Man I feel out of sync with the hivemind sometimes. Young 20-something and work from home seems to effectively be the standard for most programming work, and it makes me wish I pursued a different career. I hate being stuck at home, video calling to endless pfps, and never seeing a single coworker’s face.
I like the office better, actually. Quite a bit better.
... I just don't like it enough to make it worth 5ish hours of fighting rush-hour traffic [edit: per week], right after getting the kids where they need to be (for the morning half, at least), not being able to do my mise for dinner over lunch or move some clothes to the dryer during the day, the gas & wear & tear on my car, the risk to life and limb, not being able to work-and-travel, and not being able to move somewhere far away without changing jobs. Plus I can greet my kids when they get home from school every day.
I don't prefer WFH per se—I prefer working in an office, especially in a nice area with cool stuff around, not so much in some soulless office park—but with that all factored in, it's not even a close call. WFH by a mile.
[EDIT] Oh, and child care costs in the Summer. That's ~$2.5-3k/kid of value alone, per year, in sheer cost savings. More, if your workplace is in-person and also not flexible enough that you can get home before 5 in the evening and leave late-ish in the morning—more like $6-8k/kid per year, in that case, since you'll need before-school and after-school care.
I'm back in the office after 3 years away. I've been listening to a coworker drone on at the top of his voice for the past 2 hours. Plus, I don't even work with anybody in this (satellite) office, my actual team members are all in different cities.
I think RTO would have been an easier pill to swallow for some if the US was less car dependent. I'd be the higher a proportion of the workforce in an MSA drives, the more they'll push back against RTO.
The world is more than the US. If you think everyone outside the US, just needs to walk down the stairs of their apartment, then down the street - stopping at a coffee shop on the way - to get to their office, then keep dreaming. I live in the centre of a small EU capital that has pretty good public transport, but it still takes 40 minutes taking two buses to get to the office...
Definitely an interesting hypothesis! I bet it's also true that people who are car-dependent are more likely to have houses (with home offices, yards, space, quiet, chosen partners instead of roommates, and so on).
You could test the relationship by looking at New Jersey and Connecticut: lots of people are relatively independent from cars for their commutes, but tend to have genuine houses (as opposed to their coworkers who live on the Lower East Side).
> You could test the relationship by looking at New Jersey and Connecticut: lots of people are relatively independent from cars for their commutes, but tend to have genuine houses (as opposed to their coworkers who live on the Lower East Side).
I'm guessing you mean the part of CT that's close to NYC. At least when I was growing up in the 70's / 80's, my part of CT had literally no public transportation, except for the occasional bus service for senior citizens.
When I lived within walking distance of a transit station I was going to the office twice a week after the initial lockdowns lifted. The change of scenery was nice as was being around people again. Now that I have moved, and would need to drive to a transit station, I go in maybe once every few months. It adds maybe 15 minutes each way to my previous commute, but the idea of getting in a car at all is really off-putting. Add to that the possibility of vandalism or theft while my car is sitting in the transit lot all day and it just doesn't feel worth it. Driving to the office is a non-starter due to traffic and expensive parking.
I wonder if that equation balance would change if we all took a leaf from Joel Spolsky and gave everyone a private office in the office?
To me it wouldn't, I live in the middle of no where near my family, I couldn't work for big tech and stay here. But I bet it'd shift a lot of opinions.
It would probably make some difference at the margins. But I'd be willing to bet that, for the majority of people who don't want to go into an office or at least go in frequently, the driving factor is probably a commute. I'm pretty much fully remote but, if I would walk 15 minutes to our downtown office rather than drive >30 minutes to our suburban office, I would probably drop in semi-regularly for the change in scenery.
People have different preferences, but I will never, ever, ever again in my life voluntarily commute hours every day in standstill traffic to a bland, lifeless corporate hellhole of an office to have disinterested polite banter with random people I have nothing in common with to do a job that is entirely based around sitting at my computer. Not when I can work comfortably in the peaceful surroundings of my own home office, decorated and set up exactly how a I want, or even at a local coffee shop (or halfway across the country while visiting family for a month), eat lunch with my wife, walk our dog mid-day, and spend my mornings and evenings peacefully getting household stuff done and relaxing.
The improvement to my quality of life that remote work has produced is so monumental that it's hard to even envision how I coped most days before.
This is good, but also many people do not have comfortable and peaceful homes with nice offices, partners, dogs, etc and basically never leaving their apartment or room in their apartment is a nightmare and socially isolating in a profound way.
True. Then again, maybe masking that problem with some relief from daily commutes to work is not really a great solution. Recent layoffs in the industry were a good reminder for me that it's easy to be overly emotionally tied to your work.
I think we just have to accept that some people like an office, depending on the office, the commute, their job, their personality, phase of life, and current circumstances.
I totally agree and everyone should be able to work in their preferred way. I'm very wary of any efforts to entice more people back into offices, though, as it's absolutely not being driven by a desire to offer more flexibility.
I'll be dragged kicking and screaming back into an office, and would only ever consider an in-person role as a stopgap measure while I job hunt.
