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Isn't it funny how just a few years ago the eternal HN discussion regarding remote working always took place in the same way: about half of commenters for, and

by tn890 5y ago

Isn't it funny how just a few years ago the eternal HN discussion regarding remote working always took place in the same way: about half of commenters for, and half against. The typical arguments of social interaction, in person brainstorming and so on, vs free time, no commute, can work from anywhere, "zoom is just as good" always went round in circles. Now I see those in the mainstream and HN seems to have cross over almost completely to the WFH side. I wonder how "converted" HN-ers got where they are. If you're here and changed your mind regarding remote work since the pandemic started, I'd like to hear why; what, other than the obvious pathogen, has caused your change of heart?

QuikAccount 5y ago
I'm still really indifferent but you could almost say I'm converted in the opposite direction. I realized how awful my co-workers are at communication, especially asynchronous communication and it makes me want to pull my hair out.
- garciasn 5y ago
  That’s an organizational and leadership/management issue at your current company and/or group/team; it’s not ubiquitous. It’s time for you to find a different company that hires people who can communicate or teaches them to do better.
  - gnulinux 5y ago
    Not everyone is suited to work from home. I hated working from home, it destroyed my work focus and I think it put a good hole in my career. In the future, I'll prefer companies who offer in person (or hybrid) employment. Everyone is different.
  - macksd 5y ago
    Some people are good at the discipline and self-motivation required to make this work and like the situation where you're more isolated except when you go out of your way not to be. Some people are much happier and productive in an environment where face-to-face communication can happen frequently and when unplanned, and when you can have more personal communication. Obviously it's not as simple as those 2 categories, but as some companies embrace WFH and others go back to in-person, we're going to find that people gravitate towards environments that are one or the way other and find people that are like them. I wouldn't view one as worse or caused by a "leadership / management issue".
- Bizarro 5y ago
  ...as opposed to walking over to their cube, standing behind them for a few seconds staring at their screen before they realize you're behind them, and then interrupting their work by asking your question?
  - QuikAccount 5y ago
    No? There are ways to collaborate in person that don't require acting like you have 0 social skills.
Isamu 5y ago
Before the pandemic I was able to WFH but usually didn’t, because as luck would have it, it always seemed like a crisis would occur and everyone would be looking for me. Now it’s more normalized and not a problem. It’s less my attitude, more managing other’s attitudes (esp management)
- gkop 5y ago
  Am management, can confirm. I preferred the office for personal happiness reasons, but seeing the sustained high output [0] during WFH, why would I risk messing that up? (I don't stop people from going in to the office of course, I just don't push them to, and the company has told us "do what works". I just started going in one day a week, and it's been nice. We will do a week-long in-person gathering later this year and include the remote folks we hired since covid.) [0] Yes, high output even when normalized for various factors that were dramatic early in the pandemic, but are tapering back to a new baseline, like people not taking vacation, or working longer hours because there was nothing else to do. Yes also, my team reports many downsides to being distributed. But the sustained net output is high, and we're hiring great people twice as quickly.
mlazos 5y ago
For me it just wasn’t as bad as I thought. I do miss hanging out with my coworkers but now if we’re local we just hang out. Being able to commute from bed is just so much nicer. And also being able to take guilt free ad hoc breaks during the day is just unbeatable.
starwind 5y ago
that's because all the people who want permanent wfh are browsing hacker news upvoting pro-wfh articles and comments while working from home with no one looking over their shoulders
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mynegation 5y ago
I changed my mind about remote. Before pandemic I have been considering some fully remote roles, after pandemic - very unlikely. Working from home made me realize how much I miss talking to people at work in the meatspace. Going back to office in April and cannot wait.
- tartoran 5y ago
  Assess again in a about 6 months to a year. You may change your mind. I started back in the office in september last year and I’d really like some kind of hybrid home/office type of situation. If I were to choose one or the other Id go WFH.
  - MathCodeLove 5y ago
    Same. Hybrid is absolutely my ideal, the office can be nice in moderation, but if it had to be one or the other then my preference is WFH
ilaksh 5y ago
Most people don't really evaluate things on their merit in a logical way like they think they do. Most behavior and opinions are picked up subconsciously based on what seems to be trending around them. Then comes the rationalization. In other words, the herd moved towards WFH and got used to it. Now there are less rationalizations for commuting. The few actual thoughts based on real-world observation now have actual experience of WFH to reference, which means fewer made up nonsense reasons to dislike it. One thing that always stupidly gets left out of these conversations is the radical difference in situations for some people. Before, when kids were at home also, some parents were literally required to do two jobs while at home -- teacher and their normal job. Or some people had spouses who did not understand WFH and did not respect boundaries. But with the kids back in school it's a totally different situation for many.
