Ready to Work at Lesser Salaries or Even Quit, Employees Want Only WFH: Survey

https://metrosaga.com/ready-to-work-at-lesser-salaries-or-even-quit-employees-want-only-wfh-survey/

by rustoo • 4 years ago

268 270 4 years ago

yrgulation2• 4 years ago

The reduction in co2 emissions, not contributing to public transport overcrowding, saving on food, and the mental health benefits are just some of my reasons for avoiding on site work. Not to mention the savings. I am not against people working on site but i am against companies not allowing remote work. If a company’s culture cant cope with remote workers then that company is not internet ready. Probably shouldnt serve remote customers either and instead should switch to in person.

mentaldeath• 4 years ago

Not everyone's mental health has benefitted. I have been depressed for the past 2 years and started cutting myself and doing other selfharm. The only face to face social interactions I have are with baristas now.

danesparza• 4 years ago

You didn't ask for advice, but I'm going to give you some. See a counselor (aka a therapist). Depression is treatable, but you need to get help. The world needs a "you" that is in the right headspace.

gedy• 4 years ago

Sorry to hear that. I would recommend you build social relationships outside the office even in the best of times, layoffs happen, people leave, companies fold, etc and it's not healthy to depend on work like that.

yrgulation2• 4 years ago

That is why i am not against people wanting onsite. Life is full of nuance. I dont know what kind of advice to give you, but what i found when i was lonely was that changing the setting helped. I lived in london for more than a decade. Despite it being a crowded city i found it quite lonely. I despised that loneliness and my only friends were coworkers. Up until i got “sent” north of england. Suddenly i had a social life, met folks from outside my work and frankly since that point onwards i decided to ditch london for good. One just has to find the inner strength to let people in. Be it through hobbies or randoms there is always a place for everyone. Maybe even changing countries and cultures for more open people can help.

tessierashpool2• 4 years ago

a therapist, or a group for group therapy, can help.

plasma_beam• 4 years ago

Friend, know that you're not alone in spirit. The past two years have been tough, and many of us have struggled. I hope you find some peace.

brotoss• 4 years ago

and your point? he literally said doesn't care if other people want to be on site.

qbasic_forever3• 4 years ago

Parks, gyms, sports, recreation centers, libraries, theaters, concert venues, etc. are all totally open and have been open for full in person activities for much of that last 12 months in every state of the US.

Go out and live life, there are near zero restrictions on you seeing other people in person. Almost nowhere requires masks right now either.

VenerablePotage• 4 years ago

That's horrible. I hope you find a support system that helps you out of this dark place.

Do you draw a line directly specific from work-from-home to your current state? In the past couple of years we've globally had economic strife, millions of deaths and political unrest at enormous scale in addition to the switch to Zoom calls. Would -all things being equal- your desire to self harm be eliminated if you and your fellow employees were back to exchanging pleasantries at the office?

vonseel• 4 years ago

I don’t self-harm, but I agree WFH has been damaging for some of us.

Honestly, going to an office everyday just helps me keep a schedule better and makes me more disciplined. It’s very hard for me to be productive when I can get into the habit of just wearing sweatpants all day and barely showering.

lentil_soup• 4 years ago

If your only option is WFH, would you consider working from a coworking space? I've worked from one the entire pandemic and it has been life changing, only a 5min walk from my house, met great people, get to socialise outside work, etc

throwaway6532• 4 years ago

Same. As time progresses it's just going from bad to worse. I need to be around people. I'm not functional in a fully remote environment :(

Mountain_Skies• 4 years ago

I was very involved with public transit activism for two decades. One of the most disappointing things about the switch to remote work during the pandemic is how many of my friends I met through transit activism have turned against WFH. We used to push for "commute alternatives" of which both transit and work from home were just two of a range of alternatives. But it turns out much of that was simple lip service to transit alternatives that were easy to support because they weren't widely adopted. Once WFH suddenly gained a large chunk of market share, they got very hostile to it. Transit became the one and only acceptable choice. Turned out that many weren't motivated by wanting to have less dependence on private automobiles that clog up and pollute cities but rather they have a vision of everyone living in dense high rise buildings clustered together in city centers. Even though WFH helps unclog city streets and cleans the air, it is now considered bad because it goes against the ultimate goal of dense cities with plentiful transit to get around within the city. If people can live in low population density areas while eliminating 90% of the miles driven per year, that's considered a bad thing because it doesn't support the urban vision they have that can only work if alternatives aren't allowed to exist. Quite disappointing.

joe_the_user2• 4 years ago

Actually,

While never a transit activist, I would be in favor of dense, walkable cities regardless of work-from-home. I think these are more healthy in a multitude of ways.

If people can live in low population density areas while eliminating 90% of the miles driven per year, that's considered a bad thing because it doesn't support the urban vision they have that can only work if alternatives aren't allowed to exist.

Can you really eliminate 90% of miles driven by doing work-from-home in an entirely car oriented place? I live in small city surrounded by rural areas. Plenty of people have to drive five mile or more to get to anything. If someone did out once every ten days, it would unhealthy in other ways even if it conserved fuel, imo.

tartoran2• 4 years ago

It costs me $5400 per year more to work in the office than working from home and that is excluding the 35-40 hours a month in commute time.

JackFr• 4 years ago

So if the company let’s you work from home, how much of that savings should they capture or do you think you should get it all?

syshum2• 4 years ago

>saving on food

I did not experience this. Even though I did eat out less, I seem to be eating more over all, and with the massive inflation in food costs I seem to be spending more than ever on food.

In the office it took effort to get something to eat, i had to drive someone, or prep a meal to bring with me, etc...

At home I just have to walk to the kitchen and eat....

bamboozled2• 4 years ago

Yeah, now people just drive around doing leisure activities and buying a lot of sporting equipment.

I don't think WFH solves the worlds problems.

Before WFH I lived in a city and rode my bike everywhere. Went to a shared gym, because I lived in a city, owning a car was difficult etc.

