10 ms·

> 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 choos

> 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 ago
I 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 ago
  My 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 ago
    Yes, this is a good solution, as long as everyone agrees on the days, sounds like it should work.
pcthrowaway 5y ago
I 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.
- prox 5y ago
  My main employer is always very flexible, even before the pandemic, I just met one day in the office (everyone else had to be there too) and the rest I was free to chose. Perfect combination of seeing eachother and WFH. We had small rooms so distraction was not a point. Commute was 25minutes. I do believe we should get more flexibility where possible.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    I wonder how everyone would feel about WFH vs. office if highly paid, highly valued employees weren't forced into literally the smallest possible space for a third of their day. If we all had our own real offices and a work space not architected to be as abusive and "efficient" as possible, would we think differently about how nice it is not to go to the office any more? Likewise for city design where commercial space is highly concentrated and disproportional to residential... if workspaces were spread out and there weren't hubs with way more jobs than housing... maybe commuting wouldn't be so long and so unpleasant and the thought of working from the spare bedroom or the couch would seem ridiculous.
    - prox 5y ago
      I think that makes a big difference! Cubicles should be outlawed really, or at least optional. Seems like an archaic thing to me. For my own contracted jobs I went to place that had you choose between an open plan or a small room workplace. All flexible. So I think you are right, if we had more choice, people are happier. Hubs are also a great way forward I think. Maybe there are some exceptions, like high security or high demand for coordination on the spot, but a lot of sectors should or could be more flexible.
      - colechristensen 5y ago
        A cubicle had at least the resemblance of a piece of space I could call my own. My worst experience involved commuting two hours by train to a high rise, tiny "open plan" office space (read: a few important people got offices, the rest of us were in one not very big room). It was like a sort of torture... for up to 15 hours a day the only escape from being within a several feet of and in eyeline of half a dozen people at least was hiding in a bathroom stall for a few minutes.... and a space which could be mine and any sort of private was usually two hours of a foul smelling, packed, and unstable public transit away. Growing up in an environment where the median number of people within a mile was usually 3... being forced to be constantly "on display" and knowing that there was no escape other than hours of public transit at the end of the day was deeply psychologically unsettling. I lasted about 6 months.
cradcore 5y ago
Why should your preferences dictate what other people do? What makes your preference for having people in the office more important than their preference to want to work from home?
- canadianfella 5y ago
  Work isn’t a democracy.
  - neolog 5y ago
    depends on the company.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    Nope, but leaving your current employer is up to you if they are inflexible.
  - arpa 5y ago
    oh hi Jeff! shall i pee in the bottle?
- Larrikin 5y ago
  You think you're being witty but you're using the exact same argument that the people are using to force people back into the office.
- hermitdev 5y ago
  Why should the people preferring to work from home get preference, either? At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. No dropped calls or poor connections or VPN drops or whatever. As an engineer, I sympathize with the poster. When I need to focus and get something done, I'm generally happier at home with either fewer distractions or more of the distractions under my control. I also like my privacy and loathe the feeling of someone. looking over my shoulder. I'm so very sensitive to motion in my periphery and find movement around me distracting, too. But, I also value the in person communication and collaboration I get in person. Personally, I'm looking forward to heading back part time, especially considering that the "new normal" appears to be about a 50/50 split between home and office. Of course, everyone is going to have their own preference, but the company you work for (and your coworkers) will have theirs as well. But, if someone's attitude is "my way or the highway" they as well start looking for a new job, because they'll need one regardless...
MattGaiser 5y ago
This is why I have doubts about hybrid. I work for an aggressively hybrid company. All it means is that I have to go in and have meetings at by desk beside other people having meetings at their desks.
- jhloa2 5y ago
  I agree for internal meeting, but in my industry where external meetings are a huge part of my job, it's meant way less driving to meetings for me which has been a huge boost to my productivity levels.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Oh, my complaint is more that I am now Zooming in an open concept office with others talking right beside and behind me. I am fine with virtual meetings.
