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Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home

• geofft 5y ago
  This seems like the perfect case for differentiation. There's a lot of arguing over the merits of working remotely vs. working in person as if one is universally better. Just have some companies work entirely remotely, and some work entirely in person, and have employees choose their employer based on that just like how they choose their employer based on headquarters location etc. now.
• achow 5y ago
  I miss the office for.. - Social chatter. - Making friends with old employees who I didn't know, and connecting with new employees. - Work Life separation (balance). - Sense of belonging.. team outing, weekday after hours beer. - Intra company sports and games, and then teaming up with office colleagues to play inter company tournaments. - (Not me but others) Meeting potential dates - Office facilities for breakfast, lunch.
  • skapadia 5y ago
    Exactly.
  • jerry1979 5y ago
    Have you considered joining the rotary club or similar?
    • 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
      I'd agree – there are real advantages in maintaining a friends group outside of work: you spend far less time griping about your day to day, and the connections you make are far more stable. Get a beer once a month with coworkers, sure, but relying on work to be a primary social outlet always seems risky.
      • mirker 5y ago
        Yep, it’s more meaningful for someone to go out of their way to meet up with you (when there’s only friendship to gain). Also prevents mixing personal life with work.
        • RSHEPP 5y ago
          My first job out of school, moved to a new city. For three year my only friends were coworkers. We socialized (drank) couple times a week and almost every damn conversation was work related, mostly complaining. I left that place because I "hated" it so much. I wonder how much those conversations contributed to it.
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    A lot of us don't miss any of that. I can do all that on my own time and have been for several years now. I'm not going back in until I've exhausted every possibility.
    • dimitrios1 5y ago
      Just bear in mind when you say "a lot of us", it's a small minority of the general workforce. For the majority of the workforce, working from home is a.) not even an option, b.) torn 50/50, with your sales and client success type folk, typically customer facing and person interacting jobs overwhelmingly favoring a return to the office, and us mangly, dirty coding bots overwhelmingly favoring continuing to WFH. I am squarely in the WFH is great if it's possible camp, but perspective is necessary here. Pushing / demanding that the entire work arrangement norms for the majority of the workforce change for a vocal minority is exactly what gives people with cushy desk jobs their (deserved in this case) bad names.
      • zeroonetwothree 5y ago
        My employer gave everyone the option to continue wfh or return (no effect on compensation). Only 20% of the “mangy dirty coding bots” opted for wfh.
        • EliRivers 5y ago
          That is astounding. When asked to decide, my place went 100% software engineers committing to WFH, and well over two-thirds of every other group as well. Team admin is tag-teaming a physical presence at the office, the big boss likes to come in, there's one person in sales who likes to come in, and the guy who assembles the hardware has to come in on a number of days. I think that's about it. Almost the entire company chose to go remote, and we're never going back. The big boss indicated towards the end of last year that we're giving up the lease on one of the two office spaces. At least one person has already moved hundreds of miles to Yorkshire where he's simply having a better life. That's what it is. It's the opportunity for a better life, just waiting to be grasped. I do have sympathy for people who have discovered that their social well-being depended on physical interaction with people in the office; I would hazard that the solution to that is not to go back to the office. There are better ways to get that. There is a better life to be had.
  • kilroy123 5y ago
    I agree with you and that's why I'll join a co-working space when I feel I'm missing these things. (I've worked remotely before the pandemic) You can get the same thing from a lot of co-working spaces. I still prefer working form home, because I can pack my bag and go back home anytime I want. Soon, I'll likely go back to a co-working space because right now, I miss those things as well.
    • mdorazio 5y ago
      I had the same thought as you re: co-working spaces, but I am frequently on audio and video calls throughout the day and need an office. Co-working space dedicated offices are expensive as hell if your employer isn't paying for them. I haven't really seen a reduction in prices due to the pandemic, either. Has anyone found a good solution?
  • jessedhillon 5y ago
    I find myself feeling vaguely offended by this response. These are needs that all previous generations fulfilled through their community, or by meeting strangers. But I have the feeling that (some subset of) current generations find that proposition unacceptably risky. And I guess the offense comes from the idea that we should all be inconvenienced for their sake, and also from how the idea "I can only make friends in a safe space" is presented here and just expected to be believed.
    • woofcat 5y ago
      I mean we're in the middle of a pandemic right now, but with my WFH life currently I leave my house once a week to pick up groceries. (Where I pop the trunk and they put them in) I feel like it's really easy for people to not get out of a comfort zone and meet people just /randomly/ on the road or at the Grocery store. Especially to the point of being friends. Sadly our community has died, church attendance is massively down in most of the world. Which killed that social circle, clubs seem to not really exist anymore. Basically we're down to meetup.com, work, and bars.
      • alexgmcm 5y ago
        Meetup.com are clubs though? It seems at least there you find people with shared interests rather than the random sample at work or church. I met my friends through language classes and meetups as I emigrated.
    • jayd16 5y ago
      Why are you appealing to the past when the fully remote but post industrial 9-5 day schedules is the new thing? My parents and grandparents have either work friends or old college friends.
  • Taylor_OD 5y ago
    Wow. You get a lot more out of the office than I do. I hate small talk and at work it feels like a distraction. I am friendly with coworkers but I'm not actually friends with many/any. I have tried to decouple my sense of belonging from work as much as possible since that is very unhealthy because its not a situation I control (if I get laid off is my belonging gone?) Company sports are great but those can be replaced by sports with friends. Dating at work is... Well I'll leave that alone. And food I cook is better than any office food I've ever had. That being said I havnt worked in a FANG office that has a chef.
  • dagmx 5y ago
    It's interesting that you mention work life balance, when the majority of your points are really in the "life" section.
    • bart_spoon 5y ago
      I agree. It only improves work-life balance if you've made work and your life one and the same. For the rest of us, the "balance" tips heavily towards work and away from life when in-office is required.
  • treespace88 5y ago
    That is totally cool with me. As long as I would be able to be fully remote in the same company. What I need for that is high quality audio and video for meetings. Do you think that is possible?
    • nhumrich 5y ago
      Can (s)he work in office and get all the perks, while you with remotely and receive none of those perks, at the same company? Sure. This "hybrid" model has been working for a lot of companies, small and large, pre-covid.
  • bart_spoon 5y ago
    Sounds like the office has become a substitute for social interaction everywhere else in life. That may not be a bad thing for you, but it is a negative in the sense that it forces everyone to make it a part of their social lives. If you are looking for making new friends, a sense of belonging, sports and games, drinking buddies, meeting potential dates, and group lunches, you can in theory find outlets for all of those things outside of work. But everyone working in an office means that if you aren't interested in those things, (you already have friends, a family, hobby groups, etc), you are forced to spend time away from them to participate in the in-office culture. It seems extremely backwards to me. Its like if people who make church their social group, which is very common, required people who aren't interested in church to attend to enable their social lives. I don't know how or why a large number of us have made work a substitute for our social lives, but it has been a major problem for the rest of us who haven't.
    • wdhilliard 5y ago
      This feels like a heavy-handed response to me. Socializing in the office doesn't need to be a substitute, but can be one many missing pieces in a well-rounded social life. Many of the ways people found a social life outside of work are either still not available or not the same. I used to love working from the coffee shop down my block. There were often around 50 people working in there at any given time of day, but the chairs and tables are still stacked against the wall, and people come inside only to get their coffee and go back home. Even finding conversation in a crowded bar can seem more difficult as people are still keep physical distance from people they do not know.
      • Apocryphon 5y ago
        What about meeting people through volunteering or by even joining an open source project?
        • altpaddle 5y ago
          I guess it's just more efficient to try and make friends with people that you already have to hang out with 40 hours a week. People are lazy and making friends as an adult is difficult
  • andrewzah 5y ago
    You can do all of those things outside of work. There are meetup groups, local sports leagues, etc. There is no reason it has to happen at the office. Also this is just my opinion, but I find it odd when people's social groups are... just people from their job. There is so much more to life than just people who work in the same company or industry as oneself.
  • jayd16 5y ago
    I just miss being able to meet, pair, collaborate and mentor lag free with the full presence of in person communication. I find zoom really exhausting.
    • Ashanmaril 5y ago
      Yeah, all of that stuff is WAY worse over screensharing/calls. Being able to turn your head over to a coworker and say "hey take a look at this" and they take a few steps over to see your monitor is much less of a hassle than ringing their computer for a video call and screensharing which may be better or worse depending on either of your internet connections. Not to mention depending on your monitor sizes it might not even work properly. i.e. if you're using a larger monitor where everything is rendered smaller so more can fit on screen, it will probably be too small for them to see on their laptop. And in the case of ultrawide monitors, just give up the idea of screensharing on that entirely. At least if you use Teams where you can't share a portion of your screen. -- only the entire thing, or a single window which has problems of its own. Oh and Teams doesn't even let you draw on the other person's screen so they can't point to things! Alright this is turning into a Teams rant now.
