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Comment by korzun | Hacker News Reader

You are an exception. I was a huge advocate for working from home because I would get things done and end up saving two hours of commute.

Your perception of this approach changes relatively quickly in a managerial role.

If you are shaving 1-2 hours off your commute, then the overall output should be in line with whatever it was in the office. I probably met two other engineers that kept that in check.

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It's not for everyone. You can often see middle-aged men escaping their homes and working long hours because they feel miserable around their wives; for them office is the only "safe space" they have. But for self-motivated high-performing communicative people WFH might be a much better arrangement. They might have a different problem - not knowing when to stop and risking a severe burnout which would be limited by office hours.

I have seen this too, but it turns out they also hide from their wife at the bar afterward.

Those people ruin it for everyone. They could rent their own office to escape their wives, but are likely not paid enough to really escape. Modern office slaves.

If you're miserable in a marriage, just get a divorce. Why do people put themselves through that?

I'm the first person to admit that if I was to run a company, I wouldn't allow people to work remotely only.

But as an employee, there's no way I'm going to drag my ass into an office ever again on a regular basis, when I can just as well work from exotic beachfront homes.

This is going to work out just like companies who cut compensation work out. You'll be left with the mediocre engineers and everyone who's able to choose to work remotely will eventually do so. If you don't permit that, you're left with the chaff.

Besides, isn't it kind of the managers job to help keep output in check? If my output was down I'd expect a friendly note telling me to quit slacking.

> This is going to work out just like companies who cut compensation work out. You'll be left with the mediocre engineers and everyone who's able to choose to work remotely will eventually do so. If you don't permit that, you're left with the chaff.

This has to be the best comment in this thread.

I am observing this phenomena lately and I gotta say, I feel rather good about seeing the more backwards employers struggle already.

They really have no idea it's the programmer's market.

I do mostly contract work.

I have a line item called "distress surcharge" that is charged to clients who want to bother me with being in the office. Effectively doubles my rate. Helps them quit being silly.

I wish I could say "I'll definitely try that!", but (prepare for a slight off-tangent) I suffered through enough stress and burnout cycles in my life -- several times! -- that I can't even justify a double rate for my newly delivered suffering in fresh new customer office. Or so I think. Funny things happen to human morals and sentiments when a lot of money is involved. Maybe I should try it once and see how it goes, actually.

I am looking forward to start working with N customers on contract / consulting base but the transition is really hard. People keep treating me like a coding monkey whom they have to swindle for the lowest possible salary. Guess I have to change my LinkedIn profile dramatically, and make my own website as a start.

Bottom-line / on-topic: if you're willing to share lessons learned from your transition then you should know that you'd have a passionate and intentive listener (me).

> I'm the first person to admit that if I was to run a company, I wouldn't allow people to work remotely only.

Why not? I work remotely and if I was to run a company I would hire remotely too. Given that I've coded myself I expect to know how long tasks should generally take. And I would want to give that benefit to my employees and attract talent as well.

Thats not even a viable argument. You know how long things take. Assuming that thats true, what do you do about it? Something took significantly longer. What are you gonna do about it? Fire them?

Yes, if its a consistent problem with no good reason. Very viable.

So your answer is micro-management and making people fake activity during the mandatory 8h? You're not a good manager if that's the case.

There are courses that teach people how to focus on results and deliverables.

Deadlines, deliverables, and results

Deadlines being flexible roadmap deadlines of course

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