Welp, why bother commenting then? Also half remote half in office doesn't work. I've been working for all remote companies for the past 4 years and (asynchronous) communication has always been great. It's "just" a mindset shift.

You say we're naive for thinking this is a revolution. I'd say naive is the one evaluating the viability of remote work by looking at an incredibly noisy dataset (or a single data point in your case) during a pandemic in which companies have been forced into a paradigm that requires methodical and progressive change.

Similarly to asking someone who has never run to join a marathon and be in the top N.

I heard meditation is good, I wish I had some time though. Yesterday I got blocked in an elevator for 6 hours, so I got plenty of time. I tried to used this opportunity and tried meditate though. Didn't work

You're right that collaboration is much easier in person, even with the latest remote work technology. But could we offset that with companies that have monthly/quarterly offsites instead? What if they invest their office budget into helping people build better home offices? Ship snacks directly to employees or let them expense meals/snacks?

The worst thing a lot of companies will do is jump into fully remote without rethinking how their culture works. This is not just a way to save money by getting rid of your office. That money has to be allocated differently to make up for the differences.

I 100% agree that mixed in-perform/WFH is the worst of both worlds.

Finally, I would note the last 2 months have been very abnormal for everyone, and it's been nothing like WFH under normal situations. I would wait to when things "return to normal" before making a decision on how you feel about WFH.

I work in a shed, 20m from my main house; with a red/green sign on it that my small kids learned to obey, good noise cancelling headphones etc.

But as schools over here are closed now for about 3 months now, no amount of red/green signs or noise cancellation are going to save me from the fact my help is needed in several occasions during the day, or that (especially at the beginning of the lockdown) I have to block out 4 hours just to buy weekly groceries, or 1h to buy something in the local pharmacy.

This thing disrupted everybody. I can only imagine how is it for people who live with kids in apartments with no gardens and no dedicated rooms.

Follow the same processes: be as asynchronous as possible,reduce meetings to a few times a year, rely on tools and build new ones if you need them.

If you are permanently WFH, why are you in a small pad in the city? Look at what you can afford out in the country, or even another country entirely.

Yes, it should be a choice and not forced onto everybody, but after a couple of years of being remote, I get worried about needing to ever go into an open plan office ever again. There are positives to all this, but you may need to adapt to make it work for you.

When I am stuck WFH for this quarantine, it doesn't even feel like I live in the city anymore. Moving out of the city would just make that permanent.

It's not to say that it won't be a problem, but introverted folks have been forced into being in offices even when it stressed them out and caused them mental health issues for years. If the extroverts are getting the other end of it now, there's plenty of room to find clubs, meetups, gyms, and other hobbies. Just because I work with you doesn't mean I'm now obligated to be your social support network.

Or to the people who actually need to be in said meetings and conclude them when they need to be concluded.

And catered meals/snacks are not the norm there either - instead, you smelling microwaved fish Bob brought for lunch, plus Karen is babbling away about how her kid didn't get into the honors program. You don't have an office, you're sitting next to bunch of other people who keep talking, walking, watching funny Youtube videos. The best option is to come in late and work late so you have a somewhat distraction-free workplace to yourself - which again is pretty idiotic.

And the communication is not really that much harder, it's actually gets much easier and streamlined the more you WFH. You learn to focus on what matters, you learn to present your thoughts coherently and in an engaging manner as people need to understand you and listen to you even though they don't see you and no one even knows whether they are listening to you or not.

Whereas my wife and I (also FANG) just like doing our work and clocking out ASAP and we both absolutely love WFH. Video chat is more than good enough to make stuff happen with other people, and without a commute I can save hours of my life every single day.

Everyone can't work this way, but it works great for a portion of people. I don't see why we can't let people individually decide. My only concern is that the WFH people will be such a minority that they'll be ignored in large meetings, but as long as ~20% of people are remote then I think it can work for everyone.

I think this would also significantly reduce stress on employees. You could live in more affordable areas, and take commuter transit for the days you have in office. It wouldn't bother me too much to take a 90 min transit if I knew it was only a couple of times week. It's the day after day that really kills ones soul.

2 days/week working synchronously with people? Of meetings? I can't remember a time when a project I've worked on needed that to succeed.

