Very grateful that my employer has committed to remaining flexible with remote work. Full time in the office, hybrid, or full time remote. It’s up to the individual. Full time remote has done wonders for my health - instead of a 2 hour commute I get to exercise. Instead of coming home stressed, annoyed, and sitting in front of the TV, I go outside for a solid hour+ after I close my laptop. I travel more liberally now that I don’t have to take time off to do so. My quality of life has never been better, and my gratefulness translates into feelings of loyalty towards my employer. Why would I quit if I’m treated well and have a nice work life balance? Why would I risk this situation by slacking off when I am on the clock?
Prior to the remote shift, I was unhappy and I didn’t even realize. No exercise, no passion outside of work. All my energy went into my 10+ hour day (when you consider the commute).
Since then I’ve lost 30lbs, become enamored with new sports and hobbies, and my social life outside of work exists again. I feel more “alive” than I have in a decade.
I’ll never work for a company that doesn’t allow me that flexibility for the rest of my career, as long as I can help it. Companies that want access to good talent would be wise to follow this example.
Just as a contrast, I think I've had the exact opposite WFH/lockdown experience as you. My quality of life has tangibly and significantly degraded across every positive point you listed. Even if my employer began offering office access, I don't think it will ever be the same as what I had before.
I used to bike to work, a productive 2 hours of exercise that kept me very healthy, mentally and physically. I got to see other people, even if they weren't strictly friends. Hell, I went outside on a regular basis!
Now I'm gaining weight (although not enough for a booster), lonely, and overworked as the involuntarily designated quasi-stay-at-home parent.
Similar situation, WFH/lockdown massively degraded the quality of my life. Work became more stressful and metric-driven, social life died as all my friends & coworkers moved to their hometowns and I did too, and I've gained weight / fallen into a rut.
I was just under a year into my first role as a software developer after a career change, and I was learning a lot from my coworkers and still meeting people. If I was at a later stage in my career I would have probably loved this, but WFH has been pretty terrible for me.
Also important to note, my commute was only about 10-15 minutes and I was extremely lucky for that.
Any tips for mentors? I feel peer collaboration hasn't been too bad and honestly I strongly favor remote-style work even in the office. However, effectiveness in mentoring junior engineers has nosedived. There's more to programming than a pull request. Workflows, tools, and behaviors are also things that people learn from others. You don't get that over infrequent screen sharing and quick daily syncs.
By asking that question I think you've identified part of the problem, because around the time Covid started we lost a very competent senior dev and nobody has been hired to replace him.
Still, I used to have some pretty cool impromptu conversations in the hallway with people from other teams about projects they're working on at home, and they were great to learn from. With WFH I'd have never met some of those people. No idea how to recreate that environment.
My experience is that impromptu mentoring has essentially gone away and only concerted efforts remain. When I was stuck on a problem or just needed a break I used to walk around the software lab and look for someone who looked frustrated and then try to solve their problem. Obviously I don't do that anymore. Instead I do have (probably not enough) screen sharing work sessions with other engineers when there is a problem that one of us needs to talk through. It is a good opportunity to learn about how others work and get some work done.
I was thinking about it, but before as an academic before I always had the option to remote work, just I didn't do it at home. The cafe, the museum, just bike to my best thinking place in the morning and then bike to the university for lunch and an afternoon meeting. I never really had decent work and exercise opportunities at home, so I would spend as little time as there as possible.
These days I'm no longer an academic but ironically I've been full time WFH since I switched at the beginning of the pandemic. So now I have a nice house with a nice chair and a nicer monitor than I could get in the office. And an oculus 2 for exercise, which works out (but might not be for everyone). And those second places where I did all my best thinking outside of home and the office don't really exist anymore and might not ever exist again :(.
> and overworked as the involuntarily designated quasi-stay-at-home parent.
Ya, being at home would be really a lot worse if my 4 year old wasn't in pre-K.
My quality of life dramatically went down as well. I'm a highly extroverted SWE and I need some modicum of social interaction to be able to function at peak performance. Prior to the pandemic, I had a social life that I was very much grateful for.
