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> Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, some people hate onboarding on a new company as a remote person and so on and so on. M

> Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, some people hate onboarding on a new company as a remote person and so on and so on. My team has been able to hire people from all across the country, gaining access to talent that we normally would not have been able to reach. Because my entire company has gone fully remote, if someone on the team has to take a trip overseas, they can choose to continue working if so desired. If someone wants to bail to a seaside town during the worst of winter, no problem. People aren't forced to live in overpriced urban areas, they can live where they choose to! > I think that an environment where someone can tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall higher productivity, even if individual productivity suffers temporarily. I agree, but I am getting 1/8th of my waking hours back from commuting. Since the pandemic began I have been putting under 3000 miles a year on my car. I am eating home cooked meals every day. Mid day I can walk down to the local grocery store and pick up food to cook later for dinner. My QoL is insanely improved. If I need maintenance work done (Late last year I bought a house that was built in the 1950s, so, yes, lots of that happening) I am here all day long if need be. I don't have to worry about when expensive packages are delivered, I am always here to pick them up. I can have someone come by and cut my cat's claws whenever need be. I can schedule doctors and dentists appointments at any time of the day and not have to take a day off of work to make them. And so on and so forth. WfH rocks.

teekert 5y ago
I very much agree and I’m looking for another job because my company is forcing me back for 3/5 days because of this. I’m not going back to that.
- ihateolives 5y ago
  Onsite/online split is the worse, unless you work with just a laptop and nothing else then you'd have to have duplicate setups at work/home and at least I'm always leaving things eithere here or there and then missing them.
  - rgallagher27 5y ago
    And you basically have all the downsides of being full time in office. Have to live within commuting distance, have to buy the train/bus season tickets (or have a working car and fuel it), have to schedule deliveries/family time/exercise around your in office days etc.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Or you just remote in to your work machine. Well, at least those of us who work in Windows can have a pretty great experience because RDP is the shit. Leave a session running at work with a bunch of shit open, connect to it from home and everything resizes and rearranges to fit however many monitors and at whatever resolutions you decided to pass to it, disconnect the session and login locally at work again...
    - teekert 5y ago
      For me it’s mostly about the screen quality and size.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    I love the split / flex model! See your POV easily though. A decade ago, maybe a bit more, I consolidated into a backpack. Laptop, often second portable display, various adapters, chargers, clipboard, writing tools, phone, earbuds (I still prefer wired, if nothing more than the crazy good mic mine have), sewing, grooming, first aid... Seems like a lot, but it isn't, and where I go the pack goes. I can go from cold, arrive somewhere, and be up and running in a few minutes. Have not maintained a dedicated office for years now. I do have dedicated work places, and have a few things, cheap things, duplicated for convenience. These days, I have a home lab, work space, well equipped. Can do most anything I need there. This was not expensive, but I did also get gear over time too. Most of it was opportunistic buys. Total deals. At work, any gear I need I either use where it is, or it is in my workspace. The end result is a very mobile way. I am currently out of State for a week, and am pretty much fine, minus some gear, but I am also not needing to handle the associated roles either. For quiet, I am on cell phone, no desk phone for the last decade. Use a spare room, my car, at home space, whatever. The big perk is being where I both want and need a very high percentage of time. Would hate full time at office. Would have to have one to start!
headmelted 5y ago
To extend this, more useable time with family. For many people with younger children (and therefore early evening bedtimes), having or not having a commute is not a difference of an hour or two of your day - it's the difference between spending time with your family during the week versus not at all. I've heard this from many friends (and some family) across different industries - hardly any have wanted to stick their heads above the parapet and single themselves out as being a problem. I already empathised, but this whole thing has really thrown a light on what working parents (specifically those with primary care responsibilities like school pick-ups and drop-offs) in the workplace have been dealing with this whole entire time. tldr; A great many people have had an increase of 150% of the time they care about the most by working from home - this proposal takes that away from them.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > and therefore early evening bedtimes Haha, you say. But my 3 year old doesn’t sleep before 10 :P That said, being able to pick him up and drop him off at daycare without having to rush is really nice.
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  As a counterpoint people with young children seem to spend at least some time each week during work hours taking care of their kids while their partner (whose on maternity leave) is doing something else. Also the constant background noise of kids crying or some kids show playing it pretty annoying.
  - fn-mote 5y ago
