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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

#741

Post by johnnyanmac »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #356
rqtwteye wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office." People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .

(Shrug) If that's what it takes, that's what it takes. Commuting is for suckers, regardless of how many numbers are on your paycheck.

>regardless of how many numbers are on your paycheck.

I dunno, 7 is a lot of numbers. Work for 5 years, and be close to retirement. Definitely have my house/car and even a few luxury projects paid off in that time. I could work part time/contracts and let the rest of the money gather interest.

But I suppose you're basing this on reality, not a true ultimatum.

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

#742

Post by fortuna86 »

ryantgtg wrote: post #594
jefftk wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you'd have to double my pay to get me to commute everyday?"

As well as "I'd rather leave my current job than go back to the office." My company has spent the last 8 months trying to explain why they want us back in the office for hybrid work. At first it was, "mentoring young staff." And lately it is, "It doesn't look great to potential clients when they visit an office and the office is empty." This new argument sounds like a BD edge case. It seems to entirely be senior lead…

[dead]

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

#743

Post by lostdog »

hangonhn wrote: post #689
lostdog wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Sorry, I think I used the wrong term. The desks we have are basically not assigned anyone permanently and are available as long as someone else hasn't reserved it for the day. I don't mean literal desks that they have at hotels. The office is rather nice TBH.

That is called "hotdesking" and it sucks.

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

#744

Post by alexpotato »

There was a great quote from an old time journalist on open plan offices:

"There is a lot of talk about how open plan offices foster more communication, transparency and honest conversations.

In my day, I would invite you into my office, I would pull out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. I would pour each of us a drink and we would have an private and honest conversation."

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

#745

Post by ThunderSizzle »

astockwell wrote: post #534
gspencley wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”

Best part is when the employer's advice for an active shooter is hope they don't shoot you while you hide and wait. Most handbooks don't permit weapons.

My home's policy is the active shooter gets shot immediately until they are no longer a threat.

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

#746

Post by brailsafe »

BluePen7 wrote: post #605
izzydata wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they previously worked in some expensive city like San Fransisco and had in writing that their work from home arrangement was permanent they could move to a forest somewhere with negligible housing costs and still come out ahead. Although most people don't work in San Francisco with inflated salaries so I'd still rather not make this the norm.

It's worse than that, I didn't just gain space and scenery. I went up an entire socioeconomic class. Previously I was priced out of the housing market, renting a small basement suite. Now I own a large detached home, and thanks to the rental suite, spending less each month than I did before. And this is all before you consider the equity myself and my tenant have paid down, or even any home appreciation. It's effecti…

Next thing you know you'll be showing up to city council meetings to try and prevent apartments from being built down the street ;)

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

#747

Post by alexpotato »

steveBK123 wrote: post #69
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…

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…

> I was listening to a podcast and they observed that US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you age.. and COVID snapped everyone out of it cold turkey. Now attempting to go back to it is revolting for many.

This is a key part of the discussion.

Pre-covid, I spent ~90 minutes one way to get to the office (this included a transfer from train to subway + 10 minute walk) and used to do it every day. At the time, I thought nothing of it since it was time to read/write code/watch a movie etc.

Now, I find it hard to imagine I spent ~3 hours/day commuting but part of me also misses the time to myself but it's balanced out by seeing the kids more etc.

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

#748

Post by cratermoon »

I would consider moving to be near enough for a decent commute for a company where I had my office. Provided "near enough" was affordable for what I'd be paid and the company was located in a place I'd want to live. Obviously that last part is a matter of taste: I'd be willing to live somewhere around Boulder, CO, for example, but others might not.

I can generalize it a bit: put your offices in a part of the country where people want to live, give each of them a private office, and pay them enough to live a reasonable distance, and you might find people lined up to apply.

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

#749

Post by OJFord »

ryandrake wrote: post #670
skissane wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CEO and analyst are both upper class Class can be more fine-grained than just lower/working-middle-upper People commonly talk about “upper middle class” vs “lower middle class”, and then I suppose there are even some people in between the two (middle middle class?) Well, in the same way there is surely lower upper class and upper upper class, and maybe even more levels than that. A person on an annual salary of…

I've always thought all those granular "upper lower upper class" and "middle lower upper class" and "upper middle upper lower middle class" distinctions were pretty pointless and mainly are for the people who care deeply about constructing a societal totem pole and placing everyone precisely somewhere on that totem pole. The huge class divides are not between retail workers, tradesmen and software developers, the div…

You can be broke and upper class; rich and 'working'. Economists/historians/et al. call it socioeconomic class: I think the latter dominates in the US, and the former in the UK. If I (British) thought of or described someone as being of a particular class, it would be far more a comment on their actions or behaviour than their job or salary. To the point that it's weird to me how it's discussed here when we basically don't know either of them; if anything we know more about DJ D-Sol and it's a slightly (but certainly not definite) downward hint.

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

#750

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>With today’s tech we can literally be collaborating in real-time with people from any corner of the planet from the comfort of our home office. How would that change in office?

from my experience, collaboration is nice, after you establish the design. WFH was awful for brainstorming and more than simple design/architecturing processes. That delay in communicating ideas on a virtual whiteboard can be felt.

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