> <i>It’s time to admit that remote work doesn’t work. WFH Friday is a four-day work week. Full WFH is a two-day workweek. When people are not in the office, every interaction has to be planned in advance. And that means a lot of information-sharing doesn’t happen. Remote is a great lifestyle, not a way to build a great company</i><p>If you're starting an article with a strong, absolute, data-devoid, and highly opinion-based quote from an executive (not an engineer or direct manager), then I'm not going to take much stock in your writing.<p>Look, I'm not saying remote is better or worse. But I will say that as an engineer, a hybrid model works excellent for my personal productivity. If anything, I spend more hours focused when I'm at home or at my local coffee shop. I am fully aware that I am missing social interaction, serendipitous productive conversation, yada yada, when I'm not in the office. I am aware that my company <i>might</i> be more productive if we were all in-person. But statements like this?<p>> Full WFH is a two-day workweek.<p>Yeah, fuck off. Why are we trusting executives' opinions on day-to-day lives of their line workers anyway? Their work is different: it's largely based on connections and debates and presentations and deal-making. My work is centered around focused writing and refinement of code and prose. Obviously our ideal work environments might differ.<p>Also, tangentially, every image in this article seems to be a stock photo of someone stressed out <i>in an office</i> :)
More of this propaganda? Remote work exposes issues that were previously covered up by being in person.<p>Society has become increasingly alienating and lonely, going into an office is just a way of papering over that.<p>Companies haven’t built strong cultures around communicating and mentorship, going into an office is just a way of masking that.<p>Personally I have worked with and felt camaraderie on distributed teams with people I’ve never met in person. I know it’s possible, but it requires doing things differently than business as usual.
I’ve worked remote for a long time. Finding remote workers who can handle working remote has always been a challenge.<p>A lot of the people who apply to our remote openings think that working remote is going to be a shortcut to working less, interacting with fewer people, and doing less communication. They may have read books or blogs or Reddits that talk about remote work as an opportunity to shrink their workday to 4 hours or less so they can travel the world or something. Or they have fantasies of working two jobs or building their startup while collecting paychecks and health insurance.<p>Others have good intentions, but then struggle with the lack of face to face interaction. It’s common for people new to remote work to have trouble interpreting text communications or to start assuming the worst. Some people are nice in person but then into flame war monsters when you drop them into a Slack channel where everyone is just a screen name.<p>I hate it, because the more of these candidates we let through our filters, the less welcoming of remote work the company becomes. Filtering out these candidates is imperative to keeping the remote work going. And sadly, firing them quickly when it doesn’t work out is also important.<p>This blog is a prime example of what happens when companies don’t filter and instead just let the bad candidates run wild on remote work. You get silly ideas like “WFH is a two-day workweek” because that is exactly what the bad candidates do if left unchecked.<p>It’s time we stopped pretending that WFH is appropriate for everyone. It needs to be selectively applied if we don’t want the abusers to become bad apples that ruin the whole concept.
We run a hybrid model at work and it's absolutely wonderful. Go to the office when it feels like to be social and connect with your coworkers, the real work mostly gets done at home. No obligations to show up at certain days or a certain amount of days, just whenever we want.<p>Different people with different social energy levels and so also different presence intervals, still see each other from time to time. Sprinkle in some nice fun non-obligatory team building activities.. everybody happy and productive.
TFA did not deliver. I'm left with the idea that I waded through a load of overly verbose propaganda.<p>There's many quotes from VC people and executives, which is suspicious. Several advantages for remote work are mentioned in an attempt to do steelmanning or whatever, however, the refutation falls flat on its face: Several purported disadvantages for remote work are then paraded around, as apparently evidenced by some questionnaire, without clear presentation of the questionnaire outcomes.[0]<p>What is this?! Completely untrustworthy, unconvincing article.<p>[0] there's a page linked on the top stating "the results are in" with some lame pie charts, from which I conclude that people are unhappy if their pay is too low, and that this questionnaire was predominantly answered by people in game dev.
I was remote before the pandemic, when there would be frequent in person team events and company gatherings. This was great.<p>Then in the pandemic, isolation. Not great, but temporary.<p>Now companies are cutting costs so there's no in person gathering, no team get together. Being remote is painful. I'm doing it because I'm used to it and can cope with it for a while, plus I work with people I know from previous jobs. But I can't wait until I can meet in person again and do a more "meet once per quarter" model...
I feel very grateful for having had the opportunity during covid to work remotely for American companies. My salary suddenly skyrocketed 5x, the job was interesting and I had a lot of autonomy. But increasingly I am feeling like I miss the routine of going to work, meeting people and working together. I don't know what to do now, though, since I will have to sacrifice a lot of income if I want to find a hybrid or in-office job.