That's fine, I think clearly the labor market is shifting toward people demanding more WFH.
I just also think its fine for a company to say "look, the way we work is [remote/office], and if you want to work a different way find a different company if that's a deal-breaker".
thats why god invented coffeeshops, libraries, coworking spaces. hell, my local Uni offers free wifi for guests for up to an hour, so I've gotten planted in some of their buildings and knocked out simple tasks
It is not hivemind. People are simply split on this and I believe (no data to back it; just an assumption) that a majority of us are pro-WFH. I work for FAANG. Even the middle management folks, who said something along the lines of "I went to the office the other day and it was nice to quickly chat up with a coworker to agree about something" a month before RTO was mandated, don't show up the minimum required 3 days a week at the office these days. One of them has been using excuses like "childcare emergencies"; another one has been using excuses of feeling unwell (I wonder why they said what they said ~2 months ago). In the meantime, the head of the division (the VP) is nowhere to be found in the office (asked coworkers who go back to the office reluctantly).
I have a remote exception for now, but I think they will take it away soon and when they do, I'm leaving. I don't want to waste 2 hours of my life commuting either by public transit (less bad) or by driving (really bad because it is very dangerous to drive in the metro area I live). I am 100% productive working alone or coordinate with coworkers remotely (in fact, I spend on average 9 hours a day working when WFH). I will NEVER go back to the office. If the company doesn't have fully remote roles, I'll skip applying for them happily and it is their loss.
I'm one of the few people in my FAANG company with exemptions to work fully remote as well and I see the same thing you do... I wonder if we work at the same place.
I see some really crazy cognitive dissonance with RTO. Some of them say they prefer the new hybrid RTO policy and champion its benefits, but literally every week - without exception thus far - they've made an excuse to not show up at least one day. I think some people are just too nervous about not seeming to "drink the Koolaid". You'd think the seasoned people would be more immune to that kind of behavior, but here we are.
Managers are fundamentally involved in signaling -- arguably a primary job function. Signaling statuses up, signaling messages from leadership down.
They probably 100% agree with WFH, or hybrid, but their job is to signal, and those RSUs depend on their willingness and ability to conform to corporate culture.
People saying things that they don't really mean (seen it with RTO, 100% unit-testing coverage, 100% going all in for microservices, and all kinds of trendy stuff that I came across in my 14 years of professional programming). That is one of the reasons we haven't made human life easier/simpler.
This RTO thing is b.s. and I'm not afraid to air my grievances in front of my colleagues. In fact, I started looking for fully-remote jobs so that I can leave soon and can write a letter to that VP, who said he likes working from office better, asking him to come to the office often. :D
Keep in mind most folks needed to suffer through open office plans and terrible commutes for years until remote was an option. If you had to go through school during the pandemic then enter the workforce remotely immediately after that is going to definitely give you a different perspective. I feel bad for young folks that had to do most or part of their college years remote—that is really unfortunate. I’m sorry if that happened to you as that is really unfair.
I may be completely wrong, but I'm in France and it's mostly older people (from the age of 30 or 35) who want WFH. Young people don't know they can ask for a higher salary, and, apparently enjoy working in an office or open-space.
Older developers wants personal time, and some want to take care of their kids and family which is way easier if you're at home.
At my last interview, the boss asked if full-remote wouldn't be a problem for me, hinting that it may cause loneliness or psychological issues. I told her that I had friends and could see them whenever I wanted which is why I don't miss offices.
I think a lot of the younger generations wanting in-office work comes from living alone. I did WFH for a ~2 years recently and found that even when I was visiting with friends most days, those 8 hours spent alone, in my bedroom (the only place a desk would fit in my apartment) were really isolating.
I wound up switching to a coworking space - a local alternative to wework. Didn't directly interact with people there most days but just having a space outside my small apartment and being _around_ other people made a huge difference for my mental health.
Of course, if you have family at home or even roommates, this may be much less of a concern for you.
I run a progressive online coworking community that I don’t want to try monetizing until I started asking why I’m unable to get a better career job (I can’t do Leetcode and buckle under interview pressure when non straight forward things are asked.
I was thinking of asking for donations to cover my own coworking physical spot. The reason I thought maybe it doesn’t help is because the last time I was there I wasn’t talking to people really. I thought that meant it wasn’t for me. However the decent ~12 min drive, getting away from the house, being around people, it was really nice.
The online coworking on Zoom suffices sometimes but not when I’m already on there all the time helping manage it.
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I have people at home but the negatives outweigh the positive when I’m there all the time instead of only a couple hours a day outside sleep.
As a young person, I can afford to live alone. I'm definitely privileged in this regard (and don't live in NYC or SF) though.
Even living with one roommate I felt the isolation, since my office was still my bedroom. Placing my work desk in my bedroom was probably one of the worst moves I've made for my mental health; if my apartment had space to make a shared office I may have had a difference experience and therefore a different opinion.
