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Sam Jones, a co-founder of a nonfungible token start-up, Honey Haus, said his company had been renting a four-person space within WeWork for $1,850 a month sinc

Sam Jones, a co-founder of a nonfungible token start-up, Honey Haus, said his company had been renting a four-person space within WeWork for $1,850 a month since October. “I am just way less productive at home,” Mr. Jones said. “People are definitely, I think, realizing that physical space just has something special to it.” We have articles like this one with quotes like the one above that run counter to other research and discussion in this area like this article from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/work-from-home-revolution/622880/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/work-from-... which offers up stats that ~33% of people want to be fully remote and another 20% want to be home more than 3 days a week. Why do people have to ruin this for the rest of us. No, I don't want to go back to the office (I don't have to; my team is now fully remote forever) and I see it as a huge perk and a MASSIVE boost to our productivity to be at home.

throwawaygh 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if engineering remains flexible and sales/executive roles require more face time. I imagine an NFT startup is 100% sales/marketing and 0% engineering/science/innovation, so going fully in-office might make sense for them.
- pxlpshr 5y ago
  The fact that you assign innovation purely to science/engineering is why many startups fail. You don't seem to recognize that innovation happens across all segments of the business. Plenty of ingenious products never reach critical mass because engineering founders dismiss all other aspects of business building. Facebook's toe-hold that helped them beat MySpace and Friendster wasn't an act of innovative engineering as much as it was their go-to-market plan starting in Universities. Engineering will remain flexible because of all the virtue signaling big tech is doing in order to retain their talent. It's almost comical that they are struggling to bring people back to the office after being the biggest promotor of work-remote while the rest of the service-economy had to show up every day to their Walmart jobs...
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    This is a pretty odd comment given that I EXPLICITLY mention science, engineering, and innovation as three separate categories. Look at how I used the slashes in the earlier part of that science ("sales/marketing"). Do you think I think that sales and marketing are the same thing? If not, why would you think that I think engineering = innovation? It's the exact same grammatical structure. What I did say is that an NFT startup probably isn't doing anything innovative, and also is probably doing mostly sales and marketing, and that this combination of factors means that their in-person stance makes sense. I stand by that. My mental image of an NFT startup is that it's a boiler room of the sort that pump-and-dumped penny stocks in the 90s. That type of work benefits from rapid feedback loops among staff. The boiler room structure makes sense for a business trying to generate revenue from the NFT ecosystem. The rest of your post is an odd rant that has almost nothing to do with how I think about businesses or the world. It's not even a strawman... just kind of a completely off topic rant from my perspective. I have no idea what stereotype you're projecting onto me, but I'm not even an engineer.
tmp_anon_22 5y ago
Because you won't be able to buy your third Lake Tahoe vacation home with that attitude. Remote work eliminates a lot of career climbing opportunities and a meaningful class of tech workers depend on that.
- thebradbain 5y ago
  > Remote work eliminates a lot of career climbing opportunities Quite the opposite in my experience!
- smoldesu 5y ago
  "meaningful" might be a bit of a stretch, but I agree.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Remote work eliminates a lot of career climbing opportunities I don't understand - do you think fully remote companies never promote anyone?
  - potatolicious 5y ago
    I think the implication is that in a hybridized company the people who are there in-person will have a leg up on promotions over people who are fully-remote. I think this is pretty obviously true - even though I don't endorse the state of affairs. This is already true - even pre-pandemic those in remote offices far from HQ have a distinct advancement disadvantage vs. those who have face-time with senior leadership on the regular.
    - PickledHotdog 5y ago
      Are in-house promotions even that common these days? A lot of people's career advancement involves switching jobs
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        Depends on the company I guess. Where I work it's very common.
doublerabbit 5y ago
I hate working at home and I have been back inthe office every day since it's been open. Even if I am the only one there. Even today in the snow, I kitted up and went in. Working from home really makes me unproductive.
- hit8run 5y ago
  May I ask if you are single living alone?
  - another_story 5y ago
    I think people with kids tend to prefer the office as well.
    - garciasn 5y ago
      I have two kids and I would actually PREFER to be working from home so that I can spend more time with them.
      - closeparen 5y ago
        How do you think about the world your kids will grow up in? I just find it very strange, that I would sit at home on Zoom my whole life to better facilitate having kids who will themselves sit at home on Zoom their whole lives. Is this really the human experience we are passing on?
        KronisLV 5y ago
        > I just find it very strange, that I would sit at home on Zoom my whole life to better facilitate having kids who will themselves sit at home on Zoom their whole lives. Is this not conflating one's work life with one's life outside of work? I don't doubt that being at work with people is good for socializing with them since people seem to be better suited to that format of in-person interaction (even though that's not necessarily "doing work"), though there's also nothing preventing you from seeking out events outside of work, be it with your coworkers or other people. I think that claiming that you'll spend your "whole life" on Zoom calls is a bit far fetched, unless all of your life is work and the kind that is done primarily throughout meetings. While the argument that you make is noteworthy, i think i should point that out. Personally, i rather enjoy being able to step away from the computer and into fresh air, to go and play with my dogs or so on, as well as to not have to spend hours during commute for no good reason or live in a city with polluted air (there was black soot on the edges of my windows when i did live there). I actually wrote more about this cultural divide in preferences on my blog, which i mentioned in another post in this thread: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/remote-working-and-the-elephant-in-the-room https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/remote-working-and-the-elep... I think both one's personality and preferences in regards to modes of work are relevant here!
twblalock 5y ago
Who is ruining it for “the rest of us”? Add up the numbers in that Atlantic article you cited: 33% + 20% is only 53%. That means almost half the people surveyed do not want to work remotely at all, and a substantial majority want to be in the office at least a few days per week.
- hombre_fatal 5y ago
  I think the idea comes from the fact that it's always been hard to find fully-remote options. And even the most stubborn companies were forced by covid to relinquish some control to their workers. If, to get work done, you need your ass in a seat of your employer's selection, fine, but almost all jobs have already been like that since the beginning of time and there's no shortage of those. So I understand "you're ruining for the rest of us!" to chirp too loudly about it just when WFH is finally gaining real traction but doesn't necessarily feel like it's here to stay. The covid-induced WFH option at most companies seems precarious, like any moment the company will reverse it.
stu2b50 5y ago
How does that run counter to anything? If only 33% want to be fully remote why are you surprised a 4 person startup wants an office space? That seems pretty reasonabls statistically?
lalaithion 5y ago
In other words, ~67% of people want to work in the office at least twice a week and ~47% of people want to work all five days from the office. We're not 'ruining it' for you, we just want to work in an office.
- hit8run 5y ago
  Then go to your office and sit there parked as an employee spending your life in a cubicle. But don’t expect people who value their life outside to show up.
  - actusual 5y ago
    Sometimes I want to work in an office, therefore I don't value my "life outside" (whatever that means). What an odd conclusion to jump to...
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      For starters, having to commute and stay in the office for the full day cuts into one's WLB.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Unbeliever69 5y ago
