Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

Do your tasks in as little time as it takes leaving more room for leisure, this is the first time I'm feeling the benefits of that 'increased productivity per hour'[1] economists talk about.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/labor-productivit...

The interesting effect of this has been that said social life, which in pre-lockdown days involved many people from work, is now 100% happening with friends from other contexts.

This has made my work relatively less relevant in my life than it used to be: It's no longer a part of my identity, it's no longer a driver for socialisation, it's just a thing I do for some hours during the day. A change in environment has also meant that instead of spending my evenings at tech meetups or pubs I'm instead out scuba diving, working out and so on.

Overall I don't feel like returning to what used to be normal and have pointed this out at work. One response I got was "maybe that feeling is why they want you to come back", but the threshold for where that would've worked on me was crossed months ago.

Until then, we've already shown that (for tech workers) we can work from home. There's no point in going back to the office just to sit at every-other-desk, have limited conference room occupancy, and wear a mask all day.

Many people have challenging home situations and the office is better for them - that's fine, go to the office. But companies shouldn't be requiring a return to the office until we can all return "normally" and safely. Even then, personally I don't want to be in the office 5 days a week. I'd prefer 2 days a week for facetime/meetings/socializing, and 3 days being productive & meeting-free at home.

I've been able to save so much money in the last year, for the first time in my life I would be fine for good amount of time if I got fired today. I very much do expect big companies to force workers back in the office, tons of middle managers don't feel like they're being effective if they can't stare at you typing for 8 hours

For me, it's barely even really a choice. Thanks to spine problems, I can't sit for long, but of course standing all day is too hard on the legs, so practically speaking I took frequent resting breaks and was lucky there were places to lay down, but no work could be accomplished while doing that. Now I can work from bed and actually work. I was also limited because I can't realistically commute by driving myself, so that meant I worked at a place that was near a train station. Also meant I needed to live near a train station.

No longer having those kinds of restrictions on my life is tremendously liberating.

The supply/demand curve for the talents most of us here have simply don't require us to bend to this type of ridiculousness, and the employers that enforce arbitrary location rules under the guise of "better culture" or "collaboration" are going to find themselves lacking engineering talent eventually (or rather immediately after this pandemic has normalized remote work for so many of us who perhaps were not previously accustomed to it).

I don't want to go back to any situation that requires me in the office physically more than maybe once a week/max. Honestly once per 'iteration' is probably _plenty_ sufficient to get some face-time with coworkers and establish those more human bonds. I might be willing to bend a bit if the office is very close to my home, though I am not willing to accept zero remote regardless of the opportunity.

A week ago, I was in the office for the first time in a year. The entire floor with 100+ desks was completely devoid of people, save for one person that I passed by in the hallway. It was not a completely novel sight; I had been to the office on weekends before, for instance to pick up item that I forgot in the drawer the day before.

What I did not expect is how quickly I got nostalgic about the office experience. I'm quite well-adjusted to the home office situation at the moment, but I absolutely don't like the lack of physical separation between home and work. A separate desk is just not enough for me.

Also, working from home as a single is really lonely. At work, I can passively fulfil my social needs (and still block out the noise with headphones if I need to focus). At home, I have the non-choice of "alone with music" and "along without music". I have a colleague whom I hang out with on a Slack call for hours on end just for some of that office vibe, but it's a subpar replacement.

Also, something that's specific to my situation: The office is in the city center, where all kinds of amenities can be reached quickly. My apartment is in the outskirts of the city, so there is not nearly the same density of services and amenities. For example, the office is 10 minutes by foot from a public indoor swimming pool. A few months before the pandemic, I was taking up a habit of going there once a week during lunch break, and that's something that I want to go back to doing.

I'll be getting my first shot this weekend, so I've been starting to think about how to go forward once my immune response has built up enough. I'll probably be one of the first to return to the office on a regular basis. Even if it means having to wear a surgical mask inside the building, I think it'll be psychologically significant to me as a physical step back to a sense of normality.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

A couple of friends and I decided it'd be nice to go in once a week to catch up, we all live quite locally (15min cycle for me) so for me it's a nice idea that would work for me.

