7 ms·

I'm a parent, who does WFH, and definitely disagree about the preferability of office work. Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say he

I'm a parent, who does WFH, and definitely disagree about the preferability of office work. Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. You know what hurts productivity more? The soul-crushing experience of missing out on watching your kids grow up because you're spending all day in an office or commuting. If you work from 9-6, and commute an hour each way, that basically means you hardly see your kids at all five days out of the week. That level of depression and alienation is going to do far more to hurt output. By comparison, the productivity impact of taking five minutes to give my daughter a kiss before she takes a nap is a de minims by comparison. The people I work with are all great and interesting people. But frankly, I'd infinitely prefer to spend my lunch hour and coffee breaks and happy hours with my wife and kids. This may just be my preference, but I don't see how anyone with kids could actually prefer being alienated in an office instead of at home with their loved ones.

bluefirebrand 6y ago
> Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. Surely not a bigger productivity cost than a coworker doing the same thing, though.
- decodebytes 6y ago
  I would even say a less, my kids will often have a specific ask 'can I watch some TV' where I can reply 'yes/no/later/that's really good/bad' and then its done. A co-worker will sometimes not even have a specific ask, but are instead looking for some idle chat.
bradlys 6y ago
> If you work from 9-6, and commute an hour each way, that basically means you hardly see your kids at all five days out of the week. So live closer to work. Google pays enough for people to do that. The schools are usually better too.
- popinman322 6y ago
  A) There's only so much housing near campus buildings. B) Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant. C) Moving to a more expensive place impacts you _and_ the rest of your family via shared rent, utilities, etc.. D) Your significant other, if you have one, may not work at the same company. So you may end up shortchanging your spouse and taking time away from them and their lives?
  - bradlys 6y ago
    > Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant. I'm not advocating for living literally right next to campus. But to say you can't compete is disingenuous. The whole reason Mountain View is so expensive is because there are so many engineers from Google who can afford it.
- coding123 6y ago
  I don't think he said he works at Google.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  > Google pays enough for people to do that. No they don't. Go look up house prices right around campus on Trulia. I would say it's shocking, but disgusting is a more apt feeling.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bradlys 6y ago
    Senior eng makes $400k+ TC. You're rarely buying a house alone. Most eng at FAANG end up marrying others who are similar. Easy to see $600k+ TC. You can buy a home nearby. Sunnyvale has homes for $2m or less and you can afford it at $600K household. Very reasonable commute. If you want 3000+ sqft and 5-bath homes then yeah, you're out of luck. Hit executive level or startup riches for that one. To act like Google doesn't pay enough to afford a home in Bay Area though is BS. The whole reason the area is so expensive is because FAANG pays so damn much to keep pulling in more talent. (It's a cycle) Also - you could rent. Most eng I meet at FAANG have no interest in ownership out of principal. They just want investment potential. Renting is frequently very good. Only reason you'd buy is for leverage but you won't get good leverage here in SFBA because you have to do all cash offer. So, just invest in market instead.
jly 6y ago
This is exactly the way I feel. After working at home for ~13 months now, it will be very hard for me to go back to the office. I have young kids at home and getting to spend extra time with them every day is a huge gift, on top of having no commute. There are some negatives, but I feel just as productive and more engaged.
- twelve40 6y ago
  Great for you! I feel exactly the opposite, I feel trapped in my house, super-ecstatic that the kids are finally in school now and can't wait for the office to open.
  - rym_ 6y ago
    Do you think you'll enjoy the office as much if (for simplicity sake) 50% of the people enjoy working from home so much they do not want to return? From my discussions with colleagues much more than 50% hopes to work from home 3+ days a week once this all is over.
    - jeremyvisser 6y ago
      Not the O.P., but speaking from experience, yes, a thousand times yes. Here in Sydney, Australia, both office and WFH are available at my work. I'll have anywhere between 0% and 90% of my team in the office depending on the day or week. In my experience, even being the only one in the office is a thousand times better than WFH. Whether teammates are WFH affects me less than whether I'm WFH.
ucm_edge 6y ago
As a parent my workday has shifted to be 8 am to 6:30 pm and lots of people complain about that kind of shift, but I see that as a plus. I used to be out of the house from 7:30 am to ~6:30 pm depending on commute, so it wasn't like that my time anyway. Now I'm working a slightly longer day, because during it I'm taking an hour to make my kids lunch, an hour to interact with them in the afternoon, some random downtime here and there when they pop their heads in, etc. As schools reopen my plan is to basically just to set my core working hours to the schoolday which is going to be at 8:15 am to 3:30 pm and then I'll log a bit more in the evening if needed. We normally have the kids do some reading before bed to start winding them down and I can easily sit there with my laptop while the kids read. so many of the other parents I've seen struggle are the ones that rigidly stick to 9 to 5 vs a concept of "I should do about ~8 hours of