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Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#71

Post by progman32 »

Saw the light of wfh in 2020. Won't consider returning to the office anytime soon. I'm sensitive to my environment, and staying home has been a game changer. It's opened my eyes to other ways I was ignoring my needs, too. Now I can spend my precious introvert people budget on things that are more important to me than office interactions, and perform better at work to boot.

I recognize other people prefer office work and that's totally fair. I'm just glad that the pandemic has opened easier avenues for people like me.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#72

Post by pc86 »

spurgu wrote: post #51
ketzo wrote: post #13

At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH. Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy. It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for m…

> It's a motivational thing for me. I've always loved working from home (and was doing it for almost a year before the pandemic started), I'm quite self-driven, but I do recognize that it can be difficult to get back into the groove once you've been out of it for a while - meeting colleagues in person would help with that aspect. Ideally, if my colleagues weren't some 3000 km away, I wouldn't mind going to the office…

It's hard to find places that have anything in the middle. It's either fully remote, they may or may not even have an office anymore, and they act like you're crazy if you suggest having some sort of standing office space available without special reservations or advance notice. Or on the flip side, they want you in the office 3, 4 days a week, 8-5 or whatever, basically pre-COVID requirements.

I agree I think the best of both worlds would be some sort of schedule, maybe ~1-ish day a week on average. Personally I'd love something like Monday-Tuesday in the office every other week. But everybody is different, which in turn makes it really hard to coordinate and make everyone happy.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#73

Post by rammy1234 »

Working from Home is great for 3 things.

1. It makes you to do work. End of the day you have to show your progress. WFH forces that coz everyone will now focus on your output than ever.

2. Forces documentation of your work. Everything needs to be documented.

3. You exactly know how your time is spent and with whom.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#75

Post by Hermitian909 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #34
toomanydoubts wrote: post #6

Going to an office to write software is absolutely insane. I like going on fridays and leaving early to drink beer with coworkers.

You describe my ideal hybrid schedule. I don’t miss being in the office Monday through Thursday at all, but I really miss Fridays in the office. In my experience, remote work typically has no direct productivity downsides, but team cohesion absolutely can take a hit. I find being in the same room with someone doesn’t help us work any better, but having been in the same room with them at some point (ideally not all th…

> In my experience, remote work typically has no direct productivity downsides, but team cohesion absolutely can take a hit

I'm sure this varies based on the type of work you're doing, but I found the hit to team cohesion led to long term productivity losses. At first we were getting more done than ever. As time went on our raw work output day-to-day did not decrease but a lot of unneeded work that previously would have been headed off at planning and discussion stages would get through.

This was on a team that is specifically doing speculative high risk/reward work so that might be applicable to a lot fewer people than I imagine.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#76

Post by pyuser583 »

At start of pandemic was working from home, but with a company I had previously worked in person. I knew all my coworkers, and had plenty of in-person history with them.

Now I work for a different company. I’ve never met any of my coworkers. None of them are in the same city. Most are on different continents.

My ideal situation is working in office for a year, then work from home.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#77

Post by cardosof »

I'm never going back to work in an office. If companies stop with WFH I'll become a freelancer on Upwork or whatever.

Sure, there are many advantages to being in the office, learning and career-wise. But those advantages are related to just one aspect of life: work. With WFH I get perks in every aspect of life, plus it is healthier for me and to the environment, while also being better to the community I'm in - I get to spend my money here locally and not in some corporate park.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#78

Post by rootusrootus »

idrios wrote: post #68

I would love to see this poll broken up into some kind of demographics of: Are you single/married/married with kids, do you have roommates (and are they also wfh) what industry do you work in, what stage of your career are you in, are you managing people, etc. I thought WFH would be great but it happened too early in my career. I had no savings and too many roommates, and I was not learning nearly as much on the job…

> Are you single/married/married with kids

I think I'd have already gone completely insane if I were still a bachelor when this pandemic WFH experiment has been thrust upon me. I go stir crazy when I'm home alone, but I'm not really a social butterfly either. Work was a good compromise.

Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?

#79

Post by pmcollins »

i work from home and have the option to work from an office but the office is shitty and has an open plan. so no, i’m not going to commute 1.5 hrs round trip so i can be uncomfortable all day and be distracted by my coworkers (who i like otherwise).

but give me an office with my own space, a nice view, natural light, and a walkable neighborhood, and i’m very much in.

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