> Now, I am fully aware that there's a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
Are remarkably condescending.
Folks opting for a better work-life balance, who might not like to commute, or who prefer to socialize in other settings, "do not care to invest themselves"?
Maybe it's not the OP's opinions that are controversial, but rather the implicit judgment that comes along with it.
> work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary
Dude, I am heavily invested into my work, but that doesn't mean I need to care for your social deficits - it can, but these should be mostly orthogonal things.
Social investment is what I realized I really need to decrease at work, lol I still do it too much even virtually ( what is possible ).
Too long I have stuck to bad jobs because of colleagues and bonding.. much better to get this into a more "professional relationship", because you know, while your employer tries to meme the "friendly colleague" he never actually gives a shit.. so turns out better for me to make real friendships outside of work ( yeah, even with colleagues) and use my commute time for other social things - but stop "soft-socializing" with colleagues in office for nothing in the end !)
I read "not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary" as in meaning invest themselves into the job - not a general statement about the person.
I have friends who are like that - they work their expected hours, but don't do anything extra - they don't expect to get raises nor promotions and they are perfectly fine with that. They put their energy into other things (which they can't live off), but they are by no means miserable, lazy or mismanaging their lives
but where is the connection between investing yourself into your job and going in to the office? That assumes that you can't work hard from home, which I don't believe to be true.
It's not a burden of proof situation because your boss is paying the bill. But, if it was about who claimed what, the employees are the ones making the claim that "remote work is just as productive".
If it's about the boss's power, they can always just fire people who won't come into the office. If the boss doesn't want to do that, they've got to do the convincing. You either convince people or order them around and live with the morale consequences.
You're being paid so you can't claim to be outraged at being told to work. If your morale issues aren't handled by your salary then you should simply leave. Investigate contracting.
If you need convincing to return the the office you were hired to work in then you probably aren't the type of employee a boss would want to retain.
> Your morale issues aren't handled by your salary then you should simply leave.
If you're a "manager", morale issues on the team are your issues. This is basic, obvious stuff; if the manager isn't comfortable thinking about these things, maybe they should leave their job?
Again, if you don't like the way an employee works, you can order them to change it. If they don't, you can fire them. But you seem to be under the impression that "I'm the boss" is some kind of rational or moral argument and that employees need to feel a certain way about following your orders and realize that you were right all along. "I'm not threatening, I'm just convincing you with the argument that I'm the boss".
> If you're a "manager", morale issues on the team are your issues.
If being told to do things that the company is paying you to do is triggering your morale issues then you probably aren't going to work out at all. If all you wanted was a few dollars more you'd have already asked that in a far simpler way.
When I get a coffee I don't check which one the barista wants to make, I assume they're willing to make anything on the menu because a job is a package deal.
> that employees need to feel a certain way about following your orders and realize that you were right all along
No, and in fact my point is that as your hypothetical boss I and the managers would have decided if we think WFH is working. Given that we already decided I'm not opening it up to you to debate and honestly I wouldn't believe you were arguing openly because you've got a huge motive to stay home and comfy.
The point of an office is to assemble a critical mass and if I'm trying to get everyone in and you aren't willing, you're basically deprecating yourself. As much as I may like you I'm not going to retain you because now I want a different style of work done than you want to do.
> you seem to be under the impression that "I'm the boss" is some kind of rational or moral argument
You're stuck on this idea like you have a right to have things discussed with you and to make everyone hold until you're happy that the situation centers you and you've been well heard. That's silly. You're like a landscaper and if I sell the house with the yard I'm letting you go.
It's not about disrespecting you because it's not about respecting you because it's not about you.
> Given that we already decided I'm not opening it up to you to debate and honestly I wouldn't believe you were arguing openly because you've got a huge motive to stay home and comfy.
So, this is a basic labour rights question: How much say does the employee have in the way the business functions?
Your attitude seems to be "if you don't like management's decisions, you never should've worked there in the first place". It's clear your view is that management runs the business, the workers work, and they should not, and do not, have any meaningful say in the way the business functions.
And if you want to run your company that way, hey, that's your call.
But that's not the only way to run a business. Hell, this attitude is why labour unions were invented.
And given industry-wide labour shortages, I suspect you'll find that labour is a lot more empowered, and many people will opt to flee for another workplace where they have a greater say.
Again, your choice. But with that choice comes consequences.
As an aside, this comment:
> You're being paid so you can't claim to be outraged at being told to work.
Is a pretty strong indication that I'd never ever want to work for you.
Study after study shows that monetary compensation is not, in and of itself, motivating. There are myriad factors that lead someone to stay or leave a workplace, and "being paid" is just one, and not always a particularly big one.
> Hell, this attitude is why labour unions were invented.
Nope. Unions aren't to force bosses to hire a type of labor they don't need. I've got relatives who worked in dangerous jobs that needed unions and this sort of emotional grievance nonsense is literally insulting.
As I said, if I get rid of the house I'll get rid of the landscapers. You're trying to use a union to force me to pay you for unneeded work. If we decide we need an office then we need an office workers. No hate on you but you're saying you choose not to do that role.
