Ding ding ding.
I think this right here is the key. It was eye opening to learn how few of my coworkers had anyone outside of work. It’s heartbreaking but clearly a burning epidemic.
I also learned how many of my coworkers prioritized being in the office every day of the week over working at home with their spouses and/or children. I can’t get over that in particular. It’s none of my business, but nonetheless it angers me.
Personally, I think what makes people happy is a multidimensional surface with lots of peaks and valleys. Univariate explanations are reductive.
I also have a family who I love, but I don’t feel I need to be with them 24/7, or that I’m prioritising anything over them by wanting a career and to work physically with coworkers.
It isn’t reasonable for the WFH advocates to see us people who prefer the office as sad loners with messed up priorities. I personally find Zoom life 100x more depressing.
And who looks after the kids or elderly parents when you're physically in the office? Or the house duties? Or do we pretend they don't exist?
The only way you can pretend you don't need to be with a child 24/7 is if you neglect your duties. You are prioritising work over family. There's no other way.
> It isn’t reasonable for the WFH advocates to see us people who prefer the office as sad loners with messed up priorities.
That's not what you prefer though. You prefer forcing everyone to accompany you in the office like a sadist. You've heard that some people prefer remote yet you force your ideals on them.
You don't prefer the office. You prefer you AND others in the office.
Different.
You know, when you are WFH, you are supposed to work. Looking after kids is not working for your employer, unless you are coasting at your job. In which case, such jobs should be consolidated. I think that's what happened at Yahoo back in the day.
Same same.
Might as well you say we don't need the Internet because in your experience floppy disks are fine.
Why don't you do an actual comparison or study?
As in did you have a team with the exact conditions minus small talk and 1 with small talk and then concluded the small talk 1 created better teams? No. So how do you know which 1 it was?
I hope execs lead people forward with correct decisions using sound logic and not some vague correlation. Are we going for the 5G causes COVID drama too? In my experience the rumor might hold some value...
What makes you think I haven't done so? I have surveyed enough people at work and socially. A majority prefers hybrid, a small number favors fully remote while a small numbers wants fully in-office. Top reasons people wanted to come in office: meeting everyone in person, getting complex work (eg. designing a system) done, getting mentorship and onboarding help, free food. Top reasons people wanted to WFH: traffic.
There are a handful of cases on extreme ends with patterns like: hating social interaction, not having right conditions at home to work from etc.
I'm not going to ban you right now, even though it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines in other places too, because I didn't see anything this bad in your other comments and because we hadn't warned you before. But please don't do post like this again.
You spend roughly half of your waking hours working. Do you really want to spend that much time isolated, only interacting with other people through screens?
I realize that not everybody does though.
Personally, since going remote and moving out to the boonies, I have had some weeks where I never even came within 100 meters of anyone other than my family, and it was absolutely glorious! Treating “society” as optional is amazing and liberating. Obviously not everyone shares this outlook and that’s ok!
For those that have kids - who picks them up if you're in the office? Is your partner forced not to work or remote so you get to go in?
For those that have older family to look after, again who does it?
Or who does the housework etc?
There was an earlier discussion on why open source is mostly male dominated... well guess why...
1 person said they trash talk with coworkers during lunch. Perhaps instead we could have washed the dashes or started the washing machine or the laundry as you say. You can collect the parcel. Lots of small jobs.
Or when you aren't "working" in the office what do you do? Go over to a coworker and talk about "non-work"? Are you actually "working" intensively every minute?
Maybe read up on the studies or even listen to women that have had to do household work whilst working from home? What do you mean how? Good question. How do they survive when such men have forced it all on them and pretend it is nothing?
> women that have had to do household work whilst working from home?
I don't think women should be doing household work whilst working from home either. So no idea what you are trying to argue, unless you want coasting jobs which pay you a lot to just be at home and do your housework or childcare. That ain't gonna happen.
Then magic happens? Who does it?
> It worked extremely well for them
So did we have 2 Googles where 1 did what you said and 1 didn't? Otherwise how are you drawing this conclusion to what led to its success? Maybe this is 1 part of the puzzle but it might not have been the deciding factor.
Also who says that if they all went remote and Google offered the tools for their employees to bond online that it would not work?
All you are saying is it's worked 1 way so it must be better than the other way because of some fear of the unknown?
> That ain't gonna happen.
It's pretty sad that your view of work from home = no work at all. So if anyone puts in the same amount of work hours whether it's 9-5 or 9-10 + 11-8 or whatever the balance is what's the difference? All you do is attack people that follow a different schedule and call them coasting?
You do it after hours or on weekends or hire help for that. A lot of couples with kids figured that out before the pandemic so not really any rocket science stuff about that.
> Google offered the tools for their employees to bond online that it would not work?
My company has gone all in on making remote-first work and the leadership is sincerely trying all it can. We tried many tools for online socializing (games, food and drink, some social apps...). They all sucked. Finally the company gave up and started shelling up big bucks to fly everyone in for offsites. And that has its big challenge of crazy expensive flights and hotels, or a lack of dates/locations where everyone can make it. If you got any tools which did the trick for your team, please do share.
