Hacker News Reader

Comment by dventimihasura | Hacker News Reader

What...are the negative aspects of WFH?

Harder communication with coworkers, less trust, more conflicts, some people find it hard to work at home and need to be in the office ( ie they do nothing at home ), harder onboarding for new joiners, people misunderstanding the rules ( no you can’t work from vacation site x in country y for tax/insurance reasons ), not feeling part of something and therefore losing interest, etc

Edit: wfh also means an office ( if you have kids at home it’s the only viable option ) now so a bigger house /flat but I won’t get the corresponding pay rise.

I’ve seen some or all of the above apply to various people. It doesn’t apply to everyone obviously, some people are perfectly happy with wfh.

I personally need a bit of both !

>Harder communication with coworkers, less trust, more conflicts, some people find it hard to work at home and need to be in the office ( ie they do nothing at home ), harder onboarding for new joiners, people misunderstanding the rules ( no you can’t work from vacation site x in country y for tax/insurance reasons ), not feeling part of something and therefore losing interest, etc

I grant that some people might experience those things, but I reject that we should expect all, most, or even many people to experience these things. I know it can't possibly be all, because I personally experience none of them. Moreover, it's easy to see counterarguments or mitigation strategies for every one of these.

Remote comes with benefits. Naturally, it also comes with costs. The same is true for onsite and hybrid as well, of course. For me, the questions are:

- What is the cost benefit comparison for these models?

- Can the costs be mitigated?

In my view, the cost benefit ratio is far more advantageous for remote and the costs can all be mitigated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com