This basically means that they did not modify their lifestyle for remote work.
Purging office bullshit from your life requires some changes in lifestyle, no question about it. The workplace has to be established, distractions (much less than what is in the office, but still) have to be managed. Social needs have to be satisfied sy some other means.
Still, work from anywhere (not home, mind you, and please do not confuse the two) is much better.
I really can't understand how one can be this shallow minded. Maybe the life style required to make remote work effective is not the desirable lifestyle for everyone? Maybe people value different things in life? Or maybe some people actually enjoy the place of their work and the physical presence of their coworkers?
>Purging office bullshit
For a lot of people offices offers a lot more benefits other than bullshit. Maybe your experience with office work came from a place with super toxic work culture? It sure sounds like it from how bitter you sound and I can understand how that contributed to your bias.
>Still, work from anywhere (not home, mind you, and please do not confuse the two) is much better.
For you, and for the type of work you do, maybe. But blanket statements like that is just silly.
Why continue engaging in a circular argument about individual preferences if you’re saying it’s subjective?
If it’s subjective why must a norm either way be a thing? Isn’t that putting pressure on people that DON’T want office culture?
You’re the one making how they phrased a comment a blanket statement. I’m inferring it as their personal preference alone. Detach from semantics and literally perceive it as another person typing text into a box.
It’s silly to expect everyone to language in a vague way so as not to appear too opionated based upon your sensibilities.
There is nothing shallow about this observation.
If they chose not to it's fine. They just missed a different and, in my opinion, a better experience. Their choice.
I cannot in good faith come up with a type of work that genuinely requires being in an office. Not on a workfloor, not in a lab, not in a conference room - an office.
Please enlighten me.
Social aspects of offices are overrated. Less formal association is better if only because no one is forced into them.
I can say the same thing about WFH. If you have made the lifestyle adjustment then you wouldn't crave to be working remotely either.
Btw I don't know what kind of lifestyle adjust you were thinking about that can magically change someone's personality or family situation.
>If they chose not to it's fine. They just missed a different and, in my opinion, a better experience. Their choice.
Exactly, it is your opinion, but not a universal fact.
>I cannot in good faith come up with a type of work that genuinely requires being in an office.
Just like how you prefer WFH even when your job doesn't require you to work from home, a lot of people can prefer to work at an office even though it's not required.
>Social aspects of offices are overrated. Less formal association is better if only because no one is forced into them.
For you, maybe. I find my social interaction at office to be neither overrated nor forced.
But my first few years as an engineer, I loved going into the office. We played ping pong, we drank, we socialized, played games. There were even free snacks! Pretty good ones. Maybe for a lot of engineers that all feels silly, but I'd never thought I'd have a job that cool.
You can call that all "bullshit perks" or whatever, but it made the start of my career so motivating and fun.
I work fulltime remote now. I'm the CEO of a company, and we're fully remote. It has huge advantages, but I wouldn't trade that first office experience for anything.
Do you have any data or research to back up this assertion? How is it rated today, how should it be rated instead?
This might be true for you but it’s not true for everyone.
I personally far prefer WFH/anywhere. But I've always been very introverted and reclusive. I love the freedom of being able to work alone from any location, but I know many or perhaps most people crave some kind of in-person socializing; even just eating food together. I generally feel better avoiding that, but many feel worse.
People should be free to choose whatever makes them happiest and fits their lifestyle best. Everyone's different, and neither option is objectively better. There's a huge range of personalities and dispositions out there. I will always seek remote work and will prefer remote-first/remote-only companies, and many will do the opposite, and we're both making the right choice.
is the alternative to working in an office really working alone? Should it not be moving your interactions and realtionships to alternative channels, not eliminating them?
If I crave social contact, I message a friend online, or rarely, call them. If I don't crave it, then I don't.
> Still, work from anywhere
And this is the contradiction I find hard to manage. Not saying it's impossible, more in the "not sure how to do it"
Good equipment is important. A nice desk is important.
If you're hopping over AirBnbs, it's hard to carry all your stuff with you and have a good desktop experience wherever you go.
Working outside (from a balcony) is usually not great. Screens are not great on sunlight, then there's rain, wind, etc. And concentration suffers a bit
It looks a bit complicated at first glance.
The point is that remote work allows you to carve out that lovely workplace just about anywhere as opposed to being forced to some arbitrary and thus by definition suboptimal location.
I just rent houses in nice places by a sea. Mediterranean usually, but also Goa and Caribbean and whatnot. I think the shortest strech was two months or so. Median is about a year or two. At these time scales moving 30kg or so of equipment isn't much of a problem.
A desk and a chair - now that I prefer to DIY, desk from some local wood stock, chair - take a nice leather auto seat from some local auto salvage shop, mount it on an office chair's base. Done in an evening, costs almost nothing, much superior to every overpriced office chair, usually given away when I move out.
Ah yes, the "if it's not working you're doing it wrong rsponse". See also: Agile Methodology
Ironincally these types of back-forths are far more common in remote, async conversations than face-to-face.
