I worked hybrid 18 at home, 22 at the office and it sucked.
It showed me three things:
• It showed me that I was far more productive when I was at home and I was comfortable and not distracted.
• It showed me that I was coming into the office for absolutely no logical reason (even while there, all discussion was via Slack and Zoom).
• It showed me that the company's leadership was incompetent.
This wasn't even a 'we paid for the space, we have to use it' issue. This was an office job at a light industrial facility where no one had to be in the office. If they didn't have us come in, they could have knocked down the office area and put in another line or two. Just incompetence.
I treat office days as social days for exactly this reason. I know I'm not getting anything done, there are too many distractions, so I MUST be being forced to come into this disaster zone for one reason - to recharge. So that's what I do.
I told my boss that I get less done in the office. The temperature is always wrong. The monitors aren't as good as what I have as home. There's distractions. So many distractions. Sales guys are loud. People walking up to you. You can't ignore a person standing next to you like you can ignore a slack message.
I told him I'd go in, but it would be a day of bullshitting and not doing much work.
Fortunately, he hasn't really pushed the issue since. If the CEO gets the idea in his head again it's going to be conflict.
What I'd really like to do is form a union, but labor in the US is extremely weak.
The only way I got anything done in the office was to wear noise-canceling headphones all the time. At which point, why bother coming in? I couldn't hear anyone anyway.
I’m pretty lucky, in my industry, remote work has become the norm, so much so that my previous employer ended up closing the local office where I worked when I first started because [1] most of our colleagues were all over the country and [2] nobody thought there was a point to going back. I’m looking for a new job, and every prospect I’ve checked out so far is doing the same, almost fully remote. It just doesn’t make any sense to do otherwise.
I worked hybrid 18 at home, 22 at the office and it sucked.
It showed me three things:
• It showed me that I was far more productive when I was at home and I was comfortable and not distracted.
• It showed me that I was coming into the office for absolutely no logical reason (even while there, all discussion was via Slack and Zoom).
• It showed me that the company's leadership was incompetent.
This wasn't even a 'we paid for the space, we have to use it' issue. This was an office job at a light industrial facility where no one had to be in the office. If they didn't have us come in, they could have knocked down the office area and put in another line or two. Just incompetence.
I treat office days as social days for exactly this reason. I know I'm not getting anything done, there are too many distractions, so I MUST be being forced to come into this disaster zone for one reason - to recharge. So that's what I do.
I told my boss that I get less done in the office. The temperature is always wrong. The monitors aren't as good as what I have as home. There's distractions. So many distractions. Sales guys are loud. People walking up to you. You can't ignore a person standing next to you like you can ignore a slack message.
I told him I'd go in, but it would be a day of bullshitting and not doing much work.
Fortunately, he hasn't really pushed the issue since. If the CEO gets the idea in his head again it's going to be conflict.
What I'd really like to do is form a union, but labor in the US is extremely weak.
The only way I got anything done in the office was to wear noise-canceling headphones all the time. At which point, why bother coming in? I couldn't hear anyone anyway.
I’m pretty lucky, in my industry, remote work has become the norm, so much so that my previous employer ended up closing the local office where I worked when I first started because [1] most of our colleagues were all over the country and [2] nobody thought there was a point to going back. I’m looking for a new job, and every prospect I’ve checked out so far is doing the same, almost fully remote. It just doesn’t make any sense to do otherwise.