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The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

• hikerrrr 5y ago
  Not opposed to the office myself, "new" offices are nowhere what the glory of the old office days. One hybrid day in the office meant none of the familiar faces also shared the same areas. Instead I saw one maybe two familiar faces and the rest of the empty office was a doldrum of emptiness.. The undependable nature of the new "who's on first" office musical chairs is gaudy. It's a mishap waiting to happen, and there are no world expert managers who also have experience re-engaging a whole new social scene in a post apocalyptic world of the empty office space. Drudgery is the new office scene... Blehhh
• more_corn 5y ago
  Somebody save me a click, I’m not wading through that.
  • bearbearbear 5y ago
    > a lot of people who have returned to their offices for some or all of the week have found that they’re the only ones there, or others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom. As a result, they’re spending time commuting to and from the office and dealing with all the hassles of in-person work but without any of the promised payoff.
    • herodoturtle 5y ago
      This was the best possible excerpt you could have chosen. Thank you.
  • sgt101 5y ago
    "Some people complain about alot, no one is happy all the time, life isn't what we hoped it would be, my boss is mean sometimes."
• ravedave5 5y ago
  Same experience as me, went in nobody was there. Spent day doing the exact same thing as at home with a different view and extra 50 minutes of driving. Did not go in again.
  • musicale 5y ago
    It sounds like the commute is a big part of it. My perfect commute would probably be a 10 minute bicycle ride, or maybe a short train ride.
    • byefruit 5y ago
      I do the 10-15 minute cycle and it is excellent. Have been considering throwing in the occasional walking day too.
      • niek_pas 5y ago
        That's what I did when I had a 10-minute cycle. A 25-minute minute walk gave me a chance to, depending on the morning, either listen to a podcast or shake off the morning grogginess before heading in to work.
    • aerique 5y ago
      I've got a 35 - 45 minute bicycle ride which makes it a nice workout. I really felt it when we started working from home during corona and I was sitting on the couch just eating chips and ice cream.
      • lanstin 5y ago
        Totally the same for me. I have started going into work one day a week at my own prompting just to get some bike commute in (I just don’t like biking in circles unless there’s some mileage away from the city). No one else is there but I have seen a few old friends in the tiny remnants of the cafeteria. And I sit all alone up in the top floor where it used to be execs so I have an awesome view of the mountains and so on. And the network bandwidth is much nicer than my wifi.
• rspeele 5y ago
  I actually kind of like when I go into the office and nobody is there. It's the least distracting possible work environment.
  • hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    I like that, too. The problem is, those who are left enjoy catching up. That is fine in general but I noticed I'm much less productive in the office than at home because I need to listen to small talk whenever I go to the kitchen or just pass my coworkers. I'm not an introvert and I enjoy talking to people in general, but when I'm at work, I have a certain amount of things to do and I really want to complete them all. When I'm WFH, nobody is calling me on Zoom saying, "Hi, what's up, have you seen the last Batman"? That is perfectly fine by a friend after work, but during work hours I prefer to be focused on my work and decide when to take a break when I need to, not when someone comes to my desk (sometimes with trifle issues that could be solved more easily by async communication).
    • coding_unit_1 5y ago
      People see this as a waste, but that is how team relationships are formed. Jeff from accounts may be eating up time today talking about Batman, but 3 months down the line you'll be ringing him up saying "hey buddy, I need a favour on those TPS reports" and he'll oblige because you've formed a bond. It's human nature. I found WFH was great when we all left the office en masse and had already got a close-knit team. Changing jobs during the pandemic and trying to build new relationships remotely was really, really hard because that human-level interaction wasn't there.
      • asdff 5y ago
        We solved it by every now and then burning a friday and having potlucks at the beach or some park. Not mandatory but if its convenient people show up, and people actually do make the trek from far off sometimes just to have a cookout and a little fun. Its all social too, work isn't mentioned at all in conversations.
      • 5y ago
• themadturk 5y ago
  Our return to the office has been back and forth for various reasons, but the ultimate goal is that everyone work in the office every day. But in an effort to make commuting easier, we are opening satellite offices in the metropolitan area...which (when all satellites are open) scatters teams between up to four offices. So nearly all of our meetings will be via Zoom, even if team members are "in the office." I don't want to criticize too much, because I work for an otherwise great employer, but this decision just has me shaking my head.
  • rob74 5y ago
    The problem with Zoom calls in the office is that you usually do them at your desk rather than in a meeting room, and when you do that, you are totally destroying the productivity of anyone who happens to be in the room with you. Not to mention what happens if several people in the same room have different calls at the same time...
    • VBprogrammer 5y ago
      The absolute worst is being in an office with several people who are on the same call as you at their own desks. You can neither listen to the call nor the person near you speaking and you hear everything the say with a 2 second delay.
      • Tenoke 5y ago
        I've had that as the standard practice for meetings at a job so we accommodate remote/other employees but the employer had bought us good noise-canceling headsets so there was no issue when a person near to you will be speaking.
        • VBprogrammer 5y ago
          So all the people in the office on calls are wearing noise cancelling headphones so they can take part in meetings with people who may be in the same office. Even with good noise cancelling they have to be permanently muted if not talking to avoid bleed though noise from the environment. All of the other people around then are forced to wear noise cancelling headphones to cancel out the noise of all the people around them talking into their noise cancelling headphones. Remind me again which part of this is better than those people just being at home in their own space?
• 1over137 5y ago
  2 hour commute! Is that typical in the USA? Is it necessary? Preferable? My bike ride to my office is 10 minutes. I miss my commute.
  • ChrisLTD 5y ago
    It is not typical. The average commute is closer to half an hour.
  • idontwantthis 5y ago
    What if you go for a bike ride in the morning instead?
    • aloisdg 5y ago
      Same logic as you. I missed my walk between work and home. Now I walk 20 minutes after the end my shift in remote before coming back home.
    • andrewingram 5y ago
      Some people (such as myself) rely on the somewhat enforced structure of going into the office to "attach" other life things onto, like exercise and going out. Without that structure, i'm miserable.
      • asdff 5y ago
        Seems like a larger personal issue with discipline that you could work out on your own vs enforcing this on your coworkers for your own convenience
        • andrewingram 5y ago
          How am I enforcing anything on my coworkers? I don’t control the policy at my place of work. I’m merely expressing a preference.
      • idontwantthis 5y ago
• MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  So far I've managed to resist coming in to the office for pointless reasons. Our team was already split between the US and UK, and we tend to work outside of our team across multiple projects with people all over the world. So all meetings were always video calls even pre-pandemic. Some senior managers want us to be in the office 20% of the time to get that nebulous "collaboration" thing... Which literally never happened in person anyway. On the other hand, my managers have said we shouldn't come in unless there is an actual reason to do so. Fingers crossed sanity prevails...
