instead of work around life.
- void_mint 5y agoSome people like things. Some people don't like things. Can we just accept that different people are different and move on?
- 3gg 5y agoAs long as it gets you a blog post. Did you also notice how the TLDR is at the end of that whole rant?
- ev1 5y agoThe problem becomes when one group unilaterally attempts to force an [arguably bad for certain demographics and teams] choice without giving options. The way I see it the problem is that if you let people choose (no matter what, including 100% office or 100% remote), then it's fine.
- void_mint 5y agoAgreed.
- marto1 5y agoThere is quite a serious problem with letting people choose - financial overhead. If we go back to pre-2020 the systems that needed to be maintained, e.g. office space, pipes, parking, etc. was a done deal. Since 2020 the lines are quite a bit more blurry so providing for employees at the same level would mean worst case scenario double the burden for the employer, because both options come with their own requirements. Then you could say - but hey now employers can just adjust the office space for a lower number of employees and we're good. Not really, though, because for one the efficiency of yesteryear came from buying up stuff/services in bulk with a fixed capacity - we don't have that now. Then there is training your managers to deal with a hybrid environment, new systems/software - all additional costs. My point is in a lot of cases maintaining options for people costs money/time/effort/opportunity for the provider. That's money that could have gone to your pocket. And note I'm not saying we're not going to have both options - just don't expect to live in a simpler, more cost efficient system.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago> If you like/prefer going to the office that is fine. I am not trying to say we should all be remote. Companies should offer FLEXIBILITY to let employees choose where to work from. That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.
- midrus 5y agoI agree, mixed remote and non remote is very difficult to get right. I think we should all just switch jobs to remote companies if we like that and our company is not, and vice versa.
- foxpurple 5y agoMy company has gone to mixed but everyone naturally picks the same days Monday to Wednesday typically at home and Thursday/Friday everyone is in. This avoids all the issues of mixed.
- midrus 5y agoYes, this is a good solution, as long as everyone agrees on the days, sounds like it should work.
- pcthrowaway 5y agoI totally feel the draw to both. Personally, I really like the freedom of WFH and it wins out against the benefits of being in office for me. But I can see the appeal to being in office too; there's something really nice about working with your teammates, especially if you get along with them and learn from each other. The thing with your attitude though, is that you're saying it only works for you if everyone is in office. Basically that everyone has to be in office for you to enjoy your office environment. This only works on teams where everyone feels this way. And that's a perfectly reasonable approach to hiring for a new company. The problem is that people have been WFH long enough that every team is likely split on 'team-in-office' sentiment. If a company wants to require staff in office at this point, it should be for building new teams, not applied to existing teams. Then people with the same sentiment as you can choose to transfer to those teams if desired.
- midev 5y agoI've found the WFH debate to be a great proxy for finding people I definitely don't want to work with. Everyone has a preference. But in my experience, the people that whine the most about having to go to an office are generally the people everyone wishes would stay home anyway.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- savant_penguin 5y agoOr that's someone that spends 3h/day commuting
- kumarvvr 5y agoThe sense of sitting in office is a tremendous waste of time and potential is inescapable. I work in the engineering industry and am lucky enough that I get to have privacy and my manager is good. I ensure I do my work and well at that. But I know friends in IT who absolutely loathe the feeling of being in a monitored jail cell.
- galdosdi 5y agoYeah but the real root cause (of that awful "I am wasting my time and life right now" feeling) is that modern office work often involves getting M hrs (M < 8) of real work done and having to stretch it to fit an 8hr shift. WFH masks that symptom very well but does not actually solve it. IMHO it can actually be more frustrating because one feels more on the hook for keeping an eye on notifications. At least at the office I can zone out or focus on something personal or work related, safely assured if a boss really needs me I can be found in person, rather than just missing a ping and being assumed to be a slacker. The above depends a lot on your company culture though. It's a common failure mode though.
- MattGaiser 5y agoOr just the ability to easily rearrange when I do those 8 hours to fit with appointments, flights, and other life events.
- ALittleLight 5y agoYou need a chatbot that replies to messages with "I'm heads down on a task right now. I'll read your message when I have some time. If you need to interrupt me please reply with 'interrupt'." And if you get that keyword your chatbot plays a sound or texts you.
- magnusmundus 5y agoI mean, that's almost exactly how Slack's DND mode works. The thing is, it's too open to abuse by that one prick who stays on DND for months at a time, or (for less vitriol) maybe you just forget to turn it on/off, then you try to automate it and then never follow the schedule you set for yourself, etc., making it basically useless. It's pretty difficult to fix bad social behavior with more tech. On a tangential note, thanks to WFH, I've grown to hate clockwise with a passion. It's the single most disruptive tool in the remote workplace, especially when combined with private-by-default calendars. Maybe I only worked with bad users, I don't know. I just haven't seen anyone with that consistent a schedule, and no one pays attention to their calendar schedule after they set it once anyway. Have to set a meeting for 5 clockwise users? Tough, you'll either have to ask them individually if that time works, or just ignore calendars altogether and hope the relevant people make it work. I hope it dies soon.
- nine_zeros 5y agoI loathe that I'm being asked to go back to an environment of constant chatter for a knowledge, focused job.
- mastrsushi 5y agoThen learn to socialize or get another job.
