Overwhelmingly the developers in my organisation are happy to work remote forever. Deliver people, product people, design people all seem to want to be back in the office. Upper management as well.
You really think that outside of our "hacker news bubble", everyone is *dying* to go back to their offices in SF, to the rat race of getting raises every year to barely keep up with rising housing and general living costs, and never having a hope of buying a house or raising a family, even as senior engineers?
Do you really think the average person prefers that to living in a quiet, zero-crime suburb, in a nice big home, and spending all day every day in the comfort of their home with their family and pets?
> spending all day every day in the comfort of their home
This may sound good to you, it definitely doesn’t sound good to an extrovert. If that was my prospects for the rest of my life, I’d likely shoot myself.
For American workers, most tech hubs are SF or very similar to it, in terms of CoL. SF, LA, Seattle, Manhattan, etc.
> it definitely doesn’t sound good to an extrovert
Engineers tend to be introverted.
There are also lots of people working from 1br apartments who can't wait to work from a space that isn't also their bedroom.
Find a co-working space.
> Heck, there at even people who like SF and city life on its own merits.
Remote work gives you the freedom to work from anywhere. That includes other cities. You can still live in SF if you want, or choose any of the other dozens of cities that provide more benefits for far cheaper costs.
Alternatively, they can work for an employer who has an office and then they don't need to pay for access to a co-working space. Their choice to do so doesn't harm you, they simply value certain aspects of the job differently, much as people value vacation vs raw salary differently.
> That includes other cities. You can still live in SF if you want, or choose any of the other dozens of cities that provide more benefits for far cheaper costs.
Yes, but for the same reason as above, there are enough people who explicitly value the "conventional" office interaction that companies will continue to cater to it. It's often cheaper and more efficient for employees to do so.
I'll also as an aside mention that
> Engineers tend to be introverted.
Is in my experience false. The hn bubble is far more introverted, on average, than my coworkers at a major tech company are. If you are introverted, you may not spend a great amount of time with those people, but i don't think it's controversial to say that the majority of currently employed software engineers don't want to stay in their homes forever.
Working full-time from the office is a condition that was created due to certain historical preconditions. In particular, it was a good fit for industrial work, and indeed the modern urban office environment is rooted in the industrial revolution.
It is not at all necessary in our modern world. If you want to live in a big city and commute to a shared workspace every day, you can do so. However, there are so many other options available, and I dare suggest you shouldn't declare them all inferior before trying them.
Overall, onsite office work binds you to exactly one option, remote work allows you a huge freedom of choice - and that is categorically a positive thing.
No, I'm just unhappy working from home, and greatly miss the office. You don't need to invent a conspiracy theory.
> It is not at all necessary in our modern world
I never said it was. I said that many employees find it preferable. I agree some do not. But you're solution seems to be to ban offices.
> Overall, onsite office work binds you to exactly one option, remote work allows you a huge freedom of choice - and that is categorically a positive thing.
But you're proposing not the option of remote work, but remote only. That does remove choice, the choice to work from my company's office in proximity to my coworkers. I value that.
> However, there are so many other options available, and I dare suggest you shouldn't declare them all inferior before trying them.
I don't think I have. Please stop putting words in my mouth and getting defensive about other people's preferences.
I never suggested "banning offices" (how would that be achieved, exactly?). In fact I specifically presented a model in which voluntary offices / co-working spaces exist for those who want them.
No, you presented "co-working spaces" as a particular form of alternative to offices. Those two things aren't the same, and from your prior comments, it does seem that you find offices to be bad, and want to replace them with co-working spaces. (co-working spaces, at least to my mind, resemble something where I might rent a space and work in proximity to other people, but we all have various employers)
Further, when I stated that I'd likely choose an employer who provided an office, you resorted to calling me naive and implying I have ulterior motives like trying to keep my job, seemingly suggesting that me commenting negatively about offices would cause Google to fire me.
I maintain that up until this post, everything you said supported a remote-only approach, instead of remote-optional, and that's flawed. If that's a misrepresentation of your actual opinion, than you're more than welcome to clarify it, but I'll reiterate that to many, a co-working space is less useful than a dedicated company office, and both are superior to work from home. Hacker News is not broadly representative of opinions on WFH. I realize that as someone who likes work from home you may not enjoy hearing those things, but they're true.
Co-working spaces are already used as "mini offices" by employers who hire remotely. One of my recent offers featured one. It's basically a light-weight, low-cost way for some employers to offer physical offices in many diverse locations. Of course, some co-working places are more about mixing different employers.
> you resorted to calling me naive and implying I have ulterior motives like trying to keep my job, seemingly suggesting that me commenting negatively about offices would cause Google to fire me.
No, what I meant by "cognitive dissonance" is that since you are happy working for an employer who doesn't and won't offer remote work, you would like to believe that this is the best fit for you as well. This is the meaning of cognitive dissonance.
> I maintain that up until this post, everything you said supported a remote-only approach, instead of remote-optional, and that's flawed.
I don't believe a "remote only approach" exists, because if an employer chooses to have a physical office, it's completely outlandish that anyone would try to prevent them from doing that. There's simply no basis, rhyme, or reason to try. Like what you gonna do, make offices illegal? :)
> Hacker News is not broadly representative of opinions on WFH. I realize that as someone who likes work from home you may not enjoy hearing those things, but they're true.
We'll see. I'm not very frequent participant on Hacker News, and I have many real-world friends in the tech industry. I can tell you that many of them preferred working remotely long before the pandemic. In fact it's been a common feature of senior engineers working for startups and small-medium sized companies for years now: they often can and do choose to work remotely, which is generally (though perhaps not universally) considered a major perk that they can afford to demand for sacrificing higher comp at the bigger companies.
