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

Maybe fresh dads. I imagine majority of fresh moms like WFH due to the ease of breastfeeding. Assuming they are in a country without 1 year of parental leave.

It's like America's racial desegregation in the 1960s. Life of white workers did not become worse since colored workers joined the professional workforce.

I am in the US. Let it drop then, I will adapt by becoming a digital nomad. Maybe I will move to Mexico or Argentina for the better life there. You can buy much more life quality with half the funds.

I already know some Spanish, it's easy to pick up once I live there. If time zone doesn't matter I can also move to Southwestern China or Thailand.

Rise of wages in developing regions will also create much growth that I can invest into.

We cannot have real social democracy if there is still cheap labor on the planet to outsource to. Closing the pay gap will definitely brew global labor movement that will eventually make life better for everyone.

This is why it’s controversial.

For someone working remotely, a meeting with someone remote or in an office is irrelevant.

For someone working in an office, it makes their “in the office” experience irrelevant and meaningless.

It is not controversial because of the people who like working remotely; it’s controversial because of the people who dont, because they force their choice on other people.

You know how many people have to work remotely before it has to be a zoom meeting to be inclusive?

1.

So, in order for you in office preference to be meaningful, it has to apply to everyone.

No one likes having their choice overridden by someone else’s preference.

Thus; controversial.

When you say “I want that old school in office experience…” what it means is “I want you not to have that flexibility”, “what I want is more important than what you want”.

That might not be the intent, but let’s be blunt and realistic:

The blue sky dream of that in office experience doesn’t exist any more.

It can only exist if everyone is in the office at the same time.

Personally, I think the cat is out of the bag now. What are the chances that everyone will go back into the office full time? Not big.

That means the blue sky dream of the in office experience is probably gone forever.

It’s probably time to start trying to figure out an alternative set of practices and social outlets for people who like in office work.

With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't seem right. Of course you could argue that if some people work from home, the WFO people arent happy, but thats not because they lacked choice, whereas with the alternative, thats exactly the reason.

I don't want that to come across as aggressive or anything, that just the way I see it, and I think thats why its sometimes met badly. If what makes you happy is a condition in which someone else is unhappy, that person is unlikely to react well.

I'm pretty sympathetic to your view. I have friends I still keep up with from old jobs. I've worked at places where I pretty much hated everyone, but overall I've always managed to connect to someone there, and that was nice. Now it's stilted zoom meetings, Slack gifs, not much else. That's a bummer. I just came back from a 3 day work summit and it was actually great to see people I work with, to get to know them, to read their little mannerisms and find out their quirks. I'm a pretty shy person, and I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it.

But work is a site of control. I think this is the source of controversy you've discovered. Even if you enjoy your work and the people you work with, it's still an obligation. It took 18+ years of conditioning to get you used to this life. Finally, workers (granted, members of the laptop class like us, already a pretty well-off group) get a bit of a say, a tad bit more control over their lives. You don't have to sit in traffic, or on a train, while your brain rots with stress. You don't have some petty asshole looking over your shoulder. You can see your family more. You can sleep more. It's quite liberating to have that choice.

From where I'm sitting, I see a big push to return to the office in the media. I get the feeling, totally unsubstantiated by evidence, that this is coming from the top. Insecure leaders who need to see their underlings typing. People who genuinely hate that they've lost some control, demanding that the serfs come in under their eye. This is neither nuanced nor totally fair, but I'm trying to evoke some feelings here, to maybe get at why this is controversial.

For me personally, if I could wave a wand, I'd choose a very short commute and 2-3 days in the office. But I also bristle at the back to the office push.