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Comment by tudorconstantin | Hacker News Reader

Summary: "The survey said information technology decision-makers expect permanent remote work to double to 34.4% of their companies’ workforces in 2021, compared with 16.4% before the coronavirus outbreak, a result of positive productivity trends.

About 72% of their companies’ total global workforce is currently working remotely, according to the CIOs."

Honestly I would expect it to remain at more than 34%. Who would want to go back to daily commutes of >1h?

If we're able to do our jobs remotely it would be in our interests as human beings to resist losing 5-10 hours a week commuting.

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This is great if you have a house with lots of space.

Personally as a single young adult I like living in the city with lots of amenities nearby. I would hate being forced to WFH, the same way some hated being forced to go into the office.

This is an often recurring argument on this subject.

For example, I don't care about having a big garden but I don't necessarily enjoy living in a dense city. If I could WFH at least three days a week for the foreseeable future, I would gladly move to a town in the suburbs where I could have a bigger apartment for the price of my studio apartment. I bet a lot of people would do the same. This would lessen the pressure on housing in the city center, so people like you who actually prefer living in the big city for reasons other than work could afford larger apartments.

My main reason for living where I do is so that my commute is less than 30 minutes each way.

I guess the point is that as the constraint of everyone working in the same place is reduced, there will be less people wanting to live in the city allowing better conditions for those who do.

I mean, permanent remote is also not great (particularly in a context where there are no offices), because for people in my living situation that puts the onus on us to find our "work" zone. I'd rather not spend extra money on more real estate or a WeWork-type membership.

I just don't find it very surprising that ~60-70% of people don't particularly like permanent remote, since it's 1. a departure from the norm and 2. people usually build their home-work separation with the commute, and I would say people expressing missing the commute separation at least some of the time represent a majority, if not a plurality, of my direct coworkers. But we are also at a company that let people do partial WFH pre-COVID.

The solution to the home-work separation, which also has potential to improve mental and physical health, is to go for a 20 minute brisk walk at start and end of the work-day.

Personally I don't know why we need to keep prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions for people who may respond differently. Prescribing fully office was terrible, why is prescribing fully remote not?

Forcing people into a specific building vs saying they can work anywhere. It's a massive difference. People throw around the term WFH, but you could really work anywhere. It's freedom.

There are limits. You’ll be restricted by timezones and your ability to function in them. WFH doesn’t mean async.

Because prescribing simply, easy to agree with yet wildly inaccurate (by their very nature) rules of thumb for every situation is a quick easy way to rack up cheap virtue points.

You get what you incentivize. See that number in the corner? That's why the solution for everything gets turned into lowest common denominator five world sentences.

That's about as helpful as telling someone with depression to "just be happy."

They literally recommended something simple and physical that almost any person could do.

Without any regard for whether it works for all people all of the time.

Yeah, anyone who has already solved the actual problem by other means. Which is why it's like asking a depressed person to be happy.

My kid is in day care, so I get that separation by dropping her off and picking her up. (Fortunately day care is close to my home, not to my office!)

The work office is not the only way to have an office.

In these times, I'm renting a small one person private office a few minutes away (by bike) from home. It's the best of all worlds. Quiet space to work, it is outside of the house for separation, but very close so the commute is minimal on a bike and don't need to drive.

I don't love having to pay for the space but objectively it is less than the cost of fuel I was spending every month on the commute so I'm still saving money. And my commute is ~7 minutes on a bike instead of 60 minutes driving. And I'm so close to home I can come back mid-day to see my son. Win-win-win.

So yes, I'm planning for permanent remote, life is so much better.

I see this solution becoming more common as remote work increases in prevalence.

I can see this becoming the norm.

What is surprising is the WFH is sort of the default, people have always worked where they live. Whether you are farmer in 1500 Congo or a chinese blacksmith in the Qin dynasty. Life is work.

I thought the same for years and chased that dream. Eventually I found I ended up as a miserable isolationist to some degree. So roll on a number of years and I’ve got 5 people living in a tiny house in London. I sleep, eat, work and play in one room and have done for about 10 years now. It’s great and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

The important thing is that you find activities to do outside the house because it doesn’t matter how big your space is; you need to get away from it sometimes.

Same, we live in a fairly small (90sqm) house which we rebuilt a few years ago. Bedrooms and bathroom are downstairs and upstairs is open plan with high ceilings. My workspace is upstairs and it works out great. Kids going to school and my wife to work neatly bookends the day and I just switch on my own machine and off the companies to keep separation. I'm right in the heart of downtown Reykjavik so heading out to do stuff or take a break is straightforward.

Working remotely doesn't have to mean working from home. You could be working from a rented office or shared office space, friends, a hotel and so on.

What's great is the flexibility and customization for each individual employee.

And who pays for that?

For many remote work involves less take home pay.

Companies usually have budget for setting up remote workers and IME are happy to pay for work spaces.

IME they are not happy to pay for work spaces.

A nice chair, a desk, a monitor. (Not that I have space for a nice chair at home!)

