As a thought experiment, people should ask themselves: if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
I said “had” because admittedly now I’m a corner case. My wife and I nomad around the US 7 months a year staying in mostly extended stay hotels and the other 5 months (October-March) we “snowbird” in our home in Florida that’s rented out when we aren’t there to cover the mortgage.
I've lived the excesses of over-funded startups - I don't need the catered breakfasts and lunches, I don't need the endless snacks and drinks, I don't need the fancy desk chairs or fancy desks - I need to not get deathly ill several times a year.
That's the absolute #1 top reason why I won't go back to an office. It's not just about covid - it's about all viruses and illnesses that coworkers spread around the office. Heck no I don't want any of that in my life anymore. No thank you.
Any thoughts on how this happened? Did not have this experience in a diverse 40-year job history
A friend of mine gives tours at a museum of modern art; he says what you say: it's almost a part of the job to get sick at least once per year, typically in flu season in winter.
Employers should be forces to either guarantee there only a very small and stable team of people you meet on a daily basis -- or pay employees premium for the risk they incur because of diseases.
The alternative is to live like people live in Japan where everyone wears a mask all the time during flu season. But people in the west are often too lazy and "individual" for that. I don't really like to be overly broad and generalize, but the COVID stats prove it clearly: https://pandem-ic.com/japan-and-us-are-worlds-apart-on-pande...
/rant over/
"Companies should pay an employees a stipend for the risk of..... human contact!"
I already lament the world where parents are fined and sometimes jailed for letting their kids exist independent of surveillance, and we do not need to take further steps into isolation and atomization
Casual and constant exposure to infectious agents (natural ones, not those transmitted over TCP/IP) develops and maintains an immune response. It's not just the brain wired to have interactions with others, it's the whole gestalt.
It is mainly the long air sharing I believe that can be a difference. You still go to the same toilettes and touch the same doorhandles.
you have a room to be converted to an office, but not everybody is this lucky
This even without accounting for career related advantages when physically being in the office - building professional network, serendipitous discovery of undocumented information.
With a bit of organization it is not that challenging to have kids. Also there are a number of possible summer activities with school like schedules for those who have less family around + possibility to hire a student to take care of kids while you are working during summer.
I was surprised how quickly summer activities filled up this year. We got him in a Boys and Girl camp at least, but demand is super high for what's available in our region.
Most kids grow up without their parents really being there for them all the time. I feel this must be especially harmful the younger the kids are.
I personally find it completely inhumane and the whole going to the office thing makes 0 sense to me. I mean it makes sense that managers want to physically feel in charge of their herd, but that's obviously not a good reason from my perspective.
I'd also love to have some extra time to be able to go to the gym, but right now I'm getting home, cooking, eating, and suddenly it's past 9pm and I'm having to think about getting stuff ready for work the next day.
In my experience it seems like the people who make the decisions on returning to the office are those who can afford to live close to the office.
It has some mixed results. It's very positive for traffic and for climate change - if everyone goes from a 30 mile commute to a 5 mile one, that's 6x fewer vehicle miles traveled, 6x less car CO2 emissions, and 6x less traffic. But it also drives up rents around the office to crazy-high levels. Facebook's policy basically just boosted rents in Palo Alto by $1000/month (when they were there), and then it and the office location was single-handedly responsible for the gentrification of East Palo Alto (after they moved).
Let’s assume I moved to near that office and lived in a high density area away from nature and dark skies. What does my wife do, who now faces an 80 mile commute the other way?
For anyone but singles, co-located work seems anachronistic. Worked back in the day were only one person in the family had a job, and jobs were held for decades (not years) I suppose. Today it seems ludicrous to expect anyone to move for work.
Which naturally leads into either long commutes or remote work. Having built several remote-first companies, I'm gonna say it's not perfect, but it really works.
Going this way, if this were a law, would also prevent employers from treating people as expendable. Flying people in from across the globe because they are marginally cheaper than the local work force never made sense to me.
Work want to move me off an hourly wage. Which is fine, but it means instead of being paid time and a half for every hour over 35, I take 1.5h in lieu off.
If I do a 90 hour week you’ll barely see me for the next three weeks.
