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

I am such a person. He is not wrong. If it's not applicable to you then don't take it personally.

> I always saw tech as the field where a disproportionally large amount of people truly love what they do. Mostly, because it takes so much grit and persistence to get good at it that most people wouldn't succeed unless they see something in it beyond putting food on the table.

I went into tech because I fell in love with programming as a pre-teen. I love building things. I love the everyday magic of typing incantations and seeing the response on the screen.

I'm also a world-class introvert. If I never had to interact with anyone in person besides my wife and kids, I'd be a happy man.

You're conflating "I don't want to be in the office" with "I don't love my job", when in fact the exact opposite is true. I love my job more than ever now that all the parts of it that I disliked (such as my boss wandering in and starting a conversation in the middle of my flow state) are gone. And I don't think I'm alone here—most people I've met have been programming since they were kids are also extremely introverted. Whether it's cause or effect, there's a strong correlation.

People like me don't want to avoid the office because we dislike our job, we don't go into the office because it allows us to spend more time on the parts we've always loved.

Said space can also be rented in a dedicated co-working space (close to home or close to other place of interest) providing both the benefits of a space dedicated to work and the benefits of no commute, rent flexibility (you can choose a more preferable housing opportunity since proximity to work is not a factor), social mobility (you can choose to live in a different city) and personal security (a lot harder for physical harassment in a power imbalance context to happen when you are remote, a lot more likely for other forms of harassment to be recorded).

The fundamental drive of WFH is the opposition towards lords attempting to dictate how people live their lives. If a subset of workers want to work from the company office, good for them. If a subset prefer to work from co-working spaces, good for them. If some free spirits prefer to work from a tent in the mountains with a satellite connection and solar panels, good for them. If some prefer to switch environments, good for them.

This is the same as installing (side loading) apps on iOS. One group desires freedom (to install whatever from wherever) and does not care what others do (use only the official store). The other group (those who like the walled garden) prefers that all others do as they do (only use the official store and nothing else ever, preferably making it impossible or illegal).

I will actually express this in even harsher terms.

Mandatory WFO is a communist notion, it is fundamentally undemocratic and fundamentally un-American. It values uniformity the same way communism does. WFH values freedom and autonomy. So going forward, I will call all those who want to enforce WFO when it is not necessary: Commie-Bastards.

> I haven't seen many good arguments that WFH produces superior work outcomes.

Why should you want _arguments_ about a question for which there has been actual research? "Superior work outcomes" is a fuzzy thing to measure, but when units of work are clearly countable and it's agreed what constitutes "done", there are multiple studies that have found that WFH employees were more productive (i.e. did more in the same period of time), and since the pandemic there have been multiple findings that WFH employees were putting in more work hours (i.e. previously dead commute time became productive). Admittedly, the kinds of work that support this kind of clear measurement are generally not product design and development, but more like handling inbound customer calls, and for employees with some experience. The gold standard I'm thinking of here is Bloom et al from I think 2013 which did an actual random controlled trial. In that call center case, literally handling more calls per hour was attributed mostly to having a quieter environment, but workers did also work longer.

I think the main challenges aren't around "superior work outcomes" at the individual level, but stuff like training junior team members through interactions with their more senior colleagues. This is harder to measure, often isn't someone's "main" responsibility, and so individuals who appear to be succeeding at their own work can be less impactful on these secondary and indirect benefits.

All of which is to say, I think the personal fulfillment vs company benefit framing can be a misleading one. _which_ company benefits are most important? Does everyone in the company agree on that prioritization? Have you tried actually _measuring_ those, rather than just seeking "arguments"?

Exactly! The team has to be aligned, because if a critical mass of people are working remotely, the office ceases to offer any advantage. It's okay to prefer working from home—but you should find a team that also prefers working from home, so people who prefer the office have that option too.