Inkhaven sounds amazing, and I love your new appreciation of Hufflepuff.
(Btw, I follow you because I adore your audio rendition of HPMOR, which must have taken an immense amount of Hufflepuff hard work!)
I too have trouble with that tricky business of knowing I need to just get the words out in order to work with them, but then being too picky/perfectionistic to do it. (Then there’s lack of time too.) May we keep trying to push past the obstacles to get the words out!
Strongly, strongly disagree. When I did non-remote work I was stressed out in an office with a closed door while outside a bunch of even more stressed out people were in cubicles. I came home exhausted every day in ways that I could not fully heal from by devoting my entire evening to rest.
Inkhaven is not anything like most people's experience of non-remote work. It is much more like people's experience of remote work: you did it in the same place you were sleeping. You could get up and make yourself food or take a nap whenever you wanted. You didn't have to spend an eternity in a car or on a train twice a day.
Between "writer" and "landlord" I'm starting to wonder - have you ever had a normal job? (I am restraining myself and exercising great charity by writing "normal" rather than "real") The kind with a boss who gives you orders?
This line - "remote work is toxic to the soul" - does enormous damage to my estimate of your understanding of other people's psychology and my estimate that I should take your evaluation of this kind of thing seriously. This is like if someone just tossed in a line about how it's a tragedy that in the modern era we've stopped footbinding, or that the biggest problem with schools is that they don't cut off enough children's hands. The emotional impact of that one line outweighs not just the rest of this post but your last dozen posts combined.
Interesting! This may be my Positivity Bias leaking through. Because I did experience that for a while too, now that you mention it.
In my pre-adult years I worked summers as painter/drywall/tiling/general interior renovation work (came in very handy in later life!). This was always an interesting environment, working with a close team. It did mean personality conflicts sometimes, but it was never soulless.
As an adult I worked two decades as an accountant. My offices were varied. The first few were small teams in decent offices. Not fancy, but they had personality. In the middle of my career I spent several years in the soulless office you are describing. Grey cubes, silence, no windows. It was awful. It was made better by my having a boss who was legit great and cheered us up with her daily antics. A bit of an alcoholic tbh, not unlike working for Misato. XD But god the office was awful.
After that whenever I went in for a job interview I would ask to see the desk I would be working at. This was an excuse to see the office layout and aesthetics. I turned down two jobs because they were hellish (one cubicle hell, one Open Layout hell). So I did filtering to avoid this awfulness.
But also yeah, my brain removes awful things from my recollection by default. I've had two periods in my life where it actually wasn't worth living. One where at least I knew it would get better, and one where I considered suicide because I wasn't sure it would. Now I am aware that those periods happened, but I can't feel the awfulness anymore.
I do think this is best for me tbh.
My experience with remote work is isolation and alienation. Waking up at work. Seeing no one. Just me and endless numbers and reports. It was awful. I lost all motivation to work, and any feeling of mattering (which is hard enough to hold on to when doing accounting work tbh XD)
Going to the office and being alone anyway would be worse than just being alone at home. Much worse to be alienated in a crowd. :(
Thank you for replying charitably to my rather emotional comment.
I think the "grey cubes, silence, no windows, it's awful" type of office is the modal office. I think the ratio of people who benefit psychologically from going in to the office vs ones who benefit psychologically from working at home is at least 10:1, possibly 100:1. I think probably the majority (perhaps an 80:20 thing) of psychological benefits (not productivity benefits) of office work to the rare person who does prefer in-office work can be found at coworking spaces.
It seems very clear to me that working from home provides enormous psychological benefits to almost everyone who gets to do it. I love my current job, and 90% of that is that I work from home. I took a $30,000 a year pay cut to work from home - I left a job as a senior software engineer where I had to work in an office and got a lower ranking job elsewhere where I get to work from home.
>Waking up at work. Seeing no one.
How much would this be changed by living with other people? Again, another situation where inkhaven is much more like working from home than it is working in an office: you and those other people were sleeping in the same building, eating meals together, socializing together, right? None of those are standard features of offices, and they are all standard features of homes.