2 days in office to see people, do all of the simian interaction stuff and get a break from my house.<p>3 days at home at my tricked out workstation that no IT department would ever give me an allowance for. Low stress because I can run small annoying errands whenever I want and optimize my time for flow state. A beautiful garden and park I can access and be back home within 15 minutes to give me an active break I’d take anyway in office.<p>The option to WFH is an insane force multiplier from me. Take it away at your peril.
The option that is always glossed over, partly because it is the real mode of operation of senior staff in any non trivial company, is that you are effectively remote with in-person meetings for a week or so every couple of months, and a regime of daily communication otherwise. That is far better than either total remote, "hybrid", or full time in one office, as you get the benefits of the ability to do deep focused work, and build successful relationships.<p>To put this in perspective I still almost daily speak to former colleagues from a decade ago who were located in offices thousands of miles away that I never shared a physical office with.<p>The problem with the pandemic was that it interrupted that good aspect of occasional interaction, but this deliberate effort to confuse that with the daily open office grind isn't fooling anyone whose salary is not dependent upon it.
I am remote since 2000. I guess my productivity by now is negative and being utterly depressed I am contemplating suicide.<p>Cut the fucking crap and shove that managers propaganda up yours.
I've worked remotely since 2016.<p>A few of my takes on it:<p>How conducive an org's culture & policies are to remote work has a direct impact on remote workers. (Companies who were quickly forced into remote work at the start of the pandemic all fired a shotgun from 100 yards and hit the target everywhere. Those who hit the middle realized that remote work had its upsides. Those who missed reinforced their own bias against remote work and dug in their heels.)<p>Each team's implementation of these policies can vary which gives a member on one team a great experience and a another team a miserable one.<p>Remote workers all have different social needs. If you're lucky, your team fits your's. If you're not, your potential office BFF may be on a different remote team and you'll never meet them.<p>I spent 2016-2022 at the same org who was 50% remote and it was great. Early 2022 I moved to a new org and my team never spoke outside morning stand-ups and I hated it. I've now chosen a hybrid position where it's 95% up to me when I'm in office and it's been the perfect fit.<p>YMMV, not all orgs will do remote well. Not all workers will do remote well. Let's stop demonizing the other side and realize there is no single answer.
Not saying anything we didn't already know.<p>But you'll always have some hippie developers on hackernews who believe remote is the future religiously.
"The research, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was based on 2400 employee responses across five surveys between 2021 and 2022." Why is this even allowed to be posted?
Hybrid work was always a nice balance (having been fully-remote & on-premise). But ‘hybrid’ could mean a lot of things. Meeting up once a week, quarter, or annually for some teams & projects are enough to build that missing trust. Sometimes it’s just grabbing lunch with folks. But also, many of us, myself included, need to do better jobs integrating into the community & meeting our neighbors instead of relying so much on the workplace for socializing. I still find cafés an ideal location just because that reset & stimulation of fellow patrons or even the staff is enough to recharge & shake the funk that is easy to get stuck in if limited to just your own home where it’s too easy not to stop. Coworking spaces, labeled as such or impromptu, can help break it up too.
So a bunch of pull quotes from CEOs and one non-peer-reviewed survey study? One would expect that out of all the companies pushing for an end to remote work, one would have solid data they were willing to share.
I don't know why this article was flagged. I mostly agree with it.<p>Remote work is amazing for work-life balance and job satisfaction...if you have an established/high-paying job with an awesome home working space in a town or city you're happy living in and have a strong social network outside of work (or spend less time on work to spend more time on life, which is totally fine!).<p>If you live in a 1bd apartment/flat with roommates and your working space is also your bedroom, kitchen or closet...WFH sucks.<p>If you have an awesome office setup in your suburban home that's far away from everything because the alternative is worse and more expensive...WFH sucks.<p>If a big factor of your satisfaction at work comes from working with your work mates, and now all of them are too busy to hang because they have families and commitments and such...WFH sucks.<p>If you've just graduated college and are starting your first job...WFH DEFINITELY sucks.<p>The thing that confused me the most about the push for remote work was the mental gymnastics done in response to the obvious (to me) wage suppression that remote work at scale would introduce.<p>Why would anyone pay $x for an engineer in SFO when they can pay $0.4x for that same engineer in Kansas City?<p>Why should the engineer from SFO making $x NOT receive $0.4x now that they live in Kansas City (to take advantage of a $0.4x market?)<p>Okay, so every engineer is worth $x since $x is determined by skill, not locale. If every engineer makes $x, how do we respond to the insanity that normalizing $0.4x markets into $x markets will bring?
