[HN Gopher] 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed en...
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37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home
Author : rustoo
Score : 335 points
Date : 2022-03-25 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| lvl102 wrote:
| Wait till they find out 80% of office jobs are redundant.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I know right... If I could go through with (got health issues
| at the time) implementing automation of some stuff, then
| because of me hundreds of people would be out of their jobs...
| or at least that job. It would have saved the company a lot of
| money, too.
| didip wrote:
| The society has a once-a-lifetime opportunity to refactor how it
| can work, but it squandered it.
|
| Imagine if office buildings are no longer necessary. A lot more
| hi-rise apartments can be built, cities can be a lot more dense,
| and light rails can be attractive again.
| chasd00 wrote:
| high rise apartments are really just office buildings. Just
| live at the office, it's pretty much equivalent.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Once again, I am begging HN: this is a misleading title format
| for links to single papers or studies. What is being phrased as
| factual in the headline is merely an assertion in a paper, and
| should be reflected as such. "New paper claims (x)" is
| reasonable. "Study suggests (x)" is also reasonable. "(x)"
| borders on straight up falsehood when it portrays an assertion as
| a new finding about our world.
| lukas099 wrote:
| I think the assumption on HN should be that the title is merely
| what the article author is claiming. So from my perspective
| reading a title like "37% of jobs in the United States can be
| performed entirely at home" is automatically converted to
| "AuthorClaimsThat(37% of jobs in the United States can be
| performed entirely at home)".
| latenightcoding wrote:
| Doesn't that mean a good chunk of those jobs can also be
| outsourced?
| zw123456 wrote:
| For the other 63%, I think an interesting possibility is to use a
| robot Turk machine type of arrangement. Take for example, the
| "flag person" at a road construction site, it is an outdoor job
| and hence would be categorized as not possible to do from home,
| but, one could easily design a very simple machine with a camera
| and the stop/slow sign that could be operated remotely. That
| could actually be safer and lower cost. There are lots of other
| possible examples, window washer, etc.
|
| There is probably some companies working on it already, if not,
| it might be an interesting idea I think.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Imagine the environmental impact of cutting out emissions from
| 37% of commuters for "free". We could do it today. Its been
| proven to work the last 2 years. It's such low hanging fruit it's
| mind boggling!
| bobbean wrote:
| Oh my god, imagine the improvement in traffic for those who do
| have to leave their house for work.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| The effect is compounding too because those people will spend
| less time driving and idling their engines!
| flowersjeff wrote:
| This surprises...nobody? Except maybe bean counters/management
| types that need to show off perhaps.
|
| With that said, I do have concerns. These issues center around a
| shift in benefits offered as a result of this new paradigm ( hate
| using that word but ) around the nature of work. I.e. the gig
| everything economy coming to your job...soon
|
| Many folks in the US work a 9to5 not just for the pay, rather for
| healthcare and stability. However, it's only a matter of time
| that employees will become even more API'ified / made into
| independent contracts / etc. I know that many will welcome the
| flexibility - some though will not understand what this means.
|
| I do wonder how the US will be able to handle this continued move
| away from 'trad' employment, given our rather odd situation of
| one's medical being tied at the hip to one's employer? Those that
| work in other jurisdictions need not fear the loss of a job as
| much as a US citizen. Literally, you could die ( just look at how
| many of those that were made unemployed during the pandemic lost
| access to medical. )
|
| Just my musings...
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I would guess that the gig economy simply can't come for any
| jobs that require significant domain expertise or more than a
| few hour's worth of attention to any single project.
|
| Comparable to how you don't see day laborers doing pipefitting.
| dudul wrote:
| 2 thoughts.
|
| First, "gig workers" can't work across the board. Companies
| working on products often _need_ people to have deep
| understanding of the product. We all know how costly it can be
| to lose say a software engineer who has a few years tenure.
|
| Second, if the gig-economy were to become very widespread, it
| may finally be a push to have a true, sensible market for
| health insurance in the US. If employers no longer pay
| insurance carriers/brokers to cover their employees, these
| carriers will need to come up with products people can afford.
| hooande wrote:
| If there is a large shift toward gig economy work, then the
| healthcare industry will shift as well. There's nothing
| preventing them from offering affordable healthcare to gig
| employees other than the status quo and their current profit
| models.
|
| Something the size of the insurance industry is going to shift
| about 5-10 years after the general market. So if you're worried
| about short term gigification of your job, you might want to
| look into private insurance/benefit options now. Over the long
| term I think it will take care of itself.
| coding123 wrote:
| I think it's dangerous when we look at gigification as a "who
| cares it will work out somehow".
|
| Imagine how up-in-arms if they gigified programming. It has
| already happened in places, but what if they wholesale a
| price per line of code?
|
| This will get a lot of replies but honestly, a codebase that
| is spaghetti from gigification may be cheaper than non-
| spaghetti codebase at 100k - 200k/year * number of developers
| and work just as well for the domain it is in.
|
| If you can put the "it won't work" aside - imagine they
| figure out that it does. That rage right now - how is that
| not applicable to the people getting gigified right now?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| People complain about "gigifiation" because of things that
| has been traditionally tied to employment (health
| insurance, 401k, etc) not the gig part of it. If someone
| figured out how to do it I'd assume most programmers would
| be all over it.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Imagine how up-in-arms if they gigified programming
|
| Programmers would be up in arms in love with gig work and
| demand it everywhere if it turned out to actually work. The
| main problem with WFH is that you still have to work a set
| hours per week, gig work is the ideal. If you want to work
| 80 hours one week and 0 hours the next week you can do so.
| Gig work also means no deadlines, no manager, no long term
| worries, just write code and get instant money and
| feedback. The only reason you don't see developers
| clamoring for gig work right now is that they don't think
| gig work is possible for development.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| akagusu wrote:
| But execs want you to commute because their mindset is to make
| worker's life miserable, and working from home is seem like a
| privilege.
| nikanj wrote:
| Executives work towards a large number of stupid performance
| goals, but worker misery isn't one of them.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Citation needed. I could gesture wildly at everything these
| days. It sure seems like _someone_ is working towards worker
| misery.
| grimjack00 wrote:
| It only seems like they do.
| warning26 wrote:
| Not everyone loves WFH, you know.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I don't mind coming into the office, as needed. What I do
| mind is being _required_ to be someplace daily to assuage the
| ego of of some C-suite stuffed suit.
| agumonkey wrote:
| After covid we have some vague stats and yeah not everybody
| enjoy full remote. But 1) there's a large pool of people that
| do, 2) you can have hybrid 3) unless no other colleague goes
| to the workplace you may enjoy some workplace social context
| 4) we need to reduce energy expenditure and not commuting
| seems like a massive gain.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Right now I do hybrid work and it's great, it's easy to get
| away from the house and work from a nearby city. There's
| little-to-no traffic where I live, so the commute is short
| and enjoyable. If I want after work I can jump in the car
| and drive to the mountains or go pick something up at the
| store, or go see a friend. The car operates on my schedule.
|
| Moving away from this seems like stepping back into the
| 19th century. Usually when I hear people complain about
| cars they live somewhere that's over-crowded with poor road
| infrastructure, traffic, and inflated taxes and energy
| costs. Sure if you live in that scenario maybe commuting
| sucks, but most of the USA isn't like that.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the best remote setups are in low-density
| places with large homes.
|
| People moving from NYC and SF to Wyoming and Austin are
| going to be living in sprawl.
|
| There vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are going to increase:
| after all it's not going to be a lockdown where white
| collar workers stay inside 24/7.
| agumonkey wrote:
| So (honest question), you think people doing remote-
| friendly jobs are in dense urban areas and don't
| contribute to car emission much ? so when these guys
| relocate far away, they're going to switch from public
| transportation to car ?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I don't think this, I know this. Today the Census dropped
| data showing there was a net population loss in SF and
| NYC. If you look at a map of energy use by county (e.g.
| Google image search for "energy by county") it shows
| folks leaving places like NYC and SF are going to
| increase their energy use.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is what is happening. Over the past 2 years, people
| have left cities with solid public transit (SF, Chicago,
| NYC) and have been moving towards car centric areas in
| places like Arizona, Florida, Texas.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Yup. We are reversing a lot of efforts society put into
| reducing sprawl. More and more cookie cutter houses built
| on what was once a forest... taking with it tons of
| wildlife.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This was already happening prior to WFH spurred by
| pandemic. Housing prices were sharply increasing in many
| major cities, causing people to relocate elsewhere due to
| lack of affordable supply.
| busterarm wrote:
| I expect that over time our use of space will adapt to this
| new reality but it will probably take a decade.
|
| I definitely see older or taller office buildings
| renovating and rezoning to become mixed co-working and/or
| living spaces suited to remote work.
|
| Not just that but also I could see commercial space be
| divided up into premium one-person office spaces wired with
| fast internet and set up for video conferencing.
| eropple wrote:
| I hope this is the direction we see, but going from
| offices/commercial to residential is a much heavier lift
| than just zoning. Like, just consider the plumbing
| situation in a reasonably large office building. People
| living there will require more significant renovations
| than just putting up new walls. It is fixable, but it
| isn't cheap, and because it isn't cheap, "will it happen"
| gets some question marks.
| busterarm wrote:
| I'm not discounting any of that. Definitely won't be easy
| and that's why I say about a decade before we really see
| a shift.
| onion2k wrote:
| In my experience, whether or not someone enjoys something is
| largely irrelevant when it comes to work.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| And those people can deal. I dealt with their preferred work
| environment although I didn't love it.
| mostly_harmless wrote:
| and a commercial real estate crash would be bad for the
| company's bottom line
| MSM wrote:
| I see this everywhere but I can't see how it's true.
|
| I'm guessing that a company's largest expenses are (probably
| in order, too): People, Technology, Office space.
|
| Most companies, especially smaller companies, do not actually
| own the office space they are in, they lease it. Commercial
| real estate crashing would greatly reduce one of their top 3
| expenses... how is that bad for the bottom line?
| crent wrote:
| Yeah exactly. If they signed a multi-year lease, they are
| still on the hook for the same amount of money but the
| space won't be used. It might feel bad but it was already
| budgeted for.
| beiller wrote:
| They are paying for space (sometimes beyond 100,000 per
| month) that the competition is not paying. Office space
| is the highest expense.
| Leherenn wrote:
| That sounds weird to me. Our current office can sit 5,
| with conference room, kitchen, ... It costs about 20% of
| an engineer's salary. And we're in one of the most
| expensive place in the world for rent.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Is office space really that cheap?
|
| That actually sounds like a LOT of space compared to a
| 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that would cost quite a
| bit more....
| Animats wrote:
| If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, some day your
| job will be either automated or offshored.
| deafcalculus wrote:
| That's what a lot of people thought in the 2000s, but going by
| SV salaries the automate or offshore story hasn't really played
| out! Then again, horses seem to have lost their job in the
| early 20th century after cars came along, and their population
| just declined thereafter.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You ever wonder why people in old rust belt areas complain
| about "the globalists" all the time?
| jmyeet wrote:
| The lesson here is you can never really predict what will happen.
| This is important to remember when people make any predictions,
| particularly for doom and gloom scenarios.
|
| Take the Black Plague, which killed an estimted 25-50% of the
| population of Europe. For those lucky enough to survive this was
| a huge boon for workers rights and wages [1].
|
| There have no real increase in worker wages in _40 years_ [2].
| The pendulum swings back and forth on any issue and we 've swung
| too far towards unbridled capitalistic exploitation (IMHO). Labor
| organization (ie unions) led to things like a limited work week,
| safety in the workplace and so on. The flipside of that was
| corruption, resistance to change and so on. But ever since the
| farce of the Reagan trickle-down economics era, worker conditions
| have gotten increasingly worse (relatively) while the
| accumulation of wealth at the top is absolutely unprecedented.
|
| So Covid has killed millions and this is of course tragic. But
| who knew that this would be the catalyst for the first real
| increase in wages in decades and the ability to redefine the
| outdated in-person work that wastes so much time on money on
| pointless commutes?
|
| I'm glad that something good is coming out of this.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat....
|
| [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-
| us...
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Working from home is great and all, but do we really want work to
| be within our home? I've been working from home the entire
| pandemic, and I still find it hard to stop working and "be home."
| chasd00 wrote:
| that definitely has to be managed well. I wfh in a room where i
| also do my hobbies and stuff (like a tiny workshop more or
| less). What i do is when i'm done with work i put my company
| issued laptop in a dedicated drawer and close it. When the
| drawer closes my mind flips to "i'm at home" mode. The next
| morning, when i open teh drawer, my mind flips to "i'm at work"
| mode. It works for me but may not work for everyone.
| peter303 wrote:
| Coworking spaces were supposed be a compromise. Individuals and
| small teams could work in an office-like space without home
| distractions for a few hundred a month. In the early days
| coworking provided quality bandwith and printing for less you'd
| pay at home. But that advantage has faded.
|
| I have lost track of how coworking has fared during covid. For
| a while, pre-covid, they seemed to outnumber coffee houses in
| my metro area.
| black_13 wrote:
| kkfx wrote:
| The fallacy reside in: "can be performed", witch do not state
| _how they can_ , because so far most push "smart working" in the
| form of "get this laptop, this smartphone with a 4/5G plan and
| you are ready to work". That's obviously tend to fail and works
| just for people who have corrected the aim perhaps with a docking
| station, external monitor and external keyboard, having a spare
| room silent enough etc at _personal level_ at company level it 's
| even worse: most have no idea about remote work. The modern
| classic solution is having a big enough hw resources to keep a
| VDI infra asking workers to be on remote desktop all time, and
| again that's not a good idea even if seems to be the easiest.
|
| Seriously facing such aspects and finally admit that "real" WFH
| means set up a home office, with relevant furniture, equipment,
| connections etc and organize the work to be done from remote
| pushing people on some proprietary platform in the hope to get a
| quick&done third party solution will not really push up WFH to
| something structural and good for all parties involved.
| TimPC wrote:
| The coding used by this survey is a joke. If 40% of an occupation
| says they work outdoors that's below 50% so it's bucketed into
| the work from home category on that criterion. I think if even
| 20% of a job is saying they work outdoors that's pretty strong
| evidence you're missing some information about what the other 80%
| are doing in their job that prevents it from being a work from
| home job. The net result of their setup is obviously a vast
| overestimate so take the 37% number with a grain of salt.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| Couldn't the job still be performed at home with the occasional
| on site? I'm thinking of a construction PM. The job could
| mainly be done at home other then when needed to meet GC on
| site. Seems like there is still WFH no?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > I'm thinking of a construction PM. The job could mainly be
| done at home other then when needed to meet GC on site.
|
| I'm sure all the blue collar construction workers would
| totally respect the PM even more than they do now if they
| didn't show up on site...
