The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/career-costs-working-from-home/615472/

by RickJWagner • 6 years ago

157 147 6 years ago

frompdx5• 6 years ago

This article appears in the October 2020 print edition with the headline “A Cubicle Never Looked So Good.”

To be honest, I've never really had a cubicle. Usually just a desk in a bullpin type arrangement. No privacy. Distractions galore. The sound of co-workers flushing the toilets in the restrooms nearby. Nothing to reflect fondly upon in my opinion.

If I had wanted or needed a new job, completely changing careers would probably have been easier than getting another gig in my field with the experience I’d accrued at home.

No doubt my experience is different doing technical work, but I have never relied on my co-workers to line up my next position. I flip the switch on linkedin to let recruiters know I'm looking and call or email the recruiters I have worked with in the past. Sometimes an employer might ask for a reference. I suppose I do have a short list of those.

“Outside of immediate family, people’s co-workers become their most consistent opportunity for social interaction,” Peditto told me. “What happens when you lose that is one of my greater concerns.”

My social interactions really do revolve around my family and long time friends. It's not a large group, but I'm not a social butterfly either. I have a hard enough time keeping up with those social interactions. Who knows, maybe I was born for remote work.

Overall this feels like yet another hit piece against remote work with a lot of anecdotes and not much else. Here I am arguing against it with my own anecdotes. I really don't understand why these keep cropping up. Are commercial real-estate conglomerates paying for these?

Personally, I am happier than I have ever been working remotely. I don't struggle to keep a routine or maintain separation between my work life and my home life. I don't feel starved for social interaction either. I would hate to see the sentiments these articles convey ruin something that has been very positive for myself and my partner (and my dog).

Mountain_Skies2• 6 years ago

The social aspect is interesting because the pandemic induced remote work has happened at the same time as many people's non-work socialization has also been taken away. Whenever people start going back to the office, they may try to use socialization there to make up for the socialization that has been taken away from them due to restrictions on public gatherings. I've been doing remote work for three years, so I'm used to not socializing with coworkers in an office context, but the general restrictions on the public as a whole has been a bit rough. I have no desire to go back to working onsite in an office but could be tempted back in if it were the only way to have some level of socialization again. My guess is that offices probably won't become the primary white collar work location again until well after the restrictions on public gatherings have been relaxed so maybe going to the office to regain socialization won't be necessary (knock on wood).

benrbray6• 6 years ago

Overall this feels like yet another hit piece against remote work...I really don't understand why these keep cropping up. Are commercial real-estate conglomerates paying for these?

I appreciate the perspective you shared in the rest of your comment, but was this bit really necessary? Just because someone has had a different experience than you doesn't mean that they're a corporate shill paid to manufacture dissent.

frompdx5• 6 years ago

I do think it is necessary. It's one thing to share your experience about remote work as the author does. It's something entirely different to interleave it with with vague concerns of economic hardship for younger people or stunted career growth for women. What is the purpose of this?

In my mind I imagine a boardroom full of Don Draper types sipping scotch and smoking cigarettes fretting over the decline in office leasing revenue while Draper spins a brilliant web of fiction. "We'll tell them that it is bad for the careers of women and we'll make them miss the smell of their co-worker's day old spaghetti as it spins on the microwave turntable. We'll even make them long for the awkward interactions in the hallway while they go down a level to the inconveniently placed restroom on the floor below. They'll eat it up."

The anti-remote work hit-piece aspect is really my point. To me these articles feel like some kind of thinly veiled attempt to make people believe they missed working in the office. Maybe even make people fear for their futures if they don't work in an office. Maybe this isn't the case and isn't what the author intended, but that is how it reads to me.

slavapestov3• 6 years ago

My social interactions really do revolve around my family and long time friends. It's not a large group, but I'm not a social butterfly either. I have a hard enough time keeping up with those social interactions. Who knows, maybe I was born for remote work.
Overall this feels like yet another hit piece against remote work with a lot of anecdotes and not much else.

I think you've answered your question there. It is an unfortunate aspect of modern society that for many people, work is their only opportunity to socialize with other humans (other than trivial interactions with the cashier at the grocery store, and so on).

visarga2• 6 years ago

I really don't understand why these keep cropping up.

But you gave the answer yourself - you're different, other people are unlike you:

Who knows, maybe I was born for remote work.

Me too, but my wife suffers from it, she dreams about the day when we're going to return to the office. I'm just starting to miss the office, it's been easier on me.

