I hate that people keep framing it as a "preference" issue. There are HUGE economic and environmental costs that go along with working in and (often) commuting to an office. Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs.

We don't need to destroy our planet, dramatically increase costs, and dramatically lower productivity just to appease the minority of people that prefer playing office space, and I think more and more people are starting to see it that way.

Well, there are also huge human costs that go along with working alone all day, and in the same environment as the rest of your life.

For example, commuting, while not nice most of the time, has one great impact on life: it allows you to break from work, which is not happening when you have sleep/work/hobbies/life at the same place. I'm not saying you should spend 1h in traffic or subway, but 20min and walking would be a great way to change thoughts and separate work from life.

Also seeing your colleagues for real, and spending some time with them, as they are humans, is a great way to have better empathy and better work relations: using only remote tools doesn't provide such a human behavior.

Completely agree. I'm actually working full time in the office just so I have a working environment that's actually optimised for focusing on work, even though it's primarily empty. There's no way I'd work for a company that insisted I work in the same space I live in.

I cycle in and my commute is one of the highlights of my day. When some colleagues are occasionally in the office they all comment on how much being back in the office makes them realise what they missed about it.

I don't think anyone is advocating for a position in which companies insist you work in the space you live in. The dichotomy here is between a) company forcing you to work in specific building and b) company giving you some say in the matter. People want different amounts of 'say', of course, but even a fully-remote company isn't going to prevent you from, for example, working from a shared office that's local to you.

This sounds like a business opportunity for WeWork.

I often go to coworking spaces around while working remotely: it really helps to "go" somewhere and to have a different space from sleep/eat/relax

Many people who work remotely will go to a coffee shop or WeWork. But my point is this -- people who have this urge to be in person and can't be placated reasonably are both in the minority and are essentially a problem when what they want is much more expensive and damaging.

Absolutely agree here - although I'm plenty productive working from home, I find I have to go out for a 20/30 minutes walk afterwards, otherwise I never really 'turn off' and my brain is stuck in work mode for the rest of the day. While commuting isn't always fun, it does help provide that 'switch off' - I'm lucky enough to have a relatively short (~20 min) commute though, so I can see how this would be more frustrating for someone with 1hr+ commute.

Seeing colleagues in person is also vital for me - I wouldn't have the working relationship with them that I have if we were fully remote. I think the hybrid model is the best way - it's what works best for me, at least.

One of the nicest work environments I've had (in these specific terms only!) was when I worked 15-20 minutes away from where I lived. In summer months, I could walk in — and it helped that there was a park on the way. In the winter, or if I was really in a hurry, I could take local transport. That short commute was perfect to clear the head and prepare for the day. Unfortunately, it's a very difficult setup to achieve and my last commute — nearly 2 hours there and back — was the final straw before I decided to wfh pretty much full time.

As someone who worked in an office for 5 years and has now worked remotely for 5 years, I have to say, this just isn't true. I get the same "peaceful reflection time" from simply walking my dog that I used to get from commuting.

You can also go walking/running if you WFH, which I do. At any time I want. If I'm stressed of work mid day I'll just go running for an hour and will feel super. Couldn't properly do that if I worked from office.

Why not? What's stopping you?

Honestly, it's just too much of a hassle for me to be able to actually enjoy the running activity itself.

1. I have to prepare for the weather, organise proper clothes. Fine.

2. I sweat really hard. After a run I'm totally wet and I'd rather be indoors as little as possible, since sweat is dripping all over. And to get to a work shower I would have to go through an elevator and some other places. I'd feel people judging me if I'm sweating all over the place before getting to shower.

3. I'd prefer to not shower at work. I will have to also bring so much stuff along like changing clothes and must find a place to dry my sweaty clothes since they are dripping through. I must remember to not leave them there and I'm quite forgetful about things like that.

Depending on where your office is (typically some sort of city) this can actually be pretty dangerous (hit+run, crime, breathing very unhealthy air). Conversely if you work remotely, you can live in the suburbs or even somewhere more remote.

Additionally, I know in many in-person orgs leaving to go outside and smoke is super frowned upon and seen as a productivity drain. I assume "going for a quick run" would have the same effect at your off-the-shelf toxic org. In a remote org, no one is going to be breathing down your neck while you take 15 mins to go for a walk to collect your thoughts. Especially if we keep passing privacy legislation that limits the ability of the Amazons of the world to install spyware on worker machines.

I work from home... but I'm not alone.. I've got as much, if not more access to co-workers whilst at home as I do in the office. We use teams extensively so if you are needing to concentrate, simply flip your status to busy. We've got a group set up for the developers where we chat, swap stories, ask technical questions or just complain about the poor management. No different than if we were in the office.. In fact probably more social.