I'm also a minority and don't come from Ivy League/Top 10, so I felt that my biggest advantage was the impression I could make on others in person. In a remote-first world, I lose my biggest advantage.
Me aside, I can't help but think there are some underlying drawbacks to a remote-first world that we aren't talking about enough. But I know that, at least within the tech industry, I'm in the minority by believing that a life that is easier and more comfortable is automatically the better design.
Very true but it felt strange how everything that evenhovercraft listed as something gained from remote work was also something that I had lost. I don't think a post-Covid world would change that for me. My office is downtown, with restaurants and attractions and people. My home is in a streetcar suburb and while it has lots of nice things to walk to, it doesn't have what you would call a night life.
Just wanted to say - I hope you’re able to find ways to get those things back in your life. Remote work is certainly not without its challenges and of course, not for everyone. Companies should let the individual decide for themselves.
Somewhat. Seeing people during WFH also requires advance planning now, to align schedules, etc. In a non-WFH environment, it was much easier to see people spontaneously. That has nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with the fact that you were already colocated and could thus grab lunch, dinner, go out to karaoke after work, or whatever, and it could be done without significant advance planning.
One is not better than the other. It's not a contest. Kudos to employers who can acknowledge that different people have different needs and cater to both!
I understand the fact that you don't have the motivation of "gotta get to work/home!", but you could always get up earlier and go on a looped bike ride before and/or after work (I've actually seen a lot of people doing this as a sort-of "simulated commute", which they claim also helps with creating a mental office-home separation).
Which is why smart employers give their employees a choice of how to work instead of a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn’t. Working two days in the office is perfect for me for example.
First: you can disagree with someone and not be an asshole about it. Please consider reading the HN guidelines again.
Second: you are dismissing the fact that having an office to go to gave a lot of people a routine as well as forced social interaction. Now, it requires strict discipline to try and enforce it on yourself, whereas before it was a default.
I share this commenter’s experience. That you don’t is fantastic for you, but doesn’t make it any less legitimate.
You responded to someone describing their experience with an aggressive “just do it and don’t bother people fine with wfh,” implying that the poster was somehow trying to encroach on your ability to WFH. They never said that.
You even express your frustration directly in a sibling comment below.
Pretending your comment wasn’t rude, especially after elsewhere expressing your explicit frustration, is only half-true at best.
"Encroach on your ability to WFH" - you perfectly summed up the reason for the vitriol from remote-only people, IMO:
They are fearful that people with your stance will give companies a better argument for less remote-work. It's one thing when executives talk about it, because they're "not on the ground" and "just want control" or "don't understand individual contributors", but when peers like you support non-100% remote, it's a real worrisome prospect for them.
Sure, but it’s also a worrisome prospect for those that have had serious issues with WFH for a company to decide to go all-remote. Still doesn’t give them the right to be assholes. :)
FYI, it also read as excessively dismissive, bordering on aggressive to me. There's plenty of ways to phrase your disagreement without invalidating the person you're talking to quite so much.
You assumed they didn't consider they could just do it themselves. The issue is motivation. Going to work helped motivate them do these other things. Biking to work seems less pointless than biking to nowhere because they need to get to work, the exercise is a secondary benefit.
Edit:
Recommending they find a coworking space they can bike to and work from could have been a nicer suggestion (assuming pandemic ever goes away)
That was a pretty rude dismissal of a fraction of my experiences during all of this. You might want to reflect on what WFH has done to your social skills.
> That was a pretty rude dismissal of a fraction of my experiences during all of this. You might want to reflect on what WFH has done to your social skills.
I agree with you there.
The problem with WFH is that it doesn't force very many "transitions," which turns a lot more things into intentional acts that take more mental energy to initiate. The result it it's a lot easier to slide into a "blah" kind of state without even realizing it, and a lot harder to pull yourself out of one.
My social skills are absolutely fine, i can assure you of that.
