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"Ahhh, the old "ideas during casual talking" trope. In all my years I've never seen anything of significance come out of people talking over lunch - for most companies, the concept of unexpected collaboration based on overhearing something in the office just isn't true and is mostly not required."

I've done a lot of - perhaps even most - learning from talking to people who are better than me, whether it's over lunch, a drink, or during work. You can't disentangle casual chats and official meetings; in most companies you're not going to be allowed to just book an hour or two of meetings to discuss random stuff in the hope you'll learn something you might be able to apply to this project.

Hence needing a cultural change - we can get the same effect remotely if we actually try.

When I was a fresh grad, I also learnt a tremendous amount from the people around me; I don't doubt our ability to get the same effect remotely.

The issues we have with everyone wanting to live in massive urban areas (near work) are not less important then you needing to figure out how to learn from home, that's the type of self centred thinking that gives us high density housing, pollution, unaffordable housing, long commutes, strained family lives, broken communities and mental health issues (also known as commuting / working from a central office).

>high density housing, pollution

Low density housing and sprawl are actually worse for the environment btw. You have a clear bias against urban living. That's your opinion and that's totally ok, but the cultural trend is definitely back towards higher density urban living.

I'm a fan of periodic, 1-2 days a week remote work. But I don't like working on fully remote teams, and I've worked with managers who are very experienced and enthusiastic about it. Yes, remote working CAN improve quality of life, but it harms collaboration and communication and shifts a lot of burden onto the managers. This isn't cultural, it's simply what happens when you put people further apart.

To be clear, I dream of a day where collaboration remotely works really well. I'd like to live in a smaller city one day where I don't always have to worry about finding a job.

Like I said, cultural changes required. Urban sprawl is currently worse for the environment than high density because people can't work from home. Urban sprawl happens around cities because people want a house and want to be as near as possible to work.

Imagine if we moved from having large cities that people lived around to a series of smaller towns. The urban sprawl that we currently have would not be a problem.

You need to stop thinking in terms of how things currently are and look at how they could be. Your social centre could be your town, your work would mostly be remote, no more urban sprawl just so everyone can be as near as possible to one square mile of central business district.

If I didn't have to work in the city, I wouldn't be living anywhere near the city, I'd pick a nice town in the north near to some excellent surf breaks; why would I even be living within the urban sprawl if I didn't need to be in the city? We're killing our planet, destroying our families and ruining our mental health. Do you think the urban sprawl around london (known as greater london) would exist if people weren't forced to commute into London everyday?

" Do you think the urban sprawl around london (known as greater london) would exist if people weren't forced to commute into London everyday?"

London exists as it does today for historical factors, such as importing, manufacture etc. Only recently has it been possible for more than a tiny fraction of the population to work remotely, and even today that proportion is so low it would make no difference overall.

cultural change required. London is busy and expensive because people need to be there, if they didn't it wouldn't be!

If you don't work from home then clearly you'll have a commute; how long/expensive/stressful/environmentally damaging it is obviously depends on a number of factors. I don't work too far from where I live and I use public transport to get there, so I can read and listen to music, which means it's not remotely stressful. Working in an office means I can switch off when I leave; when I've worked from home I've got distracted so I feel like I should do more work to make up for it. People at home see me there and expect me to do non-work things because "it'll only take a minute".

I was talking about the `ideas via casual chat` thing, though, which is obviously entirely separate from any discussion about work/travel etc. It's different if you're remote because talking face to face is a different dynamic to talking over the phone/skype/irc/email etc. I mean I could sit and drink by myself at home and talk to other people who are also drinking alone at home; perhaps that's an environmentally way of relaxing after work; it would reduce drink-driving deaths, wouldn't it. It would also be a horrifically depressing insulating way of living and it's not for me.

I get the bus to work: 45 - 60 minutes to travel around 13 kilometres. I bough my two bedroom apartment for around 1 million aussie dollars, if I choose to live further away, I could have got a 4 bedroom house with a pool for $700,000, or a 3 bedroom house without a pool for $500,000. The prices are driven up as everyone wants to be as close to work as possible.

For my million dollars I get to hear upstairs go the bathroom, my child gets woken up in the early hours by upstairs walking around in high heels after a night out. Every building on the street has a minimum of 6 - 8 apartments within so there's never any peace and quiet. Sometimes the bus has so many people I have to stand for nearly an hour.

Sometimes someone will crash on the bridge which will make me an hour late home which means I miss my kids going to bed. Mental health issues here are through the roof, the stress of high density living is literally killing people through depression and hypertension.

My child doesn't even know what a back yard is, that's a foreign concept to her. The only saving grace is that we're near to two beautiful beaches, without that I think I would have had a mental breakdown.

