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Comment by benbristow | Hacker News Reader

Lucky you. I live in a top-floor apartment so don't have the luxury of a garden and I'm isolated by myself as I live alone.

It's not the same for everyone.

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That’s fine. Don’t make me come back to the office because you have undesirable accommodations.

Nobody’s making you do anything, if your employer forces a return to the office and you don’t like it you can find a new employer.

If the only option to stay remote is to quit then that's the definition of "My employer is making me return to the office".

They are voicing a very US view on the relationship. From my understanding, in EU there are jurisdictions that any concession extracted from employees by employer is effectively done under duress because the employer controls employees livelihood, even if temporarily. Actual reality depends on how desirable your skills are and how good the existing employment is.

I expect the bigger legal pushback would be the other way around. I definitely heard some grumbling early in the pandemic when some still saw office closures as an over-reaction. The complaint was that companies were making a unilateral change to the working conditions agreed-upon when they were hired.

I'm not sure this "you can't make me X" attitude is particularly helpful. The reality is that lots of people have undesirable accommodations, and whether you do or not a lot of people do and don't want to go back into the office. IMO this has to be a group conversation not an individualistic one.

Full disclosure: I don't really want to return to 100% office requirement either. I'm really excited to see other humans again - though I suspect we'll see a 2-3 day a week in-person expectation and then 2-3 day flex moving forward.

I believe my company is going to end up maintaining a small office with a set of open desks that people can come in an work at. At least for us, this seems like the right balance. We've grown in the pandemic, so keeping a smaller office lets the company save money. Hiring remotely expands our pool of candidates. At the same time, employees who benefit on the whole from remote work get to keep it, while employees who thrive on in-person interaction and a dedicated space outside their home get to keep it. It's a little tricky to set up blended in-person and remote meetings, but once that's in place, the office can be much more fluid.

This. Plus, I myself am living in a top floor apt, but over the past year I learnt the power of just taking walks, having quality weekend times, taking trips, and exercising. Just because I'm supposed to work at home does not mean that I should stay home all the time. If anything, this has taught me what I was doing wrong in my pre-covid life.

Surely this works both ways though? Remote workers always bring an implied expectation that their coworkers will do a certain amount of extra work in order to bridge the larger communication boundary. This means more documentation, more aggressive status tracking, more time spent on communication (zoom calls and slack simply aren't as high fidelity as in person communication - body language is important), more independent investigation as the activation energy of a remote call is higher, etc.

Now, many of those things are probably good for the business anyway, but they are nevertheless obligations that remote workers force on their colleagues in order to achieve that cleaner, "API-like" working relationship that remote workers often need to succeed independently.

It's even more stressful if some employees are gelling well and some aren't. Many remote workers feel they should be treated like contractors but given fuzzier expectations like salaried workers - I've seen this misalignment of expectations about culture destroy teams, and in an office culture transitioning from full time in office to partially remote, all of this is fundamentally caused by the "benefits" that the remote workers are receiving at the cost of their colleagues. It's absolutely not a win-win.

Don't mistake pandemic conditions for forever. There is no reason you need to stay permanently isolated and can't get social needs filled somewhere other than an office.

Don't mistake the post pandemic conditions for granted. Even after isolation working alone in a small apartment can be miserable, I find myself in the same situation, getting out for a bar or club in non working hours is not the same as working in a office. There are some simple idiotic social needs like small talk, or throw some jokes or even curse out loud in frustration that are difficult to get right outside the office.

Anyways, any argument down playing a situation is futile, let's just agree that every one is in a different situation and the best is to analyze case by case

Isn't analyzing case-by-case exactly what remote work is though? Obviously some people really like working at home in isolation and some people like the social aspects of being in an office. But with a remote-first company you have the option. If you want to work at home you obviously can and if you want a more social work environment then you can rent a co-working space (hopefully your company could even foot the bill with all the money they are saving on office rent) or co-work with a group of friends, etc.

I think a lot of people who have worked remotely for the first time due to COVID have a misleading impression of what remote work is. In normal times you have ample options to be able to work in an environment with other people if that's what you want. You also have the option to spend the time you save on commuting doing other non-work social activities.