• itqwertz 5y ago
  Never clap going clap back clap
• gonzo41 5y ago
  I go into the office, and everyone just works, no one talks. Even the people that really wanted to be back in the office don't chat. So I spend a day in silence, rather than a day at home taking coffee breaks in the yard with my dog. I'm going with a 7/3 split, favoring WFH. If it rains that ratio can change.
• feq543ni0g 5y ago
  My workplace requires me to visit the office once every two weeks. And even then I only go for a friendly one-on-one type of lunch with my boss. Nothing we ever discuss justifies the two hour commute, the same things could be discussed in Zoom. And yet, I am supposed to visit every two weeks. Now it turned out that during my last visit my boss had already been infected with covid. So not only me, but my wife and my two kids will need to stay home, isolate and take days off to look after the kids. WTF is the point of this? I am losing valuable vacation days, my boss also loses an employee for days (and my wife's boss ditto) and the kids will go bat-shit crazy because they will not be allowed to go outside. Yay. How much fun the office it is. And this was just one example of how idiotic and unproductive this whole on-site in-person office work arrangement is.
  • burner556 5y ago
    Use your sick time dude not vacation days
    • h0p3 5y ago
      At some places, you get to choose when to use sick days but not vacation days. All else being equal, in that case, I'd sometimes prefer to burn vacation.
      • willcipriano 5y ago
        Every job I've had they are one and the same. You just have PTO.
        • thfuran 5y ago
          I have unlimited sick days and finite vacation days.
          • willcipriano 5y ago
            A policy like that would make me sick!
• stn_za 5y ago
  In my view, the biggest problem with hybrid is: You are still required to live/reside near the office. Fully remote allows me to live in a very affordable area while still earning a great salary
  • anthropodie 5y ago
    It's crazy that so many people don't realise this.
  • turbinerneiter 5y ago
    First the companies offshored the jobs, now the employees offshore themselves. At some point, somebody will start asking why the Indian working remotely in India is paid less than the American/European expat working remotely from Bali.
    • rjtavares 5y ago
      Pretty sure competent people anywhere in the world get the same salary in remote only companies. That has actually become a trend in Portugal: people are quitting local companies to get US/German/UK salaries working remotely for US/German/UK companies.
      • greedo 5y ago
        Nope. I know of several remote only companies that take advantage of local wages. Say someone in Bulgaria can make 30K € locally, but a US employee would cost 100K USD. The company will pay the contractor 60K in Euros. Still a huge bump for the Bulgarian, but far less than a US employee, even after you factor in employment taxes.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • codewithcheese 5y ago
      Many companies already do location based salaries for remote workers, meaning you will be paid less if you live in Bali than San Francisco. Essentially, the company is performing location arbitrage rather than the employee. Next companies create more attractive work places in cheaper areas and lures employees there.
• Stratoscope 5y ago
  > a lot of people who have returned to their offices for some or all of the week have found that they’re the only ones there, or others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom. As a result, they’re spending time commuting to and from the office and dealing with all the hassles of in-person work but without any of the promised payoff. This is hardly surprising. At the last few offices I worked in during the Before Times, everyone in the open office crammed a few feet apart was typing away and focused on their monitors, wearing headphones that said "don't interrupt me!" And watching Slack.
  • civilized 5y ago
    Yep. And the management of these companies are dabbing their misty eyes as they grieve over all the "impromptu" "serendipitous" "water cooler" innovation sessions that have been lost. You can just see the visuals in their minds. Stock images of their lowly, loyal drones clad in business casual, smiling, scurrying about with manila folders in hand, shaking hands. Not a single human being that they actually know or have observed in the workplace. These people wouldn't be caught dead near a humble IC, and yet they have the gall to tell us how best to get our work done.
• VBprogrammer 5y ago
  As of yet we've only been into the office a couple of times and mostly as an excuse for a social event. I didn't actually mind the time we spent working in the office, as we deliberately all came in as a team. I did however have to bring some headphones and plug in to get any work done, same as the old days. I don't mind the chance of scenery and would be happy to do it once in a while. I just hope the flexibility we have at the moment is retained. Thankfully my current employer has cut office space so much it would be impossible for us all to turn up if we wanted to.
• null_object 5y ago
  I don't understand the headline. What's the 'worst part of working from home' in this context? In my case, my employer isn't forcing anyone to come back to the office, but there's definitely an unspoken understanding that 'collaboration' and 'team feeling' will improve if we're at the office more often. But when I go to the office it perfectly reflects the experiences described in the article: I'm almost always the only person from my team in the office at the time, or otherwise the only other team-member has their work to do, and I have mine, so we sit next to each other on the considerably less comfortable office chairs than I have at home, and work 'side-by-side' with our headphones on, and pretty much don't speak to each other any more than we usually do in Meet or on Slack. I tend to use the days for wondering around and chatting randomly with other people at the office: hang with the Sales people, mosey past the Support team, spend half an hour in the office kitchen. I guess this is ok if the idea is to be a more socially cohesive group, but it's disastrous for my productivity, and I always have to work twice as hard for the following days at home - even though it takes a while to regain my focus afterwards, so the rest of the week is often a little bit disrupted by the wasted day at the office. I don't want to only work at home for the rest of my life though - but it feels like we haven't worked-out what the new situation should be just yet. And in the meantime, managers are just thinking in outdated terms of getting everything back to 'normal'.
  • Freak_NL 5y ago
    > […] and I always have to work twice as hard for the following days at home […] Why? If socializing in the office is part of your job now (explicitly or implicitly), you're working your hours either way. If that leaves you with too little time to get things done, address it with your manager.
    • watwut 5y ago
      > If that leaves you with too little time to get things done, address it with your manager. While there definitely are exceptions, addressing something like this with an average manager is useless to contra-productive.
  • chaircher 5y ago
• DrBazza 5y ago
  This is the same as my office in London. There's little point going in, and when I have done, my experience is the same as this article - waste 90mins in each direction getting in, to sit on my own, and reply via email + Teams. But, well, "collaboration". I'm sure it's time and cost effective for senior management that are paid $$$$ and only have a really short commute from the office. But not for the other 99% of the workforce.
• thyagjs 5y ago
  Same situation with me. I go to office 3 days but most of the time the meetings are taken from the desk, on zoom. This is because most tech employees have bigger monitors which is convenient compared to tiny laptop screens. IMO remote is extremely popular among employees and many will jump ship if given remote option. Any eventual plans for mandatory all 5-day at office will be suicidal for knowledge work companies.
