6 ms·

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

warning26 5y ago
Exactly — yet so many people can’t accept that ANYONE might want to work from an office. My assumption is that people who love WFH are generally suburbanites who can’t fathom getting to work involves anything other than sitting in traffic for two hours.
- Tade0 5y ago
  Urbanite here. I hated having to travel daily, even when my commute was around 35 minutes. Currently working remotely and living in a city, because that's where all the services are.
- iso1631 5y ago
  When getting to work involves a short walk to the office, getting a coffee on the way, of course that's the best commute by a country mile. When the weather's nice like this morning I'll take a longer walk, but I don't have to do that commute.
- sharemywin 5y ago
  I hate cube and half cubes or like at my current job before covid I had an office that I shared with 2 other people.
  - peterb 5y ago
    This. A big problem with office work is office cube design. I'm old enough to have had a closed door office in the 90s and it was the best. I also worked in large cubes which had moveable partitions as walls where you couldn't see your neighbours. They were also good, not great, but better than today's cubes. They even had large book shelves where you could keep your reference books! At home, I can close my door and it is much superior for my personal productivity than an open office cube plan.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    At least you get a cube or half cube. My office is basically a really long desk with 4 people on one side and 4 people on the other (directly across from each other), with maybe 5 feet between you and the next person.
- dudul 5y ago
  Who are these people who can't accept that anyone wants to work from an office? If there are so many of them, can we see some examples? Office work is not just about the commute, it is also about terrible work conditions where you may be seated in an open space shared by support, engineers, sales, etc. "So many people can't accept that ANYONE is more productive in a remote setting". This "us vs them" discourse is so childish. Just find the company that works the way you want, either all in office, or hybrid, or all distributed and move on.
  - zeroonetwothree 5y ago
    Just look at the comments in this thread. Plenty of people seem to assume that no one actually wants to go to the office.
    - dudul 5y ago
      I see some comments where people mention that they prefer to work remote/FH, not that everyone who wants to work in an office is an idiot.
      - tapland 5y ago
        Holy crap. But that's how what _you_ write comes across o.O
    - giantg2 5y ago
      At least at my office, the majority wants to stay remote. Only about a third want to come back in the office. It's not everyone, but it can be a very large segment. That said, it seems remote would be the planet friendly option. No commute, reduce the need for additional building by retrofitting offices as residences (yeah, zoning), etc.
- alar44 5y ago
  The vast vast majority of people don't have 2 hour commutes. This is pretty much an LA or NYC thing. There are other cities in the US and none of them require insane commutes like this. My drive to work is 7 minutes, I live in a suburban neighborhood. I don't work in the office because there's no need for it.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  People are not great at empathy. If you have small kids working from an office gives you a good place to work with, hopefully, less distractions. Some people like commuting because its their me time. Some people like the socialization being in an office gives them. Some careers/roles are easier when you can walk over to someones desk and talk to them. There are plenty of reasons why working in an office might be interesting to someone. Just like there are plenty of reasons why working fully remotely is interesting to someone.
- nappy-doo 5y ago
  You're asking someone to respect your choice to work from an office, while it feels like you're disparaging their choice to live where they want to (or possibly can afford as, for example, most of the suburbs have become cheaper than cities for much of America.) Can we all just agree that people want different things?
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  I live in the dead center of a major city, but it happens to be a city that isn't much of a tech hub. Thanks to widespread work from home, I can now consider job offers from anywhere and work for a hot startup that just IPO'd and get the same benefits of a bull market for engineering labor as someone younger and/or unattached who can easily move halfway across the country for a better job.
sharemywin 5y ago
Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why? I'm not a fan of the office because: 1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.
- zeroonetwothree 5y ago
  1. Commute is a nice way to get some alone time and unwind after work (admittedly, I wouldn't mind a shorter one though, say 15 min) 2. At home there are many more distractions (kids) 3. At work there are nice people to talk to/interact with 4. Getting lunch with coworkers is a nice way to bond and discuss ideas 5. All my friends moved away during the pandemic, and an office is a good way to make new friends 6. IME, meeting in person leads to friendlier interactions, whereas virtual interactions tend to be more hostile 7. The separation of home/office life makes it easier to focus