I went full remote with the start of Corona pandemic and I have to say it's been an amazing experience. Granted I've joined a co-working place so I wasn't working out from a basement but the interactions there are more informal and relaxing. I can understand some people are upset because they were forced to go out of office during pandemic and now want to get back to be abused as usual but I'm quite content to stay remote.<p>The article otherwise looks like cheap corp. propaganda to convince the IT crowd to get back into open spaces. I guess megacaps will want to push for getting folks back so they can be controlled by middle managers as in the good ol' times. I'm not sure if that's going to work as per plan though.<p>Interestingly enough my mental health being out of the office has much improved over before office work. As a developer I thrive on long focus time and good written-down documents. I don't miss being interrupted all the time, being shot at with NERF guns, being a middle man between people having conversation over you, over lunch work debates, open office background noise, over the shoulder staring etc. etc. Not at all.
Being remote since 2009, founded several full remote companies. I never ever plan to go back to an office. Same for all people's working with me. Customers are totally ok with it, productivity is definitely not lacking. And for social interactions I have real friends and family. Much better than fake work relationships I had in the 10y in office before that.
I wonder if some companies are paying for this propaganda.
Remote work makes modern life possible. In almost every major US city commutes, and the pressures of caring for a family 10x'd over the last 50 years. In their heart of hearts everyone knows 90% of the pandemic was not fear of a virus, but coping with exhaustion of a life that had become untenable for most people.<p>I don't think everyone is as-productive in a remote mode, but knowledge workers who build tangible things often can be more productive, and measurably so.<p>Excess Management is more visibly pointless with remote work, and naturally excess managers who contribute ~nothing hate it. For example people who manage mediocre webblogs due to be replaced by LLM content such as the author of this document. It makes those people miserable, and the majority of workers in any organization are unproductive. That's all.
There are so many bloody articles going both ways on the WFH. Feels fairly simple, some people enjoy it and some people hate it. Some are more productive working from home, some are less productive. This desire to try and paint everything as either black or white, good or bad, it's so frustrating.<p>Trying to apply any statistical analysis to this feels like such a waste of time. There are so many outside factors to consider. Even if you do some shit polls and find that "WFH is 10% worse on average" or "WFH is 17.8% better on average", using that information to make any decisions for yourself or your company would be insane.<p>The way this article tries to legitimise itself with it's shoddy use of statistics is just painful, I couldn't finish it.
I think these kind of articles tend to have a fair amount of truth to them, but a lot of the anxiety etc is caused by the all out denigration of remote workers. People being constantly undermined tend to be anxious about it!<p>Remote work has some elements that need different attention to make work. I feel isolated at the moment as a remote worker because it feels like suggesting an offsite or meeting in person once a quarter is going to threaten the existence of the remote work status quo.<p>Intentionally undermining the system to then make arguments against it seems to be the operating model at the moment for people who prefer to spend all their time in an office while making no effort to support remote work, and it is exhausting.
Its frustrating to see “research” like this where you just look at numbers and determine causality.<p>Very few people ask the question, how much of the remote work productivity drop is actually bad? And how much of the depression and anxiety is related to unreasonable expectations set during the pandemic and the resulting burnout? In the first year or so, as people adjusted to the pandemic, they worked more and slowly that became the norm.<p>If now people are less productive, are they working less than they did pre pandemic or is the curve coming down to normal? And what percentage of these unproductive workers is because of burnout and unreasonable expectations?
The addition of many remote positions since COVID has been a great hiring filter for us. For the type of work we do (AI, R&D), and the culture that we find most productive and enjoyable (enthusiasm because we love the work, a sense of working in a team), remote was a real downgrade when we tried it.<p>We advertise the job as on-site only, and because of that the applications self-select for those that want in-office work. It's made our interviews more focused on technical ability.<p>I think this is a better equilibrium overall. Those on either side of the remote/on-site preference can find the right respective jobs and work cultures.
This thread is a great counter argument to anyone who claims that HN is a place for civil discussion and debate.<p>People are screaming propaganda and conspiracy as soon as they run into a view that doesn’t align with their own.
My hybrid experience:<p>I got to the office to do meetings with people that are at home.<p>I ditched the hybrid and now 2 days of week I go to an Coworking/incubator space where I have the social and "out of house" needs.
I worked remotely from 2014 and then switched employers and a chose to be onsite after the pandemic.<p>Reason being it’s so much easier to ramp in person and build trust with colleagues. I now go in a couple times a week on days when I have a lot of meetings.<p>Another factor is the work environment. My current big tech campus is an absolute pleasure to work out of a few days. My prior grey soulless bank employer was not inspiring at all. I also Don’t like wearing shirts with buttons or hard pants in the summer.