bertil 5y ago
There are patterns and practices that make working remotely possible: document with context, clear pull requests, share your intent more deliberately, written stand-ups, give meetings detailed agendas, etc. Those are good habits when you share an office, but they can easily be complemented by sharing the same workspace and whiteboards. Many teams had to discover those practices during the pandemic; companies that didn’t adopt them effectively likely lost a lot of people to frustration or apparent underperformance. After two years, many people have had the time to find places where those practices are understood and practiced, or at least have met people who know they can be. The half that thought those were impossible or unlikely discovered it was possible, even enjoyable way of working. There are still people, many of them my friends, who know and practice those deliberate communication patterns and who still prefer an office—–in particular for small start-ups. In some cases, those make more sense. But they are now a minority. Other companies haven’t transitioned because they never really tried; many blamed the circumstances for the increasing disfunction of their teams, rather than learn and adapt. With some team members remaining remote, or contagious, unavailable, companies that have not adopted at least some learnings from the forced isolation can now seem very frustrating places to work. Fewer people are going to defend what they increasingly see as a suboptimal system. I don’t think that the breakdown is as strict as you say. I think that many people have had the opportunity to see the benefits not of remote, but of a way of working that doesn’t rely on the crutch of an office. Some do it well, but a few still prefer the ease of interactions——a minority that typically don’t have time to comment here. Many haven’t learnt but won‘t comment either, because they don’t know what good should look like anymore.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  +1 good idea: written standups.
  - 21723 5y ago
    +2 better idea: no standups.
    - tomrod 5y ago
pklausler 5y ago
I work with a group that's widely distributed around the planet. Prior to March 2020, meetings would always be in conference rooms with buggy videoconferencing gear. Now we're all remote, nobody has to commute to a local office to videoconference, and until we switched to MSFT Teams the experience was at least as good as it had been pre-pandemic. The food is way better at home, too. I might see myself going into the office again to conduct an interview, but otherwise, I'm completely sold on permanent WFH.
city41 5y ago
I have found I am more productive from home and I can do things like laundry. It's far from perfect but overall I have found it to be a win. I think my ideal would be wfh 4 days, office 1 day. But I totally understand companies not wanting to maintain a building that is only used 1/5th of the time.
- julianlam 5y ago
  This is a prime opportunity for five businesses to share a single furnished space.
Aperocky 5y ago
There was never a change of heart, but never did I realize how truly awful commuting was, and how truly awesome the lack of it is.
bengale 5y ago
Seems to have helped a lot that people are back socialising with their friends so the cabin fever has lifted and they don’t feel the desire to get back to the office to scratch that itch. Also, kids are back at school.
syshum 5y ago
I think it more a changing demographic of HN, as well as people that dissent from the WFH support seem to be blasted so they just do not speak up anymore. 2 years of "if you do not want isolation you want to kill grandma" will do that to you. For my part my mind has not changed at all, I have no strong opinion either way, WFH or In Office has no impact on if I will take a job or not. Salary, benefits, Vacation, etc are all 1000000000000x more important to me, and I will drop a WFH job in a hot second if the in office job pays more or provides me with something else I need / desire
- popularonion 5y ago
  I didn’t mind working in an office, but I went WFH in 2018 because it was the only way to live where I want to live and buy a home without taking a 70% pay cut.
sokoloff 5y ago
Early March 2020, I was not only in "prefer to work in office" but "will only work in the central corporate office, not a satellite" (after being burned by too many satellite office situations). By August, I was enjoying forced-WFH. Around November, we went into the office to collect our belongings and during the 8.5 mile drive over there in zero traffic, I thought "damn this is taking forever, I hate this drive!" :) Now, while our company is remote-first forever, I just got back from a 3 day in-person offsite in FL with one of my leadership teams and have had a few others over the last year since the vaccine was widely available. They are irreplaceable and I'd take a full-time in-office job before taking a all-remote job where in-person meetings a couple times per year was not feasible.
gnulinux 5y ago
At the beginning of pandemic I was neutral... Now I passionately detest wfh and I will never even attempt to do it again until my scars from last two years heal. I had a lot harder time to communicate, stay in the loop and focus on correct things.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I totally agree with the scars. I'm still heavily depressed due to the whole COVID situation. It feels like it will take years to recover even when the restrictions have lifted. I hear your though and I wish you well. But WFH was a net win for me. At least it gave me some freedom in other ways. People no longer interrupt my concentration, they consider my status on teams more and ask before calling. But these things are highly personal. I had other things that did and still do depress me heavily about the whole situation :(