Mountain_Skies2• 6 years ago

Best advice I can give is to have a dedicated space from which to work. This will probably mean you need more space in your home than you did when you went to an office each day. This might also mean that certain real estate situations are no longer viable or are at least less desirable than they used to be. Having roommate or living in a small crowded space can be detrimental to remote work. Leaving a city center with high cost per sq ft for a less dense residential area might be the trade off you have to make in order for remote work to work for you and your employer long term.

For me it meant getting a house and setting aside a specific bedroom to be an office. I do use it for hobby activities but those uses are easily put away at the start of the work day. It's not used as a spare bedroom for visitors.

There are also certain security issues that employees and employers are going to need to come to an understanding on now that remote work is getting more common. Some discussions should not be able to be overheard by spouses, roommates, friends, or if your walls are thin enough, neighbors. So far there seems to be very little discussion around the security side of things, likely because everyone knows for most of those suddenly thrust into remote work, there's only a limited amount they can do about it right now.

supernova87a• 6 years ago

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization).

-- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior person who takes an interest in your idea?

-- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.

-- For the middle manager who can coast along and not need to move greatly in his/her career, WFH might be great.

-- For the developer who works by tickets on very concrete things and this is nothing new, WFH might be great.

-- For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be terrible.

There's a huge variability in what WFH means, depending on what you want from the situation.

For some people, remote working is really not good.

And that's aside from the point that, when everyone is remote, you're also competing with the world who is also remote. Jobs and job qualifications (and competition) may change...

chadash2• 6 years ago

And that's aside from the point that, when everyone is remote, you're also competing with the world who is also remote.

Yup... once everyone is remote anyway, won't take too long for some manager to decide to offshore work to cheaper countries. Even if that doesn't happen to you, if it happens to enough people elsewhere it'll bring salaries down for everyone.

WalterBright• 6 years ago

The D community is all over the world. We're used to that!

sJ646U9k6c6gME9• 6 years ago

Offshoring is not a new concept, and everyone knows it doesn’t work. How come offshoring hasn’t eaten my lunch yet?

rbg246• 6 years ago

They have had that option for twenty years already.

It hasn't happened because cultural fit is super important to a business if it wants to create a quality product.

Look at the areas where the services have been outsourced to overseas, it's support and maintenance of products and services, generally post-sales support where they don't care about the quality of the service or it's a company with a natural monopoly and they care more about saving money than providing a good service.

Having a hand picked team with unique interlocking skills is what creates a quality product, you can't do that if you are outsourcing entire teams overseas, you have no control on who you are hiring and quality.

Or at the least these problems are super difficult to overcome and probably the cost to overcome them is too much for anything less than a global company to get any savings out of doing.

PS I've totally generalised to make a point, there are 1000s of exceptions I am sure.

ashtonkem2• 6 years ago

I disagree. Time zone, communication, and cultural familiarity are still factors.

Practically speaking if you’re an American dev, your biggest competition isn’t someone from Ukraine or India, but rather a fellow American that’s moved to Iowa.

jankotek3• 6 years ago

》For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.

And working at office with 1 hour drive home, makes those parenting obligations somehow easier?

ianhowson• 6 years ago

Yes.

- Small children don't really understand "mummy's working, talk to me instead." Interruptions are death to productivity. Children can't interrupt you if you're not present.

- Most daycares are closed or at reduced capacity.

- Nanny services are harder to find and come with risks.

- Time at the office is time resting from the kids, and time at home is resting from the office. If it's all one place, there is no rest.

My wife and I are finding it easier to alternate childcare instead of try to do everything at once, and being out of the home during the work time gives rest and focus.

chadash2• 6 years ago

As a parent, yes. I prefer an office because there are fewer distractions. If you hear your kid laughing outside your office, it's hard not to want to take a look. Plus, my commute is me time, where i get to listen to podcasts/audiobooks and relax.

Sure, if my commute were especially long, I might say otherwise, but that's a different discussion.

sokoloff• 6 years ago

WFH parenting is made much harder with daycare workers and school teachers now WFH.

aspaceman• 6 years ago

Parenting is weird. Haven’t you ever seen the parent whose kid goes quiet, and then they jump up in a panic? They know their kid is up to something horrible if they’re quiet now....

There’s lots of thoughts like that and plenty to worry about as a parent. It’s more than just “Shut up Johnny!”

slavapestov3• 6 years ago

-- For the developer who works by tickets on very concrete things and this is nothing new, WFH might be great.

You're right, everyone who doesn't live in San Francisco is just mindlessly churning through tickets all day.

wutbrodo• 6 years ago

I can't even imagine how huge a chip on your shoulder you must need to interpret the parent comment so ludicrously.

