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Comment by NoOneNew | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling this is going to end up similar to the "open office" fad. Lots of companies are going to go 100% on "forever work from home". Then in a year it's going to be not so much. That being said, I do believe "work from home" will become more of an option and far less frowned upon by employers. Then again, this is a white-collar problem. Blue collar and a few other industries still have to go to work. But who cares about them, right? It's only the white collar jobs that matter and should have a form of change and evolution to how they work. Those lowly blue collars and service industry peasants need to get back to work. It's far more vital for the important industries to hide away from the outside world, from its horrors and look down at the rest.

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I think the perspective of "who cares about blue collar worker" is assuming that wfh is always a choice, a preference and ideal for non-blue-collar workers.

I'm sure right now, lots of people who dreamed of wfh and couldn't have tried it and learned that it might not be the right arrangement for them.

Also, I find it hard to accept that people who pick certain jobs out of preference (not made to chose out of circumstances) like "blue collar jobs" would expect working from home. What does it mean for a steel worker to be working from home? A warehouse worker? A painter? A housekeeper? A cook?

I do agree with the rest of the sentiment you shared though... The sense that some people who are enjoying the current state of affairs want others to return to normalcy while they are living the exception.

The open office “fad” is pretty much the only office arrangement for more than a decade now, so what you’re saying is this will be the de facto going forward?

De-facto, but actually counter to productivity, just like open-office. Companies that choose to not do this, will have a per employee efficiency advantage. Big companies may not care just like in open office because the per employee advantage is outweighed by the ability to reduce costs for the space

Not too long after this discussion, a similar thought from PG: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1295788954353111040. "Possible scenario: It's 2025. The epidemic is over, but most big tech cos are still significantly remote, because powerful employees moved to Jackson Hole and don't want to move back. A startup emerges that's intensely not-remote, and beats one of the incumbents by moving faster."

Open office is the second to last act of desperation.

Hot desking is your CEO standing up and saying "I got nothing" when asked how to increase profitability.

In software, remote work is way more productive in my experience working remotely for the last almost seven years. It's a win win. More productivity and way better working conditions (home office, nice desk etc.). Less hours needed to finish. Easier to concentrate. Easier to deal with bad bosses or co-workers or take time out and breaks during the day. More flexible schedule. Much less stress. The pros go on and on. The only negative for work is promotions and visibility, but when everyone's remote, even that works itself out.

How big are the teams you've worked with? I agree it's productive for deep work and when design is already worked out for large changes or additions, but I've had many people on my team complain that they can't work through a hard problem on a whiteboard with peers or quickly sync up on a design and require more time in meetings to get things done across components/team members/teams. Also not everyone has a dedicated office space at home, those people are hurting and having a hard time focusing in many cases.

We don't need to endlessly increase productivity. The US been increasing productivity faster than wages for decades and it hasn't been good for most people.

I'm not arguing either way for whether "we" need to as a whole, but if you want to get the most out of your team and company (and you should if you're running a startup) I think you should look at in person options again once things are somewhat normal if you want an advantage. Some sort of hybrid office(with dedicated per employee offices)+WFH flexibility is probably your best option.

Is there any evidence to support this?

No. There's not a lot of research into it yet because the ability to work from home is relatively new, but this is literally my wife's area of academic expertise and the research that does exist generally shows that given the proper conditions and environment, working from home can be vastly more productive.

Where has the "open office" fad ended? It seems like companies say it's a great idea even when presented with evidence to the contrary and they never back down or reverse course

The fad ended and became the norm. Like Agile/Scrum.

hoping wfh/remote kills the cargo culted agile/scrum stuff.

a cute one liner, Regularly scheduled video chat meetings are anti pattern for remote work.

That's my feeling at the moment. trying to schedule people around the world to do video chats is a lost cause. Its also trying to cram the office experience into remote work. Video chats are a waste, no one is engaged, probably because most meetings are useless. Like stand ups, who's listening? We were only engaged becasue its socially awkward to not be in person. Now, I can turn my camera and mic off and stretch until I hear my name or just do my work. There's my stream of thought and slight rant.

