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Comment by anonytrary | Hacker News Reader

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The unfortunate K-12 and college students are learning this the hard way.

Personally, I don't think that remote is here to stay. I think working will be augmented by remote tools, but it cannot be replaced by remote. Humans just aren't robots and they need community, and work is the biggest source of community after college. To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need. It's just not healthy. Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.

This whole thing is becoming evident as people are starting to really just not care for the lockdowns at this point. Parks in SF are a complete shitshow because people want to be out and about. You will never be able to force them to be purely remote, and after covid, if your company is purely remote, you will not attract the best young talent, period. You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.

This whole thing makes no sense.

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I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me.

If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen in person.

I spent the first 10 years of my working life focused on get myself into a position where I could do exactly that. As soon as it was even a little bit feasible to do so, I made the jump and haven't looked back.

It's interesting watching the entire software world get handed young Me's dream on a plate, and seeing so many people wanting their cubicles back.

>If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen in person.

I'd kill for a felt cube.

You can create the illusion of a cubicle through VR goggles. Just download the cubicle app.

I actually hope that VR progresses to a point where one can work in it all day. The idea of having 8 virtual high resolution monitors set in any environment sounds awesome to me (amongst other advantages of VR). Unfortunately VR is still just way too low resolution for this to work today. As well as too uncomfortable to wear for 8 hours a day.

You've put it really well here. I lived in the south bay for a period in my 20s, but man, in no way was living in San Jose and working in a cubicle the social lifestyle that I dreamed of.

Please do not disrespect the cubicles! For people working in open spaces, they are a vision of heaven.

But of course, remote work allows you to choose your own room / cubicle / beach / whatever you like most.

Most people are social. The vast majority of partners come from school or work.

Work is not just work, it's probably also 15-20% of one's life, or more (8+ hours each day for 40+ years).

Amen brother.

My belief is not that people should be free to choose what they want as long as they choose exactly what I want.

I know I will socialize so much more online than in person and the 10-second commute is exquisitely delightful.

The office you describe sounds like a crap office. Comparing a crap office to remote (where it's largely as good or as bad as your decide) isn't really fair. I've previously always worked in lovely offices, with lots of light and quiet spaces, at places where adhoc working from home was common and acceptable (even if we were still office first). Compared to that remote working sucks for me, particularly for the reasons the OP shared.

I've worked at a half dozen companies and I've never worked in an office that wasn't inferior to my home office. Even when I was poor and my home office was my bedroom shared with my wife, that sure beat the interruption farms of big tech office buildings. Nowadays I have a private room where I can keep it quieter than a library or blast music on speakers that beat any headphones and I've got a nicer monitor setup and chair than any company would've given me too. Of course I like commuting to a shared office space for certain kinds of meetings, but most interactions are fine over chat or video call. Needing to be in person is by far the exceptional day, not the rule. I've been cheering the slow normalization of remote work over the past decade and the way the pandemic tipped it over the edge has been a big silver lining to me.

> Comparing a crap office to remote […] isn't really fair.

It's fair for the majority of people who can only get a crap office.

Many peasants wanted to defent their tyranical king, that sort of thing.

You didn't get what OP is saying. The point is not that nobody wants remote work. The point is that today the office is an important part of our social life, and as long as we don't find a replacement people will be willing to go back to the office. Not all the people would want that, not going every day at the office either. But having an office so that you can socialize is today required by a lot of people to be happy in their life

But that is exactly what the article says. It's not going to be all remote all the time, just more than before.

Our survey evidence says that about 25 percent of all full work days will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before.

> and as long as we don't find a replacement people will be willing to go back to the office

Isn't it about time we found a replacement? Why should the thing that gives us a social life, the thing that gives us money, and the thing that gives us a sense of fulfillment all have to be provided by an employer?

I went to a German university and fortunately most universities here still believe that their job is to enable learning and that university is as much about learning to learn and learning to live than it is about the content. In contrast to school this means the motivation has to come from the students and there is no mandatory attendance.

I for one was glad that I didn't have to sit in lectures that I can learn in less than half the time on my own. That I could structure my learning the way it best fits me. This however requires that materials are available in sufficient quality remotely.

Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction, there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs.

Your comment reads like attending in person is the only right way, while I think accepting individualism and providing choice is much better. So if after covid there is the option to work/study in person or from home, whatever fits the individual that day, that would be awesome.

> Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction

Well currently that's the case either way

> there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs.

Yea but you won't meet people there who are into the same field of study as you are.

At Uni you get to meet people who have chosen the same path as you have, often people very much alike you. You are working together on tasks, explain the materials to each other and have lunch together.

You just don't have all that remotely.

Also students usually live in a single room apparent, so it gets really hard to separate study and private live.

I find it much harder to stay focused on a video lecture than on a live one inside a lecture hall. You could also go to the library to learn or work on a project if you want to avoid distractions, this is also not currently possible.

You can separate the socialising and the educational parts of the university experience.

For a large majority of courses I simply did not attend to lectures, it's a lot faster to learn on your own. Yet, I could have gone to the social nights that the CS chapter held every week and mingled if I wanted to.

But yes, the lack of separation of studying and private living in a one room apartment sucked during Covid. Of course, in a regular school year I could just take the subway to my uni or uni library to work there.

The bad parts of the remote experience will go away.

I think I strongly disagree. For one thing if you view the university as trying to train people towards being researchers (or even employment) then collaboration and socialisation matter a lot. For the actual learning I think socialisation with one’s peers (a prerequisite to having good discussions about the subject with them) is crucial because it is the fastest way to get feedback. It also can provide inspiration for alternative approaches, motivation, or a tip to get unstuck. A book, lecture or grade can’t do any of those things. Office hours or other expert feedback from teachers may help somewhat but it’s different from the kind of camaraderie one will develop with fellow students.

GP is right, you don't necessarily need any of that for effective studying. Its very possible to set up the remote equivalents for students learning together (e.g. discord) if this is done well.

Its much harder to establish the social connection, that part is true.

A lot of what you have said is opinion-based and subjective.

> Also students usually live in a single room apparent, so it gets really hard to separate study and private live.

I lived in a single room apartment and found it quite easy to separate study and private life. It was just about self-control and not invite your girlfriend up to your apartment when you're trying to study for exams.

> I find it much harder to stay focused on a video lecture than on a live one inside a lecture hall.

Not for me. It was much easier to focus at home without the guy next to you constantly shifting in his seat. Plus able to pause the video and rewatch the parts that you didn't understand the first time.

In German university I did choose which lectures were worth attending in person (generally those where the professor was more insightful or entertaining than his slides or book alone), but generally attending the lectures wasn't the point. The lectures are the excuse to get people in the same building, get them to occasionally sit close to each other, give them topics to talk about and incentive to do so (when you've spent three hours on your weekly exercise that you have to turn in tomorrow and need help). It's also so much easier socializing if everyone has a valid excuse to drive there anyways; you might as well stay a bit longer avid talk

I feel like you’re disagreeing with a pointlessly weak version of the comment you’re replying to.

It seems a bit like you are describing university as something only about learning and ignoring the social aspects of it. I strongly disagree.

Firstly let me say that what you have written implies that university merely puts you through some lectures (and maybe some exams and gives you a bit of paper at the end), and you complain that you could learn things better yourself. It would be cynical to think that university is just a book but worse yet necessary for the credential and I will assume that this is not what you think.

As universities are different, let me say what teaching mine provided to frame what I will write below. We began with everyone taking the same courses and over later years there was more choice. Teaching was done with lectures, occasional small group workshops, homework, and 1-on-2 sessions going over that homework. Attendance to lectures (or other teaching) was not required although it was encouraged and assessment was done in exams which included questions from all courses so one didn’t need to commit to certain courses in particular.

While self study was important I think the two key things provided by the university were the small group teachings which gave expert feedback, and discussion with one’s peers which provided non-expert feedback, good sources of inspiration and ideas for things to try, and discussions to build a better understanding. I think this aspect would be hardest to replicate remotely.

The other social aspect was also important: unlike school, you’re no longer surrounded by people who don’t really want to be there and it is an environment where people are particularly similar without all having the same goal. If you go to a sports club, social interactions will be mostly dominated by the interest in the sport. I don’t think it’s a good substitute for socialising with students of other subjects at university.

The least important social aspect was going to lectures although I think it provides a more informal setting than a book to see how the sausage is made (or rather to watch it being made on the blackboard in front of you.)

> I feel like you’re disagreeing with a pointlessly weak version of the comment you’re replying to.

