That doesn’t work. I prefer working in the office, but only if the rest of my team is actually there with me. If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.
We don't need to destroy our planet, dramatically increase costs, and dramatically lower productivity just to appease the minority of people that prefer playing office space, and I think more and more people are starting to see it that way.
For example, commuting, while not nice most of the time, has one great impact on life: it allows you to break from work, which is not happening when you have sleep/work/hobbies/life at the same place. I'm not saying you should spend 1h in traffic or subway, but 20min and walking would be a great way to change thoughts and separate work from life.
Also seeing your colleagues for real, and spending some time with them, as they are humans, is a great way to have better empathy and better work relations: using only remote tools doesn't provide such a human behavior.
Additionally, I know in many in-person orgs leaving to go outside and smoke is super frowned upon and seen as a productivity drain. I assume "going for a quick run" would have the same effect at your off-the-shelf toxic org. In a remote org, no one is going to be breathing down your neck while you take 15 mins to go for a walk to collect your thoughts. Especially if we keep passing privacy legislation that limits the ability of the Amazons of the world to install spyware on worker machines.
1. I have to prepare for the weather, organise proper clothes. Fine.
2. I sweat really hard. After a run I'm totally wet and I'd rather be indoors as little as possible, since sweat is dripping all over. And to get to a work shower I would have to go through an elevator and some other places. I'd feel people judging me if I'm sweating all over the place before getting to shower.
3. I'd prefer to not shower at work. I will have to also bring so much stuff along like changing clothes and must find a place to dry my sweaty clothes since they are dripping through. I must remember to not leave them there and I'm quite forgetful about things like that.
I cycle in and my commute is one of the highlights of my day. When some colleagues are occasionally in the office they all comment on how much being back in the office makes them realise what they missed about it.
I do 40 minutes, personally. It's great!
Before I had a dog, I would intentionally go for walks to think over an algorithm or endpoint I'm writing. People who work in an office do the same thing, often intentionally.
About the only thing that I have noticed, is that having the ability to immediately communicate and that communication method being text, it is very easy for complaints about the organisation to get a little more heated than would happen if we were in person.
If you are working from home and you feel alone, then just reach out to your co-workers and spend some time just chewing the fat.
But no in all seriousness, some of the most in-depth conversations I've had in my life have been in video call 1:1s. The intentionality of sitting in a call with someone for 30 mins is enormous. It's equivalent to going to someone's office and sitting right in front of them and talking for 30 mins. That almost never happens in office environments -- instead you have lots of fleeting encounters, passing people in hallways, etc. With remote you get this extremely intentional person to person experience every time.
That's the great part, I get to choose instead of being forced to the same regular pollute every day.
Seeing colleagues in person is also vital for me - I wouldn't have the working relationship with them that I have if we were fully remote. I think the hybrid model is the best way - it's what works best for me, at least.
Is that worth 29 lbs of carbon emissions and 20% productivity drain? What kind of home do you have where you can't go for a walk and take a break?
I don't think it's so clear cut.
In less collaborative environments, nobody interrupts you and you can bang code all day, close many tickets, etc etc.
In highly collaborative environments, people will talk to each other all the time. You'll me interrupted and you will write less code and close less JIRAs but you're more likely to find issues with code, design and requirements earlier in the process, solve misunderstandings easier and faster, and you get that free flow of information where everyone knows what is going on and share knowledge easily.
So you might have lesser "productivity" but you're more likely to deliver high-quality product.
Now saying that, both WFH and hybrid and office can be both highly collaborative and not. But WFH makes is really easy for people to check out of the information flow (even by accident) and be angry they're not getting informed, or promoted or whatever.
If you want WFH to work out, you need to come up with a strategy how to make that highly collaborative.
Moving to WFH will not do anything to reduce emissions and it could actually lead to an opposite outcome due to increased consumption as people would have more time to travel longer distances.
There won't be increased consumption at 7 AM and at 5 PM on a weekday if less people commute. I just don't see it happening. Additionally the tech industry isn't exactly a groundswell of people either -- if all tech workers stop commuting, that isn't going to have enough of an impact to change traffic conditions except literally in silicon valley. There just aren't that many workers in tech.
