Google delays mandatory return to office beyond Jan. 10 | Hacker News Reader

Google delays mandatory return to office beyond Jan. 10

reuters.com

132 pointsmji239 comments

If employers wish to give every single on-site worker their own individual independently ventilated office, I'm down for returning to the office. But that would cost money. As would daily rapid antigen tests for everyone coming into the office that day.

Open Office floor plans already were Petri dishes for infection before the pandemic. Now they are an incremental risk factor for premature death. Who needs that? The world has changed. People trying to return to the before times will be foiled by biology itself.

But also I 100% support people opting into going back to the office with zero protection or any liability for their employers should something unfortunate happen. They should be forced to sign a big release indicating they understand the risks and that they accept it is all on them.

Genuine question. What percentage of you is saying this for fear or concern of the virus, and what percentage is saying it because you like to work remotely?

From where I’m sitting, it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality.

What you call "normality" others might call the "the same old bullshit". Calling it "normal" doesn't make it "right", or "desirable", or even "healthy". For instance, I won't be the only one in this thread pointing out what a health risk (meaning, "you'll get sick", not "u die") open office plans were before Covid showed up. So to answer the question that wasn't addressed to me, I say this because I like to work remotely and have demonstrated that I am more productive WFH. To pull me back into the office under some idea of "normalcy" is going to get an enthusiastic "bullshit" out of me.

But that even assumes there's a chance to return to "normality" to begin with. The virus is out there, it's going to be out there for a while longer if not permanently. On top of that, the winds of change have been blowing hard for going on two years now. One's desire to return to The Before Times is a dream; IMO, things will be different, in one way or another, from now on.

When I catch an infection I tend to get pneumonia afterwards and I am sick for months. I already had a predilection for working from home because too many people who are sick insist on coming to the office despite what their company guidance says and even their managers telling them otherwise. WTH is up with that?

Now that there's a small chance that this could kill me, I have zero inclination to return to the office whereas I used to go to the office quite a bit during the summer when people weren't usually sick and avoid it during the winter months especially around the holidays. You asked.

Put it another way. I offer you a job for a $1M salary but there's one catch: every year I drag out the least productive employee (100% according to me) and publicly execute that person in front of everyone else. Would you take that job?

This can be a sign of primary immunodeficiency: http://jmfworld.com/library/educational-materials/10-warning...

Regardless, you still should get checked out by an immunologist. Often, it is treatable with immunoglobulin.

While I do not have primary immunodeficiency, I have 2 rare immune mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, and I am on subcutaneous immunoglobulin as a treatment. I infuse it twice per week.

I have not had a respiratory infection since being on subcutaneous immunoglobulin, and it's been about 5 years since I started this therapy.

I also feel your pain. I cannot work in an office environment due to health reasons, but some reasons are not due to immunological issues.

It is not at all normal to experience frequent pneumonia due to minor upper respiratory infections. That's likely a symptom of some more serious underlying pathology. I recommend consulting a physician. At least get your vitamin D levels checked.

I've had multiple physicals and my vitamin D level checked. I'm in great health with a resting pulse close to 40. I would love to find a root cause here and address it but I haven't found a doctor who has seen anything obvious. I'm with you otherwise. Any ideas?

I was in this same boat (probably not as fit as you), but got sick a lot (pneumonia twice, bronchitis a couple of times, hospitalized with "mystery virus" twice including once leading to ICU, etc etc) no obvious signs of immune compromise, decent Vitamin D nothing showing up on physicals etc until I went to see a Rheumatologist for chronic pain. He diagnosed me with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome[1], which turns out to explain all sorts of other things that I thought were seperate and unrelated problems. It's worth drilling into these things further because there could be some underlying cause that joins all the dots together and (although there's no real treatment for EDS) you could get help.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ehlers-danlos-syndromes/

Shot in the dark and I'm not a doctor but you could look into getting a genetic test for atypical cystic fibrosis. It's increasingly diagnosed into adulthood and recurrent pneumonia is one of the clues.

Atypical would probably be an understatement. I'm not an expert of the disease, but having it along with family members having it, there are many more symptoms that would have appeared by now.

There are milder / alternate forms of CF that are often diagnosed late in life. They're often mild enough that a doctor will immediately rule out CF.

Example case studies:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7652023/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20542704209210...

> Now that there's a small chance that this could kill me

Wasn't that also true before covid?

Don't forget the danger of the commute itself. Also a small chance that it could kill you.

Also remember to consider the threat posed by dihydrogen monoxide but I digress...

The ocean in particular has it out for humans. Record drownings in New England this past summer. I dug into it some and realized that I was shockingly ignorant of safe behavior around water in general.

So all human activity prior to March 2020 was murderous, evil and so forth?

Technically, the activity of lumbering golems constructed by unthinking strands of DNA seeking to make copies of themselves, and if it weren't for that meddling virus...

> Technically, the activity of lumbering golems constructed by unthinking strands of DNA seeking to make copies of themselves, and if it weren't for that meddling virus...

This is frankly insanity. You can't think this right minded?

"We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. ... This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living. " - Richard Dawkins

actually RNA, not DNA, but more or less correct.

By way of DNA but aren't we splitting strands here?

I'm familiar

So you go from that, to all human interaction is evil?

No, but you keep harping on it. What gives?

If that isn't your assertion what is?

>From where I’m sitting, it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality.

I agree, and I wish people were more honest about that aspect. I quit my old job over a mandatory return to the office policy and took a full-time remote position instead. If you’re posting on HN chances are you have a highly in-demand skillset and can get remote work if you want it; hiding behind COVID just drags out this diet dystopia longer than its natural lifespan. I realise people have different tastes but the taste of “covid culture” has got rather stale for many people.

> it feels like the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality.

So, people liking the what works for them makes them "brakes"?

And normality is forcing people to do what they don't like, for the sake of what exactly?

Sorry to break it for you, friend, but people liking things is not an obstacle. It's an business opportunity.

It's the people who are insisting on not moving with the times that are "brakes". And that's anyone who calls 9-to-5 asses-in-seats "normality".

Ain't nothing normal about that. And that ship, too, has sailed.

I think it's really silly to fear the office at this point, but I hate offices enough that I will pretend to be silly along with them when asked by bosses. I just hope we don't enter a state where we are in the office yet still afraid of things like conference rooms and lunch tables, which would be the worst of everything.

> What percentage of you is saying this for fear or concern of the virus, and what percentage is saying it because you like to work remotely?

I'm not the person you asked, but for me it's the virus. Not only for myself as a healthy 20-something year old, but also for the family and other people that I see outside of work as well as for my colleagues. We're all vaccinated, we have tests in the office and you're recommended to take one in the morning and take your mask off only after the results are in 15 minutes later, but still we work from home because I really don't fancy dealing with spreading corona to my parents and grandparents and I guess it's similar for the others.

It's not all terrible of course, I dread having to get a bus subscription again (80 euros a month to do with whatever I want is a lot of entertainment), I dread the commute time, the inflexibility. But I also miss my colleagues and the 'flexibility' of going into the city for something small and silly because I'd already be there for work. I have a much harder time concentrating on work at home. Some people have no problem with that and I kept it up for a while too, but it's been pretty bad since about mid-summer this year. At one point it just really hit me that I'm done with covid.

