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There are so many “habits” left over from industrial work. On an assembly line everyone needed to be in sync but this generally isn’t true for most office wor

There are so many “habits” left over from industrial work. On an assembly line everyone needed to be in sync but this generally isn’t true for most office work. You need to be present at the factory to do the work, hasn’t been true for office work for awhile now. Yet we still operate synchronously. Everyone commutes through traffic/crowded public transport and risk catching the latest novel virus, to arrive at work at the same time. Everyone has lunch at the same time so it’s crowded as heck and we get even more mortal danger.

grumblingdev 3y ago
> an assembly line Now imagine working on an assembly line on your feet all day versus your office day job. The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. I personally hated going into the office, but the morale effect is real. I think the main thing is people cannot be trusted to honestly tell you if they work better from the office. It's a nicer life working from home but whether you get more work done is debatable. And there is always too much to lose by speaking the truth.
- blastro 3y ago
  real for you
- diogenes4 3y ago
  > The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. I'm guessing the most spoiled people in the world wouldn't be working at all. This sort of contempt is a very specific and odd attitude to have.
  - grumblingdev 3y ago
    Imagine being an Amazon delivery driver. Monitoring to the extreme. Constant boring shit all day. Running up apartment stairs. Then imagine an office worker... It's a world of difference and puts things in perspective. People take things for granted too easily.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      At the same time, that office worker has to take time out of their free time to get exercise while the Amazon driver gets paid to exercise on the job. There's a lot of health risk with not getting daily exercise.
    - diogenes4 3y ago
      > People take things for granted too easily. If this were a widespread attitude surely the office workers would be paid less than physical laborers (and, frankly, they probably should be). I do a lot of physical work (that's my two primary jobs) and people don't spend their time fuming over people with soft hands—that's kind of a "loser" thing.
- DennisP 3y ago
  If management can tell which way gets more work done, then they don't have to rely on workers being honest about it. If they can't tell the difference, seems to me they should let people have nicer lives.
  - grumblingdev 3y ago
    White collar work is not very measurable.
    - DennisP 3y ago
      Fine. If you don't have evidence either way, might as well go with option two.
- PsylentKnight 3y ago
  > The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. Ok, working standards and life in general have gotten better for people. Why is that a bad thing? > It's a nicer life working from home Again, why is people having a better life a bad thing?
  - grumblingdev 3y ago
    My point is its a minor inconvenience compared to a lot the working environments people operate in.
    - vunderba 3y ago
      You can make that point about literally anything. People in X situation have it worse than people in Y situation, therefore Y situation is actually fine. It's a deflection without any actual merit.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  > The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. It's not a matter of being spoiled or not. I'm talking about what is necessary to get the job done and the elimination of redundant rules that serve no purpose.
  - grumblingdev 3y ago
    "get the job done" is usually poorly defined.
    - somsak2 3y ago
      Then we should demand better definitions rather than forcing a change on which we have no data is actually better.
- greedo 3y ago
  The morale effect might be real for you, but for a large group of workers, their morale has improved since WFH. On my team of 24, only one chooses to work in the office...
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    Individual morale and team morale are separate. I have no doubt that their individual lives improved a lot (e.g., being able to freely do personal chores), at the expense of team morale (feeling like a part of a team at work).
    - Clubber 3y ago
