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Dreaded commute to the city is keeping offices mostly empty

120 points by uptown 4y ago

ftyers 4y ago
https://archive.ph/wsVN7 https://archive.ph/wsVN7
ohCh6zos 4y ago
The closest I can afford to live to my job is about an hour each way. Having my 8 hour day be a 10 hour day is unappealing.
- Arrath 4y ago
  I am with you there, I move a lot for work, and I try to stay within a half hour of my office/jobsite location. Any farther than that and the commuting time just adds up so quickly. An hour each way is another full work shift by the end of just one week. No thanks.
tetraca 4y ago
If you live more than 30 minutes away from the office, and it's self-evident that your physical presence isn't necessary to accomplish your day to day, I don't see why someone wouldn't refuse to come back excepting a few days here and there for a fun communal activity with your team. Especially if they have children.
- denimnerd42 4y ago
  people don't even want to come back for mandatory fun https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220517-the-death-of-mandatory-fun-in-the-office https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220517-the-death-of-m...
  - Arrath 4y ago
    Good. The only mandatory fun I enjoy is when the boss picks up the bar tab with no other stipulations.
  - tetraca 4y ago
    This is pretty foreign to me. I put that line in because my team has actually organically suggested "Let's go have lunch!" or play a game together. Nothing mandatory or forced by a manager, just something because we do enjoy getting together from time to time.
- baq 4y ago
  obviously they wouldn't refuse if they want to keep their job... return to office will be a very convenient way of laying off people without saying you're laying off people. remember an economic slowdown is underway for 2 quarters and will last for quite a bit more.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    From people I've talked to the job market in parts of the tech industry still seems to be red hot. Everyone is having trouble hiring.
    - baq 4y ago
      you can always say that. the problem is, this happens slowly, then suddenly all at once. if it takes 6-8 months to get a new job, it might be in the middle of total hiring freeze everywhere.
    - Spartan-S63 4y ago
      The tech sector still seems red hot, but the pivot from revenue growth at any cost to margin-focused growth is what's squeezing a lot of B2C companies. I think if you're a startup or late stage private company in B2B, you're probably doing alright if you were cautious and conservative in growing your costs. If you look at a lot of the recent layoffs, most are in tech companies doing B2C rather than B2B.
      - baq 4y ago
        B2C reducing expenses means B2B reducing expenses, just on a lag. duration of that lag is anybody's guess; mine is 3+-1 quarter depending on purchasing cycles and license renewals.
  - MrPatan 4y ago
    Ah yes, one of those lay offs where you lose the people who can get a job at the drop of a hat and keep the ones that cannot. But of course, it would be initiated by somebody who wants to work from an office so, yeah, it all fits.
Johnny555 4y ago
That's one reason for sure, but even if my house was a 10 minute walk from the office, I'd still rather only go in for meetings. At home I have my own private office with a nice view. I have a nice set of speakers and can play any music I like. If I want to go for a walk, I'm in a quiet suburban neighborhood with hiking trails nearby. The kitchen is always stocked with snacks I like plus freshly prepared healthy lunches (prepared either by myself or my wife). My dog spends most of the day in the office with me. At the "new" office, no one has an assigned desk, so I have to take everything I need with me to my desk and pack it up at the end of the day. My company is distributed so I spend half the day on zoom meetings with people in other offices... and even with relatively few people in the office it's already hard to book a room for a meeting. There's enough background noise in the open office that I keep headphones on most of the time while I'm at my desk. We do get free lunches at the office which is a nice perk, but food is prepared off-site, so menus tend to be designed around food that stands up to this model of food that can be prepared hours ahead of time. My commute is less than 30 minutes (one-way) and is a pretty pleasant drive.... it takes an hour out of my day, but it's not the primary reason I don't want to go to the office.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
  The magic of open space is the same for me... but without the "perks" (food is pretty horrible from the comment I have, and it's 1 hour of traffic jam to get there). All that to do Teams meeting at my desk, with the noise of my other colleagues also in call. That's, to put it simply, hell. And then you have to be under constant surveillance, "why do you leave so early?" (I've been there for 8 hours already, so, fuck you very much)" and the "why do you go to a private cell for your meeting? (to not annoy you)" The worst part? I sometimes do meeting with half of my colleague sitting right next to me in the same call. With my headset. Why?
  - wollsmoth 4y ago
    There aren't any meeting rooms at your office? I think every place I've been, even the startups had some kind of conference call mic setup on the table, although I don't think every place had a cam. It's possible for the "room" to join the call and those who must join over video.
xt00 4y ago
With high cost buildings in NYC it would seem companies would be happy to sell their billion dollar building and make like 2 small satellite offices closer to where the people live -- one say in eastern New Jersey and one in Brooklyn when you need to meet with clients or have big meetings or for the people who need to have a workspace away from home and save a ton of money having a large percentage of the company work from home. If it ends up being a competitive advantage, then you can imagine a wave of it happening.
- criticas 4y ago
  One, most US companies don't own their buildings - they lease for the tax advantages. It comes down to capital expenditures vs operational expenditures. They're happy to reduce OpEx, but it's not like it's a billion dollar windfall. Two, satellite offices often aren't any more convenient for commuters, and often don't save as much money as you expect. You have to duplicate infrastructure in more locations. My son worked in Manhattan. His coworkers lived in Connecticut and Long Island; travelling to Brooklyn or New Jersey wasn't substantially easier for them. Even commuting between adjacent boroughs can be a pain if mass transit is oriented around getting people from the suburbs to the city core.
- spread_love 4y ago
  The cost difference in Brooklyn is quickly evaporating, especially anywhere a very large company might be looking for office space (downtown). The NYC subway system doesn't go to Jersey, it's often subway => commuter train, you're lucky if it doesn't involve a bus at some point.
dfxm12 4y ago
Employee opposition to commuting ... may require investing in housing, highways, public transportation and other infrastructure necessary to reduce commute times. Yet another benefit for investing in housing and public transportation. Based on my proximity to public transportation, too, I have many job options close by, so I'm not likely to get stuck in a bad spot.
- ericmay 4y ago
  Agreed, and look at how fragile we are when gas prices go up. If we just built medium-density, mixed use development with appealing architecture and sensible transit options (walk, bike, ride street cars or light rail) with the option of still owning a car (ideally around 1 per family) we'd be in such a better place.
  - weberer 4y ago
