I've worked from home 9 of the last 10 years and much, much preferred the year of going into an office, being better at separating work/leisure, etc.

I don't understand the appeal of doing either full-time. I can see myself being comfortable with a mix of home and office, there are advantages to each in different scenarios.

It's not just tech, lots of jobs are tech adjacent or tech-augmented and can do this. More so than we thought ten years ago.

But in short, it's not for everyone. I'm bored of it. It makes work part of my life one way or another. I like directly interacting other humans sometimes.

There's gotta be a balance, as with most things in life.

Think about this:

The office is 5-20 minutes away. There is a good work culture. You have friends at the office. You can easily go home for a quick errand at lunch. WFH wouldn't be as appealing.

Now consider:

The office is 1 hour away on a good day. Traffic is very frustrating. Parking is expensive, same with transit which is hard to get an hour away. You get home at 6 if you're lucky. After 2 frustrating commutes and a rough day at work, and having to wake up very early to make the commute, you don't feel like working out. You get the point.

This matters so much. I am a strong advocate for WFH. When I worked an hour and change away from the office, and I went WFH I felt so much better about life. Suddenly, when work ended, I was just off. No commute to frustrate me. I'd walk away from my desk, and start dinner then hit the gym. On lunches I took walks. It was glorious. I did however start to fatigue as time went on. I was wound up at the end of the day while my wife was ready to wind down because some days I just felt like I'd been isolated all day. Even with walks and going to the gym in evenings.

A year or so ago we moved 20 minutes from my office. Some stuff happened with management etc that they wanted people to at least come in a couple days if possible. So I did. Being only 20 minutes away I didn't mind it as much. I had also been migrated to a new team that I really got along with. We lunch together, we shoot the shit if things are chill, I get pulled in on more interesting projects because I'm right there and if I hear someone talking about something I know I'd be helpful on I chime in "Hey, I can help with that" - things I'd have missed out on getting to do if I were at home waiting for someone to send me a Jira ticket or mention it during morning standup. I also have more visibility with our VPs and directors.

Anyway, IMO, WFH is fantastic - especially when you live far away - but some office face time is also great. Good for people, good for careers. I feel incredibly fortunate to have stumbled into a position where I have the option to WFH, but also enjoy 3 or 4 days in the office.

Everyone being in small coop they live < 30 minutes away from that voluntarily joins and leaves larger organizations (and not in some bullshit primordial john locke way) should be the goal almost everyone can get behind.

WFH is right that autonomy is good (being away from a boss) and commutes are bad, but denying the social nature of our species when work (for better or worse) consumes so much time is ludicrous.

I absolutely agree on the 30 minutes commute.

I used to have that, my office changed location to 1h commute and the 2 days of wfh still mean more commute time than no wfh previously.

I've had 50minutes commute before, but it was just one uninterrupted subway ride which meant I could follow some online courses, but 1h of commute that involves 2x 10 minutes walks and 2 subway changes, its just hell.

I feel that the bank just had to let people with 2 wfh days, lest people quit en mass.

I've been thinking about creative ways around this - do you have any guess how the dynamic would change if everyone in a remote-first team had an hour lunch they all took in the same minecraft server (or something)? I feel like that would give a lot of time for people to talk shop in the way you're describing, but I've never heard of it being implemented.

Great in spirit, but IMO it would feel like another mandatory "fun" activity, just another obligation. It's not something that can be implemented but something that evolves.

I think the key is to create lacunae in the office that allow the culture to form. Watercoolers or smoke breaks or 100% informal happy hour beers, etc. Once leadership makes it "a thing" it loses its dynamic.

Excellent point. So leadership would have to reliably be in the server, but not require it of anyone else.

Also, some flexibility to WFH is nice.

A friend and I are starting to do "workcations" several times per year (he typically works in office, I work 100% remotely).

We go somewhere, work our during the day then go do something in the evenings - typically skiing or mountain biking. It's an amazing setup. We both typically get more done at work, because we're focused and wanting to get to our evening activity. 4 hours of skiing or biking in the evening is more than enough (especially when we do it 8 days straight).

That is one perk, I will never give up. Working on a 100% remote team has made me care about vacation days much less. Instead of taking a 3 to 4 day trip somewhere, I'll simply take a full week and work during the day (possibly still taking some time off.)

if you go East from where the client is based, it is easier to do biking/hiking/skiing in the mornings, before work at HQ starts, due to the timezones. It is also cooler in the summer and usually less busy. I am tired physically but refreshed mentally before the work even starts.

This sounds incredible. I'm more annoyed I've never thought to do this myself.

It's a really nice setup. We try to plan it around a low-cost lodging option (one of our houses or a family cottage). You end up with a week long vacation for basically the cost of travel (at least for biking).

Where are you finding all the good night skiing?

My wife and I moved to Wausau, WI for her residency. Granite Peak is pretty much in our backyard. It's a midwest "mountain" but it does the job. Extremely nice to get out for an hour after work.

Many of the midwest hills near major cities have night skiing nearly every day of the week.

Steamboat is probably the most well known "big resort".

Mt Hood is about 1.5 hours outside of Portland, OR and has good night skiing.

I have done night skiing when I worked in Detroit.

Brighton, UT has some night time skiing (I think until 9 pm).

The thing I dislike about working in an office is that it feels like working remote without any of the benefits. I work with people in different offices, which is basically the same as being remote. Instead of talking directly with people, I ping them on Slack to see if they can talk, which is basically the same as being remote. I go to meetings which all use Zoom to accommodate remote workers, which is the same as being remote. People work from home on some days when I'm in the office, which is the same as being remote. So what's the purpose of going into the office again?! Commuting isn't worth the free snacks in the kitchen area.

EDIT: probably the most compelling reason to go into the office is that the company hasn't made working remotely an optimized experience.

That's the annoying aspect of using flex-workspots in a completely non-static environment. It doesn't make sense force that if no other teammember works in the same spot. Even then you could argue that it should not be mandatory.

I have the option to work remotely and in the office (office is 20 minutes away when there's no traffic), I prefer going into the office when my work requires collabing with a colleague (dev work). But when I'm working on stuff solo I prefer to work from home, as there are no distractions there. I think I get more done in half a day at home than I normally do in a full-day at work.

Let me work from home from a low cost of living area, where there is an inexpensive coworking space where I can work with others and have camaraderie, but also build a professional network (getting hired is who you know more than what you know). My coworking space might even have some gym equipment and showers for during lunch, as well as free parking, but also be close enough I could ride a bike if I was feeling ambitious. If my gig doesn't work out, because I work with others from other orgs, I can find a gig elsewhere rapidly that also supports remote work (or pickup freelance work). WFH is a misnomer, a poor term. People want flexibility, so give them flexibility. "Work where you want, when you want, as long as the work gets done."

This is what I do today. I eat lunch with my wife and kids, and I am always home for breakfast and dinner, but I have space to focus on work (it is crucial IMHO to separate your work and home spaces, based on six years of remote work) and an area to have meetings if needed. There is no reason this model can't scale up; less WeWork, more Mr Money Mustache's coworking space [1]. Some travel might be required occasionally, but I've found all remote roles and orgs experience this; it's the entry ticket for having an amazingly higher quality of life compared to an "on site" role.

