Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely
techtarget.com
techtarget.com
The problem is that companies expect employees to be mobile when they are not. It's called putting down roots for a reason. Pulling kids out of school, buying a new house is very disruptive.
... or I can hook up my cable modem and work anywhere in the country...
Corporate elites cannot have their cake and eat it too.
Choose one:
1) Make housing affordable, and schooling more effective. Streamline the moving process through law and process improvements. Make transportation systems work better. Improve 2nd and 3rd tier cities social and political life.
2) Let people work from home. Suffer a 10-15% degredation in communications.
3) Have the entire industry force people to come to the office - have miserable workers.
For me option 2 seems to be what will happen - you'll get a control loop where companies will hemorrhage their best workers if they force back to office.
By the 90s, companies stopped paying for relocation of anyone below managerial levels. And instead depended on workers being able to afford to relocate on their own $.
This brings us to today's economy. Large companies, instead of laying older workers off, simply relocate their position to a new office. IBM (who used to be called "I've Been Moved") has a reputation for doing this to their US-based workforce especially when over age 40. If you can't afford to relocate? Great, that's now a "voluntary quit".
If companies want employees to "move where the jobs are", they need to step up to the plate and start paying for relocation. And that includes buying upside-down homes.
That's actually a constructive dismissal, which counts as an involuntary resignation.
> An employer showing favoritism to another employee without reason or explanation
Sometimes "you just like people" or "you just don't like people"; and it turns out that liking the people you work with makes you more productive, so where's the room for that irrational dynamic, where there may not BE a "rational" reason to dismiss one over another?
And down there is Ikea homes. You pay a premium but can customize it however you want. You'll also have to put it together yourself.
At least as long as the company isn't pushing to keep said properties longer than necessary.
This makes no difference to me personally, as I am a thousand miles away in another state, so I lucked out. I am still working from home.
None of this makes any sense whatsoever. I am totally expecting people to leave, just because they are forced to commute.
This is one of the nicer places I have worked. I dread to image what it would be like, in some of the shittier jobs I have had.
In my opinion, anyone who can work from home should do so. It frees up the traffic, makes office space more affordable for those businesses who do need space (dentist, restaurant etc) and in general win-win for everyone. All this talk of making "human connections" at work is just bullshit. Offices are just noisy, leads to office politics and meaningless meetings, cubicles are shitty, open office plans are shittier...
Either that, or make sensible but much, much harder changes to housing, transporation etc. Since nobody seems ready to take on that work, the easier solution is to just let people work from home. It won't solve all problems, but it is a good start
That's exactly what they miss. Those people became powerful by playing that game of office politics and now have nowhere to do that anymore.
Why bother showing up at that point.
What is happening right now with remote work is that we are seeing very clearly who actually does any work and who doesn’t. The people who don’t do any work are the ones who demand you be in an office hybrid setting or full return to office.
I dunno man, people are weird.
I would add, many software companies expect employees to work in such a way that working remotely has to be viable anyway. My direct coworkers were split across multiple Bay Area offices. I had projects going on with other companies, some of them in Seattle. I was encouraged to attend and present at conferences in other cities. I dealt with teams distributed across Europe.
Now, getting face to face time with all of these people is an important part of building relationships, but most of those meetings simply have to be online. I noticed that even though I had a home office, my boss virtually never saw me doing my most important work, because we were both in and out of meetings. I was willing to be dutiful employee who shows up to the office, and attends meetings in-person when I could, but invariably someone else in the meeting wouldn't or couldn't and we'd have to dial them in remotely anyway (ironically, this happen the most with a certain company who claims that they can't make remote work viable - their own employees would not attend meetings in person at their own employer's office).
If you're already in that situation, why can't I live where I want? You already can't assess my productivity by looking at me at a desk. I already have to have a significant remote component to all meetings. When I really need to travel, I can travel. But day to day, you've already had to have the technology and processes to allow people to be distributed for a long time. Let me take advantage of it too.
Funny that you say this. I could only be convinced to come to an office if my employer satisfied the following conditions:
- accessible in <20 minutes from a place with affordable rent via bike, walk, or public transit
- no or minimal video meetings in the office; I'm not taking the time to come in to sit on the same video calls I could take at home.
- either a lunch subsidy or reasonable in-house lunch prep options (more than just a refrigerator and a dirty shared microwave)
It definitely feels like housing affordability is a huge wrench in these gears. Up until this year, I lived in major US cities, and rent prices still shock me when I look back in my old neighborhoods. Even the suburbs have spiked to the prices I used to pay for walkable neighborhoods. I'm pretty sure my first criteria can't be satisfied unless the US has some kind of massive market-wide housing price collapse.
It’s in a walkable neighborhood a few blocks from a preschool and elementary school we send our kids to plus a park and little beach by the river/ocean. There are also nice neighborhood restaurants and cafe & ice cream parlor and library and community garden plus like consignment shops, etc. Tons of awesome neighborhood events around Halloween, Christmas, 4th of July, etc, plus a regular farmer’s market, etc… all this within east walking distance (even for kids).
My work is 15 minutes by car, low stress commute overall. It has a beautiful common space with a nice kitchen. It doesn’t have a stove or a dishwasher, but the fridge and microwave are super nice, beautiful stone counters with a nice dish washing sink, place for sitting and eating, making coffee via electric kettle, etc. It’s part of our communal “maker space” so we can have great conversations while eating lunch and watching our 3D prints complete. Plus very affordable snack bar, and a cafeteria within walking distance. I also have my own office and lab space which aren’t beautiful, but are nice to have.
Our house and yard are small and not super nice cosmetically, the income isn’t high for 3 kids and a spouse that has to stay home to take care of them, but every time I think about moving or taking a higher paid job, I realize how lucky this situation is. And how I could easily spend twice as much for a house only marginally better or three times as much for a larger and cosmetically better house in a non-walkable area.
"The office" is a tool. It's like we've forgotten the reason for doing things. Software development is really not all that social. It's not akin as a factory or an orchestra or any of these other analogies that get tossed around.
I tried this approach. I worked from a satellite with affordable housing, good schools. I had a <10 minute commute between my garage to my desk during peak traffic. I did not like it. Now, I would only entertain the idea of working out of a HQ. The satellite office provided many of the disadvantages of working in an office (open office floorplan, being forced into close proximity with that one annoying coworker, shared kitchen space) while being isolated from other teams and upper management. Those that worked at HQ saw more promotions, had better opportunities for internal mobility, and were taken more seriously inside the company. Going to HQ is fantastic for those career oriented. For everyone else WFH is the way.
This right here. If I could get to work and back in 5 minutes I wouldn't mind the commute, ever. Unfortunately everyone wants to have offices in some downtown area, instead of just near a major city in a quieter part of town, safe back-roads that wont bother anyone.
Downtown is also the place with the most transit going to it - you're excluding anyone who doesn't/can't drive if you choose to build in a quiet section.
If instead you have a few smaller offices in the burbs outside of downtown, you could save a lot of time for workers as they would be traveling counter-commute.
If your team is split across 3 timezones and 5 cities already, you're going to damage your communications even further by making everyone go into the office again.
Personally, I prefer an office space as I find the comradery is better. Being able to have lunch or general conversation is much more natural. Also, a commute that isn't too long (20-30m) is nice for ramping up on the way in and clearing the mind on the way home.
All of that said, since going remote, I don't plan to go back. I really want to move to a more rural location that better aligns with what I want in lifestyle/community. Of course, internet connectivity becomes crucial, and the current interest rates prohibit that.
I also don't think TFA is quite right on that being younger is the stronger reason for a higher chance of layoff. I think a lot of it comes down to experience and value provided from more experienced devs. It can definitely cut both ways and I have seen it in practice. I would suggest it's about perceived and actual value as well as a bit of office politics and agreeableness in the workplace that is more desired.