About the only thing that I have noticed, is that having the ability to immediately communicate and that communication method being text, it is very easy for complaints about the organisation to get a little more heated than would happen if we were in person.

If you are working from home and you feel alone, then just reach out to your co-workers and spend some time just chewing the fat.

Text, voice, even video is not the same as a live human being: even-though it is communication in all cases, and I do agree we can have great tools, the tools can't replace the interactions you can have with a real human.

That's true. In person you also have to worry about COVID and other communicable diseases. Can't beat that!

But no in all seriousness, some of the most in-depth conversations I've had in my life have been in video call 1:1s. The intentionality of sitting in a call with someone for 30 mins is enormous. It's equivalent to going to someone's office and sitting right in front of them and talking for 30 mins. That almost never happens in office environments -- instead you have lots of fleeting encounters, passing people in hallways, etc. With remote you get this extremely intentional person to person experience every time.

I'm sure you can have a 20 minute walk after working from home..

I do 40 minutes, personally. It's great!

It might work, but it is difficult to walk just for walking: I know people who walk their dog, which works, but just going out around doesn't seem like a good motivation

If you don't find that sufficiently motivating, then you don't care about it enough to use it as an argument for why we should all have to commute.

Before I had a dog, I would intentionally go for walks to think over an algorithm or endpoint I'm writing. People who work in an office do the same thing, often intentionally.

Depends on your neighborhood, but this sounds like a personal preference issue; walking just for the sake of being outside is a liberating experience in of itself. Walk for the sun and for the breeze and the sounds of nature. Or go for a jog.

> For example, commuting, while not nice most of the time, has one great impact on life: it allows you to break from work

Is that worth 29 lbs of carbon emissions and 20% productivity drain? What kind of home do you have where you can't go for a walk and take a break?

Yeah, I go for a walk or a run or a bike ride after work. Unless the weather is shit.

That's the great part, I get to choose instead of being forced to the same regular pollute every day.

> Not to mention the consistent 20-30% productivity drain working in an office seems to have across the board at most tech orgs.

I don't think it's so clear cut.

In less collaborative environments, nobody interrupts you and you can bang code all day, close many tickets, etc etc.

In highly collaborative environments, people will talk to each other all the time. You'll me interrupted and you will write less code and close less JIRAs but you're more likely to find issues with code, design and requirements earlier in the process, solve misunderstandings easier and faster, and you get that free flow of information where everyone knows what is going on and share knowledge easily.

So you might have lesser "productivity" but you're more likely to deliver high-quality product.

Now saying that, both WFH and hybrid and office can be both highly collaborative and not. But WFH makes is really easy for people to check out of the information flow (even by accident) and be angry they're not getting informed, or promoted or whatever.

If you want WFH to work out, you need to come up with a strategy how to make that highly collaborative.

You are correct about the problem, but your solution is backwards. The solution is not for us to retreat to the suburbs and WFH forever. The solution is to build dense, walkable cities with good public transit, allowing for sustainable in-person work and strengthening local communities.

Dense cities with public transit: maybe not the best in times of pandemics

They clearly aren’t that bad. China has very dense cities and has not had much issue controlling spread. Masks and a respectful society seem to be highly effective at stoping viruses.

Not in London, or the tech hotspots of the US, I'm sure. I bet it's a free for all. It's a big reason for my apprehension of a return to the office. In London, at least, it's very common to find significant numbers of people on buses and trains without a mask.

Yes, just rebuild society instead. Simple.

In my opinion this is an argument fallacy.Almost any economic activity causes pollution and spike in environmental and economic costs.

Moving to WFH will not do anything to reduce emissions and it could actually lead to an opposite outcome due to increased consumption as people would have more time to travel longer distances.

At face value:

There won't be increased consumption at 7 AM and at 5 PM on a weekday if less people commute. I just don't see it happening. Additionally the tech industry isn't exactly a groundswell of people either -- if all tech workers stop commuting, that isn't going to have enough of an impact to change traffic conditions except literally in silicon valley. There just aren't that many workers in tech.

But let's examine the flipside... The average commute distance in the U.S. is 16 miles. The average tech company is located in a densely populated metropolitan area, and the average passenger vehicle in the U.S. emits 411 grams of CO2 per mile. Commuting two ways that's 32 miles * 411g = 13.152 kg (~29 lbs) of carbon emissions for your daily commute. The average American household in total has around 39.8 kg/day (~88 lbs) of C02 emissions. Reducing that by 29 on weekdays is a 1/3 reduction in emissions. That's huge. Also consider that the average person in the U.S. drives 36.9 miles per day. For working people cutting this by 32 miles on weekdays is an enormous change.

