[HN Gopher] Want employees to return to the office? Then give ea...
___________________________________________________________________
Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an
office
Author : fortran77
Score : 657 points
Date : 2023-08-09 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| penguin_booze wrote:
| When the work I'm doing is the same both from home and from the
| said private office, I _don 't_ want to come--as simple as that.
| No, and no thanks.
| pookha wrote:
| I've never worked from home. I wouldn't even know what to do with
| myself...In the red hot heat of the pandemic (April of 2020) I
| was commuting to an office with 50+ other people (developers) in
| a cubicle forest. I even worked with an elderly lady. I caught
| covid something like three times and I'm waiting for the next
| round to fire up again. Working in DC has its advantages but
| dodging plagues is not one of them.
| rndmnflnce wrote:
| We have a whole kitchen staff that prepares very good breakfast
| and lunch for us (no dinner!). The kitchen is also open for
| beverages/snacks throughout the day. We have a great gym with
| trainers. That is enough for me to come into the office everyday.
| cxf12 wrote:
| WFH is a huge improvement in the work-life balance metric. You
| provide WFH and at least half of that W-LB issue is solved.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Having an office doesn't change how crappy a commute is.
|
| Or how annoying people in the office are... looking at you people
| who reheat fish, or try and peddle your kids' cookies and bags of
| popcorn, or show up sick and act like you don't think they rest
| of us notice you didn't wash your hands after blowing your nose.
|
| Or how literally everything in my house is more comfortable for
| me. I don't want florescent lights, or bright lights at all... I
| want my dual 4k monitors and comfy chair that doesn't get stolen
| by some random dude while I'm in a meeting just because they ran
| out of chairs in the conference room again.
|
| I don't want pointless "all hands" meetings once a week where
| some guy who wants to hear himself talk stands up and bores
| everyone with new HR policies or sales numbers, while serving a
| few bits of snack food that people flock to like it's their last
| supper.
|
| What do I miss about the office? Meh, I miss how easy it was to
| grab a few people and do a happy hour after work. I miss some of
| the "culture" like foosball tables, or pranks, or stupid inside
| jokes about how the Keurig machine on Floor 2 will electrocute
| you... I miss being able to race up and down the stairs and the
| feeling of getting a win when I beat the people who took the
| elevator. Stupid little stuff I guess.
|
| But it's going to take a lot more than just an office to make me
| not want to work from home.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Private office with a dog bed under my desk is table stakes.
|
| Separate offices would go towards driving up the value of
| commercial real estate which seems to be important to companies.
| swsdsailor wrote:
| Maybe if the commute was on the clock, people would be more
| willing to do it.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| There is one sentence at the very beginning that is completely
| false:
|
| > But remote workers don't build the skills and connections that
| can help them one day get a better job.
|
| It is so wrong yet it's repeated so much some people started to
| believe it. Maybe at some specific jobs or in some companies
| where management doesn't understand remote culture, but otherwise
| it's blatantly false as evidenced by all the people who switched
| from one remote job to another with a salary increase.[0]
|
| [0] Could they get an even better job if they had worked in the
| office? Maybe, maybe not, but it's clear what was important for
| them.
| camgunz wrote:
| After years of thinkpieces about RTO, my take now is "why is this
| up to employers at all?" Workers should get to pick their
| environments and their tradeoffs. If I super enjoy a
| collaborative open office space I should be able to find one. If
| I super enjoy a 100% remote/asynchronous configuration I should
| be able to find that too.
|
| So much of this libertarian/right-wing/capitalist junk is
| ironically top-down and authoritarian. Maybe WFH is bad for
| innovation, or maybe RTO is bad for focus and thus innovation.
| Let's let the market sort it out, including the _labor_ market.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Does anyone else just have zero faith in this? If I came in to a
| gold plated office, our own barista, private rooms and a massage
| therapist, I'd love it. And I'd expect it all to disappear as
| soon as corporate got what they wanted...
| roywashere wrote:
| I never had a _private_ office but always worked in bigger or
| smaller open plan offices. About 10 years ago I had a consulting
| engagement at a company that was working from a 70s office
| building with private offices. They were going to tear it down
| because it was not 'modern' but that was _really great_ and I
| always wondered what happened and if we would not get back to
| that style of offices at some point! It's great to be able to
| work from a private environment, where you could still enjoy
| shared lunches, or pop into a co-workers office to jointly spec
| something out or... and yeah you can do that stuff on Zoom but
| it's _different_.
|
| And I understand how it's great to work from hom. I also have the
| luxury of a proper office room at home. I don't like my commute
| either, but having the laundry, family, whatever available as
| distractions is not always great in my opinion.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Hell is freezing over because holy crap I agree with Megan
| McArdle.
|
| Pre-pandemic office life was pretty crummy: you had crowded,
| noisy open-plan spaces. Most employees sat at their desk, put on
| their headphones, and quietly plodded away until quitting time -
| leaving their desks not to collaborate but to service their basic
| biological needs.
|
| Giving people quiet, private spaces that they can personalize
| would take much of the sting out of returning to the office.
| enahs-sf wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember high wall cubicals.
| Lutzb wrote:
| I still remember two person offices. Real doors, large desks,
| large whiteboards.
| enahs-sf wrote:
| Sounds incredible depending on who your officemate is
| tfandango wrote:
| Me too. I honestly didn't mind it as much as I thought I would.
| I much preferred it to the open office I ended up in for 15
| years. I had some bookshelves, a whiteboard, some semblance of
| silence.
| jarjoura wrote:
| I loved having my own office briefly during the end of the 2000s,
| but that's not really a perk in my mind. If I'm going to commute
| 45 minutes into an office, the value is being next to the people
| I'm there to work with. Going from my home office that I've
| spec'd out and make exactly how I want my workspace to be, to
| another isolated lonely corporate office, seems, like a side-
| grade.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| If you want me to spend 2 hours+ of my day commuting then pay me
| for it.
| soggybread wrote:
| Being a level-1 helpdesk tech I never got to work from home as my
| job requires hands on work with servers, swapping drives,
| plugging in cables, etc. I haven't seen my coworker in 3 years
| though. We like to joke that he finally ditched the buzz cut and
| grew it out like Fabio
| [deleted]
| meepmorp wrote:
| Open plan offices suck, no doubt, but that's not why I don't want
| to go back to one.
|
| WFH means my whole life doesn't center around my job and its
| schedule. I'm home for when my kids go to and return from school,
| I can make lunch or dinner while sitting in the kitchen with my
| laptop, and I don't have to spend a couple hours a day commuting.
| kubectl_h wrote:
| I'd gladly go back to the office if the company did away with
| Slack in favor of email and meetings.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Some people are missing the social part of the office life.
|
| I only miss the meals with colleagues, but that is not worth the
| extra time wasted on commute and the productivity loss of being
| interrupted by noise and jack-asses.
|
| Middle managers are missing the sense of control, I think they
| rarely pay for themselves, with WFH this is even more apparent.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| 8 years, 2 different jobs, of my career have been WFH,
| exclusively because I was remote. Each time, I thought it as the
| coolest thing at first, and came to loathe it over time. I tried
| many of the techniques you're supposed to (breaks on the hour,
| dedicated space, put shoes on, etc). But I found that over time,
| what emerged was that I was working half time all the time. Work
| and other activities just blurred and I was half present for
| everything (family, work, faith, sleep, recreation, etc).
| Advocates are probably just better than me at compartmentalizing.
| Though I found that many of my also work from home peers seemed
| to just be skating along as well. I can't say that everyone falls
| into the pitfalls, but I can also state that I know I am not
| alone.
|
| In the late 90s, I was an early adopter of XP. Pair programming
| and borg like unity seemed really cool. I had a set of motivated
| peers. We actually had to get lots of special permissions and
| suffer raised eyebrows to take down some of the cubicle walls on
| our own time to create a more open collaborative work space. This
| was really cool at first. Over time, as the makeup of the team
| morphed, it became less so. What had been open tables of people
| working side by side, morphed into everyone sitting around the
| edge facing outwards.
|
| Now days I'm working in a larger lab with two of us as permanent
| residents and two others that sit in there with us sometimes. My
| commute to work involves two lights and a seven minute drive to
| work. I've been given the opportunity to occupy a soon to be
| vacant solo office across the hall and I'll be jumping on that.
| Our lab has become a constant cross roads of visiting, much of it
| not even remotely work related.
|
| After these various experiences, I've concluded a couple of
| things in the final legs of my career journey (I've got around 15
| years left).
|
| 1. Individuals will absolutley work and thrive better if you give
| each one their own space where their own identity and choices are
| manifest -- this means real walls, a closeable door, the ability
| to play music (quietly) if they want, sunlight, and plants if
| desired. I have especially observed this with interns and new
| hires. They need their own little den to hide in. Most people
| will appreciate it (in the long run) if the space is actually
| small enough that while they can express some autonomy/agency,
| it's not a large enough space for others to corner you and talk
| to you because they're avoiding work.
|
| 2. Collaborative desire comes from within a person. When it
| manifests, you should absolutely enable and support it, but never
| compulse it. The company will realize cool 1 + 1 > 2 effects if
| they do. Providing open spaces with tables, boards, at near
| convenience to said office spaces is a great thing. But you can't
| force people into those spaces. "The fishbowls will continue
| until creativity and innovation thrive" is synonymous with "the
| meetings will continue until morale improves."
|
| 3. I recognize the above is the least efficient from a logistics
| point of view for the office planners. Not just one space per
| employee, but two? And how do you scale it with people coming
| to/leaving from organizations? I honestly don't know. I've been
| told for years "how hard can it be? It's just software?" So to
| you office planners, I'm passing on this encouragement "how hard
| can it be? It's just peopleware?"
| itpragmatik wrote:
| Absolutely awful - whoever brought in this trend of "open office
| floor plan"! Please go back to having mini offices for everyone
| or at the very least cubicles with decent sized walls to get some
| privacy!
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Always found it funny that software engineers think they have so
| much power just because of relatively high compensation. (And
| ease of finding new jobs- guess not so much, this year.) But pre-
| pandemic, how much labor power did SWEs have in determining
| whether or not they could work in a private office or even a
| cubicle as opposed on the open floor? And soon, how much power do
| you have to determine whether you can WFH or not?
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Engineers who have been playing arbitrage with bay area
| salaries in LCOL areas have incredible leverage now.
|
| My mortgage is $2k a month and my finances are in fantastic
| shape because I was making hay while the sun was shining.
|
| What's more likely? They'll convince me to uproot my family and
| pull them across the country and away form their grandparents
| to increase "in-person synergy..."
|
| Or I'll just take a marginal-paying job at a startup working
| remote? Heck, I'll start applying for jobs at the local sewer
| plant ($22/hr starting pay with benefits!) than move my family
| back to the bay area.
| physicsguy wrote:
| It totally depends on the market a candidate or company is
| operating in. A strong candidate has a lot more leverage than a
| weak one. A company that underpays in the local market has
| better luck hiring if they open their pool to remote. A company
| wanting a specific skill set might not find anyone willing to
| work for them without flexibility.
| gdubs wrote:
| It's been wild to see the amount of news stories that came out
| this summer all at the same time - this enormous back-to-office
| push that's not at all some kind of commercial real-estate PR
| campaign.
|
| Anyway, one thing that gets thrown around a lot is the 'hallway
| conversation'. This idea that work is suffering because people
| aren't getting together spontaneously, or they're lacking the
| high-fidelity in-person exchanges, etc, etc.
|
| But the funny thing is, over the years I've been in countless in-
| person intensive sprints. Week long exhaustive affairs where
| people are all in a room, brainstorming, planning.
|
| Great ideas happen! But, how many of those sprints actually lead
| to action in the company? Once the herd-followers force everyone
| back into the panopticon, what then will they blame the lack of
| innovation on? Or are we simply pretending that prior to the
| pandemic every company in the world was truly operating at genius
| level, and it wasn't largely a by-product of a zero-interest-rate
| phenomenon?
|
| "Sorry - gotta go, someone else needs this room."
| johnaspden wrote:
| Oh God, yes! I'm old enough to remember when people thought it
| was important to have quiet and privacy to think.
|
| I used to love my job. All my life I've loved programming, and I
| used to love being able to solve other people's problems for them
| by doing the thing I love.
|
| And I used to love being surrounded by other people who were
| interested in the same things as me, all collaborating on a
| project to make something useful.
|
| The open-plan curse killed it for me. For years I've done as
| little paid work as I can get away with because I hate trying to
| think in an open-plan horror so much. It's like having my brain
| in a blender.
|
| I still program, and think, a lot, but I only do it for other
| people when I need the money.
| [deleted]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Eh, I mean.. it is better than some of the other ideas that were
| floated just over the past few months:
|
| - we donate to a charity of your choice and keep the tax writeoff
| - we let you rent a hotel room from us - we have a special room,
| where you can cloister yourself for a little bit when you want to
| be alone
|
| By comparison.. your own office is an actual perk.. either WFH is
| getting close or someone with actual ear to the ground is
| listening. It is still wrong. But it is less wrong.
| acd wrote:
| The productivity loss for working in open plan work spaces is
| 15%-20%. Compare the cost of space vs hiring 20% more employees.
| neosat wrote:
| No - it may work for some employees but it's not far from what
| will make people who prefer remotely want to suddenly return to
| office.
|
| More importantly, return to office, as the end goal isn't a good
| end-goal. Sure it can work reasonably well when everyone is in
| the office, but the pandemic 'experiment' has clearly shown us
| that remote, hybrid are also workable models. Each model: all on-
| site, hybrid, flexible have their pros and cons and the
| outstanding organizations of the future will be the ones that can
| create an environment where people who thrive in each model and
| co-work.
|
| The right end-goals should be around more around the lines of
| productivity, teams hitting/exceeding their goals consistently,
| employee retention, employee happiness among other things.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| I don't think people understand how cheap people in Ukraine,
| Poland and other countries are willing to work if companies go
| fully remote.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That argument always gets used as a threat which makes no
| sense. Outsourcing has been a thing for decades. If they were
| remotely serious they would have done so already and reaped the
| premiums. They don't so the only response is to put up or shut
| up, and they sure aren't putting up.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Before they could have people in the office to manage. Now
| that developers appear to refuse to show up, what's the
| difference? Do you think there aren't talented devs in
| Ukraine, South America, or Poland?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| when I worked in Germany we had small offices for 2 or 3 people.
| I thought that was perfect. You could have nice, quiet chats and
| really work on things together. Open office seems to be something
| made up by super extroverts who think things get done best in a
| loud and frantic way where everybody yells at each other. And
| cubes seem to be made up by people who like to dehumanize
| workers.
|
| Interestingly the execs who push hardest for WFH are a) almost
| never at the office and b) have a nice private office with
| windows.
| gedy wrote:
| Even with that, no company has paid me enough in 20 years to live
| near the office that is safe and family friendly. Sorry not
| sorry.
|
| BTW I keep hearing benefits of "RTO" - but I've never worked for
| a company that only has a single office, so we end up on video
| calls with other teams and team members anyways even when the
| company didn't allow WFH.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Even during our one day a month "mandatory" in office day we
| for some reason still have a teams call set up with people on
| the line.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > we end up on video calls with other teams and team members
| anyways even when the company didn't allow WFH.
|
| This has been my experience at every company I've been with in
| the last 15 years. The reason why I don't find these "increases
| collaboration and teamwork" arguments persuasive is because
| when everyone has been in the office, the work processes and
| level of collaboration were not different at all.
| cyrillite wrote:
| Oh, I'll go back to the office for a very significant pay rise.
| That's the only reason, though.
| dahwolf wrote:
| A recent internal company poll/discussion about the design of the
| new office building revealed a pretty hard split: talkers and
| workers.
|
| All the manager types, HR, comms...people that spent all day
| talking, they all want more "collaboration" rooms.
|
| All the other types, people actually doing tasks, want more
| "concentration rooms".
|
| The collaboration people don't like that. There can't be too many
| concentration rooms and attendance is max 2 hours per day.
|
| It's all so pathetic. It's truly baffling how in our society that
| ordinarily aggressively optimizes for costs and efficiency,
| businesses really believe that employees should collaborate MORE.
|
| The entire fucking problem is that there's TOO MUCH of it.
| Endless meetings, emails and chat with very little to show for
| it. How can you stand by and piss away all your money on
| buildings nobody wants to be at to do absolutely nothing of
| actual value for most of the day?
|
| Make it make sense.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| A lot of contempt for non engineers in this comment. HR, comms,
| and managers are also doing tasks. Collaborative tasks are just
| as legitimate as solo engineering ones.
| helpfulmandrill wrote:
| I've literally never worked somewhere where people other than
| upper-management had individual offices. I'm on board with the
| theory of why its better, but I think it would feel weird to
| start with. I might grow to love it, but it wouldn't be an
| immediate enticement.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| People who like WFH will never want to return to the office
| unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may
| be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time
| and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by
| a nicer office.
|
| Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those
| who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of
| scenery.
|
| A nicer office makes things better but it will not change
| people's minds on WFH.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I've been WFH for 20 years. My family's life has been built
| around it including choice of schools, my wife's job,
| activities, etc. We own one car.
|
| If I were to take a job downtown, my wife would have to get a
| different job, we'd have to pay for some level of child care,
| arrange transportation for school, drop various activities, buy
| a second car so I could drive to the train station (which comes
| with maintenance, insurance, registration, etc).
|
| The amount of money that would make any of this worth it is not
| small. You'd have to cover the additional expenses and then
| write a big check on top to compensate for disrupting our way
| of life.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I could see the coworking space take off a bit more, cause I
| have a colleague not far and we could walk/bike to a tiny cozy
| space to work on stuff out of sake of not staying at the same
| desk 24/7.
| cdme wrote:
| There's nothing an office can provide me that's better than the
| moments I have during the WFH day with our infant son as he
| grows.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Same, I have a 2 month old son. Nothing could bring me back
| to the office (extremely unrealistic compensation figures
| aside).
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| Respectfully, this is an example of rigid thinking that isn't
| productive or accurate.
|
| Apply marginal thinking the way economists do. People's
| propensity to return to the office falls on a spectrum ranging
| from 0 ( the people who are already back in their cubicles ) to
| 9 ( "You'll need a SWAT team to get me back to the office" ).
|
| A 5 on that scale is a marginal worker. Provide an incentive
| for them to return, like a nice office, and they become a 4 and
| return to the office. Now give a nice office to a population of
| 1000 workers who are distributed evenly over the above
| spectrum. They all move down by 1, and about 1/10th of them
| return to the office.
|
| Saying "People who like WFH will never want to return to the
| office" is only true of the 8's and 9's, not of the marginal
| worker. They are the ones who respond to incentives.
| eschneider wrote:
| It's much more "offer me work SO rewarding, the commute is
| worth it" or "money SO good, it makes the commute worth it."
| Office amenities probably won't get if done, as many folks
| can just setup the home office the way they want it, or at
| least as well as most private offices.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| For me it's the colleagues. Rubbing elbows with people much
| smarter and further in their careers than I am is worth
| making the ~20 min commute. But any incentive provides the
| same effect.
| regularfry wrote:
| Depends on the distribution though, doesn't it. My personal
| hunch is that it's strongly bimodal, and that there actually
| aren't that many in the middle.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| I agree with that point but disagree about the
| distribution. I myself am a 5, I go in about half the time.
| Obviously we can only speculate about others
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Personally, the commute is secondary. I hate being at the
| office. The office could be right next door to me and I still
| wouldn't want to go. Offices are cold, sterile, mentally
| unstimulating environments of constant surveillance. I never
| want to go into another one ever again
| criddell wrote:
| That's the benefit of having your own office -- you can make
| it comfortable.
|
| In mine I have music playing, I have a guitar for when I need
| to stop thinking about a problem, I have a bookshelf of books
| I love, I have a plant I care for, I have my own whiteboard,
| I have artwork, I have a balance board, and (fortunately) I
| have an amazing view. When I need a break, I can close my
| door to read, watch something, call a friend, or take a nap.
|
| Now I don't find myself watching videos, napping, or playing
| guitar all that often, but I don't when I'm working from home
| either.
| bluedino wrote:
| >> That's the benefit of having your own office -- you can
| make it comfortable.
|
| >> In mine I have music playing, I have a guitar for when I
| need to stop thinking about a problem
|
| I had a chessboard in my office at one time. It was
| basically a decoration, I think it was a secret santa gift
| or something, and it was never used until another guy and I
| started playing once every other week or so, at lunch.
|
| One day, over lunch, we were playing a game (and eating at
| the same table), and something $PRODUCTION crashed. Someone
| came into ask about the problem, we stopped what we were
| doing, and fixed it.
|
| Sometime after that, something else crashed, and then it
| became, "All they are doing in there is playing chess, no
| wonder x isn't working!".
|
| I took the chessboard home.
| NegativeK wrote:
| Your boss failed you.
| xur17 wrote:
| The "cold" aspect is one I really do not miss. During the
| summer (in Austin where it gets to 100F regularly), I had to
| wear a sweatshirt and long pants, and I was still cold.
| swader999 wrote:
| Constant surveillance. It really is like that.
| jowdones wrote:
| Surveillance is my main objection too, although my commute
| from suburbs to city center takes 3 hours per day if I have
| to do that.
|
| But at home I have side projects or learning projects. I
| get the 3 hours back and can spread them throughout the
| day. One hour in the morning, another one when I'm bored or
| tired of the job etc. If I go to the office it's nothing
| but a rather unappealing job domain and nothing else. Too
| tired in the evening to learn anything anymore, too
| stressed and still sleepy in the morning as well.
|
| So fuck the office, they'd have to pay me 50% more to
| compensate for the time lost in transit and I would still
| not take it.
| chaostheory wrote:
| It doesn't end with WFH especially if your work computer is
| a Windows box. Not sure how much MS telemetry collects, but
| it tends to be on in org managed windows computers
| giantrobot wrote:
| Joke's on them, my work laptop hasn't checked in with the
| company DC in months. They don't know what I'm doing
| (besides tickets and commits)! Though this means all
| sorts of shit trying to use my AD account is broken.
| Hooray Windows!
| hangonhn wrote:
| > People who like WFH will never want to return to the office
| unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home
|
| At my current job, there's something ironic about that. The
| people who never come back to the office despite being allowed
| to are also the people who live the closest to the office. (We
| have a big office that allows people to come back but is
| totally optional. Hotel desks for the entire office basically.)
| I asked one of them why he doesn't come in and he told me, "The
| reason I moved so close to the office in the first place is so
| I can minimize my commute. Now that I don't have to, why would
| I do the commute at all?"
|
| I think some people are just completely dead set against
| commuting or even working from an office. Another coworker told
| me, "Do you know how great this is? I can do my laundry in
| between meetings."
|
| From my experience, my employer's current situation is probably
| the most accommodating policy. If you want to work in an
| office, you can. If you don't, you don't have to. I do have
| coworkers who are actually suffering a bit from lack of
| interaction with other people but I think those people are
| starting to trickle back into the office for no other reason
| than for the socialization and interaction.
| lostdog wrote:
| > Hotel desks for the entire office basically.
|
| So your office is crappy?
|
| Similar story for my office. It's very close, but the
| facilities people made it terrible to work from. Why go in
| when I would get half as much work done?
| hangonhn wrote:
| Sorry, I think I used the wrong term. The desks we have are
| basically not assigned anyone permanently and are available
| as long as someone else hasn't reserved it for the day. I
| don't mean literal desks that they have at hotels. The
| office is rather nice TBH.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| A lot of people at my workplace use the office as a second
| "base" where they can settle for the day and is close to a
| lot of things.
|
| Since I live close to it, I never even though about doing
| this. And of course, the people that live the furthest away
| get the most value out of it. So, yeah, it's probably a very
| strong correlation, and not only for negative reasons.
| ghaff wrote:
| If I could walk to an office I'd probably do it now and
| then. But at a 30 minute drive (to an office where I
| wouldn't know anyone at this point) I'm not going to
| bother.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It's not the commute that stops me- it's the "being on". At
| home I don't have to dress a certain way, sit a certain way,
| eat a certain way, etc
|
| At home I'm either working or not working. I don't have to wear
| my public face. Wearing a public face is, if not tiring, at
| least irritating, like a mild itch you're not allowed to
| scratch, even though you could, but you shouldn't.
| BluePen7 wrote:
| For me I'm the exact opposite.
|
| Didn't mind working in the office, it was nice enough,
| coworkers are all friendly.
|
| But having to live anywhere near my office in a high COL area
| means I was priced out of affording even a 500 square foot
| apartment. Going remote meant that same salary bought me a
| newly built detached 6 bedroom house.
|
| I didn't mind the office, I minded being a poor renter
| instead of upper middle class. Office inconveniences pale in
| comparison.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Yea, i loathe the commute but i also can't afford to live
| 5min from an office _even if i wanted to_.. which i most
| definitely don 't. I want to own some small acreage (2-10
| acres depending), a big enough house for a guest room and
| two offices, etc.
| kergonath wrote:
| Some people like both and are happy with some balance. It's
| nice not to have to commute, but it's also nice to see
| colleagues and have a place to work outside home.
| theptip wrote:
| > A nicer office makes things better but it will not change
| people's minds on WFH.
|
| I suggest you consider behavior on the margin. Despite the fact
| that there are lots of people vocal about how much they
| love/hate RTO, there are also people that are indifferent or
| slightly prefer one or the other. Improvements in office
| quality will meaningfully persuade some number of people on the
| margin.
|
| It's an open question how steep the curve is (ie how much
| office improvement required to persuade 1% of people to change
| their mind) but I think it's myopic to just look at the
| partisans.
|
| All that said, sure, there is a nontrivial percentage who you
| couldn't change their minds with something like a dedicated
| office. But I think your claim is too strong that it's binary
| and all WFH likers will not be persuaded by this proposal.
| danaris wrote:
| I'm massively in favor of WFH--but I think this is a bit of an
| absolutist take.
|
| I can see plenty of people who are enjoying WFH, but would be
| willing to return to the office if they no longer had to work
| in a cube farm, but could have their own private office, that
| they could decorate to their taste, and where they could play
| their own music. And, perhaps most importantly, have a door
| that they could keep closed so that if anyone wants to
| interrupt them, they actually have to knock first.
|
| As someone who has done a 30-minute commute to a cube farm, a
| 45-minute and a 5-minute commute to a private office, and WFH,
| there's basically no reasonable amount of money you could pay
| me to go back to a cube farm, but if I didn't have specific
| personal reasons for wanting to remain fully remote, I would be
| very willing to consider another job in a private office.
| zer8k wrote:
| > if they no longer had to work in a cube farm,
|
| A cube farm is massively preferable to open offices. I never
| want to go back to working in an office but I _especially_
| never want to go back to an open office. The mixture of
| seeming too available, loud people all over the place, zero
| privacy, etc were revolting to me.
| danaris wrote:
| Oh, for sure--I've just only experienced the cube farm and
| the private office, so that's all I can personally speak
| to.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| [flagged]
| zer8k wrote:
| I was responding to the comparison being offered. The
| reality is there are few companies that offer individual
| offices and a lot of real estate that exists for open
| offices. It's not a false dichotomy because by-and-large
| _it is_ the dichotomy. The cube farms from 1990 were just
| converted to open offices by removing the barriers. To be
| honest, in my career in tech, I 've never even _seen_ a
| closed-office setup.
| ghaff wrote:
| >And, perhaps most importantly, have a door that they could
| keep closed so that if anyone wants to interrupt them, they
| actually have to knock first.
|
| In my experience with offices at a couple of different
| companies (of much different sizes), the social convention
| was door open unless you were on a private call/meeting or
| really needed to go heads down on something. It would
| actually have been considered rude to knock on the door
| because they door would obviously not have been closed unless
| there was a good reason.
|
| A lot of people seem to imagine that offices mean you shut
| the door and don't interact with anyone and that's never been
| my experience.
| danaris wrote:
| My office was in an academic building, right on a hallway.
| Keeping the door open would have meant letting all the
| bustle and noise of students changing classes in to
| interrupt me frequently, not to mention significantly
| increasing the number of confused students who would try to
| walk in thinking my office was a classroom.
|
| Frankly, I consider the expectation of constant
| availability to be another abusive part of work culture,
| very closely related to the "everyone must return to the
| office so I can see for myself that they are in their seats
| (which means they must be working)" mindset. Let people
| keep their doors closed to promote focus.
| highwaylights wrote:
| This is the correct answer.
|
| I'd much rather just find another job entirely than come back
| to an office, and I imagine a lot of people feel the same. I
| think part of the problem is that a lot of companies don't
| really appreciate what people would be giving up, or that they
| see much less value in it than the people they're trying to
| convince.
|
| You'd need to offer something pretty special just to compensate
| for the cost of the commute, let alone the time lost (which for
| a lot of people is significant).
