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Been remote for 15 years, recently started full time job, love going to office. No strict work hours but I come anyway, nice to chat with colleagues (and much

Been remote for 15 years, recently started full time job, love going to office. No strict work hours but I come anyway, nice to chat with colleagues (and much more productive than those tedious calls or text chats). Also I was already making myself leave home at least daily for physical activity, so if I'm out why not travel to the office? There's a nice coffeeshop near there. Also the chair is comfy enough, desk is adjustable etc. So no, to say it's "bullshit and everyone knows it" is just pushing for some agenda. I wish everyone can have their way, if you don't want to come to the office then don't, employers should make it possible, but don't make it sound as if everyone hates it, it's just wrong.

and0 3y ago
That's totally valid, also. I do sometimes miss the office, particularly from when I worked in a healthy office culture, but would want it to be optional.
variants 3y ago
As someone who works hands on so I have to work at the office I really wish more people fight to stay home, the commute was so much nicer with people working remote plus the office was much nicer to work in without all the noise and distractions
- grogenaut 3y ago
  I agree with this but the obvious outcome is that if you're 1 person in a 200 person office floor, your company will consolidate 200 floors into one and it'll get noisy again. The same cost function still exists for office space. I'm very with you on the commutes tho. I live in Seattle and Mondays and Fridays are like driving on Thanksgiving (a major holiday in the US when no one drives and even the roads in L.A. are clear), and Tuesday is worse than the before times. Wed/Thurs are a bit better than the before times though so I just go in on those days (that's also when we tend to have happy hours).
- throwaway290 3y ago
  If you use public transport it works better (more cost efficient to run = more frequent) when more people use it, so my commute would not get better if people stayed home. But I agree on the last part, I prefer it when certain coworkers WFH. TBH some days I strategically choose my office hours so I overlap with them less.
jacobr1 3y ago
I've enjoyed both environments. Having an in-person, highly engaged, collaborative environment is fantastic. Having a remote first, well-considered remote team is great. But having a mostly in-person, and some-people remote setup, where the remote folks are left out of the hallway conversations sucks. Having an "in-person" setup, where your team is distributed between building locations and remote sites, and you can't ever schedule conferences rooms and you are working in a cube-farms/open-office sucks. The key is finding a way to be engaged with your colleagues remote or local, and figuring out how to scale that.
- grogenaut 3y ago
  I was in a remote office from the main one before and about 30% of the time people would forget to dial in, and another 20% of the time the AV setup would be broken. They ironically got that all fixed during the pandemic, and it's great now. At the minimum the default is you will be on VC now and so it makes it much better for everyone, and everyone has the hardware all figured out. We had a large onsite last week and a ton of the young engineers said to me "people told me stuff immediately in person that I've been trying to find out for months". Humans are still kinda humans.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    It definitely takes discipline and a little culture change. I work for a company where teams are spread across many offices, so the company culture is: there's a video conference for every meeting. Period. End of story. When you walk into the conference room, you press one button and the VC starts. Everybody does this, and it's engrained. So, thanks to this discipline, remote workers are never left out. Same goes for the "hallway conversations." You just got to get out of that company-habit where major decisions and information transfers happen in this ad hoc way. It takes discipline (often on leadership's part) to properly document and communicate. Again, where I work, we would never consider "Oh, I talked to Director Xyz in the hallway and he said our focus is on the Foo project rather than the Bar project now" to be any kind of official guidance. Totally unacceptable.
    - 3y ago
GenerocUsername 3y ago
Sounds Nice. If my office was within 15 minutes of home I would be there frequently. Dropping in and out for chit chat and activities. But it isn't. The only housing within 35 minutes of my downtown office is small, expensive, high-rise apartments and condos. And there literally are not enough of those to serve the abundance of offices in that area, so it is literally impossible to provide even that meager standard to everyone.
switchbak 3y ago
Similar here, been doing part time remote since '06, full time since '11. There's ups and downs to both sides. I get "more done" remotely, in that I can usually have more time for deep focus. But then it's harder to get high-bandwidth knowledge transfer sessions, and overhear when someone has some particularly bad ideas (or roads you've already been down, etc). I think I still prefer the remote side, and it's probably a better deal for the biz, but I would like to spend a few days here and there with like minded people on shared problems.
harvey9 3y ago
You've made a reasonable proposal. But the writer of the blog wasn't offered anything so reasonable and that's why they're mad.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  Exactly right, the real title should be "my employer sucks and working conditions are not reasonable". But no, the writer titled "return to office is bullshit and everyone knows it", which phrased like that is patently false. Return to office can be a problem if some other conditions are true, like your office sucks, you are made to clock in clock out at inflexible hours, commute is inconvenient, etc. Why not talk about that.
nurettin 3y ago
You probably like people and are comfortable with whatever you excelled at. And you probably don't have an inner voice comically second-guessing everything you are about to say, causing you to act timid and awkward around others. Qualities missing from most people at the office.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  It depends on my mood. Some days I say hi and then only keyboard noise. I probably look like a robot then. Other days may talk more. And second guessing is a thing, but feeling good after social interaction is also a thing... But it's a small open office. Probably in a big open office it can be worse if many coworkers are distracting. I can see how I would hate that and it would hamper work.