I am pretty much in the same boat, i cannot afford a house where i live, and probably will never be able to at least within the next couple of years. Unfortunately between the ongoing construction, and the fact our building is slowly renovating most of the units has hurt my productivity.

While people say "oh just move somewhere else outside the city", unfortunately that means i need to now buy/maintain a car on top of everything else. Then commute into the city to be social with my friends group, or to do physical activities.

Neither of those things appeal to me, and since our work is strongly leaning to switching to be fully remote, it is kind of frustrating. A bunch of coworkers are very much just move to a city where you can buy a house! That is what i did. Or even worse a lot of people who are just "buy a house!", and are completely ignorant of how insane the housing prices have become.

Honestly the end result is probably just going to lead to me finding employment at a company that still has the ability to work onsite. A few of my like mininded coworkers pitched the idea that we could rent a small office area for people like us, and were promptly shot down by management.

Eventually you’ll have the choice to work in the office at most places, but with a permanent remote option you could also move.

But isn't that the point? If your location doesn't matter you could live somewhere with a garden because you wouldn't be forced to live near the arbitrary location of the office.

You had more than a year now to get out of your top floor apartment lease.

Not to mention that a pandemic is not an accurate reflection of what real remote work looks like.

It's a mortgage so it's not that easy.

You have the city though, no? I understand it's pandemic conditions now, but when things open back again, it should become fun again?

We were in this situation and have been lucky enough to move back in with family, in a more rural location.

I've loved it so far, being able to be around family more and take care of them and just be around.

If full-time remote becomes more the norm, I hope people are able to take the opportunity to be closer to family and friends.

Being isolated is most likely related to the pandemic and has nothing to do with working remotely.

I dunno, I worked from home way before pandemic and the isolation was pretty bad as well. Nothing can really compare to meeting a lot of great people daily, face-to-face.

get a co-working membership. It's like adult daycare for working people, they organize little activities and mixers from time to time.

Luck had nothing to do with the choices I made in my career and life.

Luck has something to do with everyone's path, no exceptions.

Intentions and planning matter too, of course.

Almost implies you have _bad_ luck, then, if there's nothing at all you can ascribe to fortuitous chance.

My career was made by someone finding my resume in a trash can.

Where, when and to who you were born, and your health. There is plenty of luck involved.

I wish you good luck then!

Oooh BOOOOY is that a self-unaware statement :->

While I will give full marks for your agency and initiative if appropriate, to think ANY of us (myself and all of us included) don't have a large amount of probability/luck/circumstance involved is hilarious.

Heck, I'm a refugee from a civil-war country who came to Canada with literally nothing but a loan for the ticket; I could try to make the claim that I "made it on my own". Yet though I've certainly put in an effort, I'm extremely lucky compared to those who couldn't leave, didn't speak the language, don't have the skillset or capability, don't look or behave in career-enhancing ways, haven't been picked up by mentors and coaches, haven't moved to a country which accepts new people, with educational and business framework that's conducive to advances, haven't found or been given the same opportunities, etc. I've certainly had bad luck and obstacles and negative externalities, but I could spend all day counting things that went well too!

I mean, I agree that I don't want to necessarily go back to the office; but it's with full view of how lucky & privileged I am. Even on very granular level, even with decisions I've made and career I've chosen and skillset I've developed - I have colleagues with same skillset and position and broadly similar projects, which have not switched to remote nearly as much as my project has. That alone is luck/circumstance/beyond my control.

Meh, the network of choices and outcomes you took couldn't have been pre-planned, but the attitude and work ethic that made you work on the skills, capabilities, mindset, etc and made you take action despite major setbacks had nothing to do with luck. To think otherwise is to deny your own agency.

My point/perspective is that it's not a binary proposition. It's not all luck/circumstance, or all agency; it's a combination of the two.

The OP to which I replied implied that ONLY their agency mattered; I disagree with that sentiment vehemently. This is not to say that agency that does not matter - I'm not a fatalist and certainly enjoy my personal freedom and take personal responsibility :)

Really? It made a lot of difference to mine. If I didn't have a mild skeletal problem I'd probably be in the air force right now, rather than a software engineer.

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