> I think the narrative of WFH success is in many ways driven by the people for which WFH is a godsend due to really long commute times or having poor office workplaces (like open plan)

Who doesn't have open plan offices? There are about three people left in the tech industry these days who still have a private office.

> But it’s potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it’s a bad idea.

Working in an open plan space is simply inferior to working remotely, except in rare cases where your team is in a bullpen and working full time on a specific project together. It's inferior for engineers because of distractions, and it's inferior for the company because of real estate costs.

The real estate costs don't go away, they just are paid for by the worker instead of the employer. Now you need to either dedicate square footage to an office setup, or get a bad back working from the couch or the bed or other common home furniture ill suited for long work hours. Maybe you legitimately don't have room in your apartment for this, and now need to invest in another bedroom. Maybe you need to buy faster home internet, or move apartments entirely due to a lack of ISP choices at your address. I've never heard of a business offering a stipend or remote assistance subsidy of any sort to their workers to cover any of this, from whatever great savings are reaped from saving on real estate costs.

I think there is a happy medium, where maybe offices cut back to about 25% capacity or so. People would instead drop in and work like a university library. You could go there and print stuff out if you didn't have a printer at home. If your laptop blew up, you could go there and get a replacement from IT. If you preferred, you could rent out a substantial desk with several monitors and a good chair if you didn't have the space at home, or focused better in that environment. You could schedule in person meetings with your team in a well appointed conference room if you wanted. You could host social events. Maybe even a gym or childcare facility. I think that's my ideal for the office environment going forward: less a sweatshop and more a clubhouse.

> The real estate costs don't go away, they just are paid for by the worker instead of the employer.

I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I have to imagine it's a miniscule number.

> I've never heard of a business offering a stipend or remote assistance subsidy of any sort to their workers to cover any of this, from whatever great savings are reaped from saving on real estate costs.

My company does, I'm sure it's become pretty standard lately.

Software engineer here who before the pandemic had a setup on the sofa or kitchen table. That’s fine for doing a few hours work in the evening. It starts to get ergonomically painful as a full time setup. It’s also annoying sharing a room with my partner who needs to be in meetings all day while I’m trying to write code.

IIRC it used to be that to claim a write off on dedicated work space at home you had to claim you had a 10'x10' dedicated work env... but I may be not recalling that correctly.

> I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I have to imagine it's a miniscule number.

I thought the same as you, and then I saw a lot of people at work not have home setups, either because of space or other reasons. It was surprisingly common!

Concentration of jobs without adequate increase in housing leads to that extra room for an office being exorbitantly priced. Then again, if you can rely on wfh, why concentrate to that degree?

> already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home

Sure, but it's your personal desktop computing arrangement -- not the company's.

With WFH, the company is effectively renting that space from you so you can work in it, but you're charging them $0.

This is the definition if a win-win then, because I would take a pay cut to keep working from home (not planning to mention this in salary negotiations). I definitely don't feel like I'm being exploited by saving my company a few bucks and saving irreplaceable moments of my life that I'd waste commuting. The lack of commute is the real kicker, driving to work costs me money, and it's a life-endangering activity.

> saving my company a few bucks and saving irreplaceable moments of my life that I'd waste commuting.

I bet if you actually considered the commute as part of your paid time to calculate an hourly rate, a lot of people probably come ahead when switching to wfh despite "renting their space" or whatever.

Depends on how you commuted to work. If you biked to work you just lost your cardio gym membership baked into your day.

This is it. I actually took a small pay cut this year to work for a company that is guaranteed remote friendly.

The peace of mind knowing that these guys already had remote engineers before the pandemic and a good workflow, and having a job that is officially and permanently remote is absolutely worth a few thousand bucks to me.

I was dreading going back to the office, even if only a day or two a week.

Counting the commute I would have otherwise been going back to with my previous company that was super excited to get asses back in seats, I'm probably actually getting paid more per hour of my time dedicated to work activities.

I always looked at the commute cost as a balance out, TBH. The distractions on the bus made study on the bus difficult and I wouldn't work on there because I was loathe to be one of the people edging out another with a laptop on a full bus. granted, other places may have better transport than the Seattle area (ours is pretty notorious), but most is pretty crowded and not suited for work or leisure. I count those commute hours as personal cost hours, to me and the environment. It was an hour in and an hour out (on a really good day), and I'm like 20 miles from the city center.

Were you making more than $0 off that space before? Not everything is zero-sum.

No, but presumably they got some living utility out of that space previously that is now devoted to work. Maybe you can finally take up mountain biking now that you don't have to make space for a desk you don't use after 5pm on friday and can fit the equipment.

The person I replied to was explicitly talking about people who already have a desktop computer setup at home. I guess for a few of them that desktop might be used by a partner or children during the day, but in the vast majority of cases it would sit idle.

> I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I have to imagine it's a miniscule number.

Once again, in SV/NYC/etc very few due to real estate costs. Most of my peers who aren't married have room mates.

> I've never heard of a business offering a stipend

I recall Shopify was in the news early last year for offering employees $1000 stipend for WFH supplies.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-shopify-gives-em...

> I've never heard of a business offering a stipend or remote assistance subsidy of any sort to their workers to cover any of this

I switched jobs during the pandemic. My previous job offered $25/mo extra to help cover utilities, $250 to cover any wfh purchases and let me borrow any office supplies, including monitors, chairs, etc... Although this company instituted a 20% pay cut for 3 months which made that all seem very silly.