That sounds like a good way to make companies do WFH wherever they can.
I mean, they already give preference to candidates near the office in order to facilitate ridiculous hours.
I firmly believe that those behind the RTO push don't realize their 24 hours are very different than the average workers.
The beige and drab decor is okay, it’s the way the monitors are so cheap and outdated. And the way the mouse and keyboard are the cheapest possible. Giving people doing knowledge work on computers all day the cheapest possible interface just don’t make sense. It’s penny wise pound foolish.
And The office neighborhood is also very unfriendly for pedestrians and bikers. it’s clear planners believed there was zero chance of people actually walking anywhere.
I’d much prefer an office with decent equipment and a better setting. it’s a reason why I am considering switching jobs. To have a decent office to go to.
This is a lovely balance. While the vast majority of my team is distributed across the country (and Europe, too), having the flexibility to stay at home or work alongside colleagues from other projects is great.
Need to focus on development one day? I'll stay at home, since it is more peaceful and my equipment is better (long live big screens with high refresh rates). Want to not worry about cooking and have lunch with other people? I'll go to the office.
I'm also quite active too. It can be a bit tedious, but walking at least 6km everyday does wonders for your health. Specially since I'm a type 1 diabetic.
Nevertheless, my contractor is far from perfect (I could rant for hours about how absolutely crap our company laptops are for developers). But it seems like these kinds of situations can only happen in small, compact cities; which is usually the case for Europeans and rarely for US cities.
I'd highly recommend hybrid to anyone who can afford it, but, as always, your mileage may vary
I’m going to be doing one in mainland Europe, and a friend has recommended Spain and Portugal.
Absolutely, yes. Don’t know how it’s in Google, but offices in our company don’t supply nice equipment like Herman Miller chairs with high quality desk and constant distractions from other people make any kind of deep state of work impossible.
Add on top of that having a house with a nice garden (if you’re one of those lucky people!) and the clear winner is obvious.
There's a reason why 10x engineers inevitably work evenings and weekends, and, if they have any social acumen, manage to get themselves excused from most workday time wasting rituals, including showing up at the office.
Prefer the DIY version where I have to put the work in myself.
I can appreciate professionally managed green spaces, and do enjoy them, but they have nothing on the space that I myself get to experiment with.
Do you mean "garden" in the American sense (an area for growing food and/or decorative plants), or in the British sense (what American's would call a "lawn" or "yard")?
The Irish I talk to all call their private patch of green adjacent their house a 'garden' even if it contains only grass with optional tree. I had assumed they got the word from you guys.
Working from home there are still days when focusing is difficult, but nothing as frustrating as that.
My home office is kitted out with an ultrawide monitor, a nice webcam lighting setup, a great mic with a nice low-profile arm that slides under the monitor, a powerful desktop tower, etc.
The downside to working in an office, even when there is dedicated hardware that stays there, is that the hardware is usually not gonna be as good as what I have at home, and that I will not be able to have my own office room to work from without distractions.
In an open-plan office, you have to listen to all your coworkers, including those on completely different teams, have extremely loud and simultaneous conversations that you can hear from far across the room.
In a coffee shop, people generally don't talk, or keep their voices low when they do, so you generally only hear people talking to the staff to make orders and such.
No, I had to hear 3 other people having a conversation louder than his call with me.
Why not? It's not practical to make 8 of your coworkers suffer through your call either.
Maybe, if you need to be on the phone for hours a day, you need an office not to be in an open floorplan.
Doesn't matter though for me because I'm in my home office.
Depends on the work you do and your age, I suppose. Also whether you touch type on a standard keyboard or not.
My work is made easier with large dual monitors and a nice standard keyboard. Squinting into a single small screen while mispressing all the laptop keys (because those characters commonly used for programming don't have a consistent spot in any laptop keyboard) is not my idea of fun.
I think those horrible, noisy environments would have led to a backlash sooner rather than later. Now any complaints about open plan offices will just be dismissed as people whining about not being able to WFH.
During Covid, a local co working space here in Berlin was one of the few places I could still go to. It's a five minute walk from my door and I did go there quite often. So, yes, I would and I have. And I don't even have a family to escape from. I've been working remotely in various settings for close to a decade. But I've done so from various offices for most of that time.
