I’m gonna go against the HN grain here and, despite having been fully for remote work for the first year or so of the pandemic, come out and say that life has really gotten a lot more repetitive and frankly disappointing since covid and the death of the office. I kind of miss meeting people in the office.
I was in the unfortunate position of having moved to a new city for a new tech job where I knew nobody just seven months before the pandemic began and everything was shut down. I was making many friends both inside and outside the office before that time, but during and since the lockdowns I just feel like socializing has become so much harder and my days are just blurred together computer screens. I guess at this point I’m an extroverted introvert, whereas most of HN is very introverted or has pre-existing families/friends to socialize with.
My company is hybrid at the moment and I’m actually writing this from the very empty office. Things just aren’t the same.
I think you're correct, but one thing that is really missing nowadays, especially with phones and the internet, is active communities that exist in real life outside of work. Stuff like the elks lodge, rotary, bowling leagues, etc are just not as common anymore as I believe they used to be. Certainly there are many things that exist, but in a way societally it seems like they don't have very much cache, even as far as for people to opine "only very lonely people go to those".
I tend to think its a good thing for people to have a bit more distance from work, but if we don't figure out ways to fill in that social need, societally, people will find themselves feeling even more isolated than they have been.
Your perspective is actually very common: Working from home isn't for everyone and we should stop pretending like it's the only way to work. A lot of people dislike remote work. Many people like remote work but can't handle it for various reasons.
Internet forums like HN will always overrepresent preferences for remote work because they're biased toward people who enjoy socializing over the internet. Most people don't go online and engage in random discussions. They do it in person, and they like it that way. A random sampling of active HN commenters is going to be much more enthusiastic about remote work than, say, your average junior who relies heavily on organic interactions to grow in an organization.
You can have all the human contact and "it's 6pm - want to go for a beer?" easy socializing that you get from being in a busy office, but simultaneously keep almost all the flexibility and the lack-of-constraints of working from home (...almost - there's usually an expectation that you wear clothes).
In many ways it's even better than office social contact: it decouples that socializing from your job. Want to change company, but keep hanging out with the same people every day? Want to switch offices and meet a whole new social circle without changing jobs? Want to go out from the office for a drink after work with your 'colleagues' with no need to avoid personal topics or keep things professional with your boss?
It does require leaving the house, but for almost everybody there is a coworking space that's significantly quicker to get to you than your current office would be. If you're in a major urban center, you probably have 10s or 100s to choose from. For me, it's a dramatic improvement on both the alternatives.
Well, I think one shouldn’t compare the sudden curfew/lockdown situation determined by COVID with the mores of a finely tuned social machine such as the office.
Given enough time, people would start developing routines and habits around diffused WFH, invest and fine-tune in facilities and services to cater for such a customer base.
Right now we have a lot of stakeholders that just held their breath hoping for a quick return to “normality”.
Indeed, a different organization of our urban spaces would drastic reduce CO2 emissions and land consumption. We should think of it in terms of a sudden opportunity to overcome a local minimum we were stuck in, and search for a new optimum.
I think people like you need a new app, something like Tinder for lunch. I personally have no will to move to a high cost of life area and spend 1+ hour on commune just because my coworkers can’t find friends.
I see many people try and combine these, saying that the current state sucks, therefore WFH sucks.
I’m not saying WFH wouldn’t otherwise suck for you/others, but it’s really hard to separate these two to figure out how different WFH would be without COVID, unless in your particular area, they’ve gone back to business as usual (which I don’t think anywhere truly has, yet).
But in a world where more companies are WFH, and COVID has much less of an impact on everyday life, I think WFH will look a lot different.
Again, my point isn’t that WFH is the greatest thing for everyone and every company, just saying that people that are just now WFH due to COVID should wait until COVID is mostly uneventful before declaring WFH a failure.
I've said this before on Hacker News, and now I wish to repeat, if you live in New York City, I host a once-a-month party, mostly for tech people. Very informal. You can get the vibe from the photos here:
It's simply meant to give people a chance to meet other like minded people. Especially in this era of working-from-home it is too easy to end up feeling isolated, so hosting a regular party like this is, I think, a non-stressful way for people to connect.
