Hacker News Reader

Comment by hvocode | Hacker News Reader

It’s a shame the WFH experiment is blended with the pandemic. It’s hard to decouple the “effectiveness of WFH” from the “pervasive impact of a global pandemic on all aspects of daily life”. I think a lot of people got a negative taste for WFH for reasons that are less WFH and more pandemic.

View on HN

Having three kids at home doing remote schooling is such a huge confounding factor. Anecdotally, my WFH productivity (or at least my uninterrupted work time tracked via RescueTime) seems to have improved since my older two went back to in-person school this quarter.

Not only that, but even if one had someone else to watch the kids during that time, one couldn't go work from a coffee shop or whatever like one normally might, for a change of scenery or to avoid at-home distractions.

Yeah, that's tough, and the younger ones can't do very much of it by themselves without help.

Read the instructions here to learn how to read >

Your comment reminded me of "The Maker" short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDXOioU_OKM "A strange creature races against time to make the most important and beautiful creation of his life."

Yeah: I have always worked from home and nothing about my job has changed, but omg has life gotten harder even for me recently; it is also worth noting that the pandemic affects not only work life but also social life, which means that suddenly work almost automatically takes up a lot more time as there has often literally been nowhere else for me to go or people to see than "maybe my work colleagues would be willing to talk about our product... in the middle of the evening... oh, yep, they are, as they are just as bored and lonely as I am right now".

Lockdowns specifically, not just the pandemic.

For sure. I feel like I'd be a lot more enthusiastic about work (in general, but especially remote work) if I, and my coworkers, had a normal social and family life along the way. It'd be a lot less exhausting and monotonous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com