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For myself, WFH is hit and miss in terms of productivity. Some days I'm super productive and might even stay logged on for extra hours. Other days, I'm hardly p

For myself, WFH is hit and miss in terms of productivity. Some days I'm super productive and might even stay logged on for extra hours. Other days, I'm hardly productive at all. My home "office" is a desk in my living room, so there can be a lot of distractions between wife watching TV and pets. I can usually get by listening to music with headphones on. Contrasting with work in the office, there are far more distractions. People walking by, drive bys from the boss, etc. And I dont even work in an open office, just low cube walls that I can see over while seated.

zinckiwi 7y ago
Your home office is not a home office. My fear, being a proponent of distributed work, is that high-profile places will half-heartedly try it due to the current circumstances, declare it to be a failure, and take us two steps back.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Well yeah, but most people don't have home offices and never will. My girlfriend and I live in a one bedroom apartment that costs $3,800 per month. We're sure as hell not gonna pay the extra thousands per month to get a three bedroom apartment so we can each have a home office. Having extra rooms in your dwelling dedicated for work is a huge luxury. Having companies provide an office space for you to work in (that they pay for) is quite nice. There is an interesting idea here for companies to subsidize employees' home offices with all the money they're saving on not renting office buildings of their own, but that would make the housing crisis substantially worse and further increase hatred of tech. Imagine how badly rents would be driven up on apartments typically desired by families if you've got lots of single workers using work subsidies to get larger apartments than they actually needed.
  - eropple 7y ago
    It'd only cause those negative effects if people don't leave the Bay Area, though, with that newfound flexibility. There are plenty of places, even desirable urban centers, that aren't the Bay. (I've worked for SFBA companies and I live in Boston--with its own housing crunch, though not nearly as bad, and TBH I'd live here even if I didn't work in tech, it's just my home.)
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      I think you underestimate the reasons why people find living in certain cities desirable. There's a lot more to do with it than merely having your job located there. Downtown SF and NYC are always going to be hugely desirable, regardless of whether people are working from home or not.
      - eropple 7y ago
        See, usually it's me saying that (because I'm usually replying to the people upholding rural living as some kind of ideal) but the thing is, people are moving to these cities, from other urban areas, mmmmostly for work. Not because they're great. They are great! But the gravity is because of the jobs more than anything else. Without that gravity, I tend to think people won't keep moving there in the same numbers and more of them will leave. If you can get 70-80% of the desirability for 50% of the cost (Boston would be like 80-90% and 60-70%, by my reckoning) while retaining 90% of the salary, and you make it perfectly acceptable on all sides to do so, a lot of people are gonna do that.
      - kortilla 7y ago
        I think you overestimate how many people want to be there when career isn’t the driver. Everyone I know who moved to the bay did it for the job and gave zero fucks about the shit lined streets of the city.
        ryandrake 7y ago
        If it wasn’t for the abundance of tech jobs, there is exactly 0% chance I would choose to live in the Bay Area. To me (everyone is different), the jobs are the upside, the rest is downside.
        joejerryronnie 7y ago
        If you could take the tech jobs with you (without the negative externalities), where is your ideal location?
  - zinckiwi 7y ago
    Yes, don't mean to minimise the challenge of having a home office that befits the name. While I am fortunate enough to have the space, my company does provide a stipend for people without it to e.g. rent a desk at a co-working space. My concern remains that companies who are doing this on the fly, due to an external influence, with employees who never signed up to be remote-first, with new, unfamiliar tools, and without the ingrained culture that a distributed-from-the-start company enjoys, will nonetheless tar us with the same brush when their experience turns out to be disappointing.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      I'd rather just work in a normal office provided by my employer than work in a co-working space. The latter seems strictly worse, so long as your company has an office where you live anyway (and mine does). Also, co-working spaces are no-go because of COVID-19 too, at least for now. So the current situation isn't so much WFH as it is WFQ, and co-working spaces don't meet that need either.
