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Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

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Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#541

Post by Joeri »

sircastor wrote: post #508
pxue wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C'mon that's just bullshit. Once working, you spend 8h a day with a group of people. It's by far the easiest way to make friends since the needed repetition of making contact (a minimum requirement for friendship) is already solved by going to work together. Making friends as an adult is hard. Work is the easiest shortcut in establishing meaningful relationships with strangers. Edit: addressing some of the comments b…

We tend to make friends early in life at school or church, but those friendships are because there's a very wide pool of individuals in a single location. Literally everyone in a geographic area who is your age. That inherently tends to include people of similar economic status and cultural background. You have this huge group of people and can pick your preferred subset from them. Walking into a job, literally the o…

Similar backgrounds and worldviews are not necessary for a solid friendship, as long as you have shared interests and mutual respect.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#542

Post by [deleted] »

65 wrote: post #342

I'm in my 20s. I live alone in a city where I don't know anyone. Remote work destroyed my mental health. All I wanted was to be able to go into an office and talk to a real life person. I would go weeks at a time not talking to a single person in real life. I don't think people understand the plight of the young office worker until they've experienced the torture of solitary confinement. Day in, day out. All alone. I…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#543

Post by giantg2 »

The_Colonel wrote: post #531
giantg2 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and people can be assholes if they want. Maybe what you describe works at some places or for specific people. Many companies will ignore your ideas. Your title is code monkey and that's all you do - shut up and listen to us important people. Some managers are very threatened by their subordinates, or are unimaginative. The business side generally wants what they want. God forbid you suggest some new approach.

I think you're missing the point, this is not about the split between management and engineering. Code monkey is here somebody who accepts assignment and produces code, without having a lot of understanding for the larger whole. And that's mostly what you get with this attitude that doesn't value any meetings / communication which doesn't relate directly to one's work. But the organizations don't want to have code mo…

They might say that they don't want code monkeys, but their actions say otherwise. That's my experience anyways.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#544

Post by ipaddr »

asdadsdad wrote: post #481
camgunz wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a symptom of societies that require you to work way too much and get everything (status, health care, socialization) from your job.

Would you like college to be remote too? School? Let's all wake up in our pijamas, hop on a zoom and live most of our lives like that?

For many college is remote. That's the new norm for many.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#546

Post by dsugarman »

lolinder wrote: post #486
65 wrote: post #342

I'm in my 20s. I live alone in a city where I don't know anyone. Remote work destroyed my mental health. All I wanted was to be able to go into an office and talk to a real life person. I would go weeks at a time not talking to a single person in real life. I don't think people understand the plight of the young office worker until they've experienced the torture of solitary confinement. Day in, day out. All alone. I…

I think you're the most honest pro-office person here. Everyone else is making justifications that dance around this idea that they need the office for the human connection. What you describe is very real and I understand that it hurts. I think what's happening is that we're in the shaking out phase where companies are deciding whether they'll be remote/hybrid/office. Each company will make that decision based on the…

Put yourself in the executives shoes for a second, they're not stupid people, they know how large the risk of blowback is and how many employees they might disenfranchise or lose. They're that confident that remote work is a bigger threat to their long-term performance and they don't want to get lapped by the companies with an in-office culture

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#547

Post by ravenstine »

nostromo wrote: post #369
65 wrote: post #342

I'm in my 20s. I live alone in a city where I don't know anyone. Remote work destroyed my mental health. All I wanted was to be able to go into an office and talk to a real life person. I would go weeks at a time not talking to a single person in real life. I don't think people understand the plight of the young office worker until they've experienced the torture of solitary confinement. Day in, day out. All alone. I…

Working in person isn't the issue here -- not having friends is the issue. People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends. (Friends and family won't lay you off like a job might. Having a network outside of work is critical if that ever happens.) Asking your coworkers to come into the office just so you can get some needed face time with other peop…

> People do make friends at work, and that's a good thing. But it should never be your primary place of making friends.