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I'm not required to return to the office. Despite having a
| whole floor rented for us, I rarely go in. It's only 20 min via
| public transport so time is not a big deal for me. That minimal
| movement would be even healthy. My main issue is the dining in
| the area. Mostly office blocks and all options are rather poor
| in quality. Ordering is also something I don't want because I'm
| too cheap to pay the premium price.
|
| So yeah, it's almost 6PM, I'm at home and starving still
| because I was lazy to cook.
|
| I think the reason is my team is fully remote for me. Not
| having to worry about food would be nice :)
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Man, i loathe the commute. They want to take 10.5 hours of my
| time but pay me for 8. No thanks, i'm done with that as long as
| i have options.
| uberduper wrote:
| Yup. If I had a 10 minute or less commute and decent coffee at
| the office, I'd have no major objections. But I have a 45
| minutes with zero traffic (1.5hr+ with traffic) commute and
| Seattle's Best essence of ashtray coffee.
| welder wrote:
| > Those who are happy to return to the office in general are
| those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change
| of scenery.
|
| Or those with distractions at home. They can WFS, but I can see
| them being ok returning to an official office.
| stefandesu wrote:
| I think this is exactly it. I liked working from home when I
| had a separate room for it and it saved me about an hour every
| day, but I've since moved to an apartment that's smaller, but
| also much closer to work, and I prefer the going to the office
| now. Having your own office does help though (I'm sharing with
| one other person who's only there once a week).
| skramzy wrote:
| My office is across the street. I can see it from my window and
| still never go in.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| mine is 10min bike ride.
|
| i still go only once a week.
|
| why? because i have more comfort, more silence and, most
| important, more privacy, at home.
| awslattery wrote:
| > unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home
|
| WFH for 2012-2023 here.
|
| With our first home purchase in 2018 being on the smaller size,
| and the introduction of our first child to the family in 2021,
| I started keeping an eye on nearby options.
|
| In March of 2023, a perfect little spot opened up that could
| support me and another employee in the same town. Pitched it to
| our small company, and now I have a dedicated office that is a
| 4 minute walk away.
|
| Cannot stress enough how impactful those few minutes are (or
| more, if I need to decompress more than normal) are for
| separation of concern between home life and work, especially
| with young children in the picture.
|
| Still get to enjoy lunch with stay-at-home wife and kiddo
| almost everyday.
|
| It also shares property with a great pizzeria and one of the
| best taproom/bottleshops in town, which is a great perk beyond
| my waistline and liver... looking forward to taking the new
| bike to the nearby bike trail when it isn't 110deg everyday.
| lampshades wrote:
| What kind of space did you find and how did you pitch it? The
| other employee lived in the same town already?
|
| I'd like to do this as well.
| awslattery wrote:
| > What kind of space did you find
|
| It is a rather unique build done by a lawyer-turned-
| metalworks artist a little more than a decade ago. Multiple
| units with adjoining walls, each with a private patio,
| minisplits, and a rather raw aesthetic. Very high ceilings,
| plenty of outlets of various voltages/amperages available.
| Our neighbor makes bespoke cycling bags and such. Other
| tenants range from retail and services to private offices.
|
| > and how did you pitch it?
|
| The founder of the company lived here for many years, and
| paid for coworking access pre-COVID when it was still a
| startup (now general cloud/software consultancy for public
| health agencies and the like).
|
| WFH and the vacation of many of our decent coworking spaces
| due to COVID took a toll on him, and moved to PHL about a
| year ago for a change of scenery / be closer to some of our
| larger clients.
|
| With that context, it was pretty easy to pitch it as a
| physical "hub" for him when he visits family/friends,
| myself, and our other employee who lives in the same town.
| We still have a good physical location for our corporate
| entity, and the cost difference between 3x coworking
| offices at post-COVID rates was not too much for him to
| stomach.
|
| > The other employee lived in the same town already?
|
| Yes! We had become good acquaintances for a few years
| before COVID as he worked remotely for an organization in
| Ireland from the same coworking space.
|
| When COVID hit, his team were among the first to be cut,
| and as his skills meant I would no longer be overextended
| between cloud and frontend, it was one of the easiest hires
| we've made to date.
| freetanga wrote:
| Nice, and I agree with you. In my line of work would not be
| so easy, as large corpos have a bunch of job safety and info
| sec standards, beyond internet connection.
|
| Clean desk policy, no take-home printouts, clear whiteboards
| with confidencial information, etc...
|
| I had a WFH employee who once burn himself at home while
| making coffee with his own coffee pot, and sue the company as
| he claimed was a job-related accident. We had to settle and
| pay him, or have Unions making a big fuzz.
|
| There are all sort of people in the workplace, and policies
| try to accommodate not only CEO whims, but also to manage a
| crowd full of many different types of people.
| awslattery wrote:
| > In my line of work would not be so easy, as large corpos
| have a bunch of job safety and info sec standards, beyond
| internet connection.
|
| Having worked DoD in the past, I can completely echo that
| it would be quite a challenge to explore something like
| this for many organizations.
|
| > I had a WFH employee who once burn himself at home while
| making coffee with his own coffee pot, and sue the company
| as he claimed was a job-related accident. We had to settle
| and pay him, or have Unions making a big fuzz.
|
| "This is why we can't have nice things," personified.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > Cannot stress enough how impactful those few minutes are
| (or more, if I need to decompress more than normal) are for
| separation of concern between home life and work, especially
| with young children in the picture.
|
| been remote since 2015. absolutely agree with this, even
| though I'm still remote. the only way I'd go back to the
| office is if it's close to that experience -- a 5-10 min walk
| away.
|
| living close to a coffee shops, gyms, and other amenities
| meant that I did a "morning commute" to get coffee most
| mornings -- more expensive than petrol, but still cheaper
| overall compared to driving. multiple choices, so could hit
| the local as well as chain shops.
|
| a gym and grocery store being nearby also meant that I could
| so an "evening commute" and workout, snag groceries, run
| errands, etc.
|
| having young kids makes it great too... most of the time.
| it's nice to be able to walk upstairs and play with the wee
| one.
| dougmwne wrote:
| For me a nicer office would change my mind and I have worked in
| that office before. Allow me to reminisce:
|
| Was working in DC on Capitol Hill. Had a 30 minute bike ride to
| work right down the center of the national mall. Had a private
| office half the size of my apartment with a really comfy couch
| and a few well worn armchairs. Coworkers brought their dogs and
| one liked to sit on my feet under the desk. Office was chock
| full of interesting people, activists, authors, photographers,
| lawmakers wealthy folks, connected folks. After a few hours
| working on the databases and maybe getting roped into some tech
| support in the Capitol building, the CEO would grab a beer from
| the keg which was the signal for the rest of us that the
| afternoon had become wet. Then I would meet up with friends for
| some kickball on the Mall, then swing back through the office
| after a few hours at the bar for a nightcap. Very occasionally
| I slept over on the couch but there was a shower in the office
| and I kept a few changes of clothes there so it was all good.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I'm all for work from home, and have doing it for over 10
| years, but we shouldn't ignore the cost of donating an entire
| room of your house to your employer (two in my case since my
| wife also wfh). Certainly this should factor into your total
| comp calculation as -(rent amount in your area). Likely it is
| more than you would spend on the commute. Employers are well
| aware they are colonizing your private space for free. You are
| also cleaning /stocking/ maintaining this area for them for
| free. They are laughing all the way to the bank.
| chaostheory wrote:
| That used to be federally tax deductible, but now it probably
| depends on your state since the tax deduction rules seemed to
| have changed during the lockdowns.
| sh1mmer wrote:
| I miss the commute that was my ~20m morning bike ride (now I
| have to motivate myself). I don't really miss the commute that
| was 20m on transit but it was ok. I really don't miss the
| commute that was 45-60m+ in traffic (even the times I was on a
| work shuttle).
|
| I could do an office again though if it weren't too far from
| home. Working from home can be strangely lonely, maybe I should
| just be better about organizing co-working with friends
| virtually or in person.
| dventimi wrote:
| Well...it might change some people's minds
| jen20 wrote:
| I would be far more tempted to an office (and to reclaim a room
| for use as another guest bedroom in my house) if I had a
| private office. Open plan or shared offices are an absolute no,
| though.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Many people with families, or even just DINKS, would opt for
| private offices. Unless you've got a giant home with private
| space, working at the same time and while your home life goes
| on around you is pretty bad.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| My home isn't huge, just a raised ranch. But I was able to
| build a soundproofed office in a corner of my basement and
| it's worked like a charm.
| lampshades wrote:
| How were you able to soundproof it? I have an office
| (upstairs) that I would love to soundproof so that I don't
| have to wear my headphones all day.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| There's a lot of structure-specific details. Happy to DM
| if you want, I enjoy the topic.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Apparently bath towels can perform even better than
| bespoke acoustic paneling. I haven't tried it, but there
| are tons of tutorials. Here someone testing it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKwb58vvFI
|
| This is the original one I saw when I considering doing
| it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pABvTWSxOes
|
| One more DIY with fabric and rock wool:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPEouyiEt3Q
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Effective soundproofing is tricky.
|
| I had to wade through a lot of conflicting advice when I
| did it.
|
| I suspect a big factor is that most people do only a
| handful of implementations, and might overgeneralize the
| lessons they draw.
|
| Also, for a given structure and environment, most people
| can only afford to try 1-2 soundproofing approaches (wall
| structure, ventilation, etc.) So it's hard to know if
| they picked a good point in the tradeoffs space.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I was in an airport a few weeks ago and saw a new array of
| soundproof "phone" booths fitted with laptop stands and
| high-output lighting, and it occurred to me that I should
| have started a business building and selling those over the
| past 3 years.
|
| Anyway, I'm thinking more about city dwellers who generally
| live in apartments.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Anyway, I'm thinking more about city dwellers who
| generally live in apartments.
|
| That's a lifestyle that makes significantly less sense
| for remote workers in the long run though.
| closeparen wrote:
| If you are content to have your household and neighbors
| as your entire social world.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I'm with you. But a lot of people still want to live in
| the city and not go to the office. So, I'm suggesting
| that, for that cohort, dedicated private offices might be
| compelling. It means that you probably have a short
| commute; you can reclaim space in your home that might
| have been used for work; still live in city and have
| access to the social offerings there; and that you retain
| your privacy, and potentially have even more if the case
| that you're co-habitating.
| velosol wrote:
| Higher end 'luxury' apartment buildings are frequently
| offering FCFS hoteling spaces and also rentable-as-you-
| need locking private spaces in the building as well as
| the modern phone booths in various parts of the
| buildings. If you have the income and that fits your
| desires you can have the city life and WFthe building you
| live in.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| That would be a great amenity.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I've only got a small home. We finally turned the smallest
| bedroom into an office for me and the wife. It's great, and
| much more comfortable than commuting to an open plan noisy
| office. I have more desk space and nicer equipment at home.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Do you both use the office at the same time? Is it used a
| working office or more like a meeting room for when you
| need privacy?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yes, we do use it at the same time. We also have times
| when we need privacy and one of us has to work elsewhere.
| Mostly it's just me in the office though as my wife
| doesn't need it as often.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| It's not just that. With a WFH policy I can work for companies
| in Munich living in a town in northern Germany. That's the big
| deal of remote work for me. Being limited to the companies that
| are located in the same city you live is a huge downside.
| smashface wrote:
| Basically this.
|
| If companies want people back in the office when they could WFH
| instead, they're going to have to compensate them, time and
| costs, for the commute.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| when unemployment goes to 7% they won't be compensating for a
| damn thing and WFH will be a thing of the past.
| o1y32 wrote:
| My data point: I live 10 minutes walk from my office, the
| campus has a cafeteria, and I have my own office. Still I don't
| want to be forced to come into office, simply because I feel
| more comfortable and relaxed at home. It is a quiet place, I
| don't want to random interruptions from colleagues, and I can
| take a nap on my comfortable bed if needed, none of which can
| be offered in the office. Having prepared food is nice but not
| as important.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > simply because I feel more comfortable and relaxed at home
|
| this core preference in environment and vibe is the main
| difference between the 2 camps. I was desperate to be in an
| office where there was a buzz of high energy and a go, go, go
| environment like skydivers jumping out of a plane. Would
| still prefer a private office though so get deep focus when
| necessary.
|
| Not sure if its nature or nurture, since I grew up doing team
| sports year round.
| acdha wrote:
| For me, the commute is a short bike or train ride. It's
| actually enjoyable but I still don't want to go into the office
| for exactly the reason given: cubicles suck. The distraction,
| poor lighting, noise, etc. are a poor fit for any sort of work
| which isn't constantly talking to everyone in the same room.
|
| I think the sweet spot is at most 2-3 people in a space. That
| could work well collaboratively if they do the same thing but
| not if there are going to be lots of conflicting meetings.
| legohead wrote:
| If work gave me an office I would come in every day vs. the
| mandated twice a week we have.
|
| I worked for a company that gave everyone an office. Just long
| hallways of offices with floor to ceiling windows and a door.
| It was a startup that grew to 200 people and was the best job
| I've had, a large part due to the atmosphere, and part of that
| was the office setup.
|
| When my current workplace shutdown the office for covid, they
| sent out an email asking for suggestions for a new office
| setup. I told them to make everyone offices. We have a huge
| open floor and it wouldn't take much effort, just money. Money
| they are planning to spend anyway. Instead they raised the
| height of cubicle walls, added a ton of glass (disease spread
| fear I guess), and gave everyone whiteboards and motorized
| standup desks.
|
| Now on my required days in the office I am annoyed by the
| constant chatter and noises around me which I cannot escape
| even with headphones.
| Un1corn wrote:
| My office is half an hour by foot from my house and yet I
| prefer to work from home exactly for this reason. Maybe in
| America where the commute can become ridiculous quickly it's a
| problem but here I just take an e-scooter if I don't want to
| walk. A better office would certainly make me come to the
| office more. But to be fair, even the CEO doesn't have his own
| office currently so I don't expect any of us to get one soon.
| jasonkester wrote:
| More to the point, The Office is in one place, whereas my
| workplace can by anywhere.
|
| So no matter how nice a place it is, and how close to my house
| you put it, it's never going to be right on that good right
| point break in Oaxaca where I like to spend my winters and
| _also_ at the AirBnB next to Green Lake where I can visit my
| friends and family in the summer.
|
| It's also not in any of the other places I choose to set up
| shop at for a few months at a time to do my thing.
|
| So it doesn't matter that it has free food, a masseuse, and is
| in a really cool neighborhood where I'd actually like to spend
| some time. I still don't want to commit to living there 50
| weeks a year.
|
| That's why I'm remote.
| 13of40 wrote:
| The thing that kills it for me is that where I work, before
| COVID it was a massive faux pas to schedule a meeting before
| 10:00 AM, but now I typically have multiple invites side-by-
| side at 9:00. In the past I could get to my office, grab some
| coffee, catch up on email, etc. before the grind started, but
| everything's been pushed back an hour and it's not coming back.
| So if I was getting up at 6:00 to fit in my morning routine,
| now I have to get up at 5:00.
|
| The other issue is that we're a lot more globally distributed
| now. The 9:00 I chose to go to today had nine other people in
| it. Three in India, one in the UK, one in BC, two in the
| midwest somewhere, and two permanent WFH. Meeting with these
| people is always going to mean putting on a headset and looking
| at a screen, no matter how diligent I am at getting in to the
| office every morning.
| ravenstine wrote:
| There is a lot of truth to what you are saying, but I don't
| entirely agree.
|
| I think I would be more amenable to working at an office if the
| experience felt like more than being in a high school computer
| lab. "Just wear headphones", imo, is not an adequate response
| to complaints of the office being noisy. Want me to stay in the
| office longer? Uninstall that piece of shit kombucha tap or
| sparkling water dispenser (neither of which are even
| operational most of the time) and replace it with another
| fridge so I don't have to cram my food into the one fridge
| shared by the entire building. Make an adequate number of power
| outlets available. Don't provide free snacks and then eliminate
| them to cut costs. If I have a designated spot, do your best
| not to move me around every few months.
|
| Yet every office I have worked in embodies various failures
| that diminish the experience, making it hard to deny that
| working at home can be a lot better for many people. How am I
| supposed to feel dignity in my line of work as a senior
| engineer when I don't even get my own cubicle; meanwhile,
| people I know who make a third of my salary get their own
| cubes! And these companies are wondering why their employees
| would rather build their own private office at home? Are you
| kidding me?
|
| I don't even need a corner office with a door that closes and a
| personal secretary. Just give me something more than what I
| would get working out of a Starbucks, and allow me to feel like
| the professional I am, as opposed to a replaceable cog, which
| is everything the modern tech workplaces symbolizes.
| lezojeda wrote:
| [dead]
| steveBK123 wrote:
| My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and
| hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the
| C-suite has had for years.. flexibility.
|
| Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from
| their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute
| chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby
| suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where
| they spend the majority of their actual hours.
|
| I was listening to a podcast and they observed that US
| commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where you
| slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as you
| age.. and COVID snapped everyone out of it cold turkey. Now
| attempting to go back to it is revolting for many.
| jasmer wrote:
| [dead]
| Roark66 wrote:
| >My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote
| and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what
| the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility.
|
| Exactly. I've been working 100% from home since 2017 (3 years
| before covid). I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to
| the office.
|
| Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my life when I lived 15 min
| walk /5 min on a bike, from my job in a city. Before I got
| that job and I had to commute for 20 min I enjoyed it too.
|
| But WFH beats that by a mile. I can live wherever I want
| (where cost of living is a lot cheaper than central London).
| I can just go down to my kitchen and make myself proper food
| any time (although I still miss certain of my favourite
| restaurants). And most importantly, I get a lot more time to
| myself and I'm much more effective at my work.
|
| There is no chance in hell people like me will "go back to
| the office". Furthermore, companies that recognised the
| benefits early are reaping the benefits. Even just one.
| Having an order of magnitude larger talent pool by not
| limiting themselves to people from one place.
|
| In today's marker that is characterised by permanent skilled
| labour shortage I can't imagine stupidest way to shoot ones
| company in the foot than trying to force people to "get back
| to the office".
| folkrav wrote:
| I know I could get paid ~10-20% more somewhere else, but I
| stay where I am. I still make good money, I like my job and
| the people well enough, it's fully remote, and the quality
| of life of being able to take care of my 5yo son
| after/before school, and being present to see my expecting
| baby as he grows up in between meetings, instead of through
| messaging and photo share, is IMHO well worth the pay cut.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| " I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office."
|
| People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be
| the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .
| jefftk wrote:
| "you'd have to double my pay to get me to commute
| everyday?"
| ryantgtg wrote:
| As well as "I'd rather leave my current job than go back
| to the office."
|
| My company has spent the last 8 months trying to explain
| why they want us back in the office for hybrid work. At
| first it was, "mentoring young staff." And lately it is,
| "It doesn't look great to potential clients when they
| visit an office and the office is empty." This new
| argument sounds like a BD edge case.
|
| It seems to entirely be senior leaders and senior empty
| nesters pushing for this, while everyone else is not in
| favor.
| esafak wrote:
| People are foregoing pay to WFH but not that much. Relax
| people are not dumb.
| lmkg wrote:
| Your employer should actually pay you _more_ to WFH.
|
| Aside from saving them rent on the office space, you
| should be able to expense several office-supply things
| that they would have provided previously. Office chair
| and desk, internet bill (pro-rated by usage), maybe
| printer ink.
| bfeynman wrote:
| not really. Companies pay more in expensive cities where
| they locate offices because they need to attract local
| talent, and they have to compete against other companies.
| Many national companies have cost of living adjustments
| baked into their salary bands because of this.
| ghaff wrote:
| Which aside from office space if you feel you need to
| rent/buy a bigger place in an expensive area are utterly
| trivial for any decent white collar job and are almost
| certainly counterbalanced by commuting costs for the vast
| bulk of people who can't just walk/cycle to their jobs.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Aside from saving them rent on the office space, you
| should be able to expense several office-supply things
| that they would have provided previously. Office chair
| and desk, internet bill (pro-rated by usage), maybe
| printer ink._
|
| Let's not get carried away. Back then you were paying for
| your own transportation costs and your commute time.
| Which is more valuable? Commuting to work every day to
| enjoy free office supplies and coffee, or WFH but paying
| for your own chair and desk?
|
| I'd take the latter any day of the week as the chair &
| desk is a one time cost anyway and lasts 10+ years.
| fjfuvucucuc wrote:
| [dead]
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| aye, and the difference is the commute and its resources
| -- gas, new tires, oil changes, etc. -- ain't coming
| back.
|
| meanwhile, i bought a standing desk and it's _mine_ , and
| it'll go to my next house and next job.
|
| they can drop ship me a laptop and docking station, and
| if they wanna be nice throw me a couple hundred as a
| "office stiped", which would be way cheaper than buying
| business grade furniture.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Not with unemployment where it is. Instead it's more
| likely that companies will offer more money to software
| engineers to compensate for a must-commute policy.
| izzydata wrote:
| If they previously worked in some expensive city like San
| Fransisco and had in writing that their work from home
| arrangement was permanent they could move to a forest
| somewhere with negligible housing costs and still come
| out ahead.
|
| Although most people don't work in San Francisco with
| inflated salaries so I'd still rather not make this the
| norm.
| BluePen7 wrote:
| It's worse than that, I didn't just gain space and
| scenery. I went up an entire socioeconomic class.
|
| Previously I was priced out of the housing market,
| renting a small basement suite.
|
| Now I own a large detached home, and thanks to the rental
| suite, spending less each month than I did before.
|
| And this is all before you consider the equity myself and
| my tenant have paid down, or even any home appreciation.
| It's effectively doubled my TC since I moved.
| pydry wrote:
| I've seen some employers try to get people to take a 50%
| paycut for WFH and then STILL bait and switch them back
| into the office.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That's the thing, if the employer tries to bargain on WFH
| then they just won't stop on an agreement but keep
| pushing.
| knappe wrote:
| I've been remote for 11 years.
|
| Remote work was always an excuse to pay less, much to my
| chagrin. The fact is that as remote work became more
| popular, with the increase in positions, pay has actually
| increased. I'm not surprised that more people are seeing
| pushback on in the office vs remote compensation as this
| has been the standard play for years.
|
| I find it doubly frustrating since remote employees are
| less of a cost sink due to less office space and all the
| costs that come with it. Remote employees are the most
| efficient type of employees from that perspective and so
| it always felt like such a flimsy excuse.
|
| My suggestion is push back on any perceived pay gap
| between in office and remote work. The work done is at
| parity (if not more so due to efficiencies of remote
| work) and so there is no valid excuse to pay less.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| It's already happening. Pinterest had top of market pay
| but realized they could cut total comp substantially by
| agreeing to remote.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| This. Companies are already catching on to this and
| starting to use this as a reason to pay less.
|
| In my latest performance review, my manager actually told
| he and other managers were being forced to ask the
| question "Do you consider WFH as part of your
| compensation" by HR/upper management to all his reports
| (including me).
|
| I'm convinced this is in preparation to either lower
| salaries, or artificially lowering them by giving lower
| raises/bonuses to those who work from home since they are
| starting to call people back to office who aren't remote
| by title. Most people are back up to 3-days a week, even
| though 90% of them are very unhappy. I'm fully remote
| hence why he asked me this question and anyone else who
| is designated full remote.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| (Shrug) If that's what it takes, that's what it takes.
| Commuting is for suckers, regardless of how many numbers
| are on your paycheck.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| agreed. unless its like an easy 20 min walk or bike or
| something, i don't plan on commuting regularly for
| anything less than a Director role.
|
| on the Dir level? fine, different story, and being
| present to have official off the record chats may be
| required.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Pay cuts are for suckers too.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I mean, yes, that's the obvious take, but can you
| honestly say there's nothing you could be doing that
| would make you more money, but that would completely
| suck, prompting you to do something else instead?
|
| Just today I'm seeing stories about how the UPS truck
| drivers have managed to negotiate themselves pay and
| benefits up to $170,000/year. Would you rather make
| $150,000 a year at your desk at home, or $170,000/year
| schlepping packages for UPS?
|
| If your answer is "$150K," you're taking a pay cut for a
| better work environment. Does that make you a sucker? No?
| Well, that's what WFH is about. If you have to leave your
| current job and find another one to make it happen, it
| could make sense as long as your paycheck and future
| prospects aren't too badly hurt. (And assuming you _want_
| to WFH, of course, which many people will not.)
| gureddio wrote:
| I feel like in the UK, some of us got WFH in lieu of a pay
| rise
| lumost wrote:
| My 2 cents, companies are effectively asking to increase
| working hours by 5-10 hours per week for most workers
| assuming a 30-60 minute commute each way. Many employers will
| try lure workers away from the office with remote work. These
| firms may offset any hypothetical productivity costs with
| lower wages. Some engineers will prioritize remote for the
| larger employer pool, and others will prioritize in-person
| for greater social connection.
|
| We'll see what happens in 20 years. But my money is on a
| resurgence of the rural village and a lot of empty office
| towers.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| This is actually a decent take.
|
| Most of our C-Suite doesn't live near an office. Or, to be
| specific WE MOVED HQ to where they wanted to live.
|
| We have other VPs and whatnot who live not near an office, or
| have winter/summer homes they go back and forth from.
|
| Meanwhile our mandatory "3 days a week in the office" starts
| September.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| The guys who get to choose the office locations happen to
| choose ones that are good for the locations of their
| home(s). Also, a reminder that C-suite guys that have
| multiple homes do in fact actually use those multiple
| homes.
|
| How do they do so? They have flexibility!
| rayiner wrote:
| > My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote
| and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what
| the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility.
|
| That's not populist at all. It's just another example of the
| white collar class enjoying the benefits of technology and
| globalization while everyone else gets left behind:
| https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-
| increa....
|
| Before the pandemic, I already made a lot more money (as a
| lawyer) than my middle class neighbors. Now I also get to
| work from home three days a week, and get a lot more quality
| time with my kids, while they have to go to work every day
| because their jobs aren't knowledge work.
|
| Obviously, management versus other white collar workers is
| one class dividing line that exists. But work from home is a
| good example if the fact that on many important dimensions,
| such as work conditions and generational mobility,[1] those
| groups are in the same class.
|
| [1] CEOs are obviously richer than say accountants of
| engineers. But in the US, CEOs largely come from the class of
| these white collar professionals. In that sense, they're in
| the same class as most other societies understand the
| concept.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It's just another example of the white collar class
| enjoying the benefits of technology and globalization while
| everyone else gets left behind_
|
| There's a lot more to it than that.
|
| WFH has been a godsend for a millions of people who work
| full-time, but are also poor.
|
| I drove for Uber for a while when I was between jobs. The
| majority of the people I carted around were people who
| thought Uber was a godsend because they were too poor to
| save for a car, and Uber allowed them to have a job that
| didn't involve manual or skilled labor they couldn't
| perform. People like call center operators, and medical
| coders (which is not the same thing as computer coding),
| and other jobs that aren't suitable for machines, and often
| done in a cube farm.
|
| The pandemic sent all those people into WFH, and many of
| their companies found that the price of equipping their
| people with a laptop and headset was cheaper than paying
| rent on cubical space.
|
| Now those working poor can put the expense of Uber into
| saving for a car, or buying clothes for their children, or
| any of the assorted other things that people need every
| day.
|
| For millions of people, WFH is a helping hand out of
| poverty.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Don't forget it can obviate the need for extremely
| expensive child care. Someone working 9-5 in an office
| doing the work you describe needs at least 2 hours of day
| care with 4 hours being closer to the average. That's
| tens of thousands of dollars in day care costs a year.
|
| Working from home means a parent can be home when their
| kids are home, available if they need to be picked up
| from school, and can just generally be more present for
| their kids. This is all especially helpful for single
| parents. They can't not work but day care costs keep the
| family destitute unless that parent makes very good
| money.
| toyg wrote:
| The similarities are skin-deep. Managers are typically
| capital-owners; employees are not. Capital owners get to
| dictate societal priorities in a way that others will
| simply never be able to.
| rayiner wrote:
| Capital ownership is one distinction, but it's not the
| only salient one. Other distinctions include, for
| example, whether your job generally benefits from
| communications technology and globalization. The private
| equity banker and the professionals that help them
| outsource factories to China share many common interests,
| and benefit from many of the same economic trends.
