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Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

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Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#121

Post by TehShrike »

abap_rocky wrote: post #69

The pandemic really helped me confirm that I prefer the office. I always sought to establish a clear distinction between my work life and home life and the enforced work from home due to COVID has made the two blur to a point now where I feel like I've lost all rhythm. Now living through a pandemic itself has a way of disrupting the rhythm of life but I feel that the collapsing of space into a singular living and wor…

I've been working from home for ~9 years. We live a short distance from town, so I use small grocery runs for about the same purpose as you were using commutes. Drive for 15-20 minutes listening to a podcast or thinking, do something useful, then drive back.

Hard agree on a clear distinction between work life and home life. I require an office in the home with a door that closes. When I am in the office, I am working. When I leave the office, I am not working. The closed door separates my work life from my home life.

My kids are trained not to come into the office, and my wife respects the boundary and messages me instead. I don't work from the living room or dining room. (I've tried, and I can't do it anyway, I become nearly useless to both the family members trying to talk to me, as well as my employer.)

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#122

Post by alecbz »

changxi_hn wrote: post #104
derekp7 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a story that explains this concept. A programmer goes to his manager, presenting a paper with a lengthy problem for the manager to solve. The manager looks over the paper, thinks for a few minutes, then writes down the answer. The employee then tells the manager "What were you doing for the last 5 minutes? It didn't look like you were working at all". The manager responds saying "I was thinking about the probl…

I'm a software manager and this isn't what happens in practice at all. The more comfortable they are, the sloppier and lazy their resulting code as they feel no pressure to take their work seriously. I can, and will, stand behind devs for hours to keep them determined and on-task.

I think maybe this is some kind of local optimum, but a poor one. Like if your devs already don't give two shits about anything, pressure from you watching over them might improve things somewhat.

But like the real fix is a path to a much better optimum, which is giving employees autonomy, trusting them, rewarding them adequately, getting them to actually care, so that they don't need to be watched over as individual code monkeys.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#124

Post by alecbz »

hh3k0 wrote: post #50
interpol_p wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I go in once a week to pick up a shared lunch for everybody and we hang out and play some board games

Hanging out with coworkers would be my own personal hell, to be frank. And there's nothing wrong with my coworkers, I'd like to emphasize that, but I have friends and family that I'd rather hang out with. Coworkers are just coworkers to me.

I'm confused, what makes it hell if nothing's wrong with them?

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#125

Post by lamontcg »

techsupporter wrote: post #93
User23 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open concept offices are awful. As someone who is more vulnerable to interruptions than most, being able to control my work environment is a godsend. Everyone is different, but my ideal work environment is library quiet. No music and certainly no overheard conversations or people constantly walking past. I’ve never worked in an office that was willing to provide such an environment, but I have it at home.

> Open concept offices are awful. The only people I've met who seem to like them are people who do sales for a living or the exact kind of coworkers who I would really not like to be in an open office with. I have a really nice office in Seattle. Since I am the second most tenured person on the team, I even have a water view and am right next to the snacks. I haven't seen the inside of this office since May 2020, and…

Don't underestimate the utility of being able to just take a goddamn nap when you've had shit sleep the night before rather than powering through the day trying to appear productive when you're a zombie. Most normal people have bad days when they really shouldn't be at work, its so much easier when you just aren't at work and can deal with the problem (take a nap, take a cold shower afterwards, get in a few hours of actual non-zombie productivity and call it a day). Then you're much less stressed the next day. And there's no worry about insomnia-spirals where you get so worried about being tired at work that you can't sleep.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#126

Post by Sebb767 »

alecbz wrote: post #115
Hermitian909 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my experience, remote work typically has no direct productivity downsides, but team cohesion absolutely can take a hit I'm sure this varies based on the type of work you're doing, but I found the hit to team cohesion led to long term productivity losses. At first we were getting more done than ever. As time went on our raw work output day-to-day did not decrease but a lot of unneeded work that previously would h…

> the hit to team cohesion led to long term productivity losses It obviously ought to, right, or else why does (should) anyone care about team cohesion in the first place?

