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I'm done with this WFH BS, need to get out of my house, the kids (I love them but separation make the heart grow fonder). I want to see human beings, talk, make conversation, see smiles, not communicate via text, slack, but human voice, human emotion.
Find a life outside of work.
Are you not allowed to return to your office at all? At our company the offices are open but no one is required to return.
That was going to be my question. At my company, if you wanna come in for more brown-nosing ( or networking, or collaboration, or whatever they wanna call it ), you absolutely can. You just let your boss know.
The question is always whether the extroverts should dictate every aspect of company life.
> if you wanna come in for more brown-nosing ( or networking, or collaboration, or whatever they wanna call it )
I find this line of thinking, which is very prevalent on HN, to be incredibly toxic. As if a social creature seeking to be amongst others is something disdainful or pathetic.
Same experience.
You have the younger crowd who live with parents, have their own room in a apartment somewhere. Happy to jump on work and then jump instantly to discord and whatever. Like my friend below my apartment.
Then you have the older crowd who have their own house, Kids, family a pet or two. Have a spare room they can turn in to an office.
And then theres me who has a single bedroom apartment and likes separation from work and personal. Having my work laptop at home has been stressful because its always felt like I am at work. Having to use my personal space for work doesn't bode well.
Luckly, my office is open and I can now go in everyday. Even when I am the only one in the office I feel more productive then being at home. WFH isn't for me.
At least at my office it's only the young people that are actually coming in to the office. It's cliché, but the subsidized snacks, ping pong, etc I think are bringing people back where as I haven't seen a single 'older' engineer back in the office yet.
So go to the bar and do this? What does this have to do with the office?
Same here, collaborating with remote workers doesn't establish a solid human connection.
And without that it's just not the same thing, to a degree that doesn't make it worthwhile for me personally.
So it's a solid no to working with remote workers if it can be avoided.
Oh good. I've considered working for Google, I think they work on interesting things, but I've recently adopted the stance that I won't take jobs that don't allow me the freedom to work 100% remotely. I value that freedom too much, and there's many other companies out there that let me do that.
I got an offer from google a few months ago and during team matching several teams were open to allowing me to work remotely. I would recommend making your position clear with your recruiter at the beginning and they can help you find teams that will work for you.
To people like you:
Go
and tick "Show all remote-eligible jobs".
Google now offers fully remote roles. In my org, _literally every single application_ for a transfer to fully remote was accepted.
And, on top of that, office transfers are a thing. Half of my immediate team (including me) have applied to relocate to otherwise random international offices that would better suit our lifestyles, and all got approved.
P.S. Fully remote would have also been an option. It's just not what we've chosen, for various reasons.
> random international offices
Just curious where people chose? Were there any side affects ?
Yeah, my current stance is that moving on from my current role to an on-site position would require the next employer to compensate me well enough that it wouldn't make sense to even consider side gigs.
This is one of the things that made me leave my previous job. The constant reminder of how catastrophically they can alter my life every few weeks was enough to break me down.
Remove mandatory. Remove the constant, lurking threat. You're giving people untold anxiety.
I wouldn’t be willing to guess much about what the workplace will look like in 12 months. But longer term, I think coercing people to go back to the office is going to turn out to have been a seriously dated and misguided worldview.
I am returning to office 1-2 days a week right now.
I think it is pretty nice.
This is the perfect compromise.
Forcing your employees to commute to the office 5 days a week just isn't a tenable proposition anymore. Hell, even the 40 hour workweek is becoming less and less acceptable.
1-2 days a week is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to put up with in office bullshit and still get most of the benefit that comes with it.
I agree, as an employee. I mentioned this to my director and he also agreed with me but brought up some logistics I hadn't thought about because it wasn't my job to care.
What do you do about office space? The company is paying a ton of money to give everyone their desks. How do you handle the logistics of having people coming in on random days? Share desks? What if you both come in on the same day? Have unassigned desks? So you're sitting by random people? But the point of coming in is being with your team. But how do you coordinate that? What if half your team chooses monday/tuesday for their office days and the other half chooses something else? None of these are show stoppers, but I also can list a bunch more little "paper-cut" problems with the hybrid approach at scale.