But let's examine the flipside... The average commute distance in the U.S. is 16 miles. The average tech company is located in a densely populated metropolitan area, and the average passenger vehicle in the U.S. emits 411 grams of CO2 per mile. Commuting two ways that's 32 miles * 411g = 13.152 kg (~29 lbs) of carbon emissions for your daily commute. The average American household in total has around 39.8 kg/day (~88 lbs) of C02 emissions. Reducing that by 29 on weekdays is a 1/3 reduction in emissions. That's huge. Also consider that the average person in the U.S. drives 36.9 miles per day. For working people cutting this by 32 miles on weekdays is an enormous change.
Consumption isn't going to increase proportionally because everyone is still going to be too busy working. The people who were already "consuming" during the day are going to continue to do so, but that population isn't going to increase. It's fixed. Maybe some will drive more, but it's not going to have the same effect that the people no longer driving 32 miles / weekday no longer having to do so will have.
I'm also ignoring the significant environmental and monetary costs of keeping an office running, and the increased work that needs to be done because of the (being charitable) at least 15% production drain of working in an office.
No one (save school trips) wants to pack into the bronx zoo at 8 AM on a tuesday. At best this would have diminishing returns -- the benefit of the roads being less crowded vanishes once the same number of people start driving for consumption reasons. There's no way it would exceed the original footprint of people commuting, because the motivation wouldn't exist once you approach commute levels of congestion. And this is ignoring the fact that there is an essentially fixed population of people who are able to consume during the workday.
There's a delayed consumption.Time and money saved will inevitably turn spending time and money later. Also not only tech workers work in the offices.A lot of other people might demand to work from home (and they already did).That's a lot of people.
>But let's examine the flipside... The average commute distance in the U.S. is 16 miles. The average tech company is located in a densely populated metropolitan area, and the average passenger vehicle in the U.S. emits 411 grams of CO2 per mile. Commuting two ways that's 32 miles * 411g = 13.152 kg (~29 lbs) of carbon emissions for your daily commute. The average American household in total has around 39.8 kg/day (~88 lbs) of C02 emissions. Reducing that by 29 on weekdays is a 1/3 reduction in emissions. That's huge. Also consider that the average person in the U.S. drives 36.9 miles per day. For working people cutting this by 32 miles on weekdays is an enormous change.
I dont think you can make an equation like this.People instead of walking to their favorite restaurant might decide to order more or make longer rides to go to "the better restaurants" instead of just consuming what is withing the walking distance from their apartments / office.
>Consumption isn't going to increase proportionally because everyone is still going to be too busy working. The people who were already "consuming" during the day are going to continue to do so, but that population isn't going to increase. It's fixed. Maybe some will drive more, but it's not going to have the same effect that the people no longer driving 32 miles / weekday no longer having to do so will have.
Except a lot of people will gain time and money to spend later.And that's usually one of the main arguments in these discussions that people hate to spend time and money to commute.
>I'm also ignoring the significant environmental and monetary costs of keeping an office running, and the increased work that needs to be done because of the (being charitable) at least 15% production drain of working in an office.
I was under the impression that offices generally are environmentally speaking better buildings than your average condos and houses.They have to follow specific sustainability standards.
The house/apartment you live in is still there (because you still live in it) regardless of if you WFH. The difference is if you WFH, it's actually being utilized 100% of the time instead of just at night and on weekends. Conversely, the office literally doesn't need to exist in the first place if everyone does WFH. So we have to compare having your apartment + having an office, to having just your apartment. The office situation is a net negative no matter how environmentally friendly it is unless it is actually carbon neutral or carbon negative. And that's ignoring the commuting aspect. If we were to abandon all offices tomorrow and let nature re-claim them, it would have a massively positive effect carbon footprint wise. And it's not like offices turn off the AC at night.
> Except a lot of people will gain time and money to spend later.And that's usually one of the main arguments in these discussions that people hate to spend time and money to commute.