strken 5y ago
I hate it. I get less work done, drop out of my schedule and start waking up five minutes before standup, don't recognise half my the people I work with, and just generally don't have a fun time. My commute is a 10 minute train ride followed by a 30 minute walk. I never realised it was actually a net positive, but it forces me to do a minimum amount of exercise every day, which significantly improves my life now we're back in the office.
- julianlam 5y ago
  Agreed. In my situation it's an hour long train ride that I use to do email catch up and general community engagement, so by the time I'm at the office, I'm ready to work. Whereas at home I have a toddler and a newborn climbing on me.
  - sarchertech 5y ago
    If you were considering 2 equal job offers, one that was 5 minutes away, and one that was an hour away, you'd take the farther offer? >Whereas at home I have a toddler and a newborn climbing on me. You could always find a co-working space.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Where I live in a busy city these are also ubiquitous. But many people live in small towns where people have never heard of those. Just saying :)
      - sarchertech 5y ago
        The small town where I grew up in has one now. Also if you’re in a small town without a co-working space, there probably aren’t many software employers either. So you’re either working from home, commuting to an office, or commuting to a co-working space.
    - julianlam 5y ago
      No, I'm not insane, all things being equal of course I would take the closer job :) A co-working space was considered (and is still being considered), though we find our current strategy of 4 days wfh and one in-office day to be a good mix. Additional considerations involve the geographic make-up of our staff. This context, of course, wasn't in my original reply up above. My main point in my previous reply was to provide a counterpoint to the argument that a commute is completely wasted time, in specific situations, it can be very useful, and not wasted at all.
MBCook 5y ago
I can sort of speak to this. I was NOT looking forward to working from home two years ago. I had always worked in the office and was happy with the social interaction. I worried about communication. And that was actually very reasonable. My only experience before was being on a team where one or two people were WFH out of 10-12. They dialed in to our meetings and it was a mess. They couldn’t hear us well, we couldn’t hear them at times, lots of interruptions. It always felt to me like “we” were having a meeting and they were occasionally butting in. It was really hard for them to be truly included, and they were cut out of in-office stuff. So I didn’t want to WFH and get left out, or have others do the same. But that’s not the case anymore. In the time since then EVERYONE was WFH. We quickly got used to it. And we got some team members in other locations. Now that some people are back in the office it’s more even. It’s not the one or two people who aren’t there, it’s half the team. So the WFHs can’t be ignored, everybody stays in the discussion. It works far better than that old arrangement ever did, almost as well as when everyone was in office. As for me I’m happy. I still get my office social interaction for the most part, it’s just often over chat/video. I feel more “free” because I can work where I want at home instead of at my one little cube in my one little chair. I can use better equipment (like my personal nice monitor vs corporate standard issue) in some cases. I don’t need to use headphones for music/podcasts. And no commute. At first I was unhappy “playing office” at home. Stuck at one desk, in one chair, with nothing to look at but a PC and a wall. As soon as I realized I didn’t have to do that I started to really enjoy WFH.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Having a nap during lunch break is also pretty refreshing. And not possible in the office. We had a callcenter in Romania where they had a "relax" area and people used to nap on the couches there during lunch but it's always a bit awkward. And my office had nothing like this.
  - tbrownaw 5y ago
    In the beforetimes if I went for a walk around the parking lot at lunch time I'd usually see a couple people napping in their cars (and of course burning gas to run the ac if it was summer).
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
That doesn't sound very scientific. I personally suspect if you took a proper poll you'd find the numbers about the same as they were a year ago. Myself I'd prefer to be back in the office. Just not the office I was in that was 45 minutes away. Working from home was dragging my soul down. So I quit, living off my RSUs for the time being. Wherever I end up though, I will be asking for some kind of office, even if it's just me in a WeWork or whatever paid for by the company. That's just part of negotiation for me now. Being at home with the dogs and the kids and the distractions is unbearable.
cortesoft 5y ago
One big thing for me is that EVERYONE is remote. It is way harder when some people are remote and some people are in the office. If some people are in the office, they are going to talk in person and make decisions in person. Remote workers can be left out. I remember an old adage about adding a remote team member... "if one team member is remote, all team members need to behave like they are remote" When some communication is electronic and some is verbal, the team members who can only see half the conversation are going to be left out of decisions.
teirce 5y ago
