9 ms·

Going back to work? No, thank you

85 points by dSebastien 5y ago

lucasyvas 5y ago
The companies that are anti-remote are on thin ice. There are enough pro-remote companies that they are screwed, because they will lose top employees if they force everyone back. The smarter of the anti-remote companies have realized this and are in a perpetual denial/paralysis phase. It would be easier if they just gave up and stopped trying to bring people back.
- iscrewyou 5y ago
  Long term lookout, I think companies who requiring people to go to the office because of nature of their work will likely pay employees more. Employees who need the extra money won’t mind going into the office. And companies are already reducing pay based on distance of employees’ homes if they choose to work from home. I think the market will automatically balance itself out in a few years.
  - stadium 5y ago
    Curious how eeoc protected classes will factor into reducing pay based on location. That seems like wage discrimination. Any employment laws that have been tested around this in court? Sex/gender: I need my commute time to take care of my children. Health/medical condition/genetics: commuting increases my blood pressure, triggers anxiety and panic, and reduces my overall mental and physical health and quality of life.
    - benrbray 5y ago
      "Your address is in the poor side of town, so obviously your cost of living is less and I don't need to pay you as much!"
      - alistairSH 5y ago
        Quite literally. I don’t know the resolution of geographic pay my employer uses (I suspect it’s by metropolitan area, but could easily be down to zip code), but I do have access to the regional differences of my employees (several large offices globally, and many remote employees). Same for my wife’s employer (several large offices, very few fully remote employees). Wife’s company makes explicit comp adjustments if an employer moved. Mine does not, but it does impact future adjustments.
      - stadium 5y ago
        Living in the poor side of town often correlates to a history of systemic racism and redlining.
    - tzs 5y ago
      If there is a problem, I think they will be able to get around it breaking pay into two parts. 1. A base amount that is based solely on the job to be done and the level of skill and experience required. The base pay is the same no matter where you live and is the same regardless of whether the work is done remotely or at one of their offices. 2a. If the company requires you to do the work at a particular location, or lets you work at home part of the time but requires you to come to a particular location often enough that you have to live in the general area of that location, they can pay an additional amount based on the cost of living in that area. 2b. If the company imposes geographical constraints on remote employees, such as requiring them to live in specific countries, states, or timezones, they can pay an additional amount based on the cost of living in those countries, states, or timezones. The key is to only have pay depend on location to the extent that the company constrains the worker's location. That should be very unlikely to run afoul of discrimination law.
      - stadium 5y ago
        > The key is to only have pay depend on location to the extent that the company constrains the worker's location When the worker has agency to chose remote vs in office, tying pay to physical location seems like coercion though. Doesn't that constrain the worker? "Live in this specific area and come to the office and we will maintain your current pay. Else, you have to take a pay cut for the same role and work output" Maybe this is a reason why some companies are hesitant to have it both ways and are inclined to force people back to the office. Could they be reducing legal exposure to equal pay lawsuits?
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    A little unintuitive if the employer is paying the office worker more than the remote worker. It's cheaper for the employer if they don't have to pay for offices, pay those electric bills, hire the janitorial staff, etc. I suppose the higher pay reflects the employer's expectation of a higher return on productivity, creativity, from that employee. Or, put another way, they are docking the pay of the remote worker expecting that they are probably not clocking in a "full days work" or will fail to deliver on the fruits of collaboration....
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Companies tend to pay what they need to in order to hire someone and hopefully retain them. A lot of factors play into that including overall skills, fit with the specific job, whether the team is mostly co-located and where, whether they're local/remote/willing to relocate, market rates where they're going to live, etc. I do expect we'll see some equalizing of salary bands at remote heavy companies. If I don't care if you're in the Bay Area or not, your decision to live there is a personal choice just like living in Aspen would be.
    - Jare 5y ago
