Submitted by Super_lobbyist t3_1133391 in washingtondc
hemlockone t1_j8od6sy wrote
Reply to comment by FlimFlamMagoo728 in Federal Government’s Return To Office Delayed By Union Disputes by Super_lobbyist
I have a little bit of a disagreement with the first point. 3 years can involve deferred projects and may not yet be a steady state. Not the same as staffing, but there is a bus garage being closed and rebuilt near me. A community push was, "if it can be closed for 3 years, why not just close permanently?". The answer, of course, is that it is putting pressure on the system. Other places have too much load and can't renovate.
That said, I've been remote for 4 years. If my sector actually had offices in DC proper, I might think differently, but the benefits of not traveling and just being able to walk the dog during lunch are huge. There are a lot of jobs that can be accomplished at the same level or better than at the office. Many gov't jobs fall into that.
But, I find hybrid painful. You lose out on spurious connections because the other people are hybrid on different days.
No-Lunch4249 t1_j8os3v7 wrote
My employer is doing Hybrid, and it’s designed to bring people in on the same days to foster those spurious connections. Marketing and Event Planning people are both in on Monday, that kind of thing. But the big draw back to it is that it removes any of the flexibility from it, you’re definitely expected to be in on YOUR days.
dwhite21787 t1_j8py2fo wrote
My on campus day is 90% shooting the sh*t with everyone who's in. It's nice to see folks and chat and occasionally even discuss something work related for a few minutes, but it's mostly sports, kids, pre-retirement plans, tv shows, traffic woes. I end up more stressed because I get hardly anything accomplished for the 3 hour roundtrip drive.
No-Lunch4249 t1_j8pzv8p wrote
100% agree. I feel like most of what would have been a solid 10 hours of goofing off with coworkers and water cooler gossip in a pre-covid work week gets compressed into the 2-3 days I’m in office, rendering those days essentially pointless lol
west-egg t1_j8q0s1q wrote
IMO even shooting the shit has value, in the form of building stronger relationships with your colleagues. Maybe it’s because I work for a smallish organization, but I’ve always found it helpful to find common interests with people whose roles are very different from mine and who I may only interact with a few times a year. It makes the work we do together easier and more productive.
xhoi t1_j8q5xee wrote
> IMO even shooting the shit has value, in the form of building stronger relationships with your colleagues.
It also has value because it's on the clock.
dwhite21787 t1_j8q4bjv wrote
I agree, it's intangibly valuable, and I'm pretty resigned that those days are not directly productive to my timesheet cost centers, and apparently that's fine with management. It irks me, but I'm not going to let it raise my blood pressure.
Gumburcules t1_j8s8ixz wrote
> My on campus day is 90% shooting the sh*t with everyone who's in.
I'm 100% convinced that despite "productivity" being the ostensible reason for returning to the office the actual reason is that the higher-ups who make the decisions miss their office shit shooting, business lunches, and escape time from their spoiled kids and loveless marriages.
FlimFlamMagoo728 t1_j8ogdax wrote
I am definitely very sympathetic to the points you make here, and do recognize that this may vary substantially from one team to the next as far as how well remote has been working out.
Tbh I really do personally like hybrid as a sort of "best of both worlds" thing - my wife works for an NGO that I think has a really reasonable approach to it, which is that they have one day a week where all hands are expected to be in office, then it is up to different department heads to determine if and how much they want their teams to be in person. For my wife's team that she leads, she has picked one additional day per week where her people come in which helps with some of the stuff you identified, but still leaves a lot more flexibility in people's lives. In our case, it means that we were able to move further out from the core of DC to somewhere that we can actually afford to buy a house which means that although the commute is longer, because she generally only has to go in twice per week means she spends less total time commuting and has that flexibility to be home with pets, go to appointments, etc. And, in our case, means that we are able to think about having a kid since we know that our jobs now give us the flexibility in our home lives to be able to handle that.
In general though I tend to land on the side that we shouldn't be forcing people who never had to come in person for their jobs to start doing so - I think that represents a bit of an unreasonable modification to working rules which is exactly the thing that unions are supposed to defend against.
hemlockone t1_j8oqheu wrote
That version of hybrid makes a lot of sense for random connections. Just put everyone in the same room periodically.
The problem, I see, is that it takes a ton of infrastructure. I work in contracting, and the rate difference for an onsite (hosted by the contractor) vs offsite (hosted by the customer) is huge. Some of that is IT load and similar, but a lot is just who owns the building. Keeping that up, but only getting 25% utilization is very wasteful. Perhaps multiple users per desk, but that takes some build out (is it like hotdesking, a timeshare? does everyone have a personal drawer?)
I think the other challenge will be hiring for positions that aren't suitable to do remote. Worse, ones that require the same skill-set as ones that are. Think IT that requires touching the actually hardware, mailroom, anything with sensitive data, etc. I know I won't be applying for any of those jobs anytime soon.
BansheeLoveTriangle t1_j8orj9u wrote
I do desk shares, and honestly I’m fucking sick of it - people are disgusting, I shouldn’t have to pick up people’s trash and wipe away their filthy every day before I sit down at a workstation
hemlockone t1_j8ov76i wrote
That seems not done right, then.
A hot desk is a communal space, just like a breakroom table. The space needs to be obviously built to be shared, part of the cleaners' rotation (an added cost, yes, but perhaps less the 4x desks, and the built setup matters. Design for cleaning.)
I'll say that I've worked remotely for 4 years, but I do occasionally (monthly?) use a hot desk at my HQ. They are clearly designed and treated as communal spaces, and I haven't had a problem as a result.
FlimFlamMagoo728 t1_j8p9pkd wrote
Yeah, it's definitely not the most ideal usage of office space but the flipside is that the flexibility of hybrid makes it easier for them to hire and retain top level talent within their specific industry
BourbonCoug t1_j8qsocs wrote
>You lose out on spurious connections because the other people are hybrid on different days.
This. This so much! What good is it for me to be in the office if the people that I would need or want to work with in-person aren't there on my dedicated day? Why go if just to attend virtual meetings?
Also doesn't help that a lot of spaces aren't designed well to foster the collaboration one might want on a hybrid schedule. No, I don't want an entirely open office floor plan, but the cubicle farm isn't any better in 2023.
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