I mentioned this 78 days ago and 6 people from Hacker News have been attending the most recent 3 parties:
> I’m gonna go against the HN grain here and, despite having been fully for remote work for the first year or so of the pandemic, come out and say that life has really gotten a lot more repetitive and frankly disappointing since covid and the death of the office. I kind of miss meeting people in the office.
There's a big difference between 'remote work' and 'forced to work from home due to a global pandemic'.
I went to the office to work the other day for the first time since February 20th, 2020.
It was great. So quiet, open, well lit, great and comfortable desk and chair, ..
Obviously, I could improve my home office, but in reality my home office is taking space that I otherwise was using before 2/20 and now there's a whole space in my home that is allocated to being a work station instead of what it was before.
A few other people came in, and it was great to talk in person in front of a giant whiteboard.
As others have noted, we're in a pandemic, so everything is off. Even in places that don't have lockdowns or mandates, people are going to be cautious about socializing.
I'm convinced, though, that when the pandemic fades away, we'll see a bifurcation of working styles. The office offers in-person relationships, high-bandwidth communication, and a well-understood management paradigm, at the cost of forcing everybody to live near the office and spend a lot of time commuting. Full-remote offers the ability to live anywhere and no commutes, but shallower relationships and not-very-well understood modes of communication and collaboration. Hybrid offers... not much, as far as I can tell. It's the downsides of in-office and remote. The best you can say about it is that you get to see people in person sometimes and can avoid commuting sometimes. :-/
So we'll see a grand sorting where people that want to be remote find the companies that will let them do that, and the people that want things to go back to normal find the companies that also want that. Then the remote companies spend the next 50 years learning how to really do distributed work, rather than just "like an office, but on Slack and Zoom".
I genuinely miss the office. Being in a different space for work (one that was pretty gorgeous), in a nice part of downtown, able to tap people on the shoulder for quick questions rather than having to ping them over chat, more spontaneous collaboration (right before we went remote again I overheard two people discussing an area I have some expertise in and was able to interject and provide useful insight), extra productivity (I do better when I'm around others working, worse when I am alone), the occasional happy hour, the occasional lunch with others, the not horrible drive where I can jam tunes or listen to podcasts and have some time to myself.
Not being able to do all of that has brought me lower and lower as the months go by. Made a similar comment on reddit and got downvoted into oblivion but this is really how I feel and it really does impact me negatively. I'm sure I'm not the only one, though it does feel like I might be in the minority.
IMHO no even if I've been working from home since 2006 when I became self employed.
What's broken is having to go to the office every single day. In my experience before and after starting to work from home there is an absolute need to work face to face either to create some bonds between the team members or with a customer or in those rare phases when you have to create something and you need to go full speed with brainstorming sessions, talk to people etc. In those cases a physical presence is much more efficient that remote communications.
"What's broken is having to go to the office every single day."
Exactly. The whole remote thing has become kinda like a zero sum game and has 2 sides to it. One that believes it should be remote anywhere for anyone vs the other that is very rigid and wants people in office all the time. The answer is somewhere in the middle and hybrid.
Flexibility to work from home 2-3 days a week would be awesome while you can still come to office if you want to meet/collaborate in person. yes, this rules out people who are not in the same state/country (I have a lot to say about that) but I am ok with that.
Someone is going to pay for that increased efficiency--either your Employer will pay in dollars, or you will pay some opportunity cost. Why should you pay?
After all, there are plenty of things that you could do in your spare time that would make you a more efficient employee. But you wouldn't let your employer tell you to work unpaid for an hour each Monday, preparing for the week. Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. The only difference between those things and commuting is that we've all been conditioned (not in any nefarious way, just by the reality of work in the past) to consider a commute a hard requirement to have a job. But it's not anymore.
