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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

#461

Post by mewpmewp2 »

scatters wrote: post #362
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also go walking/running if you WFH, which I do. At any time I want. If I'm stressed of work mid day I'll just go running for an hour and will feel super. Couldn't properly do that if I worked from office.

Why not? What's stopping you?

Honestly, it's just too much of a hassle for me to be able to actually enjoy the running activity itself.

1. I have to prepare for the weather, organise proper clothes. Fine.

2. I sweat really hard. After a run I'm totally wet and I'd rather be indoors as little as possible, since sweat is dripping all over. And to get to a work shower I would have to go through an elevator and some other places. I'd feel people judging me if I'm sweating all over the place before getting to shower.

3. I'd prefer to not shower at work. I will have to also bring so much stuff along like changing clothes and must find a place to dry my sweaty clothes since they are dripping through. I must remember to not leave them there and I'm quite forgetful about things like that.

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

#462

Post by mathverse »

sam0x17 wrote: post #442
mathverse wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There won't be increased consumption at 7 AM and at 5 PM on a weekday if less people commute. I just don't see it happening. Additionally the tech industry isn't exactly a groundswell of people either -- if all tech workers stop commuting, that isn't going to have enough of an impact to change traffic conditions except literally in silicon valley. There just aren't that many workers in tech. There's a delayed consum…

> I was under the impression that offices generally are environmentally speaking better buildings than your average condos and houses.They have to follow specific sustainability standards. The house/apartment you live in is still there (because you still live in it) regardless of if you WFH. The difference is if you WFH, it's actually being utilized 100% of the time instead of just at night and on weekends. Conversel…

>The house/apartment you live in is still there (because you still live in it) regardless of if you WFH. The difference is if you WFH, it's actually being utilized 100% of the time instead of just at night and on weekends. Conversely, the office literally doesn't need to exist in the first place if everyone does WFH. So we have to compare having your apartment + having an office, to having just your apartment. The office situation is a net negative no matter how environmentally friendly it is unless it is actually carbon neutral or carbon negative. And that's ignoring the commuting aspect. If we were to abandon all offices tomorrow and let nature re-claim them, it would have a massively positive effect carbon footprint wise. And it's not like offices turn off the AC at night

I am pretty sure most office buildings adhere to strict sustainability standards as opposed to residential housing.Only more luxurious condos are just as good as your average modern office space.

I am pretty sure most modern office buildings turn off the AC at night or have a mechanism to keep it cool by other means (external blinds).

>By this logic, we should keep everyone poor because god forbid they consume something. Consumption isn't negative across the board. And overwhelmingly these days it's digital anyway. If I stay at home and watch Netflix, I have a much smaller carbon footprint than someone who goes and drives somewhere. You can see from the statistics above, the average person drives ~39 miles per day. I'm saying reduce that by 32 on weekdays and you're saying "oh no, what if they replace that with other consumption???". I think it is borderline impossible people would consistently do something _worse_ than their commute (carbon wise) across the board. It's like saying "oh no, if we ban unhealthy deserts in schools people will buy them and eat even more unhealthy deserts outside of school". They won't -- on average kids would be healthier. It's a no brainer.

I am not arguing against WFH.I am arguing against your argument that going WFH would bring net positives for the environment.People with more disposable resources do things that cause more pollution because they participate in economic activity.That's just a fact.

Americans tend to consume much more regardless of whether they drive a car or not.

>There is no reason to suspect this would happen. If you work from 9 AM to 5 PM, and you cut out your commute, you have _more_ time to for example make a home-cooked meal. If anything people will order out less. All the statistics on WFH (and I've done contracting for a meal planning company so I can guarantee this one specifically) support this. People order out less when they work remotely, across the board.

Regarding the "taking longer rides thing" -- people aren't going to do that so much that it becomes as demanding as their commute. Then it would be annoying.

I think things like Jevons paradox beg to differ.Cooking a meal at home is an option many would not choose.

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

#463

Post by Dylan16807 »

RHSeeger wrote: post #458
Dylan16807 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s still aligned with my point. Either you pay rent for an additional separate office (lots of money), or you reduce your existing living space to make room for work stuff. Yes, but the reduction for a desk is only if you don't have another usable surface, and even then it's only a tenth of "lots of money" because a desk is so much smaller than a room. A tenth of lots of money is not all that much, and very lik…

I think part of the disconnect is that (it appears that) for you, a suitable work from home environment is - a 2'x3' area on a table, anywhere in the place you live For a lot of us (at least for me and some others), a suitable work from home environment includes - a 4'x3' desk (or larger, for multiple monitors) - a door or other way to separate the workspace from house interruptions (and vice versa) - a bookshelf and…

All of that except the door is easy to do at low cost.