      > I suppose the higher pay reflects the employer's expectation of a higher return on productivity, creativity, from that employee Not necessarily higher productivity, but different. An employee that is present at the physical office when most people don't, is providing a peculiar (and rare) kind of value besides their actual productivity in their role, _if_ the company values something about their physical offices. There may be many reasons why the company would, but exploring that is a different topic.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >A little unintuitive if the employer is paying the office worker more than the remote worker. It's cheaper for the employer if they don't have to pay for offices, pay those electric bills, hire the janitorial staff, etc Companies ask for this shit for obedience, not to reduce costs...
    - kilotaras 5y ago
      > It's cheaper for the employer if they don't have to pay for offices ... Profit per employee sets salary ceiling. Market sets salary.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    There are two sides to this and one side consistently seems to get ignored in these threads. If a company in San Francisco decides it will allow its employees to work from anywhere from now on, but pay according to local cost of living, then employees who had been based out of San Francisco and decide to move to San Antonio may have to take a pay cut to do so. That is the side that is always focused on. The other side is people who already lived in San Antonio but can't relocate, for one reason or another. Their spouse has a career and doesn't want to leave. Their kids are in school and don't want to leave. They're disabled or have family in the area that depends on them. Those people can suddenly go work for the company in San Francisco that is no longer requiring you to relocate, and might make less than employees based in San Francisco, but more than anyone was offering in San Antonio. This is the side that never seems to get brought up. It's not at all clear that, when the dust settles, the balance of those who had to take pay cuts versus those who saw pay raises to work remotely is going to work out with more seeing pay cuts. Short run that will be the case just because most companies had a lot more pre-existing employees in March 2020 than they have hired since. But that won't remain the case forever.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >And companies are already reducing pay based on distance of employees’ homes if they choose to work from home. Fast food companies might do this (just because they can get away with anything), but companies that dare pull this shit in any sector which favors employees should be shut down immediately... People are paid for their work, not for their distance from the office. If they want to try to reduce pay for that, how about adding the commute to working hours?
  - MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
    The “pay less for remote workers” thing will only work if all employees follow suit. If Apple decides to cut pay for remote workers, but google doesn’t, you’re going to see a lot more former Apple employees join ranks at Google.
- dSebastien 5y ago
  I fully agree with you!
- dahfizz 5y ago
  You are assuming that every / most employee wants to be remote. This is not the case, and these companies are obviously selecting for a team that wants to work together in person.
- Nginx487 5y ago
  There are plenty of people who choose to work from office, around 20% of total staff of major software companies as far as I remember. I worked from home about 5 years (remote-only company), long before COVID, and I strongly disliked it. I'm just tired to live in the office, not having private space and private time, and surprisingly, having fewer and fewer time for my family. After COVID I took a firm decision not to work from home anymore, even I like the project and other conditions.
chrisaycock 5y ago
> Having little human contact is really devastating Chronic isolation massively accelerated the burnout I had from my startup. While I had worked from home for several years, I went out most nights of the week to see friends. The lockdown eliminated that. I had to make a serious change in direction for my own mental health. So earlier this year I put the startup on indefinite hold and did the unthinkable: I got a job. I feel tons better now than I did a year ago. I still prefer working from home, but now I have people I can talk to on a daily basis.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- browningstreet 5y ago
  I’d add “for some”. It’s not devastating for me. I’m happy for people to get what they need, but the broad brush in these declarations, at this stage of the conversation, is unhelpful.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - linster 5y ago
    Glad you're policing what "stage of the conversation" we're at. We wouldn't want to be at the stage where a lone "works for me" dismisses legitimate concerns from what could be your top employee.
    - browningstreet 5y ago
      Handled by the “for some” part. Some people like RTO, some like WFH, some want a bit of both, some want to live 2 km/miles from the office, and some want to live 2000 km/miles from the office. Some want the water cooler, some want to be left alone and focus. Some want to maximize income and others want balance. Anything that hews strongly in a particular direction will close off another demographic of workers.
mynegation 5y ago
