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Comment by laerus | Hacker News Reader

Well i hope it is. I can't stand commuting or the noisy and distracting office environment. Being close to my family is way more important than being close to coworkers. I'm also way more productive at home, I can wear what i want, I can speak out loud to myself, listen to metal, take a walk, use my clean bathroom and the list goes on. Overall it's healthier and more ecologic. It's just doesn't compare and any argument I've heard/read against 100% remote work just doesn't matter to me. I also don't care about small talk with coworkers or any kind of non-professional bonding, I have friends for that.

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Agree with you. I'm highly skeptical of an argument from a (X?)googler about why remote is bad.

Like sure it might be nice to go to Google's office instead of work from the kitchen table but that's not what's on the table for 99.999% of developers. It's some open-plan dead air noisy hell.

From what I’ve heard Google campus is very like a college campus - and if they provided dorms many of the younger employees would love it. And it would have been amazing in my college years.

Not so much these days

Having worked at Google previously, I completely agree with this assessment.

I love remote work, mostly because actual work environment feels hostile towards ICs but if I had a Google like environment again, I’d have no problems going back to office.

Other than listening to metal (I'm more into a mix of punk and classical), I could've written this comment. When I commuted into work it took maybe 40 minutes from front door to desk in the morning; the reverse trip often took an hour and a half. It was absolutely killer. I'd rather be getting painful dental work done than sit in traffic for an hour with nothing but a podcast to distract me.

Now that my company has returned to work with a "hybrid" plan (2 days in the office, 3 days out), I'm glad that they've been flexible in allowing me to be fully remote despite being local. My dogs would be the saddest pups stuck in crates without me.

You can have the best of both worlds where you WFH and also your company pays for you to come out once every 3 months for a week or so.

This is exactly what I do right now and it's pretty nice. We have quarterly planning weeks and everyone goes on-site for that, but otherwise, we're split around the country and there is only one office in downtown San Antonio. 70% of the people working on this program don't live in San Antonio, so there is no practical way to undo being a distributed workforce. But it's a military program and the military is pretty used to working in a distributed manner. They need to be able to work in theaters of combat where you're not only spread out and constantly on the move, but any node in your worker network can go offline at any time, possibly permanently.

I haven't gone to an offsite meeting with my coworkers yet (we're 100% remote) so I don't really know what to expect of them. I do know that when I worked in offices there was a lot of bullshit going on every day that only happened because the barrier to interruption was lower. What goes on at these offsite meetings that makes them worthwhile?

I usually just expect to drink booze and shoot the shit with my team. There are usually team building activities arranged by HR, that is another way get to know your teammates. In my opinion, getting a little inebriated is the fastest way to bond with your team.

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