|
| There is an awful lot of privilege going on behind the scenes
| in these WFH debates.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Seriously. If the PM isn't on site doing some basic QC ..
| then are they really managing a project?
| isoos wrote:
| > I'm thinking of a construction PM.
|
| The construction we've seen recently had a PM, and they were
| on the site about 20-25% of the time. Parts of their job can
| be and should be done in an office (or from home), but I
| can't imagine that they wouldn't visit the site regularly
| while keeping the quality and the schedule goals...
| htk wrote:
| That's why the "entirely at home" from the study's highlights
| is an egregious conclusion from its methods.
| TimPC wrote:
| Depends what you're using the WFH number for. If you want to
| extend it to an argument about being able to live
| substantially further from a job then needing to meet a GC on
| site some of the time is a dealbreaker. I think it's fair to
| say to call the job as a whole a WFH job it needs to be 100%
| remote. That's not to say non-WFH jobs can't have some remote
| time.
| kube-system wrote:
| My office has people who live across the country and work
| 95% remote, and hop on a few flights per year when they're
| needed. Is that not WFH?
| nickysielicki wrote:
| My workplace is trying to get people to come back in the next
| week or two and people are suspiciously taking a lot of vacation.
| ~30% of engineering is out today. Methinks they're in for a very
| big surprise in 2 weeks, and I don't think they'll have the money
| to counter the offers that people will naturally field in this
| market.
|
| It's an unforced error.
| jleyank wrote:
| This seems low as only jobs that require(!) F2F interaction with
| customers or coworkers can't be done remotely. This might come
| down to "mucking about with the hardware" being the dividing line
| - if you need the car, it's in the shop, otherwise you can do in
| on the road, via the Web, ...
|
| Psychologically, companies and (older? extroverted?) workers
| won't agree with this, but it's not up to them to change. Change
| happens at its own pace and you can either yell at the tide or
| move with it.
| etskinner wrote:
| You're right about the dividing line being mucking with
| hardware (I'd also add 'requires access to large or expensive
| equipment'). But there are plenty of jobs that don't require
| face-to-face interaction but do require on-site work for one
| reason or another. Air traffic control, janitors, machinists,
| garbage collectors, geologists, bakers, etc.
| jleyank wrote:
| Good point, feel free to expound on my definition of
| hardware. "Ya gotta touch it?" as I might have been to locked
| into my own vocabulary.
| api wrote:
| Now think about the economic savings in the areas of energy and
| capital depreciation on cars. The overall economic efficiency
| boost from this could be unbelievably huge, not to mention the
| environmental benefits of less routine commuting.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if this approves economic efficiency by
| trillions of dollars.
| ppsreejith wrote:
| Also, the effect this would have on reducing rent and cost of
| living.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yeah. Personally, I don't mind working in the office really,
| what I really want from WFH is the elimination of my commute.
| warning26 wrote:
| If only there were some way to transport people that wasn't
| cars!
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| If only there was some way to live near work.
| dudul wrote:
| And that's the irony. People living in the city wants
| people back in office, which will force all of us who were
| able to move to the country to find a place in the city. It
| will put even more pressure on the housing market of big
| city. And then, they'll complain that they can't buy
| anything and are forced to rent for life.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yea, if only housing prices were reasonable in any major
| U.S. metropolitan area right now where tech companies are
| located.
| chasd00 wrote:
| no matter the transportation mechanism it still takes time.
| Unless someone can invent a star trek'esque transporter the
| commute will always suck.
| alar44 wrote:
| Do you live in a major metro area? If you do, you should know
| that the rest of the country was designed for cars. Mass
| transit in your average US isn't feasible as everything is so
| spread out. There is no city center. There's no downtown.
| kube-system wrote:
| Telecommuting is a solution for many situations where a
| public transport is simply impractical. At my last in-office
| job we had many people who chose to live in unincorporated
| areas across state lines and commute 100+km via car to the
| office. I currently live 400km+ from my job here in the US...
| 4 hours by car or 14 hours by ground-based public transport.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| That's the thing, remote working decreases the reliance on
| cars to some extent and not for everybody. Yes, cars are
| still used for transportation. In some urban settings public
| transportation is an option. I live in NYC and never owned a
| car not only because I rely on public transportation but it's
| a complete pain in the neck with parking, unwanted tickets
| and high cost for insurance.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| For every one of you, how many people are priced out of
| living in the city and have to drive to a parking lot to
| take the train in, or want their kids to have some
| semblance of a yard so they live in New Jersey and do the
| same?
| onemoresoop wrote:
| It's true and it's their choice of course. If I lived in
| NJ I'd surely own a car too. Sometimes I wish I had a
| car, especially on weekends so I and my family can do
| some outings but it's so expensive and cumbersome in NYC.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Oh, it's impractical to own a car if you live in NYC.
| There's really no point, unless you make stupid money or
| have a car fetish, or have some specific reason.
| dv_dt wrote:
| It will take some time work through, but there will also be
| cost savings on office spaces for companies.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm pretty skeptical of this methodology. They don't seem to be
| making any attempt to measure whether a job can be done
| _effectively_ from home, only whether it 's prohibited by some
| physical necessity. "Managers, educators, and those working in
| computers, finance, and law are largely able to work from home",
| but is having your teacher or lawyer on a little iPad really a
| complete substitute for having them right in front of you?
|
| I guess I'm not sure how I would do it better, but that doesn't
| make it super meaningful.
| panzagl wrote:
| Educators? Really? That alone makes me doubt the article.
| paulcole wrote:
| 100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home,
| but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.
| sharemywin wrote:
| Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why?
|
| I'm not a fan of the office because:
|
| 1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house,
| but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3.
| now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch
| more with freinds.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| 1. Commute is a nice way to get some alone time and unwind
| after work (admittedly, I wouldn't mind a shorter one though,
| say 15 min)
|
| 2. At home there are many more distractions (kids)
|
| 3. At work there are nice people to talk to/interact with
|
| 4. Getting lunch with coworkers is a nice way to bond and
| discuss ideas
|
| 5. All my friends moved away during the pandemic, and an
| office is a good way to make new friends
|
| 6. IME, meeting in person leads to friendlier interactions,
| whereas virtual interactions tend to be more hostile
|
| 7. The separation of home/office life makes it easier to
| focus
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Most of these points are unrelated to work itself, and may
| be easily rebuked.
|
| Commuting is not a way to "unwind". If you have 15 minutes
| in the car, why couldn't you meditate for 15 minutes at
| home?
|
| Interaction is not taken away if you WFH. But even if it
| was, if there are "nice" people at work, then there's the
| assumption that there are "not nice" people as well. Do you
| want to spend your days surrounded by "not nice" people as
| well?
|
| If attending to the office is seen as a way to expand your
| friendship circle, then there is the assumption that any
| other in person activity should help to this end as well.
| Wouldn't it be worth trying to go to meet-ups, gym, etc.,
| instead of relying on a workplace hostage situation?
|
| Not trying to be too harsh here. But I have found that most
| people who want to go back to the office, _expect_ others
| to go back as well. I don 't oppose people going back, of
| course, but I do oppose being an accessory to their way of
| life.
| paulcole wrote:
| 1. I bike/run commute and have planned my life to let me live
| with 15 minutes of where I work.
|
| 2. I purposefully choose to live in a small apartment with no
| dedicated "work" space.
|
| 3. Yeah, me too.
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| 1. I like my commute. If my commute changed I would feel
| differently. Regardless, I feel employees should get paid for
| their commutes.
|
| 2. I don't have an office in my house. Even if I had the
| space I don't think I would want to use it for work. However,
| since coronavirus happened I have had way more space in my
| office than I did before, and I refuse to be sandwiched
| between two other engineers in an open office floor plan. So
| if my company tries to do that they will have a problem, at
| least from me.
|
| 3. I pack my lunch as often as possible and don't really know
| anyone who works near me.
|
| I do think there are many developers for whom it makes sense
| to work from home. Especially if they are seniors, and their
| company workflow is well organized for it. Also, I do think
| that there are people who are very efficient working from
| home, but if they are WFH it will still be harder for junior
| engineers to collaborate with them or learn from them.
|
| I've seen it suggested that in the future, companies who want
| people to come back to the office will lose all their best
| employees and will only be able to retain the people who
| can't get a WFH job. I think a lot of what makes someone a
| good engineer comes down to experience, so if that were to
| come true it would ultimately mean that senior engineers
| (best employees) will work remotely and junior engineers
| (can't get a WFH job) will be working on site. That kind of
| leaves junior engineers in the dust as far as mentorship is
| concerned so I would not consider that a good thing, even
| though it seems to be fine with certain people who think that
| they are "good engineers", when in reality they are probably
| just seniors.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > I feel employees should get paid for their commutes. This
| would lead to more pollution, sprawl, and deaths by
| automobile as people would be incentivized to live further
| from work.
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| People are already incentivized to live far from their
| jobs because of HCOL near their workplaces. Also, it
| would be nice if people's choices were as binary as this
| line of thinking seems to suggest. It seems to me that
| many people would rather have a shorter commute either
| way.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Regardless, I feel employees should get paid for their
| commutes.
|
| Why? How would it even be practical? What if there is
| congestion? What if someone moved after starting a job, or
| their commute time changes drastically? Does the employer
| pay for tolls?
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| That sounds like a problem for the company to figure out,
| not the commuter.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That sounds like it would result in the company
| allocating more of the budget towards people who commute
| more than to people who commute less.
|
| As someone that commutes less, it means I get less pay,
| for no benefit to me.
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| The benefit to you is that you don't have to commute as
| far!
| shagie wrote:
| > Regardless, I feel employees should get paid for their
| commutes.
|
| This opens up way too many cans of worms - some of which (I
| feel) are very unfair.
|
| (Morning shift)
|
| I worked at SGI doing tech support on the "East" team. The
| teams were split up by timezone (we were all in Mountain
| View - where the Google campus is now). My shift started at
| 5am (no traffic at all) and I lived about 10 minutes away
| at that time of day.
|
| One of my coworkers lived in Gilroy, and was on the west
| team (a 9-5 working hours) and would sometimes have a
| commute of an hour and a half _each way_ if traffic was
| bad.
|
| So, the guy in Gilroy should be getting paid an extra $100
| to $150/day for living further away from me and not working
| the morning shift?
|
| Or how about the sf2g types ( https://sf2g.com )?
|
| ---
|
| I can find other examples of this through my professional
| career. I had a co-worker who lived in Minneapolis driving
| to Eau Claire, WI each day. One bad snow storm, it took him
| 3 hours to get in that morning.
|
| I currently have a coworker who lives in northern Wisconsin
| and the office is in southern Wisconsin. He's been very
| happy with WFH. But he had quite a commute (he likes
| driving).
|
| This furthermore complicates the question of overtime. If
| you've got a 90m commute each way, does that mean you
| should only be working for 5h/day to avoid overtime? If I
| take the scenic route, do I get paid more?
|
| The "ok, here's the consequences of paying for the commute"
| that I would see is that for companies that need people in
| the office (e.g. nurses), they would then have the
| constraint "you must live within 15 minutes from the office
| and public transportation is not acceptable as that may
| cause additional delays."
|
| While I recognize the "this is time lost", the "lets
| compensate for this time spent" is a mess and would cause
| more problems and discontent than the lost time discontent
| currently has.
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| So do you think it's fine that people spend hours each
| day in service of their company and not getting paid for
| it?
| shagie wrote:
| This gets to the question "what is the employer paying
| for?"
|
| Let me flip your question around - do you think that it
| is fine that one person is paid extra to live 2h away or
| that they should be paid twice what I get paid for
| effectively the same time spent in service of the company
| because I only have a 10 minute commute?
|
| Alternatively, consider the person who commutes into the
| office 1h each way while I'm WFH and have effectively 0
| commute. Let's say the wages are $50/h. Should they get
| paid an extra $100 a day because they are commuting
| rather than taking advantage of the WFH option?
|
| On Wednesday nights I'd head to dinner with my family
| from the office. This involved going about 20-30 minutes
| out of my way from my normal commute. Should I get paid
| for that adjustment to my commute?
|
| Alternatively, instead of taking route 1 home, I took
| route 2 home and did some shopping on the way (the route
| is actually faster sometimes, but less enjoyable and a
| harder drive), how does that factor into what I should
| get paid for my commute?
|
| If I took a 15 minute deviation from my normal commute to
| drive through McD's for breakfast, should I get paid for
| 15 more minutes?
|
| I'm older now than I was, and so prefer taking city
| surface streets that are properly illuminated and plowed
| in the winter rather than country roads. This was a
| change that I made to my commute back in '18. Should I
| get paid more because I changed my commute to surface
| streets? It's a 30 minute drive... I could switch to
| taking a bus, but that's 80-100 minutes each way (yea,
| the particular route options are awkward - two transfers
| for the fastest route).
|
| When I was in Northern Wisconsin, there was a Hmong
| community that lived 45 minutes away from the office.
| Would it be fair for the employer to say "you must live
| within 30 minutes of the office because we're not going
| to be paying more than 1h/day for a commute"?
|
| The "not paying for commute at all" is the simplest and
| (I believe) most fair way to approach the commute and
| issues of non-productive time, personal choices for
| transportation, personal choices for "where you want to
| live", and significant complications for overtime and
| verification of overtime. It avoids issues of outright
| discrimination of people who take public transportation
| or live certain distances from the office.
