The Great Office Confusion
I couldn’t wait to return, but do I actually like working in the office anymore?
There’s been a lot written about The Great Resignation. There are news articles theorising about it, countless LinkedIn posts from recruiters trying to exploit it as a marketing tool, and more recently, folks attempting to debunk or evolve the theory.
I’ve been pondering something slightly different but related. I wrote a post a while ago where I considered the pros and cons of returning to the office after working at home for so long during the pandemic. I have since started ‘hybrid’ working, where I can go into the office anytime I want, but after looking forward to going back, I’m now trying to reconcile conflicting thoughts and feelings about it. AKA:
The Great Office Confusion — do I actually like working in the office anymore?
The commute
The most obvious downside is the commute, and one I’ve heard from multiple colleagues — going to and from work just feels now like wasted time. I don’t have a bad commute, it’s about a 40-minute drive, and I do like the chance to listen to a podcast, but I just can’t shake the feeling that I could be at home doing something more productive. Or that I could be at home doing something unproductive.
In my previous company, I spent about 11 years commuting Monday to Friday to the office, about an hour and twenty minutes each way. Walk to the train station (10 mins, 5 if I was running full throttle in a panic), train journey (about 40 mins), switch to second train (about 20 minutes, usually standing), 5 mins walk to the office. All of that sounds crazy now, with the alternative being me opening my MacBook at the kitchen table as I eat my cereal (1 minute).
The sadness of what once was
At the risk of veering into the melodramatic, I wasn’t expecting the return to the office to make me a little bit sad. In ‘The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’, an old favorite fantasy series, a character states:
There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.
Ok, we’ve gone full-melodrama. The point is that I used to love working in the office, it was taken away from us, and now it’s just not the same as it was before.
The facilities are just as great as ever — and I’m aware of how privileged I am to have a great job, with nice offices — but the real thing that made it so special — the people & the culture, just isn’t back yet.
Only a few others have returned, and for obvious safety reasons, we can’t have in-person meetings or just hang out like we used to. Most of my actual colleagues were always in different offices as my local office didn’t have many from my team. But I still loved the office as I got to meet folks from other teams, attend or present at lunch-time tech talks, wander over to other people’s desks for a chat — all the usual in-office stuff that probably never felt that special or unusual but that now is very much missed.
It may never be the same
I’m also not sure if the office will ever go back to “normal” — as we’re all so used to working at home now, and companies like mine are offering hybrid work patterns. Every now and then, there’s talk of bringing in folks for large team meetings or events, but they won’t replace the random chats at the coffee machine as two people from different teams bond over having no clue how to work the coffee machine.
There’s also inclusivity and efficiency to be considered — if half the team is working remotely and the other are in the office, we can’t have in-person meetings as it just wouldn’t be fair on the people at home. We can’t go back to the days of “Can whoever is talking please move closer to the mike, because I can’t hear a word?” of conference room meetings with a few folks dialled in.
So all meetings will be “at-desk” meetings, with everyone calling in separately with their headphones on, even though they’re actually in the same building together, which just isn’t my idea of fun office times.
The positives
It isn’t, of course, all doom and gloom — it has been absolutely amazing to get peace and quiet in the office, after all the madness of working at home with a large young family.
I had been trying for the last couple of weeks to write a detailed white paper (“Engineering Excellence for Exploration” — unfortunately not how to make amazing sleds for Antarctic exploration, but how to run great exploratory innovation projects) but just haven’t had the headspace at home to finish it.
One day in the office last week gave me enough quality time to get it done and released for first review — and drinking tea and eating donuts in my favourite yellow armchair at the same time was pretty amazing.
However, as fantastic as it is, it also leads to:
The guilt
One thing I had predicted I’d feel was the guilt of not being at home. It’s not that I feel guilty working — it’s that I know that I don’t need to be in the office, that I could be at home.
Over the last 20 months or so, my family has gotten used to me being at home — I make breakfasts & lunches, drop kids to school, come downstairs from the home-office-in-the-attic to help my wife if she needs something urgently — and just generally help out like I never did before. It’s meant my workday usually stretches into the evening, as I catch up on any missed work once everyone is settled at night, which probably isn’t ideal, but I’ve always liked working when the house is quiet and dark (I’m writing this sentence at 3 minutes past 11 pm).
When I’m in the office, I can’t do any of that helping out, and while I get more work done during the day, my six-year-old wants to know why I’m not picking her up from school. “Daddy has to go into the office” — whereas I really know it should be “Daddy wants to listen to music and code for seven hours straight without having to change any nappies or get crackers with peanut butter for six people and a dog”.
Which has just led to all these confused, conflicted thoughts and emotions.
Am I being selfish for wanting some me-time to work more productively over shorter time periods, or should I continue to work at home and help my family more? Do I actually want to work in the office anymore, or have I grown to prefer working much more flexibly at my own pace and schedule? Is Wednesday driv-thru from home just as good or better than Tuesday Take-Away in the office?!
Ways of working will have more of an impact than people moving jobs
One final thought is that this confusion I’m feeling — and all the related debates on office vs. remote vs. hybrid — will be much more impactful on the future of work than the (apparent) current mass movement of people moving jobs.
Staff hiring and attrition are always important, but figuring out how to manage efficient, happy teams to run successful businesses is more important.
Any thoughts or comments on the Great Resignation VS the Great Office Confusion, please let me know below, I’d love to hear what other folks are thinking.
