I miss some interaction/bonding with coworkers and certainly acknowledge that "hallway talk" helped clear up requirements but the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons. I will never go back to an office
> I step outside my home office to see my family and start unwinding for the evening. No wasted time on commute
I find the commute (by train, I'm lucky enough to get a seat) far more effective for unwinding to be honest. And once I'm home, I'm far more engaged with the family due to having that buffer time between work and home.
> the options for places to live are endless.
That never actually stopped me before. Hence the commute
> Not to mention I eat my own food on my lunch break.
the biggest thing I miss about not commuting into London is the food. The variety, the quality, and above all, not having to cook it myself. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind cooking. But a lot of eateries do a lot better job of their signature meal than I could.
That all said, I'm in no rush to go back. And when I do, it'll be a hybrid approach. Some days in and some days from home.
edit: why am I getting heavily down voted for discussing personal reasons why I enjoyed working in the office? It's not like I'm telling you your opinions are wrong or that you should go back to the office. All I'm doing is voicing that there are some who do enjoy travelling into the city most days. Is it really that offensive a view point to read? Some people on here don't deserve to have moderation privileges.
From the article, it sounds like the CEO wanted to get rid of remote work all together.
I’ve found myself taking the car for a quick drive downtown where the grid locks, after I finish working from home. Can’t wait for it to be mandatory again!
No one is stopping you from unwinding after work if you work from home. Hop in the car when you're done with work and enjoy a relaxing "commute" on your own terms.
Nobody's stopping you from going for a couple hour-long drives on your own dime before and after work, if that's what you're really into. The pandemic has really shown everyone how absurd it is to take on the risk, expense, and uncompensated time consumed by commuting when it's been proven to be unnecessary in most cases.
> That never actually stopped me before. Hence the commute
There's a lot of miles (literally) between endless options of places to live, and places that are within commuting distance to the office.
But there is a vocal minority of people who do not want to go back to the office and they consider our position to be threatening. There are benefits to the hybrid model, which is what I’ll be pursuing.
My guess is that there has been chatter on how discussions on WFO, specially in tech forums, are brigaded by shills to sell the illogical idea that getting back to the office is fantastic and awesome, and the hallmark of these shills is the fact that their arguments in favour of returning to office are simply unbelievable. And quite frankly you post reads like that.
I have to say that I found it very weird, and outright unbelievable, that someone was arguing that commutes were "far more effective for unwinding". To me that makes no sense at all, because when working from home you are free to pick whatever you'd like to do with that time, instead of being forced to sit in a car or public transportation and waste away your life while you endure traffic. I mean, if suffering commutes is something you enjoy then if you work from home nothing stops you from hopping into your preferred means of transportation and go anywhere you'd like. But you can also do any other thing. Is driving to/from the office during rush hour the most pleasurable and relaxing thing possible? I quite doubt it.
So why claim that being forced to do something is more effective at unwinding than actually pick whatever you'd like to do? It makes no sense.
What I would like, as a manager who had to do quarterly planning would be a week a month or a week per quarter for cross functional in office planning. It would help with a lot and probably be enough time in office to fill many of the real gaps being remote has left without being required full time.
I'm sure mileages vary, but between wasting a significant portion of my life commutting to be able to experience water cooler talks, and hugging my wife and children once I step out of my home office, you can keep all the water coolers in the world to yourself.
Work/life balance shouldn't fall all the way to the work side of the scale just because some managers struggle with remote work.
It's now impossible to get 3 people in a 15 minute meetings to clear requirements.
Before: email -> problems -> let's do a zoom call -> done.
Now: email -> problems -> nobody has time in the office for a meeting.
It might be the culture but still...
I hear that because informal stuff can solve a lot of problems, or prevent it even arising, but at the same time, it papers over a lot of cracks that should probably be exposed.
I've taken to virtual coffees during the week with people on a semi-regular basis to try and keep that sort of stuff going.
