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The damaging results of mandated return to office

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Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#311

Post by antisthenes »

tetromino_ wrote: post #242
NKosmatos wrote: post #103

Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. It’s like going from a black and white TV to a color one, from a dummy phone to a smartphone, from dialup internet to fiber to the home. You never go the other way round, unless there is a very strong reason and personal decision. People like to improve their lives in whatever way is best for them and will strongly object to a “downgra…

> Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. Let me guess, you are in a low cost of living area (at least relative to your income) and have a big house? I live in NYC. Residential floor space is very expensive here. My wife and I on two tech salaries can afford a fairly large place by the standards of our area, but it's definitely not large enough for 2 adults to comfortably wo…

> you are in a low cost of living area (at least relative to your income) and have a big house?

Orthogonal to WFH conversation, are there even low COL areas left in the US that aren't complete and total sh*tholes?

In my state, houses that were selling for $150-200k pre-Covid in low COL areas are now going for 350-400k, and that's not even anywhere near urban centers, it's about 50-70 miles out in more rural areas.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#312

Post by wiether »

deathanatos wrote: post #73

What's worse to me is the return to the "hybrid" office we keep getting threatened with. (My company has not actually done a RTO … yet. I don't know if we ever will.) Now instead of a lousy 4' desk in an open office plan … I also get a desk that isn't mine? I'm supposed to … what, lug a keyboard¹ & mouse & laptop in? It seems like literally nobody has imagined what it might be like for a SWE to actually attempt to do…

Having worked in two companies practicing hybrid office with no nominative desks but two very different ways of doing it, I can say that it can be great. Or a nightmare.

In the first one they just converted regular nominative desks to free ones. Every desk had different screens with different cable standards, no ergo stand for the screens, some had shared keyboards, each had different chairs, some had drawers, some had accessible outlets, other were hidden behind the desk... You had to come with your stuff from home. And the cleaning was done once a week.

The second one, every desk is the same. The same two screens on ergo stands. A USB-C dock with network connected to the screens. Easily accessible on the desk to plug USB devices. Same chairs at each desk. Each employee has a big personal locker to put stuff like keyboard, headset, coffee mug... Cleaning done every evening so when you arrive in the morning everything is perfectly clean.

You can see which is which.

The second is by far the best place I worked at in my 10+ years career. Depending on what is your main topic of the day, you just pick the next near the people with whom you'll work. Don't want to be bothered with your coworkers most of the day? Just go near another team. And you can also meet new people this way. You can even change desk during the day if need to change context. Just unplug your laptop.

I know people prefer having their own desk with pictures, goodies and other junk. And I thought I was one of them. Until I tried free office the right way.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#313

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

The description of the "anchoring bias" doesn't make sense. It starts with:

"The crux of the problem lies in the anchoring bias, which leads us to heavily rely on the first piece of information offered (the 'anchor') when making decisions.

When initially joining the company, the employees were primarily concerned with compensation and job security, the "anchors" in their decision-making process."

OK, but then it says:

"However, once within the fold, the pandemic caused them to shift their focus to work-life balance and flexibility... the rigid return-to-office policy made these new anchors seem less attainable"

So the "anchors" are NOT the first piece of information offered, and they can change willy-nilly. Not much of an "anchor."

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#314

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

mh- wrote: post #129
Solvency wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually the entire VFX industry has shifted to remote. Let that sync in. The most hardware/GPU intensive industry of creatives dealing with ungodly complex technical pipelines, terabytes of 32bit EXR frames of rendered data, Houdini fluid simulations, compositing, color grading, the whole works... is almost entirely distributed now. They've done it. Everyone can do it. And are doing it.

I'm curious (and not really familiar with modern VFX workflows). Do they work with a mostly thin client approach now? I'm assuming it's impractical for them to regularly transmit terabytes of data back and forth over residential connections.

I think it depends on what they're doing. If they're doing animation (which includes moving elements in live-action footage) and mostly checking the quality of motion, they might get away with proxy renders. But anyone doing critical color or compositing I would think need to do local renders on a calibrated system, and then commit the work to a remote render farm for consistency and accessibility by other team members.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#315

Post by ge96 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #137
dclowd9901 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stasis causes memory to meld together. Even an office job will become a stasis at some point. If you really want to undercut that effect, inject new experiences into your life as often as possible.

Really the answer is to just quit working and become a hunter/gatherer, or travel the world. I’m only half-joking.