By this logic, we should keep everyone poor because god forbid they consume something. Consumption isn't negative across the board. And overwhelmingly these days it's digital anyway. If I stay at home and watch Netflix, I have a much smaller carbon footprint than someone who goes and drives somewhere. You can see from the statistics above, the average person drives ~39 miles per day. I'm saying reduce that by 32 on weekdays and you're saying "oh no, what if they replace that with other consumption???". I think it is borderline impossible people would consistently do something _worse_ than their commute (carbon wise) across the board. It's like saying "oh no, if we ban unhealthy deserts in schools people will buy them and eat even more unhealthy deserts outside of school". They won't -- on average kids would be healthier. It's a no brainer.
> I dont think you can make an equation like this.People instead of walking to their favorite restaurant might decide to order more or make longer rides to go to "the better restaurants" instead of just consuming what is within the walking distance from their apartments / office.
There is no reason to suspect this would happen. If you work from 9 AM to 5 PM, and you cut out your commute, you have _more_ time to for example make a home-cooked meal. If anything people will order out less. All the statistics on WFH (and I've done contracting for a meal planning company so I can guarantee this one specifically) support this. People order out less when they work remotely, across the board.
Regarding the "taking longer rides thing" -- people aren't going to do that so much that it becomes as demanding as their commute. Then it would be annoying.
I am pretty sure most office buildings adhere to strict sustainability standards as opposed to residential housing.Only more luxurious condos are just as good as your average modern office space.
I am pretty sure most modern office buildings turn off the AC at night or have a mechanism to keep it cool by other means (external blinds).
>By this logic, we should keep everyone poor because god forbid they consume something. Consumption isn't negative across the board. And overwhelmingly these days it's digital anyway. If I stay at home and watch Netflix, I have a much smaller carbon footprint than someone who goes and drives somewhere. You can see from the statistics above, the average person drives ~39 miles per day. I'm saying reduce that by 32 on weekdays and you're saying "oh no, what if they replace that with other consumption???". I think it is borderline impossible people would consistently do something _worse_ than their commute (carbon wise) across the board. It's like saying "oh no, if we ban unhealthy deserts in schools people will buy them and eat even more unhealthy deserts outside of school". They won't -- on average kids would be healthier. It's a no brainer.
I am not arguing against WFH.I am arguing against your argument that going WFH would bring net positives for the environment.People with more disposable resources do things that cause more pollution because they participate in economic activity.That's just a fact.
Americans tend to consume much more regardless of whether they drive a car or not.
>There is no reason to suspect this would happen. If you work from 9 AM to 5 PM, and you cut out your commute, you have _more_ time to for example make a home-cooked meal. If anything people will order out less. All the statistics on WFH (and I've done contracting for a meal planning company so I can guarantee this one specifically) support this. People order out less when they work remotely, across the board.
Regarding the "taking longer rides thing" -- people aren't going to do that so much that it becomes as demanding as their commute. Then it would be annoying.
I think things like Jevons paradox beg to differ.Cooking a meal at home is an option many would not choose.
The thing with your attitude though, is that you're saying it only works for you if everyone is in office. Basically that everyone has to be in office for you to enjoy your office environment. This only works on teams where everyone feels this way. And that's a perfectly reasonable approach to hiring for a new company. The problem is that people have been WFH long enough that every team is likely split on 'team-in-office' sentiment. If a company wants to require staff in office at this point, it should be for building new teams, not applied to existing teams. Then people with the same sentiment as you can choose to transfer to those teams if desired.
We had small rooms so distraction was not a point. Commute was 25minutes.
I do believe we should get more flexibility where possible.
Likewise for city design where commercial space is highly concentrated and disproportional to residential... if workspaces were spread out and there weren't hubs with way more jobs than housing... maybe commuting wouldn't be so long and so unpleasant and the thought of working from the spare bedroom or the couch would seem ridiculous.
So I think you are right, if we had more choice, people are happier. Hubs are also a great way forward I think.
Maybe there are some exceptions, like high security or high demand for coordination on the spot, but a lot of sectors should or could be more flexible.
