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The workers have spoken: They're staying home

computerworld.com

161–170 of 263 posts

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#161
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not debating the accuracy of GP’s statement, but rather the level of success one might have with that negotiation tactic. I’m waiting to hear the success stories of negotiating that 250% CoL raise.

I was advocating it more as a way of quitting TBH and rubbing the insanity of those cities' RE costs in their faces.

Thanks for the follow up. If one has the means to pull it off, I most certainly agree.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. During the span of my career, the office went from being a perfectly fine place to get work done; then degraded to a cube farm environment which was worse, but you you could work around it and get stuff done anyway; then to an open office environment which was hellish enough that it got me to quit my job and vow to never work in such an environment again. Commute is certainly an important aspect, too, but…

> then to an open office environment which was hellish enough that it got me to quite my job and vow to never work in such an environment again. We're moving to an open plan office design, to help people collaborate and interact in new emergent ways and improve productivity. Also, please don't talk to people at their desks, it's very distracting. Book a meeting room if you want to have a real conversation.

> to help people collaborate and interact in new emergent ways and improve productivity.

I wish you the best, but if history is any guide then the result will be less collaboration and a decrease in productivity.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#163
post #90
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much relates to commute. I'd probably meander in for a halfway decent office arrangement if it were less than a 30 minute walk and there were actually people I worked with there. But that hasn't been the case so I don't.

Same. For me, the office is door to door 35 minutes, 20 of those walking, the other 15 on light railway. Any longer than that and I would really struggle. As it is, this arrangement works well for me. I tend to WFH one day out of ten, or if I have a reason to be at home such as a delivery or a tradesperson visiting.

Somewhere I found an essay that references some claims that humans dislike traveling for more than something around an hour a day. And it doesn't depend on mode of transport.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#164

My problem is that I quite like working with other people. It’s really hard to build relationships with other human beings when not in the same physical location- sharing jokes, lunches, walks and just shouting across the room about the weird code change . It’s vital. Most large companies think that as they are hiring “the best from around the world” that leaving them around the world is fine. Look leaving people on…

"It’s really hard to build relationships with other human beings when not in the same physical location- sharing jokes, lunches, walks and just shouting across the room about the weird code change "

see here's the thing that has me scratching my head. I talk to my coworkers WAY more now that we're not all just sitting in our offices or in the open work area with headphones on. and get this, I can screenshot! and screenshare! and link to code!!! it's wild. communicating via analog audio signals produced by forcing air across our meat pipes is positively barbarian in comparison.

Yknow something else I just realized? Now when i want to tell someone a command, I can literally just - send them `foo bar /srv/company/* --snafucate --no-fubar` instead of "ok so foo bar - no wait, sorry, backspace that, it's foo space bar, not foobar. Ok now /srv/company/*. Sorry backspace that I mean literally the star character. Ok now dash dash snafucate. Now dash dash no fubar. No sorry not --no fubar it's dash dash no dash fubar. ok yeah hit enter. oh sorry sudo -i -u companyuser first." The alternative to that exchange of course being to type on their cheesy keyboard. No thanks, I don't want to cross-contaminate our keyboard microbiomes, mine is just the way I like it.

I dunno. I grew up on IRC and MSN and stuff. So slack is just IRC with inlined GIF memes and mini-memes (emojis) that you can comment onto literally any message. Sounds like a pure win to me.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#165

Unpopular opinion: Being an extrovert but living alone and working thirty feet from your bedroom is hell.

_Companies_ largely don't need people to be in-office, but if _you_ need to be in an office setting, why not find a coworking space?

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#166
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>drive There is your problem. Personal automobiles aren't a feasible method of transportation past a certain population density.

I'm not picky about the solution and of course it's a complex issue. - If a safe, reliable bus or train went to and from close to my house to close to the office, I'd take it. Key is safe and reliable. - If the roads were designed with enough capacity and planning in mind such that groups of vehicles are not stuck driving 15 MPH on a 70 MPH speed limit stretch of highway for 30 minutes or longer every day, that'd be…

> If the roads were designed with enough capacity and planning in mind such that groups of vehicles are not stuck driving 15 MPH on a 70 MPH speed limit stretch of highway for 30 minutes or longer every day, that'd be fine.

If you build that, then more people see that there is a nice quick road between where they work and a place where they can buy a more affordable home. The road gains more commuters until the congestion returns.

Your other suggestions are more scalable. If housing is expensive, there should be more, denser housing. If commutes are long, we should be zoning such that houses can be near workplaces, and conversely workplaces can be near housing.

If you create pockets of higher density housing and workplaces, instead of only building large swaths of low density single-family residential, you can preserve the options to live in a city, a walkable town center, or a more quiet location, while still having dense enough groupings to make transit lines viable.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#167

I work in an admnistrative office on a university campus. Work from home was great for IT folks, but not so much for a lot of regular staff. Some people had young children that didn't understand that "you can't bother mommy or daddy right now" and it was a constant fight. Some of them had to use their own computers to connect to their machine at work through a vpn, and had a lot of trouble getting that to work. Some…

> Some people had young children that didn't understand that "you can't bother mommy or daddy right now" and it was a constant fight.

When you're working from home, you yourself have to treat it as being "at work" just as much as you expect others to.

This means that if both parents are working from home, you still need someone else to look after your kids. Either out-of-home daycare (preferred) or an in-home babysitter.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#168
I definitely want to keep working at home. My workplace rebuilt all the cubicles to be half their previous size. Coincidentally, this was just as COVID started. Now we're required to work 2 days a week in the office. It's great to see people in person, but if you need to meet with someone in their cubicle, you're either going to be hanging out in the aisle or sitting very very close to them.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got to meet some of my coworkers in person for the first time recently and it was obvious that the structures re: who respects whom that we had built online were ignorant of meaningless physical details like how commanding a presence one has when they enter a room. This informed my new hypothesis: The people most in opposition to remote work are those who rely on charisma rather than other merits to remain relevant…

The team I work on was created at the start of covid, as we didn't all meet in person for the first time until 2 years later too - it was really funny to learn that one person on the team was like, 6'4! Nobody knew!

Somebody on my team who I respect very much turns out to have a small voice. Like, you just can't hear him over any kind of ambient noise. He's still a badass in my eyes, but I have to ask if he would be if we shared an office. Not that I'd consciously dismiss him. But accidents happen.
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