Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this thing that made their lives worth living or whatever.
When it first happened I thought it was a weird interpersonal conflict situation. Maybe I had broached it wrong. But it kept happening! So many people were so upset when megacorp said they had to return or find other employment.
But I’m an extrovert and working from home was suffocating.
* simplifying, of course.
EDIT: wow, I had this lodged in my brain without even realizing it was an XKCD reference
Whereas the RTO stuff was a debate between an entirely emotionally-motivated argument, "I don't want to work in an office therefore I must deny that anyone wants to in order to prevent the idea from getting airtime", versus the obvious reality that there are a range of stances on the subject.
Teams should really be choosing their model of work themselves, and anyone who doesn't like it should shuffle off to a different team within the company. Top down RTO is nuts.
Sometimes people are not very good at combining their own needs and preferences with those of people around them.
I am all for WFH and prefer a hybrid setup. WFH is easily the most convenient for me, but some time in the office is good for practical reasons and also for my mental health.
Actual introverts (especially in our computer world) don't have that and often lack a healthy social life, which can be partly fulfilled by the office's interactions. Some of us even are chronically depressed, which means escaping home is important to allow changing our mindset (which becomes attached to a location given enough time).
NB: in Europe and worked mostly for small to very small enterprises.
Is it really surprising that people have this preference?
Their reaction to you in the moment might not be reasonable, but it's coming from an injustice done to them, and one they perceive you to be in favour of.
I am back at the office now, and am enjoying the separation between work and home.
Most people prefer remote, but in-office requires bodies to provide interaction for those who like it.
While yes, I do think offices are largely a waste of space and resources, I really do not mind much if you like it and want to do it, as long as you leave me out of it. As soon as the office comes with a demand for me to be there too, even some of the time, then I'll shout.
Pay me for my commute and I'll gladly work from wherever you like, just recognize that I would get more done if you weren't paying me to travel to and from work. If you don't pay me for the time I spend commuting, you aren't interested in paying the total cost of employing me and you can kindly go fuck off.
If you don't naturally prioritize those things, the impact of missing them will sneak up on you.
Walking to work would be nice and would provide those benefits, but the vast majority of workers don't have that luxury.
I was referring to riding public transportation, then walking through the city to the office. I agree that driving doesn't meet the criteria, but commuting != driving.
Commuting by train fucking rules. I can get up, walk around, sit in the dining car and have a really nice espresso and a croissant which is heated up in the oven before I get it, and if the weather is nice I can get off one station early and get more walking in.
Granted, the availability and pain in the ass of actually getting a new job today is suffocating, so it’s not like everyone gets to pick their dream setup anymore
Time comes to potentially open the office back up, and I hear opines are mostly "nah, I don't ever want to go back into an office again". And I get it. Many of them were in industry for decades and have families at home they tend to. For that kind of environment, being able to WFH puts them closer to the people they truly care about. But for a single late 20's dude still adjusting to post-college life in a new town, it felt isolating even when offices technically opened up (on a true hybrid basis. 0 days? 5 days? all fine).
Even meetups post COVID just don't really feel the same. less frequent and a lot less people drifting in. I'm fine holing up in my place for days at a time, but I want some socialization with like minds.
It's not popular, but the reality is that many don't want help ----- but only because they don't understand they're making terrible decisions due to chemical imbalances or chemical dependencies.
It's never popular, but it's the truth. It's also super, super hard because these people are already at risk of being taken advantage of, and I'm literally talking about letting someone else take control of their lives. It would require an insane amount of oversight, audits, and checks and balances. I don't know of anywhere equipped for this
Literally the world’s easiest ambition to achieve.
This isn’t a disagreement or a hook into some discourse or anything. I don’t have a point. Just thoughts
I think people get this meaning wrong all the time. The love of money doesn't buy happiness. Having money can definitely make your life easier, and you can spend it on things that make you happy.
I don’t even buy a lot of things, really, I still don’t own a car and hope I never will. But now I just don’t feel quite so wracked with guilt over getting a haircut or getting the organic raspberries or whatever. There are so many little waste-of-time tasks that I don’t have to waste as much time on. I dunno. It’s funny. “Selling out” is real easy. It makes everything real easy.
I do wonder if this is the first step down the path to “I am a prisoner to my Stuff. Where did my life go”
Just thinkin out loud into the internet
Below the lower threshold, you have to worry too much about money to just get by. Unfortunately, too many people live below this threshold. Even in rich countries. Below this level, it is difficult to be truly happy, as your life is filled too much with money worry.
Above the upper threshold, all you basic and not so basic needs are covered and more money does not buy you much in terms of happiness.
Of course, these thresholds are very individual. The lower your thresholds are, the freer you are.
Both marketing and general enshittification from late stage capitalism are trying to push both of these thresholds up.