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| Your examples have a level of granularity that borders on
| absurdity. We all know that what it comes down to is
| this: Company makes an offer, i.e. "One of the perks of
| this job is you receive a 2 hour daily commute stipend".
| Employee accepts or rejects that offer.
| shagie wrote:
| Why not raise everyone's salary by $100/day ($2,500/y)
| and call it even?
|
| Less accounting to be done when someone's commute changes
| based on inclement weather, no needing to punch time
| clock when you leave and get home (or record milage on
| your vehicle), no difficulty with alternate commute
| choices (if I bike to work and it takes 1h rather than 30
| min driving)...
|
| What benefit to the employer is there to pay someone more
| if they live further away? What problem would there be if
| every employee was given the same pay increase regardless
| of where they lived?
|
| It means that payroll has a lot less work to do too
| (rather than trying to keep track of everyone's commute).
|
| If Meta HQ did this, would they be giving less to someone
| who lives in East Palo Alto rather than Gilroy (because
| of the "difference in commute")?
| coldpie wrote:
| Man, I love my commute. Losing that was one of the hardest
| parts of the year I spent WFH. I take the bus to work, it's
| about 40 minutes each way. I get time outside, I get to watch
| the sun rise, I spend that time reading library books and
| magazines, sometimes I talk with strangers for a few minutes,
| I stop off on my way home to get new library books or at a
| shop for whatever, or sometimes hit a bar on the way home. My
| commute rules, don't take it away from me.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| Not the OP but for me:
|
| 1. I get very little face-to-face social interaction if I'm
| working from home. I need the interaction at the office or I
| fear I'll lose the already terrible social skills I have
|
| 2. Some conversations are just easier to have in-person,
| especially from a management standpoint. I don't micromanage
| and I am pretty hands-off but when a team leader is having
| issues with their team, it's generally easier for them to
| pull me into a conference room and chat face-to-face with me
| and we can figure out a resolution together. This _can_
| happen over video, but I find it 's better if it's not.
|
| 3. I find you get exposure to new techniques and technologies
| and different perspectives on how to approach solving
| technical issues when you're in an office and can see a team
| huddling trying to figure something out.
|
| That said, I know it's not everyone's preference and I'm in
| favor of a hybrid model personally. Office is available if
| you want to use it. If you're living in the area of the
| office, come in once or twice a month and have a face-to-face
| meeting with your project teammates and/or manager.
| Otherwise, you're free to be at home if you want.
| Swizec wrote:
| I love working from home and remote suits me. But the past
| few months I've noticed more and more coworkers asking for
| zoom pairing sessions, increasing numbers of mob programming
| sessions, and a general craving for face time.
|
| Personally I dislike those because they're the worst of both
| worlds. Not quite remote, not quite in person. I get more
| done on my own.
|
| In my observation many people are just very done with remote.
| Especially the younger folk whose lives aren't as full of
| adult crap yet.
| dockd wrote:
| I can't speak for the OP and everyone has their own reasons
| but - Do you have a roommate? Children? Now your
| house/apartment is looking like a mini-office with shared
| space. - Your house has one office. Where will your
| spouse/partner work? Most houses don't have two offices. -
| Maybe living in a small apartment is OK for people because
| they can get out to larger spaces. Want to live in a studio
| apartment and work there too? - Offices can have cafeterias
| and tend to have restaurants nearby. - habit
| eminence32 wrote:
| In addition to all of the social reasons others have listed,
| I'll list 2 technical reasons why an office is a more
| comfortable place for me to work:
|
| I have 2 large monitors at my office desk (so when you
| include my laptop's screen, I have a total of 3 monitors;
| lots of screen space). Compared to no external monitors at
| home.
|
| At the office, I have a gigabit connection to the LAN and
| file servers. At home, I have a VPN that is, while pretty
| good, not able to compete with 1GBe.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| These seem like easily solvable problems though. I have
| three monitors at home and 1Gb AT&T Fiber Internet.
| paulcole wrote:
| Some people _don't want_ to solve this problem. My
| apartment is small and I have 0 interest in 3 ugly work
| monitors visible where I can see them all the time.
| eminence32 wrote:
| Hmm. Yes, they are solvable. But are they "easily
| solvable"?
|
| I could buy extra monitors for my work laptop, but then
| I'd also have to buy or build an entirely new desk for
| them, and find a place in my home for this desk to live.
|
| My ISP also offers 1GB I think, but even if I upgrade,
| that doesn't mean that my work VPN can keep up. It also
| doesn't help improve latency
| turtlebits wrote:
| Not everyone has a bad commute.
|
| Distinct place where I don't have the distractions of home.
| (ie feel the need to clean, fix, things)
|
| Much nicer environment - way more open space / natural light,
| great air quality, views, amenities.
| sporedro wrote:
| Not the person you asked, but for me it's the social aspect.
|
| I can't stand being on a camera, voice and text chat don't
| really replace the in-person conversations for me.
|
| Everything else is either the same or much worse working in
| person.
| deltree7 wrote:
| This could have never happened if Jeff and Sanjay were
| 'working from home'
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-
| friendship...
|
| Who knows Google would have been an also-ran Search Engine
| company if it weren't for those two solving the right scale
| problems at the right time.
|
| And no amount of 'Productivity Metrics' can capture these
| leaps in value creation because it truly is of the 'Unknown-
| Unknown' category.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Most people are not going to be in the position, either in
| their role or the stage of they organization, to enact
| anything even remotely resembling that sort of innovation.
| Even when scaled down to their role and organization.
| tapland wrote:
| I miss the casual chatting about all kinds of things and the
| ritualistic coffee breaks (Sweden) a lot.
|
| A lot a lot.
|
| I can't afford an apartment with another room for a proper
| separate office, and wouldn't want to waste that space on a
| room to separate work and home even if I did.
| dudul wrote:
| And you can't afford this apartment because up until 2 years
| ago everybody was forced to get a place next to the office.
| You should support remote/distributed work, since it will
| make it possible to move to the country/small towns and
| relieve the pressure on difficult housing markets.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| willcipriano wrote:
| Id be open to going into a office, but when I compare wages
| between jobs done from home and jobs that demand in office I'm
| not seeing a significant delta. Even if the drive was 15
| minutes I'd want something to cover my costs and time.
|
| I was interviewing a month ago and I got a in office offer that
| was a little lower than the remote offer I had. I brought up
| that I'd be willing to come in for more money or some sort of
| flex time around that hour commute and that was met with a
| audible gasp from the HR person. They acted as if the request
| was rude and that the occasional free lunch made up for the 10
| hours a week time loss. That made the choice for me.
|
| If I am truly more valuable to the business in a office I see
| no reason why I can't share in those rewards.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "That made the choice for me."
|
| Often the way they react is more important than the actual
| content. Seems like if they don't understand your concerns on
| this topic, they likely won't be amenable to your future
| concerns on other topics.
| paulcole wrote:
| I'm actually the opposite. I'd take a 10-20% pay cut today to
| get an in-person job vs. my current remote job. I just
| haven't been motivated to job hunt lately.
| foxyv wrote:
| If I lived in some parts of Europe, then yes, I would totally
| love to go back to the office. But in the United States? I
| can't afford to live close enough to the office for a short
| commute (4-5x as expensive) and transportation is garbage.
|
| Worst of all, there is nobody else there. Our teams are spread
| across 8 different countries in so many different time zones. I
| would have maybe 1-2 office mates from my department. That show
| up irregularly.
|
| I remember the happy times I had in the office and I really
| wish I could recapture that spirit. But the wheel of time has
| kind of turned.
| paulcole wrote:
| I'm in the US, choose to live in the least expensive and
| smallest apartment near a large-ish city so that I can have a
| short and manageable commute to both work and the things I
| enjoy doing.
|
| My transportation costs are essentially 0 -- bicycle
| maintenance I can mostly do myself. My electric bill is
| $20-$50 a month. Sometimes $3 for a bus ticket. Plus no
| homeowner's insurance, property taxes, maintenance,
| water/garbage bills (all included in rent).
|
| My costs would be 4x-5x higher if I _didn't_ make the choices
| I do, simply because the style of living I prefer isn't
| available outside of cities.
| foxyv wrote:
| I used to do that as well. But then my rent tripled in 5
| years pricing me out of the area. I still miss my tiny
| apartment, but working from home is pretty nice too.
| warning26 wrote:
| Exactly -- yet so many people can't accept that ANYONE might
| want to work from an office.
|
| My assumption is that people who love WFH are generally
| suburbanites who can't fathom getting to work involves anything
| other than sitting in traffic for two hours.
| iso1631 wrote:
| When getting to work involves a short walk to the office,
| getting a coffee on the way, of course that's the best
| commute by a country mile. When the weather's nice like this
| morning I'll take a longer walk, but I don't _have_ to do
| that commute.
| sharemywin wrote:
| I hate cube and half cubes or like at my current job before
| covid I had an office that I shared with 2 other people.
| peterb wrote:
| This. A big problem with office work is office cube design.
| I'm old enough to have had a closed door office in the 90s
| and it was the best. I also worked in large cubes which had
| moveable partitions as walls where you couldn't see your
| neighbours. They were also good, not great, but better than
| today's cubes. They even had large book shelves where you
| could keep your reference books!
|
| At home, I can close my door and it is much superior for my
| personal productivity than an open office cube plan.
| giantg2 wrote:
| At least you get a cube or half cube. My office is
| basically a really long desk with 4 people on one side and
| 4 people on the other (directly across from each other),
| with _maybe_ 5 feet between you and the next person.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Urbanite here. I hated having to travel daily, even when my
| commute was around 35 minutes.
|
| Currently working remotely and living in a city, because
| that's where all the services are.
| dudul wrote:
| Who are these people who can't accept that anyone wants to
| work from an office? If there are so many of them, can we see
| some examples?
|
| Office work is not just about the commute, it is also about
| terrible work conditions where you may be seated in an open
| space shared by support, engineers, sales, etc.
|
| "So many people can't accept that ANYONE is more productive
| in a remote setting".
|
| This "us vs them" discourse is so childish. Just find the
| company that works the way you want, either all in office, or
| hybrid, or all distributed and move on.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Just look at the comments in this thread. Plenty of people
| seem to assume that no one actually wants to go to the
| office.
| giantg2 wrote:
| At least at my office, the majority wants to stay remote.
| Only about a third want to come back in the office. It's
| not everyone, but it can be a very large segment.
|
| That said, it seems remote would be the planet friendly
| option. No commute, reduce the need for additional
| building by retrofitting offices as residences (yeah,
| zoning), etc.
| dudul wrote:
| I see some comments where people mention that _they_
| prefer to work remote /FH, not that everyone who wants to
| work in an office is an idiot.
| alar44 wrote:
| The vast vast majority of people don't have 2 hour commutes.
| This is pretty much an LA or NYC thing. There are other
| cities in the US and none of them require insane commutes
| like this.
|
| My drive to work is 7 minutes, I live in a suburban
| neighborhood. I don't work in the office because there's no
| need for it.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| People are not great at empathy.
|
| If you have small kids working from an office gives you a
| good place to work with, hopefully, less distractions.
|
| Some people like commuting because its their me time. Some
| people like the socialization being in an office gives them.
| Some careers/roles are easier when you can walk over to
| someones desk and talk to them.
|
| There are plenty of reasons why working in an office might be
| interesting to someone. Just like there are plenty of reasons
| why working fully remotely is interesting to someone.
| nappy-doo wrote:
| You're asking someone to respect your choice to work from an
| office, while it feels like you're disparaging their choice
| to live where they want to (or possibly can afford as, for
| example, most of the suburbs have become cheaper than cities
| for much of America.)
|
| Can we all just agree that people want different things?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I live in the dead center of a major city, but it happens to
| be a city that isn't much of a tech hub. Thanks to widespread
| work from home, I can now consider job offers from anywhere
| and work for a hot startup that just IPO'd and get the same
| benefits of a bull market for engineering labor as someone
| younger and/or unattached who can easily move halfway across
| the country for a better job.
| chasd00 wrote:
| heh it must hurt to have paid for all that commercial real estate
| that's now sitting empty. I bet a decent portion of the motive to
| get employees back in the office is to just validate the rent
| bill.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I've been remote by necessity for 8 years, since 2014.
|
| I'd prefer to be in the office most days; but the realities of
| life would make it difficult for my wife and I to both have
| careers and be parents. If either of us had a rigid "be in the
| office Monday - Friday" job, the other would need to cut back to
| part time just to care for our young children.
|
| What I've observed: In software, a company that wants you to be
| on-site Monday - Friday has control issues. Limiting your
| workforce to people who live within a reasonable commute who are
| single / single career couples / childless couples just makes it
| hard to hire.
| [deleted]
| aaccount wrote:
| Most jobs done need to exist to begin with.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kehnIQ41y2o
| holyyikes wrote:
| Ironically one of the biggest bullshit jobs is writing tons of
| books stating the obvious.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I know some companies are trying to get their employees to go
| back to a hybrid schedule, but for me, I think the bell can't be
| unrung. My company is a f500 company that I would not have
| thought would remain remote, but we have, and it really helps us
| hire and retain talent. It honestly helps us recruit people that
| would otherwise have sought out trendier employers.
| [deleted]
| trentnix wrote:
| Can Be != Should Be
| kreeben wrote:
| Why not?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| "Can" doesn't tell you if the job is done better or worse,
| happier or unhappier.
| trentnix wrote:
| Exactly. I work remote. I am fully planning to work remote
| for the rest of my career. But I can imagine a number of
| scenarios where camaraderie, productivity, confidentiality,
| and quality of work are improved by having people in close
| proximity.
|
| So I understand why some companies and teams bias toward
| everyone working in an office. And my choice to work at
| home will prevent me from being hired at those places. I'm
| blessed there's plenty of work available for everyone,
| remote or not.
| biermic wrote:
| Social interactions.
| lbriner wrote:
| We are going to have a massive problem with taking on
| juniors, particularly younger people. Without many people
| visiting the office, there is a lack of banter,
| encouragement, confidence building. Imagine you were 16 and
| your introduction to the world of work was sitting in your
| own bedroom!
|
| Honestly, I don't know how we deal with it unless we create a
| schedule where there has to be certain people in the office
| on certain days so that a junior can get the interaction and
| support which is as much of job training as anything they can
| do online.
|
| So that's one example of when can do != should do
| chasd00 wrote:
| young people are very well acclimated to social isolation
| and only "connecting" using online means. The younger
| generations are more mentally equipped (or handicapped) to
| wfh than any other.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Firms stopped investing in talent decades ago. Go ask new
| grads if anyone wants to train you anymore. All the job ads
| I see are a laundry list of skills and they expect you to
| hit the ground running on day one.
|
| Once it became necessary to look for a new job every 1 - 2
| years to stay current with the market, firms stopped with
| the training, "they will just leave in two years" they
| cried. In this world your arugment no longer holds water.
| kreeben wrote:
| "What about the juniors" is not a super convincing argument
| to me since I've been on-boarding them throughout the
| pandemic but also prior to that, quite successfully,
| through the use of basic video linking and sharing of
| screens. Out team is scattered around the world and that
| has always been the case. What are some other examples of
| when WFH doesn't work?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| As a junior who started in late 2019 I completely
| disagree. My contact with coworkers greatly decreased
| when we went remote. Partially that's my fault, partially
| it's the companies, but the reality is that this is
| really a hard problem to solve.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| They are pointing out "can" vs "should" sure you can
| onboard them remotely and try to build team cohesion
| remotely but it's just worse then in person.
| goodpoint wrote:
| This is the weirdest take on "think of the children!" that
| I've heard in a while.
| holyyikes wrote:
| Sink or swim. I think it's actually a really good way to
| weed out do nothings.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah. I think it's good that we are exploring what WFH
| options look like and where they can work, but I think a
| part of that needs to be recognizing where they _don 't_
| work, too.
| NationalPark wrote:
| By what normative standards? It's a labor market. If employers
| want employees to come in and get middle managed by chair
| watchers, I'm sure there's a number high enough to convince
| almost any remote-preferring worker.
