Can't imagine working in an office again. The bathrooms, the bad food you inevitably end up eating, the hour a day lost to commute, the interruptions, having to shower and wear pants. Yuck.
The above is a little tongue in cheek but also true. I think it is important to acknowledge that different people have different lives and want different things. I can certainly imagine being in a situation where I would want to work remotely.
People have varying needs. Some people are suited to office life and some people are suited to working from home. And some people like a mixture. Until relatively recently, organisations have had to put everybody in the same environment. Remote working isn’t good because you can work from home per se, it’s good because now the working environment can be tailored to the individual instead of forcing everybody into the same environment that is undoubtedly sub-optimal for a large proportion of the workforce.
I get that not everyone needs to collaborate a way that requires face to face to be efficient but many do. As a simple example I'd expect a UX designer to be far more efficient to hand their phone to their co-worker and say "try this" instead of on slack "hey, sync to the latest version, oh you're in the middle of something? Okay, stash that, now grab my version, build....several minutes later....okay now navigate to this menu. no not that one. Pick Foo->Bar then scroll down and click the Moo button. Okay now, try it"
Someone will now pipe-in that Figma solves this. Fine, I chose a bad example. In my case it would be passing a game so Figma would not solve it.
doesn’t sound like a good use of your time, but for many people, it’s a third option that definitely has it’s pros/cons
It boils down to this: a 100% remote policy doesn't rob you of what you need, but a 0% remote policy robs those of us who prefer WFH from what we need.
Also I think the current setup is working to a large extent because everyone is remote and playing field is even. It will be somewhat complicated after half the team is on-site and other half is not.
WFH makes businesses less effective.
Indeed and the annoyance I feel from that while I'm trying to concentrate is matchless.
If a company became less efficient due to a lack of "drop everything" taps on the shoulder, it wasn't efficient in the first place.
I simply do not believe meritocracy can exist.
Our biological sensibilities are too easily confused by concepts we don’t fully grasp, and come on; there is so much rubber stamping and favoritism (even now I know the founder of my company is invited to private sessions in DC to hammer out rules that favor us and we’ve proven nothing).
This forum seems to have too much of a naive and weirdly trusting belief in such subjective and hand wavy ideas when literal reality is offering plenty of evidence to the contrary in the political sections of a newspaper.
Absolutely. I've found mostly-remote with some office days works very well for me, personally, and this seems to be new normal in the bank that I work for. There are also times where we want large gatherings, too.
One thing that I feel gets missed around the idea that being in the same building builds collaboration: I personally find the opposite a lot of time. It might make for easy catchups for people in proximity in the building or campus, but it often leads to implicit decision-making by proximity, where people aren't included, even when they should be, if they happen to be on another floor or another building in the same campus.
At my first job they were so crunched for space my desk in the open office was about ten feet from the entrance to the men’s bathroom. I got to quickly know everyone’s schedule, and knew I just had to leave my desk at certain times during the day due to certain coworkers… my manager was not happy when I cited that as my reason for quitting a few months in!
If your manager was so unhappy I'm sure they would have been willing to swap desks with you and experience the - uh - ambience ...
About 7 years ago I worked in a building where the offices all shared a bathroom with several other companies. We would always need to go to the 2nd or 4th floor if we needed to go #2 due to someone on the 3rd floor using the toilet to squat, which resulted in foot prints on the seat and $#!+ on the back of the toilet seat…
Luckily they decided to tear down the building so we were forced to move. But that is the worst experience I’ve had.
So you’re definitely not crazy haha
Edit: nothing wrong with squatting toilets, just using a sitting toilet as a squatting toilet is the issue.
Oddly enough, by my second trip, that same bathroom(I assume, but can't be positive) had at least 2 functional western toilets, bidets and all. First time using one of those, and not what I'd describe as pleasant, but story for another time :).
On another note... in my wife's country many people actually do use western toilets as squatting toilets. People typically have just a typical western bowl, with no tank or seat.
The Japanese style toilets have a little button, there's 2 versions. The first uses the water pressure to function, so when you press it, the water causes it to come out and spray, these don't have any control, it's dictated by your taps water pressure.
The other is the fancy eletric ones that can go from very basic, to multi adjustment, temperature, self-cleaning, etc.
When I first saw these in Asia I thought they were absolutely stupid and pointless.
But one night I got food poisoning and ended up on the toilet, a bit messy, and i used the bidet to clean myself and...
Ok when I got gastro living in australia, I went to the toilet so many times i made my bum raw with toilet paper that it hurt.
After having food poisoning in Asia and cleaning with the Bidet then just drying off, even tho I went to the toilet many times, I didn't get a sore butt. This convinced me that they are awesome, and I've used ever since.
Sometimes you find a relaxing park. Sometimes you find a stairwell with a pointless top landing where you can hide and do frustration pushups. Sometimes you find a cheap hole-in-the-wall.
And sometimes...sometimes, you find a hidden bathroom.
It's easier with big companies in urban centers, because your badge often lets you wander into a bunch of random downtown buildings.
lol
No shoes or socks though.
Walking to work was glorious.
Now that I am fully remote, nothing will convince to ever set foot in an office again. I just rejected a position worth a raise in the six figures because management couldn’t commit to allow me working full time remote. I make that much extra just working on side projects with the free time I gain by staying at home.
I also have a crypto trading bot, but honestly, I stopped it recently due to the fact I wasn’t ready to deal with the volatility of the last few weeks.
I still prefer remote.
I bet people told you that you had a short "reverse" commute and therefore lucky that it was only 40 minutes each direction!