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What I don’t like about working at a remote job

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Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#81

Post by jawns »

tpmoney wrote: post #71
_s wrote: post #27

Working from home, or remotely is not for everyone - neither is being in an office. Some folks thrive in an office environment, they value the things it provides - a schedule, a time, a reason to get up and out, socialising with others, being out in the world. It comes at a cost of time and a bit of freedom; you don't really get to choose the hours or where this happens, neither the folks you interact with. Others pr…

>There is also a somewhat of divide between introverts and extroverts between which they prefer, but of course - there are many in either camp leaning the other way too. Yeah, as an introvert, seeing the constant assertion that only extroverts want to work from the office is very frustrating. It is because I am an introvert that I want to work from the office. Sure, I struggle with interacting with people in general…

On the flip side, I'm an extravert, but I have stopped considering anything but 100% remote work. I get my energy from others, but that doesn't mean we have to share the same physical space. I used to spend 2 hours a day in a crappy commute, and for an extravert, that sucks. Now I get to spend that time around people I enjoy.

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#82

Post by twelvechairs »

_s wrote: post #27

Working from home, or remotely is not for everyone - neither is being in an office. Some folks thrive in an office environment, they value the things it provides - a schedule, a time, a reason to get up and out, socialising with others, being out in the world. It comes at a cost of time and a bit of freedom; you don't really get to choose the hours or where this happens, neither the folks you interact with. Others pr…

Exactly - it varies person to person and company to company.

Personally I'm changing my lifestyle to have a small urban apartment in the city close to work, shops and services; and a house close to the beach around 1 hr by car / 1.5hrs by train away. I plan to move back and forth around once a week.

For me this ticks a lot of boxes and I'm happy to overcome the hassles involved. I can see it becoming a more popular lifestyle. I couldn't do the 'fully remote' move to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#83

Post by e9 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #59

We are a team of 150 with half of us in engineering. Half the engineers work on the product and they are split into a handful of teams. Half of the remainder of engineers are SRE, IT and dev tools. We don’t know what we are doing and that’s ok because we have a core product that is the best in the world and the periphery to that is “so, what now?”. We have short and long term goals, and an extremely viable business w…

“ walking around the business park on foot” <- you nailed it, looking back at my career, the 1-1 time I got with managers or my co-workers walking together and informally talking things out is what made a lot of things efficient. It’s impossible to do this over Zoom. It’s just awkward.

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#85

Post by unethical_ban »

Thank you for speaking up for those of us who think WFH is overrated.

This is the first time perhaps in my life where I have been beaten over the head by the in-group that I am in the out-group. I'm a mostly straight, white man who never had to worry about being targeted due to who I am, and who never had to worry about food or housing. I'm smart and never had to work to get into college or get a good job.

Reading HN makes me feel like I'm insane to think that WFH is a major societal change that will hurt many people, especially younger people who are just getting into the workforce.

Kids who just went through two years of remote study, who will now be thrown onto macbooks shipped to them and told how to do their coding and learn corporate culture and understand their fucking job that is a third of their life from a desk at their house. Good luck making new friends. Hope you're religious or an alcoholic or a sex addict, because that's how you meet people in the digital age.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills to think that interacting with people in person for some portion of the third of my life that is work is silly. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills to think that I should get some kind of social fulfillment out of the activity that I must complete to buy a table and put food on it.

I felt out of place today even chatting 30 seconds worth of brainstorming overtime on a zoom call, because no one "just talks" on zoom anymore to work out problems. We just zone out on Slack and trudge through our shitty WFH job, having many meetings but struggling to reach out for help.

I know WFH is good for many people and for many family situations, but I think the highlight of my professional IT life will have been my mid twenties when I really liked my coworkers and could actually feel like the work I was doing was a fun activity.

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#86

Post by slategruen »

tpmoney wrote: post #71
_s wrote: post #27

Working from home, or remotely is not for everyone - neither is being in an office. Some folks thrive in an office environment, they value the things it provides - a schedule, a time, a reason to get up and out, socialising with others, being out in the world. It comes at a cost of time and a bit of freedom; you don't really get to choose the hours or where this happens, neither the folks you interact with. Others pr…

>There is also a somewhat of divide between introverts and extroverts between which they prefer, but of course - there are many in either camp leaning the other way too. Yeah, as an introvert, seeing the constant assertion that only extroverts want to work from the office is very frustrating. It is because I am an introvert that I want to work from the office. Sure, I struggle with interacting with people in general…

I'm not sure if there's any study to back this up but aren't introverts generally more sensitive to social cues? As an introvert myself, we have similar frustrations. In-person communication is just more effective in some cases.

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#87

Post by sylens »

I feel what is always left out of these discussions is that my “office” time before the pandemic was already spent collaborating with people in other locations over Teams/Zoom/Slack. I was just wasting an hour at the beginning and end of each day to commute for the privilege of doing the remote work in an open office environment with everyone else on conference calls as well

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#88

Post by kitsunesoba »

As a single guy in his early 30s, out of the things listed in the post, those I relate to most are probably having time that I don't know how to use effectively and difficulty in making friends and socializing locally.

That said, a couple years into remote work I'm starting to get a better grip on my free time usage, and I think friends will start to come naturally as I start to pick up classes and such once the pandemic situation improves.

As for the rest… For the most part all my days felt the same at the office too. Choosing a place to move to was a function of picking a place that was affordable and best suited my tastes. Schedule comes naturally to me because I feel terrible if I don't have one. The time I spend doing things I like I consider "meaningful" even if they don't amount to much. For exercise going on walks and a VR headset has helped a lot.

Overall while I miss some things about the office, the balance generally weighs in favor of remote work. At this point I think I'd only consider coming into the office if I were living within a 5-15m walk of it.

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#89

Post by jcims »

twelvechairs wrote: post #82
_s wrote: post #27

Working from home, or remotely is not for everyone - neither is being in an office. Some folks thrive in an office environment, they value the things it provides - a schedule, a time, a reason to get up and out, socialising with others, being out in the world. It comes at a cost of time and a bit of freedom; you don't really get to choose the hours or where this happens, neither the folks you interact with. Others pr…

Exactly - it varies person to person and company to company. Personally I'm changing my lifestyle to have a small urban apartment in the city close to work, shops and services; and a house close to the beach around 1 hr by car / 1.5hrs by train away. I plan to move back and forth around once a week. For me this ticks a lot of boxes and I'm happy to overcome the hassles involved. I can see it becoming a more popular l…

I just signed a lease on an apartment to do something very similar. House out in the country, apartment in a very walkable town just outside a major metro area. The motivation was to help a family member in that town but I’m stoked at the prospect of having both.

It’s definitely a bit of an indulgence but i could downsize both once my youngest is on her own.

Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job

#90

Post by jamiek88 »

briga wrote: post #11

>When you have no interesting hobbies, you’re spending a lot of your time dabbling. You don’t have the discipline to force yourself to stick with something you’re not good at and you don’t see any benefit from I think it’s time to find some new hobbies. Find something that does inspire you. You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Agreed.

We are born good at crying and sucking nipples. Everything else we learn.

You have to stick at something through the awkward ‘not very good’ stage too.

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