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What Tech Workers Don't Understand They've Lost by WFH

• sharemywin 4y ago
  Isn't there an environmental impact to a commute?
• jenniferhl3 4y ago
  People like this and Malcolm Gladwell need to stop putting out this kind of perspective. The WFH revolution is putting more power in the hands of employees vs employers. We have more time and flexibility now to work how we like. Employers and big companies are self-interested and aim to maximally extract profit from you the employee and you the consumer. We should not feel guilty about the luxuries that WFH affords us at the expense of our employers.
• arpyzo 4y ago
  Like many things in life YMMV. For me, the time saved on commuting has directly translated into more time with my son. This far outweighs the downsides discussed in the article.
• al2o3cr 4y ago
  One of the advantages of office work is that being surrounded by colleagues pushes us to get our work done during office time. Presumably the author's job mostly involves licking boots, because that's the only way this sentence makes any goddamn sense.
  • NesquikMike 4y ago
    Hi, I'm the author. I'm a Data Scientist and I spend most of my time doing data analysis in Jupyter Notebooks or coding up ML algorithms. For me I find it helpful being in an office as at home by myself it's way too easy to get sucked into the rabbit hole of YouTube or the Productivity Porn on Hacker News. For me it helps feeling like I'm part of a team and I don't want to let my team down.
    • toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Isn’t it broad strokes to paint office work as “better” when a lack of discipline is the problem and not where the work is performed (this is only an observation, please don’t take it as anything other than constructive criticism)? Accountability and the ability to push through the emotions around procrastination are not necessarily location dependent. I’m sure, for some cohorts, they must be in the office to deliver. For many others, this is simply not the case.
      • droopyEyelids 4y ago
        It's hard to tell, but from what I've seen the people who have trouble setting boundaries when working from home are the same people who would consistently put in extra hours in the office, answer email at 11pm, etc. I feel really irritated when I see them blaming a flexible work environment for the same problem they had before, and asking for the entire workforce to be subject to restrictive conditions so they can have an ineffective incentive to stand up for themselves.
        • toomuchtodo 4y ago
          Boundaries can be challenging because the person who has the least to lose wins. If you have imposter syndrome, need the job financially, etc you’re less likely to enforce healthy boundaries to prevent termination. With that said, there are definitely folks who embrace office theater that you mention in your first paragraph. It takes some work to suss out if the toxicity is the org or the person.
    • nullfish 4y ago
      Sounds like you have poor self-control. I've been working from home for 6-years and never once had this problem. There are many ways to form productive habits at home; for example, remote conference rooms that people can jump in and out of. Slack even has "huddles" now which are very useful for remote work. Letting your team down has nothing to do with being a seat-warmer in the office.
      • 4y ago
  • Double_a_92 4y ago
    They probably mean that you will ruin your day and your evening by procrastinating at home. The day isn't relaxing even if you slack, and the evening is stressing because you eventually still need do to some work. On the other hand that could easily be solved by all being in a long group call / chat. But if your coworkers only know email and telephone, then good luck.
    • missingdays 4y ago
      People have more than 2 states, not only "working" or "procrastinating".
      • Double_a_92 4y ago
        Yes, but procrastinating in the time slots that you had originally planned for work is still bad for everyone involved. It's a different thing if you e.g. plan 1 hour in the middle of the day to go for a walk.
  • tablespoon 4y ago
    > One of the advantages of office work is that being surrounded by colleagues pushes us to get our work done during office time > Presumably the author's job mostly involves licking boots, because that's the only way this sentence makes any goddamn sense. I read that as having more discipline to guard your personal time and prevent work from spilling over into it. One of my biggest observations from WFH is it's A LOT easier to work overtime without even realizing it. At home it's SOOO much easier to just stay on a little longer to "finish up," plus you don't have as many cues in your environment that the work day is ending.
• bluescrn 4y ago
  The #1 thing lost is commuting, both the time cost and the carbon emissions
  • PebblesRox 4y ago
    Commuting costs money too. The article portrays paying for “focusing-as-a-service” as a negative, but it’s probably cheaper for a lot of people than paying the extra commuting costs to come in to the office. Seems like it could be a completely valid trade-off in a lot of circumstances.
  • suction 4y ago
    This is a huge factor that doesn't get the publicity it deserves. I work in a company currently led by a person who is very preachy about being "green" - i.e. she's a vegan who uses no plastic whenever possible, only shops at health food stores, uses her bike for commuting because she lives near her workplace, and so on. But she's adamant that everybody needs to commute to the office 5 days a week, even developers, who often have to use a car. It doesn't help that the workplace is in area which is infamous for its traffic congestions (not as bad as LA but it happens regularly that going 15 miles from home to work will take 1h-2h). Since her announcement that WFH will only be possible when the government is giving strong recommendations (to counter a pandemic wave for instance), I've lost most respect for her and her show-off "green" lifestyle. Especially because developers working at the office are often abused by clueless or unmotivated general staff who can't work the photo copier menu and think they can ask any "tech guy" who happens to be near.
• rr808 4y ago
  I'm back in the office 4-5 days a week. We had an intern this Summer as well, and we spent lots of time one on one, spent time in the team together, went out for lunch & drinks. Compare this to the guy last year who was at home and basically was too easy to ignore. In office intern learned 100x as much as the guy last year, he's just lucky to be at a company where everyone is back in the office.
  • brandmeyer 4y ago
    Its not just interns. In a world where one job only lasts 2-4 years, we're all constantly onboarding and cross-training.
