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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?

#411

Post by cableshaft »

null_shift wrote: post #306
randycupertino wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Bowling Alone have any suggestions on how to create a "third space" for ourselves? Or is it more just identifying the phenomena?

i am also very interested to know this as well. the absence of “irl” community is something i have thought a lot about over the years. seems nowadays most people hang out with either: 1. existing friends/family 2. coworkers 3. go online with wfh, you lose #2. if you are a transplant, or never had #1, that doesn’t leave you with any options. it seems inevitable that the future of socialization will be online and niche…

Before the pandemic, I made a conscious effort to meet people by regularly attending a bunch of local meetups, over the course of two years. I made a ton of new acquaintances that way, and about 15 of those people ended up being part of my two main friend circles now.

I always thought of myself as an introvert before, but I just kept attending these things, and being present a bunch, not being too irritating of a person (I don't claim to be full of social graces, but overly irritating people did tend to be filtered out over time), and having activities to focus on instead of just talking at a lot of these (board games, scavenger hunts, movies, etc) helped me make those friendships over time.

Since the pandemic I've regressed quite a bit and haven't maintained a lot of the weaker friendships, but I still do things with those two main friend circles, mostly board game nights at their houses. Helps that everyone that attends is vaccinated, otherwise I'd feel less comfortable about it.

Anyway, it's possible if you make an effort, or at least it was before the pandemic (it probably still is possible, I'm just personally more cautious now).

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

#412

Post by abduhl »

tester34 wrote: post #361
abduhl wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to double check when I read this post to make sure that you were the same person that posted: > Frankly, fuck people who refuse to get vaccinated - they can rot in their own home for all I care (not talking about people with legitimate health risks, obviously). How do you reconcile your apparent disdain for unvaccinated people with the fact that you do not believe the vaccine to be effective? Alternatively, you…

>How do you reconcile your apparent disdain for unvaccinated people with the fact that you do not believe the vaccine to be effective? by saying "effective" you wanted to say "perfect"?

The sentence you quote is followed by a sentence which adequately addresses your comment. Here, I’ll paste it for you: “Alternatively, you’ve determined that the vaccine is effective enough.”

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

#413

Post by OJFord »

Svperstar wrote: post #405
OJFord wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who 'enjoyed the convenience of delivery' long before the coronavirus pandemic, it's quite weird to realise that wasn't as normal (then) as it seemed. City bubble I suppose. Or not-having-a-car (hardly unusual for London) bubble. (I don't mean takeaway food - though it's certainly 'normal' among certain demographics.. - just groceries, Amazon, etc.)

> Or not-having-a-car (hardly unusual for London) bubble. In large sections of the US, I am guessing like 90% of the country it is almost impossible to survive without a car, like you literally will end up homeless without an automobile and I am not exaggerating.

Sure, but no section of the US large or otherwise is in London.

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

#414

Post by abduhl »

dhedberg wrote: post #381
abduhl wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to double check when I read this post to make sure that you were the same person that posted: > Frankly, fuck people who refuse to get vaccinated - they can rot in their own home for all I care (not talking about people with legitimate health risks, obviously). How do you reconcile your apparent disdain for unvaccinated people with the fact that you do not believe the vaccine to be effective? Alternatively, you…

> How do you reconcile your apparent disdain for unvaccinated people with the fact that you do not believe the vaccine to be effective? I'm not going to defend the choice of words, but nowhere does Valkhyr say that the vaccine isn't effective. That would be like reading that people still die in car crashes and arrive at the conclusion that seat belts and airbags are useless.

No, it would be like reading a post that says “anyone who doesn’t have antilock brakes can fuck off and rot at home” and my post would be one asking “is there a line where someone can not use ABS and still not fuck off and rot at home?” What if they wear a seatbelt? ABS isn’t the only thing someone can do to stay safe on the road!

Analogies in the covid context are always bad though. The real question is: for a disease that kills less than 2% of people who test positive for it, most of those being older or already at risk, and in a world with vastly diminished efficacy against continually improving variants (with apparently unknown mortality rates), when does the GP think that we should all not rot in our homes? I’m vaccinated, but apparently I may need a booster. I probably won’t get said booster because playing whack-a-mole with this disease doesn’t seem worth it to me given my risk profile. Do I need to rot at home or am I cool to not fuck off and die because I got the original shot. Am I no better than the other disease ridden pieces of shit who didn’t even get the first shot in GP’s eyes?

This rhetoric surrounding the vaccine is the real thing that needs to rot at home and die.

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

#415

Post by long_time_gone »

nuerow wrote: post #352
long_time_gone wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear it's another example of "optimizing" away something that made us more human (in this case, more in-person interaction).

> I fear it's another example of "optimizing" away something that made us more human (in this case, more in-person interaction). I disagree. If anything, WFH optimizes away unhealthy work/life imbalances that force people to become mindless company drones whose personal life is eaten away by a corporation. Our life is not the long commute, the social order imposed by a company hierarchy, the petty office politics, th…

> You are your own person, not a mindless company drone. Your life is not dictated by the context of your professional life. Mixing both is terribly unhealthy. Much like alcoholism, just because people use it as an excuse to fill in voids in their life that does not make it any healthier or even desirable.

Seems like my simple suggestion struck a nerve. The idea that while WFH can be beneficial to global society, but still represent a decrease in human socialization isn't really groundbreaking or controversial.

