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

washingtonpost.com

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

#461

Post by mytailorisrich »

ElFitz wrote: post #376
FredPret wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is a class dynamic. “Analyst at GS hanging out in the Hamptons” doesn’t scream working class. The CEO and analyst are both upper class, just different levels of power and seniority. That CEO is just a power-tripping asshole.

A 150k-250k analyst isn’t upper class. Nor is it really middle-class (although that would depend on the cost of living). It’s that weird in-between, where one still needs to earn a living and make even more money for someone else. A 25M / year CEO is far past "earning a living" and really only works because they want to.

A junior analyst at Goldman Sachs who's having lunch in the Hamptons, in a restaurant the CEO also goes to, is probably upper class, just very young/recenly graduated though we don't know the details.

Social class is not just about your current salary, although 200k soon after graduation isn't exactly 'average'...

Some might even say that walking up to the CEO like that indicates upper class self-assurance...

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

#462

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#464

Post by idlewords »

bfeynman wrote: post #403
steveBK123 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the brevity with which you describe the life trajectory for millions if not tens of millions of people is ... sigh.

Commutatio longa, vita brevis

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

#465

Post by chaostheory »

swader999 wrote: post #229
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, the commute is secondary. I hate being at the office. The office could be right next door to me and I still wouldn't want to go. Offices are cold, sterile, mentally unstimulating environments of constant surveillance. I never want to go into another one ever again

Constant surveillance. It really is like that.

It doesn't end with WFH especially if your work computer is a Windows box. Not sure how much MS telemetry collects, but it tends to be on in org managed windows computers

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

#466

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

When I started out working for a major IT firm that everyone knows, they allocated each of us junior devs to a two-person office with a senior dev. The company has office space to burn, so it was no major issue to them. For me however, it was mostly isolating, the kind of drop-ins that are more permissible in an open plan are sure to just annoy anyone else. I suspect with single office occupancies it could be quite a lonely existence, all the remoteness of WFH coupled with a long commute for the heck of it.

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

#467

Post by wombat-man »

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.

Yeah, whenever I need to concentrate it's earplugs + noise canceling headphones. For some reason there's a group of marketing people in the same big room as us. They are very chatty, especially in the mornings.

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

#468

Post by rayiner »

toyg wrote: post #256
rayiner wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. That’s not populist at all. It’s just another example of the white collar class enjoying the benefits of technology and globalization while everyone else gets left behind: https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increa... . Before the pandem…

The similarities are skin-deep. Managers are typically capital-owners; employees are not. Capital owners get to dictate societal priorities in a way that others will simply never be able to.

Capital ownership is one distinction, but it’s not the only salient one. Other distinctions include, for example, whether your job generally benefits from communications technology and globalization. The private equity banker and the professionals that help them outsource factories to China share many common interests, and benefit from many of the same economic trends.

They may have some policy disagreements—but even those are often theoretical. How many professionals who favor universal healthcare are in the 45% of employed Americans who are “very satisfied” with their own health insurance? https://www.pacificresearch.org/americans-are-overwhelmingly.... But fundamentally, they benefit from the highly financialized, globalized economy. Their human capital mostly insulates them from labor competition, and they reap the benefits of cheap foreign products and cheap services provided by non-unionized workers.

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

#469

Post by 13of40 »

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…

The thing that kills it for me is that where I work, before COVID it was a massive faux pas to schedule a meeting before 10:00 AM, but now I typically have multiple invites side-by-side at 9:00. In the past I could get to my office, grab some coffee, catch up on email, etc. before the grind started, but everything's been pushed back an hour and it's not coming back. So if I was getting up at 6:00 to fit in my morning routine, now I have to get up at 5:00.

The other issue is that we're a lot more globally distributed now. The 9:00 I chose to go to today had nine other people in it. Three in India, one in the UK, one in BC, two in the midwest somewhere, and two permanent WFH. Meeting with these people is always going to mean putting on a headset and looking at a screen, no matter how diligent I am at getting in to the office every morning.

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

#470

Post by chaostheory »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #459
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 all for work from home, and have doing it for over 10 years, but we shouldn't ignore the cost of donating an entire room of your house to your employer (two in my case since my wife also wfh). Certainly this should factor into your total comp calculation as -(rent amount in your area). Likely it is more than you would spend on the commute. Employers are well aware they are colonizing your private space for free.…

That used to be federally tax deductible, but now it probably depends on your state since the tax deduction rules seemed to have changed during the lockdowns.
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