Is going to the office a broken way of working?
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I was in the unfortunate position of having moved to a new city for a new tech job where I knew nobody just seven months before the pandemic began and everything was shut down. I was making many friends both inside and outside the office before that time, but during and since the lockdowns I just feel like socializing has become so much harder and my days are just blurred together computer screens. I guess at this point I’m an extroverted introvert, whereas most of HN is very introverted or has pre-existing families/friends to socialize with.
My company is hybrid at the moment and I’m actually writing this from the very empty office. Things just aren’t the same.
I tend to think its a good thing for people to have a bit more distance from work, but if we don't figure out ways to fill in that social need, societally, people will find themselves feeling even more isolated than they have been.
I think this has much more to do with "we are in a global pandemic" than "you can't meet people doing remote work." Certainly, there were a number of larger groups that I used to hang out with consistently pre-pandemic, but now have totally abandoned. I'm not interested in maintaining an online relationship with those groups; their value to me was in the face-to-face moments.
But that's just not a thing right now.
I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to expose my family to people who may or may not even believe in vaccinating themselves.
I think my issue isn't WFH, or virtual socialisation (which I was already doing 2-3 times per week to keep in touch with high school friends). The problem is both. 16 hours a day in front of a computer just didn't feel human.
Given the choice, I will never work from home again. Even at work I have a rule of no more than 4-5 hours in front of a screen.
I also feel people are sticking more to their core friends and family groups, and venturing out to meet new people less. But that’s more of a personal feeling than something I have quantitatively observed.
There’s a reason why social isolation is used as punishment, even in carceral locations. We’re just getting out of it at a societal level.
The pandemic is probably a bigger deal to others than it is to you.
However, I definitely give new people who are übermaskers a bit of a wide berth mostly out of respect for them.
I suppose it's not exactly a strong set of convictions if you're passively going along with broader social pressures to segregate on race and class, but if we're talking about the health of society (which I think we're implicitly doing), I think segregating on worldview is actually a whole lot healthier.
The closest thing to an exception was a group that existed a decade then happened to get a Meetup for convenience, and they closed within a year of getting on (for unrelated reasons)
In Kansas City there is a dog club (your dog is the member), but it features a bar, workspace, food, events: barkdogbar.com. You drop off your dog to play with the others and can socialize with others, work, etc.
In Chicago - there is guild row (guild row.co) (disclosure: my cousin is a cofounder). This social club is centered around making things.
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commu...
Its not a great example for a model that would work now as a huge part was how exclusionary it was - white/male/believe in god/not a commie etc. - society has moved on somewhat from that era.
Still there’s a sort of sense of place that you get when actually involved in a community that is in a local area - I hope we can start to figure out how to do things more locally again.
Depending upon age and interests, at least larger cities have options and, as you get involved, more options get opened up.
That acts as my digital water cooler since I'm remote forever.
>The few new meetings that did take place tended to be with others who were like themselves: the consultants talked to consultants, and the bankers talked to bankers. In terms of both new conversations and diverse connections, the most successful networker at the event turned out to be the bartender. https://hbr.org/2018/05/go-ahead-skip-that-networking-event
Internet forums like HN will always overrepresent preferences for remote work because they're biased toward people who enjoy socializing over the internet. Most people don't go online and engage in random discussions. They do it in person, and they like it that way. A random sampling of active HN commenters is going to be much more enthusiastic about remote work than, say, your average junior who relies heavily on organic interactions to grow in an organization.
As the default, we all have a little experience in it.
There is a need to defend it though. I've already seen several businesses claim that remote work is "the future". Personally, I feel that remote work has been very detrimental to my mental health and I hate it. I don't want that future. It feels very unhealthy.
Is it possible that these two circumstances are overlapping in your case?
Do you miss the commute and sitting in an office (on-location work) or do you miss speaking with people (socialization)?
No thanks for offices.
I'm back to the office most days of the week although I don't have to. Big difference being that there are no longer implicit or explicit expectations what hours of the day one is there, I can just stay at home to work on something or wait for a delivery, due to only a part of staff being there any given day it is more spacious and pretty much as quiet as at home, etc.
I actually have a separate room in my apartment I could convert into an office, but I don't want to, since I would have zero use for it outside work hours and prefer to use it for things I actually want to do at home. Sure I could move out of the big, expensive city into a more spacious home, but then I wouldn't live where I want to live.
I don't think there needs or should be a default, and I don't want to go back. Companies should just choose whatever model of working they prefer and see what talent they can attract. Maybe in person work becomes niche. That's fine for me. But i'm honestly getting a bit tired of the "why would you want to socialize with co-workers, don't you have real friends?", you now often get if you mention you personally favor a hybrid model.
Collectively we should work on this first before jumping the conclusion "all juniors lose out on remote" or smt. Remote gives you a lot more freedom and telling juniors that it isnt for them is kind of gatekeeping.
You can have all the human contact and "it's 6pm - want to go for a beer?" easy socializing that you get from being in a busy office, but simultaneously keep almost all the flexibility and the lack-of-constraints of working from home (...almost - there's usually an expectation that you wear clothes).
In many ways it's even better than office social contact: it decouples that socializing from your job. Want to change company, but keep hanging out with the same people every day? Want to switch offices and meet a whole new social circle without changing jobs? Want to go out from the office for a drink after work with your 'colleagues' with no need to avoid personal topics or keep things professional with your boss?
It does require leaving the house, but for almost everybody there is a coworking space that's significantly quicker to get to you than your current office would be. If you're in a major urban center, you probably have 10s or 100s to choose from. For me, it's a dramatic improvement on both the alternatives.
The one time it has worked was when friends who worked in the same niche sector would sometimes all cowork at a cafe for a day. Maybe once a month. That was incredible. We were expected to be in our offices most of the time though.
It's not cheap but I do love it. Nicest offices I've ever worked in, never obliged to talk to anyone.
Given enough time, people would start developing routines and habits around diffused WFH, invest and fine-tune in facilities and services to cater for such a customer base.
Right now we have a lot of stakeholders that just held their breath hoping for a quick return to “normality”.
Indeed, a different organization of our urban spaces would drastic reduce CO2 emissions and land consumption. We should think of it in terms of a sudden opportunity to overcome a local minimum we were stuck in, and search for a new optimum.
Furthermore, not everyone has a 1h+ commute to the office and lives in an expensive area - I know plenty of people with short commutes.
In the end, it's not 'all remote' or 'all office', we're different people in different conditions. There has to be room for everyone.
Also, the dating app Bumble has an option for friendships, and in a pinch tinder itself works if you're super clear about your goals
I really miss the ‘low effort’ social interactions that in-office work provides. “Want to get lunch?” is one of those.