Cyphase• 6 years ago

The commenter didn't say anything about where developers live. A very small percentage of the world's software developers live in San Francisco / Silicon Valley, and a very small percentage of the ones who don't are working, remotely or otherwise, for companies based in those areas.

Also, they didn't say mindlessly churning through tickets, they said working on concrete tickets.

mumblemumble• 6 years ago

-- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50%

Only up by 50%? That's impressive.

ericmcer• 6 years ago

I try to fight my primal instincts of jealousy, etc. but it really feels like a lot of the 'butts in chairs' type people like human resources, various managers, etc. have slowly cut back to basically responding to emails/messages and maybe working a few hours a week. If that is your definition of WFH being great than it is definitely going great for them.

As a dev it has kinda shredded my desire to do large scale unpredictable projects and made me pick up predictable boilerplate type work. One is easy to demonstrate progress on, the other is more abstract. This is also slowly eroding my passion for engineering so I may need a rebalancing.

ci5er3• 6 years ago

If so: Get promoted.

I love it, because it has cut my commute down 10 hours/week and my dedicated meeting time 10 hours/week. That's 20 hours. Now I can dedicate 5 hours of that to taking walks or naps or cooking healthy food. 5~10 hours of that for more work. And 5 hours for the company. Generally a win for everyone, I think.

dvtrn2• 6 years ago

It’s coincidental to my section of the universe you mention what you did in the first paragraph:

You are the third person this week I’ve heard make some commentary to that effect or another: “anyone else feel like WFH has made work easier for everyone else BUT engineering? My tickets haven’t slowed down an iota yet support and product queues are lower than I’ve ever seen them on the (Trello) board”

codygman• 6 years ago

As a dev it has kinda shredded my desire to do large scale unpredictable projects

I understand the anxiety that drives this and have found the best approach to be bringing that up to my manager, verifying those types of contributions are still welcome, why you think they are important for the business, and your desire to make sure your keeping up with "core functions".

I assume those "boilerplate type" tasks communicate their business value outwardly much better and are known quantities, but do little for your development.

slykar3• 6 years ago

For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be terrible.

Working remotely for a small company with a few people from around the world and it's going fine. We are in contact when we have to be. I can cut distractions when I need to. No open space office bulshit.

I was raised on IM. I'm fine communicating like this. If I need to talk I can always call someone.

In any case, you need a space to work. If you WFH you should have a space for work. I strongly believe that employers should pay you more so that you can afford an additional room. This should not be a cost cut for the employers. They should just pay you instead of paying the insane office rent.

WFH is simply different from working at an office. It will be hard for some people to learn a new way, but this major change could even redesign our cities.

konjin• 6 years ago

They should just pay you instead of paying the insane office rent.

Or pay the shareholders instead. Or the CEO. Or ... you are a cost center for your company. Why would they pay you more than the minimum anyone than they would for any other cost center? That said you should negotiate for an extra room as a part of doing business.

I was raised on IM. I'm fine communicating like this. If I need to talk I can always call someone.

I finally got emacs connected to the corporate email server. My productivity went up 100% overnight. I'm debating setting it up for slack.

RandoHolmes5• 6 years ago

I think WFH is particularly difficult for young people, not because they don't have access to seniors (or any other such drivel), but because they often don't have the discipline necessary for it.

For example, I've been doing freelance work for well over 10 years now and I eventually started insisting on having an extra office with a strict policy of the room is for work only (even if not paying work). The thing is, a lot of people will recommend things like dressing up as if you're going into work, taking a walk around the block as a transition, and so forth. But for me I can literally walk into that room completely naked straight from bed and have no issues.

But the thing is, what works for me doesn't work for you (and vice versa). But I've had over 10 years to figure out what works for me, young people haven't.

That's where their challenge is at, not in trying to learn from mentors, which can still happen even remote.

And some people just can't do it because they don't have the discipline and never will. Those people will fail, but that's on them.

AdrianB15• 6 years ago

I was raised on IM. I'm fine communicating like this. If I need to talk I can always call someone.

It is not about you being comfortable with IM, it is about doing an A/B comparison of the 2 options. You don't know what you don't know, if you don't compare with being in the office then "being fine" does not mean "it's better", it can be worse and you don't know it.

I am working from home a lot for ~ 12 years, I still go to the office from time to time not because I have to, but because it is good to. Those days are a complete waste of time in terms of productivity, sometimes I don't open my laptop the whole day, but they are priceless for other reasons; I talk to people all day long, the kind of discussions you don't plan and send invites with an agenda upfront.