- enriquto 5y ago
  I thought hybrid meant that two days per week everybody goes to the lab, the rest of the days are remote.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Yes, but if everyone is out three days a week, in pretty much every meeting, at least one person is going to be out, making nearly all meetings virtual by default.
    - enriquto 5y ago
      No, I mean monday and tuesday everybody goes there. This is how we are planning to do it from september and most people seem happy (especially new recruits).
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        Ah ok. Yes, this might work better for people.
neolog 5y ago
Likewise, people who prefer working from home would rather not be sidelined by people working in office.
allarm 5y ago
That does work. Before the pandemics I worked many years with the majority of my team being overseas, in multiple companies. There's nothing wrong with the hybrid approach and never was. For many companies it's always been the default approach, for global companies specifically. I am also not sure why you put "that doesn't work" and "I prefer" together - your preferences are not really relevant to this case.
- jstummbillig 5y ago
  > I am also not sure why you put "that doesn't work" and "I prefer" together Here, "that doesn't work" is short for "that doesn't work for me". It is in fact a statement of preference, colloquially phrased.
- esolyt 5y ago
  What do you mean their preference is not relevant? They're providing an example using their personal experience.
  - allarm 5y ago
    Then they should’ve used “this doesn’t work for me”.
sam0x17 5y ago
I hate that people keep framing it as a "preference" issue. There are HUGE economic and environmental costs that go along with working in and (often) commuting to an office. Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs. We don't need to destroy our planet, dramatically increase costs, and dramatically lower productivity just to appease the minority of people that prefer playing office space, and I think more and more people are starting to see it that way.
- gregoriol 5y ago
  Well, there are also huge human costs that go along with working alone all day, and in the same environment as the rest of your life. For example, commuting, while not nice most of the time, has one great impact on life: it allows you to break from work, which is not happening when you have sleep/work/hobbies/life at the same place. I'm not saying you should spend 1h in traffic or subway, but 20min and walking would be a great way to change thoughts and separate work from life. Also seeing your colleagues for real, and spending some time with them, as they are humans, is a great way to have better empathy and better work relations: using only remote tools doesn't provide such a human behavior.
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    You can also go walking/running if you WFH, which I do. At any time I want. If I'm stressed of work mid day I'll just go running for an hour and will feel super. Couldn't properly do that if I worked from office.
    - scatters 5y ago
      Why not? What's stopping you?
      - sam0x17 5y ago
        Depending on where your office is (typically some sort of city) this can actually be pretty dangerous (hit+run, crime, breathing very unhealthy air). Conversely if you work remotely, you can live in the suburbs or even somewhere more remote. Additionally, I know in many in-person orgs leaving to go outside and smoke is super frowned upon and seen as a productivity drain. I assume "going for a quick run" would have the same effect at your off-the-shelf toxic org. In a remote org, no one is going to be breathing down your neck while you take 15 mins to go for a walk to collect your thoughts. Especially if we keep passing privacy legislation that limits the ability of the Amazons of the world to install spyware on worker machines.
watwut 5y ago
I dont mind being in office, but I meetings are much much better online. Especially those long ones. You can stretch legs, exercise a little, eat or whatever.
- dragonsky67 5y ago
  do the laundry, cook dinner, Get some real work done on the side.
01100011 5y ago
Are you in SW? Over the last 20ish years of being a SWE, most of the time I had the option to work 40-100% from home. That's as an embedded SWE, which often means I'm dealing with HW. I just setup remote controls and measurement devices and WFH. I keep hearing people talk like they're going to be forced to sit at a desk 100% of the time. Is that really the case?
- kaibee 5y ago
  There's a pretty massive 0-1 difference in weekly WFH.
Hamuko 5y ago
Do you only have a single office? Because even back when we worked at the office, we had people split between multiple offices so we had to do teleconferencing anyways even if no one was remote (and usually at least one person was remote as well).
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Yes. It's also a < 20 person company. I acknowledge that both of those may be coloring my view of things—because yeah, if half your team is on another continent, I really don't know what the point of an office is. I also don't think I'd want to work in a company like that.
ekianjo 5y ago
> If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too. so no reason to go back to the office at all.