|
| They may have some policy disagreements--but even those
| are often theoretical. How many professionals who favor
| universal healthcare are in the 45% of employed Americans
| who are "very satisfied" with their own health insurance?
| https://www.pacificresearch.org/americans-are-
| overwhelmingly.... But fundamentally, they benefit from
| the highly financialized, globalized economy. Their human
| capital mostly insulates them from labor competition, and
| they reap the benefits of cheap foreign products and
| cheap services provided by non-unionized workers.
| np- wrote:
| > Before the pandemic, I already made a lot more money (as
| a lawyer) than my middle class neighbors. Now I also get to
| work from home three days a week, and get a lot more
| quality time with my kids, while they have to go to work
| every day because their jobs aren't knowledge work.
|
| With all due respect - so what? This seems like crab in a
| bucket mentality, just because some of us crabs managed to
| climb to the top of the bucket, we deserve to be pulled
| down because of some warped view of fairness? We should
| actually be trying to pull the rest of them out with us.
| rayiner wrote:
| You're not a crab, you're the chef cooking the crabs. You
| might work for the restaurant owner, but your material
| interests aren't aligned with those of the crabs.
|
| The wages versus capital distinction overlooks the nature
| of modern businesses, where ownership is diffuse, and
| businesses are run by a vast class of skilled
| professionals. For example, Tim Cook owns just 0.02% of
| Apple stock, but he runs the company. Many executives
| below him have tremendous power. Individual engineers can
| have a major impact on the direction of the whole
| business. Most importantly, the executive roles are
| typically filled from that same class of people.
|
| These people aren't Steve Jobs in terms of their
| ownership interest in the company, but they're not Apple
| Store workers either. Their self interest is
| fundamentally more aligned with those of the capitalists
| than with the interests of labor.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| You could argue its not populist but we can say its like
| 10% vs 1%.
|
| That said, some COVID era stats showed 50% of working
| population doing at least 1 day remote.. and 50% is pretty
| much right in the middle of middle class and fairly
| populist-ish?
|
| Something like 30%+ are still remote/hybrid today in 2023,
| so this isn't precisely an elite-only thing ..
| [deleted]
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| There are millions of people who work lower wage office
| jobs in call centers or other clerical jobs that benefited
| greatly from work from home. That's pretty populist.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't think we should feel ashamed of being able to do
| our work from home.
|
| There's no benefit to making everyone go to the office/job
| just because some people cannot do their jobs without that.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I'd actually argue there's a benefit to those who need to
| work at the job site in having the others stay home: a
| commute in a crowded bus / subway where you can't breathe
| or spending 2 hours on a gridlocked highway is an
| absolute PITA for everybody concerned.
|
| So if I can jockey my keyboard while sitting in my chair
| at home instead of taking the subway to do it while
| sitting in my employer's, that's a tiny bit more space
| for the guy who actually needs to go somewhere and work
| in person.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| [flagged]
| rwmj wrote:
| He didn't say it wasn't a difficult job, just that the
| C-suite were always able to work flexibly, and afford to
| have a second flat next to the office (or in extreme cases,
| force the office to move near to their homes).
| pc86 wrote:
| Not replying to you but the above comment got flagged
| before I responded and I already typed the comment up so
| I want to post it :)
|
| --
|
| If we're specifically talking about large enterprises,
| these CEOs make more in a year than most Americans make
| their entire life. If you didn't live a Fortune 1000 CEO
| level lifestyle you could literally do the job for 4-6
| months and retire, and that's ignoring the fact that
| they've typically been in the C-Suite making 20-50% of
| that salary for decades already. It's not often somebody
| living paycheck to paycheck is promoted into CEO.
|
| I've worked jobs in public companies where the CEO and
| half the C-Suite was driven to work every morning. I've
| worked jobs where a rank and file programmer got denied a
| raise because he left at 4 every day (despite working 8
| or more hours every day) because the policy was to work
| 8-5, while the CEO worked from a vacation home when the
| weather wasn't nice where our HQ was. Whether the job is
| hard is irrelevant, all the GP is saying is that you have
| ultimate flexibility in that role, and now the poors have
| a taste of it too, and most of them/us aren't going to
| give it up without a fight.
| pc86 wrote:
| I think the boiled frog is a perfect analogy. I grew up
| always assuming there would be a long commute. I couldn't
| afford to move out of my parents house for almost a year out
| of school in my first job (2008 making less than $30k/yr) so
| I spent 7 or 8 months driving an hour each way. I'm too young
| to remember but my dad spent the first few years of my life
| and several before that commuting 2 hours one way. Spending
| at least 30 minutes each way driving was just assumed.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Growing up in NYC, I had three hours of commuting per day
| from age 14 to 26. Then I switched to work from home (this
| was before covid). I would _never_ go back.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are
| 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close
| to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a
| nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min
| transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family
| by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not
| further.
|
| Each step is just a small increment worse. But when you go
| from remote back to the worst level, it's jarring.
|
| Objectively, transit has also gotten worse in some cities
| (NYC, DC) since COVID and still not recovered. So we are
| also returning to something worse than where we left it!
| nequo wrote:
| In what way is transit worse in NYC and DC? Are trains
| and buses running on a sparser schedule today in these
| two cities than they were before COVID?
| ghaff wrote:
| Like DC apparently, Boston has had some serious long-
| deferred maintenance. The commuter rail at least also has
| a reduced schedule and no longer has an express train
| from further out--so I'm a good 2 hours door to door if I
| use transit to go (rarely) into my city office. Driving
| is more flexible but it's just as slow at rush hour.
| pschw wrote:
| In the case of the LIRR:
|
| https://gothamist.com/news/lirr-riders-still-miffed-over-
| jam...
|
| https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/hell-on-wheels-bklyn-
| shuttles-...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Well DC I know they had some serious train defects that
| took trains/lines out of service for repairs for some
| time and caused capacity reductions.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/22/
| met...
|
| NYC they are running fewer trains so even if overall
| ridership is down, the trains are as crowded or more
| crowded than ever. Further in NYC due to homeless/migrant
| population growth falling through the cracks, the subway
| ends up being the shelter of last resort. Finally violent
| crime on the subway increased substantially over covid,
| and while down is still not at 2019 levels. So while
| waiting longer for a train, you are more likely to be
| dealing with a general sense of crime/disorder/etc.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you
| are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but
| close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and
| get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a
| 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to
| start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min
| commute, if not further.
|
| I found this to be a depressing quality of life
| trajectory my coworkers were on when I worked in NYC. It
| was fun in my 20s without kids, but after that, it seems
| miserable.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yup. The few that stayed in the city were funded in one
| way or another..
| ghaff wrote:
| Of all the people in my grad school class who got jobs in
| NYC finance after graduation, I can think of maybe one
| couple who stayed in the city after getting
| married/having kids.
| bfeynman wrote:
| the brevity with which you describe the life trajectory
| for millions if not tens of millions of people is ...
| sigh.
| idlewords wrote:
| Commutatio longa, vita brevis
| vel0city wrote:
| Ego similis cervisiam
| notyourwork wrote:
| This is a really good take. I have some experience with it
| though I'm not a C-Suite person. Over my 15 years of software
| engineering I've always had a job that had flexibility to let
| me work the way I wanted. Some offices and some buildings
| were worse than others but in general I was always able to
| set my hours, work from home or from a random place (i.e.
| coffee shop, park, mall, whatever) as I saw fit.
|
| There were always times I needed to be present in person and
| I never scoffed at those. What I found recently, is employers
| are trying to shift from one extreme (fully remote) to the
| other. I hope we land back in the middle because I'm happiest
| when no one tells me what to do. I want to be treated like an
| adult and measured on merit and performance, not physical
| attendance.
| esafak wrote:
| That's because it's the worst of both worlds. If you have
| to go into a particular office you are still geographically
| chained. Hybrid only makes sense if you can go to _an_
| office that is near you; e.g., a coworking space.
| mlinhares wrote:
| 100% this. In most places I worked the C-levels were not in
| the office most of the time, when there were multiple offices
| they would mostly visit the ones closer to their homes and
| for the usual "weekly/monthly conversations with c-levels"
| they'd be at their homes or second homes zooming in.
|
| One remote work hater I really like to listen to is Scott
| Galloway, that keeps on harping that remote work is horrible
| but doesn't even live in the same country where he's running
| his business anymore. Flexibility for me but not for thee.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| My favorite story on this thread is that during the hybrid
| period, GS CEO threw a fit when out in the Hamptons because
| some analyst (fairly junior role almost at the bottom) had
| the balls to go introduce themselves during a workday lunch
| at a restaurant.
|
| He couldn't articulate a specific, valid complaint like "I
| was out at a client lunch and they were goofing off" or "I
| was on a vacation day while they were supposed to be
| working".
|
| He was just mad that underlings had the same flexibility that
| he, as CEO, had always had. This being the same CEO who jets
| around DJing on the side for fun and has connections to do so
| at pretty high levels. So even the "cool CEO" is in fact, NOT
| cool.
|
| It's like getting mad at all the other idiots on the road
| making traffic, lol. What do you think you are?
| bko wrote:
| Why are you pretending this analyst is the same or even
| should have the same affordances as the CEO? You might be
| shocked to find out the CEO even gets paid more!
|
| Most people come up through the ranks and you can bet the
| CEO was one time an analyst with a demanding boss. After
| decades of work he made it to boss. You see this everywhere
| where you move up the ranks and things get better. That's
| the apprentice deal for all of history.
|
| Part of his compensation is relative flexibility although
| I'm almost certain c suite often work a lot more and have
| higher demands than junior employees.
|
| If you're very valuable to the firm (e.g. CEO) you can get
| away with more stuff. It's the natural order of things. I
| don't really see any other way around it apart from a
| dehumanizing process to treat everyone exactly the same
| regardless of capabilities
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >can bet the CEO was one time an analyst with a demanding
| boss.
|
| Executives have not been promoted into their jobs since
| the 50s.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Hey who let David Sacks enter our chat ^
| cruano wrote:
| Why are you pretending like flexibility is something you
| cannot give freely ?
|
| That's like saying all junior-level employees MUST carry
| a book on top of their heads all the time, and only
| C-Level executives get to skip that. If you give someone
| flexibility, you are not taking anything away from other
| people, so not giving it is only an unnecessary
| punishment for junior level employees.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Why are you pretending like flexibility is something
| you cannot give freely ?
|
| Many of these things are about rite of passage, and
| people who have gone thru the rites want others to not
| skip.
|
| It can also be about a power-dynamic, where flexibility
| isnt given because imposed inflexibility is a power
| lever.
| Izkata wrote:
| It can turn into that, but on the flipside it's normal to
| get more privileges over time, either as a reward
| (raises, time off) or once you've shown you won't abuse
| it (WFH/flexibility).
| bko wrote:
| You're assuming that someone working from the Hamptons is
| as productive as working from a desk in the office or his
| own home. I highly doubt this is true and especially so
| for young junior employees.
|
| After you've been there a while, learned more and are
| more effective at your job, you're more likely to get the
| benefit of the doubt but even that has limits.
|
| Why are we pretending like this is all weird? New or
| junior employees need a lot of handholding to ramp up and
| it's inappropriate that they just get the same
| consideration when compared to someone that's been there
| longer than the analyst has been alive. Have you guys
| ever worked a normal job before?
| re-thc wrote:
| > You're assuming that someone working from the Hamptons
| is as productive as working from a desk in the office or
| his own home. I highly doubt this is true and especially
| so for young junior employees.
|
| We're assuming you even read the article.
|
| It clearly says "how the underling walked up at a
| restaurant, introduced himself and pointed to associates
| with him"
|
| i.e. it was more than 1 person. Maybe they are doing
| face-to-face training? Are you saying that's ineffective?
|
| > New or junior employees need a lot of handholding to
| ramp up
|
| That's exactly what's happening. Why are you assuming
| it's not?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Exactly. What if it was a "team building lunch" or they
| were all out meeting a client or they are all remote
| together in a summer share?
|
| And of the CEO - was he meeting a client, the board, or
| simply out to lunch by himself or with
| family/friends/etc. The article is silent on this topic.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> You're assuming that someone working from the Hamptons
| is as productive as working from a desk in the office or
| his own home. I highly doubt this is true and especially
| so for young junior employees.
|
| I've had co-workers in these situations for a long time.
| _In theory_ there is no difference. But then...
|
| - suddenly you can barely hear someone on a conference
| call because they are on a 4G-tether on a beach,
|
| - or because there are tons of bar sounds in the
| background on a call
|
| - or you have a production issue but cant get the person
| to screen-share because they are on low-bandwidth
|
| I even had individuals who would block their entire
| calendar on WFH days and only take meetings on in-office
| days.
|
| The problem is with those who abuse privileges, not with
| those who are honest.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Blocking off the day makes sense because you want get
| work done. Meetings can wait until I'm at the office
| because I'm too distracted to get real work done in my
| flex-desk.
|
| Who cares if employee works at the beach?
|
| You need to provide value not appearance of value.
| whateverman23 wrote:
| > I'm almost certain c suite often work a lot more and
| have higher demands than junior employees.
|
| Lmao. I'm no where near C-Suite but I've also never
| worked as hard as I did as an intern/junior engineer.
| Moving up often means working less hard.
|
| > I don't really see any other way around it apart from a
| dehumanizing process to treat everyone exactly the same
| regardless of capabilities
|
| This post is about WFH, not treating everyone the same
| regardless of capabilities. Those are such different
| things that I'm convinced you must be arguing in bad
| faith.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| Yeah, Elon Musk is currently CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla,
| owner/CTO of Twitter, and owner of The Boring Company. It
| is incredibly hard to believe that the C-Suite works hard
| when someone is able to multitask like that. Tesla is
| even a public company--the shareholders could have him
| removed if he was doing a bad job!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Visionary leaders that can also attract talent and
| delegate well are force multipliers. Hard work doesn't
| mean it's not easy for some and almost incredibly fast to
| accomplish for others.
| whateverman23 wrote:
| We're not talking about impact. We're talking about the
| claim that "c suite often work a lot more". That claim is
| hard to substantiate.
| [deleted]
| dustincoates wrote:
| Because I was curious, here's what I found on the Goldman
| CEO story: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-
| 03-15/goldma...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| To put some numbers on it "Associate" is a $150-$250K TC
| role vs DJ CEO making $25M.
| dbbk wrote:
| He DJs as a hobby, people are allowed to have hobbies, I
| don't think it's relevant.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| In real numbers, it's a DJ ($5k) CEO ($25MM).
| Retric wrote:
| He could be pulling something like 1/2 million as a DJ.
| Still a side gig, but not quite as trivial especially
| when his CEO pay isn't directly tied to hours worked.
|
| "His Spotify profile has 550,000 monthly listeners with
| his debut single garnering 8 million listens."
|
| It varies but this list is showing several people at
| close to 1$/year per monthly listener.
| https://www.internetdj.com/top-djs
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, but the funny thing is that.. for a guy worried
| about how hard his worker bees are working / how focussed
| they were during COVID.. he dropped A LOT of tracks
| during COVID.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Solomon
|
| In fact, almost his entire track history was during
| COVID.. in a time that the company he runs has had some
| headline-grabbing losses in their consumer division.
|
| So I think its fair to say he should focus on his own
| productivity here first.
| caseyohara wrote:
| Did Solomon actually produce those tracks though? I
| always assumed it was a ghost producer.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| He flies around doing live sets, so maybe?
| haldujai wrote:
| Does he do live sets (realizing the definitions are loose
| but essentially creating music live with something like
| an Ableton) as opposed to DJ sets (basically mixing pre-
| recorded tracks live, what most DJ performances are)?
|
| I've never seen him perform but a DJ set ranges from
| people who just hit the play button and follow a recipe
| (e.g. Paris Hilton) to very technical mixing (e.g. Maceo
| Plex). A live set is substantially more challenging (and
| why few do it) but would be strong support he's not
| having his released tracks ghost produced.
|
| Either way, good for him in my opinion. I also like
| mixing as a creative outlet but am terrible at it. If I
| was worth 9 figures I'd probably get a ghost producer to
| help me out and enjoy the experience of DJing.
|
| David Solomon only really pitches himself as a hobbyist
| anyway so I don't think there's anything
| misleading/shameful about it if he is in fact just
| getting everything ghost produced and doing a 'lite'
| mixing DJ set live. There are plenty of full-time
| "professional" DJs who do the same thing.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| As a former pro DJ and having seen Him live. He is
| actually a good DJ.
|
| If anyone wants some house music to chill to:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7s7In5PLSY_Z1aUMHb2wyw
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| You'd be surprised how often "live set" is a synonym for
| "USB stick."
|
| The scene is notorious for it. It's really not hard to
| find vids of DJs dancing, pointing, posing, and poking
| uselessly at a mixer which is obviously just there for
| the look.
| caseyohara wrote:
| There's also a huge difference between a "live set" and a
| "DJ set". I'm surprised people here on HN don't realize
| this.
|
| A "live set" typically involves the performer playing
| synths and programming the drums live. There are no
| record players, no pre-recorded tracks, everything is
| played live on the fly. Example:
| https://youtu.be/cVFzblT5VPE?t=4177 (a daytime one so you
| can see the gear)
|
| With a "DJ set", the DJ is playing two or more tracks,
| beatmatching them and mixing them together, transitioning
| from one track to the next. This still takes a lot of
| skill. If you see two or more turntables or media players
| and a mixer in the middle, that's a DJ set. Often the DJ
| brings their tracks to the venue loaded on a USB stick
| and plugs it into the media player. Just because there's
| a USB stick present doesn't mean the DJ set was pre-
| recorded. Example: https://youtu.be/Ubyd98XV5C0?t=1018
| flandish wrote:
| This example is a stark reminder that the complaints are
| most often not about details but about _class_.
|
| The CEO was upset others were allowed to perform as if they
| were of the same class.
|
| It's always class when one boils it down, imho.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Precisely. He couldn't put it into words because the
| words wouldn't have looked good.
|
| But the obvious complaint was what are these slobs doing
| in my summer resort town, dining in the same
| establishment as me!! Rather than stuck in downtown
| Manhattan in the August heat. Or - the least they could
| do is go to Coney Island / Jones Beach / Jersey Shore or
| something eating some hotdogs.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| I have not run into this attitude in tech from
| executives. Finance is much more of a heiracy culture I
| guess.
|
| I have run into this at a peer level though. I've
| negotiated WFH and extra vacation and have learned to
| keep it in the down low. They get mad at me, but I'm not
| the one that is their boss and I couldn't care less if
| they WFH.
| flandish wrote:
| Have seen similar. IMHO it falls under the umbrella HR
| created to keep us from discussing salary, too. A
| completely legal (US) thing employees can do.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Small biz bros are worse. My wife left finance to work
| for a small (50-200) person business for a few years.
| Couple brothers that inherited it from daddy. Got all
| their kids / kids friends nepobaby jobs.
|
| Probably the worst scenario of business owners you can
| work for.
| ghaff wrote:
| Small businesses can have their own set of issues which
| are probably different than those you encounter at a big
| company but they can be just as bad or worse. (Oh, and if
| you're in business for yourself, you need to do a lot of
| selling and need to deal with clients directly.)
| davidw wrote:
| Toxic small businesses can be really toxic. There's a
| _lot_ of this in northern Italy, which is actually a
| pretty productive, wealthy area. But they 'd be better
| off if there was more consolidation and some new blood.
| Tons of companies where grandpa founded it after WWII,
| and worked his hands to the bone. The son inherited it,
| maybe went to college and grew it and improved it some,
| and the grandkids are all about booze and cars and women.
|
| OTOH, a good small company can be really good. Decisions
| get made quickly, you know most of the people and can
| talk with them, much less BS, and more of a sense of
| purpose in what you're doing there rather than being a
| cog. I worked in one a few years back and loved it. They
| are tough to find, though, as a real 'small company' is
| different than a startup in that they're a bit less crazy
| in terms of growth.
| ghaff wrote:
| It certainly varies. I've had a casual relationship with
| senior execs (subject of course to understanding that
| they get to make the decisions at the end of the day).
| However, I've heard the stories about some senior execs
| that are of the mindset of "Don't make eye contact with
| me unless you've been spoken to." I didn't quite believe
| it at first because it's never been my experience but
| it's a thing.
|
| I haven't taken a month-long vacation for a while but
| when I did a few times in a long-ago role, there were
| definitely people who were at least a bit incredulous
| that I could get off with doing so.
| benterix wrote:
| > it's never been my experience but it's a thing
|
| Yes it is a thing. It starts when you get promoted to a
| more senior role. The thing is, nothing much changed
| inside or outside, so many people feel they need to make
| a point. They start to dress differently, behave
| differently, introduce distance - to make sure others
| understand who is in the "superior" position.
|
| I noticed thin in insecure types or those who need some
| confirmation of their value. But there are many people
| who are exact opposites, especially in the younger
| generation. They understand that being a manager doesn't
| mean giving orders but supporting your team in their
| work. It's so much easier for everybody.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There are executive-class perks in most medium-to-large
| companies, but at least in tech, they're kept on the down
| low so you have to kind of look for them to find them.
| Personal assistants are probably the most visible.
| Private meeting rooms / bathrooms / entrances for the
| executives, chauffeurs, cooks, masseuses, access to
| corporate jets, hard-to-get tickets to sporting / arts
| events, separate housing allowances and company-paid
| villas, personal security, lots of financial perks like
| wealth management tools, free tax services, deferred comp
| and supplemental retirement savings. But these things
| don't tend to get flashed in front of the worker-bees.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Almost all of those perks have been given to line techies
| since Google was founded.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I thought it was understood executive bathrooms are for
| the hookers and blow.
| kbos87 wrote:
| This is so often overlooked and it's true. I've done well
| enough in my career that I've learned to be very cautious
| about how much I let others know about my standard of
| living. I've had experiences in the past where someone
| who either is or feels like they should be doing better
| than I am based on what little they know about me becomes
| indignant and acts like the natural order of things has
| been upended.
| FredPret wrote:
| Not everything is a class dynamic. "Analyst at GS hanging
| out in the Hamptons" doesn't scream working class.
|
| The CEO and analyst are both upper class, just different
| levels of power and seniority.
|
| That CEO is just a power-tripping asshole.
| skissane wrote:
| > The CEO and analyst are both upper class
|
| Class can be more fine-grained than just lower/working-
| middle-upper
|
| People commonly talk about "upper middle class" vs "lower
| middle class", and then I suppose there are even some
| people in between the two (middle middle class?)
|
| Well, in the same way there is surely lower upper class
| and upper upper class, and maybe even more levels than
| that. A person on an annual salary of US$25 million is
| undeniably upper class but still far beneath the
| centibillionaire class.
|
| There's also no clear boundary between upper middle and
| lower upper. You may think someone on US$250K is "upper
| class" but they probably only think of themselves as
| "upper middle class", and personally I would think the
| same. In my own head, to _really_ be upper class, your
| annual income has to be (consistently) measured in
| millions, not hundreds of thousands.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| There are other dimensions than _number of millions_ ;
| money might be an universal measure, but people are
| different.
|
| Who is more upper class, a relatively impoverished Prince
| of the Holy Roman Empire or a billionaire by marriage and
| luck? Managers like the mentioned bank CEO, or someone
| who can rent them a house in the Hamptons because they
| have lived there for generations? An intellectual who has
| never _really_ worked, or a wealthy rapper who didn 't
| finish high school?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've always thought all those granular "upper lower upper
| class" and "middle lower upper class" and "upper middle
| upper lower middle class" distinctions were pretty
| pointless and mainly are for the people who care deeply
| about constructing a societal totem pole and placing
| everyone precisely somewhere on that totem pole.
|
| The huge class divides are not between retail workers,
| tradesmen and software developers, the divide is between
| C-suite executives / old money, and... everyone else who
| has to work for a living.
|
| As a tech worker, I have far more in common lifestyle-
| wise with a schoolteacher than I do with the SVP of
| Engineering in my own company.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| The different levels of power and seniority is a class
| within a class. Different levels of money, power, and
| prestige (which seniority is a proxy for here) is all
| class is really
| flandish wrote:
| Class is in no way related to salary.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| I miss when the Wikipedia articles for American
| working/middle/upper class had an image of the typical
| car they would drive on the sidebar.
| FredPret wrote:
| I didn't mention salary. I mentioned other indicators;
| being an analyst for GS (probably went to an Ivy League
| school) who hangs out in the same restaurant as the CEO
| in the Hamptons
| lancesells wrote:
| I think you're thinking too much about the restaurant. A
| CEO can go have a $1000 meal at the same place the
| analyst has a $200 meal. The CEO could even have the $200
| meal. Even multi-millionaires might not want a seven
| course prix fix for lunch.
|
| If the analyst lives in NYC and makes $250k they aren't
| living large. If they went to an Ivy League school and
| have to pay for it they really aren't living large.
| Regardless, the story makes the CEO look silly.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Class is also not these social/economic/cultural
| signifiers. As yogthos said in a different comment,
| differences in class are about having substantially
| different economic incentives. (I wouldn't go as far as
| GP and say they are unrelated. Of course they are
| strongly correlated. But they are different things in
| fundamental ways).
| skissane wrote:
| > Class is in no way related to salary.
|
| It is in part. A person on a US$20 million a year salary
| obviously isn't working class or even middle class-they
| might truthfully say they are of "working/middle class
| background" (if their parents were of more modest means)
|
| Whereas, their 10 year old kid whose annual income and
| assets are roughly $0 is also upper class-because their
| parents are. Now, if they grow up and their parents end
| up disowning them and they end up living on the streets
| homeless-then they won't be upper class any more. But if
| that doesn't happen, then they are-because even if they
| aren't filthy rich yet, very likely they'll eventually
| inherit a huge amount of money from their parents
| (assuming they don't already have some kind of "you'll
| never have to work a day in your life" trust fund set up
| for them). They could live their whole life in the upper
| class without ever getting a salary at all
| flandish wrote:
| The 10 year old is not a worker (hopefully) and this is
| what this kind of class refers to. The relationship to
| the means of production.
|
| They may never work a day because they don't need to -
| they are upper or "bourg." for sure.
| freetinker wrote:
| Perhaps not in most of the world (Europe, Asia), but in
| America class is strongly correlated to wealth.
| gochi wrote:
| Have you heard of phrases like "old money" and "new
| money"? Or "upper middle" and "lower upper"?
|
| The reason they're used more is because there is a very
| clear distinction between groups even at high levels of
| wealth due to the need to socially signal. This is what
| causes CEOs to flip out that an analyst is trying to
| casually talk to them at a non-work event as if they are
| equals.
|
| This is class dynamics in action, it's not all about the
| working class vs upper class, but how these different
| classes interact internally and externally.
| vasco wrote:
| People like to find ways to feel superior to others
| regardless of how much money they have. Money is just one
| of the easiest and most transversal ways.
|
| But feeling like you have better opinions or thought
| deeper about subjects than others or that you know "how
| it really is", or that you're a better driver or whatever
| are other common ways. Whatever you feel like you are
| good at, or have a lot of, you will be tempted to feel
| superior about.
|
| Fighting these thoughts is virtuous in my opinion.
| Pretending that only X type of people do it (rich or
| whatever) is not virtuous in my opinion.
| hgsgm wrote:
| CEO is New Money. Analyst is Not Money.
| afiori wrote:
| There can be many class horizons, it could very possibly
| be that the young analyst would dislike a plumber (as in
| someone owning a plumbing comapany) talking casually to
| him, the plumber a retail casher, the retail casher an
| homeless person.
|
| Upper vs working the most important divide (IMHO), but
| not the only one.
| yogthos wrote:
| The only meaningful way to look at class is by looking at
| class interests. On the one hand, you have the capitalist
| class who own significant amount of capital and use this
| capital to further their wealth. On the other hand, you
| have working class people for whom selling their labour
| is the primary source of their income.
|
| These two classes have largely contradictory interests.
| People who own companies want to cut their costs, and
| therefore they want to lower wages, give lower benefits,
| less time off, and so on. Workers want the exact opposite
| of that.
|
| People such as CEOs constitute a labour aristocracy where
| their interests largely align with the interests of large
| capitalists and they own some capital of their own.
| hibikir wrote:
| It's still more complicated than that, as ultimately a
| non trivial number of people end up making more from
| investments than labor, just from savings and time.
| Basically every 45 year old developer in the US that
| tried to save at all is a capitalist in your book.
|
| If capital gains hand someone 300k a year, they aren't
| quite workers, but they aren't playing the same game as
| someone who is still playing the accumulation game. It's
| the best trick the late 20th century played: Defined
| contribution workers are all also capitalists, just like
| everyone relying on an ever more valuable house.
