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I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

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Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#151

Post by KingOfCoders »

vinni2 wrote: post #112

One thing I noticed is that while more experienced people are productive working from home, it is devastating for fresh starting employees. Work from home eliminates learning through osmosis. If anyone has a work around this let me know. I am surprised no one else has mentioned it here.

Years ago a junior employee gave in notice for a new remote job. I told him I didn't this was best for him because it would make learning much more difficult. When I've met him years later he agreed that it wasn't a good move for him.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#152

Post by Apocryphon »

solatic wrote: post #123

Sounds like the relationship is dysfunctional in both directions. On the one hand, the employer set up a panopticon in the office, with crappy furniture, lots of interruptions, a crappy office kitchen, no decent food (i.e. needing to bring food from home). Garbage in, garbage out. Of course nobody is happy to sit in traffic to come to an environment like that. Then we have the author, who has the mistaken idea that t…

> Then we have the author, who has the mistaken idea that the number one most important thing that you do at your job is your directly measurable productivity. Not relationship-building, just pure "shut up and let me sit down and get my work done."

To be fair, that's been a popular view among software engineers long before ubiquitous WFH was a reality. And programmers are definitely keen on not getting their flow interrupted.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#153

Post by code_biologist »

jasondclinton wrote: post #144
vinni2 wrote: post #112

One thing I noticed is that while more experienced people are productive working from home, it is devastating for fresh starting employees. Work from home eliminates learning through osmosis. If anyone has a work around this let me know. I am surprised no one else has mentioned it here.

The solution is obvious: structured training and mentoring. When the pandemic hit, I was hiring a team of 5 new engineers. What was I going to do? Throw up my hands? I implemented a weekly technical training program that morphed into the 250 person org official onboarding. Weekly, I literally just get someone on a VC for 30 minutes and record having a conversation about a technical topic at a noobie level. 16 months…

What remote whiteboarding tools do you like? I do a lot less whiteboarding these days and it kills me.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#154

Post by erik_seaberg »

vosper wrote: post #83
void_mint wrote: post #3

Some people like things. Some people don't like things. Can we just accept that different people are different and move on?

No, sadly I think we're going to get the endless "remote did/didn't work for me and that's why it's good/bad" posts every single time this is discussed here, forever.

I think a lot of people are judging WFH by looking at the results of sudden unplanned WFH with no childcare and no coworking spaces/coffee shops/libraries.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#155

Post by arpa »

colechristensen wrote: post #98
pcthrowaway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally feel the draw to both. Personally, I really like the freedom of WFH and it wins out against the benefits of being in office for me. But I can see the appeal to being in office too; there's something really nice about working with your teammates, especially if you get along with them and learn from each other. The thing with your attitude though, is that you're saying it only works for you if everyone is in…

>And that's a perfectly reasonable approach to hiring for a new company. And likely discriminatory. I prefer working from home because I (am caring for an ailing parent|just had a baby|am not neurotypical|have a disability|etc.) WFH is going to start being seen as a "reasonable accommodation" because the last 18 months have proven that lots of jobs can be done just fine without a physical office and denying that to e…

why is this downvoted?

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#156

Post by KingOfCoders »

rococode wrote: post #131

I predict the balance we're heading towards for many office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged". Like Monday and Wednesday are in-office, Tuesday and Thursday are WFH, Friday is optional. Preference for WFH depends on so many individual factors, not just personality but also your commute length…

Sounds complicated.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#157

Post by ekianjo »

rococode wrote: post #131

I predict the balance we're heading towards for many office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged". Like Monday and Wednesday are in-office, Tuesday and Thursday are WFH, Friday is optional. Preference for WFH depends on so many individual factors, not just personality but also your commute length…

> I predict the balance we're heading towards for most office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged".

Or a lot of people are going to be looking for full remote jobs and companies which are full remote will be able to get some folks they were not able to hire before.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#158

Post by ekianjo »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

> If you like/prefer going to the office that is fine. I am not trying to say we should all be remote. Companies should offer FLEXIBILITY to let employees choose where to work from. That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

> If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

so no reason to go back to the office at all.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#159

Post by ekianjo »

canadianfella wrote: post #19
cradcore wrote: post #15

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?

Work isn’t a democracy.

Nope, but leaving your current employer is up to you if they are inflexible.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#160

Post by ohhnoodont »

midrus wrote: post #85

In my company the only ones that want to go back to the office are those engineers and managers that spend most of their day just walking around, talking to everyone about non important stuff, inviting you to have a coffee, and making jokes until 5pm. Just the people that have nothing to show at the end of the quarter. The most productive engineers, and the ones I enjoy working the most are the remote ones. The only…

This may just be my experience as a young person in San Francisco / Silicon Valley, but it's very common for office life and social life to be highly intertwined. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Many of us moved here and joined competitive, demanding companies. People bond in these situations. I really look forward to being back in the office and having a significant part of my social life return. Don't worry we still ship plenty.
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