37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home | Hacker News Reader

37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

sciencedirect.com

414 pointsrustoo395 comments

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well.

Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the office. With high speed internet and video conferencing, I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face. I see nothing wrong with that. I understand it, but after 1992 I took a job that forced me into an office and I hated it.

I can safely say I never wrote any good code while working in an office. There are too many distractions.

This is fascinating to me! How did you manage to merge code in the 80s? What tools were available? Did you have three-way merge tools or did you do it more manually?

Or rather did you talk frequently and ensure that you weren't stepping in each other's files? How did you make changes to shared APIs?

Some "old-timers" at my software company occasionally tell stories about how "checking the source code" meant physically grabbing a the one binder filled with pages of fortran and inserting your changes. Physically holding the binder gave you exclusive checkin access :)

I would assume RCS and floppies. CVS later. That is what my company apparently used in that era.

There were always tools to diff two codebases and make a intermediate file that had all the changes. We did it back in the BBS days. You could always take the diff file and type the changes in manually. That's how "mods" worked. It would be something like this

  SomeFile.pas
  14: - If Variable = 1
  14: + If Variable = 2

Macintosh Programmers Workshop had some tools but we mostly did it by hand so we tended to work on different parts of the program. If that was a problem our manager who owned the company would do a road trip to collect the new code that another person needed (we all lived in the Bay Area.) He had a big financial incentive to do so. Or we would get together, but that was not optimal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Works...

> What tools were available?

"My Briefcase", in Windows. It was like cloud shared storage, but using removable media.

If you don't mind my asking, have you spent much of your time since then working from home or in an office?

I likewise very much prefer working from home and find I get more done, but wanting to get an idea of what it's like from someone who's seen and done both over the long term.

Works was my first job out of the Navy in 84, so I had no prior office experience. I spent 94' to 2000 working in 4 separate offices for 3 different companies. I remember my first office experience I brought in a cot. People looked at me like I was insane. Well, I guess power naps are out of the question. Then I was exposed to office politics for the first time. Some people walk around hating each other all day. What a downer that was. Some women (and some men) would interrupt me to flirt with me. I didn't mind that so much. Then I would be in deep focus fixing some problem and they'd flash the lights because it was someone's birthday and we all had to go to the conference room because it was someone's birthday and there was cake and ice cream. Again, I didn't mind that so much. I felt for all these reasons and many more I was less productive in an office than I was at home. The office to me is a place a lot of people like because they can f around with their office friends.

Edit: I never worked in an office again after I resumed programming after the dotcom bubble burst. Another anecdote: I got called into HR because someone complained I was yawning too loudly.

Didn't Microsoft give everyone their own dedicated office in those days? I thought I read/heard somewhere that is what spawned development of Outlook/Exchange.

I agree about the distractions, it's extremely bad with the open office model and hard to get anything done for me. I would much prefer cubicles or dedicated offices.

I remember hearing that too. Having an office with a door or at least a shared office would make it tolerable, but still the commute always put me in a sour mood to start and end the day. Now a days, the fad is open office, which is a dumpster fire for development. I can't believe Apple fell for that with their new mothership.

This was true in the late 80's early 90's when we used to go up to Redmond from California to pow wow, but I heard that's not true anymore. Also, if any Microsofties are reading this, how would I got about getting the source code of Works for the Mac? It was about 200,000 lines of 68000 asm code that I'm thinking of trying to get to run in the browser. I may make a formal request to Microsoft if I get more motivated about it. I lost my copy along the way.

I had my own office at Microsoft as late as 2013.

It was by far the least favorite work environment I've ever had. It was lonely and unproductive for me, with a 15 minute - 2 hour commute depending on traffic. I came home from work angry every day. I have no idea how I lasted almost two years in that environment.

I really enjoy open offices. My next job was all pair programming all the time. No assigned desks. You just showed up and sat down with a different person every day. For me that's the most productive way to get work done.

For the last 3 years I've been working from home and don't see myself going back to an office ever again. I enjoy my time at home too much.

Everyone is different and not every company has to work the same way.

That's amazing to find someone who's actually in favor of open offices, but you are probably in the extreme minority, at least as these HN discussions go.

Couldn't you still pair program in personal offices? Not to mention it would allow for more discussion without background noise. Or what about offices for teams, if individual offices are too isolating?

Some people also don’t have living conditions at home that are conducive to being productive. Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example.

Absolutely correct. Any everyone's situation is different, but let's be real - the vast majority of software engineers can afford a great home office space.

> the vast majority of software engineers can afford a great home office space

Maybe, maybe not. In high cost of living areas even high salary employees with single incomes have to compete with couples pulling in the big bucks.

The thing is, if you WFH, you don't have any need to live in a high cost of living area.

> Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example.

Because they have to live in expensive urban areas near their workplace. Their money would stretch much further if they could remote-work from rural areas.

Until rural areas cost of living goes up because 37% of people decided to move out to unsustainable rural areas.

Overall - moving to somewhere more rural is a fix for an individual looking to solve their financial problem but it is not a society wide solution. Rural homes are a net drain on society and are subsidized by city workers.

You also have to live in that rural area too. I think there's more to living then having a giant home with nothing to do. Likely won't be able to relate to the people around you at all.

I bet there are plenty of medium-sized cities, with good universities and small tech poles (because let's just say it, you want to be around educated people, and yes, it's nice) with much lower costs of living than where most techies end-up living.

Sure but a lot of these places are also not sustainable either. A lot of small to medium cities are going bankrupt due to unsustainable urban sprawl.

Many young educated techies are also not really keen on the whole suburban hellscape and being completely reliant on (dino-fuel) cars either.

Cost is one factor but sustainability is another that I think is important to highlight. You can get both in a favorable position but I think it's easier to make things sustainable and less costly in a place that has people to begin with (e.g. Tokyo) than one where everyone is adamantly against building up or creating less sprawl (most lower density cities that exist in the USA).

If we are taking into account more than 1/3 of jobs could be remote, that starts to include many white-collar jobs that are not paid that well. And if we extrapolate this from the USA to other places (like Europe) you can live in a small town and still earn just enough to live in a 2 or 3 dormitories flat, with no dedicated space for WFH for one, let alone for a couple (it's 1/3 of the jobs, so chances that both can do WFH are not that low).

> it's 1/3 of the jobs, so chances that both can do WFH are not that low

It helps that those are not multiplicative probabilities. They apply to each job, so each partner will have access to ~1/3 of the jobs, totaling an access to ~1/3 of the total jobs.

I think if a company is going to be fully remote, they should provide an office budget to every employee, so you can either rent an extra bedroom / buy a bigger house / or rent space in a co-working facility.

Working from your bedroom with a desk crammed in the corner is a serious downgrade IMO from having an office with good vibes.

Nothing anyone says in these comments should invalidate your own personal experiences and successes with your working arrangements.

But I have to admit I'm surprised to hear you say that you are "astonished" that any programmer would prefer to work differently.

2 things that I've learned from reading NH over the years: tech/programmer people are often very opinionated, and also have widely different opinions on just about everything :)

Admittedly what you say is true. People tend to believe other people think like them. I go on my own lived experience. Never once in 8 years did any of my coworkers suggest we get an office. We felt lucky to be able to work at home for all the reasons that people give.

I had a couple of other reasons for hating the office that I don't often see mentioned. I'm sensitive to 60 Hz fluorescent lights and also to bad air. Most offices are flooded with this kind of light and don't recirculate the plastic and office supply fumes often enough.

In this case, tech/programmer people have differing opinions about returning to the office. But the managers or at least the management have only have a single blanket policy for all. A compromise like 2-3 days in the office is one such policy.

> I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face

Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work takes that away from them.

I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home.

There are already a number of options in even the smallest town. I expect that will increase as more people move to WFH and seek social outlets.

And at the end of the day "interacting with coworkers in the break room" is a pretty low quality bar for an alternative to surmount. Maybe your work conversations are more fascinating than mine, but I get more value elsewhere.

>I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home.

Absolutely. Additionally, even getting to that set of regular, forced interactions necessarily consumes the limited time those people would have to pursue those social activities outside the home. That is, it's hard to have a strong social life when you commute, at best, 5 hours a week. And that's if you're lucky.

All of this benefits corporations. Especially, insidiously, the notion that your job can and should double as your social life.

What concerns me, today, is that that we're in this middle stage where things could tip either way. For this reason, I think it's important for us to bang the drum loudly that we won't spend 40-50 hours in the office. Hybrid is a sufficient compromise.

> Hybrid is a sufficient compromise.

No it isn't.

I'm happy to meet up every few months, assuming my time and travel is paid for and it's arranged well in advance

This is really how it ought to go. Once a quarter, we all descend on one city for one week. We make big plans, we revel in each other’s company, and we see a new part of the world or see a familiar part of the world in a new way with colleagues. Then we go back.

What is a sufficient compromise, in your view, that satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers and prevents corporations unprepared to manage a remote team from whipping back to full in-office?

I do not want to put words in your mouth, but since you offered so few of them, I am tempted to believe you are one of the few lucky workers who has sufficient leverage to wholesale refuse to work in an office. If that is you, or if you the reader are such a person: consider the path we must take to bring flexible work to more people.

With that goal and those prerequisites in mind, what is a sufficient compromise?

A sufficient compromise would be to allow the people that want regular face to face interactions with coworkers to go to the office and do just that. Not sure what the culture is in your place but at my place everyone has their video on in calls, so there's always face-to-face communication (exceptions can apply of course in some circumstances but that is the general rule) that way. People that want that do go to the office from time to time and do just that. But they do it with like minded people.

What is not a sufficient compromise is to force people that don't need face-to-face in person interaction into the office again when we have found out that remote works perfectly well.

> But they do it with like minded people

This is the main problem I see with your compromise. The self-sorting will create or enforce existing silos. The compromise is not only between you and your employer, but also between you and your coworkers. You might derive no value from face to face interaction, but your coworkers certainly do — and that includes you.

I suspect that this self-sorting will result in a very loud cohort of in-office workers demanding everyone come back, which spoils the whole deal.

But if I'm forced to come in for two days I'm going to go in, keep my head down, and get out, which is what I did 5 days a week before. The loud people have always and will always dominate those conversations.

Definite +1 to my sibling about coming in and keeping the head down.

Not sure which kinds of silos you are talking about. If it's silos as in social circles, that exists with 100% in-office as well. You know, the people that always sit together at lunch, always go out together for lunch or coffee, that meet after work at the pub and the people that eat lunch at their desk or off to the side, drink office-coffee only and don't go to the pub but go home to their family instead.

If you're talking about departmental or team silos those existed with 100% in-office as well. Marketing not talking to Product or Dev? Nothing really changed here I would argue. If anything it might have gotten better because everyone thought it would get worse and very actively tried to do something about it.

Face to face communication works very well over video and I derive enormous value from it. Only using written communication or audio only would suck big time. Especially when first getting to know someone that you've never met in person. But I don't have to sit in the same room with them or be 12 floors away from them for most of the day except for the meeting at three, when we both take the elevator, them 3 floors down, me 9 floors up to talk about something.

I agree that there will probably be a loud cohort of in-office workers that demand others to come back and if they succeed it will spoil the whole deal. But that doesn't get better with a 2-day in-office hybrid compromise either. If anything they would have much more pull already when they demand we go back to 5 days a week "because obviously 3 days of remote work are bad, we only get anything done ever in the 2 forced in-office days".

Oh, on my experience person to person interaction got much easier more common, because you don't have to get up and go to a different floor, or to the other end of your floor, or to another city.

We have some processes with high interaction on our development, and when people were considering going back to the office (in the end, we didn't) we met and decided how we would do then now. The remote option worked so much better than in person that there wasn't any discussion.

Assuming the word "hybrid" is being used to mean that an individual employee has to go into the office for at least some amount of time per week/month/whatever:

Here's the issue I have with the main argument I see against remote work, or rather the main argument I see in favor of forcing people to commute to an office ("satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers"):

I want to be at home, and I am fine being at home. Why should I need to go to an office because of a coworker's need for social interaction? I don't need that social interaction. To me, the argument always seems very self-centered from the point of view of pro-office people. Let the people who need that social interaction go to the office, and let everyone else stay home if they want. There's no reason that someone should be forced to go to an office because of the needs of other people, especially when those needs have nothing to do with work.

This is like arguing that I should be wearing a certain color of clothing because some people like to (or need to?) see that color. That's not my problem to solve for them.

I get plenty of social interaction outside of work hours. There should be zero expectation for me to spend more time, energy, and/or money (getting ready, preparing or buying lunch, commuting both ways, etc.) so that people who aren't my friends get to look at/talk to me in 3D.

Exactly, why should we allow someone else to make their problem our problem?

I would be happy to socialize only with people who opt in. That’s how it is already, no one forced you to go to the lunch table or tag along for drinks.

To the extent that we collaborate on work, though, having to Zoom with you instead of having a normal free-flowing conversation forms an imposition on me. It becomes an extreme imposition when I am also prohibited from having normal free flowing conversations with other people in the office, out of a sense of “inclusivity” or “leveling the playing field” for you.

I am curious how this does not present an opposite extreme: forcing me to stop my work to have an unnecessary conversation instead of discussing in asynchronous issue tracker makes me have to remember what happened, have to write down whatever I remember, deal with not being able to get my stories done while this is happening, instead of being able to look it up and have it in writing along with other people not available at the time to discuss or leave notes and changes on.

I agree, it is very bad to do things synchronously and in formal meetings that could have been async and offline. That's another reason to resent remote work. Number of meetings, duration of meetings, size of attendee lists, and % of calendar covered in meetings are all way up since the transition to remote. There's a meme on HN that remote means written async communication, but the objective measured reality at my company is the opposite.

> What is a sufficient compromise, in your view, that satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers

Let them get their interactions from people who want to have them.

What's a sufficient compromise between the need of some men to have sex with women and the desire of some women not to have sex with those men?

2 million people a year are permanently injured from car accidents and 38,000 people die a year. I'm not willing any more to put myself at those kinds of risks for my employer.

And that's before we engage with the climate impacts, the waste of time, the idiotic open office plans, the interruptions, etc.

