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

#221

Post by _curious_ » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:33 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…

Setup a phone call with someone you care about while you walk/run...

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

#222

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

t3rabytes wrote: post #219

veggieburglar wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What spot are you looking at? Asking as a mountain biker. Itching to get out on a road trip once it’s possible.

Brevard, NC. All of my family is from there and lives there and the trails are good, hard to say no to. Helluva road trip for you from CA tho.

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by grindgrind » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #107

torben-friis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

adittionally to what others have commented, make sure that the room you're working in has enough sunlight and (I can't stress this enough) is well ventilated. It also helps if you can walk outside 5 minutes every hour or so (lawn, terrace, whatever's available). Somewhere where you have open air and you can focus your sight on things that are more than 5 meters away. As for the long commutes, I'm from a big european…

> As for the long commutes, I'm from a big european city and I still have almost a one hour commute to work. Granted, it's public transit so I can use the time somewhat (netflix on my phone, ebooks or whatever) but it's still two hours that I could otherwise use at the gym, having beers with friends or watching a movie. Yeah true. I was thinking more of the American-style car commute. While I agree that time spent co…

A commute is a commute, at least in your car you are not jammed in with a bunch of people. You can also throw in a podcast, your own music, climate controlled to your liking. I would rather commute in a car than on a bus or train.

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

#224

Post by chosenbreed37 » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

deevolution wrote: post #100

I think alot of people will want to go back because they've now associated working remotely with being in an isolated jail cell. Also I'm sure couples and people with kids are ready to jump out their windows. I wont be going back to the office for a number of reasons, however, and I think everyone should boycott the office as well. Weather you want to work in the office or not should ultimately be the employees choic…

You make a compelling case for more people to opt to working from home given the choice. I wonder in all of this whether or not we might be losing something. I'd say that co-location (and possibly commuting) are a part of a larger ecosystem. For instance there are a number of businesses that cater for the office based folks. This could be providing breakfast, lunches, coffees, cigarettes (vapes), etc. In some cities you have coffee shops/restaurants that are mainly open during office hours. Without the offices many of them wouldn't be there. These may be businesses of various sizes employing several people. Then there's the staff required to maintain the office space from receptionists, porters, security, cleaners, technicians, etc. Then there are the pubs/bars that people go to after work (one of things I miss when home based). I could go on. You could argue that many of these people could simply be employed elsewhere. I think we should consider the potential ramifications of the shift before we jump full steam ahead.

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

#225

Post by ghaff » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #210

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…

Conversely for me, meetings have reduced because more people are using slack and email to communicate more frequently, and the quality of their communications has gone up. While i know that sounds like hell for some people, it’s where I thrive since I’ve always worked at multi site companies before, and it was the only effective way to scale communication. So I’ve gone from having meetings all day, every day, to havi…

Yeah, I'm hardly ever in a meeting where all participants would be in the same room unless it's a special circumstance like an on-site get together or a small meeting with people who just happen to be in the same location. Even if all of us came into an office--which many of us don't either formally or informally--we'd still be on conference/video calls. In some ways, the current situation actually works better because you don't have the mix of physically present people in conference room(s) and people by themselves remotely.

(Before this whole thing happened some of the teams I work with already had rules to the effect that if some people were going to be on a remote video link, everyone called in that way.)

ADDED: I suspect a lot of people on this board work for small companies with co-located teams in a single location. You get up to companies of even modest size and you end up with people spread over continents and, for many of us, the daily reality is coordinating and having discussions across those continents.

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

#226

Post by barry-cotter » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #117

Tade0 wrote: post #19

No wonder given that the daily commute is both mentally and physically taxing for most. I've been working remotely since 2015 and have already decided to settle in a perhaps less attractive, but definitely cheaper neighbourhood so that I could have some office space in the house. In the long run it's probably going to cost as much as the sum total of fuel and vehicles used over the years, but the main benefit is not…

People get used to most things. A few weeks after winning the lottery or losing an arm, they are mostly as happy as they were before. (Mostly! Not completely.) But I read somewhere that the misery of commuting is strangely resistance to the hedonic treadmill. See eg https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/01/change-...

I suggest you look up more recent research on the hedonic treadmill and winning the lottery and losing a limb specifically. I’m very confident winning the lottery durably raises life satisfaction and that it takes years, not months for losing a limb to be mostly but not entirely gotten over.