My new company is doing practically the same thing, but without the pay cut and is much less strict about the type of WFH purchases.

My commute was only ever a 10-15min bike ride, but Ive personally benefited greatly from the WFH switch and my productivity has been through the roof. I definitely agree with you that maintaining some space to meet and work would be nice.

> Working in an open plan space is simply inferior to working remotely

"Simply inferior" is a bit of a bold statement. Lots of people want to go back to their office for various reasons. For me it's wanting to see my co-workers (which are my friends at this point) in person every day. It's certainly not rare.

I agree that the office is great for socializing, but that isn't what offices are for. I'm talking about trying to do head-down work requiring concentration.

It depends, communication is the majority of my job (as a Senior Engineer who codes more than average).

Same here, but I find that a Google Meet session is more productive than in-person. We can share screens and talk (with the bonus of being able to record the session), and it's honestly easier to follow than when I'm trying to crane my neck to see over someone's shoulder.

In the office, a team or group meeting is a great break from sitting at the desk and an opportunity to be social. At home, it’s yet more staring at the screen at a fixed focus distance and speaking in fits and starts due to network latency. I don’t agree at all that an open office is simply inferior to remote work.

I actually feel and work much better in an open-plan office. The energy of other people being present keeps me very focused and I really like that it’s so easy to collaborate. I think it helps prevent me from being burned out.

However this is all predicated on open office being a layout where your desk is made of wood, hardwood flooring instead of carpet, your coworkers Aeron is 5’ or less from yours, massive windows close by, and there aren’t any forms of walls other than computer monitors. Cubicles require me to attend therapy.

I think introverts do not thrive in the environment you're describing.

Unfortunately introverts are not well represented in management or the types of people who make decisions about seating.

Also unfortunately, many (most?) software developers are introverts.

I'm an introvert. And a VPE. In the SF Bay Area.

I absolutely despise open office plans. I can't work in them.

My productivity shot an incredible amount as soon as I had no choice than to work from home in March, and everybody else in the office. Saved 2 hours a day. And I can use my own bathroom... that alone is worth it.

>The energy of other people being present keeps me very focused

This is the opposite of my personal experience. The energy of other people distracts and interrupts. Collaboration that interrupts focused solo work has rarely if ever been a net gain.

>> Who doesn't have open plan offices? There are about three people left in the tech industry these days who still have a private office.

There's a big range from true open-plan space (long tables with employees sitting shoulder-to-shoulder next to each other) to private offices with doors.

Somewhere in between are traditional "cube farms" which provide some amount of semi-privacy, less distracting nightlines, noise reduction, and feeling of personal space. Most of the companies I've seen are still more like this.

> Who doesn't have open plan offices?

Oracle is one company in the Valley with private locking offices with permanent full soundproof doors and outside windows with mountain views. I had one as an intern!

This reminds me of a story about early open plan offices in the 80s, where an up-and-coming Microsoft poached talent left and right by offering perks like offices with doors. I wonder if we'll swing the pendulum back in that direction again.

Wow, if that's what interns get what do the lawyers get?

FWIW this definitely wasn't the case for their Austin office pre-pandemic.

This is why their HQ is so many really narrow tall towers - so less space wasted in the middle.

Shhh - don't tell them the secret!

> I worry that MBAs of other companies will take

Sorry just want to nitpick - this really has not a whole lot to do with MBAs or any degree specifically. I think it would be a little bit more beneficial to swap MBA with management. Many of the things you're discussing are true of engineering managers, researchers with PHDs, and accountants and not specifically one group of people with one degree - they don't run the whole world and have exclusive ownership of "all the bad decisions".

MBA hate here is ridiculous.

Blaming MBAs for how companies behave is like blaming people with software engineering degree for writing buggy code. Not having people with MBA degree won’t magically make your company better, same as employing developers without a diploma won’t magically make your product more stable.

The fundamental critique of an MBA is that presumes "management" or “business” is a thing you can be an expert in, independent of the domain you are managing. If you're a domain expert in something and also an MBA then sure, whatever.

That's exactly it. There are too many MBA's who have never had a proper job, but will authoritatively tell others how to run a business they know nothing about. An MBA, to the the extent the degree should exist at all, should be something one attains later in life after getting some real world expertise and a hefty amount of domain knowledge.

I'm commenting on this small thread a lot because it's interesting so I do apologize for that - but where are these MBAs who have never had a proper job getting hired at?

I read this and think damn I've had a proper job that I worked at for years before doing my MBA (which I did while working) + 4 years on active duty in the military - and I've really struggled in the job market as it pertains to working at some top companies or startups and it scares me to think maybe I'm getting outcompeted by other MBA program graduates that haven't even held a job before. Not that they can't be capable, but still....

I can't even get a job or interview as a product analyst at this point. No "1-3 years of formal product experience" on my resume... guess I could never do that job! (sorry /rant I've been going through a rough patch with this lately)

I was thinking the exact same thing.

I don't have an MBA myself but I've been asked to write a number of recommendation letters to business school over the years.

https://teach.com/resources/how-to-get-into-business-school/

It seems in general one needs a degree, a passing GMAT, 2-3 years experience and a recommendation letter.