    Sounds like you're describing towns or small cities. And now that people can work remotely, that may be more viable, since we're no longer forced to migrate to tech hubs for competitive salaries. Maybe cramming in to huge cities will become a thing of the past.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      In America, yea. I think the issues we face with other American cities, like Columbus, or Austin, or Nashville, etc. is that they're not built like small cities - in that they try to be a New York City, when they should instead model after Copenhagen or perhaps Amsterdam.
      - weberer 4y ago
        Even those are huge cities in my eyes. I was thinking something more along the lines of Portsmouth NH, or Ellicott City MD. Places small enough where you can walk from end to end in short enough time, but large enough to have plenty of shops and events. These places are exceptionally nice areas to live.
gaspard234 4y ago
My remote org had an onsite this past week. I forgot how much I hate 'socializing' and how useless water cooler talk is. They tried their best to make it enjoyable but I am so much happier in my home office with no background noise, no need to get dressed up, and being able to define my own schedule (I eat lunch at 3-4pm and bay tech orgs serve lunch at noon with all the smells disturbing me).
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  I expect the vast majority of Return-To-The-Office managers are extroverts who have no understanding of the energy toll that socializing requires from the introverts who work for them.
switch007 4y ago
EU perspective: Gas is high and cars are expensive. Cities are full of drug addicts, homeless people, and empty shops. And crime. I don’t even like going downtown for leisure. House prices and rents have rocketed so people who moved the last 2 years to upsize have done so even further from the office. Not to mention presenteeism spreading viruses. Not to mention awful noisy offices designed by sadists. It’s far more complicated than just the “commute”.
- 99_00 4y ago
  >Cities are full of drug addicts, homeless people, and empty shops. And crime. I don’t even like going downtown for leisure. Was it always like this or has this gotten worse because of the pandemic?
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > Cities are full of drug addicts, homeless people, and empty shops. And crime. I don’t even like going downtown for leisure. That doesn't at all describe the cities I've seen post-pandemic. Cities are full of restaurants, arts, people, and energy. I don't see many empty shops, though more than usual (I assume businesses went bankrupt at higher rate during the pandemic). It does describe the beliefs of people who listen to reactionary commentary but don't go to cities, or believe the talk shows rather than simply looking around them. There are people who are homeless or addicted to drugs, but they have no impact on me and never have. Try just talking to someone - they are just people, not monsters, no different than the other people I meet except in their clothes.
  - switch007 4y ago
    > It does describe the beliefs of people who listen to reactionary commentary but don't go to cities, or believe the talk shows rather than simply looking around them. Anyone with a different experience or opinion is ignorant. Got ya. I’ve done plenty of travel recently to plenty of cities, in various countries.
swader999 4y ago
Child care, clothing, dry cleaning, car insurance & maintenance, parking, gym membership, eating out all add up. Oh yeah, gas too.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  You need to pay for a gym membership to return to office?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tristor 4y ago
    For a lot of people, their companies don't pay for a gym membership or don't have an office gym, and if the gym is part of their lifestyle not working from home means needing a gym membership in the city near the office. The logic is pretty simple, if you are going to be stuck in rush hour commute home for 2 hours or you can walk to a city gym and work out for an hour, then jump into your commute and be home in an hour and 45 minutes, so it costs you 45 minutes of total time for 1 hour of gym time + you arrive home to take a shower and get ready for the evening vs trying to work out after the drain of a commute. Meanwhile if you work from home, you can afford the space to have a home gym that you can use whenever you have time and don't need the drain of the commute at all, because you live farther from the city.
    - pedrosorio 4y ago
      > commute home for 2 hours That sounds like a nightmare. > work out for an hour, then jump into your commute and be home in an hour and 45 minutes Still terrible. > 1 hour of gym time + you arrive home to take a shower 1h45m of sweaty commute after 1h of gym? I don't think so.
    - swader999 4y ago
      Very well said. Don't even need a home gym at home, you can do bodyweight workouts, go for a run etc. Good luck doing that in many offices, rare to find even showers there.
Biologist123 4y ago
> Empty offices in city centers may be replaced by apartment buildings. “The end result is more balanced communities,” Mr. Florida said. “But—and it is a big but—the adjustment will be painful.” The institutional owners of property may end up taking a haircut. This ultimately means pension funds in large part. Alongside deglobalisation, renewables (with stranded assets) and creeping automation, I wonder what options people and governments have to protect their wealth amidst creative destruction.
- jdhn 4y ago
  >The institutional owners of property may end up taking a haircut. This is exactly why Mayor Adams wants people to come back to the office in NYC. NYC derives a big chunk of change from taxing corporate offices, and if the value goes down then NYC loses out on a lot of money.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    And taxing the commuters, and the sandwich shops those commuters patronize, etc, etc.
dougmwne 4y ago
This is a point that seems to be conveniently left out by most return to office advocates. My coworkers in Boston, DC and SF often had hellish commutes, up to 2 hours each way. That is a serious chunk of the waking hours of the day to spend on the road, not to mention the huge cost and environmental impact of the fuel, the emissions, and the additional roads that needed to be built to support these commutes. The status quo in major American cities was well beyond the point of insanity and the frog had truly been boiled over time. For every person that took a jaunty walk down the block, or a breezy bike ride to work, there were many others that had to make a major sacrifice to come in each day. We can't go back to the way things were, it just didn't make any sense. I enjoyed my time in the office, but those days are behind me. I have more money in my pocket, more time, and more quality of life. I get to be near my family all year instead of in a random city where I am rootless. I'm not going back.
- 99_00 4y ago
  >This is a point that seems to be conveniently left out by most return to office advocates. In my experience these tend to be executives who can afford to live on expensive real estate close to the city center. And therefore, have a very short commute. That's how cities where I live and people who I talk to live are laid out anyways. Downtown core is most expensive, and then the further out you go the cheaper it gets and the more painful the commute to the downtown core is.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > hellish commutes The exaggerated adjective is the argument. Your co-workers could choose to live elsewhere, so I wonder if the commute was so bad from their perspective. Those cities in particular have good public transit, which lets you live further away and commute conveniently. Many millions of people live in those cities, and choose to - the real estate prices reflect the demand. You don't have to want that, but I don't see how we can tell everyone else what is good and bad for them.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > not to mention the huge cost and environmental impact of the fuel, the emissions, and the additional roads that needed to be built to support these commutes. Plus a decent chunk of the 43,000 road deaths a third of all spinal injuries and a million days spent in the hospital every year from collisions.
