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Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

theguardian.com

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Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#21

Post by onion2k »

SilverRed wrote: post #2

It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down on WFH despite most employees loving it. I suspect that the commercial property owners and middle managers are behind this because they are the ones who have mostly lost out here. The cat is out of the bag I think. Once people can work from home in a post covid world where they can socialize normally, I think many companies, and especially in software de…

A lot of people say they enjoy working from home, but I suspect it's more the case that they enjoy things like not feeling watched by managers, or being interrupted as much, or fewer meetings, or being able to work with things like a television on or music with headphones. Those things could be achieved in an office environment with some thought and fewer open-plan spaces.

Even people saying they prefer WFH because they no longer have to commute could be solved with some (huge) infrastructure changes.

What remote working highlights is that there are big problems with offices and that the simplest solution is to work somewhere else. That doesn't mean working from your home the best solution.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#22

Post by thanatos519 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #5
jolux wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny because I feel like I’ve been reading article after article recently about how working in offices is dumb and they can’t imagine why anyone would do it anymore unless they were zombified corporate stooges. My feeling is that working in an office makes it possible for me to separate work from the rest of my life, and my commute (about 30 minutes, soon to be fifteen or less via public transit once I move) ni…

I saw a comment in the Apple thread where someone said people who don't like WFH hate their family, or themselves. Which was a shocking comment. I love spending time with my family and daughter, but I get paid to work to support my family, and working from home makes me feel distracted. I thought working from home would be the best part of a job, but losing the separation of work/life, going from avoiding meetings to…

^ This. Going to the office was my social life, because I'm an expat and the office was full of other geeky expats. I even went to the office when the rest of my team was in another timezone, but I had lost all opportunities for pair programming. When 100% WFH hit, I was talking about maybe 2 days a week in the office being the right balance, but now I'm thinking I could WFH effectively a maximum of 1 day a week.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#23

Post by Neil44 »

I speak to a real mix of people. There are a lot of dimensions in the logic matrix for working from home. Managers who want it or don't want it for either selfish or practical reasons. Employees who want it so they can slack off more (and managers who know that) Employees who want it because they can organise their lives better. Employees who don't want it because they like the separation or don't want it because they get too distracted at home. People who just miss the banter and camaraderie of the office. All these factors are at play in different ways for each individual and each department and each company. I don't feel there's a very clear consensus in any particular direction, except perhaps more people will have the option of WFH in general than before.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#24

Post by andrei_says_ »

swiley wrote: post #20
codingdave wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it is just the concept of the vocal minority. People who are seeing the world go their way tend to just enjoy the ride. People who don't like how it is going tend to be quite vocal about their displeasure. Minority opinions can be quite loud, in any aspect of our society. Personally, I want to respect our differences. I support people figuring out where they want to work and finding companies who let them…

WFH is an instant 13-20% raise for most people because they're not compensated for the commute. The same economic effect that results in SWEs being paid well above minimum wage will also result in widespread remote work. If you like socializing you can still do that, in fact you can do more of it since you're not spending an hour or two every day in a car, alone.

Yes absolutely. Commuting does not automatically cause socializing.

Commuting causes back pain, exhaustion, pollution and lots of traffic. Oh, and traffic accidents. 100% of my 2 traffic accidents were during commuting.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#25

Post by jolux »

tehbeard wrote: post #18
flukus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My feeling is that working in an office makes it possible for me to separate work from the rest of my life This is seems to be pretty common, can you explain why it's so hard to separate? Generally I start the work day by turning on the work computer, when I'm done I turn it off and anything beyond that is the sort of rare exception I would have logged in from home for even if I was working in the office. That and…

Most of us don't have a separate room for an office, or might be stuck using our own equipment (pc, phone) for our job now, which blurs the lines on home/work.

Yeah, I have to work in the same room that I sleep in, and I only have one monitor and one desk.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#26

Post by alliao »

SilverRed wrote: post #2

It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down on WFH despite most employees loving it. I suspect that the commercial property owners and middle managers are behind this because they are the ones who have mostly lost out here. The cat is out of the bag I think. Once people can work from home in a post covid world where they can socialize normally, I think many companies, and especially in software de…

the owners are mostly banks. And they aren't happy about the haircut for sure. but no matter, at the current rate of money printing everything's tolerable. Not happy, but tolerable hence these little random jabs gauging public opinion.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#27

Post by null_object »

SilverRed wrote: post #2

It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down on WFH despite most employees loving it. I suspect that the commercial property owners and middle managers are behind this because they are the ones who have mostly lost out here. The cat is out of the bag I think. Once people can work from home in a post covid world where they can socialize normally, I think many companies, and especially in software de…

> It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down on WFH despite most employees loving it

There are enormous economic forces whose interest lies in workers returning to offices and city-centers.

Thinking that journalists and media-sources are immune to this pressure is illusory - they will be talking to 'experts' who are effectively lobbyists, getting press-releases and generally being contacted in their networks by a lot of people who want to push this agenda, so that expensive offices are filled and city-center businesses can begin to sluice our cash again.

I have saved enormous amounts of money by WFH over the last year, enjoy it more than sitting at an office desk all day, had more family-time, private and hobby time, have eaten more healthily and gotten more exercise and (probably most importantly of all), worked with better focus and more effectively.

But I have no doubt that I'll be required to work at the office again at the end of the summer, because the combination of these immovable economic forces, together with the ingrained cultural prejudices of the management class (that prefer the buzz of the office environment), make it an inevitability.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#28

Post by Bombthecat »

SilverRed wrote: post #2

It almost feels like there is a conspiracy brewing to talk down on WFH despite most employees loving it. I suspect that the commercial property owners and middle managers are behind this because they are the ones who have mostly lost out here. The cat is out of the bag I think. Once people can work from home in a post covid world where they can socialize normally, I think many companies, and especially in software de…

Yeah, the other thread, the guy most upvoted, talks about how amazing office is,while when asked: 86 percent reply they don't want to go back.

Upvote bots are active now on hackernews, its sad, but bound to happen.

Re: Anthropologists and the business of sense-making at work

#29

Post by babesh »

What the article is saying is that there are group benefits to working together and that they speculate that the traders in America did better than the traders in Europe because they worked together.

Most comments I read on Hacker News that say that working from home is better measure a single individual’s output or that of a group that has worked together for a period of time.

There may well be studies that show that WFH is better. It would be good to study this further.

Perhaps it is better in some ways and worse in others. Perhaps it is better for some groups and worse for others. Perhaps certain technologies or processes can shift the balance.

I would hope that this is what we seek to learn. Instead, on Hacker News, you find a lot of agenda pushing. That makes me sad. I hope that we become more curious and open minded.

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