Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

psychnewsdaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 341 posts

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#241

Post by lamontcg »

ptmcc wrote: post #20

I don't believe it. I do believe that 34% of polled workers said they would quit rather than return to the office, but I do not believe even a majority of them would actually go follow through on that threat. Especially if you filter out high paid/high job-security developers and similar people who might have the financial security to do so. People, particularly Americans, are shackled to their jobs for many reasons…

> Once it again becomes beneficial for your career and/or social life to participate in office culture people will come crawling back.

Half of us are introverts and don't care about that. We're either self-directed enough that doesn't matter, or else we just sacrifice that already.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#242

Post by decafninja »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #83

I prefer working from the office. And people who code form their laptops from cafés, really? You would spend hours looking at a small 15" screen, straining your neck and back, instead of comfortably using dual-monitor setup and a comfortable chair in the office? Or you like working at home, near your home fridge and playing active kids? Definitely not my cup of tea.

Don't have kids, but when your company treats tech and tech employees as a cost center, they also tend to skimp out on your office digs.

My home setup is much better than my office one. Bigger (and more) monitors, much better desk with more real estate and legroom, much better ergo chair, better lighting, etc. etc.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#243

Post by chad_strategic »

alephu5 wrote: post #142
ptmcc wrote: post #20

I don't believe it. I do believe that 34% of polled workers said they would quit rather than return to the office, but I do not believe even a majority of them would actually go follow through on that threat. Especially if you filter out high paid/high job-security developers and similar people who might have the financial security to do so. People, particularly Americans, are shackled to their jobs for many reasons…

I'm just a sample of one but I literally did this. My employer started forcing us back into the office as soon as it was legally permitted. We were only allowed to be at 30% capacity, so management ensured that this quota was always filled. We were all complaining about unnecessary risk to personal and public health. We couldn't even take advantage of the office, we were doing everything through Google meet anyway be…

Agreed. You will only drive yourself crazy trying to change culture. Just leave.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#245

Post by 52-6F-62 »

foobiekr wrote: post #201
52-6F-62 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's about forcing anyone to work remotely, it's about being allowed to continue and not being forced to go back to commute times and water coolers. My employer is in an industry that thrived on in-person interactions (save for any field writers/photogs). They had no remote working policy prior to the pandemic for the bulk of the staff. They have made a complete 180° change on that and acknowledged that…

The problem is the current situation is not reflective of real remote work. One of the biggest advocates of remote work that I know is squarely someone for whom “remote work” has meant “running errands, walking the dog, heading out early for dinner, long lunches, runs after lunch” and so on. He’s much much more productive WAH this year than he was any of the last five years because all of these non-work activities ha…

It definitely feels like real remote work, being that I'm in Dundas building a data pipeline for our ERP/CRMs/publishing platform that will run on a server someplace else in North America and used by sales teams around the GTHA and print ops in Vaughn. So I'm not sure I follow.

While my employer had no remote work policy, the general approach to the office was that everyone is an adult and a professional and you do what you need to do, but be at the office for work.

Running errands, etc, were never obstacles. Working hours have actually gone down out of necessity (save 10% on payroll during the pandemic, keep everyone employed) while productivity has remained. Now that things are starting to come back to life, there's actually too many projects coming down the pipe and we will need to start hiring to meet the expanding business goals.

I can't say my situation has been suppressed, personally. In the past year I've started to reignite my music career, got myself a recording grant and am spending my non-commute time writing and practicing before work and afterward, while not having to sacrifice making and having dinner with my spouse. And I had the space to build a room out for that work—something I couldn't afford in Toronto. And the air here—it's just so much nicer than in the city. It's all so nice that sometimes I can't believe it's real.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#246

Post by imiric »

duckfang wrote: post #181
Thaxll wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because working from home for 1year just sucks and it opened my eyes that it's not something I want to do if I have a choice, you miss so much on the social side.

I don't go to work to socialize. I go to work to make money. And if I had enough money, I wouldn't work for someone else at all. I socialize by going to conventions, events, clubs, parties; with people I want to be around.

While I agree with you, I think it's a mistake to reject all social aspects of working. It doesn't have to be about making friends, and certain type of work definitely benefits from direct social contact. Even with programming being mostly a solitary activity, discussing a piece of code, brainstorming design, pair programming, etc., are all much easier and interactive in person. The online tooling is just not there yet. We've settled on text chat, crappy video conferencing and code review tooling, but they're a lossy alternative to in-person communication. Maybe one day when our brains are wired up this will improve, and we have VR in the meantime.

Outside of tech work, consider how many professions depend on communication where this lossiness is unacceptable. So I definitely get that there's a wide spectrum of preferences towards telecommuting.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#247

Post by mulmen »

citizenkeen wrote: post #200
mulmen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does a quick interruption that unblocks me and allows me to continue working outweigh allowing you to finish your thing first? No, absolutely not. As my coworker you have no right to my time, at all. Certainly not on-demand. You are in no position to prioritize my time, especially in the context of you finishing your task. > Because maybe you're unblocked but I'm blocked by you now, and the thing that's actually bl…

If someone says "Hey, you got a minute?" and you can't handle that five second interruption and you aren't comfortable saying "How about in half an hour?", that speaks more to you than others.

There's no such thing as a five second interruption. Once my concentration has been broken that is a ~15 minute process to get back into a flow state. This is human psychology. There's nothing wrong with me being distracted by distractions.

Asking "hey you got a minute?" is a waste of everyone's time because either the answer is "yes" and you could have asked your question already or the answer is "no" and you just disrupted someone who was doing productive work and still doesn't know if your actual question is worth answering right now. Just ask your question and I will answer it when I have time. This is why it is better to ask in email, IM or a meeting, depending on the nature of the question.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#248

Post by ryanSrich »

I'm 100% convinced people who do not like remote work are not doing it correctly, or their company is not providing them with the tools and culture to do it correctly. Remote work done correctly is the best option for 99.9% of all jobs that exist.

Re: 34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

#250

Post by politician »

tezzer wrote: post #160
politician wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do your colleagues feel the same way? Would you inflict office work on them if they don't?

Several do, the few times I've gone into the office and done a little problem solving with the folks who were there, we accomplished like a week of work in an hour. There's something about putting heads together that's hard to replace. Some of our folks have always been ~90% remote and that's fine, but I think they're missing out on one of the joys of engineering.

Are you suggesting that if people were in the office for 40 hours a week, that you would expect to get a sustained rate of 280 days worth of work done per week?

Or are you saying that given the creative thinking time alone that accumulated slowly over a period of time WFH, that the team was able to make 7 days worth of progress in one hour primarily due to the fact that everyone had plenty of time to understand the issues and the pains associated?

Are you confusing _peak_ with _sustained_ productivity?

Post reply on HN