The Return-to-Office Tax Nobody Talks About
TL;DR: Back in the office, back to the same problem — my status is invisible to anyone walking by. No door, back to the hallway, no signal for whether I'm heads-down or free. Built a $15 ESP32 status light that reads my calendar and flips red when I'm busy, green when I'm not. One glance from the hallway. Problem solved. Code at github.com/kix1979/StatusLight . Back in the Noise. I'm back in the office. Cube life, open floor, teammates on all sides. Back to the main hallway where everyone walks by on their way to somewhere else. I will gladly take this over a private office. The fishbowl with glass walls and a door that signals "I'm important" — no thanks. I'd rather be in it with my team. That tradeoff made sense to me. What I didn't think about is the tax. The problem isn't interruptions. It's recovery. When I'm remote, my status is obvious. Green dot means available. Red means on a call. Slack, Teams, whatever — the signal is...