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Comment by deanCommie | Hacker News Reader

> I agree, but I am getting 1/8th of my waking hours back from commuting.

What about all the people who already knew spending 2 hours commuting was a terrible use of our time before the pandemic, regardless of how much of a bigger house we could get?

So we lived in dense cities, in walkable neighborhoods, where the office was a 15 minute walk away but so were restaurants, parks, grocery stores, and theaters?

But part of the exchange we made was that our houses/apartments were small, and were for LIVING not for working. We don't have a spare bedroom to turn into a segregated office, so instead the work/home life has been an overlapping mess for 2 years.

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You can probably still go back to the office even if your colleagues work from home. And if not, there are probably coworking spaces, or similar. Why must there be a one-size-fits-all situation?

Also, if WfH spreads, many of the people who made the same choice, getting a small apartment in a dense city for living only, will probably make a different choice now and move somewhere else. I know many people who did just that. I expect this will lower the prices of housing in cities, which means you could live in a bigger apartment if you wanted.

Because as soon as one person in the team is remote, the whole team needs to organise around that. Think of a 5 person team where 1 is remote and the others aren't. Your daily standup ? can't do that quickly at your desk, you need to find a room and setup visio. Going on lunch and discussing about your project ? Too bad. Got an idea you ran by a colleague at the coffee machine ? Now you need to setup a call or get everything in writing for the 4th dude. A state of the project on a whiteboard in the office ? No, you need to use Jira.

The only option here is either having a member of the team always one step behind, or changing the entire organisation of the team to revolve around that guy. People who prefer "in-office" work would rather make the effort of commuting so that they do not have to deal with that. So they expect the other people in their team to do the same, otherwise there is little to no point.

I dislike this comment because it implies remote workers are a burden. As soon as you have one on-site worker, you need a physical office space, security, and sanitation staff. These things are not free. Either type of worker imposes burdens when you objectively consider the fully loaded costs. I would argue adding a remote worker is lower cost because a Zoom call is cheaper than office rent and physical building maintenance.

Well...they are, for companies that have decided to be primarily office oriented, and have invested a lot in making that work. And similarly, office worker are a burden for remote oriented organisations because they incur costs that were not considered to be necessary.

My point is that "let's invest in great offices for those who want, but let people do what they want regardless" is not really an option, because you are paying the organisational and financial price, and not really getting the benefits of either.

I believe most organisation working in "hybrid" model will impose fixed days at the office - so they can get the full benefits of the "in-office" time. And let other days at home, so that people working better remotely can enjoy that as well. Teams will organise around that, eg by schedule most meetings on "in-office" days.

> Well...they are, for companies that have decided to be primarily office oriented, and have invested a lot in making that work.

This is awfully close to sunken cost fallacy - we have invested so much in it, therefore we have to use it no matter what circumstances.

> I believe most organisation working in "hybrid" model will impose fixed days at the office - so they can get the full benefits of the "in-office" time. And let other days at home, so that people working better remotely can enjoy that as well.

This is the worst option for many people because it would force them still live within reasonable commuting distance, resulting them not being able to move to lcol area or closer to their parents/communities/etc. What's the point then of allowing them to go remote when it's not really remote, but rather "not here, but still close"? Yea, it will work with some pople, but for others it makes things worse.

It's only a sunken cost fallacy if you consider that the cost to be in-office is lower than the benefits it brings. Otherwise you can see this as being able to get the benefits of an investment, which would be strange not to do.

Some agree with the idea that remote is strictly "better", but many do not. Bear in mind that we had the opportunity to create fully remotes companies for a long time, and some succeeded, but most companies were still office-only or office-first. Similarly, some companies will move to remote-first post pandemic, but it does not look like everyone will - far from it. And everyone is making their pro-and-cons analysis.

> What's the point then of allowing them to go remote when it's not really remote

Here is the point: this is not remote. It's office-first with some days were you are going to be allowed not to come, in order to lower the commuting time and get more "alone" time. For people who want to work remote, from anywhere, this is not cutting it. And it's not trying to. For people who still love the office but have some complain about having to go every single day, this is a nice option.