| hsnewman wrote:
| I would change the title to "Approximately 37% of jobs in the
| United States can be performed entirely at home"
| neogodless wrote:
| "37%" isn't a number with high precision to be begin with, so
| the "approximately" is implied.
| hsnewman wrote:
| I would say that it is quite specific.
| dxbydt wrote:
| Dr. Dingel writes - "Our code makes it easy for users to explore
| alternative assumptions about whether any given occupation can be
| done from home."
|
| His repo - https://github.com/jdingel/DingelNeiman-workathome
|
| Would be a worthwhile student project to replicate this in
| R/pandas (They used Stata on a Mac, if you know what I mean) &
| have an interactive online plot so one can change the survey
| assumptions & see what results. Just collating all this data in
| one place is a monumental effort.
|
| I remember this paper was a "huge fucking deal" when it came out
| in Sep 2020. Has like ~1500 cites. Was used by Biden
| administration to set policy. Co-author Dr. Neiman was personally
| nominated by Biden for treasury. Authors are Booth school
| stalwarts. Pls do read the paper, very insightful even if you
| don't agree with its methodology/conclusions.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| I don't hate working in an office. I hate working in an "open
| plan" office where someone is always interrupting my work.
| zamalek wrote:
| If you were to prefer working in an office, you can find a
| local office space that meets your tastes.
|
| Or if you like open office, you could go that direction too.
| silisili wrote:
| Same. Seems not too long before people started really hating
| offices, offices started being designed to make you hate them.
| Open offices, no walls, 'island concept' which sounds all fun
| and tropical until you learn it just means you no longer even
| have your own desk.
|
| If companies want people back in offices, make them enticing.
| Have perks! Imagine everyone getting their own room, with a
| nice desk and maybe small couch and mini fridge. Having a
| shared personal assistant to take care of some things, work
| related or not. Heck, even something as small as a free daycare
| would be a huge motivator.
|
| If you want people back, start treating them like people and
| not cattle.
| jjav wrote:
| > offices started being designed to make you hate them
|
| Indeed. I didn't mind at all going to the office the first
| many years of my career, where I always had a private office
| with a closing door.
|
| But with open offices, I'll do everything I can to never be
| there.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| My wishlist is:
|
| 1. Kill the panopticon (open offices) 2. Employers should
| bear the cost of ALL commuting
|
| The panopticon is truly dystopian, and whenever I'm in one,
| the hair on the back of my neck never lays flat. I feel
| watched (because I am) and it isn't pleasant.
|
| Forcing employers to bear the costs of commuting would really
| up-end things. We'd all be working from home _really damned
| quickly_ , and I suspect there'd be massive gains for the
| environment, climate change, etc.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| You think removing a massive cost of ownership will reduce
| America's useage of large SUVs and pickups?
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| It'll definitely reduce usage _in people's commutes_ ,
| which is all I'm really claiming.
|
| But no, that guy with the raised truck, rolling coal?
| Hell no, he's gonna die before you take his toy away.
|
| Edit: tbh, I think if corps are footing the bill for
| commuting, it'll be mass transit for 95% of us. Your
| employer won't buy you a Ford F350 superduty to get to
| work. _Maybe_ you're gonna get a Honda Fit. _Maybe_. More
| likely a bus pass.
| pc86 wrote:
| I agree with everything you said but how is "free daycare"
| something small? Daycare costs thousands of dollars and the
| regulations and licensure are (rightfully) a very high bar. I
| would see free daycare as a huge perk and I don't even have
| kids.
| silisili wrote:
| You're right, its impact is not small at all. My wife
| pretty much stayed out of the labor market because day care
| costs so much.
|
| I guess I was thinking the work involved seemed relatively
| small compared to redesigning whole offices- just carve out
| a couple areas and hire some caretakers. But I'm pretty
| ignorant of the laws, regulations, and needs as you pointed
| out, so that's probably not small at all either.
| Clubber wrote:
| You get economies of scale with larger companies. The
| regulations are usually 1 worker per x kids, if I recall
| and not much more than that. It's not that strict at all.
| Of course if you had daycare at your company you could have
| a large room or a wing with a playroom and all that. It's
| pennies on the dollar to retain good talent, if you
| actually want to force people back in the office.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If companies want to lure employees back into the office, they
| should give them offices of their own.
| samstave wrote:
| its funny, when working at Intel, one of the things people
| bitched about was the cubicles. (1998)
|
| I hate open offices, but having worked in all formats, open
| offices are bad for mental health.
|
| When working on MPK West for FB, they built an open office to
| house 3,000 employees with only 5 offices (with escape hatches)
| for the c-suite.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Cubicles suck compared to private offices, but they're miles
| better than open offices.
| samstave wrote:
| I used to share an office with another engineer, and one
| thing that we both preferred was t keep the lights off in
| our office (we had a window office and the ambient light
| was beneficial.
|
| Lighting is SUPER important, and when youre in an pen
| office layout you have no control over your lighting.
|
| For this reason alone, one should hate open office layouts.
| smm11 wrote:
| The world did not exist until Git.
| mwattsun wrote:
| 5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at
| home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as
| needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a
| week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in
| awhile. It was ideal and worked very well.
|
| Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am
| astonished that any programmer would rather go into the office.
| With high speed internet and video conferencing, I assume that
| some people are just very lonely and need face to face. I see
| nothing wrong with that. I understand it, but after 1992 I took a
| job that forced me into an office and I hated it.
|
| I can safely say I never wrote any good code while working in an
| office. There are too many distractions.
| xhrpost wrote:
| > some people are just very lonely and need face to face
|
| Sure but some of us are just more extroverted and have better
| energy in the office. Also having a clean separation of work vs
| home context can be helpful, training the brain "this is work
| time"[1]
|
| I think it's totally fair to point out if people are opting for
| the office just due to a lack of need fulfillment elsewhere in
| life, but don't think its wise to assume it's only that by a
| wide margin.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorway_Effect
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I won't accept any non-remote job where I need long commutes
| and I have to sit my ass there for the whole week.
|
| Just yesterday we had a summer day, so just after lunch I went
| to a remote beach, used my phone as AP and worked for about 5
| hours until nightfall.
|
| No interruptions, no annoying noises, not battling with AC.
|
| I mean, having tasted this, Im pretty sure what would I do if
| my company asks me to go back to office. I still have a low
| paying job, but my life has improved dramatically.
|
| And my office is literally 5m walk from my home, so Im already
| ahead of many people in that, but it's a noisy bunker with no
| window, lots of people and all kinds of other BS.
|
| People is definitely lonely. I can understand that, but I won't
| pay for other peoples loneliness.
|
| If you want friends, ask me for a beer, or come to my house, I
| like to cook for people.
|
| But Id bet that this is more of a managers thing.
| thfuran wrote:
| You have lunch a few hours before dawn?
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Oops! I meant to "anochecer", which is nightfall in english
| according to google.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| This is fascinating to me! How did you manage to merge code in
| the 80s? What tools were available? Did you have three-way
| merge tools or did you do it more manually?
|
| Or rather did you talk frequently and ensure that you weren't
| stepping in each other's files? How did you make changes to
| shared APIs?
| Clubber wrote:
| There were always tools to diff two codebases and make a
| intermediate file that had all the changes. We did it back in
| the BBS days. You could always take the diff file and type
| the changes in manually. That's how "mods" worked. It would
| be something like this SomeFile.pas 14:
| - If Variable = 1 14: + If Variable = 2
| eminence32 wrote:
| Some "old-timers" at my software company occasionally tell
| stories about how "checking the source code" meant physically
| grabbing a the one binder filled with pages of fortran and
| inserting your changes. Physically holding the binder gave
| you exclusive checkin access :)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > What tools were available?
|
| "My Briefcase", in Windows. It was like cloud shared storage,
| but using removable media.
| tfigment wrote:
| I would assume RCS and floppies. CVS later. That is what my
| company apparently used in that era.
| mwattsun wrote:
| Macintosh Programmers Workshop had some tools but we mostly
| did it by hand so we tended to work on different parts of the
| program. If that was a problem our manager who owned the
| company would do a road trip to collect the new code that
| another person needed (we all lived in the Bay Area.) He had
| a big financial incentive to do so. Or we would get together,
| but that was not optimal.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Works.
| ..
| headmelted wrote:
| If you don't mind my asking, have you spent much of your time
| since then working from home or in an office?
|
| I likewise very much prefer working from home and find I get
| more done, but wanting to get an idea of what it's like from
| someone who's seen and done both over the long term.
| mwattsun wrote:
| Works was my first job out of the Navy in 84, so I had no
| prior office experience. I spent 94' to 2000 working in 4
| separate offices for 3 different companies. I remember my
| first office experience I brought in a cot. People looked at
| me like I was insane. Well, I guess power naps are out of the
| question. Then I was exposed to office politics for the first
| time. Some people walk around hating each other all day. What
| a downer that was. Some women (and some men) would interrupt
| me to flirt with me. I didn't mind that so much. Then I would
| be in deep focus fixing some problem and they'd flash the
| lights because it was someone's birthday and we all had to go
| to the conference room because it was someone's birthday and
| there was cake and ice cream. Again, I didn't mind that so
| much. I felt for all these reasons and many more I was less
| productive in an office than I was at home. The office to me
| is a place a lot of people like because they can f around
| with their office friends.
|
| Edit: I never worked in an office again after I resumed
| programming after the dotcom bubble burst. Another anecdote:
| I got called into HR because someone complained I was yawning
| too loudly.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Didn't Microsoft give everyone their own dedicated office in
| those days? I thought I read/heard somewhere that is what
| spawned development of Outlook/Exchange.
|
| I agree about the distractions, it's extremely bad with the
| open office model and hard to get anything done for me. I would
| much prefer cubicles or dedicated offices.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I had my own office at Microsoft as late as 2013.
|
| It was by _far_ the least favorite work environment I 've
| ever had. It was lonely and unproductive for me, with a 15
| minute - 2 hour commute depending on traffic. I came home
| from work angry every day. I have no idea how I lasted almost
| two years in that environment.
|
| I really enjoy open offices. My next job was all pair
| programming all the time. No assigned desks. You just showed
| up and sat down with a different person every day. For me
| that's the most productive way to get work done.
|
| For the last 3 years I've been working from home and don't
| see myself going back to an office ever again. I enjoy my
| time at home too much.
|
| Everyone is different and not every company has to work the
| same way.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That's amazing to find someone who's actually in favor of
| open offices, but you are probably in the extreme minority,
| at least as these HN discussions go.
|
| Couldn't you still pair program in personal offices? Not to
| mention it would allow for more discussion without
| background noise. Or what about offices for teams, if
| individual offices are too isolating?
| Clubber wrote:
| I remember hearing that too. Having an office with a door or
| at least a shared office would make it tolerable, but still
| the commute always put me in a sour mood to start and end the
| day. Now a days, the fad is open office, which is a dumpster
| fire for development. I can't believe Apple fell for that
| with their new mothership.
| mwattsun wrote:
| This was true in the late 80's early 90's when we used to go
| up to Redmond from California to pow wow, but I heard that's
| not true anymore. Also, if any Microsofties are reading this,
| how would I got about getting the source code of Works for
| the Mac? It was about 200,000 lines of 68000 asm code that
| I'm thinking of trying to get to run in the browser. I may
| make a formal request to Microsoft if I get more motivated
| about it. I lost my copy along the way.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Some people also don't have living conditions at home that are
| conducive to being productive. Not everyone can afford the
| space to have a proper home office, for example.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home
| office, for example.
|
| Because they have to live in expensive urban areas near their
| workplace. Their money would stretch much further if they
| could remote-work from rural areas.
| bradlys wrote:
| Until rural areas cost of living goes up because 37% of
| people decided to move out to unsustainable rural areas.
|
| Overall - moving to somewhere more rural is a fix for an
| individual looking to solve their financial problem but it
| is not a society wide solution. Rural homes are a net drain
| on society and are subsidized by city workers.
| tayo42 wrote:
| You also have to live in that rural area too. I think
| there's more to living then having a giant home with
| nothing to do. Likely won't be able to relate to the
| people around you at all.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I bet there are plenty of medium-sized cities, with good
| universities and small tech poles (because let's just say
| it, you want to be around educated people, and yes, it's
| nice) with much lower costs of living than where most
| techies end-up living.
| darkwater wrote:
| If we are taking into account more than 1/3 of jobs could
| be remote, that starts to include many white-collar jobs
| that are not paid _that_ well. And if we extrapolate this
| from the USA to other places (like Europe) you can live in
| a small town and still earn just enough to live in a 2 or 3
| dormitories flat, with no dedicated space for WFH for one,
| let alone for a couple (it 's 1/3 of the jobs, so chances
| that both can do WFH are not that low).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > it's 1/3 of the jobs, so chances that both can do WFH
| are not that low
|
| It helps that those are not multiplicative probabilities.
| They apply to each job, so each partner will have access
| to ~1/3 of the jobs, totaling an access to ~1/3 of the
| total jobs.
| pc86 wrote:
| Absolutely correct. Any everyone's situation is different,
| but let's be real - the vast majority of software engineers
| can afford a great home office space.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > the vast majority of software engineers can afford a
| great home office space
|
| Maybe, maybe not. In high cost of living areas even high
| salary employees with single incomes have to compete with
| couples pulling in the big bucks.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The thing is, if you WFH, you don't have any need to live
| in a high cost of living area.
| vonseel wrote:
| I think if a company is going to be fully remote, they should
| provide an office budget to every employee, so you can either
| rent an extra bedroom / buy a bigger house / or rent space in
| a co-working facility.
|
| Working from your bedroom with a desk crammed in the corner
| is a serious downgrade IMO from having an office with good
| vibes.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| With a kid at home I'm very inclined to work in office whenever
| it allows. I'm also much more productive in office when
| everything from coffee to food are taken care of.
|
| Nowadays I believe WFH is kinda the norm in IT as long as
| company policy allows. I love the hybrid mode: two days in
| office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > two days in office to relax, three days at home to help
| wifie with kid.
|
| This is not working from home, or working anywhere
|
| If you think working from home means you have time to "help
| with the kid", you're wrong.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I don't know what you mean TBH.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If you are working from home, you are working. If you are
| helping out with the kid, you are not working.
| [deleted]
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm working when I'm working. Still don't get where you
| are going with this.
| eminence32 wrote:
| Nothing anyone says in these comments should invalidate your
| own personal experiences and successes with your working
| arrangements.
|
| But I have to admit I'm surprised to hear you say that you are
| "astonished" that any programmer would prefer to work
| differently.
|
| 2 things that I've learned from reading NH over the years:
| tech/programmer people are often very opinionated, and also
| have widely different opinions on just about everything :)
| mwattsun wrote:
| Admittedly what you say is true. People tend to believe other
| people think like them. I go on my own lived experience.
