5 ms·
Five days a week in the office? Forget it
- debo_ 2y agoI'm sort of amazed at this point that these RTO position articles are still so popular. How much more can we say about this?
- indoordin0saur 2y agoThe WFH crowd has plenty of time to write think pieces.
- benterix 2y agoBecause it' still a highly contentious issue. It's as if you asked a hundred years ago, "Why are these free Saturday/40hour-work week so popular"? It is an enormous power struggle, and it can only be won through determination.
- nicholasbraker 2y agoAnd it also seems to be a very US focussed thing. Which is to say that here in Holland WFH is popular too, but it seems to be less of an issue (and less of a hill to die on for some, as it seems in the US). Of course there are differences. It depends on what kind of work you do, how far your office is from your home, how much value you put on "coffee corner banter". This nuance is lacking from most articles I read on this subject. I work for a professional service firm (disclaimer: none of the big 4 or resellers etc. )and every time this subject comes up with candidates I say: 1. It depends on the customer, but you follow their rules. 2. In practice it's always possible to WFH a few days a week, but never assume this. 3. The more senior you become, the more human interaction and interpersonal skills are key. I am not convinced any Teams/Zoom/Webex (pick your poison) screen can replace this. 4. We try to get our employees a job less than a 1 hour commute from home. Again, this is Holland: a tiny piece of mostly reclaimed land Summary: it depends on role, customer and assignment. We never have someone leave because they're unhappy with the WFH policy, we do have some candidates that didn't sign with us due to this policy, but that's perfectly fine. It's a free marketplace and IT staff is in high demand, so if you're qualified, there's a ways work.
- amelius 2y agoThe solution is to own a part of your company. Suddenly you'll love to be 5+ days in the office even if you're in a financially worse situation.
- jowdones 2y agoI bought one and only one Amazon share. Hence as per your "solution", I own part of the company. Explain how that makes me love 5+ days in the office. Btw, it's so cool how you put that +. Not just 5 weekdays, but also weekends.
- colonelspace 2y agoI own 33% of my company. I can't say I "love" the idea of having an office, let alone spending more than five days a week in one.
- culopatin 2y agoAre you talking about a 5 people company where those people are your friends?
- SunlitCat 2y agoI dunno, the article seems a bit biased towards out of office working, although it raises a few good points. Something I wonder about, if anyone has already calculated the value of the informal "water cooler chat" which is missing at working from home scenarios. I mean, that's company time during which one isn't working, but the inevitable coworker bonding that happens can be extremely valuable, as stronger connections with colleagues can make one more engaged, collaborative, and productive in the long run.
- yugnioup 2y agoThis feels a bit like rose tinted glasses. It also removes petty sleights, sexual harassment, and political maneuvering. The problem is when you are wfh and there are still people in the office who get more visibility from management simply by being in eye sight.
- hamandcheese 2y ago> It also removes petty sleights, sexual harassment, and political maneuvering. All of these things can and do happen virtually.
- Comma2976 2y agoI'm doing my part! Would you like to know more?
- selimthegrim 2y agoWell, I don’t think anybody in Starship Troopers looked like they were being sexually harassed…
- jajko 2y agoDepends on the company and atmosphere it fosters. In our, watercooler/kitchenette is just empty chat, very rarely long term beneficial to company unless you meet just the person you need right now, but then they don't sit far in any case. One thing that office is irreplaceable in (again, depending on company and atmosphere) is getting some stuff done from people not directly on projects but with crucial responsibilities/access. If I am physically there, I just go to their desk, and either sit behind them till they have time or we agree to do it within 1 or 2 hours. Now I am few months fully at home due to breaking both legs while paragliding, and some of those folks take 2 weeks of chasing, meetings etc. to get their 5-minute max shit done. While 50-folks project is blocked by them. Maddening.
- Animats 2y agoI still want to know if companies that can get out of their office leases still want employees to be in the office. Amazon tends to own real estate outright, but many companies don't.
- ghaff 2y agoEven long term commercial leases do expire. A lot of companies aren’t renewing underutilized and maybe getting smaller/cheaper space to replace it—or not.
- schnebbau 2y agoI do half the work I did when I was in-office. Of course I don't want to go back!
- mapontosevenths 2y agoBy work do you mean the 4 hours a day of utterly valueless uncompensated time commuting to and from, and preparing for my long day sharing a toilet with people who don't believe in deodorant or vaccines? If so you're right. I do less work. I do have to sacrifice the super valuable experience of joining zoom calls from a loud non-private cubicle to appease a middle managers ego and artificially inflate the local real estate market though.