I'm not interested in compromise, I'm not buying anything about the entire concept.

We're going to split into different kinds of workplaces, and remote-only employees are going to go to remote-only/remote-first workplaces.

Large tech employers who want offices are going to have to deal with the fact that they're not going to be able to hire a group of tech workers that have those demands. Those employers would probably do well to consider spinning off remote-first divisions. That isn't my problem at all though, and "hybrid" is a hard no for me, and a lot of other people.

People are making decisions about their life. This isn't something that you compromise with them over, you don't actually have a negotiating position.

It does look like the people who want everyone else back to the office are now entering into the 3rd stage of Grief though (Bargaining).

Hybrid has all the downsides of office work, it's just less hours of it

Alas, this is the nature of compromise. Your downside is your employer’s upside.

It just means "the employer" has to keep the office space for a lot of people who will only use it occasionally and all the costs associated with that. I doubt most employers would consider that an upside.

Not strictly all. You still have more time on the days you work from home, which you could use to be social.

But yeah, if everyone is "hybrid", then the pressure on the housing market is unlikely to go down enough, which means that many people may find themselves in living conditions poor for remote work, which means they're more likely to go more often to the office, which means they're back to where they started...

My objection to office work these days has more to do with thousands of unmasked people all together, spreading viruses.

Quantity has a quality all its own.

> That is, it's hard to have a strong social life when you commute, at best, 5 hours a week. And that's if you're lucky.

"At best"? The average commute in the US is 27.6 minutes, according to the Census Bureau. My commute is a 10 minute bike ride. Luck had nothing to do with it, just a different set of priorities in life.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...

> 27.6 minutes

Something’s wrong with this stat. Almost nobody can get from chair at home to chair at work in that time.

My present office is 1.6 miles of which ~1 mile is Interstate, yet it’s at best 22 minutes house door to office door (not chair to chair) if I hit traffic lights, as low as 14 minutes if all greens. Google Maps and Apple Maps say it’s 6 - 8 minutes in off hours. Once car is on street, only greens, and before turning into parking, maybe that’s right.

This suggests two things: (a) maybe they mean time in vehicle in motion not chair-to-chair, (b) maybe they are computing address to address absent traffic.

I’m also suspicious of the word “average”. For instance, I can picture bi-modal commute times: a set that are 0 minutes (like Amazon support answering calls from ‘virtual call center’ at home), and a set that are long tail, as alluded to in this quote:

> The average American is traveling 26 minutes to their jobs — the longest commute time since the Census started tracking it in 1980, up 20 percent. Commutes longer than 45 minutes are up 12 percent in that time span, and 90-minute one-way commutes are 64 percent more common than in 1990.

With 90 minute one way commutes going on, maybe the average data is asking people who are in denial.

But the simplest explanation is also in that quote: travel time. It’s certainly not start stopwatch, get ready to commute, get to your transit, wait for your transit (e.g. warm up car or wait for bus), get in motion, travel, stop, dispense with transit (park car, lock bike), get from your transit to workplace, get situated, stop stopwatch.

// I’ve prioritized “least traffic lights” and ideally “walkability” since university. From 2017 to 2021 I paid a massive premium to be able to get chair-to-chair (including both elevator waits) in ~8 minutes on foot w/ no transit in midtown Manhattan. Commute times matter to me, I use tools to heatmap them when choosing work and residences, so just not buying average possibility of 26 mins.

    ------ BEGIN_EDIT ------

Yes, it was just travel time.

I found the US Census source, it’s a question Census said was asking people for ‘travel time’ and respondents probably in optimistic denial:

Question on Travel Time to Work from the American Community Survey 2019

Q.35: How many minutes did it usually take this person to get from home to work LAST WEEK?

The Census writeup includes distributions:

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

Yes, it’s a touch bi-modal, with a valley in the 5 minute period that’s also the “average”. No, bicycle isn’t helping much, only shaves 6 mins on ‘average’. Ten percent are in the car over an hour.

Insofar as their data is travel time not total time chair-to-chair (time between being able to be doing something else at each end), and it’s self surveyed not measured, I buy it.

    ------  END_EDIT  ------

Lol, your life is not everyones. I also get to work in under 15 minutes on average. How? I live within 2 miles of work and I have a vehicle.

> How? I live within 2 miles of work and I have a vehicle.

In the post I noted that I live 1.6 miles and have a vehicle, and there are 2 traffic lights.

> under 15 minutes on average

Made a few other points that pre-debate your comment.

> Lol, your life is not everyone.

Yep. That’s why my initial comment wondered about the distribution, and why I linked to the Census writeup, with the distribution. That’s everyone.

8 minute drive to the office in Indiana. I still WFH.

This is a great point and one I’d wish I’d considered more.

I’ve long given my just my wheels in motion time whenever asked how long my commute is. But that’s disingenuous because my if I were to have have a job I could do from home, all else being equal I would save $1000+/yr on food purchases alone. A further 2500 on gas and get at least 2 unpaid hours of quality time back in my life.

So I’d save at least $3.500 in reduced expenses. I would also be able to get of a car saving thousands more a year. Plus an extra 560 hours of free time a year at my hourly rate? I’m about to threaten my employer with my resignation over these expenses if they can’t better compensate me for my time they monopolize when I’m” off the clock “ but exclusively in their service.

ADDED NOTE:

In my posted I mentioned using tools to heat-map travel times to select residences for optimized commutes.

Here’s a great writeup of “isochrone map generator” tooling:

https://traveltime.com/blog/free-isochrone-map-generator

Here is an example, note outer bubbles tied to faster roads:

https://assets-global.website-files.com/60759e0794bb7b3714fb...

Similar map, with outer bubbles tied to commuter rail:

https://assets-global.website-files.com/60759e0794bb7b3714fb...

So for instance we selected our office to be at an Interstate off ramp and also at a commuter rail station, and I selected my residence to be two blocks up from one exit away against rush hour traffic, and another commuter rail station. Note that when there’s a train, if I don’t count waiting, the train is faster than the car. Unfortunately, trains “on average” make you wait for 1/2 the time between trains, and in the US, the train and the delay may not be predictable.

I don't particularly enjoy the forced, stilted chatter but I do get a lot of value from:

a) Being obliged to put on clothes and leave the house.

b) Spending a large part of the day at a change of scenery.

c) Having other people there, around, ambiently.

Spending 23 hours a day alone in your room + 1 hour for outdoor exercise, with occasional weekend visitation, is among the worst punishments the state has at its disposal. It boggles the mind that people do this voluntarily.

Work is only 8 hours of the day, 8 to sleep, 2 for chores meals etc leaves 6 for whatever you want socializing with whoever you want?

Being obligated to go to the same place with the same people 5 days a week following the same routine seems dreadful to me.

Don't mix up pandemic restrictions with 100% remote work from home.

I put on clothes every day. I only wear a nice t-shirt though and otherwise wear my 'at home pants' that I would also put on as soon as I'd come home from the office. My nice pants last much longer now.

I really don't like the office scenery very much. I also do not like the scenery in between, i.e. a huge city that has no greenery, the commute is equally dull, boring and unappealing. Vs. my home where in summer I can actually sit outside on the deck all day and enjoy the scenery. It's lush and green and warm vs. the cold, dry AC air blowing in my face and forcing me to wear a jacket inside the office.

Depending on whether you have family and/or family that also works from home, people are even around 'ambiently' but at least they're only around ambiently without constantly distracting you. They're in a different room doing their own work most of the time.

After 8 hours of work I am free to do what I want. Go outside, take a walk, meet friends etc.

I do like my path to work. In fact, I go there once in a while, and come back just to get a long walk.

I do like my previous office. It happens that I had to improve my home when I got here, but after spending around 1/5 of my monthly salary, my home is now even a it more comfortable and I use it when not working too. If you have a minimum of space, that's quite doable, and if you don't, why don't you want to move into a cheaper place?

Even those reasons don't add up to much.

WFH don’t require working at home, you can work wherever you want.

Laptop + 5G means you can work outside for much of the year at a local park etc. You can do all that coworker social stuff with your friends rather than people you happen to work with.

Even if you do stay home skipping your commute and eating at home saves significant time and money every week you can use to again socialize with people you want to actually be around.

You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic. Remote work before covid was very different, and I expect in time we'll get back to a lot of that.

I worked remotely before the pandemic, and most days I still have ample opportunities to meet and talk to people. Most weeks I'd attend a meetup (I'm in a small city in the midwest and we still had plenty of events to cater to most any niche technical interest you'd care to name). A couple of times a month I'd meet up with other remote workers for lunch at a restaurant somewhere convenient to all of us. I regularly hosted, or attended, game nights with friends I met- mostly through the meetups.

I was never one for coworking spaces, and I don't even have a lot of non-development hobbies that had me meeting other people, and I still managed to have a pretty rich social life and meet people, make friends, and even got some of the sorts of creative boosts people claim only come from in-office working (because you talk to people about what problems they work on, or their interests, and it sparks ideas for how to apply those to your own work).

Things right now are still bleak because of the pandemic. It sucks, and it sucks worse knowing that this could have been over by now if the response hadn't been so universally mishandled, but a lot of what sucks about the pandemic will continue to suck- or suck differently but the same amount, if you go back to an office. Remote work isn't for everyone, and you really might still find that all things being equal the office just works best for you, and that's fine, but don't confuse "the pandemic sucks" for "remote work sucks".

> You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic.

Those particular circumstances of the pandemic haven't been with us for almost a year, now, ever since mass vaccination started. I hated WFH in 2020, and I hated WFH in 2021, and I still hate WFH today. Despite having no pandemic restrictions on what I can do today.

And even prior to vaccination, if you wanted to go out and do stuff, most establishments/businesses/travel options/etc were open since late 2020.

As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over, it isn't. The legal restrictions might have lifted in most places, but there's a big gap between that and things being back to how they were before- or how they'll be once we've actually hit the endemic part of covid and have a better understanding of what that looks like.

You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and co-working spaces might be open, but enough people are still reluctant to attend events that a lot of things aren't sustainable right now. I certainly wouldn't go meet someone at a restaurant for lunch right now, even though I can. Most of my friends feel the same way. Conferences are still happening, but a lot of conferences remain virtual, and a lot of people who might otherwise attend conferences aren't. Either because they are still concerned about covid today, or because they don't want to risk buying tickets, booking travel, and taking time off for a conference that might be canceled or rescheduled due to yet another surge. Tech meetups have almost entirely stopped. Nearly all meetups were hosted by companies, and while those companies might be talking about RTO for their employees, few of them are interested in hosting large groups of strangers after-hours right now. Even if you could find a venue- attendance would be quite low these days.

> As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over, it isn't.

No, it's not over, in fact we're at our worst rate of world-wide daily cases since November 2021. Believe me, I'm both a pessimist, and one of the more COVID-cautious people here.

But in my region/anywhere I'd like to go, I can, and currently feel comfortable doing just about anything I want[1] - and have been for most of the past year (Sans Omicron surge).

> You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and co-working spaces might be open, but enough people are still reluctant to attend events that a lot of things aren't sustainable right now. I certainly wouldn't go meet someone at a restaurant for lunch right now, even though I can.

Sure, you may feel that way - but I haven't felt that way. So, for me, there are no practical restrictions on what I, or my friends can do. Nothing that I liked doing three years ago is unavailable today.

... And yet, I vastly prefer going into work over WFH.

[1] I don't feel comfortable licking doorknobs or getting into a moshpit, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that pre-COVID, either.

> ... And yet, I vastly prefer going into work over WFH.

Could be just an imbalance between the pre-pandemic world and then two years of the pandemic world. It's quite possible if you had entered WFH when society was normal, there wouldn't be this sharp jolt.

That's certainly a hypothesis, but I can't exactly climb into a time machine and turn back the clock.

I also don't envision how I would have done WFH any differently in a non-pandemic world, from how I do it today.

Thanks for these comments -- this one and your reply to vkou. I started working out of college during the pandemic, and my current gig is remote-native, so I've been kind of dooming about remote work. This is some great advice for how to get past that + a good reminder that COVID is still affecting things -- I've been going with my partner to a board game group and swing classes, but the activation energy is definitely higher than before.

Curious -- have you found anything that (partially?) replaces those opportunities, either online or in-person? I joined a Discord server and gave a talk about JPEG at one of their events, which was fun, but not frequent for me to feel that it's a replacement for having in-person coworkers.

I'll admit it's pretty hard to replace the in-person events. I am in some slack and discord communities, and I've done a couple of online conferences. I really used to enjoy presenting at meetups and was very upset to have had to turn down an invitation to an in-person conference this fall because of covid. Virtual talks and meetups aren't really the same, but they are what I've made do with in the short term.

I'm not much for traditional online games, but I know some friends who have used that as a more natural way to do online socializing. I've done some online D&D and have found that is better than other kinds of online meetups for socializing, because it gives you enough space to have conversations and chat, but still gives you enough of a focus and it just feels less exhausting than other kinds of online meetups- the tools are really good these days too.

> started working out of college during the pandemic

* Caveat: remote-only, during the pandemic, right out of college would probably be the worst of all possible worlds

Most of the things that people like about WFH are contingent on being in a later stage of your career (college + 5 years?). Having a place with multiple rooms. Having something of a physical social network. Having self-confidence in your abilities, based on prior performance. Knowing how to navigate office politics.

Plus, most of the things you would be doing at that stage were interrupted: bars, clubs, etc.

Which is to say, you're absolutely right, and I agree with your perspective. But it does get better. But I'm sure that's cold comfort.

A more articulate, and less rageful version of my original post would probably have been "I believe we Americans are (and were!) doing badly at creating opportunities for adult friendships and socialization, and I would rather we aspire to improve things vs going back to the way they were."

I assume you don't have any friends or family outside of work that live close to you?

My group of friends gets lunch together 3-4 days out of the workweek. We even sometimes do dinner with eachother during the week. Sometimes we do this with family instead - my wife's sister and parents live within 15 minutes of us.

And we have kids that we lug with us.

I meet my friends for specific events (cycling, running, lunch, coffee, concert, theater, etc) lasting a few hours each on the weekends.