    - hermitdev 7y ago
      I didnt take it as belittling. Its the one spot that's mine, with my desk, computer and filing cabinet. I live in a 3 bedroom townhouse. Have 3 kids plus the wife. Wife uses one of the bedrooms as her office (she runs a non-profit and needs more room than my occasional wfh) and the lids share the other non-master bedroom. I'm sorry to hear the GP has to pay 3800 for a studio. I pay around 4400 for a 3 bed/3.5 bath townhouse w/ a 2 car garage in Chicago's suburbs; and I think what I pay is ridiculous.
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        Yeah, I wish I had those prices. I'm in Manhattan though. At least my transportation costs are very low (about $30 per month); add on the total costs of your cars and that $4,400 figure grows substantially :(
  - wolco 7y ago
    Rents would go down as most would flee to bigger homes in nicer places. No reason to pay 3800 for a shoe box if you stay at home to work.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      Cities have attractions that are uniquely their own. You overestimate how many people would flee to the boonies.
      - xyzzyz 7y ago
        In fact, if you don't have to commute during rush hour, living in remote suburbs is the best of both worlds: you're far enough that the prices are low/rent is cheap, but the city is close enough to casually drive there off peak. Sure, if you had to endure 1 hour commutes one way every day, that would be terrible, but since you don't drive at the same time as everyone else, you won't have to experience that.
        dheera 7y ago
        Assuming someone can or wants to drive, and owns a car, is a massive assumption in today's world. Many people who live in urban areas neither own a car nor want to drive. Also, suburbs are boring as hell. There's literally nothing to do outside except stare at parked cars and locked houses. Taking a walk for more than an hour is impossible because there is nowhere to go to the bathroom, unless you want to do your business in someone's bush. There are no drinking fountains, and if you get hungry on your long walk, you're screwed. It can get (seriously) depressing, compared to cities, where most of the stuff you pass by on the street is generally open to walk into and explore, and food/water/restrooms are readily available.
        xyzzyz 7y ago
        > Many people who live in urban areas neither own a car nor want to drive. By "many", I understand you mean "few". I live in Seattle, which has one of the better transit networks in the country, certainly better than average. Yet, 85% of households own cars. In the suburbs, that percentage is even higher. > Also, suburbs are boring as hell. There's literally nothing to do outside except stare at parked cars and locked houses. That hasn't been my experience. There's lots of things to do in suburbs, you just need to drive there. The rest of your comment is about some difficulties of doing walks in suburbs, which are quite foreign to me -- for one thing, I'm quite sure that almost everywhere in Seattle metro area, you're not more than 1 hour walk from a convenience store. Given how millions of people love going hiking in places even further from convenience stores, gas stations and water fountains, I don't see this as such a huge problem. The rest of your complaints are simply matter of your preferences: I for one thing couldn't care less about presence of places to walk into and explore. I'm not a tourist in my own town, I need to get places and get things done, and idly walking around the business districts is not one of my hobbies.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    You don't both need a private office, there is no reason you can't have one office room with 2 desks. Companies should probably pay extra with the savings from not having to rent an office. Combined with the savings from not having to transport yourself to an office, it should be affordable.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Combined with the savings from not having to transport yourself to an office, it should be affordable. Until it isn't. That's the magic of the invisible hand at work. And when you can barely afford rent on a WFH-friendly apartment with work subsidies, think of all the regular families with non-tech salaries that can no longer dream of it.
      - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
        The benefit of WFH is your actual location doesn't matter too much. If the inner city apartment is too expensive then find one further out. Anyone with a full time job should be able to find something with 2 bedrooms somewhere in the country/state of their job.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      > You don't both need a private office, there is no reason you can't have one office room with 2 desks. My girlfriend and I both have a good number of meetings, which is incompatible with being in the same room as another person also yapping to their computer. When we both have meetings we need to be in a different room. > Combined with the savings from not having to transport yourself to an office, it should be affordable. I pay roughly $30 per month in total transportation costs, so this is negligible. My $3,800 rent at least gets me an apartment within walking distance (and easy biking distance) of work.
    - UncleMeat 7y ago
      I have days with seven hours of meetings. Having another person in the room isn’t an option.