Don’t discount the part of the equation that the WFH crowd is very vocal (as well as preachy). So much as suggesting you miss going to the office or seeing coworkers in person is met with an incredible amount of vitriol. And I don’t mean suggesting being in the office is better. I mean expressing a personal opinion on the matter makes people defensive and hostile.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  I've found that the in-office crowd is the vocal, preachy group, always trying to convince people who are happier than ever that they are wrong. The in-office crowd are the ones trying to get everyone back to their way, rather than finding a new compromise.
- bradlys 5y ago
  Correct. It’s basically the extrovert vs introvert thing as well as many other dynamics online. You say you enjoy talking to others and would like to see people more often. Introverts will chime in and say, “but that’s not everyone! Not all of us enjoy idle chitchat! Oppressor!!” Yet - you never said you wanted to force anyone who wasn’t into that into that situation… And never implied it either. It’s weird reactionary shit that adds nothing to the conversation. Expressing a personal opinion must be met with an equal or more severe personal opinion of the opposite. No circle jerking allowed anywhere! I’m sure someone will chime in now that this isn’t actually how things work so that we can prevent any circle jerk.
- jdrc 5y ago
  is it? people who wish to remain at home are most likely more introverted than the opposite.
  - asiachick 5y ago
    It's not clear to me there is a correlation. Introverted so doesn't have many friends. At work, people who are into the same thing (coding here on HN) are like minded people that an introvert can get some socialization from. Where as an extrovert has a million friends and zoom calls them one after another, filling their socialization quota.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deathanatos 5y ago
> I wonder how "converted" HN-ers got where they are. If you're here and changed your mind regarding remote work since the pandemic started, I'd like to hear why; what, other than the obvious pathogen, has caused your change of heart? The pandemic forced me to build a home office, of sorts. I don't actually have an "office", per se, as real estate prices are bananas. I have a corner in the living room. But my corner has: 1. a window 2. a desk that's about 2× bigger than what my employer would provide 3. more space than what my employer would provide 4. is often, but not always, quiet Also got a nice chair, which improved the WFH situation greatly. Need a second monitor, at some point. But also my company keeps thinking not of a full return-to-office, but "oh, maybe like 1 day a week with hotdesking" and … no? I don't particularly want to haul things like my keyboard back and forth, & the company laptop is a MBP, so a. it's keyboard induces RSI and b. it's got those butterfly switches that fail easily, and mine have failed. I do miss my commute, when my commute was a bike ride. Unlike the article's survey, I think people absolutely can be convinced to go into the office in exchange for a salary increase. If the survey is getting "no", well, you're just not offering enough money. But, they never do.
asiachick 5y ago
I hate work from home. Absolutely hate it. I'm willing to bet there will be an reports of an epidemic of suicides and/or depression from many people being isolated. Some of you have families or whatever and that works for you but lots of people do not. Further, many people find enjoyment in socializing both at home and at work. Removing half of that socialization is also a problem for some. I know indie game collectives and they love their work and love doing at an office where they all collaborate. That feeling doesn't come from zoom.
- timbit42 5y ago
  In my country there has already been a report come out. Suicides were down but depression was up, but this is temporary depression due to the pandemic, not chronic depression due to chemical imbalances in the body.
vanilla_nut 5y ago
In my case, seniority. I’ve only been working in industry for around 5 or 6 years, and when you’re new, working remotely is inconvenient — it’s hard to ask impromptu questions, or set up “brain drain” sessions, or even get into the mindset of working. You feel like you need to work those full 8-9 hour days to prove yourself. After a couple of years, I changed jobs. I realized open offices aren’t that pleasant, the food kinda sucks, the beer fridge is full of trash, and my coworker relationships are very superficial compared to my actual friendships. I started working from home 2-3 days a week because my slightly longer commute time on the subway just wasn’t worth being in the office. Then covid hit. Everyone started working from home. I pooled resources with my significant other to put together a great coffee setup at home, nice desks, cooked lunch together every day. I moved cities to be closer to things I want to do (and cut down on the NYC drinking culture). Now I’m actually planning another move to be someplace where I can actually afford a house in the next year or two. I changed, the work environment changed, the world changed, and… work from home works better for me now? When I first started, I had a remote teammate, and it actually really bothered me — I felt like it ruined our team culture because we couldn’t include that teammate in lunches, he forced standups to be on zoom, etc. But now that I’m more established in the field I totally get it. If I had a family, no way I’d want to raise my kids in a US city right now. I’m sure it could work for other people with different preferences but to me it’s just too expensive, too much driving, too dangerous when you try to walk or bike, and cuts me off from the things I really enjoy, like biking on dirt roads in the woods, cross country skiing, downhill skiing (when it’s not busy), and easily visiting family.

