Yes. Why wouldn’t I? When I first started working from home after Covid, I had a separate bedroom that was converted to an office and across the hall I had a home gym fully equipped with cardio equipment. I had no distractions from a loud open office and I could block time off for deep work and shut everything down - Slack, Outlook etc.
I said “had” because admittedly now I’m a corner case. My wife and I nomad around the US 7 months a year staying in mostly extended stay hotels and the other 5 months (October-March) we “snowbird” in our home in Florida that’s rented out when we aren’t there to cover the mortgage.
Before covid, my coworkers would get half the office sick, including me, about 4 or 5 times a year. Back then it was just taken for granted that getting sick was a part of life. Well I haven't been sick in 3 and a half years since working from home, and masking, hand sanitizing, etc. Covid changed me, and I don't regret any of it.
I've lived the excesses of over-funded startups - I don't need the catered breakfasts and lunches, I don't need the endless snacks and drinks, I don't need the fancy desk chairs or fancy desks - I need to not get deathly ill several times a year.
That's the absolute #1 top reason why I won't go back to an office. It's not just about covid - it's about all viruses and illnesses that coworkers spread around the office. Heck no I don't want any of that in my life anymore. No thank you.
This is a point employers often overlook: working with other people means exchanging bacteria, viruses etc.
The more people there are and the higher the turnaround, the higher the likelihood of disease. Covid has finally shed a light on this.
A friend of mine gives tours at a museum of modern art; he says what you say: it's almost a part of the job to get sick at least once per year, typically in flu season in winter.
Employers should be forces to either guarantee there only a very small and stable team of people you meet on a daily basis -- or pay employees premium for the risk they incur because of diseases.
The alternative is to live like people live in Japan where everyone wears a mask all the time during flu season. But people in the west are often too lazy and "individual" for that. I don't really like to be overly broad and generalize, but the COVID stats prove it clearly:
https://pandem-ic.com/japan-and-us-are-worlds-apart-on-pande...
This attitude is more dystopia than any micromanaging over the shoulder boss.
"Companies should pay an employees a stipend for the risk of..... human contact!"
I already lament the world where parents are fined and sometimes jailed for letting their kids exist independent of surveillance, and we do not need to take further steps into isolation and atomization
Indeed, besides the obvious social damage it does (you're basically chopping people up to be fodder to amoral adtech industries) there's something to be said for the hygiene hypothesis and its continuation throughout life.
Casual and constant exposure to infectious agents (natural ones, not those transmitted over TCP/IP) develops and maintains an immune response. It's not just the brain wired to have interactions with others, it's the whole gestalt.
Most people at my office seem to get sick from their kids who in turn get it from daycare. Should employees pay for that as well? I guess the alternative is to just never employ parents.
It almost always comes from either the employees that have to travel a lot for their jobs OR people with kids... because of course kids, younger more so, trade the illnesses around and also help them mutate and spread more.
> Before covid, my coworkers would get half the office sick, including me, about 4 or 5 times a year. Back then it was just taken for granted that getting sick was a part of life.
Any thoughts on how this happened? Did not have this experience in a diverse 40-year job history
Young workforce does not have these luxuries. Most of time they would be sharing home or would have tiny apartment, they may not even have people around them through the day (having people around is a good thing - isolation, loneliness is leading to depressions).
This even without accounting for career related advantages when physically being in the office - building professional network, serendipitous discovery of undocumented information.
In any large company, the workforce is so scattered anyway that you still end up having to do remote networking. I’ve been working remotely since 6/2020 at $BigTech and my network has grown much more now than it did in the 25 years I spent working in an office.
Nope. Love my home, we set our entire life to be remote. See my child every minute (except for school) and see my wife every minute.
I would need to be forced to the office, never going there.
Happy to go on an occasional trip though, love my colleagues, but family first
Hypothesis: so many adults have mental issues such as depression because they grew up with parents going to the office a lot of the time (for no good real reason other than "manager wants me to").
Most kids grow up without their parents really being there for them all the time. I feel this must be especially harmful the younger the kids are.
