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

231–240 of 479 posts

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

#231

Post by prox »

colechristensen wrote: post #109
prox wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main employer is always very flexible, even before the pandemic, I just met one day in the office (everyone else had to be there too) and the rest I was free to chose. Perfect combination of seeing eachother and WFH. We had small rooms so distraction was not a point. Commute was 25minutes. I do believe we should get more flexibility where possible.

I wonder how everyone would feel about WFH vs. office if highly paid, highly valued employees weren't forced into literally the smallest possible space for a third of their day. If we all had our own real offices and a work space not architected to be as abusive and "efficient" as possible, would we think differently about how nice it is not to go to the office any more? Likewise for city design where commercial spac…

I think that makes a big difference! Cubicles should be outlawed really, or at least optional. Seems like an archaic thing to me. For my own contracted jobs I went to place that had you choose between an open plan or a small room workplace. All flexible.

So I think you are right, if we had more choice, people are happier. Hubs are also a great way forward I think.

Maybe there are some exceptions, like high security or high demand for coordination on the spot, but a lot of sectors should or could be more flexible.

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

#232

Post by brailsafe »

ohhnoodont wrote: post #160
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…

It is a bad thing, for the reason you just eluded to. Your work goes away for any reason, and so does your social life. This is why many of my friends haven't made any real friends since highschool

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

#233

Post by outsomnia »

angarg12 wrote: post #181

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,…

> It's just the ramblings of a very immature engineer.

> second hand toxic one

You mean, be cautious because the reddit poster had not been sufficiently institutionalized yet to love his openplan cattle stall and believe he works with a "family"?

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

#234

Post by acd »

The open office space plan is silly when "normal" companies want to imitate office cost saving from Silicon valley startups. I feel nobody really questioned why.

Open floor plan is good for cost saving but not for anything else. Collaboration is less in open plan than a traditional office.

Here is Harvard research on Open Office plan https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices

"When the firms switched to open offices, face-to-face interactions fell by 70%." https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/bernstein-open-offic...

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

#235

Post by Apocryphon »

joelbluminator wrote: post #229
Apocryphon wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've made that point before, but was told otherwise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27356320

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

#236

Post by foxpurple »

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 would suggest that Friday makes a good time for the mandatory day. Means people can go out for drinks at the end of the day. The in office days will never be as productive but they can be good socialising times so you may as well make use of that.

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

#237

Post by cblconfederate »

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…

remote work changes the dynamics, when half the team is on zoom, everyone goes on zoom, not the other way around. Also, half-empty offices are much much less useful than full offices. So i think things gravitate naturally towards all-remote

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

#238

Post by Fredej »

refactor_master wrote: post #223
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." 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 relati…

In many, many ways.

Relationships to your fellow engineers help when you're banging out code and need a review or just a rubber duck session.

Relationships to the Product Management team means you have a finger on the pulse in terms of where the product you're building is moving. That means you can push back on stupid things, and suggest brilliant things that were only possible because you had the technical insight.

Relationships to upper management helps if you have some technical idea that you want to pursue which requires a significant investment.

Basically, relationships help a ton if you want to have any influence on the work you're doing. If you're fine just taking whichever ticket pops up and implementing it then sure, you don't need relationships.

I think this however also heavily depends on the company and culture you're in.

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

#239

Post by jstx1 »

ekianjo wrote: post #157
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.

That selection works both ways. I'm excluding all fully remote jobs from my current job search.

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

#240

Post by konschubert »

ohhnoodont wrote: post #160
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…

Yea, I think both kinds of work, on-site with high social interaction and at-home with focus on individual work, have their raison d'etre.

It's not an either-or. Both modes of working will exist in the future.

Post reply on HN