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Comment by singleshot_ | Hacker News Reader

Strongly agree. My (no tech) job would barely even be possible at my house because of the impossibility of any kind of informal or spontaneous interaction with someone from whom I need to learn. This leaves aside the fact that I want to be able to set some boundaries. A short drive is worth it to have a separate, quiet space to work.

The IT world really made a mistake by creating a space that’s so unpleasant that it’s easier to work at home. I think if a significant share of tech workers had an office with a door we would not be having this wfh rto conversation.

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In the corporate world I've seen (across many countries and cultures) there is no such thing as a "separate, quiet space to work" unless you're fairly senior. The irony of course is that fairly senior folks are on zoom/teams/webex calls 12 hours a day and quiet introspection isn't part of the job.

The common pushback from employees forced into RTO is they are commuting to a significantly worse environment where they still just sit in teams calls all day.

Yup. Joel from Joel On Software covered this years ago. He made sure all devs have a quiet, private office, with window and door.

The problem is, it’s cheap to just throw desks together in an empty room and call it a “fish bowl” or “open office section”.

Most companies don’t care that it affects morale, productivity. Just that they were able to seat 5 more people with a cheap trip to IKEA.

Can’t stop people taking the lazy, easy alternative.

The lazy alternative has a direct line to accounting expenses, vs the productive management alternative for devs a more ephemeral connection to the accounting lines - even though it actually affects the bottom line more strongly than the savings from open offices.

Yeah. If I ever return to office, I’m going to demand an office with opaque walls and an opaque door.

Windows are fine; door will be open much of the time. It will be closed when I’m doing algorithm design, trying to plan out an N step refactoring to get some rust code to compile, or napping.

I noticed that some of the millenuals / gen z’ers in the old bull pen (16 person cubicle) would just shamelessly sleep at their desks in the afternoon. I occasionally nod off when reading, but this was full-on pillow on keyboard stuff.

So, I’ve decided the stigma around napping in the afternoon is misplaced.

> The IT world really made a mistake by creating a space that’s so unpleasant that it’s easier to work at home.

Yes. And it utterly baffles me! Even when employers were making an effort to improve the office environment, they did so in a way that didn't address the problems with it at all. Instead, they went for "perks" like game rooms, free snacks, etc. All of which are entirely orthogonal to what makes working in an office a terrible experience.

> All of which are entirely orthogonal to what makes working in an office a terrible experience.

I.e.: people

What would you change?

The easiest improvement would be increasing the square footage per employee enough that people can have offices with doors.

On the risk of sounding ridiculously entitled, I'm not sure that helps. As someone kinda sensitive to being disturbed by people talking, the only solution would be an office with a door for every person, or maybe 2 people. Four is too much already and the others can't be pairing or it will distract. But four is not really better than 10, but I suppose the actual noise level would differ for every person. Also unrelatedly I find screensharing so much better than looking over someone's shoulder, or sitting in the same room as someone in the same virtual meeting. I guess I should use noice canceling headphones?

That said, I've never seen single offices for normal software developers here in Germany at any company I ever worked at, so the point is kinda moot. I'm also not sure I'd like it, because where's the benefit if I am walling myself off?

And then it's the question of equipment. Companies are either too stingy or too homogenized. Either I have better screens/chair at home because the company is skimping in general or I have better stuff because I chose what I want and not what was decided to be good.

Agreed. Once I’m sharing an office it’s not an office, it’s a shared workspace.

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