Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 479 posts

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#91

Post by esolyt »

allarm wrote: post #84
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

> If you like/prefer going to the office that is fine. I am not trying to say we should all be remote. Companies should offer FLEXIBILITY to let employees choose where to work from. That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

That does work. Before the pandemics I worked many years with the majority of my team being overseas, in multiple companies. There's nothing wrong with the hybrid approach and never was. For many companies it's always been the default approach, for global companies specifically. I am also not sure why you put "that doesn't work" and "I prefer" together - your preferences are not really relevant to this case.

What do you mean their preference is not relevant? They're providing an example using their personal experience.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#92

Post by kvgr »

robertwt7 wrote: post #80

I've read this post a week ago (gee I browse reddit too much) Not sure how I feel about this, maybe flexibility is the real answer? Some days I woke up and I don't feel like working from home. It feels good to go out and walk to our company's cool office. If I don't feel like it, then I'd just stay home.

I was thinking of renting cheap one person office, so I get out of the appartment. And have a distinction of enviroment. Not really worth the money in my current job. But when I get remote job for “western” company it will be peanuts.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#94

Post by sam0x17 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

> If you like/prefer going to the office that is fine. I am not trying to say we should all be remote. Companies should offer FLEXIBILITY to let employees choose where to work from. That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

I hate that people keep framing it as a "preference" issue. There are HUGE economic and environmental costs that go along with working in and (often) commuting to an office. Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs.

We don't need to destroy our planet, dramatically increase costs, and dramatically lower productivity just to appease the minority of people that prefer playing office space, and I think more and more people are starting to see it that way.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#95

Post by watwut »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

> If you like/prefer going to the office that is fine. I am not trying to say we should all be remote. Companies should offer FLEXIBILITY to let employees choose where to work from. That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

I dont mind being in office, but I meetings are much much better online. Especially those long ones. You can stretch legs, exercise a little, eat or whatever.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#96

Post by corty »

hermitdev wrote: post #27
cradcore wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should your preferences dictate what other people do? What makes your preference for having people in the office more important than their preference to want to work from home?

Why should the people preferring to work from home get preference, either? At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. No dropped calls or poor connections or VPN drops or whatever. As an engineer, I sympathize with the poster. When I need…

Even before the pandemic, in the office, most of the collaboration was remote. Even with people in the same building, because lack of meeting rooms, noisy open-space office and loong looong walks down endless hallways we'd all rather do a quick telephone conference. My direct colleagues were just a table away of course, but collaboration isn't just with them. On the other hand, teams were also spread out across half the world, so lots of things could only be done remotely. Working from home wasn't much of a change there. In total, 90% of communication wasn't done in person but by some kind of remote com.

And since the current trend in our company (and I guess a lot of others) is "hotdesking", where you pull a ticket when entering the building which tells you what desk might be free. Well, no sitting near direct colleagues anymore. So the last advantage of the office is gone as well. Unfortunately it doesn't stop management from hallucinating the great back-in-the-office future after the pandemic...

Yes, I'll also be looking for a new job.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#97

Post by prox »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #13
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

> If you like/prefer going to the office that is fine. I am not trying to say we should all be remote. Companies should offer FLEXIBILITY to let employees choose where to work from. That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

I totally feel the draw to both. Personally, I really like the freedom of WFH and it wins out against the benefits of being in office for me. But I can see the appeal to being in office too; there's something really nice about working with your teammates, especially if you get along with them and learn from each other. The thing with your attitude though, is that you're saying it only works for you if everyone is in…

My main employer is always very flexible, even before the pandemic, I just met one day in the office (everyone else had to be there too) and the rest I was free to chose. Perfect combination of seeing eachother and WFH.

We had small rooms so distraction was not a point. Commute was 25minutes.

I do believe we should get more flexibility where possible.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#98

Post by colechristensen »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #13
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

> If you like/prefer going to the office that is fine. I am not trying to say we should all be remote. Companies should offer FLEXIBILITY to let employees choose where to work from. That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

I totally feel the draw to both. Personally, I really like the freedom of WFH and it wins out against the benefits of being in office for me. But I can see the appeal to being in office too; there's something really nice about working with your teammates, especially if you get along with them and learn from each other. The thing with your attitude though, is that you're saying it only works for you if everyone is in…

>And that's a perfectly reasonable approach to hiring for a new company.

And likely discriminatory.

I prefer working from home because I (am caring for an ailing parent|just had a baby|am not neurotypical|have a disability|etc.)

WFH is going to start being seen as a "reasonable accommodation" because the last 18 months have proven that lots of jobs can be done just fine without a physical office and denying that to employees who benefit from it for protected reasons isn't going to fly.

In short: suck it up. Dialing a few people in to an in person meeting is fine. Maybe it doesn't work exactly as well for some reasons but so what? Getting along well with your coworkers doesn't require colocation.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#99

Post by foxes »

Seems like their life would be dramatically better if they didn’t have some horrible car hellscape based commute. Pity cities are designed and spread out so because of cars.

Then making the office more comfortable and flexible without people micromanaging would be the next thing.

Re: I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

#100

Post by bpye »

tshaddox wrote: post #82
RHSeeger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. You say this like it's a foregone conclusion, a fact. I disagree with it completely. It's far easier to collaborate remotely. You don't need find a meeting room, you don't need to worry about m…

> You don't need find a meeting room You have to pay for your own. > you don't need to worry about making too much noise Unless other people live in your home. > you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic. That’s comparing all-remote to some-remote, which is a different comparison than all-remote to all-in-office.

If you have a company with more than one office I think having some meetings with remote participants is an unavoidable truth. Perhaps not every meeting - but anything requiring collaboration between teams or features groups could require it.
Post reply on HN