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canyonwalkerToday I went to my company's office nearby. It was mostly a waste of time. Here are Five Things about why:
1) The office is not far... It's an 11 mile drive from my house. Apple Maps showed a driving time of 20 minutes this morning. It's a reverse commute. It's also a relative short commute. A quick search for stats on average commutes in the US finds various figures. All are higher, in both time and minutes, than my commute.
2) ....But the time adds up! A 20 minute drive doesn't mean the commute consumes just 20 minutes of time. 20 minutes is merely the driving time. People often talk about the door-to-door time, which includes things like having to park in the garage behind the building and walk to the office. Beyond even door-to-door time today I measured the desk-to-desk time. That's the amount of time from when I took my computer off my home-office desk— the point at which I would have started my work if I were working from home— until I opened my computer at a desk in the company office. That desk-to-desk time was 36 minutes. Double that for a round trip and it's over an hour of extra time required each day even for an objectively short address-to-address commute!
3) Years ago I worked in-office regularly... and happily. Up 'til 2018 I considered myself an in-office worker. Oh, I'd done stints of remote work prior to that. I'd worked remotely for a few weeks when I injured my back and couldn't sit well. I worked remotely for a few months when my employer's office was closed for renovations. And, of course, when I was traveling heavily for work there were periods when I'd be in-office maybe one day a week for weeks at a time. But I always enjoyed coming back to the office because it was so much easier to get things done— things that required working with colleagues— when all/most of us were in the office together.
4) Today I went in looking for same f2f time. The immediate reason I went in to the office today was we were having a launch party celebrating a major new product release. It was a 9am party, so no beer and cocktails. But I figured it'd be worth getting some f2f time with execs who were in the office. ...Except only one of them was. And I hoped I could get some f2f time with more immediate colleagues who live in various places around the Bay Area... except that none of them came. Chatting with that one exec was a plus. I couldn't monopolize his time for more than a few minutes, though. After that I was back to sitting at a desk doing what I'd normally do at home, except slower. I bailed out and left for home at 10:30am.
5) I didn't choose for office work to be a waste of time, the company did. The situation today illustrates the positive and negative reasons why I started thinking of my work as remote-first several years ago. Back when there was reliably a critical mass of people in the office— most of the management based there, enough of my colleagues based there— it was valuable to be there. Companies used to value us all being in the same place, too. But over the years companies became more cavalier about hiring people wherever they could find them— and often the places they looked were in lower-cost locales thousands of miles away. Why should I go to an office at that point, when the company sees no loss in value in hiring people thousands of miles away? How am I supposedly more productive in an office (what many technology executives are saying in the media today) when all I do is answer messages and join videoconf calls with people in remote locations? I can do all that perfectly well from home... and get more than an hour of my life back every day.
1) The office is not far... It's an 11 mile drive from my house. Apple Maps showed a driving time of 20 minutes this morning. It's a reverse commute. It's also a relative short commute. A quick search for stats on average commutes in the US finds various figures. All are higher, in both time and minutes, than my commute.
2) ....But the time adds up! A 20 minute drive doesn't mean the commute consumes just 20 minutes of time. 20 minutes is merely the driving time. People often talk about the door-to-door time, which includes things like having to park in the garage behind the building and walk to the office. Beyond even door-to-door time today I measured the desk-to-desk time. That's the amount of time from when I took my computer off my home-office desk— the point at which I would have started my work if I were working from home— until I opened my computer at a desk in the company office. That desk-to-desk time was 36 minutes. Double that for a round trip and it's over an hour of extra time required each day even for an objectively short address-to-address commute!
3) Years ago I worked in-office regularly... and happily. Up 'til 2018 I considered myself an in-office worker. Oh, I'd done stints of remote work prior to that. I'd worked remotely for a few weeks when I injured my back and couldn't sit well. I worked remotely for a few months when my employer's office was closed for renovations. And, of course, when I was traveling heavily for work there were periods when I'd be in-office maybe one day a week for weeks at a time. But I always enjoyed coming back to the office because it was so much easier to get things done— things that required working with colleagues— when all/most of us were in the office together.
4) Today I went in looking for same f2f time. The immediate reason I went in to the office today was we were having a launch party celebrating a major new product release. It was a 9am party, so no beer and cocktails. But I figured it'd be worth getting some f2f time with execs who were in the office. ...Except only one of them was. And I hoped I could get some f2f time with more immediate colleagues who live in various places around the Bay Area... except that none of them came. Chatting with that one exec was a plus. I couldn't monopolize his time for more than a few minutes, though. After that I was back to sitting at a desk doing what I'd normally do at home, except slower. I bailed out and left for home at 10:30am.
5) I didn't choose for office work to be a waste of time, the company did. The situation today illustrates the positive and negative reasons why I started thinking of my work as remote-first several years ago. Back when there was reliably a critical mass of people in the office— most of the management based there, enough of my colleagues based there— it was valuable to be there. Companies used to value us all being in the same place, too. But over the years companies became more cavalier about hiring people wherever they could find them— and often the places they looked were in lower-cost locales thousands of miles away. Why should I go to an office at that point, when the company sees no loss in value in hiring people thousands of miles away? How am I supposedly more productive in an office (what many technology executives are saying in the media today) when all I do is answer messages and join videoconf calls with people in remote locations? I can do all that perfectly well from home... and get more than an hour of my life back every day.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 06:46 am (UTC)For many, it's easier to do videoconf calls from home because finding an available meeting room isn't part of the challenge.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 04:22 pm (UTC)