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Comment by skywal_l | Hacker News Reader

It's going to be a problem hard to resolved. It can be seen as a perk for a company to offer the possibility of remote work like bonuses or free coffee. The thing is, some people actually hate telework and would rather impose everyone to be present because this is how they feel the most efficient or because it is just how they like to work.

So contrary to the traditional employer/employees balance of power, there is also a employees/employees thing going on here.

Considering those who can telework full time without any limitations (say software engineer for example) what is the ratio of those who want to telework fulltime, part-time or not at all. It's hard to trust polls on this because they are usually driven by employers who have an agenda anyway.

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I only prefer working remotely as an alternative to an office with open-air seating. Give me an office with a window and a door, and I would quite willingly work from an office. My employer has, for over a decade, refused to build anything but open-air seating. So everything thinks I prefer to work remotely, because their own feelings taint their perceptions of my actions, but they don't ask my actual motivations and take for granted that I support their views.

Please take care not to frame everyone who prefers working from an office as people who would "impose" their views on others. I work from home rather than impose my views on others, but your argument makes a very good point. I should probably step up and begin pressuring for better office design, since that would remove a crutch that the remote-work movement is unaware it's being propped up by.

Yes, some will still prefer to work remotely, but I've done offices, and I've done remote, and it's clear there are pros and cons to each that vary per project and per team. It's time for office design to be given due credit for how it drives people into remote work, so that we can stop confusing a desire for a healthy working environment with a desire to work from our homes.

In my 23 year career, I’ve gone from having my own office room, to office room with a nice view, to shared with 1 other person, to a cubicle, then a bullpen.

We’re not going in the right direction.

If I wasn’t working remote, I’d have a worse office environment than when I was a 16-year-old kid doing IT for a mom-and-pop.

I actually did that in a matter of 4 years. Was rather incredible in hindsight.

First part time internship had an office with a door and my freaking name on the front.

Second internship had a nice private high walled cubicle.

That internship turned into a full time job, and they moved us into a large 4 person area's where each screen faced a different direction, and the walls weren't as high.

Finally after two years they moved us into the open office, all next to each-other, and gave us the shittiest beats headphones $100 could buy. Audio quality aside, they squeezed the head into a migraine. Comically bad.

I'm reminded of an old bit by Joel Spolsky of Stack Overflow, where he outlines — in extreme detail — his designs for the old Fog Creek offices. It's very clear that he put more thought into these designs than the work that most interior architects I've encountered have bothered to perform.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/

https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i...

(remarkable that cubicles used to be our idea of office hell, and now just seem like an unimaginable amount of personal space)

If you ever hunt up a copy of A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Mary Silverstein (the book that inspired Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software) it is an interesting read.

Patterns 146, 151, and 152 get into the design of the office.

For example, 146 - Flexible Office - https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA690&lpg=...

It is a fascinating book to read (and you don't need to consume it all at once). There are things in there that helped me understand why my house (it had its stairs reversed in the 1920s) has a flow to it that leads to certain rooms getting less use than they were designed for - the staircase from the 2nd floor living space now goes to the back door (rather than the center of the house) which means 2nd floor to garage is an easy transition while 2nd floor to front door is a harder one. That in turn makes it more natural (for this design of the house) to go out the garage door and along the sidewalk past light commercial when going down town than out the front door and past neighbors through the residential roads.

The greatest advantages of remote work are that it removes many of the downsides of a bad work environment:

    * No commute (not the employers fault really)
    * You can zone out in irrelevant meetings.
    * Sit down during stand-ups.
    * Soft 'intimidation' does not work well over the phone
    * No open office noise

etc.

Since I changed job from a chaotic place with 50min commute each way, to a tidy job within walking distance, the remote work thing seems like a minor perk, rather than the best thing ever.

Adding two very important things for me personally:

- a bathroom where I have true privacy and not someone waiting on me or able to perceive me with their senses

- not having to deal with the smell of others or worry about my own

I’ve always chosen jobs where I live within a comfortable “shit radius” and can drive home when needed. There is simply no way I could ever use a public toilet. My girlfriend finds it hilarious that I come home to take a dump, but I simply can’t go in public.

