In America, we generally treat exclusively counting the beans as a literal capital-V Virtue. And there are hordes of lumpenproletariat who will vehemently defend it when any thought is paid to not exploiting workers to the maximal extent possible where there is even the slightest hint of perceived additional beans to be acquired.
Also, do cassowaries count as dinosaurs?
The future is always going to be what we have now, but sexier in some way. So replace cars with flying ones, and replace work we do with robotic servants.
The really interesting science fiction doesn't do a linear extrapolation, it looks at how we might really change. But that's not what we get from a kid's cartoon.
It's better to think of people as individuals, and not as "labor" or "not-labor". I think remote working is great for this, much better than top-down mandates on cars and congestion zones, although those swell the tax coffers nicely, but I don't think it's a great victory. Lots of people (particularly those who do actual physical labour, such as builders and shopkeepers) have to go to a workplace. It's not a victory for them, because lumping people into tribes means category errors abound.
A separate room as a home office probably has the same benefit though.
I've personally measured this for myself and WFH is overwhelmingly more productive for me, measured via sheer output. I think part of this is because I'm naturally just working... longer? It's a mind shift, but this was generally my stance when I was in office too, which is:
1. When I'm in office, those are my working hours. Unless there was a very critical crunch period, I did not work at home at all. It was a very strong boundary. 2. I was very diligent about keeping my office hours - partially because of traffic. So I'd put in my 8 hours, often skipping lunch, and go straight home. 7am-3pm every day. 3. When you're in the office, people really love impromptu meetings. So a good chunk of the day is used talking to people. Sometimes this is productive, but often it just means the project you are working on gets 1-2 less hours that day than it would otherwise.
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Contrast this with WFH:
1. My commute was 1 hour both ways (Bay Area), which is now gone. I usually work in the range of 7am - 5pm now. I take a break for lunch and to go for a run. Ultimately, I end up working 8.5-9 hours now (a .5-1 hour increase in duration), but I'm actively healthier because I can take a break + exercise. 2. Because my desk is always setup, I end up doing more sporadic tasks - especially when it comes to long, async build processes, I'm more inclined to quickly debug something and run a pipeline again. Before I just left my laptop in my bag, and couldn't (wouldn't) be bothered to pick it up. 3. Sporadic meetings are non-existent. Slack is async, so I just check it a few times a day. I can control my time much better meaning actual focus on a task is possible - which is nearly impossible in an office environment.
Not to mention just the overall quality of life improvements from being able to eat lunch with my wife and daughter, be able to take appointments and slightly shift my calendar, be flexible in where I am (we can actually visit family not on weekends now!).
I'm happier, healthier, more energetic, and thus ultimately more productive remote. In office work sets stronger barriers, sure, but returning to the office will mean that's where I leave my work too. To satiate someone's requirement for social interaction through coworkers is bizarre to me.
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Anyway - that's my personal view. I'm curious what actual macro data shows. Perhaps I'm one in a million - but I doubt it.
I think a fair number of people struggle with imposter's syndrome because they imagine that somewhere above them there's someone that is really really smart and has a plan - no such person exists, we're all just trying our best... and that "all" is all-inclusive - the person you remember who got D's in middle school is probably a middle manager somewhere.
Citation needed. This seems like a really bogus claim which assumes decision makers don't know what's best for themselves.
This is absolutely an anecdote - but I'm not certain how else to source data around this.
Yes, I do.
Also, I don't think the vast majority of office-based companies have any idea what their actual productivity levels are.
For example if you are a very wealthy person who runs a large company you need to put that money somewhere and that somewhere may be real estate. In fact it may be real estate in a city such as San Francisco. Prior to covid and work from home that was a very good place to keep your money, but today it’s a lot less good. Companies themselves may have significant real estate investments as well. There are more inputs to this than productivity (and real estate for that matter but it was the first example that came to mind)
I think the main reason is all those expensive office towers are now sitting empty and no one wants to buy them. I bet 75% of RTO is sunk cost fallacy trying to make use of all that leased empty space.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re...
https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-offic...