Do I need to enter into collective bargaining with the Starbucks staff to convince them my desire for a latte is reasonable? Do they have "enough say" to make me drink an espresso instead?
> How much say does the employee have in the way the business functions?
As much as they have a financial stake in the business. Zero by default. I'll ask you if I want to know what you think but you have no "say" as in the ability to make demands. I pay for your knowledge and therefore advice, it's not your right to make me follow it.
> Study after study shows that monetary compensation is not, in and of itself, motivating.
Sure, and study after study shows that people who need external motivation are indistinguishable from potatoes. I don't expect money to motivate you directly, I expect you to connect the motivation from your life goals to your paycheck to the Monday mornings.
> And given industry-wide labour shortages, I suspect you'll find that labour is a lot more empowered, and many people will opt to flee for another workplace where they have a greater say.
You see, this is why I wouldn't have asked you in the first place because you think that explaining basic economics to me will suddenly convince me to make your cushy work-at-home time a human right. Trust me from my time as a boss and more recently merely as a hiring reviewer, the desire to "have a greater say" has never left the lips of a single productive employee.
If you want to "have a say" then join a poetry circle. I want you to have as much, and only as much, influence as you have sense. It's not about empowering you, it's about using you to make both of us a living.
> Is a pretty strong indication that I'd never ever want to work for you.
Oh no. Employee who refuses to do what is needed is unwilling to take my money.
I suspect there are two big difference between OP and many of the readers here.
At least for sure, Berlin vs most major US cities is night and day different in terms of commute and enjoyment opportunity. Berlin is a fun city full of things to do, places to eat, and clubs. Plus it's all accessible without a car.
Meanwhile, in the US, it's usually a very different story. Doing something after work often involves a much greater time cost, thereby reducing the likelihood that someone will partake of the opportunity. So office work is more likely just office work with no after-work fun.
Just like most people in the US have no clue what life is like in the big EU cities, most Europeans have no idea how different US life is. I've lived both, and I can say without question that it's easier to have a fun office+after-office experience in a city like Amsterdam or Berlin (or London probably) than Denver, Dallas, or most other big US cities.
OP likely doesn't factor this in and comes to the naive conclusion that it must mean we don't like talking to people.
You may be right, but as a personal anecdote, I totally agree with the sentiment you're responding to. I don't particularly enjoy working from the office and much prefer doing so from home, but I can tolerate it. I like my colleagues and shooting the breeze with them, but they're not my friends.
But boy do I absolutely hate my commute, to the point that it shadows whatever positives there are when working from the office. I live and work in Paris (proper), a "big EU city with plenty of things to do". My commute is less than one hour each way by public transit (and I'm lucky enough that my line is rarely affected by random incidents or strikes). But boy do I hate it with a passion.
It's time that is basically wasted. Yes, I read a bit, but it's much worse than if I took the time to read sitting in my sofa. I also get a bit of exercise, but again, it's much worse than if I went for a stroll at a more convenient time. It's a block of time that is fairly fixed during the day and which is tiring without getting much of anything in return.
Exactly! Over the last 2 years, I've rekindled my love of making music. I hadn't written any new music in over 20 years, and in the last 2 years, I've written something like 20 songs, and spent time archiving and restoring some older tapes I have. Stuff that would have been lost without the extra time. I now spend about 45-60 minutes every night just making music. It doesn't bother my spouse because they see me far more often since I'm working from home. Once I have to go back into the office, that's 60 minutes of my day spent commuting, and 8-9 hours not seeing my spouse. I'm not sure I'll have any time for music anymore. And having that outlet is helping to keep me sane.
Clearly life is better for you and your spouse with you working remotely. So stick to that plan, even if you have to pass up some lucrative onsite offers in the future. Quality of life beats pay!
Preach, I haven't been to Paris since the Covid restrictions started and I feel so much more rested, I added the 2-3 hours commute to my sleep time and you couldn't get me to leave my dead little suburban town for any salary.
I do feel some nostalgia for the in-office days but mostly for the times I was alone, like driving through an industrial zone at 5 A.M and seeing the bright red lights of a biochemical plant, the smell of car exhaust for some reason, seeing someone sitting at their desk by the single lit window of an office tower, getting to work first and getting to turn on the lights and get the coffee ready in a completely empty and silent building among many completely empty and silent buildings.
> 5 A.M and seeing the bright red lights of a biochemical plant, the smell of car exhaust
This gives me visions of Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed in the industrial zone.
Looking back at my younger self (who regularly drove 190+ kph to work on the freeway), I relish this idea.
But is there more to it? The night-time high speed driving, the office-before-others situation... is that not some unique sense of freedom or power? \
For me there is definitely magic in being a capable human in isolation with power to live and excel, especially when I know there will be other humans appearing later. Even at home remotely, there is a sense of power being in control of myself, my coffee-making, my news reading, and then optionally my meeting attendance...
