A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/articles-reports/2021/01/19/remote-employees-work-from-home-poll

by Simon_M • 5 years ago

166 177 5 years ago

today.yougov.com

It seems unlikely to me that the disaster that's been schooling-from-home has somehow been a stunning success for work-from-home, and I think most employers see it.

switch007• 5 years ago

Yup. Publicly employers are stating how important children are and that they're fully understanding. No doubt in the board room it's a bit more like "stupid children distracting our employees. This needs fixing"

derekperkins• 5 years ago

Those can both be simultaneously true. Employers can be supportive while still trying to regain lost productivity.

ska5• 5 years ago

In my broader circles, there is a massive divide in this between people with school-age children and people without, which shouldn't be a surprise I suppose.

sisu_man2• 5 years ago

Work from home has given me opportunities that were previously unavailable because companies did not want remote employees (it was not in the culture). I can now pick up some part time contract work at these places to help save $$.

IMO WFH is a lot easier on smaller teams/org's, where you have deep expertise. It is not a pancea, but it certainly is better then no WFH.

DebtDeflation• 5 years ago

What's optimal for a 9 year old schoolchild isn't necessarily optimal for a 30 year old professional.

missedthecue2• 5 years ago

College from home has been a spectacular failure as well

lucasmullens• 5 years ago

This article misinterpreted the survey. 91% of people don't want to work from home, 91% want it as an option, and that's only people who are currently working from home who used to not.

57% seems more accurate: "But once the crisis is over, most (57%) of those who were working before the outbreak and who intend to stay part of the workforce say they want to be able to continue working from home."

Actual survey results: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/articles-reports/2020/09...

duxup• 5 years ago

I agree. I feel like there's a VERY important needle to thread here about what people mean by saying they "want to work from home".

And that sentiment might also change post-COVID.

I also wonder what this means for people who aren't in the best situation to work remotely.

jrockway• 5 years ago

To me the concern here is that if a company offers working remotely as an option, remote workers will always be second-class citizens. (The bad habit of Slack DMs instead of conversations in a public channel is already pretty entrenched.) People that work in the office will have casual conversations that exclude people working remotely, and the remote workers will always be a little behind. I think for that reason that all or nothing is the most fair. (I wonder if giving people a coworking space for free is the answer to people that need to get away from home, which is a completely reasonable concern.)

vp89892• 5 years ago

I think all or nothing is not realistic for most companies unless the CEOs are very progressive and just deeply believe in it.

A decent workaround is to have entirely remote teams and entirely in-office teams. That way people can be on teams where they feel like being remote is not a detriment to their careers (because ALL discussion takes place online) and people who prefer working in-person don't have to force everything onto Slack just to have the remote people feel included.

carlisle_• 5 years ago

People that work in the office will have casual conversations that exclude them, and they'll always be a little behind.

My experience is that this behavior doesn't get translated to remote-only workplaces. Casual in-person conversation doesn't shift to chat platforms, it just happens less frequently.

People being remote that miss out on office chit-chat aren't actually missing out on something if their coworkers can help it. I think these interactions are incredibly important for people who value them, and fear of "leaving out" remote workers isn't a very good reason to prevent them.

The most effective workplaces I've been at that have had successful remote workers are the teams that try to consistently involve those people. It's not a set of rules or trainings that makes people do this, it's a mix of cultural values and individual conscientiousness.

macksd2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure I'd want all-or-nothing to be the norm. I was a full-time remote worker before the pandemic, but I think one of the reasons it worked so well for me is because I had been able to build up a lot of the working relationships I have now in person. I made the decision to go remote because it was just going to work better for me, and I was fully aware that I would have to work at not being forgotten by the people in the office. There are ways to deal with it: you need to overcommunicate, make conscious efforts to get in on "office gossip" (the non-toxic kind), etc. An occcasional office visit or retreat makes a big difference.

Some of the people I've enjoyed working with the most have really struggled with the 100% remote dynamic during the pandemic. They have different personalities which have made it hard for them to be stuck at home, but those personalities make them great team members too. I'm not sure I'd want to just never work with people like that again.

slavapestov3• 5 years ago

I think for that reason that all or nothing is the most fair.

It seems like the fairest is to offer both and let the employees decide if the tradeoffs are worth it, then?

dang4• 5 years ago

Ok, we've changed the URL above from https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice... to a (more recent) article about the YouGov poll.

ska5• 5 years ago

I suspect a lot of the "we're all going to be remote from now on" sentiment is overblown.

It seems to me more likely that there will be a few more remote friendly companies, and a very few more remote-only companies after the dust settles, but the real shift will be for most "office based" workers will be the expectation of partially working from home.

