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I work for another company that is going to do a partial return to office. I will be looking at options for companies that offer full in person office (or 90%

• coldtea 5y ago
  >I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. Compared to commuting (car+gas) and time-to-commute opportunity costs (to use for personal house tasks, side projects, self health)? I seriously doubt it.
  • d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago
    Agreed. The above reads like dated marketing from dinasour companies trying to convince people that office life is amazing. “Imagine the hallway conversations that could start the next…” it will make up for your 2 hour commute and 3000 one bedroom apartment!
  • jackbravo 5y ago
    I agree with most of the parent comments. Commuting costs can be reduced, I biked to work when possible, and it was not possible when my kids were at school, which will be the same once things settle down. So it was the same cost with or without remote work.
  • hwbehrens 5y ago
    I'm obviously an outlier, but I live an 8 minute (peaceful) bike ride from work. I hate commuting, so I optimized for that for this job, and working from home last year was absolutely a net negative for me. Distracting kids, poor work-life balance, more expensive (AC, food, water, etc). I think the lesson here is, some companies can be remote-first, some companies can be in-person, and different employees will prefer different environments based on what's going on in their lives and the choices they make. It should not be the case that one "tribe" should try to impose their preference on the other, which was the case pre-COVID (e.g. almost everyone was forced to be in-person), and I suspect fear of a return to that status quo is what is driving a lot of these discussions.
    • BrissyCoder 5y ago
      I don't understand how so many people in this thread are saying they spend more on food while working from home. How is this possible? Does it vary by country? In Australia at least it is orders of magnitude less expensive to prepare food at home purchased from a supermarket than it is to buy food whilst out an about. Or are these people working for companies that provide food or something. I just don't get it.
      • ModernMech 5y ago
        > Or are these people working for companies that provide food or something. It's this. Companies started offering food to keep their employees in the office longer. That people here are saying they prefer eating at work due to the cost shows it worked.
        • bredren 5y ago
          It isn't just that they prefer eating at work due to cost. Work provides prepared food. Preparing food means getting ingredients, tracking expiration and making and storing leftover food. In some ways this is wonderful, in others it is a huge time and energy sink compared to eating at work. Spoiled food wastes more than money and it happens easily. You can buy prepared food for home via takeout or frozen but those have their own problems.
  • aikinai 5y ago
    Why does everyone here just assume that everyone’s commute is as bad as theirs? There are many people in the current working generation that avoided the soul-sucking suburban commute from the start.
    • coldtea 5y ago
      >Why does everyone here just assume that everyone’s commute is as bad as theirs? Because statistically it would be representative. Also because even if the office is next door, you need to get dressed properly, prepare, etc., which eats at least half hour every morning.
      • KptMarchewa 5y ago
        I just hope you shover despite working from home.
        • coldtea 5y ago
          WFH I can shower whenever I want, not necessarily in the morning -- as would be the case when I have a morning commute. And another key benefit is that, even for those who don't shower, nobody else is hurt...
      • gnulinux 5y ago
        You should get dressed properly and prepare even if you're working from home.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • Mountain_Skies 5y ago
          Our CISO made a deal with us that we'd wear collared shirts when we need to be on a video call but are free to wear whatever we want otherwise. I keep a polo shirt with the company logo in the closet of my home office for those occasions. Works well. Sometimes I wait until lunch to shower but if I have a video call in the morning, I'll be sure to shower so my hair looks presentable.
  • jayd16 5y ago
    I live close enough to bike to work. I'm sure I don't spend a meal's worth of gas but I guess I spend 20 mins a day. Its not that strange at all.
  • themacguffinman 5y ago
    Not everyone spends a significant amount of time commuting by personal car to the office. I see a lot of angst about hypothetically long 1-2hr commutes when the average commute in major tech cities is ~30 mins, and of course you can always control it by living closer to the office. Sure, not everyone is willing to make sacrifices for commute, which is one reason why it can be a competitive advantage.
    • newsclues 5y ago
      I commuted 1.5 hours each way, bike in summer and public transit in winter both took the same time. I loved biking but public transportation sucks. Why? Rent was triple what I was paying to be close, or double to cut the commute in half. And I had no job security.
      • themacguffinman 5y ago
        I'm sure you did but again, that is not an average case. You've evidently chosen a different trade-off.
        • newsclues 5y ago
          My point is that the economics of my salary and rent made the choice for me.
      • swader999 5y ago
        Ebike next time. Mod the motor. You can still pedal and sweat if you want.
        • colinmhayes 5y ago
          The exercise is a large part of what is enjoyable about bike commuting.
          • HPsquared 5y ago
  • Solvitieg 5y ago
    Ones support of WFH seems to depend almost entirely on their distance from the office. The other stuff is superfluous.
    • twobitshifter 5y ago
      I bought a house 5 minutes from my office but I still prefer work from home. I get to spend all day with my wife where I’m most comfortable. I think some see work as a vacation from home and others see home as a vacation from work. If employees are spoiled with many benefits in the office like gourmet lunches, famous speakers, entertainment, and free massages, It makes sense to prefer working at work when your office is a luxury spa - but most offices are not like that at all.
  • throwaway1777 5y ago
    Train ticket is $5 each way, that’s less than one meal.
  • Tiktaalik 5y ago
    The amount that people go on about how WFH is saving them from their commute... Really goes to show how badly so many cities are designed that these sort of massive commutes are an ordeal required by so many It'd be nice if an outcome of this pandemic is a political change toward ending absurd commutes by building cities better, but doesn't really seem like people are putting two and two together
    • mindflay 5y ago
      +1 to this concept. WhyTF are so many people commuting for so long in the first place? solve for this the rest follows
• ferdowsi 5y ago
  Since starting to work remote I've discovered the power of shutting down the work laptop (not sleeping) at a set time and not looking back. No Slack or work email on the phone. When I look back on hallway conversations, I can't think of many that really mattered. Actual important decisions are typically not made by IC engineers. Relevant conversations are usually inside team structures and not spontaneous.
  • eyelidlessness 5y ago
    > When I look back on hallway conversations, I can't think of many that really mattered. Actual important decisions are typically not made by IC engineers Not that I’m itching to get back in an office (I’ve been remote most of my career), but this really depends on the environment. I’ve seen some really pivotal changes happen simply because someone happened to yak about it, or overheard such a yak and jumped in. Usually these changes have been mostly technical in nature and under the purview of the engineers. But sometimes they’ve significantly changed product direction.
  • justapassenger 5y ago
    Depends on the company. In my case, all transforming ideas I had and were able to later push successfully were a result of hallway/lunch conversations with coworkers from other teams. It gave me ability to see a lot of problems through their eyes, that informed my decisions.
