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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

#511

Post by Volrath89 »

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…

Although I didn't meet my wife in the same office (as a developer 95% of my colleagues have always been male), if it wasn't for the office where I had to go every day, I wouldn't have met her.

She worked in the same building for another company and we often saw each other at a nearby restaurant at lunch time. Often as in every single day. After some time (months) I was able to find someone in the other company that told me her name, searched her on facebook add her and we started talking first online, then of course we went to lunch together since we were in the same building. The rest is history as they say.

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

#512

Post by zffr »

fooey wrote: post #488
zffr wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO what's great about slack is that you can send someone a message and they can choose to respond whenever they're free. If async communication is too slow, you can always ask do to a zoom call for a few min. In an office I think it is pretty hard to tell when someone is actually available. If you make a mistake and interrupt someone while they are actually thinking deeply about a problem, you can cause a pretty big…

In the office, I was distracted by coworkers massively more often. Maybe if the "office" actually gave everyone enough space to have their own office the push-back against going back wouldn't be so bad, but it seems like no company wants to spend the money to have comfortable and productive working environments.

For a few months my company had us in single or shared offices (max of 2-3) and I think it was my favorite office environment for productivity.

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

#513

Post by chaostheory »

randcraw wrote: post #429
bhub wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 45 and have been working partially remote for 4 years and fully remote since the pandemic. I really enjoy working from home. Spending more time with family and finding a good work/life balance and not having to commute are great perks. I have recently started a new job and was interviewed and onboarded entirely remote. The process was fine and in the future I am not required to be in the office a lot either. Howe…

Assuming your kids are in HS now, and will depart for college soon, it'll be interesting to see how you like working from home when your home occupancy drops to only two (or to one, if your SO is often away). I'm a soloist, and I've found WFH to be a mixed bag in the past 16 months. I love that I can set up my home workspace exactly as I'd like it. But I very much miss routine social interactions and don't care much…

I've been doing it alone for years. It's just fine because everyone needs quiet work time where there's no random interruption. Do that for 3 days and go to meetings and interact directly 2 other days. I've done the full 4-5 days as well, and it's still fine. During the pandemic, when everyone was stuck together, it's actually much harder if you have younger children. It depends on what you want.

Do you truly want work life separation, is your work place your social venue, or do you want a mix of both? No wrong answers. Just pros and cons with personal preferences. I just feel that it would be nice to have that choice.

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

#514

Post by sanderjd »

lumberingjack wrote: post #492
sanderjd wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What I want to know is who's paying all these people to stand around and socialize while they're on the clock am I paying for that as a customer because fuck that what company is this. I'll take my business to someone who has employees who are efficient and keep my cost low.

Oddly nobody seems to wonder this about the golf and yachts of executives. Yes, very successful companies generate lots of free cash flow, and there are myriad expressions of this, like extremely wealthy executives, staff that enjoys niceties like socializing while at work, and lots of other stuff. Customers are not actually very sensitive to the size of margins taken, in many many businesses.

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

#515

Post by ducharmdev »

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…

Totally agree - often it seems people take a transactional approach to work as a way to insulate themselves from social or economic harm, but then proceed to complain about the transactional nature of work that they assist in perpetuating.

But there's plenty of room to be critical of companies without sacrificing the positive things you've listed above.

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

#516

Post by ItsMonkk »

test_epsilon wrote: post #486
ItsMonkk wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that others are not working in the office, I hope that communities realize that we are drastically under-creating shared spaces and push for significantly more of them. As these offices are sitting empty and are no longer required, instead of letting them sit empty, let them be free to all. Community involvement is the only way to get this done.

> Now that others are not working in the office, I hope that communities realize that we are drastically under-creating shared spaces and push for significantly more of them. The lack of of "community" is not due to lack of concrete boxes, in my opinion. How busy is your local library? From the odd occasion I've been, mine is not very. And seemed to be almost entirely frequented by people who had come to use the free…

I think the big winner in the short-term is places like YMCA attempting to broaden into more and more social categories.

> entirely frequented by people who had come to use the free computers/internet

This is a problem with a lack of investment into the space. If half of NYC was shared space, they would find their space and you would be in another. I find Central Park to be mostly pleasant, and that's a shared space. When it's 0.01% of the space, there isn't enough room for the required segmentation of the different tribes and it ends up toxic.

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

#517

Post by ducharmdev »

rubicon33 wrote: post #493
awsthro00945 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Speak for yourself. I am very experienced. I have worked at many companies, some of which I left abruptly, and others where my close friends were fired/laid off. But guess what? None of that matters. Just because a friendship sta…

Wow. You sound SO different from me. I really struggle to form relationships so easily, yet it sounds like you making lasting relationships wherever you go. I find that kind of fascinating. As someone who just went back into the office with the whole intent on being more social, I still find that my interactions with coworkers are at "arms length" and are very sterile. Hard to imagine a relationship with them outside…

Not OP, but I always try to watch out for opportunities to talk about other people's interests. When someone's eyes light up about a topic or they get an excited tone, I try to ask them open-ended questions to get them talking more. Its pretty affirming to get thoughtful questions about a topic you have strong interest in.

It works even better if you can manage to remember those things people get excited about. Even if you don't remember anything else about the person, it gives you something to revisit in future conversations.