by tn890 5y ago

QuikAccount 5y ago

I'm still really indifferent but you could almost say I'm converted in the opposite direction. I realized how awful my co-workers are at communication, especially asynchronous communication and it makes me want to pull my hair out.

garciasn 5y ago
That’s an organizational and leadership/management issue at your current company and/or group/team; it’s not ubiquitous. It’s time for you to find a different company that hires people who can communicate or teaches them to do better.
- gnulinux 5y ago
  Not everyone is suited to work from home. I hated working from home, it destroyed my work focus and I think it put a good hole in my career. In the future, I'll prefer companies who offer in person (or hybrid) employment. Everyone is different.
- macksd 5y ago
  Some people are good at the discipline and self-motivation required to make this work and like the situation where you're more isolated except when you go out of your way not to be. Some people are much happier and productive in an environment where face-to-face communication can happen frequently and when unplanned, and when you can have more personal communication. Obviously it's not as simple as those 2 categories, but as some companies embrace WFH and others go back to in-person, we're going to find that people gravitate towards environments that are one or the way other and find people that are like them. I wouldn't view one as worse or caused by a "leadership / management issue".
Bizarro 5y ago
...as opposed to walking over to their cube, standing behind them for a few seconds staring at their screen before they realize you're behind them, and then interrupting their work by asking your question?
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  No? There are ways to collaborate in person that don't require acting like you have 0 social skills.

Isamu 5y ago

Before the pandemic I was able to WFH but usually didn’t, because as luck would have it, it always seemed like a crisis would occur and everyone would be looking for me. Now it’s more normalized and not a problem. It’s less my attitude, more managing other’s attitudes (esp management)

gkop 5y ago
Am management, can confirm. I preferred the office for personal happiness reasons, but seeing the sustained high output [0] during WFH, why would I risk messing that up? (I don't stop people from going in to the office of course, I just don't push them to, and the company has told us "do what works". I just started going in one day a week, and it's been nice. We will do a week-long in-person gathering later this year and include the remote folks we hired since covid.) [0] Yes, high output even when normalized for various factors that were dramatic early in the pandemic, but are tapering back to a new baseline, like people not taking vacation, or working longer hours because there was nothing else to do. Yes also, my team reports many downsides to being distributed. But the sustained net output is high, and we're hiring great people twice as quickly.

mlazos 5y ago

For me it just wasn’t as bad as I thought. I do miss hanging out with my coworkers but now if we’re local we just hang out. Being able to commute from bed is just so much nicer. And also being able to take guilt free ad hoc breaks during the day is just unbeatable.

starwind 5y ago

that's because all the people who want permanent wfh are browsing hacker news upvoting pro-wfh articles and comments while working from home with no one looking over their shoulders

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mynegation 5y ago

I changed my mind about remote. Before pandemic I have been considering some fully remote roles, after pandemic - very unlikely. Working from home made me realize how much I miss talking to people at work in the meatspace. Going back to office in April and cannot wait.

tartoran 5y ago
Assess again in a about 6 months to a year. You may change your mind. I started back in the office in september last year and I’d really like some kind of hybrid home/office type of situation. If I were to choose one or the other Id go WFH.
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
  Same. Hybrid is absolutely my ideal, the office can be nice in moderation, but if it had to be one or the other then my preference is WFH

ilaksh 5y ago

Most people don't really evaluate things on their merit in a logical way like they think they do. Most behavior and opinions are picked up subconsciously based on what seems to be trending around them. Then comes the rationalization. In other words, the herd moved towards WFH and got used to it. Now there are less rationalizations for commuting. The few actual thoughts based on real-world observation now have actual experience of WFH to reference, which means fewer made up nonsense reasons to dislike it. One thing that always stupidly gets left out of these conversations is the radical difference in situations for some people. Before, when kids were at home also, some parents were literally required to do two jobs while at home -- teacher and their normal job. Or some people had spouses who did not understand WFH and did not respect boundaries. But with the kids back in school it's a totally different situation for many.

