11 ms·

I know it's cool now to rag on remote work, and I definitely get that not everyone wants to work remote. But boy, I don't ever want to work in an office again.

I know it's cool now to rag on remote work, and I definitely get that not everyone wants to work remote. But boy, I don't ever want to work in an office again. It's not just the time saved, the privacy, and the lack of commute, but the simple fact that while code is building I can throw some laundry in the washing machine, check the mailbox, keep an eye on my 3d printer, have my pets around, crash on the couch for 10 minutes, make a quick trip to the grocery or post office, use my pull-up bar, be home when large packages arrive, eat out of my own fridge and pantry, have a podcast going without having to put on my headphones, not wear shoes, use my own bathroom and spend as much time as I need in there, and so much more.

taigi100 6y ago
Same, it's amazing. Especially if you're an introvert. The difference is that with remote, at 5 p.m. you can also be done with all the household work easily. My home is cleaner and better maintained than ever, and I have more time. So much better than having bs talks with colleagues about things I don't really care about - now, I only have non-work related discussions with whom I actually want about topics that I actually care about. It's just so much better. Not even mentioning the cash savings since cooking at home, no more needing new clothes so often, the environmental impact etc.
- killjoywashere 6y ago
  You want an extra-special superpower? Get a couple teammates and in east Asia or the islands of the Western Pacific, and a couple more in Europe or Africa. Once you solve the remote work problem and get over a bit of your trust issues and get used to the time zones, your team can do 3 days of work every 24 hours. Probably a little easier to add in India or some other 4th node because the 7-9 hour separations are tricky to find any overlap at all, but adding a 4th slice of the world is also a bit tricky.
rootusrootus 6y ago
I agree. I take little breaks during the day, toss in some laundry, take a short break on the patio, etc. The flexibility is great. And no commute. But I'm not sure how I will like it when the world gets back to normal and the family is gone. Right now I have my two elementary age kids and my wife at home, so I'm not lonely at all. In the past I found that spending day after day in a completely empty house was a sure ticket to loneliness. Maybe that'll change this time, but I'm not counting on it.
yomly 6y ago
>use my pull-up bar Spontaneous exercise is a game changer for me. We were not designed to sit down for 8 hours a day with a 1 hour commute each side. Even 5 minutes every hour will do a world of good for your health. EDIT: If I ever get round to setting up my own business, a priority will be establishing a space and culture of getting up and moving
- mythrwy 6y ago
  wow did I ever get that wrong! I was imagining the "pull up bar" to be a mobile alcohol serving tray.
  - yomly 6y ago
    >I was imagining the "pull up bar" to be a mobile alcohol serving tray. Haha!! Amazing. Let's just say I have also indulged in the "pull up bar" on the odd occasion while working remotely ;) [While more than perfectly completing my work]
  - culopatin 6y ago
    Mad Men offices
PunchTornado 6y ago
I loved my commute, it was a 30mins cycling through the countryside. Now I haven't used my bike in months. :( Remote working hasn't been good for me.
- ravenstine 6y ago
  Can you bike to somewhere that you can work? I don't bike, but I often drive somewhere and work off my LTE connection. Got a little desk that mounts to my steering wheel and everything.
  - thirdsun 6y ago
    Much simpler solution as suggested by other commenters: Simply get into the habit of riding a quick 30 minute loop on the bike before working at home. Biking or running just for the sake of exercise is a completely normal thing to do and I don't see why it has to be justified by a specific purpose like commuting.
- analog31 6y ago
  I also biked to work daily before lockdown. I've been doing a "fake commute," where I get out every morning before my work day begins. Either cycling or walking.
  - novaRom 6y ago
    Same here. Even walking 20 minutes every morning is nice to start a day. Now working from home requires some discipline, and I compensate it with doing a spontaneous jogging during a day.
    - mFixman 6y ago
      Exercise and sunlight before work has done wonders for my mental health while working from home. I'm lucky that the first part of my commute through green areas — I can ignore the second part through a congested part of London now that I don't have to end in the office.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