and0 3y ago

That's totally valid, also. I do sometimes miss the office, particularly from when I worked in a healthy office culture, but would want it to be optional.

variants 3y ago

As someone who works hands on so I have to work at the office I really wish more people fight to stay home, the commute was so much nicer with people working remote plus the office was much nicer to work in without all the noise and distractions

grogenaut 3y ago
I agree with this but the obvious outcome is that if you're 1 person in a 200 person office floor, your company will consolidate 200 floors into one and it'll get noisy again. The same cost function still exists for office space. I'm very with you on the commutes tho. I live in Seattle and Mondays and Fridays are like driving on Thanksgiving (a major holiday in the US when no one drives and even the roads in L.A. are clear), and Tuesday is worse than the before times. Wed/Thurs are a bit better than the before times though so I just go in on those days (that's also when we tend to have happy hours).
throwaway290 3y ago
If you use public transport it works better (more cost efficient to run = more frequent) when more people use it, so my commute would not get better if people stayed home. But I agree on the last part, I prefer it when certain coworkers WFH. TBH some days I strategically choose my office hours so I overlap with them less.

jacobr1 3y ago

I've enjoyed both environments. Having an in-person, highly engaged, collaborative environment is fantastic. Having a remote first, well-considered remote team is great. But having a mostly in-person, and some-people remote setup, where the remote folks are left out of the hallway conversations sucks. Having an "in-person" setup, where your team is distributed between building locations and remote sites, and you can't ever schedule conferences rooms and you are working in a cube-farms/open-office sucks. The key is finding a way to be engaged with your colleagues remote or local, and figuring out how to scale that.

grogenaut 3y ago
I was in a remote office from the main one before and about 30% of the time people would forget to dial in, and another 20% of the time the AV setup would be broken. They ironically got that all fixed during the pandemic, and it's great now. At the minimum the default is you will be on VC now and so it makes it much better for everyone, and everyone has the hardware all figured out. We had a large onsite last week and a ton of the young engineers said to me "people told me stuff immediately in person that I've been trying to find out for months". Humans are still kinda humans.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  It definitely takes discipline and a little culture change. I work for a company where teams are spread across many offices, so the company culture is: there's a video conference for every meeting. Period. End of story. When you walk into the conference room, you press one button and the VC starts. Everybody does this, and it's engrained. So, thanks to this discipline, remote workers are never left out. Same goes for the "hallway conversations." You just got to get out of that company-habit where major decisions and information transfers happen in this ad hoc way. It takes discipline (often on leadership's part) to properly document and communicate. Again, where I work, we would never consider "Oh, I talked to Director Xyz in the hallway and he said our focus is on the Foo project rather than the Bar project now" to be any kind of official guidance. Totally unacceptable.
  - 3y ago

GenerocUsername 3y ago

Sounds Nice. If my office was within 15 minutes of home I would be there frequently. Dropping in and out for chit chat and activities. But it isn't. The only housing within 35 minutes of my downtown office is small, expensive, high-rise apartments and condos. And there literally are not enough of those to serve the abundance of offices in that area, so it is literally impossible to provide even that meager standard to everyone.

switchbak 3y ago

Similar here, been doing part time remote since '06, full time since '11. There's ups and downs to both sides. I get "more done" remotely, in that I can usually have more time for deep focus. But then it's harder to get high-bandwidth knowledge transfer sessions, and overhear when someone has some particularly bad ideas (or roads you've already been down, etc). I think I still prefer the remote side, and it's probably a better deal for the biz, but I would like to spend a few days here and there with like minded people on shared problems.

harvey9 3y ago

You've made a reasonable proposal. But the writer of the blog wasn't offered anything so reasonable and that's why they're mad.

throwaway290 3y ago
Exactly right, the real title should be "my employer sucks and working conditions are not reasonable". But no, the writer titled "return to office is bullshit and everyone knows it", which phrased like that is patently false. Return to office can be a problem if some other conditions are true, like your office sucks, you are made to clock in clock out at inflexible hours, commute is inconvenient, etc. Why not talk about that.

nurettin 3y ago

You probably like people and are comfortable with whatever you excelled at. And you probably don't have an inner voice comically second-guessing everything you are about to say, causing you to act timid and awkward around others. Qualities missing from most people at the office.

throwaway290 3y ago
It depends on my mood. Some days I say hi and then only keyboard noise. I probably look like a robot then. Other days may talk more. And second guessing is a thing, but feeling good after social interaction is also a thing... But it's a small open office. Probably in a big open office it can be worse if many coworkers are distracting. I can see how I would hate that and it would hamper work.