I personally find it completely inhumane and the whole going to the office thing makes 0 sense to me. I mean it makes sense that managers want to physically feel in charge of their herd, but that's obviously not a good reason from my perspective.
I think it's more likely to be the opposite: we're creating more mental issues by being more isolated from everyone outside our immediate family. "Stranger danger," watching screens or talking on the internet instead of hanging out in person with other kids/teens, etc. Generations that don't know how to meet people or talk to people outside of pre-arranged circumstance/activities or explicitly-circumscribed situations like "if you connect on Tinder, it's for dating or sex."
The mental issues you describe hit everyone, even that vast majority of people who go in to work every day. I would more readily ascribe them to the declining amount of healthy “third places” (i.e. neither work nor home) in modern US society, not remote jobs.
The comment I was replying to put the blame for mental health on "parents having jobs outside of the home during childhood." I think there are far more impactful socialization changes to the childhood experience in the last fifty years than just that; I'm not suggesting that a three year spike in remote work has caused immediate widespread harm.
I would even argue that working from home would increase the likelihood of going out and socializing after work. As you might want to get out of the house after for a bit and you have been spending time with family throughout the day. Where working at the office means you only have evenings to spend with family.
I don't want to go to an office, but I still am very social & go out all the time. This is the case for most people I know. In fact, if I didn't have to commute for 2 hours a day I'd have more time for social activities.
I'd also love to have some extra time to be able to go to the gym, but right now I'm getting home, cooking, eating, and suddenly it's past 9pm and I'm having to think about getting stuff ready for work the next day.
I disagree, it's way easier to meet people now that I don't loose 1.5h every day. I also eat better and have more energy, so I can go to the climbing gym/the sea every day, which I couldn't when I was in a office.
I talk to my neighbors every day. Working from home let's me feel connected to the community I actually live in, it's awesome. I actually find I really like socializing with people outside of our industry. It's a breath of fresh air.
I’m in agreement. Summers are challenging to have the kids (7 and 10) around, but it’s a challenge worth having. They are young once and I’d like to be there for them. even if the office is five miles away, I’m more productive as a programmer and a dad. Seems like a win/win.
This summer over the course of 9 weeks, my daughters will spend 5 weeks abroads. 3 weeks at my parents place in one country, 2 weeks at their other grandfather house in another country. The 2 remaining weeks we will have family visit and can spare taking a few days between me and their mother.
With a bit of organization it is not that challenging to have kids. Also there are a number of possible summer activities with school like schedules for those who have less family around + possibility to hire a student to take care of kids while you are working during summer.
We were thinking of shipping our kid off to grandmas when he gets older. The fact that grandma lives in small town China and my kid has mostly forgotten how to speak Chinese would make that an adventure at least.
I was surprised how quickly summer activities filled up this year. We got him in a Boys and Girl camp at least, but demand is super high for what's available in our region.
Totally agree. Working from the office is a dealbreaker for me yet I prefer working in an office compared to home. I just hate wasting a portion of my day to commuting or turning a 8 hour work day into a 10 hour workday for the same pay.
In my experience it seems like the people who make the decisions on returning to the office are those who can afford to live close to the office.
Facebook used to do basically that - they gave you a $1000/month stipend if you lived within 5 miles of the office. A lot of other companies do it in more informal ways too, eg. I've heard of companies turning down applicants because they lived an hour and a half commute away from the office.
It has some mixed results. It's very positive for traffic and for climate change - if everyone goes from a 30 mile commute to a 5 mile one, that's 6x fewer vehicle miles traveled, 6x less car CO2 emissions, and 6x less traffic. But it also drives up rents around the office to crazy-high levels. Facebook's policy basically just boosted rents in Palo Alto by $1000/month (when they were there), and then it and the office location was single-handedly responsible for the gentrification of East Palo Alto (after they moved).
If I were to commute to my companies nearest office it’s about 1h20 or 60 miles.
Let’s assume I moved to near that office and lived in a high density area away from nature and dark skies. What does my wife do, who now faces an 80 mile commute the other way?
That's just what it boils down to: Add kids to the mix and you'll have them change schools (and their entire social circle) every time you do a career change - to earn more, to do something more interesting, or because you're simply forced to.
