8 ms·

Ask HN: Do you think 'normal' working will ever return?

37 points by scotthtaylor 6y ago

Interested to hear everyone's predictions for 2021 and beyond. Do you think we will actually return to offices? Or will WFH become the new norm? Also — would you WFH if you had to take a pay cut of 10% or greater?

Minor49er 6y ago
I would not work for a company that would have me work from home for 10% less than what I make now. Why would I do that? I am paying more by working from home since I need to supply my own utilities and resources just to do my job.
- patatino 6y ago
  I work from home and my computer is paid by the company and I get a little compensation which covers internet and power etc. So no spending there! But I save a lot by not commuting and eating at home.
  - Minor49er 6y ago
    In my situation, my computer is paid by the company, but that's it. I drive my kids to and from school which is on the way to the office, so my commute has been extended. My employer also gave us a lunch credit which we lost now that we don't go to the office anymore.
- milsebg 6y ago
  You don't have to supply (i.e. buy) your own hardware, but you might have to pay for the power supply. On the contrary, you likely have lower commuting costs. However, the more important aspect might be that you end up needing more space at home and the employer needs less space in the office. Working from your kitchen table is probably not the best idea in terms of ergonomics. In my opinion this aspect gets few attention in the discussion.
  - labcomputer 6y ago
    Many people (prior to Covid) did not have a desk and chair suitable for WFH (I did, but many of my coworkers didn't). Chairs and desks are hardware. Many couples do not have two spare bedrooms (especially in the Bay Area) to work in. That means potentially renting/buying a larger living space, or converting living space into working space. N=1, but my lower commuting costs are more than offset by the lack of company-provided lunches, snacks, and coffee.
fiftyacorn 6y ago
The trend to home work has already started before Corona. I think we'll see a return to normal as there is too much vested interest in commercial property esp in the UK.
muzani 6y ago
Let's address the elephant in the room: Working from home is a lot less efficient than an ideal office. It's harder to debug things or pair program when needed, it's harder to grab someone's attention, it's easier to miscommunicate, and communication is a lot slower. You also don't get the same camaraderie as you would face to face, but the upside is that you also don't get distracted by attractive coworkers. However, few offices are ideal. Traffic and commuting is one of the worst little things of daily life. It's dangerous. It ruins the environment. Parking sucks. Good offices are wide open spaces, with good air, good climate, and cheerful environments. Many offices are bad environments and overcrowded. There's a balance that COVID has tilted. Some will learn that they don't need offices anymore, especially when people have decked out their home offices. It's likely we'll see employers double down on home offices where they can. Some, like Airbnb or Apple might find that morale is better in their offices. Some smaller companies might set up theirs out of major cities, where lifestyle is cheaper and less crowded.
- deeblering4 6y ago
  “working from home is a lot less efficient than an ideal office” — Goes on to highlight the distractions of the office and all the efficiency/time gains of WFH.
  - pc86 6y ago
    I think the point is that managers/executives view their office as ideal, and therefore (rightly and justifiably) want people to come in. The people actually working in said office see the flaws, understand it's less than ideal, and know they can be more productive from home.
  - muzani 6y ago
    I mean to say that offices are wonderful things when done right, but cities are broken. A lot of great startups start out in garages, but frankly most of us can't afford a garage, and some even sleep in less space than that. If we could afford homes that have garages, that would likely beat working in some big city skyscraper.
- 6y ago
pc86 6y ago
The location from which I am working is irrelevant with respect to the value I'm providing to the company. If anything I should earn more working from home, because I'm paying more for utilities and my employer isn't paying utilities for me at the office.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  But you're also no longer paying for your commute.
  - stephenr 6y ago
    The salient point for ops argument is that the company isn’t providing utilities, isn’t providing parking, cleaning etc etc. Working from home saves the company money. A company that is good to employees would recognise this and return at least some of the savings via payroll or reimbursements.
    - Udik 6y ago
      The company is still paying you the same although you are no longer commuting though. Before you wasted between 1/2 hour and 2 hours every day just moving back and forth from the office (formally unpaid time). Now you can get out of your bed ten minutes before the first meeting in the day or be grocery shopping in your neighborhood five minutes after your work day ended.
      - stephenr 6y ago
        That is irrelevant. Should a person who literally lived next door to the office then be paid the same because they saved less on commuting? What if I “work from home” but actually choose to commute to work from a storage facility on the other side of town? No. Commuting is irrelevant to the cost because it’s unrelated to the work or the cost of doing business. The cost of utilities not required on site is a literal and measurable saving for the business. That cost is directly transferred to the employee.
  - 6y ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
I'm still working in the office, so yes. Even though remote work has been a possibility for IT for a long time, various factors have prevented it from being taken up as the norm. I don't believe those factors have changed in any permanent way. I would happily take a pay cut to work from home, and I'd even happily take a 50% pay cut to cut my hours by 50%, and I'd like a pony...
- dragonsngoblins 6y ago
  I wish so much I could work less days even if I was getting paid less, but nobody wants someone not doing 5 days it seems like.
