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34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

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Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#331

Post by taylodl »

incrudible wrote: post #180
aroundtown wrote: post #132

Give me a dedicated office with a door that can shut, allow me to commute during off-peak rush hours, and raise my pay or shorten my work hours for the same rate... then we will talk about coming back in. Currently: I have an dedicated office at home, I can shut my door and work when I need to be distraction free. I don't have my head pinched by headphones for hours, and I can work in silence like I prefer. No cowork…

> Give me a dedicated office with a door that can shut, allow me to commute during off-peak rush hours, and raise my pay or shorten my work hours for the same rate... then we will talk about coming back in. If you can talk like that post-pandemic, why couldn't you walk like that pre-pandemic? You could've had a remote job then, too. I do like remote work, but it's not all upsides. If there's a big shift to remote wor…

Prior to the pandemic I never liked working at home. I didn't have a dedicated work area and so I ended up working at the dining room table, whose chairs hurt my back when sitting on them for long hours and I hated calling in to meetings. Often you couldn't see what was being projected in the room.

Now things are completely different. Once it become apparent that working from home was going to be long-term and not just for a "couple weeks" I started making changes. I now have a dedicated office at home. I have a proper chair that doesn't kill me to sit. Everyone (at my company) now uses WebEx for meetings so meetings are no longer the pain they used to be.

The result? My work/life balance has completely changed. I'm no longer spending 1.5 hours/day commuting to work. I'm saving money on parking, saving money on food, saving money on clothing, saving money on gas...no joke, I'm saving $200/month. Easy.

On the work side my team and I have never been happier - or more productive. We do have team activities allowing us to get together from time to time. We're more fully engaged with the business and have been delivering better solutions.

Bottom line? Spending over a year now working remotely has taught me a lot of things. The most important being I never want to go back to an office on a daily basis.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#332

Post by emodendroket »

politician wrote: post #143
tezzer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer. I can do my job 100% remotely. I can't wait to get back to the office. I like in-person collaboration, and I really like having separation between my work life and my home life. This year has been torture.

Do your colleagues feel the same way? Would you inflict office work on them if they don't?

A substantial portion of the workforce doesn’t have home situations that are favorable to remote work, which more or less necessitates the existence of an office unless you’re going to start screening out, e.g., parents. And then if you have it anyway, why wouldn’t you simplify planning by having everyone in, especially given the challenges of a mixed office-remote environment (which I think is more challenging than going all in on either one)?

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#333

Post by emodendroket »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #282
tezzer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several do, the few times I've gone into the office and done a little problem solving with the folks who were there, we accomplished like a week of work in an hour. There's something about putting heads together that's hard to replace. Some of our folks have always been ~90% remote and that's fine, but I think they're missing out on one of the joys of engineering.

IMO companies should pay less people like you as your preferences incur more costs. Alternatively you could hire a co-working hub if you prefer that, but such costs shouldn't be passed onto people who ARE able to control their emotions and work/life balance.

Such policies could quite reasonably be construed as illegally discriminatory.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#334

Post by blaser-waffle »

mym1990 wrote: post #318
politician wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do your colleagues feel the same way? Would you inflict office work on them if they don't?

You sound as if going into the office is literally some kind of torture(and I guess for some percentage of the population it is). This 'do you colleagues feel the same way?' argument is circular and the question can be posed both ways. Separating the two to allow people a preference one way or the other is a difficult problem that has been addressed by many companies by simply making everyone come into the office. It…

The office is fine. It's nice to chill with my coworkers. I've been remote since 2015 and I kinda miss that, sometimes.

The commute there and back, sometimes an hour one way depending on traffic and weather, absolutely is torture. In the middle of summer or depth of winter it can be miserable. My 8-9 hour workday would often be closer to 10-11 hours, and I'd arrive home exhausted and annoyed. Travel via train was worse in some ways but sometimes better.

I am not any less closer or further, emotional or occupationally, when remote. But I don't have to lose 2 hours of my day, huff tons of exhaust, and pay the costs of cars / busses / trains.

I can sneak away for 10 minutes to grind my coffee, good coffee, and make a cuppa my way instead of relaying on the bland Keurig machine. I can get dinner going in a slow cooker 6 hours ahead of time, give my dog 3 walks a day, and handle my personal shit, on my personal machines, without risking personal or occupational data. I get more sleep, and can work later if needed, since I don't need to worry about losing an hour of my life just to get home.

