[LB232323]

I have been working remote by choice for years. You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web.

This is a pretty straightforward advantage of the internet. Some jobs have always been "remote". For example, writers still type their manuscripts from anywhere and mail them to editors. However, only some jobs work like this. When I did service or blue collar work I always had to be on the site to physically work the capital.

As for "career ambition", you can make plenty of money or a modest income from remote jobs. Beyond jobs, you can easily own an online business or some other digital capital through the same infrastructure. There is more to life and to work than a high salary. Greed is not a virtue.

You don't have to sell your soul and most of the waking hours of your life to commute to an office, deal with the attached bullshit, and integrate yourself into the corporate machine.

Instead, you have the freedom to actually live your life. Be with you family, friends, pursue your passions, even something as simple as being able access nature or travel freely. Whatever living means to you beyond working.

From the outside looking in, the mirage of SV corporate culture seems really fake and hollow. I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult. I understand the power balance as a worker. In any job, I want to put in my time and hard work, earn an honest living, and then be free to live as a real human being.

[sverhagen]

> I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult.

Notice taken. Good for you (not sarcastic). This is why you "have been working remote by choice for years". But as the OP said:

> If I wanted to stay home forever I'd have just taken a remote consulting job a long time ago

...and he didn't. Neither did I. In the past I have worked remotely for about a year, it wasn't great (admitted that company wasn't set up for it). I am doing it now, and I'm miserable about it.

So, OP's point seems not that something is inherently wrong or bad with either mode of working, rather that people who used to be going to the office may not necessarily be happy, or interested, to become remote workers. (Not even because it works well for you.)

I did a nothing little survey during our past team retrospective, and from a dozen of folks 1) most of them want more days working from home than pre-pandemic, 2) most of them would then want more work time in the office than from home, and 3) all of them are desperately looking forward to going into the office again for any sort of time.

[lstodd]

> 3) all of them are desperately looking forward to going into the office again for any sort of time.

This basically means that they did not modify their lifestyle for remote work.

Purging office bullshit from your life requires some changes in lifestyle, no question about it. The workplace has to be established, distractions (much less than what is in the office, but still) have to be managed. Social needs have to be satisfied sy some other means.

Still, work from anywhere (not home, mind you, and please do not confuse the two) is much better.

[Cookingboy]

>This basically means that they did not modify their lifestyle for remote work.

I really can't understand how one can be this shallow minded. Maybe the life style required to make remote work effective is not the desirable lifestyle for everyone? Maybe people value different things in life? Or maybe some people actually enjoy the place of their work and the physical presence of their coworkers?

>Purging office bullshit

For a lot of people offices offers a lot more benefits other than bullshit. Maybe your experience with office work came from a place with super toxic work culture? It sure sounds like it from how bitter you sound and I can understand how that contributed to your bias.

>Still, work from anywhere (not home, mind you, and please do not confuse the two) is much better.

For you, and for the type of work you do, maybe. But blanket statements like that is just silly.

[annot888888]

Why can’t you take the post of others as exactly what you’re saying: that person’s opinion on office life?

Why continue engaging in a circular argument about individual preferences if you’re saying it’s subjective?

If it’s subjective why must a norm either way be a thing? Isn’t that putting pressure on people that DON’T want office culture?

You’re the one making how they phrased a comment a blanket statement. I’m inferring it as their personal preference alone. Detach from semantics and literally perceive it as another person typing text into a box.

It’s silly to expect everyone to language in a vague way so as not to appear too opionated based upon your sensibilities.

[lstodd]

What I say is that _if_ they would have changed their lifestyle _then_ they would not have craved the office experience.

There is nothing shallow about this observation.

If they chose not to it's fine. They just missed a different and, in my opinion, a better experience. Their choice.

I cannot in good faith come up with a type of work that genuinely requires being in an office. Not on a workfloor, not in a lab, not in a conference room - an office.

Please enlighten me.

Social aspects of offices are overrated. Less formal association is better if only because no one is forced into them.

[Cookingboy]

>What I say is that _if_ they would have changed their lifestyle _then_ they would not have craved the office experience.

I can say the same thing about WFH. If you have made the lifestyle adjustment then you wouldn't crave to be working remotely either.

Btw I don't know what kind of lifestyle adjust you were thinking about that can magically change someone's personality or family situation.

>If they chose not to it's fine. They just missed a different and, in my opinion, a better experience. Their choice.

Exactly, it is your opinion, but not a universal fact.

>I cannot in good faith come up with a type of work that genuinely requires being in an office.

Just like how you prefer WFH even when your job doesn't require you to work from home, a lot of people can prefer to work at an office even though it's not required.

>Social aspects of offices are overrated. Less formal association is better if only because no one is forced into them.

For you, maybe. I find my social interaction at office to be neither overrated nor forced.

