Many people don’t want to work unless it’s from home | Hacker News Reader

Many people don’t want to work unless it’s from home

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One of the arguments I'm surprised I don't hear more often is how much more inclusive remote work is.

People who find driving intensely stressful can be accommodated. People who might not feel comfortable being themselves in physical corporate spaces (e.g. those whose appearance/ethnicity gets remarked on, or people who feel the need to code switch around co-workers) can be accommodated. People who want to maximize time near their loved ones can be accommodated. People on the autism spectrum can be accommodated. Germophobes, agoraphobes, and those who are just socially anxious can be accomodated. People with disabilities can be accommodated.

And if all of these people have proven to do effective work remotely, are we really doing a healthy thing for society in demanding their physical presence?

Well said!

At Greenshades, working remote has been an option now for several years. It started with a few folks who just had good reasons to stay home (I was one of them). Then we started recruiting nation-wide, which is nice for the company but you can imagine how the locals had a sense of community that the true remotes felt they were missing.

Fast forward to 2020--nearly everyone has moved to 100% remote. It's hard to tell who is local vs not anymore. There are _some_ local events, but they usually coincide with flying folks in. I'd say it's much more inclusive as it puts us all on a more level playing field.

People who want to take their morning poop in a clean private bathroom.

Toilet privacy seems to come up at every company I've worked at. American stalls tend to have large gaps whereas European offices usually have private rooms with their own sink and mirror. Bathroom hygiene seems less important still even in post-COVID times.

I used to work in an old building with six floors. The bathrooms were all in the common area hallways, only two stalls per floor. It was a challenge to find an empty one between 8-10am, running up and down the stairs frantically trying door knobs. You either got there early, or you waited and then suffered the smell of the last peoples’ business while you did your business.

Oh, the frustration of stealthily making your way to the hallway only to get stopped by a chatty coworker as your bowels begin to churn. The ticking of the clock as the sweat drips down your face. The movement of your coworker’s lips in slow motion as small talk pours out of their mouth while everyone else sneaks off to fill the bathrooms up.

Nah, can’t say I miss that part very much.

The times I have come closest to pooping my pants as an adult is working at a FAANG office. Not enough male bathrooms!

I have severe IBS and need to use the bathroom many times a day. I have disc bulges in my spine that make driving very difficult. WFH has been a massive boon in helping me manage my difficulties better. I'm dreading going back to work even if it's only 3 days a week.

I’m baffled by the companies which are fully remote but still consider it an essential job function[0] for their employees to travel to their annual company-wide social retreats. I understand that the boss thinks it’s super important for employees to occasionally mingle in person or whatever, but I struggle to not see this as a policy intentionally designed to avoid employing disabled people. Is there some good faith reason to do this that I’m not thinking of?

[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/essential-job-functi...

My company has those but doesn't require them; I've missed a couple, myself.

Is it common to _require_ them?

I've never encountered a company where those are _required_. Missing out on the networking that occurs at them will hurt your career, but that won't be the direct cause of getting fired or missing a promotion.

Apropos the spectrum, I’ve noticed that remote work can also be harder. People mute and don’t show video, or the video is so small and grainy that it’s extremely hard to pick up the not-so-subtle clues and vibes they are throwing off.

It’s taken years to work out what are generally positive/negative signs in-person and now that’s all out the window.

I miss the excuse to ride my bike on a commute every morning, but I'm definitely not going back to an office anytime soon. Hopefully companies will become more open to remote working. There is supposedly a shortage of software developers in the US right now, but:

1. Most companies only hire within a small physical distance of their office(s);

2. Of those that hire remote workers, most will only hire them if they are physically located in the US, or with luck Canada / Mexico;

3. Of those that hire globally, most will only hire through an agency, so there is some middleman taking a sizable chunk out of salary.

Bonus: When you finally find a company that hires remotely, hires internally, and hires globally... they will only offer what they think is the minimum needed in your country.

So... no thanks! I'll keep contracting independently for now. I'm not opposed to working for a company, but until US companies start recruiting reasonably, they are leaving out the majority of people- even the majority of English speakers if that is a requirement.

> 2. Of those that hire remote workers, most will only hire them if they are physically located in the US, or with luck Canada / Mexico;

Have seen a lot advertising in Australia recently for remote workers. Presumably because of the cultural fit and there is still a bit of time zone overlap.

> I miss the excuse to ride my bike on a commute every morning

Commute halfway to work, turn around, and ride home.

