Ask HN: For those who can choose to go to the office, and go, why do you go? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: For those who can choose to go to the office, and go, why do you go?

27 pointsjedberg41 comments

With all the RTO talk, I haven't really seen the question asked:

If you work for a truly hybrid workplace, where you can choose to go to an office 0-7 days a week, and you do choose to go in, what reason drives you to do that?

Context: I was thinking about what the ideal office space for developers looks like these days. Back before COVID, common thought was the best places had private offices for every dev -- no one seemed to like cube farms.

But post COVID, it seems like there are two possibilities: that you like coming to the office to collaborate, or you come in because your home is not conducive to work for whatever reason.

If you're in group one, and want to collaborate, do you still want a private office, or do you prefer the bullpen cube farm?

I'm curious if I have a blind spot here. If you choose to go to the office, what is your ideal office setup in a post-pandemic world?

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I go in because it helps separate work life from home life, which I find benefits both positively in different ways.

I prefer a hybrid work area with three zones

1. Open plan chaos, lots of people talking and going bonkers

2. Smaller office 3~4 people, maybe your team or people you like more than others

3. Solo office, or hot desk in quiet zone. For deep focus. This one has a great view of the mountains in the area, which I find helps me think.

I bounce around these at my office depending on mood and task at hand. That variety is the main thing I like about our office setup

Because I'm a depressed neurotic with substance abuse issues that lives alone. I'm more productive and mentally healthier working around other people than I am working alone at home.

I also can deliver a lot of value by being available to help juniors, unblock production, talk business strategy, and all sorts of other stuff that organically comes up during the workday.

I have a private office where I can shut the door and focus when needed, if I worked in an open office I'd probably have a different view.

I worked as an open source developer (remote) between 2011 and 2016. At the end, my social skills were deteriorating (despite a reasonable social life and hobbies) and I was less motivated, disciplined and less productive.

I now work at a company where there are a max of 6 people to a room. I would go in every day except that I have a small child and it's easier in terms of logistics to work at home one day a week.

I am a hardcore introvert. I am not shy and have worked successfully as a manager (and hated it). If you think introvert == shy, look up the definition of introvert. I know several extroverts with significantly worse people skills than me.

Working at the office: - motivates me - makes me happier and less lonely - makes me more productive -- *in the long run* - helps me (a lot) with networking and generating new projects.

While working in open source, I ran into many developers who had been working at home for between 10 and 30+ years, and were very productive. Some people can do this. You must have a thick skin and be stubborn or otherwise single minded -- and it helps if you are not single.

However, I believe that the majority of people will initially be productive when WFHing, for the first 1-5 years, after which a steady decline in both productivity and mental health will set in.

Research has conclusively shown that your social network is directly related to both your health and happiness. The line between this and WFH is really short....

When I took my current job, my family lived three time zones away from the city where the office is, but we've since moved (for largely-unrelated reasons), and now I come in every day. It's simple: my wife and I can't both work from our open-plan townhouse, and I am the more willing of us to commute - it's a pleasant walk, thirty or forty minutes.

The office might be kind of lousy, if it saw heavy use - just a big concrete box with a lot of open desks, no dividers at all unless you count the glass-walled conference rooms. But there's only one other person who comes in every day; the space is built for thirty, but even on Tuesdays and Thursdays there are rarely more than six or eight people here. It's quiet enough that I rarely bother with headphones.

To answer your question, it seems obvious: private offices are better than cubicles, taller walls are better than shorter ones, cubicles are better than open-plan layouts, and dedicated desks are better than hot-desking. Does anyone claim otherwise?

If I'm coming into the office, I'd rather be around other people than locked in my own room (otherwise I might as well be working from home), so I prefer small open-plan offices - maybe 3-8 people in a room. More than that starts becoming too loud and distracting, but fewer than that feels too isolating.

This all needs to be done properly, i.e. no meetings or phone calls in the open space, an expectation that you don't just constantly interrupt people you're working with, spaces available for quieter or paired work, etc, but if it is done well, I much prefer that to cubicles or private offices.

I'm probably more social than most devs. I've had many opportunities to work fully remote and never liked it. Hate it, in fact. It's hard for me to stay focused, healthy, and motivated when fully remote.