Our team has started monthly in-person get togethers. We recently went kayaking and had dinner after. Each month we pick someone to plan the next month's activities and use this as a way to bond and realize we are people, not just online aliases. It's worked pretty well now that vaccines and such are readily available and people are becoming more comfortable with in person stuff.
My friend runs a company that is remote first in the way described here. They have employees all over the world, but they all get together at some random place on the planet (pre-covid) about once every two months.
The employees love it because of all the free trips around the world (and often tie their vacation to the beginning or end of a meeting so they can explore that place on their own) and it's great for the company because they can hire talent all over the world.
It also makes their in person time far more productive because everyone puts effort into planning that time for effectiveness and everyone knows that they only have limited time together and have to make the most of it.
Being forced to travel somewhere random on the planet every two months for work and live out of a hotel room sounds terrible frankly. The company would have to spend lavishly and find exotic / fun locations I think otherwise I'd resent it and quit.
Ultimately the ideal is not a one size fits all solution but different companies developing different cultures remote/hybrid/in person strategies and employees having options. Seems like the big tech companies are all just kind of copying each other and no one is trying to really differentiate themselves here.
Interesting idea. Every two months seems like it could be prohibitively expensive, though, depending on the org. My company has a yearly event that's mandatory for every employee throughout the country, and a common complaint is just how much it costs to put on. Granted, you could make it cheaper by getting rid of the c-list celebrity MC and free drinks, but renting a space for 1500 people, paying for travel, getting hotel rooms, etc, is all costly.
It's been all virtual for the past two years, and I genuinely wonder how much they've saved that way. It's also much more bearable for this introvert ... I despise that stupid event and resent having to attend. :P
Co-locating with your coworkers isn't a broken way of working, per se, but the majority of our cities are not designed for work/life balance.
If the office is a 5 minute walk, I have absolutely no problem going in and staying until the usefulness of being together is exhausted for the day. When the commute is an hour plus in traffic, that's gonna be a no from me dawg.
Add on to that the fact that some regions have been major winners the last decade while others are major losers, means that people stuck in "loser" regions may have better remote prospects than local prospects.
When I had a mostly-remote job, I solved the traffic issue by coming in at 10am and leaving at 3pm on the days I'd visit the office. 2 days of that a week was enough to maintain contact, go to lunch with folks and handle any obligate in-person meetings.
I’ll echo a bit what others say. I like the office.
A separate space, where I don’t pay for power, where colleagues can drop in on me, where the space is centred on peace and there are subtle conveniences like vending machines.
I like it.
But I’m not willing to commute 30+ minutes each way of my own time for that.
And I’m not willing to sit in one of those battery farm open offices.
Being able to control my own audial/visual environment has done wonderful things to my focus, productivity and mood.
I’m much less bitter as a person now, I know another person who is also perceptibly less bitter.
All you need to know about requiring work from an office is this: the people selling the supposed benefits of increased collaboration, creativity, and productivity do not themselves work this way. There is no CEO or VC who spends their entire day sitting in a cubicle, even if they have a token one.
Yes, something tells me Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t spend much time in his cubicle. He also has the peace of mind of knowing that whenever he feels like it, he can have any of a number of places on campus all to himself. So going to work in a cubicle/public space isn’t nearly the same psychological experience for him that it is for regular workers there.
That is worth mentioning, but it is far from 'all you need to know'. My job role is completely different from the CEO of my company, so I wouldn't expect them to work in the same environment I do. If my CEO's job entailed sitting in a cubicle all day I'd find another company to work for.
This really isn't true, or at least not of many CEOs. The classic being Andy Grove, but many others have also sat in cubes with the rest of the workers:
===
Back in 1995, a BusinessWeek profile of Grove said he sat in a cube "precisely to eliminate barriers between chief executive and staff. When he is around, anybody can stop by and bend his ear, even to tell him he screwed up on a decision. There's no fear of getting fired -- Grove encourages what he calls 'constructive confrontation.' "
Well, their output is measured differently too, so I'd expect their work actions and locations to be different. If the ceo was expected to produce output that was suited to working in a cubicle, they would do that, but that's not how their output is measured.
