Why should your preferences dictate what other people do? What makes your preference for having people in the office more important than their preference to want to work from home?
1. Most of the people on the team should be working from the office (benefits of being together as a team), OR
2. Most of the team should be working remote (benefits of working remotely)
The point being made was that the third option, each person gets to pick what they want, isn't really a viable option. The team should pick one option or the other. Nowhere was it was that the "in the office" option should be the one chosen, just that it was their, personal preference.
* There are some other reasons for working in the office besides being in proximity to your co-workers, but that's generally seen as the primary benefit by a lot of people.
At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. No dropped calls or poor connections or VPN drops or whatever.
As an engineer, I sympathize with the poster. When I need to focus and get something done, I'm generally happier at home with either fewer distractions or more of the distractions under my control. I also like my privacy and loathe the feeling of someone. looking over my shoulder. I'm so very sensitive to motion in my periphery and find movement around me distracting, too. But, I also value the in person communication and collaboration I get in person.
Personally, I'm looking forward to heading back part time, especially considering that the "new normal" appears to be about a 50/50 split between home and office.
Of course, everyone is going to have their own preference, but the company you work for (and your coworkers) will have theirs as well. But, if someone's attitude is "my way or the highway" they as well start looking for a new job, because they'll need one regardless...
You say this like it's a foregone conclusion, a fact. I disagree with it completely. It's far easier to collaborate remotely. You don't need find a meeting room, you don't need to worry about making too much noise, you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.
It's nice to work together in person occasionally, but I'd much rather collaborate remotely... and get together for lunch now and again.
You have to pay for your own.
> you don't need to worry about making too much noise
Unless other people live in your home.
> you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.
That’s comparing all-remote to some-remote, which is a different comparison than all-remote to all-in-office.
You have to do it anyway. The rent did not went up due you being at home during day.
I guess that's true, but I'm not sure why I would care about my home getting slightly smaller when I'm at work. It will affect some people, but I don't know if it's many.
In "Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours", a dedicated office is the "paid for more space" side, and I was talking about the "lost space" alternative.
And maybe I'm weird but I'm going to have a desk no matter what.
How do you typically browse websites at home? Do you play any PC video games? Steam has a ton of users.
(And if you use a table, then you could use the same table for working.)
It's true that PC gaming is as popular as ever, but I suspect its rise has been at least somewhat countered with a decrease in desktop computing at home as smartphones became ubiquitous.
And there's been a decrease in desktops, but far more households have a desktop/laptop than a tablet and it's not far behind the rate of having broadband.
Or just put it on a table.
I don't see any need to distinguish between desktops and laptops for working from home. Laptops have built-in webcams too.
I'd add a big screen or two, a real mouse, and a better keyboard. But that would take up very little extra space when not in use.
Plus a separate office means a door to keep out noise, room for bookshelves and other office items, and the ability to just "put things down" without having to spend time cleaning off the kitchen table before dinner.
Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal. Sure, you can make due... but you could make due with a poor environment in an office building too... but why would you? You can't compare the setup in an office building to a much worse environment at home and then say "home is cheaper". For a like-for-like comparison, it costs the employee more to work from home.
At worst that's still only a desk of space wasted.
And if you're willing to commute, you should probably be willing to spend 2 minutes putting all that stuff away. If you still decide not to, then it's because that space isn't needed very much.
> Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal.
I agree, but this line of conversation is specifically about if you don't have a separate office.
> only a desk of space wasted
There is a lot more to a dedicated, optimal work environment than "only a desk of space". Plus the fact that a LOT of people live in places that don't have an extra "desk of space". Approximately half the places I've worked couldn't give up a desk's worth of space without it being in everyone's way.
Yes, but the reduction for a desk is only if you don't have another usable surface, and even then it's only a tenth of "lots of money" because a desk is so much smaller than a room.
A tenth of lots of money is not all that much, and very likely cheaper than commuting.
- a 2'x3' area on a table, anywhere in the place you live
For a lot of us (at least for me and some others), a suitable work from home environment includes
- a 4'x3' desk (or larger, for multiple monitors)
- a door or other way to separate the workspace from house interruptions (and vice versa)
- a bookshelf and other miscellaneous items
- good lighting
In general, all that ^ is necessary to be as effective as one would be at an actual office, and generally means a separate room in the house/apartment; and that is fairly costly. The last time I did the calculations, it came out to several thousands of dollars per year.
Whether you can get a nice isolated place depends on the particular place you're living.
But I was never arguing that isolation isn't necessary! Please look again at the initial comment I replied to.
"Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office."
My concern was only with the second half of that "or". To get to the second half of the "or", you have to take it as given that there's a suitable spot in your home. When you argue that many homes don't already have such a spot, I agree, but that's irrelevant to what I was trying to comment on.
Everything I've said here should be interpreted like this: "Okay, so you've decided you don't need an additional room? Well in that case, I don't think the space taken up by working from home in an existing room is a big deal, because xyz."
maybe it's just because I've never been the meeting room finding person but in most places I've worked it hasn't been a big problem.
>you don't need to worry about making too much noise,
I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting, but I have had the problem that kids in the house were being too noisy for the online meeting and everyone has to laugh and talk about how wonderful having the kids is.
>you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.
Why wouldn't this affect remote meetings?
Obviously there are any number of things that can affect remote meeting quality. I would think for meeting quality an in person one is likely to work better as a meeting, although people might prefer the remote one for all sorts of other reasons.
In every place I've worked, there's been a limited number of meeting rooms and you needed to plan ahead to get one. And if your meeting ran over, it wasn't uncommon to have a group of people standing outside waiting for you to vacate.
> I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting
Fair. I was really thinking about the impromptu meetings of 3-4 people around a desk (because getting a meeting room takes too much time). Those almost infallibly annoy other people in the area, even if they don't say anything.
> Why wouldn't this affect remote meetings?
Suddenly adding a remote person to a meeting that was planned to be in person is difficult at best. It's common for the people on location to just not "play well" with the remote person. When meetings are "remote first", adding one more remote person doesn't wind up with that person being an afterthought. This is a fairly well known issue, honestly.
> I would think for meeting quality an in person one is likely to work better as a meeting
Under optimal circumstances, the in person meeting does tend to be best. However, there are so many different variations from optimal, it's my experience that remote-first meetings wind up being better in nearly every _actual_ case.
having a meeting run over is a problem, having someone waiting to get into that room is a solution to the problem.
And since the current trend in our company (and I guess a lot of others) is "hotdesking", where you pull a ticket when entering the building which tells you what desk might be free. Well, no sitting near direct colleagues anymore. So the last advantage of the office is gone as well. Unfortunately it doesn't stop management from hallucinating the great back-in-the-office future after the pandemic...
Yes, I'll also be looking for a new job.
If you don't think your own preference is important then don't complain when other dictate the outcome.