801–810 of 830 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Noise canceling headphones don't do anything against human voices, which is the noise problem in open offices.
Get some of the muffler things for building sites. One of my previous workspaces had a couple of these siting around.
Nope. We're all scattered over multiple teams where most of the people in that team are working directly for the client. A client that is stationed in a completely different country. Out of all the people the manager wants to see in the office only one person is someone I directly work with. The rest of the people from my team I will most likely never see in person, since they live abroad.
So, the value proposition for coming to the office is something like:
1) Lose an hour of sleep
2) Waste nearly two hours trying to commute using public transportation OR half of my daily wage by using taxi/Uber to save an hour of commute time
3) Sit in the open space office for 8 hours having no privacy whatsoever and being distracted by people who I do not even work with
4) Do all my work with a team who is stationed in an another country anyway, so I need to constantly use MS Teams or something similar to communicate
5) Spend significantly more on food (can't really cook for myself in the office) or have to go through the mess of packaging my own food (and never really have it as fresh as I want)
If I agree to come to the office on the regular I will do the same stuff I do at home, except I will spend more of my own time and money to do so. And all of that for what, some random conversations over coffee? Spending time with people I am not sure I want to be friends with? Pretending I will collaborate with that one other person more effectively? It makes no sense.
If they want me in the office they better give me a really good reason to do so. Reimbursement of time and money lost commuting would be a good start.
One of the managers started to really push the come back to the office. He even made some arrangements for our project to have a separate place in the building where only people who work for this particular project can sit. We have about 20 people working for the same client. Sound like a good idea, doesn't it? Nope. We're all scattered over multiple teams where most of the people in that team are working directly fo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yeah for sure I am not disputing that this is the way that the system works - the whole thing rests on the compromise point between the employer's margin and the employee's wage. Both need each other to some degree and so a compromise is reached which is the market value of labour. That said, other models of system are available - worker coops and other models of employee-owned business can and do exist. They have…
Make it a worker-owned coop; the productive worker still has to create more value than they get paid unless someone else is continually putting money into the coop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to hop on the train of criticism, but there are plenty of other ways to invest yourself in your career other than being a social butterfly around the coffee pot. Admittedly I'm a bit socially awkward and fully aware of my flaws, but that's part of the reason I enjoy terminal work in the first place. Commits and Slack are about as social as I was in the office, anyway and when I was social, people wished I would k…
Maybe I have some sort of Office-PTSD or something, but I make it very clear to my coworkers that we can be friendly, but we aren't friends. You don't need my cellphone number, we don't need to go grab drinks after work, etc.. I've just noticed that if you turn your back for a second, then out come the wolves. Less coffee pot talk the better as far as I am concerned. I have my friends and life outside of work, and I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk. Sorry to be flippant, but to me this is one of the worst parts of office life summed up in one statement. The bar for other people to carelessly interrupt you can be unbelievably low sometimes.
Agreed. I am a fairly high level engineer. People would come over to my desk all the time to either discuss work or shoot the shit. However I still have my own work to do. Most of the questions they came to me for are a short slack message. I’d often literally have a queue at my desk of people. I’d also be constantly running between meetings. Having me work from home is better for everyone who deals with me. I’m more…
> I'm more reachable all the time
Does not compute.
You complain of people interrupting you, but you argue that WFH enabled you to be interrupted more, all the time.
Before the pandemic and surge of remote work, a lot of us complained not just about going to the office, but that the office itself was pretty crappy. The open plan creates an environment of high distraction, low privacy, and physical discomfort. Whether or not people wanted to listen to music or anything for hours at a time, they were pushed to do it just to drown out a constant background noise of words that are hi…
I find communication over messenger apps at least as distracting as the office.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I am a fairly high level engineer. People would come over to my desk all the time to either discuss work or shoot the shit. However I still have my own work to do. Most of the questions they came to me for are a short slack message. I’d often literally have a queue at my desk of people. I’d also be constantly running between meetings. Having me work from home is better for everyone who deals with me. I’m more…
> People would come over to my desk all the time to either discuss work or shoot the shit. > I'm more reachable all the time Does not compute. You complain of people interrupting you, but you argue that WFH enabled you to be interrupted more, all the time.
I also like to move conversations to group channels so that even more people benefit from the conversation. It really is a force multiplier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not 1:1 for other reasons either besides just pay, like you don't have to pay anything for college tuition in Germany and they have universal healthcare, so you pay a ton less for healthcare expenses also, so that helps close the gap for lesser pay (also, you're working 30% less hours on average, so you have more free time to pursue other things, including a part time job if you really need to). $400/month of my…
You seem like a rational person. Why haven't you moved to Germany?
Personally Canada appeals to me more and I might move there at some point (or at least closer to the Canadian border), but I can still acknowledge there being good things about Germany while having reasons not to move there myself. I do think I should probably move somewhere with universal healthcare before I get too old as I will probably have enough health problems that would either bankrupt me or wipe out my retirement if I stayed in the US, like has happened to several of my family and friends.