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Tragedy of return to hostile offices

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#221

Post by ooterness »

dboreham wrote: post #193
tristor wrote: post #10

One of the primary reasons that remote work improves productivity is that it allows employees to tailor their environment to their needs, rather than be forced into a hostile office space that requires kafkaesque bureaucratic bullshit to make even minor changes. I once had a former employer force me to take an espresso machine home that I had brought to work because it created a situation where a different shift was…

I've been remote working since 2000 but as an EE I agree with your employer: they have a duty to remove unauthorized electrical appliances from their premises since they present a fire risk. In addition an espresso machine obviously presents a risk of injury and associated lawsuits from numbskulls who don't know how to use it.

My office requires equipment to be tested by a recognized laboratory (UL/ETL/etc). Fire safety requirements are reasonable and easy to satisfy. What you describe is nonspecific reactionary FUD.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#222

Post by turtlebits »

tristor wrote: post #10

One of the primary reasons that remote work improves productivity is that it allows employees to tailor their environment to their needs, rather than be forced into a hostile office space that requires kafkaesque bureaucratic bullshit to make even minor changes. I once had a former employer force me to take an espresso machine home that I had brought to work because it created a situation where a different shift was…

Why can't you store it at your desk? My biggest pet peeve in the office was the people storing personal items in the kitchen. I don't need to see your machine with (don't use) stickies on it or the random assortment of blender bases. I also don't need to see your dirty tupperware in the sink.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#223

Post by tivert »

ericbarrett wrote: post #59
AlexandrB wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is correct. It's why, before the pandemic normalized remote work, offices were popular. What's disheartening is that a lot of "return to office" plans I've heard of from friends involve conditions even worse than what was there before. For example, hot-desking replacing the previous (also terrible) open office. I'm too young to have lived through the golden age of engineers actually having an office to w…

I keep saying—if you want me to return to the office, give me an office . Or even a cubicle. Why even enforce a hot-desking setup when the space is 20% full? It makes no sense at all!

> I keep saying—if you want me to return to the office, give me an office. Or even a cubicle. Why even enforce a hot-desking setup when the space is 20% full? It makes no sense at all!

Cynically, it makes layoffs a lot more opaque. When everyone gets to express their individuality by sitting in an identical, constantly-shifting workspace; you can't "walk by" someone's desk and notice it's cleaned out and their gone.

I don't think that's the main reason (the main reason is trying to cheap out on office rent and ape corporate fads), but it's probably a happy added perk for those who are pushing these things.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#224

Post by watters »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #167
x86x87 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTO has benefits, just not for employees. Commercial real estate, businesses downtown, municipalities, they all benefit from this slow moving trainwreck.

I don't see how those relate to a company's revenue or bottom line, which is usually what we imagine company's to care about above all else.

Very large household-name companies often own or otherwise control significant amounts of commercial real estate, which sit on the company's balance sheet.

If commercial real estate in general loses value, the value of these assets is also reduced, which will eventually be reflected on their balance sheets.

Even in cases where the real estate is leased rather than owned, the future rents owned are liabilities that are also a part of the companies' financial reports. If the demand for commercial real estate goes down, they won't be able to fully offset liabilities by subletting or selling their commercial real estate, which will show up as losses, write offs or write downs.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#225

Post by yesdocs »

AlexandrB wrote: post #40
tristor wrote: post #10

One of the primary reasons that remote work improves productivity is that it allows employees to tailor their environment to their needs, rather than be forced into a hostile office space that requires kafkaesque bureaucratic bullshit to make even minor changes. I once had a former employer force me to take an espresso machine home that I had brought to work because it created a situation where a different shift was…

I think this is correct. It's why, before the pandemic normalized remote work, offices were popular. What's disheartening is that a lot of "return to office" plans I've heard of from friends involve conditions even worse than what was there before. For example, hot-desking replacing the previous (also terrible) open office. I'm too young to have lived through the golden age of engineers actually having an office to w…

I am old enough to remember when cubicles and offices were the norm. Cubicle companies studied and improved the cubicles spaces to make them more efficient using science. Yes they actually studied what would make us happier and more proficient at work.

Then came the stupid trend of organic seating. Cubicle’s ? Thing of the past they said, yet our productivity suffered. Great for sprints but quickly diminished due to constant distractions forcing engineers to invest in noise canceling headphones.