midrus 5y ago

I 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 ago
My 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 ago
  Yes, this is a good solution, as long as everyone agrees on the days, sounds like it should work.

pcthrowaway 5y ago

I 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.

prox 5y ago
My main employer is always very flexible, even before the pandemic, I just met one day in the office (everyone else had to be there too) and the rest I was free to chose. Perfect combination of seeing eachother and WFH. We had small rooms so distraction was not a point. Commute was 25minutes. I do believe we should get more flexibility where possible.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I wonder how everyone would feel about WFH vs. office if highly paid, highly valued employees weren't forced into literally the smallest possible space for a third of their day. If we all had our own real offices and a work space not architected to be as abusive and "efficient" as possible, would we think differently about how nice it is not to go to the office any more? Likewise for city design where commercial space is highly concentrated and disproportional to residential... if workspaces were spread out and there weren't hubs with way more jobs than housing... maybe commuting wouldn't be so long and so unpleasant and the thought of working from the spare bedroom or the couch would seem ridiculous.
  - prox 5y ago
    I think that makes a big difference! Cubicles should be outlawed really, or at least optional. Seems like an archaic thing to me. For my own contracted jobs I went to place that had you choose between an open plan or a small room workplace. All flexible. So I think you are right, if we had more choice, people are happier. Hubs are also a great way forward I think. Maybe there are some exceptions, like high security or high demand for coordination on the spot, but a lot of sectors should or could be more flexible.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      A cubicle had at least the resemblance of a piece of space I could call my own. My worst experience involved commuting two hours by train to a high rise, tiny "open plan" office space (read: a few important people got offices, the rest of us were in one not very big room). It was like a sort of torture... for up to 15 hours a day the only escape from being within a several feet of and in eyeline of half a dozen people at least was hiding in a bathroom stall for a few minutes.... and a space which could be mine and any sort of private was usually two hours of a foul smelling, packed, and unstable public transit away. Growing up in an environment where the median number of people within a mile was usually 3... being forced to be constantly "on display" and knowing that there was no escape other than hours of public transit at the end of the day was deeply psychologically unsettling. I lasted about 6 months.

cradcore 5y ago

Why should your preferences dictate what other people do? What makes your preference for having people in the office more important than their preference to want to work from home?

canadianfella 5y ago
Work isn’t a democracy.
- neolog 5y ago
  depends on the company.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Nope, but leaving your current employer is up to you if they are inflexible.
- arpa 5y ago
  oh hi Jeff! shall i pee in the bottle?
Larrikin 5y ago
You think you're being witty but you're using the exact same argument that the people are using to force people back into the office.
hermitdev 5y ago
Why should the people preferring to work from home get preference, either? At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. No dropped calls or poor connections or VPN drops or whatever. As an engineer, I sympathize with the poster. When I need to focus and get something done, I'm generally happier at home with either fewer distractions or more of the distractions under my control. I also like my privacy and loathe the feeling of someone. looking over my shoulder. I'm so very sensitive to motion in my periphery and find movement around me distracting, too. But, I also value the in person communication and collaboration I get in person. Personally, I'm looking forward to heading back part time, especially considering that the "new normal" appears to be about a 50/50 split between home and office. Of course, everyone is going to have their own preference, but the company you work for (and your coworkers) will have theirs as well. But, if someone's attitude is "my way or the highway" they as well start looking for a new job, because they'll need one regardless...

