I'm not a fan of the office because:
1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.
2. At home there are many more distractions (kids)
3. At work there are nice people to talk to/interact with
4. Getting lunch with coworkers is a nice way to bond and discuss ideas
5. All my friends moved away during the pandemic, and an office is a good way to make new friends
6. IME, meeting in person leads to friendlier interactions, whereas virtual interactions tend to be more hostile
7. The separation of home/office life makes it easier to focus
Commuting is not a way to "unwind". If you have 15 minutes in the car, why couldn't you meditate for 15 minutes at home?
Interaction is not taken away if you WFH. But even if it was, if there are "nice" people at work, then there's the assumption that there are "not nice" people as well. Do you want to spend your days surrounded by "not nice" people as well?
If attending to the office is seen as a way to expand your friendship circle, then there is the assumption that any other in person activity should help to this end as well. Wouldn't it be worth trying to go to meet-ups, gym, etc., instead of relying on a workplace hostage situation?
Not trying to be too harsh here. But I have found that most people who want to go back to the office, expect others to go back as well. I don't oppose people going back, of course, but I do oppose being an accessory to their way of life.
I have 2 large monitors at my office desk (so when you include my laptop's screen, I have a total of 3 monitors; lots of screen space). Compared to no external monitors at home.
At the office, I have a gigabit connection to the LAN and file servers. At home, I have a VPN that is, while pretty good, not able to compete with 1GBe.
I could buy extra monitors for my work laptop, but then I'd also have to buy or build an entirely new desk for them, and find a place in my home for this desk to live.
My ISP also offers 1GB I think, but even if I upgrade, that doesn't mean that my work VPN can keep up. It also doesn't help improve latency
2. I don't have an office in my house. Even if I had the space I don't think I would want to use it for work. However, since coronavirus happened I have had way more space in my office than I did before, and I refuse to be sandwiched between two other engineers in an open office floor plan. So if my company tries to do that they will have a problem, at least from me.
3. I pack my lunch as often as possible and don't really know anyone who works near me.
I do think there are many developers for whom it makes sense to work from home. Especially if they are seniors, and their company workflow is well organized for it. Also, I do think that there are people who are very efficient working from home, but if they are WFH it will still be harder for junior engineers to collaborate with them or learn from them.
I've seen it suggested that in the future, companies who want people to come back to the office will lose all their best employees and will only be able to retain the people who can't get a WFH job. I think a lot of what makes someone a good engineer comes down to experience, so if that were to come true it would ultimately mean that senior engineers (best employees) will work remotely and junior engineers (can't get a WFH job) will be working on site. That kind of leaves junior engineers in the dust as far as mentorship is concerned so I would not consider that a good thing, even though it seems to be fine with certain people who think that they are "good engineers", when in reality they are probably just seniors.
Yes, and now they would be even more incentivized.
> Also, it would be nice if people's choices were as binary as this line of thinking seems to suggest.
What's your point?
> It seems to me that many people would rather have a shorter commute either way.
Yes. But if further incentivized to have a longer commute, they would (in aggregate).
This opens up way too many cans of worms - some of which (I feel) are very unfair.
(Morning shift)
I worked at SGI doing tech support on the "East" team. The teams were split up by timezone (we were all in Mountain View - where the Google campus is now). My shift started at 5am (no traffic at all) and I lived about 10 minutes away at that time of day.
One of my coworkers lived in Gilroy, and was on the west team (a 9-5 working hours) and would sometimes have a commute of an hour and a half each way if traffic was bad.
So, the guy in Gilroy should be getting paid an extra $100 to $150/day for living further away from me and not working the morning shift?
Or how about the sf2g types ( https://sf2g.com )?
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I can find other examples of this through my professional career. I had a co-worker who lived in Minneapolis driving to Eau Claire, WI each day. One bad snow storm, it took him 3 hours to get in that morning.
I currently have a coworker who lives in northern Wisconsin and the office is in southern Wisconsin. He's been very happy with WFH. But he had quite a commute (he likes driving).
This furthermore complicates the question of overtime. If you've got a 90m commute each way, does that mean you should only be working for 5h/day to avoid overtime? If I take the scenic route, do I get paid more?
The "ok, here's the consequences of paying for the commute" that I would see is that for companies that need people in the office (e.g. nurses), they would then have the constraint "you must live within 15 minutes from the office and public transportation is not acceptable as that may cause additional delays."
