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Comment by tezzer | Hacker News Reader

I'm a software engineer. I can do my job 100% remotely. I can't wait to get back to the office. I like in-person collaboration, and I really like having separation between my work life and my home life. This year has been torture.

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Do your colleagues feel the same way? Would you inflict office work on them if they don't?

Several do, the few times I've gone into the office and done a little problem solving with the folks who were there, we accomplished like a week of work in an hour. There's something about putting heads together that's hard to replace. Some of our folks have always been ~90% remote and that's fine, but I think they're missing out on one of the joys of engineering.

The main thing I miss is all the ad-hoc technical discussions about work or (usually) random topics over lunch. We went out nearly every day for an hour or more and had fun conversations. I miss it dearly. With everyone using their normal lunch times for running errands or just working more, we've had very few social meetings since WFH started.

It's just so damn lonely.

Gitlab has some good stuff about this in their handbook. You have to be really intentional about this kind of informal meeting that otherwise happens naturally in an in-person situation.

https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/informal...

Are you suggesting that if people were in the office for 40 hours a week, that you would expect to get a sustained rate of 280 days worth of work done per week?

Or are you saying that given the creative thinking time alone that accumulated slowly over a period of time WFH, that the team was able to make 7 days worth of progress in one hour primarily due to the fact that everyone had plenty of time to understand the issues and the pains associated?

Are you confusing _peak_ with _sustained_ productivity?

No, I'm not confusing anything. I'm stating my team made a great deal of progress when we got together in the office over a sticky problem; and attributing the progress to the random directions the conversation and problem solving effort took when we were in one room bouncing ideas off each other and poking hardware together.

Look, I miss having whiteboard conversations too, but if throwing all of the developers into a smelly open plan mosh pit that's a 45 minute commute from home 5 days a week just for that clutch hour of collaboration, count me out. It's just not worth it.

IMO companies should pay less people like you as your preferences incur more costs. Alternatively you could hire a co-working hub if you prefer that, but such costs shouldn't be passed onto people who ARE able to control their emotions and work/life balance.

So instead I should personally shoulder the real estate and infrastructure costs of working from home? No thanks.

That's really regressive. My sister-in-law works for HPE and she instead got a work from home bonus added to her paycheck. Instead of having companies offload their costs to employees like some late-stage capitalist dystopia they should compensate employees for providing the infrastructure themselves.

In some jurisdictions this is actually required, if the company is to expect any level of service or availability from infrastructure on the employer's home. For example, if your personal internet fails you cannot be held liable or at fault by an employer, since they're not paying for that. And if they pay for it, then it's on them to fix it since it's the service they provided (just like it's not an employee's fault if the internet gets cut at the office).

Such policies could quite reasonably be construed as illegally discriminatory.

You sound as if going into the office is literally some kind of torture(and I guess for some percentage of the population it is).

This 'do you colleagues feel the same way?' argument is circular and the question can be posed both ways. Separating the two to allow people a preference one way or the other is a difficult problem that has been addressed by many companies by simply making everyone come into the office. It may be that giving people the option one way or another is the right way forward, but getting to that point is going to be a long and windy road...

The office is fine. It's nice to chill with my coworkers. I've been remote since 2015 and I kinda miss that, sometimes.

The commute there and back, sometimes an hour one way depending on traffic and weather, absolutely is torture. In the middle of summer or depth of winter it can be miserable. My 8-9 hour workday would often be closer to 10-11 hours, and I'd arrive home exhausted and annoyed. Travel via train was worse in some ways but sometimes better.

I am not any less closer or further, emotional or occupationally, when remote. But I don't have to lose 2 hours of my day, huff tons of exhaust, and pay the costs of cars / busses / trains.

I can sneak away for 10 minutes to grind my coffee, good coffee, and make a cuppa my way instead of relaying on the bland Keurig machine. I can get dinner going in a slow cooker 6 hours ahead of time, give my dog 3 walks a day, and handle my personal shit, on my personal machines, without risking personal or occupational data. I get more sleep, and can work later if needed, since I don't need to worry about losing an hour of my life just to get home.

Sure, work isn't torture and the office wasn't bad. But in exchange for stilled small talk with coworkers -- your coworkers aren't your friends, btw -- I gain so much more at home.

(Un)fortunately, I think that the reality is that for many people, the office is their social outlet, they are indeed friends with their coworkers (for now anyway), and they live downtown in a 200 sq. ft. apartment with 2 roommates that is 100' from the office.

For folks in this situation, WFH is probably intolerable.

It's just the case that not everyone is in the same situation, and I think people forget that when they make claims that boil down to "WFH is 100% bad and we should all go to the office." (or the opposite)

A substantial portion of the workforce doesn’t have home situations that are favorable to remote work, which more or less necessitates the existence of an office unless you’re going to start screening out, e.g., parents. And then if you have it anyway, why wouldn’t you simplify planning by having everyone in, especially given the challenges of a mixed office-remote environment (which I think is more challenging than going all in on either one)?

Is a bigger house/condo with an office an option?

If you can work remotely, why live (I’m assuming) in a city that is expensive because it was built around an in-person existence?

I don't think I want to pay for a bigger house; I already pay to be close to work. I've never had more than a 15 minute commute, and that has occasionally been an expensive policy!

I don't like co-opting my living space for work. It clutters things physically and mentally.

I'm in the same boat, and I pay a bit extra to live walking distance from my office.

I detest working from home full time. It used to be a clear mental distinction between "this is my safe space where I don't worry about work" and "this is where I'm putting all of this time slice into work". I've done little personal development and I'm stressed all of the time because I don't feel comfortable at home anymore.

I'm glad WFH is being more recognized in that if there's a day I'm not feeling great but am still okay to work, I don't have to deal with going into the office. I'm hopeful that I can take a WFH day when I need one, but I am not going to work remote full time.

Isn't your company allowing limited amount of people to work in the office especially if someone is living in a walking distance?

I understand it would be off limits if someone would need to use public transport but I can see allowing people to work from the office at least some days if they can walk/drive and it is not like too many at the same time.

You can always explain that you have important stuff to be done and it can be only done on company network because of "reasons".

I am definitely in "WFH forever" camp and I would like to buy bigger house far from the office. But I don't see why people who spend their money to live close to the office should be treated unfair.

So then you'd be fine to pay a bit extra for a co-working hub.

I think that's an expense a company should be enthusiastic about paying- along with upgraded internet, sharing of power bills... maybe the occasional lunch delivery.

"I already pay to be close to work"

That's the crux of my point. Change that, and your options suddenly open up a lot.

> I like in-person collaboration

This argument is rooted in a fondness for the way things used to be. I get it... I miss lunch with my coworkers and being able to spin around in my chair to ask someone a question. But are you really going to get that satisfaction when your coworker isn't in that chair, or your work friends want to have lunch alone because they have an immuno-compromised child at home?

Rooted in fondness according to who? Are you saying that someone that expresses an inclination for in-person collaboration is actually deceiving themselves into remembering the experiences differently than they actually were?

That person may be accurately remembering the experience they had in the before-times, however that world just doesn't exist anymore.

I mean technically no world in the past exists anymore, but in-person collaboration is certainly still a thing, albeit it is on somewhat of a pause right now. I guess no one really knows how this whole thing shakes out if we look 5-10 years out, but my bet is that humans being social creatures will drive a good number of people back into collaborative in-person working spaces.

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