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

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

#261

Post by BeetleB »

SergeAx wrote: post #221

1. WFH is not for everyone. There are people with kids and no dedicated workplace at home. There are people with low motivation and self-control, and office routine just helps them to keep up. 2. You can't mix WFH with work in office. It's either one or the other. If you have a single employee working remotely - you should transform all the processes to WFH-style. 3. WFH shifts most of the burden onto management. Man…

> WFH shifts most of the burden onto management. Managers should put 120-150% of effort in planning, communication, documentation and checking.

I don't understand the connection between the first and second statements. Can you clarify? How does WFH put more burden on management?

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

#262

Post by m0zg »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #256
m0zg wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do what we did in some distributed teams at Google: just have a permanent "call" going with everyone normally muted. When someone would like to receive attention, they unmute and speak. It's not as good as walking up to someone's desk, but it's not as bad as having to schedule a call in advance.

This sounds miserable. What did you do for periods of deep work?

People used it very sparingly. It's not at all different from working in an open plan office. If anything it's better, as you can drop off from the call if you don't want to be disturbed. No such luxury in the office. And of course this only works with Google's usual "family sized" teams of 5-7 people.

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

#263

Post by Shivetya »

tima11234 wrote: post #192
gordaco wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree. I miss my old routine too. I even have a dedicated office of sorts, and working from home is comfortable and convenient to me. But... I miss the commute. The bus I used to take wasn't particularly uncrowded, but I always managed to get a seat (thanks to having a particularly early schedule) and I used to take the opportunity to read (since each trip took about 40-45 minutes, that's about 1h30m of readi…

People need to adapt. Just because you can't seem to figure out how to read a book now or listen to pod casts because you only did those things when forced to commute, isn't a good argument against WFH.

I think the biggest mistake people not used to WFH make is they drop too much of their routine. Of course I am not talking about the commute but I refer to simple events from taking a shower each morning to dressing for work. All these rituals are important and should only be discarded where its not viable.

I even make sure to my favorite fast food breakfast once a week and coffee twice a week. Fortunately for me that is but a ten minute drive one way to the closest place to fill that requirement but it fulfills the ritual.

One item to remember to add in to that time and money savings of your commute, you safety and security has gone up as well

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

#264

Post by danbolt »

faster wrote: post #223

When I was building back end software, I could and did work from anywhere. I enjoyed working in the same space with my team, but not all day and not every day. And it wasn't necessary except maybe once or twice per quarter. Now I work on firmware, and I have about $6000 of test equipment that is required to do my job, as well as multiple fragile circuit boards, some that I'm afraid to touch because some of the rework…

I've noticed the a similar thing working with game console devkits. I can get most of my work done remotely, but due to the streaming/latency required it feels slower. I feel like for certain performance-sensitive tasks I'd need a special day in front of the hardware to test things.

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

#265

Post by m0zg »

m-ee wrote: post #252
m0zg wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do what we did in some distributed teams at Google: just have a permanent "call" going with everyone normally muted. When someone would like to receive attention, they unmute and speak. It's not as good as walking up to someone's desk, but it's not as bad as having to schedule a call in advance.

With hardware there's really no substitute for having a stocked lab and good technician in the building. A broken blue wire or fried chip could mean me losing an hour to a day of productivity depending on whether I have parts on hand and how difficult the rework is. In the office it could be fixed before I had time to grab coffee.

As an EE I know what you're talking about. But office won't be an option until November 4th. /s

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

#266

Post by edoceo »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #256
m0zg wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do what we did in some distributed teams at Google: just have a permanent "call" going with everyone normally muted. When someone would like to receive attention, they unmute and speak. It's not as good as walking up to someone's desk, but it's not as bad as having to schedule a call in advance.

This sounds miserable. What did you do for periods of deep work?

My team has a similar tool. So, everyone is in the room, muted and no-volume. So, if someone needs my attention they can send a bell but when my audio is off its only a visual bell, so it won't interrupt the deep work. And one can always exit the channel if needed - which is shown in status, so folks know your DND or not available.

But, one can monitor the channel so it behaves like a water cooler too. And up-scales to video and screen share super fast. (Faster than other tools) It's really quite flexible.