On the other hand, the society should strive to get most/almost all people above the lower threshold. Both by pushing the expenses of basic needs down (education/health care/public transport), and by creating environment for easier earning (good economic environment for entrepreneurship, antitrust regulation, minimal wages, unions, social assistance). Well, at least most countries see it that way. US has a slightly different take ...
it doesn't but it's more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes.
The hidden tolls of what I've been missing have caught up with me.
I don't know if you were around hn when the soylent guys were posting on here, but at one point one of them was having problems because they left out some trace substance that only becomes an issue after a long time of not having it. That's how I see it, there are trace elements required for happiness that I discounted at a young age. I'm not sure what they are exactly, but I was getting them previously, while being miserable about the macro issues.
I brought up money, because I was specifically thinking of my best friend, and his friends, and others who all work in construction. They work way harder in a day than I have my entire life. They have a refined skillset that took decades to master. They are outdoors, sometimes in horrific conditions. They get to bullshit and joke and call each other a bitch. They get to come home and enjoy the simple things like cooking a burger on the grill, without feeling bad about missing an unreasonable deadline, or not filing a patent for those last 20 ideas that would change the world. They get to be strong and feel confident about their chances of winning a fist fight and have wives that understand and except their flaws.
Meanwhile I am over here with a pile of old electronics I don't want to give up because they have cool components I dream about using. I have sex with hundreds of women that I have no future with. I look intimidating at a glance, but have no muscle to back it up. My kid is an adult and doesn't need me anymore. It just feels pointless.
At some point I convinced myself that making more than most of my friends and family gave me worth. That I would be a loser if I switched careers to something more fulfilling that made less than 6 figures. I know in my heart that is not true, but I am still struggling to make the leap.
...sorry for spiraling at you, I am aparrently going through something at the moment.
This part is strange to me. I've worked from home for about 10 years and I've never once had an issue with twice-daily showering, meeting people face-to-face, going out for coffee, going outdoors, going to the gym, etc. The fact I can just go sit in a park, on a hiking trail, or whatever and work there is a genuine "killer app" for me. I'm surprised at people who tell me that they are isolated by home work when there are so many opportunities for social and natural connection everywhere...
For a lot of people, that was commuting to a job outside of their home.
There is a lot of research that spending time in nature, even if the nature is not ideal (bare trees, winter, bad weather, too hot), has measurable impacts on human cognition, memory, and similar mental benefits. It's not even correlated with mood improvements: even if you return indoors more miserable than you left due to the weather, you still measurably mentally benefit from spending time in nature.
Find some shade and don't stress it Europal! (I hate climate change too.)
If you are ever in a situation where you are alone and no person works for you, realize you are most likely the problem. It took me a while to figure it out and it’s hard to make friends that you resonate and align with. But there are billions of people around the world and unless you live in a small village, there are always people looking to strike a conversation; and some of those will make good/reliable friends.
Wow, what a way to be bitter and defensive.
I dunno. Maybe this is simply the issues of a suburb where I'm clearly not at the heart of some urban sprawl.
It has nothing to do with males "not opening up," I talk to a lot of men and no one has issues sharing their emotions because we are all healthy humans and understand that life is a struggle but with social relationships it becomes bearable.
You aren't opening up at all, you're actually closing in and refusing to do anything to better yourself or seek professional therapy.
And yes, I feel it is opening up to say how I "don't belong" because I'm in this awkward age group of "too old for childhood friends". That's not something I share in my personal life. So hear it dismissed with "well you just want to be miserable, screw off" sure is motivating, right?
But I guess this is America. If I don't have money to fix my problems, I'm not worth acknowledging.
>we are all healthy humans and understand that life is a struggle but with social relationships it becomes bearable.
I envy you. I am clearly not.
It begs the question of "with who"? If you have family/spouses then it makes sense. if you have a social circle it comes down to if they are also wfh and have time to meetup for lunch or whatnot. Which is iffy these days. If you have no one... well, you don't have anyone taking you away from the computer and are tempted to just stay at your workstation. Nothing else is waiting for you.
For cowork you don’t often have to commute as much (more options around), can arrive late, don’t have to dress to nice. For some you can still change your homebase at least for few months temporarily.
But you can still have physical coworkers (even if you don’t work with them), have chitchat not relate to work, go to lunch together. You can also have routine and separate your professional life from personal one.
It is hard to keep caring about something where you see repeated patterns of behaviour and failure.
Getting closer to retirement has been a very interesting experience. Turning 50 was very stressful for me. A deep feeling of - I've only got so many rolls of the dice left. Am I in a secure position financially? I've mostly been involved in startups and small companies and wondered if I'd made terrible mistakes in my career. Why wasn't I set for life when so many others had "made it"?
Not everyone is going to get lucky and retire early - it's not a given that this will happen.
I have friends who have run successful startups and are now free to do whatever they want. And I had opportunities to join them at the beginning - I would also now be very wealthy. Equally, I have other friends just like me who have also run and joined startups and completely failed.