I do think that the nicest thing about more remote work, is it is more regionally competitive. At the higher end of the talent pool, one is able to compete for jobs that are much better paying that would be available locally, while still being less expense for businesses rooted in tech hub cities. This comes at the cost of communications, which you mention, though I think it's more than a 15% degredation in some cases. My prior position it seemed to hold things up for days on communications at times, with an international team.
Make? Who is the subject doing the making here in this scenario?
But they don’t - they’re in a suburban sprawl, at minimum a 30 minute drive - more like an hour during rush hour. I would quit on the spot if there were ever an attempt to make me go to the office on a fixed schedule.
In my estimation you're grossly underestimating the degradation in communications.
I do not think 10-15% degradation is underestimated.
People keep saying this, but the experience of quickly pairing on something is one of the things I feel has degraded the most. I can't point to a single cause, it's more death by a million cuts, but I absolutely dread pairing with a junior to help them over screen share where I would normally be happy to help someone in person. I'm not exactly inexperienced at it either, I worked fully remote for a couple years a decade before the pandemic.
However, some things of note:
1) My "Office" (not home) is not an "Open Office", it's a place where I can reasonably sit in peace and have control of my surroundings (this is something not afforded to most people in offices, and something that work from home provides)
2) I do not have children at home, which is a pro and a con of working remotely. Being able to look after your offspring is great! I have it on good authority though that kids are distraction machines.
3) My Commute is a 10 minute walk through a sparsely populated city in southern Sweden with no heavy trafficways (or even mild trafficways by North American standards)
So even though my home office setup is dedicated, clean, & spacious, I do quite enjoy going to the office at the moment.
My meandering point is that: everyone has different life situations, the office has to be a better place to be than home if you want people to come to it and it needs to be accessible too; it can't be the case that you force people to sit in traffic for 2 hours each day to get to a place where their senses are assaulted all day.
On the whole, gathering around a whiteboard is fantastic and casual conversations over coffee can really help smooth over accidental communication gaps that exist in every organisation. (and, also help create some more positive interactions with colleagues than the relatively normal situation of calling on people only when they need to do something). I can't imagine needing to be in the same place 5 days per week to get the same benefit though.
Your sort of office is the sort of thing that for most people is more attainable if they do work remotely, and then rent a space near home, or build/convert a shed/garage/outbuilding.
Your happiness working from the office is also quite tied to your employer, I'd assume (I don't know Sweden or what's normal though), which is obviously either limiting or means you might find yourself back in the 'will only work remotely' camp when looking for a new job.
I suspect that people who work for companies where teams, organizations, or even the entire company are colocated will tend to favor in-office work to some degree, while people who work for companies where teams and offices are geographically distributed will tend to favor remote work.
I personally worked for Twitter in-office full time for 14 months pre-COVID, and almost every meeting or collaboration I had involved a teleconference with people in another timezone or was done over Slack. There was some opportunity for face-to-face collaboration with people from other teams from time to time, but in my opinion not enough to justify the daily commute. That said, I'm open to a hybrid arrangement for companies where the situation I had at Twitter would not be the case.
Yes, so it's not about preferences, it's not about the pros and cons, it's about not forcing people for needless suffering. Forcing people who want or need (professionally or personally) to work with other people at home is absurd, and forcing people who provide better work at home (for jobs were it makes no difference to be in office) to commute and work in an open space just to reassure bosses is as absurd.
I call BS on all of these. Employees faking work - your hiring problem. Employees working multiple jobs - again your problem, keep them occupied with meaningful work, if not bring in legality to protect your IP or whatever. AFAIK no one working multiple jobs are revealing IPs.
In person collaboration - There may be some truth to this. High profile decisions are best taken in person, that being said during covid almost all decisions were done on Zoom not just for a week or so but for 2 years. Isn't that proof enough that even government level decisions can be done on Zoom ?
Design discussions are best done on Miro/Google docs than on the whiteboard. Multiple people can collaborate efficiently on Miro, especially with an iPad. Not only this, every voice is heard instead of just 2-3 folks standing at a whiteboard and driving discussions.
So many tools that make even pair programming or production debugging a breeze.
I can pretty much negate every argument that mandates in person office presence.
What I really vouch for is in person collaboration events once or twice a month where everyone comes together for a couple of days and hash out key issues and have a totally unstructured time for collaboration.
And of course, have an office for those who want to come in to collaborate. Not everyone has a spacious home, people like to hang out with co-workers during lunch etc. However make it mandatory that all group meetings will be done on zoom, in order to provide equal participation opportunity to remote workers. These hybrid meetings with a few people in a room and a few on zoom are a total disaster.
People fake work sitting in offices. If someone is going to fake work in the office, why not let them fake work from home and safe everyone a hassle. Or maybe incentivize real work over fake work.
I worked with someone in the office next to mine for a few years and he was running a side business the whole time. It was bizarre how brazen he was, but people are interesting and varied.
Remote work isn’t perfect, but it’s not like office work was perfect either. It’s like showing an example of a welfare cheat and saying “we can’t give welfare to help parents because people claim imaginary kids.”
I got at least 2 colleagues that were working multiple jobs from the office, of course it wasn't 4 hours straight, but committing fixes to their 2nd job/ mini-startup they started was extremely common.
Depending on the job, you won't be on all the time. I have about 2-3 days a week where I'm on and pretty hyper productive and 1-2 where I'm kind of coasting or spending more thinking/learning/reading time.
I do find, I prefer office culture to working remotely... it's much more productive and team cohesion is often much, much better. International work is much harder still to coordinate. Right now I'm working on an East coast team, living in AZ... I'm about to have to start getting up yet another hour earlier next week, and so not a morning person. That said, given the market shifts really remind me of around 2001, and I'm holding on where I am for as long as I can and generally like the people I work with.
Mandatory office presence cuts both ways, you're less likely to gain top talent and even then, you're going to pay above relative market rates for it if you do. I've seen companies try to pay relative to cost of living for developers in different locations, and to me that just doesn't work either. Splitting the difference between top locations and local relative cost of living seems to be the trend, and I'm frankly happy to see it.
There's no one-size-fits all and different companies will work with different models. You're not forced to work at any particular company and no company should be expected to be the right place for all profiles.
(Within that the employer of course does have responsibilities to accommodate employee differentiating needs, some of which is in scope of regulation and contracts)
I think that certain things being "normalized" industry wide has better outcomes, such as someone with a bad commute being able to speak up about working remotely could get rid of that, because remote work is considered commonplace now. Or maybe someone who has a busy home life could be able to spend more time in the office with reserved seating or get a coworking space funded.
Remote work wasn't always "normal" and many didn't even see it as viable if not for the pandemic. Some are mandating returns to the office and a part of that extends to the shaping of the public perception of remote work, along exaggerated statements like "remote workers are worse at collaboration and don't even have the discipline to get dressed properly". While I don't follow Joshua Fluke, I think he had a few videos about similar statements on his YouTube channel a year or two back - sometimes outright misrepresentations of remote work, made to fit a particular perspective.
But as long as people don't attempt to misrepresent what remote/in-office work is like, I think it's perfectly fine for organizations to structure themselves around whatever works for them. I just figured I'd mention the public perception aspect of it all, because sometimes stigma is harmful, e.g. how discussing one's compensation being "taboo" in some places can make one's perception of how much a certain kind of work is valued at inaccurate.
This is just false. People can be stuck at a company for a variety of reasons.
Obviously there are many situations, but I think many people can be selective about where they work.
It’s like saying that Tesla “forces” people to work on electric cars. It’s what their business is!
You’re not being forced to commute if your job is in-office anymore than you’re forced to eat canned asparagus if it’s the only vegetable in your cupboard. You can choose to not eat it or you can go to the store and buy something else.
It doesn’t matter if you work better at home if your company is in office. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a job where being in office makes no difference. You either go to the office or look for a new job.
