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Volguus posted:As in? I'd be a bit curious to find out the reason you think that way. We're coworkers, not friends. We try to get along, to help each other achieve the common goal (whatever that is), but it is nothing more than that. Yes, I have made friends, decades long friends, at work. Just visited one last Blizzcon, he works at Blizzard now, know him since 1999. But that's the exception and definitely not the rule. Want to get out and have a beer? By all means, nothing is stopping you. But forcing that interaction on people? That's just loving evil. And they know it. In general I disagree with you, but I'm glad I'll never need to talk to you while grabbing some coffee.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:34
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thotsky posted:Nah, there's legit reasons for it too. Most people aren't made to sit in a room working for 8 hours straight every day; they need to socialize, and I mean engaging in actual communal behaviors, not just hitting the pub with friends every other weekend. And some people don't need any of that for their validation or mental health. I get my socialization in the amounts, times, and ways I choose to; I don't need it forced upon me by people who, let's be real honest here, do not care about my wellbeing. I have regular calls with people I work with, it doesn't feel dehumanizing to me. Go into an office if you want it, I don't care. We can work differently.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:39
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StumblyWumbly posted:In general I disagree with you, but I'm glad I'll never need to talk to you while grabbing some coffee. The feeling is absolutely mutual. I like to grab my coffee alone too.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:46
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StumblyWumbly posted:In general I disagree with you, but I'm glad I'll never need to talk to you while grabbing some coffee. To start with, this. Volguus posted:As in? I'd be a bit curious to find out the reason you think that way. We're coworkers, not friends. We try to get along, to help each other achieve the common goal (whatever that is), but it is nothing more than that. Yes, I have made friends, decades long friends, at work. Just visited one last Blizzcon, he works at Blizzard now, know him since 1999. But that's the exception and definitely not the rule. Want to get out and have a beer? By all means, nothing is stopping you. But forcing that interaction on people? That's just loving evil. And they know it. I'll bite. Let's start by getting the easy part out of the way: modern capitalism is a loving shitshow nightmare and CEOs are ghouls. If people want to WFH that's fine - half the people I work with are in other time zones so I have no idea where they actually are. Doesn't matter to me. But that's irrelevant to what I'm talking about, which is the idea that your coworkers are this weird subhuman 'problem'. You can scroll through any thread where people talk about WFH with this same lovely attitude towards other people. Having to spend time laboring with people that aren't your friends is about as old as goddamn humanity. When people do this whole 'oh why the gently caress would I go work with my ghoulish coworkers' you're making the problem about the other victims of the situation. Again, I want to be super clear: I don't have a problem with people wanting to WFH. I have a problem when their stated reasons for it are based on antisocial dehumanizing language towards their fellow workers.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:51
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Ok, WTF? Nobody's making the problem about the other victims of the situation. Is just that nobody wants to interact with strangers if they don't have to. And certainly not more than they have to. Nobody's dehumanizing anything, is just that everyone is preferring the obviously way better solution to both their own health (mental and physical) and to the goals of the company they work for. As in, be better, more productive employees. Surely we can all agree on the fact that unhappy employees are indeed a drag on the quality of the finished product, right? And we can all agree that making people do things that make no sense, which rob them of the most precious and unreplaceable currency they have (time) is making them less happy, right? And, not to mention, said currency (time) is not paid for when you're asking people to commute to an office, so basically they're throwing that time away for no good reason. The problem is not the other employees. When we have demonstrated time and time again and we can and do get all along just fine remotely. Products and features get done on time. People are happier. Hell, people actually work longer (I know I do/did), because they're in a comfortable and happy environment. The chat (as lovely as the chat products have become, they still do perform their basic functions just fine) is the perfect and sufficient medium for conveying the important information among each other. The speed of the internet makes it possible to have face to face communication whenever we want and need to. Ad-hoc even, if we feel like it. And we still talk about "return to the office" as being a positive thing? Because I don't believe anyone who says it that they don't have an underlying, evil, motive. And the discussions that you have heard/read online about bitching about the other coworkers: However much of that was real, however much of that was a joke, would all of that be better if everyone would be forced together in a building for 8 hours per day? Would we all get along just fine at that point in time and pat each other on the back? do you not see the absurdity of this position?