In the US, I have about a five minute drive to the nearby train station and then I'm something over an hour by train and subway into the city depending upon where I'm going. Aside from not being able to actually walk to the train station, I'm not sure how you improve on that given the distance no matter what country you're in. And having done that commute about 3 days a week for over a year, it was pretty bad even though I wasn't driving.
Your public transport options are not common for most US dwellers. There are 10s of millions of people in the US who don't have access to any real public transport, especially trains.
Yes, I think it probably is uncommonly good for the US--all the hate the MBTA gets notwithstanding. But that's sort of my point. The city has relatively good public transit that is pretty much as convenient to me as is reasonable. And the commute still sucks. (I'm pretty far out but not unreasonably so.)
I think the way to improve that is to somehow lower the cost of housing, such that workers can afford to live close enough to the office to minimize the time cost of commuting.
When I was commuting in the Bay Area, I'd walk half a mile to the local BART station (a walk I rather enjoyed), then I'd spend the next 90 minutes on a bus or train until I arrived at work. If I got to BART after 6am, I'd stand on the train for the first 60 minutes. Then I'd reverse the whole thing on the way home, although I typically got on the train early enough that I could sit the whole ride home. All of that, because that is what I could afford to do. The funny thing is, if I was paid at my hourly equivalent for all of that time spent commuting, I could afford to live closer to the office.
I don't know that I like working from home per se, but I definitely hated that I spent 1-3 hours a day, every day, traveling, when I could be doing something I wanted to do. My ability to have hobbies, or spend meaningful time with my family, is basically blunted by the fact that I can't afford to house my family close to where I work. Its better now that I'm out of the Bay Area, but it's still a problem, and will be a problem, for the foreseeable future.
I agree with you on principle. However, in practice, I don't know how that would work out. In places like Paris, for example, jobs tend to be very concentrated in a few hotspots. This is a nightmare for infrastructure, like you can imagine because everybody wants to get to the same place at the same time.
There were attempts to "distribute" this, but as far as I can tell, they didn't really work out as expected.
I still think that this distribution is the best approach, though, instead of building 200-story buildings around the office towers. And this distribution can take multiple forms, one of which is remote working.
> Berlin is a fun city full of things to do, places to eat, and clubs.
And I already have my friends outside of work to go do these things, or to go to the bar, or check out the restaurant.
> we don't like talking to people.
No, more likely it's just that I don´t want to hang out with you.
Let me explain. Berlin might be a place of diversity, but it's not really heterogeneous. The majority of people that came here for "the tech scene" are hardly interested in integrating. It's been almost 10 years since I moved here and I'm yet to find a company where there is a strong push to get people to speak German or even be involved in any aspect of the local culture.
Everyone will work together and will have no problem sharing the environment when needed, but very few people will actually feel like they want to hang out with their co-workers if they have other people in their circle. What happens at the end of the day is that most people just end up getting close to those who have some degree of affinity. British people will hang out with most British people. The same for Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, etc...
I haven't been to Berlin in about 20 years, but my observation is what you are describing could be any urban area in the US too... lots of career transplants who want to keep to themselves, don't really see themselves as locals, may only be there for a few years until they can make their next career move, etc. It's an interesting phenomenon to observe.
It really depends where you live both in Europe and the US. Many people in Europe have long commutes (and even public transportation can be time-consuming). At least some number of people in the US whose companies have city offices choose to live in the city and walk/cycle/take public transit but many do not.
If I were to commute to our city office it's something like 3 hours round trip daily. Even being able to go 95% of the way by train, that's exhausting. (I did it for 18 months half-time with another company. It was not sustainable.) However, I could also--if I chose--live within walking distance and certainly easy public transit distance of our office. I choose not to do so because I like my semi-rural house.
But if I did live a short walk away from our office I would go in semi-regularly. And can certainly understand someone who lives and works in a city wanting to go into an office--especially given they probably live in a relatively small apartment.
>than Denver, Dallas, or most other big US cities.
Dallas yes. Denver has a pretty nice downtown. Boston, Manhattan, even San Francisco. It's a matter of where the office is and where you choose to live.
> especially given they probably live in a relatively small apartment.
Yeah, I can very much sympathize with people... some of my ex-colleagues in fact... who lived in small apartments (and even shared apartments with others) during the COVID forced work from home times. Oh and people with kids, especially small ones...
A lot of people in nice cities intentionally choose cheaper apartments at the expense of space because they expect they won't be home all the time. Suddenly being trapped in your small space could be like a prison sentence.
And add to that the fact that pretty much all the urban things which were pretty much the justification for choosing a small city apartment weren't even available.
I suspect commute/transport is the larger factor among the two you shared. The extracurricular usually comes down to eating and drinking. I'm sure particularly in the mid-west the options are more limited, but in a large enough city there's somewhere to go - it just might not be worth it. You'll still have to commute home in the end, and if you can't just walk to the fun destination from work then that's more time lost.
This all raises an interesting point. I wonder if attitudes towards WFH can be predicated by zoning / city density. Even before COVID was a thing, Japan's reputation for instance is for the expectation of going out drinking with the boss after work.
