The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices • Hacker News Board

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#331

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

rkangel wrote: post #94

fcatalan wrote: post #70

"Emergency" WFH at my workplace have been slashed, everyone back in full since the start of the month. No reason publically given, been privately told "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up". I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I al…

I love working from home, and I have a very enlightened employer but I do have some sympathy with the companies that have a chunk of employees who just don't work when they're at home. The situation in my company is simple to manage - we hire good people who are very capable and then trust them to get on and do the job. That works with the sort of people we hire and the sort of work we ask them to do. If they're at h…

[deleted]

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#332

Post by MivLives » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #21

themadturk wrote: post #7

Our return to the office has been back and forth for various reasons, but the ultimate goal is that everyone work in the office every day. But in an effort to make commuting easier, we are opening satellite offices in the metropolitan area...which (when all satellites are open) scatters teams between up to four offices. So nearly all of our meetings will be via Zoom, even if team members are "in the office." I don't…

The problem with Zoom calls in the office is that you usually do them at your desk rather than in a meeting room, and when you do that, you are totally destroying the productivity of anyone who happens to be in the room with you. Not to mention what happens if several people in the same room have different calls at the same time...

We have "Phone booths" that essentially are sound isolated single person meeting rooms for calls both video and phone. Of course, they are incredibly hard to find empty. From where I'm sitting I can see 3 of them, and this is in an area that has probably 80-100 desks in it. How am I ever supposed to use these?

The one thing I think they did right is keep the surface high enough it's hard to type on. Now people can't camp them all day.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#333

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

dljsjr wrote: post #294

dreen wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me you don't heat/cool your house 24/7. Other than that I can't agree with you more.

Some people don't have a choice, in Florida during the summer time if you aren't running your AC full-time the humidity and heat will ruin your home. It stays in the 80's even overnight (both temp. Fº and Relative Humidity %).

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Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#334

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #323

bearjaws wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was appalled to find our office lease was $20,000 a month. We could hire two FTEs for the price of that office, and we are not even in a premium space. To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org. Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the…

You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.

They didn't say anything about preference, they merely said output. Does people preferring to work from the office mean they are so much more productive so as to make up that cost? That's the question that we're faced with, and if the last few years are any indication, the answer seems to be "No".

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#335

Post by aaomidi » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #323

bearjaws wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was appalled to find our office lease was $20,000 a month. We could hire two FTEs for the price of that office, and we are not even in a premium space. To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org. Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the…

You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.

A comped coworking space is cheaper.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#336

Post by null_object » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #323

bearjaws wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was appalled to find our office lease was $20,000 a month. We could hire two FTEs for the price of that office, and we are not even in a premium space. To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org. Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the…

You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.

> You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.

I don't see anything in the OP's comment that referred to any assumptions about peoples' preferences: they were addressing the practical wastefulness and harm to the world's environment from the office-working conventions we've 'conformed to' in the past.

You may prefer to commute to work, and sit in an office instead of somewhere else (doesn't necessarily need to be a home), but that doesn't affect the inherent environmental wastefulness of all this 'busy' activity.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#337

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #317

fartcannon wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be nice when the serf mentality of finding meaning in your job is finally gone from the world.

> when the serf mentality of finding meaning in your job is finally gone from the world Emperors, scientists and other productive members of the elite have done this since age immemorial. If anything, the average person finding their work meaningful (versus simply toil) is a recent phenomenon.

We have a whole class of people who have finally been able to climb up Maslow's hierarchy high enough to now ask those questions.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#338

Post by aaomidi » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #317

fartcannon wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be nice when the serf mentality of finding meaning in your job is finally gone from the world.

> when the serf mentality of finding meaning in your job is finally gone from the world Emperors, scientists and other productive members of the elite have done this since age immemorial. If anything, the average person finding their work meaningful (versus simply toil) is a recent phenomenon.

Finding meaning in the labor you do is absolutely not connected to scale of said labor.

It is easier finding meaning in your labor if your labor is directly creating or providing a meaningful service to your community.

Do you see how I am not saying job? Because no one wants to do the same thing for 40 hours with surveillance. However finding meaning in labor has been a thing for millenia.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#339

Post by int0x2e » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #323

bearjaws wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was appalled to find our office lease was $20,000 a month. We could hire two FTEs for the price of that office, and we are not even in a premium space. To your point about efficiency: I don't believe our office produces 2 FTE's worth of additional productivity across the whole org. Leadership thinks it does, but assuming we acquire decent talent, that would be a net 10% increase in engineering. I don't believe the…

You're making the assumption that everybody in the office prefers working from home.

I don't think the person you're replying to assumed anything about preferences - people can still prefer to work from the office, and still not have working from the office generate >10% boost in productivity... I think many of us see how various managers are pushing people to get back to the office, but I'm not sure the impact is really there. I suspect there are a lot of people who are far more effective at home than in the office, but it's my personal opinion sadly.

Re: The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices

#340

Post by krageon » Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

rockyj wrote: post #205

ajdegol wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy goes into a bar in Mexico and there’s a dog lying in the corner, every so often the dog whimpers and whines a little. The guy asks the barman “what’s up with that dog?” And the barman said “oh, he’s probably lying on a nail.” After a few more minutes and another set of whines, the guy asks the barman “so why doesn’t he move?” And the barman says “it probably doesn’t hurt enough for him to get up.”

It is not so easy. Changing jobs cannot be always the answer. In Europe there are not many "remote friendly" companies and also it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch. On top, it is extremely hard to find software development jobs that pay around or above 100K. Most jobs are around 60-80K. A job change can also mean - inheriting someone else's problematic code base, new office politics and co…

> In Europe there are not many "remote friendly" companies

This is not true. There are many such opportunities if you ask, especially now.

> it's not that you will get a 20% pay rise every time you switch

If you work in IT (generous, but it is HN...), this should be your experience unless you switch more than once every two years. Then everyone will mistrust you, but you can still do it as a contractor.

> On top, it is extremely hard to find software development jobs that pay around or above 100K. Most jobs are around 60-80K.

Making around or above 100K in the EU is indeed very unusual. Of course, such numbers mostly make sense in the US because it is (socially, in terms of security) a desert hellscape. The lower top salary in the EU comes with the benefit of knowing that if you go blind you won't have to die shitting yourself in some crackhouse.