While I agree that getting the opinions of a few individuals is not particularly good journalism, this opinion seems to be the consensus among almost everyone I've spoken to about this. Colleagues, ex-colleagues, friends, family, everyone. The few who I have talked to that still want an office, have been in leadership positions, and usually this is from those who are higher up in the ranks.

Fact of the matter is, an office is an outdated method of working with today's technology. It just took a pandemic for the general public to realise this. You pay for a commute that's not necessary, you pay with your time (that you're not paid for) to get there (time that you could be spending on family, or something else), and depending on where you work, you're probably smelling 100s of people's sweat every day, and taking in, and contributing to, a whole lot pollution.

As someone who has been working from home for years now, I have wanted an office away from home at times.

But that is mainly because my family figured out I work from home and because I work from home they think they can just drop by anytime they like and demand my attention. I have asked a number of them "If I worked at an office would you drop my workplace unannounced because your son has broken his xbox controller (for the third time?)", the answer has been pretty much "ofcause not", so why do you think its acceptable.

I did ponder renting some office space near to home but it's cheaper to be a bit of an arsehole, tell the family "I've rented an office to prevent interruptions during my work day" and just ignore the door then it was to rent space :-P

However I don't have kids which would be more difficult to ignore while working from home. I just have to put up with the neighbourhood cats (including my own) interrupting me now and then, the cat from 2 doors up the street just jumped though the top window of my office to pinch some leftovers and is now raiding my cats toy box for a catnip toy.

But I have the benefit of a) having spare space in my home for a home office b) very little interrupts while at home c) great neighbours d) very good internet connectivity where I live (not excellent as I'm still waiting for 5G and FTTP, but I do have good 4G as a backup connection when needed). If any one of those were missing I would be seeking to either move or acquire office space to fullfill those needs.

>Colleagues, ex-colleagues, friends, family, everyone. The few who I have talked to that still want an office, have been in leadership positions, and usually this is from those who are higher up in the ranks.

That's the problem with looking at a limited number of opinions, I've seen a different consensus in people I've spoken to. Only 1 person (out of around 30) expressed a desire to remain completely remote and never go back to the office, while the rest favoured a hybrid approach. None of those I talked to (including a couple in the C-suite) expressed a desire to return to the office full-time.

The surveys I've seen have been pretty consistent (for people who can work from home most days): about 20% fully remote and about 20% five days per week in office with the balance coming in a few days per week. I see a pretty broad consensus that hybrid will be the main mode although mostly in office and fully remote will be significant too.

One challenge is that this means that in-office people that were used to everyone being physically present will largely have to adapt for many meetings (for example) to operate as if everyone were remote.

Our company is currently fully "home or office, whatever". It turns out to be basically full remote work. The amount of people coming in is miniscule.

I'm not sure what you can judge from right now. I'm familiar with companies that are allowing people back in offices if they want and some people are going in but it's not the default. Apparently it's pretty dead so you basically go in and work. But I don't really expect that to be the norm, say, next year.

It is dead, because nearly no one wants to come in given choice. We could agree on whole team coming in and we discussed it a bit. Initially half our team came for few days and then it gradually dropped. Convenience of being at home won.

There is no wish to come in.

Some people do want basically a co-working space that isn't their house/studio apartment. But, for a lot of people, even an "OK" commute that lands them at a desk near maybe one or two people they work with, possibly in a hoteling arrangement, isn't really that attractive. And, with underutilized offices, amenities--such as they are--are going to get pulled back as well.

What you're ending up with is that neither the people who want to be remote nor the people who were OK with going in specifically for pre-pandemic office are interested in going in. I'm not sure how well hybrid works and there will probably be some shifting around as a result.

I dare say it is the consencus but I don't think it's a surprise to learn that people hate commuting.

The problem is that managers want to see people working and an office environment is perfect for this purpose. I would be surprised if anything really changes in this regard long-term, other than in a few outlying cases.

Well in my experience as a developer 9 of 10 managers who said they prefer result / outcome and don't care about the process will be the first to complaint if see you're reading news / articles and oppose remote working

Do managers really care if you're in seats working? Most managers I know are fans of remote because they're usually older and have family. The push to return is coming from company executives at the very top.

Anecdotally, there are a lot of bad managers around who do care. I'm glad your actual experience contradicts this.

This hasn't been my experience so far, I've been looking at moving jobs recently and I've got plenty of options even after discarding anything with required office hours or "temporarily remote" jobs which will return to mandatory commuting.

I hope I am proved wrong and your experience becomes the norm.

Then you have a limited cross section of people that you talk to, and it seems they come from a mono culture.