Now I moved away, live in a house, fill it with stuff I probably didn't need and drive around. I will say I do all I can to not drive, I still have my bikes, but I'm still driving 100% more to when I didn't even own a car.

exabrial• 4 years ago

I find there's a mix of people that either work well remote, or don't. I don't think this is as binary issue as people make it out to be

postalrat• 4 years ago

I'd like companies to break apart teams then build new teams based on who wants to work remote and who wants to be in the office.

threads2• 4 years ago

The pandemic is never going to "end" so why oscillate between exclusively on-site and exclusively WFH?

and why, as an manager, take on that kind of liability unless you absolutely need people to be on-site?

Reminds me of an anecdote where a guy was working at a UPS near 9/11 ground zero and the manager tried to stop them from leaving work.

Is it just the Will to Power? or am I missing some convincing opinion pieces in The Economist or FT? I'm so genuinely curious about why a manager would be compelled to insist on on-site.

Cynically, I know it's easier to switch jobs if both are WFH... Would hate to think that Big Tech companies conspire to jointly enforce on-site (as an addendum to that infamous no-poaching agreement).

tessierashpool2• 4 years ago

many managers don't know how to do remote. and even experienced people get blindsided by it sometimes.

but change and learning are inherent to this field of work, so there must be something else.

for large companies, it's real estate. nobody wants to sell a huge corporate campus at a loss.

qbasic_forever3• 4 years ago

A lot of companies have a huge investment in commercial real estate and likely don't want to see those values drop. But I'm with you--this makes no sense to keep oscillating between "yay! cases are dropping, the pandemic is over!" and "uh oh, everyone WFH for now".

IMHO companies where possible should scale back to the bare minimum on site and build a strong remote-first culture. Sell offices and move to smaller locations if it makes sense to reduce that footprint. This doesn't mean no one can work on site, or that no one can work remote.

windex2• 4 years ago

Indian IT companies famously use all sorts of arrangements to claim large chunks of premium land in big cities. A large portion of their profits are banked in land and commercial real estate yielding them tax benefits and holidays for "infrastructure investments."

criddell• 4 years ago

It might be as simple as they don’t know if you are working or not when your butt isn’t in your seat. Or, to put it another way, lack of trust.

qbasic_forever3• 4 years ago

We've had two years now--that's plenty of time for management and HR to figure out how to measure and validate remote work is getting done. If a tech company still needs a manager to see a physical person in a seat then the company has far, far bigger problems.

mumblemumble2• 4 years ago

If they can't tell if you are working or not without physically watching you come into an office and sit at the desk for 40 hours every week, then WTF is your actual job? It certainly can't be something consequential that the business actually needs to have done. If it were, they would quickly notice if you aren't doing it.

(Edit: As a concrete example, I once worked on an all distributed team where it was abundantly obvious to the whole team that a new hire was goofing off. If they were simply having issues meeting productivity expectations, that would have been one thing, the kind of thing we could hopefully resolve with closer mentoring. But they were also really difficult to get a hold of during the day, and frequently made lame excuses - or obvious lies - for why they couldn't be available for meetings on short notice. Things like that.)

anthropodie• 4 years ago

There are companies in India that took your mobile phone before entering office. This was before pandemic. They had no trust in their employees. Because of pandemic they had no option but to trust their employees or else they were all gonna go in the ground. Their hand was forced by pandemic to trust their employees and it worked really well.

We would have forever worked in those awful open office plans if this mass scale experiment had not happen. Now the cat is out of the bag and everyone knows wfh works.

ouid• 4 years ago

Cynically, I know it's easier to switch jobs if both are WFH...

Somehow I had not considered this, but it seems like the dominant factor.

fartcannon• 4 years ago

Depending on your workload, you might even be able to try a couple on for size before you quit. If you quit.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

Personal anecdote: When I moved from an office job to a WFH job, there was this absurd period when I had to do a series of interviews with the remote company. It was like 8 different interviews on 8 different days, and they were all video calls. So, I had to figure out 8 different excuses to be gone for two hours to commute home, do an interview, and come back to work, all within a couple weeks: dentist appointment, doctor's appointment, optometry appointment, picking a friend up from the airport, followup appointments, etc.

I'm pretty sure that's a huge tipoff to HR.

drewcoo• 4 years ago

On the managerial front (and PMs, to a lesser extent), I think the perma-demic calls for a different kind of work. Most devs love to be heads-down alone and cranking. Managers, not so much.

- Communications are different. I think we're all trying to figure out the "right" protocols[1] for video meetings, as an example. That kind of thing hits managers especially hard. Managers (and PMs) are there not to wrangle code, but to wrangle meetings so the devs can be more productive!

- Control changed. Micromanagement in any form (except via malware stalking) just got a lot harder. Even the softer "managing by walking around" doesn't work now. Delegation is more important than ever. And most managers were promoted into position because they did things well, not because they loosely lead things into happening. So it takes some manager (re-?)training.

- Leading vs Managing is a more important divide than before. When people are left to themselves more, they'll find ways to solve their own problems. Partly because people have to solve more of their own problems and partly because managers haven't caught up to how to manage in a perma-demic, that means workers are more likely to self-organize.[2]

- With the lack of human physical contact, we have to focus more on how to measure productivity than on the way it was perceived in the past. This is likely to shock many people, managers or not, who focused more on social aspects. Lots of "soft" measures like "happiness" or "asshole-free-ness" change when the social conditions change. We still don't want to work with assholes, but what that means is shifting.

- Other

- Profit?

Manager Hint: delegate until it hurts. Hurts you and the person you delegated to. Set up checkpoints. And be available to help. Especially with firefighting and scutwork. That helps your team grow and act independently. Even if we ever get back to the office, that habit will pay off.

[1] Pro- or anti-occupy, politically, they addressed comms problems with large open-air meetings meant to include everyone. We need to think along those lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement_hand_signals

[2] Yes, "organize" was an intentional pun. Unionization in lots of fields, lots of shops is on the rise. And a shocking number of strikes goes unreported in the mainstream media (I can't find my original source, so Bloomberg will do). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-10-20/the-re...

sokoloff6• 4 years ago

The pandemic will (by definition) end when SARS-CoV2 becomes endemic, which seems like the overwhelmingly most likely trajectory that we're on.

We're not quite there yet, but I'm encouraged rather than discouraged by the totality of what I see and think we’re way past the halfway point in the time dimension of the pandemic phase of the virus, that we’re headed for a future where SARS-CoV2 is about as disruptive to society as H1N1 influenza, and that, except for a lot more tech WFH, that February 2023 will look a lot more like February 2020 than Feb 2021 or Feb 2022.

opportune• 4 years ago

The pandemic is never going to end? Bold assumption, COVID may always exist but it will become endemic as have many other pandemics such as the Spanish Flu.

