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Comment by fredleblanc | Hacker News Reader

I guess I'm the flip-side of this. I work for myself, self-employed, and my office is the best $360 I spend each month. I need separation of space. My 15 minute walk ("commute") adds to the separation of work from home.

The other thing is that there are two small children running around my house. I simply can't work there, or else I'd never get anything done. Our house isn't large enough to have a separate, dedicated office-space. I'd be constantly interrupted.

I like the concept of remote working, even in a shared environment, but if I were working at that company and I no longer had a free place to go do work, I'd be looking for another gig.

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Separation of work and personal is key IMO.

I thought I'd like working at home, as it turns out I didn't at all because once you're working at home, it's hard to draw the line.

I learned it well working for myself. After 5pm, no work unless it's a real emergency and those might happen 1-2x a year.

Having gone back into the workforce, people were always amazed I didn't carry the latest greatest phone (only got an iPhone once they added GPS, currently using a Lumia 1020). I don't need a computer in my pocket. I'm in front of a computer roughly 12-16 hours a day, that little time I'm not, I'm okay with being away from email, etc.

Even though I'm on my computer at night (like now). I never check work emails, they're also never sent to my phone. Only personal. If it's an emergency, call. It better fucking be an emergency (why I left my last job, owner didn't understand boundaries). I also don't work overtime. If you want 24/7 support, hire it.

> people were always amazed I didn't carry the latest greatest phone (only got an iPhone once they added GPS, currently using a Lumia 1020).

Same thing here, nobody understands why I'm sticking to a nokia 208.

Turning off Gmail notifications on my phone was the best thing I ever did for my stress levels.

Honestly, when you think about it, if it's over email, it's not a "real" emergency. Someone in a real emergency would just call.

I too turned off notifications on gmail a long time ago. However, I've setup some filters looking for words like "urgent", "emergency", etc without telling people that I have. They're all labeled accordingly and that specific label makes a noise on my phone. It seems to work pretty good so far.

Ditto. I turned off virtually all notifications on my phone. Only phone calls and text messages get through (which for me is quite rare).

I realized that almost nothing on my phone is important enough to interrupt me whenever.

I just use Priority Mode and put the phone face down if the notification led will distract me.

Same here. I tried doing the work-from-home thing for years. It never worked out. I would waste my mornings and stay up late wrapping up pending work. I would also skip gym because it was too much effort dressing up and going out. Plus, because I would waste my mornings, I would convince myself that I couldn't go to the gym because I had to catch up with work.

Working from a shared office means that I'm out of the door by 10-11AM. I chose a shared office that was very close to my place, so my commute is 15 minutes at most.

It's also easier going to the gym after work when I'm already out.

Wouldn't do the work from home thing unless it was absolutely necessary.

It works for some and not so well for others. I worked remote for 2 years and don't plan on doing it again anytime soon. The social isolation was hard to deal with.

ditto. I worked remotely for 10 months and don't plan to do it again. There is no substitute of the good feeling of hanging out together with team mates at same place.

Are you hanging out or working?

Don't be obtuse. You know it is not a binary thing. Work ebbs and flows throughout a day. No one works exactly from 8-12 then 1-5 and goes home. So working and hanging out can happen at work.

Good point, but it would be a much better comment without the first 5 unduly personal words.

I also worked solo -- at home for one year and in a private office at a coworking space alone, and then with an officemate, and now finally working at a company in an office. Each incremental step has been better than the next and I do not want to go back. Working solo at home was especially horrible (and I'm an introvert). I would like to have flexibility, i.e. Fridays at home (or off totally) would be ideal.

I found that the best way to deal with the social isolation is to plan lots of coffees with friends and former colleagues, and plan to attend lots of meetups.

Gets me dressed and out of the house.

This is key. Working in the office, social interaction is almost a passive activity, ie the water cooler chat about the weekend trip away to London to see musical.

When working remote, it becomes conscious effort to seek out social activity and to connect. This extra step is difficult for some.

we have a very boring, traditional, class A office space in a commercial district of town. it looks like a small law office, or an insurance sales office. no cubicles, just shared rooms and normal desks against walls.

it's quiet, and well lit, and cool. i can work an honest 8-10 hour day with occasional breaks without a problem. every full time employee (except interns) has a view. it's nice, but it's not "luxury" space. it's not very expensive, less than the cost of one junior employee.

i will never work in any other kind of environment ever again -- maybe a dedicated home office, but even then, i do like a (very) short commute for the same reasons you do. there are a handful of other tech companies here (it's mostly law firms, finance, psychiatrists, etc.) and they seem to have the same idea, and are doing well.

it's kind of like the black turtleneck theory -- the office is not something we think about, like at all, so that we're free to spend our mental energy on other more productive things.

