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Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#591

Post by BaseballPhysics »

odessacubbage wrote: post #576
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. ... > Personally, I haven't seen many good arguments that WFH produces superior work outcomes. And personally I haven't seen many good arguments that WFO produces superior work outcomes, and yet you seem to state it as fact. I suspect WFH and WFO produce roughly equivalent work…

>I think chasing productivity has led to an extraordinarily toxic work culture. i will say that crunch from home is a lot easier to optimize and ultimately sustain than crunch-in-office.

Absolutely.

IME, far from being a barrier to productivity, WFH can make it harder to maintain a good work-life balance if you're not careful.

For example, it's a lot easier for my colleagues in other timezones to justify pulling me into a 6am meeting if they know I can just roll out of bed to take the call. And I personally know people who've put in a lot more overtime because it's just so easy to keep on coding when you don't have a commute to bookend your day.

Stir in this latent perception that people who work from home are lazy, and I could see WFH being more toxic for people who aren't careful or work for a company with a broken culture.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#592

Post by bcrosby95 »

jedberg wrote: post #490

I think a lot of this boils down to kids vs no kids. I really enjoyed working in the office when I didn't have kids. Hanging out with coworkers after work was pretty normal, and sometimes my wife would come along too. We're still good friends with a lot of my old coworkers. In fact, those are the people we hang out with now. But now that I have kids I'd rather spend time with them or on my hobbies with them or hangin…

As an aside, I've worked from home my whole career and that time you spent after work with coworkers, I spent with my friends. So I never really needed to use work as a social outlet.

Most of my friends I see in person come from my high school days or online gaming.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#593

Post by yupper32 »

hhmc wrote: post #577
yupper32 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prefer to socialize in other settings Can someone shed some light on this? I'm in the office for at least 40 hours a week. Then each day I get home, cook dinner, clean, bathe, workout sometimes. I don't even have kids or a long commute. If I'm not socializing at work, when am I doing it? Two days a week? That is bleeeeaak .

40hours a week is 8 hours a day. Let's say you sleep 8 hours. Let's also be conservative and say you have a 1 hour commute each way. That's still 6 hours left. It's pretty easy to find some socialization time in there unless you're taking 4 hour long showers. This isn't just theoretical, _clearly_ many people socialize in the evenings.

By the time I work out, get home, cook dinner, eat dinner, clean, shower, it's like 8pm usually. No one around me is staying out past like 10pm on a weekday. Now I have the job of finding anyone who wants to hang out from 8pm to 10pm on a weekday when both/all of us are exhausted from a long day.

Doing the hard math and saying I have 6 hours is just theoretical. _Many_ people may socialize in the evenings, but I'd be surprised _most_ do.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#594

Post by iamthirsty »

odessacubbage wrote: post #584
iamthirsty wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WFO is shit and delivers measurably lower work. Where are your measurements? Most of the replies here are level-headed discussions, with statistics or points. This reply is mainly about your disdain for WFO, nothing more.

anecdotally, i am willing to put in far more hours if i don't have to worry about falling asleep on the commute home.

Yeah, but again, not really a statistic, that's kind just how you feel.

Personally, I enjoy working in an office, as there is a very, very clear separation between my work and private lives. Yes, having a commute can suck most of the time, but hitting the store on my way home or going to the PO Box to get the mail makes it so that when I get home, I'm home, and done for the day.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#595

Post by kroltan »

yupper32 wrote: post #570
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also add that comments like this: > Now, I am fully aware that there's a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. Are remarkably condescending. Folks opting for a better work-life balance, wh…

> prefer to socialize in other settings Can someone shed some light on this? I'm in the office for at least 40 hours a week. Then each day I get home, cook dinner, clean, bathe, workout sometimes. I don't even have kids or a long commute. If I'm not socializing at work, when am I doing it? Two days a week? That is bleeeeaak .

8 hours at work, 8 sleeping, that's still 8 more left. I would be surprised if you took all of them to cook and clean.

Even with 4 hours of chores a day, that's still 4 hours to do whatever you want. Doesn't mean you spend them all that day, or all of them socializing. Maybe you use mondays to study, tuesdays you spend more time cleaning so wednesdays you can go out do something.

