For many years I spent most of the year in the office 5 days a week. That was the normal. Most software engineers did the same. My office seemed pretty progressive with a hybrid model. We could work from home Monday and Friday. I was often in the office anyway but it was great to have the flexibility. If we needed to work from home for a good reason that was fine but it wasn’t the norm.
Then COVID-19 arrived and we all had to learn a new way of working. Different places will have had different experiences. My company planned to practice having everyone at home one Monday and that was it. Lockdown was announced that weekend, no time for practising. The lockdowns came and went. For me there was no furlough but 2 years of working from home before we returned to a caution single office day a week. I get the feeling that in many software companies it hasn’t progressed much beyond that. Offices are open again but people have largely gone home and stayed home. They might come in one or two days a week, maybe for important meetings or maybe not.
I don’t like it. I want to be in the office more often. Not only that, and this may be controversial, but I want other people to be in the office more often as well. What’s up with them all?! I don’t think my intrrobangs are going to make things any better but question marks might:
- Why do I want to go back to the office?
- Why do other stay at home?
- Are there advantages and disadvantages to being in the office?
- How does that stack up to working from home?
Travelling
My first job felt like a long commute, I think it was 45-60 minutes. A walk to the train station, waiting for the train, the train journey itself, and then a long walk to the business park where the office was. I think it the office space was cheaper out there and it easy to get to… if you had a car. Getting a bicycle and taking it on the train helped me there. It did feel like an improvement when they moved to the city centre. That’s where most of my other jobs have been. That normally means I walk or cycle to the office, taking about 60 or 30 minutes respectively. I also have the option of train, bus or underground. I’m spoiled for choice. Those costs a bit more and is not actually faster than cycling but is drier. For me time on public transport was normally an opportunity to read and time walking or cycling was exercise. Without the commute I would still want time to read and would still have to get exercise somehow. Indeed the commute handily guaranteed that I would get some good exercise most days. I’d prefer to live half an hour away from work than 5 minutes down the road.
When looking for jobs I’ve deliberately avoided jobs with big commutes. Other people might prioritise things differently. I’ve heard stories about the Edinburgh-Glasgow commute. While it’s possible to do it seems to be a big drain on time, energy and money. I think this is how many people view a commute, maybe any commute. It’s a negative that takes time away from their day and costs money that could be spent on other things. People have adjusted during COVID and don’t want to give it up. I can sympathise but I think the commute was part of what we were paid to do? If I’d been given a surprise pay rise of thousands of pounds one day would I want to suddenly give it back 2 years later.
Environment
An office is set up for people to do work. At least it’s meant to be. I think they mostly manage to do this. Generally speaking the companies I’ve worked for have provided a decent chair, monitors and enough space. That said, I don’t seem to be that fussy. When working at home I sit on an Ikea folding kitchen chair and it’s good enough. I don’t have a separate room to use as an office so it’s got to be a compromise. I don’t really want a standard office chair in my living room, they don’t look good.
The main negative for me of the office environment is noise. Bring a bunch of people together is bound to make some noise. The typical open plan office does little or nothing to dissipate that noise. I grew use to wearing headphones and listening to music to drown it out. Not that an office is necessarily noisy, although they can be, but it’s not something you can control. People can be having meetings or talking on the phone and you can’t generally ask them to stop just because you need to think hard. Sometimes what I really need is peace and quiet which might not be available.
Generally though I find it easier to focus in the office. Travel in, sit down, start working. At the end of the day it’s easier to relax. Go home, cook dinner, settle down. Separate spaces, separate functions. While the internet is an ever present distraction there are fewer incidental things in the office. At home the postman can knock at the door, cat jumps up at the window wanting to come in, all your distractions are right there. However these can also be benefits for being a home. Being there for that knock at the door means I can collect my parcels. People need to pick their kids up at the end of the school or take care of them if they’re ill. Being at home makes all of that easier.
Communication
The most likely distraction in the office is other people. You’re likely to be interrupted and to interrupt other people during the day. For most people it’s a necessary part of work. This can be both positive and negative. Being able to ask a college how something works can take a couple of minutes compared to wasting an hour trying to figure it out on your own. Being distracted by a college when you were in the middle of something breaks your flow, it can take a while to get back into it. I think the former tends to make up for the later overall.
What is frustrating is continual interruptions when you are trying to get on with things. Sometimes it’s just one of those days. For some jobs maybe it always feels like one of those days. In theory all these interruptions can still occur when working at home. However, in my experience it’s much less likely to happen. The extra effort of having to make a video call or type out the question makes it less likely. People are more likely to muddle through by themselves. So again, positive and negative. You’re more likely to stay in the zone but waste more time figuring out something that a college might just know.
Meetings feel very different between home and office. In the office it might be a quick stand-up or something more official in a meeting room around a table. I feel that the people in office meetings are more present, both figuratively and literally. They’re at the table and, even if they’re not fully listening, they’re not tapping away at their computer doing something else. I think it’s better to be paying attention at most meetings but at home the temptation to do something else is definitely there. Some meetings can be… boring or long or just getting in the way of another task. For people planning meetings do consider whether it can be done another way and who actually needs to come to the meeting. I also wonder if it’s too easy to have a big meeting using video calls. With a physical meeting getting people round the same table puts a practical limit on things. Smaller meetings tend to mean that each of the participants is more involved.
Social
In the office some of the communication is going to be office business and some is just going to be chat. Both are useful. Saying hi when people arrive in the morning or asking someone how there weekend went brings people together. At home by default there isn’t any of that. I’ve had days at home without any meetings, without anything extra, and therefore without any communication with colleges. I don’t think that’s a good way to do it.
It might not happen by itself but there are lots of things you can do to avoid that. You can say hi on a team or office channel when you start work in the morning. That means you know who’s working and who’s on holiday or ill. An already active channel is likely to get more use which keeps people in touch. Daily stand-ups are similar in the office or via video call. I think the standing up in a stand-up has a slight benefit in keeping people focus and the meeting short. There aren’t going to be any problems with microphones or slow internet connections. However I’ve occasionally done chat “stand-ups” where everyone just types at the same time and then reads all the responses. Having this as standard could have the side benefit of making it all searchable.
I think all this back and forth is easier to do in the office. Stand-ups are more like to segue into discussions about last nights telly and then back into ideas about what to do for the next sprint. You see someone in the kitchen while making coffee and end up discussing whether a different framework would be faster for the next project. People might end up going out for lunch or for a drink after work. The office becomes more than just a collection of people working on the same tasks. At the end of a video call people just switch it off and are immediately by themselves.
In the end
There are pros and cons to travelling to and being in an office compared to staying at home. For me the biggest cons are a potentially noisy environment and the possibility of getting rained on. In return I get easier focus, getting to see a few people and some guaranteed exercise. That’s a fair trade for me. For other people maybe they’ve got a separate office room at home and the commute is worse. It might not seem worth it. Overall I think working in the office gives more pros to the company and working at home gives more to the the employee, vice versa for the cons. I can understand some people just don’t want to come back in. While I don’t think always having 5 days a week in the office is necessary I do think having some time in the office each week would help.
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