        This is obviously a "to each his own" issue. Work where you perform the best and for the best of the team. For my small startup WFH has been a blessing. Outside of physical face-to-face interaction there have been no downside because we have adjusted our process and technologies accordingly. We also work very comfortable in video chat all day. We occasionally meet and have lunch. I can honestly say I will never go back to working in an office and most of my co-workers feel the same. The few that wouldn't mind working in an office occasionally are those that have distractions at home (family that don't respect boundaries, usually with young children).
      - 5y ago
marcellus23 5y ago
> Why do people have to ruin this for the rest of us. This is a bit un-self-aware isn't it? The other 50% of us could ask the exact same thing.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  You can still go to an office if you want to. Get a co-working space. Just don't force anyone else to.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    No one's "forcing" you to do anything. There are still fully remote jobs. Even GP said, > No, I don't want to go back to the office (I don't have to; my team is now fully remote forever)
  - nemetroid 5y ago
    Suggesting a co-working space completely misses the point of wanting to work in-office (perceived improved team collaboration).
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      But that's the key thing - people don't just want to work in offices themselves - they also want to force other people to work in offices. People who want to work from home don't want to force anyone else to do anything - they just want to work at home themselves.
      - nemetroid 5y ago
        They want to force their teammates to work with fully-remote colleagues.
        unsui 5y ago
        The reality for many is logging in to MS Teams or Zoom to have virtual meetings even within the office. That is what a significant number of my professional colleagues did even while at the office: many of them would just dial in from their offices, even when the meeting room was right down the hall. A significant portion of companies already accommodate hybrid work environments, whereby some meeting attendees are remote. This would be no different. There may be legitimate cases where physical proximity is a key advantage for a specific team, but the current WFH situation has demonstrated that those cases have likely been exaggerated, as people are demonstrably productive (in the case of my company, results in record profits) while completely remote.
kajecounterhack 5y ago
Not everyone has a good work space at home. Offices provide a big desk, ergonomic stuff, etc. Then you factor in kids potentially being at home, and it's pretty unfair to say everyone wants to work remotely.
- smileysteve 5y ago
  This is what's keeping me from using a wework membership. At home I have a second monitor, my external mouse and keyboard, my aeron chair; and if I need a change, i can go work from the kitchen. Even if my company opened the office again, I've now got all of the ergonomics they can offer with no sneezing colleague next to me. And it's on me if there are dishes in the sink or the coffee needs a rebrew. Plus, at least one member of each team is geo-remote, so every meeting will be a better experience without being "hybrid"
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  Isn't this situation a side effect of the “old ways”, where you had to go to work? So you optimized differently: smaller space, and no work space at home because you had one at the office where you had to go anyway, so it was better to live closer. Also, not all offices provide decent work spaces. The permanent humming of the AC, background chatter, cheap monitors, ridiculously low quality peripherals, wonky chairs… I could go on all day. In the end, it's almost as if there wasn't a single, universal best case… And I think this is what grates people, trying to apply a universal blanket policy when each person's situation and preferences are different, and they could all (or most of them) be satisfied at the same time.
- yifanl 5y ago
  I mean, anecdotes for andcdotes, but my office is on top of a subway station and isnt fully insulated around the windows (And today it was -15 C here in Toronto). My home office has neither of these two factors.
Apocryphon 5y ago
Truth be told the best way to protect the unexpected windfall of widespread remote work is to organize and to form some sort of professional association or guild [0] that can preserve tech worker leverage past current economic conditions. But no one is currently talking about that very much right now (the Tech Workers Coalition seems pretty quiet lately), because we're all dazzled by the roaring market and unable to see the dim future when it cools down and we're no longer hot commodities. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23388223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23388223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083633
- nemetroid 5y ago
  If you have a workplace where the vast majority want to work remotely but management doesn’t, it could work. But stats posted elsewhere in the comments suggest that (in general) only slightly more than half of employees want to do so, which I don’t believe is enough for efficient collective action.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    The collective action oughta just be support for choice for all. My suspicion is the end result would be hybrid for most- I think most pro-office folks would be content to work remotely at least a day or two per week- and remote for some who really want it. Pre-pandemic, most companies already had at least some remote workers who reside in different regions from the company, anyway. Collective action should preserve work location choice, not enshrine any one specific choice for all cases.
  - citizenpaul 5y ago
    It is if that half is (and it is) the bottom performers.
repomies69 5y ago
Nobody is ruining anything for anybody. Those who want to work remote, go work somewhere where they can work remote. If you don't want to work remote, you find an employer that offers premises. Either way no one forces you to choose employer that doesn't suit you.
- unsui 5y ago
  > Nobody is ruining anything for anybody. yes they are. I quite like my employer, but their return-to-office policy is non-negotiable, so I am going to start looking for a new employer. This literally ruins an otherwise wonderful working relationship and likely will result in years of tribal knowledge lost (as the senior engineer on my team). And yes, I have reached out to my manager, and this policy is non-negotiable (as it is company-wide), so the writing is on the wall.
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    That exact situation could (and is) happening to people who want to work in an office but whose company is going remote. It's not specific to people who want to WFH.
  - twblalock 5y ago
    From your company's point of view, it's probably you who is ruining the situation, not them. It takes two sides to have a disagreement like that, and it's wrong to portray it as though one side is responsible for ruining everything.
    - horns4lyfe 5y ago
      Except on one side I have to either spend a high percentage of my waking life commuting or a huge portion of my income living close in a city in what’s probably not a great place to raise a family. On the other side, someone has to talk to me over a webcam. Which penalty is higher?
      - blub 5y ago
agumonkey 5y ago
A place is not only a place indeed. I think work is more about the structure. A bad office group will make you like and be a lot more productive at home. A good one will make you miss going to work. Also I kinda believe that brains associate places with moods.. so if you struggle too long alone in the same spot, it becomes easier to stay stuck in this mode. Maybe office not being a single space for one person can dillute that effect.
coryrc 5y ago
> Sam Jones, a co-founder of a nonfungible token start-up He's zero percent productive regardless of location.
- noasaservice 5y ago
  0% ? That's being rather generous. If we take an account all the costs associated with shitcoin, this is a climate destroying ponzi scheme. He can definitely lose more than he put in.
karaterobot 5y ago
> No, I don't want to go back to the office (I don't have to; my team is now fully remote forever) It sounds like it's impossible for anybody to ruin it for you, then! That's great. Same here: I was fully remote before the pandemic, and will continue to only work at fully remote or remote-optional companies. So, if other people want to return to offices, it doesn't affect me at all. I wish them well (and secretly think they're nuts, but: different strokes for different folks). Maybe some companies will insist on people returning to the office, but it's really hard for me to imagine a future where it's harder to find a remote job than it was a few years ago. So I don't feel threatened by this. This feels like there's more variety than there used to be, that's all.
- jraph 5y ago
