Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 838 posts

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#111

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

Tao3300 wrote: post #102
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that employers need to give you everything you want is strange. They give you the least they can possibly get away with. Sure - some small subset of employers competing for the best employees will do this. But the average employer? I'm skeptical.

> They give you the least they can possibly get away with. Absolutely, but that line has shifted majorly. To the point where it won't make sense for "average" employers to even try to bring people into the office. I'm not going to sink money into gas or public transportation just to be imprisoned in a meeting room when I could just take the call at home from the porch, a treadmill, or a couch.

> I'm not going to sink money into gas or public transportation just to be imprisoned in a meeting room when I could just take the call at home from the porch, a treadmill, or a couch.

You're obviously not an average employee then.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#112

Post by narcindin »

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #43

I always performed better in 2-4 person offices. Not alone, but not open space either. The constant noise and people walking by all the time is terrible for concentration.

+1 my best office was a 15 minute walk through a upscale shopping area, into a cramped room alongside my teammates and boss with a great view of a large pond.

All of our desks were pushed together in the middle of the room. The _room_ itself would switch from chat mode to quiet mode.

Though I think the quietest member of the team would have preferred a solitary arraignment, I can only speak for myself.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#113

Post by danaris »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #30

People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by a nicer office. Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery. A nicer office…

I'm massively in favor of WFH—but I think this is a bit of an absolutist take.

I can see plenty of people who are enjoying WFH, but would be willing to return to the office if they no longer had to work in a cube farm, but could have their own private office, that they could decorate to their taste, and where they could play their own music. And, perhaps most importantly, have a door that they could keep closed so that if anyone wants to interrupt them, they actually have to knock first.

As someone who has done a 30-minute commute to a cube farm, a 45-minute and a 5-minute commute to a private office, and WFH, there's basically no reasonable amount of money you could pay me to go back to a cube farm, but if I didn't have specific personal reasons for wanting to remain fully remote, I would be very willing to consider another job in a private office.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#114

Post by kjkjadksj »

How does the dual income effect never get mentioned? In these articles its like you work from home in a vacuum, and going from remote to back to the office should be as trivial as flipping a lightswitch. The vast majority of coupled these days are dual income. It is so much simpler to find a place to live when you both work remotely, than to try and find some middle ground that is as convenient as possible to both workplaces, but this hard sought convenience goes away with the snap of the fingers should one of your jobs change. Now you are back to square one trying to triangulate housing between two offices and perhaps a school or this that and the other thing.

Remote work just makes that entire concern irrelevant. You can now live in the same location all your working years if you wanted. I see people talk about things like not having to commute as being big factors, but this benefit of not having to uproot I think is even more significant. Moving is terrible.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#115

Post by welder »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #30

People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by a nicer office. Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery. A nicer office…

> Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery.

Or those with distractions at home. They can WFS, but I can see them being ok returning to an official office.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#116

Post by JohnFen »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #45
harshaw wrote: post #10

I think its fair to say that RTO is not about data, or studies, or about anything really. Leaders across all industries have decided people are coming back. Perhaps there is a secret cabal of commercial office space lenders who are putting pressure as share holders, or some other conspiracy theory. But it's happening - no one can do anything about it (except vote with your feet), and no one is going to get better acc…

> I think its fair to say that RTO is not about data, or studies, or about anything really. How is this fair to say at all? It may be true, but there’s no evidence that this is the case.

I don't know if it's true or not, but it's a reasonable hypothesis. There has been no evidence that RTO decisions are being made on data, studies, or anything other than what management feels is right, either. So all we have hypotheses.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#117

Post by bee_rider »

nkozyra wrote: post #28
SnowProblem wrote: post #12

What companies today give software engineers offices? Microsoft's used to be fantastic in 00s and early 10s but they also were moving to open spaces when I left so not sure the state today.

Honestly, trying to fix the problems of: 1) expensive office space and 2) people not coming into the office with 3) more _expensive_ office space is just the kind of McKinsey-level thinking we should expect.

Making offices bigger and nicer will

1) mean fewer offices (per unit space, since they are bigger)

2) make people more likely to come in (since they are nicer)

The point where those cross over seems like a good target, the highest number of happy office workers you can fit.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#118

Post by dack »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #99
kjkjadksj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See if I lived five minutes walk from work, I’d want to be in the office even less. Why sit there between meetings if I am five minutes from my home? Why bag a lunch when my kitchen is down the block? I’d probably show face at the obligate meetings then just go home for the day if I could.

I used to live 5mins from work. The office catered lunch every day, but I still went home every day to eat lunch with my wife instead. Hated being at that place

even if you like the place, hard to beat lunch with the wife

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#120

Post by renewiltord »

Want employees in the office? Have an in-office culture and hire people who want to be in-office. The market is available enough now for people to just work remote if they want.

I work at a company where we're in office all the time. This is what I like and that's who I like to hire.

Post reply on HN