The biggest problem with working from home, especially as it exists in the last 18 months, is that it ruins the entire work/life separation thing.
For a long time, large companies like Google and Facebook bribed employees to basically live at work with an influx of perks. Free laundry. Nap rooms. Catered meals. The whole point is for you to never leave so you’ll work more. I think most of us can agree that is unhealthy and not good for the employee.
So now we’ve traded that for you work from home, but still don’t get to disconnect from work. So you don’t have the commute or the dress code stuff and potentially fewer meetings, but you’re always on call. You’re expected to work more. Your house is now your office (and plenty of us don’t live in places with room for a wholly isolated workspace, especially if two people are working from home). And you’ve given up the social interaction that makes going into an office really nice for plenty of people.
Obviously, ever is a good and healthy way to do remote work. I’m not disputing that. What I will dispute is that the way most companies have optimized for remote work over the last 18 months is the wrong way and I have zero faith that any of the organizations will adjust themselves to do it the right way.
So for me, if the choice is to have little work/life balance but at least have more room at my house and social interaction at work — or to literally live and work in the same cramped space without human interaction, I’ll take the office.
some people (like me) don't have separation of work/life balance. I get emails 24 hours a day. Markets move every second from sunday evening until friday afternoon. I'm constantly on my phone or in front of my computer.
So I would rather do this while sitting in comfortable sweatpants at home rather than wasting 3 hours getting dressed, commuting, etc. to do the exact same thing I would be doing anyway. Plus I get to eat healthier food, save money on food, clean my place more, spend time with family more, go workout when there's a lull in the markets, etc.
So while for some work/life balance is better with a separation, for me and many others, work/life balance is drastically improved by not going into the office
My impression from previous discussions is that people like what they like whether it's remote or in office and there isn't a lot of convincing that we can do to each other.
Given the above, how do companies move forward? Make some % of your employees unhappy because they're either dragged back into the office or forced to work without one? Hybrid models? They seem like the worst of everything and they don't look like a stable solution. Maybe through quitting everyone reorganises themselves into the type of company they want (remote or in-office) and then everyone is happy?
Judging by the historic job changing trends in the last few months, I think your suggestion that "through quitting everyone reorganizes themselves" is already happening.
The only question that remains to be answered is whether remote or in-office companies have structural advantages over the other type, and it will probably take a decade or so before there's enough data to conclusively call it.
What's so wrong with letting every employee make their own choice? Then, after 6 months or a year or whatever (to get everyone a chance to get used to it and be confident in their selection), survey everyone to find out who wants to keep working from home. Those that don't - allocate them a desk in an office. Add some additional hoteling desks for travelers or normal WFHers who need to visit, and then adjust the size of your office space to match.
I think individual employees are just figuring it out themselves. The free market can solve this issue autonomously. This causes a lot of short term pain for the companies themselves, but who cares? They're not even sentient beings.
Remote work is a sink. If even 30% of people are remote everything must adapt to remote-first, and a 70% full office is not really useful, it s like a work during august. So inevitably things will adjust to 98% remote over time. so knowledge based work should prepare for remote-first
Shoutout to everyone who keeps reading about the woes of home office, but has to work in hospitals, factories, warehouses, or drive a truck.
I enjoy my home office tremendously, but it's still kinda surreal to me how we can all sit at home with our laptops and that somehow keeps the economy going - as if our jobs hadn't been abstract and hyper-specialized already, now some people don't even leave their bed to work.
Not going back to the office seems pretty split around age lines to me. Most people in their mid thirties and up want to keep WFH full time. Early thirties is a mix, and then all the ways down from there seems like they want to be back in the office. Of course this isn’t a hard rule but continues to be my observation across a few workplaces and from friends and acquaintances.
As someone who initially missed the office, went back as soon as they offered that option, then promptly stopped going back to the office, what I realized is that I was relying on the office for social interaction. Living with roommates who are also remote is honestly ideal for this. Remote life has given me flexibility I couldn’t imagine sacrificing now for any job.
