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People working from home for the first time over the last few years are still in the honeymoon period where it seems 100% positive with no downsides. After 10+

by jsz0 4y ago

People working from home for the first time over the last few years are still in the honeymoon period where it seems 100% positive with no downsides. After 10+ years of working remotely I can tell you it's not as great as it seems. First unless you have an active social life outside work you are setting yourself up for a life of extreme social isolation. Second when your boss and co-workers don't see you in human form often there is a tendency for them to start treating you like a stranger with less trust and empathy. Third your work/life balance will never be the same. First you will be guilty you're not working hard enough then you'll be resentful you're working too hard. In my experience hybrid is the ideal setup so you can maintain good human relationships with your co-workers.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago
Hybrid loses huge proximity benefits. Rather than living in a low COL/low tax area or close to family, you’re back paying through the nose for Bay Area housing.
- rowanajmarshall 4y ago
  Although remote-heavy hybrid expands your reasonable commute distance quite a bit. a An hour-a-way commute is is pretty bad doing it every day, if you're only doing it once a week, or once a fortnight, it becomes a lot more bearable.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  That's a good and a bad thing. Some people actually want to live in a high COL area. Ubiquitous WFH could mean many of us are stuck moving to rural towns when we'd prefer to live in big cities.
babypuncher 4y ago
Yeah for me it's been a mixed bag, for the exact reasons you specify. I've moved to a hybrid work environment. I go into the office twice a week, which helps with these issues tremendously. It also means that my employer has to keep paying salaries that are livable within driving distance of our headquarters (I live about 20 minutes away). My biggest fear about WFH is that employers will wise up and start only hiring people willing to live in the middle of nowhere because they can live just as comfortably on half the salary.
SamuelAdams 4y ago
I disagree with all three points. Your social life is your responsibility. It is not as easy as working in an office, but personally I never expect real friendships to foster from office interactions anyways. If your boss and coworkers don’t trust you, work for a better team. Many teams have trust by default. Find them and work for them. Leave toxic teams quickly. My work life balance is exactly the same. I work 40 hours a week, 9-5. If I run out of time on a project, I communicate it early to stakeholders and we reschedule it to realistic deadlines.
- thinking4real 4y ago
  Agreed 100%. No one should be relying on their job for their primary social experience. If you have never had a social life outside of it, you’re missing out on life.
rr888 4y ago
The last thing is team familiarity is waning. Back in 2020/21 everyone went remote but they already knew each other well from dealing with each other face to face. Now we have new people in the team who never really learned properly and are often just ignored. I am back in the office and the grad who is here 4 days a week with me gets a lot more attention.
wwweston 4y ago
I'm now just coming into my 6th year and 2nd job that have been largely remote work, and while I can relate to the issues with the blurred boundaries between work and life... I'm still in the honeymoon period. I've probably been lucky that both the teams I've worked with have been small enough to get to know and strong at mixing async messaging, video calls, and occasional facetime to good effect for both coordination and camaraderie. Not everyone is set up that way; I can think of some previous off-site contract gigs I had which didn't fit that description and your downsides match my experience more closely there. Overall, though, whether in-office or remote the worst work/life balance issues have always come from sheer workload more than anything else. If that's addressed remote work doesn't make it worse, just changes the moment to moment tradeoffs, and the gains from being able to flexibly context shift and not having to manage commutes are alone so strong I wouldn't want to give it up. Social isolation is a problem I'm willing to solve for myself (and at some level have to anyway).

by jsz0 4y ago

ed25519FUUU 4y ago

Hybrid loses huge proximity benefits. Rather than living in a low COL/low tax area or close to family, you’re back paying through the nose for Bay Area housing.

rowanajmarshall 4y ago
Although remote-heavy hybrid expands your reasonable commute distance quite a bit. a An hour-a-way commute is is pretty bad doing it every day, if you're only doing it once a week, or once a fortnight, it becomes a lot more bearable.
babypuncher 4y ago
That's a good and a bad thing. Some people actually want to live in a high COL area. Ubiquitous WFH could mean many of us are stuck moving to rural towns when we'd prefer to live in big cities.

babypuncher 4y ago

Yeah for me it's been a mixed bag, for the exact reasons you specify. I've moved to a hybrid work environment. I go into the office twice a week, which helps with these issues tremendously. It also means that my employer has to keep paying salaries that are livable within driving distance of our headquarters (I live about 20 minutes away). My biggest fear about WFH is that employers will wise up and start only hiring people willing to live in the middle of nowhere because they can live just as comfortably on half the salary.

SamuelAdams 4y ago

I disagree with all three points. Your social life is your responsibility. It is not as easy as working in an office, but personally I never expect real friendships to foster from office interactions anyways. If your boss and coworkers don’t trust you, work for a better team. Many teams have trust by default. Find them and work for them. Leave toxic teams quickly. My work life balance is exactly the same. I work 40 hours a week, 9-5. If I run out of time on a project, I communicate it early to stakeholders and we reschedule it to realistic deadlines.

thinking4real 4y ago
Agreed 100%. No one should be relying on their job for their primary social experience. If you have never had a social life outside of it, you’re missing out on life.

rr888 4y ago

The last thing is team familiarity is waning. Back in 2020/21 everyone went remote but they already knew each other well from dealing with each other face to face. Now we have new people in the team who never really learned properly and are often just ignored. I am back in the office and the grad who is here 4 days a week with me gets a lot more attention.

wwweston 4y ago

I'm now just coming into my 6th year and 2nd job that have been largely remote work, and while I can relate to the issues with the blurred boundaries between work and life... I'm still in the honeymoon period. I've probably been lucky that both the teams I've worked with have been small enough to get to know and strong at mixing async messaging, video calls, and occasional facetime to good effect for both coordination and camaraderie. Not everyone is set up that way; I can think of some previous off-site contract gigs I had which didn't fit that description and your downsides match my experience more closely there. Overall, though, whether in-office or remote the worst work/life balance issues have always come from sheer workload more than anything else. If that's addressed remote work doesn't make it worse, just changes the moment to moment tradeoffs, and the gains from being able to flexibly context shift and not having to manage commutes are alone so strong I wouldn't want to give it up. Social isolation is a problem I'm willing to solve for myself (and at some level have to anyway).