There are a lot of news articles about “back to the office”, but they recirculate the same bad ideas. Let’s provide some new ideas for the media to circulate. It may also have the effect of making the office less terrible.
I would like my work computer to do Windows updates lightning quick in the office. It currently takes weeks, in or out of the office. Stopping in for a day makes no difference, so there is no point. Now, if there was a point, I would go in.
What would get you in the office?
Honestly, a much much higher salary. There are lots of things I’m going to have to deal with if I were to go back to the office; namely heavy traffic, transportation expenses, added stress, clothes (I mean, I’d have to use office-appropriate clothes whereas nowadays I have to be presentable only when I have meetings), food, waking up and preparing earlier than usual (sometimes up to 3 hours earlier!) and getting home late which gives me less free time, etc.
They’re going to have to offer a really lucrative salary for me to even consider returning to the office.
A higher salary would be of help to cover additional expeses related to coming to the office.
However, we also need a nice office to come to that needs to be as comfy as the one home.
You know what? I never even thought about that. I agree 100%. That’s gonna be a tall order for companies, though. I mean, different people probably have different requirements to be comfortable.
- Hot Saucerman ( @dingus@lemmy.ml ) English17•11 months ago
That’s why the whole open office and/or cubicle farm office needs to die. Yes, it will take more investment, but go back to everyone actually having their own small office that they can make their own and make comfortable. This isn’t hard.
Not to disagree with your sentiment, but the economics of space and construction costs would be a hard sell here. Plus, many managers don’t think employees deserve comfort and privacy thus the push to return to the office.
- Hot Saucerman ( @dingus@lemmy.ml ) English5•11 months ago
Oh, I agree entirely. I didn’t mean to insinuate that what I was suggesting was reasonable and/or something they would choose to invest in. Just sharting out ideas over here. Cheers.
Nothing. Quality of life of working from home cannot be replicated. Or the office would have to be in my street, which is pretty unrealistic
Nothing for me also.
The flexibility to do things when you have a few minutes (like breaks) is worth a lot to me, it makes me more productive and less stressed about time management.
Plus I have cats and no other humans here so it’s a quiet, comfortable, loving environment, and no job can provide that for me.
I used to work in an office which was doen the street once. It still sucked.
It does not solve every other issue that work environment can bring, that’s for sure
Or the office would have to be in my street,
Could become a road sweeper?
How about a raise?
Absolutely nothing. No amount of money or threats or “perks”. I work in software and my entire career has been built on flexible, mostly-remote work; particularly creating & leading remote, geographically distributed teams. I get the best talent no matter where they are, and use tools like Slack to work seamlessly in real-time and asynchronously across many disparate time zones. This wasn’t some new thing for me when COVID hit, this is how I’ve operated for more than 20 years.
I don’t mind going places for specific purposes: visiting clients, classified/sensitive discussions that can’t be transmitted, on-site work (like installations, research, etc), or team-building events like lunches, dinners, etc… but under no circumstances will I waste my time commuting to some specific ”office” daily just because. I am an efficiency expert and I will not tolerate having my time or my teams time wasted by incompetent, out-of-touch multi-millionaires that don’t realize the 80s ended 30 years ago.
preach!
A couple of things:
- commute time counts as work time
- no open plan landscape office
- no ‘clean desk’ policy but the ability to personalise your workplace
- dishwasher and general kitchen stuff not being a ‘shared responsibility’ but someone’s job.
- office being in a nice neighborhood with fun things to do after work or during lunch
My employer spent the past ~10 years de-personalising our offices, and now they wonder why people don’t like to hang out in their sterile ‘clean’ building.
32 hr work week, a dedicated office with a door and all my Mac peripherals, a big pay increase, and benefits to cover child care.
The office being within a 30 second walk of my home
Paid commute and a separate room.
Ah yeah, I wrote that it should be within 10 minutes of my flat + seperate room but yeah paid commute (frome my home door back to my home door within 8 hours) would also be OK. I could try to work remotelly if I’m on a train or just listen to a podcast.
As a minimum? Pay me for the commute. I’m only doing it because of management so they should compensate me.
I’d settle for a 4 day week of 8 hour days
Compensation for the time and cost of commuting back and forth, paid meal, free coffee and snacks, and additional sick days from using public transport and ultimately catching more sicknesses.
And even then, it doesn’t give me back the extra time I can spend with my kids.
How about 4 day work week? Would you be ok to go back to the office then?
That would help, but just that single incentive would be a no for me.
Double my salary and we’ll talk. Include my travel time in my working hours or I’ll do it anyway.