  • P_I_Staker 5y ago
    > Since starting to work remote I've discovered the power of shutting down the work laptop (not sleeping) at a set time and not looking back. No Slack or work email on the phone. What!?!? I don't necessarily agree with OP, but this is the exact opposite of my experience (mostly observing others). One of the main downsides of WFH is the "always on" nature of it. I usually left my laptop at work, and ignored my phone before (after all I'm not at work). Now you're always set up to work, so there's no reason you can't respond at 8PM. I don't, but many of my colleagues do. Most of my coworkers, especially the ones that would be leaving early for work life balance reasons, work all hours, and I get randomly pinged at 5:30-8 by people that would just be done for the day. They don't need to commute, so they have less pressure about working at odd times, and want to show managers the advantages of the WFH thing, so it won't go away.
• ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  > * I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. This is imho the worst part of WFH. Some people come to work at 6:00 and go home at 14:00, some come at 10:00 and leave at 18:00, and some even later. If you're in an office, the latecomer can just check the early birds office, "oh, you're here, can we ..." / "he's not here anymore, this will wait 'till tomorrow". With WFH it's constant emails and work calls, and for a lot of people it's hard to separate work/home, turn the work phone off (especially in small companies, where before the plague, if someone called you in the afternoon, it usually meant something horrible has happened). The second thing i'd miss is all the non-work activities that happen at work, from random chatter, to lunch, practical jokes, etc. Also when dealing with clients, the after-meeting-beer usually solved a lot of problems with a lot of one-on-one chats, and informal talks about rwhat the issues are,... this is hard to do on zoom/teams/..., especially if there is a higher-up present, and the engineers are afraid to honestly say what's bothering them during day-to-day work.
  • swiley 5y ago
    I guess I should be happy that I work at a company with people in the EU. If you get up early and stop replying to emails after 15:00-16:00 (when there isn't something scheduled going on) no one gets surprised.
    • ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      I work in EU too, but a lot of coders around here start at 10:00+.. especially in smaller companies.
      • swiley 5y ago
        I guess I wasn't clear, I work on the east coast of the US but having EU employees means people are used to some of their coworkers not being available all the time.
        • lozaning 5y ago
          I worked on a project for a big Korean company that required me to work onsite with a team in Dusseldorf. I happened to be there over Easter weekend and the project was behind. I inquired as to when we would meet up to keep working, and they told me the office would be closed, so naturally I asked what coffee shop/cafe/space or whatever we'd work at instead. The team there was shocked and maybe offended even, and I was informed it was verboten to work any of the next 3 days. Differences in work cultures globally are staggering.
• AdrianB1 5y ago
  It depends on specific situation: * I spend a lot more on gas than on the electricity delta * I spend a lot more on food and drinks when I am in the office than at home; in the office I buy, at home is all home cooked. The food at home is also a lot healthier. * the team I manage is spread in 2 other offices in different countries, nobody is in my country, so going to the office achieves nothing * the extended team I work in, also spread even more, only one person in the same office as me. We already talk too much, more is not better * spending 1-3 hours a day commuting (varies a lot if I ride the bike or drive the car, time of day and if it rains) never helped anyone * I am not distracted by home life, I am too busy for that * I am one of those very few people things are escalated to when the fan gets bent, so there is no much separation anyway But I recognize there are some benefits of being in the office, even if overall for me it is not a net positive.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  My enjoyment of remote work has varied heavily based on the company culture, the type of work, and even my own evolving life circumstances. Having gone back and forth between in-office and WFH and between IC and manager in both circumstances, I have no doubts that in-office work is more productive than WFH. The only exceptions are when the office environment is truly terrible. WFH is more productive than being in an office full of constant distractions, or an office with broken HVAC in 90-degree heat, or an office with a bully executive who enjoyed yelling at people. In those circumstances, WFH was simply a partial band-aid over a company that didn’t care enough about employees to treat them right. Eventually the interrupters learn how to ping you on Slack 20 times a day or the office bully realizes that they can terrorize people remotely at 9PM. WFH didn’t solve any problems, it just buffered them with distance. The real solution was to switch to a company that cared. That’s not to say that WFH can’t work. It can be made to work, but we need to be honest that it adds overhead and inefficiencies that must be compensated for. Given a choice between in-office and full remote, the same team will be more efficient in-person. Candidly, I suspect many employees feel the same way. However, it’s becoming taboo to question the superiority or WFH in online discussions because the WFH fans are very defensive about their preference.
  • tkojames 5y ago
    Very valid points. I went full remote 3 years ago and I really like it so far. Before had 25 min commute no traffic. I actually sometimes miss the time to just think by yourself. I took the wfh job because of the money and experience not for WFH. I think the key thing has been the entire company is remote all over the world. I think the hybrid model is just not going to work well. Either go all out WFH or not.
    • katbyte 5y ago
      I take walks if I want that time to think :)
  • insaneirish 5y ago
    > The only exceptions are when the office environment is truly terrible. Given that the trend is to open floor plans with limited personal space, I suspect that "truly terrible" is a fair--if not flat out generous--description of a lot of office space.
• BrissyCoder 5y ago
  > I often do/did paired programming, and over-the-shoulder code reviews. These are easier in person I’m sure I’m not the only person who has the exact opposite experience with this. I can’t think and get mentally blocked when I have someone peering over my shoulder or I’m staring at their screen. I find this kind of collaboration so much easier if I’m in the comfort of my own desktop setup, sharing the screen over Teams/Skype whatever and communicating verbally over a quality headset.
  • gnulinux 5y ago
    I think this has to do with seniority. When I was a lot more experienced than my coworker, doing pair programming was insanely fun. Because it felt like solving a puzzle with a friend, or exploring a video game with my sister. Now I'm occasionally pair programming with my manager -- who's like a 1000x me -- pair programming is mentally blocking. It's because my peer thinks so much faster than I do that it feels like I'm watching an action movie on 10x speed except every 3 minutes someone pauses the movie and asks questions. EDIT: To make myself clear, this is not a criticism of my boss, it's just that pair programming with someone who is a lot more experienced than you is just naturally intimidating.
    • scrose 5y ago
      I’ve been in both positions and know the feeling! Whenever I pair with someone now, I usually try and slow things down in the beginning and ask questions along the way to see if they follow me, even if I think what I’m doing is ‘simple’. No point in pairing if the other persons eyes are glazing over :)
      • eyelidlessness 5y ago
        This is great, and also good to encourage with people who are more junior. They might think they’ve explained the thing from their understanding but it’s trivial to omit details in that position too. I’m by no means junior but I’m new on a team, and I’ve had to remember over and over that the giant blob of the state of everything is unfamiliar to me, familiar to my team, and when I elide details I’m not saving anyone any time because I’m not sure whether those details are relevant or even if they might reveal where I’m off track.
• MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Yeah but you get the most bang for your buck out of rent. What's the point of renting in NYC or SF if your only there for like 2 hours.
