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Disclaimer: I support fully remote work and will likely never be returning to office in my lifetime if I can help it. Here I play devil's advocate. Even though

by adamhp 4y ago

Disclaimer: I support fully remote work and will likely never be returning to office in my lifetime if I can help it. Here I play devil's advocate. Even though it is a hypothetical world you've constructed, you still framed it from the perspective of this world. I can do the same thing you did with a different bias. Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, forced to work 8 hours a day from their living space where they're supposed to be able to retreat from work. They're not allowed to have social in-person contact with any of their peers, but they must login to show activity on their computer every 15 minutes or else be fired. Then along comes the "office". An amazing centralized place where you can take frequent breaks to have social interaction with your peers. You no longer have to wait for everyone to join the Zoom call and turn on their cameras and ask "Can you see my screen?" — you all can just look at the same whiteboard in the same room! Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk. No need to ping him and wait for a response. We'll even feed you for free, and you can play ping-pong on your breaks! You won't have to bother furnishing your home office with a standing desk and complicated technology setups. We handle all of that for you, and even have in-house IT staff to fix any issues that pop up. It all doesn't sound so bad when you frame it differently (which is what the middle managers try to do). Again, I don't really believe these arguments, I'm just pointing out that the way you framed yours can easily be done by someone with a competing view.

thunky 4y ago
> It all doesn't sound so bad when you frame it differently I disagree, it still sounds bad. It sounds like elementary school for adults.
- mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
  > It sounds like elementary school for adults. I think that sounds pretty amazing.
  - JTbane 4y ago
    Sign me up, so long as there's nap time and recess.
    - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
      My last couple of employers did, in fact, provide nap rooms for employees to use and they saw fairly frequent use.
  - madcow2011 4y ago
    do we get snacks and naps? I'm in.
  - krageon 4y ago
    To people that loved their school days the current office culture is probably already great. To people that did not, the office is just as bad. Except it is worse, because it feels like something you inflict on yourself.
- jspash 4y ago
  So... a WeWork then?
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    I'm in a WeWork building currently, and I do kinda like it, maybe it's the novelty, but seeing so many other little start-ups and various micro-businesses doing their thing, often in shared spaces, is curiously inspiring and various other perks do make coming into the office attractive enough that I do it more than I technically need to or are even expected to (it helps that it's only a very easy 15-min bike ride away!). Plus for the team I work with, I generally do find it easier to get (and provide) help when in the same physical space, and it's rarely distracting.
Joker_vD 4y ago
Now throw in the fact that the workers may also have family (spouse + a little kid) living with them and present inside the house during the working hours. Suddenly, the idea to have a physically distinct place dedicated (almost) exclusively to work sounds very attractive and very sensible. Of course, one could have a dedicated "study"/"office" room with a lock and sound proofing but that costs.
- ihateolives 4y ago
  Now throw in minimum 0.5h + 0.5h commute or more realistically at least 1.5h total commuting time and suddenly you leave for work before your kids wake up and arrive back home 2-3h before they go to sleep. Who do you want to spend more time during the day, your coworker Bill the senior Java guy or your child Charlie, who has just learned to walk but you were not there to see their first steps? I mean, Bill's a great guy, but I didn't marry the company.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > Now throw in minimum 0.5h + 0.5h commute Minimum half hour commute? Definitely not a minimum. I've had a <15min commute practically my entire career. My current commute is 15 minutes by bicycle, 5 minutes by car, and my kid's daycare is on the way. Minimum commute is more like 5 minutes. Sure, maybe average commute is a good bit higher, but then say average not minimum.
    - kjkjadksj 4y ago
      Thats lucky for you but you must be aware of how uncharacteristic that is. When you get a new job that commute disappears unless the new job is close to the old job or you up and move.
      - vel0city 4y ago