But I am utterly annoyed with selfish people effectively pulling the whole collectivity back to the office because they can't go bike for two hours or some other dumb reason.
It's okay if you got a bit lazy during the pandemic and no one is denying that... but you don't have to pull all your coworkers to the office, you can just go bike or do some other physical activity it's probably going to get better.
> My social skills are absolutely fine, i can assure you of that.
I'm not so sure.
> But I am utterly annoyed with selfish people effectively pulling the whole collectivity back to the office because they can't go bike for two hours or some other dumb reason.
> ...but you don't have to pull all your coworkers to the office...
You're projecting that on him. He was just saying working at the office was better for him than WFH, he didn't actually advocate forcing anyone back, which was even made reasonably clear when he said:
>>>> Even if my employer began offering office access, I don't think it will ever be the same as what I had before.
> I am utterly annoyed with selfish people effectively pulling the whole collectivity back to the office
You might want to re-read their comment — there was no call for everyone to go back to the office, and the parent comment is right that you're being antagonizing for no reason.
Here's an analogy for you: I had a childhood I very much enjoyed, where I wasn't on the computer as often and I spent more time in nature. If I were to state this and how much happier I felt, would you start harassing me for trying to drag everyone back to the dark ages and ruining productivity? (No! I can express my own personal opinion and preference, just as you can express yours, and it's not automatically a call for everyone to do the same as me!)
Conversely, other people are annoyed with "selfish" people forcing what could otherwise be a productive in-person meeting to now need to include one person dialed in over zoom, perhaps without a video feed. Hope you weren't planning on collaborating using physical media such as whiteboard or post-it notes. Obviously we can do our best to reduce unnecessary meetings, but for those remaining necessary meetings, an in-person meeting is almost always more productive than a zoom meeting in my experience.
This is why both sides are so fired up over remote vs in-person. Your decision to work either remotely or in person has negative consequences for your co-workers either way. WFH folks are mad that they are being asked to commute, in-office folks are mad that they are being forced to use clunky online tools strictly to accommodate their remote-only peers.
> Conversely, other people are annoyed with "selfish" people forcing what could otherwise be a productive in-person meeting to now need to include one person dialed in over zoom, perhaps without a video feed.
That's actually a good point. Conference speakerphones are garbage, so once one needed person is remote, everyone has to dial in. The experience is really only workable if everyone is using a headset.
> in-office folks are mad that they are being forced to use clunky online tools strictly to accommodate their remote-only peers.
This isn't just a side effect of WFH, offshoring/distributed teams force it too. Even before the pandemic, most of my co-located team's meetings were online, since we almost always had to accommodate someone who was based at another site.
To go a little off-topic, there are a lot of good arguments against open office plans, but weirdly the one that seemed hardest for advocates to shrug off was the difficulty of having a bunch of co-located people joining the same call, and having to deal with echo. I think that's because it challenged the assumption that work happened mainly in a very particular co-located way (e.g. like a bunch of people sitting at consoles in a mission control center).
I find it hilarious that people think there is still justification for an expense as large as office real estate / office rent, when the non-biased peer-reviewed studies all show a 15-20% productivity gain from WFH anyway. So what, you want to spend way more to be less productive? Offices are dead. Wouldn't want to be whatever idiot apple exec just commissioned their new campus. Useless real estate. Dollar value of $0.
> Conversely, other people are annoyed with "selfish" people forcing what could otherwise be a productive in-person meeting to now need to include one person dialed in over zoom, perhaps without a video feed.
And that is why you should seek remote only companies if possible. Add in asynchronous work culture. Let the "productive" people waste their time in video meetings.
Asynchronous culture and no-meetings-ever is great if you're a somebody who has the ability/experience/authority to take a high level task and run with it without needing to collaborate with or have input from anyone else, but that's not how most companies work in reality.
If you're waiting for multi-day turnaround times on agreements because there's back and forth where two parties are trying to have a debate over requirements in a document but both only check for updates every few hours, I'd argue you're not being as "productive" as you think.
