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Keep in mind that your COVID WFH experience is not the normal WFH. Normally you would have the opportunity to gain all your commute time and ge to experience a

Keep in mind that your COVID WFH experience is not the normal WFH. Normally you would have the opportunity to gain all your commute time and ge to experience a real social life that is not bound to your office. Living in one of the most congested areas in the world, with a public transit system that has been deliberately neglected by successive governments since the 1970's thanks to the car and concrete lobby, a 1 hour commute is very much an underestimate for most office workers here. I notice especially the younger single colleges never had the time to build a real social life post university, because they spend all their time outside work commuting. So they have substituted this with an in office social life. WFH for them now means sitting alone in an apartment, missing their office social circle, and having more time but nothing to fill it with as all the bars and restaurants, the cafes and the theaters are closed, as is the gym, art school, language courses, those have moved online as well. This is not normal. Normal WFH is gaining not just 2 hours that were lost in commute, but also gaining massive productivity due to not having the stress that comes with 2 hours of bumper to bumper stop and go traffic each day. Those 2 hours open up enormous social possibilities. Things you can do each evening that you normally only get to enjoy in the weekends. I do hope the 'new normal' stays, and people will get to experience the 'real' WFH as well.

saiya-jin 6y ago
You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires commute taking 2+ hours of life, every single effin day. Its mostly issue with huge cities or folks desperately wanting to buy a home with garden regardless of realities of their current location, like it would magically solve whatever issue they face in their lives. WFH now might not be representative of WFH of yesterday's days, but its what many folks face now, and its not going anywhere soon. Productivity increase - I can't imagine this happening in any big, multinational corp, only smaller, more agile companies or if you work on your own. Its simply not the way things are done. Way more conf calls, amount of emails is roughly 3x higher so finding even a stupid email conversation I still recall from few weeks ago becomes a challenge. Expectations from business are the same. You need serious discipline, no distractions (if you are not constantly pulled into some decisions/calls then you are probably not important in that company or a fresh hire). For me, covid was a blessing, I could spend home with my newborn son and wife and overall I am clearly one of the winners in very small pool of folks who can claim similar situation. For now while I still have work. But I am clearly an outlier, for most its has been pretty bad situation in many aspects. Companies will save on rent, and probably lower salaries long term but I can't see employees as winners overall in long term. Apart from few very loud folks, who either had stupid long commute because of their not-so-bright prior decisions, or some other outliers.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires commute taking 2+ hours of life I've always regarded it as pretty much a requirement that my commute be 10-15 minutes, max. I was even able to maintain that a scant few miles from the center of DC, by working in a suburb in the opposite direction from all the other commuters. My other jobs have also been in cities; once I lived in an apartment a 10 minute walk from the middle of Richmond. Part of that is that I've been happy to live either downtown or right off a highway and not somewhere more isolated. However, I still feel like WFH saves time, because after packing up, walking to the parking lot, driving home, checking the mail, unpacking, etc. it seems like roughly an hour disappears after work every day before I'm really at leisure.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  "You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires commute taking 2+ hours of life" Please realize that a 2 hour commute in my country means living 30 km away from your workplace.
jrumbut 6y ago
The 8 hours alone is already too much for me, even if I had all the normal stuff open. I actually had close to the ideal remote existence, complete with month long vacations and all that, and had come back to the office pre-COVID because it just was not healthy for me to spend so much of the average week alone. I think the other part of the dynamic is that with no one around employees become inboxes that you can dump infinite work into. Some of the finer grained feedback like the grimace when an overworked person is assigned yet another task is lost. My hope for the future is we rediscover the value of human contact, just any human contact, but that feels unlikely.
- yosito 6y ago
  I've been working remotely for the last 8 years. I completely agree with you about 8 hours alone being too much. I very rarely tolerate that, even during covid, but that doesn't mean I want to be required to go to my company's office. The alternatives are to work from a co-working space of your choice, a coffee shop, a friend's house, or a park (if you have mobile internet). There are many advantages to these choices: no excessive commute, the ability to spend your days around people you like rather than people who just happen to be your coworkers, the ability to have some variety in your environment, the flexibility to work from wherever is convenient on any given day, being judged by your output rather than how long your ass is in a chair, it's easier to schedule exercise or naps during the day, etc. During normal times I have a co-working group chat made up of people who have similar interests to me and we meet at different co-working spaces or coffee shops every day to work. The pandemic has made this risky, so now I do work from home for half a day usually and then charge up my laptop and either meet some people at an outdoor coffee shop or grab my bike and go sit under a tree at my favorite park with my hotspot. Granted, working from home can be isolating without intention, and the pandemic makes it harder, it doesn't have to be that way.
AniseAbyss 6y ago
I don't miss commuting. Aside from the stress and the smell its also expensive! A public transport subscription costs thousands of euro per year.

