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I keep reading those comments that almost nobody wants to go to the office. In my (European) company, maybe ~80 SWEs, people were given the choice to either mos
by stkdump 5y ago
I keep reading those comments that almost nobody wants to go to the office. In my (European) company, maybe ~80 SWEs, people were given the choice to either mostly go to back to the office (4 out of 5 days) or mostly work from home (3 out of 5 days at home, hot desking in the office). After 2 years of mostly having no choice and being forced out of the office, 80% of them decided to mostly work from the office after the pandemic. We always had a handful people working fully remote, and I think 1 or 2 asked if they could switch to that permanently to be able to live somewhere else. But otherwise people mostly want to be in the office. Notably people outside engineering seem to prefer WFH much more. I wonder why we are so special.
- dbetteridge 5y agoI would imagine in Europe compared to the USA there are a lot more people in very small apartments or share houses in the cities, they do not lend themselves well to home working. Additionally thats one company, maybe you just have a particularly social group of swes who like each other and a good office environment
- stkdump 5y agoHm, average apartment size in this city: 790 sq ft, average USA: 880 sq ft. Average household size my country: 1.99 ppl, average USA: 2.5 ppl. I guess we just have better working conditions in the office than average or in the USA.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoUSA houses are massive. Space is ridiculously expensive in Europe and nobody is used to it, so the market rarely offer that.
- react_burger38 5y agoA better comparison would be median single family home size in US, which is around 2,300 sq ft [1]. Over 60% of housing units in US are single family homes [2]. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/456925/median-size-of-single-family-home-usa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/456925/median-size-of-si... [2]: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/interactive/ahstablecreator.html?s_areas=00000&s_year=2019&s_tablename=TABLE1&s_bygroup1=3&s_bygroup2=1&s_filtergroup1=1&s_filtergroup2=1 https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/interactive...
- gota 5y agoCan most of you walk or bike to work?
- stkdump 5y agoI guess ~15 people bike to work, the rest uses cars or public transport. I don't think anyone walks to work.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoThis, I have been working remotely long before COVID and even if I could stay at home I was going to the office to see friends / have lunch / hit the gym / grab a beer. Nothing productive was getting done during those office days but they definitely made the job more tolerable and contributed to me not job hopping earlier.
- yourapostasy 5y agoUS commutes are especially grueling for many Americans compared to Europeans, I believe. The excellent urban and suburban European public transit makes commuting even for an hour each way tolerable, because someone else is doing the driving. I’ve heard this advantage is substantially eroded for younger European generations who are effectively locked out of affordable housing within easy commute of public transit hubs. That generational housing affordability factor might also help explain some of the WFH sentiment split between older and younger generations, and between management and IC. Older generations tend to as an aggregate have already locked in their housing cost basis in generally desirable areas with better commute characteristics, and be more represented in management.