Seriously, how ignorant should company be to use phrasing like this? Any communication I have seen so far uses pretty neutral language like “return to premises”.
- lucasyvas 5y ago
  "Return to office" is the most common phrase I've heard. "Back to work", while possibly used accidentally by some, is an infuriating phrasing.
  - dvtrn 5y ago
    I have to agree with the sensation of chagrin towards “back to work”; partially because is it feels like a loaded statement. Work never stopped for my org, we kept working, some of us worked MORE, a lot more, and saw no appreciable benefit from it other than being rewarded with more work still. So is it “back to work” or “back to the panopticon of the modern office and radar scope of the management class”? I cynically think it’s the latter, and it’s become a specific topic that I ask about in interviews. Remote-refusant companies: pass, remote-only companies: a bit better, remote optional or hybrid companies: let’s talk. I’d rather work for a place that treats me, the professional like a professional and gives me the choice and say in the matter.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    I would probably read it as back to the workplace and not be infuriated by it. If my employer does not believe we have been working this past 18 months I wish someone would have told me so I could have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail or taken up gardening full time.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      I mean honestly, I haven't been working. I'd say I'm averaging 5 hours a week of productive time since March 2020. Nobody's watching, nobody cares. I'm supposed to sit in front of a computer 40 hours a week just to do it?
thendrill 5y ago
Let's talk about the real elephant in the room: bullshit jobs vs real jobs. Alot of engineers are stuck in bullshit jobs where most meeting can be emails and no reason to be physically anywhere except clock the 8 hours so we can get paid. How many times have we coded a 21 hour task in 50 minutes of stack? Now. group 2. People that have startups people with aspiration people developing actually usefull software. Guess who doesn't need to go to the office?
Steve_Baker77 5y ago
Another HN paywall
excalibur 5y ago
> My morning routine is well-oiled. I drink a big glass of water, do some exercise, hit the shower, meditate for a few minutes, read a few pages, take some notes, and write a few more paragraphs of my next book. It seems ludicrous to me that some people are able to get this much done in an hour. If I'm able to exercise AND shower in that amount of time I'm doing good.
- nzmsv 5y ago
  They are just really good at self-delusion or not very good at lying. Either that, or that's some really crappy meditation, book paragraphs, notes, or all of the above.
- dSebastien 5y ago
  It doesn't have to be a lot of everything. A shower can take 10 minutes or less, exercise can be as basic as a few push-ups, jumping jacks, etc. I varied my routine over the week. Some days I did 45 minutes of exercise, some days none. I didn't intend to be overly precise in the article, sorry about that ;-)
westcort 5y ago
My former company said we would be having an in person party in August—-no option to back out, and then there were clients with in person meetings. So I left and started my own company. Lesson: When even one person says no to a survey, do not steamroll that person.
- simonswords82 5y ago
  Am I reading correctly that your company wanted a one off meeting of the team, a party, and you felt you should have the option not to attend? And because of that...you quit?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I know people who would almost certainly refuse to attend a large in-person event right now. He also mentions client meetings. There are jobs with a lot of normally F2F customer interactions where, at this point, getting back to some physical meetings is not really optional (even if it theoretically is).
    - simonswords82 5y ago
      Thinking on it more...if a member of my team was vulnerable I would not expect them to take the risk. Reality is that even though we are a work from anywhere business we still need to meet face to face from time to time.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        There will come a time when COVID stops being a no questions asked reason to avoid any in-person events, meetings, or travel. But if at all possible (obviously not everything can be done remotely), I would want to give people flexibility if they think they need it at least through the end of the year.
        westcort 5y ago
        The larger issue is: Why do highly skilled employees need to ask permission to make a decision as to where they can physically work when physical location is not a requirement of performance of the work? Thanks, I will run my own business instead of working for some dinosaur who thinks nothing has changed since 1998.
ttul 5y ago
The author’s description of his morning routine painfully reminds me of my own, “before times” daily grind. I don’t miss it, and I never want it back. I met with my work team in person last week - at the beach, not the office - and it was great to see their faces after 18 months. I can see the benefits of working face to face from time to time. Once a month ought to be more than enough, if not once a quarter. But I am never giving up the 30 second commute.