But an office? No way.

Perhaps it's because renting an office costs similar to renting a flat where I live (even though you get less space when renting an office).

I have had positive signals towards paying for a desk in a shared workspace... But wait, aren't we working at home to avoid sharing workspaces at the moment?

Developer for a major hospital that's not in a tech hub. An executive suite got trashed, so we got a used chair ($25 donation to one of our company charities "suggested"), and that was it. If we need more WFH gear than that, then we are told we can go work in our limited remaining office space.

I personally want more free WFH gear, but I think our execs are clever. "Oh, you don't have a desk? Nobody is in the office, so we can give you a socially-distanced 15x15' space for free if you drive in."

I'd hope that stance would shift if they didn't see it as a temporary thing. My experience has only been with remote positions where there is no office to attend.

No employer is going to hand me another $400 a month because I need an apartment with another bedroom to serve as the office.

Employees who adjust to the change and moved out of the high cost of living area.

An example from my own circumstances, I was paying $1800/month for a 1 bedroom in Toronto but now for a little bit less I have a 3 bedroom house with a small yard.

And we are seeing some employers adjust pay to location now too. In the end you are also subsidizing the office out of square footage in your home, and reaping none of the benefits such as socializing with people.

Some employers are adjusting for pay location, not all, and mine didn't because the cost of losing me was more than adjusting the salary for the different location.

I am reaping the $200/month transit pass that I no longer need. As a Canadian I'm able to ask my employer for a T2200 to write some of my expenses off even as an employee.

I'm also saving ~5 hours a week in less commute time.

I'm still socializing with those coworkers in our daily water coolers, weekly syncs, Monday & Friday fireside chat.

Being forced to work from home is better than being forced to work from an office. In the former case, you can (and I did) rent an office, join a coworking space, work from coffee shops, etc. In the latter case, you have one choice and one choice only, and that choice sucks for a whole lot of folks.

That's a great argument for pushing employers to be prepared to provide an allowance for office space (whether to cover costs of adjusting your home, or for membership at a co-working space convenient for you). We don't need to go back to centralised offices to solve that issue.

I lived downtown for years while working remote for companies in different cities. Not going to the office made it even easier to enjoy the city imo.

For some people (me included) the office is a very productive environment. Some things I am really interested in can be smashed out at home with no problems. But boring work is a chore unless I'm at the office where I can get my mind to say "you're at work, you're getting paid for this". I can do boring work well at work, whereas at home I wanna do anything just to get it out of my face.

Not only that, for some people the commute is 1h each way and for others it's 10 minutes. So some people don't see the issue with going into the office every day.

And unless everyone is going to work from home, if you're someone working from home but most other people are in the office then that can stifle your career development for internal promotions. Like it or not, the managers and higher ups will be in the office, it's easier to get to know someone in the office, it's easier to get inside knowledge on what's going on, what projects are happening, etc. I work for a company who has remote developers and none of them are leading anything or have any sort of significant power to influence decisions. They are just man power to get work done, even if that is wrong, that's how it is and I don't see it changing.

For as long as this is the case I don't see fully remote working as a viable career choice. I would only do it for a company which is all remote or all software dev is remote.

Thanks for writing this out as you've really hit the nail on the head. I manage a medium sized team and I can tell you some people are totally cool with just being a worker bee. I wish more of the conversation around WFH focused on how everyone is different, one size fits all rarely works, and if you do want to "get ahead" you'll need to put in face time. Period. Humans are social and want connection. Meritocracies are great in principal, but that's just plainly not how the world works. If you want managerial carrier development and growth, you have to put in the face time.

> I wish more of the conversation around WFH focused on how everyone is different, one size fits all rarely works

and then

> if you do want to "get ahead" you'll need to put in face time. Period.

You've just prescribed a one-size-fits-all solution, in the same phrase as saying that it doesn't work. How are you resolving the cognitive dissonance?

Thanks for pointing that out. It was two different points. The first point was that some people don't want to climb the ladder and so should be happy/content with doing their job "working to live, not living to work" kind of idea.

The second point I was trying to say was that if you only WFH, the same type of career opportunities that come from mastering soft-skills that build rapport will be unavailable. And where I was trying to go was to call out people who whine about this.

I agree I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

Yeah, the only thing I personally wanted from this huge WFH push was just the option of flexible working. Before the pandemic I never even had the option. Now I do have the option, and that's great.

I'm never going to push for everyone working from home, or everyone working from the office. It should be flexible, it should be easy to make that choice when it suits you.

Some weeks I'll go into work every day, some weeks I'll have a few days work from home. That's how I want to work. I still put in the face time, I still get to see most people. I just get to have a more relaxing time working from home now and then.

I could never be a fully remote worker right now. But I'd always advocate for more flexibility. And I'll be honest, I like seeing my work colleagues, we have a laugh, and I'd miss that in a permanent work from home setting.