Because I definitely don’t:
> You either go to the office or look for a new job.
In case it’s not clear from that, I agree with you. There’s parts of every job that suck. You just have to choose whether the benefits outweighs those sucky parts.
Last year I moved to The Netherlands from Dallas, TX, USA. My entire world has totally changed. Part of that move was a new job for a company local to my area.
Before I moved, I worked remotely in the US for about 6 years. Well before the pandemic, etc etc. My favorite part of my job being a remote worker was getting together with people once or twice a year for in person retreats or company outings visiting clients.
My commute these days is longer; 30km or about 18 miles and takes about 30 minutes. I own a car, which is ironic considering I moved to a country with the worlds best bicycle infrastructure. For better or worse, work requires our team to come to the office 2 days a week.
But because of that commute, I gain so much. I have structured time to listen to the radio and practice my foreign language listening skills. I am surrounded by people who speak a different language than me unless we're specifically collaborating on work topics (then we speak English). I can observe the habits and idiosyncrasies of this new culture, and for the moment, I really am enjoying it.
Would I have a different opinion if I was commuting 5 days a week? Almost certainly. But once or twice a week is totally manageable for me and my life now.
The takeaway I think is, do what works for you. If you like the office, that's great! If your company doesn't have dedicated offices, ask your boss for a dedicated coworking space. If you like laying on your couch, laptop on your chest, typing away all day, more power to you too.
The key is to not put down others for their preferences, and support your colleagues in being the happiest version of themselves at work, wherever that happens to be.
Hah! I do qualify for a tax break as a highly skilled migrant for 5 years, but the salary in general is nowhere near the US. I was making well into 6 figures before and now I make about $50k~ equivalent. Maybe a little less. As a percentage, I probably pay about the same tax rate, with my discount, as I did in the US.
Except for the insane cost of energy (I could rant about that all day), most of my daily living expenses are much more predictable. My family health insurance was cut in half, for superior coverage. Car insurance is about the same, but I have a much smaller car so for me it's cheaper, even with no driving record in this country. If I had the 12 years of history, it would be half the cost again. Luckily, energy prices are coming down and my bill is being cut in half next month.
Overall, I'm very happy! The quality of life I would say is much better. I walk a lot more. I eat better (because eating out in general is $$$) and cook at home 90% of the time. I have 4 weeks of paid vacation and the government requires employers to provide vacation pay equivalent to 1 months salary for salary workers. My company encourages people to take advantage of their vacation time. At 5pm the office is empty despite most people not arriving until 9am or later.
If you're looking to move, I would say now is a decent time to look into it. Decide on a couple of countries you would be interested in and then start contacting companies with open positions. Mine specifically was not advertising for migrants, but they had permission from the government already because of some remote employees in the Philippines. Many European tech companies are hurting for workers and there is a large shortage for most midsize companies. Sure, the pay is a lot less, but if you're open to staying long term, you will receive a pension and becoming a citizen entitles you to retirement benefits as well.
Happy to answer more questions. I think I have contact info in my HN profile if anyone else is intersted!
Over that age, and if the kids themselves can manage it... sure, it's great. You're there for breaks and emergencies - much better than being absent for the whole day.
My kids could walk back from school but primary school do not allows them to get out without me. This is kind of stupid as I would sign a waiver if they wanted it but they won't. So until they both reach what you call high school in the USA I have to go to the primary school and back every day. The most funny thing is sometimes I go there by bicycle, let them out of school give them a kiss then ride bike at full speed home to make it before the call while my daughters are walking on their own. I could pay someone to do that but that just sounds so stupid.
My parents put me on a cross-country train (4 hour trip) to see my grandparents every summer since I was 8. When I was 9 I had to figure out how to switch trains halfway because the direct route discontinued.
This was before mobile phones.
I’m only 37.
Please tell me you’re joking.
1. an absurdly car-friendly society that prioritizes cars well above everyone else - basically, parents have to pick up their children in cars because there is no reasonable pedestrian infrastructure to allow them a safe walking home.
2. a truckload of busybodies ("Karens") that call CPS on children wandering alone - Utah had to pass a law in 2018 [1] to cut down on that crap and other US states are following suit. Unfortunately, in states without that explicit carve-out, schools can be cited for neglect as well.
3. US healthcare being absolutely rotten to the core, which means that should a child get injured on the way from the school home, their health insurance will try to pass the bucket down to somewhere else, and the first obvious thing is to attempt to sue the school because they were the last ones in custody of the child. As a result, schools introduce such policies because the second the child is in custody of the parent, the school is no longer liable for anything and the insurance can go and stuff its claims.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/04/01/598630200/utah-passes-free-ra...
I'm not aware of any high school in the country that forces parental pickup from year 7 (aged 11/12)
Where is this? Our kids flood the park and walk home, that's how it has been in a few places we've lived. Maybe y'all are near major roads or no walkable paths?
- I get to spend time with my baby girl in the morning before I start work. I wake up at 6:30, it's by choice, I love getting up early and get half an hour of quiet and peace, drinking a coffee and watching breakfast news before the rest of the house wakes up. Then I get to cuddle my daughter for a while whilst my wife gets up and gets ready herself. By 7:30 or 8am I am in my office, often an hour or even two hours online before any of my peers and I'm already working away completely uninterrupted and get more shit done than so many others.
- When I come downstairs to top up a cup of coffee, have a snack, eat lunch, etc. I get to see my daughter again. I get a chance to quickly give my wife a hand with something, or often I just have the opportunity to cook for us rather than her, which is a huge help if nothing else.
- Because I start earlier than everyone else I can also finish on time and when I finish work then I'm immediately available to start winding down and spend time with my family and my daughter again.
Overall I get more work down, I get more sleep, I am more refreshed, I even get extra time to have an outlet after work, playing tennis, going to the gym, etc. and I get to be a much much better husband and a very involved dad even though I have to work 4 days a week.
This is priceless and if I had to go into an office I'd be less productive, more tired, more angry and irritated (less balanced life) and a worse husband/father.
I never said there's a hundred feet range around every child which makes work impossible. Only that you can't say that you can "just watch" the child, and expect to do work in the meantime. People do try this, on occasion.
Source: have 3 yo boy and 7 mo girl, even with stay at home mom to help. The girl’s presence is almost unnoticeable during work hours unless I want to see her, it’s fully under my control. The boy is a totally different story. Wouldn’t get anything done if I didn’t go to the office.
I work from home and strongly support working from home, but interruptions from kids are a serious challenge with no easy solution if you're the only parent/person/adult physically in the house at the moment.
IMHO the best thing for both parents and employers to do is allow flexible hours. if you want to work from 6 am to 10am, then be off for 6 hours and resum then from 4pm to 8pm, that should be easy (barring important meetings, etc).
Two boys and one girl squad.
WFH is indeed wonderful for parents and families, but if you try to do it without childcare, you're not going to be working much.
If you are the person responsible for keeping them safe while working it’s an absolute nightmare.
However birth rates are dropping there as much as in all the other rich countries. So the problem with population decline and dropping birthrates seems to be somewhere else.
I keep hearing here in the UK that the reason people aren't having kids is because it's so expensive, and I do what you do -- point people at the stats in Scandinavia where a huge chunk of childcare costs is borne by the state, and yet the birth rates are dropping.
My theory on this, and one that I personally felt as well, is that there's just no compelling reason to have kids outside of some biological imperative.
Having kids is seen as a big life-changing decision that rocks a relatively comfortable boat of material comforts and some light hedonism. Why bother with this when you can coast comfortably through life?
Traditionally the economic benefit of children was that they would basically work for you, including supporting you into old age. This made the enormous investment a lot more worthwhile.
Also the childcare obligations were much less (a 12 year old could be pretty much self sufficient by working).