> I guess I'm the flip-side of this. I work for myself, self-employed, and my office is the best $360 I spend each month.

That's not the flip side, that's what the article says they're doing: converting office staff to a co-working space (via their "perks"):

    "Those in San Francisco who worked in the office now have
    moved into coworking spaces, which Buffer pays for as      
    part of our team perks."

I guess I picture an office as an actual office, not a room full of desks. I'm too old-fashioned. And maybe people prefer the atmosphere of co-working. I like having a place to go where I can have quiet, have music, but most importantly have focus without interruptions. That's what an office is to me.

Sadly that is no longer what an office is.

That negates the whole point of the article (well, headline) for me.

You didn't stop having an office. You just realised you could save money by sending the few guys using your office to a shared space.

I think I'd be a bit miffed if I was a non-office employee there - suddenly the old 'office guys' are getting this 'team perk' that doesn't apply to me.

It would be more in the spirit of the whole 'openness' thing to say "here's $X, spend it on office space, coffee, whatever to improve whatever working environment you choose".

According to the article, every employee gets the team perk you seem so upset about...

I'm sorry if I "seem upset", I don't work there or anything.

My main point is just that the article content "those employees who were in our office are now in company-paid co-working space" is pretty different from the headline "we're ditching the office completely".

Having an office and granting perks to those who previously used the office (or everyone) doesn't have any redistributional effects as long as it doesn't incentivize prior non-office employees to join coworking spaces.

But apart from that, I'm with you in your conclusion that an equal amount of money for possible work environments is probably the most structure agnostic solution.

> coworking spaces, which Buffer pays for as part of our team perks

"Going to work" is now considered a "perk of the job"? Now I have heard everything.

Just last night a friend in hospitality was telling me how tips were pooled and shared out, and money was taken out of the pool against staff parties (okay, kind of defensible) and breakage (wtf!?). He said the place was even dicier than it sounds - when they did have the staff parties, the boss made it sound like the money came out of his own pocket, rather than sucked from the employees tips. Some "perks" are definitely less valuable than other "perks"...

"breakage"

This is explicitly illegal in California, Massachusetts and New York (among other states). There are also states where it is legal.

I used to think this way.

However if I work at home for the long term, then here's what that will cost:

10 years X 12 months X 360 per month = $43200

If you are as old as I am then 10 years won't seem like a long time and $43200 will seem like alot of money.

In your shoes I'd put a chair and a desk in the garage, presuming you have one or similar.

I'm self employed and have an away from home office also.

Like OP it makes a break between work and home. Plus, a few times clients have dropped by to see something. Also, I get dressed and see neighbors from adjoining offices on a regular basis. So I don't become a totally socially inept nerd.

I don't have any kids but if I continue with this, I fully expect to get more than 43,000 worth of value out of the office over a 10 year period.

I think this is a problem that will be solved in time. The social contact one, I mean. One of the advantages of being self employed is that advancements in productivity are things you can actually take advantage of. It's not like in an office environment where no matter how long it takes you to accomplish your work, you still have to have your butt warming a chair for 40+ hours a week.

But even if you do maintain a schedule with 40+ hours of work a week, working from home still leaves you with more time, since the time eaten up by commuting disappears. Now, imagine that everyone in your neighborhood is doing this. Instead of the vast majority of your local community spending the vast majority of their time outside of the community, they will actually be present. And they will all desire the natural human need for social contact. I expect that this will result in a rebirth of the local community. Long commutes, ever-growing work weeks, ever-shrinking vacation time has pretty much decimated the whole concept of a local community. But when those things disappear, you're going to end up with a lot of people wanting to get together and I'm sure they will eventually figure it out and block parties, back-yard barbecues, etc will become a regular occurrence.

Transitions are always fraught with difficulties, and I think the social contact issue with working from home is just one of the temporary ones as our society moves toward people working from home, most being self-employed.

That's great and all, except for the fact that not everyone has a job they can work remotely.

They said they were paying for every employee to work at a coworking space. So everyone everywhere would still have a place to go (assuming they work in a location that has a coworking space).

I think your current setup is ideal. It's hard to justify when your employer already has an office, though. Even if the company allowed for "100% remote work" it would be nagging at me that I'm choosing to work away from my coworkers. I love what Buffer is doing. When the default choice is to work remote and I can choose to meet my coworkers and work with them in person, it comes off much nicer than having the default choice being working in the company's office.

