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I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. If I wanted to stay home forever I'd ha

I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago, but I enjoy going to office and there is a lot of benefits that you don't get from being remote 100%. I've also made very good friends at work and I see my coworkers as much more than just another GitHub account that reviews my Pull Requests. But again, maybe I'm the exception to the rule and most engineers just want to stay focused on their immediate work and not leave the house and minimize human interaction. But knowing my own personality, if I know a company is mostly remote work culture I'll likely cross it out from my list of places to work. Also I saw this from the blog post: >There are no explicit or implicit disadvantages to working from any location: all employees have the same experience regardless of where they are. Unless Coinbase somehow figured out a way to discard factors caused by human psychology from millions of years of evolution, I just don't see how that's possible for anything other than low to mid-tier ICs with minimal no career ambition. From my personal experiences most high level decisions are made, or at least started from countless hallway/micro-kitchen conversations or informal coffee walks, and meetings are just a way to present to people of decisions that's already made. The cynical part of me thinks all this "WFH Permanently" initiative is just a disguise for companies to start lowering cost for entry to mid-level IC positions by hiring from areas with much cheaper CoL. Which makes sense, there is nothing special about an entry level JS frontend dev in SF that warrants you paying them $150k/yr when you can hire the same talent from another state for half that much or from a different country for a quarter that much.

