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As WFH becomes the norm, office life will become shittier over time. Less budgeting will go into fancy offices, they will become more spartan unassuming buildin
by xwdv 7y ago
As WFH becomes the norm, office life will become shittier over time. Less budgeting will go into fancy offices, they will become more spartan unassuming buildings. People who have to go to offices to work will be seen as second class citizens too poor or too unequipped to do any work from home. They will be seen as slow, old school workers who become more of a liability for workplace harassment policies or accidents. If you have an excellent home with a great internet connection then why go to a dirty, nasty, public office where you sit in an uncomfortable chair using cheap equipment and even risk being groped in a hallway or break room? Not to mention the risk of being killed along your commute twice a day. All while the remote workers sit gently in their favorite spot by the warm glow of a sunlit window, quietly getting tasks done as they listen to soft music coming from their home speakers. When the workday ends the office worker has to make a mad rush and brave traffic to get home. The remote worker can end the day whenever the time is right, with all the ceremony of an index finger bringing their laptop lid down to a close; what’s for dinner honey?
Very few people will choose to go to an office, working from home is a status symbol and a sign of being a well educated knowledge worker. This is even the case now during the pandemic where plenty of people boast they would be fine staying home all year while the poor and destitute are begging to go back to an office or worksite because it’s the only way they can put food on the table. Their value is mostly in their physical bodies, not their pure knowledge.
And if you can’t work from home, you’ll choose to work from some communal workspace or cafe of your choosing before ever choosing to make a dreaded commute to an office.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoYeah this is a fantasy for introverts and hermits. This will not happen. The world is run by Chads, who are by nature extroverted.
- ghaff 7y agoYou're overstating it. I gave up a dedicated space in my local office before all this. But I'd be happy to go in a day or two a week if there were good reasons to do so. But most of my team is very distributed and (during normal times) most of us travel a lot so there aren't going to be a lot of serendipitous encounters. What is probably true is that those who thrive with office socializing and activities will find the norm at companies where coming into an office becomes more about having scheduled team meetings and collaborative work on specific days less pleasant than in the past.
- xwdv 7y agoIf it becomes less pleasant those people will cease to exist, nobody will be left to pine for the days of jocular office socialization.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoIt's about socializing with your coworkers, not the office environment itself. Many of us just really like to personally know the people we do business with.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y agoThat and my boss' boss really likes 'managing by walking around'. He tries to make up for it now by sending weekly updates, but just like he says, it is just not the same.
- exmadscientist 7y agoGP is definitely overstating it. (GP is, in fact, so overstated that Poe's Law comes to mind.) What so many people here on HN forget is that software is not the world. WFH works fantastically for software, because you don't need anything other than a computer to make software. Pretty much everything in the world other than software, not so much. To pick just one nicely concrete example, who do you think makes computers? Electronics labs full of advanced equipment aren't found in ordinary people's homes. I can't do my job entirely from home without spending ~my annual salary on equipment, and even if I or my company wanted to pay for that, I don't have anywhere at home to put it.
- cglace 7y agoThat's a lot of hot takes in one go. How much of that do you actually believe?
- znpy 7y ago> If you have an excellent home with a great internet connection That's the biggest if I see. I moved across regions within my country. Where I currently am and with my current salary I can rent a room without much trobules and have access to an great internet connection. With such connection, working from home wasn't a big problem. Where I come from and with my current salary, I could easily buy an excellent house but wouldn't have a great internet connection. That would really, really affect the quality of my work and my working experience (as somebody said about videogames: videogames don't make kids violent, LAG DOES). In order to make what you say come true, public administration should really start investing heavily in connectivity. FTTH (fiber to the home) should really be the norm. Internet connectivity infrastructure should really be a basic right and public utility.