saiya-jin 6y ago

You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires commute taking 2+ hours of life, every single effin day. Its mostly issue with huge cities or folks desperately wanting to buy a home with garden regardless of realities of their current location, like it would magically solve whatever issue they face in their lives. WFH now might not be representative of WFH of yesterday's days, but its what many folks face now, and its not going anywhere soon. Productivity increase - I can't imagine this happening in any big, multinational corp, only smaller, more agile companies or if you work on your own. Its simply not the way things are done. Way more conf calls, amount of emails is roughly 3x higher so finding even a stupid email conversation I still recall from few weeks ago becomes a challenge. Expectations from business are the same. You need serious discipline, no distractions (if you are not constantly pulled into some decisions/calls then you are probably not important in that company or a fresh hire). For me, covid was a blessing, I could spend home with my newborn son and wife and overall I am clearly one of the winners in very small pool of folks who can claim similar situation. For now while I still have work. But I am clearly an outlier, for most its has been pretty bad situation in many aspects. Companies will save on rent, and probably lower salaries long term but I can't see employees as winners overall in long term. Apart from few very loud folks, who either had stupid long commute because of their not-so-bright prior decisions, or some other outliers.

perl4ever 6y ago
>You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires commute taking 2+ hours of life I've always regarded it as pretty much a requirement that my commute be 10-15 minutes, max. I was even able to maintain that a scant few miles from the center of DC, by working in a suburb in the opposite direction from all the other commuters. My other jobs have also been in cities; once I lived in an apartment a 10 minute walk from the middle of Richmond. Part of that is that I've been happy to live either downtown or right off a highway and not somewhere more isolated. However, I still feel like WFH saves time, because after packing up, walking to the parking lot, driving home, checking the mail, unpacking, etc. it seems like roughly an hour disappears after work every day before I'm really at leisure.
PeterStuer 6y ago
"You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires commute taking 2+ hours of life" Please realize that a 2 hour commute in my country means living 30 km away from your workplace.

jrumbut 6y ago

The 8 hours alone is already too much for me, even if I had all the normal stuff open. I actually had close to the ideal remote existence, complete with month long vacations and all that, and had come back to the office pre-COVID because it just was not healthy for me to spend so much of the average week alone. I think the other part of the dynamic is that with no one around employees become inboxes that you can dump infinite work into. Some of the finer grained feedback like the grimace when an overworked person is assigned yet another task is lost. My hope for the future is we rediscover the value of human contact, just any human contact, but that feels unlikely.

yosito 6y ago
I've been working remotely for the last 8 years. I completely agree with you about 8 hours alone being too much. I very rarely tolerate that, even during covid, but that doesn't mean I want to be required to go to my company's office. The alternatives are to work from a co-working space of your choice, a coffee shop, a friend's house, or a park (if you have mobile internet). There are many advantages to these choices: no excessive commute, the ability to spend your days around people you like rather than people who just happen to be your coworkers, the ability to have some variety in your environment, the flexibility to work from wherever is convenient on any given day, being judged by your output rather than how long your ass is in a chair, it's easier to schedule exercise or naps during the day, etc. During normal times I have a co-working group chat made up of people who have similar interests to me and we meet at different co-working spaces or coffee shops every day to work. The pandemic has made this risky, so now I do work from home for half a day usually and then charge up my laptop and either meet some people at an outdoor coffee shop or grab my bike and go sit under a tree at my favorite park with my hotspot. Granted, working from home can be isolating without intention, and the pandemic makes it harder, it doesn't have to be that way.

AniseAbyss 6y ago

I don't miss commuting. Aside from the stress and the smell its also expensive! A public transport subscription costs thousands of euro per year.