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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

Is that surprising? There is little value in taking on the risk of infection (and resulting bad PR and work disruption) given that you can maintain your operations with remote workers ... especially given the fact that if you wait just a few more months, your staff will be vaccinated.

> Box Inc said its reopening is still scheduled for September.

That's probably the most reasonable timeline for tech workers. And even then, we'll probably see tepid support for that. Things aren't going to go back to normal in 2021.

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Why do we need offices again? Best time ever to make full switch to remote

Because humans are social animals, and many of us enjoy interacting with IRL coworkers. It also allows much creativity and has various other benefits, both with your work - and with your mental well being.

I guess I've learned since the pandemic and finding a new job during pandemic that being at the office wasn't as fulfilling as I once thought it was and that those social interactions were rather fake/short lived and the bursts of creativity I did enjoy were destroyed by upper management deciding everything we did would be thrown out for something new.

What I want is not another day sitting in a god forsaken office after sitting in crappy traffic but rather the ability to go have a coffee, grab some lunch or just hang out and "Talk shop" with people regardless of being direct co-workers, friends, peers and whatnot. Those are the kinds of people who called me, messaged me and asked me how I was doing. THe only other former co-workers who keep up with me are ones who quit and found new jobs too - it's like since we're not still suffering we're no longer friends and all too often we see that as fulfilling social interactions without question.

I guess with hindsight I actually see the "office" as anti-social - it creates bad/poor behaviors, people find solace in common suffering and 9 times out of 10 all of my co-workers were actually dicks who only showed up to work to avoid their unhealthy home life and again, with hindsight, I see they tried making me ancillary to their unhealth work life too.

hard to explain it in a small text box, but I guess i just see the office environment as extremely fake, demoralizing and depressing - even though i've had some great memories through it - i'd rather not be captive to sitting in a cubicle chair and actually develop much more rewarding, enriching and valuable experiences that translate to more productivity and creativity in the end.

Often times i don't even get to choose my co-workers and if I did, those teams are often short lived and i think that corporate disruption to things that matter on a human to human level is something we're refusing to challenge/change because "it is the way it is". I get thrown on a new team, and its not new friends, it's now colleagues to suffer with and build empty relationships.

I second your whole post.

To try and empathize with a lot of the people bemoaning WFH, I believe they are just suffering from quarantines in general. I truly believe many of them would do fine if they could WFH 100%, but be able to go out with friends on weeknights and weekends.

You are absolutely right that the office is a pisspoor substitute for real comraderie, and I wish people would stop conflating the two.

I sympathize with the people who hate WFH but I think sometimes their sentiments towards WFF are slightly misplaced. They confuse "general quarantine", "kids doing school from home", "no good work/office area", and/or "unresolved issues with partner/husband/wife/etc" with WFH.

Personally I love working from home. It gives me a lot more flexibility, I have no commute, I have my dog with me, I can cook lunch or prep for dinner, I can do small chores on a break or to clear my head, I can take my dog on a walk, and the list goes on. That said I don't have kids and I have a home office. I was also fortunate to start WFH about 5 months before COVID hit so I was able to go out with friends and what not which totally satisfied my social needs, proving to me that any added stress while working from home now is caused by things other than WFH itself.

When I used to work in an office there were a number of people that were difficult to deal with and/or annoying to put up with. While I didn't go full WFH at that job I did get to the point where I was working 2 days a week from home and those days were glorious. Being able to pick who you are actual friends with (verses being forced in pretending to be nice to some truly toxic people) is so much nicer. I am friends with a handful of people at my new (WFH) company but that's because we both wanted to be friends and went out of our way to build the friendship not because we were forced to work together.

My hope is that people don't "throw the baby out with the bathwater" when this is all over and there is a choice of WFH or going back to the office. That said, it's not be for everyone/every job but one silver lining of this terrible last year has been a number of my staunchly anti-WFH friends talk about how much they have enjoyed it and how they want to continue it at least for part of the week if not fully.