But then again, maybe successfully gaming the entrance to business school is how one demonstrates they're ready for a leadership position in the business world... Just kidding. Kinda ;)

Management consulting, where they also do not develop deep experience in any field, and then somehow they're qualified in some general 'business' field and can be hired to senior positions.

It varies by school, but here's the list for Wharton [1]. In general, it's a lot of consulting and finance followed by various types of roles at Fortune 500 companies. Plenty go to FAANG as well, though.

[1] https://poetsandquants.com/2019/10/25/these-companies-hired-...

My understanding is it's very difficult to get into Wharton MBA without having worked a bit first. Even the "out of undergrad" admits usually get in via a 2+2 program where they spend their first 2 years working at a partner company. I believe most top MBA programs are like this, and everyone I've encountered from a mid tier MBA was doing it part time while working because their company paid.

Not saying MBAs have a ton of practical experience going in, and I wouldn't be surprised if the professors are pretty far removed from any practical experience. But I also don't think it's accurate to say most MBAs haven't worked a real job before. [At least not most MBAs that the average SWE on HN would encounter. People that got an MBA from Random U because they didn't know what else to do are probably not being hired at major tech companies.]

There's a very big difference between having worked 2-3 years in industry and actually being an experienced expert in that industry. The latter usually takes a minimum of 5 years in my opinion. Also note the industry most MBA students come from is itself consulting or finance, although again that varies by school and degree type (part time programs, for example, tend to skew older and more toward general Fortune 1000 employee students).

That was the original point of an MBA it was for a small number of highflying midcareer executives in large companies who had several years of real world experience.

Now a lot of the time its gamed for points on immigration systems.

Business is very similar to software engineering. To be great, it’s an art, that most of the time often requires more broad skills.

But you most of the time need also basic knowledge of fundamentals, and that can be enough to be just ok at your job.

> MBA hate here is ridiculous.

It indeed is. Just the other day, when the news came out that Backblaze is sending private info to Facebook, the top comments on HN were along the lines of "I guess some MBA decided it was going to make more money, so they did it."

It really takes a special level of blind hatered to blame an MBA (where there is no evidence one was involved) for sending one's information to a company founded and lead by a Harvard computer science major. But yes, let's blame all ills in this world on MBAs.

EDIT: Another example I remember was that commenters here started the usual MBA-bashing on an article about how GE's financial engineering became their downfall, until other pointed out the person behind it was GE's former CEO, whose BSc, MSc, and PhD are all in chemical engineering.

> MBA hate here is ridiculous. > > Blaming MBAs for how companies behave is like blaming people with software engineering degree for writing buggy code. Not having people with MBA degree won’t magically make your company better, same as employing developers without a diploma won’t magically make your product more stable.

I think there's a current trend -- perhaps not entirely unjustified -- of skepticism towards academic elitism and a bit of a divide, in the U.S. at least, between those in ivory towers who issue edicts, and boots on the ground. Not taking a side, here, especially being that I'm in management.

I do have to say, when I hear of "ethicists" and I recently spoke to someone who taught "medical ethics" while at Google they fired a controversial "AI Ethicist" I have to raise an eyebrow. Ethics are morals. Somehow someone studied them and can tell us the correct ones. Maybe I've mischaracterized this in my head, but it sounds awfully similar to a priesthood.

People without business degrees tend to consider more variables than simply optimizing the business for profit extraction at any cost. No guarantee, but that's what an MBA trains people to do. For some reason, doing that causes all kinds of social problems that were completely unanticipated by philosophers in the 1800s.

That might be what some MBA programs do for some graduates but I can at least give you a data point that the MBA program I attended spends a lot of time focusing on how that type of extraction is bad for long-term business.

There are some cases where it actually is perfectly ok to extract value from a business before winding it down. But that doesn't mean that all of a sudden anybody with an MBA degree is some sort of ruthless capitalist.

I got an MBA because I wanted to learn more about business, network, and hopefully adjust my own personal career path.

I can say for Fisher (Ohio State) we spent a lot of time focusing on not just great ways to make money or improve a business, but on people too. At least that was my experience. I'd guess if you spend a lot of time around "ruthless MBAs" you should take a look at what universities they're coming from and see if they have anything in common.

My software engineering classes taught me really well how to implement red black trees. They shouldn’t, so I don’t use them when they aren’t right tool for the job and I should use linked list instead?

That’s the main problem I have with MBA sentiment here. Somehow knowing about something is bad. That’s a very naive viewpoint.

MBA myself, and I can happily contrast the hate here with how much ridicule of engineers there was from business professors when I was in college. I just knock off a few points of my perception of the speaker's competence either way.

My undergraduate was in engineering and it’s fun to look back because we used to do that with business and sales. For a student org we once sold shirts that said “friends don’t let friends become business majors”... which was fun and in jest of course.

I didn’t experience a lot of what you described in my MBA program as an engineer, though. Usually it was the opposite, but I think that comes with the maturity of the program I was in where you knew that not only was engineering important and valuable, but so were sales, accounting, nursing, and all sorts of other disciplines.

What kinds of anecdotes did your business professors offer?

Mostly along the lines of engineering-centric companies that went out of business (or stayed small/struggled) because they didn’t think about marketing.

The idea though is that having an MBA is meant to make you better at the BA bit.

It doesn't feel that way though because having an MBA doesn't guarantee a minimum floor of capability. There is no such thing as losing your MBA for making a dumb decision.