  - manuelabeledo 5y ago
    Most of these points are unrelated to work itself, and may be easily rebuked. Commuting is not a way to "unwind". If you have 15 minutes in the car, why couldn't you meditate for 15 minutes at home? Interaction is not taken away if you WFH. But even if it was, if there are "nice" people at work, then there's the assumption that there are "not nice" people as well. Do you want to spend your days surrounded by "not nice" people as well? If attending to the office is seen as a way to expand your friendship circle, then there is the assumption that any other in person activity should help to this end as well. Wouldn't it be worth trying to go to meet-ups, gym, etc., instead of relying on a workplace hostage situation? Not trying to be too harsh here. But I have found that most people who want to go back to the office, expect others to go back as well. I don't oppose people going back, of course, but I do oppose being an accessory to their way of life.
- paulcole 5y ago
  1. I bike/run commute and have planned my life to let me live with 15 minutes of where I work. 2. I purposefully choose to live in a small apartment with no dedicated “work” space. 3. Yeah, me too.
tapland 5y ago
I miss the casual chatting about all kinds of things and the ritualistic coffee breaks (Sweden) a lot. A lot a lot. I can't afford an apartment with another room for a proper separate office, and wouldn't want to waste that space on a room to separate work and home even if I did.
- dudul 5y ago
  And you can't afford this apartment because up until 2 years ago everybody was forced to get a place next to the office. You should support remote/distributed work, since it will make it possible to move to the country/small towns and relieve the pressure on difficult housing markets.
  - TheGigaChad 5y ago
  - tapland 5y ago
    And who says I'm against it? I could buy a house here per year, cash, with a decent US dev salary. It's not the most expensive place. I enjoy living in a city with things around to do without having to travel. But getting 2+ extra rooms solely for us to work remotely? Then we'd have to go for the biggest apartments ever made here. They are not built to house an office on top of living space currently, and personally I enjoy talking to real life people daily.
willcipriano 5y ago
Id be open to going into a office, but when I compare wages between jobs done from home and jobs that demand in office I'm not seeing a significant delta. Even if the drive was 15 minutes I'd want something to cover my costs and time. I was interviewing a month ago and I got a in office offer that was a little lower than the remote offer I had. I brought up that I'd be willing to come in for more money or some sort of flex time around that hour commute and that was met with a audible gasp from the HR person. They acted as if the request was rude and that the occasional free lunch made up for the 10 hours a week time loss. That made the choice for me. If I am truly more valuable to the business in a office I see no reason why I can't share in those rewards.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "That made the choice for me." Often the way they react is more important than the actual content. Seems like if they don't understand your concerns on this topic, they likely won't be amenable to your future concerns on other topics.
- paulcole 5y ago
  I’m actually the opposite. I’d take a 10-20% pay cut today to get an in-person job vs. my current remote job. I just haven’t been motivated to job hunt lately.
foxyv 5y ago
If I lived in some parts of Europe, then yes, I would totally love to go back to the office. But in the United States? I can't afford to live close enough to the office for a short commute (4-5x as expensive) and transportation is garbage. Worst of all, there is nobody else there. Our teams are spread across 8 different countries in so many different time zones. I would have maybe 1-2 office mates from my department. That show up irregularly. I remember the happy times I had in the office and I really wish I could recapture that spirit. But the wheel of time has kind of turned.
- paulcole 5y ago
  I’m in the US, choose to live in the least expensive and smallest apartment near a large-ish city so that I can have a short and manageable commute to both work and the things I enjoy doing. My transportation costs are essentially 0 — bicycle maintenance I can mostly do myself. My electric bill is $20-$50 a month. Sometimes $3 for a bus ticket. Plus no homeowner’s insurance, property taxes, maintenance, water/garbage bills (all included in rent). My costs would be 4x-5x higher if I didn’t make the choices I do, simply because the style of living I prefer isn’t available outside of cities.
  - foxyv 5y ago
    I used to do that as well. But then my rent tripled in 5 years pricing me out of the area. I still miss my tiny apartment, but working from home is pretty nice too.

