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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

#91

Post by lostlogin »

TrackerFF wrote: post #52

I have a very short commute, 5 min walk from door to work. So that's 10 minutes a day. With 260 workdays a year, for me that's 2600 minutes - or 43.3 hours, just over 5 workdays, spent to and from work. One of my colleagues has a 1 hour commute, so for him that's whooping 520 hours / 65 workdays spent on commuting! But anyway, the commute isn't the only factor for me: During my 30 min lunch, I spend maybe 10 minutes…

Commutes can be amazing. Biking home after a shitty day and getting a few segment records on Strava is so great. I also like a commute via train or maybe even bus where I can zone out with some music or reading, then when home have the energy to get something done.

A long commute via car is pure evil.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#92

Post by morelisp »

ravetcofx wrote: post #71
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…

So maybe many people just really hate car dependency and long commutes which should push us to move away from such a model of urban planning. More offices seamlessly integrated into middle density housing similar to a lot of cities like Stockholm where big towers and suburban detached homes are more rare.

The RTO discussions for us in Germany (30m train commute in/to a city center) definitely begin with a very different tone than my friends in the US (60m car to an office park with a sandwich shop across the street) seem to have.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#93

Post by BizarreByte »

I thought I would, but I'm no longer sold on full remote work having done it since 2018.

I didn't realize just how much of my social interaction came from work and it's something I've not been able to recreate outside of work in my free time. I am hopelessly lonely and the mental health affects have at least in my case been dire.

At the same time I'm afraid to RTO because if for some reason I need the flexibility of WFH again there's a good chance I won't easily find another job that allows it.

We talk about the loss of third places, but some of us have lost our second places too.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#94

Post by lostlogin »

grubbs wrote: post #75
rootusrootus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

My fingers get SO cold. Literally to the point I'm about to wear gloves. Every couple hours I'll thaw them out against the space heater.. Any other hacks for this are welcome. Exercises?

> My fingers get SO cold.

Raynaud’s or other similar condition?

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#95

Post by lostlogin »

sevagh wrote: post #76
dsugarman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can you clarify your comment - you're referring to everybody who wants to work from home as "self aggrandizing adult children"?

Yes.

The real adults are sitting in a box over there, where they were told to, doing their work quietly.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#96

Post by jnwatson »

Yet another reason why WFH is useful is meetings. Now that I'm more senior, I'm in a lot more meetings. I average 7 meetings a day.

At the FAANG I work for, you have to be a vice president before you get your own office room.

That means an hour of my day would be taken up by finding and going to different conference rooms. Now that RTO has happened, folks find themselves having to go to different buildings to find a place to talk.

It is like nobody thought this through.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#97

Post by fbdab103 »

harryquach wrote: post #2

Agree on all points in the article. One of the most underrated features of WFH is my own private bathroom. This is something I would never have at the office.

I can settle for a public bathroom, but surely we have the technology to construct walls without significant gaps. Spend the one-time extra investment so that I can pretend I have some privacy.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#98

Post by rootusrootus »

metabagel wrote: post #15

I like to go into the office for the social interaction, but I also like working from home one day a week. From the article, the con about being interrupted while working in the office applies equally to WFH. Your train of thought can be just as much derailed by a Slack/Teams message as by a colleague wandering by your cubicle.

It's interesting how my daily interactions have evolved since we all went remote. A lot of people at my company seem to have given up on email, and the go-to solution for communication now is a direct message with a request to join a "quick" zoom call.

I've had to get a bit militant about it. Some people still get a bit snippity when I tell them I don't have a moment right now but I'll touch base with them when I reach a stopping point. As if my mere presence on Teams means I ought to be available at any moment to entertain them.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#99

Post by dadie »

I'm in the partial "work from home" group and I agree to most points and would stress it is in my experience by far easier (and less stressful) to have a very good equipped home office than an at least half-decent equipped office.

For my home office I simply buy the equipment I need. But for the companies office I have to ask multiple level of management for simple equipment like a mouse with more than 3 buttons just to be told that a 3 button mouse was good enough.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#100

Post by billti »

I think by now it should be pretty apparent that people are different, and some prefer working from home, some prefer coming to the office, some prefer open spaces and some prefer personal spaces. Most people are somewhere on a spectrum and like a different ratio of each. Posts like these are about as useful as an article on “Why I like gray socks more than blue socks”.

What I would love to see is some data on why so many companies that previously said during Covid “Oh wow, this remote work is great! We’re going to stay like this” are now saying “Sorry, changed our minds, now we want you back in the office”.

Office space isn’t cheap. Requiring employees be local limits your pool of talent. A lot of people like being remote. Companies must have a strong reason, hopefully with some data to back it up, but I’ve not seen any hard evidence for the about face yet. Anyone got any pointers?

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