14 ms·

Not everyone has: - long commutes - crappy coworkers or offices - a space large enough to comfortably work remotely (or the money to afford a bigger space)

by prions 6y ago

Not everyone has: - long commutes - crappy coworkers or offices - a space large enough to comfortably work remotely (or the money to afford a bigger space) - a partner, kids, or both, which makes extended social isolation more livable - a rich network for career growth and opportunities God forbid some people want to live in big cities and don't make their choices solely based on reducing costs and bottom line expenses (ironic since every other day people here rail against big corporation bean counters). Example: Facebook's latest internal polling - the majority of people want to be in the office sometimes. People suddenly waking up and realizing the office is a huge scam is the current du jour opinion here. But time and time again the HN demographic only speaks to itself. And of course people will reply with that it expands choice, but that doesn't stop those from cheering that companies going full remote like its a universal good thing for everyone. And on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to point that out. edit: Going full remote is a huge cost savings to companies. A cost that is now hoisted onto employees. So unless employees are receiving some equivalent compensation for blowing out my utility bills and refitting my office, be careful who you're cheering with.

Axsuul 6y ago
In LA, a lot of people depend on their workplace for A/C during the summer.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Or in London
- mc32 6y ago
  Great opportunity to cut costs at the office and offload that to employees!
- gnulinux 6y ago
  I live in Boston, which is relatively mild over the summer, but it still gets pretty hot, at least for me. The switch to running AC in my study room has been one of the biggest shifts for me. Since now I cannot use the AC in my bedroom. I moved it to livingroom so I can cool myself while working. But then I can't sleep well. Looks like I will have to get another AC and install it in my bedroom. WFH definitely had many unexpected short comings.
- prophetjohn 6y ago
  Does it just cool down that much in the evening? What about the weekends? This is fascinating to me. I've lived in the rural Midwest, NYC and Texas and always had A/C everywhere I lived – only question was central or window unit.
  - Jommi 6y ago
    Yeah, once sun goes down it's actually quite cold. Tho depends how close to sea you are as well. Weekends it might be that you can actually enjoy being outside.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    Most older (pre-1980s) buildings in SoCal lack A/C. It all depends on how far you are from the coast, but the evenings in the summer are mostly tolerable with a fan and some open windows. Nobody except masochists really stay inside a stuffy apartment mid-day in the summer though. The reason you pay so much in living expenses is mostly for the good weather, so people spend their weekends out and about. As a kid in the summer, I remember walking around shops in the mall just to stay cool during the hottest hours of the day, and going to the beach often. My parents would do their grocery store shopping on Saturdays and Sundays mid-day if it was going to be hot. As I got older we'd go catch a matinee, or hit up a restaurant or a bar. I imagine workers in the L.A. area will largely flood into cafes and co-work-esque places as businesses start opening back up and remote work becomes more dominant.
  - ip26 6y ago
    In many parts of the West it can hit 100F during daylight but 60F at night, thanks to ocean breezes or aridity.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Where I live (coastal LA), heat is required in all apartments, but not AC. It gets colder here than you’d think. Not “Late January in Chicago” cold, but averages down into the 40s are the norm during winter.
  - ConSeannery 6y ago
    Coming from someone who is a complete an utter pansy when it comes to humidity, 100F with almost no humidity is a lot more bearable than 75F and 100% humidity
- HelloFellowDevs 6y ago
  I live on the east coast and I’m sort of guilty of it too. Nowadays I open my window but I have to mute myself when I hear loud traffic about to pass by. I didn’t get an A/C because I didn’t want one more heavy object to move again.
- donretag 6y ago
