12 ms·

I would love to have enough time and money to go to an office to work all day

154 points by jensgk 4y ago

IlPeach 4y ago
The way this was "sold" at my workplace by the CEO reads exactly the same as whichever top executive I've been reading recently since this whole "back to the office push" started. A sad script fed to the masses to justify maintaining the status quo for as long as possible. Because people are seriously stupid.
Clubber 4y ago
>Rattner writes that he thinks virtual commuters have “gone soft” and quotes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as stating that the remote option appeals to individuals who don’t want to “hustle” as much as they should. Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss. The marketplace is talking, are you listening? Nope. Oh and Jamie Dimon, looking for some more bailouts? I guess by hustle you mean begging to CYA. >Americans’ “work ethic” is lacking, Rattner says, especially in comparison to that of the Chinese, which he describes as “extraordinary.” (Rattner did not respond to a request, passed to him through the Times, to discuss his piece.) You mean the workers that are practically forced labor? Good one. I'll bet you'd love to go back to the good ole slave days, huh? Maybe corporations shouldn't have given away all their IP to make a buck, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in with the supply chain. Keep up that hustle. Nope, corporations got worse and worse, paid less and less compared to the cost of living, and people finally had enough. I think that's what's happening. The ones that allow work from home will have a much higher chance of survival than the ones that buy your rhetoric. I'll bet people will be more willing to go back if they had their own offices instead of the travesty that is "open office." "Better for communication!" Ya right. Do that and maybe you'll get some bites. Anyway, working at home and loving it.
- eat 4y ago
  > Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss. Couldn't agree more. It's almost comical how these owners and managers are resorting to juvenile, schoolyard bully tactics against workers who are finally standing up for themselves and demanding more. "Aw, you won't eat that bug? It's because you're scared isn't it? Wow, I didn't know you were so such a scaredey-cat!" "Aw, 2 hours a day is too much to commute? Sounds like you don't even wanna work. Wow, I didn't know you were so lazy!"
- tayo42 4y ago
  Those quotes you picked are so enraging. Were living at the mercy of psychopaths here in the US
- AHOHA 4y ago
  Yep, left my job a couple weeks ago primarily for that non sense, mandating going back 5 days a week 9-5 AND in an “open office” where I can’t focus 5 minutes straight..
Zetice 4y ago
[flagged]
- sudopluto 4y ago
  yet aging countries are toying with the idea of subsidizing childcare? choosing to have children shouldn't be so heavily penalized, especially since it's a biological and (cultural, in many cases) imperative
- sshine 4y ago
  > I just can't muster up the empathy he seems to be expecting. He isn't expecting empathy for having kids. He's making an equation that says: The cost of child care is so high that if you work from home and handle your children with flexible working hours, it is hard for him to find a job that requires him to be in the office and will compensate him the cost of child care he cannot perform himself. So even if in-office jobs paid more, it would unlikely be worth it to him. What he doesn't explicitly say is: He's got an incredible privilege. Not everyone has a skill or a negotiation ability that lets you pick a remote job always. So not only does he save the $40k per year in child care, he probably earns quite well on his remote job, compared to the national average who does need to show up at the office.
  - Zetice 4y ago
    The point I'm trying to make here is that it's very possible the answer to the question of, "Why is my life so difficult?" to be, "Ten years ago you made a really bad choice for you and there's no real way around that." That choice, for may, could be the choice to have children, deciding to stay in a HCOL area, going to college (specifically taking out loans to do so) etc. SVB made "safe" bets on 10 yr T notes and it ended up being wrong. Individuals making "safe" bets on getting married, going to college, having kids, may also be making bad life choices for them. I think at least we should have that conversation...
    - sshine 4y ago
      Author does not say his life is difficult because of kids. Author says working in office has too high alternative cost because of kids. But it could have been any reason: that time spent flexibly could have gone towards any goal. Using kids tuition is just a flex. Once you can afford to insist on working remote (assuming you want to), you can earn more money because you get 5-15 hours back every week from not commuting and lunch breaking every day.
mxkopy 4y ago
> the remote option appeals to individuals who don’t want to “hustle” as much as they should. Americans’ “work ethic” is lacking It's desperation. Americans are lacking the desperation necessary to endure unnatural commutes and spaces. What these 'people' want are more desperate workers.
- Arrath 4y ago
  Management will find my work ethic is perfectly suitable to the work at hand, my ethic just scales in response to my compensation.
  - P_I_Staker 4y ago
    Idk, I'm payed pretty well, but am still lazy as fuck. I see comments like this on hackernews, but I bet you're still all making 6 figures, or $150+ in SV.
    - Arrath 4y ago
      I'm an outlier, a laborer turned foreman turned field engineer in construction who likes nerdy shit so as I've transitioned to more and more office stuff I found hacker news. :V ...I do make 6 figures, but I still wear steel toes to work?
      - P_I_Staker 4y ago
        How much money would it take for you to actually work? $200k, $150 million thousand. At a certain points it just becomes sloth. Do you really want to be a sloth? Want to eat ants all day? I actually quite like lizards. The crunchy kind.
        Arrath 4y ago
        Oh I do work, quite a bit. All the same I wouldn't mind more money, then I might even consider a house!
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I'm not sure if my situation is a little different as I work for a government contractor. Our WFH situation is now a voluntary hybrid system. If you have a certain level of seniority, or time at the company, you can WFH. They only ask us to come into the office twice a month. While I like working from home in general I tend to find it utterly boring, and go into the office at least one day a week. I find it easier to maintain relationships and stay up to date on projects by talking, and in person works best for me.