Right now, we have the highest rates of WFH in history and also historical levels of loneliness and depression. All three of these trends were happening pre-COVID. We don't have to make sweeping comparisons to completely unrelated illnesses (alcoholism) to see that people are generally not replacing the socialization found in the office with socialization at home.

When I was in the office socializing with my co-workers/friends, I didn't consider it being a "mindless company drone", I thought of it as being a human with historically human social interactions. You clearly don't (or didn't) like those interactions, but you aren't everyone. One size doesn't fit all.

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

#416

Post by snek_case »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #324
snek_case wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think there is any need to defend in person work. There is a need to defend it though. I've already seen several businesses claim that remote work is "the future". Personally, I feel that remote work has been very detrimental to my mental health and I hate it. I don't want that future. It feels very unhealthy.

For me, the isolation of the pandemic was detrimental to mental health but the remote work has been incredibly positive. Is it possible that these two circumstances are overlapping in your case? Do you miss the commute and sitting in an office (on-location work) or do you miss speaking with people (socialization)?

I had structured my life so that I could walk to work every day, so the short commute was actually some very welcome exercise.

I miss having lunch with coworkers the most. There's some natural bonding and trust building that happened over lunch, talking about random things, both work and not work related. This is very hard and possibly impossible to replicate with remote work.

With remote work, meetings are scheduled for a reason. Meeting just to "hang out" feels weird. Multi-user meetings with more than a few people also feel off because everyone is interrupting each other, you can't have multiple threads of conversation. Talking on slack, you usually can't tell how the person is feeling. The tone is lost. I've found communication is generally much poorer.

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

#417

Post by mrtranscendence »

School-Cotton wrote: post #284
mrtranscendence wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm forty, and for what it's worth I'd be more than happy going back to the office if I had a short commute. But the drive home can take as much as 1.5hrs depending on traffic, and it was a little soul crushing. I've had so much more time since going remote. Maybe younger folks are more likely to live closer to their work? Haven't looked into it at all, though.

I agree with your speculation in the last paragraph — I think this is at least partly due to the age difference. Younger people are more likely to be able to move on a whim and therefore set up their life such that they don’t have a 1.5-hr commute. I’m about a 20 minute commute from the office (Downtown Brooklyn to Astor Place). I can’t fathom living somewhere where I had to drive to work, let alone for longer than a…

The funny thing is that I did this to myself, at least partially. When I switched jobs we looked for places that were in the middle between my fiancee's work and my own. Somehow that turned into a long commute for me and ten minutes for her ...

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

#418

Post by mrtranscendence »

iKidA wrote: post #221
mrtranscendence wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

lol was the company 84.51/dunnhumby

I will neither confirm nor deny that speculation. ;)

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

#419

Post by qwerty456127 »

ericmay wrote: post #401
qwerty456127 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If everybody got the damn vaccine There are many people like me who have high level of antibodies, don't really need a vaccine this way (AFAIK there already is enough evidence supporting this) and don't want to get vaccinated with the fastest-baked (least tested) vaccine in history despite being passionately pro-vac when it's about other diseases and better-tested vaccines. I don't want the damn vaccine. I want the…

No, you just don’t want to get vaccinated. Everything else is window dressing around that. The virus will mutate and continue to do so. Eventually your immunity will weaken - will you get the vaccine then? Doubt it. You’ll make up another excuse then instead. And let’s not pretend you are any more informed about this vaccine than you are any other “highly tested” one. You have no scientific or educated reasoning here…

> No, you just don’t want to get vaccinated. Everything else is window dressing around that.

And I have no rational reason to, except artificial reasons created by most of governments.

> The virus will mutate and continue to do so. Eventually your immunity will weaken - will you get the vaccine then?

My immune system seems doing great job defending me from all the mutations which already took place. So I don't want to interfere, teaching it how to do the job it seems doing so great and targeting it against specific mutations the vaccine is supposed to help with.

I trust my immune system more than I trust whatever the vaccine does. I'm afraid the latter may actually weaken my immunity against the mutations to come. This, together with being pushed to vaccinate, are why I don't want to.

I never ever resisted any vaccine before and was always willing to get vaccinated against everything.

> You have no scientific or educated reasoning here and you’re just letting your ego get in the way of things. It’s ok. I do that too.

I always reasoned the naturally acquired immunity is better than that given by the vaccine and AFAIK this has been scientifically proven already.

> But the quicker you realize you’re caught up in FUD mostly planted by morons and Russian and Chinese state-sponsored democracy dividers

But I've never been interested in what do they say. Only in what humble amount of science I know + my own experience + logical reasoning/speculation. Plus the natural instinct to resist whenever pushed.

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

#420

Post by tjr225 »

nuerow wrote: post #350
tjr225 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same feelings working from home full time prior to the pandemic. The all-company meet ups were the best part about the job(other than the pay I guess). I actually took a job back with my prior employer with the hopes I could return to an office in some capacity, but we are all remote now. Boo!

> The all-company meet ups were the best part about the job(other than the pay I guess). To each his own, but all-company meetups are the most god-awful type of event there is. The feigned enthusiasm about company stuff, self-promotions, office politics, elevator pitches, people patting their own backs, etc etc etc. All in all, a colosal waste of time and resources.

Right, I typically hate them. But in the context of a fully remote job it is the only opportunity I have to spend time with my colleagues in the flesh. It is also the only opportunity I have to spend time with them _outside of my home_.
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