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Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

For many of us it's actually been a wake up call about how important it is to be physically present with coworkers and a realization of how much the office actually does offer in terms of productivity and morale boost.

I know this is a very unpopular opinion here on HN threads about this situation. And all power to the people who love remote work.

But out of all the engineers I know personally and of all the people on my team and most of the other Googlers I've talked to off record personally in the last months... I'd say about 85%, 90% of them are eager for return to office.

So let's not assume homogeneity of opinion. Remote work is not for everyone. It may not even be the preference for the majority of us.

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> most of the other Googlers

How much of that is because of productivity, how much is for social (i.e. non-task-oriented) interaction, and how much is getting away from the place where you also have to do your own cooking and cleaning and possibly deal with kids? I'm guessing productivity is the least of these reasons, for most FAANGers. After all, they self-selected to be in such environments.

Nah, not me ... I didn't self-select for that. I came from an acquisition, I never applied to Google... I just... arrived here. Hotel California style.

As someone who's practically spent all of their life, and whose best friends have all been, online, I never thought I'd agree with this, and I'm sad that I do.

>how important it is to be physically present with coworkers and a realization of how much the office actually does offer in terms of productivity and morale boost.

This depends on your home situation, but with mine I wouldn't say the office is more productive. But the frequency and richness of interactions you have with coworkers in person is a world apart from being remote.

Immersive telecommute VR when?

I think that’s your personal bubble. Of all the google res I know, none of them want to go back to the office, and that’s probably just my bubble too.

Personally I work at Apple, so I’m not getting the choice, but I am close to my vacation cap, so I’ll be “forced” to take a day off every fortnight; you can bet that I’ll be using an “in-office” day for that, so I’ll be working 5 days of every 10 in the office.

Well, I'm not in the Bay Area, I work out of Google Waterloo. So your experience might just be saying something about how crappy it is working in an office in the Valley.

I've personally never much enjoyed my trips to the Googleplex. :-) I like my own office much more.

I spent the last few years doing remote work, before COVID. I don't want to waste any more years of my life staring into a rectangle. If I go back to programming it's sure as hell going to be onsite.

It's all fun and games at first. "Look, I can work from home in my underpants!" Then after a while you realize you're just sitting there alone in your underpants.

> to waste any more years of my life staring into a rectangle

Do you not stare into a rectangle on-site? Do you prefer to additionally go through soul-sucking commute?

It’s a bit presumptuous to assume everyone has a soul sucking commute. Most of my jobs I’ve had a 10 minute commute.

I’ve decided to take a longer commute now (30ish minutes) but it’s not a big deal because it’s in a place where I was going many times a week anyway and had to do the commute then too. Also, it’s going to be hybrid now and isn’t 5-days/week probably.

I think you, like many of us are tired of computers but reluctant to admit it after all these years of forcing the smiles. Time to switch to an entirely different and active? career.

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