I think this set up provides much of the benefit of remote (greater flexibility in personal life commitments) while retaining the necessary components that many often cite for why remote isn't a good option (no face to face meetings). The point however is that it's not supposed to replace either in person or fully remote, but find more choices firms have in their staffing configurations. More choice means there will be greater market fit for both job seekers and employers.

Even for whiteboard discussions, you can buy a literal whiteboard for your work area, hold the meeting over video call, and exchange photos afterward. It's not quite as low friction as walking up to a whiteboard in the office with a coworker, but, at least you know the damn markers will work.

Maintaining WLB is something one needs to be attentive to. Having a dedicated work area as well as maintaining specific work hours (and sticking to them) are key. Other than that, I don't think maintaining WLB at home has to be any tougher than at the office. Kids present special issues, but, if you're a non-WFHer, you already have provisions for the kids during work hours, anyway.

But for a lot of white collar professionals at an associate to mid senior level, there's plenty of work that you should be able to do independently.

I've been working remotely for a couple years, and at some point started auto-deleting recruiter emails for jobs in the city. Commuting 2-3 hours per day is just a non-starter for me at this point. The extra sleep and exercise I get remotely is probably going to extend my life expectancy.

2. Work was already flexible enough such that if you wanted to WFH you could: could you WFH permanently or 99% of the days in a year?

3. the meals and snacks -> if you can't cook, now is a good time to learn. save money

4. Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space -> in a normal period of time, you could just relocate to somewhere better. We are not doing normal WFH

5. Those of you who are claiming this will be some form of revolution I think are naive -> I agree but I also think that you are naive if you think remote working is not superior for information workers

6. If you need an office anyway you don't really save anything -> Wrong. Water, electricity, internet, coffee, amenities, cleaning equipment, toiletries, cleaning services. And of course, the office itself. For workers: they get absolute freedom to shape their home space as they see fit. Oh and the MOST important time, you save everyone their commute (which will get you well rested employees).

7. I just don't think a company with 50,000+ employees: do you HAVE to join a 50k company?

“Move somewhere better” is naive, because where they live isn’t necessarily bad; just may not be conducive to full-time remote work.

1. Ok.

2. I leave that to OP to answer.

3. What if I don't like cooking and can afford to eat out?

4. What's better? Maybe I like living in a big city. Not everyone wants a house with a backyard.

5. We shall see. "Information workers" like to think they're superior to everyone else but people are ultimately social. Work is social. Companies build stuff by having people collaborate and so far there's no collaboration better than face-to-face. That's how you break down silos, for example, in many cases.

6. That's assuming that the company redirects the money they pay on offices to help employees pay for their home offices. I really doubt that.

7. Big companies pay better. Big companies have big projects small companies can't even dream of. There are many reasons to join a big company.

> So I've now been WFH for 2 months and honestly I hate it.

> I just don't think a company with 50,000+ employees can operate this way indefinitely.

ok. Why do you consider your arguments against WFH not biased and useful.

"other side is biased" ...quite funny :D

The software industry is doing quite well for itself, busily collecting all the world’s money. It doesn’t mean it’s doing everything right but it does put a larger burden of proof on advocates for change.

Considering that the number of total active websites is estimated at over 1.3 billion according to a survey published by Netcraft, that means that around 455,000,000 websites are using WordPress right now, which means that around 20% of all self-hosted websites use WordPress.

So I’d say they’re doing pretty well for themselves.

So...

Because what I'm saying is objectively true: physical colocation with your coworkers is inherently easier to work with than working remotely and no one in their right mind disputes that. The best you can argue for WFH-first is that it can be made to work.

Your other clue is the choice of language. I said, for example, "I hate WFH" and (paraphrased) "I like having a catered office". These are my personal preferences. You can't really argue that it isn't my personal preference. You can argue that those preferences don't work for you, which is 100% fine and indisputable.

In comparison, so many things I see written about WFH are stated with broad generalizations of "WFH is better because ..." when you can clearly tell that really means "I want to WFH and I'm going to argue my preference as being a general good".

You've had other people in this thread and elsewhere agree that a mixed WFH/in-person team is (to quote another commenter here) "the worst of both worlds". If you take that as true it then means that for people to most effectively WFH they need everyone else they're working with to do it as well. It's intellectually dishonest.

To be clear, if you can make WFH work for you and you like doing it, great. I hope you find an employer who works like that or will allow at least some of the team to work remotely. Prognostications that Covid-19 will lead to some seachange in WFH-first employment strikes me as unsubstantiated wishful thinking however.