Despite many people's wishes, yes the world will eventually go back to normal. To suggest otherwise is very myopic. If you take the pandemic having an end for granted, then yes some companies that wish to return on site will do so before others

jokethrowaway4• 4 years ago

The number of deaths is so low it's hard to call it a pandemic.

But by all means, if we can convince companies to go remote with this bs, go ahead.

At the same time, I'm tired of restrictions to my personal freedoms to save literally 5 people (living in nazi Europe, restrictions are bad here, unlike USA / UK / northern europe)

NullPrefix• 4 years ago

why, as an manager, take on that kind of liability

lolwhut? No one is liable if you die from covid at work.

tn890• 4 years ago

Isn't it funny how just a few years ago the eternal HN discussion regarding remote working always took place in the same way: about half of commenters for, and half against.

The typical arguments of social interaction, in person brainstorming and so on, vs free time, no commute, can work from anywhere, "zoom is just as good" always went round in circles.

Now I see those in the mainstream and HN seems to have cross over almost completely to the WFH side.

I wonder how "converted" HN-ers got where they are. If you're here and changed your mind regarding remote work since the pandemic started, I'd like to hear why; what, other than the obvious pathogen, has caused your change of heart?

Isamu• 4 years ago

Before the pandemic I was able to WFH but usually didn’t, because as luck would have it, it always seemed like a crisis would occur and everyone would be looking for me. Now it’s more normalized and not a problem.

It’s less my attitude, more managing other’s attitudes (esp management)

gkop2• 4 years ago

Am management, can confirm. I preferred the office for personal happiness reasons, but seeing the sustained high output [0] during WFH, why would I risk messing that up?

(I don't stop people from going in to the office of course, I just don't push them to, and the company has told us "do what works". I just started going in one day a week, and it's been nice. We will do a week-long in-person gathering later this year and include the remote folks we hired since covid.)

[0] Yes, high output even when normalized for various factors that were dramatic early in the pandemic, but are tapering back to a new baseline, like people not taking vacation, or working longer hours because there was nothing else to do. Yes also, my team reports many downsides to being distributed. But the sustained net output is high, and we're hiring great people twice as quickly.

mlazos• 4 years ago

For me it just wasn’t as bad as I thought. I do miss hanging out with my coworkers but now if we’re local we just hang out. Being able to commute from bed is just so much nicer. And also being able to take guilt free ad hoc breaks during the day is just unbeatable.

starwind• 4 years ago

that's because all the people who want permanent wfh are browsing hacker news upvoting pro-wfh articles and comments while working from home with no one looking over their shoulders

mynegation• 4 years ago

I changed my mind about remote. Before pandemic I have been considering some fully remote roles, after pandemic - very unlikely. Working from home made me realize how much I miss talking to people at work in the meatspace. Going back to office in April and cannot wait.

tartoran2• 4 years ago

Assess again in a about 6 months to a year. You may change your mind. I started back in the office in september last year and I’d really like some kind of hybrid home/office type of situation. If I were to choose one or the other Id go WFH.

ilaksh• 4 years ago

Most people don't really evaluate things on their merit in a logical way like they think they do. Most behavior and opinions are picked up subconsciously based on what seems to be trending around them. Then comes the rationalization.

In other words, the herd moved towards WFH and got used to it. Now there are less rationalizations for commuting.

The few actual thoughts based on real-world observation now have actual experience of WFH to reference, which means fewer made up nonsense reasons to dislike it.

One thing that always stupidly gets left out of these conversations is the radical difference in situations for some people. Before, when kids were at home also, some parents were literally required to do two jobs while at home -- teacher and their normal job.

Or some people had spouses who did not understand WFH and did not respect boundaries.

But with the kids back in school it's a totally different situation for many.

bertil• 4 years ago

There are patterns and practices that make working remotely possible: document with context, clear pull requests, share your intent more deliberately, written stand-ups, give meetings detailed agendas, etc. Those are good habits when you share an office, but they can easily be complemented by sharing the same workspace and whiteboards.

Many teams had to discover those practices during the pandemic; companies that didn’t adopt them effectively likely lost a lot of people to frustration or apparent underperformance. After two years, many people have had the time to find places where those practices are understood and practiced, or at least have met people who know they can be.

The half that thought those were impossible or unlikely discovered it was possible, even enjoyable way of working.

There are still people, many of them my friends, who know and practice those deliberate communication patterns and who still prefer an office—–in particular for small start-ups. In some cases, those make more sense. But they are now a minority.

Other companies haven’t transitioned because they never really tried; many blamed the circumstances for the increasing disfunction of their teams, rather than learn and adapt. With some team members remaining remote, or contagious, unavailable, companies that have not adopted at least some learnings from the forced isolation can now seem very frustrating places to work. Fewer people are going to defend what they increasingly see as a suboptimal system.

I don’t think that the breakdown is as strict as you say. I think that many people have had the opportunity to see the benefits not of remote, but of a way of working that doesn’t rely on the crutch of an office. Some do it well, but a few still prefer the ease of interactions——a minority that typically don’t have time to comment here. Many haven’t learnt but won‘t comment either, because they don’t know what good should look like anymore.

mark_l_watson• 4 years ago

+1 good idea: written standups.

timr4• 4 years ago

Many teams had to discover those practices during the pandemic; companies that didn’t adopt them effectively likely lost a lot of people to frustration or apparent underperformance. After two years, many people have had the time to find places where those practices are understood and practiced, or at least have met people who know they can be.

I feel like the real story is something like this: a lot of people on HN are folks who have a highly introverted nature and work in jobs that demand extensive quiet time. Also, most are pontificating on the internet, but still haven't returned to the office. They have almost completely forgotten the velocity achievable when a team works together.

Can you overcome the limitations of remote work with better, more intentional documentation? Yes, to an extent. But my experience is that once you go back to working as a group, you'll re-discover that in-person communication has orders of magnitude more bandwidth. And if you have those best practices in place and work in an office together, you're even more efficient.