No, I'm disagreeing witht the one-sidedness of the GPs comment. I don't disagree that the socialising aspect of university is good for *some* (or to some degree even for everyone). I do disagree that it's something that fits *everyone at all times*.

That is why I finished my comment with the outlook that every student has the option to choose what is best for him/her. Reality is, especially before covid, that remote learning and self-studying had avoidable disadvantages, because it wasn't a first class citizen and I really hope it remains a first class citizen, while in-person studying is still available for everyone who likes to use it.

> It would be cynical to think that university is just a book

I don't think you learn how to learn or how to live from reading a book. I do however think you do that throughout university. You have a certain curriculum, you have certain goals that you chose willingly and you have to figure yourself out how to learn them, but also how to motivate yourself and often also how to go through life without your parents. It's this unstructuredness and self-governance that I really appreciate about university. Once you start working, your life is much more structured and externally motivated than during university.

> unlike school, you’re no longer surrounded by people who don’t really want to be there and it is an environment where people are particularly similar without all having the same goal.

In computer science undergrad I experienced that a lot of my peers were not actually intereted in the engineering, in the building part of things, but that they chose the field because of the career outlook and the money. It wasn't particular interesting to work with them and like another commenter said I also did feel they slowed me down. After the first years I tried my best to choose peers that were interested in the engineering for all group work.

Things aren't black and white. That's also why I said having the opportunity to choose on any given day is great. I'm not arguing against in-person class and socialising. I'm arguing for choice! For opportunities! If someone thinks 2 in-person days at university are enough, in an ideal world he should have the option to self-study remotely the remaining three days and not be forced to be at campus just because some think it's best for him. Figuring out how you work best youself as an individual is an integral part of the experience and if you aren't given enough choice, independence, freedom, you can't really figure that out.

Finally, because of the flexibility my university provided, I was able to work up to 2 full days (legally up to 20 hours, in reality I did like 14-16) per week. Not in some unrelated job, but as a junior/student software engineer building and shipping production products together with senior engineers. So, I could also socialize and learn from more senior peers, while earning some additional money. This was, at least at my university, rather common among the software engineering focused students and in addition to a possible summer internship. This might also not be right for everyone, but it just shows there are a lot of different paths that all can be successful and it highly depends on the individual. Arguing in-person university is best for everyone and that the socialising is indispensable for everyone is missing the point.

I think some people are assuming here that everyone in the university are in the same age and life moment? I went to the university in Germany too and I had some colleagues with kids already and others way over their 30s, that they loved when they could just learn remotely.

> Not attending class doesn't mean you have no human interaction, there are tons of other options for human interaction like sport clubs.

Sure, but the key is like-minded individuals, and it's fun (at least for many people) to be thrown together with hundreds or thousands of other people who are at the same life stage as you.

Sports clubs, and many similar clubs and societies, amongst university students only really work when those students are substantially located in roughly the same geographical location.

You're conflating being in a lecture hall with attending university. Being in lectures is a small part of the whole experience. Much of the rest of that experience relies heavily on being mostly colocated for the academic year.

A really small example: Cambridge University will not be able to continue fielding a top quality rowing squad unless the squad members are all able to train together as a team. It will not be able to recruit new members to its rowing teams to build that top quality squad unless it can bring all those people together.

On the teaching front it's pretty difficult to do a substantial proportion of, e.g., practical physics, chemistry, and biology labs from home or your hall of residence. It's also going to be impossible to meaningfully participate in practical engineering labs, or many of the activities that medical students need to do in order to qualify as doctors.

Even the more practical aspects of the arts and music present serious challenges, and nobody can make me believe that a remote experience in these disciplines will be anything more than second rate.

For some people I'm sure it's fine (Open University and its associated remote learning have after all been available in the UK for decades) but for most people remote university is going to be an extremely impoverished experience. If I were university age now I'd seriously consider deferring until the pandemic is in the past.

> if your company is purely remote

Pure remote companies are likely to be rare. But we may see a proliferation of hybrid companies that maintain office spaces but allow certain roles to work remotely most of the time.

I think your analysis here is one-sided and is ignoring all the major problems with 100%-work-in-office cultures. Housing costs are absolutely out of control in major urban centers, and newcomers are sacrificed at the altar of NIMBYism in order to make existing homeowners/landowners wealthier. People are wasting away commuting hours a day. Folks have been getting crammed into denser and denser open floorplans and bullpens for years.

