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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

#331

Post by test1235 »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #132
amdelamar wrote: post #44

> 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…

I have a mild case of tinnitus which I attribute to headphone use for 9 or so hours a day (commute plus time trying to work in the office). At home these days I rarely have music or anything on, I can work for the most part in comfortable silence. Means that music is saved for when I actually want to listen to it and can give it my attention, instead of while I'm trying to debug or avoid someone's armpit on the train…

A lot of the time I had my over-the-ears headphones on in the office, I wasn't even listening to anything - it was just nice to block out the environment noise a bit, and let people know not to bother me.

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

#333

Post by isatty »

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 can’t believe such over generalized garbage is upvoted on HN.

Everyone’s job is different, everyone is different. There are productive engineers who are introverts and there are productive engineers who are extroverts. Making jokes in the office and having conversations does not take time away from doing good work - no dev is productive 100% of the time.

Humans are social animals, and working _with_ someone is important. I don’t care if that interaction is over chat or in person but this idea that people are productive in isolation needs to die. This is especially applicable to new hires. The most productive engineers you talked about have habits and work they do that cannot be taught over chat or VC. It just doesn’t work that way.

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

#334

Post by anm89 »

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…

Seems like a waste to pay expensive rents for office space when you are using it 2 days a week. I would imagine that is not a stable equilibrium

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

#335

Post by habosa »

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.

It's also the same for new teams or even new large projects. I have worked at {Big Tech Company} for 7 years and WFH has barely been a speed bump for me.

Last week I decided to switch teams. My onboarding rate is glacial so far. Naturally I don't have a big workload, because I am new. However between tasks I can't just try and learn by osmosis, because there's nobody around. I have to go out of my way to schedule meetings with people and say "what are you working on? explain it to me."

Luckily I am in a fairly senior role so I am confident scheduling those meetings and asking those questions. If I was a new grad I'd be terrified to do that and instead probably just sit here and twiddle my thumbs half the day.

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

#336

Post by pawelwentpawel »

IvanAchlaqullah wrote: post #170
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…

Yes, working from home is much better than working at open office. However there is some scenario where middle manager can make WFH as hellish as working at open office: by mandating everyone to install invasive spyware so they can "manage" you remotely. Bonus point if the company didn't want to give/loan company devices, so you have to install it on your own personal devices.

How common is having to install such spyware though? I hear stories about it but none of people that I know actually had to put up with it (or maybe they didn't know?).

The closest I got to this situation was being told that if I want to do work on my personal laptop I'd have to install some software that would allow the IT department to wipe it out in case it gets stolen. While I understand the reason, it was an obvious nope from me.

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

#337

Post by mvanbaak »

moss2 wrote: post #312
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 sucks to read this because I feel targeted. I can not get any coding done at home and am 10x more productive if I have people around me working on the same project. I need to see the face of another person or I just go limp and become unmotivated. People work differently and I think that an employer should accommodate as many types of work environments as possible. There should be a choice between remote or in-off…

If you have the need to 'be together' why not utilize video calls etc?

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

#338

Post by schwartzworld »

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…

> The most productive engineers ... are the remote

I was way more productive in the office. Home is too fun and distracting. The sounds and vibe of the office have work associations in my brain.

> Problem is when people mix the office with their entire social Life.

You sound like a joy to work with.

What's wrong with making friends at work? I have other friends (although age makes meeting new people harder) but work friends tend to be techie people who are interested in similar topics to me. My wife's eyes glaze over when I start talking about the finer points of my job. It's nice being around other technical people for a few hours a day.

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

#339

Post by chii »

isatty wrote: post #333
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 can’t believe such over generalized garbage is upvoted on HN. Everyone’s job is different, everyone is different. There are productive engineers who are introverts and there are productive engineers who are extroverts. Making jokes in the office and having conversations does not take time away from doing good work - no dev is productive 100% of the time. Humans are social animals, and working _with_ someone is impo…

> everyone is different.

and yet, you assert

> Humans are social animals, and working _with_ someone is important.

The most productive engineers are all different. But empirical evidence has suggested that those who are _the most productive_, such as people like Carmack, are productive in isolation (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16518726 about his programming vacations).

Of course, i don't deny there are productive engineers who do their most productive work in a group setting. But i would also not want anyone to assert that social interaction is required for it.

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

#340

Post by chii »

thevagrant wrote: post #308
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…

1. An office with four walls, a door that can be closed is helpful but as a _minimum_ I'd also want: 2. Pristine bathrooms 3. Clean kitchen and good supply of tea/coffee (with ample space for those to store or prepare their food hygenically). The amount of places I've worked that can't provide 2 and 3 is saddening. Nothing worse than being stuck in a dirty smelly place, hanging around to get points for presenteeism.…

> I'd also want: ...

a home provides all of those. So basically, you want to work from home!

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