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I will always prefer to work from home

shavingtheyak.com

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Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the TFA the OP is being interrupted in an office without an open floor plan. I am saying that an open floor plan would make it easier for others to read his body language that he currently does not want to be interrupted.

Why does body language need to get into involved? It is a simple flowchart. Is a building on fire? Yes? Interrupt. No? Email and trust the person to properly prioritize your email between work items.

>Why does body language need to get into involved?

Because it doesn't break your concentration to communicate via body language compared to telling someone that you can't talk right now.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#252
How are people having so many meetings per day, they need to complain about it? I have literally four meetings each week: company, group, boss, focus group.

It sucks.

I basically talk with myself to solve problems and see zero appreciation from fellow employees about how it impacts them, or what they’re struggling with or working on.

Not arguing for office life, but interaction is needed to some degree to feel value in the work.

Maybe it’s just my employer that isn’t doing enough?

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you can't just teach juniors how to work from home effectively, just how you teach them how to do their job. It's all part of the same thing. I've certainly helped juniors over a video call just as effectively as being next to them physically. In one case I point a finger on their screen, in another I point my mouse cursor on their screen.

It's much harder. We are social animals on a whole. Nothing beats in person interactions. I am not against remote work btw.

At 3 AM when alerts are firing, documentation beats half-remembered talks with former teammates. We need to get over our aversion to writing stuff down, or at least recording our impromptu brain dumps.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They ask because then they bring some of that stuff into an office and then claim the office is better than WFH. For example: One of the biggest things people pointed out at my current job was the long commute/gas money. So company offered to recompensate gas for anyone up to 50 miles or something and claimed now there was no reason to complain anymore... which is obviously untrue. I've seen this at 2 of the companie…

They might've done a bad job of it, but if they looked at how to make the office more comfortable and then implemented the suggestions, that sounds like a good thing?

I like working from home, but I definitely want to see my co-workers in person sometimes. So if they can bring some WFH benefits to the office, that's great!

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#255
post #133

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 en…

> I've waited 48 hours to hear back on a DM, and in other cases 3-4 weeks before getting reviews on PRs. This sounds like a performance management or team expectations management issue, not an issue with remote work.

And both those things are much less an issue if you can physically bother the person whose supposed to be doing them.

Like sure, we should be able to fix them. But if WFH creates extra friction that doesn't exist in-office, that's an extra resource drain that ought to be accounted for.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#256
post #123

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.

> It’s dangerous to build relationships with people who are about to leave.

Why? I get the argument about not getting too close with coworkers (although I've never encountered those problems with mins, and I've made good friends everywhere I've worked), but why are people who are about to leave worse?

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#257

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.

Btw in Estonia, we don't usually wear shoes in the office: instead we wear slippers, indoor shoes or just socks.

In fact, many Estonians take off their shoes inside the plan or the ferry as well.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does body language need to get into involved? It is a simple flowchart. Is a building on fire? Yes? Interrupt. No? Email and trust the person to properly prioritize your email between work items.

>Why does body language need to get into involved? Because it doesn't break your concentration to communicate via body language compared to telling someone that you can't talk right now.

ASSUME people shouldn’t be interrupted.

Re: I will always prefer to work from home

#259

Here's a reason I never see brought up in discussions like this. For me, it's as important as the others: Being an introvert, I always used to be exhausted at the end of the work week. I liked my coworkers a lot, and I liked spending time around them, but it didn't matter, I'd still feel wrung out at the end of the day. And by the end of the week, each day's exhaustion would have accumulated to the point where I need…

Maybe you don't need to talk to people all day at work if you could do your work without talking to them all day long during WFH. Work places must be quite, it's not for chatting with others.

If you are bored of office, you take a leave or you quit the work, problem solved. If you are bored of work at home, there's no place you go.

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