  • bootlooped 5y ago
    People put up with small NYC (and I'm assuming SF) apartments because there is so much going on in the city you'll hardly be there. If you wanted to get the most bang for your buck out of rent you'd move to Dayton Ohio or some other place where the cost of living is ultra low (for the USA).
  • vineyardmike 5y ago
    People enjoy the cities?
• bsder 5y ago
  Mentoring junior folks is a really big one that really needs in-person attention. It disappoints me that everybody is ignoring this. Sure, work-from-home is nice for senior folks like me who have lots of influence and have nurtured their career over several decades. We can allocate resources and people listen to us by virtue of position. For junior folks, work from home is terrible for their career. Nothing substitutes for standing in front of a whiteboard and talking things out. You need social contacts to spread out in order to be safe when your company goes to shit. And, you probably share a house with multiple other folks and don't have much budget to buy things.
  • vineyardmike 5y ago
    So few people focus on junior employees! The junior employees on my team who onboard did in 2019 vs 2020 are much more than 1 year apart in terms of output and performance.
    • omegam 5y ago
      I think it's more dependent on your WFH practices. My current employer is fully remote (but always has been) and I think the junior engineers generally get up to speed with the senior engineers quickly.
• onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Is Apple forbidding people from coming into the office more than 3 days? AFAIK at Google, you can go everyday if you want.
  • square_usual 5y ago
    No - TFA mentions teams can come in all five days if they want to.
• crossroadsguy 5y ago
  > I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. This is single biggest reason I want to go back to office. In fact it already has started to feel weird that my home is my work place as well. Even if my work place remains fully remote I’ll find some other place to work from but never some place as shitty as WeWork. Maybe I will rent a cheaper smaller place nearby if I don’t find a sane coworking space.
  • winrid 5y ago
    Have you tried setting boundaries and being disciplined about it? I've had to tell people - I won't reply after 5, and no meetings then. People still tried to setup 530, even 730pm meetings all the time (not even during crunch time). Instant decline lol We don't make enough time for our own lives. Hell, it's hard enough to find time to actually make an enjoy a dinner.
    • crossroadsguy 5y ago
      I already do that. I still don’t want my home also as a work place.
      • winrid 5y ago
        Totally understandable!
• onetimeusename 5y ago
  I would probably agree with you but one thing that offset all the benefits of going into an office, for me, was having a really long commute. I tried to get things done during the commute but it really didn't work well. Being stuck on a schedule so I could use public transportation also wasn't beneficial for me.
• ku-man 5y ago
  So, you like office politics. Enjoy the commute.
• sam0x17 5y ago
  It's funny, all of the things you mention are things I would cite as perks of working remotely at my current org. I guess it depends on how you implement remote work. For example we typically have multiple departments running one or more "open calls" all day that anyone can wander into and hear what's going on. Engineering in particular makes heavy use of this, especially those who like pair programming.
  • ripper1138 5y ago
    Do people join the open calls just for specific reasons? Or do they join all day? An open call is a half decent alternative during forced WFH but it’s not the same. Random hallway conversations are just that: random. An open call wouldn’t be the same unless everyone was in the call all day.
    • thrower123 5y ago
      There's a Teams channel that people chat in all day long. I've had to mute it, because otherwise it's just binging and bonging and flashing popups in my face constantly. If people want something, they can send an email. Those aren't ephemeral.
    • sam0x17 5y ago
      People who like to do that sit in it all day. If there are multiple conversations going on they will split into the 2nd and 3rd channels. Some people like to hear the breathing and typing of their colleagues all day, some do not.
    • sam0x17 5y ago
      To answer your question more specifically, they can be truly random conversations. The other day I talked for two hours with someone about neural networks (not related to our work) while coding.
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  I'd just like to add to that: 1. The daily routine and commute helps reset your brain and get you in/out of "work mode" 2. You don't have to cannibalize your home desk to make way for your work PC, or set up a second desk for work PC 3. No deciding what to get for lunch, it's whatever is closest or catered, no wanting a coffee and finding that you need to run to the store 4. If your team isn't meeting your sprint goals, someone can look at you and verify that you are working, so they won't automatically assume that the problem is with you
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • mtberatwork 5y ago
    > The daily routine and commute helps reset your brain and get you in/out of "work mode" This paints a rosy picture of the daily commute which is simply not true [1]. Furthermore, the argument that going into the office gets you in and out of "work mode" doesn't stand up either. With instant communication channels like email, Slack, et al and a lack of labor regulations regarding after-hour work communications (at least in the US), we were never able to be out of "work mode" pre-pandemic either. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/how-your-stressful-commute-affects-your-health-strategies-stay-sane-ncna1144946 https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/how-your-stressful-...
    • phendrenad2 5y ago
      Perhaps I've been lucky to work at places where work did truly end at 5pm, about 90% of workdays (of course if the servers are on fire, or a customer can't log in, that necessitates after-hours work, but once it's done, it's done). It's a work culture thing, and instant communication channels don't necessarily lead to everyone being on-call 24/7. I'm sure that existed pre-internet also ("Boss called, I need to go back into the office and finish some paperwork...")
• emc3 5y ago
  I would expect more of that competitive advantage, too! Most people don't want to give up Working from home[1] and/or are only interested in "working" to collect a paycheck[2]. If the future because of in-office work mostly consists of ambitious people like yourself, opposed to the latter, then I'm actually more interested in joining. Thanks for the perspective. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/wfhjobs_wfh-workfromhome-remotework-activity-6805565379436392448-ht7- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/wfhjobs_wfh-workfromhome-remo... [2] Also: "no skin in the game" / the misguided local optimization where personal responsibility is minimized at the expense of the group / intentionally stagnating instead of growing in one's career position.
  • slavapestov 5y ago
    What are you doing your job for if not to collect a paycheck?
    • vineyardmike 5y ago
      Some people feel excitement from getting to work on their project, regardless of pay. Some people think they’re “changing the world”. Some people feel a competitive nature and want to work and get ahead. Some people work with friends and therefore enjoy being there and socializing. People have varied motivations for things besides pay.
    • bloaf 5y ago
      Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve The thing thou lovest, though the body starve. Who works for glory misses oft the goal; Who works for money coins his very soul; Work for the work's sake, then, and it may be That these things shall be added unto thee.
      • johnchristopher 5y ago
        > In 1882 Cox left Paris and moved to New York where he continued to paint. He also began to do many illustrations, mostly to pay the bills. Kenyon became well established as a magazine illustrator. His illustrations reached a much wider audience than did his paintings. > Cox also began to write art criticisms (unsigned) for the New York Evening Post. This and other writing jobs took Kenyon's time away from painting but also helped him make a living.
