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5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the office. With high speed internet and video conferencing, I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face. I see nothing wrong with that. I understand it, but after 1992 I took a job that forced me into an office and I hated it. I can safely say I never wrote any good code while working in an office. There are too many distractions.

odonnellryan 5y ago
It took me 1-2 years before WFH didn't make me depressed. I enjoy it now but I understand.
cecilpl2 5y ago
This is fascinating to me! How did you manage to merge code in the 80s? What tools were available? Did you have three-way merge tools or did you do it more manually? Or rather did you talk frequently and ensure that you weren't stepping in each other's files? How did you make changes to shared APIs?
- tfigment 5y ago
  I would assume RCS and floppies. CVS later. That is what my company apparently used in that era.
- eminence32 5y ago
  Some "old-timers" at my software company occasionally tell stories about how "checking the source code" meant physically grabbing a the one binder filled with pages of fortran and inserting your changes. Physically holding the binder gave you exclusive checkin access :)
- Clubber 5y ago
  There were always tools to diff two codebases and make a intermediate file that had all the changes. We did it back in the BBS days. You could always take the diff file and type the changes in manually. That's how "mods" worked. It would be something like this SomeFile.pas 14: - If Variable = 1 14: + If Variable = 2
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Macintosh Programmers Workshop had some tools but we mostly did it by hand so we tended to work on different parts of the program. If that was a problem our manager who owned the company would do a road trip to collect the new code that another person needed (we all lived in the Bay Area.) He had a big financial incentive to do so. Or we would get together, but that was not optimal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Works...
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > What tools were available? "My Briefcase", in Windows. It was like cloud shared storage, but using removable media.
headmelted 5y ago
If you don't mind my asking, have you spent much of your time since then working from home or in an office? I likewise very much prefer working from home and find I get more done, but wanting to get an idea of what it's like from someone who's seen and done both over the long term.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Works was my first job out of the Navy in 84, so I had no prior office experience. I spent 94' to 2000 working in 4 separate offices for 3 different companies. I remember my first office experience I brought in a cot. People looked at me like I was insane. Well, I guess power naps are out of the question. Then I was exposed to office politics for the first time. Some people walk around hating each other all day. What a downer that was. Some women (and some men) would interrupt me to flirt with me. I didn't mind that so much. Then I would be in deep focus fixing some problem and they'd flash the lights because it was someone's birthday and we all had to go to the conference room because it was someone's birthday and there was cake and ice cream. Again, I didn't mind that so much. I felt for all these reasons and many more I was less productive in an office than I was at home. The office to me is a place a lot of people like because they can f around with their office friends. Edit: I never worked in an office again after I resumed programming after the dotcom bubble burst. Another anecdote: I got called into HR because someone complained I was yawning too loudly.
Bluecobra 5y ago
Didn't Microsoft give everyone their own dedicated office in those days? I thought I read/heard somewhere that is what spawned development of Outlook/Exchange. I agree about the distractions, it's extremely bad with the open office model and hard to get anything done for me. I would much prefer cubicles or dedicated offices.
- Clubber 5y ago
  I remember hearing that too. Having an office with a door or at least a shared office would make it tolerable, but still the commute always put me in a sour mood to start and end the day. Now a days, the fad is open office, which is a dumpster fire for development. I can't believe Apple fell for that with their new mothership.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  This was true in the late 80's early 90's when we used to go up to Redmond from California to pow wow, but I heard that's not true anymore. Also, if any Microsofties are reading this, how would I got about getting the source code of Works for the Mac? It was about 200,000 lines of 68000 asm code that I'm thinking of trying to get to run in the browser. I may make a formal request to Microsoft if I get more motivated about it. I lost my copy along the way.
- RandallBrown 5y ago
  I had my own office at Microsoft as late as 2013. It was by far the least favorite work environment I've ever had. It was lonely and unproductive for me, with a 15 minute - 2 hour commute depending on traffic. I came home from work angry every day. I have no idea how I lasted almost two years in that environment. I really enjoy open offices. My next job was all pair programming all the time. No assigned desks. You just showed up and sat down with a different person every day. For me that's the most productive way to get work done. For the last 3 years I've been working from home and don't see myself going back to an office ever again. I enjoy my time at home too much. Everyone is different and not every company has to work the same way.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
Cederfjard 5y ago
Some people also don’t have living conditions at home that are conducive to being productive. Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example.
- Someone1234 5y ago
  > Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example. Because they have to live in expensive urban areas near their workplace. Their money would stretch much further if they could remote-work from rural areas.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    Until rural areas cost of living goes up because 37% of people decided to move out to unsustainable rural areas. Overall - moving to somewhere more rural is a fix for an individual looking to solve their financial problem but it is not a society wide solution. Rural homes are a net drain on society and are subsidized by city workers.
    - tayo42 5y ago