- re-thc 4y ago
  Perhaps it hasn't happened where you are but some businesses have been crying about the lack of foot traffic and so 1 thing the government can control is to ask government employees back the office.
- rr808 4y ago
  Yeah I'm in the office 4 or 5 days a week. I love it, couldn't go back to wfh. I have a small apartment and children which makes a difference.
rhaway84773 4y ago
Without talking about WFH vs RTO, I have to comment about the “commute” and the attitudes towards it. Every article discussing this issue imagines the commute to be a static, never changing situation as if it were a law of nature. IOW, even the idea of maybe improving transportation, and housing, so that people can live close to where offices would be located and/or improve transportation options so your commute isn’t a 30 min drive if you’re lucky, but could also be a comfortable and safe bike ride, easy bus transportation in a dedicated lane, or clean and modern subways, isn’t even considered. The real tragedy isn’t WFH vs RTO. The real tragedy is that Americans have built a country where stepping out of your home once a day is a miserable chore to be avoided at all costs if possible.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  In my opinion, my ideal walkable/livable community is the university town. It has everything you need in walking distance. Most people who work in the community live in the community. Public transportation is well-used, to the point cars are often outright forbidden. Lots of greenspace, with good wifi through the whole town. Well managed library and IT infrastructure. Very inclusive and welcoming community, as they are arranged around the idea of incorporating new people into the community on a regular basis. I'm one of those lifers that went to college and never left, now entering my 5th year as a professor. That's a lie -- I had 3 years in industry, and I just hated it. I mean, the people were okay, but "the real world" seems to be a euphemism for having to put up with the shitty systems and communities that everyone else has to. But here's the thing (and sorry to rant for a minute), calling academia an "ivory tower" in contrast to the "real world" is an admission that we have to accept the shitty systems and communities past generations have built for us. Because with all of the craziness in the banking sector and tech sector lately, it's hard to convince me that academia is any more divorced from reality than other large industries out there that are trying to run the world. How is academia any more of an ivory tower than silicon valley? And aren't those silicon valley bankers and billionaires the ones who are trying to shape the world in their image, while crashing banks and laying off hundreds of thousands of people? To me, that is a dark tower, and one we should not be trying to emulate at a country scale; whereas my community, the places I walk, the people I work with every day, the relationships I build with them -- that's the real world. Or at least my world. /r Yes academia is a bubble and unique, but at the same time, that's what allows it to be a place where you can have the things you say you want. Is it sustainable? You know, probably not, but at the same time many of these communities are over a century old. I know my University has plans for sustainable growth for the next 100 years. There's surely still work to do to make such communities more sustainable, less costly to manage, and larger and more widespread. But still, the university town is a model that proves we can at least build walkable communities in America. They definitely exist!
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Once the passions cool and boards realize they could juice EPS by $0.02/share by closing the offices the debate will be over and those that can will be working from home. All data points to increased or equivalent productivity, and “office culture” is not a fiduciary duty, but maximizing shareholder value is.
- cpeterso 4y ago
  Good point: to a board that sees everything through a lense of shareholder value, cost savings from closing an office are quantifiable but "increased productivity and innovation" from RTO is not.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    More importantly boards have a legal obligation to see everything through shareholder value. The fact is there’s plenty of evidence of increased productivity and innovation from letting workers work the way they work best. What’s at issue is senior executives want everyone to value the things that brought them their own success, some nebulous idea of “office culture” and “hustle” and whatever other malarkey that boils down to “work the way I like not the way you like because I’m in charge.” RTO has nothing to do with profit, value, productivity, or any of that. It’s an ideological issue, and boards don’t work on behalf of ideology. In fact in many ways their purpose is to control for ideology interfering with profit and shareholder value creation.
    - AdieuToLogic 4y ago
      Most managers I have observed do not give this topic that depth of thought. The dominate mindset has been, "if I (the manager) do not see you in a seat when and where I expect, then you are not working." If employees work from home, these types of managers feel emasculated. EDIT: a word
- ikrenji 4y ago
  elon musk is once again ahead of the crowd - he simply opted to stop paying for the office space
i-use-nixos-btw 4y ago
There’s another aspect of this, one which has been an issue for centuries and an extreme issue for decades: location. Many cities formed as a result of useful geography. In the UK, at least, that reason is often water-based transport. These locations meant that large scale transport of goods was practical, as well as the ability to have all of the resources necessary to sustain large populations in those areas. In the modern day, at least in the UK, cities are much less practical. Getting anywhere in them is a pain - road links are too busy, rail is extortionate and over-subscribed. And why are they so busy and expensive? Because everyone has to do it. Why? Because that’s where the high paying companies are. Why? Because the way it has always been done. Why? Because… the place has links to good waterways? And what do you do when you get there? The same damn thing you’d do at home, but in a noisier and less comfortable environment. You can speak to the same people you could huddle with in Slack, except there’s no mute button. You’re bombarded with a brightly lit, white, open plan room, which could only ever have been popularised by people who don’t understand what a productive environment actually is. Like many on here, because we have a certain affinity for the tech sector, I have ADHD. I am extremely productive when I’m in an environment that allows me to shut out everything else and focus on what I need to do. Working from home unleashed a level of productivity I wasn’t aware that I was capable of, and once you’ve got that buzz - you aren’t going to let go of it without resistance.