Question: does this app already exist? Can I facilitate this in my life without building the app (easy part) and building a significant user base (hard part)?
I see many people try and combine these, saying that the current state sucks, therefore WFH sucks.
I’m not saying WFH wouldn’t otherwise suck for you/others, but it’s really hard to separate these two to figure out how different WFH would be without COVID, unless in your particular area, they’ve gone back to business as usual (which I don’t think anywhere truly has, yet).
But in a world where more companies are WFH, and COVID has much less of an impact on everyday life, I think WFH will look a lot different.
Again, my point isn’t that WFH is the greatest thing for everyone and every company, just saying that people that are just now WFH due to COVID should wait until COVID is mostly uneventful before declaring WFH a failure.
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/everyone-was-amazing-...
It's simply meant to give people a chance to meet other like minded people. Especially in this era of working-from-home it is too easy to end up feeling isolated, so hosting a regular party like this is, I think, a non-stressful way for people to connect.
I mentioned this 78 days ago and 6 people from Hacker News have been attending the most recent 3 parties:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27952414
You can text me at 434 825 7694
As for the invitation, unfortunately not in New York (or the States), but if I'm ever around I'd probably love to join.
In 20 years I've never had a problem.
If you ever visit NYC, please reach out.
There's a big difference between 'remote work' and 'forced to work from home due to a global pandemic'.
It was great. So quiet, open, well lit, great and comfortable desk and chair, ..
Obviously, I could improve my home office, but in reality my home office is taking space that I otherwise was using before 2/20 and now there's a whole space in my home that is allocated to being a work station instead of what it was before.
A few other people came in, and it was great to talk in person in front of a giant whiteboard.
There’s a reason that “stop working at the kitchen counter” is, like, its own cottage industry of online writing. People mostly have really bad wfh setups, even people in tech.
I'm convinced, though, that when the pandemic fades away, we'll see a bifurcation of working styles. The office offers in-person relationships, high-bandwidth communication, and a well-understood management paradigm, at the cost of forcing everybody to live near the office and spend a lot of time commuting. Full-remote offers the ability to live anywhere and no commutes, but shallower relationships and not-very-well understood modes of communication and collaboration. Hybrid offers... not much, as far as I can tell. It's the downsides of in-office and remote. The best you can say about it is that you get to see people in person sometimes and can avoid commuting sometimes. :-/
So we'll see a grand sorting where people that want to be remote find the companies that will let them do that, and the people that want things to go back to normal find the companies that also want that. Then the remote companies spend the next 50 years learning how to really do distributed work, rather than just "like an office, but on Slack and Zoom".
The all-company meet ups were the best part about the job(other than the pay I guess).
I actually took a job back with my prior employer with the hopes I could return to an office in some capacity, but we are all remote now. Boo!
To each his own, but all-company meetups are the most god-awful type of event there is. The feigned enthusiasm about company stuff, self-promotions, office politics, elevator pitches, people patting their own backs, etc etc etc. All in all, a colosal waste of time and resources.
EDIT: I suppose the lack of collaboration could’ve also been company culture. Be cautious when the sample size is small.
It's easy to believe the people you work with are friends to socialize with, but the reality is that most people cut ties with their coworkers as soon as they change job, especially early in your career when you're hopping from one job to another every few years. Those people are temporary friends at best.
I recommend doing everything you can to cultivate friendships outside of work.
I dislike this type of comment as it presumes that one person's personal experience is "reality" or a reasonable representation of what everyone else has experienced.
It assumes that something as complicated as personal relationships can be can be distilled down into some sort of "average" or "normal" protocol and that if your experience doesn't align, then you are an outlier, not-average, not-normal.
I don't think the concept of "average" or "normal" is particularly useful for something as multi-dimensional as establishing personal relationships.
Some of my longest and best friends are people I met in my first job after college.
It's my own experience, and the experience of literally everyone I've ever talked to about it, and something many people have written about in articles about the difficulties of making friends as an adult. No doubt there are people who maintain friendships with people they've worked with long after leaving a job but I don't believe it's very common. If your experience is different then I think you are an outlier. There's nothing wrong with that. You're better off than the rest of us.
GP is spot on, though, and there is absolutely no way around it.
Relationships with most coworkers is motivated and defined by work circumstances. The only reason you found yourselves sharing a space and a schedule and experiences is the fact that someone pays you to be there, but otherwise you would be doing something else somewhere else with someone else. More importantly, if any of you switches jobs, your time and focus and sometimes even city or country will change. Even though professional relationships can flourish into personal relationships, the vast majority and the norm is that the only reason you're even aware you exist is that you want that paycheck and consequently you have to deal with each other.
More than half of all my friends outside the office started out as coworkers in the past. And the remainder are almost exclusively people that I met as a result of social activities with these 'original' friends.
Let's put it this way: how many current and past coworkers do you include in your current social, non-professional group?
Turns out, coworkers are humans and can have the same outside work interest as me. Be that music, board games, cooking, reading, hiking, etc.
Sure, most people from previous work I don't have any contact with. Same is true for most people I met outside work. Friends can come from everywhere, I don't see a reason to pre-filter.
I just visited Europe this fall and people hang out together practically all the time. Every evening. Families with kids get together and effortlessly spend time while the kids entertain each other. This is the norm.
The sense that I don't get enough socialization via work is a serious symptom that I need to nurture real friendships and communities in life.
This is precisely the take I get from all the comments on how WFH supposedly causes social isolation. WFH causes nothing of the sort: people simply seem to be socially isolated by default but relied on work and office life to fill in their personal socialization void.
I've noticed the same thing regarding health and sedentarism: if you rely on your commute to the office to do any form of physical exercise then you already have a major problem, and what your blaming WFH for is just a problem that was already there to begin with.
People have personal needs, and it's simply not healthy to fool ourselves into believing that office life is the solution to meeting each and all of those personal needs.
WFH is still incredibly isolating for me. I feel disconnected from my work and from my peers. I was remote once before the pandemic and felt exactly the same way.
I think most people would describe me as highly extroverted. I just don't get enough/diverse enough person to person contact to be happy when I'm at home working all day.
I don't dislike WFH and I think it has a place. I work on embedded devices and now I'm working at Apple on phone stuff. That place is not my job, I don't think WFH is any good for the teams I'm at and for the stuff I do. Even if I just go to the office once per week, that usually involves moving multiple devices and cables and tearing down/setting up my development setup somewhere else or having to maintain duplicate setups. Don't get me started on if I forget or don't think I'll need X measuring device or Y adapter cable or tool and then I have to hunt for a second one in the office or buy one for home.
It’s been rough. Don’t have any real advice, but at least know you’re not alone.
