Americans are returning to cities after remote-work exodus, data shows
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Decided to pack up my stuff and move to the city. I now come in to the office every day and it’s improved my mood so much. There is so much joy from getting on the train every morning and hearing the chatter. Then walking in to the office and getting to work with real people instead of feeling like an automation in a box churning through jira tickets. In a few weeks I got to know the people I work with better than the 2 years I had been interacting with them on Teams.
Remote work is convenient for odd cases like having an appointment mid day, but for the vast majority of the time, I want to work with and talk to people in person.
Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers. This is just not the reality everyone lives in.
I interact with people outside of work so remote work doesn’t have a sense of isolation for me.
I have lunch with people almost every day, just they aren’t coworkers.
And I save lots of money on the commute, not to mention environmental impact.
I’m glad you like the change, but not everyone does.
Ding ding ding.
I think this right here is the key. It was eye opening to learn how few of my coworkers had anyone outside of work. It’s heartbreaking but clearly a burning epidemic.
I also learned how many of my coworkers prioritized being in the office every day of the week over working at home with their spouses and/or children. I can’t get over that in particular. It’s none of my business, but nonetheless it angers me.
Personally, I think what makes people happy is a multidimensional surface with lots of peaks and valleys. Univariate explanations are reductive.
You spend roughly half of your waking hours working. Do you really want to spend that much time isolated, only interacting with other people through screens?
I realize that not everybody does though.
Personally, since going remote and moving out to the boonies, I have had some weeks where I never even came within 100 meters of anyone other than my family, and it was absolutely glorious! Treating “society” as optional is amazing and liberating. Obviously not everyone shares this outlook and that’s ok!
For those that have kids - who picks them up if you're in the office? Is your partner forced not to work or remote so you get to go in?
For those that have older family to look after, again who does it?
Or who does the housework etc?
There was an earlier discussion on why open source is mostly male dominated... well guess why...
1 person said they trash talk with coworkers during lunch. Perhaps instead we could have washed the dashes or started the washing machine or the laundry as you say. You can collect the parcel. Lots of small jobs.
Or when you aren't "working" in the office what do you do? Go over to a coworker and talk about "non-work"? Are you actually "working" intensively every minute?
Maybe read up on the studies or even listen to women that have had to do household work whilst working from home? What do you mean how? Good question. How do they survive when such men have forced it all on them and pretend it is nothing?
> women that have had to do household work whilst working from home?
I don't think women should be doing household work whilst working from home either. So no idea what you are trying to argue, unless you want coasting jobs which pay you a lot to just be at home and do your housework or childcare. That ain't gonna happen.
Then magic happens? Who does it?
> It worked extremely well for them
So did we have 2 Googles where 1 did what you said and 1 didn't? Otherwise how are you drawing this conclusion to what led to its success? Maybe this is 1 part of the puzzle but it might not have been the deciding factor.
Also who says that if they all went remote and Google offered the tools for their employees to bond online that it would not work?
All you are saying is it's worked 1 way so it must be better than the other way because of some fear of the unknown?
> That ain't gonna happen.
It's pretty sad that your view of work from home = no work at all. So if anyone puts in the same amount of work hours whether it's 9-5 or 9-10 + 11-8 or whatever the balance is what's the difference? All you do is attack people that follow a different schedule and call them coasting?
You do it after hours or on weekends or hire help for that. A lot of couples with kids figured that out before the pandemic so not really any rocket science stuff about that.
> Google offered the tools for their employees to bond online that it would not work?
My company has gone all in on making remote-first work and the leadership is sincerely trying all it can. We tried many tools for online socializing (games, food and drink, some social apps...). They all sucked. Finally the company gave up and started shelling up big bucks to fly everyone in for offsites. And that has its big challenge of crazy expensive flights and hotels, or a lack of dates/locations where everyone can make it. If you got any tools which did the trick for your team, please do share.
> follow a different schedule and call them coasting
Your literal words: "do household work whilst working from home". That's not having a different schedule. That is coasting.
Did they? You mean where 1 side dumped it on the other side? Lots of census data worldwide (and others) have indicated it is the male dumping the work on the female and calling it "figured out".