  I live in LA, and I barely turn on my AC, even during all the years I worked from home. LA does not get that hot and has low humidity. Working from home, no AC. Too lazy to get up from my code and turn on the fan. Then again, I moved to LA because I love the sun and hate the cold.
  - Axsuul 6y ago
    West LA?
syshum 6y ago
- No long Commute for me, less than 10 mins - Office is not perfect but better than some - I do have a home office with a nicer setup than my work office - I love and thrive on social isolation, going home to my empty house is the best part of my day... - See above... I have no network... >>God forbid some people want to live in big cities yea I have never understood those people... I live in a mid sized city and have a strong desire to move back to the farm fields. Probably more on how you grew up than anything, my childhood was in a town of less than 3000 people. if it was not for network connectivity issues in Rural America I would probably still live in the sticks. >on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to point that out. Sorry, this is HN it is rule to point that out :)
- Jommi 6y ago
  What are you trying to say here? You seem to be agreeing with the OP. Different people like different ways of working and we should have possibilities for both.
Ericson2314 6y ago
I was also annoyed with all the pro WFH rallying on HN pre-quarantine. But now I am happy with it consider: - I don't want city overflowing (and price-gouged-by) wannabe suburbanites - With a sufficiently high carbon tax, hopefully WFH can mean towns not exurb hell by those that insist on leaving the city - long commutes are bad and denormalizing than as an exceptable part of modern life (in the USA) can help us make our land use less shit - We should all work less, and making work as socially isolating for the upper classes as it already is for many lower class jobs will help move things in that direction. > a rich network for career growth and opportunities This is a I think the most important one, but the ultimate solution is to simply make "career" less important be making a decent quality of life available to most everyone. I know it's great us here that in the last 20 years society has begun to value intellectual work more, but the scarcity that caused this culture shit is just unsustainable. In short, don't discount the urbanist accelerationist argument for WFH.
- gowld 6y ago
  What's wrong with exurbs, if people living there don't need to commute downtown?
  - gen220 6y ago
    I think the OP is referring to the fact that exurbs are currently hellish because everyone living there commutes downtown. They'd have a stronger sense of community and identity if residents spent their lives actually living there, rather than sleeping there: the neighborhoods would become more like "towns" and less like "exurbs". Some NYC examples would be Yonkers, most of eastern/central NJ or the western half of CT. Anecdotally, I've spent a fair amount of time living in both environments, and for me the quality of life difference is night and day. The lack of proper "towns" within commuting distance of NYC means that we have to live in town-y neighborhoods within the city, which are much more expensive to than the 'burbs, and don't come with an acre, a pool, and free parking. The apparent lack of towns means we're eventually going to leave the entire metropolitan area, which is kind of sad, since we like working here very much.
    - 6y ago
klintcho 6y ago
I fully agree. Another thing I'm somewhat surprised to see is a lot of influential people talking about the trend of urbanization being reversed. To me there are more factors than "the work is there" (at least in more developed country) to move to a big growing metropolis. An anecdotal observation I read somewhere here on HN was something like "have you logged on to tinder in a suburb of some smaller US city?". Another big factor is the environmental one, sure if we can reduce the commute for a majority of people that would be awesome, however people will not stop moving around (restaurants, entertainment, socializing). What alternatives do we have if people are going to leave the city? Public transportation is for the most part only viable in highly dense areas. Electric car is of course going to grow their share, but medium term expanded public transportation is an extremely important part of the equation.
- 3131s 6y ago