This works great if you have a huge and well-equipped home. I could set up my place to be both a home and an office, but it wouldn't be cheap (for starters, I'd want to rent something bigger). Considering taxes, this would be equivalent to at least a 20k pay cut due to costs being offloaded on me. I totally see why employers love that. Additionally, FAANG and startup tech offices often serve as more than an office - they tend to have a lot of shared amenities that are just not practical to have at home. I don't use a 3D printer often enough to own one, but there is one in the office. Gym? Office, and it has more than a pull-up bar. Post office? Office. Inbound packages? Post office. In the office. Grocery shopping? Happens much less often if you eat out. In the office. Why would I want to eat out of my own fridge and pantry (and have to prepare the food myself) when I can grab tasty food prepared by people who actually know what they're doing? The benefit isn't just that the stuff is free; the benefit is that it's all right there. It's an incredible time saver. This is going to be a huge benefits cut for tech employees, and a massive cost-cutting measure for tech employers. If the office is just an office with no amenities, and you have a sucky commute, then I can see why WfH would be attractive.
- aevv 6y ago
  so your home is where you sleep and the rest of your life is in the office?
  - enjoylife 6y ago
    If your commute is short, say sub 10-15min, enjoying such amenities would not be mutually exclusive to a good work life balance.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      Even if your commute is longer - being in the office doesn't mean working. If you live alone, coming home at 23:00 and going straight to bed doesn't have to mean poor work-life-balance. Imagine coming in at 9, having breakfast, working three hours, lunch from 12:30-13:00, working 5 hours, dinner, then spending the evening in the maker space until you need to go home.
grey-area 6y ago
the simple fact that while code is building I can...spend as much time as I need in there, and so much more Wow, do you use C++ by any chance?
raxxorrax 6y ago
It can be great but after 6 weeks I just needed to get out of my home. Maybe it would be different if you could go out more and not everything would be closed. That said, I have a 15 minutes walk to work. What I would like are flexible models. Maybe three days in office, two at home or something like that. Granted, that doesn't save money and I also detest workstation sharing or open offices. Conferences are nice and all, but there is no technical replacement for meeting people in person. Especially since with conferences, your exchanges are often limited to the people relevant to your job, so basically I mostly talked to nerds. Still, the stuff you mentioned is very convenient of course. I feel it is a bit unfair to colleagues that work in production. Those just don't have the option for home office.
chihuahua 6y ago
Same here, I love it. I can bake bread during short breaks from work: 15 minutes to mix and knead the dough, then 3 hours of proofing, then 10 minutes kneading, followed by 45 minutes proofing, then 5 minutes to preheat the oven, then 45 minutes baking. If I'm in the office, that's 5 hours from start to finish -- there's no time for that on a weekday. But if I'm working at home, it's just a few minutes away from my desk.
Mvandenbergh 6y ago
I think there's a distinction between fully remote and using an "office" as a collaboration space where people come in once every week or two to get to know colleagues socially and talk about work-related things. I'm not sure I'd enjoy being fully remote but I also don't like five days a week office working. Plus, if you're only going there occasionally and never for the entire working day, it's not really a "commute" any more. I would never accept a 90 minute commute but if I was doing it on the train once a week and not at peak hours that would be totally fine.
tiborsaas 6y ago
While this is true, I miss the physical interaction with my co-workers, the random chats, all the nonverbal communication and just the vibe of being at the same space. There's no digital substitute for this.
- apexalpha 6y ago
  Many companies in NL have already said that the new 'normal' will be a maximum of 2 days per week in office, the rest remote. So I agree with you there's no substitute for physically meeting. But I personally welcome this new normal with more remote work. Only having to commute to the office 2 days a week already saves me 6 hours of time.
  - jovdg 6y ago
    I'm in Belgium. I absolutely don't look forward to it. Just posting to make sure the "silent majority" does not stay silent. We had major changes in the past because of that silent majority thinking "it's just a fad, it will pass"...
    - apexalpha 6y ago
