Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

Perhaps this will trigger a number of employees to leave for other companies with more flexible policies, or more interestingly, trigger a new wave of start-ups.

In my mind this past year of pandemic work from home hasn’t been an accurate depiction of normal (non-pandemic) work from home because of the forced isolation in the hours outside of work. It seems like the pendulum is swinging back too far too fast to in office work.

I like work from home and get to focus more effectively than the open office. I’m pretty deep on the introvert side of the scale and this pandemic has been too isolating for even me. Which is to say I don’t think work from home should be removed because most everyone is socially needy now. I’m looking forward to being with friends again. But I do not want to go back to working in the office. I’m hoping my work has max one required office day for meetings a week, but not more, and hopefully less.

> Why not just start your day with a bike ride for leisure? Unbound by the location of your office you can now cycle to any arbitrary location. If you struggle to do it without a reason, perhaps cycle to a bakery or store and pickup some fresh food for the day.

For me, it's a motivation issue. I had to go to work and had to cycle/walk there. Now, going out in the morning is optional. If I stayed up too late or if the weather is bad (it's almost always bad in Scotland) I'll make an excuse and not go out. After doing it a few times, I broke my morning habit and it's extremely difficult to force myself to go out.

I know it doesn't really make sense but that just adds to frustration. I hate that I cannot force myself to do daily exercise and it makes me feel like shit, creating a sort of feedback loop. I don't go out and do exercise because I feel like shit and I feel more shit because I don't exercise.

> The benefits of remote work is mostly being able to focus and reducing the daily commute.

One of the reasons there's so much opposing views on WFH is that there are also other big benefits, that apply only to a subset of the population. Among those are, the ability to optimize your workspace for your own needs, and not having to have the "connection to your co-workers". For some of us[0], this can easily make 2-5x difference in terms of ability to focus and lowered stress.

The more universal, but less important and a bit controversial benefit of WFH in many occupations[1] is that you get to optimize your whole schedule - work and private - globally. E.g. you can take a break to run a personal errand in the middle of a work day, and then work a little longer, instead of desperately trying to batch up errands and take a day off in advance. This also reduces stress, and allows you to rescue even more free hours in your life, at no cost to productivity.

> I understand very well that those with long commutes like the work from home idea, most of the time it also enables them to have a nicer house/apartment than what would be available in the city.

Commute is a funny thing. Back in the day, my wife lived in a small town and worked in a different one, and her commute of 20km took less than my 4km commute in the big city, and that's using the tram system (which avoided most of the traffic jams).

The freedom to be anywhere is the important thing, though. It's not just about nice apartments, but also about being able to move closer to your partner's non-WFH workplace, or closer to extended family so your kids can see their grandparents more often, etc. I sometimes feel like an outlier here, but I'm planning to move back to a large city (different one than my employer is headquatered in, though!) - the costs of living will increase, but so will the access to benefits of modern civilization. Good cities are much more than work hubs.

--

[0] - A subset of whom you could call "neurodiverse", but my current belief is that everyone's mind is different, and ones you'd call "neurotypical" are just good enough at hiding their peculiarities in the social context.

[1] - I.e. if your job does not require to actually be butt-in-seat for 8 hours a day, and your employer isn't of the abusive kind that decides to surveil you minute-by-minute anyway.

As what would be described as an aspergers person, I find offices full of people playing bizarre political and social games with each other that I don't have any particular interest in and the workplaces themselves to be extremely unproductive. I hate working in offices with people often appointed due to nepotism or just because they are like the person hiring, that I would rather be poor then work in them.

The entire concept of workplaces, how they are run, and what people do is created by the normal person and for the normal person. This is completely irrespective and often counter to what produces the best outcome. It is about the social needs of these people, not the needs of the product.