I don't know anyone who wants to do those kinds of things on workdays, or to be "around" without a specific activity planned.

It's something but it's still very little compared to working together.

In my whereabouts weekday evenings is where the fun social stuff goes (well, used to before pandemics). Group rides, group runs, orienteering events, bar trivia nights... You get most attendants on weekdays since on weekends many people are out of town (family, summerhouses, etc) and/or go to full-day events.

Theater performances or concerts are not uncommon on weekdays either. Touring artists just have to play on whatever day it turns out to be.

Also, once remote working with lax schedules become the norm, more opportunities will come up. E.g. I fondly remember times when my friends' and mine schedules would click and we could do quick morning rides.

I think the problem is, since working fully remote means spending about twice as much time in formally scheduled meetings, and those meetings are significantly more draining on Zoom than in person, both I and the people I might socialize with feel a lot more drained at the end of the work day and less interested in doing anything non-vegetative. Previously we would go for dinner or drinks after work pretty often.

Does it? Or is it just some micromanagers who can’t let people go out of their sight?

Having worked remotely for a good decade, I see no reason why remote requires more meeting. Currently I have a couple hours of meetings a week.

Yes, it does. A bit late for the thread but here’s open source evidence from Microsoft. Our internal numbers are similar.

> “People have 250 percent more meetings every day than they did before the pandemic,” says Mary Czerwinski, the research manager of the Human Understanding and Empathy group at Microsoft.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/trip...

i do all of those things while working from home. i wear my normal clothes, work from coffee shops or breweries if I need a change of scenery, and workout plenty during the day. no offense, but perhaps this is specific to how _you_ work from home?

> I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home.

Or,it allows people with social anxiety or depression a room for social interactions with very well defined rules and in an environment where people generally interact positively with you. I like the convenience of WFH too but I do miss cooking with my colleagues and their families on Wednesdays.

This might sound weird to you but living alone and having had parents that made every meal either a screaming match or a barrage of passive aggressive comments I enjoyed those lunches with my much more reasonable colleagues a lot.

Being essentially alone most days certainly didn't help with my depression and that makes other social interactions harder.

I still won't go back though, wearing trouser being optional at work is a worthwhile tradeoff

> I like the convenience of WFH too but I do miss cooking with my colleagues and their families on Wednesdays.

Well, to fix that you can go cook with your colleagues and their families on Wednesdays.

not as long as corona is still raging here in germany, no families (or colleagues) at the office

Eh, I’m kinda implicated here but I see office interactions as some bare minimum of socialization that, yes, can lead to complacency but does not subtract from the ideal of finding meaningful relationship outside of work. If anything, face to face work helps energize me to be social, and not just with my coworkers. More like a daily practice against Cabin Fever. For some reason, for me, Cabin Fever self-perpetuates.

I still prefer WFH, but I go to a coffee shop most days of the week to work on a personal project. After a year+ my relationship with the other regulates and staff is like the best possible relationship you’d expect to have among coworkers - I’ve even grabbed a beer with the manager when then closed early one day - without the stresses of working for a common employer.

I'm approaching this from my own perspective of a fairly serious introvert, and I feel like the biggest skill I've picked up in life is pushing past the introvert wall.

Which is that thing that whispers "Going out will be a hassle. Why not just not?"

Work was one way of forcing past that, but I feel that's analogous to saying "Prison is one way of curing wanderlust." It feels more reasonable to treat the underlying issue than take a bargain that comes with serious negative consequences.

There are reasons people don't pursue activities outside of work because they only require a minimal amount of interaction with people or they don't have time for socialization outside of work. Conversations with clubmembers won't be appreciably more meaningful than conversations with coworkers.

A benefit is that your social circle exists independent of your job status but you've got to do it on your own time.

>social activities outside the home

I have no idea what you meant by this.

>There are already a number of options in even the smallest town

Can you elaborate on what options do you mean by this? I have to admit I'd have no idea where to go or what to do if I needed this.

That's true, but also very sad. I am lucky enough to have a lovely wife, kids and just enough good friends. And that's all I care about.

I don't really miss at all the office, let alone my co-workers. Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more productive.

I have all those too. But even when you are fully remote, and have a healthy outside social support system away from work, you cannot ignore the reality that is you spend the majority of your waking hours working alongside these people, often for the same goals and deadlines. It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.

Unless you are one of the rare people where you truly are a solo shop (even then you have people requesting the work from you), I want to meet, converse, and get to know the people that I spend a bulk of my waking hours with, and depend on together to do a good job because I feel like that's showing those other people basic dignity.

> It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.

I think you're creating a universal here where there is none. I have secure boundaries, and I can enjoy a coworker's company and work without having to be friends with them. And there's also an ugly side to this, where people don't want to have coworkers that they wouldn't want to be friends with. That's not some natural urge, that's something that people impose on a situation that is alienating to people who don't share your politics, or your tastes, or even like the way you treat people (I'm referring to the hypothetical "you" here.)

I have really enjoyed working with people who I'd never want to know outside of work, and have a huge amount of respect for those people whose work ethic and trustworthiness showed a real thoughtfulness and concern about what they were doing and for their coworkers' time and development. That's good enough for me, we don't have to share musical tastes or hobbies. On the other side, I've certainly made friends with people at work, but some of the people I made friends with I hated working with. The two things are barely connected.

How are you able to appreciate people in a specific capacity without feeling like you need to become buds with them?

How do you avoid forming many negative opinions about a person just because you don’t see them as socially interesting?

Apologies if I wasn't clear, I didn't say or mean be friends with them. But being coworkers with someone is indeed a type of relationship. I wasn't meaning to conflate those two, but acknowledge the commonality between the two.

> lucky enough to have a lovely wife

Me too, but I met my wife through work (we didn't work together, but I met her through a lady I did work with). I think a lot of young people - not just men - are hoping to interact with potential romantic partners through work.

That's the best part about work!

This is true historically but the culture does seem to be moving away from the idea of it being OK to date coworkers. I know a lot of younger people (like me) would be quite nervous about the prospect of coming onto someone in the workplace. Even with good intentions there is potential for miscommunication or making someone uncomfortable.

>Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more productive.

I acknowledge that you and many others derive personal satisfaction from productivity. I do too. However, I strongly believe we should move away from productivity as the measure of whether we should work from home. Primarily because it individualizes productivity and turns any deficits into a moral failing. It is incumbent on our employers to create the conditions which align productivity with our well-being as people, and balance those. Else, we are being exploited.

Put another way, and framing it opposite from what you said:

"Working remote is not what I need because I am less productive" should not be an argument against working from home. You may not need working remotely for other reasons -- social being one of them -- but it's important not to prioritize productivity to the occlusion of all other factors.

For me being productive means that I can get stuff done in less time, hence I have more time for taking care of myself and my family.

I put in forty hours a week as per my employment contract states. If I'm more or less productive is irrelevant to the amount of time I have to take care of myself or my family.

If I have a productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM. If I have a non-productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM.

If I happen to be more productive it does not mean I get more hours to do stuff in my personal time / get more personal time.

Because I am more productive when working from home, I can easily get the job done in half the time. This means that my manager is happy, and I sign off after lunch and have the rest of the day for myself. That's also why I always try to schedule meetings no later than 1pm.

I once thought I would like to have kids, based on the incredible diversity and splendor of the experiences and people and places the world had to offer. It seemed right, to create new lives to share in that.

Now that the texture of being a person in the world is mainly to be on Zoom calls, I think it would be cruel. Zoom school, Zoom friends, Zoom job, Zoom dates, only to produce yet another human who can attend Zoom school. What kind of life is that to being a child into?

We’ll still have books! That might be worth it on its own. And places take a while to decay. Maybe we can wander the remnants of places, from back when places were a thing. Maybe there will still be enough weirdos to sustain some kind of live performance tradition in unusual and expensive places. Maybe some especially backwards communities, after they have sold the school buildings, will retain the athletic fields. But I dunno. A world where the default condition is to sit alone on the internet from your nowhere-sprawl house, cradle to grave, is pretty fucking bleak.

> their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person

This sort of self-alienation seems to be a pretty widespread problem larger than the in-person/remote debate. That said, it's probably better for those experiencing it to have some in-person socialization in the office than none.

How do you know they aren't travelling the world while "working from home"? Sure, they aren't keeping up with a set group of friends, but they are making new friends every day. The world is bigger than just your tiny little apartment. You can go to Latin America, where they share largely the same timezone as us, but you can play with turtles! Or rescue dogs! Or clean up after penguins (south of argentina). It's really up to you if you think humans are the only way to not be lonely, then yeah, hit up a bar and cry yourself to sleep. But there are other ways. There is so much other there if you just work from home,and stop going into the shitty office, with terrible people. Have you ever noticed the office makes people less original? They all end up looking and acting the same as each other, and I'm the only who who's just come home from petting a penguin and they're like "we just came home from the bar.... again.... for the third time this week...." The office is dead, long live working form home.

Sure you could use remote work to do things, but in practice most people don't. Forcing everyone back into the office without a good reason isn't a good solution, but I think that the option to work in person is an ideal situation to those who like to socialize with others. Personally, I have that flexibility and have started to take advantage of it by working while traveling. But I've observed of my WFH coworkers don't seem to, which goes back to the original point- the alienation is not a function of not going into the office. It's a separate issue that giving that option to people can mitigate.

join a sports activity. Free socializing, plus health benefits. :)

>Free socializing, plus health benefits. :)

Not my experience. At sports activities where I live, people come to do sports, not really to socialize. Once the sport activity is over, most go home to their kids/wives/girlfriends/etc. At least in Germany where the focus is always on the activity at hand, and socializing with strangers is a distraction from the activity you came for.

I practice 3 different sports right now (bouldering, CrossFit and dancing), hoping to maybe make some friends or find a partner out of it in this WFH world and it's all the same, once the activity is over, people want to go home, not stay and have a beer or chat. :(

Maybe I was lucky in the past but the best friends I've ever made and sometimes partners were found on the same workplace or campus, but I sure as hell feel very unlucky and miserable now, however, I really don't wish for people who don't like being in the office to be forced to come to work, that's really stupid, but this hybrid model is the norm where I live and is the worst of both worlds. Some offices are really nightmare material.

my condolences. :(

I guess it may depend on the sport group. I've had good luck with the local Basic Fit (globo-gym type outfit, but the nearby branch has some nice people), and my weighlifting club, so perhaps you may find better luck in another sports group?

Back when I lived in Marseille, I actually made a few really nice friendships from hanging out at the Prado street workout park. It was on the beach too, which was really nice.

Climbing is also quite popular, and my local climbing gyms seem rather conductive to random social interactions that could lead to deeper friendships, although honestly I don't go very ofter (less than once per month), so perhaps that's just my perception.

That said, if you're more comfortable meeting people at work, perhaps you would be happier with an office job?

How do you make friends at gyms? Here everyone has noise cancelling headphones on, focusing on their sets, and only staring at their equipment or their phone. There's no socializing with strangers going on on unless you brought your own friends, as everyone is busy to do their sets and go home.

And what's the difference between a gym and a weightlifting club? Here we have gyms, where there's free weights, machines and cardio equipment where you can do everything including weightlifting. Never heard of a weightlifting club. What do you do there besides lift weight like in any other gym? Is it done in a group or something?

well, I can only answer for my specific case, but the way I made friends at the gym was basically people noticing that I was doing the Olympic lifts and commenting on that, plus occasionally giving random compliments/technique tips to people.

By weightlifting club I mean an association centered around competitive Olympic lifting. So you train individually, but can sign up for competitions, and are generally always around competitive lifters.

I've also heard CrossFit has a good community, not sure how accurate this is, however.

Maybe try a more 'team' oriented sport? I have found padel tennis to be probably one of the most 'socializing' sports I have played (too much even for my tastes). The fact you have to play in pairs forces you to interact with someone, and is rare the game where a beer after to talk about it doesn't happen. (unless it is a weird hours).

I made also good social circles playing tennis and doing bjj, even though those are more 'individual' things, they seem to include a part of a social element to it as well.

Never tried dancing, but the times I did bouldering and crossfit, unless you were going in a group with already a beer planned after, they tend to be more start-end kind of things.

It's more than that. I'm mid-life, with kids, meaning that my best opportunity for getting out of the house on a regular basis is while they're at school. Without that, days can go by without a significant change of scenery, especially in winter when spending evenings at the park isn't a great option.

I'm not lonely, per se, but, all the same, the pandemic has been very, very difficult for me. I went from being a longtime remote worker who went to a coworking space most days, to what has sometimes felt like two years of house arrest.

I agree that going in to an office - especially an open plan one where they pack desks end-to-end in giant noisy rooms - is a less-than-stellar option, too. But I also suspect that many people's newfound love of WFH is fueled in part by the novelty of the experience, and that the shine will wear off after a couple more years.

We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one else at all, for weeks and months. If not the office, workers are better off using some social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to that. Psychologically it's not ideal. Yes the office can be a pain, commute and what not, but loneliness could be worse.

We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one else at all, for weeks and months.

Offices are significantly less 'natural' than spending time with a small group of people. If you go back a thousand years or so many people lived their entire life within a mile or two of where they were born - they grew up, worked, got married, lived and died in a single village. In lots of more isolated cases people would have only met a couple of hundred people in their entire lifetime.

It's definitely unusual to lead such a limited life today, but psychologically it's not that bad. People survived pretty well, and they continue to now.

There was much more of a community life outside the home, with your fellow villagers.

In this case, the community is defined by the proximity to your home. Working at an office with a typical US commute is not remotely the same.

Working remotely from home is also a very different lifestyle, so I'm not sure what the argument is. Living as if it's the 1000 BC is not in the cards.

Perhaps there's a connection between the loss of community and the rise of long commutes to drab office parks.

That "small" group would consist of something like 100 people, not 5. If you want to appeal to nature, it's less natural for your family to be your entire social circle, than for it to include casual workplace acquaintances.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is the truth. We are much closer to a pack of chimps than anything else, definitely not 2-3 family members (and even 2-3 members is optimistic considering divorce rate and plummeting child bearing) . We lived in groups of a few dozens of members for hundreds of thousands of years.