Alternatively, I know people who work 8-9 hours in an office complex with 100 mile round trip commutes. Hard pass. You want help building a coworking space? I will help you build a coworking space. This is the future of work.

[1] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/hq/

> The office is 5-20 minutes away. There is a good work culture. You have friends at the office. You can easily go home for a quick errand at lunch. WFH wouldn't be as appealing.

That's pretty much my situation. On top of that, we have 8-person rooms (as opposed to hangar-like open space) and plenty of bigger and smaller conference/private work rooms for times when you want to isolate yourself. Add excellent coffee (no free food though - this is Europe, free food is not widely adopted here yet). Working in such office is pretty cool and even though I have option to work remotely 100% of the time, I still come to the office 3 or 4 times a week.

Sounds like heaven. In which country do you work?

Poland. This is mostly luck of the draw though, as the office I work in was voted by some design/architecture experts to be the best office park in the whole metro area. It is definitely not a standard. Before moving there, the company hosted us in a drab place with 20 person rooms and almost none meeting/solitude rooms. It was hellish.

Sure. In the absolute worst case, WFH is better. That doesn't really tell us anything.

The average commute is 26.9 minutes, and that is heavily skewed by metropolitan areas. Some data here[1].

Now let's consider the worst case WFH scenario: you're paid less, promotions are less frequent, there is less comradery among your team, you feel lonely because you spent your whole workday alone. You get the point.

Obviously, the best case scenario is to allow workers to decide what they want to do. Picking the form of work that fits your personality, your career, your home life, your values, etc and then trying to force that on 300+ million people is absurd. The good news is that a substantial amount of people do get to choose[2].

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/wo...

[2] https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/206033/america-comin...

This is a straw-man - I didn't propose the worst case. There are many cases which are far worse.

So already that is, on average, 1 hour lost per commuting. A huge portion would have commutes worse than that. That data would always be skewed by metro areas - that is where most people live, and where housing would force people to take long commutes.

> Now let's consider the worst case WFH scenario: you're paid less, promotions are less frequent, there is less comradery among your team, you feel lonely because you spent your whole workday alone. You get the point.

Why would you argue this, if in the very first sentence of your reply, you stated the worst case "doesn't really tell us anything?"

Back to the straw-man point - no one is suggesting that anyone be forced to do anything. Just pointing out why many would like an option to WFH whereas others may not. I agree overall that more choice and flexibility is good.

I think it's a mistake to view all commuting time as "lost".

For example, my commute is about 40 minutes door to door. But I walk to work and listen to podcasts as I go so I'm getting some light exercise and catching up on things I want to listen to. If I didn't do these as part of my commute, I'd have to find other time to do them. I also find it helpful mentally to have a "transition" time between home and work to get ready for my day or wind down after work when things are getting more stressful, and I've heard others say the same.

Friends who commute to work on the train use the time to read books or sleep. Again, if they didn't do these things then, they'd need to find some other time to do them so the actual amount of lost time is pretty small.

> * I think it's a mistake to view all commuting time as "lost".*

I think it's a mistake to claim something as subjective as a fact.

To me it's lost and that's that. I don't want to isolate myself with music or podcasts. I dislike earplugs because they make my ears hurt, I don't want to lug around big headphones, I like it when I can put everything I need for going out in my pockets, and I also don't process learning material well while I am physically moving (or waiting for my transport to move me around).

You simply made the best out of your way of life and that's cool. Just don't assume everyone else wants to do the same.

To me all time spent going from point A to point B -- in a work setting, mind you, I quite like travelling outside of work -- is lost in a meaningless way.

> I dislike earplugs because they make my ears hurt,

Same here, they also set off my tinnitus.

==To me it’s lost and that’s that==

Seems pretty close minded. All of the things you mention can be achieved on a commute. Leave your computer in the office and don’t isolate yourself with music or podcasts on the walk.

You seem to miss the point. I want to achieve certain amount of things done during my day. Commuting is a completely empty time for me since I can't use it to invest in education, nor do I like sitting around waiting to arrive to somewhere.

You might call it close-minded which is not a productive way to discuss. I call it a preference, one I had a long time to realise I was having. I tried being productive on commutes, never liked it and it was even making me tired very quickly.

The phrase, “to me it’s lost and that’s that”, doesn’t really imply there is a productive discussion to be had. You found what works for you, congrats. Loads of other people are in the middle-ground trying to find out what might work for them.

I have given my conclusion at the start and then elaborated on it which seems like I'm at least explaining my point of view.

Nitpicking on the format of my comment like you are doing isn't helpful though so let's just stop. :)

What about the vast majority of people driving to work instead of using public transport? I agree with the posts below, commuting is a waste of my time I’m expected to pay for. Another way to look at it, why are we generating all these pollutants to run our transportation systems twice a day for people who are either incapable of working at home or need some sort of social interaction while at work (the most ridiculous pro office work argument I’ve seen today so far)

This is really important! I really enjoyed my 30-minute walking commute. It didn't feel like wasted time: I got exercise and time to think and all of that stuff.

It also gives me the chance to explore a bit on my way home (since I don't have time constraints).

Best commute I ever had was a 1 hour cycle that was mostly uphill and into the prevailing wind in the morning.

It's a mistake to limit your view towards either of both stances.

Here's a great study about the complexity of associating well-being and commuting:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11116-019-09983-9...

Whether your commute sucks depends on the direct context: modes of transport, time of day,... But it also depends on why you ended up choosing to accept the commute and the trade-offs you made that made you end up in that position.

The study does report that longer commutes have a clear negative impact on subjective well-being. Sure, it's nice to read or sleep on a train or bus. But if you're spending 3 hours a day between doors, you're not spending that time on other, deeply personal, pursuits: taking care of your kids, taking a walk through the park, spending time with family or friends, cooking a proper meal for yourself, working out, etc. etc.

Tons of people spend hours on the road or in the train between urban centers and suburban areas. Why? Because the former is where they'd find the job they need to be able to afford to live in the latter. That's how you come to see things like "sleeper" or "commuter" towns: partly deserted areas where a large part of the population has gone away for the day. Which, of course, impacts local economy and social structures.

Modern commuting is a relatively new evolution. Historically, work and home life bled into one another and people lived close to their work, depending on the context. There were absolutely obvious drawbacks, but you'd also see that society consisted of local communities with a strong social cohesion. Modern commuting is a side effect of the rise of the modern workplace from the early to mid-20th century on.

Commuting is also caused by a process called gentrification: the renovation of urban neighborhoods, and as a result the influx of a more wealthy demographic pushing out the poorer strata who can't afford housing anymore. Let's not forget that some modern hip and famous urban neighborhoods in New York, San Fransisco, Paris, Berlin or London historically used to be ghetto's where poor and destitute lived in tenamments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification

Now, I don't think that a single flu epidemic or a recession is going to suddenly change how we are going to live and work overnight. Instead, I think we'll rather see profound changes over the course of the next 50 years as populations are ageing and our very lifestyle and Modern Way of Living - including commuting, views on family choices and high education levels - will (and already is) spawning fundamental and existential questions among young people.

Two things, your source for travel times puts average San Diego commute at 26 minutes. It’s more like 1 hour minimum depending on what time of day you leave. I’d question the accuracy of this data even though it’s gov data. It looks like you picked the best case here yourself.