Shivetya• 6 years ago

and here I find the fact I no longer have the stress of traffic to offset most of my concerns plus it really is beneficial to my wallet.

So yeah, there are pros and cons but the parenting one is not truly fair in that the arbitrary handling of schools across this country is maddening in its own right. people who tend to be good at managing their own time are usually good at dealing with the children being around.

bluedino2• 6 years ago

The small company CEO is a big one. Motivating people remotely is tough

paulryanrogers• 6 years ago

- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.

This is not only WFH. I've done WFH before the pandemic and it was fine. Daycare and nannies are usually an option in normal circumstances.

This seems like pandemic-from-home to me.

pdfernhout• 6 years ago

Agreed on pandemic-from-home making things hard for parents suddenly trying to work from home and homeschool at the same time. And here is another aspect the article author may not be aware of: "How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult" https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friends... "Our ability to form and maintain friendships is shaped in crucial ways by the physical spaces in which we live. "Land use," as it's rather aridly known, shapes behavior and sociality. And in America we have settled on patterns of land use that might as well have been designed to prevent spontaneous encounters, the kind out of which rich social ties are built."

ashtonkem2• 6 years ago

For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be terrible.

I’d argue that this not working is a good thing. “Force of personality” isn’t a scalable thing, it tends to inexorably tie a company to the failings of one person, and easily transitions into a cult of personality.

visarga2• 6 years ago

Another thing that got wiped out is the distinction between companies that have nice offices and those that don't. Some companies invested a lot in the workspace and now they are back on the same line with everyone else.

hkt3• 6 years ago

I'm a working parent and I don't want to go back. The hideousness of commuting has been brought home to me, all the time I spend away from my kid shown up for what it is: wasted. If I have to quit and find permanent remote work somewhere, I will.

Ultimately I don't feel responsible for the careers of the juniors, and feel they're being used as an excuse - the main thing about the cities is it's possible to meet people you want to meet and do anything you want to do. This includes tech groups, which provide social and professional opportunities. I've been to plenty myself, and wonder if it couldn't be the mainstay of progression and networking now.

hindsightbias• 6 years ago

You’re never going to find your next leader on slack.

Young organizations are going to tend towards collapse while most old organizations are paralyzed but can coast longer on the inertia of pre-existing structures.

chewz2• 6 years ago

-- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.

Why have kids if spending time with them is such a burden?

TeMPOraL3• 6 years ago

Because kids are a long-term investments in happiness. Also, they're not that big of a burden when you have access to institutions such as grandparents, babysitters, daycare, kindergarten and schools. All of which got shut down due to pandemic.

civilized• 6 years ago

People really don't seem to think the working parent thing through. Unless there is a stay-at-home parent, commuting to an office does nothing to eliminate childcare-related disruptions of your work time. It just makes you completely dependent on institutional child care, regardless of the pandemic related risks to your family.

And what kind of lame company culture only allows the proles to come into contact with Very Important Senior Team Members via "fortuitous" in-person collisions? For God's sake, just Slack them.

IME in-person meetings are so overrated. They always end up at "yeah we should totally do these things" and nothing actually happens.

Honestly people, there is nothing you can do in an office culture that you can't do equally well in a remote culture, if you take the time to adapt. But the people who don't understand or care how to adapt will continue to propagate their urban legends about the unique magic of fortuitous shoulder taps, hallway collisions and lunch meetings. Whatever.

golergka• 6 years ago

Oh, and for a senior developer from a eastern europe with excellent english, communication skills and previous remote experience, this is a godsend.

quxpar• 6 years ago

Currently subletting an apartment with an eat-in kitchen and two offices. Incredibly opulent by Brooklyn standards, but it's utterly essential for both me and my partner to have isolated space to work in. The kitchen is a nice bonus, because we can have coffee breaks together.

barbecue_sauce• 6 years ago

No bedrooms?

pelasaco2• 6 years ago

I'm doing home-office since 2013 and I'm doing fine. Have my surf and social life in my routine. Work focused, produce more and spend less time trying to get stuff done. Cook daily is hard but sometimes a joy and a must if you want to leave healthy. I would never come back to a 5 days in the office routine. Never.

bluntfang• 6 years ago

Cook daily is hard but sometimes a joy and a must if you want to leave healthy.