> If not the office, workers are better off using some social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to that. Psychologically it's not ideal.

I would caution against the presumption that people will do things that are "bad" for them because they're convenient and you have to force them to do things that are "good" for them instead.

In these comments you can see examples of people who are going to co-working spaces. Obviously they feel they need it and I support them. Personally I have no interest in going to a co-working space. I love my WFH solitude and autonomy, and 2021 was the most productive year of my life work-wise.

Is this psychologically bad for me, regardless of my own perceptions and experience? I suppose it's possible, but I don't think some random boss with the power to fire me unless I come into the office is a better judge of that than I am.

Random boss is not enlightened by virtue of being a boss. Surely anyone who has nodded their head to a Dilbert comic knows that by now. Random boss will do what's good for himself, not what's good for me.

Paternalistic, collectivist authoritarianism has dominated human thought for most of our history. It's only recently that individual autonomy and freedom have become more influential. I think that's a very good thing and I'm not going back.

I never said you have to force them, that's a philosophical question with no clear answer, I'm just stating a problem - which is called loneliness and solitude and which affects most people. Its very possible in your individual case 100% remote work is what's good for you, but it's not likely that its good for most people most of the time because it goes against everything we know about our nature and genes. Now if a person is 100% remote worker but he invests heavily in socializing then there shouldn't be a problem. The trouble is I don't think most people will do this, at least not enough. Many people lack discipline and have very weak will power; so many of us find it extremely hard to do the things which we know are good for mental well being - such as exercising, eating right and socializing with friends and family. We find it extremely easy and even addictive to do things which aren't great (or even bad) for mental well being such as Netflix binging, reading Twitter and eating junk food and not leaving the house for lengthy periods. The easy thing to do is just WFH and not bother with seeing anyone, because calling up friends is hard work. Sure, people will still see friends but not more than they did before they went WFH. It's mostly just gonna be people working from home, alone, or with a spouse if you're lucky. This is why I'm not incredibly optimistic.

WFHomers need a modern equivalent of the Knitting Bee. Distinct from a co-working space since it is organized by its members who make an effort to get to know each other and it shouldn't be dependent on membership with some organization, just a grassroots locally organized thing.

Why?

I meet people outside of work “regularly” - more weekends than not - but a coffee or a hike or a live performance here and there is very different from casually sharing a building on a random Tuesday.

The comparison isn’t a social life, it’s a family or roommates.

> A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person

Well, with the 8 hours they're getting back from not commuting, they'll have more time to go out and socialize in non-work settings

This doesn't make sense. There are countless opportunities for social interaction. Join a church, a club, a sports league, a gaming discord. I get that there's a lot of friction involved in joining anything, and many 'lonely young men' don't want to put forth that effort. But it's definitely less total effort than forcing people to come to an office for the purpose of social stimulation. Just measured in terms of time and fuel spent commuting by each person, it isn't even close.

I think there are a lot of reasons that people prefer offices. Most of it is probably tradition and "that's the way we've always done things". If the reason is truly lonely people needing social interaction, then there are a lot of way better solutions.

sorry for the shameless plug but, checkout frenemy.live

I will. Thank you.

Churches and most clubs don't have extremely intelligent people with similar interests i.e. your tribe. When I talk to my friends I am usually at maybe 20% brain "power", when I'm at work I can mention basically anything and someone will have heard of it.

YMMV.

One thing to consider is the tech industry is over represented by neurodivergent people that struggle with social interaction. What you're suggesting is not feasible for everyone.

I think a lot of it is the exact circumstances of you office as well. All else equal I think I would actually prefer working in an office assuming that:

1. It felt like a "real" space (i.e. not a beige cubical farm)

2. Was not excessively loud

3. I had a comfortable chair/workspace

4. I could walk there from my house in under 20 minutes

5. There was no dress code

6. There was nobody there who I found deeply annoying and also insisted on interacting with me regularly

And I think a lot of people (especially young people who live in cities close to where they work) actually do have something approximating that situation.

Being able to walk there from my house in under 20 minutes is a big thing for me. If I am a 1-3 miles walk/bike ride, I would go to the office all of the time. Assuming its a safe comfortable commute. I hate driving in rush hour personally, any amount of distance.

Also feeling like a real place is nice. I actually don't mind a cubical, though an office would be nicer. I really hate open office though, and open office makes me never want to go in. If it felt like a cozy coffee shop, or a college campus that would be ideal.

Yeah, I don't mind a cubicle per se (especially compared to the typical open office) but I found the traditional cubicle farm offices, where everything is this bland, monochromatic beige color and lit with neon lights, very depressing.

Interesting how you automatically assigned a gender. My wife has worked from home for 4 years and can't wait to get back into an office. I like to think that some people just have different preferences.

The interesting thing is that folks on HN who want to work from the office just say “I can see why you’re remote. Just not for me. I prefer to work in a team that’s all in-office” but folks on HN who want to work remote always go “It’s because you’re lonely that you can’t work remote. I have a loving wife and children. You are miserable and using coworkers as a substitute for social company.”

Like, dude, we get it. This is important to you. So go work where you find that. A bit tiresome to constantly come into these threads and listen to this endless repetitious nonsense.

Christ on a stick. Do you never tire of it?

It isn't my responsibility to help "lonely young men" meet people. Just go to a bar/meetup/church and start talking. That's an individual's responsibility to socialize.

Believe it or not, that entails lonely women too

It took me 1-2 years before WFH didn't make me depressed. I enjoy it now but I understand.

I won't accept any non-remote job where I need long commutes and I have to sit my ass there for the whole week.

Just yesterday we had a summer day, so just after lunch I went to a remote beach, used my phone as AP and worked for about 5 hours until nightfall.

No interruptions, no annoying noises, not battling with AC.

I mean, having tasted this, Im pretty sure what would I do if my company asks me to go back to office. I still have a low paying job, but my life has improved dramatically.

And my office is literally 5m walk from my home, so Im already ahead of many people in that, but it's a noisy bunker with no window, lots of people and all kinds of other BS.

People is definitely lonely. I can understand that, but I won't pay for other peoples loneliness.

If you want friends, ask me for a beer, or come to my house, I like to cook for people.

But Id bet that this is more of a managers thing.

You have lunch a few hours before dawn?

Oops! I meant to "anochecer", which is nightfall in english according to google.

With a kid at home I'm very inclined to work in office whenever it allows. I'm also much more productive in office when everything from coffee to food are taken care of.

Nowadays I believe WFH is kinda the norm in IT as long as company policy allows. I love the hybrid mode: two days in office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid.

> two days in office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid.

This is not working from home, or working anywhere

If you think working from home means you have time to "help with the kid", you're wrong.

I don't know what you mean TBH.

If you are working from home, you are working. If you are helping out with the kid, you are not working.

I'm working when I'm working. Still don't get where you are going with this.

You implied you were maintaining a full time job (that's what I understand "hybrid" to mean), rather than having dropped to part time hours.

Have you tried actually doing that though. When you're at home you're always available to help out. If you're at the office its impossible. When your family is having a screaming argument next door how can you concentrate at home?

High speed internet and video conferencing might bring many of those distractions into your home office in a way that you didn't have to deal with during the old days.

>"I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face"

This. We have managed to completely fuck up life style of the segment of the population to the point that they have no life outside of the office. This is sick.

A good book about this is Bowling Alone. As much as I liked programming, I would also take the day off to go surfing if the waves were good. Another WFH benefit.

http://bowlingalone.com/

That said, it made a huge difference that forced WFH coincided with closing all possible social outlets at the same time. If you discovered that you wanted to expand your social circle to diversify away from workmates, you were out of luck.

Most software is no longer this self contained. It doesn’t need to be that way but often is.

Around 9/11, I was responsible for a major system component that turned out (shocker) to be a lot more work than anyone had estimated, so I spent the week before and the month after 9/11 working fully remote so that I could dedicate every waking hour to the component. Putting aside the lack of balance, it was the most productive I have been in my life despite the high distraction of the news in the outside world.

But the last two years have been nothing like that. Some of that is my current role, and some of that is that building complex systems requires more coordination, but it also seems to me that there is some issue both around engineer depth on average (previous example, everyone was fluent in reading code and it spoke for itself) and that software these days in large companies has just so much internet-group overhead.

And video conferencing is a punishment in most large companies, worse than a phone call because it seems, to me, to result in people paying less attention. I may be alone in that though.

> some people are just very lonely and need face to face

Sure but some of us are just more extroverted and have better energy in the office. Also having a clean separation of work vs home context can be helpful, training the brain "this is work time"[1]

I think it's totally fair to point out if people are opting for the office just due to a lack of need fulfillment elsewhere in life, but don't think its wise to assume it's only that by a wide margin.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorway_Effect

Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible when chatting via google meets.

But there’s also the increased exposure to serendipity. Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation that makes you think about your career, or during drinks after work you end up discussing a new cool startup idea with colleagues. None of this really happens when you stay at home.

Sure, there are pros to staying at home. You will have more free time and fewer distractions, among other things. But there are also massive perks to putting a bit of effort and going to the office sometimes. Those perks, admittedly, may be hard to understand for the average introverted, socially anxious software dev.

My own anecdotal and I'm sure many others have experienced this before, but getting the culture right for remote work has been a great experience. I get to know people at a meaningful level. I remember being younger in high school and making meaningful relationships on the internet through chat rooms and video games that last to today.

I disagree on one point. I've spent much of my career working with remote offices over the phone and with desktop sharing. I have to say, group video conferences really don't cut it. However, one on one calls and video calls work really well and you can get to know your coworkers. Its so much better to have one on ones with others and not have each other worry about posturing in front of their peers. Group video calls are at least just as useless as group meetings.

> Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation

The office rumor-mill produced a lot of bad politics in my experience

> Maybe you overhear a conversation

This is the one thing I've never found a suitable replacement for in the remote world. Chance encounters are difficult to replicate. Maybe I'm discussing an issue with a colleague, and someone in earshot happens to know the answer. I've seen groups try to have policies like no DMs and only using public channels, but that sucks.

I much prefer remote life, but it's true that there are some aspects of in person work that are better.

Agree with all of that. For me, the issue with working at home is that home is my relaxing and family place office is my work place. My mind focuses at work much better when i am in my work environment.

Creating real connections with co workers from my experience is not possible via zoom / google meets. There is nothing that can replace real human interaction as far as creating relationships.

> Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level

In 15 years in this industry, I have only developed a handful of deep relationships with former and current colleagues. The vast majority of my own work relationships have been superficial. I'm a card carrying member of the over sharer's club, and yet so many of my colleagues throughout the years don't know that I'm originally from Ohio by way of Pennsylvania... That I'm a military veteran... That I'm a strength and endurance athlete, etc. Maybe that says something about me, but I don't think I'm an outlier.

Some of the people I've worked with were utterly contemptible and, while I maintained a professional relationship with them at work, myself and many others were inwardly happy to see them go when the time came. I think we all know plenty of cantankerous assholes who we've had to call team mate, colleague, or worse, manager / boss.

We work here together for a (usually brief, in the grand scheme of things) period of time and that's often the only glue that holds the majority of us together.

One of the deepest and most impactful relationships I have forged through a shared working environment is a person who lives in Argentina and who I have never met in person. No office required, just the Internet.

The serendipity point is interesting.

A few years ago I had my team's desks moved to be next to our sales team. I wanted to overhear their conversations and phone calls to get a deeper understanding of client feedback and how clients used our product. It worked out well, and we got into a much better place in terms of feedback and requests.

During covid I've also had a very strong indicator of how clients view our product - the entire sales team quit over time.

Translation: we should all be forced to go to work because we are dweebs and don't matter over our other social peers.

There are ways to establish communication to humans other than going into work to use their keyboard and monitor.

>Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible when chatting via google meets.

Who cares? I care about my family and friends. If I match with someone at the office, then it will happen anyway with remote work and I don't need to be force to interact in the hopes of having a better relationship. I work for work, not to socialize. I socialize with people by choice, not by force. And those people are those who I like.

>Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation that makes you think about your career, or during drinks after work you end up discussing a new cool startup idea with colleagues. None of this really happens when you stay at home.

I don't need the unexpected to make me think, thanks. I like to take command of my own life instead of waiting for unexpected wind blows to drive me somewhere or make me think of where I want to go in life. I'm sorry to hear some people need that. Maybe therapy would be good for them. Or, you know, talking with friends.

> Those perks, admittedly, may be hard to understand for the average introverted, socially anxious software dev.

I feel sorry for the people who feel the need to put others down in order to try to prove a point (for which arguments are lacking, and therefore they resort to ad-hominems).

> 5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet

It's hard to imagine now how this could be done without the internet and a distributed vcs like git.

what was the merge code process like?

git merge --strategy ours

Some people prefer working in an office because it helps them stay disciplined and keep a better work/life balance. Perhaps I’m just speaking for myself here, but I tend to get lazy and feel like my life has much less structure as a fully-remote worker.

Some people live in tiny apartments without even a balcony.

ClarisWorks was created like this too.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php

> I can safely say I never wrote any good code while working in an office. There are too many distractions.

1) Not every office is Silicon Valley Open Office Garbage

I personally think this is the biggest issue.

We never threw in with the "open office" bullshit. Offices have doors. We don't have that many cubicles, and they're generally for contractors/consultants/etc. Every time we started having cubicles, it was time to move to a bigger office.

People hate commute traffic--that's sadly unavoidable in the US. But they didn't seem to hate our office (I could, of course, simply be blind like so many stupid managers).

2) Not every job is solely writing code.

I need a lab. My juniors need a lab. They don't need to be there every day, but they do need it regularly. Expecting them to set this up in their apartment is unreasonable.

3) Junior engineers need mentoring

Maybe the fact that software does this quite so terribly is hiding this need.

There is a lot of friction between simply mentioning something to a staff engineer after lunch and setting up a specific zoom call. There is also something about the staff engineer overhearing something "minor" that junior engineers are struggling with, correlating that multiple of them are having similar issues and setting up something to fix a process or educate people.