Imagine two situations: in one, you work from home, which is a group house that you share with a handful of other people you like and care about. Your work can be done in a private space like your bedroom, or a shared space like a living room, as you prefer. You can make yourself lunch, take a nap, go for a walk to clear your head, et cetera, whenever you feel like it. You can listen to music or put a movie on while you work if you think it won't interfere with your productivity, which is a decision you get to make. You can change your outfit or the thermostat if you are uncomfortable. This is the modal work from home experience.
In the second, you work in an office. You have to make a... let's look up the average commute time, 30 minute unpaid trip twice a day to get to and from the office (so 250 hours a year, more than 10 entire days, devoted to nothing but sitting in traffic). There is a dress code. You do not have time to socialize with your coworkers, who don't want to and/or don't have time to socialize with you anyway. At most, you can eat lunch with them. You definitely can't take a nap or go do something else to clear your head; you have to sit at your desk 100% of the time unless you're going to the bathroom or purchasing caffeine from vending machine owned by the company you work for (and which they raise the prices of more often than they raise your salary) to compensate from the insufficient sleep you're getting due to the transit time and wanting to try to do things besides just sleep in the evening. If you're lucky, you're in a private office that has a window that looks out at another office building. If you're normal, you're in a cubicle, sharing air with a bunch of other people who are too scared of losing their job to stay home when they get sick, with no privacy at all, where your boss is frequently literally looking over your shoulder and breathing down your neck. You have no control at all over the environment you are in. This is the modal working in an office experience.
Do you really prefer the second one? What fraction of people do you think prefer the second one?
These are very good points. I've been isolated a lot of my life, and group houses weren't really an option back in Denver (at least, not until very recently). I think you're right about the modal office, and care for the soul of a physical space could be one of the best things we can do to improve life more the average office worker.
I do feel like it depends a lot on the office. Some offices boosted my productivity. Some offices were where I go to be constantly distracted. The places that rely on cubicles and 'open floor plans' are the ones that feel the worst for me. I get the feeling they give a tiny boost to managers productivity at the cost of all (or most of?) their employees.
Inkhaven sounds amazing, and I love your new appreciation of Hufflepuff.
(Btw, I follow you because I adore your audio rendition of HPMOR, which must have taken an immense amount of Hufflepuff hard work!)
I too have trouble with that tricky business of knowing I need to just get the words out in order to work with them, but then being too picky/perfectionistic to do it. (Then there’s lack of time too.) May we keep trying to push past the obstacles to get the words out!
Thank you! Yes, it was so many hours, but so very worth it. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I was also an unwilling participant in No Post December!
> This is why remote work is toxic to the soul.
Strongly, strongly disagree. When I did non-remote work I was stressed out in an office with a closed door while outside a bunch of even more stressed out people were in cubicles. I came home exhausted every day in ways that I could not fully heal from by devoting my entire evening to rest.
Inkhaven is not anything like most people's experience of non-remote work. It is much more like people's experience of remote work: you did it in the same place you were sleeping. You could get up and make yourself food or take a nap whenever you wanted. You didn't have to spend an eternity in a car or on a train twice a day.
Between "writer" and "landlord" I'm starting to wonder - have you ever had a normal job? (I am restraining myself and exercising great charity by writing "normal" rather than "real") The kind with a boss who gives you orders?
This line - "remote work is toxic to the soul" - does enormous damage to my estimate of your understanding of other people's psychology and my estimate that I should take your evaluation of this kind of thing seriously. This is like if someone just tossed in a line about how it's a tragedy that in the modern era we've stopped footbinding, or that the biggest problem with schools is that they don't cut off enough children's hands. The emotional impact of that one line outweighs not just the rest of this post but your last dozen posts combined.
Interesting! This may be my Positivity Bias leaking through. Because I did experience that for a while too, now that you mention it.
In my pre-adult years I worked summers as painter/drywall/tiling/general interior renovation work (came in very handy in later life!). This was always an interesting environment, working with a close team. It did mean personality conflicts sometimes, but it was never soulless.
