
The Office Is Dead - BobbieG
https://marker.medium.com/the-office-is-dead-16be89f25d01
======
eqvinox
There is a subset of people who are good at working from home and there is a
subset that isn't.

There is a subset of each of these subsets that seems to be completely unaware
that the other "side" exists.

This article seems to be written from the perspective of a person unaware of
the subset of people that are just straight up bad at working from home.

(The same subsets also exist for companies instead of people.)

P.S.: Of course, by the same logic, forcing people who are bad at working in
an office to do so regardless is dumb too.

~~~
benrbray
How productive one can be working from home also depends on the type of job
and level of experience.

As a new grad (hoping that my job offer survives covid), I'm terrified of a
transition where WFH is the default. I recognize that I still have a lot to
learn, and that I can't do it all on my own. Casual interactions with
coworkers and the ability to passively absorb new information in the workplace
are essential for entry-level employees like me. Plus, personally, I find the
social aspect of work to be crucial to my well-being.

~~~
lame-robot-hoax
I see this too in the way that older team members often have offices or
dedicated spaces within their larger homes that they work from, making it
easier to get into work mode.

I work from my small kitchen table that is about four feet from my couch which
is about 7-8 feet from my bed. This makes it a lot harder to get into the work
zone, as well, it makes it harder to leave it at the end of the day.

Secondly, a lot of my older team members are married or live with a
significant other.

I on the other hand live by myself in a new city where the only people I know
are the ones that are on my team. Or, were on my team, I should say, before my
company internally shuffled roles to avoid layoffs and moved me from my
analyst role that I was in for about six months (my first job out of college)
down to support. So now the only people I talk to are people calling for help.
Or my parents by video call. Other than that it’s just me and my thoughts,
which makes it a lot more difficult mentally. I don’t have a spouse or
significant other to talk to throughout the day, and the only people I do talk
to, for 8 hours, are generally in a neutral to unhappy mood, which also does
nothing good for my mental health. Which is just adding on top of the effect
being moved from the role I went to college for, and I applied for, and that I
thought would help get me on the right path for my career goals (data
engineer), down to a support role less technical than the one I had as an
internship during college, had on me.

I’m applying for data analyst/BI/Junior DBA/Junior Data Engineer roles across
the western US, but I have a feeling it will be quite hard now with lots of
experienced workers being laid off competing for lower level jobs, considering
I only have six months real world experience. As well, I want to start a
project for my portfolio to help learn some key technologies I don’t know, but
I’m generally so mentally drained after work I just don’t want to do anything.
I just want to nap or zone out. I took Friday and today off but it doesn’t
feel even close to enough time to fully recharge.

I’m rambling off subject, but yeah, as you can tell, this entire thing has
definitely not been easy on some of us. I think I’d like WFH if it was an
option, as in, Monday and Friday WFH, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I’m in
the office. That would be a good balance for me.

~~~
scarface74
Older married worker chiming in.

I can’t imagine how bad this would have been if my wife and I had still been
living in our apartment. Even then I had a separate small office and we had a
treadmill in the living room.

This is in a relatively low cost of living area. So I’m definitely not
bragging.

But now, it’s not too bad. I have a large separate office, we have one bedroom
converted into a decently equipped gym with exercise equipment, my son has his
own room, my wife converted another room that was originally her study to an
ad-hoc studio so she could continue to teach her fitness classes.

------
ardy42
I actually like going to the office, compared to working from home (good for
putting a clear divide between work and home, and it means I don't have to
squeeze _two_ home offices in my living space). I just hope COVID-19 spells
the end of _open offices_ , at least for a a decade or two. Besides the
increased disease transmission (which exists for colds, flu, and covid), I
don't like how noisy and visually distracting the spaces are. They're really
not conductive to focused work like software development [1].

With social distancing, there's literally no reason to not surround employee
workspaces with tall cube walls, besides a desire to replace personal privacy
with distraction.

[1] For a good discussion of this, see _Peopleware: Productive Projects and
Teams_.

~~~
jcadam
> I just hope COVID-19 spells the end of open offices

Open offices are cheap. Re-configuring office space isn't cheap. So, no.

