A situation at home that is distracting

The need for changing location for mental delimination of work

Wasting 1-2 hours of my day, with the potential to have it become a 4 hour drive once every week or two.. just way too rough.

I honestly don't get how people put up with commutes. Like, honestly and really. It feels like i'm just destroying any chance i have for downtime during the weekdays. Throw in chores, and oof. Plus i don't have kids.. i can't imagine having kids on top of a commute.

Someone is going to come along and say "BuT I dOn'T hAvE AnY bIkE pAtHs!" That might be true. Almost nobody has a bike path from their front door to their office. I sure don't. But if you stare at a map long enough, you'll find a way. It might mean you add a detour to ride a safer route. It might mean you have to drive half way. It might mean you take public transit half the way. I can't solutionize for everyone, but changing up your commute really changes things. It doesn't have to be such a miserable existence.

For example, I am a 40 minute, 30 mile drive from the city center. Most people in this area would consider that a reasonable commute. It would take 2 and a half hours to bike that distance in melting Florida heat and heavy aggressive traffic. It would take 2 hours by a succession of busses.

If I wanted to live a nice bikeable distance from the business center, I would pay dearly for it home price.

It didn’t have to be like this, but at this point we are so committed to suburban car-centric sprawl that there is now way back for most of the country and things like walkability, bike friendly and rapid public transit are going to remain luxury goods.

Solution? I got an e-bike. Again, I'm not saying everyone can bike the whole way. Take a bus for the first or latter half. It can be done if you actually want to make the change.

But... I don't go to work to socialise. I hate the idea that my social life is tied to my work. Since moving to work from home permanently, I've built social connections with people who actually live in my community which I far prefer.

I miss everyday banter and eating lunch with my co-workers.

Incidentally there are virtual office zoom call services where you can get on a call and work with other people who have the same issue of not being able to work on their own.

People who want to be in an office should have it available or work for companies that can provide it. People like me can avoid it or only do it when the paycheck is right.

My family is my family, my friends are my friends and my coworkers are my coworkers.

Zoom absolutely does not count.

Doesn't seem like you need an office for that, though? You can invite your coworkers over to your home, go to a coffeeshop/bar, even the library. I went to the local library the other day and it was effectively vacant. I bet they would welcome your group with open arms to find some use for the space.

Work from home doesn’t mean work from home, it means work from anywhere.

No need for nationalistic conspiracy theories. If your employer wants to replace you with an outsourced company or worker they will do so regardless of remote work policies, as it already happens.

Here in europe my coworkers and i debated a few times wether we should all take a trip to spain and work from there for a week. A team building exercise which we can afford since we dont waste money commuting. Maybe you could explore something similar, or if not, go out with friends and live your life outside the 8 hours.

There is life outside of work, but that doesn't mean work needs to be lifeless.

I will value positions that fit my needs, and you are free to do the same.

When hiring, I will select employees that meet the onsite requirements and fit the culture.

In my my experience it is a trade off. I find most full time remote employees not to be very productive. I would rather pay more to hire local in office.

In some instances it is so bad that I would rather pay more to hire a local novice and train to the role.

The main challenges are onboarding and building an internal networking so that they can get the information they need.

Things you would ask a coworker in 5 minutes take months to figure out.

Some of this is obviously company specific, but 20 new hires in a room learn 20x as fast as one alone.

But there is nuance to everything and varying levels of complexity, however people maintain kernels such as linux or operating systems such as freebsd or other massively complex and successful open or commercial products without ever meeting face to face.

Many years ago when i heard people talking about remote i simply couldnt get my head around it. I wanted buts in the seats and people in front of whiteboards. I just couldnt comprehend how entire companies operate without even having an office and they weren’t mom and pop size. Until it clicked. If a company can have offices spread across continents, let alone remote customers, then it surely can hire remote employees.

I would take everything you listed above as signs that things need to improve. Remote is not the issue here.

Also if you dump me in a room with 20 people just to get your code up an running i might think i am at a highschool not a proper workplace. Similarly if i need to jump through hoops to get things done then thats not a desirable place to work at regardless of pay or remote work.

I work in biotech and of my projects has probably 200 engineers and scientists working on interdependent tasks, and 10 years of accumulated knowledge. Requirement and knowledge management can only go so far, so networking becomes critical to find subject matter experts, or someone can point you to one when you need answers.

I think there is some threshold of work scale or interdependence where remote work breaks down. That is to say, any productivity benefits from remote work scale linearly and communication challenges scale exponentially. This of course assumes that there is some communication friction for remote relative to in person.

Anyone who claims that everything can be work from home or everything must be in office is missing the big picture.

But the notion that people cant convey ideas while remote shows you either havent worked with experienced people or are inexperienced yourself.