I don't hate remote work -- I do it myself, sometimes -- but nothing works as well as in-person communication. I forsee a future where most companies embrace a hybrid schedule, but demand in-person attendance on a regular basis.

pklausler• 4 years ago

I work with a group that's widely distributed around the planet. Prior to March 2020, meetings would always be in conference rooms with buggy videoconferencing gear. Now we're all remote, nobody has to commute to a local office to videoconference, and until we switched to MSFT Teams the experience was at least as good as it had been pre-pandemic. The food is way better at home, too. I might see myself going into the office again to conduct an interview, but otherwise, I'm completely sold on permanent WFH.

city412• 4 years ago

I have found I am more productive from home and I can do things like laundry. It's far from perfect but overall I have found it to be a win.

I think my ideal would be wfh 4 days, office 1 day. But I totally understand companies not wanting to maintain a building that is only used 1/5th of the time.

julianlam5• 4 years ago

This is a prime opportunity for five businesses to share a single furnished space.

Aperocky• 4 years ago

There was never a change of heart, but never did I realize how truly awful commuting was, and how truly awesome the lack of it is.

bengale• 4 years ago

Seems to have helped a lot that people are back socialising with their friends so the cabin fever has lifted and they don’t feel the desire to get back to the office to scratch that itch.

Also, kids are back at school.

QuikAccount2• 4 years ago

I'm still really indifferent but you could almost say I'm converted in the opposite direction. I realized how awful my co-workers are at communication, especially asynchronous communication and it makes me want to pull my hair out.

garciasn• 4 years ago

That’s an organizational and leadership/management issue at your current company and/or group/team; it’s not ubiquitous.

It’s time for you to find a different company that hires people who can communicate or teaches them to do better.

Bizarro• 4 years ago

...as opposed to walking over to their cube, standing behind them for a few seconds staring at their screen before they realize you're behind them, and then interrupting their work by asking your question?

syshum2• 4 years ago

I think it more a changing demographic of HN, as well as people that dissent from the WFH support seem to be blasted so they just do not speak up anymore.

2 years of "if you do not want isolation you want to kill grandma" will do that to you.

For my part my mind has not changed at all, I have no strong opinion either way, WFH or In Office has no impact on if I will take a job or not.

Salary, benefits, Vacation, etc are all 1000000000000x more important to me, and I will drop a WFH job in a hot second if the in office job pays more or provides me with something else I need / desire

popularonion• 4 years ago

I didn’t mind working in an office, but I went WFH in 2018 because it was the only way to live where I want to live and buy a home without taking a 70% pay cut.

sokoloff6• 4 years ago

Early March 2020, I was not only in "prefer to work in office" but "will only work in the central corporate office, not a satellite" (after being burned by too many satellite office situations).

By August, I was enjoying forced-WFH. Around November, we went into the office to collect our belongings and during the 8.5 mile drive over there in zero traffic, I thought "damn this is taking forever, I hate this drive!" :)

Now, while our company is remote-first forever, I just got back from a 3 day in-person offsite in FL with one of my leadership teams and have had a few others over the last year since the vaccine was widely available. They are irreplaceable and I'd take a full-time in-office job before taking a all-remote job where in-person meetings a couple times per year was not feasible.

gnulinux2• 4 years ago

At the beginning of pandemic I was neutral... Now I passionately detest wfh and I will never even attempt to do it again until my scars from last two years heal. I had a lot harder time to communicate, stay in the loop and focus on correct things.

GekkePrutser6• 4 years ago

I totally agree with the scars. I'm still heavily depressed due to the whole COVID situation. It feels like it will take years to recover even when the restrictions have lifted. I hear your though and I wish you well.

But WFH was a net win for me. At least it gave me some freedom in other ways. People no longer interrupt my concentration, they consider my status on teams more and ask before calling.

But these things are highly personal. I had other things that did and still do depress me heavily about the whole situation :(

strken2• 4 years ago

I hate it. I get less work done, drop out of my schedule and start waking up five minutes before standup, don't recognise half my the people I work with, and just generally don't have a fun time.

My commute is a 10 minute train ride followed by a 30 minute walk. I never realised it was actually a net positive, but it forces me to do a minimum amount of exercise every day, which significantly improves my life now we're back in the office.

julianlam5• 4 years ago

Agreed. In my situation it's an hour long train ride that I use to do email catch up and general community engagement, so by the time I'm at the office, I'm ready to work.

Whereas at home I have a toddler and a newborn climbing on me.

GekkePrutser6• 4 years ago

That 10 min train ride is pretty exceptional though. I had about 20 on the metro + 20 walkwhich was amazing.

In other jobs I've had 1 hour driving commutes which could go up to 3 hours due to heavy traffic in the area. It was absolutely exhausting and depressing.

So this depends a lot of your circumstances. Also, many people love to drive. I hate it and it stresses me out especially when I'm stuck in traffic.

MBCook• 4 years ago

I can sort of speak to this. I was NOT looking forward to working from home two years ago. I had always worked in the office and was happy with the social interaction. I worried about communication.

And that was actually very reasonable. My only experience before was being on a team where one or two people were WFH out of 10-12. They dialed in to our meetings and it was a mess. They couldn’t hear us well, we couldn’t hear them at times, lots of interruptions. It always felt to me like “we” were having a meeting and they were occasionally butting in. It was really hard for them to be truly included, and they were cut out of in-office stuff. So I didn’t want to WFH and get left out, or have others do the same.

But that’s not the case anymore.

In the time since then EVERYONE was WFH. We quickly got used to it. And we got some team members in other locations. Now that some people are back in the office it’s more even. It’s not the one or two people who aren’t there, it’s half the team. So the WFHs can’t be ignored, everybody stays in the discussion. It works far better than that old arrangement ever did, almost as well as when everyone was in office.

As for me I’m happy. I still get my office social interaction for the most part, it’s just often over chat/video. I feel more “free” because I can work where I want at home instead of at my one little cube in my one little chair. I can use better equipment (like my personal nice monitor vs corporate standard issue) in some cases. I don’t need to use headphones for music/podcasts.

And no commute.

At first I was unhappy “playing office” at home. Stuck at one desk, in one chair, with nothing to look at but a PC and a wall. As soon as I realized I didn’t have to do that I started to really enjoy WFH.