The whole "it'll only take a minute" issue that you seem to suffer from goes back to my cultural changes, one the culture has moved to work from home, the current working from home complaints will mostly be addressed. Also, let's not compare being in an office to going out for a drink, you can still go out and drink in your town with your friends in your community, again, cultural changes required.

It sounds like you have perhaps a few issues of your own to deal with. I've always lived in/around london and I know others who do and we're not going mad. I know a bunch of people from outside the UK who live here and they'd hate to have to live outside London; it's like another world here compared to the sticks in terms of acceptance of foreigners, access to culture etc. Sure, sometimes there's a problem with the train/road, but so what? Whatyagonna do? Shift your whole life around just to try and avoid that?

I don't know anyone who lives immediately near me so why i'd want to go for a drink with them instead of my colleagues is something of a mystery to me. I mean, I don't drink anyway, but, you know, coffee or whatever. In many cultures you'd not go out for a drink, what with them being pointlessly expensive; you'd invite each other round to your own place; drink supermarket priced beer, smoke whatever etc without having to deal with randoms getting all legal.

What have half of your points got to do with anything?

Not knowing who you live around is because that's not within the culture, if your life was based around where you live rather then where you work (and was the same for everyone) I'm sure that would change.

Your whole point about going for drinks or inviting people round is irrelevant; the point is people will be able to build local friend groups rather than work friend groups.

"Whatyagonna do? Shift your whole life around just to try and avoid that?"

Well, my whole life gets flipped around everytime I can't et home to my kids before they sleep because of an incident on the tube or the roads.

I think you mostly missed my point - you looked at your life today and decided that working from home won't work for you - you're completely ignoring all of the issues with central working locations.

Someone claiming these are my problems is nonsense; a lot of people feel the same; we are in a mental health crisis and families are under massive strain because fathers are away from their children for so long. Nobody is saying that you have to change but a lot of people are saying that the current system is causing serious issues to living standards.

Your comment about having to shift your whole life around is unreasonable and shows you haven;t thought about this outside of your situation. Every father I speak to, every couple that can't afford a house near work that I speak to, they all agree. Housing crisis, family crisis, mental health crisis; they are all heavily contributed to by this issue.

I used to be 22 and living in shoreditch, I didn't care about these issues back then either. When I don't get home in time to see my kids before bed tonight because some idiot crashes their car and delays thousands of people, I'll just say to my wife WHATYAGONNA DO!??? Can't be flipping my life around!!!

In response to your response (which I cannot reply to)- that's just one example. I did say that it may benefit some companies some of the time but I highly doubt that it's worthwhile enough to be a driver for EVERYONE to work from a central location in every company. That one time when something awesome happened at the office just doesn't outweigh the need to cut pollution, solve the housing crises and have better family lives.

America is experiencing its worst mental health and depression crisis ever, I would not be surprised if working conditions were a massive factor.

Companies should not live and die by water cooler conversations (and mostly don't).

You are talking the conversation far too extreme. No one is forcing EVERYONE to work every day onsite. No one is forcing you to give up your life, or pick a side in work vs home...

Merely, I just state remote has its drawbacks. There is a tradeoff. If remote is so superior, then everybody should already be doing it.

For me, what OP suggests feels like a myth, just too good to be true, by ignoring the potential frustration.

It's a serious issue. Just because you don't see it working that does not mean it cannot work. How else are we to solve the living standards issues? We can't all be 24 year olds forever!

>> If remote is so superior, then everybody should already be doing it.

I guess, you are missing here something very important. Onsite-work got entrenched in the society because of the earlier industrial revolution, which mainly involved working at factories on machines producing tangible things. There the concept of remote work, even for the higher-ups, was not even thinkable much. This onsite-work trend, unfortunately, got carried forward in the knowledge industry too.

What your parent is saying has a very large potential and his/her point is very important in this regard. The modern industry should give a serious try to remote working, it solves many, many problems of the modern day capitalism. It's good for both the workers and the employers and for the society as well.

"It's good for both the workers and employers"

It's good for_some_ workers. I find the increased housing costs to accommodate an additional office a net drain. The lack of work/life separation does nothing good for my stress.

As for nothing happening during lunch: my cohorts frequently grab a bite and pair on non-critical, but job enhancing, functionality. This type of interaction with others in the same problem space doesn't happen when you're lone wolfing it at home.

Work from home is great for some but it's not everyone's answer.

>>It's good for_some_ workers.

I do say, it is good for many workers in today's knowledge based industry. I have mentioned it earlier also.

As far as cohorts informal interaction, there are ways to facilitate that too: maybe a actual meeting once a week/month and then you can have private conversation over phone/mail/chat/telegram/whatsapp etc.

All good points. Since we agree neither is perfect for everyone I'm curious how many it would benefit. I guess one indicator may be the competition and availability of remote jobs. Where would someone even look something like that up?