| yogthos wrote:
| I don't think it's that complicated actually. The basic
| question is whether the individual has to keep going to
| work to maintain their lifestyle. Pretty much every 45
| year old developer out there wouldn't last long without
| having a job. They probably have a mortgage to pay on
| their house, they have car payments, credit card debt,
| and so on. They're not living off their capital even
| though they might own some capital.
|
| An actual capitalist makes a living by using their
| capital as the primary vehicle to create further wealth
| for themselves and to sustain their lifestyle.
|
| Again, the key distinction is in terms of class
| interests. What sort of social policies would be of
| interest to each type of individual is the question.
| ElFitz wrote:
| A 150k-250k analyst isn't upper class. Nor is it really
| middle-class (although that would depend on the cost of
| living).
|
| It's that weird in-between, where one still needs to
| _earn a living_ and make even more money for someone
| else.
|
| A 25M / year CEO is far past "earning a living" and
| really only works because they want to.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| upper middle class is the common term.
|
| or to use an older one: petit bourgeoisie
| jselysianeagle wrote:
| "petit bourgeoisie" used to mean "lower middle class".
| hughesjj wrote:
| The middle class is gone now so that's kind of fitting. I
| like the term "working class" as in "I need to work to
| survive". It covers a huge breadth of the population but
| that's better anyway imo
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| A junior analyst at Goldman Sachs who's having lunch in
| the Hamptons, in a restaurant the CEO also goes to, is
| probably upper class, just very young/recenly graduated
| though we don't know the details.
|
| Social class is not just about your current salary,
| although 200k soon after graduation isn't exactly
| 'average'...
|
| Some might even say that walking up to the CEO like that
| indicates upper class self-assurance...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Taking the other side - the junior was out to lunch with
| a bunch of coworkers.
|
| In the office setting the CEO would never been seen
| anywhere near the same floor that such junior people are
| working or eating, never having the opportunity to
| introduce themselves. One bank famously had a special CEO
| elevator so the guy could seamlessly get from the garage
| to his high-rise executive suite without bumping into a
| single soul.
|
| I recently found myself out to dinner a table over from a
| C-suite exec at my company. I did not introduce myself
| because I'm a socially damaged introvert.
|
| It's a pretty easy bet that the kid was a major extrovert
| on the other hand, more than some assumption they must
| already be upper class.
|
| You'd be surprised about the class mobility on Wall St vs
| other industries. When I graduated, Google famously did
| not even recruit from anything other than a small handful
| of schools and screened out a pretty high GPA minimum
| like 3.75 or so. Meanwhile every bank came to my college
| and I had like 5 offers. A good number of my coworkers
| spent some time at community college, had parents without
| college degrees, are first gen immigrants, etc.
|
| Outside of glad-handing networking roles that lean on
| peoples connections like in IB, "already rich" is the
| exception rather than the rule. Bear was famous for
| saying they didn't hire MBAs, but instead PSDs -- poor,
| smart and had a deep desire to be rich
| notfromhere wrote:
| Finance is kind of unique is that it's a weird mix of a
| strict meritocracy and a deeply seated upper crust that's
| incredibly nepotistic.
|
| The meritocrats are the ones that work the jobs where
| they actually have to make money and profits. Nepos are
| shunted to roles where that isn't as direct.
| freetanga wrote:
| Could be family money. A lot of IB folk come from wealthy
| families to begin with, then off to expensive
| Universities, and close the circle.
|
| Upwards mobility my ass.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| "a lot" describes one area in one department in very
| large global organizations. For every daddy money
| nepobaby, theres 1000 other roles filled by people who
| got there the hard way. There's only so many of these
| people you can find if you are hiring for orgs of 50K
| people.
| rayiner wrote:
| This recent (and self-serving) tendency of reducing
| "class" to only the extremely wealthy and everyone else
| is reductive and obscures important economic dynamics.
| It's ridiculous to treat a master plumber that owns a
| plumbing business as "bourgeoise" while treating an
| Amazon engineer who has tremendous human capital as being
| a "proletariat." Even in Marx's time, there was
| substantial debate about how to classify the salaried
| professionals that served as the agents of the capital
| owners.
|
| In the modern economy, capital owners are reliant on a
| class of non-fungible white collar workers that bring
| their own human capital. The two groups have myriad
| common interests. Those interests are in many cases in
| opposition to those of ordinary workers who lack human
| capital and are fungible and easily replaced.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| You think software engineers aren't fungible? Facebook
| hires SWE's based on generic technical interviews and
| doesn't even assign them a team until week six.
| rayiner wrote:
| That just means they're not literally irreplaceable, not
| that they're fungible. The pool of people who could do
| the job, even with training, is a tiny fraction of the
| overall population.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Gold is rare too.
| notfromhere wrote:
| Well paying engineers is more of a function of US
| dynamics in tech. Engineering salaries are down to earth
| basically everywhere else.
|
| They're proles by the definition of how they earn their
| labor. If the pool of labor expands beyond the available
| roles, those high salaries would crash down.
| thfuran wrote:
| Someone who has made twenty million for just a single
| year isn't working class even if they choose to continue
| working. They could immediately retire and perpetually
| draw on investments for an income several times higher
| than that of a person who's working for 150k.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Actually its extra funny because he is, objectively, a
| pretty bad CEO! Probably the worst GS has ever had. He
| will not last much longer in the seat.
|
| The big push into consumer finance has been a complete
| multi-billion loss making debacle under his leadership.
| thegaulofthem wrote:
| They may both be richer than you (they're certainly
| richer than I), but they're definitely not of the same
| class.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, even well paid worker bees are still worker bees.
|
| The queen bee who owns a share of the hive, decides how
| many bees to hire/fire, where they work, when they work,
| what % of the honey to share with the worker bees, etc..
| now thats a different class.
| generic92034 wrote:
| What about managers/trainers of sports teams, if the
| stars of the team get a significantly higher salary? The
| manager/trainer might order them around, but does that
| make them belonging to a higher class, even if they earn
| way less than their "subordinates"?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| you are misreading "owns a share of the hive, decides how
| many bees to hire/fire, where they work, when they work,
| what % of the honey to share with the worker bees"
|
| Team managers/trainers do not meet most of those
| criteria. At most the GM meets the majority of them. Only
| the team owner would meet all the criteria.
| vasco wrote:
| What about all the trades people that own their own small
| businesses? Like some young guy with a grass mowing
| business?
| notfromhere wrote:
| Tradespeople with businesses are still pretty much
| tradespeople. At a small business the owner is basically
| a foreman
|
| It's rare that those businesses scale to the point of
| where your role is purely abstract management layers
| removed from the front line workforce.
| brewdad wrote:
| That hive is too small to matter. Kind of like I don't
| really concern myself with all of the wildlife in
| Australia that would like to eat me. It doesn't affect me
| in the least day to day.
|
| Amazon was once a small business. It's possible to grow
| that hive but the vast majority get exterminated.
| nkjnlknlk wrote:
| Players have not been subordinate to managers (in most
| sports) for decades.
| derefr wrote:
| Not even. He was upset because the presence of his
| middle-class employee in his previously-upper-class
| restaurant -- especially with the employee visibly
| performing middle-class behaviors like _a lack of
| consideration of discretion_ (and then not being told to
| sit down by the restaurant staff!) -- was tarnishing the
| restaurant 's upper-class image, i.e. the usefulness of
| using eating there as an upper-class shibboleth.
|
| Or, to put that another way: if the CEO can't use "come
| eat with me at $place" as a way to say to investors and
| other CEOs that he's "one of them" and can be let in on
| the backchannel conversations, then _why is he even
| eating there_? It 's expensive and the service is awful!
| He'd much rather not! Now he needs to find a _new_ place
| to use to signal that!
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I would love to hear the "backchannel" conversations
| happening between people like Musk, Altman, the Google
| guys and their cronies. It often "feels" like they are
| planning something nefarious longterm but I can't exactly
| see the big picture so im not sure.
| Macha wrote:
| The sad thing is that when it's come out (e.g. the
| twitter court case), it's been shockingly vapid. And free
| of people challenging each other even when the ideas are
| so obviously bad.
| rurp wrote:
| Reading the text messages from that court case
| extinguished any questions I had about Musk and his
| cronies being super geniuses.
| hgsgm wrote:
| The are just normal people but with billions of dollars
| to sling around, so everything is more expensive and
| impressive scale.
| smeej wrote:
| So many of the comments are acting as though the
| underling employee actually _is_ of a different class.
|
| I'd bet anything this young person is used to having his
| family name make him welcome at any table he wishes to
| join, even in the Hamptons. He's on the well-worn path
| through a brief stint as a junior analyst before he's
| running some bank or hedge fund somewhere and the CEO of
| GS hesitates to approach _his_ table.
|
| This isn't the action of someone either boldly or naively
| misunderstanding his place. This is the action of someone
| who has grown up knowing his place is wherever he wishes
| it to be.
| flandish wrote:
| Class is not salary or wealth it is position in the
| hierarchy of the means of production.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| You just made up a scenario that has a less than 50%
| probability of being true, in order to.. come to the
| defense of a CEO worth $100M+ ? LOL cmon man.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I believe part of that is true based on the location and
| ivy league background but also the ceo has disdain for
| lower ranked employees appearing in his bubble and daring
| to appear on the same level
| indymike wrote:
| > The CEO was upset others were allowed to perform as if
| they were of the same class.
|
| I doubt it. Companies that try to hire pedigree know that
| they are hiring from the same class. The disdain is shock
| from a junior not working 20 hour days and sleeping under
| the desk.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| > I doubt it. Companies that try to hire pedigree know
| that they are hiring from the same class.
|
| Have you ever heard the term "1% of the 1%"?
| Simulacra wrote:
| and power. Being flexible and away from the office, etc.
| means someone is not holding power over you, i.e.
| requiring you to work in the office.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Exactly! It's like Musk demanding everyone comes into the
| office while he is only in the office at individual
| companies 1 or 2 times a week. CEO of Tesla, a publicly
| traded company spends all his time in the privately held
| offices of Twitter. Can other of his company employees
| work multiple jobs including their own personal company?
|
| If the answer is no then it's 100% a class thing
| notfromhere wrote:
| The funniest bit to me is that Musk owning and working as
| the CEO of multiple companies is admitting that CEOs
| don't actually do much tangible work.
| hgsgm wrote:
| He bought the company from Jack Dorsey, who did the
| absentee CEO thing first.
| hughesjj wrote:
| It's even funnier when the companies he has the least day
| to day involvement in operate better.
|
| Musk buying Twitter was the best thing to happen to the
| work culture of Tesla employees.
| [deleted]
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > US commuters might have had a boiled frog scenario where
| you slowly just get used to having a worse & worse commute as
| you age
|
| You never have to move to the exurbs though :)
| ghaff wrote:
| I like the exurbs. And my closest office--which I haven't
| spent a day in for at least the past 5 years--is basically
| in an exurb as well. (I go into our urban office more
| frequently for customer visits.)
| ghaff wrote:
| In my experience, VP+ level also maybe spend half the year on
| the road and are commonly on 10pm calls with e.g. customers
| and general managers in Asia. Certainly they're usually well-
| compensated but they're not spending their days by the
| swimming pool in their villa either. I suspect that a lot of
| people reading this would hate the job even if they could do
| it well.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Sure. I write this as someone who works 12-14hrs/day and
| sporadically over the weekend, but I do it all remote from
| home & am well compensated so I am happy with the trade.
|
| However - I think some of the CEO class defenders shouldn't
| delude themselves as to why these people have 5 homes. It
| is not because they take a paltry 15 days paid time off per
| year in which they use those homes. They have the
| flexibility to dictate their schedule, and they use that
| flexibility to be where they want, when they want.
|
| At one fund I worked they Dual-HQd NYC & Miami (plus they
| all keep a Greenwich footprint) so that some of the execs
| could sleep outside NY State for statutory 183 days/year
| and avoid NYS/NYC 10-15% income tax on high earners. Plus
| they maintained their country homes outside the city.
|
| If you make $5M/year, the 2nd/3rd/4th home start to pay for
| themselves with those economics.
|
| Sleep in Greenwich Friday to Tuesday. Monday work from CT
| office. Blade to midtown office Tuesday AM. Sleep in your
| condo Tuesday/Wednesday and then back to Greenwich Thursday
| night to work remote Friday. Next thing you know you're in
| Manhattan for a paltry 2 nights/week, maybe not even every
| week if you go do a Miami 2 weeks/month, or for majority of
| winter, etc.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I would be thrilled to have a job I hated for $5M a year. I
| would only have to bear it a year and I could retire.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| If I had a small-medium company I would hand out money for
| renting coworking spaces. If enough people do this, coworking
| spaces will pop up more and more and compete to get the best
| deals. People who wants to WFH can pocket the difference and
| those who crave for socialization will have a place for such.
|
| A large company can probably do that with smaller offices or
| with setting up the coworking spaces themselves and renting
| the spaces left without occupants.
| euniceee3 wrote:
| 100% this. Remote first company and there are two offices.
| We get more done with in-person casual conversations than
| formal meetings. Our velocity from the office is
| significantly higher. I wish some of the other teams shared
| offices a few days per week.
|
| The commute is not bad when they are localized due to the
| team members having worked together in the past.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I don't think people working from random coworking spaces
| solves the problems the execs imagine working from one
| office does
| ghaff wrote:
| And yet WeWork is probably going to end up out of business.
| Maybe if I didn't have any real estate footprint yet, I'd
| consider an all coworking spaces footprint. The more
| general problem is that, even if I were fine with driving
| into a local office, I probably wouldn't know anyone much
| less work with anyone there on a given day.
| cowmix wrote:
| My wife works for a big university and when the first "return
| to the office" pitch was happening, the head of HR for the
| whole org was on a Zoom and basically said, "If you are not
| back at work, you should be already. I love coming into
| campus and mingling with the students..." etc, etc. RIGHT at
| the moment, you could hear FedEX ringing his doorbell at his
| home. Insane.
| Natsu wrote:
| I can't go back. I have family to care for who need me at home
| and will suffer if I'm away. And that's even before I reclaim
| all the time during the day when there was no work I could be
| doing.
|
| I'm more productive, I find new ways to make myself valuable in
| some of that free time whereas in the office I'd just be bored
| out of my skull instead because I had to keep my butt in a seat
| to make someone happy.
|
| Fortunately my management is looking into downsizing leases and
| recouping savings instead of forcing people into the office.
| They've waffled a little about pulling people back in but they
| just aren't that serious about it in general.
| yungporko wrote:
| yep, i don't care if they give me an entire palace. unless it's
| attached to my home, i am not going there. if my job requires
| me to be at the office, i will say "no" and then get another
| job.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > unless it's attached to my home, i am not going there
|
| Why on Earth would you accept an office attached to your
| home?! Seems like the worst of all options...
| [deleted]
| ljf wrote:
| Before covid - we built a shed/bar/office/playroom that I
| thought I'd get to work in 1 day a week, which is what felt
| acceptable for whf at the time.
|
| During covid having a place I can shut the door on at the
| end of the day, was amazing. I watched friends work from
| kitchen tables, while I had my own office in the garden.
|
| For a while it did 'spoil' it as a playroom/fun room - but
| I pretty quickly learnt to make it work for me.
|
| Having an office attached to your house is amazing (and is
| the largest drag for me returning to the office).
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| In English, they're using that sentence as a figure of
| speech meaning that they just want to host their own
| office, inside of or attached to their house.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| That was my take as well.
|
| But I've been looking for work for 4 months, and it's a hard
| line to hold.
|
| Fully remote jobs have gotten scarcer, and there's more
| competition for them thanks to this year's layoffs.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| A private office is very much something that causes me to
| toggle between wanting to WFH and go into the office.
|
| I hate open floorplans for working (fine if I'm walking around
| to get coffee or something). The biggest draw of WFH is that I
| don't have to put on headphones just to get some quiet time.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| Yeah, no way I can afford to move closer to work when
| condos/houses nearby are 1.5 million. I will continue to work
| from home or they can find someone else. I don't mind the
| office, I do mind the 2 hours lost from my day, 5 days a week.
| lanstin wrote:
| I don't know, I worked in the 90s when I had a private office
| and it was very nice compared to the shitholes being offered
| now. To be sure salaries were like 25% of what they are now,
| but the thing I like about WFH, the ability to close the door
| and pace around and think, and also to start to research some
| topics and get a pile of articles and books, and then forget
| about them, and then come back in a few days with my former
| mental state roughly reflected in the physical arrangement of
| the documents, making it easier to weave things together in
| kicking ideas around/brainstormy kind of way, was very much
| present in the private office. It's not like people didn't
| wander around and chat and overhear what things were going on,
| but we had the ability to focus as needed. I think a nice
| office would be a good inducement.
| IKantRead wrote:
| I suspect many people on HN have _never_ had a proper office
| with a door.
|
| While I do agree with your overall premise, having had offices
| at multiple roles over my career, it is a _major_ improvement
| over cubicles and open office.
|
| Having a space to work in complete, uninterrupted quiet is
| wonderful. The simple social signal of the door being opened or
| close implying availability to chat works great to balancing
| heads down time and chat with colleagues time. Have a white
| board of your own that you can stare at throughout the course
| of a project, that evolves with discussions has not be
| replicated yet either remote or in a shared space.
|
| You can also get pretty wild with customizing an office for
| comfort. I used to know many people that brought their own
| lighting in, completely solving the problem of constant
| overhead fluorescence. And brewing your coffee the way you like
| it in your own space in the afternoon is very refreshing.
|
| Even given all that I'm sure many people would still prefer
| remote work (I would at this point), but I can image a fairly
| large number of people that would be very interested in a set
| up like this. It also mean your home is completely work free
| again.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Exactly! I used to work at a place where we had a proper
| office for each team, about 2-4 people in each room per day
| because WFH was a (real) option.
|
| I actually enjoyed going to that office because it was very
| quiet and I didn't have a proper workspace at home. My
| commute was ~30mins with a motorcycle. Yes, sometimes the A/C
| or the lighting must be compromised with other coworkers, but
| that's still okay if you get to socialize in exchange.
|
| The major aspect was obviously noise. But I also felt
| dignified in that office. It was not status like C-Suite
| offices, just feeling a nice environment instead of being
| crammed in a chicken coop.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > I suspect many people on HN have never had a proper office
| with a door.
|
| In my time at Apple I had a real office with a real door for
| about half of my time. Of that only about half was an office
| I didn't have to share with someone else. The lone offices
| were the most productive I ever was while working there. I
| could close the door and go unbothered for hours. I turned
| off the lights and had my own lamp that was much more
| comfortable.
|
| Sharing an office with coworkers wasn't bad on its face but
| it's difficult to focus if the other person is talking with
| someone else. It's all manageable but objectively worse than
| a single office. The open floor plan at Apple Park was just
| fucking horrible. Constant distractions all day. Sure you
| _could_ collaborate but when trying to actually get work done
| it was in spite of a hundred visual and audible distractions.
| I 'm sure I distracted others inadvertently as well.
|
| A giant spaceship of a campus and they couldn't manage to
| give everyone a private space. Just the stupidest design for
| a building.
| lokar wrote:
| I had a private office at a large tech firm for many years. It
| was perfect for me, I would probably go back to the office for
| that setup. I'll never go work in an open floor plan.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| See if I lived five minutes walk from work, I'd want to be in
| the office even less. Why sit there between meetings if I am
| five minutes from my home? Why bag a lunch when my kitchen is
| down the block? I'd probably show face at the obligate meetings
| then just go home for the day if I could.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I used to live 5mins from work. The office catered lunch
| every day, but I still went home every day to eat lunch with
| my wife instead. Hated being at that place
| dack wrote:
| even if you like the place, hard to beat lunch with the
| wife
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I tell recruiters I want remote because there's nothing
| better than seeing my wife or playing with my cat when I
| need to take a break. Every single recruiter understands
| completely. Some will push remote, others respectfully
| end the conversation because they know they cant beat
| that.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I don't mean this as cras, but even _better_ is "lunch"
| with the wife.
|
| I.e., when the two of you are finally home alone and
| awake, because school is in session.
|
| I suspect for some marriages, WFH has been a real
| blessing.
| lampshades wrote:
| And for other marriages, WFH has been a disaster. I know
| so many people who have ended up divorced after they were
| both WFH everyday.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Yeah, it's sad. I didn't mean to imply that WFH was a net
| positive for every couple.
| carpetmucher wrote:
| [flagged]
| screwturner68 wrote:
| I lived 5 minutes away from work for a few years, I could see
| my office window from my apartment window. Going into the
| office wasn't a big deal, it was just a 5 minute walk. I
| really didn't care about going home for lunch because we had
| a cafeteria and I'd eat lunch or go get snack with my friends
| and there were probably 20 restaurants within a 10 minute
| walk so I had better options than a PB&J. It was much more of
| a social thing than a work thing, why sit in my apartment by
| myself when I have a half dozen people I enjoy hanging out
| with 5 minutes away. The only disadvantage was that due to my
| proximity I was always the go to person in case someone had
| to physically go to the office, the guy who lived 80 miles
| away was never asked to pop in on a Saturday to reboot
| something but I was asked all the time.
| karaterobot wrote:
| When I lived close to my office, I found the office became
| an extension of my home. I don't mean that I took my work
| home with me, or worked longer hours. I mean that I found
| myself crossing the street and going into my office on
| weekends, to work on personal projects, or sometimes just
| to watch movies or play video games on my laptop. The
| office started to function like a second living room. It
| was weird and did not last long, but it was sort of nice.
| Occasionally someone would be there, working on the
| weekend, and they all thought I was a really dedicated
| employee because I was always there too.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I would work almost exclusively from the office in this
| scenario and even keep my work belongings there (if
| possible).
|
| It's much easier for some to have a complete separation of
| work and home spaces. Also a change of scenery in the morning
| and getting to move a bit before starting to work is nice.
|
| If you work 5 mins from your home you can just walk there for
| lunch. No need to bag a lunch, no?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| What's funny is my boss, a total hardo, during latter stages
| of COVID did live 5 minutes from work.
|
| He used it to his advantage to show his face in the office,
| but rarely ever put in a full day. So sure he might show up
| on reports as being a 2-3x/week attender while others were
| doing 0-1, but many of those were morning-only, afternoon-
| only, or drop-ins for an in-person meeting of importance.
| Plus the occasional Friday solitude getaway to the empty
| office.
|
| To his credit he really put no RTO pressure on us relative to
| his management chain.
| freetanga wrote:
| I did what your boss did. WFH means that other people at
| your home might be there too, your wfh spot might be
| uncomfortable, and for me changing the scenery and getting
| some peace and quiet helped me productive. If I have a
| delicate call I don't want my kids barging in telling me
| the Wifi is slow or my wife asking for dinner plans. Also,
| changing scenario helps me leaving problems at the door.
|
| I really don't get when people defend WFH as a Holy Grail
| and complain that are catalogued as lazy or freeloaders,
| only to become fierce critics and cataloging anyone who
| prefers going to the office as boot-lickers or mediocre
| middle-management (not your post SteveBK123, but a common
| attitude across this type of thread)
|
| Everyone has different circumstances, different jobs, and
| our minds work differently. Let's live and let live.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'd do it because I think it's better to have separate work /
| life areas; right now my WFH spot is also my PC gaming spot
| and the bedroom and the place where laundry dries, and I
| wouldn't mind more distance between work, leisure and private
| life.
|
| That said, five minutes means one could come home for lunch.
|
| But anyway, five minute walk to work is highly unlikely; a
| lot of people (most? citation needed?) have a commute to
| work, either driving or public transit. I'd rather have a
| nice private office or small team room than a big open and
| loud office space.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I had to get a second desk in my place for WFH. It was way
| too jarring to log off and keep sitting in the same spot.
| Contextual learning made me feel awkward to browse Reddit
| "at work".
|
| Given my space, my WFH desk is much crappier and smaller
| than my personal one, but still so much better than losing
| my life commuting.
| Roark66 wrote:
| >I'd do it because I think it's better to have separate
| work / life areas; right now my WFH spot is also my PC
| gaming spot and the bedroom and the place where laundry
| dries, and I wouldn't mind more distance between work,
| leisure and private life.
|
| Long time ago I used to rent a room in a shared house 5 min
| walk from work. My housemates were all cool people, but
| working on a laptop sitting next to the bed I slept in
| every night would e far worse for me than just going to the
| office. But this was decades ago. I can understand why
| someone in such position would prefer an office.
|
| But if you can have a house, and you're mid/senior in your
| role there is nothing better than wfh.
|
| Also I've recently noticed a disturbing trend. Companies
| advertising 100% remote work, then you go through the whole
| recruitment process and at the very end they tell you. BTW,
| it's not 100% wfh. You gotta come to the office 1 day per
| month (sometimes even 1 per week). Anyone looking for real
| wfh job should be aware of such tricks to nip them in the
| bud early on.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| There was a study about that and there was a direct
| correlational between the size of you home and your
| desire to return to the office, people with small
| apartments enjoyed the office much more than those with
| larger houses. I'd also guess that the people with larger
| homes live father away from work than people with smaller
| homes so a longer commute comes into play.
| brewdad wrote:
| That makes total sense. My house is about 1900 sq ft over
| two levels. During lockdown, my wife converted our guest
| bedroom into her office. My HS aged son did online school
| in his bedroom and I basically had the entire downstairs.
| Our cats moved around throughout the day depending on
| their mood.
|
| This would have been much more uncomfortable in a smaller
| 2BR apartment and almost unmanageable in any space
| smaller than that.
| ookblah wrote:
| it will never happen, but i always felt that everyone should have
| a private office by default (not a cubicle) that opens into a
| main "open plan" area and then breakout/conferences rooms. to me
| that is the best mixture to mix things up and accomodate all
| types of working types. add to that the ability to wfh and i
| think it would make me want to go in. sometimes i like popping
| into cafes and random co-working spaces for that reason.
| switch007 wrote:
| Our company waxes lyrical about the "amazing offices" and the
| "investment" in them. Yet the desks are next to each other and so
| cramped you have to be careful rolling back your chair when you
| stand up else you might hit someone else's chair.
|
| Zero effort was put in to make desks less distracting. Only some
| desks are height adjustable. Chairs are cheap.
|
| They were hoping all the "fun" stuff would lure people back. It
| didn't work. Because while fun stuff is nice, if work doesn't
| happen, we get fired, so the working area has to be good too
|
| Same old same old. All that changed was the language to describe
| the offices and the "experience"
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > If you want to watch your employees work, build glass walls
|
| I'm not sure if the author is serious or trolling. Looking
| forward to another series of articles "I gave them glass offices,
| why won't they come back in?!"
| heavyset_go wrote:
| "Why Gen Z/Millennials Ruined Glass Walls"
| electrondood wrote:
| I'm most productive where I have my workstation. It doesn't
| matter if that's at home or in office. If you want me to commute
| 45 minutes twice a day so you can physically see me, I'm going to
| need my own dedicated space, not some "grab what you can" hotel
| seating.
|
| Also, companies really should be adding some incentive for that
| 1.5-2 hours wasted each day.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| I couldn't care less about having a private office at work...
| That would even ruin any benefit of actually being there in
| person (e.g. spontaneously talk to a coworker, pick up knowledge
| from listening to coworkers talking about some problem...).
|
| What would help is paid commute time (or at least reimburse my
| commute costs), and paid lunch. Literally going to the office
| costs me 20-30$ per day, which is almost 10% of the salary I earn
| that day.
| kinghuang wrote:
| Distance from home to the office is an enormous factor to me. I'm
| currently an 8 minute bike ride or 25 minute walk from my office,
| and prefer going in. But, 10 years ago, when it was a 30 minute
| bike ride or drive, I would've loved to WFH.
| yboris wrote:
| I _can not_ return to an office -- I moved to rural Michigan
| where I enjoy nature and a quieter pace of life -- 100% WFH.
|
| All these articles from media controlled by capitalists hellbent
| on shaming workers and insisting the problem lies with employees
| rather than employers at every turn. Fuck them.
| dtx1 wrote:
| Our offices are empty enough that if you want to you can easily
| have your own. It's just that wearing trousers, getting through
| traffic, etc. are too inconvenient
| moomoo11 wrote:
| WFH is great for jobs where you don't need to innovate _as much_
| or do anything significantly meaningful but keep the lights on.
