Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office.

An office is a nice upgrade to a cubicle (or the utter idiocy of an open office setting), but it does not account for commute time. My house is better than any office, my commute is the 30-seconds-to-two-minutes-walk down my hallway (time varies depending on the quantity of belly rubs my dog wants during the requisite pit stop on the way), and my home office doesn't have a dress code that requires pants.
I didn't wear pants during my remote interview, I haven't worn pants during a single day of work (and I've been remote for years prior to COVID), it will take an exorbitant amount of money that no business would ever pay me to put on pants and commute to an office to do the exact same work I'd be doing pants-less with a pupper at my feet at home.

They simply can't pay me enough to deal with that shit and I don't give a flying fuck about their corporate real estate values.

I've got an office in my house, no thanks.

To offer a different perspective, I have the opposite opinion - if I'm going to go into an office, I want something different than what I can get at home. There doesn't seem to be much point if I'm just alone in a room. I like the open office plan - it gives a feel of energy and community that can be nice. It's nice that it's easy to access other people. I don't mind working in an open space with other people.

What makes office work different than work from home is other people, so if I'm going to an office, put me with other people!

I am SO tired of reading yet another mouthpiece for billionaires trying to tell employees off for wanting just a little better work life balance. Study after study is showing that employees are happier, more productive and cheaper when WFH. You want employees to come to the office because you think more in-person collaboration benefits your business? Fine, put your money where your mouth is and pay us for our commute time!

Though I'm fully remote now, my job was previously in an office as described (a room to call my own with a desk and a door that closed) and I used to say that I would not only never work in an open-office format, but that it would take a significant raise to get me to move back to a cubicle. The difference in quality of worklife when in an office versus cubicle (or especially versus "open office") cannot be overstated.

This has been known for decades.

See Peopleware

For Knowledge workers it's extremely disruptive to be interrupted, and most office environments foster constant interruption.

But in my opinion, you don't really need offices. One thing I used to like, and found almost cozy, was a cubicle as long as the walls were tall enough so that you couldn't see over it. You also need neighbors who aren't too loud, or a noise cancelling system.

The worst thing is the open office format where someone is constantly catching your eye and distracting you. It's worse than being in grade school. All this talk of collaboration was just an excuse to have cheaper office layouts. You only need a few small meeting areas even if you have dozens of employees.

I feel like I'm in a different world than all of the other office workers. I'm a software developer and I've been very productive at home, but I've also been just as productive, and happier, working in an open floor plan office. I want to work on stuff that requires collaboration - and it's 10x easier to do that when you can talk to the people on your project by leaning over and not by scheduling a video call.

The open floor plan office is a cost-saving measure. I do think that the ideal would have more space between desks - and giving everyone their own room is perfectly fine. But my highest priorities are not to get paid or simply getting the work done. I'm there to learn in the highest fidelity environment possible. But I understand that a lot of people are there because of the pay and not because programming is their dream job.

I thought I would always love having my own office when I finally got one about 7 years into my career, but by the time the pandemic hit and I changed to my current job in January 2022, I had realized that I was feeling very isolated going into a fishbowl office and barely talking to anyone outside of Teams. It was less isolating when my wife and I were WFH together before RTO for me in 2021. Now I feel a lot more socially stimulated working in an open office with a fun group of 7 people closer to my age range, and I'm more productive because I can go through the feedback loop super quick by just asking a question to the room as needed. I had to get a nice headset with microphone though since I can't talk on speakerphone anymore!

So I think it depends on the person and situation. I'm a social person and found an open office environment where I can get social stimulation both through doing the work and BSing with coworkers on the side or at the end of the day over a drink. I miss the amount of privacy I used to have, but I definitely wouldn't trade back for the environment I used to have.

While I generally support this idea, you should know that Megan McArdle is totally disconnected from normal reality and understand that she does not work a normal job.

I’ve worked in labs, in cubicles, in open offices, remote, and currently in a private office onsite. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages depending upon the actual work being performed.

I’ve found that if the meeting I’m in is boring or if I only need to pay attention to the details that concern me I will prefer virtual meetings and do something else for the bulk of the meeting. Sometimes it’s productive, more often than not it’s browsing the web or doing an unrelated task. When working from home this would often be running errands, cleaning my house, making meals, etc. At work it’s sitting on my phone, or doing actual work in a separate window. If it’s an in person meeting, I will pay attention even if it’s just enough to not be rude.

The problem with many meetings are that they don’t need to be meetings and could be an email instead. If I call a meeting it’s to brainstorm, align, or get feedback. For those I prefer in person because body language is an important part of feedback.

Working in an open office is good when everyone’s job overlaps and you need to work as a team. Otherwise it’s absolutely horrible. In reality a conference room that can be used when needed or an office when not is a much better option. Cubicles are acknowledgment that you probably need an office or WFH but the company doesn’t value you / your privacy enough.