There is a big difference between "never going to an office again" and "not going in 5 days a week".

zelos• 5 years ago

That's definitely my sense of it. In normal times I worked from home one day a week and it was (ever so slightly) frowned on. I expect that to shift to most people doing one day a week at home and many doing 2-3 days.

folkrav• 5 years ago

Anecdotal: my wife just got confirmation that it's gonna be 1-2 days/week from the office on her end once things calm down. I'm fully remote, with the expectation of a larger in-person team sync-up every week or two (that didn't happen yet because of COVID). My sister's boyfriend's team are already talking about 3/4 days of remote work after COVID.

I do agree that for most companies it probably won't be full remote, but if it just resolves in more flexibility, I'm all for it.

geoelectric5• 5 years ago

I think it'll potentially shift radically for some industries. Tech and other knowledge worker industry adapts more easily to this sort of thing than most, and tech in particular probably will pivot for a large segment for sake of not having to pay rent.

What I expect to really take off, though, is things like managed IT you do from home for some manufacturing company somewhere--small groups embedded or servicing larger companies that can be hired and spun up more cheaply from elsewhere in the country.

Basically, everything that people said would happen (but didn't work out) with globalization in knowledge worker industry, I personally expect to actually happen and work out with "domestication" of it to include a large segment of remote workers. The business considerations are mostly the same, minus the cultural, governmental, and time zone barriers that prevented it from working.

ghaff7• 5 years ago

A lot of outsourcing was basically done with the difficulty set on hardest to get at perceived lowest labor costs. So you ended up with big time zone differences, cultural and language issues, etc.

ghaff7• 5 years ago

The whole landscape probably shifts a bit. More people fully remote. More WFH more days per week than they did before. And so forth. But, yes, I don't expect many companies who currently have an office(s) to close them down. Maybe reconfigure, shut down expansion plans, hotel as needed, etc.

Won't really affect me as I was fully remote before this (in spite of being commuting distance from a company office). But I definitely know people who have moved out of the area.

ska5• 5 years ago

I agree the whole landscape shifts, I just think it won't be even distributed and most of the change will be relatively small, not radical reorganization.

hwoolery• 5 years ago

"a few more remote friendly companies". Respectfully disagree - the market will make this decision, and now that employees have all tasted the benefit, they are going to work for companies that give them that freedom. On top of that, most companies have seen equal or greater productivity (no commute, fewer sick days, etc), and will at least downsize their real estate for cost savings. There's little argument to make people come back to an office if there is no obvious benefit.

ska5• 5 years ago

There are some pretty strong assertions in your comment that I'm not convinced we actually know the answer too yet. I've seen senior people talking about "manageable productivity drops" more than "no difference", or "even better" but of course sampling bias applies.

But also, there is a potential semantic difficulty. By remote friendly I am thinking about "open to hiring a single person in a different city/country", not "employees that don't come into the office much".

I would draw a distinction between those, and I'm not convinced we'll see a huge shift in the former.

lostcolony• 5 years ago

Yeah, that's my hope too. It expands the 'reasonable' region to work from by a LOT, and gets the benefit of both worlds. Honestly, a lot of companies would benefit if they used it as reason to try and ensure that on site days were synced, and any meeting of substance was held for those days.

corobo• 5 years ago

Oh yeah the real change will be that you now have to work when sick instead of taking the day off

Just work from home :D

jermaustin1• 5 years ago

Thankfully my job has kept the same sick policy, if you are sick, don't work, just rest and get better. Granted we are all consultants and contractors, so it also saves them from paying for a full day with a likely substantial decrease in output.

tester756• 5 years ago

wtf? no, lol.

I don't think anyone sane would even suggest that unless very specific stuff

kodah• 5 years ago

There are some people who cannot work from home. These people have been especially vocal. Sometimes they include people who have kids, other times they include people who get their social interaction in at work. I think the office should accommodate them as well as remote workers.

The biggest challenge I've faced being on a remote team (read: not necessarily WFH) is that people who are at the primary physical location are acutely unaware of their remote colleagues. On VCS systems they'll shout and have conversations with each other, they won't focus conversations in chat or make equivalent channels for hallway conversations, and they'll assign work to themselves first.

I'd like to have the option for remote work to be available to me in the future and if we're going to do that then that means people who go into primary locations must learn to play ball with everyone.

j0ba• 5 years ago

That's fine. They can just take a salary cut if they need their employer to provide them an officespace.

kube-system2• 5 years ago

In my experience, there are two ways for a company to be successful at having remote employees:

1. everyone is 100% remote

2. everyone comes into the office occasionally

Anything else leads to a two-tiered system.

rockinghigh• 5 years ago

The main reason people who have kids cannot easily work from home is because schools are closed and they have to take care of their kids during the day.

bvirb• 5 years ago

My (small) company didn't skip a beat moving from entirely in office to entirely remote. In retrospect we were already having all of our conversations on Slack when we were in the office.