4) Lack of face to face time increases conflicts

This is anecdata. However, people who don't actually meet face to face regularly don't cut each other the same slack that those who meet regularly do. I don't know why. Although, we could probably paper over this by having regular lunches.

I like working from home. But I also liked working at the office. They are two different modes that serve two different purposes.

I will, however, agree that 9 to 5, 5 days a week in the office is dumb. At the very least, significantly condensing the number of "common hours" and letting people commute on off times needs to increase. This was happening, but very slowly. Covid accelerated this.

There are multiple reasons to want to work in an office. Makes it easier to separate home from work. Not having the space at home to work comfortably. Not having the quiet need from a busy and noisy house Being and to interact with others, even if it is just in a social capacity. Of course personally I'd prefer to work from home

The coding used by this survey is a joke. If 40% of an occupation says they work outdoors that's below 50% so it's bucketed into the work from home category on that criterion. I think if even 20% of a job is saying they work outdoors that's pretty strong evidence you're missing some information about what the other 80% are doing in their job that prevents it from being a work from home job. The net result of their setup is obviously a vast overestimate so take the 37% number with a grain of salt.

Couldn’t the job still be performed at home with the occasional on site? I’m thinking of a construction PM. The job could mainly be done at home other then when needed to meet GC on site. Seems like there is still WFH no?

That’s why the “entirely at home” from the study’s highlights is an egregious conclusion from its methods.

Depends what you're using the WFH number for. If you want to extend it to an argument about being able to live substantially further from a job then needing to meet a GC on site some of the time is a dealbreaker. I think it's fair to say to call the job as a whole a WFH job it needs to be 100% remote. That's not to say non-WFH jobs can't have some remote time.

My office has people who live across the country and work 95% remote, and hop on a few flights per year when they're needed. Is that not WFH?

> I’m thinking of a construction PM. The job could mainly be done at home other then when needed to meet GC on site.

I’m sure all the blue collar construction workers would totally respect the PM even more than they do now if they didn’t show up on site…

There is an awful lot of privilege going on behind the scenes in these WFH debates.

Seriously. If the PM isn’t on site doing some basic QC .. then are they really managing a project?

> I’m thinking of a construction PM.

The construction we've seen recently had a PM, and they were on the site about 20-25% of the time. Parts of their job can be and should be done in an office (or from home), but I can't imagine that they wouldn't visit the site regularly while keeping the quality and the schedule goals...

I know some companies are trying to get their employees to go back to a hybrid schedule, but for me, I think the bell can't be unrung. My company is a f500 company that I would not have thought would remain remote, but we have, and it really helps us hire and retain talent. It honestly helps us recruit people that would otherwise have sought out trendier employers.

I don’t hate working in an office. I hate working in an “open plan” office where someone is always interrupting my work.

Same. Seems not too long before people started really hating offices, offices started being designed to make you hate them. Open offices, no walls, 'island concept' which sounds all fun and tropical until you learn it just means you no longer even have your own desk.

If companies want people back in offices, make them enticing. Have perks! Imagine everyone getting their own room, with a nice desk and maybe small couch and mini fridge. Having a shared personal assistant to take care of some things, work related or not. Heck, even something as small as a free daycare would be a huge motivator.

If you want people back, start treating them like people and not cattle.

I agree with everything you said but how is "free daycare" something small? Daycare costs thousands of dollars and the regulations and licensure are (rightfully) a very high bar. I would see free daycare as a huge perk and I don't even have kids.

You're right, its impact is not small at all. My wife pretty much stayed out of the labor market because day care costs so much.

I guess I was thinking the work involved seemed relatively small compared to redesigning whole offices- just carve out a couple areas and hire some caretakers. But I'm pretty ignorant of the laws, regulations, and needs as you pointed out, so that's probably not small at all either.

You get economies of scale with larger companies. The regulations are usually 1 worker per x kids, if I recall and not much more than that. It's not that strict at all. Of course if you had daycare at your company you could have a large room or a wing with a playroom and all that. It's pennies on the dollar to retain good talent, if you actually want to force people back in the office.

My wishlist is:

1. Kill the panopticon (open offices) 2. Employers should bear the cost of ALL commuting

The panopticon is truly dystopian, and whenever I’m in one, the hair on the back of my neck never lays flat. I feel watched (because I am) and it isn’t pleasant.

Forcing employers to bear the costs of commuting would really up-end things. We’d all be working from home really damned quickly, and I suspect there’d be massive gains for the environment, climate change, etc.

You think removing a massive cost of ownership will reduce America's useage of large SUVs and pickups?

It’ll definitely reduce usage in people’s commutes, which is all I’m really claiming.

But no, that guy with the raised truck, rolling coal? Hell no, he’s gonna die before you take his toy away.

Edit: tbh, I think if corps are footing the bill for commuting, it’ll be mass transit for 95% of us. Your employer won’t buy you a Ford F350 superduty to get to work. Maybe you’re gonna get a Honda Fit. Maybe. More likely a bus pass.

> offices started being designed to make you hate them

Indeed. I didn't mind at all going to the office the first many years of my career, where I always had a private office with a closing door.

But with open offices, I'll do everything I can to never be there.

Free daycare could get me back in an office. That would be a huge financial perk.

If companies want to lure employees back into the office, they should give them offices of their own.

its funny, when working at Intel, one of the things people bitched about was the cubicles. (1998)

I hate open offices, but having worked in all formats, open offices are bad for mental health.

When working on MPK West for FB, they built an open office to house 3,000 employees with only 5 offices (with escape hatches) for the c-suite.

Cubicles suck compared to private offices, but they're miles better than open offices.

I used to share an office with another engineer, and one thing that we both preferred was t keep the lights off in our office (we had a window office and the ambient light was beneficial.

Lighting is SUPER important, and when youre in an pen office layout you have no control over your lighting.

For this reason alone, one should hate open office layouts.

If you were to prefer working in an office, you can find a local office space that meets your tastes.

Or if you like open office, you could go that direction too.

This surprises...nobody? Except maybe bean counters/management types that need to show off perhaps.

With that said, I do have concerns. These issues center around a shift in benefits offered as a result of this new paradigm ( hate using that word but ) around the nature of work. I.e. the gig everything economy coming to your job...soon

Many folks in the US work a 9to5 not just for the pay, rather for healthcare and stability. However, it's only a matter of time that employees will become even more API'ified / made into independent contracts / etc. I know that many will welcome the flexibility - some though will not understand what this means.

I do wonder how the US will be able to handle this continued move away from 'trad' employment, given our rather odd situation of one's medical being tied at the hip to one's employer? Those that work in other jurisdictions need not fear the loss of a job as much as a US citizen. Literally, you could die ( just look at how many of those that were made unemployed during the pandemic lost access to medical. )

Just my musings...

I would guess that the gig economy simply can't come for any jobs that require significant domain expertise or more than a few hour's worth of attention to any single project.

Comparable to how you don't see day laborers doing pipefitting.

2 thoughts.

First, "gig workers" can't work across the board. Companies working on products often need people to have deep understanding of the product. We all know how costly it can be to lose say a software engineer who has a few years tenure.

Second, if the gig-economy were to become very widespread, it may finally be a push to have a true, sensible market for health insurance in the US. If employers no longer pay insurance carriers/brokers to cover their employees, these carriers will need to come up with products people can afford.

If there is a large shift toward gig economy work, then the healthcare industry will shift as well. There's nothing preventing them from offering affordable healthcare to gig employees other than the status quo and their current profit models.

Something the size of the insurance industry is going to shift about 5-10 years after the general market. So if you're worried about short term gigification of your job, you might want to look into private insurance/benefit options now. Over the long term I think it will take care of itself.

I think it's dangerous when we look at gigification as a "who cares it will work out somehow".

Imagine how up-in-arms if they gigified programming. It has already happened in places, but what if they wholesale a price per line of code?

This will get a lot of replies but honestly, a codebase that is spaghetti from gigification may be cheaper than non-spaghetti codebase at 100k - 200k/year * number of developers and work just as well for the domain it is in.

If you can put the "it won't work" aside - imagine they figure out that it does. That rage right now - how is that not applicable to the people getting gigified right now?

> Imagine how up-in-arms if they gigified programming

Programmers would be up in arms in love with gig work and demand it everywhere if it turned out to actually work. The main problem with WFH is that you still have to work a set hours per week, gig work is the ideal. If you want to work 80 hours one week and 0 hours the next week you can do so. Gig work also means no deadlines, no manager, no long term worries, just write code and get instant money and feedback. The only reason you don't see developers clamoring for gig work right now is that they don't think gig work is possible for development.

People complain about "gigifiation" because of things that has been traditionally tied to employment (health insurance, 401k, etc) not the gig part of it. If someone figured out how to do it I'd assume most programmers would be all over it.

I really hope American businesses don't bring this headline to its logical conclusion...

"37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home...by people in India or Eastern Europe for much less money"

not if those jobs entail good written or even oral communication skills. Native English speakers have a huge leg up on Indians and Eastern Europeans in this regard.

For example, I imagine Coca-Cola is willing to pay more to have the person writing their ad copy be someone who has been immersed in American culture from birth.

A good portion of Indian engineers speak good English. Anecdotal evidence only though.

But a good portion don't, which makes hiring take a lot longer.

Ironically, if you google "is speak good english grammatically correct" there are a lot of articles debating whether it's ok, or if "speak English well" is better. This is the kind of subtlety that's hard to understand for non-native speakers.

I don't think there's anything grammatically wrong with "speak good English". The difference to me is language register.

Companies have been doing this for decades already.

The current situation is not going to shift even more jobs to India. Reasons being, good engineers from India are already moving to the US in sheer numbers, and good talent is unlikely to remain at Indian IT consultancy companies.

Anecdotally, I have worked along with very clever engineers who happened to be Indian nationals living in the US, but I have yet to find an above average engineer working at an Indian IT shop and based in India.

I've met a few sharp Indian engineers in India. They exist.

If it becomes really bad there's a good chance governments will step in and heavily tax offshoring or provide tax benefits for reshoring.

Just like they did with all the cheap offshore manufactured goods...

Don't hold your breath.

Hard to tell. This time it isn't factory workers, it's programmers and who knows what more - finance people, marketing, sales and maybe even doctors. A country can lose its competitive edge really fast by offshoring all of that.

It's already been happening and will increase for sure, but so far hasn't really affected salaries as far as I can see, U.S devs haven't felt a thing yet. If anything, salaries in East Europe went way up.

What I do fear is interest rate starting to rise and the implications of that on our industry but that's another thread.

Imagine the environmental impact of cutting out emissions from 37% of commuters for "free". We could do it today. Its been proven to work the last 2 years. It's such low hanging fruit it's mind boggling!

Oh my god, imagine the improvement in traffic for those who do have to leave their house for work.

The effect is compounding too because those people will spend less time driving and idling their engines!

Once again, I am begging HN: this is a misleading title format for links to single papers or studies. What is being phrased as factual in the headline is merely an assertion in a paper, and should be reflected as such. “New paper claims (x)” is reasonable. “Study suggests (x)” is also reasonable. “(x)” borders on straight up falsehood when it portrays an assertion as a new finding about our world.

I think the assumption on HN should be that the title is merely what the article author is claiming. So from my perspective reading a title like "37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home" is automatically converted to "AuthorClaimsThat(37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home)".

My workplace is trying to get people to come back in the next week or two and people are suspiciously taking a lot of vacation. ~30% of engineering is out today. Methinks they’re in for a very big surprise in 2 weeks, and I don’t think they’ll have the money to counter the offers that people will naturally field in this market.

It’s an unforced error.

Has the title editorializing rule been dropped? I see even more posts with changed titles when the original isn't particularly misleading.

I've been more aware of title changes lately, but I don't know if the frequency has increased. Some of them have been egregious. I'm a fan of changes like this one, though. I can't stand clickbait titles like this article has.

The title is a verbatim copy of one of the highlights in the study.

Since this is the most descriptive line out of the highlights section, I personally enjoy that this is the content chosen instead of the "clickbaity" page title which would be "How many jobs can be done at home?".

Now think about the economic savings in the areas of energy and capital depreciation on cars. The overall economic efficiency boost from this could be unbelievably huge, not to mention the environmental benefits of less routine commuting.

I wouldn't be surprised if this approves economic efficiency by trillions of dollars.

If only there were some way to transport people that wasn’t cars!

That's the thing, remote working decreases the reliance on cars to some extent and not for everybody. Yes, cars are still used for transportation. In some urban settings public transportation is an option. I live in NYC and never owned a car not only because I rely on public transportation but it's a complete pain in the neck with parking, unwanted tickets and high cost for insurance.

For every one of you, how many people are priced out of living in the city and have to drive to a parking lot to take the train in, or want their kids to have some semblance of a yard so they live in New Jersey and do the same?

It's true and it's their choice of course. If I lived in NJ I'd surely own a car too. Sometimes I wish I had a car, especially on weekends so I and my family can do some outings but it's so expensive and cumbersome in NYC.

Oh, it's impractical to own a car if you live in NYC. There's really no point, unless you make stupid money or have a car fetish, or have some specific reason.

If only there was some way to live near work.

And that's the irony. People living in the city wants people back in office, which will force all of us who were able to move to the country to find a place in the city. It will put even more pressure on the housing market of big city. And then, they'll complain that they can't buy anything and are forced to rent for life.

Yea, if only housing prices were reasonable in any major U.S. metropolitan area right now where tech companies are located.

Do you live in a major metro area? If you do, you should know that the rest of the country was designed for cars. Mass transit in your average US isn't feasible as everything is so spread out. There is no city center. There's no downtown.

Telecommuting is a solution for many situations where a public transport is simply impractical. At my last in-office job we had many people who chose to live in unincorporated areas across state lines and commute 100+km via car to the office. I currently live 400km+ from my job here in the US... 4 hours by car or 14 hours by ground-based public transport.

no matter the transportation mechanism it still takes time. Unless someone can invent a star trek'esque transporter the commute will always suck.

Also, the effect this would have on reducing rent and cost of living.

Yeah. Personally, I don't mind working in the office really, what I really want from WFH is the elimination of my commute.