  • FredPret 5y ago
    I mean this in absolutely the nicest possible way. But all of the above can be solved by getting a social life outside the office
  • dehrmann 5y ago
    > Meeting potential dates On place I worked with 100-120 people in the office saw 5 marriages. A big part of that was they employed a lot of single 20-somethings, but that's a lot of couples who met at work.
  • duckfang 5y ago
    - Social chatter. I associate with my friends and a few groups I frequent. I've never felt the compunction to do this at work or with work people for the most part. - Making friends with old employees who I didn't know, and connecting with new employees. Too true; there is this. I've a small handful of people whom I met at work and would call friends. But I usually try to maintain work as work - having friends tied up at a workplace can make for some really bad times when you leave or something happens. I think it's like a work-conditional friend. - Work Life separation (balance). If you can master working on work stuff during the day, once you log out of $workchat and vpn, you're off. Set a schedule when you do everyday and work on being predictable. - Sense of belonging.. team outing, weekday after hours beer. To me, "hanging out with the team" is definitely work. It has to be work-appropriate talk, on and on. That's enforced team-building activities. My sense of belonging is the paycheck I receive. I will seek elsewhere, not tied down by a job, to get a sense of belonging. - Intra company sports and games, and then teaming up with office colleagues to play inter company tournaments. Again, for me, this seems to unhealthily attach a jobs' modus operandi to your own. In reality, unless you're the owner, you are as expendable as any other machine or cog. And I try not to intertwine work relationships with friends. Only rarely do those actually cross. - (Not me but others) Meeting potential dates Yipes. - Office facilities for breakfast, lunch. My counter is that I have health issues that restrict my diet. At home, I can control exactly what I eat. At work, is what is provided. Its usually good, but sometimes I don't have anything. I would much rather have control of what I eat, by being in my kitchen cooking with my own foodstuffs.
• ketanmaheshwari 5y ago
  Unable to read the article due to paywall but how can employees be quitting in such numbers to be noted by Bloomberg? Don't they have families to feed, finances to take care of, worries of future, worries of career and such? How exactly are so many people managing to just quit their jobs?
  • pydry 5y ago
    Nobody was spending much money last year.
    • humanrebar 5y ago
      Except for all that housing.
  • a4isms 5y ago
    Quit != leave the workforce. Maybe they now have remote work options, or having tasted a year without a brutal commute, they take jobs paying less, but closer to their homes.
  • cheschire 5y ago
    The article mentions somewhere in the middle: "A May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work." And towards the end it references a tweet that went semi-viral and got a lot of responses. https://twitter.com/GenieShinobi/status/1389286585347235847 https://twitter.com/GenieShinobi/status/1389286585347235847 edit: also here's a non-paywall link. https://archive.is/Yc5UW https://archive.is/Yc5UW
    • yoz-y 5y ago
      Indeed, the article contains nothing to support the claim in the title.
  • FearlessNebula 5y ago
    People have savings. It’s not worth making your life miserable over the safety net of your current job, especially when there’s so many remote options out there.
• FearlessNebula 5y ago
  I hope this is the start of a nation wide trend towards better work life balance. Production output has gone up over the past few decades and we’re expected to work the same amount of hours. I think the future probably looks something like 4 6-hour work days each week. Life is way too short and precious to be spending so much of it working for somebody else, even if you mostly do love your job.
  • apexalpha 5y ago
    While I agree with the general sentiment I'd prefer an extra full day off in stead of working 4-6 hours a day for 5 days.
  • GianFabien 5y ago
    Managements will have to learn to embrace results instead of mere attendance at their meetings.
    • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      My concern with this is that we'll get result inflation. I'm not sure which is better - enforced butt in seat for 40+ hours or forcing productivity that whole time. Working in consulting I know that it's kind of a unspoken truth that even though you're billing and "working" on something, you're not always 100% working at it.
  • harryf 5y ago
    Will be interesting to see the impact this has on children growing up in the next 10-15 years and I'd guess it's largely positive. Parents with jobs that required business travel have found they can do their job and be present for their children. And yes while it's not all positive e.g. domestic abuse stats have gone up, I would suspect the overall impact has been generally positive for families.
    • giantg2 5y ago
      I would hope it's a net positive. My basic theory is that abuse stats have gone up because exposure to the parent has gone up. I would hope that abusers make up a small percentage of parents. If so, I would hope that means exposure to all the 'good' parents will yield positive results.
• Jaygles 5y ago
  For me, the utility of being at home versus being at the office is massive. If I need a 15 minute break, I can start a load of laundry, or run the dishwasher, or do some other chore. I can wake up later since I don't have a commute. I don't lose two hours a day due to the commute. I can wear as comfortable clothing as I desire. I can delay my shower until after my daily workout (Which I can do since my workout equipment is at home). I can control my environment so there are as many or as few distractions as i like. I can put on videos or audio that might not be considered work appropriate. I can use speakers since no one is around me to hear the sound. The number and magnitude of inconveniences we subject ourselves to by heading to an office every day has been fully revealed. I will do all I can to work from home for the rest of my life.
  • apexalpha 5y ago
    Agreed! I had an hour-long one way commute too and it's been great. My work day went from 11 hours to 9 at most. I have more time to cook, I can get up later of earlier, I can do laundry, dishwasher etc... My company wants to go 2 days home and 3 days office. I've said I'd do it the other way around. I do miss my colleagues as well, but two days a week should be enough to garner most weekly advantages of being in the same place. And it's not just convenience, either. 2 days in office would open up immense possibilities for me regarding housing, I can live in a cheaper home outside the big city and still commute less than 10 hours a week.
    • mcot2 5y ago
      I suspect the partial in-office/wfh arrangement will be fairly rare. Office space is costly to use only 2 days a week. Companies can do hoteling but it breaks down when you have very technical employees who like very particular desk setups (multiple monitors, chair positions, special keyboards/mice). The more common arrangement will probably be mostly WFH but meet up occsionally in some per-hour rented office for collaboration. Sucks for WeWork to have blown itself up before this :).
      • mcguire 5y ago
        Or if everyone's two days is Tuesday and Wednesday. :-)
• vodkapump 5y ago
  I am quite glad I can go to my office to work, having the separation is quite nice, I don't want to associate my home with work at all. Though it does probably help that my commute is only 900 metres.
  • GianFabien 5y ago
    Maybe you'd think differently if it was 2 hours commute each way in bumper to bumper traffic.
    • Dumblydorr 5y ago
      What percentage of commuters have 2 hours bumper to bumper each way? That sounds like an outlier to me.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • HappySweeney 5y ago
        With the price of real estate these days, a two hour commute is not out of the ordinary.
      • offtop5 5y ago
        I've had to commute an hour 30 before. If you're in an expensive city, like LA you're very likely to have this. It's stressful, expensive and dangerous. I'm really hoping work from home becomes a permanent thing.
        • fabianhjr 5y ago
          If you live in a car-centric city without walkable and bikeable streets nor great public transit and force car-dependence that is what you get. There are plenty of non-car-centric expensive cities that one can travel across in less than an hour.
• GianFabien 5y ago
  All the more the power to employees who have the fortitude to stand up against demeaning, demanding, power hungry bosses. They might think hustling is good, but does it actually produce anything of value? Without productive staff, businesses can either change and thrive or resist change and become Dinos-R-Us Inc.
• Tycho 5y ago
  I wonder if the mood will eventually swing the other way, with companies preferring remote working arrangements, and then people will recall the quaint oddity of employees demanding the change. Living in a high cost of living city, with a high salary, has its advantages - many goods have the same price point nationally, holidays cost the same regardless, and any raise or bonus calculated as a percentage of your base salary will be more generous in absolute terms. The housing market will be brutal but if you plan to relocate eventually, you'll be way ahead.
  • Bancakes 5y ago
    Yes when companies start demanding dedicated home offices with corporate memorabilia and multiple cameras.
    • walterlb 5y ago
      Don't forget to display one or more books written by company execs!
  • prepend 5y ago
    I think soon companies will begin exploiting teleworkers as there’s lots of cost savings there. Already most people in my org have bought their own monitors, desks, chairs, etc. Instead of allowing it, companies can start requiring it and save quite a bit not just on office space, but supplies, equipment, etc. I’m hoping smart companies get on the ball with equipment allowances. Also, I think it will finally get us to a “green” office place as COVID finally stopped the oldsters around me printing copies of everything. So the sheet amount of paper saved is quite nice.
    • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      > Also, I think it will finally get us to a “green” office place as COVID finally stopped the oldsters around me printing copies of everything. So the sheet amount of paper saved is quite nice. I kid you not, my company recently had us print something out, scan it, and send it in. From home. I had to run out and buy ink. I wonder how many of coworkers had to run out to buy printers.
• newsclues 5y ago
  Will the capitalist who prefer office workers offer higher salaries for workers who come into the office instead of working from home? Or will office only businesses fail to compete with work from home businesses? I hope the market decides.
  • dangerface 5y ago
    Rent is often the second largest cost after salaries for most businesses. I think it's more likely that work from home businesses will offer more money to offset the cost of working from home, also because they have the money to do that. I think the biggest challenge from in office businesses will be brain drain why commute to a shitty office when I can get paid more to not do that.
    • newsclues 5y ago
      I think evaluating this as purely financial decision is an error. The power, control and ability to monitor workers to ensure “productivity” is part of the decision making matrix.
      • dangerface 5y ago
        Give your employees laptops to work from home. Install monitoring software on the laptops, you could even spy on them with the webcam etc. You don't need to pay for an office just because you want to power trip on spying on people. Over covid Microsoft have added a bunch of spyware into office365 for companies to spy on their employees.
• CoastalCoder 5y ago
  The article talks a lot about executives' desire to "maintain company culture". Can someone unpack that for me? I was already fuzzy on the concept of "company culture". But if executives are worried about it at the same level as "productivity" or "profitability", I'm definitely missing something.
  • ciisforsuckas 5y ago
    They want to build that familial model where you live and die for your teammates and wfh hampers that because you aren't forced to trauma bond with a bunch of strangers. Facebook/Google learned early on that building campuses that look and act like colleges increased worker retention and productivity because they built their whole lives around the company. Shopping, Doctors, Recreation all happened on campus. All your new friends were made on campus after they forced relocation.
    • lupire 5y ago
      That's because commuting to all those errands is a waste of time. Remember this was invented before everything gkt Amazon Primed and Uberized.
      • bart_spoon 5y ago
        > That's because commuting to all those errands is a waste of time. Only in the eyes of the employer. People have always taken time out of their day for things like buying food, cooking for yourself, exercising, etc. Those things aren't burdens when your employer isn't demanding complete control over your life. And they are only "perks" in a culture where they do.
        • bradlys 5y ago
          Meh - I much prefer having those things done for me or made simpler. I’ve got exceptional work/life balance compared to my peers (I rarely work more than 40 hours/week and usually work 30-35) in SV. But I still would like my workplace to make things easier. I go to the grocery store quite often and find it just a huge waste of time. We get things delivered more often but I’m not a meal planner type so it doesn’t work well. Commuting for 10-15 minutes each way to get to nearest Whole Foods is a PITA. Having someone plan meals for me is a huge timesaver at every step. Same with exercise. Great if the equipment is right there, pound some weights just before eating lunch or play a game of basketball, etc. don’t need to manage a membership, coordinate with friends over fifty messages, etc. Totally could do those things outside of work but they take more time. Gotta go to the gym from my house or work. Gotta go to a specific park and hope there’s a pickup game that I can jump into. Etc.
• Proven 5y ago
  And the employers can't find anyone in Manila or Bangalore to fill those positions at 30% of the cost? I don't think so. I know Bloomberg and the rest of MMT-crazed intelligentsia would be happiest if the US Gov and Fed endlessly poured money into a non-functioning economy where everyone "works" from home, but somewhere out there some employers still need to get shit done and run business.
• elzbardico 5y ago
  I think that overtime some middle-ground will be achieved. Maybe some people companies won't allow full remote work, but will create satellite offices in smaller towns where people would be able to walk or even bike to work. (yes, I know, this is true in big cities like NYC, but then the cost of living is astounding).
• Dumblydorr 5y ago
  I left a job right before the pandemic because the office was terrible and they gave all the older employees WFH but then stopped giving WFH out right when I was due for it. They told me they just couldn't do it anymore, no reason given. Then, after quitting, covid occurred and they went fully remote.
• elzbardico 5y ago
  and please note Quitting != Leaving the work force. The market is strong right now for developers. Easy to find another job that has a remote option. I bet most of that people that quit, quit because they had already secured an offer with remote work option.
• kleinsch 5y ago
  When companies start pressuring people to return to the office, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a wave of quitting to switch to another company that’s more remote friendly. That will be limited by the actual number of remote jobs, so the early movers will get an advantage. I think you’ll end up with a decent number of people who answer surveys that they’ll quit before having to go back to the office, but realize there are no comparable remote jobs available.
  • agotterer 5y ago
    Early movers will snatch up the currently open remote positions. If remote really becomes the standard then companies who want to remain competitive will have no choice but to adapt and adjust policies.
  • ipsi 5y ago
    Interestingly enough, my employer has gone the opposite way - they're "shutting down" (that is, chose not to renew the lease for) our office in this city, and had all of us sign new WFH contracts. Same for the office in another part of Europe. Some of us were 100% OK with that, and some were really not - since the job wasn't expected to be a WFH job, not everyone has a good location to work from, or reliable internet, etc., etc - those people have been able to work from the office at various points over the last year as the pandemic ebbed and flowed. As a consequence, my employer has walked the office closure back a little - we're still all full-time remote, but there will be a smaller office available for e.g., project kickoffs, or people who want to get out of their house for a bit.
  • dcolkitt 5y ago
    This presupposes that the wave of quitting has no significant impact on the employer side. I'd imagine that many companies who push office-first too hard will find themselves short staffed in a very tight labor market. The likely response of many will be to panic and convert to remote-first to avoid hemorrhaging workers.
• rsynnott 5y ago
  Hmm. I think I'd quit if I was told we were going fully remote. It works for some people, not others; personally I can't wait to be back in an office.
• one2three4 5y ago
  OK. I WFH as well. I know all the benefits. And as I'm WFH for pandemic only I've been trying to find remote work post-pandemic and there I realized some bitter points: 1. I compete for positions with people all over the world. Who can complete with a fraction of the salary I need. 2. As a remote worker -most often working as a contractor- I'm even easier to be replaced in a heartbeat. No severance or anything alike. 3. Did I mention that I compete with all the planet? That makes competition for good roles really crazy. 4. Work blends into life and it is very hard to keep it from. This gets worse depending on the company/role but in general these things tend to go the employers way not yours. 5. You need to find new ways to socialize (and the motivation to do so is minimal) or you risk mental health issues. All I'm trying to say is be careful what you wish for because you might get it.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    > Work blends into life and it is very hard to keep it from. This gets worse depending on the company/role but in general these things tend to go the employers way not yours. Am I one of the few that sees this as an enormous benefit? Work becomes a series of tasks I need to achieve throughout the day, like all the other tasks like laundry and doctors appointments. I get to restructure what I need to do in a way that suits me best. I can push code at 11PM and go for a nap at 4PM if I choose (assuming no meetings). Then my life isn't segmented into exclusive blocks. It is just one seamless integrated life.
    • flatline 5y ago
      When an emergency comes up, you are right by your desk and it’s hard to not sit down to address it right away, even if it’s 11 PM. When you have a deadline it’s so easy to log back in after dinner and burn your night away working. As the work life divide begins to erode, burn out is a real risk. I see my computer and if I’m stressed about work I get stressed at times I’d have normally left it behind and not thought about it. I feel guilty if I’m not working late on something I think I’m behind on. Keep in mind I have kids, a social life, etc. I’ve built my time around work/life balance and keeping the two distinct. It’s healthy for me in ways that having the two conflated never was. May not be an issue for everyone.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  I love the fact that with WFH I can blend work and life together very seamlessly. I can work for several hours then put in laundry. Or take a nap. Or collect my parcel. I can sleep until it is work time. I can do work at 11PM as that is when there are the fewest distractions. It's been wonderful.
  • addison-lee 5y ago
    And I hate how you never escape work when WFH—it’s a double edged sword.
• a3n 5y ago
  > Some have lamented the perils of remote work, saying it diminishes collaboration and company culture. Collaboration, maybe. Company culture is not diminished, it's merely changed.
• throwitaway1235 5y ago
  Are people so hopelessly dense that they don't realize a remote economy means lower wages, massive outsourcing and the obsolescence of cities?
  • Miner49er 5y ago
    How does it mean lower wages? Wouldn't it just mean less variance in wages?
  • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    > lower wages, massive outsourcing and the obsolescence of cities I don't really know why #3 is said like a bad thing, but I wonder about the other two. If this is clearly and advantage that is sure to happen, why hasn't it? There's still time zone issues and cultural bridges to gap, so I don't know how far one can really go before it becomes a lot of effort to be productive. And speaking as a Canadian who makes what appears to be a university grad-level wage in the states, I wouldn't mind it at all if that forced the more local wage to be a little higher to compete.
