23 ms·

I hope work from home continues

• chrisseaton 6y ago
  Many people have decided in the last couple of months that it's safe to restart the war on remote working. I think the attacks are likely to get increasingly intense and blunt.
  • Hypergraphe 6y ago
    And, as a matter of fact, we now have the proof that remote work is efficient at large scale in our industry. It shatters all the false ideas about loss of productivity, lack of communication. I never communicated as efficiently as now as opposed to when I was in my open space, always disturbed by subjects that did not concern me.
    • antiterra 6y ago
      I don’t think we have this proof? At best, we have evidence it works ‘well enough.’ There are still people who hate online meetings, who have a negative physical reaction to it and are unable to engage. The people playing online video games during the day I run into who have to go afk for a few moments to ‘get a work call’ are likely to have reduced productivity. (Probably double for kids who are doing online school.) I also have seen productivity issues between two office locations that are suddenly resolved by having someone travel to the other site for a week. Sometimes this is even followed up with an writeup about the sudden revelations gleaned from the visit. On the other hand, I’ve also seen engineers take vacation days so they can be heads down on a project they care about. So, I’m not sure what the ideal situation is, exactly.
      • bagacrap 6y ago
        It ought to be noticeable in terms of output if individuals play video games instead of working. If it's not, maybe they just manage their time differently than you expect, but still effectively.
        • Hypergraphe 6y ago
          If it is not noticeable, then it probably means that their work is some kind of bullshit, so why would they waste their time doing nothing instead of gaming ? I mean when your job is fullfulling you don't need to do something else during your work hours.
  • spoonjim 6y ago
    There are already employers committing to supporting remote. If your company isn’t one of them, and you need it, change employers. Frankly I want not only to go back to the office but also to not have to work with remote people, so I hope my employer does not allow remote and all of the hardcore WFHers leave the company.
    • whateveracct 6y ago
      vote with your butt! they can't make you put your butt in a seat!
  • ghaff 6y ago
    It's a combination of some companies that want to return to mostly office and individuals who really want to go back to an office for various reasons, including social ones, who are afraid they'll be some combination of empty and teams having focused "off sites."
  • taurath 6y ago
    And those of us who want to work remote will take our services elsewhere, as there’ll be plenty more places available to work remote than we’re before even if FAANG goes back to the office forever.
• switch007 6y ago
  I've come to hate being in my house, having worked from home for 3 years. My brain just associates it with work. I haven't got a very big house. I resent it so much I don't even have the will to do maintenance and repairs. I can't wait for on-site interviews to resume and find a job in an office. EDIT: I've never worked at a job/office as hellish as the post describes. Better office jobs than that exist.
  • chanmad29 6y ago
    unsolicited advice- please pertain work to a desk/ one place of the house, and not spread it to the entire house. This can help restrict resentment to that one spot and not your entire place.
    • switch007 6y ago
      That’s exactly what I do but I still associate the entire house with work. Having a small house doesn’t help :/
• nomy99 6y ago
  Amazon is bringing back their office employees as the default operating mode; citing inefficiencies in the creative process. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/amazon-expects-some-employees-to-return-to-the-office-this-summer.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/amazon-expects-some-employee...
  • convolvatron 6y ago
    beatings will continue until I see that creative spark light up again
    • nomy99 6y ago
      I'm sorry I don't understand. What beatings/punishments?
      • Eric_WVGG 6y ago
        didn't read the article, huh?
        • nomy99 6y ago
          I did, but it seemed like a personal rant so I didn't read every bullet.
      • jtylr 6y ago
        I believe it's a reference to the phrase "The beatings will continue until morale improves" - https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/371325/origin-of-the-beatings-will-continue-until-morale-improves https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/371325/origin-of...
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • fridif 6y ago
        The one where they make you waste 2 hours of your day traveling in potentially dangerous/uncomfortable/inconvenient circumstances so that you can physically sit a desk and do the same thing you would do at home, all in the name of optics.
• mikece 6y ago
  While the cross-pollination of ideas from different teams and departments is lost, along with interesting and serendipitous discussions, I'm also in the boat of hoping I never have to go back to an office. Not having a commute, being able to spend more time with my kids, not eating less-healthy fast-food rather than home-cooked meals, being able to spend my (lunch) breaks working in my garden... I never want to go back!
  • benbristow 6y ago
    Lucky you. I live in a top-floor apartment so don't have the luxury of a garden and I'm isolated by myself as I live alone. It's not the same for everyone.
    • mylons 6y ago
      That’s fine. Don’t make me come back to the office because you have undesirable accommodations.
      • spoonjim 6y ago
        Nobody’s making you do anything, if your employer forces a return to the office and you don’t like it you can find a new employer.
        • tomca32 6y ago
          If the only option to stay remote is to quit then that's the definition of "My employer is making me return to the office".
          • sologoub 6y ago
            They are voicing a very US view on the relationship. From my understanding, in EU there are jurisdictions that any concession extracted from employees by employer is effectively done under duress because the employer controls employees livelihood, even if temporarily. Actual reality depends on how desirable your skills are and how good the existing employment is.
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  Sounds like an place I wouldn't want to go back to, either. If my office environment was anything even close to that, I think I'd be looking for another job. I actually look forward to going back in and seeing people again, but only like twice a week.
• peanut_worm 6y ago
  My employer sold their office because they were saving so much money having everyone work from home
  • avelis 6y ago
    But are they passing on the savings to the employees? Not everyone has the same internet access or home office amenities.
    • core-questions 6y ago
      Hahaha, of course they aren't. Really, you should be able to calculate how much they paid for your facilities need (square footage of your workspace, connection, IT equipment, etc) and it should be directly reflected in your salary.....
  • mikece 6y ago
    My employer has been adding so many customer support positions and basing those in the office that we cannot bring the developer teams back into the office. That, combined with an INCREASE in productivity since working from home the plan for now is for all of the software dev teams to continue to work from home while the customer support team swells to occupy the whole space of the office.
  • yardie 6y ago
    My office is now in storage because they canceled the lease. When I get back to the office the developers and sys/net admins will be hotdesking until they can figure out what to do with us.
• PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  What kind of office was this person working in? Having to breathe jet exhaust fumes while suffering through 85 degree indoor temperatures and drinking algae-filled water is nowhere near normal. The company he’s describing is severely broken if everything he’s describing is true. Most of what he describes are not normal office problems. Some of them are even health and safety violations. Working from home will only distance him from those problems, but it can’t fix an inherently broken company that doesn’t care about employees. He should be searching for another remote job ASAP
  • refulgentis 6y ago
    I believe they're describing a call center, and I agree vehemently: the title is broad and doesn't reflect the subject, someone on HN needs to hire this guy, not debate/agree with whether he needs to go back to the office
    • intuitionist 6y ago
      No, the solution to this isn’t “this guy seems cool so let’s hire him at our FAANG team.” (I mean, do what you want!) The solution to this is that OSHA or the appropriate counterpart needs to get involved.