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  > I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. For those of us who have to commute, it's not exactly the norm to be saving money while commuting. Commutes are responsible for a 10% drop in hourly wages[1], and the median commute time results in spending 10 full days commuting a year. The average commuter in one of the largest metro areas in the country will spend over 13 full days commuting a year: > In the area with the longest average commute (New York-Newark-Jersey City), commuters are spending an average of 13 days, 2 hours, and 26 minutes driving to and from work. That means that 14 vacation days a year are barely covering the time it takes to get to work every day. So in addition to dropping the average wage from $34.71 per hour to $30.15 per hour, in order to get 14 days of hanging with their family on a beach, New York commuters must be willing to spend nearly as much time sitting in a car. [1] https://go.frontier.com/business/commute-calculator https://go.frontier.com/business/commute-calculator
  • e_y_ 5y ago
    I think their calculations are based on 24 hour days (1 hour roundtrip * 260 days). Vacations and work are based on 8 hour days, however, so in reality it's more like 30 days (6 weeks) of vacation time. And 30 minutes each way is much closer than most of the places I've worked.
  • gnicholas 5y ago
    The food/drink part could be the most of it. A Google employee enjoying free food and drink could save $60/day versus buying prepared food ($10 for breakfast, $20 for lunch, and $30 for dinner). If you drink much coffee or other beverages, that could be another $15/day. If you weigh this against spending an extra hour or two commuting, then it looks like a lousy bargain. But if you are like many people, and ended up working more hours during the pandemic, [1] then that erases some/all of the gains of not commuting. 1: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/24/people-are-working-longer-hours-during-the-pandemic https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/24/people-a...
    • InvaderFizz 5y ago
      > But if you are like many people, and ended up working more hours during the pandemic, [1] then that erases some/all of the gains of not commuting. Wow. I cut my hours down substantially due to WFH. Pre-COVID I was doing 70+ hrs per week due to commuting into the area during the week and having nothing to do. Now I put in maybe 40hrs per week, broken up into 1hr chunks here and there and I'm not spending over $1500/month just for a room/expenses in the area where work is. It's great! I'm not going back to the office, like, ever.
• amyjess 5y ago
  I do not care about being competitve. I work so I can draw a salary to fund my life. That's it. I don't care about constantly climbing a ladder. I don't care about advancing my career for the sake of advancing my career. I just want to enjoy my life, and working for a living is just my means to that end. If I'm making enough to be comfortable, I don't care about chasing a promotion or getting ahead of people. I can't think of a single thing I care about less than having a competitive advantage over other people in the Game of Offices. Being forced to spend 8 hours a day outside my home makes me actively uncomfortable. I'm autistic, partially faceblind (I used to think I can tell people's faces apart... but then a coworker will shave their head and it turns out I'm completely incapable of recognizing them... turns out I mostly just recognize hair), have difficulty looking people in the eye, and have a litany of sensory issues. Face-to-face interaction gives me zero benefit, and being able to work while wearing a rayon nightgown and rayon pajama pants means I'm actually able to focus on my work instead of focusing on how my clothes feel. My company has a diversity and inclusion committee—I am on the diversity and inclusion committee—and there has not been a single discussion of how forcing people back to the office is actively harmful to autistic employees who can't benefit from face-to-face interaction and have sensory issues that make offices uncomfortable. It is absolutely hypocritical for companies to say they care about diversity and inclusion while shafting autistic employees like this.
  • mdocherty 5y ago
    If you are on the committee you should probably speak up and say something.
    • iab 5y ago
      I agree - not sure there will ever be this kinda leverage again in our lifetimes
  • eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Yo, start that discussion! I’m autistic, and while I can benefit from face to face, I often don’t. I don’t work for your company but I know I’m depending on you to work with and for your colleagues and to help set an example.
• Buttons840 5y ago
  > I often do/did paired programming, and over-the-shoulder code reviews. These are easier in person I work 100% remote and recently have been mentoring a recent CS graduate and doing pair programming with him. Let me describe how we do it and then I'd like to hear how you think things are better in person. We start a Slack voice call, these work reliably. Some coworkers told me the longest Slack call they have maintained was over 12 hours long, with people coming and going throughout the conversation. After starting the voice call, I share my screen. I show him what I'm working on in IntelliJ and we talk about it. Then I use a new IntelliJ feature called code-with-me and send him a link, he clicks on it and and he is then able to edit any file in my IDE on his IDE on his computer. I'm still sharing my screen, but he might not look at it, after all, he can see and edit any part of the code on his own computer now. He can share his screen at any time if needed with 2 clicks. I direct the conversation, but look for tasks I can pair off. There's a service I need an interface too, so I ask him to work on it. He starts reading documentation about it on his own computer with multiple large monitors. He then begins writing an interface to the service. I flip tabs over to the source file he's working on and can see where his cursor is and what he's typing in real time. I give advice, I just type out what I mean instead of trying to describe what I want him to do in the code with verbal words. This is all like Google Docs, we can bring in even more people and have 5 or 6 cursors all over the project just working independently. Everyone at their own desk where they're fully productive. This is a real story. He finished the interface to the service, and it worked well. I still don't know all the details of what he wrote, I never had to be distracted by it, but his code has worked so far, so my trust was well placed. The whole experience was so smooth. We could sync up and talk about a single bit of code and then return to our own work, the context switching took literally seconds. I'd just say, "hey, look at this", he'd click a tab in his editor and then see what I was doing, we chat about it for 30 seconds, then he makes a 2nd click and is back to his own work. We pair programmed like this for about 3 hours. Sometimes we'd go 15 minutes without saying anything, but we were working towards the same goal, and interruptions to talk about the goal weren't distracting. I could never endure watching over someones shoulder for 3 hours. We were maintaining a call / audio channel the entire time, I even muttered some things under my breath (just thinking out loud) and he was able to hear. I think it's the only time I've been happy and productive with pair programming.
  • 5y ago
• mortenjorck 5y ago
  I think this will ultimately lead to a bifurcation of workplaces into remote-first and office-first (a divide which already existed, but was probably 5% vs 95% pre-pandemic), and this diversity will be a good thing. Some company cultures are better adapted to remote working, while others stand to benefit more from in-person, and the same thing can be said for individuals. People who thrive more in one than the other will gravitate toward companies whose remote/office emphasis matches their preference, and recruiters will start considering it, too.
• whateveracct 5y ago
  > I believe working in the office is a competitive advantage Competitive advantage for whom? The company? It's gonna be hard to overcome to employee advantage of having a potentially absurd effective-hourly-rate when you combine a high salary with extremely low actual hours that only remote work can provide. You can go from 40-60 hours (factoring in overhead like commute) to 15-20 and 2-3x your hourly rate. That's a huge efficiency gain.
  • NoPicklez 5y ago
    It might be an efficiency gain, but I think OP's reasoning is how much value you're extracting throughout the day. Of course this is subject to the type of work you do your own personality etc etc.
