
The Home Office Is Dying - ohjeez
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-07/the-home-office-is-dying
======
rietta
That cover photo set an incredibly terrible tone for this article and set me
against it from the get go. After reading this, I still think it is a bunch of
bunk. Those who need an office will have one and those whose work is such that
they can suffer through with just a laptop and with distractions in the
background wont.

I _could_ work from anywhere, but I don't and no WiFi is not my preferred
connection mechanism in my house when I am working with NAS for video editing
or some of the other work that I do in addition to writing code. The only time
I may crack the laptop while in actual bed is if I was sick and on those days
I'm not going to be committing a ton of code to any of my projects. The
ergonomics would be all wrong.

The killer quote is “Most people I know end up sitting on the sofa, and half
the time the TV is on when they’re working.” I could not concentrate in such
an environment. Even if TV may be on upstairs but I have privacy in my office
in the basement. On balance this article does a disservice and gives
ammunition to organizations whose bosses want to point and show "see, this is
why we need our employees to come into the office".

~~~
fragsworth
I don't think it was even a cover photo. Look closely, someone did a bad
Photoshop job putting the whole image together. Adding even more to how
contrived it all feels.

~~~
rietta
You're right! I didn't notice that. This has to be a hit piece. What utter
editorial garbage, even for Bloomberg.

------
swiley
Anecdotally, I'm younger and have gone through long periods working from home
and I needed a home office. It's not a technology thing, my phone is plenty
powerfull enough to do anything I need and so has every laptop I've owned
since I was 10.

You have a dedicated workspace because when you start blending home and work
things start unravling with both; Work is a time when you're very active
mentally and sometimes It's difficult to keep that way. This is much harder
when it blends with your needed relaxation time.

~~~
astrobase_go
Agreed, also anecdotally. I'm a sub-30 with a dedicated workspace, and I find
that it mentally partitions leisure from work--something I find important
while working in a space that's usually devoted to leisure.

I would be interested to hear from others here who do not maintain this
distinction yet also successfully work from home. What strategies do you
employ for maintaining this separation despite the "death of the home office"?

~~~
phkahler
>> and I find that it mentally partitions leisure from work

This is very important in my opinion. More employers are offering
"flexibility" so employees are tempted to bring laptops home, use the VPN, and
generally work outside of work. Even though I have a laptop, I leave it at
work when I go home at the end of the day. I do not remotely access email or
anything else. If you work at home it makes sense to have a firm boundary
between your life and your job. A home office would seem to help with that.

------
HamwakHall
How does this kind of writing still make it to publication? This isn't about
generational shifts, changing aesthetics, or trends in home layout. This is
about falling wages, soaring costs of living in urban areas, and a decrease in
QoL for the purportedly-mobile section of the working class that is the
implicit subject of this article.

Portraying this as being a decision of taste rather than necessity is
misleading. Very few people are willingly choosing to have less rooms in their
house; our grand paring-down is the result of tight belts and empty wallets,
not a nod to minimalist aesthetics.

~~~
dpark
> _our grand paring-down is the result of tight belts and empty wallets, not a
> nod to minimalist aesthetics._

Grand paring down? Since when? The typical US home has pretty consistently
grown in size year over year for at least the last 4 decades, gaining about
250 sqft every decade.

[http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-
are-1000-s...](http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-
are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-
nearly-doubled/)

~~~
HamwakHall
I see a lot of numbers about 'new single-family houses.' What population do
you think is living in a building that fits that description?

According to the 2010 U.S. census, ~80% of the population lives in an urban
area, and all projections hold that share to have increased. That's 80+% of
the US population that is living in non-single-family buildings, many of which
are being remodeled to support greater population density and smaller
individual units.

~~~
dpark
> _That 's 80+% of the US population that is living in non-single-family
> buildings_

Urban doesn't include just multifamily units. I live in a single family home
in Seattle. So do tens of thousands of others. Ditto for San Francisco and
many other cities.

Multifamily units are also growing. The data only goes back 15 years but
they're bigger now. Check page 448:

[https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/c25ann2015.pdf](https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/c25ann2015.pdf)

------
marsrover
I, for one, would not be happy without a home office. One that I can shut the
cats out of, if need be.

It's nice having a dedicated space for work. I prefer having a desk, a nice
chair, monitor, keyboard, and mouse, rather than sitting cramped on a couch
with my laptop.

In addition, like swiley mentioned, I like knowing that when I get to my
couch, I'm not going to be working.

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LyndsySimon
I live in two-bedroom apartment with my wife and two kids, and really miss
having an office.

Don't get me wrong - my apartment is very nice and it's worth the compromise -
but I'm posting this between CI runs, sitting on the floor of my bedroom. I'd
love to have an office; I just don't have the space for it.

