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Comment by eric4smith | Hacker News Reader

It depends on the person for sure.

BUT as a business owner, employees focus a LOT more when they are in the office and working with peers.

The focus is actually quite dramatic.

There are just too many distractions in the modern home. Today's world, where we are at the moment, was built on people going to work every day. It worked. Look at how we have advanced.

Sure, now that we have reached to this point, some people can work at home. But the sustained work is done with your colleagues beside you.

The internet. The vast, vast majority of companies that are the backbone of any country. The financial system that runs credit and capitalism. All these things were built in the office or it's equivalent.

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I feel like you're projecting. Or, at the very least, operating under the assumption that your exact experiences reflect everyone's.

I live by myself. There is nothing in my home that can/will distract me, aside from the internet--which I can just as easily use as a distraction from an office.

When I was at the office, it was not uncommon for someone to walk up and strike up a conversation that lasted 20 or 30 minutes and was completely unrelated to work.

And, on top of that, there's currently one single person I can think of of who a) I interact with regularly at work and b) works from the same office as me (if I were to go back to my employer's local office).

(Also, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that your entire "argument" is an Appeal To Tradition logical fallacy anyways)

> When I was at the office, it was not uncommon for someone to walk up and strike up a conversation that lasted 20 or 30 minutes and was completely unrelated to work.

I was in an office setting in late 2019, and was often told "go ask so-and-so, he/she knows the foobar/etc". And... when I went to their desk, I was... interrupting. But I was told to do that. And... for the 'company as a whole', I guess you could say it all balanced out and they did knowledge transfer of what I needed to me, then everything eventually "got done". I was painfully aware that I was an intrusion, and was preventing them from hitting whatever deadlines they had to hit. But... this is how the management structured stuff. No scheduled time to document (and update existing docs) from what I could tell. Just "go talk to so-and-so". And that was seen as a 'benefit' of being in the office.

It didn't help that some of the people I'd go to were actually quite hostile to this, and took it out on me some. Some just ... answered some questions then... trailed off and stopped responding to me (weird). A couple folks were quite helpful, but the process was still an unaccounted for interruption.

As one of the guys who gets "shoulder tapped" for a lot of stuff, I can say I'm a lot more productive from home because I can work through a task and then check my messages. Nobody walks up to my desk at home and interrupts me. But now, while I'm busily working, I imagine those people who were used to just walking up and getting an answer probably panic and message 5 different people waiting for a response rather than just walking up to a single desk and demanding attention right then.

Same here. My main distraction is the internet (HN, YouTube, looking up things I'm interested in). That can happen just as easily at work. At least at home, I can take breaks that recharge me better like watering my plants or having a nap.

It’s a lot harder to watch YouTube at work.

I don't think empirical data is bearing out your assessment. Many companies are measuring higher productivity for remote employees.

For me there is way more distraction in an office. Unless I get a private office with a door that locks.

> There are just too many distractions in the modern home

Have you been in an office? Nobody respects boundaries and you can't teach them to do so, because they're stubborn adults who don't care about you. At home, the only other people are people who are willing to listen and compromise. Perhaps you don't have that and that's very sad for you, but a healthy home has ways to make it more effective and better than an office.

As for your claim about "a lot of people do it so it must be better", that doesn't tell us anything except that it was tradition. A tradition that deserves to die, hopefully with micromanaging managers.

> The internet. The vast, vast majority of companies that are the backbone of any country. The financial system that runs credit and capitalism. All these things were built in the office or it's equivalent.

Exactly, this is what we were able to achieve while being constrained to being forced to work in an office. Never before have we had tools good enough to empower individuals to work from home and an event to force as many people to work from home.

Free of this constrained mindset, that massive achievement is only possible together in an office, think how much more we will be able to create, build, improve and succeed with even more flexibility.

Like someone else posted, that's the equivalent of saying, because it worked in the past its the only way it can work in the future which is not a growth mindset. We're now empowered with tools to unlock more ideas, creativity, and innovation than ever before. Best of all, we don't have to do it in a noisy and crowded office when we don't want to.

I'm excited to go back to the office, but only 2 or 3 days a week. I can't wait to continue working from home 2 to 3 days a week still be able to contribute just as much as if I were in the office, if not more. I also switched jobs throughout this period. Achievement is just as possible as before. WFH won't change that negatively.

Being in the office is a giant distraction. When I'm in front of my computer at home during work hours I simply work, no distractions. When I'm in the office and I try to work I spend time trying to block out distractions so I can work.

I don't really agree, the difference between being alone in my home vs being in a office with a few people makes me more productive at home. If you're offering personal offices to people that can't have an office at home though, I understand why you would see people more focused at work.

> Sure, now that we have reached to this point, some people can work at home. But the sustained work is done with your colleagues beside you.

Not sure what you mean by "the sustained work". Sure, work was harder when I worked at McDonald's compared to now that I work in software, but on the other hand software gives me way more leverage with what I do, and so I can produce more value. I'm not saying that I'm changing the world here, but I can write a small script in an hour that makes some manual work for a few people automatic, and thus improve their productivity. There's no way I could do something with an impact this big at McDonald's.

For the internet at least, most people involved had personal offices. Mixing personal offices and open spaces is, I think, a big mistakes. Most employers only gives open spaces, which don't allow to concentrate on work as much as you would like to. I do agree that personal offices with nice shared spaces are an ideal for work. Anecdotally, most research lab that I've seen followed this pattern.

I was at the office the other day. Maybe it's because it's still a novel experience, but there were lots of distractions there, some good, like getting into technical discussions, and some bad, like every other distraction.

I can see both sides. Personally I want to go back to hybrid work and be in the office some of the time for the social aspect.

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