Working From Office during Covid

Starting this week, I am taking the longest ever leave in my career, from 10th Dec to 4th Jan, wow! And it is not done purely with the intent to recharge, but due to the massive stockpile of leaves credited but unused throughout the covid year. Among all the thoughts of what I will do in these holidays, I want to take a step back and express my views on the last 3 days at work.

Let me first tell why the last 3 days were so worthy. Singapore FB office was open, yay! 30% of employees could opt into for working from the office and I was one of them. I will sum up my experience in following points:

1: Lack of people

Even though it seems that 30% of people are allowed to come ( almost 1 in 3) but of all those who signed up, employees are split into groups for alternate weeks each. So, I could not meet a few folks within my team who had signed up and were feeling bored at home maybe.

2: Deafening quietness

The whole office was super quiet because of the lack of people and it just felt like another version of working from home, with bright lights and better views. I could sit at the massage chair and look at the sea while typing emails.

3: So Many Rules

Everywhere I went say outside of the floor, to take food, to drink water, have tea, I had a constant thought of scanning my app or making sure I follow the rules. It was not a seamless experience of roaming around. I can not sit anywhere, there are designated sitting areas for employees and certain circular one-way walkways. It was messy.

4: Lesser productivity

At home, I always have things to eat, drinks handy. These things waste so less time. At Office, even silly tasks like grabbing a bar of chocolate are like a ~15 min affair. Even though there were lesser people, amenities were at an all-time low. With fewer options to snack, eat, places to sit, etc, it is easy to get second thoughts on why we even came in the first place.

5: Mask all the time

My face and the below the ears got scars by wearing the masks whole day. It could be attributed to my skin being extra sensitive, but hey, FB engineers are not the humans built for that level of ruggedness.

6: Travel to office

I felt weird when I had to put on songs while going into the metro. The whole metro was empty during a weekday evening! I could have played music on speakers also. Travelling to work when I can just work on my mac remotely from home now seems senseless to me.

Overall my conclusion is that I felt more productive to work from home instead. I had lesser hassles, more time at hand and less preoccupied with things to-dos.