- prior to the pandemic and the surge in remote work, people were already talking about how offices are set up in a way which can be unnecessarily miserable, but crams more people in the same space, minimizing real estate cost per head.
- but even though in my city, there's now a giant glut of vacant commercial office space, I've yet to see a single company make the pitch: we'll give you a private office if you come in to work face to face.
- things become clearer if we frame this using a term with some history: working conditions. White-collar workers that have never unionized are now pushing for greater control of their working conditions. A partial list of grievances has been a subject of public discussion for years. Some employers are willing to deal with remote work as a bundled solution to multiple issues, but so far I've seen no employers who are willing to meaningfully compromise on what the office looks like.
Works pretty well. On top, my team could decide to only have a presence day every two weeks and we have that as a meetings day where there is no expectation to write code or do focused work but socialize.
I found that this I am in favor of a hybrid setup like this. For the reasons stated in the post, I really do like coming together in person and at the same time I am a parent that appreciates the time saved when working remote from home most days.
I started wearing them too because they work well but also as a passive aggressive FU to whoever designed these open office floor plans (the ear protectors are usually bright colors like yellow so there is no mistaking them for headphones)
We’re treated like assembly line workers in more and more companies anyway so why not also start wearing the PPE that goes with it?
My employer at the time had us working in a retrofitted warehouse as software developers. Huge sprawling floor plans with cubicle farms thrown in. The sound acoustics of the building, lighting (sky lights mixed with arrays of fluorescent lights), and the shear amount of people walking around my desk made it nearly impossible to stay focused for any reasonable amount of time. This forced nearly all of us to use noise cancelling headphones which in turn killed any sort of social aspect of being in office.
At home, I can work in silence if I want. If I want background noise, I can play music on a stereo or turn on the TV in the next room. When my back hurts, I can lie down on the sofa, or stretch and foam roll in a way which would be conspicuous in the office. I can be barefoot all day if I want. I can snack on the food that I like enough to buy, without broadcasting the pretention of bringing my own food to the micro kitchen. I can eat healthier lunches than the office catered food. Even without considering commuting, or the amount of time spent in synchronous interactions, just being able to control my own space is sooo much more comfortable. I injured my back this year, and taking care of it has been so much easier at home than it would have been in open plan hell.
A bunch of that stuff is nominally compatible with being "in the office" -- just give me a private office, with real walls, the ability to buy my own furniture, etc. But tech long ago decided that engineers get cubicles or open plan desks, that the way you know we're working is it see that we're looking at screens rather than seeing our actual output, that a clean modern spaceship aesthetic is more important than workers being able to control or customize their workspace. Is it that we don't value the office, or that the office has been created by people who don't value us?