Edit: I think it’s important to focus on where we go from here. And at least to me that actually means more remote. I would rather be able to work remotely from amongst my existing support network than attempt to roll back the clock to a pre-COVID style of office work.
To each their own.
I find almost all arguments against remote working seem to based on bad experiences in the last year that are potentially conflating remote work with the pandemic. Sure, some people may truly hate remote work. However, I have quite a few friends who despised it and now that we're back to normal (in the UK) have actually decided they don't want to go back to the office. The commute time + cost of commute is just not worth it. It's equivalent to a sudden pay cut to have to commute again and a pretty significant one at that. Getting your regular social life back makes a huge difference to quality of life when remote working. For most places this hasn't happened yet.
As another anecdotal example there were a loud minority crying out for us to get back to the office at my company. They wanted to be allowed in before all the equipment was back they were so desperate. One person is back full time. About 2-5 others come in once a week on the day the company has started buying lunch. I think a lot of people did want to come back but as the office opened up with the rest of society they've found they don't actually need it for a social life. I bet that in 12 months the company moves to buying a hot desk in a co-working space for the 1-5 people who want to come in and I would bet that within 24 months there's a greater than 50% chance nobody is coming in anymore because the social life they wanted through the office is gone.
If all the local bars/clubs/libraries/whatever you like to do were open, wouldn't that solve the problem?
A response I can offer you is this, And it’s loaded with empathy because I def get that people derived real fun from it.
A lot of people attended those after-hour drinks as the semi-mandatory things they are, either for career survival or career acceleration reasons. This was always a large background narrative, and the death of it as of now is a nice thing. I’d take quarterly team dinners and an 30 min zoom with beers any time.
7am-5pm, and the 5-7pm additions to work life on a often weekly basis demands a lot out of people went to them just to manage their career.
What frustrates a lot of people, and generates the tone on HN perhaps, is that this aspect isn’t acknowledged in exchange for “but it was my social life!” Your social life cut into my real non-work social life (or so the comment would go).
I never want to fall into a 5 times a week schedule again, but I miss the background discussions; commute; and energy that is involved in getting ready for work.
As it stands - I live for 2-3 hours on Sundays if the weather is good because everything is closed and will be closed for another 6 fucking months. It's fucking horrific. I have to spend the rest of my week grinding away at meaningless drivel.
Imagine actually spending 40+ hours/week around people and enjoying a significant amount of your interactions.
I disagree. If anything, WFH optimizes away unhealthy work/life imbalances that force people to become mindless company drones whose personal life is eaten away by a corporation.
Our life is not the long commute, the social order imposed by a company hierarchy, the petty office politics, the optional-in-name-only-but-actually-mandatory professional events which maskerade as company social get-togethers, etc etc. That's something people are forced to endure because they are imposed by the circumstances of office life.
If anything, WFH forces a healthy separation and distancing from inane and outright unhealthy aspects of office life, and it's sad to see how the amount of life and personal time and the opportunity to pursuit your own interests that it eats away is somehow being depicted as a negative tradeoff.
You are your own person, not a mindless company drone. Your life is not dictated by the context of your professional life. Mixing both is terribly unhealthy. Much like alcoholism, just because people use it as an excuse to fill in voids in their life that does not make it any healthier or even desirable.
Seems like my simple suggestion struck a nerve. The idea that while WFH can be beneficial to global society, but still represent a decrease in human socialization isn't really groundbreaking or controversial.
Right now, we have the highest rates of WFH in history and also historical levels of loneliness and depression. All three of these trends were happening pre-COVID. We don't have to make sweeping comparisons to completely unrelated illnesses (alcoholism) to see that people are generally not replacing the socialization found in the office with socialization at home.
When I was in the office socializing with my co-workers/friends, I didn't consider it being a "mindless company drone", I thought of it as being a human with historically human social interactions. You clearly don't (or didn't) like those interactions, but you aren't everyone. One size doesn't fit all.
It's a bit of a straw man I'm making, but a lot of people seem to say "I do fantastic work, my company doesn't need to control me, just recognise the fantastic work I do! Let me just work from home and keep up my fantastic work!"
It's already well discussed in the "theory of the firm" in economics. Why do firms hire employees, rather than just contractors? Why do workers not want to all be freelancers?
A lot of the arguments about "presenteeism" seem to veer into acting like their company wants to essentially have all the overhead of managing freelancers, and to have employees jump through all the hoops freelancing involves, which is obviously not what (most) people want in the first place.
My commute to the office is 10 minutes. We have actual offices with doors. So the whole experience is civilized and low stress.
My theory is what wrong with offices today has everything to do with managers need to exert power and feel in control. And things being run for the convenience of upper managers. They all live close to work, have offices with doors. None of this actually considers the companies bottom line. Seriously you pay an code monkey a shitload of money then have him work under the worst work environment short of running heavy machinery next to them.
I'm not surprised, because not only offices "died", but everything else did too.
Many people used to work remotely before that. But we always could jump out for a lunch with our friends in a restaurant. Or take a break and go to the gym. Or meet in board games cafe after work, go to the cinema, a swimming pool or wine tasting.
Now, corona made it all go away. It was never about the office itself but the whole life as we knew it.
Work is for work - not a social life. Yes, it's easy to make friends at work because like in middle school, you're forced together and don't need to break the ice. Very tempting - very bad for the career.
What is good for both the career and getting friends is maintaining contact with compatible people from the office once you're out of there, and becoming friends with those people. That works.
Now, as far as missing simple human contact while you're at the office - I fully understand that. The problem is, you're forced into that human contact. That's probably healthy, but here's what I do: take a trip for groceries every other day and buy things fresh. Walk around, look for deals, take a full hour. Believe it or not, that alone is enough, as long as you keep doing it. The best part of being remote is you can do that smack in the middle of the day, take a little break from work and break that day up into two smaller parts - not when you're tired after a workday.
I do live with my wife though, so maybe don't need as much human contact. But using work for socializing in the office - ugh.
I've made many, many friends at work, and this near-paranoia level of "you might be pissing off someone else" - so what? I don't need, or want, to be friends with everyone, and I'm quite fine if some people don't like me.
I used to be the "no fun allowed" type, and I wasn't really getting a lot out of it. Now I go to all the "fun" non-work events and have a great time. To each, their own, I guess.
>so what so they talk behind your back, and that's not good for a work environment. so if any of them are in management, they will impede your career. so eventually when one of those guys you pissed off has a couple of beers too many at a company outing, he is going to talk office-inappropriate crap, and despite what you might think that is bad not just for him, but for you as well.
>I'm quite fine if some people don't like me they're not "some people." they are coworkers, and by adding a personal relationship, you are impeding the work you're there to do. if you're not there for work, why not be at a baseball game, and why bother negotiating for a salary? you know who is not fine if some people at the office don't like you, because of a reason You provided to them? everyone above you in your org chart.