Second thing, not everybody has a need or even a want to be around people during their work day. I have horrible ADD, socializing at work means I get nothing done. Further why do you get less promotions and pay and why does team comradery suffer? I can’t see a correlation between WFH and those items you listed.

Consider that instead of paying a big metro salary, your employer will do what defense contractors do... pay 120% of the median salary in Nowhereville.

The defense contractor can't offshore your job. Once we normalize WFH, give it a decade and SWE salaries will be 120% of India, not 120% of Nowhereville.

My employer would rather pay 120% of Nowhereville for a dev in the eastern standard time zone than pay an Indian salary for that exact same dev working in India. And they'd even rather pay 120% of east coast major metro salary for that same dev commuting to their major metro office at least a few days a week.

I get the impression that much of the non-core software dev has already been sent to India. Much of what's left is core to the business and highly speed/quality sensitive, less price sensitive. Some of it even got offshored then reshored when management realized that time/language/culture/etc issues impose a variety of real costs that may or may not be acceptable depending on the project.

There are still significant challenges wrt workplace culture, meeting times, organizational setup (how work is actually synchronized between timezones/handed off), and, most importantly, language.

That said, a decade is a long time from now.

Language can be learned; but working with an European/US West/Malaysian team was a nightmare, because there's no way to schedule anything in everyone's daytime, and the resulting latency has horrible knock-on effects. Everything else can be changed, but the rotation of the Earth is...sort of non-negotiable.

(Mind you, we avoided actual teleconferences like the plague, but even sending an email was problematic: "yeah, this needs to go to A in Malaysia. God forbid that it then needs to go to B in USA, and then to C in Europe, because that's two whole days until you get a reply, minimum". Persuading people to work night shifts didn't quite work, either.)

> Language can be learned

Sure, but that doesn't mean they're communicating in the same way. You've got to learn (or unlearn) cultural aspects, too.

Then throw in the timezone difference, and a clear level-of-effort difference aka "case of the fuck-its", and you get a workflow that is entirely different from the local office.

We got around the time difference by offshoring in Latin America, who are on the same timezones.

Yes the commute is incredibly draining

This is absolutely the issue! I wish companies would consider small satellite offices.

"The office is 5-20 minutes away" is unrealistic if you plan on having a family AND a career that involves working in more than one place. Heck even the bad scenario "The office is 1 hour away" is kind of optimistic given how population is distributed. So remote work is the future for most senior/sufficiently advanced knowledge jobs in my view.

Another option to greatly improve that second scenario for people who can't or don't want WFH is giving the option to work something like 11 AM - 8 PM instead 8 AM - 5 PM, to miss the bad traffic. If that schedule fits in with the life outside of work, it could make that job a lot less frustrating.

This is what I did, until HR said people are working too many long hours and decided to close the office earlier. They actually did a cost cut on the electricity and security of the building, but the effect is they pretend to care about the employees and they close the office before the end of the rush hours. Years ago, I was leaving the office at night when the commute was as low as 15 minutes, at rush hour with a car it takes up to 2 hours per direction (11 miles).

People can do both. Our last startup had a small permanent HQ, flexible WFH, and a Regus subscription.

All of our employees loved being able to WRF or get an office wherever they needed, especially sales who could meet in a local space close to their meetings for that day.

Yeah 95% < 20 minute public transportation for me. Very little interest in working from home.

So maybe many of the people who love WFH really just hate their commutes.

Yet another YIMBY argument in disguise.

Yeah, pretty much. 1+ hour of my life that I can't get back that's just getting from point A to point B to generate wealth for someone else. I can generate wealth for someone else at home in my sweatpants just as well thank you very much.

Plus the MMM guy calculated that each mile you shave off of your commute saves you like ~700 bucks a year (driving). I haven't owned a car for 3+ years so that's moot to me, but the not-having-a-car cost savings have been fantastic.

I don't think it's in disguise. Many WFH threads here on HN have people openly saying they dislike the commute and the office atmosphere that prevents them from focusing.

Yes to disliking both the commute and especially the loud office atmosphere that prevents focusing.

I am faced with B but I achieve A by driving a motorcycle.

You know what? I bet you, most people don't enjoy wasting 3h+ of the day commuting. Waking up at the crack of dawn to rush into the office.

They probably don't enjoy the forced beer night outs with coworkers and mundane water cooler conversations either. They have real friends and loved ones they rather be with.

People go to work so that they can put food on the table, they don't go to the office to socialize. There are plenty of better ways to interact with people other than the office.

I bet you, they also rather use their own private washrooms. Eat fresh food at home and be in their comfortable A/C home rather than a cramped office.

Just because the society demands that everyone joins the rat race to go to the office, it doesn't mean it's an acceptable status quo.

In regards to the commute, you're probably right. But you live in a bubble if you think those most workers see nights out with their coworkers as "forced". After-work happy hours are the absolute highlight of the week/month for most people I know that work in banking, consulting, sales, education, etc. Many of them will even voluntarily meet up outside of work to spend more time together.

Many people, especially those in non-tech industries, aren't so introverted as most SWEs, and are actually friends with their coworkers and love the opportunity to socialize throughout the day while at work. Most everyone I know that works outside of tech would dread the thought of having to spend every day alone at home without people to chat with in the break room. Just because you apparently have such a negative attitude towards your coworkers does not mean that most others do.

That's until you reach a certain point in your life (baby, sponse) or the staff changes or teams structure.

We've all been there. The strongest bonds were made at my first few companies. Once you leave and are no longer friends hanging out you'll probably realize they are not true friends. But those times were great.

Besides we in tech need to go home to work on our side project.

> That's until you reach a certain point in your life (baby, sponse)

I’m past that point, as are all of my friends. Nothing in my comment is changed by that fact.

If anything, coworker relationships actually become more important as you get older and your other friends start to drift away. Post age 30, work is one of the best (if not the only, for most people) opportunities to socialize and make friends. I’ve noticed that people in other fields realize this and take advantage of it, but those in technical positions don’t, and many techies seem to even actively despise that aspect.

We are being treated as interchangeable cogwheels. At certain point you do start to despise the social aspects of work, yes.

Plus, I've had several people -- all the way to the CEO -- assure me how much I am appreciated and even looked at as a superhuman, yet 2 months later boom, we have to lay you off.

Defense mechanism or not, it's pretty normal to not mix personal and work lives and you pretending it's not dysfunctional to have friends at work is actually a bit worrying. You just got lucky, mate. That's cool and I am happy for you. But you should recognise it should absolutely not be the normal state of affairs.

No, I’m sorry that your situation is the way it is, but the dysfunctional mindset here is the one that thinks that making friends is not normal. If you really think the way that your post describes, you should find a new job ASAP because it is absolutely not healthy to view such a large portion of your life that way.

Being laid off has nothing to do with friendship. As your post even says, you should separate personal from business. I know several people who were separated from places of work and still maintain strong bonds with their now-former coworkers. I personally left my company of 5 years on not-so-great terms and yet several of the people in my wedding party are coworkers from that job. Work is a great place to begin friendships, and just because you no longer work at the same company does not mean your friendship has to end. And that’s the way it should be.