        It might be a bit uncharacteristic, but it still doesn't change the fact saying commutes have to be a minimum of 30 minutes isn't true. Its not entirely out of the ordinary to have a <30min commute. Most people in my office have a <15min commute, with a few having a similar commute as mine (~5min by car). My wife's commute is 12-15min. Most of my friends have a 15-20min commute. Many people have commutes much less than 30 minutes. Maybe 30 minutes is an average, I'd probably agree average commutes are close to 45 minutes, but that's an average not a minimum. Those words have two very different meanings.
nemomarx 4y ago
Do you get breaks to play pingpong and catered food at your offices? I've never worked anywhere that actually paid for food, honestly, and while a few places have had pingpong tables it's hard to justify leaving my desk to go use them when there's tasks I could be getting done. A minor point, but I've always wondered if you're ever actually allowed to use the nice benefits like that, or if they're just something startups show off to investors to try and look more friendly to their workers.
- qorrect 4y ago
  > Do you get breaks to play pingpong and catered food at your offices? Oh yeah, it was great ( billiards,pinball,foosball,restaurant catered lunches,beer fridays ). It never lasts, usually a company gets purchased and all those niceties are the first to go. This has happened to me three times. It made for a fun workplace, those were definitely my favorite jobs.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Not gonna lie, the lack of free food in the companies I've worked for has left a chip on my shoulder, and this is after working at a place which pays slightly better than Amazon with the express purpose of poaching Amazon engineers. I know it comes out to less than 10K per year, but I don't care I don't feel like an elite engineer until I get the damn free food!
cmiles74 4y ago
In my opinion, it's the employers that are pushing us to view these as two opposing extremes. I suspect this is because for so long (as long as I can remember) they've had all of the power and control. Clearly something more personal is the best solution, there's likely also an age component here as well. I know that with a child it's much more convenient to be at home most of the time. Now that employers have given up some control, I bet it seems risky to a lot of people to start talking about going back to the office even one day a week. In my own experience, that small concession could easily lead to my employer pushing harder and before I know it, I'm looking at commuting for 90 minutes each day and sitting at a desk Monday through Friday: back where I started. If employers want to retain talent and get some people to spend more time in the office, I think they should make some concessions to make that attractive. Putting some dollars in to offset the commute (and not just gas, maybe just pay people as if they were at work). Maybe throw away the old mid-height cube system and put something in that's taller and more like an individual office, etc. I'm sure other people have ideas out there, but just asking us to "go back" isn't reasonable.
- voisin 4y ago
  > I suspect this is because for so long (as long as I can remember) they've had all of the power and control. We are heading into a recession (if not there already). As the strong labour market deteriorates, this power imbalance will shift back to managers.
  - humanrebar 4y ago
    I'm not sure the specific labor markets we are talking about will deteriorate substantially.
    - voisin 4y ago
      There’s already layoffs and downsizing announced weekly. Even pausing growth will have an effect.
      - nickstinemates 4y ago
bodge5000 4y ago
> Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, forced to work 8 hours a day from their living space Advocates of WFH rarely care if people want to work in an office if they want to, as long as they don't have to. So that'd be "Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, able to work 8 hours a day from their living space or an office if they'd prefer"
- teg4n_ 4y ago
  Imagine a world where people work from home but aren’t socially isolated because they spend time with their families, friends, and local communities rather than whoever they happen to be working with at the time.
benhurmarcel 4y ago
If the office was so amazing you wouldn't need to force people to come in.
munchausen42 4y ago
The only relevant difference is in which part you use the word "force" in the description of the hypothetical world. In the real world, however, no one is usally forced to WFH. But we were forced to WFO.
nrb 4y ago
> Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk. Sorry to be flippant, but to me this is one of the worst parts of office life summed up in one statement. The bar for other people to carelessly interrupt you can be unbelievably low sometimes.
- walls 4y ago