    • throwawaysleep 4y ago
      Do you care if you are all that effective in those 2-4 years? Everywhere is a temporary stop, so I really only care about learning tech skills. Get the biz domain wrong? Who cares.
  • chii 4y ago
    remote teaching doesn't work for students, so it stands to reason that it also doesn't work for teaching someone starting a job. But this doesn't imply that remote WFH doesn't work for regular employees.
  • sylens 4y ago
    Training up new/junior staff is the one area where I do think having some in-person collaboration is immensely valuable. But you can do this in bursts with certain team members and not have to require everyone to be in-person.
  • belorn 4y ago
    The primary goal of internship (except when its a legal requirement for certification) is to built relationship and networking. You are trading work in exchange for access to professionals in the industry, with the hope of using that in the future. In that context it is obviously a worse trade if all the interaction is done on the phone or through a webcam. It is a very different situation for people who trade work hours in exchange of getting paid.
• ramesh31 4y ago
  Nope. WFH is literally the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I would take a 50% pay cut with zero second thoughts if it were the only way to stay remote.
• fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Maybe people should focus on working the way they work best rather than explaining how other people are wrong for working the way they work best.
  • ubermonkey 4y ago
    At issue is that folks wishing to return to the office explicitly want EVERYONE ELSE to do so as well, because their issue with working from home isn't the location. It's that they need people around them, whether they want to be there or not.
    • farleykr 4y ago
      I think this is true of some (I have suspected it among people I work with too) but there are objective advantages to being in the office just like there are advantages to working from home. For example, asynchronous communication over Slack or Teams is distracting and inefficient sometimes. I know there are also drawbacks to being available for people to bug you but nothing beats being able to communicate in real time when you're trying to solve a problem. I have been contending that in-person work is actually preferable but it has become so fraught with problematic work and management practices that we can't stand it anymore. I think that while working from home solves some issues, it's not the newer and better work practice that it's cracked up to be.
      • fnordpiglet 4y ago
        Literally I think different people work differently and that’s ok. I think managements true challenge in this isn’t creating conformance with a standard but ensuring individuals can work in the environment and mode they work best. Truth is a neurodiverse person will not feel as stressed when working in their home environment and will be considerably more productive. The marginal benefit to the extrovert being able to interact with that neurodiverse person in an office is relatively small, and much less than the impact on the neurodiverse persons productivity. By allowing people to organize along their preferred mode and management working hard to facilitate that environment the aggregate productivity gained by simply letting people be happier in their day to day life will swamp the frictions between the two styles. Nothing makes productivity happen better than a human who is comfortable in their environment. This where management should be expending their energy - figuring out how to make it work rather than figuring out how to cajole people into being unhappy.
• strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  Once you show people a taste of freedom, there is no going back voluntarily. I went back to work in the office for a couple of weeks and it was dreadful, while i enjoyed the interactions with my coworkers, the commute and lack of personal freedom while in office was dreadful. I want to sit on my couch and watch tv for an hour or exercise in the middle of the day if i feel unproductive without being judged or trying to keep up appearances. I work for an extremely forward thinking company but it is instinctive that you feel the need to somewhat keep up appearances.
  • yabones 4y ago
    I agree completely. After having the freedom to tailor my environment precisely to how I do my best work, going to an office feels entirely performative. It feels like doing a show and dance to make other people feel important rather than increase anybody's actual outputs.
  • bko 4y ago
    I'm in my mid-30s and by now most of my friends are people I had worked with. A lot of people used to meet their future spouse at work. The friends from work have been a lot stickier than those I had made in college due to similar interest and experience and overall level of maturity. After college I was socialized at work. I got a lot of hard won lessons about how to interact with people and maintain professionalism. I couldn't imagine leaving college to just spend 8 hours a day at home in front of my computer. I fear a generation of young people growing up with wfh won't be socialized. At many jobs you have to interact with a wide variety of people. You learn about power dynamics, office politics and effective/poor leadership. You could think this stuff is BS, and maybe it is, but its important to understand. Work is also great moderator. Many young people live in a bubble and surround themselves with people exactly like them, with their same politics and beliefs. It's easier to be an activist on slack, and without the awkward looks from your colleagues, you won't realize its not being well received. At this point in my life wfh is convenient. I have dishes to do, kids to pick up, a relationship with my wife to maintain, but I still miss work from home. I'm just glad I had the chance to experience in person work when I was younger
    • 4y ago
• jeffwask 4y ago
  I taught myself discipline years ago I recommend you try that rather than needing artificial constraints to force discipline upon you.
• greatpostman 4y ago
  Anyone that can’t embrace the freedom of working from home is lost. There’s more to life than a capitalist trap.
  • mypastself 4y ago
    How would this be a capitalist trap? I don’t have the numbers, but I’d expect that most government employees have returned to the office, whereas many industries (like IT) have kept WFH/hybrid work post-pandemic.
• tvbusy 4y ago
  I find doing house chores help me to be more productive. Sure, some times it bother me that I cannot finish the chores but as long as I split it up well, I feel good. Instead of slacking for 20 mins after intense work, I stand up, bring the dirty clothoes and put them in the washing machine. That simple act not only pull my mind away from thinking about work but also exercise my body. I save some time as well so it's a nice bonus on top. Now back at my computer, I can have a fresh look at what I was working on. In office, I either surfing on my phone, watch YouTube for striking a conversation with whoever is in the canteen (this often takes a lot more time as you can't just say time's up, I need to work).
  • LetsGetTechnicl 4y ago
    I love being able to get stuff done that's technically personal and not work related, like chores or cooking food. I can take a break from work and not have to use my limited personal time (after 5 and on the weekends) to get the boring stuff done. It just makes more sense to kill 2 birds with 1 stone in that sense.