Consumption isn't going to increase proportionally because everyone is still going to be too busy working. The people who were already "consuming" during the day are going to continue to do so, but that population isn't going to increase. It's fixed. Maybe some will drive more, but it's not going to have the same effect that the people no longer driving 32 miles / weekday no longer having to do so will have.

I'm also ignoring the significant environmental and monetary costs of keeping an office running, and the increased work that needs to be done because of the (being charitable) at least 15% production drain of working in an office.

No one (save school trips) wants to pack into the bronx zoo at 8 AM on a tuesday. At best this would have diminishing returns -- the benefit of the roads being less crowded vanishes once the same number of people start driving for consumption reasons. There's no way it would exceed the original footprint of people commuting, because the motivation wouldn't exist once you approach commute levels of congestion. And this is ignoring the fact that there is an essentially fixed population of people who are able to consume during the workday.

>There won't be increased consumption at 7 AM and at 5 PM on a weekday if less people commute. I just don't see it happening. Additionally the tech industry isn't exactly a groundswell of people either -- if all tech workers stop commuting, that isn't going to have enough of an impact to change traffic conditions except literally in silicon valley. There just aren't that many workers in tech.

There's a delayed consumption.Time and money saved will inevitably turn spending time and money later. Also not only tech workers work in the offices.A lot of other people might demand to work from home (and they already did).That's a lot of people.

>But let's examine the flipside... The average commute distance in the U.S. is 16 miles. The average tech company is located in a densely populated metropolitan area, and the average passenger vehicle in the U.S. emits 411 grams of CO2 per mile. Commuting two ways that's 32 miles * 411g = 13.152 kg (~29 lbs) of carbon emissions for your daily commute. The average American household in total has around 39.8 kg/day (~88 lbs) of C02 emissions. Reducing that by 29 on weekdays is a 1/3 reduction in emissions. That's huge. Also consider that the average person in the U.S. drives 36.9 miles per day. For working people cutting this by 32 miles on weekdays is an enormous change.

I dont think you can make an equation like this.People instead of walking to their favorite restaurant might decide to order more or make longer rides to go to "the better restaurants" instead of just consuming what is withing the walking distance from their apartments / office.

>Consumption isn't going to increase proportionally because everyone is still going to be too busy working. The people who were already "consuming" during the day are going to continue to do so, but that population isn't going to increase. It's fixed. Maybe some will drive more, but it's not going to have the same effect that the people no longer driving 32 miles / weekday no longer having to do so will have.

Except a lot of people will gain time and money to spend later.And that's usually one of the main arguments in these discussions that people hate to spend time and money to commute.

>I'm also ignoring the significant environmental and monetary costs of keeping an office running, and the increased work that needs to be done because of the (being charitable) at least 15% production drain of working in an office.

I was under the impression that offices generally are environmentally speaking better buildings than your average condos and houses.They have to follow specific sustainability standards.

> I was under the impression that offices generally are environmentally speaking better buildings than your average condos and houses.They have to follow specific sustainability standards.

The house/apartment you live in is still there (because you still live in it) regardless of if you WFH. The difference is if you WFH, it's actually being utilized 100% of the time instead of just at night and on weekends. Conversely, the office literally doesn't need to exist in the first place if everyone does WFH. So we have to compare having your apartment + having an office, to having just your apartment. The office situation is a net negative no matter how environmentally friendly it is unless it is actually carbon neutral or carbon negative. And that's ignoring the commuting aspect. If we were to abandon all offices tomorrow and let nature re-claim them, it would have a massively positive effect carbon footprint wise. And it's not like offices turn off the AC at night.

> Except a lot of people will gain time and money to spend later.And that's usually one of the main arguments in these discussions that people hate to spend time and money to commute.

By this logic, we should keep everyone poor because god forbid they consume something. Consumption isn't negative across the board. And overwhelmingly these days it's digital anyway. If I stay at home and watch Netflix, I have a much smaller carbon footprint than someone who goes and drives somewhere. You can see from the statistics above, the average person drives ~39 miles per day. I'm saying reduce that by 32 on weekdays and you're saying "oh no, what if they replace that with other consumption???". I think it is borderline impossible people would consistently do something _worse_ than their commute (carbon wise) across the board. It's like saying "oh no, if we ban unhealthy deserts in schools people will buy them and eat even more unhealthy deserts outside of school". They won't -- on average kids would be healthier. It's a no brainer.

> I dont think you can make an equation like this.People instead of walking to their favorite restaurant might decide to order more or make longer rides to go to "the better restaurants" instead of just consuming what is within the walking distance from their apartments / office.