Well, I don't think we disagree. I know that friendships can start at work and I'm okay with that. I was mostly saying that it shouldn't be the norm because mixing work and personal life can lead to pretty nasty problems.

I too have a few pleasant acquaintances that are former co-workers, by the way.

Your original comment states that it is “dysfunctional to have friends at work”. We absolutely disagree.

Seems like we do then. In my eyes it's something that shouldn't be encouraged but also shouldn't be resisted if it happens naturally.

I've observed a lot of Stockholm syndrome in people in offices and that made me believe many are forcing relationships at work so at to make their workplace more tolerable. I could be wrong though.

Yeah... it's called being polite and sociable

Let's not conflate being professional (which includes being polite) with actually making friends in the office. Very different things.

Right, that's why I included being 'sociable' as well!

Ah well, at this point I believe I made the wrong impression. I am actually quite an ongoing guy and easily bond with people.

HOWEVER, when in a work setting I prefer to grab the problem at hand by the horns and start wrestling it. I like small talk -- maybe even too much! -- and that's exactly why I gradually learned to deflect most such attempts by colleagues so as not to be in an awkward position later after I have bonded with 10+ people but got zero work done. :D

You know?

No, I don't know. I don't have trouble navigating being personable to my coworkers and getting work done. In fact, it's kind of hard to imagine how being personable gets in the way of productivity, when I'd imagine the opposite to be true - that is to say a lack of personableness amongst co-workers in an office would lead to inefficiencies. I'm not sure how being personable, to you, means bonding to the extent that nothing got done.

I've seen being too personable get in the way of productivity.

- The employee who spends the day having extra long visits around the office.

- The employee who joins every social event team possible so much they are never doing their core role

- The helpful senior dev who spends all day teaching a junior only to avoid the bug queue and push their work to other seniors

- The company meeting where everyone listens as Sally is given an above and beyond reward for their work on a project everyone else did but Sally. Sally is very personable with the CEO

Let's just get our work done.

Sigh, not one joke gets past you.

Thanks for the discussion.

> Plus, I've had several people -- all the way to the CEO -- assure me how much I am appreciated and even looked at as a superhuman, yet 2 months later boom, we have to lay you off.

It most likely wasn't their choice. You can't really have that affect your friendships.

Coworkers are not your friends. If they are, I think it's unhealthy because it mean you have sentimental bound with the company you work for. That mix badly with business (because the relationship you have with your company is a business one).

If an other company offer XX% more than your current company but you stay for your "friends" you could have a big disappointment in the future.

I personally think this would be a very difficult mindset to have in regards to an environment I spend so much of my time in. Just because you have a financial business relationship with your employer does not mean you can’t have friendships with other people that also have business relationships with your employer. It would be unhealthy to not have some type of friendship with people you spend so much time with.

The majority of my closest friends (and their closest friends) are people that started from work relationships and we have had no problem leaving those companies when the time came, and we have maintained our friendships. It’s not any different than any other friendship where people sometimes move or start new hobbies.

That said, if someone does choose to stay at a specific company because they have friends there... so what? Having a strong social circle and support network is, in many cases, a better reason to work at a company than a higher paycheck.

I definitely have work friends, but it's disingenuous to call most peoples relationship with their boss just a "financial relationship".

In the US your healthcare and well-being are pretty much dependent on your job. And make no mistake, this is 2020, where your org will fire you for any reason so long as it makes sense to an MBA. As your sole source of income and healthcare they wield immense power in your life, and any interactions you have with coworkers or other work-related engagements are going to revolve around that power disparity in some way. Sure there are freelancers and well paid devs who can come and go as they please, but those are a tiny minority compared to all of those who are thusly constrained.

Point is, don't make work your social life cuz when they fire your ass you're going to lose your support network AND your meal ticket.

Two thoughts:

1) This is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's no secret that when it comes time to let people go (or time to promote), managers (even the MBA boogeymen) will stick their neck out for people they like more than for people they do not know. If you're continuously being dropped like a hot rock by your employers and you don't think it's because of performance reasons, perhaps you should reconsider your work relationship habits.

2) What's with the notion that you "lose your support network" just because you get fired? There is no reason that you should stop being friends with people just because you lose your job, even if those friendships stemmed from your workplace. I understand that it may be more difficult to find the time to socialize with them if you are not at work with them (which is exactly why it's worth it to go to those "forced beer nights" and build a relationship outside the context of work), but that doesn't mean you should stop putting in the effort and cut ties entirely.

Even if you are entirely career focused, getting fired is a situation in which you should actually lean heavier on your support network, especially coworker friends, as they are the ones that most likely can do the most to help you find a replacement job.

I've group friends at work and we have a whatsapp group where we talk at least a few times a week. Three people in our group of 6 left for new jobs this past year and we're still in contact. One guy moved to Michigan for a job last June. He came back to NY just to visit us and we organized a few dinners and get togethers during his stay. It's not really a farfetched idea to love the people you work with every day.

I would have hard time calling those kind of people my friend by my definition of friendship. How much time do you see those people IRL ? Online relationship meaning nothing to me. The work place force relation between people. I work with a guy I hate for almost 2 years. You are not my friend because I m forced to work with you. You are my friend if you are willing to make a sacrifice for me the same way I would for you.

If changing employers is what breaks the friendship, then it wasn't a very good friendship to begin with.

I really don't see the issue in socialising with colleagues and potentially becoming friends.

I think you make some valid points for some people, but I think you may be overlooking the fact that for some, the social connections made at work can be very valuable. Especially for people who recently move to a new area, "work friends" can be as valuable as other social groups.

I go to the office to socialize. Its not my primary reason of course, but I value the conversations I have over lunch, and we often take time to play games after work or get involved in sports as a bonding experience. To dismiss the social aspects of office work is going a bit too far.

I accept though that many people feel like you do in this case. I just want to point out that many people may value the things that you do not.

> I bet you, they also rather use their own private washrooms.

Underrated perk. I used to have to go down 6 floors and search for a nice, hidden restroom on a mostly female floor to be comfortable.

Being in charge of what paper products are purchased is a strong perk as well. Ditto the coffee beans, afternoon tea & Pens stocked by the office manager (me)

> They probably don't enjoy the forced beer night outs with coworkers and mundane water cooler conversations either

Those mundane water cooler conversations are the only conversations I'd get if I weren't in the office. I enjoy them.

> There are plenty of better ways to interact with people other than the office

Like what?

Lots of people prefer different things. I'm not sure I understand the acrimony here. My point was that they can be advantages to being in person and this wfh Utopia is not one size fits all.

Your experience and personal issues don't reflect the thinking of the rest of the world

> wasting 3h+ of the day commuting

It's not wasting, it's time to myself.

Do you have kids?

I get a lot done during that time, I need that.

not sure why this is so downvoted

Commuting (if done by public transport anyway) can be productive time, personal development time, gaming time, reading time etc. It's often the only time people get to themselves all day.

Even if you drive, there are podcasts and audiobooks.

You have got to be kidding me. Melting precious, finite fossil fuels to spend time going to your job because you need time away from your family? How can you sincerely sit here and type this?

I’ll take the downvotes- this is absurdity.

Agreed. It's funny that they're failing to see the irony that WFH is a way for them to reclaim that time, by instead of being forced to commute, bugging off to your nearest coffee shop and getting some of that time for yourself without the hassle.