People are willing to put up with these things when they don't have any other options. But when other companies are investing in supporting hybrid environments and you're stuck still requiring people to relocate to San Francisco permanently, you're going to start losing talent. Not supporting some kind of hybrid remote policy is going to become a serious competitive disadvantage in the talent market. You can still maintain your trendy urban office space to attract the college graduates who want that lifestyle.

I think you may be misinterpreting me. I am not advocating for pure in-person, I am only advocating against pure remote. I believe a hybrid approach is best.

Well, your 2nd paragraph does imply no-remote. Your 3rd paragraph softens the stance.

I agree, hybrid is definitely the best for most companies. Some in-person collaboration and socializing is always going to beneficial, even if rest of the work is done remotely. Having a long commute isn't that bad either if you only do it once or twice a week, so it gives people much more freedom over where they can live.

GitLab seems to be doing ok, and they get together in person only once every 8 or 9 months. Or would you consider that hybrid also?

One off examples don't set the trend. For example, holacracy seems to be working out for Valve but that's about it.

So the question is is GitLab an aberration or ahead of the curve? To me it feels like the latter but I admit I don't have evidence of what the future holds.

Depends what long means. A 2 hour commute each way is still going to be that day you dread even if it's just once a week. What seems a more common scenario in my experience is that people get together for a few days meetings maybe once a month and people who aren't local fly in.

If the meetings are scheduled appropriately, you can commute in and out outside rush hours, which should make it less dreadful. Especially if you are not required to be present for 8 hours on meeting day(s).

> Pure remote companies are likely to be rare

They are, I work for one - it imposes challenges but in aggregate it is a vastly preferable way to work for me.

Interestingly the people who do well 100% remote are quite different to the people who well 100% in office.

Fundamentally the people who communicate the most effectively in written text and can concisely convey their thoughts/opinions do well.

I love it but I can completely understand why some people wouldn't.

Yep, there's no way any young person will want to stick in the Menlo Parks or Palo Altos of the world when there are companies with similar pay that will let them live wherever they want - whether that be dense urban cores, or small towns near national parks.

Frankly, I can't think of a single reason you would want to live in the South Bay. Even if you liked the lifestyle, you could find it in a sunnier suburb near Santa Barbara for a quarter of the price.

The commenter wasn’t talking about all people having to work at the office all of the time, merely that fully remote was not good and not favoured by young engineers. And he was spot on. I’m a young engineer in my 20s and if I don’t get in-person training soon (I started over a year ago and haven’t gotten any since we’ve been remote the entire time), I’m going to quit and go elsewhere. This is in spite of working in the best team of engineers in my city, working on an awesome problem. But I can’t sacrifice my career for their desire to work from home.

The way you put it, it sounds like you're working with the best possible team you can - why would you be sacrificing your career to stay?

Wouldn't it be the other way around? Sacrificing your career for social contact?

Social contact is essential to the development of one's career.

And to be honest, this might be a personal thing, but if a job isn't worth being in person for, then it's not worth pursuing at all. I know I'd much rather be with a few friends hacking projects together for pennies on the dollar than making 200k remote.

> Social contact is essential to the development of one's career.

Agreed, except the biggest movers for my career have been social contacts made outside of work.

People incorrectly keep thinking about remote work only in a pandemic sense. Remote work doesn't mean zero social contact, it means more control over the social contact you have.

Seems like a problem with your team instead of a remove vs non-remote thing.

I'm a young programmer in my 20s and I get plenty of training working remotely.

You’re unlikely to find in-person training anywhere right now, so that would likely be a fool’s errand.

You need to speak with your manager about this. There’s a lot of social contact and training that can be created without being in the office. If you haven’t spoken up and are just stewing about it at home, your team may be oblivious you feel this way.

There’s also no reason to assume you’d have gotten more training in the office. Many teams simply do not invest enough in training and onboarding new engineers. It sounds like you’re new to the industry and possibly haven’t realized this is common yet. The good news is communication can often resolve this to some degree if not fully.

this is spoken like it is true for everyone, which is not accurate. I would have loved to be fully remote in my early 20s, free to travel and not focus purely on work. sure it was great for my career, but work isn't living.

sure, a ton of people hate working from home. some personalities and roles require in-person interaction. most people never considered wfh when choosing their apartment or house and don't have good setups. meanwhile, there are also a ton of people, like me, who have always _hated_ going into the office. being constantly distracted by coworkers, dealing with long commutes, and putting up with uncomfortable and loud offices.

yes, people need social interaction, but that doesn't have to come from coworkers. it is a very SF mindset to build your entire life around your work.. being in the office all day and most of your "friends" are coworkers.

