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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

#141

Post by adamredwoods »

I've worked in many different jobs throughout my life: in the office, freelancing from home, renting office space, or working on company and university campuses.

I feel cubicles are better than open plans.

Allow people to WFH. Personally, I don't mind in office work, but I prefer mostly from home (I am raising the future work force).

Commutes are horrid. Here in Seattle, road rage shootings are common. In San Francisco, on the BART, one could get into an accidental fight with strange people.

Make sure the bathrooms are clean, and don't assume men's bathrooms should be smaller. I find it absurd to stand in line.

Free coffee and candy are not perks.

Homogeneous workplace application is a thing of the past. Flexibility is the future.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#143

Post by ghaff »

soneil wrote: post #126
morelisp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One side-effect of the WFH period for us (and I assume a number of other EU companies) is that once we went WFH, we also went remote; previously we had two offices and everyone worked in one of those two cities and today we have (IIRC) five and people work all over the country and take rail into the nearest office when necessary. This has... mostly worked out OK. In any given office there's some spaces dedicated for…

That's what we've been seeing. My team were all in one corner of one room. Then "one day", we were all sent home. Someone left, and was replaced by someone in another European country. He's nominally "in the office", but since it's not the same office as the rest of us (and we're not in ours anyway), he's free to come and go as he pleases. It's not like it makes any difference to us. Then our manager moved on, and wa…

I think that's the situation at many places. They've had three years of hiring and organizational changes where, by and large, they didn't really pay a lot of attention outside of gross timezone or language factors to where people physically lived. So now they're in a place where they really can't just undo those three years and move back to teams being mostly colocated. At least without a lot of organizational turmoil and at least some cost.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#144

Post by oHqgTQUT »

lnsru wrote: post #123
BizarreByte wrote: post #93

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…

Your colleagues are not your friends. You’re more like passenger in the same bus where somebody will depart in the next stop. It’s dangerous to build relationships with people who are about to leave.

I have made many life long friends at work, who I am still friends with to this day, many years after we left the companies we both worked at. I'm sure many other people have too.

You need some kind of social bond with the people you work with. What are you going to do instead? Treat the people you work with like robots where every interaction is a barter or request of some kind like "Hi, can you review this please. Thanks." every single day for the entirety of your employment at this company?

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#145

Post by strangesmells06 »

ghaff wrote: post #129
strangesmells06 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! This! I think anyone would not mind the office if they werent treated like cattle. I dont think people dread going back to the office. People dread going back to the open office.

Some people really dislike open offices (or just spending the day around a lot of people generally) but I'm betting commutes are the #1 reason most people have against going into an office. Unless you can walk or, for some, bike any meaningful commute is basically a not very pleasant hour+ out of your day.

Agreeed! Commute is rough also.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#146

Post by pawelduda »

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.…

Up until pandemic it was impossible for me to convince mgmt that I can work remotely just fine. Then it turns out that it's viable, personally I'm happy there are people shouting about it. On the other side you have biased articles how WFH slays businesses, I see no problem with both sides being remindered about an alternative, especially in times when it's a hot topic

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#147

Post by starttoaster »

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…

While your setup now is great, just know that it can change at any time. I know multiple people whose companies are finding a new address for their office for one reason or another. Some of them in completely different areas. My mom, who used to live a 5-10 minute drive from her office now has to drive about 30-40. My office being at home, I'll never have that problem as long as I don't change jobs. Granted I know multiple people who had WFH jobs where the carpet was swept right out from under them and they had to start coming into the office or be laid off, which is the flipside to my argument, though it doesn't really affect me because my company has no central headquarters so some huge internal changes would need to happen for my situation to change.

Anyway, biking to work is awesome, that's a cool setup too for sure. I used to bike 10 miles into one of my previous jobs (and then 10 miles back home.)

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#148

Post by iLoveOncall »

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…

Even if I lived next door to an office where I had a private room and my teammates there I wouldn't want to go at all, for many reasons. Off the top of my head:

- Even without commute there's at least 30-45 minutes of preparation to be decent for the office,

- The office invariably doesn't have the setup that I want and have at home,

- People are able to come "bother" you all day long.

None of those are things I'm willing to put up with.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#149

Post by j7ake »

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.

I’ll take 20 minutes in a car over bike on a cold rainy day every time.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#150

Post by artyom »

Offices today are merely a justification for managers (the useless kind, which is about 90% of them) to not become redundant, and for the C-suite to keep getting those sweet sweet tax breaks.

Which answers the question by itself.

"Should we be loyal to companies...?"

No

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