• pluc 4y ago
  "I don't like WFH so you shouldn't either" If you have no discipline and no motivation, remote work is not for you. You have to make efforts to have social interactions, get out of the house, draw a line in the sand between work and play. It's real easy once you get your ducks in a row. WFH is a great, but like anything, if you misuse it and can't find ways to be productive and disciplined, you probably belong in an office under the supervision and comfort of someone (or something, such as cultural ethos) having that discipline for you.
  • tomuli38 4y ago
    Not just lack of discipline, but these types tend to have poor social skills, hoping to make their only friends via work. Employers don't want people to have rich social lives.
    • farleykr 4y ago
      Working from home isn't synonymous with a rich social life. Personally, even though I have/had healthy work and personal relationships, I used WFH as an excuse to unhealthily isolate myself for just about all of 2020. Also, I'm inclined to believe employers don't give a damn about our social lives. They want more work out of us and more money.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • tomuli38 4y ago
        I hope that didn't come across as my point. Some have a rich social life and prefer the office, and others wfh. Some have a poor social life and prefer the office, and others wfh. My point was just that those who fill their social life outside of work don't always need everyone working from the office. And that's okay.
    • cudgy 4y ago
      And these types are the ones that interrupt me to ask obvious questions that can be figured out with a little research on their own or catch me in the hall for a “quick” chat about trivial matters or gossip that lasts for 20-30 minutes several times a day. Meanwhile, I stay late to get work done since several hours have been wasted commuting to the office, chatting, and going to inefficient meetings. Bottom line is that companies save money on real estate and utilities, have happier workers, live in healthier environments due to less car pollution, can hire from a larger pool, and attract the best talent when they offer work from home. Companies that do not take advantage of this will be at a structural disadvantage, so the almighty savings of dollars will likely make this trend unstoppable.
• datalopers 4y ago
  meta but: am I the only one who gets an uncomfortable feeling while reading a blog with these constant inline links? I feel compelled to click them but there’s so many I just end up not reading the article at all.
  • saimiam 4y ago
    I feel this way too but the other day, I was reading an op-ed with a bunch of in-line links. I decided to click on the links to see if the linked page actually say what the link anchor and surrounding text hinted at. In many cases, there was no connection at all! Usually, these links are used to boost on-site SEO and sometimes, to seem authoritative and well-read on the topic at hand.
  • pluc 4y ago
    all that does for me is remind me of the PageRank-induced farming for backlinks, doesn't make it look more credible (which is what this particular author tries to do).
• drooopy 4y ago
  If I had to interact with my co-workers and boss 9 hours every day I would have quit my job a long time ago. And I have no intention of overworking myself to death. At 17:00 I turn my computer off and proceed to enjoy the rest of my day.
• ianai 4y ago
  Working from the office during the pandemic has been hell for me. I avoided Covid successfully despite a lot of social pushback on wearing a mask at work and other precautions until June because somebody couldn’t be damned to wear a mask, social distance, or just stay home. They did none of it. Meanwhile everyone not on my team did get to WFH for the duration and most still do. Stuff like this creates serious ill will and resentment.
• brolumir 4y ago
  Not one mention of children in the article - the #1 reason people that have them prefer to work from home.
• bitcharmer 4y ago
  I haven't read something I disagree with so strongly in a very long time. It looks like the author makes an (entirely incorrect) assumption that their views is somehow equal to scientific evidence. All I learned from this post is the author is unable to reap the many benefits of WFH. And that's fine; it doesn't have to be awesome for everyone.
• jraph 4y ago
  > Remote workers are in a cycle of procrastination and guilt I've felt that at the office too. Not sure it is related to WFH for me. WFH is a change. I'm not surprised some people wary about it. I guess it is healthy. This article, however, really goes far making WFH feel sad. My video calls feel nothing like "speaking to muted mics and webcams, wondering whether anybody is listening at all". We trust each others. Ever lived an in-person meeting where everybody is sleeping because of boredom and a big lunch just before? This kind of thing is possible both remotely and in-person. Thanks to WFH I've been able to spend quality time with friends and family lately, not having to worry about how I should be able to reach a specific geographic place at all time, and I'm enjoying my colleagues too. Granted, it might take specific personalities, but I seem to fit personally and my colleagues too. Some people are not ready/wired for this, like in my previous company, and that's fine too.
  • Double_a_92 4y ago
    At the office I guess the guilt is somewhat hidden by having "proof" that you were seemingly working.
    • jraph 4y ago
      Possible. Definitely didn't work for me however (xD). I'm accountable to myself (in addition to the colleagues / bosses) and that seems to suffice feeling guilt if I don't progress.
• ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  But I don't care about this. I don't want to see my colleagues, sure I preferred in person meetings but that was only because it was a break from real work. I dislike meetings in general at all. I want to go to work, do my job, get paid and then after that, that's my life, then I can be around the few people I have chosen to be around not forced interactions with people just because we share the same enviroment.
• sylens 4y ago
  Sounds like the author is writing this article based on his own ineffectiveness at working remotely. It's true that video calls can be more draining than an in-person meeting - if you have nothing but meetings on your calendar all day. If I only have one meeting for the day, it's nice to not have to commute in just for that one hour (that could be cancelled/postponed if somebody doesn't show). The author is also terribly mistaken if he doesn't think people weren't browsing the web while in an office before, procrastinating on getting their work done there as well.