The key was we were always listening to music in our headphones.

ramblerman• 5 years ago

This sounds a bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Sure it's not entirely fair, but it's human nature.

It's akin to saying you want good relationships and friendships but without the hassle of all that conversation.

irrational4• 5 years ago

My company has already said that we will never be a remote working company after the pandemic is over (we have all been working remote since last March and they are saying that it probably wont be until August or September that we move back to campus). I think most of that is because the company just finished building 2 million square feet of additional office space on campus just before the pandemic.

pjettter3• 5 years ago

But what if their workers are more productive those days when they are working remotely? That should pay down on the investment sooner! I never understand shortsightedness...

francisofascii• 5 years ago

Has anyone brought up the Sunk Cost fallacy yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect

lovegoblin• 5 years ago

There is a big difference between "never going to an office again" and "not going in 5 days a week".

Yes, but I'd argue there's an even bigger difference between "not going in 5 days a week" and "going in 5 days a week."

As soon as you're remote even just part time, that means all your internal tooling and everything must be remote-compatible. Way more of your communication becomes async-by-default. And if some people are 1-2 days wfh, what's to stop some people from choosing 100% remote? And if that's happening, why limit your hiring to local?

Even part time remote employees is a culture shift.

sokoloff• 5 years ago

I think a lot of company leaders will nod along with the picture you paint above, but any company that's 40% or less remote will probably recenter on sync-by-default, in-person, and where being-at-headquarters matters.

ska5• 5 years ago

Pandemic has force many/most placed to come up with something remote-capable, at least temporarily. It's a big shift, I absolutely agree. I think it's mostly all that happens though - the "slippery slope to remote" you describe mostly wont happen. Of course we are both speculating.

standardUser2• 5 years ago

I have a group of coworkers who've taken the initiate to slyly relocate during the pandemic, in some cases signing leases and buying houses. I think their idea is to either stay fully remote indefinitely or find a different remote job if the company won't abide.

The remote revolution may be overblown in general, but for programmers, the appeal is particularly strong. They've seen the promised land and it turns out it's in a nice home office in Bend OR, not a Bay Area traffic jam.

psim12• 5 years ago

If by "slyly" you mean without notifying their employers, this could backfire on them in small and big ways. In a small way, it would affect local/state taxes that are withheld. In a big way, employers--whether rightly or wrongly--want to know where the employee lives in order to set a cost-of-living salary. If the employer finds out you're taking a SF salary while living in Bend, there are likely to be consequences.

formercoder• 5 years ago

My guess is the following will take place: companies will generally be more open to WFH. Those who spend more time in the office will develop stronger networks and relationships, will be able to advocate for themselves more easily, and thus will be more successful. People will snowball back into the office as they see this happening. Keep in mind I’m generalizing, I’m fully aware that you can create a culture that doesn’t disadvantage those that are remote, I’m just not convinced that broadly will happen.

cudgy2• 5 years ago

“ Those who spend more time in the office will develop stronger networks and relationships, will be able to advocate for themselves more easily, and thus will be more successful. People will snowball back into the office as they see this happening.”

Completely disagree with this. The future is going towards decentralization of work using tools like virtual reality and other communication mediums that have yet to be created. This area is already hot and huge sums of money are going to be spent to optimize for it.

Workers that rely on the traditional staying in the office to gain relationships and schmooze with the boss will be left behind. Besides, why is it assumed that the bosses will be in the office?

dalbasal2• 5 years ago

I think that "after the dust settles" may not be such a specific point.

We sit at our desks and communicate via IM & email anyway. The internet has changed reality, and changed a lot of the underlying logic for the status quo. Social distancing for a whole year is one hell of a catalyst.

Meanwhile, there are real economic factors like large housing cost and wage disparities between (often nearby) locations. Reasons why remote isn't always good notwithstanding, underlying economics exerts has a ratchet like influence. ...Not to mention globalisation.

So yes, I agree that the maximalist prediction is overblown. That said, I think this is a complex chain-of-events type of process that is now going to be moving faster. Companies are now more experienced/capable of remote. Employees are more capable of it. People have an understanding of it, how to fix it, etc.

It's a combination of prevailing wind and gust of wind.

lastofthemojito• 5 years ago

I'm curious to see what other changes come about in this new sometimes-remote world.

These days, most professional employees get a set amount of vacation time, lets say 20 days. In the previous system, if you wanted to fly halfway around the world to visit family or what-have-you, you might use half of those vacation days in one go. Now, if you're only expected to be in the office 1 day per week ("Meeting Monday"), you could take that same trip and use just 2 days of vacation, assuming you're working, or at least a making a passable semblance of working during the rest of that trip. Heck, you could take almost half of the Meeting Mondays for a year if you work the rest of the time.