- bigwavedave 5y ago> Then learn to socialize or get another job. I rarely rant on hn or espouse strong feelings, but you've made a couple of dismissive comments like this so I'm afraid I've lost my composure. Socializing isn't the problem. The problem is an open office plan filled with constant noise, the stench of whatever the guy five desks over is eating for lunch, the music being played loudly through four different peoples' headsets in an attempt to drown out the constant chatter, the team building exercise Accounting is doing in the fishbowl (this designated meeting room earned its nickname by being in the center of the open office plan with all four walls completely transparent), the crashing of weights from the 24hour Fitness on the floor above ours, the 45 minutes wasted in traffic each way every day, and the constant backlash of people with attitudes like yours who somehow think this is better, who somehow believe that I not only need this environment to write code, but that I and my teammates (half of whom are remote in another country anyway) need this kind of environment to thrive! There are plenty of reasons to work in the office and there are plenty of reasons to prefer working from home, but pretending someone doesn't want to be around the environment I just described because they have poor social skills is tonedeaf, childish, dismissive, and demoralizing. I would like to echo the sentiments of another commenter in another thread who said something along the lines of how the wfh debate has been a great litmus test for who they would and wouldn't want to work with.
- mastrsushi 5y ago“ the constant backlash of people with attitudes like yours who somehow think this is better” This reeks of bitterness and projecting. I never claimed wfh is worse, to your suprise I actually prefer working from home. If you do not like the environment you work in, adapt or leave. Or you know, complain about it on a programming forum, go on some sanctimonious rant, totally not childish.
- rodgerd 5y agoThe saddest thing is the people giving him a hard time for "being entitled". How fucked have our mindsets been by decades of anti-union, anti-worker propoganda, elevating CEOs to philosopher-kings, that people argue for their own bondage?
- zz865 5y agoThere is no bondage but if you dont like the job, quit dont complain about it.
- shard972 5y agojust go starve and die, see i offered a solution, im helping.
- inter_netuser 5y agojust make your own billion dollar unicorn with somewhat stableish employment and affordable insurance premium.
- MattGaiser 5y agoWhy not complain and see if something can be changed first? Less work than rebooting your algo brain circuits with Leetcode.
- zz865 5y agoSure, complain to your boss and see what's possible. Writing anonymous reddit posts isn't trying to change your workplace.
- Apocryphon 5y agoIt gets the people going.
- lliamander 5y agoI agree that is the saddest part, but that has nothing to do with anti-union propaganda. Unions can be afflicted by this "crabs in a bucket" mentality just as easily. The fact is that free market was the reason the OP was able to leave for a different job in the first place.
- mastrsushi 5y ago“ The company kept saying we will be more productive at the office. That's the opposite of what I am seeing. My team is now taking longer for cards, and the amount of time wasted in the office is ridiculous. The number of people, mindless walking around, chit-chatting in cubicles, going out for lunch/ coffee breaks just to fill in the time is a joke” You mean congregating like actual people. Not making snacks in your “private upstairs kitchen” and eating them in your pajamas?
- MattGaiser 5y agoWhy is chatting with colleagues about the sports team better than me making snacks?
- lmm 5y agoBecause to make something actually useful (rather than something technically perfect but useless) your team needs to be the kind of gestalt entity that chatting about the sports team helps to create?
- Datagenerator 5y agoAlso some people like to do real work and deliver value instead of stealing time.
- mastrsushi 5y agoKeyword: some
- tehjoker 5y agoTime is something being stolen from employees. We have one life to live. A company isn't even alive.
- cgsmith 5y agoAre you retired? Employees pay you for the time it takes on a job. If you're retired then maybe you are waxing philosophically about the fleating nature of time.
- Nbox9 5y agoWow, that seems like a terrible place to work. Why is he going to a daily meeting if he doesn’t have to pay attention to the meeting? Why is there not an incentive to complete more than one card a day? If one card can take as little as two hours it seems like a massive waste to expect someone to only do one card. Why doesn’t he have proper equipment? If you spend XXX,XXX a year for an employee it makes sense to spend X,XXX/yr for proper equipment. The company should provide high quality mouse/keyboard/headset.
- MattGaiser 5y ago> Why is he going to a daily meeting if he doesn’t have to pay attention to the meeting? Attendance is not usually optional for standup.
- cgsmith 5y agoI realized that the OP can correct these actions himself. If he is in a useless meeting then he should speak up and work towards changing that policy. If he doesn't have good equipment he could work with management to lobby for better equipment or bring his own there. Instead of working for 4 hours then "doing whatever" he could make meaningful changes in the organization but he chooses not too. Maybe it isn't a terrible place to work. Maybe he is a terrible employee.
- chrsig 5y agoWhy is that a better option for the OP than finding a job that better aligns with how they would like to work? It's really better for everyone in the long run. Company has fewer malcontent workers and can replace the headcount with people that do want to be in the office, and OP isn't suffering in an environment they can't tolerate. Maybe neither are terrible. Maybe they're just poorly suited for each other.
- Apocryphon 5y agoJust as changing jobs tends to boost salary more than getting raises, changing jobs and disclosing all of one's grievances at the exit interview is probably a stronger signal than being the squeaky wheel while still in the company.
- amdelamar 5y ago> The best part is that the cubicle doesn't have tall walls so I can literally see/hear everything, including other people's monitors. Open offices are awful. In my experience most people end up wearing headphones all day, and I did too. My ears would get red and irritated after a while. But I'd keep them on because it was like an unspoken social rule; that if you looked busy and had headphones on, people won't interrupt you as much.
- beebmam 5y agoI originally hated open spaces. But eventually I grew to love open spaces for being social. In fact, I had one of the most enjoyable times I ever had at a big tech company being in an open space! But I was probably producing about 10% of what I normally produced in a closed space. I was OK with that :-) My company probably wasn't, but hey, I was salary; that's their problem.