• 999900000999 4y ago
  >The Social Alienation of Remote Working We don't want to be your friends and hang out afterwards and get drinks. I am a fantastically social person outside of work, I got to bars, go to concerts. That's where I've met my first real girlfriend, fun concert. A fun concert that I voluntarily went to. I absolutely hate company events, I hate this whole forced fun crap. I have other things I would rather do. If you actually would like to become my friend, we can hang out. But not at the office. Real talk, if I found a job that would allow me to work remote from another country ( where I'm authorized to work), I would be open to working for as little as 60K a year. That's more than enough to support me in most of the world. But if instead you tell me I need to live in the bay, all of a sudden. I need at least 300k total comp.
  • LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Real talk, if I found a job that would allow me to work remote from another country ( where I'm authorized to work), I would be open to working for as little as 60K a year. Become a contractor.
• sharemywin 4y ago
  I interact all the time over teams with my coworkers from my team. Most of my work comes from jira. I have 5 to 10 tasks on my plate and I know what I need to get done. If I run out of crap I ask for more. We even have a little group setup of people I used to go to lunch with. We post crap from the internet etc. Most of my team is in other states so even if I did go back to an office my work process wouldn't change. but I would spend a fortune more in gas and going out to eat at lunch. I checked the news and stuff at the office and do the same at home. The big difference is the hour a day I get back and I have a little better attitude.
• minimaul 4y ago
  I've done full time WfH, I've done hybrid and I've done full time in office over the last few years. Full time WfH is where I've settled. I find the flexibility suits me better - if I want to take a long lunch so I can cook in the middle of the day, I can. If I'm not being productive, I can do something else and come back later. It gives me a lot more freedom to work in the way that suits me best, and for our company we've found it's actually more productive. We get more work done, without people doing more hours, and the fact it cuts out my commute is just the cherry on top.
• coldcode 4y ago
  Although I retired last year, that year I worked at home during the pandemic was just fine productivity-wise, but I did miss the social interaction, the ability to hear discussions around me (sometimes too loud of course) where I learned things I would otherwise not know about projects, and I had lunch with my team and other teams almost every day, talking about all sorts of things and sometimes even work. That's what I missed. Slack is fine for communication (I probably read/wrote hundreds of messages every day) but you miss the human interaction. If I had a family, probably would not have missed the work folks as much, but spending time talking with other programmers every day in casual conversation is a learning experience you won't get just slacking people as part of work. Junior engineers can learn by doing, but being able to have impromptu whiteboard sessions to explain things in detail helps them move forward faster. Sure you could use Zoom, but it becomes just formal meetings instead of a 5 min quick lesson.
• reeealloc 4y ago
  which CEO who spent millions on an office people don't use wrote this?
• mabbo 4y ago
  It's 9:15am. I just spent 10 minutes helping my 5-month-old daughter fall asleep for her first nap of the day. Now I'm sitting with my wife and eating breakfast. At 9:30, I'll walk 20 feet to my office and start work for the day. At noon, I'll take an hour with my wife and daughter, cook together, eat together, and get back to work at a little before 1. At 5:30pm, my work day will end, and I'll cook my family a healthy dinner. It takes a longer, more effort, than ordering in or doing something cheap and easy but I have the time and it's worth it. The focus of my life is my family, not my job. That is what work from home means to me. Any company that demands I change that focus isn't one I'm willing to work for.
  • cjameskeller 4y ago
    Yes. We have to work, but it doesn't have to be so disconnected from the greater portion of life.
• marcofiset 4y ago
  > now that the pandemic is over Ha. That's news to me. Here in QC, Canada our hospitals are still suffering a lot from overcrowding covid patients. Cases are on the rise again. It's far from over.
• jacknews 4y ago
  "but slowly realised that complete remote working was an alienating experience that has diminished the boundaries between work and leisure." Yeah, no. The boundary was already destroyed by emails and other 'urgent' messages outside of regular hours, on top of the requirement that you get your bum on a seat within view of a manager for 8+ hours a day (the commute time is your problem). There seem to have been a few 'WFH is bad for you' posts lately. Is this a concerted campaign?
• onion2k 4y ago
  I was initially excited by the benefits of working from home, but slowly realised that complete remote working was an alienating experience that has diminished the boundaries between work and leisure. You can't state this as a fact. Lots of people are able to separate work and leisure when they work remotely. Over the past 25 years I've spent about 30% of my career being remote, and it works brilliantly for me. If anything I think there's a lot of people who feel they're more able to divide work and leisure time when they work remotely. Prior to the pandemic some people definitely saw the office as a proxy for a social life, and wanted to have their colleagues around after hours in the bar or at barbecues or as friends to hang out with. Many, many people didn't want that at all though. People complain about office socials no end. There are some who just didn't want to socialise at all, some who had a healthy social life entirely separate to work, and some who maintained a balance. The idea that you need to leave your home and go to a different building for part of the day to be any of those is silly. There is nothing about remote work that prevents you from doing exactly the same with your leisure time that you'd do after hours when you worked in an office. Nothing.
  • throwawaysleep 4y ago
    Or in my case, I like to weave them together seamlessly. Go drool in standup, read my tickets aloud, and then call my grandmother for her birthday before my next meeting. Or pre-load my work in the evening the day before so I can take off and go to a museum.
• jimbobimbo 4y ago
  I clicked the link thinking I'll read something about the ease of outsourcing of the remote work positions, but what I read in the article is not in the vicinity of what I'd ever worry about working remotely.
