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Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

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Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#241

Post by sdoering »

When I started to WFH at the beginning of the pandemic nearly two years ago I thought that a few days/weeks would be a nice change of scenery. Now, two years later I wouldn't want to go back to the office.

I can imagine doing offsites together with my team. Or client workshops. But regularly driving a quarter hour into the office is off the table for me.

Three days a week I start with swimming between 07:30 and 08:30 am. Sitting at my desk at 09:00. The other days I start early and am able to get some hours done before the meetings are killing productivity. And this way I am able to call it a day quite early.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#242

Post by playcache »

JohnBooty wrote: post #194
ketzo wrote: post #13

At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH. Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy. It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for m…

But man, I miss people. For me, working from home gives me more time to spend with family and friends, so that's been the tradeoff and it has mostly worked. I also get more exercise/sunlight. Even if it's just a walk with the dogs during lunch, or mowing the lawn. Although, it's doubly tough when things aren't good at home. Because during those times, the office provided some solace. But overall it's been positive. H…

I think this is the key aspect. For people with families at home, WFH is a godsend. I have two small children and am an avid runner on my local trails. WFH has meant I can get up around 7am and go running with my dog through the countryside, to then return, have a shower and walk with my young son to his school to drop him off. I can do all that and be showered and ready to start work in my home office by 9am.

Any companies not offering remote now that instead want me to commute to an office and lose all of that personal time, are an immediate rejection.

On the other hand, young professionals who have moved into a city and our just developing their career, they want to be among peers, socializing , learning and building a network.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#243

Post by banana_giraffe »

Due to a series of events at the company I currently work for, I've been one of a few permanent WFH employees in an otherwise office-bound company for a few years now.

For the most part, everyone is still WFH in my company even now, though that's beginning to change. I prefer this for mostly selfish reasons. I'm no longer an outlier, someone that they need to remember to loop into meetings, or that single outlier with an odd schedule. That part has made my job easy.

What's not easy for me: I'm now seen as the expert on how to WFH efficiently. I know what works for me, but communicating that to people in wildly different living arrangements, or just different work styles is surprisingly hard.

And, it turns out I do miss meeting up with colleagues in real life. I used to travel to our different offices a few times a year and meet with colleagues. As much as I'm one of the ones that's really adapted well to WFH, turns out even I need some face-to-face time. I suspect I'm going to be a bucket of nerves and stress next time I attend a conference.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#244

Post by Mayzie »

rootusrootus wrote: post #78
idrios wrote: post #68

I would love to see this poll broken up into some kind of demographics of: Are you single/married/married with kids, do you have roommates (and are they also wfh) what industry do you work in, what stage of your career are you in, are you managing people, etc. I thought WFH would be great but it happened too early in my career. I had no savings and too many roommates, and I was not learning nearly as much on the job…

> Are you single/married/married with kids I think I'd have already gone completely insane if I were still a bachelor when this pandemic WFH experiment has been thrust upon me. I go stir crazy when I'm home alone, but I'm not really a social butterfly either. Work was a good compromise.

> I think I'd have already gone completely insane if I were still a bachelor when this pandemic WFH experiment has been thrust upon me. I go stir crazy when I'm home alone, but I'm not really a social butterfly either. Work was a good compromise.

This is the issue with all of these anti-WFH posts and threads. It was in the midst of the pandemic, where you were not strongly discouraged from leaving your home and socialising. I imagine if there was no lockdown yet everybody similarly worked-from-home, the answers would be markedly different.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#245

Post by schipplock »

Headhunters now are asking me if I'm ok with home office, like it's something bad.

My problem with home office is that I don't have a dedicated room for my "office". Also my heating costs went up, so did my power consumption. I still need to pay for car insurance and maintance :D.

I seem to work more at home. My stress level actually increased.

Also some people don't understand the concept of home office, and are now bugging me during work (my mom e.g.).