- dSebastien 5y ago
  I'm with you there! TBH I don't mind going to the office from time to time. It is indeed nice to see colleagues face to face. What I'm against is organizations forcing people to be present in the office every X out of fear that people won't feel "connected" to the organization.
glerk 5y ago
https://archive.is/lP87C https://archive.is/lP87C
toiletaccount 5y ago
I think tech workers will win the PR game in the short term on this issue because of delta, but lose in the long run. Pay is a lot higher in this industry than many others in America, and when tech workers move into smaller towns they end up distorting the local economy. People often dislike the 'improvements' that come with the new residents and end up getting priced out of their homes. Meanwhile, tech workers complain they won't be making San Francisco wages in their new, much cheaper, location. It's not a good look, and a lot of people resent it. Californians were already one of the most hated groups west of the Rockies and now they're moving out in droves, acting just as entitled as people already assumed they were.
- thinkharderdev 5y ago
  I seriously doubt this will be a significant effect in very many places. I'm sure a lot of beach/ski towns might have issues as a bunch of newly full-time remote workers try to move there but most places won't have big enough inflows to affect local housing supplies/prices and the new cash in the local economy will be a net-positive.
- danaris 5y ago
  So when you say "tech workers", what you really mean is "American tech workers." In fact, what you specifically mean is "Silicon Valley tech workers," given that pay and CoL are much, much lower in most of America, including for tech workers.
vehemenz 5y ago
I've noticed that, like the author, many advocating for WFH live far away from their office and have long commutes. Suppose your office were next door. Then, you could have a 1-minute commute and enjoy some degree of socialization and the amenities of the office. You could have lunch at home, and you wouldn't need dedicated workspace there. The fact that many would prefer this setup to WFH suggests that the problem is not the office itself but the commute. There is a distance that, for most folks, commuting doesn't present much of a problem. For example, my commute by bicycle is about 9 minutes, bus 15 minutes, car 20 minutes. I think the trade-off is worth it here, but I can imagine a point where it wouldn't be.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Ideally, the office is a 15 minute walk from home. Then you get a nice daily walk. I always enjoyed my walk to/from school.
- Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
  I once had a short (10 minutes) commute. I worked a lot at home because my home setup is better than what any work provide (better screen, better chair, often better computer)... and no one bothered me with "hey, how is it going" every 30 minutes, judged me for leaving my desk for 1 hour, on what I ate or not. Heck, I could THINK. Those things are way too scarce in an open office. So no, even for a short commute, I don't want to go to the office.
  - dSebastien 5y ago
    Exactly!
- tgv 5y ago
  Totally, but it's not always possible to move close to work. I'd even say it's frequently near impossible or undesirable.
- Arainach 5y ago
  This doesn't scale, though. It's the fundamental problem - unless all your employees are interested in living in a place dense enough to support great transit (and willing to pay the rent premium), many of them will have to commute. There are only a few places in the world with transit of that caliber (Tokyo, London, NYC, etc. ). Even most medium or large cities aren't good enough for that experience. Public transit in Seattle is a disgrace (in most areas you're lucky if you can get one bus per half hour, and that bus is stuck in the same traffic as cars, and those buses never go from where you are to where you want - you have to go downtown and transfer from there, and the buses stop running long before the bars close). BART isn't exactly holding up well either.
joelbondurant 5y ago
By the law of USA communist unity, tax cattle state property objects owe their labor to the community, so one must not be permitted to object to full labor compliance.
nikolay 5y ago
I haven't worked at an office in the past 10+ years, but I can recall the 2-hour lunches, the hour-long meetings, which finished in 20 minutes, and the next 40 minutes getting spent in non-company related chat as you have a solid proof on your calendar that you did work, indeed. I won't work at an office anymore, even if I get paid less for working remotely (although I've always made mode working remotely than working in Orange County, CA where I live), because it's just better, and I'm more productive. Even when I worked close to home, I still wasted an hour in commute and parking, and maybe another hour getting ready for work, etc. Not to mention all the risks associated with the commute, the respiratory diseases we keep catching from sick people who don't stay home and prefer to cough and sneeze in the faces of their coworkers just to show off as the world's greatest workaholics.

