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Is going to the office a broken way of working?

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Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#111

Post by cvhashim »

samjbobb wrote: post #68
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #40

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’ve been thinking about exactly this! I really miss the ‘low effort’ social interactions that in-office work provides. “Want to get lunch?” is one of those. Question: does this app already exist? Can I facilitate this in my life without building the app (easy part) and building a significant user base (hard part)?

Yeah I think bumble has a feature like that. Just for finding friends and such.

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#112

Post by BoorishBears »

ugh123 wrote: post #109
taurath wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're correct, but one thing that is really missing nowadays, especially with phones and the internet, is active communities that exist in real life outside of work. Stuff like the elks lodge, rotary, bowling leagues, etc are just not as common anymore as I believe they used to be. Certainly there are many things that exist, but in a way societally it seems like they don't have very much cache, even as far a…

I thought thats what Meetup was about, for both tech and non-tech communities. I haven't been involved for a while due to life changes (kids + relo), so not sure if its as vibrant in some cities as it used to be.

I literally never saw a Meetup group last for more than a year.

The closest thing to an exception was a group that existed a decade then happened to get a Meetup for convenience, and they closed within a year of getting on (for unrelated reasons)

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#113

Post by nkotov »

I experimented a bit with this with my company. We came down to a hybrid of what we call, 'Work where and when you're most productive'. The office primarily is now used for pair programming + discussions. Focus work seems to get done at home. My dev team on average comes in 2/3 days a week. Works out well for us.

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#114

Post by smt88 »

sim_card_map wrote: post #89
IggleSniggle wrote: post #72

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.

> And no excess deaths.

False[1][2][3][4][5]. Sweden had 7.7% higher mortality in 2020 than it averaged from 2016-2019.

By comparison, Sweden's closest neighbors (geographically, demographically, and socioeconomically) had far, far lower mortality because of lockdowns, mask mandates, and closing restaurants[3][4].

> "Sweden, with a COVID-19 attributed death rate of 0.54 per 1000 population as of July 5, has a higher death rate compared with its neighbours: 11.5× compared with Norway (0.05 deaths per 1000 population), 5.1× compared with Denmark (0.10 deaths per 1000 population), and 9.1× compared with Finland (0.06 deaths per 1000 population)."[1]

Even more damning: we now know that Sweden intentionally allowed the virus to spread and never believed their own words about people behaving responsibly without mandates[5]. They knew that their lack of action would kill people.

You can argue all you want that some of those deaths are a fair price to pay to eat at restaurants, but you can't argue that they didn't happen or that no one could have prevented them.

1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14034948209802...

2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe...

3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9

4. https://www.science.org/content/article/it-s-been-so-so-surr...

5. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/22/sweden-coronavirus-covi...

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#115

Post by m10y »

My theory is that office design and expectations are just broken for tech workers. There's no reason (besides profits) that my office can't be just as comfortable as the spare bedroom I do my work in. There is the broader issue of a commute, but divorcing companies from the worst real-estate markets on the planet would help a lot with that.

There are three real game changers:

- I get to wear more comfortable clothes, and be more comfortable in them. This is a culture problem.

- I have a big, private office (bedroom-sized) with windows and comfortable furniture that I can potentially nap on when I need to.

- I have a private half-bath that I don't have to transit the whole darn building to visit. Public bathrooms are terribly unpleasant, but I also don't want to have to break my flow by getting caught by a coworker who wants to chat about whatever.

If my work office could solve these aspects, I would prefer it over my home office every day.

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#116

Post by jdavis703 »

geofft wrote: post #78
IggleSniggle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatedly, I think this is part of what fuels more extreme social groups. If you don't have rotary/bowling/church/golf whatever group that you hang out with in real life, and you've got nothing else, then when you finally find a group they will be more likely to be a group that by its very nature has a stronger set of convictions; enough so that it overcomes the social norms and inertia and gathers in-person.

Aren't lodges, churches, and golf clubs kind of the stereotypical examples of race- and class-exclusionary groups? I suppose it's not exactly a strong set of convictions if you're passively going along with broader social pressures to segregate on race and class, but if we're talking about the health of society (which I think we're implicitly doing), I think segregating on worldview is actually a whole lot healthier.

I don’t know much about lodges and golf clubs, but most churches are overwhelmingly of one race or another. Finding a church that reflects the broader community is quite rare, most of the community tends to self-segregate on Sunday mornings.

That said, growing up churches seemed fairly class-integrated (I’m atheist now, maybe this has changed?). But growing up we had everyone from an American Football quarterback on a multi-million dollar contract to working class folks in the same room.

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#117

Post by waynesonfire »

WJW wrote: post #30
wussboy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfair. In an uncaring universe, humans have done quite well. The world was never “fixed” for us to break, and it never will be. The fact most of us live in civil societies of any kind is a miracle or the first order. I get frustrated at this nihilism. A quick trip to any point in the part would reveal how truly lucky we are right now, and would inspire us to drag our sorry species even further from the abyss…

Things can be quite far from "the absolute worst" and still be quite far from perfect, too.

we're not that far from absolute worst. the world is savage.

Continuing my rant, it's one of the things I like about Jordan Peterson. His ideas face this fact head-on. He reminds listeners and readers of this and then presents his ideas given this truth. It seems to me that a philosophical idea that doesn't incorporate that as a basis is fundamentally flawed as it's a pretty important detail.

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#118

Post by jrockway »

jedberg wrote: post #103
jrockway wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always enjoyed the after-work drinking events. Lots of people there that I would never call up and ask "hey want to go to the bar?" but still enjoyed hanging out with. I guess it's not work's job to be your social life, and these after-work events exclude people with families or that don't like alcohol from valuable interactions... but ignoring the global effect, I personally enjoyed them. Now that everyone is remo…

I did too. But I always felt bad when we made a work decision at the bar and then the folks who didn't come out with us didn't get a say and had an uphill battle if they didn't agree.

Yup. I think that it probably falls on the side of "not good for the company", so it's not necessarily a bad thing that we can't do it anymore.

Honestly, I think we mostly spent our time shit-talking people that weren't there, which isn't super healthy.

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#119

Post by mmmpop »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #72
Ancalagon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the other point I wanted to make (but frankly I was too scared that maybe it’s just because I suck at meeting people now that I haven’t socialized like a normal person in a year). It just seems harder to meet people _in general_ than it did even two years ago. Like where is everybody? Does everyone stay home literally all the time now?

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…

[flagged]

Re: Is going to the office a broken way of working?

#120

Post by pimterry »

Ancalagon wrote: post #8

I’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…

Coworking is a really great solution to this.

You can have all the human contact and "it's 6pm - want to go for a beer?" easy socializing that you get from being in a busy office, but simultaneously keep almost all the flexibility and the lack-of-constraints of working from home (...almost - there's usually an expectation that you wear clothes).

In many ways it's even better than office social contact: it decouples that socializing from your job. Want to change company, but keep hanging out with the same people every day? Want to switch offices and meet a whole new social circle without changing jobs? Want to go out from the office for a drink after work with your 'colleagues' with no need to avoid personal topics or keep things professional with your boss?

It does require leaving the house, but for almost everybody there is a coworking space that's significantly quicker to get to you than your current office would be. If you're in a major urban center, you probably have 10s or 100s to choose from. For me, it's a dramatic improvement on both the alternatives.

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