    Cannot tell if the parent is missing /s or not... just in case not. - Noise cancelling headphones work as well at home as they do at work. I love mine. - Imagine: I definitely spend time outside of "work hours" doing work, so it might balance out. Anyway, person-to-person and day-to-day differences in productivity are pretty large in my experience. Of course you could be in a bust-your-butt-for-a-promotion kind of situation, but you could also take the attitude that you're getting paid for what you actually do, and the fact that you are not top 1% productivity is reflected in your current "help-at-home-when-I-am-needed" salary.
ihateolives 5y ago
> My team has been able to hire people from all across the country, gaining access to talent that we normally would not have been able to reach. It works when the team is used to and knows how to connect with each other online and to keep those connections going through the day/week. I'm an (highly functioning) introvert and even I hate video onboarding. I've done it twice during pandemic and it sucks big time if the team is not ready for online lifestyle/workstyle. Several months in and I still don't feel like I belong, it's just all the people busying away on their own, like in a univerity groupwork. I miss my old work when the chat was actually a place for smalltalk, instead of a place for just sharing technical knowledge or updating progress. Feels like some companies think that remote work is exactly like onsite, just virtually. Well, it's not. Dynamics is different, workflow is different, everybody has to adapt. I genuinely want to work remote, I don't think I'll be back to office anymore, but I still need the team that knows how to actually be a team online.
- Accacin 5y ago
  You know what, I agree. My last place of work we went remote at the start of the pandemic, but I'd already had two years of getting to know my colleagues and our relationships carried on as usual when we started remote working. I recently switched jobs, and have been to the office once (to pick up equipment and get set up) and it's a completely different dynamic. I don't really know any of my colleagues, chatting online occasionally isn't the same as meeting in person, etc. I still game a few times a week with people from my last two jobs, but I can't see the same happening for this job. On the whole though, I do prefer it. My work relationships are probably lacking more but my quality of life is greatly improved.
- DJHenk 5y ago
  It's all purely anecdotal. I started a new job just when the pandemic hit. It was perfect timing, the lockdown went into effect between my last interview and my first day of work. Like everyone else, the company was not prepared for it. The only advantage they had was that they had a couple of long term contractors from another country. So I went in and... it worked out really well. Quality of life is fantastic, productivity too. It's like we've never done it another way. For the contractors it was even an improvement, because now they were on the same level as the rest. Based on this experience, we have started to hire people from abroad and whoever wants can stay remote.
Hendrikto 5y ago
I agree that working from home is great, and this is really not important, but I have to ask: > I can have someone come by and cut my cat's claws whenever need be. You have somebody else come over to cut your cat‘s claws?
- james-skemp 5y ago
  > You have somebody else come over to cut your cat‘s claws? I know a number of people that don't feel comfortable doing that, or have cats where you'd need multiple people, or to wrap them, in order to clip their nails. I definitely don't clip as short as they do at the vet, but I have a great set of clippers, and learned that what works for our cats is to keep the clippers on my desk and clip one or two nails when they come for a midday sit on my lap.
- navbaker 5y ago
  As someone who has had both cats and dogs and currently has an otherwise well mannered dog who bites when his claws are touched, yes, that is a necessity with some animals.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
As a opposite view: Some team members output has severely dropped. I've seen people playing video games during work hours for example. Also work and free time has mixed to a point where people just randomly take hour or two to go skiing or for a walk and routinely just quit at the normal time. Commuting is different in different places. For me it is 15 minute drive to the office from a neighboring smaller city where property prices are 5x lower. I've never eaten more takeout in my life than during past 2 years. At the office I had access to healthy "home style" cooking with variety of diet. Now I have access to pizza, poor quality Chinese, and decent Indian food. Of course I could cook for myself, but I don't like cooking and I don't want to spend the time. I'd argue my Quality of Life has gotten significantly worse especially since they closed gyms. Yes, they are now open, but there is also like a meter of snow outside so I probably won't get to the gym until spring actually starts. I live in an apartment complex so the super has the keys to do whatever work needs to be done without my presence. I could take my deliveries at the office (and I often did since I saw clear improvement on delivery dates when they delivered to a business instead of residential address). Doctor visits were never an issue, because remote work was always an option and many people did work a day or two every week remotely. If past experience is anything to go by I will get flooded with people saying that I should just do better and be better remote worker (like I probably shouldn't be writting this on company time) instead of acknowledging that different people are different and working at the office fits me and my life style better and that I've optimized for that lifestyle long before the pandemic hit. I personally can't wait for life to go back to normal. I'm sure we will lose some people since they want to be 100% remote and that's fine.
- gbear605 5y ago
  > Yes, they are now open, but there is also like a meter of snow outside Wouldn’t that snow be just as annoying to deal with for getting to work?