  - cosmodisk 7y ago
    I've got the same: 1 bedroom flat, however if I were to work 100% remote, what I spend on commuting each month would almost cover higher rent for 2 bedroom flat.
  - cultofmetatron 7y ago
    $3800/month? if you can work remotely, you could go to a place like Medellin and get a penthouse suite with 5 bedrooms, a 360 view of the city AND cleaning staff and personal chef for less than that!!
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      Why the fuck would I want to live in Medellin?? I don't even speak the language, and all my friends and family are on a different continent entirely. Most people aren't digital nomads.
      - cultofmetatron 7y ago
        There are plenty of English speakers in poblado. The women are beautiful. The meat and produce is super fresh and the people are super friendly. I was there for 6 months and absolutely loved it. it was way better than living in SF. If I wasn't working on my startup in Europe, I'd go back there in a heartbeat.
    - andreshb 7y ago
      And still have money left over. If you work in tech there is a strong developer community and you can get away with not speaking the language as 5-bedroom penthouse suites are located in neighborhoods where almost everyone is bilingual, from waiters to C-level execs.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Having extra rooms in your dwelling dedicated for work is a huge luxury. Having companies provide an office space for you to work in (that they pay for) is quite nice You’re assuming everyone works on the west coast.... The average square footage of a home in the US is 2600 square feet. (https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/real_estate/american-home-size/ https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/real_estate/american-home-s...) I would assume since most developers in most of the United States make more than the average for their market, they would be able to afford the average home. In my market (a major metropolitan city), any developer with 5-7 years of experience could easily afford a place with an extra room for an office. We were renting a three bedroom, 2 bath apartment with an office four years ago in the most exclusive part of the city with the best school system for $1700/month. It’s still about the same price. We bought a brand new build 3200 square foot house (5 bedroom/3.5 bath house with a large separate office) and are paying $2150/month all in with 5% down and still live in a great school system.
  - fragmede 7y ago
    > most people don't have home offices and never will. [citation needed] Just because your use case, and likely that of most of your friends, doesn't lend itself to having a home office, doesn't mean that other people, with different costs of living (esp in land price), will live the same way. If $3,800 got you 5 bedrooms instead of 1 and everything else stayed the same, it's possible you'd voluntarily choose to downsize, but it also seems possible you'd keep it, and have 1 bedroom, a home office each, a conference room, and a (shared) workshop. Or however else you wish you divide up the space. (Hint: children take up a lot of it.)

zinckiwi 7y ago

Your home office is not a home office. My fear, being a proponent of distributed work, is that high-profile places will half-heartedly try it due to the current circumstances, declare it to be a failure, and take us two steps back.

CydeWeys 7y ago
Well yeah, but most people don't have home offices and never will. My girlfriend and I live in a one bedroom apartment that costs $3,800 per month. We're sure as hell not gonna pay the extra thousands per month to get a three bedroom apartment so we can each have a home office. Having extra rooms in your dwelling dedicated for work is a huge luxury. Having companies provide an office space for you to work in (that they pay for) is quite nice. There is an interesting idea here for companies to subsidize employees' home offices with all the money they're saving on not renting office buildings of their own, but that would make the housing crisis substantially worse and further increase hatred of tech. Imagine how badly rents would be driven up on apartments typically desired by families if you've got lots of single workers using work subsidies to get larger apartments than they actually needed.
- eropple 7y ago
  It'd only cause those negative effects if people don't leave the Bay Area, though, with that newfound flexibility. There are plenty of places, even desirable urban centers, that aren't the Bay. (I've worked for SFBA companies and I live in Boston--with its own housing crunch, though not nearly as bad, and TBH I'd live here even if I didn't work in tech, it's just my home.)
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    I think you underestimate the reasons why people find living in certain cities desirable. There's a lot more to do with it than merely having your job located there. Downtown SF and NYC are always going to be hugely desirable, regardless of whether people are working from home or not.
