I am personally not railing against being in the office. What I am railing against is being in the office five days a week when there is no parking and no desks and all I do is fucking teams meetings.
I don’t mind being at work, The office is nice, the people are awesome. Blowing a couple hours a day driving to and from, hundreds in gas, tires, oil, replacement cars is just absolutely unreasonable for a job that doesn’t need that.
Yeah I always try to commute during work hours too so it really eats into my coding time. They don’t seem to care 🤷♂️
It’s mostly just a hassle to work that into the day and also still work and pickup my kids from school. I do way more driving than I should be for a job that’s all online but somehow I’m in the car for so much of the day
Just owning a car can be optional if you are a remote either.
We are a one car family. It saves so much stress, and money. Not possible if I had to go into the office even 1 day/week. Literally thousands of dollars/year in savings
I’m happy with my hybrid schedule. Some tasks are faster or easier on-prem, and I get a chance to socialize and get out of my house. I also think its beneficial for people to see my face a couple times a week to remind them that I exist and am contributing.
If I was 100% remote I’d degenerate to full on hermit mode.
I live 200 km from the office. They hired me to work remotely and only drive to the office about twice a month for team events and to meet visitors. It worked for years. Nobody cared as long as my work was done. I got promoted twice and every one of my managers wrote very good reviews about my performance every single quarter. Still its a pointless exercise, These days are by far my least productive. I drive 2,5-3 hours each way on office days and the open plan office is worst than a Turkish bazaar. Impossible to get work done.
Until last year we got a new CEO, our department got merged with another one and all of the sudden there is an issue with my “visibility”. I asked them repeatedly in what metric is this showing, since my numbers are always way above average. They said they didn’t look at my numbers, only the one which shows how many times I swiped my card a month.
Now they want me to come to the office twice a week. So I said its not very reasonable to ask this and now I got till September to change my attitude and improve my visibility or I can start looking for a new job. So I’m pretending to play along with this, but already looking for a new job. Wish me luck as the job market right now is an AI-centric hellscape with fake listings and data stealing traps. Honestly fuck big corporations.
As much as I hate the culture of linkedin, it’s useful in situations like these. A few years back my job suddenly wanted me back in the office, and a friend of mine suggested making an account on linkedin. I immediately started getting headhunters contacting me, despite the fact that I’m just a lowly estimator at a medium distribution company in the construction sector, and within a week I had a job offer lined up for a fully remote position with a competitor. I used it to negotiate an almost-entirely remote position (I still come in once a month for a department meeting) and a significant pay raise. I thought it’d put a target on my back to stay where I was, but I haven’t had any issues so far, and I still get plenty of people contacting me on linkedin in case something does change.
For the life of me I cannot comprehend why people think open plan offices are a good idea. They’re worse for solo work and group work than regular offices, with cubicles between them on both factors. In open plan offices it’s both rude to converse with someone when you need to, but aiso people are often chatting.
Because being a good idea to you, the worker, and being a good idea to Tommy, the Manager/Executive are not the same thing.
Tommy loves seeing all his peons at once. There is no shadow lands beyond his reach, no closed doors. His domain is the entire office.
Tommy doesn’t give a fuck if you don’t like your job
Tommy is a total piece of shit.
That’s fair, I’m just an engineer who focuses on actually improving functionality. When it’s a choice between functionality and comfort I can have a reasonable discussion. When it’s a choice between functionality + comfort and Tommy’s fucking gut instinct and need to feel big and useful well then Tommy gets to learn that I’m kind of a bitch to idiots who aren’t at least self aware or nice.
I was interviewing for a position that they made a big deal about “100% in office”. I’d be doing manufacturing R&D, which is usually conducive to a pretty nice “when we’re here it’s an intense 14hr day(s) executing a run, the trade off is when we’re planning we do it from home in pajamas”. I was disappointed they weren’t open to that. It was a start-up using toll manufacturing which means a small team planning runs, and usually a sparsely populated, poorly provisioned office. Get to last round of interviews with the CEO, the day before the interview I’m told “<Mr.Smith> will be joining remotely”. I canceled and withdrew my application.
I’m at a job now that’s also not remote, but its 24/7/365 so, you know, it makes sense lol.
My work brought in a „return to office“ policy and was repeatedly challenged on what metrics they were basing it on. Their only answer is that it’s „values based“. Value to the building owners maybe…
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There is no metric how they don’t trust people to do their jobs without close surveillance. The results are not enough, your company IT checking on you is not enough, you also need a shit for brains middle manager looking over your shoulder.
Er. Just leave your swipe card with a trusted colleague.
Wouldn’t work, it’s underestimate the level of power trip these sorts of managers will go through.
They probably see a cheap way to increase their paycheck by dropping what they think is not a relevant worker, not knowing nor caring the sort of role said person serves.
yes, my new manager is the kind of person, who talks about socializing, and work family, and goes around once a day just to see who is there, nods from the distance and fucks off…
If one day / week in the office is the difference between needing a car and not needing one, it’s a rather big deal.
When is the difference between “living anywhere in the country” and “living where we tell you, plebe”, so you’re within commute range, is also huge.