But then this shit happens https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... and I figure: okay then, let's be good for another holiday season and then I'll see about going back to the office again. It also feels stupid because it's never me, like, I haven't gotten covid at any point, I've been responsible, I'm not part of the problem. But then I'm also privileged in this ivory tower making an above-median amount of money early in life while just sitting at home. It's mixed feelings all around.

In short, to answer the percentage question with a percentage: let's say I like office/home 60/40 (not as a time share, but as advantages vs. disadvantages). I'm not dying to go back, but the virus is definitely the reason that tips the scale.

This post is an up/downvote rollercoaster but I can't readily identify the reason. I am curious to hear feedback on where I'm right or wrong, so do share please. (PM is also fine, contact in profile.)

Just the various tribes waving their respective flags.

If the tentative R0 of ~3 for omicron holds, then one tribe is about to decrease in number drastically. Their bodies, their choices...

Hey, I'm interested in news (also if it's tentative) regarding info about new variants but I'm apparently not on channels where this typically pops up. Do you have a good source for that?

Edit: Wikipedia on omicron actually looks quite complete already and answered some things I was curious about, but keeping up with the edits (it's currently updated like every 20 minutes) would be a bit hard as a news source. Maybe I should just check the most interesting sections every now and then.

I read a variety of sources who are all immunologists, epidemiologists, or doctors. What I try to avoid for the most part is armchair engineer experts of all persuasions and media sorts trying to express a dynamic evolving situation as compelling soundbites.

Or best guess, and it's all just guesswork for at least the next few weeks, it's more contagious, evades the vaccines, but it's potentially less lethal. That's good and bad.

https://secureservercdn.net/50.62.198.70/1mx.c5c.myftpupload...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03619-8

More as the situation evolves (literally).

False dichotomy. Systems of reasons affect decisions.

E.g. I'm willing to add a fully vaccinated office to my risk profile, but how do I get there? Even if I could trust everyone in the office was vaccinated (I can't), public transit was my only option before. Will the company send me a taxi with a vaccinated driver? Of course not.

Companies are asking people to take unnecessary risk for questionable speculative gain and burdening employees with figuring out (and paying for) how to do it safely.

You can't. The courts are blocking vaccine mandates. Ergo you are indeed being asked to take a risk on behalf of your employers in exchange for absolutely nothing. I thought by now we would at least have required electronically verified vaccination status to fly but we can't even manage that so it seems the workplace is a lost cause.

I wonder if we'll end up with something like smoking and non-smoking sections. E.g. this building is for vaccinated and that building is for unvaccinated.

I hope that dystopian reality never comes to pass, there’s enough social conflict in this world as it is without artificially inventing more categories of “reasons to hate our fellow human beings”.

Approximately known as red and blue states at this point, no?

> the laptop class liking WFH is one of the brakes for a return to normality

I see what you're saying, but you can't separate WFH from fear of the virus, so I think you're assuming nearly all workers don't fear the virus at all.

It's a real risk for anyone in the high-risk group, but a lot more people also face real risk if they: interact with older family members, go to church services or participate in gatherings outside of work, have small kids, have at-risk family members living with them, interact with unvaccinated people, or interact with health care workers.

I still reduce my interactions because even being vaxed + boosted, I know I could spread a new variant. Asking me to go into a cramped, shared office space for many hours per day would not sit well. Even worse would be if I knew it made me less productive and eliminated some of the flexibility I had in my schedule.

I laugh when I hear that phrase - back to normalty. We are never going back to how it was. Society has been irreversibly changed now and people's entire perception of the world has been dramatically altered.

There is no future without scheduled, forced vaccinations. That is not normalty returning. That's insanity.

The people trying to return to 2019 are suffocating fish on a dock slowly dying so one can understand why they might hallucinate a bit and think things are going back to what they were and everyone will be super peachy happy at our new doubled death rate much like no one saw the end of Donnie Darko coming...

I'm inclined to agree that reality has permanently changed, and I also want to remind folks that it's OK to feel grief for what we've lost and some of the good things we used to be able to appreciate. In some ways, I think this idea of a return to normal is making it harder for us to find forward-thinking ways of mitigating risks in our public place. Most measures and redesigns seem to be temporary and not optimal.

It’s also a bit odd to consider remote working the paragon of virtue when of course the vast majority of jobs simply can’t be done from home.

So it’s a bit of a pickle to claim working in an office is equivalent to killing others, when we all accept buying products that clearly weren’t made by people that were working from home. Are we casually supporting these people killing each other, just so we can buy a hamburger?

There's a reason "we're not essential, we're expendable" became a meme among service workers. We are absolutely expecting low wage workers to sacrifice themselves to keep the economy and luxury services running.

Now you're figuring out the west's informal caste system. Now apply this concept to the equity pie slices that go to startup TLAs vs founding engineers and be amazed...

Normal is context sensitive. The norm for 2021 information sector workers has been remote work.

See also: "I am a man, therefore everything I do is a manly act".

Exactly!

> one of the brakes for a return to normality

I hate how so many have simply defined "normal" as "exactly the way we all lived in November 2019" and then just assume that we must get back to precisely that. As if that moment in time represents some objective Normal Right Way to live. Framing that moment of time as "normal" is preventing us from moving forward to a new normal, with things like more opportunities for remote work and better in-office health-and-safety.

2019 was raging inequality and toxic corporate politics. We have an opportunity to do something about both right now. A lot of people are realizing that starting their own businesses is just as profitable and no less stable than a myriad of crappy McJobs.

Open offices were already a craptastic idea before the pandemic but no amount of data overrode their cost savings so they were portrayed as a perk. I'm pretty much Eric Cartman singing the social distance song by nature, but I get people don't all agree with that. That's your lightcone, not mine. May we never intersect.

Covid precautions and adherence to same has been a giant Rorschach test. Given a situation in which old norms are no longer assumed, with different information and beliefs, what does each person think is "reasonable"?

Personally, IMHO, if someone isn't wearing a mask in crowded public places and getting their vaccinations, it's mind bogglingly hypocritical to be claim to be afraid of returning to the office.

Either they're worried enough about the virus to protect themselves and the people around them, or they're not. And if they're not, then how can they be too worried to be in the office?

* Leaving aside the issue of the minority who medically can't vaccinate.

> Leaving aside the issue of the minority who medically can't vaccinate.

Perhaps nitpicking, but it isn't just a matter of whether you can vaccinate. For example, cancer patients can often still receive the vaccine (depending on their health and current phase of treatment), but that doesn't mean that they aren't still at a dramatically higher risk from exposure to Covid than others, despite being vaccinated.

Funnily enough this used to be a benefit Microsoft touted.

This is the kinda idiot I wouldn't want to work with. Take one thing and go to the extreme. What a crazy way to live.

> But also I 100% support people opting into going back to the office with zero protection or any liability for their employers should something unfortunate happen

There's a legitimate concern about people being coerced into "volunteering" to return to the office by their employer. Perhaps not most people at Google, but even there some employees will be in a situation where their manager can bully them into the office.