With pensions, no child labour, etc, the trade-off is not like that any more in economic terms. Having children is basically a total economic loss and a rational person would tend to avoid it. It's seen as a luxury nowadays, something most can't afford.
The first couple years of a kid’s life are formative, and fleeting. Why only spend a small portion of each day together? It takes more than that to form a good bond.
Plus, grandparents might have all the free time, but aren’t as able to do everything as someone in the next younger generation. But why don’t any of the aunts and uncles have jobs, while the kid’s parents do, in your hypothetical?
The sooner we get away from 5 8s the better IMO, so we can start living richer, balanced lives. At least the commute is going, which really makes it more like 5 10s on average.
The primary factor to success and happiness in life is your family structure and having their loving guidance and support.
Today, the village mostly hinders. Few people have experience with children anymore and most are self centered. Their "help" mostly consists of direct criticism, or indirect criticism in calling the authorities.
In particular, it could mean that you cant move to SV for better job, because some relative depends on you.
I start my shower 15 minutes before work and am online and productive. Going into the office adds on at least an hour and all the intangibles with it (gas, drycleaning, food, etc).
And childcare is so possible with remote work and much more difficult with commuting.
If I could teleport instantaneously to my office I would choose it in a heartbeat.
I would still only work from home.
I enjoyed riding my bike to work when the weather was nice, but I’d rather ride to other places instead (better routes). Same goes with walking, I’d rather walk around my neighborhood and nearby parks and lakes than the central business district.
I suppose my point is that even if you’re in an ideal situation, the office still doesn’t make sense. Most people are not in that position so it makes even less sense.
The occasional face-to-face get together is nice, but you don’t need an office for that.
I think before the pandemic a lot of people were judging performance based on appearances (does this person seem busy, do they have a high profile in meetings). The wider cultural shift toward remote has led to increased emphasis on delivery.
If you want to live in a big expensive city you have to pay more. If you work a job that pays the maximum their office is probably in a big expensive city which means you either have to live in said city or commute there.
I could have higher paying job, but that would require 1-2 hour commute.
I could also move closer to the office, but that would mean taking on debt or paying high rent.
My compromise is to live ~15 minute drive away from the office. I live in cheaper city (I'd have to pay at least twice if not thrice as much for same size apartment), but I have to commute to the office, I could use public transportation, but then I'd be chained to schedules and it would take ~45 minutes in total, so I choose to own a car and drive.
From my experience, no one wants to get back to the office more than fathers that want to escape their wifes and children.
So, homeoffice while caring about 1 years old, yup the kid is distraction machine. Home office that allows you to interact with your 10 years old as he comes from school, fill the kids needs and then return to work is awesome.
This x1000, it's not just getting rid of distractions by people walking by or talking... but especially how you sit. My back is shot, I prefer lying on a sofa or in one of these bean bags. No way to do that in the office.
I think Open Office approach only works when its your team in a secluded area, and then any other teams have a wall to block out your teams shenanigans. I prefer remote, but I miss the one open office place I worked in where we were just isolated by teams mostly, it was also maybe 8 of us? So its different from having a much larger team set.
When I'm visiting my parents, I like to clean leaves and get rid of the snow from the driveway. But if I had to do it every day, because I wouldn't be able to use the car if I didn't? That's a completely different perspective.
It's super close and it's less populated now.
Of course I would like your setup.
It's like "I'm fine with going to the office, though mine has a top class chef, free booze, an infinity pool, and cheerleaders, oh and all my personal friends work there, and it's right next door to me".
But liking vs not liking it is not the point (as it varies, as you said, between people, and also over time: e.g. someone might not have kids now, but they might get. Or they might need to rent elsewhere and have a much longer commute). The real point is whether people are given the option to go or not: then they have the power to make the decision.
More of a nuance here, they are mainly only distraction machines for 5-7 years, after that it is more about scheduling conflicts and being able to be "present" when they are. Especially for children attending traditional school programs (public or private), they are gone most of the day and then have their own distractions (homework, hobbies, trainings, friends, etc).
This is a big no and main reason why I am against WFH. Here in Finland we have ample maternity leave and pretty good paternity leave as well, so why in the fuck are we allowing these new fathers to "work" from home while looking after the kid? The mother has maternity leave precisely so she can take care of the kid(s), she should be doing it for the 8 hours you are working, but every single new father takes huge part of work day off to take care of kids.
Yeah they claim they will work overtime during the evening or on weekends, but
A) I doubt they actually make up the time since they don't take into account all the time the kid is just in the room with them distracting them and
B) it doesn't matter if we need to collaborate and you aren't on the clock when rest of us are on the clock
>My meandering point is that: everyone has different life situations
I just wish WFH advocates would remember this when someone is not for WFH. Whenever I bring up my reasons for liking the office here I get replies that just dismiss my reasons or are otherwise just mean spirited simply for disagreeing with their point of view.
For those curious of my own reasons to go to office:
- cheap & healthy food prepared by someone else
- good coffee prepared by someone else / machine
- easy to go to the gym on my way to the office
- nice separation of work and "civilian" life, I can just leave work at the office when I leave
- a reason to put on trousers and a clean shirt in the morning
The reason why I don't go to office more often currently is lack of lunch service. I don't want to go to eat at restaurant or pack a lunch every day. This then cascades to rest of my life - I haven't been to the gym whole winter since I can't be arsed to clear the snow and ice off of my car just do drive to the gym and back and I'm wasting time brewing coffee and making food.
For me it's the opposite. Food outside of home means it's low quality food in comparison to the fresh organic produce which we buy locally and my wife and myself have had freshly cooked food all our lives so we really value fresh home made delicious food rather than having a burger or some other rubbish outside.
- good coffee prepared by someone else / machine
Again, the complete opposite for me. The first kitchen appliance which we bought when we moved into our house was a Sage Oracle coffee machine, one of the best bean to cup machines and we buy an organic blend of well sourced beans from a local shop in South West London. Everyone who visits us and drinks our coffee says that they never had such a good cup of coffee before.
- easy to go to the gym on my way to the office
In the city the gyms are crammed, overcrowded and small and they have limited facilities. Here where I live we have a massive David Lloyd just a 6 minute drive away, it's a massive complex with indoor/outdoor tennis courts, gym floor, 20+ studios for classes, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a creche for children, a bar and restaurant and the most amazing spa. Going to my local gym after work is a million times better than those shitty crammed basement bullshit gyms in the city where all the offies are.
- nice separation of work and "civilian" life, I can just leave work at the office when I leave
I love my work. We have an office room in our house. If I'm inside this room with closed doors I'm in deep work mode. If outside I'm in home mood. Clean separation enough, also the best separation is to finish work, put on my sports gear and go hit the tennis courts or go with my family for a walk outside or something. I don't need to sit on an overcrowded stuffy tube full of sick overly tired miserable looking people in order for my brain to switch into home mode.
- a reason to put on trousers and a clean shirt in the morning
Never wore shirt to work, even when I went into the office. I'm thankful for that.
I am not a coffee snob and this is by intention. I like the caffeine - it is a wonderful drug and I can enjoy a well made cup of coffee, but I want to be able to have coffee anywhere I feel the need without having to look for something specific or being disappointed in the taste. Filter is fine. Instant is fine. I do have couple coffee bean grinders and couple fancier brewers, but it is a rare day I care to use them.
Again depends where you live. Where I live when I go to the gym between 5 and 6 there are usually no one there. I can lift in peace. I would love to have room for my own gym, but I would have to move. And if it wasn't for the snow I probably would go to the gym and I probably will start when the snow melts.
I bought my apartment before Covid, so I didn't prioritize having home office since back then only reason to have remote day was if I had a package coming in that was too large to bring home from office. So I'm working from my living room which is not ideal. Yes, I could make the sacrifice and take a loan, put my current apartment up for sale and move to something that has dedicated office, but I don't see the point. My office is being renovated and by the end of the year (assuming the schedule holds) I can start going to the office again every day.
