personally I go to the office every day even though I have a long commute. I hate working from home. Mandates for RTO don’t universally make the job worse. Of course I acknowledge it does for some people but not everyone.
I also hate WFH and go in every day even though my company allows full WFH, but RTO mandates suck. The WFH option means the only people who come in, are the people who want to be there. It makes the experience much more pleasant (and less crowded!). I think it'd be nice if more people chose to come in, and I support making changes so more people choose to do that (travel compensation, free child care, more private offices & cubes). But a mandate only makes it worse for everyone.
I actually enjoy going into the office too, but not in a cubicle farm. Every employee should have their own office. I love the hybrid model, but only if that is true.
Being in the office is only nice if it’s not crowded. Having 40-50% occupancy is the sweet spot for me. Any higher and I’ll autocorrect to working from home.
Allow me a small observation: people is not in office or WFH for pleasure, well, at least in most case, but because they need to work, even most talented who in general like they jobs have to accept many not so pleasant aspects of them.
This to say a thing: it's not viable stating "allow those who want the office or WFH individually decide", it's simply too costly for a company, that's why office spaces are often crowded, because being larger cost much more.
So, if a company decide to go remote it MUST go remote PERIOD, if a company decide to have offices it must use them, there is no point in Zoom-in from the office because some coworkers are at home or abroad.
Long story short it's about time to admit that the need of the office is essentially ended, and for certain activities where it's still a thing there is no hybrid option. Companies mandating RTOs prove only to pursue external interests maybe of some inside the company against the interest of the company itself.
> it's simply too costly for a company, that's why office spaces are often crowded
That’s nonsense. My company pays 25x more for my salary than the office space that houses me. Increasing the cost, or decreasing the utilization there is not going to move the needle.
At least, not considering how much extra salary would be needed for me to accept working in an overcrowded office.
your salary it's 25 times the overall office cost? Maybe you are an top manager, an apical figure anyway, but how much it cost the office for all workers (grand total) vs their salary? Compute all office costs, cleaning, air conditioning/heating, surveillance and so on included.
The cost of the office is 1/25 the cost of salaries (this is central Tokyo btw, it doesn’t really get more expensive). The cost of cleaning, air conditioning, surveilance etc is a fraction of that (just as true for your own house/apartment).
You don’t have to be pedantic about it to see that it’s fairly irrelevant in terms of cost.
They absolutely do, because they're mandates. If you want to work from the office you are more than welcome to do so, and nobody here is telling you to stop doing that.
Working from the office gets more useful when more people do it, because of easier communication with teammates, so mandates can absolutely make the work environment better for someone who wants to work in the office.
I wouldn't hire someone who wants to work in a office if they gave me this explanation, sounds like they really lean on the other team members to get day to day work done and probably struggle working independently.
I do and I do. I also don't like having to crush them over and over every day saying "not now, daddy has work..." Going into the office means I'm gone when I'm working, but when I'm with them I'm 100% with them. Days I do work from home and they're not in school can be rough for them.
Also, while I'm lucky enough to afford a whole room of my home as an office two little kids can still end up being quite loud and interruptive. It's nice having a dedicated space to have some quiet on my work schedule.
Plus, free gym for exercise, free tea/coffee, free AC/electricity, there's a free bike share if I drive in and want to ride through the nature preserve near the office or to the restaurants or other parks nearby, meetings in person when we're all right near each other seem easier, free car charging, etc. There's a lot of amenities in the office for me as well.
My commute is only like 2mi from home. It's a 15 minute bike ride. It's not like I'm spending a ton of time and money commuting. If there's something important for me to go to in regards of the kids it's not like I have to hop out for over an hour; the pediatrician is like 10min from the office, the library is closer than that, their school is across the street from the library, etc.
I get not everyone has great amenities, I understand some people have like half-hour commutes or worse. Everyone has their own math to do on if coming in is good or not. But it's not like having kids is instantly a remote work is better.
Good for you. A 15 min bike ride is a hell of a difference for the most of us with 45+ min train/bus/car ride.
Whenever I do take the trip to the office, I spend on average 1.5 hours less time with my 4 year old. This is why I will always refuse to work in an office for as long as my services and talents are marketable with WFH arrangements.
I’m not the person you’re replying to but I do. And absolutely yes, I do. When I work from the office I’m gone longer (maybe 1.5 hours a day) but I’m significantly more present when I’m at home. If I WFH I’ll spend the evening ducking back into my home office to send that email or check that document etc and my mind will be 50% thinking about work all evening. I like a hard cutoff, when I’m home my phone goes off and I’m 100% there for dinner, bath and story time.