  It's not surprising that people who would do this happen to be the people who want to return to the office.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Agreed. I am a fairly high level engineer. People would come over to my desk all the time to either discuss work or shoot the shit. However I still have my own work to do. Most of the questions they came to me for are a short slack message. I’d often literally have a queue at my desk of people. I’d also be constantly running between meetings. Having me work from home is better for everyone who deals with me. I’m more reachable all the time. That queue of people no longer waste their time waiting on my time. I’m insanely more productive because I am great at multi tasking when I’m not having to simultaneously hold a discussion in person. It’s not hyperbole on my part to say that having me shift to working from home has been a force multiplier for everyone who depends on me for something.
  - xgbi 4y ago
    > People would come over to my desk all the time to either discuss work or shoot the shit. > I'm more reachable all the time Does not compute. You complain of people interrupting you, but you argue that WFH enabled you to be interrupted more, all the time.
    - roland35 4y ago
      It does make some sense to me! It's a lot easier to manage several slack messages simultaneously than several in person conversations (although the image of an engineer helping a bunch of juniors like Magnus Carlson playing a bunch of chess tables in a line is funny!) I also like to move conversations to group channels so that even more people benefit from the conversation. It really is a force multiplier.
_ea1k 4y ago
If remote work was all 8 hours a day with 15 minute checks, you'd be right. But that happens in offices too, so it isn't the key difference.
bearmode 4y ago
> Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk Yeah, this is part of the problem most WFH folks have with most WFO folks. We fucking hate this.
ameister14 4y ago
>they must login to show activity on their computer every 15 minutes or else be fired. This is the stupidest thing, I think - I don't care if you're at your computer all the time I am at my computer, I care if you get shit done
- akoncius 4y ago
  it gets a bit tricky when you ask urgent question to colleague and he is not responding to you for 30 minutes.
  - mch82 4y ago
    What question is so urgent? What’s the consequence of waiting 30 minutes, or until tomorrow, for an answer?
  - jjav 4y ago
    > it gets a bit tricky when you ask urgent question to colleague and he is not responding to you for 30 minutes. This type of interruption culture is very harmful both directly to productivity (it takes a long time to get back to focus from being interrupted) and also to mental health from the pressure of being constantly interruped and expected to jump at every slack message. There should be no question that is so urgent that it can't be answered tomorrow. Do a full day of work and check & answer your messages once a day, morning or evening. The exception is people on call who of course do need to respond to things within minutes but that's why being on call is so exceptionally stressful. Rotate that so nobody is subject to such stress very often.
d1sxeyes 4y ago
You make some good points, but... > They're not allowed to have social in-person contact with any of their peers I don't think any companies with remote work policies enforce a 'no in-person contact' policy. > they must login to show activity on their computer every 15 minutes or else be fired I don't think most companies have this policy. > An amazing centralized place where you can take frequent breaks to have social interaction with your peers. Those companies with strict policies on activity monitoring for home workers are unlikely to allow 'frequent' breaks. The few short breaks you have are mostly spent in the toilet, or queuing to buy coffee. > Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk. Have we asked Bill how he feels about this :D > We'll even feed you for free, and you can play ping-pong on your breaks, [and we'll give you a] standing desk! Relatively few companies do this. Your framing is heavily subjective and seems to contrast the best, employee-friendly companies' in-person benefits with the worst micromanaging companies' remote work drawbacks. OP's framing is less subjective. Although the number of hours, the paid vs. unpaid lunch break, and the ugliness of the building do vary, the principles are broadly more objective.
personalidea 4y ago
I found that the sweet spot is somewhere in between these two extremes. After a week of working from home, sometimes I found that I hadn’t left the house for anything other than groceries. In the mornings, I get up and get the kids ready. Then work. Then the kids come home. Family time, dinner and so on. Time to sleep. Rinse, repeat. So yeah, I find going to the office from time to time refreshing. It helps that my team agreed that office days are for socializing and focused work is not expected.
stemlord 4y ago
I'm genuinely wondering if this is satire. No offense. I was just under the impression that the ping pong table has been the subject of enough startup-culture critique in popular opinion to put the idea that employees will actually see it as a meaningful perk to rest. Also interesting is the assertion that having to ask "can you see my screen" is enough of a problem for someone that it rivals waking up an hour earlier for a grueling commute...