It will take some time work through, but there will also be cost savings on office spaces for companies.

But then the jig is up, no? I thought that was an amazing moment when recently the NYC mayor asked CEOs to "help get workers back to the office".

It's not about the work, it's not about the city, it's about making sure real estate doesn't crash and those campaign contributions can keep coming.

Maybe the mayor also cares about local businesses that get their income from city workers as well as the transport networks which need all the money they can get. Maybe they care about the tourist buzz from a busy city or the saftey in numbers.

You don't always have to assume the worst of someone just because they are powerful.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

Don’t forget the suburban sprawl this sort of stuff will cause. Eating further and further into our natural habitats building giant houses for wealthy, privileged tech workers.

Work from home could plausibly have the opposite effect by liberating a lot of buildings from office use and repurposing them as homes. I know a lot of people who would prefer to live in a city rather than the suburbs, especially young people.

The solution to that is improved urban planning, not to reduce the demand for housing.

In most surveys of this, there are substantial numbers of people who want to get back to the office. That doesn't mean we should ignore the people who don't want to, but the opposite is also true.

It's also about the other businesses that are enabled by having significant number of non-at-home workers in the neighborhood. I'm not saying that this should outweigh or override anything else, but I am saying you don't have to be this cynical.

Can Be != Should Be

Why not?

"Can" doesn't tell you if the job is done better or worse, happier or unhappier.

Exactly. I work remote. I am fully planning to work remote for the rest of my career. But I can imagine a number of scenarios where camaraderie, productivity, confidentiality, and quality of work are improved by having people in close proximity.

So I understand why some companies and teams bias toward everyone working in an office. And my choice to work at home will prevent me from being hired at those places. I'm blessed there's plenty of work available for everyone, remote or not.

Social interactions.

We are going to have a massive problem with taking on juniors, particularly younger people. Without many people visiting the office, there is a lack of banter, encouragement, confidence building. Imagine you were 16 and your introduction to the world of work was sitting in your own bedroom!

Honestly, I don't know how we deal with it unless we create a schedule where there has to be certain people in the office on certain days so that a junior can get the interaction and support which is as much of job training as anything they can do online.

So that's one example of when can do != should do

Yeah. I think it's good that we are exploring what WFH options look like and where they can work, but I think a part of that needs to be recognizing where they don't work, too.

"What about the juniors" is not a super convincing argument to me since I've been on-boarding them throughout the pandemic but also prior to that, quite successfully, through the use of basic video linking and sharing of screens. Out team is scattered around the world and that has always been the case. What are some other examples of when WFH doesn't work?

As a junior who started in late 2019 I completely disagree. My contact with coworkers greatly decreased when we went remote. Partially that's my fault, partially it's the companies, but the reality is that this is really a hard problem to solve.

They are pointing out "can" vs "should" sure you can onboard them remotely and try to build team cohesion remotely but it's just worse then in person.

In what way is it worse?

This is the weirdest take on "think of the children!" that I've heard in a while.

Firms stopped investing in talent decades ago. Go ask new grads if anyone wants to train you anymore. All the job ads I see are a laundry list of skills and they expect you to hit the ground running on day one.

Once it became necessary to look for a new job every 1 - 2 years to stay current with the market, firms stopped with the training, "they will just leave in two years" they cried. In this world your arugment no longer holds water.

young people are very well acclimated to social isolation and only "connecting" using online means. The younger generations are more mentally equipped (or handicapped) to wfh than any other.

Sink or swim. I think it's actually a really good way to weed out do nothings.

By what normative standards? It's a labor market. If employers want employees to come in and get middle managed by chair watchers, I'm sure there's a number high enough to convince almost any remote-preferring worker.

I've been remote by necessity for 8 years, since 2014.

I'd prefer to be in the office most days; but the realities of life would make it difficult for my wife and I to both have careers and be parents. If either of us had a rigid "be in the office Monday - Friday" job, the other would need to cut back to part time just to care for our young children.

What I've observed: In software, a company that wants you to be on-site Monday - Friday has control issues. Limiting your workforce to people who live within a reasonable commute who are single / single career couples / childless couples just makes it hard to hire.

I'm pretty skeptical of this methodology. They don't seem to be making any attempt to measure whether a job can be done effectively from home, only whether it's prohibited by some physical necessity. "Managers, educators, and those working in computers, finance, and law are largely able to work from home", but is having your teacher or lawyer on a little iPad really a complete substitute for having them right in front of you?

I guess I'm not sure how I would do it better, but that doesn't make it super meaningful.

Educators? Really? That alone makes me doubt the article.

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

Exactly — yet so many people can’t accept that ANYONE might want to work from an office.

My assumption is that people who love WFH are generally suburbanites who can’t fathom getting to work involves anything other than sitting in traffic for two hours.

When getting to work involves a short walk to the office, getting a coffee on the way, of course that's the best commute by a country mile. When the weather's nice like this morning I'll take a longer walk, but I don't have to do that commute.

I hate cube and half cubes or like at my current job before covid I had an office that I shared with 2 other people.

This. A big problem with office work is office cube design. I'm old enough to have had a closed door office in the 90s and it was the best. I also worked in large cubes which had moveable partitions as walls where you couldn't see your neighbours. They were also good, not great, but better than today's cubes. They even had large book shelves where you could keep your reference books!

At home, I can close my door and it is much superior for my personal productivity than an open office cube plan.

At least you get a cube or half cube. My office is basically a really long desk with 4 people on one side and 4 people on the other (directly across from each other), with maybe 5 feet between you and the next person.

Urbanite here. I hated having to travel daily, even when my commute was around 35 minutes.

Currently working remotely and living in a city, because that's where all the services are.

Who are these people who can't accept that anyone wants to work from an office? If there are so many of them, can we see some examples?

Office work is not just about the commute, it is also about terrible work conditions where you may be seated in an open space shared by support, engineers, sales, etc.

"So many people can't accept that ANYONE is more productive in a remote setting".

This "us vs them" discourse is so childish. Just find the company that works the way you want, either all in office, or hybrid, or all distributed and move on.

Just look at the comments in this thread. Plenty of people seem to assume that no one actually wants to go to the office.

I see some comments where people mention that they prefer to work remote/FH, not that everyone who wants to work in an office is an idiot.

Holy crap. But that's how what _you_ write comes across o.O

At least at my office, the majority wants to stay remote. Only about a third want to come back in the office. It's not everyone, but it can be a very large segment.

That said, it seems remote would be the planet friendly option. No commute, reduce the need for additional building by retrofitting offices as residences (yeah, zoning), etc.

The vast vast majority of people don't have 2 hour commutes. This is pretty much an LA or NYC thing. There are other cities in the US and none of them require insane commutes like this.

My drive to work is 7 minutes, I live in a suburban neighborhood. I don't work in the office because there's no need for it.

People are not great at empathy.

If you have small kids working from an office gives you a good place to work with, hopefully, less distractions.

Some people like commuting because its their me time. Some people like the socialization being in an office gives them. Some careers/roles are easier when you can walk over to someones desk and talk to them.

There are plenty of reasons why working in an office might be interesting to someone. Just like there are plenty of reasons why working fully remotely is interesting to someone.

You're asking someone to respect your choice to work from an office, while it feels like you're disparaging their choice to live where they want to (or possibly can afford as, for example, most of the suburbs have become cheaper than cities for much of America.)

Can we all just agree that people want different things?

I live in the dead center of a major city, but it happens to be a city that isn't much of a tech hub. Thanks to widespread work from home, I can now consider job offers from anywhere and work for a hot startup that just IPO'd and get the same benefits of a bull market for engineering labor as someone younger and/or unattached who can easily move halfway across the country for a better job.

Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why?

I'm not a fan of the office because:

1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.

1. Commute is a nice way to get some alone time and unwind after work (admittedly, I wouldn't mind a shorter one though, say 15 min)

2. At home there are many more distractions (kids)

3. At work there are nice people to talk to/interact with

4. Getting lunch with coworkers is a nice way to bond and discuss ideas

5. All my friends moved away during the pandemic, and an office is a good way to make new friends

6. IME, meeting in person leads to friendlier interactions, whereas virtual interactions tend to be more hostile

7. The separation of home/office life makes it easier to focus

Most of these points are unrelated to work itself, and may be easily rebuked.

Commuting is not a way to "unwind". If you have 15 minutes in the car, why couldn't you meditate for 15 minutes at home?

Interaction is not taken away if you WFH. But even if it was, if there are "nice" people at work, then there's the assumption that there are "not nice" people as well. Do you want to spend your days surrounded by "not nice" people as well?

If attending to the office is seen as a way to expand your friendship circle, then there is the assumption that any other in person activity should help to this end as well. Wouldn't it be worth trying to go to meet-ups, gym, etc., instead of relying on a workplace hostage situation?

Not trying to be too harsh here. But I have found that most people who want to go back to the office, expect others to go back as well. I don't oppose people going back, of course, but I do oppose being an accessory to their way of life.

1. I bike/run commute and have planned my life to let me live with 15 minutes of where I work.

2. I purposefully choose to live in a small apartment with no dedicated “work” space.

3. Yeah, me too.

Not the OP but for me:

1. I get very little face-to-face social interaction if I'm working from home. I need the interaction at the office or I fear I'll lose the already terrible social skills I have

2. Some conversations are just easier to have in-person, especially from a management standpoint. I don't micromanage and I am pretty hands-off but when a team leader is having issues with their team, it's generally easier for them to pull me into a conference room and chat face-to-face with me and we can figure out a resolution together. This can happen over video, but I find it's better if it's not.

3. I find you get exposure to new techniques and technologies and different perspectives on how to approach solving technical issues when you're in an office and can see a team huddling trying to figure something out.

That said, I know it's not everyone's preference and I'm in favor of a hybrid model personally. Office is available if you want to use it. If you're living in the area of the office, come in once or twice a month and have a face-to-face meeting with your project teammates and/or manager. Otherwise, you're free to be at home if you want.

I love working from home and remote suits me. But the past few months I’ve noticed more and more coworkers asking for zoom pairing sessions, increasing numbers of mob programming sessions, and a general craving for face time.

Personally I dislike those because they’re the worst of both worlds. Not quite remote, not quite in person. I get more done on my own.

In my observation many people are just very done with remote. Especially the younger folk whose lives aren’t as full of adult crap yet.

I can't speak for the OP and everyone has their own reasons but - Do you have a roommate? Children? Now your house/apartment is looking like a mini-office with shared space. - Your house has one office. Where will your spouse/partner work? Most houses don't have two offices. - Maybe living in a small apartment is OK for people because they can get out to larger spaces. Want to live in a studio apartment and work there too? - Offices can have cafeterias and tend to have restaurants nearby. - habit

In addition to all of the social reasons others have listed, I'll list 2 technical reasons why an office is a more comfortable place for me to work:

I have 2 large monitors at my office desk (so when you include my laptop's screen, I have a total of 3 monitors; lots of screen space). Compared to no external monitors at home.

At the office, I have a gigabit connection to the LAN and file servers. At home, I have a VPN that is, while pretty good, not able to compete with 1GBe.

These seem like easily solvable problems though. I have three monitors at home and 1Gb AT&T Fiber Internet.

Some people don’t want to solve this problem. My apartment is small and I have 0 interest in 3 ugly work monitors visible where I can see them all the time.

Hmm. Yes, they are solvable. But are they "easily solvable"?

I could buy extra monitors for my work laptop, but then I'd also have to buy or build an entirely new desk for them, and find a place in my home for this desk to live.

My ISP also offers 1GB I think, but even if I upgrade, that doesn't mean that my work VPN can keep up. It also doesn't help improve latency

Not the person you asked, but for me it’s the social aspect.

I can’t stand being on a camera, voice and text chat don’t really replace the in-person conversations for me.

Everything else is either the same or much worse working in person.

1. I like my commute. If my commute changed I would feel differently. Regardless, I feel employees should get paid for their commutes.

2. I don't have an office in my house. Even if I had the space I don't think I would want to use it for work. However, since coronavirus happened I have had way more space in my office than I did before, and I refuse to be sandwiched between two other engineers in an open office floor plan. So if my company tries to do that they will have a problem, at least from me.

3. I pack my lunch as often as possible and don't really know anyone who works near me.

I do think there are many developers for whom it makes sense to work from home. Especially if they are seniors, and their company workflow is well organized for it. Also, I do think that there are people who are very efficient working from home, but if they are WFH it will still be harder for junior engineers to collaborate with them or learn from them.

I've seen it suggested that in the future, companies who want people to come back to the office will lose all their best employees and will only be able to retain the people who can't get a WFH job. I think a lot of what makes someone a good engineer comes down to experience, so if that were to come true it would ultimately mean that senior engineers (best employees) will work remotely and junior engineers (can't get a WFH job) will be working on site. That kind of leaves junior engineers in the dust as far as mentorship is concerned so I would not consider that a good thing, even though it seems to be fine with certain people who think that they are "good engineers", when in reality they are probably just seniors.

> I feel employees should get paid for their commutes. This would lead to more pollution, sprawl, and deaths by automobile as people would be incentivized to live further from work.

People are already incentivized to live far from their jobs because of HCOL near their workplaces. Also, it would be nice if people's choices were as binary as this line of thinking seems to suggest. It seems to me that many people would rather have a shorter commute either way.

> People are already incentivized to live far from their jobs because of HCOL near their workplaces.

Yes, and now they would be even more incentivized.

> Also, it would be nice if people's choices were as binary as this line of thinking seems to suggest.

What's your point?

> It seems to me that many people would rather have a shorter commute either way.

Yes. But if further incentivized to have a longer commute, they would (in aggregate).

That's great, thanks.

> Regardless, I feel employees should get paid for their commutes.

This opens up way too many cans of worms - some of which (I feel) are very unfair.

(Morning shift)

I worked at SGI doing tech support on the "East" team. The teams were split up by timezone (we were all in Mountain View - where the Google campus is now). My shift started at 5am (no traffic at all) and I lived about 10 minutes away at that time of day.

One of my coworkers lived in Gilroy, and was on the west team (a 9-5 working hours) and would sometimes have a commute of an hour and a half each way if traffic was bad.