I would add nature as an opposite factor to city density. A lot of magical places exist, but they don't usually have offices and jobs. Remote work enables one to experience them.
Many years ago I had been remote working for a couple of years and then realized that I didn't have to continue living in Dallas with 100+ degree summers and air quality warnings several days each month. I moved to a ski resort area in the Colorado mountains. Even without the time flexibility that I had (which enabled me to snowski on weekdays when the slopes were empty... fresh powder all mine!), the summers were bliss with dozens of mountainbike trails of all degrees of difficulty. Needless to say my physical fitness became the best of my life, without effort (it was "play"!)
That was probably my favorite place to live (and work) in the world, even counting beaches in Phuket, Thailand. The nature options were beyond what most people can imagine. The only reason I left was lack of available remote work when my job ended in 2011. So I moved to Amsterdam for a job and got to experience the oppsite but also awesome lifestyle.
I would suggest remote workers take advantage of their freedom and spend some time in different places. My ski resort location was planned just as a month, but I stayed three years because it was so great. Such a thing just wouldn't have been possible had I been working in an office. One can always go back to a company with an office after exploring the alternatives.
There are magical places, though they seem a tad less magical when they get overcrowded. I see owning a piece of 'magic' as a level of privilege that I don't think we can expect most middle-or-above class workers to indulge in without decimating away the magic, unless the population finally drops.
Therein lies the problem. I have struggled with this, as I've seen places I "discovered" and loved become unlovable because too many others discovered. I know it's selfish of me to want it for myself, pristine, and not want to be overrun with others like me.
Despite this, the world is really large. For example, there are magical places in northern Thailand (minus the snowskiing) where one could setup shop and have spectacular nature, relative seclusion, but still good access to low cost food, housing, healthcare, etc.
What I dislike intensely is when the youtube-influencer crowd shows up. I feel embarrassed to see other westerners trotting around, talking loudly while holding up a camera, and acting as if they are kings on holiday. I know I exaggerate a bit, but I still worry at the impression it gives to local people. I like to be welcomed and appreciated, not viewed as an exploiter.
All that beside the point, I do think that travel benefits everyone. Some measure of care must be taken to "tread lightly", but it can be done, and on budget. And who knows... whether Ecuador or Mexico or Thailand or even rural France (no jab, just light humor to the amphibians :P... it's very lovely there), there are sights and experiences to be discovered and even new human connections to be made.
I agree with your comment 100% but the closing line is ridiculously beside the point. I also really don't get how anyone reads into my post that I want to force everyone to come back to the office all the time. My whole point was that I sometimes feel like I'm the only one missing certain things about working in a co-located manner and, you're absolutely right there, I forgot to factor in some very import background factors like the country you're working from.
The last line of my comment was "OP likely doesn't factor this in and comes to the naive conclusion that it must mean we don't like talking to people".
Your post did say, "others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people". Not me, but others did take that to suggest that many of us were antisocial or incapable of social interaction. I don't take offense because I will easily admit to not being interested in talking to most people. Granted that doesn't mean I don't care about their wellbeing; it just means I don't want to spend my time on conversation which I think offers little to either party for the time and effort.
I didn't comment on whether you want people to come back to the office or not. Some want it desperately, and some (like me) will pass up every job opportunity that has any measurable in-office requirement.
Don't feel alone though -- you are not the only person wanting to come back into the office. About 1/3 of my colleges at my previous gig this year were asking for this. 1/3 of us were thinking, "wtf, hell no, we don't want to come in". And 1/3 were not publicly commenting :). In my experience during the COVID times, it did seem that the people most interested in returning to the office were younger. The older folks were openly joyous of being able to work from home.
> Don't feel alone though -- you are not the only person wanting to come back into the office. About 1/3 of my colleges at my previous gig this year were asking for this. 1/3 of us were thinking, "wtf, hell no, we don't want to come in". And 1/3 were not publicly commenting :).
Random aside, but it's fascinating to me that, when we ran a survey at our company, we had literally the exact same results.
I'm kinda jealous of sociologists and economists, because there's some fascinating research papers that will come out of all of this.
There's also the culture shift of even if it is convenient to do after work fun near the office, you can choose your friends, but you can't quite directly choose your coworkers. Not that it is wrong to have friends who are coworkers, but that you don't need your entire social life "defined" by your job.
Socialization and social life are important to people, but "we need to return to offices for our social lives" rings hollow as a message precisely because some people here that as either the message "you must have a social life with your coworkers [for the good of the company]" or the desperate "I don't have a social life outside of work [please send help!]".
After work I want to go home to spend time with my family. Are these after work experiences things were they are going home and getting their family and then meeting up? Or is this one of those singles be non-singles kind of thing?
In my experience it's either a single thing, or both partners have similar situations and are each doing colleague things frequently.
What absolutely does not work is when one of them is home pregnant and the other one is playing games with his buddies most nights at the gamedev shop they work for :). That is why I left a AAA game company. Had I been single, I would still be there. It was nerd paradise.