• rubicon33 5y ago
  This is what most of the newcomers to WFH don't understand: There is a big different between WFH for a few months where EVERYONE else is also WFH ... and WFH for YEARS where some, or most, of the others are in office. The latter is years upon years of feeling disconnected, left out, and sidelined. The vast majority of companies even if they allow remote are not remote first. Remote first involves actual structural and procedural changes. Lastly, WFH for years can result in a serious mental health decline. If you think you're doing fine after 1 year, come see me after 5. You'll realize by the end of it just how important water cooler conversation is for your BRAIN. You'll recognize just how bad it can be to see (as a function of your time alive) MOSTLY just your home. It does a number on you.
  • jjeaff 5y ago
    Surely there are other reasons to leave your home than work and other people to socialize with in person than co-workers.
    • musicale 5y ago
      > Surely there are other reasons to leave your home than work and other people to socialize with in person than co-workers. I wouldn't be surprised if people who don't have local family or established friends in the area and live in cities where talking to strangers is considered threatening behavior tend to socialize primarily, if not exclusively, with co-workers.
      • mixmastamyk 5y ago
        Meet
      • viraptor 5y ago
        But that's a really limited view. If you live in a city, there are likely loads of activities, clubs, meetups you can go to at least weekly.
    • justapassenger 5y ago
      Depends on your character, stage of your life and priorities. It looks way different when you’re young, outgoing single person. Vs when you’re older, with a family (and tons of obligations) and introverted. Work is then often a place where you socialize and take a break from all the other stuff happening in your life.
• lamontcg 5y ago
  You're engaging in the fallacy of "what is good for me is good for everyone else."
  • bootlooped 5y ago
    I didn't read that from the post you're referring to.
    • area51org 5y ago
      I did. The whole post is worded in a confrontational way, intending to piss people off and start arguments.
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      They're mostly just talking about their own experience, but it starts off with sweeping generalizations and doesn't address that other individuals might be different. Its the argumentation equivalent of a lie by omission.
• NoPicklez 5y ago
  As someone who works for a global firm that has been back to the office since October I 100% agree. We have a policy where you are free to work from home if you like given that there are no COVID cases in the city I live in however we have seen large influxes of staff returning to the office. For me, its exactly the reasons you've called out. At the end of the day there is no one size fits all for everyone, the same way that working in an office doesn't work for anyone. However I do believe that people should be given the option.
• CodeWriter23 5y ago
  > * Overhearing hallway conversations (and joining them) helps spawn invocation Yes, we had similar results in my coven.
• throwaway1777 5y ago
  I feel the same. Aside from the interpersonal benefits, the perks of the office are real monetary value. A lot of us don’t have terrible commutes and these benefits outweigh the cost of commute time.
• bootlooped 5y ago
  I agree on everything except two points: 1) Home is not without distractions, but I think the office had more; it mostly came down to ambient noise and people always moving around in my field of view. Being alone I can focus more. Everybody is different. If you find the office better for focus (for you) I don't debate that. 2) I hate over-the-shoulder code reviews. I don't want me and my coworker's faces to be kissing distance while we both squint at a 14" laptop. I'll take a Zoom call screen sharing on my 34" ultrawide any day. I absolutely think being there in person is a competitive advantage, especially in the ladder-climbing aspect. We don't work in a purely egalitarian system. There is a game, and you can play it or not play it, but all other things equal you'll get more monetary rewards if you play it. And my non-Machiavellian viewpoint on it is that I like my coworkers and I think seeing them and conversing with them in person few times a week is good for my mental health. I get more face to face social interaction when I work at least part of the week in the office.
• 29athrowaway 5y ago
  My ranking is: 1) WFH 2) dedicated office 3) cubicle 4) quitting 5) open plan office Not every employer gives you free meals, and when they do, you may not always like them and may still want to eat something else. Commuting can many hours of your time. I have more valuable things to do with my time rather than commuting.
• lxe 5y ago
  Those are all great advantages of working at an office. Unfortunately they are inconsequential compared to advantages of working from home.
• area51org 5y ago
  If it's good for you, that's fine. But most of your ideas here are dead wrong. Things like "oh yeah real innovation happens because of hallways conversations" come from pervasive myth, not actual reality. Oh BTW pair programming is much easier over a shared screen, remotely, than it is trying to squish people in front of a single monitor.
  • dcolkitt 5y ago
    The innovation argument is particularly frustrating. By far the most innovation in computing this century has occurred in open source software, which by its nature is completely distributed. People who work on the Linux kernel or Postgres or Rust would be pretty shocked to learn that whatever they’re doing must not be innovative since they’re not hanging out in the hallway.
    • anarazel 5y ago
      As a postgres dev, I do feel that the lack of in-person conferences over the last 1 1/2 years caused a perceptible slowdown in some areas. But I also can't stand working full in an office most of the time.
      • jack_riminton 5y ago
        Conferences are a nice in-between. I can see a lot more companies coming together for talks, socials and meetings a few times a year
      • maigret 5y ago
        The quality and insight of the discussions at conference is usually way higher than at the office. Conferences allow specialists to come together around topics covered only by a few people in the company. Also, they allow you to look outside the box, how other approach similar problems or technologies. At work, I usually already know it most from the regular communication.
• ashtonkem 5y ago
  > I often do/did paired programming I think this is the only point in your list that is actually fundamental, the rest can be remediated by relatively simple lifestyle changes. If you like pair programming, then there is an almost certain probability that you'll prefer the office over remote. There is literally nothing one can do remote to replace the kind of in person interaction that pairing or over the shoulder reviews give you. I personally paired full time for a few years and I hate it with the heat of a thousand sons. Between pair programming and getting a low paid service job, I'd take the latter. The fact that WFH lets me cut out at-work social interactions that cause me severe distress is a benefit I will never give up.
• screye 5y ago
  > Being seen by my fellow employees helps keep me from becoming distracted. Too real
• p1necone 5y ago
  I don't think free food at work is particularly common outside of big silicone valley companies. Free espresso coffee (of middling quality) is pretty ubiquitous where I am though.
  • deviation 5y ago
    Here in Australia, every company I have worked at (non-FAANG) as a Software Engineer has had a kitchen, stocked with food under a "Grab what you want, when you want it" policy. Is it really that uncommon in the US outside of FAANG companies?
    • Maxion 5y ago
      In Europe your employer can't provide you with free food, it's value is counted as taxable income.
      • onion2k 5y ago
        Europe is made up of 27 countries all with their own tax laws. You can't make generalisations like that without significantly more detail. Here in the UK my employer can and occasionally, but not frequently enough in my opinion, does pay for my lunch.
        • Plyphon_ 5y ago
          There are 51 countries in Europe, if you count some technicalities around the Vatican, Monaco etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... Though I suspect both yourself and the previous poster was referring to the European Union.