starik36 4y ago
All these people, including me, working from home and yet there is still massive traffic everywhere.
angarg12 4y ago
All of my career I prioritized short commutes, which led to living in tiny apartments (as small as 25 sqmt) within a short commute from work. When Covid hit we had just moved to a new 1 bed flat and were paying our highest rent yet, but hey, 15 minutes commute! When it became evident we were in for the long haul we started looking to move again. We ended up moving to a 3 bed house with garden in a tiny village close to our family paying much less rent, but across the country from the office. I can't understate the massive increase in quality of life this brought us. Being closer to the family I don't feel the need to socialize with colleagues at work, and I didn't need to meet anyone in office for about 2 years.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Everyone on HN who loves urban density should read things like this. Quality of life cooped up in a dense urban setting, especially with a family, is awful. There's so much space in the world, we don't need to pack ourselves in tiny urban centers near "tech hubs" at all.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    I grew up with one parent in the burbs and the other in the boonies, and today I live in a city and I'll never go back to anywhere that isn't eminently walkable. I don't value space, I value proximity to lots of people. I'm happy that WFH allows people who value the opposite to vacate the cities that make them miserable in order to free up room for people who crave density.
    - criddell 4y ago
      For me, what I want has changed a lot over my life. In my 20's I craved density. I loved the energy and options of cities. 30 years later, I'm the opposite. I live in the suburbs in a house big enough to give me a home gym, workshop, office, etc... but if I had a self-driving car and could get great internet, I'd move way out of the city. I want a little more space and a lot less noise.
      - 4y ago
rndmize 4y ago
No shit. As far as the Bay goes, it feels like decisions about office placement are made with things like management or prestige in mind, rather than the average worker. For all the growth in the East Bay and Tri-Valley area, it seems like most office buildings continue to be built on the peninsula. Hayward is one of the most central locations in the bay and is largely used for... logistics and distribution? I miss the office, but there's no way I'd give my current remote lifestyle for the way things were before (average 1.5 hours of commute time per day). Mind you, this is _after_ optimizing my home buying process to shorten my commute as much as possible. I have a neighbor that bought a Tesla mainly for the tag that lets you use it in carpool lanes. Everyone has better things to do than sit in cars (or other transport) for hours a day, and its a sad thing that more effort hasn't been expended to improve this before now.
- divbzero 4y ago
  > Hayward is one of the most central locations in the bay and is largely used for... logistics and distribution? That actually makes perfect sense for logistics and distribution… but yes, it would make sense for office commutes as well.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  >it feels like decisions about office placement are made with things like management or prestige in mind Our company made that management focus explicit - our main office is on the Peninsula and before COVID hit we opened an east bay (Pleasanton) office, which happened to be close to the homes of the CEO, CFO and a couple other C-level execs. Employees that lived in the East bay thought "Great! We can go to that office and avoid that long cross-bay commute", but no, "Finance and Marketing are moving to the East Bay Office along with senior leadership, it is not available for drop-in by other employees". Which didn't please a lot of people that had organized their life around the Peninsula commute and now have to go to the East Bay
ansible 4y ago
In one of the meetings this week, we were talking about changing how a program works, to allow the user better access to the diagnostics information in the event of a hardware failure. When the program was first designed, the idea was that the program would exit, and the system would either take corrective action or restart. Easy, simple. Now, if the program continues to run in the event of hardware failures, we need to re-examine the assumptions we made when writing it in the first place. Especially with regards to different operating modes. I tried to emphasize this repeatedly during the meeting. It is the same thing with our economy and work in general. In the past, there was expensive infrastructure needed to carry out the company's functions. Even if we're not talking about industrial equipment, the typical office worker would still need a typewriter, access to lots of file cabinets, other office equipment, telephones, and so on. Almost none of that could easily be replicated if the worker wanted to work from home. And so everyone got used to the idea of going into the office or factory on work days. That became the norm, and until recently it wasn't widely questioned. But nowadays, you basically just need power and Internet, which is widely available to most workers at home anyway. I'd have preferred to live in a world without pandemics, but if having a pandemic causes more people to question the assumption you have to commute to work, that is a side benefit.
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  > But nowadays, you basically just need power and Internet, which is widely available to most workers at home anyway. The power and Internet part is easy - a quiet room can be a challenge for some though. At one point in the pandemic, a friend tried coming over and working in my basement because her family was so distracting at home (2 parents + 3 kids in a 3-bedroom house with virtual work and school and a baby crying, etc). I'm told homebuyers are emphasizing having enough space for home offices these days, but that's easier to attain for some than others, especially with the run-up in housing prices over the past couple of years. So yeah, for some people it's easy ... for others, not so much.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Lots of people do not have home computers beyond their phones. When the pandemic began, one urban school district discovered that half their students didn't have a computer (desktop or laptop) at home.
ryukafalz 4y ago
I’ve started commuting back to the office more regularly because I honestly need the exercise! My commute pre-pandemic was about a half hour walk each way. I moved just as the pandemic was starting, and now it’s about a 40 minute walk, or 20-25 minutes by bike or transit. I wouldn’t want to give up the ability to work from home, but I did really miss the physical activity.
Seriomino 4y ago
alaricus 4y ago
Commuting does not make any sense for most white-collar jobs. Let people work from wherever they are, everyone will be happier for it.
Bud 4y ago
Um, I'd say it's more the covid than the commute.
PaywallBuster 4y ago
best part of asia is that there's huge cities with nice condos everywhere you can always find a nice place to stay near work or your favorite spots in a very short time and for reasonable prices in western cities (tech capitals) you spend months looking for the "least worse" overly expensive option and you're stuck there, too often you're living one city away and spend 1h each way on commuting
Steltek 4y ago
As the exception that proves the rule, I missed my commute terribly and its absence was having a negative impact on me. However, I have a 30 minute bicycle commute, which I think changes everything. The daily exercise, change of scenery, and fresh air made all the difference in the world. I'm probably more productive for my employer at home but I feel way better as a human being when I commute in. When WFH, there were days where I wouldn't even leave the house. I had no idea what the weather was outside. Now I know what you're thinking but no, I couldn't maintain a habit of getting out of the house to do exercise for exercise's sake. The bike commute always felt different because it wasn't primarily about exercise and if you're committed to going to the office, you can't skip it no matter how much you want to. Now that all said, I don't believe any level of car commuting is healthy. Kill that with fire and WFH!