- petters 5y agoNot sure about the definition, but a "cubicle" without high walls is not really a cubicle, right? I have worked at Google and a cubicle would have been better than the open source we had.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoI have a mild case of tinnitus which I attribute to headphone use for 9 or so hours a day (commute plus time trying to work in the office). At home these days I rarely have music or anything on, I can work for the most part in comfortable silence. Means that music is saved for when I actually want to listen to it and can give it my attention, instead of while I'm trying to debug or avoid someone's armpit on the train.
- test1235 5y agoA lot of the time I had my over-the-ears headphones on in the office, I wasn't even listening to anything - it was just nice to block out the environment noise a bit, and let people know not to bother me.
- 5y ago
- vallavaraiyan 5y agoUnfortunately, there is a drop in empathy and trust (to varying degrees) when interacting with those who one hasn't met in person. Being in office, talking to your teammates face-to-face is super valuable when the team members are new to each other. Once the rapport is established, let each person do what works the best for them.
- inter_netuser 5y agoi wonder how companies survived until now with all kinds of outsourcing, outstaffing, contractors in 5 different timezones, vendors in 12 different timezones, regulators in 3 different time zones, separate divisions for APAC, EMEA, US and so on...? ...but just can't handle remote employees that they have so much more control over? Sounds like complete nonsense to me. If they can handle vendors located on a different continent - they can handle remote employees, full stop. I'll believe the complaints about WFH when they'll ban offshoring.
- MattGaiser 5y agoA former colleague of mine quit a job over this. They wanted him back into the office. He mostly worked with their Toptal devs from Nigeria and and Hungary.
- jameshush 5y agoI worked on a team that was mostly Seattle people while I was based in the Los Angeles HQ. All my team members were in a different city. Needless to say "switching" to remote wasn't a big deal at all for me.
- inter_netuser 5y agowhat does he do now? Toptal?
- senko 5y ago> ... how companies survived until now with all kinds of outsourcing ... All of this involves varying degrees of transaction costs (ie. how hard is it to have everone aligned, communicating effectively, etc). Outsourcing is usually done for (parts of) jobs that can be easily carved out into fairly complete packages. For example, have the QA team offshore, or outsource the design or slide-deck preparation. Most dev outsourcing is also done at least per-component if not per-project. True distributed teams are HARD. But having everyone aligned, on the same page and motivated, if half (or more) of the team is remote, means a lot more effort on clear communication, management, etc and many office patterns will need reworking. As one example, onboarding (esp junior) team members is much harder, as new people learn as much by osmosis as by reading the documentation. This is not to diss WFH - I prefer it to office esp. cubicle hell - but we should be realistic about the challenges involved.
- gorbachev 5y agoMost of the people posting these sort of articles fail to realize people have different preferences. Some people prefer WFH, some the office, some something in between. Smart companies understand that and tailor their approach to fit. Dumb ones will dictate The One True Way and see half their people leave.
- inter_netuser 5y agoi wonder how companies survived until now with all kinds of outsourcing, outstaffing, contractors in 5 different timezones, vendors in 12 different timezones, regulators in 3 different time zones, separate divisions for APAC, EMEA, US and so on...? ...but just can't handle remote employees that they have so much more control over? I'll believe the complaints about WFH when they'll ban offshoring.
- gorbachev 5y agoYep. Cherry picking justifications for management decisions is often an art form.
- black_13 5y agoI think talking on this forum is going to invite trolling and smugness...of the variety „well im just fine“. I went out for a long walk on my break because I know its not going to last. I feel like a cancer patient who is in remission and want to use the time to experience the best and simplest things. Quiet going for a walk to the end of the street a slice and beer and an un interrupted conversation with my Mom.
- joelbluminator 5y agoIf anyone can do your work remotely...ANYONE can do your work remotely. Do you guys think maybe when the next recession happens we will see unprecedented offshoring due to companies not being able to pay 160K to a developer with 3 years experience? Its all nice and well when every startup can raise as much money as it wants. What happens when/if that pops?
- bilog 5y agoThat goes both ways though. It also means that you can get hired by some company on the other side of the world that possibly offers better conditions than anything local.
- joelbluminator 5y agoWell yes it's great for Indians / Africans. For people living in U.S, U.K not so much. I think it also means people should go deep, way deep in their stack. Don't switch too much. You know PHP? Become great in PHP. Know Ruby? Stick to Ruby and become a real expert. Generalists may become a commodity...just my personal opinion. You will have to set yourself apart somehow. What is your strategy in this brave new world?
- Zababa 5y ago> For people living in U.S, U.K not so much. If you live in San Francisco or London, probably, but there are lots of places where the cost of living is lower.
- kanzenryu2 5y agoAs somebody who's quite a bit of a generalist, I really don't see this happening. IT is just such a huge field that knowing enough general stuff to be useful is still pretty hard.
- chrsig 5y agoSo....better suffer now because otherwise we might suffer later? No, thanks.
- bww 5y agoLike most people, I enjoy being physically around my colleagues from time to time. There is real value in that sort of interaction. It is not, however, an essential component of most jobs that traditionally have been conducted in an office. This fact has been indisputably proven over the last 18 months. If you want to go to an office every day of the week, go ahead! That’s great, who’s stopping you? But if you think everyone you work with should also be there in order to interact with you? In the environment where you like to work, regardless of how productive your colleagues are there? I shouldn’t have to tell you that you are the one who is being unreasonable.
- pictur 5y agoI think working from the office or working remotely is the last thing to worry about. There is so much nonsense in business that I think it's the last thing to worry about.
