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Comment by headmelted | Hacker News Reader

To extend this, more useable time with family.

For many people with younger children (and therefore early evening bedtimes), having or not having a commute is not a difference of an hour or two of your day - it's the difference between spending time with your family during the week versus not at all. I've heard this from many friends (and some family) across different industries - hardly any have wanted to stick their heads above the parapet and single themselves out as being a problem.

I already empathised, but this whole thing has really thrown a light on what working parents (specifically those with primary care responsibilities like school pick-ups and drop-offs) in the workplace have been dealing with this whole entire time.

tldr; A great many people have had an increase of 150% of the time they care about the most by working from home - this proposal takes that away from them.

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> and therefore early evening bedtimes

Haha, you say. But my 3 year old doesn’t sleep before 10 :P

That said, being able to pick him up and drop him off at daycare without having to rush is really nice.

This is of course true.

OTOH, WFH people living alone can go many days without any human interaction.

There is no arrangement that is "best" for everyone.

> WFH people living alone can go many days without any human interaction.

dont threaten me with a good time

But this doesn't remove the option for people to socialize or interact with humans. If not for COVID there'd be no reason that WFH people living alone couldn't have seen other people over the last two years. In fact, without a commute people now have more time to be able to socialize if they so choose with the people they want to socialize with.

You can't really get time with your kids when you work from the office, but you can get socialization when you're not working.

If you're going many days without any human interaction, then the issue isn't your inability to force your colleagues into the same physical space with you. The issue is that you're confusing your colleagues for a personal social support network.

Remote or in-office, that's not healthy. Go outside. Make real friendships with people you don't work with. And if you're struggling with that, then seek help. But don't force me into a car for 10 hours per week, just to help you fake a social support network.

I didn't suggest forcing you to do anything. Only that some people prefer different things than you. Apparently that upsets you.

Believe it or not, a lot of people do make friends at work. I can see why that might happen less for you.

Requiring people to do anything is by definition a use of force.

They didn't say anything is wrong with having friends at work, only that using work as your only social avenue is unhealthy.

There are those that end up cleaning up after everyone else that don't necessarily have the time to do that because the work needs to get done or someone gets blocked. I envy the people that get to clock out at the normal time, and are free to not consider downstream effects of what they do because that would take too much time away from their social endeavors. At least with WFH, you generally have enough contact info to call that sort of thing out, and ideally, wort it out.

> I envy the people that get to clock out at the normal time

What's stopping you from doing the same?

I think it's important to not confuse WFH life with WFH life during a global pandemic.

Many people WFH and their kids have been stuck at home, they dont feel safe popping to the coffee shop for a few hours of work, and they dont feel safe going to social events.

Once people feel fully safe doing those things and the kids are back in school in person WFH life will elevate for so many.

So go find a coworking space close to you with people seeking the same thing.

Then if it turns out the coworking mates are a bunch of jerks, you can switch without wondering if you'll be able to pay rent next month.

Seems pretty cool to me.

As a counterpoint people with young children seem to spend at least some time each week during work hours taking care of their kids while their partner (whose on maternity leave) is doing something else. Also the constant background noise of kids crying or some kids show playing it pretty annoying.

Cannot tell if the parent is missing /s or not... just in case not.

- Noise cancelling headphones work as well at home as they do at work. I love mine.

- Imagine: I definitely spend time outside of "work hours" doing work, so it might balance out.

Anyway, person-to-person and day-to-day differences in productivity are pretty large in my experience. Of course you could be in a bust-your-butt-for-a-promotion kind of situation, but you could also take the attitude that you're getting paid for what you actually do, and the fact that you are not top 1% productivity is reflected in your current "help-at-home-when-I-am-needed" salary.

> Noise cancelling headphones work as well at home as they do at work. I love mine.

This is actually the bug, not the feature. These people have bought noise cancelling headphones, so when they join a meeting everyone else it bothered.

>Imagine: I definitely spend time outside of "work hours" doing work, so it might balance out.

Why are you doing work outside of working hours? That does not make sense.

It might. If your office is in your home you may have more flexibility to get things done on an ad hoc basis if that were necessary (like something takes down production or someone needs something urgently).

If that were the case when everyone was at the office it just couldn't get done.

If you are one call, that is completely different and doesn't make sense in this argument.

If you are just picking up a call from your boss to work without being paid overtime then don't do the work. Only exception is if you have flexlible working time e.g. 32 hours per month then you just do a shorter day at some point.

> These people have bought noise cancelling headphones, so when they join a meeting everyone else it bothered.

Noise cancelling headphones have directional mics that typically do a very good job of only picking up the wearer's voice.

If people really want to sound clear, a headset with a mic boom is every better. 0 background noise gets through.

These are all very well solved problems.

Heck my laptop back in 2005 (!!!) had a directional mic array. I could use an included utility app to control where in the room I wanted the mic to record from, I could record from in front of my laptop when going to lectures, or have the mics pointed at me when recording myself.

(That was a super cool laptop!)

What can I say? That shit doesn't block kids crying or TV shows, because I hear them at least weekly if not daily during meetings.

I think he was suggesting that the technology exists (and I confirm) not necessarily that all of your tele-coworkers are utilizing that technology.

> As a counterpoint people with young children seem to spend at least some time each week during work hours taking care of their kids while their partner (whose on maternity leave) is doing something else.

That is me, and I account for time off during day to play with my 10 month son by spending an extra hour after dinner finishing up work.

WfH gives me the flexibility to do that. WfH also means I don't have to take an entire day off if my son has a mid-day doctors appointment. Everyone wins.

> Also the constant background noise of kids crying or some kids show playing it pretty annoying.

Your company should spend the few extra $$ on good headsets for everyone.

Company has given out headsets to everyone, but people are impossible to please so most people (myself included) aren't using the official ones for variety of reasons. Plus a lot of it is about the MS Teams which has no software support for noise isolation or cancelling. I can see it clearly when I'm using Discord; if I don't talk, I don't broadcast. In Teams if I am quiet Teams will keep cranking up the volume until some sound AC hum, typing, whatever gets picked up and I am constantly broadcasting.

> Plus a lot of it is about the MS Teams which has no software support for noise isolation or cancelling

My company uses WebEx, which in 2020 had no background noise elimination, but now days it does it quite well.

I can be in a room with another person talking, loudly, and it won't come through on my mic. But I also have a nice Bose headset.

My wife's headset with a dedicated boom mic also works really well in this regard.

Airpods, eh, not sure how much I trust people using airpods. :)

FWIW unless I am talking, I mute myself, and all of my colleagues do the same.

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