It depends on the nature of your work imo. Sometimes you need key tools or infrastructure that cannot physically be in your home, like a mechanic's shop. If you are just working on a computer in an office, however, there's no point to ever coming in just to work on a computer in this particular location vs your home or elsewhere. Internal team meetings seem more productive on zoom than dragging everyone into a conference room in my experience. Use the commuting hours for your own free time instead instead of volunteering them to your employer for free, since in commuting out of pocket, you are subsidizing their costs to bring in the labor they need to their workplace to do their work for their client (note how any contractor will take note of and bill you for travel time, but employees are expected to front it themselves).
If you work in something more client facing, you'd probably benefit a lot more from stuff like in person slide decks in front of clients you flew in and are accommodating, and other corporate schmoozing and boozing that is just impossible and awkward on zoom or any other electronic platform.
Living in Maui, I have a remote job (my agency/consultancy) and a job doing fun stuff (driving people to Hana, Haleakala OR working on a whalewatching boat). I am setting up residual income streams to save for my own property here.
I have a startup/movement I am working on as well, freeing up my time from clients to invest more time and money into it.
I'm blessed with the ability to live in a somewhat low COL city, and be within a 10 minute walk to work. When WFH first started I was beyond excited. Working in my pyjamas? Hell yeah.
Fast forward about 12 months and I began longing for the social interaction, and even just the different visual stimulus of having a large open space to walk around and think in.
I don't think there will ever be a true answer to WFH vs. WFO.. But I think opening up that choice to the employee will give numerous benefits to employers in the coming years.
I did the "remote with monthly visits" thing for three and a half years. I honestly didn't mind, there were even some things I liked about it, but it sure as heck isn't for everyone. And then there's the carbon-footprint issue. It was bad enough when it was just me, but having everyone do it (as suggested in the article) would be truly awful.
If you're going to be remote first, be remote first. That means not only people working from home, but a work flow designed for that environment. Written, asynchronous, open. Not big frequent video calls that replicate in-person meetings, augmented by private calls that fill in the gaps but also create/reinforce clique structures (and exacerbate "Zoom fatigue"). Companies that do true remote first can succeed. Companies that do "remote first" as a poor approximation of in-office presence get the worst of both worlds.
My theory is that office design and expectations are just broken for tech workers. There's no reason (besides profits) that my office can't be just as comfortable as the spare bedroom I do my work in. There is the broader issue of a commute, but divorcing companies from the worst real-estate markets on the planet would help a lot with that.
There are three real game changers:
- I get to wear more comfortable clothes, and be more comfortable in them. This is a culture problem.
- I have a big, private office (bedroom-sized) with windows and comfortable furniture that I can potentially nap on when I need to.
- I have a private half-bath that I don't have to transit the whole darn building to visit. Public bathrooms are terribly unpleasant, but I also don't want to have to break my flow by getting caught by a coworker who wants to chat about whatever.
If my work office could solve these aspects, I would prefer it over my home office every day.
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ancalagon|4 years ago|reply
I was in the unfortunate position of having moved to a new city for a new tech job where I knew nobody just seven months before the pandemic began and everything was shut down. I was making many friends both inside and outside the office before that time, but during and since the lockdowns I just feel like socializing has become so much harder and my days are just blurred together computer screens. I guess at this point I’m an extroverted introvert, whereas most of HN is very introverted or has pre-existing families/friends to socialize with.
My company is hybrid at the moment and I’m actually writing this from the very empty office. Things just aren’t the same.
[+] [-] taurath|4 years ago|reply
I tend to think its a good thing for people to have a bit more distance from work, but if we don't figure out ways to fill in that social need, societally, people will find themselves feeling even more isolated than they have been.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
Internet forums like HN will always overrepresent preferences for remote work because they're biased toward people who enjoy socializing over the internet. Most people don't go online and engage in random discussions. They do it in person, and they like it that way. A random sampling of active HN commenters is going to be much more enthusiastic about remote work than, say, your average junior who relies heavily on organic interactions to grow in an organization.
