91–100 of 468 posts
Everyone has their own personal circumstance and reasons for wanting to work in the office, home or hybrid. Ultimately employees will choose what suits them and given nowadays a lot of companies offer the choice of remote, will see people shift if that's what they want.
Remote will become an accepted and standard way of working, and I hope local communities will benefit and thrive from having a local hub of workers.
My impression from previous discussions is that people like what they like whether it's remote or in office and there isn't a lot of convincing that we can do to each other. Given the above, how do companies move forward? Make some % of your employees unhappy because they're either dragged back into the office or forced to work without one? Hybrid models? They seem like the worst of everything and they don't look lik…
What's so wrong with letting every employee make their own choice? Then, after 6 months or a year or whatever (to get everyone a chance to get used to it and be confident in their selection), survey everyone to find out who wants to keep working from home. Those that don't - allocate them a desk in an office. Add some additional hoteling desks for travelers or normal WFHers who need to visit, and then adjust the size…
You're inevitably forcing your colleagues into your own way of working to some extent. Imagine a team of 6 people working on the same product:
If 1 is in office and 5 are remote, then the benefits of the office are largely lost even for the 1 person. That 1 person is still working in a remote model just from a different location which happens to be the office.
If 1 is remote and 5 are in office, the 1 person will inevitably miss out on a lot of the ongoing in-person communication. This was a well-known thing before the pandemic - the most common advice was to be remote for entirely remote companies/teams but to avoid being the only remote person on an office-based team.
If it's 3-3, then some of the communication is in person and half of the team is missing out on it but all meetings still have to be online.
I don't doubt that some companies will do this but it doesn't seem stable in the long run.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think people like you need a new app, something like Tinder for lunch. I personally have no will to move to a high cost of life area and spend 1+ hour on commune just because my coworkers can’t find friends.
I fully understand this perspective and agree remote work should be the de facto norm. Remote works benefits on a productivity and environmental level do seem to outweigh the social benefits. I guess I was just commenting how much I miss organic interaction with like-minded smart people in the office, and how much duller my days have gotten without that.
The future of work is flexibility, it has nothing to do with in office or remote-first. It has everything to do with tech workers, or people who work from a screen having control and autonomy over their lives to decide to work how they would like too. We need to stop choosing one side or the other, its just a balance :).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, yes. If not "everyone," certainly lots and lots of folks are just staying home whenever possible. Because we are in the middle of a global pandemic. I think this has much more to do with "we are in a global pandemic" than "you can't meet people doing remote work." Certainly, there were a number of larger groups that I used to hang out with consistently pre-pandemic, but now have totally abandoned. I'm not inter…
Life has always been normal here in Sweden. No lockdowns, mask mandates, restaurants have always been open. And no excess deaths. So don't speak for everyone.
My friend runs a company that is remote first in the way described here. They have employees all over the world, but they all get together at some random place on the planet (pre-covid) about once every two months. The employees love it because of all the free trips around the world (and often tie their vacation to the beginning or end of a meeting so they can explore that place on their own) and it's great for the c…
Interesting idea. Every two months seems like it could be prohibitively expensive, though, depending on the org. My company has a yearly event that's mandatory for every employee throughout the country, and a common complaint is just how much it costs to put on. Granted, you could make it cheaper by getting rid of the c-list celebrity MC and free drinks, but renting a space for 1500 people, paying for travel, getting…
For a long time, large companies like Google and Facebook bribed employees to basically live at work with an influx of perks. Free laundry. Nap rooms. Catered meals. The whole point is for you to never leave so you’ll work more. I think most of us can agree that is unhealthy and not good for the employee.
So now we’ve traded that for you work from home, but still don’t get to disconnect from work. So you don’t have the commute or the dress code stuff and potentially fewer meetings, but you’re always on call. You’re expected to work more. Your house is now your office (and plenty of us don’t live in places with room for a wholly isolated workspace, especially if two people are working from home). And you’ve given up the social interaction that makes going into an office really nice for plenty of people.
Obviously, ever is a good and healthy way to do remote work. I’m not disputing that. What I will dispute is that the way most companies have optimized for remote work over the last 18 months is the wrong way and I have zero faith that any of the organizations will adjust themselves to do it the right way.
So for me, if the choice is to have little work/life balance but at least have more room at my house and social interaction at work — or to literally live and work in the same cramped space without human interaction, I’ll take the office.
Even if I go back to the office, my entire team is geographically distributed. Only a couple people on my team would be in the office, while others are all over the world. So, even though I also miss the office I'm not sure what going back would mean for me now that my team setup is so different.
So, have to think about that.
Not being able to do all of that has brought me lower and lower as the months go by. Made a similar comment on reddit and got downvoted into oblivion but this is really how I feel and it really does impact me negatively. I'm sure I'm not the only one, though it does feel like I might be in the minority.