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> I enjoy riding the Tube, or cycling, or walking. I enjoy driving too. I enjoy seeing people on busy high streets, I enjoy chatting / playing card games over lunch at work, etc.

Is there anything preventing from you doing a "commute" before work each day when working from home or renting an office space like a WeWork? If you like it, nothing is stopping you from doing a commute.

> There's also the whole "corona theater" element, with people pretending that they don't want to come in because they'll die or whatever, which might have made sense for a month or two in March last year but now is just a sign that you're dealing with someone who is either deliberately lying or just has no understanding of the situation.

I don't know if that's a fair characterization. Everyone has their own risk tolerance and for different people that's a different value. Maybe someone lives with someone older, like a parent or close relative, and doesn't want to be a vector to transmit to them?

> I genuinely think that WFH for the vast majority is just a step towards the dystopia of having people live in endless tower blocks somewhere, plugged into a wall with a VR headset and a nutrition drip. It'd be more efficient and convenient.

I see requiring people to come into an office leads to the same thing. I want WFH so I can move out of a city central area and live in a cheaper community where I can walk around without fear of getting mugged, know local business owners, etc.

Your entire post is based around me fitting my round peg into your square hole.

I have left the industry because of WFH. I have no interest in compromising, it was fun, and none of what you have described is fun, so why bother?

I wish you the best in front of your screen.

> Your entire post is based around me fitting my round peg into your square hole.

So it is possible to do but because it isn't required to actually "get to" work it feels futile?

> it was fun, and none of what you have described is fun

I haven't really described much here. I'm just asking if "commuting" to get coffee from a local shop or something could serve as a substitute. Your response seems to indicate that it couldn't but I'm not exactly sure why that is.

> I wish you the best in front of your screen.

I don't know if this is meant to be a dig but, if you're a SWE or in IT or something you're probably going to be behind a screen for a majority of your job. Even people in NOC monitor screens most of the time.

Stop putting words in his/her mouth. This is how some people feel. Let it go.

Thank you.

I honestly find these people to simply be trolls. The views espoused make no sense.

Imagine if I suggested that they just video call their children from the office as a replacement for watching them grow up.

You want A, I want B. We can have both, it ain't even hard.

> I honestly find these people to simply be trolls. The views espoused make no sense.

I hope it's not coming off as me trolling. I'm genuinely attempting to see what the other side of this discussion is. One side seems to represent remote work as a way to decentralize the industry allowing us all to move to lower cost of living areas, reduce the time "working" by not needing commutes, spend more time with family and children, and improve the amount of focus time you have.

As for the work-from-office side of things: I don't actually know why people want to return. As from what I can gather: people miss commuting and miss seeing other people. It seems fairly straight forward to me how this could be replicated in a WFH environment.

1. If you miss commuting adding a fake commute (home -> subway -> coffee shop -> subay -> home) into your day can help.

2. If you miss seeing people working from a shared office space like WeWork or attending meetups with other people in your field seems like a good substitute. You can talk shop with people who are actually your friends (changing jobs doesn't change your social group).

I see these as being very direct substitutes for what I see people bring up and I don't understand why these are not the same. Maybe because other people you are working with are not also doing these? Maybe it's that if the commute or socialization aren't part of the job it feels sort of "pointless"? I don't understand this though.

> Imagine if I suggested that they just video call their children from the office as a replacement for watching them grow up.

Funnily enough this is one of the reasons people like WFH. They can spend time with their kids instead of commuting.

> You want A, I want B. We can have both, it ain't even hard.

Actually, it is sort of difficult. In a world where we assume all workplaces allow WFH then yes, we can do both. Coworkers who want to work in an office can self organize into rented office space but the default of remote workers will change things: conference rooms need to allow people to dial in, people need to document discussions/decisions that are randomly made in office, etc. In a world where work-from-office is the assumed norm it is much harder to join a company as WFH since many processes are just not there.

