It's our duty as human beings to resist going back to the office as much as possible. To gain back some of the life we otherwise would spend on commute. Work is for work, not for socializing, or having fun, or playing Xbox and table tennis. I mean, sure, these are nice perks, but we are being paid for the work we do, not for the fun we have. And working without being distracted by some colleagues loud music in the headphones, or the chit chat of others, or the "sorry, quick question" of some manager, improves my quality of work tremendously.
For the latter, there are times when you need to think about working, and when you're doing that, being in the office with a group of people and a whiteboard is invaluable. But at some point, you know what you need to do, you just need to get into a flow and do it. And that is near impossible in modern offices. That is especially important for engineers, but it also applies to accountants and designers and carpenters and any productive labor that isn't management.
Introvert/extrovert doesn't come into play, all productive labor needs to get into states of deep focus.
Maybe if engineers all had doors that closed, but for some damn reason we haven't had those since the 1960s.
I came to the office very early (say 7ish), which gave me a couple hours to really focus on things, before my colleagues started meandering in.
I'm certain that there will be an outpouring of hundreds of reasons why people cannot move, and I'm sure all of those reasons have merit. But it doesn't change the fact that long commutes are a huge detriment to work/life balance.
With the pandemic I've been enjoying being at home so much. If they force me to go back to commute I will look for another job.
Commute time doesn't have to be wasted time.
Your suggestion works for exactly one type of person, who has enough resources to outbid others for housing and either lives alone or has a non-working spouse.
That said I'd never ever have a 1+ hour commutes, 30 minutes is plenty but I have noticed a difference in inspiration this year and I put it down to this.
I was doing 90 minutes each way, four days a week, before; I'm currently not worried about going back to three days a week, although I'm a little curious if I'll feel differently once it happens.
I don't think about work outside of work, which includes commuting. I may have an epiphany while showering or talking a walk, but in the car I listen to music or podcasts. That is Me Time, not Employer Time.
You might not be thinking about work, but your brain is.
Maybe I care about this more because I'm a designer so, creativity is what I'm judged on.
This is definitely true after work sometimes, but a commute is not necessary for this. Walking helps similarly and is healthier, too. For me personally, I tune everything out and listen to music most of the time while commuting, or simply meditate (specifically not dwelling on any thoughts).
"Maybe I care about this more because I'm a designer so, creativity is what I'm judged on."
I'm not sure if you intended this, but this could be read that you're implying that programming is not a creative profession. Which is wholly false.
Part of tackling hard problems is coming up with creative solutions. One absolutely needs creativity and vision to architect larger applications and coordinated services.
I've met accountants that are more creative than some jazz musicians, but the creative work they do is much more abstract and not as intrinsically understandable as a musician that's improvising on a tune.
People think that the things they do at the office (beyond work) are impossible to replace in "real life". They are, office is the actual virtual life
My bus ride is very valuable to me for this reason.
Try as I might, on the WFH days I virtually always wind up doing this same block of study after 10pm which is my free time.
I also get interrupted just as much regardless of whether I'm at home or in the office, so that's kind of a moot point in my particular case.
I commute 2x 40-50 minutes plus if I work at the office I have a forced 1h break, so around a little bit less than three hours of life have been given back to me during remote work. I understand your sentiment and I share it completely. I am now able to run errands, exercise, nap, clean the house, play video games, or work in my garage during this found again time. I often feel shy to admit that the pandemic-induced shift to remote work has given me back a lot. My boss lives a 5 minutes walk away and will never ever understand what it means to have to commute every day.
I don't know how others feel, but I am not outgoing enough to use the foosball and pingpong tables that are common in development studios, I feel so judged; so those are (for me) not perks at all.
I try not to build too much of an us-vs-them philosophy into either the site design or the marketing message, but I hope to soon have an XHR-type feature where the hiring manager instantly sees the effect that each piece of job metadata (remote work-ability, interview format, etc.) has on their prospective candidate pool as they enter the job info.
I think this could send a useful signal upstream to the industry at large.
You can see all of the filterable attributes by directly visiting https://sievejobs.com/job-seeker
And I'd love to hear any feedback that anyone might have.
I've started going back into the office now for brainstorming because just being able to talk without latency and without only one person being able to talk at once the difference is just night and day, not to mention the casual non-meeting non-slack chats where ideas are born.