I will probably work for 50 years (~20 -> ~70).

About 11 months a year (~1 month for holidays). Around 160 hours a month. So 1760 hours a year. And about 88k hours over my entire lifetime.

That works out to <<10 full years>> of my lifetime.

If I'm not socializing at work, albeit a bit constrained by the professional environment, something is super wrong. Restricting socialization strictly to weeknights and weekends seems... super radical to me.

Oh, this isn't about sitting at home in isolation like we are doing during covid, this is about being out with people who actually care to have a healthy relationship. Working with people who inspire creativity, challenge your assumptions and actually get to know you as a person - things that are often difficult with direct peers because of corporate policies, competition for positions, hierarchy and career status nonsense...

I think your math actually suggests our way of life is actually extremely unhealthy with the assumption we should develop social systems at our places of employment that absolutely don't exist for any such activity.

We need those relationships - but the office way of work certainly isn't a healthy way to achieve them. People get fired, laid of, move to new orgs, get moved around, corporate policy is dictated from top down without regard to human experiences but rather bottom dollar value line.

Not saying it can't be done - but again - think back on all your working years - were many of your work relationships meaningful or just convenient? Do they know your family? kids? spouse? significant other? Do they wish you a happy birthday? did they call you during covid to see how your doing?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26574000

Working hours taking up so much of our life is an orthogonal, but not totally unrelated issue.

As with complaints against "working from home", I get the feeling that proponents of work socializing recognize there's a problem, but they have mis-identified the root cause.

> Working hours taking up so much of our life is an orthogonal, but not totally unrelated issue.

Well, we can complain about it, but it's a fact of life. It's almost like complaining that gravity drags us down :-)

Plus, for a lot of people does give them... something to do. A purpose, an activity, a place where they can use their skills and use their intellect.

It's hard to do this alone if everyone else is working. I guess you could try mingling with the rich people and join charities?

Admittedly, my views on this come from the limits of my own experience - as someone who writes (and sometimes rights) software, I highly prize uninterrupted time in flow. I suppose writing and other such similar pursuits would work very well on an work environment that was isolated.

But I do try to exercise my empathy and recognize for some endeavors it's is useful to collaborate. I just wish that people wouldn't attribute intrinsic necessity of physically close collaboration where it is not warranted.

My purpose or activity, even after I'm financially independent will be writing software, something I can do without having to be in close contact with people I am working with, and I in fact am much more productive when I'm not.

And honestly, even at 40 hours a week, I still have a lot of time in which I've formed my best social relationships. My coworkers are nice people, I just have shockingly little in common with them outside of work.

Maybe try part-time at a co-working space. You get some company a few days a week, but if it turns out you hate the group, moving is easier than at your employer's office.

I've worked in shared offices for 20+ years and have made a lot of long-term friends through them.

Offices make me spend 4+ extra hours a day on work with 0 benefit. That's 20 hours/week I could be spending with my wife & cats, caring for my home, developing skills and software that makes me money instead of some corporation.

That's an entire mini-lifetime I'd be giving my employer. And I don't think I ever will have to - I can force myself to be remote the rest of my working life. And that mini-lifetime is mine..and that's priceless.

I've had 1 or 2 coworkers out of hundreds I became any level of "friends" with, and the closest of whom I didn't even work directly with. Actually, one of the coworkers I'm friends with, I met in a remote team with us living across the country from each other.

I am glad that is your experience.There is no single answer for all people. I think you as an employee are making a wise choice. If you can get paid a full salary for 20 hours of work, it is in your best interest to keep that alive!

As a business owner, I am not sure you would hire on the same axis. I would personally not hire someone that can only work for 20 hours a week, there is too much to do.

I've worked at many remote companies by now. None have asked how many hours they're getting out of me. And they all got more or less the amount of time mentioned. And they were all plenty happy with my output!

Why would they care if the output was the result of fewer hours? If they wanted to pay me by the hour, they could have negotiated that.