If that's what you meant then sure. As in make someone else suffer. You can't do it after hours. You can't do it when you choose to. Like literally do you just tell a newborn to stop being hungry because it's not the weekend? As to hiring help - can everyone afford it? And does that mean you are hands off?
> My company has gone all in on making remote-first work and the leadership is sincerely trying all it can. We tried many tools for online socializing (games, food and drink, some social apps...). They all sucked. Finally the company gave up and started shelling up big bucks to fly everyone in for offsites. And that has its big challenge of crazy expensive flights and hotels, or a lack of dates/locations where everyone can make it. If you got any tools which did the trick for your team, please do share.
It doesn't sound like the tools here. It's the mentality, attitude and direction. From your replies you've already indicated that sitting on a desk during certain hours is the priority and not the actual tasks. Even if I did the same amount of work as in the office but did my chores during that time you'd scold me for it... even if in the office I'd go for a walk, gym or coffee or anything else... To you as the manager what's the real difference?
All you're doing is lifting in-person to remote 1:1 just like when some businesses move to the cloud. It's a different beast. It's still about socializing in the tradition sense isn't it? And then you said you just fall back again to in-person trips.
> Your literal words: "do household work whilst working from home". That's not having a different schedule. That is coasting.
As in you don't take breaks in the office? You don't talk to people or do activities that equate to non-work? Perhaps you don't but if you really believe that 0 workers do in an office environment we're in another world.
In your literal words: "do other activity whilst in the office". That is coasting according to you. Same same.
I think this is the core of our disagreement. Mentalities and attitudes are forged over the years and hard to change, both for individuals and companies. If you do not have a compelling alternative, people will revert back to what they know and are comfortable with. If provided with a great experience, people will even change their habits and glue their faces to a black rectangle with a screen as the last 15 years have shown.
So - why should we (individuals, companies) change our attitudes and mentalities when it comes to WFH and team bonding? Whatever I have seen so far from the pro-WFH side is a subpar experience.
We do not work 8 hours, but our schedules are set that way. We're only working ~3 hours per day, the rest is mostly fluff. Give people back those 5 hours and you've got a very different answer than "force people into the office just so they have time to socialize".
I’d rather do my socialising in the local community, head out to grab a sandwich from a local business, and not have to spend half of my remaining waking hours travelling to and from a place I don’t really want to be in the first place.
Absolutely. And I do not need to be "interacting" when I am working. There is a chat / email which I would read at my convenience. In case of emergency there are calls.
Yes. Also, the choice is made for me. I work in software and data and everyone I work with is digital whether I’m in the office or home or Timbuktu. So I don’t really have a decision. Every day my “team” is in multiple counties and time zones. There’s no way to spend time with them every day in person. Unless I want to say hello to security guards and chitchat with work strangers I’d rather spend that time with other people.
I guess there are some industries where teams can be in the same room and building. I don’t work in such an organization and I like my job. I don’t feel isolated.
Today, it's _easier_ for me to have an unscheduled sync with a teammate because I can immediately hop on a zoom call from my private home office. Before the pandemic, I had to first try to find an unused conference room or phone booth (because having calls in the open-plan office was disruptive). Sometimes, when there was no good space available, I'd end up standing holding a laptop (and thus unable to take any notes) in the stairwell, which had less consistent wifi signal. If a meeting runs long, we don't have to scramble as we're kicked out of rooms by the next scheduled group. And scheduling larger group meetings isn't limited by the ability to reserve multiple large conference rooms across multiple offices.
People trying to tell me that I'd be more productive from the office are so far unwilling to commit to providing an office which doesn't waste my time on this nonsense.
I also have a family who I love, but I don’t feel I need to be with them 24/7, or that I’m prioritising anything over them by wanting a career and to work physically with coworkers.
It isn’t reasonable for the WFH advocates to see us people who prefer the office as sad loners with messed up priorities. I personally find Zoom life 100x more depressing.
And who looks after the kids or elderly parents when you're physically in the office? Or the house duties? Or do we pretend they don't exist?
The only way you can pretend you don't need to be with a child 24/7 is if you neglect your duties. You are prioritising work over family. There's no other way.