So, the guy in Gilroy should be getting paid an extra $100 to $150/day for living further away from me and not working the morning shift?

Or how about the sf2g types ( https://sf2g.com )?

---

I can find other examples of this through my professional career. I had a co-worker who lived in Minneapolis driving to Eau Claire, WI each day. One bad snow storm, it took him 3 hours to get in that morning.

I currently have a coworker who lives in northern Wisconsin and the office is in southern Wisconsin. He's been very happy with WFH. But he had quite a commute (he likes driving).

This furthermore complicates the question of overtime. If you've got a 90m commute each way, does that mean you should only be working for 5h/day to avoid overtime? If I take the scenic route, do I get paid more?

The "ok, here's the consequences of paying for the commute" that I would see is that for companies that need people in the office (e.g. nurses), they would then have the constraint "you must live within 15 minutes from the office and public transportation is not acceptable as that may cause additional delays."

While I recognize the "this is time lost", the "lets compensate for this time spent" is a mess and would cause more problems and discontent than the lost time discontent currently has.

So do you think it's fine that people spend hours each day in service of their company and not getting paid for it?

This gets to the question "what is the employer paying for?"

Let me flip your question around - do you think that it is fine that one person is paid extra to live 2h away or that they should be paid twice what I get paid for effectively the same time spent in service of the company because I only have a 10 minute commute?

Alternatively, consider the person who commutes into the office 1h each way while I'm WFH and have effectively 0 commute. Let's say the wages are $50/h. Should they get paid an extra $100 a day because they are commuting rather than taking advantage of the WFH option?

On Wednesday nights I'd head to dinner with my family from the office. This involved going about 20-30 minutes out of my way from my normal commute. Should I get paid for that adjustment to my commute?

Alternatively, instead of taking route 1 home, I took route 2 home and did some shopping on the way (the route is actually faster sometimes, but less enjoyable and a harder drive), how does that factor into what I should get paid for my commute?

If I took a 15 minute deviation from my normal commute to drive through McD's for breakfast, should I get paid for 15 more minutes?

I'm older now than I was, and so prefer taking city surface streets that are properly illuminated and plowed in the winter rather than country roads. This was a change that I made to my commute back in '18. Should I get paid more because I changed my commute to surface streets? It's a 30 minute drive... I could switch to taking a bus, but that's 80-100 minutes each way (yea, the particular route options are awkward - two transfers for the fastest route).

When I was in Northern Wisconsin, there was a Hmong community that lived 45 minutes away from the office. Would it be fair for the employer to say "you must live within 30 minutes of the office because we're not going to be paying more than 1h/day for a commute"?

The "not paying for commute at all" is the simplest and (I believe) most fair way to approach the commute and issues of non-productive time, personal choices for transportation, personal choices for "where you want to live", and significant complications for overtime and verification of overtime. It avoids issues of outright discrimination of people who take public transportation or live certain distances from the office.

Your examples have a level of granularity that borders on absurdity. We all know that what it comes down to is this: Company makes an offer, i.e. "One of the perks of this job is you receive a 2 hour daily commute stipend". Employee accepts or rejects that offer.

Why not raise everyone's salary by $100/day ($2,500/y) and call it even?

Less accounting to be done when someone's commute changes based on inclement weather, no needing to punch time clock when you leave and get home (or record milage on your vehicle), no difficulty with alternate commute choices (if I bike to work and it takes 1h rather than 30 min driving)...

What benefit to the employer is there to pay someone more if they live further away? What problem would there be if every employee was given the same pay increase regardless of where they lived?

It means that payroll has a lot less work to do too (rather than trying to keep track of everyone's commute).

If Meta HQ did this, would they be giving less to someone who lives in East Palo Alto rather than Gilroy (because of the "difference in commute")?

> Regardless, I feel employees should get paid for their commutes.

Why? How would it even be practical? What if there is congestion? What if someone moved after starting a job, or their commute time changes drastically? Does the employer pay for tolls?

That sounds like a problem for the company to figure out, not the commuter.

That sounds like it would result in the company allocating more of the budget towards people who commute more than to people who commute less.

As someone that commutes less, it means I get less pay, for no benefit to me.

The benefit to you is that you don't have to commute as far!

Not everyone has a bad commute.

Distinct place where I don't have the distractions of home. (ie feel the need to clean, fix, things)

Much nicer environment - way more open space / natural light, great air quality, views, amenities.

Man, I love my commute. Losing that was one of the hardest parts of the year I spent WFH. I take the bus to work, it's about 40 minutes each way. I get time outside, I get to watch the sun rise, I spend that time reading library books and magazines, sometimes I talk with strangers for a few minutes, I stop off on my way home to get new library books or at a shop for whatever, or sometimes hit a bar on the way home. My commute rules, don't take it away from me.

This could have never happened if Jeff and Sanjay were 'working from home'

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...

Who knows Google would have been an also-ran Search Engine company if it weren't for those two solving the right scale problems at the right time.

And no amount of 'Productivity Metrics' can capture these leaps in value creation because it truly is of the 'Unknown-Unknown' category.

Most people are not going to be in the position, either in their role or the stage of they organization, to enact anything even remotely resembling that sort of innovation. Even when scaled down to their role and organization.

I miss the casual chatting about all kinds of things and the ritualistic coffee breaks (Sweden) a lot.

A lot a lot.

I can't afford an apartment with another room for a proper separate office, and wouldn't want to waste that space on a room to separate work and home even if I did.

And you can't afford this apartment because up until 2 years ago everybody was forced to get a place next to the office. You should support remote/distributed work, since it will make it possible to move to the country/small towns and relieve the pressure on difficult housing markets.

And who says I'm against it?

I could buy a house here per year, cash, with a decent US dev salary. It's not the most expensive place. I enjoy living in a city with things around to do without having to travel. But getting 2+ extra rooms solely for us to work remotely? Then we'd have to go for the biggest apartments ever made here. They are not built to house an office on top of living space currently, and personally I enjoy talking to real life people daily.

Id be open to going into a office, but when I compare wages between jobs done from home and jobs that demand in office I'm not seeing a significant delta. Even if the drive was 15 minutes I'd want something to cover my costs and time.

I was interviewing a month ago and I got a in office offer that was a little lower than the remote offer I had. I brought up that I'd be willing to come in for more money or some sort of flex time around that hour commute and that was met with a audible gasp from the HR person. They acted as if the request was rude and that the occasional free lunch made up for the 10 hours a week time loss. That made the choice for me.

If I am truly more valuable to the business in a office I see no reason why I can't share in those rewards.

"That made the choice for me."

Often the way they react is more important than the actual content. Seems like if they don't understand your concerns on this topic, they likely won't be amenable to your future concerns on other topics.

I’m actually the opposite. I’d take a 10-20% pay cut today to get an in-person job vs. my current remote job. I just haven’t been motivated to job hunt lately.

If I lived in some parts of Europe, then yes, I would totally love to go back to the office. But in the United States? I can't afford to live close enough to the office for a short commute (4-5x as expensive) and transportation is garbage.

Worst of all, there is nobody else there. Our teams are spread across 8 different countries in so many different time zones. I would have maybe 1-2 office mates from my department. That show up irregularly.

I remember the happy times I had in the office and I really wish I could recapture that spirit. But the wheel of time has kind of turned.

I’m in the US, choose to live in the least expensive and smallest apartment near a large-ish city so that I can have a short and manageable commute to both work and the things I enjoy doing.

My transportation costs are essentially 0 — bicycle maintenance I can mostly do myself. My electric bill is $20-$50 a month. Sometimes $3 for a bus ticket. Plus no homeowner’s insurance, property taxes, maintenance, water/garbage bills (all included in rent).

My costs would be 4x-5x higher if I didn’t make the choices I do, simply because the style of living I prefer isn’t available outside of cities.

I used to do that as well. But then my rent tripled in 5 years pricing me out of the area. I still miss my tiny apartment, but working from home is pretty nice too.

The fallacy reside in: "can be performed", witch do not state how they can, because so far most push "smart working" in the form of "get this laptop, this smartphone with a 4/5G plan and you are ready to work". That's obviously tend to fail and works just for people who have corrected the aim perhaps with a docking station, external monitor and external keyboard, having a spare room silent enough etc at personal level at company level it's even worse: most have no idea about remote work. The modern classic solution is having a big enough hw resources to keep a VDI infra asking workers to be on remote desktop all time, and again that's not a good idea even if seems to be the easiest.

Seriously facing such aspects and finally admit that "real" WFH means set up a home office, with relevant furniture, equipment, connections etc and organize the work to be done from remote pushing people on some proprietary platform in the hope to get a quick&done third party solution will not really push up WFH to something structural and good for all parties involved.

The lesson here is you can never really predict what will happen. This is important to remember when people make any predictions, particularly for doom and gloom scenarios.

Take the Black Plague, which killed an estimted 25-50% of the population of Europe. For those lucky enough to survive this was a huge boon for workers rights and wages [1].

There have no real increase in worker wages in 40 years [2]. The pendulum swings back and forth on any issue and we've swung too far towards unbridled capitalistic exploitation (IMHO). Labor organization (ie unions) led to things like a limited work week, safety in the workplace and so on. The flipside of that was corruption, resistance to change and so on. But ever since the farce of the Reagan trickle-down economics era, worker conditions have gotten increasingly worse (relatively) while the accumulation of wealth at the top is absolutely unprecedented.

So Covid has killed millions and this is of course tragic. But who knew that this would be the catalyst for the first real increase in wages in decades and the ability to redefine the outdated in-person work that wastes so much time on money on pointless commutes?

I'm glad that something good is coming out of this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat....

[2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

heh it must hurt to have paid for all that commercial real estate that's now sitting empty. I bet a decent portion of the motive to get employees back in the office is to just validate the rent bill.

Mostly it's invasion of privacy. Your boss can invade your privacy trivially at work, and get reads on you about how little you can be paid, how much abuse you can actually take, to what degree he can injure you long-term so you have a worse negotiating position, what the consequences will be of going over that, all kinds of things. Like a typical boss will spend all day plotting how to get an employee to work unpaid overtime. Plus scream at you at FULL VOLUME, physical intimidation has to happen in person, it's too abstract if the volume is limited by the sound system or if the intimidation happens over video, it's not only less immediate but it can also be recorded accidentally. Like "oh I'll get my ass kicked...in 6 hours. Eh, go for it."

And no decibel meter, that ruins the fun, when he whispers and retaliates for you not hearing him, or when he squelches "I'M AN ASSHOLE" the decibel meter can't say "oh that was inaudible, but the other one was this far from a shotgun." Ruins the fun. Because later in court, if the plaintiff repeats the scream, not only with the words, but with the tone, and with the VOLUME, THE COURT HAS TO STOP AND CHECK THE ACOUSTICS, HOW WELL INSULATED IS THIS ROOM, WE CAN'T INTERRUPT THE COURT NEXT DOOR. IS THAT REALLY HOW LOUD HE SAID IT? DECIBELS? METRIC SYSTEM? IF THE JUDGE HAS TO COVER HIS EARS THROUGH THE TESTIMONY, HE WILL HAVE TO FIND A VERY GOOD CLAUSE TO JUSTIFY--I SAID JUSTIFY--THE VERDICT IN FAVOR OF THE DEFENSE [explosives starting went off as I wrote this paragraph].

The basic problem with work from home is that it's digital. Gaslighting requires analog.

(And I have had virtuous bosses, and even the boss who screamed "I AM AN ASSHOLE" into a recorded call center phone call had many virtues. In many ways employees, through their lack of work ethic, bring this upon themselves. But at the same time, he screamed "I AM AN ASSHOLE" into a recorded call center phone call. I'm not sure I disagree or agree with his confession, he said it and what is said is said.)

> Gaslighting requires analog.

No, no it doesn't. Sometimes the most powerful gas-lighter is oneself. Silence can cause me to gaslight myself. Shit, my boss isn't responding.. is he mad at me? Or fuck, a Zoom meeting at 4 PM on Friday fuck fuck. It must have been that PR.. I thought I removed the creds.. Of course I didn't, I never remember that. Fuck. Again. Damnit. I can't stand to look at it..

Also human communication is more than words and sounds, but expressions, body movement, minor twitches etc. Someone can be terrible at lying or obfuscating the truth in person and write some convincing shit in an email.

People are the problem my friend, not where you work. Your isolation at home, and the ability to force isolation by closing an app, treats the same symptoms but you misidentified the disease.

I'm totally open to being all wrong. What can I read that will bring me around?

On the note of gaslighting, it just doesn't work if the lamp is binary.

I would like to add to my other response:

> Also human communication is more than words and sounds, but expressions, body movement, minor twitches etc. Someone can be terrible at lying or obfuscating the truth in person and write some convincing shit in an email.

That's you. That's the employee. The convincing shit in an email is a raise ultimatum. The person who is terrible at lying or obfuscating the truth in person is the employee who needs to hide that his wife got pregnant or son got no financial aid from Stanford. Needs to hide his need, but needs his need to motivate him to get the raise he needs.

Wait till they find out 80% of office jobs are redundant.

I know right... If I could go through with (got health issues at the time) implementing automation of some stuff, then because of me hundreds of people would be out of their jobs... or at least that job. It would have saved the company a lot of money, too.

The company I work for had a "return to office" about two weeks ago, and while we still are 50%+ remote, those that aren't we're now in the office a lot more. My first impression after two weeks is how little the in office people get done. They spend a significant amount of time socializing and walking around to meetings and getting meeting rooms working and eating, and when they are in meetings, are less focused, and when they aren't in meetings, they talk about not being able to concentrate as well because of all the distractions.

They also seem to be having a lot more fun!

It should be interesting to see how it plays out in the next few years!

i know it seems unlikely now but i think we will return to the office. not 100% of the time. not everyone was doing 100% before either.

but a lot of people have switched jobs in the remote only era. we have experienced / are experiencing how little we know these new people. how little we feel connected to them. how strange it is to not make new friends at a new job that go beyond the work-friend level. i think most people will pay the cost of going in (again, not every day) for the gain of seeing people. this will be gradual but i think it is a common sentiment that we want to work with people we can see in person

> this will be gradual but i think it is a common sentiment that we want to work with people we can see in person

That's been my biggest issue, is I miss the people. I miss the coffee runs, the random lunch outings...