    • redisman 5y ago
      You mean like catering at all hours or a bag of bagels and some fruit and maybe some snack sized chip bags
• zebnyc 5y ago
  WFH has been much better for our lives and I am not looking forward to going back. These are how WFH has benefited us: The wife: Does chores / cooking and baking while she is just a participant in a meeting. Go for a run before picking up the kid from daycare Myself: I can drop the kid off at daycare, do chores around the house, do HIIT workout multiple times during the week. Try body hacking like intermittent fasting / prolonged fasting We take naps to recharge if we are tired. We also go enjoy nature & hike practically every week which is naturally therapeutic.
  • hellbanTHIS 5y ago
    This is maybe the first relatable comment I’ve come across in here — work kills, the stress of having to be there on time, eating fast food because you don’t have time to cook, no time to exercise because you’re driving an hour a day, all the other things in your life piling up because all you seem to do is drive back and forth to work… I mean people aren’t even getting vaccinated because they’re worried about being able to show up to work the next day. It’s a dream for a lot of people to just wake up, get a cup of coffee and sit down at their computer, to not have to get out of bed in the middle of the night, plan bowel movements like a military campaign and run around like a maniac all day every day.
• tootie 5y ago
  I will always prefer WFH for a critically important reason no one else seems willing to mention. I get to use my own bathroom. Sitting in a stall next to someone noisy is my daily hell. The worst is if the seat is still warm. I think may have actually avoided using a public restroom for 15 straight months.
  • fatbird 5y ago
    I see you.
    • hellweaver666 5y ago
      You need to stop looking over the top of the stalls ;)
      • vultour 5y ago
        My last place had these obnoxious stalls where the bottom is cut off, as someone with bathroom anxiety those things were a nightmare. Funnily enough the HQ building 5 minutes away had proper room-like stalls, I actually used to go there just to use the toilet sometimes.
  • hawthornio 5y ago
    I started using a bidet during the pandemic and I am dreading having to use normal American toilets
  • meken 5y ago
    What? The seat being warm is the best case.
    • yakubin 5y ago
      To me that's one of the grossest things ever.
    • tootie 5y ago
      Wow. I guess there's just two kinds of people in the world.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  You have some strong anecdotes there but I'd like to see some stats from this previous year and see if there was actually a drop, an increase, or relatively neutral change in productivity/sanity amongst those who worked from home.
• com2kid 5y ago
  $200-$300k less to buy a house that is "outside commute range" of tech companies in the Seattle area. ~90 minutes of commute saved each day (2 hours a day for me actually), valuing my time at $100/hr. That comes out to roughly 5k-6k a month in savings.
  • Nbox9 5y ago
    In my opinion living in Seattle is $200k-$300k better than living in Tacoma.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  Working remote means: * the rest of the company tends to forget you exist * you tend to get the blame * out of sight, out of mind * fewer promotions
• decodebytes 5y ago
  I feel directly opposite to this, I am way more productive working from home as a programmer, for this reason alone: https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-programmer/ https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt... Also I find modern tools easily make up for not being in close proximity. Best of all as an engineering lead, I am not restricted to hiring in the small pool of engineers who can travel to the physical location of an office. I can hire talent world wide > I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. To be fair, that's a matter of personal discipline. There is nothing to stop you closing your laptop at 5pm and leaving it until the next day to open it again.
  • vladvasiliu 5y ago
    > > I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. > To be fair, that's a personal disciple issue. That's true, and in my case I have absolutely no issue with not working at random hours, even though I use the same exact computer for both work and personal projects. I work from 8 AM to 6 PM, with a break from 12 to 2. Absent an emergency, at 6:01 I'm done for the day and unreachable. But in other domains, I've found that having to enforce this discipline can take an emotional / energy toll. In my case, I have this issue with food. I've found that if I have snacks and / or other easy to eat, calorie-laden food around the house I will absolutely have a terrible time trying to control myself and not eat them all. Even though I'm not actually hungry, I keep thinking about them and keep feeling like I need to eat them. This absolutely has an effect on my ability to focus, and the only way to have that go away is to eat. I'm not a smoker, but I suppose it's a similar kind of itch. But by not buying them at all and not having them in the house, it's much, much easier for me. I don't actually miss them when I don't have them and never think about them. Every once in a while I may think about having an ice-cream or something, but I don't crave it to the point of going to the store and buying it (even though the round trip is like 10 minutes, and I'm a fairly active person). Just eating an apple or whatever makes the craving go away. But if the ice cream was there, 9/10 times I would have eaten that instead of the apple. And "just a scoop" is never just a scoop. So I completely sympathize with people who've found that having this clear separation between work and home makes a difference for them. Having to catch a train / avoid sitting in a car during a commute / picking up the kids from school / whatever can really put an end to the possible tendency of "just five more minutes, and I'm done". But there's also the fact, as others have said, that there are other ways to not work from home than going to an office. While I love working from my own house, what I hate the most with the office is the commute, and it's not even that bad by local standards. But advocating for a remote culture would allow people to combine these advantages (having both a separation and no / short commute). Of course, the social aspect of the office some people talk about wouldn't be completely solved.
• jorvi 5y ago
  > * Having a workforce socially close improves productivity because everyone wants to step up for each other. I can agree with all your other points, but this one simply stuck out to me. Haven't nearly all companies realized more productivity with WFH?
• wizardofmysore 5y ago
  Working from home has been a boom pretty much for the same reasons mentioned as in the pro. Random noises and sounds takes away focus and brings me out of "the zone". I have a separate area where I work, I don't work any place other than that.
• entropea 5y ago
  I really like my current company and will be of the first in the office at least 3-4 times per week. I agree with your points, but also understand that it doesn't fit everyone's life. My social interaction has pretty much always been online since a kid and most of my long term friendships and social interaction came from in-person work. I miss the people who genuinely made my day better on a consistent basis at work, and I get almost none of that remote. Being single through COVID has been hell. I also have zero work/life separation. I enjoy the routine, the excercise, less distractions than being at home. I feel like I could absorb more and know a lot more of what was going on.