> quit working

that is the plan... gotta save/invest

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#316

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

What sucks in the USA is that Trump canceled all the tax deductions home workers could take, just in time for COVID to make home work the norm for millions of people. And those deductions haven't been restored.

So now we foot the bill for all the electricity and space required to do our work.

People also ignore these costs when arguing for "densification." Now that we spend even more time at home, people who want to make that home a little nicer and more spacious are vilified. OMG, you want a patch of yard? ELITIST. Never mind that everyone's dinky patch of yard could come out of the tracts of dying, boarded-up malls and empty office parks and defunct commercial/industrial zones... and the parking lots that surround them.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#317

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

di456 wrote: post #87

I am grateful for a remote job. Sometimes being at home for too long I get stir crazy and if I plan my day well I can schedule in time for breaks and walks and feel better. If I had a 45+ minute commute each way again I'd be stir crazy in traffic. No thanks. The hardest part for me is balancing slack and video conferences. Slack can be useful but it's hard to have more nuanced conversations and make complex decisions…

"Any company claiming to be climate friendly and forcing people to commute is hypocritical (cough cough Amazon)."

But on the other hand it's Amazon and its ilk that allow people to be at home all the time, not out running errands. Don't get me wrong: I'm no fan of Amazon. But on one hand you have a lot of self-proclaimed car-haters pretending that nobody needs a car, but then wanting to take away the street capacity that makes carlessness possible by enabling delivery.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#318

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

sanderjd wrote: post #295
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To each their own. That's exactly my point! I find it ridiculous that CEO's think they somehow have to create the same policy for everyone, as if giving people a choice was somehow a taboo. We've come a long way realizing self-organizing teams work better than micromanaged ones etc., I wonder how long it will take PHBs to understand that giving people a choice is not just good for them but it's overly beneficial to…

I agree, but there are very real costs to having teams (at different levels) doing different things. A team with 8 people in-office and 2 people WFH is pretty crappy. The in-office people end up feeling put-upon to have to go out of the way to include the WFH people in things, and the WFH people inevitably end up feeling left out of a lot of things, because they are. At the very lowest level, it works best to have a…

While I agree, it all depends on the methods of communication. In a more or less standard scenario, with a daily sync with video and then async like Slack, it doesn't matter that much who's in the office. I tend to message my colleagues on Slack even if they are sitting next to me, for the same reason that public channels are recommended over private ones - nobody is excluded and it's easy to find information that would otherwise be lost.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#319

Post by mostlysimilar »

packetlost wrote: post #285
NKosmatos wrote: post #103

Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back. It’s like going from a black and white TV to a color one, from a dummy phone to a smartphone, from dialup internet to fiber to the home. You never go the other way round, unless there is a very strong reason and personal decision. People like to improve their lives in whatever way is best for them and will strongly object to a “downgra…

Idk, I'm firmly in the "hybrid works best" camp. Face-to-face collaboration has no alternative, sorry. In jobs where you have to actually engineer instead of build CRUD web-app #2,000,001, it's very hard to be effective without in-person communication. Most people are not great at the async types of comms that are necessary for that to scale to remote work.

> In jobs where you have to actually engineer instead of build CRUD web-app #2,000,001, it's very hard to be effective without in-person communication.

Trivializing the work of others isn't making your point any stronger. There's plenty of complexity in delivering software via the web that benefits from in person collaboration.

Re: The damaging results of mandated return to office

#320

Post by runamok »

jaclaz wrote: post #278
pvdoom wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is very interesting to consider how it relates to capitalism today, and how in essence you are paying some amount of rent to your employer, in the form of the profits of the work - the leftover after salaries are paid and expenses covered.

I am not getting it. In sharecropping (with a lot of nuances depending on the specific countries and even different regions in a same country) the landowner and the tenant were some sort of partners, both had all the interest in having a better/larger crop (or raise more cattle, etc.). In a normal capitalistic employer/employee relationship, the employees have no particular interest in the final outcome, they are onl…

I'd argue they trade receiving the full fruit of their labor for increased safety/stability. I know I do at least. The owner of a business still needs to make payroll even when the business is doing well with legal consequences iiuc if they don't. If you are a sole proprietor your billable rate goes up but now you are marketing, IT, accounts receivable, janitor, etc. etc.

Additionally different company's have different ways of incentivizing employee "ownership". Everything from RSUs, Employee stock purchase plans, a Christmas bonus for a good year, etc.

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