by adamhp 4y ago

thunky 4y ago

> It all doesn't sound so bad when you frame it differently I disagree, it still sounds bad. It sounds like elementary school for adults.

mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
> It sounds like elementary school for adults. I think that sounds pretty amazing.
- JTbane 4y ago
  Sign me up, so long as there's nap time and recess.
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    My last couple of employers did, in fact, provide nap rooms for employees to use and they saw fairly frequent use.
- madcow2011 4y ago
  do we get snacks and naps? I'm in.
- krageon 4y ago
  To people that loved their school days the current office culture is probably already great. To people that did not, the office is just as bad. Except it is worse, because it feels like something you inflict on yourself.
jspash 4y ago
So... a WeWork then?
- wizofaus 4y ago
  I'm in a WeWork building currently, and I do kinda like it, maybe it's the novelty, but seeing so many other little start-ups and various micro-businesses doing their thing, often in shared spaces, is curiously inspiring and various other perks do make coming into the office attractive enough that I do it more than I technically need to or are even expected to (it helps that it's only a very easy 15-min bike ride away!). Plus for the team I work with, I generally do find it easier to get (and provide) help when in the same physical space, and it's rarely distracting.

Joker_vD 4y ago

Now throw in the fact that the workers may also have family (spouse + a little kid) living with them and present inside the house during the working hours. Suddenly, the idea to have a physically distinct place dedicated (almost) exclusively to work sounds very attractive and very sensible. Of course, one could have a dedicated "study"/"office" room with a lock and sound proofing but that costs.

ihateolives 4y ago
Now throw in minimum 0.5h + 0.5h commute or more realistically at least 1.5h total commuting time and suddenly you leave for work before your kids wake up and arrive back home 2-3h before they go to sleep. Who do you want to spend more time during the day, your coworker Bill the senior Java guy or your child Charlie, who has just learned to walk but you were not there to see their first steps? I mean, Bill's a great guy, but I didn't marry the company.
- vel0city 4y ago
  > Now throw in minimum 0.5h + 0.5h commute Minimum half hour commute? Definitely not a minimum. I've had a <15min commute practically my entire career. My current commute is 15 minutes by bicycle, 5 minutes by car, and my kid's daycare is on the way. Minimum commute is more like 5 minutes. Sure, maybe average commute is a good bit higher, but then say average not minimum.
  - kjkjadksj 4y ago
    Thats lucky for you but you must be aware of how uncharacteristic that is. When you get a new job that commute disappears unless the new job is close to the old job or you up and move.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      It might be a bit uncharacteristic, but it still doesn't change the fact saying commutes have to be a minimum of 30 minutes isn't true. Its not entirely out of the ordinary to have a <30min commute. Most people in my office have a <15min commute, with a few having a similar commute as mine (~5min by car). My wife's commute is 12-15min. Most of my friends have a 15-20min commute. Many people have commutes much less than 30 minutes. Maybe 30 minutes is an average, I'd probably agree average commutes are close to 45 minutes, but that's an average not a minimum. Those words have two very different meanings.

nemomarx 4y ago

Do you get breaks to play pingpong and catered food at your offices? I've never worked anywhere that actually paid for food, honestly, and while a few places have had pingpong tables it's hard to justify leaving my desk to go use them when there's tasks I could be getting done. A minor point, but I've always wondered if you're ever actually allowed to use the nice benefits like that, or if they're just something startups show off to investors to try and look more friendly to their workers.

qorrect 4y ago
> Do you get breaks to play pingpong and catered food at your offices? Oh yeah, it was great ( billiards,pinball,foosball,restaurant catered lunches,beer fridays ). It never lasts, usually a company gets purchased and all those niceties are the first to go. This has happened to me three times. It made for a fun workplace, those were definitely my favorite jobs.
Der_Einzige 4y ago
Not gonna lie, the lack of free food in the companies I've worked for has left a chip on my shoulder, and this is after working at a place which pays slightly better than Amazon with the express purpose of poaching Amazon engineers. I know it comes out to less than 10K per year, but I don't care I don't feel like an elite engineer until I get the damn free food!

cmiles74 4y ago

In my opinion, it's the employers that are pushing us to view these as two opposing extremes. I suspect this is because for so long (as long as I can remember) they've had all of the power and control. Clearly something more personal is the best solution, there's likely also an age component here as well. I know that with a child it's much more convenient to be at home most of the time. Now that employers have given up some control, I bet it seems risky to a lot of people to start talking about going back to the office even one day a week. In my own experience, that small concession could easily lead to my employer pushing harder and before I know it, I'm looking at commuting for 90 minutes each day and sitting at a desk Monday through Friday: back where I started. If employers want to retain talent and get some people to spend more time in the office, I think they should make some concessions to make that attractive. Putting some dollars in to offset the commute (and not just gas, maybe just pay people as if they were at work). Maybe throw away the old mid-height cube system and put something in that's taller and more like an individual office, etc. I'm sure other people have ideas out there, but just asking us to "go back" isn't reasonable.

voisin 4y ago
> I suspect this is because for so long (as long as I can remember) they've had all of the power and control. We are heading into a recession (if not there already). As the strong labour market deteriorates, this power imbalance will shift back to managers.
- humanrebar 4y ago
  I'm not sure the specific labor markets we are talking about will deteriorate substantially.
  - voisin 4y ago
    There’s already layoffs and downsizing announced weekly. Even pausing growth will have an effect.
    - nickstinemates 4y ago

bodge5000 4y ago

> Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, forced to work 8 hours a day from their living space Advocates of WFH rarely care if people want to work in an office if they want to, as long as they don't have to. So that'd be "Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, able to work 8 hours a day from their living space or an office if they'd prefer"

teg4n_ 4y ago
Imagine a world where people work from home but aren’t socially isolated because they spend time with their families, friends, and local communities rather than whoever they happen to be working with at the time.

benhurmarcel 4y ago

If the office was so amazing you wouldn't need to force people to come in.

munchausen42 4y ago

The only relevant difference is in which part you use the word "force" in the description of the hypothetical world. In the real world, however, no one is usally forced to WFH. But we were forced to WFO.