- throw-ru-938 4y ago
  Being close to many people is a draw in itself. I'm sure I just don't understand something, but all these pro-WFH arguments here at HN give me almost hikikomori vibes.
  - derstander 4y ago
    > … all these pro-WFH arguments here at HN give me almost hikikomori vibes. This doesn’t match my experience. I’m a teleworker with a family and the percentage of my life spent interacting with other human beings is much higher than when I was a single person commuting to the office every day, or even a person with a family commuting to the office every day. Sure it’s the same few people instead of the dozen or so in an office and the smattering when I went out at night. But those relationships with the fewer people I interact with now are a good deal stronger than those other cases. I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the current norm of commuting in to an office or other workplace is anomalous in the history of humanity. People certainly had varied and meaningful personal relationships before this. The bulk of humanity weren’t essentially reclusive hermits prior to the start of the rat race. There are certainly benefits and drawbacks to then as now, but people spoke in person with their neighbors, engaged in civic life, found community in their faith, etc. Many of these social outlets have been replaced in bulk for a lot of people by a work social life and a nightlife out at restaurants and bars where relationships may be many but more fleeting. And maybe some of our interpersonal skills have suffered for it. Certainly there are feuds and rivalries of historic proportion before office culture, but I think conflict management is developed more when there are difficult people in your communities that you just need to deal with — think of decades-long neighbors. But I’m sure some of these are my own biases: I went from living in a city and commuting to work to living in a very rural area and mostly teleworking. Do I miss the city? Yes, certainly: arts and entertainment events, cuisines of any kind in walking or public transportation distance, etc. Do I miss going into the office every day? Sometimes: I honestly do like some of my coworkers enough to be real friends with. Am I the American equivalent of a hikikomori? No: I have stronger personal relationships with both family, neighbors, and members of my community than ever before — and certainly than more so than when I commuted to an office every day. I do listen to a lot fewer podcasts and new music without a commute though.
davidgay 4y ago
What these discussions always seem to forget is that WFH is you paying for your office space, i.e., a subsidy (versus the previous status quo) to your employer. That's easy to forget for people in the US where land and housing is cheap, but I'm not convinced that it's so exciting in, e.g., Switzerland where residential land is scarce and expensive.
- Vrondi 4y ago
  I save enough money in gas alone (let alone eating lunches out) to more than make up for this subsidy of me paying for my home office/electricity/Internet. And I also get to not freeze to death in a noisy open plan office all day. It's so much better it's not even a joke.
- humanrebar 4y ago
  Long commutes are also a subsidy to your employer. If employers paid enough for a similar standard of living down the block from the office, that's what everyone would do.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
    Truth. Would employers be ok with long commutes if they had to subsidize the cost of the commute from the time and fuel/wear and tear cost? Suddenly under that hypothetical scenario WFH becomes a lot more attractive
    - re-thc 4y ago
      That mostly never happens. Even in the past when you had to travel, a lot of time is spent packing, going to the airport etc that's never accounted for as a part of your "work hours".
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
        True, but that’s more of a slight against what is culturally billable as work time vs the reality of the intangibles of how much it costs to commute in the employee-employer relationship
000ooo000 4y ago
Is it that time of the week already? When the 1% tell me I'm soft? They would know, after all, living in circumstances just like mine. Does anyone, outside the hustle culture folk, hear this stuff and not just roll their eyes?
- JohnClark1337 4y ago
  [dead]
AdieuToLogic 4y ago
A friend of mine I have worked with for 2+ decades used to love his long commute when he was married and had children in the house. When I asked him why he liked being in a car for over an hour each way, he said: It was the only time he had to himself all day.
- tap-snap-or-nap 4y ago
  Reminds me of the spongebob character. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ck0su859Ps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ck0su859Ps
  - AdieuToLogic 4y ago
    That video is all too appropriate. :-D What gives me flashbacks is the expression on the character's face was eerily familiar.
- Loocid 4y ago
  That's incredibly depressing. I feel like the better solution would be to have an honest conversation with your wife that you need some alone time rather than waste it sitting in traffic.
  - P_I_Staker 4y ago
    Definitely want to be careful not to disparage women, because raising a family can be so difficult, but for a lot of families, this isn't an option. As you said, this is incredibly sad. I don't know the answer or what peoples lives are actually like. I have witnessed friends wives have total meltdowns, because we were playing videogames when she wanted him to be cleaning their already spotless house for relatives... I honestly thought he was going to get stabbed.
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    > an honest conversation with your wife that you need some alone time I've tried that, that definitely doesn't work...
  - 4y ago
FpUser 4y ago
>"...Steven Rattner argued, in a piece called “Is Working From Home Really Working?,” that the increasing prevalence of remote work reflects a change not just in technological capacity and social circumstances but in the United States’ entire attitude toward labor—a change that is “not for the better,” he says, and that “threatens to do long-lasting damage to economic growth and prosperity.” No shit Sherlock. Now please do show me where did I sign to work for "growth and prosperity"? I do not give a flying fuck about it. Never have. Never will. As for his likes the "prosperity" means rich fucktards buying more yachts and owning more of the world while the rest enjoys inflation eating into their money.