Also their own studies find wfh increases productivity by 3%: https://www.gsam.com/content/gsam/us/en/advisors/market-insi...
So yes just another indicating that companies will sacrifice productivity for control.
I always caveat this idea with the fact that I love WFH and do not want to RTO, but I can’t make an argument why it’s better for my organization.
Your assumption is flawed on a number of levels, first and foremost due to the fact that it is based on the faulty premise that companies will always make optimal decisions based on perfect data, when the reality is:
- in most cases the data on whether remote work is more or less productive is murky at best, non-existent at worst. For ever study showing and increase/decease in productivity there is a study showing the opposite. Most companies struggle to even define and measure productivity in the first place, outside the context of remote work. - productivity isn’t the sole axis of decision making. Some companies prioritize excellent benefits to retain talent in the belief the benefits of a happy talented workforce will outweigh the costs of providing it. Other companies are much less generous, happy to churn through less competitive employees to keep costs down. Similar disagreements on remote work exist, which is why there are many companies with no plans to mandate in office work - what company leadership prioritizes is not necessarily what is best for the business. I’m not sure how anyone, after 40 years of Jack Welch-style executives destroying long-term business value for short-term profits, would fail to recognize this. Company leadership will do what is in company leadership’s best interest, whether that’s cutting long-term profits for short term share price increases that are tied to personal compensation, exorbitant spending for unnecessary company amenities like private transportation, or dictating the workforce comes back into the office because they prefer to work that way. Note when outspoken critics of remote work like Elon Musk, personally, almost exclusively work remote.
Do you think most companies can reliability measure productivity? As an SWE I haven't seen it.
I literally saw a coworker sleeping in his cubicle, and had I not woken him up he probably would have gotten fired that day when our boss walked in maybe 90 seconds later. Offices are not the meccas of productivity the RTO crowd would like us to believe.
You can run a gambit with this; nobody expects you to be able to really prove Useful Conversations happened.
Indeed, even though it might actually be _negative_ work, if one of those people would have otherwise been productive. Which was one of my major gripes with being in the office.
I'm a local celebrity due to putting out all the Big Fires - so now, whenever people see me on-site as a trapped/captive audience, I hear about every hint of smoke.
Thankfully our mandates are currently more... suggestions, giving credit to the "layoffs but not really" story IMO.
It's annoying to even re-negotiate. I've been remote for years, pre-pandemic, only appearing when required.
Ironic to see this comment in a discussion about carbon footprints of remote work. Separate rooms do not come from free - they also have a high carbon cost in terms of bigger house, more heating/cooling, most likely suburban setting which has its own carbon costs etc.
I switched from a clearly defined (imposed) lunch break with multiple intra day whole floor coffee breaks to working straight 10 hours with a break when I can slip into the kitchen and I feel I am both more productive and happy when working from home.
The point is not on the clock hourly days of work but rather being treated like an adult and trusted.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/time-savin....
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/130/1/165/2337...
At the same time, we started hiring without geographic concern. The mandate became get the best folks you can, we don't care where they are[1].
It has worked out well for us. We've gone heavily international, and grown our customer base and expanded markets at a slightly faster faster pace than we were before going remote. (I don't think going remote did that - more capital and people did. But it didn't hurt.)
And maybe we're just selecting for folks who like remote work now, but I don't know of anyone who wants to go back to the old days.
[1] With some exceptions, some managers want people in the same timezone, some roles are inherently place-bound, etc.
Any kind of return to office is now impossible. Their (now much smaller office) can only hold about 5% of the employees, and the vast majority of employees are now scattered throughout the United States. Not even the founders or any of the executives live near the office anymore; they're all scattered geographically as well.
I was hired as part of the wave of remote hiring, and it seems to me based on the stories I hear from those that worked there in the pre-remote times that the switch to remote hiring really worked out well for them.