[+] [-] pimterry|4 years ago|reply
You can have all the human contact and "it's 6pm - want to go for a beer?" easy socializing that you get from being in a busy office, but simultaneously keep almost all the flexibility and the lack-of-constraints of working from home (...almost - there's usually an expectation that you wear clothes).
In many ways it's even better than office social contact: it decouples that socializing from your job. Want to change company, but keep hanging out with the same people every day? Want to switch offices and meet a whole new social circle without changing jobs? Want to go out from the office for a drink after work with your 'colleagues' with no need to avoid personal topics or keep things professional with your boss?
It does require leaving the house, but for almost everybody there is a coworking space that's significantly quicker to get to you than your current office would be. If you're in a major urban center, you probably have 10s or 100s to choose from. For me, it's a dramatic improvement on both the alternatives.
[+] [-] eecc|4 years ago|reply
Given enough time, people would start developing routines and habits around diffused WFH, invest and fine-tune in facilities and services to cater for such a customer base.
Right now we have a lot of stakeholders that just held their breath hoping for a quick return to “normality”.
Indeed, a different organization of our urban spaces would drastic reduce CO2 emissions and land consumption. We should think of it in terms of a sudden opportunity to overcome a local minimum we were stuck in, and search for a new optimum.
[+] [-] LudwigNagasena|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jader201|4 years ago|reply
I see many people try and combine these, saying that the current state sucks, therefore WFH sucks.
I’m not saying WFH wouldn’t otherwise suck for you/others, but it’s really hard to separate these two to figure out how different WFH would be without COVID, unless in your particular area, they’ve gone back to business as usual (which I don’t think anywhere truly has, yet).
But in a world where more companies are WFH, and COVID has much less of an impact on everyday life, I think WFH will look a lot different.
Again, my point isn’t that WFH is the greatest thing for everyone and every company, just saying that people that are just now WFH due to COVID should wait until COVID is mostly uneventful before declaring WFH a failure.
[+] [-] lkrubner|4 years ago|reply
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/everyone-was-amazing-...
It's simply meant to give people a chance to meet other like minded people. Especially in this era of working-from-home it is too easy to end up feeling isolated, so hosting a regular party like this is, I think, a non-stressful way for people to connect.
I mentioned this 78 days ago and 6 people from Hacker News have been attending the most recent 3 parties:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27952414
You can text me at 434 825 7694
[+] [-] outworlder|4 years ago|reply
There's a big difference between 'remote work' and 'forced to work from home due to a global pandemic'.
[+] [-] foobiekr|4 years ago|reply
It was great. So quiet, open, well lit, great and comfortable desk and chair, ..
Obviously, I could improve my home office, but in reality my home office is taking space that I otherwise was using before 2/20 and now there's a whole space in my home that is allocated to being a work station instead of what it was before.
A few other people came in, and it was great to talk in person in front of a giant whiteboard.
[+] [-] cwp|4 years ago|reply
I'm convinced, though, that when the pandemic fades away, we'll see a bifurcation of working styles. The office offers in-person relationships, high-bandwidth communication, and a well-understood management paradigm, at the cost of forcing everybody to live near the office and spend a lot of time commuting. Full-remote offers the ability to live anywhere and no commutes, but shallower relationships and not-very-well understood modes of communication and collaboration. Hybrid offers... not much, as far as I can tell. It's the downsides of in-office and remote. The best you can say about it is that you get to see people in person sometimes and can avoid commuting sometimes. :-/
So we'll see a grand sorting where people that want to be remote find the companies that will let them do that, and the people that want things to go back to normal find the companies that also want that. Then the remote companies spend the next 50 years learning how to really do distributed work, rather than just "like an office, but on Slack and Zoom".
[+] [-] gaoshan|4 years ago|reply
Not being able to do all of that has brought me lower and lower as the months go by. Made a similar comment on reddit and got downvoted into oblivion but this is really how I feel and it really does impact me negatively. I'm sure I'm not the only one, though it does feel like I might be in the minority.
