5 ms·

> But when she does, the office is half empty, and she hates it. And those who prefer to work from home dislike working in a noisy place filled with people lik

> But when she does, the office is half empty, and she hates it. And those who prefer to work from home dislike working in a noisy place filled with people like her. Why does her choice gets to win? How about let those who like face to face interactions go to office and discuss away while those who prefer to wfh from home are allowed to do so? It doesn't even have to be a 100% strict thing - the firm can say that every employee must come to office once a week so that face-timers can get their appetite taken care of (even though video calls already cater to that) without overwhelming the wfh-ers. Nobody is denying that there are genuine circumstances when hashing things out face to face can be more efficient and quicker. It just doesn't have to be the default mode.

yulaow 3y ago
I personally only consider full remote position because even policies like "one day in the office every two weeks" would force me to live quite close to the city in which the office is and I absolutely want to avoid that if I can (and the market says I can) To be on the safer side, I try to consider only offers from company that have no physical office at all, so it's quite impossible that in the medium term they call a "return to office" policy... I mean, they could always decide to buy office space out of the blue, but usually in those companies all the upper management is there exactly because they want to WFH for life
hellweaver666 3y ago
I think that "hybrid" is the worst of both worlds. If you attend the office you spend most of your time on video calls to people working from home. Need to run a workshop? You still have to plan it in a hybrid way using Miro and video conferencing for the couple of people who will make an excuse not to come into the office.
- ghaff 3y ago
  And at bigger companies, you're almost certainly dealing with people in multiple locations and even timezones anyway. For many of us, we could go into an office and it would just be a desk we made phone calls from.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > we could go into an office and it would just be a desk we made phone calls from. This has been every place I've worked for the last decade, honestly. Even before WFH was a thing, all meetings took place over videoconferencing and most discussions took place over email and chat even with the people in the cube next to yours. Working from home didn't seem like a major shift to me because no work or communications flows changed with it.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I suspect a lot of people very invested in the remote/non-remote question are either at a smaller company where everyone is on a floor or two of a building or are on very self-contained co-located teams at a larger company. As you say, my situation for the last decade has been working with people who are in three different office locations + remote, my being on the road a large percentage of the time, others being on the road a lot, etc. I drove into the office sometimes (it's not that bad a commute). But really I could go in and not see anyone I knew on a given day especially as the company grew. I basically stopped going in at all maybe 6 years or so ago.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  I am sure there are individual situations where it works great, but I am currently hybrid ( 4 remote ;1 in office ) and it is genuinely killing me in terms of messed up body rhythm. Wednesday ( my day in ) throws my entire week into disarray as I try to fight it with extra doses of caffeine. And given that I am now finishing a messy project that necessitated some allnighters, I am now constantly behind on sleep debt. I am frankly fed up to the point that I am looking for a new fully remote position so that I can show it to my manager ( who is not really on board for remote work, but begrudgingly accepts some exceptions ). It is only now that I am restarting my normal body cycle again. I should not have to put up with that bs.
gtirloni 3y ago
> How about let those who like face to face interactions go to office and discuss away while those who prefer to wfh from home are allowed to do so? If you have never worked in that way, let me tell you it's the absolute worst situation. I'd rather go back to the office instead of having it work like that. People at the office will have hours of discussions that are not recorded anywhere, might even make decisions without your input and you are always playing catch up. If a company has remote workers, the company ought to be remote first otherwise it's horrible for everybody and resentment is the only thing you reap from it.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  > People at the office will have hours of discussions that are not recorded anywhere, might even make decisions without your input and you are always playing catch up. Er, they've been doing that even pre-pandemic, and even when I'm in the same room.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  >People at the office will have hours of discussions that are not recorded anywhere, might even make decisions without your input and you are always playing catch up. That happened a lot even during the in-office days as well. People with more seniority and influence would whiteboard new ideas and then bring you up to speed on the next daily standup on what they decided. If you were indeed that vital to the engineering effort they would definitely rope you in for the whiteboard session. It's not the end of the world if you find out the decisions the next day. If you have some stellar feedback, you can bring it up then and I'm sure they'll consider it. And honestly, roping in everyone to attend every single impromptu meeting just so you're up to speed on everything would be a huge time sink in terms of interruptions and I assure you you would complain about that too. Seems like you can never please developers: If you don't invite them to attend all the meetings, then they're offended because they feel left out from important decisions. If you invite them to all the meetings then they're angry because you're interrupting their productivity with useless meetings. You can never win. Developers should cut out the Mary Sue, and come down to earth for a bit, we're just cogs in a machine doing work for a paycheck, that's it, and even without you, your company and projects will still go on. You're most likely not the be-all end-all of your company as you imagine.
paulcole 3y ago
> Why does her choice gets to win? It doesn’t unless the company makes the decision to let it “win.” Some people prefer working at companies that are 100% in person. Some prefer 100% remote. Some are OK with some type of hybrid arrangement. If a person is working at a company with policies they don’t like, either they work to get the policies changed, they find a job with policies they do like, or they live with the policies they dislike and keep the current job. Just like people who prefer in-person work aren’t going to get their way at all companies, people who prefer remote work aren’t going to get their way at all companies.
- re-thc 3y ago
  > It doesn’t unless the company makes the decision to let it “win.” If only it was that simple. There's pressure everywhere. Even governments try to push people back to the office with some mantra about e.g. saving the city. If only it was just a choice. At the end of the day most management never come into the office all the time. They do what they like. They have 0 implications so if they have dinner with a government official and was told it's best to ask the staff back then they do it. That's all.

