The new Sydney offices designed to make workers happy

I do get the huge benefit of in person working, especially relationship building. I’ve tried for years with remote work - it’s so, so much more of a slog.

But tell anyone that they have to sit in a crowded train or bus for 2 hours a day, just for them to be in a Zoom call for most of the day anyway, and you can see why people don’t want to come in for the sake of “the company paid for office space” or “relationship building”.

Companies need to be much, much more intentful with in-person.

These buildings will be exactly the same as any other one you’ve ever worked in, just with lifts and stairs in different colousr or glass. There’ll be some fancy ‘cafe’ and some ‘learning hubs’ that will sound cool and maybe even have cheap or free food, but there will last until the second a few more desks are needed.

The guys at SOM are well intentioned but actually don’t get it. Their job relies on making more of the same.

Depends on the career, lots of programmer roles still allowing 100% wfh. I work for a Sydney company and live in Qld.

WFH 100%. We founded here and have now 25ish people, but most are overseas anyway. We don't have an office in Sydney anymore, and our local team here instead meets up socially or for workshops.

I'm a programmer and back to 2-3 days in the office per week. Honestly there are some things that do work better in person, like when you need to explain things with a whiteboard, but on days where I just chitchating about nothing, I wonder why I bother going in at all.

We were told to be in the office 60%+ a while back. Most people on my floor have gone back to 20%, which means that you come into the office to join Teams meetings. Doesn't help that the trains seem to have a problem every other day. On top of that, why would I want to go work at a desk with a terrible keyboard and mouse, and tiny displays?

I used to work for Surf Life Saving Australia and had to fight really hard to get two WFH days a week. This despite the fact that I was in IT supporting volunteers via an online ticketing system.

I moved into my current role nearly 2 years ago and was hired as remote.

I've moved a few times since then, and now live less than 10km from the office (<20 min on my motorbike). I'm still 100% WFH though, with my last visit being a single day in late October last year.

I dread the idea of returning to the daily commute and have kept that as a key criterion when turning down recruiters.

Mandatory 1 day per month in office but I also go in by choice about once per week

The threat of having to go in more often has been hanging over us for a year, but I think the work world has changed and they couldn't get me to go more than 2 days per week

My productivity is about the same either way