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Comment by MicahWedemeyer | Hacker News Reader

It's kind of what I expected, but all the comments here are actually debating the Are you more productive? question, and the point of the post is that I really don't care anymore.

Try examining the other part of the equation: Are you happier? If the answer is no, then WFH probably isn't for you. But, if the answer is yes, perhaps productivity isn't so important?

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I formerly ran a large team and cared about both things for my employees: their productivity AND happiness.

Part of that is that I am a human, and part of that is practical -- namely, productivity is a long game (at least for knowledge-workers). It's not something you measure in work-units-per-hour within the confines of a single day. Same reason you can't have a death-march release cycle and ignore the plummeting "productivity" in the days/weeks/months after... or the lost productivity from employees who seek more manageable work elsewhere and need to be replaced, etc.

Your post is too one-sided and uses Adderall as a straw-man (or similarly fallacious argument). Your personal happiness as others have said isn't the only factor in an employer-employee relationship -- but that said, viewing productivity as a many-factored, nuanced thing that includes overall worker happiness (or, better put: satisfaction) is probably pretty appropriate.

I agree that being happier is important. But it's only natural that responses tend to skew towards the other side of the equation since, in the back of our minds, those of us who enjoy working at home, are almost always thinking of ways to convince management of its value in ways that can't be directly measured. So we're trying to figure out a way to pull "happiness" into the equation in a way that works for management. . .since they don't care if we're happy or not unless it affects the bottom line.

In Silicon Valley, companies spend a fortune on "happiness" - catered lunches, employee off-sites, release parties, snacks and sodas and beer, interior decorating and office design, pool tables and ping pong, expensive hardware, gym memberships, etc.

It might be cheaper to just let people be at home!

Companies want happy employees who work, not happy employees who are doing their laundry.

They seem to want happy employees who are playing ping-pong more than either of those.

That depends on your situation surely - if you're working for yourself, awesome, you get to make those decisions. If your employer decides that they don't want people working from home because they're less productive, then that's their call.

Productivity isn't as important as happiness once you have the skills to back up the demand for working from home. If you are valuable enough, you can demand that type of control. If you aren't, then whether or not you are happier doesn't matter.

Things like working from home are great, but not something you are entitled to. You have to provide the value to justify it.

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