Right, just like losing your privileges to write code for producing too many bugs.... oh wait...

Yes, management generally.

> How much more productive will employees be if they don’t have a dedicated office and if their commute time was like 15 minutes instead of the 2 hours someone from Silicon Valley may spend?

Yea, i'm very pro-WFH, but i've built my life around it. I own a house with an office. I can't imagine trying to WFH on a couch or some desk in my living room while my wife cooks/watches TV/etc.

With that said i still hope people see more chances to WFH, and can start buying/renting homes with this in mind. I have a three bedroom house, turned into 2 offices 1 bedroom, and it worked wonderfully for my wife and I during these WFH times. My wife fwiw was not a WFH person before Covid, but she is currently, and she has adapted quite easily with a dedicated office. One of her coworkers however lived in a tiny apartment with two children and no office. Her QOL was miserable.

we inadvertantly made exactly the situation you couldn't imagine happen, as our house is very new but purposefully small, and the TV and noise with no office is distracting. Honestly wouldn't wish it on others, because it's frustrating when one is accustomed to being able to totally focus.

I noticed that in my organization the senior folks stayed in the office but sent all the workers home to create the safety buffer. They continued to show up and network with each other.

I believe MBAs are going to love this new world order. The privilege to show your face in the office will become a sign that you've "arrived" and all your time before that will be working towards that privilege.

Any office will be the new corner office.

Interesting take.

Related to that I’m interested how office cliques will work. It’s pretty damn easy to exclude someone if everyone is working from home. Unless they are scouring calendars they may not even know they were left out of an important meeting. Seems like a nightmare for a office with more passive-aggressive types.

Any mixed remote/office work company suffers from this, even with the best intentions.

Face-to-face conversations have such a huge latency/throughput advantage over online discussions that the remote employees are typically left out of the loop.

(At least, that's been my observation at dedicated remote vs hybrid companies. Maybe things will change post-pandemic, but I'm not optimistic.)

Trust me, this already happened and it's an easy way to get rid of your workers after you "relocate" without paying unemployment.

Offer remote work and then offer no advancement opportunities until they quit, so you don't take the unemployment hit. Voila, you have shifted the costs unto them to go find a new job.

I have heard this as well, but super curious what the impact will be when WFH/in-office is so widespread.

"who either function well with very little guidance"

That's the definition of a senior developer and senior employees.

For junior developers I've worked in pre-covid with juniors in wfh environments and success rates are lower. For everyone 1 developer who finds there way you have another who can't setup there environment. If someone held your hand in school or if you relied on working together I could see things falling apart quickly online. I feel like the new grads will have wfh school experience from this year will adapt well.

Yeah, I definitely think it’s a senior vs junior thing. Experienced folk already know the ropes and keep their head down without interruptions from underlings or junior developers. Junior developers have a harder time with acquiring tacit knowledge and need more handholding, which they don’t get because the experienced folk have their head down.

I’ve had a couple interns lately, and the WFH experience with them has been much less successful than past in-person internships have been. They’re able to basically moonlight on a remote project, and there has been actually MORE handholding required as it’s much harder to judge when they’re struggling or if they have things under control. There are a lot more non-work distractions for them and they have developed less camaraderie between each other as lunch times, social activities, and fortuitous interactions have been rarer. The lack of established trust also has significant overhead.

So I agree that this is in many ways a senior vs junior and a maturity divide, however these are digital-native students and they’re still struggling, so I’m not sure I agree it’s going to get much better. I think some of the WFH productivity gains are coasting on pre-pandemic trust and implicit knowledge transfer that aren’t happening as much any more. You can see how hard it is for young people in particular by seeing the drops in performance due to school-at-home.

(However, WFH is indeed forcing some familiarity with remote work for many institutions that resisted technology and teleworking arrangements, so there definitely has been some improvement in some areas. It has been a godsend for some people, and that will be a lasting benefit of 2020’s forced WFH experiment.)

I think some of it is a "senior vs junior and a maturity divide" as you said, but some of WFH effectiveness has to do with experience in the current role/project. I've got something like 18 years of software experience, have often been the senior guy who doesn't require handholding, etc. But I got a new job during the pandemic, and joining a team with a complex system and various environments and deployment methods, etc, takes some time to come up to speed on. I definitely felt that I picked that stuff up more slowly from Confluence pages and Slack conversations than from previous transitions where you can sit next to a co-worker and effortlessly watch what they're doing, talk about what they're doing, shout over to the person in the next cube with a question, etc. Not saying WFH doesn't or can't work, but I do think that people who are already up to speed do well WFH and people who are still coming up to speed are at a bit of a disadvantage.

Bootstrapping is definitely a process that's much easier when you have instant, low-friction access to the people with the knowledge.

Often you don't even know what questions you need to ask, and the give-and-take of a 1:1 face to face meeting provokes all sorts of useful tangents.

I interned remotely last summer and it was a disaster. I had very little direction, couldn't stay focused on work, didn't meet anyone, and really learned very little. Not looking forward to doing it again this summer.

Yep.

MOST technology knowledge involves a good deal of tacit knowledge which an only be transmitted person-to-person in an intern/mentor/supervisor mode.

So simpler tasks that have zero barriers-to-entry for automation can be done without this. But for more complex stuff, not so much. This is the same for B2B sales - that will ALWAYS be person-to-person - it simply can't work via e-commerce like selling books or CDs on Amazon.

