Or worse: they don't like being at their own home, so the thought of staying there is terrifying.
That's at least what I've gathered from those I talked with.
I mean, if someone is saying that a 40min commute in high traffic still doesn't tip the balance in favour of remote work, then they apparently either really like being in the office, or really dislike staying home. Parents come to mind for the latter, but most of the people I've known who have 4+ children work remotely, so this doesn't add up.
It's multifaceted. It might be fine if you own a large enough home that you can have a dedicated working space, with a door.
Even without kids, I find it extremely difficult to work from home without a dedicated space. If I try to work from the living room, I end up doing living room things (like playing video games).
For some people, though, the idea of engineering your environment to change your behavior is either impractical or unheard of, which is what I think gives these people the general impression that "working effectively from home is impossible."
I love my kid crawling on me while I work, she sits on my lap and watches around or hug me a bit.
I work in the living room, my wife is there, my kid too. The desk is equipped for work, to be clear (good chair, screens etc.), I occasionally play games on it in the evenings (not often, to be fair) and I work in my "home clothes". Been doing this for over 10 years now.
I have my rules: if I don't work enough or I see I lose focus often, I'll work more hours. If I work too much, I'll work less the next day.
The other day I was even shocked realizing how much time people spend chatting at work, my day seemed more intense at home than their at the office.
To everyone its own. My style has been working great and a hug or cuddle from wife/kid is a great boost to my productivity!
For those types, maintaining their position means endlessly manufacturing superficial validation. It's a game of perception.
I see where they're coming from because it's still somewhat surreal to me, but I want to go home.
Which brings me to another point: there's something off about this. Most of the cost of living compensation appears to address the cost of real estate, which is artificially inflated in the first place.
Why do companies still do that if all they achieve is pumping the local housing prices even more?
There are certain types of communication that are vastly superior to do in person that can get quite tedious over text or phone. A 2 minute quick talk can save tons of time.
Now if my colleague is working from home I get the that same disadvantage from working from home - even when I'm still in the office. Many of the downsides people list here with working from home will be shared by those who are still in the office.
Remote work will have to become much more common in the future. It makes absolutely no sense to waste so much time and energy on commutes.
Personally I would look for another job.
I love being able to work from home, when I'm recovering from being ill or if it somehow makes life easier on a particular day. Will probably come in handy during this crisis as well - so I'm very thankful of it.
But 363 times out of 365 I much prefer to work in office. And that is with the assumption that I won't be alone...
Taking this into account, along with the undeniable time and energy benefits of remote work, I think companies should start preparing for, allowing and offering remote work. It should become normalized, so that people who want to work from home on some days should be able to.
Importantly though, I don't think it makes sense for most companies to try to completely switch to remote work. Eventually, I think this will lead to a stable equilibrium of some significant percentage of people working from home and a significant percentage coming to work, on a given day. Except for companies which deliberately want to be remote-only, I doubt it would ever result in no one coming to the office.
This seems like a win-win. It reduces the burden of commuting for those that do not want it or cannot manage it on a given day, it gives people more free time, it lessens energy expenditure, but there's still an office to come to and socialize, interact directly and do immediate in-person business, just with a bit less people than usual.
I know this has happened with me and others I know. I wouldn't mind going into the office a day or two per week if it were useful but between travel and people working from home and people who aren't in the same office, there won't be a lot of people I work with circulating around if I do. So I don't bother.
But we're a pretty remote friendly company in general--although the degree to which people who have an office come in varies by team.
Like talking to a room where people are actually present and to 20 people each from their laptop, with the mic muted and the video turned off
It's much harder to 'read the room' and much is lost
And I certainly love working from home and don't fancy socializing much when at work
But technology made a lot of work-related things harder or worse
In fact, things like making the room easier to read despite using a camera is exactly what I was talking about. It is definitely the case with today's systems where you simply have a camera on the lid of the laptop and display many individual images of people on the screen. This does look very unnatural.
For instance, one very distracting aspect of this is that it is impossible for two people to be looking into each other's eyes as they are communicating, since the image and the camera are not aligned. Solving this would at least make addressing a single person over a video call much more natural. Perhaps we could somehow place a camera behind the screen? Will volumetric display technology make it easier once it is more widespread?
And this is just one problem that we can identify. I'm sure there are many other subtle cues missing from a video call which could be identified and then hopefully fixed.
The funniest example I know is a guy who will first call people then when they say NO in no uncertain terms and hang up on him he drives there and asks exactly the same thing. He frequently describes how both him and the prospect pretend the rude phone call never happened.
He one time needed 100 plants for a stage of a theater performance. On the phone the grower refused to rent them to him, he didn't want to name a price, just NO. In person he immediately agreed to do it for free.
Working from home changes the relative value of certain skills. It make sense why people would be resistant to their own devaluing.
The work place is competitive and no one likes to see the rules of game change in way that disadvantages themselves.
Family life is mostly about sharing the events of the day
Working home is pretty uneventful and that aspect can be stressful
I worked home for 13 of my 23 years career, loved them and still do it, but my best years have been the 3 years I left all my jobs to go touring around Europe as roadie
Being part of a team that shares a common goal but also solves everyday mundane tasks together like finding a place to eat that's ok for everybody or fixing a flat tire gives a lot more meaning to what one does
For example, a lot of people will be like this or that operating system is trash and you shouldn’t use it. And I am ashamed to admit that years ago I used to be this way too.
