There are a lot of news articles about “back to the office”, but they recirculate the same bad ideas. Let’s provide some new ideas for the media to circulate. It may also have the effect of making the office less terrible.
I would like my work computer to do Windows updates lightning quick in the office. It currently takes weeks, in or out of the office. Stopping in for a day makes no difference, so there is no point. Now, if there was a point, I would go in.
What would get you in the office?
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Absolutely nothing. I don’t think even money could do it for me at this point. Aside from all the obvious reasons to hate commuting and then sitting for 8 hours doing maybe 2 hours of work, I have never been healthier.
I have chronic migraines. Well, I used to(?). I haven’t had a single bad migraine in years. Yeah, I’ve still had a couple in the last few years, but they didn’t put functioning at a complete standstill. I wasn’t stuck in bed, hoping for death. The lack of artificial light is a big deal. The not having to stress myself out by commuting, then being stuck there is also another
On top of that, I eat 1000% better, easier. I can exercise instead of commuting. There’s literally no benefit to working in an office for me, but it has a metric fuckton of drawbacks.
sitting for 8 hours doing maybe 2 hours of work
This is funny, and something I’ve thought about and talked about with coworkers a lot. When I first started permanent WFH at the beginning of COVID, I used to feel really guilty about doing random chores and stuff around the house during the workday. I felt like I always had to be “on” trying to busy myself or whatever, even if there wasn’t really work to do.
Over time as we have done a partial return to office and I realized I do even less work on the days we go in, I have done a lot of reflection on the way we used to work when we were 100% in the office pre-covid. My conclusion is that on any given day most people were doing between 1-4 hours of actual work, and the rest of the time was spent wandering around, bullshitting, taking walks, browsing the Internet, etc. And everyone thought that was just fine. But a solid half of most days was literally wasted doing nothing productive at all.
So these days I have shifted my attitude to one that is focused on getting my assigned work done, and being somewhat flexible on meeting times and when I can accomplish things. In return I don’t feel guilty if I need to mow the lawn or do some laundry during the day. I have a smartphone and I get notifications. If there is something urgent I’ll drop what I’m doing to handle it. If it can wait, I finish up then take care of it. It’s greatly helped my sanity and I think it’s improved my work, too. We do go to the office once a week or so but I honestly plan to get almost nothing accomplished on those days and consider it a bonus if we do get work done.
I typed out a long reply, and idk where it went but the highlights are
I saw the bullshit of it back in the 90s when I started working. I had MANY arguments with my boomer mother about it. Of course her opinion was shut up, put my head down, and do whatever they say, to keep my job. My opinion was fuck that fire me.
I have never had a job (for someone else) where I couldn’t 100% complete it, accurately in 2 hours a day, max. Often less.
I’m self employed now, and I have never been healthier, happier, or more mentally stable. I have two chronic conditions, that can be/are debilitating, which have never been better controlled. I know I can’t be alone on that.
WFH is 100% better for everyone, and those that WANT to go back to the office, should work that out with their employer. WFH has shown to improve ever metric on the workers lives, and not to mention the reduction in pollution and road congestion.
How about a raise?
Read my second sentence. I literally couldn’t have spoon fed it to you any more.
62% more pay
Oddly specific
1 million dollars every time I have to be on the highway so 2 miles per day hahaha
And if you were in one of those companies pushing hard to get people back in the office, what pay cut would you be willing to take to make your job fully remote? (I swear I’m not in HR! )
I’ve taken 3 pay cuts so far. Had 3 pay increases since covid forced wfh and each time it’s been less than inflation. I haven’t pushed for more because I’ve been left alone and am one of the last employees here still 100% wfh.
I’m on salary, I already had somewhat flexible hours when I was in the office, had to start at a specific time but could leave when the bulk of my work was done and then would log on from from at the end of the day and tidy up anything that came in after I left. It wasn’t uncommon for me to only be in the office for 3-4 hours on a typical day and my commute was 45mins to an hour, so time wise I now I spend ~50% less time at work.
Paid commute and a separate room.