I think remote work is now something people will demand but I can't be the only person who's noticed the difference especially in creativity focused work and believe the end game within 2 years will be the people in the office will work on the interesting stuff and remote will work on fixing bugs. Which of course will trickle on to impact salary unfortunately.
Please don't talk for all of us. If you're miserable in the office that's fine, but it's noones duty to support your preferences. This is why we have this amazing free market - everyone can work at a company that respects their preferences.
> everyone can
No. Most people don't have good options. It's a little ironic to say the OP needs more empathy and then go on to make an argument that's almost breathtakingly disconnected from reality.
How am I disconnected from reality?
And yes- I would like to see a total ban on gas guzzling cars in my lifetime. I would like to see cities built around walkability, and ban all types of cars entirely in the city center. Etc. But it's a step by step process.
The social contact you have at work often feels forced and artificial - you can choose your friends, your colleagues not so much.
I did choose them, luckily I got to audition them from around 300 people I've been forced to interact with through over my career during the past 10 years. Not only do I get to know their characters well because I can decide if I like them or not and find out if they're trustworthy through working together I also get the extra benefit of being recommended for jobs through them.
How on earth am I supposed to do that though clubs? Presumably you mean sports clubs because no sure much else than that exists for adults, what if I want to make friends with people who are not interested in sports?
But in my city Meetup.com has a huge amount of clubs and groups for basically anything, and I'm in Barcelona so the city isn't even that big and it's not all English-speaking (which I guess may be more likely to use Meetup).
There are sometimes local Facebook groups for stuff as well, I went on day-trips to various places like that.
I know my colleagues who are into tabletop games and D&D go to those groups, I personally just went to language exchanges and hiking/tourism groups. There are even groups for local video gamers etc. as I guess it's nice being able to meet in person too.
For music specifically there are local scenes. If you go to local places consistently, you'll see some of the same faces. Etc.
I like programming, but I would find it very boring to only be friends with people in the same industry as me.
I also don't see this as an issue. If you want to meet people, that's a great way to do so. I've done it across America and in Korea, and I have made many friends from it.
If you have been able to draw the line and log off at 5pm, good for you, but that's not the experience for a lot of people.
But I'm not working extra hours every day, and given the time I save on commuting and lunch hour and being able to do various chores during the day - I think it's still a significant win.
That's a personal issue though. It seems backwards to insist on an in-person work environment because someone doesn't have the personal discipline to log off at 5pm on their own.
WFH may be good for introverts with good social skills. It's awful for shy extraverts (which is a less-than-ideal combination to begin with).
If you can't speak to people unless they're forced to, that doesn't mean that you need to make it so that everyone else is forced to because otherwise you're uncomfortable.
In the same way working 60-80hrs a week will start being more productive at the start but eventually burn most people out, at least for me and people like me, not hanging out with others will do the same thing.
It's a balance for me. Too little direct interaction, short breaks, sharing lunches, having non-work related conversations, will end up decreasing my over all productivity.
You're welcome to WFH but I personally hope you're in the minority because if no one but me goes to the office then it's just as bad as WFH for me.
Also I feel for the people who's work was supporting workers in, y'know, work. I no longer live there, but even a crappy day in London for me was brightened by the countless interactions with people, the guy in the magazine shop, a new hipster pop up cafe, the street vendors selling exciting new food. Will they work from home?
I think one of the major challenges for an organisation is how to get peak performance from a diverse team (in terms of life circumstances and personality) and still maintain one culture and a ‘team mind’ where everyone is safe and content with their work.
I’m not a WFH evangelist really: remote is just another modality, with its own costs and benefits. It just doesn’t seem to get a fair hearing in a lot of places.
This is my exact complaint, even in the Marine Corps. All of our senior leadership are charismatic extroverts. They are trying to adapt "distributed command & control" because they recognize that large management nodes are easy to spot and kill. But they still insist on all forms of concentrated workspaces, in-person meetings, video teleconferences, etc... We have the technology, but it will never be fully embraced because it is fundamentally anathema to the character of our decision-makers.