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

#227

Post by SauciestGNU » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

nck4222 wrote: post #9

nerdbaggy wrote: post #3

The 25-34 age range had the most “Yes” I want to work from home. I wonder if experience made the later years want to not work from home, or what caused that.

Children probably. Don't get me wrong, I love being home and spending time with the family more, it's really the best part of this experience for me. But there's no way I'd be able to be as productive as expected under normal circumstances. I'm lucky if I get 4 hours in.

I have to say that I'm lucky if I get 4 productive hours in on any day, and most colleagues and peers I have talked to say something similar. That makes me want to ask here as a sort of informal poll, how many hours of the working day would you all say you normally spend working?

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

#228

Post by bart_spoon » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58

willvarfar wrote: post #25

I'm anticipating that most HNers prompted to comment here will be those thinking this unlikely or wrong or whatever. Every time something positive about remote working is on HN, only those opposing it seem to comment... So, anyway, here's my vote in favour of remote working! I've worked from home for the last 10 years straight, and two years in the decade before that. Working from home has always been best for me. Hi…

> I'm anticipating that most HNers prompted to comment here will be those thinking this unlikely or wrong or whatever. On the contrary, this seems like the most honest take on the topic of remote work preferences. The headline says that 50% of Americans prefer working from home. That suggests that 50% prefer working from the office or aren't sure yet. In other words: Some people like to work from home. Some people do…

I don't think people are ignoring the half of the population that does not benefit from working from home. It's that, historically, we've been ignoring the half that prefers it. The default in America is to come into the office every day. Yeah, great, there are people that work better that way, but the current situation has forced us to re-examine that way of doing business and we are realizing that there is at least as many people who don't work better that way. This half of the population, up until about 6 weeks ago, was the one being steamrolled into the office culture.

In a broader context, it opens up lots of questions about tangentially related questions. Things like climate change, or urban planning. In my area, sprawl is a problem. Lots of people live in the suburbs and commute. This combined with the harsh winters mean the roads are constantly getting chewed up, and there is always a struggle to find the tax dollars for proper maintenance. Growth is up, and so there are debates between those who want to expand highways and those who want to use tax dollars for something else. The desire to eliminate a commute is leading to gentrification and people being priced out of their communities.

Additionally, requiring a physical presence limits career opportunities. My field has a lot of jobs concentrated in a few hubs like SF and Boston. But there are lots of reasons to not want to live in those areas, and for those who don't wish to, career prospects are severely limited.

We also make lots of concessions to our quality of life in order to be able to work in the same physical space. Lots of Americans spend hours commuting to and from work. At the same time, we don't exercise enough, we eat poorly, and we work too much. All of these are at least somewhat related to not having enough time in the day, and working from home would at the very least give back people the hours of the day they spend traveling between work and home.

I think the honest take on remote work preferences is that there is no one size fits all solution. But up until a month ago, we were largely forcing a single solution on everyone. There's always been excuses: worries about decreases in productivity, claims that we don't have the internet infrastructure, insistence that real work is done face to face. But the reality is that in many cases those simply aren't true, and we are making lots of sacrifices by propping those excuses up.

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

#229

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

I have found that working from home is great, right now. During normal times, though, I could not really handle doing it for more than a couple days a week.

I suspect the reason is that my wife and kids are at home right now. So I can close the door and they will leave me alone, but I still have a sense of them being around. So I am comfortable. But during normal times, the kids would be at school all day and my wife would be at her office. So then the house would be empty except for me, and then I get a little stir crazy after a couple days.

We will find out eventually, when offices reopen. I am secretly hoping that I will be able to continue working from home while maintaining my sanity.

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

#230

Post by eru » Tue, Apr 14, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #226

eru wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get used to most things. A few weeks after winning the lottery or losing an arm, they are mostly as happy as they were before. (Mostly! Not completely.) But I read somewhere that the misery of commuting is strangely resistance to the hedonic treadmill. See eg https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/01/change-...

I suggest you look up more recent research on the hedonic treadmill and winning the lottery and losing a limb specifically. I’m very confident winning the lottery durably raises life satisfaction and that it takes years, not months for losing a limb to be mostly but not entirely gotten over.

Sorry, ignore the bit about limb and lottery. That was for explaining the hedonic treadmill.

The point was that commuting seems surprisingly resistant to the hedonic treadmill.