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> I'm baffled by the polarized and inflammatory replies to this post. I was just relating a personal experience. I don't have opinions on how others should work. You want to be 100% fully remote forever? Cool. I don't think you're wrong. I'll continue to be remote a majority of the time, myself.

The problem is that choices aren't independent. While they're not using this language, you can see that other people are thinking of you as a "scab" for having crossed the "picket line" of returning to the office, and that admitting there is any benefit to being in the office at all will result in their life being made worse. That's why it's so heated.

I wouldn't mind being in the office. I do mind commuting, and I definitely would mind getting COVID as my wife is in the vulnerable category.

I get where you’re coming from. I’ve been half time remote since 2017 (I.e. on one coast half the time and back near the office the other half) and full time since 2019. It is very nice to visit and have a really good in person session occasionally.

My work has moved the office to a general hoteling model where the dozen people that need the office every day are always welcome to use it. It’s mostly a ghost town but everyone is happy with how this worked out.

The most common use case is a team coming into the office to see each other for the first time in two years or the first time ever depending on when they started.

We have a rule that all calls are done over Zoom or Meet, so we will have the eventual insane looking situation of the majority of the participants in the same conference room speaking into a laptop.

The company owns several Owl cameras which did a good job pre-pandemic of bridging the gap of seeing who is speaking in a conference room. I’m not sure if all laptops open is a good policy for remotes like myself but I’m sure we’ll figure that out in a few months time.

I'm with you. I definitely miss having an office to go to.

Would I take a job that required me to be in the office every day? Almost definitely not. Would I sacrifice a bit of pay if it meant working for a company local enough that I could go to the office 1-2 days a week? Probably.

That would really be the sweet spot for me. I like working from home a lot, but being a fully remote team wears on you. I've considered taking a part time bartending job just to satisfy the desire to have in-person coworkers a bit of time a week.

1. There are people who are more sociable and more likely to thrive working with other people in person, while some other type of people are more introverted, sensitive and dislike human interactions.

2. There are companies/work environments/jobs/teams where coworkers are mostly nice, smart and a pleasure to work with. There are also companies/work environments/jobs/teams that suck and filled with political, disgruntled and unhappy employees.

So, the only thing that is universally true is YMMV.

There’s introverted and then there’s reclusive. People who don’t like big groups or find social situations draining may nevertheless find a lifestyle with 95% of their time spent alone (assuming 8 hours of social plans in a 168 hour week) to be too isolating.

I am introverted, but the pandemic has taught me that I'm not actually suited to a reclusive life. I get far more done when working from home, but need a day in the office every month or so as a "reset", to remind myself that the company is bigger than just me and my projects, and that my colleagues are people rather than Slack bots.

No offense, but your comment reads like it came from a script. Thing happened -> unexpected result -> wonder why -> learn more about yourself. And the moral of the story is that working in the office is not that bad, because we're human beings not... robots?

Surely you're not so surprised to get these responses :)

I actually am surprised to get these responses, and I’ve sent a request to the mods to remove my account as I’m weirded out by what HN has become.

I'm with you on this.

I had the temerity to suggest there are benefits to face-to-face collaboration, and that meeting with colleagues was a valid reason for asking them to be on site in the office -- and I got raked over the coals as a butts-in-seats management lackey.

https://ez.substack.com/p/the-work-from-home-future-is-destr...

Some of us have moved to places that aren't a reasonable commute to an office. It's much nicer not having to deal with big city traffic for anything.

Yeah, I hate big cities, generally.

Do you still spend (or, would you like to spend) any time with your teammates? Like several times per year? Or 100% remote?

Regarding why this post is so inflammatory, it's just tedious "i hate people" misanthropic posturing from people who still haven't figured out that their problem is them.

Misanthropic? How could you possibly understand that from their comment?

I'd really want to see your reasoning...

I think they’re talking about the replies

Those people have to be (labelled) smart, don’t they?

I’ve noticed this as a very American thing to say on the lines of “I’m super excited to be here” :-)

I've read your comment a few times and I'm baffled. What are you saying, here?

I understand that people fake "happiness" and "respect" all the time. Yes. It's true. But... you seem to be suggesting that I am faking it here? Why?

My coworkers aren't reading this. They don't know my HN handle. I have never mentioned my employer on HN. What incentive would I have to be false here?

If I am misunderstanding you, please explain.

No, I didn’t mean faking it at all.

I commented as a light disagreement with:

- need to use the word “smart people” or even such a need itself

- also possibility of this being a trite - more of an unconscious habit without maybe meaning anything specific about it (again, not faking it) [1]

And more importantly it was joke kind of a retort which I think I should have been clear about. Wasn’t a personal attack in any way.

Edit: [1] e.g. like the zero day old guy saying in his intro, “I’m super excited to join you all super smart people. It’s gonna be fun”.

And as for WFH - god, I just want to go back to office - fully or hybrid!!

It could be an example of Lake Woebegon effect[1], though I'm not sure that's the case here.

On the other hand, making broad proclamations about nationalities based on anecdotes has another name.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_...