I don't want to go back because:

- I waste time while commuting (~30min. each day)

- I waste time socializing. Not bad, but hey I would prefer to do it at the bar not at the office and not everyday :)

- I waste time trying to focus. You know, open space office

- I don't feel comfortable in "office" clothes. It's not that I wear a suit or anything, but at home I am: barefoot, I don't wear underwear (I wear pants only!)... I hate wearing shoes and/or socks

- I wast time pretending I can work 8h/day. C'mon, it's 2021, no one (at least in my profession, IT) can say that it's possible to work totally focus 8h/day five days per week. That's BS. I can work fully focused 4h/day and call it a day. At home I don't pretend, so I have more time for myself

- I eat better at home. At home: Healthy snacks, plenty of fruit, small meals. At the office: kinda the same, but I don't get to pick which fruits and the like; besides they are gone fast (I do miss not having to pay for them, tho)

Corporations will make decisions based on what maximizes productivity.

I don’t think remote work will persist to the extent people believe.

There are exceptions to the first rule - when an employee is especially motivated. Even then, they’re one bad managerial decision away from checking out.

I’m aware of studies that support boost in productivity over covid, but I believe this is bc there are fewer distracting things to do during covid than normal.

REALLY hoping we're not forced back to the office at my company - along with 75% of the other developers at my place (we did a Slack poll).

I've been given the flexibility to define my own schedule with regards to when I'm in the office and when I'm working from home. I can't WAIT to go back: it's great having a dedicated work space, I like hallway conversations and in-person meetings, and it'll be AWESOME to be able to snag a hot meal at our cafeteria without having to prep or think about it.

BUT, I'll probably never go in for a Friday ever again, and realistically I'll be working from home 2-3 days/week.

So yes, I feel very fortunate my employer is extending that flexibility post-COVID.

Pre-pandemic, I had a CFO say to me "I don't pay for all this expensive office space so you can work from home." I had a CTO tell me "WFH sends a message to your reports that you don't want to be here." I was too obsequious at the time, not to mention afraid to lose my job, to push back, so I relented despite a punishing balance of childcare when my son was very young. But today I call bullshit on this ancient relic of Taylor's "scientific management" peddled by the HBR-reading neocons populating finance departments all across tech. A job that requires my ass to be in a seat is not a job, it's a prison.

Now that it's been over a year, I absolutely yearn for a trip to see my coworkers in person. And I think the needs of people vary in this regard: my heart breaks for some coworkers who have clearly struggled through all this and who feel extremely isolated. I'd gladly inconvenience myself regularly for them to stop feeling like that.

I stay in the best neighbourhoods around the world, walk to coworking spaces, eat out almost every meal and still spend considerably less than what I did in Sydney.

The reasons hybrid appeals to me is I do miss the casual interactions that happen when working in an office or grabbing lunch with random coworkers. I miss having a frustrating day and going to happy hour with someone to commiserate. I miss being able to jump up in a meeting to share something on the whiteboard.

But the trade-offs are great too. My commute now is one flight of stairs. I'm saving money on lunch. If I have to pop out to pick up a prescription, it doesn't involve planning my day around the pharmacy's hours. I can take a nap if I need it in something more comfortable than my car.

All-in-all, I don't think any of the three options is "perfect" as they each have ups and downs.

Now I work in an office. With a door. Work-life balance? Never been better! I'm healthier, I exercise more, lost weight.

I can go on and on but no, I'm not going back.

My team has talked about meeting once-per-month or at the start of big initiatives to nail down some ideas. That's really about all you need for meeting face-to-face. We don't need the office anymore. It's over.

I find communicating with the team works pretty, we just chat or call on teams. Some people don't communicate well, but from what I've learned, they didn't communicate well before COVID either.

I'm not saying I'll never go back into the office, it will just have to be one heck of an offer.

Unfortunately, while our leadership hasn't said anything official yet, there's so much writing on the wall that you'd have to be illiterate not to see it. They're making anyone who has an office go back full time next month and have been pretty much ignoring the employee surveys saying people want remote flex and a hybrid policy.

