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I Miss Working from the Office

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Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#331

Post by shawnz »

metafunctor wrote: post #283
DrBazza wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a well reasoned comment. I'm 'of that age' where I have a large-ish house, and hence a large, well equipped study. I don't much like my work office. It's on the top end of 'good': spacious, well equipped, light, modern, free snacks, etc. But... and it's a big but, it's open plan. And noisy. With people eating at their desks, talking, interrupting you and so on. But I still miss it. The last nine months has tau…

Seems like you don't miss the office, but you miss the social aspect. A good office would allow you to work in peace when you need to. For a programmer, this would be maybe 50-80% of the time. This is where the monitors and keyboards and chairs are. Personal tools and personal space. But, there should be enough opportunity to socialize when you feel like it; ranging from sofas and coffee machines and team lunches to…

I think this hard separation between work areas and social areas in an office would eliminate a lot of the social advantages of the office.

Who wants to be seen as the one always in the social area not working while on the clock? Plus, who would consciously choose to get their socialization from work instead of their personal friends? I think office socialization has to be coincidental or it just won't happen at all.

I think that model works better in university settings because the students have such disjoint schedules, they need those amenities to keep students occupied between classes.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#332

Post by Der_Einzige »

st1x7 wrote: post #48

I think that what isn't discussed enough is the variance in quality of your office environment and of your home office and how that quality affects your preferences about working from home. It sounds quite obvious but in these arguments people often just state what they personally like and leave it at that. Your office can be place where you still have the option to work uninterrupted but also get the benefits of fac…

For the two weeks before I had to WFH at my current job (I joined in February), I had my own office in an extremely beautiful tech HQ building.

That office was hella nice, but I'm still far happier at home. I don't think my home office is all that nice, but I simply value the freedom given to me from WFH far more than the "benefits" of the office.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#333

Post by afandian »

partisan wrote: post #195
dandellion wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good point, I'm really enjoying working from home and I attributed it mostly to not having to do the one hour commute each way, but there's so many more things that add up: - At home I have the most comfortable chair I could find on the market that fits me perfectly. At work there are very basic adjustable chairs and they use some slippery fabric. - At home I have an ergonomic mechanical keyboard vs. a…

It’s the exact opposite for me. At work, we had 3 monitors, standing desks, great chairs, a gym, free breakfast and lunch, full private bathrooms with showers and towels and toiletries, amazing views, etc. Now I compete for space with some children, a spouse who also works from home, and I work on a 14 inch laptop screen from a couch. It’s a downgrade and I would work from the office if it were practical. We can go i…

Maybe the competiton is unavoidable, but working from a couch? Doesn't your employer have legal workplace safety obligations?

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#334

Post by neuronic »

dudul wrote: post #311
staticfish wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let me guess. you're not a single?

Can you expand on that? Which of the points mentioned above make you infer that?

Apparently, only people in relationships are allowed to enjoy working from home because you must be rotten if you're single but don't miss meeting office people.

Some people need social interactions. It's their life blood. Others require very little of it and enjoy being alone.

Neither category really understands the other.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#335

Post by kidman007 »

I mainly miss being able to work from multiple places. I find that if I get too comfortable in a space I will be completely unproductive. It has happened at work when I had a desk and it is now happening at my home office. I miss being able to go to a coffee shop. I miss going to the library. I miss being able to go to the chair on the third floor of the office. I miss choice.

Staying home is obviously the right thing, but I miss choice.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#336

Post by [deleted] »

partisan wrote: post #195
dandellion wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good point, I'm really enjoying working from home and I attributed it mostly to not having to do the one hour commute each way, but there's so many more things that add up: - At home I have the most comfortable chair I could find on the market that fits me perfectly. At work there are very basic adjustable chairs and they use some slippery fabric. - At home I have an ergonomic mechanical keyboard vs. a…

It’s the exact opposite for me. At work, we had 3 monitors, standing desks, great chairs, a gym, free breakfast and lunch, full private bathrooms with showers and towels and toiletries, amazing views, etc. Now I compete for space with some children, a spouse who also works from home, and I work on a 14 inch laptop screen from a couch. It’s a downgrade and I would work from the office if it were practical. We can go i…

[deleted]

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#337

Post by volume »

Xevi wrote: post #166
diarrhea wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your work just sounds very subpar. Crippling developers with that sort of equipment and environment is a poor move and also an awful trade-off, business-wise.

Yet it feels very common to see employers buy subpar equipment, because they either don't understand how much of a difference it makes, or it "costs too much" to give every developer higher quality tools. I'm also in the camp of preferring to work from home with my triple high-res monitor setup, good chair, height adjustable table, ergonomic keyboard/mouse, and so on. I dread the day I'll have to go back to the offic…

> I dread the day I'll have to go back to the office.

Unless you have a real vote in the decision, then the the best move, is to accept either result. Otherwise you saddle yourself with the mental and emotional baggage and clutter.

I suppose this is easier said than done, but worth the effort in converting the dread to acceptance.

This is just some random opinion on the internet of course.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#338

Post by dbbk »

derwiki wrote: post #300
dbbk wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I now work from my own coworking space, while the rest of my company work from home. It's a nice middle ground.

Pardon my ignorance but I had presumed they had all shut down with indoor dining being shut down. What’s coworking like in a pandemic?

Offices are still open in the UK. It's fine, the only difference is increased frequency of cleaning.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#339

Post by bartread »

Tomis02 wrote: post #165
bartread wrote: post #42

> I miss productivity! Our engineering productivity has fallen through the floor since COVID despite everyone working longer and harder; I fundamentally do not think remote teams can ever be as productive as in-person teams. So far I haven't found this to be the case. Somewhat the opposite in fact, although here I'd credit our move from scrum/scrumban to Shape Up as much as working from home. It's not perfect though.…

> Nobody's losing their minds, exactly, but plenty of people aren't really happy. There seems to be a lot of newfound concern for the wellbeing of the employees. Interesting how this wasn't an issue before Covid hit, and nobody was asked "would you prefer to work from home rather than having to deal with constant distractions in the office? Would you like to not waste your life away on a useless commute? Are you happ…

Could you reign in the cynicism a bit, please?

I'm talking about my entire team, including me. These are people I know and work with on a daily basis. Part of knowing people is that you can tell when they're not quite themselves.

I've also polled my team on a semi-regular basis throughout the last 8 months on their preferences going forward, which is how I know I have a range of preferences across the spectrum of WFH versus working from the office. We've always had a flexible approach in this area because of team has always been distributed, but one of the silver linings of the COVID cloud will, I hope, be a more general acceptance of increased flexibility in working conditions for jobs where that's feasible.

Don't you dare put words into my mouth. Take it elsewhere.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#340

Post by zomglings »

as1mov wrote: post #14

I recently switched jobs and the new company onboarded me remotely. It's difficult for someone who's new to get acquainted with the new job remotely. Simple things like a small question regarding the codebase turns into a video call with a colleague where you first ping them on chat and ask them if they are free and then schedule the call. Even if the whole thing takes 10 minutes, it's too much compared to just turni…

I hope remote teams will start to invest more heavily in keeping up to date knowledge bases to help with exactly these kinds of issues. Tools like Confluence/Notion/whatever should really be solving this problem.

Video calls really grind productivity down to a halt. It's a strange phenomenon - when I have a call scheduled, it's really hard to get work done in a half hour neighborhood of the call.

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