It would benefit many from a standards of living perspective. The lack of high density housing and removal of urban sprawl would mean that your child will actually know what a nice back yard is rather than having to live above one family and below another; rather than having to hear upstairs use the bathroom at 2am. I didn't care about that when I was 22 and living full on party / work lifestyle but I do care now that I'm 30 and have a child. I really don't like missing my daughters bedtime just because some idiot crashed his car on the bridge (at least once per week) on the way home.

By not adopting work from home, you really are making peoples lives worse, just because that;s not you today, doesn't mean it won't be you at some point - wait until you need to buy a house within a reasonable commute to the office; a whole lot of money for no space and living with people banging around above you!

Personally , i don't think the big silicon valley companies are interested in a great solution for the remote work problem(or in remote work in general) - or else we would have seen large r&d investments from them on that subject.

And i wouldn't be surprised most VC investors don't care for that either.

You are correct - there is no push from anyone significant on this - this is one of the few things I think the Government should intervene in, heavily incentivised a work from home culture to the point where we can get rid of central business districts (in their current form) in every major city.

Other than very long term costs savings (and nobody thinks really long term), there's no money to be made from a big cultural shift that makes workers lives better.

The big silicon valley companies don't need to care. They have deep pockets, and queues of kids round the block willing to work and live in cubicles for a chance to work with them joining every year.

The VCs don't care either, they want to keep their startups on a tight leash from Sand Hill Road.

For a bootstrapped startup that isn't tied to a Sand Hill VC, remote working is a viable option that gives them access to talent they wouldn't otherwise have.

Many of those problems could also be solved by adjusting zoning laws to increase density. Suburbs have a lot of problems aside from just commute times that can be solved by working from home.

The maintenance costs associated with the spread-out infrastructure required to support everyone having their own personal 1/4 acre of land cannot be supported by the tax base available in such a low density population. Most US cities could be much denser than they are with a higher quality of life and lower pollution if people could be located within walking distance of most of the places they need to go.

I'm not sure why you think commute times are only a problem in the suburbs. My wife and I are looking to buy a house and we can't afford anything near the office, which is in the middle of a large metropolitan area (the 2nd largest in the nation). If we buy further out, where we can afford, I'll have a very long commute, 100% of which will be within the city.

I never said long commute times are only a problem in the suburbs.

If you're staying within the city proper and still have a "very long commute" (which to me is 1+ hours, I'm not sure what the means to you) it sounds like the city is still insufficiently dense.

In my experience, the vast majority of people with long commutes are commuting from suburbs/exurbs into a city center. I'm sure there are some cities that are so spread out that one could have a long commute while still staying within the city limits, but that would imply that there are people even further out with even longer commutes from the suburbs.

The problem would vanish if we moved from city living to small town living. We only have city living because everyone needs to get to their office which created high density housing near the city centre and urban sprawl everywhere else; both of those things would not be a problem if we moved away from city living and focussed on smaller towns instead; that way we could still have services centralised to a local community that works for everyone rather than having millions of people in one place which cause extreme mental distress for many people (see the mental health crisis).

I commute through the city, if one person crashes their car it impacts thousands of people getting home on time to see their kids before bedtime, how is that a nice way to live?

That's exactly my point point. Nobody should be driving their car through a city.

As for mental health issues, some people like cities, some don't. Without the traffic it would probably be a lot more pleasant.

It's tough to have a successful small town without it growing into a city.

Agree - I've been thinking about what the city would be like if all cars (except taxis) were banned during rush hour. I'm struggling to see how it would lead to anything but a better public transport network and a better standard of living for most people that need to commute during busy hours.

I did have that experience myself.

Me and colleague are talking about, back in last November, Paris attack thing. And we are working in the media sector, he just mentioned that we could use the user behavior stream to detect whether something big happens. Now it becomes a viral item detector, also providing real time metrics to other services.

It might not be significant, but it did evolve into something useful.

> In all my years I've never seen anything of significance come out of people talking over lunch

That's nice, but probably trying to generalise your personal experience to everyone as though it were an immutable law isn't a good one. I've certainly had the opposite experience.

> Ahhh, the old "ideas during casual talking" trope. In all my years I've never seen anything of significance come out of people talking over lunch

Depends on your job really, roles where creativity is required this sort of interaction is essential.

No it's not - there are very few companies that live and die by this - it;s not in any job spec I've ever seen and even if this is true for some companies, I never claimed this would work for all companies. You have cherry picked one thing from my overall argument.

In my experience, the American workforce is managed in a tight hierarchy, and management would not be happy to see their workers seeking out outside collaborations and coming up with ideas born out of random conversations. If any of those things happen to you, I would imagine you are more likely than not to get in trouble.

Another issue is that most Americans work from cubicle farms where conversations and unstructured meetings are actively discouraged. This is probably related to the previous point.

What country do you work in that's not America? I want to move there. OTOH, if you work in America, what country are you referring to that's not like this, and why aren't you working there?