I prefer an office that I can go to 2 or 3 times a week. When that isn't available, I'll find a coworking space and treat it as an office, even though nobody there is technically a coworker.

Just the ambience of having other people around being productive really helps me stay on task. And it's nice to be able to have lunch with them, get a beer afterward, etc. It's also really nice to be able to ride my bike to work and back and get a bit of sun and exercise every day, vs being cooped up in a bedroom-turned-office all day.

I don't like private offices (for myself) because they are too quiet and lonely. Much prefer cafeteria style seating with no dividers. Of course it's also nice to have a few desks in more private areas so people who need quiet to focus can go there, or to take calls in. I actually really enjoy open floor plans, but I would never force someone to use that if they didn't. I think private offices should just be reservable hot desks for people who really need/want them for the day, and those people should also just be allowed to WFH.

What I'm getting is that people are fundamentally different and the same office environment that's perfect for one person could be a nightmare for the next, and it should be a matter of reasonable accommodations (both ways) to find a suitable compromise.

If I were in charge, I'd never mandate RTO for people who don't want it. But I'd also try to at least provide a small office for people who DO want it. People like me are often completely left out of the considerations. I guess we're freaks for actually liking our coworkers? Shrug.

If I could keep my current job but swap the remote-ness with someone who works in the office, I'd do that in a heartbeat!

> I guess we're freaks for actually liking our coworkers? Shrug.

So to be fair, I don't think that's entirely the issue. A large part of the dislike that many people have for mandatory RTO is the corresponding commute.

> It's also really nice to be able to ride my bike to work and back and get a bit of sun and exercise every day

When I lived in Taiwan, I looked forward to the essentially "free exercise" that I got as part of the 2 mile bike ride into the office.

However, a lot of people's living situation simply doesn't allow for the opportunity to walk/jog/bike to one's workplace - especially if you live in the US. Having to deal with rush hour traffic, manic drivers, gridlock day in and day out is soul crushingly awful.

I just meant that the popular discussion about this stuff never really includes workers who WANT to go back to the office. It's usually painted as a matter of managers/execs (who want RTO) vs workers (who don't), and people like me are the outliers. That's fine; we're why coworking spaces exist...

But yeah, hellish commutes are definitely a part of it, especially in the Bay Area. I'd never want to force that on anyone.

Having an office (or even just sharing a coworking space sometimes) is nice, but only when it's not a requirement.

I go to the office to hang out, interact with people, ask junior colleagues what they are working on, and mentor them.

Home working is great for concentration, but the serendipitous conversations only happen in the office

So given that, would you prefer an open office layout or would you still want private offices at the office?

Because sitting alone at home sucks. It's great for a day. Fun for a week. After months, even introverts are happy to see other humans.

We didn't have a rule to go to office. So someone would go there and there'd be no humans there. Just wasted commute time. It's a bit of effort to ask people and it puts pressure on both parties to commit to a day to go to office.

They're social days first. Group communication second. There are some things better done in person, where you hover over the other person's keyboards. Or having a meal together. Or one-on-ones without the lag. We do apps too, and things like "non-smooth response" or phone camera orientation isn't easily explained virtually.

So hybrid 2 days works fine. One day is for meetings, no 'real work' so that we have the other 3 home days to focus only on work. The other hybrid day is to slot in other work. Meetings are faster and more effective in person, even though half the team is in a different country.

Because of this, let's go with cube farms. Many of us can afford home offices.

> After months, even introverts are happy to see other humans.

Maybe some introverts.

I went years without seeing friends in person during the pandemic and thrived.

I’ve been full remote since and am much happier and more productive focusing on my work during the day and spending time with my family in the evenings.

Socializing with coworkers is pretty low on the list of things I want to do, especially if it means I have to make up that time by working more later =)

I like the office for social work: meetings, brainstorming, etc.

I was never able to be productive doing heads down work like coding or analysis in the office. Even 10 years ago, I would do a lot of that stuff at home after hours.

I completely understand why managers and executives want to go back to the office but more than a day a week seems wrong for heads down ICs.

I didn't mind taking a train to a wework recently. I have a much better connection and overall set up at home, but when I set up similarly as I would at a coffee shop with an ergo keyboard, headphones, etc.. sometimes I'd just like the deliberate act of separating my home space from work. Every day is too much though.