  - DrammBA 5y ago
    He's definitely double dipping on the "I want to return to the office" and "It sucks going outside"
fzzzy 5y ago
> Because my entire company has gone fully remote, if someone on the team has to take a trip overseas, they can choose to continue working if so desired. Just so you know, this is not legal. I hate it.
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  > Just so you know, this is not legal. Your blanket statement is wrong. If you’d said “likely not legal”, you’d be correct. Someone could very well get work visas and have their employer approve the travel and accept the likely required nexus in said country.
itsoktocry 5y ago
>My QoL is insanely improved. My question is: how did people not realize this before the pandemic? The workers of Silicon Valley (and other urban centres) literally created and sustained this problem all by themselves: "You have to get to Silicon Valley!"
- GFischer 5y ago
  People realized it. It was companies that were resisting it. I remember looking for remote work pre-pandemic and it was WAY harder, now it's more a default. I'm in Uruguay, South America, so the pandemic has been an incredible boon to me. I even got a remote team management position !
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Truth! I went mobile over a decade ago. Had some work travel to do, and it made so much sense I basically reorganized, ditched a desk phone (literally put it into a drawer, left VM announcements that I do not do VM, and have not had one since), setup a nice backpack with the goodies and never went back. Through that time, I setup a home lab and just did more and more there, until about the only thing that matters is where stuff to work on actually is and whether I can move it.
- hardolaf 5y ago
  People noticed it, but companies also knew what defense learned: long-term planning efficiency plummets when working remotely. And that goes for whether you're just two different in-office design centers working together, or if the entire team is remote. I'm sure companies are starting to see the decrease in quality and efficiency of project planning and management starting to show now which is why they're looking to return to offices.
mwest217 5y ago
As a young person without children, I much prefer the office - I intentionally live close enough to the office that my commute is a 20 minute walk or a <10 minute bike ride, so my commute is actually pleasant, and not having the forcing function of a commute to get me outside is actually worse for my mental health. I can still work from home when I have errands to run or medical appointments, but I much prefer being in the office.
- hardolaf 5y ago
  I also don't have kids and I don't necessarily prefer the office... but from over a decade now of experience working in remote and hybrid jobs, I've found that there is no substitute for shoving everyone in a room and telling them to figure out the problems with processes. Tons of things just never get resolved when working remotely because it's hard to communicate actual pain points to others because they'll only talk to you via instant messages or in brief video/voice chats. And it's hard to convey how much time people are losing to issues in projects. The issues don't pop up on a day to day basis, but they do pop up in long-tail projects and even in continuing development projects. And the worst is figuring out requirements remotely. When you're in person, you can pester people without their ability to filter you out until they get you the requirements. Remotely, well, they can simply just ignore you (and often do in my experience). Yes, I like working remotely most of the time. But I like living close enough to the office that if needed, I can go slap someone upside the head on a whim.
kodisha 5y ago
The only thing that is (kinda) better IRL is impromptu debug sessions, or that initial couple of days when you are bootstrapping a new project, so it's nice to sit with person(s) who are working on this. Even those are easily matched in quality with zoom/slack and draw on screen features.
suifbwish 5y ago
An interesting note on this is the main reason any urban areas are overpriced is because of max desired commute to a high paying job. If more remote options become available for this, we will likely see a decline in pricing for real estate in those areas as well as a decline in gentrification ect.
bitcharmer 5y ago
I was going to reply to the parent comment but found yours and just wanted to say 100x this! Thank you for capturing it so simply and concisely.
bipvanwinkle 5y ago
Agreed. I don’t if it’s for everyone, but i love it. No commute, healthier food, access to a bed for a quick nap, and a nice office. 10/10 would do again.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  As soon as they give me a 12sqm private office with a view, I’ll be happy to go back to the office.
  - GFischer 5y ago
    I have a corner cubicle with a view, I don't want to go back to the office anyways.
- hkt 5y ago
  Quick naps are hugely underrated. 20 minutes of sleep in the afternoon and afterwards I could do my job while juggling knives (figuratively). A manager I worked with once pre-pandemic had his idea of "business hammocks" for the office repeatedly shot down. He was a genius though.
  - craigie 5y ago
    >his idea of "business hammocks" for the office repeatedly shot down. He was a genius though. Sounds like nap pods lol
    - hkt 5y ago
      Except less coffin like in construction. That was his criticism of pods, and frankly I share it.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    We had a couch for a while. At other jobs, I setup the back of my Expedition. Tinted windows, bedding, a few comforts and I knocked out the short nap all the time. Would/will do again.
deanCommie 5y ago