Free or affordable, clean, safe public transit that takes me no more than 20 minutes from the time I set foot out my front door to setting foot in the office, and a team/company that doesn’t care if I decide to work the day remotely for any reason whatsoever. I also like the other guy’s comment about the workplace being a nice, inviting place to be since my cube is barren and probably 20+ years old.
Also the rest of y’all need to stay home when you get sick instead of bringing that shit into the office.
Nothing pisses me off more than hearing some dude hacking up his lungs just across the hallway.
I’ll call in sick a few days later just because, and say there must be something going around. At least it will get me a few days away from the Sickies so I can potentially avoid getting it.
Some cubicle farms are just sad. Coffee stains from 20 years ago, along with old fart smells.
I love staying at home when I am “too sick for the commute, but not so sick to answer a couple emails.”
Careful what you wish for regarding cubicles. I would kill for a cubicle in our office. When companies implement these modern collaboration space ideas, it’s all about hotel desks, movable workstations, short or no dividers and open air spaces.
Having a cubicle to myself was fucking awesome. Now there is no privacy, no space to call my own, no place to simply have a phone conversation without everyone within 50 feet of me hearing every word.
Compensation for the time and cost of commuting back and forth, paid meal, free coffee and snacks, and additional sick days from using public transport and ultimately catching more sicknesses.
And even then, it doesn’t give me back the extra time I can spend with my kids.
How about 4 day work week? Would you be ok to go back to the office then?
As in WFH 1 day per week, or same salary but only 4 days of working? In either case, no. The main people pushing for mandatory in-office is landlords who are freaking out because their office space is no longer in demand, and shitty managers with the mentality of “if I can’t see you working, then you’re not working.” There are also those awful people who want to go back into the office because they miss the drama and messing with people and distracting people while they work
Work 4 days a week reduced work hours same wage. But in the office.
That would help, but just that single incentive would be a no for me.
Short answer: Nothing
Long answer: Actually, nothing
Before the pandemic, I was already remote working because all I did was connect my computer to servers in a warehouse 20 kilometers away from the office I had to be at.
Now, every person in my department is literally hundreds of kilometers away from each other, and we MUST go to each office to do the same things we could do staying at home. I lose 3 hours daily (waking up early, preparing meals, going to the office, and returning…) because of this nonsense.
Also, the building I have to go to doesn’t belong to my employer. The contract ends this year and, instead of sending us home again, my employer has rented another building that’s FARTHER than the current one. We’re pretty sure this is just money laundering or the building belongs to a friend.
People are leaving for remote jobs, and our bosses are still wondering why.
Agh, people I’ve talked to seem so reticent to understand that even outside the commute time I’m giving up my time to my employer. I don’t want to wake up at 5 to rush out the door to sit in traffic until 7:30 and do the same on the way home then still have to spend my own “free” time meal prepping and doing house chores that I can hopefully cram in before I have to go to bed and do it all again tomorrow.
All of that is no longer “my” time because I would definitely be spending it differently if it weren’t for the expectations imposed on me by my employer. Try to tell people that and they look at me like I’ve sprouted a third eye
Time. Can’t spend 3 hours a day commuting to work.
Money
An office in my city and within 10-15 minutes walking distance.
If my whole team was based out of the same office and we coordinated the days we were there to have in person meetings. I don’t see any reason to be 100% in the office, though 1-2 days a week in this scenario would be nice.
My team is spread out all over the place, so it makes no sense to go to the office just to be on WebEx the whole time anyways.
3x base salary at least. No-thought commute, so maybe provide transportation for me. I currently live what is about 1.5hrs away each way now and there isn’t a public transportation option.
Commute time should count towards my “8 hour work day”. No distracting desk drive bys. Provided breakfast and lunch or an optional lunch stipend or whatever to cover if I go somewhere near the office.
Not sounding great for the company? It isn’t meant to. It would be nearly impossible to get me to go back to the office, as it should be.
I’m not being unreasonable. I am at least twice as productive since working from home and even simple internal reports can prove that. I’m also 2-3x happier and less stressed, nothing can really replace that.
