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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

I understand what you are saying. Especially as someone with ADHD, the level of self control required, and lack of routine, in WFH make each day feel like a tiny battle that I’m always almost losing. The aesthetic of that strictly ordered salary man lifestyle is quite beautiful from here.

I was making a caricature out of it but honestly, I would like 1) A quiet place at work (not at home) 2) Formal meetings with agenda and strict meeting notes 3) Telephones, yes real clunking telephones that you can pick up and call your coworkers. No slack, no non-sense. 3) Great email system that isn't tied to Google Suite 4) Excellent stationery 5) No HR department. None. Zero.

All the parts of me that agree with you (and I love these parts of me) are parts that I try to, somehow, both suppress and maintain.

Suppress: in order to stay abreast of the changing world.

Maintain: in order to have a sanity-saving anchor to the real-world I'm familiar with.

> 4) Excellent stationery

Just thinking about this gave me the kind of excited thrill that could passingly be mistaken for sexual.

in some areas people are doing exactly like that. I know some teachers, doing exactly like that. Back to the 90s. No whatsapp, no mobile, just a phone to be called from 8-15h. Parents cannot call the teacher at 19:30 to talk about little Hans that got a 3 in science, and no whatsapp at 3 AM from the school director saying that a teacher is in sick call and somebody have to jump in.

Maybe that works for your dad, but not everyone has the same chronotype nor do they have the same preferences. Don't impose what you want on everyone else.

I agree with your dad. We have lost a lot of intrinsic culture by making everything as remote and relaxed as possible.

They sell black ties and white shirts still, perhaps you can buy them and live out this fantasy.

But there are no old school cubicle offices to go to anymore. Offices have turned into hotel lobbies where nothing happens except terrible software engineering using Jira and some HR bullshit to deal with. Great coffee though. Actually, just realized, if an office space has bad coffee, it'd probably be my type of a place.

I hate Jira as much as the next guy, but I think you are confusing what you hate about some type of company with what you think the reasons are for 'terrible software engineering'. The coffee at my office is very bad though, so maybe you want to apply there.

My company turned their office where every engineer had their own room in an open-space dance floor. 60% of the engineer team became remote after that. But HR and Marketing loved this change.

A literal dance floor or an open-floorplan office?

open-floorplan with music where people from marketing, hr, sales talk loud while going to infinite smoke breaks

Old school is an office with a door or someone's garage.

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