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Comment by oftenwrong | Hacker News Reader

I work remotely 2-3 days per week, and in the future I only want to increase that number. Recently, I turned down an opportunity because it would have required me to commute to an office every day, without exception. For me, that is now a deal-breaker.

Some personal benefits to working remotely:

- I save an hour a day by not commuting

- I can work in whatever position I want

- I can wear whatever is most comfortable

- I can work outside, in the park or in my garden (I suppose I could do this near the office, but the park is not as nice)

- I can tend to my household duties or exercise during my short breaks instead of just milling about the office

- I can take a nap

- I can prepare a fresh meal

- Privacy / personal space

- No undesired socialising

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My biggest reason to work from home has been my son's school schedule. He gets out at 3:00. There's no way I can reliably come from work, pick him up, bring him home, and then get back to work without wasting a lot of time. Now, I moved my lunch hour to that time, I spend the entire hour driving, pickup/drop off, and a little bit of play before I head into my office for the rest of the day.

On a side note - I feel like taking a nap is a bit too extreme for a work at home setup. Maybe you don't need to be available all the time during your work hours, but unplanned naps means your team will be unable to reach you at a time they assumed you'd be available.

My work schedule is shifted early, so I leave the office by 3pm. I think all offices should permit this to accommodate school pickups. A side benefit is that I never have to commute during peak times.

I do not need to be available at all times. There is an insignificant time-away-from-desk difference between going out for a coffee and having a short nap. A nap helps me stay unstressed, energetic, focused. I feel a headache coming on, a short nap nips that in the bud. Working continuously with no breaks is only a fine strategy for robots.

I'm with you. Plenty of people (across all job industries, tech included) go out for long lunches and/or coffee and often aren't checking their notifications for most or all of that time. A nap is no different, and is just as, or more, important to productivity and health as food or coffee.

For certain kinds of "emergency response" jobs in tech, that may not be an option, but for everything else odds are your teammates can survive if you aren't available right that minute. And even emergency responders need shifts and breaks during shifts. If you're a developer, unless you're very actively training a new team member or something, I can't think of many scenarios where an immediate response is truly needed. This is HN and everyone has a counterexample for everything, so I'd be curious about other takes on this, but that's been my experience.

Remote-first companies seem to be very asynchronous (or at least try to be), out of necessity to accommodate people across all timezones, but also to encourage this kind of flexibility.

I agree with "undesired socializing". Sometimes the peer pressure gets you. Especially the small talks in the kitchen area.

Yep. If the companies support remote working for entire teams (Stripe, GitLab etc.,) - it will be a boon. Else we'll get into a mode where you feel highly insecure.

And if you did go to the office, there's a good chance you'd get to the office only to find you need to work with people who are remote.

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