|
| You really do benefit from being in person when doing something
| meaningful and impactful. It just works much better, and you only
| need a few people to do this and delegate the rest of the work to
| the WFH crowd.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| How does the dual income effect never get mentioned? In these
| articles its like you work from home in a vacuum, and going from
| remote to back to the office should be as trivial as flipping a
| lightswitch. The vast majority of coupled these days are dual
| income. It is so much simpler to find a place to live when you
| both work remotely, than to try and find some middle ground that
| is as convenient as possible to both workplaces, but this hard
| sought convenience goes away with the snap of the fingers should
| one of your jobs change. Now you are back to square one trying to
| triangulate housing between two offices and perhaps a school or
| this that and the other thing.
|
| Remote work just makes that entire concern irrelevant. You can
| now live in the same location all your working years if you
| wanted. I see people talk about things like not having to commute
| as being big factors, but this benefit of not having to uproot I
| think is even more significant. Moving is terrible.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Yes, especially with the shockingly high cost of housing this
| is a very real effect.
| albert_e wrote:
| agreed.
|
| add kids and their schools & playgroups to the mix and the
| prospect of having to move becomes stressful enough to shorten
| the lifespan :)
| 300bps wrote:
| 3.5% unemployment rate = nothing will get people back into office
| if they don't want to be in the office.
|
| This all flips around at some point though. Maybe 10%
| unemployment?
|
| For me, I'm looking incredulously at people making decisions on
| where to live assuming that "work from home" is locked in
| forever. I know someone who is in the process of settling on a
| house in the middle of nowhere working for a large publicly
| traded company remotely. The company just posted their first
| quarterly loss in forever.
|
| If she ends up losing that job, she'll be 100% dependent on being
| able to find another remote position or be forced to sell her
| house.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Can someone explain why companies want _engineers_ to return to
| the office so badly? Engineering requires prolonged periods of
| uninterrupted focus. Working from home provides that focus. Who
| wants this return to the office so badly and why?
|
| When I worked "from the office" I routinely had to work from home
| to focus on high stakes projects, because the office was
| interruption hell. The office, especially open plan, is good for
| catching up but sucks shit for focusing and getting stuff done.
| postalrat wrote:
| Because you are actually more production when you are being
| interrupted vs locked away where nobody can reach you.
|
| Or do you just work on small projects that you can finish by
| yourself?
| shrimpx wrote:
| > you are actually more production when you are being
| interrupted
|
| That makes no sense. If you research the impact of
| interruptions on productivity you will find that
| interruptions unanimously destroy productivity. For
| engineers, it takes a significant amount of ramp-up time to
| get into flow, and being interrupted resets that ramp.
| emu7652 wrote:
| Want people to RTO? threaten them. Constantly remind them they
| are replaceable, never reward good behavior.
| moneycantbuy wrote:
| echoing others here, the cost of living in the bay area and hours
| of daily commuting aren't worth the proclaimed "innovative water
| cooler conversations". i wish the executives would at least be
| honest about why they are forcing us back on location. i suspect
| it is to try to keep their real estate values high. to my
| knowledge none of the big companies have published data showing
| wfh being less profitable than on campus work. anecdotally i am
| much more productive wfh from my sweet affordable mountain home
| than trying to sleep in my expensive but still crappy sf
| apartment then risk my life driving for hours for some badge
| swipe kabuki. icing on the cake is my manager and colleagues are
| in other countries. not surprisingly i'm looking for another job.
| tpankaj wrote:
| I don't want my own office. If I wanted to work in a room by
| myself, I would work from home. The whole reason I go to the
| office at a job that lets me choose is because I find it easier
| to be productive when sitting with my teammates.
| [deleted]
| nerdchum wrote:
| I would 100% come into the office if I didn't have to work in an
| open office environment like a child.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| I'm not moving to the real-estate market near an office. Poor
| working conditions are certainly one reason to avoid the office,
| but being able to live where ever you want is also a huge deal.
| feyman_r wrote:
| I am an outlier and minority here - WFH should have worked for
| me, but I realized the lack of control over snacking when at
| home, and a lack of discipline to take breaks between meetings to
| walk and be active. I gained 20 lbs over two years.
|
| When I'm in the office, both these problems don't exist; in fact
| 1:1s become 'walking 1:1s'. I feel more healthier; the commute
| back allows me to disconnect from work and decline meetings.
|
| This is not to say working from the office is better for
| everyone. I wish _I_ had the discipline to be better at WFH.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I personally experience the polar opposite.
|
| Our office had ice cream fridges, candies, people ordering in
| daily, etc.
|
| I threw away a lot of money and ate a lot of extra calories
| because acting as a group was strongly encouraged, meaning I
| would go out with the team every "let's eat out at a fast food
| place Friday" (if not more often).
|
| When I am at home in my controlled space, there are no snacks
| because I do not buy any. There are no restaurants because I
| live far from downtown & fast food places by choice.
|
| When I have a lot of willpower to do so, I even workout during
| the day and then take a shower. The best I could do at the
| office is go for a walk next to a road filled with cars.
| snarf21 wrote:
| This is the thing I wish people would admit: it is all a
| preference. It's fine if some people want to WFH. It should
| also be fine if some people don't. Let employers fight to get
| their employees what their employees want or lose them to one
| that will. I wish I could work locally but it is no longer
| possible but I see a lot of benefits that you enjoy too. There
| is no absolute, just a preference for each person's priorities.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Echo this a lot. Combined with a 4-year old at home constantly
| interrupting your flow, it's a hard time.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If our kid was at home all the time, going to the office
| would be necessary, but someone has to watch the kid, and
| having a daycare in the neighborhood makes it better to just
| send them off there (and convenient to drop/pick them up via
| WFH).
| [deleted]
| DragonStrength wrote:
| That's the opposite of me: I take twice daily walks when
| working from home because I prioritize living somewhere I like
| and can walk. Returning to the office means eating worse food
| for me (eating out) and spending more time in a vehicle versus
| walking.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Want employees in the office? Have an in-office culture and hire
| people who want to be in-office. The market is available enough
| now for people to just work remote if they want.
|
| I work at a company where we're in office all the time. This is
| what I like and that's who I like to hire.
| heisnotanalien wrote:
| I love working from home as much as everyone else here
| (seemingly) but I don't think people are fully appreciating how
| damaging not talking to people in meat space is likely to be
| long-term. We are embodied/energetic creatures and that energy is
| not exchanging the same way online (sorry if that sounds woo but
| it's true!). More so for the younger people, let's not forgot
| some of whom have never worked with people much in person.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I simply do not get much if any of my human connection needs
| met by coworkers. I have a family, neighbors, close friends I
| see frequently and less close friends I see occasionally. A
| church, relationships based on volunteering, hobbies and
| interests, teens I mentor and their parents I shoot the shit
| with. Coworkers are so far down the list of priority
| socialization that my life isn't negatively affected by not
| interacting with them physically.
| heisnotanalien wrote:
| Me me me. Other people exist apart from you!
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I'm not the one trying to change everyone else's work
| environment because I can't meet my human needs elsewhere!
| (and I don't think you are either?) If you value human
| connectedness then build it into your life. If you don't
| then learn to live without it. Don't try to shape the lives
| of others around you in order that they meet your needs
| merely because they are easily accessible as coworkers.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Other than 1 or 2 individuals from previous jobs I've never in
| my life felt social fulfillment from colleagues. Even those 2
| people I haven't spoken to in a long, long time and in fact
| only remembered they existed because I'm writing this post.
|
| As far as social situations go, colleagues rank somewhere near
| the bus driver I greet every morning in terms of how much
| fulfillment they give me.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| This is a modern requirement of having to talk to people other
| than your family and friends. If you were a farmer or shepherd
| or fisherman or ... 50 years ago, to whom would you talk during
| the day and work? Probably noone. You would just talk to your
| family when back at home.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I would say the most important factor for me would be to
| implement COVID-19 mitigations, but I also enjoy wfh now.
| SonOfKyuss wrote:
| Corporate America is done with COVID for the most part. I don't
| know of any non-medical office still doing any significant
| COVID mitigations other than possibly retaining enhanced
| cleaning protocols.
| tehjoker wrote:
| They won't be when the rising disability rates (ONS and FRED
| data show this) shrink the labor pool.
| opless wrote:
| Covid hasn't gone away though.
|
| Returning to an office is my idea of hell though. Getting I'll
| because some random employee won't take the time off or WFH
| because they have a cold/flu/covid is plenty enough reason to
| say "no"
| footy wrote:
| This is how I feel. I know someone whose life was pretty
| severely impacted by long covid, and I don't want to be her.
| And I'm a 37 year old woman, which apparently is a higher
| risk demographic than average.
|
| Between that and the benefits of working from home (having
| lunch with my local friends or eating leftovers, no commute,
| control over my environment, being able to work from my
| partner's occasionally), I really don't think there's a
| realistic amount of money I'd go back to an office for.
| Onsites are fine, but RTO 5 days a week 48 weeks a year? No
| thank you.
| jwestbury wrote:
| Honestly, I'd even take a cube farm. I've only ever worked at
| tech companies with fully open offices, or, at best, some cubicle
| walls up around groups of 10-15 desks.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Before cubes were a thing, open office layouts were the norm.
| When cubes were introduced, office workers hailed than as
| wonderful things because it meant no more of the hell that is
| open office layouts.
|
| Open offices < cubes < private offices
|
| Personally, I will never again work in an open office setting,
| or even a "pod" setup. I've learned my lesson.
| goodpoint wrote:
| How about neither?
| quercusa wrote:
| I have repented of my bitching about cube farms since
| discovering there are worse things.
| xeromal wrote:
| Aye, same. My first job was a cube farm and it was much
| better than sitting at a giant wooden table with 5000 chairs.
| btilly wrote:
| When I worked for eBay they had a hexagonal version of a cube
| farm.
|
| I thought it was brilliant. Pack more people into a space, and
| make your distance to your nearest neighbor farther. Plus you
| naturally had a comfortable place to sit, 2 filing cabinets,
| and 2 spots for bookshelf, whiteboard, or whatever. And a lot
| more desk space than you'd expect.
|
| I was always puzzled that nobody else ever tried that design.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| I always performed better in 2-4 person offices. Not alone, but
| not open space either. The constant noise and people walking by
| all the time is terrible for concentration.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, this seems like a fun idea. You get to make a couple of
| buddies and you can bounce ideas easily without being
| overwhelmed or treated like cattle. Team rooms.
| narcindin wrote:
| +1 my best office was a 15 minute walk through a upscale
| shopping area, into a cramped room alongside my teammates and
| boss with a great view of a large pond.
|
| All of our desks were pushed together in the middle of the
| room. The _room_ itself would switch from chat mode to quiet
| mode.
|
| Though I think the quietest member of the team would have
| preferred a solitary arraignment, I can only speak for myself.
| Brystephor wrote:
| I mentioned this in another post but here's my take.
|
| Background: I graduated from school in Spring 2020 and started at
| my first full time software in Aug 2020. I've began going to the
| office about 4 days a week since Feb 2023. Prior to that, I had
| only been in an office twice ever (excluding my 2019 internship).
|
| Here's some points that make in office tough for me to enjoy.
|
| * When I'm in office, stuck on a problem and need to just think,
| what can I do? I can stare at other people. I can hear other
| conversations, others typing, etc. When I'm at home, I can do
| basic home chores like fold laundry.
|
| * When I'm in office, my lunch options are more limited. I either
| need to buy lunch, bring it, or select from what work has
| catered. Bringing a lunch limits options and takes time at home
| to prepare. When I'm at home, I can eat whatever, whenever. No
| pressure to sit with people I with with. No comments about why am
| I eating what I'm eating.
|
| * I typically feel more isolated in the office than I do at home.
| In the office, I can see others walking around having
| conversations. I don't know anyone outside of my direct team.
| Even then, collaboration is very low. With no meetings, I'll talk
| for maybe 15-20 minutes in the day. At home, I am alone, but I'm
| not watching others actively socialize. This is more of a me
| problem than anything.
|
| There are also things I don't like about being in the office in
| general. I don't like that others speak in languages I don't
| understand. The monitors, chairs and lighting are worse than at
| home. The office is in a not great area, and I walk so it's not a
| nice commute.
|
| Overall, I've come to really enjoy and be excited for my work
| from home days.
| exabrial wrote:
| Precisely what we did, with coordinated WFH days. We're still
| experimenting, but I'm pretty happy with it and it seems to work
| for a lot of people.
| swader999 wrote:
| I see white collar evolving to more virtual workspaces than
| physical. These will get more functional and productive, right
| now they are crude and clunky.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I find a lot of this amazing.
|
| Management in many places seems to insist on getting people into
| offices, but cannot explain why?
|
| And they think people will spend 2h a day and 100s of dollars a
| month because they shuffled some desks around and bough bagels?
|
| And the idea that you just trust people to be productive or god
| forbid actually check Vs just relying on social pressure to
| "look" productive is out of the question
|
| I'm just baffled.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| All of this RTO discussion comes from the idea that being in the
| office is the standard that must be "returned" to. Another
| perspective is that WFH is a paradigm shift and is now the
| objective standard. From that perspective: if you are asking a
| worker to shift from my new standard, you had better be offering
| enough to make up for the huge costs that working in the office
| incurs. The costs are so high that not many employers could
| really justify paying what it is worth to the worker.
|
| Maybe it is time for employers to pony up or STFU.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Give each one an office? There's little difference with WFH
| except the commute, which in general is not a plus.
|
| The thing is, if you only talk about the annoyances of an open
| office, there's no comparison possible.
|
| There's one type of office plan that i find horrible though.
| Cubicles: the combination of annoyances from noise and feeling
| isolated, without the benifits of immediate feedback and more ad
| hoc communication.
| wetpaws wrote:
| [dead]
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| At home, the benefits are extreme. Full office, private bath,
| private bed, private kitchen, garaged parking, asset security,
| and a 30 second commute. The next wave of office workers will
| want it _better_ than this, or it simply won 't work.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The idea that employers need to give you everything you want is
| strange.
|
| They give you the least they can possibly get away with.
|
| Sure - some small subset of employers competing for the best
| employees will do this. But the average employer? I'm
| skeptical.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >They give you the least they can possibly get away with.
|
| Yup, and now that employees have had a taste of freedom from
| that, they are very resistant to returning to that. Why is
| that hard to grasp for companies?
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > They give you the least they can possibly get away with.
|
| Absolutely, but that line has shifted majorly. To the point
| where it won't make sense for "average" employers to even try
| to bring people into the office. I'm not going to sink money
| into gas or public transportation just to be imprisoned in a
| meeting room when I could just take the call at home from the
| porch, a treadmill, or a couch.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > I'm not going to sink money into gas or public
| transportation just to be imprisoned in a meeting room when
| I could just take the call at home from the porch, a
| treadmill, or a couch.
|
| You're obviously not an average employee then.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The idea that they will eat larger costs, so that they can
| not get you what you want, and part of the reason you want it
| is because you will be more productive... is quite strange.
|
| I don't get where you are coming from.
| zer8k wrote:
| > The idea that employers need to give you everything you
| want is strange.
|
| The working class, low class, and middle class are all tax
| cattle. We have to take ostensibly dangerous commutes on
| highways with people too tired/too rushed/too busy to care.
| We have to eat inside of a certain timeframe, respond chipper
| no matter the circumstances, and when they're done with us
| they just let us go in a "right-sizing". We are subject to
| panopticon levels of surveillance with open offices, late
| nights because you don't want to appear to be the guy leaving
| early, etc. If you're lucky you get a few dozen hours a week
| with your family, maybe have some hobbies.
|
| Cattle, imo, actually have it better because at least Farmer
| John drives them to work and they eat for free.
|
| The Cxx's are always so chipper about coming into the office
| because they make, on average, 20x more than than the
| engineers doing actual work, and they can work from
| home/beach/yacht as they please.
|
| Employers would be wise to treat employees with what they
| want. WFH is a net savings for them unless they're locked
| into 20 year leases. Many companies happen to get their lease
| through their VCs so it explains entirely why they are so
| keen on coming back to office. Employees will just leave to
| companies still offering remote. The problem for the
| employers who refuse to change? In a "fully" employed
| recession wages will not match the environment. If they
| cannot make up for lost wages with benefits like remote, paid
| healthcare, 401k match, etc they will die because without tax
| cattle, they are nothing.
|
| This was simply the cattle waking up and realizing that they
| are the ones with the actual power. Any power a CEO claims to
| have is simply voodoo. The issue is employees still don't see
| this. Even without a union having enough people just walk out
| because the company doesnt respect them will _crush_ the
| company. Rightly so.
| frollo wrote:
| > This was simply the cattle waking up and realizing that
| they are the ones with the actual power. Any power a CEO
| claims to have is simply voodoo. The issue is employees
| still don't see this. Even without a union having enough
| people just walk out because the company doesnt respect
| them will crush the company. Rightly so.
|
| This. While unionisation and labor organisation in general
| are a good thing for the workers, just people deciding they
| have had enough and finding a better employer (and maybe
| pulling out a couple of colleagues via referrals) is going
| to hurt companies.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > They give you the least they can possibly get away with.
|
| And employees should take the most they can possibly get away
| with.
|
| When an employee doesn't behave like that, he is acting
| against his own interests.
| eloisant wrote:
| Not only acting against his own interests, but making it
| worse for everyone by lowering the bar of what an employer
| needs to provide to hire.
| Veliladon wrote:
| Not only will those employers competing for the best get the
| best, they'll get it at a discount rate because remote
| workers are on average willing to accept an 18% pay cut to
| remain fully remote.
|
| Employees are literally willing to pay employers to stay at
| home. The middle manager who is awful at their job and so
| insecure they need to "see employees working" is costing the
| business not just in talent acquisition but when pulling in
| the dregs they're paying a premium for it. The center cannot
| hold.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Middle managers aren't making these decisions to have
| people go back to working in offices
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Their job is to support their staff against higher
| management. They are failing to do that if their teams
| are begrudgingly going back to work. They really do have
| all the leverage here. A business cannot function without
| labor or else it would just be the c suite as the only
| people employed.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > The center cannot hold
|
| The center isn't just insecure managers. Plenty of people
| want to work together... together. I happen to run my team
| remote, but to reduce a real issue to insecurity is to
| starve the conversation of meaningful contributions.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > The middle manager who is awful at their job and so
| insecure they need to "see employees working" is costing
| the business
|
| What makes you think upper management in public companies
| isn't mos interested in self-preservation also?
|
| The idea that upper management is some benevolent and wise
| dictator while middle management is a different class of
| incompetent morons is strange.
|
| They're cut from the same cloth.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Once you factor in taxes and commute expenses, 18% is
| practically break-even for even a well compensated
| employee, and that doesn't include the QOL factor.
|
| Indeed, middle management is the plight of modern
| civilization. They'll probably get replaced by AI soon
| enough.
| ebiester wrote:
| Middle management will only be replaced by AI if fewer
| employees can do the same job.
|
| How many people do you think a VP-Eng or CTO can manage
| and still do the rest of the job?
| linuxftw wrote:
| Middle management's job seems like the easiest to replace
| by AI. They don't create any products directly, they only
| take orders from above and distribute them to below. They
| take feedback from below, possibly communicate it up,
| most likely communicate it laterally to another team,
| etc.
|
| So, I think we'll see 5 middle managers replaced by 1 or
| 2 middle managers + AI. It doesn't have to be all or
| nothing.
| ebiester wrote:
| It's like anything else - the closer you get to the
| problem, the more work you see that happens.
|
| Directors are often the group that is doing all the work
| nobody else is assigned. This goes from scheduling off-
| sites to preparing for audits to determining who handles
| unscheduled work that doesn't neatly fit into any one
| team. Directors are responsible for coaching engineering
| managers and are the backstop for problems outside the
| skill level of the eng manager.
|
| They also handle project management because in smaller
| organizations, those positions have already been
| condensed.
|
| Now, I think there's an alternative. You could hire an
| executive assistant that offloads some of what directors
| do. You could have a project manager or two handle all
| the projects across the portfolio for medium sized orgs -
| you're likely looking at 1.5 project managers for a
| director salary. (I think there is a place for AI there,
| but I actually think we have a better algorithm with
| Monte Carlo simulation.) You could have non-directors
| doing 85% of what a director does today, but you're still
| hiring high-skill people.
|
| But if AI could replace a director then so could an EM.
| An EM can write a weekly status better than an AI and if
| a VP-Eng could rely on that, directors would have been
| replaced long ago.
| toddmatthews wrote:
| At one point in time people probably said the same thing
| about employer provided health insurance, and now it's
| expected. Tough to get good talent if other companies are
| providing better perks
| wkat4242 wrote:
| In the US I think it's also a retention strategy. Nobody
| will just up and leave before they have another job lined
| up because health insurance is unaffordable. One US
| colleague mentioned $1000 per month!
|
| It's a big deterrent IMO especially compared to Spain where
| healthcare is free
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Honestly, I wonder what sort of aca plans you would
| qualify for unemployed? Certainly not a $1000 a month one
| as you'd be reporting no income.
| blululu wrote:
| Last I checked the feds treat income as an annual thing
| that happened a year ago. A six month period of
| unemployment does not mean your income is zero by their
| accounting.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Employer-provided health insurance comes from World War 2
| and the US government locking market pay rates for the war.
| To compete, employers had to add non-monetary perks such as
| health insurance. Unfortunately we didn't transition out of
| this and it ballooned into the current mess.
| foxyv wrote:
| It baffles me that people think that employees should just
| put up with whatever horrible environment an employer
| produces and be grateful for the job. Even after employers
| have demonstrated time and time again that they have zero
| interest in the wellness of their employees aside from how it
| affects health insurance rates.
| [deleted]
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I think a lot of people on here have not been through a real
| recession. Not saying that everybody will go back to working in
| an office, but thinking one can simply demand anything only
| works when employment is high. During a recession, it is either
| social assistance or one takes the job that is available.
| ye-olde-sysrq wrote:
| It also works if employees collectively bargain.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > I think a lot of people on here have not been through a
| real recession.
|
| You can't be serious.
|
| > During a recession, it is either social assistance or one
| takes the job that is available.
|
| It's only this way because we _allow_ it to be. Huge
| productivity gains over the last decades have been captured
| by the .1%. There 's nothing ambiguous or mysterious about
| it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The GFC didn't hit tech too hard. The places I worked
| pretended "times are tough" to justify not handing out any
| raises, but the place next door was always happy to pay
| more. I certainly was not feeling the same recession as my
| friends in other industries were.
|
| Anyone that worked through the dot-com bust is late-
| forties, at minimum. But they'd have to be mid-50s or older
| to really feel the effects and know what changed. And
| people in their mid-50s+ are a strong minority in tech.
|
| If the median tech worker is 32, they would have graduated
| college after the GFC was over (2014ish).
| mdorazio wrote:
| > You can't be serious.
|
| I have to agree with the parent post here. What do you
| think the median age of HN commenters is? I'd say it's
| probably mid-late 20s, in which case most people graduated
| after the great recession was largely over and only
| experienced the COVID blip that wasn't a cyclical recession
| in the normal sense and mostly _helped_ tech workers
| instead of harming them.
| intended wrote:
| The median age here would be 40s.
| pc86 wrote:
| Based on what?
| ted_dunning wrote:
| Same point applies. Somebody who is 40 has seen the last
| bit of one recession that didn't hit tech as hard as the
| dot com crash (or as hard as 1991 or 1980).
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| > You can't be serious.
|
| Ok, im serious. It's silly to quote someone when you don't
| have a rebuttal.
|
| 2008 was 15 years ago, and didn't hit tech as hard as other
| industries. The last serious one was early 2000s. A
| significant number of people "in it for the money" or with
| non-traditional credentials simply had to leave the field.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I think it comes from being a software engineer in US the
| last 10, and especially the last 5 years, is probably the
| greatest working conditions of any worker ever in human
| history.
|
| There are a large number of people, namely on HN, that have
| _never_ known anything other than $120K+ compensation,
| constant stream of offers for changing jobs, all while
| working from their home and doing about 4 hours of real work
| a day.
|
| I don't think a recession is necessarily coming, but a
| reversion to the mean is going to leave these people
| obliterated.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| Four hours of knowledge work a day is actually a lot. The
| average corporate worker probably does far less. Meetings,
| small talk, answering emails, etc. feel like work, but most
| of the time it isn't. Four hours of focused knowledge work
| can produce exponential more value that four hours of
| meetings.
|
| The thing is, this has always been the case for the white
| collar world. Lawyers, executives, etc. The real change is
| that ICs that aren't playing politics are able to live that
| life now. The reversion to the mean isn't happening until
| those people stop producing massive economic value.
|
| Personally, I will work in a warehouse before I go back to
| the office. Do twenty hours a week temp work while I work
| on setting up a side business. It's never been easier to
| start your own business, and we don't need big companies to
| make a living anymore. The real reversion to the mean is
| cutting out the rent-seeking middle men that extract value
| from our economic output while contributing little
| themselves.
| brmgb wrote:
| > Four hours of knowledge work a day is actually a lot.
| The average corporate worker probably does far less.
| Meetings, small talk, answering emails, etc. feel like
| work, but most of the time it isn't. Four hours of
| focused knowledge work can produce exponential more value
| that four hours of meetings.
|
| No idea if I should be rolling on the floor laughing or
| extremely saddened reading that. I might advice taking a
| reality check before spurring this kind of non sense in
| public if you want to avoid sounding both entitled and
| utterly disconnected.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >a reversion to the mean is going to leave these people
| obliterated.
|
| Not if they 'made hay while the sun shines' and are now
| financially independent
| xedrac wrote:
| > while working from their home and doing about 4 hours of
| real work a day.
|
| One of the consequences of working from home is I tend to
| work 8-12 hours a day. Sometimes it's hard to mentally shut
| off work because it's in the same place I live. I don't
| know how anyone works 4 hours a day, unless they simply
| don't have a lot to do.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's true but it's also true that during a recession
| companies may be more focussed on saving money, and smaller
| offices because employees WFH save money.
|
| IMHO, for jobs that can be done either in an office or
| remotely the crux is the company's management team: Some
| people want to be in office to keep an eye on staff and
| maintain status, some don't care as long as the work is done.
| boo-ga-ga wrote:
| I don't think even recession will necessarily affect this.
| All the employees have tasted remote work. And many (if not
| most) people see it as a huge benefit. So any company that
| forces people to visit their office for whatever reason will
| get a market penalty. Some will pay for it with higher
| compensation or other goods, but I'm sure many will seize the
| opportunity and will happily continue working remotely.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Can you explain what point you're making?
|
| Seems like it is that employees should never ask for better
| working conditions because, it may be taken back when
| conditions allow employers to be more abusive? Is that really
| a point worth making?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| You're assuming that companies will want to pay for downtown
| offices during a recession.
| tristor wrote:
| > During a recession, it is either social assistance or one
| takes the job that is available.
|
| This is only true for people who don't have essential skills
| at a high level. For senior people, this won't be a problem.
| I cleaned up during the last two recessions, partly due to
| the prevalence of M&A activity during recessions, and was
| able to buy property cheap at auction post 2008 due to high
| foreclosure rates.
|
| If you're just starting your career in a recession you're
| pretty screwed, if you're mid-career with a specialized
| skillset that is essential to core business function, you'll
| be completely fine.
| Veliladon wrote:
| There is no excess labor left in the system. We just went
| through a pandemic where, in the US, 2.4 million people just
| vanished from the labor force. If there is a recession it'll
| be a fully employed recession where the fed has to keep rates
| high because workers are fully employed and driving up wages
| while capital is crying uncle for lost profits and cheap
| money again.
| adolph wrote:
| > in the US, 2.4 million people just vanished from the
| labor force
|
| Not certain what you mean by vanished and where the 2.4M
| number came from. CDC says 1,136,473 died in the pandemic
| [0], although a significant portion were not likely members
| of the labor force. As it stands the number labor force
| members caught up to pre-pandemic numbers in August of
| 2022. [1] Feb 2020 164M Apr 2020 156M
| Aug 2022 164M Jul 2023 167M
|
| 0. https://covid.cdc.gov/
|
| 1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV
| ted_dunning wrote:
| A million died. A large number were disabled (probably
| more than were disabled).
| Someone1234 wrote:
| A lot of people retired or otherwise left the workforce.
| For example stay at home parents substantially increased
| and has stayed increased since. They're talking about
| people who left the workforce as in, no longer
| working/looking for work, you're talking about death
| exclusively.
|
| The "Civilian Labor Force Level" isn't a relevant
| statistic because of its definition:
|
| > Civilian Labor Force is the sum of civilian employment
| and civilian unemployment. These individuals are
| civilians (not members of the Armed Services) who are age
| 16 years or older, and are not in institutions such as
| prisons, mental hospitals, or nursing homes.
|
| This, by definition, ignores people who exited the
| workforce. Here is the two charts you want to compare
| instead:
|
| - 2019: https://www.bls.gov/cps/aa2019/cpsaat03.htm
|
| - 2023 https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm
|
| Specifically the "Not in labor force" column. That's a 4M
| loss. Out of those it is disproportionately women and
| older people.
| guestbest wrote:
| There is excess labor but they are NEETs
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I predict automation/outsourcing will keep whittling away
| the need for work from home computer based jobs. The labor
| demand will be for the in person jobs that require physical
| labor.
| adolph wrote:
| Predicting reduced need for labor due to "automation" has
| been a losing bet since the Luddites. Do the tasks
| change? Yes. Is more and different work enabled? Yes.
|
| Likewise "outsourcing" could result in a net increase of
| WFH given that contracting companies already support it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I specified reduced need for a certain type of labor.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>The next wave of office workers will want it better than
| this, or it simply won't work.
|
| Workers want lots of things. Eg money. It's a negotiation.
|
| One of the best tactics to learn about negotiations is
| negotiating on multiple fronts. Did salary negotiation turn
| sticky? Shift to negotiating for days off, or title... on the
| employer side.
|
| One reason that this works is that negotiations have their
| rationale/objective side and partially contradicting other
| sides.
|
| Case in point, the value of an employee, particularly a
| specific employee at a particular time... can be extremely high
| relative to alternatives. The alternative can easily be spend
| 12 months paying salary equivalent cost without the benefit.
|
| Lots of positions are hard to adequately fill. 12 months of
| hiring, training, fail, rehiring, etc. That can easily be your
| mean alternative. It's very common that someone good leaves a
| team and 12 months later you have not really replaced them.
|
| Yet... That reality rarely translates to practicality outside
| of executive comp. Investors certainly act this way, but hr
| doesn't. The rationale of rehiring cost and risk/difficulty of
| hiring _are_ understood... but there are still limits to the
| number they are to put on this. It 's never 300%. It's 10% or
| maybe 25%. Willingness to pay correlates to value, but it isn't
| proportional.
|
| Anyway... WFH is currently an extremely irationale space. No
| one is being quite honest about it's full benefits, costs,
| risks, etc.
|
| It's a benefit that neither employee or employer is usually
| comfortable about outright "negotiating," like offering less
| money for remote.
|
| So... WFH is not-negotiable-for salary benefit that is #1 or #2
| on both parties' priority list, second (often prior) to salary.
| Unlike other primary benefits, employees know who gets what.
|
| Currently, it's all about perceived negotiating power.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Also, schedule flexibility. If I hit a point where my brain is
| a smoldering pile of ash I can get up and go do chores or get
| some sun by checking the mail or something, instead of sitting
| at my desk staring at my screen praying to the gods of
| productivity that my brain will start functioning again.
| quectophoton wrote:
| This also means that _choosing_ to stay a bit late[1] because
| you 're working on a hard problem becomes an easier choice,
| because you know you can stop any time and be on your bed in
| under 15 seconds, no bus no car no bike no commute.
|
| [1]: If your employer doesn't like if you take a longer lunch
| break or something to get this time back, then it's time to
| start looking for a different one.
| jwells89 wrote:
| This is true, but depending on the individual it can also
| mean that one might need to be good at drawing a line and
| stopping at it.
|
| I do sometimes work late when chewing on a more difficult
| problem, but if I don't stop early enough to leave a decent
| gap between end of work and bedtime, it can sometimes be
| difficult to get my head turned off and get to sleep.
|
| I miss my teens and early twenties when I could flop into
| bed and fall asleep no matter what I had been doing prior.
| laserlight wrote:
| So much this. Doing chores is a great way to have a break:
| physically engaging and functional.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| oh yes!
|
| i go for a quick walk to a nearby park and i listen to an
| audiobook for 30min. or i walk my dog. or i get my
| steamdeck and play something for 30min (with baldur's gate
| 3, it's hard to stop after only 30).