- colechristensen 4y ago
  >Now that all said, I don't believe any level of car commuting is healthy. Kill that with fire and WFH! I like driving, lots of people do. A nice 20 minute drive is a good commute. Bumper to bumper traffic for more than 40 is hell.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  I had a 30 - 40 minute bike commute pre-COVID (almost all of it was on off road trails, it was great), and still preferred WFH (which was only allowed one day a week). I moved and no longer have the bike option (taking bike friendly roads would lead to a 90+ minute bike commute), but even an easy bike commute would not make me want to return to the office. I've replaced the bike commute with an indoor spinning bike.
- asdff 4y ago
  I hated my old commute but I still liked the idea of a commute. So now I walk around my neighborhood for 15 mins or so with a mug of coffee and that's my commute. Maybe for you, you can try and simulate a bike commute by riding a fixed route around your neighborhood every morning.
  - Steltek 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
asdff 4y ago
The workplace is going to a hybrid schedule soon which I am not too pleased about, but I'm going to be considering my commute as working time versus personal time this go around. I'll leave for work at 9am and aim to be home from work by 5pm. This seems more logical than having me front the free time for commuting if its something my employer is demanding of me anyhow. If they would prefer to not pay for commuting hours they could just have me go back to a remote schedule, but no longer am I giving these hours to my employer for free.
- ls15 4y ago
  What about the fuel/transportation cost?
hintymad 4y ago
Am I the only one happy to see this? I love suburb for its quietness and access to nature. And I hate that my coworkers prefer socializing in bars or even discussing technical questions in bars. It would be so much better if companies move out of SF. In that way, SF residents will be happy too and will stop hating techies for destroying their way of life.
irrational 4y ago
Currently the main issue is the cost of gas. Pay $5.49/gallon (and I don't live in California where it is even more expensive!) to drive in, or work from home where over the past 2+ years I have shown that I can do my job perfectly well. Hmmm, such a hard decision. Working from home I have better computer equipment, I don't have to waste time getting ready and driving in, half our team is remote so any meetings have to be over zoom anyway, our office doesn’t have assigned seating so I have to spend time wandering around looking for somewhere to work, etc. Such a no brainer.
dekhn 4y ago
For me, it's about "an office". In particular, a little room- with a door that closes, and a desk/chair, that has my name on it. Not an open office, not a breakaway room that you can squat in when things aren't crowded. If I had a little room, I wouldn't really mind. But right now the proposition is that I come into an open office that's too noisy/distracting to get real work done, then go to a conference room (often just 1 person in a 5 person room) to talk to people elsewhere. If I had an office with a door that closed, Ic ould take all my meetings and do all my head-down work in the office building.
99_00 4y ago
Isn't this what city planners want? People driving less. People living where they work. I'm not hearing the drive less, live where you work crowd celebrating. Am I just not looking in the right places?
foolinaround 4y ago
around paywall : https://archive.ph/wsVN7 https://archive.ph/wsVN7
foolinaround 4y ago
more than half of the folks who have offices in NYC that I spoke to - told me that they just feel uncomfortable travelling in the train after recent incidents. This is in addition to other issues discussed, but atleast 2 people who were planning to go back now have indefinitely postponed plans. It really is not that unsafe (sporadic incidents) but stacked along with other disadvantages, folks just dont want to go in.
Tiktaalik 4y ago
Turns out that we've been building cities wrong for the last 100 years. Whoopsie. It took a pandemic to get people to realize that the status quo of hopping in their car and sitting in traffic twice a day to get to work and back every day is a hugely frustrating waste of time. It doesn't have to be this way. We can build more housing near where people work. We can build bike lanes and public transit. It's entirely possible to have small and easy carless commutes to work. > urban areas where people live closer to work have a higher return-to-office rate No surprise here. I'll be coming back to work often I expect, but I live a 15 minute bike ride from my office. It'll be a nice change of pace for me to go to the office, and effectively an effortless shift. We need the political will to change and stop repeating the same failed mistakes of the last 100 years that mires us in car dependency. Stop protecting SFH areas from any and all new housing development. Stop building new highways. Start creating new housing everywhere. Start creating transportation alternatives.
- colin_mccabe 4y ago
  I do wish we spent more on bike paths and infrastructure. It's much cheaper than any of the other transit initiatives. However, it becomes very difficult to use them if you have to drop off kids in the morning. So it is never going to be an option for a lot of people. In general, working from home makes cities and public transit a lot less relevant. There isn't a strong reason for everyone to get on a train to the big city, if they can just sit at home and work. When you add crime, COVID-19, pollution, etc. into the mix the case for just staying home seems even better.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > I do wish we spent more on bike paths and infrastructure. It's much cheaper than any of the other transit initiatives. However, it becomes very difficult to use them if you have to drop off kids in the morning. Out of curiosity, could you put the kids in one of those child trailers, or on a cargo bicycle? > When you add crime, COVID-19, pollution, etc. into the mix the case for just staying home seems even better. This reads like (though I don't know the parent at all) the argument of someone who doesn't spend time in cities or who just doesn't value what cities offer. Crime rates are pretty low in cities (despite the media campaign trying to say how dangerous they are); pollution is mostly non-existent in most cities in economically advanced countries. Cities have services and experiences that are not available anywhere else. Where else can you find the food, music, arts, etc. that are in NY? The people? The public beauty such as the architecture?
wolverine876 4y ago
Lots of businesses don't have offices in cities. What is the data for them? That is, is it related to cities or to commutes in general. Many cities have public transit, which can reduce or simplify commutes.
nevermindiguess 4y ago
Does anyone else think that those wanting to work fully remotely, should just become contractors and offer their services to companies? Forgo also job security (in those countries that offer that) and all other benefits associated with being a permanent employee? To me the work arrangement they describe fits well with contracting work and little with “joining” a company. I feel that it is unfair to have both. Contractors’ work by definition is unsupervised and they use their own tools. Joining a company full time means being part of the team, meeting your colleagues in the office, sharing the journey and feeling part of it. It can also include remote work but not as an absolute right that the company must provide.

