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

231–240 of 838 posts

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

#231

Post by albert_e »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #114

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 wo…

agreed.

add kids and their schools & playgroups to the mix and the prospect of having to move becomes stressful enough to shorten the lifespan :)

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

#232

Post by syndicatedjelly »

zer8k wrote: post #162
danaris wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> if they no longer had to work in a cube farm, A cube farm is massively preferable to open offices. I never want to go back to working in an office but I especially never want to go back to an open office. The mixture of seeming too available, loud people all over the place, zero privacy, etc were revolting to me.

[flagged]

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

#233

Post by mapgrep »

The best insight in the article is actually this:

> cheaper real estate presents an opportunity for employers with vision

On top of any deterioration in office rents, companies need way less space than they used to since people are working from home many days. This opens up many possibilities that will IMO keep offices in prime markets filled:

-companies take more space per person in office for same cost, providing desks

-companies that couldn’t afford prime markets move in and use them as mainly collaboration spaces (“let’s all work out of Manhattan next week while we finish this project”)

-companies downsize in prime markets but reorient toward specific events - brainstorming, project closings, strategy retreats, get to know each other, cross department workshopping etc etc

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

#234

Post by DragonStrength »

feyman_r wrote: post #194

I am an outlier and minority here - WFH should have worked for me, but I realized the lack of control over snacking when at home, and a lack of discipline to take breaks between meetings to walk and be active. I gained 20 lbs over two years. When I’m in the office, both these problems don’t exist; in fact 1:1s become ‘walking 1:1s’. I feel more healthier; the commute back allows me to disconnect from work and decline…

That's the opposite of me: I take twice daily walks when working from home because I prioritize living somewhere I like and can walk. Returning to the office means eating worse food for me (eating out) and spending more time in a vehicle versus walking.

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

#235

Post by dathinab »

AvAn12 wrote: post #9

Joel Spolesky has made this very point many times in the past: "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation." I work on a Data Sci team that moved to an open floor plan in 2018. What happened? Anyone who needed to work intensively on a project would work from home instead of in the office.

I have worked in all of 1,3,4,20-35 office rooms and home office.

I don't think single person rooms are necessary (but better), but open office is definitely not grate and without noise canceling headphones completely unbearable.

With rooms with small number of people (2 or much worse 4) it also depends _a massive lot_ on the layout. But also the other person, i.e. do they constantly click their pens, do they interrupt you all the time, do they have ad-hoc meetings with other people at their desk etc. etc. The problem is such factors are hard to "control"/estimate/plan with.

Through similar considerations apply to home office too, i.e. people need room in their home which can become office space. E.g. working in you bedroom comes with a huge number of problem, which can be overcome, sometimes, but it's IMHO not as simple as "just" having a proper desk and chair.

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

#236

Post by frollo »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #155
steveBK123 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open floorplans are especially problematic if your team handles any mix of development & operational tasks. Wall Street tech it's pretty typical to do your own SRE/L3 and honestly even L2/L1. Everything from business user "hey how do I.." customer service questions down to "the server is on fire, alerts are coming in .. ". Open floorplans mean even if you have an agreed PagerDuty type rotation, everyone gets sucked i…

Is that a bad thing? Since we started WFH, I’ve heard a lot of stories of oncalls spending an hour on things that could have been handled in 5 seconds if the right person had gotten sucked in on the way back from coffee. “Oh, I recognize this bug from two years ago, here’s what you gotta do.” “That customer’s symptoms are impossible, ask for more details on how they’re doing suchandsuch because they must be leaving s…

Well, yes, until the stuff which has to be delivered by the people sucked in to do support stuff starts lagging and missing deadlines. Then, suddenly, lots of people start being really unhappy (usually at the expenses of the people who were helping).

If the oncalls don't have the knowledge to solve the issues they encounter, they need to escalate them and somebody needs to put more time in developing a more comprehensive knowledge base for them to reference, not just "steal" time from other company functions.

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

#237

Post by AlInGaP_Diode »

makingstuffs wrote: post #66

People need to stop trying to make things return to the original office model. Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Nor do people want to spend £10+ a day on food and drinks which they have in their fridge, at home. Then there is also the social pressure of having to go…

> Then you have the whole “oh, but, learning” as if it is simply impossible to part with knowledge via any medium other than a coworker’s breath hitting another’s eardrum.

I find it a lot more effective to msg technical questions instead of talking as I can reread a dense statement to help internalize and can also reference it later. WFH is great for learning

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

#238

Post by steveBK123 »

flandish wrote: post #215
steveBK123 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite story on this thread is that during the hybrid period, GS CEO threw a fit when out in the Hamptons because some analyst (fairly junior role almost at the bottom) had the balls to go introduce themselves during a workday lunch at a restaurant. He couldn't articulate a specific, valid complaint like "I was out at a client lunch and they were goofing off" or "I was on a vacation day while they were supposed…

This example is a stark reminder that the complaints are most often not about details but about class . The CEO was upset others were allowed to perform as if they were of the same class. It’s always class when one boils it down, imho.

Precisely. He couldn't put it into words because the words wouldn't have looked good.

But the obvious complaint was what are these slobs doing in my summer resort town, dining in the same establishment as me!! Rather than stuck in downtown Manhattan in the August heat. Or - the least they could do is go to Coney Island / Jones Beach / Jersey Shore or something eating some hotdogs.

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

#239

Post by nequo »

steveBK123 wrote: post #198
pc86 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the boiled frog is a perfect analogy. I grew up always assuming there would be a long commute. I couldn't afford to move out of my parents house for almost a year out of school in my first job (2008 making less than $30k/yr) so I spent 7 or 8 months driving an hour each way. I'm too young to remember but my dad spent the first few years of my life and several before that commuting 2 hours one way. Spending at…

Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not further. Each step is just a small increment worse. But when you go fro…

In what way is transit worse in NYC and DC? Are trains and buses running on a sparser schedule today in these two cities than they were before COVID?

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

#240

Post by Zetice »

mrbgty wrote: post #57
Zetice wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won’t work? How will these non-workers pay for things? They’ll have no choice but to work.

How will the company stay in business without workers? They'll have no choice...

An understaffed company will last infinitely longer than an individual without a job.
Post reply on HN