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Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#41

Post by textminer »

peachananr wrote: post #31

I love working at the office but not the whole 8 hours. I love it in the morning but when it's afternoon, I find myself more productive elsewhere, maybe a cafe. This is an interesting approach that allows experiments. Would love to see how this will turn out. :)

I agree with this. I find the convention most stifling-- my instinct in the afternoon is to go work somewhere else, but quickly guilt* starts to pop up and tell me I'm doing something wrong, even if it's just to do work more ably.

(* - this guilt is a weird thing I can't really describe. It also lessens as I advance further in my career and am more sure of myself.)

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#42

Post by _b8r0 »

At Mandalorian we have to work 9-530 days, our customers expect to be able to contact us in this period. What we do though is allow everyone to work from home unless they absolutely need an office environment. Once a quarter we meet up face to face, have a day set aside for meetings, discussions, presentations and that's about it. We have IRC for techies and Google chat for non-techies, along with Google Hangout for when we need some face to face discussion.

So far it's working pretty well. People who need to pick kids up from school pick kids up from school. People who need to receive deliveries or have plumbers round don't have to worry about taking time out to do so. Additionally everyone's travel costs are miniscule when not on customer site, which I think is a massive positive for all of us. On the whole I believe that a happy workforce is a productive workforce, and that creating stress for employees is counterproductive. If we need meetings we can have them. If we need physical space together we can arrange it. Aside from that, I'd rather focus on the results than the time put in.

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#43

Post by onemorepassword »

gnosis wrote: post #6
com2kid wrote: post #2

In contrast, I am energized by going into the office and working side by side with my peers to solve hard problems. I dislike programming by myself, it is dull, boring, and much more error prone than when I have someone to bounce ideas off of. (Rubber Ducking only goes so far!) Really every time this topic is brought up the overall consensus seems to be "it varies for different people." Some people seem to really ben…

"In contrast, I am energized by going into the office and working side by side with my peers to solve hard problems." Let me know if you still feel that way in 20 years.

I still feel that way after more than 20 years.

But it helps a lot if company policy doesn't force you to come in every day, or be in at 9am. And of course if the people involved are people that you like to work with.

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#44

Post by soneca »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #38
soneca wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered about offices with "loneliness rooms". Not to sleep, or meditate, but to work. Some place where anyone can go if he/she don't want to be around other people. A mix of open spaces and discreet rooms, where you can go and people won't even notice you are going there. I wouldn't even put doors in there, not to be mistaken to a place where you hide. Just a very small room, with no space for hanging arou…

We have focus rooms in our semi-open plan. They suck, they aren't fairly utilized and usually monopolized, or they are quickly turned into the service of other purposes (like store rooms or guest offices).

I imagine that must be hard to manage the use of the rooms. I think an open plan with distanced, isolated through architecture one-person workspaces might work better. But that demands a lot of space, must be hard to implement.

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#45

Post by quaunaut »

ablativenotion wrote: post #39
quaunaut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm new into the industry, but I thought working from home would be a blast. But surprisingly, I'm finding I hate just having nowhere to go during the day, no reason to go outside, see the world, aside from exercise. It saps me of my energy. Sadly, the company I work for is based in a place I couldn't stand to live, but it's telling that even despite that, I'm genuinely thinking about moving there.

You might want to look into coworking spaces where people that are not working for the same company, such as freelancers or remote workers, share an office.

Where might I look for something like this? Is there a centralized location, or is this the sort of thing that people just kinda find on Craigslist or something?

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#46

Post by onemorepassword »

methehack wrote: post #22

The very term "work from home" suggests separation. That's the wrong model. This is not about introverts and extroverts. Working with a remote team is not a choice about whether to collaborate or not. When a team is set up properly, remote work is no less collaborative than any other kind of work. The tools are there, widely available, and free. Everyone on a team needs to be using them, yes, but duh. As near as I ca…

I'm all in favor of letting people work from home and facilitating remote work for certain kinds of projects, but if you seriously think remote work is no less collaborative or technology can replace "face time", I assume you're missing a lot of human communication skills.

