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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

#171
post #94

> 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.

I hate that people keep framing it as a "preference" issue. There are HUGE economic and environmental costs that go along with working in and (often) commuting to an office. Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs. We don't need to destroy our planet, dramatically increase costs, and dramatically lower productivity just to appease t…

> Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs.

I don't think it's so clear cut.

In less collaborative environments, nobody interrupts you and you can bang code all day, close many tickets, etc etc.

In highly collaborative environments, people will talk to each other all the time. You'll me interrupted and you will write less code and close less JIRAs but you're more likely to find issues with code, design and requirements earlier in the process, solve misunderstandings easier and faster, and you get that free flow of information where everyone knows what is going on and share knowledge easily.

So you might have lesser "productivity" but you're more likely to deliver high-quality product.

Now saying that, both WFH and hybrid and office can be both highly collaborative and not. But WFH makes is really easy for people to check out of the information flow (even by accident) and be angry they're not getting informed, or promoted or whatever.

If you want WFH to work out, you need to come up with a strategy how to make that highly collaborative.

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

#172
post #89

If anyone can do your work remotely...ANYONE can do your work remotely. Do you guys think maybe when the next recession happens we will see unprecedented offshoring due to companies not being able to pay 160K to a developer with 3 years experience? Its all nice and well when every startup can raise as much money as it wants. What happens when/if that pops?

That goes both ways though. It also means that you can get hired by some company on the other side of the world that possibly offers better conditions than anything local.

Well yes it's great for Indians / Africans. For people living in U.S, U.K not so much. I think it also means people should go deep, way deep in their stack. Don't switch too much. You know PHP? Become great in PHP. Know Ruby? Stick to Ruby and become a real expert. Generalists may become a commodity...just my personal opinion. You will have to set yourself apart somehow. What is your strategy in this brave new world?

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

#174
I miss being able to tell if I'm interrupting a coworker's state of flow or not with a quick message.

When everyone's in the office, I can _see_ when they get back to their desk and haven't gotten into anything again. I can see that my question isn't going to interrupt them.

As it stands, I interrupt everyone and they interrupt me. I haven't been able to get into flow during office hours in 18months.

Code review discussions which would take 5 minutes take 3 days. You have to write multiple paragraphs instead of walking over and saying "dude, look at this right there, like _seriously_."

Nothing like a little pair programming to work through a code review.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lucidchart has been my go to. Allows multiple users in the same whiteboard at once. Legible text as opposed to whiteboard scribble. Easily rearrange block diagrams. Permanent record of a diagram session that can be thrown in a design doc.

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

#176

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.

Surely no more complicated than it is for hourly workers to keep track of their shifts, or for college students to keep track of 5 different full-day schedules that change every few months. "Come in Monday, stay at home Tuesday" is not exactly the peak of complicated scheduling.

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

#177
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that people keep framing it as a "preference" issue. There are HUGE economic and environmental costs that go along with working in and (often) commuting to an office. Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs. We don't need to destroy our planet, dramatically increase costs, and dramatically lower productivity just to appease t…

Well, there are also huge human costs that go along with working alone all day, and in the same environment as the rest of your life. For example, commuting, while not nice most of the time, has one great impact on life: it allows you to break from work, which is not happening when you have sleep/work/hobbies/life at the same place. I'm not saying you should spend 1h in traffic or subway, but 20min and walking would…

Completely agree. I'm actually working full time in the office just so I have a working environment that's actually optimised for focusing on work, even though it's primarily empty. There's no way I'd work for a company that insisted I work in the same space I live in.

I cycle in and my commute is one of the highlights of my day. When some colleagues are occasionally in the office they all comment on how much being back in the office makes them realise what they missed about it.

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also some people like to do real work and deliver value instead of stealing time.

Time is something being stolen from employees. We have one life to live. A company isn't even alive.

I definitely have much more time to myself with WFH, by orders of magnitude.

I can even get things done on public transit at a reasonable time when I have important errands to run! Because half the city isn't taking the train into the peninsula for no reason other than micromanagement. Honestly, this is the more interesting part to me. People that absolutely can't WFH by nature of job duties have much less traffic and craziness and delays to deal with as a side effect of the majority of the city WFHing - this greatly helps people that can't afford to live in the downtown CBD zones of major cities, for instance.

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

#179
For those of you distracted by the office chatter, me too: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php?l=...

I use this speech noise-jamming page a lot at work, someone walks over near my desk and starts chatting, I wear my headphones and this goes on. I don't have any downtime in the office anymore because of this.

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

#180

If anyone can do your work remotely...ANYONE can do your work remotely. Do you guys think maybe when the next recession happens we will see unprecedented offshoring due to companies not being able to pay 160K to a developer with 3 years experience? Its all nice and well when every startup can raise as much money as it wants. What happens when/if that pops?

This has been bandied about since the '90s. There might be drastic hiring of people outside of the tech hub area (Midwest, Canada), but offshoring beyond North America is hamstrung by linguistic, cultural, and time zone differences.
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