> I agree, but I am getting 1/8th of my waking hours back from commuting. What about all the people who already knew spending 2 hours commuting was a terrible use of our time before the pandemic, regardless of how much of a bigger house we could get? So we lived in dense cities, in walkable neighborhoods, where the office was a 15 minute walk away but so were restaurants, parks, grocery stores, and theaters? But part of the exchange we made was that our houses/apartments were small, and were for LIVING not for working. We don't have a spare bedroom to turn into a segregated office, so instead the work/home life has been an overlapping mess for 2 years.
- mdpye 5y ago
  Surely you mean that the flat is for sleeping not living. They're too small for living, because all the living is done at the restaurants, bars, parks, theatres, offices and so on. If that's the style you prefer, then you need a co-working space to replace the office, in the same way your place probably isn't big enough to entertain people for dinner so you use a restaurant. And it's too dense with the neighbours to throw a proper party with dancing, so you use the bars and clubs. At least this is my understanding from having done a bit of both.
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    No? I can still have people over, and I can still enjoy my hobbies at home. But I don't have a spare bedroom going unused that I can make an office. My office can only overlapping with my personal "fun" space.
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  You can probably still go back to the office even if your colleagues work from home. And if not, there are probably coworking spaces, or similar. Why must there be a one-size-fits-all situation? Also, if WfH spreads, many of the people who made the same choice, getting a small apartment in a dense city for living only, will probably make a different choice now and move somewhere else. I know many people who did just that. I expect this will lower the prices of housing in cities, which means you could live in a bigger apartment if you wanted.
dragonelite 5y ago
Yeah i joked with my team the next step will be asynchronous teams where teams could be spread over US and EU etc. I love my solo lunchbreak walk just to empty my head or just think instead of having to talk or interact with team members.
- weatherlite 5y ago
  Well that's been going on for a long time now, most big companies have multiple time zone teams.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Next step? International companies have been doing this for decades. Until I retired at the end of 2017 I had worked for over twenty years in a team which had developers and domain experts in the following countries: Norway, UK, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, USA (several states), Canada, Poland.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    A lot don't have closely working together ('two pizza') teams distributed across offices, nevermind timezones more than one or two out. Occasional collaboration is different from day to day, and I'm sure that's why GP emphasised 'asynchronous' - doing it with your close colleagues requires a shift in how you work, async written communication not chats, PR review not pairing, etc.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      This was not occasional collaboration, it was daily video standups, real time collaboration, code review, frequent video discussions with other developers and domain experts, etc.
- sharpy 5y ago
  My team is mostly in office, but we do have people in 2 other time zones. Communication happens mostly in slack (even for people in the office - because it would be too loud otherwise - open plan office, gggrr), but also to include people not in the office. I think having remote people in various time zones is fine, as long as we can "get together" once in a while. We do virtual board game night (well, afternoon for most of us) once a week, and of course, do sprint reviews and planning together.
blitzar 5y ago
All great for you ... but hey lets think of the little people like the shareholders of google... 257 billion in profit in 2021 (share price closed 2800), from 89 billion in 2019 (share price closed 1350). Hey look it works for them too, everyone is a winner!
- IMTDb 5y ago
  What part of these profits comes from work actually done remotely during the pandemic ? What you are proving is that the Google model of hiring extremely talented devs, paying them handsomely, and asking them to spend days in their campus allowed them to create a company that takes in billion of profits even during a pandemic. Which part of the Google offer significantly changed thanks to work done during the pandemic ? All these profits come from something that was built - in person - in pre pandemic work organisation, so we know that this was was successful. The only big thing that I can think of on Google side that was supposed to take off during the pandemic is Stadia. I own one, and it's an understatement to say that it did not deliver on its promises. It is not the first Google product that fails, and it is hard to say if the failure is due to remote work, but still something to consider.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    > All these profits come from something that was built - in person - in pre pandemic work organisation, so we know that this was was successful. This is very true. It is also true that these built products were operated in a remote work environment - meaningful, and significantly enhanced profits were extracted when operating these assets remotely vs operating them in person. Sample size is small of course and time will tell. Stadia, not a great example, build in person - launched and operated remotely. Was its failure due to it being poorly built or poorly operated? Fellow owner and former user of the service, I didnt think it was that bad technically, but understand I am in the significant minority on that one.
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    Honestly, the argument you made in the first paragraph is a good argument against companies getting too big rather than against remote work: what part of Google's profit comes from work done in the last 5 years? Most Google products and services were mature in 2017.

