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Comment by elite_hackers3 | Hacker News Reader

But then you’d have to work for Facebook… cringe

Quality of life improvement when you work remote is several fold higher. You have to experience it. I've been working remote (consulting) for about 4 years now. My wife has done it about 1/2 her career. We live in sunny SoCal (expensive, but very tolerable when you don't have to get on the freeways).

Take care of No. 1 first. That is you. GOOG folks, please don't cringe at FB. There is no difference.

Pretty much everyone has experienced what WFH is like a year plus into the pandemic. Those of us who want to go back to the office have experienced WFH, and our quality of life is lower with WFH. It's no longer true that people who say they don't like WFH would change their mind if only they'd experienced it.

Nobody has been experiencing normal remote work during the pandemic.

Normal remote work lets you go out and do fun stuff with friends after hours (which you have more of with no commute), spend more time with your kids (who have been at school for most of the day), or even explore other cities or countries (if you have that kind of remote arrangement).

All the pandemic has shown us is basically all knowledge work can be done remotely, and most sales work too.

> Normal remote work lets you go out and do fun stuff with friends after hours (which you have more of with no commute), spend more time with your kids (who have been at school for most of the day), or even explore other cities or countries (if you have that kind of remote arrangement).

Some people enjoy socializing at work.

> All the pandemic has shown us is basically all knowledge work can be done remotely, and most sales work too.

For sales, can be done, but can it win over the face to face sales?

>Some people enjoy socializing at work.

I do. I have small children, don't have a lot of time in the evenings, so work is my main social meeting place (granted, there are weekends with friends, but weekdays are much harder).

During the day, I want to talk to real, physical people, have lunch or coffee with them (probably a cultural thing), and talk about things. I sorely miss it.

While I understand that some people can cope with skyping people all day long 5 days a week and have no physical interactions, I find it incredibly wearing in the long run, and am not sure that most people can. It's a bit like comparing facebook and going to a cafe with friends : sure, both allow social interactions, but the quality of said interactions is vastly different with the remote ones fundamentally lacking.

I'd happily have a day of wfh per week though - perfect for uninterrupted, focused work!

I'm really tired of these no true Scotsman arguments from WFH evangelists.

"Everyone would like WFH if they'd truly experienced it the 'correct' way! Anyone who says they don't like it just hasn't done it properly!"

Please just accept that not everyone is exactly like you. Plenty of people really do enjoy the in-person office environment more.

And they are really tired by the "see, people do terribly at home, this proves it doesn't work" from the anti-WFH crowd, and being pushed out of something that works for them with such arguments. (Which is the reverse of your argument: please accept that for some people WFH works better and they really want to keep that option)

I am in the "will return to the office regularly as soon as I can" crowd, but I don't think the "no true Scotsman" is a fair accusation here. The pandemic situation is different and not a good indicator, and a good chunk of the problems people have are obviously connected to that.

100% agree. After 3 month of WFH, I started coming in to the empty building. I was the only one here, but it is so much easier to get work done when I'm not at home.

Most of my co-workers feel the opposite from me, but my home is a sea of distractions that I'd rather be doing than sitting at a computer working (and I live alone, so no kids or spouse at home). Instead I could be playing piano, practicing violin, writing music, taking photos, developing film, or 100 other things. When I'm at work, I work (mostly).

i've been doing remote consulting for over 10 years and i wouldn't go back to an office even if a company offered me doubled what i earn.

no traffic in the morning, being able to go for walks in the middle of the day, home cooked meals every day, no alarms in the morning (biggest plus imo).

Personal opinion: Google carefully treads the gray lines of legality and morals/ethics. Facebook leadership, on the other hand, decided a long time ago that they care about legality only. They seem very proud of that decision, too.

Google might still have a better reputation in certain circles but it is unclear what company is actually worse for the world at this time (btw, if you have a link where somebody tried to actually quantify it, it would be an interesting read).

Getting ~11 hours of my life back from commutes a week alone is worth it. That's almost a full day! (assuming 16h wake cycles)

Would i prefer in-office if i didn't have to commute? Maybe. The downsides are just not worth the upsides, though. To me.

I have a nice ~20min (4-5mi) bike ride to/from work in the SF East Bay, usually good weather. Found a route with bike lines and moderate traffic so its pretty nice. I'm looking forward to going back to the office more.

I mean you could go for an even nicer bike ride every day if you were WFH and can choose to cycle anywhere you fancy.

...just a thought :)

I tried that. I'm not motivated enough. Totally my problem but the structure of communting was really helpful in getting me to do it everyday.

Also, I live 300ft up in the Oakland hills so going out and back in the morning to WFH means I have to climb back up or jut ride in the hills which involves more climbing. Going to work is downhill!

> Take care of No. 1 first.

what does this mean exactly? work at any terrible company that does terrible things, as long as the pay is good?

Yes.

We're talking about Google employees here. Squint your eyes and they look like the same company.

Google gave us maps, Gmail, Google, android...

Facebook is probably a net negative for the whole world. If fb would evaporate tomorrow no one would care.

Old Google gave us Google, Gmail - new Google has been continually making it worse and/or more evil. Maps and Android are probably a bit more of a mix though.

Regardless i'm not questing what Google _was_. I'm commenting on what Google _is_.

Let me know when google undermines American democracy, enables a genocide in Myanmar, or casually starts kicking human rights activists off its products.

Or by “squint” do you mean “close?”

Google has provided a platform that for years benefited off of extremists and only recently started taking action against it.

It provided multiple platforms that, like Facebook, optimized user clicks in ways that ended up causing significant harm. Radicalizing extremists and pushing racism, homophobia, misinformation, etc.

One may be objectively worse than the other, but lets not pretend that Google conveniently forgot "Do no evil" until it was notified of it's own actions by the public. Only with its back against the wall did it recognize the problem.

... when you already work for Google?

If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.

I realize that many people love social media and derive happiness from FB, but it’s just not the case for me and the main reason I couldn’t work there.

> If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.

I wish I could know which company is which by your comment, but I can't, any could be in any place here.

It's pretty clear that Google is the one with useful and revolutionary products (Android, Maps, Earth, YouTube, Gmail, Google Pay) while Facebook is basically only useful for groups nowadays or for Instagram (is that really useful?) and WhatsApp (which they bought and introduced stories on. Wohoo. Innovative.)

It's not that clear for me. Out of your examples, only Gmail and Google Pay are actually created by Google (or by people working at Google at the time of creation), the rest are acquisitions.

And your use case for Facebook et al is obviously different than how many others see it. Being the first truly wordwide social network has to count for something, even though we're not sure it was a good idea in the first place. The world is big and people use/like different things, and it's all relative in the end.

Hence wfhbata's comment without any naming, can be seen from both perspectives.

"Why choose the lesser evil?"

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