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I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in fro

• joncrane 8y ago
  OMG I do the same thing. First job out of college, I had a private office, bookcase, huge filing cabinet, everything. As my pay increases, my working conditions deteriorate. I hate working from home, though. I am now on the FI train (Financial Independence) so I can either take lower paying jobs and live partially off my savings, or do whatever I want. I also, of course, maximize my income. Making 4x what I was making back when I had my own office takes the sting off a little, you know? But still. Ridiculous.
  • ThomaszKrueger 8y ago
    I love WFH. It helps that I have been happily married for many years, I have home cooked meals, more family interaction (well when I am working I am working but whatercooler conversations in your own kitchen are great). And I can literally work from anywhere, be it visiting relatives or travelling to Europe. I really hope I can continue like this for a long time; I might accept going back to the office - but it better be a real one.
    • beamatronic 8y ago
      I’m only productive WFH when there’s no one else home.
      • LaGrange 8y ago
        Pretty sure the "great productivity while WFH" is contingent on having a dedicated workspace (I mean, I guess it can be shared with other work-from-homers in the household, but it should be dedicated). Which isn't something everyone can afford. That's why, even as I advocate for WFH as the default, I think companies should still have offices where people can do their work if they need to.
        • iamdave 8y ago
          My last job was 100% WFH and I tell people this all the time who ask how I do it. "Dedicate a work area for work and nothing else". All I have on my work desk (which is an actual desk in a smallish room I converted for the purpose) is a monitor, keyboard and mouse and a coffee mug full of pens. The only thing in the room that isn't work is a Dualshock 4 PS4 controller that I use for gaming when I'm on lunch breaks or after work is done and I feel like playing some street fighter. You don't just work at the house and expect to be productive. Much like muscles in the body working out for a marathon, you have to train at it, exercise and make deliberate efforts to get better. You don't just show up and run if you expect to have a good time. YMMV though. I'm lucky to be a single-ish guy with a cat and no kids.
          • mirimir 8y ago
            For me it was a walk-in closet. Just big enough for a desk and chair. And cats. My wife had her own walk-in closet. But no kids, I admit.
        • k3liutZu 8y ago
          Yes, if I ever go back to WFH I'll make sure to have a dedicated office. You need a room where "work happens" and nothing else. The human mind needs boundaries.
          • Tempest1981 8y ago
            I know people who WFH at their kitchen table, and do fine. Others need isolation, just like at work.
    • pasbesoin 8y ago
      Working from home... For some of us, that too, is becoming impossible due to noise. I moved, to my own house, in part in the hope of starting to consult as a sideline. To end up tortured by a series of neighbors. I just had another one move in next door, and find my previously quiet neighboring property now has a fellow who plays music while he works in his garage. At least that I can't hear, inside my own house with the windows closed and the A/C on. This "all noise, all the time" culture has invaded home life, too. And, it seems, for more and more people, not just from those you choose (or, are forced to...) live with. Like the selfish people with their straight pipe Harleys. The absolutely ridiculous car stereos, which around here at least, the police finally seem to have cracked down on, a bit. (Once we got a noise ordinance, that for a long time they weren't really enforcing, I felt like pointing out to them, "Look! Here's your revenue stream! Third or fourth violation: $1000. You can afford to buy some calibrated sound meters.") Choose where you live carefully. Home, like work, is a place where inconsiderate -- or, bad -- neighbors can drag your life and productivity down. Whereupon your options shrink, rather than grow.
      • bunderbunder 8y ago
        re: music while working in garage -- I don't think that's anything new. It used to be that everyone had a boom box in their garage. What seems to be new is that the music is getting louder and louder because so many people have early stage hearing loss by age 30 as a result of cranking the music on their earbuds up too loud. I'm semi-regularly amazed to discover the things I can hear and people 10 years younger than me can't.