teekert 5y ago

I very much agree and I’m looking for another job because my company is forcing me back for 3/5 days because of this. I’m not going back to that.

ihateolives 5y ago
Onsite/online split is the worse, unless you work with just a laptop and nothing else then you'd have to have duplicate setups at work/home and at least I'm always leaving things eithere here or there and then missing them.
- rgallagher27 5y ago
  And you basically have all the downsides of being full time in office. Have to live within commuting distance, have to buy the train/bus season tickets (or have a working car and fuel it), have to schedule deliveries/family time/exercise around your in office days etc.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Or you just remote in to your work machine. Well, at least those of us who work in Windows can have a pretty great experience because RDP is the shit. Leave a session running at work with a bunch of shit open, connect to it from home and everything resizes and rearranges to fit however many monitors and at whatever resolutions you decided to pass to it, disconnect the session and login locally at work again...
  - teekert 5y ago
    For me it’s mostly about the screen quality and size.
- ddingus 5y ago
  I love the split / flex model! See your POV easily though. A decade ago, maybe a bit more, I consolidated into a backpack. Laptop, often second portable display, various adapters, chargers, clipboard, writing tools, phone, earbuds (I still prefer wired, if nothing more than the crazy good mic mine have), sewing, grooming, first aid... Seems like a lot, but it isn't, and where I go the pack goes. I can go from cold, arrive somewhere, and be up and running in a few minutes. Have not maintained a dedicated office for years now. I do have dedicated work places, and have a few things, cheap things, duplicated for convenience. These days, I have a home lab, work space, well equipped. Can do most anything I need there. This was not expensive, but I did also get gear over time too. Most of it was opportunistic buys. Total deals. At work, any gear I need I either use where it is, or it is in my workspace. The end result is a very mobile way. I am currently out of State for a week, and am pretty much fine, minus some gear, but I am also not needing to handle the associated roles either. For quiet, I am on cell phone, no desk phone for the last decade. Use a spare room, my car, at home space, whatever. The big perk is being where I both want and need a very high percentage of time. Would hate full time at office. Would have to have one to start!

headmelted 5y ago

To extend this, more useable time with family. For many people with younger children (and therefore early evening bedtimes), having or not having a commute is not a difference of an hour or two of your day - it's the difference between spending time with your family during the week versus not at all. I've heard this from many friends (and some family) across different industries - hardly any have wanted to stick their heads above the parapet and single themselves out as being a problem. I already empathised, but this whole thing has really thrown a light on what working parents (specifically those with primary care responsibilities like school pick-ups and drop-offs) in the workplace have been dealing with this whole entire time. tldr; A great many people have had an increase of 150% of the time they care about the most by working from home - this proposal takes that away from them.

Aeolun 5y ago
> and therefore early evening bedtimes Haha, you say. But my 3 year old doesn’t sleep before 10 :P That said, being able to pick him up and drop him off at daycare without having to rush is really nice.
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
As a counterpoint people with young children seem to spend at least some time each week during work hours taking care of their kids while their partner (whose on maternity leave) is doing something else. Also the constant background noise of kids crying or some kids show playing it pretty annoying.
- fn-mote 5y ago
  Cannot tell if the parent is missing /s or not... just in case not. - Noise cancelling headphones work as well at home as they do at work. I love mine. - Imagine: I definitely spend time outside of "work hours" doing work, so it might balance out. Anyway, person-to-person and day-to-day differences in productivity are pretty large in my experience. Of course you could be in a bust-your-butt-for-a-promotion kind of situation, but you could also take the attitude that you're getting paid for what you actually do, and the fact that you are not top 1% productivity is reflected in your current "help-at-home-when-I-am-needed" salary.

ihateolives 5y ago

> My team has been able to hire people from all across the country, gaining access to talent that we normally would not have been able to reach. It works when the team is used to and knows how to connect with each other online and to keep those connections going through the day/week. I'm an (highly functioning) introvert and even I hate video onboarding. I've done it twice during pandemic and it sucks big time if the team is not ready for online lifestyle/workstyle. Several months in and I still don't feel like I belong, it's just all the people busying away on their own, like in a univerity groupwork. I miss my old work when the chat was actually a place for smalltalk, instead of a place for just sharing technical knowledge or updating progress. Feels like some companies think that remote work is exactly like onsite, just virtually. Well, it's not. Dynamics is different, workflow is different, everybody has to adapt. I genuinely want to work remote, I don't think I'll be back to office anymore, but I still need the team that knows how to actually be a team online.