      You also have to live in that rural area too. I think there's more to living then having a giant home with nothing to do. Likely won't be able to relate to the people around you at all.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      I bet there are plenty of medium-sized cities, with good universities and small tech poles (because let's just say it, you want to be around educated people, and yes, it's nice) with much lower costs of living than where most techies end-up living.
      - bradlys 5y ago
        Sure but a lot of these places are also not sustainable either. A lot of small to medium cities are going bankrupt due to unsustainable urban sprawl. Many young educated techies are also not really keen on the whole suburban hellscape and being completely reliant on (dino-fuel) cars either. Cost is one factor but sustainability is another that I think is important to highlight. You can get both in a favorable position but I think it's easier to make things sustainable and less costly in a place that has people to begin with (e.g. Tokyo) than one where everyone is adamantly against building up or creating less sprawl (most lower density cities that exist in the USA).
eminence32 5y ago
Nothing anyone says in these comments should invalidate your own personal experiences and successes with your working arrangements. But I have to admit I'm surprised to hear you say that you are "astonished" that any programmer would prefer to work differently. 2 things that I've learned from reading NH over the years: tech/programmer people are often very opinionated, and also have widely different opinions on just about everything :)
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Admittedly what you say is true. People tend to believe other people think like them. I go on my own lived experience. Never once in 8 years did any of my coworkers suggest we get an office. We felt lucky to be able to work at home for all the reasons that people give. I had a couple of other reasons for hating the office that I don't often see mentioned. I'm sensitive to 60 Hz fluorescent lights and also to bad air. Most offices are flooded with this kind of light and don't recirculate the plastic and office supply fumes often enough.
- balaji1 5y ago
  In this case, tech/programmer people have differing opinions about returning to the office. But the managers or at least the management have only have a single blanket policy for all. A compromise like 2-3 days in the office is one such policy.
Adraghast 5y ago
> I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work takes that away from them.
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  Interesting how you automatically assigned a gender. My wife has worked from home for 4 years and can't wait to get back into an office. I like to think that some people just have different preferences.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home. There are already a number of options in even the smallest town. I expect that will increase as more people move to WFH and seek social outlets. And at the end of the day "interacting with coworkers in the break room" is a pretty low quality bar for an alternative to surmount. Maybe your work conversations are more fascinating than mine, but I get more value elsewhere.
  - 30367286 5y ago
    >I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home. Absolutely. Additionally, even getting to that set of regular, forced interactions necessarily consumes the limited time those people would have to pursue those social activities outside the home. That is, it's hard to have a strong social life when you commute, at best, 5 hours a week. And that's if you're lucky. All of this benefits corporations. Especially, insidiously, the notion that your job can and should double as your social life. What concerns me, today, is that that we're in this middle stage where things could tip either way. For this reason, I think it's important for us to bang the drum loudly that we won't spend 40-50 hours in the office. Hybrid is a sufficient compromise.
spaniard89277 5y ago
I won't accept any non-remote job where I need long commutes and I have to sit my ass there for the whole week. Just yesterday we had a summer day, so just after lunch I went to a remote beach, used my phone as AP and worked for about 5 hours until nightfall. No interruptions, no annoying noises, not battling with AC. I mean, having tasted this, Im pretty sure what would I do if my company asks me to go back to office. I still have a low paying job, but my life has improved dramatically. And my office is literally 5m walk from my home, so Im already ahead of many people in that, but it's a noisy bunker with no window, lots of people and all kinds of other BS. People is definitely lonely. I can understand that, but I won't pay for other peoples loneliness. If you want friends, ask me for a beer, or come to my house, I like to cook for people. But Id bet that this is more of a managers thing.
- thfuran 5y ago
  You have lunch a few hours before dawn?
  - spaniard89277 5y ago
    Oops! I meant to "anochecer", which is nightfall in english according to google.
markus_zhang 5y ago
With a kid at home I'm very inclined to work in office whenever it allows. I'm also much more productive in office when everything from coffee to food are taken care of. Nowadays I believe WFH is kinda the norm in IT as long as company policy allows. I love the hybrid mode: two days in office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid.
- iso1631 5y ago
  > two days in office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid. This is not working from home, or working anywhere If you think working from home means you have time to "help with the kid", you're wrong.
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    I don't know what you mean TBH.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      If you are working from home, you are working. If you are helping out with the kid, you are not working.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - markus_zhang 5y ago
        I'm working when I'm working. Still don't get where you are going with this.
        iso1631 5y ago
        You implied you were maintaining a full time job (that's what I understand "hybrid" to mean), rather than having dropped to part time hours.
  - 5y ago
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
High speed internet and video conferencing might bring many of those distractions into your home office in a way that you didn't have to deal with during the old days.
FpUser 5y ago
>"I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face" This. We have managed to completely fuck up life style of the segment of the population to the point that they have no life outside of the office. This is sick.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  A good book about this is Bowling Alone. As much as I liked programming, I would also take the day off to go surfing if the waves were good. Another WFH benefit. http://bowlingalone.com/ http://bowlingalone.com/