Hit this on the head. Since I've started working remotely, ~1 year before the pandemic, I've really seen my diet improve. I eat clean. Fresh vegetables and grains are much cheaper than food truck/restaurants. I do put in hours though, but I haven't timed it. I usually can pull off cooking during my lunch break or during the 2-3 monthly all staff meetings I have where I don't do any talking.

What really baffles me about all of this is how full the fast food drive thrus are when I go about on errands.

pelasaco2• 6 years ago

i eat much more vegetables and and fruits and much less meat than before. Brew your own coffee (BYOC) instead of the enterprise machine and the option to seat outside while reading some paper or thinking about your code is priceless.

redisman5• 6 years ago

I've done 5 years, with about a year of half-office-half-home. You readjust and I think it would be really hard to fit in the commute into my day now. With covid I'm sometimes thinking it would be nice to go in for a day but that is probably just a general desire to do something outside of the safe routine.

benrbray6• 6 years ago

As a recent graduate with an overseas job offer who has been left with no choice but to work remotely until Japan re-opens its borders to foreign workers, this really hits home.

My student apartment is not equipped for this lifestyle. I do not have a home office in a sprawling estate in the suburbs on several acres of property where I can enjoy the sounds of nature. I live in a small apartment on a busy street surrounded by highways and golf courses who don't let plebs like me wander around inside.

When I'm at home, I just feel this anxiety about working that just never subsides. I feel much more relaxed when I'm able to be outside, but the nearest public green space is campus, which I avoid as much as possible now that school is in session. The nearest park is a thirty minute drive, but I have to check the air traffic before leaving due to a nearby airport.

At home, work seems to never end, especially with the 13-hour time difference that necessitates 10:30pm meetings twice a week. On one hand, I really enjoy this rare occasion to talk to my co-workers, but on the other hand, I can't shut off my work brain until after the meeting is over. On these days I end up going to sleep at 3 or 4am, adding to the cycle of stress and sleep deprivation.

I figured this would last one, maybe two months at the most. But now it's been four months since I started remote work and six months since I accepted the initial offer. There's no word about Japan issuing new work visas any time soon.

I want my life to begin.

downrightmike• 6 years ago

You need to track your time and limit all that you put in. I use a spreadsheet that I put the times I start, take lunch, and then it calculates when I need to stop. So if I take a 37 minute lunch, I can set a timer on my phone to go off and remind me. I've also setup a automatic timer to switch on a lamp that starts at roughly an hour before I need to log on and cuts out at lunch. After lunch I turn it back on util I'm off. I only go into work mode with that light on. Simple but effective. Then you have to make other things worth doing, like I'd rather throw a ball for my dog than keep working. Or a hobby that gets you away from the PC, knitting would work and easy to get started.

VLM2• 6 years ago

If you're a 30 minute drive away from a park it must be extremely urban and therefore expensive. It might be cheaper to move somewhere suburban or go completely nomadic. You may not get a chance to see the Grand Canyon or other national parks anytime soon if you're moving to Japan, so now might be a very good time.

Google searches for mountain view CA apartment rents as an example of hyper dense urban life far from green areas seem to indicate $2K to $6K/month is quite reasonable. Similar google searches for rural Wisconsin cabins indicate a thousand bucks per week will get a cabin on a lake in the woods with a pontoon boat, wet bar, and hot tub. You don't have to worry about your schedule if your closest neighbor is a quarter mile away. Internet might or might not be a problem.

The problem with spending a couple months at some New Orleans bed and breakfasts is you'd be close enough to be reminded everything is shut down, and noise level. Might be easier to stick with rural retreats and adventures.

The united states lighthouse association website lists rentable lighthouses if you really want to get away from it all. Again, internet via satellite may or may not be a problem. The entire lighthouse on Charity Island in Michigan can be rented for not too much more than a Mountain View apartment.

You could do a very small house boat on a lake for $4K to $6K per month off season. There is no shortage of houseboat rentals and lakes and parks to visit. Could try the mississippi river...

In all fairness I did spend yesterday in a park shelter at a county park with excellent wireless working away in 70 degree breezes, but there are many days when it rains or its 100 or 0.

ci5er3• 6 years ago

You are very (very!) generous with this. Tokyo ain't CA (for example, I can't imagine he would want to drive anywhere for a good while). There are more forgiving environments (and processes!), but it sounds as if he's going to have to spend some time on the ground to figure that out. It can be a weird place for six-or-so months.