For context, I live with my partner in a 400sq ft studio, and sometimes that's just not at all productive for me, I have to find a place to isolate, and sometimes I'd prefer that to not be a coffee shop. However, if it ended up that going in to work meant more interaction, or sitting in a grey hellscape for 8 hours, it would kill that whole value prop for me. I want to just have the space to completely focus and not be depressed about my surroundings.

Taken to a logical extreme, if being a programmer meant that I'd be exclusively working in a grey cube farm, or a static open office, I'd try much harder to find a different profession.

I work at a fully remote company and I go to a WeWork every day.

I choose to live in a tiny apartment in a dense city and don’t enjoy living and working in the same space. I would rather go into an office than get a bigger place and/or move.

I enjoy the bike/run commutes I’ve had my entire adult life and find they get me ready for work and unwind from work in a way that simply getting out for a walk/bike/run before and after work doesn’t.

For about a year I actually paid for the private office at WeWork but eventually the price got too high and I decided the benefit wasn’t high enough to justify it (I started to have fewer meetings). Now I just use the common areas for my daily work and phone booths when I have meetings. I really like being in the high-energy common area more than in a quiet room.

Reasons: - I really like my coworkers (both in my team and other teams) and made true friends among them. So I simply enjoy seeing them, even though I'm an introvert. - Being at the office encourages me to take breaks. I don't take real breaks at home and can deep work for 5h straight, but it often ends up being less productive than 2h chunks with breaks. - I'm a junior-mid dev and most of my teammates go the office at least twice a week. I feel more comfortable asking questions and doing pairing sessions IRL than remotely. - I live in a studio apartment, a really shitty setup to work from home and back problems, so office chairs are often more than welcome. - I live very close to the office, so I can choose to work there in the morning then go home for the afternoon, if I feel like I'd be more productive there that day.

I enjoy a group office, I listen to music while working and absolutely don't mind having noise around me to focus. I do mind people coming up to my desk to ask questions, so I usually tell them to message me first. After a few times they get used to it and avoid disrupting deep work flows. Sometimes the office is too crowded and I'd just go work from home in the afternoon.

Ideal office setup is a team office space, with little disruption from other teams and space for devs to focus and discuss when needed. A shared space for lunch and coffee breaks, where all teams are mixing up. Comfortable meeting rooms (actual room, not phone boxes). And a nice setup (chair, screen, noise cancelling headphones etc).

Trying to answer all your questions in order.

1. I prefer to meet coworkers in person. Also, lunch at the office is more convenient. Lastly, it's nice to leave work at the office at the end of the day. At home it's hard to "stop" working.

2. Never had a private office, but I am not sure I would need it, unless I had to do many phone or video calls.

3. Ideal office setup (not sure I understood your question right?) in terms of amenities:

- private desk or office w/ lots of daylight

- printer, whiteboards, flip charts

- bookshelf w/ technical literature

- conference rooms for workshops etc.

- lunchroom/restaurants and vending machines available

Disclaimer: I'm not a developer, but a data analyst in a very small ecommerce company and fulfillment center. I do quite a bit with light-to-medium automation and "development", as needed, but my skill level at anything development related is probably at the level of a hobbyist.

For the workers that are capable of working from home, my workplace asks us to be in the office only on Thursday morning each week. This gives us a consistent time to do things like having our company-wide meetings or social events like company sponsored meals, fun events, etc.

During COVID, I was perfectly happy working at home. My workplace ensured that I had a desk setup that matched what I had in the office, and my home "office" was removed enough from the chaos of the rest of the house that it worked well.

My decision to start going back to the workplace was in the middle of 2022, when all the COVID related stuff finally started calming down and things like mask regulations started to relax. Some of my decision was due to needing to work in a location where I couldn't distract myself by going and doing things around the house. I had started to do that more and more frequently, mostly due to my ADHD and the fact that the novelty of working from home had worn off.

But another really big part of my decision was because I REALLY did miss seeing my coworkers in person. I'm in this rare unicorn situation where I absolutely love what I do, I love the company I work for, and I love the people I work with. Being there just makes me happy at all levels. This isn't even about an "ideal office setup" in the strict sense you're thinking of. I'm currently in my own office, but I spent the first 3.5 years working in an open office with 3 to 5 others, and that was just as good.