  > and secretly think they're nuts, but: different strokes for different folks I don't know. I'm switching next week to a fully remote position, partly because of the fully remote work aspect. I am looking forward to work in a team that can handle asynchronous and well written communication and use that by default because I think that's way more efficient for me and such a team. I'm also looking for saving the commute time so I can spend more time on my own things and friends, the possibility to take breaks at random times in the day, the possibility to cook for lunch if I haven't had the chance to cook the days before, and many other things. However, I have been enjoying my last days in the office at my current position, in particular the in person discussions, lunch and peer programming. I appreciate that people are seeking this. I also know people who just can't focus very well at home, and that's not always because of the children. My flatmate is one of them. I don't think they are nut for preferring office work as a consequence.
hlbjhblbljib 5y ago
Yeah, I moved out of the city and have a 100% remote job now, and am enjoying the lower housing costs. If you didn't job search during the lockdowns, now is the time to do it.
crate_barre 5y ago
The media is just out of touch or pure shills writing marketing pieces. There are three dipshits on planet earth that want to be in the office. The royal king that’s treated like a king (the boss), the dipshit royal assistant to the king, and the newly birthed dumbass intern that for the first time feels professional dressing up for work. Everyone else just ain’t having it.
- gsinclair 5y ago
  An amusing comment, but far from factual.
analog31 5y ago
I think the big picture is that all working arrangements, including blended arrangements, create winners and losers. This was true before the COVID, it will be true after. I have a hunch that there might have been a trend towards remote work even before the COVID, but it was happening gradually under the radar, people had a choice based on their choice of job, and could arrange their lifestyles and workstyles (making up a term) to be more or less compatible. Of course companies that paid more, could also demand more of their workers, including inconveniences of commuting and office life. I think the deal with the pandemic was how sudden it was. My work group agreed to clear out of the office, and we were gone that day. Managers didn't know what hit them, and had to re-imagine their own jobs. It strikes me that we are still coming out of the phase where the situation was forced on us, but we haven't figured out long term who the winners and losers are going to be in the future. It will be interesting to watch certain people: The ones who are strongly motivated to advance their own careers, and see what workstyles they choose for themselves.
- alexpotato 5y ago
  As a data point to the above, GitHub was almost fully remote as early as 2012. Plus, "telework" has been effective since the late 2000's. People might say "yeah but there was no video conferencing back then" to which I reply that I worked at a large bank in that timeframe and 99% of all interactions with people not physically in our location were over the phone.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  I've worked 100% remote since 2015 so it was definitely getting more popular even before COVID.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >I have a hunch that there might have been a trend towards remote work even before the COVID There was, I remember reading a paper that said it had gone from 5% to 10% of the working US population over the previous decade.
- helij 5y ago
  Indeed. I find it funny how we see a big push to return to office these days. I've been in 'hybrid mode' for years before the pandemic. Sometimes fully remote and sometimes with irregular visits to the office if there was an actual purpose.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kumarvvr 5y ago
Using "productivity" in the same context as "nonfungible token start-up" is bold. It just goes on to show that there is a lot of excess money in SV, not to mention greed and arrogance.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  My hypothesis is the value in NFTs are driven by black market money laundering where high prices are a benefit—not a drawback. Once the government gets better at cracking down on them I suspect their values will plummet.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    The ability to donate a painting to a museum and get a giant tax deduction is a big part of their value as an asset. I’m waiting for someone to have the chutzpah to try this with an NFT
bluefirebrand 5y ago
> Why do people have to ruin this for the rest of us. It's a mix of extroverts who see the office as a way to socialize, sandbaggers who see the office as a way to waste time and not do work, asskissers who just say whatever they think their bosses want, and control freaks who think the only way to manage people is by seeing them in a chair for 8 hours. In short, it's mostly people who are already ruining something for us even at the office.
- closeparen 5y ago
  In 2014 an artist made an interactive work intended to capture the existential anguish of the conference call [0]. Slate calls it, "Like David Lynch Directed a Remake of Office Space.” I don't know about you, but it sure works on me. Try it [1]. That is how I feel every time I have to be part of a collaboration that includes a remote worker. Which is of course every meeting for the last two years, but a national emergency is bound to cause some low-grade suffering. Making the vile space of Zoom into the center and essence of working life permanently is a whole other thing that I didn't sign up for and I'm not on board with. [0] https://slate.com/business/2014/01/the-existential-despair-of-the-conference-call-conferencecall-biz-captures-it.html https://slate.com/business/2014/01/the-existential-despair-o... [1] http://conferencecall.biz/ http://conferencecall.biz/
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    I don't feel any difference between a video call and an in person meeting, both are mostly annoying wastes of time
    - closeparen 5y ago
      Is it because your whole job is to hands-on-keyboard execute, or because you've found ways to influence/mentor/coordinate/lead without them?
      - bluefirebrand 5y ago
        It's because in every company I've been a part of, a substantial number of meetings are unproductive bikeshedding. I'm a lead, my job isn't 100% hands on coding anymore. But the number of "this could have been an email" meetings I have attended in my life is high. Mostly in person.
deleted 5y ago
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blub 5y ago
IT workers like to ignore the fact that most other professions in most countries are returning to the office (or never left) and for good reasons. Face to face communication and collaboration is the gold standard to doing any kind of work together. There are many reasons why one would want to work in an office at least part of the time besides efficient communication/collaboration: socialising, access to equipment, access to facilities, cafeteria/restaurants, change of scenery, biking/walking, etc and so on. Any of these can be argued against or replaced by other things, but when the office can give them to you in a package why go to the extra effort? For many people things were fine before the pandemic and now they want to get back to their lives. Working from home is an exceptional situation available to very few professions and only to parts of the staff that has yet to prove how good it works at scale in the long term. Based on my own experience before and during the pandemic, people painting home office as some kind of heaven were either in a terrible situation (commute, noise, etc.) or haven't figured out what the costs are yet (isolation, loss of professional social support, less chances for promotion, blurring of borders between work/home, slacking off, etc.)
- ryathal 5y ago
  Non-coding collaboration is so much easier in person, and it's the main reason I don't want 100% remote. It's so much easier to have meetings in person with a whiteboard to draw a flowchart/diagram/brainstorm than doing it remotely, even with virtual whiteboards, it's still not great. Digital also encourages people to have longer and bigger meetings, which is still just a huge waste, sitting in a meeting on mute with a camera off doing other work and listening for the 30 seconds that matter is far more draining than going to an office and meeting a sane number of people for 15-30 minutes.
magicroot75 5y ago
Because at 33%, there are still 67% of workers who want to come into an office at some frequency.
spoonjim 5y ago
I’m not saying that remote work can’t be effective (companies like Gitlab and others show that it can be) but what employees want and what companies want are not necessarily in any way related.
PorterBHall 5y ago
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
I think people wildly underestimate the huge biases towards capital expenditures in accounting and tax structures that are in place from past efforts to support the economy, while it is only putting a drag on and distorting the economy now in several ways and for several reasons. Crossing the remote work gate and getting off the fence will provide a massive advantage to companies. I think the only advantage that many co-located companies will have is higher pay due to the massive monopolization/concentration that has been going on where, e.g., Google can pay a staggering larger amount to persuade you to work in their offices the only they can afford in the Valley. We shall see if they have enough money and wherewithal to shift expectations.

