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Comment by evgen | Hacker News Reader

You are quite delusional if you think the ratio is 10:1 in favor of WFH. One thing that the recent lockdown and forced WFH experiment has revealed is that while people are strongly in favor of flexibly WFH the ratio is closer to 10:1 against having no office at all.

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Please make your substantive points without swipes like "you are quite delusional if $opposing-view".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The current situation isn't a good barometer for WFH for two reasons:

- Companies that previously laughed at the idea of WFH were forced to implement it without much time to prepare. Their technology, culture, and processes are bad.

- We're in a pandemic, so I can't go hang with my friends after 5pm at a bar or do any outside hobbies. This slight cabin fever is making people dislike WFH which is ironic because usually WFH means you have more time to go outside and do fun things.

I think you missed the biggest one of all for a huge number of us: no school or childcare.

You might like it or not but that's the direction the tech world is going. A lot of people hating WFH hate it because they always worked in an office and don't want to change what they are used to.

In 10 years you will have a whole new generation of engineers that always worked from home and by then I would be surprised if the ratio is only 1:10.

As another comment mentioned, this current pandemic makes you hate a lot of aspect of life, regardless if you worked from home or from the office.

The world is moving in that direction. Adapt or become extinct.

But that's just, like, your opinion. How can you be so sure WFH isn't going to be just a fad?

Do you really think that with the world being more connected than ever, so many collaboration tools being created over the last years and VR evolving non stop, the office is still going to be a thing ?

I would be very surprised if in 50 years the concept of an office even exists anymore.

Im in a smaller company of a few hundred employees. We had the option to go back to the office this week. Exactly 3 people are in the office, the same 3 who have remained at the office the entire time. Everyone else chose WFH until it is mandatory to go back to the office.

I don't know what the preference is for the general developers public; obviously someone who is 40 with 2 kids and lives in Ohio isn't the same as someone who is 23 and lives in SF. What I do mean, for a company like Shopify, they can do what they want. Tons of people will want to work there, whether they are 40 or 23.

yeah, I like having the option to WFH, but I definitely don't think I can WFH permanently. At least, not right now. If a person is living in an urban city, I doubt they have space to have a proper WFH setup to begin with. I had to move my desk from my bedroom to my living room, which is fine when everyone is social distancing, but I definitely don't have space it for under normal circumstances.

It's really not fair to describe the current situation as a "forced WFH experiment". We're trying to work and be even remotely productive during an unprecedented global pandemic, and also happen to be working from home.

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