Why do so many people want us back in the office?
I feel like most people who want to go back to working in an office, don’t really need <i>an office</i> per se — in the sense of needing to rent out a unit or floor of a building for their company to work out of.<p>Most of the advantages that individual knowledge-workers attain from an office — work-life separation, and meeting rooms in which to come together with others for a scheduled semi-private conversation — already have a relevant institution that will provide those to almost anyone on Earth, free of charge: the public library. Everyone[1] sitting at the tables in a public library is being productive. And almost all modern libraries have bookable meeting rooms as a <i>free</i> service!<p>[1] If your library is full of noisy people, find a different one. This mostly only happens to the one library per city nearest to the projects. I suggest a public library near a college; or, for that matter, a University library, if it’s public-access.<p>Yes, there’s also coffee shops, but those only solve work-life separation. Most coffee shops don’t offer bookable spaces for private meetings. I guess you could combine coffee shops with booths at restaurants, but that gets expensive quickly. Libraries are free! And, unlike the coffee shop where sitting there all day with your laptop will <i>annoy</i> the employees, being productive all day in a library is <i>the point</i>, and you have every right to ask the library employees to shush anyone <i>interfering</i> with your productivity, because productivity is what they want the library environment to foster.<p>——————<p>Who doesn&#x27;t think libraries are a valid substitute for offices?<p>• Sales people and call-center workers, obviously. Anyone who needs to make phone calls all day. But these people were never really suited to ordinary office space, either. They need sound-proofed rooms&#x2F;booths, really. You can build those anywhere — podcasters and journalists are currently building these at home. You really do need a <i>separate</i> space for this, though, and that might not be tenable in a small bachelor apartment. I have a feeling we might see the rise of specialty coworking spaces consisting of floors of small, rentable recording-booth rooms. (Some fancier public libraries have these too — again, for free.)<p>• Managers. Specifically, <i>middle</i>-managers. In-person, off-the-record conversations are how you &quot;build your team&quot;, i.e. how you build loyalty to yourself and ensure that your team-members are working for <i>you</i>, rather than for <i>the company</i>, such that you can later take credit for their achievements and they won&#x27;t call you out for it. This role is dying, and most of the visible backlash is likely coming from here. It&#x27;s like the death throes of aristocracy when centralized government rises to replace it. Good riddance, I say. (Team-allocated executive assistants can perform the project-management tasks of a manager just as well, without also becoming feudal lords. <i>These</i> don&#x27;t mind remote work at all, because they&#x27;re fine with everything they say happening on-the-record on Slack&#x2F;email&#x2F;etc.)