641–650 of 830 posts
Over time I'm hoping the workforce will redistribute somewhat so that more office folks join the same pro office companies. For myself I'd prefer to join a company that has some office community even if it's a hybrid company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree with you but I think we may have differing definitions of "exploitation." To generate more value for a company than you receive in wage is to be exploited, in my book, and is subsequently unethical. The way out of this situation is unclear but to pretend that this is not the case helps neither man nor beast.
In order for employment to be stable over the long-run, the productive employee has to create more value for the employer than they receive. (Employers have all kinds of overheads, unproductive employees, and friction/loss that has to be covered in order for the employer to not run out of money.) I hope (and work to ensure) that my employer gets an over-unity multiple of value from me and my team’s work. That keeps e…
That said, other models of system are available - worker coops and other models of employee-owned business can and do exist. They have their own merits and flaws though - nothing in this world is perfect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may be right, but as a personal anecdote, I totally agree with the sentiment you're responding to. I don't particularly enjoy working from the office and much prefer doing so from home, but I can tolerate it. I like my colleagues and shooting the breeze with them, but they're not my friends. But boy do I absolutely hate my commute, to the point that it shadows whatever positives there are when working from the of…
Exactly! Over the last 2 years, I've rekindled my love of making music. I hadn't written any new music in over 20 years, and in the last 2 years, I've written something like 20 songs, and spent time archiving and restoring some older tapes I have. Stuff that would have been lost without the extra time. I now spend about 45-60 minutes every night just making music. It doesn't bother my spouse because they see me far m…
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…
I think there are many “subcultures” (for lack of better description) within WFH and WFO. You’re describing two of them, but there’s also a group of WFH’ers that believes the whole organization should be remote as to standardize the processes to be asynchronous, and there are WFO’ers that still like to work from home one or two days a week. There’s also WFH but within the same country, WFH globally across all timezon…
Given that the WFH crowd has no expectation of collaborating in person with anyone and 90% of the WFO argument is predicated on other people being there with you, I don't see how this statement could be possible. WFO absolutely want other folks in the office, whereas I don't see WFH feeling the same outside of some kind of safety in numbers (e.g. they won't force me to come into the office if a lot of my coworkers are also at home)
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…
Both sides have their points, but fundamentally, to me, it makes no sense to join a company with an office, and then fight to not go to that office.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. Something often missing from these discussions is that at many large companies, A lot of people are scattered around the country/world so, even if they are in an office, a lot of meetings are going to be b…
> if some people are going to be remote, it's good policy that people generally dial in individually if it's an interactive meeting But that's exactly what the parent posts have issues with. The false claim that the WFH people are letting everyone do what they want while the WFO's are not letting everyone do what they want. Because the WFH people are forcing the WFO people into zoom meetings. Having to dial in indivi…
Example: my old team
Half in Boston and half in Barcelona. Standups were joined by people at both offices and were done with Zoom in 2 conference rooms because even though everyone was WFO, we still need to do video conferencing. Unless you want to restrict teams to being in the same office.
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…
When I talk to people about going back to the office so many are unreasonably strident that they never will, to the point it seems like a social anxiety instead of a time/productivity choice. They often say things which are obviously wrong such as "there's no difference in productivity" when that is clearly dependent on person, task, and team. Or maybe it's that they've retreated into depression during Covid and this is unconscious coping.
Anyways, teams are teams and if someone doesn't want to be part of one there are other classes of work where you produce alone and those are more appropriate to people who cannot or will not go to the office. The extreme WFH people should evaluate their positions and see if they're in their optimal role or if they're now blocking others and change their career to give them their preferences. (The rabid WHO people are also an issue from their side of course.)