My doc asked me to buy a thing that graphs my blood pressure. I happened to be using it before and after I quit my increasingly toxic RTO job and landed a tricky interview with a job with ‘remote except where legally required’ in its union contract.
The graphing is neat. It goes steadily up, up, up, up and then goes back down starting on the day I quit.
A gun held to my head?
A few things that would help:
A 4 day work week with both ends of the day brought in to maybe 10-4 (sorry didnt mean 10-3). Things like going to the bank require me to either run during my lunch break or do it on a day off. 4x10-4 means i have a day and edges of days to do tasks i can’t do on the weekend.
Unlimited PTO. If my tasks are done and I’m paid a salary there is no reason i need to sit around doing nothing. If more work is expected then I’d expect more compensation.
And lastly mandatory cost of living connected to inflation every year. My last job started during the pandemic. In 2 years the effective inflation rate was 15% and yet i was only given 3% over that time while getting good marks on my reviews. That means in that time i was paid a crazy amount less my last day than my first. I dont care about the actual number of dollars I’m paid but I’d like to buy the same number of eggs mext year as this year if I’m expected to do the same amount of work. This shouldn’t be thought of as a bonus, but rather keeping my level of compensation matched woth my level of expectations for my job.
What job do you have that 4x10-3 would be a reasonable option? Coming from someone who works 5x6a-6p (though this week it’s been more like 6a-8p) those hours seem like a fairytale.
That’s more like part-time honestly, doesn’t make any sense. But your hours are intense. I did that 50/60 hours a week years ago, I’ll never do that again. I’m at 35 now and considering asking for a 4 day 32 hours schedule next year. And I WFH full time. I’m done organizing my life around work.
A friend from college does software dev for a place that does 4x10-4 and he said the way the fixed issues was by asking for ROI on everything you do. Need to schedule a meeting? Is it worth the cost of people’s time? If so make sure you get the right people, habe everything planned out before calling it so you get your work done promptly.
At first everyone was like fuck, more crap you have to do. But eventually they figured out that much of their time was wasted on crap no one needed to do. Some people stuck around for an hour or two after work to hang out and others took back their lives. Productivity actually increased because people were not as burned out.
That sounds very satisfying, wow! I swear to god, half the meetings I attend are just soooo unproductive. Talk about this project, where we were, where we are, where we are going. But it always ends up that I have to jog people’s memory, ask why what was supposed to get done didn’t and when it will be. Rinse and repeat. I love that approach, makes people accountable and saves everyone’s time.
As for jogging people’s memories…
So whenever i have to get approval from higher ups that i know they will forget and get annoyed about it i ask that they all stand up and state “i agree / approve to XYZ.” People will laugh and say “really?!?”.
At my last job one of my bosses decided on something that went against what all us in engineering said. So i told him to stand up in front of everyone and say “i acknowledge that this goes against the suggestions by engineering but I would like the team to implement… whatever the feature was.” Two months later he came to a meeting all pissed about how this feature wasn’t working and when he saw me enter the meeting he said “fuck, this is my fault isn’t it?”
That is fucking brilliant!
Ever have someone deny they said it?
Nope not so far. It’s always in a meeting with other people, make it a little awkward and everyone remembers so no one denied it as they know others won’t deny it.
Yeah, part of it is that I’m in a medical field and still in school. Unfortunately my hours are going to get worse with internship/residency before they get better. Even still, 4x10-3 would never (honestly could never) happen in my field.
Oh I see. I’m sorry, you guys in medical really have it fucking hard. Hang in there, and best of luck!
I’m a lead software developer. Finally working a place where we do reasonable schedules with a good amount of padding for problems popping up.
If i wasnt in pointless meetings and focused on actual productive time thats about what most of my team does and we hit all our schedules.
When i worked at Samsung they were doing 4 day weeks and no one was doing 8hr days
No. I went remote 11 years ago. I have no intention of going back to an office ever again.
A shit-tonne more money. Like, more than the extra time spent travelling to and from work worth of salary.