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  That said, it made a huge difference that forced WFH coincided with closing all possible social outlets at the same time. If you discovered that you wanted to expand your social circle to diversify away from workmates, you were out of luck.
foobiekr 5y ago
Most software is no longer this self contained. It doesn’t need to be that way but often is. Around 9/11, I was responsible for a major system component that turned out (shocker) to be a lot more work than anyone had estimated, so I spent the week before and the month after 9/11 working fully remote so that I could dedicate every waking hour to the component. Putting aside the lack of balance, it was the most productive I have been in my life despite the high distraction of the news in the outside world. But the last two years have been nothing like that. Some of that is my current role, and some of that is that building complex systems requires more coordination, but it also seems to me that there is some issue both around engineer depth on average (previous example, everyone was fluent in reading code and it spoke for itself) and that software these days in large companies has just so much internet-group overhead. And video conferencing is a punishment in most large companies, worse than a phone call because it seems, to me, to result in people paying less attention. I may be alone in that though.
xhrpost 5y ago
> some people are just very lonely and need face to face Sure but some of us are just more extroverted and have better energy in the office. Also having a clean separation of work vs home context can be helpful, training the brain "this is work time"[1] I think it's totally fair to point out if people are opting for the office just due to a lack of need fulfillment elsewhere in life, but don't think its wise to assume it's only that by a wide margin. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorway_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorway_Effect
heassler 5y ago
Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible when chatting via google meets. But there’s also the increased exposure to serendipity. Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation that makes you think about your career, or during drinks after work you end up discussing a new cool startup idea with colleagues. None of this really happens when you stay at home. Sure, there are pros to staying at home. You will have more free time and fewer distractions, among other things. But there are also massive perks to putting a bit of effort and going to the office sometimes. Those perks, admittedly, may be hard to understand for the average introverted, socially anxious software dev.
- memonkey 5y ago
  My own anecdotal and I'm sure many others have experienced this before, but getting the culture right for remote work has been a great experience. I get to know people at a meaningful level. I remember being younger in high school and making meaningful relationships on the internet through chat rooms and video games that last to today.
- chapium 5y ago
  I disagree on one point. I've spent much of my career working with remote offices over the phone and with desktop sharing. I have to say, group video conferences really don't cut it. However, one on one calls and video calls work really well and you can get to know your coworkers. Its so much better to have one on ones with others and not have each other worry about posturing in front of their peers. Group video calls are at least just as useless as group meetings.
- humanwhosits 5y ago
  > Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation The office rumor-mill produced a lot of bad politics in my experience
  - deleted 5y ago
UncleOxidant 5y ago
> 5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet It's hard to imagine now how this could be done without the internet and a distributed vcs like git.
unemphysbro 5y ago
what was the merge code process like?
- glouwbug 5y ago
  git merge --strategy ours
vonseel 5y ago
Some people prefer working in an office because it helps them stay disciplined and keep a better work/life balance. Perhaps I’m just speaking for myself here, but I tend to get lazy and feel like my life has much less structure as a fully-remote worker.
AniseAbyss 5y ago
Some people live in tiny apartments without even a balcony.
wdurden 5y ago
ClarisWorks was created like this too. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php
bsder 5y ago
> I can safely say I never wrote any good code while working in an office. There are too many distractions. 1) Not every office is Silicon Valley Open Office Garbage I personally think this is the biggest issue. We never threw in with the "open office" bullshit. Offices have doors. We don't have that many cubicles, and they're generally for contractors/consultants/etc. Every time we started having cubicles, it was time to move to a bigger office. People hate commute traffic--that's sadly unavoidable in the US. But they didn't seem to hate our office (I could, of course, simply be blind like so many stupid managers). 2) Not every job is solely writing code. I need a lab. My juniors need a lab. They don't need to be there every day, but they do need it regularly. Expecting them to set this up in their apartment is unreasonable. 3) Junior engineers need mentoring Maybe the fact that software does this quite so terribly is hiding this need. There is a lot of friction between simply mentioning something to a staff engineer after lunch and setting up a specific zoom call. There is also something about the staff engineer overhearing something "minor" that junior engineers are struggling with, correlating that multiple of them are having similar issues and setting up something to fix a process or educate people. 4) Lack of face to face time increases conflicts This is anecdata. However, people who don't actually meet face to face regularly don't cut each other the same slack that those who meet regularly do. I don't know why. Although, we could probably paper over this by having regular lunches. I like working from home. But I also liked working at the office. They are two different modes that serve two different purposes. I will, however, agree that 9 to 5, 5 days a week in the office is dumb. At the very least, significantly condensing the number of "common hours" and letting people commute on off times needs to increase. This was happening, but very slowly. Covid accelerated this.
chrismcb 5y ago
There are multiple reasons to want to work in an office. Makes it easier to separate home from work. Not having the space at home to work comfortably. Not having the quiet need from a busy and noisy house Being and to interact with others, even if it is just in a social capacity. Of course personally I'd prefer to work from home