But some of us just want to be normal devs for most of our careers, so I don't care if I piss some % of my coworkers with some political stance, even if that means hindering my chances to get "promotions". I don't even _want_ to get any promotions.
And it's also very hard for me to make friends outside of work, which I guess it's true for almost everyone who is 30+ in the western world
Nowadays, jobs in tech rarely last more than 4 years and the worst that can happen is that you get a salary increase and change job.
I wouldn't skip on work socialisation just out of fear.
It's a nice perk to have.
right. the worst that can happen if I take a nice fat dump into my dinner plate is I'll have to get a new dinner plate.
it's not fear. it's being at work to do work and get paid being the number one reason to even bother working. and if you're not there to work, why not be at a rock concert instead. with some friends.
When you work remotely you have to be very deliberate with socialization as well, since you don't get that for free when you're not in the office.
I've been remote for 10+ years and I can assure you that this side of things is harder and you have to take deliberate steps to build socialization into your schedule. I do this with tech meetups, board games and cycling specifically using Meetup to attend events.
But I've been working remotely 4 years now and there's no way I will ever be going back into the office. As a matter of fact, I plan to buy a condo near the beach maybe end of this year or start of next year. This condo will eventually be my office, but now it will just be for holidays. It will have a nice olympic size swimming pool and a nice assortment of restaurants next to a beach road. The beach road will be nice to walk daily one or two times (at night seeing the sun go down into the sea). The swimming pool will be nice for a little break and exercise in the afternoon. For me this setup will be perfect.
My current setup is not perfect since I work from home and still have distractions from my girlfriend (e.g. cleaning the room, calling out for food and small shopping chores, etc...).
I thrive when I am in a space with zero distractions and I hope to have this space in the future in the form of my very own condo office :)
I'm sorry you're having a tough time with it. That sounds really unpleasant.
> My company is hybrid at the moment and I’m actually writing this from the very empty office. Things just aren’t the same.
Ignoring the pandemic, it sounds like the people at your company just don't agree that in-person work is necessary for them to get what they need out of their employment. The issue is either side attempting to force its preferred working conditions on the other. aka the solution isn't to make all of those people that don't want to be in an office come in again, but instead for you to find companies/circles that have people with similar interests as you. Being around people that don't want to be around you is unpleasant for both sides.
Wfh is great for some people, but I also find it monotonous and reduces daily variety amongst a number of other not great attributes more work related. My ideal is a 2-3 day in the office. Different options work better for different people.
I've been coming to office to run into more ppl but alas, no one comes. So just as you, it's very lonely here and it's hard to get attached to work when you haven't met anyone face to face.
commuting is horrendous for some, workplace social life can be too
but for some it's fine and needed
I think it can lead to a rebalancing effect.
I agree, and it’s awesome.
The point of remote work is to make your work hours very efficient so you have more time away from work to live your actual life.
Not being able to do all of that has brought me lower and lower as the months go by. Made a similar comment on reddit and got downvoted into oblivion but this is really how I feel and it really does impact me negatively. I'm sure I'm not the only one, though it does feel like I might be in the minority.
> able to tap people on the shoulder for quick questions rather than having to ping them over chat
My work requires so much focus, having people randomly tap me on the shoulder to ask a question they could just drop in chat is debilitating.
I'm curious you phrase "having to ping them over chat" negatively? I would say the same sentence almost totally in reverse:
"Now I no longer have to interrupt people to ask them a question, I can just ping them over chat for a reply when they are ready"
In person they can cut me off when they start to get it, or I can tell from their face that I need to keep going with more context, it's just more more collaborative.
In chat I'll either end up having to answer a ton of follow up questions for detail, or I'll drown the question in context.
Yes, I can get better at asking questions. But tbh most of this complexity stems from me trying to ask questions well to begin with. IDK, pinging someone over chat seems like more of an intrusion than just asking a question.
Also, I won't, like, ask someone to take off their headphones for this. I'll ask them at lunch, or when we're grabbing coffee / snacks. Over chat there's no coffee break, it's all "headphone" time, from my perspective.
Once you've done that, headphones on or off is redundant.
In my experience, 99% of these disturbances could be avoided with a bit more effort on the side of the person interrupting. So what generally happens is that the person concentrating loses his focus - very likely getting out of the zone - and helps them with something that they could've done themselves.
For me it really seems selfish the majority of the time. Urgent matters, things that really block you and you absolutely can't figure out, sure. Almost anything else can wait a bit for a response.
the problem is that you have already interrupted their flow. Getting back into that takes valuable time.
Having to ping them over chat is annoying because while it may result in a quick answer it may also just disappear into the ether (or the chat app fails to deliver, the person steps away but you don't know this, etc.).
Again, our work is collaborative and if someone wants to be left alone they throw on headphones in which case everyone knows to just ping them over chat so they can respond whenever is convenient for them.
I agree with you that it can be nice. But in thinking back on my career, I’ve never been in an industry that needed it (beyond dealing with operational events).
However, i loved being tapped and then helping people. it was my very favourite distraction, and assuming i was actually helping them with work, I felt zero guilt about losing my focus. it's very personality specific, I suppose * shrug *
The ability for me to switch of chat/email and just get stuff done, without people tapping on my shoulder or standing next to me because they want something is one of the key reasons why I have been working from home for the past 10 years. I’ll come to the office for a week or two every 8 weeks or so, and that’s it. My productivity takes an insane nosedive in the office, simply because open-plan, interruptions and distractions.
I've had colleagues who would maybe quickly look at their mail/chat once a day (usually early in the morning before most people arrived). Latency is high, but that's manageable. But the most annoying is that maybe you would get an answer, maybe not. So you would need to ping them several times over several media, hoping one catches their attention. In meetings you regularly have to re-state/explain stuff because it was sent in a email and they didn't read it, while everyone else is up to date.
A common example: assign them a MR. Gitlab is too noisy (by default), so they redirect every mail from Gitlab to the trash and don't get a notification. You ping them on chat about the MR, wait a couple of days, no review. So you re-ping them. This time a review happens, maybe the next day. There are some comments, so you fix/answer them. Of course they don't know that you did (and don't check), so you need to re-ping them and wait. Depending on how insistent you are, even a small MR can take a week or two. The end result (which might be what they want ultimately) is that you avoid collaborating with them as much as possible because of how painful it is.