| Never once in 8 years did any of my coworkers suggest we get
| an office. We felt lucky to be able to work at home for all
| the reasons that people give.
|
| I had a couple of other reasons for hating the office that I
| don't often see mentioned. I'm sensitive to 60 Hz fluorescent
| lights and also to bad air. Most offices are flooded with
| this kind of light and don't recirculate the plastic and
| office supply fumes often enough.
| balaji1 wrote:
| In this case, tech/programmer people have differing opinions
| about returning to the office. But the managers or at least
| the management have only have a single blanket policy for
| all. A compromise like 2-3 days in the office is one such
| policy.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Most software is no longer this self contained. It doesn't need
| to be that way but often is.
|
| Around 9/11, I was responsible for a major system component
| that turned out (shocker) to be a lot more work than anyone had
| estimated, so I spent the week before and the month after 9/11
| working fully remote so that I could dedicate every waking hour
| to the component. Putting aside the lack of balance, it was the
| most productive I have been in my life despite the high
| distraction of the news in the outside world.
|
| But the last two years have been nothing like that. Some of
| that is my current role, and some of that is that building
| complex systems requires more coordination, but it also seems
| to me that there is some issue both around engineer depth on
| average (previous example, everyone was fluent in reading code
| and it spoke for itself) and that software these days in large
| companies has just so much internet-group overhead.
|
| And video conferencing is a punishment in most large companies,
| worse than a phone call because it seems, to me, to result in
| people paying less attention. I may be alone in that though.
| Adraghast wrote:
| > I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face
| to face
|
| Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of
| lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only
| people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work
| takes that away from them.
| WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
| That's true, but also very sad. I am lucky enough to have a
| lovely wife, kids and just enough good friends. And that's
| all I care about.
|
| I don't really miss at all the office, let alone my co-
| workers. Working remote is just what I need, and I am way
| more productive.
| unidosnuestros wrote:
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I have all those too. But even when you are fully remote,
| and have a healthy outside social support system away from
| work, you cannot ignore the reality that is you spend the
| majority of your waking hours working alongside these
| people, often for the same goals and deadlines. It's a
| basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.
|
| Unless you are one of the rare people where you truly are a
| solo shop (even then you have people requesting the work
| from you), I want to meet, converse, and get to know the
| people that I spend a bulk of my waking hours with, and
| depend on together to do a good job because I feel like
| that's showing those other people basic dignity.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our
| time with.
|
| I think you're creating a universal here where there is
| none. I have secure boundaries, and I can enjoy a
| coworker's company and work without having to be friends
| with them. And there's also an ugly side to this, where
| people don't want to have coworkers that they wouldn't
| want to be friends with. That's not some natural urge,
| that's something that people impose on a situation that
| is alienating to people who don't share your politics, or
| your tastes, or even like the way you treat people (I'm
| referring to the hypothetical "you" here.)
|
| I have really enjoyed working with people who I'd never
| want to know outside of work, and have a huge amount of
| respect for those people whose work ethic and
| trustworthiness showed a real thoughtfulness and concern
| about what they were doing and for their coworkers' time
| and development. That's good enough for me, we don't have
| to share musical tastes or hobbies. On the other side,
| I've certainly made friends with people at work, but some
| of the people I made friends with I hated working with.
| The two things are barely connected.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Apologies if I wasn't clear, I didn't say or mean be
| friends with them. But being coworkers with someone is
| indeed a type of relationship. I wasn't meaning to
| conflate those two, but acknowledge the commonality
| between the two.
| burrows wrote:
| How are you able to appreciate people in a specific
| capacity without feeling like you need to become buds
| with them?
|
| How do you avoid forming many negative opinions about a
| person just because you don't see them as socially
| interesting?
| 30367286 wrote:
| >Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more
| productive.
|
| I acknowledge that you and many others derive personal
| satisfaction from productivity. I do too. However, I
| strongly believe we should move away from productivity as
| the measure of whether we should work from home. Primarily
| because it individualizes productivity and turns any
| deficits into a moral failing. It is incumbent on our
| employers to create the conditions which align productivity
| with our well-being as people, and balance those. Else, we
| are being exploited.
|
| Put another way, and framing it opposite from what you
| said:
|
| "Working remote is not what I need because I am less
| productive" should _not_ be an argument against working
| from home. You may not need working remotely for other
| reasons -- social being one of them -- but it 's important
| not to prioritize productivity to the occlusion of all
| other factors.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > lucky enough to have a lovely wife
|
| Me too, but I met my wife through work (we didn't work
| together, but I met her through a lady I did work with). I
| think a _lot_ of young people - not just men - are hoping
| to interact with potential romantic partners through work.
| unidosnuestros wrote:
| That's the best part about work!
| [deleted]
| bboylen wrote:
| This is true historically but the culture does seem to be
| moving away from the idea of it being OK to date
| coworkers. I know a lot of younger people (like me) would
| be quite nervous about the prospect of coming onto
| someone in the workplace. Even with good intentions there
| is potential for miscommunication or making someone
| uncomfortable.
| nluken wrote:
| > their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact
| with in-person
|
| This sort of self-alienation seems to be a pretty widespread
| problem larger than the in-person/remote debate. That said,
| it's probably better for those experiencing it to have some
| in-person socialization in the office than none.
| unidosnuestros wrote:
| How do you know they aren't travelling the world while
| "working from home"? Sure, they aren't keeping up with a
| set group of friends, but they are making new friends every
| day. The world is bigger than just your tiny little
| apartment. You can go to Latin America, where they share
| largely the same timezone as us, but you can play with
| turtles! Or rescue dogs! Or clean up after penguins (south
| of argentina). It's really up to you if you think humans
| are the only way to not be lonely, then yeah, hit up a bar
| and cry yourself to sleep. But there are other ways. There
| is so much other there if you just work from home,and stop
| going into the shitty office, with terrible people. Have
| you ever noticed the office makes people less original?
| They all end up looking and acting the same as each other,
| and I'm the only who who's just come home from petting a
| penguin and they're like "we just came home from the
| bar.... again.... for the third time this week...." The
| office is dead, long live working form home.
| nluken wrote:
| Sure you _could_ use remote work to do things, but in
| practice most people don 't. Forcing everyone back into
| the office without a good reason isn't a good solution,
| but I think that the option to work in person is an ideal
| situation to those who like to socialize with others.
| Personally, I have that flexibility and have started to
| take advantage of it by working while traveling. But I've
| observed of my WFH coworkers don't seem to, which goes
| back to the original point- the alienation is not a
| function of not going into the office. It's a separate
| issue that giving that option to people can mitigate.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| WFHomers need a modern equivalent of the Knitting Bee.
| Distinct from a co-working space since it is organized by its
| members who make an effort to get to know each other and it
| shouldn't be dependent on membership with some organization,
| just a grassroots locally organized thing.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Why?
| achenet wrote:
| join a sports activity. Free socializing, plus health
| benefits. :)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Free socializing, plus health benefits. :)_
|
| Not my experience. At sports activities where I live,
| people come to do sports, not really to socialize. Once the
| sport activity is over, most go home to their
| kids/wives/girlfriends/etc. At least in Germany where the
| focus is always on the activity at hand, and socializing
| with strangers is a distraction from the activity you came
| for.
|
| I practice 3 different sports right now (bouldering,
| CrossFit and dancing), hoping to maybe make some friends or
| find a partner out of it in this WFH world and it's all the
| same, once the activity is over, people want to go home,
| not stay and have a beer or chat. :(
|
| Maybe I was lucky in the past but the best friends I've
| ever made and sometimes partners were found on the same
| workplace or campus, but I sure as hell feel very unlucky
| and miserable now, however, I really don't wish for people
| who don't like being in the office to be forced to come to
| work, that's really stupid, but this hybrid model is the
| norm where I live and is the worst of both worlds. Some
| offices are really nightmare material.
| achenet wrote:
| my condolences. :(
|
| I guess it may depend on the sport group. I've had good
| luck with the local Basic Fit (globo-gym type outfit, but
| the nearby branch has some nice people), and my
| weighlifting club, so perhaps you may find better luck in
| another sports group?
|
| Back when I lived in Marseille, I actually made a few
| really nice friendships from hanging out at the Prado
| street workout park. It was on the beach too, which was
| really nice.
|
| Climbing is also quite popular, and my local climbing
| gyms seem rather conductive to random social interactions
| that could lead to deeper friendships, although honestly
| I don't go very ofter (less than once per month), so
| perhaps that's just my perception.
|
| That said, if you're more comfortable meeting people at
| work, perhaps you would be happier with an office job?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| How do you make friends at gyms? Here everyone has noise
| cancelling headphones on, focusing on their sets, and
| only staring at their equipment or their phone. There's
| no socializing with strangers going on on unless you
| brought your own friends, as everyone is busy to do their
| sets and go home.
|
| And what's the difference between a gym and a
| weightlifting club? Here we have gyms, where there's free
| weights, machines and cardio equipment where you can do
| everything including weightlifting. Never heard of a
| weightlifting club. What do you do there besides lift
| weight like in any other gym? Is it done in a group or
| something?
| achenet wrote:
| well, I can only answer for my specific case, but the way
| I made friends at the gym was basically people noticing
| that I was doing the Olympic lifts and commenting on
| that, plus occasionally giving random
| compliments/technique tips to people.
|
| By weightlifting club I mean an association centered
| around competitive Olympic lifting. So you train
| individually, but can sign up for competitions, and are
| generally always around competitive lifters.
|
| I've also heard CrossFit has a good community, not sure
| how accurate this is, however.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| Maybe try a more 'team' oriented sport? I have found
| padel tennis to be probably one of the most 'socializing'
| sports I have played (too much even for my tastes). The
| fact you have to play in pairs forces you to interact
| with someone, and is rare the game where a beer after to
| talk about it doesn't happen. (unless it is a weird
| hours).
|
| I made also good social circles playing tennis and doing
| bjj, even though those are more 'individual' things, they
| seem to include a part of a social element to it as well.
|
| Never tried dancing, but the times I did bouldering and
| crossfit, unless you were going in a group with already a
| beer planned after, they tend to be more start-end kind
| of things.
| closeparen wrote:
| I meet people outside of work "regularly" - more weekends
| than not - but a coffee or a hike or a live performance here
| and there is very different from casually sharing a building
| on a random Tuesday.
|
| The comparison isn't a social life, it's a family or
| roommates.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The interesting thing is that folks on HN who want to work
| from the office just say "I can see why you're remote. Just
| not for me. I prefer to work in a team that's all in-office"
| but folks on HN who want to work remote always go "It's
| because you're lonely that you can't work remote. I have a
| loving wife and children. You are miserable and using
| coworkers as a substitute for social company."
|
| Like, dude, we get it. This is important to you. So go work
| where you find that. A bit tiresome to constantly come into
| these threads and listen to this endless repetitious
| nonsense.
|
| Christ on a stick. Do you never tire of it?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It isn't my responsibility to help "lonely young men" meet
| people. Just go to a bar/meetup/church and start talking.
| That's an individual's responsibility to socialize.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It's more than that. I'm mid-life, with kids, meaning that my
| best opportunity for getting out of the house on a regular
| basis is while they're at school. Without that, days can go
| by without a significant change of scenery, especially in
| winter when spending evenings at the park isn't a great
| option.
|
| I'm not lonely, _per se_ , but, all the same, the pandemic
| has been very, very difficult for me. I went from being a
| longtime remote worker who went to a coworking space most
| days, to what has sometimes felt like two years of house
| arrest.
|
| I agree that going in to an office - especially an open plan
| one where they pack desks end-to-end in giant noisy rooms -
| is a less-than-stellar option, too. But I also suspect that
| many people's newfound love of WFH is fueled in part by the
| novelty of the experience, and that the shine will wear off
| after a couple more years.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers
| are the only people they regularly interact with in-person
|
| Well, with the 8 hours they're getting back from not
| commuting, they'll have more time to go out and socialize in
| non-work settings
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| I think a lot of it is the exact circumstances of you office
| as well. All else equal I think I would actually prefer
| working in an office assuming that:
|
| 1. It felt like a "real" space (i.e. not a beige cubical
| farm)
|
| 2. Was not excessively loud
|
| 3. I had a comfortable chair/workspace
|
| 4. I could walk there from my house in under 20 minutes
|
| 5. There was no dress code
|
| 6. There was nobody there who I found deeply annoying and
| also insisted on interacting with me regularly
|
| And I think a lot of people (especially young people who live
| in cities close to where they work) actually do have
| something approximating that situation.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Being able to walk there from my house in under 20 minutes
| is a big thing for me. If I am a 1-3 miles walk/bike ride,
| I would go to the office all of the time. Assuming its a
| safe comfortable commute. I hate driving in rush hour
| personally, any amount of distance.
|
| Also feeling like a real place is nice. I actually don't
| mind a cubical, though an office would be nicer. I really
| hate open office though, and open office makes me never
| want to go in. If it felt like a cozy coffee shop, or a
| college campus that would be ideal.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| Yeah, I don't mind a cubicle per se (especially compared
| to the typical open office) but I found the traditional
| cubicle farm offices, where everything is this bland,
| monochromatic beige color and lit with neon lights, very
| depressing.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| Interesting how you automatically assigned a gender. My wife
| has worked from home for 4 years and can't wait to get back
| into an office. I like to think that some people just have
| different preferences.
| weatherlite wrote:
| We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural
| only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one
| else at all, for weeks and months. If not the office, workers
| are better off using some social working space, but
| unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to
| that. Psychologically it's not ideal. Yes the office can be a
| pain, commute and what not, but loneliness could be worse.
| onion2k wrote:
| _We are social creatures, there is something quite
| unnatural only interacting with your wife /kid or worse -
| with no one else at all, for weeks and months._
|
| Offices are significantly less 'natural' than spending time
| with a small group of people. If you go back a thousand
| years or so _many_ people lived their entire life within a
| mile or two of where they were born - they grew up, worked,
| got married, lived and died in a single village. In lots of
| more isolated cases people would have only met a couple of
| hundred people _in their entire lifetime._
|
| It's definitely unusual to lead such a limited life today,
| but psychologically it's not that bad. People survived
| pretty well, and they continue to now.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| That "small" group would consist of something like 100
| people, not 5. If you want to appeal to nature, it's
| _less_ natural for your family to be your entire social
| circle, than for it to include casual workplace
| acquaintances.
| weatherlite wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is the truth.
| We are much closer to a pack of chimps than anything
| else, definitely not 2-3 family members (and even 2-3
| members is optimistic considering divorce rate and
| plummeting child bearing) . We lived in groups of a few
| dozens of members for hundreds of thousands of years.
| closeparen wrote:
| There was much more of a community life outside the home,
| with your fellow villagers.
