Like "careerist lapdog" in the article. I gave up reading after that.
After 4 years of WFH, not all due to COVID, I make it a point to go to the office 5 days a week even though my company is hybrid 3 days in, 2 days out. Humans are social animals and even though I am an introvert, postage stamp videoconferencing window s don't cut it.
People have been making friends at work since work has existed. It's a place you spend 40 hours a week, very likely with people with similar interests and life experiences. That's a great environment to make friends in and many, many, many people make real friendships through work. It's fine if it doesn't work for you, but telling others it's wrong or bad or unusual to make friends at work is absolute brainworms stuff.
HR makes it clear we’re not to hire anyone with similar interests and life experiences.
At any rate, my reply is under the context of wanting to go to the office for the social interactions. I am not here to socially amuse or validate anyone. Those seeking social fulfillment at the office are exhausting, and they create active stress for those of us with lives outside work who know that work is a thing you do to get paid.
> HR makes it clear we’re not to hire anyone with similar interests and life experiences.
Huh? If you're in the same industry for a long time, you by definition have history in common, and it's pretty likely you've got similar interests if you both ended up at the same place. I don't see how HR could or would want to have an affect on that.
> At any rate, my reply is under the context of wanting to go to the office for the social interactions. I am not here to socially amuse or validate anyone. Those seeking social fulfillment at the office are exhausting, and they create active stress for those of us with lives outside work who know that work is a thing you do to get paid.
Indeed, this is a great example of why forced-RTO is a terrible policy for everyone, including folks who like coming in to the office!
> [...] postage stamp videoconferencing window s don't cut it.
Where I work almost all meetings are online, because the majority of people WFH. And it's easier to join online than to walk to a common room for those that don't.
If anyone enables their camera that's usually causing a short burst of laughter. Not because there's anything particularly funny, but simply because noone is used to see other people's faces anymore.
The screen space is used for more important things.
> "poor self-discipline" is quite the judgy statement to make dude.
I certainly didn't think it was so extreme that it needed to be flagged.
I simply find it an incredible concept that a person needs to physically leave a building before they can mentally adjust to "being at work"/"not being at work".
I don't have a special 'office space' in my home environment. Over the years I've intentionally trained myself to not need anything other than my laptop to program on. In this way _even before the pandemic_ I was able to work under a tree in the park, at a café, on a train, at home or even (the most noisy and distracting place) at the office.
Admittedly, when at the office I also needed noise-cancelling headphones - along with every single other programmer employed there because of the constant distraction of people talking, managers making personal phone calls, sales high-fiving each other, and so on.
> Admittedly, when at the office I also needed noise-cancelling headphones - along with every single other programmer employed there because of the constant distraction of people talking, managers making personal phone calls, sales high-fiving each other, and so on.
Don't you think someone could say to you that those headphones are expensive and unneccesary, and that this problem simply reflects your lack of work focus? Wouldn't that be offputting and annoying if someone were to say that to you?
> Wouldn't that be offputting and annoying if someone were to say that to you?
There's a very emotionally-loaded tone to this discussion, which I don't think was an element in my original comment. I was struck by the fact that some people seem unable to change their mental state just because they're at an "office" or at "home".
This is totally different to the fact that an open-plan office (all I've ever experienced before the pandemic) is a noisy and disruptive environment, with people talking loudly, making phonecalls, playing ping-pong, eating, and often dogs running around and barking.
I think many people did actually read that element into your original comment. I tried to highlight that here from a different perspective, so maybe you'd see what that could come across like if you were on the other side.
For full transparency I use the noise cancelling headphones same as you, I think it's very logical and it does help me in the same way. I don't think that would be a reasonable thing to say to you. But the framing and emotionally loaded tone comes across as comparable to your original comment.
E: and just in case: You will think those are very different scenarios, and your preference makes sense given the context. That's a valid perspective! But the people you were talking about in your original comment feel the same way!
After 4 years of WFH, not all due to COVID, I make it a point to go to the office 5 days a week even though my company is hybrid 3 days in, 2 days out. Humans are social animals and even though I am an introvert, postage stamp videoconferencing window s don't cut it.