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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

#111

Post by SoftTalker »

lostlogin wrote: post #91
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.

> A long commute via car is pure evil.

Not everyone hates driving. I think it's better than sitting on a full bus.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#112

Post by oHqgTQUT »

Something I have been struggling with as a remote software engineer is 1. getting reviews from coworkers and 2. being able to communicate asynchronously with coworkers, even those working on the same projects. I find some of my coworkers are quite good, but others much less so. Sometimes I've waited 48 hours to hear back on a DM, and in other cases 3-4 weeks before getting reviews on PRs. It feels like in a remote environment it's so much easier to ignore other people that you work with.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#113

Post by ghaff »

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…

If I could easily walk to or even take a modest transit ride to the office I'd probably go in once or twice a week for the change in scenery. But the only company office it makes any sense for me to go into at this point is a two hour commute each way. I would need to have a specific reason to do that and no one I work with regularly is in that office. (I'm a 30 minute drive to another office but no one I know is there, it's in a boring office park, and it's closing.)

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#114

Post by n8cpdx »

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…

Guilty as charged.

I almost commented about how I bugged HR to let me return to office when it became available (having some months earlier signed a permanent work-from-home contract). I like walking to work and having the work-life separation. Not to mention my office is tricked out with sweet posters, mostly of the transit and active transportation propaganda variety.

The million dollar 360 views are a nice bonus though.

Of course I still work from home on days where it is really inconvenient not to, but I tend to not enjoy that nearly as much now.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#115

Post by isthispermanent »

I’ll admit that I do miss when everyone else wasn’t remote. Once Covid handed everyone remote on a silver platter it diminished some of the perks.

Everything used to be completely empty during normal work hours. This is was one of my big life lessons that it’s better to not advertise things that are truly great in order to help prevent the utility of it from being crowded away.

Case in point are “day in the life” TikTok’s about an awesome lifestyle. These egotistically blatant brags end up bringing attention that threatens it.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#116

Post by adamredwoods »

jnwatson wrote: post #96

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…

Microsoft campus (a few years ago) had little "phone rooms" where people could go to get private or quiet zoom calls done. This was great. They also had larger rooms with a desk to get some focus time. Unfortunately, people would camp out in these rooms all day, and they became filled. It became a territorial thing as my manager did not have a private office so he would "claim" one of the smaller rooms and would grumble loudly if someone else took it.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#117

Post by fnordpiglet »

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…

In office work is relatively new in humanity, even if no one alive today existed before such a time.

At one time your neighborhood was not zoned as a monoculture, but included a lot of places to congregate. People got their socializing not from people who were paid to sit in the same room together, but from people who came to a cafe or restaurant or pub to sit in the same room together.

If your commute is close to an office it’s also close to a communal space. Instead of doing chores at home during lunch, why not leave your home and your job and be with the people you live around? The people who share your neighborhood are more a feature of your life than the people who share your payroll, in so far as they exist in the same context as you for longer - if you let them.

I actually find it sad we’ve lost our communities and traded them for our workplace cliques. We huddle in our break rooms and exchange banalities and assume this is in fact a bond we are forming. We all then commute home to our real life and the two don’t cross over.

But life isn’t actually split into two realities, it’s all one thing. We just insulate our valued life over our work life, trying to make a balance between our sacrifice and our existence. This is a new phenomenon in human existence, and I don’t think it’s strictly necessary. And I suspect it’s not healthy.

But why does it feel so lonely to work from home? Because we don’t have the skills, mental framework, or neighborhood infrastructure any more to build social connection outside of the artificial community of the office.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#118

Post by lolinder »

tqi wrote: post #61
throwawaysleep wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the long run this is how it will work out, and people will choose companies that match their preferences. In the meantime there's a culture split within many orgs, with each faction wanting their org to end up on their preferred end of the spectrum.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#119

Post by corobo »

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…

Aye I'd happily go to an office every day if it was within walking distance. The problem was the commute and all the time wasted to and fro. If anyone ever comes up with working teleporters I'll go back to the office no bother

Also punctuality and butts-in-seats, but that whole thing turned out to be adhd (working from home gave me the time to figure that out!) so might not be an issue now I can get up early enough to not have a mad panic rush every morning, haha

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#120

Post by ghaff »

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…

People here talk a lot about being able to have closing doors. My experience with private offices was, barring confidential conversations or rarely going really heads down for a few hours, the unwritten policy was you kept your door open. I've never worked anyplace where private offices generally had their doors shut.
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