7 ms·

People need to stop trying to make things return to the original office model. Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply

People need to stop trying to make things return to the original office model. Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Nor do people want to spend £10+ a day on food and drinks which they have in their fridge, at home. Then there is also the social pressure of having to go for after work socials at the local boozer/cafe/restaurant, or be seen as the person who never joins the team for social stuff. There are so many benefits to working from home which reach beyond personal and into society/the environment but very few benefits to going into an office. The one reason which supporters of the original office model tout is ‘collaboration’ but I call BS. With today’s tech we can literally be collaborating in real-time with people from any corner of the planet from the comfort of our home office. How would that change in office? Then you have the whole “oh, but, learning” as if it is simply impossible to part with knowledge via any medium other than a coworker’s breath hitting another’s eardrum.

downrightmike 3y ago
Humans have only been working in offices since the industrial revolution, before that it was nearly all WFH. WFH is our natural state.
- layer8 3y ago
  This wasn’t true for any kind of collaborative work requiring physical presence.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Well to be fair, peasants helping eachother to raise a barn is technically working from home. This idea of commuting has only been possible with a means to move labor from one region to another versus having cottage industries ran out of the home. That came with the horsedrawn streetcar.
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      Having to go and visit a construction site is not working from home.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    It was true when "industry" was in the first floor of your house or two houses down on the estate/plantation. This was not that long ago. If you visit historic sites from the 1800s it was extremely common to find workshops among the servant housing. Not only for the estate, but for export to the local community. Long commutes aren't practical when the roads are bad and the fastest mode of personal transportation is a horse.
gspencley 3y ago
> Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Not only is it unpaid, it actually costs the employee money. In the worst case you need a car + the insurance, fuel and maintenance costs associated. In the best case you still need to pay for public transportation. > Nor do people want to spend £10+ a day on food and drinks which they have in their fridge, at home. Eating out regularly is also hazardous to your health. In my experience and opinion there is no such thing as a healthy dining option. There are varying degrees of poisonous; some options are certainly better than others; but if you're trying to be strict with your diet then forget eating out daily. Then add the stress of a commute, workplace hazards, risks associated with commuting (I have a ZERO chance of getting killed in a car accident when I'm not travelling in a car), risks associated with communicable diseases and there is a case to be made that working in an office is actually hazardous to your health.
- dom96 3y ago
  That's all fair, though there is one clear advantage that commuting has (via certain modes of transport) and that is exercise. I say this as someone that loves working from home, but before I did so I would get thousands of steps in every day running towards the tube in London and around all the platforms. Dunno, maybe the positive health benefits of the steps are outweighed by how polluted the air in London (and likely even more so the tube) is. But getting less steps in every day due to WFH is a real problem.
  - gspencley 3y ago
    This will depend on how you commute. I agree that exercise is important but if I were commuting within the city that I live, I would be driving to work and walking maybe 10 steps to my car and 20 steps to my desk. In a large urban centre where you are dependent on public transit then this might be a benefit. Edit: I will also point out that, in my opinion, when I'm choosing my own "WFH" arrangements, the onus is on me to make whatever choices suit my health and lifestyle. The employer has no obligation or responsibility to actively promote and encourage any lifestyle choices in my opinion (I actually get really annoyed when employers try to do this - just let me do my job and stay out of my personal life). But they sure as hell have a responsibility to reduce risk and hazards while on the job to every reasonable extent.
AlInGaP_Diode 3y ago
> Then you have the whole “oh, but, learning” as if it is simply impossible to part with knowledge via any medium other than a coworker’s breath hitting another’s eardrum. I find it a lot more effective to msg technical questions instead of talking as I can reread a dense statement to help internalize and can also reference it later. WFH is great for learning
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Pair programming is also easier. Today I pair programmed with a junior engineer across the country, he was in his own 21x9 setup, with his colour scheme, and I was on my laptop at the office with my light theme. It was perfect.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    All of that would be possible in person, excluding doing it across the country. Being in person also reduces the friction in junior engineers asking you to pair program with them.
    - pnt12 3y ago
      Senior: let's pair on this. Junior: sure. Slightly easier than traveling half a country!
webdood90 3y ago
I suspect the lines are typically drawn between introverts and extroverts, so it's unfair to generalize here. I work remote and we don't have an office near me, but I'd love to go back. My job is where I spend the majority of my life. I like to get to know the people I work with by socializing over lunch, after work social events, etc. It's how I meet people. Collaborating remotely also sucks. You miss out on a lot of non-verbal communication vs in person. It's fine if it's not your jam and all of the above sounds like hell to you - it just means I don't want to work with you.