I think this is where we have a language break down. By shirt I mean just like a t-shirt or hoodie. The confusion was mine since I did change "pants" to "trousers", but didn't think far enough.
In fact, first half year/year are by far the easiest months in incoming years when you look back, just tons of sleeping, no teething. If parents complain during this phase its usually due to this being first child so they are still learning, or child is non-standard.
Its great if you like being in the office, a lot of lonely or career-oriented people I talked to feel the same, and there are some nice perks to be had. Most of what you describe is just matter of a bit of discipline, which is a skill most people these days are rather lacking, not bad to train that a bit. Ie if you like that somebody cooks for you and does your coffee, for sure work is not the only place to get it, not even in Finland, heck get it delivered home if you are so lazy that you don't want to clear snow to go to gym (which is TBH ridiculous if you think about it).
Yep, that is literally what day care is for. This is how things have been done for decades. How are things all of a sudden any different - other than now the father is working from home and the mother can offload onto him and eat into his work time.
As with everything having kids requires sacrifices, meaning you lose your free time since you have to build and take care of your family, but then trying to now shift that on the employer is unreasonable.
>a lot of lonely
Again (not-so) subtle attack on my person. Of course I must be lonely (and probably a loser) since I prefer to have the perks of working in an office.
>Most of what you describe is just matter of a bit of discipline
Aaand there comes the dismissing.
>heck get it delivered home if you are so lazy
I would if I could. No place delivers before 10 or 11. However this is due to the city I live in. I am sure in bigger expensive city I could get coffee delivered at 6, but not here. Also since again I've made the sacrifice with pay I don't want to be paying 10€+ every morning to get coffee delivered, I could afford it, but I am not so well off that I wouldn't notice it in my finances.
>you don't want to clear snow to go to gym (which is TBH ridiculous if you think about it).
More dismissal. Yeah, you can think it is ridiculous, but I think having kids is ridiculous so that argument doesn't hold much weight.
Having kids is a choice. For me, the right one, and a core part of who I am. But you don’t need to justify or explain why you made your choice.
Now days in cities kids are more like very expensive pets.
> healthy food
> prepared by someone else
Pick two at best.
We had lunch catering for 6€ and had every day couple different "home style" choices.
Of course you can argue about the "cheap" part, but to me 6€ a day is cheap. Every restaurant charges at least double usually triple.
No more office for me. kthxbai
With my current job, despite being moved across the country in 2014 to work in an office and then being told to stay at home indefinitely once COVID-19 hit, I had experienced 4 bosses trying to fire me once I got into an office. I had to attend unnecessary meetings in person that made no sense. I had to kiss asses and say hi to people that I really didn't want to see or know in person. It'd take a lot to convince me that I should go to an office to do a job I can perfectly do at home.
I remember when I was first moved across the country.. and I asked, "Am I safe for at least 6 months to a year?" And the boss who required the move said, "We cannot guarantee that." Not more than 3 months in and I had four different bosses scrutinizing me for everything from the way I wrote code, to the way I dressed to the way I was sitting... and it just sucked. I even had a boss that almost fired me for putting Lorem Ipsum in the content before it was sent to the client. #truestory read all about it: https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/lorem-ipsum-almost-g...
So I'm done with that life.. hopefully indefinitely.
Wow, it sounds like your bosses were really stupid.
If our environment is filled with people like that - maybe we should just move on, you know? Even if WFH masks this pain somewhat by requiring us to not plant our lips physically on on their asses on a daily basis, but merely astrally, via Slack and what not.
Being as the underlying rot is still there on some level, and ultimately, just as toxic.
(I know, I know, I know - eventually it pretty always ends up being "like that". No matter how rosy everything smells at the onset).
Your project manager sounds dumb, but Lorem Ipsum is a bad idea for development in general. It just confuses people, including clients, as you saw and wrote. Apps in staging should be seeded with real-looking information and text, and there are plenty of seeding libraries out there that do this. If you need to generate paragraphs of text, there is non-lorem text seeders that create real English paragraphs.
>Lorem Ipsum is a piece of text, used by designers to fill a space where the content will eventually sit. It helps show how text will look once a piece of content is finished, during the planning phase. Filler text has been widely used for centuries, so most people are familiar with seeing Lorem Ipsum on a mock design.
https://www.solopress.com/blog/copywriting-typography/what-i....
Next time use ChatGPT.
I'd look some of them sit in tiny booths to be on phone calls the entire day.
No idea why they wouldn't just work from home. But maybe the option wasn't available to them.
I have gone back to the 30 min commute. I do not care for the commute part. The office bit is 'nice'/whatever as it is as I tell the people I work with 'toy distraction free'. As all of my cool things I like to mess with are at home.
But honestly they are paying me a decent salary and part of the deal is I do what they pay me for, for a few hours of the day. I am selling my time for money. If they want to pay for that I am fine with it. They want to pay me to 'work from home' I am fine with that too. It is is 'their dime'.
A colleague of mine prefers going to the office because at home he's constantly distracted by kids.
Another has literally injured himself due working from his kitchen in a bad position for a year. It's worse than RSI. He had to rehabilitate for half a year just to get back to 95% health, and even now whenever he concentrates for too long the pain comes back.
One might say, "well they should arrange a suitable setup then". Not everyone has a home that's large enough. Besides, my experience is that most people don't have the discipline or will to do this properly, and as an employer you have to more or less force this upon employees (not even "recommend" is good enough).
In the Netherlands, if employees — even office employees — injure themselves, then the employer is obliged to take care of them for max 2 years, even if the injury was not directly caused by the employer.
This widely believed anecdotally driven piece of opinion-data was what COVID invalidated. Studies demonstrated no significant loss in productivity and in many cases increased productivity during WFH during covid - putting aside contexts where it was clearly unsuitable / suboptimal (people trapped in their houses with small kids, no appropriate equipment etc).
Commuting costs are easily underestimated but a honest look might reveal that they are substantial:
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-...
I have literally injured myself due to working in offices: got back and chest pain because every piece of furniture from desk to chair was absolute garbage, each day hands, wrists, and forearms were in pain within minutes because of lousy keyboard and mouse, eyes crying so much I wanted to gouge them out because the screen was spectacularly bad (low contrast, low resolution, high minimum brightness, high latency) and lighting was the worst (single window giving into an artificially long room, overhead neon ceiling lighting flickering at mains frequency, no other lights). Of course it was open space, so to not be constantly distracted one isolates themselves with headphones and music for hours on end and whatnot.
Most employees had at least two items each they bought on their own dime or brought from home (whether it was lights, screens, chairs, headphones, laptops...) to make it bearable.
A coworker suffered from back pain and was put of commission for 6 months, came back feeling better, stayed two months... and was out again for 6. Another started to have ear ringing because of the constant music. At some point I felt terrible chest pain, like being hit by a truck, a piercing sensation from front to back, like being impaled by a javelin, couldn't raise arms, went out to try and catch my breath and legs gave in as I stepped outside. I thought I was having some heart attack of sorts but it was "merely" my chest and back muscles getting so tense over the years that they cramped and would not let go, even if it meant choking to death.
Took months to realise, years to undo the damage.
This experience was a tad extreme but the principles are generally consistent across many many workplaces: employers buy the cheapest hardware, rent the cheapest place, and throw the coding masses in there, where employees try to make the best with what they are given and what they can bring from home. The tech startup bubble where employees get the best hardware and working conditions is the exception, not the rule.
So to sum up: employees suffer commuting and terrible work conditions that they accomodate for with their own gear from home, only to end up isolating themselves once on site, for the benefit of having two times 10min face to face watercooler talk + 45min lunch per day. No wonder so many want to skip the nonsense, work from home, and do the occasional social thing outside of the office.
