
Why do so many people want us back in the office? - ingve
https://paulitaylor.com/2020/09/12/why-do-so-many-people-want-us-back-in-the-office/
======
mancerayder
This is a complicated problem with different perspectives that no doubt will
get muddled at some point. I'm confident at least the following is true:

Some people have long commutes and wfh is great

Others have small, expensive apartments they paid for shorter commutes and
it's suffocating 40-50 hours a week

Some people live in palaces and offices are a step down in comfort

Some people are happy with the online interactions

Some people are dissatisfied with the online interactions and prefer to talk
to humans and not text strings from humans they can't see or hear

Some people want to work from home some of the time, and go to the office some
of the time, and they've wanted that before the apocalypse occurred (puts hand
up)

Cities are nervous that business districts are devastated since no one buys
coffee, lunches or walks home and steps into a shoe store or tailor, or to a
bar for drinks with colleagues.

But like much else in our present world, things are presented in black and
white, emotive ways.

~~~
sriku
Most of these are what one might call "first order effects" \- i.e. factors
immediately associatable with work location. For prolonged situation, higher
order effects are going to become more important.

Here are some candidates -

1\. Improvement in city air quality due to reduced commute - road and flight.

2\. Erosion of "social credits" over time due to lower bandwidth interactions
when remote.

3\. Cumulative impact of serendipitous but significant learning arising from
in-person interactions.

4\. Impact on the body - prolonged unmoderated sitting in bad postures, eye
strain due to constant staring into the screen, bad eating habits, etc.

5\. Reduction in sense of belonging / identity / cohesiveness as the
"molecules" that make up a cell can move more freely through the "cell
boundary".

6\. Impact on cognitive development during early childhood - due to school-
from-home and lack of social interactions. Joint family homes are great to
counter this!

7\. Eroding knowledge and awareness of local geography due to reduced travel.
Reduced attachment here can lead to apathy when local environs get trashed.

~~~
maremp
Most of the points make sense, but this one does not

> Impact on the body - prolonged unmoderated sitting in bad postures, eye
> strain due to constant staring into the screen, bad eating habits, etc.

How does WFH change how you sit and the eye strain? You’re doing the same
work, what changed? IMO having a good office setup (chair, device, screen,
room lighting) is a must for any WFH position, but especially if it’s full-
time.

Also for me, the food is better because in the office I used to eat snacks and
go out in restaurants or fast foods. Now I mostly make food at home, and with
the benefit of s garden have home-grown vegetables. So I eat better and spend
less, plus I cut down the crap food from couple times a week to a few times in
a month.

As I see it, the argument 4) applies only with refusing to invest into a
proper working environment setup and with the lack of discipline. But I hardly
believe someone with the lack of discipline would eat any better in the
office. And I’m taking this from my past experience.

~~~
p_l
Most people don't have good WFH setup, that's one thing.

Two, WFH can mean less interruptions requiring you to move, resulting in far
more sedentary behaviour than normal office work, even if you assume no
difference in movement from commute.

~~~
noahtallen
Competitive distributed companies already pay for your home office setup, and
many people opt for better chairs and desks they would likely get in a normal
office. I think for companies to stay competitive in a WFH environment, they
will have to offer similar benefits.

The other point I agree with :)

------
x87678r
My commute is 20 minutes on an uncrowded ferry, and my home office is a tiny
desk in my daughter's bedroom while she works on the other side on school
stuff.

My colleague has a massive house with a pool tennis court and so much space he
has literally 3 never-used bedrooms. His wife looks after kids who are at
school most of the day again. His commute is 2 hours each way.

People are talking home vs office people are coming from very different
comparisons.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Commute time is a big thing here.

People who have a 2 hour (one way) commute from hell from their massive house
are super happy about this situation (shocking, I know).

People who live in a small studio apartment 10 minutes from the office see it
differently.

What I expect this to result in is employers increasingly forcing people to
WFH (either outright, or by making the offices horribly unattractive through
hot-desking, increased density, etc.), pushing the cost of an office onto
employees.

Even if a company "generously" gives you a $1000 allowance, that barely covers
what high quality office furniture would cost, and in exchange, you pay a lot
of tiny things that don't seem to be worth mentioning individually but add up
to a massive cost when you take them all together over years:

\- the real estate

\- HVAC

\- utilities (increased water usage, electricity for the office equipment &
HVAC)

\- maintenance for all of that (money and time)

\- cleaning (if your employer asked you to come in unpaid after hours to
vacuum the office and scrub the office toilets, everyone would consider them
crazy, and yet this is effectively what will happen with WFH)

Not to speak of all the amenities and perks employers often provide, like
cafeterias (often subsidized or even free). And not only will you end up
paying the businesses' business expenses, you'll often do so (at least in
part) with your post-tax money, i.e. depending on your tax rate, each dollar
spent may be equivalent to e.g. $1.6 in lost income.

~~~
ghaff
Really, there are only 2 costs that matter.

On the one side you have the commute--both in time and money.

On the other side is whether the place you'd be living in otherwise is
suitable for long-term WFH or if you have to spend more money for another
bedroom or whatever.

So, if you already have a dedicated office in an exurban house (as I do), not
commuting--which I rarely did anyway--is a cost savings. As someone who has
mostly worked remotely for years, all the other stuff is pretty trivial even
given the occasional significant purchase (I had to replace my very old office
chair).

I already have to clean my house and/or have it done. And the delta in
utilities, etc. is trivial.

ADDED: Companies sometimes have covered co-working spaces. Though I suspect
this will become less common.

~~~
Retric
Those minor costs can still add up. Depending on your setup and location you
could easily be spending 30+c/h on electricity when working from home. Extra
cooling, lighting, possibly multiple PC’s etc. At ~2,000 hours a year you’re
talking an extra ~600$/per year after tax.

On the other hand it’s also much cheaper to cook at home.

PS: My preference is to live close enough to walk to the office, but that
doesn’t really scale well.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
A couple years ago, I had to move bare metal servers to my home to continue my
job working at a VR technology startup, who had just decided to forgo their
offices.

I took on an extra $150-$200 in power expenses per month, and it was
absolutely treacherous trying to get reimbursed for this. The company never
considered the costs they were funneling into the employees - apparently -
until people started to complain.

I fear most people were put into similar situations - perhaps not fiscally,
but in a procedural sense - during this most recent mass WFH migration.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
> I took on an extra $150-$200 in power expenses per month, and it was
> absolutely treacherous trying to get reimbursed for this

Well, fuck that... if it's company hardware and there's no reimbursement,
power gets cut to that rack at 5PM local time.

~~~
ethbr0
Just wire it into a light switch. If the switch gets flipped... shame.

"I don't know what to do. I guess if you wanted to send an electrician out to
install a new circuit with its own meter, things might be more reliable."

~~~
VLM
> send an electrician

I think OP needed an electrician onsite anyway, as $200/month would be
somewhat over 2500 watts continuous 24x7 which would require in the US at
minimum two dedicated 15 amp circuits. That's a serious enough amount of heat
to require the attentions of a HVAC guy also.

I ran some small clusters at home for learning purposes and maybe $400 per
year was pretty minimal compared to the cost of tuition, cost of the hardware,
etc.

~~~
Dylan16807
If your electricity is 10 cents per kWh it would be that much.

Since they said NYC we can bump that to 21 cents and then $150-$200 becomes
980-1300 watts, or 8-11 amps. That's something most people could plug in to
their bedroom or living room circuit without a sweat.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Is there a resource online one can use to figure out what the cost per kWh
will be for their power usage in a particular area?

I am fascinated by how people know these figures seemingly off the top of
their heads. :)

------
01100011
I would be in favor of a number of working arrangements, ranging from working
in a Bay Area office full-time(least favorite) to working from home most-time
in an area that provides me with the chance to buy a home and have a
reasonable commute to a satellite office.

I am absolutely, 100% against full-time WFH in an expensive, low-quality(no
sound/thermal insulation) Bay Area apartment without a dedicated workspace.

> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world

I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't
successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it.

One final point is that anyone looking to judge my WFH productivity better
take into account the endless procession of major disasters taking place
outside my window. WFH in a pandemic with looting and massive wildfires is not
the same as WFH in a 'normal' year.

~~~
maneesh
>> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the
world

> I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't
> successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it.

Welp, I'm the CEO of a smart wearable device company
([https://pavlok.com](https://pavlok.com)). We were based in Boston because
everyone told me, and I believed you HAD to be in one place to build a
startup, and DEFINITELY for a hardware startup.

Then when I finally closed the Boston office and moved to Medellin, Colombia.
Then budapest. Then Berlin. Then Bali. Then Mexico.

All while doing the same for the team -- remote first, work anywhere.

Only then did we begin to explode in productivity and success.

I don't think it's true for EVERY job (tough to do janitorial cleanup from
another country). But it is possible for a lot lot lot lot more than you
think.

~~~
aspaceman
I can’t even with this comment.

Not everyone has the resources to make a working place anywhere viable. You
seem to have the resources to make a hotel in Budapest or whatever work.
Talking so causally about international travel already puts you beyond most
Americans’ income.

So yeah it is very, very easy for folks with a job like yours, and with the
resources you’re afforded, to work anywhere. The issue isn’t proximity to
resources, but the ability to complete work.

~~~
woodson
Staying at AirBnBs in the listed cities and working from there is quite likely
cheaper than renting office space in Boston (probably even including airfare).
So it’s not about “resources” as in money, it’s about being able to be
productive working from all these places, especially when taking into account
the time zone difference to other members of the team.

~~~
maigret
Yes, and... I’d be curious to see which digital nomads follow the local taxes
regulations. It’s easy to get in trouble with working abroad.

~~~
woodson
Fully agreed, taxes and work permit/visa are topics that are likely being
neglected by most. Often, there simply isn’t a visa category that allows
individuals to work for foreign entities while residing in another country, as
regular work visas are for employment with an entity based in the country.

~~~
ghaff
>regular work visas are for employment with an entity based in the country

Usually true. Although some countries (like China) do have a business visa
that you're supposed to get if you're e.g. attending a business event.

With a US passport traveling to countries for example, there's nothing keeping
you from visiting for a month or two and working from a short-term rental. I
don't know all the theoretical rules that may exist but I know traveling
partly/fully on business, people obviously do work for their US company all
the time without filing any special paperwork.

------
SergeAx
1\. WFH is not for everyone. There are people with kids and no dedicated
workplace at home. There are people with low motivation and self-control, and
office routine just helps them to keep up.

2\. You can't mix WFH with work in office. It's either one or the other. If
you have a single employee working remotely - you should transform all the
processes to WFH-style.

3\. WFH shifts most of the burden onto management. Managers should put
120-150% of effort in planning, communication, documentation and checking. I
never saw a single manager who likes WFH. And the management are the ones who
decides.

