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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?

#621

Post by ilaksh »

listenallyall wrote: post #273
ilaksh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can connect or collaborate in a hallway, you can also do so in a Discord channel (or whatever tool). There are also several good applications for internet collaboration that simulate a rich shared 2d or 3d or video space. Or things like GitHub issues and Wikis. Networking, mentorship, company culture, etc. can all happen over the internet. You make it part of the company culture to use the remote collaboration…

Discord, rich shared 3d spaces, GitHub Issues, wikis... Lol. Some people (most, I'd say) prefer going to lunch or to Starbucks with other people, leaving all the technology behind briefly, and simply talking. I think it's also more effective in getting a point across than any virtual medium.

More effective how? You may have a higher bandwidth interface but the difference between a video chat audio call and in-person is not as big as people think it is. Also eye contact is coming soon to VR devices.

It's nice to be able to meet in person sometimes and going out is more fun. But it absolutely is not important for effective communication. Unless they literally have poor writing skills and/or poor reading comprehension.

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

#622

Post by lamontcg »

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…

I've absolutely managed to have non-structured zoom meetings which have been productive. Often its just a spillover of standup where me and a coworker take over the end of the meeting and basically let everyone else drop off (or not) and we start bitching about something horrible to fix. Sometimes it resulted in something meaningful, sometimes it was just a bitching session. I did this mostly with other coworkers because I'm an introvert. If you're aggressive about hopping on zooms with other people then they can happen with external people. I've gotten dragged into zooms with customers, via the customer services team airdropping me into some horrible customer issue, which later solidified the direction the architecture should go based on the obvious struggles the customer was having. My coworker at prior job was better about inserting himself into those kinds of virtual discussions.

And there's a major advantage to being able to operate that way since you don't have to be geolocated with your customer or your customer services folks and you don't need plane tickets and you can get it done with an hour or three virtually rather than having to take days out of your schedule to do an onsite.

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

#623

Post by Gigachad »

projectazorian wrote: post #617
Gigachad wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably would have been better if I hadn’t moved out of my parents house. For a brief moment I was living the dream in the city with a 5 minute walk to work, then I found myself remote working sitting on a Monday thinking about the dinner party with friends I’ve planned for Saturday for the weekly social interaction.

Your username is “gigachad” and you never considered the option of going to a gym on weekdays? Not going to say I have made lifetime friends at the gym but I have nice conversations with other regulars fairly often, it’s a good serotonin top-up. Even works for finding romantic partners as well if you’re not creepy about it, in fact two regulars at my gym just got married. There’s always the bar as well but of course…

Yes I’ve spent significant time at the gym. It doesn’t fill the void of spending 8 hours working alone.

I have so many great memories of work from 6-3 years ago, but 3 to now is just a void, sitting at home on Teams calls. What makes things worse is my city has the oldest population in the country so there is hardly anything going on outside of work as well. I've made the decision to move to a bigger city where I can work in office with everyone along with every other benefit of a larger population.

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

#624

Post by quailfarmer »

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…

Wow, this hits close to home.

I just moved a thousand miles from school to a new state. I live near work, which is about 30 miles from the nearest city (no public transit to speak of). If there's any spots for young people to socialize nearby, I haven't been able to find them.

My long-term girlfriend has a career near where we went to school, so many weekends I'm traveling there, or she is here. Both of which are great, but neither of which are conducive to making friends in this new place.

I'm really excited about the job, and I'm a late sleeper. I tend to work 11am to around 9pm.

I've had some roommates, but they've been pretty uninterested.

Luckily, work is fully in-person, and it's a very young office. The first few months were rough, but I've finally made friends with people, I had a barbecue, we went skiing, went to see a co-workers band perform.

My personal situation could be a lot worse, but it could have also been a lot better. Compared to the last year of my Masters program, the adjustment period was very painful, and I think not having human interaction would have made it worse.

-- Though, (and I'm just realizing it now), if the job were remote, I could have just stayed in the part of the country where I had many friends. Sadly, I work with hardware, so that's probably not going to happen.

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

#625

Post by krabizzwainch »

whynaut wrote: post #602
krabizzwainch wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care that little about the social interaction at work, then you probably aren't someone that we are talking about or miss working with...

And yet you have an issue with them not wanting to come in!

I literally never said that.

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

#626

Post by captainbland »

bilvar wrote: post #403
ornornor wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything in life is about career advancement. Well said :)

Yes, and when people going to the office get more opportunities, more advancement and higher compensation, he/she will be complaining for making "less money for the same work". Or they will start complaining about how unfair is that those opportunities only arise in the office and demand that there will be "procedures" for them to be available remotely.

It turns out using that time and energy I was spending on my commute on my work was actually good for my career.

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

#627

Post by tzs »

arcturus17 wrote: post #138
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…

> you can make a commute a quite pleasant part of your day and create a healthy separation between your work and your life Everyone is picking on the rest of your arguments, and I can sympathize with some of them, but not this one. Never had, nor can I envision, a commute with a healthy separation of work and life or that wasn't orders of magnitude worse than, you know, reclaiming that time for whatever I want.

I had such a commute once. I lived in Seattle but worked on the other side of Puget Sound commuting by ferry.

Most people who commute across Puget Sound go the other way. They live on the west side and commute east to Seattle. That direction is a nightmare, with heavy traffic and long waits both in traffic and at the ferry terminals.

Going my way traffic was not too bad even if I went in during rush hour. I usually went in a couple hours or so later though and then it wasn't even noticeable. Similar coming home.

On the ferry I could nap in my car, or read in my car, or go take a nice stroll around the deck enjoying watching the water, or have a meal or a snack at the ferry's cafeteria, or relax in the fairly comfortable passenger seating area. There were newspaper vending machines with the Seattle Times, Seattle PI, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal which provided another way to spend my time on the boat.

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

#628

Post by iso1631 »

treis wrote: post #23

I think a lot of people are abusing WFH. Some make it obvious like doing meal prep during refinement but others are just kind of ghosts during the day. Even as a fellow team member reviewing code it's hard to tell how much my coworkers are working. Assume my EM has less of an idea than I do and anyone above them is totally in the dark.

> it's hard to tell how much my coworkers are working

In a rare occasion I get a desk anywhere near a coworker when we are in the office, I also find it hard to know how much they are working.

The physical presence in the same city, building, or even sat right next to each other, goes not give me any information.

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

#629

Post by watwut »

dasil003 wrote: post #10
watwut wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "People need social connections with their peers to work together successfully "

Yeah, but we know that people were more productive in home. So, nah.
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