      • refulgentis 6y ago
        Ah, good point, I was speaking allegorically and that wasn't clear, sounds like it implied I thought he's cool and thus needs to be come a software engineer. Thank you for clarifying. Please do not try to launder him into FAANG! Passing someone to HR for interviews _certainly_ wouldn't be a way to help a call center worker :)
        • intuitionist 6y ago
          My point is not that OP doesn’t deserve to work somewhere better, but that his coworkers deserve that as well.
• mylons 6y ago
  The office is such an archaic appendage of manual labor and management’s desire to oversee and micromanage it.
• jpm_sd 6y ago
  I've been 100% WFH for just over a year, and I'm really looking forward to /occasionally/ going back into the office. But certainly not every day!
• meowzero 6y ago
  My boss remarked how surprised he was on how well our team worked remotely. But I suspect he'll want us back in the office anyway.
• slingnow 6y ago
  Sounds like your issues are with your particular company and not with the office life in general. Life in my office is absolutely nothing like that and I don't dread the return at all. If my office were like yours I'd be job hunting almost immediately. Not to mention the reasons towards the end started to become quite a stretch.
• jmkni 6y ago
  I’m completely the opposite to be honest. I’ve found working from home lonely and isolating, and am badly missing the structure of getting up, showered and going into an office! For people at a certain stage of life, I’m sure working from home is great, but have some empathy for those of us it sucks for.
  • Ocerge 6y ago
    Ditto for me. This is the loneliest I've ever been and worst my mental health has ever been. I had no idea this is how I would react to remote work, but I'm counting the days until I get to separate home and work again.
  • chasd00 6y ago
    i really enjoy working from home and will change jobs if forced to go back in. I know what you're talking about though, my wife has friends that are wfh now and that, along with the general isolation of the pandemic, is having a serious effect on them. I think when this is over there will be various compromises that will probably not work out very well. If WFH works for you then it's great, if it doesn't then it's miserable. There's not a lot of middle ground. a good compromise leaves everybody mad. - Calvin and Hobbes
  • grep_name 6y ago
    > For people at a certain stage of life Nobody seems to discuss this, but yeah for me working from home means working from my bedroom, the only room I can really work in in my small shared apartment. It definitely affects my productivity. On the other hand, I've basically stopped getting sick. Open office plans are very bad for certain types of people, and not just those who struggle with distraction, so still a net positive for me
    • elliottkember 6y ago
      The long-term effects of not getting sick might be an issue as regular exposure helps the immune system.
  • mLuby 6y ago
• wukerplank 6y ago
  While I enjoy working from home (fewer distractions and interruptions) I miss the social aspect of the office. I consider many of my colleagues friends and having the occasional beer after work, coffee maker chit-chat and common lunch breaks added a lot of texture to my life as a "worker".
• Flex247A 6y ago
  The website looks nice but the contrast is too low.
• hn8788 6y ago
  Biggest for me was "I don't actually like my job, but it's easy and pays well, and working from home gives me the time to pursue other interests so I don't feel the need to look for a new job to escape the boredom". Even that didn't last too long though, and I ended up finding another job after a few years of working from home.
• itg 6y ago
  This comes down to individual preferences, but does anyone prefer going to the office? Here's my list of reasons why: - Better relationships with co-workers. I enjoyed smalltalk, getting coffee, lunch, or drinks afterwards with them. It was also easier to interact with others outside your immediate team. - Separation of a work environment and home environment. - If I had a question, it is more likely and quicker to get answered in person instead of over slack/email/zoom. - Had fewer meetings - Company dependent but we got free food and other perks.
  • dudul 6y ago
    > it is more likely and quicker to get answered in person instead of over slack/email/zoom. It was more likely quicker because you felt like you could just walk to the person's desk and interrupt whatever they were doing to demand that they solve your problem.
    • itg 6y ago
      I keep in mind others may be focused on something and interrupting them would be detrimental. When wfh, it is easier to miss responding back to a quick question and I’m guilty of it myself.
• jherdman 6y ago
  I've been at a remote-first company for nine years now. I'll go back to an office as an absolute last resort. All of the wins the author described just begin to touch the surface of what's available to you. Once you can do your work even slightly asynchronously the quality of life improvements are just too overwhelming to go back.
• benrbray 6y ago
  Those of you who think that remote-work-by-default would be a good thing, can I ask how your companies are handling career progression and collaboration, as well as mentorship of junior developers? Listen to Adam Savage [1] talk about his early career as a prop-maker. I just don't see how that sort of deep collaboration is possible remotely. As a recent graduate whose first full-time job has been full remote due to the pandemic, I'm terrified that this is going to kill my career progression, not only upwards but also laterally. I just don't have the same opportunities to 1) learn from people or 2) bump into new people as I would if we're all forced to be in the same place. [1]: https://youtu.be/qvU5PZgSowk?t=148 https://youtu.be/qvU5PZgSowk?t=148
  • jamal-kumar 6y ago
    If it's any consolation, I've spent most of my career working remote and I'd say probably the richest experiences I've learned from depended on who and what they were working on WAY more than them being there in person, and those richer experiences didn't really have a hell of a lot of zoom meeting and other distracting nonsense. The communication simply shifts to text based chat with a nice handy record of communication to look back on and consider over a longer period of time, where the information is more salient. Basically -- how do you think open source has been doing it since practically the 90s?
    • ghaff 6y ago
      I do get the issues with onboarding/mentorship (as well as social) especially right out of school. I suspect that many companies are just trying to do business as usual rather than adapting. It's also worth pointing out that we're talking about remote during a pandemic. In normal times, there's nothing to keep teams from traveling to a location for a week. (Yes, some people have travel issues for various reasons but in general the statement stands.)
      • benrbray 6y ago
        I think the tough part is that fresh grads will benefit a lot from the senior developers being physically present, but I get the impression that many senior devs will choose not to come to the office unless they are required to. So, I don't think it's as simple as letting people choose when and how often to come to the office. I could see a hybrid 2 days local / 3 days remote model working if physical presence is mandatory on those two days.
• spoonjim 6y ago
  Some companies will force return to the office, some companies won’t. Then all the people complaining about one or the other will have to switch employers. There will be some grumbling but then we will get a long-term nonrandomized comparison of remote vs in-office companies.