Yeah, I used "handholding," but that's really an unnecessarily pejorative term for providing direction and knowledge transfer to less-senior employees. I.e. senior employees and managers actually doing their frakking jobs.

What advice would you give to an intern's mentor to improve the remote internship experience?

I was a 2x WFH intern. Micromanage the intern a bit more. Ask to see code that’s being worked on and don’t let them go too long without interaction. It’s way too easy to get distracted when the only interaction we have is a 15 minute stand up in the morning, a few slack messages, and 8 hours of time to manage ourselves. There were a lot of days where I could get done more work in the hour before a 1:1 meeting than the rest of the day. When I’m not learning much and the feedback is still positive even when I slack off then it’s really hard to stay motivated.

Also remember that interns don’t have a home office and most are in their bedroom at the same desk they relax and play games at. It doesn’t feel like I’m actually at work unless there’s frequent interaction

One nice way to "micromanage" and also just learn how senior devs work is to pair program. I feel like it's been a boon for me, as a junior dev myself.

I second what DC1350 said. I didn't get enough opportunities to face criticism, have my code reviewed, or to get steered in the right direction, and that led to the same exact situation where I would piss away weekdays and scramble to put something together before my weekly 1:1.

Of course, if I were a better intern, I would have taken care of a lot of those things myself, but I think it's better practice as a mentor to start with the metaphorical bowling bumpers up and then relax the oversight as the intern proves themselves capable over the 3 months.

Doing it again this summer, I plan to ask for at least 3x weekly 1:1s (e.g. MWF) and to make sure I have code reviewed in the first week or two of the internship. More interaction with other interns would also help, especially technical interaction and not just high-level discussions of our projects. I also think it would be cool to do some sort of pair programming / spectating where I watch the mentor work through a problem to get a sense of what the professional workflow actually looks like.

let interns meet or communicate and share onboarding experience with each ither. so kne senior dev can "hold hand" of a single intern, so to speak, and that intern will hold hands of other interns

>Yeah, I definitely think it’s a senior vs junior thing.

Also, an existing vs new employee thing (which is not the same). I'm doing fine with WFH because of the relationships I have built here over the last 5 years and my knowledge of the company culture/organization/processes. If I were a new employee (even coming in as a senior level experienced hire) I would not have any of that and it would be far harder to get established. Usually by the 5 year mark I'm looking to hop, but I've been holding off for exactly that reason.

> I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.

Don't worry: It won't be the last time it happens. How many shops have I heard say they are "Just like Google" only to find out that what they mean by that is that they have beanbag chairs?

> But it's potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it's a bad idea.

They'll learn that they need a higher caliber of employees to make it work. Incidentally, these employees are also now hirable by competing SV firms that can and will outbid them.

> hirable by competing SV firms that can and will outbid them

That depends. As an ex-FAANG employee, I happily add a sizeable premium to my salary at the prospect of working at one of those again.

I’m CTO in a software company but I don’t have a proper home office. I was using a small coworking space a 2 minute walk around the corner instead. During the pandemic i’m working in the kitchen for 4 hours before the kids get up and then in the afternoon when my wife takes the kids out. We were always partially wfh as a company anyways and tbh I get zero work done in the office when I go. I only go for morale and relationships (though I do need to take a 20 hour flight to get there). I couldn’t imagine this working in lab based companies but for a company like ours offices are bad or neutral for productivity but useful for mental health.

> I was using a small coworking space a 2 minute walk around the corner instead

This was something I wanted to do as well - only to find out that the local coworking doesn't let you do calls in the space - you have to walk out into halls or limited number of "booths". And I found this common in coworking spaces around here. Which is a stark contrast with how open layout offices I worked in worked (you were expected to keep noise down to tolerable levels but if you didn't want to be disturbed by noise you had headphones).

The idea sounds excellent - I live 5 walking from a nearby coworking space that's really well equipped - but in practice it's not ideal. + having to leave my equipment around strangers isn't the best either and I don't want to meet randoms in a coworking space before I can feel comfortable leaving a wallet on the desk when going to the toilet.

I might end up renting a private office there - but the smallest office they have is 2 people and that's a lot more expensive than a coworking desk.

I agree with everything else you said - I love walking out with my wife and son around lunch time and flexible work hours are much better - I tend to be most productive later in the day anyway - which usually meant I spent mornings in the office socialising and procrastinating and then having to work late - I get to spend that time with my family now.

> Which is a stark contrast with how open layout offices I worked in worked (you were expected to keep noise down to tolerable levels but if you didn't want to be disturbed by noise you had headphones).

People who thought they could talk as loud as they want / hold an impromptu meeting by your desk and thought it was your problem to sort out if you didn’t like it are a lot of the reason why I hated open plan offices so much.

Taking calls in open plan workspaces is so incredibly thoughtless to others working.

Wildly distracting and frustrating when people do this.

No noise canceling headphones do not block out voices.

> Taking calls in open plan workspaces is so incredibly thoughtless to others working.

This is why that old, stuffy, sclerotic behemoth named IBM used to have individual offices with doors.

Funny that.

There often just isn't a choice. When I was shopping for co-working spaces I'd see tons of open plan space, with maybe 1 or 2 tiny phone closets for 50 - 100 people. They were always in constant use. I don't know why open offices don't set aside more space for private conversations when they need to happen.