GekkePrutser6• 4 years ago

Having a nap during lunch break is also pretty refreshing. And not possible in the office.

We had a callcenter in Romania where they had a "relax" area and people used to nap on the couches there during lunch but it's always a bit awkward. And my office had nothing like this.

cmrdporcupine• 4 years ago

That doesn't sound very scientific. I personally suspect if you took a proper poll you'd find the numbers about the same as they were a year ago.

Myself I'd prefer to be back in the office. Just not the office I was in that was 45 minutes away. Working from home was dragging my soul down.

So I quit, living off my RSUs for the time being. Wherever I end up though, I will be asking for some kind of office, even if it's just me in a WeWork or whatever paid for by the company. That's just part of negotiation for me now. Being at home with the dogs and the kids and the distractions is unbearable.

cortesoft• 4 years ago

One big thing for me is that EVERYONE is remote. It is way harder when some people are remote and some people are in the office. If some people are in the office, they are going to talk in person and make decisions in person. Remote workers can be left out.

I remember an old adage about adding a remote team member... "if one team member is remote, all team members need to behave like they are remote"

When some communication is electronic and some is verbal, the team members who can only see half the conversation are going to be left out of decisions.

teirce2• 4 years ago

Don’t discount the part of the equation that the WFH crowd is very vocal (as well as preachy). So much as suggesting you miss going to the office or seeing coworkers in person is met with an incredible amount of vitriol.

And I don’t mean suggesting being in the office is better. I mean expressing a personal opinion on the matter makes people defensive and hostile.

bradlys3• 4 years ago

Correct. It’s basically the extrovert vs introvert thing as well as many other dynamics online.

You say you enjoy talking to others and would like to see people more often. Introverts will chime in and say, “but that’s not everyone! Not all of us enjoy idle chitchat! Oppressor!!” Yet - you never said you wanted to force anyone who wasn’t into that into that situation… And never implied it either.

It’s weird reactionary shit that adds nothing to the conversation. Expressing a personal opinion must be met with an equal or more severe personal opinion of the opposite. No circle jerking allowed anywhere!

I’m sure someone will chime in now that this isn’t actually how things work so that we can prevent any circle jerk.

jdrc2• 4 years ago

is it? people who wish to remain at home are most likely more introverted than the opposite.

ptx• 4 years ago

So much as suggesting you miss going to the office or seeing coworkers in person is met with an incredible amount of vitriol.

This might be because some of those of us who want WFH perceive this as, in practice, carrying the (unintentional) implicit threat of forcing us into physically mingling with the crowds again. After all, you can't see us in person without us seeing you in person, and on the way to that in-person meeting we're seeing a substantial part of the city's population in person.

gilbetron• 4 years ago

I've found that the in-office crowd is the vocal, preachy group, always trying to convince people who are happier than ever that they are wrong. The in-office crowd are the ones trying to get everyone back to their way, rather than finding a new compromise.

deathanatos• 4 years ago

I wonder how "converted" HN-ers got where they are. If you're here and changed your mind regarding remote work since the pandemic started, I'd like to hear why; what, other than the obvious pathogen, has caused your change of heart?

The pandemic forced me to build a home office, of sorts. I don't actually have an "office", per se, as real estate prices are bananas. I have a corner in the living room. But my corner has: 1. a window 2. a desk that's about 2× bigger than what my employer would provide 3. more space than what my employer would provide 4. is often, but not always, quiet

Also got a nice chair, which improved the WFH situation greatly. Need a second monitor, at some point.

But also my company keeps thinking not of a full return-to-office, but "oh, maybe like 1 day a week with hotdesking" and … no? I don't particularly want to haul things like my keyboard back and forth, & the company laptop is a MBP, so a. it's keyboard induces RSI and b. it's got those butterfly switches that fail easily, and mine have failed.

I do miss my commute, when my commute was a bike ride.

Unlike the article's survey, I think people absolutely can be convinced to go into the office in exchange for a salary increase. If the survey is getting "no", well, you're just not offering enough money. But, they never do.

asiachick2• 4 years ago

I hate work from home. Absolutely hate it. I'm willing to bet there will be an reports of an epidemic of suicides and/or depression from many people being isolated. Some of you have families or whatever and that works for you but lots of people do not.

Further, many people find enjoyment in socializing both at home and at work. Removing half of that socialization is also a problem for some. I know indie game collectives and they love their work and love doing at an office where they all collaborate. That feeling doesn't come from zoom.

timbit42• 4 years ago

In my country there has already been a report come out. Suicides were down but depression was up, but this is temporary depression due to the pandemic, not chronic depression due to chemical imbalances in the body.

vanilla_nut• 4 years ago

In my case, seniority. I’ve only been working in industry for around 5 or 6 years, and when you’re new, working remotely is inconvenient — it’s hard to ask impromptu questions, or set up “brain drain” sessions, or even get into the mindset of working. You feel like you need to work those full 8-9 hour days to prove yourself.

After a couple of years, I changed jobs. I realized open offices aren’t that pleasant, the food kinda sucks, the beer fridge is full of trash, and my coworker relationships are very superficial compared to my actual friendships. I started working from home 2-3 days a week because my slightly longer commute time on the subway just wasn’t worth being in the office.

Then covid hit. Everyone started working from home. I pooled resources with my significant other to put together a great coffee setup at home, nice desks, cooked lunch together every day. I moved cities to be closer to things I want to do (and cut down on the NYC drinking culture). Now I’m actually planning another move to be someplace where I can actually afford a house in the next year or two.

I changed, the work environment changed, the world changed, and… work from home works better for me now? When I first started, I had a remote teammate, and it actually really bothered me — I felt like it ruined our team culture because we couldn’t include that teammate in lunches, he forced standups to be on zoom, etc. But now that I’m more established in the field I totally get it. If I had a family, no way I’d want to raise my kids in a US city right now. I’m sure it could work for other people with different preferences but to me it’s just too expensive, too much driving, too dangerous when you try to walk or bike, and cuts me off from the things I really enjoy, like biking on dirt roads in the woods, cross country skiing, downhill skiing (when it’s not busy), and easily visiting family.

