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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?

#511

Post by amw-zero »

ghaff wrote: post #209
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commute time is a big thing here. People who have a 2 hour (one way) commute from hell from their massive house are super happy about this situation (shocking, I know). People who live in a small studio apartment 10 minutes from the office see it differently. What I expect this to result in is employers increasingly forcing people to WFH (either outright, or by making the offices horribly unattractive through hot-des…

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…

The keywords in what you said is “to me.”

For some reason, passionate work from home workers assume everyone likes what they like and everyone has the same situation as them.

I prefer going to the office. It’s not a moral failing, it’s just what I like. I think people should be free to do what they like.

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

#512

Post by kabacha »

ilyanep wrote: post #418

Who's going to pay for me to upsize my apartment so I can make a home office? Working from the same desk I use for my personal computer / gaming is really taking a toll on the ol' mental health? Also who's going to pay for my extra electricity use, etc? I also used to get free food at the office, would I be getting a raise to cover that as well? My commute was a pleasant 25m bike ride I could use to listen to podcast…

> Who's going to pay for me to upsize my apartment so I can make a home office?

Your company. Offices are pretty expensive, if the company goes remote they have extra capital to distribute during yearly review or whatever policy your company has.

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

#513

Post by warrenq »

josephg wrote: post #500
mkhpalm wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying but only with respect to global remote hires. I've seen the same attempts to fight it. But with local hires and optional wfh you just let that sort of problem work itself out. If the by-choice wfh person feels like they are left out its on them to do something about it. Its a personal problem not a team problem.

“You’re welcome to work from home, so long as you’re happy being systematically forgotten about in team decisions and passed over for promotions.” Yeah, that’d definitely work itself out; but it’s not what I would describe as a remote friendly workplace.

it's a choice you made. There are some inherent physical laws and human behaviors that you can't 'guideline' it away

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

#514

Post by sriku »

dlkf wrote: post #507
sriku wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these are what one might call "first order effects" - i.e. factors immediately associatable with work location. For prolonged situation, higher order effects are going to become more important. Here are some candidates - 1. Improvement in city air quality due to reduced commute - road and flight. 2. Erosion of "social credits" over time due to lower bandwidth interactions when remote. 3. Cumulative impact of…

> For prolonged situation, higher order effects are going to become more important. More important for what? And for whom? Someone who just shaved 100% off of their 70-minute commute probably doesn't give a fuck that their awareness of the "local geography" (see: trash-draped blackberry bushes on the highway shoulder) is "eroding." Some of your points are legit (particularly 6), but your dismissal of what you call "f…

"more important" than they are for short stints of the lockdown intervention.

I'm not dismissing first order effects. They are important. However higher order effects are where feedback cycles usually reside (ex: whats happening with climate change). So ignoring them is not a good idea even if during the initial phases it might seem like obsessing over details. In poorer countries, we can't ignore the risk of people dying due to hunger triggered by lockdown for covid19, for ex.

Public policy is hard and chock full of higher order effects. Common mental habits of super focused problem solvers don't help and can be downright bad to address such problems (ref: Dietrich Dorner's revealing book "The logic of failure").

Around my locality (Chennai, India) it is a very compelling argument that lack of awareness of local geography can be behind the dire water supply situation. For example, all localities with the name "pakkam" were originally in the vicinity of large water bodies .. nearly none of which are around today. Many localities were named after the dominant vegetation in the area, which you won't see any signs of today.

Yeah the commute is probably not going to help much because the commuters will likely be on their phones or cursing the increased traffic due to the need to be in offices. Feedback loops start that way.

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

#515

Post by selimthegrim »

ryandrake wrote: post #445
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but then you'd have to live in Minden, NV. From a guy who grew up in Gardnerville, NV, it's sure as hell not a place I'd ever move to - if you're looking for the nature and tax break of Nevada outside Tahoe or Incline is probably much nicer.

Is Gardnerville bad though? Never been there but the town seems to have really cheap land, some beautiful ranch properties, reasonable proximity to Tahoe/skiing, and zero income tax. I know culture is not measured in $/sq.ft but as a Californian paying out the nose in taxes for nothing, it seems to be a pretty decent location.

My dad used to have a house there - other than the Basque food I can’t imagine why I’d go back

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

#516

Post by m-p-3 »

mancerayder wrote: post #392

This is a complicated problem with different perspectives that no doubt will get muddled at some point. I'm confident at least the following is true: Some people have long commutes and wfh is great Others have small, expensive apartments they paid for shorter commutes and it's suffocating 40-50 hours a week Some people live in palaces and offices are a step down in comfort Some people are happy with the online intera…

> Some people have long commutes and wfh is great

This is exactly my situation, it takes me two hours of commute per day to get in the office, and the housing is prohibitively expensive the closer you get to it.

My quality of life is significantly improved by WFH, which leaves me with more quality time with my kids and to cook.

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

#517

Post by itronitron »

InertBrake wrote: post #431
iancmceachern wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And further complicated by the fact the the same person may want different things at different stages in their life. Ive evolved, like many in my workplace, to be on site in the office as needed, occasionally (we work in hardware). We've learned to do most everything from home, with a few on site activities as needed.

Many of the comments on discussions such as these give me the impression that people are not considering this when they write, or at the very least omitting it. I'm a college student graduating next year, and I just finished my first substantial internship ever in a remote arrangement. The past twelve weeks were my first real experience in my professional environment of interest, but I'm not even sure if I can call i…

Right now you can idealize what you anticipate the social interactions in a work setting will be because you haven't yet experienced it (for any extended period of time at least.)

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

#518

Post by erdos4d »

01100011 wrote: post #140

I would be in favor of a number of working arrangements, ranging from working in a Bay Area office full-time(least favorite) to working from home most-time in an area that provides me with the chance to buy a home and have a reasonable commute to a satellite office. I am absolutely, 100% against full-time WFH in an expensive, low-quality(no sound/thermal insulation) Bay Area apartment without a dedicated workspace. >…

>> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world

> I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it.

I'm a dev and I say confidently that I can code from anywhere and produce the exact same output as in an office. In fact, not having to deal with the stress of office conditions will almost surely get you better code out of me. Maybe you do something non-technical, but for most any tech job, I can't understand why you say this.

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

#519

Post by bob33212 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #411

> “There’s sort of an emerging sense behind the scenes of executives saying, ‘This is not going to be sustainable,’” said Laszlo Bock, chief executive of human-resources startup Humu and the former HR chief at Google. Maybe that because remote working is affecting their politicking ways more than it affects people who do the grunt work on the ground.

The least competent managers use lazy metrics like hours in the office for their employees. People who manage managers like this are really in a bad spot, because they have no idea if shit is hitting the fan down at the grunt level or not

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

#520

Post by bob33212 »

balfirevic wrote: post #179
refurb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. My 10,000 company in the Bay Area did an employee poll and it was overwhelming “I’d like the opportunity to work from the office again”. Keep in mind it wasn’t “I want to be there 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday”. But they definitely wanted the option to work from an office for part of the work week, at a minimum. This doesn’t surprise me in the least.

> I’d like the opportunity to work from the office again Is that a useful answer? Of course people would like that opportunity, even if they never used it - it's pure bonus. More useful question would be "how many times a week (or how many hours) do you plan to work from the office given the opportunity to work from both home and the office?"

Pre pandemic we had a 15 person space that was available for our 30 employees, many of whom travelled We had about 10% usage.
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