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Mar 9, 2024 07:06
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It's really funny when someone insists that there are no possible upsides to anybody for being in an office, and it takes less than two sentences for it to become abundantly clear that it's actually a personal issue on their part.
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Mar 9, 2024 07:14
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Jabor posted:It's really funny when someone insists that there are no possible upsides to anybody for being in an office, and it takes less than two sentences for it to become abundantly clear that it's actually a personal issue on their part. Ah, I see. "It's you, you're the subhuman" argument coming in full force. Right. Oh well, what can I say, enjoy your commute.
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Mar 9, 2024 07:30
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Volguus posted:Is just that nobody wants to interact with strangers if they don't have to. And certainly not more than they have to. If the former, it could be one reason to look for greener pastures elsewhere. If the latter, well, you do you—this gets back to the initial point: companies should more clearly settle into one camp or another and those who prefer one to the other should self-select to what works best for them. Volguus posted:And we still talk about "return to the office" as being a positive thing? Because I don't believe anyone who says it that they don't have an underlying, evil, motive.
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Mar 9, 2024 07:37
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Jabor posted:It's really funny when someone insists that there are no possible upsides to anybody for being in an office, and it takes less than two sentences for it to become abundantly clear that it's actually a personal issue on their part. There are far more downside than upsides IMO. Pretty much every study done shows an overall increase in happiness and well being, COVID opened lots of people's eyes to what work could be. People who like working in an office seem to be the minority from what I see, the issue is " you do you" attitude doesn't really work. People who prefer WFH are being dragged into the office because of the desire of a minority to keep that outdated culture going. Hybrid wont last, for a company it has the worse of both worlds, either places will commit to WFH or eventually everyone will get dragged back to the office. thotsky posted:
We have a bi-weekly meeting to show our work to other people, it fills that role pretty well. Cugel the Clever posted:I think this mindset is the crux of the difference between those who are okay about returning to the office and those who aren't. Why are your coworkers strangers? Nah that's just that dude. I like most of my coworkers, I just like WFH more. I like this coworker the most 
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Mar 9, 2024 08:23
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Volguus posted:Ah, I see. "It's you, you're the subhuman" argument coming in full force. Right. Oh well, what can I say, enjoy your commute. I love it, it's a fifteen minute walk along the waterfront or a five-minute tram ride if the weather is unpleasant. I've done the work-from-home thing, and it's great for when I'm heads-down on a solo project. But I'm more productive overall working from the office where I can be immediately accessible to juniors for technical discussions and whiteboarding, can use body language and other subtle cues to figure out whether now's a good time to interrupt someone, and generally be plugged in to what the team is up to. If you personally prefer working from home 100% of the time - great, fantastic, good for you. If your job and life situation are such that the downsides of commuting in to work in the office outweigh the upsides of being in there, that sucks and you should definitely push for remote work. But pretending that there are absolutely no upsides for anyone to working in an office is an extremist position that makes you look hyperbolic and unreasonable to everybody who's personal experience says otherwise.
