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Comment by tetromino_ | Hacker News Reader

> Once you’ve tasted the fruits of WFH and you like the taste, you’ll never go back.

Let me guess, you are in a low cost of living area (at least relative to your income) and have a big house?

I live in NYC. Residential floor space is very expensive here. My wife and I on two tech salaries can afford a fairly large place by the standards of our area, but it's definitely not large enough for 2 adults to comfortably work from home with a toddler also running around.

For us, the optimal solution is hybrid with a schedule where on any given day one of us is wfh and one in the office.

When both of us were forced to work from home full time, we managed, but it was suboptimal and a drag on productivity. The "fruits of WFH" turned out somewhat bitter.

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Or you could keep your jobs and move to a lower cost of living area making us of more space?

Irrespective of lack of space, NYC is the only place in the US where I have enjoyed living.

Yeah people always miss this: Job availability is not the only reason people don't all move to rural Kentucky. People like living in expensive cities! That's why so many people live there!

Not that they'd do this, but if the company offered what it was paying for office space for you as a stipend for your home office, would that change your mind? Some quick Google math suggests an average of $80/sqft/year for NYC office space and suggests 100 sqft per-person for an open-office worker which comes out to $600-700 a month. Again, cursory Google search, but it looks like that's right about the price increase to go from a 2BR to a 3BR and have a home office.

Hence the "and you like the taste" qualification. I don't think OP is talking about you.

And one of the consequences of widespread remote work—as we're already seeing—is more people deciding they don't want to continue to live in a cramped, expensive city apartment.

This doesn't mean everyone will—there are certainly other benefits to living in a city besides proximity to workplace. But it is likely that, given time (and probably some common-sense changes to housing policies), this will result in less pressure for apartments, meaning that people who do remain in cities will be likely to be able to afford more space.

> And one of the consequences of widespread remote work—as we're already seeing—is more people deciding they don't want to continue to live in a cramped, expensive city apartment.

Are we seeing that?

Certainly lots of people have left SF, but the pandemic / WFH did not reverse the general trend toward urbanism. The geographic flexibility has been in people picking different cities, not in people choosing to move to rural areas en masse.

Working from anywhere with a toddler running around seems unproductive

> you are in a low cost of living area (at least relative to your income) and have a big house?

Orthogonal to WFH conversation, are there even low COL areas left in the US that aren't complete and total sh*tholes?

In my state, houses that were selling for $150-200k pre-Covid in low COL areas are now going for 350-400k, and that's not even anywhere near urban centers, it's about 50-70 miles out in more rural areas.

That's why I don't understand the insistence on RTO. It's clear from all discussions that people have different views on the topics. So why don't give people a choice? Those who want to work in the office should be free to do so, as should be the rest of us who sees no reasons to go back. In this scenario everybody is happy and more productive.

I'm all for WFH and dislike going to the office often. But it's the same argument as the parent, from the company's perspective. Once local executives taste the fruits of in-person "watch the cattle" control, which was the entirety of their careers, it's hard for them to go back to "forced worker freedom".

Yeah but the choice is clear. Most tech workers prefer remote work or at least freedom of choice.

I'd love to glimpse into the minds of the corporate exec class and understand why they are so uniformly aligned on RTO and against WFH. Is it really as simple and primal as wanting to watch the cattle or "behold my empire" or do they really believe it's better for business?

I guess I'll never know since, 1. corporate execs don't post to HN comments section and 2. even if they did they would probably not admit to a narcissistic need to bask in the buzz of an office full of their minions.

Many people who want to work from the office are mostly interested in doing so because they want to be around their coworkers. If their coworkers are remote, they won't get what they want. Similarly, remote people might not be happy at a company that allows remote work but primarily has an in-person culture.

Letting everyone do what they want is not a path towards everyone being happy. I think a better approach is for companies (or at least teams) to land somewhere on the spectrum from full in-person to full remote, and then employees can work at the place that fits them best.

I understand that point of view but I don't agree with it. I work remotely because my coworkers are in different countries. But some of them come to local offices because they like it. This is a great setup for everybody and noone is complaining.

I know anecdata doesn't count but I observed the same in various companies: yes, those who prefer to work from the office miss their colleagues, but are surrounded by like-minded people and that works better for everyone.

As long as the company is large enough for there to be a critical mass of people in a bunch of locales, I think this works great. I work for a company with < 100 people spread across like 10 time zones, and I wish it made sense for us to have some office space in my city where I could work with people sometimes, but it doesn't because there are only three of us and we don't work on the same things.

From my perspective, it feels like this post is putting the cart before the horse.

In stead of thinking: I'd like to go back to the office because our home is too small, why don't you think: I'd like to work from home so that I can afford a bigger house for less cost?

Because not everyone wants a big home or to live in the places where big homes are inexpensive.

on the flip side of this I live in a house in NYC (the outer boroughs and yes the outer boroughs are a part of the city) and have the corner of my bedroom into a full WFH station.

I am missing the kid component though.

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