6 ms·

I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to

I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both being heated/cooled for 24 hours. The employee wastes 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Similarly the employer wastes time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms in building B, etc.,etc., in addition to paying the likely enormously expensive lease itself. The impacts on the environment, the number of hours of human life wasted in commute, the pointless buildings and associated costs to employers as well as the public infrastructure to support it (roads, trains, busses, etc.) are all incredibly wasteful. Surely, all of this could only be justified if physical presence had a dramatic impact on productivity. Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes.

marcosdumay 4y ago
> Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes. It very clearly improves the outcome of some work, and degrades the outcome of other work, and doesn't impact much some other kinds of work. It's only unclear for the people that insist on putting every work on the same bracket.
999900000999 4y ago
The point is to keep local economies alive. It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. However, offices are straight up abelist , if you have mobility issues it's absurdly hard to commute. Commuting isn't really needed here, if I was in a wheelchair I'd take this to court. Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector would collapse. Most modern cities would collapse as well. So many industries are based around commuting, or supporting office workers. Hell, normalized remote work might destroy our entire economy.
- hexis 4y ago
  I’m happy to go to a bagel shop in my neighborhood.
  - glouwbug 4y ago
    I just get my own bagels from the grocery store. Society relying on bagel up-sellers is largely a symptom of office life
    - distances 4y ago
      My sandwich café sells sandwiches with such a variety of fillings that me trying to replicate that would lead to a lot of wasted food. Everything from asparagus, pickled carrots and smoked cheese to avocado, broccoli and burrata. Plus, there is something about just going to a breakfast where you can just people-watch the passersby without food preparation or cleanup.
- 88913527 4y ago
  Why can't I have lunch delivered to my house or visit the bagel shop from my house?
  - shlurpy 4y ago
    This is location specific, but one reason is because American cities were irreparably ruined by suburbanization.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  - jen20 4y ago
    Mobility issues are not for you to agree with or not. And yes, work the hours you want to work. I typically don’t start until 11 or noon, and thanks to time zones and meetings tend to work until 11pm or so. It works out great since 11 is typically when the good shows start here. Do try to be less disagreeable.
shahbaby 4y ago
Yep, it's jarring to see governments talk about carbon emissions and then ignore the potential emission savings by WFH.
- voisin 4y ago
  Heating/cooling 100 homes vs 1 office favours the office, but the commute tips it in favour of WFH. So why not fix the commute? Let people live/work/play in dense urban environments rather than commute individually from live-zone to work-zone.
mahathu 4y ago
i like hanging out and talking to my coworkers, it's fun:)
- Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
  Nowadays people will try and convince you you're weird and wrong if you say you enjoy seeing other people and not working in silence at home. I like the office environment. The only thing I don't like is the commute. This is why I think the future is local shared working spaces within towns so that they're in walking distance. I'd much rather have a 15 minute walk to work than a 30 minute drive.
  - heurisko 4y ago
    I agree regarding shared working spaces. I had a look at a WeWork and it seemed like a good choice for a remote job. The best I find it hybrid: a mixture of quiet home time and office meetings to talk with people. I've never had a horrendous commute, however.
- jmspring 4y ago
  I find it ok to see and visit coworkers now and then, but work is not meant to replace one's social life. Further, some years back, I attended a couple different "Work at a Startup" and related events. Companies pushing "we are a family", "we hang out after work" typically means they have an unreasonable expectation of how much time they expect you to be around - despite productivity. Do I have colleagues (current or former) that are friends? Yes. Do/did I feel a need to be in the office to spend time with them - no. Work is a contract between myself and my employer to produce based on a certain set of expectations. Those expectations shall not include (nor exclude) social interactions outside those times.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    > I find it ok to see and visit coworkers now and then, but work is not meant to replace one's social life. Work has been a critical component of social life for many generations now. It is extremely strange to offhandedly dismiss its role like that. > Do I have colleagues (current or former) that are friends? Yes. Do/did I feel a need to be in the office to spend time with them - no. I started my previous job in mid 2019. I made multiple friends at the office in 8 months before the lockdowns started that I still keep in touch with. After we went full remote, I worked there for an extra year. During that time, my team have doubled in size. Not only I did not make friends with any of the new colleagues, I don’t even remember their names now. I finally quit in 2021, because I absolutely loathed full time WFH. I am now commuting to the office every day, with rather arduous 50-60 minutes one way commute, and I am extremely happy, making friends again and feeling very motivated.
aylmao 4y ago