throwawaygh 5y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if engineering remains flexible and sales/executive roles require more face time. I imagine an NFT startup is 100% sales/marketing and 0% engineering/science/innovation, so going fully in-office might make sense for them.

pxlpshr 5y ago
The fact that you assign innovation purely to science/engineering is why many startups fail. You don't seem to recognize that innovation happens across all segments of the business. Plenty of ingenious products never reach critical mass because engineering founders dismiss all other aspects of business building. Facebook's toe-hold that helped them beat MySpace and Friendster wasn't an act of innovative engineering as much as it was their go-to-market plan starting in Universities. Engineering will remain flexible because of all the virtue signaling big tech is doing in order to retain their talent. It's almost comical that they are struggling to bring people back to the office after being the biggest promotor of work-remote while the rest of the service-economy had to show up every day to their Walmart jobs...
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  This is a pretty odd comment given that I EXPLICITLY mention science, engineering, and innovation as three separate categories. Look at how I used the slashes in the earlier part of that science ("sales/marketing"). Do you think I think that sales and marketing are the same thing? If not, why would you think that I think engineering = innovation? It's the exact same grammatical structure. What I did say is that an NFT startup probably isn't doing anything innovative, and also is probably doing mostly sales and marketing, and that this combination of factors means that their in-person stance makes sense. I stand by that. My mental image of an NFT startup is that it's a boiler room of the sort that pump-and-dumped penny stocks in the 90s. That type of work benefits from rapid feedback loops among staff. The boiler room structure makes sense for a business trying to generate revenue from the NFT ecosystem. The rest of your post is an odd rant that has almost nothing to do with how I think about businesses or the world. It's not even a strawman... just kind of a completely off topic rant from my perspective. I have no idea what stereotype you're projecting onto me, but I'm not even an engineer.