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| this is a big thing for me, some days the switch in my brain
| turns on at night and not during the day time, so should i
| sit and stare at my computer for 8 hrs, go home and then
| start working for real? It is much better for me to rest or
| take care of errands in the morning and then roll up my
| sleeves and get to work at night.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't think that it needs to be better than home. However,
| offices have been actively unpleasant places that are difficult
| to work in for a very, very long time. Now that everyone is
| reminded (or made aware, for younger workers) of that, people
| rightfully expect better. That much really does need to change.
|
| Everyone getting an office with a door -- even a small one --
| would go a long way toward making the office a good place to
| work.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _Everyone getting an office with a door -- even a small
| one..._
|
| Alice looked through the small door...
|
| https://images.genius.com/80f6b055d05188b3ae126e3be56a5134.1.
| ..
| [deleted]
| Zetice wrote:
| Won't work? How will these non-workers pay for things?
|
| They'll have no choice but to work.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Depends on the timeline. Things are changing very rapidly.
| Automation seems to be coming at us at an exponential rate.
|
| The expectation that it's going to be business as usual is
| just as short sighted and archaic with regard going into an
| office as it is with the idea of work in general.
| missingdays wrote:
| So far automation helps rich people get richer, and that's
| about it
| nkozyra wrote:
| Is this not true of every watershed technological
| breakthrough?
| halgir wrote:
| Oh boy, I'm excited for the massive wealth creation of this
| exponential growth to trickle down to workers.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| No need to wait, the future is now. I've already seen
| huge gains in income and work-life balance by spending
| time automating my workflow.
|
| I hope that by "trickle down to the workers" you aren't
| talking about technically illiterate workers who are not
| actively contributing to the automation effort.
| Unfortunately, they will receive some benefits as well,
| which is completely undeserved.
| halgir wrote:
| > I hope that by "trickle down to the workers" you aren't
| talking about technically illiterate workers who are not
| actively contributing to the automation effort.
|
| I'm talking about every single human being who has been
| brought into this world through no fault of their own and
| deserves our empathy on that point alone.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > I've already seen huge gains in income and work-life
| balance by spending time automating my workflow.
|
| Sure, most of us have used copilot or other AI tools and
| seen some benefit. But there's a point of no return where
| suddenly those tools are able to do the other things we
| think only we can.
|
| What happens then?
| nkozyra wrote:
| Certainly not an argument I'm making. But if you're
| making UBI at bare minimum you won't have to iron your
| polo shirt and khakis every morning.
| halgir wrote:
| You're right, sorry for the cynical tone. I do hope the
| level of automation we're aiming for will benefit
| everyone, not just a few individual owners and us lucky
| tech workers who have found ourselves in demand lately.
| rabuse wrote:
| It's a two-way street between employers and employees.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Ever hear of The New Deal?
|
| It was necessary because many, many US citizens hit hard by
| The Great Depression figured out in that time how to live
| without depending on regular (or any) work.
|
| Tent cities; hunting; scavenging; farming; begging; stealing;
| mutual aid networks; etc.
|
| It wasn't the best life, but for many it was found to be
| preferable to the factories or the docks.
|
| To even consider returning to living a life dependent on a
| wage, Uncle Sam needed to offer them a new deal.
| Zetice wrote:
| We've since invented air conditioning (among other things),
| so I doubt this is a relevant point.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Air conditioning existed prior to The Great Depression.
| Zetice wrote:
| So? The AC you're referring to isn't what is cooling my
| home right now, nor is it what will stop people from
| deciding to live in the woods.
|
| But you knew that.
| mrbgty wrote:
| How will the company stay in business without workers?
|
| They'll have no choice...
| Zetice wrote:
| An understaffed company will last infinitely longer than an
| individual without a job.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| There's always someone who's willing to work regardless of
| WFH policy. What would probably happen is that companies
| are lowering their standards of hiring.
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| They have plenty of choices, including:
|
| - visa workers who have no bargaining power.
|
| - younger people who are mobile
|
| - moving offices to other places
|
| There have been a few recent posts about struggling to find
| jobs... every time it turns out they are only applying to
| online listings for remote jobs, and have high standards.
| That's not a situation you're likely to stand out in.
|
| I just don't see how global remote work as the norm is "pro
| worker" for anyone except those already well established in
| their career. Besides being more disposable, what happened
| to complaints about companies not providing job resources
| or training? Did we give up on that one?
| rabuse wrote:
| The younger generation is much less willing to work under
| conditions they disagree with.
| rndmwlk wrote:
| At my previous job, when they did their return to office rollout,
| I remember the head of our department waxing on about how much he
| missed being in the office with everyone. He missed it so much,
| he went on, that while he would previously have kept his office
| door closed so he could work in peace and quiet he actually kept
| it open (that day) so that he could hear all of the din of the
| office.
|
| This brought me great comfort when I struggled to hear anything
| during any of my meetings (all of which were still remote in
| nature due to a diversely located team).
| someonehere wrote:
| VCs and companies like Blackrock have investments in commercial
| real estate. They will definitely "encourage" C-levels to RTO to
| keep their investments safe at the expense of the people at the
| bottom.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Offices are a vast improvement over open plan.
|
| But ultimately my work day is still 2-hours longer vis-a-vis
| commuting AND I am required to live in a much more expensive area
| to make that commute at all, essentially reducing my wages yet
| further. WFH is a 25% shorter work day (8 actual instead of 8 +
| 2) and I can live in a 20%~ cheaper home, how are you going to
| compensate that?
|
| You can either offer me WFH or increase my wages 40% and give me
| an office. Seems like WFH is the economically most efficient for
| both employer and employee but what do I know?
| slily wrote:
| My #1 reason for working remotely today has nothing to do with
| office layouts or benefits, it's that housing costs in large-city
| tech hubs are insane. Chances are I'd pay at least twice my
| mortgage in rent for a crappy apartment if I moved back now.
|
| The open office plan just might be #2 though. ;)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| At some point many years in the future, more lives will have been
| saved due to WFH trends (pollution, accidents, etc.) than were
| taken prematurely by COVID.
|
| Fascinating silver lining.
| eloisant wrote:
| COVID didn't create WFH, it merely accelerated its spread.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Accelerated by many decades.
| ljf wrote:
| I find the idea that you can't grow, progress or build a network,
| when working from home, really alien.
|
| I've personally and workwise developed hugely in the last 3
| years, despite being remote. I have built networks with people
| I've never met and picked up skills and work I'd never considered
| before.
| dudul wrote:
| Not a single link to back the claim. I bet it wouldn't change
| anything.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Nah, I'm not going back to your stupid building to talk about
| sports in the break room while microwaving Tupperwared leftover
| chicken breast lol.
|
| Gas + commute time + increased likelihood to eat out (leftover
| chicken breast) = more money out of my pocket.
|
| And I could stretch even further with the endless banter, getting
| yelled at for not understanding things the first time (I'm not an
| auditory listener), disrespected for how I look, more reasons to
| waste money on therapy. Obviously that's personal, but you
| couldn't pay me more to go back to the cattle stall we call an
| office...
|
| I do miss wearing dress shirts and slacks while I eat your free
| pizza!
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > commute
|
| Not only time but expense and accident risk, especially for an
| automobile commute.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Agreed, a daily cross on the beltway isn't something that
| should be necessary so I can sit at a computer. This isn't
| 1965, I'm not working at Honeywell as some mainframe
| engineer.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I'm not going back to your stupid building to talk about
| sports in the break room
|
| Talking sports and politics are the main reasons why you won't
| find me in the break room.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| > Nah, I'm not going [...] to talk about sports in the break
| room while microwaving Tupperwared leftover chicken breast lol.
|
| Dunno. I do the same during WFH, only with having no pants on.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Eating out is a net positive for me. I get better, more varied
| food and feel better if a professional does the cooking. It's
| not worth saving money on what I eat - it's so important for
| health.
| goodpoint wrote:
| There is nothing healthy in eating out.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Sweetgreens, Cava, Mezeh, Chipotle
|
| Obviously don't get queso dip or soda, etc
| kzrdude wrote:
| That depends on where you go to eat, I think
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| You'd be surprised how easy it is to make healthy, tasty
| food.
|
| Personally, if I made enough, I'd eat out all the time too.
| [deleted]
| everdimension wrote:
| Completely agree with "give people a better office" and
| completely disagree on what a good office is. But instead of
| arguing on details, I want to say that as always, people are
| different. Sometimes polarly different.
|
| I love an open space which is a bit loud rather than quiet. It
| actually makes me feel more privacy than a quiet room full of
| people.
|
| But here's a recipe. Create an amazing office and don't force
| anyone to go there! No "once a week" rules or similar. Make it
| completely voluntary. And see what happens.
|
| A great office located closely, ideally walking distance, where
| you can discuss ideas and offtopics with your coworkers, have
| great coffee, not worry about snacks and stuff is like visiting
| an all-inclusive hotel, but for work. This statement isn't true
| for everyone. For some people working from home will always be
| better. Don't force them to change. But see what happens when you
| have an inviting place that's available for people to visit for
| as long and for as short as they want.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| I wonder how much of this comes from 'war rooms' that companies
| like the Big 3 do. They work on a project for 5 months all
| smashed together in 1 meeting room.
|
| And then you need to talk to one of them, they pick up the phone
| in that room, not even walking out. Absolutely horrible.
|
| Is that where this comes from?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Both come from the shared common ancestor of, how do you work
| when you're a small scrappy team who's just gotta get stuff
| done together? You find a room, you get the equipment you need,
| and you work out of it until you're big enough to need more.
|
| I can fully understand why people dislike this kind of thing,
| but the fact that it shows up in multiple contexts suggests it
| probably does achieve what it's aiming for.
| flerchin wrote:
| The argument for me ends at productivity. We went full remote in
| march 2020, and our velocity metrics went up by 60%. All the
| other arguments (and they are persuasive) are worth an order of
| magnitude less.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| For the first time in my life, I have space and energy to work on
| my fitness goals. I wouldn't be able to do that if I had to go
| into the office.
|
| Ironically, I moved to California because I was told we'd be
| working onsite...three years later and I _still_ don't have a
| badge because the back to office mandate never came.
|
| I use my lunch hour to workout because I can just eat at my desk.
| I wish I could afford a bigger house so I can have a home office
| instead of sharing my office with my bedroom but hey, Cali's
| expensive (but oh so nice).
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Congrats. Not all of us are so lucky.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| True luck is rare, most luck comes with hard work and
| dedication (as is my case).
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| I've always been fit but when I was in the office, I understood
| why a lot of people weren't. Work + Commute + Daily exercise is
| a HUGE chunk of time.
|
| With remote, I simply exercise _during_ work with my home
| equipment, it's fantastic.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I could do the same thing too if I'm being honest. I'm at the
| point now where I wonder why I don't have residual income
| from a side business that doesn't require a lot of my time.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Give it say 1-5 years and there will be a whole new dimension to
| this. It will be about whether you have to put your VR/MR
| glasses/googles on and enter the shared space during any specific
| times.
|
| That will be a whole new fight.
| momirlan wrote:
| i remember a contract job at Deloitte, where they gathered some
| 20 of us around a table so that the partner could see all of us
| at a glance. there wasn't even room for laptops, never mind
| elbows... sayonara suckers!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Racing0461 wrote:
| It's the commute/"salaryman lifestyle" that im avoiding, not an
| office.
| stephenblum wrote:
| WFH is happiness. I want that. And I want that for my team.
| squirrel6 wrote:
| Digital meetings are never going away at this point so this is a
| great point. Also, the most meaningful interactions I had early
| in my career were in small offices with 1 or 2 colleagues. If
| offices can't be made available for everyone, they should be
| available to people above a certain level in the org.
|
| There are new cubicle designs with lower walls that still foster
| interaction but allow for focus time.
|
| Hotdesking is so bad for morale, especially for people who have
| dedicated so many years of their life to their employer.
| irrational wrote:
| You could give me a 5000sq ft corner off with every amenity
| imaginable and I still would prefer working from home.
| shagie wrote:
| Gift link to article: https://wapo.st/3OwA5OG
| whiddershins wrote:
| I don't mind if people can see me working, but it makes me crazy
| to feel like people can look at my screen.
|
| Not that there is anything scandalous on my screen. It is just
| that my screen feels very intimate, private. I rarely share more
| than a window at a time when on calls.
|
| I just don't want people to be able to read my screen. I can't
| explain why, and I know no one is even interested in it. I don't
| want people looking at it anyway.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| I would be happy with a desk even.
|
| I've worked not even with a decent chair.
| zffr wrote:
| One middle ground that's been working for me is having sound-
| proof "phonebooths" in the office (https://room.com/pages/office-
| privacy-booths). Whenever I really need to focus, I'll go into
| one of these.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| I need to focus all day, every day. What are people doing where
| they don't?
| spookieboogie wrote:
| Nope. My previous employer tried this in ~2021 with the intention
| of demanding a full RTO as soon as they possibly could after
| decades of being a cubicle farm. I immediately left for a company
| that adapted to remote-first and never looked back
|
| My commute time has turned into workout and cooking time, (as
| expected I'm in the best shape of my life,) my only coworker is
| my spouse and best friend, I get to live closer to my family than
| ever before in a quiet, LCOL town, and the impact on my career
| and for the company has never been greater
|
| You'll have to do a LOT better than my own closet to convince me
| that wasting my time commuting every day, from a place I don't
| want to live, to spend time in close proximity to people I might
| not care for would be a better proposition than the one I have
| now
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The employers will understand sooner or later that they've
| essentially lost leverage with people like you. Now that you're
| in a LCOL area, you can explore a lot of different jobs at
| different places. You don't need to make bay area salary to
| survive because you're not in the bay area.
|
| Meanwhile startups who could never compete with FANG on pay are
| eager to swoop up talent at a discount.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I'd say the first priority is to fix the commute.
|
| Open regional offices perhaps? Or rent space in smaller towns
| like Idaho falls.
| lizardking wrote:
| Having my own office wouldn't make the companies in my medium
| sized city any more attractive to me.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| The apocryphal narrative is that extroverts like the office, but
| introverts prefer WFH, _ceteris_ domestic situations being
| _paribus_.
|
| Maybe tech workflow has a more natural fit with WFH, and tech
| attracts more introverts, so WFH could be the doubly reinforced
| preference.
|
| It seems psychologically plausible, but what is your experience?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > It seems psychologically plausible, but what is your
| experience?
|
| I am dating a wide range of men, but I avoid engineers, because
| I don't want to date nerds like myself. Anyways, from my
| experience, the vast majority of the guys I meet is absolutely
| shocked and often disgusted by the idea of 100% homeoffice as I
| have it. "But don't you miss talking to people?", they ALL say.
| (I don't, I hate people)
|
| So in short, I am convinced you are right.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| We prefer that our employees sit shoulder-to-shoulder in long
| rows so that they can have spontaneous idea jams and whiteboard
| sessions together while talking about at least a dozen
| programming languages and debating about the best editor
| commandlinefan wrote:
| My employer is calling us all back to the office, but only the
| people that work in hotelling cubicles. There are individual
| offices in the building, but the people who are assigned to them
| are still working from home.
| sigzero wrote:
| They are putting "hoteling" into place for possible future use. I
| went to see where my desk would be and it is down a dark hall
| with no windows and in an office with no windows. Not only no,
| but hell no.
| Bostonian wrote:
| Lots of people in this thread complain about offices. I have
| worked for many years as a financial "desk quant". Often I find
| things to work on chatting with investment staff or overhearing
| what they are talking about. They will be comfortable asking me a
| question if they have spent time with me in person. Employees
| working together can build bonds. Having catered breakfasts and
| lunches a few times a week is pleasant, as is a monthly happy
| hour.
|
| I know offices can be noisy and distracting. So can a home when
| you have children (and dirty dishes in the sink, unopened mail,
| etc.) Sometimes I look forward to having more time to code
| uninterrupted on Friday, when fewer people are in the office and
| there are no meetings.
|
| Consider that if you can do your job fully remote, so can an
| engineer in a country where the pay is 1/10 that of the U.S.
| Simulacra wrote:
| So a home away from home. Who gets windows? My career began in a
| windowless office in San Jose. I did not get a window for 2
| years.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| When I started out working for a major IT firm that everyone
| knows, they allocated each of us junior devs to a two-person
| office with a senior dev. The company has office space to burn,
| so it was no major issue to them. For me however, it was mostly
| isolating, the kind of drop-ins that are more permissible in an
| open plan are sure to just annoy anyone else. I suspect with
| single office occupancies it could be quite a lonely existence,
| all the remoteness of WFH coupled with a long commute for the
| heck of it.
| makingstuffs wrote:
| People need to stop trying to make things return to the original
| office model.
|
| Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from
| home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day
| travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it.
|
| Nor do people want to spend PS10+ a day on food and drinks which
| they have in their fridge, at home.
|
| Then there is also the social pressure of having to go for after
| work socials at the local boozer/cafe/restaurant, or be seen as
| the person who never joins the team for social stuff.
|
| There are so many benefits to working from home which reach
| beyond personal and into society/the environment but very few
| benefits to going into an office. The one reason which supporters
| of the original office model tout is 'collaboration' but I call
| BS.
|
| With today's tech we can literally be collaborating in real-time
| with people from any corner of the planet from the comfort of our
| home office. How would that change in office?
|
| Then you have the whole "oh, but, learning" as if it is simply
| impossible to part with knowledge via any medium other than a
| coworker's breath hitting another's eardrum.
| AlInGaP_Diode wrote:
| > Then you have the whole "oh, but, learning" as if it is
| simply impossible to part with knowledge via any medium other
| than a coworker's breath hitting another's eardrum.
|
| I find it a lot more effective to msg technical questions
| instead of talking as I can reread a dense statement to help
| internalize and can also reference it later. WFH is great for
| learning
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Pair programming is also easier.
|
| Today I pair programmed with a junior engineer across the
| country, he was in his own 21x9 setup, with his colour
| scheme, and I was on my laptop at the office with my light
| theme. It was perfect.
| charcircuit wrote:
| All of that would be possible in person, excluding doing it
| across the country. Being in person also reduces the
| friction in junior engineers asking you to pair program
| with them.
| pnt12 wrote:
| Senior: let's pair on this.
|
| Junior: sure.
|
| Slightly easier than traveling half a country!
| hcks wrote:
| It's over. You WILL take showers in the morning. You WILL wash
| your clothes. You WILL commute to the office. You WILL chat
| with your colleagues at breaks. And you WILL be happy.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Humans have only been working in offices since the industrial
| revolution, before that it was nearly all WFH. WFH is our
| natural state.
| layer8 wrote:
| This wasn't true for any kind of collaborative work requiring
| physical presence.
| jandrese wrote:
| It was true when "industry" was in the first floor of your
| house or two houses down on the estate/plantation. This was
| not that long ago. If you visit historic sites from the
| 1800s it was extremely common to find workshops among the
| servant housing. Not only for the estate, but for export to
| the local community.
|
| Long commutes aren't practical when the roads are bad and
| the fastest mode of personal transportation is a horse.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Well to be fair, peasants helping eachother to raise a barn
| is technically working from home. This idea of commuting
| has only been possible with a means to move labor from one
| region to another versus having cottage industries ran out
| of the home. That came with the horsedrawn streetcar.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Having to go and visit a construction site is not working
| from home.
| gspencley wrote:
| > Employees have realised we are equally as effective working
| from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of
| every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of
| it.
|
| Not only is it unpaid, it actually costs the employee money. In
| the worst case you need a car + the insurance, fuel and
| maintenance costs associated. In the best case you still need
| to pay for public transportation.
|
| > Nor do people want to spend PS10+ a day on food and drinks
| which they have in their fridge, at home.
|
| Eating out regularly is also hazardous to your health. In my
| experience and opinion there is no such thing as a healthy
| dining option. There are varying degrees of poisonous; some
| options are certainly better than others; but if you're trying
| to be strict with your diet then forget eating out daily.
|
| Then add the stress of a commute, workplace hazards, risks
| associated with commuting (I have a ZERO chance of getting
| killed in a car accident when I'm not travelling in a car),
| risks associated with communicable diseases and there is a case
| to be made that working in an office is actually hazardous to
| your health.
| dom96 wrote:
| That's all fair, though there is one clear advantage that
| commuting has (via certain modes of transport) and that is
| exercise.
|
| I say this as someone that loves working from home, but
| before I did so I would get thousands of steps in every day
| running towards the tube in London and around all the
| platforms. Dunno, maybe the positive health benefits of the
| steps are outweighed by how polluted the air in London (and
| likely even more so the tube) is.
|
| But getting less steps in every day due to WFH is a real
| problem.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > But getting less steps in every day due to WFH is a real
| problem.
|
| It is! The solution is to walk more and everyone gets to
| decide how, we're all grown ups.
| BluePen8 wrote:
| As someone recovering from a back injury, I was excited as
| hell to work from home.
|
| 6-8 weeks later, I wondered why my back hurt so damn much.
|
| I had no idea how much my office's slow elevators and 5
| flights of stairs had been helping, had to manually add
| that back into my life.
| gspencley wrote:
| This will depend on how you commute. I agree that exercise
| is important but if I were commuting within the city that I
| live, I would be driving to work and walking maybe 10 steps
| to my car and 20 steps to my desk. In a large urban centre
| where you are dependent on public transit then this might
| be a benefit.
|
| Edit: I will also point out that, in my opinion, when I'm
| choosing my own "WFH" arrangements, the onus is on me to
| make whatever choices suit my health and lifestyle. The
| employer has no obligation or responsibility to actively
| promote and encourage any lifestyle choices in my opinion
| (I actually get really annoyed when employers try to do
| this - just let me do my job and stay out of my personal
| life). But they sure as hell have a responsibility to
| reduce risk and hazards while on the job to every
| reasonable extent.
| astockwell wrote:
| A recent HN comment on another post highlighted the irony of
| corporate messaging:
|
| "Come back to the office"
|
| "We'll be resuming periodic Active Shooter drills"
| BluePen7 wrote:
| When I switched to WFH, it was amazing suddenly finding an
| extra 5 figures annually in my pocket.
|
| Commuting is also the most dangerous thing the average person
| does.
|
| My wife only commutes in 4 days a month, and we still have
| dashcam footage from multiple close calls.
|
| Recently a pickup truck cut someone off and hit their car,
| then proceeded to flee during rush hour. In traffic doing
| about 20MPH he swerves though a hair away from my wife at
| over 60MPH. She asked me to check the footage because the
| wind force was so strong she wasn't sure he didn't graze her.
|
| Everyone looks at you crazy if you want to do an extreme
| sport, or even something like dirtbiking, but on my old
| commute there'd be 2-3 major accidents a week, a death every
| week or two, and nobody bats an eye. All so I can log into a
| data centre in North Virginia, that's nowhere near me.
| albrewer wrote:
| > Employees have realised we are equally as effective working
| from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of
| every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of
| it.
|
| I looked into the employment laws long ago about commutes to
| and from your home to your workplace. In general, you can't be
| paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more
| than a certain distance from your assigned workplace. It's been
| a long time since I read up on this subject, so I have no idea
| where I got the info.
|
| I wonder if WFH will affect these rules - if your originally
| assigned office was "remote" and now you're forced to go in to
| a physical location, it could be argued that your employer
| changed your office location and will have to reimburse you for
| _any_ commute.
| dqv wrote:
| >In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to
| an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your
| assigned workplace.
|
| There's nothing barring an employer from paying employees a
| "commute stipend". I think you probably read about what is
| taxable/nontaxable. It's probably taxable as income and
| that's the "can't", which isn't really a "can't" at all; it's
| more of a "won't because it's taxable".