yulaow 3y ago

I personally only consider full remote position because even policies like "one day in the office every two weeks" would force me to live quite close to the city in which the office is and I absolutely want to avoid that if I can (and the market says I can) To be on the safer side, I try to consider only offers from company that have no physical office at all, so it's quite impossible that in the medium term they call a "return to office" policy... I mean, they could always decide to buy office space out of the blue, but usually in those companies all the upper management is there exactly because they want to WFH for life

hellweaver666 3y ago

I think that "hybrid" is the worst of both worlds. If you attend the office you spend most of your time on video calls to people working from home. Need to run a workshop? You still have to plan it in a hybrid way using Miro and video conferencing for the couple of people who will make an excuse not to come into the office.

ghaff 3y ago
And at bigger companies, you're almost certainly dealing with people in multiple locations and even timezones anyway. For many of us, we could go into an office and it would just be a desk we made phone calls from.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > we could go into an office and it would just be a desk we made phone calls from. This has been every place I've worked for the last decade, honestly. Even before WFH was a thing, all meetings took place over videoconferencing and most discussions took place over email and chat even with the people in the cube next to yours. Working from home didn't seem like a major shift to me because no work or communications flows changed with it.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I suspect a lot of people very invested in the remote/non-remote question are either at a smaller company where everyone is on a floor or two of a building or are on very self-contained co-located teams at a larger company. As you say, my situation for the last decade has been working with people who are in three different office locations + remote, my being on the road a large percentage of the time, others being on the road a lot, etc. I drove into the office sometimes (it's not that bad a commute). But really I could go in and not see anyone I knew on a given day especially as the company grew. I basically stopped going in at all maybe 6 years or so ago.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
I am sure there are individual situations where it works great, but I am currently hybrid ( 4 remote ;1 in office ) and it is genuinely killing me in terms of messed up body rhythm. Wednesday ( my day in ) throws my entire week into disarray as I try to fight it with extra doses of caffeine. And given that I am now finishing a messy project that necessitated some allnighters, I am now constantly behind on sleep debt. I am frankly fed up to the point that I am looking for a new fully remote position so that I can show it to my manager ( who is not really on board for remote work, but begrudgingly accepts some exceptions ). It is only now that I am restarting my normal body cycle again. I should not have to put up with that bs.

gtirloni 3y ago

> How about let those who like face to face interactions go to office and discuss away while those who prefer to wfh from home are allowed to do so? If you have never worked in that way, let me tell you it's the absolute worst situation. I'd rather go back to the office instead of having it work like that. People at the office will have hours of discussions that are not recorded anywhere, might even make decisions without your input and you are always playing catch up. If a company has remote workers, the company ought to be remote first otherwise it's horrible for everybody and resentment is the only thing you reap from it.

InCityDreams 3y ago
> People at the office will have hours of discussions that are not recorded anywhere, might even make decisions without your input and you are always playing catch up. Er, they've been doing that even pre-pandemic, and even when I'm in the same room.
ChuckNorris89 3y ago
>People at the office will have hours of discussions that are not recorded anywhere, might even make decisions without your input and you are always playing catch up. That happened a lot even during the in-office days as well. People with more seniority and influence would whiteboard new ideas and then bring you up to speed on the next daily standup on what they decided. If you were indeed that vital to the engineering effort they would definitely rope you in for the whiteboard session. It's not the end of the world if you find out the decisions the next day. If you have some stellar feedback, you can bring it up then and I'm sure they'll consider it. And honestly, roping in everyone to attend every single impromptu meeting just so you're up to speed on everything would be a huge time sink in terms of interruptions and I assure you you would complain about that too. Seems like you can never please developers: If you don't invite them to attend all the meetings, then they're offended because they feel left out from important decisions. If you invite them to all the meetings then they're angry because you're interrupting their productivity with useless meetings. You can never win. Developers should cut out the Mary Sue, and come down to earth for a bit, we're just cogs in a machine doing work for a paycheck, that's it, and even without you, your company and projects will still go on. You're most likely not the be-all end-all of your company as you imagine.

paulcole 3y ago

> Why does her choice gets to win? It doesn’t unless the company makes the decision to let it “win.” Some people prefer working at companies that are 100% in person. Some prefer 100% remote. Some are OK with some type of hybrid arrangement. If a person is working at a company with policies they don’t like, either they work to get the policies changed, they find a job with policies they do like, or they live with the policies they dislike and keep the current job. Just like people who prefer in-person work aren’t going to get their way at all companies, people who prefer remote work aren’t going to get their way at all companies.

re-thc 3y ago
> It doesn’t unless the company makes the decision to let it “win.” If only it was that simple. There's pressure everywhere. Even governments try to push people back to the office with some mantra about e.g. saving the city. If only it was just a choice. At the end of the day most management never come into the office all the time. They do what they like. They have 0 implications so if they have dinner with a government official and was told it's best to ask the staff back then they do it. That's all.