> If I WFH I’ll spend the evening ducking back into my home office to send that email or check that document etc and my mind will be 50% thinking about work all evening
If you can resist checking emails after your commute I'm sure that with some self discipline you could also do it without the commute. You're basically admitting that there is no good reason or expectation for you to be working after hours anyway.
It's a state of mind thing, and I can easily fall into the same thing.
When I predominantly work at the office, I can kind of compartmentalize my working mindset to that place. When I leave, I'm done, finished, checked out. Laptop closed, in a bag (or even left at the office). It takes actual effort to return to that state.
When my office is just another room in the house, it's far easier to be stuck in that work mindset. The computer is all set up, it's just a quick password away to getting back exactly where you were when working. It's easy for me to think about a problem I was working on and easily slip back into it. Not so if I need to go grab my backpack, clear off a space for the work computer, hop back on, etc.
During COVID I was in a small apartment. My office was my living room. It felt like I was just always in the office, always working, never at home.
> When my office is just another room in the house, it's far easier to be stuck in that work mindset.
I can see how this can happen, but at the same time it seems like there's such an easy fix: just stop doing it.
But it may actually be a form of addiction, so maybe eaiser said than done. I could probably say the same thing about someone who wants to quit smoking but can't. People that smoke typically enjoy smoking, though, so they probably don't actually want to give it up, they only try to stop because they know it's bad for them. This may be the case here as well: maybe you have a hard time disconnecting from work because you actually want to work.
I'm WFH and I have absolutely zero problem flipping the switch at the end of the day, notifications off, done. I didn't sign up to work nights and weekends and it's not something I want to do, so I'm simply not going to do it (unless it's an emergency).
For me it absolutely is. It is pretty much telling a drug addict "just say no." I get a lot of enjoyment out of many parts of my work. It gives me a lot of pleasure fixing some REST endpoint or optimizing some problem. Given the opportunity my mind will just keep chewing on the problem at all hours of the day when it is a problem I like. It is a dopamine rush to get that thing working. And since its work, there's actual deadlines and what not, real customers waiting, so even though I mentally know I shouldn't let those things affect me personally, emotionally it is harder for me to step away especially when I'm literally sitting in the same chair at the same desk with the same keyboard and mouse I'd use to solve those problems instead of tinker on my own projects that are far more nebulous.
In the end with my office at home set up primarily for work, personal projects take a back seat. With work at the company office, my work setup stays primarily there. My desk at home is free to be littered with my halfway done projects. Breadboards, soldering irons, all the various parts I'm toying with, etc. can take up the whole space. When I get home, that's my space, not their space.
> you actually want to work
Yes, I actually do enjoy what I do most days of the week. There's always the overhead and paperwork and what not that isn't the fun parts, but actually digging in to solve a problem is one of my favorite things to do whether that be at a datacenter or in the cloud or on a car or motorcycle or plumbing or an embedded device or a radio or whatever. Getting paid to be able to work on cool problems is practically gravy on top for me.
And FWIW, it also cuts the other way at times when I WFH. Sometimes my mind wanders and starts thinking about the personal projects at home. Let me go check on this thing, maybe I could just slip out and spend a few minutes trying to dial in the new irrigation controller, I probably need to check the chemical levels in the pool, that glue on the rocking chair repair is probably dry now let me move that along, I should really look into that leak on the wet bar drain, it'll only take a minute...suddenly it is an hour later.
Good for you? I also struggle with work/home boundaries when I have to WFH. "Oh, I should go kick off that build so it's ready in the morning... oh, there's an email... oh, someone had a question for me..." If I leave all my equipment at the office, then it's simply not an option for me to do work outside work hours. It's a system that works well for me, there's no problem to "fix" here.
> it seems like there's such an easy fix: just stop doing it.
If it was such an easy fix you wouldn’t be having this discussion about them going into the office I imagine.
For what it’s worth, I completely relate. If computer is sitting in the place I’ve just been working from the whole day then I’ll walk by and automatically start again.
Your comment would be more informative if you were to actually tell why you hate working from home, what about the office makes it worth the long commute etc.
My job involves 60% writing software and 40% testing with hardware. I work about 5% of my days from home, when I’m sick or have other obligations.
I don’t have the space, time or incentive to set up a home office in the place I live. This unfortunately means all the stuff around me become distractions. I find it harder to sustain long work sessions at home.
I miss having quick chats with coworkers by their desk. Sometimes I hit an issue and all I need is a 30-second talk with the dev 2 aisles over. And it’s mutual: I find these quick chats great for helping folks out and keeping myself in the loop. Instant messaging is not an adequate substitute.
And lastly this is tied to my work and company policies but usually I can only access test hardware at the office, due to logistics or confidentiality.
Plenty of people don't have good spaces to work at home and it's actually quieter at their office. Of course, there's also people in the other direction.