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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

#701

Post by xyzzy4747 »

cdme wrote: post #169
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…

There's nothing an office can provide me that's better than the moments I have during the WFH day with our infant son as he grows.

Same, I have a 2 month old son. Nothing could bring me back to the office (extremely unrealistic compensation figures aside).

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

#702

Post by notfromhere »

steveBK123 wrote: post #577
mytailorisrich wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Taking the other side - the junior was out to lunch with a bunch of coworkers. In the office setting the CEO would never been seen anywhere near the same floor that such junior people are working or eating, never having the opportunity to introduce themselves. One bank famously had a special CEO elevator so the guy could seamlessly get from the garage to his high-rise executive suite without bumping into a single sou…

Finance is kind of unique is that it’s a weird mix of a strict meritocracy and a deeply seated upper crust that’s incredibly nepotistic.

The meritocrats are the ones that work the jobs where they actually have to make money and profits. Nepos are shunted to roles where that isn’t as direct.

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

#703

Post by notfromhere »

rayiner wrote: post #575
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.

This recent (and self-serving) tendency of reducing “class” to only the extremely wealthy and everyone else is reductive and obscures important economic dynamics. It’s ridiculous to treat a master plumber that owns a plumbing business as “bourgeoise” while treating an Amazon engineer who has tremendous human capital as being a “proletariat.” Even in Marx’s time, there was substantial debate about how to classify the…

Well paying engineers is more of a function of US dynamics in tech. Engineering salaries are down to earth basically everywhere else.

They’re proles by the definition of how they earn their labor. If the pool of labor expands beyond the available roles, those high salaries would crash down.

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

#704

Post by nuancebydefault »

Give each one an office? There's little difference with WFH except the commute, which in general is not a plus.

The thing is, if you only talk about the annoyances of an open office, there's no comparison possible.

There's one type of office plan that i find horrible though. Cubicles: the combination of annoyances from noise and feeling isolated, without the benifits of immediate feedback and more ad hoc communication.

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

#705

Post by notfromhere »

vasco wrote: post #661
steveBK123 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are misreading "owns a share of the hive, decides how many bees to hire/fire, where they work, when they work, what % of the honey to share with the worker bees" Team managers/trainers do not meet most of those criteria. At most the GM meets the majority of them. Only the team owner would meet all the criteria.

What about all the trades people that own their own small businesses? Like some young guy with a grass mowing business?

Tradespeople with businesses are still pretty much tradespeople. At a small business the owner is basically a foreman

It’s rare that those businesses scale to the point of where your role is purely abstract management layers removed from the front line workforce.

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

#706

Post by peatmoss »

daruk wrote: post #682
peatmoss wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job after college, I worked at a federal agency where people had cubicles carved out of traditional large offices. It was actually kind of nice, because you worked with people in your office, but had some separation from them as well. The peons all had desktop computers, while middle management had clunky laptops with docking stations. You knew who the executives were by their small laptops that were clea…

To contrast this, I’d say that the “few cubicles in an office” is my least favorite approach. It makes every little noise much more noticeable, and if you get stuck with a loud talker, their voice on on virtual meetings is going to echo a lot more off of the office walls. I’d prefer a regular cubicle in a large floor where the background noise all just kinda blends together.

In my case, the cubes were in large-ish rooms with doors. This was kind of great in that if things got loud you were either shutting the door or asking two or three office mates to pipe down. There was no cut-through traffic or hallway conversation. Not as excellent as the one time in my career where I had a traditional private office, but definitely the runner-up.

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

#708

Post by shrimpx »

postalrat wrote: post #639
shrimpx wrote: post #633

Can 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?

> you are actually more production when you are being interrupted

That makes no sense. If you research the impact of interruptions on productivity you will find that interruptions unanimously destroy productivity. For engineers, it takes a significant amount of ramp-up time to get into flow, and being interrupted resets that ramp.

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

#709

Post by acuozzo »

Zetice wrote: post #676
acuozzo wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever hear of The New Deal? It was necessary because many, many US citizens hit hard by The Great Depression figured out in that time how to live without depending on regular (or any) work. Tent cities; hunting; scavenging; farming; begging; stealing; mutual aid networks; etc. It wasn't the best life, but for many it was found to be preferable to the factories or the docks. To even consider returning to living a life…

We've since invented air conditioning (among other things), so I doubt this is a relevant point.

Air conditioning existed prior to The Great Depression.

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

#710

Post by peatmoss »

smileysteve wrote: post #564
peatmoss wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job after college, I worked at a federal agency where people had cubicles carved out of traditional large offices. It was actually kind of nice, because you worked with people in your office, but had some separation from them as well. The peons all had desktop computers, while middle management had clunky laptops with docking stations. You knew who the executives were by their small laptops that were clea…

Is it sad that I miss cubicles? even semi-cubes. I had them from 2001-2014, 2017-2018.

Nope, cubes were reviled back in the 90s because they were a pale shadow of what knowledge workers had lost in terms of offices. Management heard our lamentations about cubicles and sent us to a deeper, colder level of hell—the open plan.
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