tspike 6y ago
Primary benefit for me is to be able to live somewhere I enjoy (small town near mountains). I like to visit cities, but I loathe living in them.
toraobo 6y ago
I like going to the office because it offers a very nice solid separation between "home" and "work" life.
- Cookingboy 6y ago
  That's another good reason. I know of coworkers who are single and really looking back to get back to the office because they are sick of being alone in their small apartments for days at a time. I also know of coworkers who are married with family and can't wait to get back to the office because they need to take breaks from their spouses/kids from time to time.
  - lstodd 6y ago
    When I was in the same situation, I was very much enjoying working from a pub which was 20 minutes walk away from the "office". It was quiet, nice food and much socializing towards the evening. What's not to like? To think how much money the company was wasting on the office... I still cringe today.
    - Cookingboy 6y ago
      > It was quiet, nice food and much socializing towards the evening. What's not to like? To me the smell of alcohol would be awful? Or maybe I don't like noisy strangers? Or maybe I can't bring my comfortable chair and twin 30" monitors to a pub with me every day? I think you've fallen pretty deep in the trap of thinking your experience and preference applies to everyone.
      - lstodd 6y ago
        Please cut the ad hominems. I'm merely showing that there is life and work without an office, and better one much of the time. Yes I prefer twin monitors, two black cats, zero interruptions and some ambient music most of the time. When I get in the other mood, I go sit at the pub. Or I take a walk and meditate on a problem. Or I take a 50 mile ride on a motorbike. Or I fire up the local equivalent of the Uber and give some rides to the people just for the talks. Or whatever else comes to mind. Those are the choices I would never have had I made a mistake and got another job at the office.
        6y ago
keiferski 6y ago
I strongly dislike working at home but love the flexibility of a remote job. In fact I wish the remote working community would adopt a different philosophy, less focused on work from anywhere and more on create an office anywhere. As in, you can make any space into a work space, but every space doesn’t become a workspace automatically. Without a change of location, the day seems become an amorphous unorganized mess. My ideal set up is a small private office about 5-10 minutes walk from home, preferably with a cafe and gym on the way.
- lstodd 6y ago
  Yup. People fixate on the 'from home' bit for some unfathomable reason. It's not about home, it's about not being bound to some arbitrary building, and the same applies to their home.
radium3d 6y ago
How about remote first with a slightly smaller private company office space that employee can go and utilize whenever they feel like it with donuts and coffee and gossiping Sallys and Bobs? A fair compromise, no? If you like it quiet it might make the private office resort even nicer than before.
yuribro 6y ago
> If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago, There's a difference between working from home as an employee and a remote consulting job. There is a place for both. > The cynical part of me thinks all this "WFH Permanently" initiative is just a disguise for companies to start lowering cost for entry to mid-level IC positions by hiring from areas with much cheaper CoL. Why is it cynical? It really benefits everyone: 1. "Remote" workers: Workers can stay at their (lower CoL) homes, with their friends, family and culture, and still work on products they couldn't otherwise. 2. Consumers: More competition, as barrier to entry is lower 3. Companies: No need to raise huge funding rounds for the most basic of products or the initial prototype 4. "Local" workers: Not everyone is relocating to your home town, so it becomes a little cheaper CoL for them too
- borvo 6y ago
  It will be interesting to see what happens with salaries, given increased world-wide competition for jobs.
onion2k 6y ago
I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. One important difference is that "the flexibility to WFH when wanted" means you need to live near the office. Having the freedom to live where I want, or even work remotely while travelling digital-nomad style would be a huge plus in my opinion. As for lowering the cost of staff, as someone who lives in a part of the world where developer wages are a lot lower than typical US salaries, if a company is willing to meet me in the middle and I can get a decent pay rise while the US company makes a saving, surely that's a good thing for everyone involved? Companies operate globally now. Why shouldn't that include hiring?
LB232323 6y ago
I have been working remote by choice for years. You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web. This is a pretty straightforward advantage of the internet. Some jobs have always been "remote". For example, writers still type their manuscripts from anywhere and mail them to editors. However, only some jobs work like this. When I did service or blue collar work I always had to be on the site to physically work the capital. As for "career ambition", you can make plenty of money or a modest income from remote jobs. Beyond jobs, you can easily own an online business or some other digital capital through the same infrastructure. There is more to life and to work than a high salary. Greed is not a virtue. You don't have to sell your soul and most of the waking hours of your life to commute to an office, deal with the attached bullshit, and integrate yourself into the corporate machine. Instead, you have the freedom to actually live your life. Be with you family, friends, pursue your passions, even something as simple as being able access nature or travel freely. Whatever living means to you beyond working. From the outside looking in, the mirage of SV corporate culture seems really fake and hollow. I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult. I understand the power balance as a worker. In any job, I want to put in my time and hard work, earn an honest living, and then be free to live as a real human being.
- Cookingboy 6y ago
  >As for "career ambition", you can make plenty of money or a modest income from remote jobs. Beyond jobs, you can easily own an online business or some other digital capital through the same infrastructure. There is more to life and to work than a high salary. Greed is not a virtue. >You don't have to sell your soul and most of the waking hours of your life to commute to an office, deal with the attached bullshit, and integrate yourself into the corporate machine. I'm sorry but that came across as both condescending and judgmental. I know plenty of people chose the life they have here because they want to, not because they have to sell their soul or what not. There is a lot more perks from having a fulfilling job other than making a big paycheck, it ranges from working closely with amazing people to tackling challenging and fun problems. I know for sure the reason I go to work these days isn't because of money, since I'm past the point where I care too much about it. Finally there is absolutely nothing wrong with pursuing financial success. Having desire to "enjoy nature" and having desire to "have money" are both greed, just in different forms. I definitely do not consider myself morally superior just because I enjoy hiking... >From the outside looking in, the mirage of SV corporate culture seems really fake and hollow. I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult. I've been both inside and outside of SV (worked in Texas, Bay Area, and now in Seattle), and I have to say your understanding of SV culture is extremely superficial, likely augmented by the cherry-picking examples and sensationalized media portrayal.
noneeeed 6y ago
I think flexibility is the key. All the things that are touted as pros and cons of both WFH and office working are highly dependent on the individual, the company, the type of work, people's housing situation, disability, and many small life choices. Whenever this topic comes up I'm always rather disappointed to see how many people struggle with the idea that their situation is not everyone's situation, and make blanket statements about how WFH or offices are the better option, end of argument. Ultimately it's a personal preference, and highly dependent on situation. What I'm hoping for with all this is that a lot of companies see that remote working can be ok, and it gets easier for those who want to WFH to do so, either full time or just when necessary. It's going to be much harder for many companies to have blanket "no WFH" rules, although I'm sure there will be many that will revert to the norm.
- Cookingboy 6y ago
  The problem is that it likely snowballs one way or another if you allow full flexibility. If more people initially chose to work at the office, then the minority WFH people will inevitably be at a disadvantage and they would feel potentially left out of a lot of developments that take place in the office. Then they may end up forcing themselves to go to the office from time to time or move to a different company where more people WFH. Or if more people initially choose to WFH, then the value of going to office gets diminished and then one may start WFH more and more since not a lot of people go to the office in the first place, then the places becomes pretty much full remote and the company may just close it down to save real estate cost. Then you either are forced to embrace WFH or you have to find a different job with a different culture.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - matz1 6y ago
    But that is just life isn't it ? Whatever choice available there will be trade off, there will be pros and cons.
  - nogabebop23 6y ago
cbg0 6y ago
> maybe I'm the exception to the rule and most engineers just want to stay focused on their immediate work and not leave the house and minimize human interaction This is a bit of a false premise, I've been working from home for over a decade and I don't mind human interaction at all, I get plenty of it when hanging out with friends and family, but I do prefer my office space at home to some open space office with lots of noise and people constantly coming by and asking for stuff. > The cynical part of me thinks all this "WFH Permanently" initiative is just a disguise for companies to start lowering cost for entry to mid-level IC positions by hiring from areas with much cheaper CoL. While this could be true, it's entirely up to you if you want to work for such a company. Great developers will not work for cheap regardless of where they're from, and just because you live in a cheaper place doesn't mean the work you're doing is somehow lower value than the work employees in the SF office are doing.