All of that is pointless. You're inevitably going to be exposed to the virus many times throughout your life regardless of what your employer does. Whether you're exposed in the office or somewhere else hardly matters. Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments make the risk minimal.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

In every argument for and against any covid related policy, the debate falls apart when the participants fail to realize people have different risk assessments. Age, co-morbidities or lack thereof, pre-existing risk-taking lifestyle or not, co-habitating with anyone else or not, and the list goes on.

Also irrelevant. Think it through over the long term. Since the virus is now endemic and can't be eradicated anyone who lives outside of a sterile bubble will occasionally be exposed regardless of the protective measures they take. Just like with the other endemic coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43. Differences in personal risk assessment won't change that reality. Unfortunately some people still have an irrational, unscientific belief that they will somehow magically be able to avoid the virus forever.

That said, I do hope that remote working will continue to be an option for those who want it as there are advantages besides virus exposure.

I'm usually on the lifting restrictions side of the argument, but do you honestly not see the difference in health risk of contracting the virus x times vs potentially (x + y) times? So far it seems like immunity is not permanent..

I honestly do not see the difference in health risk. Reinfections are rare but will be more common over time, just as with any other coronaviruses (or most upper respiratory viruses in general). Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments are pretty effective, and the natural immunity from surviving an infection typically reduces the symptom severity for subsequent reinfections.

The evidence indicates that another coronavirus HCoV-OC43 probably caused the 1889-90 pandemic and killed millions of people worldwide. The same virus is still endemic. It doesn't kill many people today because most of us get infected as youths and then retain some level of immunity which protects us later in life.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

There's more to life than avoiding disease. I'm not going to put my life on hold and hide.

I'm not saying you should..I'm completely back to my pre covid behaviors and only wear a mask when I have to. That being said, I think a lot of your post is basically just conjecture; the claim that exposure to covid past the first infection or vaccination does not increase risk needs a little bit more evidence, and I don't blame people who are coming to the opposite conclusion.

Biologically speaking SARS-CoV-2 is just one more coronavirus and isn't particularly special or unusual. We already know that prior infection with other coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43 provides pretty good protection against symptomatic reinfection with the same coronavirus as long as the patient is otherwise healthy. If anyone claims that SARS-CoV-2 is somehow different then the burden of proof is on them; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

As for vaccines, we obviously can't have any data on long term effectiveness. But short term effectiveness against severe symptoms is pretty good, and periodic boosters are available to those who want them.

I don't think it's very constructive to call every personal risk assessment "irrelevant" without qualifications.

For one, there might be vaccines that work more broadly and give immunocompromised individuals better protection in the future, or cures/remedies that help your body fight the virus better when you do fall ill.

For another, right now hospitals are starting to overflow here and if I decide today to start going out and about as if nothing is amiss again, me or a loved one might end up there at a time where they're actually full. That is not cool for the covid patient, the medical personnel that usually already do overtime during normal times, or the people whose treatments are delayed again because it's full of covid patients again. We do still have a period to work through, either by (booster or initial) vaccinations or by forced inoculation for anti-vaxxers (aka having covid).

It's not about being too short-sighted to see that it's very likely we'll all be exposed eventually.

My sweet 79-year-old father-in-law has had his “elective” hernia surgery rescheduled twice, and now cancelled without a rescheduled appointment because too many people in Germany “trust their natural immunity” or “deserve to do their own research”.

The 2020s: when residents of the wealthy West discovered that “elective” procedure doesn’t only mean cosmetic or gender-affirming surgery, but anything that isn’t literally preventing you from dying right now, or a baby coming out.

New treatments are becoming available all the time, better vaccines will emerge, why wouldn't I want to delay? I take care of an elderly parent; becoming sick and not knowing it is potentially fatal to her.

I can be cautious and likely avoid significant exposure for another year or two at least, but not if my employer disallows it.

Sure, but I'm betting that an everybody does what they want to to the point that it doesn't endanger anyone else isn't even good enough for some people who feel the need to control the behavior of others.

What is this obsessive need to bring everyone back into the same poorly ventilated rooms? What business goal is served here other than literally making them look busy? Do you want to wear a mask for 7 to 12 hours a day on the job when you could be at home?

But also for those who feel that doing so is better than working from home, more power to you. Just don't make me join your club. It's just not my thing.

I can choose to willingly not go into a closed space with 1000+ people. The risk of exposure is going to be higher in the office. I have no qualms with meeting my team for lunch or dinner or even a team offsite for a whole day once a month but the notion of coming into potential close contact with hundreds of people day to day is very scary.

The sorts that wish to require you to work in spaces like that are not worth working for under any circumstances. You can do better if you try, don't settle...

If you don't see the value in delaying exposure to that virus until there is something close to a sterilizing vaccine that's your viewpoint and you are entitled to that viewpoint. I hope you realize others see things differently. I understand that people feel isolated and I support them doing as they please up to the point that it endangers others.

To that end, opening up all the corporate offices for those that feel the need to be in the office once again whilst 100% allowing work from home seems the best of both worlds. We have vaccines. But we also have a rapidly evolving virus and a perfect storm right now for it to evolve further. I'm betting on the virus to win this one in the short-term. But I'm also betting in the long term that it's doomed, fortunately.

> To that end, opening up all the corporate offices for those that feel the need to be in the office once again whilst 100% allowing work from home seems the best of both worlds.

Except that's not what's likely to happen. Even if 100% WFH is the official policy, people will be leaned on to come into the office. And as the number of people working remotely shrinks, that will only get worse, because it's very hard to be an outlier when everyone else is communicating real-time face to face.

Speak for yourself. I've been WFH mostly for over a quarter century. No fate but the one you make and all that stuff...

I think it's fair that being the one remote member on a team is difficult. But especially going forward I don't expect that to be the norm. And in practice I'm generally communicating with people in a lot of different locations anyway.

I didn't say it can't work, I said it was harder to be the only remote person.

I've seen all-remote, all-local, and mixed environments. I just don't have faith that mixed environments work well, but every situation is different.

The secret is not hiring fungibles and instead hiring people you can trust. But also those sorts are in demand and your overlords will probably not give you the $$$ to hire them. So we're forced to make do with fungible talent and that's where it all falls apart IMO.

Got any sage advice? That's a rare amount of time to have done WFH in 2021

Stand up for your needs. And deliver sufficiently that your manager prefers to keep you working. The one exception where I tried to work 100% in an open office led to me catching the flu and staying stick for 4 months. People complained about my coughing so they gave me a private office rather than allow me to WFH until I felt better (got to keep the private office though). I had no complaints, but just about no one is going to do that.

I have been offered a job in a new SARS vaccine design team and, ironically, they want to put me in a tiny crowded office with no HVAC.

Of course, when I stated I'm less than happy about that, they claimed it's very safe. Yet all workers are traveling by bus and masks are not mandatory.

So are you seeing the red flags here or not? This doesn't seem like a winning effort. This seems more like the opening scene to The Stand or the French lab that spawned the zombie apocalypse. Not that I think this virus is the end of the world but I do think it is the global marshmallow test. I can wait a really long time. I'm not a people person anyway.

Aside: genuine bona fide former bench scientist who used to work in a hot lab here. I stopped working in hot labs because the safety practices of my coworkers terrified me. Many of them are dead of cancer now, decades later. While there's no strong evidence for it, I cannot entirely dismiss the lab Leak theory here based on my prior experience working with fellow scientists and their cavalier attitudes towards safety. Had I stayed I think I would have lost my mind.

