Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll • Hacker News Board

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#151

Post by t3rabytes » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #74

t3rabytes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally, not saying it isn't a problem in that case either, but rather that remote is hailed as this "you can live anywhere, move to the cheapest city you can!" solution when it's not (for most people).

It's a choice to work a non-remote job though. My partner could work, but it wouldn't be remote, so she's a stay at home parent while I work remote, enabling us to live somewhere rural (which also happens to be cheaper; one income easily supports a family of four). Both people in a relationship could work remote jobs to enable geospatial freedom, also a choice! When someone says that working remote isn't a solution t…

That's something we've been looking at recently, actually -- moving somewhere cheaper, but the problem we've found is that there just really aren't any jobs that she's interested in in the area we've been looking at (even outside of her current field, which she wants to leave anyway) -- we're looking at one spot in particular because of my mountain biking hobby and because I've lived there and have a lot of family there --, and we don't have kids, so it's hard to determine "okay, is it fine for us to just move and for you to have no idea on what job you want to do there?" even though my income is more than enough to sustain us (4x hers).

For her, the idea of doing that -- moving with no job or even an idea of what job to do there -- doesn't sit well. She doesn't like the implied dependence on me and that others may see her as a failure because she doesn't have a job for X time or an idea of what she wants to do. I can do all I can to convince her that that isn't the case and that not everyone has their sights set on something when they're in high school/college (I did, which doesn't help). Ultimately I think the change would be good since I think her job/boss in our current city is toxic and mentally rough, such that moving to an entirely new area with totally different prospects could create a positive.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#152

Post by maccard » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

FalconSensei wrote: post #147

mfer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did when I started working from home. I was lucky to have a manager who knew about habits and patterns to fix that. A lot of this isn't about going to work but about our habits and patterns. For example, I have a room I go into and close the door. When I am in there I am working. When I am out of there I'm not. It's like a mental switch. I also use some tricks to keep be from being distracted like a pomodoro timer.…

> I have a room I go into and close the door That would be awesome to have, unfortunately, I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment. So I either work on the living room, were the TV and my wife are, or on the bedroom :(

I'm in a small apartment too, where my partner (and dog) are also here. We've both got corners set up in different rooms (I'm in the bedroom) and if I'm in my corner, I'm working. It's less about having a full room to dedicate to being a home office, and more about making a space (no matter how small or open) dedicated to working.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#153

Post by Lambdanaut » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

danielrpa wrote: post #143

flatline wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My work is all meetings all the time, now. I’m on the phone most of the day. Little things that used to take 20 minutes now take an hour. I used to enjoy working from home a couple days a week because I got some peace and quiet and knew I could catch back up with people when I returned to the office. I went from loving to hating my job in the last three weeks. I am also constantly distracted by having the kids around…

I think that you are just generalizing something that can't be easily generalized. I'm not happy with what's happening in the world - as I hope most aren't - but the work from home situation isn't a problem for me. I'm loving it. I have an older kid and both him and my wife, who's a stay-at-home mom, are doing a great job maintaining a quiet environment in the house. One thing that makes a huge difference is having a…

I'll chime in there. Same experience. I've got a nice office upstairs away from everyone. I do two things every single day, all day, in that room by myself, and it feels amazing.

I do my work for a few hours, and then I hack on a personal project the rest of the day.

Then before bed I catch up with my wife for a couple hours and we watch something.

I'm in heaven. Introvert heaven.

Communal offices drain my life.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#154

Post by krisroadruck » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

Whenever I read these WFH HN threads and see all the comments about people who "just can't do it" I'm always curious if it's truly that they can't enjoy working from home, or that they are doing it wrong. Have worked from home for the better part of 10 years off and on and some things that make all the difference:

Have a dedicated office. Yeah you aren't going to be as productive on your kitchen table or your couch on a laptop as you would be in a quiet dedicated room with a desk, multiple monitors and clear delineation between work and play time.

Get the kids/dog/whatever distraction dealt with. You don't have kids at your office, why would you think your productivity wouldn't take a hit if you have them around at home while you are trying to work? Not now obviously because Covid, but under normal circumstances, send them to day care or whatever arrangement you gotta make to have quite during your business hours.

Figure out your coms! If your team/company isn't built around remote work, obviously there are going to be issues. You have to have a strategy for communication that's designed for remote. Both to keep you from feeling like an island or second class citizen and also because remote communication requires a totally different regiment than the random water cooler check in.