Accacin 5y ago
You know what, I agree. My last place of work we went remote at the start of the pandemic, but I'd already had two years of getting to know my colleagues and our relationships carried on as usual when we started remote working. I recently switched jobs, and have been to the office once (to pick up equipment and get set up) and it's a completely different dynamic. I don't really know any of my colleagues, chatting online occasionally isn't the same as meeting in person, etc. I still game a few times a week with people from my last two jobs, but I can't see the same happening for this job. On the whole though, I do prefer it. My work relationships are probably lacking more but my quality of life is greatly improved.
DJHenk 5y ago
It's all purely anecdotal. I started a new job just when the pandemic hit. It was perfect timing, the lockdown went into effect between my last interview and my first day of work. Like everyone else, the company was not prepared for it. The only advantage they had was that they had a couple of long term contractors from another country. So I went in and... it worked out really well. Quality of life is fantastic, productivity too. It's like we've never done it another way. For the contractors it was even an improvement, because now they were on the same level as the rest. Based on this experience, we have started to hire people from abroad and whoever wants can stay remote.

Hendrikto 5y ago

I agree that working from home is great, and this is really not important, but I have to ask: > I can have someone come by and cut my cat's claws whenever need be. You have somebody else come over to cut your cat‘s claws?

james-skemp 5y ago
> You have somebody else come over to cut your cat‘s claws? I know a number of people that don't feel comfortable doing that, or have cats where you'd need multiple people, or to wrap them, in order to clip their nails. I definitely don't clip as short as they do at the vet, but I have a great set of clippers, and learned that what works for our cats is to keep the clippers on my desk and clip one or two nails when they come for a midday sit on my lap.
navbaker 5y ago
As someone who has had both cats and dogs and currently has an otherwise well mannered dog who bites when his claws are touched, yes, that is a necessity with some animals.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

nextlevelwizard 5y ago

As a opposite view: Some team members output has severely dropped. I've seen people playing video games during work hours for example. Also work and free time has mixed to a point where people just randomly take hour or two to go skiing or for a walk and routinely just quit at the normal time. Commuting is different in different places. For me it is 15 minute drive to the office from a neighboring smaller city where property prices are 5x lower. I've never eaten more takeout in my life than during past 2 years. At the office I had access to healthy "home style" cooking with variety of diet. Now I have access to pizza, poor quality Chinese, and decent Indian food. Of course I could cook for myself, but I don't like cooking and I don't want to spend the time. I'd argue my Quality of Life has gotten significantly worse especially since they closed gyms. Yes, they are now open, but there is also like a meter of snow outside so I probably won't get to the gym until spring actually starts. I live in an apartment complex so the super has the keys to do whatever work needs to be done without my presence. I could take my deliveries at the office (and I often did since I saw clear improvement on delivery dates when they delivered to a business instead of residential address). Doctor visits were never an issue, because remote work was always an option and many people did work a day or two every week remotely. If past experience is anything to go by I will get flooded with people saying that I should just do better and be better remote worker (like I probably shouldn't be writting this on company time) instead of acknowledging that different people are different and working at the office fits me and my life style better and that I've optimized for that lifestyle long before the pandemic hit. I personally can't wait for life to go back to normal. I'm sure we will lose some people since they want to be 100% remote and that's fine.

gbear605 5y ago
> Yes, they are now open, but there is also like a meter of snow outside Wouldn’t that snow be just as annoying to deal with for getting to work?
- DrammBA 5y ago
  He's definitely double dipping on the "I want to return to the office" and "It sucks going outside"

fzzzy 5y ago

> Because my entire company has gone fully remote, if someone on the team has to take a trip overseas, they can choose to continue working if so desired. Just so you know, this is not legal. I hate it.

jsjohnst 5y ago
> Just so you know, this is not legal. Your blanket statement is wrong. If you’d said “likely not legal”, you’d be correct. Someone could very well get work visas and have their employer approve the travel and accept the likely required nexus in said country.

itsoktocry 5y ago

>My QoL is insanely improved. My question is: how did people not realize this before the pandemic? The workers of Silicon Valley (and other urban centres) literally created and sustained this problem all by themselves: "You have to get to Silicon Valley!"