• jollyllama 4y ago
  The quality of bonds and trust I formed with in person colleagues is greater than that of remote colleagues, who have been much more prone to let me down, backstab, or be unaccountable. People can say, "it's your company culture". I don't think remote can help culture, it can only be neutral or negative. The other thing is, every organization will have at least two potentially overlapping cliques (the more they overlap, the better the org): a select cadre of high achievers who fix difficult problems and mentor people into their group, and a 'mafia' who hold the power and make the decisions. In person, it's much easier to learn who they are and observe their activities and act accordingly. With remote, you're in the dark on any communication you're not specifically included on. PRs and bug reports can clue you in, but there might be a stellar admin/SRE who is knows how things really work that you'll never hear about. Stuff like that.
• bumby 4y ago
  It seems like the issues bright up in this article could be remedied by better systems and habits. Make it a habit to shut off your work laptop and pack it away somewhere you feel compelled to open it on weekends. If you’re feeling alienated, set up a weekly lunch date with a friend or join a social group. Make it a habit to sign onto meetings early for a couple minutes of small-talk etc. WFH can present some problems, but I’m not convinced they are unsolvable problems.
• samwillis 4y ago
  The article extrapolates from his own experience of procrastinating when WFH, and extends that to the population at large. I don’t believe that is the case. As a small (anecdotal) data point, I run an online store, when the pandemic hit we saw a massive change in browsing habits. Our store sells personalised items that can be quite time consuming for a customer to “play” with before purchasing. It used to be that about 2.30-3pm we would see significant spike in people on the site customising items, during that mid afternoon slump while at work. After people started working from home this vanished completely. So my assumption, and it’s not that, is that people have become more disciplined when working from home. They are ensuring that they finish their work in the afternoon so that can jump back into home life. I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t doing “8 hours” in front of their computers, and may be clocking off early. But I suspect the number of productive hours has increased.
• rossdavidh 4y ago
  I have worked alternately remotely and in-office for about a decade, about equal amounts each. Currently working remotely, and that's fine by me. However, I think a lot of people are underestimating how much more likely they are to get laid off, when the time comes to pick who gets axed and some of the people show up in person at the office and some don't. I am a serial contractor, so that's not an issue for me; I'm always temporary anyway. But I've accepted as part of this lifestyle that the job will go away right when it is most difficult to get a new one. I'm not sure everyone working remotely is aware how much more likely they are to get laid off in a downturn.
• krageon 4y ago
  This is an article lamenting the author's unhealthy relationship with their work and claiming that this must be true for everyone. Somehow we're too widdle to have this much freedom and we must be constrained. Infantilising and trite, it is a genuine mystery to me that this article survived past proofreading.
• lucideer 4y ago
  What this article (and every other article advocating RTO) misses is that this is not about WFH / remote work. While yes, there has been a move toward fully remote companies (this existed before Covid - e.g. Gitlab), I've never seen this as something that would be broadly adopted - this suits a certain niche, it's great that it exists, I think that niche should grow, but I can't see it ever approaching majority. Leaving aside fully-remote working, the debate in most cases is about choice and autonomy. While many engineers had flexible working arrangements before Covid, many did not (and the vast majority of non-engineer office workers didn't either). Now these arrangements are the norm (despite managements fighting to remove them). Personally, I much much prefer working from the office. I have a nice work setup at home now (after much tuning over the past few pandemic years), but it will never be ideal for me. If I were working for a fully remote company, I would need to rent shared space to avail of some of the mental health benefits outlined in this article, and it would still be far from ideal as my work neighbours would not be colleagues. BUT... I absolutely would not be happy to give up the ability I currently have to stay home if/whenever I need to - it's enormously liberating and allows me to conduct my day-to-day life much more efficiently and happily. I don't think anyone arguing for WFH is really advocating fully-remote for all (which seems to be this author's assumption?). They're advocating for worker autonomy.
  • PebblesRox 4y ago
    I agree. Clearly there are costs and benefits on both sides, and different people will assign different weights to the costs and benefits depending on their values and circumstances. Ideally everyone would have the option to work in whichever way is most suitable for the situation they’re in, both personally and professionally.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    >I don't think anyone arguing for WFH is really advocating fully-remote for all In general I think that's true. However, the flip side is you have people who want to go into a 2019 office. And they're going in and finding a ghost town. And at least some of them think it's the responsibility of their coworkers to fix that even if they're getting their jobs done perfectly well from somewhere remote.
• rockostrich 4y ago
  The title of the article should be "30 year old data scientist who lives in London misses social interactions at work." Going to work in an office everyday isn't so bad when you live in a city, have no responsibilities, and have a <30 minute commute to work on public transit. Especially when you're 20-35 and maybe don't have a ton of friends outside of work. I get it. I moved to a new city for work at 25 and didn't know anyone there. The office is where I made friends and had most of my social interactions. But we still had a work from home policy that made sense for folks that needed it.
• Finnucane 4y ago
  I don't think anybody really needs to be told that zoom calls suck. Or that changes don't come with a cost. You get nothing for free. But overall a lot of people are finding that the benefits of WFH far outweigh the costs.
• throwawaysleep 4y ago
  I really don't care about my work enough to care if I am heard, to care whether I produce anything, or to care whether people I will never speak to again after I leave the job laugh at my jokes. I am here to extract the cash required to have a safe and enjoyable life. Working on adtech and security tech is a means to an end.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I have returned to the office and I’m glad I did so. There’s so many opportunities and connections that working from home had me missing. I’ve been back at the office for four months now and my productivity has definitely increased, and I feel a lot more plugged into my career. My company put in a lot of effort to bridge things for those who want to work from home, but… They are absent. Unless we are on a phone call or a zoom call, they don’t really exist. I forget about them.