- Cookingboy 6y ago
  >I do prefer my office space at home to some open space office with lots of noise and people constantly coming by and asking for stuff. Haha so you do dislike human interaction to some degree, or at least human interaction beyond family and friends. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but a lot of people thrive, if not prefer those "noisy environment" you described. >Great developers will not work for cheap regardless of where they're from, just because you live in a cheaper place doesn't mean the work you're doing is somehow lower value than the work employees in the SF office are doing. That's not how market economy works. Doesn't matter how great a developer is, in 99% of the case there is someone who's just as good but is willing to take half the pay because they live at a place that's 1/4 as expensive when it comes to CoL. A senior engineer at Google would get paid $350k+ in Mountain View, but I guarantee you plenty of people with that level of talent who live in much cheaper areas would gladly take 60% that much, if not less. In the end what count as "work for cheap" all comes down to supply/demand. And due to the supply increase and we'll see the price point drop.
  - cbg0 6y ago
    I realize you really want to drive down this concept of disliking human interaction because you've made your mind that if you want to work from home this must be true, but being bothered by people that interrupt you when you're doing work doesn't mean you dislike human interaction. Also, I don't really know any software engineers that "thrive" in noisy environments. If you need noise cancelling headphones to thrive, then the environment is definitely an issue.
baddox 6y ago
I don’t quite understand the problem. Of course I would choose to have the option to work from home or work from the office rather than not have that option. Even if I only end up wanting to work at the office 1 day a year, why would I say no to having that option?
- michaelt 6y ago
  > why would I say no to having that option? Because the option will also be extended to all your colleagues. And the moment a team gains a single remote worker it gains a load of process and ceremony. Every conversation becomes a scheduled meeting, every scheduled meeting books a meeting room with AV equipment, every meeting gains five minutes of AV setup time, everything that would have been a group of people at a whiteboard turns into a presentation prepared in advance by a single person, and every lightweight task tracking system gets replaced with Jira. All of which is done with the best of intentions - you don't want Remote Person to be excluded, or unable to see the whiteboard. And the changes aren't terrible - plenty of companies use Jira quite happily. Some people would even prefer a 20 minute scheduled meeting to a 10 minute interruption! But each change makes your life slightly more like the cliches and jokes about corporate life. It's not all downsides of course; if you get to avoid commuting or working in an open-plan office you might find on balance it's less alienating.
JSavageOne 6y ago
100% prefer remote work (not to be confused with WFH. Remote work != WFH). It's not necessarily the WFH aspect actually, it's more the "live anywhere you want" part, not having to commute, and the "avoiding all the office bullshit" aspects. Regarding location: I don't have roots in SF/NYC/Seattle where all the well-paying tech jobs are, and have no desire to make any of those cities my home. Lived in NYC 5 years, that was enough for me. Visited SF for a weekend for an interview, was appalled by the blatant homelessness on the streets. I'm not really interested in living anywhere long-term where a "starter home" goes for $1m, especially a boring suburb like Mountain View or Menlo Park (to be fair I've never visited, but I grew up in the suburbs of DC and U.S. suburbs just aren't my thing). While working remotely, I've been able to travel the world, and more recently settle down in a (first-world) country where my cost of living is no more than 1/3 of what it was in NYC, with increased quality of life. Regarding the office bullshit part - every office job I've ever had has office bullshit. You're expected to be there between 10:30am-5:30pm, or whatever the mandated hours are, passive aggressively enforced by some dreaded morning standup where for some reason the time is non-negotiable. You can bust your ass off for the first 4 hours of the day (probably the limit of productive work before reaching diminishing returns). Then it's 2:30pm and you've done a day's work but your brain is fried so you know you're not going to be productive, but you can't just leave early because then your PM and co-workers on other teams will think you're a slacker, and the executives will be concerned that their secretaries, oops I mean "executive assistants", who get paid a fraction of your salary despite working longer hours, will start to get jealous. So you have to figure out a way to burn the next 3 hours, maybe have your IDE up in one monitor while reading HN in another. Meanwhile when I WFH, when I know I'm not going to be productive, I just do something else and don't have to put on this facade of looking like I'm being productive 8 hours/day. As a night owl I'll get into a flow state and pull an all-nighter one day, and then take the next day off. I don't set an alarm clock before I go to sleep because I'm more productive when I'm well-rested. Also open offices suck. Maybe I wouldn't be so appalled by office jobs as much if we at least got our own cubicles. As fun as it is to make fun of cubicles, they're a hell of a lot more comfortable then being on an assembly line of desks in a giant coliseum. Though no matter where your office is, it eventually gets boring. Variety is always good, and remote work gives you that freedom.
- 6y ago
xiphias2 6y ago
For me the biggest problem with working in an office was that tech hubs concentrate men, so it completely destroyed my dating life for years. My low social status of being just an average looking male outside work also made me depressed so much, I never ever want to feel that again. Also working in an office was the best with a small team in a separate room with a nice view, the noise from open office plans is so bad for people like me, who can't work with music in the background on the headphones.
- funnybeam 6y ago
  For me, noise cancelling ear phones playing pink noise works to blank everything out. Music I find too distracting and white noise too harsh (makes me feel like I have a hangover) but pink noise is soothing, almost like being in the womb and really helps me focus
- peruvian 6y ago
  > tech hubs concentrate men When people have this issue I always recommend NYC. I know it's not the easiest city to live in, even with a tech salary, but at least the gender imbalance is not a problem at all.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Sure, I should have done that before, actually it's a bit sad that I haven't done that when I was younger. At this point I have an asthma because of air pollution from living in cities, so I can't go there anymore, but I'm independent now.
tjbiddle 6y ago
More choice is always better, in my opinion. So I'd prefer flexibility to be WFH. My first "real" job had WFH options for T/H which I regularly took advantage of, and from April 2014 on I've been 100% remote. I rode out a few consulting gigs and then went full-time for a NYC company, my requirement was that I was able to WFH - and then I stayed living in Cincinnati at the time. I very thoroughly enjoyed my all-expenses paid quarterly trips to NYC, and I very much enjoyed not having to have any commute. I worked from home or various coffee shops near me - and got to make a few friends that way. Now I run my own e-commerce business. The business is registered in the US, all customers and business relations are all US based. I live in Bali, Indonesia and my two employees live near Manilla in the Philippines - so we're 100% remote. I love having the option to work from home, explore the copious cafes and restaurants often, as well as occasionally will go to co-working centers. It all depends on my mood - but I have the option for it all! I have the added benefit of living in a heavily dense for remote workers - so whenever I want to be social and co-work, I can call any number of people to hang out. It's given me the option to travel the world, work at any time of the day I want, save countless hours on "meetings", saved a fortune in commuting hours and gas - I could go on. So I fully empathize with enjoying the work environment, but I also love having all my benefits of working remotely. If you're 100% remote and struggling with the social aspect - you just need to find something that works for you.
- GordonS 6y ago
  A bit OT, but you mentioned you are now living in Indonesia, and I gather you're a US citizen - can I ask what permit/visa you are on, or are you doing "visa runs" and staying on a holiday visa?
  - tjbiddle 6y ago
    I've tried a few, haha - Tourist Visa (30 days) - Visa On Arrival (30 days + 30 days extension) - Social Visa (180 days) - Business Visa (Valid for 1 year, but max 60 days at a time) - Bonus Visa: Emergency Visa for COVID-19 (Unknown - We're allowed to stay until they lift the restriction. Not much info right now, just know I'm legally allowed to be here even though I've overstayed my current 60 days on the Business Visa) Correct - after you hit those limits you do a visa run. Just involves leaving the country and coming back. No one cares if you were gone for 6 hours or 6 years. I usually either do a morning flight to Singapore and evening flight back if I don't want to disrupt my life, or I'll take the opportunity to do a 1-2 week trip somewhere. Pretty much the only "usual" route I haven't tried is the KITAS/KITAP which is a working visa. You would get this if you're either working for an Indonesian company, or running an Indonesian business and issue yourself the visa. These are good for 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years I believe.
lawn 6y ago
I currently work from home permanently but visit the office 5-6 times a year or so. I think it works great and wouldn't have it any other way.
peteretep 6y ago