>My point is that "let's invest in great offices for those who want, but let people do what they want regardless" is not really an option, because you are paying the organisational and financial price, and not really getting the benefits of either.

Amazing how the realities of our financial system and transaction structure basically necessitates projection of a management groups will on others isn't it?

Couldn't have anything to do with the overrepresentation of psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies amongst corporate decisionmakers...

Remote workers are a burden when working from office is the status quo, though. No two ways around it. It sounds like that because that's what it is. Disliking it doesn't make it untrue.

This only holds if only one member of the team is remote, which is often enough not the case. This is also moving the goalposts.

deanCommie's argument was around a choice of living arrangements based on the idea that work would happen at the office, and there not being any space for work at home, so a purely logistical one.

Coordination between on-site and remote workers is a separate issue, though I agree it is absolutely important.

> People who prefer "in-office" work would rather make the effort of commuting so that they do not have to deal with that. So they expect the other people in their team to do the same, otherwise there is little to no point.

I guess it works both ways. People who prefer "from home" would rather make the effort of communicating by text / visio so that they don't have to deal with the commute.

> People who prefer "from home" would rather make the effort of communicating by text / visio so that they don't have to deal with the commute.

Precisely ! That's why it's important to communicate clearly to every person of the team the working agreement that are expected - and to enforce them. If the agreement is that no one is expected to have to commute, and everything must be done so they don't have to, that's perfectly fine - as long as everyone plays the game. And any person still insisting to meet "somewhere" because they don't like emails/IM/zoom needs to be talked to.

Similarly, if the rules are : you have to come to the office 3 days/week, expect that some things will happen in person, show up, and play the game. If you start insisting that everything needs to be organised in a way that allows you to stay fully remote and not show up, you need to review your position.

The important part is to ensure that expectations are clearly expressed - and enforced. Which Google is doing.

I think a good compromise might be come in once a month but for a few days. It's infrequent enough that you can move to a lcol area and the company can replace the office with hotel or co-working.

But it's frequent enough you can still hold most of your stuff for inperson if you didn't want to have the overhead of remote working.

> Your daily standup ? can't do that quickly at your desk, you need to find a room and setup visio

Yeah that only works for very small teams the moment you are like ten or os, even in an office first setting will be away for whatever reason, tradespeople coming, feeling sick etc

> Going on lunch and discussing about your project ? Too bad.

> . Got an idea you ran by a colleague at the coffee machine ?

> . A state of the project on a whiteboard in the office ?

> No, you need to use Jira.

Too bad that you need to put that into writing so later it can be referenced or you end up headscratching at a git commit which doesn't refer a ticket three months down the road

Co-working spaces are likely to be more expensive than working at home. Who pays?

Surely you mean that the flat is for sleeping not living. They're too small for living, because all the living is done at the restaurants, bars, parks, theatres, offices and so on.

If that's the style you prefer, then you need a co-working space to replace the office, in the same way your place probably isn't big enough to entertain people for dinner so you use a restaurant. And it's too dense with the neighbours to throw a proper party with dancing, so you use the bars and clubs.

At least this is my understanding from having done a bit of both.

No? I can still have people over, and I can still enjoy my hobbies at home. But I don't have a spare bedroom going unused that I can make an office. My office can only overlapping with my personal "fun" space.

I made that deal then switched jobs and had an hour commute from my townhome.

WfH means not needing to buy for commute. Buy for lifestyle. Still want to live urban? Get a co-working space.

You can always move away from that dense city. With booming property prices you should even profit in case you own the apartment, just sell it.

I would also argue that small apartment can be very limiting also for living. I mean, sure, if you spend all your free time in those restaurants, parks, grocery stores and theaters, then it may actually work. But if you wanna do anything that requires personal space, then living in a small apartment is very limiting.

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