Why is it ironic? The outcome from a proper vaccine would be eliminating masks and other measures. It seems 100% aligned with the company goals, but not the common perpetually-anxious-but-loves-to-look-rational dream.

We're so confident we'll stop the zombie apocalypse that we require all our new employees to be bitten by zombies!

I mean you could opt to stay super safe in a bunker and automatically die after 70 years or so, or go play along with the zombie wearing a helmet. There is a risk to living life to the fullest. Not everyone is you.

I don't intend to stay locked down anywhere.

During the peak of the pandemic I was still going to my office at Oxford University. However, this other institution I'm potentially joining has much more relaxed safety measures.

I think having a low-density office is a must even if there is no pandemics. I want to be productive, and I don't want to be surrounded by tens of coughing people during the flu season. It's just commonsense.

Um, one is pretty safe outdoors so far. I'm living a pretty good life modulo I miss watching movies on the big screen, mostly addressed by procuring a cheap 70" flatscreen. What's not so safe is congregating in poorly ventilated spaces. Why are you so hellbent on suggesting life is incomplete without doing so?

I'm not hellbent on proving anything, but looking at the thread at large, it seems you are very much. Carry on.

A slightly different formulation:

"All of that is pointless. You're inevitably going to be exposed to ionizing radiation many times throughout your life regardless of what your employer does. Whether you're exposed in the office or somewhere else hardly matters."

Viral loading matters a great deal.

> Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments make the risk minimal.

For some definition of 'minimal', for most people, this is thankfully very true.

Why not have to sign, I assume you mean, liability waiver when you step foot outside of your home?

One of the biggest sources of infections in the already vulnerable has been nosocomial vectors. Should your hospital admissions be assumed as a dangerous activity that is optional at your own risk?

Children get on average 5-8 viral infections a year. Should parents be told that they should sacrifice their child's lifelong immune health and rectitude to prevent themselves getting a common virus as has been our custom for millennia?

Just like HR departments exist solely to protect corporations from lawsuits this agreement is there to protect corporations from idiotic lawsuits insinuating that the dumbass who went into the office unmasked and got covid somehow takes zero responsibility for their behavior.

Or is this your way of saying that you're opting into getting a free smallpox infection this year because children get 5 to 8 viral infections a year? We still have some small stockpiles of smallpox if you're so inclined.

> Or is this your way of saying that you're opting into getting a free smallpox infection this year because children get 5 to 8 viral infections a year? We still have some small stockpiles of smallpox if you're so inclined.

I genuinely can't decipher what point you are making?

Infections are natural and cool? OK! Help yourself to HIV, smallpox, polio, hantavirus, covid, measles, MERS, and Ebola. Can you feel that healthy natural immunity building now or what?

I'm done with this WFH BS, need to get out of my house, the kids (I love them but separation make the heart grow fonder). I want to see human beings, talk, make conversation, see smiles, not communicate via text, slack, but human voice, human emotion.

Agreed. Although I do enjoy not having to commute.

As for the suggestions -

Get a social life - For one, I'm not too keen to do that. Going to a bar is not really an option. I don't quite link to have a drink just for the heck of it. And beyond a certain age, I really don't feel like socializing as I used to do while younger.

Have a hobby - Well, most of my hobbies are not social hobbies. I enjoy software and tinkering around with hardware, but that's about it. I do like going for rides, hikes and treks but that's because I enjoy the solitude.

I think there is a particular aspect of social interaction that gets fulfilled at work. Talking about some small things, not for too long. Meeting people face to face whom you've enjoyed working with. Sharing work related anecdotes. These have a special place which don't quite get fulfilled elsewhere. And all the while having a clear line which doesn't get crossed is a relief and one which we take for granted.

Find a life outside of work.

This is first of all so condescending and second of all so defeatist. Isn't it possible to have a life outside of work and still want to leave your house and see people IRL for the 8+ hours per day you spend working? Just because I have friends and hobbies doesn't mean I have to love working from home.

> This is first of all so condescending

It's not condescending.

Many people have spent years neglecting their home life and personal life in favor of work life.

People have been actively encouraged by employers to do this. But at the end of the day for some people pandemic was a blessing and others it was a curse and for most this distinction rests on how much energy people spend prior to the pandemic maintaining their non-office life.

Office life will never return to the way it was pre-pandemic. Absolutely for some people this situation sucks, but it isn't going to resolve itself. I've seen countless people in HN comments like this effectively waiting for things to go back to the way there were: they won't.

Things will change, and they will improve but if you're waiting for a return to feel good again, you will never feel good again. If you want to stop feeling bad, you need to actively start figuring out new possible ways to feel better.

Working on building relationships with friends, neighbors, members of your local community is a good place to start.

I understand that you're trying to show the parent commenter a different perspective, but telling somebody that a comment is not condescending is unconvincing, especially when the statement is followed by an exposition of your world view.

Empathy is the opposite of condescension; if you want to show someone that you're on their level, and genuinely want to convince them, you should try to state their premise in your own words, and then show the advantages of your outlook.

The irony here being that this is comment is itself a perfect example of condescension.

Could you please explain what makes my comment above read that way? It was not my intent to be condescending.

>Office life will never return to the way it was pre-pandemic.

I think this is absolutely right.

It will vary by company of course. But more people will be fully remote and, based on a bunch of different studies I've seen, in-office will probably be 3 days a week or so for most people. Now I would expect co-located teams to coordinate some but I doubt that the 9-5 everyone in the office world will be the norm at most companies for the foreseeable future.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what you wrote to me here is absolutely dripping with condescension. Maybe we just don't agree on what that word means? In my view, writing the following to a stranger whose life you know nothing about could be a passable definition of "condescension":

> If you want to stop feeling bad, you need to actively start figuring out new possible ways to feel better. Working on building relationships with friends, neighbors, members of your local community is a good place to start.

the current situation offers an opportunity to increase leverage for knowledge workers , and i think for that reason alone, no one should ever return to the office.

Go to a cafe

It's not about "having a life outside of work".

I have friends in several different social circles.

Some of us still desire a concrete separation between personal and work lives.

Not only that, but some of us find there are significant benefits and upside to being able to socialize with our teammates and even management because those work relationships are great resources later. Someone is much more likely to want to help you get unblocked if they've formed a connection with you before. Otherwise you're just "that other person working on that other project and since it doesn't block me from my work then why should I spend any time, despite having the prior experience to assist you"?

And that's just one example.

"Some of us still desire a concrete separation between personal and work lives."

I have work computer and a fun computer. Once the workday ends, the work computer gets shut and I don't open it again until 9am the next workday. Separation complete.

Yeah and I have a one bedroom apartment. I don't like being in the same place for 16 hours of the day.

Does the apartment have a door?

I have one, a rich one at that, thank you, but 60+ hours in a room in my house, and the dehumanized nature of wfh is doing my head in.

If you're working 60+ hours in your office, you don't have a life outside of work. No wonder you hate WFH.

I did WFH for years prior to pandemic and found it much easier to work less hours. Spent many long lunches with friends, took time out of the day for personal projects, made sure to schedule remote meetings with old friends and former coworkers during the middle of the work day.