- toolz 3y ago
  I struggle to see an ethical argument one could make to force rigid in-office work for anything but the smallest of companies (when the work could be done remotely). Eventually (and it won't take long) you'll hire someone that would benefit in many ways from flexible work and the only detriment will be that you would have to utilize your flexibility to satisfy your own personality traits the same as everyone else, rather than have rigid, harmful rules, that cater only to your preferences.
- fernandotakai 3y ago
  i'm 100% an extrovert. i still prefer working from home. why? because i like having my own office, with a door that i can close. i like that i have my own setup, specifically designed by me so i can be as comfortable as possible. i love that i can stop work for 30min and just play with my dog or talk to my wife. oh, and i LOVE that i have privacy and i don't have someone looking at what i'm doing for 8h.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    How horrible are those offices people talk about (I guess in US)? Is it really the norm that people look over your shoulder? I like when it's quiet and private but I also like to come work from an office... Even though it's a basic small shared space and I literally work from my laptop (can't be bothered to hook up the screen etc). I do like not having to do it every day so I am free to come or not but I look forward to it usually. Or I may go out to that area for other reasons and just drop by.
hcks 3y ago
It’s over. You WILL take showers in the morning. You WILL wash your clothes. You WILL commute to the office. You WILL chat with your colleagues at breaks. And you WILL be happy.
lampshades 3y ago
I'm currently going through interviews and I think "collaboration" and communication is a real thing WFH is missing. You say that people can collaborate real-time from any corner of the planet but that hasn't been my experience. I have had two companies in the last few weeks (out of like 5) where my recruiter had no idea what stage of the process I was in because at some other point some recruiter had picked me up. I had no idea what was going on and neither did they. And when they find out that there is a dual-recruiting process happening, they call me to ask what's happening instead of asking their teammate. So stupid, man. It doesn't stop there. When I'm actually at work, I'm constantly waiting for hours for responses unless I pull in a manager to move things along. While it's true that with today's tech we can collaborate anywhere, that's not what I see happening in practice. I constantly see miscommunication and misunderstandings that normally would take 10 minutes at someone's cube to resolve that end up taking DAYS to resolve.
- ilaksh 3y ago
  Those are process failures. People need to be responsible on some electronic communication medium and if they can't do that then they have to be fired.
  - lampshades 3y ago
    I don't disagree but I've been dealing with it for years now (since COVID) and nobody has seemed to be able to fix it.
    - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
      Sure. Management stupidity and employee incompetence certainly wasn't a thing before COVID! I really like this new comic from Scott Adams called Dilbert [1] that gets a good laugh from how incompetent things have gotten since COVID! /s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert
      - lampshades 3y ago
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Re colab: I am in a team that is split across 4 cities, 2 countries, and an ocean. It literally makes no sense to demand that we are in the office.
coffeebeqn 3y ago
Commute to the office downtown. Have calls with teams in other locations over zoom while they’re with aggressive noise canceling. What’s not to love ?
albrewer 3y ago
> Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. I looked into the employment laws long ago about commutes to and from your home to your workplace. In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your assigned workplace. It's been a long time since I read up on this subject, so I have no idea where I got the info. I wonder if WFH will affect these rules - if your originally assigned office was "remote" and now you're forced to go in to a physical location, it could be argued that your employer changed your office location and will have to reimburse you for any commute.
- dqv 3y ago
  >In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your assigned workplace. There's nothing barring an employer from paying employees a "commute stipend". I think you probably read about what is taxable/nontaxable. It's probably taxable as income and that's the "can't", which isn't really a "can't" at all; it's more of a "won't because it's taxable".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>With today’s tech we can literally be collaborating in real-time with people from any corner of the planet from the comfort of our home office. How would that change in office? from my experience, collaboration is nice, after you establish the design. WFH was awful for brainstorming and more than simple design/architecturing processes. That delay in communicating ideas on a virtual whiteboard can be felt.
dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
>Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Most were effectively fools to not realize that before Covid. Now when will they start realizing that out of the 5 days that they work in a week they are working without compensation anywhere from 2 to 4 days effectively for the Govt/corporate/overlords because of taxation at various levels. ( taxesincome/property/sales, inflation etc.) To summarize the meta problem is the minions, not the corporations. In this day of automation most people should be having a lot of free time and relatively little work, but here were are in the year 2023 working and commuting our asses off.