- robertwt7 5y agoI've read this post a week ago (gee I browse reddit too much) Not sure how I feel about this, maybe flexibility is the real answer? Some days I woke up and I don't feel like working from home. It feels good to go out and walk to our company's cool office. If I don't feel like it, then I'd just stay home.
- kvgr 5y agoI was thinking of renting cheap one person office, so I get out of the appartment. And have a distinction of enviroment. Not really worth the money in my current job. But when I get remote job for “western” company it will be peanuts.
- xmprt 5y agoI think it depends from company to company. Originally I was dreading working from the office and I still don't prefer it now, but there are a few benefits that make the analysis a lot less black and white. Office has free food, socializing with coworkers, and they've decked out the entire place with really good monitors, standing desks, a stocked kitchen, etc. I think it's up to the company to make the office experience worth it and even then it might not be enough for some people so flexibility should be offered as well. It's also nice now that it's voluntary so the commute is shorter and meeting rooms are empty. I only go about once a week so far (will start going 2-3 times soon).
- midrus 5y agoIn my company the only ones that want to go back to the office are those engineers and managers that spend most of their day just walking around, talking to everyone about non important stuff, inviting you to have a coffee, and making jokes until 5pm. Just the people that have nothing to show at the end of the quarter. The most productive engineers, and the ones I enjoy working the most are the remote ones. The only way they have to justify their time is with what they ship. I don't go to work to be a family, a brotherhood, or whatever....I do that at my pub, at the gym or with my friends. I go to work to work, ship stuff, grow my career, learn and earn money. Problem is when people mix the office with their entire social Life.
- yobbo 5y ago> Just the people that have nothing to show at the end of the quarter. These positions are part of the incentive system: "if you're loyal and work hard, you might one day get a job like that." For most people, being able to lord over others is very seductive and motivating. The managers just want to continue to experience what they construe as their "reward" for loyal careers.
- tchvil 5y agoOne programming teacher told me 20 years ago: "you think your technical skills will make you advance your career, wrong, it is your interpersonal ones that will do". I'm not very good at it, but since then I try to work on both sides.
- rxhernandez 5y agoOn my second job, I made 2.5x what I made at my first engineering job (which ended 3.5 years ago). At my 3rd job I jumped my salary by 10s of thousands of dollars over what I was making at my 2nd job. At my 4th job, I now make 8x my first job. I am now consulting (with way too many clients) and have the choice of making six figures by working less than 4 months a year. Technical skills almost solely put me in the 1%. Although, I am sure that if I stayed at my 1st job I would have gone nowhere due to my lacking interpersonal skills. I also sincerely doubt that I would have made millions if I had mediocre technical skills and mediocre interpersonal skills instead of my pretty good technical skills and subpar interpersonal skills.
- tehjoker 5y agoIf they make me go back to the office during the delta wave, I am organizing a strike or quitting.
- foxes 5y agoSeems like their life would be dramatically better if they didn’t have some horrible car hellscape based commute. Pity cities are designed and spread out so because of cars. Then making the office more comfortable and flexible without people micromanaging would be the next thing.
- aba_cz 5y agoThis is U.S. thing, right? People in Europe are using public transportation to get to work from the edge of the city with no problems. Come visit Prague to see how it's done :D
- ekianjo 5y ago> People in Europe are using public transportation to get to work from the edge of the city with no problems. In theory. When there are no strikes or public transportation issues.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoThere are plenty of people with long commutes in Europe as well. I suspect we tend to trade off the commute against housing until the commute is just bearable.
- mrweasel 5y ago> People in Europe are using public transportation No we don't. It would add 90 minutes each way for my 15km commute. We really need to stop with the idea that public transportation in Europe is awesome, it not, it actually pretty terrible outside a few select areas. It's actually faster to ride a bike to work in my case, except bikes aren't allowed on the motorway. Europe need to fix it's public transportation system. So far the solution is to make driving more expensive, while providing no alternatives. Maybe it's better in Czechia, but in general I don't think we can seriously claim that Europe has good public transportation.
- brailsafe 5y agoSo you're saying that because you live rather far from work, and precariously located proximate to transit terminals, people in European cities don't use transit? 15km is far af. It's only not far af if you use a car. If your frame of reference though is not commuting by car, then you select employment and residence differently. I currently don't have a car or a job, and walk or take transit everywhere (not in Europe), and as such I'm sure as hell not looking for jobs located 15km from my house. Sure, let me just thru-hike to work np.
- cflynnus 5y agoMy first 100% remote job was w/ invisionapp.com a few years before the pandemic. Best decision I've ever made.
- askonomm 5y agoIt is my opinion that if you are against remote work being the norm, you're a dinosaur and best get out of the way of progress. The amount of time people would win back to spend their life however they want by not commuting is astronomical, the environmental impact of not having so many transportation devices on the roads as a result would also be massive. If you somehow think that your need for water-cooler talk is as important as that, well, it isn't.
- brailsafe 5y agoHave to agree with this. Exceptions being places where commuting isn't inherently destructive, and actually being in the office is irregular and obviously necessary.
- Kosirich 5y agoTo be fair, it seems like he works in a really shitty place. I guess lot's of us have better conditions at work. Also "having to wait to reheat your prepared lunch in the canteen" sounds idiotic. If people have to bring their lunch, at least have enough microwaves in the office....they are like 100$.
- erik_seaberg 5y agoAt a kilowatt each, a kitchen with more than two or three microwaves needs dedicated wiring like a whole aisle of desks would use.
- vinni2 5y agoOne thing I noticed is that while more experienced people are productive working from home, it is devastating for fresh starting employees. Work from home eliminates learning through osmosis. If anyone has a work around this let me know. I am surprised no one else has mentioned it here.