It's possible it might be that your current office has a terrible culture (most companies failed the transition to WFH). Realistically you shouldn't have to be working more than 30hrs a week, and not being in an office means you don't have to do any more "performance" work. It might be as easy as finding a new employer that has a more realistic sense of work life balance.

Especially with kids this is easier said than done.

While I want to go to the office, this is probably good advice. We have to do more.

Are you not allowed to return to your office at all? At our company the offices are open but no one is required to return.

That was going to be my question. At my company, if you wanna come in for more brown-nosing ( or networking, or collaboration, or whatever they wanna call it ), you absolutely can. You just let your boss know.

The question is always whether the extroverts should dictate every aspect of company life.

> if you wanna come in for more brown-nosing ( or networking, or collaboration, or whatever they wanna call it )

I find this line of thinking, which is very prevalent on HN, to be incredibly toxic. As if a social creature seeking to be amongst others is something disdainful or pathetic.

The apparent disdain for it is probably coming from frustration at being unnecessarily forced back into that environment where they'd rather not be, just like they used to be before COVID started.

You don't see a lot of helpful (read: condescending) advice columns titled "Dear extroverts: how to be more quiet and introspective." The less social creatures among us that pretty often.

Letting people work in the environment that they like sounds like a positive change for everybody.

That’s fine but it turns to projection when you try to force everyone to behave the way you want to behave. It’s not a problem if someone else wants to stay home but it is if they want to force me to stay home.

Letting people that want to, work in the office among other people sounds like just the same positive change.

I know that it may be difficult to accept, but not everyone has the same 'social' needs. Is there a good reason to force me to drive 20 miles so that we can talk?

For some jobs.. sure. I am certain I can't be a butcher remote; not yet anyway. But if my job is done, my boss seems happy with the results, my basic question becomes, why can't I live AND work in my ideal habitat, which happens to limit the amount of people I directly interact with?

I was gonna go the Christmas party until omicron showed up. That was the extent of my social needs. More to the point, do I really need to be where I do not want to be? How does that help anyone?

I think there's a significant difference between social creatures that are just craving socialization which we can trivially achieve outside of work and wanting to specifically hang out with your boss every day. If you can't see that difference I'm not sure how to communicate it to you though, but I don't think anyone is calling anyone pathetic for needing socialization.

Leans head in door, “Hey boss, headed downstairs for some coffee; want anything?”

I’m just a other-seeking social creature!

Seriously, the number of people in this thread who desperately crave an IRL opportunity to kiss up to their boss is staggering.

There is tremendous dissonance in culture between the rewards of ingratiation and the opprobrium of it. At the same time it is difficult to balance the difference between brown-nosing and being a normal caring fellow human being who is grateful to others. The example I gave is over the top (in my mind), but I assume different workplace cultures have different norms.

Google itself has this policy. My best friend works at their Cambridge office and he frequently goes in person.

I work at Google's Mountain View office and I've been coming in for the past 6 months, around 4 times a week. Not a lot of people do, maybe 5%? (I hear it varies in other offices). I find the separation of home and work productive to me, so even if it doesn't change my actual interactions with people, which are still in video calls almost entirely, it's just much easier for me to concentrate and be productive like that. Plus the commute gives me some time to clear my head, call friends, listen to audio books and podcasts, etc.

I think we're similar. I know one person who goes in semi-regularly. It's good if you want the separation or just don't have a good working situation at home. It doesn't really help people who want the social environment of an office though as very few are going in.

Yes that is the case with us as well.

So go to the bar and do this? What does this have to do with the office?

Because bars are shit for socializing? No one here goes to bars alone, and the music is too loud to hear anyone talk anyway.

Someone finally said it.

I've never had the experience of talking to some random new people at a bar if I went alone.

The only times I actually got to socialize with new people was joining a pub-crawl meetup.

I have had lots of interesting conversations with random people at bars, but I have noticed that generally it is only older people who are comfortable with it. The last time I tried talking to someone my own age they just looked at me like I was crazy and then turned away from me without even responding.

Move to Ireland? This is incredibly normal there. No London UK also works for this.

Try breweries. I spend a lot of time hanging out at breweries with great beer, great food trucks, plenty of outdoor space, and either no music or relatively quiet music. People often have dogs, which are a pretty great conversation starter, too.

You live so close to a brewery that a trip to it doesn't count as a long commute?

Edit: I just checked the three breweries closest to me on Google maps... They just look like restaurant dining rooms? I don't know if people are comfortable with someone at another table talking to them in a restaurant.

Most breweries tend to be a little bit different than restaurants, particularly if we’re talking about the outdoor area. You’re much more likely to see kids running around, dogs, etc. More of a “backyard bbq” atmosphere than a restaurant. And in many parts of the country, especially places with high numbers of tech jobs, you can’t swing a cat without hitting at least one brewery.

Yeah, I'm looking on Google in the San Jose area.

Yep, it's actually a criteria I look at when I choose a house/apartment. It's a nice "third space" where community events often happen, where you can meet new people (easier before COVID), and where it's easy to spend an afternoon working or reading. Kind of like a park but with dedicated food, drink, and bathrooms.

I'm sorry, but it's very hard for me to sympathize with people citing a need to get away from their kids as a reason why I should be forced to commute for two hours a day.

All I was saying is I want to go back. I don't agree that forcing everyone to go back in is the right approach.

I know. I wan't necessarily commenting directly to you, but this reason has been cited by a ton of people who don't mind having forced office days.

Same experience.

You have the younger crowd who live with parents, have their own room in a apartment somewhere. Happy to jump on work and then jump instantly to discord and whatever. Like my friend below my apartment.

Then you have the older crowd who have their own house, Kids, family pet or two. Have a spare room they can turn in to an office.

And then theres me, a 32 year old who has a single bedroom apartment who likes separation from work and personal. Having my work laptop at home has been stressful because its always felt like I am at work. Having to use my personal space for work doesn't bode well.

Luckly, my office is open and I can now go in everyday. Even when I am the only one in the office I feel more productive then being at home. WFH isn't for me.

Tip: You don’t have to actually have a separate room, all you have to do is trick your brain into feeling like it’s another room. Design two completely different lighting schemes for work and off-work, and connect the lights to a switch to change between them. Use two different chairs. Switch to another keyboard and mouse. Reposition your monitor. If you have an height-adjustable desk, change it.

Idea courtesy of Vallejo B:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck&lc=Ugzl3DOl0s0oS...

Living in my 350sqft studio during the pandemic, I personally have tried a lot of these "tips," but haven't found much success. It turns out the brain is pretty good at building contextual clues related to its surroundings. Even if I'm sitting at my "play" desk (different chair, different room corner, different computer with its own keyboard/mouse/monitor), playing a game, with the lighting scheme completely different, I'm still _physically_ in the same place. I've still got the same noise from upstairs neighbors, same surroundings, same deco, same food options, same _temperature_ even (remember complaining about offices being too cold?). It's not enough to kick my brain out of "work" mode, and as a consequence, I'm always thinking about work in the back of my mind.

This is of course all separate from whether you can actually physically go offline from work, too. If a Slack ping at any time causes you to reopen your work laptop, even if you have different surroundings, you can't really fully escape "work mode." If you always wake up immediately into dealing with work, your bed becomes a "work area" too...

