511–520 of 830 posts
I like the office—well, some offices anyway—quite a bit better but I don't like it to the tune of 200-400 hours per year and thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I worked out that for me, even accounting for energy bills and such, working from home full time would be equivalent to a 15% pay rise. And on top of that, I'd have 2 hours of extra free time every day. I can't understand the kind of person who wouldn't want that.
Likewise, work-from-office people get something out of that experience that is more valuable to them than 2 more hours per day of free time. It varies from person to person.
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…
With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…
With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…
And yes, you're coming as agressive, sorry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are reading three different reasons and you are mentally adding “do not care to invest” to all three. That is not what the OP said.
Here’s a direct quote: Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary . (I added the italics for emphasis.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
This cuts both ways: It's okay to prefer working from the office—but you should find a team that also prefers working in the office, so people who prefer home have that option too.
Right now we're in the shaking-out stage where each team is deciding what kind of team it will be. Both sides of the debate justifiably want their preference to win out. In the end, we'll see people leaving the teams that won't accommodate their preferred working style, and that's okay! No one should assume a priori that their team will land on their side of the fence, and it's not on your teammates to leave and go find a [WFO/WFH] job if you're the odd one out.
Possibly?
I can't speak for others but I can say:
I find working for money incredibly alienating when I compare it to the many other places in my life where I work because I want a thing in itself.
When I compare the job I have taken to pay my rent to child rearing or the bands I play in, or the pro-bono things done to support organizations, or simple maintenance of my life, the job is profoundly alienating. I'm spending a big chunk of my life and trading it for the most-fungible-of-all-things.
When I was younger, I tried to compensate for that feeling by taking up jobs with which I could identify. I spent years teaching in universities and running recording studios and taking commercial video production gigs. All fun things, none paid well, but the pay was not the problem.
What I found was that no matter how much I tried to make that work, I never really fully could fully get that identification with the work going: I was never a good enough professor or engineer or technician, because there is always that other element of money as motivation.
What is worse, that identification with the work led me to have really bad boundaries with work: isn't a "good" professor researching literally -all the time-? Shouldn't a "good" programmer be constantly honing their skills and playing with code pens and new languages? Shouldn't a "good" small business owner be constantly on the grind and networking?
That is not a very sustainable view of work for me; while there are plenty of people who can do that for long periods of time, I suspect that constantly trying to make our personalities about things that we are essentially only doing for money is not a healthy mode of life.
As I have gotten older, I have found that while I want to have money for all the things that I do care about, that strategy of over-identifying with my job was more of a problem then a solution.
It's okay to say to myself: "I am just doing this for the money, they are getting XYZ and I am getting PQR and that is the end of it". I am not a bad programmer: I make the stuff and fix the stuff and do the tasks. But at the end of my work, I leave it and go play clarinet or trumpet or boulder or hike. Those are all good things, and I am not a good or bad person if I suck... they are simply things that are good to do in themselves.
Once I stopped trying to invest my self-peception into my job, it became much easier to setting appropriate boundaries on the work. I don't really care if I am a good software developer or not, I just care that I can do the tasks people ask me to do.
That leave a lot more time and room and energy to try and be a good parent or musician or caring member of a community.
So, no I think there are more fundamental issues at play than simply specifically bad managers or rude co-workers. I think there is a fundamental structural problem with over-identifying with our work, and in my experience creating greater boundaries (in the form of remote work or in the form of "leaving work at work") is the only long-term tenable solution I've found.
But I don't miss having to live hundreds of miles away from my friends and family, who live in a rural area with no tech jobs.
I am sure Berlin is loads of fun. But I'd rather be here with the mountains and the sea and the people I love.