downrightmike 3y ago

Humans have only been working in offices since the industrial revolution, before that it was nearly all WFH. WFH is our natural state.

layer8 3y ago
This wasn’t true for any kind of collaborative work requiring physical presence.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Well to be fair, peasants helping eachother to raise a barn is technically working from home. This idea of commuting has only been possible with a means to move labor from one region to another versus having cottage industries ran out of the home. That came with the horsedrawn streetcar.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    Having to go and visit a construction site is not working from home.
- jandrese 3y ago
  It was true when "industry" was in the first floor of your house or two houses down on the estate/plantation. This was not that long ago. If you visit historic sites from the 1800s it was extremely common to find workshops among the servant housing. Not only for the estate, but for export to the local community. Long commutes aren't practical when the roads are bad and the fastest mode of personal transportation is a horse.

gspencley 3y ago

> Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Not only is it unpaid, it actually costs the employee money. In the worst case you need a car + the insurance, fuel and maintenance costs associated. In the best case you still need to pay for public transportation. > Nor do people want to spend £10+ a day on food and drinks which they have in their fridge, at home. Eating out regularly is also hazardous to your health. In my experience and opinion there is no such thing as a healthy dining option. There are varying degrees of poisonous; some options are certainly better than others; but if you're trying to be strict with your diet then forget eating out daily. Then add the stress of a commute, workplace hazards, risks associated with commuting (I have a ZERO chance of getting killed in a car accident when I'm not travelling in a car), risks associated with communicable diseases and there is a case to be made that working in an office is actually hazardous to your health.

dom96 3y ago
That's all fair, though there is one clear advantage that commuting has (via certain modes of transport) and that is exercise. I say this as someone that loves working from home, but before I did so I would get thousands of steps in every day running towards the tube in London and around all the platforms. Dunno, maybe the positive health benefits of the steps are outweighed by how polluted the air in London (and likely even more so the tube) is. But getting less steps in every day due to WFH is a real problem.
- gspencley 3y ago
  This will depend on how you commute. I agree that exercise is important but if I were commuting within the city that I live, I would be driving to work and walking maybe 10 steps to my car and 20 steps to my desk. In a large urban centre where you are dependent on public transit then this might be a benefit. Edit: I will also point out that, in my opinion, when I'm choosing my own "WFH" arrangements, the onus is on me to make whatever choices suit my health and lifestyle. The employer has no obligation or responsibility to actively promote and encourage any lifestyle choices in my opinion (I actually get really annoyed when employers try to do this - just let me do my job and stay out of my personal life). But they sure as hell have a responsibility to reduce risk and hazards while on the job to every reasonable extent.

AlInGaP_Diode 3y ago

> Then you have the whole “oh, but, learning” as if it is simply impossible to part with knowledge via any medium other than a coworker’s breath hitting another’s eardrum. I find it a lot more effective to msg technical questions instead of talking as I can reread a dense statement to help internalize and can also reference it later. WFH is great for learning

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Pair programming is also easier. Today I pair programmed with a junior engineer across the country, he was in his own 21x9 setup, with his colour scheme, and I was on my laptop at the office with my light theme. It was perfect.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  All of that would be possible in person, excluding doing it across the country. Being in person also reduces the friction in junior engineers asking you to pair program with them.
  - pnt12 3y ago
    Senior: let's pair on this. Junior: sure. Slightly easier than traveling half a country!

webdood90 3y ago

I suspect the lines are typically drawn between introverts and extroverts, so it's unfair to generalize here. I work remote and we don't have an office near me, but I'd love to go back. My job is where I spend the majority of my life. I like to get to know the people I work with by socializing over lunch, after work social events, etc. It's how I meet people. Collaborating remotely also sucks. You miss out on a lot of non-verbal communication vs in person. It's fine if it's not your jam and all of the above sounds like hell to you - it just means I don't want to work with you.