> I enjoy going to office and there is a lot of benefits that you don't get from being remote 100%. I've also made very good friends at work and I see my coworkers as much more than just another GitHub account that reviews my Pull Requests. I've found I can almost all of the benefits of going into an office by having a nearby coworking space / community which I like, often more-so.
dgellow 6y ago
You seem to assume that working remotely means you don’t develop social bonding with colleagues. I worked remotely with quite big time offsets (some people in South America, some in France, I was in Thailand), and we were able to develop friendships and have social time together. I’ve never thought about others as “another github account reviewing pull request”.
shrimpx 6y ago
Btw the idea that you can hire talent from some podunk town for half the price is an oft repeated trope that I’m pretty certain is not true. It’s not a buyers market out there. High end talent doesn’t grow on trees in villages. Forgive my tone but I get a bit triggered. The implication that it’s a buyers market, and high end engineers from cheap places are undercutting engineers in expensive places, is a weird myth.
deleted 6y ago
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ojr 6y ago
Hiring developers in far proximity like in a different country is a quick way to accumulate tech debt from my experience.
tluyben2 6y ago
Been working almost (maybe 1 year total spent in an office and hated every second of it) exclusively remotely for well over 25 years; I personally find offices absolute time wasters. Noise, commute(or wasting money living close to the office), meetings, disruptions etc.
cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
There's a reason why a lot of freelancers prefer to work from coffee shop or coworking spaces. I'm pretty sure 90% of the people commenting on this thread have never actually lived through working without an office for years, and these people have no idea what they are talking about. Here's what happens to so called WFH people: Phase 1. It's exciting to work independently and productivity rises for a couple of weeks. Phase 2. Working from home gets old very very fast, and you end up pushing yourself to go work at more public places like coffee shop (otherwise your productivity goes down no matter how productive a person you are). Phase 3. If you work out of coffee shops for a long period of time, this gets old too. Not everyone reaches this state but many people do. You would rather work from a fixed place with less uncertainties than floating around different coffee shops every day. And this is why coworking spaces exist and people pay a lot of money to work out of coworking spaces.
vinniejames 6y ago
> How many people actually prefer WFH Everyone paying ludicrous rent in SF proper who can now move, saving thousands per month
dustinmoris 6y ago
> I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. > If I wanted to stay home forever > most engineers just want to stay focused on their immediate work and not leave the house and minimize human interaction Your company being a remote business, doesn't mean that you ONLY MUST work from home. It means you have the flexibility. You can work 3 days from home, 2 days from an office or co-working space, enjoy being around your friends and like minded folks or elsewhere. Your entire response is based on false assumptions or a purposefully wrongly painted picture of WFH. Maybe your view is badly skewed because your only WFH experience is a pandemic lockdown, which is not what true WFH looks like, just like going to the grocery store with 2 metre distance and a face mask is not how normally people go to grocery stores when there isn't a pandemic.
selykg 6y ago
I think in an ideal world, my preference would be work from the office 2-3 days a week. Then remotely the other days. This gives me time to see my colleagues, interact with them in person, quickly accomplish certain tasks that can't be easily done over a call or screenshare, and have that social interaction (probably only matters to those that enjoy their colleagues, but still, it's a thing). This would save me some money each year in gas and in time driving and would strike a good balance for me. Sadly, I think my job is going to go back to 100% in office. But I also know that my general feelings on this are very in the middle and finding a local (to me) company that'd be willing to do this is pretty low.
codingdave 6y ago
I've been working from home for almost a decade now. I absolutely prefer it. And most people I talk to prefer it. Clearly, not everybody... and I respect our differences, but the ones who prefer offices feel like a vocal minority to me. The communication concerns you are talking about do exist when there is a mix of office-based and remote staff. But those problems evaporate when everyone is remote. You learn new communication styles, and everything is different, but it works. That being said, I do agree that if you have a split company, the remote staff ends up being a little out of the loop. For some people, that is acceptable, for others it is not. I'm in that boat at the moment, and I accept it because the benefits of being at home outweigh my desire to be involved in all decisions. As far as lowering costs go, yes it is a cost saving measure and it does mean that cheaper talent gets hired in. And sometimes the talent is lower quality because of that as well. Again, whether or not that is acceptable depends quite a bit on your own career goals and motivations. I am a 47 year old coder, transitioning out of coding, who has already accomplished all I wanted to in this industry. Someone 20 years younger than me who is ambitious will certainly desire a different working environment than I.
jasonv 6y ago
I have zero desire to go into an office. Ever. Very happy WFH, and have.. on and off, for years. Sometimes self-employed. Also like part time digital nomad-ing. Companies that are WFH friendly tend to have less meeting waste and office culture time wasting. The last company I spent time at had a nice building but horrible amenities. The kitchens were swampy and busy, meeting rooms difficult to schedule, inaccessible VPs who were always in meetings, etc. because decisions took forever the workforce also spent a lot of time waiting, and the socializing was endless. I just find less of that when working for a company that has tuned away from that.
- xoxoy 6y ago
  there’s a difference between being remote and knowing most coworkers are in one location and time zone and being remote first and having everyone in multiple time zones. I assume most who choose to be “remote” will stay in the US, but if “remote first” ends up being a dozen time zones there is no advantage to that at all, in fact it just becomes a massive scheduling headache.
  - jasonv 6y ago
    And I've worked in the in-between configuration, where remote first was US oriented. Our co-workers in Asia worked our schedule, or at times, overlapped a bit. That includes organizations where there was no office (well, a condo in the Philippines, for people who wanted to collect occasionally or when local weather impacted connectivity). It's easier if everyone worked a PST schedule, but in other instances... having hand-off overlaps allowed for teams to work independently but also leverage their counterparts.
RyJones 6y ago
I've been WFH for over five years and I've turned down several opportunities to work in an office for significantly more money. Agency is worth a lot to me.
roosterdawn 6y ago
> The cynical part of me thinks all this "WFH Permanently" initiative is just a disguise for companies to start lowering cost for entry to mid-level IC positions by hiring from areas with much cheaper CoL. This isn't cynical, but the sword cuts both ways. Eventually, those lower CoL areas will equalize towards a higher CoL as folks begin moving there to WFH. The other way around will occur there too, as the discount to entry or mid level IC engineers will erode over time, and the good ones will cost more because of trajectory, while the more middling ones likely will experience some erosion due to increased labor market competition. With that said, I can't really speak as to what the second order effects or black swans will be regarding the shift to remote first. Some speculation: - Will suburbs become more or less attractive as commute becomes less important of a perk? - Will more remote tracts of land previously relegated to just outside the reach of exurbs become more or less attractive now that inhabitants are no longer precluded from virtual labor market participation? - Will a caste system solidify around those who continue to commute to the office versus those who do not, or will it dissolve as the majority moves towards working and collaborating virtually? - What will the effect of timezones be? Will we begin to see nations organize around timezone based vertical blocs as economies increasingly shift towards virtual labor and knowledge work?
zeku 6y ago
In my area(a 2nd tier major US Metro, a city you've heard of and may even want to live in, a state capitol) you could pay that dev $50k.
Kalium 6y ago
> From my personal experiences most high level decisions are made, or at least started from countless hallway/micro-kitchen conversations or informal coffee walks, and meetings are just a way to present to people of decisions that's already made. I've had a similar experience. WfH does a lot to inhibit those conversations by raising the bar to informal conversation. A mixed environment will tend to mean that informal discussion happens in the office first, and over video link when people remember to ask the others. I've seen this blow up into major tension with as few as three or four people involved. I think a lot of people are low to mid-level ICs whose career ambitions don't include promotions. No few are quite attached to the freedom, the romance, of being a digital nomad.
bluntfang 6y ago
>If I wanted to stay home forever Remote First != stay at home forever. You're being deliberately inflammatory towards people who prefer to have control of their surroundings, including the people they surround themselves with.
unsignedint 6y ago
You are definitely not alone, I would be frustrated if not horrified if the WFH situation gets permanent. Even physically, I find personally, it'll require quite bit of investment to make WFH viable/productive for it to be permanent, to have a permanent "work" room set up. Limited space shared with my personal computer and equipment are not very ideal for the productivity. Still then, I would certainly prefer getting out of my place and working outside of my home. It's one thing someone joins the company knowing that it's a remote job, I'm curious how people are adjusting to this change.