But also I took a fully remote position to not have to deal with the return to office stuff so realistically nothing would get me back to an office.
Exactly what I came to say
Paid commute (time and expenses) and free lunch.
A valid reason for a start.
An immense raise and a free hot lunch every day would be the beginning of negotiations
Nice try, Susan from HR!
Given “lots more money” is prevalent in the responses, I hope Susan in HR is reading this.
A few things that would help:
A 4 day work week with both ends of the day brought in to maybe 10-4 (sorry didnt mean 10-3). Things like going to the bank require me to either run during my lunch break or do it on a day off. 4x10-4 means i have a day and edges of days to do tasks i can’t do on the weekend.
Unlimited PTO. If my tasks are done and I’m paid a salary there is no reason i need to sit around doing nothing. If more work is expected then I’d expect more compensation.
And lastly mandatory cost of living connected to inflation every year. My last job started during the pandemic. In 2 years the effective inflation rate was 15% and yet i was only given 3% over that time while getting good marks on my reviews. That means in that time i was paid a crazy amount less my last day than my first. I dont care about the actual number of dollars I’m paid but I’d like to buy the same number of eggs mext year as this year if I’m expected to do the same amount of work. This shouldn’t be thought of as a bonus, but rather keeping my level of compensation matched woth my level of expectations for my job.
What job do you have that 4x10-3 would be a reasonable option? Coming from someone who works 5x6a-6p (though this week it’s been more like 6a-8p) those hours seem like a fairytale.
Given that they also talk about finishing their work with nothing to do, I’m guessing they work one of those jobs that doesn’t actually need so many employees but has to have them or are held back by the lowest performers.
The idea of “completing all my tasks” is a silly one to me, since my product has an endless stream of work where we can’t do all the things we want to do. If I managed to finish all the things I personally planned to do, that would mean nothing as that’s just my personal plan and there’s a virtually endless backlog. This has been the case for every job I’ve had as a software engineer.
Most employers I think pay for time, anyway, not tasks. Even when salaried, it’s a salary intended based on time you’d generally work. And if this wasn’t the case, many people (myself included) would be penalized for delays.
That’s more like part-time honestly, doesn’t make any sense. But your hours are intense. I did that 50/60 hours a week years ago, I’ll never do that again. I’m at 35 now and considering asking for a 4 day 32 hours schedule next year. And I WFH full time. I’m done organizing my life around work.
A friend from college does software dev for a place that does 4x10-4 and he said the way the fixed issues was by asking for ROI on everything you do. Need to schedule a meeting? Is it worth the cost of people’s time? If so make sure you get the right people, habe everything planned out before calling it so you get your work done promptly.
At first everyone was like fuck, more crap you have to do. But eventually they figured out that much of their time was wasted on crap no one needed to do. Some people stuck around for an hour or two after work to hang out and others took back their lives. Productivity actually increased because people were not as burned out.
That sounds very satisfying, wow! I swear to god, half the meetings I attend are just soooo unproductive. Talk about this project, where we were, where we are, where we are going. But it always ends up that I have to jog people’s memory, ask why what was supposed to get done didn’t and when it will be. Rinse and repeat. I love that approach, makes people accountable and saves everyone’s time.
As for jogging people’s memories…
So whenever i have to get approval from higher ups that i know they will forget and get annoyed about it i ask that they all stand up and state “i agree / approve to XYZ.” People will laugh and say “really?!?”.
At my last job one of my bosses decided on something that went against what all us in engineering said. So i told him to stand up in front of everyone and say “i acknowledge that this goes against the suggestions by engineering but I would like the team to implement… whatever the feature was.” Two months later he came to a meeting all pissed about how this feature wasn’t working and when he saw me enter the meeting he said “fuck, this is my fault isn’t it?”
That is fucking brilliant!
Ever have someone deny they said it?
Nope not so far. It’s always in a meeting with other people, make it a little awkward and everyone remembers so no one denied it as they know others won’t deny it.
Yeah, part of it is that I’m in a medical field and still in school. Unfortunately my hours are going to get worse with internship/residency before they get better. Even still, 4x10-3 would never (honestly could never) happen in my field.
Oh I see. I’m sorry, you guys in medical really have it fucking hard. Hang in there, and best of luck!
I’m a lead software developer. Finally working a place where we do reasonable schedules with a good amount of padding for problems popping up.
If i wasnt in pointless meetings and focused on actual productive time thats about what most of my team does and we hit all our schedules.
When i worked at Samsung they were doing 4 day weeks and no one was doing 8hr days