8 ms·

Genuine question. What percentage of you is saying this for fear or concern of the virus, and what percentage is saying it because you like to work remotely?

Genuine question. What percentage of you is saying this for fear or concern of the virus, and what percentage is saying it because you like to work remotely? From where I’m sitting, it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality.

tinus_hn 5y ago
It’s also a bit odd to consider remote working the paragon of virtue when of course the vast majority of jobs simply can’t be done from home. So it’s a bit of a pickle to claim working in an office is equivalent to killing others, when we all accept buying products that clearly weren’t made by people that were working from home. Are we casually supporting these people killing each other, just so we can buy a hamburger?
- SauciestGNU 5y ago
  There's a reason "we're not essential, we're expendable" became a meme among service workers. We are absolutely expecting low wage workers to sacrifice themselves to keep the economy and luxury services running.
- varelse 5y ago
  Now you're figuring out the west's informal caste system. Now apply this concept to the equity pie slices that go to startup TLAs vs founding engineers and be amazed...
CameronNemo 5y ago
Normal is context sensitive. The norm for 2021 information sector workers has been remote work. See also: "I am a man, therefore everything I do is a manly act".
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Exactly! > one of the brakes for a return to normality I hate how so many have simply defined "normal" as "exactly the way we all lived in November 2019" and then just assume that we must get back to precisely that. As if that moment in time represents some objective Normal Right Way to live. Framing that moment of time as "normal" is preventing us from moving forward to a new normal, with things like more opportunities for remote work and better in-office health-and-safety.
  - varelse 5y ago
    2019 was raging inequality and toxic corporate politics. We have an opportunity to do something about both right now. A lot of people are realizing that starting their own businesses is just as profitable and no less stable than a myriad of crappy McJobs. Open offices were already a craptastic idea before the pandemic but no amount of data overrode their cost savings so they were portrayed as a perk. I'm pretty much Eric Cartman singing the social distance song by nature, but I get people don't all agree with that. That's your lightcone, not mine. May we never intersect.
varelse 5y ago
When I catch an infection I tend to get pneumonia afterwards and I am sick for months. I already had a predilection for working from home because too many people who are sick insist on coming to the office despite what their company guidance says and even their managers telling them otherwise. WTH is up with that? Now that there's a small chance that this could kill me, I have zero inclination to return to the office whereas I used to go to the office quite a bit during the summer when people weren't usually sick and avoid it during the winter months especially around the holidays. You asked. Put it another way. I offer you a job for a $1M salary but there's one catch: every year I drag out the least productive employee (100% according to me) and publicly execute that person in front of everyone else. Would you take that job?
- jefftk 5y ago
  > Now that there's a small chance that this could kill me Wasn't that also true before covid?
  - varelse 5y ago
    Much much smaller covid is not just like the flu please go away.
    - jefftk 5y ago
      Covid is not just like the flu, yes. If you have no immunity covid is about 10x more likely to kill you. But, once you're vaccinated, the risk from covid is lower than the flu.
      - varelse 5y ago
        Right up until our strong pool of unvaccinated folk provide the evolutionary opportunity to infect the vaccinated pool. Why that seems to be exactly what's happening right now with omicron. But since fatality rates are decoupled from virulence rates as long as you survive long enough to spread the thing, we're all stuck waiting another couple months to sort this out. I'm 100% on team life finds a way (tm). I don't need you to think that way but I'm going to continue thinking that way and we'll see how that goes.
lucb1e 5y ago
> What percentage of you is saying this for fear or concern of the virus, and what percentage is saying it because you like to work remotely? I'm not the person you asked, but for me it's the virus. Not only for myself as a healthy 20-something year old, but also for the family and other people that I see outside of work as well as for my colleagues. We're all vaccinated, we have tests in the office and you're recommended to take one in the morning and take your mask off only after the results are in 15 minutes later, but still we work from home because I really don't fancy dealing with spreading corona to my parents and grandparents and I guess it's similar for the others. It's not all terrible of course, I dread having to get a bus subscription again (80 euros a month to do with whatever I want is a lot of entertainment), I dread the commute time, the inflexibility. But I also miss my colleagues and the 'flexibility' of going into the city for something small and silly because I'd already be there for work. I have a much harder time concentrating on work at home. Some people have no problem with that and I kept it up for a while too, but it's been pretty bad since about mid-summer this year. At one point it just really hit me that I'm done with covid. But then this shit happens https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=earliest..2021-12-03&region=Europe&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases_per_million&hideControls=true&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=DEU~NLD&Metric=Confirmed+cases https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... and I figure: okay then, let's be good for another holiday season and then I'll see about going back to the office again. It also feels stupid because it's never me, like, I haven't gotten covid at any point, I've been responsible, I'm not part of the problem. But then I'm also privileged in this ivory tower making an above-median amount of money early in life while just sitting at home. It's mixed feelings all around. In short, to answer the percentage question with a percentage: let's say I like office/home 60/40 (not as a time share, but as advantages vs. disadvantages). I'm not dying to go back, but the virus is definitely the reason that tips the scale.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  This post is an up/downvote rollercoaster but I can't readily identify the reason. I am curious to hear feedback on where I'm right or wrong, so do share please. (PM is also fine, contact in profile.)
bachmeier 5y ago
