Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#151

Post by alecbz » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

twayt wrote: post #111

I find that I get more emotionally jerked around working in person and can insulate myself from it working from home. Coworker acts curt to me as though they are superior and more productive than me? Rage ensues and I get an ungodly amount of work done. Come across an inspiring/encouraging coworker or get recognition for something? I feel great and feel like I take more risks. Coworker types super loud or acts incons…

Totally just my 0.02, but this reads a little like "opting out" instead of addressing issues interacting with other humans. Like yeah, humans are sometimes great, sometimes make you feel not great, sometimes are genuinely bad. I think life is learning to address and navigate all of that.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#152

Post by chologrande » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

I often feel like an overlooked part of working from home is the cost you have to take on to do so.

While I love the convenience of working from home, making an office space at home takes a huge portion of the square footage available for me. My company offers $100/mo as a stipend to work from home. This is approximately the cost of .25 square feet of real estate.

I can't afford to work from home, but I have to anyway. Most companies I know have closed down their offices. :(

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#153

Post by _9omd » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

Trasmatta wrote: post #25

toomanydoubts wrote: post #6

Going to an office to write software is absolutely insane. I like going on fridays and leaving early to drink beer with coworkers.

The absolute absurdity of sitting in an open office, and pretending to program the full 9-5. That's just not how work like this happens. Why do companies pay their developers high salaries, but then tie one hand behind their backs like that. For me? Never again.

But why go 9-5? Show up at 10. Take a 2hr lunch at noon, and leave at 4. Ride your bike in, chill with people you like, get some work done, don't stress yourself. Ride your bike home and crack a beer. No one is chaining you to a desk, if you're a software engineer the cards are all in your hand in this market.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#154

Post by alecbz » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

changxi_hn wrote: post #131

alecbz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe this is some kind of local optimum, but a poor one. Like if your devs already don't give two shits about anything, pressure from you watching over them might improve things somewhat. But like the real fix is a path to a much better optimum, which is giving employees autonomy, trusting them, rewarding them adequately, getting them to actually care, so that they don't need to be watched over as individual…

No. I'm the manager, they're the dev. If they want autonomy, become an artist.

Do you want to feel powerful or to have productive devs?

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#155

Post by jsrcout » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

Work from home, definitely. The office was fine but I'm very much an introvert and it's just so much less stress this way. The main thing I miss is random chats with people in the aisles or the break room. Haven't found a substitute for that at all. When our site reopens, we'll probably be coming in for meetings/whatever fairly often, so things should be about perfect.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#156

Post by dleslie » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #137

dleslie wrote: post #18

Working from home means I get to see my wife and children for more hours of the day. It also means that I get to choose when I will allow myself to be interrupted, rather than sitting in an open concept office and being _continually_ interrupted. I've been working from home for over six years. I never want to return to the office. I will change careers before I return to a software development office.

> It also means that I get to choose when I will allow myself to be interrupted, rather than sitting in an open concept office and being _continually_ interrupted. This is extremely situational. When I was in a larger house and had no kids, WFH was an easy way to avoid interruptions. Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. Avoiding interruptions at home was extrem…

> Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around.

I lived in an 800 square foot home with one bathroom for five of the last six years, with my wife and two children. My desk was beside the front entryway, with no door.

> Avoiding interruptions at home was extremely difficult because I was always only a door away from someone asking a “quick favor”.

That's a problem of setting boundaries. It never gets easier, but at least the spouse works and the kids go to school and day care.

> I’ve felt that fully remote has been the worst of all worlds. Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. It’s hard to push back against people who want answers now now now and know they can get your attention by typing the right few characters into Slack.

More setting of boundaries. Be firm and say no. Better, don't respond outside of your core hours unless you're explicitly on pager duty.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#157

Post by alvatech » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

abap_rocky wrote: post #69

The pandemic really helped me confirm that I prefer the office. I always sought to establish a clear distinction between my work life and home life and the enforced work from home due to COVID has made the two blur to a point now where I feel like I've lost all rhythm. Now living through a pandemic itself has a way of disrupting the rhythm of life but I feel that the collapsing of space into a singular living and wor…

I am just like you. I used to also maintain a clear distinction between home and office. Also, I like driving and 45min(2 way) commute was therapeutic to me.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#158

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

In the before times, I (thought I) loved working from the office. I'm a reasonable social person, so I enjoy hanging out with people in the office and after work at the pub.

It took me a while to get used to remote work, but now I couldn't have it any other way. I do miss the social aspects of being in the same physical space as other people, but I greatly prefer the other freedoms like not wasting 1-2 hours of my day commuting to work. I used to get pretty bad seasonal depression over winter which has now disappeared as I'm not longer coming home in the miserable cold dark for a few months of the year.

I'm also grateful that I have a decent apartment with a seperate and dedicated office that is a very distinct area from where to cook, eat, and sleep.

I'm thankful that I have a good social circle (who I all met through past jobs in an office...) that still regularly hangs out. One silver lining of the past few years is that we just go over to each other's place to hang out, which is much more comfortable and cheaper!

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#159

Post by _9omd » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #43

Trasmatta wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute absurdity of sitting in an open office, and pretending to program the full 9-5. That's just not how work like this happens. Why do companies pay their developers high salaries, but then tie one hand behind their backs like that. For me? Never again.

Why are you pretending to program the full 9-5? I like the office and am currently working in the office but I just... get up and leave whenever I want. Come back whenever I want. No need to pretend to work 9-5.

This 100%. People are acting like someone is chaining them to their desk. Seriously, just get up! No one is going to say shit, you have all the power in this current market. I'm a huge fan of 2hr lunches that include a nap in the park. Get my best ideas walking to/from the park.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#160

Post by tootie » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:26 AM UTC

I think the huge irony of tech work over the last twenty years is that the WFH revolution was preceded by the offshoring revolution. I spent probably half my working days since 2012 working with partly or fully distributed teams around the world or at least the country. I don't grudge because I had some great teammates in Colombia or Ukraine or Costa Rica or Roumania. It was obvious they could do good work without being with us in person. There's very little about tech work that can't be done remotely. I worked in consulting and we had no trouble doing sales and support remotely too.