- benrbray 5y agoI graduated into this mess and feel like I've been cut off at the knees.
- caffeine 5y agoHey I really feel for you. Please don’t disengage, fight hard to get mentored. Not sure what your org is like but ask to pair remotely if you can, ask to do code reviews over video call so you can talk through questions, ask your manager regularly to talk you through the trade offs involved in the decisions they are making, etc. If you hear about a weekly status call happening on some project, ask if you can be included “to learn.” Your goal is to first increase your situational awareness and understanding of the domain, because that is upstream of the technical trade offs. I think people graduating into this have to fight really hard for the mentorship and learning that would happen naturally 10 years ago. People like me who graduated 10-15 years ago and would now naturally be your mentors don’t realise this because we never faced it.
- jasondclinton 5y agoThe solution is obvious: structured training and mentoring. When the pandemic hit, I was hiring a team of 5 new engineers. What was I going to do? Throw up my hands? I implemented a weekly technical training program that morphed into the 250 person org official onboarding. Weekly, I literally just get someone on a VC for 30 minutes and record having a conversation about a technical topic at a noobie level. 16 months later we have 50+ training videos on every topic. We implement mentors and formal onboarding processes with screen sharing and remote whiteboating sessions, too. It's not hard.
- 5y ago
- thefz 5y agoI can feel the "I invested in a nice work environment" part a lot. At home I have an insanely comfortable chair, very nice keyboard and mouse, two stellar 27'' displays on a very large desk. At work none of the above plus a shitty 2010-era work computer with a 5400rpm rotational drive that takes at least 20 minutes to boot and 10 to open visual studio alone. Plus at home I can listen to the news while doing mundane work tasks like replying to tickets and emails, have some relaxing music on, access to my whole kitchen, and so on. Commuting one hour each way sucks hard too. I hope we'll never go back to full office work, I feel like I got my life back.
- mouzogu 5y agoTrying to read between the lines, why are most companies pushing for a return to the office? Does it really just come down to the personal insecurities of management.
- unixhero 5y agoI went back and it was pretty great. My colleagues are real homies, secretaries are real hot and I get to use the gym as much as I want so I can lose the kilos lockdown caused me to gain. Will definitely be using home office more often tho.
- CephalopodMD 5y agoI just want my own office. That's all. I'd be pretty okay with going in if I had my own office with 4 walls. First job of my career, they told me I would have an office of my own. First day I come back do for full time (I had interned there too with my own office), they tell me they're switching buildings to go open office in about a month's time. I got a precious few weeks with a personal office, and then it was all gone. I hated this change of scenery mmediately, but I guess I got used to it after a few years. Working from home took me back to that zen. I didn't even know how much I missed it - how much I needed my own space to feel productive. I've since changed jobs, and I kinda dread having to go to the open office nightmare once this is all over. The facilities are way nicer than my last job, but it's still an open office. Open. Office. As. Implemented. In. Our. Industry. Is. Stupid.
- IvanAchlaqullah 5y agoYes, working from home is much better than working at open office. However there is some scenario where middle manager can make WFH as hellish as working at open office: by mandating everyone to install invasive spyware so they can "manage" you remotely. Bonus point if the company didn't want to give/loan company devices, so you have to install it on your own personal devices.
- curiousigor 5y agoThat's a huge red flag for me though. If you're employed (so not working as a freelancer for the company), the employer is supposed to provide the equipment you can work on. For them to expect usage of personal devices and then have a requirement of installing these kind of tools on it wouldn't be expectable to me.
- vineyardmike 5y ago> Bonus point if the company didn't want to give/loan company devices, so you have to install it on your own personal devices. Oh i would NEVER. That sounds horrible.
- pawelwentpawel 5y ago
- suzzer99 5y agoIf your work is so locked down they give out cards that take 2-4 hours to jr. devs, then working from home is probably just as productive if not more than the office - for the reasons eloquently laid out in the reddit post. But if you want to work on new technology with a ton of unknowns (which I personally get more job satisfaction out of), in my experience you need that human connection and in-person collaboration - at least at first. Maybe that can work fully remote. But my fully remote startup experiences have been abysmal.
- decodebytes 5y agoI disagree. Right now some of the most cutting edge technology is developed within Open Source communities, predominantly resourced by geographically spread folks from different companies / independents - all using tools to communicate / collaborate. I think this is a case of argue your limitations and they are yours.
- solatic 5y agoSounds like the relationship is dysfunctional in both directions. On the one hand, the employer set up a panopticon in the office, with crappy furniture, lots of interruptions, a crappy office kitchen, no decent food (i.e. needing to bring food from home). Garbage in, garbage out. Of course nobody is happy to sit in traffic to come to an environment like that. Then we have the author, who has the mistaken idea that the number one most important thing that you do at your job is your directly measurable productivity. Not relationship-building, just pure "shut up and let me sit down and get my work done." Personally, I'd prefer it if engineering work didn't go the way of Amazon warehouse workers, because if "productivity" is the sole metric of an employee's performance, just wait until your employer decides to try and optimize it. Best of luck to the OP at the dice roll that is the next company he works for.
- Apocryphon 5y ago> Then we have the author, who has the mistaken idea that the number one most important thing that you do at your job is your directly measurable productivity. Not relationship-building, just pure "shut up and let me sit down and get my work done." To be fair, that's been a popular view among software engineers long before ubiquitous WFH was a reality. And programmers are definitely keen on not getting their flow interrupted.
- LQexplanation 5y agoOne small thing : even if available food is decent, some people prefer their own (diet needs, it may be cheaper, etc).
