Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do so many people want us back in the office?

paulitaylor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 624 posts

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#121

Post by voisin »

Nursie wrote: post #101
weeksie wrote: post #28

The long term shakeout of this will be that everybody realizes that yes, we need offices. They are spaces literally built for working. The required footprint will be smaller, people won't need to be in the office for absolutely everything, the demand for square footage of commercial real estate will decrease a bit—good news for cities who don't build b/c they can convert excess commercial inventory to residential. Bu…

I think we'll find that not every company does need an office, or the expense of an office. IMHO now is probably a good time to invest in meeting-place providers like Regus.

Regus’ parent company just filed for creditor protection.

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#122

Post by ketzu »

balfirevic wrote: post #94
ketzu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I haven't considered alternatives between a corporate office and a home office. Could you list some? I am fairy uncreative about these things, unfortunately :/

Coworking space or a small private office that's separate from your house/aparment.

Thank you for the ideas, I'll have something to think about now

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#123

Post by andi999 »

Nursie wrote: post #45
ketzu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number one reason for me is the separation of work and private life. It's so much easier to keep work from creeping into my private life when it happens in a totally different place. I also miss the social interactions, discussion with colleagues is much easier in person. Lastly, I hope it will reduce the amount of video conferences that crept up considerably. edit: Not OP obviously. edit2: Note: Just to make sure, I…

At 5.30 I reboot my workstation from linux into windows. Separation complete :)

AM or PM?

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#124

Post by x87678r »

My commute is 20 minutes on an uncrowded ferry, and my home office is a tiny desk in my daughter's bedroom while she works on the other side on school stuff.

My colleague has a massive house with a pool tennis court and so much space he has literally 3 never-used bedrooms. His wife looks after kids who are at school most of the day again. His commute is 2 hours each way.

People are talking home vs office people are coming from very different comparisons.

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#125

Post by nonbirithm »

ckdarby wrote: post #8
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #6

I don't care about "us" going back to the office but I definitely want to go back to the office and I am far from alone in this.

Can you discuss why you want to go back to the office?

Not the OP. In my case:

- I get far too distracted by my apartment. The things I hung up on my wall to give myself a sense of personality are the things that I will be distracted by if I have my work laptop open.

- I want a clear separation between being at work and being at home. Otherwise I will make excuses that because I happen to be at home I can do X or Y without consequence. At home I have my personal computer and television within walking distance at all times. By being in the office I deliberately prevent myself from having those options.

- My job requires me to use a specific model of laptop for remote work. The laptop itself is not an ideal environment for getting things done. It is a Lenovo-era ThinkPad with the chiclet keys and they are awful to type on. I have other hardware in my room to plug in, but on top of that I have to RDP to my machine in order to access corpnet things, and the latency is plainly awful. It takes several minutes to just launch it and render the entire desktop completely, control key combinations will frequently not register because of the latency, I'm unable to use my laptop's microphone half the time over RDP, and there are frequent disconnections. And if I'm working at home, all of these annoyances will just pile on top of each other and make me lose motivation to do work entirely.

- On top of that my access credentials expired while I was taking shelter early on, so to use my work laptop from home at that point I had no choice but to go to the office to get them unblocked. I went in and immediately wondered why I hadn't been working from there in months. It was night and day.

I got certified to go into the office as "essential staff," because for me being in the office is what determines if I am productive at all or not. In fact the amount of work that ended up piling up because I was unable to work effectively anymore caused an anxiety episode that I had to take off a few months for. It truly felt like I had been pushed into a corner. Thankfully my team was understanding, it being a devastating pandemic and all.

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#126

Post by alexbanks »

weeksie wrote: post #28

The long term shakeout of this will be that everybody realizes that yes, we need offices. They are spaces literally built for working. The required footprint will be smaller, people won't need to be in the office for absolutely everything, the demand for square footage of commercial real estate will decrease a bit—good news for cities who don't build b/c they can convert excess commercial inventory to residential. Bu…

> The long term shakeout of this will be that everybody realizes that yes, we need offices.

You said this, and then wrote the rest of your post about the opposite? Why do you think we'll need offices?

