Or go to a bar and say hi to people who are hanging around. Compliment someone’s jacket. Tell someone that their whole aesthetic is cool as fuck. Comment on the weather. Become a part of your local environment and interact with your fellow humans. Join a hiking or hobby group.
Work is actually one of the worst places to get your social enrichment. You’re significantly more likely to change jobs than cities and your innie is less likely to feel like your true self. Furthermore there’s a baseline mental taxation of being at work that doesn’t come with being in a social environment. And nobody’s going to come up to you at a social event and tell you to get back to work.
Or go to a bar and say hi to people who are hanging around. Compliment someone’s jacket. Tell someone that their whole aesthetic is cool as fuck. Comment on the weather. Become a part of your local environment and interact with your fellow humans. Join a hiking or hobby group.
Nah, I’m good thanks
Fair enough, it will help with loneliness though. And I’ll acknowledge it’s hard and awkward at first, but it’s a skill and it’s one I think many people would appreciate developing. It’s like getting in shape but for the social part of the self.
Even if I felt lonely, none of those things are how I would start talking to anyone.
When I’m in public I wish to be left alone. It would be a violation of the Golden Rule for me to start talking to randos about their outfits or the weather.
lmao. ikr. Extroverts just don’t get it. 😔
Remember how clean the air was when most people were working from home?
But shareholder value is more important.
Good luck to this woman finding good employees. Good employees have a choice.
Yeah, when I’m looking for sound mental health advice, I ask a CEO. Doesn’t everyone?
What if it’s the CEO of mental health
CEOs almost never have the skills and experience in actually doing the work of their company. I and other techs have had to do IT work for the CEOs of our IT support company. Plus one of them accidentally opened a phishing email.
Even worse. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
“Hard truth I learned as a CEO: Sometimes you have to lie to get what you want, regardless of reality and facts”
Anyone who thinks more work gets done in the office is an idiot, or lying.
Eh, it depends. I find that there is a benefit in highly collaborative projects or in an environment where training is a component.
For instance, a lot of data showed that junior staff productivity tanked as they didn’t have the mentoring opportunities that they would have had in a full remote environment.
I am the team lead and architect for my group. We have green engineers and interns. The other day my team was publically acknowledged as being one of the most productive and well oiled teams because of the detail I put in. On a weekly basis I am doing mentoring activities and 1 on 1s with everyone. And I still find time to be writing specs, design documents, code, and hour of meetings.
It requires very little effort. What I have found is that the vast number of leads and managers just aren’t good at teaching or helping others. It’s not a face to face issue. It’s soft skills, logistics, and actually wanting a good team issue. All I am doing is the opposite of what all my bad managers did.
Maybe, but I find that my staff benefits from several daily discussions and that interaction generally doesn’t happen over the Internet. My staff are more proactive at asking me questions if I’m physically there than over Teams.
We solved that with a party line. Most days we have an open meeting we all sit in that makes natural talking easier. We chit chat and bring up work issues as is we were sitting next to one another. It is totally voluntary, some days its just me alone in the call. Other days none of us are even muted.
right now I am hiding in a call booth in my office on our one in person day a week because the rest of the office is singing along to achy breaky heart while two junior employees throw lifesaver mints at each other.
Where the fuck is the boss?
one CXO is playing the music, the COO hides in the corner by the swag storage, the CEO has a private office not connected to the main bullpen, the two VPs don’t care or are joining in
At that point, it sounds like the group’s culture that you’re in isn’t a good fit for you, and I can understand your frustration that you have to go into work to suffer this.
eh it’s one day a week and I’m respected and appreciated in other contexts it’s just the one day because the boss is convinced it enables the team.
Do many people get mentored in the office? I have worked for decades and have never been mentored.
Edit: I assume random, one off comments don’t count as mentoring. “Don’t put your feed up on the desk” isn’t mentoring right?
Between interns and junior engineers, I’d say I am doing about 0.5 to 1 day a week of 1 on 1 work with all of them. Sometimes it’s direct problem solving and other times it’s going over topics they are interested in. The last few weeks have been on development processes and workflows, time management and getting things done, presentations and soft skills. I even helped one work on interviewing.
If I can train them to be amazing at their next job chances are they stick around longer and do great things here.
In my industry, it is very common. It is generally accepted that a large part of senior staff’s time is reviewing the work of junior staff to make the work better. A lot of that requires teaching junior staff how to perform the work correctly.
Depends on the career. As an engineer I really wish we’d quit our decentralized bullshit and just form a guild or union so that after university you join an official apprenticeship rather than find a job looking for people without experience willing to train. The whole x years of experience is often really asking how much mentorship do you need and are you able to lead projects.