Just go and look at all the blog posts and articles written about how to make WFH work. Why aren't there just as many (or more) articles about making WFO (Working From Office) work if the benefits are so self-apparent?

There are certain kinds of work that could be remote and would be just fine to do so but they still generally aren't (eg call center work; apart from obvious offshoring cases, a lot of US domestic call center work is still from an office for some reason). But I don't put software engineering at scale in that category.

This isn't even remotely objective. It's amusing how people think their personal perspective is the objective one.

> Why aren't there just as many (or more) articles about making WFO

There's an ocean of WFO content on the Internet - everything from leases, to security, to feng shui. I'm willing to wager there's an order of magnitude more WFO than WFH content. And it's all about making office life work (or work better).

Believe it or not, offices are a modern invention. Just because it's been the status quo for several decades, doesn't mean it's the only way to get things done.

Screwing over worker was the status quo at one point, too.

There are countless examples of companies large and small who have found massive amounts of success switching to a remote based methodology. Saying that this is objectively wrong and that these folks are not in "their right mind" makes your argument, that could otherwise be valid, look foolish.

It largely depends on what kind of work you're doing. For software development, I could just as easily claim that it is objectively true that asynchronous communication and a freedom from non-technical people tapping you on the shoulder 10 times a day is objectively easier.

> Why aren't there just as many (or more) articles about making WFO (Working From Office)

Because that blog (or more likely book) has already been written and re-written for the past 100 years. WFH is a somewhat new phenomenon in the age of modern internet and broadband.

> with your coworkers is inherently easier to work with than working remotely

This is so dependent on the coworkers. There's plenty of folks who I can work with remotely OK preciesly because we're remote. Sitting next to these people 6-8 hours per day would be extremely counter productive. I'm sure there's plenty of folks that can take me only in small doses, and 8 hrs/day of working with me face to face would be too much - I don't fault them for that!

This is objectively not true for the kind of work I (and many others) do. Physical colocation with coworkers actually makes it harder for knowledge workers to do their work, which is why lawyers and accountants have their own offices even when they're in the same building.

But to address a finer point: there is still a lot of activity about open vs closed plan etc. So wfo is not a fully solved problem either!

Could this be the tipping point to a sustained exodus from an urban kind of lifestyle? (spoken as someone who likes/values density)

That's highly arguable. Young people like cities, that's where the girls and the parties are. That's been true for a really long time.

In the case of SF almost every 20-something I’ve interacted with is here primarily for career and plans on relocating at some point.

SF used to be a place people moved to because they wanted to live in San Francisco, they wanted the culture, the access to nature and its beauty, the arts scene that was traditionally more cutting edge (citylights, burning man), the cutting edge food and wine scene, the walkability.

Nobody moves to San Francisco for that anymore. They move to San Francisco for work not life. They move to San Francisco to extract value from a job and then leave.

San Francisco is too amazing a city to be relegated to becoming a company town. If there is a positive outcome from this, it will hopefully result in a recalibration and people who want to be in SF because they WANT TO BE IN SAN FRANCISCO will stay and the people who came here to just smash and grab some cash will leave.

So I took the plunge and moved to Washington last October before COVID was a thing. And i couldn't be happier. It was all because my company had a SF and Bellevue location.

I forsee many other people doing the same now that job opportunities aren't tied to location.

I was forced to work in SF because thats where the Jobs were for me, but I never wanted to be so near or work in SF.

Instead of having to pay exorbitant prices in an extremely in-demand real estate market, people like me could move a little further out and still have reasonable access to those social, leisure, or other opportunities with slightly more time invested without requiring spending 5 hours a day commuting.

Spending 2-3 hours in transit one way to get to work is not reasonable. Spending 2-3 hours in transit to spend the day in the city on the weekend is a little more palatable.

But communication and collaboration isn't that difficult with Zoom and Slack, you can't change my mind. You can make it work.

I love being able to walk into my kitchen at lunch and make whatever I want.

Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and and that's fine because your home is your space and you can make it work for you - even with someone else working in the same room as you.

...

There's a crowd on HN saying there will be a mass exodus from urban centers. I'm not sure if it will play out quite like that, but I think there will be a premium on locations and housing with extra room for a home office, easy access to open space, and nearby amenities.