  Since America has no problem with authoritarian measures that are meant to 'protect' us from ourselves and each other, at this point we should just forcibly take away everyone's vehicles and make them ride bicycles. It is illegal for me to do things far less dangerous to myself and others compared to driving a car, and as someone who has no plans to own a car again, I neither want to breathe in exhaust fumes or risk getting hit by a vehicle just because others feel entitled to drive. If we're going to live in a nanny state, let's actually maintain a consistent framework for measuring harm and stick to it.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > Since America has no problem with authoritarian measures that are meant to 'protect' us from ourselves and each other. What are you going on about? Every country in the world is enforcing social isolation now...
onion2k 6y ago
Facebook's latest internal polling - the majority of people want to be in the office sometimes. Zuckerberg was recently in the press saying he wants Facebook to pay remote workers less (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521). That could skew the results a little.
- gowld 6y ago
  And employees want to pay less rent, and that could skew the results too.
- rodiger 6y ago
  If I could live in Omaha with a FB bay area salary I'd live like a king
- ankitmathur 6y ago
  While this is true, I'm pretty sure the referenced poll was conducted well before that was announced. In fact, I've heard internal criticisms of the opposite direction. The prospect of a full time shift to remote was not communicated as context for the poll. Employees answered the polls thinking they were talking about how they'd go to the office given COVID-19 (a lot more people saying they'd do 50/50, when in reality, that just reflected their lack of comfort due to the disease). Companies should be sure not to confuse actions people are willing to take due to a pandemic to be what they'd do in a post-pandemic world. Same thing with productivity: just like we don't know the long term impact of this disease, we also don't know that employees will remain as productive as they've been so far.
- aarohmankad 6y ago
  This is a very biased interpretation. Your salary may not be adjusted if you work in a similar CoL area. Only if you move from HCoL to LCoL (and vice-versa!) Too many people assume remote work always means working somewhere far away from a major urban city.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    If you currently live in Silicon Valley, there are very few (none) other places you can go to that would match the cost of living.
nemacol 6y ago
>Going full remote is a huge cost savings to companies. A cost that is now hoisted onto employees. Commuting, lunch, tons of cloths/uniforms, (likely more stuff I am not thinking off) is also a huge cost to employees. I know my mortgage payment is due if I go to an office or WFH. My car, on the other hand, requires loads more fuel and maintenance when I work in the office. Electricity bill goes up slightly. Heating / cooling costs goes up a bit. I was already heating and cooling my home though but a schedule made it so I didn't heat or cool as much during business hours (when I was not home). For lunch I am not going out nearly as much. Mostly because my home is not well positioned for a quick trip for lunch. Seems to me there are savings on both sides here. I could be convinced otherwise though - I have not read any proper studies where the dynamics here have been fleshed out. I feel like I am saving lots of money and a fair amount of time with WFH.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  You missed a big one. Choosing where to live. If you live near downtown SF, you might get a 15 minute commute to work, which is pretty great, but it'll be super expensive and maybe more urban than you like. Or you could live like 2-3 miles away and have an hour commute to work, but live where it's a little more residential, cheaper, and close to the beach and GG park. The nicer one is somehow cheaper! Prices are a huge function of commute. In the near term, getting to work remote lets you benefit from price arbitrage to live somewhere nicer for cheaper. In the long term, getting to work remote might spread the housing costs over a large enough space that people can get the not-crazy-dense housing so many want and municipalities might keep up with demand. If we're lucky, it could lower the average price per person at the expense of maybe raising the average price per square mile.
  - nemacol 6y ago