  • ks6g10 5y ago
    Are people so hopelessly dense that they don't realise an office economy means lower net wages, massive outsourcing and the obsolescence of local communities?
• h0nd 5y ago
  This was so obvious. But who will pay and feed these former employees?
• yboris 5y ago
  I moved from the NYC area (NYC job) to Michigan for cheaper cost of living. I told my employer I either continue 100% remotely or I will find another job. I am grateful my employer let me stay on. I presented it nicely, but it was an ultimatum. My approach was to express (honestly) that I wanted to stay with the company, but the opportunity of living in a state closer to my friends and with a calmer pace of life was too much to pass up. In my case I bought a house for $150k and will be paying much lower property taxes than I did in NJ. This move and 100% remote has been a major win across all dimensions for me.
• swader999 5y ago
  The environmental benefits are massive. For all the press the climate gets you'd think we'd hear this angle more. Perhaps even incentives for employers.
  • podgib 5y ago
    This is very place-dependent. In california where everybody is driving to work, you're probably right. But in many European cities where people would take public transport to work, and instead are heating entire homes all day instead of heating one office for hundreds of staff, the environmental effect of WFH is probably negative.
    • thehappypm 5y ago
      Ditto this. This summer I'm going to need to run my air conditioning basically 24/7.
• flippinburgers 5y ago
  I deeply dislike going into work. - You have to look a certain way. - You have no opportunity to break up your schedule. - You have to pretend to enjoy being around people. - You have to commute (much too far). - You cannot leave before a specified time. - You cannot arrive after a specified time. - You cannot open the windows. - You cannot change the room temperature. ... etc, etc, etc. The list goes on forever.
  • recursive 5y ago
    Different work places are different. At mine, all of those are wrong, except "You cannot change the room temperature". Fortunately, it's already good at mine. Also, I guess technically I have to "look a certain way", like have clothes on. But I'm going to look that way anyway.
  • fernandotakai 5y ago
    >- You cannot leave before a specified time. >- You cannot arrive after a specified time. this is what gets me. i already finished my stuff for the day, i want to go home to do something -- nope, can't. you have to stay until you clock in 8h. need to arrive later? sucks to be you, you have to clock 8h no matter what, so now you are staying at the office until late hours. WFH means i can just finish work and relax. if anyone needs me, they can ping me on slack, send me an email, or even call me.
  • evocatus 5y ago
    You still have to look a certain way - even more so on camera. Speaking from experience.
    • flippinburgers 5y ago
      Nobody at my current workplace uses their camera.
  • granshaw 5y ago
    I’ve worked for a few remote places, including one which was remote-first before it was cool, and I don’t think the schedule flexibility part rings true Everyone was expected to be available 9-5ish for potential collaboration/questions purposes, and you had to inform the team if you’re gonna be afk for anything longer than 30minsish Some teams even had a norm of leaving a “signing off for the day” note and a “getting lunch” note If there are remote companies out there who truly let you be flexible with your schedule, I’d love to know about them
• wjossey 5y ago
  I worked from home prior to the pandemic, then joined a company right at the start. I’m a “remote vet” having been doing this for five years, so I’ve been doing my best to help folks adapt (because it does take adaptation). Ironically, today is our first day where the office here in LA is generally open, so I’m driving in at some point for the celebrations. Because I’m going in, I’m going to miss my son’s nighttime routine (which I’ve missed maybe 7 times in his 18 months). The life choice of being able to be there for the development of my son is one that many fathers here in LA do not get to make. The commute alone would be coming 100% out of my time with him. And, with that, I’ve gotta jet. Time to go run around and then go on our hour walk around the neighborhood. Remote may not be the best for everyone, but it’s certainly a wonderful addition to my life.
• leet_thow 5y ago
  Honestly, I wouldn't feel safe taking the BART to SF 5 days a week. I'm referring to crime, not the pandemi .
• swader999 5y ago
  The only thing that would get me back in the office is a 4 day work week, full pay. That would be an equivalent trade imo.
• Oras 5y ago
  While working from home is fantastic for many, there are some real issues coming up due to WFH: - From my observations, people with commitments (family, partners, pets .. etc.) prefer to work from home while single people prefer to go to the office. This will create a noticeable gap between the two groups. - While working from home can be productive for med to senior-level employees, I suppose it will be a nightmare for juniors and interns. They will have no one around to mentor them or at least to ask for immediate advice. When working from home (as pointed by others), we tend to get into deep focus on avoiding distractions from messaging tools. To clarify, when I start hiring, the work will be fully remote, but I just wanted to list observations from different perspectives.
  • cpitman 5y ago
    I think the second one is a massive issue. In an in-person world, mentoring and role-modeling happen all the time. Junior employees see what their seniors are doing, even when the seniors do not plan on being seen. In the remote work world, junior employees can only see their seniors at defined events. Lots of mentoring needs to move to explicit mentoring relationships, and people have to move from "showing the right behaviors" to "explaining the right behaviors". And that assumes the mentee/mentor even know what behaviors they need to focus on! In person, you just get to see everything.
  • johannes1234321 5y ago
    > From my observations, people with commitments (family, partners, pets .. etc.) prefer to work from home while single people prefer to go to the office. I also have seen the opposite. Some folks with family want to work from office, so that kids can play loud without interrupting and when coming home it's clearly family time. And I living alone like the flexibility. Got a new partner? - I work from their place. Want to visit some friends/family in a different town? I work from there. Want to hang out with some friends? I work from their office. Very individual choices.
  • Taylor_OD 5y ago
    Facebook has started approving remote work but only for E5's and higher. I think that will limit the usefulness of having the more junior folks in the office but I guess it makes sense.
• tinyhouse 5y ago
  For me WFH is not the key but rather having the freedom and flexibility. I've been going to the office for the last few months, about 2-3 times a week. It's been great. First, I bike or walk to the office, so my commute is part of my weekly exercise. The office is empty, so I have all the freedom that I want. I can come and leave whenever I want. The benefit of the office is pretty significant for me - I'm not stuck at home all day, it's quiet unlike my home (my wife is WFH and my kids are sometimes around) so I can concentrate better, etc. I still like WFH at least twice a week, since I like mixing things up and it fits my schedule better on days that I have other activities during the day or early evening. Now, obviously my current situation is not going to last. Sooner or later others will come back to the office and it's not going to be that quiet anymore, my boss might be around, etc. However, I actually look forward to that. Going out for lunch with co-workers etc. I'm still planning to keep things as they are now. Coming and leaving whenever I want, mixing it between WFH and from the office. Meetings are going to continue to be fully remote anyway, since we have people all over the world. I see the office as a place people can come to have a quiet time, enjoy the office perks, and socialize. Different than what the office used to be pre-covid (at least at some places). Since we have a large office with many areas to connect your laptop and work, I'm not even planning to sit together with my team. The one thing I'm not looking forward to is rush hour. I'm really enjoying my commute these days, much more than pre-covid. I hope that things will never go back to pre-covid levels. (most likely given that WFH has become much more common)
• digbert 5y ago
  Personally, I'm the opposite. I have considered quitting as my company has been talking about remote work, but none of my team seem interested, so I'm sticking around for now. If a few people in my team went remote (or mostly remote), I'd probably quit.
• mancerayder 5y ago
  I like the option. Poor sleep, shitty weather, subway issues, or early meetings are all motivations for that day to be a WFH day.
• theshadowknows 5y ago
  I’ve been working outside on my deck the past few weeks and it’s been glorious. It’s a little cooler sometimes than I’d like but it’s not frigid (I live in Connecticut).
• jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
  Right now I'm working in my backyard on a nice day, listening to the birds chirp instead of keyboard clacking. One of the MASSIVE downsides of working in an office that I rarely hear mentioned is that you have to be inside during prime sunlight hours for basically all of the summer except weekends and when you're on vacation. We're all cooped up in a shed like factory farmed animals.
  • Idunn0 5y ago
    What is your setup for working outside in the sunshine?
    • jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
      A laptop on a patio table under a patio umbrella.
  • kaesar14 5y ago
    Well for those of us in dense urban areas, we don't have a backyard and you could really go on a walk whenever it damn well pleased you anyway
    • jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
      Yeah that's nowhere near the same as what I'm talking about.
    • greedo 5y ago
      When I was in the office, the only acceptable reasons to be away from your desk were: 1. Bathroom break. Better not take too many or it'll be noticed. 2. Coffee/smoke break outside. Not much scrutiny of this, but I do neither. 3. Exercise break where people walk around the campus for a bit. Not too fun to do in the middle of either a hot or ice-cold midwestern day. Anything else was viewed with a jaundiced eye.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• mdorazio 5y ago
  PSA: The average commute for Americans is about 27 minutes each way [1]. If your commute is 2 hours, you're an outlier. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/650061560/stuck-in-traffic-youre-not-alone-new-data-show-american-commute-times-are-longer https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/650061560/stuck-in-traffic-yo...
