7 ms·

I'm totally not an introvert: I love being around nice people, I love playing table tennis and having lunch with my colleagues. But wasting 1h-2h daily on commu

I'm totally not an introvert: I love being around nice people, I love playing table tennis and having lunch with my colleagues. But wasting 1h-2h daily on commuting to/from work is in absolutely no way worthy of this. It's our duty as human beings to resist going back to the office as much as possible. To gain back some of the life we otherwise would spend on commute. Work is for work, not for socializing, or having fun, or playing Xbox and table tennis. I mean, sure, these are nice perks, but we are being paid for the work we do, not for the fun we have. And working without being distracted by some colleagues loud music in the headphones, or the chit chat of others, or the "sorry, quick question" of some manager, improves my quality of work tremendously.

izacus 5y ago
> It's our duty as human beings to resist going back to the office as much as possible. Please don't talk for all of us. If you're miserable in the office that's fine, but it's noones duty to support your preferences. This is why we have this amazing free market - everyone can work at a company that respects their preferences.
- krageon 5y ago
  > amazing free market > everyone can No. Most people don't have good options. It's a little ironic to say the OP needs more empathy and then go on to make an argument that's almost breathtakingly disconnected from reality.
  - izacus 5y ago
    I've seen many breathtaking articles on this very page which claim that majority of companies are shifting towards permanent WFH. They were followed by predictions that this will increase. How am I disconnected from reality?
- irq 5y ago
  Just in terms of reduced CO2 emissions due to fewer people commuting because they can work from home, and the impact this has on climate change, he is correctly speaking for all of us, if by all of us you mean life on Earth.
  - izacus 5y ago
    If that's the main driver, then instead of forced WFH, let's do a blanket ban of cars. Not just commute to work, but force people to stay at home at all times. After all, we're ignoring all the other effects here right?
    - andrewzah 5y ago
      Tackling climate change is a step at a time. First, we support WFH. Then, we can move on to other things. And yes- I would like to see a total ban on gas guzzling cars in my lifetime. I would like to see cities built around walkability, and ban all types of cars entirely in the city center. Etc. But it's a step by step process.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  Hmm, and does this free market give us the option of quiet, small offices, with doors? Or do we overwhelmingly get the "option" of open offices?
heterodoxxed 5y ago
Yes, two non-introvert reasons for remote work: Commuting is hell and deep focus is near impossible in modern offices. For the latter, there are times when you need to think about working, and when you're doing that, being in the office with a group of people and a whiteboard is invaluable. But at some point, you know what you need to do, you just need to get into a flow and do it. And that is near impossible in modern offices. That is especially important for engineers, but it also applies to accountants and designers and carpenters and any productive labor that isn't management. Introvert/extrovert doesn't come into play, all productive labor needs to get into states of deep focus. Maybe if engineers all had doors that closed, but for some damn reason we haven't had those since the 1960s.
- edem 5y ago
  I worked in an office many years ago where I noticed that the accountant always stayed late in the office. I once asked her and she said: "I stay late because when they leave I can finally start to work".
  - CaptainZapp 5y ago
    For me it was exactly the other way 'round. I came to the office very early (say 7ish), which gave me a couple hours to really focus on things, before my colleagues started meandering in.
thefz 5y ago
> I'm totally not an introvert: I love being around nice people, I love playing table tennis and having lunch with my colleagues. But wasting 1h-2h daily on commuting to/from work is in absolutely no way worthy of this. I commute 2x 40-50 minutes plus if I work at the office I have a forced 1h break, so around a little bit less than three hours of life have been given back to me during remote work. I understand your sentiment and I share it completely. I am now able to run errands, exercise, nap, clean the house, play video games, or work in my garage during this found again time. I often feel shy to admit that the pandemic-induced shift to remote work has given me back a lot. My boss lives a 5 minutes walk away and will never ever understand what it means to have to commute every day.
helmholtz 5y ago
I never understand why long commutes aren't "Pants On Fire" emergencies for people. If you're driving two hours every day, and not spending all your free time wondering how you can either change jobs or change housing, well, it's a finite life that you're pissing away. I'm certain that there will be an outpouring of hundreds of reasons why people cannot move, and I'm sure all of those reasons have merit. But it doesn't change the fact that long commutes are a huge detriment to work/life balance.
- timthorn 5y ago
  I have regularly had 2-3h (each way) commutes. It's not because I couldn't change, but because I actively enjoyed the travel each day. Dedicated, no interruption thinking space, and a clear buffer between the stress of work and my home life.
