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Comment by dariusj18 | Hacker News Reader

I worry about offices that open but still allow people to work from home. I think there will be pressures for people to go into the office, creating density issues, or miss out on promotions, etc.

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Our offices have been "open" but absolutely no one is going there. I actually wonder when people will start going back because it doesn't really make much sense to go there if no one else is there.

The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow, then everyone else will feel the need to ensure the brown nosers aren't given a leg up over them.

We've always been able to work remotely at our own discretion though.

>The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow

there is a risk that covid may turn that into a natural selection process ...

I disagree. If my office was open I would love to go in only if no one else was there. The benefit I get from an office is having a place designated for work. No people = no distractions

Yeah, my office is in a commercial area next to my car dealership, Costco, grocery store, etc. so I go in once a week and get all my errands done at the same time - and the empty office is heavenly.

I started going to the office this week precisely because there is no one else.

This way I walk while commuting and it is safer than home, where there 4 more people.

If more people do it, I might reconsider it.

>it is safer than home, where there 4 more people.

Are you not going back home and spending a ton of time with those people in there?

Yes, but since the time in shared spaces is much shorter the probability of transmission is also much smaller, also for them, as ther is less density at home. I do not mean is is 100% safe, but comparatively safer.

If there were more people at the office, I would not do it, as I could be exposing my family.

It is all about reducing density and contact.

You are right, the individual propensity to go to the office is going to be highly sensitive to the number of people already going to the office. I believe this to have a steep s-curve shape; with little number of people at the office there is little incentive to show up. But after a critical threshold of office-goers, it will very rapidly be a career/productivity disadvantage to opt not showing up. Only thing that can change this curve is active office occupancy ceilings enforced by the company. Which kinda sucks, my employer might be good at writing web services, but how much do I trust them doing good epidemiology?

This will happen just like “unlimited vacation” policies pressure actual vacation taken downwards. It doesn’t have to be an explicit management pressure either, simply the game theoretic implications put WFH people at a disadvantage as a function of people who don’t WFH increase. I believe this is how we will get the second and further waves as decision makers turn this into a Newton-Rhapson iteration to discover the sweet spot of the “office openness vs infection” function.

Our office is in the process of opening again and we have an arrangement that, at any time, half of the people come to the office and the other half stays at home. It's one person per room, basically. Some groups have organised themselves so that everyone comes in every other day. Some groups are naturally split into teams and the teams come in every other week. I've heard from another company where some people come in the morning and some in the afternoon.

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