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I'm noticing at our company those who are married and/or have kids seem to prefer remote working and those who miss the office tend to live alone. There are ob

I'm noticing at our company those who are married and/or have kids seem to prefer remote working and those who miss the office tend to live alone. There are obviously many factors that can affect a person's happiness and it's always good to hear people's perspectives. Why do you find it miserable?

civilized 6y ago
This 100%. If you're married with children, you most likely have less than zero need for an office-based social life.
- seibelj 6y ago
  When I was younger I would have been less happy, but I was lucky enough to grow up near Boston, went to school in Boston, and have a software career in Boston, so all of my friends and family live around here and I never needed work to have a social life. TBQH I think a lot of young people no longer know how to make friends outside of the rigid structures of school and work. All of the old structures of church and community fell without something to take its place, and for whatever reason it's progressive to discount prioritizing traditional values like family over career. If I hadn't grown up in Boston I probably would have stuck around where ever my family was located. I think the pandemic is forcing people to analyze their own lives and many are discovering things they don't like about themselves and their choices. Hanging out on social media all day is unhealthy and is not a replacement for true friends and family.
  - klipt 6y ago
    > All of the old structures of church and community fell without something to take its place, and for whatever reason it's progressive to discount prioritizing traditional values like family over career. The economy grows faster when people sacrifice their personal lives for work. Not saying I like it, but it seems obvious why incentives are aligned that way.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      Perhaps in the short term. It's not obvious in the longer term. Economic growth, which is affected by technological and scientific advancement (among many other things), depends on insight and creativity, not just hard work. Maybe the economy grows more in the longer term if the people working in it were raised as healthy, happy children in more of a "family values" sort of situation.
      - jlokier 6y ago
        To clarify, I don't intend my comment to be read as suggesting "family values" automatically results in healthier, happier children or is superior in some way. Especially not "traditional" family values. (Personally I hold much more of a progressive, pro-LGBT+-visibility, love-and-let-love type of position than what are sometimes called traditional family values.) Rather, I want to suggest that long term economic growth almost certainly depends in some way not just on people sacrificing their personal lives for work now; but also qualities that future generations grow up with, i.e. how children are raised, schooled, looked after, the attitudes they are surrounded by and so on. I'm not informed enough to know how personal life in the present affects multi-generational economic growth. But I'm sure it has an effect, and that everyone maximising work in the present at the cost of personal life is almost certainly not the path to maximum collective prosperity as measured by economic growth in the long term.
  - bart_spoon 6y ago
    I think you bring up an important point that may be an uncomfortable truth about modern society. I personally have been weathering the pandemic/WFH situation well, in no small part because my spouse is a stay-at-home parent anyways. I don't need to juggle work and monitoring children much because they are available to do so. If anything, its been a boon to be able to "tag-team" occasionally, to give my wife a break/back her up, and also be a presence in my kids life more than just after work hours and on weekends. For many friends and colleagues with children, however, its been a disaster, and it seems the largest culprit is that they both work, and therefore they struggle to do their jobs while also watch their children all day. I don't blame them for their situation. Society has made it so that having a stay at home parent is a luxury that many families simply can't afford, and it has also devalued the idea so much that even the families that can afford it are almost embarrassed to do so (my wife personally likes being a stay at home mom, but feels judgement from friends and former colleagues for quitting her job as a chemist to do so). Its good that we moved beyond expecting women to exclusively be the homemakers, as that is needlessly sexist, but it would have been far more healthy to replace that with normalizing one parent, gender-agnostic, devoted to child-care, rather than normalizing both parents working and relying on daycare/schooling to watch kids for most of the day.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Some people like to have friends, not just family.
visarga 6y ago
> those who are married and/or have kids seem to prefer remote working and those who miss the office tend to live alone I would have thought to be the other way around - parents miss office as they have to supervise and educate their kids while also doing their regular job.
- seibelj 6y ago
  We have family watching the kids during the day, and if we didn't we would hire help. But even with help, it's just easier not having to commute, being able to do laundry / chores / etc. while taking meetings, etc. I am more productive overall.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Yes, this! Plus, you can shift your schedule around to do childcare in the morning and evening with work in-between.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  What it seems to be is that people prefer having people around for part of the day but not in their way while working. People with families but no office to get away from everyone struggle and people alone 24/7 struggle. Personally I live with 4 other family members but have a dedicated room with a dual monitor setup so I find this to be ideal.
- mrmonkeyman 6y ago
  One, you cannot do those two things at the same time and be productive. Two, having kids implies having a shitload of housework. Not having to sit two hours in a car staring at other cars helps with that.
devmunchies 6y ago
I'm the opposite. Married with 2 kids, but I had to rent a private office 10 minutes from home so I could focus. I was setting a bad precedent for my sons when they would try to talk to me and I'd say "I'm working. not right now." Then it becomes ambiguous whether they can talk to me or not. Not good for kids IMO. Now when I come home i get the biggest hugs you've ever seen and we start playing.
- Xcelerate 6y ago