I absolutely love the flexibility working from home gives me - but I have a strong group of people around me to meet for coffee and live in a central location in a good city so I'm not isolated at all. But I can really relate to people who don't have that and don't have support around them.
AI is unlocking all sorts of exciting things - there are projects that I've long had on the back burner that are now unlocked. It is going to radically reshape our industry.
This reshaping is tough. What made me good at my job may not necessarily be useful. Deep focussed work delivering highly technical work - maybe that's not needed now.
I'm not sure I want to work until I'm very old. I've got my financial plan that puts me on a trajectory of being able to retire in a couple of years compfortably.
It's worth modelling this. Knowing your position is a real help. Just being able to look at something and say "I'm going to be ok - I can stop in X years if needed". Or even - "I can stop now and it wouldn't be a disaster".
And if the modelling says - you need X more years - at least you know.
It's a miserable grind. Routine includes alarm, after a poor night of sleep, getting ready, commuting in, loud, bright offices where while you enjoy the convivial nature of joking and commiserating with colleagues, it's so distracting and noisy and visually distracting that you can't be productive technically.
Next you go home at 6, 630, sleepy, go to the gym or do your shopping, home, sleep, rinse repeat.
Suddenly six months has gone by. Then a year.
I cannot sympathize with the work from home complainers. You folks are like people who came across a lot of money, retired early and are depressed due to boredom.
If WFH is misery, is it possible it's the town you live in that's causing the misery?
Maybe it is my town, maybe it's me. But I just don't think it's healthy to wake up, walk down the stairs and sit in front of a computer for 8-15 hours every day, rinse and repeat. Maybe things would be different if I had the discipline to consistently shower, cook, exercise, go outside, spend time with friends, pursue my hobbies, and maintain my household.
Yes obviously?!? Nothing about work from home makes you sit on your ass all day.
You're projecting your lack of discipline about the things that make life worthwhile (feeling good physically, bettering yourself mentally, enjoying the world around you, and sharing it with others) onto a working model.
Discipline is a personal problem not an office policy issue.
Check my bookcase and you'll find ~60 thick books all about programming languages and frameworks. I've learned something like 9 languages at a professional level, and I've worked up and down the stack all the way from bare metal firmware, to mobile, to web, and server.
AI has gutted my passion for software development. It seems people in this industy can be loosely bucketed as follows:
* Went into software because you love writing code to solve problems, where the actual design and writing of said code is as important as the outcome.
* Went into software purely for the outcome, love building things, don't care how it gets built.
At the end of the day I'm a craftsman. I became passionate ~20 years ago about the design and architecture of software, and it fueled a beautiful career. Now, what?
I've spent the last year just throwing prompts at claude and seeing how well it does. Despite having built more in the last year than would have ever been possible before, I feel empty. The outcomes work, they work well, but I didn't write the code. I explained some high level directives to claude, maybe jumped in here or there with a technical angle to fix something when claude got stock... but by and large... the skills I've built over the last 20 years don't really apply anymore.
Yea, I'm not honestly not sure what is going to happen. Your comment about dreaming to be homeless really resonated with me. I either need to find a joy in this AI coding, or I don't know what will happen with me.
My Mom once said something to me as a kid that resonated deeply, even then. Human beings' most valuable skill is adaptation. If you cannot adapt, you will die. As long as I can enjoy this fight, this life, this grind, this mystery... then I will make it my priority to adapt and to reframe my thoughts such that joy is possible again.
It doesn't have to be the end if I don't want it to be. The world will always change, it's on me to change with it.
You will eventually get tired of it, homesick, want to settle down somewhere, but it is a tremendously good brain refresher.
Not if current leadership has any say in it (and they do). I'm never really one who thinks "this generation is screwed" in the same way people go "kids these days". But I still use such sentiment. Because the generations before us did the exact opposite of leaving a seed for a tree they will never sit under. They are in fact trying to burn the forest down and kids will inherit the fire.
The kids will adjust, once the adults strop strangling them. Which at this point will probably need nature to work its course.
I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new things just for the sake of it. Now I daydream about being homeless. I look around at all the meaningless crap I have accumulated, and feel shame that I didn't use that money to retire early.
I am surprised that remote work didn't get a bigger mention in the article. In a few weeks I will have been working from home for 12 years, and I believe it is the cause of most of most of my angst. At first, the convivence was such a relief, but it has become a trap. The effort of the commute, forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day, they all felt like a burden at the time but they were good for me and I didn't realize it. Not to mention that it makes my house feel like work, and I now I hate it here.
I will say as an anecdote counter to the AI examples given in the article. I have a young co-worker who is very excited about AI and is using it way more effectively than I am. Talking to him gives me hope for the future, the kids will be alright.
But to the point of the article: I have many friends my age that are making less than half of what I do working objectively harder jobs for way longer hours, but they all seem so much happier than I am.