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

#518

Post by test_epsilon »

ItsMonkk wrote: post #516
test_epsilon wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now that others are not working in the office, I hope that communities realize that we are drastically under-creating shared spaces and push for significantly more of them. The lack of of "community" is not due to lack of concrete boxes, in my opinion. How busy is your local library? From the odd occasion I've been, mine is not very. And seemed to be almost entirely frequented by people who had come to use the free…

I think the big winner in the short-term is places like YMCA attempting to broaden into more and more social categories. > entirely frequented by people who had come to use the free computers/internet This is a problem with a lack of investment into the space. If half of NYC was shared space, they would find their space and you would be in another. I find Central Park to be mostly pleasant, and that's a shared space.…

> I think the big winner in the short-term is places like YMCA attempting to broaden into more and more social categories.

I might be missing something. You're making it sound like there is some short term or new phenomenon happening here. COVID certainly has not been the cause of the decline of community cohesiveness, and certainly not behind any rise in demand for people "sharing spaces" with strangers.

> This is a problem with a lack of investment into the space. If half of NYC was shared space, they would find their space and you would be in another.

Well I disagree with that characterization that it's a problem or that a solution would be to spend vast amounts of money on it. As I said, people don't want to share spaces. The "problem" is not lack of shared space. If you don't like the lack of community or people willing to share and invest in their shared spaces, the root cause is completely different. A top-down decree of more will not fix it.

> I find Central Park to be mostly pleasant, and that's a shared space.

Parks are one thing that can work if they are quite remote or highly policed or in "good areas", but that's because people tend to go there for few reasons, there isn't much in the way of infrastructure or services to be ruined or hogged or stolen.

I don't see many people working, cooking, or gardening in shared spaces though. Sure there are some college kids, occasional professional who takes their laptop there for a few hours to work, sometimes people will have a BBQ and there is the odd community garden project. But even with the meager parks there are, I don't see a lot of them overflowing for places to sit and work.

> When it's 0.01% of the space, there isn't enough room for the required segmentation of the different tribes and it ends up toxic.

Dangerously bordering on anti diversity wrongthink... but true. However increasing space doesn't really help all that much when there is a lot of crime and not enough resources to police it.

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

#519

Post by test_epsilon »

rytor718 wrote: post #507
test_epsilon wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now that others are not working in the office, I hope that communities realize that we are drastically under-creating shared spaces and push for significantly more of them. The lack of of "community" is not due to lack of concrete boxes, in my opinion. How busy is your local library? From the odd occasion I've been, mine is not very. And seemed to be almost entirely frequented by people who had come to use the free…

Or it could be people dont prefer to socialize at libraries (I have always been taught its a quiet place, personally)? I agree with the person you respond to: we kinda haven't figured out the social spaces thing, nor had to figure it out, for a very, very long time. All of our current shared social spaces are conventions from a time past that we continue because they're still relevant (bars/pubs, clubs, private clubs…

> Or it could be people dont prefer to socialize at libraries (I have always been taught its a quiet place, personally)?

People don't prefer to socialize anywhere. Libraries definitely used to be a much more social community hub though. But I'm not just talking about socializing but "shared spaces", as OP said. People working, meeting, relaxing just weren't there. And it is not for lack of room. The people there as I said using the facilities I didn't mean they were wasting it or using it other than its intended purpose, the opposite they were. They were there for a free service they didn't have, but almost certainly if they had a little bit more money they would have prefered their own internet/computer/phone and used it somewhere not in a shared space. Like everybody else who didn't have to be there to use the internet.

> I agree with the person you respond to: we kinda haven't figured out the social spaces thing, nor had to figure it out, for a very, very long time. All of our current shared social spaces are conventions from a time past that we continue because they're still relevant (bars/pubs, clubs, private clubs, restaurants, etc). Not complaining about any of these -- they're fantastic. Just noting the absence of modern social spaces.

There is no absence, they just aren't used as I said. And what do you mean we haven't figured it out? Everything is figured as we go continually. We have arrived here because there is actually less relative demand for these shared spaces than there used to be.

> Its the reason I really love Summer where I live. Always a festival or event to go got and get lost in a crowd, meet new people and celebrate whatever's on display that day.

Is the problem this meaningless new phrase "shared space"? We've always had festivals and markets and shows and concerts and things like that.

> Aside from those, there's very little of what I'd call modern "social spaces" around me.

I don't know why "aside" -- as I said those are not modern things. Would help to define what you mean, the first post didn't seem to be advocating for more crowded festivals but rather taking over empty office spaces and turning them loose to the public with some unexplained goal in mind.

> Seems like a void needs to be filled there in the community.

Sounds to me like the void is lack of community trust and cohesiveness and therefore willingness to share spaces. As I said, that will not be improved with more concrete boxes.

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

#520

Post by joefife »

sylens wrote: post #190
himinlomax wrote: post #103

Hypothesis: an underestimated reason why people don't want to go back to the office is not (just) because they like WFH, but because offices suck hard for knowledge workers when they need not. The reason why is based on a major historiological mistake, see the book Deep Work ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work )

This is it. Who wants to go back to open office floor plans? Give me a shared office and maybe my answer changes

Exactly. I used to take my laptop and had to a meeting room just to be able to think.

What's the point in making me drive an hour just to sit in a meeting room, hiding from all the people who make noise all day?

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