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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

Smart employees will reject going into the office to just video chat with everyone

Any other solution?

I actually am someone who would go into the office part time but I would still want to maintain the ability to have 100% remote work.

I am bothered a lot by people at home. I’ve been remote pre-pandemic so the affliction of people thinking your being at home means you can run their errands is not new. The pandemic made it worse because now I am bothered all day every work day.

You’d think, “stop bothering the person paying the mortgage” would be a motivator but it’s simply not the case for me.

I know many people in this position so it is worthwhile to have empathy for people who really need an office.

And of course to reiterate, that doesn’t mean that a return to office should be mandatory.

Your complaint about errands is kind of oblique and I find it confusing -- are you speaking of housemates, or your family, or who?

I've seen the errands and expectations problem from family. Clear boundaries can be difficult to maintain if one makes too many exceptions. Young kids especially can struggle to understand why a parent is visible on the way to the bathroom or for water but otherwise forbids interruption.

It takes diligence, patience, soundproofing, and sometimes locks and a detached shed / workshop.

I have the same issue and am really struggling to resolve it. I’m the sole income and have young kids. I’m constantly interrupted by the kids who want to come see me. I try not to turn them away because the advantage of WFH, or so I believe, is that we don’t miss all the things our kids do while we’re slaving away at an office. However, this requires me to push things to later in the day. Then there are appointments and things that my wife usually has covered, but with another adult in the house “can you take the baby for a couple minutes”. I tried explaining the concept of context switching but so think I just come off like an uncaring jerk. I’m looking for a 1-2 time a week space away from my home office because I can’t keep looking at these same four walls day in and day out. I used to be so much more productive in the office, but felt like a terrible father. I’m really trying to come up with a way to have my cake and eat it too.

Meetings with part in office, part remote, are so cumbersome and awkward compared to all in office or all remote. The cadences between the two conversations are totally off, making it odd to try and sync up and have natural organic discussions.

In my experience, I've found that to be the case when the meetings are already effectively pointless and not well organized. One solution is to make meetings more structured and important. This has the benefit of also making them rarer. When I've been in meetings that have clear goals and an agenda/talking points to go through so that people stay on topic, I found them to be far more bearable with mixed remote and office employees.

The problem is that even if everyone is in the office, they are often in different offices. I currently work at a company with people resourced into projects from two other countries (soon 4), with a plethora of customers on other sites in my country. We have three offices in this country as well, and the head office is in a different country again.

Almost every decision (which requires a meeting) requires someone from this diaspora. So we are on video no matter what.

If I had a quid for every “you’re all muted now, I can’t hear anything you’re saying”

The average hn person presumably does get at least a quid for all the connection faff every meeting

Hah. Fair point.

Man, we used to waste so much time running from one conference room to the other. Not having to do that saves a lot of time for natural organic conversations.

Smart employers will embrace Conways law, and make sure that the in-office guys mostly collaborate with each other, and give the out-of-office people projects that are self-contained and well specified.

Don't do video chats? They're pretty worthless.

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