tspike 6y ago

Primary benefit for me is to be able to live somewhere I enjoy (small town near mountains). I like to visit cities, but I loathe living in them.

toraobo 6y ago

I like going to the office because it offers a very nice solid separation between "home" and "work" life.

Cookingboy 6y ago
That's another good reason. I know of coworkers who are single and really looking back to get back to the office because they are sick of being alone in their small apartments for days at a time. I also know of coworkers who are married with family and can't wait to get back to the office because they need to take breaks from their spouses/kids from time to time.
- lstodd 6y ago
  When I was in the same situation, I was very much enjoying working from a pub which was 20 minutes walk away from the "office". It was quiet, nice food and much socializing towards the evening. What's not to like? To think how much money the company was wasting on the office... I still cringe today.
  - Cookingboy 6y ago
    > It was quiet, nice food and much socializing towards the evening. What's not to like? To me the smell of alcohol would be awful? Or maybe I don't like noisy strangers? Or maybe I can't bring my comfortable chair and twin 30" monitors to a pub with me every day? I think you've fallen pretty deep in the trap of thinking your experience and preference applies to everyone.
    - lstodd 6y ago
      Please cut the ad hominems. I'm merely showing that there is life and work without an office, and better one much of the time. Yes I prefer twin monitors, two black cats, zero interruptions and some ambient music most of the time. When I get in the other mood, I go sit at the pub. Or I take a walk and meditate on a problem. Or I take a 50 mile ride on a motorbike. Or I fire up the local equivalent of the Uber and give some rides to the people just for the talks. Or whatever else comes to mind. Those are the choices I would never have had I made a mistake and got another job at the office.
      - 6y ago

keiferski 6y ago

I strongly dislike working at home but love the flexibility of a remote job. In fact I wish the remote working community would adopt a different philosophy, less focused on work from anywhere and more on create an office anywhere. As in, you can make any space into a work space, but every space doesn’t become a workspace automatically. Without a change of location, the day seems become an amorphous unorganized mess. My ideal set up is a small private office about 5-10 minutes walk from home, preferably with a cafe and gym on the way.

lstodd 6y ago
Yup. People fixate on the 'from home' bit for some unfathomable reason. It's not about home, it's about not being bound to some arbitrary building, and the same applies to their home.

radium3d 6y ago

How about remote first with a slightly smaller private company office space that employee can go and utilize whenever they feel like it with donuts and coffee and gossiping Sallys and Bobs? A fair compromise, no? If you like it quiet it might make the private office resort even nicer than before.

yuribro 6y ago

> If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago, There's a difference between working from home as an employee and a remote consulting job. There is a place for both. > The cynical part of me thinks all this "WFH Permanently" initiative is just a disguise for companies to start lowering cost for entry to mid-level IC positions by hiring from areas with much cheaper CoL. Why is it cynical? It really benefits everyone: 1. "Remote" workers: Workers can stay at their (lower CoL) homes, with their friends, family and culture, and still work on products they couldn't otherwise. 2. Consumers: More competition, as barrier to entry is lower 3. Companies: No need to raise huge funding rounds for the most basic of products or the initial prototype 4. "Local" workers: Not everyone is relocating to your home town, so it becomes a little cheaper CoL for them too

borvo 6y ago
It will be interesting to see what happens with salaries, given increased world-wide competition for jobs.

onion2k 6y ago

I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. One important difference is that "the flexibility to WFH when wanted" means you need to live near the office. Having the freedom to live where I want, or even work remotely while travelling digital-nomad style would be a huge plus in my opinion. As for lowering the cost of staff, as someone who lives in a part of the world where developer wages are a lot lower than typical US salaries, if a company is willing to meet me in the middle and I can get a decent pay rise while the US company makes a saving, surely that's a good thing for everyone involved? Companies operate globally now. Why shouldn't that include hiring?

LB232323 6y ago

I have been working remote by choice for years. You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web. This is a pretty straightforward advantage of the internet. Some jobs have always been "remote". For example, writers still type their manuscripts from anywhere and mail them to editors. However, only some jobs work like this. When I did service or blue collar work I always had to be on the site to physically work the capital. As for "career ambition", you can make plenty of money or a modest income from remote jobs. Beyond jobs, you can easily own an online business or some other digital capital through the same infrastructure. There is more to life and to work than a high salary. Greed is not a virtue. You don't have to sell your soul and most of the waking hours of your life to commute to an office, deal with the attached bullshit, and integrate yourself into the corporate machine. Instead, you have the freedom to actually live your life. Be with you family, friends, pursue your passions, even something as simple as being able access nature or travel freely. Whatever living means to you beyond working. From the outside looking in, the mirage of SV corporate culture seems really fake and hollow. I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult. I understand the power balance as a worker. In any job, I want to put in my time and hard work, earn an honest living, and then be free to live as a real human being.

