Our offices are empty enough that if you want to you can easily have your own. It's just that wearing trousers, getting through traffic, etc. are too inconvenient
Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
631–640 of 838 posts
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#632Earlier quoted context omitted.
To put some numbers on it "Associate" is a $150-$250K TC role vs DJ CEO making $25M.
In real numbers, it's a DJ ($5k) CEO ($25MM).
He could be pulling something like 1/2 million as a DJ. Still a side gig, but not quite as trivial especially when his CEO pay isn’t directly tied to hours worked.
“His Spotify profile has 550,000 monthly listeners with his debut single garnering 8 million listens.”
It varies but this list is showing several people at close to 1$/year per monthly listener. https://www.internetdj.com/top-djs
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#633Can someone explain why companies want engineers to return to the office so badly? Engineering requires prolonged periods of uninterrupted focus. Working from home provides that focus. Who wants this return to the office so badly and why?
When I worked “from the office” I routinely had to work from home to focus on high stakes projects, because the office was interruption hell. The office, especially open plan, is good for catching up but sucks shit for focusing and getting stuff done.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#634Earlier quoted context omitted.
i'm 100% an extrovert. i still prefer working from home. why? because i like having my own office, with a door that i can close. i like that i have my own setup, specifically designed by me so i can be as comfortable as possible. i love that i can stop work for 30min and just play with my dog or talk to my wife. oh, and i LOVE that i have privacy and i don't have someone looking at what i'm doing for 8h.
How horrible are those offices people talk about (I guess in US)? Is it really the norm that people look over your shoulder? I like when it's quiet and private but I also like to come work from an office... Even though it's a basic small shared space and I literally work from my laptop (can't be bothered to hook up the screen etc). I do like not having to do it every day so I am free to come or not but I look forward…
At my place, there are desks (about 4 feet wide, set in rows of 6, with people's backs facing each other and no dividers). There are about 200 desks, and about 250 employees. Desks need to be reserved, keyboard, mouse and charger all need to be brought by the employee to their desk each day. 50 or so people don't get desks and have to sit on couches, stools in the kitchen with no backs, or the floor.
The CEO said that we should just feel grateful that we have an air-conditioned office with snacks to come back to, poo-poo'd the concerns over: a lack of desks, the high noise-levels, the fact that most teams are distributed and so much of the open office is sitting in a remote zoom call talking over one another...
It's an incredibly hard environment to work in, and I was shocked that my company's CEO was so out-of-touch. Of course, he has a private office.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#635People 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 think this is exactly it. I liked working from home when I had a separate room for it and it saved me about an hour every day, but I've since moved to an apartment that's smaller, but also much closer to work, and I prefer the going to the office now. Having your own office does help though (I'm sharing with one other person who's only there once a week).
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#636Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of people on here have not been through a real recession. Not saying that everybody will go back to working in an office, but thinking one can simply demand anything only works when employment is high. During a recession, it is either social assistance or one takes the job that is available.
There is no excess labor left in the system. We just went through a pandemic where, in the US, 2.4 million people just vanished from the labor force. If there is a recession it'll be a fully employed recession where the fed has to keep rates high because workers are fully employed and driving up wages while capital is crying uncle for lost profits and cheap money again.
There is excess labor but they are NEETs
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#637People 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…
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. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend th…
100% this. In most places I worked the C-levels were not in the office most of the time, when there were multiple offices they would mostly visit the ones closer to their homes and for the usual "weekly/monthly conversations with c-levels" they'd be at their homes or second homes zooming in.
One remote work hater I really like to listen to is Scott Galloway, that keeps on harping that remote work is horrible but doesn't even live in the same country where he's running his business anymore. Flexibility for me but not for thee.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#638People 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 suspect many people on HN have never had a proper office with a door. While I do agree with your overall premise, having had offices at multiple roles over my career, it is a major improvement over cubicles and open office. Having a space to work in complete, uninterrupted quiet is wonderful. The simple social signal of the door being opened or close implying availability to chat works great to balancing heads down…
> I suspect many people on HN have never had a proper office with a door.
In my time at Apple I had a real office with a real door for about half of my time. Of that only about half was an office I didn't have to share with someone else. The lone offices were the most productive I ever was while working there. I could close the door and go unbothered for hours. I turned off the lights and had my own lamp that was much more comfortable.
Sharing an office with coworkers wasn't bad on its face but it's difficult to focus if the other person is talking with someone else. It's all manageable but objectively worse than a single office. The open floor plan at Apple Park was just fucking horrible. Constant distractions all day. Sure you could collaborate but when trying to actually get work done it was in spite of a hundred visual and audible distractions. I'm sure I distracted others inadvertently as well.
A giant spaceship of a campus and they couldn't manage to give everyone a private space. Just the stupidest design for a building.
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#639Can someone explain why companies want engineers to return to the office so badly? Engineering requires prolonged periods of uninterrupted focus. Working from home provides that focus. Who wants this return to the office so badly and why? When I worked “from the office” I routinely had to work from home to focus on high stakes projects, because the office was interruption hell. The office, especially open plan, is go…
Because you are actually more production when you are being interrupted vs locked away where nobody can reach you.
Or do you just work on small projects that you can finish by yourself?
Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
#640Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did Solomon actually produce those tracks though? I always assumed it was a ghost producer.
He flies around doing live sets, so maybe?
You'd be surprised how often "live set" is a synonym for "USB stick."
The scene is notorious for it. It's really not hard to find vids of DJs dancing, pointing, posing, and poking uselessly at a mixer which is obviously just there for the look.