Melatonic• 4 years ago

I like the option of working from home but from a social perspective I also definitely prefer in many ways going into a physical office. In a world where most people want to exclusively WFH I wonder if that will artificially limit my career growth.

randomdata• 4 years ago

WFH translates to “work from anywhere”, so social opportunities are actually greater when WFH rather than in the office.

Anyone who started WFH within the last couple of years likely haven’t realized that yet, granted.

mattgreenrocks• 4 years ago

I’m a big remote work fan, and yet going into work has big benefits even for this introvert.

Really I just want the choice in it all. I think if you explained to people that either is okay, but some things need you in, that seems quite fair.

llamataboot• 4 years ago

And here comes all the AI content flooding every niche ad-words style....

macintux2• 4 years ago

I thought perhaps English wasn’t their first language but your explanation makes more sense.

Since the pandemic is around the corner and situation can go from bad to worse at any moment, it has to be considered is what has been reported.

somehnacct37575• 4 years ago

The article is exceedingly poor quality by HN standards, textbook blog spam. But it doesn't matter cuz everyone read the title and jumped straight into the comments.

bravetraveler• 4 years ago

Kind of in the same spirit, I'm not sure I could be paid enough to return to the office.

I'm pretty sure remote positions I'm qualified for will be open. I could get by with about half of my pay if needed

The idea of adding such dreadful routine to the day around already stressful work puts me over the edge

For context: Architecture/compliance/operations dude with a lot of hats

mabbo• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I could be paid enough to

I think a better way to frame this: "No one will ever be willing to pay me enough to".

Because everyone has a price for just about any job imaginable.

Apreche• 4 years ago

We're beyond that. I've set a new goal. I'm going to try to negotiate a four day work week for myself. Not 4x10. 4x8. I mean, Ideally it would be as little as possible, but someone might actually agree to 4x8.

city412• 4 years ago

This has worked for me as a contractor. I'm currently on a 4x8 schedule.

There is also this site, which I've not really explored yet https://4dayweek.io/

commandlinefan• 4 years ago

I suspect this will result in lesser salaries for everybody over time.

Apocryphon5• 4 years ago

Companies could play it smart and seek out compromises- what about hybrid that’s a couple times a week every two or more weeks? What about getting rid of open office floor plans and instituting cubicles, if not individual offices or at least team offices?

isbvhodnvemrwvn• 4 years ago

hybrid is no different than in office. I still have to live near the office.

Apocryphon5• 4 years ago

Yes, the commute is the major downside to RTO, but it’s not the only one. Some people might be fine with some commuting, but dislike working in offices full time, or just in open office environments.

dqpb• 4 years ago

Adults want autonomy. Surprise, surprise.

lifeplusplus• 4 years ago

I'll also take unpaid 3-4 month time off but keep insurance

jzymbaluk• 4 years ago

I'm sure lots of people want WFH exclusively, and that's valid, but for me a flexible hybrid setup where the office is there if you want it, and my team plans in-the-office meeting days is really ideal for me. I feel like I miss a lot not seeing people in person. I've felt extremely isolated these last 2 years and I'll be very happy to be getting some face-to-face time this year and in the future

windex2• 4 years ago

Fuel prices, traffic congestion, cheaper rents, healthier air, are all advantages that cannot be taken away. Taking the commute out of my job gave me an additional 4 hours everyday not counting lower stress levels. Doing away with random cafeteria talk gave me 90 minutes back. As to creativity, I think the management view that everyone sitting in a room is more creative is not really true. I'd rather meet up people outside a stuffy office.

The clamor to come back to office is only from upper management whose primary concerns seems to stem from the fact that having control over physical bodies in an office is a sense of power. They also have nice offices, views, facilities, space and desks. The rent extracting industry is also going through a crisis of sorts and the political class is deeply invested in rent extraction.

COVID hasn't gone away. Long term effects (cognitive, cardiac) of a COVID infection are not being accounted for either. COVID highlighted the fact that you can get digital work delivered from anywhere.

jcims2• 4 years ago

I’ve been developing an opinion that it has more to do with propping up commercial real estate and protecting the value of existing investments.

dvtrn3• 4 years ago

See my other comment, but I suspect so too. Just listening to the rhetoric of my parent company about our clients (commercial real estate developers), a lot of companies are vocally fretting about what to do with their (expensive) office spaces when the BIS (butts in seats) factor is down to single digits.

macintux2• 4 years ago

There are a lot of ripple effects too: I suspect our largest local employer is getting a lot of pressure from the business community. The number of downtown businesses that are impacted by the absence of those feet & wallets is significant.

jmole• 4 years ago

I hope this finally ends the nonstop office space development in the bay area in favor of more housing.

langsoul-com• 4 years ago

That seems likely for the biggest tech companies, that spent $1 billion+ on offices.

CincinnatiMan• 4 years ago

If a company has their offices representing a non negligible portion of their assets/revenue, they’re either doing something wrong or they’re a property developer/owner as a business.

baby• 4 years ago

Exactly, I'd rather work from home or from a wework or something, and then meet my coworkers for actual sessions of collaborations (or outside at a bar, or something)

vidarh• 4 years ago

Having the illusion of control and illusion of good management more than power I think.

I once taught a course and the first thing I was told was to look for a green glow on people's faces: it meant people were playing solitaire on the class computers instead of listening.

A whole lot of managers knows only the work equivalent of that: they've learnt simple proxies for actual management that let them think they know when people are working well from walking rooms (or having people reporting to them do so).

People working from home means they actually have to figure out how to track output, and that takes effort. Effort many managers are not used to.

I had to learn a whole lot to start managing remote and distributed teams. It takes away a whole lot of lazy shortcuts to management.

Lucky for me I was forced to deal with that many years ago, but it was uncomfortable and a big change, so I'm not at all surprised that many resist it now.

dreamcompiler• 4 years ago

Having the illusion of control and illusion of good management more than power I think.

It's certainly true that managers are lazy and they would rather measure illusory proxies for work rather than work itself, but America also became a major economic engine of the world by exerting control over people's bodies without paying them. Even though that practice ended several generations ago, the attitude that equates "success" with "power over bodies" is still very common in America. Many states are now trying very hard (again) to control women's bodies with the force of law, to cite just one example.

itronitron• 4 years ago

A lot of people in upper management are there because they aren't concerned about the effect their decisions have on their colleagues.

gorgoiler3• 4 years ago

WFH is fantastic for ICs and misery for decision makers. You’re seeing pro-office bias from the latter because humans are optimised for building alignment when they meet in person. If you’re an IC that doesn’t need to build influence then, indeed, WFH is bliss.

