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Tragedy of return to hostile offices

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#241

Post by lm28469 »

layer8 wrote: post #219
lm28469 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who doesn't enjoy the comraderie you can form with people that you spend 40 hours a week with. I'd much rather spend that time with people I chose. Some you of you borderline sound like you're suffering from Stockholm syndrome

What I don’t get is why you would want to spend half of your waking hours, even remotely, working with people on a team whose company you don’t enjoy? The conclusion I would draw is that I’m on the wrong team or at the wrong company, and then switch as quickly as possible.

I enjoy my friends, yet I don't want to spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week in sitting 1 meter away from them.

It's a job, it's IT, it's easy, it's well paid, as long I don't have a literal archnemesis annoying me every day I literally don't care who I work with. Not everyone has the luxury to quit a job and find a new one right away, especially in the current climate

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#242

Post by Hackbraten »

itishappy wrote: post #72
Hackbraten wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an existential issue. Carbon emissions are literally killing people, and are bound to kill many more millions if we don't change our ways. So if the cooks and nurses and truck drivers have no choice, then I'd say that it's our duty to work remotely in order to do our part in reducing emissions.

Yes, we need more tech workers to save the world from all the cooks, nurses, and truck drivers out here literally killing people with their emissions.

Not sure what your point is.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#243

Post by Shish2k »

sircastor wrote: post #66
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…

My last job had pinball machines in the breakroom. We also had folks coming over from the UK who thought those pinball machines were awesome. The pinball got taken away because it was seen as “unfair” to all the offices that didn’t have something like that.

Yup, “in order to align with global standards” has become a meme where I work, because the phrase always preceeds “we are removing one of our location-specific perks” ;(

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#244

Post by numpad0 »

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!

The stupid idea is your value creation should come from internal/external prostitution works and radiating positive energies and importantly not from self playing on computers, because too much in software is measured subjectively and this mindset works for those that can game the system. This shouldn't go on forever, but kind of continue to spread until going against this trends becomes differentiation(and positive outlook in it is there's no way such trend is continuing, or perhaps even happening at at all at this point where random grumpy idiot like I am is rambling about it)

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#245

Post by dragonwriter »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #99
ericbarrett wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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…

> Those same walls meant that sound didn't travel when your PM was on yet another call.

In about 20 years of cubicle work, that was never my experience. It might be better than open plan for that (never had to suffer through that outside of exceedingly small offices, up to ~5 total people in a bullpen), but sound from calls in a cubicle environment (especially one shared with non-technical-IC staff) can be pretty bad.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#246

Post by jdbernard »

paulcole wrote: post #233
tomashubelbauer wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're making a pretty standard mistake often made by people who are pro-WFH. Many people who prefer working in an office prefer to work with other people who are also in an office. They do not want to interact with people who are working remotely. Just to be clear, this is a 100% fine preference to have. In this case, a company saying, "Yeah get a coworking space or whatever and meet with the remote people on Zoom"…

I'm sorry, but you are the one making the "standard mistake," logically. It's the incel argument. You're trying to say this is a two-way street, that the dynamics are the same in both directions. That's obviously false. It is a one-way street here. The people who are wanting to RTO are trying to exert active control over the lives of others. "You must change your habits of life to accommodate my desires." This is not what the WFH position is doing. The WFH position isn't trying to force the RTO people to do anything.

You complaining "your unwillingness to come to the office is forcing me to remain lonely in the office" is exactly the same kind of argument, structurally, as the incel argument "your unwillingness to have sex with me is forcing me to remain a virgin." Yes, there are some things that you cannot do alone, but that does not entitle you to force me to accommodate you.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#247

Post by just_boost_it »

iteratethis wrote: post #152

A lot of people work virtually regardless of their location. You can return to the office but it doesn't stop. You still work as if it was remote because there will always be somebody in the meeting that isn't there. They could be at home, in a different building, or a vendor in another country. Such is the consequence of complex organizations and outsourcing, as well as employees increasing demands to have a say in…

My dream is for the entire industry to start demanding this perfect workflow. Then I will be even more valuable wherever I go.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#248

Post by wormius »

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…

Jordan Schlansky is that you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A8W77m-ZTw

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#249

Post by schnable »

ryandrake wrote: post #234
voisin wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this pressure look like, in practice? Sternly written letters? Phone calls? What power does a city have over a private employer when it comes to employment decisions like this? If remote is everything people say it is, the cities should have no power to overcome improved performance and lower (in the long run) costs (due to lower or nonexistent rent)

Think about it as if it was a private golfing club, where these guys (corporate executives, real estate developers, bigshot investors, local politicians and officials, chief of police, county and city judges) all hang out in the same bar and play golf together, and shoot the shit with each other, and go to each others' kids' soccer games and so on. I'm sure there's a lot of peer pressure for them all to kind of get a…

I think this is mostly it. But a little more generously, a lot of business leaders do have civic pride and if remote work is going to collapse the city's tax base, that isn't about personal profit. There are practical and emotional reasons why politicians, business leaders, educational and healthcare institutions, non-profits etc. would not want this. And this all trickles down to voters - people don't want to live in a crappy place!

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#250

Post by mortallywounded »

I once worked in an office where one of our engineers ended up moving out of the open office into an office of his own.

He would often get offended in the open office around the other engineers. Why? Language. He once asked me not to say "damn" around him because he's very religious.

It was a C/C++/C# codebase, so that was never going to happen.

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