My worst experience involved commuting two hours by train to a high rise, tiny "open plan" office space (read: a few important people got offices, the rest of us were in one not very big room). It was like a sort of torture... for up to 15 hours a day the only escape from being within a several feet of and in eyeline of half a dozen people at least was hiding in a bathroom stall for a few minutes.... and a space which could be mine and any sort of private was usually two hours of a foul smelling, packed, and unstable public transit away. Growing up in an environment where the median number of people within a mile was usually 3... being forced to be constantly "on display" and knowing that there was no escape other than hours of public transit at the end of the day was deeply psychologically unsettling. I lasted about 6 months.
And likely discriminatory.
I prefer working from home because I (am caring for an ailing parent|just had a baby|am not neurotypical|have a disability|etc.)
WFH is going to start being seen as a "reasonable accommodation" because the last 18 months have proven that lots of jobs can be done just fine without a physical office and denying that to employees who benefit from it for protected reasons isn't going to fly.
In short: suck it up. Dialing a few people in to an in person meeting is fine. Maybe it doesn't work exactly as well for some reasons but so what? Getting along well with your coworkers doesn't require colocation.
I didn't vote, but probably it's mostly because of "In short: suck it up", because it seems like a crudely-expressed attempt to deny others the option of disagreement or further discussion
What if George had been away getting coffee or at the bathroom when you started the conversation, he would have missed out anyway.
At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. No dropped calls or poor connections or VPN drops or whatever.
As an engineer, I sympathize with the poster. When I need to focus and get something done, I'm generally happier at home with either fewer distractions or more of the distractions under my control. I also like my privacy and loathe the feeling of someone. looking over my shoulder. I'm so very sensitive to motion in my periphery and find movement around me distracting, too. But, I also value the in person communication and collaboration I get in person.
Personally, I'm looking forward to heading back part time, especially considering that the "new normal" appears to be about a 50/50 split between home and office.
Of course, everyone is going to have their own preference, but the company you work for (and your coworkers) will have theirs as well. But, if someone's attitude is "my way or the highway" they as well start looking for a new job, because they'll need one regardless...
You say this like it's a foregone conclusion, a fact. I disagree with it completely. It's far easier to collaborate remotely. You don't need find a meeting room, you don't need to worry about making too much noise, you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.
It's nice to work together in person occasionally, but I'd much rather collaborate remotely... and get together for lunch now and again.
You have to pay for your own.
> you don't need to worry about making too much noise
Unless other people live in your home.
> you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.
That’s comparing all-remote to some-remote, which is a different comparison than all-remote to all-in-office.
You have to do it anyway. The rent did not went up due you being at home during day.
I guess that's true, but I'm not sure why I would care about my home getting slightly smaller when I'm at work. It will affect some people, but I don't know if it's many.
In "Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours", a dedicated office is the "paid for more space" side, and I was talking about the "lost space" alternative.
And maybe I'm weird but I'm going to have a desk no matter what.
How do you typically browse websites at home? Do you play any PC video games? Steam has a ton of users.
(And if you use a table, then you could use the same table for working.)
It's true that PC gaming is as popular as ever, but I suspect its rise has been at least somewhat countered with a decrease in desktop computing at home as smartphones became ubiquitous.
And there's been a decrease in desktops, but far more households have a desktop/laptop than a tablet and it's not far behind the rate of having broadband.
Or just put it on a table.
I don't see any need to distinguish between desktops and laptops for working from home. Laptops have built-in webcams too.
I'd add a big screen or two, a real mouse, and a better keyboard. But that would take up very little extra space when not in use.
Plus a separate office means a door to keep out noise, room for bookshelves and other office items, and the ability to just "put things down" without having to spend time cleaning off the kitchen table before dinner.
Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal. Sure, you can make due... but you could make due with a poor environment in an office building too... but why would you? You can't compare the setup in an office building to a much worse environment at home and then say "home is cheaper". For a like-for-like comparison, it costs the employee more to work from home.
At worst that's still only a desk of space wasted.
And if you're willing to commute, you should probably be willing to spend 2 minutes putting all that stuff away. If you still decide not to, then it's because that space isn't needed very much.
> Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal.
I agree, but this line of conversation is specifically about if you don't have a separate office.
