I love working hybrid. I feel like it’s the best of both worlds. You get 2-3 days in office where if you really have something collaborative to do you can just schedule it then, and then utilize the rest of the week on more singular tasks without the commute. I currently work 3 days in 2 days remote, and I think 2 days in 3 days remote makes more sense, but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to look for a fully remote job, and I definitely don’t want 5 days a week in office.
The key thing is that everyone who’s hybrid has the same days in office, and the in office days are consecutive. Without those two things hybrid is kind of pointless.
That last bit is HUGE. Part of what is great about working from home is flexibility and forcing people to be in on certain days just isn’t ever going to work for everyone. Inevitably you will end up with meetings where one person has to dial in and now the rest of team is annoyed they made the effort to show up that day.
Anyway, I don’t disagree with you that a hybrid where everyone is on the office together for some amount of time could be very good for productivity and teamwork. However, it just isn’t a realistic which then, as you said, makes it pointless.
Just let people work from wherever works for them.
That’s why you affix the office days. Like Monday Tuesday. Then if you have a meeting Monday everyone’s together. If you have a meeting Friday everyone’s remote. That takes the guesswork out of it. And since that’s set in stone, they can tell you that in your interview and you’ll know whether you can make that work or if you’ll need to keep looking.
I agree. 2 days in office where one is expected for everyone, and then remote 3 days. I find that I actually value the in office time more this way. Consider that for the vast majority of companies they were 5 days in office, the hybrid schedule is still pretty revolutionary and I think I almost prefer it to fully remote, at least at my current job!
As a hybrid worker myself, I honestly enjoy it. I’ve got an open office with a couple of new hires that I’m mentoring. I can bother people at their desks, rather than fighting to schedule them over Teams for a five minute talk. Lunch spots downtown are genuinely good and I can stretch my legs a bit walking around.
Then I’ve got W/F to myself at home, so I can roll out of bed and dive in and eat out of my fridge.
The worst part about my job, atm, is that all our DBAs are these overseas contractors who are constantly coming and going and don’t know our systems past whatever documentation got telephone-gamed to them over three prior managers. Would love for a little less work from a trans-Pacific timezone home, tbh.
Seems like your documentation should be out in the open not sent over to them. You should all be looking at the same thing.
Bothering people at thier desk is exactly what I do not want. Why not put your question into teams or what ever you use, and it will get answered when they have time?
Seems like your documentation should be out in the open not sent over to them.
Take that up with my utterly dysfunctional security-through-obscurity obsessed managers.
Bothering people at thier desk is exactly what I do not want. Why not put your question into teams or what ever you use, and it will get answered when they have time?
Because Teams is constantly ringing, as everyone is on a dozen different groups with back-and-forth that they aren’t really a part of. So we’ve stopped paying attention to Teams messages in real time.
Also, sometimes its easier to carry a laptop over to someone and show them a thing with a simple question than to Teams in and share screen when they’ve got a dozen things up on their own monitors.
Yeah, I was think about that with teams. Mine doesn’t ring or notify, I will get it when I get it. It’s like IRC: you just ask the question.
In the end if it works for you that’s great. My biggest problem is hybrid meetings. A roomful of people and a bunch of remotes makes them a mess.
Either everyone in one place, or no one.
For me remote is great. I keep a lot of wasted time stopped because I force documentation as a requirement. If there is a question needing asked, it and the answer gets written down, or it wasn’t worth asking in the first place.
I like spending my time in other cities and countries instead of commuting.
Edit. I wanted to add that you make a good point inadvertently about local businesses downtown. A lot of them were hurting without the foot traffic so that’s a positive.
My biggest problem is hybrid meetings. A roomful of people and a bunch of remotes makes them a mess.
Oh, yes. That’s awful. But then most large participatory meets are awful, just because its hard to engage that many people for any extended period of time. Unless you’re just doing a quick presentation, large meetings almost always feel like a waste of time.
For me remote is great. I keep a lot of wasted time stopped because I force documentation as a requirement.
Getting documentation out of my coworkers is like pulling teeth. Everyone does things their own way and its almost never recorded in a central (much less organized) repository. One of my tasks over the last year has been about changing that, but even just getting a central Sharepoint repository that lots of people can access has been difficult.
Having a crowd of people in the office I can bother physically has been - in my experience - much more efficient than firing off emails or Teams notices that can be easily ignored.
Edit. I wanted to add that you make a good point inadvertently about local businesses downtown. A lot of them were hurting without the foot traffic so that’s a positive.
I’ve worked in offices for a while, and there’s definitely a difference between the “run out for a Subway sandwich then get back to work ASAP” and “meander down to the Tonkotsu ramen spot and chat with the owner while you enjoy some mid-day leisure time”. If you’re living the former, I get why WFH is orders of magnitude better. If you’re enjoying the latter, it feels like you’re being robbed if you can’t experience the nicer parts of the city that you’re ostensibly earning enough money to live in.
