If we all could, I would that everyone on the team lived only a 2~5 minute walk from the office, and then we all would work in the office.
(But as it is, we all work from home)
I’m a carpenter, so I don’t work from home or in an office. However.
If your job could be done in a WFH context and you would rather be in an office, respectfully, I absolutely cannot understand where you’re coming from. Working from home sounds awesome.
Thank god my work doesn’t involve using the computer so my pick is neither but if I absolutely had to choose then I’d rather go to office than work from home. I still get the occasional custom order that I have to manufacture at home so I know how difficult it is to get anything done when there’s no-one holding me accountable.
Office. For me personally: I like the contact with colleagues, I am more efficient in the workplace.
Home only.
Private bathroom. Private break room with full kitchen. No commute. No pants. What’s not to love?
Plus, from the comfort of my home, behind the shield of a screen, I’m comfortable enough to say things and conduct myself in ways that are absolutely necessary to effectively do my job, but would never feel comfortable doing face-to-face.
I’m Team Work Where You Are Best.
Some people that means an office. Some people it means remote. The plan is the workers do the thing and get the money. A manager needing to see their ass in a chair to feel good about himself is a little creepy.
Yeah I live alone and I need to see people daily in person or else I’ll go crazy. I love my coworkers.
BUT every person and workplace is different!!! I’m the same team as you…work where you’re best. For those whose jobs are flexible in location, it seems unfair to force someone to do either one or the other.
I go in to the office two days a week typically - by choice - because I like the focused office vibe and I want to see my colleagues.
I pick the days. I don’t have to announce them. If my alarm goes off and I feel like “damn I need an extra snooze” then I don’t go in. No explanation necessary.
Before Covid it was five days a week in office. I’m very glad for the choice.
WFH because 1) it’s better for the environment 2) people I don’t want to see are at the office 3) I don’t wanna commute 1 hour one way 4) fuck getting up early 5) we call people that aren’t in the office anyway, which defeats the point of showing up, and 6) I hate my job.
I’ve been fully remote since 2018 and wouldn’t have it any other way. I can get chores and cooking done during the day, don’t waste time or money commuting, and I’m more available for both work and my family.
People keep telling me I should “leave my house” and “interact with people” but that’s always fraught with peril and disappointment
Working in the office is really nice, I enjoy it when I go. But the extra 3 hours of commute time added to my day really tire me out and make it hard to keep on top of the housework needed to stay alive.
When I stay home I have more of my life together. When I go to the office I have more of my work together. It seems I can’t have both. Hybrid is the best for me, but if I had to choose, WFH only. I would simply perish if I had to work 5 days a week. I would eat only cup noodles, the house would be filthy, I would have nearly 0 clean clothes.
Before COVID, I thought 100% wfh would be the bee’s knees.
It was not
I learned that even identifying as an introvert, I need more social contact than just my spouse and dog. 2-3 days in office would be optimal but if I have to choose all on-site or all wfh, I think it has to be all on-site.
Home only.
Why travel to an arbitrary location to access equipment at a different arbitrary location.
I don’t drive and I’m out in the middle of the suburbs, so commuting is rough.
As much as I’d love to work from home, I can’t. I’m too easily distracted and work would be at the bottom of my priority list at all times.
I’ll happily support all of you home workers, but I can’t trust myself to do what I’m supposed to do during “work time”.
I think a truly WFH world would force us to fundamentally rethink some of our common infrastructure designs. And one of those would be including multiple different offices in houses. Because most houses and apartments aren’t designed with WFH in mind.
If you have a dedicated place for work, (instead of a shared space, like a desk that you also use for your personal stuff), it helps you focus. Your brain compartmentalizes the rooms in your house, (which is why you’ll walk into a room and immediately forget what you went in there for,) so having a room that is dedicated to WFH will literally help you avoid distraction. If you try to WFH from the same desk that you play video games at, you’ll feel a constant desire to boot up a game instead of working. And inversely, if you try to play a game at your work desk, playing will begin to feel like a job. Your complaint is perfectly valid, and also so common that it would literally reshape the way our houses are designed.