I really dislike the debates about WFH because they're mostly about which personality types we are, and so the medium we use to discuss selects who will participate in the discussion. The folks who spend lots of time online are generally the folks least likely to do well in an in-person social setting. Online life tends to self-select for folks who find in-person socializing to some extent exhausting, stressful, or anxiety inducing. These folks are the most likely to favor smaller social groups and will find it more enjoyable to work alone or among family.

My partner is the exact opposite of most of the commenters in this thread, but I don't think she's that rare. She has ADHD and craves stimulus; interacting with people is a large part of how she gets stimulus. The move to permanent remote work was very detrimental to her mental health. Now that she has a choice to go to the office she does. Working the way everyone in this thread (and lots of other online threads) discusses would be her form of personal hell. For folks like her though, a personal office would probably be the same as WFH, a sort of isolating space where the things that give her energy just don't exist. I'm somewhere in the middle. I had an office as a senior grad student and it felt very similarly to when I used to work from my own apartment (which is very common among grad students.)

I always thought cubicles were the perfect middle ground. Isolated enough that you could disconnect if you found social situations overwhelming but open enough that when you need to ask a question or just want to impromptu socialize, you could. If you were the type that really didn't want to socialize at work, a few unenthusiastic conversations in your cube would be enough to signal that you didn't really enjoy work socializing. As someone who needs some social energy in my life but also can get overstimulated in an open office, my time working in cubicles was the best of both worlds.

EDIT: I also think there are some pretty detrimental effects of WFH on junior employees. A lot of junior employees need a quick feedback loop to unblock themselves the first dozen times they get blocked. WFH environments are terrible at quick feedback loops and generally benefit employees that can unblock themselves or know how to batch up blocked work. Almost every junior I've worked with picks these skills up just fine with time (it's part of the transition from junior to higher levels after all), but I believe that it's detrimental and a huge career drag without the initial fast feedback cycle. Most of the junior engineers I mentored when my last company went remote during the pandemic had a really hard time ramping up.

Our current office building is an old building from the 70's, which is great. It still has loads of small offices where 1 or 2 people can work in, no open floor plan. Sadly the building is going to get torn down and replaced with one of those modern open floor plan monstrosities.

Open floor is one of the worst things ever to happen to office workers. I fucking hate it. I have ADHD and one of the problems I have is that I can't close myself off to the conversations of other people. When colleagues are talking about something that's even mildly interesting to me I automatically start listening, this not only makes me less productive but it's also very tiring (mentally). I prefer a smaller room where I can work alone or with one other collleague, I despise open floor.

I've never worked in a cramped cubicle office but I really miss my spacious open office with my sales/customer service team. No cubicles and only a small team of 8-10 but we can had enough space between us to not get cramped but still be able to communicate. It allowed me as manager to easily help when needed and have my team great camaraderie.

When our company moved to a smaller building they gave us all individual offices I found our group cohesion took a nosedive and productivity became inconsistent. As for myself I did not fare well in solitary confinement. I found a new job since and now mostly work remotely for my home office. I still miss the camaraderie but at least I have the benefits of working from home including my hounddog napping nearby.

I think maybe the real lesson is job satisfaction is greatly impacted by the environment we are in daily. It is not trivial and should not be optional. Too loud, too hot, too cramped, too isolated, all these things lead to unhappy employees and reduces efficiency and increases turnover. If companies made an effort to be accommodating and make the office comfortable maybe we wouldn't all hate it.
Luckily there's a whole bunch of unused space for them to do it in.

Not open floor plans where people can hear every word, sneeze and gum-chew that comes from a co-worker’s mouth.

I had my annual job performance review this week. As I said to my manager (with whom I have a very good relationship; we hug "hello"), this is just paperwork for the sake of doing paperwork. But she and I have to go through the motions, because her boss needs to see her doing her job.

One of the sections of the performance review is for us employees to give feedback to the company, including a question "What should we STOP doing?" (as part of a K.I.S.S. matrix = Keep doing, Improve on, Start doing, Stop doing) The only answer I could think of, which I didn't write but did tell my manager, was: stop playing rap music in the office. The founder/CEO of the company (25 employees) is a fan of rap music, as are a few other employees, so some days the office soundtrack is a rap / hip-hop playlist. And that really shits me. I hate rap music. And I'm forced to listen to it when I go into the office. If there must be background music in the office, it should be a neutral boring inoffensive style of music. Sure, not everyone will like it, but we should avoid music styles that people will have strong negative feelings about in an environment where many people are listening to the same soundtrack.

Luckily, I get to work from home some days, but I do work in the office some days - and it's not an environment I enjoy going to. Apart from the aforementioned rap music, there's also just the general noise that comes with jamming about 12-15 people into a single space with no separating walls (there are two offices: one for the CEO, one for the General Manager). Plus, every time someone cooks lunch for themselves, the whole office stinks of whatever food they just heated up.