- jeddy3 5y ago> Then we have the author, who has the mistaken idea that the number one most important thing that you do at your job is your directly measurable productivity. Not relationship-building, just pure "shut up and let me sit down and get my work done." Well, the most important thing is certainly NOT relationship-building either.
- refactor_master 5y ago> Then we have the author, who has the mistaken idea that the number one most important thing that you do at your job is your directly measurable productivity. Not relationship-building, just pure "shut up and let me sit down and get my work done." Relationship-building sounds like something my manager would say. And I’d still have to code XYZ, make sure it works, and make a presentation about it. Not sure how relationships help me in a technical role.
- rococode 5y agoI predict the balance we're heading towards for many office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged". Like Monday and Wednesday are in-office, Tuesday and Thursday are WFH, Friday is optional. Preference for WFH depends on so many individual factors, not just personality but also your commute length, home size, children, neighborhood, friends, etc. Although a lot of discussions on HN seem to be dominated by "I prefer WFH", I reckon in reality the divide is probably pretty close to 50/50, just like with introverts and extroverts. Companies will find strong candidates in both types of people and find out they can't fully satisfy them all, and the end result will be everyone compromises. Encourage some days to be WFH so that WFHers won't feel career pressure from missing out on office politics. Encourage some days to be in-office so that office-lovers won't go to the office to socialize and find it half empty. Have a flexible day or two where people can do whatever they want. Maybe throw in some flexibility on start and end hours so that people can avoid peak traffic.
- KingOfCoders 5y agoSounds complicated.
- rococode 5y agoSurely no more complicated than it is for hourly workers to keep track of their shifts, or for college students to keep track of 5 different full-day schedules that change every few months. "Come in Monday, stay at home Tuesday" is not exactly the peak of complicated scheduling.
- ekianjo 5y ago> I predict the balance we're heading towards for most office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged". Or a lot of people are going to be looking for full remote jobs and companies which are full remote will be able to get some folks they were not able to hire before.
- papaf 5y agoI have hopes for hybrid working but I think that it needs to be targeted. A team should be in the office together on the same day. This day should have a schedule like a mini conference with talks, pair programming and architecture sessions. We have done similar things in the past when two teams that are remote from each other come together and it works well. All the activities were optional and we went to a Beer garden at the end. Simply going back into the office for a day and working as normal is wasting the personal contact time.
- gregoriol 5y agoIt seems to me that this person doesn't hate the office but actually hates the company. It seems that the meetings, the style, the colleagues, nothing fits for him. I also don't understand why he would discover the cubicle only now: didn't he interview with the company? didn't he ask the questions? I believe this person should urgently go work for another company that better fits him, and not because he has to go to an office.
- ta2234234242 5y agoThe bathroom part rings true. I've been in so many offices where they make it hard to use a stall. Are all the stalls busy? Yep. Did you go across the hall? Yep. Did you go to the floor above or below you? Yep.
- oskenso 5y agoTo remote work vs in-office: why not both?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- abhinav22 5y agoDo we need swear / curse words in titles? I know it’s a minor point, but I think it’s a regression away from thoughtful expression
- jpollock 5y agoI miss being able to tell if I'm interrupting a coworker's state of flow or not with a quick message. When everyone's in the office, I can _see_ when they get back to their desk and haven't gotten into anything again. I can see that my question isn't going to interrupt them. As it stands, I interrupt everyone and they interrupt me. I haven't been able to get into flow during office hours in 18months. Code review discussions which would take 5 minutes take 3 days. You have to write multiple paragraphs instead of walking over and saying "dude, look at this right there, like _seriously_." Nothing like a little pair programming to work through a code review.
- diegoperini 5y ago> You have to write multiple paragraphs This I actually like. My short summary of my work in Slack usually becomes the first draft of the documentation I need to write later.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoSame here, I also like having time to proof-read and refactor what I've written to remove redundancy, clear up any amiguities and look for assumed knowledge.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoOn interruptions, I turned the notification indicator off for general messages in Slack, so I only get system notifications for DMs or mentions. Slack obeys DND (on Mac OS at least), so I use that a lot to mute it when I am doing work. I check it a couple of times a day to catch up on messages. It's amusing to see the occasional "hi" sent without any context, then an hour or two later, the real question the person wanted to ask. I think I'd get in trouble if I set https://www.nohello.com/ https://www.nohello.com/ as my status though. Unfortunately we also have to use Microsoft Teams which implements its own notification system and doesn't obey the system-wide DND, so I usually just quit Teams when I am not actively using it.
- Treblemaker 5y agoping "Hey, Bob, can I share my desktop and show you something?" Five minutes later, Bob is fixing his mistake. Or, Bob has notifications turned off, and he lets me know as soon as he's available again. My point is that the tools are there to address this concern. I don't go a day without sharing my desktop or looking at someone else's. And in some ways it's even more efficient and less disruptive than getting up, walking over to someone's desk.
- veltas 5y agoFor those of you distracted by the office chatter, me too: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php?l=14222840464228211305 https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php?l=... I use this speech noise-jamming page a lot at work, someone walks over near my desk and starts chatting, I wear my headphones and this goes on. I don't have any downtime in the office anymore because of this.
- angarg12 5y agoI have several colleagues in the same situation (first job, never been to the office). As much as I love remote work, a word of caution: don't take this text too seriously. It's just the ramblings of a very immature engineer. Form your own opinion rather than using a second hand toxic one. Try it out. It turns out different people like different things, and also circumstances are different. If something doesn't work, try to change it. If ultimately you hate the office as well, then feel free to look for other opportunities.