[+] [-] pmontra|4 years ago|reply
What's broken is having to go to the office every single day. In my experience before and after starting to work from home there is an absolute need to work face to face either to create some bonds between the team members or with a customer or in those rare phases when you have to create something and you need to go full speed with brainstorming sessions, talk to people etc. In those cases a physical presence is much more efficient that remote communications.
[+] [-] codegeek|4 years ago|reply
Exactly. The whole remote thing has become kinda like a zero sum game and has 2 sides to it. One that believes it should be remote anywhere for anyone vs the other that is very rigid and wants people in office all the time. The answer is somewhere in the middle and hybrid.
Flexibility to work from home 2-3 days a week would be awesome while you can still come to office if you want to meet/collaborate in person. yes, this rules out people who are not in the same state/country (I have a lot to say about that) but I am ok with that.
[+] [-] marcusverus|4 years ago|reply
After all, there are plenty of things that you could do in your spare time that would make you a more efficient employee. But you wouldn't let your employer tell you to work unpaid for an hour each Monday, preparing for the week. Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. The only difference between those things and commuting is that we've all been conditioned (not in any nefarious way, just by the reality of work in the past) to consider a commute a hard requirement to have a job. But it's not anymore.
Your time is a commodity. Why give it away?
[+] [-] jseban|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notyourwork|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|4 years ago|reply
The employees love it because of all the free trips around the world (and often tie their vacation to the beginning or end of a meeting so they can explore that place on their own) and it's great for the company because they can hire talent all over the world.
It also makes their in person time far more productive because everyone puts effort into planning that time for effectiveness and everyone knows that they only have limited time together and have to make the most of it.
[+] [-] fullshark|4 years ago|reply
Ultimately the ideal is not a one size fits all solution but different companies developing different cultures remote/hybrid/in person strategies and employees having options. Seems like the big tech companies are all just kind of copying each other and no one is trying to really differentiate themselves here.
[+] [-] mrtranscendence|4 years ago|reply
It's been all virtual for the past two years, and I genuinely wonder how much they've saved that way. It's also much more bearable for this introvert ... I despise that stupid event and resent having to attend. :P
[+] [-] r00fus|4 years ago|reply
Me doing this (after years of 25%+ travel in a different role) would result in a divorce quite quick.
[+] [-] arrosenberg|4 years ago|reply
If the office is a 5 minute walk, I have absolutely no problem going in and staying until the usefulness of being together is exhausted for the day. When the commute is an hour plus in traffic, that's gonna be a no from me dawg.
Add on to that the fact that some regions have been major winners the last decade while others are major losers, means that people stuck in "loser" regions may have better remote prospects than local prospects.
[+] [-] emaginniss|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijit|4 years ago|reply
A separate space, where I don’t pay for power, where colleagues can drop in on me, where the space is centred on peace and there are subtle conveniences like vending machines.
I like it.
But I’m not willing to commute 30+ minutes each way of my own time for that.
And I’m not willing to sit in one of those battery farm open offices.
Being able to control my own audial/visual environment has done wonderful things to my focus, productivity and mood.
I’m much less bitter as a person now, I know another person who is also perceptibly less bitter.
[+] [-] nzmsv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downandout|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 01100011|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] compiler-guy|4 years ago|reply
===
Back in 1995, a BusinessWeek profile of Grove said he sat in a cube "precisely to eliminate barriers between chief executive and staff. When he is around, anybody can stop by and bend his ear, even to tell him he screwed up on a decision. There's no fear of getting fired -- Grove encourages what he calls 'constructive confrontation.' "
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/03...
[+] [-] malaya_zemlya|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mgkimsal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filmgirlcw|4 years ago|reply
For a long time, large companies like Google and Facebook bribed employees to basically live at work with an influx of perks. Free laundry. Nap rooms. Catered meals. The whole point is for you to never leave so you’ll work more. I think most of us can agree that is unhealthy and not good for the employee.
