Return to Office Hits a Snag: Young Resisters

I think I found it. Here, have mine: /s

If people dont want to go back then you by definition do not have an amazing in office culture.

If your culture is predicated on being in person, some less dysfunctional company is going to eat you alive.

To be fair, this true of almost all work meetings. Extra points if nobody asks for your input the whole meeting, and extra points for meetings over an hour.

Our discussions have been much more focused and to the point. Primarily because interrupting thoughts and comments are often done on the chat rather than being vocalized. Things like "where can I find X", or "What does Y refer to?" can be answered async with the meeting.

I also work in a technically hard space and remote work isn't perfect, specifically because there is a hardware component to my job. However, I really think its not a huge deal because I think people are overestimating how good communication was pre covid. I have generally observed that people who I didn't really understand or who were simply bad communicators in person, are bad in a WFH environment. If people are bad at giving clear & concise answers, the problem isn't WFH, its that their writing and communication skills aren't actually that good. I feel though that in person, people get to lean on being funny, nice, etc. but in a remote environment clear & concise communication is required or else people get ignored or they waste a bunch of time. Their lack of communication skills and potentially technical skills are more obvious in a remote environment due to this. The people who could get things done didn't stop once WFH started, it was the people who were already pretty "meh" who's issues got amplified during covid.

I fully believe that some software can be developed 100% remotely (you only need to look at all the free/open source software as evidence for this). But for the kind I do, I can't imagine the developers being fully remote. We need to be local enough to be physically present at least every now and then. Some people are calling this a "hybrid" approach. We predominantly work remotely, but we live nearby.

What seems absurd is expecting people to be in the office 100% of the time for the maybe 10% that would benefit from it. I don't ever want to go back to a 100% office job. I'm so glad COVID happened.

I was going to write "corporations trust us to make the right decisions to run our service, they should trust us to make the right decisions about where to work", but these two things are one and the same.

So your team believes they work better in an office: your team works in an office. The team next door believes they do better at home: that team works from home. Managers want to do the day-long promotion meetings in an office, all the managers head to the office that day.

The WFH topic is bafflingly being met by the exact same old talking points as before (e.g. "slippery slope") -- as though the last year and a half didn't just happen.

Something'll give or, welp... time to begrudgingly start leetcoding to shake off the interview dust.

I explained this to my boss the best I could and he said I could work from home one day per week on a provisional basis. I left shortly after.

Wow, I never realized I had such strong schadenfreude around MBA types.

My ideal office is how my favorite job was: deserted around 4:55pm, managers and directors included. 2 hour lunches not uncommon. Work-life balance always the primary focus. Unfortunately my ideal job includes never going into an office, so I'll have to continue looking elsewhere.

I worked for a while in a "normie" office (not a tech company) and I was blown away by the amount of junk food people ate. In some areas each row of desks had piles of junk food at the ends and there would constantly be cake for people's birthdays etc.

Other places I've seen offer a "fully stocked" kitchen (read, junk food) as a perk. Why the hell would I want a constant supply of crap I can easily afford to buy but don't because it's unhealthy? I consider myself to have pretty decent self control, but some people don't and it's like offering crack to an addict. I don't even agree with vending machines at work.

This is the key point for me. Too many people seem to think that only workers should adapt for companies, and that the labor market exists to compete for the jobs that are bestowed on them. This is evident in the whole "no one wants to work any more! What a bunch of lazy [millenials|zoomers|derogative of choice]". Naw dude, they just don't want work for you, for peanuts, with no benefits or healthcare, in the middle of a deadly pandemic. They're not lazy, they're maximizing value for their shareholders too, in this case themselves. Covid has made a lot of people realize that the shit they had to take before was not a great deal for them, and they want something better.

We tended to work weird, utterly flexible hours, though, since the pace was dictated by the experiments. Thirty six hours of time points every two hours, sleeping on the couch in the break room, and just not showing up the next day. Leaving a dinner party at 10PM to stop by the lab and deal with a culture before going to bed. Disappearing to take a walk for two hours in the middle of the day because because there was a 6AM time point and a 6PM time point.

Also in situations where I may need to show something to a couple people, I have the option to record it. This allows for others to watch who couldn't attend and it can be reference for new members.

When in the office, someone stopping by or having me come to their desk was awkward and there was usually no paper trail to reference.

If I were to go back to the office I would continue mentoring this way as the tools help facilitate the sessions better than sitting at their desk talking to them.

Aka part-time work?