| biomcgary wrote:
| In this case, the community is defined by the proximity
| to your home. Working at an office with a typical US
| commute is not remotely the same.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Working remotely from home is also a very different
| lifestyle, so I'm not sure what the argument is. Living
| as if it's the 1000 BC is not in the cards.
| Kye wrote:
| Perhaps there's a connection between the loss of
| community and the rise of long commutes to drab office
| parks.
| civilized wrote:
| > If not the office, workers are better off using some
| social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting
| and easy most will resort to that. Psychologically it's not
| ideal.
|
| I would caution against the presumption that people will do
| things that are "bad" for them because they're convenient
| and you have to force them to do things that are "good" for
| them instead.
|
| In these comments you can see examples of people who are
| going to co-working spaces. Obviously they feel they need
| it and I support them. Personally I have no interest in
| going to a co-working space. I love my WFH solitude and
| autonomy, and 2021 was the most productive year of my life
| work-wise.
|
| Is this psychologically bad for me, regardless of my own
| perceptions and experience? I suppose it's possible, but I
| don't think some random boss with the power to fire me
| unless I come into the office is a better judge of that
| than I am.
|
| Random boss is not enlightened by virtue of being a boss.
| Surely anyone who has nodded their head to a Dilbert comic
| knows that by now. Random boss will do what's good for
| himself, not what's good for me.
|
| Paternalistic, collectivist authoritarianism has dominated
| human thought for most of our history. It's only recently
| that individual autonomy and freedom have become more
| influential. I think that's a very good thing and I'm not
| going back.
| weatherlite wrote:
| I never said you have to force them, that's a
| philosophical question with no clear answer, I'm just
| stating a problem - which is called loneliness and
| solitude and which affects most people. Its very possible
| in your individual case 100% remote work is what's good
| for you, but it's not likely that its good for most
| people most of the time because it goes against
| everything we know about our nature and genes. Now if a
| person is 100% remote worker but he invests heavily in
| socializing then there shouldn't be a problem. The
| trouble is I don't think most people will do this, at
| least not enough. Many people lack discipline and have
| very weak will power; so many of us find it extremely
| hard to do the things which we know are good for mental
| well being - such as exercising, eating right and
| socializing with friends and family. We find it extremely
| easy and even addictive to do things which aren't great
| (or even bad) for mental well being such as Netflix
| binging, reading Twitter and eating junk food and not
| leaving the house for lengthy periods. The easy thing to
| do is just WFH and not bother with seeing anyone, because
| calling up friends is hard work. Sure, people will still
| see friends but not more than they did before they went
| WFH. It's mostly just gonna be people working from home,
| alone, or with a spouse if you're lucky. This is why I'm
| not incredibly optimistic.
| hooande wrote:
| This doesn't make sense. There are countless opportunities
| for social interaction. Join a church, a club, a sports
| league, a gaming discord. I get that there's a lot of
| friction involved in joining anything, and many 'lonely young
| men' don't want to put forth that effort. But it's definitely
| less total effort than forcing people to come to an office
| for the purpose of social stimulation. Just measured in terms
| of time and fuel spent commuting by each person, it isn't
| even close.
|
| I think there are a lot of reasons that people prefer
| offices. Most of it is probably tradition and "that's the way
| we've always done things". If the reason is truly lonely
| people needing social interaction, then there are a lot of
| way better solutions.
| infamouscow wrote:
| One thing to consider is the tech industry is over
| represented by neurodivergent people that struggle with
| social interaction. What you're suggesting is not feasible
| for everyone.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Churches and most clubs don't have extremely intelligent
| people with similar interests i.e. your tribe. When I talk
| to my friends I am usually at maybe 20% brain "power", when
| I'm at work I can mention basically anything and someone
| will have heard of it.
|
| YMMV.
| holyyikes wrote:
| BKirkpatrick wrote:
| sorry for the shameless plug but, checkout frenemy.live
| infamouscow wrote:
| I will. Thank you.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular,
| forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient
| and retards some people from pursuing social activities
| outside the home.
|
| There are already a number of options in even the smallest
| town. I expect that will increase as more people move to WFH
| and seek social outlets.
|
| And at the end of the day "interacting with coworkers in the
| break room" is a pretty low quality bar for an alternative to
| surmount. Maybe your work conversations are more fascinating
| than mine, but I get more value elsewhere.
| Riverheart wrote:
| There are reasons people don't pursue activities outside of
| work because they only require a minimal amount of
| interaction with people or they don't have time for
| socialization outside of work. Conversations with
| clubmembers won't be appreciably more meaningful than
| conversations with coworkers.
|
| A benefit is that your social circle exists independent of
| your job status but you've got to do it on your own time.
| closeparen wrote:
| I don't particularly enjoy the forced, stilted chatter but
| I do get a lot of value from:
|
| a) Being obliged to put on clothes and leave the house.
|
| b) Spending a large part of the day at a change of scenery.
|
| c) Having other people there, around, ambiently.
|
| Spending 23 hours a day alone in your room + 1 hour for
| outdoor exercise, with occasional weekend visitation, is
| among the worst punishments the state has at its disposal.
| It boggles the mind that people do this voluntarily.
| Retric wrote:
| WFH don't require working at home, you can work wherever
| you want.
|
| Laptop + 5G means you can work outside for much of the
| year at a local park etc. You can do all that coworker
| social stuff with your friends rather than people you
| happen to work with.
|
| Even if you do stay home skipping your commute and eating
| at home saves significant time and money every week you
| can use to again socialize with people you want to
| actually be around.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| You are viewing remote work through the particular
| circumstance of the pandemic. Remote work before covid
| was very different, and I expect in time we'll get back
| to a lot of that.
|
| I worked remotely before the pandemic, and most days I
| still have ample opportunities to meet and talk to
| people. Most weeks I'd attend a meetup (I'm in a small
| city in the midwest and we still had plenty of events to
| cater to most any niche technical interest you'd care to
| name). A couple of times a month I'd meet up with other
| remote workers for lunch at a restaurant somewhere
| convenient to all of us. I regularly hosted, or attended,
| game nights with friends I met- mostly through the
| meetups.
|
| I was never one for coworking spaces, and I don't even
| have a lot of non-development hobbies that had me meeting
| other people, and I still managed to have a pretty rich
| social life and meet people, make friends, and even got
| some of the sorts of creative boosts people claim only
| come from in-office working (because you talk to people
| about what problems they work on, or their interests, and
| it sparks ideas for how to apply those to your own work).
|
| Things right now are still bleak because of the pandemic.
| It sucks, and it sucks worse knowing that this could have
| been over by now if the response hadn't been so
| universally mishandled, but a lot of what sucks about the
| pandemic will continue to suck- or suck differently but
| the same amount, if you go back to an office. Remote work
| isn't for everyone, and you really might still find that
| all things being equal the office just works best for
| you, and that's fine, but don't confuse "the pandemic
| sucks" for "remote work sucks".
| vkou wrote:
| > You are viewing remote work through the particular
| circumstance of the pandemic.
|
| Those particular circumstances of the pandemic haven't
| been with us for almost a year, now, ever since mass
| vaccination started. I hated WFH in 2020, and I hated WFH
| in 2021, and I still hate WFH today. Despite having no
| pandemic restrictions on what I can do today.
|
| And even prior to vaccination, if you wanted to go out
| and do stuff, most establishments/businesses/travel
| options/etc were open since late 2020.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over,
| it isn't. The legal restrictions might have lifted in
| most places, but there's a big gap between that and
| things being back to how they were before- or how they'll
| be once we've actually hit the endemic part of covid and
| have a better understanding of what that looks like.
|
| You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and
| co-working spaces might be open, but enough people are
| still reluctant to attend events that a lot of things
| aren't sustainable right now. I certainly wouldn't go
| meet someone at a restaurant for lunch right now, even
| though I can. Most of my friends feel the same way.
| Conferences are still happening, but a lot of conferences
| remain virtual, and a lot of people who might otherwise
| attend conferences aren't. Either because they are still
| concerned about covid today, or because they don't want
| to risk buying tickets, booking travel, and taking time
| off for a conference that might be canceled or
| rescheduled due to yet another surge. Tech meetups have
| almost entirely stopped. Nearly all meetups were hosted
| by companies, and while those companies might be talking
| about RTO for their employees, few of them are interested
| in hosting large groups of strangers after-hours right
| now. Even if you could find a venue- attendance would be
| quite low these days.
| vkou wrote:
| > As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over,
| it isn't.
|
| No, it's not over, in fact we're at our worst rate of
| world-wide daily cases since November 2021. Believe me,
| I'm both a pessimist, and one of the more COVID-cautious
| people here.
|
| But in _my_ region /anywhere I'd like to go, I can, and
| currently feel comfortable doing just about anything I
| want[1] - and have been for most of the past year (Sans
| Omicron surge).
|
| > You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and
| co-working spaces might be open, but enough people are
| still reluctant to attend events that a lot of things
| aren't sustainable right now. I certainly wouldn't go
| meet someone at a restaurant for lunch right now, even
| though I can.
|
| Sure, you may feel that way - but I haven't felt that
| way. So, for _me_ , there are no practical restrictions
| on what I, or my friends can do. Nothing that I liked
| doing three years ago is unavailable today.
|
| ... And yet, I vastly prefer going into work over WFH.
|
| [1] I don't feel comfortable licking doorknobs or getting
| into a moshpit, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that
| pre-COVID, either.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > ... And yet, I vastly prefer going into work over WFH.
|
| Could be just an imbalance between the pre-pandemic world
| and then two years of the pandemic world. It's quite
| possible if you had entered WFH when society was normal,
| there wouldn't be this sharp jolt.
| vkou wrote:
| That's certainly a hypothesis, but I can't exactly climb
| into a time machine and turn back the clock.
|
| I also don't envision how I would have done WFH any
| differently in a non-pandemic world, from how I do it
| today.
| vgel wrote:
| Thanks for these comments -- this one and your reply to
| vkou. I started working out of college during the
| pandemic, and my current gig is remote-native, so I've
| been kind of dooming about remote work. This is some
| great advice for how to get past that + a good reminder
| that COVID is still affecting things -- I've been going
| with my partner to a board game group and swing classes,
| but the activation energy is definitely higher than
| before.
|
| Curious -- have you found anything that (partially?)
| replaces those opportunities, either online or in-person?
| I joined a Discord server and gave a talk about JPEG at
| one of their events, which was fun, but not frequent for
| me to feel that it's a replacement for having in-person
| coworkers.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| I'll admit it's pretty hard to replace the in-person
| events. I am in some slack and discord communities, and
| I've done a couple of online conferences. I really used
| to enjoy presenting at meetups and was very upset to have
| had to turn down an invitation to an in-person conference
| this fall because of covid. Virtual talks and meetups
| aren't really the same, but they are what I've made do
| with in the short term.
|
| I'm not much for traditional online games, but I know
| some friends who have used that as a more natural way to
| do online socializing. I've done some online D&D and have
| found that is better than other kinds of online meetups
| for socializing, because it gives you enough space to
| have conversations and chat, but still gives you enough
| of a focus and it just feels less exhausting than other
| kinds of online meetups- the tools are really good these
| days too.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _started working out of college during the pandemic_
|
| * Caveat: remote-only, during the pandemic, right out of
| college would probably be the worst of all possible
| worlds
|
| Most of the things that people like about WFH are
| contingent on being in a later stage of your career
| (college + 5 years?). Having a place with multiple rooms.
| Having something of a physical social network. Having
| self-confidence in your abilities, based on prior
| performance. Knowing how to navigate office politics.
|
| Plus, most of the things you _would_ be doing at that
| stage were interrupted: bars, clubs, etc.
|
| Which is to say, you're absolutely right, and I agree
| with your perspective. But it does get better. But I'm
| sure that's cold comfort.
|
| A more articulate, and less rageful version of my
| original post would probably have been "I believe we
| Americans are (and were!) doing badly at creating
| opportunities for adult friendships and socialization,
| and I would rather we aspire to improve things vs going
| back to the way they were."
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I assume you don't have any friends or family outside of
| work that live close to you?
|
| My group of friends gets lunch together 3-4 days out of
| the workweek. We even sometimes do dinner with eachother
| during the week. Sometimes we do this with family instead
| - my wife's sister and parents live within 15 minutes of
| us.
|
| And we have kids that we lug with us.
| closeparen wrote:
| I meet my friends for specific events (cycling, running,
| lunch, coffee, concert, theater, etc) lasting a few hours
| each on the weekends.
|
| I don't know anyone who wants to do those kinds of things
| on workdays, or to be "around" without a specific
| activity planned.
|
| It's something but it's still very little compared to
| working together.
| mantas wrote:
| In my whereabouts weekday evenings is where the fun
| social stuff goes (well, used to before pandemics). Group
| rides, group runs, orienteering events, bar trivia
| nights... You get most attendants on weekdays since on
| weekends many people are out of town (family,
| summerhouses, etc) and/or go to full-day events.
|
| Theater performances or concerts are not uncommon on
| weekdays either. Touring artists just have to play on
| whatever day it turns out to be.
|
| Also, once remote working with lax schedules become the
| norm, more opportunities will come up. E.g. I fondly
| remember times when my friends' and mine schedules would
| click and we could do quick morning rides.
| closeparen wrote:
| I think the problem is, since working fully remote means
| spending about twice as much time in formally scheduled
| meetings, and those meetings are significantly more
| draining on Zoom than in person, both I and the people I
| might socialize with feel a lot more drained at the end
| of the work day and less interested in doing anything
| non-vegetative. Previously we would go for dinner or
| drinks after work pretty often.
| katbyte wrote:
| Work is only 8 hours of the day, 8 to sleep, 2 for chores
| meals etc leaves 6 for whatever you want socializing with
| whoever you want?
|
| Being obligated to go to the same place with the same
| people 5 days a week following the same routine seems
| dreadful to me.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Don't mix up pandemic restrictions with 100% remote work
| from home.
|
| I put on clothes every day. I only wear a nice t-shirt
| though and otherwise wear my 'at home pants' that I would
| also put on as soon as I'd come home from the office. My
| nice pants last much longer now.
|
| I really don't like the office scenery very much. I also
| do not like the scenery in between, i.e. a huge city that
| has no greenery, the commute is equally dull, boring and
| unappealing. Vs. my home where in summer I can actually
| sit outside on the deck all day and enjoy the scenery.
| It's lush and green and warm vs. the cold, dry AC air
| blowing in my face and forcing me to wear a jacket inside
| the office.
|
| Depending on whether you have family and/or family that
| also works from home, people are even around 'ambiently'
| but at least they're only around ambiently without
| constantly distracting you. They're in a different room
| doing their own work most of the time.
|
| After 8 hours of work I am free to do what I want. Go
| outside, take a walk, meet friends etc.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I do like my path to work. In fact, I go there once in a
| while, and come back just to get a long walk.