I think you'd be much more likely to be able to keep the arrangement you have now if you became an employee of a company like this than if you became an employee of a company that had a traditional office.

I've been working remote for quite some time. And in my current company I'm now working remote after 6 months of having to be in the office. Since I had 3 hour daily commutes I said to them that I would be leaving someday! Too much lost time..

So, remote working is definitely not for everyone! You must really appreciate your "freedom" so much that you'll want to have the trouble to organize your life around it. You have to be a very organized person "internally", if you know what I mean.

As for the lack of social life, as some people say, I found that hobbies are great solution to that problem. You get to do interesting things outside work while meeting other people. For instance, I think my diverse interests in life and the hobbies that I pursue describe me better personally than being a "developer doing.. things.."!

But consider if every company let you work remotely, you could switch companies and still have your commute be the same quick walk.

$360/mo becomes a lot more affordable with the scale of money self-employment brings. I looked into getting an out-of-house office with my last gig which was all-remote, couldn't afford any of them. (We also didn't have co-working spaces nearby; small town/5 years ago, things were different.)

If I got a real job again, I'm not sure that I could afford to have a $360 monthly bill.

Are you me? Exactly same situation. And I find it much easier to concentrate in the solitude of my private office room (rented from a co-working company) and be more productive there.

As I understand it, they pay for coworking space as a benefit.

As others mentioned, for some it’s important to separate work from home. It resembles more of a classic approach to workspace. However, when you think about lifestyle choices and entrepreneur mindset, fusion of two is better as there is no work anymore. Everything is hustle, either landing clients or writing code.

You have small children running around the house, so you'd never get anything done there because you'd be constantly interrupted.

I have childish coworkers running around the office, so I can barely get any work done there and I am constantly interrupted.

I work from home, and we have 4 children (ages 3 to 12), and one on the way. My office is in my bedroom.

But back when I worked in a "real" office, I had the exact same situation you just described. It was just as noisy and loud as it is here at home.

In either place, I have to learn how to work with distractions in the background, and learn how to ignore them efficiently. So why not do that at home?

Here, I have an "open door" policy, so that I can help my wife out with any homeschool tasks that might be better suited for me.

It can be challenging sometimes, but it's extremely rewarding.

And I'm just as productive here (if not more productive) than I ever was at a "real" office.

But YMMV.

Five kids is very old fashioned and ... Roman. It's good to be not alone here in HN.

On the subject, eventually the house's temperature goes to the heights. But I'd never worked so much before and the parenting experience gives a great sense of achievement. It's like a family business with its own departments, and its own kind of clashes.

I don't understand the Roman part. But yeah I agree with everything else you said wholeheartedly.

Roman Catholic.

Oh hey you're Catholic too? I didn't know there were any actual legit Catholics on HN. Crazy!

Work from home, son shoots you with nerf gun, work from office, brogrammer shoots you with nerf gun....

At least you can send your son in timeout.

I've been in this exact situation. Fortunately I found another place to work in the same building that contained our office and I was super productive. I feel like the "no fun employee" but when you get shot 20 times a day from all the nerf Wars that break out I don't understand how anyone gets shit done. Ultimately they probably just don't (at least if it is as frequent as I ran into).

Wait, those seriously happen? I thought examples of that were just satire. I guess there are some upsides to working in finance. That would never happen there lol.

I mean my 20 was probably an exaggeration but I can remember days where 10+ battles erupted around me. If it's 1 or maybe 2 times I don't mind and might even join in but on the days when it becomes excessive? I can't get anything done! Very frustrating.

It used to happen in my office, but it was usually a friday evening thing, or in one of those awkward gaps after meetings, but before lunch, and everyone was distracted anyway.

When I worked for a game development studio a couple guys brought nerf guns and shot people at work for awhile.

It got too distracting so management put the kibosh on it after about a month, though.

I really wish that I could kick out the office dogs, shut down the office music, and enforce library rules.

I am definitely the "no fun employee".

I have no children running around my house, but I still lack the discipline to work from home effectively. That "separation of space" helps to keep me focused. That's just me personally, and I know plenty of people that are effective working form home, but I just procrastinate and distract myself. I am my own interruption.

Yes, open office environments with a culture of "interruptions are fine" doesn't help either. I guess what a need is a library that's also an office? I don't know.

Where are you located and what kind of SF do you get for that?

Just saying I pay N is nearly useless without context.

I'm very curious about this too. A little research suggests that I could barely get my own desk for a similar price in Southern California.

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