• jamal-kumar 6y ago
  I don't think I have worked in an office this disgusting before in my life, I would have left. I live in a tropical country where people are clean and care about hygiene which probably has a lot to do with it because otherwise you just end up having roaches everywhere. I get the sense people higher in the northern hemisphere get away with a lot of disgusting stuff because they don't get infested with roaches and flies right away. On the other hand alot of the other points stand
• jonnycomputer 6y ago
  Things I miss: - interacting with my colleagues, going out to lunch - the very high-speed and reliability of being on the network wire - dedicated work-space outside of my home where home-chores don't press on my mind while I'm trying to work - my commute: I cycled into work, and the daily exercise was great - a clearer separation of work and home life Things I don't miss: - interacting with my colleagues, when i don't want to (group office, oy) - having my boss pop in over my shoulder (my bosses are great though) - my commute: I cycled into work, and the daily ride was sometimes a grind, in cold or wet weather. And it takes a lot of time - not having my work at home when I need to work late (I have a work laptop, but still) - having the campus police officer give me the eye when they see me working at 2am I'm considering coming in Thursday/Fridays.
  • hiq 6y ago
    > - my commute: I cycled into work, and the daily exercise was great This one is not like the others, it's completely up to you to have a bike ride e.g. at lunch time around the block when you WFH.
    • jonnycomputer 6y ago
      Oh, you're right. But when you have to cycle to get to work whether you want to or not, its easier to get that exercise in. I'm not a leisure cyclist. I don't dress up in spandex and ride an expensive bike. In fact, I have difficulty containing my derision for leisure cyclists. I know that the equipment they use has utility, but it also signals: I don't have to ride a bike. I have an expensive SUV at home, and I didn't lose my drivers license to a DUI.
      • atty 6y ago
        If anything, I would think “i didn’t lose my license to a DUI but I like to get some cardio” is a good thing, and any derision should be aimed at people who actually did endanger themselves and others by driving under the influence. I am very confused by your attitude.
• duxup 6y ago
  I wonder about the advantages for folks who have room at home to work from home efficiently. I have a big house, a space just for work. I worked with folks who didn't work from home because they simply didn't have the space to do so. I wonder how they're doing.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• BitwiseFool 6y ago
  Covid WFH is a real issue for our new developers. Especially the ones who are fresh out of college. They're missing out on so much institutional knowledge transfer. Especially the kind of monkey-see-monkey-do experience you need to build confidence using tools such as git. They're also hesitant to ping coworkers and ask for screen sharing time because they can't sense if the more senior developers are working on something. Mentorship has also been difficult when the mentor and mentee cannot work side by side. Management is looking into alternatives, such as having volunteers come into the office on a rotating basis.
  • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > Covid WFH is a real issue for our new developers I'm seeing this across the board. Learning curves are shallower. Matt Levine commented on it with respect to the Goldman Sachs B.S.: "...it's usually that 100 hours of work for a first year analyst is probably closer to 80 hours of work for a second year analyst. But first years aren't learning as quickly working remotely, so the time isn't being shaved down, it's just staying at 100 hours a week." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-25/matt-levine-junior-analysts-on-wall-street-cash-in-on-long-work-hours https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-25/matt-l...
  • jjice 6y ago
    For sure. The job I had during March 2020 was difficult because my boss came off as unwelcoming to questions at points (even in the office I could see him open my slack messages and ignore them), which made working much more difficult when you're adapting to new systems. Thankfully, I had some great coworkers who were very welcoming and helped me a lot. If there is anything I learned from that, it's that being welcoming and open to questions from a coworker is extremely important. Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated with a coworker, but being able help them kindly is such a huge skill I will continue to appreciate and reciprocate.
    • benfrancom 6y ago
      Interesting...I'm not a fan of read receipts and typing indicators for messaging applications for reasons like this. If I need to craft a lengthy reply, it could take a day depending on the schedule. If someone never replies though when it is the de-facto-company messaging platform, that is highly problematic. A coworker even mentioned how anxiety-inducing typing a lengthy reply is that involves some lengthier research.
• ska 6y ago
  Not only would I not like to go back to the office described in this article, I would have left ages ago (and am lucky enough to be able to choose that). One interesting thing about all this should-we shouldn't-we discussion about offices is that it gives everyone a bit better view - positive and negative - of how different people work lives can be.
• antiterra 6y ago
  This is a tough problem, because some people do work much better from home and aren’t particularly interested in interacting outside of pure work discussions. However, some people’s productivity is significantly worse from home (mine, for example,) even if it’s their primary choice. While I wish work was as simple as treating everyone as responsible adults, I’ve experienced working with well-entrenched coworkers who barely contribute at all, and whose productivity is weakened by their inability to interact in-person. Further, even the heads down antisocial developer needs to communicate with a project/product manager or a support engineer on a regular basis. In this situation, talking in person seems to help communication between coworkers that often make too many assumptions otherwise.
• dt3ft 6y ago
  This is why co-working spaces may be the next "office". Companies are cancelling their leases left and right. For many software companies, this is likely the way it will unfold. Why pay huge amounts to rent an office space, when you can do without at no cost.
• blunte 6y ago
  Wow, the author has a pretty miserable company :(. That said, I share most of the opinions even though I quite like the office environment of my company. I abso-fking-love choosing where I work (and to some degree, when). Being able to take my laptop and go sit under a canopy in my back yard when the weather is nice, seeing my rabbits hopping around the yard, my cats avoiding the aggressive she-rabbit, hearing the birds, etc., while working, is just about as happy as I can be while also working on stuff that doesn't really matter much. As I begin to form my own company, one of my priorities is to allow my employees to have at least some of their time completely at their own discretion. They choose when and where they work as long as they can attend some important anchor meetings (and obviously be productive). And for the social aspect, weekend or week-long dev retreats are ideal. 4 hours of intense serious work, plus a couple of hours of colleague social interaction, and the rest left to the individual to spend however they like, is the kind of situation I would have not even been able to dream of when I was younger. And from a bean-counter owner perspective, do not underestimate the employee loyalty and overachievement motivation you can get by giving some nice free trips, nice free food, and quality equipment. Big companies lack this freedom to treat their creative talent not because they cannot afford it but because the people in charge tend to not be creative thinkers. This is why most interesting things happen in smaller companies (and ultimately tend to get bought by the laggard big companies).