- outsomnia 5y ago> It's just the ramblings of a very immature engineer. > second hand toxic one You mean, be cautious because the reddit poster had not been sufficiently institutionalized yet to love his openplan cattle stall and believe he works with a "family"?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoI guess social climbing and engagement in office politics are sure signs of maturity, then.
- aseerdbnarng 5y agoReturn to office is just management reasserting ownership over the serfs dressed up with mindless business jargon (collaboration, innovation, culture etc)
- jstx1 5y agoI think this is too reductive. There've been enough people in this thread who mention that they prefer working from an office. It's not just managerial oppression.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thih9 5y agofriendly UI: https://teddit.net/r/cscareerquestions/comments/oosru6/i_went_to_the_office_for_the_first_time_i_fucking/ https://teddit.net/r/cscareerquestions/comments/oosru6/i_wen...
- acd 5y agoThe open office space plan is silly when "normal" companies want to imitate office cost saving from Silicon valley startups. I feel nobody really questioned why. Open floor plan is good for cost saving but not for anything else. Collaboration is less in open plan than a traditional office. Here is Harvard research on Open Office plan https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices "When the firms switched to open offices, face-to-face interactions fell by 70%." https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/bernstein-open-offices.aspx https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/bernstein-open-offic...
- Apocryphon 5y agoOn a tangential pop cultural note, I recently realized that The Office, perhaps the seminal '00s-'10s equivalent to '90s office drone dramas (Dilbert, Office Space, The Matrix, Fight Club and so forth - https://www.openculture.com/?p=1067238 https://www.openculture.com/?p=1067238), takes place in an open office. The employees of Dunder Mifflin have low cubicles that expose their sounds both to the viewers, and to each other. Not the best environment for concentration. Perhaps this has been an invasive trend that's common to white collar professions even beyond tech? And it's the defining hassle for white collar professionals of the present era.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoWould be good to get the opinion of anyone on HN who is in upper management and their feelings on this? What kind of discussions have you and your org been having about WFH? What have you employees been saying, and have you been losing staff over this?
- jstx1 5y agoThe simple model I have personally is that my preferences are: 1. Good office environment (including convenient commute). 2. Working from home. 3. Bad office environment. Some people love WFH simply because they experienced an improvement from 3 to 2 and they don't even know that 1 is possible. For others the order is genuinely different from mine and they would pick WFH over any office. I think this is helpful because office experiences vary a lot and people often end up talking past each other in threads like this one.
- eb0la 5y agoThis monday I had to take a plane to go to the office because I didn't have enough PTO days left. We must be there for 4 hours every day, and then go back home and keep working for another 4. This means we have the worst experience of being remote and in an office. The fun part is we're a consultancy firm. I work remotely with customer equipment, I have my dailies with the customer in MSTeams, and I am not expected to go to customer officest for at least 24 months. Of course, does not make sense to me, nor my manager, or my VP. But the company was bought by a fund 2 months before Covid and the investor wants its money back asap...
- MrPatan 5y agoDo you know what I want? After a few years of WFH, somebody should do a study looking again for the "height salary premium". See if taller people still get paid more.
- adreamingsoul 5y agoI miss my office. It’s an actual room that has 3 desks, windows, lights, and a door. Although it does have a glass wall. I’m so used (conditioned) to working in an open office plan that my desk faces a wall with my back to the room. Idk, it helps me focus.
- zmmmmm 5y agoI like the idea that employers are now going to have to actually think hard about how to make the office an attractive place to work. I hope some really positive improvements come out of it.
- rvz 5y ago> Companies should let employees decide where to work from. That's why a WeWork office exists.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoActually I have very fond memories of my office prior to 2010 or so. I had either a private office or shared it with another colleague, and both options were great as these were both professionals and amiable types. However, once the open space revolution started and we had to flock like animals, it became a nightmare. People started to have headaches, problems with ears and even vagus nerve from constant headphone use. Some of my colleagues complained their blood pressure levels are higher than ever, with no apparent reason. Production-wise, it was a disaster. The pandemic clearly demonstrated how useless open space offices were and how much more productive we can be if not treated like cattle. For me it does not matter that much if I work in a private office or at home, but spending most of my day in an open space is unacceptable, especially now that we finally have other options.
- glangdale 5y agoI liked working in an open-plan office with my team around me. We were a team of 4 who had been working together from 2007-2008 through to 2017 (for a while, we were 4/5 of Sensory Networks, acquired by Intel). We talked all sorts of outrageous shit, got lots of work done, etc. After the Intel acquisition it was still good, but having other people in hearing distance of us wasn't nearly as fun (likely for either side). I enjoyed it a lot more than sitting at home. Conversely, I think sitting at home is way better than being wedged in with a bunch of random semi-connected folks.
- k__ 5y agoI didn't hate the office. It was mostly boring. If I could cut out the 40h work week and commute, I think working in an office would be okay.
