I’ve been looking for a new job as a software developer. The huge majority of job listings I see in my area are hybrid or remote. I just had an introductory phone call with Vizio (which didn’t specify the location type in the job listing). The recruiter told me that the job was fully on-site, which I told her was a deal breaker for me.
It makes me wonder how many other people back out after hearing that the job is on-site. And it makes me wonder why this wasn’t specified in the job description. I assume most people only want hybrid or remote jobs these days, right?
Anyways I was just wondering how many of you guys apply for on-site IT jobs? Hybrid is so much better, I don’t know why people would apply for on-site jobs unless they have no other options.
I prefer to work in the office.
Lower utility bills for me. What little I spend in gas, yeah it’s a no brainier.
Also as the chair/desk/etc wears out, the company pays for it. It’s not like they give me the difference if I work from home.
My only complaint is led lights. Companies don’t understand what they are doing when they buy the lights.
What’s wrong with LED lights?
Most companies put in lights that run at 5000 kelvin. So they appear to be white or even slightly blue in color. It’s hard on the eyes.
3500 or 3000 Kelvin would be more natural light.
Plus most of them have to slow of a refresh. So I see a flicker. Think a strobe light and move your hand in front of your eyes. That shudder or screen door effect that you would see. That’s what I see when I’m around led lights.
Most companies refuse to invest in better lights.
Aren’t fluorescent bulbs the ones that flicker?
I agree about the color temperature.
I have a pretty good hybrid situation, where it’s probably good for me to get dressed and out of the house twice a week. It helps that it’s only three mile commute with no traffic. I’d probably look for that, even if I don’t like going in.
That being said, we hire across many time zones and I don’t even work with local people so I’m not sure the point. Why is my company wasting money on a local office so I can be on Zoom all day, but can’t spend the travel budget even once for me to meet the people I work with (from Boston, I generally work with people in London, Toronto, Bangalore)
I run a development department, and nobody who reports to me comes to the office. We have been 100% remote since 2020… much to the chagrin of HR. Others in IT come in, but no developers. I see no reason to change it either. I question why I even come in most days.
Without looking it up, I don’t know how many people I’ve interviewed over the last 4 years, but there’s been a few. I’ve only had one person who indicated he wanted to be in an office. Every other person wants fully remote. The most common comment I’ve heard from people is saying they will settle for hybrid if full-remote isn’t available.
There’s some value to having people work together in-person, but I’d rather give my teams the flexibility to choose for themselves rather than force it.
My dad is the only human being I know that likes his on-site IT job, but that’s probably because he’s getting away from the miserable woman he married for a few hours a day.
I was in that boat for a bit but it was my mentally ill adult child that I needed a break from.
Different boat. You didn’t choose that. Best wishes!
All good!
In my team, 2 out 15 people come to the office regularly, because they prefer the separation of work from free time.
I can definitely see some benefits from being on-site. You do occasionally just run into people, who can tell you really useful things for your job. And it’s definitely harder to keep track of what my wider team is working on, since we’ve gone mostly remote.
But those benefits just as well evaporate when “on-site” becomes two or more locations. I’m not going to run into someone who’s in a different office in a different city.
If I have to actively work together with people from different locations, I will also be wearing headphones all day, not able to socialize with the people around me. That makes it rather pointless to go into the office.And yeah, just the flexibility of being at home is really useful. I can take a break from work to load my washing machine. I can sleep until 5 minutes before my first meeting. Or I can walk to the store in the morning, when it’s still cool outside.
So yeah, personally, I certainly wouldn’t go back to a fully on-site job, unless it’s somehow the best job in the world in other ways.You’re talking specifically about software based IT jobs.
Those of us who deal with the hardware have alwaus been and will always be on-site and hands on.
The office is 3 day a week onsite, w Mon and Fri remote.
I have to be on site Tue - Thur to support the users.
I go in most Mon and Fri because it’s the only time I know I have physical access to the systems.
My support work is largely “remote”, in that I can manage my systems 99% of the time better from my office than in the room, and I really like my setup.
Aside from physically rebooting hardware that’s too frozen to reboot remotely, or replacing defective hardware, I can work 100% from anywhere I have internet.
Thing is, I love the company I work for, the end users and various IT and facilities staff that support my work are all great people.
The only close friends I have all moved far away decades ago, so the “water cooler” is the only real social interaction I get.
I do spend a ridiculous amount to live 15 minutes from the office so the commute isn’t a concern.
I’ve been fully onsite basically the whole time, including during the pandemic, for me it’s been fine. Gets me out of my tiny studio apartment and keeps my work life at work. Also free A/C / heating at work.