Personally I tend toward introvert (it's not black and white) and have experience with working from home before the pandemic. For someone who's starting working from home it's easy to fall into a pattern of self-isolation which will have a negative psychological effect on them. I'm convinced that most people need at least a couple of days per week of social office time for their own sanity.
"spending time with family" - no, I'm single and alone and so are most of my co-workers
"living in a nicer / cheaper location" - no, my office is nicer than my home and same for most of my co-workers.
Your situation and needs are different than mine apparently.
Sometimes you end up in a job with no good transit routes from where you can afford to live, so you have to drive hours a day. Search the web for stories about "supercommuters".
Compared to any of that, a 30 min bike ride is downright lovely.
I've seen this argument before, and I don't understand how working from home changes this honestly.
Why not just start your day with a bike ride for leisure? Unbound by the location of your office you can now cycle to any arbitrary location. If you struggle to do it without a reason, perhaps cycle to a bakery or store and pickup some fresh food for the day.
For me, it's a motivation issue. I had to go to work and had to cycle/walk there. Now, going out in the morning is optional. If I stayed up too late or if the weather is bad (it's almost always bad in Scotland) I'll make an excuse and not go out. After doing it a few times, I broke my morning habit and it's extremely difficult to force myself to go out.
I know it doesn't really make sense but that just adds to frustration. I hate that I cannot force myself to do daily exercise and it makes me feel like shit, creating a sort of feedback loop. I don't go out and do exercise because I feel like shit and I feel more shit because I don't exercise.
Alternatively find a coffee shop, ride there for your morning fix of caffeine.
There are many comments here about missing their commutes as they could meditate/reflect on things, etc. One can quite easily do this with meditation or walking/running/biking for ~30 mins. However it takes discipline to carve out that 30 mins and leave it specifically for meditation or whatever.
"A couple" can mean anything from two to full week. I can assure you that at least for some people one day is enough.
Typically, as a contract consultant, working onsite would have me provided a 13" cheap crap-top (my personal laptop has 32gb of RAM and 2tb of SSD in a RAID config), and then stick me in the worst "half-cubicle/half-storage/supply closet" that none of their employees would ever sit in.
Even then, there would be a non-stop stream of people dropping by, and/or "shoulder-taps".
And I am a weird introvert/extrovert - so I love in-person meetings, whiteboarding and training/speaking sessions. But I also love the quiet, uninterrupted time in a decent work environment to actually... "get stuff done".
As for "The pandemic-driven remote working is hell for some people, and unfortunately they call the shots.", one might want to ponder _why_ the extroverts got into a position where they're calling the shots. Mastering the art of human interaction is important, even for introverts.
While extroverts are overrepresented in management, I think a bigger issue is that people who overvalue physical proximity as a tool for establishing/maintaining control (both of formal subordinates and otherwise) are overrepresented in management. You don’t have to be an extrovert to be cargo culting Management By Walking Around (if you aren’t cargo-culting, you can probably adapt it to a remote environment) or to have developed and lean heavily on communication techniques (non-verbal, especially) that work better for dominating meetings in=person.
Honestly, I think introverts who have spent time crafting a particular set of tools for surviving as managers are at least as dangerous here here as extroverts.
For a knowledge worker where they need to concentrate there needs to be a quiet distraction free environment without interruptions. If this is at home in a separate low-traffic room or in an office with few people and a door that can be closed , both will work well. However I don't think many people's environments are like that in either place.
So to me there's no difference between working at home or the office, if you're going to have people interrupting you, high levels of background noise, and other visual/scheduling distractions.
LOL, thanks for the laugh! :-)
Majority rule :-)
For the general population? No way. Most studies put the number of introverts somewhere between 20-40%.
Extroverts are loud and they are the majority, too.
As someone on this forum put it, the only evolutionary advantage to being an introvert is that you're insurance in case all the bunched up introverts die in a natural disaster, while you're away sitting alone in your far away corner.
I don’t mind coming into your office now and again (there’s a special dimension to IRL connections), but the reason I don’t want to work there full time is that it’s crap for knowledge work. I outspend you by 10x per head in my home office, and everything there is to my exact specification. The whole field of modern office design should be a discredited pseudoscience; management is addicted to it because of the real estate crisis though.
This is also kind of terrible, because a lot of people use FAANG as their North star for every policy decision.
“Well Google use primary colours in their logo, Brian”