However, if I lived my ideal schedule I would work from 0600 to 1100 ITO, break for a 'siesta', then finish my work later in the afternoon evening as my schedule allows. And so my co-workers have also had their own ideals which overlap little to any such that we quickly reach a point of "no point in having in office, we overlap two hours at best."

Perhaps the best model to satiate flexibility but indulge the human side of the equation, is remote-first regional-companies. One can still plan to meet with some regularity without absurd amounts of travel. At my first startup, we would meet on a roughly weekly basis for a company lunch to have those conversations easiest done face-to-face, or just hang out for an afternoon enjoying the local natural beauty (#SaltLife) - anytime the Engineering VP and I needed to meetup, we'd just figure out what day we could meet up at a colo office or coffee spot.

Otherwise, remote from wherever made sense. Some days for me it was pool side, some days down by the creek, most days just in my home office. The only real down-side is that lack of a national or global talent pool, but we weren't even all that niche so it wasn't a factor for us and, I suspect, most companies which just do the same old languages on the same old platforms.

I'd happily do quarterly week long company regional on sites. It's expensive for companies to do, if they do it right and cover all costs and travel for sig others/family, but its still cheaper than rent on a big office building.

That's actually a lot to ask of people with children or other dependents in their care.

A quarterly 2-day off-site is far more digestible. Which I agree is still a great compromise in expense and f2f to an office.

Sure. I'd take 2-3 days as well. A week is pretty long for anything quarterly. But if you are only doing once a year a week is pretty reasonable.

I feel so much better working remotely so that I don't have to talk to my colleagues in person. We are completely different people, like from different worlds. RTO is mandatory at our place.

This made me happy every time I saw a rise in infections or new variant, for which I feel bad about myself.

I started a new job during COVID. I've met my coworkers twice (two of them three times). There are a solid four people out of an org of ~40 who I unhesitatingly consider non-work friends now.

"You can't make friends over the Internet" hasn't been true for decades.

Indeed. How many of us have friends made through gaming over the ‘net? I’d wager 50%+

Eh. I've had close work friends and even with my best efforts those still felt like work friends, basically not as close as my non work friendships, and the relationship suffered greatly once one of us left that job.

I don't try to cultivate work friendships now. It's a great way to build up a friendship that wont exists, or will only exist to a lesser extent, in 12-24 months.

I'll be nice and friendly, as always. But I'm not staying late to get beers with work folks because they are my friends. I'm going home to see my family or hangout with my actual friends.

It just doesnt feel healthy to tie work and my friendships together.

Whether workers want it or not isn't going to be the deciding factor. Nor will it be a mental health issue. Just look at their years of ignoring studies about how open offices are bad for knowledge workers. Rather, it will be purely a financial decision.

It comes down to whether employers are going to sign many-year leases for a social hangout spot for their employees. As well as accept liability during future COVID outbreaks.

Right now there is artificial demand from employers in favor of returning, but only the ones who already signed many-year leases. For everycorp else, an office is an unnecessary expense. They will take the money they save on rent and insurance and spend some of it on wellness perks and subsidizing home offices, and come out ahead financially.

I also think the employee demand to return to the office is misplaced. We're all tired of being cooped up at home with nothing to do, but that has more to do with lockdowns than WFH. Without the lockdowns, those 2 hours you spent commuting are now time in your day to join a social club near your home, start an outdoor hobby, etc. Will WFH workers still want to return to an office once they find a new mental health balance that doesn't rely on their employer? I think no.

> As well as accept liability during future COVID outbreaks.

Yet somehow grocery store workers managed to work in their "office" and survive the last two years. Why do all these software developer people think they are so special?

It bothers me how many people use COVID as a means to push their personal agendas.

You are the person introducing politics into a conversation that had none. And your anti tech worker sentiment out of left field on a tech worker forum is unnecessarily antagonistic. Maybe you're the one with a personal agenda.

Future COVID waves are going to cost companies with offices much more money than fully remote companies. Quite literally a liability. I have no idea what this has to do with grocery stores.

> Rather, it will be purely a financial decision.

I agree and think this will be the key. Most will return to the office and the companies that don't will be out-competed forcing them to close or return. Of course this will take years to fully shake out.

For the other 63%, I think an interesting possibility is to use a robot Turk machine type of arrangement. Take for example, the "flag person" at a road construction site, it is an outdoor job and hence would be categorized as not possible to do from home, but, one could easily design a very simple machine with a camera and the stop/slow sign that could be operated remotely. That could actually be safer and lower cost. There are lots of other possible examples, window washer, etc.

There is probably some companies working on it already, if not, it might be an interesting idea I think.

Have you ever worked as a flagger? I have. It isn't a binary "move the sign and then flip it back". Here are a list of things that you would need to consider:

1. Flaggers often go from site to site throughout the day. You would need someone to set up and take down the machine

2. The flagger is in constant radio contact with the work crew. They need to know which equipment is blocking which lane etc. And this is always changing.

3. Flaggers need to respond to emergency vehicles, busses, their own work trucks etc. You have to have your head on a swivel at all times

4. Pedestrians/bikers/other road users need to be considered as well, and may be outside of camera shot

5. What if the connection is choppy/equipment breaks. Does a tech go site to site? Does the crew stop working? Labor is the single biggest cost of construction by a large margin. Everyone minute the crew isn't working is CrewNumber * PrevailingWage lost.

6. Flaggers work at night/all weather/complex intersections. All this would need to be accounted for.

7. Like self driving cars, there are about 12 billion edge cases that take a combination of experience/reasoning.

I don't mean to be dismissive of your idea or anything. But this attitude is pervasive in our industry, that "I saw someone doing a job that looks easy, I bet I know everything about it and can design a better way to do it". That attitude is both great (inspires bold ideas) and terrible. The right question isn't "I bet this could be automated" but rather, "I should job shadow someone doing this job, see if there are any ways to improve it".

This seems low as only jobs that require(!) F2F interaction with customers or coworkers can't be done remotely. This might come down to "mucking about with the hardware" being the dividing line - if you need the car, it's in the shop, otherwise you can do in on the road, via the Web, ...

Psychologically, companies and (older? extroverted?) workers won't agree with this, but it's not up to them to change. Change happens at its own pace and you can either yell at the tide or move with it.

You're right about the dividing line being mucking with hardware (I'd also add 'requires access to large or expensive equipment'). But there are plenty of jobs that don't require face-to-face interaction but do require on-site work for one reason or another. Air traffic control, janitors, machinists, garbage collectors, geologists, bakers, etc.

Good point, feel free to expound on my definition of hardware. "Ya gotta touch it?" as I might have been to locked into my own vocabulary.

Most jobs done need to exist to begin with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kehnIQ41y2o

This is approx ~30% in Europe, meanwhile of the positions that "can be performed entirely at home", interestingly these remote positions take half as long to fill... in comparison to fully office-based positions.

Source: https://app.careersaas.com/portal/career-search.html

But execs want you to commute because their mindset is to make worker's life miserable, and working from home is seem like a privilege.

Not everyone loves WFH, you know.

After covid we have some vague stats and yeah not everybody enjoy full remote. But 1) there's a large pool of people that do, 2) you can have hybrid 3) unless no other colleague goes to the workplace you may enjoy some workplace social context 4) we need to reduce energy expenditure and not commuting seems like a massive gain.

Unfortunately, the best remote setups are in low-density places with large homes.

People moving from NYC and SF to Wyoming and Austin are going to be living in sprawl.

There vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are going to increase: after all it’s not going to be a lockdown where white collar workers stay inside 24/7.

So (honest question), you think people doing remote-friendly jobs are in dense urban areas and don't contribute to car emission much ? so when these guys relocate far away, they're going to switch from public transportation to car ?

This is what is happening. Over the past 2 years, people have left cities with solid public transit (SF, Chicago, NYC) and have been moving towards car centric areas in places like Arizona, Florida, Texas.

Yup. We are reversing a lot of efforts society put into reducing sprawl. More and more cookie cutter houses built on what was once a forest… taking with it tons of wildlife.

This was already happening prior to WFH spurred by pandemic. Housing prices were sharply increasing in many major cities, causing people to relocate elsewhere due to lack of affordable supply.

That’s not how supply and demand works.

I don’t think this, I know this. Today the Census dropped data showing there was a net population loss in SF and NYC. If you look at a map of energy use by county (e.g. Google image search for “energy by county”) it shows folks leaving places like NYC and SF are going to increase their energy use.

I expect that over time our use of space will adapt to this new reality but it will probably take a decade.

I definitely see older or taller office buildings renovating and rezoning to become mixed co-working and/or living spaces suited to remote work.

Not just that but also I could see commercial space be divided up into premium one-person office spaces wired with fast internet and set up for video conferencing.

I hope this is the direction we see, but going from offices/commercial to residential is a much heavier lift than just zoning. Like, just consider the plumbing situation in a reasonably large office building. People living there will require more significant renovations than just putting up new walls. It is fixable, but it isn't cheap, and because it isn't cheap, "will it happen" gets some question marks.

I'm not discounting any of that. Definitely won't be easy and that's why I say about a decade before we really see a shift.

Right now I do hybrid work and it’s great, it’s easy to get away from the house and work from a nearby city. There’s little-to-no traffic where I live, so the commute is short and enjoyable. If I want after work I can jump in the car and drive to the mountains or go pick something up at the store, or go see a friend. The car operates on my schedule.

Moving away from this seems like stepping back into the 19th century. Usually when I hear people complain about cars they live somewhere that’s over-crowded with poor road infrastructure, traffic, and inflated taxes and energy costs. Sure if you live in that scenario maybe commuting sucks, but most of the USA isn’t like that.

In my experience, whether or not someone enjoys something is largely irrelevant when it comes to work.

I don’t mind coming into the office, as needed. What I do mind is being required to be someplace daily to assuage the ego of of some C-suite stuffed suit.

And those people can deal. I dealt with their preferred work environment although I didn't love it.

and a commercial real estate crash would be bad for the company's bottom line

I see this everywhere but I can't see how it's true.

I'm guessing that a company's largest expenses are (probably in order, too): People, Technology, Office space.

Most companies, especially smaller companies, do not actually own the office space they are in, they lease it. Commercial real estate crashing would greatly reduce one of their top 3 expenses... how is that bad for the bottom line?

Yeah exactly. If they signed a multi-year lease, they are still on the hook for the same amount of money but the space won't be used. It might feel bad but it was already budgeted for.

They are paying for space (sometimes beyond 100,000 per month) that the competition is not paying. Office space is the highest expense.

That sounds weird to me. Our current office can sit 5, with conference room, kitchen, ... It costs about 20% of an engineer's salary. And we're in one of the most expensive place in the world for rent.

Is office space really that cheap?

That actually sounds like a LOT of space compared to a 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that would cost quite a bit more....

I think it's around 70 sqm, so pretty equivalent to a 2-bedroom really. We have a common area with 3 people and a small kitchen, a smaller room with 2 people and a conference room. Toilets are shared with other similar offices. And it's in an industrial building a few minutes away from the city centre, so a bit cheaper.

But even then, you can put 4/5 people comfortably in a 2-bedroom in Brooklyn if it's designed for it, and it's not going to cost you multiple times an engineer salary.

It might not scale as well though if you need to own your own campus with security, catering and all that.

Executives work towards a large number of stupid performance goals, but worker misery isn’t one of them.

Citation needed. I could gesture wildly at everything these days. It sure seems like someone is working towards worker misery.

It only seems like they do.

If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, some day your job will be either automated or offshored.

That's what a lot of people thought in the 2000s, but going by SV salaries the automate or offshore story hasn't really played out! Then again, horses seem to have lost their job in the early 20th century after cars came along, and their population just declined thereafter.

You ever wonder why people in old rust belt areas complain about "the globalists" all the time?

The society has a once-a-lifetime opportunity to refactor how it can work, but it squandered it.

Imagine if office buildings are no longer necessary. A lot more hi-rise apartments can be built, cities can be a lot more dense, and light rails can be attractive again.

high rise apartments are really just office buildings. Just live at the office, it's pretty much equivalent.

Doesn't that mean a good chunk of those jobs can also be outsourced?

Working from home is great and all, but do we really want work to be within our home? I’ve been working from home the entire pandemic, and I still find it hard to stop working and “be home.”

that definitely has to be managed well. I wfh in a room where i also do my hobbies and stuff (like a tiny workshop more or less). What i do is when i'm done with work i put my company issued laptop in a dedicated drawer and close it. When the drawer closes my mind flips to "i'm at home" mode. The next morning, when i open teh drawer, my mind flips to "i'm at work" mode. It works for me but may not work for everyone.

Coworking spaces were supposed be a compromise. Individuals and small teams could work in an office-like space without home distractions for a few hundred a month. In the early days coworking provided quality bandwith and printing for less you'd pay at home. But that advantage has faded.

I have lost track of how coworking has fared during covid. For a while, pre-covid, they seemed to outnumber coffee houses in my metro area.

This would save a lot of oil.

Dr. Dingel writes - "Our code makes it easy for users to explore alternative assumptions about whether any given occupation can be done from home."

His repo - https://github.com/jdingel/DingelNeiman-workathome

Would be a worthwhile student project to replicate this in R/pandas (They used Stata on a Mac, if you know what I mean) & have an interactive online plot so one can change the survey assumptions & see what results. Just collating all this data in one place is a monumental effort.

I remember this paper was a "huge fucking deal" when it came out in Sep 2020. Has like ~1500 cites. Was used by Biden administration to set policy. Co-author Dr. Neiman was personally nominated by Biden for treasury. Authors are Booth school stalwarts. Pls do read the paper, very insightful even if you don't agree with its methodology/conclusions.

The world did not exist until Git.

I would change the title to "Approximately 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home"

"37%" isn't a number with high precision to be begin with, so the "approximately" is implied.

I would say that it is quite specific.

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