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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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man i just spent 30m this morning telling jokes to my remote coworker over slack, I've seen him only once in my life, according to this CEO I couldn't have possibly gotten to know him.
Funny watching the CEOs trying to do the verbal splits, coming up with excuses where it's just "waah we're paying for an office that nobody uses :("
we have nothing to lose but our commutes
The most frustrating part of the pro office talking points for me is the line about meeting in person being easier. My team is spread across four states, I'm either on a zoom meeting at my house where there is always a quiet room from which to take a meeting at a comfortable desk. Or I'm in the office, an open office with hot desks where you can't leave keyboards, mice, computers, etc overnight and you have to reserve a conference room to take a zoom meeting (all meetings). Now I'm wasting time setting up my desk every day, reserving rooms for all my meetings, kicking people out of the rooms I reserved. Huge loss of productivity for the Corp. I'm not staying late because you wasted so much of my time, I gotta hit the road to beat traffic.
Don't forget the "commuting to an office just to talk on Zoom to somebody 400km away in his own home"
Work in an office, they said. It will be easier for meetings, they said.
It's crazy how shortsighted and dumb companies are.
It's not that they're shortsighted and dumb (well, many are, but that's not why they're spouting this BS), they know those reasons are full of shit, they just need some excuse that sounds better than "we signed a 4 year lease and so we're going to make that your problem" or "the CEO is getting lonely and misses being able to walk around the office among all his minions"
True. Even with like 20 - 30 meeting rooms there are always people posted up in all of them. Even if you reserve a desk or room, someone will be there.
Their excuse is usually "I reserved a different one but someone's in that one now." So you have to take someone else's, and they inevitably interrupt your meeting. At the beginning of this chain of room theft is probably an executive who doesn't even know how to sign up for a room.
Being at home is like 3x better now. I don't care about free coffee or food. I buy exactly what I want at the supermarket.
Yeah, it's really weird seeing these blanket statements from the CEO of Zoom, of all things.
I've grown up with ICQ, IRC and forums, later worked with a very distributed, international volunteer team and made connections just fine, even though we barely used voice chat (it was still the Skype days) and nobody ever actually saw me or knew my real name.
Those people and connections weren't somehow less real to me than the superficial, safety-first chit-chat you sometimes get into at work. This obviously isn't everybody's experience, but maybe, just maybe, the CEO should "get" this instead of being out of touch with what he's selling.
Maybe he was left on read one time too many.
My coworkers and I are constantly sending each other jokes and memes when any of us are work from home. Sometimes the official company chat will just be everyone communicating through gifs.
It's incredibly rare anyone actually uses the Team's chat for actual work purposes. If I need to talk to someone for work purposes I usually send passive aggressive emails.
They've just added to the bottom of that email signatures.
[Company name], certified a great pace to work 2023 - 2024
We're just wondering who certified that, the general consensus is that it's probably BS.
My company has 11 people, so Teams is the easiest way for us to communicate other than just talking across the room or walking 10 feet to a different room lol
It all depends on company culture. The last contract I worked was 100% virtual, and the chat channels were all business, all the time. I don't think I saw a single meme the whole 8 months I worked there.
Eh, for certain people they definitely are less productive online(unfortunately including me), but I'm sure some others are more productive online.
I think the issue is the one-size-fits-all mentality, it leaves no room for each person to do what works best for them.
My wife's company only rents one of the 4 floors it used to, for those who wanted to return to offices and it's worked out perfectly, they maintain a space for necessary in office meetings, a place for presentations while only paying a fraction of their old lease.
We've been work-from-home since the pandemic kicked off, so about 3.5 years now. They're working on renovating our office building (and shrinking the footprint we occupy in it), so we're going to be work-from-home until at least the spring, at which time we'll have to report a max of one time per week. Supposedly a remote work policy is under development as well, which is what I'm hoping for.
I will say, though, I went to an in-person strategy session for a club I'm in back in May. No zoom at all. What I had forgotten was the hallway conversations, the discussions over dinner, and being able to collaborate like that. It was much easier to talk to my counterparts in the club and see how they were addressing issues, for example. I softened my stance on the full work-from-home idea after that - for certain things, like brainstorming, an in-person meeting is hard to beat. But, our day-to-day work, including the quarterly meetings where we pass motions to revise the club bylaws - those can be (and still are) done virtually.
So you're saying that a few times per year is enough for in person networking? I agree with that.
I didn't say that.
Maybe once a year!
That's why they should give people the option to work from home. You can choose which one is best for you.
I much prefer to work from home, but I am admittedly less productive. That was my point. I choose to work from home given the choice, but would be less productive.
Why do you choose it if you know it makes you less productive?
Because it is much more enjoyable.
The question for me is, is maximizing productivity the most important thing?
I think you have to have a good work-life balance. If you are only focused on maximizing productivity, you risk burnout. I'm not a manager, but I've certainly seen burnout lots of times.
It depends to who and how you define productivity