I know a lot of people that have that "Sunday Dread" about having to go to work on Monday, but I honestly get almost giddy Sunday evening knowing that I'll get to go to work the next morning. The really funny thing is that I consider myself to be a pretty extreme introvert. But all in all, I'm well aware that this whole outlook is extremely uncommon, so it's probably not truly considered a "blind spot" on your part, but more that I'm just an outlier.

It can depend on the job being done. For example, during board bringup, it can be convenient to be on site so I can plug in scope probes and stare at traces.

It is also nice to occasionally have an opportunity to get lunch with colleagues. From these social interactions, one may learn things about your colleagues that may be helpful in future technical discussions and debates. It can also be an opportunity to learn about impending bad (or good) news that cannot be shared on a potentially recorded medium.

I like the physical act of going some place that isn't home, wearing clothes specifically for work. It creates a "time to get things done" focused mindeset for me.

Even if I'm WFH I'll wear "office clothes". It makes me feel more "professional".

In my brain this makes a clear separation between "home" and "office".

When I have worked from home, I have made a point of leaving the "office" at the end of the work day, walking around the block (or whatever), and coming "home" to begin my free time. Work laptop stays closed during personal time, personal laptop stays closed during work time; never the twain shall meet.

I like to make that my second job, though, leaving the remote job to be done remotely from that second job.

Well, first and foremost my job is about 70% hands-on as an electronics engineer. I can and do sometimes do this work from home, but I have better equipment at the office. That's really not what you're asking, though.

When I don't need to be at the office, I can really only tolerate a few days at a time. I need the structured time of being in a physical place with clear purpose and expectations. My home office is absolutely not that.

I actually and truly do real work through my entire day. It's all productive time, maybe like 30 minutes of downtime a day for smoke breaks or dicking around on my phone. I know, I'm a freak. But when working from home I usually get 2-4 hours of real work done. On a personal level, I need to feel productive, be it at work on on my hobbies. WFH days usually leave me feeling dissatisfied and restless. And not to mention my spouse or pets offering distractions and interruptions all day.

Office is nice because we have an extremely small team: 6 total are local, and only two to three are usually in the office at the same time as me. It's quiet, I have few distractions, and I can simply get work done.

I suspect I'd feel exactly the same if I just rented a private office for myself. I just need that psychological context switch of being in the place that work happens

I follow a rule set by myself: I always go to office after more than two days off in a row. This means I always go on Monday (or Tuesday, if Monday is a holiday) after every weekend. This rule ensures I go to office at least once per week.

The reason behind it is simply because I tend to slack off more when not office. I set this rule to secure one medium to high productivity day at least, per week. Also, I suffer from low energy / low motivation for everything when I stay in home for too many days in a row. I hate commuting but it does help on reduce such symptoms.

I changed role to developer almost exactly the moment COVID took the world, so I never had a chance to experience the high in-person interaction office life. My ideal setup would be quiet (and I mean REALLY quite) work zones, with multiple huddle space / room nearby.

I keep wondering if there’s others that are in the same situation as me. I always liked going to the office to be with friends and coworkers, collaborating and sharing information and ideas. I came early and regularly stayed late. Then, during the pandemic, my company made changes. They conducted large layoffs. After some time they realized we were understaffed and needed to hire more developers. It they didn’t hire locally. They hired mostly “offshore”, using remote staffing companies in India, They also hired people living in other states. By the time I returned to the office, my entire team had been replaced with people who don’t live nearby. With the exception of a manager. So I commute 2-3 hours a day to take my zoom meetings from there instead.

At some point, about 15 years ago, I was the only person from my team living on a different continent. I did not need to go to office at all, but I chose to do it for these reasons:

- socializing

- doing some work that required the presence in the office (almost 1000 interviews)

- interacting with some contractors that joined me for a few years. I had to train them, then to be around because I found that me being approachable was making them more productive when they hit any sort of barriers that I could help with

- being in the office was one of the conditions for any career growth

But that's about it, these days I don't have any of these reasons so I barely go to the office, it is a 3 hours drive or at least 1-1.5 hours with the motorcycle (city traffic).

I am fully remote and have only been in the office once this year.

I really miss the social aspect but that is it. Everything I miss about the office is the opposite of productive.

Even career growth wise, I have much more direct line to the people that matter eyes on chats than I ever would to their ears in the office. Their ears would be drowned in noise like everyone else in the office.