      • wl 8y ago
        You might want to talk to Leslie Blomberg of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. He's doing research into the kinds of noise ordinances that have been enacted in the United States and how effective and enforceable they are. In particular, it seems that giving police officers sound meters is more complicated than you'd think (they require special training) and not all that effective.
      • techsupporter 8y ago
        I have this same problem as well. I don't know if the world is getting noisier or I'm getting more sensitive. Probably the latter. My neighbor to one side has two vehicles with massive car stereos that he enjoys just letting run most of the day on some days. He's told me to pound sand when I ask him to turn it down. My neighbor to the other side has a straight pipe Harley that he warms up at 7:30 on the morning. He's told me that loud pipes save lives when I ask him to not do it so much. My neighbor on the other side of the duplex has a stoop that faces my window and enjoys holding mobile phone conversations in the outdoors where it's nice and breezy. That's roughly the same effect as people gabbing in the open space. I tried renting one of those small offices in a quiet neighborhood. Nope, they're apparently built with tissue paper so when the tattoo parlor moved in across the hall and started dropping the beat, there went all semblance of calm. Same for the small business just to the other side where they have loud stand-ups (with applause) and lots of sales calls. So, yep, I know the old saying of "if everybody else is the asshole it's you who's the asshole." I still can't shake the feeling that I have nowhere to escape. Work is people loud, home is people loud, away is people loud, even the bus to and from work is getting people loud, the plane ride to vacation is people loud. Maybe I just need to hermit.
    • mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
      I work from home. I used to put in 8 hours at an office, then went down to 5 at home. Since I had a baby my work time is now 1-2 hours. To make up for the lost time I have to be super productive. Basically, I don’t work unless I’m in the zone. I should probably mention that I work for myself so it’s not like I’m stealing time from anyone. A deadline is a deadline and I meet them regardless of hours worked. I’ve learned that there is work, productive work and super productive work. I have to be in the zone 100% of the time I work or things turn into a shitshow.
• dver 8y ago
  Same joke here, I tell people I'm trending to card table in the parking lot. Like my job and company alot, hate the open office. Literally have standing conversations start right behind my chair multiple times a day.
  • mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    I worked in a hallway cubicle at a law office for a while. Once a day an attorney would start chatting with another behind my back and would stay there for an hour. I got so annoyed at some point that I stopped working for the entirety of their conversation any time someone started talking. I felt wrong for taking up company time but these people did not respect my space. At some point I also started just turning around and looking at them while they talked. A few got the point and left but others just kept on talking even after making eye contact.
    • carlivar 8y ago
      That seems really passive aggressive. Why not just ask them to have their conversation elsewhere?
      • AstralStorm 8y ago
        That almost never works in software jobs as workplaces are not mobile. Move a big desktop with hardware? Good luck. Try to access local state from a laptop? Does not work or is inconvenient. Multiply by number of people talking. Not talking also kills pair programming.
        • golergka 8y ago
          Why would he need to take his workplace anywhere? It's the talking people who need to take their conversation someplace else.
      • mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
        Tried that first of course.
• JTbane 8y ago
  The open office meme needs to die.
  • loco5niner 8y ago
    Yes, the open office needs to die.
• beamatronic 8y ago
  Same here, had my own office at first job - late 90s, East Coast.
• technofiend 8y ago
  It really was nice back when I started to have a dedicated office. When I was at Shell even the "hot seat" SA who had to answer the hotline and customer emails rotated into an office dedicated to that task for their week in the hot seat. But it wasn't all perfect - Chevron used to allow in office smoking. Fortunately for everyone else the two smokers had their own shared office but still everything in there was covered in a yellow tar miasma and the offices on either side didn't fare much better. And Shell's offices were in a building that could be resold as a hospital, so we sat in rooms that were meant to be a private hospital room and were jammed in with easily removed furniture: in my case that meant sharing a room with four card tables and literally getting up and leaving the office so my office mate could walk past my desk and exit the room.