There is no reason to suspect this would happen. If you work from 9 AM to 5 PM, and you cut out your commute, you have _more_ time to for example make a home-cooked meal. If anything people will order out less. All the statistics on WFH (and I've done contracting for a meal planning company so I can guarantee this one specifically) support this. People order out less when they work remotely, across the board.

Regarding the "taking longer rides thing" -- people aren't going to do that so much that it becomes as demanding as their commute. Then it would be annoying.

>The house/apartment you live in is still there (because you still live in it) regardless of if you WFH. The difference is if you WFH, it's actually being utilized 100% of the time instead of just at night and on weekends. Conversely, the office literally doesn't need to exist in the first place if everyone does WFH. So we have to compare having your apartment + having an office, to having just your apartment. The office situation is a net negative no matter how environmentally friendly it is unless it is actually carbon neutral or carbon negative. And that's ignoring the commuting aspect. If we were to abandon all offices tomorrow and let nature re-claim them, it would have a massively positive effect carbon footprint wise. And it's not like offices turn off the AC at night

I am pretty sure most office buildings adhere to strict sustainability standards as opposed to residential housing.Only more luxurious condos are just as good as your average modern office space.

I am pretty sure most modern office buildings turn off the AC at night or have a mechanism to keep it cool by other means (external blinds).

>By this logic, we should keep everyone poor because god forbid they consume something. Consumption isn't negative across the board. And overwhelmingly these days it's digital anyway. If I stay at home and watch Netflix, I have a much smaller carbon footprint than someone who goes and drives somewhere. You can see from the statistics above, the average person drives ~39 miles per day. I'm saying reduce that by 32 on weekdays and you're saying "oh no, what if they replace that with other consumption???". I think it is borderline impossible people would consistently do something _worse_ than their commute (carbon wise) across the board. It's like saying "oh no, if we ban unhealthy deserts in schools people will buy them and eat even more unhealthy deserts outside of school". They won't -- on average kids would be healthier. It's a no brainer.

I am not arguing against WFH.I am arguing against your argument that going WFH would bring net positives for the environment.People with more disposable resources do things that cause more pollution because they participate in economic activity.That's just a fact.

Americans tend to consume much more regardless of whether they drive a car or not.

>There is no reason to suspect this would happen. If you work from 9 AM to 5 PM, and you cut out your commute, you have _more_ time to for example make a home-cooked meal. If anything people will order out less. All the statistics on WFH (and I've done contracting for a meal planning company so I can guarantee this one specifically) support this. People order out less when they work remotely, across the board.

Regarding the "taking longer rides thing" -- people aren't going to do that so much that it becomes as demanding as their commute. Then it would be annoying.

I think things like Jevons paradox beg to differ.Cooking a meal at home is an option many would not choose.

I think the environmental factor could go either way. It's much better for the environment if people are clustered in dense cities versus spread out in rural areas. If the result of the work-from-home boom is a massive exodus from cities, that's quite clearly going to be bad for the planet.

I totally feel the draw to both. Personally, I really like the freedom of WFH and it wins out against the benefits of being in office for me. But I can see the appeal to being in office too; there's something really nice about working with your teammates, especially if you get along with them and learn from each other.

The thing with your attitude though, is that you're saying it only works for you if everyone is in office. Basically that everyone has to be in office for you to enjoy your office environment. This only works on teams where everyone feels this way. And that's a perfectly reasonable approach to hiring for a new company. The problem is that people have been WFH long enough that every team is likely split on 'team-in-office' sentiment. If a company wants to require staff in office at this point, it should be for building new teams, not applied to existing teams. Then people with the same sentiment as you can choose to transfer to those teams if desired.

My main employer is always very flexible, even before the pandemic, I just met one day in the office (everyone else had to be there too) and the rest I was free to chose. Perfect combination of seeing eachother and WFH.

We had small rooms so distraction was not a point. Commute was 25minutes.

I do believe we should get more flexibility where possible.

I wonder how everyone would feel about WFH vs. office if highly paid, highly valued employees weren't forced into literally the smallest possible space for a third of their day. If we all had our own real offices and a work space not architected to be as abusive and "efficient" as possible, would we think differently about how nice it is not to go to the office any more?

Likewise for city design where commercial space is highly concentrated and disproportional to residential... if workspaces were spread out and there weren't hubs with way more jobs than housing... maybe commuting wouldn't be so long and so unpleasant and the thought of working from the spare bedroom or the couch would seem ridiculous.

I think that makes a big difference! Cubicles should be outlawed really, or at least optional. Seems like an archaic thing to me. For my own contracted jobs I went to place that had you choose between an open plan or a small room workplace. All flexible.

