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Comment by thegrim33 | Hacker News Reader

Wow, "workers who are able to work from home are happier at their jobs". That's quite a claim!

Open the article. The byline on the article is "Remote working really could make workers happier, study finds".

Well, that's interesting, within four words we went from "are happier" to "could make workers happier". That's weird. Oh well let's continue on.

Let's go ahead and take a look at their evidence for their (now ambiguous) claim.

The data is .. a self survey of 4,000 people on what they thought about remote work, of which 2,600 of the respondents didn't even work remotely.

No actual data or measurements about whether the 1,400 remote workers actually were happier, or actually were more productive. Not a single piece of data or analysis anywhere. No, literally just a survey of what a collection of workers say they think about remote work.

Man, that's a real nail in the coffin there. Mark 'em boys, remote work makes workers happier!

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> a self survey of 4,000 people on what they thought about remote work, of which 2,600 of the respondents didn't even work remotely.

To emphasize on this a bit, before the pandemic had I been given a similar survey I probably would have said the same things. But being 100% remote was a miserable experience for me in the long run. Everyone's millage varies for sure, but for me I was surprised at how quickly working from home all the time became a burden and a mental health drain rather than a boon. Having to dedicate a section of my already limited living space to work, not having a psychological separation between my work and my home, no commute time to switch modes, not being able to keep an ear on the stuff the rest of my team was doing, the lack of tone conveyable in text, meetings full of "I... what I was... I mean... No you go first", things that should have been a 5 minute in person conversation became hours of async back and forth chat messages, the increased presence of outside managers dropping in on discussion occurring in team channels, or co-workers that really needed to have more direct supervision and weren't self aware enough to see it. And those are the tangible things and doesn't even get into the social aspects. No I'm not an extrovert and never have been.

Yes, I prefer flexibility and the option to work from home when I need it. But the grass does always look greener on the other side, and it's easy to imagine all the perks of something when you don't have it and dismiss any possible negatives.

5 mins -> hours... Really

Yes really. You know how dealing with customer support over email turns what should be a 15-20 minute problem and solution into a 1-2 day back and forth process? Same dynamic

My personal experience is exactly the opposite: in the office people would approach me many times. Sometimes with some work-related issue they needed advice about, sometimes they would simply want to socialize and ask me "do you want to grab a coffee?". In these pre-pandemic days of in-the-office work I would actually never got any work done in the office, I would just hang around, either interacting with people, or just mindlessly browsing the internet (because I could not focus anyway) and impatiently wait for the time when I can go home and get some actual work done.

Working remotely was a godsend for me.

Of course that’s also a possibility, which is why I noted that mileage may vary. I don’t suggest that everyone is served by working in office, or that everyone is served by working at home. I was pointing out that asking people what they think will make them happy is not the same as what does make them happy.

Before the pandemic, I had a strong preference for my next job to be 100% remote. I would have answered that survey to say WFH would make me happier and more motivated and likely to work harder. After the pandemic, I realize I need an office, and would much rather have a flexible option that defaults to in office. I learned that no, it would not make me happier to wfh all the time. No it actually gave me huge issues with motivation, and while I did work harder, it was because maintaining a satisfactory output and work / life balance was harder.

I can see for tight teams wanting to be in the same place. But most of these big companies are basically go in office and work with someone else half a world away, or the other side of campus etc.

I spent 2 years in an open floor tech pit surrounded by 50 people, but I worked with none of them. My team was on the other side of the country.

Management called these working conditions, "long halways".

shrug works for me.

I told my boss I could quit or work from home but I wasn't coming back into the office. I work from home.

uh oh, sounds like somebody has the case of the Mondays!

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