GFischer 5y ago
People realized it. It was companies that were resisting it. I remember looking for remote work pre-pandemic and it was WAY harder, now it's more a default. I'm in Uruguay, South America, so the pandemic has been an incredible boon to me. I even got a remote team management position !
- ddingus 5y ago
  Truth! I went mobile over a decade ago. Had some work travel to do, and it made so much sense I basically reorganized, ditched a desk phone (literally put it into a drawer, left VM announcements that I do not do VM, and have not had one since), setup a nice backpack with the goodies and never went back. Through that time, I setup a home lab and just did more and more there, until about the only thing that matters is where stuff to work on actually is and whether I can move it.
hardolaf 5y ago
People noticed it, but companies also knew what defense learned: long-term planning efficiency plummets when working remotely. And that goes for whether you're just two different in-office design centers working together, or if the entire team is remote. I'm sure companies are starting to see the decrease in quality and efficiency of project planning and management starting to show now which is why they're looking to return to offices.

mwest217 5y ago

As a young person without children, I much prefer the office - I intentionally live close enough to the office that my commute is a 20 minute walk or a <10 minute bike ride, so my commute is actually pleasant, and not having the forcing function of a commute to get me outside is actually worse for my mental health. I can still work from home when I have errands to run or medical appointments, but I much prefer being in the office.

hardolaf 5y ago
I also don't have kids and I don't necessarily prefer the office... but from over a decade now of experience working in remote and hybrid jobs, I've found that there is no substitute for shoving everyone in a room and telling them to figure out the problems with processes. Tons of things just never get resolved when working remotely because it's hard to communicate actual pain points to others because they'll only talk to you via instant messages or in brief video/voice chats. And it's hard to convey how much time people are losing to issues in projects. The issues don't pop up on a day to day basis, but they do pop up in long-tail projects and even in continuing development projects. And the worst is figuring out requirements remotely. When you're in person, you can pester people without their ability to filter you out until they get you the requirements. Remotely, well, they can simply just ignore you (and often do in my experience). Yes, I like working remotely most of the time. But I like living close enough to the office that if needed, I can go slap someone upside the head on a whim.

kodisha 5y ago

The only thing that is (kinda) better IRL is impromptu debug sessions, or that initial couple of days when you are bootstrapping a new project, so it's nice to sit with person(s) who are working on this. Even those are easily matched in quality with zoom/slack and draw on screen features.

suifbwish 5y ago

An interesting note on this is the main reason any urban areas are overpriced is because of max desired commute to a high paying job. If more remote options become available for this, we will likely see a decline in pricing for real estate in those areas as well as a decline in gentrification ect.

bitcharmer 5y ago

I was going to reply to the parent comment but found yours and just wanted to say 100x this! Thank you for capturing it so simply and concisely.

bipvanwinkle 5y ago

Agreed. I don’t if it’s for everyone, but i love it. No commute, healthier food, access to a bed for a quick nap, and a nice office. 10/10 would do again.

Aeolun 5y ago
As soon as they give me a 12sqm private office with a view, I’ll be happy to go back to the office.
- GFischer 5y ago
  I have a corner cubicle with a view, I don't want to go back to the office anyways.
hkt 5y ago
Quick naps are hugely underrated. 20 minutes of sleep in the afternoon and afterwards I could do my job while juggling knives (figuratively). A manager I worked with once pre-pandemic had his idea of "business hammocks" for the office repeatedly shot down. He was a genius though.
- craigie 5y ago
  >his idea of "business hammocks" for the office repeatedly shot down. He was a genius though. Sounds like nap pods lol
  - hkt 5y ago
    Except less coffin like in construction. That was his criticism of pods, and frankly I share it.
- ddingus 5y ago
  We had a couch for a while. At other jobs, I setup the back of my Expedition. Tinted windows, bedding, a few comforts and I knocked out the short nap all the time. Would/will do again.