Sure, work isn't torture and the office wasn't bad. But in exchange for stilled small talk with coworkers -- your coworkers aren't your friends, btw -- I gain so much more at home.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#335

Post by dokem »

ebrenes wrote: post #327
dokem wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to a job where I have an office for the first time and it really makes me question HTF open layouts have cough so much traction among employees. I think there was a push away from 'boring' offices and now no one even remembers or knows what having an office is like. I also don't buy the idea that there is really any hindrance to collaboration or casual socialization around the office. And no more packing u…

That no one remembers what it's like having an office is the system working as intended. The open office layout is meant to reduce costs as it's cheaper to cram more people in fewer square meters of physical space. It's also cheaper to reorganize teams/furniture in an open office layout. Plus, it allows managers to look over their demesne unimpeded.

Yea I get why mgmt is creaming over it, but it also seems like a lot of employees are too for no valid reason.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#336

Post by politician »

tezzer wrote: post #299
politician wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that if people were in the office for 40 hours a week, that you would expect to get a sustained rate of 280 days worth of work done per week? Or are you saying that given the creative thinking time alone that accumulated slowly over a period of time WFH, that the team was able to make 7 days worth of progress in one hour primarily due to the fact that everyone had plenty of time to understand the i…

No, I'm not confusing anything. I'm stating my team made a great deal of progress when we got together in the office over a sticky problem; and attributing the progress to the random directions the conversation and problem solving effort took when we were in one room bouncing ideas off each other and poking hardware together.

Look, I miss having whiteboard conversations too, but if throwing all of the developers into a smelly open plan mosh pit that's a 45 minute commute from home 5 days a week just for that clutch hour of collaboration, count me out. It's just not worth it.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#337

Post by politician »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #334
mym1990 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound as if going into the office is literally some kind of torture(and I guess for some percentage of the population it is). This 'do you colleagues feel the same way?' argument is circular and the question can be posed both ways. Separating the two to allow people a preference one way or the other is a difficult problem that has been addressed by many companies by simply making everyone come into the office. It…

The office is fine. It's nice to chill with my coworkers. I've been remote since 2015 and I kinda miss that, sometimes. The commute there and back, sometimes an hour one way depending on traffic and weather, absolutely is torture. In the middle of summer or depth of winter it can be miserable. My 8-9 hour workday would often be closer to 10-11 hours, and I'd arrive home exhausted and annoyed. Travel via train was wor…

(Un)fortunately, I think that the reality is that for many people, the office is their social outlet, they are indeed friends with their coworkers (for now anyway), and they live downtown in a 200 sq. ft. apartment with 2 roommates that is 100' from the office.

For folks in this situation, WFH is probably intolerable.

It's just the case that not everyone is in the same situation, and I think people forget that when they make claims that boil down to "WFH is 100% bad and we should all go to the office." (or the opposite)

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#338

Post by mym1990 »

mike_d wrote: post #320
mym1990 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rooted in fondness according to who? Are you saying that someone that expresses an inclination for in-person collaboration is actually deceiving themselves into remembering the experiences differently than they actually were?

That person may be accurately remembering the experience they had in the before-times, however that world just doesn't exist anymore.

I mean technically no world in the past exists anymore, but in-person collaboration is certainly still a thing, albeit it is on somewhat of a pause right now. I guess no one really knows how this whole thing shakes out if we look 5-10 years out, but my bet is that humans being social creatures will drive a good number of people back into collaborative in-person working spaces.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#339

Post by marcind »

shaftway wrote: post #211

I feel like I'm in the minority here, but I am chomping at the bit to get back into the office. I'm a Senior SWE. I've got ADHD. Work from home has been * catastrophic* for me. I don't have the ability to focus. I have no space in my home where I can work distraction-free, and no ability to create a space separate from my family. From home I can slack off for an hour... or two... or days, and nobody notices because m…

From one fellow whiteboard junky to another: please give ShareTheBoard.com a try. It's no replacement for the real thing but it's a quick fix (ha!) and, I dare say, solves a problem or too.

As for the need for structure: I can understand this quite well. Both as a PdM and as a lifelong fan of my son.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#340

Post by theshrike79 »

aroundtown wrote: post #132

Give me a dedicated office with a door that can shut, allow me to commute during off-peak rush hours, and raise my pay or shorten my work hours for the same rate... then we will talk about coming back in. Currently: I have an dedicated office at home, I can shut my door and work when I need to be distraction free. I don't have my head pinched by headphones for hours, and I can work in silence like I prefer. No cowork…

> If I'm waiting for responses or reviews, I can veg out, watch Netflix or play a video game, while staying on top of my email and work load.

I pretty much finished all of Spider-Man on PS4 just on my work breaks while letting my brain churn out problems in the background.

When my brain goes ding, I can pause the game, walk the 3 meters to my work laptop and keep working until I get stuck again.

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