Opinion | Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

Can I bring my dog to that office? Will it have my fridge there, and my kitchen? I'd also want a teleporter so that there's zero commute time.

I think we're a bit beyond just rebelling against the "open office" concept.

Any job that can be WFH should be WFH.

Any job that can't be WFH that requires sitting at a desk all day should give each person an individual office. The open office plan has been an absolute nightmare, and only benefits micromanagers. It's a productivity disaster, and makes for a miserable experience, and only exists for the sake of surveillance. However, I doubt there are many jobs that can't be WFH that require such a situation.

The real issue here is an intentional mis-framing, imo. Why must people get back to a traditional office setting? The only people who want this are employers who think that Butts In Seats = Productivity, and the only way to ensure it is to intensely surveil your employees. I also don't give two shits if some real estate company goes bankrupt because business tenants stop renting their properties. Boo fucking hoo.

I've been working for a remote-first company now for over a year, and I won't ever got back to working in an office. There is literally nothing about what I do that needs me to be physically present in any specific place. The problem isn't "productivity" or "collaboration", the problem is entirely based around a work culture that is fundamentally punitive, puritanical, and antithetical to life balance.

Isn't it significantly cheaper for most businesses to be run remotely? What is the pressure of returning to work coming from?

Force them to treat commute time (within reason) as work for which the employee must be paid, and you'll see a bunch of companies blanch and do an about-face on their attempts to get people back to the office.

As for the primary thesis of the article, well, if I go into the office I'm the only person on my floor even if the building is at full occupancy—there are two desks in the basement and the other has been untenanted since a couple of years before the pandemic. I'd still rather stay home, and not waste the time and gas, even though it's only a 15-minute drive along back roads.

I can identify with this. I went on early retirement (5 years ahead of time) because I was sick and tired of an open-plan office that kept distracting me constantly. If I had to get something done seriously quickly, like consolidated month reports etc, I had to do it from home. My productivity was at 50% or less at an office because of constant interruptions, or colleagues talking at the desk next to mine.

And of course senior managers would have their own offices, so they could get work done.

The rule should be, if open-plan offices make so much sense for collaboration etc, then everyone gets an open-plan office, including HR and the CEO. They can also go meet in a meeting room for private conversations.

It's easy to make decisions for employees when you don't have to follow those decisions yourself... want employees back at work, yes then make it better for them.

I was very ambivalent about WFH all through the pandemic. But I had a job which involved hardware development. When I was forced home due to the pandemic, I had to bring half my lab home. When we were contemplating going back and being hybrid, I told my boss that I had too much physical shit to interact with on a daily basis to be in two places. I either had to stay home, or move all my shit back to the office and stayed there. But I had an actual cubicle and a lab there. If I needed privacy to get stuff done, I could sort of get it.

Meanwhile, I got a fully remote job offer and took it. It is more of a systems role, and I can do much more of it remotely, so it works well. I still make several trips a year to the home office though, in an extremely HCOL area. Their office is one of the super-open-floorplan offices. Before the Pandemic, I was told it was packed and nobody liked it at all. But during the pandemic, people literally got days of their life back because they no longer had to spend 2+ hours a day commuting.

They've been trying to get folks back to the office at least once a week, but they're not forcing the issue. If anything, the managers end up there more often than the workers. When I go there, I have the advantage of being able to expense my travel, so I can stay close. And with the exception of that one day a week, the office itself is a ghost town. There might be a few dozen people in a place that can "hold" hundreds (like sardines). But on that one day, there are so many people talking that if I have a critical meeting, I just stay in my hotel instead. Plus, so many meetings are with offsite people anyway (the company has employees around the world) that even with so many people on site you're still doing the meeting over the Internet anyway.

Open floorplans are an absolute joke. They need to die.

I recently quit my old job which was desperately trying to claw employees back into the office (first 1 day a week, then 2, then 3) for a fully remote role. It's been a breath of fresh air. My new team is spread all over the country and yet everything runs so much more efficiently compared to my old employer.

They do have a small office available in case anyone prefers that environment (or perhaps their home isn't suitable for remote work) but there is no expectation or requirement to come in, other than a suggestion that each team meets face to face maybe a handful of times per year, if only to get lunch/drinks together or have a social day.

It's working out great for them as it lets them scale the number of employees they have significantly while not spending any more on commercial real estate.