The pros are mostly yours, and the cons are mostly your employers. The labor market is finally shifting to the laborers having the leverage :)
Working for a flexible work arrangement employer has made me appreciate the following alternatives to what I used to consider pros of working in the office.
- Hall way chats are now Slack chats. These are more likely to be in the open and allow more participants. When gathering feedback or ideas this allows interested parties to participate asynchronously, which they may not have been able to do in person.
- Quick tap on the shoulder assistance or conversations. These were always a little disruptive. With Slack statuses and huddles, I'm finding we can have explicit do-not-disturb signals and when everyone is ready, a quick low-friction way of having a discussion.
- Group meetings. There was always a limit to the effectiveness of this depending on the make up of the group and the size of the group. Being forced online means it's even more obvious when people are not comfortable participating. The solution being more async collaborative RFC-style processes before meeting in Zoom to discuss only the points of difference.
- Recordings. Often we would need to take notes, etc. Now everything can be recorded. Minutes are still good, but no longer need to be taken all the time. If the meeting was a bust and nothing of value was gained, you don't need to type it up. If something important was discussed, you don't have to rely on memory and can transcribe off the recording.
All of the above I consider to be a benefit to both the employer and employee as it allows for greater flexibility in how and when we interact and automated digitisation means a much easier process of persisting and communicating institutional knowledge that is being created among a group.
This sounds like nonsense to me.
If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less and can demand less salary - the market might take a bit to adjust for that, but probably not long. It means that I'm going to be working for a less successful company, which is a lot less fun.
Employers and employees are usually in a mostly cooperative relationship, this adversarial view of it just strikes me as wrong.
(And no, before someone accuses me of being biased, I do not and have never run a company or anything like that)
I'm not sure I would even agree with this. I have a better monitor setup at home, a quieter place to work and think, and I'm spending less of my day in pointless conversations for the sake of politeness.
My employer simply gets more out of me when I work from home AND turnover is reduced.
I think the pros outweigh the cons for employers, even if they don't care at all about their employees and even if we weren't in a tight labor market
At my work, like most other works, productivity didn't go down with remote, and the company saved massively on office space.
It seems the people pushing for more office-time are in management, and this situation leads me to question the extent to which this change helps _their_ role rather than the company, and by extension their ability to manage their own conflicts of interest.
> The central sticking point, and cause cited by many people who recently left, was Smith’s strong push this year for all Blue Origin employees to return to the office.
This is without a doubt about Blue Origin's call to return to office.
It’s hard to keep working after five when the kids are home and making their usual racket. But it’s also hard to disconnect because the line between work and home is nonexistent.
The free breakfast and lunch at the office were much better than anything I can make or buy myself. Talking to random coworkers during the breaks made me feel more like part of something.
I didn’t even mind the “standing in a packed subway car” part that much. That’s just city life; I want more of it again.
Group (1) loves WFH and can't understand how anyone would ever want to work in an office and will only work remotely from now on if they can. Group (2) hates WFH and desperately needs the interactions an office provides and will be quitting any job that permanently works from home.
These two groups are two totally different types of people. They will never understand each other. It is probably not productive for each of them to keep rehashing their stances to each other. I don't know what the relative ratios of the two are, but I imagine we're gonna live in this two-types-of-employees world forever and ought to get used it. And we should probably stop belligerently pontificating to each other; nothing is going to change and it is just going to keep being a cycle of failing-to-communicate.
I'm ok with people wanting to go to office. Just let me work from home.
I'm also ok with people saying "I'm ok with WFH. Just let me work in the office".
I'm not ok with people saying "everyone needs to WFH" or "everyone needs to go to the office".
I think that's the rub, as most people/roles who want to "work from office" also mean be surrounded by their coworkers.
never heard of anyone who ever said that. is it simply there for rhetorical purposes?
Reality is more complicated, nuanced, and doesn't easily split people into two groups, which is a good thing! It makes it easier to empathize.