It sounds like you just want to live downtown. Commuting and all it entails is a side of humanity I'd rather not see again. Waking up and seeing people in terrible moods going to jobs they hate. Micromanagement, pestering, time wasted on useless conversations.

I think if you look at it at just the surface level it does seem like a step backwards. In really there's a reason so many companies switched to it, it wasn't because they're secret operatives trying to plug us up to nutritus-3000 to maximize our LOC, it's because of reduced friction for the worker.

I think a lot of people forget about terrible managers as well, with WFH the surface area of harm a bad manager can cause you is limited which can immediately make a terrible office job into a tolerable remote one.

Nah, I want to work with actual people.

I have literally zero interest in a Zoom call to someone who's in the same town as me, I'd rather jump on the bus or train and see them.

I don't see that as being increased friction because to me travel and seeing people is _better_ than sitting in front of a screen for longer - it provides a welcome break and helps me to see more about the world.

I just find the entire thing odd. Like, being in the pub is better than on a phone call. Being at a theme park is better than being in a sim. Being at work is better than being at virtual work.

The whole situation is absurd to me, like a bad movie plot.

You forget that corona WFH is not the same as the WFH that is to come, post-lockdowns and quarantines. Having the freedom to work from your local cafe, your local university library, an expensed WeWork, in public spaces of your choosing, rather than in open offices full of endless distraction and people coughing, there is freedom to that. You will get physical interactions with greater society, you just won’t be forced to be in the office all the time from that. Work from a park.

And I say this as someone who will probably prefer the hybrid approach of seeing my teammates 1-2 times a week. The less time people are forced to waste lavish amounts of time, fuel, and their lives to commuting, so much the better.

I can do all of that now, I live in the UK which has no restrictions.

You talk about being "forced" to be in an office but ignore the other side of being "forced" to work over video calls.

I mean, neither are forced, like I said I just left the industry. So it goes, life moves on. What a shame to have wasted so much time on a dead end path, though now I'm having great fun doing other stuff. :)

You’re either going to be forced to do one or the other, or both. Would you be okay with hybrid? Why this stark dichotomy when compromises already exist?

If you don’t want to be “forced”, then become your own boss- this is a Y Combinator site, after all. Become an entrepreneur or a freelancer. Or drop out of the workforce entirely into the ranks of r/antiwork.

It sounds like you’ve found a new path, that’s great! You do you, but trumpeting it in such an oblique way is just Vaguebook humblebragging.

I just left the industry. There are other fields which are not doing WFH to the same extreme.

Most office jobs aren't even going as bonkers as software dev.

If you see me saying "software development left me behind" as a humblebrag, that's on you.

I had a job I loved, and propaganda deleted it.

You’re alleging you’re having great fun doing other stuff, so you could talk about that if you want or otherwise it’s just a passing reference.

Very well said. Same age here and I could not agree more. I don’t like traffic, but for that we need a base level of public transportation infrastructure, not this WFH nightmare dystopia.

Comment is dripping with hyperbole

> here's also the whole "corona theater" element, with people pretending that they don't want to come in because they'll die or whatever

if people are forced to vaccinate and wear masks by their own government why is it theater when they just want to expose themselves to 25-100 less people everyday? Cant have it both ways

I consider that to be theatre too.

Frankly I just don't interact with corona-obsessed people in real life any more, which they probably prefer. Everyone wins.

Sure, but we dont actually have a choice in the former. Unless of course you work remotely 5 days a week then maybe youll be exempt from vaccination reqs, contact tracing, masking and social distancing office rules.

Yeah, I don't do any of that.

I left the industry, only software development has really gone all in on it.

> There's also the whole "corona theater" element, with people pretending that they don't want to come in because they'll die or whatever, which might have made sense for a month or two in March last year but now is just a sign that you're dealing with someone who is either deliberately lying or just has no understanding of the situation.

"Sure, I went to a packed restaurant with friends this weekend but I feel uncomfortable coming into the office."

Right?

I would find it amusing if these guys weren't so _serious_ about it.

It's a religion.