Closed headphones do a better job, because a thick hunk of plastic doesn’t need to predict the incoming noise. I found HD-280 to be pretty comfortable.

I use afternoons for focused work, no calls, so it works for me. In the morning I usually work from the kitchen taking calls etc as I can make coffee etc and everyone is still asleep anyways. Calls are definitely an issue for coworking. I even considered designing and developing modular call booths for coworking space at one time (when I ran a space).

> I only go for morale and relationships (though I do need to take a 20 hour flight to get there). I couldn’t imagine this working in lab based companies but for a company like ours offices are bad or neutral for productivity but useful for mental health.

It is like that when people go there to socialize. It is different if company culture treats offices as places to work in.

Many of my colleagues work from there but afaict only support type roles perform well in that environment.

> I only go for morale and relationships

As somebody who seems to be in a leadership position, you need to realize that building relationships and improving morale are part of your work.

I really don't get this are you in some super poor country? No offense intended. I'm an IT manager of a mediocre real estate company and I have a decked out home office with all the new toys and with a mini data center that could power a medium size office. In all probably totaling in the mid 5 figures. All company paid and I doubt they remember I exist most days. Where are these tech first companies that barely allow a CTO to scrape by with no resources?

High pay does not imply that you live in a large house with ample space for an office even if you can afford it. Someone living in a $1M+ condo in an urban high-rise for the lifestyle is unlikely to have space for an office if they did not plan on needing one when they bought it. Most people aren't in the habit of spending lots of money on things they don't plan on using. Even if you wanted to move to a larger house since COVID means you now need an office, in many regions there is no housing available to buy.

I don't have a home office either and no one would confuse me with being poor. Until COVID, I had no use for one.

If you're in a high COL area, then the constraint is usually an extra room away from your family, not the equipment. Not always an option to buy or rent a place with another room once you start working from home. My company sure isn't paying an extra $500-1,000 per month to cover rent/mortgage.

Remember: "CTO" sometimes means "I am the technical founder of a 3 person company"

Not to say it applies to the OP, but there are "CTOs" (poorly compensated, ramen startup engineer with a fancy title) then there are CTOs (well compensated--cash and equity, and C-Suite or C-Suite adjacent individuals at a well-capitalized real business)

Between the two extremes mentioned there is the engine of the global economy. That's where we are.

Not the GP, but my guess is probably Canada?

The move to remote work has made me both less productive and personally unhappy. I've mostly just been grateful that I still have a job and trying not to complain considering so many people have been laid off or have had to risk their health when going to work. But the idea of permanent long-term WFH is very unappealing.

It seems like the majority of people prefer working from home, and I understand why, but I still prefer having a dedicated place away from home to work. It seems to put me in a different frame of mind that is much harder to get to when I'm at home. I've found it much harder to actually work on hobby projects for some reason; since it's all done from the same place, it just feels a bit like work and motivation has certainly waned.

They're not the majority. Maybe they're close to it, among developers. But outside of developers, it's not the case, by far. For a lot of people work is an important part of their social life.

I could be wrong, but my impression is that a majority do want to go into the office at least some days per week.

That's definitely my perspective. I certainly like not having to commute (25 minute drive one way) but I would still like to get out of the house for the day 1-2 days per week. I'm introverted though and my commute is relatively easy. WFH is much more daunting for other personality types and situations.

I think my ideal would be work-from-anywhere, plus travel to the office for maybe 5 days every month or two. It would be the perfect balance of in-person collaboration, AND allow me to live somewhere affordable.

While I mostly agree with you, one of the health institutions in Germany that I know of(and probably plenty others), only had laptops and VPN's available for middle and upper management. So while upper and middle management got to WFH, older folks and plenty of people with preexisting heart and lung conditions got to work in cramped 3-5 people offices.

I agree that a lot of people can't afford a full size home office. Nonetheless most of them will probably also only have a small cubicle or less at work.

My statement doesn't negate what you said, but do keep this perspective in mind also.

Absolutely this. If a company wants people to come into the office but does not have enough space for them they should be forced to allow those employees to work remotely or pay for adequate space. They can't have both.

It sounds like a lot of the issues you are describing could be screened for. Making having an office at home a requirement to become a remote worker. Remote work only for certain levels of employees.

Is that a perfect fix? No. But many remote friendly companies are already doing something like that. In 2020 people didnt really have a choice and many had kids at home. That is not a normal WFH situation for many.

> In 2020 people didnt really have a choice and many had kids at home. That is not a normal WFH situation for many.

Similarly, people who homeschool their kids often remind others that having your kids at home learning remotely because the school is closed, is not the same as the usual homeschooling. (And similarly, many of them hope that current experience will make more people consider homeschooling as an option.)

How can you home school while working full time? I don't believe it's possible.

One parent works from home and one home schools. It’s easier to do with wfh because you can live in a low cost of living area where one tech salary supports a family and buys a large house with dedicated rooms for work and school.

To summarize, one parent doesn't work. Thought so, you can't do both.

My point is that it's not possible to support a family with one parent homeschooling without wfh because it's the only way you can have only one parent work and also have the room you need to effectively homeschool due to the ability to move to a low cost of living area.

SV isn't as unique as you think it is. A lot of the problems that plague the SF area plague LA, NYC, medium-sized cities and the metro areas surrounding them. I've even lived in small cities with less than 80k people that have similar problems.