For example, a few people in thread have already stated they like a hybrid approach (whether it's twice a week in-office and the other days from home, or even WFH most of the time but in-person meetings a few times a year).
For another example, most people will have different preferences at different times in their career and/or lives. Just starting out? Maybe it makes more sense to be around other people to lear more. Live far away and have a long commute? Maybe WFH is better. Have young kids but live in a small apartment? Office might be easier.
The truth is, this isn't really two ways of "being". This is dependent on personality, yes, but also on circumstance.
And btw, being a manager and meaning that your job is more effective if people work from the office is also a circumstance, and a legit one, despite many of the people on this site somehow implying this is somehow wrong. (Not that I'm saying managers should always get their way, but it's a real, valid concern).
I do however have an issue with others trying to sell me their preference as some kind of objective truth when in practice software development is so diverse these days that one's reasons to go (or not) to the office are often irrelevant to someone else.
That being said I like to see that discussion happening on HN and I don't tire of reading the different takes.
Personally, it feels to me that these personality types are simply incompatible - conditions in which the first group will be happy will be disappointing for the other and vice versa.
The logical conclusion for all of that in my eyes is a split culture - certain companies and teams will go remote first, while others will go back to the office when safe, and the respective people will sooner or later migrate to the environments that are better suited to them, as long as such positions can be found.
However, this is not just an utilitarian decision but also something impacted by the people in management positions, who in my experience err on the side of the more traditional in person work. If it were not for the pandemic, remote work wouldn't be as prevalent nowadays.
But I do not doubt they exist.
I just wish group 1 and group 2 could coexist without forcing the other group.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
(It's white and gold, I don't care what reality has to say about the matter)
"The dress itself was confirmed as a royal blue "Lace Bodycon Dress" from the retailer Roman Originals, which was actually black and blue in colour"
Unfortunately, in the case of work environments, there is no objective reality we can appeal to. Different people prefer different kinds of environments. The best solution is the one that fits each person to the environment they are most productive in.
Remote working, in the sense that very few medium or large businesses have a single location, is the norm. It always has been. What has also been the norm is shitty ways of dealing with that - creating a de facto priveleged class of decision makers in one location, flying people around, and the like.
I agree there's not going to be a reconciliation between people who mostly want to work where-ever suits them (whether that's home or a satellite office) but a rational response to reality would be to do a better job of dealing with what was already there before COVID.
> I imagine we're gonna live in this two-types-of-employees world forever and ought to get used it.
We won't, it will be hybrid in companies with collaborative work and WFH In others (to save costs + attract people).
Right now, now one can really say that WFH works at scale because going into current WFH there was a lot of momentum. You would need studies for new teams that are entirely WFH to really understand if WFH is good enough or not.
Not a HN limited phenomenon. Pretty commonplace now
This place is dying.
My home is my sanctuary. It’s for sleep, rest, family and pleasure. It is modeled entirely around being comfortable.
I don’t want to hear my coworkers voices in my home. Or my manager. Or anything else work related. It gives me great anxiety and pain to hear my work in my apartment, and the feeling like I can never truly “leave” work. And I love my work and my team and the company.
To me there is nothing more alarming than the corporate overlords invading my home. And yet this is being applauded by many of my peers. Time will tell.
I think the work from home obsession is the “open office space” debate of our generation.
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.
Not everyone has this luxury but a hybrid model or choice of working environment is a necessity.. or maybe the real debate to a return to office isn’t location, but the forty hour work week.
>My home is my sanctuary. It’s for sleep, rest, family and pleasure. It is modeled entirely around being comfortable.
>I don’t want to hear my coworkers voices in my home. Or my manager. Or anything else work related. It gives me great anxiety and pain to hear my work in my apartment, and the feeling like I can never truly “leave” work. And I love my work and my team and the company.
>To me there is nothing more alarming than the corporate overlords invading my home.
I think maybe your home is too small. Sounds like you don't have a separate study or home office.