tmp_anon_22 5y ago

Because you won't be able to buy your third Lake Tahoe vacation home with that attitude. Remote work eliminates a lot of career climbing opportunities and a meaningful class of tech workers depend on that.

thebradbain 5y ago
> Remote work eliminates a lot of career climbing opportunities Quite the opposite in my experience!
smoldesu 5y ago
"meaningful" might be a bit of a stretch, but I agree.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Remote work eliminates a lot of career climbing opportunities I don't understand - do you think fully remote companies never promote anyone?
- potatolicious 5y ago
  I think the implication is that in a hybridized company the people who are there in-person will have a leg up on promotions over people who are fully-remote. I think this is pretty obviously true - even though I don't endorse the state of affairs. This is already true - even pre-pandemic those in remote offices far from HQ have a distinct advancement disadvantage vs. those who have face-time with senior leadership on the regular.
  - PickledHotdog 5y ago
    Are in-house promotions even that common these days? A lot of people's career advancement involves switching jobs
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Depends on the company I guess. Where I work it's very common.

doublerabbit 5y ago

I hate working at home and I have been back inthe office every day since it's been open. Even if I am the only one there. Even today in the snow, I kitted up and went in. Working from home really makes me unproductive.

hit8run 5y ago
May I ask if you are single living alone?
- another_story 5y ago
  I think people with kids tend to prefer the office as well.
  - garciasn 5y ago
    I have two kids and I would actually PREFER to be working from home so that I can spend more time with them.
    - closeparen 5y ago
      How do you think about the world your kids will grow up in? I just find it very strange, that I would sit at home on Zoom my whole life to better facilitate having kids who will themselves sit at home on Zoom their whole lives. Is this really the human experience we are passing on?
      - KronisLV 5y ago
        > I just find it very strange, that I would sit at home on Zoom my whole life to better facilitate having kids who will themselves sit at home on Zoom their whole lives. Is this not conflating one's work life with one's life outside of work? I don't doubt that being at work with people is good for socializing with them since people seem to be better suited to that format of in-person interaction (even though that's not necessarily "doing work"), though there's also nothing preventing you from seeking out events outside of work, be it with your coworkers or other people. I think that claiming that you'll spend your "whole life" on Zoom calls is a bit far fetched, unless all of your life is work and the kind that is done primarily throughout meetings. While the argument that you make is noteworthy, i think i should point that out. Personally, i rather enjoy being able to step away from the computer and into fresh air, to go and play with my dogs or so on, as well as to not have to spend hours during commute for no good reason or live in a city with polluted air (there was black soot on the edges of my windows when i did live there). I actually wrote more about this cultural divide in preferences on my blog, which i mentioned in another post in this thread: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/remote-working-and-the-elephant-in-the-room https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/remote-working-and-the-elep... I think both one's personality and preferences in regards to modes of work are relevant here!

twblalock 5y ago

Who is ruining it for “the rest of us”? Add up the numbers in that Atlantic article you cited: 33% + 20% is only 53%. That means almost half the people surveyed do not want to work remotely at all, and a substantial majority want to be in the office at least a few days per week.