I agree, but I don't think the problem is so much "the office", but rather how poorly cities are designed in the USA; - The lack of mixed use zoning makes it just that much more likely that one live so far from their workplace. The choice is too often "a house far away from everything" or "a high-rise close to the noise, smells, and un-pretty sights of town" - There's so little space to build offices cities end up having super-dense downtowns, with very tall, expensive and crowded buildings. This is great for office real-estate, but terrible for everyone else because it means traffic. Since cities tend to have only one mega-downtown, cause zoning in the USA is pretty adamant in grouping everything together, things get even worse, because everyone is moving in the same direction at the same time. - This hyper-dense core, but hyper-sparse suburb outskirts in cities make it very hard to bike to work; many people in the USA wouldn't even consider it an option. It's also hard to build efficient public transit. The routes that make sense are radial, so they might be good to get to work, but inefficient for leisure. Things are so far apart in the suburbs one it's hard to put stations close to everyone where they live. The fact so many people prefer to not leave their home for work should be considered a moderate victory for remote communication technology, but an abysmal failure in urban design.
- jen20 4y ago
  “The office” being near “the house” doesn’t change each of them being unused for much of the day.
- quantumwannabe 4y ago
  Most American cities have their jobs distributed throughout the city, and don’t have mega skyscrapers. The more sprawling the city, the more evenly distributed the jobs are. Mixed use zoning has no effect on commute times because it doesn’t matter that an office is near your home, what matters is that your office is near your home. Most people don’t move every time they change jobs, so even if someone originally lived near work they may not in the future, and couples may have jobs in different locations. The US and Europe have nearly identical average commute times [1][2]. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20201021-2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d... [2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/acs/acs-47.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/acs/acs-47....
greggman3 4y ago
I have a friend what has a company with ~20 employees. During COVID they all went WFH. After 12 months or so they announced they'd stay WFH forever and closed the office. 9 months later the president and office manager got new office. They realized they were more productive together than separated, more productive at a dedicated work space than at home with all the distractions, family, kids. They were also happier to be together, to spend time with their "work friends", etc... They have not asked the employees to come back to the office but several are of their own accord, finding their life better than being at home all the time alone or with just the people in their houses, rather than having a larger extended set of people to hang out with.
- travisgriggs 4y ago
  This mirrors my work experience over the years somewhat. I had a pretty unique experience as a college student when I was permitted to take one of the company’s HP 720 workstations with me two states away and work remotely. I used dial up and kermit to transfer files. It was very exciting at first. I did engineering up at campus, worked at home, consuming all of tiny toons and animaniacs while I worked on nuclear fuel design software. I missed the team though. I missed having someone to bounce ideas off of spontaneously. And to be in the know of what was going on. I was glad to “go to work” when I got done with school. In my next job, it started out as a tight team of software in a larger company. It grew and then we bought our biggest competitor (we called it an acquisition; they called it a merger). Over time what was left of that staff shrunk and became remote. So we had a core group that was collocated, and then a group of remotes. The power dynamics were odd and competitive. The remotes wanted to be kept in the loop. The locals resented the extra process and protocol that had to be observed to keep the remotes in the loop. The locals also resented that the remotes got to just code, and didn’t have to deal with the interruptions that come with product managers that stop by with questions. I was so excited when my next job was all remote, everyone. My kids were aged 3-11, and had a lot of school activities I wanted to support. We were in the “trench years” of four kids. At first, I loved the flexibility. It was great. After six years, I hated it (I’m not sure how much of this was remote vs feeling betrayed that the company was dysfunctional). I hated that I felt like I worked half time all the time. I could step out of work any little minute. But every little minute, work was only an “open up the laptop in the office” away. It was like being an on call dad and an on call worker simultaneously 100% of the time. And it seemed like a large portion of the team was basically freeloading on the gravy train. There were a core of us that could not help neatly figure out how 40ish hours at home work amounted to so little produced results. When I got a job at a local company, I was so thrilled to go back in to work and work as part of a cohort. I have a lot of flexibility/autonomy here, so some days I stay at home and work because I’m in the groove and want to focus. But more times than not, I find I’m drawn back into the office/lab to work. There’s a lot gadgets I work with that it just wouldn’t make sense to duplicate for just me and warehouse at home. Our company has seen an uptick in can’t-do-without-em upper level staff who are now working remote. I find I often resent them.
synu 4y ago
I’ve heard stories of people getting up, driving to the office, turning on their computers and sitting in zoom meetings all day from their desk. Who thinks this is a good idea?
- rinze 4y ago
  Real estate investors.
ricardobayes 4y ago
Might be a short-sighted comment but perhaps we could ease the housing issues by converting the offices into long-term accomodation

marcosdumay 4y ago

> Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes. It very clearly improves the outcome of some work, and degrades the outcome of other work, and doesn't impact much some other kinds of work. It's only unclear for the people that insist on putting every work on the same bracket.