Exactly — yet so many people can’t accept that ANYONE might want to work from an office. My assumption is that people who love WFH are generally suburbanites who can’t fathom getting to work involves anything other than sitting in traffic for two hours.

Tade0 5y ago
Urbanite here. I hated having to travel daily, even when my commute was around 35 minutes. Currently working remotely and living in a city, because that's where all the services are.
iso1631 5y ago
When getting to work involves a short walk to the office, getting a coffee on the way, of course that's the best commute by a country mile. When the weather's nice like this morning I'll take a longer walk, but I don't have to do that commute.
sharemywin 5y ago
I hate cube and half cubes or like at my current job before covid I had an office that I shared with 2 other people.
- peterb 5y ago
  This. A big problem with office work is office cube design. I'm old enough to have had a closed door office in the 90s and it was the best. I also worked in large cubes which had moveable partitions as walls where you couldn't see your neighbours. They were also good, not great, but better than today's cubes. They even had large book shelves where you could keep your reference books! At home, I can close my door and it is much superior for my personal productivity than an open office cube plan.
- giantg2 5y ago
  At least you get a cube or half cube. My office is basically a really long desk with 4 people on one side and 4 people on the other (directly across from each other), with maybe 5 feet between you and the next person.
dudul 5y ago
Who are these people who can't accept that anyone wants to work from an office? If there are so many of them, can we see some examples? Office work is not just about the commute, it is also about terrible work conditions where you may be seated in an open space shared by support, engineers, sales, etc. "So many people can't accept that ANYONE is more productive in a remote setting". This "us vs them" discourse is so childish. Just find the company that works the way you want, either all in office, or hybrid, or all distributed and move on.
- zeroonetwothree 5y ago
  Just look at the comments in this thread. Plenty of people seem to assume that no one actually wants to go to the office.
  - dudul 5y ago
    I see some comments where people mention that they prefer to work remote/FH, not that everyone who wants to work in an office is an idiot.
    - tapland 5y ago
      Holy crap. But that's how what _you_ write comes across o.O
  - giantg2 5y ago
    At least at my office, the majority wants to stay remote. Only about a third want to come back in the office. It's not everyone, but it can be a very large segment. That said, it seems remote would be the planet friendly option. No commute, reduce the need for additional building by retrofitting offices as residences (yeah, zoning), etc.
alar44 5y ago
The vast vast majority of people don't have 2 hour commutes. This is pretty much an LA or NYC thing. There are other cities in the US and none of them require insane commutes like this. My drive to work is 7 minutes, I live in a suburban neighborhood. I don't work in the office because there's no need for it.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
People are not great at empathy. If you have small kids working from an office gives you a good place to work with, hopefully, less distractions. Some people like commuting because its their me time. Some people like the socialization being in an office gives them. Some careers/roles are easier when you can walk over to someones desk and talk to them. There are plenty of reasons why working in an office might be interesting to someone. Just like there are plenty of reasons why working fully remotely is interesting to someone.
nappy-doo 5y ago
You're asking someone to respect your choice to work from an office, while it feels like you're disparaging their choice to live where they want to (or possibly can afford as, for example, most of the suburbs have become cheaper than cities for much of America.) Can we all just agree that people want different things?
nonameiguess 5y ago
I live in the dead center of a major city, but it happens to be a city that isn't much of a tech hub. Thanks to widespread work from home, I can now consider job offers from anywhere and work for a hot startup that just IPO'd and get the same benefits of a bull market for engineering labor as someone younger and/or unattached who can easily move halfway across the country for a better job.

sharemywin 5y ago

Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why? I'm not a fan of the office because: 1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.