I have found myself missing the work commute more and more. Granted, I had a pretty nice one (15min train, 10min walk; not spending hours in traffic), but the biggest benefit I'm retroactively realizing was the clear separation between work and home. Working on finishing up a commit? Too bad, gotta run to catch a train, and then I'm no longer in work mode. Thinking about that bug the next morning? Maybe, but can still allow some personal time in the morning because not really "at work" until the physical commute in.

Not a viable means for myself. I can hide my laptop behind my bookcase, leave it outside in the courtyard. I don't have space for two different chairs. I have dual monitors, I even bought mounting poles for my monitors to make it a larger area. WFH just doesn't work for me.

Couldn't you just move to a larger and cheaper apartment since you don't have to live directly next to the office anymore? I don't understand, if the problem is your space, change your space. Maybe try that whole getting a pet thing. Even with the office as a social outlet I wouldn't want to live in a 1 bedroom apartment very long. Also consider using a separate computer for work and nonwork stuff, and turning the work computer off at a specific time. Once it's shut down, you're done for the day. You can give yourself permission to disconnect from work without forcing everyone into an office.

I feel like sometimes people miss that living close to an office usually comes with living close to other amenities like restaurants, grocery stores, etc that you could walk or bike to. So "Just move to a larger and cheaper apartment" is likely a complete change to the way a lot of people live.

I don't want to have to buy a larger house than I need just so I can supply my own office. We already have housing shortages, bigger houses isn't going to help that problem.

I feel like people who make comments like this have only experienced NYC/SF and the deep suburbs of those areas.

There are so many places around the world where you can live in a slightly smaller urban area, live down town, walk to everything, typically have a stronger local community and pay a fraction of what you do in a large metro for a bigger apartment.

I completely understand not wanting to move from a place with easy, walkable access to food + grocery + bar + etc, but there are a huge range of options for cities that you can easily afford a 2+ bedroom and be part of an active down town area.

> I feel like people who make comments like this have only experienced NYC/SF and the deep suburbs of those areas.

Agreed. I don't understand the false dichotomy of either ultra-dense NYC/SF or else having to drive 20 minutes to the nearest shop. That doesn't fit my experience at all.

I live in a small town (~10K people) surrounded mostly by forest and mountains, so relatively rural. This is in California.

But I can walk to just about anything I need (multiple supermarkets, pharmacies, hardware stores, many restaurants, movies, etc). On my bike I can easily get to the far side of town (about a mile away) for even more choices in restaurants and shops, breweries, pubs.

So it is entirely possible to have a house well outside a large city and yet have everything within walking distance.

> Couldn't you just move to a larger and cheaper apartment since you don't have to live directly next to the office anymore? I don't understand, if the problem is your space, change your space.

Will you fund all my costs to move apartments? Transport costs? Costs to and from my social activities? I like where I am. I shouldn't need to move because upcoming generations doesn't enjoy office life. I get it, I really do. Commuting to work sucks, transport sucks, meetings suck but to ignore those who do actually enjoy being in the office is sad. I hate webcam, zoom, teams. I need real face interaction. It's an outlet.

> Once it's shut down, you're done for the day. You can give yourself permission to disconnect from work without forcing everyone into an office.

I disconnect by knowing that I can walk through my apartment door and be free from anything work related. Separation is how I disconnect. I like my own space, and it shouldn't need to be filled with work related objects. Otherwise my life will always be orientated around work knowing I have to have that one bit of space for a work laptop. That's not healthy.

> I shouldn't need to move because upcoming generations doesn't enjoy office life.

From what I've seen it's the younger people who mostly really want to get back into offices for the social aspect. Those of us who own houses in the country or suburbs are mostly fine with not driving into offices, not that I did it much pre-pandemic.

And I totally get the social aspect. With some trade events spinning back up I've really appreciated the opportunity to reconnect with people in person.

As someone who's lived in a _studio_ apartment in a high-rent city for a decade, you have good points, but a lot of this is easier said than done.

> move to a larger and cheaper apartment since you don't have to live directly next to the office anymore

In the Boston area, this basically comes down to "either live with space in the middle of nowhere isolated from anyone, or live in the city core but pay $$$$$$ for a tiny place" -- and especially if we are discussing working only from home (so limiting that potential avenue for socialization), moving away from any other social avenues can be daunting. Maybe this is less of a dilemma for someone who has a family, since then they can just socialize with SO/kids/etc.

> Maybe try that whole getting a pet thing.

If only 99% of landlords didn't disallow pets...

> Also consider using a separate computer for work and nonwork stuff, and turning the work computer off at a specific time. Once it's shut down, you're done for the day.

On the surface, these are valid points, but they contain a few assumptions that can be challenging. For example: that your company is okay with you being offline for _16 hours_ of the day. How does that work if you've got an on-call rotation, coworkers in other timezones, critical products with low bus factors, etc? For example, at 11pm ET it is 9:30am IST -- not being able to respond to pings/questions/PRs from coworkers on your team who are on the other side of the globe can be detrimental. There's also the physical aspect -- if you are in the same (350sqft, in my case) room 24 hours a day, and you use it for work for 12-14 hours every day, even when not working, it's easy for the mind to stay in "work mode" despite trying to shut off work computers, etc.

> You can give yourself permission to disconnect from work without forcing everyone into an office.

I know this is in response to the post itself, regarding Google (delaying) forcing people back to the office. However, there might be some middle ground here. I have been going into my office one day a week for a change of pace (and to have _some_ on/off time via my train commute) -- but it is a lot nicer when other teammates join me in-office, to get some semblance that I'm working with other human beings for a change. I'm totally not on board with _forcing_ anyone to go in, but it is nice to have the option to coordinate. I have found myself missing casual after-work beers on Fridays -- even pre-pandemic, not everyone joined (those with families would generally leave to get home early), but among those who _did_, it really helped build more camaraderie and made the company feel like it was staffed with _people_ rather than just anonymous cogs.

> For example: that your company is okay with you being offline for _16 hours_ of the day.

It is scary that this could be controversial?

Most jobs in the US are 40 hours per week or 8 hours per day. So yes, you absolutely should be offline (from work networks & apps anyway) for 16 hours a day on weekdays.

Sure if you have an on-call week that's an exception but you should be getting compensated in some way (on-call pay in larger companies, or the lure of those sweet options (probably worth nothing) in a startup).

Don't work for free!

At least at my office it's only the young people that are actually coming in to the office. It's cliché, but the subsidized snacks, ping pong, etc I think are bringing people back where as I haven't seen a single 'older' engineer back in the office yet.

Really? As an engineer, as much as I love my home setup, my lab at work is WAY better equipped.

Consequently, I'm much more productive when bringing up a board at work where my office is optimized for software and is nice and clean, my lab is optimized for hardware and is goopy and dirty at times, and I have lots of space for both.

But, then, we also don't believe in the "open office" idiocy, so we put people in their own spaces with a door they can close.

Way to bury the lede there! I think if companies like Google were to say, "Hey, we're going to start requiring people to come back into the office, and we do mean office in a literal sense. Here's your own office" -- we'd be having a very different type of conversation.

I ended up terminating my lease and moving back in with my parents because I had no friends outside of work that lived in the area.

I ended up renting some cheap office space in the small town they live in to work from.