~~~
scruple
Maybe you can get your company to reimburse you for visits to a co-working
space? I was in a similar situation for a while and worked out a similar
arrangement with my manager. Even now, I have a dedicated office at home that
I work from, but I still opt for the co-working space 2-3 times a week.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I actually went from a fully-remote position to an on-site one earlier this
year. When I was remote, I rented an office for a while and worked from coffee
shops and the library quite a bit. It worked out fine, but I changed jobs for
other reasons.

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ssharp
> Current home design tends toward open-floor plans, with an emphasis on
> flexible spaces and workspace nooks, says architect Paul Adamson, who
> operates out of the San Francisco Bay Area.

I've seen these workspace nooks before and personally find them terrible. It's
like bringing all the negative parts of the open office home with none of the
benefits.

I like open floor plans but don't want my office as part of that. The last
thing I want to hear while trying to concentrate is the sound of pots and pans
banging in the kitchen, the sound of the television, etc.

~~~
alistairSH
Agreed. Those nooks are fine for light "home" business (TurboTax, searching
for recipes, etc). I would hate to use one for my day job.

I keep a proper home office. My house has a small dining room, which was too
small for large family dinners (8+ guests), so the room was repurposed as an
office. The current dining room used to be the family room (which is now in
what would have been the formal living room).

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cygned
> keeps a desk in the corner of the living room of his one-bedroom apartment

Yeah, that's basically how you not do home office.

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vyrotek
Well call me old fashioned then :) I recently built a new home and I
specifically wanted a dedicated & separated office and also ran Ethernet to
all the rooms.

I will admit, when we were shopping it did seem hard to find homes listing a
home office as feature even though several had them. I did also note that a
popular thing now with new homes in AZ is a "mini" office that can barely fit
a single PC and chair.

~~~
DashRattlesnake
> I will admit, when we were shopping it did seem hard to find homes listing a
> home office as feature even though several had them.

Forgive my ignorance (I'm not a homeowner and am just starting to think about
it), but wouldn't a home office just be a bedroom that you use as an office?

~~~
toxican
Pretty much. Plus you can call rooms an office if they don't qualify as a
bedroom (I believe they need to have a window to be called a BR). Also, I
would think an extra bedroom sells better than calling it an office.

~~~
dpark
You definitely need a window to qualify as a bedroom. It has to meet certain
requirements that basically boil down to "could a 10-year-old escape a fire
through this window?" Although "not falling to death after climbing out" isn't
a requirement.

I believe technically a bedroom in the US is also supposed to have a built-in
closet of some sort and a door that closes the space off. Lack of either of
these often means a room is marketed as an office.

------
tedmiston
Anyone else feel like this really doesn't apply to them?

I have a dedicated office room, not split with another room.

Though I have a small apartment without a couch or living room, I still do
90%+ of my work done at home from the office desk.

------
qwrusz
This may be true. But I have a feeling a large percentage of HN are not part
of this trend, as it seems there's quite a few people on here who still have
real jobs that involve concentrating, which is not the going trend for most of
the country.

As for me, and I admit this is weird, I have wanted a home office since I was
kid. And now that I have one it's my favorite room in the house. I'm not
married nor do I have kids. But a quiet, very functional room where one can
sit and concentrate, for real work or for a hobby, where friends who come over
aren't going to touch shit, where you can work on something you take seriously
is really a gift. The bedroom might be the most fun room in the house, but a
home office is where the magic can happen.

Good luck to these people with their Macbooks Air sitting and working in bed.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
This title wouldn't have confused me if it weren't in Title Case.