The commute is also part of that decision making - for me the commute is a long walk outside to/from work every day. All that walking around outside sort of levels me out mentally & gets rid of any stress I had, not to mention the exercise.
IT guy here, I absolutely hate working from home, I want separation between my work life and my home life.
I need that to change my brain from home mode to work mode.
Fellow IT guy here, I absolutely hate working from the office. Home life is my life and work life only matters to me insofar as it’s necessary to my home life.
Anything taking my brain from home mode to work mode is an obstacle that should be avoided.
I’ve heard a lot of people about how much they enjoy working fully remotely. Almost all of them have a separate home office room to work in.
I am sure they do enjoy it, just as I don’t.
For me that’s achieved by being 6 timezones ahead - I finish work, turn off my computer and go to sleep.
I took up online tutoring and teaching programming for kids. It has great benefits:
- It’s an hour or so after work, it has a fixed schedule so it forces me to clock out
- it makes me focus hard so I completely forget about work
- it pays for itself (not my corporate day-job rate, but I’m not doing it for free)
- I can try out languages and tech I’d normally wouldn’t be able to in my day job, or I’d have to invest my free time gor a side project
- I have a background in teaching… I like it, it’s fun and refreshing
- I’ve helped many kids jump start their interest in programming even in families that know nothing about tech at all. I’ve helped a few of them to get accepted to the school they wanted to and pursue a career in programming
All in all, teaching after work makes for a great hobby and a strong barrier for my day job so I don’t find myself working late anymore.
Yep, totally this.
I occationally have to fix stuff on the weekend and even than I’ll rather go to the office than doing it from home.
Also I have different monitor/keyboard/mouse setups and I really don’t like working on my home setup.
Full remote all the way.
Demand that in your contracts so you have flexibility. Then it’s a choice not an obligation to come to the office.
I work with a few who prefer the office over work from home. I think they need a way to escape the house/wife/kids and the office is the only quiet place they have to work.
I work with a few who prefer the office over work from home.
It does allow for a more clean break between work and non-work mindset.
I find it helps maintain a more healthy work-life balance.
Plus, I work on hardware, so it’s not like I can do that remotely most of the time anyway.
I enjoy office work more than wfh because I genuinely like the people I work with and I think we riff off each other way better in person
I dont know if I agree with the work life balance.
Shower, groom, dress and commute starting at 6.30am, work 8.30–5.30 and commute to 6.30/7
or work 8.45-5.15ish and maybe spend an extra hour or two coupla times a week?
Huge difference.
My team moved to fully remote a month ago. I’m loving it so far.
Getting to see my little girl throughout my day makes me feel like I’m not missing out on watching her grow up.
I think I may be the only person on the face of the earth with no preference on this. My commute is immaterial, the office about 2k away, working from home is kind of a drag but I don’t have to get dressed and can keep the household going (which is part of why it’s a drag) online meetings suck even more than in person meetings, otherwise fine to work remotely. So when we were working from home, I was fine with it, then hybrid I thought would be the worst of all, no, it was fine. Now they say come in at least 3 days, I am going to put away the home workstation and just work at the office, reclaim the space at home, that’s fine too. It’s pretty much the same job either way.
I have only ever worked on-site jobs, so I am very used to it. The main plus for me is interacting with my co-workers. You run into the occasional jerk or someone having a bad day, but usually it is a great way to learn new things and gain different perspectives.
I would rather not be employed. I hated everything about my in-office jobs. The clothes, the pointless small talk, the “quick sidebars” that end up being longer than a meeting but could’ve just been a text conversation. The only thing I miss was lunchtime banter and finding fellow nerds to infodump with.
I’ve been remote for the 3 years of work experience that I’ve had. I live in a city with piss poor public transportation and detest traffic, plus I enjoy waking up 10 minutes before having to clock in.
The pay and perks would have to be substantial for me to consider working on-site.
From what I’ve heard, most people that are for in office work like having the separation between work and home.
That being said, I think most folks want remote work or at least remote hybrid. It just makes more sense especially for me. I live far from my office (140 mile drive roundtrip), and working 3 days a week from home has been a god send.
most people that are for in office work like having the separation between work and home.
My apartment offers wework-style glass cube space, as well as (totally unused) conference space on the 30th floor. Big conference TV, kitchenette, global supra high-back seating (good-not-amazing) and panoramic river views.
I did notice that the only people not opting for WFH/hybrid at my last job were all the married-with-kids types who hated being around their family and used work as an escape. It was really sad to see lol
There’s a psychological stress with work that can take some time to slough off.