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Mar 9, 2024 11:46
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Jabor posted:But pretending that there are absolutely no upsides for anyone to working in an office is an extremist position that makes you look hyperbolic and unreasonable to everybody who's personal experience says otherwise. I'm definitely not just emptyquoting this. Cugel the Clever posted:Can you expand on this? What's the evil intent? Honestly, sure, some bosses are assholes, and places definitely exist like what they're referring to where managers are just like, people watchers. But...that doesn't explain why companies without that culture would be pushing WFH stuff; my team definitely doesn't have any of that going on and our company still went hybrid. A good manager isn't there to keep an eye on you, they're there to make sure you can get your work done, which is both a better culture for everyone and more effective at productivity. I think that realistically, the higher up in a company you are, the more you probably value being at the office. Your job is mostly about communicating and meetings, and those have some clear upside in person, and I think that leadership types also tend to be more social as a general theme (not a rule), so I really think all the stuff they talk about with collaboration or whatever is probably reasonable to them. I don't think that means that they should ignore people that work for them that want WFH, or even that it makes them right. I just think there's a pretty rational explanation for this that doesn't involve all these companies just setting up meetings and wringing their hands nefariously. Most of the people I know that were in favor of RTO came into the office a lot even during the middle of the pandemic (since nobody was around), and a good portion of them were managers. They weren't doing snide comment stuff or pushing people to come in more, it was just...how they worked, I guess. I prefer hybrid, personally, although I'm pretty frustrated by my company's hotel desking bullshit because it wastes my time to setup and tear down each day. Edit https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html this actually touches on what I was mentioning a bit more in the context of meetings Falcon2001 fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 12:14
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the purpose of RTO is to prop up inner city real estate values
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Mar 9, 2024 12:58
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yeah i mean multiple things can be true: - some people like going to the office - sometimes you do actually have to be in the office - some managers or directors think going to the office makes people more productive - some managers or directors get good brainfeel from seeing butts in seats - real estate heavily lobbies companies to bring people back (or lobbies the government to get companies to) - some companies with nice offices feel bad that nobody's using them
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Mar 9, 2024 13:13
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The purpose of rto is that any meeting with more than 2 active participants is a loving slog as a remote meeting, getting worse with more active people. Software is different in that code/schematic and end of sprint meetings can be better remote, but the further you get from those meetings the worse remote meetings get.
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Mar 9, 2024 13:23
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I don't mind my coworkers, they're just people who were chosen for me to have to work with. Some good, some bad. But WFH is abundantly, plainly better for my mental health than having to go into an office. I just don't work very well that way. One of the most immediately obvious things about the COVID pandemic was how much happier I was compared to when I had to go into the office. I've tried hybrid, and it is not enough. Commuting and sitting in an office makes me abjectly miserable compared to WFH. I'm so, so glad that I was born in an age where I don't have to do it. I believe I can communicate just as well on projects from home as from an office and get just as much done. If you don't work that way, and you prefer to be in an office, that's fine. But please have respect for the fact that not everybody has the same outlook on life as you, especially if you're going to talk about teamwork and respecting your coworkers as human beings. Meeting people where they are is a huge part of that. And don't act as a toady for management, whose reasons for trying to force people back to the office are not benevolent. No one's forcing you to work from home. And if you feel like your office experience isn't "complete" without us, somehow-- tough poo poo??
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Mar 9, 2024 13:49
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Tbh the thing that I and the other people who aren't wfh absolutists are responding to is that poster saying that all their coworkers are NPCs why would they want to see them or the poster saying like it's objectively literally scientifically unambiguously 9 million percent better to work from home or whatever. I prefer to work from the office; I was extremely miserable forcibly working from home all through covid. I also think hybrid meetings suck rear end and so do remote meetings unless people sink several hundred dollars into their home a/v setups. I also think that many more dev jobs should be remote friendly or even remote first (obviously not all can but we all agree on that, not worth mentioning) and somebody who can't manage remote people isn't a good manager and c levels or managers that want butts in seats are drooling morons. I work in a field that will always require coming to an office and I will continue to do that at least in part for that reason, but other fields including fields in the same company shouldn't have that restriction. Separately from that I also think that, like, somebody starting their first job has to adjust to what having a job means. Before wfh was common, that meant like understanding the rhythm of office life and how to deal with being around people you might not like, and finding ways to focus, and finding things to choose to like so you weren't jaw-grindingly miserable for 8 hours of every day, and how to talk to people and how to establish boundaries when you didn't want to talk and so on and so forth. Working from home requires an equivalent adjustment but to a completely different end, and just like some people are maladjusted to offices by like having loud phone calls with with their divorce lawyer from their cubicle, some people are maladjusted to working from home by like never responding to chat messages or whatever
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Mar 9, 2024 14:18
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StumblyWumbly posted:The purpose of rto is that any meeting with more than 2 active participants is a loving slog as a remote meeting, getting worse with more active people. I actually prefer remote meetings. I can get work done.