I like going in to see the people. I strongly believe that all white-collar workers should have at least some in-office time, to meet with their co-workers and build social bonds. That absolutely does improve working relationships and even increases productivity. That said, my manager and I both agree that we need our work-from-home days because we get more done on those days! So, a mix of in-office and at-home work gives the best of both worlds.

But the office should be a conducive environment when I go in there. Some days I feel like my office environment is actively attacking me. Some days, I get out my own headphones, put them on, and plug into my own personal music choice, just so I can cope.

My company has exactly this right now. If you come in 3 days a week you get a dedicated office. Still more than half choose to WFH. I prefer to come in because I'm only 20 minutes away by car and I focus better in that isolated environment. The ones who don't come in tend to have longer commutes: they live farther away and some don't even own a car which at least doubles the time. Most days I don't see a single team member. Meetings are all online, even for those of us who came in. The exception being meetings with middle management who seem to mostly come in. So no, even if you give people a choice between coming in and getting an office and WFH, many will still choose to WFH.

I have a couple of views on this-

1. More office environments need to stop paying people to micromanage or look for stupid optimizations. If you can set reasonable goals, and confirm your workers are hitting them (a sadly dangerous precedent to set since it almost always spirals into shit), so long as they're not doing stupid shit you probably don't need to be looking over their shoulder. Letting people manage their own time/productivity makes the office a hell of a lot less oppressive, and often works better with the different types of workers (some people just grind away, others are bursty or like to juggle multiple things).

2. For the love of god let people wear headphones if you're going to have open/cube plans. Being able to zone out on some tedius task and not be distracted because you're listening to music/audio books/podcasts/whatever helps moral/productivity so so much.

3. All that said, there's still a ton of work that should be remote. While I do think there are major disadvantages to remote work in some cases, it doesn't change the fact that someone not having to commute and constantly being in their personal environment is such a huge moral/productivity factor.

As always this almost always boils down to the same problems though. Tracking metrics is good, but tracking them without context is awful. If you expect 10 widgets a day, every day, then you get people who can probably do 20 half assing every day. If you give them some flexibility and allow them 5 or 2 some days they'll probably bust out 30-40 on good days. How you get offices that respect these concepts I have no idea.

I'm also not so naive as to ignore the fact that the "grind them to dust and have an efficient churn" method sure as hell also works for certain tasks (for a given value of works), and is a lot easier to emulate.

This is an HVAC nightmare.

Where i work we have an hybrid model (more or less is 50/50) but you are allowed to work from home for long stretch of time as long you keep the quota along the year.
I have seen that some people do not like WFH and to the office almost everyday (for different reasons... usually personal) others, like me, tend to hoard the office days during winter so they are free for the other months (and if we could we wouldnt touch base at all).

It's very hard to find a solution that satisfy everyone but I think that maybe there is some truth in the article. I hate to go to the office because I fell unconfortable there, i do not have a desk i can call mine, it is usually crowdy and noisy and if I want to concentrate i need to blast my ears with loud music.
Should i have an office, a real one, it would be bearable but now it is like to work in the ikea cafeteria.

I would like to add that it would be ok and even better to have a small group office... let's say 4 ppl. In this case i think mostvif the critics would vanish. A small group can be quiet, ppl tend to help and know each other more, ppl would really "network". I think you could get the best from working from the office without the downsides of the open office.

Spouse and I had a discussion where he brought up a completely different take on WFH, that I don't think is obvious to many of the exceptionally online people here.

It's an equity issue. Remember all those "essential" workers during the pandemic, who had no choice other than to show up for work because they had tasks requiring proximate physical labor?

Spouse and I are both knowledge workers these days. He's been fully remote for 15 years, and I've had to work remotely from wherever I happened to be in the field for almost that long. But we've both been in positions where we deeply resented the privileged executive class who showed up in the office whenever they felt like it, and brazenly conducted "meetings" on golf courses and in bars.

I can understand the issues of labor/management relations that might arise when the class of workers who make things, provide in-person services, or maintain the workplace don't have the liberty of choosing their work environment, while a new class of people who already avoid getting their hands dirty can now escape the unpaid commutes, dreary surroundings, and petty strife of sharing space with people you wouldn't choose to spend time with. [It's worth thinking about this in the analysis of right-wing resentment...]

And having spent time in the back office spaces of a couple of newly designed and built hospitals, it's remarkable how tiny the open plan administrative spaces are by comparison with the hands-on workspaces for medical care. Even medical directors get broom-closet sized offices. I don't think this is unreasonable, given the ostensible purpose of the facility and the costs per square foot. Obviously, there's going to be variability by industry, yet companies that produce nothing but knowledge products still have physical infrastructure that's maintained by actual humans who must be present daily, and can't complete their tasks from a cozy chair.