> follow a different schedule and call them coasting
Your literal words: "do household work whilst working from home". That's not having a different schedule. That is coasting.
Did they? You mean where 1 side dumped it on the other side? Lots of census data worldwide (and others) have indicated it is the male dumping the work on the female and calling it "figured out".
If that's what you meant then sure. As in make someone else suffer. You can't do it after hours. You can't do it when you choose to. Like literally do you just tell a newborn to stop being hungry because it's not the weekend? As to hiring help - can everyone afford it? And does that mean you are hands off?
> My company has gone all in on making remote-first work and the leadership is sincerely trying all it can. We tried many tools for online socializing (games, food and drink, some social apps...). They all sucked. Finally the company gave up and started shelling up big bucks to fly everyone in for offsites. And that has its big challenge of crazy expensive flights and hotels, or a lack of dates/locations where everyone can make it. If you got any tools which did the trick for your team, please do share.
It doesn't sound like the tools here. It's the mentality, attitude and direction. From your replies you've already indicated that sitting on a desk during certain hours is the priority and not the actual tasks. Even if I did the same amount of work as in the office but did my chores during that time you'd scold me for it... even if in the office I'd go for a walk, gym or coffee or anything else... To you as the manager what's the real difference?
All you're doing is lifting in-person to remote 1:1 just like when some businesses move to the cloud. It's a different beast. It's still about socializing in the tradition sense isn't it? And then you said you just fall back again to in-person trips.
> Your literal words: "do household work whilst working from home". That's not having a different schedule. That is coasting.
As in you don't take breaks in the office? You don't talk to people or do activities that equate to non-work? Perhaps you don't but if you really believe that 0 workers do in an office environment we're in another world.
In your literal words: "do other activity whilst in the office". That is coasting according to you. Same same.
I think this is the core of our disagreement. Mentalities and attitudes are forged over the years and hard to change, both for individuals and companies. If you do not have a compelling alternative, people will revert back to what they know and are comfortable with. If provided with a great experience, people will even change their habits and glue their faces to a black rectangle with a screen as the last 15 years have shown.
So - why should we (individuals, companies) change our attitudes and mentalities when it comes to WFH and team bonding? Whatever I have seen so far from the pro-WFH side is a subpar experience.
We do not work 8 hours, but our schedules are set that way. We're only working ~3 hours per day, the rest is mostly fluff. Give people back those 5 hours and you've got a very different answer than "force people into the office just so they have time to socialize".
I’d rather do my socialising in the local community, head out to grab a sandwich from a local business, and not have to spend half of my remaining waking hours travelling to and from a place I don’t really want to be in the first place.
Absolutely. And I do not need to be "interacting" when I am working. There is a chat / email which I would read at my convenience. In case of emergency there are calls.
Yes. Also, the choice is made for me. I work in software and data and everyone I work with is digital whether I’m in the office or home or Timbuktu. So I don’t really have a decision. Every day my “team” is in multiple counties and time zones. There’s no way to spend time with them every day in person. Unless I want to say hello to security guards and chitchat with work strangers I’d rather spend that time with other people.
I guess there are some industries where teams can be in the same room and building. I don’t work in such an organization and I like my job. I don’t feel isolated.
Today, it's _easier_ for me to have an unscheduled sync with a teammate because I can immediately hop on a zoom call from my private home office. Before the pandemic, I had to first try to find an unused conference room or phone booth (because having calls in the open-plan office was disruptive). Sometimes, when there was no good space available, I'd end up standing holding a laptop (and thus unable to take any notes) in the stairwell, which had less consistent wifi signal. If a meeting runs long, we don't have to scramble as we're kicked out of rooms by the next scheduled group. And scheduling larger group meetings isn't limited by the ability to reserve multiple large conference rooms across multiple offices.
People trying to tell me that I'd be more productive from the office are so far unwilling to commit to providing an office which doesn't waste my time on this nonsense.
Why does it anger you so much that different people have their own situations and preferences?
What I dislike the most about the WFH vs RTO debate is how the strongest advocates on each side seem completely baffled by the other.
So where do I go out and meet people who aren't super religious, ballroom dancing nuts, or alcoholics?
The other thing I'll add is that when you're in tech, there's a good chance you share a lot of interests with coworkers. This isn't the case with a lot of community social groups. Sure, they're people you see, but you don't have enough in common with them for them to ever be more than acquaintances.
same crowd, but with people from different companies
are in cities
:(
Lots of coworkers have been just the same. No difference.
I'm well equipped to understand the vulnerability disclosure spectrum and when and how to reveal personal information so that my relationships don't stagnate nor am I dumping on people I've just met. I can navigate conservations adeptly to find topics of common interests and genuinely connect. I've purposely enriched myself with topics tech folks tend to dismiss like psychology, sociology, and mysticism which have fruited deep personal connections with others in ways I've never dreamed of.
The effort-reward structure is much more gentle than I would have thought even 10 years ago.
When my kids were young going into the office was easier work than staying home and keeping them. I felt guilty about not being at home with them and being able to be in the office.