• mfDjB 4y ago
  Just started a position in a FAANG as a remote worker, funnily enough accidentally. I am in Seattle working for a team in NYC. I didn't realise that it was technically a remote position, I just thought I would go into the Seattle office but happen to work for a NYC team, this is what I've been used to in the past. As a remote worker the following has happened: 1) I was relocating from where I was to Seattle, and told that I will receive no relocation support because I was technically remote. 2) I was told after speaking to other people I know at other FAANG companies that my seat at the office was not guaranteed. Indeed when I checked with the recruiter and my new manager it turns out that the company does not guarantee you a seat in the office if you are a remote worker. 3) Remote onboarding is a horribly broken and disfunctional experience, I can only speak for the company I am with here your mileage may vary, most links don't work and things aren't really explained well, you end up waiting around most of the time and feel strange, like you are missing something. It feels very much like being a second class citizen at a FAANG. The perks access clearly isn't there, and there is a lot of assumed knowledge, e.g. "Oh you didn't know you wouldn't be able to go into the office?". Not a fan. I've never felt less like a person and more like a battery.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    >I didn't realise that it was technically a remote position It doesn't sound like there was anything technical about it. And that seems a pretty fundamental characteristic of a job. And, if I were remote, I wouldn't assume I could just go into an office every day, eat at the cafeteria, etc.
• FerretFred 4y ago
  Personally I couldn't be happier WFH and I was doing this for 5+ years before the Pandemic. I DON'T miss the godawful commute by train, housing and rent so expensive I couldn't save anything, air-conditioned offices in which the aircon failed every summer, open plan offices where developers sat next to sales and colleagues constantly brought in new (howling) babies to show off, that guy who filled his "quiet moments" with endless monologues that always started "Hey did I ever tell you about that time when...", endless f**ing face-to-face team meetings with no outcomes... I could go on. Now my office is set up just right, my network is great, I can have peace and quiet on demand, not ruin my hearing wearing headphones all day, and I can take my new dog out for walkies when it suits. I now do video meetings, and guess what: they're still useless :) It works for me!
• tomkaos 4y ago
  During the pandemic I debate the good and bad of WFH, but the day I come back to office the ridiculousness of commuting hit me. The carbon emission, the waste of time.. I have a hybrid car, but it was zero emission during the pandemic.
• tlogan 4y ago
  I think that WFH for younger individuals might be a problem: a lot of things I learned when I was young was by chatting with senior engineers and senior management. During coffee breaks or random hallway talk. Basically you do not know that you don’t know and that you do not even know what to ask. And management including EVPs was always marking expresso or teas for them self in the morning thus prompting this unofficial brain dump. I think that is the only benefit of working in the office. And I really do not how to replicate that in WFH environment.
  • bsima 4y ago
    People keep bringing this up, about junior developers. But my experience as a junior was very different. I didn't have senior mentors, I learned mostly from irc and stackoverflow, in fact I worked remotely for most of my junior years, and it worked out for me. (I'm a senior staff engineer at a "unicorn" now.)
• gregors 4y ago
  I'm never going back!
  • elforce002 4y ago
    Preach!
• joshstrange 4y ago
  I'm not at all sure at all I believe the bit about left/right politics and WFH and that paragraph seemed odd/out-of-place when I first started reading. After finishing the article it really makes no sense and makes me thing the author is just throwing any/everything at the wall to see what sticks as I find their other arguments range from "reaching" to absurd. > Nobody likes to do video call hangouts/drinks, but many of us enjoy it in person. Disagree, I don't mind in-person but I don't mind virtual at all. > If we're lucky, we're confronted with the images (including our own) of several different people all on one screen. If we're unlucky everyone has their camera off, and we speak into a void of muted mics and turned off cameras hoping that someone is actually listening to us. And similarly wearing blindfolds at a bar isn't fun. Come on, you can twist the settings to make in-person better and I'll agree virtual is still a good bit away from 1-to-1 in-person but it's not anywhere near as bad as this guy makes it out to be. > Video calls add friction to human interactions. The most jarring experience of this for instance is telling a joke while people have their microphones on mute. No matter how funny the joke is the response feels like an awkward silence. I've spent hundreds of hours in video calls since 2020 and I think this has happened 1 time max and it was even funnier after people unmuted. I'm really finding it hard to take this guy seriously. > In a previous role, one Microsoft Teams update led to calls exceeding 10 minutes turning the fans on my 2 year old Macbook Pro to their highest setting. I'm still curious to know what Microsoft Teams would have been processing in the background of those meetings. And the point is? No really? Do fans bother people that much? Are they not using headsets and/or earbuds? I sit in a room with 3 desktops, a Synology, an my MBP (sometimes 2), fans have never bothered me once. Also Teams is hot garbage, news at 11. > Reasearch by Gartner has shown that remote new joiners have a diminished sense of beloging to their organisation. Remote working is making it too easy to stay in our bubbles rather than to engage with our colleagues. I joined my company fully remote in late 2019. The pandemic actually improved a number of things about working remote and brought me closer to my coworkers on the whole. You have to make an effort, setup a "catch up" zoom call with people to see how they are doing, what's new in their lives, the same way you would walk over in an office and talk to someone. Sure it might take an extra step but I've not found it taxing in the least, also your conversation is completely private and there is no chance of someone overhearing and butting in, something I experienced more than a few times when working in-person. > Knowing our colleagues on a more personal level makes it easier to communicate and solve problems, making work much more rewarding. I agree with this but being remote doesn't make this impossible to accomplish by a long shot. I'm able to form bonds just fine over zoom. > At my current company many colleagues have been poached by someone who used to work with them and is now managing a team at a different company. This poacher who has enticed a lot of the Data Science & Data Engineering talent has been offering their former colleagues jobs