  • HWR_14 6y ago
    I'm thrown by people working on a laptop. Do you have a battery powered second screen? Is there some workflow tips I should adopt to make it work better? I'm quite jealous of people who can work on laptops. I wonder the degree to which people enjoy WFH is the same as the degree to which they enjoy working on a laptop. Even the people I know with a dedicated room for work set up want to go back to the office if they prefer multiple monitors.
    • mrweasel 6y ago
      Depending on country, you’re not legally allowed to work on your laptop. You’re required to have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you cannot be hunched over a laptop for 8 hours a day. The applies both to the office and when working from home.
• yardie 6y ago
  > ox tail and greens that smell worse than burnt popcorn. Sorry, but ox tails and greens are awesome. And there is a shortage at the moment so I don't eat it as often as I used to. Damn hipsters are even gentrifying Caribbean foods.
  • spyspy 6y ago
    Yeah this dude is missing out. I'm married to a Trini woman and her and her family's cooking is like 87% of the reason why.
• throwaway59553 6y ago
  I am eager to return to the office. I intend to work one week in the office, and the rest of the month remotely. Trying to balance the best of both worlds.
• throwprogram 6y ago
  I wonder if a few more years of remote work could cause innovation on the cross pollination of ideas. I miss meeting random coworkers getting coffee. Meeting random people at a coffee restaurant doesn't guarantee the quality.
• throwawaydigest 6y ago
  Why is nobody mentioning their digestive system? Humans fart, it's healthy and remote works makes it viable. I never want to go back a) holding farts b) farting on colleagues. Throwaway for obvious reasons.
• conductr 6y ago
  I'm preparing to return of office in next few weeks and have realized errands to be my most cherished feature of WFH. I could run to the mechanic, store, vet, doctor, etc. without much inconvenience as these are all things that I utilize in my neighborhood. Commuting has common complaints (time, money, stress) but spending your time 30min/hour away from your home also makes it difficult to leave mid-day without making a simple errand consume a half-day.
• bsharitt 6y ago
  Once we do get back to "normal" I wonder how the job market will change for me, someone who switched to remote work prior to the pandemic and have no desire to go back to an office ever again. I've seen companies that have decided to just switch to remote on a permanent basis(or at least become more open to remote workers if the company itself doesn't go full remote) and I've seen lots of people who don't want to go back to the office after their taste of remote work. Will I see a wider variety of opportunities and open positions as more companies offer more remote roles, or will the market for remote work becomes squeezed as people decided they want to find new remote jobs rather than go back to the office. Of course it could also balance out I suppose.
• jjice 6y ago
  Something I've noticed without formal study is that people my age (college seniors and recent grads) don't like working from home. I was working at a new internship (8 months, starting January 2020) and the initial working from home was draining, unmotivating, and a bit depressing (that's partially due to being alone during the start of the pandemic). I thought I was in the minority because all of HN and Reddit seemed to love working from home, but as I spoke more to my peers about it, it seems like they didn't like it for the most part either. I believe that people who have families are more likely to prefer working from home because they have more contact with their loved ones, where as a single new grad has less contact with the people they know. Now, to be fair, I'm a lot more open to remote work now that the pandemic is more handled since I can at least get some human interaction outside of work. If anything, the thought of working remote when I graduate in May is a bit exciting since I'd be able to move every few months for a little while before deciding where to live.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    What you're seeing is the demographics that are over-represented on different platforms. Working people in their 20s mostly live in cheap apartments whereas a huge chunk of Reddit lives with their parents (if they're employed at all) and HN skews older and wealthier to the point where people have nice houses in nice suburbs or can justify a higher end apartment.
    • imposterreality 6y ago
      > a huge chunk of Reddit lives with their parents This seems lost on most people but is painfully clear if you read post histories. For instance, most of /r/childfree (an interesting topic no doubt) is a younger sister overexposed to her parents' excitement (because she's living at home) about older sister's kid. Most of /r/QAnonCasualties is the same sort of angst, directed at parents. Most city subs are the same way, edgy "right wing" guy turns out to live with his dad, who he's parroting. It's incredible that the site is taken any more seriously than 4Chan; there ought to be some great business studies on Reddit's "teflon" nature.
  • jquaint 6y ago
• raldi 6y ago
  In the fancy offices, the situation is flipped, with the HVAC freezing in the summer and sweltering in the winter. This is actually much worse, because everyone has to dress for the opposite during their commute.
• draw_down 6y ago
  I started working remotely over 10 years ago so I’m biased, but this office environment sounds quite shitty. Ok, that sucks, but it’s not necessarily surprising or uncommon. But here’s my thing. If you told this person to consider working at a FAANG – forget about pay, at least respect yourself enough to work at a place where you don’t fight for a microwave – I bet they would come back with all manner of reasons that would be below them. Suit yourself then, enjoy your 3 microwaves
• sbt 6y ago
  This sounds like the office from hell
• dblooman 6y ago
  I wonder how much of the split is going to be down to parents vs singles. As a single person, I have seen more pushing from managers with kids to go remote, singles or DINKs who live in small apartments in cities are more open to a flexible life style. 3-2 weeks, 60%-40% weeks, whatever people end up calling them seem to be quite a good compromise, but i can see many working 5 days in the office. There are still a lot of people who treat work seen in a higher regard than work complexity. Someone who is proactive and seen to be, pair programming, mentoring, conducting interviews etc. This can all be done remote, but there might be an advantage to going to the office. As much as I want to believe that people will work together and both approaches can work, office types will most likely cut out remote types if it isn’t easy to get on with work. I have seen this before COVID, I can see it happening again. When it comes to it, if you pr whole team is remote, would you feel forced into staying at home and vice versa?
  • izacus 6y ago
    The thing is, 3/2 hybrid is the worst type of compromise - it still forces you to live close enough to the office to commute and it forces the company to maintain offices as well. It doesn't really provide the major benefit of WFH or from having people there. (Having said that, being able to skip days and stay at home when you feel like it should be the default.)
• underseacables 6y ago
  I worked at a pretty miserable company. The executive was like Cersei Lanister, and the office was mostly a clique of young, bitter, overpaid and educated staff. Working from home would’ve lessen the impact of bullying by others and the boss.
• randomopining 6y ago
  Being in an office is useless unless you: -Need to synthesize lots of stuff daily -Truly enjoy being around your coworkers -Have a terrible homeworking environment If you just have jiras and you sit down, drink some coffee, music, code, chat people once every few hours to ask about something... it's useless lol. Think of all the wasted energy going to and from the office, to do the same thing but less efficiently. So dumb.