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  I assure you that you signed on for that. I'm sorry that you didn't know what you were signing.
  - nisegami 4y ago
    No one signed up for this.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
j45 4y ago
I've started thinking about all work not in the office as distributed work.. .. instead of remote, work from home, virtual, etc. Why? Distributed work seems to convey a higher standard of quality, thought, care in communicating well for the companies trying to do it. While new employees generally do much better starting off at the office and then transitioning to distributed work (they have a chance to learn what the culture of "how we do it here" in person) For those who insist on 100% wfh may be consenting to some employers accepting it and being ok to list the jobs 100% remote to the best value and performance globally, instead of the current pool. Distributed work, that maybe is hybrid may be the best of both worlds.
- Vrondi 4y ago
  This name is interesting. Distributed office locations already happen. Distributed groups could be employee choice, not just employer choice all the time. If several employees happen to live on the same side of a city and want to meet for part of the day in their favorite coffee shop or somewhere to brainstorm on a project together, that ought to count as "in office" time.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Hybrid takes away the benefits of wfh while lowering the productivity of in office. Both parties must spend money on property. Visits to the office become non work days and more social visits. The ability to hire better developers disappears.
  - re-thc 4y ago
    Hybrid is when management wants onsite but doesn't want to risk it all yet. If they ever get the chance they'll add more days required in the office as time goes by.
  - j45 4y ago
    That might be, hybrid can work well for non developer roles. Startups typically work better and faster in person too. To be clear , I’ve worked remotely for the better part of 10-15 years. To help tip things towards the flexibility I like, I invest and make sure my own setup is much more productive than anything I’ll be provided. The pandemic shift to egg was a non issue for me, I felt like the world came to me. Still, an in person component at one time or another has been indispensable to make things much easier - be it roll out, training, or upfront discovery. People are much more open to change or collaboration when you’ve got a foundation of some kind in person even if it’s team building.
rcpt 4y ago
> Prosperity per se has grown, but the gains have been sucked up by top earners Noooo! High income people are not sucking money out of other workers. It's landlords and property owners who reap the benefits of progress in today's world.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  "Top Earners" is C levels, not workers. Even a high level google coder doesn't compare with average bigco CEO compensation.
klooney 4y ago
> I read Rattner’s piece on my phone while walking from my car to my son’s 2:30 p.m. elementary school pickup Please stop and look where you're going, the news can wait.
- re-thc 4y ago
  The addiction can't.
gtop3 4y ago
I live in an above average COL area, but I would have to pay atleast 6x to have a similar sized home if I were to live within commuting distance from Manhattan or SF/Palo Alto. Not to mention the other expenses that would rise, with increased tax liability being about as significant as the child care number presented in the article. Those of us that left the cities had the opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of dollars since 03/20. I'll look into commuting if the compensation exceeds the savings.
- paulcole 4y ago
  Then don’t look for a similar size home? Look for one that’s much smaller and fits your budget. Or don’t. I also live in an above average COL area and rent the smallest apartment I could find for a monthly rent of about 1/750th the cost of the single family homes next door. Unless you’re hella wealthy you can’t live in an expensive city and expect the same housing arrangement you’d get in the suburbs. The trade offs are worth it for some people and aren’t for others.
  - foogazi 4y ago
    > Then don’t look for a similar size home? Why not ? the employer gets the full 40 hours
    - paulcole 4y ago
      I’m really struggling how what your employer “gets” has to do with this. Regardless, my point is that anyone who says, “I’d have to pay 6x as much for the same house near Manhattan as in Iowa” has a truly unrealistic view of living near Manhattan. You make do with less space than you’d “like” and get the benefits of living near Manhattan. If that tradeoff isn’t appealing to you, keep the remote job and stay in Iowa.
      - gtop3 4y ago
        Moving to a central office location has real costs associated with it. If I were to live near Manhattan or SV I could spend 6x and get comparative housing, or I spend 2x and live somewhere smaller but adequate. I am in a position that I could do either of those things. I don't want to, because I think it's a bad use of my money. I understand the city has benefits. Been there, done that. I don't have an unrealistic view, I just have preferences, and a detailed understanding how different markets meet my preferences.
JoeMayoBot 4y ago
I think we'll go though a period of adjustment before landing on a few different work arrangements: only office, only home, and some hybrid option in-between. Some companies are born remote and won't ever change. People will either suffer through an arrangement they don't like or quit and move to something that suits them better. I'm independent and most of my work is remote. That said, sometimes I like to take jobs where I'm in the office because it's a different dynamic and occasionally nice to be around other people. So, I'd be happy in a world of more choice on where I worked and the thought of one way to work for everyone is probably outdated.
- Vrondi 4y ago
  This is truly the way. There is no one-size-fits-all that works best for all workers, all companies, all regions/towns.
MagicMoonlight 4y ago
The people telling us we need offices are always the ones who have meaningless jobs like a CEO. Their time in the office consists of saying hello to people and then going to lunch. If they wish to go home at any point, they just ask their chauffeur. It's just not really a fair comparison.

