Can you discuss why you want to go back to the office?
Additionally, I am definitely a person who prefers in person meetings and conversations. It’s not that I can’t do remote conversations - I’ve even managed remote employees for years - but I value water cooler conversations as a place for spontaneous idea generation or just relationship building, which is just harder remotely. You have to go out of your way to send ideas into the ether, without the physical signs that someone might be receptive to random, possibly stupid musings, or non-sequiter stuff about personal life.
Count me among the people who are fine with others choosing to stay remote, but once it’s feasible and safe to go into the office I would want to do it.
My company (~10k, global, mix of hourly and salaried) has multiple times sent out pandemic guidance asking people to take more time off and stop working so much, they see the extra hours in their time tracking tooling upstream (and it's not a financial play, they're targeting the salaried).
1. Work/life separation. Even with a separate computer, getting it shut away and Slack gone is easier said than done. Now everyone knows you're probably around somewhere and will read their e-mail or see their Slack message, even early in the morning or later in the afternoon.
1b. I work better in a dedicated environment. My home office has all kinda of other distractions. Homework from my OMSCS classes beckons to be done, personal projects, not to mention kids. The psychological difference of being in a dedicated workspace is significant.
2. Social connections. There are many people I was friendly with but only at the office. Now I only interact with people on my own team or in closely related teams when we are working on some project that overlaps. My 'work world' has shrunk dramatically.
3. Zoom. Just make it stop. My company has dedicated Thursday to be 'no meeting day' but it hasn't really stuck yet. I'm brought onto way more calls now than I ever was when we were in the office. It feels like Zoom has become the substitute for the random communications we used to have, except instead of taking 5-10 minutes everyone schedules 30-60 minutes at a time. And they always find a way to use up every minute plus 2 or 3 after the end time.
I don't actually want to go back full time. I am thinking seriously of selling my Model 3 because having a 60K depreciating asset in the garage that only gets driven a couple hundred miles a month is not the best use of my money. But when the office opens back up eventually, I do think I'll try to spend at least one day a week there. Maybe two.
I echo this sentiment. As a junior engineer in a large office, being able to keep track of other projects, who is working on what, what's coming up in a different business area, etc., has been very important for career development. Working from home, I've been "siloed" into my own team to a much larger extent.
Send a meeting invite for 30 minutes to someone in the org with: "Hi. I'm new and I try to meet one new person every week in areas I'm not familiar."
Pro tip: Either pick someone who seems to have a cult following, looks to be untouchable in the org and or very active on internal company GitHub/Gitlab.
But... why? Just don't look at work messages outside of work hours. Is that so hard?
I've been told "You have no instinct of self preservation at this job" but being stuck in meetings and not being able to get things done is not what I was hired to do. Tuesdays and Mondays I concede to meeting hell because those are regular team meetings but your little attempt at showing the marketing department is still doing work by scheduling meetings is not that fun :(
I also miss the social interactions, discussion with colleagues is much easier in person. Lastly, I hope it will reduce the amount of video conferences that crept up considerably.
edit: Not OP obviously.
edit2: Note: Just to make sure, I know this is personal preference and I am perfectly happy with other people being super happy and productive at home!
I know this is a personal preference, but for me, physical distance makes my work more productive and my private time more relaxing.
Can you recommend your camera, mic and screen setup? And what brand/model they are? TY!
I use a Blue Snowball mic but any decent USB mic will work. I have a dedicated office and I haven't found using a headset makes it better though YMMV. I'd just as soon not wear a headset unless necessary.
Computer is just a 27" iMac with a 2nd monitor. (Though I actually usually work with video on my main screen and do any work with shared docs etc. on a MacBook.)
Also have an Elgato keylight to get the lighting a bit more even.
ADDED: Probably at least as important is that you're not backlit by a window and you have the camera at maybe a bit above eye level. I've also done a bit of "set decorating" of my background.
If I had the extra space and time to set it all up I would probably use a regular SLR camera on a tripod, and lavalier mic. But the Logitech is a lot more convenient - connects over a single USB through the docking station and just works with zero set up.
The screen is just a regular LG 4K 55" TV mounted on the wall which connects to the laptop docking station, allowing video conferences, slides, etc. to be "thrown" over there when it's convenient.
What used to be going to work in the morning became exercise. Then, when it was end of day, we went outside. I have kids which made it making more sense. But you can go outside for walk or read book outside etc. The point is that you leave room and do something that causes mental switch.
I've had time to get my head around the separation you talk about, I guess. Also helps that I'm on a small team and we all slack something like "Signing off now, catch you tomorrow" at around 5.30. Puts an end on the day.
But I'm not convinced a corporate office is the only, let alone, best option. Have you considered alternatives?
The latter can be done remotely but definitely isn't anywhere near as smooth or natural I find.
- I get far too distracted by my apartment. The things I hung up on my wall to give myself a sense of personality are the things that I will be distracted by if I have my work laptop open.
- I want a clear separation between being at work and being at home. Otherwise I will make excuses that because I happen to be at home I can do X or Y without consequence. At home I have my personal computer and television within walking distance at all times. By being in the office I deliberately prevent myself from having those options.
- My job requires me to use a specific model of laptop for remote work. The laptop itself is not an ideal environment for getting things done. It is a Lenovo-era ThinkPad with the chiclet keys and they are awful to type on. I have other hardware in my room to plug in, but on top of that I have to RDP to my machine in order to access corpnet things, and the latency is plainly awful. It takes several minutes to just launch it and render the entire desktop completely, control key combinations will frequently not register because of the latency, I'm unable to use my laptop's microphone half the time over RDP, and there are frequent disconnections. And if I'm working at home, all of these annoyances will just pile on top of each other and make me lose motivation to do work entirely.
- On top of that my access credentials expired while I was taking shelter early on, so to use my work laptop from home at that point I had no choice but to go to the office to get them unblocked. I went in and immediately wondered why I hadn't been working from there in months. It was night and day.
I got certified to go into the office as "essential staff," because for me being in the office is what determines if I am productive at all or not. In fact the amount of work that ended up piling up because I was unable to work effectively anymore caused an anxiety episode that I had to take off a few months for. It truly felt like I had been pushed into a corner. Thankfully my team was understanding, it being a devastating pandemic and all.