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Comment by dsq | Hacker News Reader

Its worth mentioning that renote work is still a thing only in the US. In most other OECD countries (in Europe or Japan for example) it's all in-office with at most 1-2 days hybrid if you are lucky.

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Yup and look at their birth rates. Companies/Countries are screwing themselves by not allowing flexibility to raise a family during their workers 20s and 30s.

In Japan, I understand that it's exacerbated by how expensive the costs of having a child at all – the medical costs, the costs of childcare etc. [1]

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/will-japans-new-plan-to-boost-birth-ra...

yeah and I imagine the costs balloon if you need childcare 10-12 hours a day instead of 5 or 6. In Japan they work sort of insane hours so that's why I say 12. We're able to survive on only 6 hours a day by aligning our schedules to offset but if we're both in the office FT then that's no longer an option and the childcare costs would double for us.

Starve the beast.

The US isn't much better. We're also below the replacement rate. We're just not as xenophobic with our immigration. Which is saying something.

Source?

I’m working in EU and the vast majority of my friends and colleagues are remote first, with maybe 1-2 days in the office/week, mostly for socialising.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-americans-work-from-home-eur...

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/return-to-office-stark-d...

Anecdote but I'm in Asia, my office is in the city I live in and I am free to work from anywhere.

Anecdotal of course but this isn't my experience at all, I don't know of any current or ex-colleagues that are working in offices at all. I think in southern Europe it's common to have more onsite.

I think there's a bifurcation between the startup/tech world, who indeed work a lot from home, and all the other tech workers in non tech industries (bank, insurabce, govt, corporate), who have mostly long since been recalled to office (in non US OECD countries).

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