> It isn’t reasonable for the WFH advocates to see us people who prefer the office as sad loners with messed up priorities.
That's not what you prefer though. You prefer forcing everyone to accompany you in the office like a sadist. You've heard that some people prefer remote yet you force your ideals on them.
You don't prefer the office. You prefer you AND others in the office.
Different.
You know, when you are WFH, you are supposed to work. Looking after kids is not working for your employer, unless you are coasting at your job. In which case, such jobs should be consolidated. I think that's what happened at Yahoo back in the day.
Same same.
Might as well you say we don't need the Internet because in your experience floppy disks are fine.
Why don't you do an actual comparison or study?
As in did you have a team with the exact conditions minus small talk and 1 with small talk and then concluded the small talk 1 created better teams? No. So how do you know which 1 it was?
I hope execs lead people forward with correct decisions using sound logic and not some vague correlation. Are we going for the 5G causes COVID drama too? In my experience the rumor might hold some value...
What makes you think I haven't done so? I have surveyed enough people at work and socially. A majority prefers hybrid, a small number favors fully remote while a small numbers wants fully in-office. Top reasons people wanted to come in office: meeting everyone in person, getting complex work (eg. designing a system) done, getting mentorship and onboarding help, free food. Top reasons people wanted to WFH: traffic.
There are a handful of cases on extreme ends with patterns like: hating social interaction, not having right conditions at home to work from etc.
I'm not going to ban you right now, even though it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines in other places too, because I didn't see anything this bad in your other comments and because we hadn't warned you before. But please don't do post like this again.
So where do I go out and meet people who aren't super religious, ballroom dancing nuts, or alcoholics?
The other thing I'll add is that when you're in tech, there's a good chance you share a lot of interests with coworkers. This isn't the case with a lot of community social groups. Sure, they're people you see, but you don't have enough in common with them for them to ever be more than acquaintances.
same crowd, but with people from different companies
are in cities
:(
Lots of coworkers have been just the same. No difference.
I'm well equipped to understand the vulnerability disclosure spectrum and when and how to reveal personal information so that my relationships don't stagnate nor am I dumping on people I've just met. I can navigate conservations adeptly to find topics of common interests and genuinely connect. I've purposely enriched myself with topics tech folks tend to dismiss like psychology, sociology, and mysticism which have fruited deep personal connections with others in ways I've never dreamed of.
The effort-reward structure is much more gentle than I would have thought even 10 years ago.
Why does it anger you so much that different people have their own situations and preferences?
What I dislike the most about the WFH vs RTO debate is how the strongest advocates on each side seem completely baffled by the other.
When my kids were young going into the office was easier work than staying home and keeping them. I felt guilty about not being at home with them and being able to be in the office.
Edit: It’s either Saturday or Sunday at this point. It’s a weekend. None of us should be here. I’m not going to be pedantic.
(remote for ~10 years, married 15, together 20)
Edit: I acknowledge some relationships require time apart. n=1!
This is about the freedom to do so. Nothing stops you from going to a cafe or somewhere else. It's remote work.
It's about freedom not 1 or the other.
>"I hate video calls
Absolutely, this is why I mostly do productive work. Calls are limited and not video.
>"I hate MS Teams."
I do not hate it since I do not use it.
>"I hate sitting at home alone every day."
I do not. I work but since (except rare meetings) I am on my own schedule I free to go for a swim, bike ride, walk whatever any time I want.
>"I missed going out after work on a Friday with coworkers"
Nope. I have actual friends and we meet whenever we feel like.
>"I missed shit talking with people at lunch."
Again I have friends and can talk to them any time. Often over Skype as we spread over the world. With those here in Toronto usually meet in person on evenings / weekends.
We are just different people.
>"Remote work is convenient for odd cases"
No. It is convenient for people who like it. You are always free to go to the office if that's your cup of tea.
>"I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers.
Nothing to ridicule on my end. As already said to each their own.
>"This is just not the reality everyone lives in."
Bullshit. Speak for yourself. There are enough people on each end of the spectrum.
This doesn't work. It's not what they want. They want an office full of people so you "the remoter" has to go in as well!
Personally I've solved my remoting / independence problem back in 2000 and do not give a shit what they want.
