I guess this is a correct community to post about this? If not let me know.
My company finally is asking politely that we have to go to the office twice a week. Or else. That else is not yet defined, but obviously there will be consequences of not going to the office.
I have been at this company for 15 years, from junior dev to manager.
I did a daily commute of about 40 mins in the morning, 40 to an hour back, never gave a second thought about that. That was normal.
After pandemics, I found out all I have been missing on my kids growing up. My second kid is much more attached to me since she saw me daily, even if I was in my office room at home, she got to see me more often.
So I found out how much my life improved by doing working at home. Hell in the middle of this sentence my kid just showed me some thing she drew.
I stood my ground, I basically politely told HR that I am not going back. And actually my reasons make sense, I work with people in other countries, they don’t care where I am.
And it will affect my performance, driving to the office, moving all my equipment, and having people around trying to talk to me will take a toll.
So yeah, I am polishing my resume, because there is no turning back now. I will be shunted if I ask for a raise, they can easily say “hey but you are not coming to the office, how come you want a raise if you are not part of the team”, never mind that I do everything that is expected and more.
Just off my chest I guess, and anxious about the future.
There are two reasons they want people back in the office: control and real estate. Managers maintain power by controlling and manipulating people. That’s harder to do if you’re not present. Corporations have huge investments in real estate and don’t want to see these drop in value. None of these reasons convey any benefit to the employee.
The upper management at my work is pushing for 3 days a week, but as of now it’s completely optional. They keep acting like hybrid work is the best of both worlds, but I honestly feel like hybrid work is the worst of both worlds. Moving all of my equipment is so disruptive to my workflow. And now I get all of the drawbacks of needing to commute with the added drawback of needed to move all of my equipment every day that I go in. My laptop will die if it isn’t plugged in for 2 hours, even when asleep, so if I just leave it in my backpack between work days that I go into the office, it will die and I will need to re-open all my applications, which is very time consuming with how slow my laptop is.
My manager decided that our team will have one weekly optional in-office day, so for those of us who want to come in, we can on the same day others want to. We all have lunch together on those days, and we usually leave early - around 3:30 PM. It has actually been really nice to see people’s faces. It’s just understood that we hardly get any actual work done those days, and it’s more for “”“team building”“”
Moving equipment is one of my main issues, only second to commuting.
We don’t have fixed desks, we have to sign up in an app and choose an available space.
So I can’t have my desk the way I want, which is very specific as I have my keyboard, mouse, second keyboard, and also 2 external monitors, in the office there is only 1.
And yeah, if I have to, I would accept like going once every 2 weeks, on a friday, with the assumption that it is going to be a slow day for me and my client should be notified of this.
What is that called again, hotdesk? Abso fucking lute nightmare. It’s like taking an open office and making it even shittier. It’s a net NEGATIVE on CuLtUrE, since it makes everyone feel like they don’t have their own place in the office to be comfy with coworkers.
My last job tried to do this. They didn’t even have enough desks for everyone. My entire team said “no thanks” and several people quit and they backtracked real fast. Now their stock is worth $2 when it used to be $40 a year ago lol
Just look for other jobs if you are standing your ground. Sometimes it takes a few losing a few people for them to realize they fucked up
Lol, served them well. This kind of story should be published more, to warn other companies from doing the same mistake.
You should definitely stop doing “more”, also.
That was a figure of speech haha.
I am old and experienced enough to work exactly the hours I am paid. I give my 100% on those hours, I am all in, and I always push back when they try to sneak a meet after my EOD, try to get some extra hours from me and so on.