Prior to working from home (since late 2018), my social circle was limited to the office. After nine years in the same neighborhood, I knew two neighbors (three before the ones next door moved away) and only one who I knew well enough to ask to pet-sit. Work and commuting consumed all of my time. I had a boat I visited once a month (mostly to make sure it still floated), hobbies that sat unnoticed for weeks or months at a time, and a house and garden that were decaying around me; all because I never had time for them. I paid a housekeeper to clean and a lawn service to cut the grass. I never liked the commute, but I did enjoy the office. Lunch with coworkers, happy hour at the bar next to the office, hanging out in the cafeteria or someone's office were all enjoyable activities.
I would never trade a single benefit of working from home to get them back. Double my salary and a short commute (or a chauffeur) might tempt me back for a while (if only because I could then pay people to do a lot of the projects I'd otherwise put off), but it wouldn't keep me.
Work from home has allowed me to:
- not be distracted if I don't want to be. No one is on a speakerphone; there aren't conversations in the hallway; if the espresso machine makes noise, it's because I'm using it. Even having a private office with a solid, lockable door didn't insulate me from office noise the way working from home does (yes, there are more dogs barking, children playing, and lawns being mowed ... but unless I'm in a meeting those noises aren't distracting the way people talking is)
- meet many of my neighbors (helps that they're mostly all working from home too)
- spend more time at the marina. Used to be, I could only do that on weekends
- work on my house. Used to be, I was too tired when I got home, so again limited to weekends
- take a break from work during the day and still be productive on something else (housework, hobbies, etc). Before, taking a break from work meant a visit to the cafeteria or a chat with a coworker. Weeding a garden, washing my car, folding clothes, organizing my tools; all of these are fantastic activities for thinking up solutions to work problems
- go racing every Wednesday night. Before, if I wanted to be at the dock at 5:00, I'd have to leave the office by 3:00. That really wasn't possible. Now I leave my house at 4:45 to be there on time. This, by far has been the biggest impact ... new friends at 36, who knew!
- reclaim two hours of my life from commuting ... sure I could have moved closer to the office, but I tried that once and my next job just took me that much farther from home
- reclaim my evenings because I'm not exhausted from commuting
- work on my schedule. Aside from meetings, I can mostly work when I know I'll be most productive ... either early in the morning or late in the evening. And noone cares if I take a nap at 2:00 every day
You might want to consider whether being at home was the thing that made you wander, or if just being in an unfamiliar state of being forced you to wander. I would reckon it's the latter because I can attribute my varied life to the fact that I'm an immigrant, and the immigration forcing me to think outside of the box to do all those things.
> Do you have an active social circle? Do you have regular, sustained, positive interaction with your neighbors (i.e. do you do more than say hello in passing)? Kids who do sports? A long commute or a short one? A house or an apartment? Do you do your own housework or do you hire it out? When you're in the office, where do you work (e.g. private office, cubicle, open plan)?
I live in the US (bay area), so my responses will be based on that.
A lot of us were forced to work remote for the last year and a half, which is a bit different than (I presume what you did was) deciding to work from home permanently. There are also pandemic-induced factors that might help people to miss the office more than they might in normal WFH circumstances.
> Social circle / neighbors
COVID kind of killed in-person socialization for a year for the cautious, so social circles and activities aren't as relevant here nor as easy to maintain (compared to a 'normal' WFH timeline). I had a couple groups that did online video calls and catchups / games, but all of those engagements slowly tapered off.
It's also a time where it is incredibly difficult to meet new people, as most are either content with their current circle or are not open to engaging with new people due to COVID. This also applies to my neighbors in my apartment building - nobody seems to want to socialize (I've tried a bit).
> Distractions
I think I'm unique in this one in that I have difficulty maintaining focus for a few reasons, but the office isn't one of them. Once I have some headphones on I'm usually fine.
> Marina and [insert other hobby]
A lot of my hobbies I have were/are typically done at home. I like to read, play games, and sometimes watch tv or twitch or what not, with whatever else is my flavor hobby at the time. None of these are good at getting me out of my apartment, though it is nice to take a book somewhere and sit for a bit now that places are open more around me.
> Commute / evenings / scheduling
My commute is hellish. It's the one thing I don't miss about the office. I agree with you here. The only good thing was it being a good time for winding down after work, which still have to do anyway before I have the energy for another activity.
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I find a lot of the people who are satisfied with WFH fall into one or more of the following categories: people who live with others (partners, family), those who have kids[0], some own homes / larger living spaces. Partners and family keep you company. Kids can keep you busy. A larger space is easier to be in for a long amount of time.
I'm someone who lives alone, in around 600-700sqft apartment, in a city where I only know a handful of people (who were in/out of town much of last year), was told to stay inside / social distance until early 2021, with nearly everything around me closed for a long time.
I've spent a year and a half sometimes going weeks without seeing someone I know, and it has been very isolating and quite hellish. And I would even consider myself an introvert. My friends in the area happen to all be couples that are quite happy to spend time together. Things have been getting better the last six months or so, but 2020 was bad. (This point is a bit thin since in a 'normal' non-pandemic world, a lot of this wouldn't be the case. But 'free' socialization is one reason why I miss the office now.)
Seeing other people you work with face-to-face is nice. It lets you take breaks / walks together, grab coffee, lunch, or generally just BS for 5-10 minutes when you both need a bit. That's aside from the working bits where proximity can help. I miss pairing with other developers on my team.
Office perks were nice. My company provided meals, snacks, drinks, etc. There was also a well-equipped gym that was free, better than I can get in my area, and certainly better than what fits in my apartment. And the space is obviously much larger than my apartment.
Working on a schedule helped provide some structure to day-to-day (for me). I miss going into the office because it provided some structure for me that I didn't have to do myself.
I don't have the space to distance work from leisure in my apartment, which can make it difficult to focus. My home is full of many things that are more interesting than what I am working on, so the psychology is against me. Going into the office provided an easy separation here.
So those are the reasons why I miss the office. That was longer than I thought it would be. Sorry for the wall of text there.
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I will admit that some of these are things I could address myself with moderate - large effort. I could be more proactive with friends and neighbors. I could be more disciplined with my schedule. I could try to find better outdoor hobbies. But honestly right now I am just trying to make it by however I can, so some of those seem daunting. I think that's a lot of folks right now.
In hindsight, I should have packed all of my stuff in a storage unit and went to go bunk with some family for a year and work from there. In extra-extra hindsight, if you had told me in 2019 that this would happen, I would have kept living with my roommate instead of striking it out on my own in the fall.
[0] I feel for the parents who relied on daycare / school as a 'break' from their kids and now have had to manage it themselves. I've also had that sympathy worn quite thin from all of the 'WFH must be great if you're single with no kids!' comments I've been seeing for a year. Frankly I'd kill for a spouse and some kids to provide any interaction or structure to a normal day.