999900000999 4y ago

The point is to keep local economies alive. It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. However, offices are straight up abelist , if you have mobility issues it's absurdly hard to commute. Commuting isn't really needed here, if I was in a wheelchair I'd take this to court. Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector would collapse. Most modern cities would collapse as well. So many industries are based around commuting, or supporting office workers. Hell, normalized remote work might destroy our entire economy.

hexis 4y ago
I’m happy to go to a bagel shop in my neighborhood.
- glouwbug 4y ago
  I just get my own bagels from the grocery store. Society relying on bagel up-sellers is largely a symptom of office life
  - distances 4y ago
    My sandwich café sells sandwiches with such a variety of fillings that me trying to replicate that would lead to a lot of wasted food. Everything from asparagus, pickled carrots and smoked cheese to avocado, broccoli and burrata. Plus, there is something about just going to a breakfast where you can just people-watch the passersby without food preparation or cleanup.
88913527 4y ago
Why can't I have lunch delivered to my house or visit the bagel shop from my house?
- shlurpy 4y ago
  This is location specific, but one reason is because American cities were irreparably ruined by suburbanization.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
- jen20 4y ago
  Mobility issues are not for you to agree with or not. And yes, work the hours you want to work. I typically don’t start until 11 or noon, and thanks to time zones and meetings tend to work until 11pm or so. It works out great since 11 is typically when the good shows start here. Do try to be less disagreeable.

shahbaby 4y ago

Yep, it's jarring to see governments talk about carbon emissions and then ignore the potential emission savings by WFH.

voisin 4y ago
Heating/cooling 100 homes vs 1 office favours the office, but the commute tips it in favour of WFH. So why not fix the commute? Let people live/work/play in dense urban environments rather than commute individually from live-zone to work-zone.

mahathu 4y ago

i like hanging out and talking to my coworkers, it's fun:)

Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
Nowadays people will try and convince you you're weird and wrong if you say you enjoy seeing other people and not working in silence at home. I like the office environment. The only thing I don't like is the commute. This is why I think the future is local shared working spaces within towns so that they're in walking distance. I'd much rather have a 15 minute walk to work than a 30 minute drive.
- heurisko 4y ago
  I agree regarding shared working spaces. I had a look at a WeWork and it seemed like a good choice for a remote job. The best I find it hybrid: a mixture of quiet home time and office meetings to talk with people. I've never had a horrendous commute, however.
jmspring 4y ago
I find it ok to see and visit coworkers now and then, but work is not meant to replace one's social life. Further, some years back, I attended a couple different "Work at a Startup" and related events. Companies pushing "we are a family", "we hang out after work" typically means they have an unreasonable expectation of how much time they expect you to be around - despite productivity. Do I have colleagues (current or former) that are friends? Yes. Do/did I feel a need to be in the office to spend time with them - no. Work is a contract between myself and my employer to produce based on a certain set of expectations. Those expectations shall not include (nor exclude) social interactions outside those times.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  > I find it ok to see and visit coworkers now and then, but work is not meant to replace one's social life. Work has been a critical component of social life for many generations now. It is extremely strange to offhandedly dismiss its role like that. > Do I have colleagues (current or former) that are friends? Yes. Do/did I feel a need to be in the office to spend time with them - no. I started my previous job in mid 2019. I made multiple friends at the office in 8 months before the lockdowns started that I still keep in touch with. After we went full remote, I worked there for an extra year. During that time, my team have doubled in size. Not only I did not make friends with any of the new colleagues, I don’t even remember their names now. I finally quit in 2021, because I absolutely loathed full time WFH. I am now commuting to the office every day, with rather arduous 50-60 minutes one way commute, and I am extremely happy, making friends again and feeling very motivated.

