... I just don't like it enough to make it worth 5ish hours of fighting rush-hour traffic [edit: per week], right after getting the kids where they need to be (for the morning half, at least), not being able to do my mise for dinner over lunch or move some clothes to the dryer during the day, the gas & wear & tear on my car, the risk to life and limb, not being able to work-and-travel, and not being able to move somewhere far away without changing jobs. Plus I can greet my kids when they get home from school every day.
I don't prefer WFH per se—I prefer working in an office, especially in a nice area with cool stuff around, not so much in some soulless office park—but with that all factored in, it's not even a close call. WFH by a mile.
[EDIT] Oh, and child care costs in the Summer. That's ~$2.5-3k/kid of value alone, per year, in sheer cost savings. More, if your workplace is in-person and also not flexible enough that you can get home before 5 in the evening and leave late-ish in the morning—more like $6-8k/kid per year, in that case, since you'll need before-school and after-school care.
You could test the relationship by looking at New Jersey and Connecticut: lots of people are relatively independent from cars for their commutes, but tend to have genuine houses (as opposed to their coworkers who live on the Lower East Side).
I'm guessing you mean the part of CT that's close to NYC. At least when I was growing up in the 70's / 80's, my part of CT had literally no public transportation, except for the occasional bus service for senior citizens.
To me it wouldn't, I live in the middle of no where near my family, I couldn't work for big tech and stay here. But I bet it'd shift a lot of opinions.
That would eliminate about 75% of what I hate about working in an office. Cubes are hell. The only hell worse than that is an open office layout.
The improvement to my quality of life that remote work has produced is so monumental that it's hard to even envision how I coped most days before.
I'll be dragged kicking and screaming back into an office, and would only ever consider an in-person role as a stopgap measure while I job hunt.
I just also think its fine for a company to say "look, the way we work is [remote/office], and if you want to work a different way find a different company if that's a deal-breaker".
I have a remote exception for now, but I think they will take it away soon and when they do, I'm leaving. I don't want to waste 2 hours of my life commuting either by public transit (less bad) or by driving (really bad because it is very dangerous to drive in the metro area I live). I am 100% productive working alone or coordinate with coworkers remotely (in fact, I spend on average 9 hours a day working when WFH). I will NEVER go back to the office. If the company doesn't have fully remote roles, I'll skip applying for them happily and it is their loss.
I see some really crazy cognitive dissonance with RTO. Some of them say they prefer the new hybrid RTO policy and champion its benefits, but literally every week - without exception thus far - they've made an excuse to not show up at least one day. I think some people are just too nervous about not seeming to "drink the Koolaid". You'd think the seasoned people would be more immune to that kind of behavior, but here we are.
They probably 100% agree with WFH, or hybrid, but their job is to signal, and those RSUs depend on their willingness and ability to conform to corporate culture.
In other words, they hate it too but like $$$$
This RTO thing is b.s. and I'm not afraid to air my grievances in front of my colleagues. In fact, I started looking for fully-remote jobs so that I can leave soon and can write a letter to that VP, who said he likes working from office better, asking him to come to the office often. :D
I may be completely wrong, but I'm in France and it's mostly older people (from the age of 30 or 35) who want WFH. Young people don't know they can ask for a higher salary, and, apparently enjoy working in an office or open-space.
Older developers wants personal time, and some want to take care of their kids and family which is way easier if you're at home.
At my last interview, the boss asked if full-remote wouldn't be a problem for me, hinting that it may cause loneliness or psychological issues. I told her that I had friends and could see them whenever I wanted which is why I don't miss offices.
I wound up switching to a coworking space - a local alternative to wework. Didn't directly interact with people there most days but just having a space outside my small apartment and being _around_ other people made a huge difference for my mental health.
Of course, if you have family at home or even roommates, this may be much less of a concern for you.
I was thinking of asking for donations to cover my own coworking physical spot. The reason I thought maybe it doesn’t help is because the last time I was there I wasn’t talking to people really. I thought that meant it wasn’t for me. However the decent ~12 min drive, getting away from the house, being around people, it was really nice.
The online coworking on Zoom suffices sometimes but not when I’m already on there all the time helping manage it.
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I have people at home but the negatives outweigh the positive when I’m there all the time instead of only a couple hours a day outside sleep.
Thanks for getting me back into this idea
lol young people in 2023 can't afford to live alone.
even entry level FAANG salaries in NYC or SF mean you're still living with a roommate if you're anywhere near your work campus.
Even living with one roommate I felt the isolation, since my office was still my bedroom. Placing my work desk in my bedroom was probably one of the worst moves I've made for my mental health; if my apartment had space to make a shared office I may have had a difference experience and therefore a different opinion.
I think a 15 minute walk to a low-commitment workspace was a good fit for me, but obviously I can't speak for everyone.
Can you see them during the half of your waking life spent working?
[0] https://brainscan.uwo.ca/research/research_summaries/BJHE051...
I have a family, so I prefer being able to run into them at the water cooler when I leave my office room.
I'm French and I never did video calls, ever. It's always audio calls using Teams and we just show the relevant part of the screen to the audience (aka Screen sharing or something).
Is there something I'm missing?
I really disagree, but people want everyone on camera.
At my San Francisco based fintech, the culture that's developed is:
For one-on-ones and small meetings where everybody is expected to participate, cameras are on.
For large one to many broadcasts (like an all hands) generally people turn the camera off.
But I would say probably 95% my meetings have cameras on, so I'm constantly "seeing people".
I've seen companies that dealt with a ton of business travel before WFH got big, prefer actual dial-in-on-a-phone conference calls for meetings, even when all parties happened to be in offices at the time, well into the Zoom era. It weirded me out at first, but I think they may be on to something. If you don't need to screen share, not every call needs to be a video call. Don't need to install anything—anyone with a phone, which is everyone, can join. Easier to join on-the-go. Reliable Internet connection not required. If your phone has signal, you can join the call. Can even join from a wired desk phone.
Other companies, every call's a video call and you'll catch shit if you keep your camera off. Remote cultures exist on a spectrum between those. (and, of course, open source projects with distributed teams are often highly productive with little more than IRC, email, git, and an issue tracker)
It seemed to start because managers who weren’t used to remote wanted to keep tabs on their employees.
I work in the US for a company that doesn't allow WFH.
All of our meetings are via video calls, even though we are all in the same place. This has been the norm in my experience for over a decade now.
The place I worked before my current employer did the same, but allowed people to keep the video off if they chose. Everyone chose to keep the cameras off, except most of the management.
What's probably true is that a lot of people who want to be remote really want to be remote. They also recognize that remote hasn't been anything like the norm for office workers until COVID.
Whereas, a lot of the people who want to (mostly flexibly) come into an office, more mildly prefer the change in scenery and mingling with co-workers. While some might prefer more of their co-workers to come in, they may well work with people at other sites anyway so it's not really a big deal is all/most of their co-workers come it.
I've worked for two remote-first companies, and both had a culture of at least turning on web cams. My former company took it a step further and would have an annual gathering of the whole company in February, and regional gatherings in August.
That said, I do have a 5 min commute, I get better food at work and have an office for myself. If that would be significantly longer, I certainly would prefer to WFH too.
join a club, go places, talk to people. even working from home I walk to local coffee shops and chat with the people there. 6am there is always the same old guy and he reads the whole damn newspaper before 7am -- and is keen to talk. Old-timey, but a nice guy.
I'm on a softball team. there are a few meetup.com groups I like to hit, esp. the local LUG. there is a local non-profit art center and my wife sits on that board -- get to go to a few art events.
the problem is you're stuck at home. get out more, killer.