I no longer ride my bike to work; but, when I did, on the days I worked from home, I had my "commute to nowhere" every morning. (I admit that if the weather was nasty, I'd skip it.)

I miss my bike commute too, but a couple months before COVID hit my satellite office was closed and the main office is a 30+ min drive. Now that I've been working at home I try to get a ride in after work or if I'm having a particular hard day I take a long lunch and ride to clear my head. It's probably help keep me sane during all of this.

I'm not currently looking for work but whenever recruiters contact me (which is a lot since the pandemic for some reason) I always make a point of saying that I will only consider remote work just to get that idea out into the universe.

Yup, I always start with "Where is it, if not remote. And what's the salary?"

Anything else is a potential waste of a lot of our time.

It is insane that recruiters send stuff like "WFH 2 days a week!!!". I had one a couple years ago that offered a "perk" of casual Fridays. They have no sense of the real world and what it takes to hires developers.

> I always make a point of saying that I will only consider remote work just to get that idea out into the universe.

Make it a point to also ask the hiring manager or someone on the team what remote means. Sometimes recruiters are not on the same page as the team or the rest of the company, and some companies have "unique" definitions of remote work.

Count me among them. I've been WFH for many years now, and partial WFH before that, and am definitely not going back.

That said, one thing I haven't seen mention of in favor of on-site work is regarding skills development. I've personally benefitted greatly from deep team integration early in my career, learning much of the practice of software engineering and applied research. It's easy to imagine that not happening as well or at all if I had been pure remote straight out of college. I've also worked on teams that included less skilled/experienced members that have had a very frustrating work experience due to for some reason having missed out on that learning by deep integration and osmosis.

The commute is an invisible tax.

It would take decades,even with this 'Covid changed everything' to have abundance of remote roles, especially outside the tech sector, which was always more succeptable to remote work. For a lot of companies it's simply easier to call everyone in, then no need to figure out anything. Having spent the last 15 month working remotely,I can't imagine going back to office,unless it's literally across the road.

My work is very excited about the new office location that they're moving into. I'm uh... less than enthused about it. Fifteen months of not having to drive into the snarl of traffic everyday has been nice. I don't really get anything out of being there rather than in my better office space at home.

Might ask for 20, 25 grand more if I have to go back to the office.

That's completely reasonable since you're not being paid for the time you spend on the bus or in a car each day.

> Might ask for 20, 25 grand more if I have to go back to the office.

Here's a source you can use for hard numbers[1].

Commutes are responsible for a 9.91% drop in wages. They're also responsible for an average of nearly 10 entire days of driving a year, or 30 full 8-hr work days of driving each year.

[1] https://go.frontier.com/business/commute-calculator

After over a year of WFH, I think I need a mix. Too many days at home and I start to lose focus. A few days in the office fixes it. Also, I realized that despite the stresses of driving, commuting had allowed me to decompress a bit from work before coming home, as long as I drove in a relaxed manner. That being said, for some reason a lot of drivers post-COVID are 10x more aggressive, so I'm actually now a bit afraid to go into the office.

> commuting had allowed me to decompress a bit

I go for a walk before and after working (at home) to bookmark my day. It's also healthy :)

One downside of remote (only) work is that the employer is less likely to sponsor a visa. I encountered this problem recently, but after I get the residency permit, I'll be glad to work remotely.

There are several remote jobs sites at this point, maybe a reverse with remote only candidates would be nice!

Many people don't want to work.

These jobs will get done remotely in Ukraine. We have ubiquitous fiber internet, extremely cheap real estate, and 5% flat income tax for the self-employed.

I know a significant number of young women here who can speak English, have a computer, and decent home office, and are earning $1k-$2k/month for run-of-the-mill marketing jobs full-time for American companies.

(By contrast the salary for a Doctor here is about $1.5k)

I know young men who basically replicated entire American departments, in Ukraine.

You Americans should really be weary about this widespread move to remote.

Indeed. If companies go remote, this will depress salaries and makes those living in expensive areas less competitive and either force them to accept a lower standard of living or force them to move to less expensive areas. This might be nice a way to diffuse income and liberate people from having to live in those areas if they don't want to, but for those who do, it won't be great. And this would be true even if US companies were required to hire within the country first.

The other possibility is that if remote work is allowed, but working on prem is preferred, then workers who agree to work on prem will be able to out compete the remote workers for positions anyway which means little practical improvement for those wanting to work remotely.

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