Also after this lockdown period I suspect there will be a longer period of low% office usage. So we will still be face to face meetings and the like, but less frequently. And that I think will help smooth things out.

I've been wanting a lifestyle change for a while, this might be the gateway for that. I already live rural, but the commute has been unpleasant for me to where I work. I am enjoying not driving.

If this scenario continues, I could see our family moving closer to what we like -- skiing, outdoor recreation, etc. -- and having lower cost of living in the process.

I've heard endless people state that WFH productivity is through the roof with absolutely no evidence. And lets not pretend that we can accurately measure productivity of software devs - we've all been down this road with agile.

I think part of the shift is because companies are realizing it isn't as bad as they expected. A friend works for a company that announced they will allow 100% WFH in the future too. The CEO said she thought WFH would cause a 50% loss of productivity. But after 2 months of it, no significant loss in velocity has been noticed. Not just for development work, but for other office work as well.

Two things:

1. Working-from-home-during-global-pandemic-with-kids-and-spouses-and-roommates-and-not-ideal-setup isn't the same as working-from-home. Undoubtedly some people are less productive today.

2. Commits isn't necessarily a great proxy for productivity to begin with. For example, with greater focus comes less "oops I missed a unit test and broke the build" type commits, or even just more time to interactive rebase and clean up commits before pushing. "Go slower, you'll be done sooner."

It is also hard on people that are used to working in the office to be told that they now have to work from home suddenly. I'm sure a non-trivial amount of people did not have a space for themselves to be able to work and they are trying to figure things out as they go. Not to mention figuring out how to communicate properly while everyone is remote.

There is also not a one size fits all solution. People will be more productive being where they are more comfortable. That may be at home, in a coffee shop, at a library, in the office or any other number of places. People are expected to work from home right now, so a lot of those other options are out of the question.

TL;DR, don't judge work from home when everyone has to do it during a pandemic.

If you have a remote first company, it means your employees can actually move somewhere that they can settle down and own a house.

And yes if it’s mixed WFH and on-site then of course the remote workers will lose out. But both Shopify and twitter are doing perm remote for all employees, creating an even playing field.

People don’t live in cities just for jobs. I live in the city to go to museums, art galleries, the symphony, plays, comedy shows, concerts, restaurants, happy hours etc. I have no interest in living outside the city and I especially have no interest in maintaining a house.

I really want to go back to my nice office for work.

And there is no way I am going back to going to an office to work.

YMMV

The wild card is that things may seem easier when people have no choice but to WFH, but once things open up completely, there could be a shift back but inevitably everyone would have already had a taste and some may want it permanently

I mean it's trivial to say you're projecting that on to others. Particularly with the closed minded comments like "you can't change my mind".

The 'revolution' is already happening, but I don't think it will be across every company and every industry. I don't know who does say that.

You can't just hammer WFH out of existence.

> I just don't think a company with 50,000+ employees can operate this way indefinitely.

The other thing is that those-sized companies have made significant real estate investments in their office space. If suddenly their own workforce didn't use them, what would the value of those be? I imagine e.g. Apple Park would not be worth even close to what Apple paid for it if Apple wasn't going to use it.

However if not and especially if you have a commute WFH is great. I agree with other comments in that fully remote isn't always ideal though.

I've done both (ex-LinkedIn) and I currently run a tech consulting firm.

I think the right mix is a choice.

I prefer 2 or 3 days in the office and the rest of the week from home.

Don't want to change your mind, so instead consider that your statement might be more accurate if you said:

"But communication and collaboration for me is just much harder work remote."

I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home?

>> Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and it's not conducive to being productivity, particularly if you live with other people, if you can't get some form of separation.

Do you live in that space because it's close to your office? Ok, so now you're remote you can live anywhere. If there was no pandemic you could work from a library, or café or dozens of other places. You could move around each day. Or you could move to a cheaper location and have a nice home office.

Yes, I can prepare my own lunch. But it takes about 24 hours to make a vat of delicious homemade ramen that will feed 500 people. Do you know how long it takes to make a single serving of that same ramen? ...About 24 hours.

Likewise, an office with 100 people can easily have a whole variety of fresh fruit and produce to spontaneously choose and snack from and most will get eaten before any goes to waste. When I buy produce, I have to get exactly what I'm going to eat which means my weekly trip locks me into exactly one set of produce that I'm stuck with.

