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Comment by OminousWeapons | Hacker News Reader

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly can't wait to get back to the office (or any other workspace that isn't my home). I really hate working at home. I don't have enough space or privacy, it becomes far more difficult to partition work and play when they occur in the same spaces / I find myself distracted more easily, and there is no one to socialize with when I'm sitting by myself every day.

Could I remedy all of these problems with extra effort? Sure, but it's far easier for me to simply go to the office.

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I've officially reached zero productivity today.

I'm sick of being stuck in my tiny condo with the noise from neighbors and zero work/life balance. The constant streams of asks on Slack that wake me up in the morning and keep me up at night.

I'm making more in the stock market than my job.

Just close slack at 5 or 6 or whenever your day is over. That's what I do. Don't be dumb enough to install it on your phone. Unless your job explicitly says "on call 24/7" you're doing it for free.

Might seem a little off topic, but you are well positioned to read "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. It's been discussed on HN many times, and when I recently read it, it felt like someone finally "got it". Like "yes, this is what I've believed, but now someone else is saying it!".

Back on topic - I've been on both sides of this. I started working from home ~7 years ago when I took a job on the west coast, but opted to stay in Chicago.

Prior to this role, I had worked almost exclusively IN the office for ~10 years, with the very occasional WFH day (literally about 1-2 days/year, usually during the holidays, so definitely not a habitual thing).

When I started WFH, I loved it...for about 3 months. I relished the lack of commute. I enjoyed the additional focus / reduced distractions. But then I started to feel the downsides. The lack of connection with people, the higher effort required to collaborate on some kinds of things, etc.

Over the years though, I found a balance. I found new outlets. New habits. And about ~25% travel helped break things up a bit.

And then COVID hit.

And now I'm back to fully hating WFH. My new habits, outlets, and most importantly the work travel, were no longer viable.

On top of that, while I may have been comfortable with WFH by the time this all started, most of the people with work with were not. So they're going through the learning curve, and I'm empathizing every step of the way. Which is in turn reminding me about the things I dislike.

Anyway, this is a super long winded comment that I'll bring to a close by saying: WFH is not a cure-all. It's not a solution to every problem. Like everything in life, it needs to be applied prudently, and a balance must be found.

My advice to you and people struggling with similar challenges is this: quickly learn to set boundaries.

- Set "Do not Disturb" windows on all work apps/notifications.

- Set clear expectations with your management about when you'll start/stop your day

- Don't succumb to the temptation to just keep working...working...working at the end of the day

- If possible (this is hard or impossible for some), set up a dedicated work space

- Only check Slack once/hour if you can. Encourage your team to do the same.

- Invest in good noise cancelling headphones

- Oh, and read Deep Work :)

> - If possible (this is hard or impossible for some), set up a dedicated work space

This is the real killer IMO. It's impossible to focus in a studio apartment. It's where I cook, eat, drink, sleep, Netflix, and now work.

Try to micro partition your space.

Have a desk to work and a table to have food, possibly facing different walls.

Sit on a couch to play videogames and on a (office) chair to work.

Don't play games or watch Netflix on the computer you use to work. Uninstall them.

Yeah, counterintuitively buying a TV helped. It's better for my sanity than going full cold turkey on Netflix.

I'm with you on the lack of work travel. Pre-COVID, I was mostly full-time WFH but I traveled for over a third of the time so I had plenty of people contact. But that's of course all shut down. I haven't been more than an hour away from my house since early March.

Slack literally has a Do Not Disturb schedule built in, its very useful. It silences all pings.

> I'm making more in the stock market than my job.

Assuming you’re talking about trading - enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t quit your job to do it full time. Unless you have an actual edge of information, you’re just gambling and will eventually get steam-rolled by the event you’re not expecting.

Can you sign off from slack when you finish working for the day? That should be step one for getting a balance.

I don't use Slack anymore but I think there is a feature to specify your working hours so it will not notify you outside of those hours.

