Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely

I disagree. I work from home as a new dad of a nearly 8 month old girl now. The first 3 months I took off work to be a full time dad, but since then I've returned back to a 4 day work week and when I work Monday to Thursday I am not distracted by my baby girl at all. I have a separate room as an office, if the door is closed then it means no interruptions. My wife is still on maternity leave so she is free to do the majority of the child care during the working week. She respects the door is closed rule and knows that I cannot be interrupted then. However, WFH with a young baby has some MASSIVE advantages which I wouldn't be able to get if I was going to an office:

- I get to spend time with my baby girl in the morning before I start work. I wake up at 6:30, it's by choice, I love getting up early and get half an hour of quiet and peace, drinking a coffee and watching breakfast news before the rest of the house wakes up. Then I get to cuddle my daughter for a while whilst my wife gets up and gets ready herself. By 7:30 or 8am I am in my office, often an hour or even two hours online before any of my peers and I'm already working away completely uninterrupted and get more shit done than so many others.

- When I come downstairs to top up a cup of coffee, have a snack, eat lunch, etc. I get to see my daughter again. I get a chance to quickly give my wife a hand with something, or often I just have the opportunity to cook for us rather than her, which is a huge help if nothing else.

- Because I start earlier than everyone else I can also finish on time and when I finish work then I'm immediately available to start winding down and spend time with my family and my daughter again.

Overall I get more work down, I get more sleep, I am more refreshed, I even get extra time to have an outlet after work, playing tennis, going to the gym, etc. and I get to be a much much better husband and a very involved dad even though I have to work 4 days a week.

This is priceless and if I had to go into an office I'd be less productive, more tired, more angry and irritated (less balanced life) and a worse husband/father.

>Being able to look after your offspring is great!

This is a big no and main reason why I am against WFH. Here in Finland we have ample maternity leave and pretty good paternity leave as well, so why in the fuck are we allowing these new fathers to "work" from home while looking after the kid? The mother has maternity leave precisely so she can take care of the kid(s), she should be doing it for the 8 hours you are working, but every single new father takes huge part of work day off to take care of kids.

Yeah they claim they will work overtime during the evening or on weekends, but

A) I doubt they actually make up the time since they don't take into account all the time the kid is just in the room with them distracting them and

B) it doesn't matter if we need to collaborate and you aren't on the clock when rest of us are on the clock

>My meandering point is that: everyone has different life situations

I just wish WFH advocates would remember this when someone is not for WFH. Whenever I bring up my reasons for liking the office here I get replies that just dismiss my reasons or are otherwise just mean spirited simply for disagreeing with their point of view.

For those curious of my own reasons to go to office:

- cheap & healthy food prepared by someone else

- good coffee prepared by someone else / machine

- easy to go to the gym on my way to the office

- nice separation of work and "civilian" life, I can just leave work at the office when I leave

- a reason to put on trousers and a clean shirt in the morning

The reason why I don't go to office more often currently is lack of lunch service. I don't want to go to eat at restaurant or pack a lunch every day. This then cascades to rest of my life - I haven't been to the gym whole winter since I can't be arsed to clear the snow and ice off of my car just do drive to the gym and back and I'm wasting time brewing coffee and making food.

Does it matter? The end result is the same. Plenty of big problems in the world are based only on perceptions.

> Another has literally injured himself due working from his kitchen in a bad position for a year. It's worse than RSI. He had to rehabilitate for half a year just to get back to 95% health, and even now whenever he concentrates for too long the pain comes back.

I have literally injured myself due to working in offices: got back and chest pain because every piece of furniture from desk to chair was absolute garbage, each day hands, wrists, and forearms were in pain within minutes because of lousy keyboard and mouse, eyes crying so much I wanted to gouge them out because the screen was spectacularly bad (low contrast, low resolution, high minimum brightness, high latency) and lighting was the worst (single window giving into an artificially long room, overhead neon ceiling lighting flickering at mains frequency, no other lights). Of course it was open space, so to not be constantly distracted one isolates themselves with headphones and music for hours on end and whatnot.

Most employees had at least two items each they bought on their own dime or brought from home (whether it was lights, screens, chairs, headphones, laptops...) to make it bearable.

A coworker suffered from back pain and was put of commission for 6 months, came back feeling better, stayed two months... and was out again for 6. Another started to have ear ringing because of the constant music. At some point I felt terrible chest pain, like being hit by a truck, a piercing sensation from front to back, like being impaled by a javelin, couldn't raise arms, went out to try and catch my breath and legs gave in as I stepped outside. I thought I was having some heart attack of sorts but it was "merely" my chest and back muscles getting so tense over the years that they cramped and would not let go, even if it meant choking to death.

Took months to realise, years to undo the damage.

This experience was a tad extreme but the principles are generally consistent across many many workplaces: employers buy the cheapest hardware, rent the cheapest place, and throw the coding masses in there, where employees try to make the best with what they are given and what they can bring from home. The tech startup bubble where employees get the best hardware and working conditions is the exception, not the rule.

So to sum up: employees suffer commuting and terrible work conditions that they accomodate for with their own gear from home, only to end up isolating themselves once on site, for the benefit of having two times 10min face to face watercooler talk + 45min lunch per day. No wonder so many want to skip the nonsense, work from home, and do the occasional social thing outside of the office.

Ultimately I guess offices are part about control over employees and part status symbols for companies (as in, "we rented that big place", not as in "you'll have the best working conditions")

While in poorer country, here in the Philippines, we don't have an option to WFH if our company is under PEZA https://business.inquirer.net/378811/hundreds-of-bpos-with-w... The government reason to return to office is to boost the economy.