  • jjice 6y ago
    I personally really like the chatting with coworkers and I find it helps refresh me between tasks at work. It's hard to replicate "water-cooler" or "coffee-maker" talk remotely, but I imagine a lot of people don't feel the same way. That's actually something I'd love to see. A good way to replicate water-cooler talk remotely. I don't see a good way to do it initially, but I'm interested in the idea.
    • randomopining 6y ago
      I agree, but it's a small price to pay. Maybe worth going in every month or so just for that.
• walterlb 6y ago
  I have my own list of pros and cons about returning to the office, but I had completely forgotten about the dreaded urinal conversation.
  • ryanmercer 6y ago
    I think everyone should be made to watch "Male Restroom Etiquette" before returning to offices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzO1mCAVyMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzO1mCAVyMw
• globular-toast 6y ago
  > Do not have to go to work sick, because they act like you murdered 30 children if you call in sick. > Do not have to be exposed to multiple sick coworkers at any given time. This is a really important one and something that occurred to me recently. Now that we've all established that we can, in fact, work from home just fine, we should at the very, very least stop the ridiculous practice of coming into work sick. Prior to COVID it was perfectly acceptable for someone to be in meetings or sitting next to you with a cold in full flow. This wasn't something you could complain about. In fact, it was more likely someone would complain if they took time off for having a cold. I agree wholeheartedly with all of the author's other points. At this point, going back to the office every day would be an enormous regression. I don't want to work for such a place ever again.
  • pottertheotter 6y ago
    The thing that baffled me as I read this point is that the choice set when sick is (a) go to work and work, or (b) stay home and work. What we should be discussing is not working at all when you're sick. Rest and get better. I can't be the only one that finds this odd?
    • richardwhiuk 6y ago
      I think it's mainly an American thing where sick leave comes out your holiday AIUI.
    • globular-toast 6y ago
      If you're too sick to work, then don't work. That should be simple. When you have a bad flu or tonsillitis or something, there is no choice. You are in bed. This is about those times when you can still work. Most people come into work whenever they can, even if they are carrying an infectious virus. That needs to stop. If you are sick but can still work, you should work from home.
    • ryanmercer 6y ago
      If I have a cold, it's annoying and makes it hard to breathe but it doesn't prevent me from working. Getting a few colds a year while working in an office is normal. I'm more than happy to work with a cold, I'd just prefer to do it from home than at an office where I'm probably going to share it with at least one other person. If I have to make a mad dash to the toilet every few minutes, then working isn't practical. If I'm burning up with fever and feel like a truck hit me, working isn't practical.
• decafninja 6y ago
  I am wondering what kind of companies and office environments people who prefer working at the office are at. I work somewhere that requires a ~1.5 hour miserable commute to get to; unresolvable without paying significantly more for smaller/older/inferior housing closer to the office. The office itself is your typical dystopian Dilbertesque environment - I'd say this is par for course for most "old school" companies where tech is a cost center. Atmosphere itself is pretty dreary, everyone must wear at least business casual (dress shirt, dress pants, dress shoes). I've been to the offices of some Silicon Valley style tech companies and the atmosphere and environment could not be more different from mine. I know grass is greener from the other side, and eventually work is work, but I could imagine myself enjoying being at the office much more in such a place.
  • barbazoo 6y ago
    > I could imagine myself enjoying being at the office much more in such a place. It gets old too. There is a reason why companies create an environment like that and it's not to make you genuinely happy. I hope this dip into remote work makes people move somewhere they like, being able to create a work from home environment, work (remotely) for a company that doesn't make them miserable and focus on the things that really matter in life.
• hiq 6y ago
  Could there be an alternative model where companies give up (often illusory) secrecy for most things, and have employees working in shared spaces near their accommodations, with employees of other companies? I think that's already the case for a lot of startup accelerators because it helps spread and nurture ideas. You trade internal knowledge transmission for transfers with other companies, most likely not competitors anyway. Covid WFH completely gives up on offices, but post-Covid does not have to be that extreme.
• DebtDeflation 6y ago
  Sadly, RTO is going to happen much quicker than people think. My guess is almost everyone will be in the office 2-3 days per week by July 1 and full time (or whatever arrangement they had pre-pandemic)right after Labor Day. I hope I'm wrong, because I love WFH.
  • barbazoo 6y ago
    This very much depends on where you live and how your local government is handling the pandemic.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  But what is life without all those disgusting things ?
• peytn 6y ago
  Working from home means setting boundaries at home. I don’t want to set those boundaries at home. I’d rather set those boundaries in a workplace. Maybe it’s sometimes hard to set those boundaries in the workplace, but to me it feels like the appropriate place. My home is not, and will never be, an office.
  • barbazoo 6y ago
    Maybe it's different for me because I have a dedicated work room but I don't really get that mindset. I love being at home, being able to switch between work and personal life multiple times a day, it's so liberating.
• thrower123 6y ago
  The only real advantage of going back to the office would be getting away from the wife, who has also been working from home for the past year, once in a while. On the whole, it's still better to just say "Honey, I'm going to the grocery store/Home Depot/Tractor Supply" when I need to get away and get out from under thumb.
• dudul 6y ago
  People in the comments criticizing "remote work" seem to focus only on the 2 extremes of the pendulum "work from home" and "work from the office". Co-working spaces are a thing.
• cybert00th 6y ago
  Ugh, office air conditioning - ours is like that too. And the gents restroom <barf> Please let me work from home from now on, I'll even take a small cut in salary!
  • mapmap 6y ago
    Your employer will be saving on rent, utilities, insurance, etc. Don't offer to cut your pay.
  • occz 6y ago
    I wouldn't accept a pay cut - there should be enough companies to work at that realize that WFH post-pandemic is in their interest. For the record, I have no intention of returning to the office either.
• offtop5 6y ago
  Copying from a less popular thread >The conspiracy theorist in me believes this is more about stimulating the local economy around tech jobs then actual productivity. Millions of people essentially work in support roles in cafes or bars that cater to office workers. Even auto mechanics will eventually start to lose work as less people need to drive. I seriously never want to return to the office. It's useless. I don't miss spending hours a week trying to commute to and from work. Has anyone ever thought working in an office actually spreads illness ? At most you can go to a concert once a week, you need to come into work 5 days a week exposing you to various illnesses
• m1117 6y ago
  There're people who like WFH, there're people who don't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• contrarian_5 6y ago
  if you allow people to work from home you can pay them less because they will be able to cut their living expenses in half when they move out of LA/SF/NY. there are tons of great places to live all over the place. work-from-home would be a boon for the whole country and undo some of the damage that was done after the middle of the country lost all its manufacturing jobs.