My wife is job hunting right now so I'll grudgingly go back so as not to disrupt my family's health insurance, but once she finds something, I'd say it's good odds I'm going to start looking. It's a shame because I like my team, but I don't feel a need to actually see them in person more than once or twice a year. I'd much rather work in my nice home office where the bathroom's never occupied, people aren't walking around/talking and being distracting, my dog wanders in occasionally to see what I'm doing, and my daughter runs in to say hello when she gets home from school. None of the office "perks" measure up to those, for me.

WFH makes the days easier until I can buy a house in the country and hopefully go days without seeing other humans.

34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727678

I hope work from home continues https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26712524

I get things done much faster at home and I have lots of energy and extra time left for myself and my family. Commuting was a waste of time and energy. So much unnecessary overhead and stress going to the office every day.

I do like the idea of meeting my co-workers from time to time, but I definitely wouldn't want to go back to the office on daily basis.

I heard some people struggle with their productivity or loneliness. We should research and find out the causes and help them to get over it, or give them the option to work from the office. For some people it's perhaps as simple as bad habits or bad home office setup. For others it might be lack of enough space, or having too many kids around.

But after a year of being cooped up with a wife and a 4 year old, I yearn to be back at the office about twice a week.

Unlike others that have posted here with that opinion, I hold no view that my coworkers are family or even close friends. Regardless, even the small face-to-face socialization I get as part of my work in the office is something that fulfills me. I am invigorated by being able to go into a conference room and stand at a white board or just walk to someone's desk, and try to hash out solutions to problems we are working on. It's just not the same on Slack.

I am single and live alone, so that is a big factor in that.

I also live within a few blocks of my office, so re-adding a commute into my day is a healthy thing, not a huge environmental and personal time drain.

I'll keep my options open, but I never want to find myself in a situation again where I am expected to sacrifice my health for the insecurities of upper management.

Reason is that when I did that in a office little would get done, not just endless meeting but people interrupting, distractions, and weird office-only issues (like drama, office politics, HR nagging people because they left books on their desk, etc...)

At home even with family around, I can tell them it is my worktime, and then focus on work, and they will respect that.

I am not sure what the future holds, but I will push for more remote work if I have the option.

I save at least two hours and $25-$50 a day by not commuting. No wear and tear on my vehicle, no wear and tear on me. I can pop out for a half hour and putter in my garden or take a walk with the dog.

Of course, I don't really enjoy people at the best of times.

"Well lets go back to destroying the environment and making cities unlivably expensive, because I need to be forced to have 40+ hours a week of socialization"

Not to mention it is all open plan offices that everyone is so desperate to get back to.

In industry this might work great, for government this becomes challenging as the access to collaboration tools and services it’s challenging.

So depending on who you ask and where they work the answer will be relevant to a person and place of work.

Getting to work with a geographically diverse set of people is also pretty cool. I get to hear about gator hunting in Florida, dirt biking in Utah, Italian food in Jersey, etc.

It feels like the office was geared 100% for extroverts and finally introverts have an option that works for them. My productivity has never been higher and my stress has never been lower.

I worry about my colleagues outside engineering however.

That said, I do have the huge advantage of having an entire room for my home office.

I am looking forwards to finally getting off my ass and finding a new pole dance studio to keep myself in shape, though. I moved just before the pandemic.

I think managers, given two equally skilled and productive staff, would be more likely to promote the one they see more (whether consciously or subconsciously)

My team is anyways geographically spread. From office also I need to be on video conferencing. So doent make any difference.

Human nature and micro-managers will get back on top of things in short order.

I work in London for a tech company. Prior to the lockdown we mostly worked out of a very nice office in the square mile. Lots of dedicated meeting rooms and breakout spaces with good sound isolation, good Herman Miller chairs, automatic standing desks, excellent coffee machine.

* All video conferencing software is terrible

We use a combination of Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Both have the same problems. For one-to-many meetings it is passable, but anything involving group discussion breaks down quickly. There is just enough latency that you can't talk with multiple people without stepping over each other. A year and a bit in and people still talk with mute enabled, or forget to mute themselves while not talking. Conversations that would take minutes in real life take an order of magnitude longer.

Everyone I work with has given up on video calling, so it's become glorified conference calling. I'm half Italian, having to talk without using my hands is like only being able to communicate with morse code. It's so low bandwidth, communicating anything with nuance just becomes frustrating.