Yeah... good luck with that.

Not to say that people don't make friends outside work, but there are many variables involved with that.

But just use Meetup.com, right? Sure, if you want to spend a few hours with people of retirement age, not if there's anything wrong with that.

Not having friends is just the surface level of the issue. If all you want is friends and friends alone, then that really isn't that hard to arrange.

If the use of "friends", however, is those who are in your age cohort as well as romantic possibilities, that's an entirely different beast that can be ironically difficult to conquer once college life has been long since left in the dust.

For many, if not most, the office was the deciding factor as to whom you would associate with in adulthood. Plenty of people have met long time friends as well as their husbands and wives at the office. With remote work, this is extremely difficult to pull off. I've been fortunate to have made one or two good friends through my years of remote work, but I had 100x more social opportunities back when I worked in a physical office. I miss the fact that I could have a best work friend kind of like how I usually had a best school friend as a child. But it's usually impractical to make such connections when all you have is Slack and Zoom, neither of which are good for shared 1-on-1 experiences. There's no chance to say "Hey, wanna run to Starbucks with me?"

I wouldn't give up remote work entirely, but I'm finding there's a lot left to be desired that would be met in an office. The office is the missing variable that gets people to spend sufficient amount of time together on shared goals. That's not easily going to be replicated by introducing yourself to random people in town.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#548

Post by giantg2 »

joxel wrote: post #509
giantg2 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and people can be assholes if they want. Maybe what you describe works at some places or for specific people. Many companies will ignore your ideas. Your title is code monkey and that's all you do - shut up and listen to us important people. Some managers are very threatened by their subordinates, or are unimaginative. The business side generally wants what they want. God forbid you suggest some new approach.

Makes sense. I'd just be trying to get out of a job like that, and don't see how that's desirable at all. You seem to think its the better way though.

I never said it was the better way. It's simply reality, at least for most jobs (larger non-tech companies).

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#549

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

65 wrote: post #342

I'm in my 20s. I live alone in a city where I don't know anyone. Remote work destroyed my mental health. All I wanted was to be able to go into an office and talk to a real life person. I would go weeks at a time not talking to a single person in real life. I don't think people understand the plight of the young office worker until they've experienced the torture of solitary confinement. Day in, day out. All alone. I…

I have no opinion on whether or not remote is good (I work alone, at home, and I'm fine with it, but I also understand the draw of office life).

I would strongly suggest volunteer work, as a way to socialize. Geeks have extremely valuable skills, and can give a great deal, to most volunteer efforts.

In my case, I have been involved in a fellowship, for my entire adult life, and it richly satisfies my socialization needs. I also do a great deal of tech volunteer work for it.

I wish you luck, but I'm not sure that returning to the office would fix things.

Re: Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?

#550

Post by Volundr »

roncesvalles wrote: post #380
65 wrote: post #342

I'm in my 20s. I live alone in a city where I don't know anyone. Remote work destroyed my mental health. All I wanted was to be able to go into an office and talk to a real life person. I would go weeks at a time not talking to a single person in real life. I don't think people understand the plight of the young office worker until they've experienced the torture of solitary confinement. Day in, day out. All alone. I…

Same and same. Also, I hate how these days it's somehow shameful to even think about making friends at the workplace, that somehow work friends are work friends and can never be your "real friends". Looking at my parents' generation, most of their current friendships are people they met at work. In fact my parents met each other at work. We go to school and make friends with other people at school. Why is it wild tha…

Work friends can 100% be real friends. There is nothing shameful about making these at work. There's also nothing about remote that makes it impossible. I know, I've done it.

That said I would be very, very careful about assuming your work friends are real friends. People are often surprised to discover which connections vanish when you quit working together. Hence why I strongly advocate for finding friends outside of work. Makes it much less likely you get laid off or leave your job one day and suddenly find yourself lonely.

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