  • cableshaft 5y ago
    Lots of people both live and work in small towns or cities. As someone who lived in a city of about 100k population, my commute to anywhere in the city was no more than twenty minutes on a bad day, usually fifteen. Lots of people both live and work from within big cities reasonably close to their job. For those people, their commute is likely less than 30 minutes. For people who are outside of big cities and have to commute in, or live in one city and commute to another, they will have longer than 30 minute commutes, almost certainly. That applies to most people who live in the suburbs. Also note this quote from your article: "Speeds over the five or six years that Uber and others have been in existence have dropped from a very slow 6.5 mph to 4.7 mph," Schwartz says about New York City. 4.7 miles per hour. So that suggests that if your home is as close as 5 miles away from the city, it could take you an hour just to drive into the city during rush hour.
• JansjoFromIkea 5y ago
  What are these employers offering as a concession? I'd do 4 day weeks in the office; I'd definitely do 3 days in the office and one at home and I'd take a 10% pay cut to be allowed it with basically no difference to my productivity. If you're offering nothing and simultaneously aren't able to give clear reasons why working remotely isn't a valid option I don't see what you can expect other than people quitting.
  • biztos 5y ago
    Why would you take less money for the same work output?
    • JansjoFromIkea 5y ago
      It's a hypothetical scenario with two options that conceivably could be seen as a fair trade-off by the employer. I'd take less money because I dont really care about how productive I am on aggregate, I just care about how much time I have where I am completely free to not be productive. I think the example I gave is a touch extreme though; 5% deduction for alternating 4 day weeks remote and in the office.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  Here, we’ve scheduled a high five session with your fellow employees, please come in for it.
• woeirua 5y ago
  I was a strong proponent of WFH for years. I fought tooth and nail for more flexible policies at my previous employers. After having done it now for over a year full-time, I'm done. I don't want to WFH full-time anymore. Part of it is that I'm at a different point in my life: I have kids now so having some physical separation between home and work is almost required. the other reason is that its so hard to integrate with a company when you're fully remote. I've never felt more like a cog in the machine than this last year. Ultimately, some companies will move to completely remote work. Most will go back to at least a hybrid in-person model. For the latter, I suspect that most WFH employees will eventually go back to the office once they realize that they're second class employees and that they're effectively frozen out of the traditional career progression model by being remote.
  • mtberatwork 5y ago
    > Ultimately, some companies will move to completely remote work. Most will go back to at least a hybrid in-person model. For the latter, I suspect that most WFH employees will eventually go back to the office once they realize that they're second class employees and that they're effectively frozen out of the traditional career progression model by being remote. I disagree. This is a problem if the majority of workers are in the office full time and only a small group are remote. If the office is entirely WFH or hybrid, then everyone is a remote worker. Also, the traditional career model has been changing drastically even before the pandemic. These days workers need to move horizontally, across companies, to achieve any kind of progression in their careers. The vertical move up the corporate ladder is becoming a relic. Mind you, I'm not saying that is good or bad, just commenting on the current situation.
• pawelduda 5y ago
  It's a shame global pandemy had to happen for companies to realize that employeee don't have to be at a particular place at a particular time to do a good job. Never say never, but I never want to go back to office job :)
• motohagiography 5y ago
  This idea that voice/video ostensibly reduces empathy may not be all bad. It's easier to set personal boundaries when the poorly equipped project or engineering manager on the other side of a voice or video bridge can't escalate with implied threats or histrionics. Cajoling and haranguing people to work for its own sake is not management, and the tech sets a boundary on a lot of that behavior. I'd argue the human contact in offices is rarely used to foster healthy long term relationships, and the improved mental health of remote employees appears to have a productivity benefit. Think of the anti-patterns that people use in offices because it works for them, and how those anti-patterns don't work anymore and they must find better tools. I can see how it's hard for superfluous managers who must compete to extract value from the same set of resources, but for a well aligned organization, remote is a potential renaissance.
• pearjuice 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm never going back and if they want me to go back I will quit too. This is the new normal and productivity has shown that there is zero necessity for people to come to an office. It's all perfectly viable to WFH. - stress free working if I actually want to get stuff done - no open office or any obnoxious sounds just me in my room and I can make whatever sounds I want - don't have to pretend to work hard, just get stufff done and don't be a slacker and I can literally be productive 1/2 days and relax/be async 2/3 days because I can focus very well. No complaints whatsoever from stakeholders or the business. - not being hyper alert of how I look or what I wear, just my top needs to look presentable when in an meeting with camera on and can wear sweatpants and no shoes or whatever is comfortable without dress code - can fix the temperature to the exact degree I want it - no social interactions whatsoever. no "get togethers", Friday drinks with people I don't like, barely any casual conversation just straight to the point business and that's it - no morning talk or "how was your weekend" NPC tier conversations for the sake of conversing just a daily stand-up (we actually sit) hyper-focused on work and that's it - eat whenever i want whatever i want no more sandwiches in a box or overpriced canteen food, bake french eggs for lunch or make a soup. Fitness during a break. Take a walk whilst being in a "meeting" - no commute whatsoever, can practically roll out of bed into my chair if i wanted to - not ONE colleague seen at the coffee machine or when getting water no SMALL TALK OR STARING of colleagues begging for me to say hi and them to ramble about their kids or whatever uninspiring thing they did in the weekend. I have friends and colleagues. I don't want to socialize with these colleagues, I wouldn't even think about small talking with them in a bar why force it in an office? And best of all no SJW office politics whatsoever. All of that seem to have disappeared with WFH. Just get stuff done, get paid and that's it. I'm never going back to the or any office.
• jlos 5y ago
  Commute time is one of the biggest factors on your quality of life. Increasing your commute time has been to shown to: - decrease your number of friends - increase your likelihood of divorce - increase your over all mortality And then with kids the reality is you have this 3-4 hour window when you can see them each day. Not to mention the struggles for shared and single parenting. The curtain has been pulled back and it's going to be a lot harder to justify the kind of rigidity that existed before the pandemic.
• kraig911 5y ago
  I hope things continue to change. Pre pandemic I feel all my labor was rewarded on the results and not effort. I felt that for myself too. Long commutes and messy house and difficult family relationships. I think a lot of people are finally seeing the relative effort sometimes far out-weights the results/cost.
• rodolphoarruda 5y ago
  I stopped working at the office in 2006. Since 2018 I've been working at stakeholder's location, which can be the prospect, customer, partner or event. The key aspect I miss the most from my office days is networking, or the capacity to build and maintain a consistent network of contacts. Maybe because I'm latin working in Latin America. We are high touch by definition. But I really feel that remote work damaged my capacity to keep my network of contacts. Now I see myself with the mission to find a new job, and I'm not sure my current network will be enough help.
• chad_strategic 5y ago
  Aside from the debate of WFH / work at the office, culture, water cooler etc. Environmentalist should up in arms about return to the office. 2 hour commutes are terrible for the environment. 2 hours of an idling car not moving at it's true potential. (I understand that when the car is idling or stuck in slow traffic it is burning the most fossil fuels.) I'm not saying that WFH is going to solve our environmental problems, but taking a few cars off the morning commute surely can't hurt. It also takes money away from big oil and our criminal frenemy, MBS in.
• Simulacra 5y ago
  To play devil's advocate for a moment, is it possible people are becoming spoiled or too coddled by work? I've always been of the presumption that market forces will align workers with jobs, but it's clear in places where there is little to no choice (i.e. the small towns Amazon puts their warehouses) theory doesn't exactly work out in reality. That's led me to change my thinking a bit, but I'm having trouble getting over the notion that it's a job, and if you want a job, you work, if you don't want to work at a particular place, you go work somewhere else. I bristle at the notion that employees should, could, or can bend a company to their preference. It just seems we've gone from free lunch and massages to employees dictating business decisions. I'm not sure if that shift in power is wise.
  • jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
    They aren't actually dictating anything though. Employers are still in charge of their policies. These employees are just stating their terms and leaving if their terms aren't met. Companies can then choose their response. They can hire other workers who are willing to work in an office or they can cave to worker demands or some other compromise can be made. This is free society functioning how it's supposed to: free agents negotiating their terms and coming to mutually beneficial arrangements.
• efields 5y ago
  Office work never acknowledged how much labor was being done at home by unpaid workers — usually moms. Now we’ve had a couple generations of women in the workforce en masse, partners who have stepped up household responsibilities, longer commutes, and more being asked of all workers. The only time to get household crap done has been late after hours and the weekend, aka “leisure time.” It hasn’t been tenable for a while and now the pandemic showed us another way. This is an improvement. Offices mostly facilitate interruption, but also collaboration on a good day. So much of that can be done virtually. Half-day whiteboard sessions are great IRL, no reason why they can’t be scheduled a day in advance, or later in the day and give people time to get to a common area to do so. The office had its issues and the pandemic is forcing a reckoning of them. Great!