While I recognize the "this is time lost", the "lets compensate for this time spent" is a mess and would cause more problems and discontent than the lost time discontent currently has.
Let me flip your question around - do you think that it is fine that one person is paid extra to live 2h away or that they should be paid twice what I get paid for effectively the same time spent in service of the company because I only have a 10 minute commute?
Alternatively, consider the person who commutes into the office 1h each way while I'm WFH and have effectively 0 commute. Let's say the wages are $50/h. Should they get paid an extra $100 a day because they are commuting rather than taking advantage of the WFH option?
On Wednesday nights I'd head to dinner with my family from the office. This involved going about 20-30 minutes out of my way from my normal commute. Should I get paid for that adjustment to my commute?
Alternatively, instead of taking route 1 home, I took route 2 home and did some shopping on the way (the route is actually faster sometimes, but less enjoyable and a harder drive), how does that factor into what I should get paid for my commute?
If I took a 15 minute deviation from my normal commute to drive through McD's for breakfast, should I get paid for 15 more minutes?
I'm older now than I was, and so prefer taking city surface streets that are properly illuminated and plowed in the winter rather than country roads. This was a change that I made to my commute back in '18. Should I get paid more because I changed my commute to surface streets? It's a 30 minute drive... I could switch to taking a bus, but that's 80-100 minutes each way (yea, the particular route options are awkward - two transfers for the fastest route).
When I was in Northern Wisconsin, there was a Hmong community that lived 45 minutes away from the office. Would it be fair for the employer to say "you must live within 30 minutes of the office because we're not going to be paying more than 1h/day for a commute"?
The "not paying for commute at all" is the simplest and (I believe) most fair way to approach the commute and issues of non-productive time, personal choices for transportation, personal choices for "where you want to live", and significant complications for overtime and verification of overtime. It avoids issues of outright discrimination of people who take public transportation or live certain distances from the office.
Less accounting to be done when someone's commute changes based on inclement weather, no needing to punch time clock when you leave and get home (or record milage on your vehicle), no difficulty with alternate commute choices (if I bike to work and it takes 1h rather than 30 min driving)...
What benefit to the employer is there to pay someone more if they live further away? What problem would there be if every employee was given the same pay increase regardless of where they lived?
It means that payroll has a lot less work to do too (rather than trying to keep track of everyone's commute).
If Meta HQ did this, would they be giving less to someone who lives in East Palo Alto rather than Gilroy (because of the "difference in commute")?
Why? How would it even be practical? What if there is congestion? What if someone moved after starting a job, or their commute time changes drastically? Does the employer pay for tolls?
As someone that commutes less, it means I get less pay, for no benefit to me.
Personally I dislike those because they’re the worst of both worlds. Not quite remote, not quite in person. I get more done on my own.
In my observation many people are just very done with remote. Especially the younger folk whose lives aren’t as full of adult crap yet.
Distinct place where I don't have the distractions of home. (ie feel the need to clean, fix, things)
Much nicer environment - way more open space / natural light, great air quality, views, amenities.
1. I get very little face-to-face social interaction if I'm working from home. I need the interaction at the office or I fear I'll lose the already terrible social skills I have
2. Some conversations are just easier to have in-person, especially from a management standpoint. I don't micromanage and I am pretty hands-off but when a team leader is having issues with their team, it's generally easier for them to pull me into a conference room and chat face-to-face with me and we can figure out a resolution together. This can happen over video, but I find it's better if it's not.
3. I find you get exposure to new techniques and technologies and different perspectives on how to approach solving technical issues when you're in an office and can see a team huddling trying to figure something out.
That said, I know it's not everyone's preference and I'm in favor of a hybrid model personally. Office is available if you want to use it. If you're living in the area of the office, come in once or twice a month and have a face-to-face meeting with your project teammates and/or manager. Otherwise, you're free to be at home if you want.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...
Who knows Google would have been an also-ran Search Engine company if it weren't for those two solving the right scale problems at the right time.
And no amount of 'Productivity Metrics' can capture these leaps in value creation because it truly is of the 'Unknown-Unknown' category.
I can’t stand being on a camera, voice and text chat don’t really replace the in-person conversations for me.
Everything else is either the same or much worse working in person.
2. I purposefully choose to live in a small apartment with no dedicated “work” space.
3. Yeah, me too.