When I worked for Bell, they had just ended their WFH policy. I was required to be in the office every day. The rest of my team was still under the policy according to their contract, including my boss who was a 10 minute walk from the office, so they all worked from home. And most of my meetings involved teams in 3 different cities, not to mention the fact that it was Bell, so all meetings were over the phone with a screen sharing app. There were some other people that worked in the office, but they worked with different teams so I didn’t interact with them beyond saying “hi” in the break room as I was getting coffee. But it was apparently very important that I be in the office.
Some days I really appreciate the fact that I left IT.
Fuck Bell
Could also be laying off people without doing “layoffs”. Not everybody is going to return to the office, problem solved.
Teams room technician here. Just wanna say= fuck teams. For the love of god, use any implementation of video conferencing besides teams.
One small detail that encapsulates all that’s wrong with teams= the software that runs the room-scale experience frequently refers to itself as ‘skype for business’, even in current, official documentation from Microsoft. Hell, the (well known) default password for the system is the acronym ‘sfb’.
Please. If you’re spec’ing new software for video conferencing, use anything but teams.
Oh! I always thought that password was short for “Sam Fankman-Bried”
also it crashes my audio driver on windows 11 regularly, so fucking annoying…
only teams manages to do that… somehowIdk, most teleconference solutions are pretty much the same. Our teams rooms have been working very well imo.
Zoom is worse though from a security standpoint
We were “encouraged” by our CEO to go back to office and “collaborate”. So my rule is now 2 days per week in the office (sometimes 1, sometimes 3, I’m flexible), but when I’m there, no calls/meetinga as much as possible. I’m socialising, shooting the shit, drinking coffee, playing ping pong with my peers. Realistically this works about half thr time, the other half we are organically ending up doing some work, discussing that thing we always wanted to but it never fits in a formal meeting slot, coming up with ideas how to solve a problem we didn’t even realise we had until it came up during coffe or smth… At the beginning my boss complained a bit and I just told him I’m collaborating. He let it go!
So, BTO has a (limited) point, there is value to be there in person sometimes…
I’m a strong advocate for this.
There’s no point of “everybody together in the office” if we’re too busy in Teams meetings or have to focus on individual tasks. The real benefit is when we have days with open calendars and we can discuss stuff and come up with ideas.
And that is without a doubt the biggest reason to show up, the socializing. It definitely sounds like you have a killer deal there with more days at home but added flexibility
This is why hybrid is a dumb idea unless everyone in the meeting is in the office on the same day.
My office has hybrid with the same two in office days for everyone, and it is great for communication that works in person and then we get all the work done the other three days without office distractions.
If the days weren’t consistent it would be pointless.
In some cases, being in at the same time doesn’t matter because people can’t get of their ass and walk across the street, or sometimes even down the hall!
Source: The environment I work in does exactly this.
The primary issue in this is that for years, both organizations and people have accepted that inside the office is the way that work has always been conducted (not true, by the way), that working in the office is an fundamental, unchangeable human nature and the only way which work can be done, and all attention to keep people happy at work is to iteratively improve by putting foosball table and catered lunches in the office.
So, when COVID showed that working from home is possible, even more efficient at times, against the perceived human nature to show that change can happen and the office isn’t even NEEDED, the cynicism kicked in: to admit that work from home regularly is even possible would be to admit that the previous system was fundamentally wrong, and that having a giant office at all is ultimately a waste of money, which is why they are so desperate to revert and remove work from home to somehow justify paying for an office for all these years and that things can never change for the better, ever, and the broken system was to be always accepted.
It’s a form of expression of despair, and despair often isn’t logical.
Isn’t this the sunk cost fallacy?
For the unitiated: https://yourbias.is/the-sunk-cost-fallacy
The summary version is that you’ve spent so much time and money on something that you keep it around because you’ve spent so much time and money on it.
It is! But I also think the reason is more than just the sunken cost fallacy.
That seems likely to me.
I could speculate on what that might be, but there’s little value in such speculation.