120 points by uptown 4y ago

https://archive.ph/wsVN7 https://archive.ph/wsVN7

The closest I can afford to live to my job is about an hour each way. Having my 8 hour day be a 10 hour day is unappealing.

Arrath 4y ago
I am with you there, I move a lot for work, and I try to stay within a half hour of my office/jobsite location. Any farther than that and the commuting time just adds up so quickly. An hour each way is another full work shift by the end of just one week. No thanks.

tetraca 4y ago

If you live more than 30 minutes away from the office, and it's self-evident that your physical presence isn't necessary to accomplish your day to day, I don't see why someone wouldn't refuse to come back excepting a few days here and there for a fun communal activity with your team. Especially if they have children.

denimnerd42 4y ago
people don't even want to come back for mandatory fun https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220517-the-death-of-mandatory-fun-in-the-office https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220517-the-death-of-m...
- Arrath 4y ago
  Good. The only mandatory fun I enjoy is when the boss picks up the bar tab with no other stipulations.
- tetraca 4y ago
  This is pretty foreign to me. I put that line in because my team has actually organically suggested "Let's go have lunch!" or play a game together. Nothing mandatory or forced by a manager, just something because we do enjoy getting together from time to time.
baq 4y ago
obviously they wouldn't refuse if they want to keep their job... return to office will be a very convenient way of laying off people without saying you're laying off people. remember an economic slowdown is underway for 2 quarters and will last for quite a bit more.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  From people I've talked to the job market in parts of the tech industry still seems to be red hot. Everyone is having trouble hiring.
  - baq 4y ago
    you can always say that. the problem is, this happens slowly, then suddenly all at once. if it takes 6-8 months to get a new job, it might be in the middle of total hiring freeze everywhere.
  - Spartan-S63 4y ago
    The tech sector still seems red hot, but the pivot from revenue growth at any cost to margin-focused growth is what's squeezing a lot of B2C companies. I think if you're a startup or late stage private company in B2B, you're probably doing alright if you were cautious and conservative in growing your costs. If you look at a lot of the recent layoffs, most are in tech companies doing B2C rather than B2B.
    - baq 4y ago
      B2C reducing expenses means B2B reducing expenses, just on a lag. duration of that lag is anybody's guess; mine is 3+-1 quarter depending on purchasing cycles and license renewals.
- MrPatan 4y ago
  Ah yes, one of those lay offs where you lose the people who can get a job at the drop of a hat and keep the ones that cannot. But of course, it would be initiated by somebody who wants to work from an office so, yeah, it all fits.

Johnny555 4y ago

That's one reason for sure, but even if my house was a 10 minute walk from the office, I'd still rather only go in for meetings. At home I have my own private office with a nice view. I have a nice set of speakers and can play any music I like. If I want to go for a walk, I'm in a quiet suburban neighborhood with hiking trails nearby. The kitchen is always stocked with snacks I like plus freshly prepared healthy lunches (prepared either by myself or my wife). My dog spends most of the day in the office with me. At the "new" office, no one has an assigned desk, so I have to take everything I need with me to my desk and pack it up at the end of the day. My company is distributed so I spend half the day on zoom meetings with people in other offices... and even with relatively few people in the office it's already hard to book a room for a meeting. There's enough background noise in the open office that I keep headphones on most of the time while I'm at my desk. We do get free lunches at the office which is a nice perk, but food is prepared off-site, so menus tend to be designed around food that stands up to this model of food that can be prepared hours ahead of time. My commute is less than 30 minutes (one-way) and is a pretty pleasant drive.... it takes an hour out of my day, but it's not the primary reason I don't want to go to the office.

Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
The magic of open space is the same for me... but without the "perks" (food is pretty horrible from the comment I have, and it's 1 hour of traffic jam to get there). All that to do Teams meeting at my desk, with the noise of my other colleagues also in call. That's, to put it simply, hell. And then you have to be under constant surveillance, "why do you leave so early?" (I've been there for 8 hours already, so, fuck you very much)" and the "why do you go to a private cell for your meeting? (to not annoy you)" The worst part? I sometimes do meeting with half of my colleague sitting right next to me in the same call. With my headset. Why?
- wollsmoth 4y ago
  There aren't any meeting rooms at your office? I think every place I've been, even the startups had some kind of conference call mic setup on the table, although I don't think every place had a cam. It's possible for the "room" to join the call and those who must join over video.

xt00 4y ago

With high cost buildings in NYC it would seem companies would be happy to sell their billion dollar building and make like 2 small satellite offices closer to where the people live -- one say in eastern New Jersey and one in Brooklyn when you need to meet with clients or have big meetings or for the people who need to have a workspace away from home and save a ton of money having a large percentage of the company work from home. If it ends up being a competitive advantage, then you can imagine a wave of it happening.

criticas 4y ago
One, most US companies don't own their buildings - they lease for the tax advantages. It comes down to capital expenditures vs operational expenditures. They're happy to reduce OpEx, but it's not like it's a billion dollar windfall. Two, satellite offices often aren't any more convenient for commuters, and often don't save as much money as you expect. You have to duplicate infrastructure in more locations. My son worked in Manhattan. His coworkers lived in Connecticut and Long Island; travelling to Brooklyn or New Jersey wasn't substantially easier for them. Even commuting between adjacent boroughs can be a pain if mass transit is oriented around getting people from the suburbs to the city core.
spread_love 4y ago
The cost difference in Brooklyn is quickly evaporating, especially anywhere a very large company might be looking for office space (downtown). The NYC subway system doesn't go to Jersey, it's often subway => commuter train, you're lucky if it doesn't involve a bus at some point.

dfxm12 4y ago

Employee opposition to commuting ... may require investing in housing, highways, public transportation and other infrastructure necessary to reduce commute times. Yet another benefit for investing in housing and public transportation. Based on my proximity to public transportation, too, I have many job options close by, so I'm not likely to get stuck in a bad spot.