• mikestew 8y ago
  One person got sick, everyone got sick. Combine that with the growing popularity of "all-in-one-bucket" PTO (IOW, your sick days comes out of the same bucket as vacation/holiday), and it's a wonder anyone stays healthy for any period of time. For the longest time I joked with my wife that I'd take a $20K pay cut to not work in an open office. The job market called my bluff. gulp Sure, it's less money (and probably right around the $20K I was willing to trade), but I'm pretty sure my office is bigger than the one I had at Microsoft back in the day. Ask me today, and it's a trade I'm glad I made. And I haven't been sick in the five months since I started. :-)
  • pjc50 8y ago
    > "all-in-one-bucket" PTO (IOW, your sick days comes out of the same bucket as vacation/holiday), This is of course illegal in the UK and I suspect most European countries: https://www.gov.uk/employers-sick-pay/entitlement https://www.gov.uk/employers-sick-pay/entitlement > "You cannot force your employees to take annual leave when they’re eligible for sick leave."
• some_account 8y ago
  Still waiting for the joke part... Programmers have also lost a lot of respect, and are now seen as simple factory workers who glue things together according to best practice.
  • ProAm 8y ago
    Programmers are a trade worker the same as plumbers and electricians, etc.... There was a bit of 'magic happens here' in the industry for a while but nowadays we're pretty much a skilled trade.
    • colatkinson 8y ago
      To be honest, I'm fine with this. My buddy is a plumber and makes almost as much as me.
    • barrkel 8y ago
      It depends on how close to the sales pipeline you are, or whatever creates value in your company. It's still possible to have an outsized, leveraged effect as a developer.
    • ken 8y ago
      Trade means "skilled work", so programming has always been by definition a trade. That's not disparaging in the least. There's absolutely nothing wrong with trade work. My only issue is the matter of supplies. If you hired me as an electrician but wouldn't let me have any wire cutters, I would have a very difficult time doing my job. Likewise, a quiet space to think is one of the necessary reagents for programming.
  • HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
    Yeap, I'm looking for an exit from being a permanent programmer employed by someone else. Whether that's self-employment, or transitioning to a PM or BA type role. Code monkey is a dead-end if you're outside a tech-hub.
    • mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
• lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Noise cancellation does nothing for office noise. It is only useful for things like fans, engines, etc. So, any headphones with isolation will do in an office.
  • sbuas 8y ago
    As someone who uses noise cancelling headphones (Bose QC35) every day in the office for ~1.5y, I can tell you that yes it re ally help for me. It won't hide the voices of people's talking but it will mask them somewhat (like if they where more far). It's the only way I'm able to be functional and talk with clients and continue working in an open space.. However Bose mic is catching everything, but that's another problem..
    • lawnchair_larry 8y ago
      That isn’t noise cancelation. That’s normal attenuation that any closed headphone will do. Real-time noise cancelation is impossible for voices.
• thermodynthrway 8y ago
  OMG my office might as well sponser Bose noise cancelling headphones. "Warehouse style" bare concrete on every surface. The cheapest shittiest office space for a bunch of people making 70+k a year. It's crazy. In my company everyone from the janitor to the CTO sits in the same shitty chairs in the same giant concrete warehouse. At least they're fair about it...
• HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
  I'm in a dead end job right now but I'm reluctant to leave because my office is huge. big bookshelf, multiple chairs, nice view. I'm going to need a big pay increase to go back to an open office, and no one is ponying up.
• duxup 8y ago
  I don't wear headphones that play music much (unless I want rainy mood or something) but Shooting Earmuffs are perfect. With a good pair I would forget I'm even at work at times. At the same time if someone comes to my cube and is close by, I can still hear them. Far away noises, not so much. I highly recommend getting a pair, they're super cheap, all kinds of styles and sizes.
• ljw1001 8y ago
  Same, except I don't work from home. After open floor plan came "flex-seating" where spaces in an open floor plan office are available 'first-come, first serve' and you can't leave pictures, papers, books, or anything on your desk when you go home.