• dcolkitt 5y ago
  What I find really disconcerting is that the senior leaders in the tech industry have been talking for years about increasing gender inclusivity. Yet very few major tech companies seem to be wholeheartedly embracing full remote, despite it being by far the most effective way to encourage more women to join the industry. Research shows that women are 50% more likely to prefer full remote than men[1]. For better or worse, much more of the burden of childcare falls on mothers in our society.[2] Women are also much more likely to sacrifice their own careers to relocate for a spouse's career.[3] Along similar lines, that tends to mean women prefer careers with geographic flexibility.[4] Tech companies have spent the past decade sprouting platitudes about creating a more welcoming workplace for women. Now they actually have a real opportunity to make a difference. Transitioning to a remote first model would massively improve gender inclusivity. Yet, despite widespread employee satisfaction with remote, senior management in most places seem to be pushing back as hard as possible on outdated (and often sexist) notions that "people who hustle show up to the office". [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-01/americans-are-done-with-5-days-a-week-in-the-office-here-s-what-that-means-for-the-economy?srnd=premium https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-01/americans... [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4131769/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4131769/ [3]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/28/why-couples-move-for-a-mans-job-but-not-a-womans/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/28/why-c... [4]https://science.sciencemag.org/content/205/4412/1225.abstract https://science.sciencemag.org/content/205/4412/1225.abstrac...
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  Depends on what you want, I wanted to go beyond just from home, I wanted forever remote with good location flexibility. And after the old employer could not or would not accept the location part, I simply quit. I have found a forever remote in a FAANG and it is the best decision I have made in a long time.
• theknocker 5y ago
  I prefer an actual office. An open floor plan that’s designed so my boss can walk behind me twenty times a day is not an actual office.
• choeger 5y ago
  The only thing that nags me about homeoffice is that I was mostly working with people that I met in the office before. I do not know yet how interactions will work with people I only know remotely (pun intended).
• darthrupert 5y ago
  There's a trivial fix to all these problems: declare time spent commuting as billable work time. I'm amazed how this is not reality already, but the pandemic time should have made this obvious now.
  • intricatedetail 5y ago
    Not only commuting time, but time spent on dressing up and so on.
  • rebelos 5y ago
    It's also quite obvious that the net result of this will be companies preferring employees who live closer to work and bear a higher cost of housing.
    • thehappypm 5y ago
      Or, perversely, incentivizing long commutes -- incentivizing people to sit in traffic, creating more traffic, burning more carbon.
• momirlan 5y ago
  Wondering what is the corporate next step. Work from office can be enforced in a number of ways : lower pay for WFH comes to mind. I'm sure we'll see some devious schemes.
  • intricatedetail 5y ago
    Actually companies should pay more for use of worker's home as office.
• codezero 5y ago
  At my company it feels like it’s about 50/50. I expect this to be company and individual specific. Half my team will quit if they don’t get access to in office amenities and socialization.
• intricatedetail 5y ago
  The moment I get asked to come to office I am going to leave. I may agree to occassional meetings no more than twice a month.
• area51org 5y ago
  As someone who's now been in the workforce for decades: presence in an office is mostly a waste of time and money. In my experience, those who demand "facetime" do so because - it's part of a political power/control game - "this is the way we've always done it" - they buy into the myth that "magic" happens in hallways conversations and nowhere else There are plenty of large companies (and god knows how many startups and SMBs) who have recognized what a colossal waste it is to maintain permanent offices and mandatory facetime. It's time for the rest to stop pretending it's 1980.
• Zelphyr 5y ago
  ...there’s also the notion that some bosses, particularly those of a generation less familiar to remote work, are eager to regain tight control of their minions. “They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us,” she said. “It’s a boomer power-play.” I'm not an "OK Boomer" kinda person but this is spot on. However, I would add that it applies to the Boomer generation and older. I worked at a company a few years ago that was started by a man who was in his late 80's at the time. A good man, I should add, but he was all about "butts in seats" (he is also a former Marine). He didn't understand technology at all and was constantly at loggerheads with my boss about where her people were. She never could get across to him that just because he didn't see us didn't mean we weren't working. We took the department from barely breaking even to being the most profitable in the company in nine months, so, obviously we were doing something when our butts were in different seats. COVID accelerated remote working but I suspect it won't become fully embraced until the Boomer generation of managers and company leadership retire.
• jordache 5y ago
  Every company should just do hybrid. Setup hoteling space at the office, reduce office sq ft. Meet both mindsets in the middle. Easy peasy. I don't understand why this is not automatic for these companies.
• MrPatan 5y ago
  I'll let someone else reap the 15% extra productivity or w/e office working adds. Knock yourselves out. For me there's no turning back. The cat is out of the barn and the horse out of the bag. That ship has sailed and it hit the iceberg. The fat lady sang her swan song. Sorry, bums-in-seatsers.
• dfxm12 5y ago
  Employees are quitting because pay & benefits aren't good enough to deal with the alternatives otherwise. Maybe you can justify it when you're able to save time and money on your commute, day care, etc., and staying as safe from a global pandemic as possible. I'm not a fan of this framing by Bloomberg. It's not that the workers are quitting, it's that employers are failing to attract/retain workers.
• apozem 5y ago
  For me, remote work gives personal options. My wife got a job in a small Southern college town. It'll be great for her career, but there are zero, zero tech jobs there. Remote lets me grow my career while she grows hers.
• duxup 5y ago
  I wonder how much it equates to trust too. My employer trusts me to work from home, that's good. If they suddenly announced I had to come in because some disconnected management chain doesn't trust me to do the thing, or wants to make the policy because some managers can't handle it, or other employees can't handle it. That changes the relationship entirely, I'm just a widget, I'm way more likely to move on. It also impacts my family and that changes the dynamic as well. The employer might see it as a rudimentary policy, but to me it is a lot more.
• dbrueck 5y ago
  That's basically what I did 12 years ago: the benefits of working from home were too appealing, so I quit my job, started my own company, and have worked from home ever since (the only exception was a post-acquisition stretch where I had to go in occasionally, but after I paid my dues I quit and started another company). It might not be for everyone, but I absolutely love it. Of all the benefits, the biggest is time - it's a precious resource, and for me at least, working in an office wastes way too much of it (commute, tons of meetings, etc.).
• xwdv 5y ago
  Forcing someone to be at an office is like saying "Hey can you work an extra two hours everyday for free?" Time spent commuting is work. Getting dressed for work is work. If you want to keep people working in the office you need to pay more. At least 2 hours per day more.
• alasdair_ 5y ago
  I’m dreading my commute to Seattle once offices reopen. Over the last year and a half there have been a crazy number of new homes and apartments built all along the two-lane highway that comprises most of my route. Everything is workable now because people are still at home but as soon as the offices reopen it will be atrocious. This is especially true once the weather turns shitty - snow can easily make a 1.5 hour commute take 3.5 hours even excluding the new homes.
• supergeek133 5y ago
  I still don't like the polarization of this issue "either everyone has to allow full time WFH or I quit!". I prefer working at the office given the choice, it allows me to see some of my co-workers and helps me with balance. I get distracted at home. Also things that happen organically at the office like lunch together and happy hours are nice to have. At the same time, I have a VERY short commute compared to most, I can imagine I would feel differently if I lived 30 minutes+ away from the office. My company has announced we will do "3 days minimum" in the office once things are "normal", this made a lot of people upset in our company with good reason. I think we should be more flexible, but I still appreciate the option.
  • Ocerge 5y ago
    I feel like the pandemic has given rise to a winners vs losers mentality with respect to WFH. For the longest time, people who prefer to work in office were the winners, and now it's the people who prefer WFH. In reality everybody is different and wants different things out of the work aspect of their life. I have been in an awful place mentally due to WFH; I can't stand not separating work from life, I'm more social than the average dev so I enjoy being around people, I get easily distracted at home, etc. I don't know why compromise is not more common in online spaces. Reads like 90% of introverts running a victory lap.
    • supergeek133 5y ago
      Yeah this is what I'm getting at, I've started referring to it as "I live at work now".
  • paxys 5y ago
    How is it polarization? I want to work from home full time, my employer stops allowing it, so I find a new job. Especially in the software industry where there's an unlimited number of remote/wfh jobs there's no point in needlessly compromising for your employer's sake.
    • supergeek133 5y ago
• JustSomeNobody 5y ago
  Some people are energized by other people. Some people are drained by other people. The workplace shouldn't discriminate against either group.