Not to hop on the train of criticism, but there are plenty of other ways to invest yourself in your career other than being a social butterfly around the coffee pot. Admittedly I'm a bit socially awkward and fully aware of my flaws, but that's part of the reason I enjoy terminal work in the first place. Commits and Slack are about as social as I was in the office, anyway and when I was social, people wished I would keep it to commits and Slack =P
Maybe I have some sort of Office-PTSD or something, but I make it very clear to my coworkers that we can be friendly, but we aren't friends. You don't need my cellphone number, we don't need to go grab drinks after work, etc..
I've just noticed that if you turn your back for a second, then out come the wolves.
Less coffee pot talk the better as far as I am concerned. I have my friends and life outside of work, and I like to keep them separate. As the saying goes, "you don't shit where you eat."
I have friends who are not in my profession. But I have very few friends in my profession who are not my coworkers. There is definitely social bonding to be done with people who deal with the same work you do 40 hours a week, who understand your work life in a way that others don't.
Less coffee pot talk means work sucks. It means you don't learn about other roles in your organization. It means not breaking down communication barriers between people and departments. It means people know less about each other and each other's work. It means less empathy and sympathy around common struggles.
Nowhere is anyone saying "your only friends must be work friends". But if you are unable or uninterested in establishing any connection with the people around whom you work day in and day out, IMO, that's abnormal.
Im no social butterfly, and understand initial boundaries are important, however stone walling everyone at work makes for a miserable work place for your colleagues, and for yourself (due to all interactions being ultimately pointless beyond strictly business).
Well, for one, once we part ways, I usually befriend them. Just not while we are working together. I am super friendly and outgoing, and will talk to them an all, but I keep a lot of my life private for good reason. I do not like to give people enough rope to hang me with.
I'm not perfect, and it's not like I haven't ever broken my own rule, but I think I have been burned all but one time. I've seen how good of "friends" coworkers are when things like promotions, salary increases, etc. are on the line.
Like the group of philosophers, Wu-tang Clan, once said, "protect ya neck, kid"
Yup. So much this. I'm friendly with folks at work. I'm not friends with people at work.
Maybe some people truly are but I suspect most people who think their coworkers are friends are pretending like that friendship wont go away rapidly when one of them no longer works for the company.
So much of OPs post is trying to get from coworkers what many get from friends.
Some of the best friends and mentors I've made in life have been through my career. I still talk to friends from jobs that I left over a decade ago.
That's bizarre to me to have an explicit attitude of not befriending colleagues. It's never been something I've specifically sought out, it's always organically come to be -- but it's not something I would actively work against. I don't understand the benefit to that mindset.
Yeah I don't get it at all. It seems like some people are operating with an axiom that work is fundamentally and unavoidably awful, and therefore you should avoid doing anything that might seem to make it more pleasant, because then you might trick yourself into spending more time than you otherwise would, which by assumption is a mistake.
Tell me about your kids, your weekend, etc. and I will listen. We can grab lunch even. But we aren't hanging out after work, going to bars, coming over to my house, I don't want to go to theirs, etc.
To give an alternative opinion, as someone who has come to see a commute as a complete waste of my time, and also as someone who has spent a long time contemplating the nature of my relationship to work in general, I did not feel condescended by the that post.
I saw each those descriptors separately, able to appeal to those they resonated with. And honestly, the characterization of "working to get paid and not investing beyond what is necessary" is not a deprecation of me, my attitude, or the balance I've struck.
I can understand if that specific sentiment does not resonate with you, but for me, I've come to feel accepting and happy with the ideas that: my work is purely in exchange for money, it is not my identity, and that once I've put my part in, I want to use my time and energy towards the other things that make me happy.
I'm not saying I don't get great joy and satisfaction out of my hard work and coworker relationships, I really do. For me, that comes with: "This is my task, and when I've satisfied it, that's all I'm interested in doing". However what really brought peace to my mind was incorporating: "And that's OK." into my outlook. "I do not care to invest myself beyond that" is not a characterization I feel the need to be ashamed of. Perhaps it's hubris on my part, but I'm proud of the push back that I feel entitled to give, and I'm proud to say "this is the limit of my investment in work".
Thanks! And for what it's worth, I don't feel chastised that much. From personal experience of talking to a lot of friends about this, I knew where this was headed :D
I worked out that for me, even accounting for energy bills and such, working from home full time would be equivalent to a 15% pay rise. And on top of that, I'd have 2 hours of extra free time every day. I can't understand the kind of person who wouldn't want that.
There are always tradeoffs. You could make a lot more money, but in return you'd have added risk and probably have to do things that you think are "evil". If I said, "I can't understand the kind of person who doesn't want to make more money" that completely ignores the tradeoffs.
Likewise, work-from-office people get something out of that experience that is more valuable to them than 2 more hours per day of free time. It varies from person to person.
Totally.. and if you really miss the socializing in the office because of being young and alone, or fresh in a city (only reason why I could understand that): find a nice coworking space nearby and you can have most of the things the author seems to miss?
