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Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

I've been fully remote for 3 years now and I'd prefer an office if I had the choice. Something like 2-3 days/week in the office feels ideal. Granted the last time I worked in an office I also lived a few miles down the street from it, so my commute was not an issue (it was a great part of my day, in fact). So that probably pollutes my view on all of this.

My team is fully remote, and if I was to be totally honest, we would be more effective if we were all in the same space. Maybe other remote teams are just better at being remote than us, I don't really know.

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There is a very real culture problem with hybrid environments, when other people are together and you are remote it's a problem. It can work, but my preference is to be full remote. I've been full remote for 13 years and I had to develop methods to satisfy interaction. When I do travel and go to the office its such a drag, I feel so drained after.

I really like having lunch at home, napping if I want, etc. It's not socially acceptable to be so relaxed in an office.

hey i'd want tips if you want to share. i'm remote since before covid. i've moved company months ago, but i don't have great ideas on how to "satisfy interaction" professionally.

It takes work - search around for events and put yourself out there

How do you know your team would be more effective in any given configuration? Do you have some metrics you can share? Above such metrics, what if working in the office meant losing a couple of folks who turned out to be highly efficient but wanted to work from home and you could only find less effective replacements? What if the opposite were true?

People are constantly arguing back and forth about whether WFH or office is more productive and the various pitfalls but actual evidence is sparse. And second order effects just throw everything out. I think we'll be talking about it for a long time and it's still company and personal preference.

Yeah, I don't know any of that. I'm just speaking from my perspective. For example I notice communication is harder. A Slack thread becomes a video call and screenshare, and I am pretty sure it would be a lot more efficient and effective to just walk over to someone's desk. I don't know if that is actually the case, just what I intuit from seeing our day to day.

Interesting. I would spend a lot of time going over to others' desks in the office but I do prefer screenshare now. It's clearer what they are trying to show and I can have the code files open in my own editor at the same time. You lose some of the adhoc but gain some clarity.

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