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‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

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Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#271

Post by tomtheelder »

sanderjd wrote: post #245
awsthro00945 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise. Why? Work is where you spend one third (or more) of your time during your adult life. Why the hell would I not want such a significant portion of my life to not also provide great benefits like opportunities to make friends, meet people, eat great food, and have fun? If you scoff at people who want to make their workplaces more welcoming and happier, no shit th…

Because you might get fired or laid off or burnt out and leave and only then discover that you have invested too much of yourself into this faceless entity that does not care a whit about you. This is one of those things where peoples' warnings to the young come from hard won experience, but where it doesn't sound right to people who have not themselves yet gained the experience. So we fail to impart the lessons and…

Enjoying the convenient food, comfortable workstation, and low level social interactions you get from a good workplace is not an investment at all. If you get fired or quit then you just get the same thing at the next job. I speak from experience having done this multiple times.

Your point about not over-investing into a company that doesn't care about you is valid, but not relevant.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#272

Post by drclau »

awsthro00945 wrote: post #214
ItsMonkk wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced all of these to a much better degree during college. Are you sure you don't just want to live in a city that provides plenty of shared spaces? Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise.

> Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise. Why? Work is where you spend one third (or more) of your time during your adult life. Why the hell would I not want such a significant portion of my life to not also provide great benefits like opportunities to make friends, meet people, eat great food, and have fun? If you scoff at people who want to make their workplaces more welcoming and happier, no shit th…

Let me be the devil's (to be read corporate) advocate for a moment here. You say:

> Why? Work is where you spend one third (or more) of your time during your adult life. Why the hell would I not want such a significant portion of my life to not also provide great benefits like opportunities to make friends, meet people, eat great food, and have fun?

I say: aren't you supposed to, you know, work while you are at work? The office is not a social club!

Jokes aside, I always wondered how much time people actually do proper, productive work while in office, in software engineering. My view is rather restricted to my own experience (personal + people around me). I'm asking because if it's, say, 4h a day, I'd rather just spend 4h a day in office, and spend the other 4h however I choose to (alone, with family, or with colleagues, friends etc.), instead of watching YouTube or listen to conversations I don't want to (thanks open plan office!), or whatever people do when they are not productive.

Maybe one day we'll collectively figure out the right amount of time we are actually productive, and get back the rest of the time.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#273

Post by Lammy »

achow wrote: post #166
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #42

In my experience at least talking to some younger people there is a clear dichotomy: despite all the talk about Gen Z being "digital natives", people new in their career are much hungrier to get back into the office because they don't yet have good career networks built up and they're eager for mentorship. It is older, or at least more established workers who are less keen on that. I don't think FAANGs will have any…

From a single, young: I miss the office for.. - Free and convenient food. - Social chatter & engagement. - Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees. - Work life separation (balance). - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment. - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers.. - Intra and inter company sports and games. - Meeting potential dates. [Not me. Just em…

- Making friends with employees

- Work life separation (balance)

Does not compute.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#274

Post by Finnucane »

acwan93 wrote: post #212
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH I think the divide between WFH and return to the office boils down to something surprisingly simple: how much longer does your current lease last and/or how much office property do you own. Companies that are about to have a lease expire, or are growing at a rate that they would need to soon lease an even larger building a…

Apple is the prime example, touting the massive $5B+ investment into its new campus. Google might be in the same boat with its Downtown San Jose expansion work.

Here in Cambridge Google began work on an expansion before the pandemic, and it is now almost done. Do they now actually need it? Will be interesting to see.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#275

Post by acid__ »

moistly wrote: post #258
acid__ wrote: post #141

Eh, I love my company and I love my coworkers and I’m unbelievably excited to see them in person. In fact, I’ve already started going back into the office (since April) and 1) my productivity is easily 5-10x what it was before 2) I’ve had amazing so many conversations that never happened over zoom — both productive and personal - and as more of our company’s employees return over the coming months I’m even excited fo…

You are super-productive and you are spending a lot of time having amazing conversations. That makes sense. Yup. Must be working sixteen hour days.

