Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 559 posts

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

#341

Post by greedo »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #251
m_fayer wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to doubt this advice. I'm a "change it" sort of personality by nature - a reformer. When faced with these 3 options, I've chosen "change it" many times. And more often than not, I've found myself in a political crossfire, with new unwelcome knowledge of the various forces (typically some combination of self interest, ego, and turf-guarding) that are responsible for the thing I'm trying to change. My curr…

Worse yet, IME, being a keen participant in HN's technical side almost precludes one's ability to overcome the other players , those who fight in the name of some combination of self interest, ego, and turf-guarding. To vanquish these, in the name of The Right Way, one ultimately must engage them in social combat, whether by proxy or directly. And they're better at it than you are. Nerds may be clever, and they may a…

Exactly. I was once tasked with replacing a piece of software. Enterprise software is such a mess, but I had 4 vendors before the downselect, and one was clearly the optimal choice both for price and performance. Presented it to upper mgmt and was asked to keep researching the options. Did this dog and pony show for another month until one of the sales engineers for the #1 vendor mentioned that my executive had a previous relationship (at another company) with the sales exec. A bad relationship. So my exec was never going to sign off on a sale that would benefit the sales exec, but he didn't want to come out and tell me outright. He simply wanted me to read between the lines and skew the evaluation in favor of the other candidates.

The "Schmoozer" class is full of this type of crap. I'm convinced that outside of a few unicorn companies, meritocracy is an illusion.

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

#342

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #324
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.

That is a glib response that sounds great, but it is wrong! If you have good insulation it can at best save very little energy. If you have bad insulation it can save a lot, but the solution is fix your insulation not play with the HVAC controls.

[deleted]

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

#343

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

dreen wrote: post #272
osigurdson wrote: post #258

I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both be…

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

As a Canadian I don't have a choice for most of the winter. The cold will creep in and start causing problems if I leave it unheated at -20 (C or F, take your pick) for 10 hours. I certainly reduce the heat, but I can't turn it off.

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

#344

Post by peoplefromibiza »

fartcannon wrote: post #314
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's also a cultural thing. US commute is particularly bad, I work from home and been doing it on and off for the past 20 years. My commute has never been longer than 20 minutes total. I now live 5 minutes walk away from my office, I'm not going, but if I had to I would walk there and have a very nice breakfast in some bar on the road there. One thing that's always overlooked is how much WFH is selecting people who a…

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

I think it's backwards: people find meaning in their jobs because it's their only activity (or is largely their main one) .

To let it go for good we'd need people to make themselves entertain in different activities other than working.

But mostly it's because (I think) it's activities they enjoy doing and actually have meaning in the real World, even if on a much smaller scale than the global one.

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

#345

Post by int0x2e »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #303
osigurdson wrote: post #258

I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both be…

it's also a cultural thing. US commute is particularly bad, I work from home and been doing it on and off for the past 20 years. My commute has never been longer than 20 minutes total. I now live 5 minutes walk away from my office, I'm not going, but if I had to I would walk there and have a very nice breakfast in some bar on the road there. One thing that's always overlooked is how much WFH is selecting people who a…

WFH is also doing an amazing job to help people who would otherwise be marginalized. In particular, I've seen how remote interviews help people that are wheelchair bound or have subtle issues with their eye-sight (that are only noticeable up close) get through some of the hidden (or even unconscious) biases that still exist in all of us and end up screening-out some otherwise great candidates.

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

#346

Post by rodolphoarruda »

I work from home since 2006. I feel that my capacity to maintain or even expand my professional network is very limited. I remember my 13 years of work before 2006 and they were very intensive in terms of social interactions, meaning, happy hours, in-office birthday parties, visits to clients' sharing the same taxi leaving from the office, meetings, both formal and informal ones at the water cooler, or at the printing bay. WFH is nice. I saw my two kids being borne and stayed with them for many years afterwards. It was priceless(tm). But I think my networking and, in some way, my employability were affected.

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

#347

Post by whywhywhywhy »

nafizh wrote: post #133
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #123

I don't get why they are not just talking to each other, is it that hard to say "I'll be in on Wednesday, will you? So we can chat about X" and why are so many people living 2 hours away from where they work then complaining about it. Like you chose to live there and work elsewhere.

>'why are so many people living 2 hours away from where they work then complaining about it. Like you chose to live there and work elsewhere.' For many people this isn't a choice. Specially, if you have a family.

Just get a full remote role then

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

#348

Post by greedo »

Nextgrid wrote: post #172
matwood wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up" Then it's time to let people go. Early on in COVID leeway definitely needed to be given with daycares closed, people transitioning to WFH, etc... But at this point, if someone can't get their work done remotely, then they should find a non-remote job. We went fully remote prior to the pandemic, and I remember someone i…

Alternatively, if these people have taken a 2 year vacation and the company appears to be operating fine, maybe there's no problem? I don't understand why this issue is being raised now - surely they already have existing processes in place to deal with people who underperform, in which case those same processes can be applied regardless of WFH status. The fact that they haven't suggests that in the end work is being…

Many companies have difficulty assessing performance, so whenever they get the opportunity to safely fire people who have transgressed in some fashion they do so. My company had famously never performed layoffs. We've been in business since the 19th Century. But eventually all good things must end, and during the 2008 crisis, some newer mgmt found an opportunity to fire people who didn't play their game. We only laid off 30 people, but it was a huge shock to the company culture, and made people re-evaluate what they thought the social contract was about.

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

#349

Post by greedo »

IMTDb wrote: post #188
Nextgrid wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, if these people have taken a 2 year vacation and the company appears to be operating fine, maybe there's no problem? I don't understand why this issue is being raised now - surely they already have existing processes in place to deal with people who underperform, in which case those same processes can be applied regardless of WFH status. The fact that they haven't suggests that in the end work is being…

Alternatively, the world was in a state were these people really did not need really to be working because economy was so slow, and government grants were paying for those salaries anyway, so people were kept on the payroll. Now that the economy is "back on track", we need them to be working - like they did before the pandemic, not like they did during the pandemic - so the work organisation gets back to a pre-pandem…

Bull. My company has posted the highest sales and profits in it's multi-century history during the pandemic years.

This idea that people were slacking off during COVID is a myth.

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

#350

Post by lukebuehler »

helen___keller wrote: post #277
lukebuehler wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home?? Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics.

> I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. Alternate POV: this could save cities as we know them. All top American cities have been struggling for about 20 years now to handle urban growth, as cost of living goes through the roof and small businesses disappear when their renewed lease comes at twice the rent. As always, the survivors are those who can afford the change: homeowners…

I should have put more emphasis on "as we know them." I think think cities will exist for sure, and they might be better. So I agree with you there, and I actually hope the same.

But modern cities have had two phases: first industrial growth, and more recently white collar/information worker city cores. Industry will still exist, but has already moved further out from city centers and cores. Currently, the life blood of large cities is closely tied up with the mega corps having their ego towers there and thus attracting innumerable highly paid workers which then spend their money in those city cores. With that going away and/or substantially changing, cities will change drastically too.

Post reply on HN