  • gifnamething 5y ago
    Of course, the big monitor and quiet room that some of us get to enjoy were paid for by our salaries, net of tax. Yet if we try to convince the employers paying those salaries to give us computing equipment that we like and private offices, it's hopeless.
• watwut 5y ago
  I think that people coming in and being alone or not talking whole day are things that will solve themselves over time. People/management will start to coordinate when who comes. People will start to socialize again. But, omg, I really don't want to go back to office. I like not having to travel there. I like breakfast in peace taking my sweet time for it and lunch at home. I like extra sleep I am getting in the morning. I like extra exercise I am getting. I like being at home when kids come, have quick chat with them before returning to work.
  • afr0ck 5y ago
    I think WFH could be a blessing when you have a family. I still like WFH to a certain extent because I get more focused and more productive. But it has one major drawback: for solo people, like me, living alone, far from friends and family, it's very hard to not feel lonely. And to fill the loneliness gap, I tend to work more, casually burning out myself and then ending up depressed and feeling overworked. I am still trying to build a social network on this new city, but it's a very hard process and a very long one. For now, going to office, makes me feel less lonely and I get some interactions and also do some activities with co-workers.
    • giantrobot 5y ago
      > And to fill the loneliness gap, I tend to work more, casually burning out myself and then ending up depressed and feeling overworked. This happened to me working in an office every day. I moved to a new city for work and lived alone. My friends and family were hundreds of miles away. Co-workers are not going to solve this problem for you I am sorry to say. They're a temporary reprieve at best. You're going to need to build some sort of social circle for yourself outside of work. You really should treat that situation as a major problem that needs to be addressed. You wouldn't drag around a broken leg, don't drag around loneliness and depression. Going into the office can't be your only in person socializing. It's only going to end up feeding into depression. It's not a fun spiral to get on.
      • afr0ck 5y ago
• spaniard89277 5y ago
  I do the exact same job in my office than with my laptop anywhere else. Im in my mid 30s, and most of employees are +45 in my job. They really want to come back, and there are already a few in there, but whats the point? I guess they feel lonely, bosses too, but my life is so much better with WFH. Now Im just used to go places with my laptop, my phone as hotspot, and do work somewhere nice and quiet. I can even travel on workdays. This very week Im heading to Madrid to visit a friend. I don't need to take time off as I'll be capable of working there. It's usually just around my province, but knowing I can do this if I want is very liberating. Im not a SWE, I'm aiming to be one, as I currently work for an ISP and get low pay. Getting even a junior job in SW will likely give me a jump in income. I wonder if I will be able to continue with this lifestyle, because I'll probably need more concentration, not sure yet. Of course the fact that I can do this makes my otherwise boring and alienating job, with low pay, much more attractive. I didn't leave because I was afraid when the pandemic, now I just take it easy while I i study to change career. Of course I have no kids, no wife, no responsibilities. If I don't do this now...
  • showsover 5y ago
    It might go either way to be honest. I'm currently living and working Spain as a SWE (immigrant) for a US company and the amount of useless meetings there is insane. That makes it quite hard to work on-the-go as half of the day is spent in meetings (most of them with camera turned on).
    • spaniard89277 5y ago
      We rearely do that. We just type the stuff we need in teams and the occasional formative talk once a month or so. Meetings are about twice a year, and they appear in my teams calendar so I can plan ahead. When I feel we need a serious discussion I write a long ass text, and people usually follows without needing a call. It's like forums, so that's something I'm used to. But again, my job is very jump in, jump out. I don't really need too much focus, it's pretty much helpdesk with some admin, so I can get distracted without problem, and I don't really need to keep any code model in my head. My only worry if I find a job in SW will be that, the need to keep my mind focused, not being able to be pretty much anywhere. I hope the pay offsets this fact.
• throwaway85858 5y ago
  We do design days in office once a quarter, fits within the project planning takt and feels great to catch up in person outside of the occasional after work drinks, some however do still choose to come in on a regular basis on their own accord. We greatly reduced our office space since the pandemic and i personally can't see us ever going back to the former status-quo.
• thawaya3113 5y ago
  > all the benefits of working from home (no commute, more focus, hanging out with the dog, whatever it may be) More focus…hanging out with the dog… These things literally contradict each other. The fact that someone can type this out and not even realize that just goes to show why everyone is convinced they have become so much more productive WFH, when companies dhar actually track their employees and their productivity have hard data that shows otherwise (Facebook, Google, etc would not be calling people back to the office which only serves to increase their costs, if they didn’t have the data to back it up).
  • alexb_ 5y ago
    You can be more productive while also having more time for things that aren't work. The two are not mutually exclusive.
  • Mikushi 5y ago
    I work for a large company and the data doesn't show that, team velocity has been up by 20 to 30% consistently.
    • postalrat 5y ago
      Velocity up spinning in circles because communication is down and leadership can't lead.
  • fbanon 5y ago
    Facebook didn't call people back to the office.
  • giantrobot 5y ago
    > Facebook, Google, etc would not be calling people back to the office which only serves to increase their costs, if they didn’t have the data to back it up Yes they would. Both companies have the same toxic management types that see their direct reports as serfs in their fiefdom. They bitch and moan to upper management to get their serfs back in the fields. It's not difficult to focus while hanging out with a dog. The sort of attention they want typically isn't the same as a coworker standing over your desk. Petting a dog releases endorphins and oxytocin while dealing with the hovering coworker only generates cortisol.
• joaodlf 5y ago
  I love coming in to the office. Granted, I live a 20 min walk away. The walk in is through a beautiful county park, surrounded by nature. Most of my colleagues who live further away have stopped coming in. Understandable, I wouldn't want to get in a car to get here, traffic in the UK is horrible. It's all about personal circumstances, really. Living close to my workplace, having access to a nice office that is (now) mostly quiet, I quiet enjoy the new work culture :).
  • tapanjk 5y ago
    > Granted, I live a 20 min walk away. The walk in is through a beautiful county park, surrounded by nature. This is likely the reason you love coming into the office. The fresh air, greenery in the park, and the walk that gets your blood flowing ... emotionally you _should_ be in a better place. Compare this with someone who commutes 30 minutes in traffic, and they will arrive at the office in a worse emotional state. It took me a long time to realize that in addition to the team culture, my happiness/satisfaction at work depends a lot on my commute and the ambiance at the office (quiet and comfortable is good; noisy and cramped are bad).
    • chrisjc 5y ago
      More of a reason for those that used to commute to take some of their reclaimed time to take a stroll/exercise during their normal commute hours... maybe even doing some of the things they would have done in the car or on the train like making calls or listening to podcasts. Of course I'm a hypocrite for not exactly doing this myself... instead I take a short drive to pick up coffee in the morning. There's no traffic (esp at 5am) and it's quite a beautiful location. It at least helps define somewhat of a boundary between work and home life for me.