Not all tech work is about sitting in front of a glowing screen, writing code. It’s about achieving a business goal that brings in revenue, and all the alignment throughout the org that’s needed to get that done.

Repository layout, test framework changes, factoring out core components to make a long term stable branch, persuading teams to collaborate at their bleeding edges rather than by internal releases, how to ship auto formatting code with the lowest negative impact on everyone else…

Decision making, even on technical topics, is a people-centric skill.

dleslie2• 4 years ago

None of what you've described is impossible, or less effective, when performed over digital communication. If anything, digital is better for that coordination and influence gathering due to its recorded nature. Better still, because the digital communication is more time flexible the stakeholders and clients you need to coordinate have the ability to consume and process it at a rate that best suits them, rather than feign interest in yet another meeting packed with forgettable information that should have been an email.

Asooka• 4 years ago

All the things you listed were already done over email, slack, etc. even before the pandemic. The moment I have to involve a second team, I have to do it over email, doing it in person is too disruptive to work.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 4 years ago

We do all that, we do all of it remote and we wouldn't go back to the office (it is now impossible)

wfh_forever2• 4 years ago

Every single engineering items were resolved by a well written design doc (ERD). 2-3 Google hangouts were enough to get alignment across team members.

jjav• 4 years ago

Taking the commute out of my job gave me an additional 4 hours everyday not counting lower stress levels.

While I'm a huge proponent of WFH-forever and eliminating the commute, I have to say that it hasn't increased my time much.

That's because with everyone commuting, we approximately never had meetings before 10am since everyone knew everyone might be stuck in traffic, so no point scheduling anything earlier. And certainly no meetings after 5pm since everyone had to hit the commute nightmare.

With the pandemic WFH, I'm seeing meetings as early as 8am and up to 6pm, since there is no "excuse" of having to commute. So the time I was sitting in traffic I'm now sitting in zoom.

Sure, I'd rather take zoom than traffic, but overall it didn't free up much time.

IshKebab• 4 years ago

A 2 hour commute is insane. That's on you really.

nemetroid• 4 years ago

On them and American urban planning. I agree it’s insane, though.

neilalexander• 4 years ago

I am not really sure whether you are suggesting people should move closer to their jobs, or to find jobs closer to where they live, but there are all sorts of externalities and life is rarely that simple.

kirso• 4 years ago

Think what it also enabled is less office politics and promotions based on the output, not who you chit chat with in the cafeteria

spoonjim• 4 years ago

A reminder that just because WFH is in an employee’s interest doesn’t mean it’s it in an employer’s interest and that the dynamics of this will be much like “employees want more money” — people with leverage will get it and people without it will not.

somehnacct37575• 4 years ago

The passing play is now in favor of WFH. In other words if you think the choices are fully onsite, fully remote, or mixed - mixed is not a terminal state. It's an interim state which drifts toward fully remote.

Say you have a mixed workforce where they have to be in 3 days a week. They are going to commute to work, sit at a desk, and spend all day on zoom anyway to accommodate the 40% of workers having a WFH day.

Also consider the companies that allowed a subset of workers to go permanent remote. If you work directly with even one of those ppl, all your meetings are now zoom meetings.

In both cases the person in the office is penalized. They have a WFH experience but they have to needlessly commute to get it. Is the salary boost worth the commute costs and time lost?

There's a thousand other ways for us to solve quote unquote mental health issues related to WFH. The lockdowns are over. You can join a club. You've got 2 extra hours in your day from no commute to tend a community garden, join a rec league, go to the local pub. You don't need coworkers or employers for these things.

edmundsauto• 4 years ago

What about people for whom WFH means less, or no, productivity? Lots of my colleagues are willing to brave the commute in order to be in an environment that is focused on the business at hand.

somehnacct37575• 4 years ago

This is the group I think will hold out the longest, the people who need a reliable, socially accepted way to escape their home environment. When they say 'focus on the business at hand' they really mean 'not distracted by my home'.

I don't think businesses will continue to provide for these employees after the commercial real estate correction. In time, having an office flips into a multi-faceted liability.

But until that happens, the leases were already signed so let the good times roll. These employees and employers form a complementary artificial need for an office.

ipaddr5• 4 years ago

Does this group get replaced?

jdrc2• 4 years ago

coworking spaces?

alar44• 4 years ago

Sounds like they are in the wrong field and should seek out a job in a factory or maybe driving a cab.

tippytippytango• 4 years ago

This is one of those cases where the market will figure it out.

zmmmmm2• 4 years ago

It does seem that that there is a pretty strong push for return to on site in a lot of organizations. However it is interesting the premise is often not well articulated beyond diffuse sentiments such as improving "team work" etc etc. Few seem to be arguing that productivity is the issue. By and large, everyone is acknowledging that the work gets done either way.

Which leaves the question of what is motivating it? I feel like this is more managers struggling to recapture their previous sense of identity which was founded in some way on there being a physical place full of warm bodies with a specific culture shaped by management through various decisions. Without that managers are left with a much more intangible sense of what their role and value is. Everything seems a lot more hollow if your only reason to exist is to deliver on bare bones work requirements. Then, managers also feel they have a lot of influence over employees by controlling their physical environment which they don't have with WFH.

The problem the managers have is, the factors in favor of WFH are pretty clear and objective. Just eliminating commute saves most employees a couple of hours a day which is already probably more productivity gain than you could achieve through any other kind of workplace measure. The benefits for the environment, reduction in burden on infrastructure, etc etc are all pretty easy to add up.

So we are left with management weirdly struggling to assert a rationale made up entirely of intangibles against pretty obvious hard objective facts. It's going to be pretty interesting to see who wins this one.

dvtrn3• 4 years ago

Which leaves the question of what is motivating it?

As someone who works in a software shop that sells directly to this sector, I have a guess (and it’s just a guess but a quasi-informed one):

Office/Building leases.

rtomanek• 4 years ago

What about them?

NeverFade2• 4 years ago

There are many considerations that organizations have, that they will never articulate to their employees because they are either orthogonal or to some degree opposed to these employees' interests.