Cookingboy 6y ago
>As for "career ambition", you can make plenty of money or a modest income from remote jobs. Beyond jobs, you can easily own an online business or some other digital capital through the same infrastructure. There is more to life and to work than a high salary. Greed is not a virtue. >You don't have to sell your soul and most of the waking hours of your life to commute to an office, deal with the attached bullshit, and integrate yourself into the corporate machine. I'm sorry but that came across as both condescending and judgmental. I know plenty of people chose the life they have here because they want to, not because they have to sell their soul or what not. There is a lot more perks from having a fulfilling job other than making a big paycheck, it ranges from working closely with amazing people to tackling challenging and fun problems. I know for sure the reason I go to work these days isn't because of money, since I'm past the point where I care too much about it. Finally there is absolutely nothing wrong with pursuing financial success. Having desire to "enjoy nature" and having desire to "have money" are both greed, just in different forms. I definitely do not consider myself morally superior just because I enjoy hiking... >From the outside looking in, the mirage of SV corporate culture seems really fake and hollow. I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult. I've been both inside and outside of SV (worked in Texas, Bay Area, and now in Seattle), and I have to say your understanding of SV culture is extremely superficial, likely augmented by the cherry-picking examples and sensationalized media portrayal.

noneeeed 6y ago

I think flexibility is the key. All the things that are touted as pros and cons of both WFH and office working are highly dependent on the individual, the company, the type of work, people's housing situation, disability, and many small life choices. Whenever this topic comes up I'm always rather disappointed to see how many people struggle with the idea that their situation is not everyone's situation, and make blanket statements about how WFH or offices are the better option, end of argument. Ultimately it's a personal preference, and highly dependent on situation. What I'm hoping for with all this is that a lot of companies see that remote working can be ok, and it gets easier for those who want to WFH to do so, either full time or just when necessary. It's going to be much harder for many companies to have blanket "no WFH" rules, although I'm sure there will be many that will revert to the norm.

Cookingboy 6y ago
The problem is that it likely snowballs one way or another if you allow full flexibility. If more people initially chose to work at the office, then the minority WFH people will inevitably be at a disadvantage and they would feel potentially left out of a lot of developments that take place in the office. Then they may end up forcing themselves to go to the office from time to time or move to a different company where more people WFH. Or if more people initially choose to WFH, then the value of going to office gets diminished and then one may start WFH more and more since not a lot of people go to the office in the first place, then the places becomes pretty much full remote and the company may just close it down to save real estate cost. Then you either are forced to embrace WFH or you have to find a different job with a different culture.
- deleted 6y ago
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- matz1 6y ago
  But that is just life isn't it ? Whatever choice available there will be trade off, there will be pros and cons.
- nogabebop23 6y ago

cbg0 6y ago

> maybe I'm the exception to the rule and most engineers just want to stay focused on their immediate work and not leave the house and minimize human interaction This is a bit of a false premise, I've been working from home for over a decade and I don't mind human interaction at all, I get plenty of it when hanging out with friends and family, but I do prefer my office space at home to some open space office with lots of noise and people constantly coming by and asking for stuff. > The cynical part of me thinks all this "WFH Permanently" initiative is just a disguise for companies to start lowering cost for entry to mid-level IC positions by hiring from areas with much cheaper CoL. While this could be true, it's entirely up to you if you want to work for such a company. Great developers will not work for cheap regardless of where they're from, and just because you live in a cheaper place doesn't mean the work you're doing is somehow lower value than the work employees in the SF office are doing.

Cookingboy 6y ago
>I do prefer my office space at home to some open space office with lots of noise and people constantly coming by and asking for stuff. Haha so you do dislike human interaction to some degree, or at least human interaction beyond family and friends. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but a lot of people thrive, if not prefer those "noisy environment" you described. >Great developers will not work for cheap regardless of where they're from, just because you live in a cheaper place doesn't mean the work you're doing is somehow lower value than the work employees in the SF office are doing. That's not how market economy works. Doesn't matter how great a developer is, in 99% of the case there is someone who's just as good but is willing to take half the pay because they live at a place that's 1/4 as expensive when it comes to CoL. A senior engineer at Google would get paid $350k+ in Mountain View, but I guarantee you plenty of people with that level of talent who live in much cheaper areas would gladly take 60% that much, if not less. In the end what count as "work for cheap" all comes down to supply/demand. And due to the supply increase and we'll see the price point drop.
- cbg0 6y ago
  I realize you really want to drive down this concept of disliking human interaction because you've made your mind that if you want to work from home this must be true, but being bothered by people that interrupt you when you're doing work doesn't mean you dislike human interaction. Also, I don't really know any software engineers that "thrive" in noisy environments. If you need noise cancelling headphones to thrive, then the environment is definitely an issue.

baddox 6y ago

I don’t quite understand the problem. Of course I would choose to have the option to work from home or work from the office rather than not have that option. Even if I only end up wanting to work at the office 1 day a year, why would I say no to having that option?

michaelt 6y ago
> why would I say no to having that option? Because the option will also be extended to all your colleagues. And the moment a team gains a single remote worker it gains a load of process and ceremony. Every conversation becomes a scheduled meeting, every scheduled meeting books a meeting room with AV equipment, every meeting gains five minutes of AV setup time, everything that would have been a group of people at a whiteboard turns into a presentation prepared in advance by a single person, and every lightweight task tracking system gets replaced with Jira. All of which is done with the best of intentions - you don't want Remote Person to be excluded, or unable to see the whiteboard. And the changes aren't terrible - plenty of companies use Jira quite happily. Some people would even prefer a 20 minute scheduled meeting to a 10 minute interruption! But each change makes your life slightly more like the cliches and jokes about corporate life. It's not all downsides of course; if you get to avoid commuting or working in an open-plan office you might find on balance it's less alienating.

JSavageOne 6y ago

100% prefer remote work (not to be confused with WFH. Remote work != WFH). It's not necessarily the WFH aspect actually, it's more the "live anywhere you want" part, not having to commute, and the "avoiding all the office bullshit" aspects. Regarding location: I don't have roots in SF/NYC/Seattle where all the well-paying tech jobs are, and have no desire to make any of those cities my home. Lived in NYC 5 years, that was enough for me. Visited SF for a weekend for an interview, was appalled by the blatant homelessness on the streets. I'm not really interested in living anywhere long-term where a "starter home" goes for $1m, especially a boring suburb like Mountain View or Menlo Park (to be fair I've never visited, but I grew up in the suburbs of DC and U.S. suburbs just aren't my thing). While working remotely, I've been able to travel the world, and more recently settle down in a (first-world) country where my cost of living is no more than 1/3 of what it was in NYC, with increased quality of life. Regarding the office bullshit part - every office job I've ever had has office bullshit. You're expected to be there between 10:30am-5:30pm, or whatever the mandated hours are, passive aggressively enforced by some dreaded morning standup where for some reason the time is non-negotiable. You can bust your ass off for the first 4 hours of the day (probably the limit of productive work before reaching diminishing returns). Then it's 2:30pm and you've done a day's work but your brain is fried so you know you're not going to be productive, but you can't just leave early because then your PM and co-workers on other teams will think you're a slacker, and the executives will be concerned that their secretaries, oops I mean "executive assistants", who get paid a fraction of your salary despite working longer hours, will start to get jealous. So you have to figure out a way to burn the next 3 hours, maybe have your IDE up in one monitor while reading HN in another. Meanwhile when I WFH, when I know I'm not going to be productive, I just do something else and don't have to put on this facade of looking like I'm being productive 8 hours/day. As a night owl I'll get into a flow state and pull an all-nighter one day, and then take the next day off. I don't set an alarm clock before I go to sleep because I'm more productive when I'm well-rested. Also open offices suck. Maybe I wouldn't be so appalled by office jobs as much if we at least got our own cubicles. As fun as it is to make fun of cubicles, they're a hell of a lot more comfortable then being on an assembly line of desks in a giant coliseum. Though no matter where your office is, it eventually gets boring. Variety is always good, and remote work gives you that freedom.