> And yet this is being applauded by many of my peers. Time will tell.
Well, I dunno why the others are applauding, but I can tell you why I am: I have a study at home that is private and closed off from the rest of the house.
In effect, there is no bleed-over of the workplace into my home.
Thanks this is incredible insight I’m gonna fix that right away
I’d say there is still plenty of psychological bleed-over for me. Not having a 100% physically separated work/home boundary has more of an effect than you might imagine. I can’t fully switch in and out of work mode.
Just my personal viewpoint
Edit:spelling
I've worked from home for a while and pre-pandemic it seemed to be fine. However, I started to have issues when everybody could do every part of their job from home. More urgent requests in off-hours, simply because people had access 24/7. I used to take 60 to 90 minutes a couple nights a week just to take my time on some work that required thought or extreme focus. There were times that moved to Saturday in the past year.
I started hating going to the basement where my office is. I have a TV and seating for movies, but use it much less than I used to.
Paying for a small office/coworking desk close to home at my own expense > commuting to office on a daily basis. And I absolutely love that I can work from random airbnbs when I want to travel.
Remote first allows a lot of flexibility even if you have offices.
There is not much of a debate, open offices are hated by knowledge workers and pushed by managers and accountants for cost reasons. I get the same feeling from those pushing back to office policies, they want control of employees under the guise of sparking ‘water cooler talk’.
The return to offices is also pushed for cost reasons. Employers made billions of dollars in investments in commercial real estate, signed multiyear leases, and have executives, board members and shareholders that are invested in commercial real estate, as well.
I assume this is a huge factor in him wanting everyone back in the office.
So, what happens from here with my job has the added complexity of "will the customer both be in the office AND want me to visit them". In some cases customers have been in the office but they have banned anybody external from coming in. In others some of the staff are there but then some aren't - and so since some will be on VC anyway it is almost better for me to VC with them to ensure an equal experience. And, actually, I have found the more senior/tenured somebody technical at the customer is the more likely it is that they'll be the ones WFH and on the VC - with the more junior in the office - and so properly catering to the remote staff is usually the better call.
Our office was VERY open plan with staff jammed in like sardines with no assigned desks (we have lockers) and was designed to be a stop-over between customer site visits. So much so that they had to limit capacity at 50% with COVID to give people a bit of space between each other. And so, ultimately whether I can work from home is dependent on what the customers want - as going to our office and taking back-to-back VC calls in open plan is kind of dumb.
Before this last lockdown in Australia I was going in one day a week to have lunch & coffees & beers with my colleages - as I did miss that. The internal stuff. But one day a week was really enough for that as long as all the people who I wanted to hang out with standardised on the same day of the week.
I am not really sure which way it'll go. Will customers be in a big hurry for me to go to them - especially if it means I am on a plane of potentially infected people, get in a Uber and take it right into their office? As much as I do miss the magic that sometimes happens when everybody gathers around a whiteboard - I really hope not...
Speaking of that - I am surprised how a couple years into this the remote collaboration/whiteboarding stuff really hasn't improved. We all should have iPads with Apple Pencils and be able to get close-is to that in-person white boarding by now?
We believe you shouldn't need an iPad/apple pencil to conduct remote whiteboarding. With some handy CV/ML/Math your laptop is all you need to share legible content with remote viewers and even let them contribute to your board.
Check it out and let me know your thoughts, please. Thanks in advance.
It’s honestly closer to 50% now that I’ve been doing it for years. It completely alters what having a career and raising a family is like. You’d have to give me a boatload of money to go back to the office because wow does that arrangement steal so many invaluable memories and times with my family.
> broad internal distaste for Smith [...] reflected in the job site Glassdoor, which shows that just 19% of employees approve of Smith’s leadership. That’s sharply below the approval for other space executives, as Glassdoor shows 91% of SpaceX employees approve of CEO Elon Musk and 77% of United Launch Alliance approve of CEO Tory Bruno.
