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Tragedy of return to hostile offices

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#261

Post by mk89 »

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!

Traditionally companies have been working from the office. This shortly switched for a period of time, showing that working remotely can be done. Going back and finding no compromises is an outdated view of work that companies and unfortunately some individuals too seem to push on their employees/ peers.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#262

Post by TheCleric »

turtlebits wrote: post #222
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.

Yeah you leave something for longer than a day in communal space, it should be community property.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#263

Post by alistairSH »

jstarfish wrote: post #258
alistairSH wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My previous office was like that. The individual offices were around the exterior wall. The cubes were in the interior. Only managers got to see daylight. It was fucking depressing. Wife's previous office was better. Offices were around the interior, so cubes go light from the windows. Those offices had windows, so they too could get some natural light during the day. Current office is open plan, which is kinda dumb.…

Heh. My previous workplace had a similar setup-- executives got perimeter offices with windows, everyone else got the bullpen. Thankfully, the executives were rarely there and their doors were left open, so sunlight still got through. Nothing is as bleak as security offices and SCIFs. Even the Soviets painted bunker interiors. Americans are too cheap.

Oh yeah, thankfully never had a SCIF job. I suppose it could be worse, there's always missile silos in the Midwest. Or a submarine. :)

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#264

Post by tsunamifury »

conductr wrote: post #260
tsunamifury wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. When you calculate the total spend of a company on Google on real estate then multiply it by their PE ratio and now that spend now has 0 return instead of 30x or so you get a pretty large double digit percentage of their market cap in delta value. I think you are trivializing a pretty huge risk on the global markets.

Google is chump change to the global commercial RE market. I’ve worked with/on dozen or so executive teams, public and private, bought sold RE and leased/renewed RE at most of them. Nobody cares about the landlords or the shareholders of those companies. It’s actually an adversarial relationship just like most tenant/landlord relationships. Each party is looking out for themself. The math makes no difference when all…

You seem to misunderstand what im saying...

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#265

Post by gedy »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #252
walthamstow wrote: post #162

The majority in my company have forgotten what used to be quite standard office manners before covid. Hot food in the desk area of the office used to be a real no-no, likewise having notification sounds coming out of your laptop constantly.

> Hot food in the desk area of the office used to be a real no-no I've never encountered this perspective before. Why was/is this disliked?

The smell

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#266

Post by mk89 »

paulcole wrote: post #254
jdbernard wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The WFH position isn't trying to force the RTO people to do anything. Yes, they are. They are trying to get people to work with them who don't want to work with them. This is exactly the same thing as RTO does to WFH people. And it's fine! It's just a preference and it's fine for a company to make a decision that makes some people upset. Those people can deal with it or they can get a new job.

This is an extreme view in my opinion, as also the previous poster showed. You can have 10 people with 5 wanting to work from the office, 5 who don't want. Or 10 that all want a hybrid model. Etc. It's not all black or white.

Pushing for only one way of working or the other is telling people how to live. It has been like this for many years because there was little or no alternative. Now "thanks to" the covid an alternative came. But hey, now let's all go back to the traditional way things have always been done.

If a company is fully remote (no offices at all) before you apply you know what you're getting into. Same for a company only working from the office full time.

The issue is the companies slowly going back in a forceful manner, taking away the alternative, and all the people feeling "lonely" or having their "way things should be" being fine with that and actually enforcing this.

All surveys show people want flexibility, yet we're doing a lot to go to the pre 2019 model.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#267

Post by paulcole »

mk89 wrote: post #266
paulcole wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The WFH position isn't trying to force the RTO people to do anything. Yes, they are. They are trying to get people to work with them who don't want to work with them. This is exactly the same thing as RTO does to WFH people. And it's fine! It's just a preference and it's fine for a company to make a decision that makes some people upset. Those people can deal with it or they can get a new job.

This is an extreme view in my opinion, as also the previous poster showed. You can have 10 people with 5 wanting to work from the office, 5 who don't want. Or 10 that all want a hybrid model. Etc. It's not all black or white. Pushing for only one way of working or the other is telling people how to live. It has been like this for many years because there was little or no alternative. Now "thanks to" the covid an alte…

I don't get why everyone is so defensive over this?

When a company says, "This is how we work," that is them telling you to conform your life to how they work if you want to work there. That's for any value of "this" from remote, in-office, hybrid, whatever.

There's nothing wrong with that.

It just happens that the people who are strongly in favor of remote work don't seem to acknowledge the fact that committing to remote work alienates some workers the same way that in-office work alienates some workers.

"Oh but they can go into the empty office" doesn't solve the problem the way so many pro-WFH people seem to think it does.

You can dislike tradition the same as someone dislikes the nontraditional. They're just preferences not unequivocally right or wrong choices.

Everybody just wants their employer to commit to the preference that they prefer.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#268

Post by joenot443 »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #89
benjaminwootton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though? Most companies prioritise their own self interest over nebulous “institutional investment” bogeymen.

Do they? Odd how coordinated so many companies reach the same conclusions, policies, and follow the same trends. Could it be that the board members of these companies are in that nebulous investor class?

Yes, they do. The board member croneyism keeping the working man down is a bit of a simple minded reddit fantasy - in the real world, public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They don’t serve the interests of some hidden cabal.

If you notice that companies make similar decisions as a result of changing market trends (a global pandemic, for instance) it’s probably because those decisions were deemed the most financially sound. They weren’t colluding to screw over employees.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#269

Post by paulcole »

mk89 wrote: post #261
paulcole wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

Traditionally companies have been working from the office. This shortly switched for a period of time, showing that working remotely can be done. Going back and finding no compromises is an outdated view of work that companies and unfortunately some individuals too seem to push on their employees/ peers.

But you can't deny that anyone who doesn't want to work in an office is pushing their view on those who do want to work with others in an office, right?

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#270

Post by ghaff »

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.

No. But you probably do if you go out to dinner or some event with them. Over the years,I found that I could have most of my contact by phone but it really helped to have spent some some with someone in person.
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