Some places are probably still hot-desking.

~~~
ardy42
> Open offices are cheap. Re-configuring office space isn't cheap. So, no.

I think that's pre-covid thinking. The OP speaks about 1) companies dropping
their office footprints due to increased WFH and 2) companies reducing office
density and making other changes to accommodate social distancing. Both of
those require office reconfiguration.

We'll be dealing with this pandemic for at least another year, and the
psychological effects will last longer, so monomaniacal bottom-line focused
thinking will have to accommodate it.

------
hangonhn
Did any other introverts discovered that they're not as introverted as they
thought they were during this pandemic? I got a pretty harsh awakening about 2
weeks into shelter in place. At the beginning I thought I would excel at this
and even joke this is time for "introvert flexing". Two weeks in, I found
myself anxious and kind of miserable. What I've never realized and always took
for granted is how much social interaction I had with my coworkers and how
those interactions help to lower my anxiety and stress. A joke here and there,
etc. throughout the day really helped. I've gone back to running every day to
deal with the anxiety and stress and really miss seeing my coworkers.

So I'm not so sure the office is dead. As someone else pointed out, this might
be true for some people but we may still need office space for the other
portion of the population.

~~~
arkadiytehgraet
I did not consider myself introvert until the pandemic. I have not had real
human contact in more than 2 months, other than some audio-only standups and
stuff + I live completely alone. I feel not that different compared to when I
interacted with others on a daily basis, if anything, I would actually prefer
to have even less contact with people.

------
jedberg
> Pinpoint’s $25,000-per-month lease with WeWork for 1,800 square feet

My god, is that what it costs now?! You can rent an 1800 sq ft house in the
middle of SF for about $7,000 a month. You'd get three "offices", some common
space, a kitchen, some parking. You could spend another $2,000 a month to hire
someone to clean the place every day, and another $2,000 to have someone bring
coffee and beer and whatever else you get "for free" at WeWork, and even
$1,000 a month for an "IT person" so set up and maintain wifi and conferencing
equipment, and _still_ save money.

~~~
btbuildem
That's 1800 sq ft of open space, you can cram way more people there than into
a three-bedroom townhouse. They're not wasting any floorspace on a bathroom
either, that's down the hall.

~~~
jedberg
Sure, but let's say you need to rent twice as much space to get the same
amount of free space. You're _still_ saving money.

------
christiansakai
So all of this working life I always go to my office for work because at home
I always found myself distracted about bunch of stuffs. I prefer to be in the
office even though my companies always flexible in working remotely.

It is not until this pandemic that I was forced to work from home that I
realized that I am the happiest I've ever been in years. I always felt tired
daily when I used to go to office and also go to bunch of other social
gatherings that I have. It turns out that I am definitely an introvert to the
bone. Not only not meeting people everyday face to face has been beneficial to
me, but cutting slack, social media, text, etc has been tremendously great for
me. I also don't watch TV. Basically less human interaction in general (not
zero at all mind you, I'm not anti social). Now I have more time to cultivate
my various hobbies (which I've always been doing anyway) and become self
absorbed lol.

I enjoy life better now, everyday feel fresh and energized and as a result my
productivity with my work also shoot through the roof. I didn't know why I
always thought I'd be distracted at home. All the simple things in life like
running outside, walking outside, queueing for some snacks, just become
delightful all of a sudden. Not to mention the great air quality.

I know it is bad for me to say this, but this pandemic I've been the happiest
in years. I hope this pandemic is over soon but I don't hope to be back in
office soon.

~~~
the_af
Do you have kids of toddler-age or younger and a spouse who also works during
standard office hours? I find that makes the difference between "WFH works"
and "WFH is hell on earth".

I have a 9-month old baby who is just starting to crawl all over the place and
gets noisy and impatient when we don't pay attention to her. My wife and I
work during office hours. Nursery is of course out of the question due to the
lockdown and babysitters are illegal (because of the quarantine). Our stress
levels are going through the roof. I want to go back to normality ASAP. Give
me back my office, please!

~~~
christiansakai
Thankfully I currently don't. I'm sure it's gonna be zoo and hell on earth
when I have one lol. My wife will most likely won't gonna be working when we
have one.

------
danielrhodes
I can imagine this pandemic is going to push WFH into the vanguard... but to
imply that companies no longer need offices seems too hyperbolic a conclusion.

The reality is that if a company says they don’t need an office because you
can work from home, they need to compensate you for the use of your office
space. A place of work is physical capital, and you can’t simply decide that
your workers provide that capital as part of their employment.

~~~
jedberg
> A place of work is physical capital, and you can’t simply decide that your
> workers provide that capital as part of their employment.

Back in the day when cell phones were new, companies provided them to you.

Now they just assume you have one.

Things that start out as work provided sometimes move into employer provided
without extra compensation.