In some sense, that's no problem. One of the big points of remote work is that it doesn't matter where you are, as long as you get your work done. But the reality is, those occasional in-person days seem to be very important for really connecting with teammates. If Nomad Ned seems to always be missing Meeting Monday but I can rely on Local Larry to be there, I may be much happier and feel more connected with Larry, even if they both take the same number of vacation days per year.

Between geopay, tax rules, wanting employees to be close enough to an office for in-person meetings or emergencies, etc, I think employers are going to become much more invasive in terms of tracking the locations of their employees going forward.

antonzabirko2• 5 years ago

Weird sentiment in this thread. Regardless of the survey i have only seen positive reactions to working remote, and hope remote is here to stay.

sisu_man2• 5 years ago

I think WFH is challenging for some people as its harder to maintain that social connection to your org. You have to work a bit harder, have already built the relationships, or simply be secure knowing that you can deliver value to the org and even if people do not see you on a consistent basis that you are valued by the team/org. Embrace the change though I think, its certainly worth the tradeoffs in my mind, no commute is pure glory.

antonzabirko2• 5 years ago

I agree with most of that. At the end of the day i do quality work in silence, and not in the open office. Losing the commute is a nice side effect though.

technofiend• 5 years ago

My employees love the camaraderie and face-to-face adhoc conversations that come from everyone being on the same floor. However no one likes the new workstation layout our company employs; people are on top of each with other minimal partitioning for those that face each other, and no partitioning at all side to side. It's noisy and hard to concentrate and the fact you have a locker and may keep nothing personal on your desk sends a certain message. A message that is amplified by the fact people at a certain org level get offices with a door.

We're working out how to mix up WFH with WFW to try and get the benefits of both.

chihuahua• 5 years ago

Those terrible workstation layouts (or the equivalent at my company) are the reason why I find it much easier to talk to people on my team when I'm working from home. I can start a teams call with anyone and have a 1-on-1 conversation with no distractions. When we were still going to the office, it was difficult to have a 1-on-1 conversation because you would have all the noise of people around you talking loudly, plus my own conversation is distracting those other people who are sitting 3 feet away but are not part of the conversation. So we'd have to go to a meeting room nearby, but then you don't have your computer screen available, so you can't talk about the code you're working on. The whole concept of trying to collaborate in the office was ludicrous. Adding insult to injury, the company calls these cramped office spaces "collaborative".

anewaccount20213• 5 years ago

Online discussions quickly fall into the Obligatory Contrarian trap when there's little else to latch on to.

So in every one of these threads, HN is all of a sudden nostalgic for two hours a day commuting, shelling out-of-pocket for parking, eating junk food for lunch every day...

Offices cost money. This is why WFH isn't going away. Even people who are required to go into the office periodically might find themselves sharing temp space with others who use the same (reduced) space on alternating days.

As you can tell from this comment, I love WFH and will never go back....and it doesn't look like I'll have to. While the poor office dwellers are sitting in their cars, I'm enjoying a nice morning run.

wackk• 5 years ago

Personally, I hate being fully remote and will probably not stay at a job that is permanently full remote. I live alone in a fairly small apartment, and only have space to work at the same desk that I use for recreation. I find myself unfocused more easily, which leads to being less productive, which leads to working more, which leads to being less productive, etc. I have started going into the office alone just to get some separation.

For context, I'm also much more extroverted than the average developer - I suspect that also has something to do with my absolute dislike of full remote working.

mkl95• 5 years ago

6 months ago, I was the first fully remote hire at the startup I work for. Now about 80% of my coworkers are working from home indefinitely. It truly feels like entering a new era.

whateveracct• 5 years ago

a big thing with remote work is the worker can largely elect to do it.

i just don't consider roles that aren't remote, even if they are in my metropolitan area.

i'm not gonna waste 8 hours a day in an office, away from things and people who actually matter.

groundCode• 5 years ago

The company still holds the power though. Your current contract is unlikely stipulate that you can work full time remote. I suspect that until there are enough options in the hiring market for employees to “vote with their feet”, employers will want to return to bums on seats.

whiddershins• 5 years ago

One thing I think isn't being factored in is the interaction between remote working and remote school for kids.

Depending on a bunch of factors, remote work could be much more pleasant or taxing during school closures than it might be during 'normal' times.

I guess a similar point could be made even just about spouses both doing remote work at the same time, or even roommates.

codegeek• 5 years ago

It is not cut and dry. I think we need to find the balance between "no/hardly work from home" vs "never come in office". Employers have to be flexible about letting employees work from home whenever needed. When I was an employee, I wanted flexibility to sometimes do that when needed. I usually wanted to go to office because I like getting out of the house. I get that some people love working from home 100% but I am a big proponent of finding a balance and not going extreme one way or the other.