This person probably goes to the office and sits in her own private room by herself, because she can’t focus with the loud plebs on the big open office floor
This person arrives at 10, has a 1.5hour lunch, talks loudly around other people, leaves at 2 because needs to pick up the dog from the dog sitter, complains people are never in the office, only shows up 2 days a week if you’re unlucky, 0 days if you’re lucky.
Don’t forget all those “networking” trips out of town.
I could spend 3 hours a day on a train and do teams meetings in the office, or i could not do 3 hours a day on trains and do teams meetings at home.
I was paying £550 a month in train tickets before covid freed me
It amazes me that leaders don’t get this. My office is filled with separate one-sided calls and it’s unbearable. Furthermore I’ve not been in a meeting without Silicon Valley listening in in at least 5 years.
They do get it but they don’t care. They want you to be uncomfortable and miserable because it keeps up the value of their commercial real estate portfolio .
Also tax breaks. Many large corpos negotiated city tax breaks for bringing a certain number of employees into downtowns. If those numbers don’t meet minimums, the tax breaks go away.
Any we all know how much time, effort and expense a business person will go through to avoid paying $1 in taxes.It makes sense, but what would be even more valuable for real estate is if we gave up on crampt open plan offices and give people some space 😅
“Why don’t people want to hang out with me?”
“My only friends are people on my payroll.”
“People don’t want to hang out with me unless I pay them”
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of sadistic people like this who bond together just fine.
I suspect this is mainly because almost all of the CEOs I’ve met are workaholics, and being “at work” is the only way they can self-validate.
And remember, most of them are dark-personality traits, which explains why they cannot understand why you don’t want to go in
Does she think sleepless nights are going to improve mental health?
I am in general a big proponent for going to go to the office, I am an IT guy, and I find I have more focus when in the office, I also don’t want to associate my home with work, I need the physical separation and I find it to be easier to coordinate with others in the office.
That being said, this CEO is stupid, loneliness is not cured by being forced to interact with people that I need to be paid to interact with.
I also realize that just because I find the office beneficial, does not mean I get to dictate how other people should feel about it.
I am in general a big proponent for going to go to the office, I am an IT guy, and I find I have more focus when in the office, I also don’t want to associate my home with work, I need the physical separation and I find it to be easier to coordinate with others in the office.
Some people do.
The trick about remote work is not that it lets us all work from home, but that it gives us another location and we can pick our best environment.
I found a job that promises “work from anywhere in the country”, and many people min-maxed their location for profit. They only have to match time-zone to ensure they’re punched in during ‘business hours’ (and, for some, starting later in their day to synch with the home office is f’n awesome).
But they still maintain “hotel” spots, two of them permanent. People did find some days or many days in the office each week is their jam. Some come and go as per their current needs and best environment. One of my peers went camping, and did a server update over VPN over starlink over smores, and then put the laptop away for the weekend. He was proving he can camp while on-call.
Sometimes I like my view. Sometimes I need a featureless wall to cut down on distractions. I find what is best and I rock that shit. And that’s what it’s about: find your best space.
When the only space is Office Space, then there is no freedom to find that environment where you crush it today, and that needs to be seen as an impairment. Let us pick our time and place and - sun tzu - victory is assured.
I fully agree with you, there are times when I need to work remote, I hate it, but I love having the option to do it.
During the pandemic, I worked from home in two week periods, it was absolutely terrible, just disconnecting from the RDP session and be in “home mode” never worked for me, normally take the bus to and from the office and have an hour to wind down after work and just empty my mind through Youtube, I don’t have that mandatory time when I work from home…
These days I at least have a car, so I can take a trip after work, but when driving, my brain doesn’t really rest, so it is far from the relaxing time heading home on the bus…
I started working remotely before the pandemic because it absolutely works for me. But part of that is that I have things that I do to get into and out of office mode. I get up and get dressed, make myself breakfast, and have a separate area where my office PC lives. When I’m done with work I leave my office. Even if I’m going to be back in there very shortly to record music (because my office doubles as my studio) I walk out of it physically. If I don’t feel disconnected enough from work I’ll change clothes or shower. The key is to always be intentional about it.
That’s not in an effort to convince you of anything. Just giving you tools to keep in your toolbox in case you ever want to use them.
Some folks do way better in an office. Some don’t. But I’m absolutely convinced the workers that want everyone back at the office really need someone to talk to because no one in their personal life wants to be their friend. They don’t have a life with interests and hobbies. But the people that want to go back to the office because it’s better for them, I absolutely support y’all! I think you’re great.