SashaRuvin 6y ago
The one thing I can appreciate about working from home for so long is I haven't been sick this entire time. Open floor plans spread colds, flus, and stomach bugs around like wildfire, and it's nice to be out of the petri dish.
- belval 6y ago
  This has been my experience as well. I used to get about 3 colds per year, maybe 4 if I was unlucky. I've been at home since March and haven't had symptoms of anything which is so great.
  - nroach 6y ago
    Also this is magnified with many kids out of school. With reduced child to parent transfer those that do need to go in to the office may have less background infectivity. When my kids were in elementary school I had more sick days in a year than the ten years prior combined.
- UhDev 6y ago
  I miss taking sick days for no reason.
candu 6y ago
1. Yes, we will largely return to offices. Digital tools remain sub-par as replacements for direct human contact / communication, and that isn't likely to change soon. (Mayyyyyybe mixed reality will finally make a dent here, but meaningful computer-supported collaboration is still a very active area of academic research. Haven't found any tool that comes close to the fluency and reliability of a quick huddle around a whiteboard.) As others have noted, there's also a lot of investment in commercial space - so there will be economic / political pressure to return to office work. Will this happen in 2021? No idea. Some workplaces have announced full-remote until mid-2021 at the very least, and any cure / vaccine will take time to fully study, productionize, and distribute. It might take a few years to fully return, and there may be a slightly higher proportion of WFH even after that. For a historical perspective: consider that humanity has weathered catastrophic pandemics before, and look to what happened there in the longer term. This time around, we have the further advantage of much better medicine / logistics than, say, during the 1918 flu. (We also, of course, have both the advantages and disadvantages that come with much faster communications channels.) 2. Absolutely not! By working from home, I'm taking on additional office-related expenses that would normally be paid for, plus expenses related specifically to remote work (e.g. webcams). If anything, I'd expect the company to help cover those expenses, and/or bump my salary up to compensate for added setup and logistics on my end (or even just to reflect the reduced overhead on their end - if they save money having me work at home, why shouldn't I see some of that?)
emit_time 6y ago
I think this is teaching a lot of people how much of work is BS. Now that a lot of the distractions and meetings are gone lots of people are realizing they really only work a couple hours a day and spend the rest dicking around or stuck in pointless meetings.
- amitoz_azad 6y ago
  I second this !
chansiky 6y ago
Just adding another opinion to the poll. I think this is an extreme scenario, but it also is a shift towards a new "normal". The inefficiency of commute, and the ease of not traveling to work everyday is a thing many people would love to reduce. Pushing buttons on a television screen has been largely eliminated by remotes because it simply requires less mental energy and I think the workforce will fight for it simply because people are lazy. Also, I would WFH for the paycut, and that's because technically I'm not home at the moment - and that is potentially more valuable than what the extra money would have bought.
Natales 6y ago
My CTO has been researching this (large 30K emp. software company) and the current consensus seems to indicate that ~60% of the workforce is expected to continue to work remote. Offices will be redesigned as collaboration spaces, where (when it becomes safe) people will converge from time to time for specific activities, but the follow-up and rest of the work will be remote. I fully support this, and I to a degree, I've been doing it for 6 years already, and I find it extremely effective. And no, I would not take a pay cut. Companies pay for what I bring to the table. As long as they get what they want from me, it should be irrelevant where am I.
- RIMR 6y ago
  I actually make the argument that you should pay me more if I work from home. If you aren't going to be paying for a workspace, a lab environment, electricity, etc. for me to do my job, I'll be the one paying for those things, so give me more money to pay for it. If you're not going to pay for an office for me to use, pay me enough to afford a larger home with a dedicated office space.
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    I get tax credits for using my home as a work environment, so I can expense a portion of my Internet bill and some other stuff.
commonturtle 6y ago
I would prefer working from an office just because of the benefits of collaboration. For generic cookie cutter projects WFH works well, but IMO complex large projects can be executed much faster by a co-located team of people.
_ah 6y ago
1. Individual Contributors are more effective at home without distractions. 2. Managers are more effective at the office where they can talk to people and discover information: "manage by walking around". 3. Why are managers / executives necessary and often paid more? Because their contribution affects the work of many other people. Managers' work operates with leverage (for good or ill). 4. If offices make managers more effective, and managers leverage their effectiveness over a large number of people, then the greatest good for the company is likely to be a return to in-person working environments. It may take a while, but most of us will be going back.
president 6y ago
Some annoyances I have found from working from home: 1. Lots of people have horrible internet connections making communication a frustrating experience. 2. Hard to get attention of colleagues when they don't respond on Slack. It was already hard enough in the office but at least you could physically walk into somebody's cube before. 3. Not everyone has the amenities of air conditioning or heating.
goatcode 6y ago
It depends on the will of the companies employing people. I've been back in the office for 4 months, and everything feels extremely normal up until I try to go to most businesses outside.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