I don't think the issue is technical, but cultural. If everybody else is available all the time, it's hard to do differently.

Now is a good time to broach the subject. Everyone working home, something needs to be done for the balance.

Set hard work hours and refuse to deal with it outside of those hours.

serious question how much do devs like you make? what is "you" ? 5 YOE staff engg at FAANMAG?

> I really hate working at home. I don't have enough space or privacy, it

I really my office, I don't have enough space or privacy, or even a window. At home I have a spacious desk with wide windows.

It's almost as if the problem is not office vs home but comfortable space vs shithole.

You're lucky

For many people on HN, it's going to be the opposite. A smaller than desirable city apartment and an office which the company has spent money on to make it comfortable, well-lit, good facilities etc.

And yet many companies insist on the disastrous open floor plan. No privacy etc.

I am dreading the one hour travel time and switching there tube lines to get to the office. The inability to be grumpy or annoyed in the office. Enjoying working from home.

> Could I remedy all of these problems with extra effort? Sure, but it's far easier for me to simply go to the office.

This, exactly this. People adverse to self discipline are the ones that most want to go into the office, because its "the easy way". But people with discipline should have always, and should continue to be given the choice to work in the way that suits them the best, if you will, that is "easiest" for them. Don't try and make me come into the office too when the things that happen at the office

* open office distractions & lack of privacy * trivial socialization * commuting to and from work

are what makes it not "easier" for me to get my work done. Diversity folks, or if you will, different strokes for different folks.

>This, exactly this. People adverse to self discipline are the ones that most want to go into the office, because its "the easy way". But people with discipline should have always, and should continue to be given the choice to work in the way that suits them the best, if you will, that is "easiest" for them. Don't try and make me come into the office too when the things that happen at the office

So basically "people who prefer what you don't prefer are lesser in some way" but with some extra words for obfuscation because you can't just come out sand say that in polite conversation?

People have preferences. If you're gonna try and pretend that one is universally better or superior then I hope that attitude causes big problems for you.

Wow relax...All I said was I prefer working in an office setting; I didn't say you had to come back to the office. If you prefer working from home then you should work from home.

> Diversity folks, or if you will, different strokes for different folks.

I agree but it sure sounds like you don't based on what you said a few sentences earlier.

People should work in the way that suits the job they're paid to do best. At some workplaces, you need to be present in the office because the company, for various business reasons, has not invested in developing the necessary structures to make effective and well-directed remote work possible. At some workplaces, they have done so.

I prefer working from home, I'm happier doing so, and my boss says I'm even more productive than usual (and he hasn't been concerned about my productivity, and my boss's boss expressed concerns about me working too hard and hitting burnout in our last in-person one-on-one). But my company, organizationally, is not set up this way and we were dragged into it unprepared in March. I'm doing very well on the things where I know how to work autonomously, and I have a good-sized backlog, but at some point I'll run out, and once we're back in the office, I'm going to want to be around for all of the "distractions" and "socialization" that help me develop a good idea of what I should be working on. It does the company no good - and it does me no good, come performance review season - to be highly productive at the wrong thing.

And the "diversity" argument doesn't work here. You need to pick one context where things happen, unless you want to effectively run multiple companies. Either you go remote-first and you adopt the Apache-style policy of "if it didn't happen on the mailing list, it didn't happen," or the folks who are seeing each other in person will chat in person, come up with ideas in person, make decisions in person, consult each other for design reviews in person, etc. and cut the remote workers out of the loop.

Now, yes, I think my company probably should develop the structures needed to work remotely, but I'm aware that's a self-serving belief. I genuinely don't know if my company has enough people who have the "discipline" (in your words; I might also add "lack of roommates, spouse, or children") that this switch is the right thing for the company. It's rather like my position on whether my company should pay me more: I'm not going to argue that I don't want the money, since it would certainly be good for me, but there is certainly some finite salary level where it's no longer in the business's interest to do so.

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