odonnellryan 5y ago

It took me 1-2 years before WFH didn't make me depressed. I enjoy it now but I understand.

cecilpl2 5y ago

This is fascinating to me! How did you manage to merge code in the 80s? What tools were available? Did you have three-way merge tools or did you do it more manually? Or rather did you talk frequently and ensure that you weren't stepping in each other's files? How did you make changes to shared APIs?

tfigment 5y ago
I would assume RCS and floppies. CVS later. That is what my company apparently used in that era.
eminence32 5y ago
Some "old-timers" at my software company occasionally tell stories about how "checking the source code" meant physically grabbing a the one binder filled with pages of fortran and inserting your changes. Physically holding the binder gave you exclusive checkin access :)
Clubber 5y ago
There were always tools to diff two codebases and make a intermediate file that had all the changes. We did it back in the BBS days. You could always take the diff file and type the changes in manually. That's how "mods" worked. It would be something like this SomeFile.pas 14: - If Variable = 1 14: + If Variable = 2
mwattsun 5y ago
Macintosh Programmers Workshop had some tools but we mostly did it by hand so we tended to work on different parts of the program. If that was a problem our manager who owned the company would do a road trip to collect the new code that another person needed (we all lived in the Bay Area.) He had a big financial incentive to do so. Or we would get together, but that was not optimal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Works...
zozbot234 5y ago
> What tools were available? "My Briefcase", in Windows. It was like cloud shared storage, but using removable media.

headmelted 5y ago

If you don't mind my asking, have you spent much of your time since then working from home or in an office? I likewise very much prefer working from home and find I get more done, but wanting to get an idea of what it's like from someone who's seen and done both over the long term.

mwattsun 5y ago
Works was my first job out of the Navy in 84, so I had no prior office experience. I spent 94' to 2000 working in 4 separate offices for 3 different companies. I remember my first office experience I brought in a cot. People looked at me like I was insane. Well, I guess power naps are out of the question. Then I was exposed to office politics for the first time. Some people walk around hating each other all day. What a downer that was. Some women (and some men) would interrupt me to flirt with me. I didn't mind that so much. Then I would be in deep focus fixing some problem and they'd flash the lights because it was someone's birthday and we all had to go to the conference room because it was someone's birthday and there was cake and ice cream. Again, I didn't mind that so much. I felt for all these reasons and many more I was less productive in an office than I was at home. The office to me is a place a lot of people like because they can f around with their office friends. Edit: I never worked in an office again after I resumed programming after the dotcom bubble burst. Another anecdote: I got called into HR because someone complained I was yawning too loudly.

