I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
221–230 of 479 posts
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#222In 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…
Nice superiority complex you got there.
Why don't you admit you are poor at socializing.
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#223Sounds 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."
Relationship-building sounds like something my manager would say. And I’d still have to code XYZ, make sure it works, and make a presentation about it. Not sure how relationships help me in a technical role.
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#224Seems 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
No problems doesn't mean enjoyable. It's still 90 minutes of overcrowded public transport. I may prefer it over sitting in car, but no commute at all wins.
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#225> 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…
The book Peopleware had a nice description of cubicles:
"Today’s modular cubicle is a masterpiece of compromise: It gives you no meaningful privacy and yet still manages to make you feel isolated. You are poorly protected from noise and disruption; indeed in some cases, sources of noise and disruption are actively piped into your space. You’re isolated because that small lonely space excludes everyone but you (it’s kind of a toilet stall without a toilet). The space makes it difficult to work alone and almost impossible to participate in the social unit that might form around your work."
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
You need a chatbot that replies to messages with "I'm heads down on a task right now. I'll read your message when I have some time. If you need to interrupt me please reply with 'interrupt'." And if you get that keyword your chatbot plays a sound or texts you.
I mean, that's almost exactly how Slack's DND mode works. The thing is, it's too open to abuse by that one prick who stays on DND for months at a time, or (for less vitriol) maybe you just forget to turn it on/off, then you try to automate it and then never follow the schedule you set for yourself, etc., making it basically useless.
It's pretty difficult to fix bad social behavior with more tech.
On a tangential note, thanks to WFH, I've grown to hate clockwise with a passion. It's the single most disruptive tool in the remote workplace, especially when combined with private-by-default calendars. Maybe I only worked with bad users, I don't know. I just haven't seen anyone with that consistent a schedule, and no one pays attention to their calendar schedule after they set it once anyway. Have to set a meeting for 5 clockwise users? Tough, you'll either have to ask them individually if that time works, or just ignore calendars altogether and hope the relevant people make it work. I hope it dies soon.
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure you can have a 20 minute walk after working from home.. I do 40 minutes, personally. It's great!
It might work, but it is difficult to walk just for walking: I know people who walk their dog, which works, but just going out around doesn't seem like a good motivation
Depends on your neighborhood, but this sounds like a personal preference issue; walking just for the sake of being outside is a liberating experience in of itself. Walk for the sun and for the breeze and the sounds of nature. Or go for a jog.
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#228In 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…
> I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing.
It's not a bad thing per se. The problem is that it seems in some places there's no alternative
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#229If 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.
South American and Mexico are in the same time zone, I'm sure there a couple million decent programmers in the entire South continent.
Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
#230Sounds 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…
Agreed.
It's a false dichotomy that one is better than the other.
The only useful way I know to think about it is what my ratio of solo focus time is vs time spent communicating with others.
There is a place in the world for people who wait for requirements to appear in their ticket queue, code out solutions, then go home, ad infinitum. But software development tends to work better as a collaborative endeavour.
As an IC you should expect to spend 70-80% of your time on focus work (either solo or pairing) and 20-30% on communicating/planning/overhead.
The writing of the code itself happens in the middle of a much longer conversation and to deny the programmer visibility of this is to deny them context.
Designing working spaces to allow this is possible, but easier if you let people choose where to work for 4 out of 5 days a week.