Also, some people don't get to commute on comfy trains, ubers, or cars, and instead have to take crowded subway trains where this time is for themselves and shared with the other 6 people touching their body and breathing down their neck.

Commuting by car is mostly wasted time too unless you really like audiobooks and podcasts.

I've often marveled at the absurdity of how many of my coworkers openly admit that a big appeal of the office for them is getting away from their wives and kids. Healthy and normal!

Before becoming a parent I wondered about it too. Now I understand. Little kids are a disaster to one's brainpower and sanity. WFH with an infant next door is much harder. Going to an office to work really feels like a break instead of a chore.

In my life experience, myself included, I often knew about something a lot when, in fact, I really didn't. I suspect those that are down-voting us older people haven't yet experienced what we did or are.

I believe so. Before my daughter was born, I thought I knew what to expect. I was very wrong, but not in the things I thought I might be. A lot of minutiae of parenthood caught me by surprise - and ended up explaining mysteries like suddenly starting to enjoy the office.

I've been working from home for 8 years. If you really desire the commute, just go drive around. Or, better yet, take a walk or bike. I do this every day in the summer. It's much more enjoyable than being packed in traffic.

It’s sad that you have so little control over your time. This is an extreme rationalization if I’ve ever heard it. Wouldn’t you rather have alone time anywhere else but crammed in a train? Perhaps, a park?

A train, not too crammed and with a table, is actually a nice place to be alone for an hour with one's laptop, working on one's favourite open source project, studying something of interest, or reading Hacker News.

A park is fine for a stroll, a stretch, a bit of fresh air.

But people need quiet, unpressured, indoors time to themselves as well.

Coffee shop outside work time works too, in theory. (Although those can be more packed than a train.)

But you may have to fight to be "allowed" alone time if it appears to be discretionary, because not everyone understands or accepts that. They think it is selfish.

People are strange, and will happily understand and let someone "go to work" with set hours and a "commute". But strangely, not if the someone wants the equivalent personal time outside work with no commute.

You are right that it's sad for someone to have that little control over their time. But it is a fact of life for many people with families. "Work" time is accepted only when the time appears imposed by a third party; self-selected alone time, not so much.

That sounds lovely but doesn't match everyone's experiences. I spent two years commuting from Park Slope to the Upper West Side in NYC for a 9-5 job (so rush hour commutes). Standing room only, two transfers, loud, smelly, and stressful. No way to read or do anything productive.

Public transit vs fighting through traffic is a vastly different experience. Maybe if it was a relaxing drive in, but if you live around a major metro, traffic is probably horrendous and it's hard to enjoy that time.

It can be; it can also be a sardine can with no room for that.

It might be one of those “be careful what you wish for” situation. First, you enjoy the freedom and lack of commute. After ten years your employer folds and you notice you’re all alone.

Work may not be everyone’s primary source of social life, and indeed there seems to be a growing mindset that socializing at work is bad, somehow (probably part of the US culture to reduce all of life to shareholder value).

But even in those cases, my experience has been that I am far more likely to participate in social events on days that I have worked at the office, either because I’m already showere & dressed, and used to “going somewhere”. Or because social events tend to happen closer to where ever I’m working than where I life.

> I don't understand the appeal of doing either full-time

It's all about the commute, the office quality, and the office culture.

I'm sure you can imagine how being full-time one or the other would be beneficial depending on how these factors compare.

Yeah I work from home 3 days a week. I have a big deal, monitors of my own.

I was talking with someone recently and they were excited to work from home since they bought a new home... so they don't have to work from home from their kitchen table that maybe seats 4 people... maybe.

I think we forget that work from home generally requires some space. Not everyone's home or family situation allows for it.

Conversely, you can get a lot more space a lot more affordably if you don't have to live within commuting distance of a central business district filled with office buildings.

That's a pretty big commitment to ONLY work at home if you go a ways out, and I suspect where people live isn't entirely relative to their current job.

You don't necessarily have to relocate to a rural area or anything, but you'll have a lot more space and still be able to save money sometimes by living in a 2-3 bedroom in the suburbs rather than a studio apartment downtown.

Many people, especially more recent generations, would happily choose the studio apartment downtown over living in the suburbs even if they worked from home all the time. In my remote job, I personally see the requirement to have more space for a home office as a burden rather than a benefit.

Yeah, most people eventually outgrow that.

Not sure why you think this. Recent trends have shown a massive influx to urban cores, including those of older ages that have families. It has nothing to do with "outgrowing" and everything to do with the fact that people no longer romanticize cookie cutter suburban neighborhoods like they used to. If anything, society is "outgrowing" suburbanization.

Nobody ever romanticized "cookie cutter suburban neighborhoods", they were just a refuge from crime, vagrancy, and the high cost of living in urban areas. All of which are factors that led me to no longer romanticize cities the way you do. The Bay Area might be an exception because not even the suburbs there are affordable, but at least in the Seattle area there's a definite lifestyle split between families and single young men.

Oh yeah totally agreed there.

I do worry that this extends to a sort of class situation where folks again with fewer resources are at a disadvantage as for them they have to go out damn far most places to even start thinking about a home.

> I also expect that the shift toward WFH will not be a positive thing for highly paid Silicon Valley engineers. Once people are working from home most of the time, it’s not much of a stretch to hire cheaper engineers from a few states over at literally half the cost of a SV engineer. From there, it’s only a few more levels of difficulty to unlock international talent at 1/4 of the price.

That's a fantasy only. The tech giants that are supporting the high salaries can already do all of that. They're not because they can afford to not. They can do max WFH anytime they want to. It is not a first tier concern, it's a third or fourth tier concern, far down the list.

They don't need to hire people for $50,000 instead of $200,000. They need the $200,000 people to keep helping them generate $5b, $10b, $50b per year in operating income. So long as they do, the salaries will remain high. The salary difference on what they could potentially save (and potentially wreck the house instead), is not worth it to do such a major switch.

Microsoft will approximately double in size in the next six or seven years, to $250-$300 billion in sales and $70-$80 billion in operating income. Google and Facebook are in the same growth boat. You think they're so worried about shaving a few pennies of salary cost on those growth machines, that they're going to put their entire systems at risk? No, they won't do that under any circumstance. The only thing they'll do is keep lobbying for importing more tech labor to try to dilute some (they're running the modest risk scenario) and continue to grow outside of SV (and other expensive tech areas like NYC or Seattle) physically as they have been for a long time.

Yep - satellite office growth isn’t a cost play, it’s a hunger for more bodies that can be thrown at projects that are guaranteed massive ROI.

>From there, it’s only a few more levels of difficulty to unlock international talent at 1/4 of the price.

Nah, I bet language barriers and substantial time zone difference will keep most companies out of that mix. You'd need to change the company a bit more to accommodate that.

> Nah, I bet language barriers and substantial time zone difference will keep most companies out of that mix. You'd need to change the company a bit more to accommodate that.

I'm speaking from direct experience managing mixed teams of US-based and international remote employees.

Language barrier is not an issue. Most of the top international developers became experts by consuming years of English documentation, tech news, and discussion.

Time zones are the biggest hurdle, but once you get into the flow of an asynchronous routine it's much easier than you expect. In my experience, WFH tech employees like to push workflows toward being asynchronous anyway.

