521–530 of 830 posts
I am aware of precisely zero software development companies in London that work from the office in the normal way that almost everyone did in 2019.
I can either do Zoom calls from home, or Zoom calls from the office. Barely anyone is there.
That's not WFO. That's just a waste of time, worst of both worlds.
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Came exactly here to say this. Because of WFH im able to have a awesome job and see my family living in other countries and also my parents at home much more frequently now. If you want to work in an office you can do that it’s your choice. Many people also have young kids and two working parents making the WFH flexibility ideal. Lots of reasons for WFH exist but they don’t matter. If you do your job and the company…
The issue is that I don't just want to work from the office, I want to work from the office along with my coworkers. Sitting there alone is only marginally better than work from home. In the end we just need to self select into companies that follow our desired "work from" policies, it's just tough now since the pandemic made every company temporarily WFH so some workers need to swap as companies change back.
Don’t be upset when you have trouble finding talent unless you are paying out amazing salaries though.
This to me just gets into people trying to control other people. You have your preferences and thats fine but forcing it on others always causes problems.
If you start your job search with this requirement in mind though i don’t think people should have issues. I look for my jobs based on being listed as fully remote and the rest of the company being largely remote as well. As long as you aren’t at a company trying to force everyone back in the office I think its all good.
I do know my last company of size 1000+ has been trying to force people back slowly. 50% of my team left and now that they are pushing harder i am having people reach out to me every week about openings.
With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…
WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. That is different than someone who desires to work from an office or remotely out of personal preference. For instance, I may prefer to WFH because it makes my life more convenient, but I can also accept that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. Personally, I haven't see…
We're actually building a virtual office to make having these quick chats easier (gloo.chat). If you would want to try it out, or even just provide some feedback, that would be amazing given we just got started. Totally shameless plug.
I think a lot of this boils down to kids vs no kids. I really enjoyed working in the office when I didn't have kids. Hanging out with coworkers after work was pretty normal, and sometimes my wife would come along too. We're still good friends with a lot of my old coworkers. In fact, those are the people we hang out with now. But now that I have kids I'd rather spend time with them or on my hobbies with them or hangin…
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"The quiet guy who just likes listening to intelligent conversations and chiming in when they can" also misses the social interactions that happen by default in an office. Overhearing conversations about other tech stacks/problems, conversations about vacations or plans, conversations about random political/education/local/global events - and learning something from those conversations is what's missing for me. Switc…
Try coworking spaces? I'm 50/50 type of person, I want to be left alone when I need to concentrate, but I need someone to chat with once in a while. The best job I've ever had had flexible schedule, I could clock in and out at any time or not come in at all, just had to let the team know about my plans. But the best part of that job was that I could walk to the office. 0.5h walk is so different from 0.5h sitting in a…
Running group has helped, just hanging out with adults and overhearing conversations is nice - they're mostly running focused though.
My commute time was nice to just veg and listen to podcasts; it's weird how you have the same time in a day but don't ever just go sit in a chair and listen to a podcast for 30 minutes when that's what you did regularly for years.
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I worked out that for me, even accounting for energy bills and such, working from home full time would be equivalent to a 15% pay rise. And on top of that, I'd have 2 hours of extra free time every day. I can't understand the kind of person who wouldn't want that.
Totally.. and if you really miss the socializing in the office because of being young and alone, or fresh in a city (only reason why I could understand that): find a nice coworking space nearby and you can have most of the things the author seems to miss?
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Are you accomplishing anything during those 8 hours or do you sit in meetings all day listening to people qualify their existence? I changed employers because of this and sacrificed compensation to do so. That resulted in a quality of life improvement for me.
Definitely, and I absolutely love what I am doing. It's only that I really miss the whole communal and social aspect around it and feel few other people do.
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WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. That is different than someone who desires to work from an office or remotely out of personal preference. For instance, I may prefer to WFH because it makes my life more convenient, but I can also accept that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. Personally, I haven't see…
It's easier to be creative when you can bounce-off an idea with a coworker immediately, rather than wait for the Zoom meeting or wait for them to answer your Slack message. We're actually building a virtual office to make having these quick chats easier (gloo.chat). If you would want to try it out, or even just provide some feedback, that would be amazing given we just got started. Totally shameless plug.
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> improve housing policy so people can live closer to work Or, improve labor policy so work becomes a much smaller part of most people's lives.
Come on... people work far less than they ever did before, that should be pretty obvious if you just think about it. Further, tons of "work" is done with zero physical strain, lots of those "work" hours are the in-between stuff -- travel, meetings, calls, lunches -- meaning that actual hours laboring are even less. https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours
I can't wait until it is implemented across the whole world. England, Portugal, and other countries are at the forefront already.
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It might be a bit uncharacteristic, but it still doesn't change the fact saying commutes have to be a minimum of 30 minutes isn't true. Its not entirely out of the ordinary to have a Many people have commutes much less than 30 minutes. Maybe 30 minutes is an average, I'd probably agree average commutes are close to 45 minutes, but that's an average not a minimum . Those words have two very different meanings.
This probably depends on your local traffic environment in your city. Depending on the time of day and exact routing, 7 miles in southern california can take you 45 minutes or more. If you take the bus like I do you are in for closer to an hour.
> Now throw in minimum 0.5h + 0.5h commute or more realistically at least 1.5h total commuting time
This is what I'm responding to here. ihateolives is suggesting all commutes are a minimum of 0.5h each way, with 1.5h being a realistic figure. They make no mention about Southern California, they're talking about WFO in general. Would you agree that 1.5h commutes in general are realistic, or do you think that's pretty big hyperbole?
To me, 1.5h commutes are insane and are a massive outlier, and I live in one of the most sprawled out metro areas in the US.