Also consider that if you strictly socialise in a work context, most of those relationships will grow distant relatively quickly when you or they leave for another company, which means it's harder to build long lasting friendships. Those can be really handy at times of transition in your life, which is where work friends usually fail first.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#596

Post by tacticalturtle »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #356
asdadsdad wrote: post #254

Oh my - I've been waiting to hear this since forever, and you couldn't have said it better. I feel exactly the same way, and I feel like specially the younger tech workers are losing a big chunk of what it means to build work relationships (which are some of the best), and to connect with people. I don't know how to fix it as like you said, most people will scream when you mention work from office/

> younger tech workers are losing a big chunk of what it means to build work relationships (which are some of the best) I dont want to judge but its really hard not to if you see work relationships as some of the best relationships available. They are absolutely relationships that are formed from forced repeated interaction. Maybe I have had a few co workers who I would have naturally become friends with outside of w…

Why would you struggle not to judge someone who had developed some of their best relationships from work?

Studies have shown that the best way to develop friendships is repeated, unplanned interaction.

I certainly didn’t make friends with everyone I worked with, but out of that pool, there have been some great ones I wouldn’t have otherwise met. I certainly empathize with the feelings of the parent.

Would you feel the same if the parent commenter had some of their best relationships from school, and seeing the same people in class everyday? Or the military? I don’t think the location of these interactions matters.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#597

Post by yupper32 »

kroltan wrote: post #595
yupper32 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prefer to socialize in other settings Can someone shed some light on this? I'm in the office for at least 40 hours a week. Then each day I get home, cook dinner, clean, bathe, workout sometimes. I don't even have kids or a long commute. If I'm not socializing at work, when am I doing it? Two days a week? That is bleeeeaak .

8 hours at work, 8 sleeping, that's still 8 more left. I would be surprised if you took all of them to cook and clean. Even with 4 hours of chores a day, that's still 4 hours to do whatever you want. Doesn't mean you spend them all that day, or all of them socializing. Maybe you use mondays to study, tuesdays you spend more time cleaning so wednesdays you can go out do something. Also consider that if you strictly so…

Why do so many people try to do the hard math when it comes to this? The reality is by the time I am able to go out on a weekday it's like 8pm. Very few of my peers, friends or not, want to go out late on a weekday after already having a long day.

If you're able to do better than that, then you are in an uncommon bracket.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#598

Post by criddell »

listenallyall wrote: post #429
criddell wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> improve housing policy so people can live closer to work Or, improve labor policy so work becomes a much smaller part of most people's lives.

Come on... people work far less than they ever did before, that should be pretty obvious if you just think about it. Further, tons of "work" is done with zero physical strain, lots of those "work" hours are the in-between stuff -- travel, meetings, calls, lunches -- meaning that actual hours laboring are even less. https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours

We're definitely heading in the right direction. I don't think we're there yet though.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#599

Post by shuntress »

I mostly agree with you. I miss being in the office with my coworkers and I am starting to feel like it is a permanent change for the worse.

I would push back on your implication that "lonesome engineers just need to be forced to socialize" because that is not really the point and there is nothing wrong with have the preference and ability to work remotely.

I also think you are massively under-appreciating the value add of working in a walkable urban environment. I think we would all agree here that no matter how effective your home office setup is, you are essentially in a "bubble" that insulates you from interaction with the world. Leaving that bubble to commute to a slightly larger office-bubble is very different from leaving it for a good city.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#600

Post by BaseballPhysics »

samuel_backend wrote: post #580
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yes, there are people who work only to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. And what does that have to do with preferring to work from home? It's almost comical the implication that those same people, pre-COVID, weren't going to the office and phoning it in. IMO the two topics--being... I dunno... not ambitious, and working from home--are entirely orthogonal concepts. And the…

I work a 4 day work week and am complaining about this BECAUSE I care about the fun and meaning these 32 hours / week have, not because I want to work more or define myself through work achievements. And again, I wouldn't want to force anyone to come to the office. I am merely asking for other people's opinions.

Hey, the OP! Great, I can just straight up ask you: given that, would you agree with the statement that preferring a WFH arrangement and being ambitious/"invested"/whatever are largely orthogonal to one another?

I ask because, right here, you're tying "[caring] about the fun and meaning [of your work hours]" to working in an office. And I honestly just don't see the connection.

Can you say more about that?

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