MrMorden• 6 years ago

An urban location won't be more then ten minutes away from a park by foot. A 30 minute drive means exurbia.

opportune• 6 years ago

I started feeling the same way. The only thing that made me feel better was caring less about my performance at my current job. Once I accepted getting one rating or so lower than I wanted, it was very easy for me to stop thinking about work or working after 5PM. This might be hard since you just started your first job after college and, if you’re like me and most new graduates I’ve run into, are eager to please and succeed.

But it helps to take a step back from work emotionally sometimes. A typical career is 40 years and as long as you aren’t extremely lazy (which is like working 10hr/week, not just 40 or even 35) or rude you’ll do fine in your first job. Your real life isn’t waiting to start, it’s ticking along right now.

cvhashim• 6 years ago

Nice what are you doing out there in Japan. I’ve had interest in just packing up my life and moving off to a foreign country but I’m unsure how to find a job abroad (currently in the US). I’ve thought about starting a consulting shop and doing remote gigs.

AdrianB15• 6 years ago

If you want your life to begin, give it a kick start by moving out of the city to a larger place in the suburbs where the Internet is still good, but the space is cheaper and you can set up properly to work from home.

scarface744• 6 years ago

This may be a moot point post Covid, but if I were young and single, the burbs would be depressing. A lot of old married couples with kids - like me.

mox001• 6 years ago

“The stubborn human desire to stare at one’s own face” (on Zoom)

So others do that too?

slavapestov3• 6 years ago

I think people who are opposed to remote work should be honest about what they really want. They're advocating for all tech jobs to be concentrated in a handful of cities (SF, NYC, Seattle), all of which suffer from a housing shortage.

snazz• 6 years ago

You can dislike WFH while also disliking centralization in a few cities with housing shortages. They’re not mutually exclusive.

throwaway021331• 6 years ago

Being born in SF or in some african village is the biggest predictor of wealth.

This makes borders the most impactful form of discrimination.

Of course a lot of people in wealthy countries are not so happy with remote work (but offshoring cobalt mining is ok)

redisman5• 6 years ago

Remote wasn't that rare in Seattle at least even before covid.

hevelvarik• 6 years ago

I love everything about WFH save for that I get far less exercise not making my daily MTA

analog31• 6 years ago

I've biked to work every day for more than a decade. When I started WFH, I read a comment online about doing a "fake commute." So, I put myself on a schedule for I go for a long brisk walk every morning before my regular work day.

cableshaft3• 6 years ago

This is a good way to think about it. I should start doing this. I keep meaning to go on morning walks and making excuses on how I can't do it today, but maybe if I think of it as a commute, it'll work.

pritovido• 6 years ago

As a long term worker from home I feel a sense of victimhood that floods all the article.

I understand that most people are working for a company so others tell her what to do after school when they also train you what to do and you are micromanaged all the time.

The article portrays that you need your boss to create your social circle for you.

People do not see that as the enormous opportunity that it is.

For example, before I worked remote I used to spend two hours every day commuting. I risked my life on the road with truck drivers and other carriers that were always late, stressed and dangerous. That also required my own money in gas and car repairs, expensive clothing...

Most people at the office were not my friends, they were coworkers, and because I spent so much time there I had no time for seeing my real friends and family. I was also exhausted all the time, because I did not sleep enough.

Working remote is amazing for me now(it was tough at first) and it could be for a lot of people is only they learn to grasp the opportunity.

Take control of your own life, you will have to go against the training of the school days that is pervasive, school took years of your live. It will take you years to undo this training. Make your own group of friends, lovers. Sleep and eat well. Exercise. Invest on your skills.

The article portrays young people as victims, and it is quite the opposite, they are the ones that can adapt and learn and grow.

I went to Russia and most old people had a hard time working in a capitalist society because they grew up in a State that did everything for them, so as young people they did not developed the skills to make things on their own. If you actually tried , you were strongly punished.

But young people are adaptable. When I was young and started working remotely very few people did, so I had to learn on the go. Today it is much better and easier.

Be proactive, refuse being a victim, if you have problems with working remote create a club, a mail list or whatever for other people in your same situation. Learn from people that have made it.

But don't be a victim. We will be having covid for at least 5 to 6 months more in the north Hemisphere. You can spend that time doing something about it, learning and improving your skills or just complain all the time.

After everything goes back to normal, most people will not do remote work 100%, but odds are they will do 30%, 40, or 50%, and their live will improve as a result if you have gotten the skills.

brsg• 6 years ago

People are "allowed" to be frustrated with the situation, and I think it's a little dismissive to accuse them of having "victimhood".

It's perfectly reasonable to miss direct interactions with coworkers, and there's nothing wrong with being friends with your coworkers. Video chats really aren't comparable for most people.

