Three years after Silicon Valley companies led the charge for embracing remote work in the early days of the pandemic, the tech industry is now escalating the fight to bring employees back into the office -— and igniting tensions with staff in the process.
I recently left a tech job that was 100% remote for one that requires 2 days a week in the office.
When I started the remote only job it was good, I had people I talked to on a daily basis, we did all our ceremonies (bi-weekly meetings) over Teams, we were pretty productive and there were few distractions.
Over time though they pushed for more people to be back in the office, but as someone who lived the other end of the country this wasn’t really an option for me. I gradually felt more isolated, I started dreading the ceremonies because everyone else could have proper human interaction and they often forgot about the one or two guys at the end of the Teams calls.
I don’t love my new commute - it takes too long, there is too much traffic - and eating out in the city is expensive, I’m often distracted because of office chats that really don’t need to happen, and I don’t get to take my kids on the school run every morning.
But I don’t get forgotten about and I get to talk to adults who aren’t my wife and kids a couple of times a week.
So far it’s working and I’m pretty happy, but I really hope they don’t start wanting more than two days a week in person.
Sounds like the problem here is that your colleagues are your only social circle outside of family rather than remote work being isolating. I think it’s unhealthy to have work relationships take up a significant part of your social contacts in general, because you’ll have a less rational perspective on your job when you associate it with friends. You might be reluctant to leave a job with poor compensation and hours because all of your friends are there, for example. My commute to work and back takes over 2 hours a day and it’s much easier to be peer-pressured into working overtime when you can see everyone else doing so. All of this only benefits the employer. I’d rather work remotely and spend the saved time with people I choose to be with.
Oh that would be reasonable then, a 2 day on-site work hybrid schedule with 40 minutes of commute and no overtime certainly isn’t something I would complain about (unlike my current workplace, lol). I assumed the commute was much longer and also read the comment incorrectly because I read it as the new workplace was pushing for fully on-site work as well.
I recently left a tech job that was 100% remote for one that requires 2 days a week in the office.
When I started the remote only job it was good, I had people I talked to on a daily basis, we did all our ceremonies (bi-weekly meetings) over Teams, we were pretty productive and there were few distractions.
Over time though they pushed for more people to be back in the office, but as someone who lived the other end of the country this wasn’t really an option for me. I gradually felt more isolated, I started dreading the ceremonies because everyone else could have proper human interaction and they often forgot about the one or two guys at the end of the Teams calls.
I don’t love my new commute - it takes too long, there is too much traffic - and eating out in the city is expensive, I’m often distracted because of office chats that really don’t need to happen, and I don’t get to take my kids on the school run every morning.
But I don’t get forgotten about and I get to talk to adults who aren’t my wife and kids a couple of times a week.
So far it’s working and I’m pretty happy, but I really hope they don’t start wanting more than two days a week in person.
Sounds like the problem here is that your colleagues are your only social circle outside of family rather than remote work being isolating. I think it’s unhealthy to have work relationships take up a significant part of your social contacts in general, because you’ll have a less rational perspective on your job when you associate it with friends. You might be reluctant to leave a job with poor compensation and hours because all of your friends are there, for example. My commute to work and back takes over 2 hours a day and it’s much easier to be peer-pressured into working overtime when you can see everyone else doing so. All of this only benefits the employer. I’d rather work remotely and spend the saved time with people I choose to be with.
They’re not, I have a social group I speak to daily in discord, weekly over zoom and in person every couple of months.
My commute is only 20 minutes each way so it isn’t terrible, I would probably have a worse opinon of it it took any longer.
I’ve not been asked to do overtime so far, I’m not really too sure how I would respond if they asked me to do it.
Oh that would be reasonable then, a 2 day on-site work hybrid schedule with 40 minutes of commute and no overtime certainly isn’t something I would complain about (unlike my current workplace, lol). I assumed the commute was much longer and also read the comment incorrectly because I read it as the new workplace was pushing for fully on-site work as well.