    That makes sense. I had not really considered moving because WFH is an option, other than the digital nomad dreams that float through my mind. :D In my case, I live in small town WV (pop < 2500) and work outside Pittsburgh, PA. Living in WV basically means you can afford a house with acres of property IF you can make more than 60k / year (which is a big IF for most around here). Back to the original point - The choice to live in one place over another, shorter or longer commutes, etc.. Is not the company shifting its operating cost onto its employees. is it? Do I misunderstand still? Seems to me, if anything, this is an opportunity to continue to live the way you did before with slightly more free time and potentially more money OR, as you say, move a bit more out of town and save even more money. This change should decrease costs for the employee, open up the labor market for the employer thus lowering costs for them as well. Shedding office space is a great way to save money anywhere in the country - Let alone in a hyper expensive place like downtown SF. I am still failing to understand how this is pushing the cost of business onto employees.
gowld 6y ago
If wfh was such a swindle in favor of employers, why wasn't the norm already?
- Noos 6y ago
  Because employers aren't always expert at maximizing swindling, thank God.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- strunz 6y ago
  Because they've always been afraid working from home equals hardly working and they've already sunk in the cost on the multi year office lease.
richardknop 6y ago
It's a very good point. I live in central London and had a very short commute to my office and I enjoyed coming to office most of the time. Now during the lockdown I am stuck working from my small studio apartment which is just not suited as a working environment and it is starting to take its toll. Working basically next to my kitchen corner and bed is not ideal at all and I feel I would be more productive if I were allowed to work from office again.
exolymph 6y ago
"the HN demographic only speaks to itself." about that... dang wrote a long comment regarding this community, and why he thinks your sentiment comes up so often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
HN is not a homogeneous whole. The top comment(s) are only representative of that subset of readers who both a) agree and b) bother to upvote. I skim read the top few comments then minimise them, or minimise them immediately. I'm looking for what's different to my current understanding, and the top comment(s) almost always are perspectives I'm already familiar with.
cuddlybacon 6y ago
My site lead (small office, big-ish company) sent as survey. Only 25% percent of people wanted to work from home more days per week than they work in the office. Heck, 40% said they wanted to return before the date our CEO selected. There seems to be a group on HN that really wants to make the desire to WFH seem universal. A few weeks ago a post like yours likely would have been buried.
ipiz0618 6y ago
For me I'm happy to go to office as long as I live near it, and working hours are flexible. Unfortunately a lot of industries outside tech do not provide those. The cost of transport, especially the drainage of energy after squeezing into a crowded train / bus definitely outweighs utility bills. However, if a company provides both options, remote workers are usually disadvantaged because of the reasons stated in the article and the comments. It's a tough choice, and I think the division should at least be team-based for a fair competition.
havelhovel 6y ago
Stating that people preferring WFH is a "du jour" opinion is not based on any fact or productive at all. Utility bills are not being "blown out" by working from home [1]. Acknowledging that your observations are anecdotal doesn't absolve you of speaking honestly. [1] https://qz.com/work/1825934/how-working-from-home-impacts-your-energy-use/ https://qz.com/work/1825934/how-working-from-home-impacts-yo...
j4kp07 6y ago
"So unless employees are receiving some equivalent compensation for blowing out my utility bills and refitting my office, be careful who you're cheering with." Due to WFH, I get 10 hours of my life back each week (minimum), I save a lot of money on transportation and meals, I get more sleep each night and there are times when I can do house chores while in a conference call. It should go without saying that WFH is not for everyone. But for some of us, it is truly ideal and it's difficult to put a price tag on the benefits I gain in my life.