work today". Those are the ones that really seem the most vocal about wanting the office back. Which honestly if that is what they want, that's fine. They can be the office crew and have the commute, pay for childcare, etc. I'm not looking to get back on that grind though. I do feel bad for parents were both parents are constantly on Zoom. We're lucky in that we were able to rig it so all my meetings at AM meetings and my spouse has PM meeting, so we can have an on call parent most of the time. For families were both parents work sales, this probably sucks. Although I've seen some people in sales do enterprising things like setup little pods of rotating babysitting so they can just not schedule calls during their day to watch all the kids in the pod (do their reports or whatever). I think going forward two things I'll advocate for at work is flexibility during summer hours and for parents with kids too young to be handed a Redwall novel and told to read quietly for a bit. Both are forms of investing your employees as short term thing for long term benefit since after all eventually the children get older (or you at least end up with a more mature child that can do tier 0 support duties and escalate to mom or dad when needed).
bobthepanda 6y ago
We could just let people do whatever they wanted. It is unclear why, having complained about being forced to work from the office, the set of employees happy to work from now think imposing their preferences on everybody else is supposed to be better for everyone.
- tjr225 6y ago
  Agreed. I can’t focus when my toddler is running around screaming. I love her; but I miss my office. In fact I simply miss the ritual of leaving my home and returning every day. I’ve been doing this for a few years, though. Long dog walks have helped.
- notriddle 6y ago
  There is one good reason: if most of your team works at the office, and you're working from home, it's difficult to make sure that you're not left out of discussions.
- fidesomnes 6y ago
  it isn't the employees imposing their preferences, it's the managers.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  That’s a point I agree on. But my understanding is that most of the companies that are re opening offices are insisting that employees eventually come back. Is Google/Apple/JP Morgan letting people stay full WFH?
aogl 6y ago
I couldn't agree with you more!
andorxor 6y ago
Even when talking about the negative effects of commuting on you and your kids, you frame it in terms of the productivity impact on your employer. Man, talk about Stockholm syndrome. Productivity is not the end all be all. It's ok to look out for yourself.
- fidesomnes 6y ago
  > Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. this is truly a fucked up mindset. This is a person who is missing the trees for the forest a long time ago.
ryandrake 6y ago
Yea commute + kid is the key motivation for WFH for me. My Bay Area commute is 4+ hours per day, depending on traffic. This means in order to guarantee I can be at work for my first 8AM meeting, I need to wake up around 5AM and leave the house at 5:30. My day is over at around 5PM (thankfully I don't work for a workaholic culture start-up), but this still means I'm home by 7:30-8PM most days. I'm basically driving 50% of the time I spend at work, and don't get to see my kid at all besides weekends. It really sucks. COVID-19 has been a huge quality of life boost for me.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  My father traveled for work a few months at a time. It wasn't the best for any of us, especially my mother. Consider the cost of those lost years. Even if you can retire early it's a season you'll never be able to share with them.
- Google234 6y ago
  Why do you live 2 hours away?
  - akmarinov 6y ago
    Expensive housing
  - PoignardAzur 6y ago
    Property prices, I assume?
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      Obviously! I would love to live closer to work, if I could afford it. I can maybe afford a tent in Fremont and a shoebox in Palo Alto. Nothing in the South Bay or Peninsula in my price range screams "quality of life".
650REDHAIR 6y ago
How old are your kids and what are they doing all day?
jjav 6y ago
> You know what hurts productivity more? The soul-crushing experience of missing out on watching your kids grow up because you're spending all day in an office or commuting. Yes! And I'm renting a small office near the house for pandemic purposes to have a quiet space to work. But being two minutes away instead of an hour away is night and day. I can be home and back multiple times a day, in same time than it took to walk to the snack dispenser at the office.
ppf 6y ago
I have two very young children, one of whom was born during 2020. I can tell you that raising kids that young, with both parents trying to WFH, and the lack of any support of any kind at all thanks to Covid restrictions, was a soul-crushing experience that I do not ever want to repeat. I do appreciate that my experience is a little unique, though.
Tade0 6y ago
This. My daughter is a month old now and while that does require me to chop my day into pieces so that I can take care of her, I can't imagine being out for 10h a day.
zamalek 6y ago
> commuting Assuming you're driving yourself, this is universally a productivity killer. You risking a huge amount of frustrating and angering situations while your workers are commuting to a central location. I'd put good money on a lot of lost productivity to commute. Then there's the people who have to commute, due to functionally in-person jobs (artisans, doctors, baristas, etc.). Optional commuters going to the office for their "social fix" are doing so at the expense of forced commuters. Work should be work and social should be social; if you want a social experience during work hours then have a social lunch in your neighborhood.
cco 6y ago
The secret you learn is that many people that like work a lot, actually fundamentally don't like their home lives, whether that be their spouses or their children.