~~~
danans
> 2\. You can't mix WFH with work in office. It's either one or the other. If
> you have a single employee working remotely - you should transform all the
> processes to WFH-style.

You don't provide the line of thinking behind this statement. Why do you think
this is the case?

Also, even taking your statement at face value, you can still have a setup
where there are fewer days in the office and more days working from home for
every employee. Basically, have flexible in-office hours, whether that means
only certain days, or certain parts of certain days.

This sort of flexibility could be of great benefit to the employee who has
kids, or is just tired of sitting in traffic or crowded trains 5 days a week.
As a bonus, it could reduce crowding on transit lines during peak hours.

~~~
jen729w
This is what I came here to say. As usual, arguments (just in the general) are
polarised: it’s either _in the office 40 hours a week_ or _work from a beach
in Thailand_ and nothing in between.

How about the sensible reality where we have an office, that we can get to,
but we aren’t expected to turn up there every day _just because?_ Where I work
from home a few days a week to get that tricky stuff done – heaps harder in a
distracting office – but then I go in a few days to connect with colleagues,
catch up on the conversations, overhear things across the partition?

This saves my sanity, money, and time, and saves my employer ~50% of their
office space. Win-win, surely?

(Not that I disagree with the sentiment that all processes should be made WFH-
friendly. I think that’s very sensible. But it doesn’t mean that I necessarily
must WFH the whole time.)

~~~
TACIXAT
I believe their argument is that if you have one remote person you need to
have a remote culture so that person is not left out of communications. If you
rely on the office to communicate, a remote person is going to really miss
out.

------
faster
When I was building back end software, I could and did work from anywhere. I
enjoyed working in the same space with my team, but not all day and not every
day. And it wasn't necessary except maybe once or twice per quarter.

Now I work on firmware, and I have about $6000 of test equipment that is
required to do my job, as well as multiple fragile circuit boards, some that
I'm afraid to touch because some of the rework wires might break. I am working
at home, but I guarantee that I'm not as productive as I would be in an office
with access to the EEs and MEs and the people who built the firmware for the
previous version of the product. Yes, I can schedule a call or ask questions
on Slack, but so much is passed to new team members by osmosis or exposure or
context, whatever you want to call that side effect of colocation.

> The best thing you can do in any period of change is to bet on neither black
> or white.

I agree, in some cases. There are still some cases where the best bet IS
almost entirely black, or almost entirely white.

~~~
m0zg
You could do what we did in some distributed teams at Google: just have a
permanent "call" going with everyone normally muted. When someone would like
to receive attention, they unmute and speak. It's not as good as walking up to
someone's desk, but it's not as bad as having to schedule a call in advance.

~~~
dkdk8283
This sounds miserable. What did you do for periods of deep work?

~~~
edoceo
My team has a similar tool. So, everyone is in the room, muted and no-volume.
So, if someone needs my attention they can send a bell but when my audio is
off its only a visual bell, so it won't interrupt the deep work. And one can
always exit the channel if needed - which is shown in status, so folks know
your DND or not available.

But, one can monitor the channel so it behaves like a water cooler too. And
up-scales to video and screen share super fast. (Faster than other tools) It's
really quite flexible.

We've been using this pattern for about 60 months. We all (6 humans) seem to
like it OK.

~~~
maest
Is this an in-house tool?

~~~
hackmiester
Seems that they said it is; however, you could do all this with Zoom, for
instance.

To be in the room muted and with no volume, disconnect the audio connection.

To ask for someone's attention, send them a direct chat message (not to
Everyone).

And of course you could always leave the Zoom meeting and rejoin later.

------
weeksie
The long term shakeout of this will be that everybody realizes that yes, we
need offices. They are spaces literally built for working. The required
footprint will be smaller, people won't need to be in the office for
absolutely everything, the demand for square footage of commercial real estate
will decrease a bit—good news for cities who don't build b/c they can convert
excess commercial inventory to residential.

But we have also found a vast increase in productivity that we probably won't
see in the numbers until we can separate it out from all the other crazy shit
that's been happening. The efficiencies gained in _every_ white collar
business being forced to make remote work to _some_ degree are significant,
and I think as of yet underrated.

So no we're not all going to be sipping cocktails on the beach (though more of
us might) but we will be better off. Big exogenous shocks tend to find hidden
productivities, even if the shock part really sucks.

~~~
mattlondon
I am not so sure productivity has definitely improved.

I agree there was a good head of steam where people were able to quietly and
independently work through their "list" of stuff they wanted to do for ages
but never had the chance to etc, or whatever had previously been planned out.

Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and
productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to dry up.
Those ad hoc conversations that lead to a new feature, bumping into someone in
the corridor who mentions some big issue they're having, meeting and talking
to end users, the offsites to work out the strategy for next quarter, day-long
workshops with UX and management and users and post-it notes galore where we
thrash out ideas and concepts are a distant memory. Instead we have stilted
video calls where people sit on mute 95% of the time and there simply is not
as much collaboration as there was before.

Sure stuff still happens, but it feels like to me that the "spark" from people
who usually generate ideas and set the agenda/work items is reduced
significantly - if not entirely gone - and people are just going through the
motions somewhat mechanically and "doing the best they can given the
circumstances" etc.

~~~
goatinaboat
_Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and
productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to dry up._

My employer mandated a return to the office about 2 weeks ago. Productivity
has declined compared to when we were all WFH for 6 months and I have the
stats - pull requests, builds pushed to prod, tickets opened, all are down.

~~~
egsmi
This whole thing is so multifaceted I think it’s hard to draw any conclusions
from it. In CA, we have COVID and fires so I’m essentially a prisoner in my
house. If you locked me in my office, my productivity might go up too. But now
that’s school is on and my kids are locked in here too. Productivity goes
down. All in all, it’s a bumpy ride.

~~~
mmcnl
Is this a problem though? Is business suffering? Are there metrics on that?

------
saos
Yeah I’d like to go back but 2 days a week. Any more and it’s over kill
really. 3 other days can be used for deep work at home. I’m tech guy working
in marketing...these type of people love to appear at your desk every so often
in the office. Now with Slack I can just not sign in or set my status as away
and reply when I want. It’s asynchronous communication and really good for
“me”.

And truth is. Everyone is different. I can respect the person that prefers
office environment. What we will see is greater flexibility and just less
office space in the future.

The real winner outs of all this will be local communities and businesses.

~~~
x87678r
Is that everyone the same 2 days a week? Because its a problem if everyone
chooses different days you still can't get those interactions.

~~~
saos
Yes my whole team will decide the two days to come in and meet.

------
ThrowawayR2
I don't care about "us" going back to the office but I definitely want to go
back to the office and I am far from alone in this.

~~~
ckdarby
Can you discuss why you want to go back to the office?

~~~
rootusrootus
Not OP but I will throw in my 2 cents...

1\. Work/life separation. Even with a separate computer, getting it shut away
and Slack gone is easier said than done. Now everyone knows you're probably
around somewhere and will read their e-mail or see their Slack message, even
early in the morning or later in the afternoon.

1b. I work better in a dedicated environment. My home office has all kinda of
other distractions. Homework from my OMSCS classes beckons to be done,
personal projects, not to mention kids. The psychological difference of being
in a dedicated workspace is significant.

2\. Social connections. There are many people I was friendly with but only at
the office. Now I only interact with people on my own team or in closely
related teams when we are working on some project that overlaps. My 'work
world' has shrunk dramatically.

3\. Zoom. Just make it stop. My company has dedicated Thursday to be 'no
meeting day' but it hasn't really stuck yet. I'm brought onto way more calls
now than I ever was when we were in the office. It feels like Zoom has become
the substitute for the random communications we used to have, except instead
of taking 5-10 minutes everyone schedules 30-60 minutes at a time. And they
always find a way to use up every minute plus 2 or 3 after the end time.

I don't actually want to go back full time. I am thinking seriously of selling
my Model 3 because having a 60K depreciating asset in the garage that only
gets driven a couple hundred miles a month is not the best use of my money.
But when the office opens back up eventually, I do think I'll try to spend at
least one day a week there. Maybe two.

~~~
nemetroid
> Social connections. There are many people I was friendly with but only at
> the office. Now I only interact with people on my own team or in closely
> related teams when we are working on some project that overlaps. My 'work
> world' has shrunk dramatically.

I echo this sentiment. As a junior engineer in a large office, being able to
keep track of other projects, who is working on what, what's coming up in a
different business area, etc., has been very important for career development.
Working from home, I've been "siloed" into my own team to a much larger
extent.

~~~
ckdarby
Just book meetings with others in the company. I think school has trained us
for structure and rarely are we willing to initiate without formal processes
in place.

Send a meeting invite for 30 minutes to someone in the org with: "Hi. I'm new
and I try to meet one new person every week in areas I'm not familiar."

Pro tip: Either pick someone who seems to have a cult following, looks to be
untouchable in the org and or very active on internal company GitHub/Gitlab.

------
happyjack
I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this comment, but it's my honest
opinion. People want you in the office so they can babysit you. They don't
care about performance; they care about politics. I know, I know, your company
is different. You all are equal and it's about saving the world, man. But
here's the honest to god truth; Karin the office manager wants to save her job
and has zero leg to stand on sending out emails about the kitchen fridge being
dirty if you all are from home. Accountants and paper pushers can't push more
paper when they have no artificial hierarchy when you all are at home. The
engineer team manager is having a hard time managing you all in your home
offices. It's all about politics. I think I remember reading in Yuval's book
"Sapians" that humans can only organize around 100 people until they have to
have some kind of shared myth. That shared myth can be religion, etc. etc. OR
it can be in the form of being a "Googleon" or "IBM'er."

~~~
otabdeveloper4
> People want you in the office so they can babysit you.

Only if you're doing a commoditized, conveyor-belt kind of work.

Some of us want you in the office so that we can mentor and train you.
Teaching doesn't work too well remotely.

~~~
happyjack
This is at good places. Kudos if your company is one of them, and you help out
younger folks!

------
xyst
Why do people continue to push this myth?

“ Kirsty Allsopp led the anti-remote work charge on Twitter, suggesting that
if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world.
Who would have thought that a couple of months of working in shorts and a
T-Shirt has made us more susceptible to being replaced by less expensive folk
in India, Myanmar and China?”

It doesn’t matter if they are American or live halfway across the world. If
you want amazing talent, you are going to have to pay them well. Talented
people are usually well aware of the salary differences between American vs
local companies of their region.

The people that tend to take the low offer are usually not in the best
position to do the best work compared to their counterpart.

I have met and worked with amazing talent from all across the world. At the
same time I have also worked with people that should have never been in the
business and were the root cause of project delays caused by buggy features
and constant rework. Whether they are American or not, the people in the
latter group tended to be in a group that was not happy largely due to their
pay. In the cases I probed for more information, I discovered amongst the
contracting companies that placed bids, the company took the lowest bid that
was offered. No fucking surprise that 8-12 months later that the project is
behind by at least half a year.

Moral of the story companies need to pay well - regardless of the location of
the person - in order to get a quality product that is pushed to the masses in
time and remain competitive.