IF
Not to mention not everyone wants to come in every day and then you might not meet the right people on the same day.
This seems misleading, I've rarely come across that even among people who are in threads proclaiming they completely prefer remote 100%.
What I do see is a ridiculing of the idea that you have to be in an office environment to socialize, or that those relationships are anywhere near as fulfilling as people who actively choose to be somewhere out of a shared interest (and not a financial incentive).
There are also great discussions on which type of work benefits most from team in person environments and which doesn't.
Either way, I wholly despise the binary perspective on remote/office work as mostly being quite short sighted. The idea isn't we should pick one or the other, it's the desire for more flexibility on how we approach work hours.
That would seem to be a comment on the number/type of people you meet more than anything. There are days I'm happy to WFH but I'm very glad I don't do it 5 days a week any more (and I used to ~18 years ago, as well as through much of 2020 and 2021).
Might make sense why some people have such different views of the office when the actual environment is vastly different.
It's not as in those that claim so prove they can't type, write out something coherent or use online tools. They don't know how to build relationships otherwise. It's the only way they can interact with people (in-person).
> The idea isn't we should pick one or the other, it's the desire for more flexibility on how we approach work hours.
The remote argument has always been do what you like vs the in-office argument has always been force everyone back. The problem with those preferring in-office is that they don't prefer to go to the office. They prefer to have someone (unwillingly) go to the office to sit next to them.
Might I ask which city? SF and NYC are pretty different these days.
I had to visit our office (first time since Jan 2020) to do some emergency heads down work with my teammates and it's incredible how I had forgotten what it feels like to be part of a company.
With that combined with the fact that people are increasingly bad at hiding the fact that they're often just taking off mid-afternoon (always fun to need a set of eyes for a critical hotfix pull request and get radio silence on Teams!), the difficulty of focusing at home, and the expense of trying to live somewhere with an extra bedroom or area as a dedicated home office, and I really wish I could go back to the office. Unfortunately I don't live in the same state as the office anymore, so I am stuck like this for now.
And if you think companies should change their cultures to find good talent, let me assure you - companies know that and track attrition carefully. If they didn't think they had an upper hand in forcing RTO, they wouldn't have done that. It is much easier to find workers who can come to the office than what HN seem to believe.
And 640k ought to be enough for everybody too right?
> So why should company change it if it can continue in the same old way?
Yeah like why should the world improve if we can continue the same way? Why move to electricity if there's fossil fuel. Why do anything?
It depends on what's your role. I am responsible for product design and development. I definitely do not feel like my part of code is shipped "into the void". I see it working and serving customers
Edit: I just noticed that your HN account is less than two years old, and yet you've managed to post 3,772 times. Whoa. You certainly love to socialize!
That's fine. You can do that. As you said you "want".
> Almost every day I see comments here ridiculing the idea that someone might enjoy the presence of their coworkers. This is just not the reality everyone lives in.
And there's the problem. How did you enjoy the presence of your coworkers?
If you were the only 1 in the office would you then complain?
Hint: yes.
So the gist of the issue is you want to go to the office AND force everyone to be back just so YOU are not lonely?
> I hate sitting at home alone every day.
You didn't and don't have to. What does this have to do with remote?
> I missed shit talking with people at lunch.
Again how is this a remote problem? Because you can't have lunch with people including coworkers if remote?
I am considering actually measuring my mood but it looks like the office helps me.
45 minutes of walking after work does a lot of good to my mental health. I also do a sort of one meal a day “diet” where i consume just coffee at work, and it actually costs a lot less.
Worst case is that I leave late and it’s cold so i take an uber, but I actually prefer it.
Hey, if you've got the time to spare, and like getting up significantly earlier than you would otherwise have to. And you are into ... chatter.
Then walking in to the office and getting to work with real people instead of feeling like an automation in a box churning through jira tickets.
I've had plenty of onsite jobs where I felt like no less of on automaton (or worse). Seems uncorrelated with onsite/remote, per my data trail.