For anyone but singles, co-located work seems anachronistic. Worked back in the day were only one person in the family had a job, and jobs were held for decades (not years) I suppose. Today it seems ludicrous to expect anyone to move for work.
Which naturally leads into either long commutes or remote work. Having built several remote-first companies, I'm gonna say it's not perfect, but it really works.
This makes sense multiple perspectives: it's good for the climate to not make people burn gasoline every day (though this point may be lost on some people) and it's also good for the local community - both the employer needs to step his game up to assist and train people more since talent pool is limited and locals also need to step their game up since there are only so many local employers around (assuming all prefer to hire locally).
Going this way, if this were a law, would also prevent employers from treating people as expendable.
Flying people in from across the globe because they are marginally cheaper than the local work force never made sense to me.
Is that so bad? The other way of looking at it is that employers would be more likely to allow WFH, since they don't have to pay for your commute costs anymore
TBH I'm on salary like many here and I do subtract the commute time (1.5 hr round trip) from work hours when I go in. I'm not paid by the hour so I'm not commuting then doing a full 8 hours in the office, sorry.
I’m on salary and wfh but often work 4 hours/day. Of course some times if it’s “crunch time” I work 12 hours. But on average it’s probably under 6. The whole point of salary is you don’t count hours though so you are encourage to be efficient instead of inefficient
Work want to move me off an hourly wage. Which is fine, but it means instead of being paid time and a half for every hour over 35, I take 1.5h in lieu off.
If I do a 90 hour week you’ll barely see me for the next three weeks.
Here in Japan, employers have to pay for the employee's public transit commuting costs (but not time). So people living very far away (i.e. outside the city's transit service area) are unlikely to get an offer.
It’s not just commute, I’d like an office but not my current employers office so I work from home. I would love to go into a decent office, except they cheaped out so much on the work equipment.
The beige and drab decor is okay, it’s the way the monitors are so cheap and outdated. And the way the mouse and keyboard are the cheapest possible. Giving people doing knowledge work on computers all day the cheapest possible interface just don’t make sense. It’s penny wise pound foolish.
And The office neighborhood is also very unfriendly for pedestrians and bikers. it’s clear planners believed there was zero chance of people actually walking anywhere.
I’d much prefer an office with decent equipment and a better setting. it’s a reason why I am considering switching jobs. To have a decent office to go to.
Agreed on this. It is partly the commute, but also the environment you end up in. I used to work for a FAANG in “cube-ville USA”. It was dark and demoralizing. There were great views out of the windows, but you couldn’t see them through your cubicle walls. A bunch of us took the top panels down so we could enjoy the sunlight and view, but quickly got in trouble with facilities. It was fairly miserable. Until they moved us to a team room with zero windows. That was worse. I left soon after.
I worked at Google for 10 years and I always tried to make myself a cubicle by getting a corner desk and then getting soundproof barriers. Cubicles got a bad rap but open plan offices are way worse.
I live in a relatively small city of Spain, working for a considerably big consulting company. It takes 30 minutes to walk to the office from my home, and I'm on remote 1-2 days a week.
This is a lovely balance. While the vast majority of my team is distributed across the country (and Europe, too), having the flexibility to stay at home or work alongside colleagues from other projects is great.
Need to focus on development one day? I'll stay at home, since it is more peaceful and my equipment is better (long live big screens with high refresh rates). Want to not worry about cooking and have lunch with other people? I'll go to the office.
I'm also quite active too. It can be a bit tedious, but walking at least 6km everyday does wonders for your health. Specially since I'm a type 1 diabetic.
Nevertheless, my contractor is far from perfect (I could rant for hours about how absolutely crap our company laptops are for developers). But it seems like these kinds of situations can only happen in small, compact cities; which is usually the case for Europeans and rarely for US cities.
I'd highly recommend hybrid to anyone who can afford it, but, as always, your mileage may vary
> if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
Absolutely, yes. Don’t know how it’s in Google, but offices in our company don’t supply nice equipment like Herman Miller chairs with high quality desk and constant distractions from other people make any kind of deep state of work impossible.