~~~
onecommentman
1\. I do wonder why in the US we permit discrimination based on place of
residence and place of birth. You can legally discriminate based on accent or
other indicators of your place of birth or development, but not legally
discriminate for race, gender, sexual orientation. And similarly we are also
permitting employers to discriminate based on where you choose, or life
exigencies compel you, to live, modulo objective work-related collocation
requirements. Maybe a pivot by SJWs is in order.

2\. The very largest US companies learned long ago about the importance of a
significant geographic economic presence all over this great country aka USA.
Alternatively 90+ Members of Congress explained the virtue via anti-trust
actions and other targeted legislation. With telework, FANG and the like get
the political benefit of constituencies across Congressional districts and
States without the overhead of managing a lot of real estate for offices.

3\. There are a lot of edge cases being thrown around in this thread. It’s
good to hear those voices, but it can make it hard to gain a sense of how many
people actually now experience telework as a good thing or a bad thing,
especially if/when some fraction of infrastructure cost savings are directly
shared with the employees.

4\. To the question of the original post, businesses dependent on commuters
(including those who own real estate in the commercial area) call up the
Mayor, and the Mayor calls CEOs and
begs/threatens/pleads/flatters/seduces/cajoles and it is easier to send the
droids back to the grind than to hear the Mayor’s minions whine and complain,
unless the droids push back hard. [Purely personal guess]

~~~
rootusrootus
> And similarly we are also permitting employers to discriminate based on
> where you choose, or life exigencies compel you, to live

Presumably this works both ways. Google does not pay 500K/year to developers
in the Portland office. Why should SF developers get paid more? Nobody cared
until engineers out of SF wanted to take advantage of remote work but keep the
big paycheck.

------
dpcan
I've worked from home for 17 years, but I love to go work other places like
coffee shops, libraries, etc. I would LOVE to not be at home again.

I can technically go to these other places and work again, just like I used
to, because the area I live in believes this is all a hoax, but I'm just not
comfortable, and I don't want to wear a mask all day, and people just aren't
the same right now - so I'm a little nervous about being around strangers all
day and want to avoid uncomfortable or awkward situations.

~~~
Finnucane
Yeah, I worked from home for a few years as a a freelancer. That was a very
different experience from wfh due to pandemic lockdown. Before I could still
see people when I wanted or needed to, go to the cafe or the library, buy
lunch at the deli, etc. I didn’t have an office but other kinds of normal
interactions were still an option.

~~~
geerlingguy
Go to meetups and talk shop with other locals in the industry...

------
ilyanep
Who's going to pay for me to upsize my apartment so I can make a home office?
Working from the same desk I use for my personal computer / gaming is really
taking a toll on the ol' mental health? Also who's going to pay for my extra
electricity use, etc? I also used to get free food at the office, would I be
getting a raise to cover that as well?

My commute was a pleasant 25m bike ride I could use to listen to podcasts
(which is exercise I've now lost, so losing the commute didn't exactly give me
a bunch of extra free time). Seeing coworkers in person was a really nice way
to not only get some social contact every day but also build a rapport with my
teammates. The office was also going to be a great place for my dog to get
some socialization with other dogs.

Yes, I was annoyed at the moves to more open spaces and with regular
frustrating interruptions, but with those mitigated, an office with my actual
coworkers (with at most 1 day a week at home) is vastly superior to what I'm
doing now, regardless of how much processes change. Not to mention, employers
sort of implicitly assume that any time you gained back from not having to
commute or whatever are just going to doing extra work.

~~~
kelnos
> _My commute was a pleasant 25m bike ride I could use to listen to podcasts
> (which is exercise I 've now lost, so losing the commute didn't exactly give
> me a bunch of extra free time)._

You can still do that, though. Get up, do a 12.5m bike ride out, and 12.5m
bike ride back home. Then start work.

Or do anything else. Maybe you'd prefer to go for a run some days? Great, you
can do that. Maybe you want to lift weights? Great, you can do that. Maybe you
stayed up late the night before doing something fun and want to sleep in a
little? Great, you can do that. None of this other stuff would have been
possible when you were fixed into the required, inflexible commute routine,
but now you can do any of these things, or just keep doing your same commute
routine, just with a different route that returns you home.

> _Not to mention, employers sort of implicitly assume that any time you
> gained back from not having to commute or whatever are just going to doing
> extra work._

They only assume that if you allow them to by working longer hours. Set your
boundaries, and assert them.

------
hordeallergy
I have no interest in being in the office. The commute is horrid and a waste
of time. The socialising is insignificant. The water cooler never has more
than one visitor at a time, so the idea of it being an idea exchange is myth.
Everyone communicates via chat in office, with headphones on. Being able to
separate work and private life is a matter of self discipline, the other
matters are not. The only thing I want is for coffee shops to return to
normal.

~~~
rangoon626
If you primarily rely on socializing and interacting with other people AT WORK
and around a water cooler of all things, you need some hobbies and activities.

People used to have an actual connection to the community they lived in but it
seems like there’s now a massive collective laziness to seek it out.

~~~
tima11234
Agreed. I think the people that are pointing out social aspects just haven't
bothered to talk to people outside of their work. I lived in several different
apartments in SF for many years, I didn't know a single neighbor, ever. Most
people couldn't be bothered to say hello.

------
noisy_boy
> “There’s sort of an emerging sense behind the scenes of executives saying,
> ‘This is not going to be sustainable,’” said Laszlo Bock, chief executive of
> human-resources startup Humu and the former HR chief at Google.

Maybe that because remote working is affecting their politicking ways more
than it affects people who do the grunt work on the ground.

~~~
bob33212
The least competent managers use lazy metrics like hours in the office for
their employees. People who manage managers like this are really in a bad
spot, because they have no idea if shit is hitting the fan down at the grunt
level or not

------
7ewis
I usually have to commute for 3 hours a day. I have to be up early and get
home late, stuck on a crowded train normally standing up for most of the
journey.

I was never previously a big fan of working from home, I enjoy the social
interaction at the office. Having coffee breaks with people, going out for
lunch etc. But now I'm used to WFH I love the fact that I can wake up at 9AM
and I'm 'at work'. I finish at 5:30PM and I'm already home. Yes I do miss the
interaction with people, but I have met some people outside work, and
regularly have Slack convos (or social ones while gaming for example) with
those people.

I feel lucky that I've been at my company for a relatively long time, so have
'work friends' who I continue talking to. I now don't talk to the
'acquaintances' or new starters for example, which I guess is sad - but being
selfish, makes it feel like I have even more time to do my own things. But on
the other hand, probably isn't so good for the newer members of staff and
doesn't help company morale.

I am still fairly young and have seen some people mention work/life balance.
That doesn't bother me too much either as my company is flexible and I know if
I do a few extra hours one evening I can do a few less hours another day etc.
and wouldn't have to tell or ask anyone to do that.

Until reading this post I hadn't really thought about it too much, but guess I
am just lucky that it works for me. If I was older and had kids/family, or
didn't have an office to work from at home I can see how it would be more of a
struggle. I do want to go back to work at some point, but I don't know how
often I'd want to be there. I don't know if I can handle the long commutes
week in week out now.

------
mcphilip
I think ideally it should be up to the employee to return when they feel safe.

That being said, I look forward to going back to the office. It’ll be nice to
see people again —- few people bother to turn on their video on zoom anymore
for anything other than one-on-ones, myself included, and that is starting to
feel alienating to me. I don’t think it’s wise having a policy that you must
have video enabled, though, it’s nice being able to sprawl out on the couch
and get comfortable for a particularly long, boring meeting.

Edit: to address the actual contents of the article, I think below is a better
read that doesn’t reduce people’s concerns about remote working to wanting to
save sandwhich shops:

[https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-
hidden-...](https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-hidden-
trillion-dollar-office-economy-5800af06b007)

~~~
derwiki
Interesting. For whatever reason my team keeps video on for all meeting unless
there are bandwidth issues. But I agree now that it would be far worse if
folks didn’t show their face regularly.

~~~
maxerickson
I don't have a webcam on my work setup, no one uses video, it hasn't bothered
me at all.

~~~
saiya-jin
Same here, I have my own desktop, camera is unplugged and I put it on only for
skype with parents. Company didn't give us laptops, so has 0 lever to ask for
anything. Most folks on our conf call system (webex) use audio only.

I made tons of other, more useful things (meals, real work, babysitting etc.)
during those dull calls that are not really about me (or they cover me for 1
minute in 30-60 minutes). It would be really tiring to keep looking engaged
while I couldn't care less about the topic (self pressure is a bitch), 3-6x
per day.

------
kepler1
I mean, if you simplify this to its most fundamental level, the article is
about not wanting to work (not just the office part). Or it's about not
wanting to do the _unpleasant_ aspects of work. And citing some random studies
to support his position.

But jobs / companies are mechanisms for getting people to do things _they
wouldn 't feel like normally doing_, because they get paid to do it. That's
the definition of work!

Of course no one wants to go back to work when they've been allowed not to for
a while.

The author lists all the things he hates about being in the office. Namely the
things that are work. He wants some fairy tale home environment where no one
bothers him, there are no deadlines, and he gets to work on only the things he
wants. For high pay and 0 stress.

If anyone has been able to find that in life, god bless you and treasure what
you have. If the author was not getting paid right now, you best believe he'd
have a different attitude.

Eventually people will have to go back to work. This "work from home lala
land" imaginary utopia is not going to be possible forever.

------
NewFireStudios
Working from home has been great for me. I no longer have a 45 minute commute
in both directions. I don’t have to pay for a train pass. I get to eat lunch
with the only person with whom I want to eat lunch, my wife. I don’t have
distracting conversations going on behind me. I can listen to relaxing music
all day without having to wear headphones. I can now continue working on
things during forced meetings because no one is able to see I don’t care about
the conversation that before the pandemic clearly didn’t involve me but
somehow required my presence. Overall, by working from my basement, I save
time, money, and stress. I get more done now work-related than I did before
the pandemic. I have time to take care of myself. I get to spend more time
with my wife. The only thing that took a little getting used to was now I have
to IM my boss to ask him to review something instead of turning to my right
and saying out loud, “Can you please look at the deck and approve for
release?” I don’t get instant feedback that my message was received, but, if
I’m being honest, I really don’t care what happens after I have done my part.