So I think you are right, if we had more choice, people are happier. Hubs are also a great way forward I think.

Maybe there are some exceptions, like high security or high demand for coordination on the spot, but a lot of sectors should or could be more flexible.

A cubicle had at least the resemblance of a piece of space I could call my own.

My worst experience involved commuting two hours by train to a high rise, tiny "open plan" office space (read: a few important people got offices, the rest of us were in one not very big room). It was like a sort of torture... for up to 15 hours a day the only escape from being within a several feet of and in eyeline of half a dozen people at least was hiding in a bathroom stall for a few minutes.... and a space which could be mine and any sort of private was usually two hours of a foul smelling, packed, and unstable public transit away. Growing up in an environment where the median number of people within a mile was usually 3... being forced to be constantly "on display" and knowing that there was no escape other than hours of public transit at the end of the day was deeply psychologically unsettling. I lasted about 6 months.

Yeah that sounds ugly! Personally I don’t think could stand that either. You need time to be able to shut off from the social hubbub.

>And that's a perfectly reasonable approach to hiring for a new company.

And likely discriminatory.

I prefer working from home because I (am caring for an ailing parent|just had a baby|am not neurotypical|have a disability|etc.)

WFH is going to start being seen as a "reasonable accommodation" because the last 18 months have proven that lots of jobs can be done just fine without a physical office and denying that to employees who benefit from it for protected reasons isn't going to fly.

In short: suck it up. Dialing a few people in to an in person meeting is fine. Maybe it doesn't work exactly as well for some reasons but so what? Getting along well with your coworkers doesn't require colocation.

For arranged meetings including the remote workers won't be a problem but there are many 'meetings' that happen in a work context where important information is exchanged that are informal that remote workers will miss out on.

I think this is an org-smell though, I shouldn't miss out on important details because I was in the stall or taking a quick walk either. My first job was remote communications oriented despite being overwhelmingly in-office employees, and it was amazing how much information you could find by searching communication channels and wikis. The norm was to ask questions and talk about impromptu problems in chat, and if you needed to collaborate you went to designated areas or scheduled a meeting. Remote workers weren't out if the loop and on site new hires like myself had a huge wealth of searchable info to absorb

That only really happens if the on-site people neglect to provide the remote workers with a summary. Even when everyone still came in to the office, this happened to sick workers, people on different shifts, locations, teams, etc. In other words: it's about emotional intelligence and seeing yourself as part of a team, not working in an office.

for a small effort. is not difficult to say, "George should be part of this discussion". Ok you may need to all put on headphones or get a room so you can use a speaker phone, but really, not that hard.

What if George had been away getting coffee or at the bathroom when you started the conversation, he would have missed out anyway.

why is this downvoted?

>why is this downvoted?

I didn't vote, but probably it's mostly because of "In short: suck it up", because it seems like a crudely-expressed attempt to deny others the option of disagreement or further discussion

Why should your preferences dictate what other people do? What makes your preference for having people in the office more important than their preference to want to work from home?

That's not what they said, though. What they said was that the benefit of being in the office is lost of it isn't the case that most of the team are in the office. As such, either

1. Most of the people on the team should be working from the office (benefits of being together as a team), OR

2. Most of the team should be working remote (benefits of working remotely)

The point being made was that the third option, each person gets to pick what they want, isn't really a viable option. The team should pick one option or the other. Nowhere was it was that the "in the office" option should be the one chosen, just that it was their, personal preference.

* There are some other reasons for working in the office besides being in proximity to your co-workers, but that's generally seen as the primary benefit by a lot of people.

Why should the people preferring to work from home get preference, either?

At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person. No dropped calls or poor connections or VPN drops or whatever.

As an engineer, I sympathize with the poster. When I need to focus and get something done, I'm generally happier at home with either fewer distractions or more of the distractions under my control. I also like my privacy and loathe the feeling of someone. looking over my shoulder. I'm so very sensitive to motion in my periphery and find movement around me distracting, too. But, I also value the in person communication and collaboration I get in person.

Personally, I'm looking forward to heading back part time, especially considering that the "new normal" appears to be about a 50/50 split between home and office.

Of course, everyone is going to have their own preference, but the company you work for (and your coworkers) will have theirs as well. But, if someone's attitude is "my way or the highway" they as well start looking for a new job, because they'll need one regardless...

> At the end of the day, like it or not, the majority of people working for a company of beyond a small size are going to be in some level of a collaborative environment. Logistically, it's easier to accomplish that in person.

You say this like it's a foregone conclusion, a fact. I disagree with it completely. It's far easier to collaborate remotely. You don't need find a meeting room, you don't need to worry about making too much noise, you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.

