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I will always prefer to work from home

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Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#61

Post by tqi »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #55
tqi wrote: post #33

Who is this meant to convince? Has anyone ever changed their mind as a result of reading a listicle of complaints? This seems more like something for people who already agree with the author to read and self righteously think "yeah, this is THE way" There isn't some objective right answer here. Different people value different things, and that's ok. Companies can set their RTO policies as they see fit, and that's ok.…

This particular one needs to be a tribal schism as the preferences cannot coexist. WFH people will always be miserable with in office people and vice versa.

Different companies can set different policies. A large enough company can set different policies for different orgs.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#62

Post by alemanek »

codegeek wrote: post #7

Yes great points. But most WFH advocates forget to talk about juniors or people who are just starting their careers or people who just cannot wfh effectively. The article talks about Management's arguments against WFH but fails to mention any of the points I mentioned. The best solution in my opinion is hybrid especially for juniors and I will die on this hill.

For the team I am on maintaining virtual office hours has really helped in this respect. One or more (but at least one) senior+ person just working/hanging out in a zoom call where others can drop in and talk about whatever.

With remote teams you have to explicitly solve this issue rather than just having it happen like it does for healthy in office teams. But, it isn’t like this is some unsolvable problem.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#64

Post by hombre_fatal »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #29

Under-appreciated: not wearing shoes all day. Anytime I need to spend a day in an office now, when I finally get home and pull off my shoes and sweat soaked shoes I'm so glad I don't have to do this on a regular basis anymore.

Try wearing socks with those $45 foam Birkenstocks as your daily driver. Black on black doesn't look bad.

When I lived on a beach I didn't wear shoes for years. The combo above was the only way I could reenter society.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#65

Post by makeitdouble »

the_snooze wrote: post #4

I feel these discussions always go the same way. Working at an office sucks because of some combination of {long commute, open office plan, team not being there}. I quite like going to the office myself because my situation is the opposite: I bike to work, where I have my own office, and my team likes to come in too. Hating the office is totally justifiable given that my setup isn't common; most people are forced to…

Why office sucks can be for any number of reasons, I think it's more of a long tail phenomenon with a myriad of distincts personal preferences and special needs.

For instance office drinks can suck, and someone drinking 3 to 5 cups of warm drinks a day, being able to prepare delicious beverages with specialized equipement is a godsend.

Or people who work sitting on their bed. Or want their pet around. Or don't want to wear makeup and get out of the house at all. Those who squat during the long meetings. Those who usually need an hearing aid but can instead just push the sound up if they're at home etc.

Sure, any of those could be addressed in an office setting, but you still only have one office for hundreds of people who probably wish for different things. Most will just give up on comfort, where WFH is an option to be in a better situation.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#66

Post by rootusrootus »

grubbs wrote: post #10

I understand why these get posted. But not everyone is in the same situation as the author. I can bike to work, I'm extroverted, and I like free coffee. So I go into the office 2-3 days a week by choice. I have no on-site requirement. I also get quite depressed in winter working in my cold basement office with a space heater :( But that's just me. And I don't feel like I should force my WFH opinion on anyone else.

I feel you on the winter thing. I added an electric heater to my office so I can keep the temperatures a bit higher than the rest of the house (mostly I do this for my fingers, honestly). And through the magic of LEDs I have a fairly ridiculous amount of light I can turn on. Makes winter more bearable when I can make it as bright as high noon in July.

I totally get wanting to go into the office. I would go in a few days a week if they hadn't put our new office 20 miles away. Not close to where anybody lives, but it's in the trendy part of downtown.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#67

Post by lowercased »

rootusrootus wrote: post #50
lowercased wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a place years back that was expanding; bought a second building - 2 stories. Downstairs had semi-open cubicles, and a wall of private office spaces (8 IIRC). All empty. Cubes were full. I was in the other building, told we were needing to move over the next couple months. I asked for one of the private spaces. They weren't really that big, and had no natural light, but... they did have a door. I'd been wr…

I don't even need a private office. One of the best environments I've ever worked in was a hybrid office/open model. Basically a bunch of conference rooms where each team got a room, and within the room the desk walls were low. Decorate it however you want, if you agree on style then you can have ambient music, etc. It was pretty great. But then they knocked all the walls down and put in rows of desks because they co…

Worked in a place like that - mostly open cube space for around 80 inbound call agents, and a few 'side rooms'. Worked with 5 other dev/tech folks in one of those 'side rooms' - a suitably sized office for the 6 of us.

It was reasonable, in that we were generally all quiet or talking at the same time, and was not the worst place at all I've worked. Dedicated private space still works best for a lot of type of work (obviously that's "imo" but seems a standard POV from most colleagues today).

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#68

Post by codingdave »

donbox wrote: post #9

Does your team use Slack (or something similar). Don't you get random pings, mentions or calls for help/input. Is there an expectation around for you to respond within a short period. I have been 100% WFH since last 5 years and I am only productive after 5 pm.

You can ignore those random pings of all kinds until you at a good place to stop what you are doing and help out. If you are responding to all of those the second they come in, you are encouraging the problem by building a culture of over-responsiveness.

I've been on teams where we explicitly defined expected response times. 2 hours was the typical answer on teams where I've worked.

I've also been on teams that didn't define the expectation, but nobody I work with expects Slack to be real-time. The only time we respond quickly is when we have first asked, "Hey, let me know when you have a couple minutes to chat." And then I either stick around until they have time and quickly have the chat/huddle... or if they don't respond and I need to step away, I delete my message.

It sounds counter-intuitive but you can often build a better remote culture by being a little less responsive.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#69

Post by codingdave »

game_the0ry wrote: post #20

If someone were to ask me why I prefer WFH, my answer would be: bc I fucking feel like it. I am not obligated to justify my preferences to anyone. Ever.

Totally true. And yet, if you do explain your preferences, your leadership can know their people and try to build an environment that works for them. Hard to blame them for not giving you a good environment if you've never been willing to tell them what "good" means for you.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#70

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

donbox wrote: post #9

Does your team use Slack (or something similar). Don't you get random pings, mentions or calls for help/input. Is there an expectation around for you to respond within a short period. I have been 100% WFH since last 5 years and I am only productive after 5 pm.

My team does use Slack, but I just have it muted for most channels and check it in predefined intervals. I don't have DM's muted but we also don't have a culture of DM'ing people, calls for help are posted in designated channels.

In my opinion and experience there are very few issues that require you to actually respond immediately, I just find many teams don't understand this. Everyone thinks their specific issue is the highest priority thing going on, and I'd say product teams are especially bad about this. Asking for status updates all too often and interrupting developers days just for small things that could've been done at a scheduled time or just been an email.

Obviously this can somewhat depend on your role since your role may be something that tends to require immediate intervention. But I check Slack once every 30 min to an 1 hour or so and have no issues with my response times.

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