Bluecobra 5y ago

Didn't Microsoft give everyone their own dedicated office in those days? I thought I read/heard somewhere that is what spawned development of Outlook/Exchange. I agree about the distractions, it's extremely bad with the open office model and hard to get anything done for me. I would much prefer cubicles or dedicated offices.

Clubber 5y ago
I remember hearing that too. Having an office with a door or at least a shared office would make it tolerable, but still the commute always put me in a sour mood to start and end the day. Now a days, the fad is open office, which is a dumpster fire for development. I can't believe Apple fell for that with their new mothership.
mwattsun 5y ago
This was true in the late 80's early 90's when we used to go up to Redmond from California to pow wow, but I heard that's not true anymore. Also, if any Microsofties are reading this, how would I got about getting the source code of Works for the Mac? It was about 200,000 lines of 68000 asm code that I'm thinking of trying to get to run in the browser. I may make a formal request to Microsoft if I get more motivated about it. I lost my copy along the way.
RandallBrown 5y ago
I had my own office at Microsoft as late as 2013. It was by far the least favorite work environment I've ever had. It was lonely and unproductive for me, with a 15 minute - 2 hour commute depending on traffic. I came home from work angry every day. I have no idea how I lasted almost two years in that environment. I really enjoy open offices. My next job was all pair programming all the time. No assigned desks. You just showed up and sat down with a different person every day. For me that's the most productive way to get work done. For the last 3 years I've been working from home and don't see myself going back to an office ever again. I enjoy my time at home too much. Everyone is different and not every company has to work the same way.
- Apocryphon 5y ago

Cederfjard 5y ago

Some people also don’t have living conditions at home that are conducive to being productive. Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example.

Someone1234 5y ago
> Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example. Because they have to live in expensive urban areas near their workplace. Their money would stretch much further if they could remote-work from rural areas.
- bradlys 5y ago
  Until rural areas cost of living goes up because 37% of people decided to move out to unsustainable rural areas. Overall - moving to somewhere more rural is a fix for an individual looking to solve their financial problem but it is not a society wide solution. Rural homes are a net drain on society and are subsidized by city workers.
  - tayo42 5y ago
    You also have to live in that rural area too. I think there's more to living then having a giant home with nothing to do. Likely won't be able to relate to the people around you at all.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    I bet there are plenty of medium-sized cities, with good universities and small tech poles (because let's just say it, you want to be around educated people, and yes, it's nice) with much lower costs of living than where most techies end-up living.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      Sure but a lot of these places are also not sustainable either. A lot of small to medium cities are going bankrupt due to unsustainable urban sprawl. Many young educated techies are also not really keen on the whole suburban hellscape and being completely reliant on (dino-fuel) cars either. Cost is one factor but sustainability is another that I think is important to highlight. You can get both in a favorable position but I think it's easier to make things sustainable and less costly in a place that has people to begin with (e.g. Tokyo) than one where everyone is adamantly against building up or creating less sprawl (most lower density cities that exist in the USA).

eminence32 5y ago

Nothing anyone says in these comments should invalidate your own personal experiences and successes with your working arrangements. But I have to admit I'm surprised to hear you say that you are "astonished" that any programmer would prefer to work differently. 2 things that I've learned from reading NH over the years: tech/programmer people are often very opinionated, and also have widely different opinions on just about everything :)

mwattsun 5y ago
Admittedly what you say is true. People tend to believe other people think like them. I go on my own lived experience. Never once in 8 years did any of my coworkers suggest we get an office. We felt lucky to be able to work at home for all the reasons that people give. I had a couple of other reasons for hating the office that I don't often see mentioned. I'm sensitive to 60 Hz fluorescent lights and also to bad air. Most offices are flooded with this kind of light and don't recirculate the plastic and office supply fumes often enough.
balaji1 5y ago
In this case, tech/programmer people have differing opinions about returning to the office. But the managers or at least the management have only have a single blanket policy for all. A compromise like 2-3 days in the office is one such policy.