Whether you can get a nice isolated place depends on the particular place you're living.

But I was never arguing that isolation isn't necessary! Please look again at the initial comment I replied to.

"Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office."

My concern was only with the second half of that "or". To get to the second half of the "or", you have to take it as given that there's a suitable spot in your home. When you argue that many homes don't already have such a spot, I agree, but that's irrelevant to what I was trying to comment on.

Everything I've said here should be interpreted like this: "Okay, so you've decided you don't need an additional room? Well in that case, I don't think the space taken up by working from home in an existing room is a big deal, because xyz."

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

#464

Post by unionpivo »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #376
minimaul wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same here.

12 minutes on average (there is one 2 min semaphore) with car. Would take on average 45 min by public transportation Takes about 25 min by bike.

But i think i am in almost worst case. There are plenty of my friends in same city that have usable commute with public transportation

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

#465

Post by Dylan16807 »

tshaddox wrote: post #460
Dylan16807 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your laptop is comfortable to use that way, then you can work on it that way. Or just put it on a table. I don't see any need to distinguish between desktops and laptops for working from home. Laptops have built-in webcams too.

It sounds like your office setup is much much more minimal than mine too then. Obviously you’re very fortunate if you’re fine working 8+ hours a day on a laptop on your dining table.

I'm not exactly recommending a minimal setup, I'm saying that if someone already has a minimal setup they're happy with then they can repurpose it for work.

I'd add a big screen or two, a real mouse, and a better keyboard. But that would take up very little extra space when not in use.

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

#466

Post by baby »

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #363
baby wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

I found that no, that's not the case at all. I'm very relaxed now that I'm finally back in an office. I was very stressed working from home.

I guess you have a gift!

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

#467

Post by refactor_master »

Fredej wrote: post #238
refactor_master wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In many, many ways. Relationships to your fellow engineers help when you're banging out code and need a review or just a rubber duck session. Relationships to the Product Management team means you have a finger on the pulse in terms of where the product you're building is moving. That means you can push back on stupid things, and suggest brilliant things that were only possible because you had the technical insight.…

I’m surprised I got upvoted at all, reading over your well thought-out comment.

I do command quite some deciding power. But I can’t figure out if it’s my technical skills, or the fact that I’m the only person carrying this project. Pretty sure no one else around me knows what a ticket is.

But what irks me is that my entire position feels incredibly ill-conceived. Like I’m not solving any actual problems. And I can’t “do” anything about it, because that would take years of company-wide restructuring. And I’m just not a long-term visionary, like my peers (who all happen to be, let’s say, at a much later physical and mental state in life).

That’s why I don’t see how in-company relationships benefit me. I wouldn’t dismiss them in general though, which I strongly came off as doing.

But it’s either that, or quitting. The latter will probably happen in the foreseeable future, once it doesn’t look too transient on my resume.

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

#468

Post by bryanrasmussen »

RHSeeger wrote: post #390
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't need find a meeting room, maybe it's just because I've never been the meeting room finding person but in most places I've worked it hasn't been a big problem. >you don't need to worry about making too much noise, I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting, but I have had the problem that kids in the house were being too noisy for the online meeting and ev…

> in most places I've worked it hasn't been a big problem In every place I've worked, there's been a limited number of meeting rooms and you needed to plan ahead to get one. And if your meeting ran over, it wasn't uncommon to have a group of people standing outside waiting for you to vacate. > I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting Fair. I was really thinking ab…

>And if your meeting ran over, it wasn't uncommon to have a group of people standing outside waiting for you to vacate.

having a meeting run over is a problem, having someone waiting to get into that room is a solution to the problem.

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

#469

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

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…

It's a lot harder than giving an employee a laptop and having them shadow someone for a couple weeks before kicking them in the deep end.

Structured training may be straightforward to implement, but it takes many more man-hours than just letting the new employees sponge up knowledge on their own.

That said, remote work is here to stay, and you're right to criticize companies for being extremely lazy with remote onboarding. Companies that can quickly ramp up fully-remote new-hires will probably have a huge competitive advantage in the coming years.

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

#470

Post by schwartzworld »

cebert wrote: post #370
baby wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

From my experience it’s best to keep coworkers and friends in separate circles. Most of your coworkers aren’t truly your friends and have their own personal motives. You compete against them during performance reviews and promotions. It’s difficult to determine if you can trust or confide in any coworkers. Stick with true friends you can confide in and have healthy relationships with.

> it’s best to keep coworkers and friends in separate circles

I've made some really great friends in the workplace. Considering how much time you spend working, there's nothing wrong with cultivating relationships there, and often those relationships can outlive the job.

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