This is a terrible article. The supporting evidence for their claim is 1 study of 2400 participants that hasn't been peer reviewed and an outdated poll from Feb 2022 conducted during the epidemic and economic downturn. The rest are just quotes from biased Silicon Valley CEOs. And the author of the article is also a tech CEO so I'm sure there's no conflict of interests here.
There will be lots of new "studies" funded by those lobbying to get workers back into buildings. WFH is a cancer to corporate America for those with investments in office buildings and the surrounding industries. The sooner they can erode the belief that you can WFH successfully back to pre-2020 levels the happier they'll be.
One thing that I think gets forgotten in these discussions is the economics of offices. Offices are really hard to convert to residential space, and paying for a space you only use 2-3 days a week can be prohibitive to companies that aren’t huge, not to mention downtown SF is becoming a ghost town with all businesses closed
Since this article makes an argument by starting with a non-peer reviewed survey, then stacking several layers of hypotheses on each other, I feel comfortable countering with an anecdote: the most productive company I ever worked for was fully remote from before covid. So, I guess that’s checkmate.
I am not concerned about my job because I am at home rather than spending 90 minutes a day commuting. I am concerned about my job because our CEO constantly threatens to fire people and then makes good on those threats.
Extroverts who were forced into WFH because of the pandemic having withdrawals symptoms; News at 11.<p>----<p>Before Pandemic, people self-selected into WFH/remote scenarios; if you were introverted and just wanted to focus on work, you would have taken the quiet path yourself. If your office offered it, you took it; if not you would try your best to move to job that offered it.<p>If you were an extrovert who gained energy from social interactions... you would never have chosen such a path, but the pandemic forced extroverts into to seclusion, and they are now stuck.<p>They can see the clear benefits from a WFH/ remote setup, like being able to focus on work, time/fuel savings from no commute, flexible schedule... but they want the office energy back.<p>Like boomers, they pine for the good-ol' days and they don't just want themselves back in office, they want the whole crowd, and to make a crowd, you need EVERY one back.<p>So they are miserable and trying to make us miserable too.
Bosses will do just about anything to point the finger at anyone but their own behavior. Poor strategy, poor communication, changing directions like a 4yo on too much sugar.
I feel like the steadfast RTO deniers are either<p>1) families or other people who have a large amount of responsibility outside of work, absolutely love hybrid<p>2) recluse engineers who love being alone and socialize on the internet, even 1 day in an office a week is unacceptable
Where you work primarily depends on what you do. If you're a labourer then you may have to work on scaffolding. If you're a bin man you may have to work on a garbage truck. If you don't like this or feel working in these conditions is bad for your mental health, then you may be in the wrong line of work.<p>Some jobs (like software engineering) can be slightly more flexible. You'll probably need to work at a desk behind a computer screen all day, but where that desk is located, might not be so important depending on the exact nature of your work. If you don't like working at a desk behind a computer screen all day and believe this is bad for your mental health, then you may be in the wrong line of work.<p>We should remember that regardless of whether we're working remotely there's a lot about the nature of our work that is simply determined by the specifics of our jobs. I must work 5 days a week on a desk behind a screen if I want to be software engineer (like it or not). I'd argue this in my case this far worse for my health than whether that screen is in an office with colleagues or in my house with my family.<p>If people feel that remote work isn't for them then I think that's fine, but I also think they should just look for companies that are happy for them to work in-office or work hybrid. One of the nice things about remote work is that generally there are other companies out there (if not your own company) that will allow you to work from the office if you choose. When you compare this to people who are forced to work on roofs in the rain, or forced to work under cars in a car garage, or forced to sit behind a stirring wheel for hours in trucks, I think this hysteria about remote work being so "bad" speaks more to the privilege that middle-class white collar workers have. Although I don't want to dismiss anyone's individual struggles.<p>Again, I've worked mostly remote for decade and in my case it's been lovely. I get to spend loads of time with my partner and we've been able to take 1-2 month trips abroad a few times because I can work while we're away.<p>Even if you don't like or agree with remote work for yourself what we should all be in favour of is more choice in the labour market, and remote work for this reason should be celebrated instead of repeatedly bashed in the media for not always maximising worker productivity, and occasionally making people feel lonely.<p>Remote work is a good thing. Not because it's good for everyone, but because it's good for some people. If you struggle to mentally cope with working from your home, you may find most other places of work to be quite rough on your mental health too. I suspect in many cases this may speak more to things going on in your personal life than an issue with your workplace. Maybe the real issue here is that it's not healthy for us to live alone and in recent decades with we've replaced family life with work and with neither some people feel lost.
This is me. I started going back into the office a few days a week recently and love it. My office’s culture is definitely different now than pre-COVID, and better. We’re like better at respecting each others’ focus time while also making good use of lunch and impromptu white boarding.