It's nice to work together in person occasionally, but I'd much rather collaborate remotely... and get together for lunch now and again.

> You don't need find a meeting room

You have to pay for your own.

> you don't need to worry about making too much noise

Unless other people live in your home.

> you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.

That’s comparing all-remote to some-remote, which is a different comparison than all-remote to all-in-office.

If you have a company with more than one office I think having some meetings with remote participants is an unavoidable truth. Perhaps not every meeting - but anything requiring collaboration between teams or features groups could require it.

> You have to pay for your own.

You have to do it anyway. The rent did not went up due you being at home during day.

Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office.

> you lost space at your home during the 8 hours

I guess that's true, but I'm not sure why I would care about my home getting slightly smaller when I'm at work. It will affect some people, but I don't know if it's many.

I would expect it impacts a large number of people that work primarily remotely. A lot of us have a home office because working from the kitchen or other shared space just isn't effective. The cost of an extra room (even if a bonus room, not a full bedroom) can increase the cost of a house by a dramatic amount; and then you also have to consider utilities and the like. Every time I've done the math, working from home costs more (for the worker) than going into the office; usually my many thousands of dollars a year.

Needing a dedicated home office room for various reasons is a big issue but it is not the issue I was responding to.

In "Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours", a dedicated office is the "paid for more space" side, and I was talking about the "lost space" alternative.

Not just when you’re at work, unless you tear down your desk and store it out of sight every single day!

Only if you got an extra work-only desk. Even then, an extra desk by itself isn't very big.

Desk, monitors, keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and other things that go on a desk. I'm certainly not going to tear all that down every evening and set it back up every day.

Plus a separate office means a door to keep out noise, room for bookshelves and other office items, and the ability to just "put things down" without having to spend time cleaning off the kitchen table before dinner.

Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal. Sure, you can make due... but you could make due with a poor environment in an office building too... but why would you? You can't compare the setup in an office building to a much worse environment at home and then say "home is cheaper". For a like-for-like comparison, it costs the employee more to work from home.

> Desk, monitors, keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and other things that go on a desk. I'm certainly not going to tear all that down every evening and set it back up every day.

At worst that's still only a desk of space wasted.

And if you're willing to commute, you should probably be willing to spend 2 minutes putting all that stuff away. If you still decide not to, then it's because that space isn't needed very much.

> Any setup other than having a specific office for work is, in my opinion, sub-optimal.

I agree, but this line of conversation is specifically about if you don't have a separate office.

If you don't have a separate office, then odds are you have a sub-optimal work environment. So you're not considering "if you can save money working from home" but rather "if you can save money by working from a worse work environment". Which I guess is a valid argument, it's just somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether or not working from home saves money.

> only a desk of space wasted

There is a lot more to a dedicated, optimal work environment than "only a desk of space". Plus the fact that a LOT of people live in places that don't have an extra "desk of space". Approximately half the places I've worked couldn't give up a desk's worth of space without it being in everyone's way.

That’s still aligned with my point. Either you pay rent for an additional separate office (lots of money), or you reduce your existing living space to make room for work stuff. The only case where you don’t notice is this is when you just so happened to already have completely unused living space that you don’t mind filling up with work stuff, or you just so happened to have an office setup at home that overlaps perfectly with what you need for work.

> That’s still aligned with my point. Either you pay rent for an additional separate office (lots of money), or you reduce your existing living space to make room for work stuff.

Yes, but the reduction for a desk is only if you don't have another usable surface, and even then it's only a tenth of "lots of money" because a desk is so much smaller than a room.

A tenth of lots of money is not all that much, and very likely cheaper than commuting.

I think part of the disconnect is that (it appears that) for you, a suitable work from home environment is

- a 2'x3' area on a table, anywhere in the place you live

For a lot of us (at least for me and some others), a suitable work from home environment includes

- a 4'x3' desk (or larger, for multiple monitors)

- a door or other way to separate the workspace from house interruptions (and vice versa)

- a bookshelf and other miscellaneous items

- good lighting

In general, all that ^ is necessary to be as effective as one would be at an actual office, and generally means a separate room in the house/apartment; and that is fairly costly. The last time I did the calculations, it came out to several thousands of dollars per year.

All of that except the door is easy to do at low cost.

Whether you can get a nice isolated place depends on the particular place you're living.

But I was never arguing that isolation isn't necessary! Please look again at the initial comment I replied to.

"Either you paid for more space or you lost space at your home during the 8 hours you were previously working at an office."

My concern was only with the second half of that "or". To get to the second half of the "or", you have to take it as given that there's a suitable spot in your home. When you argue that many homes don't already have such a spot, I agree, but that's irrelevant to what I was trying to comment on.