Why even have a good job in a nice city if you can’t go out and do the things that these cities are known for?
Hybrid sucks. It’s like the worst of both worlds.
If you are going to have meeting with remote and in office, never have anyone in a meeting room.
I love working hybrid. I feel like it’s the best of both worlds. You get 2-3 days in office where if you really have something collaborative to do you can just schedule it then, and then utilize the rest of the week on more singular tasks without the commute. I currently work 3 days in 2 days remote, and I think 2 days in 3 days remote makes more sense, but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to look for a fully remote job, and I definitely don’t want 5 days a week in office.
The key thing is that everyone who’s hybrid has the same days in office, and the in office days are consecutive. Without those two things hybrid is kind of pointless.
That last bit is HUGE. Part of what is great about working from home is flexibility and forcing people to be in on certain days just isn’t ever going to work for everyone. Inevitably you will end up with meetings where one person has to dial in and now the rest of team is annoyed they made the effort to show up that day.
Anyway, I don’t disagree with you that a hybrid where everyone is on the office together for some amount of time could be very good for productivity and teamwork. However, it just isn’t a realistic which then, as you said, makes it pointless.
Just let people work from wherever works for them.
That’s why you affix the office days. Like Monday Tuesday. Then if you have a meeting Monday everyone’s together. If you have a meeting Friday everyone’s remote. That takes the guesswork out of it. And since that’s set in stone, they can tell you that in your interview and you’ll know whether you can make that work or if you’ll need to keep looking.
I agree. 2 days in office where one is expected for everyone, and then remote 3 days. I find that I actually value the in office time more this way. Consider that for the vast majority of companies they were 5 days in office, the hybrid schedule is still pretty revolutionary and I think I almost prefer it to fully remote, at least at my current job!
I’m similarly in love with hybrid and would never go back to 100% either direction.
I disagree with consecutive, but definitely agreed on everyone having the same days.
As a hybrid worker myself, I honestly enjoy it. I’ve got an open office with a couple of new hires that I’m mentoring. I can bother people at their desks, rather than fighting to schedule them over Teams for a five minute talk. Lunch spots downtown are genuinely good and I can stretch my legs a bit walking around.
Then I’ve got W/F to myself at home, so I can roll out of bed and dive in and eat out of my fridge.
The worst part about my job, atm, is that all our DBAs are these overseas contractors who are constantly coming and going and don’t know our systems past whatever documentation got telephone-gamed to them over three prior managers. Would love for a little less work from
a trans-Pacific timezonehome, tbh.Seems like your documentation should be out in the open not sent over to them. You should all be looking at the same thing.
Bothering people at thier desk is exactly what I do not want. Why not put your question into teams or what ever you use, and it will get answered when they have time?
Take that up with my utterly dysfunctional security-through-obscurity obsessed managers.
Because Teams is constantly ringing, as everyone is on a dozen different groups with back-and-forth that they aren’t really a part of. So we’ve stopped paying attention to Teams messages in real time.
Also, sometimes its easier to carry a laptop over to someone and show them a thing with a simple question than to Teams in and share screen when they’ve got a dozen things up on their own monitors.
Yeah, I was think about that with teams. Mine doesn’t ring or notify, I will get it when I get it. It’s like IRC: you just ask the question.
In the end if it works for you that’s great. My biggest problem is hybrid meetings. A roomful of people and a bunch of remotes makes them a mess.
Either everyone in one place, or no one.
For me remote is great. I keep a lot of wasted time stopped because I force documentation as a requirement. If there is a question needing asked, it and the answer gets written down, or it wasn’t worth asking in the first place.
I like spending my time in other cities and countries instead of commuting.
Edit. I wanted to add that you make a good point inadvertently about local businesses downtown. A lot of them were hurting without the foot traffic so that’s a positive.
Oh, yes. That’s awful. But then most large participatory meets are awful, just because its hard to engage that many people for any extended period of time. Unless you’re just doing a quick presentation, large meetings almost always feel like a waste of time.
Getting documentation out of my coworkers is like pulling teeth. Everyone does things their own way and its almost never recorded in a central (much less organized) repository. One of my tasks over the last year has been about changing that, but even just getting a central Sharepoint repository that lots of people can access has been difficult.
Having a crowd of people in the office I can bother physically has been - in my experience - much more efficient than firing off emails or Teams notices that can be easily ignored.
I’ve worked in offices for a while, and there’s definitely a difference between the “run out for a Subway sandwich then get back to work ASAP” and “meander down to the Tonkotsu ramen spot and chat with the owner while you enjoy some mid-day leisure time”. If you’re living the former, I get why WFH is orders of magnitude better. If you’re enjoying the latter, it feels like you’re being robbed if you can’t experience the nicer parts of the city that you’re ostensibly earning enough money to live in.
Why even have a good job in a nice city if you can’t go out and do the things that these cities are known for?