It's true that many meetings could have been an e-mail, but there are a few crucial meetings that can save days by just getting everyone together in a room for 30 minutes to reach an agreement.
> It's true that many meetings could have been an e-mail, but there are a few crucial meetings that can save days by just getting everyone together in a room for 30 minutes to reach an agreement.
Oh, and what stops you from doing that in an async company? If the meeting is justified, that is. It's the other 98% of meetings that you get rid of.
And incidentally, why "everyone in a room" and not "everyone in a group chat"?
I find your take really interesting because everyone who is pro-WFH tells people that they love WFH because of this long list of things that I was doing before the pandemic, and they were free to do as well. I personally find the notion that by merely having a commute, your quality of life is 10x diminished than if you didn't.
If most employers make people return to office, are people just going to drop exercising? Would it not be fair to call that ridiculous?
Stop bullshitting. As a parent the dynamics are totally different especially with Covid measures still in place. My child has not been to pre school for 4 weeks due to sickness and daycare group being closed because of Covid incident. And that must be like the 4th month within this year. It’s hard to maintain any routine in this ever changing emergency.
> and my gratefulness translates into feelings of loyalty towards my employer.
Yes and in turn translates to better quality work. In my case, I'm consciously adding extra web dev cherries on top every chance I can.
I haven't set foot in the office since the beginning of 2020, mostly due to lockdown. My boss is okay with it because he's happy with my work. I will never go back, I'd quit first.
Things I don't miss:
* The shared microwave always covered with a layer of grime on the inside.
* The office coffee machine, you drank it because it contains caffeine.
* Noise pollution from loud phone calls about things you have nothing to do with.
* Air con
* Air con set to a temperature you would change if you could.
* Staff toilets in general. Men's urinals without divider partitions.
* The small-talk encounters replayed every day with slightly different arrangement of words. They can be enjoyable too, but this is a cynical list.
* Driving and public transport, they both suck.
* Alarm clocks. For the first time in my life I wake up at the right time without an alarm.
* Not being able to make really nice breakfasts that take more time to prepare. (Porridge using steel-cut oats requires a 25 minute simmer, for example).
You are me. We had cubicle walls that were so short they didn't make any difference with noise because half the employees were on their feet while having conversations away. Constant talking. It was endless. Non stop complaining about significant others. Thankfully I had an hour lunch to get away for awhile.
We overheard every call because it was cubicle after cubicle in one big room. But hey! Let's complain about the customer that we just overheard you talking to for 30 minutes. Let's relive it after every call. Man.
Hey yeah, let's have our personal cell phone alert tone be a Linkin Park song at the loudest possible volume and always leave on their desk next to you. What a hell hole.
Micromanagement? You got it! You haven't experienced pedantry until you've met my supervisor. If you misspeak a word he pretends to not understand what you mean until you've re-spoken it in a way he understands. Now that we converse over chat/email almost entirely that ridiculous behavior has subsided.
They rarely cleaned the bathrooms thoroughly. One urinal. One stall. Just gross.
Microwave encrusted with who knows what. Janitors don't clean microwaves I guess?
I'm not one of those people that has very specific temperature needs. But of course we had one of those people that was very underweight in the office that needed it to be much warmer than normal. Why can't those people just wear more layers of clothing and not make the rest us suffer in sweat?
Parking? Okay that was close. If you can find a spot.
I will never go back to the office. I will also quit my job first.
I started a new job this year. The employer and our manager have made it clear, IF you feel safe coming into an office once the company declares it safe you can. If you are never comfortable ever again with coming in to the office, you won't have to. They have dedicated themselves to what works best for each employee, zero pressure. Nobody on my team is going in it's been decided.
I am way more productive at home. I have ADHD and the distraction of an office environment is too much and makes it hard for me to concentrate. My productivity has never been higher. I don't dread going to work, I get paid enough that I do not need to find a better place. And I have been a remote worker since 2011 and never, ever want to go back to work in an office.