bluefirebrand 6y ago

> Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. Surely not a bigger productivity cost than a coworker doing the same thing, though.

decodebytes 6y ago
I would even say a less, my kids will often have a specific ask 'can I watch some TV' where I can reply 'yes/no/later/that's really good/bad' and then its done. A co-worker will sometimes not even have a specific ask, but are instead looking for some idle chat.

bradlys 6y ago

> If you work from 9-6, and commute an hour each way, that basically means you hardly see your kids at all five days out of the week. So live closer to work. Google pays enough for people to do that. The schools are usually better too.

popinman322 6y ago
A) There's only so much housing near campus buildings. B) Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant. C) Moving to a more expensive place impacts you _and_ the rest of your family via shared rent, utilities, etc.. D) Your significant other, if you have one, may not work at the same company. So you may end up shortchanging your spouse and taking time away from them and their lives?
- bradlys 6y ago
  > Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant. I'm not advocating for living literally right next to campus. But to say you can't compete is disingenuous. The whole reason Mountain View is so expensive is because there are so many engineers from Google who can afford it.
coding123 6y ago
I don't think he said he works at Google.
cbozeman 6y ago
> Google pays enough for people to do that. No they don't. Go look up house prices right around campus on Trulia. I would say it's shocking, but disgusting is a more apt feeling.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bradlys 6y ago
  Senior eng makes $400k+ TC. You're rarely buying a house alone. Most eng at FAANG end up marrying others who are similar. Easy to see $600k+ TC. You can buy a home nearby. Sunnyvale has homes for $2m or less and you can afford it at $600K household. Very reasonable commute. If you want 3000+ sqft and 5-bath homes then yeah, you're out of luck. Hit executive level or startup riches for that one. To act like Google doesn't pay enough to afford a home in Bay Area though is BS. The whole reason the area is so expensive is because FAANG pays so damn much to keep pulling in more talent. (It's a cycle) Also - you could rent. Most eng I meet at FAANG have no interest in ownership out of principal. They just want investment potential. Renting is frequently very good. Only reason you'd buy is for leverage but you won't get good leverage here in SFBA because you have to do all cash offer. So, just invest in market instead.

jly 6y ago

This is exactly the way I feel. After working at home for ~13 months now, it will be very hard for me to go back to the office. I have young kids at home and getting to spend extra time with them every day is a huge gift, on top of having no commute. There are some negatives, but I feel just as productive and more engaged.

twelve40 6y ago
Great for you! I feel exactly the opposite, I feel trapped in my house, super-ecstatic that the kids are finally in school now and can't wait for the office to open.
- rym_ 6y ago
  Do you think you'll enjoy the office as much if (for simplicity sake) 50% of the people enjoy working from home so much they do not want to return? From my discussions with colleagues much more than 50% hopes to work from home 3+ days a week once this all is over.
  - jeremyvisser 6y ago
    Not the O.P., but speaking from experience, yes, a thousand times yes. Here in Sydney, Australia, both office and WFH are available at my work. I'll have anywhere between 0% and 90% of my team in the office depending on the day or week. In my experience, even being the only one in the office is a thousand times better than WFH. Whether teammates are WFH affects me less than whether I'm WFH.

ucm_edge 6y ago

As a parent my workday has shifted to be 8 am to 6:30 pm and lots of people complain about that kind of shift, but I see that as a plus. I used to be out of the house from 7:30 am to ~6:30 pm depending on commute, so it wasn't like that my time anyway. Now I'm working a slightly longer day, because during it I'm taking an hour to make my kids lunch, an hour to interact with them in the afternoon, some random downtime here and there when they pop their heads in, etc. As schools reopen my plan is to basically just to set my core working hours to the schoolday which is going to be at 8:15 am to 3:30 pm and then I'll log a bit more in the evening if needed. We normally have the kids do some reading before bed to start winding them down and I can easily sit there with my laptop while the kids read. so many of the other parents I've seen struggle are the ones that rigidly stick to 9 to 5 vs a concept of "I should do about ~8 hours of work today". Those are the ones that really seem the most vocal about wanting the office back. Which honestly if that is what they want, that's fine. They can be the office crew and have the commute, pay for childcare, etc. I'm not looking to get back on that grind though. I do feel bad for parents were both parents are constantly on Zoom. We're lucky in that we were able to rig it so all my meetings at AM meetings and my spouse has PM meeting, so we can have an on call parent most of the time. For families were both parents work sales, this probably sucks. Although I've seen some people in sales do enterprising things like setup little pods of rotating babysitting so they can just not schedule calls during their day to watch all the kids in the pod (do their reports or whatever). I think going forward two things I'll advocate for at work is flexibility during summer hours and for parents with kids too young to be handed a Redwall novel and told to read quietly for a bit. Both are forms of investing your employees as short term thing for long term benefit since after all eventually the children get older (or you at least end up with a more mature child that can do tier 0 support duties and escalate to mom or dad when needed).