At-will salaried employment cuts both ways :) and in this case, everyone is happy. Anyone wanting more hours out of me is just trying to exploit my labor. I'm already getting paid fair value for what I'm producing.

>As a business owner, I am not sure you would hire on the same axis

If you are hiring salaried individuals on the basis on how many hours they put in a week, then you might be focusing on the wrong metrics. There were plenty of people in tech doing 20 hours of work a week, and spending the remaining 20 hours on hacker news.

I bemoan WFH, but not because of work output.

> As a business owner, I am not sure you would hire on the same axis. I would personally not hire someone that can only work for 20 hours a week, there is too much to do.

When you're hiring make this known so people can do their own filtering on their end, as well.

Yup, we make it known. Plenty of companies in the world that you can coast at, it can’t be a company with <5 developers fighting well funded competitors.

This is only true if you assume 40 hours a week produces better software than 20 hours a week. I’ve not found that to be the case. Software productivity is in large part a function of developer happiness. Plenty of people are happier and more productive with less hours. That’s not even getting into burnout and cost of replacing people.

I get the feeling they were talking about the commute/lunch/break overhead not slagging off for an extra 20 hours per week because they weren’t supervised.

I know I get a lot of benefit from not commuting, from being able to make a healthy lunch out of my fridge & from doing laundry when I would have been walking to the coffee shop.

If anything I “work” more remote than I ever did in the office.

The issue is that almost no workplace in the US is going to work like this knowingly for salaried employees. I really doubt your current workplace is okay with you working 20hrs/week, you just likely don’t tell them that’s the case.

Maybe consider contracting instead?

Just because you haven’t made friends doesn’t mean the rest of us haven’t. On top of this, work friendships can just be that. Work friendships. Ones that last as long as you’re at that job, not all of them have to go outside of it. And that’s okay.

Why contract when I can work as if I'm full-time & salaried (with benefits) for 5+ years? Just seems like added risk and a lower effective wage to me.

Also - it's springtime which means it's review season - the results are in and the entity paying me for my output is very happy with my output!

As someone who was suffering from serious cabin fever last April, I can now say that I would find it quite annoying to be asked to go to an office full time again.

The option to go as I please (which would probably average one or two days a week) would be excellent, though!

we, small enterprise software company, have opened the office under that model. What is happening is that some people have refused to return, myself included, some are doing the official 2 days a week, and others are going back full time. The office actually opened up last year, right after the first NYC fizzled out. There have been a few week long shutdowns of the entire office as some are found to have COVID-19.

My general thoughts are that there are a few people that got strong armed into returning, but most that are back in the office are happy to be there.

Thats what you want to believe. In reality after 6 months plus of full remote work most people dont want to step in the office again at least nowhere near full time. We see this in every 1:1 conversation.

For software developers...

I think people who "enjoy interacting with IRL coworkers" should absolutely be allowed to return to their offices, but don't force people who work better from home or have four hour commutes (like me) to come back too.

Some people have been really struggling with WFH and just can't make it work well for them, and they understandably want to get back to the office. That's great, and they should do it! But why not also let people who have been thriving under WFH continue to do it?

All the same can be said for wfh. I can socialize with people I want to socialize with, not those I have to socialize with. I have freedom, no commute, no open office, no manager dropping in on me...

I have extensive experience managing and working remote and non-remote and I've never seen any benefit to non-remote work. Productivity and creativity are higher with wfh and stress and burnout are way lower.

I'd probably prefer full-time WFH over full-time office 9-5, but I agree there is definitely a benefit to spending 1-2 days per week in the office. I'm hoping some more jobs with that sort of format will come out of this too.

I asked this very question in my 1st year of fully remote working. By the 7th year the answer was very clear in my head, so I went back to the office. Two years later COVID happened and now I'm stuck at home again.

It took me a few years to realize the effects of loneliness and the lack of social interaction.