* Meetings for everything

This is calming down a bit, but my company seems to love sync-up meetings. I think I've had more meetings in the first year of lockdown than I did in the proceeding two years of working from the office. Because outlook prefers 15 minute intervals for scheduling, everyone overbooks the time they need for meetings 'just in case'.

* Being pulled into meetings without any notice

This used to happen in the office, but at least you'd see it coming. Now people have figured out you can invite people into an existing meeting, such that they get no warning whatsoever. Good meetings never start with "Joe Somebody is calling you from a group chat".

* Despite the meetings everyone is more siloed than ever

Having everyone work from home has made it easier for teams to become isolated from each other, only communicating by Jira and poor video conference meetings [in emergencies]. I almost never get to casually talk to anyone from the rest of the company, which is really isolating. I don't feel like I work with anyone outside of my immediate team anymore. I've seen this sentiment echoed by my colleagues.

* I miss going to the pub with my colleagues

This is half caused by lockdown, but the other half is everyone working from home. I used to run into people from other teams at the pub all the time. Nowadays everything needs to be booked, scheduled, and planned out which means no spontaneity. My immediate team have a weekly pub night zoom call, but we can't expand it to include other people as you can only really have one conversation at a time.

* Not having to commute is great

I really hate commuting, so this has been great for me.

* My home workspace is a mixed bag

I finally have a decent chair at home, but don't have the space for a good desk. My partner works in the same room as me, a few meters away, and so I still have to wear headphones all day. The best situation is where I have a set of tasks to work through. Sadly my work is not usually that straightforward.

* No family or friends nearby

This is mostly my own fault, I did move halfway around the world as an adult. If the last six years in London has taught me anything, making friends outside of work is very hard. Part of the problem is you're unlikely to live near anyone you meet. London (like Sydney) is a very large city. In the before time socialising with my colleagues was enough for me, but I feel like that avenue will be permanently closed if we all keep working from home.

* More scope for hobbies

I've taken up wildlife rehabilitation in my spare time, which I would never have been able to do while working from the office. It's not so much time consuming as it needs regular intervals of time throughout the day. I can easily feed an animal while attending a meeting now, or take little breaks through the day to take care of things.

- Instead of commuting for two or more hours a day to travel a mere sixteen miles, I use that time for weight training. I'm now stronger than I have ever been and no longer experience back, neck and shoulder pain.

- I can keep my office at a temperature that is comfortable for me. Usually offices are far too warm in the winter and far too cool in the summer.

- I can actually understand people in meetings. I am hearing impaired and in person meetings are difficult for me because many people mumble or are low talkers and I can't understand them. For some reason people always like to ask if I have hearing aids. Of course I do but they aren't like wearing glasses. It is fatiguing to use hearing aids and they are uncomfortable to wear even though they are fitted for your ears.

- No more office drama. For years I was subjected to daily passive-agressive slack messages in the general channel about not leaving dishes in the sink. They were never mine. I always brought my own, but I had to hear about it nonetheless. For a while I had a co-worker who was apparently allergic to green bell peppers and had to do listen to an onslaught of complaints and warnings about not eating green bell peppers in the office. I didn't eat a green bell pepper for two years. I felt for them, but it was exhausting to hear about because even though I didn't do anything wrong I still had to hear about it. I really can't stand that kind of stuff.

- I can actually get stuff done at home. Offices are places of non-stop distraction. One time my desk was by the restrooms and I was constantly distracted by a stream of people going to the bathroom. The air moved by the walking by also had the effect of blowing all the papers on my desk around. Some people had streams so forceful even I could hear them. For over a year the office above us was being renovated. Once the renovation was done the city started work on the street below. On the flip side, I don't have to worry about being a distraction to others. I have a loud voice and can't play the whispering game because I can't hear people when the whisper. If someone wants to have a conversation with me it has to be a full volume.

- When I need to take a break I can take my dog for a walk. He's the real winner here.

- I eat much better at home and have time to cook.

There are some things I miss:

- Quarterly all company meetings can sometimes be fun and informative. I would not mind attending those in person again.

- Happy hours and team lunches are always fun. I don't buy in to the narrative that co-workers aren't really your friends any more than I buy into the narrative that they are your family and you need to see them every day. I don't see my family every day. I also have remained friends with plenty of former co-workers.