      Fair enough! But hopefully we can in the future choose ourselves between being in the office 5 days a week of fully remote. I understand not everyone has an hour long commute or has a home situation suitable for work. But before Corona I didn't have a choice and the 5-days-in-office norm was almost set in stone. Maybe if you're lucky your company allows working from home on Fridays. Although, I can't comment on working from home with Belgian internet. ;)
      - jovdg 6y ago
        First: my employer allowed an average of one day from home per week (you can schedule them as you see fit). Also, internet in Belgium is reasonable, depends on what you pay ofc. I think choice is most important. But whatever the choice, it has some consequences. With "work from the office", team meetings are assumed to be in person (everyone in the same room). With "work from home", team meetings are assumed to be online. Both require different infra, and if there is a 50/50 mix, you just need both... Every meeting starts with 5 to 15 minutes of hassling with the online infra (someone got a new laptop, browser update, local infra was replaced and is not compatible with our stack) - this is how we had it for the past few weeks since we were allowed to work from the office again. And indeed, it depends on your home situation: while my kids were home schooled too, work from home was just terrible. However, if I can work from home, how can I justify sending my kids to school...? So maybe now is the time to f* it all and become a stay-at-home dad
greggman3 6y ago
Work for me has almost always been 10-20% party. I get to be with people. Discuss things with them. Have lunch with them. Do extracurricular activities with them. Design solutions with them. Solve problems with them. For whatever reason doing any of that on slack/zoom feels super inferior / depressing. One is a playground and the other is solitary confinement. I fully acknowledge lots of people have jobs they hate at offices they hate. I'm just not excited for this new future where we all stay isolated at home.
- tkwj 6y ago
  I agree. I find slack/zoom to be a terrible replacement for the old casual/impromptu/hallway conversations. Sometimes the best information is learned in those formats.
- hoot 6y ago
  A lot of it seems to depend on if you have a family at home or not. With my wife, dog, and cat at home, I don't feel isolated at all. If I was here by myself, I could see how there could be a desire to go back to the office just to be around other people during working hours.
LockAndLol 6y ago
Hear hear. There are very few reasons I'd ever want to set foot in an office building again and at the moment I can't even think of a single one. Just because some people like working from home or some like being in an office, doesn't mean you have to force it upon everyone.
ezzzzz 6y ago
I 100% second this sentiment. Granted, I live in the Mid-West, my workplace is not a startup, I'm skewed towards introvert, have ADHD, and my work is not necessarily collaborative. Being in the Mid-West means car-centric living, WFH gives me at least 8 unpaid hours back to use as I please. I used to take a longer route on my way home, to decompress and avoid the stress of traffic. My carbon-footprint is also lowered significantly, which is personally important to me. As an introvert, I no longer feel the need to decompress from hours of maintaining false appearances and shallow office interpersonal relationships. The corporate world also loves meetings, and I estimate that the move to virtual over physical meetings saves literal hours per week (just by eliminating the need to physically move to a location, as well as the context switch and disruption of focus). Additionally, as someone with attention issues, not being overstimulated by my surroundings helps my energy, focus, and productivity. Again, I know everyone is different, but after living the wfh life, I am not sure if I can ever go back. I can see the argument against it, especially in the startup world. I still think it can be managed, with the right approaches and the right team.
- PenguinCoder 6y ago
  This is almost exactly me, as well. Still need a car, but I don't have to commute at all, entirely WFH. It saves so much time, and like you, the familiarity of _my_ work area, setup exactly as I want and need it, makes me so much more productive.
g5w 6y ago
WFH has been great for me and my wife hopes I never go back to the office. Saving two hours of commute time is a huge bonus giving me more time to spend with the family or work on projects around the house. And like you wrote, I put up laundry everyday so I don't have to spend time doing it in the evening, same with dishes, cleaning bathrooms, etc. Even better, dinner is now ready at 5 or 6:00 instead of 8:00. When I get into the groove I can crank my music and not worry about disrupting my coworkers. The downside for me is the daily meetings that I now have so that we can handle all of the old hallway conversations. And while I have a home office setup, the desk and chair are sub-optimal at best.