Socializing with your colleagues has nothing to do with socializing with random people who happen to work in the same space. Work is part of many people's identity, they take pride in their work and enjoy discussing and improving it. It is also not part of many other people's identities. Both are perfectly valid approaches to life.
Is that just from commuting? For me the cost is 50-100€ per month depending on the cost of the public transport ticket, and that I can deduct from taxes anyway. Plus a couple of extra lunches I would buy with WFO. So basically negligible.
Here’s an example of train commuter fares in the Bay Area: https://www.caltrain.com/fares. Travel from San Mateo to San Francisco (3 zones, around 20 miles) is $200/month. That’s the discounted fare for a ticket. It doesn’t cover parking or travel to/from the train. If you need transportation to/from the train it can add another $50-$100 per month for fares, or more for parking fees and gas consumption for drivers.
And BART (a different rail system) is even more expensive.
That’s not negligible: that’s almost three hours of work for me to cover the cost (pre-tax). And I’m fairly well paid. Most engineers aren’t paid half as well. It’s a much bigger hit for them.
I assume that's just a bus/subway pass? At least where I live, parking at the train station, a monthly train pass, plus a monthly transit pass would be something like $500 or $600 dollars. To say nothing of taking almost 90 minutes door to door.
Yes that's the scale for monthly public transport ticket price in large number of continental European cities. I don't own a car so I may be out of touch with those expenses, 15% just sounded to me like a lot.
The time value is of course then on top, but the parent accounted for that separately.
A monthly bus/subway pass in the local large city is in that range as well--about $90. But, as in the Bay Area example, that starts going up quite a bit if you take rail that goes beyond the bus/subway system.
In Boston, if you don't have a car you almost certainly wouldn't be taking commuter rail with fairly few exceptions.
The phrase makes it clear that these are different people than the ones who can't stand the commute etc. And yes, there are people who work only to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. What exactly is wrong with that, or why do you think the OP implies there is something wrong with that?
> And yes, there are people who work only to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
And what does that have to do with preferring to work from home?
It's almost comical the implication that those same people, pre-COVID, weren't going to the office and phoning it in.
IMO the two topics--being... I dunno... not ambitious, and working from home--are entirely orthogonal concepts. And the implication that people who advocate for wfh options are more likely to "not care to invest themselves" is, charitably, misguided.
If anything, wfh makes it possible for more people to achieve their professional goals since the labour market has opened up significantly for folks in other geographies, or who might have restrictions in their personal life (e.g. being a caregiver, having disability, etc) that make commuting a significant barrier.
> What exactly is wrong with that, or why do you think the OP implies there is something wrong with that?
Because the OP goes on to say:
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.
It's clear they view "grit" and "persistence" as virtues, and "not [caring] to invest themselves beyond what is necessary" as a vice.
Frankly, this smells pretty strongly of hustle culture, and I've had more than enough of that.
I work a 4 day work week and am complaining about this BECAUSE I care about the fun and meaning these 32 hours / week have, not because I want to work more or define myself through work achievements.
And again, I wouldn't want to force anyone to come to the office. I am merely asking for other people's opinions.
Hey, the OP! Great, I can just straight up ask you: given that, would you agree with the statement that preferring a WFH arrangement and being ambitious/"invested"/whatever are largely orthogonal to one another?
I ask because, right here, you're tying "[caring] about the fun and meaning [of your work hours]" to working in an office. And I honestly just don't see the connection.
No, I absolutely don't and I feel that's the main point where people take offense in what I said.
My question goes more in the direction of: For me personally, the communal and social aspect of occasionally sitting in the same room with the team I'm building software with has always given me a lot. And I have experienced recently that loads of people will not even take a 20 minute commute once a week to have some few meetings face-to-face because they apparently don't even see the slightest addition in value from that. I can't really wrap my head around it (because I obviously have an orthogonal viewpoint here) and was trying to get more insight into this way of thinking.
Ah, that's probably pretty simple: Other folks don't see the same value in sitting in the same room with the team. It's really no deeper than that.
Look, I'm a pretty extroverted, social guy, and as a senior manager, the vast majority of the problems I need to solve involve high bandwidth, 1:1 communication because the problems I solve are people problems first and foremost.
So obviously, for me, in my role, face-to-face interactions have a ton of value!
But I absolutely recognize that a lot of other roles are not the same.
When I look back at my days as a developer, I spent a lot of time in the same room with people! And 80% of that time, our headphones were on and we were banging away coding while interacting digitally. Sure, we'd often pop those headphones off to have those high-bandwidth problem solving conversations, but the vast majority of time those conversations were 1:1 discussions, and could have easily been had over virtual meeting tools like Zoom or Teams.
That's the reality for a lot of individual contributors.
Just because you can't wrap your head around that, doesn't mean that experience is invalid.
Further we're seeing the lowest rate ever of unemployment among the disabled [1] (42.5M Americans). I guess OP views them as
> people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
> Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
And then are people who are fully invested, but also aware that a lot of time in office is spend on ... other people trying to get socialization. Cause they don't build relationships outside of work, but still need to talk to people, so they drag meetings and discussions forever.