Not only does physical interaction have a much higher bandwidth, it goes well beyond just the work. The more you interact, at lunch or in the hallways, the better you will be able to communicate with each other on all levels, and the better you'll be able to collaborate. And this is not a one time thing, this is a continuous process.

I would never hire people who lack the ability to recognize that vast difference to work remotely. For one thing, you don't have the ability to compensate if you don't even understand there is something to compensate for.

Hell, I wouldn't even hire a person like that to work on site.

And the fact that there appears to be a strong overlap between people who favor remote work and short-sighted people who seem unable to recognize its disadvantages is not exactly encouraging companies to hire remote workers.

Yes, hiring managers read HN, and these kinds of comments aren't helping to promote remote work. Quite the opposite. The pro remote working crowd comes across as a bunch of immature self-entitled whiners.

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#47

Post by megablast »

quaunaut wrote: post #45
ablativenotion wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look into coworking spaces where people that are not working for the same company, such as freelancers or remote workers, share an office.

Where might I look for something like this? Is there a centralized location, or is this the sort of thing that people just kinda find on Craigslist or something?

Google search, that is how I found some places in London. And it was really great way to go, and some where very cheap. £50 a month!

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#48

Post by enjo »

devcpp wrote: post #40
enjo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! There are times I want to be in the office. There are times I want to be at a coffee shop. There are times I want to be at home. As an executive, I feel like it's my job to provide as much flexibility to my team as I possibly can. Inspiration can strike anywhere, in any environment. I want to capture that for my business. I find that people really appreciate it as well. Really it comes down to meeting management…

Your sound like an executive too, putting emphasis on well-researched words, and mentioning things like capturing inspiration. As far as I've seen, there is little inspiration involved in most programming environments, just a lot of thinking.

I'm going to assume this was meant to be insulting. A lot of that is going around on HN these days. It's really too bad.

I'll just leave it at this. Isn't inspiration often the end-result of careful thought?

I don't see what about an office makes it the right place for the thinking you see in programming environments. I've solved more hard problems in the shower than I have at my desk.

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#49

Post by enjo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #38
soneca wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered about offices with "loneliness rooms". Not to sleep, or meditate, but to work. Some place where anyone can go if he/she don't want to be around other people. A mix of open spaces and discreet rooms, where you can go and people won't even notice you are going there. I wouldn't even put doors in there, not to be mistaken to a place where you hide. Just a very small room, with no space for hanging arou…

We have focus rooms in our semi-open plan. They suck, they aren't fairly utilized and usually monopolized, or they are quickly turned into the service of other purposes (like store rooms or guest offices).

In the open floor plan offices I've been in, those "focus rooms" quickly become de-facto offices for whoever can stake a claim to them first.

Re: Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

#50

Post by Illotus »

onemorepassword wrote: post #46
methehack wrote: post #22

The very term "work from home" suggests separation. That's the wrong model. This is not about introverts and extroverts. Working with a remote team is not a choice about whether to collaborate or not. When a team is set up properly, remote work is no less collaborative than any other kind of work. The tools are there, widely available, and free. Everyone on a team needs to be using them, yes, but duh. As near as I ca…

I'm all in favor of letting people work from home and facilitating remote work for certain kinds of projects, but if you seriously think remote work is no less collaborative or technology can replace "face time", I assume you're missing a lot of human communication skills. Not only does physical interaction have a much higher bandwidth, it goes well beyond just the work. The more you interact, at lunch or in the hall…

Similarly pro office crowd come across as bunch of draconian overlords with little regards to the nature of the work and circumstances of other people. Such is the joy of the internet. Both crowds are likely to be much more middle ground in real life conversation.

Perhaps that highlights your points even more.

That aside, in my experience working at a good office is much more fun and a lot of the time nearly as productive as remote working. However I currently work remotely as the two hour daily commute is way too much, though I find that visiting my own office or other, nearer offices tends to help brighten up the work week. It certainly seems to me that communicating mainly via text makes it harder to restrain negative comments as you don't get the facial and body language cues. It takes much more effort to be polite and consider other peoples feelings. I wish it wasn't so.

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