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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

I had a discussion with some people at a growing tech company looking to expand in one of their locations. I basically asked-/Cant more people just work from home? (Many already do.) they basically told me many of the younger employees would just up and quit if they couldn’t come into an office.

Looking back on my earlier career I can sympathize.

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Perhaps let the portion work from home that wanted to.

That was pretty much the concept for any jobs that allowed it. In fact, the company was apparently taking away desks from people who weren't using them enough. (They could still hotdesk.) But the demand for desks was greater than the supply--even with a lot of office crowding.

I'm partial to staying at home Monday and Friday. Sometimes you have meetings, sometimes you just want to come in and shoot the shit.

Why would younger folks up and quit if they couldn't come to an office? This doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Possibly they don't have calm or comfortable place for work at home. Possibly they would get lonely and demotivated over time. Possibly many people derive motivation from other people and would lack it absent personal contact - purely online classes have huge failure rates too.

When I had a WFH job, I would go days without talking to anybody. I literally started conversing with the cat and singing because my throat muscles began to atrophy. Once I got back into an office, I realized that my social skills had gone to shit.

There are some perks to WFH, but it can be bad for people who don't have a drive to seek human interaction with reasonable frequency.

If you're going to WFH, definitely get out and walk to lunch in the sunshine/fresh air. We're not meant to live in a cave 24/7.

During my early days, I looked for jobs that let me maximize my learning. I preferred onsite jobs so I can have stronger professional relationships with my co-workers and have high bandwidth visual and oral communication when I needed help.

Later in my career, now that I worked remotely, I am much more independent and don't have as much interest in synchronous communication with my co-workers.

If I lived in a 1100 ft apartment and had to work out of it every day I would legitimately probably never leave my apartment for anything other than food. It would drive me mad, and I would probably quit to work somewhere else.

So imagine this very common scenario. You've just graduated college where you had group activities of all sorts, lived with people, etc. Get a job offer. And you don't even need to go into an office!

So now you're working out of your small apartment. Maybe you have a housemate or two for better or worse. Besides maybe an onsite meeting or two, you only know your colleagues and manager by messaging and video call. There's no luncheon chit-chat. No softball league. No after-work beers. No random hallway conversations. No impromptu conversations with your manager.

I work pretty much fully remote now by choice and I'm very good with that. I can't really imagine having done it early in my career.

I live with two housemates. Some days they work from home, if I didn't have an office to work from, my house would become the office. Or more precisely my room as both my housemates work jobs that require lots of phone calls.

I currently sleep and relax in the same room. I do not want to add working to the list of things I do there.

Human contact.

I mean, your coworkers can drive you absolutely bonkers, but being alone all day can drive you crazy in a different way.

Loneliness.

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