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

~~~
chrisseaton
But it's the title of an article.

------
santaclaus
The hardest part of working from home is getting other people in your life to
realize that you are working, and should be treated as such...

------
yardie
In my last flat I had a hallway wide enough to install home office. It was the
central corridor hub where all the other rooms branched out of, so not exactly
a long, traditional hallway. Instead, I opted to make our kitchen more like a
coffee bar; wide countertops, barstools, plenty of outlets. Because in my
single days those were the type of places I worked out of. So I modeled my
"home office" after my "old office." And it's worked really well. Our son
comes home and we work around the kitchen, together. Now, the kitchen has
become our focal point, not the bedrooms, salon, etc.

I think the concepts of what I home needs has changed. They are more expensive
than our parents generation so every part has to have a function. When I visit
friends and see that they have 2 offices, one for each of them, I just think
what a waste of valuable space. Like you have so many rooms you're inventing
functions for them; what's next the gift wrapping room?

------
FussyZeus
My office is about 80% office, 20% man cave but the idea that everyone now
works solely on laptops and migrates around the house is flat on it's face
silly.

Personally I can't stand working on a laptop in any serious capacity. During
an emergency if I need to VPN into work quick and restart some problem child
machine? Sure. Actually sitting and building something from scratch? God no. I
mean with a gun to my head I could make it work but given any other options,
be it a table, a desk, preferably with my Thunderbolt displays, I'd choose a
real surface over lounging with a laptop any day.

When I do sit down to do some writing though my Surface shines, it's the only
computer I've been able to use comfortably not sitting. Maybe this is just
something the author and their co-workers experience also being writers. But
yeah, any serious mental heavy lifting work happens in my office.

------
sjtgraham
I expected this to be about the UK gov department The Home Office
([https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-
office](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office))

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briandear
Kind of hard to have a 34" monitor on my couch.

------
chillingeffect
You gotta love clickbait, where "the home office is growing and spreading out
to the entire home" becomes "the home office is DYING (1)"

(1) DYING, people, death! feel your amygdala respond! fight, flight or freeze!
remain suggestible!

~~~
jaclaz
I will confess that I read Home Office as "Home Office":

[https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-
office](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office)

------
absynce
I've had enough trouble staying ergonomic at my desk. The couch would be
horrible.

It's possible to teach yourself to ignore distractions. However, putting the
body under that stress over time will have consequences. It takes longer than
your 20s to evolve. Unfortunately, even with exercise, you will eventually
have to correct those habits.

I'm curious to see what people born in the 90s do when they get to their 30s.

[http://marcholzman.com/marcholz/wp-
content/uploads/2016/08/E...](http://marcholzman.com/marcholz/wp-
content/uploads/2016/08/Evolution-300x121.jpg)

------
crazygringo
The point is, you used to _have_ to have a separate office. You had a desktop
PC with a CRT, a bookshelf, a filing cabinet, a landline, a printer, boxes of
software on CD-ROM, and so on. Remember how much _room_ that took up?!

Now that everything's digital and on your phone/laptop, most people don't need
_any_ of that anymore. It's kind of crazy when you realize it. You don't need
a dedicated room -- you can use whatever room in the house is currently quiet
and unoccupied.

~~~
ashark
Decent ergonomics still require a dedicated space. Or else carting a lot of
crap around to whichever room is quiet, then adjusting it to fit that space,
assuming it's even possible without unreasonable amounts of effort.

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sjclemmy
I used to work at the desk in my bedroom. I now work from a rented shared
office 20 minute walk from where I live. The lure of a nap at 2.30pm was too
much to resist.

I still work at home a lot of the time, but I prefer the strict divide between
'work' and 'home' that the office affords me. It is also a place to store all
the extraneous hardware I seem to have accumulated - Anyone want a HP Compaq
9020 laptop? :)

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Tempest1981
This seems surprisingly high:

"60 percent of employers let workers telecommute, up threefold from 1996"

Edit: link to the SHRM survey -- anyone have member access to the PDF?
[https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-
forecasting/researc...](https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-
forecasting/research-and-surveys/Pages/2016-Employee-Benefits.aspx)

~~~
pythonaut_16
My personal experience would suggest that this isn't a 60% allow workers
telecommute whenever they want, but rather allow workers to telecommute
sparingly when circumstances require.