It's perfectly reasonable to be frustrated that you're stuck in a crowded apartment with roommates and no office space. The WFH change happened virtually overnight for many people.

It's perfectly reasonable to be fearful that a junior contributor's career may stall during this. Most companies' cultures weren't built around this system, so it's pretty rational to expect companies to struggle recognizing junior employees.

Obviously people can and will adjust, but criticizing an imperfect system is the only way it will improve - it's not a sign of weakness.

cableshaft3• 6 years ago

People who think their social interactions have suffered since WFH during the pandemic, it's not because of WFH, it's because of the pandemic.

Once we are past the pandemic you can still work from home and 1) schedule periodic lunches or in-person meetings with coworkers that live in the area, and 2) go out and make friends with other people outside of work, possibly people you would get along with better and want to spend more time with anyway

I know you can, because I was already working from home for two years before the pandemic, and that's what I did. You can't do those two things right now, but that's a pandemic-specific thing, not an inherent fault of WFH.

susiecambria• 6 years ago

I'm working on a distance learning project at the moment. . . analyzing focus group results. We're talking with parents, teachers, and adult/alternative learners.

Just finished a parent transcript today. What came through loud and clear is that school from home is wicked hard for all kinds of people and that combining WFH and school from home is even more wicked hard. Parents are struggling with their kids' academic content (pre-calc? algebra?!). Kids are struggling with less structure. Everyone is struggling with limited bandwidth (literally and figuratively) and learning/working styles and the need for socialization are colliding in an unfortunate, constant way. For many, not all.

Looking forward to reviewing all the transcripts and compiling the findings. But if parents are any indication, it's gonna be a rough fall.

*Edit: Yes, I'm from New England. (wicked)

Jedd• 6 years ago

Like almost every other behaviour or trait we want to use to characterise (or worse, categorise) humans -- it's a spectrum.

There's certainly some people near either extreme -- from those whose mood, productivity, health plummets when away from a social/work environment, to those who could happily go weeks or months with minimal human interaction, and whose productivity soars when they set their own schedules and can control & minimise interactions and interruptions.

Apart from a tacit acknowledgement that people are not required to be in an office 5 days a week, I am hopeful that this pandemic will lead more workplaces to embrace and accommodate that spectrum, facilitating environments and conditions that will better suit - well, ideally everyone, but I'll take 'more people than before'.

hombre_fatal• 6 years ago

WFH has some obvious trade-offs. But I'm not particularly sympathetic to all of them when office work has been the only choice for almost everyone.

Some of the downsides of WFH that the article points out, like how our office coworkers incidentally become our social life (and now we don't have them), are also symptoms of larger issues that I don't think work should be tasked to solve. The social isolation of the youth (before Covid) and the dependency on an office for many people to make friends were already pretty depressing parts of our society.

But so was having to go to work to do a job that could be done anywhere. Like everyone always talks about wanting to retire so they can finally hang out on the beach year round, but WFH is what lets you do that. It doesn't need to be a distant dream anymore for when you're old. I get that people were suddenly tossed into the deep end of WFH due to Covid instead of given a choice, and that many people aren't cut out for it.

But this kind of coverage also goes too far, I think, in a world where we were always forced to go to an office. I was looking for a job last year, and I had to search high and low for a remote job. For example, almost all the job posts on HN want you to come into an office. I was unsuccessful finding remote work in my more traditional search and fortunately found a good remote job through my social circle.

Office jobs have a certain stability and, even more important, familiarity. But I think that familiarity can be confused with an assumption that it's the way things should be.

For example, I agree that a future where most jobs are WFH will have to consider a solution for helping us find a productive way to work (like giving us a private office in a coworking space or letting us choose a stipend to set up a home office). But also consider how depressing it is to clutch on to office work because it gives you an escape from your children—it's really not a quality of the office work itself that you're after, but somewhat of an incidental upside that can (and should) be replicated in a culture of WFH.

What I mean to say is that I see a lot of office-work praise for what's actually incidental advantages of office-work (that should definitely be replicated outside of office-work), and it would be a damn shame if we as a society use those incidental benefits to damn WFH and regress back to the more or less office-work-only society from which we came.

I hope we find a good 50/50 middle ground where people have a choice.

redisman5• 6 years ago

My problem always was, hanging out with people from work - we always ended up talking about work during the evening. Sometimes cathartic but work also kind of creeps more and more into your free time.

cableshaft3• 6 years ago

Yeah, I had been working from home the past two years before the pandemic, and I was sticking with this job longer than I wanted to because it was near impossible to find a new remote job.