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#127

Post by Freak_NL »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #47
Nursie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why try to support that, instead of allow the economy to adapt? I spent £180 per week on transport before this, and another £50+ on coffee and meals. At the end of the year I will have saved enough to get my bathroom refitted, benefitting local tradespeople. I also go out and buy coffee and food locally more often. The spending won't be lost, it'll change. And if we're lucky it'll change in a way that spreads the…

I think that viewpoint definitely does have some validity, but in this case I think rests quite heavily on the idea that post-covid will closely resemble the current way people do things. Clearly there will be some significant change, but I'm sure it will be a balance between what we had and how things are now. Once that happens, we don't really want to have lots of businesses to have gone bankrupt. At least not the…

Encouraging people to commute just so the coffee joint near the office can survive is economically and ethically disproportional. Commuting is, for most people and at least for a large part of the commute, a waste of time.

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#128

Post by alexbanks »

mattlondon wrote: post #76
weeksie wrote: post #28

The long term shakeout of this will be that everybody realizes that yes, we need offices. They are spaces literally built for working. The required footprint will be smaller, people won't need to be in the office for absolutely everything, the demand for square footage of commercial real estate will decrease a bit—good news for cities who don't build b/c they can convert excess commercial inventory to residential. Bu…

I am not so sure productivity has definitely improved. I agree there was a good head of steam where people were able to quietly and independently work through their "list" of stuff they wanted to do for ages but never had the chance to etc, or whatever had previously been planned out. Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to…

I think it's more that the ability to work remotely has been unlocked for pretty much every business that operates online (which, as I type it, sounds kind of crazy that it didn't already work that way).

At the very least, for the most part, businesses won't forget that possibility, even if they don't rely on it heavily post-pandemic. We've removed a significant blocker, that doesn't necessarily mean that we've reinvented the office dynamic or anything like that, but we've at least opened up a new channel for some businesses that didn't have it before, which IMO is objective improvement.

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#129

Post by rootusrootus »

ckdarby wrote: post #8
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #6

I don't care about "us" going back to the office but I definitely want to go back to the office and I am far from alone in this.

Can you discuss why you want to go back to the office?

Not OP but I will throw in my 2 cents...

1. Work/life separation. Even with a separate computer, getting it shut away and Slack gone is easier said than done. Now everyone knows you're probably around somewhere and will read their e-mail or see their Slack message, even early in the morning or later in the afternoon.

1b. I work better in a dedicated environment. My home office has all kinda of other distractions. Homework from my OMSCS classes beckons to be done, personal projects, not to mention kids. The psychological difference of being in a dedicated workspace is significant.

2. Social connections. There are many people I was friendly with but only at the office. Now I only interact with people on my own team or in closely related teams when we are working on some project that overlaps. My 'work world' has shrunk dramatically.

3. Zoom. Just make it stop. My company has dedicated Thursday to be 'no meeting day' but it hasn't really stuck yet. I'm brought onto way more calls now than I ever was when we were in the office. It feels like Zoom has become the substitute for the random communications we used to have, except instead of taking 5-10 minutes everyone schedules 30-60 minutes at a time. And they always find a way to use up every minute plus 2 or 3 after the end time.

I don't actually want to go back full time. I am thinking seriously of selling my Model 3 because having a 60K depreciating asset in the garage that only gets driven a couple hundred miles a month is not the best use of my money. But when the office opens back up eventually, I do think I'll try to spend at least one day a week there. Maybe two.

Re: Why do so many people want us back in the office?

#130

Post by watwut »

mattlondon wrote: post #76
weeksie wrote: post #28

The long term shakeout of this will be that everybody realizes that yes, we need offices. They are spaces literally built for working. The required footprint will be smaller, people won't need to be in the office for absolutely everything, the demand for square footage of commercial real estate will decrease a bit—good news for cities who don't build b/c they can convert excess commercial inventory to residential. Bu…

I am not so sure productivity has definitely improved. I agree there was a good head of steam where people were able to quietly and independently work through their "list" of stuff they wanted to do for ages but never had the chance to etc, or whatever had previously been planned out. Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to…

The same here. In addition, I see social problems accumulate slowly and the team seems to be failing apart. Interpersonal issues are nit solved until they boil in the home office, in person people were more eager to speak up about issues faster and more often.
Post reply on HN