• sam0x17 6y ago
  Not only this, I think these days it is environmentally and financially irresponsible to have an in-person company unless the work you are doing absolutely necessitates it. Think of all the extra carbon footprint and money that could be saved. The FANG companies going back to work right now is solely because they need to justify their multi-billion dollar campuses. Remember, they experienced _increased_ productivity during this work from home stint, so there is literally no justification to ever return to those offices other than attempting to save face for an irresponsible purchase.
• jchw 6y ago
  I miss the ability to be in an office, but I must say: my biggest obstacle to productivity during COVID-19 WFH has been COVID-19 related stress and depression, and related familial issues. I thought WFH was doomed to be low productivity and highly distracting. And to be honest, it is. But so was the office environment. On a good WFH day, I will be way more productive than any day in an office could ever be. The fact that some companies are deciding to not offer permanent WFH, especially as people are trying to deal with familial issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, is going to do some harm to them, in my opinion.
• lenitabinol 6y ago
  If I had to go back to the office I would simply work for big tech.
• dcolkitt 6y ago
  The main reason I hope WFH is here to stay, is because there's no tech hubs left that are livable for families. Austin and Denver use to qualify. But an out of control real estate market, basically makes it impossible to buy a home there. Every listing gets 20 all cash, no contingency offers for hundreds of thousands over list price. Unless we embrace full remote work, the only people who will be able to work in the tech industry are either those who bought property in a tech hub before 2020. Or the young and single who are unencumbered and willing to live in small expensive apartments. Insisting that engineers live in the Bay Area or Seattle or NYC or Austin will essentially lock out a huge pool of talent. Blame America's dysfunctional housing market and NIMBY culture. Tech generates a ton of wealth, but essentially all that wealth gets slurped up by land owners in tech hubs. The only solution to break the cycle is industry wide embrace of full remote work.
• cbanek 6y ago
  I really want to tell my company that the key to keeping me happy is our lack of communication, and I would know why they would jeopardize that by having me return to an office.
• standardUser 6y ago
  The one and only reason I want to stay permanently remote is because I can vacation and work at the same time. It's glorious. I can stay with family or friends for a week and work, or spend a week at a resort in Mexico and work, or stay in a cabin somewhere beautiful and work. Offices are fine, but they aren't usually next to beaches or trails or my loved ones.
• shados 6y ago
  Remote work (at least in industries where it's easy to do) as a norm is likely inevitable at this point and companies that push back against it will likely have to change their stances sooner or later. At least as long as tech workers are in more demand than there is supply. If we have another dotcom crash though, things could flip around. What I find unfortunate however is how the high level discussion (yes or no on remote work at all) is preventing meaningful debates on how to best do it, and how to be inclusive of all types of people. The old model was that everyone had to have butts in seat even if it didn't work for them. The new model is that everyone will be remove even if THAT doesn't work for them. "But most companies are giving people a choice!". Not really: the thing about remote is that "one remote, everyone's remote", at least at a team level. As soon as one team member is remote, everyone needs to deal with Meet/Zoom/whatever, conversations all need to happen in front of a screen, you need physical whiteboard alternatives (or at least use devices that project whiteboards), you need to share your screens, you need to be deliberate about all discussions, etc. Some people have real personal issues that makes these things very difficult for them. We're trading one set of challenges for another. I find that remote works better when everyone's remote in a team, and vice versa for in person. But the counter argument is that talent isn't fungible, making this kind of split impractical. More importantly, right now it's very hard to have these discussions at all, because any talk about how to optimize for the various preferences/needs is getting pushed back as if remote was a no brainer that's better for 100% of people with no tradeoffs. Hopefully once people who want to be remote no longer have to be afraid they'll be forced back into the office, we can move on and talk about how to make it better.
• wjamesg 6y ago
  Everybody here posting on HN throughout the workday - whether you are in the office or working from home - is incredibly privileged, including myself.
• throwaway823882 6y ago
  I don't understand why more companies don't do remote work as a strategic hiring advantage. I will leave my current job to work for you if I can work remote, and you can pay me less than the going rate in your office's expensive metro area. Why are more companies not picking up on this, unless it's totally irrational on their part?
• alex_young 6y ago
  I forgot about half of these things already. Thanks for the reminder!
• oxymoran 6y ago
  I live 10 minutes from my office but even just not having to wake up an hour before work and being home on my lunch break has given me so much of my life back. I am never going back on any sort of regular basis.
• treespace89 6y ago
  I'm not that worried about returning to the office. I think most office jobs will be some form of remote work forever. We worked in offices because it's the way we always did it. But we now know we don't have to. It reminds me of post World War 2, where women were expected to just return to their previous lives. There will be a big push to get people back in the office. But companies that embrace remote work will be more profitable.
• fireeyed 6y ago
  There is no reason for knowledge based employee living in suburbs to commute to a local commuter station for 30 mins and get on a train, travel for another hour and half and take another hour to settle down at the office cubicle. If the employee was successfully able to work for an entire year remotely its totally unnecessary to be in the office. Of course there are vested interests. Corporate Real Estate divisions who scare the crap out of Csuite that they are going to lose control of their employees if they dont "herd" them back (yes this is nothing more than herding sheep) into their pens at the offices.
• andrewfromx 6y ago
  i see the future people and it's RDO: https://andrewarrow.substack.com/p/my-vision-for-the-roaring-20s https://andrewarrow.substack.com/p/my-vision-for-the-roaring...
• surfsvammel 6y ago
  I also hope to never go back to the way it was before. But I still think it is important to meet face to face every once in a while. Maybe I’m just old/old-school.
• gidam 6y ago
  wow you work in a pretty bad place...
• shetill 6y ago
  Sounds like literally every office I've been in. Only thing we can do is start prioritising remote only companies to the point of employers seeing that they lose good talent if they don't go remote
• armandososa 6y ago
  ITT: Everybody saying how awful OP's workplace is. But ~10mins of commuting? That's heaven! If I had to commute to a local company it would take me 90mins in a good day, or rent a place for half the salary such local company would be paying me. I've been working remotely for 14 years now and I'm never coming back. Ever.
  • mradmin 6y ago
    It's "an hour a day(+/- 10 minutes)" which I read as "an hour a day give or take 10 minutes"
    • armandososa 6y ago
      Silly me. You're right.
  • bkovacev 6y ago
    I believe you have misread it - the commute is an hour +/- 10 minutes.
    • armandososa 6y ago
      I am an idiot. Thanks for the correction.
• forinti 6y ago
  It seems that he works at a pretty crappy place. I just hope that the new normal will be less days at the office and that that will make traffic better.