bertil 5y ago

There are patterns and practices that make working remotely possible: document with context, clear pull requests, share your intent more deliberately, written stand-ups, give meetings detailed agendas, etc. Those are good habits when you share an office, but they can easily be complemented by sharing the same workspace and whiteboards. Many teams had to discover those practices during the pandemic; companies that didn’t adopt them effectively likely lost a lot of people to frustration or apparent underperformance. After two years, many people have had the time to find places where those practices are understood and practiced, or at least have met people who know they can be. The half that thought those were impossible or unlikely discovered it was possible, even enjoyable way of working. There are still people, many of them my friends, who know and practice those deliberate communication patterns and who still prefer an office—–in particular for small start-ups. In some cases, those make more sense. But they are now a minority. Other companies haven’t transitioned because they never really tried; many blamed the circumstances for the increasing disfunction of their teams, rather than learn and adapt. With some team members remaining remote, or contagious, unavailable, companies that have not adopted at least some learnings from the forced isolation can now seem very frustrating places to work. Fewer people are going to defend what they increasingly see as a suboptimal system. I don’t think that the breakdown is as strict as you say. I think that many people have had the opportunity to see the benefits not of remote, but of a way of working that doesn’t rely on the crutch of an office. Some do it well, but a few still prefer the ease of interactions——a minority that typically don’t have time to comment here. Many haven’t learnt but won‘t comment either, because they don’t know what good should look like anymore.

mark_l_watson 5y ago
+1 good idea: written standups.
- 21723 5y ago
  +2 better idea: no standups.
  - tomrod 5y ago

pklausler 5y ago

I work with a group that's widely distributed around the planet. Prior to March 2020, meetings would always be in conference rooms with buggy videoconferencing gear. Now we're all remote, nobody has to commute to a local office to videoconference, and until we switched to MSFT Teams the experience was at least as good as it had been pre-pandemic. The food is way better at home, too. I might see myself going into the office again to conduct an interview, but otherwise, I'm completely sold on permanent WFH.

city41 5y ago

I have found I am more productive from home and I can do things like laundry. It's far from perfect but overall I have found it to be a win. I think my ideal would be wfh 4 days, office 1 day. But I totally understand companies not wanting to maintain a building that is only used 1/5th of the time.

julianlam 5y ago
This is a prime opportunity for five businesses to share a single furnished space.

Aperocky 5y ago

There was never a change of heart, but never did I realize how truly awful commuting was, and how truly awesome the lack of it is.

bengale 5y ago

Seems to have helped a lot that people are back socialising with their friends so the cabin fever has lifted and they don’t feel the desire to get back to the office to scratch that itch. Also, kids are back at school.

syshum 5y ago

I think it more a changing demographic of HN, as well as people that dissent from the WFH support seem to be blasted so they just do not speak up anymore. 2 years of "if you do not want isolation you want to kill grandma" will do that to you. For my part my mind has not changed at all, I have no strong opinion either way, WFH or In Office has no impact on if I will take a job or not. Salary, benefits, Vacation, etc are all 1000000000000x more important to me, and I will drop a WFH job in a hot second if the in office job pays more or provides me with something else I need / desire

popularonion 5y ago
I didn’t mind working in an office, but I went WFH in 2018 because it was the only way to live where I want to live and buy a home without taking a 70% pay cut.

sokoloff 5y ago

Early March 2020, I was not only in "prefer to work in office" but "will only work in the central corporate office, not a satellite" (after being burned by too many satellite office situations). By August, I was enjoying forced-WFH. Around November, we went into the office to collect our belongings and during the 8.5 mile drive over there in zero traffic, I thought "damn this is taking forever, I hate this drive!" :) Now, while our company is remote-first forever, I just got back from a 3 day in-person offsite in FL with one of my leadership teams and have had a few others over the last year since the vaccine was widely available. They are irreplaceable and I'd take a full-time in-office job before taking a all-remote job where in-person meetings a couple times per year was not feasible.

gnulinux 5y ago

At the beginning of pandemic I was neutral... Now I passionately detest wfh and I will never even attempt to do it again until my scars from last two years heal. I had a lot harder time to communicate, stay in the loop and focus on correct things.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I totally agree with the scars. I'm still heavily depressed due to the whole COVID situation. It feels like it will take years to recover even when the restrictions have lifted. I hear your though and I wish you well. But WFH was a net win for me. At least it gave me some freedom in other ways. People no longer interrupt my concentration, they consider my status on teams more and ask before calling. But these things are highly personal. I had other things that did and still do depress me heavily about the whole situation :(

strken 5y ago

I hate it. I get less work done, drop out of my schedule and start waking up five minutes before standup, don't recognise half my the people I work with, and just generally don't have a fun time. My commute is a 10 minute train ride followed by a 30 minute walk. I never realised it was actually a net positive, but it forces me to do a minimum amount of exercise every day, which significantly improves my life now we're back in the office.

