4 ms·

It's fascinating to me that "work from home" for many really means, "work from anywhere but the same place your coworkers are." Comments about "separate buildi

It's fascinating to me that "work from home" for many really means, "work from anywhere but the same place your coworkers are." Comments about "separate buildings" and "renting office space" kind of underscores the real value wfh provides; less human interaction. The only problem with that is human interaction actually ends up making much work easier, not harder.

lolinder 3y ago
Separate building on the same property is still very much "from home"—you have no commute, can eat lunch with your family, could invite the dog in if you want, can do laundry during breaks, etc. Renting office space less so, but it still provides another key benefit to remote work: you can live anywhere. Office space doesn't have to be in a high rise, it can be unused commercial space in a suburb or even in a small town. If you don't like remote work that's fine, but there's not much point in posting your caricatures of remote work on a thread filled with people who enjoy working remotely.
- WendyTheWillow 3y ago
  It's hardly a caricature, when you realize that by working remotely, you're asking someone else to pay the costs of you not being in the room. Maybe for some it's fine, and that's what your manager can do for you, but if you're WFH and your whole team isn't, the cost is shifted to someone else. But for workplaces that presume WFH is cost-free and all benefits, someone there is suffering on behalf of the people who WFH.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    You talk as though most people who work from home are doing so as an exception to the rule— maybe that's how it is in your organization, but by now most companies have established official policies for WFH. Mine decided to go fully remote, others demanded a returned to the office, and others set up a hybrid system. If your company landed somewhere on that spectrum that you're unhappy with, that sucks, but that suggests it's time to get a new job, not bitterly caricature your co-workers as only wanting to work remotely in order to avoid interacting with you.
  - faeriechangling 3y ago
    There’s plenty of costs the work in office crowd are shifting as well. Look at the hit the economy took from people not being prepared to work from home during a pandemic. Look at how offices inflate the prices of everything surrounding them and artificially force densification. Look at the environmental catastrophe office culture has caused through commuting. The work in office crowd also forcibly shifts costs onto their coworkers by forcing them into the office under threat of firing, but the inverse never happens. I have a disability and had a legal entitlement to WFH for years which was routinely denied as a result of fraud where HR departments would claim undue hardship regardless of legitimacy. Since COVID this no longer flies as there is abundant proof that employers can in fact perform such accommodations trivially in many cases. Work in office cost shifting was enforced through force and crime, so I have little sympathy for complaints of the costs of the work from home crowd voluntarily doing what they prefer to do.
    - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
      "Work from office" is just "work". That's the default; you go somewhere, provide value in exchange for money, and go home. There was no "shifting" unless you mean pre-capitalistic agrarian societies where "work" meant doing literally everything yourself.
      - faeriechangling 3y ago
        I do go somewhere - I go to my home office. I have an entire formal written agreement which stipulates that I am to work from this location, and not other locations. If I’m stuck in a different city - tough luck - I need to haul ass back home. This is a location where I have expended great effort in creating a productive and specialized workspace engineered to deal with personal medical issues largely using money out of my own pocket. I went to this expense, not just to benefit myself, but out of a sincere desire to be as productive as possible at my job.
        WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        Oh well if it's formal, that suddenly makes it totally okay and therefore nobody is paying for you to do that in extra effort... My point is that in situations like yours, there's always a loser, and they often don't get a choice. You're benefitting, but the people you have an agreement with have passed the cost of keeping you in the loop and productive onto someone else, and that someone else can't decide to end remote work for you if the burden it too high.
dudul 3y ago
"Work from home" is an unfortunately inaccurate label for "work from anywhere the f you want". As for the whole muh'productivity, I feel like we've beaten this horse to death many times over the past few years. The only reasonable answer is: YMMV.
Marsymars 3y ago
For me, it's the commute that's unbearable. When I was younger, I'd move so that I could walk to work. Now I'm married, and own a house full of things, so that isn't really practical any longer. I'd still happily physically work anywhere that's within a short walk of my house.

lolinder 3y ago

Separate building on the same property is still very much "from home"—you have no commute, can eat lunch with your family, could invite the dog in if you want, can do laundry during breaks, etc. Renting office space less so, but it still provides another key benefit to remote work: you can live anywhere. Office space doesn't have to be in a high rise, it can be unused commercial space in a suburb or even in a small town. If you don't like remote work that's fine, but there's not much point in posting your caricatures of remote work on a thread filled with people who enjoy working remotely.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago
It's hardly a caricature, when you realize that by working remotely, you're asking someone else to pay the costs of you not being in the room. Maybe for some it's fine, and that's what your manager can do for you, but if you're WFH and your whole team isn't, the cost is shifted to someone else. But for workplaces that presume WFH is cost-free and all benefits, someone there is suffering on behalf of the people who WFH.
- lolinder 3y ago
  You talk as though most people who work from home are doing so as an exception to the rule— maybe that's how it is in your organization, but by now most companies have established official policies for WFH. Mine decided to go fully remote, others demanded a returned to the office, and others set up a hybrid system. If your company landed somewhere on that spectrum that you're unhappy with, that sucks, but that suggests it's time to get a new job, not bitterly caricature your co-workers as only wanting to work remotely in order to avoid interacting with you.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  There’s plenty of costs the work in office crowd are shifting as well. Look at the hit the economy took from people not being prepared to work from home during a pandemic. Look at how offices inflate the prices of everything surrounding them and artificially force densification. Look at the environmental catastrophe office culture has caused through commuting. The work in office crowd also forcibly shifts costs onto their coworkers by forcing them into the office under threat of firing, but the inverse never happens. I have a disability and had a legal entitlement to WFH for years which was routinely denied as a result of fraud where HR departments would claim undue hardship regardless of legitimacy. Since COVID this no longer flies as there is abundant proof that employers can in fact perform such accommodations trivially in many cases. Work in office cost shifting was enforced through force and crime, so I have little sympathy for complaints of the costs of the work from home crowd voluntarily doing what they prefer to do.
  - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
    "Work from office" is just "work". That's the default; you go somewhere, provide value in exchange for money, and go home. There was no "shifting" unless you mean pre-capitalistic agrarian societies where "work" meant doing literally everything yourself.
    - faeriechangling 3y ago
      I do go somewhere - I go to my home office. I have an entire formal written agreement which stipulates that I am to work from this location, and not other locations. If I’m stuck in a different city - tough luck - I need to haul ass back home. This is a location where I have expended great effort in creating a productive and specialized workspace engineered to deal with personal medical issues largely using money out of my own pocket. I went to this expense, not just to benefit myself, but out of a sincere desire to be as productive as possible at my job.
      - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        Oh well if it's formal, that suddenly makes it totally okay and therefore nobody is paying for you to do that in extra effort... My point is that in situations like yours, there's always a loser, and they often don't get a choice. You're benefitting, but the people you have an agreement with have passed the cost of keeping you in the loop and productive onto someone else, and that someone else can't decide to end remote work for you if the burden it too high.

dudul 3y ago

"Work from home" is an unfortunately inaccurate label for "work from anywhere the f you want". As for the whole muh'productivity, I feel like we've beaten this horse to death many times over the past few years. The only reasonable answer is: YMMV.

Marsymars 3y ago

For me, it's the commute that's unbearable. When I was younger, I'd move so that I could walk to work. Now I'm married, and own a house full of things, so that isn't really practical any longer. I'd still happily physically work anywhere that's within a short walk of my house.