People at my company work longer hours, have completely multiple very difficult high profile deadlines due to WFH. That your office is unproductive because you need a physical lab shouldn’t inform those who don’t, IMO!

I think an underrepresented problem with WFH is that even among senior engineers collaborating on a project, overall communication goes down and it results in less cohesion among the team. It results in a small, but quite noticeable amount of siloing within a project. I've also found I don't really know my coworkers as people much anymore because we don't have much of any off-topic discussions which leads to strained social dynamics.

>I’ve noticed this split in opinion from higher ups who have higher pay and thus have large, finished home offices versus others lower on the totem pole who don’t.

I know lots of 'lower totem pole' employees with a nicer WFH setup than many managers.

From what I've seen, there is a more significant reason higher ups like WFH. PG wrote an essay about the creators schedule versus the managers schedule. A managers schedule (the higher ups) spend their day flip flopping between meetings during each hour increment. Imagine having to walk/transport to a different building on/off campus for a new meeting a many times a day. It can take a lot of valuable time & potentially be exhausting. In WFH, you just click a new link to join a zoom meeting. Much more convenient.

The people doing the low level work such as coding tend to be younger. They are looking to make office connections and define their career path. Working out of an office allows for progression in both.

>Also, I think WFH tends to isolate and stovepipe employees even more than they already were, which is a problem especially in larger organizations.

The large organization I am consulting at right now had a larger than average number of employees (also higher level employees) quit over the lockdown which has given management the idea that WFH frays the social ties and makes it easier for people to consider leaving.

> has given management the idea that WFH frays the social ties

It does fray social ties. We're social beings, made for face to face interactions. That's how we operate. There's a reason almost every language has a proverb along the lines of "out of sight, out of mind".

Many would argue that it’s unhealthy to rely on your work for social bonds. I much prefer keeping my social circle and my work circles completely separate. Wfh means I can spend more time socializing with those I care about.

Having no social bonds with people you're spending 8+ hours/day with seems a lot more unhealthy to me (and so does spending all that time hermit-like - and doing your job in the company of family or friends from outside the job seems awkward too).

Your not really spending 8 hours a day with them when your remote though, your team/coworkers w/e are just people to sync up with when you need to.

Sure, but if you don't have any bonds with your coworkers you're either having zero social contact for 8 hours/day, or trying to work while socialising with non-coworkers. There are definitely days where I keep my head down and don't talk to anyone, but I wouldn't want every day to be like that.

If you're socializing with co-workers you're also not working. One of the problems is the 8 hour work day. I don't want to be forced to spend 40+ hours a week with co-workers. That is why people aren't having healthy social lives. Work is draining their time and energy. Yes, people make due by creating social bonds with their co-workers, but I'd hardly call that ideal.

> If you're socializing with co-workers you're also not working.

Only in a narrow sense. If anything employers in our industry tend to deliberately encourage employees to socialise (within reason): casual contact is important to help different parts of the org chart break out of their silos, liminal spaces are an important route for information that might be suppressed over normal channels, and almost everyone knows at some level that you can't do 40 hours of productive programming per week. The way I see it, a certain amount of socialising on the clock is win-win.

> One of the problems is the 8 hour work day. I don't want to be forced to spend 40+ hours a week with co-workers. That is why people aren't having healthy social lives. Work is draining their time and energy.

I don't disagree, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Given that I do have to work 8 hours/day, I'd rather humanise that time as much as possible than refuse out of some sense of accelerationism.

I wouldn't call optimizing for information flow through an organization in a way prescribed by management "socializing" or even "good".

Wfh definitely isn't accelerationism (or perfect). It's just a chance to live somewhere less oppressively expensive and have less surveillance from your employer all day. It's up to the individual to take advantage of that. If socializing is important to them, there are more opportunities to do it, it just takes a bit more work but I would argue the results are much healthier and more natural than relying on work and centering relationships around working.

Micromanaged "socialising" is indeed bad for everyone. But organic socialisation at work can be win-win. Refusing to socialise at work is what I'm saying is accelerationism.

> Many would argue that it’s unhealthy to rely on your work for social bonds.

Many would argue that eating right and exercising is healthy, yet 30%+ of people in developed countries are overweight and the percentage is increasing.

At some point we have to accept reality. People are flawed (yet they somehow manage to live their lives :-) ).

Well the reality is that wfh is a trend and it helps with the issue that I'm talking about. It's not hypothetical, it's happening now.

Does it, though? Socializing at home during work hours is not the same thing as socializing outside of work hours.

Plus, people still work 8+ hours a day, so you can't really interact much with friends.

The main thing you win is geographically, I guess. No more time lost in commute plus maybe less time lost meeting with friends because you don't have to go from the office to the meeting place (though that will obviously depend on how far your friends are from your home).

You're not really socializing with people in the office either, you're working with them. Without a boss around looking over your shoulder, you have a lot more time to socialize if you want. Go get a coffee with a friend, your partner, your kid...

I'd also describe the office as anti-social as I would not voluntarily spend my time with the majority of my co-workers and having to be around them day in and day out is extremely draining and demoralizing. I find surrounding myself with people I actually care about and have real bonds with to be far more positive.

For some of us that’s all we got.

For others they prefer their co-workers over forced social socializion due to family relations.

Not having social bonds out of work is definitely a problem with our society. It's fixable though, there are lots of groups outside of work you can connect with and start meeting people. The internet made this a lot easier.

