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IT workers like to ignore the fact that most other professions in most countries are returning to the office (or never left) and for good reasons. Face to face
by blub 5y ago
IT workers like to ignore the fact that most other professions in most countries are returning to the office (or never left) and for good reasons. Face to face communication and collaboration is the gold standard to doing any kind of work together.
There are many reasons why one would want to work in an office at least part of the time besides efficient communication/collaboration: socialising, access to equipment, access to facilities, cafeteria/restaurants, change of scenery, biking/walking, etc and so on.
Any of these can be argued against or replaced by other things, but when the office can give them to you in a package why go to the extra effort? For many people things were fine before the pandemic and now they want to get back to their lives.
Working from home is an exceptional situation available to very few professions and only to parts of the staff that has yet to prove how good it works at scale in the long term. Based on my own experience before and during the pandemic, people painting home office as some kind of heaven were either in a terrible situation (commute, noise, etc.) or haven't figured out what the costs are yet (isolation, loss of professional social support, less chances for promotion, blurring of borders between work/home, slacking off, etc.)
- ryathal 5y agoNon-coding collaboration is so much easier in person, and it's the main reason I don't want 100% remote. It's so much easier to have meetings in person with a whiteboard to draw a flowchart/diagram/brainstorm than doing it remotely, even with virtual whiteboards, it's still not great. Digital also encourages people to have longer and bigger meetings, which is still just a huge waste, sitting in a meeting on mute with a camera off doing other work and listening for the 30 seconds that matter is far more draining than going to an office and meeting a sane number of people for 15-30 minutes.