As a notable example, it's much easier for employees to hop between remote jobs. Forcing you into a physical location is a way to lock you into the job: you socialize and make friends at work, you buy a house close to work, you build an entire life around work.

No employer will tell their employees "let's all get back to the office so you will find it harder to leave your role even if we underpay and overwork you."

derefr• 4 years ago

A slightly more sympathetic concern: remote work makes a manager's job harder. Said job still does get done either way; but it's the difference between a manager being able to goof off for most of the day and end up finding out everything they need to know anyway through simple off-hand questions whenever someone walks by; vs. needing to actively arrange high-scheduling-overhead Zoom meetings + actively probe one's reports on Slack for relevant updates.

scarface747• 4 years ago

Not forcing me to come to work and being able to work from anywhere in the US is one of the major reasons for me keeping my job.

I refinanced last year to a 15 year mortgage planning for this to be our “forever home”. I woke up one morning and I asked my wife did she want to move to one of the tax free states. We can save $12K a year and try some place different for a few years.

pragmatic5• 4 years ago

I’ve actually heard this one.

Managers happy that employees bought a house bc “now you’re stuck here”. Which isn’t too far from the truth.

There are or where a lot of places where a specialty like networking and various tech fields might only have one or two major employers in the area.

notimetorelax• 4 years ago

I keep reading those comments where those proverbial managers want this or that. I don’t understand where it comes from - managers also people with similar needs to individual contributors. Myself, being a manager I’m not looking forward to us going to office and the teams are performing well as is. My peer managers are is a similar opinion.

Is it the banal they vs us, search for an enemy and cause of one’s unhappiness?

qaq• 4 years ago

Because mandates are coming from managers? Or are suggesting they are coming from ICs?

midhhhthrow• 4 years ago

Managers tend to be more extroverted and thus also more lonely at home. Several even admitted this to me. And so they want to make everyone come back to the office so they can have their social needs met. But the way they phrase it is, it’s easier to communicate and have meetings

adrianN• 4 years ago

Whether one prefers WFH or the office strongly depends on ones personality. I wouldn't be surprised if the personality type that tends to become a manager also tends to prefer to work in an office environment.

mouzogu2• 4 years ago

If your manager told you to push your team back into the office. Would you do that or resist?

That's my view that management are there to enforce the often unpleasant demands of those above. In most cases anyway.

stkdump3• 4 years ago

I keep reading those comments that almost nobody wants to go to the office. In my (European) company, maybe ~80 SWEs, people were given the choice to either mostly go to back to the office (4 out of 5 days) or mostly work from home (3 out of 5 days at home, hot desking in the office). After 2 years of mostly having no choice and being forced out of the office, 80% of them decided to mostly work from the office after the pandemic. We always had a handful people working fully remote, and I think 1 or 2 asked if they could switch to that permanently to be able to live somewhere else. But otherwise people mostly want to be in the office. Notably people outside engineering seem to prefer WFH much more. I wonder why we are so special.

freyr• 4 years ago

Someone in the management chain is making that decision.

la647102• 4 years ago

Upper management … you will ask your team to come to office as soon as you get the memo from upper management. <shrugs>

thesumofall• 4 years ago

I think it originates from the feeling that cross-team innovations are somehow more difficult to pull off. Is this really measurable? No. Would it put a company at risk if there is a chance that such kind of innovation were reduced by 25%? Possibly.

Combine this with the fear of many managers that they will not be able to change policy once they allowed everyone to work fully from home and you get the prevalent policies

mouzogu2• 4 years ago

As an asthmatic is there some kind of medical route I can take to avoid ever going back?

I don't trust that things will improve for 95% of people long term, I think the agenda is clear. So, I'm looking for some hard lines that my employers can't cross.

weatherlite2• 4 years ago

Sounds reasonable if the offices are in a polluted place (which is often the case) and you get a doctor to sign that smog/pollution exacerbates your asthma (which sounds reasonable as well). It's a known fact that pollution exacerbates asthma. Hope it gets better for you!

kkfx• 4 years ago

A modern society can very well exists with much of jobs from remote, of course not all can be done remotely and that means those jobs will get paid more, witch is actually good BUT that demand a revolution many do not want: that demand a distributed economy.

WFH it's ok, but outside my new home on mountains I need groceries, health services, real-life leisure services etc those can only exists in a new old distributed economy because who want to open a megastore on mountains collecting a small fraction of people of even a small city?

Such transformation is needed ALSO for environmental reasons: we can't make "green tall buildings" simply because we can't practically upgrade them, while we can make homes "for a human life" to be destroyed and rebuilt with modern techniques of the present time forever. We still need factories, witch still need many humans in place, witch means a new kind of society where the wealthy are physically far from poors, poors are concentrated in factory-smart-cities-labor-camps-alike places and wealthy are spread in the territory, but since in nature there is the principle of communicating vessels that can't really last longer etc. Actually ALMOST NO ONE want to face such big revolution, also neoliberals schools believe that population can't really evolve in "short" time, even if some try hard to push them to a new and better life. That's the challenge and probably the response will be "individual" with big unrest in the meantime...

d4rkp4ttern• 4 years ago

I think there is another trend going on, perhaps spurred by the pandemic: the rise of consultancy (or contract) work. It feels like the whole concept of “I work at company X” is fast becoming old fashioned. Especially in software some increasing percentage of people people seem to much prefer being consultants. Or am I wrong about this trend ?

thawaya3113• 4 years ago

They will get their wishes for lower salaries pretty soon.

WFH is just a small transitory step towards work from the cheapest 3rd world country you can find.

djohnston• 4 years ago

I'm not going back to the office but there is a sense that outsourcing to cheaper east euro / s.e. Asian dev shops will become more commonplace.

dmitrygr• 4 years ago

Makes sense.

I like what I do. I like my team. But I also like not having brain damage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5

wfh_forever2• 4 years ago

WFH has to be THE blessing in disguise from the COVID pandemic. Unless you are walking distance from your workplace. WFH is the most productive form of work. As far decision making arguments. It boils down to good management practices and engineering documentation versus micro management and below par documentation practices.

Ready to Work at Lesser Salaries or Even Quit, Employees Want Only WFH: Survey

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