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

191–200 of 479 posts

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

#191

Post by Smaug123 »

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.

I'd been at my company for two years when the pandemic hit, and I continued learning loads by osmosis through a daily 30min team Webex "turn your mic and camera on, and just chat or work silently or whatever ends up happening". Have you tried that? I haven't yet had the chance to mentor a new starter in remote mode, but from my own experiences and on general principles I would personally be trying a "leave my Webex room open all day and have a few of us working in there" approach. Of course, even better would presumably be to actively note what questions get asked during that time, and to update documentation accordingly.

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

#192

Post by tonyedgecombe »

aba_cz wrote: post #110
foxes wrote: post #99

Seems like their life would be dramatically better if they didn’t have some horrible car hellscape based commute. Pity cities are designed and spread out so because of cars. Then making the office more comfortable and flexible without people micromanaging would be the next thing.

This is U.S. thing, right? People in Europe are using public transportation to get to work from the edge of the city with no problems. Come visit Prague to see how it's done :D

There are plenty of people with long commutes in Europe as well. I suspect we tend to trade off the commute against housing until the commute is just bearable.

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

#193

Post by Apocryphon »

MrScruff wrote: post #177
gregoriol wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

This sounds like a business opportunity for WeWork.

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

#194

Post by beardface »

CephalopodMD wrote: post #119

I just want my own office. That's all. I'd be pretty okay with going in if I had my own office with 4 walls. First job of my career, they told me I would have an office of my own. First day I come back do for full time (I had interned there too with my own office), they tell me they're switching buildings to go open office in about a month's time. I got a precious few weeks with a personal office, and then it was all…

I work remotely and rent an office in town. It's a 15 minute walk from my house, a decent size (~22m^2), all my own, and well set up. I love it and pay gladly but I it's not possible for everyone.

I used to have a garden office but my wife now needs her own space for her work so I took the rented space.

A dedicated space is a must if you're working remotely. Either at home or offsite.

I have no objection to going into the office for well defined, productive meetings like project kick-offs though. I still believe they're the best way to collaborate on big planning tasks, even after having worked remotely for over 10 years.

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

#195

Post by orangepanda »

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…

> I go to work to work, ship stuff, grow my career, learn and earn money.

I prefer an office for the same reasons - separating my work life from everything else. Out the door by 5pm. An emergency in the middle of the night? Nothing I can do about that.

Everyone else prefers working from home? Great; less noise!

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

#196

Post by Treblemaker »

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…

ping "Hey, Bob, can I share my desktop and show you something?" Five minutes later, Bob is fixing his mistake. Or, Bob has notifications turned off, and he lets me know as soon as he's available again.

My point is that the tools are there to address this concern. I don't go a day without sharing my desktop or looking at someone else's. And in some ways it's even more efficient and less disruptive than getting up, walking over to someone's desk.

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

#197

Post by jhatemyjob »

rxhernandez wrote: post #188
tchvil wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.…

To me it seems your interpersonal skills helped you find and secure your 8x job.

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

#198

Post by Dylan16807 »

tshaddox wrote: post #149
watwut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to pay for your own. You have to do it anyway. The rent did not went up due you being at home during day.

Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office.

> you lost space at your home during the 8 hours

I guess that's true, but I'm not sure why I would care about my home getting slightly smaller when I'm at work. It will affect some people, but I don't know if it's many.

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

#199

Post by mrweasel »

aba_cz wrote: post #110
foxes wrote: post #99

Seems like their life would be dramatically better if they didn’t have some horrible car hellscape based commute. Pity cities are designed and spread out so because of cars. Then making the office more comfortable and flexible without people micromanaging would be the next thing.

This is U.S. thing, right? People in Europe are using public transportation to get to work from the edge of the city with no problems. Come visit Prague to see how it's done :D

> People in Europe are using public transportation

No we don't. It would add 90 minutes each way for my 15km commute. We really need to stop with the idea that public transportation in Europe is awesome, it not, it actually pretty terrible outside a few select areas. It's actually faster to ride a bike to work in my case, except bikes aren't allowed on the motorway.

Europe need to fix it's public transportation system. So far the solution is to make driving more expensive, while providing no alternatives. Maybe it's better in Czechia, but in general I don't think we can seriously claim that Europe has good public transportation.

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

#200

Post by mikro2nd »

CephalopodMD wrote: post #119

I just want my own office. That's all. I'd be pretty okay with going in if I had my own office with 4 walls. First job of my career, they told me I would have an office of my own. First day I come back do for full time (I had interned there too with my own office), they tell me they're switching buildings to go open office in about a month's time. I got a precious few weeks with a personal office, and then it was all…

Indeed, this is backed by Real Data! Back in the 1970s or thereabouts, IBM did a study where they put one group in an open office and another in individual offices and quantified the productivity difference. The "individual office" group was (iirc) something like 15% more productive.

All from memory, so I may have misremembered bits... As I recall it, they actually built purpose-designed buildings for the study, such was IBM's cashflow, power and arrogance back then.

Post reply on HN