Add on top of that having a house with a nice garden (if you’re one of those lucky people!) and the clear winner is obvious.
Open office layouts can be hard to deal with for me, even if everything else (chair, desk, computer, etc) are good. It varies from day to day but there are days where it's practically impossible to think due to coworkers buzzing around like bees, popping in and out of peripheral vision. When that happens, putting on ANC headphones is like trying to patch a basketball-sized hole in a boat with a piece of chewing gum.
Working from home there are still days when focusing is difficult, but nothing as frustrating as that.
Offices don't even supply offices anymore and haven't for decades. They're clearly not fit for purpose.
There's a reason why 10x engineers inevitably work evenings and weekends, and, if they have any social acumen, manage to get themselves excused from most workday time wasting rituals, including showing up at the office.
> Add on top of that having a house with a nice garden
Do you mean "garden" in the American sense (an area for growing food and/or decorative plants), or in the British sense (what American's would call a "lawn" or "yard")?
The Irish I talk to all call their private patch of green adjacent their house a 'garden' even if it contains only grass with optional tree. I had assumed they got the word from you guys.
I think the confusion here is from you presenting a "yard" as an alternative, when a yard in UK/Ireland would be a space that's mostly or entirely paved or has some other artifical surface
When my company still had WeWork passes, I would go to the WeWork just across from my gym sometimes, which I go to (the gym) every day around lunch anyway. 10 minute walk there downhill, maybe a 15 minute walk back uphill. It was pretty nice. The main downsides were the hot-desking and not having dedicated hardware there.
My home office is kitted out with an ultrawide monitor, a nice webcam lighting setup, a great mic with a nice low-profile arm that slides under the monitor, a powerful desktop tower, etc.
The downside to working in an office, even when there is dedicated hardware that stays there, is that the hardware is usually not gonna be as good as what I have at home, and that I will not be able to have my own office room to work from without distractions.
Criticism of open office plans was almost a trope (there's a software book from the 90s that rips into them), but in the years before Covid, companies doubled-down, removing partitions and implementing full hot-desking.
I think those horrible, noisy environments would have led to a backlash sooner rather than later. Now any complaints about open plan offices will just be dismissed as people whining about not being able to WFH.
In an open-plan office, you have to listen to all your coworkers, including those on completely different teams, have extremely loud and simultaneous conversations that you can hear from far across the room.
In a coffee shop, people generally don't talk, or keep their voices low when they do, so you generally only hear people talking to the staff to make orders and such.
Roles aren't always that well-defined. Many of us aren't recruiters or in sales but can still spend hours a day on planning, etc. calls with distributed teams. It's not practical to seek out a phone booth or alcove for every one of those calls.
There was a group of people in a meeting room working on separate parts of some larger project. I had to call one of them. You think that guy would get off his ass to walk away and talk to me in private? I spend the time helping you out and you don't even offer me that?
No, I had to hear 3 other people having a conversation louder than his call with me.
Last time I was at the coffee shop someone was watching Netflix at full volume. So yeah that was pretty bad. And I don’t have any power to stop them (at a workplace I could complain perhaps)
> For some, probably. I'm happy to work in a cafeteria, coffee shop, etc.
Depends on the work you do and your age, I suppose. Also whether you touch type on a standard keyboard or not.
My work is made easier with large dual monitors and a nice standard keyboard. Squinting into a single small screen while mispressing all the laptop keys (because those characters commonly used for programming don't have a consistent spot in any laptop keyboard) is not my idea of fun.
We're a social species. So, many people actually enjoy meeting with and mingling with their colleagues.
During Covid, a local co working space here in Berlin was one of the few places I could still go to. It's a five minute walk from my door and I did go there quite often. So, yes, I would and I have. And I don't even have a family to escape from. I've been working remotely in various settings for close to a decade. But I've done so from various offices for most of that time.
I've also been to the US on business travel a few times and got to spend some time in a few offices. There's a real difference between the US and Europe and it isn't good. The average US office with it's cubicles, air conditioning, lack of a view, and typical dreary locale is just miserable.