    - eropple 7y ago
      See, usually it's me saying that (because I'm usually replying to the people upholding rural living as some kind of ideal) but the thing is, people are moving to these cities, from other urban areas, mmmmostly for work. Not because they're great. They are great! But the gravity is because of the jobs more than anything else. Without that gravity, I tend to think people won't keep moving there in the same numbers and more of them will leave. If you can get 70-80% of the desirability for 50% of the cost (Boston would be like 80-90% and 60-70%, by my reckoning) while retaining 90% of the salary, and you make it perfectly acceptable on all sides to do so, a lot of people are gonna do that.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      I think you overestimate how many people want to be there when career isn’t the driver. Everyone I know who moved to the bay did it for the job and gave zero fucks about the shit lined streets of the city.
      - ryandrake 7y ago
        If it wasn’t for the abundance of tech jobs, there is exactly 0% chance I would choose to live in the Bay Area. To me (everyone is different), the jobs are the upside, the rest is downside.
        joejerryronnie 7y ago
        If you could take the tech jobs with you (without the negative externalities), where is your ideal location?
- zinckiwi 7y ago
  Yes, don't mean to minimise the challenge of having a home office that befits the name. While I am fortunate enough to have the space, my company does provide a stipend for people without it to e.g. rent a desk at a co-working space. My concern remains that companies who are doing this on the fly, due to an external influence, with employees who never signed up to be remote-first, with new, unfamiliar tools, and without the ingrained culture that a distributed-from-the-start company enjoys, will nonetheless tar us with the same brush when their experience turns out to be disappointing.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    I'd rather just work in a normal office provided by my employer than work in a co-working space. The latter seems strictly worse, so long as your company has an office where you live anyway (and mine does). Also, co-working spaces are no-go because of COVID-19 too, at least for now. So the current situation isn't so much WFH as it is WFQ, and co-working spaces don't meet that need either.
  - hermitdev 7y ago
    I didnt take it as belittling. Its the one spot that's mine, with my desk, computer and filing cabinet. I live in a 3 bedroom townhouse. Have 3 kids plus the wife. Wife uses one of the bedrooms as her office (she runs a non-profit and needs more room than my occasional wfh) and the lids share the other non-master bedroom. I'm sorry to hear the GP has to pay 3800 for a studio. I pay around 4400 for a 3 bed/3.5 bath townhouse w/ a 2 car garage in Chicago's suburbs; and I think what I pay is ridiculous.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      Yeah, I wish I had those prices. I'm in Manhattan though. At least my transportation costs are very low (about $30 per month); add on the total costs of your cars and that $4,400 figure grows substantially :(
- wolco 7y ago
  Rents would go down as most would flee to bigger homes in nicer places. No reason to pay 3800 for a shoe box if you stay at home to work.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Cities have attractions that are uniquely their own. You overestimate how many people would flee to the boonies.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      In fact, if you don't have to commute during rush hour, living in remote suburbs is the best of both worlds: you're far enough that the prices are low/rent is cheap, but the city is close enough to casually drive there off peak. Sure, if you had to endure 1 hour commutes one way every day, that would be terrible, but since you don't drive at the same time as everyone else, you won't have to experience that.
      - dheera 7y ago
        Assuming someone can or wants to drive, and owns a car, is a massive assumption in today's world. Many people who live in urban areas neither own a car nor want to drive. Also, suburbs are boring as hell. There's literally nothing to do outside except stare at parked cars and locked houses. Taking a walk for more than an hour is impossible because there is nowhere to go to the bathroom, unless you want to do your business in someone's bush. There are no drinking fountains, and if you get hungry on your long walk, you're screwed. It can get (seriously) depressing, compared to cities, where most of the stuff you pass by on the street is generally open to walk into and explore, and food/water/restrooms are readily available.