> Working from home is a lot less efficient than an ideal office. It's harder to debug things or pair program when needed, it's harder to grab someone's attention, it's easier to miscommunicate, and communication is a lot slower. You also don't get the same camaraderie as you would face to face, but the upside is that you also don't get distracted by attractive coworkers. YMMV. Your home can be your ideal office, and is for many of us working remote (myself included). There are technology companies with hundreds of employees with billion dollar+ valuations who are fully remote. There is no proof they would be more efficient if you colocated all of those folks in person.

edogg 6y ago
I’ve been WFH for 10 of the past 15 years. It is much harder to create a new billion dollar company if everyone is WFH, especially if there is a physical product as opposed to something that only manifests on screens. It is much harder to on board and mentor new co-workers. It is much harder to make a transition to the next position in your career, like a promotion or move within the company. It is much harder to develop and maintain relationships that result in respect and trust for coworkers. All of the above especially if most people are in the office. I’ve become a bit like a contractor grinding through a series of similar projects, my career growth has stalled, and my only interactions with my coworkers who used to be friends now always boil down to ‘when will X be done?’ I would avoid WFH for anyone not in the sunset years of their career.
- BjoernKW 6y ago
  Well, those might be dismissed as anecdotal examples but Automattic, Zapier, Basecamp and GitLab clearly show that remote-first or remote-only companies can be highly successful and efficient businesses with friendly, conducive work environments.
deleted 6y ago
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rapjr9 6y ago
I worked from home for 15 years and found it to be much more efficient than going into my office. The slower communication is a great benefit because people are forced to think before replying rather than just reacting. Tutoring students worked much better because they have your thoughts in writing rather than having to quickly takes notes or remember what you said. You now have a timestamped record of activities that you can refer back to. You can record a Zoom conference for those who were not able to attend or to create a video for disseminating new information. I think that one of the main reasons some people, and some professions (like banking), prefer working in person is because it is less accountable without the written/recorded history.