> the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality I see what you're saying, but you can't separate WFH from fear of the virus, so I think you're assuming nearly all workers don't fear the virus at all. It's a real risk for anyone in the high-risk group, but a lot more people also face real risk if they: interact with older family members, go to church services or participate in gatherings outside of work, have small kids, have at-risk family members living with them, interact with unvaccinated people, or interact with health care workers. I still reduce my interactions because even being vaxed + boosted, I know I could spread a new variant. Asking me to go into a cramped, shared office space for many hours per day would not sit well. Even worse would be if I knew it made me less productive and eliminated some of the flexibility I had in my schedule.
ethbr0 5y ago
Covid precautions and adherence to same has been a giant Rorschach test. Given a situation in which old norms are no longer assumed, with different information and beliefs, what does each person think is "reasonable"? Personally, IMHO, if someone isn't wearing a mask in crowded public places and getting their vaccinations, it's mind bogglingly hypocritical to be claim to be afraid of returning to the office. Either they're worried enough about the virus to protect themselves and the people around them, or they're not. And if they're not, then how can they be too worried to be in the office? * Leaving aside the issue of the minority who medically can't vaccinate.
- notpachet 5y ago
  > Leaving aside the issue of the minority who medically can't vaccinate. Perhaps nitpicking, but it isn't just a matter of whether you can vaccinate. For example, cancer patients can often still receive the vaccine (depending on their health and current phase of treatment), but that doesn't mean that they aren't still at a dramatically higher risk from exposure to Covid than others, despite being vaccinated.
minerva23 5y ago
False dichotomy. Systems of reasons affect decisions. E.g. I'm willing to add a fully vaccinated office to my risk profile, but how do I get there? Even if I could trust everyone in the office was vaccinated (I can't), public transit was my only option before. Will the company send me a taxi with a vaccinated driver? Of course not. Companies are asking people to take unnecessary risk for questionable speculative gain and burdening employees with figuring out (and paying for) how to do it safely.
- varelse 5y ago
  You can't. The courts are blocking vaccine mandates. Ergo you are indeed being asked to take a risk on behalf of your employers in exchange for absolutely nothing. I thought by now we would at least have required electronically verified vaccination status to fly but we can't even manage that so it seems the workplace is a lost cause.
  - minerva23 5y ago
    I wonder if we'll end up with something like smoking and non-smoking sections. E.g. this building is for vaccinated and that building is for unvaccinated.
    - varelse 5y ago
      Approximately known as red and blue states at this point, no?
    - BoxOfRain 5y ago
      I hope that dystopian reality never comes to pass, there’s enough social conflict in this world as it is without artificially inventing more categories of “reasons to hate our fellow human beings”.
peakaboo 5y ago
I laugh when I hear that phrase - back to normalty. We are never going back to how it was. Society has been irreversibly changed now and people's entire perception of the world has been dramatically altered. There is no future without scheduled, forced vaccinations. That is not normalty returning. That's insanity.
- tdeck 5y ago
  I'm inclined to agree that reality has permanently changed, and I also want to remind folks that it's OK to feel grief for what we've lost and some of the good things we used to be able to appreciate. In some ways, I think this idea of a return to normal is making it harder for us to find forward-thinking ways of mitigating risks in our public place. Most measures and redesigns seem to be temporary and not optimal.
- varelse 5y ago
  The people trying to return to 2019 are suffocating fish on a dock slowly dying so one can understand why they might hallucinate a bit and think things are going back to what they were and everyone will be super peachy happy at our new doubled death rate much like no one saw the end of Donnie Darko coming...
mikestew 5y ago
What you call "normality" others might call the "the same old bullshit". Calling it "normal" doesn't make it "right", or "desirable", or even "healthy". For instance, I won't be the only one in this thread pointing out what a health risk (meaning, "you'll get sick", not "u die") open office plans were before Covid showed up. So to answer the question that wasn't addressed to me, I say this because I like to work remotely and have demonstrated that I am more productive WFH. To pull me back into the office under some idea of "normalcy" is going to get an enthusiastic "bullshit" out of me. But that even assumes there's a chance to return to "normality" to begin with. The virus is out there, it's going to be out there for a while longer if not permanently. On top of that, the winds of change have been blowing hard for going on two years now. One's desire to return to The Before Times is a dream; IMO, things will be different, in one way or another, from now on.
blindmute 5y ago
I think it's really silly to fear the office at this point, but I hate offices enough that I will pretend to be silly along with them when asked by bosses. I just hope we don't enter a state where we are in the office yet still afraid of things like conference rooms and lunch tables, which would be the worst of everything.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
>From where I’m sitting, it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality. I agree, and I wish people were more honest about that aspect. I quit my old job over a mandatory return to the office policy and took a full-time remote position instead. If you’re posting on HN chances are you have a highly in-demand skillset and can get remote work if you want it; hiding behind COVID just drags out this diet dystopia longer than its natural lifespan. I realise people have different tastes but the taste of “covid culture” has got rather stale for many people.
romwell 5y ago
> it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality. So, people liking the what works for them makes them "brakes"? And normality is forcing people to do what they don't like, for the sake of what exactly? Sorry to break it for you, friend, but people liking things is not an obstacle. It's an business opportunity. It's the people who are insisting on not moving with the times that are "brakes". And that's anyone who calls 9-to-5 asses-in-seats "normality". Ain't nothing normal about that. And that ship, too, has sailed.