I would never personally advocate for full on-site and I am actually a supporter of full remote work. I just don't pretend it's already perfect and that we can function by just purely conversing about work like we are JIRA ticket machines.

Also, geographically distributed companies will still tend to have the majority of people in a team or sub-team in one area but nothing is 100%. Different geographies usually have different responsibilities. Companies will also do all kinds of other methods of team building that is mostly social to compensate like flying everyone to a singe location occasionally or remote activities.

I might blow your mind but there is a whole spectrum between being stuck with colleagues in an office 2000 hours a year and being an anonymous working bee

And the implication obviously is that socialization works better in person, but I didn't say it was exclusive to that. The person I responded to did say something about on-site requirements but it was vague.

As i said, i dint mind people wanting or working on site. But that demand seems to either directly or indirectly mandate that others work onsite as well.

So why should earn less and live in worse conditions just so that you can chat with me in an office?

Doing all of this in a city jam packed by people rushing to offices would have been impossible. Making friends also since its a large city and there is no time to meet and maintain relationships anyway.

I think keeping an open mind and exploring the options remote work give you might help fix the issues that might impede socialising. The alternative is not even knowing you can do better, but maybe in the right setting - which you could explore by remote working.

You can still socialize digitally with others if you work from home, or step out and get lunch or coffee at local businesses and be around people.

A home is no more distracting than an office.

Work is what happens when your laptop is open. Make a ritual of closing it to symbolize the end of your work day and you get the same effect.

Working from an office sucks and is for lower class jobs IMO. It is beneath a software engineer’s esteemed status.

I don't think socializing digitally is a sufficient substitute. Being around people I don't know isn't socializing because I don't have a relationship with them."

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"A home is no more distracting than an office."

My apartment is quiet, I have two cats, I'm not near any loud roadway just a park, and my building has sound proofing so I never hear my neighbors.

Everyone has a different living situation but your comment implies it's the same for everyone.

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"Work is what happens when your laptop is open. Make a ritual of closing it to symbolize the end of your work day and you get the same effect."

This is not sufficient for me. I don't know why you think what works for you psychologically would work for others.

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"Working from an office sucks and is for lower class jobs IMO. It is beneath a software engineer’s esteemed status.

This is such a stupid comment that I'm just going to call you an asshole and take the flag.

All this means is that working in an office should be optional. Forcing it on everyone just because some people use work to socialize is not intelligent.

Must be a cultural thing, but in my sphere 'home' is where a lot of socializing with others takes place.

Others may be:

* Access to specialist resources/equipment which is only available in the office,

* Costs of heating / cooling / etc. (more significant now, in Europe at least),

This is actually the biggest reason for me. Even after nearly 2 years of WFH I didn't find it nearly as easy to mentally separate from work. Leaving the office at 4pm does that much more effectively. I went back to working at the office as soon as it was possible.

As for locations: - Coffee shops are noisy and staying there multiple hours is both inappropriate, you could have power issues, wifi issues related to speed.

- Being outside requires some internet device which may not be reliable or fast, power issues again but I guess you could just have a backpack with a USB power bank. The sun makes it difficult to see, you need to find a table, bugs, animals, other people, rain, heat, cold, etc

I've tried these things. My home setup is dual 27 inches with a physical keyboard. This improves my performance greatly, maybe I could get used to a laptop but that would require an adjustment period.

Edit: note that I’m an individual contributor and not in any sort of management position - but I imagine this is how management types think.

Shameful.

Mentoring

Engineering a physical product. Maybe not the norm on this forum, but certainly the norm for many engineering jobs.

What a dystopic world we live when where "work" became the main, if not only, source of socialisation.

I use the hours I shaved off by not commuting for real socialisation

My parents met at work and I've made friends at previous position and remained friends with them. I also think that being in close proximity is important to me. For example people around the world travel home for the holidays instead of using a webcam. Since the cost and time of that travel is significant must there be a reason why it's important.

I spend far more hours at work than I have for socializing outside of work, with or without commutes.

In my case, our house has a room that is basically only big enough to be an office, and we have solar that means we barely pay for electricity. It's a no-brainer for me to save the time and money that would be sunk in a commute and just use that room for work. However, I can totally see how someone without that extra space would find an office important.

I think what would be optimal for society is if we could reclaim the space that is used for central, commuter offices and bring that space closer to home. Whether that's building more homes that have rooms specifically designed to be offices, or building coworking spaces in the middle of residential areas, we need to do something to eliminate commutes. The amount of pollution, accidental deaths, property damage, and wasted time inherent in people driving to work is insane. Technology is at the point where, for most office workers, the harm caused by commutes far outweighs the benefits of being in a centralized work environment.

If you're working from home, you should be writing off that office space come tax time, which should offset the utility cost.

Alas, most offices are optimized for 1) cost-per-person 2) modern looks and an open concept

My home is much better for working than my workplace is