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Comment by rootsudo | Hacker News Reader

>When I ran a consultancy, I spent a lot of rent of making sure my employees had both proper offices where they could think and common areas where they could collaborate. Doing otherwise is foolish.

Looking back, wouldn't it have made more sense to not spend alot on rent and let the employees work at home? Granted, no common areas to collaborate.

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It is very impartant to have live collaboration possibility.

Also working from home is not as productive.

> Also working from home is not as productive.

I'd like to see your data on that. When covid hit and sent everyone home I was working in the Danish public sector and we saw an increase in productivity. People worked less hours, or at least, they were using their computers for less hours, but they delivered more.

It probably would've lead to reforms if it wasn't because the employee satisfaction didn't do equally well. As you might imagine, covid was hard on middle managers, but it also turned out that quite a lot of employees (public sector might be very different than tech) got very lonely while working from home every day.

> it also turned out that quite a lot of employees (public sector might be very different than tech) got very lonely while working from home every day.

There’s your answer, demoralized employees are unproductive.

Let's give them commutes, and have them on an open plan or cubicles, that should boost their morale!

Commuting (I usually bike) and meeting with my teammates in person does wonders to my morale indeed.

For me, who’s made the decision to live 1.1 miles from the office, my commute (either biking or walking) is a positive benefit. During Covid WFH I would try to get out for a similar length of walk in the morning, but it’s better for my brain to get into work mode by actually traveling to a different space.

You do realize it's physically impossible for everyone to live so close to the office?

And because of this nobody should be allowed to commute?

Might have also been that recreational places were mostly closed or on limited hours, and many people forced into working from home didn't have adequate physical space or time management habits to create boundaries.

Citation needed

It makes more sense now. Back then we did not have as many good tools for remote collaboration. My business had certain other constraints that made physical space necessary.

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