  • Gigachad 5y ago
    The office is not as bad as people make it out to be. Its commuting that really sucks. I used to hate working in the office and then I moved to an apartment next to work and I decided to walk in even while WFH was an option because I did slightly prefer going to the office and being with everyone.
• thawaya3113 5y ago
  In a hierarchy of options, it’s unsurprising most companies are settling in the worst of options, much like they did with their poorly designed open office plans. There’s nothing worse than the “flexible” options companies are settling on, where people come 2-3 days a week, have no fixed seating arrangements, and need to get used to a new setup every time.
  • ace32229 5y ago
• slategruen 5y ago
  A lot of the sentiments seem to resent commuting a lot? Perhaps most of them works in the US and primarily use cars as a mode of transportation?
  • Jiejeing 5y ago
    Not necessarily. In Paris I had a 45 minutes subway commute, or a 35 minutes -somewhat dangerous- bike commute (time for a one-way trip), and while sometimes I could appreciate either the disconnection the subway provided me or the physical effort need for the bike ride, it was mostly a hassle and lost time I am not compensated for. Living close to where you work is pretty expensive, especially when the CEO likes the prestige associated with the building or area (and lives nearby, of course, but he gets 10 times my salary).
  • BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    Train and bus rides come with their own set of problems, whereas any other form of transportation is generally much slower, pushing people to relocate closer to the office in an often expensive and very population dense area. The premise remains the same: time spent commuting is often time better spent differently.
  • Macha 5y ago
    Ehh, 40 minutes on a crowded tram isn't much better. A 1.5 hour walk is better in the actual experience, but that extra 50 minutes comes out of my sleep.
  • NoboruWataya 5y ago
    I live in London and commute via public transport, it still sucks.
  • oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    I think you have a point — a typical US commute is probably worse than, for example, a typical UK commute. But that's not to say UK commutes are acceptable — my 2 hour each way commute was expensive as well as horribly uncomfortable, and that was on pretty much one of the best rail lines I've used for commuting! Unless we solve the "it's too expensive to live near where you work" problem, I think the trend has to be more towards WFH.
• kamaal 5y ago
  There is a big reason to Work from office, apart from the merits of the case like close collaboration, productivity et al. Most important of all is being able to see your manager on a day to day basis, a lot of people don't really understand how important seeing your bosses on a day to day basis can be to their careers. Most people have a problem of neglecting what isn't front of them, it's not malice or anything its just how it is. We ourselves have forgotten people with whom we don't have in person check often. People change with time, and people tend to work more closely, and are more likely to give promotions, rewards or anything for that matter to people with whom they have a daily check-in. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, compensation, benefits and overall career trajectories of people who work with top bosses at office is better than those working from remote.
  • ricardobayes 5y ago
    Out of sight, out of mind
    • kamaal 5y ago
      So many people don't realise this. You haven't seen your cousin or a friend for a while? What is your perception of them now? I am sure all that Facebook liking and commenting hasn't given you a clue of what they are now, and more importantly even the perception of them from when you last had a chance to see them often has now been long forgotten/hazy. The facts here are anybody you don't see often, you don't know them well enough and they don't figure anywhere in your list of top people to give anything.
      • giantrobot 5y ago
        > The facts here are anybody you don't see often, you don't know them well enough and they don't figure anywhere in your list of top people to give anything. Then you leave and find work with someone that doesn't have the attention span of a goldfish. If you're producing work of value you should be compensated. If the company is doing well then all of the employees should be doing well. No one should have to put on a song and dance for their managers to get their work recognized and rewarded. If your manager can't remember you unless you're in front of them at all times they're not fit for their job.
• randsp 5y ago
  Sadly I dont think there are good short term incentives for most companies to go 100% remote yet. For example, most companies obtain tax benefits from buying office space which incentivates company owners to invest on real estate without spending their own money, then there are mid-managers who keep people accountable only through meetings. And from the political perspective, why would some local politicians be interested on incentaviting remote works? that would hit hard other businesses like restaurants at business areas and that would also decrease housing prices, rental prices and local population because people could decide to move to other more affordable areas. Covid19 created a real short-term incentive for remote work, that generated some momentum around it, there are some companies which saw the real productive value behind remote work but most others didn't see it and they are taking these mid-road of "hybrid" work.
• fcatalan 5y ago
  "Emergency" WFH at my workplace have been slashed, everyone back in full since the start of the month. No reason publically given, been privately told "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up". I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I also feel kind of personally insulted and victim of ham-handed collective punishment. I hate being back: My gear at home is better, I have to work in uncomfortable clothes and at a room temperature that makes me sweat within minutes. I have to work in an N95 mask since we are packed in small 4 person cubicles and COVID numbers are still too high in my area. I'm spending more on gas and wasting time in traffic. I'm eating worse quality food. I keep getting interrupted by exactly those sames guys that took the 2 year vacation. I feel hard to concentrate and I'm angry all the time so my output has suffered. I keep sending IMs to people I work with, we never need to actually meet. Now you have to apply for a new more restrictive WFH scheme. Those wanting to sign up to it had a meeting with our direct manager where he tried to discourage us with thinly veiled threats about "special performance measuring procedures" and trite arguments about how it is unfair not being here for the people that want to come. We applied the same, but now HR is telling us that they can't approve our WFH requests since they can't guarantee that our screen setup at home is safe and we haven't completed a "Data Display Device Setup and Handling" course in the last three years. They don't know when the course will be offered again. I've been programming for more than 35 years now, so again I kind of feel doubly insulted, both by the bare faced obstructionism and ridiculous particular hurdle. I'd leave, I even feel I'm morally in the wrong for not leaving. But the thing is that the pay is good, that I'm of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss...
  • rkangel 5y ago
    I think it is indefensible to bring people back to work in any workplace where mask wearing is needed at your desk. If you're admitting in that way that there is a risk in being in the office then you shouldn't be requiring them to be there!
    • 5y ago
• onion2k 5y ago
  Employees need to be on site, we’re told, because collaborating with one another has been harder to do when everyone is working from separate locations. I think this is true, but only if the main part of your job is collaborating eg talking to other people to reach a consensus. That is easier face to face. The problem is that only higher up management roles are actually like that. Lower down the tree people are expected to not spend lots of time talking to each other, and instead actually produce things (code, documents, reports, emails, etc). When higher ups push for a return to offices to make collaborating easier what they actually mean is to make their jobs easier, at the expense of everyone else. When managers say collaboration is better when everyone is in the office, they don't mean those "water cooler moments" we apparently have. They mean those times they can talk to you as they stand by your desk so you can't ignore them.