Keeping your people happy does not only impact your productivity, but it also impacts motivation (people who love their job are more likely to try and improve beyond their job), the overall churn and, as a second-order effect, even stuff like hiring or wages.

Of course, in the end this all affects the company productivity, but it's really not as straight-forward [0] as the productivity of a single team.

[0] "straight forward" is a bit of an overstatement for measuring team productivity, but that's a different discussion.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#127

Post by toomanydoubts »

changxi_hn wrote: post #104
derekp7 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a story that explains this concept. A programmer goes to his manager, presenting a paper with a lengthy problem for the manager to solve. The manager looks over the paper, thinks for a few minutes, then writes down the answer. The employee then tells the manager "What were you doing for the last 5 minutes? It didn't look like you were working at all". The manager responds saying "I was thinking about the probl…

I'm a software manager and this isn't what happens in practice at all. The more comfortable they are, the sloppier and lazy their resulting code as they feel no pressure to take their work seriously. I can, and will, stand behind devs for hours to keep them determined and on-task.

I'm not a psychic, but I sense your software manager career is not going very far.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#128

Post by alecbz »

nell wrote: post #117
Hippocrates wrote: post #81

I'm an EM who went from full onsite, to hybrid, to full remote. This is my favorite topic. Throughout the pandemic we surveyed employees and they largely preferred to WFH. A lesser but significant cohort preferred a hybrid setup. Almost nobody at all was in favor of full-onsite. I was in the hybrid camp. I thought I could have the comraderie of the workplace and the dynamism of a bustling city, plus enjoy the comfort…

> Commuting is literally wasted life Commuting is not the same as setting time on fire. The distraction endemic negates the advantage and makes it worse. The forced time in the car with limited options lets me use it somewhat productively, notably makes me do one thing. I spend that time thinking about work, taking phone calls, sometimes listening to podcasts and audiobooks. I have read zero books, but finished 2 aud…

I quite like my (short) commute. Though it's either bus, subway, or bike. It's nice to get some exposure to the city, get some bookends for the work day, and (if biking) get some exercise in.

Generally we're talking 20-30 mins though. A much longer ~hour commute or something would definitely start to wear on me I think.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#129

Post by rubyfan »

I’m convinced that I’m weird somehow because since the start of the pandemic I have very little in person engagement with anyone outside my wife and kids… and I’m totally OK. Most people I know are either seriously bothered by lack of in person interaction or they’ve said screw it and are living a pre-pandemic life now. Like people were depressed or otherwise in bad mental places and I’ve been overall better throughout, so I sort of feel guilty.

WFH for me has been amazing, I get more personal time, more family time, less stress, less commute - feels like a total win for me. Like many corporate employees I am lamenting being forced back to a 3/2 hybrid arrangement in the near future. And like many I’m looking for a new employer.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#130

Post by Trasmatta »

vesinisa wrote: post #102
Trasmatta wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute absurdity of sitting in an open office, and pretending to program the full 9-5. That's just not how work like this happens. Why do companies pay their developers high salaries, but then tie one hand behind their backs like that. For me? Never again.

My experience is almost exactly contrary. At home, I get a "guilty" feeling if I don't work 100% effectively for the whole day. At the office, I never felt pressured to "code" the full eight hours, as I could see nobody was doing so (in Slack it seems everyone else is always green/present.) At the office, I'd fill the day with conversations, lunch and coffee breaks, and other meaningful interactions with other progra…

I guess this is a good example of different people's work styles, and why it's probably important to give people the flexibility of choosing. I don't feel that type of pressure when WFH, but do when I'm in an office.

When WFH I'll often just check out for multiple hours in the middle of the day. Go on a walk, take a nap, whatever... Sometimes I'll just do more hours later that night to make up for it, or sometimes I'm just on top of everything anyway, and the break helps keep my mind fresh.

I never felt like I had the ability to do things like that when in the office

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