hombre_fatal 5y ago
I think the idea comes from the fact that it's always been hard to find fully-remote options. And even the most stubborn companies were forced by covid to relinquish some control to their workers. If, to get work done, you need your ass in a seat of your employer's selection, fine, but almost all jobs have already been like that since the beginning of time and there's no shortage of those. So I understand "you're ruining for the rest of us!" to chirp too loudly about it just when WFH is finally gaining real traction but doesn't necessarily feel like it's here to stay. The covid-induced WFH option at most companies seems precarious, like any moment the company will reverse it.

stu2b50 5y ago

How does that run counter to anything? If only 33% want to be fully remote why are you surprised a 4 person startup wants an office space? That seems pretty reasonabls statistically?

lalaithion 5y ago

In other words, ~67% of people want to work in the office at least twice a week and ~47% of people want to work all five days from the office. We're not 'ruining it' for you, we just want to work in an office.

hit8run 5y ago
Then go to your office and sit there parked as an employee spending your life in a cubicle. But don’t expect people who value their life outside to show up.
- actusual 5y ago
  Sometimes I want to work in an office, therefore I don't value my "life outside" (whatever that means). What an odd conclusion to jump to...
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    For starters, having to commute and stay in the office for the full day cuts into one's WLB.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Unbeliever69 5y ago
      This is obviously a "to each his own" issue. Work where you perform the best and for the best of the team. For my small startup WFH has been a blessing. Outside of physical face-to-face interaction there have been no downside because we have adjusted our process and technologies accordingly. We also work very comfortable in video chat all day. We occasionally meet and have lunch. I can honestly say I will never go back to working in an office and most of my co-workers feel the same. The few that wouldn't mind working in an office occasionally are those that have distractions at home (family that don't respect boundaries, usually with young children).
    - 5y ago

marcellus23 5y ago

> Why do people have to ruin this for the rest of us. This is a bit un-self-aware isn't it? The other 50% of us could ask the exact same thing.

chrisseaton 5y ago
You can still go to an office if you want to. Get a co-working space. Just don't force anyone else to.
- mdoms 5y ago
  No one's "forcing" you to do anything. There are still fully remote jobs. Even GP said, > No, I don't want to go back to the office (I don't have to; my team is now fully remote forever)
- nemetroid 5y ago
  Suggesting a co-working space completely misses the point of wanting to work in-office (perceived improved team collaboration).
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    But that's the key thing - people don't just want to work in offices themselves - they also want to force other people to work in offices. People who want to work from home don't want to force anyone else to do anything - they just want to work at home themselves.
    - nemetroid 5y ago
      They want to force their teammates to work with fully-remote colleagues.
      - unsui 5y ago
        The reality for many is logging in to MS Teams or Zoom to have virtual meetings even within the office. That is what a significant number of my professional colleagues did even while at the office: many of them would just dial in from their offices, even when the meeting room was right down the hall. A significant portion of companies already accommodate hybrid work environments, whereby some meeting attendees are remote. This would be no different. There may be legitimate cases where physical proximity is a key advantage for a specific team, but the current WFH situation has demonstrated that those cases have likely been exaggerated, as people are demonstrably productive (in the case of my company, results in record profits) while completely remote.

kajecounterhack 5y ago

Not everyone has a good work space at home. Offices provide a big desk, ergonomic stuff, etc. Then you factor in kids potentially being at home, and it's pretty unfair to say everyone wants to work remotely.

smileysteve 5y ago
This is what's keeping me from using a wework membership. At home I have a second monitor, my external mouse and keyboard, my aeron chair; and if I need a change, i can go work from the kitchen. Even if my company opened the office again, I've now got all of the ergonomics they can offer with no sneezing colleague next to me. And it's on me if there are dishes in the sink or the coffee needs a rebrew. Plus, at least one member of each team is geo-remote, so every meeting will be a better experience without being "hybrid"
vladvasiliu 5y ago
Isn't this situation a side effect of the “old ways”, where you had to go to work? So you optimized differently: smaller space, and no work space at home because you had one at the office where you had to go anyway, so it was better to live closer. Also, not all offices provide decent work spaces. The permanent humming of the AC, background chatter, cheap monitors, ridiculously low quality peripherals, wonky chairs… I could go on all day. In the end, it's almost as if there wasn't a single, universal best case… And I think this is what grates people, trying to apply a universal blanket policy when each person's situation and preferences are different, and they could all (or most of them) be satisfied at the same time.
yifanl 5y ago
I mean, anecdotes for andcdotes, but my office is on top of a subway station and isnt fully insulated around the windows (And today it was -15 C here in Toronto). My home office has neither of these two factors.