  - nullsense 5y ago
    This is why I like my bus ride. I lose valuable time when I work from home.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      Seems like an odd thing to do for that. I take a short drive each morning to get my coffee and then come back home. It's my meditation/alone time/change of scenery and i get to continue my day working uninterrupted at home. People think that the things they do at the office (beyond work) are impossible to replace in "real life". They are, office is the actual virtual life
      - nullsense 5y ago
        I study on the bus because it's the perfect environment for it to me. I'm on the bus, so I can't do anything else. I'm on the bus so there isn't any expectation that I'm working nor can I change when I get to get to work. My mind is just at ease that there is this naturally occurring block of time with the perfect conditions to help me accomplish an important goal of the day without impinging on any other part of my day and that is solidly baked into the routine in a very stable way that doesn't require me to exercise any executive function to ensure it happens. My bus ride is very valuable to me for this reason. Try as I might, on the WFH days I virtually always wind up doing this same block of study after 10pm which is my free time. I also get interrupted just as much regardless of whether I'm at home or in the office, so that's kind of a moot point in my particular case.
edem 5y ago
I cannot agree more. If I have to choose between spending time with my kid or actual friends vs sitting in my car commuting it is an absolute no brainer. Thankfully I have been a contractor for a while and I don't need to put up with this nonsense anymore.
dijit 5y ago
> I love playing table tennis and having lunch with my colleagues. I don't know how others feel, but I am not outgoing enough to use the foosball and pingpong tables that are common in development studios, I feel so judged; so those are (for me) not perks at all.
anoncake 5y ago
It's our duty as human beings to resist any normalization of remote working. Loneliness is a far worse problem in our society than commuting. We need to make sure everyone has a baseline level of social contact.
- alexgmcm 5y ago
  You can have social contact outside of work though. WFH gives people back time to explore hobbies, join clubs, meet people etc. The social contact you have at work often feels forced and artificial - you can choose your friends, your colleagues not so much.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - anoncake 5y ago
    For many people, that doesn't work for whatever reasons. Which is why we have a loneliness problem. WFH may be good for introverts with good social skills. It's awful for shy extraverts (which is a less-than-ideal combination to begin with).
    - krageon 5y ago
      > for whatever reasons If you can't speak to people unless they're forced to, that doesn't mean that you need to make it so that everyone else is forced to because otherwise you're uncomfortable.
      - anoncake 5y ago
        You must have misread my post.I wrote "many people", not "me".
  - llampx 5y ago
    Does wfh really give back time to people? From what I've seen with colleagues and friends, it mostly has led to longer working hours. The commute time and the time before dinner has been replaced by more work. If you have been able to draw the line and log off at 5pm, good for you, but that's not the experience for a lot of people.
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
The commute sucks, luckily mines only 30 minutes but honestly after a year of this I'm now convinced video calls are half as productive as in person meetings and some people just never really engage at all in video calls when they used to working in person, not sure if they're consciously aware that they no longer provide useful input, they used to. I've started going back into the office now for brainstorming because just being able to talk without latency and without only one person being able to talk at once the difference is just night and day, not to mention the casual non-meeting non-slack chats where ideas are born. I think remote work is now something people will demand but I can't be the only person who's noticed the difference especially in creativity focused work and believe the end game within 2 years will be the people in the office will work on the interesting stuff and remote will work on fixing bugs. Which of course will trickle on to impact salary unfortunately.
arwhatever 5y ago
I've created https://sievejobs.com https://sievejobs.com to allow software developers to simply "block" contacts regarding jobs that don't match your preferred working arrangements. I try not to build too much of an us-vs-them philosophy into either the site design or the marketing message, but I hope to soon have an XHR-type feature where the hiring manager instantly sees the effect that each piece of job metadata (remote work-ability, interview format, etc.) has on their prospective candidate pool as they enter the job info. I think this could send a useful signal upstream to the industry at large. You can see all of the filterable attributes by directly visiting https://sievejobs.com/job-seeker https://sievejobs.com/job-seeker And I'd love to hear any feedback that anyone might have.
- mattm 5y ago
  lol, nice domain name :)
  - arwhatever 5y ago
    Thanks. I'm honestly not crazy about it, but am holding off until profitability justifies purchasing something more succinct. :-)