tinus_hn 5y ago

It’s also a bit odd to consider remote working the paragon of virtue when of course the vast majority of jobs simply can’t be done from home. So it’s a bit of a pickle to claim working in an office is equivalent to killing others, when we all accept buying products that clearly weren’t made by people that were working from home. Are we casually supporting these people killing each other, just so we can buy a hamburger?

SauciestGNU 5y ago
There's a reason "we're not essential, we're expendable" became a meme among service workers. We are absolutely expecting low wage workers to sacrifice themselves to keep the economy and luxury services running.
varelse 5y ago
Now you're figuring out the west's informal caste system. Now apply this concept to the equity pie slices that go to startup TLAs vs founding engineers and be amazed...

CameronNemo 5y ago

Normal is context sensitive. The norm for 2021 information sector workers has been remote work. See also: "I am a man, therefore everything I do is a manly act".

ryandrake 5y ago
Exactly! > one of the brakes for a return to normality I hate how so many have simply defined "normal" as "exactly the way we all lived in November 2019" and then just assume that we must get back to precisely that. As if that moment in time represents some objective Normal Right Way to live. Framing that moment of time as "normal" is preventing us from moving forward to a new normal, with things like more opportunities for remote work and better in-office health-and-safety.
- varelse 5y ago
  2019 was raging inequality and toxic corporate politics. We have an opportunity to do something about both right now. A lot of people are realizing that starting their own businesses is just as profitable and no less stable than a myriad of crappy McJobs. Open offices were already a craptastic idea before the pandemic but no amount of data overrode their cost savings so they were portrayed as a perk. I'm pretty much Eric Cartman singing the social distance song by nature, but I get people don't all agree with that. That's your lightcone, not mine. May we never intersect.

