I should preface this by saying I generally enjoy my job for a lot of reasons, which is why this makes me sad. I'm working in my first full-time role following graduation for a small company, where I'm given a lot of freedom and autonomy in terms of the projects I work on and how I manage my time. My “department” is just me and my manager, and I have a drop-in or meeting once a week at the very most. This is all ideal for me, minus one key aspect…
…My job is has a VERY firm “culture” of being anti-WFH. When I applied for the role I was told repeatedly that they want to maintain a culture of people who are good with coming into the office and having a team-oriented environment each and every day (I genuinely didn't see this as an issue because the job was, and I believe is, a perfect fit in every other way and I took it to move up to my dream city). Everyone at the office is a tad older than I am so I don't want to generalize and say it's a generational thing but it seems to be. People here seem more than eager to trudge through awful weather or brave a long commute and traffic just to sit at their desks here and conduct 80% of business on computers, alone. During one of our company-wide quarterly meetings (which ironically was hosted over Zoom with everyone at their own desk), the CEO went on a mini tirade about how conducting business remotely is disingenuous to clients and unproductive). Hell, this company pays for office space for a team of FOUR people in one of our newer branches in another state and mandates they come in each day as well.
Again, I'm a team of two, verging towards one since my manager has gone on maternity leave and has shifted to part time indefinitely. I feel increasingly disillusioned with this role, where I'm doing work I genuinely love but have to wake up early, spend a fortune on gas and sit in a corner cubicle with zero natural lighting just to hunker down and do my work that has little to no collaboration with others, certainly not to the point where it justifies my presence being here 40 hours a week with zero flexibility on that whatsoever. Most days I come in, do my work without talking to more than 3 people, and get home now wondering why I spent almost 40 miles worth of gas to do that.
I also feel like I'm taking crazy pills here given how all the older coworkers of mine seem perfectly fine with this, to the point where people often get there before 8 and stay past 5 or 6. People also seem to really buy in to the whole office “culture” and the benefits that have been espoused time and time again, which to me just feels like making vapid small talk, drinking Costco-brand coffee, putting up with the bosses' asshole dogs that run freely, and having a holiday party maybe once a quarter.
I feel like I'm getting secondhand exhaustion just from being around this culture, not to mention the direct impact on my own life when I see how much better it can be. I've been applying to new roles and it both excites me and infuriates me to see that it's almost the norm in my industry to have at least SOME remote flexibility. I've already put in my resume for a few new roles that are either remote, hybrid or justify my presence by having the work I'd be doing be in a larger team where I actually need to be collaborating with others. I've been at this job for slightly less than a year and it's just now getting to me, but it's really upsetting to me to feel like I'm being pushed out of a place I could stay for 2-3x longer than I am if they only made this one small change to make me feel like a human being and not a butt keeping a seat warm just to fulfill someone's ego about how “business should be done.”
This was mostly me venting my frustration, but if anyone else has some advice on this… that would be great. Not sure if it's worth trying to change anything here for my own sake or others or if I'm doing the right thing by just applying elsewhere and jumping ship before I get fully burned out and start to resent a field that I truly love working in.