What's broken is having to go to the office every single day. In my experience before and after starting to work from home there is an absolute need to work face to face either to create some bonds between the team members or with a customer or in those rare phases when you have to create something and you need to go full speed with brainstorming sessions, talk to people etc. In those cases a physical presence is much more efficient that remote communications.
Exactly. The whole remote thing has become kinda like a zero sum game and has 2 sides to it. One that believes it should be remote anywhere for anyone vs the other that is very rigid and wants people in office all the time. The answer is somewhere in the middle and hybrid.
Flexibility to work from home 2-3 days a week would be awesome while you can still come to office if you want to meet/collaborate in person. yes, this rules out people who are not in the same state/country (I have a lot to say about that) but I am ok with that.
After all, there are plenty of things that you could do in your spare time that would make you a more efficient employee. But you wouldn't let your employer tell you to work unpaid for an hour each Monday, preparing for the week. Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. The only difference between those things and commuting is that we've all been conditioned (not in any nefarious way, just by the reality of work in the past) to consider a commute a hard requirement to have a job. But it's not anymore.
Your time is a commodity. Why give it away?
Depending on how you look at things, this may or may not be necessary to be done on your own accord in your free time to avoid your skills getting dated and irrelevant.
Essentially, you do have to keep up with at least some of the new developments within the industry to remain employable, especially if you don't have any of the FAANG companies on your resume.
While your employer might not necessarily expect you to do it, you might have to do that in your own interest, without getting paid for it.
Whereas with my workload and circumstances within the company, that's not realistic.
In the past 2 weeks, i've:
- worked on migrating large enterprise apps from Java 8 to Java 11
- worked on migrating those apps from Spring to Spring Boot
- worked on containerizing them and carrying over configuration parameters
- edited a whole lot of legacy code that was needed for all of that to happen and documented the process
- helped people deal with external integrations and PKI related configuration and Ansible
- helped onboard a person on the project and consulted other junior devs
- got called in to work on a PHP project even though i'm technically a Java dev
- consulted a person on how to use Figma to create designs for the app (even though i'll just have to develop it?)
- realized that the app has literally no onboarding instructions or documentation whatsoever, so set out to create those
- developed some scripts to seed the DB with test users and data, otherwise the app won't even allow logging in locally
- consulted with the clients about all of these things, waiting for additional feedback on that
- fixed a few bugs here and there, did the usual meetings, sprint estimation, architecture stuff etc.
Regardless, that probably shows that there is a world of difference in both compensation and the workloads of people. While having the time to learn new tech on company time would be good, it simply isn't my current reality, nor is it the reality for many out there. Thus, if i don't want to have my skills become obsolete, i spend the occasional morning/evening/weekend working on pet projects. That needs to be taken into account.
Curiously enough, i've heard some people voice the opinion that their workloads actually lessened in larger companies where they also happened to be more highly paid.
> Your time is a commodity. Why give it away?
These things aren't even considered most of the time in regards to commute or other practices in the corporate world, just because they're "the normal".
The employees love it because of all the free trips around the world (and often tie their vacation to the beginning or end of a meeting so they can explore that place on their own) and it's great for the company because they can hire talent all over the world.
It also makes their in person time far more productive because everyone puts effort into planning that time for effectiveness and everyone knows that they only have limited time together and have to make the most of it.
Ultimately the ideal is not a one size fits all solution but different companies developing different cultures remote/hybrid/in person strategies and employees having options. Seems like the big tech companies are all just kind of copying each other and no one is trying to really differentiate themselves here.
There is always someone huh. Such an arrangement literally sounds like the dream remote arrangement to me. It never even crossed my mind that there would be people who would say no to a fully paid pseudo-vacation every couple of months.
I am completely unable to empathize.
At my company offsites aren't mandatory: those who want to go, can go; but those who for some reason don't want to or can't are not looked down upon as "non-team players" or "antisocial". People are all different, and it's about time you recognized that.
If you're travelling away who will look after you kids? Pets? Parents? Believe it or not most people have responsibilities.
Which they can afford because they are not spending on office space.
It's been all virtual for the past two years, and I genuinely wonder how much they've saved that way. It's also much more bearable for this introvert ... I despise that stupid event and resent having to attend. :P
it was a blast -- you got a week of "free" travel w/ your SO (because it was just once a year, they paid for your SO to come with you).
i loved it, because it was a time to get together, have some drinks, chitchat and do some super productive work.
Me doing this (after years of 25%+ travel in a different role) would result in a divorce quite quick.
If the office is a 5 minute walk, I have absolutely no problem going in and staying until the usefulness of being together is exhausted for the day. When the commute is an hour plus in traffic, that's gonna be a no from me dawg.
Add on to that the fact that some regions have been major winners the last decade while others are major losers, means that people stuck in "loser" regions may have better remote prospects than local prospects.
A separate space, where I don’t pay for power, where colleagues can drop in on me, where the space is centred on peace and there are subtle conveniences like vending machines.
I like it.
But I’m not willing to commute 30+ minutes each way of my own time for that.
And I’m not willing to sit in one of those battery farm open offices.
Being able to control my own audial/visual environment has done wonderful things to my focus, productivity and mood.
I’m much less bitter as a person now, I know another person who is also perceptibly less bitter.
But…
There was a conference room literally right across from their cubicle that had a recurring 10 hour 5 day a week meeting in it. 2 guesses who that recurring meeting belonged to.
===
Back in 1995, a BusinessWeek profile of Grove said he sat in a cube "precisely to eliminate barriers between chief executive and staff. When he is around, anybody can stop by and bend his ear, even to tell him he screwed up on a decision. There's no fear of getting fired -- Grove encourages what he calls 'constructive confrontation.' "
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/03...
For a long time, large companies like Google and Facebook bribed employees to basically live at work with an influx of perks. Free laundry. Nap rooms. Catered meals. The whole point is for you to never leave so you’ll work more. I think most of us can agree that is unhealthy and not good for the employee.
So now we’ve traded that for you work from home, but still don’t get to disconnect from work. So you don’t have the commute or the dress code stuff and potentially fewer meetings, but you’re always on call. You’re expected to work more. Your house is now your office (and plenty of us don’t live in places with room for a wholly isolated workspace, especially if two people are working from home). And you’ve given up the social interaction that makes going into an office really nice for plenty of people.
Obviously, ever is a good and healthy way to do remote work. I’m not disputing that. What I will dispute is that the way most companies have optimized for remote work over the last 18 months is the wrong way and I have zero faith that any of the organizations will adjust themselves to do it the right way.
So for me, if the choice is to have little work/life balance but at least have more room at my house and social interaction at work — or to literally live and work in the same cramped space without human interaction, I’ll take the office.
So I would rather do this while sitting in comfortable sweatpants at home rather than wasting 3 hours getting dressed, commuting, etc. to do the exact same thing I would be doing anyway. Plus I get to eat healthier food, save money on food, clean my place more, spend time with family more, go workout when there's a lull in the markets, etc.