  • pmlnr 5y ago
    > That is easier face to face Written down communication makes things impossible to wiggle out of later on, meaning the writing needs to happen anyway, why waste time on the face to face?
    • fcatalan 5y ago
      That's another reason for them. Can't make verbal promises to you and then forget about them via email.
    • ubercow13 5y ago
      In many cases, in my experience, it’s because it’s way more efficient face to face. You can always follow up with written confirmation.
    • iso1210 5y ago
      In my experience if you are going into a large (more than say 5 people) meeting to get a consensus for a decision you've made, you start with one-to-one conversations with every meeting participant, get them on side, then the large meeting is just a rubber stamp.
    • sneak 5y ago
• Mikushi 5y ago
  I've been to the office once in the last 3 years, it was for a team lunch. Rest of the day was just me sitting in a cold space, on an uncomfortable chair, with an inadequate desk setup. I lost 2h30 of my day to get there. Luckily my employer was always remote friendly and it just works so why change.
• ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  The only thing I missed when WFH was the lucnhes and in-office jokes and fun. I can still have those, if we're in the office once per week or even less. Everything else is better from home, from not having to wear pants to saving myself an hour a day because my workplace is 5 seconds away from my bed.
• pmlnr 5y ago
  :Sarcastically Surprised Kirk meme:
• wmkn 5y ago
  Looking at the comments and article, I almost feel like a freak for actually not minding going back to the office. My commute to the office is about a 10 mins walk - maybe that’s the difference with many others here. Either way, I like the separation between work and home. I also believe that online meetings and chat are not a great substitute for actually talking to people, especially when you are building something together.
  • sylens 5y ago
    > My commute to the office is about a 10 mins walk - maybe that’s the difference with many others here That is exactly the difference. Every single comment in here from someone who likes or doesn't mind returning to the office mentions that their commute is short and simple (quick walk/bike)
  • shp0ngle 5y ago
    I don't mind office when everyone is in. Some things are easier in person. But this hybrid setup is literally the worst of both worlds. Why come to the office, when nobody is there anyway? There is no upside.
  • greedo 5y ago
    The thing about meetings is that it's increasingly rare to have all parties in one physical location. Maybe for very small software shops, but even then, that's going to hurt the business in the long run in terms of recruiting top talent. Any company that expects all of their IT staff to be local is foolish. Even Apple, notorious for not allowing remote work is hedging. It's simply a fact of 21st Century IT employment now. Whether it's WFH or remote offices, you'll have people spread out across different regions, and you'll need to accommodate this in your meetings. I have a friend who's entire company is remote. Employees in the multiple states, as well as multiple overseas companies. Extremely successful, top tier company in his field. This is the model for most tech companies for the rest of this century.
  • TrackerFF 5y ago
    I, too, don't mind going back to the office. But I also have a very short commute - 5 min walk. OTOH, I work with people that have a 1 hour commute each direction, and they tend to WFH much more frequently. I think the motivation to work from home is inversely proportional to your commute distance / time.
• whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  I don't get why they are not just talking to each other, is it that hard to say "I'll be in on Wednesday, will you? So we can chat about X" and why are so many people living 2 hours away from where they work then complaining about it. Like you chose to live there and work elsewhere.
  • nafizh 5y ago
    >'why are so many people living 2 hours away from where they work then complaining about it. Like you chose to live there and work elsewhere.' For many people this isn't a choice. Specially, if you have a family.
    • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
      Just get a full remote role then
  • giantrobot 5y ago
    > Like you chose to live there and work elsewhere. A business chooses their office location based on business needs. The business isn't worried about the myriad reasons people choose to live in a particular place. So businesses are rarely right next door to every employee's house. Traffic in cities will easily make a short distance into a long duration commute. Living in more affordable suburbs makes for longer distance commutes.
• bob2222 5y ago
  This exactly the mindset at Barclays in the UK except we are a globally distributed across 5 offices. When they started their back to office nonsense they caused an exodus on our team in Glasgow and now we are all working fully remote for for 50% more money
  • riknox 5y ago
    Got to justify the absolutely massive campus they've built by the Clyde somehow. In my experience, there's been quite the PR push recently on how amazing this new campus is (I'm not a Barclays employee).
• swalsh 5y ago
  I've been working from home for a bit over 5 years now. Before Covid, we used to have quarterly meetings where all of us full time WFH people went into the office for a day of in-person meetings. We'd get A BUNCH of work done, then go back to normal. In person collaboration is better, but you don't need it every day, or even every week. Our team was highly distributed so monthly was not practical. But this was a good system, we haven't done it since Covid, and I think we're worse off for it.
• sylens 5y ago
  The other thing this article does not mention is that with many open office floor plans, the amount of conference rooms was never enough to satisfy meeting demand. So even though I might have coworkers on my team with me in my same location that needed to meet with others in another location, we could never just grab a conference room at the last minute and all sit together there. Instead, we would all have to dial in from our desks (often back-to-back in the open office) and manage mute/unmute there to prevent echo. I'm glad people are seeing how ridiculous this was.
  • mprovost 5y ago
    We noticed a lot of "meeting fatigue" with teams early in the pandemic and after a lot of feedback realised that it was because the limited number of conference rooms was constraining the overall number of meetings. Once that constraint was lifted and everyone could meet online, the number of meetings shot way up. It's come down a bit since then but is probably still much higher than it was when everyone was in the office. It will take some adjusting to go back to that, and honestly I doubt we ever will.
• scrapheap 5y ago
  My team currently has to all go into the office for one day per week - that day is now referred to as "Low Productivity Day".
  • swarnie 5y ago
    We have the same issue and the same term at my company. For me its now beanie hat, wireless headphones with music, head down and don't bother me please. Eventually they'll get sick of me and stop asking me to attend i hope.
  • greedo 5y ago
    The official name for ours is Collaboration Days. But since every team has a different CD, it's almost impossible to have in-person meetings outside of our team. In within our team, if we have to wait for Collaboration day to make decisions etc, we'd be hopelessly broken and inefficient.
• t_mann 5y ago
  I'll venture a bet (not sure it's 100% true, but a fun idea to explore): sometime last year there was media hype about FAANG developers quitting their jobs to join crypto/web3 projects. Surely, ballooning crypto valuations played a large role in that, but part of it might have been driven by SV companies moving back to hybrid work schemes, while crypto projects have perfected the 'work-anywhere-you-want, literally' (just let us know which time zone) and 'we'll pay for everyone to get together in an actually cool location from time to time'-schedule.
  • davidgerard 5y ago
    I don't recall ever seeing a statistic of any sort attached to this particular claim. I'm sure there are more than zero people who ever did this, but hard numbers, or even soft ones, haven't been put forward.