The only reason my job became remote work in the first place is because the parent corporation was trying to cut costs everywhere and reducing its real estate footprint and closed our office.

Most of the offices they closed they just laid everyone off, but we had enough business that didn't transfer well to other departments that they let us keep working remotely.

I was willing to go in to work a couple of days a week when I was looking for a new job, but I was not eager to do it every day again. Between the commute and the hassle and cost of having to take our dogs to and from doggy daycare everyday it didn't seem worth it, especially when I knew I could do my job from home just fine.

I'm glad the pandemic normalized WFH a bit more and I don't want to see everything revert back to 'you gotta physically be in work, each and every day' once we're past it. It's fine if being in an office is an option again, sure, but I don't want it to be the only option.

Also, I feel like I have to speak up about my preferences on HN whenever this comes up because it seems like the majority of people are pushing for everything to go back to in-person, and I don't want people to assume everyone thinks that way.

dehrmann• 6 years ago

Same thing for students. There will be a cohort that's a ~year behind where they should be in most skills. It'll also be interesting to see what happens with students who were under-tested; some will advance when they're not ready, and for things like college admissions, between fewer standardized tests and noisier grades, I'm not sure how colleges that want quality students will maintain their standards.

austincheney3• 6 years ago

For some people writing software is an inherently social experience: contributing to a team, learning from colleagues, exchanging ideas in person. For others software is an experience of research and crafting which requires minimal feedback and no social interaction to grow and experiment. Like everything else in life this comes down to personal needs and expectations.

To say working from home results in a lost generation is excessive, almost to absurd. It is beneficial to some people and harmful to others regardless of financial or familial situations.

Furthermore that opinion only makes sense in a vacuum, such as for people who do nothing else and are limited to a single job solely focused upon writing software. Once your professional experience has broadened a bit absolutes like this subject become more clear for the limitations that they are.

scarface744• 6 years ago

For others software is an experience of research and crafting which requires minimal feedback and no social interaction to grow and experiment.

If you are young and new in your career, I don’t see how it could not stunt your career or lead to being an “expert beginner” without getting feedback.

This definitely happened to me for the first decade of my career. Not working remotely, working either as a sole developer or working with two or three other self taught developers who had been with the company forever.

austincheney3• 6 years ago

I don’t see how

As a self-taught developer I promise you it never stunted my skills, and most probably made me a much stronger developer. I have been a professional developer for 12 years (10 of those as a senior) and during that time I have spent 4 years on military deployments overseas and another 1 year in a military school. As a result of intense self-training away from the corporate world I have learned to become a stronger and more independent developer than most of my peers.

When you are writing software on a small netbook traveling around Afghanistan with no internet you have to learn to be self-reliant, portable, efficient, and cheap with system resources. Given the right set of expectations and personality you just figure it out. Based on this perspective its my thought expert beginners are precisely so because they are too reliant on social reinforcement over original decisions.

ponker• 6 years ago

This pandemic has taught me that I personally detest WFH. I’m glad that going forward there will be more WFH options for those who prefer it, but I am not one of those people.

hkt3• 6 years ago

It's churlish, but I'd honestly rather the rent money spent on commercial office space went to me, and that the space itself was redeveloped into nicer, more spacious homes for the young people without offices.

topkai22• 6 years ago

The issue brought up by the author are real, but I think many aren't necessarily inherent to remote work but are due to society and norms not having adapted to it yet. I've run a remote team for years and quite explicitly encourage socialization, develop new hires and thier connections, and encourage boundaries (mostly by telling people to stop working at 530p). We have few of the problems that are often claimed to be endemic in remote, because we have actively worked to build a culture that avoids them.

Even at a wider, multi-group level, we are able to address issues of innovation and serendipity by creating time and space for them. One of the best tricks is encouraging lots of small presentations on non-work or semi-work topics followed by lots of open ended conversation. People show up by mutual interest outside of their project based work and talk. I run a book club roughly themed to application development and every session I meet new people from across the org and exchange ideas. Some of these contacts have resulted in valuable insights for later projects. Volunteer projects and hackathons can serve a similar purpose.

These are just examples and we are hardly perfect, but I if the projections of an massive increase in WFH bear out at all, you'll see culture adapt to it as well- people will get better at socializing on screen, feel more free to ping with questions, and will find these alternate avenues to collaborate. I'm less confident that society outside of work will adapt as well, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a long term increase in young people continue to live with extended family or social clubs.

The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

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