------
aphextron
The most fascinating thing about this crisis is how it has laid bare the
importance of flexible, forward thinking leadership at every level, in every
form of organization. Entities that have/will successfully adapt to the new
reality we live in are the ones who have given up on the notion of a "return
to normal". There will never be a "normal" again. The COVID-19 outbreak was an
epochal event. Whether you embrace that and seize the new opportunities it has
opened up, or determinedly force your outmoded mindset onto a world that no
longer exists will determine who are the winners and losers out of all of
this.

------
S_A_P
I’m all for choice. I would probably do part time in the office but I’ve been
living my best life remotely working. My productivity is way up. No driving
2-3 hours a day. Helping my kids with school cooking. Been great.

------
mikece
Who is demanding this? My company is openly talking about “office optional”
when normalcy returns with “office days” being the exception rather than the
norm.

~~~
agrippanux
My company was a few months away from an office move when Covid hit. Most
leadership was fiercely anti-wfh. Fast forward to today, and the new office
buildout has been converted into a “hotel” model with no permanent desks and
the expectation is when it’s safe, you will have option to do come in a few
days a week.

~~~
bigwavedave
If my work ever went to a "no permanent desks" rule, they'd never see me in
the office again. Not knowing where I'll be sitting and what noise/neighbor
issues I'll have to work around is like adding insult to the injury of having
to commute and forego all the benefits I get spoiled by with wfh.

------
dschuetz
It's about control. Many managers like to micromanage everything and everybody
very much, but that does not work very well remotely. They want to make sure,
or at least to be able to make sure, that their workers, well, work. Many are
afraid to loose that kind of control, because that's the only thing they can
do best.

~~~
derwiki
Is this restricted to first line managers? Or do second line managers
micromanager first, directors second, etc. Thankfully have managed to avoid
this sort of manager so no first hand experience.

~~~
dschuetz
I think, the second level management is the unluckiest of them all. It's
impossible to micromanage several lower level managers at the same time.
Whoever tries, fails or burns out.

------
Valgrim
At my work, almost everybody got to work from home since the beginning of the
pandemic. I was one of the few who had to stay behind, due to the nature of my
job. Here's what I have observed:

\- The office is much quieter, and it's easier to concentrate.++

\- People working from home are harder to reach. I can wait 6 hours before I
get an answer to a question I would otherwise get answered within 5 minutes.

\- Those who stay behind become the Go-For guys for all other departments.
Marketing needs something sent to a client by mail ASAP? Just ask the only guy
left to gogetit! It's tiresome, especially if the other department is a mess.

-People are really bad at describing things. In casual chatting, the amount of non-language communication, like pointing things, is staggering.

\- The more time people spend time away from work, the more they seem to get
out of touch with the physical nature of what they do. For example, if you
want something transported somewhere, you need to tell me from where, to
where, when, how big it is and ideally a reference number or a contact. No, we
can't modify the order if the truck left four hours ago...

------
pbuzbee
Really, I just want the choice to work remotely. I prefer working remotely,
but everyone has their own preference and it's been discussed ad nauseum.

But my concern is that I likely won't get this choice. I suspect that the
layers of management above me will want employees in the office ASAP because
that's how they wield the most influence and control. Plus, management makes
more money, so they aren't as subject to the quality of life tradeoffs that
come from being in the office. I feel like if only one of the people in my
management chain want me back in the office, then I'll have to go back. It
seems unlikely that all of them will be OK with remote work.

------
KingOfCoders
Beside what others have mentioned.

CEOs do most of their time: meetings & talking to people. This is their job,
they don't do Powerpoint, coding or anything else beside talking and meetings.
Both is more draining if you do this 10h a day remotely. To my coachees there
is a big push amongst CEOs to get people back in the office, they haven't
defined their remote role yet.

~~~
danjac
I detect a hint of worry: if the company does just fine with minimal input
from the CEO, how do they justify their outsized salary and benefits?

~~~
KingOfCoders
I would agree. I think the CEO role will change the most from the move to
remote.

------
danielrhodes
Outside of the pandemic, I think a company doing remote/WFH carries with it
some implications people don’t seem to talk about - namely that your physical
workspace and equipment used is capital, and the company is not compensating
employees for the use of that capital. If a company does not need to maintain
office space, that is a huge expense they don’t have to pay for - but an
employee is paying for it.

Right now you can see this in the real estate markets - people are moving out
of their smaller city apartments into bigger places, partially I’m sure,
because maintaining an office at home requires extra space. But that cost is
on the employee not the employer.

~~~
tima11234
Remote work at tech companies isn't something completely new, it just wasn't
the norm. The good companies compensate employees for internet and hardware.

~~~
zrail
My company pays a good chunk for startup expenses for remotes but so far we
haven’t convinced them to pick up the tab for internet.

~~~
tima11234
My company is discussing some internet stipend. I'm all for it, it would be
silly to say no to more money.

However, I would have internet whether I worked from home or not. I realize
some people may need to upgrade their internet plans, but this probably
doesn't apply to most.

Also, if you go outside the company bus shuttle bubble, companies never paid
people all the commuting expenses that people incurred. Some _might_ give you
a few bucks, but that rarely covers parking, gas, full public transport
passes, wear and tear on your car, etc.

------
roenxi
There is a certain mindset - turns up all the time in economic discussions too
- where if a change is made and doesn't lead to a metric-observable
consequence in 6 months then that is the end of the discussion.

Working from home is crippling for forming new social connections. Promotions
are done based, primarily, on social connections. Hiring too. There is very
strong pressure for ambitious people who know how the world works to get back
into the office.

And the social aspect of a supervisor understanding what their reports are
doing is also easy to underestimate. Offices will be back as soon as it is
practicable.

~~~
heavyset_go
> _Working from home is crippling for forming new social connections._

This is really strange to me as someone who has worked remotely for the past
several years, because I've made more social connections outside of work than
I ever did while working.

> _And the social aspect of a supervisor understanding what their reports are
> doing is also easy to underestimate. Offices will be back as soon as it is
> practicable._

Sounds like offices will be back as soon as possible for workplaces where
supervisors feel compelled to micromanage.

~~~
solidasparagus
I assume they mean professional relationships.

------
garden_hermit
I love remote work—some of the time. I also love offices—some of the time. I
fear that in ditching offices completely, we might lose out on some society-
level benefits, like knowledge spillovers. Specifically, remote-work (to me)
makes it more difficult to learn from others, to hear about what else is
happening in the organization, to discuss interesting new ideas that could
potentially be spun into new products or companies. A team can also more
easily and quickly learn to collaborate while in-person.

This doesn't even touch on all the economic spillovers of having people in the
same area, such as restaurants and other services catering to the
concentration of office workers (as mentioned by the author), but also things
like specialized lawyers, financiers, and other professional services that
concentrate around Silicon Valley and other agglomerative clusters.

Ultimately, I hope we can come to a compromise, something like 50/50
remote/office, with smaller offices that cater more towards the explicitly
social functions of the organization.

------
albmoriconi
This is pretty significant to me, I live in the a place where viability is not
very good and spent almost 2h30m in my daily commute, plus 8h40m working.

Since the lockdown and the "working-from-home" revolution I've had the time to
start working out, sleep more and better, cook my own food, not being a
complete zombie in the evenings, spend more time with my girlfriend...

Of course I'm in a position to say this because I'm also lucky, I have a
beautiful home in a nice place.

I always took the reality of the commute and working in the office for a fact,
but my productivity also sky rocketed in this period.

I know that sometime soon I'll be back in the office, but it will be
incredibly hard to go back to my previous life and give up all of this.

What particularly saddens me is the idea of how wonderful fatherhood could be
working from home, and all the time with my kids I'll have to give up again
when I'll go back to spend 11h outdoors daily.

------
rangoon626
I went from an environment of blaring led lights, friends repeats playing on
the tv all day that I had to muffle with headphones because people could stand
to work “in a library” and commuting 30+ min each way in stressful crawling
traffic, to sleeping in an hour longer, natural lighting and a quiet
environment with better hardware than what the office has.

This has made me insanely productive and I don’t know if I have ever had such
a great streak before. Going back to the office ruins all of that.

So I say, boo-hoo to the real estate investors.

~~~
mjrbrennan
I find the idea of blaring a TV or music in an office is so disrespectful. The
people who need quiet to work _really_ need it...if you need noise put some
headphones on to listen to music or a show. It shouldn’t be the other way
around, it is much harder to block out the noise with headphones. Coworking
spaces are terrible for this.

------
hazemotes
My coworker seems to be fighting for us to go back because he's sick of
spending all day at home with his wife.

~~~
mch82
This is, sadly, common. I’ve heard a handful of people say they go to work to
get away from their family situation.

------
tibbydudeza
Mid level managers and their empire building ... found we function better
without them and they are not required.

------
freyr
The comments here are repeatedly suggesting a compromise between fully remote
and fully on-site: _" Just have employees come into the office X days a week
instead of every day."_

This is my preferred outcome, but the main benefit of remote work, for me, has
been the opportunity to leave the Bay Area. I can't really stand the idea that
I'd be forced back into the Bay Area housing/rental market, just so that I can
attend a few days of meetings per month. It would be the worst of all worlds.

So I'm hoping that the reported techie exodus from SF leads to a diaspora,
with attractive tech job opportunities cropping up in more U.S. cities.

~~~
pbuzbee
This is how I feel too. I like working in an office, but I don't find living
in the Bay Area to be worth it. A partial WFH situation isn't that much better
than full-time in-office if it means moving back to the Bay Area.

------
redm
I'm not banging any drums but I was excited to get back to an office. I think
it's similar to the saying "Dress for Success", in that, when I'm in the
office, I focus on work and get more done. Everything around me is work
related and focused, there are no distractions, and I really get stuff done.

My situation may be a bit unique, in that I work in an office alone (we are a
remote work team, but I still keep an office), and my commute is very short.
Still, I've always found it hard working at home and being as productive as at
an office.

~~~
giantDinosaur
That's more than a 'bit' unique, that's very uncommon. Nice situation though.

~~~
mynameishere
Yeah, he might as well be rolling from his bedroom to his guest bedroom where
he keeps his laptop.

...

In any case, if anyone else here has worked in a nice office setup (4 walls +
door, no uptight manager, no long commute, and no army boot camp style
communal bathrooms) then you'll know that the main problem with working from
an office is those particulars. WFH is nice simply because _everybody 's_
house is nicer than a trash office build-out.

------
rubyfan
The expectation from the fortune 500 company I work at is we will eventually
go back to normal. Though we are slowly starting to come around to COVID as
being potentially a multi-year situation. We’ve got a small number of people
in management roles that will return a few days a week in office soon. I’m
personally a bit worried this will create an expectation or disadvantage for
others not in office. In my observation there is a political commonality to
the management returning to office in our company that may be a driver for
them.

~~~
dhimes
The best answer I've heard of is a company opening up the offices but
mandating that all meetings are over videoconference anyway. Need to get out
of the house? There's an office for you. But you don't have an inherent in-
person advantage in a meeting.