• bloqs 5y ago
  1.Interesting, the vast majority of these are not work related for me. Maybe one a year is in some way useful 2. I would contest that with sufficient quality screen share this simply so marginal it's dismissable 3. This makes several assumptions about personality and socialising and isn't always the case. Forcing people to see each other does not create social closeness. Sustaining good friendships over instant message is very much the norm. I think occasional in person meetings or, more deliberate collaborative effort if fully remote can create this just fine. 4. Distractions in the office, drive bys, noise of neighbours and even digital distraction vs a small degree of self discipline (using one monitor, phone on dnd can help too) ... I dont buy this at all. 5. See above - if you have children then that is understandable, however I would wager that correct work/play time separation is whats needed here. 6. I can claim some of my electricity cost as work expenses and the food on my commute and at work is incredibly overpriced. I typically prepare food at home. Being at home more i'm now not restricted to whatever carries well in a tupperware. 7. Arguing that a routine needs to be made for you instead of creating your own isnt a valid reason. Self discipline. 8. Discipline and routine also addresses the last point, but I will concede its easier to manage. To outline the competitive advantage FOR working at home. In addition to the above I gain: Custom desk, my high quality office chair vastly superior to corporate stock, custom office space, custom lighting temperature and air flow. Control of noise levels Total control of distractions I save 4 hours a day lost to transport being forced to listen to podcasts and have more meaningful work and play time as a result. I save substantial money on transport No social guidelines, I can have what I want on the radio/TV if I wish. I can wear more comfortable clothes and save money on laundering work clothes I can exercise more freely and easily I can work in line with the ebb and flow of my conciousness and not when someone else demands it - and am subatantially more productive. My deliveries no longer go missing My home is tidier I dont have to use a disgusting corporate bathroom I dont get sick anymore My carbon footprint is close to zero My mental health has improved substantially I think that mostly covers it
  • pojzon 5y ago
    People should realize that wfh is highly dependant on self-discipline. Some ppl have it, some dont. (Actually only very small % of ppl have high self-discipline). Due to this all corporations will and are going to try to “control” ppl simply because most of them cannot control themselves.
• zelos 5y ago
  * I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. I've been enjoying not having to spend £4k/year on a rail season ticket. It looks like in the UK the new part-time season tickets are aimed at people commuting 2 days a week, whereas tech companies seem to be converging on 3.
• Vhano 5y ago
  Your points are personal preferences. They don't support "competitive advantage" claim.
• dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  > I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. I agree with a lot of your points, but not this one. Even if I were to take my lunch to work, I would still end up spending some money on coffee or snacks (because I can't always predict exactly what I will want to eat or drink during the day), and if I'm in a rush in the morning at home (e.g. slept in), I can just make lunch when I end up having the time, versus having to buy lunch in the office if I left without time to prepare some food to take. The electricity point stands I suppose, but it's hard to quantify the difference, for me, as I moved only a few weeks before the pandemic, so don't have any pre-pandemic, work from the office data to compare with. The £150 odd I save each month on travel costs likely more than makes up for any extra spending on leccy
• aseerdbnarng 5y ago
  "The reason other people should do a 2hr+ commute each day is because I function best in an adult kindergarten" No self-respecting person would never publicly (and proudly no less) say they: - Need supervision - Require frequent interactions / reassurance from colleges - struggle to maintain their personal lives - Cant form their own routines There is mounting pressure to stop WFH and its coming entirely from those at risk of WFH, namely those who need the office as a place to be seen.
• Xevi 5y ago
  * Overhearing hallway conversations (and joining them) helps spawn invocation. - I hate being distracted by hallway conversations. They're just a way to avoid work for most people. * I often do/did paired programming, and over-the-shoulder code reviews. These are easier in person - They are easier to do online imo. There's no need to sit next to each other. * Having a workforce socially close improves productivity because everyone wants to step up for each other. - My team has gotten closer to each other during the pandemic than ever before. I think your point is highly subjective. * Being seen by my fellow employees helps keep me from becoming distracted. - Sounds like you need to work on that. If you need other people to monitor you to make sure you're doing work... * Working at the office helps prevent home life from being distracting during work hours. - Again, probably something you need to work on. * I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. - I think most people spend the same on food and drinks, since companies do not provide it for them. Maybe they even spend less, since they have more time to cook at home. Electricity is negligible for me at least. It's way less than I spend on commuting. * I enjoy the routine. - I find it insane. * I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. - I'll give you that. But for me personally this has not been a problem at all.
  • jack_riminton 5y ago
    Agree on every point. Re: work/life separation, I think a shed at the bottom of the garden is all the separation I need. The fact that I can do some coding, take a short walk to the park, do some gardening, interact with my wife far outweigh wasting my life in an office
  • shankr 5y ago
    The only point that I agree from OP is about stronger work/life separation which I need to work on. My work days drag a bit more while working from home. In the beginning, I was even working during night which I never did when I was working in the office since I left my laptop at work. This was also because I am single and everything was under lockdown. So I didn't know what to do with my time.
• evandijk70 5y ago
  I agree, I've worked remote for a little over a year now, and I definitely prefer working in on office. The main benefit for me is the hallway conversations, real-life meetings, sketching things out on whiteboard, and work/life separation. I do not see myself ever working in a fully remote environment.
  • marcind 5y ago
    <plugarino> https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com -- It doesn't solve all of the problems you've listed but it does help with remote white boarding! Try it and share feedback, please!
• tkiolp4 5y ago
  > I believe working in the office is a competitive advantage. For the company, probably; not for me. All the bullet point you mentioned: none of them applies to me. It’s interesting to see different points of view, though.
• mytailorisrich 5y ago
  Interestingly a lot of what you list is the reason while Agile advocates having the team all sit together in office. It makes communication much quicker and easier, and just simply overhearing others helps spread information very efficiently.
• dboreham 5y ago
  Pair programming and code reviews are actually easier remote.
• wayoutthere 5y ago
  It’s all fine that these things work for you, but they probably don’t work for at least half your coworkers. I would not expect software development to ever return to 100% in-office. Those days were already starting to end pre-pandemic, and staying home for a year just accelerated the trend. A hot topic in the HR space right now is how you make working remote not a competitive disadvantage because it actually is a better working arrangement for a lot of people who have been historically marginalized. Working in the office is not a competitive advantage when your leaders are working remotely. Which is what’s often happening — I find it’s actually easier to catch up with my peers virtually since I don’t have to waste time walking to another building and standing in line for coffee. Since they’re at home too and not stuck in meetings all day, they’re answering IMs and turning what used to be a 30 minute ordeal you had to go through in order to get their attention into 5 IMs back and forth. Just try to imagine being on the other side of this: if you wanted to work in the office and people arbitrarily said “nah”. Because that’s what I think is going to happen at a lot of companies, and it’s what many of us who prefer remote work have dealt with our whole careers. There are too many positives for companies around office leases to not have a significant portion of your workforce remote: I think the improvement in financial performance of remote companies will force the hand of even the reluctant ones.
• meursault 5y ago
  Any "competitive advantage" gained by these points will be more than wiped out by the extreme difficulty companies will have attracting talent if they don't offer remote flexibility. All of the data I've seen so far is pretty clear that yours is a minority opinion among tech workers.
• agbell 5y ago
  I love my job, and I love working from home. I have been doing it for years. Working on a fully remote team is not the same as working on fully co-located team. Some will say it's worse but for me its better. One thing is for certain - it is different. Some things are easier and some things are harder. It's just a different point in the design space of possible ways to work.
