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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?

#581

Post by josephg »

mkhpalm wrote: post #567
josephg wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

I can't tell what you're arguing. An employee makes a daily conscious decision to wfh and is then upset about any consequences of doing so? Is this person an adult?

I think it’s ridiculous to accept those sort of downsides for remote workers. Working remotely doesn’t have to be a second class citizen to working from the office. It takes work to set up, but it can work great.

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

#582

Post by llampx »

dathinab wrote: post #303
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…

There is also a social and mental cost. For example for some one where anxiety acts in a way which hinders him to proper handle thinks like making food or cleaning having a clean office with a Mensa giving out reasonable good food for a reasonable price is a massive difference. It can make the difference between overcoming it and complexity succumbing to it to a degree where you at some point end up homeless on the s…

Good points. It is also not that easy to just upgrade from a 2 bedroom apartment to a 4 bedroom one to accommodate a couple where both parties needs to work from home. Who is paying that extra rent? Certainly not the employer.

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

#583

Post by eganist »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #563
eganist wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, to me,the dominant effect here is less demand for air travel->fewer flights. Fewer flights means less carbon emitted. Any knock-on effects seem to pale in comparison because air travel is so carbon intensive. > If fewer flights is a "second order" effect here, I'd struggle to name anything that is a first order effect. I don't really think this is what the person I was responding to was talking about when they…

> This doesn't immediately result in fewer flights because air schedules are meticulously planned in order to maintain specific routes That's all well and good, but in fact the pandemic did essentially immediately result in fewer flights. Flights started getting cancelled within days of lockdowns starting in NYC. If this is a second order effect, then everything is a second order effect. Reduction in travel demand is…

Flight cancellations that took place were ones that were required as a consequence of government actions or were able to be done because they didn't disrupt routing, e.g. those planes were not necessarily expected to be at their subsequent destinations.

That's first-order. You can reference my prior post for the distinction between this and long-term re-working of tactical and strategic decisions (second-order)

Not sure how else I can explain this to you mate. The original commenter and I seem to get it.

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

#584

Post by jlokier »

frutiger wrote: post #417
syshum wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am definitely not the person to address building relationships, I suck at it, that is why I work with computers not people... that said I think you can build in remotely, even the people I am in the same office with 70-80% of our communications is over Chat, Phone, or Email anyway. Why walk 10 feet to the persons office when I can just message them on slack or teams?

Because hearing you laugh when I make a joke makes me far happier than seeing you react with :joy:.

I find that a colourful emoji like [hmm, HN can't display an emoji] feels very different from a text emoticon or tag.

It's such an illusion, too - the sender doesn't even see the same emoji character as I do because of different fonts and devices. Some emojis look sad or angry on some devices, and smiling on others. There's plenty of room for misinterpretation.

But it adds feeling anyway!

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

#585

Post by [deleted] »

sriku wrote: post #514
dlkf wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#586

Post by mjrbrennan »

rangoon626 wrote: post #63

I went from an environment of blaring led lights, friends repeats playing on the tv all day that I had to muffle with headphones because people could stand to work “in a library” and commuting 30+ min each way in stressful crawling traffic, to sleeping in an hour longer, natural lighting and a quiet environment with better hardware than what the office has. This has made me insanely productive and I don’t know if I h…

I find the idea of blaring a TV or music in an office is so disrespectful. The people who need quiet to work _really_ need it...if you need noise put some headphones on to listen to music or a show. It shouldn’t be the other way around, it is much harder to block out the noise with headphones. Coworking spaces are terrible for this.

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

#587

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

eganist wrote: post #583
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This doesn't immediately result in fewer flights because air schedules are meticulously planned in order to maintain specific routes That's all well and good, but in fact the pandemic did essentially immediately result in fewer flights. Flights started getting cancelled within days of lockdowns starting in NYC. If this is a second order effect, then everything is a second order effect. Reduction in travel demand is…

Flight cancellations that took place were ones that were required as a consequence of government actions or were able to be done because they didn't disrupt routing, e.g. those planes were not necessarily expected to be at their subsequent destinations. That's first-order. You can reference my prior post for the distinction between this and long-term re-working of tactical and strategic decisions (second-order) Not s…

> The original commenter and I seem to get it.

Plenty of times, multiple people have had agreement on a belief that is ultimately incorrect. Before you crow, see how the air travel landscape looks in five years. I predict, assuming the pandemic is resolved, it will have fully recovered and passed the 2019 peak.

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

#588

Post by jlokier »

mmcnl wrote: post #253
sjy wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don’t compensate employees for the cost of their commute either. I don’t see the big deal here; the marginal cost of working from home is often pretty close to zero.

They do actually. Maybe not where you live, but where I live it's normal (and expected) that employers compensate for commute.

Where I live, companies often provide a loan for a train season ticket (about £6k/year), but you're still expected to pay for it yourself in the end.

Separately, the tax office does not allow employees or contractors to treat commutes as a tax-deductible expense. The cost of going to a non-habitual workplace is expensable, but not a regular commute.

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

#589

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

mgh2 wrote: post #352
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…

Not everyone employed had these benefits to start with. What pains me is seeing tech employees complain about lost perks while the rest of the population is really suffering. How comfortable do we need to be to lose the sense of reality?

> Not everyone employed had these benefits to start with.

The key points I'm talking about are "some form of office" and I believe most people who can WFH had that. Even people who don't work in offices usually have a workplace, i.e. the utilities issue applies to them as well.

Less privileged workers will be hit harder by this, because a couple hundred bucks for all the bullet points I listed each month is not a huge deal to a tech worker, but potentially a massive deal for someone who makes less.

The additional perks are a tiny part of it, and subsidized (not free) cafeterias aren't uncommon even outside of tech in Germany. This will affect all office workers, not just tech.

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

#590

Post by p_l »

maremp wrote: post #570
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…

Most of the points make sense, but this one does not > Impact on the body - prolonged unmoderated sitting in bad postures, eye strain due to constant staring into the screen, bad eating habits, etc. How does WFH change how you sit and the eye strain? You’re doing the same work, what changed? IMO having a good office setup (chair, device, screen, room lighting) is a must for any WFH position, but especially if it’s fu…

Most people don't have good WFH setup, that's one thing.

Two, WFH can mean less interruptions requiring you to move, resulting in far more sedentary behaviour than normal office work, even if you assume no difference in movement from commute.

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