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Working from home is powering productivity

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Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the city care about number of people in the office if they are deriving the money from commercial property taxes?

Why would the city care if no one is working downtown?

Ends up destroying downtown (downward spiral)

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don’t follow the male, female, disabled person argument at all.

The canonical example would be it's hard to have a serendipitous conversation with your male colleagues in the mens restroom if you're female.

That's the obvious one. Then we get to styles of conversation and engagement. I've had to defend promotions for female engineers from criticism based entirely on their communication. "She is not assertive enough." Ok, is she highly effective at her job? Yes. Ok, then what the fuck are we talking about?

And always what we're talking about is men communicate a certain way, and women don't, and the men don't want to have to change.

To answer the disabled question, there was a flight of stairs at the office, and the meeting would end and people would just head up the stairs. Except the dude in the wheelchair. I'm autistic and I have light sensitivity, and after a meeting in a nice bright window office, I am exhausted and don't want to engage in social rituals.

My point is that the examples that tech leaders give as the reason to go back to the office are simply male social rituals, held up as "how we have good ideas and develop new hires". They're not. They are all managers performing post-hoc rationalization theater And if those were the goals, they'd figure out an effective way to meet them that's better than "chatting to john while taking a leak".

And the most galling thing is that every single one of my most impactful career moments didn't involve having a serendipitous conversation. It involved researching things I was interested in.

I am for nerds and against tech-bros.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#153

It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH. Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement) and often based on the assumption that company productivity is based on workers doing what they do (usually far fro…

The issue seems to be less about wfh or not.

It’s just how well does a company culture support distributed work (many locations) or not.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#154
I currently work somewhere where I can't WFH. And as a counterpoint to pretty much everyone here I prefer it. My last role I was able to WFH.

Reasons I prefer going into the office:

- when work is done, I leave, and it's done.

- not using my resources (electricity / broadband / etc) for work.

- easier interaction with colleagues.

I liked it at the start, and liked the flexibility, but after a while hated that my home was also my workplace. I also found it was too easy to do unpaid overtime from home. After a while my productivity fell.

Caveat is I live within cycle distance to work. I hate commuting too, and wouldn't do more than 30 minutes.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#155
I'd really like to see how the American libertarian copes with the return to office mandates.

I've had a lot of American colleagues that do not wish to return to office, the types that believe in "freedom", "individual responsibility" and "if you do not like the job go work somewhere else".

As the employers are closing in on them, they slowly start to understand that unless they collectively punch back they _will_ yield sooner or later.

They are still on their pleading / "negotiating" phase at the moment, but let us see.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#156

I am literally at least 10x when I work from home. I have ADHD and through years of discipline, cultivating my workspace to suit my needs, and hard work I can be productive most of the day in the zone without (much) sidetracking. Literally impossible for me to do in the modern software dev sweatshop. I also make more money, can spend more time with my family because I don’t commute, and plenty of other positives. I l…

I am the exact same way.

I tend to be more on the hyperactive side, and I am far less distracted when I work from home sheerly because there are not others for me to go talk to.

I also have noticed that I tend to suffer from less mental fatigue in general when working from home. The only issue with working form home is that I tend to work longer. I might hyperfocus and pull at 12 hour day or something, but I try not to do this.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#157

I am literally at least 10x when I work from home. I have ADHD and through years of discipline, cultivating my workspace to suit my needs, and hard work I can be productive most of the day in the zone without (much) sidetracking. Literally impossible for me to do in the modern software dev sweatshop. I also make more money, can spend more time with my family because I don’t commute, and plenty of other positives. I l…

You are the anomaly, not the norm. WFH takes discipline, work ethic and honestly the ability to manage a work life balance. Doing this is hard, like you said. Problem is most people aren’t disciplined:)

> WFH takes discipline

That is bizarre to me. I find the office takes far more discipline. Do people really get that distracted at home? What is so distracting?

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#158

I currently work somewhere where I can't WFH. And as a counterpoint to pretty much everyone here I prefer it. My last role I was able to WFH. Reasons I prefer going into the office: - when work is done, I leave, and it's done. - not using my resources (electricity / broadband / etc) for work. - easier interaction with colleagues. I liked it at the start, and liked the flexibility, but after a while hated that my home…

I'm not trying to tell you that liking the office is wrong but most of what you said here applies to WFH. When I finish working, my laptop gets put in a bag and not taken out until I start working again and colleague interaction while remote is going to vary based on how your invested your company is in remote work. As far as your home being your workplace, you could always rent a cheap office to work from. The co-working space around me offers private offices for a few hundred a month.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#159

I am literally at least 10x when I work from home. I have ADHD and through years of discipline, cultivating my workspace to suit my needs, and hard work I can be productive most of the day in the zone without (much) sidetracking. Literally impossible for me to do in the modern software dev sweatshop. I also make more money, can spend more time with my family because I don’t commute, and plenty of other positives. I l…

You are the anomaly, not the norm. WFH takes discipline, work ethic and honestly the ability to manage a work life balance. Doing this is hard, like you said. Problem is most people aren’t disciplined:)

I'm substantially more productive at home. Not for any single reason, but as a result of small things coming together, for example.

More sleep. I can set my alarm 15 minutes before I start work instead of an hour and a half. So I'm more refreshed.

Commuting is mentally draining.

I get sick less. Less often as a sardine in a tin can. More sleep probably helps too.

Less distractions. There's just me in my home office room, at work there are 3 other people right next to me and a dozen within ear shot.

I get home stuff done during work breaks. When I step away from my desk at work I do so because I need a break from what I'm doing, not a break from everything. But there's nothing else to do at work so I sit and do nothing. At home i: - unload the dishwasher - walk to the shops to buy items for dinner - sit in the park

And I find doing those things more refreshing than sitting in the break room staring into space, or walking through the city in the noise of cars everywhere.

So when I step back to my desk, at home I'm more refreshed ready to get back into it.

This also means when I finish work for the day, in office it's another hour or so to get home and then do chores. Vs at home I finish work and I can go for a walk in the park because I've done my chores already.

So I'm happier and less stressed. Which leads to less fatigue and burn out. So I'm ready to go again the next day.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#160
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enlisted =>college (via GI Bill) => ROTC/OCS

Yeah, exactly, there is a path, but it sort of involves quitting the army

I believe most contracts are 4 years active, 4 years reserves, so you can easily get a degree in the 2nd 4 years without leaving the military.
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