5 ms·

I predict the balance we're heading towards for many office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory W

I predict the balance we're heading towards for many office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged". Like Monday and Wednesday are in-office, Tuesday and Thursday are WFH, Friday is optional. Preference for WFH depends on so many individual factors, not just personality but also your commute length, home size, children, neighborhood, friends, etc. Although a lot of discussions on HN seem to be dominated by "I prefer WFH", I reckon in reality the divide is probably pretty close to 50/50, just like with introverts and extroverts. Companies will find strong candidates in both types of people and find out they can't fully satisfy them all, and the end result will be everyone compromises. Encourage some days to be WFH so that WFHers won't feel career pressure from missing out on office politics. Encourage some days to be in-office so that office-lovers won't go to the office to socialize and find it half empty. Have a flexible day or two where people can do whatever they want. Maybe throw in some flexibility on start and end hours so that people can avoid peak traffic.

KingOfCoders 5y ago
Sounds complicated.
- rococode 5y ago
  Surely no more complicated than it is for hourly workers to keep track of their shifts, or for college students to keep track of 5 different full-day schedules that change every few months. "Come in Monday, stay at home Tuesday" is not exactly the peak of complicated scheduling.
ekianjo 5y ago
> I predict the balance we're heading towards for most office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged". Or a lot of people are going to be looking for full remote jobs and companies which are full remote will be able to get some folks they were not able to hire before.
- jstx1 5y ago
  That selection works both ways. I'm excluding all fully remote jobs from my current job search.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    good. we all get the best of both worlds then.
foxpurple 5y ago
I would suggest that Friday makes a good time for the mandatory day. Means people can go out for drinks at the end of the day. The in office days will never be as productive but they can be good socialising times so you may as well make use of that.
- andrewmackrodt 5y ago
  Throughout my career I've found Thursday is consistently "the day" when work people are most likely to go out together. In some places it may have been because the last Thursday of the month is payday, but largely I believe it's because the majority of people are likely to have commitments with other friends, partners, children etc on a Friday. I'm also in favour of Thursday as the mandatory day if I need to be in the office as the last day of the week to do release management, e.g. minimise the risk of a bad deployment on a Friday affecting someone's weekend.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  There is also a trend towards four-day work weeks to account for. I work 4 × 8, and Friday is a good day to have off; you get a long weekend and unlike Monday¹ shops are open in the morning too. 1: This may be a Dutch phenomenon, but many shops and amenities are closed on Monday morning. Especially with the gradual increase of shops being open on Sunday afternoons.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > This may be a Dutch phenomenon, but many shops and amenities are closed on Monday morning. Especially with the gradual increase of shops being open on Sunday afternoons. This is the case in France too, it's common for small shops to close Sunday and Monday, and be open the rest of the week.
cblconfederate 5y ago
remote work changes the dynamics, when half the team is on zoom, everyone goes on zoom, not the other way around. Also, half-empty offices are much much less useful than full offices. So i think things gravitate naturally towards all-remote
DrBazza 5y ago
In London, I'm inclined to agree with this. 2 days seems a fair balance. The trouble is that the majority of employees have signed a legally binding contract that says "your legal place of employment is <insert address here>", meaning that you are legally obliged to go back into the office. Some companies think it is a "competitive advantage" to have people back in the office. A couple of banks and accountancy firms certainly seem to think so. But as everyone has said "it depends". I've worked in 7-to-a-row open plan offices in banks, to small companies. I was more productive in open-plan when I was in my early 20s, and far more productive on my own or in smaller quieter offices as I've gotten older. Going back to this from the other day [1] "Insulating developers from interruptions" is the best reason to wfh. [1] https://hackernoon.com/the-generational-divide-in-software-developers-bco354a https://hackernoon.com/the-generational-divide-in-software-d...
anm89 5y ago
Seems like a waste to pay expensive rents for office space when you are using it 2 days a week. I would imagine that is not a stable equilibrium
nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
With the 2 office days fully understood by all parties as fully non-productive days, more like team building?
stunt 5y ago
It's going to take a few years for companies to learn how to implement hybrid model. Especially for traditional companies with lots of works force that are grow up with the office work mentality. And I'm not only talking about how to run remote meetings, but everything including on-boarding and training new engineers and cross team collaboration. Luckily full-remote companies have lots of good documentation about remote work. So I think other companies should start reading their playbooks or try to hire some of their talents to learn how proper remote work is done.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

