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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

#581

Post by halgir »

nkozyra wrote: post #268
halgir wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy, I'm excited for the massive wealth creation of this exponential growth to trickle down to workers.

Certainly not an argument I'm making. But if you're making UBI at bare minimum you won't have to iron your polo shirt and khakis every morning.

You're right, sorry for the cynical tone. I do hope the level of automation we're aiming for will benefit everyone, not just a few individual owners and us lucky tech workers who have found ourselves in demand lately.

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

#582

Post by steveBK123 »

freetanga wrote: post #434
ElFitz wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could be family money. A lot of IB folk come from wealthy families to begin with, then off to expensive Universities, and close the circle. Upwards mobility my ass.

"a lot" describes one area in one department in very large global organizations. For every daddy money nepobaby, theres 1000 other roles filled by people who got there the hard way. There's only so many of these people you can find if you are hiring for orgs of 50K people.

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

#583

Post by dbg31415 »

Having an office doesn’t change how crappy a commute is.

Or how annoying people in the office are… looking at you people who reheat fish, or try and peddle your kids’ cookies and bags of popcorn, or show up sick and act like you don’t think they rest of us notice you didn’t wash your hands after blowing your nose.

Or how literally everything in my house is more comfortable for me. I don't want florescent lights, or bright lights at all... I want my dual 4k monitors and comfy chair that doesn't get stolen by some random dude while I'm in a meeting just because they ran out of chairs in the conference room again.

I don't want pointless "all hands" meetings once a week where some guy who wants to hear himself talk stands up and bores everyone with new HR policies or sales numbers, while serving a few bits of snack food that people flock to like it's their last supper.

What do I miss about the office? Meh, I miss how easy it was to grab a few people and do a happy hour after work. I miss some of the "culture" like foosball tables, or pranks, or stupid inside jokes about how the Keurig machine on Floor 2 will electrocute you... I miss being able to race up and down the stairs and the feeling of getting a win when I beat the people who took the elevator. Stupid little stuff I guess.

But it's going to take a lot more than just an office to make me not want to work from home.

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

#584

Post by dqv »

albrewer wrote: post #551
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. I looked into the employment laws long ago about commutes to and from your home to your workplace. In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your assigned wo…

>In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your assigned workplace.

There's nothing barring an employer from paying employees a "commute stipend". I think you probably read about what is taxable/nontaxable. It's probably taxable as income and that's the "can't", which isn't really a "can't" at all; it's more of a "won't because it's taxable".

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

#585

Post by awslattery »

lampshades wrote: post #364
awslattery wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home WFH for 2012-2023 here. With our first home purchase in 2018 being on the smaller size, and the introduction of our first child to the family in 2021, I started keeping an eye on nearby options. In March of 2023, a perfect little spot opened up that could support me and another employee in the same town. Pitched it to our small company, and now I have a dedicat…

What kind of space did you find and how did you pitch it? The other employee lived in the same town already? I'd like to do this as well.

> What kind of space did you find

It is a rather unique build done by a lawyer-turned-metalworks artist a little more than a decade ago. Multiple units with adjoining walls, each with a private patio, minisplits, and a rather raw aesthetic. Very high ceilings, plenty of outlets of various voltages/amperages available. Our neighbor makes bespoke cycling bags and such. Other tenants range from retail and services to private offices.

> and how did you pitch it?

The founder of the company lived here for many years, and paid for coworking access pre-COVID when it was still a startup (now general cloud/software consultancy for public health agencies and the like).

WFH and the vacation of many of our decent coworking spaces due to COVID took a toll on him, and moved to PHL about a year ago for a change of scenery / be closer to some of our larger clients.

With that context, it was pretty easy to pitch it as a physical "hub" for him when he visits family/friends, myself, and our other employee who lives in the same town. We still have a good physical location for our corporate entity, and the cost difference between 3x coworking offices at post-COVID rates was not too much for him to stomach.

> The other employee lived in the same town already?

Yes! We had become good acquaintances for a few years before COVID as he worked remotely for an organization in Ireland from the same coworking space.

When COVID hit, his team were among the first to be cut, and as his skills meant I would no longer be overextended between cloud and frontend, it was one of the easiest hires we've made to date.

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

#586

Post by halgir »

welshwelsh wrote: post #172
halgir wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy, I'm excited for the massive wealth creation of this exponential growth to trickle down to workers.

No need to wait, the future is now. I've already seen huge gains in income and work-life balance by spending time automating my workflow. I hope that by "trickle down to the workers" you aren't talking about technically illiterate workers who are not actively contributing to the automation effort. Unfortunately, they will receive some benefits as well, which is completely undeserved.

> I hope that by "trickle down to the workers" you aren't talking about technically illiterate workers who are not actively contributing to the automation effort.

I'm talking about every single human being who has been brought into this world through no fault of their own and deserves our empathy on that point alone.

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

#587

Post by danaris »

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.

Oh, for sure—I've just only experienced the cube farm and the private office, so that's all I can personally speak to.

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

#588

Post by declan_roberts »

Apocryphon wrote: post #562

Always found it funny that software engineers think they have so much power just because of relatively high compensation. (And ease of finding new jobs- guess not so much, this year.) But pre-pandemic, how much labor power did SWEs have in determining whether or not they could work in a private office or even a cubicle as opposed on the open floor? And soon, how much power do you have to determine whether you can WFH…

Engineers who have been playing arbitrage with bay area salaries in LCOL areas have incredible leverage now.

My mortgage is $2k a month and my finances are in fantastic shape because I was making hay while the sun was shining.

What's more likely? They'll convince me to uproot my family and pull them across the country and away form their grandparents to increase "in-person synergy..."

Or I'll just take a marginal-paying job at a startup working remote? Heck, I'll start applying for jobs at the local sewer plant ($22/hr starting pay with benefits!) than move my family back to the bay area.

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

#589

Post by Tokkemon »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #138

For the first time in my life, I have space and energy to work on my fitness goals. I wouldn't be able to do that if I had to go into the office. Ironically, I moved to California because I was told we'd be working onsite...three years later and I _still_ don't have a badge because the back to office mandate never came. I use my lunch hour to workout because I can just eat at my desk. I wish I could afford a bigger h…

Congrats. Not all of us are so lucky.

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

#590

Post by Karawebnetwork »

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…

I personally experience the polar opposite.

Our office had ice cream fridges, candies, people ordering in daily, etc.

I threw away a lot of money and ate a lot of extra calories because acting as a group was strongly encouraged, meaning I would go out with the team every "let's eat out at a fast food place Friday" (if not more often).

When I am at home in my controlled space, there are no snacks because I do not buy any. There are no restaurants because I live far from downtown & fast food places by choice.

When I have a lot of willpower to do so, I even workout during the day and then take a shower. The best I could do at the office is go for a walk next to a road filled with cars.

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