I've worked primarily remote since 2016; but I have the option of going to an office a few miles away when I want to. My wife, forced to work from home, finds the entire experience to be socially isolating and misery inducing.
> work from our own comfy homes instead of rolling into a crowded, stuffy office everyday?
This one-sidedness is a strawman. Not everyone's home is comfy or has space for working; some people made housing decisions based on one person leaving the home for most of every day (e.g. choosing a smaller apartment closer to city). Not every office is crowded and stuffy; some are quite pleasant. Not every worker gets their social needs met outside of work, and forcing them home ends up isolating them from the primary source of social interaction in their world, with all of the mental health and well-being issues that entails.
Personally, think that "more remote work" is the way to go, but the issue is more nuanced than "why are people resisting this obviously beneficial change?"
Folks forced into an office cannot choose to opt out of all work. Changing jobs is a bigger lift than picking up some social hobby or activities after work.
I agree hybrid can be nice, yet executives are too often demanding RTO compliance. That's why there is so much breathless enthusiasm for remote work, and angst against attempts to both-sides the issues.
Personally, I would probably be happiest with a remote office situation.
That's fine, but no one is obligated to spend time with them. They need to be more convincing or charismatic then to get people to spend more time with them. "If you don't endure a commute to spend time with me, I won't be happy" won't cut it.
Some people have convinced themselves that they don’t like social interaction, but this is probably due to a trained negative association caused by repeated past negative experiences. It seems very unlikely that some humans simply lack the social instinct congenitally.
Society is currently set up in a way that social urges are largely satisfied by work. Is that a good setup? No, it definitely isn’t. Is deleting it without a proven replacement a good idea? Also no.
And remote work can also be done from co-working spaces. Or with occasional all-hands IRL.
When there is a good mixture of everyone remote, I've found it not to be an issue.
Sadly, probably yes. This is the "age of outrage" after all.
This weird grandstanding about having a social life every time remote works comes up on HN is sad.
How? If my remote work makes my employer schedule 2 hrs of extra zoom meetings and the workday is now 8-6 instead of 9-5, how can I find fulfillment elsewhere? In that scenario, office seems better because I get to hang out with other people between 9-5. Remote is much worse if one likes to socialize.
I might pick up a hobby and make some friends there - these friends are going to linked to my personal life, not my professional one.
I cannot ask this hobby friend for a referral for a job in the future. I cannot ask this hobby friend for some help if I’m dealing with a difficult boss or a challenging technical problem.
I might ask this friend to come skiing with me or come to the bar with me though. That’s nice, but it’s not a work relationship and I can’t fulfill work relationship needs through it.
Perhaps you can strike up friends at a co-working space or a company where RTO is optional. (I go snowboarding with a former co-worker occasionally. Since we live far away it's usually a big trip, yet still no less an adventure.)
Hopefully losing your job won't also put your social life at risk.
That’s not to say it’s impossible, of course, but just much harder. Your professional social network is much smaller remotely. You have to work with someone remotely for months to form the same relationship you could have in an afternoon in-person.
Hybrid work is a good compromise.
Losing my job wouldn’t put my social life at risk - as work relationships don’t and shouldn’t fill that role for me. Again, you seem to be conflating personal and professional relationships.
You are making the straw man here. People are mostly asking for a right to work remotely if they want to, that's all. And the status quo until very recently was (and still is) the opposite: not allowing remote work for people who want it, without any empathy for their needs. Try not to read it as an attack on the office, but more as millions of people asking for not being forced to commute and go to the office for a miserable experience.
I don't hear the same sentiment in the real world but there you go.
If you advocate for "mostly remote work, with hybrid scheduling and hot desking as needed", some unempathetic execs and clueless middle micromanagers are inevitably going to try to turn that into a privilege to be allowed to work from home once a month. You have to open the negotiation by demanding full remote, so there's room for concessions allowing a few satellite campuses and occasional all-hands meetings.
