Gregory's Server
 87 comments
@linkeddev This, and while I'd call myself an introvert, I actually missed seeing coworkers in person during the lockdowns, and also e.g. having lunch with people. OTOH, I've never worked in the corporate hellscape that the media suggests the American open-plan office to be. (I know the OP is a joke template, but I keep seeing that point made seriously far too often.) @chrpistorius @linkeddev But most of the time i'm quite content to work from home: no disruptions when i'm feeling in-the-zone, no travel-time, taking breaks without feeling awkward, etc  @chrpistorius @linkeddev I'm working 40% in the office now, and I find 20%β40% pretty much perfect. That's in an office that is open-plan but with big desks which got bigger thanks to the pandemic and physical distancing, nice pantry with sofa and plenty of conference rooms. The pandemic did a lot of good both for improving the office itself and also for working there less.  @linkeddev @PavelASamsonov Wouldn't renting/joining/using a shared workspace or however they're called cover that use-case?  @PavelASamsonov anyone required to goto an office or other specific location for work should be payed to do it out of the normal working day and should have their travel expenses payed for @Rog @PavelASamsonov Musk stiffed the landlords, and the bankers went bankrupt. But yea, come to the [nonexistent] office or get fired! [unless you already were]  @Rog @PavelASamsonov I'll think of them. I think they're rent-seeking bastages who need to be looted for their ill-gotten gains. @PavelASamsonov Flip the script, and suddenly you find good reasons for most of that shit. Not every office is like that but I know what you mean.  @CloudyMrs John Prine even wrote a song about it (Angel of Montgomery).  @PavelASamsonov Work from home is better for the environment. Give companies a tax rebate per person who works from home and I am sure companies would fall over each other to make people work from home. @PavelASamsonov Yes, but a problem with using this meme format is that it's normally used to ridicule something legitimately and obviously useful (like <insert occupation>), and make normal things sound insane... not to make a sincere plea to stop doing something that's actually bad. @PavelASamsonov Iβd say WFH puts more cost on the employees to work than working from an office. In fact, a lot of free lancers are taking to working at cafes, libraries, places like WeWork to cut down on the costs of WFH. Environmentally, itβs a mixed bag with too many variables. Iβd say it leans towards neutral or negative. https://hbr.org/2022/03/is-remote-work-actually-better-for-the-environment  @PCIB @PavelASamsonov when I moved to WFH the first things I noticed. * I now have 2 extra hours to my home time per day that I used to sit in a car driving @raptor85 @PavelASamsonov Things I noticed, I had 300 or more less dollars in my bank account. I had to work more hours, and my workday started much earlier. I was also way more isolated from my colleagues, productivity went down, while work load increased. On top of that, I had to create a space in my home in order to work. @PCIB @PavelASamsonov interesting, company-wide our productivity skyrocketed, we also were able to start hiring candidates in other states with better qualifications which we hadn't even looked into before. Most of us got considerable raises due to the productivity boost, my pay went up by nearly 1/3. We're on teams all the time so isolation isn't an issue. It does require a mindset that works well with it though, if you can't manage yourself you'll do terrible WFH. @raptor85 @PavelASamsonov Oh, I am highly efficient. The issue is no ability to walk over and quickly ask a question so it turns into a meeting during WFH and slowly but surely your schedule has meeting creep. It might have sky rocketed, but all studies are showing a decline. What makes up for it is people working longer hours. Instead of 9 - 5, I was working 8 - 7. So, really work starts to invade personal time as youβre trying to make up for the extra meetings. @PCIB @PavelASamsonov so really, even if it were a wash environmentally, mental-health wise it's a huge win, plus I get 500x as much done, less risk of accidents, and I'm not massively stressed out and exhausted by the time I get home after driving. The article also glosses over that while more trips are taken by car the overall miles driven is VASTLY shorter, yeah i'll shoot around the block to get takeout or something but i'm not in a car for 2 hours a day burning energy. @PCIB Honorable commenter, may I direct your attention to the meme, where (despite being a joke and not a peer reviewed scholarly article) it acknowledges the existence of cafes @PavelASamsonov I get that, itβs more of a QYB remark. If you want to work from home, great. But quit schilling nonsense, businesses are aware theyβre BS. Most applications and laptops reveal how productive actually is and how much time you actually waste how much is on meetings without any spyware.  @quirk @PavelASamsonov There's no such union nor guild in my country for my trade. I've looked. @lispi314 when I was a programmer working on the Y2k bug, I did not consider my profession a trade. Today I am a licensed electrician, and belong to a trade union. A trade union professional does not normally work in an office or at home, we work at a job site. Sometimes that job site is an office, but we're not sitting at the desks all day wishing we could "work" from home. @quirk What exactly makes the Writers guilds around legitimate but doesn't apply to programmers? Or are you going to argue that creative work isn't work? Should they be abused just because they don't do as much manual labor? That'd be one hell of a weird take on worker rights. As for a trade, I'd say any profession with a relatively narrow set of minimum skills which can be learned at a technikum would qualify. @lispi314 the writer's Guild also is not a trade union, as writing is not considered a trade. There are also labour unions, but a labourer does not hold any specific trade designation, so a labour union isn't a trade union. People of every profession have the right to organize and form a union for their profession, but it's up to them to get the cards signed and get people out to vote. They can't do that working from their homes. @quirk Why is that? I managed to vote for my national elections by mail, so there's certainly precedent that it's feasible. And I see that your objection was primarily about the technical category (which happens to translate a bit weirdly with technical schools & their options being trades as my country and its people tend to consider them). @lispi314 there's president, set by someone who took it upon themselves to build democracy; your voters form didn't arrive by magic. A union needs to be built by the workers. This means meeting others in your occupation to plan a strategy and to draw up a collective agreement. Then you must be ready to negotiate with your employers and balance your wants with their needs, and if you do not agree, you must be ready to go on strike. If you're working from home, are you going to picket your house? @quirk Picketing isn't what's effective about collectively refusing to perform labor. The core is a lot simpler. Publishing broadly on all channels that no work is happening at the company (or across all employers for that field) would accomplish about the same. Unless we go back, I suppose, to historical precedents where there was a tangible threat of direct violence and sabotage... but then sabotage is still feasible. I'm not sure that's what you're advocating though. @lispi314 you could organize a union or guild, and go on strike if your demands aren't met, but what's to stop the company from employing scabs to do the work? If the work needs to be done at an office, your picket line becomes a physical barrier. If everyone is working from home, they could employ scabs and nobody would be the wiser until it's too late. @quirk They could just hire remote scabs for all work that can be done remote and use helicopters for those that absolutely need to be on-site (likewise food delivery via private drones is doable). There's very little we can actually do about that if they're willing to bother. The social mechanism of sharing what they're doing and refusing to work for employers that do that would be more practical and effective. Widespread membership in the union would make it a lot easier to check for that. @lispi314 except there may be laws in your country that require work be done in the office. Laws that may have been put in place to protect you and your rights. Laws that would be much easier to circumvent should everyone decide they ought to be working from home. And if you think it's so easy to get everyone in your profession to join your union, I recommend a book called Dreams of Dignity, workers of vision. If you want to know your future, study the past. @quirk In the meantime, employers here have done exactly nothing but the most ineffective and minimal of implementation of biosafety measures despite a pandemic with >=10% chances of permanently disabling you (partly or fully) on every infection. I don't consider being forced to expose myself to gratuitous biohazards to be adequate protection (it's also against our bill of rights). I'll still take note of that book as it might be interesting. @lispi314 this quote by Oscar Wilde comes to mind: "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." Corporations call fear of not being paid, fear of not having work and being paid, and fear of disobeying idiots who have less and less practical skills to do anything but dictate and demand the further up almost every corporate ladder you go, 'respect'. It is not respect; it is obeisance expected to demands by one's superiors to do, die, and not question your orders, on pain of having less if you fail to adhere precisely to their fool's itinerary, or question their judgement. @PavelASamsonov to be fair to the half headset : you need a free ear, to hear your manager breathe down your neck.  @PavelASamsonov  @jtphillipsmnr @PavelASamsonov you get into management because you're able to make clever decisions when not all variables are completely clear (aka "complex) - or because you *think* you have that ability and can convince other managers of it. @PavelASamsonov once worked in a nice fun office with an eclectic style of office spaces that worked well and then they remodelled "to make room for more employees" and it was like working in a call center. Everyone was miserable and when several employees complained about a specific light that was causing migraines because of the angle it hit a certain space in the office, it was ignored and dismissed as "employees complaining for no reason."  @PavelASamsonov I love working from home, but there are definitely reasons to sometimes be at the office. Serendipitous meetings, specialized equipment, simpler collaboration on a lot of things, sensitive data, etc. @PavelASamsonov Yep. Sounds about right. My husband drove 90 miles each way, five days a week, for 20 years. All to experience this.  @PavelASamsonov In my workplace, I was the *only* person in there for most of lockdown, aside perhaps from security, facilities, maintenance, and cleaning. So, basically 2 years of utter peace. Now, about 50% or so of the people are back in the office Tues, Weds, & Thurs. Noise levels up, productivity levels down (because they all want to chat with their mates they've not seen since last week, etc.) @PavelASamsonov so true. And for the people who point out things that still work better in person : we just need to get better at WFH. We got good at going to an office (which is weird) so we can get good at WFH. @PavelASamsonov I like offices, but I live within walking distance of the CBD; So going to the office is basically my daily exercise. I can see why people wouldnβt want to drive 90 minutes a day to do stuff they could do at home. @PavelASamsonov My dopamine levels are already way too low to be able to work in my home. Iβd be 10x more productive in an office. @PavelASamsonov if offices werenβt a function of a car dependent society this wouldnβt be nearly the problem that it is. There are a lot of reasons to have in person spaces for certain kinds of work, especially creative collaborative work. The issue isnβt in-person work, itβs every capitalist innovation that surrounds it. We arenβt designed to be one thing or the other. @PavelASamsonov There are so many professional time-wasters who rely on an office environment to survive. Useless, toxic meetings, wandering about with a coffee cup interrupting people. βManagement by walking aroundβ was an actual thing! #WFH was a revelation for me. The most productive, creative, focused work of my career was from home. @Giddey_up @PavelASamsonov The bane of my corporate existence: management by walking around combined with open floor plans, hot desks, and everyone constantly in phone meetings because all teams had global membership and few people were co-located with others on their teams. Iβm fortunate to be able to #WFH and happy to do it! @PavelASamsonov I worked with the window slightly open and heard birds singing all day today. And sunlight. And green trees. And stepping out into the garden for a short break. Yeah, I don't need to be in a windowless office with brown furniture, fluorescent lights, and beige walls. @maggie2021 I put my phone up against the window so Merlin identified all the birds for me!  @PavelASamsonov idk I tried this wfh thing but every time I went to the kitchen to get more tea, there was noone there to describe my problem to. Do people really buy rubber ducks to fill that gap? @wolf480pl @PavelASamsonov You can. Anime figurines work too. You can also just talk to yourself. @PavelASamsonov I only have a 1 mile commute to the office, so I don't mind being in the office that much. I do have a hybrid schedule and WFH some as well. If I had an hour or more commute, you bet I would want WFH. @PavelASamsonov I WFH most of the time. Itβs lonely. I canβt do sensitive work in a cafe. When I do get to go to the office I enjoy my commute on the train as I get to listen to a few podcasts. Itβs not the furnishings I go to the office for - itβs the people. We get much more done working together and itβs just nice to be with them. @PavelASamsonov Sheesh. Bad timing. Now it looks like I agree with Jeremy Hunt which is not the case at all!  @PavelASamsonov I want to put this as a sticker on the office door, but I work from home... @PavelASamsonov excellent points, and after reading them I can't help asking your opinion abou the "office bubble"/"save amazon" part of my last post here: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/the-city-reboot-for-2070-that-we (also, sorce of that image, please? Thx) @PavelASamsonov thanks, I wanted to know what attribution to use in case I need it. It's a good picture! @PavelASamsonov  @PavelASamsonov It's almost surreal to read such an earnest and accurate iteration of this meme. |
@PavelASamsonov I want to have an office because I need separation of home/life and work. I do think there are some issues with offices of course, like being forced to go, but it's nice to have a 2nd location to separate the tasks mentally and physically