  I’m on paternity leave right now with my first kid. I worked a little bit before taking the leave and that was all the time I needed to determine that having a separate “office” is a must. We’re moving away from the Bay Area to be closer to family, and I’m seriously thinking about purchasing a cheap ($40-$60k) hut/cottage with a pretty view about ten minutes away from wherever home ends up being. I’ll set up a desk, couch, espresso machine, and treat that as “work”.
  - rayhendricks 6y ago
    Must be very affordable real estate where you live. There’s also something like this for a backyard office https://www.costco.com/installed-sheds-by-studio-shed---boreas-10'-x-12'.product.100666039.html https://www.costco.com/installed-sheds-by-studio-shed---bore...
    - devmunchies 6y ago
      $24k! Would that increase the real estate value? I pay $400/mo (all inclusive /w internet) for my little office. That would take me 5 years to recoup at my current rate. I got my company to pay for it though so its technically free.
    - Xcelerate 6y ago
      We haven’t moved yet but are thinking about rural North Carolina. Haven’t looked at prices for small plots of land, so maybe I’m off a bit. I’ve considered an office shed too, but I’m a bit worried that’s still a little too close haha.
pmiller2 6y ago
That's interesting. I also find it pretty miserable, mostly due to the isolation. I kind of feel like a microservice that takes JIRA tickets as input and outputs code these days. My home office is great: nice desk, chair, good lighting, extra monitor, more than enough space. The literal work facilities are certainly better here for me than at the office. I just miss seeing coworkers, and I even miss my train ride a bit (that used to be my reading time). And, yes, I live by myself (with my dog, fortunately).
- tikhonj 6y ago
  > I kind of feel like a microservice that takes JIRA tickets as input and outputs code these days. That sounds like a symptom of a deeper problem—insufficient autonomy? no "seat at the table"?—that is, at most, being exacerbated by remote work. What specifically about your culture makes you feel this way? What makes you feel this way more now than previously?
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Well, that wasn't a literal description of my job. I was exaggerating a bit for effect, to emphasize the isolation bit. Like many of us, I have wide latitude in exactly how I go about meeting the requirements of the project I'm on, and I have some amount of freedom in choosing those projects. My manager is not looking over my shoulder at how many LOC I commit. What's causing me to feel this way is a combination of isolation, every fucking thing that's happened in 2020, and my deteriorating mental health as a result. I may not last another year in a remote work + COVID environment.
    - solipsism 6y ago
      This seems to be lumping a lot of things into remote work that really shouldn't be. There is universal isolation now, for most of us. But post-COVID you presumably won't be so isolated, even if you were working from home.
- civilized 6y ago
  I'm married with kids and, pandemic or no, I perpetually feel like a microservice that receives child demands and outputs dining and entertainment services.
throwaway1777 6y ago
Opposite experience, the ones with kids need some other space where they can concentrate.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Presumably once schools open again this is less of an issue for ~9 months of the year, right?
  - tehlike 6y ago
    Depends on the age of kid :) schools are already open but bay area in particular most schools are still doing remote education. Families voted it that way.
    - nradov 6y ago
      That's not quite what happened. Parents were asked to pick between a full year of distance learning or a hybrid option with partial classroom time. However most county education departments are still forcing classrooms to stay closed, so everyone is still on distance learning regardless of how they voted.
bobthepanda 6y ago
As a childless person with a roommate, the current WFH situation has been not ideal. I live in an apartment complex that normally features amenities and is located in a neighborhood with lots of shops, cafes, bars, gyms, etc. All of the third places are currently closed or under very heavy restrictions (e.g. in Seattle you can only dine indoors with members of your household), so now I'm stuck in a two-bedroom apartment. I can still go for walks but it's not quite the same. There's also the issue of everybody else. On paper, I have gig internet. In practice, I don't think the fiber here was designed for everyone to be simultaneously working from home. And especially with kids staying at home instead of using up their energy at school or at the playground, apartment noise has become more significant. Work from home would probably be nicer under less strenuous circumstances. Working from home or a coffee shop of your own volition is one thing, working from home because you have to is another. I'm onboarding to a new team and personally I've found it difficult to get the quick 30-second validation I need to see if I'm setting things up right or have the right assumptions, because it very easily snowballs into setting up formal meetings.
X-Istence 6y ago
I live alone, and I really prefer working from home. I get to set up my own environment, and the lack of distractions is amazing for my productivity.
dzhiurgis 6y ago
IMHO biggest variable is company itself. If it’s not setup as remote & distributed-first, then you going to suffer. Same with what you actually do. Developing a product is much easier alone than a service in a consulting company.
karmasimida 6y ago
Actually not my experience. My married friends complain more about WFH than otherwise. I think it depends on how many kids you have, and how big your house is.
- nostromo 6y ago
  Same. My coworkers who have young children at home seem pretty miserable. I have a coworker that I haven't seen for weeks now because of their new part-time job as a homeschool teacher. Childless couples and single people seem pretty happy with their new free time, even if they’d eventually like to return to the office.
- scarface74 6y ago
  This is not what working from home is normally like for parents with kids. In normal times, you would still have the kids in school/daycare or have a real stay at home spouse.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  Agreed. I personally have a setup where: - my spouse is stay at home, and therefore is supervising the kids while I work - I have a study/office at home that allows me to close the door if necessary - more of my daily time is spent programming than in meetings or interacting with people If any one of those things wasn't true, I too would probably be struggling more with the WFH situation. As it stands, its a massive improvement as I can still work effectively, the lack of commute means I have more time for seeing my family, and the flexibility of my daily schedule now allows me to do things like take a break to hang out or have lunch with my kids.