MattGaiser 5y ago

This is why I have doubts about hybrid. I work for an aggressively hybrid company. All it means is that I have to go in and have meetings at by desk beside other people having meetings at their desks.

jhloa2 5y ago
I agree for internal meeting, but in my industry where external meetings are a huge part of my job, it's meant way less driving to meetings for me which has been a huge boost to my productivity levels.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Oh, my complaint is more that I am now Zooming in an open concept office with others talking right beside and behind me. I am fine with virtual meetings.
enriquto 5y ago
I thought hybrid meant that two days per week everybody goes to the lab, the rest of the days are remote.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Yes, but if everyone is out three days a week, in pretty much every meeting, at least one person is going to be out, making nearly all meetings virtual by default.
  - enriquto 5y ago
    No, I mean monday and tuesday everybody goes there. This is how we are planning to do it from september and most people seem happy (especially new recruits).
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Ah ok. Yes, this might work better for people.

neolog 5y ago

Likewise, people who prefer working from home would rather not be sidelined by people working in office.

allarm 5y ago

That does work. Before the pandemics I worked many years with the majority of my team being overseas, in multiple companies. There's nothing wrong with the hybrid approach and never was. For many companies it's always been the default approach, for global companies specifically. I am also not sure why you put "that doesn't work" and "I prefer" together - your preferences are not really relevant to this case.

jstummbillig 5y ago
> I am also not sure why you put "that doesn't work" and "I prefer" together Here, "that doesn't work" is short for "that doesn't work for me". It is in fact a statement of preference, colloquially phrased.
esolyt 5y ago
What do you mean their preference is not relevant? They're providing an example using their personal experience.
- allarm 5y ago
  Then they should’ve used “this doesn’t work for me”.

sam0x17 5y ago

I hate that people keep framing it as a "preference" issue. There are HUGE economic and environmental costs that go along with working in and (often) commuting to an office. Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs. We don't need to destroy our planet, dramatically increase costs, and dramatically lower productivity just to appease the minority of people that prefer playing office space, and I think more and more people are starting to see it that way.

gregoriol 5y ago
Well, there are also huge human costs that go along with working alone all day, and in the same environment as the rest of your life. For example, commuting, while not nice most of the time, has one great impact on life: it allows you to break from work, which is not happening when you have sleep/work/hobbies/life at the same place. I'm not saying you should spend 1h in traffic or subway, but 20min and walking would be a great way to change thoughts and separate work from life. Also seeing your colleagues for real, and spending some time with them, as they are humans, is a great way to have better empathy and better work relations: using only remote tools doesn't provide such a human behavior.
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  You can also go walking/running if you WFH, which I do. At any time I want. If I'm stressed of work mid day I'll just go running for an hour and will feel super. Couldn't properly do that if I worked from office.
  - scatters 5y ago
    Why not? What's stopping you?
    - sam0x17 5y ago
      Depending on where your office is (typically some sort of city) this can actually be pretty dangerous (hit+run, crime, breathing very unhealthy air). Conversely if you work remotely, you can live in the suburbs or even somewhere more remote. Additionally, I know in many in-person orgs leaving to go outside and smoke is super frowned upon and seen as a productivity drain. I assume "going for a quick run" would have the same effect at your off-the-shelf toxic org. In a remote org, no one is going to be breathing down your neck while you take 15 mins to go for a walk to collect your thoughts. Especially if we keep passing privacy legislation that limits the ability of the Amazons of the world to install spyware on worker machines.

watwut 5y ago

I dont mind being in office, but I meetings are much much better online. Especially those long ones. You can stretch legs, exercise a little, eat or whatever.

dragonsky67 5y ago
do the laundry, cook dinner, Get some real work done on the side.

01100011 5y ago

Are you in SW? Over the last 20ish years of being a SWE, most of the time I had the option to work 40-100% from home. That's as an embedded SWE, which often means I'm dealing with HW. I just setup remote controls and measurement devices and WFH. I keep hearing people talk like they're going to be forced to sit at a desk 100% of the time. Is that really the case?

kaibee 5y ago
There's a pretty massive 0-1 difference in weekly WFH.

Hamuko 5y ago

Do you only have a single office? Because even back when we worked at the office, we had people split between multiple offices so we had to do teleconferencing anyways even if no one was remote (and usually at least one person was remote as well).

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Yes. It's also a < 20 person company. I acknowledge that both of those may be coloring my view of things—because yeah, if half your team is on another continent, I really don't know what the point of an office is. I also don't think I'd want to work in a company like that.

ekianjo 5y ago

> If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too. so no reason to go back to the office at all.