izacus 5y ago

> It's our duty as human beings to resist going back to the office as much as possible. Please don't talk for all of us. If you're miserable in the office that's fine, but it's noones duty to support your preferences. This is why we have this amazing free market - everyone can work at a company that respects their preferences.

krageon 5y ago
> amazing free market > everyone can No. Most people don't have good options. It's a little ironic to say the OP needs more empathy and then go on to make an argument that's almost breathtakingly disconnected from reality.
- izacus 5y ago
  I've seen many breathtaking articles on this very page which claim that majority of companies are shifting towards permanent WFH. They were followed by predictions that this will increase. How am I disconnected from reality?
irq 5y ago
Just in terms of reduced CO2 emissions due to fewer people commuting because they can work from home, and the impact this has on climate change, he is correctly speaking for all of us, if by all of us you mean life on Earth.
- izacus 5y ago
  If that's the main driver, then instead of forced WFH, let's do a blanket ban of cars. Not just commute to work, but force people to stay at home at all times. After all, we're ignoring all the other effects here right?
  - andrewzah 5y ago
    Tackling climate change is a step at a time. First, we support WFH. Then, we can move on to other things. And yes- I would like to see a total ban on gas guzzling cars in my lifetime. I would like to see cities built around walkability, and ban all types of cars entirely in the city center. Etc. But it's a step by step process.
andrewzah 5y ago
Hmm, and does this free market give us the option of quiet, small offices, with doors? Or do we overwhelmingly get the "option" of open offices?

heterodoxxed 5y ago

Yes, two non-introvert reasons for remote work: Commuting is hell and deep focus is near impossible in modern offices. For the latter, there are times when you need to think about working, and when you're doing that, being in the office with a group of people and a whiteboard is invaluable. But at some point, you know what you need to do, you just need to get into a flow and do it. And that is near impossible in modern offices. That is especially important for engineers, but it also applies to accountants and designers and carpenters and any productive labor that isn't management. Introvert/extrovert doesn't come into play, all productive labor needs to get into states of deep focus. Maybe if engineers all had doors that closed, but for some damn reason we haven't had those since the 1960s.

edem 5y ago
I worked in an office many years ago where I noticed that the accountant always stayed late in the office. I once asked her and she said: "I stay late because when they leave I can finally start to work".
- CaptainZapp 5y ago
  For me it was exactly the other way 'round. I came to the office very early (say 7ish), which gave me a couple hours to really focus on things, before my colleagues started meandering in.

thefz 5y ago

> I'm totally not an introvert: I love being around nice people, I love playing table tennis and having lunch with my colleagues. But wasting 1h-2h daily on commuting to/from work is in absolutely no way worthy of this. I commute 2x 40-50 minutes plus if I work at the office I have a forced 1h break, so around a little bit less than three hours of life have been given back to me during remote work. I understand your sentiment and I share it completely. I am now able to run errands, exercise, nap, clean the house, play video games, or work in my garage during this found again time. I often feel shy to admit that the pandemic-induced shift to remote work has given me back a lot. My boss lives a 5 minutes walk away and will never ever understand what it means to have to commute every day.

helmholtz 5y ago

I never understand why long commutes aren't "Pants On Fire" emergencies for people. If you're driving two hours every day, and not spending all your free time wondering how you can either change jobs or change housing, well, it's a finite life that you're pissing away. I'm certain that there will be an outpouring of hundreds of reasons why people cannot move, and I'm sure all of those reasons have merit. But it doesn't change the fact that long commutes are a huge detriment to work/life balance.