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bdcravens
While I'm a data point against the article (my home office: 27" 4K, Das
Keyboard, Aeron, and other comforts) I think we're starting to see a
generation of workers who have used laptops their entire life. (It wasn't that
long ago that laptops were a challenge to use without peripherals, given the
universal crappiness of trackpads on non-Apple hardware)

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andrewvc
This may be true, but it's really a bad thing for ergonomics. While changing
your position is vital, you still need a real work area. Having a proper
adjustable height desk + large monitor + ergonomic seating is a good idea.
Whether that goes in a corner or in a special home office, working a full day
from the couch on a laptop is terrible for your health.

~~~
tedmiston
A few years ago this might have been dismissed as a first world problem, but I
really hope the tech scene startups dedicating more time and effort into the
ergonomics of working from coffee shops in the next few years. Everyone knows
what we're doing [working for too long without breaks, in unergonomic
positions on laptops where the screen height is far below eye level so craning
our necks] isn't great, yet everyone does it.

~~~
rietta
Isn't that what co-working spaces are setup to address. Coffeeshops are not
supposedly in the business of being an office away from the office.

~~~
tedmiston
The same problem applies to coworking spaces, especially with floating desks.

------
return0
Sure, there are many musicians who could write songs with a guitar on the
beach but serious sound geeks would invest for a Nemo-like studio
([http://www.nemostudios.co.uk/nemo/tour/recording/recording_b...](http://www.nemostudios.co.uk/nemo/tour/recording/recording_br.htm))

------
themihai
Working on a laptop from bed or couch becomes a pain(literally) on long term.
A big monitor and a good chair/recliner pays off big time if you are developer
working at home. You don't have to use a desktop/tower computer though. A
laptop or even a phone(ubuntu) may work just fine (connected to the monitor).

------
dorfsmay
I agree with all the comments here and I'll add that being able to close the
and explain to the kids that if the door is closed you can only come if
there's an emergency.

Nothing worse than a kid, clearly old enough to understand the concept of a
closed door, who constantly interrupt an audio/video conf.

------
rietta
I can't get over the thought that this is some sort of hit piece on work-from-
home being published by Bloomberg. Does this narrative support HP, Yahoo, and
other companies insist that employees commute in for culture and for
productivity!?

------
pmontra
When I have to read something, I can read it anywhere in my home. If I have to
write down some notes, I begin to need a surface appropriate to writing. If I
have to code, I go to my desk 99% of the time. The home office is still there.

------
yabatopia
“Most people I know end up sitting on the sofa, and half the time the TV is on
when they’re working.” I know I get easily distracted, but I can't imagine
you're being very productive or focused in such an environment.

~~~
dpark
Probably depends on the work being done. Sometimes there's some relatively
brainless slogging that needs to be done. I will sometimes do that kind of
stuff at night while the TV is on.

Doesn't work well if you need your brain fully engaged.

------
127001brewer
Way back when, computers were just heavy and large and, sometimes, required a
number of peripherals so a dedicated room was necessary.

Now? A wireless printer can be hidden in a nook and laptop makes any place a
work area.

~~~
soneil
That doesn't work for me, at all. I don't want "any space" to be a work area.

I have a "work area". And when I close the door, I've left the office. I'm not
at work. I don't want my couch to be a work area, I don't want the bedroom to
be a work area. I need to be able to leave work at the end of the day.

~~~
jmcdiesel
My laptop is my work area. When its open and doing work tasks, im at work.
When its closed, im at home. Both of those times can be in the same physical
location.

------
serg_chernata
To me, sounds like home office is simply evolving. However, I personally need
a desk and a comfortable chair. A space for keyboard and mouse pad. You can't
replicate that on the couch.

~~~
hudell
I spent so long looking for a comfortable chair that I ended up getting used
to working in my reclining chair with my notebook on my lap and a wireless
mouse on the chair's arm. I don't really miss using a table anymore.

------
arcaster
I'm a huge proponent of having separate physical spaces to relax and do work
in, a big part of this for me is adding more space or effort between myself
and possible distractions.

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k__
I have an adjustable desk with a nice chair and desktop PC in my living room.
That's all the "office" I need.

------
CodeSheikh
Does that bad Photoshopped cover photo mean to have a double meaning such as
euphemism for working at home sucks?

------
rrhyne
These people must not have kids.

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jt2190
tl;dr People still work at home, they're just not creating a special room for
working. Home builders, realtors are trying to figure out what to market, if
not "an office."

~~~
jmcdiesel
VR Room. Boom.

------
beastman82
this article is painfully devoid of hyperlinks