154 points by jensgk 4y ago

The way this was "sold" at my workplace by the CEO reads exactly the same as whichever top executive I've been reading recently since this whole "back to the office push" started. A sad script fed to the masses to justify maintaining the status quo for as long as possible. Because people are seriously stupid.

Clubber 4y ago

>Rattner writes that he thinks virtual commuters have “gone soft” and quotes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as stating that the remote option appeals to individuals who don’t want to “hustle” as much as they should. Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss. The marketplace is talking, are you listening? Nope. Oh and Jamie Dimon, looking for some more bailouts? I guess by hustle you mean begging to CYA. >Americans’ “work ethic” is lacking, Rattner says, especially in comparison to that of the Chinese, which he describes as “extraordinary.” (Rattner did not respond to a request, passed to him through the Times, to discuss his piece.) You mean the workers that are practically forced labor? Good one. I'll bet you'd love to go back to the good ole slave days, huh? Maybe corporations shouldn't have given away all their IP to make a buck, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in with the supply chain. Keep up that hustle. Nope, corporations got worse and worse, paid less and less compared to the cost of living, and people finally had enough. I think that's what's happening. The ones that allow work from home will have a much higher chance of survival than the ones that buy your rhetoric. I'll bet people will be more willing to go back if they had their own offices instead of the travesty that is "open office." "Better for communication!" Ya right. Do that and maybe you'll get some bites. Anyway, working at home and loving it.

eat 4y ago
> Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss. Couldn't agree more. It's almost comical how these owners and managers are resorting to juvenile, schoolyard bully tactics against workers who are finally standing up for themselves and demanding more. "Aw, you won't eat that bug? It's because you're scared isn't it? Wow, I didn't know you were so such a scaredey-cat!" "Aw, 2 hours a day is too much to commute? Sounds like you don't even wanna work. Wow, I didn't know you were so lazy!"
tayo42 4y ago
Those quotes you picked are so enraging. Were living at the mercy of psychopaths here in the US
AHOHA 4y ago
Yep, left my job a couple weeks ago primarily for that non sense, mandating going back 5 days a week 9-5 AND in an “open office” where I can’t focus 5 minutes straight..

Zetice 4y ago

[flagged]

sudopluto 4y ago
yet aging countries are toying with the idea of subsidizing childcare? choosing to have children shouldn't be so heavily penalized, especially since it's a biological and (cultural, in many cases) imperative
sshine 4y ago
> I just can't muster up the empathy he seems to be expecting. He isn't expecting empathy for having kids. He's making an equation that says: The cost of child care is so high that if you work from home and handle your children with flexible working hours, it is hard for him to find a job that requires him to be in the office and will compensate him the cost of child care he cannot perform himself. So even if in-office jobs paid more, it would unlikely be worth it to him. What he doesn't explicitly say is: He's got an incredible privilege. Not everyone has a skill or a negotiation ability that lets you pick a remote job always. So not only does he save the $40k per year in child care, he probably earns quite well on his remote job, compared to the national average who does need to show up at the office.
- Zetice 4y ago
  The point I'm trying to make here is that it's very possible the answer to the question of, "Why is my life so difficult?" to be, "Ten years ago you made a really bad choice for you and there's no real way around that." That choice, for may, could be the choice to have children, deciding to stay in a HCOL area, going to college (specifically taking out loans to do so) etc. SVB made "safe" bets on 10 yr T notes and it ended up being wrong. Individuals making "safe" bets on getting married, going to college, having kids, may also be making bad life choices for them. I think at least we should have that conversation...
  - sshine 4y ago
    Author does not say his life is difficult because of kids. Author says working in office has too high alternative cost because of kids. But it could have been any reason: that time spent flexibly could have gone towards any goal. Using kids tuition is just a flex. Once you can afford to insist on working remote (assuming you want to), you can earn more money because you get 5-15 hours back every week from not commuting and lunch breaking every day.

mxkopy 4y ago

> the remote option appeals to individuals who don’t want to “hustle” as much as they should. Americans’ “work ethic” is lacking It's desperation. Americans are lacking the desperation necessary to endure unnatural commutes and spaces. What these 'people' want are more desperate workers.

Arrath 4y ago
Management will find my work ethic is perfectly suitable to the work at hand, my ethic just scales in response to my compensation.
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  Idk, I'm payed pretty well, but am still lazy as fuck. I see comments like this on hackernews, but I bet you're still all making 6 figures, or $150+ in SV.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    I'm an outlier, a laborer turned foreman turned field engineer in construction who likes nerdy shit so as I've transitioned to more and more office stuff I found hacker news. :V ...I do make 6 figures, but I still wear steel toes to work?
    - P_I_Staker 4y ago
      How much money would it take for you to actually work? $200k, $150 million thousand. At a certain points it just becomes sloth. Do you really want to be a sloth? Want to eat ants all day? I actually quite like lizards. The crunchy kind.
      - Arrath 4y ago
        Oh I do work, quite a bit. All the same I wouldn't mind more money, then I might even consider a house!

