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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?

#261

Post by JohnBooty »

tmmx wrote: post #189
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also means that I get to choose when I will allow myself to be interrupted, rather than sitting in an open concept office and being _continually_ interrupted. This is extremely situational. When I was in a larger house and had no kids, WFH was an easy way to avoid interruptions. Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. Avoiding interruptions at home was extrem…

When I want to focus, I pause slack notifications. Slack provide a way to still send it, but in my workplace people tend to respect that setting unless it is a real emergency.

Yeah, this is the key.

Whenever I hear about somebody's hellish Slack culture at their workplace and they blame Slack I always think, "That sounds like a bad office culture that would be bad even if Slack was removed from the equation."

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

#262

Post by sharat87 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #211
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also means that I get to choose when I will allow myself to be interrupted, rather than sitting in an open concept office and being _continually_ interrupted. This is extremely situational. When I was in a larger house and had no kids, WFH was an easy way to avoid interruptions. Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. Avoiding interruptions at home was extrem…

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…

Could you share that FAQ here or link to it? I've been recently thinking of writing something like this for my team, so having an existing working template would be of great help.

Thanks!

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

#263

Post by brjiro8 »

klodolph wrote: post #221
Salgat wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest issue is that people are lonely due to the pandemic, and are conflating that with working from home. You can have a strong social life and working from home. For others, unfortunately the only socialization they can get is forced interaction with coworkers at the office.

Conflating those concepts may be appropriate here, for many people. I don't think it's only a matter of how strong your social life is outside of work, or a matter of people leaning on forced socialization at work. That's an overly reductive look at it. I would like to talk about it but I'm kind of sick of seeing the discussion framed in term of people who only socialize at the office. The fact is, in the office we h…

No post body was provided.

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

#264

Post by JohnBooty »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #225
catsarebetter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, used to wear enormous noise cancelling headphones but I would have to pay music to completely block out noise from the office, but then there would be loud music playing in my ears. Real challenge there

Noise cancelling responds to droning, repetitive sounds, while a big chunk of plastic responds to everything. Not to sound like a shill, but there’s an old headphone model (HD-280 pro) I’ve always sworn by, and I was pleased to see that same model was in Google’s “stuff” catalog for any employee to request. Another colleague reused his earmuffs and earplugs from the gun range, but I think most of those are pretty unc…

    Another colleague reused his earmuffs and earplugs 
    from the gun range, but I think most of those are 
    pretty uncomfortable.
You can definitely get ones that are about as comfortable as a pair of comfortable over-ear headphones.

Ideally, everybody struggling to work in an office would wear big, absurd earmuffs.

Maybe if management looked around and saw that 80% of their employees were geared up like they were working on the tarmac of a busy fucking airport just to get some work done, they would rethink the hell of open offices.

Nah. They wouldn't.

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

#266

Post by allthecybers »

Commuting to a crowded downtown core every day never made sense to me. I much prefer WFH. In my admittedly well appointed home office, I am much more focused, productive and it's easier to connect with my distributed team via video chats, Slack messages and Huddles.

I do go into a corporate office about once a week and candidly I have issues with concentration and productivity because of the open office and stark lighting. To take calls or video chats you have to step away from your desktop setup (monitor, etc) to find any empty conference room so you don't have to compete with other people talking in the open office area. Sometimes when I go in I am the only one on a floor with 50+ desks. Those days are slightly better for productivity, but the vaunted social aspect of the office isn't there anymore. Or other team members are in so randomly and infrequently that the serendipity of water-cooler world problem solving never happens.

While I prefer WFH for a number of reasons, I can understand why people prefer the office. But even on the days I appreciate having a corporate office, I still hate the open office configuration. It's almost like WFH has evolved and changed to be much better, and the office is stuck in the past. Candidly, you won't get me to come back into an office consistently, until there is a way for the office to be more like WFH.

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

#267

Post by jinushaun »

The results reflect other polls I’ve seen…

My only conclusion is that everyone else had shitty 2 hr commutes in heavy traffic from their large house with extra rooms.

Others, like myself, had a pleasant subway ride playing games/listening to music from my cramped tiny apartment.

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

#268

Post by lamontcg »

JohnBooty wrote: post #219
lamontcg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't underestimate the utility of being able to just take a goddamn nap when you've had shit sleep the night before rather than powering through the day trying to appear productive when you're a zombie. Most normal people have bad days when they really shouldn't be at work, its so much easier when you just aren't at work and can deal with the problem (take a nap, take a cold shower afterwards, get in a few hours of…

Yeah. God. The ability to take an afternoon nap if you need it... there's no way to even put a monetary value on it. Can walk, get some exercise/sunshine, nap, even have a quickie with your partner or look at porn, etc. No matter how awesome one's office is, those things are generally not options.

There's also no pointless commute. No wear and tear on the car. No carbon emissions. No wasted time. Also no risk of injury if you get into an accident.

And even if you bike to work that latter point still stands due to the passively homicidal assholes driving cars out there.

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

#269

Post by sturmeh »

I miss how it was prior to the pandemic, and would happily office 5 days a week if I could get that back.

However knowing that it's never likely to be the same, as people get used to WFH and companies realise they can save a load of money without creating incentives to get people in an office, the office is going to be far less desirable.

I'm down for a mix or even WFH, but I miss the socialising greatly.

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

#270

Post by physicles »

Salgat wrote: post #210
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…

I think the biggest issue is that people are lonely due to the pandemic, and are conflating that with working from home. You can have a strong social life and working from home. For others, unfortunately the only socialization they can get is forced interaction with coworkers at the office.

For me, the two aren't conflated, and I still find that I prefer some office time. I have the ability to work from home or work remote, so I often do that. But I live in China, so social life is rather normal these days (modulo the occasional restrictions).

Like another commenter said, I find it easier to care about the concerns of people around me, so if that's a bunch of people at my company then I'll care more about them and what they need. It makes a difference for me if physical presence and work presence are aligned.

Probably for a similar reason, I've found that I can't reach 100% productivity consistently (over weeks) unless I'm in an environment where people around me are working. So that means finding a coworking space wherever I go.

Also, in-person conversation is so much higher bandwidth than anything else. Those couple hundred ms of latency do matter. Being able to party on the same physical whiteboard is really nice.

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