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I Miss Working from the Office

roguelazer.com

21–30 of 502 posts

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#21
post #14

I recently switched jobs and the new company onboarded me remotely. It's difficult for someone who's new to get acquainted with the new job remotely. Simple things like a small question regarding the codebase turns into a video call with a colleague where you first ping them on chat and ask them if they are free and then schedule the call. Even if the whole thing takes 10 minutes, it's too much compared to just turni…

My team currently does half hour coffee mornings and has an open office hour once every two weeks; often we're all just working silently through them, but everyone's on the same call throughout.

Is that something you can do - just sit on a call with your assigned mentor for most of the day?

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#22
I simply can't afford enough space at home for a comfortable working environment in addition to enough space for the kids.

I'd have to move MUCH farther away from the city (think 1 hour of driving), to get a space where this would work, I've been looking into it for the last 3 months, but so is everyone else, meaning the price where there is broadband available is skyrocketing in my area.

In general the pandemic has decimated the quality of life I used to enjoy in my downtown office, and to get that back I have to rebuild my life from scratch, 2020 and the move to WFH has been terrible in that regard for our family.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#23
post #14

I recently switched jobs and the new company onboarded me remotely. It's difficult for someone who's new to get acquainted with the new job remotely. Simple things like a small question regarding the codebase turns into a video call with a colleague where you first ping them on chat and ask them if they are free and then schedule the call. Even if the whole thing takes 10 minutes, it's too much compared to just turni…

It seems like a communication issue. Why would you need a video call to ask a question? Problem is that people are used to verbal communication and lack skills to convey a message in writing. When worked in remote first company it was a non issue, rarely had to go on a video call. We had social calls often, but work stuff easily worked out over text. It is also about culture - we had a codebase very well documented and if a starter had questions their task was to improve the documentation together with the dev assigned to onboarding.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#25

I simply can't afford enough space at home for a comfortable working environment in addition to enough space for the kids. I'd have to move MUCH farther away from the city (think 1 hour of driving), to get a space where this would work, I've been looking into it for the last 3 months, but so is everyone else, meaning the price where there is broadband available is skyrocketing in my area. In general the pandemic has…

The broadband problem could be soon solved by Starlink.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#26

I simply can't afford enough space at home for a comfortable working environment in addition to enough space for the kids. I'd have to move MUCH farther away from the city (think 1 hour of driving), to get a space where this would work, I've been looking into it for the last 3 months, but so is everyone else, meaning the price where there is broadband available is skyrocketing in my area. In general the pandemic has…

The broadband problem could be soon solved by Starlink.

"soon" in Germany might mean 2022

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#27

Interestingly, I don't know anybody who misses the office. We're all techies and designers and nobody complained. We do miss having a beer after work every now and then, but we don't miss the office itself at all.

I don't miss "the office" as a singular entity, but I miss properties of the office:

- air conditioning

- coffee corner chats

- lunch with colleagues

- strong separation between work time and free time

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#29
>I fundamentally do not think remote teams can ever be as productive as in-person teams.

Trade an anecdote for an anecdote.

We have found our dev team to be exactly as productive if not more since moving to work from home. A single instance of productive remote work invalidates this statement that it is literally impossible for remote work to be productive.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#30
post #2

He is a software engineer in the Bay Area, I presume? I think he can afford to buy a big monitor (I use a 55” LG OLED TV which I have bought at discount for less than $1400. Compared to a shitty Dell at my workspace, it’s a bliss). I, personally, hope to never return to the office. I was working mostly from home even before the pandemic, but now it’s official.

If i have a shitty monitor at the office i buy myself one and a keyboard and a mouse. A Kitchen Chef has his own personal tools (Knifes) too. I refuse to work with stuff that makes my workday a pain (just talking about the physical stuff, software stuff is something completely different as we know)
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