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#246

Post by signaru »

abap_rocky wrote: post #69

The pandemic really helped me confirm that I prefer the office. I always sought to establish a clear distinction between my work life and home life and the enforced work from home due to COVID has made the two blur to a point now where I feel like I've lost all rhythm. Now living through a pandemic itself has a way of disrupting the rhythm of life but I feel that the collapsing of space into a singular living and wor…

same. home has been the place for my side projects so having work stuff take over my real estate has been invasive.

home maintenance and electricity is also conveniently ignored by my employer (internet bills are flat so I don't mind). someone else does and pays these back in the office. staying at home longer means it gets disorganized faster, especially with work stuff thrown into it.

i had also always hated remote (micro-)management, even before the pandemic. now that's not just the norm, that's the only option. there are a lot of things that are not communicated verbally/textually. a lot of details get overlooked as we are only using documents as a guide instead of the actual stuff that is being built/developed. things look nice on paper, but the reality is full of duct tape solutions. there are also a lot of decisions that can be made better if you are at the workplace seeing the actual work.

it's also kind of insulting to do "extracurricular" work that would have been tolerable in the office. i had spent hours making "educational" presentations that had nothing to do with product we are developing, only because it had been a tradition in the workplace. when i'm doing stuff at home it's hard not to question whether it is ultimately meaningless.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#247

Post by achow »

ketzo wrote: post #13

At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH. Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy. It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for m…

Got the following insights from my younger team members, who are single, new to workforce, new to the city (edit - not in 'home' city).

I miss the office for..

- Free and convenient food.

- Social chatter & engagement.

- Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees.

- Work life separation (balance).

- Proper workstation, climate controlled environment.

- Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers..

- Intra and inter company sports and games.

- Meeting potential dates.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#248

Post by twayt »

alecbz wrote: post #151
twayt wrote: post #111

I find that I get more emotionally jerked around working in person and can insulate myself from it working from home. Coworker acts curt to me as though they are superior and more productive than me? Rage ensues and I get an ungodly amount of work done. Come across an inspiring/encouraging coworker or get recognition for something? I feel great and feel like I take more risks. Coworker types super loud or acts incons…

Totally just my 0.02, but this reads a little like "opting out" instead of addressing issues interacting with other humans. Like yeah, humans are sometimes great, sometimes make you feel not great, sometimes are genuinely bad. I think life is learning to address and navigate all of that.

Never said that these people were bad. Just stating my reaction to them is blunted and no longer affects my productivity.

Your framework of dealing with people seems different from mine. What in this post strikes you as “opting out”? That comment doesn’t make sense to me and some clarification would be great.

Also, do these things not bother you or do you simply have a different way of dealing with it so that you don’t feel bad about it?

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#249

Post by ketzo »

webstrand wrote: post #65
ketzo wrote: post #13

At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH. Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy. It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for m…

Maybe it depends on how the team is structured. For the team I belonged to, most of our long-term planning was done informally, we were small enough that we could often spontaneously discuss future goals, present problems, and potential solutions. But with the advent of WFH, those discussions no longer happen, and nobody seems to have time or interest in regularly scheduled meetings. But I don't know, I only learned…

I'm sorry to hear that. My team is actually excellent about communication for ongoing work, and I still feel the way I do - I'd be waaaay worse off if I felt like people were forgetting about me.

If I could offer some unsolicited advice - tell them that you feel that way! I am quite confident that no one wants you to feel abandoned, and they would be unhappy to know they're making you feel that way. They might not be able to fix the situation all at once, but I hope you're able to get a better situation soon, one way or the other.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#250

Post by JohnBooty »

charcircuit wrote: post #234
JohnBooty wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. I recently began work on a team that has a brief "culture FAQ" regarding things like Slack messaging norms and expectations. We have an agreement that @'ing/DM'ing is expected to be asynchronous unless you explicitly let the recipient know otherwise - "hey, the server's down" or "hey, I'm blocked on this" etc. (above paragraph edited for clarity…

Doing this reduces efficiency. You are potentially blocking someone for half of a day when you might just need to send a simple message back.

Ah, thanks for replying. I edited my post for clarity. I assure you we do not sit around, blocked, waiting for replies. =)

The point being, if you need an immediate reply, you're expected to explicitly mention that. Otherwise it's assumed to be async.

It's working well IMO.

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