85 points by dSebastien 5y ago

The companies that are anti-remote are on thin ice. There are enough pro-remote companies that they are screwed, because they will lose top employees if they force everyone back. The smarter of the anti-remote companies have realized this and are in a perpetual denial/paralysis phase. It would be easier if they just gave up and stopped trying to bring people back.

iscrewyou 5y ago
Long term lookout, I think companies who requiring people to go to the office because of nature of their work will likely pay employees more. Employees who need the extra money won’t mind going into the office. And companies are already reducing pay based on distance of employees’ homes if they choose to work from home. I think the market will automatically balance itself out in a few years.
- stadium 5y ago
  Curious how eeoc protected classes will factor into reducing pay based on location. That seems like wage discrimination. Any employment laws that have been tested around this in court? Sex/gender: I need my commute time to take care of my children. Health/medical condition/genetics: commuting increases my blood pressure, triggers anxiety and panic, and reduces my overall mental and physical health and quality of life.
  - benrbray 5y ago
    "Your address is in the poor side of town, so obviously your cost of living is less and I don't need to pay you as much!"
    - alistairSH 5y ago
      Quite literally. I don’t know the resolution of geographic pay my employer uses (I suspect it’s by metropolitan area, but could easily be down to zip code), but I do have access to the regional differences of my employees (several large offices globally, and many remote employees). Same for my wife’s employer (several large offices, very few fully remote employees). Wife’s company makes explicit comp adjustments if an employer moved. Mine does not, but it does impact future adjustments.
    - stadium 5y ago
      Living in the poor side of town often correlates to a history of systemic racism and redlining.
  - tzs 5y ago
    If there is a problem, I think they will be able to get around it breaking pay into two parts. 1. A base amount that is based solely on the job to be done and the level of skill and experience required. The base pay is the same no matter where you live and is the same regardless of whether the work is done remotely or at one of their offices. 2a. If the company requires you to do the work at a particular location, or lets you work at home part of the time but requires you to come to a particular location often enough that you have to live in the general area of that location, they can pay an additional amount based on the cost of living in that area. 2b. If the company imposes geographical constraints on remote employees, such as requiring them to live in specific countries, states, or timezones, they can pay an additional amount based on the cost of living in those countries, states, or timezones. The key is to only have pay depend on location to the extent that the company constrains the worker's location. That should be very unlikely to run afoul of discrimination law.
    - stadium 5y ago
      > The key is to only have pay depend on location to the extent that the company constrains the worker's location When the worker has agency to chose remote vs in office, tying pay to physical location seems like coercion though. Doesn't that constrain the worker? "Live in this specific area and come to the office and we will maintain your current pay. Else, you have to take a pay cut for the same role and work output" Maybe this is a reason why some companies are hesitant to have it both ways and are inclined to force people back to the office. Could they be reducing legal exposure to equal pay lawsuits?
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  A little unintuitive if the employer is paying the office worker more than the remote worker. It's cheaper for the employer if they don't have to pay for offices, pay those electric bills, hire the janitorial staff, etc. I suppose the higher pay reflects the employer's expectation of a higher return on productivity, creativity, from that employee. Or, put another way, they are docking the pay of the remote worker expecting that they are probably not clocking in a "full days work" or will fail to deliver on the fruits of collaboration....
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Companies tend to pay what they need to in order to hire someone and hopefully retain them. A lot of factors play into that including overall skills, fit with the specific job, whether the team is mostly co-located and where, whether they're local/remote/willing to relocate, market rates where they're going to live, etc. I do expect we'll see some equalizing of salary bands at remote heavy companies. If I don't care if you're in the Bay Area or not, your decision to live there is a personal choice just like living in Aspen would be.
  - Jare 5y ago
    > I suppose the higher pay reflects the employer's expectation of a higher return on productivity, creativity, from that employee Not necessarily higher productivity, but different. An employee that is present at the physical office when most people don't, is providing a peculiar (and rare) kind of value besides their actual productivity in their role, _if_ the company values something about their physical offices. There may be many reasons why the company would, but exploring that is a different topic.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >A little unintuitive if the employer is paying the office worker more than the remote worker. It's cheaper for the employer if they don't have to pay for offices, pay those electric bills, hire the janitorial staff, etc Companies ask for this shit for obedience, not to reduce costs...
  - kilotaras 5y ago
    > It's cheaper for the employer if they don't have to pay for offices ... Profit per employee sets salary ceiling. Market sets salary.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  There are two sides to this and one side consistently seems to get ignored in these threads. If a company in San Francisco decides it will allow its employees to work from anywhere from now on, but pay according to local cost of living, then employees who had been based out of San Francisco and decide to move to San Antonio may have to take a pay cut to do so. That is the side that is always focused on. The other side is people who already lived in San Antonio but can't relocate, for one reason or another. Their spouse has a career and doesn't want to leave. Their kids are in school and don't want to leave. They're disabled or have family in the area that depends on them. Those people can suddenly go work for the company in San Francisco that is no longer requiring you to relocate, and might make less than employees based in San Francisco, but more than anyone was offering in San Antonio. This is the side that never seems to get brought up. It's not at all clear that, when the dust settles, the balance of those who had to take pay cuts versus those who saw pay raises to work remotely is going to work out with more seeing pay cuts. Short run that will be the case just because most companies had a lot more pre-existing employees in March 2020 than they have hired since. But that won't remain the case forever.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >And companies are already reducing pay based on distance of employees’ homes if they choose to work from home. Fast food companies might do this (just because they can get away with anything), but companies that dare pull this shit in any sector which favors employees should be shut down immediately... People are paid for their work, not for their distance from the office. If they want to try to reduce pay for that, how about adding the commute to working hours?
- MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
  The “pay less for remote workers” thing will only work if all employees follow suit. If Apple decides to cut pay for remote workers, but google doesn’t, you’re going to see a lot more former Apple employees join ranks at Google.
dSebastien 5y ago
I fully agree with you!
dahfizz 5y ago
You are assuming that every / most employee wants to be remote. This is not the case, and these companies are obviously selecting for a team that wants to work together in person.
Nginx487 5y ago
There are plenty of people who choose to work from office, around 20% of total staff of major software companies as far as I remember. I worked from home about 5 years (remote-only company), long before COVID, and I strongly disliked it. I'm just tired to live in the office, not having private space and private time, and surprisingly, having fewer and fewer time for my family. After COVID I took a firm decision not to work from home anymore, even I like the project and other conditions.