Everything I've said here should be interpreted like this: "Okay, so you've decided you don't need an additional room? Well in that case, I don't think the space taken up by working from home in an existing room is a big deal, because xyz."

A desk is big if you live somewhere where property and rent prices are high. Like California, for instance.

Still, it's a tenth of what an entire room costs. When you do something like weigh the cost of commuting vs. the cost of that space, a desk is probably going to win.

And maybe I'm weird but I'm going to have a desk no matter what.

If you already have a desk that easily accommodates both your work computer and whatever other non-work things you use the desk for, then sure, but you could say the same thing for any new at-home requirements for a job that you just happen to already satisfy. I don't have any reason non-work reason to have living space dedicated to a computer desk, and I suspect that's true for most people.

> I don't have any reason non-work reason to have living space dedicated to a computer desk, and I suspect that's true for most people.

How do you typically browse websites at home? Do you play any PC video games? Steam has a ton of users.

(And if you use a table, then you could use the same table for working.)

Home computer use is limited to my phone and tablet on the couch or in bed. Haven't had a gaming PC (or any Windows computer) since around 2013. I get enough desktop computing exposure at my day job, thank you very much!

It's true that PC gaming is as popular as ever, but I suspect its rise has been at least somewhat countered with a decrease in desktop computing at home as smartphones became ubiquitous.

Unless you're typing all these comments with no keyboard (why??), then I think your work experience, with getting your fill there, isn't the most typical.

And there's been a decrease in desktops, but far more households have a desktop/laptop than a tablet and it's not far behind the rate of having broadband.

We're probably both just swapping anecdotes, but I suspect you might be surprised just how many general computer users overwhelmingly use their smartphones for nearly everything. I remember years ago being confused by the steady and swift increase in smartphone screen size. Why in the world would people want the little communication gadget in their pocket to be larger? The reason, I realized, is that it's not "the communication gadget in their pocket." It's their only computer.

I'm not working off anecdotes. It's 78% of people that have a desktop or laptop at home. Households that only have a phone or tablet as a computer are only 14%.

Laptop is a different story, because of the whole lap top thing.

If your laptop is comfortable to use that way, then you can work on it that way.

Or just put it on a table.

I don't see any need to distinguish between desktops and laptops for working from home. Laptops have built-in webcams too.

It sounds like your office setup is much much more minimal than mine too then. Obviously you’re very fortunate if you’re fine working 8+ hours a day on a laptop on your dining table.

I'm not exactly recommending a minimal setup, I'm saying that if someone already has a minimal setup they're happy with then they can repurpose it for work.

I'd add a big screen or two, a real mouse, and a better keyboard. But that would take up very little extra space when not in use.

Literally neither. Same space, nothing changed. I pay maybe more on electricity, but save much more on food and transport.

>You don't need find a meeting room,

maybe it's just because I've never been the meeting room finding person but in most places I've worked it hasn't been a big problem.

>you don't need to worry about making too much noise,

I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting, but I have had the problem that kids in the house were being too noisy for the online meeting and everyone has to laugh and talk about how wonderful having the kids is.

>you don't need to worry about adding one person from another location suddenly changing the entire dynamic.

Why wouldn't this affect remote meetings?

Obviously there are any number of things that can affect remote meeting quality. I would think for meeting quality an in person one is likely to work better as a meeting, although people might prefer the remote one for all sorts of other reasons.

> in most places I've worked it hasn't been a big problem

In every place I've worked, there's been a limited number of meeting rooms and you needed to plan ahead to get one. And if your meeting ran over, it wasn't uncommon to have a group of people standing outside waiting for you to vacate.

> I've never had the problem that a meeting was being too noisy for the people outside a meeting

Fair. I was really thinking about the impromptu meetings of 3-4 people around a desk (because getting a meeting room takes too much time). Those almost infallibly annoy other people in the area, even if they don't say anything.

> Why wouldn't this affect remote meetings?

Suddenly adding a remote person to a meeting that was planned to be in person is difficult at best. It's common for the people on location to just not "play well" with the remote person. When meetings are "remote first", adding one more remote person doesn't wind up with that person being an afterthought. This is a fairly well known issue, honestly.

> I would think for meeting quality an in person one is likely to work better as a meeting

Under optimal circumstances, the in person meeting does tend to be best. However, there are so many different variations from optimal, it's my experience that remote-first meetings wind up being better in nearly every _actual_ case.

>And if your meeting ran over, it wasn't uncommon to have a group of people standing outside waiting for you to vacate.

having a meeting run over is a problem, having someone waiting to get into that room is a solution to the problem.