The greatest advantage is that you can get other things done around the house (or beyond the house) between productivity stints. Even a short walk from the office tends to create a barrier to that.

Ye forgot that one. It is high on the list.

The commute seems like a huge part of it (but maybe I'm biased, always hated a driving commute). I have a few coworkers who (when talking about housing, this was always in good taste) would nudge me to move out by them, because I could have a much bigger yard and "it's only a 40 minute drive to work."

Now they're the ones who realize they hate their commute and want to stay full remote forever whereas I'm more than ready to get back into it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this dichotomy, but it's fun to watch.

At my last W-2 job they made me come into the office four days a week even though I had a remote work job. I supported specialized internal application software for three departments spaced roughly 500, 1000, and 2000 miles away from me. I never in my entire term at that job went onsite, they didn't see the point of paying all the money. I never physically met more than 5 or so people I worked with.

This seems "normal" at very large megacorporations if you work at a higher level. I knew Scala and Play framework (trendy and cool at the time; does anyone still use?) so I got shoved into the role; at least they didn't force me to move to one of the operations sites; presumably the other two would squeal too much if the third "got me".

This seems to be how most major corporations work; the "active directory genius" (not me..) is in charge of all AD servers worldwide; does it really matter which city he lives in if he's responsible for servers all over the world? Same for "the woman who's really good at docker" or the guy whom actually understands DNS.

For years I wasted a lot of time, money, and gasoline to drive 20 miles into work just to work on server software 1500 miles away all day long. May as well stay home.

The commute often is the fault of the employer, if they decide to locate the business in an area will little housing or little housing that the employees want (for example, an area with only extremely expensive apartments or a bad school district).

Also, better food

Also, easier to coordinate home and personal projects and matters incl healthcare.

But, no kids/etc vying for your attention

But, more reliable internet

But, easier work-life separation (for some people+companies)

Well said on the soft 'intimidation'.

Anecdotally, I've experienced better adherence to processes since the shift to remote work since communication is mostly written instead of oral communication.

We currently have something very similar to Apple's proposed policy (~2 days in the office per week, several weeks remote work per year).

Some like it and will work from home as much as they can, others will come to the office but don't mind the flexibility.

What was interesting was comments from an anonymous poll. A couple of people said they didn't like the policy since it meant they ended up caring for young children almost all the time. Previously, they would split things like taking them to/from school or looking after them if they were sick 50:50 with their partner. One person having so much flexibility meant this became 100:0.

In theory we were flexible before 2020, but its only since 2020 that I've felt doing my laundry was an acceptable reason to work from home.

Not sure I get it - why would working from home mean that you need to look after the children more? You can still use whatever other childcare arrangements you were using before, exactly as if you were in an office.

Often a sick child (can't go to daycare / school) gets a "today I take a PTO day, you take a PTO day next time."

When one partner has WFH, neither person needs to take an absence from work, but the person who is WFH gets all the childcare.

There's also the "the person with the flexible schedule allows the other schedule to become more normalized." In the before times, one of my co-workers picked up their child on alternating days. So Monday was late in (drop off child at school) and late out (spouse picked up the child). Tuesday was early in (spouse dropped off the child) and early out (pick up child at school). This way both people were able to get in 8h days at work. With WFH, my co-worker's schedule shifted so that they were the one always dropping off and picking up the child (and having what would be considered a split shift - working a few hours in the late afternoon or evening).

For my co-worker, this was overall a net positive (school was a short distance from the house compared to a long, out of the way distance from work) allowing (even with the schedule change) less time spent ferrying a child around... but it also meant that my co-worker is doing all the child ferrying while their spouse is working a regular 9-5 that have oddities of child ferrying adjustments.

This, plus if your partner is dumping things on you because you're free, that's a partner communication issue, not a WFH issue.

If your partner has to take unpaid leave you might both agree that it's better for you to care for the sick child. But you're still stuck with it.

This sounds entirely like a personal relationship problem. Funny to see it come up in a company survey.

No matter what they tell you, it’s a people problem.

> So contrary to the traditional employer/employees balance of power, there is also a employees/employees thing going on here.

We have that on my team at work too. About 10% of the people on the team prefer to work in office, but they always caveat that with, "but I don't want to come into an empty office." Meaning being, that want the rest of the team in the office too.

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