~~~
danielrhodes
Companies will often compensate you for part of your phone bill, especially if
being on the phone is a part of your job.

------
irrational
A couple of thoughts, 1\. My company has been building new buildings that
would add 3,000,000+ square feet of office space to the campus this year. I
think they will probably nix working from home when this is all over just so
they don't look dumb for building all that new office space.

2\. My company has been leaning heavily into not just open office space, but
what they call freestyle office space. They only allocate enough desk space
for 50-75% of the people working in the building with the assumption that
people will be in meetings or elsewhere for enough of the day to make it work
out. You do not have an assigned desk and are not allowed to sit at a certain
desk for more than 2 hours. (Yes, many/most of us think this is the height of
stupidity - it's like being back in college and everyone is working in the
library and you have to have a backpack to carry all your stuff from place to
place). Of course, this whole seating arrangement is a nightmare in a social
distancing situation. What they are saying now is that when we go back you can
sit at a desk the whole day, but every other desk must be empty. So, intead of
having enough desks for 50-75% of people, there will only be enough for
25-37.5% of people. Clearly they are going to have to allow working from home
to continue for a certain percentage of people. I'm honestly not sure how they
is all going to shake out.

~~~
lame-robot-hoax
How does this work if you need to use dual monitors or something? You just go
to one of the desks with two monitors, plug in, do what you need to do, and
then leave once you don’t need two monitors?

~~~
irrational
Their solution is to provide very very wide monitors that the computer can be
setup to see as 2 monitors so the 1 monitor is effectively split into 2. Not
ideal (especially for someone like me who has 2 monitors, but keeps both of
them vertical instead of horizontal), but better than nothing. However, they
haven't actually moved any IT people into this kind of seating arrangement. I
think it won't really work for a bunch of developers who are in their seats
for the majority of the day.

------
chadash
The office isn't dead [1].

There are plenty of people who didn't like working from home before and still
don't. There are also plenty of people who just can't do their job as well
from home.

What seems likely is that some managers who previously didn't think of work-
from-home as a viable option before will probably be more open to the idea
going forward. And some individual contributors will decide that working
remotely suits them well. And companies will have a better sense of the tools
required for effectively working remotely.

But the majority of people are going back to the office when this is over. It
might be because managers will still be managers, and feel that they can have
more control with people there in person. It might be because people like to
get out of the home. Maybe they like socializing with coworkers in person.
Maybe they don't have enough room at home. Or the proper equipment.

I certainly expect to see changes, but the concept of offices isn't going
anywhere.

[1] and nor does the article claim it is, despite the sensationalist headline

~~~
libertine
It's one of those things that will have the rubber band effect, just like any
other office trend.

First will be trendy tech organizations that will go the extreme and set a
large window of WFH, then some will move a large chunk of operations to WFH,
then a lot of tech companies will follow with bold claims of how good it is,
and so on...

Then all of a sudden, one study or one article with the unpopular opinion -
"working from home is not that good after all", then some people will vent out
on how they dislike it in some situations, then one trendy company will make
the bold claim: "We're bringing people back in!"

I can already see the headlines of Buzzfeed, Wired, and posts on medium: "The
gold nugget of productivity! This company boosted their performance by
bringing people back into what we used to call offices!", with comments of the
CEO that's trying to lure in talent.

Just to end back in the middle term: some roles are suitable for work from
home, while others make sense to bring in house, some people prefer work from
home while others don't.

My prediction is this will all occur until 2022.

Just to make it clear: I like working from home.

~~~
leetcrew
my guess is most companies that were forced into WFH by coronavirus will try
to return to "business as usual" as soon as reasonably possible. if you're
already paying for enough square footage and operations people to have
everyone on-site, you may as well get your money's worth.

my hope is that, after seeing that work still got done during the crisis,
employers will be more willing to entertain a certain number of WFH days per
week. this would be ideal for me. I love the flexibility and comfort of WFH,
but I would like to have at least a small window where I can reliably find
people on-site for a face-to-face meeting, without having to plan that
interaction far in advance.

------
rhacker
I started working from home about 10 years ago. At first I was going back to
an office every 4 months. I got sick twice a year, pretty much every
fall/winter and spring trip.