• codingdave 5y ago
  > others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom. I saw this even before the pandemic. Open office situations are noisy and distracting, everyone set up their desks so they would stare at walls, put on headphones, and used Slack to talk to people right next to them. One CEO even doubled down on it, giving attaboys to the people who sent the most Slack messages. I don't have a problem with Slack. I like it, and feel it helps remote work. I just feel that this article is 100% correct that if everyone in the same room/office is using slack to talk to each other, something is broken with communication within that organization.
• lukaslalinsky 5y ago
  Many years ago, I tried working at a bigger company. I made a mistake and accepted a job in a satellite office. I did not realize it would cause exactly this. I was supposed to be in office every day, but most of the relevant people were in the HQ, so all discussions were done online. It felt so pointless and even lonely to spend the time in the office. I tried doing that for a few months and eventually left. I really wonder what will happen now that people experience this on a larger scale.
• HstryrsrBttn 5y ago
• incomingpain 5y ago
  A ton of businesses are dealing with a bad hand right now. They know they cant successfully force everyone back to the office. If news goes out about X entity is going back to the office. Recruiters go to linkedin and reach out to all of those people and offer them work from home and a raise. Flipside, if you dont go back to the office. What are going doing holding so much $ and costs for nothing? Everyone who realizes this also cant rush out to sell. There's already loads of empty buildings and who is buying? Nobody, you'll get wrecked. Then add on top, even if you decide to force everyone back into the office and accept the losses. How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home??
  • lukebuehler 5y ago
    > How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home?? Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics.
    • bogle 5y ago
      That's unlikely. For a start, many people like living in the city. It's fun and their friends and family are all there. Then there's everyone with children at school so they're not going to mess with the kids' education and friendship group. Another big problem is rural broadband. I know the countryside is nice, I may well retire there, but it's not where I am now and it's only a very small number of people who like the isolation.
      • incomingpain 5y ago
        >That's unlikely. For a start, many people like living in the city. It's fun and their friends and family are all there. Then there's everyone with children at school so they're not going to mess with the kids' education and friendship group Down on my imaginary future ranch, I have a 10kw solar array charging my cybertruck and it drives me to the concerts, friends/family, and all that for free. Children playing at the park? Is that even a thing anymore? Xbox/PS# seems to be replacing that entirely. We could discuss if this is a good thing or not but that same cybertruck can self-drive the kids to wherever they are meeting up. >Another big problem is rural broadband. I know the countryside is nice, I may well retire there, but it's not where I am now and it's only a very small number of people who like the isolation. That's what just broke. Why suddenly this became a thing. Starlink or 5g with long range 5ghz wireless backhaul. Rural suddenly has good relatively reliable fast internet access.
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  The crazy thing is the pandemic still wasn't long enough to teach companies how to work remote or hybrid. I literally forwarded a list of 10 best-reviewed books, articles, etc about remote working to my org's leadership, and I don't think they read any of them. They certainly never changed the way they work. We still spend upwards of 25% of our time in meetings with no agenda to talk about coming up with a plan to start working. We still don't document needed information, we just bug people on Slack for the same information over and over. In-person people are still "huddling" around a laptop that nobody on remote can hear. I'm not aware of any empirical evidence that working in person is better for productivity. But what it does do is make 50% of the people feel happier - the people who want to escape their home-family to be with their work-family. In this sense I totally understand why management is forcing people to come into the office: it's because management just likes in-person, and they don't want to learn how to work hybrid or remote-first if they keep the office. I think there continues to be a competitive advantage for remote-first companies. They can be more productive, have a global pool of talent to choose from, and potentially lower overhead. I think we're going to see incumbents remain in-person while disruptive companies will be increasingly remote-first.
  • Dave3of5 5y ago
    The head of HR at my last job actually took a paid course (I think it's free now) by gitlab based upon a convo I had with her. The company ignored it all and said "back in the office". I suspect that it was because of the CEO who was saying throughout the pandemic that he wasn't a fan of remote work. That's how the decision was made, based on one old guys feelings. They don't care about you as an employee, remember that.
    • motoboi 5y ago
      > That's how the decision was made, based on one old guys feelings. Isn't this how all decisions get made on a company?
      • elldoubleyew 5y ago
        Its not just any "old guy". Its an "old guy" thats either appointed by stakeholders or personally heavily invested in the success of the company. Like it or not his "feelings" are formed from decades of experience in making a business profitable. I understand its not every case but lets not be overly-dismissive of his opinions, especially on HN where we are so concerned with ageism.
• Dave3of5 5y ago
  During the pandemic (in one of the lower case moments) I went back into the office with my Manager. It was to on-board a summer intern. I realised from that point that I needed a 100% fully remote job. * The office was mostly empty * The only communication was between my manager and myself and it was pointless * There were several people in what appeared to be 8 hour long teams meetings * None of the people who were pushing to get people back into the office were actually in the office. None of the exec team for example none of the HR or any of the older engineers * You had bizarre rules with the mask which was you didn't need one when you are sat at the desk but moving about you need one. Not only that most people were ignoring those rules completely * The office actually felt even more shit than what I imagined it to be * I still needed to do the daily stand up via teams * I didn't have a webcam / microphone at the desk so I had to use my own headset and go without the camera * You couldn't it right next to someone and talk to them about their computer so I had to have a teams call with the intern to get them setup * The intern forgot everything I told him as he didn't take any notes and asked me the same questions that I had already answered for the next 2 weeks * The normal cafeteria was shut (looked permanently) so I had to drive to get my lunch * I had forgotten that my chair was actually broken so moving from my £300 secret lab chair to a 10 year old farty broken cheap £25 office chair was a culture shock * The toilets had every second stall blocked off (pre-pandemic) these were always full and you would often have to wait * If the toilets had more that X people in them you had to wait in a queue outside * Only 1 person at a time was allowed into the kitchen not sure how that was supposed to work if the office was full * I had never noticed this before but the décor in the place was terribad. The carpet was skanky/mostly worn away. Two walls were painted headache inducing red. They had a bunch of shit art on all the walls. The plants were all either fake or dead. There was 0 natural light. The windows didn't open and were facing a 3 story brick wall. * I felt quite breathless when I was there as you couldn't open a window the place was very stuffy and felt like the o2 levels were low * The AC would make a loud grinding noise every 30 minutes that felt like the building was going to collapse My overall experience was that I felt degraded like the company had "done a Will Smith" and smacked me in the face in front of everyone. I started looking for a 100% remote job immediately after this.