Ultimately I guess offices are part about control over employees and part status symbols for companies (as in, "we rented that big place", not as in "you'll have the best working conditions")
Why aren't they at school?
Travelling, as in actually going somewhere, is often a nice and relaxing experience. Taking a delayed filled-to-the-brink bus to the train-station, switching to a delayed train without a single free seat, switching to a hermetically sealed metro car an hour later and finally arriving at the office 30 minutes late is _not_ a relaxing experience.
I'd love to see my coworkers now and then, but commuting really neutralises any benefits from going to the office.
If you spend your time running to a bus stop, not being able to do anything in the bus because it is crowded and bouncy, then have to catch a train, that is also full then another one, to run to another bouncy crowded bus and reach your office 1h30 to 2h00 without having been able to spend a decent amout of time reading, chatting or something else, this is totally lost. If you are driving chance is it is also lost for the most part.
Working remotely has really made me think hard about the enormous part of my life that I've wasted commuting.
Never again!
I think in future people will clock on as soon as they walk out the door at 9, and not clock off till they get home again at 5.
I feel that software engineering isn’t a one size fits all and its up to you to chase the work environment you enjoy the most.
This is a funny reality. Even the profligate employers of software developers are reluctant to spend money on a monitor setup as nice as what I had at home at the entry level.
...except, of course, I paid for it - plus sales tax - with the money they gave me - net of income tax.
Secondly, it brings people together. I myself found this argument BS, but I found out it really depends on the team. I am looking forward to the interactions I am having in the office now.
So, to each their own. Most importantly IMO is that teams can have freedom to decide what works best for them.
We're a small "DevOps" team that provides all kind of services but we figured out that people in our company (it's a small startup) just don't come to us virtually if they need something or want a second opinion.
So we said we'll come into office once a week on a specific day and that day they can approach us with everything. Of course it hasn't changed behavior of everyone but that day we have more interactions with all kind of colleagues than the rest of the remote days combined.
Working from office you compete with candidates in the same city or in the same country if willing to relocate. Working remotely one have to compete with the whole world.
There’s a factual question here about whether remote first companies are more, less, or equally competitive with office first companies. Anecdotes aren’t going to answer that question. Logical arguments aren’t going to answer that question. Passionate rants about pointy haired bosses aren’t going to answer that question.
We just going to need to wait and see the natural experiment play out. Meanwhile, if you are an employer make the best call you can with insufficient data. That’s why you get so much upside. If you’re an employee take the role that’s best for you and your family.
In my own case, if we say an ideal productivity output per day is 1 unit, that is 100% productive. Commuting to the office, office distractions, and general tiredness, I would put the hard limit at 50%. I've measured it, and the duration I'm very productive tends to be at best, half the working hours. Usually, it's much less. Any meeting that could be handled in slack, design documents w/feedback do not count (this is almost all meetings). The many "could you..", "do you know...", etc, all take up a good chunk, even though the requests are only 5 minutes worth of work.
While working from home, suddenly the deep focus you had 2 hours in, stretches on for 6 hours, or even 10. Or around 2-300% productive.
To what extent there is a tradeoff in office culture, and colloquial banter, that has its own value, I'm not sure. But, for people who value getting shit done, the office, and commuting, sure adds a lot of negative value in the mix.
And, you might think that this just applies to "hands-dirty" (as much as they get dirty while typing on a keyboard :p) engineering work. Though I would argue it applies equally to secondary work planning, task breakdown, and strategic planning.
This is only obviously true for rote work.
For more ambiguous knowledge work increasing task completion rate may make the company less competitive if the tasks are less aligned with the company strategy (ever seen a product became a tangled mess of half-broken features?). If you're mathemtically inclined, it's useful to model tasks as vectors adding to the company's vector of progress; the net result can be a reduction in progress if the task vector and company vector are misaligned.
Anecdotally, this misalignment is the what everyone at the middle management layer and above is worried about. You get to the end of the quarter and you realize that the work team A did was misaligned with the work from team B and now their shared business goal is shot. Many people's reaction to this line of thinking is "well that's management's fault" but, as the parent correctly calls out, that's beside the point. "Just hire more competent managers" is not something you can do en masse.
If only a tech recruitment company would publish biannual findings from their factual observations of the whole industry, they'd have a strong evidence-based vantage point which none of us individual tech workers have. They could use a catchy name like "Hired dot com" and people would write news articles about their findings.
Oh well.
I will never work in an office again, unless the company I work for wants to pay for me to have a private office with a door that closes, and pay to duplicate my home set up (~£1000+).
Even then:
- it just seems moronic for me to spend my own free time on commuting. So I would also want my company to pay for that, both in transport fees and in my time.
- it's very inconvenient to have to bring a packaged lunch to work, or wasteful to buy one every day.
- I can control my own temperature, my own noise levels, and take breaks when I feel my performance lagging, not when it's socially appropriate to do so
I think it's totally fine to come to an office occasionally to collaborate or celebrate, but doing it every day or even once a week is valueless
Holy hell... I have been working remotely for so long that I forgot that those were prominent problems in offices...
My setup, software:
- talon (https://talonvoice.com/), basing my configuration on the standard repo (https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/), with some minor modifications. This is how I navigate my whole computer, and runs the voice recognition and eye tracking. This is how I'm typing this right now. There are also a bunch of other little system changes that you need to make (eg, on macOS, disable double space to type a period), which is documented by the community with varying levels of success.
- cursorless (https://www.cursorless.org/), and then vscode. Before this I used Sublime Text for years and years, but cursorless is too good for coding. I know there are some projects on going to port it to different editors, but I haven't massively looked into it.
- vimium extension for web browsing (works in both chrome and firefox). This makes things like clicking links easier with your voice, without having too use an eye tracker all the time.
And then hardware:
- DPA 4488 microphone -> DAD6001 microdot-XLR converter -> Shure X2U USB XLR interface. ~£800. It's a very expensive microphone, but it's what the developer of talon uses (same brand anyway), and since I'm using this for work I want to remove every obstacle to having my voice recognised correctly and quickly
- Tobii Eye Tracker 5. ~£250. This is basically the only game in town. It works well enough but needs a lot of light. It also needs to be physically mounted to a monitor. In theory this means I don't need to use a mouse, but because I have a 34" ultrawide it doesn't work well on the edges, so I have a specific window size and location configured (say "layout mouse") which I could move apps into if I need to.
- At some point soon I want to replace the X2U with something higher quality and more permanent on my desk. Soon!
- 200 sqf dedicated room with my own toilet, shower and kitchenet
- Basic lab equipment: 4 tables, 10 screens, 6 computers... Nothing crazy, under $20k total
- Soundproofing, video conferencing equipment, 1Gbps uplink
- Compensation for time and expenses I would spend on commute
- Window with a nice view
It did not go down very well.
And yet, you can have all of that at home without much effort. My setup is significantly less elaborate than yours, and still not something any company seems willing to replicate any more. I don't think either is excessive, obviously my own setup I don't consider excessive since I spent /my own money/ to make it so. It's insanity that any company would expect you to return to the office and accept anything less.
Employer 1: “All work is on-site, no exception. No lunch. Open source? What’s that? Sounds like you’re earning money on the side!”
Employer 2: “Work is fully flexible, but usually people like to go in the office 2-3 days a week. We like to pick the same days. Paid lunch. We rely on open source, but we don’t actively contribute.”
Me to Employer 1: “I have another offer, 10% higher salary, fully flexible work conditions, Rust, and they won’t fire me for doing open source.”
Employer 1: “You can work home one day per week, you can do open source, and here’s +3% salary.”
I’m sure they had to respect their own budget. But the number of companies that reverted to 100% work on-site after covid just grew right back.
So if something has to be deployed to production, it now has to be done during normal working hours. I'm not going to commute and still have to turn on the computer when I get home.