ericmay 4y ago
Agreed, and look at how fragile we are when gas prices go up. If we just built medium-density, mixed use development with appealing architecture and sensible transit options (walk, bike, ride street cars or light rail) with the option of still owning a car (ideally around 1 per family) we'd be in such a better place.
- weberer 4y ago
  Sounds like you're describing towns or small cities. And now that people can work remotely, that may be more viable, since we're no longer forced to migrate to tech hubs for competitive salaries. Maybe cramming in to huge cities will become a thing of the past.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    In America, yea. I think the issues we face with other American cities, like Columbus, or Austin, or Nashville, etc. is that they're not built like small cities - in that they try to be a New York City, when they should instead model after Copenhagen or perhaps Amsterdam.
    - weberer 4y ago
      Even those are huge cities in my eyes. I was thinking something more along the lines of Portsmouth NH, or Ellicott City MD. Places small enough where you can walk from end to end in short enough time, but large enough to have plenty of shops and events. These places are exceptionally nice areas to live.

gaspard234 4y ago

My remote org had an onsite this past week. I forgot how much I hate 'socializing' and how useless water cooler talk is. They tried their best to make it enjoyable but I am so much happier in my home office with no background noise, no need to get dressed up, and being able to define my own schedule (I eat lunch at 3-4pm and bay tech orgs serve lunch at noon with all the smells disturbing me).

dreamcompiler 4y ago
I expect the vast majority of Return-To-The-Office managers are extroverts who have no understanding of the energy toll that socializing requires from the introverts who work for them.

switch007 4y ago

EU perspective: Gas is high and cars are expensive. Cities are full of drug addicts, homeless people, and empty shops. And crime. I don’t even like going downtown for leisure. House prices and rents have rocketed so people who moved the last 2 years to upsize have done so even further from the office. Not to mention presenteeism spreading viruses. Not to mention awful noisy offices designed by sadists. It’s far more complicated than just the “commute”.

99_00 4y ago
>Cities are full of drug addicts, homeless people, and empty shops. And crime. I don’t even like going downtown for leisure. Was it always like this or has this gotten worse because of the pandemic?
wolverine876 4y ago
> Cities are full of drug addicts, homeless people, and empty shops. And crime. I don’t even like going downtown for leisure. That doesn't at all describe the cities I've seen post-pandemic. Cities are full of restaurants, arts, people, and energy. I don't see many empty shops, though more than usual (I assume businesses went bankrupt at higher rate during the pandemic). It does describe the beliefs of people who listen to reactionary commentary but don't go to cities, or believe the talk shows rather than simply looking around them. There are people who are homeless or addicted to drugs, but they have no impact on me and never have. Try just talking to someone - they are just people, not monsters, no different than the other people I meet except in their clothes.
- switch007 4y ago
  > It does describe the beliefs of people who listen to reactionary commentary but don't go to cities, or believe the talk shows rather than simply looking around them. Anyone with a different experience or opinion is ignorant. Got ya. I’ve done plenty of travel recently to plenty of cities, in various countries.

swader999 4y ago

Child care, clothing, dry cleaning, car insurance & maintenance, parking, gym membership, eating out all add up. Oh yeah, gas too.

bobthepanda 4y ago
You need to pay for a gym membership to return to office?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tristor 4y ago
  For a lot of people, their companies don't pay for a gym membership or don't have an office gym, and if the gym is part of their lifestyle not working from home means needing a gym membership in the city near the office. The logic is pretty simple, if you are going to be stuck in rush hour commute home for 2 hours or you can walk to a city gym and work out for an hour, then jump into your commute and be home in an hour and 45 minutes, so it costs you 45 minutes of total time for 1 hour of gym time + you arrive home to take a shower and get ready for the evening vs trying to work out after the drain of a commute. Meanwhile if you work from home, you can afford the space to have a home gym that you can use whenever you have time and don't need the drain of the commute at all, because you live farther from the city.
  - pedrosorio 4y ago
    > commute home for 2 hours That sounds like a nightmare. > work out for an hour, then jump into your commute and be home in an hour and 45 minutes Still terrible. > 1 hour of gym time + you arrive home to take a shower 1h45m of sweaty commute after 1h of gym? I don't think so.
  - swader999 4y ago
    Very well said. Don't even need a home gym at home, you can do bodyweight workouts, go for a run etc. Good luck doing that in many offices, rare to find even showers there.

Biologist123 4y ago

> Empty offices in city centers may be replaced by apartment buildings. “The end result is more balanced communities,” Mr. Florida said. “But—and it is a big but—the adjustment will be painful.” The institutional owners of property may end up taking a haircut. This ultimately means pension funds in large part. Alongside deglobalisation, renewables (with stranded assets) and creeping automation, I wonder what options people and governments have to protect their wealth amidst creative destruction.

jdhn 4y ago
>The institutional owners of property may end up taking a haircut. This is exactly why Mayor Adams wants people to come back to the office in NYC. NYC derives a big chunk of change from taxing corporate offices, and if the value goes down then NYC loses out on a lot of money.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  And taxing the commuters, and the sandwich shops those commuters patronize, etc, etc.

dougmwne 4y ago

This is a point that seems to be conveniently left out by most return to office advocates. My coworkers in Boston, DC and SF often had hellish commutes, up to 2 hours each way. That is a serious chunk of the waking hours of the day to spend on the road, not to mention the huge cost and environmental impact of the fuel, the emissions, and the additional roads that needed to be built to support these commutes. The status quo in major American cities was well beyond the point of insanity and the frog had truly been boiled over time. For every person that took a jaunty walk down the block, or a breezy bike ride to work, there were many others that had to make a major sacrifice to come in each day. We can't go back to the way things were, it just didn't make any sense. I enjoyed my time in the office, but those days are behind me. I have more money in my pocket, more time, and more quality of life. I get to be near my family all year instead of in a random city where I am rootless. I'm not going back.

