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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

#351

Post by mmarq »

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…

> if "productivity" is the sole metric of an employee's performance, just wait until your employer decides to try and optimize it.

Productivity is the sole metric of your performance, it is the job of management to come up with meaningful metrics. If they try to optimise for something stupid like LOC or mouse movements or hours logged, they will get the hell they planned for themselves.

The very last thing I want to happen is being judged by how popular I am.

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

#352

Post by baby »

schwartzworld wrote: post #338
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…

> The sounds and vibe of the office have work associations in my brain.

You’ll find that once you’re not used to that anymore, reaclimating to it will be a nightmare (and very stressful)

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

#353

Post by wodenokoto »

> When I get a card, depending on what it is, I can finish it in 2-4 hours, and then I can focus on doing something else for the rest of the day (learning/training, other meetings, or just not work at all since I was able to be productive).

Aren’t you supposed to start the next card?

“Working at the office sucks because I have to work instead of doing my hobbies” is a shitty argument for working at home.

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

#354

Post by gregoriol »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #219
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…

I work from home... but I'm not alone.. I've got as much, if not more access to co-workers whilst at home as I do in the office. We use teams extensively so if you are needing to concentrate, simply flip your status to busy. We've got a group set up for the developers where we chat, swap stories, ask technical questions or just complain about the poor management. No different than if we were in the office.. In fact p…

Text, voice, even video is not the same as a live human being: even-though it is communication in all cases, and I do agree we can have great tools, the tools can't replace the interactions you can have with a real human.

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

#355

Post by ekianjo »

jstx1 wrote: post #239
ekianjo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

good. we all get the best of both worlds then.

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

#356

Post by benhurmarcel »

sumo89 wrote: post #345

For all the upsides of working remotely and especially for 100% remote I think the downside is it can become very transactional. Write code for x hours, the clock ticks to 6pm and you leave to do something else. I'm not saying everyone has to have a great passion for their work and ultimately we're all doing it to put food on the table but it seems to me that it's a recipe for becoming disillusioned with it all. You…

I find it a lot more "transactional" to come sit at the office and be paid to be there until I can clock out. When working from home I'm clearly paid for my output, not for being in a place for a set amount of time.

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

#357

Post by edude03 »

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…

I upvoted you, but I heavily disagree with you. Working with people you don't know, don't trust and/or don't like is hard. This hardship can be alleviated by "relationship building"

You can also cut down a tree with a dull axe, but why would you choose that over a sharp axe?

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

#358

Post by probably_wrong »

Nbox9 wrote: post #37

Wow, that seems like a terrible place to work. Why is he going to a daily meeting if he doesn’t have to pay attention to the meeting? Why is there not an incentive to complete more than one card a day? If one card can take as little as two hours it seems like a massive waste to expect someone to only do one card. Why doesn’t he have proper equipment? If you spend XXX,XXX a year for an employee it makes sense to spend…

> Why doesn’t he have proper equipment?

Oh, oh, I know this one! Because the equipment is standardized for the entire organization, meaning that it's optimized for the administrative branch who uses mostly Powerpoint and Outlook.

For the extra credit: Of course you can order specialized equipment, but it will come out of your department's budget (because it's non-standard) and there might not be enough. It may also take weeks to arrive, a business case justification, and/or quotes from several vendors.

Paying for it yourself also won't do - Bring-Your-Own-Device may be forbidden due to security concerns, and I have yet to see a company that allows me to buy more RAM with my own money.

There's also the question of what a "high quality headset" is, but that's probably a different topic.

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

#359

Post by throwawaydeitz1 »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #346
thefz wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's very common for office life and social life to be highly intertwined Until there's a conflict of interest between the two zones or between two colleagues and it all goes to shit. Trust me, keep work and friends separated.

> Trust me, keep work and friends separated. That's what you do by changing jobs. When you move on to the next company, those guys you met on the job become just "out of work friends".

Most people with > 3 jobs worth of experience will tell you that coworker-friends rarely transition to non-work friends after leaving said company. You will become too busy with making new coworker-friends at the new company, combined with non-work family/friend commitments filling the rest of your time.

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

#360

Post by Mordisquitos »

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’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.

I would go even further than that in your criticism of the overgeneralisation: there are engineers who are introverts and want to go back to the office.

I'm sure this is very dependant on the local or office culture, but introverts can very much miss social contact in the office as well.

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