So while for some work/life balance is better with a separation, for me and many others, work/life balance is drastically improved by not going into the office
I actually think this is going to be an interesting aspect : it will significantly affect the demand for housing with separated work/living areas.
Given the above, how do companies move forward? Make some % of your employees unhappy because they're either dragged back into the office or forced to work without one? Hybrid models? They seem like the worst of everything and they don't look like a stable solution. Maybe through quitting everyone reorganises themselves into the type of company they want (remote or in-office) and then everyone is happy?
What options do we have here?
The only question that remains to be answered is whether remote or in-office companies have structural advantages over the other type, and it will probably take a decade or so before there's enough data to conclusively call it.
You're inevitably forcing your colleagues into your own way of working to some extent. Imagine a team of 6 people working on the same product:
If 1 is in office and 5 are remote, then the benefits of the office are largely lost even for the 1 person. That 1 person is still working in a remote model just from a different location which happens to be the office.
If 1 is remote and 5 are in office, the 1 person will inevitably miss out on a lot of the ongoing in-person communication. This was a well-known thing before the pandemic - the most common advice was to be remote for entirely remote companies/teams but to avoid being the only remote person on an office-based team.
If it's 3-3, then some of the communication is in person and half of the team is missing out on it but all meetings still have to be online.
I don't doubt that some companies will do this but it doesn't seem stable in the long run.
This was already the case even for 100% on-site. It was just woven into the culture, so it didn't seem anomalous.
Before the pandemic, people still had to accommodate people with different working habits. This is where we got ideas such as hierarchies and "silos." There were unwritten rules about who was more important than who, whether they could have an office with a door, who could be interrupted and who couldn't. There were multiple channels of information that were not accessible to all.
I noticed that during the pandemic, there was as much or more communication among the rank and file, because it was easier to get lost without staying in touch. I had to be more careful about getting good information before proceeding on faulty assumptions. My group also became more global.
Oddly enough I'm back in office now, but in an isolated lab where I'm alone 90% of the time. And my team's boss is in another state.
In fact I started working remote full time because after our company moved us to a fancy new open-office floorplan in the city my commute went from 20 mins to 75 and I realized I was wasting all that time just to be on virtual meetings in the office, so I stopped going in. Even when we were all in the office, meetings tended to be online anyway because the company did not build nearly enough conference rooms.
Having an online-first culture even before COVID never seemed to be a big problem for us. Obviously YMMV.
Don't fear the idea just because in your mind there are purely hypothetical situations where it might not be optimal.
The direct opposite of your opinion & posited hypothetical situation may exist in someone else's mind.
In fact, the refusal to acknowledge the truth that alternatives exist (albeit out of the box alternatives) strikes me as a common way for in-office advocates to shut down the WFH conversation.
I enjoy my home office tremendously, but it's still kinda surreal to me how we can all sit at home with our laptops and that somehow keeps the economy going - as if our jobs hadn't been abstract and hyper-specialized already, now some people don't even leave their bed to work.
I know quite a few previously using public transportation 5 days a week now driving on "office" days, because they got scared of rush hour crowds.
That and/or the lower car costs no longer justify the savings of using public transportation.
Maybe younger folks are more likely to live closer to their work? Haven't looked into it at all, though.
I’m about a 20 minute commute from the office (Downtown Brooklyn to Astor Place). I can’t fathom living somewhere where I had to drive to work, let alone for longer than an hour.
If you work in something more client facing, you'd probably benefit a lot more from stuff like in person slide decks in front of clients you flew in and are accommodating, and other corporate schmoozing and boozing that is just impossible and awkward on zoom or any other electronic platform.
I have a startup/movement I am working on as well, freeing up my time from clients to invest more time and money into it.
Balance is the key to fulfillment, to longevity.
Sounds like a great balance you have; good luck saving up for the house!
Fast forward about 12 months and I began longing for the social interaction, and even just the different visual stimulus of having a large open space to walk around and think in.
I don't think there will ever be a true answer to WFH vs. WFO.. But I think opening up that choice to the employee will give numerous benefits to employers in the coming years.
If you're going to be remote first, be remote first. That means not only people working from home, but a work flow designed for that environment. Written, asynchronous, open. Not big frequent video calls that replicate in-person meetings, augmented by private calls that fill in the gaps but also create/reinforce clique structures (and exacerbate "Zoom fatigue"). Companies that do true remote first can succeed. Companies that do "remote first" as a poor approximation of in-office presence get the worst of both worlds.
There are three real game changers:
- I get to wear more comfortable clothes, and be more comfortable in them. This is a culture problem.
- I have a big, private office (bedroom-sized) with windows and comfortable furniture that I can potentially nap on when I need to.
- I have a private half-bath that I don't have to transit the whole darn building to visit. Public bathrooms are terribly unpleasant, but I also don't want to have to break my flow by getting caught by a coworker who wants to chat about whatever.
If my work office could solve these aspects, I would prefer it over my home office every day.
The distinction of "WFH/remote" vs "on site" will blur once home is within a few minutes of work. People will literally walk to the office for a meeting and then walk home again. People who are working from home will pop in to share lunch and then go home again. This is my dream, anyway...
I get frustrated at this nihilism. A quick trip to any point in the part would reveal how truly lucky we are right now, and would inspire us to drag our sorry species even further from the abyss.
While this may be the romanticized optimal work setup, regular people have kids in school and local commitments. This arrangement, sometimes, puts unfair disadvantage to women as well. Of course in a ideal world, both parents don’t have to travel to offsite, but disappearing to a resort for days may not work for everyone
I worked remotely, full time, for several years long before the pandemic. Early enough that anytime I told someone I would have to explain all the minutiae that Yes, I am able to get stuff done at home. No, I don't need to "get dressed for the office anyway" and "Yes, we have many video calls per day just to keep in touch" and so on.
It was fun for a while, but what made it _really_ fun, was meeting colleagues in cafes and the like all over town for regular catchups and stuff like brainstorms.
I was at my peak productivity (of my entire career) when I had the choice to stay at home and maximise my "in the zone" time but also was no further than "tomorrow" from being able to have a meeting with the team.
Granted, there are caveats to this - having a decent, work compatible, space at home. I have invested quite a bit in ergonomic furniture at home, and have dedicated a small room to be my work space.
I also live in the suburbs of a big city, no more than an hour away from the bustle, collab spaces, and coffee shops.
What made me leave was over time the colleagues either moved away or left, to be replaced by people further away, meaning those next-to-impromptu meetings became more and more difficult to have. Eventually I felt like I was missing out on civilisation and threw in the towel for a trendy startup gig in the city again.