Honestly, that still would not be enough to change my opinion here about Work From Home. We have the systems and tools at our disposal to make the office life redundant. The notion that work from home employees largely abuse the privilege is simply an opinion without any hard facts to back it up. Indeed it is actually the opposite. Employees are happier and more productive. A minority may abuse the privilege but those are the ones you fire for cause. You don't end a system that works overwhelming well. That would be kind of like scrapping a car because there is a small scratch on it.

The old notion of having to punch a clock is over as well!

Oh God, yes! I'm old enough to remember when people thought it was important to have quiet and privacy to think.

I used to love my job. All my life I've loved programming, and I used to love being able to solve other people's problems for them by doing the thing I love.

The open-plan curse killed it for me. For years I've done as little paid work as I can get away with because I hate trying to think in an open-plan horror so much. It's like having my brain in a blender.

I still program, and think, a lot, but I only do it for other people when I need the money.

I go to the office a few times a year, mostly for all-hands meetings that are often also parties. Any more than that, and I'm looking for a new job. Recently, the company mentioned something about making the office more enticing. That went over like a lead balloon. There are a lot of other companies in the same city with better pay for in-office and hybrid work, and many of us live 1.5+ hours away.

I wouldn’t return to work if you offered me the whole building.

for my entire career, 100% of my work has been on the computer. once in a while, I may have some client interaction, and for that videoconferencing is fin 99.99% of the time. the 0.01% it’s not, I can go on-site. I’ve never attended a meeting that couldn’t have been an email or that couldn’t be handled via videoconference. what managers I’ve had fall into 2 categories:

• The Quite Ones: these are the good managers who send short emails regarding project needs/goals and periodically check in on progress, providing feedback when necessary.
• The Overbearing Micromanagers: jerkwads who feel the need to constantly insinuate themselves into my process and assert their position of power just for the sake of it, often negatively affecting both my workflow and the end-results of the project itself. They send huge, monotonous emails full of corporate-speak which say very little, set regular meetings that waste time and accomplish nothing, and set capricious, pointless policies which often change equally capriciously. I suspect this is done because they’re too incompetent to do their actual jobs and are designed both distract from that and remind us “who’s boss.”

Obviously, the first can be dealt with 100% remotely, and the second has positioned themselves, through being terrible at their jobs and being terrible people in general, to require workers to be present, mostly to justify their own jobs which would amount to nothing if there were no employees physically present to subject to their petty torments.

so, yeah, give me my own office? that’s not gonna cut it, as it changes exactly 0 of the reasons why I never want to return to the office, which are the commute, the stifling work atmosphere, the management, and the fact that there’s 0 reason to ever be there physically anyway due to the nature of my work.

I had my own office for a couple of years. The commute, and the rest-of-the-office environment, isn't worth it.

Isn't that what all that "business" is about? Innovating to keep up with other available alternatives?

Managers and company executives hoping to get people back into the office by whining and saying that's how it used to be ain't gonna work. They will have to offer something to stay competitive. Be it higher pay (compensation for commuting), better flexibility, better office resources (not just donuts and smiley stickers).

No thanks.

Fuck that. I already have an office at home.

I fully agree with this article. Some years back I even left an employer for a lesser position specifically because they went from cubicles to open office. That kind of caused the company some problems as they were under contract with a tight delivery date, I was then the center of some engineering developments and they didn't actually have anyone else at the time capable of stepping into those particular developments. I literally couldn't think straight while crowded in the open with 40 other engineers and felt constantly exhausted. Some people just don't do well in crowds, and management that treats employees like Lego blocks isn't going to keep any competitive edge it might have.

I don't need an office, I already have quite a nice office at home to work from.

I would consider working in an office if I could commute in less than 10 minutes (may consider up to 20 if it's a 20 minute walk rather than driving), and I could either have my own office or share one with a maximum of 2 people that I get along with well.

I left a job once because at the old job I had to share an office and at the new job I found and landed (because I wanted a new office) I got my own office. It's kind of like a no-duh. I felt like I was the Jeffersons. Motivating factor for changing jobs not caring I didn't last a year at the old job where I had to share an office: Having my own friggin' office. I even asked in the interview, "can I have my own office, or do I have to share?" They said I got my own office. I hummed "movin' on up" after.

I have zero interest in going back beyond possible a big meeting type thing or something. Open office plans are one of my personal hellscapes. I can't hardly focus on what I'm doing for all the movement and noise. I do get it for certain types of jobs but I'm a dev and can collab online with less distractions and get my stuff done. My stress level is less and my boss is still happy.

Probably the outlier here, but my work office is much nicer, and I enjoy my peeps. I've recently gone 100% back, but have the flexibility to do whatever the f I want.

Why would i want employees to return to the office? Convert to housing.