~~~
yoz-y
How many meeting rooms would you need to do that? This would work if most
people were in individual or very small offices but that’s rarely the case.

~~~
dhimes
Yes- in this case they have individual offices. But it would work if enough
people worked remotely.

------
sharker8
> Cynically I might suggest the real subtext here is about propping up
> commercial property investment portfolios.

Great article. I recommend taking out the word "cynically". That is what this
is about.

------
nottorp
There are about three problems with the current forced WFH situation:

1\. People simply aren’t used to it yet. The self discipline part, knowing
when to work... and when to stop too.

2\. You do need some sort of dedicated space. I’ve been working from home just
fine for 20 years but I have a separate room for that.

3\. Especially in tech, management may not have the knowledge to judge
productivity. Measuring time the chair is filled in the office is much easier
than evaluating a developer’s work based on just what they do.

~~~
noir_lord
I don’t have a dedicated office but I do have a dedicated space in the living
room (which is large).

At home I have a fast 8C/16T desktop with two 4K screens and a comfortable
chair, awesome sound setup.

Vs a 1.5hr commute and the inevitable MacBook it’s a good trade imo.

When we buy a house I’m converting the garage into a proper office/motorcycle
workshop though just because I’ll have the space.

------
rocklee93
I've often found people praising WFH during CoVid times by viewing it as an
opportunity to pursue their pass-times, I love the great outdoors/traveling
and have found the CoVid restrictions stifling my pass times. I'm at a point
where I don't hate WFH but I hate WFH during the CoVid time. I see a lot of
articles extrapolating the WFH during CoVid time to WFH in general, I think
these are two different things.

~~~
aksjfnkajsnd
> I see a lot of articles extrapolating the WFH during CoVid time to WFH in
> general, I think these are two different things.

Thank you! Likewise, I don't actually want to WFH except for the fact that
there's a pandemic and it's the responsible thing to do given that I'm able
to. It's getting tiring explaining this to management- the argument somehow
becomes about WFH during non-pandemic times.

------
jt2190
> The key phrase here is: managed and supported appropriately. Certainly
> managers need to reinvent themselves as mentors to this style of working and
> then – forgive me – get the hell out of the way.

I think that this may be the key thing that the pandemic has accelerated: A
re-evaluation of what kind of management is appropriate for modern work, and
whether that management can be performed by the self, another person, another
company, or perhaps even by a tool.

Managing work, in an idealized sense, is wasteful because it’s not actually
production. Of course, in the real world we need all sorts of management of
our work, from well informed decisions by individuals all the way up to
strategic alignment of whole organizations. But how we actually get that
management done, and done effectively, feels like it’s taking center stage now
that our old routines have been up-ended.

Edit: Note that an individual’s preference work at home, for or against, is in
a sense a vote for a certain kind of management. As the article points out,
work at home can be interrupted with Zoom And Slack just like it was in the
office with in-person meetings and office chatter, so the at home/at office
debate kind of masks the real issue: We all want better management. Now we
just need to invent it.

------
supernova87a
I've mentioned this before, but WFH has a huge difference in result depending
on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company
(or organization). _For some people_ , going back to the office has benefits.

\-- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates
and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding
unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to
schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior person who takes an interest
in your idea?

\-- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and
stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.

\-- For the middle manager who can coast along and not need to move greatly in
his/her career, WFH might be great.

\-- For the developer who works by tickets on very concrete things and this is
nothing new, WFH might be great.

\-- For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone
in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be
terrible.

There's a huge variability in what WFH means, depending on what you want from
the situation.

For some people, remote working is really not good.

And also count your other hidden factors -- when everyone is remote, you're
also competing with the world who is also remote. Jobs and job qualifications
(and competition) may change. You might still have a job if people have to go
back in person...

This is not just "those evil exploitative bosses want to get us back in
offices". It's not that simple, as with anything.

~~~
matthewmacleod
_For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress
has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible._

But it’s worth bearing in mind that this in particular is an almost completely
orthogonal issue.

~~~
sjy
What does this mean?

~~~
tima11234
WFH during a pandemic is not the same as WFH during normal times. A lot of
people conflate the two.

------
BillinghamJ
From a government/economy perspective, office workers do contribute a lot to
local businesses when they pop out for lunch, coffee, etc. While furlough
schemes are gradually wrapping up (eg in the UK), reducing redundancies does
depend on some level of normalcy in people's day to day spending.

~~~
Nursie
But why try to support that, instead of allow the economy to adapt?

I spent £180 per week on transport before this, and another £50+ on coffee and
meals.

At the end of the year I will have saved enough to get my bathroom refitted,
benefitting local tradespeople. I also go out and buy coffee and food locally
more often.

The spending won't be lost, it'll change. And if we're lucky it'll change in a
way that spreads the money out beyond London.

The real sector that's f*cked is commercial property.

~~~
BillinghamJ
I think that viewpoint definitely does have some validity, but in this case I
think rests quite heavily on the idea that post-covid will closely resemble
the current way people do things.

Clearly there will be some significant change, but I'm sure it will be a
balance between what we had and how things are now.

Once that happens, we don't really want to have lots of businesses to have
gone bankrupt. At least not the ones we will still want when things have
reached that balance.

~~~
Freak_NL
Encouraging people to commute just so the coffee joint near the office can
survive is economically and ethically disproportional. Commuting is, for most
people and at least for a large part of the commute, a waste of time.

------
ahupp
I worked remote for 3 years. It was great at first (10ft commute, woo!), but I
wouldn't choose to do it long-term. All those relationships I'd made with co-
workers slowly withered as the team changed, and by the end we just didn't
work as cohesively together. It wasn't a failure per se, we still shipped
software, it was just clearly a lot less effective (both for me career-wise,
and for the team as a whole). So I would strongly prefer a job that's in-
person at least a few days every week.

Some caveats: this was before video conferencing, slack or FB Workplace so
maybe things are better now. And, it might be different when everyone is
remote so YMMV.

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
> this was before video conferencing, slack or FB Workplace so maybe things
> are better now.

I do think things must be a lot better now. I started a new job after COVID
began, so I still have never met my team in person. I’m on video calls with
them multiple times a day though, and slack with them all day. Sure, it
probably isn’t quite as good as in person contact, but I’ve been shocked how
well it has worked and how well I feel like I know most of them.

------
Nginx487
When I was single, I always rented an apartment in a walking distance from my
office, no matter how much it cost, 2-3 hours of my time daily are priceless.

Now when I have a family, remote work is a real money-saving solution, but
gosh, how I miss the office and how I'm tired of my home turned into an
office. My wife also works here, we have two workspaces, 3 printers, but no
space anymore for "switching context" from work to home, and no private time,
work may find you at 11 pm, and you can't stop thinking of doing more today to
do less tomorrow. I read everything about WFH planning and self-discipline,
but this is how it works for us at the moment.

------
jefflombardjr
I wish people didn't see it as a binary option. "The office" vs "Remote". And
no I'm not talking about suggesting alternatives like "work from home". I'm
talking more about let's look at it through the lens of "employer control" and
"individual empowerment".

The article points to some statistics about the benefits of remote work. But I
think those benefits are more derived from enabling individuals to decide what
is best for them and their company. Alot of what is described in "Bullshit
Jobs" was reversed overnight, and we're seeing the benefits of that. Location
has nothing to do with it.

------
system2
Remote work does not work for people who switch from office to home. It is not
in their blood. Most office employees need constant management. If the
employee can get away with watching netflix and do minimum from home, they
will do it. I've observed many employees getting super slow or unreachable
almost instantly after they start working from home. Most bosses don't like it
and they get fired. In most cases nothing was related to covid in my opinion
because obviously the employee performance dropped dramatically.

Work from home won't work for many companies. Period.

~~~
jlokier
There are widespread reports from companies that their employees are proving
to be _more_ productive working from home during Covid-19 than they were in
the office.

Based on that, it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion the "most"
employees need constant management in an office and will do the minimum
possible at home.

This is why there's such a big debate about WFH now. Having tried it at scale
in a forced situation, turns out it actually works ok for many jobs in the
short term.

------
outside1234
I think what this is taught me is that we need both.

It is too much to be in the office all of the time because sometimes "life"
happens or you need the ability to have some silence and concentrate.

It is too much to be remote all of the time because software is a team sport
and to function optimally, we need to have great human relationships and
communication, and those are better done face to face.

We need to find the "happy midpoint" between these two extremes as a working
culture.

------
mnd999
It completely depends on your home situation. If you have a quiet home office
with fast broadband then why not work from home.

If however you and your partner are squeezed round a small table in a studio
flat with no air con fighting over crappy WiFi the office makes a lot of
sense.

The author finally comes to this point at the end of the article. It’s not all
back to the office or the death of the office, it’s somewhere in between.
Unfortunately that’s not a good headline.

~~~
Nursie
My question to those stuck two to a studio - are you doing that in a large,
expensive city?

Would you not be happier able to be completely unchained from an office
location, and able to choose to live anywhere? Then you could likely have a
bigger place too.

~~~
jeltz
No. I love living in the city. I like the restaurants, shops, bars, etc. I
also like having people around, especially during the summers.

~~~
Nursie
That's fair enough, but the choice then is on you.

~~~
cinquemb
The thing is, you can get all of what they say they want in any large city in
the world much cheaper than large cities in the US if one does their research…
my 3br apartment with a home office in Jakarta is still cheaper than the 1B in
in any city in US, or in my personal experience, compared to the 3br apt I
split with two other grown men in Boston 5 years ago when I first started
working remotely (and way nicer and more amenities too).

And now, way more companies open to hiring remote workers!

------
dkdk8283
While I am now strictly WFH oriented (been remote for 10 years) office workers
contribute to local businesses. Lunch options, funding public transportation,
etc.

There’s a balance to be had, which remains to be seen. I personally will
choose a flexible company that allows remote work 100% of the time. I prefer
to work in increments spread throughout the day, not a strictly regimented 9-5
which office environments encourage.

------
rayrrr
"Cynically I might suggest the real subtext here is about propping up
commercial property investment portfolios." Yup.
[https://therealdeal.com/2020/08/20/little-bit-of-guilt-
trip-...](https://therealdeal.com/2020/08/20/little-bit-of-guilt-trip-jeff-
blau-joins-landlords-pushing-return-to-work/)

------
zuhayeer
Not being in the office exposes a lot of the workplace theater we participate
in, in order to put on a facade that we are working or being productive. Now,
you can truly just _not_ work on some days when you aren't feeling it. You can
actually embrace the lulls and highs that ebbs and flows through the very
nature of work.

