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Tragedy of return to hostile offices

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#71

Post by foooorsyth »

AlexandrB wrote: post #40
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…

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 loved my cube at my first job. We even had a biometric door that separated engineering from the rest of the company. Only engineers behind the door. Juniors and mid levels working in cubes. A few tenured engineers, the primary engineering manager, VP of engineering, and CTO working in offices. Only two meetings per week — all other time was head down programming and ad hoc discussions. The median volume of the room was silence.

I was in focus heaven and I didn’t even know it. Miss that job.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#72

Post by itishappy »

Hackbraten wrote: post #18
rossdavidh wrote: post #13

So, I have often worked remotely, think it's fine, and makes sense in some cases. But, honestly, this is a professional-class issue, and every article about it seems written from a viewpoint that has forgotten about most of the population. The waitress and cook never had the option of working remotely, nor did the factory worker, the construction worker, the taxicab driver, the truck driver, etc. etc. Most of the pop…

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.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#73

Post by IggleSniggle »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #22
rossdavidh wrote: post #13

So, I have often worked remotely, think it's fine, and makes sense in some cases. But, honestly, this is a professional-class issue, and every article about it seems written from a viewpoint that has forgotten about most of the population. The waitress and cook never had the option of working remotely, nor did the factory worker, the construction worker, the taxicab driver, the truck driver, etc. etc. Most of the pop…

My wife works customer service remotely. > The longer we bemoan being forced to go to work in order to get paid, the more the rest of the population becomes convinced that the professional class is entitled and a bit spoiled. I stopped caring about what random strangers think when I was in high school. The correct answer to this is to tell these random people who have no skin in the game to fuck off.

The real world is just high school with bigger stakes. You can "not care" all you want as long as you're quiet about it. But if you start badmouthing the bully or whining in class every day about not having enough time to eat lunch, you might improve things but there's a much higher chance it just turns out bad for you.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#74

Post by chasd00 »

Zigurd wrote: post #45
manuelabeledo wrote: post #17

In some ways, OP’s suggestions are a recipe for building hostile teams! Why would I be entitled to interrupt someone to review my code, just because they are sitting next to me? Always on zoom? No, thanks. It invariably devolves into micromanaging. Constant KPI awareness? Most companies cannot even agree on how a valuable KPI looks like. Remote pair programming? Honest question here, is pair programming still a thing…

Pair programming isn't widely practiced for obvious reasons: It looks like you just made your code twice as expensive. There are studies justifying the cost by showing it can be recovered with less testing, code review, and bug hunting. But that evidently hasn't been persuasive. Also, anyone familiar with statistical quality control (SQC or SQA) would look at pair programming and see 100% inspection. Very suboptimal…

have you ever done pair programming? like actually sit there and be forced to do it? It's absolutely infuriating to anyone who values anything. I spent 20min trying to convince my "pair" that it was ok for a comment to be a sentence fragment and not a complete sentence. Every keystroke is the same conversation over and over. After that experience, i pulled rank and said i will never pair program again and haven't since.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#75

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

chasd00 wrote: post #39
Devasta wrote: post #19

I work in Cork, Ireland. My boss is in Dublin, his boss Singapore, my staff in Nova Scotia, Devs in Manila, clients in London and New York. I'm always working remotely, no matter where I am, as is anyone who works in any multi office company. The RTO is being entirely driven from the top by institutional investors wanting to avoid losses on property investments and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple wit…

> The RTO is being entirely driven from the top by institutional investors wanting to avoid losses on property investments and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple with the fact they dont have friends or hobbies and need you in the office so that they dont feel like such embarrassing losers. I know i'm supposed to "contribute to the conversation" but it's important to recognize that the above point is exa…

More amusingly, not that long ago my direct boss was denying it was the case, but it was not until recent RTO call that he ( and his boss ) finally admitted something along the lines of 'yeah, we got commercial real estate on our books so like you know, we should do our part'.

So yeah, I am told to subsidize failing real estate without getting anything in return. Won't I think of the poor, poor investment managers and their real estate? Why would I? Do they think about me?

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#76

Post by twh270 »

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.

Notice how shi*y companies always seem to find that "unfairness" needs to be "fixed" by removing the benefit?

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#77

Post by wbobeirne »

Devasta wrote: post #19

I work in Cork, Ireland. My boss is in Dublin, his boss Singapore, my staff in Nova Scotia, Devs in Manila, clients in London and New York. I'm always working remotely, no matter where I am, as is anyone who works in any multi office company. The RTO is being entirely driven from the top by institutional investors wanting to avoid losses on property investments and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple wit…

> and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple with the fact they dont have friends or hobbies and need you in the office so that they dont feel like such embarrassing losers.

I can see why office culture doesn't appeal to you, you sound like a grump who doesn't enjoy the comraderie you can form with people that you spend 40 hours a week with. If you can enjoy the cognitive dissonance of socializing with black squares in a zoom, that's great, but I'd rather enjoy the time I spend working, not merely tolerate it. I don't think that makes me a loser.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#78

Post by kukkeliskuu »

pid-1 wrote: post #35
Devasta wrote: post #19

I work in Cork, Ireland. My boss is in Dublin, his boss Singapore, my staff in Nova Scotia, Devs in Manila, clients in London and New York. I'm always working remotely, no matter where I am, as is anyone who works in any multi office company. The RTO is being entirely driven from the top by institutional investors wanting to avoid losses on property investments and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple wit…

How does that work? Are institucional investors writing "plz return to office or we are going bust" emails to every company?

I worked under a C-level person who was otherwise a pretty sensible guy, but he had participated in a workshop about this, in a 1000 person company. After the workshop he instituted a RTO policy. The policy was more lenient than the company policy, but still needlessly strict. In personal discussions he stated that in the workshop they discussed that all people would slack away from work given the opportunity. He seemed agitated about it. I guess this was how the C-level was "motivated".

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#79

Post by TheCoelacanth »

eptcyka wrote: post #49
pid-1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work? Are institucional investors writing "plz return to office or we are going bust" emails to every company?

They don't need to explain themselves. Big enough shareholders just can express their needs to the board, a vote can be held and, if the decision is not implemented, courts can get involved.

Courts getting involved over something like that isn't realistic. A more likely outcome is board members getting fired.

Re: Tragedy of return to hostile offices

#80

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Devasta wrote: post #19

I work in Cork, Ireland. My boss is in Dublin, his boss Singapore, my staff in Nova Scotia, Devs in Manila, clients in London and New York. I'm always working remotely, no matter where I am, as is anyone who works in any multi office company. The RTO is being entirely driven from the top by institutional investors wanting to avoid losses on property investments and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple wit…

> the fact they dont have friends or hobbies and need you in the office so that they dont feel like such embarrassing losers

You must be a great person to work with if this is whats going on with your internal monologue about the people you interact closely with.

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