Hello everybody.

I’d like to explain a lot about a topic that is very near my heart. If your job is in an office you will understand this.

Why offices?

So why are we sitting together in one big place cramped up with 20-300 other people? Why bother the catering and the ventilation and what not to accommodate these people at one place? Why not just leave them be and let them work at home?

If your job involves interaction than you are in bad luck. You need to be there to talk to people to coordinate your work to gather information and to generally do your work.

But this doesn’t answer the question.

Why does it matter if I’m in the office or not if my work is done?

That’s my big question. Why must I sit in the office if my work is done and in a good shape and good quality? Why must I go in and do my job there if at home I’m 50% more efficient because I’m in my underwear? In fact, why bother going into and environment where I don’t feel comfortable. Where I must go into an office which is cold and doesn’t have my favourite chair, my desk and loud heavy metal from speakers.

Well there are couple of things.

Interaction

So like I said earlier there is that. Interaction. You need to collaborate with others. You need to do pair programming, you need to talk to the business analysts, testers, colleagues what nots. In that case, having an environment where everybody is at your disposal is pretty neat and necessary. It cannot be avoided.

Unless everybody is on Skype and available all the time.

Separation of Concern

There is a Design Pattern in software engineering called Separation of Concern. This applies to work places as well. You don’t live where you work generally because living could distract working. There are tons and tons of books about how you need a separated environment if you are a writing and you write at home. Because there are too many distractions. And if you are not disciplined enough you will get Zero work done. You will always find something better to do.

That’s why the physical act of going to work will switch your brain into work mode and lets you focus better. Whilst going home should do the opposite thing. You should leave work at work.

Show “our” strength

Generally big companies like to show off. For a company as big as Microsoft or IBM for example it’s actually not the product that matters on the market but the yearly growth of employees. Hence, strength in numbers.

Now if some investors get around and want to check out the company they like to see the buzzing bees. They like to see people working, sitting, typing away at stuff. It’s all about appearances. A strong, cramped office full of people looks like a very busy hard working company.

Companies could be a bit more flexible though

If I work from 6AM to 3PM because my daughter has a show at 5PM I want to go though I would like to be able to do that without having to go through too much trouble.

Or if I would like to work tomorrow and today I have better things to do, then why not, if my work is done?

Abuse

But then, people are people. Most of them will use every opportunity to slack off. Hence the general perception is that if you are at home you are not working. So to be better able to monitor you, all of the employees must be in one place.

Last words

So really there needs to be a better agreement between both sides. Workers need to be honest and diligent. And workplaces need to be more flexible and understanding as long as the job is done. Because people will work a LOT better and more efficient if they are HAPPY in their work environment.

That’s what I’m proposing.

As ever,

Thanks for reading.

Have a nice day.

Gergely.