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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?

#581

Post by antisthenes »

Gigachad wrote: post #386
nostromo wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve got friends but you can’t fill 100% of your social interactions with meeting friends. Unless you have a very large number of them, you won’t be able to see them daily, and even if you do, you end up consuming all of your free time with socialising and having no personal time left. Remote work left me choosing between fulfilling social interaction or personal time after work, either option leaving me unsatisfied.…

> Remote work left me choosing between fulfilling social interaction or personal time after work, either option leaving me unsatisfied.

Congratulations, you're an extrovert. To me, that sounds like the PERFECT arrangement. 0 pressure to interact with people, but in case everyone is feeling like it, we meet up with friends over the weekend.

I like having personal time to work on personal projects 3-4 days a week. I'm also fine with only 2-4 hours of face to face interaction per week.

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

#582

Post by gedy »

RichEO wrote: post #520
herghost wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. I'm happily married, children, dog, several distinct groups of friends, great job at a great company, lovely house in a nice village, etc, etc, etc. I worked from home for about 4 years as a freelancer and found it incredibly isolating (but lucrative, so endured it) but finally had enough and get a permanent job back in an office. This was 5 weeks before what would be the first of sever…

I don’t know where you live, but have you considered finding a “third place” to work from or frequent at lunch or after work? I’ve found that working from a local cafe, in my little suburban “village” centre has been really fantastic for this. I work, I bump into people I know, I meet new people and get to know my neighbours. It’s great.

Given their ubiquity, local libraries might be good to advertise meeting facilities for remote workers during the day. Before anyone complains about the noise and distractions from other workers - it's probably better than an open office layout.

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

#583

Post by scrollaway »

ravenstine wrote: post #547
nostromo wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

Meetup works great in many cities and plenty of young people use it. If you’re joining a tricot or bingo group though don’t be surprised at finding yourself surrounded with “retirement age” members.

In some cities it’s unused though. When I lived in Athens it was terrible, just crypto groups used it.

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

#584

Post by Gigachad »

treis wrote: post #69
hikingsimulator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caring about the raw amount of time people put into their jobs sounds like a middle management thing to do -- rewarding showing up and putting in hours like it was PR. If the results are there, and in accordance with the employment contract, time shouldn't matter.

Except that they also take advantage of the flexibility of agile. If a story is pointed for 2 days and it takes 3 it's better to take that as a missed estimate than a developer not producing as much as they should. Hammering them because they let a deadline slip leads to all sorts of bad things. But, again, even as a fellow team member I can't tell if they worked for 2 days and fucked off for one or it legitimately j…

Yeah I really doubt many people here would be happy about being grilled constantly about their output. I'd rather work in a high trust environment, but this requires actually having trust which is pretty hard remote.

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

#585

Post by deely3 »

dsugarman wrote: post #532

Far too many of these posts since the pandemic, it's OK if you personally feel more productive at home but if you seriously can't understand the benefits of working together physically then you have a serious mental block. There's some emotional reason why you don't want to hear why people find office work productive. You should at least be able to recite an opposing argument if not empathize with it (let alone agree…

> you seriously can't understand the benefits of working together physically then you have a serious mental block.

But we working together, just remotely. Could you explain please, for us with "serious mental block" why do you feel that you need to be near me physically to do any work?

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

#586

Post by mustini »

scrollaway wrote: post #578
mustini wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very easy advice to give and oft repeated, but I’m deeply skeptical that this is something that works for most people (unless we substitute friends with acquaintances).

It’s often repeated because a lot of people make friends this way. My board game buddies are my closest real life friends, and I met them exactly like this. However people do need to accept that not everyone makes friends the same way.

Maybe the more interesting question is what does it take for this to work?

I’m just going anecdotal here from college friends that have dispersed across the US.

Warm intros, so to speak, help. If you join a running group attended by a friend of a friend it seems to stick better than joining when you know absolutely no one.

Public transit helps. It’s hard to be consistent when going to the activity requires slogging through traffic.

And lastly, an activity that encourages repeated regular attendance. Hiking is an activity that is super flaky attendance compared to say training for a triathlon with a specific event day.

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

#587

Post by Gigachad »

watwut wrote: post #8
cloudwalking wrote: post #4

People need social connections with their peers to work together successfully. It's much easier to build these connections in the office than virtually. Seeing each other a couple times per quarter for an extended period could also work, but it's easier--if you already have an office space--to bring people together in the office once or twice a week.

That sounds like a reason why an employee would go to the office. But not really something employer would care about - they don't care about employees social lifes in other contexts.

Because people will leave. I will no longer work any job which doesn't have an office. Remote work is depressing and isolating.

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

#588

Post by antisthenes »

brewdad wrote: post #535
hypothesis wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny how people find it necessary to participate in in-group/out-group dynamics/politics at work, long past high school. What if one could get paid for doing a job without any of that by skipping “socialize at work” altogether?

That works fine until your workplace is 3 people or more. Human nature can’t be wished away.

There's a thing called CC on your email client. It certainly lets you add more than 3 people.

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

#589

Post by Volundr »

ipaddr wrote: post #544
asdadsdad wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was common even before the pandemic. Plenty of colleges offered certain courses or even full degrees remotely.

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

#590

Post by leros »

jpeterson wrote: post #102
n8cpdx wrote: post #67

There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes. That’s the sort of thing that isn’t immediately obvious, but becomes more noticeable as time goes on. The first months of the pandemic people were able to coast on their existing connections, but it becomes harder years on, especially if half your team has _never_ met in person or come to company HQ. In the before tim…

"There’s a lot of collaboration and spontaneous connection that happens in hallways and kitchenettes." I've seen this idea repeated many times, but in over 20 years in the tech industry, I've never once seen a meaningful collaboration spring up in a kitchenette or hallway. It's invariably "how was your weekend?" fare. Don't get me wrong, there's value in connecting that way, but it's never the sort of thing that dire…

I would probably say that 95% of my creative problem solving type work happened in unstructured conversations like hallway conversations. A lot of value was definitely lost there.
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