|
| I do like my previous office. It happens that I had to
| improve my home when I got here, but after spending
| around 1/5 of my monthly salary, my home is now even a it
| more comfortable and I use it when not working too. If
| you have a minimum of space, that's quite doable, and if
| you don't, why don't you want to move into a cheaper
| place?
|
| Even those reasons don't add up to much.
| 30367286 wrote:
| >I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge --
| regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally
| sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social
| activities outside the home.
|
| Absolutely. Additionally, even getting to that set of
| regular, forced interactions necessarily consumes the
| limited time those people would have to pursue those social
| activities outside the home. That is, it's hard to have a
| strong social life when you commute, at best, 5 hours a
| week. And that's if you're _lucky_.
|
| All of this benefits corporations. Especially, insidiously,
| the notion that your job can and should double as your
| social life.
|
| What concerns me, today, is that that we're in this middle
| stage where things could tip either way. For this reason, I
| think it's important for us to bang the drum loudly that we
| won't spend 40-50 hours in the office. Hybrid is a
| sufficient compromise.
| saltharp wrote:
| > That is, it's hard to have a strong social life when
| you commute, at best, 5 hours a week. And that's if
| you're lucky.
|
| "At best"? The average commute in the US is 27.6 minutes,
| according to the Census Bureau. My commute is a 10 minute
| bike ride. Luck had nothing to do with it, just a
| different set of priorities in life.
|
| https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-
| way-...
| Terretta wrote:
| > _27.6 minutes_
|
| Something's wrong with this stat. Almost nobody can get
| from chair at home to chair at work in that time.
|
| My present office is 1.6 miles of which ~1 mile is
| Interstate, yet it's at best 22 minutes house door to
| office door (not chair to chair) if I hit traffic lights,
| as low as 14 minutes if all greens. Google Maps and Apple
| Maps say it's 6 - 8 minutes in off hours. Once car is on
| street, only greens, and before turning into parking,
| _maybe_ that's right.
|
| This suggests two things: (a) maybe they mean time in
| vehicle in motion not chair-to-chair, (b) maybe they are
| computing address to address absent traffic.
|
| I'm also suspicious of the word "average". For instance,
| I can picture bi-modal commute times: a set that are 0
| minutes (like Amazon support answering calls from
| 'virtual call center' at home), and a set that are long
| tail, as alluded to in this quote:
|
| > _The average American is traveling 26 minutes to their
| jobs -- the longest commute time since the Census started
| tracking it in 1980, up 20 percent. Commutes longer than
| 45 minutes are up 12 percent in that time span, and
| 90-minute one-way commutes are 64 percent more common
| than in 1990._
|
| With 90 minute one way commutes going on, maybe the
| average data is asking people who are in denial.
|
| But the simplest explanation is also in that quote:
| _travel_ time. It's certainly not start stopwatch, get
| ready to commute, get to your transit, wait for your
| transit (e.g. warm up car or wait for bus), get in
| motion, travel, stop, dispense with transit (park car,
| lock bike), get from your transit to workplace, get
| situated, stop stopwatch.
|
| // I've prioritized "least traffic lights" and ideally
| "walkability" since university. From 2017 to 2021 I paid
| a massive premium to be able to get chair-to-chair
| (including both elevator waits) in ~8 minutes on foot w/
| no transit in midtown Manhattan. Commute times matter to
| me, I use tools to heatmap them when choosing work and
| residences, so just not buying average possibility of 26
| mins. ------ BEGIN_EDIT ------
|
| Yes, it was just travel time.
|
| I found the US Census source, it's a question Census said
| was asking people for 'travel time' and respondents
| probably in optimistic denial:
|
| _Question on Travel Time to Work from the American
| Community Survey 2019_
|
| _Q.35: How many minutes did it usually take this person
| to get from home to work LAST WEEK?_
|
| The Census writeup includes distributions:
|
| https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publica
| tio...
|
| Yes, it's a touch bi-modal, with a valley in the 5 minute
| period that's also the "average". No, bicycle isn't
| helping much, only shaves 6 mins on 'average'. Ten
| percent are in the car over an hour.
|
| Insofar as their data is travel time not total time
| chair-to-chair (time between being able to be doing
| something else at each end), and it's self surveyed not
| measured, I buy it. ------ END_EDIT
| ------
| humanwhosits wrote:
| Hybrid has all the downsides of office work, it's just
| less hours of it
| beamatronic wrote:
| My objection to office work these days has more to do
| with thousands of unmasked people all together, spreading
| viruses.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Not strictly all. You still have more time on the days
| you work from home, which you could use to be social.
|
| But yeah, if everyone is "hybrid", then the pressure on
| the housing market is unlikely to go down enough, which
| means that many people may find themselves in living
| conditions poor for remote work, which means they're more
| likely to go more often to the office, which means
| they're back to where they started...
| 30367286 wrote:
| Alas, this is the nature of compromise. Your downside is
| your employer's upside.
| eikenberry wrote:
| It just means "the employer" has to keep the office space
| for a lot of people who will only use it occasionally and
| all the costs associated with that. I doubt most
| employers would consider that an upside.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > Hybrid is a sufficient compromise.
|
| No it isn't.
| iso1631 wrote:
| I'm happy to meet up every few months, assuming my time
| and travel is paid for and it's arranged well in advance
| 30367286 wrote:
| This is really how it ought to go. Once a quarter, we all
| descend on one city for one week. We make big plans, we
| revel in each other's company, and we see a new part of
| the world or see a familiar part of the world in a new
| way with colleagues. Then we go back.
| 30367286 wrote:
| What is a sufficient compromise, in your view, that
| satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face
| to face interactions with coworkers and prevents
| corporations unprepared to manage a remote team from
| whipping back to full in-office?
|
| I do not want to put words in your mouth, but since you
| offered so few of them, I am tempted to believe you are
| one of the few lucky workers who has sufficient leverage
| to wholesale refuse to work in an office. If that is you,
| or if you the reader are such a person: consider the path
| we must take to bring flexible work to more people.
|
| With that goal and those prerequisites in mind, what is a
| sufficient compromise?
| tharkun__ wrote:
| A sufficient compromise would be to _allow_ the people
| that want regular face to face interactions with
| coworkers to go to the office and do just that. Not sure
| what the culture is in your place but at my place
| everyone has their video on in calls, so there 's always
| face-to-face communication (exceptions can apply of
| course in some circumstances but that is the general
| rule) that way. People that want that do go to the office
| from time to time and do just that. But they do it with
| like minded people.
|
| What is not a sufficient compromise is to _force_ people
| that don 't need face-to-face in person interaction into
| the office again when we have found out that remote works
| perfectly well.
| 30367286 wrote:
| > But they do it with like minded people
|
| This is the main problem I see with your compromise. The
| self-sorting will create or enforce existing silos. The
| compromise is not only between you and your employer, but
| also between you and your coworkers. You might derive no
| value from face to face interaction, but your coworkers
| certainly do -- and that includes you.
|
| I suspect that this self-sorting will result in a very
| loud cohort of in-office workers demanding everyone come
| back, which spoils the whole deal.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| But if I'm forced to come in for two days I'm going to go
| in, keep my head down, and get out, which is what I did 5
| days a week before. The loud people have always and will
| always dominate those conversations.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Definite +1 to my sibling about coming in and keeping the
| head down.
|
| Not sure which kinds of silos you are talking about. If
| it's silos as in social circles, that exists with 100%
| in-office as well. You know, the people that always sit
| together at lunch, always go out together for lunch or
| coffee, that meet after work at the pub and the people
| that eat lunch at their desk or off to the side, drink
| office-coffee only and don't go to the pub but go home to
| their family instead.
|
| If you're talking about departmental or team silos those
| existed with 100% in-office as well. Marketing not
| talking to Product or Dev? Nothing really changed here I
| would argue. If anything it might have gotten better
| because everyone thought it would get worse and very
| actively tried to do something about it.
|
| Face to face communication works very well over video and
| I derive enormous value from it. Only using written
| communication or audio only would suck big time.
| Especially when first getting to know someone that you've
| never met in person. But I don't have to sit in the same
| room with them or be 12 floors away from them for most of
| the day except for the meeting at three, when we both
| take the elevator, them 3 floors down, me 9 floors up to
| talk about something.
|
| I agree that there will probably be a loud cohort of in-
| office workers that demand others to come back and if
| they succeed it will spoil the whole deal. But that
| doesn't get better with a 2-day in-office hybrid
| compromise either. If anything they would have much more
| pull already when they demand we go back to 5 days a week
| "because obviously 3 days of remote work are bad, we only
| get anything done ever in the 2 forced in-office days".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, on my experience person to person interaction got
| much easier more common, because you don't have to get up
| and go to a different floor, or to the other end of your
| floor, or to another city.
|
| We have some processes with high interaction on our
| development, and when people were considering going back
| to the office (in the end, we didn't) we met and decided
| how we would do then now. The remote option worked so
| much better than in person that there wasn't any
| discussion.
| grardb wrote:
| Assuming the word "hybrid" is being used to mean that an
| individual employee has to go into the office for at
| least some amount of time per week/month/whatever:
|
| Here's the issue I have with the main argument I see
| against remote work, or rather the main argument I see in
| favor of forcing people to commute to an office
| ("satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face
| to face interactions with coworkers"):
|
| I want to be at home, and I am fine being at home. Why
| should _I_ need to go to an office because of _a coworker
| 's_ need for social interaction? I don't need that social
| interaction. To me, the argument always seems very self-
| centered from the point of view of pro-office people. Let
| the people who need that social interaction go to the
| office, and let everyone else stay home if they want.
| There's no reason that someone should be forced to go to
| an office because of the needs of other people,
| especially when those needs have nothing to do with work.
|
| This is like arguing that I should be wearing a certain
| color of clothing because some people like to (or need
| to?) see that color. That's not my problem to solve for
| them.
|
| I get plenty of social interaction outside of work hours.
| There should be zero expectation for me to spend more
| time, energy, and/or money (getting ready, preparing or
| buying lunch, commuting both ways, etc.) so that people
| who aren't my friends get to look at/talk to me in 3D.
| closeparen wrote:
| I would be happy to _socialize_ only with people who opt
| in. That's how it is already, no one forced you to go to
| the lunch table or tag along for drinks.
|
| To the extent that we collaborate on work, though, having
| to Zoom with you instead of having a normal free-flowing
| conversation forms an imposition on me. It becomes an
| _extreme_ imposition when I am also prohibited from
| having normal free flowing conversations with other
| people in the office, out of a sense of "inclusivity" or
| "leveling the playing field" for you.
| ev1 wrote:
| I am curious how this does not present an opposite
| extreme: forcing me to stop my work to have an
| unnecessary conversation instead of discussing in
| asynchronous issue tracker makes me have to remember what
| happened, have to write down whatever I remember, deal
| with not being able to get my stories done while this is
| happening, instead of being able to look it up and have
| it in writing along with other people not available at
| the time to discuss or leave notes and changes on.
| closeparen wrote:
| I agree, it is very bad to do things synchronously and in
| formal meetings that could have been async and offline.
| That's another reason to resent remote work. Number of
| meetings, duration of meetings, size of attendee lists,
| and % of calendar covered in meetings are all _way_ up
| since the transition to remote. There 's a meme on HN
| that remote means written async communication, but the
| objective measured reality at my company is the opposite.
| ornornor wrote:
| Exactly, why should we allow someone else to make their
| problem our problem?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > What is a sufficient compromise, in your view, that
| satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face
| to face interactions with coworkers
|
| Let them get their interactions from people who want to
| have them.
|
| What's a sufficient compromise between the need of some
| men to have sex with women and the desire of some women
| not to have sex with those men?
| dtx1 wrote:
| > I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge --
| regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally
| sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social
| activities outside the home.
|
| Or,it allows people with social anxiety or depression a
| room for social interactions with very well defined rules
| and in an environment where people generally interact
| positively with you. I like the convenience of WFH too but
| I do miss cooking with my colleagues and their families on
| Wednesdays.
|
| This might sound weird to you but living alone and having
| had parents that made every meal either a screaming match
| or a barrage of passive aggressive comments I enjoyed those
| lunches with my much more reasonable colleagues a lot.
|
| Being essentially alone most days certainly didn't help
| with my depression and that makes other social interactions
| harder.
|
| I still won't go back though, wearing trouser being
| optional at work is a worthwhile tradeoff
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I like the convenience of WFH too but I do miss cooking
| with my colleagues and their families on Wednesdays.
|
| Well, to fix that you can go cook with your colleagues
| and their families on Wednesdays.
| dtx1 wrote:
| not as long as corona is still raging here in germany, no
| families (or colleagues) at the office
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Eh, I'm kinda implicated here but I see office interactions
| as some bare minimum of socialization that, yes, can lead
| to complacency but does not subtract from the ideal of
| finding meaningful relationship outside of work. If
| anything, face to face work helps energize me to be social,
| and not just with my coworkers. More like a daily practice
| against Cabin Fever. For some reason, for me, Cabin Fever
| self-perpetuates.
|
| I still prefer WFH, but I go to a coffee shop most days of
| the week to work on a personal project. After a year+ my
| relationship with the other regulates and staff is like the
| best possible relationship you'd expect to have among
| coworkers - I've even grabbed a beer with the manager when
| then closed early one day - without the stresses of working
| for a common employer.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'm approaching this from my own perspective of a fairly
| serious introvert, and I feel like the biggest skill I've
| picked up in life is pushing past the introvert wall.
|
| Which is that thing that whispers "Going out will be a
| hassle. Why not just not?"
|
| Work was one way of forcing past that, but I feel that's
| analogous to saying "Prison is one way of curing
| wanderlust." It feels more reasonable to treat the
| underlying issue than take a bargain that comes with
| serious negative consequences.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| High speed internet and video conferencing might bring many of
| those distractions into your home office in a way that you
| didn't have to deal with during the old days.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Some people live in tiny apartments without even a balcony.
| vonseel wrote:
| Some people prefer working in an office because it helps them
| stay disciplined and keep a better work/life balance. Perhaps
| I'm just speaking for myself here, but I tend to get lazy and
| feel like my life has much less structure as a fully-remote
| worker.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face
| to face"
|
| This. We have managed to completely fuck up life style of the
| segment of the population to the point that they have no life
| outside of the office. This is sick.
| mwattsun wrote:
| A good book about this is Bowling Alone. As much as I liked
| programming, I would also take the day off to go surfing if
| the waves were good. Another WFH benefit.
|
| http://bowlingalone.com/
| jdminhbg wrote:
| That said, it made a huge difference that forced WFH
| coincided with closing all possible social outlets at the
| same time. If you discovered that you wanted to expand your
| social circle to diversify away from workmates, you were out
| of luck.