• kibleopard 6y ago
  A pattern I notice (not necessarily directly related to this article) is that the people who loudly exclaim “I don’t want to go back to the office ever again!” are usually older folks who: > have a house > have a family As a 20-something who lives alone in an apartment, I don’t get the luxury of having a nice backyard to go work in (like someone mentioned doing in another comment thread here). I don’t get the luxury of having a bunch of space to set up an office. And for that reason alone I’m excited to go back to an office setting. It’s nice that older people who have their lives figured out are enjoying WFH, but let’s not discount how WFH disproportionately is worse for early in career people.
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    Parents with small children at home often prefer the office because it provides some context switching. It’s really difficult to explain to a toddler why a parent is home but cannot play with them for half of the day. That said, you’re not alone in preferring to work in an office. It’s actually very common outside of Internet forums for people to prefer working in an office. It’s just not a popular opinion online right now. To each their own, but let’s not pretend like one working style is inherently better than the other for everyone.
    • bcrosby95 6y ago
      > It’s really difficult to explain to a toddler why a parent is home but cannot play with them for half of the day. I've worked from home through 3 toddlers, and very rarely had a problem. But I've worked from home for their whole lives. This is probably something harder to transition into. Kids only really know what you introduce to them. If you've worked from home their whole lives they don't know anything different. If they're used to mommy working from home and them not being able to play with her, then they pretty much accept it. We never tried to explain, we just said: mommy is at work, you cannot play with her, you can see her at lunch/after work.
      • zebnyc 6y ago
        Wow, I am amazed that worked for you. Maybe cause the kids can entertain each other. We have a 3 year old and restricting him / telling him that he cannot do something makes makes that his entire focal point. Hell, he might even be playing by himself or with me but if the Mom disappears even for a cat nap, he has to go interrupt/play with her. Has caused a huge amount of stress between my wife and I this past year. Thankfully the day care has opened and they are very careful & rigorous.
• mariorojas 6y ago
  I'd like to add "Working out at home anytime"
  • 0-_-0 6y ago
    I just got a set of modular dumbbells, great investment and doesn't take up almost any space!
  • ryanmercer 6y ago
    So this is another benefit for me. If I'm feeling sluggish, I'll hammer out some light accessory work that compliments my programming for the day and I can do it while working. It takes me 30 seconds to hammer out a set of dumbell presses or hammer curls or whatever while I'm actively reading an email/teams message/looking at documents to figure out what to do with a case. Or sometimes I'll just go down and back up the basement stairs when I go to the kitchen to top my water off, takes less time than walking to the breakroom at the office and lets me fight gravity a little more than walking. I can't do that at an office.
• hiimtroymclure 6y ago
  I think the author was a bit extreme in a few items but for the most I 100% agree. I am never going back to the office
• annoyingnoob 6y ago
  I've been in the office the entire time and I have no sympathy. While you all got to go home I got to go to the office, every day. Take all of the complaints and add masks, social distancing, extra cleaning, etc. Working from home is great for some and not for others. If your office is so terrible then leave, but be sure to tell your employer that you are leaving due to the office conditions. At some point you'll need to put on your big girl panties and get back to the office, at least some times.
• dsiegel2275 6y ago
  Over my lunch break today I threw a pork shoulder on my smoker. It will be ready at dinner time, just as I finish work. Yeah. I'm never going back to an office.
• datavirtue 6y ago
  "Have to deal with random coworkers coming to my desk/cornering me at the urinal and blabbing incessantly about their divorce/kids/wife's boyfriend/vet bill, this was a regular occurrence in person and has happened exactly once via teams since work from home started." This is real everywhere...and not healthy on many levels.
• ramoz 6y ago
  Companies that get this right won't make anyone "comeback" -- however their office spaces wont go vacant either. It's a learning opportunity & especially for reconsiderations around cross-functional teams and open environments. The at home argument works for parents in stable home environments, recluse individual contributors, and nomads. I think it tends to stop there.
• Klwohu 6y ago
  HR wants you back, they basically have nothing to do without inter-office drama.
• dalbasal 6y ago
  OK so, we of the tech/startup/modern white collar world don't tend to think of these as "labour issues." Besides money, the big returning theme in modern labour "complaints" is autonomy. A similar thought occurs to me when the old "open office plans" debate flares up on HN. It's a labour issue. An autonomy issue. People want a work environment that they like more, and no one has an interest in the goodness of an office/desk than the person sitting in it for 2000 hours per year. WFH has its benefits and drawbacks, but it does put more control in workers hands... allows them to make their own choices and tradeoffs. On an unrelated note, algae is good for you. It's the fungi you need to watch out for.
  • fctorial 6y ago
    How do I differentiate
    • dalbasal 6y ago
      Algae is green. It will grow in wet, light exposed places.
• npsimons 6y ago
  Everything about this post is spot on, and what I've been saying for years. But management doesn't care. They don't even care about productivity. It's all about keeping up appearances, having butts in seats, and I'm so, so sick of it.
• cainxinth 6y ago
  I was fully remote for several years before the pandemic. It’s the only way I ever want to work again. I’m a copywriter, so sometimes I need time to marinate on an idea. If I left the office to take a 90 minute bike ride in the middle of the day, no one would believe it had anything to do with work. But that’s where I get a lot of ideas and generally just recharge my brain. Same goes for power naps. Some offices have “nap pods” or whatever, but I would feel self conscious napping at work. Whereas at home, if I’m feeling run down, I can take twenty minutes for a nap or meditation whenever I need to. My attitude has always been that if my work isn’t up to snuff or I’m missing deadlines, I would be open to suggestions about my workflow.... but as long as I maintain a high level of output and quality, I will continue doing things my way, bike rides, naps, and all.
• lisper 6y ago
  Back when I was the boss, long before covid was a thing, I let people work from home because I liked working from home. One thing I did that I've not seen many other people do, but which really helped make it work, was to get everyone to formalize their working time by announcing their virtual arrival at and departure from work every day. So the first thing everyone would do everyday is send an email to the team with the subject, "I'm in", with a few very brief sentences saying what they were working on and hoping to accomplish that day. When they were done for the day, they would do the same thing with "I'm out" and again a few brief sentences saying what they had actually done. the guideline was that they should spend no more than five minutes, and probably more like one or two, composing these emails. This policy had a dramatically positive effect, including on me. The overhead was negligible but it made it harder to slack off because that would be more immediately visible to the entire team. It also made it clear when one could expect timely responses to emails sent out during the day. And just forcing everyone to actually think about and what they were working on and rendering that into words made it obvious when there were organizational problems and tasks were not being distributed effectively.