Each job since then the number of required trips seems to drop a little. I
think I'm pretty much permanently always home now. I really don't get sick any
more.

I know it hasn't really hit specific articles, but NO, nail salons are not the
cause of the pandemic. The specific cause of the pandemic was airplanes (or
travelling in general) and offices, which quite aptly explains new york on
both counts.

------
cm2187
I work in what the author describes as an "old school wall street firm". The
senior management may be delusional about the impact of working from home (the
senior management is often delusional about many things). But the consensus on
the ground is that it sunk productivity massively, information is not flowing
fluently, and for some people it is absolute hell (trying to work with
screaming kids, young couples trying to do calls in the same room while their
flatmates are trying to do the same in other rooms, etc).

~~~
btbuildem
Could that be a transitional period? Young couples with roommates crammed into
shoeboxes live in those conditions as a compromise to be relatively close to
their high-paying jobs in an expensive city. The line about "cities losing
some of their lustre" resonated with me. We're basically living country life
right now (not seeing much people except the odd neighbour, once a week
groceries, etc) - I'd much rather do that in a country setting, if this is to
continue in the long term.

~~~
lame-robot-hoax
100% agree. I live in a more expensive apartment in the middle of downtown so
I get the amenities of living downtown. Except now those are gone. As well, I
don’t have a car because normally the rail system or busses or ride sharing
was enough to get me around, but now I feel as if I’m trapped in this small
area around my apartment. Can’t go anywhere, and even if I want to walk
somewhere, it’ll be aimlessly cause everything is closed.

I’d rather live in a cheap apartment further out that had parking for a car so
I could drive to the mountains or just anywhere really. Instead I’ve been
within probably a quarter mile of my apartment at all times for the last ten
weeks. I’m paying a premium for no return right now.

------
jcadam
I'd been looking for a remote job for a long time before this. Never could get
one, I was frequently turned down because I lacked remote work experience.

Now that I have remote work experience, everyone else does as well. So... no
change in my competitive position vis-à-vis other remote job candidates. Booo,
they'll just come up with new reasons to reject me :(

I like working from home, there are some disadvantages, but overall I
definitely prefer it, and at a more macro level I think there's an opportunity
here to fix some of the crowding issues (not to mention traffic and the
concomitant pollution) in our cities by giving people flexibility in where
they live and work. I for one, hate big cities, but a career in tech has
generally meant living in a major metro area.

OTOH, companies are not going to just let all the office space they're paying
for sit idle. If they can't divest themselves of some/most of it quickly
(hello, commercial real-estate crash), all our asses are going to be back in
our rickety office chairs under the flickering fluorescent lights.

------
flatline
For a well-organized team with top of the line collab tools? Perhaps, if
everyone is comfortable with working from home, but I'm still skeptical.
Finding myself in a management position, coordinating the efforts of a medium-
size development team across two organizations has become an order of
magnitude more challenging. I cover a lot of meetings that the developers
don't have to, but sometimes we still need to sit two to five people in a room
to hash out the details of some technical problem. I have not seen an adequate
substitute for that process. I believe that the people who worked from home
full time prior to this (and I've been one of those before) are leveraging the
time others spend in face to face interactions to their indirect advantage.
When _no_ high-level planning or in-depth low-level in person conversations
can happen, many organizations are simply going to move much more slowly and
make more mistakes.

------
nogabebop23
I am super scared of a future where remote work could be the default. I see
the amazing creative works in technology, art, etc that come from the simple
act of pushing smart people into the same place and having them rapidly
iterate. Do we know how to do this in a remote-first setup?

I get it; you're super productive in your _job_ during this pandemic but is
this the same thing? It feels more like optimizing for efficiency in what you
do now, vs. effectiveness to do something bigger than yourself.

I manage a lot of people who focus on making themselves x% better, where x
ranges from 1% to maybe 15%. I believe to scale we need to make the system
better, which is more like a fractional % improvement multipled by n. Is this
easier to do remotely? not yet with the tools we have IME...

------
WalterBright
I've worked about half my career in an office and half from home.

Working from home just doesn't work that well if you're on a team. The
constant communication with the other team members helps a great deal. For
example, you can bring along the new guys and get them up to speed on how
things work and what to do. Misunderstandings don't fester into disasters.
Somebody veering off in the wrong direction can be quickly brought back to
focus on the team goal.