> For others they prefer their co-workers over forced social socialization due to family relations.

Honestly, these are the co-workers I hate being around the most as they treat you like an outlet for not just social contact but often therapy or venting about their family. I literally never want to hear about a co-worker's terrible marriage (for an example I've had to deal with quite a bit).

We had a rather average amount of turnover which might be high considering the concerns about the economy. I think one possible contributor is that more remote roles are available.

Who is actually calling for permanent, "close the office" WFH for everyone? Nobody I know. It seems like a strawman. I would argue it's just as unreasonable as forcing everyone to work in the office or quit, whether they like it or not. Different people work better in different environments, and ideally WFH would stay optional.

Are you being serious? A very vocal portion of HN has advocated this for years. At least for their own positions, if not "forced" onto all employees.

For YEARS now, the #1 most reliable way to see your username on the front page of HN is to post a link about David Heinemeier Hansson promoting remote work, or a story skewering Marissa Mayer for squashing it at Yahoo.

It's only after 12 months of sitting at home in our sweatpants going crazy, that I'm starting to see more people discuss offices a bit wistfully.

> At least for their own positions, if not "forced" onto all employees.

There is a huge difference between advocating for the option to WFH for yourself and arguing to force everyone to WFH. Few if any are advocates for the latter.

> There is a huge difference between advocating for the option to WFH for yourself and arguing to force everyone to WFH. Few if any are advocates for the latter.

The thing is, 100% WFH means that you probably kneecap your career if the others don't do the same.

Maybe. But that's a choice people should be willing to make, IMO.

I've worked for remote-only, local-only, and mixed environments.

Mixed environments are significantly more difficult to sustain. FTF discussions are such big wins when it comes to volume of information shared and ability to quickly redirect to other topics as needed, that the employees who are remote will often find themselves cut out of the loop entirely.

So, given the choice, I'd much rather work for a remote-only company than be left out of the important conversations. It's not a deliberate decision to exclude the remote workers, it just happens naturally.

(As I said elsewhere, it's possible that will change post-pandemic, but I think that it's mostly an inevitable outcome of the typical office dynamics.)

You cannot have a mixed environment unless the company is a "remote-first" company. A remote-first company means that all policy is designed for remote work, but still has open office space for anyone who wants to come in.

Remote-first companies have specific policies about meetings and unscheduled conversations. For example, all meetings must be announced, available over video, recorded, with a write up at the end. All spontaneous chats happen over email, slack, or a wiki to make sure they are documented.

This levels the playing field for anyone working remote, so that they aren't completely isolated or left out of important decisions by those in the office.

> All spontaneous chats happen over email, slack, or a wiki to make sure they are documented.

That's just anti-human. I'm all for working from home but people in the office are going to chat just as the people working from home are going too. The bitch sessions about the boss just happen in the 1 on 1 video calls.

That's an excellent point; I'm skeptical, however, that many companies will successfully make a transition to remote-first, if they even seriously attempt it.

>> Who is actually calling for permanent, "close the office" WFH for everyone?

REI sold their corporate campus in a move to 100% WFH:

We have made the decision to pursue a sale of our buildings and land in Bellevue’s Spring District—and, with that sale, to step toward a new model for our headquarters that will better serve the way we live, work and act as a force for positive change.

Remote working will move from a temporary solve to a more engrained, supported, and normalized model for many of our headquarters employees.

Target recently sold its downtown offices as well:

Minnesota-based Target says that flexibility is behind the decision to shut down the company's City Center operation in downtown Minneapolis, and relocate 3,500 employees to other locations in the city and elsewhere.

"None of us knew what the future would hold or how long we’d be working from home, but in just one year we’ve proven that we can drive incredible results, together, from our kitchens and basements and living rooms," Kremer wrote in her email.

With the end of the pandemic hopefully in site, Kremer says Target is moving toward a hybrid system called "Flex for Your Day" that will incorporate both virtual and on-site work and collaboration when employees "gradually return to headquarters later this year."

Capitol One is doing the same thing:

Capital One Financial Corp. said the majority of employees at its U.S. call centers for cards will work from home even after the coronavirus pandemic ends.

For the rest of its staff, the card giant extended remote operations until the end of March, according to an internal memo. Capital One had previously said employees would work remotely until at least the end of this year.

Not "solve," "solution." I keep hearing this. And it has a twisted mate: "solutioning." <facepalm>

Well said. I like how you laid out both sides. For employees, this is a preference. I'm tired of the "best" narrative. Everything has trade-offs that are not calculated in.

fortuitous interactions - This is the big problem for me. Developing relationships and getting a pulse on the company and all the opportunities / challenges / "there be dragons" is nearly impossible working from home. The water cooler and grapevine have pretty much disappeared and any chance of getting ahead of arising issues / storms is now gone.

My impression is that other industries are often already back to the office, ignoring state guidance.

“Ignoring State Guidance” was pretty much one of the main themes of 2020 and likely will be for 2021. Which is one reason we can’t seem to claw our way out of this mess without throwing people under the bus to die.

>I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.

At the end of the day markets are efficient. Some will make mistakes and loose, some will do the right thing and prosper.

I think this is an oversimplification. There isn't one uniform market for labor, even within an industry. What is a mistake for one company might not be for another, but social and other non-economic pressures may cause less weight to be given to such distinctions and work against both.