without interviews. It's because of the meaningful relationships that my colleagues have established with this poacher while working in person before the pandemic that they have been offered this opportunity. Again, far from impossible even over zoom. I've helped get 2 ex-coworkers hired at my current company and if I ever went elsewhere I'd at least try poaching a few people I met at my current job because again, you can form bonds just fine over zoom/chat. > The lines between work time and home time have become much more blurry with WFH. It is not just us either: a study of real-time data from millions of GitHub users found that work was often being re-allocated from the traditional 9-6pm weekday hours to evenings and even weekends. Life is losing the punctuation points between work and leisure that we have enjoyed in the past. Gasp! People are picking when they work instead of being forced in an outdated mold? The horror! Spare me, this isn't an issue on it's own. It's important that people have a good work/life balance but that looks different for everyone and assuming we all do best in a one-size-fits-all 9-5 is absurd. I personally choose to end my day at 5pm but as long as the requests are infrequent and minor I have no issue jumping on for a quick zoom if I'm free or kicking off a deploy if it's requested. My job is in CA, I live in KY, 3 hours different but they've been extremely respectful of my "5pm" and in turn I'm happy to occasionally help out past that time. In fact, I'm almost positive I worked past 5pm or in the evenings more at my last in-person job. I'm not even going to touch on these "focussing as a service" things. If they work for you great, not everyone needs them and pretending it sees widespread usage needs some data to back it up. All in all I find most of these examples to not have only a passing resemblance to reality. Some of the examples are more realistic than others but the outlandish examples make it hard to take them seriously (again, fans?). If you want to work from an office go work from an office, with so many companies wanting a return to the office you shouldn't have a problem. I can't help but feeling like this guy didn't care at all about people who preferred WFH or were asking for it prior to 2020. I have no issue with people who want to go back to the office, just don't try to force me back.
• j245 4y ago
  Tech workers DO understand what they are losing. They have done the cost/benefit analysis and it’s significantly better to WFH in many scenarios. One clear example is people that commute and have children they would otherwise miss seeing during weekdays. Should social interaction with Bob at the office really be prioritised over being there for your child ? I view one of the purposes of technology as saving us from having to make these terrible choices. I.e. Being able to provide for your family vs. Seeing your children for more than 2 days in a week. There are just too many valid use-cases for Remote/WFH. Framing it as “you’re not smart enough to realise what you’ve lost” is naive and misguided. There is nothing novel in the article, I would argue most people already understand these points well.
  • allo37 4y ago
    Exactly. I do miss seeing/conversing with my coworkers with WFH, but the positive effect it has had on my overall health and stress level cannot be understated. These "actually, you really want to go back to the office and like it" articles are a bit presumptuous.
• rvieira 4y ago
  I don't think it's honest to lump "tech workers" in a single bag. For starters, introverts and extroverts might feel very differently regarding WFH.
• farleykr 4y ago
  After reading a lot of the comments, it seems like there's a lot of black and white thinking in regards to working from home being an objective improvement over working in an office. For crying out loud, can we inject some nuance into the conversation? Neither working from home or an office is better. There are different pros/cons and good/bad reasons for doing either or wanting others to do one over the other.
• erellsworth 4y ago
  Our lives should not revolve around work, and that includes our social lives.
• jarofgreen 4y ago
  Completely disagree with the article for reasons others have already commented on. I just want to pick up on one point with a pro tip: > At one point it got so bad that I had to cancel my subscription to The Athletic to stop myself reading it during official work hours. Have separate work computers and personal computers or have separate operating system accounts. You need to maintain separation between your work and personal life otherwise both are going to suffer. Also, if you have a service you use for both (like Trello) have different logins, a work email and a personal one. I've given this tip before and it was clear a lot of people haven't thought of it - I'm curious to see if this is more obvious to a tech audience.
• Helikentio 4y ago
  I addressed the issue of sitting in front of a zoom call and everyone having there cameras disabled. People can be addressed and asked to enable them and they will. I also have a few regular syncmeetings with a few critical colleagues which also helps a lot. I will not go back to the office and I will not do the 2-3 days per week in the office dance.
• timssopomo 4y ago
  Of course, working at home is socially isolating and requires a different approach than working in the office... but _maybe_ this just means that some people are better suited for remote work than others, and workers ought to choose a job that allows them to work in the office or invest more in other types of socializing. Of course, there are more opportunities to goof off at home... but _maybe_, if the work is still getting done in the hours people are working, the remaining work is performative and unnecessary and you can decide to either take on more meaningful work or examine your internalized guilt about Never Working Hard Enough. Of course, it may be easier to concentrate when you're afraid of someone "catching" you not working... but _maybe_ if you're unable to work without fear, you ought to examine why that's the case and seek better sources of motivation. Of course, the fact that at least some work is performative and unnecessary makes managers and executives believe this untapped "productivity" is being stolen... but _maybe_ it ought to be pointed out that overworking people leads to lower productivity overall and there's a lot of empirical evidence to suggest that even 40 hours of work a week is too much. Of course, cities are emptying out and this may be bad for local economies based on a captive class of office workers... but _maybe_ a local economy requiring millions of people to spend hours of their lives each day migrating away from their homes isn't exactly sustainable. And on and on... I work for companies based in New York City. We had to move 2.5 hours away from NYC to find a home that fit our budget. If the powers that be want to continue to allow the costs of education and housing to double every 9 and 15 years respectively, they'd better allow us to move where we can actually afford to live ~or~ pay us what we need to house, feed, clothe, and educate our children.