My office is 10 hours away, on paper. They have no space, they have no desk, they have no workstation gear, but my agreement says they can recall any of us at any time - even those who are 4 timezones away - and we either commute or we quit. We all still took the job and filled up on the hopium.
It doesn’t even have to be in the same country. Could be anywhere in the EU or maybe even third countries, I don’t know, I haven’t worked internationally in that way.
You commute or they fire you. Collect that unemployment baby
Yeah, it would feel like a sword of Damocles hanging over you.
I’d probably only do that if I had a solid contingency plan in place.
I’m 100% remote and just use my cargo ebike. I just gave my daughter my car because I don’t have any particular use for it.
Because I am 100% remote I moved away from my office.
Why would anyone pay $2800 to live in a 2 bedroom in the city when they can pay $1600, or less, to live in nature with no upstairs neighbors, no downstairs neighbors, just ✌️.
I’m free to work 100% remote but I travel to our local site 2 days a week just to be seen and support if needed. I hardly use my car at all these days. I can cycle or walk to the office.
I use my ebike to drop my son at school, get up to the office, then back to school and wfh in the afternoon.
Ebikes really are the future of travel. I can’t achieve all of the above on my normal mountain bike in a sensible time frame and with luggage.
Well, I feel like you could Uber one day a week and outweigh the cost of owning a car no problem. But I get what you’re saying, and I think of work can be done remotely, it should be.
If I have to attend the office once a week then I have to live within commutable range of the office, even an Uber is only practical within a certain distance range. If I’m 100% remote or can live wherever. I can leave somewhere cheap, I don’t have to live in the city.
It’s one day to them, it’s an entirely different life to me.
Can’t you just use your private jet?
You know how many stupid “articles” I’ve seen on the Firefox homepage, about such and such a person who flies to work for one day a week. I just report them and move on, because that’s ridiculous.
Went from working remotely full time to in office full time. It fucking sucks. Got a 45 minute commute one way so now I’m gone almost 11 hours a day. I hate it. My family hates it. Gotta pay the bills somehow though.
That’s not a remote worker.
Remote workers never go into the office. Anything else is a lie.
People who go into the office a little are Hybrids. If the boss calls that Remote, then the boss is a dink.
I’m a remote worker. I’m supposed to go into the office on Thursdays to “collaborate”. I don’t. That’s why I’m a remote worker.
Well I go for special occasions, when I’m not supposed to work a whole day. Thats not 1/week and not even 1/month, more like a several times per year. And I can skip that too if I wish.
This is what i do. I go in maybe 2 times a year when its basically just a “party” at the office. I love an hour away though so I usually show up around noon and leave at 3.
It is nice to see some of the people I don’t talk to on any other day of the year. Plus they have cats there.
Not picured: the three hours in traffic.
… each way
I’m like that with my 1 day a month in the office.
Mine’s this Thursday, and I’ve been dreading it for over a week, haha!
Mine is tomorrow.
Bi Thursdays here. Better traffic than Fridays tho
At my last job I only went in to the office about once every 6 months. When I started going in twice a week they all thought I was new even though I’d been working there like 9 years
I can win this. I’ve been working remotely on job2 since 2002. I’ve gone in exactly once, during Biden, and I’ll probably retire before it’s safe to go to America again.
That’s fair. If I didn’t already live here I wouldn’t enter the country. Too easy to end up in ICE detention.
My once annual work trip where I have to leave the house and be around other humans:
“Capitalism is EVIL AND SO UNFAIR”
That and “Humanity was a mistake” on my annual trip.
Might make it over a year this year.
The company I work for doesn’t have an office but we have quarterly meetings and it’s the same feeling.
In office workers any day they have to go to the office.
Yeah, pretty much. No one is making me go and I like to see my coworkers occasionally to either plan or just get lunch and maintain some human connection.
But… It’s a 1.5 hour drive and the traffic is never, ever, ever nice. I was once passed by a car towing a boat full of loose hay. Must have been going 90mph.So I do it, but I also cry after making that decision.
Unironically, yes. I have severely debilitating OCD (yes diagnosed), and being in the office or outside in general really fucks me up, even with the medication. It very much felt like I was dying when I was in person, and my fiance had legitimate fears that I might have killed myself up until HR finally decided to give me a reasonable accommodation.
And at the end of this month they’re planning to claw back that accommodation.
Check any documentation they may have had with you when they let you be remote. I wish you luck.
Good luck mate.
hey that’s me :D the one day a week i need to cut my hair, shave and put on a shirt.
the struggle is real man.
drag my arse into office, tap on, and make an appearance, go and get a coffee and sit in the cafe for a few hours. fuck off at 4. i bill by the minute, fuck these cunts.
I’ve been exclusifely working from home for over a decade now. I developed Diabetic Retinopathy and have blind spots in my vision. When I saw a pedestrian appear out of nowhere while he crossed the street in front of me, I stopped driving. My employer was fantastic about making a WFH accommodation since I had a half hour drive to the office every day. I’ve been to my office less than 10 times since then, and they always send an Uber for me to go to the xo,many picnics.
Uhh remote workers don’t go into an office though, that’s kind of the definition.