I've also been to the US on business travel a few times and got to spend some time in a few offices. There's a real difference between the US and Europe and it isn't good. The average US office with it's cubicles, air conditioning, lack of a view, and typical dreary locale is just miserable.
Google is of course famous for making an effort to make their offices nice. But from what I've seen it's still a cubicle hell. So, I can imagine that enduring a lengthy commute for the privilege of being miserable there is a bit of a hard sell. On the other hand, they do pay a premium for their people. So asking them to show up is maybe not that unreasonable. And of course they have to justify maintaining offices in a places with epic real estate pricing. If people stop showing up, you might legitimately wonder what the point of being in such expensive areas is to begin with.
For me, if I could walk 5-10 minutes to an office (especially with people I actually worked with, which wouldn't be the case if I drove 30 minutes to the nearest office) I'd probably do so pretty regularly. For me, it's definitely mostly about the commute which would be 30+ minutes to the closest office and then I wouldn't know anyone there.
Oh wait, that much sq ft per person was “too expensive” so I guess we’re all going back to open plan hell.
Sadly cubicles aren't very soundproof or private (but they are still better than open plan for people who need to concentrate or focus.)
University libraries tend to be somewhat open plan, though sometimes with study carrels, and students manage to get work done there. However they also typically quiet environments as well, there are no supervisors walking around, and falling asleep may be socially acceptable. The density might be better in some cases as well.
It's not culture, it's physics. With a room full of a maze of cloth panels (which are specifically designed to absorb sound), sound is absorbed and can't bounce around the room, leading to much lower overall ambient noise levels.
And then there's "quiet offices" you can use if you need to take a sensitive call or have a quick meeting with 2-3 people.
Used to live in the West Side in Los Angeles. Everything took 30 minutes.
Now I live in North Phoenix. 30 minutes is like... FAR. But it's a real joy to drive.
There is something about walking / cycling that makes even the most miserable day at least tolerable. Now my commute is a combined cycle + train journey again, but now I'm cycling through lovely countryside on quiet country roads. I cannot possibly convey how much I appreciate it, I used to be a city boy!
tho tbf i don't work well from home, i need social interaction and less distraction. the bike ride was great to wake up, jam, or think about problems for the day
The pandemic was a huge improvement. Suddenly everyone was remote. So it's definitely improved. In a perfect world I'd be very happy to go to an office one or two days per week and have meetings, be social. If the commute was 5 minutes rather than an hour, then I'd be happy to do it 3-4 days a week. But I don't think I'd want it to be 5 days even if I could walk there in two minutes.
There are a lot of locations that really benefit me being close to them than being close to the office.
Also, 5 minutes from the office is not very far. If a lot of people work at the office, living spaces 5 minutes from the office will either end up really expensive or really small.
(OTOH I was about as far on Earth that I could possibly get from from my extended family, so that was a bummer).
On the one hand, I makes sense to pause. On the other hand, making vibrant light urban spaces feels like something they could pull off & really build on. Become a destination company.
I.e., if:
(1) living in the company town is contingent on being an employee,
(2) being accused of politically incorrect speech can end one's employment, and
(3) eviction is ultimately backed by state-sanctioned violence,
then I can see the logic. I'm just not aware of any examples of this actually happening.
OTOH, I have no idea if the plans for those company towns involved behavior standards for conduct in the residential areas, outside of working hours.
The overall setup sounds really dystopian, so hopefully this is the last we'll ever think about it.
That's the point. Google by and large treats its employees really well. There's no reason to think it would push this dystopian version of employee housing, instead of something a lot more tame. The only explanation I can think of is that some people just like thinking of themselves as the little guy against the world.
Many very-bad, dictatorship-type regimes have come into power with immense public support - a public that thought they would continue to be treated well.
I agree there's potentials for the company to grow mean & sour, to exploit the position of granter of a reasonably good life. Ideally a good life should also be available by other means. What really is damned in this condemnation is the rest of the world, which lacks in offerances & alternatives.
The idea is that this is a destination company. Your whole premise is that people get exploited. Maybe over time that's true, but you will never create a destination company by being a shitty fuck.
