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

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

#531

Post by lostdog »

hangonhn wrote: post #250
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…

> People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home At my current job, there's something ironic about that. The people who never come back to the office despite being allowed to are also the people who live the closest to the office. (We have a big office that allows people to come back but is totally optional. Hotel desks for the entire office basicall…

> Hotel desks for the entire office basically.

So your office is crappy?

Similar story for my office. It's very close, but the facilities people made it terrible to work from. Why go in when I would get half as much work done?

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

#532

Post by coffeebeqn »

steveBK123 wrote: post #96
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.

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…

We had a coworking space where some company was running (phone) customer service reps a few tables over. I didn’t use that one very much

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

#533

Post by steveBK123 »

smeej wrote: post #498
flandish wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So many of the comments are acting as though the underling employee actually is of a different class. I'd bet anything this young person is used to having his family name make him welcome at any table he wishes to join, even in the Hamptons. He's on the well-worn path through a brief stint as a junior analyst before he's running some bank or hedge fund somewhere and the CEO of GS hesitates to approach his table. This…

You just made up a scenario that has a less than 50% probability of being true, in order to.. come to the defense of a CEO worth $100M+ ? LOL cmon man.

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

#534

Post by astockwell »

gspencley wrote: post #98
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…

> 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. Not only is it unpaid, it actually costs the employee money. In the worst case you need a car + the insurance, fuel and maintenance costs associated. In the best case you still need to pay for public transportation. > Nor do people…

A recent HN comment on another post highlighted the irony of corporate messaging:

“Come back to the office”

“We’ll be resuming periodic Active Shooter drills”

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

#535

Post by derefr »

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.

Not even. He was upset because the presence of his middle-class employee in his previously-upper-class restaurant — especially with the employee visibly performing middle-class behaviors like a lack of consideration of discretion (and then not being told to sit down by the restaurant staff!) — was tarnishing the restaurant's upper-class image, i.e. the usefulness of using eating there as an upper-class shibboleth.

Or, to put that another way: if the CEO can't use "come eat with me at $place" as a way to say to investors and other CEOs that he's "one of them" and can be let in on the backchannel conversations, then why is he even eating there? It's expensive and the service is awful! He'd much rather not! Now he needs to find a new place to use to signal that!

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

#536

Post by freetinker »

flandish wrote: post #370
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.

Class is in no way related to salary.

Perhaps not in most of the world (Europe, Asia), but in America class is strongly correlated to wealth.

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

#537

Post by coffeebeqn »

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…

Commute to the office downtown. Have calls with teams in other locations over zoom while they’re with aggressive noise canceling. What’s not to love ?

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

#538

Post by everdimension »

Completely agree with "give people a better office" and completely disagree on what a good office is. But instead of arguing on details, I want to say that as always, people are different. Sometimes polarly different.

I love an open space which is a bit loud rather than quiet. It actually makes me feel more privacy than a quiet room full of people.

But here's a recipe. Create an amazing office and don't force anyone to go there! No "once a week" rules or similar. Make it completely voluntary. And see what happens.

A great office located closely, ideally walking distance, where you can discuss ideas and offtopics with your coworkers, have great coffee, not worry about snacks and stuff is like visiting an all-inclusive hotel, but for work. This statement isn't true for everyone. For some people working from home will always be better. Don't force them to change. But see what happens when you have an inviting place that's available for people to visit for as long and for as short as they want.

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

#540

Post by vel0city »

idlewords wrote: post #464
bfeynman wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Commutatio longa, vita brevis

Ego similis cervisiam
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