• Hippocrates 4y ago
  I agree that all of these stated problems are real (definitely are for me). But I definitely DO understand what's lost and I'm happy with the trade for what I have gained. RTO vs WFH takes like this are silly and obvious. Yeah, there are downsides to WFH. Do people not realize this through their own introspection? At least for me it has been very obvious that there are negatives to WFH. Realizing this and knowing how to compensate/counteract makes it ok (or great). - Block time or just go outside for a walk without a screen. If you were WFO this would be a coffee or lunch break. I know I had at least 2 a day. Minimum 30 mins. Not to mention walks to/from the bathroom, or meetings, and chats in between. I forgot how much BS we did in the office. It literally wasn't "butts in seats" from 9-5. No need to feel guilty about walking around the block or house several times a day. - Close your laptop and stop answering messages when you're done working for the day. If this were WFO, you'd be missing your train and dinner with the family. Boss got a problem with that? Maybe he's a shit boss, maybe the company WLB is trash, or maybe you actually desire something more cushy and coast-able. As long as I am getting my work done and doing a good job, I will defend that boundary at any cost. If it doesn't work out, so be it. - Feeling socially disconnected? Good! Use the time you aren't spending at lame social event venues to lean into the relationships you already have, or forge new ones via community forums and events. Text an old friend, make a plan to meet up, or plan a vacation. - Take sick days for mental health. This is a crucial part of your health. Also take them for physical health. Back pain, headache, diarrhea. Just because you're at home doesn't mean these things can't wreck your focus. Don't be afraid to use that benefit.
• bsima 4y ago
  > One of the advantages of office work is that being surrounded by colleagues pushes us to get our work done during office time. Many knowledge workers are paying to have silent video chats with people who act as their accountability buddies. the panopticon is real
• Volundr 4y ago
  > As someone who wants to work more in person with our colleagues, it is disappointing to see that my opinion is so contrarian. I don't mind that others want to work from the office. I mind that others want to drag me back into the office kicking and screaming, all the whole insisting it's "for my own good" when really it comes down to preference. None of the points ring true for my life. Yes I feel less connected to coworkers, but that's just led me to being more conscious about getting my social interaction outside the office, which I view as healthier anyway. If your only friends are coworkers that's not a healthy situation. Sure I sometimes procrastinate working by being on the internet (see this comment), but no worse than I did in the office. Rather I'm more productive because I don't have the constant noise of the office and people showing up and my workstation to distract me. I don't doubt that some find that the lines between work and leisure are blurring, but there are solutions to that other than the office. A friend of mine put his work desk in his garage so he could get up and physically leave work. Another goes for a walk after work to simulate a "commute". Personally I've found it sufficient to maintain a strict separation between work and personal devices and shut off the work devices at the end of the work day. If the office is right for you, you do you. But don't force it on me on the assumption that because it's the answer for you it must be for me as well.
• flax 4y ago
  I know exactly what I've "lost" by going wfh: a
• flax 4y ago
  I know exactly what I've "lost" by going wfh: a 45 minute commute both ways (and the biking exercise), an open-office panopticon, and being surrounded by coworkers who don't know how to chew with their mouths closed. I do NOT feel like my relationships with coworkers are any less friendly or social working from home. Unfortunately, the office environment wasn't/isn't terrible by nature. It's terrible because it's not about work, it's about managers making life awful for people so they can feel a sense of power. And there's nothing preventing them from ruining wfh in the same way. We're already seeing mandatory webcam observation in student and low-status (eg customer support) roles. Private offices to cubicles could be plausibly justified by cost, but cubicles to open office was entirely about making life worse. The panopticon will come for wfh too, probably even worse, if we do not fight it every inch.
• LetsGetTechnicl 4y ago
  > now that the pandemic is over, it's difficult for employers to get employees back into the office. There's not much of a reason to continue reading after this bit about the pandemic being "over" when COVID is still around and we have polio and monkeypox going around.
• braza 4y ago
  WFH was the best thing that happened for me because I absolutely do not like to socialize with co-workers. I came from work cultures with low boundaries related with personal interactions that sometimes I felt permanently in a state of acting. No, I do not want drinks after work; I will go to the indoor climbing with my friends. No, I do not want know about the last episode of <Hyped TV show in some streaming>; I will watch my soccer team playing. No, I do not want to notice your smell if you bought the last Carolina Herrera or if you lack of hygiene and do not use deodorant and took 1h30m in the subway/bus to come to office; I just want to work in my porch breathing fresh and clean air. The idea of having relationships in workplace is overestimated. Most of the time os just some tool for people show their Machiavellian traits and trying to drag you in office politics. Becky from legal has a new car? I do not care. Kevin from sales have some affair at work? Not interested. 6PM I just shutdown my computer and go to live my life.
• rouzh 4y ago
  Woof. I don't want to upset you, but I don't think I've ever disagreed more with a written argument than I did with this one. It sounds like maybe you (and perhaps those in your social circle) have some very specific problems with being accountable and responsible, but in 35+ years of work I've never once had to have the "feeling of being watched" to "feel accountable" or be "pushed to work." I work and focus because I take pride in my professionalism - I don't need a "focus buddy" to keep me on task. I wish I could say I was more surprised by the items you raised, but I've noticed that there is certainly a large contingent of EVERY workforce that seems to suffer from an inability to take any kind of pride in themselves or their work, and unfortunately, those of us who ARE able to focus on work tasks during work hours have been trapped in the "butts in seats" paradigm for decades as a result of those individuals. I'm glad to see the market finally correcting itself.