Thaxll• 5 years ago

Full remote is not the future, I'm sure that most people don't want to work remotely full time, it will most likely be 2days/week at home type of thing.

chrisseaton• 5 years ago

I'm sure that most people don't want to work remotely full time

Why are you sure about that? Because that's how you feel?

mabbo2• 5 years ago

Simply put, if my employer told me I needed to be in the office more than 5 days per month, I would find a new employer.

I'm more productive than ever. I'm happier than ever. I'm eating healthier. I sleep better. My marriage is stronger. My finances are kicking ass.

I won't give this up.

superbcarrot• 5 years ago

On the opposite side, if there was no covid and my employer gave me the option to either WFH or go to the office, I would go to the office every single day. Hopefully people will have more options in the near future instead of being forced into a model they don't like whether it's the office or WFH.

Dumblydorr• 5 years ago

I left a job in February 2020 because they had instituted a policy that no more employees would get remote work...a year earlier, they promised me WFH after a year. It was a big reason I left. Then, covid hit, and suddenly WFH was and still is mandatory.

snarf21• 5 years ago

That's cool, it's your preference. A lot of people prefer going in, especially if they are single and live alone.

wjamesg• 5 years ago

You are quite privileged

anewaccount20213• 5 years ago

Why are you working if not to earn privilege?

kashura2• 5 years ago

Why? Because an individual has difference circumstances they are automatically "privileged"?

dang4• 5 years ago

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, and especially not ones that are personally provocative. It just makes discussion worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mabbo2• 5 years ago

You're right. I am living an incredibly fortunate, privileged life. That's why we're considering which charities to donate to, which local groups have needs we can help.

When life is good, share it.

IMTDb2• 5 years ago

Too take the exact opposite view :

Simply put, if my employer told me I needed to setup zoom calls every time I need to talk to someone more than 5 days per month, I would find a new employer. I'm less productive than ever. I'm more depressed than ever. I'm eating poorly and drinking more. I almost don't sleep anymore. I just want to spend few hours by myself instead of being constantly around my family members. My finances are unchanged.

I won't give this up. Give me a schedule, a break from home to work, let me see and meet people.

ndiscussion2• 5 years ago

Maybe you should improve your home life... that's really sad, man. You deserve better.

If you hate your family so much why don't you move in with roommates? I don't talk to my family either.

kashura2• 5 years ago

How many of the issues above do you control? I could make an argument the zoom calls being the only thing.

ryandrake2• 5 years ago

It’s almost as if different people have very different preferences and companies should provide flexibility to work in whatever way you prefer and are most productive.

dudul• 5 years ago

What do zoom calls have to do with eating poorly and drinking more? What does it have to do with not sleeping?

Go to the office if you want (to be "by yourself"? a bit weird but whatever) and let your coworker stay home if they prefer that.

Sounds like your problems are caused by something a bit more profound than a few zoom calls a day.

xornox2• 5 years ago

I do not need an expensive car anymore when I am working from home. That alone is huge benefit.

ange1a• 5 years ago

just wait until corporations realize that if your job can be done from kansas city... it can also be done from manila... and a whole new class of gigs just vanish.

kube-system2• 5 years ago

They realized that 25 years ago. Then, 10 years ago they realized that time zones and soft skills are also a thing.

bzbarsky3• 5 years ago

There are a lot of assumptions going into that implication. My experience with working remotely, on globally distributed teams, for about 20 years now is:

* Synchronous high-bandwidth communication (read: meeting, ideally with a shared whiteboard) is pretty handy sometimes.

* Timezones really do matter. If you want a sync meeting that includes people in Europe, the US, and APAC, someone will have a bad time. If you want quick turnaround on code reviews, having 8-12 hour time zone differences is a significant barrier. Even a "4-hour" difference for meeting time purposes can be a huge problem in this sense: it's 9pm on Thursday where you are (US West coast), but your coworkers' weekend has started (in New Zealand), so any code reviews you ask for on Friday morning you won't see until you get back to work on Monday. And any code reviews they ask for on their Monday morning won't happen until you get back to work on their Tuesday.

* Language matters. Even if everyone involved speaks English to some extent, it's a _lot_ easier to follow some accents than others, especially on an imperfect (read: teleconference) audio feed. Which accents depends on which people.

* Shared context matters, just in terms of understanding requirements. This can be developed, but it takes time. People from more similar backgrounds often require less time to get to mutual understanding around this sort of thing. This needs to be weighed against blinkered thinking and lack of diversity in perspectives, of course.

