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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

#421

Post by pnt12 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #353

> 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.

Learning and training are not hobbies, it's something that many people don't have time to because they're overworked. If someone takes 10% of their work time to learn, at the end of a year they had the opportunity to learn a lot. If you just learn barely enough to finish your task, yoi never get deep knowledge about something - that's how I often feel.

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

#422

Post by conductr »

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 once worked at a place with pristine bathrooms. Awesome in theory except any time nature called I ran into a “closed for cleaning” sign as they were deep cleaned 3-4 times a day. I always wanted to work with the janitorial staff to improve their timing and “system” as I don’t think they even realized sometimes they had all men’s rooms closed at the same time for significant amount of times. But I couldn’t bring myself to interject.

Anyways I have an appreciation for availability these days. My office butts to toilet ratio is very high and I’m occasionally in a jam.

I really wish people in the men’s room would only use the toilet to sit down. The seat should certainly rise without the weight of a butt on it, it’s the only time it belongs down despite what the women in all our lives have conditioned us to believe.

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

#423

Post by bradlys »

brailsafe wrote: post #397
bradlys wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

That's an interesting approach - how do you even do that though?

Honestly - WFH isn't much more time liberating for myself. Any amount of commute time I had (which was never very much - always under 20min each way, closer to 10min) was taken over by extra work demands or blurring separation of lines. On top of that - there's no happy hours, fun lunches, or what not now because WFH.

And I agree - but I guess what I'm saying is... You don't need lasting friendships for socializing to be enjoyable. Situational socializing can still be fun and it doesn't have to be this thing where you are going to have these people be your best man at your wedding.

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

#424

Post by midrus »

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.

Well, now I manage to have lunch with my wife every day. I prefer that.

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

#425

Post by joelbluminator »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #411
joelbluminator wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people took monetary obligations (mortgages mostly) thinking they'll make 6 figures for the next 20-30 years...what happens if that's no longer true?

Currently, mortgage debt evaporates faster from inflation/wage growth faster than outsourcing can realistically occur. In any case I don't see why software engineering should be exempt when the manufacturing and textile industries hit hard by outsourcing and automation. It sucks but that's just how capitalism works. SE's would probably have an easier time adapting than people in those industries anyway. There's a lot…

You raise good points. I'll just counter this: you say currently and that's a very important word. Currently things are good in tech, in fact never have been better. Almost any startup with half decent product raises tens, often hundreds of millions of dollars with ease. With this loose finance (the causes of which are the low interest rate) of course paying a lot for developers doesn't matter much. I'm talking about a scenario in which if (when?) a lot of hot air is released from this bubble. This will terminate many companies that don't really produce much and will cause the rest to cut costs aggressively. I guess something similar to the dot com bubble only I think this time it will be worse. I do agree with you though that if the abundance of money continues, for the reasons you listed the current dynamic will probably prevail.

After reading what I just wrote I fully realize this is one of those things that is impossible to predict and pointless to worry about. It can happen tomorrow, in 10 years or maybe never.

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

#426

Post by midrus »

foxpurple wrote: post #250
midrus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, this is a good solution, as long as everyone agrees on the days, sounds like it should work.

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

#427

Post by Dylan16807 »

RHSeeger wrote: post #389
Dylan16807 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you lost space at your home during the 8 hours I guess that's true, but I'm not sure why I would care about my home getting slightly smaller when I'm at work. It will affect some people, but I don't know if it's many.

I would expect it impacts a large number of people that work primarily remotely. A lot of us have a home office because working from the kitchen or other shared space just isn't effective. The cost of an extra room (even if a bonus room, not a full bedroom) can increase the cost of a house by a dramatic amount; and then you also have to consider utilities and the like. Every time I've done the math, working from home…

Needing a dedicated home office room for various reasons is a big issue but it is not the issue I was responding to.

In "Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours", a dedicated office is the "paid for more space" side, and I was talking about the "lost space" alternative.

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

#428

Post by Dylan16807 »

tshaddox wrote: post #410
Dylan16807 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you lost space at your home during the 8 hours I guess that's true, but I'm not sure why I would care about my home getting slightly smaller when I'm at work. It will affect some people, but I don't know if it's many.

Not just when you’re at work, unless you tear down your desk and store it out of sight every single day!

Only if you got an extra work-only desk. Even then, an extra desk by itself isn't very big.

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

#429

Post by mvanbaak »

cehrlich wrote: post #371
mvanbaak wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not the same.

Sorry, but I once moved over 8000km away from the office. Some tinkering with lego to have a robot with an ipod touch and a permanent facetime feed is close to be the same. I could 'walk around' and talk to ppl as much as I wanted.

In the end, the whole walking around was a gimmick and 99.9999% of the time it was not used. But yeah, while you cannot smell your coworkers, you can have the same convo's etc. Just have everyone when they start working enter the video chat.

It's not the same if you make it not the same.

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

#430

Post by tshaddox »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #428
tshaddox wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just when you’re at work, unless you tear down your desk and store it out of sight every single day!

Only if you got an extra work-only desk. Even then, an extra desk by itself isn't very big.

A desk is big if you live somewhere where property and rent prices are high. Like California, for instance.
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