But I do have one extra point: if work is fully remote (i.e., every employee is remote) things work much much better than when only part of the team is remote. You need to at least make sure your manager is also fully remote.

Human beings didn’t evolve to spend 100% of their time staring into a webcam, only interacting over Zoom. Remote is great and should be part of the solution, but sometimes, you just can’t beat face-to-face.

Human beings didn't evolve to sit in a chair at a desk for 6+ hours daily. What's your point?

Well we did evolve big buttocks (bigger than other primates) that are apparently useful for sitting for extended periods of time.

I'm not sure what you mean. In people who sit for long periods of time the gluteus mucles (buttocks) become atrophied. Do you mean the ass fat is useful for sitting?

Maybe you're just making a joke and I'm not getting it.

It's likely more to support walking (and running) on two legs for extended periods of time.

When we work we dont spend all our time in zoom meetings. Do you?

Guess what, human as like any other organism can adapt to their changing environment. Basic evolution biology.

Whiteboards, space, and low ping communication.

sharetheboard.com -- here's an excuse to scratch whiteboards off your list. or... to use them more :)

Alright well how do I hand the marker to a coworker so they can append to my image? Do I need to set up a projector or something?

Forget the fact that I don't have the space for a whiteboard in my home to begin with...

Excellent questions and astute predictions of what's in store on the roadmap. :)

Very soon we will be adding viewer annotations (ability for remote viewers to add content/comments on your board). As you're facing your laptop during your remote presentation anyway, we've found that this works reasonably well. The augmented reality approach (via smart glasses or synchronized projectors) is also on the map but getting the timing right is much trickier. The UX of it is nothing short of magic but the market for people with glasses or synchronized projectors is fragmented.

As for your last note: you don't need a whiteboard! Flipcharts or electrostatic sheets are cost/space-effective alternatives. Also, you can simply point your camera at your notebook and scribble away. Indeed, many of us do this, it's very natural (though, admittedly, we're still getting some kinks out).

Especially because they gave us long timeframes (my Silicon Valley company announced "no return to office requirement until September 2021" last summer sometime) in order to give us all the ability to make longer-term plans, rather than always wondering "Will it be this month?

Its nothing to do with the risk from covid because its minuscule, its more of does it actually make sense to work in the office? For many tech worker, there is little benefit of actual office space.

>Its nothing to do with the risk from covid

Huh? The reason why offices of big tech companies are closed is SOLELY due to covid.

if it because of covid then it doesn't make sense because the risk are so small.

You don't believe the risk of spreading covid is small in an enclosed space? Especially when so many of us now work in open floor plans?

My first job in an open floor plan (really a trading floor setup), we would literally watch colds and other ailments work their way up and down the rows each winter.

The risk of spreading itself its not small. The risk of one actually die from covid is really small.

I would be fine in the office in closed space with other people if it make sense for my work, regardless of covid.

Its not just about death with Covid- one of my coworkers- who on the brief times he came to the office since this started last March- wore a mask at all times, even at his desk- caught covid in early November. He is a long hauler and now has what appears to be chronic leg pains that he goes to doctors weekly for to get properly diagnosed. This is a guy in his 20s.

If a "really small risk" is 545k people dead in a year in the US, even with all the precautions we have taken, I think we fundamentally disagree on what a really small risk is. There are now more dead from Covid in a year than the entire durations of both World Wars combined and in about a month or so, we can lump in Vietnam in there as well.

That show mask is not effective.

And his case, although is very possible, also need further investigation, is it really because the covid?

The number of death is highly inflated, that number include every case remotely related to covid. Also the US population has increased considerably compared back to word war.

Also lockdown can cause death too.

How does this disprove that masks are not effective? There was almost zero influenza this year as well: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm How do you have any idea what the numbers would have been without masks or the measures that were taken? I can tell you about a year ago to the day there were ambulances outside my house every 3 minutes or so, just outside Manhattan.

