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Comment by cookie_monsta | Hacker News Reader

My boss (middle management) is very staunchly opposed to more than 1 day per week of WFH. She spends about 90% of her time on video calls, so I was always confused by that until she was telling me that when she does WFH she's always distracted by other things which doesn't happen in the office.

Maybe a lot of the WFH opposition is really just managers projecting their own work ethic onto others?

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> projecting their own work ethic

Alternately, they're projecting their own home environment, which won't always be the same level of distractions/benefits across different employees life-styles/situations.

"My house is filled with screaming two-year-olds and my commute is five minutes away, so obviously office-work is superior."

When I work in the office I’m distracted by other things which don’t happen at home

This is why I like to work in the office at work from home days. It's usually just me and one other person in the entire building.

In general people struggle to consider how others' experiences might differ from their own.

Which is why it’s just as absurd to say “remote work is superior”. Just don’t try saying that to anyone here.

I support people in working how they want to work.

There is nothing in the world stupider than driving into the office to get on a video call.

I do it 5 days a week, all year round

Same. Then I email, IM and work in the cloud on my company laptop for the rest of the day...

I'm curious to know what types of interactions happen on that 90% of her time on video calls. If it's one-on-one meetings all day over video call, I can imagine why they might want to have them in the same room with someone as video calls can really drain some people (including me).

A lot of larger companies already have distributed teams though, so even if you are in an office you often can't get everyone into the same room, and you have to do a video call no matter what.

Yes, but we’re talking about one person here. She’s not speaking for all people or organisations. She’s speaking for herself and her own experience.

Yes, we're distributed with 5 locations across town. I had to go to a one hour meeting across town once which chewed up 3 hours of my day after driving and parking and whatnot was factored in. Videoconferencing makes 100% sense for our organisation.

Yeah, that doesn't sound fun. But to some people, that 3-hour trip may be a relief from a home environment they don't enjoy or frankly just grateful to see colleagues in person. I imagine individuals respond to it differently and at different times of their lives and different job roles. If I'm coding, yeah, I'd probably rather work remote. If 90% of my time is having one-on-one meetings with people, I'd probably prefer to do most of those in person, maybe some walk-and-talks.

But again, this all depends on a lot of variables. I think in the past, few people knew what remote work was and now that many of us have tasted it, there are lots of pros/cons to any remote/hybrid/office choice.

Fair point, I guess I was more trying to imagine what the day looks like for someone who has a managerial role. I imagine people coding or doing spreadsheets or designing may often prefer remote because of the increased focus (unless they have domestic distractions), whereas a manager's job seems to be a lot of conversations with people and getting a feel for the group and individual performance and dynamics.

> She spends about 90% of her time on video calls

Doing what? And I ask this not as someone who is a junior, or even mid-level, far above it.

But this legitimately seems like "make-work."

UBI would go a long way to resolving a large class of these problems.

The absurdity of driving into an office, to get on video calls is not a new absurdity or problem, but we already proved its pointless. And yet people stick to it.

Maybe they shouldn't be in charge of people, let alone working.

Remember how excited we were at the start of the pandemic? "Now we get to find out which of those meetings could have been an email" the joke went.

But now it turns out that almost every email exchange degrades into "let's get everybody together and have a quick video chat about this"

Ha ha.

I don't think UBI would help the situation as much as people being bold enough to make decisions on their own without a bunch of useless "consultation"

> Maybe a lot of the WFH opposition is really just managers projecting their own work ethic onto others?

That might be. But it more likely they are traditional managers or leaders and don't want to learn how to navigate WFH team members (i.e., work in the 21st Century). It's not as simple as just-add Zoom or just-add Slack.

Thinking WFH is going away is like saying "The Internet... It's just a fad." We've been to this rodeo before. Managers and leaders who are in denial - and unwilling to learn new teicks - aren't worthy of their current role.

My boss is opposed to any WFH but he is working 2 days from home. Only managers have the luxury of hybrid in my little world.

> she's always distracted by other things which doesn't happen in the office

Ah yes, some people will use any excuse to get away from their family/kids.

Before WFH these people were traveling to any meeting or conference they could find.

Working 90 minutes from home, each way…

I remember a coworker that would go to a closed office 5/5 days in middle the covid discouragement + ban (managed to find a way to get access from some manager) just to get away from his wife, his children are grown up (18+).

I was so full of questions those 2 years we worked in the same office but couldn't really ask without it being touchy.

I manage a team of 12. I am in favor of more WFH.

But when I am in the office, I take full advantage of face to face meetings. I take team members out for coffee to have one on ones.

Well you don't need to be on video calls if you're in person.

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