civilized 6y ago

This 100%. If you're married with children, you most likely have less than zero need for an office-based social life.

seibelj 6y ago
When I was younger I would have been less happy, but I was lucky enough to grow up near Boston, went to school in Boston, and have a software career in Boston, so all of my friends and family live around here and I never needed work to have a social life. TBQH I think a lot of young people no longer know how to make friends outside of the rigid structures of school and work. All of the old structures of church and community fell without something to take its place, and for whatever reason it's progressive to discount prioritizing traditional values like family over career. If I hadn't grown up in Boston I probably would have stuck around where ever my family was located. I think the pandemic is forcing people to analyze their own lives and many are discovering things they don't like about themselves and their choices. Hanging out on social media all day is unhealthy and is not a replacement for true friends and family.
- klipt 6y ago
  > All of the old structures of church and community fell without something to take its place, and for whatever reason it's progressive to discount prioritizing traditional values like family over career. The economy grows faster when people sacrifice their personal lives for work. Not saying I like it, but it seems obvious why incentives are aligned that way.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    Perhaps in the short term. It's not obvious in the longer term. Economic growth, which is affected by technological and scientific advancement (among many other things), depends on insight and creativity, not just hard work. Maybe the economy grows more in the longer term if the people working in it were raised as healthy, happy children in more of a "family values" sort of situation.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      To clarify, I don't intend my comment to be read as suggesting "family values" automatically results in healthier, happier children or is superior in some way. Especially not "traditional" family values. (Personally I hold much more of a progressive, pro-LGBT+-visibility, love-and-let-love type of position than what are sometimes called traditional family values.) Rather, I want to suggest that long term economic growth almost certainly depends in some way not just on people sacrificing their personal lives for work now; but also qualities that future generations grow up with, i.e. how children are raised, schooled, looked after, the attitudes they are surrounded by and so on. I'm not informed enough to know how personal life in the present affects multi-generational economic growth. But I'm sure it has an effect, and that everyone maximising work in the present at the cost of personal life is almost certainly not the path to maximum collective prosperity as measured by economic growth in the long term.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  I think you bring up an important point that may be an uncomfortable truth about modern society. I personally have been weathering the pandemic/WFH situation well, in no small part because my spouse is a stay-at-home parent anyways. I don't need to juggle work and monitoring children much because they are available to do so. If anything, its been a boon to be able to "tag-team" occasionally, to give my wife a break/back her up, and also be a presence in my kids life more than just after work hours and on weekends. For many friends and colleagues with children, however, its been a disaster, and it seems the largest culprit is that they both work, and therefore they struggle to do their jobs while also watch their children all day. I don't blame them for their situation. Society has made it so that having a stay at home parent is a luxury that many families simply can't afford, and it has also devalued the idea so much that even the families that can afford it are almost embarrassed to do so (my wife personally likes being a stay at home mom, but feels judgement from friends and former colleagues for quitting her job as a chemist to do so). Its good that we moved beyond expecting women to exclusively be the homemakers, as that is needlessly sexist, but it would have been far more healthy to replace that with normalizing one parent, gender-agnostic, devoted to child-care, rather than normalizing both parents working and relying on daycare/schooling to watch kids for most of the day.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Some people like to have friends, not just family.