Then covid hit and I'm back to full time remote and it's starting to suck again.
There are a lot of ways that people socialize online. They just aren't built into the remote work culture.
There are many startups looking to address this with more social virtual work environments. But really it's a matter of what people do rather than not having tools.
For example if there was an always-on video-chat on its own monitor, people could just unmute that. Or something similar but with different locations such as water-cooler A and water-cooler B.
For me, having been remote for about ten years or more depending on how you count it, they have mostly been very small startups. And the other people involved actually generally have had other jobs to do. So they just didn't have much time available during the week for socializing. But part of it I feel is a lack of interest in socializing. Which you can say that forcing people to do it by being in the same space is an advantage but maybe another idea is to adopt traditions/culture and software that make it more fun or easier to socialize online.
I just wish people would log into the Discord more. But I think the fact they don't do that every day means they are a bit checked out of the project realistically.
If I could come in to a space that just had the people I worked with I'd be more inclined to that. Even if they offered a quieter space to work that might be better but what's the point when I'm already fortunate enough to a quiet space at home.
We're currently getting the push to get back into the office now by guilting us that we're killing the local cafes around our building, even though I never purchase take away coffee and bring my lunch from home because I'm cheap.
They are also a major problem with hybrid offices: meetings/conference calls.
If everyone is in the office, you find a meeting room... no problem (assuming you can find one).
If everyone is remote, you all jump on a call... no problem.
When half the team are remote, and multiple teams are remote, you suddenly have way more calls in an open plan office, which is horrific.
Even if I go back to the office, my entire team is geographically distributed. Only a couple people on my team would be in the office, while others are all over the world. So, even though I also miss the office I'm not sure what going back would mean for me now that my team setup is so different.
So, have to think about that.
The office also brings perks that I don't have access to at home, like better internet speed, air conditionning and the coffee machine; on the subject of coffee (and lunch) breaks, going to the office allows to talk with people that I would never talk if I worked remotely full-time; most of those discussions aren't usually work related, but those who are interesting and I learned thing I wouldn't have otherwise.
On the other hand, being able to do housework during the day is really good
Commuting an hour to do so five days a week is broken. I have been an office worker for 10 years and then fully wfh for nearly another ten. Neither is perfect, but I’d choose 0 days in the office over 5, and I suspect 1-2 days a week or a week per month would be perfect.
I think a lot depends on your home life. I live alone, no close friends, pets,etc...and I am fine most days but I need some social interaction so I won't turn into a complete hermit. I have colleagues with kids and family members at home as well who hate the office for obvious reasons. So long as I get to work from home most days and I don't have to spend the entire day in the office I don't think it's such a big deal. I am grateful to even have the option to work from home at all.
Send me back to the office, let me WFH, keep me within an hours drive... whatever... just tell me so I can plan the next couple years of my life accordingly. For me, the uncertainty of the current era is the worst part. Life never offers guarantees, but it is good to at least know where things should be headed.
Everyone has their own personal circumstance and reasons for wanting to work in the office, home or hybrid. Ultimately employees will choose what suits them and given nowadays a lot of companies offer the choice of remote, will see people shift if that's what they want.
Remote will become an accepted and standard way of working, and I hope local communities will benefit and thrive from having a local hub of workers.
1. A greater ability to focus and be as productive as possible.
2. Greater control over my schedule.
3. A much better work/life balance. I love being around my wife and kids and don't want or need social interactions with people from work outside of work hours. It is very rare (three times in my 30+ year career) that my work friendships cross over into my personal life.
4. By working remotely, I have been able to recover two hours of my life per day by not commuting.
5. I was able to get rid of one of my cars, since I don't need it for commuting to work. This saves me a ton of money in insurance, repairs, gas, maintenance, etc. It's also my small contribution to the environment.
Having been forced to work in an office for most of my career, I can empathize with people who need the type of interpersonal relationships an office provides in order to function their best. I'm sure those people are struggling with remote work the same way I struggled with being in an office.
We're all different and have different needs. I doubt a one-size-fits-all approach will ever appeal to everyone, regardless of what it is.
No, it is not. I recommend trying to understand "The F-Connection: Families, Friends, and Firms and the Organization of Exchange"[1].
Firms consist of humans. Humans need human connections. One frequently finds a new job due to a connection with a friend. And, while you don't have to love everyone you work with, one does develop (or used to develop) friendships at work. Or, on the way to work. Or, during lunch break.
When everyone lives in their little pod and only connect with work over video conferencing, their very human connection to other people in their firm weakens.
I understand this is appealing to people who are only familiar with living in a bedroom community, hopping on the company bus every morning where they stare at their laptop screens, go to the company campus and not interact with the outside world, and repeat the same trip in the other direction in the evening.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, people who just want to live in their own pods seem to have the power to determine our destiny.
sigh
However, crucially, I do not miss my commute. So unless I could afford to live within easy biking/walking distance of the office, I don't see myself going back.
Not saying that necessarily applies to TFA, though. But imo it does apply to the somewhat overrated Deep Work.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
And on the other end of the spectrum, there are people out there who feel absolutely suffocated by being stuck behind a screen and not being able to collaborate in the physical presence of others. The conversations, with all of their tiny details which get lost in text, voice or even video chats. Building rapport with others and getting to know them better, all of the spontaneous conversations that just don't happen at all. Even overhearing ones like that and learning more about what's going on in the company. And instead being stuck at home, in many situations even with noisy kids or a work environment that simply isn't good for their wellbeing in the longer term! They sometimes even see the days blending together and finding it harder to separate work from their private time.
The amount of empathy that i feel for these people is limited due to our personal differences, the same way that they don't necessarily imagine themselves putting themselves in the shoes of someone who hasn't felt one bit of discomfort at working remotely and finds social satisfaction elsewhere (online communities and enjoyment of video essays and such content in my case). The exact same way that for them working in the office just felt very normal and natural, it being their preferred way of getting things done. To me, it feels like those are just two very different types of people, regardless of their other qualities.
Neither of us are necessarily better in any way (unless you want to talk about what the majority of humanity is like and therefore which form of work it is better suited for), however those differences are where the problems will begin. Sooner or later, many will want to return to the office, while for others it will be a dealbreaker. In many cases, a particular type of work will be mandated "from above" and many employees will just decide to leave their companies and participate in a globalized economy instead... whilst taking all of their domain knowledge with themselves. A hot job market is probably overall a good thing, but knowing how much documentation and onboarding is lacking within the industry, i fear that there will be quite a few problematic situations to be encountered in the coming decade.
I actually summarized these thoughts in a blog post of my own as well: "Remote working and the elephant in the room".
Here's a link: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/remote-working-and-the-elep...