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Comment by xwdv | Hacker News Reader

You know what we need? Something that is the equivalent of a blue check mark for remote workers.

The check mark would mean that this worker has a home office setup that meets or exceeds standards for remote work. The certification process can be handled by a neutral third party.

The standards would be stringent, a laptop on on some corner desk wouldn’t quality. You must have a room with a door that can be closed IMO. Maybe there can be tiers though.

Edit: I don’t get the downvotes, does this comment really lower the level of discourse, or do people just hate this idea so much?

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You know what we need? Something that is the equivalent of a blue check mark for offices.

The standards would be stringent, an open office hoteling arrangement wouldn’t qualify. You must have an office with a door that can be closed IMO.

I can't tell if this is serious.

If you are serious, what's stopping me from renting a space for 1 hour, getting the check mark and going back home to my slum?

Or fixing up my place, getting rid of kids toys, getting the check mark, then letting things go back to before?

Seriously though, if you can't do your job, your manager should be able to figure it out.

It could be trivial to do an express “recertification” by recording a video of your workspace once in a while, after you’ve done the full certification.

I think we all need constant monitoring and certification that we're not shitting our pants. Because, you know, shitting one's pants is bad, so we totally need some patroling to save people from this. Can we count as a civilized society while we let pants-shitting happen to our citizens?

I mean, I hate it, but it's not THAT far from certain requirements that you can run into. For instance....when doing games development as an indie dev, you can't have a Playstation devkit at home unless you have certified locks installed on all doors, the devkit is positioned out of view, the window isn't easily accessible from the outside(preferably with metal bars)....it's a pain to actually demonstrate that your place of work is safe enough to have a devkit present there.....otherwise they just won't send you one, end of story. So yes, in order to just do your job from home, there is a requirement for a level of security and setup involved.

As an aside - funny how in the pandemic these requirements were massively relaxed and as a remote worker I currently have a PS5 devkit on my desk like it's a not big thing.

I can see how that can quite easily be viewed as gatekeeping.

Having a "spare" room or a rented coworking space to use as a remote office is a luxury of the middle/upper class.

I can see your logic, and I can see how it would be more profitable for companies when hiring remote, but at the end of the day, there are many profitable things a company can do that they are not (technically, see: "legally") allowed to do, for example not hiring disabled workers, firing pregnant female workers, and so on.

We choose to not maximise productivity to create a more accepting and equal society.

That is of course all in theory.

A company can still hire unverified workers though if they want.

But that doesn't address the issue that there would be a legal way for companies to discriminate based on your wealth, regardless if they do it or not.

"filter for applicants with a remote office" is virtually 1-to-1 with "filter for middle/upper class applicants", which of course is unacceptable according to our modern view on social mobility and egalitarianism.

But not illegal.

Of course, we need to gatekeep access to WFH opportunities. This is going to fix things.

I think some people object (aka downvote) because one of the good parts of wfh is "different strokes for different folks" without having to justify it or get permission. You are suggesting an approach that people will tend to find highly invasive and controlling.

If you want to control my work space and dictate what that looks like, then assign me an office and make what you want on your dime. Don't try to turn wfh into some perfect slave labor scenario where employers control it and employees pay for it and it's this highly invasive process.

For WFH, the organization that I work in had a form that I had to fill out prior to getting authorization. It essentially looked like something from OSHA.

* The working area is maintained between 68°-76°

* The working area is free of tripping obstructions

* The working area has a adjustable chair

* The working area has handholds on any staircase of more than two steps

Etc...

And yes, I am working on improving the area that I work in. It currently meets the requirements, I'm just looking to go another step for a more comfortable area now that I know that long term WFH is possible and reasonable.

Hah. I have a pretty nice home office but it probably doesn't consistently fall in to that temperature range. Often colder in the winter and I don't turn on the noisy window AC unless it gets really hot. (And I don't know what tripping hazards are.) But, sure, I'll check the boxes. Lying to employers is pretty traditional.

I actually agree with you. I don't think it needs to be strictly enforced. I think most people just don't realize how terrible their WFH setup is; they don't give it a moment's thought.

I've observed that they either feel they can't change it, or they put up with distractions, or they don't worry about setting boundaries, or the equipment is subpar compared to the office.

Having a checklist would at least get people to think for a moment.

It's not rocket science. In an ideal world, people probably have a dedicated room, a good adjustable chair that fits them, good lighting for video, temperature control, ergonomic keyboard setup, etc. Sure you can write all that down on a page. Maybe make a video. But a lot of people just don't have that space and there's nothing they can easily do about it.

Right, you must have room with a door to WFH otherwise back to the open plan office.

Why not just have employee cameras so that they can both verify the workstation set up as well as make sure they’re actually working for the full 8 hours a day?

Sounds like a great YC startup idea. They can use machine learning and AI to calculate the times that the employee is sitting at their workstation, have eye tracking to make sure that they are looking at the screen, and analyze the network traffic and keystrokes to make sure that people aren’t goofing off on HN or Reddit.

I think android overloads would improve the situation.

Eh? An employer should ensure all of this; money normally spent on that employee's workspace should be spent on their home setup. This should include enough money so that the employee can move houses to a place with a spare room, desk, chair, screens, electricity, internet connection, etc. Take what you pay per employee in desk space, and pay it to your employees directly.

And open up your wallet for relocation, since it's unlikely they'll find housing in SF.

I didn't downvote. But so long as I'm getting my work done--and barring any specific strict security requirements--I don't see how it's any of my employer's business whether I have an A+ office setup or if I'm working from my kitchen table (both of which I do).

People differ. I have a nice home office setup but for probably half the time I just use a laptop somewhere else in my house.

>You must have a room with a door that can be closed IMO.

I have a bathroom door. Does that count for the blue checkmark?

What’s the benefit of this?

It helps the professional remote workers with dedicated power user setups standout from the crowd.

It doesn't really seem beneficial. In the end all that actually matters is that the employee is sufficiently productive. There's no reason to needlessly gatekeep working from home. Everyone works differently so whatever standard that gets set might work for a few people but be less beneficial for others and basically useless for another group.

Do we really want SWE interviews/applications to get more toxic than they already are? On top of quizzing for largely non-pertinent academic knowledge, wasting people's weekends with no-pay projects to "judge their work", and other arbitrary BS do we also want to tack on a qualification for getting hired being that your home is structured in an employer approved way?

I don't think the issue is that people are hiding the fact that their WFH situation is not ideal. The people who have crappy WFH setups are quick to tell everyone. They aren't trying to get away with working from home, they are asking to work from an office.

Even if you have this WFH certification like you talk about, that isn't going to tell your employer much. Some people will have great WFH setups and not be very productive, some people will have bad setups and do great work. The only way to see which is which is to observe their productivity. Certification won't help.

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