chrisaycock 5y ago

> Having little human contact is really devastating Chronic isolation massively accelerated the burnout I had from my startup. While I had worked from home for several years, I went out most nights of the week to see friends. The lockdown eliminated that. I had to make a serious change in direction for my own mental health. So earlier this year I put the startup on indefinite hold and did the unthinkable: I got a job. I feel tons better now than I did a year ago. I still prefer working from home, but now I have people I can talk to on a daily basis.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
browningstreet 5y ago
I’d add “for some”. It’s not devastating for me. I’m happy for people to get what they need, but the broad brush in these declarations, at this stage of the conversation, is unhelpful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- linster 5y ago
  Glad you're policing what "stage of the conversation" we're at. We wouldn't want to be at the stage where a lone "works for me" dismisses legitimate concerns from what could be your top employee.
  - browningstreet 5y ago
    Handled by the “for some” part. Some people like RTO, some like WFH, some want a bit of both, some want to live 2 km/miles from the office, and some want to live 2000 km/miles from the office. Some want the water cooler, some want to be left alone and focus. Some want to maximize income and others want balance. Anything that hews strongly in a particular direction will close off another demographic of workers.

mynegation 5y ago

Seriously, how ignorant should company be to use phrasing like this? Any communication I have seen so far uses pretty neutral language like “return to premises”.

