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Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

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Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#101

Post by sdevonoes »

I don't want to go back on a daily basis, but I would love to go back twice per month or so (to socialize, mainly).

I don't want to go back because:

- I waste time while commuting (~30min. each day)

- I waste time socializing. Not bad, but hey I would prefer to do it at the bar not at the office and not everyday :)

- I waste time trying to focus. You know, open space office

- I don't feel comfortable in "office" clothes. It's not that I wear a suit or anything, but at home I am: barefoot, I don't wear underwear (I wear pants only!)... I hate wearing shoes and/or socks

- I wast time pretending I can work 8h/day. C'mon, it's 2021, no one (at least in my profession, IT) can say that it's possible to work totally focus 8h/day five days per week. That's BS. I can work fully focused 4h/day and call it a day. At home I don't pretend, so I have more time for myself

- I eat better at home. At home: Healthy snacks, plenty of fruit, small meals. At the office: kinda the same, but I don't get to pick which fruits and the like; besides they are gone fast (I do miss not having to pay for them, tho)

Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#103

Post by ridethebike »

speeder wrote: post #21

I am currently looking for a work from home job making games or other complex systems... Reason is that when I did that in a office little would get done, not just endless meeting but people interrupting, distractions, and weird office-only issues (like drama, office politics, HR nagging people because they left books on their desk, etc...) At home even with family around, I can tell them it is my worktime, and then…

>> HR nagging people because they left books on their desk

You just reminded me one more reason for me not to return office - we have policy that when leaving for the day employees must remove all extra items [] from the desk and put that into personal cabinet.

extra items - everything apart from phone, display and keyboard + mouse.

Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#104

Post by me_me_me »

uhhhd wrote: post #50

I don't want to go back. Commuting is a massive waste of time. Assuming 261 workdays in a year, I will save 783 hours a year. I get over a month of my life back. I can run errands whenever I choose and work whenever is convenient. I can help care for my children. It's a no-brainer for me.

> Assuming 261 workdays in a year, I will save 783 hours a year. I get over a month of my life back.

You can also save days by brushing teeth while pooping.

But on more serious note.

I never liked this kind of an argument/math, its not like you will magically get a 13th month in a year by not commuting.

That said 3hrs commute is crazy, I did it (3.5hrs of total daily commute) as a teen during a summer job. I leant then that its not worth it. Its draining + expensive. Also it cuts into so much of your time that your quality of life will suffer as you have to choose between recovering your energy levels or social life.

Ever since I have a rule to not consider a job if its too far away.

Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#105

Post by shade »

I don't want to go back. The one bright side from the last 14 months was getting to experience working on a remote-only team and discovering that it's great. We have a team distributed across offices anyway, and meetings go a lot better when everyone is using the microphone on their laptop instead of a terrible conference room setup. It's also tamped down somewhat on "let's have a meeting to talk about that" in favor of asynchronous communication.

Unfortunately, while our leadership hasn't said anything official yet, there's so much writing on the wall that you'd have to be illiterate not to see it. They're making anyone who has an office go back full time next month and have been pretty much ignoring the employee surveys saying people want remote flex and a hybrid policy.

My wife is job hunting right now so I'll grudgingly go back so as not to disrupt my family's health insurance, but once she finds something, I'd say it's good odds I'm going to start looking. It's a shame because I like my team, but I don't feel a need to actually see them in person more than once or twice a year. I'd much rather work in my nice home office where the bathroom's never occupied, people aren't walking around/talking and being distracting, my dog wanders in occasionally to see what I'm doing, and my daughter runs in to say hello when she gets home from school. None of the office "perks" measure up to those, for me.

Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#106

Post by intergalplan »

dougmwne wrote: post #65
intergalplan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fewer restrictions and less questioning of your use of time and your activities is typical the higher one observes the class ladder. WFH (absent remote monitoring tools, which take it back down below an in-person job without such tools) is like bumping up to the upper-middle, or professional, class, which most programmers are not in , ordinarily, socially speaking. ... and yes, a taste of class privilege is, frankly,…

You nailed it. I may never have much class privlage, but I can emulate it with WFH, location flexibility and by cultivating small amounts of financial independence.

I truly think class-anxiety will make the freer kinds of WFH fairly uncommon over time, if it persists on a large scale at all, the more savvy managers get to it. I'm seeing non-programmer, bog-standard office drone friends get their work done in a couple hours and have the rest of the day basically to themselves (though no fault of their own, as they've sought more work in the past and found no-one to give it to them, and just happen to be way more efficient than some of their peers). They did the same in the office, but they weren't free there. I don't think managers will like mere office drones, or even huge numbers of programmers (just office drones they have to pay more, while resenting it every day, really), gaining those kinds of privileges, which ordinarily aren't available to such a degree even for middle managers.

I expect work spyware and spying services to be a booming market, even more than it has been. :-(

Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#107

Post by intergalplan »

tarruda wrote: post #24
pcbro141 wrote: post #17

I don't want to go back, I can get my day job done in Do your tasks in as little time as it takes leaving more room for leisure, this is the first time I'm feeling the benefits of that 'increased productivity per hour'[1] economists talk about. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/labor-productivit...

I feel like I can do my daily work in 2-3 hours, but I end up spending all day procastinating between tasks.

That's a working-in-an-office habit, which I personally am trying to break. (as he goofs around on HN)

Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#108

Post by ASalazarMX »

dougmwne wrote: post #62
aliljet wrote: post #29

I may be the malcontent, but I'm tired of being at home. I want to keep the option of being at home, but I miss the community I found at work, I miss the non-work adventures our team had, and frankly, I think the new folks joining our teams are not nearly as integrated into our family as those of that came before the pandemic. I've worked remote for a decade and the option to work remote for 2ish days a week makes li…

Your coworkers are not your family, unless they are literally your family business. Most people don't learn this lesson till the first layoff and they watch those warm and friendly relationships sublimate in an instant.

Remember when your schoolmates were your best friends at the time, then you changed schools and their friendship sublimated? I guess they weren't worthy of being your friends after all.

Re: Ask HN: Who doesn’t want to go back to the office?

#109

Post by uhhhd »

me_me_me wrote: post #104
uhhhd wrote: post #50

I don't want to go back. Commuting is a massive waste of time. Assuming 261 workdays in a year, I will save 783 hours a year. I get over a month of my life back. I can run errands whenever I choose and work whenever is convenient. I can help care for my children. It's a no-brainer for me.

> Assuming 261 workdays in a year, I will save 783 hours a year. I get over a month of my life back. You can also save days by brushing teeth while pooping. But on more serious note. I never liked this kind of an argument/math, its not like you will magically get a 13th month in a year by not commuting. That said 3hrs commute is crazy, I did it (3.5hrs of total daily commute) as a teen during a summer job. I leant th…

Ok, I chuckled. But it's actually true. Time is finite and time not spent sitting on a commuter train or waiting for subways is time that used for other things. And I agree 3 hours a day is NUTS, but unfortunately pretty common in large metro areas.
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