We keep our standups to less than 1 minute per person. 5 minutes in and out.

If all of the white collar workers who are able to work from home and limit exposure to and spread of covid-19, doesn't that help everyone else who can't work from home?

You don't see the "It's good for you that I hide from the danger and you go out in it" and how incredibly messed up that is?

> You don't see the "It's good for you that I hide from the danger and you go out in it" and how incredibly messed up that is?

That would be messed up, but what is actually being said is “Given that you need to go out into the danger, its good for you that I don't go out and needlessly increase that danger.”

In fact, I've heard the exact argument made from the side of workers that have to go out into the danger—whether to deal with it directly because thet are in healthcare, or because they work in retail in essential sectors, or whatever—that out of respect for their safety, people who don't need to be out magnifying the danger shouldn't be.

What are you actually saying? That white colar workers cannot have certain benefits that come with the job because blue collar workers cannot have them?

Let's hope everyone can choose the job they want and have the benefits that come with it.

I know plenty of blue collar workers that would never want to work behind a desk, and also know plenty who started earning a lot of money at 18.

I find your "blue collar victims" mentality very strange.

> What are you actually saying? That white colar workers cannot have certain benefits that come with the job because blue collar workers cannot have them?

I'm pretty sure this is what is regarded as "progress" these days... :)

Because only Sith think in absolutes. It's objectively positive because there are a lot fewer people out there to get infected and lowers the overall case load for health and other essential workers. Unfortunately it hurts other. There will always be winners and losers.

There are a number of blue-collar jobs that don't require close indoor proximity. That's almost the differentiating factor. A landscaper, welder, framer, forester aren't sitting in conference rooms breathing each other's exhalations for 8 hours a day.

And since most of those jobs aren't usually salaried, I think they'd all welcome being able to go to work and continue to earn.

Until we solve AGI (if we ever do), someone is still going to have to go out to do a wide range of jobs that just can't be done remotely.

The fewer people out and about, the less opportunities for the virus to spread.

Yes, it's messed up, but it's better than the alternative: Everyone going about their lives like normal and spreading it even more.

I honestly don't see any better alternative.

How are those related? I don't understand why you think that some people working from home means that others will be less able to, or that those who can WFH don't care about those who can't WFH.

Given that some people are not working from home, surely it's strictly better for them if the spread of the virus is reduced?

I don't get how WFH is related to not caring(or caring) about blue collar employees. If anything the demand for housing reduces and the rent goes down.

Doctors have to go to work every day too. tons of WFH people are the lowest paid. It's not so clear cut.

Why would companies keep their offices if no one comes in to work there? Why wouldn't they sell all the furniture? Get rid of the infrastructure? Etc, etc.

This isn't a decision that could be rolled back easily or without significant capex. Companies that are doing this must be thinking it's a long term thing.

>Companies that are doing this must be thinking it's a long term thing.

Or they were thinking along these lines anyway and this was the push to get them over the line. Or they're putting real estate expansion plans on indefinite hold in the case of "you don't need to come back in the office but you can."

Similarly, I suspect that the people moving out of NYC aren't those with a mindset of "I could never live anyplace else on account of the opera." In many cases, they're probably people who were toying with idea already and this accelerated the process.

I think there is a massive business opportunity for somebody to develop a system that will help big businesses turn cube farms into bubble farms, where every employee has an airtight box to sit in with their own air supply, filters, and exhaust.

Perhaps even some kind of comfortable spacesuit you can just live in all day will help the blue collar workers.

I'm only half joking. I would like to think there will be a strong push for a much more hygienic society in the future. A corona vaccine will never completely solve the problem, and who wants to even get a traditional flu. I suspect these social distancing measures are just how we live now.

Open office is still super popular

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