• dghughes 5y ago
  If you are IT-literate it's OK. People stress if they are not IT-literate, a failed router or no Internet is very stressful for people who have no clue how it works. I've never worked from home until recently and now I find it very isolating. I feel like a device a tool not a person who has coworker friends I only interact via emojis towards usernames. There's no flow to the day it's quite compartmentalized. Sure the commute short which is great but my small home has lost a good part of space what was formerly not an office. I like the separation of work from home even if it involves a commute. It's great sometimes but not all the time.
• juloo 5y ago
  For me, the main benefit is I can choose where I live. There is not many developer positions available outside of big cities, with WFH I get to choose both where and for which company I work. Living in a big city was a bad experience for me, I would quit my job immediately if I were asked to give up WFH. Commute time, expense and risks are other benefits but others are talking about it already.
• ajuc 5y ago
  We build 2 buildings for each person - 1 to live in and other to work in. And then we build roads between them and parking spaces near them. And then we pay these people to use all that infrastructure and waste their precious time doing it, instead of just using their computer and internet connection (which they already use anyway) for 1 more thing. It's so inefficient it boggles my mind we're still doing it.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• wdhilliard 5y ago
  Working from home has been nice, but I have enjoyed the freedom of flexible working. I am not surprised by the overwhelming amount of people who never want to return to the office again. As someone who was often in charge of organizing team and social events pre-pandemic, I have been aware of the amount of people who think of social time as an unwanted obligation vs fun. Still, not everything about working from home is better. Here are a few thoughts of my own: - My commute is only 15 minutes. Despite environmental impact, which I can appreciate, I enjoy my 15 min in the car - drinking coffee, thinking about my day. I wouldn't call it meditation, but it's close. If your commute is 2 hours a day, good riddance. You probably should have been considered a remote worker all along. - I truly enjoy interacting with my coworkers. I am a single, mid-30s guy who likes to socialize. It's a nice break and gives me reason to get up from my desk. There are lots of studies on how short breaks impact productivity and mental wellness. I was acutely aware of my declining social skills as I worked from home. I became easily agitated and curt with people. If you consider all forms of casual communication as "small talk", consider that you might be more about the effort you're willing to put into people vs. how innately boring everyone else is. - Scheduling online meetings and Zoom calls IS a pain in the ass. Everything revolves around a calendar of 30min blocks. 5min convo? 30 minutes. I also can't help but get the feeling that many of my coworkers are not actually engaged on calls. If you're colleagues are honest, you have most likely heard them say at least once "sorry can you repeat that. I was distracted". Many issues simply don't get addressed because it's not an appropriate text chat, but it doesn't seem big enough to put on someones calendar. - I am arguably less productive at the office, but my days feel shorter. - I never really wanted my home to be a working environment. This is probably my biggest issue with working from home. My office is an office. My living room is an office. My kitchen table is an office. It feels really nice to come home and have it feel like a home. Not to mention the privilege of even having space for a real office vs having to work from my bedroom like many people do. - There are introverts and extroverts, but being anti-social is not a positive thing. If you believe in mental health, this is not an argument. There ARE plenty of ways to be social online, but many people are bad at it. The ability to be a passive aggressive asshole seems to increase when you know the only way for someone to talk to you about it is over text. - I worry about the impact remote work has on employee appreciation/value. Workers seem more like a commodity. I think this is easier for someone to understand if they have ever worked on a team with distributed contractors. This isn't
• rexreed 5y ago
  For knowledge workers, Work From Home should be the assumed starting point, with offices provided for those who would rather not or can't, rather than the reverse. For service providers and retail folks, obviously this is not as much of an option.
• stakkur 5y ago
  My last year commuting (2019), I calculated my commute and related prep/travel time: 612 hours. Six hundred and twelve hours. Almost a solid month. So, I worked my way into 100% remote, and I make it clear often that it's mandatory for me. There's no going back. If I'm forced to, I'll quit.
• harveynick 5y ago
  Good for them, and good for everyone else here who's happy about the switch to remote working. That said: I think I'd almost rather quit than "work from home" indefinitely. For me I'm not "working from home", I'm "living at the office". I deeply resent that my work has taken over a part of my home. For the record: I love my job. I also really miss working from the same physical space as my colleagues. Meetings which I used to enjoy are now awkward and draining. Lastly: I even miss my commute home in the evening (not so much my morning commute, to be fair). It used to give my 30 minutes in which to decompress and switch my brain out of work mode.
  • evocatus 5y ago
    Fully agreed. I didn't endure over a decade of an abusive household and even a few months of homelessness just so my employer could close down its offices and forcibly relocate them into my living room. I was absolutely fucking livid. Can't a man just be left alone in his own home any more? It seems that I am in the minority here.
    • greedo 5y ago
      At least you had a job that allowed you to WFH. Imagine being in the restaurant biz where you were just shut down...
      • evocatus 5y ago
        Yes, and at least you were not a starving orphan in $COUNTRY.
  • lowbloodsugar 5y ago
    I hope we can find a solution where people can choose to work at an office or from home. I expect that the compromises necessary will be difficult. For some, like yourself, meetings were a source of pleasure and are now draining. For others, meetings were a place for dominating (usually male) colleagues to enact competence dramas, often at the expense of more competent but quieter ones. I know some people who already head to the office, but prefer that the meetings are still virtual. For many people getting to the office really is just about having a physical space to work outside the home. So there are a lot of factors. In the end, the market will decide.
• Sanguinaire 5y ago
  I'm fortunate that I worked from home by default anyway, so all I've lost over the pandemic is the chance for occasional trips to the office for a catch-up with (also generally remote) colleagues. Reading the comments here, I worry how much the WFH newcomers will have their goals of continuing dashed by the crab mentality of those who want to go back to an office.
• jes5199 5y ago
  I spent three years working from home in the pre-pandemic era, at GitHub - the king of remote culture at the time - and I was desperate to have an office again. I can code fine at home (better, actually, with more privacy to focus), but I can’t do the meta-stuff nearly as well. It’s the soft-skills that suffer. I think my pandemic-era company failed (we got acquired but, it was a failing-up situation) because we lost the ability to have course-correcting conversations outside of formal meetings. Which is to say: we just weren’t as smart, as a group. We should have done a daring pivot, but there was no way to discuss it (zoom+figma “brainstorming” sessions were completely useless) I think my ideal would be to have somewhere that we met in person semi-regularly, maybe optionally, like a study hall environment, where we could pair or whiteboard or just chat. I don’t want to go back to being crammed into an open-office with too many people, that is just awful for coding. and Slack is like being in an open-office 24 hours a day; I hope my next gig doesn’t use it.
• nomy99 5y ago
  I'll never work from home. I'll go so far to say that I'd only work for companies that require you to come in. My experience WFH has been abysmal.
• lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  Corporations have missed that we employees are actually customers. We trade services in exchange for cash. We can easily take our business elsewhere. It's no surprise that the business leaders focus on "culture". "Oh, they have to be here four days per week or we don't have culture". Not effectiveness. Not satisfaction. "Culture". And by "culture" they mean "kissing ass" and maintaining their lordships feudal demesne. They make noises about "bums in seats" being necessary for productivity, yet they either don't have measures in place to measure productivity, or conveniently forget them, since the data shows that productivity is the same or better when an employee is allowed to choose where to work. Then there was that article about how junior employees wont be able to learn from senior employees, which is arse. If anything it's easier to work together remotely. Bonus, nobody putting their hands on a junior as they lean in "to get a better look at your work". But in any case, junior employees aren't going to learn from senior employees if the senior employees arent there.
• wdb 5y ago
  It's hard not to like WFH when you can save thousands of dollars per month on food, drinks, and travel.
• api 5y ago
  Amazing news! This has the potential to kill the hideous "you have to be in one of five cities to have a career" insanity that has been a major factor in decimating the middle class. It's created a dichotomy of "no jobs, unaffordable housing, pick one."
• Grimm1 5y ago
  WFH is great for > 30 yo, and those with money/space and worse for people just starting out or who live in a studio. I'm young (26), but successful by financial standards and before the pandemic my apartment was just the place I slept so I had a studio and I liked it that way. Working, sleeping, eating and socializing from my 800 sqft studio is frankly maddening. I feel like I'm always on call and connected where before my apartment was the place I decompressed and escaped. It's lost its sanctity and I want it back.