by prions 6y ago

Axsuul 6y ago

In LA, a lot of people depend on their workplace for A/C during the summer.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
Or in London
mc32 6y ago
Great opportunity to cut costs at the office and offload that to employees!
gnulinux 6y ago
I live in Boston, which is relatively mild over the summer, but it still gets pretty hot, at least for me. The switch to running AC in my study room has been one of the biggest shifts for me. Since now I cannot use the AC in my bedroom. I moved it to livingroom so I can cool myself while working. But then I can't sleep well. Looks like I will have to get another AC and install it in my bedroom. WFH definitely had many unexpected short comings.
prophetjohn 6y ago
Does it just cool down that much in the evening? What about the weekends? This is fascinating to me. I've lived in the rural Midwest, NYC and Texas and always had A/C everywhere I lived – only question was central or window unit.
- Jommi 6y ago
  Yeah, once sun goes down it's actually quite cold. Tho depends how close to sea you are as well. Weekends it might be that you can actually enjoy being outside.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  Most older (pre-1980s) buildings in SoCal lack A/C. It all depends on how far you are from the coast, but the evenings in the summer are mostly tolerable with a fan and some open windows. Nobody except masochists really stay inside a stuffy apartment mid-day in the summer though. The reason you pay so much in living expenses is mostly for the good weather, so people spend their weekends out and about. As a kid in the summer, I remember walking around shops in the mall just to stay cool during the hottest hours of the day, and going to the beach often. My parents would do their grocery store shopping on Saturdays and Sundays mid-day if it was going to be hot. As I got older we'd go catch a matinee, or hit up a restaurant or a bar. I imagine workers in the L.A. area will largely flood into cafes and co-work-esque places as businesses start opening back up and remote work becomes more dominant.
- ip26 6y ago
  In many parts of the West it can hit 100F during daylight but 60F at night, thanks to ocean breezes or aridity.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Where I live (coastal LA), heat is required in all apartments, but not AC. It gets colder here than you’d think. Not “Late January in Chicago” cold, but averages down into the 40s are the norm during winter.
- ConSeannery 6y ago
  Coming from someone who is a complete an utter pansy when it comes to humidity, 100F with almost no humidity is a lot more bearable than 75F and 100% humidity
HelloFellowDevs 6y ago
I live on the east coast and I’m sort of guilty of it too. Nowadays I open my window but I have to mute myself when I hear loud traffic about to pass by. I didn’t get an A/C because I didn’t want one more heavy object to move again.
donretag 6y ago
I live in LA, and I barely turn on my AC, even during all the years I worked from home. LA does not get that hot and has low humidity. Working from home, no AC. Too lazy to get up from my code and turn on the fan. Then again, I moved to LA because I love the sun and hate the cold.
- Axsuul 6y ago
  West LA?

syshum 6y ago

- No long Commute for me, less than 10 mins - Office is not perfect but better than some - I do have a home office with a nicer setup than my work office - I love and thrive on social isolation, going home to my empty house is the best part of my day... - See above... I have no network... >>God forbid some people want to live in big cities yea I have never understood those people... I live in a mid sized city and have a strong desire to move back to the farm fields. Probably more on how you grew up than anything, my childhood was in a town of less than 3000 people. if it was not for network connectivity issues in Rural America I would probably still live in the sticks. >on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to point that out. Sorry, this is HN it is rule to point that out :)

Jommi 6y ago
What are you trying to say here? You seem to be agreeing with the OP. Different people like different ways of working and we should have possibilities for both.

Ericson2314 6y ago

I was also annoyed with all the pro WFH rallying on HN pre-quarantine. But now I am happy with it consider: - I don't want city overflowing (and price-gouged-by) wannabe suburbanites - With a sufficiently high carbon tax, hopefully WFH can mean towns not exurb hell by those that insist on leaving the city - long commutes are bad and denormalizing than as an exceptable part of modern life (in the USA) can help us make our land use less shit - We should all work less, and making work as socially isolating for the upper classes as it already is for many lower class jobs will help move things in that direction. > a rich network for career growth and opportunities This is a I think the most important one, but the ultimate solution is to simply make "career" less important be making a decent quality of life available to most everyone. I know it's great us here that in the last 20 years society has begun to value intellectual work more, but the scarcity that caused this culture shit is just unsustainable. In short, don't discount the urbanist accelerationist argument for WFH.

gowld 6y ago
What's wrong with exurbs, if people living there don't need to commute downtown?
- gen220 6y ago
  I think the OP is referring to the fact that exurbs are currently hellish because everyone living there commutes downtown. They'd have a stronger sense of community and identity if residents spent their lives actually living there, rather than sleeping there: the neighborhoods would become more like "towns" and less like "exurbs". Some NYC examples would be Yonkers, most of eastern/central NJ or the western half of CT. Anecdotally, I've spent a fair amount of time living in both environments, and for me the quality of life difference is night and day. The lack of proper "towns" within commuting distance of NYC means that we have to live in town-y neighborhoods within the city, which are much more expensive to than the 'burbs, and don't come with an acre, a pool, and free parking. The apparent lack of towns means we're eventually going to leave the entire metropolitan area, which is kind of sad, since we like working here very much.
  - 6y ago