Apocryphon 5y ago

Truth be told the best way to protect the unexpected windfall of widespread remote work is to organize and to form some sort of professional association or guild [0] that can preserve tech worker leverage past current economic conditions. But no one is currently talking about that very much right now (the Tech Workers Coalition seems pretty quiet lately), because we're all dazzled by the roaring market and unable to see the dim future when it cools down and we're no longer hot commodities. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23388223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23388223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083633

nemetroid 5y ago
If you have a workplace where the vast majority want to work remotely but management doesn’t, it could work. But stats posted elsewhere in the comments suggest that (in general) only slightly more than half of employees want to do so, which I don’t believe is enough for efficient collective action.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  The collective action oughta just be support for choice for all. My suspicion is the end result would be hybrid for most- I think most pro-office folks would be content to work remotely at least a day or two per week- and remote for some who really want it. Pre-pandemic, most companies already had at least some remote workers who reside in different regions from the company, anyway. Collective action should preserve work location choice, not enshrine any one specific choice for all cases.
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  It is if that half is (and it is) the bottom performers.

repomies69 5y ago

Nobody is ruining anything for anybody. Those who want to work remote, go work somewhere where they can work remote. If you don't want to work remote, you find an employer that offers premises. Either way no one forces you to choose employer that doesn't suit you.

unsui 5y ago
> Nobody is ruining anything for anybody. yes they are. I quite like my employer, but their return-to-office policy is non-negotiable, so I am going to start looking for a new employer. This literally ruins an otherwise wonderful working relationship and likely will result in years of tribal knowledge lost (as the senior engineer on my team). And yes, I have reached out to my manager, and this policy is non-negotiable (as it is company-wide), so the writing is on the wall.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  That exact situation could (and is) happening to people who want to work in an office but whose company is going remote. It's not specific to people who want to WFH.
- twblalock 5y ago
  From your company's point of view, it's probably you who is ruining the situation, not them. It takes two sides to have a disagreement like that, and it's wrong to portray it as though one side is responsible for ruining everything.
  - horns4lyfe 5y ago
    Except on one side I have to either spend a high percentage of my waking life commuting or a huge portion of my income living close in a city in what’s probably not a great place to raise a family. On the other side, someone has to talk to me over a webcam. Which penalty is higher?
    - blub 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

A place is not only a place indeed. I think work is more about the structure. A bad office group will make you like and be a lot more productive at home. A good one will make you miss going to work. Also I kinda believe that brains associate places with moods.. so if you struggle too long alone in the same spot, it becomes easier to stay stuck in this mode. Maybe office not being a single space for one person can dillute that effect.

coryrc 5y ago

> Sam Jones, a co-founder of a nonfungible token start-up He's zero percent productive regardless of location.

noasaservice 5y ago
0% ? That's being rather generous. If we take an account all the costs associated with shitcoin, this is a climate destroying ponzi scheme. He can definitely lose more than he put in.

karaterobot 5y ago

> No, I don't want to go back to the office (I don't have to; my team is now fully remote forever) It sounds like it's impossible for anybody to ruin it for you, then! That's great. Same here: I was fully remote before the pandemic, and will continue to only work at fully remote or remote-optional companies. So, if other people want to return to offices, it doesn't affect me at all. I wish them well (and secretly think they're nuts, but: different strokes for different folks). Maybe some companies will insist on people returning to the office, but it's really hard for me to imagine a future where it's harder to find a remote job than it was a few years ago. So I don't feel threatened by this. This feels like there's more variety than there used to be, that's all.

jraph 5y ago
> and secretly think they're nuts, but: different strokes for different folks I don't know. I'm switching next week to a fully remote position, partly because of the fully remote work aspect. I am looking forward to work in a team that can handle asynchronous and well written communication and use that by default because I think that's way more efficient for me and such a team. I'm also looking for saving the commute time so I can spend more time on my own things and friends, the possibility to take breaks at random times in the day, the possibility to cook for lunch if I haven't had the chance to cook the days before, and many other things. However, I have been enjoying my last days in the office at my current position, in particular the in person discussions, lunch and peer programming. I appreciate that people are seeking this. I also know people who just can't focus very well at home, and that's not always because of the children. My flatmate is one of them. I don't think they are nut for preferring office work as a consequence.

hlbjhblbljib 5y ago

Yeah, I moved out of the city and have a 100% remote job now, and am enjoying the lower housing costs. If you didn't job search during the lockdowns, now is the time to do it.

crate_barre 5y ago

The media is just out of touch or pure shills writing marketing pieces. There are three dipshits on planet earth that want to be in the office. The royal king that’s treated like a king (the boss), the dipshit royal assistant to the king, and the newly birthed dumbass intern that for the first time feels professional dressing up for work. Everyone else just ain’t having it.

gsinclair 5y ago
An amusing comment, but far from factual.

analog31 5y ago

I think the big picture is that all working arrangements, including blended arrangements, create winners and losers. This was true before the COVID, it will be true after. I have a hunch that there might have been a trend towards remote work even before the COVID, but it was happening gradually under the radar, people had a choice based on their choice of job, and could arrange their lifestyles and workstyles (making up a term) to be more or less compatible. Of course companies that paid more, could also demand more of their workers, including inconveniences of commuting and office life. I think the deal with the pandemic was how sudden it was. My work group agreed to clear out of the office, and we were gone that day. Managers didn't know what hit them, and had to re-imagine their own jobs. It strikes me that we are still coming out of the phase where the situation was forced on us, but we haven't figured out long term who the winners and losers are going to be in the future. It will be interesting to watch certain people: The ones who are strongly motivated to advance their own careers, and see what workstyles they choose for themselves.

alexpotato 5y ago
As a data point to the above, GitHub was almost fully remote as early as 2012. Plus, "telework" has been effective since the late 2000's. People might say "yeah but there was no video conferencing back then" to which I reply that I worked at a large bank in that timeframe and 99% of all interactions with people not physically in our location were over the phone.
kilroy123 5y ago
I've worked 100% remote since 2015 so it was definitely getting more popular even before COVID.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>I have a hunch that there might have been a trend towards remote work even before the COVID There was, I remember reading a paper that said it had gone from 5% to 10% of the working US population over the previous decade.
helij 5y ago
Indeed. I find it funny how we see a big push to return to office these days. I've been in 'hybrid mode' for years before the pandemic. Sometimes fully remote and sometimes with irregular visits to the office if there was an actual purpose.