You are an employee. You are as valued as a package of staples.
My current director phrases that as "Externalize your pain."
I have a 1 year old. I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with her every day. When I'm done work, instead of commuting for 40-75 minutes, I immediately get a big hug from her. She'll go to daycare in a few months when my wife goes back to work- but I'll get to walk her there every morning.
If I had to pick between a 30% pay cut to stay this way, or to stay at the same salary and commute every day, I'd take the pay cut. It wouldn't be a hard decision at all.
Now, if you started offering to double or triple my salary but it's in-office, there would be some hard decisions to make. But nobody is. They want to pay the same money, but with the commute- and I will continue to politely decline.
If my employer came to me tomorrow and told me they were cutting my pay by 50% for working remotely I'd look for alternative remote jobs, but I wouldn't move back to where the office is.
A five minute stroll is enough for him to get there and he can go back for lunch if he has a need.
I'm planning on doing something similar long term.
- Why would I subject myself to a commute?
- I like being in the office and talking to my coworkers
- You have no social life. I actually have friends unlike you
- Managers are twirling their moustaches to make us come in
- no it's the company executives trying to justify their office space purchases
- actually it's the real estate mafia
- managers just want to exercise power
- yeah it's the managers who want to see butts in seats
- clearly you don't have a family
- that's actually why they want to go in to the office, they don't like their family
Blah blah blah blah constant ceaseless repetition. God why do we never tire of it.
- real whiteboards are just better
- real whiteboards aren't as good as screen sharing
But yes indeed, nothing new has been said on this subject for years.
- enormous time lost to commutes
- massive lost flexibility
- restriction of your workforce to the tiny 20 mile radius of people willing / able to physically travel to your office instead of literally the entire world (or at least, those in your time zone who speak your language)
If you put the mild benefits of "chit cat at the water cooler", "separation b/w home and work" etc which mostly only benefits the extroverts it seem utterly bonkers to sacrifice all that. Far better to invest in actually doing remote well - which does take effort and does heavily mitigate many of the things people complain about with WFH.
I am quite fine with this arrangement, but it's a bit more charitable to those who aren't.
I think differences in people's personal lives silently drive this conversation.
I've worked remote before covid (better part of a decade now). I've never felt alone .. but I'm married. So I spend my remote work time with my wife instead of being apart from her in an office. That drives my love of remote work. But someone without that may frame it as "being alone all day."
I don't get value out of being in the office. I'm an introvert. I come in, dump my laptop on the table in the dull open space office, put my noise cancelling headphones on, then do the same exact thing I do at home. I do the watercooler banter on Slack.
My coworkers are fine with remote work. My manager outright admits that he would have let the team stay remote if he wasn't getting prodded by HR, who are of course enforcing corporate's diktat.
And that brings us to the problem.
Corporate.
Corporate wants everyone back in the office and they're insane about it.
Every unoccupied screen now has some lines about how cool being back in the office is.
Every company-wide meeting has a 10 minute speech about how we should finally get back together and collaborate.
There is total disregard for people's actual circumstances.
They keep telling us this policy is for our own good, that we can work better this way, but a FAQ document had a question on it about those who collaborate with people in other regions and even with all the HR-speak flowery words the answer basically was: we don't care, deal with it and come to the office.
An executive at a corporate-wide meeting outright BRAGGED about being sick with COVID and lying about it so he could attend a company function in person at the height of the pandemic.
The obsession is genuinely uncomfortable at this point.
It's not that I'm against offices - I actually rented a private one for a few years after my daughter was born. I biked in most days, it was great.
And I'm happy to visit my employer's office a few times a year. More often if it's in reasonable walking or bicycling distance.
I just don't want to move or have a daily car commute.
My wife and I spent a year in the Bay Area before moving back to the Midwest, and it was good for what it was, but we're much happier here.
This is worth at least 4x any salary I would have got anywhere else. So much more free time, no commute, the ability to really live in my community, REAL flexibility. What price tag is there to having more time with your family?
I rally thought a lot about the 4x figure. That's the minimum required for me to even consider the hell of an office work again.
When I position a desk in spaces I control, I point my back away from doors, windows, and walkways. Literally every cubicle or open office floor plan I've seen in practice seems to explicitly do the opposite. What fluffy things architects or executives have to say about collaboration is irrelevant imo, you are indisputably more physically vulnerable in positions with your back exposed. Some part of me is always trying to be aware of what's happening behind me and it kills my focus. I don't actually fear violence in such situations it's just a reflex.
[0]: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/ff/e7/d8ffe768ab6de0db4d76...
If you can be remote, to an exec, they might not see it too differently between you and offshore, except for how much better the bottom line is. We're even hiring roles that I thought I'd never see moved over there, too, like Product Managers.
I bet we'll see this trend increase.
Since this is my second go at offshoring everything. Compared to 2015, it's not nearly as cheap to go get offshore talent. It used to be about 1/6th the cost, now it's about 1/2....
I'm curious about other's experience with this. I took current job because we were a very tech-driven, high performing, highly-skilled company, and I never thought we'd move engineering jobs overseas to improve the bottom line.
The reality is that there aren't enough people competent in tech roles in the entire world to serve the global need for people with those skillsets, and I encourage my employer to hire remote, from anywhere in the world, and pay a Western salary, to get the best talent possible to do the job.
This is a different tactic than "offshoring", which is usually driven by bean counters without any regard to strategic alignment, work quality, or how it impacts customers and the long-term trajectory of the company/brand. There are enough companies and teams in tech like mine that hire people wherever they are that are competent, that companies focused on "offshoring" get people at a lower cost, but also at a significantly lower competency. That ratio used to be roughly equal, but as you pointed out the cost is roughly 1/2, however the competency is still around 1/6th.
Remote work is not only a way of life now for me, but my household. Our family moved to a new area and while it was a big adjustment for us, everyone is so happy. When we were living in our shoebox of a house, it was nice to be close to the beach and brand name stores, but everyone seems less wound up. The traffic isn't bad, it takes 15 minutes to drive to the town centre which has a reasonable sized shopping centre and nice restaurants. Public transport isn't great, but there is transport.
The best thing of all about working 100% remote is the flexibility. Some days I need to do the school drop off and pick up, I just let my employer know and it's not an issue. Sometimes I'll start earlier to compensate or work through lunch. I never miss packages anymore (I don't miss going to the post office to pick up packages). The postal service doesn't leave everything at your doorstep anymore like they did during the pandemic. If you need to sign, someone has to be home or they're taking it to the post office. I get to eat lunch with my wife, do some chores around the house. Sometimes I will get away from the computer and go out and push the mower to cut the lawn.
If I were to quantify how much we have saved in child care costs, it would be immeasurable. One child costs us $70 per day for childcare. There have been days when my kids have been sick and I was working from home, so I could help out, but also work on my laptop (even if it's beside them). When I finish work, I can go outside and kick a ball with my son. Remote work has been tremendous from a family bonding perspective. If I were working in an office, my kids would only see me on the weekends as I wouldn't get home until it's their bedtime and I would be leaving as they were waking up.
The one thing people need to respect is not everyone wants or can work from home. And I think people on both sides of the fence should have the choice. Obviously, if you're applying at a company that only works remotely, then you waive the right to complain. But, if the company offers both, nobody should be forced one way or the other. Flexibility is now a perk.
Overall it just doesn't make sense to have millions of people moving around twice a day who don't need to and this will take over. COVID made it much clearer but it's obvious anyhow.
Could it not also suggest they have significant real estate holdings?
Edit: and return to office bas been used as a way to get rid of some people without having to terminate them.
I am not a full-time SWE, so it's better when I am coding on things. The quiet and lack of distraction is important. Even then, I turn on some music and put on headphones.