Google is of course famous for making an effort to make their offices nice. But from what I've seen it's still a cubicle hell. So, I can imagine that enduring a lengthy commute for the privilege of being miserable there is a bit of a hard sell. On the other hand, they do pay a premium for their people. So asking them to show up is maybe not that unreasonable. And of course they have to justify maintaining offices in a places with epic real estate pricing. If people stop showing up, you might legitimately wonder what the point of being in such expensive areas is to begin with.
Some people do have very specific demands of company office environments because they don't like working in more open settings with ambient noise.
For me, if I could walk 5-10 minutes to an office (especially with people I actually worked with, which wouldn't be the case if I drove 30 minutes to the nearest office) I'd probably do so pretty regularly. For me, it's definitely mostly about the commute which would be 30+ minutes to the closest office and then I wouldn't know anyone there.
Cubicles are bad for collaboration: you can't easily hear all the conversations around you that have absolutely nothing to do with whatever you're working on. Corporate executives know that being constantly exposed to conversations on topics outside your expertise is great for collaboration and productivity.
Sadly cubicles aren't very soundproof or private (but they are still better than open plan for people who need to concentrate or focus.)
University libraries tend to be somewhat open plan, though sometimes with study carrels, and students manage to get work done there. However they also typically quiet environments as well, there are no supervisors walking around, and falling asleep may be socially acceptable. The density might be better in some cases as well.
Cubicles obviously aren't soundproof of course, but they're normally made with cloth-covered walls that do a pretty good job of absorbing sound, so offices filled with cubicles tend to be fairly quiet, and conversations don't travel far.
I think it's a reference to acceptable behaviour in different cultures. Tokyo station in rush hour is surprisingly quiet even though it's a sea of bodies.
Maybe, but my open-plan office here in Tokyo is much, much noisier than the cubicle farms I used to work in back in the US (back when cubicle farms were the norm).
It's not culture, it's physics. With a room full of a maze of cloth panels (which are specifically designed to absorb sound), sound is absorbed and can't bounce around the room, leading to much lower overall ambient noise levels.
Not really for most people. When I interviewed with Boeing in the 80s, it was a room full of desks and no partitions with managers around the outside in offices. I did, at the time, have a job with another company where I had an office (though I spent most of my time on job sites) but offices for IC engineers were never the norm at most companies.
We have separate offices for different teams (for the most part). Some are just glass walls and no doors (open in one end). Some are not really offices but partly divided by cubicle dividers. I feel that works pretty good. The most important thing is to divide the office up a bit so it's not just a huge open floor with desks.
And then there's "quiet offices" you can use if you need to take a sensitive call or have a quick meeting with 2-3 people.
Couldn't agree more: I used to cycle 15 mins to the train station, then take the train for 20 mins, then walk for another 10. Then I changed jobs and my commute turned to being 25 mins on the motorway. Which was shorter and more comfortable, yet I kind of hated it; I was so happy when I moved and changed jobs again.
There is something about walking / cycling that makes even the most miserable day at least tolerable. Now my commute is a combined cycle + train journey again, but now I'm cycling through lovely countryside on quiet country roads. I cannot possibly convey how much I appreciate it, I used to be a city boy!
I'm supposing in this thought experiment, being so close means you could be in the office for morning standup, work breaks, and meetings, and still do your deep work at home each day...
Even if you’re not so close you can shift evening commute home to lunchtime or early afternoon, and settle in for solo time at home. I do this quite a bit.
My work is about an easy 15 minute bike ride through a forest on paved paths. Very nice. I hate it. I hate having to get ready. I hate the time going there and back. I hate everything about commuting, even for an easy commute like mine.
I'm the exact opposite, I love having a 5k bike ride as my commute. It helps clear my head and it keeps me healthy. During COVID I even rented my own office away from my home just to have an excuse for a daily ride.