>Most of the top international developers became experts by consuming years of English documentation, tech news, and discussion.

Sure for top international developers who are fluent in English.

But top international developers who are very fluent in English aren't cheap.

In my experience communication and language skills are even more important in remote work, and the vast majority of cheap international developers do not have those skills in English.

I would agree - I managed a team that was mostly Europe and US. Everyone was roughly on par in terms of pay and capabilities and the tz differences were actually advantages. the overlap allowed us to essentially double what could be done in a day. We also had a lot of wfh.. my only issue was I had to keep reminding people they couldn’t check out in meetings. I had one guy who would take calls during meetings and never had a clue what we were talking about. Pretty much everyone did email during meetings... but that’s not just a wfh problem— I had to ask plenty of people in the office to leave their laptops out of meetings. It took awhile but eventually folks paid attention. Personally I’ve worked at least half of my twenty years from home or remote office. I really enjoy being able to mix and match and be strategic with my time.

Language may not be an issue but comprehension is a huge problem.

Language barriers aren't relevant when the country you're outsourcing to has the same primary language. TZ differences are a non-issue for distributed companies already using JIRA and Slack for everything. Those two things would only even be a concern for the tiniest minority of companies.

I'm a software engineer based in Brisbane, Australia, I've worked for two US-based startups who were specifically growing their offices in Australia because it's cheaper to hire for the same roles here than in the US.

Offshoring has been tried and only succeeds under very specific circumstances and with very specific conditions. For one, not all engineering talent is created equal. You'd be surprised at how important language and culture are to succesfully building a technology product. So it's not just a few more levels of difficulty. It can sometimes be completely insurmountable to hire good quality talent overseas, especially if you don't know how to go about doing it, don't understand the culture of the country you're hiring from or it's business practices or don't know how to properly structure and manage your projects which is difficult enough as it is with local talent.

Besides, this assumes that "WFH" will be normalized which I doubt will happen. It will be forced on us, but workplaces are social places just as much as they are places to do work.

Beyond that, this all assumes that SARS-COV-2 is a true epidemic of proportions we haven't seen since the Spanish flu which, despite all the alarmist media, isn't likely. It's good to take all the right precautions, but we aren't living in the early 19th/20th century anymore.

We have modern medicine, proper hygiene, and a much faster rate of information transfer than we ever have before.

> Beyond that, this all assumes that SARS-COV-2 is a true epidemic of proportions we haven't seen since the Spanish flu which, despite all the alarmist media, isn't likely.

Media aren't alarmist enough. They don't understand how exponential growth works. Will this epidemic kill as much as the Spanish flu in absolute sense? Probably, especially if you factor in all the deaths from other causes that happened because the hospital system was DDoSed. In relative sense? Maybe not, there was ~4x less people back then.

> It's good to take all the right precautions, but we aren't living in the early 19th/20th century anymore.

Exactly. 19th and early 20th century would fare better. Yes, the virus would kill more of the infected people. But it also wouldn't travel as far and as fast, and wouldn't be damaging national economies so badly. Or threatening the food security of so many people (both in absolute and relative terms).

> We have modern medicine, proper hygiene, and a much faster rate of information transfer than we ever have before.

We also have just-in-time supply chains and lean philosophy of "cutting out fat" - i.e. any spare capacity in the system that could help with a crisis. Modern medicine won't do much if you use it all up in a week, and more won't be coming for another couple of months if at all. Faster information transfer won't help you if you have barely enough doctors to staff hospitals at regular load, forget the peak load during a pandemic (and note that many doctors will catch it and go out of circulation).

This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Blindly assuming exponential growth will actually hold is downright excuse for panicing thinking. Exponentials inevitably breaks once it reaches a limiting condition. Which is well before "infects literally everyone" when there are sensible measures taken to minimize contact made.

That's exactly it. Exponential growth can only be cut short if proper containment measures are followed. If not, infection rates will look like the S curve of popular technology adoption rates, where it only tapers off when nearly everyone has been infected.

"Infects literally everyone" is 7 billion people. If it infects 0.1% of that, it's already going to be extreme.

Obvious limiting factor would be local saturation. Problem is, we're shuffling population faster than ever before.

No, I see no reason to not expect the virus to ride the exponent into millions of cases. I guess we'll see if I was right in less than two weeks.

EDIT: On top of that - arguably, it's not the virus that's most dangerous right now; it's the healthcare system overload and the disruption to the supply chains (and the economy in general) it caused. Not going to take bets on that, but I feel somewhat positive that these secondary effects will lead to more deaths than the COVID-19 itself.

Offshoring is a matter of perspective. From most IT orgs the current situation is exactly this: software and services are made by integrating stuff implemented by suppliers in foreign countries and foreign language speakers (mostly english).

I do think it's puzzling that SV companies don't do more offshoring to eg European countries where SWE salaries are so much lower but lots of talent exists and there is a dearth of interesting product companies.

But would it really be bad for SV engineers? Maybe it would just make the SW market hotter, just like the mainstreaming of open source boosted paid SW work instead of hurting it.

It's not going to normalize WFH, but it will normalize paying for WFH-related software. Companies that start using new collaboration tools aren't going to stop paying the 50k a year or whatever for them once the epidemic is over, because they were hard to get approved and it isn't their money anyway. But you'll still need to mostly start going to the office again.

> From there, it’s only a few more levels of difficulty to unlock international talent at 1/4 of the price.

You say that like outsourcing engineers is a new thing. This has been happening for as long as tech has been a cost center and will continue to happen until U.S. salaries are commensurate with the rest of the world, I don't see why this virus will accelerate the trend any further.

Having worked with that kind of arrangement, I highly doubt if it _really_ worked outside of a MBA manager's presentation.

Yes, international talents are there, but unless you're willing to develop a local agency that are up to par with the quality standard of US, it's not going to be of positive value. At which point the cost might as well be the same.

This of course doesn't apply to relatively non-technical work like call centers.

My current company is currently re-shoring (if that's a word). After years of sub-optimal code being shipped over the systems eventually started to keeled over. It's been pretty eye opening rewriting some of the older code and seeing how little care was given, variables named x1, x2 etc....

Tech isn't always a cost center, though. Whether it is depends a lot on what part of the industry you're talking about.

> but we need to get over this idea that WFH is the best option for everyone.

I don't think anybody is claiming this. The argument is more that WFH is best for people who prefer to WFH and are able to do so effectively.

Last time I checked, most big tech companies have little tolerance for WFH, only allowing workers to WFH at most once or twice per week. There's clearly a middle ground between "no remote workers" and "WFH is the best option for everyone".

If you are at a place that doesn't allow some form of wfh in todays age that environment is considered toxic and should factor into your job search.

"Toxic"?

Seriously?

I'm quite grateful to be able to work from home as needed in my current gig, but "toxic" seems like it should mean something more than "not doing what I want."

Then again, I've suspected "toxic" of being a meaningless phrase primarily used to tar and feather things the speaker dislikes for a while now, do maybe it fits perfectly.

The criticism of the (ab)use of toxic is fair but I see is a meaningful use in this context implicitly.

It isn't the policy itself that does it but in context without a need. That implicitly has an assumption of "no need for the restriction in this context and yet here it is". In this case it implies a management which is too rigid to accept the possibility of working from home at all. It implies one or more of the following.

