News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:A Hybrid Approach to Work by hinkley on Thursday May 06, 2021 @01:21AM (#27059431)
If people in the building have private offices, and the buildings have floors, there are a lot of psychological barriers that people either didn’t notice of have forgotten about because we’ve been trying to do our best imitation of a feedlot.

I’m not going to go across a building and up steps to ask someone a question unless I am out of other options. I’m not. You’re not. I’ve done too many 5 Why’s where one of the answers was “they made a guess because they couldn’t be arsed to cross the building to verify things”.

We might message that person, if we use it and they actually read their messages. At which point being in the office isn’t quite as transformative.

Re:A Hybrid Approach to Work by asdff on Thursday May 06, 2021 @02:11AM (#27059735)
There's definitely a balance. I shared an office with one other guy before the pandemic. It was great being able to go, "Hey fred, are you busy? you seen something like this before?" and instantly have the coworker fix some super specific issue they faced before related to our setup that would have taken an afternoon or more stringing together the right generic stackoverflow questions.

Now I have to find time in our day loaded with zoom meetings with other people with just as convoluted zoom meeting schedules to zoom with Fred for ten minutes. We might not find a good mutual time to meet until next week.

Scheduling zoom calls vs. leaning back in your chair when your coworker has a second is an entirely different animal when it comes to workplace efficiency. I'd say I'm spending a lot more of my working time scratching my head than getting things done vs. before the pandemic.

There are good things about working from home, but this is probably one of the worst parts in terms of work. It's like studying alone in your cramped bedroom vs in the library with your buddies in college.

Re:A Hybrid Approach to Work by nr2x on Thursday May 06, 2021 @08:45PM (#27070650)
Depends how you are wired, all of my group study interactions in college were thinly veiled romantic efforts, whereas I got my actually studying done at 2am in a mostly empty cafe.