Some people don’t want to log out of work and be grumpy or distracted during family time.
That being said having a process or system as a habit to denote work/home is a good alternative.
A 10 minute walk, a change of clothes, or some song you play, anything that creates a mental delineation. So the annoyance from that way too long meeting asking why something isn’t done (4 hours a day giving out status updates isn’t helping) doesn’t come out on the family.
There’s also a huge value to people working in the same space.
Random conversations solve a lot of problems.
And I’m someone that finds being in an office around people constantly to be exhausting. I just recognize the value.
Random conversations solve a lot of problems.
Trends indicate no. The odds of that vs the costs of the distractions - because Mike, I swear to god, you keep clicking that pen and I’m gonna find a new home for it - don’t make it a winning choice.
In 2002 we solved this with an open skype call where everyone was muted. Convos were easy to start (alt-space to unmute and start talking), which created some distraction but not like Larry and his goddamned sad cowboy music.
I can chat with someone for hours on end, but I also like using my own toilet, and having access to a tea, snack, etc.
For me, what blocks having random conversations is having 1-3 hours of status updates daily - it doesn’t leave much leftover to do the work especially when my firm declaration that it was going to take twice as long as someone else estimated (and then sure enough it did, at minimum, and maybe taking 10x) is ignored. That would block conversations regardless?
Anyway, the conversations are the content, but them being present physically is only the medium, so WFH does not need to block them, and if anything can help facilitate them e.g. working one in-between other meetings whereas the time taken to physically walk over would have been prohibitive.
There’s also a huge value to people working in the same space.
Random conversations solve a lot of problems.
If only we had decent VR headsets that were comfortable to wear all day I wouldn’t mind replicating that in a “virtual office”
Unfortunately, even Apple wasn’t able to solve the comfortability problem.
You can replicate that remotely. I’ve had days where 2-3 people joined a call to share something and then kept that call in the background for hours, chatting about random things while working.
That’s understandable but like… you could go to a coffee shop or literally rent office space nearby to where you live - it doesn’t have to be all one way or the other. Anyway, if they truly do enjoy being surrounded by people then I don’t want to knock their totally valid preferences, just to say that there are other ways.
Not wanting to work in a crowded home has nothing to do with disliking your family. Kids are loud. They run around the house. They watch TV with the volume set too high. They have excited calls with their friends. Many home builders skimp on noise insulation for interior walls.
From my open office experience, it is often not better with colleagues. A lot of noise, distractions, useless conversations. That is not as bad as kids, but this is why I always dreamt to WFH. I will always be grateful to the person who under cooked that bat in 2019.
My brain definitely focuses better with environmental cues. I mean, I can work just about anywhere, but if I’m not in the mood, then having the environmental cues displaces alternatives. Subjectively, I feel more productive at work. Never had a really bad commute, so I was never motivated to try to set up a ‘work-only’ space at home, but I’d only do a 70 mile one-way drive for very special occasions.
My ask is 4x salary for in office.
It’s usually met with “Well, that’s not going to happen…”
To which I reply “I know, right?”
“how bout that” lol
My ask is
You mean ‘request’, right? You need to leave the used-car-salesbro jargon at the lot, man.
But I run a surcharge as well, and it’s prohibitive for some. It’s about 40% more for the first day in the office, and 20% more for each day-per-week after that, to 120% surcharge at most. I put the interview answers in the spreadsheet, and when they ask about Salary I tell them how it’s based on the per-person rent of a 2-bedroom condo closest to the work location and a percentage surcharge or rebate based on the job attributes. Either that’s too offbeat or detailed for them, and they sometimes get sad for one or both of those reasons.
Software update policy, dress code (there’s a difference between ‘casual’ and ‘business casual’), a tax for Teams or Office or Outlook, mandatory standby, forced field work, 9x9 schedule, etc. I don’t have a tax for ‘distance from nearest commuter train station’ but it’s coming.
Absolute.com (security not vodka) was down to $85k, though, as it was so awesome. But ohhh, if MDA or the BoC had bit, it would’ve been nearly $500k as they had SO many problems.
No, I mean “my ask.”
Not jargon. Recognized by the Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary. Perhaps your understanding of English is not “advanced”.
It is what I am asking. It is my ask.
What an absurdly pointless hair to attempt to split. It’d be one thing if you were being inquisitive, but you’re out here just confidently incorrecting people lmao.
Stay in school, kiddo.
Instead, the people offering the largest salaries are mostly remote-only.
People that value your work value your work, I guess.
How to win against the dead-sea effect, I guess.
