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Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds
(www.washingtonpost.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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the most insulting part of this is 'people' suddenly pretending like we love and always loved the office, when it's been a fundamental symbol of stagnation and boredom and misery in culture ever since they became widespread. NO ONE would voluntary want to spend 5 days in a shitty building after a commute wearing clothes they don't want to with bosses sniffing around their necks all day leaving maybe 4 hrs a day to yourself in your home. 'top talent' or not, everyone deserves to be able to work where they feel most comfortable.
People used to make sardonic jokes about cubicles. Then cubicles disappeared in favor of the open office and somehow the jokes stopped, just as things got worse.
Open Office was a cesspool of disease, even before covid it was problematic:
https://www.passporthealthusa.com/employer-solutions/blog/2020-2-how-do-open-offices-affect-employee-health/
Studies have found that that those who work in open offices are more likely to take short term sick leave or a sick day. Those employees might be using 62% more of their sick days due to the environment. Employees with this office layout are also more prone to headaches and respiratory problems due to weakened immune systems.
Thankfully enough people realised this and switched to Libre.
Nerd.
I like you.
Through the course of my career I've somehow lost office space as I've ascended the corporate food chain. I had a private office/technician room in my first job out, then had an eight foot cubicle with high walls, then a six foot cubicle with low dividers, and then the pandemic hit. The operations guy at the last place was making noises about a benching arrangement after RTO, like people were going to put up with being elbow to elbow with Chris The Conference Call Yeller and Brenda The Lip Smacking Snacker while Team Loudly Debates Marvel Movie Trivia is yammering away the next row over.
Hell, if it meant getting a space to myself with enough privacy to hear my own thoughts I might consider giving up my current WFH gig. But everybody's obsessed with building awful office hellscapes and I don't have the constitution to put up with that kind of environment.
Gonna be honest, I prefer to be in an office over WFH, despite WFH technically having “advantages”.
Home is an awful environment to work in. I get less done, worse quality and in general dislike it more. While that’s technically a personal problem, it’s not fair to say no one would voluntarily work in an office 5 days a week. I do, and know multiple other people who do as well.
WFH when you’re just starting your career sucks. Both my internships and start of my FT jobs were WFH, and it made it near impossible to learn to work with a team, get information from senior developers, get IT help if there was hardware issues and a ton of other minor things that aren’t a problem for someone who had been working at the company prior to going 100% remote, but are huge sticking points for new hires.
100% with you on the new hires thing. Was remote in college and have been for all my jobs. Maybe its a case of the grass is always greener but I would much prefer to predominantly work from an office. Maybe not 5x a week nor a sizeable commute but I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of career growth, networking, and team cohesion. As an OSS contributor, homelab hobiest, and adhd experiencer, I find it difficult to sepererate my headspaces and get into work mode.
You know, I work full time from home ever since covid and it is brilliant because I had a long commute to an office I didn't really needed to be in because all my peers/colleagues are in other countries. But when I started out, I worked in a nice office which was a 10 minute bike ride from my home and it was brilliant. If I could do the same work within a 10 minute commute I do now, I would be in the office every day I think.
I am the opposite, I thrive when I work from home. But it's important for me to have a dedicated space for it, not in my bedroom, and free from distractions like wife, kids, pets, and neighbors with drills.
My home setup is 10x better than at the office... I have a great desk with lots of space, big awesome monitors, awesome keyboard and mouse with kvms to make switching to my personal PC easier. My coffee is better than any work coffee machine I ever used. My internet is much faster and more reliable.
I shit you not, at the last company I worked they proxied all web traffic through another country thousands of km away. As expected, it worked like shit and was failing constantly. And you couldn't even access repos like maven central, because they used a proxy autoconfig file with hundreds of rules, which is not supported by any software except browsers.
And there's also the benefits of having a private office, away from noisy coworkers and prying eyes.
It also really depends on what "home" is. My current home is a tiny room in a cheap apartment (to save money) with a tiny kitchen, a small living room, and a joke of a dining area. I feel inclined to go to the office despite a 45 minute commute because there isn't anywhere good to spread out and focus on work at home. Plus in-person connections with colleagues is another benefit. I'm currently hybrid with WFH 1 day out of 5.