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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

It made sense starting from when the concept of an office was established until mid-2020. Has the world really changed so much in these last ~4 years that we can't even imagine going in to work 5 days a week now? That too considering every other industry besides tech is already doing it?

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WFH would have worked before Covid as well. Covid just forced the hands of most companies. So no, there hasn't been some breakthrough that has made WFH possible within recent years.

> we can't even imagine going in to work 5 days a week now

For a lot of people, yes. The reason why there is so much outrage around RTO mandates is because:

1) WFH offered a massive quality of life improvement

2) There is essentially no evidence that in office workers are more productive (or vice-versa)

When executive teams, (many of whom work remotely themselves, as often as they'd like), try to reverse the quality of life advancement that WFH offers, without an evidence backed reason for doing so, workers get angry.

It's the equivalent of a parent saying "because I said so". Except these aren't children that Jassy and others are speaking to.

> Has the world really changed so much in these last ~4 years that we can't even imagine going in to work 5 days a week now?

I think we are going further and further away from "the future".

In 1964, Arthur Clarke said that "I am perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand." and "Men will no longer commute, they will communicate." [1]

I would think that a future where people aren't limited by where they live is desirable and not commuting to office is a way to achieve this.

Covid was a way for companies to realize that many jobs don't really need physical presence in an office. And maybe we should invest in technology that makes more jobs remove so that even brain surgery could be so. But it seems like instead of Covid being the impetus for change, things are reverting, as if non-remote is the normal state of affairs.

Maybe it is the natural state, but it's a sadder world because of it.

[1]: https://fortune.com/2024/05/29/arthur-c-clarke-space-odyssey...

You have it backwards- it hadn’t made sense from the invention of the internet until 2020. I point to “teleworking” being a legitimate thing even before the internet was mainstream as evidence that the traditional office is a relic from the 40s and 50s typewriter factories.

My dad has been working from home since the 1980s. He worked for AT&T, selling telepresence products. He told his boss "how can we expect our customers to believe in these products if we don't?" And they let him work from home forever

Hilarious to watch Zoom return to office in the last two years.

WFH worked before COVID. Parts of my team were fully remote 10 years ago. I haven't been going in a full five days a week for 6 years. I got way more productive from home.

I'll never do the 5 days in the office again.

It's not some big or recent development, effective WFH has been possible since ADSL matured for many, it just took a while for that to be commonly understood.

Yup, having 1-2 days to care for your home is just that good.

Yes, it has. We spent 4 years working from home with no loss in productivity, and now we're being dragged kicking and screaming back into the office to satisfy the KPIs of some business degree loser and his fragile ego. Offices suck. A lot of people here talk about the commute, but the office itself sucks, too.

I'm really not sure what people were expecting, honestly. Of course things would always revert back to the mean.

Huh? I have friends that work in engineering, accounting, and purchasing that are all at least partially if not 100% wfh. Plenty of other industries have given up on 5 days in the office.

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