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Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

bloomberg.com

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Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#221

Post by pimeys »

irrational wrote: post #51

Same. Half the people we hired during work from home are remote (that was never allowed before). Now all meetings are on zoom and all conversations are on slack. Being in an office is beyond pointless. It wastes time, gas, etc. the main take away from the past 2 years is working in an office is beyond stupid (at least for certain careers like developers). I drive to work, communicate with no one except on the compute…

We're also almost completely remote. I still find it fun to go to the office 2-3 times a week. Yeah, it's a 40 minute commute, sitting in the train and listening to podcasts (or biking in the summer). In the office I typically have my own room without distractions, the company orders lunch and I get to be somewhere else than home every now and then.

I also have a great remote setup at home. A room, with a fast desktop computer and all. Still changing the location few times a week clears my head somehow...

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#222

Post by oblio »

wallfacer120 wrote: post #113
JohnBooty wrote: post #25

I recently spent a week in the office with my team. First time I'd had office time with any team since mid-2018. It was really, really, really nice. I've been a diehard work-from-home guy for ages. Why spend perhaps 10+ hours per week commuting? It's a productivity and environmental nightmare. But... sometimes? Yeah. It's nice to be in the room with other smart people, solving hard problems. I didn't realize I missed…

Regarding why this post is so inflammatory, it's just tedious "i hate people" misanthropic posturing from people who still haven't figured out that their problem is them.

Misanthropic? How could you possibly understand that from their comment?

I'd really want to see your reasoning...

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#223

Post by snarfy »

I work at a FAANG. I know many people that immigrated across the world to work at a FAANG. Who am I to complain about driving across town? So I go into the office. I may not like it but reality is that promotions come easier to those that go in. So I burn 2 hours a day and $300/mo in gas driving in.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#224

Post by isuckatcoding »

snarfy wrote: post #223

I work at a FAANG. I know many people that immigrated across the world to work at a FAANG. Who am I to complain about driving across town? So I go into the office. I may not like it but reality is that promotions come easier to those that go in. So I burn 2 hours a day and $300/mo in gas driving in.

I’d rather keep those two hours for something enjoyable in my life

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#225

Post by gumby »

lpapez wrote: post #143
irrational wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly that sounds awesome. Company paid opportunity to experience another culture in depth? Yes please!

The perspective depends heavily on your position in life. E.g. I can't imagine many parents taking up on such an offer.

why not? It sounds great to me.

The only “bad” case I know of is my cousin who moved to Finland from Australia: her teen struggled because high school was impossible to follow. The younger kid didn’t care as much, and otherwise they all had a great time.

I feel like I know plenty of families who have done this.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#226

Post by gumby »

brtkdotse wrote: post #175
irrational wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly that sounds awesome. Company paid opportunity to experience another culture in depth? Yes please!

Working with a team offset by 12 hours? No thank you!

What if you don’t have to overlap for the full day? Our team is all over the world and people are used to having real-time overlap with some people only for a couple of hours.

I have to be able to talk to everyone so my schedule is crazy (but is a schedule, so I’m not up at 2 AM every morning, and do get enough sleep). But I’m the only one.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#227

Post by civilized »

chillfox wrote: post #141
ryanSrich wrote: post #133

As someone who has worked on startups, side gigs, and only around 6 months at a “real” company. I’m always blown away at how many meetings there are in corporate America. What are you even meeting about? Why aren’t you doing hands on keyboard work? Why does a decision need to be made in a room, with everyone pretending to listen? Why are you presenting something to me when I’ll comprehend it far better if I read it,…

Don’t forget the pre meeting meeting to discuss the upcoming meeting and the post meeting meeting to review the meeting.

He's not joking, folks.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#228

Post by gumby »

throwaway5371 wrote: post #186

Half my friends say they work less than 1 hour a day remote. Literally attend standup, complain they are somewhat blocked or investigating something and then just work on personal projects or just game. The rest are doing chores because their spouses are not considering them working because they are "home". All kinds of chores from pick up the kids to take the dog to the vet. Whoever says overall productivity increas…

> The rest are doing chores because their spouses are not considering them working because they are "home"

I finally addressed this by blocking out the hours of 3-5 on my schedule for “personal time” and then working after that. It meant I could push personal chores and errands into that window no matter when requested.

Actually my schedule is so cross time zone that it wouldn’t matter so much but locking in the time helps manage it (I also have time blocked out for truly personal things like reading HN).

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#229

Post by throwaway71271 »

globular-toast wrote: post #216
throwaway5371 wrote: post #186

Half my friends say they work less than 1 hour a day remote. Literally attend standup, complain they are somewhat blocked or investigating something and then just work on personal projects or just game. The rest are doing chores because their spouses are not considering them working because they are "home". All kinds of chores from pick up the kids to take the dog to the vet. Whoever says overall productivity increas…

> Whoever says overall productivity increases, is probably talking about very disciplined individuals. That's a very simplistic view of productivity. The kind of work most people here are doing cannot be measured in hours. I can be in an office for 10 hours, bash my keyboard, blabber away in meetings and not produce anything useful. Conversely, I could spend the whole day sitting in the garden and come up with an ide…

> The kind of work most people here are doing cannot be measured in hours.

I feel almost all dev work I do today is bashing my keyboard doing boilerplate garbage and transforming one thing to another and dealing with accidental complexity of the modern 'best practices'.

My work probably can be measured in hours. Good for you if you have something difficult enough to think about, but I am not sure most people have the luxury to work on interesting things.

Re: Employees are returning to the office to sit on zoom calls

#230

Post by maxwelldone »

jiggawatts wrote: post #199
ryanSrich wrote: post #133

As someone who has worked on startups, side gigs, and only around 6 months at a “real” company. I’m always blown away at how many meetings there are in corporate America. What are you even meeting about? Why aren’t you doing hands on keyboard work? Why does a decision need to be made in a room, with everyone pretending to listen? Why are you presenting something to me when I’ll comprehend it far better if I read it,…

Wait till you see government organisations. There are meetings to decide who needs to turn up to a meeting. I thought that was a sick joke until I attended such a thing myself. On one project we had dozens(!) of meetings involving 5-10 people to decide what to call an API endpoint that no human being will ever see again after the initial implementation. A nearly cried. I told them that they could literally mash the k…

This reminds me of a great scene[1] from the British show "Yes, Minister". It's from an episode called The Compassionate Society where a minister for Department of Administrative Affairs learns about a newly built hospital which has some 500 employees but no doctors & patients. The scene I linked is a conversation between the minister & his private secretary where the latter explains why administrators are essential no matter what.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAk448volww

Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLU-Evdlt-A

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