In the summer I like to go in so they can pay for air conditioning, in the winter I like to stay home so I don’t have to drive in the snow (I have to run the furnace either way so the pipes don’t freeze, so no energy saving there)
From a societal perspective I think we should be working in common spaces so we can be near people and learn to socialize. We’re losing second and third spaces. Fewer people having children also means less forced interaction and I fear we are heading towards a more isolated society.
Unfortunately, not everyone would lives close enough to comfortably go into an office, which leaves people burning 2-3hrs of their day just doing that. And all the commuting also impacts the Earth.
Edit: Adding that I mentioned “common spaces” and I did not mean situations where people are forced to work in toxic environments. I have been lucky to develop many friendships and also help support many relationships that have formed in the past place I worked at. The majority of the people around me were introverts, working around like minded people helped all of us.
I do think the modern workplace isn’t really a good place for this either unfortunately. In my field at least it’s like everybody is a corporate mercenary. They’re going to come in, make no friends, do their jobs and then quietly leave for a higher paying position as soon as they possibly can.
Which is fine, but it’s a pretty poor place to get social nourishment.
I don’t think those kinds of positions would really benefit from being in office given the competitive nature.
Mixing your personal and professional life is a surefire way to be create an abusive and exploitative environment.
The exploitative companies basically want to ‘foster togetherness’ so they can exploit they works via emotional manipulation techniques, and often seek to isolate workers from the outside world or life outside the office.
This is very much based on the industry of course. I’ve formed life long friendships with people from my last job. I just saw one of them I haven’t worked with in 5 years and likewise a few others during halloween. I was in a position to be able to nurture those friendship and workplace dynamics.
Yeah, the normal office is not the place to make friends.
But I guess for a shared workspace for people working remote, it doesn’t really matter what they do or if they change jobs. You can make casual conversation with regulars at the water cooler or coffee bar without the weird forced interactions of working for the same company and “team building”. You’re both in this common space because you want to be there, rather than sitting at home.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned common space, since those people would want to be there. Being forced to do hybrid ends up being weird since most of those people don’t want to be there and it doesn’t really let you form bonds as much.
I don’t want to socialize with or date my co-workers. I don’t want to play politics to get promoted or have to befriend my boss or navigate office-relationships where I risk getting fired for offending or rejecting the wrong person. I also have had repeated problems with female co-workers trying to cheat on their partners with me, which I do not miss.
For me, working from home removed that problems and got me 3 promotions in 6 years. Because what matters now is my work, and I can do it without being distracted.
I can socialize outside of the workplace, thanks. Why would I want to do that with my coworkers? They’re not family and rarely ever have I befriended any and that’s fine.
Edit: I’m all for 3rd places making a comeback, to be clear, but I neither need nor want forced socialization in an office.
I agree on trying to bring back some semblance of the other spaces, and I’m an introvert. But work isn’t ideal for that, not only because of potential turnover, but also the rule of thumb on bringing too much personal stuff into work that can backfire on you.
How about more work from home where it makes sense, giving more time back that was spent commuting, and a four hour work week with equal or greater pay. Make socializing possible both in time and income given.
Having your coworkers be your only social interaction is a recipe for being exploited.
Third spaces are fine but if you make me come into an office for teamwork I’m finding another job that doesn’t make me pay to commute and be away from home.
This is why I actually like my hybrid schedule which is two days in the office and three at home. 1 day per week in office would be enough most of the time, but the regular in person does help with feeling connected for a lot of people but 5 days is massive overkill.
We switched to hybrid once covid died down, but the genie was out of the bottle. Most people didn’t want to come back. Since they also implemented a system where people chose what days they were in, it was hard to get proper overlaps. That company is now fully remote and have leased out their offices. As long as the hybrid is thought out, I do think it can work.
We all had the same days in the office so it was worth being in the office, so that was thought out. Some people don’t want to work from home and they work in the office 5 days a week which works for them. I’m just glad we have flexibility!
I think any company that isn’t flexible and forcing 5 days in office (for those who work on computers) is on borrowed time.
