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Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

That's a well reasoned comment.

I'm 'of that age' where I have a large-ish house, and hence a large, well equipped study. I don't much like my work office. It's on the top end of 'good': spacious, well equipped, light, modern, free snacks, etc. But... and it's a big but, it's open plan. And noisy. With people eating at their desks, talking, interrupting you and so on.

But I still miss it. The last nine months has taught me that whilst I work fine from home, I thought I'd be completely happy like that, but I'm not. And I'm surprised by that. I want to go back to the office, but not for 9-5, 5 days a week. Once a week will be fine.

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Seems like you don't miss the office, but you miss the social aspect.

A good office would allow you to work in peace when you need to. For a programmer, this would be maybe 50-80% of the time. This is where the monitors and keyboards and chairs are. Personal tools and personal space.

But, there should be enough opportunity to socialize when you feel like it; ranging from sofas and coffee machines and team lunches to pool tables and movie clubs and parties and gardens and tennis courts and dinners and skiing trips or whatever.

Universities tend to be pretty good in this sort of thing, actually. You get a room. With total isolation. You also get a vibrant community of smart people with varying interests and a huge range of activities to pick from.

Most of us aren't hermits, after all. Many programmers living in cubicle hell may think they hate people, but maybe they just hate the interruptions and loosing control of their concentration.

> Seems like you don't miss the office, but you miss the social aspect.

Absolutely. Just being able to chat with colleagues when grabbing a coffee exposes so much more of 'what's going on' than you can ever find out looking at git logs, slack channels and wikis.

I think this hard separation between work areas and social areas in an office would eliminate a lot of the social advantages of the office.

Who wants to be seen as the one always in the social area not working while on the clock? Plus, who would consciously choose to get their socialization from work instead of their personal friends? I think office socialization has to be coincidental or it just won't happen at all.

I think that model works better in university settings because the students have such disjoint schedules, they need those amenities to keep students occupied between classes.

I am not a proponent for hard separation either; I would prefer to have a sofa and a coffee machine and white board in my room and have colleagues stroll in when the door is open. It would not always be open, though.

That "appearing as not working while on the clock" is, to me, a foreign fear, and not something I've ever really experienced at the places I've worked in. I know that I (and the teams I've been part of) have been plenty productive without pressure to put in the hours. I think that a culture of putting in the hours would have been counterproductive, in fact. My work has not been flipping burgers, but designing and creating complex systems. It doesn't work out that well under time pressure.

This comment really resonates with me. The difference for me is that we have an amazing office space, comfortable chairs, big desks and monitors and ample space. But, it's open plan and extremely noisy, with interruptions being frequent. It's not a space that allows deep work. I feel that 1 or 2 days in the office would make for a healthy harmony between work and life. We also really need to rethink working hours.

I completely share the sentiment. But I don’t see a world where companies keep on paying for their office spaces only to have their employees go there once or twice a week.

I do. I think something like this could become a competitive differentiator (smoother collaboration when you need it) and recruiting tool.

I was thinking about this, and I could see it working if they downgrade to a smaller office without permanent seating. Try to figure out roughly what percent of total employees would come in on average.

This is what my company is planning. They plan on having a website where we can schedule office time with an open desk if and when we want or need to go in.

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