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I do sometimes miss working out of an office with my coworkers, but I don't miss the hour plus commute, the constant taps on the shoulder, spending too much mon

I do sometimes miss working out of an office with my coworkers, but I don't miss the hour plus commute, the constant taps on the shoulder, spending too much money on coffee and lunch, etc. The collaborative nature of the office is hard to replicate remotely, though not impossible, and I think it's genuinely good for us to have human contact throughout the day.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>the constant taps on the shoulder To me that is way more tolerable than the constant pinging in chats and putting my headset ON & OFF to jump on calls several times per day. Hearing the ringtone of Teams/Slack today still gives me PTSD. A situation that can be figured out by a 5 minute face to face talk in person can end up as a 30+ minute back and fourth in the chat. You walk away from your computer for a second and you see 80+ missed texts in 3 Slack channels. The more people in the chat rooms, the worse it gets, as while one person is writing a long sentence explaining something, another is writing a long sentence asking about the thing that other person is just about to explain leading a lot of wasted time and effort with communication. The worse part is those super long bank-and-fourths in the chat rooms then become "the documentation". Why did you break this? Didn't you know we changed X because of Y? It was discussed in the group Slack yesterday. Didn't you read it[the 100+ message papyrus]? I much prefer WFH, but it can also be absolute hell, keeping up with the bombardment of chats that remote sync cooperation leads to. In my new job I'm mostly in the office and it's much less stressful.
- mulmen 2y ago
  RTO is not synonymous with a single-site team. The benefits you describe are impossible to realize for any company with distributed offices.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    > The benefits you describe are impossible to realize for any company with distributed offices. Oh definitely, but where I live in this small European country, large SW companies with internationally distributed teams are not really a thing, it's mostly local small and medium enterprises where the whole company teams are under the same roof. Not every SW employer is a large multinational.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      Sure but you’re overloading the term RTO. You’re describing a single-office environment. There are real benefits to that, probably. And also to being small. But “RTO” is not only that. RTO can be part of it but what you describe also requires eschewing offshoring and embracing a homogeneous culture. That’s a much different conversation.
mulmen 2y ago
> I think it's genuinely good for us to have human contact throughout the day. I like to choose who I have human contact with. You have no right to put people in a room against their will just to satisfy the shortcomings in your own life. I’m an engineer, not a surrogate. I have friends, going to the office just cuts into my personal time. Your coworkers are not your friends and your job is not a substitute for a social life.

Rinzler89 2y ago

>the constant taps on the shoulder To me that is way more tolerable than the constant pinging in chats and putting my headset ON & OFF to jump on calls several times per day. Hearing the ringtone of Teams/Slack today still gives me PTSD. A situation that can be figured out by a 5 minute face to face talk in person can end up as a 30+ minute back and fourth in the chat. You walk away from your computer for a second and you see 80+ missed texts in 3 Slack channels. The more people in the chat rooms, the worse it gets, as while one person is writing a long sentence explaining something, another is writing a long sentence asking about the thing that other person is just about to explain leading a lot of wasted time and effort with communication. The worse part is those super long bank-and-fourths in the chat rooms then become "the documentation". Why did you break this? Didn't you know we changed X because of Y? It was discussed in the group Slack yesterday. Didn't you read it[the 100+ message papyrus]? I much prefer WFH, but it can also be absolute hell, keeping up with the bombardment of chats that remote sync cooperation leads to. In my new job I'm mostly in the office and it's much less stressful.

mulmen 2y ago
RTO is not synonymous with a single-site team. The benefits you describe are impossible to realize for any company with distributed offices.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  > The benefits you describe are impossible to realize for any company with distributed offices. Oh definitely, but where I live in this small European country, large SW companies with internationally distributed teams are not really a thing, it's mostly local small and medium enterprises where the whole company teams are under the same roof. Not every SW employer is a large multinational.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    Sure but you’re overloading the term RTO. You’re describing a single-office environment. There are real benefits to that, probably. And also to being small. But “RTO” is not only that. RTO can be part of it but what you describe also requires eschewing offshoring and embracing a homogeneous culture. That’s a much different conversation.

mulmen 2y ago

> I think it's genuinely good for us to have human contact throughout the day. I like to choose who I have human contact with. You have no right to put people in a room against their will just to satisfy the shortcomings in your own life. I’m an engineer, not a surrogate. I have friends, going to the office just cuts into my personal time. Your coworkers are not your friends and your job is not a substitute for a social life.