99_00 4y ago
>This is a point that seems to be conveniently left out by most return to office advocates. In my experience these tend to be executives who can afford to live on expensive real estate close to the city center. And therefore, have a very short commute. That's how cities where I live and people who I talk to live are laid out anyways. Downtown core is most expensive, and then the further out you go the cheaper it gets and the more painful the commute to the downtown core is.
wolverine876 4y ago
> hellish commutes The exaggerated adjective is the argument. Your co-workers could choose to live elsewhere, so I wonder if the commute was so bad from their perspective. Those cities in particular have good public transit, which lets you live further away and commute conveniently. Many millions of people live in those cities, and choose to - the real estate prices reflect the demand. You don't have to want that, but I don't see how we can tell everyone else what is good and bad for them.
lamontcg 4y ago
> not to mention the huge cost and environmental impact of the fuel, the emissions, and the additional roads that needed to be built to support these commutes. Plus a decent chunk of the 43,000 road deaths a third of all spinal injuries and a million days spent in the hospital every year from collisions.

starik36 4y ago

All these people, including me, working from home and yet there is still massive traffic everywhere.

angarg12 4y ago

All of my career I prioritized short commutes, which led to living in tiny apartments (as small as 25 sqmt) within a short commute from work. When Covid hit we had just moved to a new 1 bed flat and were paying our highest rent yet, but hey, 15 minutes commute! When it became evident we were in for the long haul we started looking to move again. We ended up moving to a 3 bed house with garden in a tiny village close to our family paying much less rent, but across the country from the office. I can't understate the massive increase in quality of life this brought us. Being closer to the family I don't feel the need to socialize with colleagues at work, and I didn't need to meet anyone in office for about 2 years.

colechristensen 4y ago
Everyone on HN who loves urban density should read things like this. Quality of life cooped up in a dense urban setting, especially with a family, is awful. There's so much space in the world, we don't need to pack ourselves in tiny urban centers near "tech hubs" at all.
- kibwen 4y ago
  I grew up with one parent in the burbs and the other in the boonies, and today I live in a city and I'll never go back to anywhere that isn't eminently walkable. I don't value space, I value proximity to lots of people. I'm happy that WFH allows people who value the opposite to vacate the cities that make them miserable in order to free up room for people who crave density.
  - criddell 4y ago
    For me, what I want has changed a lot over my life. In my 20's I craved density. I loved the energy and options of cities. 30 years later, I'm the opposite. I live in the suburbs in a house big enough to give me a home gym, workshop, office, etc... but if I had a self-driving car and could get great internet, I'd move way out of the city. I want a little more space and a lot less noise.
    - 4y ago

rndmize 4y ago

No shit. As far as the Bay goes, it feels like decisions about office placement are made with things like management or prestige in mind, rather than the average worker. For all the growth in the East Bay and Tri-Valley area, it seems like most office buildings continue to be built on the peninsula. Hayward is one of the most central locations in the bay and is largely used for... logistics and distribution? I miss the office, but there's no way I'd give my current remote lifestyle for the way things were before (average 1.5 hours of commute time per day). Mind you, this is _after_ optimizing my home buying process to shorten my commute as much as possible. I have a neighbor that bought a Tesla mainly for the tag that lets you use it in carpool lanes. Everyone has better things to do than sit in cars (or other transport) for hours a day, and its a sad thing that more effort hasn't been expended to improve this before now.

divbzero 4y ago
> Hayward is one of the most central locations in the bay and is largely used for... logistics and distribution? That actually makes perfect sense for logistics and distribution… but yes, it would make sense for office commutes as well.
Johnny555 4y ago
>it feels like decisions about office placement are made with things like management or prestige in mind Our company made that management focus explicit - our main office is on the Peninsula and before COVID hit we opened an east bay (Pleasanton) office, which happened to be close to the homes of the CEO, CFO and a couple other C-level execs. Employees that lived in the East bay thought "Great! We can go to that office and avoid that long cross-bay commute", but no, "Finance and Marketing are moving to the East Bay Office along with senior leadership, it is not available for drop-in by other employees". Which didn't please a lot of people that had organized their life around the Peninsula commute and now have to go to the East Bay

ansible 4y ago

In one of the meetings this week, we were talking about changing how a program works, to allow the user better access to the diagnostics information in the event of a hardware failure. When the program was first designed, the idea was that the program would exit, and the system would either take corrective action or restart. Easy, simple. Now, if the program continues to run in the event of hardware failures, we need to re-examine the assumptions we made when writing it in the first place. Especially with regards to different operating modes. I tried to emphasize this repeatedly during the meeting. It is the same thing with our economy and work in general. In the past, there was expensive infrastructure needed to carry out the company's functions. Even if we're not talking about industrial equipment, the typical office worker would still need a typewriter, access to lots of file cabinets, other office equipment, telephones, and so on. Almost none of that could easily be replicated if the worker wanted to work from home. And so everyone got used to the idea of going into the office or factory on work days. That became the norm, and until recently it wasn't widely questioned. But nowadays, you basically just need power and Internet, which is widely available to most workers at home anyway. I'd have preferred to live in a world without pandemics, but if having a pandemic causes more people to question the assumption you have to commute to work, that is a side benefit.

lastofthemojito 4y ago
> But nowadays, you basically just need power and Internet, which is widely available to most workers at home anyway. The power and Internet part is easy - a quiet room can be a challenge for some though. At one point in the pandemic, a friend tried coming over and working in my basement because her family was so distracting at home (2 parents + 3 kids in a 3-bedroom house with virtual work and school and a baby crying, etc). I'm told homebuyers are emphasizing having enough space for home offices these days, but that's easier to attain for some than others, especially with the run-up in housing prices over the past couple of years. So yeah, for some people it's easy ... for others, not so much.
wolverine876 4y ago
Lots of people do not have home computers beyond their phones. When the pandemic began, one urban school district discovered that half their students didn't have a computer (desktop or laptop) at home.

ryukafalz 4y ago

I’ve started commuting back to the office more regularly because I honestly need the exercise! My commute pre-pandemic was about a half hour walk each way. I moved just as the pandemic was starting, and now it’s about a 40 minute walk, or 20-25 minutes by bike or transit. I wouldn’t want to give up the ability to work from home, but I did really miss the physical activity.

Seriomino 4y ago

alaricus 4y ago

Commuting does not make any sense for most white-collar jobs. Let people work from wherever they are, everyone will be happier for it.

Bud 4y ago

Um, I'd say it's more the covid than the commute.

