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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

#241

Post by ALittleLight »

chrsig wrote: post #121
joelbluminator wrote: post #68

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?

So....better suffer now because otherwise we might suffer later? No, thanks.

Not to mention that suffering now wouldn't prevent the future suffering.

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

#242

Post by minimaul »

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

In my experience, public transport is great in europe if you're in a capital city. If you're not, then it is very patchy, and you end up having to drive everywhere.

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

#243

Post by thrwaeasddsaf »

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…

Yeah, I go for a walk or a run or a bike ride after work. Unless the weather is shit.

That's the great part, I get to choose instead of being forced to the same regular pollute every day.

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

#244

Post by thih9 »

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…

I'd prefer to have more choice about who / where / when I get to socialise. E.g. with remote work I can save time on commute and use it to visit a tech event, or a coworking space; I'd still meet similar people there, while having more freedom.

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

#245

Post by foxpurple »

magic_carpet_ai wrote: post #162
benrbray wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct about the problem, but your solution is backwards. The solution is not for us to retreat to the suburbs and WFH forever. The solution is to build dense, walkable cities with good public transit, allowing for sustainable in-person work and strengthening local communities.

Dense cities with public transit: maybe not the best in times of pandemics

They clearly aren’t that bad. China has very dense cities and has not had much issue controlling spread. Masks and a respectful society seem to be highly effective at stoping viruses.

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

#246

Post by Bancakes »

mesaframe wrote: post #222
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…

Nice superiority complex you got there. Why don't you admit you are poor at socializing.

Are you an engineer? Do you work for a living?

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

#247

Post by Apocryphon »

acd wrote: post #234

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 ope…

On a tangential pop cultural note, I recently realized that The Office, perhaps the seminal '00s-'10s equivalent to '90s office drone dramas (Dilbert, Office Space, The Matrix, Fight Club and so forth - https://www.openculture.com/?p=1067238), takes place in an open office. The employees of Dunder Mifflin have low cubicles that expose their sounds both to the viewers, and to each other. Not the best environment for concentration. Perhaps this has been an invasive trend that's common to white collar professions even beyond tech? And it's the defining hassle for white collar professionals of the present era.

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

#248

Post by solraph »

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…

> 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_."

Honestly, I've found screen sharing better on a video call for pair programming. I can switch to the branch and share on my screen to code through a solution, give or take control of their workstation without crowding around a tiny desk, and if I need to have an in-depth discussion that takes 45 minutes to work out what core concept is missing, then we can do that without annoying everybody else in the office or needing to find a meeting room.

Three days is an epic amount of time for an open pull request to be resolved, unless there's been some massive miscommunication. To me, that would indicate there's some other problem with the team.

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

#249

Post by jstx1 »

aseerdbnarng wrote: post #201

Return to office is just management reasserting ownership over the serfs dressed up with mindless business jargon (collaboration, innovation, culture etc)

I think this is too reductive. There've been enough people in this thread who mention that they prefer working from an office. It's not just managerial oppression.

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

#250

Post by foxpurple »

midrus wrote: post #76
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

> 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 agree, mixed remote and non remote is very difficult to get right. I think we should all just switch jobs to remote companies if we like that and our company is not, and vice versa.

My company has gone to mixed but everyone naturally picks the same days Monday to Wednesday typically at home and Thursday/Friday everyone is in.

This avoids all the issues of mixed.

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