> yes, people need social interaction, but that doesn't have to come from coworkers

Yeah, I think people keep conflating remote work with pandemic remote work. Pandemic remote work sucks. I miss going to coffee shops, 10am Jiu-Jitsu, and going to matinees with friends. I'm ready to get back to pre-pandemic remote work.

Speak for yourself!

When I was young and starting college, I was poor and lived in a semi-rural area. So getting back and forth to all the classes was very difficult. Not to mention I had to work two jobs to support myself at the time.

I would have fucking loved to be able to do my classwork remotely and just hung out with other students as my schedule allowed. Of course it was not an option back then.

I have recently went back to university to advance my degree and it has nearly all been online. Much better! Frankly I met many more people than I did back in the day through the online tools and the fact that the classwork can be flexible around my life, versus the other way around was very convenient!

I can see how this might not work for labs, but for most other classes it seems to be a very viable alternative.

Also, I think you might be surprised about how much value people of any age put on being near other people at the time of learning. It obviously is very valuable to you, but I would expect you will find just as many that couldn't care less about that aspect of it.

> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.

This seems silly. Why would any company prefer workers with less experience.

If anything, I think you’ve got the causation backwards. Hot startups are full of young engineers, because they need to be located in dense metro hubs of talent. These areas heavily skew young, because people with families flee HCoL areas. The competitive advantage of a 25 year old is their willingness to live in a studio apartment.

Now that the we’ve built the technology and culture for fully remote companies, this calculus no longer applies. You can assemble a team of people on a globally unconstrained talent pool. Frankly, there’s no reason to expect a startup filled with 25 year olds to outcompete one with ten times the cumulative experience.

I mostly agree with this, but startups also benefit from people willing to take a lower salary in exchange for equity (or maybe just lower salary in general), and willing to work very long hours. That will always favor young people without families.

> I don't think that remote is here to stay.

I think it is in some shape or form and it will only increase, because it's a more sustainable way of life to not have to travel every day. Remote work means less strain on cities, less traffic on roads, less inflated housing prices in metropolitan areas and so on.

> but it cannot be replaced by remote

In many areas in can be replaced and therefore it will.

> Humans just aren't robots and they need community

Before open plan office jobs in skyscrapers became fashionable people had for thousands of years their community at home, their street or village. You don't have to be a suit wearing slave to make some friends.

> To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need

Agreed. Remote studying is literally just reading a book on your own. Every successful self taught person has gone through that, but because they are intelligent they didn't have to take a student loan for it. They only paid a few quid to Amazon to buy a bunch of books.

University is massively overrated anyways. It's not needed for the vast majority of bullshit jobs nowadays. It just serves as a mean of class segregation to identify rich people from poor when giving them a job.

> Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.

You can do this anywhere. I have worked remotely for a while now and I visit a lot of co-working spaces which are closer located to where I live. I don't have to slave myself through the rush hour commute into a densely overpopulated crammed city centre to please a master. I can get to a nice co-working space close to home at a leisurely pace without stress and still meet people, have interesting chats over lunch and make friends, be productive and get motivated in an environment. But I choose when to go there based on my personal needs. Some days I want to WFH because I need more headspace, or because I'm tired from a long day before and needed that extra half an hour sleep, or because I want to sort out an errand during the day without having to stress myself. Remote is the future for all jobs which can.

> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.

A lot of the things you say make sense, but this sounds ridiculous to me. Why would you only want young talent? How about older talent?

Skill isn’t age specific.

I think we are misunderstanding. I never implied you don't need both. I just implied that you will most likely not have the latter. You need both, obviously.

Why is it obvious that you need both? Plenty of companies seem to be ageist and surviving well

> How about older talent?

Just guessing: older talent is less willing to work overtime and weekends, because they have a family waiting for them at home?

I used to think this, but now that I'm older and don't have kids waiting at home, I don't think it's the real reason. Older talent is simply harder to bullshit. Older talent also tends to have a bit of savings, so they are harder to push around.

> This whole thing makes no sense.

