Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 479 posts

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

#181

Post by angarg12 »

I have several colleagues in the same situation (first job, never been to the office).

As much as I love remote work, a word of caution: don't take this text too seriously. It's just the ramblings of a very immature engineer.

Form your own opinion rather than using a second hand toxic one. Try it out. It turns out different people like different things, and also circumstances are different. If something doesn't work, try to change it. If ultimately you hate the office as well, then feel free to look for other opportunities.

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

#182

Post by MrScruff »

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…

For arranged meetings including the remote workers won't be a problem but there are many 'meetings' that happen in a work context where important information is exchanged that are informal that remote workers will miss out on.

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

#183

Post by amarant »

gregoriol wrote: post #124
sam0x17 wrote: 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…

I'm sure you can have a 20 minute walk after working from home..

I do 40 minutes, personally. It's great!

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

#184

Post by diegoperini »

jpollock wrote: post #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 disc…

> You have to write multiple paragraphs

This I actually like. My short summary of my work in Slack usually becomes the first draft of the documentation I need to write later.

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

#185

Post by Apocryphon »

zz865 wrote: post #73
MattGaiser wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not complain and see if something can be changed first? Less work than rebooting your algo brain circuits with Leetcode.

Sure, complain to your boss and see what's possible. Writing anonymous reddit posts isn't trying to change your workplace.

It gets the people going.

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

#186

Post by jldugger »

galdosdi wrote: post #36
kumarvvr wrote: post #8

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,…

> involves getting M hrs (M Our team has a backlog of approximately 500 tickets / bugs / work ideas. Nobody has to stretch anything, the backlog will outlive us all.

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

#187

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

jpollock wrote: post #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 disc…

On interruptions, I turned the notification indicator off for general messages in Slack, so I only get system notifications for DMs or mentions. Slack obeys DND (on Mac OS at least), so I use that a lot to mute it when I am doing work. I check it a couple of times a day to catch up on messages.

It's amusing to see the occasional "hi" sent without any context, then an hour or two later, the real question the person wanted to ask. I think I'd get in trouble if I set https://www.nohello.com/ as my status though.

Unfortunately we also have to use Microsoft Teams which implements its own notification system and doesn't obey the system-wide DND, so I usually just quit Teams when I am not actively using it.

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

#188

Post by rxhernandez »

tchvil wrote: post #128
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…

One programming teacher told me 20 years ago: "you think your technical skills will make you advance your career, wrong, it is your interpersonal ones that will do". I'm not very good at it, but since then I try to work on both sides.

On my second job, I made 2.5x what I made at my first engineering job (which ended 3.5 years ago). At my 3rd job I jumped my salary by 10s of thousands of dollars over what I was making at my 2nd job. At my 4th job, I now make 8x my first job. I am now consulting (with way too many clients) and have the choice of making six figures by working less than 4 months a year.

Technical skills almost solely put me in the 1%. Although, I am sure that if I stayed at my 1st job I would have gone nowhere due to my lacking interpersonal skills. I also sincerely doubt that I would have made millions if I had mediocre technical skills and mediocre interpersonal skills instead of my pretty good technical skills and subpar interpersonal skills.

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

#189

Post by carlmr »

playcache wrote: post #130
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…

It does heavily slant towards managers. Their perceived value is often build around knowing and reporting up on what others are doing. Remote work really shook the tree and exposed this.

How did remote work expose that managers are managing people?

The issue I see exposed is rather the top-heaviness of many modern companies where there are too many managers and too few people that do actual work.

If you're a manager and doing low level work you're doing it wrong. Your role is to remove the interpersonal roadblocks, get people to pull in the same direction, inspire with your vision, hire the right people, and fire the people that don't fit.

A manager doing these things properly has value. But that manager has to manage enough people to make these efficiency gains worth more than the manager's salary.

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

#190

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

diegoperini wrote: post #184
jpollock wrote: post #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 disc…

> You have to write multiple paragraphs This I actually like. My short summary of my work in Slack usually becomes the first draft of the documentation I need to write later.

Same here, I also like having time to proof-read and refactor what I've written to remove redundancy, clear up any amiguities and look for assumed knowledge.
Post reply on HN