------
aivosha
Lots of this in hinged on the fact that real estate business will inevitably
collapse. Dont expect them to take this hit lightly and "pivot" or "adjust".
The whole business is based on "location location location" \- which will
(already has) become more and more irrelevant.

------
AlexTWithBeard
Every once in a while some blogger posts an idillic picture of a guy with his
laptop working on a sandy beach under a palm tree.

Once you start thinking about it:

\- it's hot there. There's no AC on a beach.

\- wifi in the beach is mostly likely poor

\- sand is a nasty substance which gets everywhere, including your laptop

\- the nearest coffee machine may be a couple of miles away

and so on.

I'd rather work in an office.

------
dathinab
Lie he said/quoted the in-between part of meetings and office work is missing
and I think it's essential.

IMHO Trying to emulate office work procedures with video conferences isn't
helpful.

A move to out-of-office work should go hand in hand with a move to more async
leadership and (technical) communication.

> what we gain in work-life balance

Might be nothing or even massive negative depending on the combination of your
(home) environment and personality.

Remote work has the uncanny side effect to make it harder for people which
have certain kind of problems, like abusive parterns or a otherwise "broken"
home, addiction, depression or some other mental problems.

Sure at the same time it can _enable_ some people with mental problems to
work, through often under the condition that their problems are already
handled well.

------
etxm
Bosses want you back so they can efficiently micromanage you and treats lush
some sense of the control they’ve lost.

If you want/need to go to the office, great, go for it.

Requiring people that have a desk job to be in a specific building to do their
work is absurd.

Edit: I’ve been working remote for almost 12 years.

------
matthewmacleod
Some people definitely enjoy working in an office; for others, it’s a
necessity given limited space or facilities at home. I totally understand
individuals’ desire to get back, and equally the desire of others to continue
working at home. Certainly as a hardware company it’s been important for us to
be able to take turns in the office occasionally.

But the effect the article has noted is really prevalent and weird. Seeing the
actual UK government banging on about how essential it is for everybody to get
“back to the office”, being very explicitly anti-remote-working, and using
their usual propaganda channels to spread that message is a strange choice at
the moment. It’s hard to find a convincing explanation for.

~~~
marcinzm
>It’s hard to find a convincing explanation for.

Cynically, the leadership of top companies wants workers back in the office
(for whatever reason) and the current government is in their pocket.

------
smcleod
I miss being in the office so that I can go for coffees with people at morning
tea, lunch and beers after work, I miss the human connection that cannot
truely occur via via conferencing software, I miss walking around the city at
lunch and even the 30-40 minute community to/from work (about half the time).
I miss having a lunch room to sit and spitball ideas in that people truly,
naturally walk in and out of, I miss meeting rooms not for bad meetings but
for good hands on sessions with physical post-it notes, whiteboards, I miss
being about to seperate work and home life, I miss the daily change of
scenery. I miss having a work life.

~~~
smcleod
Got to love the downvotes for expressing my personal opinion and experience
through this nightmare that so many of us are in. HN comments are truly
becoming like Reddit at times.

~~~
aksjfnkajsnd
how do you downvote?

~~~
smcleod
Sometimes I mess up when I’m in the wrong headspace but usually only for
misinformation, aggressive hostility, personal insults. As I said I mess up
sometimes and I try not to downvote too often.

~~~
aksjfnkajsnd
No I mean, on HN, I thought you could only upvote. How can I downvote?

~~~
smcleod
Once you have at least 500 upvote / karma points.

------
pwinnski
From one perspective, it's frustrating to see employers happily taking
advantage of employees' real estate and internet connections for free, but
since I _have_ the spare room already, and I'm not commuting, I'll take it.

~~~
tayo42
What would be nice is either a stipend to account for a bigger place with a
spare room and connections, or to work out of a shared work space things. Like
give me an extra couple hundred a year to get a place with an extra bedroom

~~~
pwinnski
A shared work space thing... like an office? ;-P

But yes, I agree. Since my company will be saving tons of money once their
lease comes up for renewal, and already hasn't had to expand despite hiring
more than 60 people this year, it does seem like a stipend is in order.

------
gridlockd
One thing is clear, you can't have it both ways: Earn a SV salary without
having SV living expenses. Someone with lower living expenses will do your job
for less, even if it's not someone from outside the country.

------
softwaredoug
I wonder how people build meaningful professional relationships fully remote?
I’m honestly asking as I’m new to it, and I’ve found the relationships with
colleagues is what ensures and leads to future success.

------
ornornor
I wonder what else it is that we deem “impossible” but when we’re forced to
make it happen overnight like remote work, we’ll find it’s totally doable...
20h workweeks? Sustainable energy and living?

------
gchokov
Because you are not independent, cannot work without micromanagment and
supervision, and can’t do anything by yourself. Because can I call you for 2
minutes is all you ask for 20 times a day. That’s why.

------
spiritplumber
Control.

~~~
danjac
That, and the fact that many politicians, media barons and other wealthy
individuals stand to lose a lot of money on their commercial property
investments, and so have their flying monkeys working overtime to persuade the
rest of us to risk life and health for no good reason.

------
citizenpaul
There is a huge percent of people that simply hate their life at home. The
office is an excuse that they "must" be away from their home.

Depending on where these people fall in the power/management structure is what
determines how the return plays out.

I read somewhere that we didn't have people barricading themselves in the
office refusing to leave. Where I'm at we literally did and those people
successfully managed to stay at work when 95% of the staff was not.

------
burlesona
These threads get pretty emotional and dogmatic. I think it’s not actually
that complicated: some people really enjoy remote, some people don’t. Perhaps
we should learn to be more comfortable with “live and let live” instead of
feeling the need to convince everyone to be the same way we are.

In my case, I worked remotely for a lot of my career pre-COVID, and of course
have been remote since. I don’t like the Bay Area housing situation, and the
freedom to look elsewhere is appealing... but I really do miss the office.

------
VLM
I wonder how many people used to work with the people they sat next to?

That was a rare experience for me back in the old W-2 office days.

My boss was in another state, another timezone, another shift, sometimes
another country. Ditto coworkers, internal and external customers.

I had a few office jobs supporting field circus techs where by definition we
never worked physically together and they had no idea if they called me at
work or home.

There are a lot of 3 to 5 person companies out there where people labor away
shoulder to shoulder for hours; but not that many.

------
gpsx
I really liked this linked article below which talks about what makes people
most productive. Its starts off talking about brainstorming, which it says
doesn't work, but goes on to talking about more general collaboration and is
relevant for this debate.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/groupthink](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/groupthink)

------
mytailorisrich
Looking at it from South East England, this shows what a huge business
commuting is. Probably millions of people commute into London every day. Train
fares (which are expensive), taxi fares, coffee shops, takeaway food, pubs,
restaurants. Since lockdown people who have been working from home have found
that they suddenly have plenty of cash on hand for a reason. Commuting is big
business and that's why some are lobbying for commuting to resume ASAP.

------
zwischenzug
Interesting piece. I wrote a similar one recently about the effects of an
office exodus on central London property. So far some of my predictions have
come to pass, eg paradoxical mini property boom outside London

[https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/07/25/the-halving-of-the-
centr...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/07/25/the-halving-of-the-centre-covid-
and-its-effect-on-london-property/)

------
xapata
Because my desk is so easy to access, I've found myself working nearly non-
stop for ... longer than I care to think about. I have trouble sleeping
because I didn't give myself time to wind down. I wake up early thinking about
programming. I need a detox. When we get an office again, I'll ask for a
desktop and only work from there. When I come home, it's home and not work.

~~~
JoelTheSuperior
I think it depends on what your living situation is like as well.

Because I live reasonably far out into the suburbs, my home office is a
completely separate room, so it's fairly easy to just totally forget it exists
when I stop work.

~~~
xapata
I'm moving soon to enable that separation.

------
ai_ja_nai
>An increasing number of executives now say that remote work [...] is not
their preferred long-term solution once the coronavirus crisis passes.

An increasing number of people that spend their full office hours doing
meetings, while devs need silence and solitude, complain that remote work
sucks for meetings. Wow. What a bunch of egotistic children.

------
627467
I've been choosing to live within an hour walk from work for many years now.

While I didn't normally walk to work (pre-pandemia) I knew I could and I did
(I live in a major capital with lots of transit disruptions).

I definitely wouldn't want to work at the office every day, but I also
wouldn't want to stay at home everyday either (hunting for a seat on a cafe
counts as wfh for me).

------
james1071
When there is a sudden change, there are winners and losers. The losers will
complain and try to reverse the change. That is all.

------
FpUser
Sounds like a cry of a many managers who suddenly feel that their precious
skin (some of them do nothing really useful) is in jeopardy.

------
scott_w
> it seems some people really are suggesting that businesses > should alter
> their workplace strategies in order to save…> > sandwich shops. > > OK, I’m
> exaggerating for effect.

If only! Richard Tice (major political funder) had spent a lot of time on
Twitter claiming remote work is directly responsible for Pret closing stores!

------
spottybanana
What about the simplest explanation - shareholders believe that when people
meet in office face-to-face it generates more value.

If WFH produces superior result, it should mean that companies endorsing WFH
should be better investments and make more profit.

It is also possible that other factors matter way more, and therefore it is
not the thing to focus on.

------
m3kw9
It’s gonna be a shift from mostly office to a lot more hybrid office-remote.
Most can’t just go fully remote.

------
tlear
So how do you hire and on-board junior people?

Every remote contract I done I found that when client hires another
junior(fresh out of college) person productivity plummets for everyone. When
you have one in the office I find that mentoring them and getting them to be
useful is much easier.

------
onion2k
Plenty of people want to get back to the office because it's pragmatically
better for some of us, but _the media stories_ about returning to offices are
being driven by people who own commercial real estate. The narrative is being
driven by money, as always.

------
jacobwilliamroy
We need some kind of open, easily auditable telemetric suite which people can
use to monitor resource usage on their home (electric, HVAC, compute, network)
and bill their employers. Then let's see how much the corporates REALLY want
work from home.

------
langitbiru
I suspect remote management will be taught in business school. This remote
stuff is already common thing for software engineers (open source projects)
but it's very new for people outside software engineering. So I can empathize
with them.

------
eyeball
Because I haven’t spent time with another human in person since March. It’s
depressing.