Adraghast 5y ago

> I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work takes that away from them.

long_time_gone 5y ago
Interesting how you automatically assigned a gender. My wife has worked from home for 4 years and can't wait to get back into an office. I like to think that some people just have different preferences.
ethbr0 5y ago
I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home. There are already a number of options in even the smallest town. I expect that will increase as more people move to WFH and seek social outlets. And at the end of the day "interacting with coworkers in the break room" is a pretty low quality bar for an alternative to surmount. Maybe your work conversations are more fascinating than mine, but I get more value elsewhere.
- 30367286 5y ago
  >I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home. Absolutely. Additionally, even getting to that set of regular, forced interactions necessarily consumes the limited time those people would have to pursue those social activities outside the home. That is, it's hard to have a strong social life when you commute, at best, 5 hours a week. And that's if you're lucky. All of this benefits corporations. Especially, insidiously, the notion that your job can and should double as your social life. What concerns me, today, is that that we're in this middle stage where things could tip either way. For this reason, I think it's important for us to bang the drum loudly that we won't spend 40-50 hours in the office. Hybrid is a sufficient compromise.

spaniard89277 5y ago

I won't accept any non-remote job where I need long commutes and I have to sit my ass there for the whole week. Just yesterday we had a summer day, so just after lunch I went to a remote beach, used my phone as AP and worked for about 5 hours until nightfall. No interruptions, no annoying noises, not battling with AC. I mean, having tasted this, Im pretty sure what would I do if my company asks me to go back to office. I still have a low paying job, but my life has improved dramatically. And my office is literally 5m walk from my home, so Im already ahead of many people in that, but it's a noisy bunker with no window, lots of people and all kinds of other BS. People is definitely lonely. I can understand that, but I won't pay for other peoples loneliness. If you want friends, ask me for a beer, or come to my house, I like to cook for people. But Id bet that this is more of a managers thing.

thfuran 5y ago
You have lunch a few hours before dawn?
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  Oops! I meant to "anochecer", which is nightfall in english according to google.

markus_zhang 5y ago

With a kid at home I'm very inclined to work in office whenever it allows. I'm also much more productive in office when everything from coffee to food are taken care of. Nowadays I believe WFH is kinda the norm in IT as long as company policy allows. I love the hybrid mode: two days in office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid.

iso1631 5y ago
> two days in office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid. This is not working from home, or working anywhere If you think working from home means you have time to "help with the kid", you're wrong.
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  I don't know what you mean TBH.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    If you are working from home, you are working. If you are helping out with the kid, you are not working.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - markus_zhang 5y ago
      I'm working when I'm working. Still don't get where you are going with this.
      - iso1631 5y ago
        You implied you were maintaining a full time job (that's what I understand "hybrid" to mean), rather than having dropped to part time hours.
- 5y ago

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

High speed internet and video conferencing might bring many of those distractions into your home office in a way that you didn't have to deal with during the old days.

FpUser 5y ago

>"I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face" This. We have managed to completely fuck up life style of the segment of the population to the point that they have no life outside of the office. This is sick.

mwattsun 5y ago
A good book about this is Bowling Alone. As much as I liked programming, I would also take the day off to go surfing if the waves were good. Another WFH benefit. http://bowlingalone.com/ http://bowlingalone.com/
jdminhbg 5y ago
That said, it made a huge difference that forced WFH coincided with closing all possible social outlets at the same time. If you discovered that you wanted to expand your social circle to diversify away from workmates, you were out of luck.

foobiekr 5y ago

Most software is no longer this self contained. It doesn’t need to be that way but often is. Around 9/11, I was responsible for a major system component that turned out (shocker) to be a lot more work than anyone had estimated, so I spent the week before and the month after 9/11 working fully remote so that I could dedicate every waking hour to the component. Putting aside the lack of balance, it was the most productive I have been in my life despite the high distraction of the news in the outside world. But the last two years have been nothing like that. Some of that is my current role, and some of that is that building complex systems requires more coordination, but it also seems to me that there is some issue both around engineer depth on average (previous example, everyone was fluent in reading code and it spoke for itself) and that software these days in large companies has just so much internet-group overhead. And video conferencing is a punishment in most large companies, worse than a phone call because it seems, to me, to result in people paying less attention. I may be alone in that though.