• irrational 6y ago
  I work on a beautiful campus with amazing work facilities and it is only 2 miles from my house. We have fitness facilities, walking trails, tons of food options, etc. But having to go back and work there instead of working from my house is giving me major anxiety. I do not want to return to the office, at all. It's not my coworkers or boss, they are all fantastic. I just love being able to see my wife and kids more frequently. I love using my own bathroom. I love being able to roll out of bed and start working instead of having to get ready for the day and then riding my bike to and from work. I love working from home, I'm almost in tears thinking about having to go back to campus. Oh, and also I have 1 gigabit internet service to my house which is much faster than what I had at work ;-)
  • ryanmercer 6y ago
    >Oh, and also I have 1 gigabit internet service to my house which is much faster than what I had at work ;-) Same. I am fortunate t have gigabit in a very rural town as we are 2 blocks from US40 which apparently has some serious fiber runnning along side it, it's MUCH faster than the internet at work which is wonderful for work-related searches as we often have to research what something is throughout the day to figure out what it is and when you have a hundred something people crammed onto some crappy connection a simple Google query can sometimes take several seconds just to load when people are using their work computer for trying to stream something (a big no-no) bogging down the speeds for everyone.
• ldbooth 6y ago
  The reality is the WFH scenario is subjective. Depends on your seniority, industry, role, and other factors. For kids coming out of college, how do they get mentorship? You're lying to yourself if you think apprenticeship means zoom calls and retreats. The model doesn't work for most companies, but it sure feels good to get that first shot of WFH freedom. After 5 years working from home, this last year put the exclamation point on me getting back into an office working shoulder to shoulder with a like minded community of people. I need people more than WFH comfort, after a while, WFH is a predictable numbing experience. While the efficiencies are there, and there are many valid points, WFH has severe limitations to professional growth.
• SavageBeast 6y ago
  Yeesh - where the hell does this guy work?
• didibus 6y ago
  I'm a bit conflicted, because I see pros/cons both ways, but I think I'm ready to go back to the office. My main reason is because I've felt that I end up working more when I work from home, because most people take the time saved in the commute and put it towards work. And ramping up people on the team, mentoring, coordinating with others for project ideas, planning, goals, progress, and all form of collaboration is more tedious and less efficient.
• schwartzworld 6y ago
  The article mentions the cost of commuting that is now saved by working from home, but fails to mention the new added cost of maintaining a workspace in your home. Prior to covid I would work from the couch on WFH days, but that's not sustainable for full time work. Now my wife and I have to have two permanent setups, and it's a challenge to make it all work. If my industry goes mandatory WFH forever, I'll probably eventually have to think about a new industry.
  • mLuby 6y ago
    I haven't heard anyone talk about "mandatory WFH forever" but lots of companies are talking about mandatory RTO forever. Time and money spent on commuting is mostly just lost. In contract, investing in a comfortable chair, good desk/computer workspace, and high-speed internet is still beneficial when you're not working.
• bcanzanella 6y ago
  I'm seven years into working remotely (from home) this week. While I don't miss some of the things the authored mentioned, the pros were greater than the cons since I worked for a company that rented out a snazzy office at CIC in Cambridge, MA. In a CODIV-19-world, I'm not sure I'd ever want to be in those sort of close quarters again, though a change of scenery would be nice!
• johnchristopher 6y ago
  > Do not have to fight 100-130 people for 1 of 3 microwaves on my 30-minute lunch break, Does not compute :].
• brofallon 6y ago
  So curious to see what happens to salaries, and where people live, if WFH is common in many sectors. Will salaries go up or down on average if employers must compete nationally to find good employees? Will people flee high cost of living areas? Anyone know of good data regarding this?
• pwinnski 6y ago
  People focusing on specifics about his particular workspace are very much missing the point. People calling him antisocial, as if he's somehow defective are very much missing the point. Look, you might enjoy working in an office. That's fine, I don't think anybody's saying you're not allowed to return to an office. But for many people, probably most people, productivity is lower in an office, despite more time being spent "working." This has been demonstrated and reported on many, many, many times. To say that you don't care, you enjoy yourself more in an office is fine, but it doesn't mean an office is better for everyone, or even for you. I have friends, I have family, I have activities in my neighborhood, and I would gladly never see any coworker in person ever again for the extra hour per day I can spend with my family and friends vs commuting. That doesn't make me anti-social any more than it does Mr Mercer. My office didn't suck, but I think the entire concept of a shared office kinda sucks. It's just so normalized that we don't realize how much it sucks until we step away for a year. I mean, I was spending an hour a day to relocate to a place where I could be overall less productive for my company. Maybe some days I enjoyed myself more, sure, but that's an separate issue. If you want to spend time with coworkers, go ahead! Just don't pretend it's providing value for your company.
• sbehlasp 6y ago
  Way the covid-19 waves are returning , looks difficult any time soon. I hope vaccination could help.
• sixothree 6y ago
  I have learned the dings in my new car and my old car are almost certainly caused by my neighbors lawn guy.
• fetacheese 6y ago
  I would rather work from space. Especially in the case that there are not enough space suits for anyone but myself. The reason is there is no such thing as developer collaboration anymore there are only microservices, wiki pages, and scrum boards...and JERKS. If you need or have more than that you are probably working in a waterfall shop with 75 year olds writing cobol. People are rude, developer conversations are usually pointless and condescending or a fun try at ESL translations. When you are talking about software with a developer, you are not writing code. Any idiot can run their mouth. We are the new robots who just happen to eat food. Eventually we will be gone and our shared misery we call a "job" will be relieved from us. And that will save a good many of us from having to pretend are lives have any meaning whatsoever.
• stunt 6y ago
  Saving commute time is the only reason I don't want to go back to an office unless it's less than 20mins away from my home.
• chenning 6y ago
  Working from home definitely has advantages, but I've been absorbing costs e.g., heating, cooling, electricity just to name a few. I think if given the option I would prefer a majority WFH situation, but these other costs do affect one's total compensation.
• matart 6y ago
  I think there is a lot of people here who hate their offices/coworkers. I haven't worked at a FAANG(?) company but I've always enjoyed my office. I've learned a lot from random coffee runs with people in the sales team or support team. I've randomly glimpsed someone traversing our logs in a way I didn't know possible and asked them to teach me. I've had great technical discussions with people at lunch that couldn't be planned. I hope to have these again some day.
• HeavyStorm 6y ago
  Holy crap this guy needs a new job.
• mzmzmzm 6y ago
  Reading a lot of these points, the author needs a union as much as WFH.