nrb 4y ago

> Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk. Sorry to be flippant, but to me this is one of the worst parts of office life summed up in one statement. The bar for other people to carelessly interrupt you can be unbelievably low sometimes.

walls 4y ago
It's not surprising that people who would do this happen to be the people who want to return to the office.
dagmx 4y ago
Agreed. I am a fairly high level engineer. People would come over to my desk all the time to either discuss work or shoot the shit. However I still have my own work to do. Most of the questions they came to me for are a short slack message. I’d often literally have a queue at my desk of people. I’d also be constantly running between meetings. Having me work from home is better for everyone who deals with me. I’m more reachable all the time. That queue of people no longer waste their time waiting on my time. I’m insanely more productive because I am great at multi tasking when I’m not having to simultaneously hold a discussion in person. It’s not hyperbole on my part to say that having me shift to working from home has been a force multiplier for everyone who depends on me for something.
- xgbi 4y ago
  > People would come over to my desk all the time to either discuss work or shoot the shit. > I'm more reachable all the time Does not compute. You complain of people interrupting you, but you argue that WFH enabled you to be interrupted more, all the time.
  - roland35 4y ago
    It does make some sense to me! It's a lot easier to manage several slack messages simultaneously than several in person conversations (although the image of an engineer helping a bunch of juniors like Magnus Carlson playing a bunch of chess tables in a line is funny!) I also like to move conversations to group channels so that even more people benefit from the conversation. It really is a force multiplier.

_ea1k 4y ago

If remote work was all 8 hours a day with 15 minute checks, you'd be right. But that happens in offices too, so it isn't the key difference.

bearmode 4y ago

> Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk Yeah, this is part of the problem most WFH folks have with most WFO folks. We fucking hate this.

ameister14 4y ago

>they must login to show activity on their computer every 15 minutes or else be fired. This is the stupidest thing, I think - I don't care if you're at your computer all the time I am at my computer, I care if you get shit done

akoncius 4y ago
it gets a bit tricky when you ask urgent question to colleague and he is not responding to you for 30 minutes.
- mch82 4y ago
  What question is so urgent? What’s the consequence of waiting 30 minutes, or until tomorrow, for an answer?
- jjav 4y ago
  > it gets a bit tricky when you ask urgent question to colleague and he is not responding to you for 30 minutes. This type of interruption culture is very harmful both directly to productivity (it takes a long time to get back to focus from being interrupted) and also to mental health from the pressure of being constantly interruped and expected to jump at every slack message. There should be no question that is so urgent that it can't be answered tomorrow. Do a full day of work and check & answer your messages once a day, morning or evening. The exception is people on call who of course do need to respond to things within minutes but that's why being on call is so exceptionally stressful. Rotate that so nobody is subject to such stress very often.

d1sxeyes 4y ago

You make some good points, but... > They're not allowed to have social in-person contact with any of their peers I don't think any companies with remote work policies enforce a 'no in-person contact' policy. > they must login to show activity on their computer every 15 minutes or else be fired I don't think most companies have this policy. > An amazing centralized place where you can take frequent breaks to have social interaction with your peers. Those companies with strict policies on activity monitoring for home workers are unlikely to allow 'frequent' breaks. The few short breaks you have are mostly spent in the toilet, or queuing to buy coffee. > Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk. Have we asked Bill how he feels about this :D > We'll even feed you for free, and you can play ping-pong on your breaks, [and we'll give you a] standing desk! Relatively few companies do this. Your framing is heavily subjective and seems to contrast the best, employee-friendly companies' in-person benefits with the worst micromanaging companies' remote work drawbacks. OP's framing is less subjective. Although the number of hours, the paid vs. unpaid lunch break, and the ugliness of the building do vary, the principles are broadly more objective.

personalidea 4y ago

I found that the sweet spot is somewhere in between these two extremes. After a week of working from home, sometimes I found that I hadn’t left the house for anything other than groceries. In the mornings, I get up and get the kids ready. Then work. Then the kids come home. Family time, dinner and so on. Time to sleep. Rinse, repeat. So yeah, I find going to the office from time to time refreshing. It helps that my team agreed that office days are for socializing and focused work is not expected.

stemlord 4y ago

I'm genuinely wondering if this is satire. No offense. I was just under the impression that the ping pong table has been the subject of enough startup-culture critique in popular opinion to put the idea that employees will actually see it as a meaningful perk to rest. Also interesting is the assertion that having to ask "can you see my screen" is enough of a problem for someone that it rivals waking up an hour earlier for a grueling commute...