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Comment by syvolt | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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