- alkonaut 2y agoPeople seem to always circle back to arguments about whether wfh is better/worse for productivity and so on. But that potential cost/benefit is surely drowned by the extra cost of paying people to work in an office. If productivity is +/-10 or 20% (which would be huge) between office and wfh but the additional comp is 50% to get someone to work 100% in office then the calculus is still simple.
- earnesti 2y agoAs a small employer in European country, I'm mostly worried about the problem cases. What if someone gets seriously difficult? Like stops working at all. Firing in US is much cheaper and legally easier than in Europe, there I would have less to worry about. Also one time we had remote employee, that was committing fraud towards the customers.
- alkonaut 2y agoIf someone doesn’t work at all and you are worried about not noticing I think there is some organizational issue. What in this scenario makes it easier to know if this person is working when they are in the office?
- earnesti 2y agoI didn't say about not noticing.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoIt's much harder to get away with avoidant behavior in-person than remotely. I think you are twisting yourself into a knot to avoid admitting this point.
- alkonaut 2y agoI was only considering pure solo desk work like software development now. But anything with visible individual output should follow the same pattern for observability. Obviously in other lines of work it can be different. But if I wanted to not work (say, work 50% on my personal project during office hours) then I’d probably prefer trying that stunt in the office. Because in an office no one questions whether you work (people confuse ass-in-seat with work) while if I’m working from home I know I’m only measured on my output.
- Devasta 2y agoMost office workers probably only need 5 days a year.
- yedava 2y agoThe framing around productivity misses a huge area - productivity of life. The less time that is wasted in office, the more time is available to do things that make life worth living. Any argument for return to office should justify why people are expected to waste away their lives.
- earnesti 2y agoThe whole point of work is that someone pays you money, so you donate your time. How exactly and what amount of time, that is the contract you negotiate with your employer. Office time is just one negotiation point. Personally I would never work as an employee to begin with, unless I were in serious financial distress. I would rather be a poor entrepreneur/freelancer than wealthy salaried employee. And office isn't really the factor, but other things, like freedom. But people have different preferences.
- hypeatei 2y agoCommutes usually aren't paid.
- taytus 2y agoThey are priced in. Co A offers $X Co B offers $Y You take whatever makes sense to you.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- danjl 2y agoThe best things about WFH are hard to quantify, like the best things in life. You are more relaxed, with lower stress, more control of your time, less probability of auto accidents commuting, ... These are rarely mentioned because they're hard to quantify, but as someone who's been working from home for multiple decades, they are far more important for my happiness and productivity.
- 2y ago
- Desafinado 2y agoI have to admit, since the pandemic started the entire conversation around WFH has centered on economics and efficiency, and I've found that very disheartening. When my company went remote I was suddenly cut off from a handful of friends who I haven't spoken with in four years now. I'm bored and socially disengaged, lacking friendship and largely isolated to my wife and children. Nobody ever talks about things like this, only what's the most 'productive', which I think is a glaring mark on how people operate and think. There is now an entire class of people who are being excluded from social camaraderie because the majority is happy working in pajamas. All of that being said, now that my kids are in school I've realized that WFH is far more convenient. But can we please stop pretending that the lifestyle is the dream it's made out to be? If companies aren't offering opportunity for social engagement it can be a real problem.
- ghaff 2y agoI’m not sure what social engagement companies can/should offer to remote workers aside from the occasional offsite. At least to my way of thinking, Zoom happy hours weren’t worth a lot.
- sabarn01 2y agoIt also makes switching jobs lower cost. If I just change where I log in and I don't know anyone I work with who cares.
- stevenAthompson 2y agoAdults are supposed to have friends outside of their homes who they do not work with and are not related to. The problem isn't with WFH, it's with society.
- Desafinado 2y agoThe problem with this logic is that our working conditions are a part of society, and in the modern age are a major source of our well being or lack thereof. So if everyone's suddenly trapped in their basement that's just yet another problem with modern society that we now have to deal with. What I find more disturbing is that in my company's case the result of the pandemic seemed to be random and based on nothing but financial logic. My department supported a hybrid situation almost entirely but the powers that be didn't care, they did the easiest thing. Before the pandemic we couldn't get one day a week remote because it was a 'security risk'.
- indoordin0saur 2y ago> Once more, companies want butts in seats — even though there's no legitimate business reason for many employees to return to the office. If there were no legitimate business reason they wouldn't do it since it costs them a great deal to do so. And if businesses are acting irrationally? There are plenty of companies who are not returning to office, so we'll certainly see them out compete and displace the office-based businesses.