  • JakeTheAndroid 5y ago
    I am not sure where you live, but I would expect that WHF allows those under 30 a similar financial relief to those above. For you to be forced to live in an 800 sqft place working in tech, I would assume you live in one of the larger metropolitan areas. WFH should allow you to move further away and capture more space for your dollar, even if you don't end up owning the property like those over 30 might. At the start of the pandemic I lived in a house full of people working at tech startups in Oakland. So I understand having no space as I worked/lived from my tiny room. But, I was able to leave the bay area, as were my roommates and now we all have our own places (some rent some own) because the same rent in Oakland was able to afford private spaces in other parts of CA. So I empathize with your position. I recommend trying to move out of the locale that only allows you to afford an 800 sqft studio. Even the shittiest tech jobs in the Bay would allow for you to have your own 2 bedroom apt in other parts of CA. This is how you take advantage of the WFH opportunity as a younger person.
    • Grimm1 5y ago
      You may have misunderstood me, I could definitely afford a bigger space. I didn't/don't want one. I purposely chose my 800 sqft studio because I hadn't signed up to be entombed in it. I was never home by choice in the before times and I don't want to change that. I want to go back to getting home at 10pm sleeping after work, socializing, going to meetups or whatever and then leaving at 8:30am the next day. The extra space would be wasted in that case. Plus saving 35%+ of my paycheck was/is great. I only spent time in my apartment later at night and sometimes on the weekends. Moving away from the city won't help me there. I imagine it'd actually be worse.
• failwhaleshark 5y ago
  I heard FB is most likely doing-away with WfH and going back to ass-in-seat mentality (AiSM).
• msarrel 5y ago
  Did anyone else notice that they quote hate speech from this worker who won't return to the office? I have to wonder why we have a quote in there ridiculing someone because of their age. Would it have been okay if she had said that this person she worked for was stupid because of their race or gender? Why is it okay that the person she works for is stupid because of his age?
• 01100011 5y ago
  If society accepts global warming is happening and climate change is a threat, commuting is going to be severely limited in the future. If we don't kill the commute, we're going to kill suburbs(and we may do that either way). Once you accept AGW, you have to commit to seriously reducing energy expenditures until the planet is 100% renewable and we've maxed out our carbon capture mechanisms. Commuting takes energy. Even in an urban environment. Arguments about the positives and negatives of WFH, which have been discussed in many popular threads on HN ad nauseum, are really secondary. Incentives to reduce energy usage will eliminate commutes and reshape society. Covid helped kickstart the transformation but it would have happened eventually anyway.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    You might combine the two, with "WFH" in shared workspaces in suburban environments, that would seem to be the "all of the above" option if it becomes popular and there is sufficient shared workspace availability.
• latenightcoding 5y ago
  There are certain jobs that are very easy to outsource yet companies pay a premium to hire locals. I feel quitting instead of going back to the office will backfire for many. I'm not necessarily talking about tech jobs, which led the way in WFH positions even before the pandemic.
• CloudyWeather 5y ago
  Won't workers prefer a forward-thinking, agile workplace versus being stuck in high traffic and/or high cost areas?
• zerop 5y ago
  Another advantage on wfh I see is that there is a less impact from the "visuals".. for example what you are wearing, what is your body language, how much attention others pay you during a meeting and all that nuance that could distract.. now in wfh, when you talk to someone over zoom, your whole attention is on the voice and contents, so the visual distractions has become less... I also see junior engineers who were getting intimidated in the meeting are able to verbally contribute more... Though both the things I mentioned have their own downsides..
  • asdff 5y ago
    I think its kinda a disadvantage to lose body language. You could have a presentation and have no clue how well anyone understood anything, since everyone's camera is off. During a normal talk you can see when their eyes glaze over and you lose the room.
• anonu 5y ago
  The answer, like most things in life, is in the middle. That's why the "hybrid model" has been talked about recently as the world opens up. Reading lots of comments here and it's clear there are two camps. Which is great. There will be a big realignment of people switching jobs to go remote and moving to cities to get to work with a cool in person team. But there's also the middle of the road hybrid model where you can still be remote but there will be offsites every month or every quarter.
  • greedo 5y ago
    That's not really a hybrid from what I've read. A hybrid is where you work one or more days in the office every week. Your hybrid is much more appealing than the former to me.
• jurassic 5y ago
  Give me a private office with a door that closes and pay me enough to live a 5 minute walk from the office without compromises to other aspects of my lifestyle, and I might consider coming back to the office. Until then, I'll see you on Zoom. Anecdotally, the dichotomy I'm observing at my company is young/single/apartment-dweller people want to get back to the office because they don't have enough space at home to make it a nice experience. Many I know in this category are also eager to get back to screwing around at the water cooler. Meanwhile, the older, family-oriented people who own or rent a home in the suburbs want to WFH forever because that social dynamic isn't worth the hassle of the trek in for them.
  • frockington1 5y ago
    Unrelated, but why would someone rent a house in the suburbs? Renting an apartment as a young person seems logical as you save for a down payment. Is it mainly people who can't afford a house or is there something else driving it?
    • jurassic 5y ago
      Rent vs buy is a complicated question, but I'm sure there are those who would prefer to keep their money invested rather than tie it up in the downpayment on a home. Especially if they think they might only be in that location for a few years. I'm thinking of military families who move every few years, or perhaps someone who is an academic and has to be nomadic in following fellowship and professorship opportunities.
• hinkley 5y ago
  Effectively we all got a raise by being sent home. I know some companies have exploded during the quarantine, but not everyone has been so lucky. For myself it's the last big raise I've gotten in some time, and I expect I'm far from the only person for whom that's true. Going back to work for these people is going to reduce their effective salary back to what it was 15 months ago.
• jl2718 5y ago
  I used to like the office. It was fun. My friends were there. I got help when I needed it. We talked about things informally. My desktop PC and Internet was top-notch, and I didn’t have a laptop or mobile. They had a great gym. I worked at work, and did other things at home. Now I haul my laptop from home to my cubicle to fight over the phone booths for endless remote meetings. I don’t work with and have never spoken to my neighbors. My work goes home with me. Working from home isn’t better, but the office is worse.
• musicale 5y ago
  > They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us Management has been reduced to counting butts in chairs.
• CSDude 5y ago
  I'm going to start my own startup with a friend. We've been planning this for a long while. We will work together in a small office, but I'm not sure how We can build a team fully remote, with no experience. I'm all for flexibility etc. but when things are not in an order, just starting remote feels very heavy and risky for me. Any pointers would be appreciated.
• greedo 5y ago
  I don't see a hybrid model working well at all. The scenarios that have been thrown around at my company are like these: 1. Everyone comes back to the office (extremely unpopular) 2. Everyone continues to WFH (gives management the hives) 3. Some teams WFH full-time, while others go BTTO). 4. A hybrid schedule where you come into the office once a week, and WFH the remainder. I don't see how these can work. BTTO is going to cause huge issues, the cat is out of the bag. And if some teams get to WFH, but others don't then that will cause turmoil as well. A hybrid schedule seems to be the worst option actually. Say that everyone has to come in on Mondays for team meetings. Then Tue-Friday, the office is a ghost town. If you're required to come in one day a week (but you can choose), then the odds are the most of the office will be empty, and that's a waste of company resources in having an office sized for pre-COVID times. If a hybrid BTTO plan is for F2F with mgmt, then it'll need to be mandatory, on the same day. Otherwise my poor manager has to be in the office 5 days a week. Eventually, mgmt will just require everyone to come BTTO. Changes like what COVID caused aren't bells you can unring. It's like having women work in factories during WW2. Sure when the troops return home, things seem to go back to "normal", but that's just delaying the change. Remote work is here to stay, and the companies that embrace it will have a leg up. All the friction that we experienced in the las year will diminish over time with faster/better Internet, with workflows and communication tools that are better suited to WFH.
• clarge1120 5y ago
  I've been WFH since '07, only occasionally returning to the office for short periods of time. There is absolutely no pressure on me to return to an office. I was surprised that the first question was: "Will I have to be vaccinated or show proof thereof?" Why is that? I thought there was very little hesitation. Was it the sample the author chose?
• sizzle 5y ago
  Employers need to compensate us for the extra wear and tear on our homes, our office furniture/accommodations, and prorated utilities consumed on company time. In return, companies can afford massive savings from a reduced physical footprint and smaller commercial real estate leasing + massive facilities upkeep and utilities cost savings.
• prirun 5y ago
  I worked in mostly from home as a contractor (my own company) for Ford, IBM, and Silicon Graphics in the early 90's using a 9600 bps modem(!), then co-founded a web company in '98 and worked from home for 7 years, then retired early. We used 128K bps ISDN connections in the early years, and it was fine. Got a ton of stuff done from home. So anyone who thinks it can't work now, with the kinds of Internet speeds available, just doesn't want it to work. I never understood how people could handle long commutes, plus all the wasted time and money for work clothes, to sit in front of a computer in a building instead of home.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  WFH makes some things slower, but do we really need to go as fast as we did? If most of the gains of going fast go to capital holders, who cares if they make $900,000,000 this year instead of $1,000,000,000?