The set of foods that scale down efficiently is a very small subset of the set of foods that I like to eat.

Also, pragmatically, the free food was a perk of the job that I factored into the compensation package when I took the job. Losing access to the free food is effectively the same as taking a pay cut or giving up a couple of vacation days. Given the state of the economy, I think this is actually a reasonable way for the business to save money right now, and I'm much rather give up lunches than see layoffs happen, but the compensation package has shrunk.

Also, there is real value in not having to come up with new food to eat.

Except now you have the choice of living anywhere you think the cost of living makes sense for you, which more than makes up for this.

> a reasonable way for the business to save money right now

And so is not having to worry about office space, leases, parking, security, and the cost of logistics of running an office. WFH has the ability both save companies money and put more money in workers pockets.

> Except now you have the choice of living anywhere you think the cost of living makes sense for you, which more than makes up for this.

We were able to basically just put one car in storage. Car insurance, gas and parking alone are saving me like $650/mo. That alone would be enough for me to go buy a fresh fruit platter every workday to pick through and throw the leftovers out and still come out ahead.

Of course I can but I just don't want to. This isn't about being cheap or lazy (although I'm guilty of both to varying degrees). The biggest benefit of having a catered office is the lack of having to make a decision about what to eat. I'll just eat what they're serving that day.

I'm a big believer in decision fatigue [1]. Don't make me make decisions about things I don't care about and what I have for lunch is one of those. For years I worked in offices where I either had to bring in my own lunch (never gonna happen) or I had to go out and buy it. I'm fine with the cost of it. I'm not fine with choosing where to go and what to order when I get there. I'll end up finding something I like and just getting it every day until I get sick of it because that's let cognitive load than having something different every day.

That's why I like a catered office.

> Or you could move to a cheaper location and have a nice home office.

I live in NYC because I want to live in NYC. I chose the job because it's in NYC where I wanted to live. On a side note, I think this is the fundamental difference with the Bay Area. hardly anyone wants to live in the Bay Area. They want to work for [Google|FB|Apple|...] and to do that they need to live in the Bay Area. Most other places people have decided they want to live there and then look for work options.

So yeah, I could buy a big house Georgia but... why would I want to?

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-fr...

This doesn't check out. All of those companies have large offices elsewhere. I agree with your take that you work in NYC because you want to live in NYC so that's where you work but your bias is showing that you can't consider that people feel similarly about the Bay Area.

As one data point, I chose San Francisco when I had the guaranteed option to work for the same exact company with proportional pay (stupid high relatively speaking) in my hometown. People with options move where their quality of life is maximized -- that's the beauty of having options.

It doesn't make NYC sound very appealing if working from your home in NYC is hellish.

Working from my home in the Bay is actually quite nice. The best part is getting an hour of my day back because I don't have to commute to work. That 1 hour commute probably added more stress to my day than any other hour.

Speaking personally, I made some optimizations, but there's only so much that can be done with the fixed amount of space that I share with others.

Because living in a big city with lot of options for food (and maybe other enjoyable and interesting things) give you decision fatigue?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also, can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN generally? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261569 is another example. We're not here to cross-examine each other or make each other look bad. We're here for curious conversation and to learn.

for me, at least, it's about the contact with other people and the talk during the lunch break. face to face human contact. i honestly can not comprehend how can people wish to be isolated... but maybe it's something different with me.

Between meetings and misc. things that come up I had human contact all day. Lunch was the one time I could have to myself.

WFH != isolation

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

moving to a cheaper location also usually means giving up a lot of things that urban life comes with as well. you cant expect that everyone is going to be happy with that decision

I think most companies already have workers who do work from home, even if they're not remote friendly. So most corporations already have secure email / vpn / firewalls etc etc if data security is crucial. As for tech companies, don't we all push commits from home every now and then? it's already been happening for years.

That said, I've had catered lunches at Google when visiting friends, and that's way better than eating gum restaurants every day.

The decision fatigue is real. But also, there are relatively few options that are genuinely good in the area, especially if you're trying to eat somewhat healthy. You get very bored after a while. Lunches provided by an in house chef are very good, tend to be healthier, and more interesting. I think - like I said, I mostly ate a meal here and there.

(and if we're comparing to cooking at home, obviously that incurs greater time cost)