We've been using this pattern for about 60 months. We all (6 humans) seem to like it OK.

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

#267

Post by dijit »

danbolt wrote: post #264
faster wrote: post #223

When I was building back end software, I could and did work from anywhere. I enjoyed working in the same space with my team, but not all day and not every day. And it wasn't necessary except maybe once or twice per quarter. Now I work on firmware, and I have about $6000 of test equipment that is required to do my job, as well as multiple fragile circuit boards, some that I'm afraid to touch because some of the rework…

I've noticed the a similar thing working with game console devkits. I can get most of my work done remotely, but due to the streaming/latency required it feels slower. I feel like for certain performance-sensitive tasks I'd need a special day in front of the hardware to test things.

For sure this is true, my girlfriend is QC at a major game company and watching her work from home is _painful_. Though Citrix is better than Parsec, and both are far better than Remote Desktop (in a huge way).

I have been pushing for Stadia as a primary testing platform, but the backend is quite painful to use (please don't hurt me google, I know I signed an anti-disparagement agreement, but your backend is really inflexible).

But I think this is the 'old way of working', we're so fearful of losing devkits (and the software on them) that we keep them in the office, but that's not realistically much safer really.

As a sidenote though: it's quite fun to see the game working on a tiny little MacBook.

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

#268

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #259
ghaff wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, there are only 2 costs that matter. On the one side you have the commute--both in time and money. On the other side is whether the place you'd be living in otherwise is suitable for long-term WFH or if you have to spend more money for another bedroom or whatever. So, if you already have a dedicated office in an exurban house (as I do), not commuting--which I rarely did anyway--is a cost savings. As someone wh…

Those minor costs can still add up. Depending on your setup and location you could easily be spending 30+c/h on electricity when working from home. Extra cooling, lighting, possibly multiple PC’s etc. At ~2,000 hours a year you’re talking an extra ~600$/per year after tax. On the other hand it’s also much cheaper to cook at home. PS: My preference is to live close enough to walk to the office, but that doesn’t really…

[deleted]

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

#269

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

Retric wrote: post #259
ghaff wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, there are only 2 costs that matter. On the one side you have the commute--both in time and money. On the other side is whether the place you'd be living in otherwise is suitable for long-term WFH or if you have to spend more money for another bedroom or whatever. So, if you already have a dedicated office in an exurban house (as I do), not commuting--which I rarely did anyway--is a cost savings. As someone wh…

Those minor costs can still add up. Depending on your setup and location you could easily be spending 30+c/h on electricity when working from home. Extra cooling, lighting, possibly multiple PC’s etc. At ~2,000 hours a year you’re talking an extra ~600$/per year after tax. On the other hand it’s also much cheaper to cook at home. PS: My preference is to live close enough to walk to the office, but that doesn’t really…

A couple years ago, I had to move bare metal servers to my home to continue my job working at a VR technology startup, who had just decided to forgo their offices.

I took on an extra $150-$200 in power expenses per month, and it was absolutely treacherous trying to get reimbursed for this. The company never considered the costs they were funneling into the employees - apparently - until people started to complain.

I fear most people were put into similar situations - perhaps not fiscally, but in a procedural sense - during this most recent mass WFH migration.

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

#270

Post by viraptor »

Retric wrote: post #259
ghaff wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, there are only 2 costs that matter. On the one side you have the commute--both in time and money. On the other side is whether the place you'd be living in otherwise is suitable for long-term WFH or if you have to spend more money for another bedroom or whatever. So, if you already have a dedicated office in an exurban house (as I do), not commuting--which I rarely did anyway--is a cost savings. As someone wh…

Those minor costs can still add up. Depending on your setup and location you could easily be spending 30+c/h on electricity when working from home. Extra cooling, lighting, possibly multiple PC’s etc. At ~2,000 hours a year you’re talking an extra ~600$/per year after tax. On the other hand it’s also much cheaper to cook at home. PS: My preference is to live close enough to walk to the office, but that doesn’t really…

Savings also add up, so everyone's balance will land somewhere different depending on their lifestyle. Commute has a cost, buying lunch has a cost, less sleep has a cost, wearing shoes more often has a cost, etc...

(I expect another one of the "surprising industry suffering from covid" articles at some point about lack of footwear sales)

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