        xyzzyz 7y ago
        > Many people who live in urban areas neither own a car nor want to drive. By "many", I understand you mean "few". I live in Seattle, which has one of the better transit networks in the country, certainly better than average. Yet, 85% of households own cars. In the suburbs, that percentage is even higher. > Also, suburbs are boring as hell. There's literally nothing to do outside except stare at parked cars and locked houses. That hasn't been my experience. There's lots of things to do in suburbs, you just need to drive there. The rest of your comment is about some difficulties of doing walks in suburbs, which are quite foreign to me -- for one thing, I'm quite sure that almost everywhere in Seattle metro area, you're not more than 1 hour walk from a convenience store. Given how millions of people love going hiking in places even further from convenience stores, gas stations and water fountains, I don't see this as such a huge problem. The rest of your complaints are simply matter of your preferences: I for one thing couldn't care less about presence of places to walk into and explore. I'm not a tourist in my own town, I need to get places and get things done, and idly walking around the business districts is not one of my hobbies.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  You don't both need a private office, there is no reason you can't have one office room with 2 desks. Companies should probably pay extra with the savings from not having to rent an office. Combined with the savings from not having to transport yourself to an office, it should be affordable.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Combined with the savings from not having to transport yourself to an office, it should be affordable. Until it isn't. That's the magic of the invisible hand at work. And when you can barely afford rent on a WFH-friendly apartment with work subsidies, think of all the regular families with non-tech salaries that can no longer dream of it.
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      The benefit of WFH is your actual location doesn't matter too much. If the inner city apartment is too expensive then find one further out. Anyone with a full time job should be able to find something with 2 bedrooms somewhere in the country/state of their job.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    > You don't both need a private office, there is no reason you can't have one office room with 2 desks. My girlfriend and I both have a good number of meetings, which is incompatible with being in the same room as another person also yapping to their computer. When we both have meetings we need to be in a different room. > Combined with the savings from not having to transport yourself to an office, it should be affordable. I pay roughly $30 per month in total transportation costs, so this is negligible. My $3,800 rent at least gets me an apartment within walking distance (and easy biking distance) of work.
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    I have days with seven hours of meetings. Having another person in the room isn’t an option.
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  I've got the same: 1 bedroom flat, however if I were to work 100% remote, what I spend on commuting each month would almost cover higher rent for 2 bedroom flat.
- cultofmetatron 7y ago
  $3800/month? if you can work remotely, you could go to a place like Medellin and get a penthouse suite with 5 bedrooms, a 360 view of the city AND cleaning staff and personal chef for less than that!!
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Why the fuck would I want to live in Medellin?? I don't even speak the language, and all my friends and family are on a different continent entirely. Most people aren't digital nomads.
    - cultofmetatron 7y ago
      There are plenty of English speakers in poblado. The women are beautiful. The meat and produce is super fresh and the people are super friendly. I was there for 6 months and absolutely loved it. it was way better than living in SF. If I wasn't working on my startup in Europe, I'd go back there in a heartbeat.
  - andreshb 7y ago
    And still have money left over. If you work in tech there is a strong developer community and you can get away with not speaking the language as 5-bedroom penthouse suites are located in neighborhoods where almost everyone is bilingual, from waiters to C-level execs.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Having extra rooms in your dwelling dedicated for work is a huge luxury. Having companies provide an office space for you to work in (that they pay for) is quite nice You’re assuming everyone works on the west coast.... The average square footage of a home in the US is 2600 square feet. (https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/real_estate/american-home-size/ https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/real_estate/american-home-s...) I would assume since most developers in most of the United States make more than the average for their market, they would be able to afford the average home. In my market (a major metropolitan city), any developer with 5-7 years of experience could easily afford a place with an extra room for an office. We were renting a three bedroom, 2 bath apartment with an office four years ago in the most exclusive part of the city with the best school system for $1700/month. It’s still about the same price. We bought a brand new build 3200 square foot house (5 bedroom/3.5 bath house with a large separate office) and are paying $2150/month all in with 5% down and still live in a great school system.
- fragmede 7y ago
  > most people don't have home offices and never will. [citation needed] Just because your use case, and likely that of most of your friends, doesn't lend itself to having a home office, doesn't mean that other people, with different costs of living (esp in land price), will live the same way. If $3,800 got you 5 bedrooms instead of 1 and everything else stayed the same, it's possible you'd voluntarily choose to downsize, but it also seems possible you'd keep it, and have 1 bedroom, a home office each, a conference room, and a (shared) workshop. Or however else you wish you divide up the space. (Hint: children take up a lot of it.)