I think a 15 minute walk to a low-commitment workspace was a good fit for me, but obviously I can't speak for everyone.
I'm sorry my 200 word anecdote-based comment did not account for 100% of possible personal circumstances. Please contact customer service if you'd like to request a refund.
Or maybe younger/less experienced people feel anxious about competing with everybody in the remote market so they don't even bother and go for the less competitive in-office market.
You're not the only one. One job I worked, one of my coworkers left the job, even though he liked the work and it was a great opportunity, because he couldn't stand not having coworkers to run into at the water cooler.
I have a family, so I prefer being able to run into them at the water cooler when I leave my office room.
When the industry adopted open office plans as the norm I almost changed careers. Spending 6 years in that soul crushing environment after having spent the previous couple decades in either regular offices or cubes was not fun. I have no desire to ever return to that. WFH is definitely not optimal, but given the alternative, I’ll take it.
I prefer either being in-office or being completely isolated and having complete freedom if working from home. Working from home and having to work by a schedule and do daily video calls feels like taking the bad parts of both options.
I see people talking about video calls all the time in the USA when working remotely but I don't understand if it's a social or cultural thing.
I'm French and I never did video calls, ever. It's always audio calls using Teams and we just show the relevant part of the screen to the audience (aka Screen sharing or something).
Pretty much the same. At moderately large East Coast company, big (usually optional) informational meetings, non-presenters usually have their cameras off. Small team meetings and 1:1s, cameras are mostly on though no one will object if someone has to shut theirs off for some reason.
It varies company to company in the US. Ditto video on vs video off being the norm.
I've seen companies that dealt with a ton of business travel before WFH got big, prefer actual dial-in-on-a-phone conference calls for meetings, even when all parties happened to be in offices at the time, well into the Zoom era. It weirded me out at first, but I think they may be on to something. If you don't need to screen share, not every call needs to be a video call. Don't need to install anything—anyone with a phone, which is everyone, can join. Easier to join on-the-go. Reliable Internet connection not required. If your phone has signal, you can join the call. Can even join from a wired desk phone.
Other companies, every call's a video call and you'll catch shit if you keep your camera off. Remote cultures exist on a spectrum between those. (and, of course, open source projects with distributed teams are often highly productive with little more than IRC, email, git, and an issue tracker)
> I see people talking about video calls all the time in the USA when working remotely
I work in the US for a company that doesn't allow WFH.
All of our meetings are via video calls, even though we are all in the same place. This has been the norm in my experience for over a decade now.
The place I worked before my current employer did the same, but allowed people to keep the video off if they chose. Everyone chose to keep the cameras off, except most of the management.
I’m in the USa, and I’ve been remote for over a decade. Until the pandemic I almost never did a video call. Then everyone went remote and it suddenly became the norm.
It seemed to start because managers who weren’t used to remote wanted to keep tabs on their employees.
In the US today video calls are pretty common for work, don’t think you’re missing anything. I worked remotely pre pandemic and only ever just used a phone and webex. Poor audio, sometimes odd behaviors, especially around the world (the zones did not always perfectly combine, so you could tell it was an India based call vs a US one) but basically functional. Today I do video calls, the audio is far better, but the video makes me feel like a psychopath, and completely emotionally drained after a long meeting. It’s weird.
Yes, because you're the one who's the most impacted by this; your prospects will be limited by the career ladder stasis which remote work is causing. You'll also never really be able to form any bonds or trust with your coworkers. People who are more advanced in their careers, depending on their strategy, won't care about these things as much, and have families that take up their time.
You're not alone. The WFH supporters just seem a bit... louder. I've stopped discussing this topic at length because how emotional many get in discussing the reasons and supposed motivations of those they disagree with.
What's probably true is that a lot of people who want to be remote really want to be remote. They also recognize that remote hasn't been anything like the norm for office workers until COVID.
Whereas, a lot of the people who want to (mostly flexibly) come into an office, more mildly prefer the change in scenery and mingling with co-workers. While some might prefer more of their co-workers to come in, they may well work with people at other sites anyway so it's not really a big deal is all/most of their co-workers come it.
> video calling to endless pfps, and never seeing a single coworker’s face.
I've worked for two remote-first companies, and both had a culture of at least turning on web cams. My former company took it a step further and would have an annual gathering of the whole company in February, and regional gatherings in August.
I enjoyed it for a year, but I started to hate it too. I am not a social type at all, but some exchange with others at work is nice.
That said, I do have a 5 min commute, I get better food at work and have an office for myself. If that would be significantly longer, I certainly would prefer to WFH too.
coworkers aren't your friends they're "work friends", and your job isn't your life.
join a club, go places, talk to people. even working from home I walk to local coffee shops and chat with the people there. 6am there is always the same old guy and he reads the whole damn newspaper before 7am -- and is keen to talk. Old-timey, but a nice guy.
I'm on a softball team. there are a few meetup.com groups I like to hit, esp. the local LUG. there is a local non-profit art center and my wife sits on that board -- get to go to a few art events.
the problem is you're stuck at home. get out more, killer.