julianlam 5y ago
Agreed. In my situation it's an hour long train ride that I use to do email catch up and general community engagement, so by the time I'm at the office, I'm ready to work. Whereas at home I have a toddler and a newborn climbing on me.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  If you were considering 2 equal job offers, one that was 5 minutes away, and one that was an hour away, you'd take the farther offer? >Whereas at home I have a toddler and a newborn climbing on me. You could always find a co-working space.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Where I live in a busy city these are also ubiquitous. But many people live in small towns where people have never heard of those. Just saying :)
    - sarchertech 5y ago
      The small town where I grew up in has one now. Also if you’re in a small town without a co-working space, there probably aren’t many software employers either. So you’re either working from home, commuting to an office, or commuting to a co-working space.
  - julianlam 5y ago
    No, I'm not insane, all things being equal of course I would take the closer job :) A co-working space was considered (and is still being considered), though we find our current strategy of 4 days wfh and one in-office day to be a good mix. Additional considerations involve the geographic make-up of our staff. This context, of course, wasn't in my original reply up above. My main point in my previous reply was to provide a counterpoint to the argument that a commute is completely wasted time, in specific situations, it can be very useful, and not wasted at all.

MBCook 5y ago

I can sort of speak to this. I was NOT looking forward to working from home two years ago. I had always worked in the office and was happy with the social interaction. I worried about communication. And that was actually very reasonable. My only experience before was being on a team where one or two people were WFH out of 10-12. They dialed in to our meetings and it was a mess. They couldn’t hear us well, we couldn’t hear them at times, lots of interruptions. It always felt to me like “we” were having a meeting and they were occasionally butting in. It was really hard for them to be truly included, and they were cut out of in-office stuff. So I didn’t want to WFH and get left out, or have others do the same. But that’s not the case anymore. In the time since then EVERYONE was WFH. We quickly got used to it. And we got some team members in other locations. Now that some people are back in the office it’s more even. It’s not the one or two people who aren’t there, it’s half the team. So the WFHs can’t be ignored, everybody stays in the discussion. It works far better than that old arrangement ever did, almost as well as when everyone was in office. As for me I’m happy. I still get my office social interaction for the most part, it’s just often over chat/video. I feel more “free” because I can work where I want at home instead of at my one little cube in my one little chair. I can use better equipment (like my personal nice monitor vs corporate standard issue) in some cases. I don’t need to use headphones for music/podcasts. And no commute. At first I was unhappy “playing office” at home. Stuck at one desk, in one chair, with nothing to look at but a PC and a wall. As soon as I realized I didn’t have to do that I started to really enjoy WFH.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Having a nap during lunch break is also pretty refreshing. And not possible in the office. We had a callcenter in Romania where they had a "relax" area and people used to nap on the couches there during lunch but it's always a bit awkward. And my office had nothing like this.
- tbrownaw 5y ago
  In the beforetimes if I went for a walk around the parking lot at lunch time I'd usually see a couple people napping in their cars (and of course burning gas to run the ac if it was summer).

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

That doesn't sound very scientific. I personally suspect if you took a proper poll you'd find the numbers about the same as they were a year ago. Myself I'd prefer to be back in the office. Just not the office I was in that was 45 minutes away. Working from home was dragging my soul down. So I quit, living off my RSUs for the time being. Wherever I end up though, I will be asking for some kind of office, even if it's just me in a WeWork or whatever paid for by the company. That's just part of negotiation for me now. Being at home with the dogs and the kids and the distractions is unbearable.

cortesoft 5y ago

One big thing for me is that EVERYONE is remote. It is way harder when some people are remote and some people are in the office. If some people are in the office, they are going to talk in person and make decisions in person. Remote workers can be left out. I remember an old adage about adding a remote team member... "if one team member is remote, all team members need to behave like they are remote" When some communication is electronic and some is verbal, the team members who can only see half the conversation are going to be left out of decisions.

teirce 5y ago

Don’t discount the part of the equation that the WFH crowd is very vocal (as well as preachy). So much as suggesting you miss going to the office or seeing coworkers in person is met with an incredible amount of vitriol. And I don’t mean suggesting being in the office is better. I mean expressing a personal opinion on the matter makes people defensive and hostile.

