481–490 of 830 posts
First, click here, as my comment has a theme song: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pt8VYOfr8To I think what you are missing is that you’re in Germany. So many people on this site are working for American companies or American offices. And let me tell you, compared to European office life, it sucks. It sucks so much! In the McCountry, companies basically abuse you and the employees cry to be abused harder. Endless unpai…
I miss the office. More work got done and less time was spent on stupid shit. Sadly my company's office is being renovated, so I don't think I can go until next summer earliest, but I will be there as soon as possible. Remote workers can go and pretend to work elsewhere.
I envy your perception. My office days were people coding for 20 minutes, then going to talk about fantasy football for another 40 minutes. Im proud to say I haven't heard any fantasy football discussion since spring of 2020 Meetings took 15 minutes to start because you had to physically look for people around the office and drag them in
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WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. That is different than someone who desires to work from an office or remotely out of personal preference. For instance, I may prefer to WFH because it makes my life more convenient, but I can also accept that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. Personally, I haven't see…
A class of response I don't really see in responses here so far is that if the supposed benefits of WFO were supposed to be that high-bandwidth collaboration requires face-to-face interaction ... for a lot of companies that ship sailed a long time ago, prior to the pandemic. Mid-sized and large companies _frequently_ have projects that involve people that would previously have been in different offices. In my last in…
Even if everyone were to get pulled into their nearest local office tomorrow. And the majority probably do have a relatively nearby local office; I know relatively few people who moved remote during the pandemic. I would basically never be in a meeting where everyone (or even most people) were sitting together in one room.
And to add to your point, if half the people are more are going to be on Zoom anyway, I'd rather the people who could be in a conference room together just called in individually. A number of teams I work with have that as a rule.
I'm in Berlin (moved from Seattle). Want to commiserate over beer/coffee? If anybody else wants to join just reply :-)
I can't help but feel these takes come from a lack of empathy; I'm the exact opposite, but I fully accept people have your view. What strikes me as odd is the incapability for the pro-in-office crew to see that they're seeking participation for what they want, for what I now see as a considerable personal cost (commute time, comfort, simply not seeing the work place as a social venture), the participation from the WF…
When you pick up the phone do you start by asking someone how are they doing or wake it clear idgaf?
When I changed jobs I realized what a game changer it was that people turned on webcams during meetings. That’s not negotiable for me. I had a really good colleague who only wanted to communicate through Slack messages. He left. So a job is just money for me to, but I want it to be driven with the warmth of human interaction kindness and not between robots. YMMV.
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> If what makes you happy is a condition in which someone else is unhappy, that person is unlikely to react well. I really hate zoom meetings. Unfortunately if everyone just does whatever they want, then even the in-person meetings get dragged onto zoom because there’s at least a few people who are remote and need to dial in. Early on as we returned to office we even wound up taking a lot of meetings in the office ov…
Exactly! The team has to be aligned, because if a critical mass of people are working remotely, the office ceases to offer any advantage. It's okay to prefer working from home—but you should find a team that also prefers working from home, so people who prefer the office have that option too.
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Work is a third of our life, and it seems reasonable that many people would want social interaction during that time. Further, at least in the workplace I had before Covid, people could work from home as needed, or even part time, depending on their management. Granted this was for IT, not for the whole company though. You think WFH is every individuals choice in this new world. It isn’t. The last place I worked had…
> Work is a third of our life, and it seems reasonable that many people would want social interaction during that time Yeh thats reasonable enough. I do miss the social aspects of working in an office, I just don't miss the logistics of it like the commute, or the cost, the social pressures or the lack of freedom. As you say work is a third of our life, it seems reasonable that people wouldn't want it to be any more…
And I do think some are saying WFH is morally superior in that they think WFO is something "forced" on introverts. My point is that WFH is something "forced" on extroverts. Introverts' decision to WFH affects an office advocate as much as an extrovert's decision to have everyone work from office affects a WFH advocate.
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I'd also add that comments like this: > Now, I am fully aware that there's a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. Are remarkably condescending. Folks opting for a better work-life balance, wh…
Further we're seeing the lowest rate ever of unemployment among the disabled [1] (42.5M Americans). I guess OP views them as > people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/new…
Many people realized during covid that life has completely different meaning for them than being a cog in some corporation and sitting on their asses whole day, every day, in some soulless office far away, making money for somebody else. You clearly have no close family, otherwise we wouldn't have this thread at all, simple as that. I've become parent of 2, 1 right before covid, 1 during. It took over my whole world…
I really enjoyed working in the office when I didn't have kids. Hanging out with coworkers after work was pretty normal, and sometimes my wife would come along too. We're still good friends with a lot of my old coworkers. In fact, those are the people we hang out with now.
But now that I have kids I'd rather spend time with them or on my hobbies with them or hanging out with other people with kids while the kids do kid's stuff.
It's true, I don't know my current coworkers nearly as well as I did my old ones, and that's been a bit of a problem. We have occasional in person events and it's always a good time.
But that's because it's infrequent. Giving up my flexibility of working from home is something I will never do. But I totally sympathize with people who don't have kids and their social circle is their coworkers (that was me!).