Speaking of these bigger companies: they have formed the most major resistance to this trend so far, but we are now seeing some of them - Facebook, Salesforce, Twitter - joining in. We will see how it all plays out, but I'm sure you'll agree that 2020 wasn't a bad year for those who prefer to work remotely.
Finally, let me emphasize again that I'm not trying to force anyone to work remotely. Quite the opposite: I am just hoping for more options for all those who want them.
The meaning of my comments to you earlier was:
1. Even if your company goes remote, you will have options like co-working spaces at the very least.
2. You may be happier with some of these options. For example, working from a co-working space (i.e. a small satellite office) in the town where your family lives, which isn't available to you right now.
That is, I believe more distributed work model can bring more satisfaction to both those who want to work 100% from home, and those who prefer a more traditional office environment. It will certainly be better than the only option available with many big employers right now: move to one of very few tech hubs and work in a huge office.
As for global: global competition has been upon us for decades now. Most big tech companies have foreign offices in countries like India.
Finally, you are mistaken if you believe pay will drop so much. Maybe you won't make the $300k you used to make in SF, but $200k gives you a damn big home and high quality-of-life in most of suburban Texas - especially since you won't have to pay crazy California income taxes.
You also won't have to deal with crime if you can go literally anywhere in the country. There are thousands of small towns and suburbs that have effectively zero crime while not being very expensive. In general, most serious QoL problems disappear once you can choose to live anywhere.
Yes, but employees had to relocate to the Bay Area so companies had to pay that level of salaries. But if people can work from whatever cheap location then why would any company keep paying that much?
> As for global: global competition has been upon us for decades now. Most big tech companies have foreign offices in countries like India.
Sure, and they get paid on Indian levels. I am also not from the US, I work and live in Europe but both my current and previous employers are big American tech companies with HQs in the Bay Area, and guess what they pay here? Standard European salaries that any other local company does. Maybe a couple of percent more, but nothing outstanding, definitely not close to Bay Area level salaries. And that is exactly the point I'm trying to make here: companies adjust the salaries considering the cost of living of the area their employees live in. If you move to a cheaper place, that will definitely have an impact on your salary.
> Finally, you are mistaken if you believe pay will drop so much.
Well, time will tell. I hope you'll be right there.
There are more commuting scenarios that living in the SF (or London or NYC or insert major city here) with a long commute and crazy house prices. I live and work(ed) in a medium size city where a mid-level engineer can afford a decent flat 10-25min walk into the city centre with lots of walkable local community areas and green space. Moving out to a suburbs gives me a bit more space but not much else. It also comes at the expense of being further away from everything and having to drive everywhere. There's a lot of room between everyone in the same dense massive urban areas and everyone going full remote from the suburbs.
Additionally not everyone is settled down with a family. Many of us are still at the stage in life where we're (in normal times) going out, dating, going for drinks, going to events etc. For those of us at this stage the idea of moving to the suburbs is hellish. Sure an extra room would be nice but otherwise it's boring as hell.
What I've not heard discussed enough is the middle ground. If remote and distributed teams start to work better why not distribute teams across more offices in medium sized cities where we can get a trade off between both worlds. Or change the office concept to something where lots of folk work from shared offices. I'd love to go work for a FANG but I'd hate to move to London. If there was an option to work for FANG from my local WeWork office and there was a critical mass of other tech professionals doing the same that might be a good trade off.
Remote works lets you choose where you want to live and work. You can stay in the city if that's your thing, or move to the suburbs.
I don't understand comments that pretend as if remote work is going to force everyone to "work from the suburbs". Remote work is about more choice.
Incidentally, remote work will also make cities more affordable, so folks like you who enjoy them will benefit tremendously.
Remote work doesn't limit your choices, that's what office work does.
Remote work greatly expands your range of options.
> Many of us are still at the stage in life where we're (in normal times) going out, dating, going for drinks, going to events etc.
Areas that are very dense in tech aren't ideal for dating. Tech is male-dominated, so if your preferred partner is female, you will find dating in Silicon Valley quite challenging.
With remote work, you could choose a city that offers better dating prospects.
Yet another win for remote work.
Literally any particular thing you'd like to optimize for: dating, meeting new people, staying near existing family and friends, raising a family of your own - remote work gives you far better and more numerous options.
I mentioned the suburbs because the comparison you setup was suburbs vs expensive city life. I was critiquing the flawed comparison.
> Areas that are very dense in tech aren't ideal for dating. Tech is male-dominated, so if your preferred partner is female, you will find dating in Silicon Valley quite challenging.
I was making the point about expensive cities more generally. Other similar areas such as London and NYC don't have that issue.
There's also the advantages of actually being in an office. Having structure enforced by a physical separation, the social aspect of being in an office etc. Those aren't valuable to everyone but to many they're incredibly valuable.
In the real world, once a company becomes self-sustaining no one with real decision-making power cares about productivity, they care about amassing more power, even at the detriment of the organisation. Those games are infinitely better played in person. I don’t like it any more than you do but that won’t change these facts.
The suburbs only make sense if you're commuting. Who would want to live there otherwise? Not remote enough to be cheap or have real land, not city enough to be a fun place to live. Who would willingly spend all there time in the suburbs?
I do live in the suburbs because it used to offer a convenient commute and have me close enough to still go into town for bars, museums, concerts, etc. But with all that stuff out of the picture, what is the point of this place?