I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by cehrlich » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:13 AM UTC

mvanbaak wrote: post #337

moss2 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not the same.

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

#372

Post by cebert » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:15 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #204

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…

Perhaps companies that require physical offices could try to offer a compromise incentive: personal offices or actual cubicles instead of open office layouts. At least that would solve many of the pain points of physically working in tech. Maybe personal offices are too expensive, but how much does it cost to set up cubes?

The biggest contributor to me loathing returning to the office every day is the open office floor concept. It’s a distracting environment for software engineers who need to focus when doing their work. As I’ve become more senior, it’s become even worse because I feel like I have a constant flow of individuals standing behind me to ask questions. It’s very difficult to get an hour or two of uninterrupted time every day.

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

#373

Post by benhurmarcel » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:15 AM UTC

foxpurple wrote: post #261

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rush hour sucks though even if you use the metro/tram/bus/train. The idea that the majority of the adult population should be travelling either in or out of the city centre at the same time seems quite preposterous now.

They shouldn’t be travelling that far at all. They should be within a walkable distance of where they need to go. Walking to work is never stressful and often does reverse.

Yes I'm going to live in an ugly industrial zone with no shops or nature around.

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

#374

Post by chhxxhh » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

slgeorge wrote: post #293

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.

Absolutely. Remote working is absolutely devastating to the development of junior team members and people just getting started in the world of work. If you're just getting started in your area (whether development, sales, marketing, devops) having immediate help and guidance from your peers and manager is really helpful - documentation helps, structured training helps but they're not the full solution. Those momentar…

This 100%, I am happy to sacrifice some personal comfort for the greater good of the team.

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

#375

Post by kokey » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:18 AM UTC

thefz wrote: post #326

ohhnoodont wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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.

I find this depends highly on where one lives. If you work somewhere where a significant chunk of the workforce are local either by growing up there or graduated there then this separation comes naturally since people have established social circles outside of work. It's different where the majority of the company's employees had to relocate to work there, people will be more open to making friendships at work and this will be a good thing. In the end it will be down to good leadership to manage the conflict of interests and they will arise anyway. I've seen this happen where due to the lack of friendships inside and outside of work some employees can be targeted and corrupted by vendors who take advantage of a person's social needs.

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

#376

Post by benhurmarcel » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

minimaul wrote: post #242

aba_cz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even then, I currently live in a European capital city, and my commute is either 1h in public transportation or 15 minutes by car.

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

#377

Post by benhurmarcel » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:22 AM UTC

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…

All of those seem pretty standard in large companies in my experience.

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

#378

Post by edude03 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:26 AM UTC

I've gone back and forth between consulting and working full time in an office for the last ~12 years of my career so I have a good amount of experience with both WFH and working in an office.

I prefer an office mostly because unfortunately the only way to make some people "behave" and work together is actually by forcing discipline on them. My biggest frustration is the type of person who only values their own personal productivity to the detriment of the team. The type of person who joins a "useless meeting on mute" then after whatever time period produces output that wildly varies from expectations because listening to others is beneath them, and they're too smart/disinterested to ask questions about what they're building. The type of person who replies to messages hours and sometimes days after you message them because they turned their notifications off to "focus" and never bothered to check them after. The type of person who you have to message about everything because they can't be bothered to document anything they do (never updates tickets, never comments their code, doesn't write readmes etc). The type of person who writes tests that assert 1 = 1 for the sake of adding tests like their team lead asked.

I don't know OP personally, but I get the impression that they're exactly the type of antisocial person I'm thinking of.

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

#379

Post by prehensile » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:31 AM UTC

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 have a counter-example for you. Most of the people who are most keen to get back to the office in my company, and a few others that I know about, (majority engineers, certainly all knowledge workers) are the people who are struggling to work from home. Maybe they’re young and/or in tiny or otherwise non-ideal apartments or houseshares, maybe they live with a partner or kids and finding the space for everyone to do their thing is difficult.

Being able to WFH comfortably is not a luxury everyone has.

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

#380

Post by chhxxhh » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

jasondclinton wrote: post #144

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.

The solution is obvious: structured training and mentoring. When the pandemic hit, I was hiring a team of 5 new engineers. What was I going to do? Throw up my hands? I implemented a weekly technical training program that morphed into the 250 person org official onboarding. Weekly, I literally just get someone on a VC for 30 minutes and record having a conversation about a technical topic at a noobie level. 16 months…

You can't replace human contact with technology, it will never be an adequate substitute. We are social animals and I think the increased push to doing everything online will damage peoples mental wellbeing in the long term