The WFH movement is because water flows downhill. We learned that we made the office an incredibly inefficient place to work, because we didn’t follow the science and threw away decades of research because of a new ‘fad’ that the CEO’s liked. Too bad CEO’s, I have been WFH ever since corporate America thought organic seating was cool.

I will never go back, in fact us programmers should unite and unionize to solidify this benefit before they try and take this away for good and make our jobs more difficult.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#226

Post by tivert »

jwells89 wrote: post #150
Pet_Ant wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the memes about cubicles the one time I had it was actually pleasant. You could have a small meeting in the cubicle. The walls were tall enough to hang up reference diagrams. Those same walls meant that sound didn't travel when your PM was on yet another call. Not being able to see a window was a downside. As was there oppressive grey-beige monotony, but I imagine with the Google colour palette they'd be much…

The walls have another benefit: they act like noise canceling headphones for your eyes. That’s one of the issues I have with open floor plan offices: people buzzing around in my peripheral vision can be incredibly distracting and detrimental to productivity depending on the day and my mental state, and there’s almost nothing that can be done to mitigate that.

> That’s one of the issues I have with open floor plan offices: people buzzing around in my peripheral vision can be incredibly distracting and detrimental to productivity depending on the day and my mental state, and there’s almost nothing that can be done to mitigate that.

Don't worry, the office-lords have solved that! You can book a focus room for no more than 60 minutes when you need to focus. PROBLEM SOLVED!!!! /s

People who complained about cubicles were probably mourning the loss of an enclosed office (which I imagine is far superior). As we are learning, it can always get worse, and what was once bad is now good by comparison to what we're getting now.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#227

Post by tomashubelbauer »

paulcole wrote: post #198
mk89 wrote: post #173

I see this tragedy every day I wake up and from my living room window I see hundreds of cars waiting at the traffic light(s). This wasn't the case during covid, of course, and also during the beginning of post-covid. It seems all is behind us. Not sure what the value of all this is, except for some people telling others how they have to live life.

> except for some people telling others how they have to live life Don't act like this is a one-way street. If you're working remotely then your employer is also telling its employees how they have to live life. It's just that in this case you happen to agree with them so it's A-OK!

People who prefer the office can band together and get one with WFH. People who enjoy their homes or even still an office, just their personal one, don't have that choice with RTO.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#228

Post by invalidptr »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #17

In some ways, OP’s suggestions are a recipe for building hostile teams! Why would I be entitled to interrupt someone to review my code, just because they are sitting next to me? Always on zoom? No, thanks. It invariably devolves into micromanaging. Constant KPI awareness? Most companies cannot even agree on how a valuable KPI looks like. Remote pair programming? Honest question here, is pair programming still a thing…

>Honest question here, is pair programming still a thing?

It's still by far the most effective tool for certain tasks. Inherit an extremely complex codebase with 50 levels of abstraction? You could spend a week tinkering with it, or you could step through the code with the guy who wrote it for 30 minutes. But it's not something you'd want to do every day, or even frequently.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#229

Post by willcipriano »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #214
ghaff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I do think there are a fair number of people who recognize there are downsides to never seeing coworkers in person. But, given the option, it's a tradeoff they'll make so they don't need to commute.

Imo if you have video conference thats good enough, not like you get more information out of conversation in person vs on the phone or zoom.

I don't even need video. Worked closely with a guy for a couple years, only when I left the company and added him on linkedin did I learn he was black. There really wasn't a need for me to know much about him to get our work done.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#230

Post by voisin »

hellisothers wrote: post #220
voisin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The RTO is being entirely driven from the top by institutional investors wanting to avoid losses on property investments and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple with the fact they dont have friends or hobbies and need you in the office so that they dont feel like such embarrassing losers. This is argument keeps getting parroted without evidence or skepticism. Where's the evidence? Just because many peo…

I think the problem is, if you want to work remote you don’t care if other people work in the office or not. However, if you want to work in the office you really want others in the office as that is the purported main point of being there so one side is forcing the other into their desired working situation. This is exactly what the OP is describing, people above/below/around compelling RTO.

So go to a company that doesn’t have RTO requirements. The market should sift employees and employers to an equilibrium where people work in the environment that suits them.

We already have this. People that can’t stand sitting at a screen all day and need to be outdoors to feel good find jobs that suit that. People who need to interact and not do paperwork find jobs that suit this. And vice versa. RTO and WFH will just be the next phase of that.

I look forward to the market showing us, objectively, which is most effective on the whole when enough companies with radically different policies compete with each other.

I have a strong suspicion which will prevail but I want to see objective real world results.

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