You sound overly dismissive and uncharitable. There are many opportunities that occur when one doesn’t need to turn every conversation into a 30 min video call. As one example, my office (like many others) provides lunch.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#276

Post by ffggvv »

i remember at my first job we had company wide satisfaction surveys yearly. there was one question about whether employees planned to leave within the next 2 years. the results always showed greater than 70% saying yes.

yet the attrition rate was way lower. in the time i was there almost no one left

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#277

Post by aaron-santos »

padobson wrote: post #219
ItsMonkk wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced all of these to a much better degree during college. Are you sure you don't just want to live in a city that provides plenty of shared spaces? Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise.

Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise. This is a brilliant sentiment and can be tide to multitudes of other items. The more that can be voluntarily decoupled from the employer-employee relationship, the more should be.

> Making friends with employees

This is a lesson I learned in the last year. Even though I've made real friends with colleagues and I wouldn't change that, I would still advise caution. It can be tempting to make friends at work because spontaneous regular encounters and shared experiences are the natural basis for cultivating friendship. However, making friends at work has hidden hazards.

Most (but not all) colleagues are like fair-weather friends. It is easy to confuse someone being friendly with someone being a friend. If you couldn't imagine spending time with this person outside of work, they are probably friendly but not your friend. If it would be weird for them to call you outside of work to ask how you're doing, they are probably friendly but not your friend.

Why wouldn't you want to cultivate true friendship in the workplace? Don't expect workmates to continue to be friendly when you switch workplaces. If you're not engaging with them outside of the workplace, their friendliness will simply fizzle out. Secondly, confusing friendliness for friendship makes it easier to be exploited. I've stayed at a dysfunctional workplace far too long because I liked my "friends" there. However, when I finally did switch and these "friendships" fizzled out, it became much more clear that these were simply friendly people. This doesn't make them bad people, it's just a social lesson I learned. Finally, the last hazard of workplace friendships has to do with the insulating effect of selection bias. Especially in the tech sector, workplace friends will tend to be a much smaller slice of class, race, and gender and it's easy to have a narrow worldview as a result. Maybe the importance of that differs from person to person, but it makes it easier to wake up one day and realize, "Huh, I have only middle class white guy friends. What's up with that?"

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#278

Post by lotsofpulp »

adflux wrote: post #225
wil421 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you need some hobbies. Most of the things you state I get from my hobbies. Do you not live in a place with climate control? At home I make the temperature decisions not the facility folk.

Spoken like a true 1%er

https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/air...

>The latest results from the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) show that 87 percent of U.S. households are now equipped with AC.

That was 12 years ago.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#279

Post by mirrorlake »

I want to see genuine competition between businesses to try and make their offices better. People got off the treadmill long enough to realize that their workplace sucks. But many issues are completely fixable.

Make workplaces better. Ask people what they want improved, and then actually improve it.

The future can't be about squeezing out every ounce of productivity at the expense of happiness and autonomy--it has to be about increasing every ounce of happiness to make small gains in productivity. The equation was looked at backwards for far too long.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#280

Post by tomtheelder »

wil421 wrote: post #193
achow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a single, young: I miss the office for.. - Free and convenient food. - Social chatter & engagement. - Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees. - Work life separation (balance). - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment. - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers.. - Intra and inter company sports and games. - Meeting potential dates. [Not me. Just em…

Sounds like you need some hobbies. Most of the things you state I get from my hobbies. Do you not live in a place with climate control? At home I make the temperature decisions not the facility folk.

I have lots of hobbies and plenty friends through those. I also really enjoy my workplace and the social interaction I get there. Either one of those alone would definitely be insufficient for me.

I sort of feel like these discussions are just (oversimplifying here) extroverts and introverts arguing back and forth about the best way to find satisfaction socially when they just have profoundly different social needs.

Also FWIW I've never lived in an apartment with climate control past radiators and window AC units. I don't think that's too unusual if you live in older buildings.

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