I love working remotely, and am used to the scheduling issues around this sort of thing, but there are a _lot_ of issues that come with hiring someone halfway across the globe that you don't get with hiring someone also working remotely but in the same city or at least speaking more or less your accent of your language and within an hour or two timezone distance. The fact that the latter works for a particular position does not imply the former will.

wtetzner• 5 years ago

I think companies also need to deal with the tax implications of someone working in another country. Not sure what impact that would have.

Bakary3• 5 years ago

Most of these hurdles seem really unimportant compared to the salary savings

spamizbad• 5 years ago

I worry that companies are going to pull back from allowing WFH once the pandemic is over and dust settles.

It's been tolerated and embraced by organizations because their feared dip in productivity never surfaced -- in fact, some organizations found themselves more productive. But employees are taking less vacation and putting in more hours since their social options are greatly restricted due to the pandemic.

So what happens to the perception of productivity in late 2021/2022 when people start burning through all that banked vacation time and start socializing again instead of putting in an extra hour or two in the evening before bed? I could see employers panicking.

throw89328942• 5 years ago

My country has new rule about minimal square space per employee. Capacity of our office is now reduced to 20%. 80% employees have to work from home, they do not fit into our office.

If this rule is permanent, companies may not be able to afford office space. WFH may become "new normal" bcos it is only thing company can afford.

In old days, flu spread in office like wild fire. Companies outsourced negative externalities (sick leave and sick holidays) to their employees. Now we have way more transmissible viruses and probably new regulations.

djrogers2• 5 years ago

Now we have way more transmissible viruses and probably new regulations.

That’s incorrect and largely irrelevant. We have one virus that’s more dangerous, but not necessarily more transmissible than the flu, measles, or the common cold (and demonstrably less transmissible than many viruses).

Unless you are of the irrational belief that we have somehow reached a point in history when serial deadly pandemics are the norm instead of the exception, then there’s no reason that we can’t go back to a world where we can work in person again...

Wether we want to or not is the relevant question.

xornox2• 5 years ago

High enough human population leads to continuous pandemics. It is law of nature and can not be changed.

throw89328942• 5 years ago

I think we are way past rationality. I do not see how we can go back to normal.

Hygiene rules will change, and companies have to adapt.

djrogers2• 5 years ago

While I love wfh and have done it for the past 20 years, there are some jobs and some times when face to face in an office is far more effective.

I’d love it if my office went to a 1-2 days/week on-site schedule, where face to face time is predictable and regular, and we can all be productive and relatively zoom free the other 3-4 days.

A hybrid approach, if managed right, would be ideal.

01100011• 5 years ago

If we take global warming seriously, then all of us who can work from home will end up working from home. If we take global warming seriously, we will incentivize using less energy, at least until we have mostly replaced non-carbon neutral energy. If we incentivize using less energy, there will be pressure not to commute.

Unless there is an analysis that shows there are energy benefits to centralizing your workforce(more efficient coffee machines, lighting, HVAC, etc), the pressure will be there to let them stay at home.

sharkweek2• 5 years ago

My partner works in operations for [fairly large company]. Her job is to min/max space use, organize for hiring pushes, keep the office space humming, revamp existing space as needed, plan out new space... etc. etc. etc. It's an interesting job, she's probably the person you're pissed at when your desk gets seemingly randomly moved to another floor.

Right before COVID, she was managing a HUGE densification project to get more desks in their company's current footprint. That obviously got entirely axed March 2020 (over a year of work down the drain), and it's been her job the last year to figure out WFH and what post-COVID-19 workspace looks like.

The executives are wanting people back in the office. They've seen enough they don't like about full WFH that they do want people back in the building at some point when it's safe. But they also don't want everyone in the building at the same time anymore. Basically, they want to operate the building at pre-pandemic capacity of 50% or so, rotating who is in and who isn't.

With that comes some unique space challenges, including but not limited to how does having a desk work if only 50% of people are in the office on a given day. They haven't chosen a final solution yet as there are A LOT of moving pieces, but it has been interesting to watch.

alextheparrot2• 5 years ago

This really is the worst of both worlds for the employees. Employees are still bound to a physical location, but you also have to maintain a home office and heterogenous communications stack [0]. Also, coordinating who is in the office when is a nightmare and can often lead to oversubscribed days.

The only utility I can see is if you need to run for appointments that are easier to do when working from home, but this is less about remote work and more about flexible working hours.

[0] Having worked in a team with distributed offices, a fairly large company like your partner's can definitely solve this.

pnutjam3• 5 years ago

True, I am not interested in coming in to the office more then once a quarter.

ghaff7• 5 years ago

I'm not sure it's quite worst of both worlds. One of my company's local offices would be a 90ish minute commute. That's doable for a day a week but not really sustainable a lot more frequently than that. (I used to have another job with a similar commute; it was rough on a regular basis even if I didn't go in many days.)