------
proc0
Working in software, the idea that we should all report in at the beginning of
the day, every day, feels like too much like school. It would be better if the
office culture was to show up when you needed to show up, without any hidden
expectations, or surprise bad reviews because the perception is you work less
because you're not in early or stay late enough. Luckily this had to go away
recently for obvious reasons.

------
sida
The really interesting thing I learned during covid19 is that, the fact that
everybody is WFH, makes WFH better.

In the past, when I WFH, and everybody else is in the office. I was the odd
one out and people start to talk amongst themselvces. Sometimes I don't hear
well, sometimes I can't get into the discussion politely.

But, since everybody is WFH right now, the whole WFH experience became better
and I am more productive in WFH as a result.

~~~
xur17
Agreed, this is one of the reasons working remotely for a 100% remote company
is substantially better than working remotely for a team that is partially
remote and partially in the office.

------
peterwwillis
It's more likely that the "giant monolithic office" is dead, and will
transform into a hybrid of WeWork-esque distributed offices, complete with
pay-per-minute only-works-half-the-time videoconferencing walls and $6 lattes.

If a new WeWork manages "subdivided office space" all around a city, then a
company could lease space from all of them, and pay just slightly _more_ than
they used to, with the freedom that their employees can spend _more time at
the office_ because commuting is less of a chore. Supplement that with all the
luxury add-ons and suddenly it looks like the office is reborn, not dead at
all.

And remember: cities are getting bigger, not smaller. Why not rent an
apartment in the same skyscraper as a coworking space, along with your co-
workers who also live in your city? Especially if your job sets aside money to
help pay for it? Again you can squeeze "more productivity" out of your little
mechanical turks, but you don't have to deal with the management overhead of
typical offices. Less logistics, more productivity, still (basically) an
office.

------
untog
I'm skeptical. Not just of this article but really of anything written in this
moment that talks about how The Way Things Will Be.

We're thick in the middle of a pandemic right now. It will subside. No one
knows exactly what waits for us on the other side, or what the societal
impacts will be. Yes, we're all working remotely right now. But it's been an
incredibly slap-dash, thrown together effort for many companies and that might
mean they become _less_ receptive to remote work in the future, not more. We
don't really have any data on what the economic impact of remote work is
(separate from all the other economic impacts swirling around us right now),
and until we do I'm going to hold off making too many wild predictions.

~~~
arkadiytehgraet
> we're all working remotely now

Except for the 33 million people out of jobs in the last 6 weeks.

~~~
untog
Well, sure. I wasn't intending to imply that the entire population of the
globe is working remotely.

------
enygmata
I'm going to the office even though I'm not an essential worker because
working from home ruins my mental health. I stayed home for the first three
weeks of social distancing and I couldn't be more stressed and unhappy if I
tried.

------
commandlinefan
I suspect that if this really does become the new normal, in 5-10 years, part
of that new normal will be providing your own equipment (computers, monitors,
etc.). I predict there will be a non-trivial "startup cost" associated with
taking most jobs.

~~~
CalRobert
My brother in law is a mechanic. I was shocked to find he's expected to
provide his own tools at a job - even working for a dealership

~~~
nogabebop23
I've never heard of a professional trade where they don't provide their own
tools. The exception has always been big, expensive, infrequently used things
but hand tools always and a lot of specialized and power tools.

~~~
CalRobert
This makes sense for independent contractors, etc. but I was really surprised
to find out that he (and his coworkers) all have their "own" tools. To me that
was a bit like bringing your own computer to work, which would run in to
issues with invention assingment agreements and the like, if nothing else.

To be fair it _kinda_ makes sense in that each person will have their own
preference for tools, but it's a pretty big expense.

------
zrail
A semi-permanent shift to more remote work will have large impacts on a lot of
different industries. For example, the lunch joints near office towers will
have to significantly rethink their strategies.

Companies that make consumables like toilet paper and soap will have to scale
their residential arms and reduce their commercial arms, which in some
instances requires building entire new paper mills or production facilities.

Gas, electricity, and water utilities will all see "weekend all day" patterns
that they'll need to adjust for. Internet providers might start offering
commercial-light plans for home offices that come with an SLA but not full
business support.

------
cs702
The $2.5 trillion question[a] is whether companies will ever go back to using
as much office space per person as they did prior to the pandemic, given that:

* they can save a ton of money by using less office space per person going forward, and

* so far, they are seeing equal or better productivity from remote employees, as this article points out.

The question answers itself, I think.

