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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?

#131

Post by dvtrn »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #75
fernandotakai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i worked at company that is remote first and they did a company retreat every year (as well as team-focused retreats, like engineering, support, C-level). it was a blast -- you got a week of "free" travel w/ your SO (because it was just once a year, they paid for your SO to come with you). i loved it, because it was a time to get together, have some drinks, chitchat and do some super productive work.

If it was a week long, in a desirable location, and I could take my fiancee, I'd be all for it. But it's 1.5 days, no SOs, and held in a casino in the ass end of bumfuck Indiana. And forget about working -- it's centered around a team-building exercise with people from other parts of the company you probably don't know and will never talk to again.

I understand the “why” of team building, but the “what” or “how” the team-building is done often handled in such a hackneyed top-down way that I often wonder “if you just brought the team together, gave them options on ways to spend their time together, would they otherwise choose to do the same activities the managers designed for the event”?

That’s more rhetorical than anything and is a roundabout way of saying: most organized team building events are just…boring.

It’s also just a preference though: getting together and just hanging out without the pressure to talk shop or participate in some kind of coordinated, planned and overly-orchestrated activity is just as engaging for me as “escape rooms” or “games” or other “activities”.

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

#132

Post by dboreham »

codegeek wrote: post #122
pmontra wrote: post #7

IMHO 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 b…

"What's broken is having to go to the office every single day." Exactly. The whole remote thing has become kinda like a zero sum game and has 2 sides to it. One that believes it should be remote anywhere for anyone vs the other that is very rigid and wants people in office all the time. The answer is somewhere in the middle and hybrid. Flexibility to work from home 2-3 days a week would be awesome while you can still…

I worked for a couple of years in an organization where we all worked remotely but met up for 2-3 days in some convenient city (e.g. where one or two team members already lived) for brain storming sessions 2-3 times a year; and also at trade shows/conferences, where we sent probably more team members than was necessary but it was justifiable because the event doubled as a f2f team session.

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

#133

Post by 01100011 »

nzmsv wrote: post #26

All you need to know about requiring work from an office is this: the people selling the supposed benefits of increased collaboration, creativity, and productivity do not themselves work this way. There is no CEO or VC who spends their entire day sitting in a cubicle, even if they have a token one.

That is worth mentioning, but it is far from 'all you need to know'. My job role is completely different from the CEO of my company, so I wouldn't expect them to work in the same environment I do. If my CEO's job entailed sitting in a cubicle all day I'd find another company to work for.

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

#134

Post by stef25 »

pimterry wrote: post #120
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 t…

> Coworking

It's not cheap but I do love it. Nicest offices I've ever worked in, never obliged to talk to anyone.

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

#135

Post by onion2k »

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…

... has pre-existing families/friends to socialize with.

It's easy to believe the people you work with are friends to socialize with, but the reality is that most people cut ties with their coworkers as soon as they change job, especially early in your career when you're hopping from one job to another every few years. Those people are temporary friends at best.

I recommend doing everything you can to cultivate friendships outside of work.

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

#136

Post by Zababa »

Something that's very important when considering "the office": open spaces. For some people, they are terrible. Going to the office in a private office, in a small office with a few people or in an open space with 20+ people are all very different things for very different kind of people. I personally don't like open offices, especially where there are people behind me.

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

#137

Post by 01100011 »

All I can say that hasn't already been said in the dozens of HN discussions already is this: someone better make up their damn minds soon, because living with the uncertainty of knowing what my job situation will be like and where I need to live is stressing me out.

Send me back to the office, let me WFH, keep me within an hours drive... whatever... just tell me so I can plan the next couple years of my life accordingly. For me, the uncertainty of the current era is the worst part. Life never offers guarantees, but it is good to at least know where things should be headed.

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

#138

Post by IggleSniggle »

mmmpop wrote: post #119
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…

[flagged]

First off, if you're not vaccinated, it's really a lot less safe for you for me to be around you. I don't really want to be responsible for getting you or your family sick.

But beyond that, if I can't trust you to take very basic precaution of vaccinating, can I trust you to take the much more obnoxious precaution of masking up, or the still more inconvenient precaution of social distancing generally? Or quarantining after travel? True, I was using a shorthand heuristic that is almost certainly flawed in the specific. Some people cannot get vaccines.

I haven't done any research on it, so I may be wrong, but I also assume that if you have antibodies to fight off an infectious disease, the disease is statistically more likely to exist in lesser concentrations than in a person who does not have those antibodies, if it exists at all.

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

#139

Post by the-smug-one »

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.

Uuhm, you're also wrong on life just being "normal". Sweden did have quite a few restrictions, just not as many or as heavy as their neighbors.

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

#140

Post by pvarangot »

nappy-doo wrote: post #12
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…

How much of this is fixable though if you could have a normal social calendar? I don't think current circumstances offer a fair comparison.

I have a normal social calendar, but using the same desk and having to share space between work stuff and hobby stuff is getting to me. I could move to a bigger place but that's basically taking a paycut, or if it's a cheaper place it will mess up my social calendar again.

I don't dislike WFH and I think it has a place. I work on embedded devices and now I'm working at Apple on phone stuff. That place is not my job, I don't think WFH is any good for the teams I'm at and for the stuff I do. Even if I just go to the office once per week, that usually involves moving multiple devices and cables and tearing down/setting up my development setup somewhere else or having to maintain duplicate setups. Don't get me started on if I forget or don't think I'll need X measuring device or Y adapter cable or tool and then I have to hunt for a second one in the office or buy one for home.

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