varelse 5y ago

When I catch an infection I tend to get pneumonia afterwards and I am sick for months. I already had a predilection for working from home because too many people who are sick insist on coming to the office despite what their company guidance says and even their managers telling them otherwise. WTH is up with that? Now that there's a small chance that this could kill me, I have zero inclination to return to the office whereas I used to go to the office quite a bit during the summer when people weren't usually sick and avoid it during the winter months especially around the holidays. You asked. Put it another way. I offer you a job for a $1M salary but there's one catch: every year I drag out the least productive employee (100% according to me) and publicly execute that person in front of everyone else. Would you take that job?

jefftk 5y ago
> Now that there's a small chance that this could kill me Wasn't that also true before covid?
- varelse 5y ago
  Much much smaller covid is not just like the flu please go away.
  - jefftk 5y ago
    Covid is not just like the flu, yes. If you have no immunity covid is about 10x more likely to kill you. But, once you're vaccinated, the risk from covid is lower than the flu.
    - varelse 5y ago
      Right up until our strong pool of unvaccinated folk provide the evolutionary opportunity to infect the vaccinated pool. Why that seems to be exactly what's happening right now with omicron. But since fatality rates are decoupled from virulence rates as long as you survive long enough to spread the thing, we're all stuck waiting another couple months to sort this out. I'm 100% on team life finds a way (tm). I don't need you to think that way but I'm going to continue thinking that way and we'll see how that goes.

lucb1e 5y ago

> What percentage of you is saying this for fear or concern of the virus, and what percentage is saying it because you like to work remotely? I'm not the person you asked, but for me it's the virus. Not only for myself as a healthy 20-something year old, but also for the family and other people that I see outside of work as well as for my colleagues. We're all vaccinated, we have tests in the office and you're recommended to take one in the morning and take your mask off only after the results are in 15 minutes later, but still we work from home because I really don't fancy dealing with spreading corona to my parents and grandparents and I guess it's similar for the others. It's not all terrible of course, I dread having to get a bus subscription again (80 euros a month to do with whatever I want is a lot of entertainment), I dread the commute time, the inflexibility. But I also miss my colleagues and the 'flexibility' of going into the city for something small and silly because I'd already be there for work. I have a much harder time concentrating on work at home. Some people have no problem with that and I kept it up for a while too, but it's been pretty bad since about mid-summer this year. At one point it just really hit me that I'm done with covid. But then this shit happens https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=earliest..2021-12-03&region=Europe&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=total_cases_per_million&hideControls=true&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=DEU~NLD&Metric=Confirmed+cases https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... and I figure: okay then, let's be good for another holiday season and then I'll see about going back to the office again. It also feels stupid because it's never me, like, I haven't gotten covid at any point, I've been responsible, I'm not part of the problem. But then I'm also privileged in this ivory tower making an above-median amount of money early in life while just sitting at home. It's mixed feelings all around. In short, to answer the percentage question with a percentage: let's say I like office/home 60/40 (not as a time share, but as advantages vs. disadvantages). I'm not dying to go back, but the virus is definitely the reason that tips the scale.

lucb1e 5y ago
This post is an up/downvote rollercoaster but I can't readily identify the reason. I am curious to hear feedback on where I'm right or wrong, so do share please. (PM is also fine, contact in profile.)

bachmeier 5y ago

> the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality I see what you're saying, but you can't separate WFH from fear of the virus, so I think you're assuming nearly all workers don't fear the virus at all. It's a real risk for anyone in the high-risk group, but a lot more people also face real risk if they: interact with older family members, go to church services or participate in gatherings outside of work, have small kids, have at-risk family members living with them, interact with unvaccinated people, or interact with health care workers. I still reduce my interactions because even being vaxed + boosted, I know I could spread a new variant. Asking me to go into a cramped, shared office space for many hours per day would not sit well. Even worse would be if I knew it made me less productive and eliminated some of the flexibility I had in my schedule.

ethbr0 5y ago

Covid precautions and adherence to same has been a giant Rorschach test. Given a situation in which old norms are no longer assumed, with different information and beliefs, what does each person think is "reasonable"? Personally, IMHO, if someone isn't wearing a mask in crowded public places and getting their vaccinations, it's mind bogglingly hypocritical to be claim to be afraid of returning to the office. Either they're worried enough about the virus to protect themselves and the people around them, or they're not. And if they're not, then how can they be too worried to be in the office? * Leaving aside the issue of the minority who medically can't vaccinate.