Most of the responses here seem to be focused around "your social fulfillment should be _completely_ separate from work". I've found this attitude to be very limiting. I don't know any of my current coworkers well at all -- they're all just 2D heads on screens and avatars in text chat. This definitely affects my work, compared to the _very same company_ pre-pandemic. Maybe for some people, the ability to work with others doesn't depend at all on being friendly with those people, but I personally find that important. Being able to grab ad-hoc lunch with coworkers -- including a walk to/from wherever, eating in a common space, talking about things other than work -- really helped strengthen the culture and the relationships between folks. Ditto Friday beers after work -- or going out after. Some coworkers can be coworkers _and_ friends.

Maybe this is different for folks with families (those who generally didn't hang out after work even pre-pandemic -- no judgment there), but for some of us more social single folks, I'm surprised at the vitriol here from people who don't seem to understand us at all. Isn't there some middle ground here? I definitely don't miss being _forced_ to go to work (sick coworkers spreading flu around the office, loud talkers interrupting focus time, etc) but on the flip side why are people so happy to be _forced_ to never interact with people?

If you don't have a long commute, don't have to work in an open office with a lot of people, it might be nice to go back. In my case, mandatory return to work means I'm commuting 6 hours a week at least and increasing my chances of getting covid.

That's cool. You do you. As long as you're ok with those of us who don't want to come in being there, then everyone is happy.

Yes totally optional, I don't think it would be nice to force people back in.

Same here, collaborating with remote workers doesn't establish a solid human connection.

And without that it's just not the same thing, to a degree that doesn't make it worthwhile for me personally.

So it's a solid no to working with remote workers if it can be avoided.

Work for a company of any size with multiple offices and it's pretty much impossible to avoid. On a given day pre-pandemic I'd typically be on calls with people in at least 4 different offices plus some remote.

Of course, it's easier to have everyone on a floor or two of a building with a small company.

100% agree with you. It feels like it's super easy to lose the purpose in your work along with any personal connection. I love the flexibility of being able to be home if necessary but I don't believe it leads to the most effective teams.

Maybe try a co-working space?

Oh good. I've considered working for Google, I think they work on interesting things, but I've recently adopted the stance that I won't take jobs that don't allow me the freedom to work 100% remotely. I value that freedom too much, and there's many other companies out there that let me do that.

I got an offer from google a few months ago and during team matching several teams were open to allowing me to work remotely. I would recommend making your position clear with your recruiter at the beginning and they can help you find teams that will work for you.

Google now offers fully remote roles. In my org, literally every single application for a transfer to fully remote was accepted.

And, on top of that, office transfers are a thing. Half of my immediate team (including me) have applied to relocate to otherwise random international offices that would better suit our lifestyles, and all got approved.

P.S. Fully remote would have also been an option. It's just not what we've chosen, for various reasons.

> random international offices

Just curious where people chose? Were there any side affects ?

Berlin, Dublin, Zürich. Pay & benefits are adjusted to be in line with anyone else employed by the company at the target office.

Being able to pick a city where one actually wants to live is definitely an upside. Being a remote singleton with no nearby teammates might prove a downside, though in our case I doubt it will be all that significant.

Other than that, ask me again in a year.

Is it really fully remote? Or is it work from home only remote? Can you work from any country you choose?

I am located roughly 3,000 miles from my team and will never return to being within driving distance of any Google office. International is harder because of time zones, but it is an option.

To people like you: Go https://careers.google.com/ and tick "Show all remote-eligible jobs".

Yeah, my current stance is that moving on from my current role to an on-site position would require the next employer to compensate me well enough that it wouldn't make sense to even consider side gigs.

heh..like you would get hired

btw Google offers 100% remote.

I wouldn’t be willing to guess much about what the workplace will look like in 12 months. But longer term, I think coercing people to go back to the office is going to turn out to have been a seriously dated and misguided worldview.

I love in-office culture. I really, really do. However, I think the only real way to create team bonding in modern global organizations is the "on-site", a semi-regular team convergence to a specific place, often in a work-live environment or a mini office-park.

I agree that fully remote teams benefit a lot from this.

But this would be my least-favored option, personally: I can see why others like it, but traveling for work is too disruptive to my life. Especially global travel. I'd much rather just live near work and go into the office a couple days a week.

Heh. People differ. I'm perfectly fine never going into my local office which isn't a bad commute (well, one is one isn't). But one of the improvements to my quality of life this fall has been getting back to attending trade events and seeing people.

I'd agree, working at a multi county small company. Sometimes you just need to meet up. Particularly, if there's any language barrier. Eg. Native vs not native English speakers

Not from my experience. All you have to do to get that is to give them slack channels and allow them to speak freely in shared spaces. Everything will work itself out.

Not from my experience. We had all the Slack channels, work ones and social ones (memes, rant channels about work experiences, etc.).

Nobody on my previous team ever used a single one. Only people in other teams across the org, and not full participation from them either.

IMO nothing just "worked itself out", and is a good part of why I chose to leave.

People are allowed to speak freely on the social Slack channels at my employer but they are all either dead silent or get at most 1-2 posts per week. There was a bit of activity at the beginning of the pandemic but it petered off to nothing.

I moved from a company that had very active private and social channels to a company that has almost no social communications at all. The channels exist but no one uses them. It's eerie. It makes me think either people are afraid of saying anything or they just don't like talking to their coworkers unless they have to.

I am returning to office 1-2 days a week right now.

I think it is pretty nice.

This is the perfect compromise.

Forcing your employees to commute to the office 5 days a week just isn't a tenable proposition anymore. Hell, even the 40 hour workweek is becoming less and less acceptable.

1-2 days a week is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to put up with in office bullshit and still get most of the benefit that comes with it.

I agree, as an employee. I mentioned this to my director and he also agreed with me but brought up some logistics I hadn't thought about because it wasn't my job to care.

What do you do about office space? The company is paying a ton of money to give everyone their desks. How do you handle the logistics of having people coming in on random days? Share desks? What if you both come in on the same day? Have unassigned desks? So you're sitting by random people? But the point of coming in is being with your team. But how do you coordinate that? What if half your team chooses monday/tuesday for their office days and the other half chooses something else? None of these are show stoppers, but I also can list a bunch more little "paper-cut" problems with the hybrid approach at scale.

At some point it's just fully-remote with an expensive office. I think those things will naturally work themselves out. But it makes sense why someone who's job it is to care will not know up front to solve it. I think the solution is to not try and solve it ahead of time.

At some point it seems we'll naturally converge on smaller office spaces with more OFFICES and less "open". Some people will always want to come into the office. Those people will be supported. Some people will never want to come into the office. Those people will also be supported. Teams will figure out what works best for them.

For me, I plan to work fully remote the rest of my career. And right now that's a sword I'm willing to die on. Do I miss some things about in-office attendance? Yes! So I plan to go in occasionally. I'll plan that around the schedules of people I want/need to see. Also, sometimes I just need a freaking shared whiteboard. And no, Draw.Io and digital whiteboards somehow just don't work the way I want.

I agree that it's not super simple. But frankly, as highly valued employees in a hot job market, it's not our job to worry how companies cater to our demands. If they want to extract value from our labor and cognitive/create energy, then they have to compete with other companies to best serve our desires.