timthorn 5y ago
I have regularly had 2-3h (each way) commutes. It's not because I couldn't change, but because I actively enjoyed the travel each day. Dedicated, no interruption thinking space, and a clear buffer between the stress of work and my home life.
- nullsense 5y ago
  This is why I like my bus ride. I lose valuable time when I work from home.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    Seems like an odd thing to do for that. I take a short drive each morning to get my coffee and then come back home. It's my meditation/alone time/change of scenery and i get to continue my day working uninterrupted at home. People think that the things they do at the office (beyond work) are impossible to replace in "real life". They are, office is the actual virtual life
    - nullsense 5y ago
      I study on the bus because it's the perfect environment for it to me. I'm on the bus, so I can't do anything else. I'm on the bus so there isn't any expectation that I'm working nor can I change when I get to get to work. My mind is just at ease that there is this naturally occurring block of time with the perfect conditions to help me accomplish an important goal of the day without impinging on any other part of my day and that is solidly baked into the routine in a very stable way that doesn't require me to exercise any executive function to ensure it happens. My bus ride is very valuable to me for this reason. Try as I might, on the WFH days I virtually always wind up doing this same block of study after 10pm which is my free time. I also get interrupted just as much regardless of whether I'm at home or in the office, so that's kind of a moot point in my particular case.

edem 5y ago

I cannot agree more. If I have to choose between spending time with my kid or actual friends vs sitting in my car commuting it is an absolute no brainer. Thankfully I have been a contractor for a while and I don't need to put up with this nonsense anymore.

dijit 5y ago

> I love playing table tennis and having lunch with my colleagues. I don't know how others feel, but I am not outgoing enough to use the foosball and pingpong tables that are common in development studios, I feel so judged; so those are (for me) not perks at all.

anoncake 5y ago

It's our duty as human beings to resist any normalization of remote working. Loneliness is a far worse problem in our society than commuting. We need to make sure everyone has a baseline level of social contact.

alexgmcm 5y ago
You can have social contact outside of work though. WFH gives people back time to explore hobbies, join clubs, meet people etc. The social contact you have at work often feels forced and artificial - you can choose your friends, your colleagues not so much.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- anoncake 5y ago
  For many people, that doesn't work for whatever reasons. Which is why we have a loneliness problem. WFH may be good for introverts with good social skills. It's awful for shy extraverts (which is a less-than-ideal combination to begin with).
  - krageon 5y ago
    > for whatever reasons If you can't speak to people unless they're forced to, that doesn't mean that you need to make it so that everyone else is forced to because otherwise you're uncomfortable.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      You must have misread my post.I wrote "many people", not "me".
- llampx 5y ago
  Does wfh really give back time to people? From what I've seen with colleagues and friends, it mostly has led to longer working hours. The commute time and the time before dinner has been replaced by more work. If you have been able to draw the line and log off at 5pm, good for you, but that's not the experience for a lot of people.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

The commute sucks, luckily mines only 30 minutes but honestly after a year of this I'm now convinced video calls are half as productive as in person meetings and some people just never really engage at all in video calls when they used to working in person, not sure if they're consciously aware that they no longer provide useful input, they used to. I've started going back into the office now for brainstorming because just being able to talk without latency and without only one person being able to talk at once the difference is just night and day, not to mention the casual non-meeting non-slack chats where ideas are born. I think remote work is now something people will demand but I can't be the only person who's noticed the difference especially in creativity focused work and believe the end game within 2 years will be the people in the office will work on the interesting stuff and remote will work on fixing bugs. Which of course will trickle on to impact salary unfortunately.

arwhatever 5y ago

I've created https://sievejobs.com https://sievejobs.com to allow software developers to simply "block" contacts regarding jobs that don't match your preferred working arrangements. I try not to build too much of an us-vs-them philosophy into either the site design or the marketing message, but I hope to soon have an XHR-type feature where the hiring manager instantly sees the effect that each piece of job metadata (remote work-ability, interview format, etc.) has on their prospective candidate pool as they enter the job info. I think this could send a useful signal upstream to the industry at large. You can see all of the filterable attributes by directly visiting https://sievejobs.com/job-seeker https://sievejobs.com/job-seeker And I'd love to hear any feedback that anyone might have.

mattm 5y ago
lol, nice domain name :)
- arwhatever 5y ago
  Thanks. I'm honestly not crazy about it, but am holding off until profitability justifies purchasing something more succinct. :-)