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kumarvvr 5y ago

Using "productivity" in the same context as "nonfungible token start-up" is bold. It just goes on to show that there is a lot of excess money in SV, not to mention greed and arrogance.

bin_bash 5y ago
My hypothesis is the value in NFTs are driven by black market money laundering where high prices are a benefit—not a drawback. Once the government gets better at cracking down on them I suspect their values will plummet.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  The ability to donate a painting to a museum and get a giant tax deduction is a big part of their value as an asset. I’m waiting for someone to have the chutzpah to try this with an NFT

bluefirebrand 5y ago

> Why do people have to ruin this for the rest of us. It's a mix of extroverts who see the office as a way to socialize, sandbaggers who see the office as a way to waste time and not do work, asskissers who just say whatever they think their bosses want, and control freaks who think the only way to manage people is by seeing them in a chair for 8 hours. In short, it's mostly people who are already ruining something for us even at the office.

closeparen 5y ago
In 2014 an artist made an interactive work intended to capture the existential anguish of the conference call [0]. Slate calls it, "Like David Lynch Directed a Remake of Office Space.” I don't know about you, but it sure works on me. Try it [1]. That is how I feel every time I have to be part of a collaboration that includes a remote worker. Which is of course every meeting for the last two years, but a national emergency is bound to cause some low-grade suffering. Making the vile space of Zoom into the center and essence of working life permanently is a whole other thing that I didn't sign up for and I'm not on board with. [0] https://slate.com/business/2014/01/the-existential-despair-of-the-conference-call-conferencecall-biz-captures-it.html https://slate.com/business/2014/01/the-existential-despair-o... [1] http://conferencecall.biz/ http://conferencecall.biz/
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  I don't feel any difference between a video call and an in person meeting, both are mostly annoying wastes of time
  - closeparen 5y ago
    Is it because your whole job is to hands-on-keyboard execute, or because you've found ways to influence/mentor/coordinate/lead without them?
    - bluefirebrand 5y ago
      It's because in every company I've been a part of, a substantial number of meetings are unproductive bikeshedding. I'm a lead, my job isn't 100% hands on coding anymore. But the number of "this could have been an email" meetings I have attended in my life is high. Mostly in person.

deleted 5y ago

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blub 5y ago

IT workers like to ignore the fact that most other professions in most countries are returning to the office (or never left) and for good reasons. Face to face communication and collaboration is the gold standard to doing any kind of work together. There are many reasons why one would want to work in an office at least part of the time besides efficient communication/collaboration: socialising, access to equipment, access to facilities, cafeteria/restaurants, change of scenery, biking/walking, etc and so on. Any of these can be argued against or replaced by other things, but when the office can give them to you in a package why go to the extra effort? For many people things were fine before the pandemic and now they want to get back to their lives. Working from home is an exceptional situation available to very few professions and only to parts of the staff that has yet to prove how good it works at scale in the long term. Based on my own experience before and during the pandemic, people painting home office as some kind of heaven were either in a terrible situation (commute, noise, etc.) or haven't figured out what the costs are yet (isolation, loss of professional social support, less chances for promotion, blurring of borders between work/home, slacking off, etc.)

ryathal 5y ago
Non-coding collaboration is so much easier in person, and it's the main reason I don't want 100% remote. It's so much easier to have meetings in person with a whiteboard to draw a flowchart/diagram/brainstorm than doing it remotely, even with virtual whiteboards, it's still not great. Digital also encourages people to have longer and bigger meetings, which is still just a huge waste, sitting in a meeting on mute with a camera off doing other work and listening for the 30 seconds that matter is far more draining than going to an office and meeting a sane number of people for 15-30 minutes.

magicroot75 5y ago

Because at 33%, there are still 67% of workers who want to come into an office at some frequency.

spoonjim 5y ago

I’m not saying that remote work can’t be effective (companies like Gitlab and others show that it can be) but what employees want and what companies want are not necessarily in any way related.

PorterBHall 5y ago

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

I think people wildly underestimate the huge biases towards capital expenditures in accounting and tax structures that are in place from past efforts to support the economy, while it is only putting a drag on and distorting the economy now in several ways and for several reasons. Crossing the remote work gate and getting off the fence will provide a massive advantage to companies. I think the only advantage that many co-located companies will have is higher pay due to the massive monopolization/concentration that has been going on where, e.g., Google can pay a staggering larger amount to persuade you to work in their offices the only they can afford in the Valley. We shall see if they have enough money and wherewithal to shift expectations.