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Comment by arrakis2021 | Hacker News Reader

arrakis2021

As a big supporter of wfh for others, I’m personally not a fan.

My home is my sanctuary. It’s for sleep, rest, family and pleasure. It is modeled entirely around being comfortable.

I don’t want to hear my coworkers voices in my home. Or my manager. Or anything else work related. It gives me great anxiety and pain to hear my work in my apartment, and the feeling like I can never truly “leave” work. And I love my work and my team and the company.

To me there is nothing more alarming than the corporate overlords invading my home. And yet this is being applauded by many of my peers. Time will tell.

I think the work from home obsession is the “open office space” debate of our generation.

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If you want to get out of the house, walk or ride a bike somewhere (park, coffee shop, etc.). There's no debate to be had: we need to stop driving cars so much, or you might need something like a stillsuit, Arrakis2021.

I appreciate that despite feeling that way about your own circumstances, you still support wfh for others.

That’s a fair point about home being a sanctuary. After working out of my basement for almost a year I went ahead and built an office in the back yard.

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

Not everyone has this luxury but a hybrid model or choice of working environment is a necessity.. or maybe the real debate to a return to office isn’t location, but the forty hour work week.

> As a big supporter of wfh for others, I’m personally not a fan.

>My home is my sanctuary. It’s for sleep, rest, family and pleasure. It is modeled entirely around being comfortable.

>I don’t want to hear my coworkers voices in my home. Or my manager. Or anything else work related. It gives me great anxiety and pain to hear my work in my apartment, and the feeling like I can never truly “leave” work. And I love my work and my team and the company.

>To me there is nothing more alarming than the corporate overlords invading my home.

I think maybe your home is too small. Sounds like you don't have a separate study or home office.

> And yet this is being applauded by many of my peers. Time will tell.

Well, I dunno why the others are applauding, but I can tell you why I am: I have a study at home that is private and closed off from the rest of the house.

In effect, there is no bleed-over of the workplace into my home.

This is a nice pat answer, but truthfully I need two studies if I really expect working from home not to affect my home life. One will have my work in it and one will be filled with my personal projects (raspberry pi, small wood projects, electronics, music instruments, etc). My current house is sized for not having a dedicated workspace from home, and you could argue that that’s “too small” but the fact of the matter is buying a house with one more bedroom around here is no small bump in price, so I get by with my work life encroaching on my personal life. For now. If I want to continue working from home, my choices are to buy an even bigger house or accept that I will never have that separation.

“I think your home is too small.”

Thanks this is incredible insight I’m gonna fix that right away

I have a large enough house with a full-bedroom sized dedicated work office. I also don’t have a work phone (nor work email on my personal phone) and don’t check my computer outside work hours.

I’d say there is still plenty of psychological bleed-over for me. Not having a 100% physically separated work/home boundary has more of an effect than you might imagine. I can’t fully switch in and out of work mode.

Just my personal viewpoint

Edit:spelling

Negative, my office is a whole separate floor in my house and it still gives me anxiety. Home and work are blurred.

>To me there is nothing more alarming than the corporate overlords invading my home.

I've worked from home for a while and pre-pandemic it seemed to be fine. However, I started to have issues when everybody could do every part of their job from home. More urgent requests in off-hours, simply because people had access 24/7. I used to take 60 to 90 minutes a couple nights a week just to take my time on some work that required thought or extreme focus. There were times that moved to Saturday in the past year.

I started hating going to the basement where my office is. I have a TV and seating for movies, but use it much less than I used to.

I agree with you I started working as a contractor before the pandemic and I don't have a spare bedroom for office. It was fine before my son was born but at this point it's not very productive. If I was living in a house it would be a different matter.

Paying for a small office/coworking desk close to home at my own expense > commuting to office on a daily basis. And I absolutely love that I can work from random airbnbs when I want to travel.

Remote first allows a lot of flexibility even if you have offices.

Pre-pandemic, I worked remotely, but rarely from home. In normal times, nothing is forcing you to work from home in particular if you're working remotely.

> the work from home obsession is the “open office space” debate of our generation.

There is not much of a debate, open offices are hated by knowledge workers and pushed by managers and accountants for cost reasons. I get the same feeling from those pushing back to office policies, they want control of employees under the guise of sparking ‘water cooler talk’.

> There is not much of a debate, open offices are hated by knowledge workers and pushed by managers and accountants for cost reasons. I get the same feeling from those pushing back to office policies, they want control of employees under the guise of sparking ‘water cooler talk’.

The return to offices is also pushed for cost reasons. Employers made billions of dollars in investments in commercial real estate, signed multiyear leases, and have executives, board members and shareholders that are invested in commercial real estate, as well.

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