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I Miss Working from the Office

roguelazer.com

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Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#81

Post by iso947 »

nickff wrote: post #41
canofbars wrote: post #29

>I fundamentally do not think remote teams can ever be as productive as in-person teams. Trade an anecdote for an anecdote. We have found our dev team to be exactly as productive if not more since moving to work from home. A single instance of productive remote work invalidates this statement that it is literally impossible for remote work to be productive.

The OP's claim is slightly vague, but would most charitably be read as saying that if you compare all teams (as in the total of all teams around the world), they will perform better in-person than remote, and that this is unlikely to change. You seem to be interpreting the OP as having said that each and every team is always better in-person. Your read is plausible, but HN guidelines say we should interpret charitabl…

OP offers no evidence though, just an anecdote

How many companies have a set up where people hotdesk nowhere near their team (sometimes in different buildings) and encourage all meetings online because there is not enough meeting space? I don’t know, but I know it’s not zero.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#82

Post by w0utert »

Jugurtha wrote: post #65

Yes. Some people on the internet were also advocating for a return to the office because people could not stand the loneliness anymore and need to interact socially. I had to point out that this was symptomatic of a poor social/family life [outside of work]. If someone is lonely working remotely and they miss humans, it is a sign the only humans they interacted with were colleagues. It's also a sign of what the perso…

I don’t understand this comment, do you suggest all forms of social contacts are created equal and people should just replace the social interactions they used to have with co-workers by visiting their family more often, organizing more poker nights with friends or taking salsa classes or whatever?

That makes absolutely no sense, these interactions are completely different from those you would have with your co-workers, and it’s perfectly normal even for people with an otherwise active social life to miss those. My friends and family are almost universally incomparable to my coworkers in almost every way.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#84

Post by 0-_-0 »

mrweasel wrote: post #15

The biggest one for is, as mentioned in the article: casuasl collaboration. I mis being able to just walk over to a coworker. I’m just home every other week, which strikes a reasonable balance for me.

Do your coworkers also miss you just walking over to them?

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#85

Post by mrweasel »

pracer wrote: post #67
mrweasel wrote: post #15

The biggest one for is, as mentioned in the article: casuasl collaboration. I mis being able to just walk over to a coworker. I’m just home every other week, which strikes a reasonable balance for me.

If you think about it, what you miss is the possibility to interrupt others at any time, which is not very considerate once you realise it. Calling it "casual collaboration" is not honest, as that's not collaboration. The other person is not collaborating, just being interrupted to help you with something. the only thing I agree is that you lost the casual talks in the coffee break or kitchen, but that is not always…

I’m normally the one who gets interupted. The part I miss is helping a co-worker, I always thought that was very considerate of me.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#86

Post by taneq »

feralimal wrote: post #13

No offices, everyone work at home - everyone so busy... And then you look around, what is all this work achieving? What were we achieving when we worked in the office? Were we doing anything real at all?

This is why I like automation. Not test harnesses; actual machines that make things. It’s real in a way websites and apps just aren’t.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#87

Post by StavrosK »

iso947 wrote: post #78
StavrosK wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably just haven't used anything better. Even email is better than Slack for work-related stuff. I greatly prefer Zulip, I've written up why here: https://www.stavros.io/posts/seven-tips-great-remote-culture...

Your view is that email is better than slack. OP has experience with email and judges slack to be better. Neither are “right” or “wrong” I find Slack is better than Skype For IM. I find zoom the best for face to face meetings and screen sharing (slack doesn’t seem to have a “share this window” option), but slack for starting a quick call and for asynchronous comms, and things like changes and alerts. Email for comms…

The fact that OP has used email doesn't mean that he's done work collaboration exclusively over email. Obviously some of the people who have done both might prefer Slack, but the difference is so large that I find it unlikely.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#88

Post by PeterStuer »

Most people that were not already WFH before the virus hit are confusing WFH with the effects of (semi-)lockdowns.

No commute actually gives you under normal conditions the time to build out a real social life instead of a substitute work social life.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#89

Post by lokedhs »

enriquto wrote: post #79

I feel really miserable working from home. Cannot get anything done. 1. Main problem is lack of social interaction. I now realize most of my work projects started in casual coffee conversations with people from other groups. Now there's nothing like that, and planned meetings never work that way. 2. Also, I really miss my commute. I had 15km of bike lanes in the forest every day, that were essential to reset my mind…

Over here (Singapore), we were out of the office for several months, and while it was annoying, I didn't feel too bad about it. At least I could sleep in in the morning.

My biggest problem was because I work a lot with people in Europe which meant that I ended up working very late every night, since there was no natural way to stop in the evening.

Now that we're back in the office 50% of the time, I realise just how much nicer that is. You really get isolated when working from home, and one doesn't really notice it until you actually come back.

Re: I Miss Working from the Office

#90

Post by lokedhs »

chrismcb wrote: post #46
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…

Before my current job I worked from home for 8 of 9 years. Right in the middle I worked in an office in a small start up. We were about 10 people squeezed into a space the size of my living room. I spent more time chatting with them over some form of messenger than I did in my remote jobs! And no, I feel like I get more done, because I don't have someone just turning sideways and interupting me. While it may be quick…

That may be the case for you, but for many people, their job requires them to communicate with a lot of people. For these kinds of jobs, being in the office is a lot more efficient.

If I was a regular developer, working on a single part of a larger application, I would have zero problems working from home. Once you're in a position where you have to coordinate work with several other people, things are very different.

I can imaging that people who manages large teams have a lot of problems dealing with that remotely.

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