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Mar 9, 2024 14:20
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Cup Runneth Over posted:I don't mind my coworkers, they're just people who were chosen for me to have to work with. Some good, some bad. But WFH is abundantly, plainly better for my mental health than having to go into an office. I just don't work very well that way. One of the most immediately obvious things about the COVID pandemic was how much happier I was compared to when I had to go into the office. I've tried hybrid, and it is not enough. Commuting and sitting in an office makes me abjectly miserable compared to WFH. I'm so, so glad that I was born in an age where I don't have to do it. I believe I can communicate just as well on projects from home as from an office and get just as much done. This is exactly how I feel as well, and as my current job is pushing RTO more I've started looking for another place. I'll accept coming to the office when there's a purpose for it, like if we're doing something together that may benefit from being in person. But I'll never be happy to commute just to sit on my own and do the same work I could do from home, and I'll never agree to sit in an open office landscape type place again. Also, commuting time should be considered work time and compensated as such, regardless of whether people are happy to be in the office or not.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:05
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Woebin posted:Also, commuting time should be considered work time and compensated as such, regardless of whether people are happy to be in the office or not. If you compensate people for their commute, RTO becomes a losing deal by a mile. The CEOs demanding RTO at their employee's expense are effectively reducing net pay across the company. That, on top of the environmental impacts of commuting in our car-centric country (just because you take public transit doesn't mean everybody caught up in RTO will) makes most demands for RTO evil.
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Mar 9, 2024 15:29
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Volmarias posted:I'm sure that after firing the guy, the position will be backfilled since you weren't able to cover the workload having a useless coworker cau- oh, you mean the position was eliminated and you still have to do the work? When our overemployed guy got fired we no longer had to clean up the messes his sloppiness caused so it genuinely resulted in less work for us. (I have no idea how they caught him - I didn't snitch or even know, and I doubt anyone else did.)
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Mar 9, 2024 16:06
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Judge Schnoopy posted:If you compensate people for their commute, RTO becomes a losing deal by a mile. The CEOs demanding RTO at their employee's expense are effectively reducing net pay across the company. That, on top of the environmental impacts of commuting in our car-centric country (just because you take public transit doesn't mean everybody caught up in RTO will) makes most demands for RTO evil. If someone made the decision to move to a car-dependent exurb knowing their company has an office downtown and is now complaining that either they can't RTO or that my walkable, bikeable, and bussable 15-minute neighborhood needs to rip out sidewalk and bike lanes to allow more single-occupancy autos on the streets, it's something I'm going to push back on.
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Mar 9, 2024 16:34
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StumblyWumbly posted:any meeting...is a loving slog Fixed
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Mar 9, 2024 16:45
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I am an extrovert who is energized by meeting strangers. Just got back from a four day work retreat and that was super motivating. Could care less about the travel part but actually meeting my coworkers and spending time with them was genuinely exciting to me. That is where the one poster is off. There was a definitive statement like “nobody wants to see strangers,” but humans, even human software devs, are all different. I also live in a small condo a mile from downtown Denver with my wife, a child and a large dog, there isn’t really space for me to have a home office. And I would prefer not to move to the suburbs because I like living close to the theater and all the museums for my kid, etc. Not to mention that we can’t afford to move period because of the residential real estate situation in our city. But my commute has never been longer than 15 min on a bike. So I would 100% prefer a full RTO. But I know it’s not gonna happen. Even here in Denver of the major startups I think only Gusto has a RTO policy of any kind. I would have to work for specifically Gusto to work from an office now. And I do love that there are jobs that I can take now that I couldn’t before. I’ve been the CTO of a Brooklyn-based non-profit, been a Director of DevRel for a company based in Boston, and now am back to just IC coding for a Bay Area startup, and that’s a journey I couldn’t have taken working purely in the Denver job market, So my balance is I only take jobs with some form of coworking space reimbursement. When necessary, I spend a bit extra from my own pocket to rent a fully private office, so I can keep all my home lab poo poo there too and get it out of my small condo. Hell, me renting a private office with no reimbursement is still cheaper than us moving. My commute is 5 min, I get to see other people and shoot the poo poo over lunch, but I don’t have to compromise what job I take. And I tend to take roles now (I’m technically in the Product org currently, though still coding) that get me to the retreats and conferences a few times per year to feed the “meeting strangers” fire. Riven fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 17:02
