Is going to the office a broken way of working?
newyorker.com
Is going to the office a broken way of working?
1–10 of 468 posts
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#2By Cal Newport
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#3Yes. And so is working from home. It's all broken.
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#4Yes. And so is working from home. It's all broken.
Working is broken?
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#5Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#6Living in Maui, I have a remote job (my agency/consultancy) and a job doing fun stuff (driving people to Hana, Haleakala OR working on a whalewatching boat). I am setting up residual income streams to save for my own property here.
I have a startup/movement I am working on as well, freeing up my time from clients to invest more time and money into it.
Balance is the key to fulfillment, to longevity.
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#7IMHO no even if I've been working from home since 2006 when I became self employed.
What's broken is having to go to the office every single day. In my experience before and after starting to work from home there is an absolute need to work face to face either to create some bonds between the team members or with a customer or in those rare phases when you have to create something and you need to go full speed with brainstorming sessions, talk to people etc. In those cases a physical presence is much more efficient that remote communications.
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#8I’m gonna go against the HN grain here and, despite having been fully for remote work for the first year or so of the pandemic, come out and say that life has really gotten a lot more repetitive and frankly disappointing since covid and the death of the office. I kind of miss meeting people in the office.
I was in the unfortunate position of having moved to a new city for a new tech job where I knew nobody just seven months before the pandemic began and everything was shut down. I was making many friends both inside and outside the office before that time, but during and since the lockdowns I just feel like socializing has become so much harder and my days are just blurred together computer screens. I guess at this point I’m an extroverted introvert, whereas most of HN is very introverted or has pre-existing families/friends to socialize with.
My company is hybrid at the moment and I’m actually writing this from the very empty office. Things just aren’t the same.
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#9It depends on the nature of your work imo. Sometimes you need key tools or infrastructure that cannot physically be in your home, like a mechanic's shop. If you are just working on a computer in an office, however, there's no point to ever coming in just to work on a computer in this particular location vs your home or elsewhere. Internal team meetings seem more productive on zoom than dragging everyone into a conference room in my experience. Use the commuting hours for your own free time instead instead of volunteering them to your employer for free, since in commuting out of pocket, you are subsidizing their costs to bring in the labor they need to their workplace to do their work for their client (note how any contractor will take note of and bill you for travel time, but employees are expected to front it themselves).
If you work in something more client facing, you'd probably benefit a lot more from stuff like in person slide decks in front of clients you flew in and are accommodating, and other corporate schmoozing and boozing that is just impossible and awkward on zoom or any other electronic platform.
Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?
#10Been remote for 5+ years and I feel more connected with my co-workers than I did when I worked 9-5 in an office.