I enjoy face to face discussions and whiteboarding sessions on tough technical topics. And I'm a fairly introverted person.

You get 2-3 competent engineers in the same room with no screens, just a whiteboard, and magic happens. No amount of zoom or virtual whiteboards will replicate that experience for me.

Also I don't learn much being remote. Many of my colleagues are 20 years or more younger than me and yet I learn something new every time I have deep discussions with them.

I'm lucky that my commute is 30 minutes each way. I choose to go to office at least thrice a week and a subset of my local colleagues do so too. If the commute was much longer, then I wouldn't go in as much.

I go in to my office once a week -- mostly to remind people that I exist in real life. All (most) of the developers try to come in on the same day, I guess to facilitate that personal connection. I could probably take it or leave it, though.

I go there for some quiet but there is no one there, its just a room. A room is not an office. I would really enjoy having this space with 3 or 4 regulars, no more than 10 minutes driving from my place, where we could all thrust each other and have the keys. Couldn't be salespeople...

I tried saying that it was a "Coworking Space" on Google Maps - a woman got in touch and I bailed - my wife wouldn't enjoy that setup. (For some reason I was picturing a version of any of my past engineer colleagues but then realized that those types are not the most common person around in 2024)

I spent 4 years WFH, and started feeling too lonely, sitting at home. I joined a new job where they demand all 5 days in office. I am enjoying - Set routine - Seeing people real life and meeting new (I am a midddle aged expat and still relatively new (8 yrs) in new country, with job as only way to meet fellow humans. - Wearing proper cloths :) - Every morning cold shower and feeling fresh for whole day.

Only thing which I dislike sometime is that 50 minute long commute and staying away from my Dog for so long.

I choose to go into my local office 3x a week by choice despite having a remote team because I enjoy the perks and I like the 'change of pace'.

We get free coffee, snacks, and lunch onsite, as well as having a nice gym. The time I save from getting lunch, driving to the gym, or out or having to buy a bunch of snacks negates the commute.

Up until very recently, I have been going into the office every day since they let us in post covid. I have a very hard time staying focused at home. I also really enjoy having friends at work. Once you have a family, it is really nice to have adult relationships outside of the home, and frankly it's really hard to maintain hobbies outside of work with all the kids activities and house tasks.

For personal reasons I've moved remote this year and it's hard, but I can manage for a while I guess. It is really nice to walk out of my home office and be instantly home, but I find that I have to work longer hours to get the same amount of work done at home.

As for layout, my office had open seating areas for talking, quiet areas, and a dozen or so phone booths for more privacy. I usually just worked in the open collab areas and used my headphones when needed. This has been the way for the last decade prior to covid.

I think this is probably not really in the spirit of what you were asking, but ...

My company is technically 100% remote, but we do have an office that almost on one ever uses, which could not possibly fit everyone if we did want to use it, and we're geographically dispersed across the US and this office is only in one place. It's not in the same state as me.

Nonetheless, a few months ago I did request travel reimbursement for myself and a small team to work together for a week. First, because it was getting needlessly difficult to clear our schedules enough and coordinate on timing to work in an effective manner. Pure async wasn't getting it done. Second, I've been with this company for five years and I'd never actually met anyone else from the company before. It was nice to finally do so. I love remote work, but even with Internet communities, you want to sometimes have meetups once you've known each other for long enough.

If there were an office near me, I don't think I'd go in on any set schedule with a guarantee I'll be there a specific day, but I'd at least drop in sometimes, just to feel like I'm still part of the place and not purely an anonymous mercenary.

I go to do things that I don't want to do in my home, I design and build hardware so that usually means things that burn, smell, are loud or make a mess, and when I want to do things like that with others. I do most everything else from home.

I think it's very productive with devs who need to ship product faster. People need to be building along side each other. Works best for small teams. for large teams not so much. cuts down the speed for decision-making

I can work from home two days a week, and generally work from home one. I do have a private office at work, and a short commute.

loneliness

I prefer going to the office but do not like a completely open office plan. I like to get out of the house and be generally around people but I don't aggressively socialize at work and do prefer at least some privacy there. I don't even explicitly/deliberately seek to collaborate, but in the long run it happens on its own and the proximity to others pays off.

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