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

Yep. Virtual coffees during work hours. Virtual beers after. It just doesn't cut it for me. I've narrowed it down to me being fine small-talk with friends in person, but feeling extremely awkward small-talking on a screen. It's probably the same mechanism that has made me hate "general chit chat" phone calls for as long as I can remember, while being comfortable with general chit chat in person.

> The truth is that some people DO need human contacts more than others.

I always knew this was the case for me, but I somehow thought that as long as I had a good set of friends and loved ones in my life, I would be fine with not seeing people on a regular basis. Turns out that's not the case.

> The only way you have right now is to "fake it until you make it" with virtual coffees, etc.

Yep. All in all, I can't complain. Everyone I know is healthy and employed. It could be a lot worse. I feel like a whiner now, but this was the umpeenth news story exhalting WFH and I couldn't refrain from commenting any longer.

> Plus, whenever you can, go out, even for short walks (check your local regulations and in general stay safe).

Yes, thankfully this is fine where I am now (the curve is thoroughly flattened, hospitalizations on a good decline for more than a week, and society will slowly start reopening next week). Stay safe, and best of luck to you!

I'm excited about the work-from-home revolution that's going on here, and I think it will benefit society and some level of work-from-home will stick for the long term, for many people. However, it's not for everyone. Some people just don't like the remote work lifestyle at all. It's also not for every kind of job or office.

I think we'll see a lot of hybrid arrangements in the post-covid world. Some offices might institute work-from-home only for tuesdays and thursdays. Or just have everyone come into the office on Mondays and cram all the important in-person meetings into that day. Or in some situations it will be an at-will flexibility (come in for specific meetings when it makes sense, or come use the office like you would a co-working space when your home life is a little crazier because the kids are out of school for the summer and/or there's a contractor remodeling the kitchen, etc).

I think most seemingly-virtualizable businesses that had offices before will still have offices for the foreseeable few years, but by implementing various hybrid policies they could see their average headcount onsite per day shrink significantly over time. For many the office will become optional and/or a part-time thing. One way they could react to this is to downsize their commercial real estate the next time contracts are up. Another way they could handle it would be to remodel the space they've got, trading out cube-farm areas for more private offices and private conference rooms that can be reserved ahead, which will draw some employees back for more hours on-site, until they find a balancing point.

The deeper transition for managers is getting away from the control-freak model of tracking "hours worked", and starting to focus instead on the "things done". The reason you hired your employee is not to punch a clock and stare at a wall for a fixed number of hours; you hired them to accomplish goals, and you're actually going to have to focus directly on measuring true work rather than time in a post-office-hours world. Once you break free of the chains of time-tracking, all kinds of efficiencies that benefit both the employer and the employee are unlocked through remote and flexible work arrangements.

You can't competently work from home full time and also manage children. Even for people without children, they are dealing with co-workers who are juggling a new normal, have not set up dedicated work spaces, are fumbling to learn how to use zoom/meet/hangout etc...

I say all this to point out that, even in non-ideal conditions with little to no preparation or planning, most people would still rather work from home.

Work from home should be the STANDARD, not the exception, for white collar work.

Did they? The only question I see broken down by age range is not about wanting to work from home, but "are you more productive working from home?".

The survey was conducted using mechanical turk for American workers with full-time jobs. We didn't control for age, as you can see in the age breakdown of "are you more productive working from home," so had some age groups more represented than others. The margin of error is 4%.

So that raises some red flags, because turkers are WAY more likely to be favorable towards WFH conditions. They already do that!