Sounds complicated.

rococode 5y ago
Surely no more complicated than it is for hourly workers to keep track of their shifts, or for college students to keep track of 5 different full-day schedules that change every few months. "Come in Monday, stay at home Tuesday" is not exactly the peak of complicated scheduling.

ekianjo 5y ago

> I predict the balance we're heading towards for most office jobs is going to be something like 2 mandatory office days a week, 1 optional day, and 2 mandatory WFH days, with "mandatory" really meaning "highly encouraged". Or a lot of people are going to be looking for full remote jobs and companies which are full remote will be able to get some folks they were not able to hire before.

jstx1 5y ago
That selection works both ways. I'm excluding all fully remote jobs from my current job search.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  good. we all get the best of both worlds then.

foxpurple 5y ago

I would suggest that Friday makes a good time for the mandatory day. Means people can go out for drinks at the end of the day. The in office days will never be as productive but they can be good socialising times so you may as well make use of that.

andrewmackrodt 5y ago
Throughout my career I've found Thursday is consistently "the day" when work people are most likely to go out together. In some places it may have been because the last Thursday of the month is payday, but largely I believe it's because the majority of people are likely to have commitments with other friends, partners, children etc on a Friday. I'm also in favour of Thursday as the mandatory day if I need to be in the office as the last day of the week to do release management, e.g. minimise the risk of a bad deployment on a Friday affecting someone's weekend.
Freak_NL 5y ago
There is also a trend towards four-day work weeks to account for. I work 4 × 8, and Friday is a good day to have off; you get a long weekend and unlike Monday¹ shops are open in the morning too. 1: This may be a Dutch phenomenon, but many shops and amenities are closed on Monday morning. Especially with the gradual increase of shops being open on Sunday afternoons.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > This may be a Dutch phenomenon, but many shops and amenities are closed on Monday morning. Especially with the gradual increase of shops being open on Sunday afternoons. This is the case in France too, it's common for small shops to close Sunday and Monday, and be open the rest of the week.

cblconfederate 5y ago

remote work changes the dynamics, when half the team is on zoom, everyone goes on zoom, not the other way around. Also, half-empty offices are much much less useful than full offices. So i think things gravitate naturally towards all-remote

DrBazza 5y ago

In London, I'm inclined to agree with this. 2 days seems a fair balance. The trouble is that the majority of employees have signed a legally binding contract that says "your legal place of employment is <insert address here>", meaning that you are legally obliged to go back into the office. Some companies think it is a "competitive advantage" to have people back in the office. A couple of banks and accountancy firms certainly seem to think so. But as everyone has said "it depends". I've worked in 7-to-a-row open plan offices in banks, to small companies. I was more productive in open-plan when I was in my early 20s, and far more productive on my own or in smaller quieter offices as I've gotten older. Going back to this from the other day [1] "Insulating developers from interruptions" is the best reason to wfh. [1] https://hackernoon.com/the-generational-divide-in-software-developers-bco354a https://hackernoon.com/the-generational-divide-in-software-d...

anm89 5y ago

Seems like a waste to pay expensive rents for office space when you are using it 2 days a week. I would imagine that is not a stable equilibrium

nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago

With the 2 office days fully understood by all parties as fully non-productive days, more like team building?

stunt 5y ago

It's going to take a few years for companies to learn how to implement hybrid model. Especially for traditional companies with lots of works force that are grow up with the office work mentality. And I'm not only talking about how to run remote meetings, but everything including on-boarding and training new engineers and cross team collaboration. Luckily full-remote companies have lots of good documentation about remote work. So I think other companies should start reading their playbooks or try to hire some of their talents to learn how proper remote work is done.