~~~
person_of_color
Thats on you buddy

~~~
eyeball
Probably. I don’t know anyone outside of work.

------
11235813213455
Slighly off-topic, when you think about it, offices are such a waste of space.
I'd really like to rent of buy an office and actually live there, because it's
so quiet by night since there are very little neighborhood

------
barrenko
The article is better than this discussion, quite sad. Anyways as with any
huge societal shift, some people will be fit for this, and have been waiting
for it for quite a long time, and others are ... not.

------
peterwwillis
_> We can do so much better, for ourselves, our customers and society if we
stop being so frightened or so certain of the future._

That would require removing emotion from our biology. Maybe shoot for
something smaller.

------
torgian
The company I work for is looking at subsidizing rent as wfh office space.
But, this company has been remote first for the past ten years, so their
thought process is years ahead of most companies.

------
gedy
Because there are a surprising number of employees and managers who don't
produce customer-usable value, and are less important when all the value is
being produced from "home" or elsewhere.

------
surfmike
Data point: Most of my single co-workers, most of whom have roommates, would
like to return to working in an office. They miss the social aspect of work,
and for some of them it’s hard to work from home.

------
paulbromford
Thanks for so many comments on my original post. I'm going to try and include
some of the challenges in a follow up Thanks again Paul Taylor
www.paulitaylor.com Twitter: @paulbromford

------
irrational
My company just finished building an additional 3 million sq feet of office
space on our main campus. I imagine they are anxious to get us back onto
campus to justify that capital expanse.

------
rbg246
I've read a pile of these articles and it always seems to be one or the other
as though they are mutually exclusive.

Why isn't this a hybrid solution?

------
timwaagh
I dont think the conclusion is super useful. So i Will give you a better one.
So far little indicates this is more than an emergency.

------
feralimal
People are social and don't like change.

We are being forced to change and take the 'physical' out of the social.

What's not to like?!?!

------
paulbromford
Thanks for so many comments on my original post. I'm going to try and include
some of them in a follow up.

------
ilaksh
I think it's a lot more complicated than just "from home" or "in the office".
There are a lot of different home situations, many different types of
commutes, and then there is the specific software and hardware you use for
communication and how you configure it.

For example, take something like presence. The boss wants to know if you are
working. With software, there are ways to track that if it's really necessary.
For a manager that doesn't trust the employees, activity tracking software
gives about the even more information than being there, because you can
actually see screenshots.

That is what UpWork does. It's quite invasive, and most people would not
tolerate it if they felt they had the choice, but I bring it up as an example
of how the software configuration makes as much difference as the physical
location. And in fact tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people on UpWork have
tolerated it. So it's a real thing, even though it's abhorrent.

The more sane way is having some way to see your reports' work output on a
regular basis. And there is no reason that needs to be minute-to-minute or
even day-to-day if there is a level of trust.

But presence is not just useful in a physical setting for monitoring
employees. It also allows for things like spontaneous communication or types
of communication not possible or difficult on a computer screen. Here I think
again, the actual software available and the configuration can make a huge
difference.

For example, if you truly feel that water-cooler meetings are critical, you
can build that into your at-home software setup and just make it mandatory.
There are a lot of ways you could do that. It could literally be chat rooms
named "water-cooler1" and "water-cooler2" and then you put some piece of
required information like an expense code in there so people have to enter.

Or there are various types of software with virtual spaces, such as top-down
maps where you see the location of your co-workers and can even hear their
conversations if your avatar is close by. There are also 3d world's, both with
a screen interface and a virtual reality interface.

I think especially as VR and AR headsets get more comfortable and usable over
the next few years, that is really going to be able to compete with physical
presence. For example, they are starting to track eye movements. That's going
to make it possible to actually communicate using your eyes in VR.

Point being that there is a big spectrum in types or level of presence that is
about the type of software and hardware configuration (and culture/rules) as
much as it is about actual physical location.

------
rogerkirkness
Weird proxy for "normal"

------
pcbro141
Question: What month do you think you'll be back in the office, if you had to
guess?

------
scruffyherder
You cant play cubicle chess if you don’t have any pawns.

------
mhh__
It's the economy, stupid!

(Is the quiet part some are not saying out loud)

------
dan_m2k
Property portfolios = people paying your pension one day.

------
Spooky23
Easy. Lots of people are skating, doing little.

------
seaghost
Because hierarchy is less visible.

------
iszomer
I just want to WFH without pants.

------
nickalaso
I live in a studio apartment with high rent, with a half mile walk from my
office. I did this on purpose so I wouldn’t have to commute. Now I am spending
high rent for a small space. My company keeps stating that we will have to
return to the office in some unknown “near future”, otherwise I would plan on
going full WFH and relocating to a larger home somewhere cheaper and more
rural. But I’m stuck.

I also miss my dedicated workspace, and I miss being able to separate work and
home life easily by going no contact after 5PM without management thinking
that means I am a bad employee.

But most of all, I miss being able to let my bosses "micromanage" me in a way
that didn't disrupt me. “Office Politics” has changed at my company in a way
that is taking up a lot more of my productive time than it used to, and I hate
it.

Before the Great WFH of 2020, my boss would walk by my cubicle or speak to me
in person regularly. Short conversations, didn't ever bother me, and allowed
me to focus on work. Made him feel busy and made him feel I was busy.
Ultimately I was able to spend less time "appearing busy" and more on actually
getting work done.

Since management at my company doesn't know how to actually track real work
output, they have always used proxies like "how long does this person stay at
the office?", "Are they still in their cubicle when I am leaving?", "When I
walk by their cubicle do they have their IDE open doing 'coding stuff'" etc.
etc.

I’ve always been decently performant at code production. So all I had to do
was stay on my coding tasks for a few hours each day, have an IDE always open
on at least one of my monitors and wait til exactly 5:01 PM every day before I
left as that was when my boss went home. I ended up getting stuff done quick,
got to avoid most meetings, and could screw around the rest of the day if I
wanted. Personal projects, internet surfing, etc.

Great reviews from management. I would prefer an actual meritocratic standard
based on actual work done, but that really has never been the case at any of
the companies I have ever worked at so far in my career as a software
engineer, so I’m used to it at this point.

But now that we are all WFH, they really don't seem to know what to do. They
don't know how much work anyone is, or isn't doing, instead daily standups
have changed from 10 minute short succinct updates to “how aggressively and
for how long can you technobabble bullshit about your coding tasks you did
yesterday” turning these stand ups into at least an hour or more, and now I
have to also technobabble bullshit or management will think I’m slacking.

Even more so than before, they now seem to think pointless emails and multi-
hour zoom meetings are the true marker of productivity. I hate this. I don't
want to have to spend hours per day making up bullshit technobabble emails and
sitting in on multi-hour long zoom meetings talking about unrelated boring
bullshit. I just want to be able to focus on getting my coding tasks done for
the day. Some of the lowest performers on my team love it though, because they
are great at meetings, scheduling meetings, and making themselves feel
important with pointless technical presentations during these meetings. Not to
mention we are expected to have our webcams on at all times during these
meetings, so I can’t even “pretend” to be present while I go make myself tea
or something.

The barrier to entry for meetings has lowered. Before, scheduling a meeting in
the office room down the hall and giving a presentation on why we all should
add “bureaucratic coding standard addition xyz” was both too scary and too
much work. Now, its “why not, management will think I am showing leadership
skills!”.

Thanks guys, I love more poorly managed bureaucracy. Test driven development
might be good if someone actually managed it and maintained standard during
code reviews, but now everyone just creates shitty unit tests to meet the 70%
code coverage requirement we are told to meet because the literal lowest
performer on my team scheduled multi hour meetings with management on why we
should all follow tde and convinced them it was a good idea.

------
yourapostasy
1\. Real estate interests are extremely wealthy and powerful in nearly all
nations, and in every OECD nation. Commercial real estate especially so. Take
a look at the wealthiest individuals in a nation, and a big chunk of them are
connected to real estate. It is realistic instead of cynical to expect these
interests to hammer for a return to _status quo ante_ , regardless of the
actual benefits to those who must follow such diktats.

2\. In the US at least in my experience and from observing my clients'
organizations, after two decades of relentless offshoring, for high-wage roles
we're nearly scraping the bottom third percentile of the talent barrel
globally for available replacements for on-shore talent, without accreting
significant technical, organizational, support, maintenance, goodwill, and
other types of intangible debt that CxO's increasingly recognize as burdensome
friction to rapid innovation. Gains to be had offshoring are measured in
inches and not yards now, with lots of attention-to-detail work to achieve it;
the gains exist, but are just as hard to accomplish anywhere in the world,
domestic or offshore. Just recently here on HN we were discussing
management/promotion engineering/demotion, with a significant sidebar
conversation on hybrid tech lead roles; there aren't that many people wired
for that kind of balanced hybrid, and throw that on top of the complexities we
normally deal with, and it is no wonder it is hard to recruit no matter where
you look in the world.

3\. Lots of "I need that separation" reports are very familiar to those who
have been doing remote work for a decade or more. It takes anywhere from a
year to multiple years to work out accommodations and find your groove when
remote working. Finding that separation is part of it. Some people never
adjust to it, and that's okay.

4\. We have plausibly reached beyond the observer effect-type improvements in
productivity [1] from the remote work change in habits, so this mass social
experiment shows there is something substantive to remote work compared to
traditional office work.

5\. We have not yet reached critical mass on the time everyone has been
working from home to internalize the effects of their new normal. Remote
workers who have successfully made the switch have reported this takes between
6-18 months typically. This takes different forms in people. For some an
intense loneliness sets in, others depression, others are happier, others find
more energy. This is the Remote Work Great Filter.

6\. We flipped the switch and paused a system that has taken literally
_centuries_ of refinement upon office work, and started a remote equivalent
under emergency conditions from scratch in many instances with (from initial
indications) no productivity hit, and some even claiming a small productivity
increase. What kinds of productivity increases lie behind further remote work
refinement?

7\. A "grey system" of hybridized remote and on-prem office presence can
unlock interesting benefits. As expensive as offices are, the pandemic
response shows that they aren't so unbearably expensive that companies would
wholesale leap at the slightest opportunity to unload them. This might change
with the depression barreling down upon us, but for now, there is the
opportunity (and perhaps even requirement) to use long-term commercial lease
agreements (or even more long-term capex real estate purchases) to double or
triple the amount of space in company offices. A soft turn away from the open
office plan.

8\. As flawed as the response was in the US, a lesson I drew from it is the
qualitative change in information infrastructure since only a couple decades
ago enabled private entities everywhere (not just the US) to rapidly route
around many kinds of damage in many, adaptive, different ways. Very rapid,
Net-based, decentralized, decoupled decision-making like depicted in some
futurist visions is already here in a proto-form.

A lot of the response depends upon organizational culture and individual
psychosocial makeup. I agree with the author, a hybrid grey response seems the
most realistic. Remote work has the potential out of this experience to go
from a marginal recruiting tool to an integral part of capex and opex plans.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

------
dredmorbius
As several others have noted, commercial real estate interests -- landlords,
building management and services companies, but most especially banks and
finance companies with a toe in the $2.5 trillion office market, a sizeable
fraction of the toal $14--17 trillion+ commercial property market
([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)), and all the
interrelated securities backed by or tied to it --- have a profound interest
here. Leasing volume fell by over 50% per some reports, which is of course
huge.

You'll find articles largely in the business and financial press, e.g.,

"Coronavirus set to usher in big changes at U.S. offices"
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-
of...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-
officespace/coronavirus-set-to-usher-in-big-changes-at-u-s-offices-
idUSKBN21Y334)

"Pandemic exposes ‘severe stress’ in commercial property financing"
[https://www.ft.com/content/e4b2302b-76c5-494a-8560-e6d24de93...](https://www.ft.com/content/e4b2302b-76c5-494a-8560-e6d24de9358f)

"Suburban Philly offices feel the brunt of COVID-19’s economic toll"
[https://www.inquirer.com/business/suburban-office-
distressed...](https://www.inquirer.com/business/suburban-office-distressed-
debt-defaults-covid-coronavirus-cmbs-center-city-20200823.html)

"COVID-19 and real estate: How the coronavirus is impacting the AEC industry"
[https://www.bdcnetwork.com/covid-19-and-real-estate-how-
coro...](https://www.bdcnetwork.com/covid-19-and-real-estate-how-coronavirus-
impacting-aec-industry)

"United States Office Outlook – Q2 2020" [https://www.us.jll.com/en/trends-
and-insights/research/offic...](https://www.us.jll.com/en/trends-and-
insights/research/office-market-statistics-trends)

Contrast the outlook as of October 2019: "base fundamentals indicate that the
US CRE market remains on a strong footing."

Deloitte: "2020 commercial real estate outlook"
[https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/financial-...](https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/financial-
services/commercial-real-estate-outlook.html)

That's not to say that sandwich shops and individual workers and managers
don't have concerrns, but their voices are far more relatable and telegenic
than faceless megabanks. Even genuine and spontaneous statements can be
repeated and amplified by other interests.

------
marsdepinski
Control.

------
derefr
I feel like most people who want to go back to working in an office, don’t
really need _an office_ per se — in the sense of needing to rent out a unit or
floor of a building for their company to work out of.

Most of the advantages that individual knowledge-workers attain from an office
— work-life separation, and meeting rooms in which to come together with
others for a scheduled semi-private conversation — already have a relevant
institution that will provide those to almost anyone on Earth, free of charge:
the public library. Everyone[1] sitting at the tables in a public library is
being productive. And almost all modern libraries have bookable meeting rooms
as a _free_ service!

[1] If your library is full of noisy people, find a different one. This mostly
only happens to the one library per city nearest to the projects. I suggest a
public library near a college; or, for that matter, a University library, if
it’s public-access.

Yes, there’s also coffee shops, but those only solve work-life separation.
Most coffee shops don’t offer bookable spaces for private meetings. I guess
you could combine coffee shops with booths at restaurants, but that gets
expensive quickly. Libraries are free! And, unlike the coffee shop where
sitting there all day with your laptop will _annoy_ the employees, being
productive all day in a library is _the point_ , and you have every right to
ask the library employees to shush anyone _interfering_ with your
productivity, because productivity is what they want the library environment
to foster.

——————

Who doesn't think libraries are a valid substitute for offices?

• Sales people and call-center workers, obviously. Anyone who needs to make
phone calls all day. But these people were never really suited to ordinary
office space, either. They need sound-proofed rooms/booths, really. You can
build those anywhere — podcasters and journalists are currently building these
at home. You really do need a _separate_ space for this, though, and that
might not be tenable in a small bachelor apartment. I have a feeling we might
see the rise of specialty coworking spaces consisting of floors of small,
rentable recording-booth rooms. (Some fancier public libraries have these too
— again, for free.)

• Managers. Specifically, _middle_ -managers. In-person, off-the-record
conversations are how you "build your team", i.e. how you build loyalty to
yourself and ensure that your team-members are working for _you_ , rather than
for _the company_ , such that you can later take credit for their achievements
and they won't call you out for it. This role is dying, and most of the
visible backlash is likely coming from here. It's like the death throes of
aristocracy when centralized government rises to replace it. Good riddance, I
say. (Team-allocated executive assistants can perform the project-management
tasks of a manager just as well, without also becoming feudal lords. _These_
don't mind remote work at all, because they're fine with everything they say
happening on-the-record on Slack/email/etc.)