At some point it's just fully-remote with an expensive office. I think those things will naturally work themselves out. But it makes sense why someone who's job it is to care will not know up front to solve it. I think the solution is to not try and solve it ahead of time.
At some point it seems we'll naturally converge on smaller office spaces with more OFFICES and less "open". Some people will always want to come into the office. Those people will be supported. Some people will never want to come into the office. Those people will also be supported. Teams will figure out what works best for them.
For me, I plan to work fully remote the rest of my career. And right now that's a sword I'm willing to die on. Do I miss some things about in-office attendance? Yes! So I plan to go in occasionally. I'll plan that around the schedules of people I want/need to see. Also, sometimes I just need a freaking shared whiteboard. And no, Draw.Io and digital whiteboards somehow just don't work the way I want.
This can indeed work well for some people, but for others it's the _worst_ compromise. It means they can't benefit from moving to a lower CoL area or nearer to family etc., because they still have to be within a reasonable commute distance. But at the same time, it can mean they still have to keep the necessary equipment and space setup for remote working at home, may no longer have a permanent desk/office, lose the benefit of reduced-cost season tickets for public transport etc.
It's hard to come up with something that's going to work for everyone.
I just took a job that specifically allowed remote but I'm flying onsite a (work) week a month. To me that is a great compromise, especially since I don't have to pay for the flights/hotel/car.
This is what I've been doing too, coordinated with other team members. We usually go in on planning or big meeting days. I sure don't want to go in every day but 2 - 3 days is perfect to get out of the house and see some new people.
Similar here. I tried to be in office 3 days a week, I am actually enjoying it.
Yup
To see colleagues face to face, from time to time, it is really chill.
I don't realize how much I miss that experience until I did lol
Is everyone back there? Maybe it's nice because it's quiet? That's how I felt when I went back but to imagine being with 1000s of people in there is scary
> Is everyone back there?
To some degree yes, everyone had at least back to the office to some extent on weekly basis, but people aren't all appearing at once on a single day, so it is still pretty nice and quiet.
Definitely not crowded, the utilization isn't even close to 10% per my current experience.
I'm in my office (Google Waterloo) about 3 days a week and yeah, it's pretty quiet. Maybe 20% capacity and I can always get an EV charger, which isn't normal.
Right now this is awesome. I'd like to see more of my teammates, but I don't look forward to when the crowds return.
I love in-office culture. I really, really do. However, I think the only real way to create team bonding in modern global organizations is the "on-site", a semi-regular team convergence to a specific place, often in a work-live environment or a mini office-park.
I'd agree, working at a multi county small company. Sometimes you just need to meet up. Particularly, if there's any language barrier. Eg. Native vs not native English speakers
Not from my experience. All you have to do to get that is to give them slack channels and allow them to speak freely in shared spaces. Everything will work itself out.
Surprising no one...
It seemed like odd timing from the start with the expected post-holiday and winter surge.
the company still encourages employees to continue coming in “where conditions allow, to reconnect with colleagues in person and start regaining the muscle memory of being in the office more regularly.”
I'm sure I still have plenty of muscle memory...
You joke, but me and several co-workers laughed together when we realized after a year and a half, we didn't know how to make small talk anymore. Or even talking felt awkward/forced the first few days
It was pretty funny actually
It sounds kinda sad.
Somethings you just don't want to remember.
I mean, this is why some of us start drinking...
My bosses dream about getting whole team to the office. Though having corona outbreak in the office would have 2 huge issues: operations would stop and the bosses would need very good explanations to the highest management. At the end one can enter the office only being vaccinated or after recovery and there is 100% home office option. I used it during hot project phase, but I feel a bit isolated not going at least a day a week to the office. My perfect schedule is slacking 2 days in the office and working hard 3 days from home. I am sure this will stay this way for years since virus is mutating. After omicron comes other variant for sure.
I'll go back 2 days a week if they give me an office. I'm not working in an open space with 500 people on my floor.
I think at this point it's pretty obvious that Big Tech wants the pandemic economy to last forever.
Something good comes out of Omicron. woooo!