Assuming that everyone has a comfortable and spacious home with a desk&chair area is, well, a bad assumption.
A bunch of people I know are now working significantly more time from a couch, in a clearly non-ergonomic position. We will see and hear about the real damage 5 years from now.
I couldn't agree more, the transition for me was trivial - I'm a developer who plays games, I already had a nice chair, two 27" 4K displays and a fast desktop so for me my hardware/comfort improved - for my partner work issued her a just about passable laptop and..well that was it.
With the lack of space I used a spare 27" monitor I had putting it on the boys desk with a decent external mouse/keyboard and we bought him a gaming chair - that way my partner can use his room as an office while he's at school/his fathers but yeah it's not be great for her.
We are moving next year and my only criteria for the house is at has to have either a large brick built garage or a concrete garage and space for an office pod in the garden, working from home around a near-teenager was challenging (and frankly that's just gonna get worse) and long term not something I want - I need quiet solitude to work most comfortably.
I assume you're moving out of the city and into the suburbs or similar?
I wonder if the last year of WFH will actually make suburban sprawl worse in the short- to medium-term? Lots of people moving out of city flats into suburban homes for just the reasons you mention. I can't blame them, but it's probably not sustainable either. [and easy for me to say, as I already own a suburban home]
I know a bunch of people who were in urban apartments who have moved to larger places a number of hours out. There's a huge spike in real estate prices outside of cities now.
I'm in the UK but in the north earning a southern developers salary so that gives us a lot of options.
"long term" they won't be a near-teenager, or even teenager. ;). I do understand the quiet solitude for work issue though.
Our employers did at provide additional monitors (both of us already had suitable laptops), which was nice and better than many received.
My brother works from home now and he's either in his living room or kitchen and my sister has just moved house and has converted one of the bedrooms to an office but prior to that worked from her dining room.
I've worked from home for a few years and have an office (spare bedroom we didn't use) so it's no big deal for me.
I'd love to see a large-scale survey around home office working.
This is an interesting change happening in many places now and I wonder how it will impact the higher end of the market (and expectations) in a long term. Some people in larger houses recently went from 4 bedrooms with lots of space to 1 bedroom, 1 nursery, 2 offices. (yes, nice problem to have in practice, but still interesting)
It's not for everyone! Even for me, if there was a mall in my area, which had coworking, an attached hackerspace and, let's say, a gym? I would pick up a minimal "grab a desk" coworking package.
Why not? Sometimes being around people is nice. Sometimes there's lawn work or construction happening near my house. I could make a thermos of coffee and a protein shake first thing in the morning, head to coworking, get some stuff done, hit the gym, have my choice of food court meals, and head home for a shower and a quiet afternoon at home. Or call it a soft half-day and spend the afternoon working on something with circuit boards, or just shooting the breeze with the hackers.
Gosh this is sounding really nice! Anyone finds a setup like this, let me know!