At the moment I live in an apartment with two rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a walk in closet, it is 70m2, I would love to have a separate room to go and do work in, but it is just not feasible here.
I recently installed a two meteter long office desk (can be risen and lowered naturally), I have my normal home computer on one side and a workspace for when I work from home, it is far better than remoting in from my home machine, so improvements are being made
I get it. And that’s part of (but certainly not the only) the reason it’s not for everyone. Even if you had 200m² it might not be for you because some folks just honestly do better in the office, but at 70 it’s going to be psychologically difficult for almost anyone. You’ve made good headway with the separate work workstation on your desk.
Yeah, when using RDP from my home machine, it was far too easy to alt tab into a game…
A completely sane viewpoint that respects the different needs and preferences of others? Weird.
I completely respect your position. Some people genuinely like the office life and it’s totally fine!
Personally, I have never had any boundary issue with home being used for work. I have my own office room that is also my hobby room that I made as I like, so it’s a very nice and quiet space, and I love working there.
Besides the obvious aspects of this post which are quite dumb, what that person misses is that by working from home I finish to work at 17 and at 17.01 I am free to go meet people. Cutting commuting time frees quite some time for personal life and not to mention working from home is associated with more flexible work too, like doing some chores during a break etc., which frees up even more time.
Same here. If I could I’d only WFH, but we only get a few days a week. I don’t have an issue disconnecting mentally from work. However, I think a big contributor is I don’t exactly hate my current job. I sometimes surprise myself how easily and quickly I switch off.
My TL on the other hand prefers the office, probably because they have two young kids, who can be quite loud and require lots of attention.
I was a manager at an aerospace company for a bunch of years, just recently retired. One of my takeaways was that, like so many facets of managing people, there’s no single right way to do WFH. I had employees who could WFH 100% of the time, with increased productivity and increased morale. I had employees that fit OP’s description and were super lonely during the pandemic because their whole social life revolved around work. I had employees who preferred WFH, but were much more productive when they could collaborate in person.
I was frustrated that my company insisted on implementing one-size-fits-all solutions, which eventually became 100% RTO. I thought it would have been most effective to let managers decide what worked best for individuals and teams. For many of my employees, I would have asked for a hybrid arrangement, where they came into the office two days a week, with one of those days being common to the team and one being flexible, and the ability for anyone to come in more than that if desired. But I also had employees who either didn’t have a collaborative job, or they collaborated with people at different sites (so had to do virtual meetings anyway), and those people I would have said could 100% WFH.
I couldn’t work from home but I really like coworking spaces.
Rather than having to commute all the way to the main office I have an office located 5 min away from home.
This way I do have an office, coworkers but without the long commute.
Codie A Sanchez does a lot less work WFH, is what I took from this.
Time to go back to the office and have still all meeting online with extra background noise. Looking for a quiet corner to be able to hear others properly is great for my mental health.
Also the office life improves my soft skills, like:
- walking with my laptop open im my hand with a headset on to find an empty meeting room
- sharing desks with annoying co-workers from other departments
- enjoying other peoples conversations about their lunch plans from the other side of the open plan office
- fighting for the thermostat setting and opening/closing the windows
- embracing the daily multi-hour commute in rush hours
It really builds character.
Your office windows can be opened ? Luxury!
After writing that I feel I may need to clarify that I mean actual physical windows in an office building, not some self opening Microsoft product.
Your office has 11 windows?
It used to have 95 windows, but times have changed
I had 10 Windows, but those were the last I ever need. Now have penguins.
This made me chuckle :)
My first job shoved me into a tiny room that’s maybe 10 C hotter than the rest of the office. Anyone who wandered in would go “Wow it’s really hot in here! You guys should talk to building management!”. I swear the damn office nearly gave me heat stroke.
“Hi, I’m a shitty person who has an opinion that is self-serving. Let me tell you what I think.”
Ah yes. The lament of the middle managers with nothing to do. They feel threatened because it turns out they weren’t needed after all.
I work from home, and my manager works from home also. He’s not even in the same country as me.
Not all middle management has a thing for insisting people work from the office.
Middle managers don’t have power to insist such things. Daddy CEO makes these calls with a lot of fanfare
Managers of technical people are required, but in an efficient organisation there is no need to have layer to manage those managers.
If my next job is office only. I’m strictly only using a desktop PC. You can give me a travel laptop. But I’m never taking it home.
office only
but bob, it’s a corporate retreat, we’re all going, grab your laptop
“FUCK YOU TODD, WHEN I WAS HIRED THE POSITION WAS OFFICE ONLY. GO FUCK YOURSELF AND YOUR RETREAT”