taigi100 6y ago

Same, it's amazing. Especially if you're an introvert. The difference is that with remote, at 5 p.m. you can also be done with all the household work easily. My home is cleaner and better maintained than ever, and I have more time. So much better than having bs talks with colleagues about things I don't really care about - now, I only have non-work related discussions with whom I actually want about topics that I actually care about. It's just so much better. Not even mentioning the cash savings since cooking at home, no more needing new clothes so often, the environmental impact etc.

killjoywashere 6y ago
You want an extra-special superpower? Get a couple teammates and in east Asia or the islands of the Western Pacific, and a couple more in Europe or Africa. Once you solve the remote work problem and get over a bit of your trust issues and get used to the time zones, your team can do 3 days of work every 24 hours. Probably a little easier to add in India or some other 4th node because the 7-9 hour separations are tricky to find any overlap at all, but adding a 4th slice of the world is also a bit tricky.

rootusrootus 6y ago

I agree. I take little breaks during the day, toss in some laundry, take a short break on the patio, etc. The flexibility is great. And no commute. But I'm not sure how I will like it when the world gets back to normal and the family is gone. Right now I have my two elementary age kids and my wife at home, so I'm not lonely at all. In the past I found that spending day after day in a completely empty house was a sure ticket to loneliness. Maybe that'll change this time, but I'm not counting on it.

yomly 6y ago

>use my pull-up bar Spontaneous exercise is a game changer for me. We were not designed to sit down for 8 hours a day with a 1 hour commute each side. Even 5 minutes every hour will do a world of good for your health. EDIT: If I ever get round to setting up my own business, a priority will be establishing a space and culture of getting up and moving

mythrwy 6y ago
wow did I ever get that wrong! I was imagining the "pull up bar" to be a mobile alcohol serving tray.
- yomly 6y ago
  >I was imagining the "pull up bar" to be a mobile alcohol serving tray. Haha!! Amazing. Let's just say I have also indulged in the "pull up bar" on the odd occasion while working remotely ;) [While more than perfectly completing my work]
- culopatin 6y ago
  Mad Men offices

PunchTornado 6y ago

I loved my commute, it was a 30mins cycling through the countryside. Now I haven't used my bike in months. :( Remote working hasn't been good for me.

ravenstine 6y ago
Can you bike to somewhere that you can work? I don't bike, but I often drive somewhere and work off my LTE connection. Got a little desk that mounts to my steering wheel and everything.
- thirdsun 6y ago
  Much simpler solution as suggested by other commenters: Simply get into the habit of riding a quick 30 minute loop on the bike before working at home. Biking or running just for the sake of exercise is a completely normal thing to do and I don't see why it has to be justified by a specific purpose like commuting.
analog31 6y ago
I also biked to work daily before lockdown. I've been doing a "fake commute," where I get out every morning before my work day begins. Either cycling or walking.
- novaRom 6y ago
  Same here. Even walking 20 minutes every morning is nice to start a day. Now working from home requires some discipline, and I compensate it with doing a spontaneous jogging during a day.
  - mFixman 6y ago
    Exercise and sunlight before work has done wonders for my mental health while working from home. I'm lucky that the first part of my commute through green areas — I can ignore the second part through a congested part of London now that I don't have to end in the office.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