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Commute to the office downtown. Have calls with teams in other
| locations over zoom while they're with aggressive noise
| canceling. What's not to love ?
| webdood90 wrote:
| I suspect the lines are typically drawn between introverts and
| extroverts, so it's unfair to generalize here.
|
| I work remote and we don't have an office near me, but I'd love
| to go back. My job is where I spend the majority of my life. I
| like to get to know the people I work with by socializing over
| lunch, after work social events, etc. It's how I meet people.
|
| Collaborating remotely also sucks. You miss out on a lot of
| non-verbal communication vs in person.
|
| It's fine if it's not your jam and all of the above sounds like
| hell to you - it just means I don't want to work with you.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i'm 100% an extrovert. i still prefer working from home.
|
| why? because i like having my own office, with a door that i
| can close. i like that i have my own setup, specifically
| designed by _me_ so i can be as comfortable as possible. i
| love that i can stop work for 30min and just play with my dog
| or talk to my wife. oh, and i LOVE that i have privacy and i
| don 't have someone looking at what i'm doing for 8h.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| How horrible are those offices people talk about (I guess
| in US)? Is it really the norm that people look over your
| shoulder?
|
| I like when it's quiet and private but I also like to come
| work from an office... Even though it's a basic small
| shared space and I literally work from my laptop (can't be
| bothered to hook up the screen etc). I do like not having
| to do it every day so I am free to come or not but I look
| forward to it usually. Or I may go out to that area for
| other reasons and just drop by.
| mfitton wrote:
| At my place, there are desks (about 4 feet wide, set in
| rows of 6, with people's backs facing each other and no
| dividers). There are about 200 desks, and about 250
| employees. Desks need to be reserved, keyboard, mouse and
| charger all need to be brought by the employee to their
| desk each day. 50 or so people don't get desks and have
| to sit on couches, stools in the kitchen with no backs,
| or the floor.
|
| The CEO said that we should just feel grateful that we
| have an air-conditioned office with snacks to come back
| to, poo-poo'd the concerns over: a lack of desks, the
| high noise-levels, the fact that most teams are
| distributed and so much of the open office is sitting in
| a remote zoom call talking over one another...
|
| It's an incredibly hard environment to work in, and I was
| shocked that my company's CEO was so out-of-touch. Of
| course, he has a private office.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There's nothing quite as ridiculous as an open office
| with row after row of employees sitting shoulder to
| shoulder, half of whom are loudly talking on video calls
| with their teams which are distributed among other
| offices where they are also sitting shoulder to shoulder
| in an open office. I'd be shocked that any deep
| concentration work gets done in such an environment.
|
| EDIT: Furthermore, I think some execs in tech companies
| (particularly those who never were engineers) really
| believe that's how software development happens! Like if
| you ask your company's CEO how software gets written, he
| pictures this Wall Street-like trading floor where
| engineers are yacking at each other, and having standup
| meetings and flailing about at whiteboards, and that's
| the sound/busy-ness of engineering being done!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If you've never seen one, an open office looks like a lan
| party. A really really busy and cramped one.
| 121789 wrote:
| I don't think that's the only line - I am pretty introverted
| but like having a place outside of my home where I can work.
| It's enough of a "default mildly social" situation to not
| feel isolated or restless if I want to do something like
| watch a movie or read at night (and I have a partner but
| that's not the same). I'd say most of the variability can be
| explained with three questions 1. Do you have a long commute?
| 2. Do you have a nice working environment at the office? 3.
| Do you have kids?
| toolz wrote:
| I struggle to see an ethical argument one could make to force
| rigid in-office work for anything but the smallest of
| companies (when the work could be done remotely). Eventually
| (and it won't take long) you'll hire someone that would
| benefit in many ways from flexible work and the only
| detriment will be that you would have to utilize your
| flexibility to satisfy your own personality traits the same
| as everyone else, rather than have rigid, harmful rules, that
| cater only to your preferences.
| [deleted]
| lampshades wrote:
| I'm currently going through interviews and I think
| "collaboration" and communication is a real thing WFH is
| missing. You say that people can collaborate real-time from any
| corner of the planet but that hasn't been my experience. I have
| had two companies in the last few weeks (out of like 5) where
| my recruiter had no idea what stage of the process I was in
| because at some other point some recruiter had picked me up. I
| had no idea what was going on and neither did they. And when
| they find out that there is a dual-recruiting process
| happening, they call me to ask what's happening instead of
| asking their teammate. So stupid, man.
|
| It doesn't stop there. When I'm actually at work, I'm
| constantly waiting for hours for responses unless I pull in a
| manager to move things along. While it's true that with today's
| tech we can collaborate anywhere, that's not what I see
| happening in practice. I constantly see miscommunication and
| misunderstandings that normally would take 10 minutes at
| someone's cube to resolve that end up taking DAYS to resolve.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Those are process failures. People need to be responsible on
| some electronic communication medium and if they can't do
| that then they have to be fired.
| danbolt wrote:
| Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. If the org has a clear
| goal and is organized enough, this sort of work can easily
| be distributed asynchronously.
| lampshades wrote:
| I don't disagree but I've been dealing with it for years
| now (since COVID) and nobody has seemed to be able to fix
| it.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Sure. Management stupidity and employee incompetence
| certainly wasn't a thing before COVID! I really like this
| new comic from Scott Adams called Dilbert [1] that gets a
| good laugh from how incompetent things have gotten since
| COVID! /s
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert
| lampshades wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think what you said is relevant.
| Also, you seem insufferable.
|
| Edit: oh, it's probably the autism.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Re colab: I am in a team that is split across 4 cities, 2
| countries, and an ocean. It literally makes no sense to demand
| that we are in the office.
| agentultra wrote:
| I had a private office once. On a short walk from where I lived.
| That would be the closest I would get to returning to an office.
|
| But no tech companies set up small offices where I live so remote
| it is. And that's fine with me. I like where I live, the people
| around me, etc.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Personal office is irrelevant to me.
|
| My criteria - Is there a reason for me to be in the office on
| this specific day? Will my team be there? Is there an upcoming
| milestone where having everyone in a room together for most of
| the day will make us more productive? If the answer to all three
| questions is yes, then I want to be in the office that day. If
| it's just to go to a physical location where I will be on Zoom
| calls all day with team members all in offices in other
| locations, then hard pass on going into the office and it doesn't
| matter whether it's an actual office or a cube.
| kkfx wrote:
| The RTO policy have a purpose: keeping up a dumb but profitable
| for some economy of services. Not really different than the old
| soviet adage, today dig a hole, tomorrow fill it so you have a
| job...
|
| Offices means bars/restaurants/ready-made food delivery/cleaning
| services/rents and so on in cities. Means the base needed to head
| to a 2030 where "you'll own nothing" because anything is a
| service of someone else.
|
| This is clear, what's not clear is the fact that such model is
| untenable. In an era of abundance we can keep money flowing with
| bullshit jobs, in an era of scarcity we can't.
|
| Long-story short:
|
| - most people will resist with any means because WFH means much
| to them
|
| - most service economy will collapse anyway
|
| - the disaster made in the meantime will push much more poor in
| cities, creating a bigger disaster thereafter.
|
| Some I've no doubt think they can also profit from it...
| Tokkemon wrote:
| I'm not going to endure an hour's commute and all the expense
| involved with that to just sit in another box where communication
| will just marginally improve.
| gspencley wrote:
| Does it even improve marginally?
|
| I can see this being highly variable for the type of position /
| work. As a software developer the ability to schedule face time
| and use messenging for low-priority is way more productive than
| an unexpected door-knock that demands an immediate response.
|
| Apart from that, I was going to comment saying the exact same
| thing. Not having a commute is non-negotiable for me. That
| said, I have been working from home long before the pandemic,
| and for the one year out of 20 that I worked in office (was a
| once in a lifetime job opportunity) I rented a condo across the
| street from the office. Life is way too short to waste 1 - 2
| hours per day driving. I also finding driving to be one of the
| most stressful activities in life. Not because I don't enjoy
| driving itself, but because of traffic and having to share the
| road. In other words, I am positive that working from home is
| literally adding years to my life due to drastically reduced
| stress levels in addition to having more time to actually enjoy
| life.
|
| So no, I will never accept a position where I need to commute
| for work regularly unless it is temporary and a very special
| circumstance.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Even if it improves dramatically, so what?
|
| The point of life is not to provide your employer with
| unrestricted access to your time for their convenience.
| angry_moose wrote:
| My company recently did a forced 3-day return-to-office to "gain
| the immeasurable benefits of face-to-face collaboration"
| bullshit.
|
| Except they used the pandemic to close down a site and merge two
| offices, so there aren't enough desks. So, everyone who isn't
| full time in the office has to use hotel cubes, so I had my cube
| taken away a few weeks ago.
|
| I quickly found out that most of the hotel cubes are several
| floors away from my team, so its incredibly rare I actually see
| anyone on my team when I go in. I usually sit in silence on a
| different floor and interact with my team on zoom.
|
| To the best of my knowledge no one is taking attendance yet, so
| I'm doing 1-2 days tops.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the hotel cubes are several floors away from my team
|
| My hotel cubes are several states away from my team, so I drive
| downtown, sit in my hotel cube, and get on zoom calls with my
| team that's in a different time zone.
| coryfklein wrote:
| One efficiency of WFH that is underappreciated is the ability to
| match working hours to capacity. I can't count how many times I
| was in the office and 3 PM rolled around and I was completely
| _spent_. I knew that with a herculean effort I could probably
| squeeze a few more drops of productivity into my day, but it wasn
| 't worth it.
|
| But you can't just "go home" at 3 PM. So you check some emails.
| Look over your shoulder and pull open Reddit or - dare I say -
| Hacker News and you while away those final 90 minutes until you
| can walk out the door having said you worked a full 8 hour day.
| Neither you nor your employer really want those 90 minutes spent
| that way, but it happens, and it's demoralizing all around.
|
| When working from home there is sooo much more flexibility to
| match productive hours with working hours. When I'm excited and
| energized and a project is in that flow state I might actually
| put in 10 hours. Other times at that 3 o'clock slump, I put
| headphones in and phone into a meeting (or listen to a recording)
| while doing random chores around the house. What time I check out
| of work is now a fuzzy mental calculation of how much energy I
| have, how productive I'd be, how much demand there is for my
| time, and, yes, a little bit of a simple desire to have life
| outside of work.
| sph wrote:
| Careful, going down this path will make you realise that if you
| can optimise your workday and eliminate any distractions such
| as meetings and wasted time, you'd fill 3-4 hours of extreme
| focused work, and you'd be spent. In normal office work, these
| 4 hours of focus are spread over 8 hours.
|
| I have reached this state, and it feels surreal to complete a
| day's worth of work in my morning, so I have the entire
| afternoon for chores, research and other unstructured me or
| family time.
|
| The silver lining of the pandemic is that it might be the first
| step towards the abolishment of the 40 hours week. We're
| talking about 4 day work week now and it's still far too much
| time dedicated to your employer, that's still filled with
| mostly nonsense. We should be pushing for the 15-20 hour work
| week instead. Or just be your own boss I guess.
| duxup wrote:
| Everyone just does their thing and it sorts itself out.
|
| The debate about all this is endless and companies are going to
| do what they feel they need to do and so will everyone else.
| Right now employment is pretty fluid and that's good.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Won't work, they giveth hand taketh after sometime
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Nah, I had a personal office and still quit in order to leave the
| Bay Area because commuting >30 minutes to mostly work with people
| in offices hours away when I don't love where I am doesn't make
| sense. Middle management at large companies spent years building
| distributed teams without the executives noticing, and now
| they're learning about it too late. Having hour long commutes to
| sit on video calls all day in one of the most expensive real
| estate markets in the country isn't a life.
| dijit wrote:
| Prior to COVID, I had made a reputation for myself as being quite
| difficult when it comes to Office space.
|
| Mostly this was because I felt that I wasn't _as effective_
| working in the Open Office.
|
| I was told time-and-time again how the open office is the
| standard, I figured the problem was me and looked inwardly at
| solutions (some of which I documented on my blog).
|
| I later discovered I had many markers of ADHD, meaning that
| fighting myself was actually an unwinnable battle. -- and all
| those days of going home exhausted after having done nothing that
| day, only to pry open my laptop at home and finally accomplish
| everything required -- was something that was not a personal
| failing.
|
| I envied people who had their own office, or even a shared
| office; I was told I couldn't work from home unless I was sick or
| unable to get to the office, and truthfully it was painful to do
| so anyway due to the corporate VPN being a shambles.
|
| I'm so glad that we are collectively pushing back on this; we are
| told on one hand that rents are so expensive that it necessitates
| the open office push, but when that argument is invalidated (even
| lower rent if you don't need the space at all!) we are told to
| return to office anyway.
|
| That said, there are advantages to being on-site if you have a
| nicer working environment, getting away from the house (and the
| mental context shift that follows) along with access to certain
| equipment that might make your life easier. It's just that the
| juice isn't worth the squeeze. And boy, have we been squeezed.
| electrondood wrote:
| For what it's worth, I discovered a baseball cap to block the
| obnoxious overhead lights and some Sony noise-canceling
| headphones were a godsend for focus.
| dijit wrote:
| Baseball cap is a good idea, I wrote on my blog that ANC
| headphones are not a panacea as they are known to cause
| fatigue.
|
| Options where basically: Imagine that you have an office that
| surrounds you, try to feel like you really own your space. --
| Also you can shift your working hours slightly so that there
| are fewer people around. (I recommended going early since
| there is a perception among managers that "early bird gets
| the worm" vs "oh he has to stay late because he didn't finish
| up everything").
| surume wrote:
| Why not also give them a Ferrari to get to work, and a handful of
| diamonds to make them feel valued. I have been working with the
| big corps for 12 years, and this is pure fantasy. If they can
| save $5 a month something, they will. The idea of every worker
| getting their own office is laughable, even if it is admirable.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| I just want to be paid well and be left the fuck alone. I've
| been in consulting for over 30 years and I'm used to being
| treated poorly. I don't need a fancy office with a view. I
| don't need a coffee bar or a beer fridge. I don't need ping
| pong or bullshit team builders. I need good benefits, higher
| pay and more vacation. If you can provide those things you can
| make me work in the basement for all I care (and yes I have
| worked in basements with no windows and places worse than
| that).
| plagiarist wrote:
| Give me a laundry and dish service to replace how I am able to
| start appliances during a break.
| amf12 wrote:
| Interesting.. laundry/grocery service would be trivial for a
| lot of employers, and a huge benefit for employees. Why hasn't
| anyone offered it yet?
| joncrocks wrote:
| Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
| amf12 wrote:
| The point isn't the $ value of the money but the time
| saved. That's why perks like free food are valued over
| their cost.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Laundry service was a pretty common perk for Bay Area
| employers 10 years ago.
| klysm wrote:
| This is such a huge perk for me, last thing I want to do when
| getting home from a commute is hit a wall of chores. Much
| better to spread them out through the day
| tfandango wrote:
| I often do dishes or laundry during longer calls. I find it
| easier to follow the topic when I do this over when I'm on a
| call AND a computer where I quickly end up working on code
| and ignoring the call.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I haven't considered that, but I could probably concentrate
| better if I were mindlessly sweeping a floor than if I keep
| seeing Slack DMs popping up.
| omar12 wrote:
| What others have likely mentioned, the biggest perk that I get
| from WFH is flexibility to do home duties during business hours.
| Working from home has given me the flexibility to manage my day
| to deal with personal errands along with your work
| responsibilities.
|
| When coming to the office, all the home tasks are left for later,
| where my cognitive level is below ideal or where businesses are
| closed.
|
| There is also child care, where when working from home, you can
| pick up your kids, where you are present for them.
| cafard wrote:
| I was inside the old Post building on 15th St. NW twice: once for
| an interview for a job that I didn't really remember applying
| for; once to buy copies of the election-night edition in 2008.
| But I think I recall still pictures from "All the President's
| Men" showing a newsroom that everybody at desks in a big open
| space.
|
| Actually, I'd rather the Post reporters not sit in the same room
| all day--better that they should be out talking to persons who
| are not their co-workers most of the time.
| beastcoast wrote:
| Amazon has decided the worst of all worlds: a return to office
| mandate (stick) and agile seating plans with no assigned seating
| (stick). No carrots...
| barbazoo wrote:
| But it's a safer, more productive, higher performing, more
| diverse, and more just work environment. And not having
| assigned desks? Don't you know that this way you accomplish
| more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-
| sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for
| growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense. Thinking
| small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
|
| /s obviously https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-
| workplace/leadership-...
| dadoomer wrote:
| A counter-intuitive part of the reluctance of employers to keep
| work-from-home, is that offices costs them money. So, if
| efficiency stays the same (which seems to be the case), then they
| should want to keep work-from-home. So why do they want to go
| back? Is it all about control?
| asow92 wrote:
| Small-town and low cost of living WFH is unbeatable for those
| raising a family. It'd take me about a 100% pay increase to drag
| me back to the city.
| elforce002 wrote:
| Enjoy it my friend. They're fighting tooth and nail to reverse
| WFH.
| meremortals wrote:
| office + personal bathroom
| AvAn12 wrote:
| Joel Spolesky has made this very point many times in the past:
| "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required
| and not open to negotiation." I work on a Data Sci team that
| moved to an open floor plan in 2018. What happened? Anyone who
| needed to work intensively on a project would work from home
| instead of in the office.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _I reckon at some point someone will figure out that the
| physical environment can be modified to make knowledge workers
| more productive, and start walloping their competition._
|
| I've tuned out the entire wfh debate for this reason. We just
| need some patience and we'll have an answer. There's no need
| for all the angry debates.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| And I'm also sure if Joel Spolsky created a company today it
| would most likely have a remote first policy. At least, I'd be
| disappointed if I found out he didn't support it with how
| forward thinking his companies have been.
| whateverman23 wrote:
| > "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely
| required and not open to negotiation."
|
| Where does this come from? It's something that sounds right,
| but then I look back at my parent's office jobs and pop culture
| from 20+ years ago and it doesn't line up. Open office spaces
| have been extremely common for a very very long time, with
| private offices reserved for higher level people.
| xtracto wrote:
| Back in 2008 i worked at a Leibnitz institute in germany.
| First as a Wissenschafter and then as a Koordinator.
|
| In the first case I shard a closed door office with one other
| person. Each of us had a large desk, bookcase and great
| space.
|
| In the second case I had my own office with my own desk and
| even a table with two chairs for receiving people.
|
| I was pretty low in the institute food chain. Only the PhD
| students were lower, and they shared 2 or at most 3 person
| closed door offices .
|
| Its perfectly doable.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I've worked in open plan spaces most of my career. I've had my
| own office a few times also. I don't hate all open plan
| arrangements, if it's a room with 4-6 developers and no sales
| or marketing or other functions going on, desks are large
| enough and spaced apart a little bit, it can be fine.
| Developers will mostly put on headphones and get into the zone.
| It can feel kind of nice to have other people around even if
| you aren't interacting with them.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Open floorplans are especially problematic if your team handles
| any mix of development & operational tasks.
|
| Wall Street tech it's pretty typical to do your own SRE/L3 and
| honestly even L2/L1. Everything from business user "hey how do
| I.." customer service questions down to "the server is on fire,
| alerts are coming in .. ".
|
| Open floorplans mean even if you have an agreed PagerDuty type
| rotation, everyone gets sucked into or distracted by it. It's
| hard not to want to lend a hand when you see your buddy getting
| blown up by some difficult user or your inbox/slack is getting
| filled up with alerts.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| We had a coworking space where some company was running
| (phone) customer service reps a few tables over. I didn't use
| that one very much
| btbuildem wrote:
| Open floor plans are even more problematic when the R&D team
| shares the space with sales / marketing. In that setting only
| one of the teams is getting any work done, I'll leave you to
| guess which one.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes - There is less than zero thought put into open
| floorplan seating charts.
|
| We had in sequential rows - Level1 support, R&D,
| Development. Sat like this for years.
|
| So R&D was sandwiched between the team that was constantly
| on contentious urgent calls, and the dev team they ran over
| to ask for help.
|
| Best open floorplan seat I ever had was in a far corner way
| off from most dev, sat near a trader who spent all day on
| the phone yakking. Just like a total storyteller kind of
| guy, incredible yarns were spun .. kind faded into
| interesting background music for me. Like leaving the
| History Channel on in the back. Philosophy, science,
| history, movies, politics.. etc.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Is that a bad thing? Since we started WFH, I've heard a lot
| of stories of oncalls spending an hour on things that could
| have been handled in 5 seconds if the right person had gotten
| sucked in on the way back from coffee. "Oh, I recognize this
| bug from two years ago, here's what you gotta do." "That
| customer's symptoms are impossible, ask for more details on
| how they're doing suchandsuch because they must be leaving
| something out."
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Well it depends on your tradeoff decision between SLAs &
| Development productivity.
|
| If you hire explicit 20% staff to do operational tasks, and
| also wall off a fixed rotating 5% of your dev team to
| assist them.. then you've made a conscious decision on
| resource allocation of 25%. If the other 95% of the dev
| team is getting interrupted every 30minutes by "questions"
| then your operational staff/rotation is not resulting in
| better runbooks, etc.
|
| If you want better SLA and your operational staffing is not
| sufficient, then you should see your SLA breach, make
| staffing/process changes, etc.
|
| When development just papers over these issues you end up
| with great operational metrics and bad development metrics,
| so then everyone can be even more upset at dev!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Personally, my experience is the exact opposite.
|
| It's very easy to say "hey, can you share your screen" on a
| remote conversation. While in person that will require
| moving at minimum 2 people (often more) into a compressed
| setting with bad visibility at some random place of the
| building.
| dathinab wrote:
| What you describe is a completely different problem which
| happens to (poorly, inconsistently and costly) happens to
| sometimes get solved by open office space.
|
| Having proper knowledge bases and procedures, including how
| the ask "the team"/seniors "ad-hoc" questions and get
| feedback reasonable fast is what you want to have to solve
| that problems IMHO. Because that also tends to work if e.g.
| some people are sick or gone (knowledge bases) or can't
| come to the office (e.g. sick kids at home).
|
| Through most important I would say is that communication in
| remote work is very different to office work and "just
| throwing slack into the mix" and doing the rest like before
| isn't going to cut it.
|
| And yes that needs proper tooling, too and yes most of the
| tooling marked for this purpose today is .... pretty bad,
| sometimes utter garbage creating more work then they save
| time. Similar the part of procedures is often completely
| ignored, too.
| frollo wrote:
| Well, yes, until the stuff which has to be delivered by the
| people sucked in to do support stuff starts lagging and
| missing deadlines. Then, suddenly, lots of people start
| being really unhappy (usually at the expenses of the people
| who were helping).
|
| If the oncalls don't have the knowledge to solve the issues
| they encounter, they need to escalate them and somebody
| needs to put more time in developing a more comprehensive
| knowledge base for them to reference, not just "steal" time
| from other company functions.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes. Management wants to be all about the metrics & KPIs,
| but then throw in this "open office plan / RTO is needed
| for collaboration" fuzziness on top.
|
| If you want to be metric driven, it's important that the
| processes be allowed to fail. Otherwise you are robbing
| Peter to pay Paul, and the KPI that looks BAD is not
| where the process is failing necessarily, but where the
| time got stolen from.
| cauch wrote:
| But your solutions imply things that you would probably
| not accept to do if you were the one having to do the
| work for these solutions.
|
| You are saying that people will be blamed for taking too
| much time to an example saying it would took 10h of
| someone's time instead of 5 minutes. Why the company will
| value more "your" deadline than "the operation" deadline?
| You are basically saying you are okay with "operation"
| being the target of people unhappy as long as they are
| not unhappy with you.
|
| You are saying people should escalate. But on the
| example, the person who has the solution is the person
| you say should not be disturbed. So you are just asking
| to disturb uselessly people who cannot help, so your
| solution is even worse.
|
| You are saying more time is needed to develop a more
| comprehensive knowledge base. But who should take the
| time to fill up the knowledge base if not the people who
| have the answers, which, in this example, is the people
| you say don't have time. (and moreover, funnily, those
| people complaining to be distracted are also very very
| often not doing any effort to share their knowledge
| somewhere accessible).
|
| I'm slowly getting very irritated by the whole WFH
| debate: there is way too much arguments that boils down
| to "the problem is that _I_ am the one that people
| distract, so let's do my solution that is sooooo much
| smarter, let's do something where _I_ am happy even if it
| makes the situation worse for everyone else". That slowly
| creates this impression that a lot of pro-WFH are just
| little kids.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| Alternatively come in early or stay late. Joel did get it
| right. Open spaces are fine for light tasks but a huge drain on
| deep thinking.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Don't even suggest that. Someone might see this.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Why not both?
| wombatpm wrote:
| I had a boss who was a VP in sales. His philosophy was
| "On the days I go in late, I make up for it by leaving
| early".
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm guessing that sales is pretty different from typical
| software dev, in the sense that sales productivity is
| very measurable.
|
| That probably sidesteps a lot of the guesswork about what
| makes a person most productive.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes and if you're hitting or exceeding your sales goals,
| your boss won't care how much you are in the office. For
| at least some sales work, a substantial portion of it may
| take place outside of the office anyway.
| pc86 wrote:
| This is pretty consistent with my experience with both
| salespeople and VPs regardless of department.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I go back to reading "Joel on Software" from time to time...
| it's not my Bible or anything, but a lot of it has aged REALLY
| well.
| echelon wrote:
| While I agree that in private offices would be amazing, the
| amount of space this would require seems huge. Ideally each
| room would be as big as a two-person conference room, and even
| that would feel a little claustrophobic after several hours.
|
| Companies can't fit enough of those in as it stands. How would
| they do it for every employee? The square footage needs would
| be huge.
|
| Open office floorplans take ~75 sqft per employee. An office
| would take ~150.
|
| I vaguely remember IBM cubicle farms from visiting their
| offices as a child. They took up a ton of space, requiring huge
| office towers. That means lots of elevator trips and conference
| room needs.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-re...
|
| https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i...
| Zetice wrote:
| If all of this results in an office layout revolution that
| includes many individual offices opening into shared team
| spaces, I am 100% here for it.
| btbuildem wrote:
| It won't. The push for open-plan spaces was motivated by
| cost-cutting.
|
| Layouts with many closed offices would cost far more to
| build, and take up more square footage to host the same
| number of employees.
|
| At a time where savvy businesses have dropped their
| commercial leases / gone full remote, and the more
| conservative / less accepting of change ones are left holding
| the bag, I would not expect anyone to make big investments
| into office space.
| Zetice wrote:
| It's a common but incorrect belief that many small
| individual offices is a substantially more expensive
| buildout option.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Do you want to share with us how that belief is
| incorrect?
|
| It seems downright trivial to me that giving employees 4'
| desks packed side to side, back to back in rows requires
| less square footage and no walls, vs. an office.
|
| (And thus, the race for short-term gains in terms of less
| real estate trumped the long-term gains of SWE being able
| to think, and the race to the bottom began. It seems to
| me the costs of open-office are all after the build out:
| lower morale, higher noise, lower productivity, faster
| disease transmission, etc....)
| Zetice wrote:
| It's trivial to you that a few extra pieces of drywall
| and a handful of additional planks of wood would launch
| the cost of a buildout into the stratosphere?
|
| Are you even reading the comments about studies showing
| the lost productivity (and therefore revenue) caused by
| open office spaces?
|
| I didn't say it wouldn't cost one penny more than an open
| office, I said it wasn't wildly different. So many
| buildouts go halfway already with the tiny "phone rooms";
| it's not in any way a budget buster to keep that idea
| going, except around a central shared space where
| meetings can take place.
| deathanatos wrote:
| When I consider "the cost of the buildout", I consider
| that to be the cost to do the buildout, nothing more.
| Productivity gains/losses are outside the scope of that.
|
| I.e., the claim, as I read it, is that construction of an
| open office is more expensive than a non-open floorplan,
| per employee.
|
| (If you consider that, yes, I think open office is the
| long-term worse option, and the parenthetical in my
| comment pretty clearly denotes that.)
|
| > _I didn 't say it wouldn't cost one penny more than an
| open office, I said it wasn't wildly different._
|
| This still isn't clear to me. An office is probably,
| what, 10' square, at least? Google thinks, "The North
| American office size average is currently 150-175 square
| feet per employee. Open office spaces for tech companies
| typically use even less at 125-175 square feet per
| person". That's _considerably_ more room than an open
| office floorplan, which is probably closer to 4 'x4',
| maybe 4'x5'.
|
| > _So many buildouts go halfway already with the tiny
| "phone rooms"_
|
| My company had 3 of those, back to back to back,
| occupying what like 30-40 sq ft total? That's hardly
| "halfway".
| Zetice wrote:
| I don't really know what you want me to do with this
| comment. Okay? What part of any of this suddenly
| exponentially blows up the cost of building many little
| offices (not average sized offices, unnecessary for
| this)?
|
| You asked me to justify it, I did, and you replied with a
| generic moan. Alright?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| What you quoted had numbers for open office spaces. It
| said they were not much smaller than average or the same
| typically. And the source was a leasing guide. Office
| meant company office. Not individual office.
| jonhohle wrote:
| There have been many studies that have shown that decreased
| worker productivity and increased sick leave negate any
| cost savings from open floor plans. Their only benefit is
| that the my look cool, especially when recruiting junior
| employees.
