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Comment by rzz3 | Hacker News Reader

But, why offices at all? All my productivity problems are solved by just working from home.

This. I'm about to build a dev team next year, and my co-founder is kinda disappointed that I want them all completely remote. He's the old-school "let's have a big office where we can all get together" and I'm "let's not and say we did".

I can see way down the line there'll be a problem with Engineering vs The Rest because we'll be remote and they'll be in an office. But tbh there is always a problem with Engineering vs The Rest regardless.

I want my devs to be able to switch Slack off, not answer emails, go for a walk in the park, and stare at the ceiling for hours while properly thinking about what they're building. Too much code is written in haste.

may your project prosper.

You sound like my current employer. Working for them the only worrying thing I ever think about is that I don’t want this gig to end, ever.

Have you guys ever thought about the fact that there are nerds that like so socialize and hate working from home, because it gets f'ing lonely after a while? I want to see people. The corona pandamic where I worked almost 2 years from home drove me into a severe depression.

Yes, I have a theory based on this. I think that roughly 40%-60% of developers prefer remote, the remainder prefer in-office. So if you mandate in-office, roughly half of your developers will be unhappy. If you go full-remote, again, roughly half of your developers will be unhappy. So what do you do? I think you have to pick one and stick with it. Over time, you'll collect people who prefer remote or in-office. It won't be easy, but doing "hybrid" is absolutely the wrong decision, that makes no one happy.

The reason I like the office is mostly for the free food and events. I don't get much more out of my coworkers by being physically close to them. They don't like to be bugged (I don't either, usually). Maybe a little at lunch when I can pick their brains about random crap that doesn't warrant a meeting but not much.

I really believe your number is more like 80%. But yeah, the overall idea stands.

Have you ever thought about the fact many people like to work from home because it leaves more time to socialize with family and friends?

Pandemic restrictions have ended. You could eat lunch with a neighbor who hates working from home also. Or rent shared working space.

On the other hand I have no interest in socializing with my colleagues, and I'm no intravert either. I have plenty of actual friends outside of work, and the nice thing about working from home is that I can catch up with my mates during the workday while still working!

Yes? And people like you have enjoyed an office environment that by default catered to you. It's not those of us who finally found productivity in a controlled, quiet environment that lack empathy, it's you, the group that can't imagine that "normal" might not be universally healthy and that for the first time are finding themselves not the default perspective.

Well, yes. I used to have my own office, for most of my career. Then when we had to move offices there wasn't enough room for that, so now we have smaller or larger rooms with from a few to many people. In general I'm much less efficient when working like that (the only exception is when I, for specific purposes, join up with another person to do work in tandem with something. That can be highly efficient, but it's limited to just those specific cases). So that's one reason I use my home office most of the time. But it is useful to meet up with the others once in a while (and not just by Teams), so after this morning working from home I'm heading to the office for a few hours.

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