And that is not being invested more, but it is awful common. WFH greatly minimizes that. In return you get spend more time with actual friends/family.
The unfortunate fact is that at least in the US, even if you live in a "walkable", "transit oriented" city, there is no way to run a business that's community oriented. Which means that the only actual community available is your work community.
How are you supposed to "build relationships outside of work" in that environment?
I get that your opinion of this is that it's degenerate, and this may be true - but have some sympathy for folks whose regular, non covid experience even when they can walk to all the urban amenities is "I can't make friends because I would have to break into a group, which means an activity that isn't focused on transactional gain, which isn't allowed in the city due to a combination of taxes, rental prices, and most of the city preferring to drink alone and out voting me"
> there is no way to run a business that's community oriented. Which means that the only actual community available is your work community.
Actual community does not requires a business. Building relationships does not require business either.
I did not said it is degenerate. But it is dishonest when what I described is framed as somehow being more performing, because of spending more time in workplace slowing down effectivity of it. Also, It is possible to create relationships in workplace and then keep those as you move to other workplaces - assuming people are willing to socialize outside of workplace. It is possible for communities to form around blocks, parks or hobbies.
Actually it does, or religion. I'm assuming you're not a fan of evangelicals?
That seems like a barb, but the fact is that it's quite difficult to maintain community organizations without a central business or religious organization. However, profit maximization and digital first precludes physical community, where you have the people you have. Everyone can opt out and play WoW instead.
I genuinely think that believe stuff is impossible without being centered over business is odd and possibly one of reasons of loneliness. Businesses are good for economy, but they designed for profit making and effectivity. Community building is opposite.
And also, no I am not much fun of evangelicals nor conservative Catholics for that matter. Too much authoritarian control, too much hate and too much of paranoia. (And yes, I grew up in christian environment).
Agree. It speaks to some bias the OP has towards WFH-preferring people.
I live in a major metro area close to the city center. I worked in a hybrid WFH environment prior to March of 2020 when COVID-19 started freaking people here out. I've now been fully remote 100% for a number of years, and I work with a firm based in another distant US state (with no local office). Do I miss friendly banter with some previous coworkers whom I liked on a personal level? Yes. Do I miss it enough to want to go back to an arrangement where I was expected to be in-office 2-3 days a week. Absolutely not.
For me the benefits in productivity and convenience while working from home outweigh the camaraderie or team lunches or whatever. I still lunch with some of my former coworkers semi-regularly. We pick a place fairly central and those who can show up do. Does this mean that I'm a socially inept miscreant? I think not. It just means that I prefer working in an environment that is maximally comfortable and of my own choosing.
To drive my point home allow me to make a statement: I will never again accept any position that requires me in the office full-time or really any more than a single day per week at most. I just do not have to. I don't tend to target working for <impressive-brand-name-company>, so I have plenty of choices to work with lesser-known companies whom are (very) happy to find someone competent to help them build out their tech stacks. I've found that those lesser-known companies are much less likely to push hardball WFO tactics. If they do...then I simply start answering my unsolicited emails. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Good luck to you, OP. I hope you find happiness out there.
There are also different kinds of jobs at different companies. Some jobs are basically "wait around until something explodes, and then all hands on deck" - the IT equivalent of firemen, for example.
Those jobs certainly have a fun "club" aspect when hanging around the firehouse waiting for disaster to strike; and that aspect is gone when everyone's working from home doing whatever.
This is an excellent analogy. I've been struggling to understand why I feel like I'm one of the minority that (like OP) isn't really in love with WFH. You just described my motivation in one simple sentence.
If a US person made those "Now, I am fully aware" comments you quoted, I think one likely interpretation is that they are generalizing from anecdotes from personal experience (possibly including conflating distinct properties), and resent that.
Another possibility is that, although the English is excellent, there are probably implicit cultural values and ideas that are unfamiliar to me.
(Incidentally, though I don't think it's the case here, I've also sometimes seen tone like that slip in when someone is astroturfing, or writing a persuasive piece around misrepresenting their real position, but is not good at it. It's a bit like Fellow Kids.)
I don't understand why people don't want to do WFH to reduce carbon emissions. It seems like the quickest way an individual can reduce their emissions.
> Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
This was a stand-alone comment, separated from the comment about those that don't like to commute or socialize. I don't think they were implying that one means the other. That's how I read it anyway.
BTW as someone that works to get paid and does not care about investing myself beyond what is necessary, I wasn't offended by that remark and I don't think OP meant it in an offensive way. To me it comes off as accepting it as a valid reason for not wanting to come in.
Some people really view their coworkers as an opportunity for forced socialization / to make up for their lack of social life.
True story: a new employee moved to sf. In my office, we had a standing weekly drinks night at the local. Everyone was invited (NB: and not required to drink in any way.) I mentioned it to this person. He/she doesn't drink. Cool, do yourself.
And then, dude wanted us to switch to boba. Nope, ain't happening. And actually had a tantrum w/ managers involved over us not wanting to cater to his hangups about alcohol.