1. "Not invented here" syndrome for remote working. Willful ignorance isn't a very good look. 2. A complete lack of trust is implicit in the social environment. 3. Needing a physical presense to apply some sort of office social manipulation. 4. Excessive authoritarianism from leadership and management

Essentially "toxic" means "red flag" hinting at a messed up culture. It is like taking away free coffee being a sign it is time to move on. It isn't that the expense is crippling but it hints that they aren't being valued anymore and are starting to bean count.

These signals are completely negated when there is a reason outside of any dynamics. To give a silly hypothetical example if a stupidly powerful crazed fundamentalist Mormon splinter sect manages to create a worldwide prohibition on coffee it doesn't really reflect upon the management.

For more grounded in reality examples a job where part of it involves say physically examining devices on a daily basis or say in a SIF where "no information physically leaving the site and designed to be network independent" wouldn't be toxic as it would have an actual somewhat legitimate reason behind it (even if one may have very reasonable qualms about the secrecy philosophically - let alone what they are keeping secret).

It might not necessarily be toxic. But it's a possible red flag that the company doesn't trust their employees. And that they time lunch breaks and other breaks.

> Many of the parents with young children at home are dreading the loss of their office space right now

As someone without kids can you explain this? Where I work at many employees with kids come to work much later and leave much earlier since they have to pick up their kids or send them to after school activities. Wouldn't working from home better this process?

They are not talking about how they schedule and manage the family life. They are talking about desperately needing some time away from the family. Which is normal and healthy (depending on whether you discuss it and make time for yourself, or whether you escape trough alcohol and ridiculous amounts of time at work).

Also just being able to work without distraction. It's very hard to explain to young children that they cannot disturb their parents for several hours and many people won't have a spare room just to work.

The school shuffle starts at 4. For younger children, they often have a stay at home caregiver (stay at home spouse, family member, or in home nanny). It can be challenging to get work done with a two year old screaming around the house with no concept of boundaries.

For older children, if you aren't the designated pick up parent for the day, it can still be quite distracting with children coming and going and doing their thing without a lot of regard for others (as children are still developing that capacity).

Office can be a quiet refuge where you get to be around adults instead.

It gives you more time to be with them at that early age which goes by quickly.

It can feel excruciatingly slow in the moment. I think a lot of parents forget about that when they look back with nostalgic fondness on early childhood.

"Daddy are you done work yet?"

2 minutes pass

"Daddy are you done work yet? When will you be done?"

closes the door

2 minutes pass

door opens...

It _is_ nice to be able to step away for 5 minutes and ask how their school day went when they get home and that sort of thing, but there are other times it can be pretty darn inconvenient, especially when they're under 5ish. And god help you if you don't have an office with a door :)

Probably depends on the person, the home, and the boundaries. I have a 2.5 yr old and 11 mo old and WFH w/ a dedicated but connected office. I personally love it. I don't find putting on the noise cancelling headphones, and the distractions are honestly lower than when I used to be in office. I like trading the commute for time w/ kids, despite missing the quiet time at times.

Once your 2.5y old turns 3 or 4 you will understand what folks are talking about :-)

I mean, that could be good for the greater economy. Big tech is better off, the wealth coming into distributed workers benefits their areas, and the distributed workers might come out even? Lower cost of living vs lower income. The only people unambiguously hurt are landowners, which is fine by me, given their decades of rent seeking behavior.

Time zones are going to remain a significant barrier. I think it'll actually deliver a significant benefit for jobs to leave the Bay Area because it will free engineers from having to live in the Bay Area.

I agree.

What I hope will happen with this is that companies become a lot more flexible and encourage people who want to to regularly work a few days a week remotely.

For my employees, a lot of them do get more heads-down work done at home. It makes sense for them to work from home when they need intense focus. They also usually do better collaborative work in the office.

I also have employees who really like working remotely and others who really don't like working. I wouldn't want to force people who don't like working remotely to do so.

Some people at my work can walk to work, and coming into the office is an opportunity to interact with other driven people to build great stuff. We shoot the shit, get coffee together, and in general enjoy each other's company. For a lot of employees, coming into the office is something they enjoy.

Give me my own cube and a < 15 minute walk/cycle commute and then for me office would be better.

> highly paid Silicon Valley engineers. Once people are working from home most of the time, it’s not much of a stretch to hire cheaper engineers from a few states over at literally half the cost

What’s wrong with this? I’m one of these engineers in Silicon Valley who would like to live near family. “Half the cost” is still massively higher than the local rate in my home state, which I would happily accept.

"we need to get over this idea that WFH is the best option for everyone"

This is a strawman that always appears in every remote work thread and it is always treated at face value: If anyone proposes that they can/should work from home, somehow will reply that everyone can't work from home. Then cue a procession of people giving their tale about how they don't like working from home.

No one is saying, or has ever said, that everyone should WFH. But somehow the notion that some people WFH is threatening to people that don't want to / don't approve of it, and it's always cast in this binary manner. It's a completely dishonest tactic that is boorish.

I think it comes up because so many posts about WFH / Remote work have this angry / preachy angle arguing as if remote is the obvious and only desirable future, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a Luddite.

Discussions on this topic are more interesting when they’re focused on the trade offs and how best to optimize, rather than what other people “ought” to do.

Yet in the history of discussions about remote work on HN, overwhelmingly the top comments have been negative or posting this strawman.

Another PoV: once WFH is a norm, it would be easier to get SV salary in Oklahoma. One of the main reasons of working remotely is that you're not happy with your local rates.

I can more-or-less WFH whenever I want/need to. It's nice because I can do laundry or whatever around the house throughout the day and still do what I have to do as far as work is concerned, but I don't think I'd want to do it exclusively. At least not at my current job, though I think it's just the nature of my role more than it is anything else.

> dreading the loss of their office space

If I had office space, yes, I might be dreading the loss.

Please stop using engineer when referring to software developers.

I agree with you, but unfortunately, nobody seems to be able to stop Google's juggernaut of cultural influence.

I don't think your wrong, but does it matter?

Society has moved mountains to make work-at-the-office from 9 to 5 (WATO95) possible. It's mind boggling how much society has been bent to pay the _EXTRAORDINARY_ costs of WATO95.

Now, given that society is what it is, right now WATO95 seems cheap. But it really isn't. Some fun facts:

-- the electric car longevity problem --

Electric cars have this giant, unaddressed problem. A normal 'explode dead dinos' style car, even if well engineered, has about a million kilometers tops and then it's just done. Just about every component inside is at the end of its useful lifespan, from the entire engineblock to the wheels (those probably ended earlier), to even the interior; at some point people want a new style.

A well engineered electric vehicle is nothing like this; loads of components (not the batteries or the wheels, but most of the rest) have a lifetime 4x to 10x that easily.

The problem is, an individual car owner is NEVER going to clock that many miles on a car. After 10 years of ownership even if the materials can easily go for another 90, there are newer designs, more comfort, etc.

How do we solve this problem? We could, especially with self driving cars, go to a model where we pool cars: You don't own a car, you just order one, one will drive on its own to your front door within 5 minutes, you use it, and when you're done, it drives off. This pushes utility-per-day up to the levels required to actually use up the components in a 10 year span.

