41–50 of 479 posts
I've found the WFH debate to be a great proxy for finding people I definitely don't want to work with. Everyone has a preference. But in my experience, the people that whine the most about having to go to an office are generally the people everyone wishes would stay home anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I have doubts about hybrid. I work for an aggressively hybrid company. All it means is that I have to go in and have meetings at by desk beside other people having meetings at their desks.
I agree for internal meeting, but in my industry where external meetings are a huge part of my job, it's meant way less driving to meetings for me which has been a huge boost to my productivity levels.
Open offices are awful. In my experience most people end up wearing headphones all day, and I did too. My ears would get red and irritated after a while. But I'd keep them on because it was like an unspoken social rule; that if you looked busy and had headphones on, people won't interrupt you as much.
Some people like things. Some people don't like things. Can we just accept that different people are different and move on?
The problem becomes when one group unilaterally attempts to force an [arguably bad for certain demographics and teams] choice without giving options. The way I see it the problem is that if you let people choose (no matter what, including 100% office or 100% remote), then it's fine.
My point is in a lot of cases maintaining options for people costs money/time/effort/opportunity for the provider. That's money that could have gone to your pocket. And note I'm not saying we're not going to have both options - just don't expect to live in a simpler, more cost efficient system.
The sense of sitting in office is a tremendous waste of time and potential is inescapable. I work in the engineering industry and am lucky enough that I get to have privacy and my manager is good. I ensure I do my work and well at that. But I know friends in IT who absolutely loathe the feeling of being in a monitored jail cell.
Yeah but the real root cause (of that awful "I am wasting my time and life right now" feeling) is that modern office work often involves getting M hrs (M IMHO it can actually be more frustrating because one feels more on the hook for keeping an eye on notifications. At least at the office I can zone out or focus on something personal or work related, safely assured if a boss really needs me I can be found in person,…
> The best part is that the cubicle doesn't have tall walls so I can literally see/hear everything, including other people's monitors. Open offices are awful. In my experience most people end up wearing headphones all day, and I did too. My ears would get red and irritated after a while. But I'd keep them on because it was like an unspoken social rule; that if you looked busy and had headphones on, people won't inter…
But I was probably producing about 10% of what I normally produced in a closed space. I was OK with that :-) My company probably wasn't, but hey, I was salary; that's their problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should your preferences dictate what other people do? What makes your preference for having people in the office more important than their preference to want to work from home?
Why should the people preferring to work from home get preference, either? At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. No dropped calls or poor connections or VPN drops or whatever. As an engineer, I sympathize with the poster. When I need…