This works great if you have a huge and well-equipped home. I could set up my place to be both a home and an office, but it wouldn't be cheap (for starters, I'd want to rent something bigger). Considering taxes, this would be equivalent to at least a 20k pay cut due to costs being offloaded on me. I totally see why employers love that. Additionally, FAANG and startup tech offices often serve as more than an office - they tend to have a lot of shared amenities that are just not practical to have at home. I don't use a 3D printer often enough to own one, but there is one in the office. Gym? Office, and it has more than a pull-up bar. Post office? Office. Inbound packages? Post office. In the office. Grocery shopping? Happens much less often if you eat out. In the office. Why would I want to eat out of my own fridge and pantry (and have to prepare the food myself) when I can grab tasty food prepared by people who actually know what they're doing? The benefit isn't just that the stuff is free; the benefit is that it's all right there. It's an incredible time saver. This is going to be a huge benefits cut for tech employees, and a massive cost-cutting measure for tech employers. If the office is just an office with no amenities, and you have a sucky commute, then I can see why WfH would be attractive.

aevv 6y ago
so your home is where you sleep and the rest of your life is in the office?
- enjoylife 6y ago
  If your commute is short, say sub 10-15min, enjoying such amenities would not be mutually exclusive to a good work life balance.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Even if your commute is longer - being in the office doesn't mean working. If you live alone, coming home at 23:00 and going straight to bed doesn't have to mean poor work-life-balance. Imagine coming in at 9, having breakfast, working three hours, lunch from 12:30-13:00, working 5 hours, dinner, then spending the evening in the maker space until you need to go home.

grey-area 6y ago

the simple fact that while code is building I can...spend as much time as I need in there, and so much more Wow, do you use C++ by any chance?

raxxorrax 6y ago

It can be great but after 6 weeks I just needed to get out of my home. Maybe it would be different if you could go out more and not everything would be closed. That said, I have a 15 minutes walk to work. What I would like are flexible models. Maybe three days in office, two at home or something like that. Granted, that doesn't save money and I also detest workstation sharing or open offices. Conferences are nice and all, but there is no technical replacement for meeting people in person. Especially since with conferences, your exchanges are often limited to the people relevant to your job, so basically I mostly talked to nerds. Still, the stuff you mentioned is very convenient of course. I feel it is a bit unfair to colleagues that work in production. Those just don't have the option for home office.

chihuahua 6y ago

Same here, I love it. I can bake bread during short breaks from work: 15 minutes to mix and knead the dough, then 3 hours of proofing, then 10 minutes kneading, followed by 45 minutes proofing, then 5 minutes to preheat the oven, then 45 minutes baking. If I'm in the office, that's 5 hours from start to finish -- there's no time for that on a weekday. But if I'm working at home, it's just a few minutes away from my desk.

Mvandenbergh 6y ago

I think there's a distinction between fully remote and using an "office" as a collaboration space where people come in once every week or two to get to know colleagues socially and talk about work-related things. I'm not sure I'd enjoy being fully remote but I also don't like five days a week office working. Plus, if you're only going there occasionally and never for the entire working day, it's not really a "commute" any more. I would never accept a 90 minute commute but if I was doing it on the train once a week and not at peak hours that would be totally fine.

tiborsaas 6y ago

While this is true, I miss the physical interaction with my co-workers, the random chats, all the nonverbal communication and just the vibe of being at the same space. There's no digital substitute for this.