klintcho 6y ago

I fully agree. Another thing I'm somewhat surprised to see is a lot of influential people talking about the trend of urbanization being reversed. To me there are more factors than "the work is there" (at least in more developed country) to move to a big growing metropolis. An anecdotal observation I read somewhere here on HN was something like "have you logged on to tinder in a suburb of some smaller US city?". Another big factor is the environmental one, sure if we can reduce the commute for a majority of people that would be awesome, however people will not stop moving around (restaurants, entertainment, socializing). What alternatives do we have if people are going to leave the city? Public transportation is for the most part only viable in highly dense areas. Electric car is of course going to grow their share, but medium term expanded public transportation is an extremely important part of the equation.

3131s 6y ago
Since America has no problem with authoritarian measures that are meant to 'protect' us from ourselves and each other, at this point we should just forcibly take away everyone's vehicles and make them ride bicycles. It is illegal for me to do things far less dangerous to myself and others compared to driving a car, and as someone who has no plans to own a car again, I neither want to breathe in exhaust fumes or risk getting hit by a vehicle just because others feel entitled to drive. If we're going to live in a nanny state, let's actually maintain a consistent framework for measuring harm and stick to it.
- oblio 6y ago
  > Since America has no problem with authoritarian measures that are meant to 'protect' us from ourselves and each other. What are you going on about? Every country in the world is enforcing social isolation now...

onion2k 6y ago

Facebook's latest internal polling - the majority of people want to be in the office sometimes. Zuckerberg was recently in the press saying he wants Facebook to pay remote workers less (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521). That could skew the results a little.

gowld 6y ago
And employees want to pay less rent, and that could skew the results too.
rodiger 6y ago
If I could live in Omaha with a FB bay area salary I'd live like a king
ankitmathur 6y ago
While this is true, I'm pretty sure the referenced poll was conducted well before that was announced. In fact, I've heard internal criticisms of the opposite direction. The prospect of a full time shift to remote was not communicated as context for the poll. Employees answered the polls thinking they were talking about how they'd go to the office given COVID-19 (a lot more people saying they'd do 50/50, when in reality, that just reflected their lack of comfort due to the disease). Companies should be sure not to confuse actions people are willing to take due to a pandemic to be what they'd do in a post-pandemic world. Same thing with productivity: just like we don't know the long term impact of this disease, we also don't know that employees will remain as productive as they've been so far.
aarohmankad 6y ago
This is a very biased interpretation. Your salary may not be adjusted if you work in a similar CoL area. Only if you move from HCoL to LCoL (and vice-versa!) Too many people assume remote work always means working somewhere far away from a major urban city.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  If you currently live in Silicon Valley, there are very few (none) other places you can go to that would match the cost of living.

nemacol 6y ago

>Going full remote is a huge cost savings to companies. A cost that is now hoisted onto employees. Commuting, lunch, tons of cloths/uniforms, (likely more stuff I am not thinking off) is also a huge cost to employees. I know my mortgage payment is due if I go to an office or WFH. My car, on the other hand, requires loads more fuel and maintenance when I work in the office. Electricity bill goes up slightly. Heating / cooling costs goes up a bit. I was already heating and cooling my home though but a schedule made it so I didn't heat or cool as much during business hours (when I was not home). For lunch I am not going out nearly as much. Mostly because my home is not well positioned for a quick trip for lunch. Seems to me there are savings on both sides here. I could be convinced otherwise though - I have not read any proper studies where the dynamics here have been fleshed out. I feel like I am saving lots of money and a fair amount of time with WFH.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
You missed a big one. Choosing where to live. If you live near downtown SF, you might get a 15 minute commute to work, which is pretty great, but it'll be super expensive and maybe more urban than you like. Or you could live like 2-3 miles away and have an hour commute to work, but live where it's a little more residential, cheaper, and close to the beach and GG park. The nicer one is somehow cheaper! Prices are a huge function of commute. In the near term, getting to work remote lets you benefit from price arbitrage to live somewhere nicer for cheaper. In the long term, getting to work remote might spread the housing costs over a large enough space that people can get the not-crazy-dense housing so many want and municipalities might keep up with demand. If we're lucky, it could lower the average price per person at the expense of maybe raising the average price per square mile.
- nemacol 6y ago
  That makes sense. I had not really considered moving because WFH is an option, other than the digital nomad dreams that float through my mind. :D In my case, I live in small town WV (pop < 2500) and work outside Pittsburgh, PA. Living in WV basically means you can afford a house with acres of property IF you can make more than 60k / year (which is a big IF for most around here). Back to the original point - The choice to live in one place over another, shorter or longer commutes, etc.. Is not the company shifting its operating cost onto its employees. is it? Do I misunderstand still? Seems to me, if anything, this is an opportunity to continue to live the way you did before with slightly more free time and potentially more money OR, as you say, move a bit more out of town and save even more money. This change should decrease costs for the employee, open up the labor market for the employer thus lowering costs for them as well. Shedding office space is a great way to save money anywhere in the country - Let alone in a hyper expensive place like downtown SF. I am still failing to understand how this is pushing the cost of business onto employees.