But that is not practical because of WATO95: At about 7am-9am, everybody wants a car, so that whole re-use thing just does not work. We can keep WATO, but then 95 thing has _GOT_ to go; that morning commute needs to be smeared way out; a single car needs to be busy from 5 in the morning to noon bringing at least 4 people to work, hopefully more.

-- traffic jams --

Here in the Netherlands, if ~10% of the workforce does not drive to work at all on any given day, there'd be no traffic jams. As is, there's hundreds of kilometers of traffic jam every workday. How much fuel, and lost hours is that? How many billions upon billions of dollars of value is society throwing down this hole to support WATO95?

-- health --

yeah the corona thing. It's complicated; isolation is very bad for mental health. But is 'drive to the office' (even if we get rid of 95, keep the WATO) the best option? Can we go for an alternative solution with more advanced connectivity (proper video calling, social solutions to staying connected even without an explicit appointment somehow?) Can we move everybody to a '2 days at home, 3 days a the office' model?

The list is way, way longer than this. You're not wrong; working from home as all sorts of major issues, but let's not lose sight of the incredible cost of WATO95 culture either.

SV companies are constantly trying to get you to move back to the area after you leave.

Talent outside the bay lags behind so its not as desirable for those companies. Not to mention the valley culture is a bit guild like

SV companies are constantly trying to find new ways to push the "life/work" balance as solidly an inextricably towards "work" as possible. Coercing you to be in SV shows you're committed to that, and are willing to sacrifice attachments you might have to family in other areas to give it all to the company. Making you be on site in SV gives them access to so many more work-squeezing tactics. Free lunches! (less personal time during lunches and you're talking about work at lunch anyways) On-site laundry! (less time you're doing mundane chores, more time you're working.)

It's a bit like stockbrokers in NYC. In order to be taken seriously by your peers, you have to spring for the expensive luxury Manhattan apartment. If you live in Queens or New Jersey and commute into Manhattan, that tells the brokerage you won't be hungry enough to work as aggressively as they need and you will be first in line to be fired.

Find better peers.

Yeah that's not the issue. It's when an entire industry is set up this way and the people with the real money want their highly pair employees to be competitive and addicted to their high pay.

So what you are saying instead is find a better industry to be in and better people to work for.

Ultimately though distribution of wealth as incredibly unequal as it is limits that choice substantially.

Self reinforcing loop. Publicly traded company has officers who have a fiduciary responsibility to return on investment aka they need to keep the stock price up and/or generate returns. Doesn't even have to be public, just one where the owners or investors are cracking the whip.

Consistently failing to make it grow mean they get the axe, which means they replace the nice, patient people with aggressive type-a folks who do what needs to be done. Rise-and-repeat over several cycles and you start to see this hardcore work culture.

The fat bonuses only reinforce it further. If you're gonna be copping six-figure bonuses you either hustle or you gtfo of the way, because there are plenty of people that would bust their ass for that chance. Again, play that cycle out over a few decades and here we are.

It's toxic as hell, but it shouldn't be surprising that it turns out this way since it's 100% structural.

> Talent outside the bay lags behind

Wow if ever there was a [citation needed] this is it.

Simple network effects. You find the most cutting edge web development experts in the bay, just like you find the most movie makers in Hollywood.

Is great work done elsewhere? Of course!

But for better or for worse, the bay is where the most ambitious webdevs go righ now.

Just like I bet the best aircraft engineers are in Chicago and Bethesda because that’s where Boeing and Lockheed are.

It’s not the talent that lags behind, it’s the environment.

This is an extremely limited and uninformed view of the world.

Especially considering what Boeing goes through right now, I would say the best aircraft engineers right now are located in Europe and they work in the Airbus headquarters.

But other than that: most recent innovative payment providers are coming mostly from Europe these days. Transferwise or Revolut comes to my mind as two such examples. Out of which Revolut reached a total valuation $1.7 billion not so long ago.

Also let's take a look at the online music streaming landscape: Tidal, Deezer and Spotify are all European companies.

There are whole industries (or segments at least) where SV is lagging behind.

So this environment argument doesn't hold any water.

Maybe there was a very narrow time period, let's say 10 years or so, when SV was really ahead of the pack in terms of technical skills, but those times are over.

And BTW, I didn't even mention machine learning and AI, where China is basically becoming the world leader right now.

> This is an extremely limited and uninformed view of the world. > > Especially considering what Boeing goes through right now, I would say the best aircraft engineers right now are located in Europe and they work in the Airbus headquarters.

Didn't airbus have issues of their own way back? Besides, airbus bought the a220 from bombardier, which makes it canadian rather than european. which just goes to show you, the products come from where the talent exists. silicon valley is a big part of it, but not the only game in town.

saying "environment doesn't matter," is ridiculous. but I agree—there is plenty of good engineering where elsewhere, but it is more likely to exist where there is a mass of other engineers :)

Yes I specifically said webdev not music streaming or AI.

My point is that communities form where an industry is at its peak and it’s those communities that attract top talent in that industry.

Like if you want to work at the forefront of private space industry right now you’d probably go to LA. Because that’s where SpaceX lives.

Californias GDP compared to the rest of the world tells a different story than what you are telling here.

k8s came from where ?

Containers ( cgroups ) came from where ?

Hashicorp is the standard for devops

Elon and Tesla took a curve out of IT but guess where they started ?

Your few startups are nice but the technology they run on is built in SV and that continues to be the place of innovation regardless of VCs trying to spark it elsewhere.

Yes other areas are innovating but SV does remain one of the most innovative area if not the main one. Everything else pales in comparison

HashiCorp is highly distributed. One founder lives in Los Angeles and the other recently moved to Connecticut. Far more employees live outside California than inside.

Source: I worked there from “early” until “mid” stage.

k8s was actually developed in Washington.

Why is Tesla in this list of companies supposedly (see sibling comments) providing tech that others build on? Honest question as I was always under the impression it was all proprietary.

When you work in SV its really common to ask a question on an internal company mailing list and get a reply from the developer contributing that feature to the kernel / filesystem / DB

It was a bit unnerving the first time it happened but you have access to so many people like that and you are around it daily.

You constantly find out about new things from your buddy over at the other company who tells you about something they are working on that is a completely new product.

Not to mention when something hits mainstream outside SV its aging in SV and soon will likely be obsolete

Example you might not know this but k8s is googles borg lite and everyone who has been around the valley has ran into someone who worked on it for years.

You simply don't have that experience outside SV...Not to mention things considered common knowledge in SV isnt common outside... eg I still have to explain to people why ITIL doesnt work with Agile DevOps ever since I left.

> I still have to explain to people why ITIL doesnt work with Agile DevOps ever since I left

Do you have any interesting reading on this subject? I'd like to get some material for my heavily ITIL-aligned shop.

Terraform has some good presentations on it.

At least the conference they had presented this material. I might have it saved somewhere and will look around and reply if I remember

This ignores OPs point that if remote work is normalized, they won't be asking you for anything anymore.

Not sure. Engineering skills are not linear (this is what allows for 10x engineer).

So the value that you get from an expensive engineer can be many number of times the saving. Of course, if a manager under employs an expensive engineer than yes.

Moreover, as engineering tools become better, the better engineer become much more productive, thus magnifying his advantage.