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Cugel the Clever posted:I think this mindset is the crux of the difference between those who are okay about returning to the office and those who aren't. Why are your coworkers strangers? Every acquaintance, friend, or lover you've ever had started out as a stranger to you—if your coworkers are stuck at stranger, that suggests something's either horribly wrong with your workplace culture or there's another common denominator holding things back. Cugel the Clever posted:Can you expand on this? What's the evil intent? It depends on who they are. A CEO ... we have expanded on it. A pleb? Maybe evil is not the right word, maybe selfish is better. They are extroverts looking for get their energy from people, so they want people around, whether those people wanna be there or not. Maybe they're gunning for that promotion so they're looking to kiss someones rear end. There could a bunch of reasons.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:13
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People who want to be at an office have my blessing, but as soon as they start demanding that others be forced back they lose my respect. I've heard people argue that RTO should be mandated because the office is too empty for them to enjoy being there, and that's some garbage. We should all be free to work in the way that suits us best, without forcing our preference on others. And yeah, obviously some jobs do work best in person, but the period of full WFH brought on by the pandemic proved that mine can be done no less successfully from home. Cugel the Clever posted:Commute keeps coming up as a despicable thing, but no one citing it ever seems to want to do anything about it except WFH forever. Though obviously suburban sprawl is an artifact of legacy decisions made by the people who came before us, it's weird that the thing people want to end is the WFO rather than the suburban sprawl, something which many of us can self-select into changing the narrative on.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:54
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At the risk of Discoursing, as much as people are still primates and in-person uses our social brains in a way that remote work does not, mandatory return to office is a patch used to disguise the fact that management still doesn't actually have a single clue about how to do anything involving managing people and organizations. I'm a developer. I dev Python. What makes my job easier, and employing me more profitable for the company, is:
I believe that frequent in-person contact is necessary for creative, intense, and high-stakes work. Which is the exact opposite of routine dev in a large company. Reading between the lines of what I asked for, it's actually an effective asynchronous working environment. RTO doesn't help this. It's actually counter-productive in some senses, because management doesn't believe they need good standards or documentation because I can always go talk to Ted, except they laid Ted off last month to juice the stock price. Or when I'm blocked because I need a two minute clarification on a requirement, and the person to talk to is booked in continuous meetings until 2:00 PM tomorrow. Or when whatever I'm doing involves a remote team on the other side of the world, and everybody in the meeting is cranky about being forced to sign on a 7:00 AM/PM. And don't ask me why our dev/test/prod set-up is such a Kafka-esque nightmare. I've been here five years and I've asked everyone and no one knows. Putting a bunch of people together without a reason why they're there has some un-intended side effects. Everybody likes to talk about workplace culture and diversity, but pre-pandemic, the cafe broke down along racial and generational lines like some kind of hyper-charged highschool. People like other people that they have something in common with, and it turns out that given free choice, you get self-segregation. I enjoyed after work happy hour with my team. My Muslim co-worker had a less fun time, especially because it was also Ramadan, and he had to be hungry and sober. This was also before I had a kid, so sticking around until 6:00 PM wasn't a problem, which is something I'm less willing to do now. Proximately, I dev Python because they pay me to. Ultimately, it's because my code solves business problems and increases shareholder value. Happy and efficient teams operating in an environment of intellectual and emotional trust are better at their jobs than the alternatives, and this is backed up by every management study. Yet somehow in practice, the corporation is entirely captured by people playing status games like "I am very busy and talking in a lot of meetings", "I can tell lots of people what to do", and "My office is very big and has windows". None of that increases shareholder value. When RTO started back up, I told my manager that I was happy to come in, but that the first day I spent in the office on Zoom calls to people in other offices would be the last day I'd be back in the office. We've agreed that there hasn't been a day I should come in.