What about clueless employees who think remote is great for their needs but is actually counterproductive to what the company needs?
LMAO, and you're the one complaining about strawmen? Give me a break.
Your wife is not "forced" to work from home. She is forced to find her own work accommodations. At the extremes of requiring a dedicated IP address and fiber connection, it's still an option to rent an office space individually. At the less extreme: As is an individual membership at a coworking space, likely a public library, or a coffee shop. Similarly, whether at home, at a office, or at a corworking space she is not forced to be socially isolated or miserable.
Workers should have a strong say in how they spend their 40+ hours a week, but we have a society where petty tyrants get to control their workers' lives. It should be easier to form worker-owner cooperatives and to organize strong unions, and generally promote more democracy in the workplace. And we should, as a society, de-emphasize work a bit. With all the automation we have, most people should be able to work a 32-hour work week and society would clip along just fine. Meanwhile, people would have more time to devote to the rest of living a life (pursuing art, socializing with friends/family, volunteering in social projects, studying an interesting subject, etc).
That's all to say, we are all individuals with different wants and needs, and we spend a lot of time at our jobs. We should restructure society to make us all happier and more fulfilled.
To be fair, this is especially egregious in the United States, where urban design is incredibly hostile and workers have long commutes because of distortionary policies to boost car sales and maximize returns on real estate speculation. Likewise, workers have so few protections and paid leave relative to other developed countries.
I probably wouldn’t care about going into the office in a nice, walkable European city, where I didn’t live in constant fear of being fired, be unable to take sick days, or be constantly forced to work over 40 hours, rarely take vacations, etc. But if you’re going to design society around maximizing my misery to make as much money as possible for someone else, I’m sure as hell not going to want to go into work if I can do my job from my couch with my dog beside me.
On the flipside, it's pretty sick that we've normalized getting all of one's social fulfillment from wage slaving rather than genuine social experiences that don't involve exploitation of our labor.
So it depends on circumstances and preferences. Both modes should be possible.
I am not sure there is more than one mode. Remote work isn't about working from home, it about working from wherever you want. That necessarily includes working from an office, if that is what you want.
It is bizarre that the companies without offices – with workers most likely to work from home – are the ones given the "remote" moniker. Technically, it is the companies with offices that are most likely to have remote workers.
Which perhaps makes perfect sense if the work involves using a networked computer, but what about work that doesn't use networked computers? We also have trucks that allow coworkers to work at a distance from each other.
Coworking spaces are one solution. But many disappeared during the pandemic. Also, somebody needs to pay for them. I bet we'll see a lot more of them using the empty commercial space. But they will work best near residential areas.
This isn't a missed opportunity, it's just an opportunity. Large-scale remote work wasn't feasible prior to the advent of the web and the personal home computer in the 90s, and realistically wouldn't have happened prior to the mass penetration of the internet and the computerization of everything circa 2005/2010. It just so happened that the covid pandemic occurred at approximately the exact moment in human history where mass remote work was even an option (and obviously is still limited to people in knowledge sectors).
The urbanization driven by the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century didn’t tip the balance to a majority of the US population living in cities until 1920. Other countries were even further behind.
Work From Not Home is the actual historical anomaly here. Information technology allowing people to perform their 21st Century, postindustrial knowledge work at home is just reversion to the mean.
Because a considerable part of our economy apparently relies on people getting out of the house, (mostly) driving somewhere, buying their lunch (and other stuff) and temporarily occupying some landlord's building.
I understand 1 day in the office, but 3-5 days/week is madness. Doubly so in places where the commute is upwards of 1 hour in each direction. M
Fortunately the management of a lot of medium-large tech companies have a tech background and have allowed WFH to continue.
It's extra large tech companies with career managers who are trying to get people to RTO.
[a] A Jetsons opportunity is any missed prediction of the future from the past, usually in a form like “where’s my flying car?”