Bosses won’t like it but WFH is a happier way to work | Hacker News Reader

Bosses won’t like it but WFH is a happier way to work

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75 pointspg_123426 comments

Can't make a man understand something that his salary depends on him not understanding, or however the saying goes. There's a considerable number (not all - calm down, managers) of individuals in the workforce whose entire value proposition is wrangling 'lazy ICs'. Remote work requires trust that your ICs aren't lazy. Where do those individuals then fit in, in the remote world, if your ICs are grown-ups doing their jobs? My money is on those individuals simply fighting to maintain the status quo and keeping bums in seats. Hard to see making 'a better society' even registering in their minds.

Nearly every study has shown a productivity increase across the board with WFH.

Well, if we continue to run the climate into the ground despite The Studies, threatening actual human life, I have little hope for Middle Manager Peter changing his mind on WFH.

I don't understand why "big tech" is forcing tech workers to go back. Have they specified the reasons? Perhaps at bigger companies, it is easier to "hide" and not be productive, while working from home? Or is it because, if for some team members remote work is not productive (e.g. due to the surrounding environment), then it is better for the whole team to be co-located? Honest question, because I really can't say. For the past 8+ years, I've now worked at two fully-remote companies and found it to be a perfect fit for me personally.

1. Commercial real estate.

2. The executives are also landlords. Requiring WFO means an increase in the rental costs.

At least in my experience, communication has gone down the drain. We have an office which some people chose to use and some chose to WFH. But I find myself basically only working with the other people in office because getting any response or collaboration from the WFH crowd is like pulling teeth.

When I need to really get stuff done like merge critical changes now, in office is massively faster because you can just look around and find someone free to review your PR as soon as possible rather than waiting 4 hours for the remote crowd to get to it.

I've worked remotely for most of my career, both as an IC and an EM, and across the board if it took someone 4 hours to respond to a crisis during their normal working hours it would be viewed as a serious failing. Of course if your company chooses to let remote employees get away with murder the end result will be remote employees getting away with murder! If you needed someone who was working in office and they were missing for four hours you obviously wouldn't just accept that as the way things are.

Sure, partially it's a failing of management. But all the management is WFH and unresponsive as well. So it's easier for me to just ignore whatever team I'm in and work with the people sitting around so I can actually get stuff done.

Fair play, I imagine I'd do the same in your situation, sorry to hear your management is asleep at the wheel -- I'm a big advocate of WFH but it does require people (especially managers) to change how they work and communicate in order to work successfully.

WFH is a two way street. Communication is key. It doesn't necessarily have to be synchronous, but most WFH companies are built around synchronous Slack communications. But whether synchronous or asynchronous, communication has to be thorough and responsive.

How do you coworkers expect to get a promotion and/or survive the next round of layoffs? Responding on Slack is the new "butts in seats" for bad managers, and good managers notice good communication.

If you're the type of guy that is always helping out your colleagues, that's behaviour that was often counter-productive. It too often wasn't noticed, and didn't show up appropriately on your 6 month review. But when you do it on Slack, it's noticed, or at least is more likely to be.

Allegedly, creativity has gone down because of the lack of face to face interaction.

In other words: the RTO crowd has settled on a justification that is conveniently very difficult to measure.

Similarly, many schools are giving children more autonomy in learning, instead of training them for lives of desk-bound obedience.

This was one of the biggest disappointments of the pandemic. Teachers aren't ready to give up on their old operating models. The flipped classroom, despite the hype in the 2010s didn't really shine.

> Americans have higher average incomes than almost all Europeans, but they also emit far more CO₂ per capita, don’t have guaranteed paid vacations and live seven years less than Spaniards.

And have no job security, and have to pay for their own healthcare, and childcare is thousands of dollars a month. Anything else that can be added?

Higher probability to die from gunshot wounds and traffic accidents(anything out of car a multipke of that)

I have an employee that has to be at work at the office. Otherwise he gets depressed due to lack of human interaction.

Like me, he's an introvert. But I force him to go to the office and I go to just to keep him alive.

I'm not having the easiest return to office. I'm trying to see the positives in it because I want to provide value and be a team player.

But I have 2/9ths the horizontal pixels at work, and have to ignore five other people having unrelated conversations while I am paid to write code. I'm a little tired from adding the long commute back in but that's completely on me to figure out.

I'm genuinely worried my performance stats are going to take a hit that gets me into some trouble. I have a lot of adjustments to figure out.

I know it's always easier said than done, but if you are that much happier and more productive working from home why aren't you looking for a new WFH job?

Rory Sutherland repeatedly likes to point out that whilst businesses may look dimly upon WFH, many of them would and should be keen for their customers to have it (and indeed more public holidays as far as Americans are concerned), as it would mean more leisure time and time for discretionary spending, and that it follows that it is in their own interests to extend such allowances for their own employees accordingly.

He cites Henry Ford's two day weekend as justification, amongst other things, and notes how it was intended to provide employees with enough free time to justify owning an automobile*

*https://hankeringforhistory.com/history-weekend/

Well this opens some crazy second order consequences which I have noticed in my life. I am probably spending 10-15% more (forget inflation) with wfh and the more flexible hours. Where does this come from? Higher pay ultimately? A reduction in spending on other things?

Over the long term everything readjusts

The big question in your case is how you commute to work. Did you drive to work? If so, how far is work?

For the majority of people who have the privilege of WFH, they drove to work with an average commute time of 40-60 minutes. If you account for fuel and commute costs, it’ll either even out or you will save money and time by not having to commute and purchase lunch.

Personally I save money in office because the electricity costs for heating/cooling are greater than the train ticket.

Unfortunately, most people don’t have the luxury of using public transportation. Hence, the vast majority of people do not save money going to the office.

In my case, fuel costs approximately $200 or more a month for just commuting to the office. Our HVAC costs stayed the same working from home, even with a smart thermostat.

After saving commuting costs and dramatically reducing your lunch costs? I am saving easily $10 a day on the commute and about the same on lunch. That’s $4k/year post-tax and I had a short (albeit driving) commute.

I was wondering the day, how did we settle on 8/8/8 where the 8 hours of work are net, but the other two are gross?

Also, I need 9 hours of sleep.

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