PaywallBuster 4y ago

best part of asia is that there's huge cities with nice condos everywhere you can always find a nice place to stay near work or your favorite spots in a very short time and for reasonable prices in western cities (tech capitals) you spend months looking for the "least worse" overly expensive option and you're stuck there, too often you're living one city away and spend 1h each way on commuting

Steltek 4y ago

As the exception that proves the rule, I missed my commute terribly and its absence was having a negative impact on me. However, I have a 30 minute bicycle commute, which I think changes everything. The daily exercise, change of scenery, and fresh air made all the difference in the world. I'm probably more productive for my employer at home but I feel way better as a human being when I commute in. When WFH, there were days where I wouldn't even leave the house. I had no idea what the weather was outside. Now I know what you're thinking but no, I couldn't maintain a habit of getting out of the house to do exercise for exercise's sake. The bike commute always felt different because it wasn't primarily about exercise and if you're committed to going to the office, you can't skip it no matter how much you want to. Now that all said, I don't believe any level of car commuting is healthy. Kill that with fire and WFH!

colechristensen 4y ago
>Now that all said, I don't believe any level of car commuting is healthy. Kill that with fire and WFH! I like driving, lots of people do. A nice 20 minute drive is a good commute. Bumper to bumper traffic for more than 40 is hell.
Johnny555 4y ago
I had a 30 - 40 minute bike commute pre-COVID (almost all of it was on off road trails, it was great), and still preferred WFH (which was only allowed one day a week). I moved and no longer have the bike option (taking bike friendly roads would lead to a 90+ minute bike commute), but even an easy bike commute would not make me want to return to the office. I've replaced the bike commute with an indoor spinning bike.
asdff 4y ago
I hated my old commute but I still liked the idea of a commute. So now I walk around my neighborhood for 15 mins or so with a mug of coffee and that's my commute. Maybe for you, you can try and simulate a bike commute by riding a fixed route around your neighborhood every morning.
- Steltek 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

asdff 4y ago

The workplace is going to a hybrid schedule soon which I am not too pleased about, but I'm going to be considering my commute as working time versus personal time this go around. I'll leave for work at 9am and aim to be home from work by 5pm. This seems more logical than having me front the free time for commuting if its something my employer is demanding of me anyhow. If they would prefer to not pay for commuting hours they could just have me go back to a remote schedule, but no longer am I giving these hours to my employer for free.

ls15 4y ago
What about the fuel/transportation cost?

hintymad 4y ago

Am I the only one happy to see this? I love suburb for its quietness and access to nature. And I hate that my coworkers prefer socializing in bars or even discussing technical questions in bars. It would be so much better if companies move out of SF. In that way, SF residents will be happy too and will stop hating techies for destroying their way of life.

irrational 4y ago

Currently the main issue is the cost of gas. Pay $5.49/gallon (and I don't live in California where it is even more expensive!) to drive in, or work from home where over the past 2+ years I have shown that I can do my job perfectly well. Hmmm, such a hard decision. Working from home I have better computer equipment, I don't have to waste time getting ready and driving in, half our team is remote so any meetings have to be over zoom anyway, our office doesn’t have assigned seating so I have to spend time wandering around looking for somewhere to work, etc. Such a no brainer.

dekhn 4y ago

For me, it's about "an office". In particular, a little room- with a door that closes, and a desk/chair, that has my name on it. Not an open office, not a breakaway room that you can squat in when things aren't crowded. If I had a little room, I wouldn't really mind. But right now the proposition is that I come into an open office that's too noisy/distracting to get real work done, then go to a conference room (often just 1 person in a 5 person room) to talk to people elsewhere. If I had an office with a door that closed, Ic ould take all my meetings and do all my head-down work in the office building.

99_00 4y ago

Isn't this what city planners want? People driving less. People living where they work. I'm not hearing the drive less, live where you work crowd celebrating. Am I just not looking in the right places?

foolinaround 4y ago

around paywall : https://archive.ph/wsVN7 https://archive.ph/wsVN7

foolinaround 4y ago

more than half of the folks who have offices in NYC that I spoke to - told me that they just feel uncomfortable travelling in the train after recent incidents. This is in addition to other issues discussed, but atleast 2 people who were planning to go back now have indefinitely postponed plans. It really is not that unsafe (sporadic incidents) but stacked along with other disadvantages, folks just dont want to go in.

Tiktaalik 4y ago

Turns out that we've been building cities wrong for the last 100 years. Whoopsie. It took a pandemic to get people to realize that the status quo of hopping in their car and sitting in traffic twice a day to get to work and back every day is a hugely frustrating waste of time. It doesn't have to be this way. We can build more housing near where people work. We can build bike lanes and public transit. It's entirely possible to have small and easy carless commutes to work. > urban areas where people live closer to work have a higher return-to-office rate No surprise here. I'll be coming back to work often I expect, but I live a 15 minute bike ride from my office. It'll be a nice change of pace for me to go to the office, and effectively an effortless shift. We need the political will to change and stop repeating the same failed mistakes of the last 100 years that mires us in car dependency. Stop protecting SFH areas from any and all new housing development. Stop building new highways. Start creating new housing everywhere. Start creating transportation alternatives.

colin_mccabe 4y ago
I do wish we spent more on bike paths and infrastructure. It's much cheaper than any of the other transit initiatives. However, it becomes very difficult to use them if you have to drop off kids in the morning. So it is never going to be an option for a lot of people. In general, working from home makes cities and public transit a lot less relevant. There isn't a strong reason for everyone to get on a train to the big city, if they can just sit at home and work. When you add crime, COVID-19, pollution, etc. into the mix the case for just staying home seems even better.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > I do wish we spent more on bike paths and infrastructure. It's much cheaper than any of the other transit initiatives. However, it becomes very difficult to use them if you have to drop off kids in the morning. Out of curiosity, could you put the kids in one of those child trailers, or on a cargo bicycle? > When you add crime, COVID-19, pollution, etc. into the mix the case for just staying home seems even better. This reads like (though I don't know the parent at all) the argument of someone who doesn't spend time in cities or who just doesn't value what cities offer. Crime rates are pretty low in cities (despite the media campaign trying to say how dangerous they are); pollution is mostly non-existent in most cities in economically advanced countries. Cities have services and experiences that are not available anywhere else. Where else can you find the food, music, arts, etc. that are in NY? The people? The public beauty such as the architecture?

wolverine876 4y ago

Lots of businesses don't have offices in cities. What is the data for them? That is, is it related to cities or to commutes in general. Many cities have public transit, which can reduce or simplify commutes.

nevermindiguess 4y ago

Does anyone else think that those wanting to work fully remotely, should just become contractors and offer their services to companies? Forgo also job security (in those countries that offer that) and all other benefits associated with being a permanent employee? To me the work arrangement they describe fits well with contracting work and little with “joining” a company. I feel that it is unfair to have both. Contractors’ work by definition is unsupervised and they use their own tools. Joining a company full time means being part of the team, meeting your colleagues in the office, sharing the journey and feeling part of it. It can also include remote work but not as an absolute right that the company must provide.