| bsder wrote:
| > I can safely say I never wrote any good code while working in
| an office. There are too many distractions.
|
| 1) Not every office is Silicon Valley Open Office Garbage
|
| I personally think this is the biggest issue.
|
| We never threw in with the "open office" bullshit. Offices have
| doors. We don't have that many cubicles, and they're generally
| for contractors/consultants/etc. Every time we started having
| cubicles, it was time to move to a bigger office.
|
| People hate commute traffic--that's sadly unavoidable in the
| US. But they didn't seem to hate our _office_ (I could, of
| course, simply be blind like so many stupid managers).
|
| 2) Not every job is solely writing code.
|
| I need a lab. My juniors need a lab. They don't need to be
| there every day, but they do need it regularly. Expecting them
| to set this up in their apartment is unreasonable.
|
| 3) Junior engineers need mentoring
|
| Maybe the fact that _software_ does this quite so terribly is
| hiding this need.
|
| There is a lot of friction between simply mentioning something
| to a staff engineer after lunch and setting up a specific zoom
| call. There is also something about the staff engineer
| overhearing something "minor" that junior engineers are
| struggling with, correlating that multiple of them are having
| similar issues and setting up something to fix a process or
| educate people.
|
| 4) Lack of face to face time increases conflicts
|
| This is anecdata. However, people who don't actually meet face
| to face regularly don't cut each other the same slack that
| those who meet regularly do. I don't know why. Although, we
| could probably paper over this by having regular lunches.
|
| I like working from home. But I also liked working at the
| office. They are two different modes that serve two different
| purposes.
|
| I will, however, agree that 9 to 5, 5 days a week in the office
| is dumb. At the very least, significantly condensing the number
| of "common hours" and letting people commute on off times needs
| to increase. This was happening, but very slowly. Covid
| accelerated this.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > 5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working
| at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet
|
| It's hard to imagine now how this could be done without the
| internet and a distributed vcs like git.
| odonnellryan wrote:
| It took me 1-2 years before WFH didn't make me depressed. I
| enjoy it now but I understand.
| heassler wrote:
| Going to the office means getting to know the people you work
| with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do
| that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going
| out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible
| when chatting via google meets.
|
| But there's also the increased exposure to serendipity.
| Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a
| conversation that makes you think about your career, or during
| drinks after work you end up discussing a new cool startup idea
| with colleagues. None of this really happens when you stay at
| home.
|
| Sure, there are pros to staying at home. You will have more
| free time and fewer distractions, among other things. But there
| are also massive perks to putting a bit of effort and going to
| the office sometimes. Those perks, admittedly, may be hard to
| understand for the average introverted, socially anxious
| software dev.
| chapium wrote:
| I disagree on one point. I've spent much of my career working
| with remote offices over the phone and with desktop sharing.
| I have to say, group video conferences really don't cut it.
| However, one on one calls and video calls work really well
| and you can get to know your coworkers. Its so much better to
| have one on ones with others and not have each other worry
| about posturing in front of their peers. Group video calls
| are at least just as useless as group meetings.
| nanochad wrote:
| humanwhosits wrote:
| > Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a
| conversation
|
| The office rumor-mill produced a lot of bad politics in my
| experience
| [deleted]
| scruple wrote:
| > Going to the office means getting to know the people you
| work with to a meaningful level
|
| In 15 years in this industry, I have only developed a handful
| of deep relationships with former and current colleagues. The
| vast majority of my own work relationships have been
| superficial. I'm a card carrying member of the over sharer's
| club, and yet so many of my colleagues throughout the years
| don't know that I'm originally from Ohio by way of
| Pennsylvania... That I'm a military veteran... That I'm a
| strength and endurance athlete, etc. Maybe that says
| something about me, but I don't think I'm an outlier.
|
| Some of the people I've worked with were utterly contemptible
| and, while I maintained a professional relationship with them
| at work, myself and many others were inwardly happy to see
| them go when the time came. I think we all know plenty of
| cantankerous assholes who we've had to call team mate,
| colleague, or worse, manager / boss.
|
| We work here together for a (usually brief, in the grand
| scheme of things) period of time and that's often the only
| glue that holds the majority of us together.
|
| One of the deepest and most impactful relationships I have
| forged through a shared working environment is a person who
| lives in Argentina and who I have never met in person. No
| office required, just the Internet.
| jghn wrote:
| > Maybe you overhear a conversation
|
| This is the one thing I've never found a suitable replacement
| for in the remote world. Chance encounters are difficult to
| replicate. Maybe I'm discussing an issue with a colleague,
| and someone in earshot happens to know the answer. I've seen
| groups try to have policies like no DMs and only using public
| channels, but that sucks.
|
| I much prefer remote life, but it's true that there are some
| aspects of in person work that are better.
| mike10921 wrote:
| Agree with all of that. For me, the issue with working at
| home is that home is my relaxing and family place office is
| my work place. My mind focuses at work much better when i am
| in my work environment.
|
| Creating real connections with co workers from my experience
| is not possible via zoom / google meets. There is nothing
| that can replace real human interaction as far as creating
| relationships.
| Cd00d wrote:
| The serendipity point is interesting.
|
| A few years ago I had my team's desks moved to be next to our
| sales team. I wanted to overhear their conversations and
| phone calls to get a deeper understanding of client feedback
| and how clients used our product. It worked out well, and we
| got into a much better place in terms of feedback and
| requests.
|
| During covid I've also had a very strong indicator of how
| clients view our product - the entire sales team quit over
| time.
| memonkey wrote:
| My own anecdotal and I'm sure many others have experienced
| this before, but getting the culture right for remote work
| has been a great experience. I get to know people at a
| meaningful level. I remember being younger in high school and
| making meaningful relationships on the internet through chat
| rooms and video games that last to today.
| wdurden wrote:
| ClarisWorks was created like this too.
|
| https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php
| unemphysbro wrote:
| what was the merge code process like?
| glouwbug wrote:
| git merge --strategy ours
| beauzero wrote:
| This would save a lot of oil.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| foolfoolz wrote:
| i know it seems unlikely now but i think we will return to the
| office. not 100% of the time. not everyone was doing 100% before
| either.
|
| but a lot of people have switched jobs in the remote only era. we
| have experienced / are experiencing how little we know these new
| people. how little we feel connected to them. how strange it is
| to not make new friends at a new job that go beyond the work-
| friend level. i think most people will pay the cost of going in
| (again, not every day) for the gain of seeing people. this will
| be gradual but i think it is a common sentiment that we want to
| work with people we can see in person
| waterboigh wrote:
| > this will be gradual but i think it is a common sentiment
| that we want to work with people we can see in person
|
| That's been my biggest issue, is I miss the people. I miss the
| coffee runs, the random lunch outings...
|
| However, if I lived my ideal schedule I would work from 0600 to
| 1100 ITO, break for a 'siesta', then finish my work later in
| the afternoon evening as my schedule allows. And so my co-
| workers have also had their own ideals which overlap little to
| any such that we quickly reach a point of "no point in having
| in office, we overlap two hours at best."
|
| Perhaps the best model to satiate flexibility but indulge the
| human side of the equation, is remote-first regional-companies.
| One can still plan to meet with some regularity without absurd
| amounts of travel. At my first startup, we would meet on a
| roughly weekly basis for a company lunch to have those
| conversations easiest done face-to-face, or just hang out for
| an afternoon enjoying the local natural beauty (#SaltLife) -
| anytime the Engineering VP and I needed to meetup, we'd just
| figure out what day we could meet up at a colo office or coffee
| spot.
|
| Otherwise, remote from wherever made sense. Some days for me it
| was pool side, some days down by the creek, most days just in
| my home office. The only real down-side is that lack of a
| national or global talent pool, but we weren't even all that
| niche so it wasn't a factor for us and, I suspect, most
| companies which just do the same old languages on the same old
| platforms.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I'd happily do quarterly week long company regional on sites.
| It's expensive for companies to do, if they do it right and
| cover all costs and travel for sig others/family, but its
| still cheaper than rent on a big office building.
| Cd00d wrote:
| That's actually a lot to ask of people with children or
| other dependents in their care.
|
| A quarterly 2-day off-site is far more digestible. Which I
| agree is still a great compromise in expense and f2f to an
| office.
| throwxxxaway wrote:
| I feel so much better working remotely so that I don't have to
| talk to my colleagues in person. We are completely different
| people, like from different worlds. RTO is mandatory at our
| place.
|
| This made me happy every time I saw a rise in infections or new
| variant, for which I feel bad about myself.
| eropple wrote:
| I started a new job during COVID. I've met my coworkers twice
| (two of them three times). There are a solid four people out of
| an org of ~40 who I unhesitatingly consider non-work friends
| now.
|
| "You can't make friends over the Internet" hasn't been true for
| decades.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Indeed. How many of us have friends made through gaming over
| the 'net? I'd wager 50%+
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Eh. I've had close work friends and even with my best efforts
| those still felt like work friends, basically not as close as
| my non work friendships, and the relationship suffered greatly
| once one of us left that job.
|
| I don't try to cultivate work friendships now. It's a great way
| to build up a friendship that wont exists, or will only exist
| to a lesser extent, in 12-24 months.
|
| I'll be nice and friendly, as always. But I'm not staying late
| to get beers with work folks because they are my friends. I'm
| going home to see my family or hangout with my actual friends.
|
| It just doesnt feel healthy to tie work and my friendships
| together.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| Whether workers want it or not isn't going to be the deciding
| factor. Nor will it be a mental health issue. Just look at
| their years of ignoring studies about how open offices are bad
| for knowledge workers. Rather, it will be purely a financial
| decision.
|
| It comes down to whether employers are going to sign many-year
| leases for a social hangout spot for their employees. As well
| as accept liability during future COVID outbreaks.
|
| Right now there is artificial demand from employers in favor of
| returning, but only the ones who already signed many-year
| leases. For everycorp else, an office is an unnecessary
| expense. They will take the money they save on rent and
| insurance and spend some of it on wellness perks and
| subsidizing home offices, and come out ahead financially.
|
| I also think the employee demand to return to the office is
| misplaced. We're all tired of being cooped up at home with
| nothing to do, but that has more to do with lockdowns than WFH.
| Without the lockdowns, those 2 hours you spent commuting are
| now time in your day to join a social club near your home,
| start an outdoor hobby, etc. Will WFH workers still want to
| return to an office once they find a new mental health balance
| that doesn't rely on their employer? I think no.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > As well as accept liability during future COVID outbreaks.
|
| Yet somehow grocery store workers managed to work in their
| "office" and survive the last two years. Why do all these
| software developer people think they are so special?
|
| It bothers me how many people use COVID as a means to push
| their personal agendas.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Rather, it will be purely a financial decision.
|
| I agree and think this will be the key. Most will return to
| the office and the companies that don't will be out-competed
| forcing them to close or return. Of course this will take
| years to fully shake out.
| tharne wrote:
| I really hope American businesses don't bring this headline to
| its logical conclusion...
|
| "37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at
| home...by people in India or Eastern Europe for much less money"
| achenet wrote:
| not if those jobs entail good written or even oral
| communication skills. Native English speakers have a _huge_ leg
| up on Indians and Eastern Europeans in this regard.
|
| For example, I imagine Coca-Cola is willing to pay more to have
| the person writing their ad copy be someone who has been
| immersed in American culture from birth.
| samarthr1 wrote:
| A good portion of Indian engineers speak good English.
| Anecdotal evidence only though.
| mprovost wrote:
| Ironically, if you google "is speak good english
| grammatically correct" there are a lot of articles debating
| whether it's ok, or if "speak English well" is better. This
| is the kind of subtlety that's hard to understand for non-
| native speakers.
| glandium wrote:
| I don't think there's anything grammatically wrong with
| "speak good English". The difference to me is language
| register.
| globular-toast wrote:
| But a good portion don't, which makes hiring take a lot
| longer.
| weatherlite wrote:
| If it becomes really bad there's a good chance governments will
| step in and heavily tax offshoring or provide tax benefits for
| reshoring.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Just like they did with all the cheap offshore manufactured
| goods...
|
| Don't hold your breath.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Companies have been doing this for decades already.
|
| The current situation is not going to shift even more jobs to
| India. Reasons being, good engineers from India are already
| moving to the US in sheer numbers, and good talent is unlikely
| to remain at Indian IT consultancy companies.
|
| Anecdotally, I have worked along with very clever engineers who
| happened to be Indian nationals living in the US, but I have
| yet to find an above average engineer working at an Indian IT
| shop and based in India.
| weatherlite wrote:
| It's already been happening and will increase for sure, but so
| far hasn't really affected salaries as far as I can see, U.S
| devs haven't felt a thing yet. If anything, salaries in East
| Europe went way up.
|
| What I do fear is interest rate starting to rise and the
| implications of that on our industry but that's another thread.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Has the title editorializing rule been dropped? I see even more
| posts with changed titles when the original isn't particularly
| misleading.
| caymanjim wrote:
| I've been more aware of title changes lately, but I don't know
| if the frequency has increased. Some of them have been
| egregious. I'm a fan of changes like this one, though. I can't
| stand clickbait titles like this article has.
| htk wrote:
| The title is a verbatim copy of one of the highlights in the
| study.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Since this is the most descriptive line out of the highlights
| section, I personally enjoy that this is the content chosen
| instead of the "clickbaity" page title which would be "How many
| jobs can be done at home?".
| stefan_ wrote:
| But then the jig is up, no? I thought that was an amazing moment
| when recently the NYC mayor asked CEOs to "help get workers back
| to the office".
|
| It's not about the work, it's not about the city, it's about
| making sure real estate doesn't crash and those campaign
| contributions can keep coming.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In most surveys of this, there are substantial numbers of
| people who _want_ to get back to the office. That doesn 't mean
| we should ignore the people who don't want to, but the opposite
| is also true.
|
| It's also about the other businesses that are enabled by having
| significant number of non-at-home workers in the neighborhood.
| I'm not saying that this should outweigh or override anything
| else, but I am saying you don't have to be this cynical.
| lbriner wrote:
| Maybe the mayor also cares about local businesses that get
| their income from city workers as well as the transport
| networks which need all the money they can get. Maybe they care
| about the tourist buzz from a busy city or the saftey in
| numbers.
|
| You don't always have to assume the worst of someone just
| because they are powerful.
| dml2135 wrote:
| These things are not mutually exclusive.
| [deleted]
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Don't forget the suburban sprawl this sort of stuff will
| cause. Eating further and further into our natural habitats
| building giant houses for wealthy, privileged tech workers.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The solution to that is improved urban planning, not to
| reduce the demand for housing.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Work from home could plausibly have the opposite effect by
| liberating a lot of buildings from office use and
| repurposing them as homes. I know a lot of people who would
| prefer to live in a city rather than the suburbs,
| especially young people.
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