6y ago

xiphias2 6y ago

For me the biggest problem with working in an office was that tech hubs concentrate men, so it completely destroyed my dating life for years. My low social status of being just an average looking male outside work also made me depressed so much, I never ever want to feel that again. Also working in an office was the best with a small team in a separate room with a nice view, the noise from open office plans is so bad for people like me, who can't work with music in the background on the headphones.

funnybeam 6y ago
For me, noise cancelling ear phones playing pink noise works to blank everything out. Music I find too distracting and white noise too harsh (makes me feel like I have a hangover) but pink noise is soothing, almost like being in the womb and really helps me focus
peruvian 6y ago
> tech hubs concentrate men When people have this issue I always recommend NYC. I know it's not the easiest city to live in, even with a tech salary, but at least the gender imbalance is not a problem at all.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Sure, I should have done that before, actually it's a bit sad that I haven't done that when I was younger. At this point I have an asthma because of air pollution from living in cities, so I can't go there anymore, but I'm independent now.

tjbiddle 6y ago

More choice is always better, in my opinion. So I'd prefer flexibility to be WFH. My first "real" job had WFH options for T/H which I regularly took advantage of, and from April 2014 on I've been 100% remote. I rode out a few consulting gigs and then went full-time for a NYC company, my requirement was that I was able to WFH - and then I stayed living in Cincinnati at the time. I very thoroughly enjoyed my all-expenses paid quarterly trips to NYC, and I very much enjoyed not having to have any commute. I worked from home or various coffee shops near me - and got to make a few friends that way. Now I run my own e-commerce business. The business is registered in the US, all customers and business relations are all US based. I live in Bali, Indonesia and my two employees live near Manilla in the Philippines - so we're 100% remote. I love having the option to work from home, explore the copious cafes and restaurants often, as well as occasionally will go to co-working centers. It all depends on my mood - but I have the option for it all! I have the added benefit of living in a heavily dense for remote workers - so whenever I want to be social and co-work, I can call any number of people to hang out. It's given me the option to travel the world, work at any time of the day I want, save countless hours on "meetings", saved a fortune in commuting hours and gas - I could go on. So I fully empathize with enjoying the work environment, but I also love having all my benefits of working remotely. If you're 100% remote and struggling with the social aspect - you just need to find something that works for you.

GordonS 6y ago
A bit OT, but you mentioned you are now living in Indonesia, and I gather you're a US citizen - can I ask what permit/visa you are on, or are you doing "visa runs" and staying on a holiday visa?
- tjbiddle 6y ago
  I've tried a few, haha - Tourist Visa (30 days) - Visa On Arrival (30 days + 30 days extension) - Social Visa (180 days) - Business Visa (Valid for 1 year, but max 60 days at a time) - Bonus Visa: Emergency Visa for COVID-19 (Unknown - We're allowed to stay until they lift the restriction. Not much info right now, just know I'm legally allowed to be here even though I've overstayed my current 60 days on the Business Visa) Correct - after you hit those limits you do a visa run. Just involves leaving the country and coming back. No one cares if you were gone for 6 hours or 6 years. I usually either do a morning flight to Singapore and evening flight back if I don't want to disrupt my life, or I'll take the opportunity to do a 1-2 week trip somewhere. Pretty much the only "usual" route I haven't tried is the KITAS/KITAP which is a working visa. You would get this if you're either working for an Indonesian company, or running an Indonesian business and issue yourself the visa. These are good for 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years I believe.

lawn 6y ago

I currently work from home permanently but visit the office 5-6 times a year or so. I think it works great and wouldn't have it any other way.

peteretep 6y ago

> I enjoy going to office and there is a lot of benefits that you don't get from being remote 100%. I've also made very good friends at work and I see my coworkers as much more than just another GitHub account that reviews my Pull Requests. I've found I can almost all of the benefits of going into an office by having a nearby coworking space / community which I like, often more-so.

dgellow 6y ago

You seem to assume that working remotely means you don’t develop social bonding with colleagues. I worked remotely with quite big time offsets (some people in South America, some in France, I was in Thailand), and we were able to develop friendships and have social time together. I’ve never thought about others as “another github account reviewing pull request”.

shrimpx 6y ago

Btw the idea that you can hire talent from some podunk town for half the price is an oft repeated trope that I’m pretty certain is not true. It’s not a buyers market out there. High end talent doesn’t grow on trees in villages. Forgive my tone but I get a bit triggered. The implication that it’s a buyers market, and high end engineers from cheap places are undercutting engineers in expensive places, is a weird myth.

deleted 6y ago

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ojr 6y ago

Hiring developers in far proximity like in a different country is a quick way to accumulate tech debt from my experience.

tluyben2 6y ago

Been working almost (maybe 1 year total spent in an office and hated every second of it) exclusively remotely for well over 25 years; I personally find offices absolute time wasters. Noise, commute(or wasting money living close to the office), meetings, disruptions etc.

