I’ll just keep working from home EVERY day, and not getting a bunch of covid, colds, and flus from being jammed into small office spaces with a bunch of other people at once, thanks.
I did that in the 90’s. My boss and our director f’ing hated it. I missed the most awful meetings, missed the worst day of commute, got to miss the occasional lunches. It was bliss. That was before Boeing started letting us work from home a decade later.
Fuck offices. If a teams meeting or email will suffice then why push for face to face ? If you want better collab with workers then use different methods.
Most folk aren’t as happy when you steal 2 hours out of their day.
Reducing those on the roads helps everyone. Less pollution for all and less full roads. Push to utilize cafes and other areas near workers to help out local businesses and stop propping up conglomerates.
They don’t help humanity and actively work against us.
I go in 5 days a week because my Internet is slow. My office has maybe 30% of the office in with different people different days. Friday is maybe 10% or less and I find myself walking onto dark floors.
I kinda liked coming in at the end of the week now instead of middle of the week...less people in the office leads to less distractions and less traffic too, but school is starting soon so well see how bad that screws up the commute...
And ideally this is how it should work to maximize usefulness of the space...oh, everyone else is gone on Fridays, I'll come in Friday instead of Tuesday
Still coming in 3 days a week except now everyone is happier
Except the justification for forcing people back to offiices is to socialize and collaborate in-person. It defeats the purpose if you’re showing up when everyone else isn’t around (assuming management justifications are genuine).
If management actually value face-to-face collaboration, then they’ll mandate all team members be in the office on the same set of days. Allowing you to pick your own WFH days speaks to different priorities - either manager oversight of specific individuals, or justification for all the money being spent on rent.
imo (and I'm not a manager, though I occasionally do manage people) there's different levels of collaboration. If you get the whole company in one room, that's one level of energy. If you get 5 separate but related teams in a room, that's another level. And if you get just 5 random people from the company together, that's another level.
There's definitely a balance to be had, but having your office be empty every Friday is not efficient, even if you want to increase socializaion and collaboration.
Plus there's some benefit to providing workers a place that isn't their house to work. Some people just need to go somewhere else to be at their most productive, not necessarily just for socializing.
Correct - there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution for this. Ideally, you would be on a team where your manager is well aware of what works for each individual, and make decisions based on that but also taking into consideration that there will need to be compromises where individual preferences are in conflict. Some folks may certainly work better in isolation. Others thrive from interaction with others. The more reasonable arguments for WFH practices stress flexibility when accounting for team dynamics.
Yah we usually try to have everyone come in on Wendesdays for our weekly meeting and after that its a free for all. Ironically wednesdays are my least productive as half the day is devoted to meetings and the other half is catching up with the people i havent seen in a week and our extended lunch break...
Same for me too! Every part but going in to the office. No people to distract me at home. Less traffic without a commute. Oh and this is not just Fridays, it’s every day I don’t go in to the office.