notpachet 5y ago
> Leaving aside the issue of the minority who medically can't vaccinate. Perhaps nitpicking, but it isn't just a matter of whether you can vaccinate. For example, cancer patients can often still receive the vaccine (depending on their health and current phase of treatment), but that doesn't mean that they aren't still at a dramatically higher risk from exposure to Covid than others, despite being vaccinated.

minerva23 5y ago

False dichotomy. Systems of reasons affect decisions. E.g. I'm willing to add a fully vaccinated office to my risk profile, but how do I get there? Even if I could trust everyone in the office was vaccinated (I can't), public transit was my only option before. Will the company send me a taxi with a vaccinated driver? Of course not. Companies are asking people to take unnecessary risk for questionable speculative gain and burdening employees with figuring out (and paying for) how to do it safely.

varelse 5y ago
You can't. The courts are blocking vaccine mandates. Ergo you are indeed being asked to take a risk on behalf of your employers in exchange for absolutely nothing. I thought by now we would at least have required electronically verified vaccination status to fly but we can't even manage that so it seems the workplace is a lost cause.
- minerva23 5y ago
  I wonder if we'll end up with something like smoking and non-smoking sections. E.g. this building is for vaccinated and that building is for unvaccinated.
  - varelse 5y ago
    Approximately known as red and blue states at this point, no?
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    I hope that dystopian reality never comes to pass, there’s enough social conflict in this world as it is without artificially inventing more categories of “reasons to hate our fellow human beings”.

peakaboo 5y ago

I laugh when I hear that phrase - back to normalty. We are never going back to how it was. Society has been irreversibly changed now and people's entire perception of the world has been dramatically altered. There is no future without scheduled, forced vaccinations. That is not normalty returning. That's insanity.

tdeck 5y ago
I'm inclined to agree that reality has permanently changed, and I also want to remind folks that it's OK to feel grief for what we've lost and some of the good things we used to be able to appreciate. In some ways, I think this idea of a return to normal is making it harder for us to find forward-thinking ways of mitigating risks in our public place. Most measures and redesigns seem to be temporary and not optimal.
varelse 5y ago
The people trying to return to 2019 are suffocating fish on a dock slowly dying so one can understand why they might hallucinate a bit and think things are going back to what they were and everyone will be super peachy happy at our new doubled death rate much like no one saw the end of Donnie Darko coming...

mikestew 5y ago

What you call "normality" others might call the "the same old bullshit". Calling it "normal" doesn't make it "right", or "desirable", or even "healthy". For instance, I won't be the only one in this thread pointing out what a health risk (meaning, "you'll get sick", not "u die") open office plans were before Covid showed up. So to answer the question that wasn't addressed to me, I say this because I like to work remotely and have demonstrated that I am more productive WFH. To pull me back into the office under some idea of "normalcy" is going to get an enthusiastic "bullshit" out of me. But that even assumes there's a chance to return to "normality" to begin with. The virus is out there, it's going to be out there for a while longer if not permanently. On top of that, the winds of change have been blowing hard for going on two years now. One's desire to return to The Before Times is a dream; IMO, things will be different, in one way or another, from now on.

blindmute 5y ago

I think it's really silly to fear the office at this point, but I hate offices enough that I will pretend to be silly along with them when asked by bosses. I just hope we don't enter a state where we are in the office yet still afraid of things like conference rooms and lunch tables, which would be the worst of everything.

BoxOfRain 5y ago

>From where I’m sitting, it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality. I agree, and I wish people were more honest about that aspect. I quit my old job over a mandatory return to the office policy and took a full-time remote position instead. If you’re posting on HN chances are you have a highly in-demand skillset and can get remote work if you want it; hiding behind COVID just drags out this diet dystopia longer than its natural lifespan. I realise people have different tastes but the taste of “covid culture” has got rather stale for many people.

romwell 5y ago

> it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality. So, people liking the what works for them makes them "brakes"? And normality is forcing people to do what they don't like, for the sake of what exactly? Sorry to break it for you, friend, but people liking things is not an obstacle. It's an business opportunity. It's the people who are insisting on not moving with the times that are "brakes". And that's anyone who calls 9-to-5 asses-in-seats "normality". Ain't nothing normal about that. And that ship, too, has sailed.