I this is highly subjective and depends on how social you are, how much of an outlier you are in cognitive ability or interest and on what kind of social environments you have physical access to. If you are “middle of the pack” in all these aspects then sure, remote first doesn’t make sense.

On the other take me as an example: I enjoy working with other people face to face, but I’m extremely picky in terms of sparring partners. Most people just slow me down. Some are even offended, probably because they feel a bit intellectually inferior when I get going, leading to unnecessary conflict. I’ve been looking for people with similar cognitive style and interests in my physical surroundings for 20 years, and I’ve only found a handful. They are eccentrics, often in high demand and not easy to collaborate with.

There are of course physical environments where I would not be an outlier, or where I would even struggle to keep up. I’m not Terrence Tao. But I don’t have access to those environments.

From this perspective remote first makes a lot of sense. And while I am a bit older now I don’t think it would have been much different in my 20-ties.

> I this is highly subjective and depends on how social you are

I am incredibly anti-social. I can't stand working from home.

It's not coming from Stanford. It's coming from three economists -- Barrero, Bloom, and Davis -- only one of whom is at Stanford, Bloom. Barrero is at ITAM in Mexico, and Davis is at Chicago (he does have an affiliation with Hoover).

It should go without saying that a single professor does not speak for Stanford, or vice versa. For all we know everyone else at Stanford thinks Bloom is an idiot.

I've been almost permanently WFH since April, with a few weeks back in the office during summer when the incidence rate was lower, then back to WFH when the second wave hit.

I enjoy not having to commute, but I absolutely miss the banter across the desks and lunch conversations.

I would absolutely like to keep 2-3 weekly WFH days in the future, which would also give me more flexibility in where I choose to live, I really want to move farther from the city and closer to nature. A longer commute would be acceptable if I didn't have to do it every day.

One negative is that such a hybrid mode still ties you to a location, albeit more loosely. Being able to travel and live in arbitrary (often cheaper) places is a benefit of pure remote work that many people seem to enjoy.

I know a lot of people want that nomad lifestyle, but that's not for me. Both my girlfriend and I have moved a lot during our educations and work histories, we would like somewhere to grow roots, have a vegetable garden, invite friends for barbecues, that sort of thing.

Upholding a nomad lifestyle means it's very hard to establish and maintain friendships and we've both had to completely abandon several circles of friends over the years, due to moving. That's not something I enjoy.

2-3 days commuting per week, you still probably don't want a 2 hr. each way commute. Even 1 day per week that ends up being a day you sort of dread.

That said a 1.5 to 2 hour commute once a week is doable but that still only gets you to a closer to nature location. It doesn't really give you the option to live in a different cheaper city if that's what you want--which is what many people (not myself) are looking for rather than a rural house.

A 2 hour each way commute is definitely excessive. Luckily the distances here are not as great as for instance in the US, so my colleague who lives in a town perceived as "far away" from the city has a ~1 hour commute by car. For comparison, I live 6km away from work (well within good public transit coverage) and it takes me around 35 minutes by bus.

As a downside to distances being generally shorter, we also don't have the same vast impressive swathes of nature that the US and Canada do, plus historically we cut down most of our forests to maintain an impressive navy. However we do have some forests left and plenty of coastline, no part of the country is more than 50km from the coast, there is still plentiful natural beauty to admire.

So it is possible to live closer to nature here, while still being not too far away from the city. In the long run, I may also want to get out of IT and do something less stressful and more "real", but that's something I'm still weighing the pros and cons of. There is also the consideration that by living in the city, I have very easy access to events and dining experiences, which is something I do still value, even if the pandemic has made all of that seem like the distant past.

One thing I do know is that I'm not interested in suburbia. It's either apartment living or close to nature, I'm not interested in the small identical plots of land, cookie cutter communities, HOAs, any of that stuff. I want my neighbors either on the other side of a wall or more than a stone's throw away :-)

>It's either apartment living or close to nature

I actually agree with you. I grew up in what, at least at the time, would probably properly be called ex-urban and live somewhere similar today (on 5 acres next neighbors with a lot more land as well as conservation land but within a few miles of plenty of stores, etc.).

I've never had much interest in classical suburbia but I do like cities--at least to visit.

2 hours gets you way out of even most Northeastern US cities. I'm about 90 minutes to get into Boston at rush hour if I time it right and less in the evening. I've actually commuted into the city--I also have a pretty convenient commuter rail--for some days for about a year and a half. It wouldn't have been sustainable long-term though.