> only a desk of space wasted
There is a lot more to a dedicated, optimal work environment than "only a desk of space". Plus the fact that a LOT of people live in places that don't have an extra "desk of space". Approximately half the places I've worked couldn't give up a desk's worth of space without it being in everyone's way.
Yes, but the reduction for a desk is only if you don't have another usable surface, and even then it's only a tenth of "lots of money" because a desk is so much smaller than a room.
A tenth of lots of money is not all that much, and very likely cheaper than commuting.
- a 2'x3' area on a table, anywhere in the place you live
For a lot of us (at least for me and some others), a suitable work from home environment includes
- a 4'x3' desk (or larger, for multiple monitors)
- a door or other way to separate the workspace from house interruptions (and vice versa)
- a bookshelf and other miscellaneous items
- good lighting
In general, all that ^ is necessary to be as effective as one would be at an actual office, and generally means a separate room in the house/apartment; and that is fairly costly. The last time I did the calculations, it came out to several thousands of dollars per year.
Whether you can get a nice isolated place depends on the particular place you're living.
But I was never arguing that isolation isn't necessary! Please look again at the initial comment I replied to.
"Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office."
My concern was only with the second half of that "or". To get to the second half of the "or", you have to take it as given that there's a suitable spot in your home. When you argue that many homes don't already have such a spot, I agree, but that's irrelevant to what I was trying to comment on.
Everything I've said here should be interpreted like this: "Okay, so you've decided you don't need an additional room? Well in that case, I don't think the space taken up by working from home in an existing room is a big deal, because xyz."
maybe it's just because I've never been the meeting room finding person but in most places I've worked it hasn't been a big problem.
>you don't need to worry about making too much noise,
I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting, but I have had the problem that kids in the house were being too noisy for the online meeting and everyone has to laugh and talk about how wonderful having the kids is.
>you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.
Why wouldn't this affect remote meetings?
Obviously there are any number of things that can affect remote meeting quality. I would think for meeting quality an in person one is likely to work better as a meeting, although people might prefer the remote one for all sorts of other reasons.
In every place I've worked, there's been a limited number of meeting rooms and you needed to plan ahead to get one. And if your meeting ran over, it wasn't uncommon to have a group of people standing outside waiting for you to vacate.
> I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting
Fair. I was really thinking about the impromptu meetings of 3-4 people around a desk (because getting a meeting room takes too much time). Those almost infallibly annoy other people in the area, even if they don't say anything.
> Why wouldn't this affect remote meetings?
Suddenly adding a remote person to a meeting that was planned to be in person is difficult at best. It's common for the people on location to just not "play well" with the remote person. When meetings are "remote first", adding one more remote person doesn't wind up with that person being an afterthought. This is a fairly well known issue, honestly.
> I would think for meeting quality an in person one is likely to work better as a meeting
Under optimal circumstances, the in person meeting does tend to be best. However, there are so many different variations from optimal, it's my experience that remote-first meetings wind up being better in nearly every _actual_ case.
having a meeting run over is a problem, having someone waiting to get into that room is a solution to the problem.
And since the current trend in our company (and I guess a lot of others) is "hotdesking", where you pull a ticket when entering the building which tells you what desk might be free. Well, no sitting near direct colleagues anymore. So the last advantage of the office is gone as well. Unfortunately it doesn't stop management from hallucinating the great back-in-the-office future after the pandemic...
Yes, I'll also be looking for a new job.
If you don't think your own preference is important then don't complain when other dictate the outcome.
1. Most of the people on the team should be working from the office (benefits of being together as a team), OR
2. Most of the team should be working remote (benefits of working remotely)
The point being made was that the third option, each person gets to pick what they want, isn't really a viable option. The team should pick one option or the other. Nowhere was it was that the "in the office" option should be the one chosen, just that it was their, personal preference.
* There are some other reasons for working in the office besides being in proximity to your co-workers, but that's generally seen as the primary benefit by a lot of people.
I think we should all just switch jobs to remote companies if we like that and our company is not, and vice versa.
This avoids all the issues of mixed.
Here, "that doesn't work" is short for "that doesn't work for me". It is in fact a statement of preference, colloquially phrased.
so no reason to go back to the office at all.