I've worked on a number of crap, toxic teams over 20+ years. This one's good.

I'm absolutely dumbfounded at the replies here. I make an offhand remark about my current team being a pleasure to work with, and I have multiple replies suggesting that there is something fishy afoot?

    "The Lake Wobegon effect, a natural human tendency 
    to overestimate one's capabilities"

Oh, cool. Because I say my coworkers are good and I enjoyed spending a few days with them, maybe I'm overestimating my own abilities. Great. Very cool. Nice thing to say about a stranger.

I've never ever had such absolutely bizarre replies on HN. I can't remember the last time I had such bizarre replies anywhere.

Don't let it bother you man. It's just an example of cross-cultural confusion crossed with some blunt HN mannerisms (to put it politely).

The tell is the callout that this is an "American thing" -- which, well, it is. America has a culture, and especially SF has a culture, that's pretty distinct from elsewhere. Talking up the raw intellect of one's coworkers is a very SF thing, and a very-non-European thing (not to say the person you're responding to is from the EU, I'm sure there's other similar places).

How it reads to an American: "this commenter is psyched to go to work with their colleagues, whose contributions and company they enjoy"

How it (could conceivably) read to someone from a culture very different from SF's: "this commenter is bragging about the IQ of their coworkers relative to everyone else's, which is either uncouth or sycophantic."

Commenting on it is of course ridiculous. Happy your team is good :)

Interesting perspective, thanks.

It's hard to wrap my mind around somebody thinking a stranger is "bragging" or "uncouth" or "sycophantic" because they think their team is smart and fun to work with.

But, I understand that it's a thing.

To be clear, it's not that you think they are smart and fun to work with, it's that you are saying they are smart and fun to work with.

Saying they are "fun" is obviously my personal opinion. How could it be anything else? Of course it means I think they are fun and not it is a universal truth that everybody thinks my team is fun.

As for smart, aren't most/all engineers "smart?" I hardly thought that calling a group of engineers "smart" would be controversial.

Some people are just very grumpy that they have to go back to the office.

So here comes along this guy that loves going back to the office. Fuck that guy! He must be faking it, he's lying to himself. It's that fake American culture that acts as if it's a nice thing to go back to work. It's because of these kind of people that I'm forced to go back! :)

I'm European and I know the fake US thing, but I didn't read that in your post.

Thanks for the kind words and the guidance.

I think there was also a misunderstanding. I'm not returning to the office. It was just a one week visit. I am back to working remote. I live 500mi/800km from my office. I will not move there.

    fake American culture that acts as if it's a nice thing to go back to work

Are you from America? I do not understand this statement. I have lived in America my whole life and everybody complains about their jobs 99% of the time. Maybe a person might lie to their boss about being happy. But nobody lies to their friends or strangers about loving their jobs. I mean, wtf? That's what people think Americans do?

It was just an exaggeration on my part of course.

But as a European looking at US culture, there is definitely a difference between this "positive thinking" attitude. I guess that's what the first response to your post was referring to.

Respectfully, I was not addressing you, and I think you are reading very different things into my comment than I intended. The connection in my mind was that the Lake Woebegon monologue always ended with "That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." I did not agree with this characterization, and I gently took someone to task for making what I considered a bigoted statement.

I have no opinion on your subjective assessment of your current or prior teams. I'm not sure what about my response merits being called bizarre. If I inadvertently touched a nerve, please understand that it was not my intention.

> On the other hand, making broad proclamations about nationalities based on anecdotes has another name.

You’re right. I’ll retake the humour class (skipped that during my UG) and try again later. Failed miserably here it seems. But thanks :)

Wtf are you on about

I did the same and it was as unbelievably worthless as I recalled from before the pandemic. You know what really stands out in the office? How sad it all is. The frowns on the subway, the fake smiles in the office, the pretending, the posturing. Bleh. I'm resigning.

I miss in-person activities, especially going to lunch with coworkers, trying a new restaurant, or one of our old favorites. Remote has become pretty old.

What stops you from doing that now? You still get lunch breaks when WFH.

People whose common ground in life is that they both liked the weather or got good deals on big houses - at least this is how I understand geographical community in a remote-first world - would seem unlikely to produce nearly as engaging of lunch conversation as coworkers. And coworkers at lunch were not famously engaging to begin with.

Nothing, but it's more than exception than the rule now.

the opportunity this presents is getting lunch with people that aren't ephemeral and transactional. you can experience something OTHER than work on your lunch hour, expand your horizons, and build meaningful relationships. of course you will on occasion get one of those relationships from the office, but they're the exception to the rule imo.

How are you going to build more meaningful relationships with a collection of people that’s essentially random (neighbors) vs. one with a lot of built in common ground (coworkers)?

it used to be incredibly common, in fact normal, to be friendly with your neighbors… dine with them, hang out with them… this has changed dramatically in the last 30 years

yup — I’m a bit old school and keep trying to do this. It’s very “hard,” you can face rejection, but it’s way more interesting than living in a bubble of your work place.