\--

[a] That's the estimated value of office space in the US:
[https://www.reit.com/data-research/research/nareit-
research/...](https://www.reit.com/data-research/research/nareit-
research/estimating-size-commercial-real-estate-market-us)

------
drpgq
I'm curious what will happen where I work. Upper management has always hated
working from home and part time work. I think eventually they'll go back to
their set ways, but it will be some time in late 2021.

~~~
standardUser
Our company's business happens to be booming during this pandemic, and we've
handled a massive amount of unexpected growth very well and entirely without
an office. I'd hope that would be sufficient proof of the efficacy of remote
work.

But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about
getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit depressing.

~~~
bradlys
> But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about
> getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit
> depressing.

Same story with mine. (Minus the business booming - ours is fluttering along)

I've brought this up to our management: "We work in a space where most people
sit within arms distance of each other. How are you going to manage that
aspect?"

They said, "Oh, maybe we'll do a thing where half comes in one day and half
comes in another. Like business one day, engineering another, etc."

I responded, "But... the office isn't setup for hot swapping desks at all. So,
you'd have half of some teams come in? You'd force us all in small meeting
rooms again with very poor ventilation where we can't do social distancing?
What's the point if half of engineering is at home and half isn't? We don't
have many bathrooms so we'd have a lot of shared touch points. Same with
kitchen - etc."

As usual - they're not thinking past the initial words coming out of their
mouth. It's utterly amazing how inept people are at all levels of the stack.

------
Shivetya
for many companies that own their own properties I doubt they will maintain
work from home policies long term unless Covid19 outlooks are dire but to be
honest, if they get that dire and stay there then where you work is the least
of the concerns.

the issue with work from home is that jobs which are suited for it or can be
adapted this require that workers have discipline to do so. for companies
willing to have a portion of their employees offsite then HR programs would
need to be put into place to help train people how to manage their work life
at home and then to train managers in how to properly employ a work from home
team.

the issue not raised here is the tax component. a collapse of the real estate
market will take the tax base down a few notches. this will lead to an
increase in finding a replacement and this could include proxy taxes on an
employees work from home setup and costs associated with it; a few fees and
tariffs here and there. Then comes the non state actors, HOAs and property
management companies, whose rules will need to moderated if not outright
regulated to prevent putting undue pressure on work from home employees. most
can fly under the RADAR because of no increase in external activity; think
shipping and receiving; to give it away but cancel culture has its adherents
everywhere with people who have nothing better to do than point.

------
code4tee
Offices won’t go away, but the idea that there is a physical space permanently
set aside for you in an office and that you use that space most workdays will
largely be seen as a quaint relic of the past for many.

It’s not a question of if there is about to be a bloodbath in commercial real
estate, just how bad it’s going to be.

If there’s a plus side smart developers could quickly repurpose commercial
spaces into residential and quickly fill needed housing shortages in many
cities.

------
jaybeeayyy
The company I work for (insurance carrier) has seen the light with working
from home and the big heads are starting to discuss what to do when the long
term leases are up. I think even outside of tech a lot of places that can have
people working from home will strongly encourage or require it. Not every job
can, obviously but with the incentive to save money on expensive leases and
what comes with them it's really a no-brainer.

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martythemaniak
Honestly, if you have a commute, do you actually have an opinion on WFH? If
you can't separate commuting and the office, then isn't your opinion on WFH
really just the inverse of your opinion of your commute? I'm pretty skeptical
of people's opinions of something in which they've had no options or choice.

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ptx
Aren't commutes and offices inextricably linked unless you live in the office?

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mnd999
I dunno about the US, but my flat in London isn’t suitable for both of us
working from home. Most other flats in London aren’t suitable for two people
working from home either. Unless we build a lot of new, larger homes with
live/work spaces, this isn’t going to work.

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panzagl
The underlying assumption in a lot of these articles is that if you could work
from home you'd move to the suburbs/country where space is cheaper. Very few
assume people like living in a city.

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KoftaBob
"$25,000-per-month lease with WeWork for 1,800 square feet"

That is absolutely absurd. _$25,000_ for an amount of space equivalent to a
large 2 bedroom apartment? If this is what kind of rates restaurants are
paying for rent, I can imagine why their margins are razor thin.

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Gibbon1
> $25,000-per-month lease with WeWork for 1,800 square feet would be up in
> August

Excuse me, but WAT

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nogabebop23
that's like $165 per foot, or roughly 3x the most expensive AAA corporate
space in North America. Not sure what they're getting beyond floor space -
maybe furniture, ammenities and technology?