aylmao 4y ago

I agree, but I don't think the problem is so much "the office", but rather how poorly cities are designed in the USA; - The lack of mixed use zoning makes it just that much more likely that one live so far from their workplace. The choice is too often "a house far away from everything" or "a high-rise close to the noise, smells, and un-pretty sights of town" - There's so little space to build offices cities end up having super-dense downtowns, with very tall, expensive and crowded buildings. This is great for office real-estate, but terrible for everyone else because it means traffic. Since cities tend to have only one mega-downtown, cause zoning in the USA is pretty adamant in grouping everything together, things get even worse, because everyone is moving in the same direction at the same time. - This hyper-dense core, but hyper-sparse suburb outskirts in cities make it very hard to bike to work; many people in the USA wouldn't even consider it an option. It's also hard to build efficient public transit. The routes that make sense are radial, so they might be good to get to work, but inefficient for leisure. Things are so far apart in the suburbs one it's hard to put stations close to everyone where they live. The fact so many people prefer to not leave their home for work should be considered a moderate victory for remote communication technology, but an abysmal failure in urban design.

jen20 4y ago
“The office” being near “the house” doesn’t change each of them being unused for much of the day.
quantumwannabe 4y ago
Most American cities have their jobs distributed throughout the city, and don’t have mega skyscrapers. The more sprawling the city, the more evenly distributed the jobs are. Mixed use zoning has no effect on commute times because it doesn’t matter that an office is near your home, what matters is that your office is near your home. Most people don’t move every time they change jobs, so even if someone originally lived near work they may not in the future, and couples may have jobs in different locations. The US and Europe have nearly identical average commute times [1][2]. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20201021-2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d... [2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/acs/acs-47.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/acs/acs-47....

greggman3 4y ago

I have a friend what has a company with ~20 employees. During COVID they all went WFH. After 12 months or so they announced they'd stay WFH forever and closed the office. 9 months later the president and office manager got new office. They realized they were more productive together than separated, more productive at a dedicated work space than at home with all the distractions, family, kids. They were also happier to be together, to spend time with their "work friends", etc... They have not asked the employees to come back to the office but several are of their own accord, finding their life better than being at home all the time alone or with just the people in their houses, rather than having a larger extended set of people to hang out with.

travisgriggs 4y ago
This mirrors my work experience over the years somewhat. I had a pretty unique experience as a college student when I was permitted to take one of the company’s HP 720 workstations with me two states away and work remotely. I used dial up and kermit to transfer files. It was very exciting at first. I did engineering up at campus, worked at home, consuming all of tiny toons and animaniacs while I worked on nuclear fuel design software. I missed the team though. I missed having someone to bounce ideas off of spontaneously. And to be in the know of what was going on. I was glad to “go to work” when I got done with school. In my next job, it started out as a tight team of software in a larger company. It grew and then we bought our biggest competitor (we called it an acquisition; they called it a merger). Over time what was left of that staff shrunk and became remote. So we had a core group that was collocated, and then a group of remotes. The power dynamics were odd and competitive. The remotes wanted to be kept in the loop. The locals resented the extra process and protocol that had to be observed to keep the remotes in the loop. The locals also resented that the remotes got to just code, and didn’t have to deal with the interruptions that come with product managers that stop by with questions. I was so excited when my next job was all remote, everyone. My kids were aged 3-11, and had a lot of school activities I wanted to support. We were in the “trench years” of four kids. At first, I loved the flexibility. It was great. After six years, I hated it (I’m not sure how much of this was remote vs feeling betrayed that the company was dysfunctional). I hated that I felt like I worked half time all the time. I could step out of work any little minute. But every little minute, work was only an “open up the laptop in the office” away. It was like being an on call dad and an on call worker simultaneously 100% of the time. And it seemed like a large portion of the team was basically freeloading on the gravy train. There were a core of us that could not help neatly figure out how 40ish hours at home work amounted to so little produced results. When I got a job at a local company, I was so thrilled to go back in to work and work as part of a cohort. I have a lot of flexibility/autonomy here, so some days I stay at home and work because I’m in the groove and want to focus. But more times than not, I find I’m drawn back into the office/lab to work. There’s a lot gadgets I work with that it just wouldn’t make sense to duplicate for just me and warehouse at home. Our company has seen an uptick in can’t-do-without-em upper level staff who are now working remote. I find I often resent them.

synu 4y ago

I’ve heard stories of people getting up, driving to the office, turning on their computers and sitting in zoom meetings all day from their desk. Who thinks this is a good idea?

rinze 4y ago
Real estate investors.

ricardobayes 4y ago

Might be a short-sighted comment but perhaps we could ease the housing issues by converting the offices into long-term accomodation