      So let me get this straight. To improve team morale, individual morale has to suffer, is that what you are saying?
- analog31 3y ago
  >>>> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. That's been part of workplace culture even when most people were in-office. The "office" and "factory" people had noticeably different working conditions. Moreover, the remote workers were largely invisible -- if we dealt with them at all, it was through their boss, or some kind of ticketing system.
- Clubber 3y ago
  >The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. Sure, then have then design a database schema with a half ass business spec, and the'll realize why.
- npsimons 3y ago
  > The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. And farmers working hard manual labor from before sunrise to sundown, in heat and UV exposure would look upon factory workers as spoilt. So what? Are you against progress? You aren't one of those "I had it hard, so these damn kids should too!" boomers are you?
- somsak2 3y ago
  > on your feet all day versus your office day job I have a standing desk, so I am on my feet all day.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
scottLobster 3y ago
Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity. Perhaps if everyone working from home were constantly available to screen-share/video chat it wouldn't be as bad, but my experience with WFH is people get distracted by kids/pets/etc and half the time I wait hours for a response required for me to continue my work. At one point during the pandemic I had 6 cascading tasks going in parallel based solely on needing something to do while I twiddled my thumbs waiting for the required SME to come online (we charge by the hour, so I can't just be idle and charge it). In the office I just walk over to their desk. This is from the perspective of an engineer by the way, I'm not management.
- throwaway9191aa 3y ago
  > Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. The reason it isn't, for me, is that I'm usually answering questions about Why we do something, or How something is supposed to work. I'm usually giving a quick response, with a link to a design, or a code snippet, or a git commit, or a Code Review link, or something online. So I have to provide an online response whether you ask me in person or not. If I'm in a 1:1, yea I totally agree I'd rather just talk about career growth and that stuff in person. But.... I mean now we are walking down the already-well-discussed path of Manager/IC and how these jobs are just different. I don't know for sure, but I think this is the experience of many senior developers. [edit] > I twiddled my thumbs waiting for the required SME to come online I mean, this isn't an RTO discussion. If your SME is slacking off that is a different problem. Assuming best intentions, you would walk up to that SME's desk and there would already be 5 people waiting with a question because the SME can only talk to 1 person at a time. I can slack with several different folks, so long as they can just wait a second while I type. The worst people (so sorry, there are some great TAMs) are the ones who page you as soon as they need something because they don't understand you are busy with a different project.
  - scottLobster 3y ago
    Yeah I guess the difference is that at my workplace there's a lot of tribal knowledge. Even when there is a design document it often hasn't been updated or requires nuance to interpret that's only really in one or two peoples' heads. Often the question/discussions is about engineering priorities, some discovery was made during coding that would alter the design, and half the time simply bringing up the topic with them for 5 minutes brings new information to bear that produces a superior result. I try not to waste their time and develop my questions as much as possible on my own, but I'm not going to risk several hours of wasted work going down the wrong path when a 5 minute discussion with a SME would confirm something. And it is an RTO discussion, because in the office they're available to some degree. WFH that availability drops off a cliff, and these are questions about the inner-workings of proprietary software, if the answers were on Google there would be legal action.
zacharytelschow 3y ago
> Everyone commutes through traffic/crowded public transport and risk catching the latest novel virus, to arrive at work at the same time. Everyone has lunch at the same time so it’s crowded as heck and we get even more mortal danger. Apropos username.