I even mentioned it on here and had HN commenters pissy that I -- a grown ass adult -- didn't feel responsible for rearranging my limited outside-of-work social time to suit someone else just because he happened to work with me.
Can someone shed some light on this? I'm in the office for at least 40 hours a week. Then each day I get home, cook dinner, clean, bathe, workout sometimes. I don't even have kids or a long commute.
If I'm not socializing at work, when am I doing it? Two days a week? That is bleeeeaak.
8 hours at work, 8 sleeping, that's still 8 more left. I would be surprised if you took all of them to cook and clean.
Even with 4 hours of chores a day, that's still 4 hours to do whatever you want. Doesn't mean you spend them all that day, or all of them socializing. Maybe you use mondays to study, tuesdays you spend more time cleaning so wednesdays you can go out do something.
Also consider that if you strictly socialise in a work context, most of those relationships will grow distant relatively quickly when you or they leave for another company, which means it's harder to build long lasting friendships. Those can be really handy at times of transition in your life, which is where work friends usually fail first.
Why do so many people try to do the hard math when it comes to this? The reality is by the time I am able to go out on a weekday it's like 8pm. Very few of my peers, friends or not, want to go out late on a weekday after already having a long day.
If you're able to do better than that, then you are in an uncommon bracket.
Well, not sure how else to approach you with the fact that there is more time than you give credit to. Also, 8pm? How much time do you spend on commute? Do you live in a mansion and don't hire a cleaning person?
To be fair, I personally am on an uncommon bracket where I usually socialise over the internet, people who make games tend to like playing them too, and there is no commute.
That said, you're still framing it as a work thing. Your peers can do whatever they want, but the rest of the world still exists. Unless you're saying everyone within 20min of your commute path also follow this routine pattern, but then I would expect you to be on an uncommon bracket.
There are countless activities you can partake that involve interacting with other people and give you opportunity to create friends.
> Also, 8pm? How much time do you spend on commute
Leave work at 5 (hopefully!). Gym/exercise for an hour, commute for 30min, dinner for an hour. That's already 7:30pm. Add in chores or errands or distractions or whatever and 8pm comes quick.
Like yeah, I could start doing microwave dinners or not exercising or replace all my food with Huel like someone actually suggested in the comments here. Or move right next to the office or leave work early. But my god I'm not going to hyper optimize my life in order to maybe see people late on a weekday.
My whole point in this entire thread is that I socialize during work. At lunch, during breaks, between meetings, etc. Time I would have not been working anyway (because I'm not a robot). This is what people have been doing forever just fine.
By the time I work out, get home, cook dinner, eat dinner, clean, shower, it's like 8pm usually. No one around me is staying out past like 10pm on a weekday. Now I have the job of finding anyone who wants to hang out from 8pm to 10pm on a weekday when both/all of us are exhausted from a long day.
Doing the hard math and saying I have 6 hours is just theoretical. _Many_ people may socialize in the evenings, but I'd be surprised _most_ do.
I had a similar realization at a certain point. I was wasting too much time on chores, so I optimized them out of my life.
Replace all food at home with Huel. No more cooking, no more cleaning, no more shopping (no more driving to stores), no more wondering if you can go out for dinner or if food will spoil.
Make sure all your clothes can be washed together (either all tones of grey, or all colours). Make sure all your socks are the same. Do washing once a week on a weekend.
Move closer to your office to eliminate commute. You don't cook anymore, so can get a place without a good kitchen for cheap.
Suddenly you have infinite time. For what it's worth, I would socialize with people from work (and ex-coworkers) after work. 5pm, off to the pub or a restaurant. Then walk home since I'd live near the office which would be near the pub/restaurant (since we are going after work).
That's assuming that you don't have to pop all of your spell slots to get through the 8 hour work day. The 8 hour work day was chosen pretty precisely to be exactly exhausting enough in a menial labor factory assembly job that you return home with very little energy for anything else. If you presume your job is more (creatively, socially) taxing than "repeatedly doing the same task in an assembly" line, it's very easy to assume most jobs today are more exhausting in 8 hour shifts than what that work week was first established for.
You may have 6 hours of time left, but that doesn't mean you have 6 hours of energy reserves left to socialize or otherwise. (Clearly many people spend their evenings in low effort activities like watching TV on weeknights, too.)
Implicit judgment? Remarkably condescending? It's a statement of fact that many WFH advocates are paycheck-grabbers who want to extend the least effort for the most pay.
Maybe the worst part about WFH is the increased tendency to cherry pick a line of text and derail the main topic. All because feelings of being judged personally, possibly by a sub-optimal word choice of the sender. It's almost like we are being forced to debate semantics instead of substance with attitudes like that.
> Now, I am fully aware that there's a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary.
Are remarkably condescending.
Folks opting for a better work-life balance, who might not like to commute, or who prefer to socialize in other settings, "do not care to invest themselves"?
Maybe it's not the OP's opinions that are controversial, but rather the implicit judgment that comes along with it.