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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

The newly gained experience of widespread working at home could be applied in creative, constructive ways:

For example, offices could be changed to provide some of the benefits of home. Napping could become normalized, for example. More child care facilities could be provided. What else?

Hours could be adjusted, so parents are home when their kids return from school: Instead of distributing hours in full days at the office or home, how about being at the office 5-6 hours/day and at home the rest?

Hours could be more flexible, normalizing people running errands and doing other things during the day.

Dress codes? Pajama Fridays? What else?

EDIT: This HN thread and many others are filled with arguments for working from home. It's a hot topic and you can find them all elsewhere. Here I'm asking a different question: How can offices be improved based on what we've learned?

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None of this addresses the reasons that I and, I think, most others prefer remote work.

I don’t want to miss watching my kids grow up because by the time I drive home they’re already in bed. I want to spend my lunch hour with my family, instead of gossiping with my coworkers about office politics. I want to raise my children in a community of my choosing, surrounded by close friends and family, instead of the SFBA, which I have no connection to and frankly hate. I don’t want to waste literal years of my life commuting, which is consistently shown to be the least happy part of people’s day.

It's amazing to me that this many obvious things need to be explained. People really are slaves to their jobs.

Whenever I think like that, it usually turns out that it wasn't so obvious because I am the one missing something.

> I don’t want to waste literal years of my life commuting, which is consistently shown to be the least happy part of people’s day.

The median commute result in nearly 10 full days of driving each year, equivalent to about 30 full work days a year. Depending on the location, the local median can go as high as 14 full days, or 42 work days, of driving a year. Commutes are responsible for a 9.91% drop in hourly wages, as well[1].

[1] https://go.frontier.com/business/commute-calculator

So how can we solve that problem, besides the extreme of not going to work?

Remote work seems like one way to address this.

Another way is to organize with your coworkers and either negotiate for commute compensation, or negotiate a wage that allows you to live close enough to work that you aren't spending a month of workdays a year simply driving to and from your job.

Addressing the 40 hour work week could help allievate this problem, as well. Productivity in the US keeps reaching new highs and yet workers are still expected to work the same amount of hours as they did in the past, and their compensation hasn't increased with those productivity increases.

I think we're making it a purely political issue about demands, and not being creative on the technical side.

For example, we could use remote work to reduce commute time. People can work remotely when transportation is slow, daily during rush hour, or when there is bad weather, construction, or otherwise. Combine that with four days at the office, and total annual commute time might be reduced 50% (as a wild guess: 20% less from 20% fewer days at the office, 30% from avoiding slow transportation).

Or, because we know people work effectively remotely, invest in public transit (or corporate transit for their employees) that facilitates working: Quality Internet service, quiet cars, private space for phone calls, etc.

“Most others” Jesus, imagine thinking that most people have kids. If you want what you say you want for your kids I would probably get of the capitalism merry-go-round if you have that privilege. Otherwise good luck with that thinking you can work at Apple AND be the type of parent you want to be.

This doesn't address the GP question. It's also not accurate: The GP directly addresses some of those concerns, but it's point was to ask a question, not answer them.

> I want to raise my children in a community of my choosing, surrounded by close friends and family

It's a free country; you can do that right now. If you want to work for your current employer, you'll need to find an arrangement they find valuable or they have no reason to work with you.

> SFBA, which I have no connection to and frankly hate

> gossiping with my coworkers about office politics

You hate the community, your co-workers are no more interesting, important, or valuable to you than office gossip .... work from home isn't the issue.

Why are any of these proposals preferable to working from home?

Please no. I want work to be work and home to be home. Making work more like home is just the employer saying “why do you want to go home? Home is here!”

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