From the people I talked to it is mixed with the majority wanting no more than 3 days, with most going for 2 days at home the rest in the office. The Hybrid model...

The amount of decisions, and knowledge that is passed around in a given office with just idle in person chats in the hallways or inpromptu meetings pretty large in many organizations, this everyday knowledge transfer does not happen in WFH, or happens less often, this can lead to things being missed, people being left out of the loop, etc.

Also it really depends on if a person a location in their home that can dedicate to an Office, that can be door closed off for meetings, and have no / limited interruptions.

I know a few people that do not have a spare room or other space to dedicate to that, so WFH for them is using the Kitchen table, or a desk in the living room that is not ideal... People like this generally prefer to be in the office.

It sounds like you’re talking to people who have no experience working from home. Information sharing and documentation is far better when everyone is remote. I’ve worked dozens of places, in person and remote and “happenstance innovation in the hallway” is a myth perpetuated by poor managers, sociopathic execs and those looking to turn the office into their social circle. All constituencies that negatively impact quality of work.

>>“happenstance innovation in the hallway” is a myth perpetuated

hmm I experience it every day, where I over hear something in the hallway that another team it working on, that impacts my team.

This is especially true for IT depts who are often the last to know about something when they should be included from the Jump...

but sure just deny my 20+ years experience and insert yours as more valid that mine...

I am sure what you experience is true for you, and I am sure as I said in my original comment my experience my not be true for a company that has been WFH as primary for years, or from their formation.

However if you work for a 60+ year old company that until 2020 never had any WFH then just try to graft on WFH, that is going to be an issue

> hmm I experience it every day, where I over hear something in the hallway that another team it working on, that impacts my team.

If this is how you are finding out about things that impact your team, then your company’s communication and planning is broken and work from office is a bandaid enabling that. Wfh forces good process as it’s not sustainable without it.

Maybe it's Google's algorithm, as I have clicked on several of the articles from an Android, but it feels to me as I have seen more and more of these "pro commuter" and "how the office is a better place to work than home" articles come out now that we're coming to a point where lock downs are supposed to be ending. In the beginning, all of the opinion pieces seemed to be, "Work from home, is it the wave of the future?" style pieces. It's either journalism trying to ride a wave or being paid to push a narrative. Business as usual in the journalism world.

Yep. All ad money went to zuck, brin, and page.

Upvoting this grayed-out comment. Like it or not, overly generalized/personalized or not, this is still an important truth about how journalism is sustained under capitalism.

Extremely large quantities of money have been removed from the business models of traditional, worker-employing journalism and redirected to Google, Facebook etc. to the point where I don't understand how any of the traditional old school businesses remain functioning at all. Hell, Craigslist struggles, and Craigslist was an early wave of the internet hurting what newspapers do.

"Yep. All ad money went to zuck, brin, and page" is glib, but does not deserve this degree of downvoting. In important ways, it's the truth.

Not sure about Craigslist. How is anyone expected not to struggle when they seem to have done little in terms of improvements in 25 years? I checked whether it's still alive and it had a few listings in Berlin, one of which may or may not be offering to sell a baby, so at least it's kind of a weird lawless place, but I'm not sure that's enough to run a business on (might be good enough for a few reddit threads exploring creepy stuff though).

I'm sure that ad spending has shifted online, but traditional media companies have been losing audience before Google launched News and Facebook started to dominate. There's plenty to blame, and the web as a whole probably played a part, but I'm not sure it's the primary driver. Before there were online alternatives, there was TV or just not getting "the news" at all. Relying on not having competition feels like a bad idea with regards to being a sustainable business.

The BBC news website was previously very high quality mostly impartial journalism. I am not sure why but the quality and impartiality has dropped noticeably over the last 10 years.

Always has been. The internet exacerbated things by publishing more anecdotes to cherry-pick from, but journalists were never scrupulous about taking a representative sample, and the Guardian in particular has always been practically innumerate.

Do you think the views expressed in the article are something that has been fairly covered through all this time...?

This is a breath of fresh air, finally some cost-benefit analysis is being done on what was a very hasty set of decisions.

A few days ago there was an online thing on the Guardian site for people to add stories like this of their own experience.

You're lucky it isn't just images of their tweets tied together with an 'emerging trend' narrative.

This was always the case!

Yup. Anecdotes or lies; take your pick.

I wish there was an HN guideline against nihilism.

It’s The Guardian, journalism isn’t what they’re known for.

Yeah, breaking stories on the phone hacking scandal, PRISM/Snowden and the Panama Papers isn't journalism.

Not completely true. They used to do better than that. This is minimum effort.

Only if they are carefully chosen to support a particular narrative.