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Comment by colmvp | Hacker News Reader

> A survey late last year of 9,000 knowledge workers commissioned by workplace chat software company Slack found 20% want to work remotely, 17% in the office and 63% a mix of the two.

That's pretty much where I'm at. I like the idea of hopping into the office maybe once or twice a week to interact with my co-workers, but otherwise I'm extremely productive at home especially without having to endure the 1-2 hours commute.

I joined a company last last year and they moved to this hybrid model once they found there was practically no efficiency loss with respect to moving everyone to remote. But some people still missed going into the office so they re-opened their physical offices albeit at limited capacity.

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One note I have about numbers like these...

Is the question phrased in a way that distinguishes between "working remotely as you have during COVID times" vs. "working remotely post-COVID"

I think it's important to distinguish that in the mind of the responder. At the very least, get people thinking in terms of "What would WFH be like if the kids were at school much of the day?" or "What would WFH be like if we could meet with friends at 17:30?" or whatever.

What we've experienced over the last year is far less social, and far more stressful than what WFH could be.

Personally, I'd like to WFH most of the time, with sprint & release planning sessions in person.

For me, it probably depends on if I have the option to go to a cafe and how nice my home office is. Right now, I'm stuck in my bedroom basically 24 hours a day because I have roommates (1 of which also works from home) and don't have room to move outside of my bedroom. This is extremely depressing. I absolutely hate it and I'd say I'm probably operating at 60% productivity or less and have been for most of the last year. But, I'm moving in May and will at least have my desk not in my bedroom. Even then, I'd rather be in person for most meetings. I think it's extremely important to have face-to-face communication the majority of the time both for social reasons, but also because it's just more efficient. Understanding on what the team is doing over the last year has dropped significantly as well, and the (remote) barriers to communication are real and have a larger than I think people realize impact.

So you want other people to go to the office to deliver your preference for face to face meetings?

Your company has to pay for desk space and for meeting space?

> So you want other people to go to the office to deliver your preference for face to face meetings?

Yes, I think that's an entirely reasonable expectation to be the norm. It's what was the norm/expectation when I started and I do not see a reason that should change. My boss has said that it will most likely be the expectation once it's safe to return to the office, so I am not alone.

> Your company has to pay for desk space and for meeting space?

Yes, actually. They aren't paying for my home office and it wasn't an expectation in the original employment contract. Further, we work with specialized scientific hardware. We need the space anyway.

I've been WFH for a few years and liked it. I did not like it because of the COVID baggage:

* At home schooling * More people needing help at odd hours (nights/weekends) * Lots of normally well adjusted folks stressed/angry about minor things

That and there was a lot of corporate "make sure to take time for yourself" and "be realistic about schedules", however there were clearly roles/orgs where that was not an option.

This is mostly how I feel as well. However, I wonder how well the hybrid office thing will work out in practice.

Specifically, if you’re in the 63% of people who want to “pop into the office sometimes,” and you come in on some random Tuesday.... is anyone else even there?

It seems like the probability of seeing the people you want to see by chance (when 83% are either always or usually remote) is very low.

So my guess is that for the hybrid thing to still have the social aspect of office work it probably needs to be paired with a policy like “we all come to work on Tuesdays.” But if you do that then the all-remote crowd isn’t getting what they want (they still need to live in travel range if they have to be in the office once a week).

So the alternative is to do something more like “we all come to the office for one week every quarter,” and in that case it’s more of a company retreat than normal work.

So as I said, I’m curious how things will unfold as life opens back up.

My best guess is we’ll end up converging on 2-4 different archetypical models which will become part of a company’s identity and recruiting pitch, and people will self select into the work style they prefer.

I think many (most) places will return to in-office by default with a permissive WFH system, so you can choose to WFH on any given day with no/minimal notice. Places that are remote first by default - a category which will continue growing - will have minimal to no in-office component.

I went through the process before covid.

Your personal desks go away replaced with work stations / long tables where anyone can dock. It become more like a school libruary where everyone is working on different things .

Then you have these community meetings every few months where everyone comes in for a meeting but there are not enough work stations so everyone just hangs around until people trickle home.

Honestly that sounds amazing. Just to be able to run around and get appointments or errands done during the day avoiding traffic and work a little longer at home has been a godsend.

My employer is talking about having a core set of days where everyone is onsite and then a few days where you can wfh. I like that, it avoids losing my desk and wondering if someone is in on a certain day.

You have a desk. That’s rare. Pre covid it was first come first served hotdesking. If you were lucky you got a desk.

My work are now looking at getting rid of a load of desks because they are expensive and unproductive.

Far better to spend the money on free beer for collaboration days.

> (they still need to live in travel range if they have to be in the office once a week).

True, but I think that range expands significantly if one comes in only once a week. Living 2 or more hours away might become reasonable, and even getting a hotel room once a week can easily pay for itself when taking into account housing costs.

Exactly right.

I wish more companies were talking about the "we all work from the same place for a week or two" per quarter. It gives almost all of the flexibility of working remote along with much of the benefit of being in person. Plus as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

A few days per week in the office is the worst of both systems. Some remote workers and some office workers isn't a ton better.

I'm afraid of "partial" WFH meaning that I have a schedule opposite others, and there are many people I simply never see.

I tend to be a fairly black-and-white thinker, so it's easier to envision 100% office or 100% WFH, and harder to get my head around a mixed arrangement. Particularly if that mixed arrangement means I don't have my 'own' desk and equipment in the office.

That said, even though I've done WFH in bits and pieces here and there, I've enjoyed WFH this past year a lot more than I thought I would. I'm thinking of my post-Covid schedule being in the office tues-thurs, so that I still have a consistent block of time where I'm going in "every day" for a few days, rather than every other day.

> once they found there was practically no efficiency loss

how did they measure this?

From my perspective we measured by deadlines missed/hit.

We hit all, so no measurable loss on productivity.

There was certainly a productivity per hour worked hit, as people replaced their commutes or more with screen time.

Folks are overall more productive, yes, but at a cost of more hours worked. The marginal productivity and its rate of improvement is not as high.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/the-...

Even if that's true, I'd certainly rather spend N hours a day programming than N-2 hours programming plus 2 hours commuting.

You spent n-2 hours a day before? Productively?

Pick any value of N that you like. Commuting time definitely subtracted from my productive time.

Very few people translated commuting into working. Whereas before you had N-2 hours working, many folks now have N+M, M>0.

Nice. Should be interesting to experiment with 4 day workweek next.

Let's use binary search instead :)

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