• dade_ 5y ago
  The return to office has generally been an awful failure. Business owners and management have broadly failed onto address employee experience, and generally have done nothing to support hybrid working. For example, there are simple tools and practices that help teams coordinate their schedules to be in the office at the same time, while not overbooking space (which has often been reduced). Bad management is basically being exposed as inept with high turnover. They can get away with it for a while as a good portion of the cost isn't directly reflected by a line item in the balances sheet, but either their days are numbered or the days of the company will be.
  • htrp 5y ago
    It's almost as if they want hybrid work to fail so they can ask everyone in full-time
• htrp 5y ago
  My personal theory is that hybrid work is deliberately made to be chaotic and disastrous, so that when management wants people back 5 days a week; there will be much less grumbling.
  • fellowniusmonk 5y ago
    If that is the case for a given business than it would only make sense for everyone to microwave sardines for lunch (near managements offices until wfh is reinstated.) Joking of course.
• jdrc 5y ago
  Told you. Remote work is a trap you can't escape from so learn to live with it
• 0xRusty 5y ago
  I love being back. The office is quite empty, but after two years of not being around 500 people every day I think it would be overwhelming to all be back together in one instant. I'm happy to be in that first wave of those returning. It's not just the office, it's the area I work in. I work downtown, I've forgotten how much I missed all of my favorite cafes, coffee shops, casual lunch places. They remember me too, it really made my day when one of my favorite lunch places recognized me and we had a great chat for 10 minutes. I'd forgotten how much of that life is missed. I live alone, I'm a fairly solitary person, I don't get out much. I always said work from home would suit me as long as I still did a few things in the week (go to a bar once a week, have lunch out a couple of times) but I didn't do any of these things, my friends have become hermits and we hardly see each other even at weekends. The last two years have been hell frankly. I've come to realise my work is my social life. Call that if you like but it's the reality and I actually enjoy spending time with people that share interests with me. Since I've been back in the office I've been to a bar and had a nice relaxing conversation over a beer for the first time in 2 years. Not all of us are lucky enough to have that opportunity to have amazing social lives away from work. I wouldn't go back to working from home if you doubled my salary.
  • cameron_b 5y ago
    This is the best case. I took a remote job at a new company right after the lockdowns started in my area, and I've loved it but for the same reasons you love your office. I live in a small town, on the main residential street in the old neighborhood. I have a family ( wife and two kids ) and we love our neighbors. Before Covid, the commute was awful. The area where the office was located was insular. I watched my security cameras to keep up with my garden and family and feel connected to the world that mattered to me. Now I'm able to walk in my garden and pull weeds between tickets/meetings instead of taking a lap around an exurban campus. I talk to my neighbors when they are out doing the same, or at the end of our days ( tag-team visiting Taco Tuesday gathering last night after the kids went to bed... ) Everyone is in different seasons, ( heck I might be looking for an office in a few years depending on the kiddos schedules, ) but community is the make-or-break factor.
• rickspencer3 5y ago
  I have a cynical view about this, but also expect it all to come out in the wash over time. My cynical view is that some older executives are, indeed, not as effective in remote companies and younger ones, because they have no practice running remote companies and haven't adapted. Additionally, many senior and middle managers never figured out how to assess and reward actual productivity on their teams, so relied on their ability to schmooze to create a veneer of contributing, and schmoozing is easier to do in person. Finally, managing facilities is a big job, especially at bigger companies, and few executives are going to point out that their main job functions are now outdated and the company should de-invest. Imagine being an executive who is overseeing the capital costs of real estate development for a very large tech campus as an extreme example. However, it is also my view that remote work-forces are inherently more efficient in multiple ways for many industries. I have been working from home and managing remote teams since 2008. Every time I go to an office I am absolutely shocked by how much time is wasted in an office. Time that could be spent exercising, doing laundry, gardening, so many things that are beneficial to someone's health and work productivity. I believe that market forces will solve these problems of ineffective execs and managers. I could imagine some specific companies making a co-located office their competitive advantage by appealing to the minority of knowledge workers who prefer working that way, though.
  • xtracto 5y ago
    In my previous job, my boss (CEO) did not "believe" in remote work. He pushed so hard for everyone to be in the office during 2020 that there were several covid outbreaks in the office. The punchline is that we had offices both in California and Mexico... and I was specially hired to open and maintain the office in Mexico. I flew several times a year to Cali (thankful) but I just couldn't make him see that covid or no covid we would have to make remote work , because I was working remotely for him. I ended up leaving for a 2x salary position and fully remote job.
    • soapboxrocket 5y ago
      When COVID broke out I was working with a manufacturing company, helping to fix their PMO. One of the big issues they had was that the only way to get parts through the factory was for the PMs to go down to the shop floor and constantly babysit and move them; the primary directive from management was "the PMs should not be going to the shop floor." Perfect! So COVID hits and I suggest we send the PMs home to work since they are only at their desks working on their computers and talking with customers. Corporate VP: "But if we send them home how will we know if they are working?" Me: "How do you know they are working now?" Of course the most ironic part was that VP was on the phone calling in from home because he lived in a different state that had no business operations in his area. Not surprising to me, that company has since shut down.
• Timpy 5y ago
  Before the pandemic I was working in an office with a 45 min / 1 hour commute one way with lots of traffic. My tiny little office shared a wall with my senior dev, I literally couldn't be closer to him, and we still only communicated over Teams. If it weren't for passing people on the way to get coffee I could go an entire day without speaking to anyone except via Teams. The owner loved the office but he showed up around 10am-ish or whenever he felt like it, and he could afford a place nearby. No wonder there's a dramatic disconnect between his experience and mine. Every day that I wasn't needed for some in person meeting (most days) I had an extremely bitter, traffic-filled drive home.
• osigurdson 5y ago
  I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both being heated/cooled for 24 hours. The employee wastes 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Similarly the employer wastes time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms in building B, etc.,etc., in addition to paying the likely enormously expensive lease itself. The impacts on the environment, the number of hours of human life wasted in commute, the pointless buildings and associated costs to employers as well as the public infrastructure to support it (roads, trains, busses, etc.) are all incredibly wasteful. Surely, all of this could only be justified if physical presence had a dramatic impact on productivity. Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes. Let's face it, it's dumb.
  • bearjaws 5y ago
    I was appalled to find our office lease was $20,000 a month. We could hire two FTEs for the price of that office, and we are not even in a premium space. To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org. Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the office could ever achieve a 10% increase in output.
    • buzzdenver 5y ago
      You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.
      • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        They didn't say anything about preference, they merely said output. Does people preferring to work from the office mean they are so much more productive so as to make up that cost? That's the question that we're faced with, and if the last few years are any indication, the answer seems to be "No".