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90285582/everyone-hates-open-
| pla...
| regularfry wrote:
| Yeah, but it comes out of a different budget, if it's
| costed for at all; and if it's noticed it's blamed on
| workshy employees, not a tactical error by management.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| See, "shared team spaces" aren't too bad; most development
| work I've done has been in teams of 2 - 8 people in a SCRUM
| setting, for that kind of work I think small team sized
| office spaces are ideal.
|
| I've also worked in a big open space where, while all five
| teams worked on the same product, each individual team had
| their own section. But for that one, you could hear the
| next desk block over talk about football and another block
| talk about what THEY're working on, which is highly
| distracting.
|
| Another one was an open office across three floors with a
| central auditorium (that is, big open central space cutting
| across all floors), which in theory would be bad but they
| had enough noise padding and ceiling-high walls /
| whiteboards between the blocks to not be an issue.
|
| Another one was one where we were asked for input; they
| initially wanted to make it an open space, but we convinced
| them to divide it up into rooms instead. They ended up
| being rooms with glass walls, some matt glass, but that was
| enough for team privacy and limited noise.
|
| My current spot has a mostly open plan space, but they have
| heaps of noise padding; felted panels on walls and
| dividers, in between rows of desks, and desks arranged in
| groups of 6-8. It's manageable, although unfortunately the
| walkways are in between the desks so people passing by
| having conversations is annoying, and the meeting rooms'
| noise insulation is inadequate. That said, we're only there
| two days a week so it's manageable.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| They wanted individual offices around team spaces. Not
| team offices. 8 person rooms are as bad in my experience
| as many open floors.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Estimates I saw said individual offices were not much more
| expensive compared against the other costs to employ
| people. But the costs were simpler to quantify than the
| benefits. Or the benefits were denied. The motivations for
| open spaces included faith in collaboration or productivity
| increases. Even when studies found decreases.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > The push for open-plan spaces was motivated by cost-
| cutting.
|
| I think that it was just as motivated by the way you can
| walk a potential investor (or a worried current investor)
| through them, and make grand gestures with your arm
| indicating all of the busy beavers working on making things
| happen. Then the group can be walked from rockstar ninja to
| rockstar ninja, looking over shoulders at unintelligible
| screens, while having smoke blown up their asses.
|
| An open-plan office is primarily a theatrically staged
| office. 20 years ago I was paid as a temp to sit in one and
| type random numbers into a noisy electric printing
| calculator while a random spreadsheet was on the screen.
| After a few hours, a small group walked in, led by a man
| who was obviously giving a presentation, with wide gestures
| of his arms. They were in the room for two or three minutes
| before being led out. Twenty minutes after they left the
| room, we were mostly dismissed, except for the younger guys
| (like me) who were offered a few hours more work moving
| boxes.
|
| The end of free money might make open plan offices _more_
| popular among a certain type of company.
| esafak wrote:
| Adam Neumann: "Activate the space!"
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/activate-space-wework-founder-
| adam-18...
| hnboredhn wrote:
| The one counter is that commercial real estate is way
| cheaper than it used to be. The potential savings of
| putting everyone in a full open floor plan aren't as high
| as they used to be.
|
| (Still don't think it will happen - but that shift occurred
| when leases on commercial real estate were at all time
| high)
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| Lots of empty / underutilized offices right now. So costs
| should be down, which might rip the equation. Recruiting is
| still a challenge for top positions, an office might be a
| nice way to attract talent on the cheap.
| LegitShady wrote:
| my employer is currently making noises about this,
| currently 2 days a week from home. I have a source in the
| process and I'm told that for 2026 they're going to be
| giving up their current lease, moving to a new smaller
| location, and requiring people hot desk so you don't even
| get your own cube.
|
| It's either going to be working from home or a new employer
| for me.
| captainbland wrote:
| To be honest I think with hybrid, open offices make a lot
| of sense. Realistically you want to be able to hot desk
| because that's where the cost savings are made in a hybrid
| situation. You sort of fractional-reserve your office
| space. Of course it works only so long as nobody calls an
| in-person all hands.
|
| The in-office days are social collaboration days so it
| doesn't make sense to keep people in separate boxes for
| them. Then people's home office setups are their cubes if
| they want them, which most people seem to.
| amluto wrote:
| No, thanks. If you want happy productive desk workers,
| give them their own desks, their own shelves, and
| possibly even their own blackboards.
|
| Even ignoring increased happiness, this enables giving
| employees their own tools: keyboards, chairs, monitors,
| workstations, tea, oscilloscopes, papers, etc.
| captainbland wrote:
| Again we're talking about a hybrid situation here where
| typically the employee is likely to be working from home
| more than they're in the office. I think what you're
| suggesting makes sense for 3+ days a week in office
| situations though but 2 days or less and it starts to get
| tenuous. And for me I wouldn't want to go in any more
| than 2 days a week so they can keep the permanent desk
| imo.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| I would not want to go in any days without a permanent
| desk.
| philwelch wrote:
| > To be honest I think with hybrid, open offices make a
| lot of sense. Realistically you want to be able to hot
| desk because that's where the cost savings are made in a
| hybrid situation.
|
| This doesn't sound like a stable equilibrium to me; more
| like a transition to full remote that you do when you're
| waiting for your lease to run out. Not even having your
| own permanent desk sounds like utter hell.
| captainbland wrote:
| I seriously doubt anyone's going to maintain hybrid
| working and give everyone permanent desks in any
| situation, though.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| You said it would make sense for 3 days in office. This
| seems to be a common hybrid schedule. Some companies
| assigned shared permanent desks to people with
| complementary 2 day schedules. This is better than hot
| desks. And it is possible both of you are right.
| jonhohle wrote:
| We had "hotelling" at Accenture in the early 2000's and I
| hated it. It made sense their, because at any moment you
| could be called to an out of town assignment, but the
| lack of workspace consistency and the feeling of coming
| into the most generic workspace available was really
| draining).
| rocqua wrote:
| That works only if everyone is hybrid. If some people are
| 80% office, they need a place for real work.
| akwiuehjt wrote:
| I can tell what stage a project is in by which desks on my
| floor are empty. I go in to the office when I'm doing planning
| or review, but when I'm building I stay home where it's quiet
| and I won't be interrupted. Pretty much all of my department is
| the same way. I'm glad I have that freedom (and privilege) and
| from here on I probably won't consider jobs that don't give me
| that freedom.
| [deleted]
| peatmoss wrote:
| To me it beggars belief that companies spend so much on humans
| only to put them in an environment where it's impossible to
| concentrate. I reckon at some point someone will figure out
| that the physical environment can be modified to make knowledge
| workers more productive, and start walloping their competition.
|
| I am on a distributed team with no in-person interaction, and I
| love commuting even though I don't see anyone I work with. But,
| I hate the physical space.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Because we just came out of two or three decades of Google
| and Yahoo offices splashed across the business pages, filled
| with bean bags and beer taps and foosball tables, making us
| all think that these playgrounds created massive streams of
| revenue for their companies.
|
| Turns out, it was just advertising that made the cash all
| along. The silly "collaborative" environment had nothing to
| do with it.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Microsoft used to do this. Famously, they had private offices
| for a long time while all the competition was open-office
| plans. They've scaled this way back in recent years though
| (to much complaining, albeit totally ignored, from
| employees). Whether this means the brainworms got to them too
| or they actually have the numbers to prove that private
| offices aren't worth the expense, I don't know.
| peatmoss wrote:
| In my first job after college, I worked at a federal agency
| where people had cubicles carved out of traditional large
| offices. It was actually kind of nice, because you worked
| with people in your office, but had some separation from
| them as well.
|
| The peons all had desktop computers, while middle
| management had clunky laptops with docking stations. You
| knew who the executives were by their small laptops that
| were clearly designed for traveling by the jet setting
| class.
|
| I've come to think that the ultimate power move for the
| movers and shakers at a company, would be to have a
| traditional office with a desktop computer that they cannot
| take with them. I remember being excited the first time I
| was issued a corporate laptop. I felt like I had finally
| arrived, and finally was one of the powerful and
| privileged. Now, I look back on those days of desktop
| computing, where I could not take my computer home, and
| where there was no expectation that I would randomly work
| from home as the very height of luxury.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Is it sad that I miss cubicles? even semi-cubes.
|
| I had them from 2001-2014, 2017-2018.
| peatmoss wrote:
| Nope, cubes were reviled back in the 90s because they
| were a pale shadow of what knowledge workers had lost in
| terms of offices. Management heard our lamentations about
| cubicles and sent us to a deeper, colder level of hell--
| the open plan.
| daruk wrote:
| To contrast this, I'd say that the "few cubicles in an
| office" is my least favorite approach. It makes every
| little noise much more noticeable, and if you get stuck
| with a loud talker, their voice on on virtual meetings is
| going to echo a lot more off of the office walls. I'd
| prefer a regular cubicle in a large floor where the
| background noise all just kinda blends together.
| peatmoss wrote:
| In my case, the cubes were in large-ish rooms with doors.
| This was kind of great in that if things got loud you
| were either shutting the door or asking two or three
| office mates to pipe down. There was no cut-through
| traffic or hallway conversation. Not as excellent as the
| one time in my career where I had a traditional private
| office, but definitely the runner-up.
| justjash wrote:
| Same. Got a laptop and Blackberry at my first job out of
| college. Didn't take too long for me to realize that it
| actually sucked.
|
| Later worked as a govt contractor and could leave my
| laptop at the office 90% of the time. Never realized how
| good that was until I switched back to a job with an on-
| call rotation.
| bitbckt wrote:
| Sun used to assign offices to two people.
|
| I personally don't mind sharing office space with less than
| about four coworkers. In a small(!), shared office there is
| enough social pressure to keep concentration periods quiet,
| or agree on shared music choices, &c. and still maintain the
| advantages of having what amounts to a team meeting space for
| collaboration in the same footprint.
| progman32 wrote:
| Heh. If there's anything worse than an open office in my
| mind, it's being locked in a small room with someone else.
| At least the pervasive need to self monitor due to constant
| surveillance is somewhat diffuse in an open office. In a
| small room, nothing can escape attention.
| closeparen wrote:
| Knowledge workers are nominally expensive but compared to
| real estate? The company's actual liquid cash outlay to a
| highly-paid knowledge worker barely covers the mortgage
| payment on a mediocre house an hour away. Tech workers are
| rich in many things, but not square feet. The company renting
| palatial amounts of class A space on their behalf could be
| tantamount to doubling wages, and I bet most people would
| take the wages.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "To me it beggars belief that companies spend so much on
| humans only to put them in an environment where it's
| impossible to concentrate."
|
| But "collaboration"....
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Those hallway conversations where the real magic happens,
| man.
| solardev wrote:
| At least you have hallways, man. Our collaboration
| happens in the space between desks where the power strips
| go. It's not so bad if we reorient the monitors just
| right so they don't hit our heads.
| esafak wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUdRhB_M7qk (safe for
| work)
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Bathrooms are best for quick discussions.
| pydry wrote:
| Anecdotally I think a a lot of the IT work that requires
| extreme focus has become commodified. That is, it's either
| done by some open source library or a SaaS or something.
|
| I had a lot more of the stuff that required focus at the
| beginning of my career. In my last few jobs it's been more
| about hooking together subsystems from 11 different
| teams/companies in six different timezones.
|
| Most bugs seem to happen because of misalignments or
| miscommunication. Intense focus just isnt as important any
| more.
| solardev wrote:
| Did you mean "commoditized", like work that used to be hard
| and custom is now generic? If so, totally agreed... we've
| moved up the ladder of abstractions quite a bit and there's
| less of a need to build up from the ground these days.
|
| To me, though, that calls less for private offices and more
| for effective async collaboration. With 11 teams, nothing
| is going to get done over meetings except some basic
| alignments. The actual work of integration needs to be
| fully documented and agreed upon in writing in a way where
| provider and consumer can look at while actively
| developing, like a living API spec with specific schema,
| response and error codes etc. all laid out. If any team
| fails to adhere to the spec, well, the spec is right (as of
| any given version).
|
| Even if we were all in person in the same conference room
| talking for hours one afternoon, none of that is going to
| stick around more than a week or two before some detail
| diverges.
|
| The meetings are perhaps good for managers to walk away
| with some basic summary of a decision, but the actual
| engineering and IT work can't happen in them. I wish more
| managers would realize that and give teams more time to
| actually collaborate through individual async
| contributions, not just sitting together in a room --
| there's a big difference.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| We can tell this isn't Reddit because you don't have a top
| reply to your post stating, "this is what happens when we
| let the neurotypical into the tech industry."
| [deleted]
| Eddygandr wrote:
| If my job involved integrating 11 subsystems I'd need some
| pretty intense focus!
| [deleted]
| matt_s wrote:
| I believe this concept came from the PeopleWare book by
| Demarco/Lister.
|
| Its common sense that for work requiring deep periods of
| concentration, eliminating distractions is key. Easiest way to
| eliminate distractions in an office environment is being in a
| room behind a closed door. Cheapest way to do that these days
| is WFH, assuming people have that space where they live.
| JamesLeonis wrote:
| The title of chapter 12 is "Bring Back The Door"
| wombat-man wrote:
| Yeah, whenever I need to concentrate it's earplugs + noise
| canceling headphones. For some reason there's a group of
| marketing people in the same big room as us. They are very
| chatty, especially in the mornings.
| technofiend wrote:
| Since I don't have a colleague to rubber duck with, I talk to
| myself. Needless to say that can't happen in an open office
| floor plan because I don't want to be a distraction any more
| than I want to be distracted.
|
| Elsewhere boiled frog and class have both been mooted with
| regards to office. That's definitely my experience from
| working the last few decades. I started my career having an
| office for almost every job. But that slowly fell away as
| corporations discovered cubes save money and is now
| completely gone where I work now unless you are _very_ senior
| indeed. We 're talking there are only a handful of offices
| per floor vs nothing but offices on every floor.
|
| Class comes in to play because at least where I work the
| people setting policy for the average worker to sit at a cube
| not only have their own offices, they have their own
| building! One that you don't get access to by default. Yet,
| as cost-saving-measures we've enabled people to collaborate
| across regions and timezones to the point that coming in to
| work in a cube farm is actually counterproductive. Very few
| people are customer facing and need to get face time with
| clients to do deals. The rest of us can happily WFH. Perhaps
| as Wall Street slowly weans itself from CRE, that will in
| fact be the next benefit that's pulled back: sorry, you need
| to be really senior to come into the office / square footage
| is for closers. I can hardly wait.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I think it was the Amazon CEO that said the "office" is great
| because you can just walk up to someone and ask them questions.
| Fuck no.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| We went into the office a few weeks ago, and I was much less
| productive due to us walking up to each other and asking
| questions. Rather than shoot chats to each other, or quick
| phone calls, each question/discussion was by far more
| disruptive to workflow. I didn't expect that, but it was
| undeniable!
| dathinab wrote:
| I have worked in all of 1,3,4,20-35 office rooms and home
| office.
|
| I don't think single person rooms are necessary (but better),
| but open office is definitely not grate and without noise
| canceling headphones completely unbearable.
|
| With rooms with small number of people (2 or much worse 4) it
| also depends _a massive lot_ on the layout. But also the other
| person, i.e. do they constantly click their pens, do they
| interrupt you all the time, do they have ad-hoc meetings with
| other people at their desk etc. etc. The problem is such
| factors are hard to "control"/estimate/plan with.
|
| Through similar considerations apply to home office too, i.e.
| people need room in their home which can become office space.
| E.g. working in you bedroom comes with a huge number of
| problem, which can be overcome, sometimes, but it's IMHO not as
| simple as "just" having a proper desk and chair.
| bparsons wrote:
| The whole office culture thing is unnecessary and performative,
| and the pandemic proved it.
|
| Any productivity gain/loss is negligible for most types of white
| collar work. Forcing people to go back to the office is about
| deliberately increasing attrition and the immiseration of
| employees because they were got too uppity during the labour
| crunch.
| harshaw wrote:
| I think its fair to say that RTO is not about data, or studies,
| or about anything really. Leaders across all industries have
| decided people are coming back. Perhaps there is a secret cabal
| of commercial office space lenders who are putting pressure as
| share holders, or some other conspiracy theory. But it's
| happening - no one can do anything about it (except vote with
| your feet), and no one is going to get better accommodations in
| this economy (e.g better offices).
|
| I am in the middle of having to tell a top engineer (and team
| lead) who was hired remote that they can no longer be remote and
| need to move to one of our office locations (thousands of miles
| away of course). Just for the privilege of being on a video call
| with the PMs who of course don't live in the same city anyway.
|
| Sadly, it's like people running these companies are drawing
| inspiration from Vladamir Putin and saying "Fuck it - I want
| people in the office". This may be off topic from the article -
| but I think leaders are just going to say fuck it - you are
| coming in or you are getting fired.
| whoopsie wrote:
| Meanwhile, my startup is profitable, hiring, and permanently
| 100% remote across 7 countries. Hiring is easy.
| brk wrote:
| Yes, but you shouldn't extrapolate from that. In many cases
| "startups" are much much easier to manage remotely. You often
| have a much smaller, and more focused, employee base. There
| is much less room for unproductive employees to hide in the
| shadows.
| amf12 wrote:
| > I think its fair to say that RTO is not about data,
|
| What data do you have to support this, other than a personal
| anecdote?
| harshaw wrote:
| Well - at my massive company no one is willing to share any
| data about these decisions. That's a huge red flag. And
| anecdotes about remote working are personal (individual
| manager) and larger team (100s) to entire orgs (500+). it's
| been working great.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > What data do you have to support this, other than a
| personal anecdote?
|
| If RTO proponents had any hard data, wouldn't they shared it
| by now? It is _they_ who are making the claim that office
| work is more productive, so it is on them to _prove_ it. We
| are being fed some fables about "spontaneous interactions at
| water cooler" and other such bullshit instead.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| > I think its fair to say that RTO is not about data, or
| studies, or about anything really.
|
| How is this fair to say at all? It may be true, but there's no
| evidence that this is the case.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't know if it's true or not, but it's a reasonable
| hypothesis. There has been no evidence that RTO decisions are
| being made on data, studies, or anything other than what
| management feels is right, either. So all we have hypotheses.
| brk wrote:
| >Perhaps there is a secret cabal of commercial office space
| lenders
|
| In a sense, I think this is much of it.
|
| Commercial real estate used to be a fairly predictable
| investment. Costs were mostly predictable, rents would increase
| over time, etc.
|
| Now, we have all these vacant buildings and it's highly
| disruptive to the investors and owners of those buildings. You
| have companies in the middle of 5, 10, 15 year leases, and
| they're paying on those spaces with no hope of getting out of
| the contract. So the companies have a large incentive to
| justify that spend, which is really only going to happen by
| utilizing the space, which means in-office work.
|
| I think if there was a viable way for these lessors to get out
| of those obligations we would see more of an embrace of WFH or
| hybrid work.
|
| There is also part of the issue where for some people and
| tasks, an in-office scenario is higher net productivity to the
| company (but not necessarily the employees).
|
| Additionally, you also have companies where a large contingent
| of the workforce can't WFH (eg: manufacturing, assembly, etc.).
| It creates animosity among the workers when the higher paid
| people also have the luxury of not needing to come to a
| physical location.
|
| Overall, I think the deck is stacked against WFH becoming a
| long-term trend for a majority of the workforce. I think it
| will become a more common perk, something that is earned and
| not granted.
| dsm4ck wrote:
| My theory is that RTO is a way to reduce headcount without
| having proper layoffs and severance.
| rdtsc wrote:
| That's a large part of it. It's especially works well to get
| rid of people who are older and have families, and keep
| mostly fresh college graduates and singles. And those usually
| have a lower salaries, we're getting fresh employees who are
| lower cost, everything looks great on paper.
|
| Except that the first people who would leave might also be
| the good experienced engineers, but that loss is a little
| hard to see on paper at first, to predict and so it doesn't
| get accounted for very well.
| seansmccullough wrote:
| Yep, it's just a backdoor layoff.
| sneak wrote:
| It's always a good thing when bad companies with bad managers
| are free to alienate and otherwise drive away their best
| talent.
| jononomo wrote:
| I think collaboration between software engineers is more
| effective if everyone works remotely because the screen-sharing
| and video chatting technology is so powerful and inexpensive. So
| it's a double win: more flexibility and more productivity.
| toddmorey wrote:
| Years ago I worked for a company in a huge windowless, wall-less
| open plan building that was supposed to be fun because they put a
| slide in it. You had to have headphones on to think.
|
| Looking back it seems so surreal like thinking about when people
| used to smoke on airplanes. I can't imagine ever going back to
| that.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| Hah, I was scrolling through some commercial listings this
| morning and found a barren industrial warehouse (with windows!)
| that I thought would be perfect for the eternal tormenting of
| information workers under the guise of a Fun, Hip Place To
| Work.
|
| No carpets, no canvas on the walls, nothing - just a new paint
| job, a couple of kegs, some ping-pong tables, and maybe a
| cornhole setup for maximum tailgating vibes.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's not about what the office looks or feels like or what the
| amenities are for me but about a lifestyle. Once I got a taste of
| this lifestyle I decided that, for the kind of work I'm doing
| right now, ordinary software development, I will never go back to
| the office unless absolutely necessary (recession, war, etc). I'd
| be happy to go work from my employer's building where the job
| requires it, where I need equipment I can't reasonably expect to
| have at home (factory) or where I have to work where the
| customers are (service), things like that.
|
| The kind of software job I'm in though, it's absolutely possible
| with the right policies and technology to have the same kind of
| productivity as in the office, it's up to the employer to fix
| whatever they think is missing.
| avmich wrote:
| > This will be awful for commercial landlords, their banks and
| their cities' tax bases.
|
| I especially like the last one. How about increasing a number of
| family houses in the city using that space, at least a little?
| That would get some tax back and improve the situation with
| housing at the same time.
| tristor wrote:
| I've worked remotely since 2015. I have no intent of ever going
| back to the office. I actually enjoy working from the office
| occasionally, but it can't be a permanent thing for me, and
| giving me an office with a door and a short commute are not
| enough to make it matter. That makes it better, but not enough to
| change my mind.
|
| It's really simple. My office at home is better than any
| corporate owned office could ever feasibly be. A major reason why
| is because it's /mine/, I have absolute and complete control over
| it, and basically no budget restrictions. My home office is
| /comfortable/, /relaxed/, and /nice/. None of which are things
| companies care about when they start putting numbers in
| spreadsheets, and even if they did care about, they'd have to
| standardize it. My home office is also /personal/, which a
| corporate office can never be.
|
| I will /consider/ going back to the office when I get a 15m^2
| space to myself with a locking door that closes, a window view,
| and a $30k/yr a budget to do whatever I want inside that office
| on top of world-class pay, and I can commute there in under 20
| minutes. When all of those things are true, and only then, does
| it even become a consideration that is comparable to working from
| home permanently.
| lolinder wrote:
| > If you want to watch your employees work, build glass walls.
|
| I hope this is dark humor and not meant to be taken seriously.
| For me, about half the reason I prefer my home office is that I
| don't feel like I have to _look_ productive. I can get my stuff
| done in my way, and as long as my boss is happy with the result
| it doesn 't matter if my way "looked" right.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > glass
|
| The acoustics are also terrible, as are the visual distractions
| of watching people walk past and peek in every 20 seconds.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Reminds me of working out of a WeWork in South Station
| Boston. I faced away from the door and kept headphones on.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Often it comes down to your boss/manager wanting to get their
| "moneys worth".
|
| In their minds, they don't pay you for results - but rather for
| your time. If you complete your tasks fast, and deliver the
| desired results, in let's say 20 hours instead of 40 - that
| means you have 20 more hours to do something else. It's the _"
| If you have time to lean, you have time to clean"_ mantra
| brought to the white-collar world.
|
| If you work from home, they can't micromanage or monitor your
| hours as well as in the office. They don't know if you're a
| very efficient or average worker. Their fear is that you finish
| your tasks, and then spend time "slacking" at home - doing
| house chores, watching tv shows, or whatever, on their time.
|
| That was literally the first thing I learned when I entered the
| workforce. It's always better to do nothing and look like
| you're doing something, than to do something and look like
| you're doing nothing.
|
| I don't say this often, but I feel blessed to have a remote
| boss that doesn't give two shits about what I / we do with our
| time, as long as we deliver results. But so far he seems like
| an anomaly.
| btilly wrote:
| I worked in a company that had meeting rooms with glass walls.
|
| It was great. You could write on the glass like it was a
| whiteboard. And the knowledge that everyone else could see you
| were in a meeting was an incentive to only be in meetings when
| you had a real reason to be.
| lolinder wrote:
| Meeting rooms is fine--it has the added benefit of seeing
| easily if one is empty. Offices would be terrible.
| amluto wrote:
| The nicest office, by far, that I ever worked in was a four
| person office, and my officemates and I were generally working on
| almost completely unrelated things. Outside the offices was a
| nice lounge, quite large but extensively broken up with furniture
| and architecture, with lots of couches and blackboards.
| EchoReflection wrote:
| Modern white-collar work wil _never_ go back to the way things
| were (nor does it need to). Pros and cons to that of course. The
| path of least resistance (saving the costs of lighting
| /heating/cooling/plumbing/office-maintenance, etc) will triumph.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Yes! I've been a firm believer in this for ages. Heck I'd even
| quite like a cubicle, no really, I would. The open plan office
| that is ubiquitous in the UK is the absolute worst of all
| possible designs
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah it's amazing to think we now long _back_ to the days of
| the cubicle. When they were introduced I never thought things
| could get worse.
|
| When I started in the late 90s I had my own office _as an
| intern_ in a huge fancy building in Amsterdam. They started the
| cubicle transition soon after.
| m1117 wrote:
| Lol people get hella spoiled. Hybrid is the way to go.
| rabuse wrote:
| Spoiled? By providing more value to a corporation through
| productivity increases and work-life balance that allows people
| to have a better head-space?
| SnowProblem wrote:
| What companies today give software engineers offices? Microsoft's
| used to be fantastic in 00s and early 10s but they also were
| moving to open spaces when I left so not sure the state today.
| maverick2007 wrote:
| Epic Systems did as of 5 years ago
| willcipriano wrote:
| Epic systems basically has a company town set up. I don't
| think you ever really leave work when you work for epic.
| selectodude wrote:
| Not to mention they've taken to straight up lying on their
| job descriptions saying they're based in Chicago while
| having "required to relocate to Madison" in fine print at
| the end of the ad.
|
| Yucky company.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Honestly, trying to fix the problems of: 1) expensive office
| space and 2) people not coming into the office with 3) more
| _expensive_ office space is just the kind of McKinsey-level
| thinking we should expect.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| If HOAs increase property values, maybe we can convince our
| overlords that an Office Workers' Association for planning
| these renovations will help save them from Numbers Go Down in
| the commercial real estate market.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Making offices bigger and nicer will
|
| 1) mean fewer offices (per unit space, since they are bigger)
|
| 2) make people more likely to come in (since they are nicer)
|
| The point where those cross over seems like a good target,
| the highest number of happy office workers you can fit.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > 1) mean fewer offices (per unit space, since they are
| bigger)
|
| I think this is rather optimistic. If you give more square
| feet per employee and expect most/all to come in, the idea
| that it will mean fewer offices doesn't really add up.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Sure, that was the point of my comment. Making the
| offices bigger and nicer incentivizes people to come in,
| and reduces the building capacity, the goal should be to
| find the point where those two trends meet.
|
| Of course, this is under the assumption the company wants
| people to come in willingly. They could just try and
| force their employees to come in, but people are really
| into work from home and good employees have more options.
| xpe wrote:
| Apple does, at least in some locations. Others who have more
| current knowledge can chime in.
| mapgrep wrote:
| The best insight in the article is actually this:
|
| > cheaper real estate presents an opportunity for employers with
| vision
|
| On top of any deterioration in office rents, companies need way
| less space than they used to since people are working from home
| many days. This opens up many possibilities that will IMO keep
| offices in prime markets filled:
|
| -companies take more space per person in office for same cost,
| providing desks
|
| -companies that couldn't afford prime markets move in and use
| them as mainly collaboration spaces ("let's all work out of
| Manhattan next week while we finish this project")
|
| -companies downsize in prime markets but reorient toward specific
| events - brainstorming, project closings, strategy retreats, get
| to know each other, cross department workshopping etc etc
| nullsmack wrote:
| If they want me to return to the office, then I need a private
| trailer with my office and it's own facilities in it. Don't shove
| me in where I'm forced to share air and virus with anyone else.
| 6510 wrote:
| To do a plot twist, what other things are there be that would
| make work more enjoyable, more efficient and cheaper while
| contributing to private life? No need to check all the boxes.
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