bobthepanda 6y ago

We could just let people do whatever they wanted. It is unclear why, having complained about being forced to work from the office, the set of employees happy to work from now think imposing their preferences on everybody else is supposed to be better for everyone.

tjr225 6y ago
Agreed. I can’t focus when my toddler is running around screaming. I love her; but I miss my office. In fact I simply miss the ritual of leaving my home and returning every day. I’ve been doing this for a few years, though. Long dog walks have helped.
notriddle 6y ago
There is one good reason: if most of your team works at the office, and you're working from home, it's difficult to make sure that you're not left out of discussions.
fidesomnes 6y ago
it isn't the employees imposing their preferences, it's the managers.
dcolkitt 6y ago
That’s a point I agree on. But my understanding is that most of the companies that are re opening offices are insisting that employees eventually come back. Is Google/Apple/JP Morgan letting people stay full WFH?

aogl 6y ago

I couldn't agree with you more!

andorxor 6y ago

Even when talking about the negative effects of commuting on you and your kids, you frame it in terms of the productivity impact on your employer. Man, talk about Stockholm syndrome. Productivity is not the end all be all. It's ok to look out for yourself.

fidesomnes 6y ago
> Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. this is truly a fucked up mindset. This is a person who is missing the trees for the forest a long time ago.

ryandrake 6y ago

Yea commute + kid is the key motivation for WFH for me. My Bay Area commute is 4+ hours per day, depending on traffic. This means in order to guarantee I can be at work for my first 8AM meeting, I need to wake up around 5AM and leave the house at 5:30. My day is over at around 5PM (thankfully I don't work for a workaholic culture start-up), but this still means I'm home by 7:30-8PM most days. I'm basically driving 50% of the time I spend at work, and don't get to see my kid at all besides weekends. It really sucks. COVID-19 has been a huge quality of life boost for me.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
My father traveled for work a few months at a time. It wasn't the best for any of us, especially my mother. Consider the cost of those lost years. Even if you can retire early it's a season you'll never be able to share with them.
Google234 6y ago
Why do you live 2 hours away?
- akmarinov 6y ago
  Expensive housing
- PoignardAzur 6y ago
  Property prices, I assume?
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Obviously! I would love to live closer to work, if I could afford it. I can maybe afford a tent in Fremont and a shoebox in Palo Alto. Nothing in the South Bay or Peninsula in my price range screams "quality of life".

650REDHAIR 6y ago

How old are your kids and what are they doing all day?

jjav 6y ago

> You know what hurts productivity more? The soul-crushing experience of missing out on watching your kids grow up because you're spending all day in an office or commuting. Yes! And I'm renting a small office near the house for pandemic purposes to have a quiet space to work. But being two minutes away instead of an hour away is night and day. I can be home and back multiple times a day, in same time than it took to walk to the snack dispenser at the office.

ppf 6y ago

I have two very young children, one of whom was born during 2020. I can tell you that raising kids that young, with both parents trying to WFH, and the lack of any support of any kind at all thanks to Covid restrictions, was a soul-crushing experience that I do not ever want to repeat. I do appreciate that my experience is a little unique, though.

Tade0 6y ago

This. My daughter is a month old now and while that does require me to chop my day into pieces so that I can take care of her, I can't imagine being out for 10h a day.

zamalek 6y ago

> commuting Assuming you're driving yourself, this is universally a productivity killer. You risking a huge amount of frustrating and angering situations while your workers are commuting to a central location. I'd put good money on a lot of lost productivity to commute. Then there's the people who have to commute, due to functionally in-person jobs (artisans, doctors, baristas, etc.). Optional commuters going to the office for their "social fix" are doing so at the expense of forced commuters. Work should be work and social should be social; if you want a social experience during work hours then have a social lunch in your neighborhood.

cco 6y ago

The secret you learn is that many people that like work a lot, actually fundamentally don't like their home lives, whether that be their spouses or their children.