toolz 3y ago
I struggle to see an ethical argument one could make to force rigid in-office work for anything but the smallest of companies (when the work could be done remotely). Eventually (and it won't take long) you'll hire someone that would benefit in many ways from flexible work and the only detriment will be that you would have to utilize your flexibility to satisfy your own personality traits the same as everyone else, rather than have rigid, harmful rules, that cater only to your preferences.
fernandotakai 3y ago
i'm 100% an extrovert. i still prefer working from home. why? because i like having my own office, with a door that i can close. i like that i have my own setup, specifically designed by me so i can be as comfortable as possible. i love that i can stop work for 30min and just play with my dog or talk to my wife. oh, and i LOVE that i have privacy and i don't have someone looking at what i'm doing for 8h.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  How horrible are those offices people talk about (I guess in US)? Is it really the norm that people look over your shoulder? I like when it's quiet and private but I also like to come work from an office... Even though it's a basic small shared space and I literally work from my laptop (can't be bothered to hook up the screen etc). I do like not having to do it every day so I am free to come or not but I look forward to it usually. Or I may go out to that area for other reasons and just drop by.

hcks 3y ago

It’s over. You WILL take showers in the morning. You WILL wash your clothes. You WILL commute to the office. You WILL chat with your colleagues at breaks. And you WILL be happy.

lampshades 3y ago

I'm currently going through interviews and I think "collaboration" and communication is a real thing WFH is missing. You say that people can collaborate real-time from any corner of the planet but that hasn't been my experience. I have had two companies in the last few weeks (out of like 5) where my recruiter had no idea what stage of the process I was in because at some other point some recruiter had picked me up. I had no idea what was going on and neither did they. And when they find out that there is a dual-recruiting process happening, they call me to ask what's happening instead of asking their teammate. So stupid, man. It doesn't stop there. When I'm actually at work, I'm constantly waiting for hours for responses unless I pull in a manager to move things along. While it's true that with today's tech we can collaborate anywhere, that's not what I see happening in practice. I constantly see miscommunication and misunderstandings that normally would take 10 minutes at someone's cube to resolve that end up taking DAYS to resolve.

ilaksh 3y ago
Those are process failures. People need to be responsible on some electronic communication medium and if they can't do that then they have to be fired.
- lampshades 3y ago
  I don't disagree but I've been dealing with it for years now (since COVID) and nobody has seemed to be able to fix it.
  - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
    Sure. Management stupidity and employee incompetence certainly wasn't a thing before COVID! I really like this new comic from Scott Adams called Dilbert [1] that gets a good laugh from how incompetent things have gotten since COVID! /s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert
    - lampshades 3y ago

PartiallyTyped 3y ago

Re colab: I am in a team that is split across 4 cities, 2 countries, and an ocean. It literally makes no sense to demand that we are in the office.

coffeebeqn 3y ago

Commute to the office downtown. Have calls with teams in other locations over zoom while they’re with aggressive noise canceling. What’s not to love ?

albrewer 3y ago

> Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. I looked into the employment laws long ago about commutes to and from your home to your workplace. In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your assigned workplace. It's been a long time since I read up on this subject, so I have no idea where I got the info. I wonder if WFH will affect these rules - if your originally assigned office was "remote" and now you're forced to go in to a physical location, it could be argued that your employer changed your office location and will have to reimburse you for any commute.

dqv 3y ago
>In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your assigned workplace. There's nothing barring an employer from paying employees a "commute stipend". I think you probably read about what is taxable/nontaxable. It's probably taxable as income and that's the "can't", which isn't really a "can't" at all; it's more of a "won't because it's taxable".

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>With today’s tech we can literally be collaborating in real-time with people from any corner of the planet from the comfort of our home office. How would that change in office? from my experience, collaboration is nice, after you establish the design. WFH was awful for brainstorming and more than simple design/architecturing processes. That delay in communicating ideas on a virtual whiteboard can be felt.

dennis_jeeves1 3y ago

>Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Most were effectively fools to not realize that before Covid. Now when will they start realizing that out of the 5 days that they work in a week they are working without compensation anywhere from 2 to 4 days effectively for the Govt/corporate/overlords because of taxation at various levels. ( taxesincome/property/sales, inflation etc.) To summarize the meta problem is the minions, not the corporations. In this day of automation most people should be having a lot of free time and relatively little work, but here were are in the year 2023 working and commuting our asses off.