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Mar 9, 2024 19:12
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Mega Comrade posted:I actually prefer remote meetings. I can get work done. If you need to have a vigorous debate or hammer out an understanding, remote meetings are poo poo, they get worse the more people are actively involved, and they can go horrible with misinterpretations. I am not an extrovert, I am not paid by Big Real Estate, but I do have to coordinate with a lot of people across a lot of departments and it is easy to see that this is done better in person. At best, people who are disciplined with their remote communication are slightly better than people flopping their way through in person communication. There are a lot of other benefits to being in office, but that's the main one I see. The real point here is CEOs and upper management generally deal with more active meetings than code reviews, so they see the poo poo part of WFH more than the good part. To say they care more about realestate value than the productivity of the company is some "they're lizard people" thinking. Volguus posted:It depends on who they are. A CEO ... we have expanded on it. A pleb? Maybe evil is not the right word, maybe selfish is better. They are extroverts looking for get their energy from people, so they want people around, whether those people wanna be there or not. Maybe they're gunning for that promotion so they're looking to kiss someones rear end. There could a bunch of reasons.
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Mar 9, 2024 19:18
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My company has a 50% in office in a quarter policy, which sounds reasonable but then it’s enforced for like the whole workforce without exceptions. So like you can frontload it at the beginning of the quarter and then sayonara, see you in a month and a half. I have literally zero people from my org (never mind the team) in the office I’m working from. My assigned office is around Denver, my manager is in Ireland, some teammates are in Germany, California, India and few other places. Everyone in my team understands that this requirement is messed up but there’s like nothing we can do. If we’re under 50 miles from an office, we’re expected to come - and going full remote if you’re over 50 miles from the office is not really getting approved. My manager went full remote and he said that he can totally help me doing so too but I’d need to move further from the office to potentially have a chance for it. Tbh, on the meeting when I asked him whether he’s ok with me moving from CA to CO, he said that he can’t be NOT ok as he’s in a process of going full remote himself. He also helped me get relocated from Ireland to CA first. Like, line managers who I worked with in this place are great - but there’s literally nothing they can do with the higher ups enforcing stupid policies.
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Mar 9, 2024 19:18
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Cugel the Clever posted:Weird 15 minute city rant I'm not really understanding your point here. Remote people are anti 15 minute city? 15 minute cities would be easier to achieve without the burden of job commute. More people could more easily give up their car. Once I went remote we were able to go to a one car household, I have lots of options for entertainment and shopping within an easy bus ride, I do NOT have lots of options within a bus ride for work. Mega Comrade fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 19:32
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We have fully embraced hybrid at work, at least in the departments where that's possible. Almost all meetings are hybrid, unless there are specific reasons for them being in-person, and it mostly works out. I prefer being in the office 2-3 days a week, but I am very happy that I can work from home as much as I want to (as long as it doesn't negatively affect my work - a mostly self-imposed rule).
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Mar 9, 2024 19:48
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StumblyWumbly posted:There are times when this is fine and times when it isn't. When its fine, you may as well say "Can you send me the minutes" or "I'll work in the corner until my part comes up" if it were in person, but yeah remoting in to that kind of meeting works better. When it isn't fine, it means you've checked out of a meeting where your input would have been valuable. This is a skill issue tbh I'm one of like 20 principal engineers in an engineering org of around 800 or so, am full-time remote, and I spend the vast majority of working hours on calls. Everything you point to as being better in-person has never been an issue in my org because we're globally distributed and our default condition is that all of our meetings always include some remote communication even if it's office-to-office. Really the issue comes down to people who don't want to spend time thinking about how other people work and respecting that difference. If you wanna work in an office that's cool, you do you. But you can't convince me that there's something inherently superior about it just like I won't try to convince you that working from home is better.