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago

There's a reason why a lot of freelancers prefer to work from coffee shop or coworking spaces. I'm pretty sure 90% of the people commenting on this thread have never actually lived through working without an office for years, and these people have no idea what they are talking about. Here's what happens to so called WFH people: Phase 1. It's exciting to work independently and productivity rises for a couple of weeks. Phase 2. Working from home gets old very very fast, and you end up pushing yourself to go work at more public places like coffee shop (otherwise your productivity goes down no matter how productive a person you are). Phase 3. If you work out of coffee shops for a long period of time, this gets old too. Not everyone reaches this state but many people do. You would rather work from a fixed place with less uncertainties than floating around different coffee shops every day. And this is why coworking spaces exist and people pay a lot of money to work out of coworking spaces.

vinniejames 6y ago

> How many people actually prefer WFH Everyone paying ludicrous rent in SF proper who can now move, saving thousands per month

dustinmoris 6y ago

> I'm really curious, how many people actually prefer WFH permanently vs. just having the flexibility to WFH when wanted. > If I wanted to stay home forever > most engineers just want to stay focused on their immediate work and not leave the house and minimize human interaction Your company being a remote business, doesn't mean that you ONLY MUST work from home. It means you have the flexibility. You can work 3 days from home, 2 days from an office or co-working space, enjoy being around your friends and like minded folks or elsewhere. Your entire response is based on false assumptions or a purposefully wrongly painted picture of WFH. Maybe your view is badly skewed because your only WFH experience is a pandemic lockdown, which is not what true WFH looks like, just like going to the grocery store with 2 metre distance and a face mask is not how normally people go to grocery stores when there isn't a pandemic.

selykg 6y ago

I think in an ideal world, my preference would be work from the office 2-3 days a week. Then remotely the other days. This gives me time to see my colleagues, interact with them in person, quickly accomplish certain tasks that can't be easily done over a call or screenshare, and have that social interaction (probably only matters to those that enjoy their colleagues, but still, it's a thing). This would save me some money each year in gas and in time driving and would strike a good balance for me. Sadly, I think my job is going to go back to 100% in office. But I also know that my general feelings on this are very in the middle and finding a local (to me) company that'd be willing to do this is pretty low.

codingdave 6y ago

I've been working from home for almost a decade now. I absolutely prefer it. And most people I talk to prefer it. Clearly, not everybody... and I respect our differences, but the ones who prefer offices feel like a vocal minority to me. The communication concerns you are talking about do exist when there is a mix of office-based and remote staff. But those problems evaporate when everyone is remote. You learn new communication styles, and everything is different, but it works. That being said, I do agree that if you have a split company, the remote staff ends up being a little out of the loop. For some people, that is acceptable, for others it is not. I'm in that boat at the moment, and I accept it because the benefits of being at home outweigh my desire to be involved in all decisions. As far as lowering costs go, yes it is a cost saving measure and it does mean that cheaper talent gets hired in. And sometimes the talent is lower quality because of that as well. Again, whether or not that is acceptable depends quite a bit on your own career goals and motivations. I am a 47 year old coder, transitioning out of coding, who has already accomplished all I wanted to in this industry. Someone 20 years younger than me who is ambitious will certainly desire a different working environment than I.

jasonv 6y ago

I have zero desire to go into an office. Ever. Very happy WFH, and have.. on and off, for years. Sometimes self-employed. Also like part time digital nomad-ing. Companies that are WFH friendly tend to have less meeting waste and office culture time wasting. The last company I spent time at had a nice building but horrible amenities. The kitchens were swampy and busy, meeting rooms difficult to schedule, inaccessible VPs who were always in meetings, etc. because decisions took forever the workforce also spent a lot of time waiting, and the socializing was endless. I just find less of that when working for a company that has tuned away from that.

xoxoy 6y ago
there’s a difference between being remote and knowing most coworkers are in one location and time zone and being remote first and having everyone in multiple time zones. I assume most who choose to be “remote” will stay in the US, but if “remote first” ends up being a dozen time zones there is no advantage to that at all, in fact it just becomes a massive scheduling headache.
- jasonv 6y ago
  And I've worked in the in-between configuration, where remote first was US oriented. Our co-workers in Asia worked our schedule, or at times, overlapped a bit. That includes organizations where there was no office (well, a condo in the Philippines, for people who wanted to collect occasionally or when local weather impacted connectivity). It's easier if everyone worked a PST schedule, but in other instances... having hand-off overlaps allowed for teams to work independently but also leverage their counterparts.

RyJones 6y ago

I've been WFH for over five years and I've turned down several opportunities to work in an office for significantly more money. Agency is worth a lot to me.

roosterdawn 6y ago

> The cynical part of me thinks all this "WFH Permanently" initiative is just a disguise for companies to start lowering cost for entry to mid-level IC positions by hiring from areas with much cheaper CoL. This isn't cynical, but the sword cuts both ways. Eventually, those lower CoL areas will equalize towards a higher CoL as folks begin moving there to WFH. The other way around will occur there too, as the discount to entry or mid level IC engineers will erode over time, and the good ones will cost more because of trajectory, while the more middling ones likely will experience some erosion due to increased labor market competition. With that said, I can't really speak as to what the second order effects or black swans will be regarding the shift to remote first. Some speculation: - Will suburbs become more or less attractive as commute becomes less important of a perk? - Will more remote tracts of land previously relegated to just outside the reach of exurbs become more or less attractive now that inhabitants are no longer precluded from virtual labor market participation? - Will a caste system solidify around those who continue to commute to the office versus those who do not, or will it dissolve as the majority moves towards working and collaborating virtually? - What will the effect of timezones be? Will we begin to see nations organize around timezone based vertical blocs as economies increasingly shift towards virtual labor and knowledge work?

zeku 6y ago

In my area(a 2nd tier major US Metro, a city you've heard of and may even want to live in, a state capitol) you could pay that dev $50k.

Kalium 6y ago

> From my personal experiences most high level decisions are made, or at least started from countless hallway/micro-kitchen conversations or informal coffee walks, and meetings are just a way to present to people of decisions that's already made. I've had a similar experience. WfH does a lot to inhibit those conversations by raising the bar to informal conversation. A mixed environment will tend to mean that informal discussion happens in the office first, and over video link when people remember to ask the others. I've seen this blow up into major tension with as few as three or four people involved. I think a lot of people are low to mid-level ICs whose career ambitions don't include promotions. No few are quite attached to the freedom, the romance, of being a digital nomad.

bluntfang 6y ago

>If I wanted to stay home forever Remote First != stay at home forever. You're being deliberately inflammatory towards people who prefer to have control of their surroundings, including the people they surround themselves with.

unsignedint 6y ago

You are definitely not alone, I would be frustrated if not horrified if the WFH situation gets permanent. Even physically, I find personally, it'll require quite bit of investment to make WFH viable/productive for it to be permanent, to have a permanent "work" room set up. Limited space shared with my personal computer and equipment are not very ideal for the productivity. Still then, I would certainly prefer getting out of my place and working outside of my home. It's one thing someone joins the company knowing that it's a remote job, I'm curious how people are adjusting to this change.