If you are doing all of these things and remote work still isn't your cup of tea I'd love to hear about it. If you aren't doing most or all of these things, It's probably not remote work that is the problem, it's how you are treating it.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#155

Post by chadlavi » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

That's definitely part of the appeal to me. 45min one way of walking plus subway (and ±10min for subway schedule shenanigans, thanks MTA) is gone, so now I have a significant chunk of free time at the beginning and end of my day.

And as a subway commuter, there's also definitely a "getting yourself mentally prepared to go out into the world and endure the subway" period that I'm quite glad to skip.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#156

Post by eru » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #33

jve wrote: post #16

> Half of all Americans want to continue working from home following the coronavirus That is a VERY rough (actually false) sentance, considering they have only surveyed ~500 Americans out of 205'950'000+ population at working age. > We surveyed over 500 Americans...

You should look up polling theory. You don't need to talk to every member of a population, only a representative sample.

The simplest way I found to explain that the representative sample size is independent of population is via coin flips and dice:

We can flip a coin an infinite number of times. But to get a good handle on whether it's biased or not, we only need to sample a very finite number of flips.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#157

Post by mk89 » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #127

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone feel the same? The study headline is that half of Americans prefer work from home. The other half either prefer working from an office or haven't made their minds up yet. In my experience managing remote teams, including some people who are new to WFH, many people struggle with the isolation of WFH. For others, the honeymoon phase is short-lived as cabin fever sets in. During normal times, the solution…

> Now would be a great time to try a new morning exercise routine. Getting out of the house for even a 10-minute morning walk can make all the difference in the trajectory of your day. You can build up to a 30-minute run over time, but it's easier to engrain the habit if you start with a very low bar. Just get dressed, prepare a to-go coffee if you like, and go for a walk around your block. You might be surprised at…

> It still makes me feel better, but it doesn't turn my brain on. I strongly suspect I need the human interaction :-/

Which is OK. Have you tried having "virtual coffees" with your colleagues? Let's say every one or two days at a fixed time? Or even 1-1 calls with a colleague that feels the same about it? It doesn't have to be about work. Believe me when I say that this is much more common than you think. In the very beginning of the "lockdown", some colleagues still tried to go to the office for that exact reason. Then it became mandatory in my company to work from home, so they couldn't go anymore. The truth is that some people DO need human contact more than others. The only way you have right now is to "fake it until you make it" with virtual coffees, etc. Plus, whenever you can, go out, even for short walks (check your local regulations and in general stay safe).

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#158

Post by papito » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

I once took three months off work when I had a pretty sweet severance deal. Let me tell you, going back to the office from 10AM to 6:30PM was HELL. It ruined worked for me. I realized that there was, you know - life.

It's the sort of epiphany you get after you retire ("oh crap, I worked too much and now my healthy years are gone"), except this time a lot of people will realize it when they are still young.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#159

Post by oddthink » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #45

I heard on WFH opinions there are two groups of people, one that think this will usher in a new age of productive freedom working from home never having to commute again, and the group with kids.

Oh, yes. In the olden times, I could hop on the subway for 20 minutes and get to a magical place with free food, good coffee, an actual full-sized desk, a monitor bigger than a 12" portable, and no fights breaking out every 45 minutes or small people coming in and saying "Dad? Daaad?" just as I had a hold of an idea.

That probably suggests there's an urban / suburban divide, too, where the people with enough real estate to set up a full-on home office are much happier with the results. I don't even know where I'd stick a 27" monitor if I ordered one.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#160

Post by dbingham » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

Extrovert / introvert.

You're clearly more towards the extrovert part of the spectrum. Please try to have empathy for people on the introverted part of the spectrum who cannot fathom being forced into an office with tons of people distracting them all day every day. Heretofore they (save for a lucky few like me) have been forced to not just fathom it, but live it.

The "half" of Americans mentioned in the article probably has heavy overlap with those introverts.

Honestly, your post reads pretty heavily to me of "status quo privilege bias". You fit the current status quo very well, and are expressing worry that a change to that status quo would hurt you, with out extending empathy to those the current status quo hurts badly.

The world is not going to flip to fully remote work. It's likely going to inch towards remote work being more prevalent or available. What you are expressing is a case of "When you're accustomed to privilege (your way of working being privileged in this case), then equality (remote work being equally available) feels like oppression."

Not saying that makes you evil or any thing, just pointing out that this is a pretty standard human bias that gets expressed and winds up working to defend harmful status quos all the time. Worth being self aware of.