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Comment by throwaway2016a | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2016a

I like working from home sometimes. A line is crossed for me when a company goes 100% remote.

I would go crazy working from home day in and day out. I actually did have a borderline nervous breakdown years ago because I couldn't take being alone so much of the day. In fact if I have to work from home full time again I would pay to have a membership in a co-working space just to be around other humans.

I think work from home full time reinforces the idea that programmers and anti-social and not creative. The opposite is true for many (most?) of us. And for people who are social and creative you need other humans around.

I say let people work from home but make sure they have the option of an office.

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> I say let people work from home but make sure they have the option of an office.

...or provide a stipend to be used to help pay for local co-working spaces, if that's your preference. I can certainly understand how some people might need alternatives to the monotony of WFH, but making everyone commute to some crowded business district/downtown is whole other set of nuisances and inefficiencies.

Oh, indeed. I can relate to this. So much so that I wrote a blog post about it:

https://likewise.am/2015/12/18/why-i-love-industrious-and-ab...

Curious about the implied link between social-ness and creativity.. care to expound? I can think of several individuals who are highly creative but who prefer being alone.

> Curious about the implied link between social-ness and creativity

They are linked in that I think they are both related to working in an office.

- Social interactive as it relates to an office environment is fairly obvious

- As far as creativity... that requires more explanation. That was more a response to people saying things like "I can get more code done working from home"... as a manager who also still codes (a lot) I can say, I am paying you to solve problems not write code. If the problem gets solved I don't care if it is 10000 lines of code or 10. Solving problems takes creativity. And for many people, creativity is enhanced by being around other people. Other people expose you to new ideas. You can still do that work from home but but I think an office accelerates. Granted, history is full of people who were immensely creative but also recluses, so that can swing both ways.

I am paying you to solve problems not write code.

Really glad to hear this, it's something that people seem to easily lose sight off

If the problem gets solved I don't care if it is 10000 lines of code or 10. Solving problems takes creativity. And for many people, creativity is enhanced by being around other people

That may be true for some people, but it's diametrically the opposite for others. Partly just pure personality, but I'd also argue that working with others biases towards "fine grained" solutions where your contribution dovetails with other pieces. Working alone for non-trivial increments of time makes it easier to step back and think about whether there's a single piece that can solve the whole problem.

Finally, the specific case of WFH often (not always) makes it easier to step away from the computer for an hour or two when you're stuck, perhaps prepare lunch or even go for a walk. That's a far more fertile setup for inspiration to strike than sitting in front of a blank text file.

If only Picasso had been forced to work in an open office, imagine what he could have achieved.

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