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Comment by granshaw | Hacker News Reader

I think the picture is pretty clear at this point and further discussion is pretty pointless as it just results in the same points keep being brought up:

Junior/single/ADHD/work-is-social-circle: REMOTE BAD

Senior/married (esp with kids)/prefers-non-work-social-circle: REMOTE GOOD

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Senior/married/ADHD/work-was-social-circle: I fucking love remote work, I'm straight up never going back to an office.

I’m senior/married/kids and I hate full time remote. I don’t want to go in every day but 2-3 days a week is great. I just find it very hard to connect with people over screens.

I think this is pretty accurate other than the ADHD part.

Work from home is vastly superior to the distractions of an office (especially open offices) for me. At home, I have much more control over interruptions and noise, and completely eliminate the constant activity around me.

I actually never realized how badly ADHD hurt my productivity until I started working remotely and the constant distractions severely decreased.

I'm one of those ADHD people that needs chaos around me to focus. So open offices work great for me. I recently read that this is a thing with some people, but I can't remember the term.

I’ve read alot of anecdotes from ADHDs saying that they can’t stay on task at home given that, you know, they’re at home and no one’s watching

But I wouldn’t know what the breakdown would be between the two

I have ADHD and greatly prefer remote as I can tailor my office how I like, and can break up my day as I like.

Yeah that's basically it. I'm single/senior/ADHD/work-was-social-circle (at previous job). Hate remote full time.

I think the main determinant is the last part.

For me, Senior/Single/ADHD/prefers-non-work-social-circle: REMOTE GOOD

But the issue raised in this thread is very real, with full remote I've see both junior training as well as new employee ramp up considerably slowed down, and there's no clear alternative to knowledge gained from random hallway conversations.

But then how do companies capture both? Offices with only junior, single, social seekers kind of defeats all the benefits that those people are searching for. Do we just leave the first group behind to better benefit the second group?

I'd gladly live near office if I could afford a decent house and schools for a family. Companies won't pay that to make it happen, so yes, I guess it's sorry/not sorry junior devs?

I don't think you do. This falls under "irreconcilable differences" and the solution is for people to work at companies that match their preferences.

Companies will just have to accept more of one of the other depending on their policies.

Alternatively they could become such an attractive place to work via other factors that they can attract employees whether remote or not

I'd be willing to bet a lot more would prefer to have only remote than only in person work, on both demographics. And even if not, seniors are just more important to retain anyway.

If companies want people to come into the office, they could pay them more and make it a condition of employment. In some sense they were getting a free ride for a long time by forcing senior employees to waste hours commuting for the benefits of in person mentorship. After all, upskilling junior engineers benefits the company much more than the senior engineer who is taking time away from doing stuff relevant to their own technical skills. Now the market has shifted: you want that, you pay more for it.

And make the conditions not suck! At the very very least this means an office with a door that closes? And ideally blinds on interior windows.

I’ve been remote for 8 years now and doubt I could ever go back, but above would be like a bare minimum to even consider - that and a minimum of a 25% comp bump over a remote option.

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