I don't think lumping together university/college education with professional setup will yield useful results. Everything about them are vastly different. Situations in life, demography, support system, primary goals, to name a few.

Just to pick on one aspect; tools. Remote work tools are geared towards many-to-many collaborative activities. Whereas remote learning is primarily a one-to-many activity. Of course you have supporting TAs but still, it's about a very small set of people dispensing information/learning to a very large group students.

At the campus, the physical presence naturally fosters a whole range of interactions besides classroom learning, as you rightly pointed out. Replicating that is just impossible online.

Professional activities, however, is comparatively easier to replicate online, going by the evidence of how companies were able to go full remote just with a few day's notice. Uber, for instance, went full with just one day's notice. I was expecting a massive productivity drop. To my surprise, my team (I was a manager there) actually began shipping more features during full remote. Sure, it took ~2 weeks for us to find a rhythm but that's to be expected.

All this to say, I completely agree with you w.r.t. online education. It's been a shitshow. Education is so much more than just learning. But please don't extend that argument to the professional life. From what I've seen, remote work is here to stay, at least I hope it does. People in India have been working from their home towns instead of being stuck in expensive and shitty urban jungles. It'll spur the much needed growth of tier-2/3 cities in India.

You want young talent and you also want older talent.

Mixing remote and non-remote cultures is hard but if done right it will outperform any of the two extremes you pick.

> Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.

I dont if you have ever been in uni but in my time it was all about putting 200 students in huge amphitheaters with one lecturer not caring at all about their audience. It has to be the worst way to learn anything.

For me at least, university, at the end of the day, had very little to do with going to lectures.

> Remote college isn't a thing and never will be

Is so wrong as "Remote working isn't a thing and never will be"

There are a lot of people that are interested in Remote studing. Sure it's not for everyone, sure not always 100% of the time, but I guess it would work pretty well and I personally would love to see "Remote college" becoming a thing.

It hard to see the greatness in having someone else impose who your friends should be and where you should sit for about 50% of your awaken hours.

Then we have the added stress from places with open space/cubicle with poor sound isolation, people walking behind you, and constant interruption for which you have zero control over. Young 20-something Me could only really manage that with a corner chair and with headphones that blasted music so loud that people on the other side of the room complained.

I could however imagine a situation where I would enjoy the situation if given enough changes. If I were the group leader and decided who I worked with then the first problem goes mostly away. If the work I did was mostly social then the problem of noises and interruptions goes mostly away, and I might even want it to be a open space plan so I can walk around and stand behind my employees and check what they are doing. Doing that remotely would be much harder.

Being locked down and not about to go out and working remotely are two different things. They just happen to be coincident at this time.

Also, I am sure that Stanford online is disappointing compared to in person. But there are ways to improve the social aspects with software. The particular configuration of the software and how it's used will make a huge difference in the types or amount of online social interactions.

For example, if you want you can create a virtual dorm room in Gary's Mod or Rec Room VR and get your friends to log into it at lunch and dinner. But the fact that they aren't forced to interact with you because they are physically in the same space does not seem like it should be the only factor.

Maybe good idea would be to have a community decoupled from business?

In any case, you could still have offices as a place for people meeting face2face and do the most "thinking" or "creative" work at home, it's not mutually exclusive.

This isn’t “coming from Stanford”. It’s a paper written by three researchers, one of whom is on the faculty at Stanford. But that person doesn’t speak for Stanford and has nothing to do with Stanford’s policies in re COVID.

If I was a college student during covid, I would opt for that year off. I totally agree with you that college is a social experience.

In terms of work, however, I think it depends on the organization and people's stage of life. If you already have a family, then WFH is much better to me and worth the tradeoff. Imagine being able to spend 2-3 hours with your young kid everyday at the cost of less face time with your coworkers.

I learned more about working independently from reading linux manuals and irc chats after high school than in 12 years of school or 5 years of college.

I think the headline on this link is misleading. It only says that people will now work from home 25 % of the time instead of 5 %. A pretty uncontroversial view imo. It’s not talking about full remote.

Indeed, cubicles make no sense. Being able to work remotely is a competitive advantage and those for whom the physical office is a must will have to fight hard for it.

It is perfectly logical if your thinking is conspiratory, but on HN only logical thinking is allowed, so it really makes no sense.

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