You can definitely increase the radius of where you can live but you're right that you can't go live in a mountain town.

dbcurtis• 5 years ago

Meh. I started my current job during pandemic. Some weeks I am in 100%, others zero. I have a desk in the ghost town, but spend a lot of time in the lab for hands-on stuff. I would be perfectly happy with a “desk hotelling” situation on a permanent basis. The plant is someplace I visit when I need to hook up probes.

walshemj2• 5 years ago

Thankfully the days of ramming people into ever smaller footprints seems to be reversing

macNchz• 5 years ago

With that comes some unique space challenges, including but not limited to how does having a desk work if only 50% of people are in the office on a given day.

I've heard of companies hot-desking like this so they can have fewer desks than total employees, splitting each desk between people whose schedules are "out of phase" with each other. It sounds basically intolerable.

I'm somewhat less sensitive to many common office complaints than a lot of sw engineers I've worked with, but if this were something my employer announced I'd be on my way out immediately.

michaelt• 5 years ago

It'd certainly be alienating not to have a desk if you were in the office every day.

But if you're doing two days a week in the office, all your meetings will move into those days so they can happen in person, so you'll miss having your own desk less.

twh270• 5 years ago

Can you expand on "[The executives have] seen enough they don't like about full WFH"? I'm trying to gather enough anecdotal and "research-y" data to make decisions around this for myself and friends/co-workers.

sharkweek2• 5 years ago

It'd be hard to do so without getting a little too specific but I will add two pieces of context:

1) The company has a small technical corner, but is mostly a non-technical org.

2) The average age of the company is quite a bit older than one more focused on technology might stereotypically be and, at the risk of sounding ageist, has proven to be far less interested in engaging with modern technologies that would make WFH smooth/productive.

scarmig• 5 years ago

Despite all the individual cases of people claiming WFH makes them more productive, in the aggregate employees are not. In the particular data I've seen, new employees and more junior employees suffer significantly, even while more senior engineers hold steady or improve, perhaps because their responsibilities shift to more easily quantifiable metrics than knowledge sharing, mentoring, and onboarding.

benhurmarcel• 5 years ago

Right, my company plans to let us work from home a maximum of 3 days a week in the future, but they're cutting our office space by at least 30%. So we wouldn't have a designated desk anymore, just a bunch of similar desks on a first-come-first-serve basis every day.

My main issue with this is that you can't set up your desk how you like it anymore. You can't set the desk height, you get a chair that's differently broken every day, often a different sized screen, you can't ensure to seat nearby the people you need to collaborate with, you can't put up some decoration or printed cheatsheets…

dont__panic5• 5 years ago

And in my experience, you also have to get used to different "neighbors" with different annoying habits every time you come into the office.

May god have mercy on you if your company lets sales and product who are constantly chatting on calls (often at high volume) into your desk area when you're trying to focus on programming or design...

andrekandre• 5 years ago

Basically, they want to operate the building at pre-pandemic capacity of 50% or so, rotating who is in and who isn't.

i dont know if rotation or full wfh forever is a good idea, but i must say that pandemic or not, offices (at least the open kind) at anything above 50% capacity are horrible places to work... the noise, distractions and reduced oxygen levels are brain-killing...

irrational4• 5 years ago

Prior to the pandemic my company was moving to a model where nobody had a fixed desk. You had a backpack and a laptop and plugged is wherever you could find a free place. You were not supposed to stay at the same desk for longer than 3 hours. There was actually a team in each building walking around and enforcing it.

Post-pandemic they have said that is being scrapped since there is too much chance of infecting people from shared work areas. So back to you have a fixed desk. Only, despite adding 2 million more square feet of office space to campus last year, there really isn’t enough room for everyone.

I pity the people who are having to figure this out.

dukeyukey2• 5 years ago

So I get the idea of hotdesking, even if I think it's bad. But moving every 3 hours? Why tf do they think that's a good idea? Office workers aren't migratory animals that must move on when the good grasses have been depleted.

throw14082020• 5 years ago

Executives want people back. Executives are often the ones that don't stay in the office, or have a far different office experience (power dynamics, extra physical resources). People don't want to be back. More jobs will be more flexible. The best people can find jobs they like. Over time, executives who don't adapt will be stuck a certain type of employee.

pjettter3• 5 years ago

For some, WFH is more attractive and more productive than for others. But why does it have to be an either or? There are advantages with sitting next to colleagues. There are advantages with being able to skip the commute and being able to concentrate at home. Ideally, someone would choose what's most productive, which is probably a mix of WFH and working on site.

ryandrake2• 5 years ago

Yea, I don’t think the WFH advocates are proposing “mandatory remote work.” All we want is the option. It’s the WFO folks that are saying “we want to WFO and we want to make everyone do it too!”