apexalpha 6y ago
Many companies in NL have already said that the new 'normal' will be a maximum of 2 days per week in office, the rest remote. So I agree with you there's no substitute for physically meeting. But I personally welcome this new normal with more remote work. Only having to commute to the office 2 days a week already saves me 6 hours of time.
- jovdg 6y ago
  I'm in Belgium. I absolutely don't look forward to it. Just posting to make sure the "silent majority" does not stay silent. We had major changes in the past because of that silent majority thinking "it's just a fad, it will pass"...
  - apexalpha 6y ago
    Fair enough! But hopefully we can in the future choose ourselves between being in the office 5 days a week of fully remote. I understand not everyone has an hour long commute or has a home situation suitable for work. But before Corona I didn't have a choice and the 5-days-in-office norm was almost set in stone. Maybe if you're lucky your company allows working from home on Fridays. Although, I can't comment on working from home with Belgian internet. ;)
    - jovdg 6y ago
      First: my employer allowed an average of one day from home per week (you can schedule them as you see fit). Also, internet in Belgium is reasonable, depends on what you pay ofc. I think choice is most important. But whatever the choice, it has some consequences. With "work from the office", team meetings are assumed to be in person (everyone in the same room). With "work from home", team meetings are assumed to be online. Both require different infra, and if there is a 50/50 mix, you just need both... Every meeting starts with 5 to 15 minutes of hassling with the online infra (someone got a new laptop, browser update, local infra was replaced and is not compatible with our stack) - this is how we had it for the past few weeks since we were allowed to work from the office again. And indeed, it depends on your home situation: while my kids were home schooled too, work from home was just terrible. However, if I can work from home, how can I justify sending my kids to school...? So maybe now is the time to f* it all and become a stay-at-home dad

greggman3 6y ago

Work for me has almost always been 10-20% party. I get to be with people. Discuss things with them. Have lunch with them. Do extracurricular activities with them. Design solutions with them. Solve problems with them. For whatever reason doing any of that on slack/zoom feels super inferior / depressing. One is a playground and the other is solitary confinement. I fully acknowledge lots of people have jobs they hate at offices they hate. I'm just not excited for this new future where we all stay isolated at home.

tkwj 6y ago
I agree. I find slack/zoom to be a terrible replacement for the old casual/impromptu/hallway conversations. Sometimes the best information is learned in those formats.
hoot 6y ago
A lot of it seems to depend on if you have a family at home or not. With my wife, dog, and cat at home, I don't feel isolated at all. If I was here by myself, I could see how there could be a desire to go back to the office just to be around other people during working hours.

LockAndLol 6y ago

Hear hear. There are very few reasons I'd ever want to set foot in an office building again and at the moment I can't even think of a single one. Just because some people like working from home or some like being in an office, doesn't mean you have to force it upon everyone.

ezzzzz 6y ago

I 100% second this sentiment. Granted, I live in the Mid-West, my workplace is not a startup, I'm skewed towards introvert, have ADHD, and my work is not necessarily collaborative. Being in the Mid-West means car-centric living, WFH gives me at least 8 unpaid hours back to use as I please. I used to take a longer route on my way home, to decompress and avoid the stress of traffic. My carbon-footprint is also lowered significantly, which is personally important to me. As an introvert, I no longer feel the need to decompress from hours of maintaining false appearances and shallow office interpersonal relationships. The corporate world also loves meetings, and I estimate that the move to virtual over physical meetings saves literal hours per week (just by eliminating the need to physically move to a location, as well as the context switch and disruption of focus). Additionally, as someone with attention issues, not being overstimulated by my surroundings helps my energy, focus, and productivity. Again, I know everyone is different, but after living the wfh life, I am not sure if I can ever go back. I can see the argument against it, especially in the startup world. I still think it can be managed, with the right approaches and the right team.

PenguinCoder 6y ago
This is almost exactly me, as well. Still need a car, but I don't have to commute at all, entirely WFH. It saves so much time, and like you, the familiarity of _my_ work area, setup exactly as I want and need it, makes me so much more productive.

g5w 6y ago

WFH has been great for me and my wife hopes I never go back to the office. Saving two hours of commute time is a huge bonus giving me more time to spend with the family or work on projects around the house. And like you wrote, I put up laundry everyday so I don't have to spend time doing it in the evening, same with dishes, cleaning bathrooms, etc. Even better, dinner is now ready at 5 or 6:00 instead of 8:00. When I get into the groove I can crank my music and not worry about disrupting my coworkers. The downside for me is the daily meetings that I now have so that we can handle all of the old hallway conversations. And while I have a home office setup, the desk and chair are sub-optimal at best.