Heh. I’m not disagreeing with your experience (as it’s yours, obviously) but I’m amused because I also have ADHD and an way less productive with WFH because home has so much more distraction; in an office where others are working it was much easier for me to focus than at home where Netflix or hacker news is only a tab away, and there’s no risk of anyone walking by. Plus, pairing was sort of focusing by default as well, and that’s harder (though not impossible) to do now.
> Full time in the office, hybrid, or full time remote. It’s up to the individual.
I feel like this is the key thing.
Instead of mandating blanket policies (whatever they are) that might not make sense for every team, trust your employees to self-organize in the way that makes the most sense for them and the way they work.
I'm in the same boat, and like you, doubt I will want to work any other way again.
The problem is that in many cases, the pro-office people, despite saying otherwise, probably do need everyone - or at least most, to be in the office with them for them to personally gain the benefits of the social office environment. The benefits of you WFO depends on your coworkers.
If you are a pro-WFO person on a team that offers flexibility to WFH or WFO, but nearly everyone but you is WFH, then what do you do?
In contrast if you are a pro-WFH person but the rest of your team is in the office, you probably don’t care as much because the benefits you gain from WFH aren’t dependent on your coworkers.
> It’s mesmerizing to me how so many think office life is a necessity for data entry work
I think it's more about how cities and communities are set up with commuting in mind.
Like, I live about an hour away from my best mate, which in London may as well be Mars. Bur our offices are literally 5 mins walk from each other, so messaging 'pint?' is SO much easier when in-office.
This is just an anecdote, and things have gotten better as the city has adjusted (gotten more involved in my local community for example) but I can 100% see why people are reluctant to change.
Nevermind open source developers building the software world we rely on via email for decades.
While this may work, some companies insist DevOps means involving the entire organization and all processes, rendering the word meaningless. So in face of such inflexibility, open source software developed for open source developers works a bit differently, much more flexible.
I'm a parent. I've had 2 employers in the last 7 years, switching in June of this year.
When covid struck initially, I kept my kid home with me. My job, aside from a daily standup and a weekly meeting, could be done while juggling my child. I worked really odd hours, bc I could. Early AM, later at night. But I got to protect my kid and my family from a disease I didn't know much about, for 15 months.
My new job disallows me to juggle him but it's still WFH. He started school anyways.
I exercise more. I meditate more. Go outside more - get little chores done, cut the grass on my lunch break rather than cutting in on family time.
The lack of a 45-115 min commute each way has been a lifesaver. Going to the doctor is faster and less time consuming bc my docs are near my home and not near my work. I can jog in the morning and still be to work "on time" rather than having to get up earlier and trade exercise for sleep.
And what's more.. When I do break, I get to see my wife. Or talk to my parents on the phone. At lunch I can catch up on a TV show, a podcast, a YouTube vid, that I'm interested in but my family might not be.
It affords me more ability to access my personal computer for things I might not do on a company machine.
I can do training videos and obligatory but time pointless and wasting meetings that never ask for my participation while in my "poor man's sauna" (hot bath + space heater in the room) or on a exercise bike or while walking around the block.
I miss being around people I like at work.
But alas.. I don't like anyone at my new job even a little
Even now in October you wake up in the darkness, and it's dark again at 4 pm here. When WFH you can decide flexibly what time is the best for you for an hour of outside activity. You can go out at noon to enjoy few minutes of gentle sunshine. Then, being recharged it feels awesome and the total productivity is great.
Yes the most notable effect is I can eliminate the commuting time and spend that to exercise outside (for 2 hours!). Now I can come back to improve my running distance, discover the joy of bicycling and so much more!
But I miss the interaction with real people. Sure you have application to help with chatting and meeting but somehow I long for the real connection. And I'm speaking from the perspective of an introvert. There's something that remote working can replace the serendipity. I felt I had much more creative ideas when working onsite.
> Very grateful that my employer has committed to remaining flexible with remote work. Full time in the office, hybrid, or full time remote. It’s up to the individual.
imagine working for an employer that treats you like a human being.
