I'm really torn on WFH.

I started my whole programming career as a freelancer and worked fully remotely for 6 years before ever going to an office. But that's a bit different, because I advertised as a freelancer/consultant, and in that period I rarely worked in a team. And even when I worked in a team, my areas of responsibility were completely mine.

On one hand I vividly recall my last BigCo full time employment. I enrolled to a newly opened office, which at that point in time wasn't even an office but a few rented cubicles in WeWork-like space. My daily routine for first couple of months was to come to the office, get into my cubicle and login to the Skype call with the rest of the people I was working - in different offices. And for the rest of the day I sat there alone, occasionally hoping on other impromptu Skype calls.

I specifically asked couple of times if it would be possible for me to work from home, because I have zero personal interactions in the office, but over and over again I was told that WFH is strictly forbidden by the company policy.

That was pre-covid.

On the other hand, as someone who wore hats of leader/manager/director I have to admit - to this day - I find building teams, from ground up, in remote environment, almost impossible.

My very first office job had a very clever trick up their sleeve - we had a free lunch each day. Nobody skips a free lunch. Took me some time to realize how clever it was. To this day I have a draft of article in my desk titled "eat your scrum master".

Oh, and 20 years ago everyone was smoking. Between smoking, lunch, and bumping into each other at coffee desk - everyone knew everything. It's so simple - people like to talk, but eventually you'll run of small talk topics and start talking about the job.

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bluefirebrand 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> My very first office job had a very clever trick up their sleeve - we had a free lunch each day. Nobody skips a free lunch

I was recently diagnosed with celiac, so I'm pretty iffy around restaurant food in general

But even before I was diagnosed, I would much rather choose what I want for lunch than have whatever the office decided to buy.

Then again I've never really done well in office jobs, my career really never went anywhere until I started working remote and could stop trying to figure out the office politics bullshit

	▲	zeroq 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not specifically against you, but whenever I bring up this memory everyone's first reaction is just that - I won't be told what I can eat, fuck off. But this arrangement doesn't mean you only have one option. Most of the time you have a few. Sometimes - as was in my case mentioned in the post - you could specifically say what you want. And you could want anything you'd like, as long as it could be delivered. This wasn't Google, so we didn't had chef, but we had options. The only time I saw the company took the decision was when I had my stint at CDPR, when they advertised free lunch. The part they didn't advertised was the part the lunch was arriving at 6pm. But still they were ordering for 2-3 different restaurants.