- burneraccount12 5y agoWhat is this, the zillionth "I prefer WFH" article, the office sucks" article on HN? We get it, enough already. It's like dealing with vegans -- not enough for them to enjoy their lifestyle they must publicly tell you how much they hate yours. Is there anything new to learn here at this point? Why do these articles keep getting upvoted? WFH lovers swear by how much more productive they are (and here productive = tasks that don't require collaboration), how many less distractions they have (no kids) and how much time they save on the commute (apparently never getting sick of living/working in the same space 24/7). I like going to the office, OK? Yes, even with the terrible open office plans. It gives me structure, focus and socialization. I can easily pose questions to colleagues. And when I go home I can context switch to home life easier. But if that's not for you, fine, maybe just find one of the countless remote jobs available now instead of writing yet another 3K word article about how terrible working in an office is? Enough already.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoIn my case, I worked in offices for over 30 years. I was pretty damn productive (at least, I didn’t get fired, and was steadily promoted, so I guess I did OK). For the first dozen years, it was “shirt and tie.” I learned to keep a couple of suits up to date; even after going “business casual” (I never worked in jeans and T-shirt). Since working from home for almost the last 4 years, my productivity has gone stratospheric. It’s freaking amazing. I still maintain a lot of personal “office discipline,” like dressing in jeans and a button-down shirt, even though I may not be going out anywhere. I also limit breaks (but I take them whenever I want, and sometimes, they may be an hour or so). I work whenever I want. Early morning is my most productive time. I often get more done by 8:30AM, than I used to get done all day, in the office (8:30 was my usual starting time). But not everyone is able to work this way. I don’t have small children (if you don’t count the cats), and I spend just about every second of work time, coding. I have a dedicated office space, with a standing desk. No sitting on the couch, with a laptop. No Starbucks tables. My equipment is top-notch. I have a monitor that extends across my entire desk. I have a decent laptop, but its screen seems ridiculously small. My next laptop will be even smaller. I’m spoiled rotten. I have tremendous self-discipline; partly because I’m a high-school dropout with a GED, and have had to fight for Every. Damn. Thing. in my career. I’ve never had one blessed thing handed to me. It was infuriating, but it taught me to stay disciplined, focused and productive; despite almost ceaseless adversity. Not everyone’s experience, but it made me who I am today. I have no idea if things would be better for me by now, if I’d had a smoother road. I could easily see myself “going to fat,” so to speak. I probably would not have been so well-prepared for at-home work. But that was just my experience. YMMV.
- lqet 5y agoApparently, the author does not have children.
- sumo89 5y agoFor all the upsides of working remotely and especially for 100% remote I think the downside is it can become very transactional. Write code for x hours, the clock ticks to 6pm and you leave to do something else. I'm not saying everyone has to have a great passion for their work and ultimately we're all doing it to put food on the table but it seems to me that it's a recipe for becoming disillusioned with it all. You don't have to be great friends with your colleagues but if you're enjoying your work or the atmosphere of work, having a chat to people over lunch, going to pub every now and then, the odd team pizza trip or whatever, then after 10 years you may still be enjoying it. At the very least it breaks up the days so they aren't all the same. But clocking on at 9am to write code for 8 hours while talking to a moving image of someone's face once a day is a recipe for hating it in the long term.
- benhurmarcel 5y agoI find it a lot more "transactional" to come sit at the office and be paid to be there until I can clock out. When working from home I'm clearly paid for my output, not for being in a place for a set amount of time.
- wodenokoto 5y ago> When I get a card, depending on what it is, I can finish it in 2-4 hours, and then I can focus on doing something else for the rest of the day (learning/training, other meetings, or just not work at all since I was able to be productive). Aren’t you supposed to start the next card? “Working at the office sucks because I have to work instead of doing my hobbies” is a shitty argument for working at home.
- pnt12 5y agoLearning and training are not hobbies, it's something that many people don't have time to because they're overworked. If someone takes 10% of their work time to learn, at the end of a year they had the opportunity to learn a lot. If you just learn barely enough to finish your task, yoi never get deep knowledge about something - that's how I often feel.
- throwawaydeitz1 5y agoITT: A lot of opinions backed by personal anecdotes, and a paucity of opinions backed by tangible, measurable data evidence.
- rocqua 5y agoThe few times I was able and allowed to go back to the office, I personally loved it. Having separation between work and the rest of life is much harder when working from home. It also means I get to see and talk to more than 3 people. Much appreciated. It does probably help that work is a 20 to 15 minute cycle, and I work in a 3-person room, rather than an open space.
- edude03 5y agoI've gone back and forth between consulting and working full time in an office for the last ~12 years of my career so I have a good amount of experience with both WFH and working in an office. I prefer an office mostly because unfortunately the only way to make some people "behave" and work together is actually by forcing discipline on them. My biggest frustration is the type of person who only values their own personal productivity to the detriment of the team. The type of person who joins a "useless meeting on mute" then after whatever time period produces output that wildly varies from expectations because listening to others is beneath them, and they're too smart/disinterested to ask questions about what they're building. The type of person who replies to messages hours and sometimes days after you message them because they turned their notifications off to "focus" and never bothered to check them after. The type of person who you have to message about everything because they can't be bothered to document anything they do (never updates tickets, never comments their code, doesn't write readmes etc). The type of person who writes tests that assert 1 = 1 for the sake of adding tests like their team lead asked. I don't know OP personally, but I get the impression that they're exactly the type of antisocial person I'm thinking of.
- the_answer 5y agoI am incredibly interested to see what happens with desk job workers vs. workers who need to work on-site (service sector comes to mind) as the wfh trend continues.
- gideon_b 5y agoI went fully remote about 8 years ago. About 3 years ago I realized I turn into a hermit. Being home alone all day is bad for me. The problem is that I live in a small mountain town now and my company is fully remote as well. I rented an office that I share with a really close friend who does the same kind of work. We set up a sweet little kitchen with our ridiculous coffee stuff. It's less than 5 mins from my house. I get to see my friend every day, and we can go for walks and talk about work stuff. Our dogs hang out while we work. It's in a commercial space but I honestly think renting a residential apartment would have worked just as well. I think this going to become common. There's real value in being around people who care about the same things, but it doesn't actually matter if you all work for the same company. There's value in separating home from work, but I still want to share my work life with friends and former coworkers that I really enjoy being around.