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I'm not sure if my situation is a little different as I work for a government contractor. Our WFH situation is now a voluntary hybrid system. If you have a certain level of seniority, or time at the company, you can WFH. They only ask us to come into the office twice a month. While I like working from home in general I tend to find it utterly boring, and go into the office at least one day a week. I find it easier to maintain relationships and stay up to date on projects by talking, and in person works best for me.

re-thc 4y ago
Perhaps it hasn't happened where you are but some businesses have been crying about the lack of foot traffic and so 1 thing the government can control is to ask government employees back the office.
rr808 4y ago
Yeah I'm in the office 4 or 5 days a week. I love it, couldn't go back to wfh. I have a small apartment and children which makes a difference.

rhaway84773 4y ago

Without talking about WFH vs RTO, I have to comment about the “commute” and the attitudes towards it. Every article discussing this issue imagines the commute to be a static, never changing situation as if it were a law of nature. IOW, even the idea of maybe improving transportation, and housing, so that people can live close to where offices would be located and/or improve transportation options so your commute isn’t a 30 min drive if you’re lucky, but could also be a comfortable and safe bike ride, easy bus transportation in a dedicated lane, or clean and modern subways, isn’t even considered. The real tragedy isn’t WFH vs RTO. The real tragedy is that Americans have built a country where stepping out of your home once a day is a miserable chore to be avoided at all costs if possible.

ModernMech 4y ago
In my opinion, my ideal walkable/livable community is the university town. It has everything you need in walking distance. Most people who work in the community live in the community. Public transportation is well-used, to the point cars are often outright forbidden. Lots of greenspace, with good wifi through the whole town. Well managed library and IT infrastructure. Very inclusive and welcoming community, as they are arranged around the idea of incorporating new people into the community on a regular basis. I'm one of those lifers that went to college and never left, now entering my 5th year as a professor. That's a lie -- I had 3 years in industry, and I just hated it. I mean, the people were okay, but "the real world" seems to be a euphemism for having to put up with the shitty systems and communities that everyone else has to. But here's the thing (and sorry to rant for a minute), calling academia an "ivory tower" in contrast to the "real world" is an admission that we have to accept the shitty systems and communities past generations have built for us. Because with all of the craziness in the banking sector and tech sector lately, it's hard to convince me that academia is any more divorced from reality than other large industries out there that are trying to run the world. How is academia any more of an ivory tower than silicon valley? And aren't those silicon valley bankers and billionaires the ones who are trying to shape the world in their image, while crashing banks and laying off hundreds of thousands of people? To me, that is a dark tower, and one we should not be trying to emulate at a country scale; whereas my community, the places I walk, the people I work with every day, the relationships I build with them -- that's the real world. Or at least my world. /r Yes academia is a bubble and unique, but at the same time, that's what allows it to be a place where you can have the things you say you want. Is it sustainable? You know, probably not, but at the same time many of these communities are over a century old. I know my University has plans for sustainable growth for the next 100 years. There's surely still work to do to make such communities more sustainable, less costly to manage, and larger and more widespread. But still, the university town is a model that proves we can at least build walkable communities in America. They definitely exist!

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Once the passions cool and boards realize they could juice EPS by $0.02/share by closing the offices the debate will be over and those that can will be working from home. All data points to increased or equivalent productivity, and “office culture” is not a fiduciary duty, but maximizing shareholder value is.

cpeterso 4y ago
Good point: to a board that sees everything through a lense of shareholder value, cost savings from closing an office are quantifiable but "increased productivity and innovation" from RTO is not.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  More importantly boards have a legal obligation to see everything through shareholder value. The fact is there’s plenty of evidence of increased productivity and innovation from letting workers work the way they work best. What’s at issue is senior executives want everyone to value the things that brought them their own success, some nebulous idea of “office culture” and “hustle” and whatever other malarkey that boils down to “work the way I like not the way you like because I’m in charge.” RTO has nothing to do with profit, value, productivity, or any of that. It’s an ideological issue, and boards don’t work on behalf of ideology. In fact in many ways their purpose is to control for ideology interfering with profit and shareholder value creation.
  - AdieuToLogic 4y ago
    Most managers I have observed do not give this topic that depth of thought. The dominate mindset has been, "if I (the manager) do not see you in a seat when and where I expect, then you are not working." If employees work from home, these types of managers feel emasculated. EDIT: a word
ikrenji 4y ago
elon musk is once again ahead of the crowd - he simply opted to stop paying for the office space

i-use-nixos-btw 4y ago

There’s another aspect of this, one which has been an issue for centuries and an extreme issue for decades: location. Many cities formed as a result of useful geography. In the UK, at least, that reason is often water-based transport. These locations meant that large scale transport of goods was practical, as well as the ability to have all of the resources necessary to sustain large populations in those areas. In the modern day, at least in the UK, cities are much less practical. Getting anywhere in them is a pain - road links are too busy, rail is extortionate and over-subscribed. And why are they so busy and expensive? Because everyone has to do it. Why? Because that’s where the high paying companies are. Why? Because the way it has always been done. Why? Because… the place has links to good waterways? And what do you do when you get there? The same damn thing you’d do at home, but in a noisier and less comfortable environment. You can speak to the same people you could huddle with in Slack, except there’s no mute button. You’re bombarded with a brightly lit, white, open plan room, which could only ever have been popularised by people who don’t understand what a productive environment actually is. Like many on here, because we have a certain affinity for the tech sector, I have ADHD. I am extremely productive when I’m in an environment that allows me to shut out everything else and focus on what I need to do. Working from home unleashed a level of productivity I wasn’t aware that I was capable of, and once you’ve got that buzz - you aren’t going to let go of it without resistance.

