No, but the company name was similar in spirit.
When concealed carry was approved in my state the company put up a sign that disallowed weapons in the building. (Many businesses did this.) I was shocked at a number of women who said their gun was in their purse and who cared what the company said. These women did not seem like the gun toting âtypeâ (if there is one). Also it made me think of Stephanie Plumâs gun-toting grandma in the One for the Money series.
At that time our parking was not all that secure so I could see why some considered it a safety issue. (Altho I never saw anyone too weird that wasnât quickly chased off by Security.)
Weâre now in a different location and our parking is fairly secure. Iâm guessing those gun toters are still packing though. These are NOT the sort of red necks one often imagines as gun toters and this does not bother me.
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Eurgh, I hate the âfirearm in purse.â That is extremely unsafe storage and Iâd truthfully report those people.
I mean, it was years ago that they told me. No accidental shootings & I canât be certain they are still carrying. I do think itâs likely tho.
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Responsible gun owners, right?
i was in a work meeting with some folks on Monday. one guy is a C-level person at his company and he was giddy about wanting to âcall everyone backâ and mandate in person only. he must love spending time hiring new people bc I figure 30% of his office will leave if he declares that (up from a flexible 2-3 to all 5 days)
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So weird. Iâd be nervous, like maybe this will boost productivity but people are going to hate it and it will be harder to recruit talent.
I still prefer what my company has done â adopt a âdo what makes the most sense for your teamâ policy.
Even if I were local to the rest of my team, or local to my boss, it would make no sense for me to go in 5 days a week. 2 or 3 maybe, with the exact number and which days varying depending on what else is going on.
So much of my work is either my plugging away in Excel or my modeling tools, or being on Teams with folks in locations different from where my team and boss are located, that itâs a waste of resources and efficiency for me to physically go into an office.
My company does have an office local to where I am. I used to go in daily, because back then the commute was easy, VPN sucked, and I liked having the added separation between âworkâ and âhmeâ. However, then the office moved and the commute became miserable, and the corporate VPN improved to suck significantly lessâŚand thatâs why I was WFH for a few years before the pandemic made it popular.
But Iâm an oddball. It looks like most people are in 2-3 days a week, although the actual number and which days varies based on what else is going on. I did see a job posting to fill a vacancy in my recently-former team specified â2 days in office each week requiredâ, but I think that was HR injecting a corporate preference rather than reality.
agreed, though my commute longer i used to go in every day, three hours wasted
will add, i also donât like people
WFH makes me much more pleasant
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Those with established careers will hate it. Less experienced and entry level are more likely to benefit from being in the office. You canât make the hallway interactions happen through teams, or at least, it does not seem to be done effectively.
I knew almost everyone in my department before COVID. I can maybe name 25% of those we hired in the last 4 years. This is a solvable problem where you can force these interactions to happen in new ways, but its a new problem. Mandatory time in the office is one solution.
I imagine this is a legitimate and growing concern for company and department leaders beyond an âok boomerâ mindset. People want to be left alone to get their job done, but you canât manage a company for very long without developing the next generation of leaders. Maybe those leaders are developing and emerging, but in ways that are difficult to recognize because it is all different. I havenât seen much evidence that anyone has confidently solved this problem. Realistically, thatâs not even observable yet.
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do a lot of chat in Teams, which is not too bad as the hallway interaction
Itâs not bad once it happens, but I have no reason to talk to Joeâs new hire Sara, because she is on a different team, but if we were all in the office, I likely would meet her in the first week and chat with her on occasion in the breakroom or elsewhere.
You can find ways to make this sort of thing happen, but again, I am not hearing good solutions for this.
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Our department hasnât hired anyone thatâs in-person in 3 years. The company as a whole has done more remote hiring than in-person hiring. If the company were to decide âOK, everyone back in the officeâ there would be a huge exodus of people.
As it is, I think thereâs an unofficial policy of âif you want to supervise, you have to be at least hybridâ which requires in-person at one of the company offices 3 days a week. Probably not a problem right now, most people who were in supervisory positions are already close to one of the two major offices. Weâll see if that becomes an issue as people age out and fewer pre-2020 people [who were all working in-office because they all lived in the local area] are available to move up into those roles.
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I think the 2-3 hybrid is a nice compromise. You get the benefit of those interactions with more flexibility and fewer days commuting. I think fully remote for many roles degrades culture / EL training / etc, but in a similar way 5 days is just a bit masochistic.
Our best workaround is I have my new hires setup 30 minute get to know you calls with ~20 people not in their department. Some other areas do this as well. Not quite the same as in person, but it has led to some interactions that wouldnât have happened for remote workers otherwise.
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During pandemic lockdowns, my former department set up the practice of having weekly âcoffee breakâ sessions in Teams, as a way to get some of the hallway chats / serendipitous interactions that we lost in the fully-remote setting. Everyone was invited and encouraged to participate if possible. Theyâve continued even after the shift to hybrid being the norm, although attendance is down.
My new department, which is scattered across three continents, has quarterly semi-mandatory social interactions, where we are quasi-randomly assigned into groups of 6 or 7 people (âquasi-randomlyâ = âensure a mix of teams and geographiesâ), to meet and chat.
I like the idea of short meetings with new hires from other teams. The problem i see with the teams coffee breaks is 1-2 people will dominate the conversation. Hallway chats are usually 2-3 people and 5 minutes or less.
Again, plenty of ways to solve this, but recognizing the need is usually the hardest part.
We use a Slack plug-in (not sure if thatâs the right term) called Donut that will randomly suggest meetings for people to meet and chat. I donât know how it works, someone must give it lists to work with.
Itâs a decent solution, I do wish the list was a little broader and it paired me with some BI folks maybe. Not as effective as the old water cooler chats but itâs nice.
At my institution of employment every few months they will create the coffee chat and then randomly assign people to breakout rooms in groups of 5-6.