People who hate working from home

Some of this depends on how clean a work/life boundary you had before the pandemic.

If like me, you work in a job where you are on-call, frequently checking in morning/night/weekends, taking out-of-hours calls with other regions, etc.. then the line was long ago blurred. So I was already doing lots of “extra” semi-involuntary time from home, why bother with the ceremony of the commute in the middle of the elongated work day?

During the pandemic companies really started to abuse this.. my wife & I started having more regular team meetings at early hours that would never have happened in-office. If they want us back in the office, then the day will need to shrink again.

Lastly, in addition to losing the extra time companies have gotten from us - I’ve noticed that another counterintuitive office aspect is all the gossip. Management thinks that we need the serendipity of the “water cooler chats” and informal networks coming up with the next big idea. Little of that happens in reality in most orgs. What does happen though is lots of gossip about who is on the way up/down, in/out. People are a lot more candid IRL than on electronic, likely recorded, means.. and in some cases thats not a good thing.

I have been one of those people.

Ever since mandatory WFH ended, I've been in the office almost every day. When I'm alone at home, it takes 2-3x more effort to do anything compared to when I'm in an office. Also, work-related stress easily "pollutes" my home headspace, which makes it hard for me to relax if I'm working from the same place I rest.

Things would probably be much different if I owned a house, had a dedicated "office" room, and lived with someone else. But I'm still a long time away from that. A tiny rented noise-polluted apartment is definitely my least favorite place to work from.

Its a lovely sunny day here in the UK and I'm stuck in this mouldy office when I could be on a laptop in the garden. Any home workers want to swap jobs?

Edit > Compton believes offices come with multiple benefits, including enabling colleagues to feed off each other's energy.

Yes this is the biggest reason I want out of the office. I have my own work and I don't need energy vampires draining me.

I'd like to see the break-down based on job position and duties. I highly suspect people who want to go into office will: 1) have large decorated offices with doors, visitor chairs, admin assistants and in-person tech support. 2) spend 6 of 8 hours of their day in meetings.

There is an abundance of coworking spaces available (likely more as employers end their leases). It's not like work-from-home advocates are saying that these need to go away also.

Remote-first has the highest degree of freedom for everyone involved. Office-first only works for those who enjoy it. These arguments are inherently selfish.

I am torn on this issue. On one hand I don't want to waste my time commuting nor I don't want to sit in open-space office where everyone screaming over everyone and I can't concentrate

On the other hand I need that physical separation between I work here and I relax here

I wonder how many people who want to be back in the office are those who don't have too many friends outside of work? I'm not dragging on anyone, it is hard to make friends as an adult and it is common for people to form social connections at work.

I don't think its always about bosses wanting their minions at desks.

Count me in to this bucket. I’ve had to work remotely for most of my 12-year software career, and I just find it frustrating and unproductive compared to being in the same room with my team. I finally got an in person job a few years before the pandemic and loved it, highlight of my career. But now the company is all remote and the entire industry with it. I really dislike it.

(Before you flame me, I am very fortunate and have an A+ detached home office setup; I also have done the co-work thing to try and replicate the social aspect of things, and it’s not the same.)

I wish there was a way for remote to be a personal preference and for everyone to get their preference, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. If the team is strict about in office then nobody who prefers remote gets their preference. But once anyone is remote then everyone is dealing with remote, and more of the team will have reasons why they want to go remote too… and very quickly it’s 30-50% of the team. Then in practice you have to be full remote and Async or it all falls apart, so even if half or more of the team preferred in-person, they don’t get it.

To the tech people who actually want to go to the office, I'm genuinely curious what sort of work you do that makes that useful. I would say that I get the same work done that I did while I was in the office but I spend about 25% of the time to do it. The other 75% was composed of commuting, random office conversations, getting coffee, sitting in my office waiting for a meeting, going to lunch, taking breaks, working not in flow state etc.

I'd really like to understand what it is that people actually do in offices that makes it worthwhile for them, the image I have in my mind is just the standard uncharitable "well my job is fake and an office helps me pretend it's not" manager/MBA person. Even doing hardware I find I get more done at home with occasional trips in to integrate things.

my small home was supposed to be a relaxation/side-project man cave. losing what i enjoyed in place of endless "homework" was invasive.

i miss being on the road. i used to travel for work from sunday to thursday. client work aside, this was a guaranteed period of time alone for me. while i love my wife, i need a lot of it.

i havent traveled for a client since then and it is slowly driving me nuts. balancing work, gym, alone time, personal project time, and time with my wife is pushing my limits hard.