[electrosphere]

I'm introverted but very glad I have the option of working from the office and being among fellow staff, we also have a lunchtime exercise club once a week. It's much better for my mental health.

In fact, I've added two days working outside of home instead of one because of the benefits. I think 3 days home/2 days office is the sweet spot.

[ray_v]

We've been slowly creeping back toward being fully RTO, and my mental health has been in what I can only describe as "steep decline". I don't know if I pin it all on RTO, but it sure isn't helping the situation. I love my job, but hate the in-office requirements - I'm a systems admin.

[electrosphere]

Sorry to hear that. Being a sysadmin, I guess you're mainly interacting with systems rather than people and need to focus. They should exempt you from RTO except for the odd "all hands" meeting days.

I'm a software engineer in a Product Engineering team and it's about 75% hands-on engineering, 25% Slack/Teams interaction and alignments between people. I find being in the office helps to make connections with other staff in other teams (eg. bumping into people while making coffee in staff kitchen etc). I think thats important from a career perspective.

[toomuchtodo]

Vote with your feet.

https://hiring.cafe

(no affiliation)

[a456463]

The keywords that you are not saying are "is a sweet spot FOR YOU"

If it is a sweet spot for you fine, I am happy you found it. But DO NOT FORCE all of US who have different sweet spots to meet you at yours.

[ultratalk]

I don't think GP was forcing anyone to do anything.

[electrosphere]

Thanks pal, I was not forcing anyone... but I guess my wording made it sound "this applies to everyone!".

I put my comment out there to trigger just this kind of discussion.

[wing-_-nuts]

I'm not saying you're doing this, but I can't tell you how many complaints I've read where people who want to work in office get there, are bummed out about the fact that their colleagues all work from home, and go whinging to management who are looking for any excuse to bring people back into office.

That tends to generate resistance

[casey2]

Says that guys that FORCED all of America into car dependency

[deinonychus]

So you hate waffles?

[apercu]

I get that, and a lot of people like to be social with other people. But just because 10% (made up number) like it, there's no reason to force it on the rest of the workforce (not that you are).

I encourage people who are remote but want human contact to rent a desk once a week at a co-working space.

For me personally, I want to do my work as efficiently as possible, in as little time as possible, and then have my social time, which has very little in common with my work and/or colleagues.

I might be an exception, but I get up very, very early and work almost right away, and I don't want to be on a roll and then have to pack up, get in the car at a terrible traffic time where (some) people are driving like animals, hunt for parking and then find a desk. That's a huge _tax_ on my productivity.

But I don't expect or demand that the rest of the world do this.

As a side comment, I would agree with you though, that 2 in the office is better than one. But I also had a very effective pattern around 10 years ago, where I spent 2 days in the office per month, and that worked really well for me (though those days were far, far less productive than my at home work days).

Now, if the world adopted a 32 hour, 4-day work week I would probably be ok with the office 1 day a week.

[asdff]

The hubris of our generation damning our species into a global warming catastrophe just because we want to stand around the water cooler and have lunchtime exercise club for these last few decades at our apogee.

[yls]

There are many cities around the world where most employees use public transports.

[thelastgallon]

Zero days in office is the sweet spot. Get rid of all physical infrastructure. Its mind boggling that we are building a completely unnecessary second space for work and then build transportation infrastructure to move between two spaces all, compel people to drive back and forth, deal with traffic congestion and waste 2 hours/day, buy cars, pay for insurance, deal with accidents, use up precious mind space in driving through horrible traffic. If people have mental health issues, it doesn't mean that we need to build a second space for them. There are other ways to deal with mental health issues.

[stemlord]

True, and then think of all the real estate that gets opened up for third spaces

[array_key_first]

While this is true and many people echo this, I also think this is partially caused by an over-reliance on work.

Ideally, we should not be put in a situation where we have to get necessary social health through our jobs. It should be through our hobbies, our passions, our friends, and our family. The people and things we choose to spend time with.

I'm not judging you either, because this is also the case for me. But, I think, if I was WFH, I would have a lot more free time. I could dedicate that to social interactions. Most people don't, but they could.

[josephcsible]

Having the option of working from the office is a good thing. It's only being unnecessarily forced to do so that's bad.

[Apocryphon]

What's your commute like? There are many aspects to the RTO vs. WFH debate, but having to waste away 1-3 hours a day on the road, coupled with the energy use in the OP, really cancels out the mental health aspects of being in office. It even detracts from the amount of work done.

[electrosphere]

The London office commute is 30 minutes train and 25 minutes walk. I really like that balance as it gives me sunlight, exercise and fresh air.

I work from a library on the other day, thats a 30 minute drive. I tend to leave before 0700 when the roads are peaceful. My car is pretty fuel efficient, i try to hypermile it and get ~50mpg.

[linkjuice4all]

Imagine how much more sunshine you could enjoy working in the evening and enjoying the outdoors during the day - good thing they've got the exercise club.

[stefandesu]

My sweet spot is the same. I like being at the office (because I like my colleagues), but with almost an hour commute each way, going every day is very draining. I'm glad my employer is giving us pretty much total flexibility.

[stemlord]

Even 3 days in office, 2 days home feels significantly better because that's the point at which one is spending less days out of the week in the office

[gdilla]

ultimately people want choice. not forced ways of working. not sure why companies don't get this.