lucasyvas 5y ago
"Return to office" is the most common phrase I've heard. "Back to work", while possibly used accidentally by some, is an infuriating phrasing.
- dvtrn 5y ago
  I have to agree with the sensation of chagrin towards “back to work”; partially because is it feels like a loaded statement. Work never stopped for my org, we kept working, some of us worked MORE, a lot more, and saw no appreciable benefit from it other than being rewarded with more work still. So is it “back to work” or “back to the panopticon of the modern office and radar scope of the management class”? I cynically think it’s the latter, and it’s become a specific topic that I ask about in interviews. Remote-refusant companies: pass, remote-only companies: a bit better, remote optional or hybrid companies: let’s talk. I’d rather work for a place that treats me, the professional like a professional and gives me the choice and say in the matter.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I would probably read it as back to the workplace and not be infuriated by it. If my employer does not believe we have been working this past 18 months I wish someone would have told me so I could have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail or taken up gardening full time.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    I mean honestly, I haven't been working. I'd say I'm averaging 5 hours a week of productive time since March 2020. Nobody's watching, nobody cares. I'm supposed to sit in front of a computer 40 hours a week just to do it?

thendrill 5y ago

Let's talk about the real elephant in the room: bullshit jobs vs real jobs. Alot of engineers are stuck in bullshit jobs where most meeting can be emails and no reason to be physically anywhere except clock the 8 hours so we can get paid. How many times have we coded a 21 hour task in 50 minutes of stack? Now. group 2. People that have startups people with aspiration people developing actually usefull software. Guess who doesn't need to go to the office?

Steve_Baker77 5y ago

Another HN paywall

excalibur 5y ago

> My morning routine is well-oiled. I drink a big glass of water, do some exercise, hit the shower, meditate for a few minutes, read a few pages, take some notes, and write a few more paragraphs of my next book. It seems ludicrous to me that some people are able to get this much done in an hour. If I'm able to exercise AND shower in that amount of time I'm doing good.

nzmsv 5y ago
They are just really good at self-delusion or not very good at lying. Either that, or that's some really crappy meditation, book paragraphs, notes, or all of the above.
dSebastien 5y ago
It doesn't have to be a lot of everything. A shower can take 10 minutes or less, exercise can be as basic as a few push-ups, jumping jacks, etc. I varied my routine over the week. Some days I did 45 minutes of exercise, some days none. I didn't intend to be overly precise in the article, sorry about that ;-)

westcort 5y ago

My former company said we would be having an in person party in August—-no option to back out, and then there were clients with in person meetings. So I left and started my own company. Lesson: When even one person says no to a survey, do not steamroll that person.

simonswords82 5y ago
Am I reading correctly that your company wanted a one off meeting of the team, a party, and you felt you should have the option not to attend? And because of that...you quit?
- ghaff 5y ago
  I know people who would almost certainly refuse to attend a large in-person event right now. He also mentions client meetings. There are jobs with a lot of normally F2F customer interactions where, at this point, getting back to some physical meetings is not really optional (even if it theoretically is).
  - simonswords82 5y ago
    Thinking on it more...if a member of my team was vulnerable I would not expect them to take the risk. Reality is that even though we are a work from anywhere business we still need to meet face to face from time to time.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      There will come a time when COVID stops being a no questions asked reason to avoid any in-person events, meetings, or travel. But if at all possible (obviously not everything can be done remotely), I would want to give people flexibility if they think they need it at least through the end of the year.
      - westcort 5y ago
        The larger issue is: Why do highly skilled employees need to ask permission to make a decision as to where they can physically work when physical location is not a requirement of performance of the work? Thanks, I will run my own business instead of working for some dinosaur who thinks nothing has changed since 1998.

ttul 5y ago

The author’s description of his morning routine painfully reminds me of my own, “before times” daily grind. I don’t miss it, and I never want it back. I met with my work team in person last week - at the beach, not the office - and it was great to see their faces after 18 months. I can see the benefits of working face to face from time to time. Once a month ought to be more than enough, if not once a quarter. But I am never giving up the 30 second commute.

dSebastien 5y ago
I'm with you there! TBH I don't mind going to the office from time to time. It is indeed nice to see colleagues face to face. What I'm against is organizations forcing people to be present in the office every X out of fear that people won't feel "connected" to the organization.