throw-ru-938 4y ago
Being close to many people is a draw in itself. I'm sure I just don't understand something, but all these pro-WFH arguments here at HN give me almost hikikomori vibes.
- derstander 4y ago
  > … all these pro-WFH arguments here at HN give me almost hikikomori vibes. This doesn’t match my experience. I’m a teleworker with a family and the percentage of my life spent interacting with other human beings is much higher than when I was a single person commuting to the office every day, or even a person with a family commuting to the office every day. Sure it’s the same few people instead of the dozen or so in an office and the smattering when I went out at night. But those relationships with the fewer people I interact with now are a good deal stronger than those other cases. I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the current norm of commuting in to an office or other workplace is anomalous in the history of humanity. People certainly had varied and meaningful personal relationships before this. The bulk of humanity weren’t essentially reclusive hermits prior to the start of the rat race. There are certainly benefits and drawbacks to then as now, but people spoke in person with their neighbors, engaged in civic life, found community in their faith, etc. Many of these social outlets have been replaced in bulk for a lot of people by a work social life and a nightlife out at restaurants and bars where relationships may be many but more fleeting. And maybe some of our interpersonal skills have suffered for it. Certainly there are feuds and rivalries of historic proportion before office culture, but I think conflict management is developed more when there are difficult people in your communities that you just need to deal with — think of decades-long neighbors. But I’m sure some of these are my own biases: I went from living in a city and commuting to work to living in a very rural area and mostly teleworking. Do I miss the city? Yes, certainly: arts and entertainment events, cuisines of any kind in walking or public transportation distance, etc. Do I miss going into the office every day? Sometimes: I honestly do like some of my coworkers enough to be real friends with. Am I the American equivalent of a hikikomori? No: I have stronger personal relationships with both family, neighbors, and members of my community than ever before — and certainly than more so than when I commuted to an office every day. I do listen to a lot fewer podcasts and new music without a commute though.

davidgay 4y ago

What these discussions always seem to forget is that WFH is you paying for your office space, i.e., a subsidy (versus the previous status quo) to your employer. That's easy to forget for people in the US where land and housing is cheap, but I'm not convinced that it's so exciting in, e.g., Switzerland where residential land is scarce and expensive.

Vrondi 4y ago
I save enough money in gas alone (let alone eating lunches out) to more than make up for this subsidy of me paying for my home office/electricity/Internet. And I also get to not freeze to death in a noisy open plan office all day. It's so much better it's not even a joke.
humanrebar 4y ago
Long commutes are also a subsidy to your employer. If employers paid enough for a similar standard of living down the block from the office, that's what everyone would do.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  Truth. Would employers be ok with long commutes if they had to subsidize the cost of the commute from the time and fuel/wear and tear cost? Suddenly under that hypothetical scenario WFH becomes a lot more attractive
  - re-thc 4y ago
    That mostly never happens. Even in the past when you had to travel, a lot of time is spent packing, going to the airport etc that's never accounted for as a part of your "work hours".
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
      True, but that’s more of a slight against what is culturally billable as work time vs the reality of the intangibles of how much it costs to commute in the employee-employer relationship

000ooo000 4y ago

Is it that time of the week already? When the 1% tell me I'm soft? They would know, after all, living in circumstances just like mine. Does anyone, outside the hustle culture folk, hear this stuff and not just roll their eyes?

JohnClark1337 4y ago
[dead]

AdieuToLogic 4y ago

A friend of mine I have worked with for 2+ decades used to love his long commute when he was married and had children in the house. When I asked him why he liked being in a car for over an hour each way, he said: It was the only time he had to himself all day.

tap-snap-or-nap 4y ago
Reminds me of the spongebob character. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ck0su859Ps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ck0su859Ps
- AdieuToLogic 4y ago
  That video is all too appropriate. :-D What gives me flashbacks is the expression on the character's face was eerily familiar.
Loocid 4y ago
That's incredibly depressing. I feel like the better solution would be to have an honest conversation with your wife that you need some alone time rather than waste it sitting in traffic.
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  Definitely want to be careful not to disparage women, because raising a family can be so difficult, but for a lot of families, this isn't an option. As you said, this is incredibly sad. I don't know the answer or what peoples lives are actually like. I have witnessed friends wives have total meltdowns, because we were playing videogames when she wanted him to be cleaning their already spotless house for relatives... I honestly thought he was going to get stabbed.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > an honest conversation with your wife that you need some alone time I've tried that, that definitely doesn't work...
- 4y ago

FpUser 4y ago

>"...Steven Rattner argued, in a piece called “Is Working From Home Really Working?,” that the increasing prevalence of remote work reflects a change not just in technological capacity and social circumstances but in the United States’ entire attitude toward labor—a change that is “not for the better,” he says, and that “threatens to do long-lasting damage to economic growth and prosperity.” No shit Sherlock. Now please do show me where did I sign to work for "growth and prosperity"? I do not give a flying fuck about it. Never have. Never will. As for his likes the "prosperity" means rich fucktards buying more yachts and owning more of the world while the rest enjoys inflation eating into their money.