visarga 6y ago

> those who are married and/or have kids seem to prefer remote working and those who miss the office tend to live alone I would have thought to be the other way around - parents miss office as they have to supervise and educate their kids while also doing their regular job.

seibelj 6y ago
We have family watching the kids during the day, and if we didn't we would hire help. But even with help, it's just easier not having to commute, being able to do laundry / chores / etc. while taking meetings, etc. I am more productive overall.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Yes, this! Plus, you can shift your schedule around to do childcare in the morning and evening with work in-between.
Polylactic_acid 6y ago
What it seems to be is that people prefer having people around for part of the day but not in their way while working. People with families but no office to get away from everyone struggle and people alone 24/7 struggle. Personally I live with 4 other family members but have a dedicated room with a dual monitor setup so I find this to be ideal.
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
One, you cannot do those two things at the same time and be productive. Two, having kids implies having a shitload of housework. Not having to sit two hours in a car staring at other cars helps with that.

devmunchies 6y ago

I'm the opposite. Married with 2 kids, but I had to rent a private office 10 minutes from home so I could focus. I was setting a bad precedent for my sons when they would try to talk to me and I'd say "I'm working. not right now." Then it becomes ambiguous whether they can talk to me or not. Not good for kids IMO. Now when I come home i get the biggest hugs you've ever seen and we start playing.

Xcelerate 6y ago
I’m on paternity leave right now with my first kid. I worked a little bit before taking the leave and that was all the time I needed to determine that having a separate “office” is a must. We’re moving away from the Bay Area to be closer to family, and I’m seriously thinking about purchasing a cheap ($40-$60k) hut/cottage with a pretty view about ten minutes away from wherever home ends up being. I’ll set up a desk, couch, espresso machine, and treat that as “work”.
- rayhendricks 6y ago
  Must be very affordable real estate where you live. There’s also something like this for a backyard office https://www.costco.com/installed-sheds-by-studio-shed---boreas-10'-x-12'.product.100666039.html https://www.costco.com/installed-sheds-by-studio-shed---bore...
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    $24k! Would that increase the real estate value? I pay $400/mo (all inclusive /w internet) for my little office. That would take me 5 years to recoup at my current rate. I got my company to pay for it though so its technically free.
  - Xcelerate 6y ago
    We haven’t moved yet but are thinking about rural North Carolina. Haven’t looked at prices for small plots of land, so maybe I’m off a bit. I’ve considered an office shed too, but I’m a bit worried that’s still a little too close haha.

pmiller2 6y ago

That's interesting. I also find it pretty miserable, mostly due to the isolation. I kind of feel like a microservice that takes JIRA tickets as input and outputs code these days. My home office is great: nice desk, chair, good lighting, extra monitor, more than enough space. The literal work facilities are certainly better here for me than at the office. I just miss seeing coworkers, and I even miss my train ride a bit (that used to be my reading time). And, yes, I live by myself (with my dog, fortunately).

