Comment by pyjarrett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pyjarrett | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a super introvert who works remote. I don't want the company to spend a bunch of money on a ski trip for the company, I want to see my portion of that money in my pocket so I can do what I enjoy.

Working from home means my employer gets more productivity, since I can handle "life" things easier without having to run home. They save money on office space, in-office meals, chairs, desks, and such, and I get more autonomy on my personal setup and how I want to work. It also means that people can move due to life reasons such as to be closer to an elderly family member, and still stay working for the same employer.

I could get steps from walking around town, or, I can walk my dog while I'm waiting on a build or at lunchtime. My kid is home a couple days this week because of break for the upcoming holiday, so she gets to go with me and the dog on our morning walk, and I don't need to worry about child care.

I like the people I work with, and have built rapport with them over years of working together on difficult problems. We connect based on our professional mutual work, but we each have our own interests and families.

Remote work emphasizes this professional connection and broadens your ability to work with more varying people due to the limited and directed nature of the communications and interactions. You don't need to worry about the person in the next cubicle loudly talking on the phone or eating potato chips or burning popcorn in the microwave. It makes it easier to focus on positive interactions and tune out the bad ones. If I don't want to hear all the sports talk, I'm not in the #sports slack channel.

Yes, I could operate in an office environment, a lot will probably return to it. However, I've been fully remote for years, and it'd be a hard sell for me to go back.

I'm the author of the post and just want to say: I think it's awesome that you work at a remote company and am glad that you found a role that fits your personality. It sounds like you're happier there and I'm glad that the option exists.

I think that the fact that there's more variety now in whether you can work remotely or in an office is awesome, and I hope that's not going away. (And don't think it will.) And no job should ever give you hell for staying home one or two days per week if your job is totally doable at home.

With that being said, there are a lot of people in the world that genuinely enjoy having in-person interactions with their colleagues every day and I'm one of them. I've been lucky enough to work in jobs with awesome colleagues and I don't want to be put up digital barriers between me and them. I also like the fact that I have some forcing function for getting more than 2,000 steps a day.

The main thing that I'm worried about is that companies are going to see dollar signs in remote work because they can cut office space expenses, only for employees to not be able to backtrack.

I enjoy the in-person interactions in the office, and I'll even argue that there's benefits and desirability to it, and office work and centralisation.

But my wife has worked at a company that did offsite kinda vacation/camp things, and gotta say, it ranks up pretty high there on the corporate dystopia cringe scale for us.

I work at a semi distributed organisation atm (several offices in different cities) and we generally used to have once a year offsite. while it was nice to see some faces in person, the experience of leaving my family to do so, and to have to go to locations and accommodation chosen by work, was again just a downer. I know other people looked forward to it, so horses for courses, but I also know there were people working long hours and liking the travel because they had nothing else going on in their lives.

I think the strengths of centralisation stand independent a lot of these practices, that make a lot of us shudder on some level.

My argument against that narrative is if you crave interpersonal connection, there are healthier ways to engage in that through actual friendships and hobbies, than within the forced artificial construct of corporate hierarchy, rules, incentives and power structures. I can't imagine as an independent contributor this would be productive or desired.

In my experience, I've found managers very enthusiastic to RTO as it gives them more validation, and increased productivity through monitoring - under the guise of building team rapport.

> I don't want the company to spend a bunch of money on a ski trip for the company, I want to see my portion of that money in my pocket so I can do what I enjoy.

Your portion would be taxed, they can offer this avoiding 40% taxes on it or whatever it would work out to at your marginal rate. You may still not want it, but the alternative isn't getting the same money.

I'd rather have this as taxed bonus income than as a ski trip. Bei g crowded in with all my coworkers (whom I actually like by the way) still doesn't sound like a perk to me. And I like skiing. Or at least snowboarding.

I still wouldn't see it as a perk to spend a few days together with the people with whom I work. I like working with them. I really do. But I also really like to do what I want when I am not on the clock.

And that would be so worth the tax cut. At least in my personal opinion.

The point here is that the ski trip is not a perk, but an investment in company productivity via social lubrication. The company believes it is getting more for its money by sending the team on a ski trip, than it would depositing those same dollars into people’s bank accounts (even ignoring taxes).

I have been remote for six years and I love it, but still some of the biggest leaps forward in trust and communication I get with people happen when I spend time with them in person; and some of the most fruitful products and tech I’ve been involved in conceiving weren’t in a meeting set up to conceive them, but accidentally, while having a drink and being in the same room as someone I didn’t plan to be with.

Everyone is different and I’m not saying you should be forced to do any of this. I recognize that often these situations are just painful, depending on who you are and who your team is. Just saying the dollars have a specific purpose when being spent in this way.

For introverts, such trips are not lubrication. They effectively throw sand directly in the gears of the machine. Personally, it takes me days to unwind after being forced to go on such outings.

The smart thing to do would be for companies to actually solicit feedback and listen to their employees in order to accommodate their needs. As it stands, one must actively work to prevent companies from sabotaging themselves through mandatory participation in activities that will ultimately be injurious to your mental health.

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