gilbetron 5y ago
I've found that the in-office crowd is the vocal, preachy group, always trying to convince people who are happier than ever that they are wrong. The in-office crowd are the ones trying to get everyone back to their way, rather than finding a new compromise.
bradlys 5y ago
Correct. It’s basically the extrovert vs introvert thing as well as many other dynamics online. You say you enjoy talking to others and would like to see people more often. Introverts will chime in and say, “but that’s not everyone! Not all of us enjoy idle chitchat! Oppressor!!” Yet - you never said you wanted to force anyone who wasn’t into that into that situation… And never implied it either. It’s weird reactionary shit that adds nothing to the conversation. Expressing a personal opinion must be met with an equal or more severe personal opinion of the opposite. No circle jerking allowed anywhere! I’m sure someone will chime in now that this isn’t actually how things work so that we can prevent any circle jerk.
jdrc 5y ago
is it? people who wish to remain at home are most likely more introverted than the opposite.
- asiachick 5y ago
  It's not clear to me there is a correlation. Introverted so doesn't have many friends. At work, people who are into the same thing (coding here on HN) are like minded people that an introvert can get some socialization from. Where as an extrovert has a million friends and zoom calls them one after another, filling their socialization quota.

deleted 5y ago

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deathanatos 5y ago

> I wonder how "converted" HN-ers got where they are. If you're here and changed your mind regarding remote work since the pandemic started, I'd like to hear why; what, other than the obvious pathogen, has caused your change of heart? The pandemic forced me to build a home office, of sorts. I don't actually have an "office", per se, as real estate prices are bananas. I have a corner in the living room. But my corner has: 1. a window 2. a desk that's about 2× bigger than what my employer would provide 3. more space than what my employer would provide 4. is often, but not always, quiet Also got a nice chair, which improved the WFH situation greatly. Need a second monitor, at some point. But also my company keeps thinking not of a full return-to-office, but "oh, maybe like 1 day a week with hotdesking" and … no? I don't particularly want to haul things like my keyboard back and forth, & the company laptop is a MBP, so a. it's keyboard induces RSI and b. it's got those butterfly switches that fail easily, and mine have failed. I do miss my commute, when my commute was a bike ride. Unlike the article's survey, I think people absolutely can be convinced to go into the office in exchange for a salary increase. If the survey is getting "no", well, you're just not offering enough money. But, they never do.

asiachick 5y ago

I hate work from home. Absolutely hate it. I'm willing to bet there will be an reports of an epidemic of suicides and/or depression from many people being isolated. Some of you have families or whatever and that works for you but lots of people do not. Further, many people find enjoyment in socializing both at home and at work. Removing half of that socialization is also a problem for some. I know indie game collectives and they love their work and love doing at an office where they all collaborate. That feeling doesn't come from zoom.

timbit42 5y ago
In my country there has already been a report come out. Suicides were down but depression was up, but this is temporary depression due to the pandemic, not chronic depression due to chemical imbalances in the body.

vanilla_nut 5y ago

In my case, seniority. I’ve only been working in industry for around 5 or 6 years, and when you’re new, working remotely is inconvenient — it’s hard to ask impromptu questions, or set up “brain drain” sessions, or even get into the mindset of working. You feel like you need to work those full 8-9 hour days to prove yourself. After a couple of years, I changed jobs. I realized open offices aren’t that pleasant, the food kinda sucks, the beer fridge is full of trash, and my coworker relationships are very superficial compared to my actual friendships. I started working from home 2-3 days a week because my slightly longer commute time on the subway just wasn’t worth being in the office. Then covid hit. Everyone started working from home. I pooled resources with my significant other to put together a great coffee setup at home, nice desks, cooked lunch together every day. I moved cities to be closer to things I want to do (and cut down on the NYC drinking culture). Now I’m actually planning another move to be someplace where I can actually afford a house in the next year or two. I changed, the work environment changed, the world changed, and… work from home works better for me now? When I first started, I had a remote teammate, and it actually really bothered me — I felt like it ruined our team culture because we couldn’t include that teammate in lunches, he forced standups to be on zoom, etc. But now that I’m more established in the field I totally get it. If I had a family, no way I’d want to raise my kids in a US city right now. I’m sure it could work for other people with different preferences but to me it’s just too expensive, too much driving, too dangerous when you try to walk or bike, and cuts me off from the things I really enjoy, like biking on dirt roads in the woods, cross country skiing, downhill skiing (when it’s not busy), and easily visiting family.