Yes, excellent point. The optionality is wonderful and my team has really taken to it. My favorite part is that some of their work is asymmetrical, so if they need to run to the store during working hours--totally fine!--they just finish up their work later in the day. It's really amazing what people will do when you tell them, "sure, WFH, you're an adult, I trust you to manage your time". And of course I've been very clear that if they we lose that trust, I will fire them :)

Managing a split remote/local team is one of the hardest things to do. Nigh-impossible I'd say.

On my prior gig we were in an office but communicated via Teams anyways since it was an open office and you could not talk without disturbing the 6 person wall-less booth. Communication from home is much easier since we just can call each other. But this is mainly due to bad office layout not wfh being better as a concept.

It is probably a good idea to have office days even with remote teams. Half a day every other week or what ever.

Your last point about career development is an interesting one that comes up. If you are remote but your co-workers are interacting in person I can see how there would be an informational advantage in favor of your co-workers that is unavoidable.

My preference is to WFH most of the time, but not all the time. When WFH for awhile, I can much more easily get into a zen-like state of concentration after an hour or so that is extremely difficult to get in an office. At the office I have to contend with constant sources of distractions and interruptions (people walking up on foot, phone ringing, non-work related discussion, ...) which has often made me feel like the only time I can push through a hard problem is during off-hours when no one is around. Most importantly, being in a zen-like state while working and getting stuff done is what makes work enjoyable for me.

That said, whenever there is a significant amount of collaboration or a need for a lot of round-trip communication with someone (new employee, need to bring someone up to speed, ...) it's better in person - but I find this to be only an occasional need.

Putting aside the 4000 GBP (5200 USD) I no longer have to pay each year for the privilege of taking the train to work, I would definitely trade a significant amount of career success for a lifetime working from home. It's so, so good.

Obviously others have a different take, but I can see myself never going into the office regularly again.

While saving money on fuel and avoiding pollution. If you can avoid pollution in India you can literally increase lifespan.

The problem here in India, when I brought up "WFH is future", all the experienced manager above 10yrs were not happy with idea. Why? Probably because they are paying EMIs for hefty loans they took for buying flats. People like me who are relatively less experienced don't want to take that risk at all. Moreover I intend to move to my hometown permanently. Needless to say, my ideas don't sit well with managers.

I think the other issue is that middle managers see that people working from home barely interact with them, which means that their middle man role is visibly unnecessary. A recipe for getting scared.

Agreed. There’s more focus on output and a lot of management simply produces nothing tangible.

I couldn't agree more. Compared to my previous job at an office, where my manager's role seemed to be to draw developers into pointless arguments he had won beforehand, as a fully remote developer I find myself only interacting with management a couple of times per day on Slack and the odd Zoom call.

But that is about people who don't understand their role as middle management. They should set guidelines and enforce processes so employees that do job think only about working and when they forget about some rules there is management to guide them.

This does not have anything to do with meeting with people f2f, one can use tech tools and maintain policies. Of course having coffee with people all day is easier :)

> middle man role is visibly unnecessary

Yep. One way forward is to move "middle" to other leaf node tasks in organisation. I have restructured a bunch of organisations towards globally distributed remote work since early 2000s. Every time: Unless I have strong investors' support I _MUST_ find a way to get the "middle" excited to move away from traditional management and coordination tasks into other things. Often this is back tech or sales where they originated. If you do it right most are happy and you get great improvements in productivity, staff retention, decision making. Do it wrong and you get mired down or sabotaged.

At my company we recently had an incident related to the recent WFH with a subcontractor in India. He was providing his credentials to another contractor who impersonated him, which is something that he probably would not have tried in the office!

Although maybe he would have tried it, because the impersonator called into meetings and everyone noticed that he sounded completely different (had much better English) and the work was different (less skilled)! If it was me, I would be checking the sub-sub-contractors work and at a minimum calling into meetings myself ;)

Well, there was the guy that outsourced his own job to China [1]:

"The software developer, in his 40s, is thought to have spent his workdays surfing the web, watching cat videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay.

He reportedly paid just a fifth of his six-figure salary to a company based in Shenyang to do his job."

...

"Authentication was no problem. He physically FedExed his RSA [security] token to China so that the third-party contractor could log-in under his credentials during the workday. It would appear that he was working an average nine-to-five work day," he added."

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693

Because a lot of people, the kind that matter politically, don't like to sit and think of concise messages, actions and implications, in fact, don't like deep thought at all, they just like to interrupt, ask stupid questions without doing any basic research first and like others to see them as appearing busy -- that is wasting the time of people who actually do do deep work.

That and socializing, getting away from kids/stressful homes.

> Honestly I would expect it to remain at more than 34%. Who would want to go back to daily commutes of >1h?

I think it's quite a personal thing. I can't wait to be back in an office; I really need to be around people. The last eight months has been a miserable experience.

Mind you, my commute in the before-times was a 15 minute walk.

I'd expect it to remain at more than 34% too, but people are likely reluctant to make that decision this quickly. I'd expect we'll see the number they predict will keep increasing as more people get confidence it works for them, and as they get better at navigating it.

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