He was 100% fine before covid, then all of a sudden has chronic leg pains directly after which seem very consistent with blood clotting and nerve issues that covid causes?

The excess deaths from all causes was up sharply in 2020, and correlates exactly with the start of the pandemic in 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores (remove the default countries, and just add the US- you will see an exact overlay with covid cases and deaths). How do you justify your claim?

You are being willfully ignorant, though I am glad you clearly haven't had this affect you in any way. I have two close friends that have lost parents to Covid.

you mentioned that your coworkers still caught covid despite wore mask at all times.

so mask only work with influenza ?

>He was 100% fine before covid, then all of a sudden has chronic leg pains directly after which seem very consistent with blood clotting and nerve issues that covid causes?

Could still be coincide with something else. Even if it covid that caused that, still need to how how prevalent this is. I know friends that got covid but recover fully.

>The excess deaths from all causes was up sharply in 2020, and correlates exactly with the start of the pandemic in 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores (remove the default countries, and just add the US- you will see an exact overlay with covid cases and deaths). How do you justify your claim?

The lockdown also corelates with the start of the pandemic, how do u know its not caused by the lockdown ?

In the place that don't implement lockdown, the death chart look similar, how do u know if lockdown work ?

And by the way, death is not the only metric to go by.

Lets say you can reduce death number but in order to do that you increase misery, that would be suck, I certainly don't want that.

>You are being willfully ignorant, though I am glad you clearly haven't had this affect you in any way. I have two close friends that have lost parents to Covid.

I'm not blindly against lockdown, I'm againts lockdown because it doesn't make sense. It caused problem greater than the virus itself.

The lockdown has certainly affect me. I too have friends that suffer from the lockdown.

> you mentioned that your coworkers still caught covid despite wore mask at all times.

No claim was ever made that they are 100% effective. Vaccines are not 100% effective either, this does not mean they are ineffective.

> Could still be coincide with something else. Even if it covid that caused that, still need to how how prevalent this is.

Willfully ignorant.

> The lockdown also corelates with the start of the pandemic, how do u know its not caused by the lockdown ?

Because lifting restrictions is directly related to increases in cases, which is then directly correlated to the number of deaths? Willfully ignorant.

> I'm not blindly against lockdown, I'm againts lockdown because it doesn't make sense. It caused problem greater than the virus itself

We might agree that there may be more effective ways to keep people separated than a full blown lockdown, balancing health concerns with people's needs, but at the time, it was the best tool in the toolbox- and outside the US worked well- New Zealand, for example, which is pretty much back to normal these days after a duration much closer to the first time period.

As for your last statement, you are certainly implying that your own inconvenience is far more damaging than the lives of others. You don't want to wear a mask, you won't stay home, you... just want to let the people die and let the chips fall where they may. All the while claiming that lockdowns are ineffective while in your other posts admitting you didn't follow them [1][2]. "The thing doesn't work even though I didn't do it and I am fully aware it requires everyone's compliance to be effective." Sounds like you are ready to run for office as a Republican.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817123 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24191298

>Because lifting restrictions is directly related to increases in cases, which is then directly correlated to the number of deaths? Willfully ignorant.

Correlation != Causation. Willfully ignorant.

>We might agree that there may be more effective ways to keep people separated than a full blown lockdown, balancing health concerns with people's needs, but at the time, it was the best tool in the toolbox- and outside the US worked well- New Zealand, for example, which is pretty much back to normal these days after a duration much closer to the first time period.

South dakota, sweeden don't have lockdown and they pretty much normal all these times. Florida has short lockdown, but they realized their mistake and quickly lifted it. They are normal too.

>you are certainly implying that your own inconvenience is far more damaging than the lives of others. '

No, lockdown affect a lot of people, not just me and its just not merely inconvenience.

> just want to let the people die and let the chips fall where they may

No, I never said that. I support reducing/preventing death as much as we possibly can, but trying to do so with causing so much damage that is bigger than the virus itself, I can't support.

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