~~~
marcinzm
>Who doesn't think libraries are a valid substitute for offices?

Anyone who enjoys having a personalized ergonomic workspace that fits their
needs. Working on a laptop 8 hours a day is going to be terrible for your body
long term.

>without also becoming feudal lords.

You really underestimate what people given power, implicit or explicit, can do
with it. Once you're able to tell people what work they should do, you have a
lot of power to wield as you wish.

~~~
derefr
> Working on a laptop 8 hours a day is going to be terrible for your body long
> term.

Libraries have computer workstations with proper ergonomics. Bring your laptop
and a long HDMI cable. Push the workstation’s keyboard and mouse back. Plug
your laptop into the monitor with the HDMI cable, then set the laptop down
where the workstation’s keyboard was. Switch the input on the monitor to your
laptop. (Ignore the laptop’s screen; don’t try to use it as a secondary
display. It’s too low; you’ll hurt your neck.)

Since you’re not _unplugging_ anything from the workstation, you won’t even
have to ask permission from the library IT staff first to do this. It’s just
like using a USB stick.

Alternately, bring one of those HDMI “compute sticks” and your own Bluetooth
keyboard and mouse paired to it. You won’t get the same level of compute power
that you’d get from your laptop, but you _will_ get slightly better input
ergonomics. Fine if your work is cloud-based.

Alternately, sign up for (or get your company to sign up for) a cloud Desktop-
as-a-Service service, e.g. Amazon WorkSpaces. Then VNC/RDP into your
workstation from any old library computer. Even the 10-year-old Dells with
Celerons are powerful enough to support VNC streaming; and, given that you’re
at a public library, relying on the wired Internet means you avoid the
bottleneck of the single overloaded wi-fi AP everyone else is contending over.

Certainly, these workstations aren’t _personalized_ ; but they won’t kill your
back/neck.

> Once you're able to tell people what work they should do, you have a lot of
> power to wield as you wish.

The simple difference between a manager and an executive assistant is that the
manager hires the team, but the team hires the executive assistant.

It’s the same as the difference between monarchy and democracy: subjects live
at the sufferance of their monarch, but a president commands at the sufferance
of their people. If you can fire your boss, they’re not really your boss.

~~~
marcinzm
>but the team hires the executive assistant.

Some manager up the hierarchy hires the executive assistant, the team simply
has input into the process. I suspect the input into the firing will quickly
go down to 0 if the person who actually has firing power likes the EA. If the
team has direct firing power then you're going to get some lovely politics
going on between everyone like giving choice work to half the team all the
time to keep them on your side.

>but a president commands at the sufferance of their people.

Technically, they only need 50% of the people at best.

edit: And since the EA isn't actually accountable for productivity (how can
they be, they can't fire the "unproductive" team members after all) they can
play even more political games since they're less in the line of fire for
backlash.

~~~
derefr
> Some manager up the hierarchy hires the executive assistant.

My post assumed team autonomy, where each team has an entirely separate hiring
pipeline. Think “startup that’s recently been acquired by a big company, but
hasn’t yet been absorbed into it.” I think Amazon’s AWS service teams are also
like this. Tiny little independent business units.

But really, you don’t _need_ that; you could still have a mostly-hierarchical
organizational structure, but just take hiring/firing away from the managers
at every level. with _no_ managers making hiring decisions at any level. You’d
give all hiring/firing power, instead, to teams; or rather, to each team’s
hiring subcommittee (which would be a temporary thing, elected anew from the
team members each time hiring/firing must be done.)

You can still have traditional managers in such an org, but their main purpose
at that point (if the EA duties are being played by an actual EA) would be to
serve as the contact point for a team — the “API” that the rest of the org
uses to access the team members and their labor. So, essentially, a talent
agent.

> edit: And since the EA isn't actually accountable for productivity

Sure they are. Just because something may fail for reasons entirely out of
your control, doesn’t mean you’re not _usually, partially_ in control. A
wilderness guide can still be held accountable for the safety of those in
their charge, even if sometimes there’s just suddenly an angry lion.

The point of the EA—like the point of an effective manager—would be to
(attempt to) be a multiplier for the team’s aggregate productivity, usually by
subtly enabling knowledge-sharing and communication, while deflecting outward
pressure.

As such, a measure of the EA’s effectiveness, is the same as a measure the
team’s aggregate productivity, against a pre-existing baseline measurement of
the team’s aggregate productivity with no EA/manager.

I would guess that it’s very likely that the average EA/manager has neutral or
negative impact on aggregate team productivity. Which makes sense; an
EA/manager needs to have (much) higher coordination skills than the average
human being, in order for their inserting-themselves into coordination
problems to be worth the overhead it introduces.

> Technically, they only need 50% of the people at best.

If you like — and this works especially well when done remotely — you can set
up your EA/manager as a (team-specific, unlimited-scope) helpdesk, where team
members “file tickets” with the EA to do things for them; and where the
EA/manager can also file tickets themselves “on behalf of” someone, when they
notice something going subtly wrong and are trying to help without being
explicitly asked to do so.

Probably you could do this in a streamlined, ChatOps way, where any new team-
workspace message thread with the EA/manager is automatically a new ticket.

Then, you can throw industry-standard IT-helpdesk ticket-resolution
performance metrics at the tickets the EA/manager is creating+resolving.

This won’t tell you anything about aggregate productivity, but it _will_ tell
you — in a very legible, statistical way — whether the EA/manager is
preferentially solving problems for only a subset of team members. (Don’t hook
anything automated up to that fact; you need manual review, because it might
be the team member that’s giving the EA stupid asks that they’re rightfully
ignoring.)

------
gridlockd
Let's be honest, if there's no second wave that's stronger than the first wave
during winter, there's no rational reason to _not_ go "back to normal".

All the data we have now shows that even unmitigated COVID-19 spread is not
dramatically worse than a strong flu season, with the difference that COVID-19
kills far less younger and otherwise healthy people.

Even the argument that "we have a Influenza vaccine!" doesn't really cut it,
because those vaccines are only 50% effective _on average_.

Of course, there are plenty of _irrational_ reasons not to go "back to
normal". I wouldn't be surprised if these were to prevail.

Governments around the world have just been handed powers they never knew they
had, and I'm not talking about the power to do lockdowns.

I'm talking about the peoples of the free world demonstrating that they can
easily be scared into compliance, that they will follow the dominant
narrative, that they're ready to denounce their neighbors for infractions of
rules "for the common good" \- anything you would expect in a totalitarian
regime works _just as well_ in liberal democracies.