Pullman is notable for its wage cuts of workers (while still charging the same for everything in the town they owned) which caused a major strike that got ugly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Company#Company_town
Pripyat, in Soviet-Ukraine, a “nuclear town” was established and subsequently evacuated when the infamous meltdown occurred: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat
In the US, specifically, a lot of company towns issued scrip instead of cash or allowed workers to charge to an account expenses they could not afford. This may be outlawed but I think this model can be sufficiently masked with technology that it can be implemented and even incentivized for workers to use company money. Further, the company town’s isolation will suggest workers stay inside. Now your whole social circle and standard of life is dictated by someone else’s bottom line.
If the argument is that consolidation of employers and landlords is worrying, then we can have a discussion.
If the argument is that the corporate police is gonna kidnap you, then you're just a conspiracy theorist with a victim complex.
The corporation had no loyalty and has no obligation to you beyond what was agreed upon when you got hired. A termination for any reason means your entire life is uprooted. In addition to finding a new employer, you are now looking for housing. That idea of vulnerability is terrifying to a lot of people and will cause further asymmetry in the employee-employer relationship.
Will there be the Company Store too?
Really sounds like going back to the bad old days
I have no idea what the housing model proposed is. But everywhere else in the US that is mildly popular is ragingly expensive. If I can live in a great place affordably while making a solid paycheck for the future, that doesn't feel like a trap, that feels like a development course. Even if it doesn't last. The meanest thing we can say here is that the rest of the country can't compete, which again isn't the fault of those entities trying to make better.
Will there be a company store? I dunno. Is this a worthwhile dig or a trope, a regurgitation of past historic circumstance? We just spent a while talking about how companies will be desperate to lock employees in, golden handcuff them into never leaving... But now suddenly it's dark Zuckville & he's also nickel & dime scrooging over the employees? This no longer sounds like a viable Destination Company...
Will it be both too utopian and too dystopian all at once? Or is there one side of too much you'd wager for?
I absolutely think this could be shit & terrible. But this is a vacuous shitty useless historically-based drag that, but to me, fails any real analysis of the current situation, ignores the possibilities at hand, and just seeks to disabuse.
Yes, because I don't want to get covid.
I'd still want the office to be nice. If it's some concrete monstrosity where I can't get them to buy a decent chair and I have to sit in an open plan… home still wins.
I lived 5 mins from my office for ages - I specifically moved to the area to avoid a commute, save money on transport, etc.
Still preferred to work from home.
At the office I share an office with someone. It has no windows, so it's stuffy and lit only by harsh florescent lights. We have to take turns using the office because we just sit on video calls all day. I basically just sit in this torture box on video calls all day.
If it were five minutes walk, I would consider walking over there after dropping the kids off at school and walking back before they got home so I could greet them.
In an office I hotdesk on a laptop and if I’m lucky I get. A desk for a few hours.
I have my own kitchen, my own bathroom, I can do housework things like putting the laundry in while I'm on a break, I can be in for deliveries, etc.
I'd be most happy with a fully remote job, that has an option to go in to the office whenever I like. Some face time is valuable, but absolutely not 5 days of face time a week.
I walk 5 min to my office and I still want to work from home most of the time. I like going to the office as well, but I prefer staying home.
I think there is certainly benefit in being in the same physical space as the rest of the team on occasion. I don't think it has to be often though, even the kind of once every 6 months to a year thing some fully remote companies do might be enough to make a difference with team building.
Not enough information to answer that.
Is it an open office layout or a real office? If it is an open office, I will still need to work from home even if it's a 1 minute walk because it is impossible to get any work done in an open office.
But give me a real office with a closing door and I'll happily commute 30 minutes every day to use it.
I do not have a separate office room at home, I work from my bedroom.
That or an elevator ride to a different floor in a hybrid office/condo tower would be nice.
This is what they get for adopting a car-centric lifestyle.
>As a thought experiment, people should ask themselves: if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
I live in Tokyo, and it's about 10 minutes to walk to my office, and it's extremely safe. No, I don't want to work from home much, except maybe the days when there's a typhoon or I'm just not feeling well.
[[citation needed]]