You could've just gone for a morning and evening cycle. When I started working from home I went for a walk before and after, it initially helped me maintain the mental work/life balance.
that's crazy, because biking 10 min to work was my favourite part of going to work.i loved biking thru my city, and having the flexibility to leave when i want, get home fast, and take public transit if i wanted to.
tho tbf i don't work well from home, i need social interaction and less distraction. the bike ride was great to wake up, jam, or think about problems for the day
It's 90% the commute (and the time lost in commuting, especially if you need to set up your gear), and only 10% actually being in an office. I have been fully remote 10+ years now while everyone else was at the office in a city I moved from, so that's the worst of both worlds: people don't need to be social on Teams/Slack, they are social by the coffee machine. But I'm not at the coffee machine.
The pandemic was a huge improvement. Suddenly everyone was remote. So it's definitely improved. In a perfect world I'd be very happy to go to an office one or two days per week and have meetings, be social. If the commute was 5 minutes rather than an hour, then I'd be happy to do it 3-4 days a week. But I don't think I'd want it to be 5 days even if I could walk there in two minutes.
Would you rather be 5 minutes from your office or your kids’ school? Or 5 minutes from your office or 5 minutes from your extended family? Or 5 minutes from the beach? Or 5 minutes from the ski slopes?
There are a lot of locations that really benefit me being close to them than being close to the office.
Also, 5 minutes from the office is not very far. If a lot of people work at the office, living spaces 5 minutes from the office will either end up really expensive or really small.
I'm 5 minutes from the beach (walking), 5 from my gym (biking), max 10 from my friends (both) and 15 from my family (biking). Also have a school nearby. Now I just have to find an office, or create my own.
Both Google and Facebook were in the process of building little company towns, mixed-ish residential/office zones, is my understanding. Both on pause indefinitely.
On the one hand, I makes sense to pause. On the other hand, making vibrant light urban spaces feels like something they could pull off & really build on. Become a destination company.
Yes, the US healthcare profiteer-capitalism is fucked. But it's not employers fault.
I have no idea what the housing model proposed is. But everywhere else in the US that is mildly popular is ragingly expensive. If I can live in a great place affordably while making a solid paycheck for the future, that doesn't feel like a trap, that feels like a development course. Even if it doesn't last. The meanest thing we can say here is that the rest of the country can't compete, which again isn't the fault of those entities trying to make better.
Will there be a company store? I dunno. Is this a worthwhile dig or a trope, a regurgitation of past historic circumstance? We just spent a while talking about how companies will be desperate to lock employees in, golden handcuff them into never leaving... But now suddenly it's dark Zuckville & he's also nickel & dime scrooging over the employees? This no longer sounds like a viable Destination Company...
Will it be both too utopian and too dystopian all at once? Or is there one side of too much you'd wager for?
I absolutely think this could be shit & terrible. But this is a vacuous shitty useless historically-based drag that, but to me, fails any real analysis of the current situation, ignores the possibilities at hand, and just seeks to disabuse.
In those wonderful towns, residents not only get fired for wrongthink, they also get evicted by the corporate police. The omnipresent cctv cameras help residents stay in line with the community standards of inclusive speech and behavior.
Pripyat, in Soviet-Ukraine, a “nuclear town” was established and subsequently evacuated when the infamous meltdown occurred: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat
In the US, specifically, a lot of company towns issued scrip instead of cash or allowed workers to charge to an account expenses they could not afford. This may be outlawed but I think this model can be sufficiently masked with technology that it can be implemented and even incentivized for workers to use company money. Further, the company town’s isolation will suggest workers stay inside. Now your whole social circle and standard of life is dictated by someone else’s bottom line.
>I'm just not aware of any examples if this actually happening
That's the point. Google by and large treats its employees really well. There's no reason to think it would push this dystopian version of employee housing, instead of something a lot more tame. The only explanation I can think of is that some people just like thinking of themselves as the little guy against the world.
It’s the consolation of power that is concerning. The idea that one single institution that is accountable to nobody but it’s shareholders can dictate where you live, eat, who your friends are, and where your family is.
Many very-bad, dictatorship-type regimes have come into power with immense public support - a public that thought they would continue to be treated well.
I don't know why you're going to such lengths to defend someone who claimed they would be arrested by the corporate cops for thought crime. Over Google building some employee housing close to their office.