In real life, everyone seems to be craving human interaction. It’s sad sometimes. Being afraid to have small talk with people isn’t introversion, it’s a mental problem. Places like NYC have completely popped off again and I think we’ll see more and more demand for walkable social areas
It's a societal problem. Too many people invade our attention constantly to try and sell us something, whether that be a product or service, a fad, or political bullshit. We have necessarily become defensive about people invading our attention uninvited.
It's also very robotic. Small talk never want real responses. Oh like when you begin the conversation with "How was your day?" and the expectation is to say "fine thanks" or similar? What's the point?
Are you sure everyone hates people or just those requesting things like "small talk" are the problem?
Its teenage angst, nihilism, and dangerous witch hunts. Like a kind of lord of the flies, but with “adults” in the mix.
I take issue with the idea that psychology, psychiatry and drugs are for the purpose of normalising everyone.
It's often disturbing how obvious it is. I can tell when someone is deeply lonely, and as much as I feel sorry for them, the lack of awareness they have about the way they're presenting themselves makes me feel overwhelmed and avoid interacting with them.
Thankfully I invested a lot of time into reverse engineering how normal people behave in high school when I ran out of other things to do, so now when I meet people they think I'm well adjusted and charismatic instead of an extremely eccentric and unpredictable nerd.
There may be other factors at play as well. Maybe a person would like to go into the office more often, but they don't want to live in the city or make a long commute everyday. Maybe their particular office is very boring and quiet, or maybe it's loud and distracting and overstimulating. Maybe you get along great with your coworkers, or maybe your coworkers are intolerable and you can't stand being around them. Some people have crafted the perfect home office for themselves, and others may not have space for a home office.
It's very much a matter of personal taste, but there could also be many other factors at play. Point is, what works for one person doesn't work for everyone.
I get it’s a bit over the line for me to make that assumption, but I think it’s probably a safe one.
Office feels like a lazy excuse to skip a bunch of things.
I'm in my 30's quite happily single, but if I do have a family there's no way I want to move them to the suburbs. As a friend who raised two very successful kids in NYC (just like he was raised) once said to me, "As a parent, I have never had to worry about either one getting a car with someone who's been drinking, and that alone is worth it."
I’m not giving an ounce of fucking credit when people are having their livelihoods threatened because the incestious controlling boards want their CMBS values to go back up and pump the value of their other investments in the city.
If you crave human interaction, here's a thought: "Go outside". You don't need to go to work to meet other humans.
But having interactions outside of work is also important, and this is where 'go outside' would be helpful.
You're better off with shared interest groups: exercise clubs, hobbies, that sort of thing. It's like the social parts of work, but you don't get paid for it and you don't have to leave when you move to a new job. You can even go out as a group in the evenings after the activity ends if you want to, just like work!
Nor do they happen by going to the office (except for fake forced 1s out of courtesy or to try and fit in).
If it happens it happens office or not.
My preference is for office work with like minded individuals, so I am fine with the current push to fire remote workers. They can find a different company with a culture they prefer.
Live and let live.
This describes the majority of working age people, particularly in older countries such as the US and the UK.
For these people, if they are working at the office with others, this time represents the optimal or most likely opportunity to have some social interaction outside of family.
And Zoom can be better than a poor office with a terrible chair, small monitor and other bad equipment. Again this doesn't mean in-person itself is bad either.
and saying it right now for the future, the Bay Area is going to continue to be the overwhelming center of tech in the US and nope, everyone's not going to move to Austin.
I’m not sure that some kind of push to truly rural living was ever really on the docket. Leaving the city doesn’t have to mean living in the wilderness. There is quite a bit in between. A town with 2,000 people is deemed urban.
I think what this data actually shows is that there are many people out there who strongly desire to know and hang out with people who are neither family nor co-workers. It's hard to get the opportunities to do that if you aren't in a city. If they could do that in the rural areas or the butbs, they probably would. But rural areas have far fewer people.
And the burbs are not set up for chance encounters. The burbs are more setup for planned encounters. Which brings you back to the original problem of finding someone to plan an encounter with. :(
There are so many events, attractions, opportunities etc happening just by strolling the streets. It's lively. Everything is walkable and accessible. Public transport is easy.
I'm fine with the occasional on site collaboration and camaraderie are fine, but every week? No. I'm productive because I'm a professional.