8 ms·

A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

166 points by Simon_M 6y ago

antonzabirko 6y 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_man 6y 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.
  - antonzabirko 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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".
- anewaccount2021 6y 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.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  No amount of "camaraderie" or "social interaction" is worth the soul killing experience of commuting to and from work >200 times a year.
  - ht_th 6y ago
    I miss my 20 minute bike ride between work and home. That bike-ride truly separated work-life from home-life. It cleared my head, and I got some exercise in. I really miss that. And no, just going cycling or walking for an hour or so during the day isn't the same. I don't know why.
    - dublinben 6y ago
      If more people had a 20 minute bike commute, we'd all be much better off. Unfortunately, far more people are facing the prospect of returning to 60+ minute driving commutes, which are hell.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wackk 6y 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.
missedthecue 6y ago
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 6y 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 6y ago
    Those can both be simultaneously true. Employers can be supportive while still trying to regain lost productivity.
- ska 6y 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_man 6y 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 6y ago
  What's optimal for a 9 year old schoolchild isn't necessarily optimal for a 30 year old professional.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    College from home has been a spectacular failure as well
lucasmullens 6y 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/2020/09/22/most-workers-want-work-home-after-covid-19 https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/articles-reports/2020/09...
- duxup 6y 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.
  - anewaccount2021 6y ago
    > what people mean by saying they "want to work from home". Its not complicated, "I", "want", "to", "work", "from", "home".
    - duxup 6y ago
      The parent to my comment indicated what the nuances are.
    - dang 6y ago
      "Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jrockway 6y 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.)
ska 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
- geoelectric 6y 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.
mkl95 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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?
mabbo 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
  That's cool, it's your preference. A lot of people prefer going in, especially if they are single and live alone.
- wjamesg 6y ago
  You are quite privileged
  - kashura 6y ago
    Why? Because an individual has difference circumstances they are automatically "privileged"?
  - anewaccount2021 6y ago
    Why are you working if not to earn privilege?
ange1a 6y 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-system 6y ago
  They realized that 25 years ago. Then, 10 years ago they realized that time zones and soft skills are also a thing.
- bzbarsky 6y 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.
spamizbad 6y 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.
throw8932894 6y 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.
- djrogers 6y 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.
  - xornox 6y ago
    High enough human population leads to continuous pandemics. It is law of nature and can not be changed.
  - throw8932894 6y 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.
djrogers 6y 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 6y 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.
sharkweek 6y 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.
- alextheparrot 6y 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.
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    True, I am not interested in coming in to the office more then once a quarter.
  - ghaff 6y 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.
pjettter 6y 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.
- ryandrake 6y 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 6y 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."
  - pjettter 6y 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 6y 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
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  We are all commodities... best to shatter that illusion safely before you get hurt.
- Bakary 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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__panic 6y 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.
dang 6y ago
Url changed from https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice-but-to-offer-an-option-for-remote-working-a38ea7fe9a9c https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice..., which points to this.
dang 6y ago
The submitted URL was https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice-but-to-offer-an-option-for-remote-working-a38ea7fe9a9c 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&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=follow-up%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
jonahrd 6y ago
And here is a (poorly written) article saying that "top bankers" say WFH is falling apart: https://montrealgazette.com/executive/careers/top-bankers-sound-alarm-that-remote-work-is-starting-to-grate/wcm/db9ab6a5-707a-4e1f-a643-ebb6c7a7e545 https://montrealgazette.com/executive/careers/top-bankers-so... We'll see whose opinions matter more when this is over... workers or executives.
ibobev 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
ckgjm 6y 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.

166 points by Simon_M 6y 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_man 6y 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.
- antonzabirko 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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".
anewaccount2021 6y 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.
deeeeplearning 6y ago
No amount of "camaraderie" or "social interaction" is worth the soul killing experience of commuting to and from work >200 times a year.
- ht_th 6y ago
  I miss my 20 minute bike ride between work and home. That bike-ride truly separated work-life from home-life. It cleared my head, and I got some exercise in. I really miss that. And no, just going cycling or walking for an hour or so during the day isn't the same. I don't know why.
  - dublinben 6y ago
    If more people had a 20 minute bike commute, we'd all be much better off. Unfortunately, far more people are facing the prospect of returning to 60+ minute driving commutes, which are hell.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wackk 6y 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.

missedthecue 6y ago

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 6y 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 6y ago
  Those can both be simultaneously true. Employers can be supportive while still trying to regain lost productivity.
ska 6y 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_man 6y 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 6y ago
What's optimal for a 9 year old schoolchild isn't necessarily optimal for a 30 year old professional.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  College from home has been a spectacular failure as well

lucasmullens 6y 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/2020/09/22/most-workers-want-work-home-after-covid-19 https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/articles-reports/2020/09...

duxup 6y 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.
- anewaccount2021 6y ago
  > what people mean by saying they "want to work from home". Its not complicated, "I", "want", "to", "work", "from", "home".
  - duxup 6y ago
    The parent to my comment indicated what the nuances are.
  - dang 6y ago
    "Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jrockway 6y 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.)

ska 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
geoelectric 6y 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.

mkl95 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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?

mabbo 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
That's cool, it's your preference. A lot of people prefer going in, especially if they are single and live alone.
wjamesg 6y ago
You are quite privileged
- kashura 6y ago
  Why? Because an individual has difference circumstances they are automatically "privileged"?
- anewaccount2021 6y ago
  Why are you working if not to earn privilege?

ange1a 6y 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-system 6y ago
They realized that 25 years ago. Then, 10 years ago they realized that time zones and soft skills are also a thing.
bzbarsky 6y 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.

spamizbad 6y 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.

throw8932894 6y 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.

djrogers 6y 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.
- xornox 6y ago
  High enough human population leads to continuous pandemics. It is law of nature and can not be changed.
- throw8932894 6y 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.

djrogers 6y 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 6y 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.

sharkweek 6y 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.

alextheparrot 6y 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.
- pnutjam 6y ago
  True, I am not interested in coming in to the office more then once a quarter.
- ghaff 6y 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.

pjettter 6y 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.

ryandrake 6y 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 6y 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."
- pjettter 6y 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 6y 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

ndiscussion 6y ago
We are all commodities... best to shatter that illusion safely before you get hurt.
Bakary 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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__panic 6y 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.

dang 6y ago

Url changed from https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice-but-to-offer-an-option-for-remote-working-a38ea7fe9a9c https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice..., which points to this.

dang 6y ago

The submitted URL was https://simon-moxon.medium.com/employers-will-have-no-choice-but-to-offer-an-option-for-remote-working-a38ea7fe9a9c 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&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=follow-up%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

jonahrd 6y ago

And here is a (poorly written) article saying that "top bankers" say WFH is falling apart: https://montrealgazette.com/executive/careers/top-bankers-sound-alarm-that-remote-work-is-starting-to-grate/wcm/db9ab6a5-707a-4e1f-a643-ebb6c7a7e545 https://montrealgazette.com/executive/careers/top-bankers-so... We'll see whose opinions matter more when this is over... workers or executives.

ibobev 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.

ckgjm 6y 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.