What was very useful to me when I was working in an office was the hallway conversations, and making all the random connections. You would find opportunities to learn and get involved with things, and expand your sphere of influence. There's pros and cons.
I'm not sure leadership understands the utility of quiet and isolation for coders. As well, there's the concern about "How do we know they're working" - which is a very old school way of thinking.
That old school way of thinking also goes like, "We pay you to be here 8 hours a day, so you better be here and not screwing around". But that's not really what you're being paid for in a SWE position. If you aren't meeting your KPI's (hitting deadlines, pushing good code, spreading knowledge, etc.) you'll get fired. Because you're getting paid to perform well, not just sit there working - you're paid to work well.
So - if you hire people who can hit every KPI and work 20 hours a week, who cares? You're not paying someone hourly anyways. You're paying a salaried worker.
But, everyone is different. I totally understand many people have a lot more reasons than me to work remotely
Let's see: If you were paid regardless of going to work or working or not, would you still keep going there and doing your job?
I would definitely leave this company if I was forced into a remote setting. I would go find another job. I would also take pay cut for keeping an office.
The thing we fear losing out on is the social aspect where you learn to understand people by meeting them more and observing them work. You see when they are happy and or stressed, even when you don't have a face-to-face call. You can have unplanned conversations. I have been remote for 10 years but I do understand the value in this.
The idea of going to an office against your will to sit there quietly and work (or even do video calls), is obviously going away companies aren't going to afford making people do that, because of all things you can do with an edge in compensation, that feels like the worst investment.
We need more models for teams than just "office", "remote" or "hybrid". We need "commute hybrid" where everyone can come in regularly say once a week, and "travel hybrid" where people can show up for say one week per quarter or similar. The problem as I see it is choosing one of these models, and making it work for a team or company. What do you do if you have a team that is "commute hybrid" while some are "travel hybrid" or fully remote? (I'm in that situation myself now and it's not without friction).
I guess BongBong doesn't have all the gold he pretended to have after all. Sorry mate.
There might be one or two companies in the world I’d choose to move to work at. Even then, it’s a hard choice to make.
As long as remote is an option, that’s where I will work, even if I prefer another job on all other dimensions.
I really miss the in person communication and relationship building of office work. I would love to be back in office 3 or 4 days a week, but have a medical condition (DVT) that basically requires me to be up and moving constantly or keep my leg elevated.
Have a custom set up at home that allows me to recline at my desk for most of the day with a standing desk, keyboard tray and down tilted monitor on an arm.
Could only imagine trying to get this sort of setup in an office (although - if I asked, I'm sure they'd oblige, but would just be an awkward set up since the office is now optional in a "hot desk" sort of fashion).
> The report showed that nearly 40% of software engineers preferred only remote roles, and if their employers mandated a return to the office, 21% indicated they would quit immediately, while another 49% said they would start looking for another job.
So it sounds like they've asked a few questions along the lines of "Do you prefer remote or onsite work?" and "If your employer said you had to return to the office, what would you do?" and they're drawing these conclusions based on the response to those questions. I'd be surprised if this is much of a reflection on reality.
Some questions that are fun to think about with surveys like this (that arent answered in the article):
- What is the sample size?
- How was the sampling performed? (Just guessing here, but I'd be surprised if they sampled many software engineers in china for example)
- Could the sample be biased? Did this survey go out in a newsletter for example? What kind of people might be subscribed to that newsletter?
- The survey asked people what they would do in a hypothetical situation. If push came to shove would they actually do it?Unless you're one of a handful of massive, highly desirable tech employers, it's probably time to adapt. If you're a city relying on a massive pool of office workers doing a thing workers don't need to do anymore, it's probably time to adapt as well.
The implication here is absurd, irrelevant to the topic, and essentially means that the endeavor is massive failure.
Here's an idea, I'd be willing to return to office if my workday was 6 hours - with no change in pay - to make up for the time I'm wasting in traffic.
Yeah I'm good in my home, thanks.
It’s not the same as it was 15 years ago. My interactions in general have encountered well educated individuals familiar with American culture.
If you're dedicated to the job and want to be a team player, go to the office.
If your firm’s hiring process has inadvertently optimized for #1 then WFH will not work. If the firm has managed to find enough #3, then RTO will damage company productivity.
Ironically, the fact that Apple was able to make the migration from PowerPC to Intel back in the day was because they gave a #3 type employee a special exemption to WFH.
One of the things remote-first companies are going to need to do is to migrate from interviews that are centered around “what you know” to “show me you can get stuff done”
I exchange my time, skills and knowledge for money. If the company wants that time to be spent sitting on a chair at a particular location, they need to pay me more than one that does not.
I feel sorry for people like you who make their job their life. The company has no dedication to you.
Virtual meetings and collaboration platforms are but tools to achieve that. An event better tool is working next to your colleagues to enable more synergy between the various initiatives people are working on organically.
As someone dedicated to your company's mission, you should want to use the best tool for the job.
The fact that you can't believe anyone would have the discipline to do their job without someone looking over their shoulder says far more about you than about remote workers.
Work for home when I need to be home or when I have work to do that needs me to be focused.
Go in office the less busy day to socialize.
For me it comes down to three simple things:
1. Commute
2. Control of my Surroundings
3. Time Management (and as a centerpoint, Food)
To expand on these three points, my biggest challenge is that if I were to take on going back to the office in my current or a future role, I'd be putting myself into a situation where I would be expected to be physically present at exactly the same time every day in an environment which I have no control over and which is not structured to suit my style of working or being, and to do so I would need to restructure how I manage my time and especially how I eat (I follow a strict diet and process) in order to adapt to the expectations and allowances of management and coworkers.
If CEOs want workers back in the office, here's a handful of things they can do that would make this much much more tenable, all of which also generally improve society and reduce operational costs for the company:
1. Move your offices away from city centers and towards the places people actually live, and advocate for those municipalities to provide (good, reasonable, high speed) transit interconnection. Teams should be colocated with one another, but to make this possible you need to entice people to the office by making it not a horrible, stressy process to get there and an enjoyable experience once you are there. A maximum 30 minute commute by transit or car, maximum 1 hour by e-bicycle for the average person assigned to that office. Any more than this, and nobody will deal with that. Let me put this into simple business-speak, your best employee's BATNA to RTO is simply quitting and going to work for your competitors remotely, don't be stupid.
2. Provide knowledge workers with assigned offices that have closable doors. If you want to make it by seniority, that's probably reasonable, but it's absolutely insane to expect a staff engineer or senior level PM that are doing strategy, architecture, and planning work that have outsized business impact (and the salaries to match) to share a hotel desk with 3 other people in an open floorplan office where they are /constantly/ interrupted by noise, movement, and other distractions.
3. Constrain meeting schedules to a 5-6 hour block of time centered on the work-day, make it a company rule to avoid meetings on Fridays and to outright ban meetings that are first-thing in the morning or at the very end of the day. Preferably eliminate as many meetings as possible for ICs, but if you're going to make people attend a meeting, it shouldn't fuck up their morning routine by effectively disallowing the flexibility of 10-15 minutes in their morning or at the end of their day. I know for me, I would quit with no notice before I skip my breakfast ahead of work, there's absolutely no excuse for management to demand someone be physically present first thing in the morning down to the minute for office work.
While working remotely none of these things are a concern, I commute 1 minute from my bedroom to my home office, which is in a separate room specifically structured for my preferred working environment, and I can eat while I'm working which means I've never had to skip any of the meal times in my diet in order to meet some arbitrary and unnecessary time expectation. When I do travel to the office, I get less "work" that doesn't involve meeting people face to face done, although I'm usually the first or second person to arrive at the office so have at least some quiet time (and despite my comments above, I am basically never late, I just don't like the anxiety that comes with the expectations), this difference in productivity is pretty much entirely down to surroundings. Open Floor Plan offices are a mistake, and companies don't seem to care and just double-down on it.