Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbdumas | Hacker News Reader

I can't wait to go back to the office. Everything about my job is harder from home. Harder for me to focus on work, harder for me to separate work and life, so so so much harder to forge the actual human connections that make tech work feel at all worth doing.

ETA: Interesting that the above has resulted in high controversy in both up/down votes and replies. I can tell this is a very emotional issue for people. To be clear I'm not interested in forcing people to do anything, just trying to share my experiences. I would be disappointed if my job went permanently remote, and would probably start looking for a new one.

View on HN

Conversely, there are others who feel the opposite and love working from home (no shared workspace with coworkers, the freedom to work in their home environment how they want) and don’t have the need for human connection (because they get that from their family and friends) from their job, only a paycheck.

Lots more remote work now for remote folks (with businesses required to have a go at it, and learning it’s easier than expected), and I’m sure office folks will still find businesses that will offer that model.

I agree with your general contention that others may love the idea of indefinite work-from-home, but I don't think the poster was claiming work as the source of your life's human connections.

I read it as work without those connections lost meaning (for them). I can see that point - many of my best experiences doing difficult technical work have been with very tight knit teams that are difficult to maintain working remotely, let alone create.

Which isn't to say its-just-a-paycheck jobs are wrong in any sense, just that it's not enough for everyone.

I’ve worked remote for the last ~10 years and have had such moments with a team, so I’m skeptical that this requires in person collaboration to achieve these shared flow states (for lack of a better description).

Please forgive the bluntness of my opinion. First the business world made excuses that remote work just wasn’t as productive as in person work, and then a pandemic forced an experiment that proved that assertion to be untrue. Now the excuse is, “well, remote just isn’t as good as in person for building team bonds and collaboration” even when teams at billion dollar orgs (both young and old) are able to do so.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but facts and data are not negotiable, and this is important distinction when large scale presence decisions are being made for workforces.

The tightest professional relationships I've made in many moons were made entirely remote during some Covid-19 relief work. I still haven't met any of them in person, but there was as much humanity in that project as we ever get working-from-work.

Shared struggle can generate cohesion regardless of locality. Happy to hear this anecdote.

I don't find this blunt, it's your experience.

For what it's worth, I've a experienced a fair range of what is possible. I've worked on local, mixed, and remote teams in both IC and lead roles.

This experience has led me to believe that: (a) it is possible to have good cohesion in a remote group (b) it is harder to do and (c) it is especially hard to do with a new group & company. Perhaps less universally (d) it's really hard with mixed hardware/software groups.

It's undoubtedly true that lots of large organizations do it, with varying levels of success but generally pretty well (there are exceptions). It's also true that they invest a fair amount into making this work, in my experience, and the infrastructure matters.

I've experienced very well functioning remote groups, less so mixed remote/local - but I certainly believe it's possible. It's always required more effort and intention, and they've never quite reached the same level of cohesion as some small local teams.

As you note though, YMMV.

Also I didn't mean to suggest "remote work == just a paycheck" though I can see how that might be ambiguous.

What "facts and data" have "proved that assertion to be untrue"? You aren't seriously suggesting that 6 months of remote work where all companies have the exact same handicap/advantage of being fully remote has proven anything, are you?

The effects of remote work in areas like mentorship, culture, employee attrition, information flow, knowledge sharing, talent identification, strategic decision making, bottom-up idea generation, etc. will take years to become clearer. And it won't be until we have a sizable number of fully remote companies competing against non-remote companies for years that we will be able to make a real judgement of how they compare in productivity.

> "First the business world made excuses that remote work just wasn’t as productive as in person work, and then a pandemic forced an experiment that proved that assertion to be untrue."

Got anything to back that up? After being forced to switch to all remote, my organization is reporting various levels of productivity loss across all departments.

> [T]here are others who ... don’t have the need for human connection (because they get that from their family and friends) from their job, only a paycheck.

I don't have a problem with people who feel that way, but for myself I would find that very bleak given the substantial fraction of my life I am expected to spend working. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com