On the other hand, the rest of the world being exploiting wolves of capitalism fucking over everyone, obstructing most everyone trying to get started & make their way seems to be the actual evil here.
I agree there's potentials for the company to grow mean & sour, to exploit the position of granter of a reasonably good life. Ideally a good life should also be available by other means. What really is damned in this condemnation is the rest of the world, which lacks in offerances & alternatives.
The idea is that this is a destination company. Your whole premise is that people get exploited. Maybe over time that's true, but you will never create a destination company by being a shitty fuck.
This is not a persecution complex. As long as you are employed by a company, you are engaging in a business transaction. Once they determine you are no longer worth the expense, they will cut the expense, then your are no longer welcome in Googleville.
I personally never mentioned thought crimes, rather my argument is based on the rather fleeting nature of even full time employment in todays age.
The corporation had no loyalty and has no obligation to you beyond what was agreed upon when you got hired. A termination for any reason means your entire life is uprooted. In addition to finding a new employer, you are now looking for housing. That idea of vulnerability is terrifying to a lot of people and will cause further asymmetry in the employee-employer relationship.
I would go every day if it was 5 min. Even if it was 15 min. But right now my commute is 1 hour+ unless I go off peak but that makes the scheduling awkward. Still I do that pretty often because I find the collaboration far superior in person. One day in person produces more good ideas than two months remote
I am a 5 min bicycle ride from my office yet I still WFH 3-4 days per week. And if a daily office presence would be required at some point I'd just switch job.
> if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
I'd still want the office to be nice. If it's some concrete monstrosity where I can't get them to buy a decent chair and I have to sit in an open plan… home still wins.
Probably not, or at least not much. At home I have my own office, a window that looks out on trees and provides ample natural light, and my family. And I don't have to wear pants or shoes.
At the office I share an office with someone. It has no windows, so it's stuffy and lit only by harsh florescent lights. We have to take turns using the office because we just sit on video calls all day. I basically just sit in this torture box on video calls all day.
If it were five minutes walk, I would consider walking over there after dropping the kids off at school and walking back before they got home so I could greet them.
> if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
I have my own kitchen, my own bathroom, I can do housework things like putting the laundry in while I'm on a break, I can be in for deliveries, etc.
I'd be most happy with a fully remote job, that has an option to go in to the office whenever I like. Some face time is valuable, but absolutely not 5 days of face time a week.
I go into the office once a fortnight and the commute takes 2 hours out of my day. If it was 5 mins away I'd maybe have a preference to up that to once a week, maybe a bit more of it wasnt open plan.
I think there is certainly benefit in being in the same physical space as the rest of the team on occasion. I don't think it has to be often though, even the kind of once every 6 months to a year thing some fully remote companies do might be enough to make a difference with team building.
> As a thought experiment, people should ask themselves: if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
Not enough information to answer that.
Is it an open office layout or a real office? If it is an open office, I will still need to work from home even if it's a 1 minute walk because it is impossible to get any work done in an open office.
But give me a real office with a closing door and I'll happily commute 30 minutes every day to use it.
Yes. My office is about a 10 minute walk away. I work from home when I need to get stuff done. There are simply fewer distractions. I go to the office when I do feel live having some idle chit chat or to be social. If I were 100% remote, I would not miss the office.
I do not have a separate office room at home, I work from my bedroom.
I had a short (5-10 minutes) commute through a small park/forest and it was perfect. Just enough time to wake up or decompress, but short enough that I could run if late and merely be out of breath.
That or an elevator ride to a different floor in a hybrid office/condo tower would be nice.
>There's a growing consensus that most people like having an office to go to (more social, separated from kids/partners, etc.) but hate to commute.
This is what they get for adopting a car-centric lifestyle.
>As a thought experiment, people should ask themselves: if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?
I live in Tokyo, and it's about 10 minutes to walk to my office, and it's extremely safe. No, I don't want to work from home much, except maybe the days when there's a typhoon or I'm just not feeling well.
As a thought experiment, people should ask themselves: if I could walk 5 min to my office, would I still want to work from home?