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Comment by okareaman | Hacker News Reader

I was extremely lucky to WFH during the first 12 years of my software career. When I finally got a job in an office I was shocked at how awful it was. The 2 hours commuting every workday, the flickering fluorescent lights, the noise of coworkers, the smell of burnt coffee or popcorn, the boss that drops by to see how you're doing and causes you to lose a hour of concentration so I might as browse the web until quitting time. I couldn't function in an office, so I was lucky to do my best work at home which I am still proud of. I'm not proud of anything I accomplished while sitting in office jail.

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> the flickering fluorescent lights, the noise of coworkers, the smell of burnt coffee or popcorn, the boss that drops by to see how you're doing and causes you to lose a hour of concentration so I might as browse the web until quitting time.

Was this at a "tech" company of any kind, or a non-tech company with a small number of software engineers? This sounds more like an archetype based on Office Space rather than a real office that I have been in any time in the last 6 years.

This basically just describes the offices of most small- to large-sized tech companies that aren't part of West-coast tech culture (some of which has spread beyond the West coast, but does not dominate like it does there).

There are lots of them and they may well represent a larger proportion of dev employment in the US than either stodgy-old-established-bigtech (IBM, telcos) or ones that are a part of the aforementioned West-coast tech culture. They tend to develop industry-specific products (or, often, a whole bunch of industry-specific products) but are definitely tech—and often even purely-software—companies.

I think the inability to control light, noise, temperature, scents and walk-up bosses/coworkers are more of less universal among offices.

But all of those things are trivial and unimportant in the shadow of the miserable 1-2 hour of commute every day, which is truly a waste of time, resources and our limited human lives.

These were all software companies in or near Silicon Valley. Cube farms, not open office. Maybe you are one of the lucky ones to get your own office (with a door)

The one time I had an office with a door it was my worst location, because it didn't have a thermostat so it got too hot to leave the door closed.

It's surprising how bad smelling the coffee from a Starbucks iCup machine is though.

Cube farms of the 80's/90's were the worst. Cube etiquette was in its infancy. Loud talkers, ice chewers, farters, snifflers, oversharers, too much A/C, too little A/C, awful ergonomics, 6'x4' compressed cubicles, shared cubicles. Then there was the crappy cafeteria food, enormous parking lots with 15 minute walks to your car if you showed up after 8am, ... oy.

But didn't they make the office even worse by going from cubicle to open office? Often less space per person, less privacy, noise travels further, visual distractions, etc...

Yeah, that happened. It went from your own tiny cube to an open space with no guaranteed seating. I had already stopped decorating my cube way before this trend, but it seems even more shitty. I am really glad I've been working remotely for the past decade. I have no idea what new offices are like (left offices in 2012).

Yeah, I never expected to feel nostalgic for cubes.

So, 2 hours a day. That's 10 hours a week. That's 40 hours a month. That's 480 hours a year, or about the equivalent of 3 entire months working 40 hrs/wk, sitting in traffic, doing nothing productive. Napkin math says you lost a lot more than ambience.

The 2 hour commute is your fault, not the fault of office job's. My commute is 10 minutes.

I mean, that's a pretty harsh way to put it. It takes a very flexible lifestyle to be able to move 10 minutes from your office every time you get a new job. That is also likely to severely impact your finances. For some workplaces, it would be a financial impossibly to live that close for anything less than an executive salary. Often it's far more optimum to work remote if you want to minimize your commute.

Plus, lots of business/office districts don't have any public schools of even middling—let alone good—quality within a 10-minute commute radius.

Move closer. Why didn't I think of that?

I think "get a job closer to your home" is a reasonable suggestion, even if that commenter was a bit blunt about it. In my most recent job search I avoided applying to positions that were further than I was willing to commute, even though they're in the same metro area.

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