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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

#391

Post by burneraccount12 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 12:59 PM UTC

What is this, the zillionth "I prefer WFH" article, the office sucks" article on HN?

We get it, enough already. It's like dealing with vegans -- not enough for them to enjoy their lifestyle they must publicly tell you how much they hate yours.

Is there anything new to learn here at this point? Why do these articles keep getting upvoted?

WFH lovers swear by how much more productive they are (and here productive = tasks that don't require collaboration), how many less distractions they have (no kids) and how much time they save on the commute (apparently never getting sick of living/working in the same space 24/7).

I like going to the office, OK? Yes, even with the terrible open office plans. It gives me structure, focus and socialization. I can easily pose questions to colleagues. And when I go home I can context switch to home life easier.

But if that's not for you, fine, maybe just find one of the countless remote jobs available now instead of writing yet another 3K word article about how terrible working in an office is?

Enough already.

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

#392

Post by ElectricMind » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:02 PM UTC

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.…

//Pristine bathrooms//

Thanks for pointing this out. I thought I was alone thinking this. I mean it tells lot about company right : how they keep toilet/bathroom ..

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

#393

Post by Grimm665 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #358

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 t…

> and I have yet to see a company that allows me to buy more RAM with my own money

Reminds me of a funny story from my first IT internship. Got a ticket for a weird issue from a software developer on the floor above. Went to visit his desk, and found he was a quiet, shy, but likeable guy who was having trouble with some hardware in his workstation. He gave me a cheeky look before opening his company-supplied desktop, and it was completely full of custom parts he had slowly installed himself over the course of years to improve his workflow. This guy had a PCIe SSD, in 2011, while the rest of the company still had spinning rust.

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

#394

Post by bluebubble56 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

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…

Absolutely agree here - although I'm plenty productive working from home, I find I have to go out for a 20/30 minutes walk afterwards, otherwise I never really 'turn off' and my brain is stuck in work mode for the rest of the day. While commuting isn't always fun, it does help provide that 'switch off' - I'm lucky enough to have a relatively short (~20 min) commute though, so I can see how this would be more frustrating for someone with 1hr+ commute.

Seeing colleagues in person is also vital for me - I wouldn't have the working relationship with them that I have if we were fully remote. I think the hybrid model is the best way - it's what works best for me, at least.

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

#395

Post by Mordisquitos » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #340

thevagrant wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I can't comment on your own home or that of GP commenter, but in my home the cleaning and supplies services seem to take 7 days off per week, so I keep having to deal with cleaning the bathroom and stocking up on tea and coffee myself. At the office these tasks are taken care of, and when I get home the state of it and its supplies are no worse than they were when I left in the morning.

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

#396

Post by stunt » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

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…

It's going to take a few years for companies to learn how to implement hybrid model. Especially for traditional companies with lots of works force that are grow up with the office work mentality. And I'm not only talking about how to run remote meetings, but everything including on-boarding and training new engineers and cross team collaboration.

Luckily full-remote companies have lots of good documentation about remote work. So I think other companies should start reading their playbooks or try to hire some of their talents to learn how proper remote work is done.

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

#397

Post by brailsafe » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #282

brailsafe wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean, nothing is stopping you from making friends outside of work too though. It’s just another avenue for socializing. WFH though means that socializing is likely completely off the table. Fine if you’re not into it - sucks a lot if you are. I really miss lunches with my coworkers. It was almost always the highlight of my day - if I didn’t do anything else after work.

Often times the feeling of pseudo-social life and working too much are some of the things stopping you from doing this. Then maybe a pandemic happens and you realize that all those people were doing the exact same thing, and there's no neutral substance to your friendship. For this reason, I always recommend meeting the friends of people at work. They're relatively neutral, and you only rely on your work connections as a jumping off point.

WFH means you can do other shit more easily because you have more time available to go to the gym, cafe, walking around, party etc..

Not to say that friends made at work cannot be friends, but all it takes is a trivial severance of that to reveal how close that connection was.

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

#398

Post by brailsafe » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

Lewton wrote: post #288

brailsafe wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm still regularly meeting up with a group of ex-colleagues from a company I left 5 years ago

It can happen. Certainly if you did quite a lot of other things outside of work. It's just not necessarily a safe BET imo. If you live right next to them, or you became drinking buddies that talk about thingds other than the current project you're both working on, you stand a higher chance. If the only thing tying you together is your company though, it's going to be pretty vulnerable.

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

#399

Post by brailsafe » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #286

brailsafe wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Your work goes away for any reason, and so does your social life. Sure, as can be true after leaving school or moving away from family. Reason enough to always foster the skill of both making and keeping friends.

Totally agreed. If your only friends are highschool buddies, then you'll likely never leave your hometown.

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

#400

Post by brailsafe » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

twelve40 wrote: post #291

brailsafe wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What the OP has alluded to was that sometimes you just like the people you work with, and if you are in a situation with long hours and hard work, for some people it's more efficient to endure that in person and not in isolation, and it's not always a BS manager thing. Whether you choose for some reason to cling to those people, or fully realize that this is a team that gets together to get shit done, not a family, i…

I don't think it was only this, but I agree this can be much better than in isolation. You just don't want your work and your work-social life to encompass all of your time. It's just not that important no matter how much your Saas is going to change the world.

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