So now we’ve traded that for you work from home, but still don’t get to disconnect from work. So you don’t have the commute or the dress code stuff and potentially fewer meetings, but you’re always on call. You’re expected to work more. Your house is now your office (and plenty of us don’t live in places with room for a wholly isolated workspace, especially if two people are working from home). And you’ve given up the social interaction that makes going into an office really nice for plenty of people.
Obviously, ever is a good and healthy way to do remote work. I’m not disputing that. What I will dispute is that the way most companies have optimized for remote work over the last 18 months is the wrong way and I have zero faith that any of the organizations will adjust themselves to do it the right way.
So for me, if the choice is to have little work/life balance but at least have more room at my house and social interaction at work — or to literally live and work in the same cramped space without human interaction, I’ll take the office.
[+] [-] The_Beta|4 years ago|reply
So I would rather do this while sitting in comfortable sweatpants at home rather than wasting 3 hours getting dressed, commuting, etc. to do the exact same thing I would be doing anyway. Plus I get to eat healthier food, save money on food, clean my place more, spend time with family more, go workout when there's a lull in the markets, etc.
So while for some work/life balance is better with a separation, for me and many others, work/life balance is drastically improved by not going into the office
[+] [-] zmmmmm|4 years ago|reply
I actually think this is going to be an interesting aspect : it will significantly affect the demand for housing with separated work/living areas.
[+] [-] kdamken|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstx1|4 years ago|reply
Given the above, how do companies move forward? Make some % of your employees unhappy because they're either dragged back into the office or forced to work without one? Hybrid models? They seem like the worst of everything and they don't look like a stable solution. Maybe through quitting everyone reorganises themselves into the type of company they want (remote or in-office) and then everyone is happy?
What options do we have here?
[+] [-] DylanBohlender|4 years ago|reply
The only question that remains to be answered is whether remote or in-office companies have structural advantages over the other type, and it will probably take a decade or so before there's enough data to conclusively call it.
[+] [-] dave78|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1270018080|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UweSchmidt|4 years ago|reply
I enjoy my home office tremendously, but it's still kinda surreal to me how we can all sit at home with our laptops and that somehow keeps the economy going - as if our jobs hadn't been abstract and hyper-specialized already, now some people don't even leave their bed to work.
[+] [-] Grimm1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willio58|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
If you work in something more client facing, you'd probably benefit a lot more from stuff like in person slide decks in front of clients you flew in and are accommodating, and other corporate schmoozing and boozing that is just impossible and awkward on zoom or any other electronic platform.
[+] [-] rblion|4 years ago|reply
I have a startup/movement I am working on as well, freeing up my time from clients to invest more time and money into it.
Balance is the key to fulfillment, to longevity.
[+] [-] deviation|4 years ago|reply
Fast forward about 12 months and I began longing for the social interaction, and even just the different visual stimulus of having a large open space to walk around and think in.
I don't think there will ever be a true answer to WFH vs. WFO.. But I think opening up that choice to the employee will give numerous benefits to employers in the coming years.
[+] [-] sam0x17|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notacoward|4 years ago|reply
If you're going to be remote first, be remote first. That means not only people working from home, but a work flow designed for that environment. Written, asynchronous, open. Not big frequent video calls that replicate in-person meetings, augmented by private calls that fill in the gaps but also create/reinforce clique structures (and exacerbate "Zoom fatigue"). Companies that do true remote first can succeed. Companies that do "remote first" as a poor approximation of in-office presence get the worst of both worlds.
[+] [-] m10y|4 years ago|reply
There are three real game changers:
- I get to wear more comfortable clothes, and be more comfortable in them. This is a culture problem.
- I have a big, private office (bedroom-sized) with windows and comfortable furniture that I can potentially nap on when I need to.
- I have a private half-bath that I don't have to transit the whole darn building to visit. Public bathrooms are terribly unpleasant, but I also don't want to have to break my flow by getting caught by a coworker who wants to chat about whatever.
If my work office could solve these aspects, I would prefer it over my home office every day.
[+] [-] InternetPerson|4 years ago|reply