DoofusOfDeath• 5 years ago

But why does it have to be an either or?

In mixed onsite / remote teams, the remote employees can be seriously disadvantaged regarding access to information, participation in decision-making, etc.

Some of the comments above mention this effect, and my own personal experience has very painfully confirmed it. It was a truly awful experience for me. I suspect it's what lead to the maxim, "If anyone is remote, then everyone must be remote."

pjettter3• 5 years ago

Thanks. That partly confirms my feelings. Now with Covid here in Sweden at my company, everyone is remote. It works (equally bad and equally good) for everyone.

I think if a company is serious about a mix, there needs to be optimization around this. Like, remote Mondays and Fridays, if you want to be remote. Meetings on Tue/Thu. Something like that.

throwarayes• 5 years ago

I worry at the long term implications of remote work:

- I hear of Bay Area tech companies throwing stupid high salaries at senior devs in smaller local firms -> more consolidation in tech

- how non people centric will work become? I feel being 100% remote I have even less of a relationship with anyone at home. I’m a commodity doing work. Maybe there’s more of a temptation to get that commodity cheaper elsewhere

ndiscussion2• 5 years ago

We are all commodities... best to shatter that illusion safely before you get hurt.

Bakary3• 5 years ago

how non people centric will work become? I feel being 100% remote I have even less of a relationship with anyone at home. I’m a commodity doing work. Maybe there’s more of a temptation to get that commodity cheaper elsewhere

Do not think for a second that you are not already disposable

pbuzbee• 5 years ago

Almost a year in, it seems like there isn't a clear consensus in whether or not we (as a whole) are more productive when working distributed. If there isn't a clear winner, I would hope that companies would err on the side of improving employee well-being by providing flexibility.

At the individual level, productivity in office VS at home varies depending on your personal circumstances, preferences, and role. I hope larger companies realize that a one-size-fits-all policy isn't the best solution.

Instead, I'd like them to allow individual teams to decide what options they want to allow within the team (full-time in office, work from home N days/week, full-time remote, etc.) Then the team can develop norms and processes for work and communication that make sense.

D13Fd• 5 years ago

From the small business side, office space in a prime location is super expensive and it would be nice to cut back on that.

dont__panic5• 5 years ago

Cutting the barriers to entry to starting up a tech business definitely seems like an advantage. Just requiring the cash for a corporate lease probably pushes a lot of startups to VC capitol.

dang4• 5 years ago

Url changed from https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice..., which points to this.

dang4• 5 years ago

The submitted URL was https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice..., but that is not a very substantive article, and there have been countless of these. Also, as commenters have pointed out here, it misrepresents the poll it's based on.

Normally we'd downweight such a submission as a follow-up [1] on an extremely repetitive topic [2], but this thread turned out to be quite a bit better and more thoughtful than usual, so I've changed the URL instead to an article about the survey.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

jonahrd• 5 years ago

And here is a (poorly written) article saying that "top bankers" say WFH is falling apart: https://montrealgazette.com/executive/careers/top-bankers-so...

We'll see whose opinions matter more when this is over... workers or executives.

ibobev• 5 years ago

Permanently working from home for some people like me is a direct way to depression. For someone who lives alone going to the office is essential to have social interactions without which the mental health can be severely damaged. I'm terrified by the possibility of working from home becoming a norm for the tech companies. It can be also a serious problem for novice developers who are greatly dependent on working closely with their seniors for their professional development and also for more experienced ones who are at a new job and need help to step in.

epr• 5 years ago

I really appreciate the big "Reject All" button for cookies consent as opposed to all the irritating dark patterns most websites seem to use where if you don't want to "Accept All", you're forced to drill down into submenus to disable every type of cookie individually. Thanks for not being subhuman garbage.

mrwoggle• 5 years ago

I started a new job before covid hit. Some other devs started to annoy me. Just those silly things many people have. Like sighing every other second and never ending chit chat. I mean, I can tolerate it. But WFH is so much better. I can wear pyjamas, scratch my sack, do short power naps.

I'm in hardware, so I still have to make trips to the office. Those are way more fun. And those trips turn into social events. It's like catching up with friends.

ckgjm2• 5 years ago

Really good points here. I’m experienced in remote collaboration across global sites and my previous company allow for the occasional WfH. But the covid situation brought about something different.

The boundaries between private and work life became fuzzy and there’s this implicit expectation that one will be available all the time- where can you be apart from home? And that’s not healthy.

It has also been challenging to families with kids as they need to juggle between work For home and work from home. I’ve now seen folks responding to emails and queries as though we work different time zones!

I’m in tech and my team are mostly waiting to get back into office. But I believe that working on prem or wfh should be a choice.

A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

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