gowld 6y ago

If wfh was such a swindle in favor of employers, why wasn't the norm already?

Noos 6y ago
Because employers aren't always expert at maximizing swindling, thank God.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
strunz 6y ago
Because they've always been afraid working from home equals hardly working and they've already sunk in the cost on the multi year office lease.

richardknop 6y ago

It's a very good point. I live in central London and had a very short commute to my office and I enjoyed coming to office most of the time. Now during the lockdown I am stuck working from my small studio apartment which is just not suited as a working environment and it is starting to take its toll. Working basically next to my kitchen corner and bed is not ideal at all and I feel I would be more productive if I were allowed to work from office again.

exolymph 6y ago

"the HN demographic only speaks to itself." about that... dang wrote a long comment regarding this community, and why he thinks your sentiment comes up so often: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

HN is not a homogeneous whole. The top comment(s) are only representative of that subset of readers who both a) agree and b) bother to upvote. I skim read the top few comments then minimise them, or minimise them immediately. I'm looking for what's different to my current understanding, and the top comment(s) almost always are perspectives I'm already familiar with.

cuddlybacon 6y ago

My site lead (small office, big-ish company) sent as survey. Only 25% percent of people wanted to work from home more days per week than they work in the office. Heck, 40% said they wanted to return before the date our CEO selected. There seems to be a group on HN that really wants to make the desire to WFH seem universal. A few weeks ago a post like yours likely would have been buried.

ipiz0618 6y ago

For me I'm happy to go to office as long as I live near it, and working hours are flexible. Unfortunately a lot of industries outside tech do not provide those. The cost of transport, especially the drainage of energy after squeezing into a crowded train / bus definitely outweighs utility bills. However, if a company provides both options, remote workers are usually disadvantaged because of the reasons stated in the article and the comments. It's a tough choice, and I think the division should at least be team-based for a fair competition.

havelhovel 6y ago

Stating that people preferring WFH is a "du jour" opinion is not based on any fact or productive at all. Utility bills are not being "blown out" by working from home [1]. Acknowledging that your observations are anecdotal doesn't absolve you of speaking honestly. [1] https://qz.com/work/1825934/how-working-from-home-impacts-your-energy-use/ https://qz.com/work/1825934/how-working-from-home-impacts-yo...

j4kp07 6y ago

"So unless employees are receiving some equivalent compensation for blowing out my utility bills and refitting my office, be careful who you're cheering with." Due to WFH, I get 10 hours of my life back each week (minimum), I save a lot of money on transportation and meals, I get more sleep each night and there are times when I can do house chores while in a conference call. It should go without saying that WFH is not for everyone. But for some of us, it is truly ideal and it's difficult to put a price tag on the benefits I gain in my life.