• jacknews 5y ago
  LOL, I'm gonna need to go ahead and come in and sit in the office all day ... that'd be great. It's more difficult for managers to low-level harass or intimidate employees who WFH, and it's auditable if they do.
• civilized 5y ago
  > Instead, a lot of people who have returned to their offices for some or all of the week have found that they’re the only ones there, or others are staying isolated in their offices, and all communication still happens over email, Slack, or Zoom. As a result, they’re spending time commuting to and from the office and dealing with all the hassles of in-person work but without any of the promised payoff. Hahaha, like this wasn't true before the pandemic. It sure as hell was for me, anyway.
• dougmwne 5y ago
  My story goes back 7 years. I had a life reevaluation and my family decided to prioritize location independence. Pre-pandemic my partner and I had been working remotely for years. I never hated being on-site, I never had a monster commute. Actually one of my commutes was a fabulous bike tour of the major monuments of the national mall. I had a beer keg and a dog to warm my feet when I got to the office. But once I got out of the office environment for a little while it was like being "red pilled". I could no longer ignore the absolutely silly justification for bringing everyone into the same place, I saw it only as a productivity destroyer for myself and others, I saw the relationships for what they were, shallow and transactional. My first and only stint back on-site it felt like coming back to high school after years and being amazed and all the silly things that loomed so large in your former life. I'm not a hermit or an introvert. The office is still dead as a doornail for me.
• civilized 5y ago
  It's almost like executives never cared about the vaunted benefits of office work and just wanted to get bodies in the office.
• rodolphoarruda 5y ago
  I work from home since 2006. I feel that my capacity to maintain or even expand my professional network is very limited. I remember my 13 years of work before 2006 and they were very intensive in terms of social interactions, meaning, happy hours, in-office birthday parties, visits to clients' sharing the same taxi leaving from the office, meetings, both formal and informal ones at the water cooler, or at the printing bay. WFH is nice. I saw my two kids being borne and stayed with them for many years afterwards. It was priceless(tm). But I think my networking and, in some way, my employability were affected.
• Hardik_Shah 5y ago
  According to consistent research, remote workers work more hours than their office-bound counterparts. Working at home is clearly more productive than working in an office, according to studies.
• theknocker 5y ago
• marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I think the long-term consequences of the shift to remote and WFH are going to be fascinating. - we need to redesign our homes, because every working adult needs a study/workspace that is quiet (and preferably not their bedroom) - we need less office space, and probably don't need an office at all. Commercial real estate is going to hurt - we need less transport infrastructure. If the Rush Hour stops being a thing, that has huge implications for transport planning (and business models) - we can hire from different regions/countries/cultures. This has been happening over the last 20 years or so, but it steps up a notch with remote teams. - we don't need to live near a city any more. Rural villages with decent wifi are viable again. - "management by walking around" stops working. We actually have to measure employee output, rather than how long they moisten the chair for. Any more?
• dt3ft 5y ago
  My next job will very likely be full remote.
• jdrc 5y ago
  Roman houses had a commercial thing at the front. Cities had lavish public baths, people had banquets, socialized in the market. The Industrial era lasted too long
• e-clinton 5y ago
  Is there something about introvert vs extrovert? My wife, an extrovert, loves commuting and meeting people in person. I, however, could careless as I commute to an office just so I can take Zoom calls from there.
• BallinBige 5y ago
  I absolutely agree with everything that it's written in the article. It makes no sense to re-open offices.
• greedo 5y ago
  I think many of the problems come down to the different world executives live in. Different people in many ways. Most executives have little experience at the core operations of a business in a technical manner. They tend to climb from Sales and Marketing teams, or Accounting. So they may understand who they sell to, and what the markets/competition are like, but they rarely are good at understanding the fundamentals of managing and motivating people. And when they hire managers to take care of these details, they hire people they can identify with. People who are like them, but lower in status and experience. Yet people with the same goals towards climbing the corporate ladder. These managers (I lump anyone below C-Level Officer in this group) also lack hands on experience in the current environment, but they know how to play the game. They quickly find out who the decision makers are, what they want, and their vulnerabilities. This allows them to advance. Then these executives higher and promote people who do have current experience. They expect them to manage the workers/ICs. They base their hiring decisions on the same fallacious ideas that they believe in. And when a manager presents them with differing opinions, that challenge their world view, they both resent and dismiss these opinions. One because they don't understand the technical side of business, and two because they are threatened. So they try to exert control. For them, it's all about status and schmoozing; cronyism, nepotism, corrupting vendor relations, all cloaked in talk of "culture, collaboration, cooperation." When they reach out to employees with a satisfaction survey, bad results (less than high approval ratings) means that the lower status managers failed to impart the company line effectively. The parallels to the Soviet Union are unmistakable. When you view it in terms of Managers are from Mars, Workers are from Venus, you'll start to understand how status, power and privilege play a huge role in how workplaces are designed and managed.
• vmception 5y ago
  Are there any companies doing it right? I see all the articles about people quitting, and all the articles like this one about ridiculous patches to work life that aren't working, and I have to wonder, is there someone doing it right that is also paying well?
  • asdff 5y ago
    github?
    • vmception 5y ago
      what are they doing?
• GrqP 5y ago
  For knowledge workers, on-site today seems a lot like off-site of yesteryear. This time it's an unscheduled, unscripted team-building exercise, where you pay to attend and a fraction show up. Lots to figure out. Exciting times for HR and recruiters.
• DerArzt 5y ago
  Being forced to go back to office was one of the reasons (among many) that I left my last employer. My boss gave me the same spiel about how being together increases collaboration and is good for career advancement, while at the same time half of my department was on the other side of the planet and 5 of the 8 developers on my team lived out of state. On top of all of that, I have invested heavily in my home office on my own dime (they didn't give any stipend even though work from home was pretty much mandated). I found that my writs and fingers were starting to hurt so I invested in a a more ergonmic split keyboard [1] and mouse which I would have to lug into the office with me. I feel that my new employer, one that's exclusively remote, has a better approach of us doing an "on-site" every quarter or so where everyone from around the country gathers in a city for those higher level meetings and team bonding activities. [1] ZSA Moonlander https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/ https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/
• oars 5y ago
  Very well thought out and written perspectives here.
• xkbarkar 5y ago
  I have realized that office politics bother me less, if at all when I wfh for longer periods. I have been back in the office for 2 weeks now and I am already emotionally exhausted. I had forgotten how draining the so called in-person collaboration actually is. Also I am cold all the time as I am a very thin person surroumded by slightly larger ones that want the window open all the time. Wfh is completely optional where I work. And I think I will go back to that 100%. I never realized how soul draining the office environment actually is and how fast I went from calm and content to stressed and miserable. Same job, same employer, same team. Wfh definetly suits me better.