- piva00 2y ago> And if businesses are acting irrationally? That seems to be the most plausible answer. Businesses are led by people and acting irrationally even when not financially beneficial isn't out of the realm of reality. Businesses in the same industry already suffer from a herd mentality, doing the opposite thing that others are doing is risky, most leaders will choose less risk. It becomes dominoes, one leader from a benchmark company makes a hard to quantify wrong decision, another will follow, the side-effects will take a few years to crop up and by then almost the whole industry will have followed suit.
- pintxo 2y agoYou mean like open plan offices?
- atmavatar 2y agoAlso overtime. We have over a century of evidence that requiring employees work > 40h/week for long periods of time is a net loss in productivity compared to working fewer hours. That's why we have a standard 40 hours per workweek and a concept of overtime in the first place. However, there's always going to be a large cohort of management that thinks their employees are different so they can squeeze out more hours, so we get BS like trying to convince employees they're part of a family they need to sacrifice for and (unfortunately successful) lobbying for legal overtime exemptions across certain jobs.
- jedberg 2y agoI think you're not accounting for momentum. Amazon can act irrationally for decades before they get out-competed.
- axegon_ 2y agoI have a slightly different take: office is a good thing for some people. I am not wildly sociable. If anything I'm borderline unapproachable if you just randomly walk up to me on the street and start talking to me. When COVID hit and we were all sent home, I had been working at that job for 8 years and I had automated pretty much everything in my day to day work - even the most busy days, I could get everything I had to do in less than 2 hours so all of a sudden, I was all day in my apartment, which is spacious and with views that are second to none in my city. The following 8 months up until I had to quit were the best time of my life. I had the time to read hundreds of books, work on personal projects, get in the best shape I've ever been by a long shot, got a dog. It was absolutely awesome. But time moved on and the few people I was close to prior to that and I just drifted apart and while we were together basically on daily basis before covid, now we call each other on birthdays at best. We see each other twice a year tops: They all moved on with their lives, got married, had children, etc. I did none of that for a million and one reasons and because I worked from home 100%, ultimately completely lost my social life. And now that I can(and actively am) going back to an office, I truly feel happy: despite still not being the most social creature, at least I see people and get to talk to someone. Although I do have to admit - working at a company where literally everyone is cool and down to earth certainly makes it easy. If that were at my old job, there's a good chance I would have become very aggressive and extremely likely violent towards several individuals.
- bratao 2y agoThanks for sharing it. This is something that I noticed. Office Working and University are very good opportunities to become more social and have a dosis of interaction. Choosing their own hobbies while sounds easy, is something that we keeping postponing.
- stevenAthompson 2y agoToo many peoples social and professional lives are entwined. They aren't meant to be the same thing. Have you heard of the phrase "never mix business with pleasure"? It isn't about sexual harassment policies. It's general life advice, meant to save you from becoming a recluse who loses all of his friends if he loses his job or whose work suffers because he's paying attention to something other than the bottom line. For your own mental health, I'd work on making some friends outside of the office. No matter HOW cool they are at the office.
- whydoineedthis 2y agoI miss the office A LOT. Remote pays more, otherwise I would volunteer my butt easily.
- sabarn01 2y agoI hate working at home. I have 20 years of going into an office. I need the separation or I just work ineffectively for a lot longer. I'm Dyslexic and choose teams that didn't work remote because I don't like Async communication. For lots of people the structure of going into work makes them more effective. All these think pieces should just stop and let people vote with their feet.
- EasyMark 2y agoThat’s great! You won’t find a single person who likes to WFH who wants to stop you from going to the office. The rest of us like to keep the movement alive and keep people thinking about how productive some people are when they don’t have to spend 2 hours a day risking their lives in a commute and contributing even more to global warming for no real increase in productivity from them, and for some an actual decline in productivity and severe reduction in quality of life.
- nunez 2y agoLook. I like working in an office. WFH has been killing me. But I completely understand how WFH makes my colleagues lives so much easier, especially with kids. Can we just do the hybrid thing and call it a day? Or give people optionality on whether they want to go into the office or not?
- bb88 2y ago> I hear that people in Amazon offices now Zoom from their cubicles instead of their homes. What a culture! This is true of a lot of companies, particularly those with offices distributed across America and the world(e.g. you work in Houston, but your boss is in NYC). Financial institutions typically fit this bill.