Our experience following the covid lockdowns and everybody working from home is that even if a majority of us are in the office, we still have meetings over Teams. It allows far better control, easier background chat, sharing ideas that can be raised in the verbal meeting and people to get on with real work if the topic under conversation is not important to them, but keeping them in the loop. Win win.

Even before the pandemic, in the office, most of the collaboration was remote. Even with people in the same building, because lack of meeting rooms, noisy open-space office and loong looong walks down endless hallways we'd all rather do a quick telephone conference. My direct colleagues were just a table away of course, but collaboration isn't just with them. On the other hand, teams were also spread out across half the world, so lots of things could only be done remotely. Working from home wasn't much of a change there. In total, 90% of communication wasn't done in person but by some kind of remote com.

And since the current trend in our company (and I guess a lot of others) is "hotdesking", where you pull a ticket when entering the building which tells you what desk might be free. Well, no sitting near direct colleagues anymore. So the last advantage of the office is gone as well. Unfortunately it doesn't stop management from hallucinating the great back-in-the-office future after the pandemic...

Yes, I'll also be looking for a new job.

Don't forget the hours of commute time lost daily. Compared to a few minutes lost by a few people in Zoom, commute is everybody every day.

You think you're being witty but you're using the exact same argument that the people are using to force people back into the office.

Work isn’t a democracy.

Nope, but leaving your current employer is up to you if they are inflexible.

depends on the company.

oh hi Jeff! shall i pee in the bottle?

Own preference (whatever that is) is always more important than other preference.

If you don't think your own preference is important then don't complain when other dictate the outcome.

I agree, mixed remote and non remote is very difficult to get right.

I think we should all just switch jobs to remote companies if we like that and our company is not, and vice versa.

My company has gone to mixed but everyone naturally picks the same days Monday to Wednesday typically at home and Thursday/Friday everyone is in.

This avoids all the issues of mixed.

Yes, this is a good solution, as long as everyone agrees on the days, sounds like it should work.

This is why I have doubts about hybrid. I work for an aggressively hybrid company. All it means is that I have to go in and have meetings at by desk beside other people having meetings at their desks.

I thought hybrid meant that two days per week everybody goes to the lab, the rest of the days are remote.

Yes, but if everyone is out three days a week, in pretty much every meeting, at least one person is going to be out, making nearly all meetings virtual by default.

No, I mean monday and tuesday everybody goes there. This is how we are planning to do it from september and most people seem happy (especially new recruits).

Ah ok. Yes, this might work better for people.

at the end it may as well be just one day per week. The "pizza seminars" used to be a happy routine before the pandemic, and even colleagues who love WFH want to recover that.

I agree for internal meeting, but in my industry where external meetings are a huge part of my job, it's meant way less driving to meetings for me which has been a huge boost to my productivity levels.

Oh, my complaint is more that I am now Zooming in an open concept office with others talking right beside and behind me. I am fine with virtual meetings.

Are you in SW? Over the last 20ish years of being a SWE, most of the time I had the option to work 40-100% from home. That's as an embedded SWE, which often means I'm dealing with HW. I just setup remote controls and measurement devices and WFH. I keep hearing people talk like they're going to be forced to sit at a desk 100% of the time. Is that really the case?

There's a pretty massive 0-1 difference in weekly WFH.

That does work. Before the pandemics I worked many years with the majority of my team being overseas, in multiple companies. There's nothing wrong with the hybrid approach and never was. For many companies it's always been the default approach, for global companies specifically. I am also not sure why you put "that doesn't work" and "I prefer" together - your preferences are not really relevant to this case.

> I am also not sure why you put "that doesn't work" and "I prefer" together

Here, "that doesn't work" is short for "that doesn't work for me". It is in fact a statement of preference, colloquially phrased.

What do you mean their preference is not relevant? They're providing an example using their personal experience.

Then they should’ve used “this doesn’t work for me”.

I dont mind being in office, but I meetings are much much better online. Especially those long ones. You can stretch legs, exercise a little, eat or whatever.

do the laundry, cook dinner, Get some real work done on the side.

Do you only have a single office? Because even back when we worked at the office, we had people split between multiple offices so we had to do teleconferencing anyways even if no one was remote (and usually at least one person was remote as well).

Yes. It's also a < 20 person company. I acknowledge that both of those may be coloring my view of things—because yeah, if half your team is on another continent, I really don't know what the point of an office is. I also don't think I'd want to work in a company like that.

> If some people are remote, then we have to do Zoom meetings, so I may as well be remote too.

so no reason to go back to the office at all.

Likewise, people who prefer working from home would rather not be sidelined by people working in office.