• jseban 5y ago
  Yeah and also to mention the elephant in the room: people work much more when they are stuck in a room with others, and have eyes on them. And they work way less if they are at home and nobody is watching. This is just the truth, regardless of how little it applies to myself, of course! I'm also annoyed by the amount of housework/cooking/preparation/cleaning I have to do when I'm at home all day, when half of that happens in the office/resturant otherwise.
  • jclardy 5y ago
    But you are basing this on your personal experience. I work remote out of state from my company (and did so pre-pandemic.) I would often travel and stay at the office for decent periods of time. During those periods way less work was accomplished for me, because I was socializing more with co-workers, took more snack/water breaks, spent more time at lunch. While WFH I will still go out to local coffee shops to work out of if I am lacking focus for the day. Some people actually do work better in a distraction free environment, but it seems you don't believe that. I should mention, my company has an open-office floorplan, so the amount of daily interruptions was quite incredible...
  • greedo 5y ago
    Sounds like an anecdote. I've worked with people who have made it a fine art to appear busy, to hold earnest conversations in hallways, to comment in IM frequently, yet do 10% of the work of the good performers. And we all knew who the good performers were. Managing employees in an office doesn't depend on having butts in the seat, or "eyes on them." It depends on understanding what needs to be done, communicating/delegating, and then getting out of the way.
  • kevstev 5y ago
    I disagree there- I mean I work way more hours when I wfh than when I am in the office because I can tolerate it because I don't have a family at home who I am far from. I come down and see the wife when I get coffee and that is my "hallway" conversation and my dog is always next to me, and I never worry about her getting lonely. If anything, having to walk the dog helps pull me away from the computer when I otherwise would not. I am not sure how cleaning changes at all, and doing laundry, which used to be very difficult to fit in, is so much easier. I can understand why food prep would be more onerous to most, but I enjoy cooking and if I don't really want to I live in a city, I have plenty of options all around me.
• jseban 5y ago
  The push for working from home is just two other things that have become taboo to debate and is manifesting through the work from home "movement", which is the loss of private offices, and the debate about reducing hours of work. And if people are allowed to work from home, they have an alternative that fills the loss of the private office, and they can also take upon themselves to shorten their working hours to something more "reasonable".
  • i_haz_rabies 5y ago
    There are other factors (why waste fuel/accident risk on commutes, easier to cook healthy lunches, et cetera), but those are the biggest ones for sure. It would be nice if we could have the hours debate out loud and for real.
    • jseban 5y ago
      Yeah I hope this debate is started soon. I think if a company offered 6 hour working days and private offices, it would be a whole different story.
• stetrain 5y ago
  > * I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. Weirdly for me the food and drink is the opposite. Maybe if you're lucky enough to have an office that provides full lunch meals for you but I haven't experienced that yet. I really enjoyed work lunches but it usually meant 4/5 days a week was going out with colleagues to local restaurants and paying restaurant food prices. At home I can make a sandwich with stuff from my fridge without the allure of "well everyone else is going out for sushi don't you want to join?"
• zenron 5y ago
  > I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. That is more on you being a good steward of your money than anything else. Our development team eats out at restaurants nearly every day when we were at the office. Code together, dine together. Bad boys for life.
  • Nbox9 5y ago
    It’s mostly me having a programmable thermostat, taking full advantage of free food, and having negligible transportation costs.
• pnutjam 5y ago
  Sounds like you need an environment with better collaboration tools and people who know how to communicate. I was getting a slew of emails related to a project and after a bit of coaching I got most of these updates to go into a teams channel, where we can call out the interested part @user, and keep things in an easier to view format when we need to catch up.
  • tachyonbeam 5y ago
    Working remotely will never be as good for communication IMO. You can set up weekly one-on-ones over your favorite videoconference platform, but there's just so much you can't see being physically separated from your coworkers. At my previous job, I would bond with my teammates over lunch talking about random things, bouncing ideas, and I feel like we really were a team. We trusted each other. At my new, 100% remote job, sometimes my colleagues are just tuned out, and I have no idea why. I can ask them over our weekly videochat, but it's just not the same. We don't have the same level of trust. I can't read their body language. We can't just have a random 5 minute chat over coffee. Brainstorming online has also proven to be really ineffective. It works really well over lunch, with no stress and no expectations, but planning a brainstorming meeting really can't offer that. IMO remote work is very weird and dehumanizing. You might feel differently. I know it works for some people, but I really feel like the cohesion in my team is nowhere near as good. Yet I feel like if we were in the same office in person we'd be doing much better. My ideal balance is 4 days of in-person work and one remote day per week, with flexible working hours.
    • pnutjam 5y ago
      I've always viewed work as means to an end, and that end is getting paid to take care of my family. I've made some good friends, but I've also been forced to tolerate some people I would rather not be around. I also find that communicating through multiple remote channels is freeing. People aren't reading my body language to misinterpret what I'm saying. Requests and plans are more concrete and documented. People have to be more thoughtful about what they are asking for.
      • 5y ago
• Waterluvian 5y ago
  I'm glad you found what works for you. I think it's interesting how much preferences can differ from person to person. For me, working from home for the past 3 years has been completely life altering. Work is nothing more than a distraction away from what I really want to be doing with my life. Working from home lets me optimize for all the right things like being here with my kids all the time, going to the playground at lunches, making them breakfasts and lunches, and seeing them at 5:01pm. I love that I can take breaks with them rather than talk about nonsense at the water cooler. I'd much rather not focus on optimizing for work...
• dominotw 5y ago
  > Overhearing hallway conversations (and joining them) This really happens? I am too shy to join a random conversation in the hallway.
• pmontra 5y ago
  I've been self employed and mostly working from home since 2006 and yet I'm with you that "working in the office is a competitive advantage." Not for me because I'm self employed, but I believe it is for people working in companies with other people in the office close to the eyes and ears of their managers. I saw it happen 25+ years ago when working from home wasn't a thing. I worked for a consulting company. We had about half of our workforce working at customer premises. Not low fee body rental but projects that had to be run there. Well, the people getting advances in pay and career were mostly the people working in the headquarter. Managers of successful remote teams got career advances, some key remote developer got them too (customers wanted them) but most of them were forgotten wheels of the company machine. But I'm in no competition with colleagues so working from home is great. I won't go back unless I'll ever start starving.
• jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  I haven’t updated it in a bit, but I did a breakdown of how much money I saved working remotely for the last 2 years in December. Taking into consideration gas, insurance, food, time, clothes, etc saved almost $5k and 500 hours of personal time a year. I do miss the office a bit, but I’ll never go back.
• leethakssor 5y ago
  Registered just to respond to you. Don't you have any other ambitions than working for someone under their rules your whole life? That you even have to be present to overhear convos and so on?