grumblingdev 3y ago

> an assembly line Now imagine working on an assembly line on your feet all day versus your office day job. The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. I personally hated going into the office, but the morale effect is real. I think the main thing is people cannot be trusted to honestly tell you if they work better from the office. It's a nicer life working from home but whether you get more work done is debatable. And there is always too much to lose by speaking the truth.

blastro 3y ago
real for you
diogenes4 3y ago
> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. I'm guessing the most spoiled people in the world wouldn't be working at all. This sort of contempt is a very specific and odd attitude to have.
- grumblingdev 3y ago
  Imagine being an Amazon delivery driver. Monitoring to the extreme. Constant boring shit all day. Running up apartment stairs. Then imagine an office worker... It's a world of difference and puts things in perspective. People take things for granted too easily.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    At the same time, that office worker has to take time out of their free time to get exercise while the Amazon driver gets paid to exercise on the job. There's a lot of health risk with not getting daily exercise.
  - diogenes4 3y ago
    > People take things for granted too easily. If this were a widespread attitude surely the office workers would be paid less than physical laborers (and, frankly, they probably should be). I do a lot of physical work (that's my two primary jobs) and people don't spend their time fuming over people with soft hands—that's kind of a "loser" thing.
DennisP 3y ago
If management can tell which way gets more work done, then they don't have to rely on workers being honest about it. If they can't tell the difference, seems to me they should let people have nicer lives.
- grumblingdev 3y ago
  White collar work is not very measurable.
  - DennisP 3y ago
    Fine. If you don't have evidence either way, might as well go with option two.
PsylentKnight 3y ago
> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. Ok, working standards and life in general have gotten better for people. Why is that a bad thing? > It's a nicer life working from home Again, why is people having a better life a bad thing?
- grumblingdev 3y ago
  My point is its a minor inconvenience compared to a lot the working environments people operate in.
  - vunderba 3y ago
    You can make that point about literally anything. People in X situation have it worse than people in Y situation, therefore Y situation is actually fine. It's a deflection without any actual merit.
TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. It's not a matter of being spoiled or not. I'm talking about what is necessary to get the job done and the elimination of redundant rules that serve no purpose.
- grumblingdev 3y ago
  "get the job done" is usually poorly defined.
  - somsak2 3y ago
    Then we should demand better definitions rather than forcing a change on which we have no data is actually better.
greedo 3y ago
The morale effect might be real for you, but for a large group of workers, their morale has improved since WFH. On my team of 24, only one chooses to work in the office...
- Ferret7446 3y ago
  Individual morale and team morale are separate. I have no doubt that their individual lives improved a lot (e.g., being able to freely do personal chores), at the expense of team morale (feeling like a part of a team at work).
  - Clubber 3y ago
    So let me get this straight. To improve team morale, individual morale has to suffer, is that what you are saying?
analog31 3y ago
>>>> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. That's been part of workplace culture even when most people were in-office. The "office" and "factory" people had noticeably different working conditions. Moreover, the remote workers were largely invisible -- if we dealt with them at all, it was through their boss, or some kind of ticketing system.
Clubber 3y ago
>The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. Sure, then have then design a database schema with a half ass business spec, and the'll realize why.
npsimons 3y ago
> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. And farmers working hard manual labor from before sunrise to sundown, in heat and UV exposure would look upon factory workers as spoilt. So what? Are you against progress? You aren't one of those "I had it hard, so these damn kids should too!" boomers are you?
somsak2 3y ago
> on your feet all day versus your office day job I have a standing desk, so I am on my feet all day.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

scottLobster 3y ago

Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity. Perhaps if everyone working from home were constantly available to screen-share/video chat it wouldn't be as bad, but my experience with WFH is people get distracted by kids/pets/etc and half the time I wait hours for a response required for me to continue my work. At one point during the pandemic I had 6 cascading tasks going in parallel based solely on needing something to do while I twiddled my thumbs waiting for the required SME to come online (we charge by the hour, so I can't just be idle and charge it). In the office I just walk over to their desk. This is from the perspective of an engineer by the way, I'm not management.

throwaway9191aa 3y ago
> Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. The reason it isn't, for me, is that I'm usually answering questions about Why we do something, or How something is supposed to work. I'm usually giving a quick response, with a link to a design, or a code snippet, or a git commit, or a Code Review link, or something online. So I have to provide an online response whether you ask me in person or not. If I'm in a 1:1, yea I totally agree I'd rather just talk about career growth and that stuff in person. But.... I mean now we are walking down the already-well-discussed path of Manager/IC and how these jobs are just different. I don't know for sure, but I think this is the experience of many senior developers. [edit] > I twiddled my thumbs waiting for the required SME to come online I mean, this isn't an RTO discussion. If your SME is slacking off that is a different problem. Assuming best intentions, you would walk up to that SME's desk and there would already be 5 people waiting with a question because the SME can only talk to 1 person at a time. I can slack with several different folks, so long as they can just wait a second while I type. The worst people (so sorry, there are some great TAMs) are the ones who page you as soon as they need something because they don't understand you are busy with a different project.
- scottLobster 3y ago
  Yeah I guess the difference is that at my workplace there's a lot of tribal knowledge. Even when there is a design document it often hasn't been updated or requires nuance to interpret that's only really in one or two peoples' heads. Often the question/discussions is about engineering priorities, some discovery was made during coding that would alter the design, and half the time simply bringing up the topic with them for 5 minutes brings new information to bear that produces a superior result. I try not to waste their time and develop my questions as much as possible on my own, but I'm not going to risk several hours of wasted work going down the wrong path when a 5 minute discussion with a SME would confirm something. And it is an RTO discussion, because in the office they're available to some degree. WFH that availability drops off a cliff, and these are questions about the inner-workings of proprietary software, if the answers were on Google there would be legal action.

zacharytelschow 3y ago

> Everyone commutes through traffic/crowded public transport and risk catching the latest novel virus, to arrive at work at the same time. Everyone has lunch at the same time so it’s crowded as heck and we get even more mortal danger. Apropos username.