deanCommie 5y ago

> I agree, but I am getting 1/8th of my waking hours back from commuting. What about all the people who already knew spending 2 hours commuting was a terrible use of our time before the pandemic, regardless of how much of a bigger house we could get? So we lived in dense cities, in walkable neighborhoods, where the office was a 15 minute walk away but so were restaurants, parks, grocery stores, and theaters? But part of the exchange we made was that our houses/apartments were small, and were for LIVING not for working. We don't have a spare bedroom to turn into a segregated office, so instead the work/home life has been an overlapping mess for 2 years.

mdpye 5y ago
Surely you mean that the flat is for sleeping not living. They're too small for living, because all the living is done at the restaurants, bars, parks, theatres, offices and so on. If that's the style you prefer, then you need a co-working space to replace the office, in the same way your place probably isn't big enough to entertain people for dinner so you use a restaurant. And it's too dense with the neighbours to throw a proper party with dancing, so you use the bars and clubs. At least this is my understanding from having done a bit of both.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  No? I can still have people over, and I can still enjoy my hobbies at home. But I don't have a spare bedroom going unused that I can make an office. My office can only overlapping with my personal "fun" space.
vladvasiliu 5y ago
You can probably still go back to the office even if your colleagues work from home. And if not, there are probably coworking spaces, or similar. Why must there be a one-size-fits-all situation? Also, if WfH spreads, many of the people who made the same choice, getting a small apartment in a dense city for living only, will probably make a different choice now and move somewhere else. I know many people who did just that. I expect this will lower the prices of housing in cities, which means you could live in a bigger apartment if you wanted.

dragonelite 5y ago

Yeah i joked with my team the next step will be asynchronous teams where teams could be spread over US and EU etc. I love my solo lunchbreak walk just to empty my head or just think instead of having to talk or interact with team members.

weatherlite 5y ago
Well that's been going on for a long time now, most big companies have multiple time zone teams.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Next step? International companies have been doing this for decades. Until I retired at the end of 2017 I had worked for over twenty years in a team which had developers and domain experts in the following countries: Norway, UK, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, USA (several states), Canada, Poland.
- OJFord 5y ago
  A lot don't have closely working together ('two pizza') teams distributed across offices, nevermind timezones more than one or two out. Occasional collaboration is different from day to day, and I'm sure that's why GP emphasised 'asynchronous' - doing it with your close colleagues requires a shift in how you work, async written communication not chats, PR review not pairing, etc.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    This was not occasional collaboration, it was daily video standups, real time collaboration, code review, frequent video discussions with other developers and domain experts, etc.
sharpy 5y ago
My team is mostly in office, but we do have people in 2 other time zones. Communication happens mostly in slack (even for people in the office - because it would be too loud otherwise - open plan office, gggrr), but also to include people not in the office. I think having remote people in various time zones is fine, as long as we can "get together" once in a while. We do virtual board game night (well, afternoon for most of us) once a week, and of course, do sprint reviews and planning together.

blitzar 5y ago

All great for you ... but hey lets think of the little people like the shareholders of google... 257 billion in profit in 2021 (share price closed 2800), from 89 billion in 2019 (share price closed 1350). Hey look it works for them too, everyone is a winner!

IMTDb 5y ago
What part of these profits comes from work actually done remotely during the pandemic ? What you are proving is that the Google model of hiring extremely talented devs, paying them handsomely, and asking them to spend days in their campus allowed them to create a company that takes in billion of profits even during a pandemic. Which part of the Google offer significantly changed thanks to work done during the pandemic ? All these profits come from something that was built - in person - in pre pandemic work organisation, so we know that this was was successful. The only big thing that I can think of on Google side that was supposed to take off during the pandemic is Stadia. I own one, and it's an understatement to say that it did not deliver on its promises. It is not the first Google product that fails, and it is hard to say if the failure is due to remote work, but still something to consider.
- blitzar 5y ago
  > All these profits come from something that was built - in person - in pre pandemic work organisation, so we know that this was was successful. This is very true. It is also true that these built products were operated in a remote work environment - meaningful, and significantly enhanced profits were extracted when operating these assets remotely vs operating them in person. Sample size is small of course and time will tell. Stadia, not a great example, build in person - launched and operated remotely. Was its failure due to it being poorly built or poorly operated? Fellow owner and former user of the service, I didnt think it was that bad technically, but understand I am in the significant minority on that one.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  Honestly, the argument you made in the first paragraph is a good argument against companies getting too big rather than against remote work: what part of Google's profit comes from work done in the last 5 years? Most Google products and services were mature in 2017.