tikhonj 6y ago
> I kind of feel like a microservice that takes JIRA tickets as input and outputs code these days. That sounds like a symptom of a deeper problem—insufficient autonomy? no "seat at the table"?—that is, at most, being exacerbated by remote work. What specifically about your culture makes you feel this way? What makes you feel this way more now than previously?
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Well, that wasn't a literal description of my job. I was exaggerating a bit for effect, to emphasize the isolation bit. Like many of us, I have wide latitude in exactly how I go about meeting the requirements of the project I'm on, and I have some amount of freedom in choosing those projects. My manager is not looking over my shoulder at how many LOC I commit. What's causing me to feel this way is a combination of isolation, every fucking thing that's happened in 2020, and my deteriorating mental health as a result. I may not last another year in a remote work + COVID environment.
  - solipsism 6y ago
    This seems to be lumping a lot of things into remote work that really shouldn't be. There is universal isolation now, for most of us. But post-COVID you presumably won't be so isolated, even if you were working from home.
civilized 6y ago
I'm married with kids and, pandemic or no, I perpetually feel like a microservice that receives child demands and outputs dining and entertainment services.

throwaway1777 6y ago

Opposite experience, the ones with kids need some other space where they can concentrate.

bobthepanda 6y ago
Presumably once schools open again this is less of an issue for ~9 months of the year, right?
- tehlike 6y ago
  Depends on the age of kid :) schools are already open but bay area in particular most schools are still doing remote education. Families voted it that way.
  - nradov 6y ago
    That's not quite what happened. Parents were asked to pick between a full year of distance learning or a hybrid option with partial classroom time. However most county education departments are still forcing classrooms to stay closed, so everyone is still on distance learning regardless of how they voted.

bobthepanda 6y ago

As a childless person with a roommate, the current WFH situation has been not ideal. I live in an apartment complex that normally features amenities and is located in a neighborhood with lots of shops, cafes, bars, gyms, etc. All of the third places are currently closed or under very heavy restrictions (e.g. in Seattle you can only dine indoors with members of your household), so now I'm stuck in a two-bedroom apartment. I can still go for walks but it's not quite the same. There's also the issue of everybody else. On paper, I have gig internet. In practice, I don't think the fiber here was designed for everyone to be simultaneously working from home. And especially with kids staying at home instead of using up their energy at school or at the playground, apartment noise has become more significant. Work from home would probably be nicer under less strenuous circumstances. Working from home or a coffee shop of your own volition is one thing, working from home because you have to is another. I'm onboarding to a new team and personally I've found it difficult to get the quick 30-second validation I need to see if I'm setting things up right or have the right assumptions, because it very easily snowballs into setting up formal meetings.

X-Istence 6y ago

I live alone, and I really prefer working from home. I get to set up my own environment, and the lack of distractions is amazing for my productivity.

dzhiurgis 6y ago

IMHO biggest variable is company itself. If it’s not setup as remote & distributed-first, then you going to suffer. Same with what you actually do. Developing a product is much easier alone than a service in a consulting company.

karmasimida 6y ago

Actually not my experience. My married friends complain more about WFH than otherwise. I think it depends on how many kids you have, and how big your house is.

nostromo 6y ago
Same. My coworkers who have young children at home seem pretty miserable. I have a coworker that I haven't seen for weeks now because of their new part-time job as a homeschool teacher. Childless couples and single people seem pretty happy with their new free time, even if they’d eventually like to return to the office.
scarface74 6y ago
This is not what working from home is normally like for parents with kids. In normal times, you would still have the kids in school/daycare or have a real stay at home spouse.
bart_spoon 6y ago
Agreed. I personally have a setup where: - my spouse is stay at home, and therefore is supervising the kids while I work - I have a study/office at home that allows me to close the door if necessary - more of my daily time is spent programming than in meetings or interacting with people If any one of those things wasn't true, I too would probably be struggling more with the WFH situation. As it stands, its a massive improvement as I can still work effectively, the lack of commute means I have more time for seeing my family, and the flexibility of my daily schedule now allows me to do things like take a break to hang out or have lunch with my kids.