As an adult I worked two decades as an accountant. My offices were varied. The first few were small teams in decent offices. Not fancy, but they had personality. In the middle of my career I spent several years in the soulless office you are describing. Grey cubes, silence, no windows. It was awful. It was made better by my having a boss who was legit great and cheered us up with her daily antics. A bit of an alcoholic tbh, not unlike working for Misato. XD But god the office was awful.
After that whenever I went in for a job interview I would ask to see the desk I would be working at. This was an excuse to see the office layout and aesthetics. I turned down two jobs because they were hellish (one cubicle hell, one Open Layout hell). So I did filtering to avoid this awfulness.
But also yeah, my brain removes awful things from my recollection by default. I've had two periods in my life where it actually wasn't worth living. One where at least I knew it would get better, and one where I considered suicide because I wasn't sure it would. Now I am aware that those periods happened, but I can't feel the awfulness anymore.
I do think this is best for me tbh.
My experience with remote work is isolation and alienation. Waking up at work. Seeing no one. Just me and endless numbers and reports. It was awful. I lost all motivation to work, and any feeling of mattering (which is hard enough to hold on to when doing accounting work tbh XD)
Going to the office and being alone anyway would be worse than just being alone at home. Much worse to be alienated in a crowd. :(
Thank you for replying charitably to my rather emotional comment.
I think the "grey cubes, silence, no windows, it's awful" type of office is the modal office. I think the ratio of people who benefit psychologically from going in to the office vs ones who benefit psychologically from working at home is at least 10:1, possibly 100:1. I think probably the majority (perhaps an 80:20 thing) of psychological benefits (not productivity benefits) of office work to the rare person who does prefer in-office work can be found at coworking spaces.
It seems very clear to me that working from home provides enormous psychological benefits to almost everyone who gets to do it. I love my current job, and 90% of that is that I work from home. I took a $30,000 a year pay cut to work from home - I left a job as a senior software engineer where I had to work in an office and got a lower ranking job elsewhere where I get to work from home.
>Waking up at work. Seeing no one.
How much would this be changed by living with other people? Again, another situation where inkhaven is much more like working from home than it is working in an office: you and those other people were sleeping in the same building, eating meals together, socializing together, right? None of those are standard features of offices, and they are all standard features of homes.
Imagine two situations: in one, you work from home, which is a group house that you share with a handful of other people you like and care about. Your work can be done in a private space like your bedroom, or a shared space like a living room, as you prefer. You can make yourself lunch, take a nap, go for a walk to clear your head, et cetera, whenever you feel like it. You can listen to music or put a movie on while you work if you think it won't interfere with your productivity, which is a decision you get to make. You can change your outfit or the thermostat if you are uncomfortable. This is the modal work from home experience.
In the second, you work in an office. You have to make a... let's look up the average commute time, 30 minute unpaid trip twice a day to get to and from the office (so 250 hours a year, more than 10 entire days, devoted to nothing but sitting in traffic). There is a dress code. You do not have time to socialize with your coworkers, who don't want to and/or don't have time to socialize with you anyway. At most, you can eat lunch with them. You definitely can't take a nap or go do something else to clear your head; you have to sit at your desk 100% of the time unless you're going to the bathroom or purchasing caffeine from vending machine owned by the company you work for (and which they raise the prices of more often than they raise your salary) to compensate from the insufficient sleep you're getting due to the transit time and wanting to try to do things besides just sleep in the evening. If you're lucky, you're in a private office that has a window that looks out at another office building. If you're normal, you're in a cubicle, sharing air with a bunch of other people who are too scared of losing their job to stay home when they get sick, with no privacy at all, where your boss is frequently literally looking over your shoulder and breathing down your neck. You have no control at all over the environment you are in. This is the modal working in an office experience.
Do you really prefer the second one? What fraction of people do you think prefer the second one?
These are very good points. I've been isolated a lot of my life, and group houses weren't really an option back in Denver (at least, not until very recently). I think you're right about the modal office, and care for the soul of a physical space could be one of the best things we can do to improve life more the average office worker.
I do feel like it depends a lot on the office. Some offices boosted my productivity. Some offices were where I go to be constantly distracted. The places that rely on cubicles and 'open floor plans' are the ones that feel the worst for me. I get the feeling they give a tiny boost to managers productivity at the cost of all (or most of?) their employees.