Like you said, different people want different things, and it's likely that the most successful companies in the future will be the ones that figure out best how to find the sweet spot between maximum flexibility and maximum collaboration.

> What do you do about office space? The company is paying a ton of money to give everyone their desks.

> I think the solution is to not try and solve it ahead of time.

Indeed. The company has been paying for the office this whole time. This is an opportunity to slowly decrease office spending over the next few years, not a logistics issue that needs to be solved ASAP.

This can indeed work well for some people, but for others it's the worst compromise. It means they can't benefit from moving to a lower CoL area or nearer to family etc., because they still have to be within a reasonable commute distance. But at the same time, it can mean they still have to keep the necessary equipment and space setup for remote working at home, may no longer have a permanent desk/office, lose the benefit of reduced-cost season tickets for public transport etc.

It's hard to come up with something that's going to work for everyone.

A different, similar compromise is 1 full week in the office once a month or two. That's fairly easy to manage if you still want to live in a LCOL area, with a minimum 3 nights in a hotel.

Coordinate with your team and project stakeholders to all converge on the same week where you can collaborate and plan more efficiently. Then break and work remotely to actually execute.

Many small businesses won't even need to maintain a consistent workplace. They could cycle the meetups in more flexible co-working spaces as needed. Larger megacorps could still justify maintaining their own space that ends up being designed for more modularity and flexibility.

Make it 3 days once a quarter and you've got a deal.

Leaving my wife home alone for a week every month to take care of the household by herself is not really feasible, I'd need to live close enough to commute if I were going to do that, so that kind of eliminates the chance to live far away when it's cheaper.

I just took a job that specifically allowed remote but I'm flying onsite a (work) week a month. To me that is a great compromise, especially since I don't have to pay for the flights/hotel/car.

> This is the perfect compromise.

Except then you are geographically tied to a location.

I've been working remotely for about 10 years now, so well before Covid.

I now prefer to live in a low cost of living area, or travelling and working from places with a low cost of living.

As a software engineer, every single thing I do is timestamped, logged, reviewed, deadlined, etc ... so it's not like I can be lazy and slack off. I still have to work, I should be able to do it from anywhere.

I was of the same mindset pre-Omicron. If antibody evasion shows to be problematic I am going to hunker down and only come in occasionally.

Still not going to indoor restaurants/bars or indoor parties or exercise rooms.

Not sure if we are going off topic, but doesn’t it make you sad to miss 2+ years of life experiences to save a relatively small chance of injury or death?

Most people are doing all of the things in your list by now.

I can’t comprehend hiding from this thing for years. Would feel like an awful waste of some of my prime years. I got bored after a few weeks!

> doesn’t it make you sad to miss 2+ years of life experiences to save a relatively small chance of injury or death?

I think we'll have to disagree on the "small" bit. Long COVID is a reality. Apparently 33% of all people infected suffer from it [1]. Last thing I want to do is my kids getting infected and having ongoing heart or lung conditions for the rest of their lives.

Plus, lots of stuff you can do without going indoors to eat/play/workout. We've done lots of picnics with friends and enjoy the outdoors a lot more as well. I don't feel I've "lost" life experiences, just replaced them with different ones.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/monumental-acknow...

I can't believe we still have to bring this up two years into this shitshow... Being cautious isn't just about you. It's about the people around that may be nore vulnerable than you. Show solidarity, be cautious.

Is everyone back there? Maybe it's nice because it's quiet? That's how I felt when I went back but to imagine being with 1000s of people in there is scary

I'm in my office (Google Waterloo) about 3 days a week and yeah, it's pretty quiet. Maybe 20% capacity and I can always get an EV charger, which isn't normal.

Right now this is awesome. I'd like to see more of my teammates, but I don't look forward to when the crowds return.

> Is everyone back there?

To some degree yes, everyone had at least back to the office to some extent on weekly basis, but people aren't all appearing at once on a single day, so it is still pretty nice and quiet.

Definitely not crowded, the utilization isn't even close to 10% per my current experience.

This is what I've been doing too, coordinated with other team members. We usually go in on planning or big meeting days. I sure don't want to go in every day but 2 - 3 days is perfect to get out of the house and see some new people.

Similar here. I tried to be in office 3 days a week, I am actually enjoying it.

Yup

To see colleagues face to face, from time to time, it is really chill.

I don't realize how much I miss that experience until I did lol

Doesn't this limit you to still living near a specific area?

This is one of the things that made me leave my previous job. The constant reminder of how catastrophically they can alter my life every few weeks was enough to break me down.

Remove mandatory. Remove the constant, lurking threat. You're giving people untold anxiety.

Everyone is pretending like the word mandatory isn't in the article. You don't HAVE to work from home. If you don't want to be around your kids, go into the office. Making people go into the office and risk long term damage or death from covid is absolutely insane.

> the company still encourages employees to continue coming in “where conditions allow, to reconnect with colleagues in person and start regaining the muscle memory of being in the office more regularly.”

I'm sure I still have plenty of muscle memory...

You joke, but me and several co-workers laughed together when we realized after a year and a half, we didn't know how to make small talk anymore. Or even talking felt awkward/forced the first few days

It was pretty funny actually

It sounds kinda sad.

Somethings you just don't want to remember.

I mean, this is why some of us start drinking...

I’ve been thinking the pandemic has marked a shift in the next generation of tech giants. We might just see the next generation of these companies as being remote first or having no office. I mean if you think of the startup costs itself, monthly subscriptions to zoom slack or teams (or in the future, Meta in VR, eww) is much lower than the cost to rent an office.

Added to the fact that Recently there is a lot of mention about web 3.0 and decentralized technology as disruptive technologies over the current incumbents (search, file sharing, social media, etc)

Also, Remote first doesn’t mean Remote only. Offices still play a role, just a lesser one. And I guess it’s not a surprise, coworking spaces are more like “office-lite” and have been in existence for a while.

Surprising no one...

It seemed like odd timing from the start with the expected post-holiday and winter surge.

I'll go back 2 days a week if they give me an office. I'm not working in an open space with 500 people on my floor.

I mean, that was true before COVID as much as it is today. I don't need a private room with view, but open floor plan has never been good for anything.

My bosses dream about getting whole team to the office. Though having corona outbreak in the office would have 2 huge issues: operations would stop and the bosses would need very good explanations to the highest management. At the end one can enter the office only being vaccinated or after recovery and there is 100% home office option. I used it during hot project phase, but I feel a bit isolated not going at least a day a week to the office. My perfect schedule is slacking 2 days in the office and working hard 3 days from home. I am sure this will stay this way for years since virus is mutating. After omicron comes other variant for sure.

Meanwhile Microsoft has adopted full remote.

This is not true. You can work from home, but you cannot travel and work.

On one hand, I have pity on major cave syndrome in Silicon Valley. Kids are not going to sleepovers and are forced to do outdoor PE with masks on even if fully vaccinated. Adults are still not meeting their family or traveling on vacations. On the other hand, if hysteria gets me more work flexibility for as long as possible - thanks I guess? Just don't force me into your bubblewrap lifestyle.

Do you live in the Valley or are you just making assumptions? Because this is not at all what I see around me.

There are people like that everywhere, but it’s definitely concentrated in the West’s liberal cities.

Something good comes out of Omicron. woooo!

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