glerk 5y ago

https://archive.is/lP87C https://archive.is/lP87C

toiletaccount 5y ago

I think tech workers will win the PR game in the short term on this issue because of delta, but lose in the long run. Pay is a lot higher in this industry than many others in America, and when tech workers move into smaller towns they end up distorting the local economy. People often dislike the 'improvements' that come with the new residents and end up getting priced out of their homes. Meanwhile, tech workers complain they won't be making San Francisco wages in their new, much cheaper, location. It's not a good look, and a lot of people resent it. Californians were already one of the most hated groups west of the Rockies and now they're moving out in droves, acting just as entitled as people already assumed they were.

thinkharderdev 5y ago
I seriously doubt this will be a significant effect in very many places. I'm sure a lot of beach/ski towns might have issues as a bunch of newly full-time remote workers try to move there but most places won't have big enough inflows to affect local housing supplies/prices and the new cash in the local economy will be a net-positive.
danaris 5y ago
So when you say "tech workers", what you really mean is "American tech workers." In fact, what you specifically mean is "Silicon Valley tech workers," given that pay and CoL are much, much lower in most of America, including for tech workers.

vehemenz 5y ago

I've noticed that, like the author, many advocating for WFH live far away from their office and have long commutes. Suppose your office were next door. Then, you could have a 1-minute commute and enjoy some degree of socialization and the amenities of the office. You could have lunch at home, and you wouldn't need dedicated workspace there. The fact that many would prefer this setup to WFH suggests that the problem is not the office itself but the commute. There is a distance that, for most folks, commuting doesn't present much of a problem. For example, my commute by bicycle is about 9 minutes, bus 15 minutes, car 20 minutes. I think the trade-off is worth it here, but I can imagine a point where it wouldn't be.

WalterBright 5y ago
Ideally, the office is a 15 minute walk from home. Then you get a nice daily walk. I always enjoyed my walk to/from school.
Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
I once had a short (10 minutes) commute. I worked a lot at home because my home setup is better than what any work provide (better screen, better chair, often better computer)... and no one bothered me with "hey, how is it going" every 30 minutes, judged me for leaving my desk for 1 hour, on what I ate or not. Heck, I could THINK. Those things are way too scarce in an open office. So no, even for a short commute, I don't want to go to the office.
- dSebastien 5y ago
  Exactly!
tgv 5y ago
Totally, but it's not always possible to move close to work. I'd even say it's frequently near impossible or undesirable.
Arainach 5y ago
This doesn't scale, though. It's the fundamental problem - unless all your employees are interested in living in a place dense enough to support great transit (and willing to pay the rent premium), many of them will have to commute. There are only a few places in the world with transit of that caliber (Tokyo, London, NYC, etc. ). Even most medium or large cities aren't good enough for that experience. Public transit in Seattle is a disgrace (in most areas you're lucky if you can get one bus per half hour, and that bus is stuck in the same traffic as cars, and those buses never go from where you are to where you want - you have to go downtown and transfer from there, and the buses stop running long before the bars close). BART isn't exactly holding up well either.

joelbondurant 5y ago

By the law of USA communist unity, tax cattle state property objects owe their labor to the community, so one must not be permitted to object to full labor compliance.

nikolay 5y ago

I haven't worked at an office in the past 10+ years, but I can recall the 2-hour lunches, the hour-long meetings, which finished in 20 minutes, and the next 40 minutes getting spent in non-company related chat as you have a solid proof on your calendar that you did work, indeed. I won't work at an office anymore, even if I get paid less for working remotely (although I've always made mode working remotely than working in Orange County, CA where I live), because it's just better, and I'm more productive. Even when I worked close to home, I still wasted an hour in commute and parking, and maybe another hour getting ready for work, etc. Not to mention all the risks associated with the commute, the respiratory diseases we keep catching from sick people who don't stay home and prefer to cough and sneeze in the faces of their coworkers just to show off as the world's greatest workaholics.