P_I_Staker 4y ago
I assure you that you signed on for that. I'm sorry that you didn't know what you were signing.
- nisegami 4y ago
  No one signed up for this.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

j45 4y ago

I've started thinking about all work not in the office as distributed work.. .. instead of remote, work from home, virtual, etc. Why? Distributed work seems to convey a higher standard of quality, thought, care in communicating well for the companies trying to do it. While new employees generally do much better starting off at the office and then transitioning to distributed work (they have a chance to learn what the culture of "how we do it here" in person) For those who insist on 100% wfh may be consenting to some employers accepting it and being ok to list the jobs 100% remote to the best value and performance globally, instead of the current pool. Distributed work, that maybe is hybrid may be the best of both worlds.

Vrondi 4y ago
This name is interesting. Distributed office locations already happen. Distributed groups could be employee choice, not just employer choice all the time. If several employees happen to live on the same side of a city and want to meet for part of the day in their favorite coffee shop or somewhere to brainstorm on a project together, that ought to count as "in office" time.
ipaddr 4y ago
Hybrid takes away the benefits of wfh while lowering the productivity of in office. Both parties must spend money on property. Visits to the office become non work days and more social visits. The ability to hire better developers disappears.
- re-thc 4y ago
  Hybrid is when management wants onsite but doesn't want to risk it all yet. If they ever get the chance they'll add more days required in the office as time goes by.
- j45 4y ago
  That might be, hybrid can work well for non developer roles. Startups typically work better and faster in person too. To be clear , I’ve worked remotely for the better part of 10-15 years. To help tip things towards the flexibility I like, I invest and make sure my own setup is much more productive than anything I’ll be provided. The pandemic shift to egg was a non issue for me, I felt like the world came to me. Still, an in person component at one time or another has been indispensable to make things much easier - be it roll out, training, or upfront discovery. People are much more open to change or collaboration when you’ve got a foundation of some kind in person even if it’s team building.

rcpt 4y ago

> Prosperity per se has grown, but the gains have been sucked up by top earners Noooo! High income people are not sucking money out of other workers. It's landlords and property owners who reap the benefits of progress in today's world.

mrguyorama 4y ago
"Top Earners" is C levels, not workers. Even a high level google coder doesn't compare with average bigco CEO compensation.

klooney 4y ago

> I read Rattner’s piece on my phone while walking from my car to my son’s 2:30 p.m. elementary school pickup Please stop and look where you're going, the news can wait.

re-thc 4y ago
The addiction can't.

gtop3 4y ago

I live in an above average COL area, but I would have to pay atleast 6x to have a similar sized home if I were to live within commuting distance from Manhattan or SF/Palo Alto. Not to mention the other expenses that would rise, with increased tax liability being about as significant as the child care number presented in the article. Those of us that left the cities had the opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of dollars since 03/20. I'll look into commuting if the compensation exceeds the savings.

paulcole 4y ago
Then don’t look for a similar size home? Look for one that’s much smaller and fits your budget. Or don’t. I also live in an above average COL area and rent the smallest apartment I could find for a monthly rent of about 1/750th the cost of the single family homes next door. Unless you’re hella wealthy you can’t live in an expensive city and expect the same housing arrangement you’d get in the suburbs. The trade offs are worth it for some people and aren’t for others.
- foogazi 4y ago
  > Then don’t look for a similar size home? Why not ? the employer gets the full 40 hours
  - paulcole 4y ago
    I’m really struggling how what your employer “gets” has to do with this. Regardless, my point is that anyone who says, “I’d have to pay 6x as much for the same house near Manhattan as in Iowa” has a truly unrealistic view of living near Manhattan. You make do with less space than you’d “like” and get the benefits of living near Manhattan. If that tradeoff isn’t appealing to you, keep the remote job and stay in Iowa.
    - gtop3 4y ago
      Moving to a central office location has real costs associated with it. If I were to live near Manhattan or SV I could spend 6x and get comparative housing, or I spend 2x and live somewhere smaller but adequate. I am in a position that I could do either of those things. I don't want to, because I think it's a bad use of my money. I understand the city has benefits. Been there, done that. I don't have an unrealistic view, I just have preferences, and a detailed understanding how different markets meet my preferences.

JoeMayoBot 4y ago

I think we'll go though a period of adjustment before landing on a few different work arrangements: only office, only home, and some hybrid option in-between. Some companies are born remote and won't ever change. People will either suffer through an arrangement they don't like or quit and move to something that suits them better. I'm independent and most of my work is remote. That said, sometimes I like to take jobs where I'm in the office because it's a different dynamic and occasionally nice to be around other people. So, I'd be happy in a world of more choice on where I worked and the thought of one way to work for everyone is probably outdated.

Vrondi 4y ago
This is truly the way. There is no one-size-fits-all that works best for all workers, all companies, all regions/towns.

MagicMoonlight 4y ago

The people telling us we need offices are always the ones who have meaningless jobs like a CEO. Their time in the office consists of saying hello to people and then going to lunch. If they wish to go home at any point, they just ask their chauffeur. It's just not really a fair comparison.