xhrpost 5y ago

> some people are just very lonely and need face to face Sure but some of us are just more extroverted and have better energy in the office. Also having a clean separation of work vs home context can be helpful, training the brain "this is work time"[1] I think it's totally fair to point out if people are opting for the office just due to a lack of need fulfillment elsewhere in life, but don't think its wise to assume it's only that by a wide margin. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorway_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorway_Effect

heassler 5y ago

Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible when chatting via google meets. But there’s also the increased exposure to serendipity. Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation that makes you think about your career, or during drinks after work you end up discussing a new cool startup idea with colleagues. None of this really happens when you stay at home. Sure, there are pros to staying at home. You will have more free time and fewer distractions, among other things. But there are also massive perks to putting a bit of effort and going to the office sometimes. Those perks, admittedly, may be hard to understand for the average introverted, socially anxious software dev.

memonkey 5y ago
My own anecdotal and I'm sure many others have experienced this before, but getting the culture right for remote work has been a great experience. I get to know people at a meaningful level. I remember being younger in high school and making meaningful relationships on the internet through chat rooms and video games that last to today.
chapium 5y ago
I disagree on one point. I've spent much of my career working with remote offices over the phone and with desktop sharing. I have to say, group video conferences really don't cut it. However, one on one calls and video calls work really well and you can get to know your coworkers. Its so much better to have one on ones with others and not have each other worry about posturing in front of their peers. Group video calls are at least just as useless as group meetings.
humanwhosits 5y ago
> Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation The office rumor-mill produced a lot of bad politics in my experience
- deleted 5y ago

UncleOxidant 5y ago

> 5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet It's hard to imagine now how this could be done without the internet and a distributed vcs like git.

unemphysbro 5y ago

what was the merge code process like?

glouwbug 5y ago
git merge --strategy ours

vonseel 5y ago

Some people prefer working in an office because it helps them stay disciplined and keep a better work/life balance. Perhaps I’m just speaking for myself here, but I tend to get lazy and feel like my life has much less structure as a fully-remote worker.

AniseAbyss 5y ago

Some people live in tiny apartments without even a balcony.

wdurden 5y ago

ClarisWorks was created like this too. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php

bsder 5y ago

> I can safely say I never wrote any good code while working in an office. There are too many distractions. 1) Not every office is Silicon Valley Open Office Garbage I personally think this is the biggest issue. We never threw in with the "open office" bullshit. Offices have doors. We don't have that many cubicles, and they're generally for contractors/consultants/etc. Every time we started having cubicles, it was time to move to a bigger office. People hate commute traffic--that's sadly unavoidable in the US. But they didn't seem to hate our office (I could, of course, simply be blind like so many stupid managers). 2) Not every job is solely writing code. I need a lab. My juniors need a lab. They don't need to be there every day, but they do need it regularly. Expecting them to set this up in their apartment is unreasonable. 3) Junior engineers need mentoring Maybe the fact that software does this quite so terribly is hiding this need. There is a lot of friction between simply mentioning something to a staff engineer after lunch and setting up a specific zoom call. There is also something about the staff engineer overhearing something "minor" that junior engineers are struggling with, correlating that multiple of them are having similar issues and setting up something to fix a process or educate people. 4) Lack of face to face time increases conflicts This is anecdata. However, people who don't actually meet face to face regularly don't cut each other the same slack that those who meet regularly do. I don't know why. Although, we could probably paper over this by having regular lunches. I like working from home. But I also liked working at the office. They are two different modes that serve two different purposes. I will, however, agree that 9 to 5, 5 days a week in the office is dumb. At the very least, significantly condensing the number of "common hours" and letting people commute on off times needs to increase. This was happening, but very slowly. Covid accelerated this.

chrismcb 5y ago

There are multiple reasons to want to work in an office. Makes it easier to separate home from work. Not having the space at home to work comfortably. Not having the quiet need from a busy and noisy house Being and to interact with others, even if it is just in a social capacity. Of course personally I'd prefer to work from home