While I understand where people are coming from when they act that way, it is still frustrating and I wish it wasn’t like that.
Ultimately I think we're all responsible for our own morals & I generally don't get worked up about people having different ideas (notwithstanding such that deny my right to exist, such as antisemites).
But there are some who have allergies, and it can be easier for them to choose a vegan restaurant to be certain there's no lactose / egg contamination.
I'd always thought the primary difference between vegetarians and vegans was ethical, rather than dietary. That part of the ethics of veganism is opposition to the mechanised slaughter of individuals that should have the same, or similar, rights to people.
Maybe this is more of a fringe belief as vegan options become mainstream?
Yeah, that makes no sense. I don't like working from home, but I want as many people as possible to work from home. That makes my commute so much better!
Why should other people come in just because you need entertainment?
Maybe make some relationships outside work?
We spend the majority of our lives at work -- spending that alone in my spare room/coffee shop/wherever just sounds like a nightmare long-term.
I think as long as humans are social animals, remote working will stay niche and optional at best.
Maybe eventually people can find a group of friends/acquaintances with which they can also hang out and have a coffee, while each tends to their own work?
I can have friends outside of work and still feel lonely WFH all day. If you have a family, it can be the exact opposite (too many distractions).
It is not selfish to need some degree of separation between work and life.
'Stick to some schedule' is pretty portable advice. It sounds like you and your father both did that.
The option to pursue an exciting and highly rewarding goal for a few days without having to think about what the Joneses think about the particularities of my dressing habits or adherence to a schedule can be a great gain.
In my case, when I was in college, there would be days on end where I wouldn't leave my dorm. I'd hang around in pjs doing pretty much the same thing all day long: get in front of the computer, do whatever, eat in front of the computer, continue doing whatever, get the laptop in bed, fall asleep. Repeat the next day. After a while I really had the impression of "doing nothing" or of "always doing the same thing".
Nowadays, when I work from home, I get up, make the bed, put my workout clothes on, do my workout routine, take a shower, eat a protein shake, get dressed "for work" (ie put on a clean tshirt so as to be presentable on a video call), get in front of the computer, start up Teams and get to work. I try to take a break every hour or so to move around a bit (do some push-ups / pull-ups), drink a glass of water, look out the window, then get back to work. Around 6 PM, when the office hours are done, I finish up whatever I'm doing then quit Teams, quit the mail program, and I'm done for the day.
Now YMMV, but I find that the days when I go straight to work and just do the work part, sometimes still in my pjs as in college, I really get the feeling that I've accomplished less. I find that for me, breaking up the day with some activities helps to not perceive it as being monotonous, just doing one thing all day long. At least for me it's important for whatever breaks I take to not just be in front of the computer, like browsing hn or whatever. That's why I like moving around a bit and looking out the window.
This is something that I'm not as likely to do in the office. There are more distractions, even though I'm not in a proper open space, so it takes me more time to "get in the zone" and I'm also less inclined to break it whenever I'm in it cause I never now when I'll be able to get back. Also, I enjoy calm during my breaks, so people on the phone or talking to each other and other random noises are more likely than not to stop me from walking around outside the office.
But since I been WFH for a while (thanks for the COVID-19), surprisingly I found if I took 30 mins nap both at noon and dusk, I would extend the motivated period to the most of the day! It's a game-changer for me, and it's not much a loss because I can sleep less at night because I trade to the day.
I'm a ADD person, it feels like the dopamine would exhaust after hours, and a nap would reset it for a while.
Did you read the article? Because that's one thing he emphasises.
Here's my tips.
1. Use mute, often
2. If it's meeting, it's a meeting. Don't have everyone looking at their screens rather than listening.
3. Get some light-weight headphones that you can wear for a long time. I have the classic Sennheiser px-200. You can't seem to buy similar headphones anymore, particularly not wireless.
4. The "watercooler" always-on vidcon idea is a good one.
That were the days. Much later in the 90s this changed to be allowed to be on CompuServe in the evening for a half hour. I can still remember going to GO MAXIS :)
Given that changing faces real time in video is doable now, wouldn't it be trivial to fake business dress? Or even (Dog forbid) shaving.
I worked from home for ten years, then back to the office for three, now back at home. I can tell you that what works for one person does not work for everyone.
For example, I am most productive in the morning, and wake up motivated and ready to work. For that reason, I don't take a shower until lunch, then use the afternoons to sort of wind-down with less productive things like meetings, reports, and such.
My father worked from home in the 80's. He was the opposite. He was better in the afternoon. Because of that, he had to force himself to take the mornings seriously. He did that by getting up every morning at 6am, doing the full getting-ready-for-the-office thing, and even went down to the corner store for coffee every day as a sort of "commute."
He would end up at 8am sitting in his home office in the laundry room in a full suit and tie ready for for the day, while I'm still in my sweatpants until after noon.
(Equipment-wise, from working home in the 80's was very different than it is today. Think a big desk with three rotary telephones, filing cabinets, a VFD calculator, and a Telex machine.)