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Mar 9, 2024 20:44
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I didn't want to go back to the office because modern open plan offices are still loving awful for any kind of focus work and WFH reminded me of that. People talk about monkey social dynamics, well having a chunk of my brain paying attention to all the people around me and walking behind me and having those vigorous debates two desks over is miserable. also you can never ever ever say 'your dog in the office is being a pain in the rear end' or you meet instant social death
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Mar 9, 2024 21:11
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im extroverted for a dev and i accept that my preference of being in an office with other people isn't universal. imo the ideal is if your workplace has an office they keep it completely optional/downsize it if a large portion of the people aren't coming back in i did roll my eyes at one of the posts that kicked this off being something along the lines of "return to office is evil because the realty owning ceo wants me to make smalltalk with the ghouls i work with". they don't have to be your best friends but at that point i think you should consider finding a workplace where you don't hate everyone
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Mar 9, 2024 21:14
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Falcon2001 posted:I think that realistically, the higher up in a company you are, the more you probably value being at the office. Your job is mostly about communicating and meetings, and those have some clear upside in person, I agree with this sentiment in tiny companies that have not outgrown single office yet, but I wonder how do you square it up with the typical megacorp existing across multiple countries and continents, so once you are higher up you won't be having in-person meeting in office anyway, because you need to talk with people in dozen other places. e.g. my mom is not in tech, but has risen fairly high up in management in global pharma corp. Half of her typical day is spent in meeting (some days even more rip), but those meetings are all remote even if she is in office, because the participants won't even be in the same timezone, much less in the same office.
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Mar 9, 2024 21:22
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Blinkz0rz posted:This is a skill issue tbh It is a skill issue and you can work around it if you invest some time and practice in it, but there's a cost associated with that and you'll find people outside software or young-ish engineers are less likely to pay that cost, so good luck having useful meetings with the Mech E team or production folks who really don't have a WFH option. "There's a cost to WFH but I think it is worth it" is fair and a far cry from "CEOs are being paid by office rental companies to prevent me from working from home" Xarn posted:e.g. my mom is not in tech, but has risen fairly high up in management in global pharma corp. Half of her typical day is spent in meeting (some days even more rip), but those meetings are all remote even if she is in office, because the participants won't even be in the same timezone, much less in the same office.
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Mar 9, 2024 21:45
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Cugel the Clever posted:Commute keeps coming up as a despicable thing, but no one citing it ever seems to want to do anything about it except WFH forever. Though obviously suburban sprawl is an artifact of legacy decisions made by the people who came before us, it's weird that the thing people want to end is the WFO rather than the suburban sprawl, something which many of us can self-select into changing the narrative on. Yeah it's weird how nobody is posting any individual solutions for poor urban planning.  Strawmanning this into a NUMTOT thing is weak and you know it. Nobody WFH wants to drive anywhere.
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Mar 9, 2024 22:14
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I used to like in Prague, 7 minutes from subway. I still preferred WFH.
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Mar 9, 2024 22:32
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StumblyWumbly posted:It is a skill issue and you can work around it if you invest some time and practice in it, but there's a cost associated with that and you'll find people outside software or young-ish engineers are less likely to pay that cost, so good luck having useful meetings with the Mech E team or production folks who really don't have a WFH option. The cost of working from home is the same cost as having multiple offices and having teams work across time zones, which is to say it's a combination of investing in communication tools and process, not forcing everyone to do their job the way you want them to. To your second point, it's a bit naive to claim that pressure from commercial real estate has no impact on the WFH conversation. They may not be paid by CBRE but you can be drat sure execs are keeping an eye on a huge line-item in their budget, especially if the ~~vibes~~ make it feel like that expense isn't worth it. Is it easier to force their employees back into the office or renegotiate a multi-year lease and incur all the costs associated with moving or downsizing?
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Mar 9, 2024 22:48
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raminasi posted:When our overemployed guy got fired we no longer had to clean up the messes his sloppiness caused so it genuinely resulted in less work for us. (I have no idea how they caught him - I didn't snitch or even know, and I doubt anyone else did.) Snitching in this case is acceptable.
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Mar 10, 2024 00:35
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I used to live less than a one minute walk away from my office and I still worked from home a fair bit because open offices are miserable places to try to get focused creative/knowledge work done. I did like going to that office for the social aspects though and I'm still friends with quite a few people who worked there.
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Mar 10, 2024 05:45
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