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Gibbon1
Exactly. My company, rent + outsourced IT + utilities, etc is around
$12,000/mo for 4400 sqft. So $30 per foot.

Problem I have with that is after the dot bomb we were looking at office space
and it seemed that the high flyers that threw $$$[1] at their office build
outs were all out of business. Where the ones where you had as a friends
company, network cables stapled to the walls weren't.

It's not so much the money spent but the thought that those were the guys that
didn't have a sense of how to prioritize their cash flow.

[1] Like 100-300 sqft on build out.

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jillesvangurp
Remote work was already starting to happen on a larger scale for a few years.
The pandemic and the world wide panicked response to it is merely accelerating
the trend. However, it's a logical trend and many of us were already dealing
with remote teams for a few years.

IMHO many people will actually revert back to their old behaviors for the
simple reason that offices are still there and as restrictions lift in the
next weeks there will be lots of pressure to show up on people.

What will take longer is changing processes to facilitate working remotely.
Many smarter companies are probably looking to make this a permanent thing in
their companies; because it makes sense and it undeniably can work. For
developers it's easy, just do what the OSS folk are doing for the last
decades; it works. And the stuff they were doing instead always was in any
case a bit challenged in terms of actually working as advertised.

However, the rest of the world will need a bit longer to discover how to work
asynchronously.

Also there's the notion that a lot of work is actually completely redundant
and pointless. Big corporations are just as bad about generating bureaucracy
as governments are. Fat profits can cover up a lot of bad management. A
cynical reason for remote work not being much of a disruption is that lots of
people weren't actually doing anything important anyway. So, them doing a poor
job of something that never mattered to begin with is completely OK. Of course
the next logical step is getting smarter about eliminating such jobs. A
curious thing in today's economy is that this does not seem to happen nearly
as often as you'd expect. Rather the opposite and people self congratulate
each other to ever more surreal levels of dysfunctional behavior.

In any case, seeing a productivity boost if you eliminate 1-2 hour (twice per
day) commutes at stupid o'clock from people's life should not come as a
surprise. Being well rested and non stressed does wonders for people's focus
and concentration.

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arkj
In our office Covid-lockdown proved that office will never be dead.

A lot of people come to office not just to work but it’s also some sort of
essential social gathering for them. This is more true for those extroverted
by nature.

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purplezooey
The premise of this article is largely based on anecdotes. The office will not
be dead. Too many people will forever equate working from home with laziness.

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nogabebop23
Maybe we're headed for smaller office footprints with the same # of people. We
can pack them in tighter with the super-duper open floor plan!

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ken
The big question is: with that $17,000 they save, is it going into higher
worker salaries, lower prices for consumers, or executive bonuses?

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rramdin
Savings like these are generally passed on to stakeholders; existing contracts
(e.g. vendors, clients, employees, contractors) are rarely automatically
renegotiated to reflect lower cap ex

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somurzakov
whats gonna happen is that companies will get rid of some real estate and
convert existing office space into "agile" workspace - where anyone can come
in with laptop and work. But it will be so packed, that most people will opt
for WFH most of the time and come like for 1 day in a week.

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joshuaheard
Reading all the reasons in the article, I think this applies to classrooms as
well.

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chadlavi
On the flip side of this: I do not owe my employer space in my home. Having to
dedicate some part of my home to their economic activity should be something
I'm financially compensated for.

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BjoernKW
In the future employment contracts might stipulate such compensation in order
to remain competitive.

Something to consider, though: Most employees today probably aren't
compensated for the time and money they waste during their daily commute. What
about car maintenance? Unless they're driving a company car to work most
employees will have to pay for that themselves. Shouldn't the employer cover
or reimburse these costs?

~~~
ashtonkem
In many ways, including WFH explicitly in salary agreements would be unusual
largely because workers incur a large number of other work related expenses
that are not explicitly enumerated in the agreement. But those costs are
implicitly included, as employers have to compete against each other to offer
salary and benefits necessary to attract talent.

But practically speaking, it would not be surprising to see WFH companies
offer slightly higher salaries largely due to the significant savings
associated with no offices, as well as the reduced risk of not having a lease.
If I save $27K a year per employee (from the article), I can easily offer
candidates $10K more than my competitors with an office, increasing profit and
attracting higher quality talent.