I hope you have a wonderful day!
You too!
Damn Margot you smart
But playing dumb is way funnier though…
Don’t all beautiful women actually need to play dumb?
You watched the monologue part in that movie I can’t promote right now, right?
Bank I quit working for 6 months ago did this. During the pandoodle our team was allowed to build itself as though WFH was permanent. Then someone in c-suite realized that the bank owned all the parking garages next to the offices they had all over the country, and that they were missing out on about $12/employee/day, so they started pressuring us to come in. Trouble is, some of our team was in Pittsburgh, some in Cleveland, some in Dallas, some in LA, and at least one we couldn’t prove but strongly suspected had his US work permission but was actually working from his family farm in Mexico. So we went from being comfortable in our homes with no commute and doing all of our meetings via teleconferencing to being uncomfortable, having anywhere from a 30 to 90 minute commute depending on which team member you talk to, and still only being able to meet online.
Fucking hate Teams.
It’s getting better. A couple years ago it was a hot mess. I do still have to manually kill the app and restart it if my VPN acts up, though.
Zoom > Google meet > teams > in person meetings
Sending a fucking email > any kind of meeting
If people read emails, they are great.
Most things are fine by email, unless they lead to questions. A few people on a zoom/teams to discuss a complex problem followed by an email summarizing the decision is great. Anything larger than a few people by zoom/teams that involves discussion is a train wreck, but they are good for large groups watching a live presentation that includes active Q&A.
Everyone in a zoom/teams with a shitty facilitator are great for appearing to be busy for an hour or two while doing something else.
We’re supposed to use Teams for everything, but for some reason some managers sometimes organize meetings with Zoom instead and I hate it every time…
I didn’t have one less Zoom call in the office vs WFH.
Muh water cooler
Some days, I want a change of environment. I’m not completely against going back to the office but it should be voluntary.
You can change your own environment?
I’m built different
I find working from the office makes it easier to separate from work when I’m trying to relax. Also easier to run errands when I’m already out than after 8hours of work stress combined with “being at home” inertia.
It’s harder to oppress you if you aren’t actually there
I still remember several months into the pandemic how my then-company’s VP brought up how we can go back into the office, but we wouldn’t be able to meet in the same room or be in close proximity to each other, and so any/all communications would still need to be done via MS Teams.
I think even he realized how ridiculous that sounded because there was a momentary pause before he finished his sentence.
Hey, the failing precast company I used to work for did this. The plant manager also was having weekly meetings with the office workers so he could read to them from Paul Aker’s most recent word vomit on “Lean” as if they were 2nd graders.
I believe business need to adopt a hybrid approach. There are just aspects of human interaction you can’t do with teams. I’d you job has your working on a team meeting in person once or twice a week makes a difference.
What about no WFH, Hybrid or back to office and just use common sense.
Stop treating peoplw like they can’t choose whats best for them.
I go into the office… When I need to. It’s a pretty radical idea.
Could be 0 days a week? Could be 5. It depends what I’m doing and who I’m working with.
Sadly hybrid often means (2-3) days in the office. Why? Why must we bucket things? It’s stupid.
Obviously it should be a case by case basis. But a lot of these jobs pushing full return to office some actually benefit from that and a more hybrid structure would benefit them.
The problem is that most people literally cannot choose what’s best for them.
This is a repetitive theme in society with problems like obesity and poor diet choices.
It’s great that you are self-driven and able to make the best choice when it’s not the easy choice, but most people just will not choose to go into the office when they aren’t forced to. And the quality and pace of work will suffer for it.
Yeah! Like sex!
Or retrieving a document from a network printer.
It depends on the gig. I’m a software engineer, I’m at my happiest and most productive when I have a user story and no interruptions. I’m also a senior dev and recently passed my 10,000 hours, I don’t really benefit too much from close interaction with other devs on my team and their code will teach me anything they have to teach me. Thinking back to when I was fresh out of college, however, I benefited greatly from having a mentor who was close at hand for both coding and cultural learning.