zeroonetwothree 5y ago
1. Commute is a nice way to get some alone time and unwind after work (admittedly, I wouldn't mind a shorter one though, say 15 min) 2. At home there are many more distractions (kids) 3. At work there are nice people to talk to/interact with 4. Getting lunch with coworkers is a nice way to bond and discuss ideas 5. All my friends moved away during the pandemic, and an office is a good way to make new friends 6. IME, meeting in person leads to friendlier interactions, whereas virtual interactions tend to be more hostile 7. The separation of home/office life makes it easier to focus
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  Most of these points are unrelated to work itself, and may be easily rebuked. Commuting is not a way to "unwind". If you have 15 minutes in the car, why couldn't you meditate for 15 minutes at home? Interaction is not taken away if you WFH. But even if it was, if there are "nice" people at work, then there's the assumption that there are "not nice" people as well. Do you want to spend your days surrounded by "not nice" people as well? If attending to the office is seen as a way to expand your friendship circle, then there is the assumption that any other in person activity should help to this end as well. Wouldn't it be worth trying to go to meet-ups, gym, etc., instead of relying on a workplace hostage situation? Not trying to be too harsh here. But I have found that most people who want to go back to the office, expect others to go back as well. I don't oppose people going back, of course, but I do oppose being an accessory to their way of life.
paulcole 5y ago
1. I bike/run commute and have planned my life to let me live with 15 minutes of where I work. 2. I purposefully choose to live in a small apartment with no dedicated “work” space. 3. Yeah, me too.

tapland 5y ago

I miss the casual chatting about all kinds of things and the ritualistic coffee breaks (Sweden) a lot. A lot a lot. I can't afford an apartment with another room for a proper separate office, and wouldn't want to waste that space on a room to separate work and home even if I did.

dudul 5y ago
And you can't afford this apartment because up until 2 years ago everybody was forced to get a place next to the office. You should support remote/distributed work, since it will make it possible to move to the country/small towns and relieve the pressure on difficult housing markets.
- TheGigaChad 5y ago
- tapland 5y ago
  And who says I'm against it? I could buy a house here per year, cash, with a decent US dev salary. It's not the most expensive place. I enjoy living in a city with things around to do without having to travel. But getting 2+ extra rooms solely for us to work remotely? Then we'd have to go for the biggest apartments ever made here. They are not built to house an office on top of living space currently, and personally I enjoy talking to real life people daily.

willcipriano 5y ago

Id be open to going into a office, but when I compare wages between jobs done from home and jobs that demand in office I'm not seeing a significant delta. Even if the drive was 15 minutes I'd want something to cover my costs and time. I was interviewing a month ago and I got a in office offer that was a little lower than the remote offer I had. I brought up that I'd be willing to come in for more money or some sort of flex time around that hour commute and that was met with a audible gasp from the HR person. They acted as if the request was rude and that the occasional free lunch made up for the 10 hours a week time loss. That made the choice for me. If I am truly more valuable to the business in a office I see no reason why I can't share in those rewards.

giantg2 5y ago
"That made the choice for me." Often the way they react is more important than the actual content. Seems like if they don't understand your concerns on this topic, they likely won't be amenable to your future concerns on other topics.
paulcole 5y ago
I’m actually the opposite. I’d take a 10-20% pay cut today to get an in-person job vs. my current remote job. I just haven’t been motivated to job hunt lately.

foxyv 5y ago

If I lived in some parts of Europe, then yes, I would totally love to go back to the office. But in the United States? I can't afford to live close enough to the office for a short commute (4-5x as expensive) and transportation is garbage. Worst of all, there is nobody else there. Our teams are spread across 8 different countries in so many different time zones. I would have maybe 1-2 office mates from my department. That show up irregularly. I remember the happy times I had in the office and I really wish I could recapture that spirit. But the wheel of time has kind of turned.

paulcole 5y ago
I’m in the US, choose to live in the least expensive and smallest apartment near a large-ish city so that I can have a short and manageable commute to both work and the things I enjoy doing. My transportation costs are essentially 0 — bicycle maintenance I can mostly do myself. My electric bill is $20-$50 a month. Sometimes $3 for a bus ticket. Plus no homeowner’s insurance, property taxes, maintenance, water/garbage bills (all included in rent). My costs would be 4x-5x higher if I didn’t make the choices I do, simply because the style of living I prefer isn’t available outside of cities.
- foxyv 5y ago
  I used to do that as well. But then my rent tripled in 5 years pricing me out of the area. I still miss my tiny apartment, but working from home is pretty nice too.