[partyboat1586]

Your work buddys today will be gone tomorrow. Most work relationships are shallow and transitory. If that's your thing because you're extroverted then great but a lot of people in tech are more ambiverted or introverted, they value deeper more meaningful relationships.

What I see a lot is introverted or ambiverted people tricked into believing their work buddies will call after they leave the company. Tricked into spending time on this shallowness outside of work hours + commute time over spending time with the people in their lives that really matter and will be there for them in darker times.

Sure there are a minority of extroverted people who want to be in the office because they want social time all the time, shallow or not. There are also parents who want some time away from home. On the other hand there are introverted people who want to be in the office because that's the only place they know how to get their social need filled anymore even though it's not truly fulfilling.

[saurik]

> family situation

If you have a family, and you are trying to escape them to go to an office or be alone in transit for hours commuting every day (which is simply time lost from your life), something might be wrong with your relationships and you should spend some time fixing that (but like, yeah: if you are essentially feeling trapped or something because you hate your family, I guess it makes sense to do anything you can to avoid them :/).

[staticassertion]

I can't come up with work that requires being in an office, other than perhaps whiteboarding out ideas.

But my first few years as an engineer, I loved going into the office. We played ping pong, we drank, we socialized, played games. There were even free snacks! Pretty good ones. Maybe for a lot of engineers that all feels silly, but I'd never thought I'd have a job that cool.

You can call that all "bullshit perks" or whatever, but it made the start of my career so motivating and fun.

I work fulltime remote now. I'm the CEO of a company, and we're fully remote. It has huge advantages, but I wouldn't trade that first office experience for anything.

[take_a_breath]

==Social aspects of offices are overrated. Less formal association is better if only because no one is forced into them.==

Do you have any data or research to back up this assertion? How is it rated today, how should it be rated instead?

[paulcole]

> Social aspects of offices are overrated.

This might be true for you but it’s not true for everyone.

[meowface]

Or it means they chose to look for an office job despite knowing remote jobs were available, because they prefer having real-life interaction with co-workers or other physical benefits.

I personally far prefer WFH/anywhere. But I've always been very introverted and reclusive. I love the freedom of being able to work alone from any location, but I know many or perhaps most people crave some kind of in-person socializing; even just eating food together. I generally feel better avoiding that, but many feel worse.

People should be free to choose whatever makes them happiest and fits their lifestyle best. Everyone's different, and neither option is objectively better. There's a huge range of personalities and dispositions out there. I will always seek remote work and will prefer remote-first/remote-only companies, and many will do the opposite, and we're both making the right choice.

[nogabebop23]

>> I love the freedom of being able to work alone from any location

is the alternative to working in an office really working alone? Should it not be moving your interactions and realtionships to alternative channels, not eliminating them?

[meowface]

Sure, if someone prefers that. I'm just a hermit, myself, most of the time. I generally prefer being alone. I feel more free and more comfortable in my own skin.

If I crave social contact, I message a friend online, or rarely, call them. If I don't crave it, then I don't.

[raverbashing]

> The workplace has to be established, distractions (much less than what is in the office, but still) have to be managed. Social needs have to be satisfied sy some other means.

> Still, work from anywhere

And this is the contradiction I find hard to manage. Not saying it's impossible, more in the "not sure how to do it"

Good equipment is important. A nice desk is important.

If you're hopping over AirBnbs, it's hard to carry all your stuff with you and have a good desktop experience wherever you go.

Working outside (from a balcony) is usually not great. Screens are not great on sunlight, then there's rain, wind, etc. And concentration suffers a bit

It looks a bit complicated at first glance.

[lstodd]

Well, obviously couchsurfing doesn't mesh well with a polished and lovely dedicated workspace. That's not the point.

The point is that remote work allows you to carve out that lovely workplace just about anywhere as opposed to being forced to some arbitrary and thus by definition suboptimal location.

I just rent houses in nice places by a sea. Mediterranean usually, but also Goa and Caribbean and whatnot. I think the shortest strech was two months or so. Median is about a year or two. At these time scales moving 30kg or so of equipment isn't much of a problem.

A desk and a chair - now that I prefer to DIY, desk from some local wood stock, chair - take a nice leather auto seat from some local auto salvage shop, mount it on an office chair's base. Done in an evening, costs almost nothing, much superior to every overpriced office chair, usually given away when I move out.

[nogabebop23]

>> This basically means that they did not modify their lifestyle for remote work.

Ah yes, the "if it's not working you're doing it wrong rsponse". See also: Agile Methodology

Ironincally these types of back-forths are far more common in remote, async conversations than face-to-face.

[skuthus]

Is it really that surprising that people want socialization after going this long without it? Waiting in line at the DMV would be the social event of the year given our current climate.

You might get more honest results after people are back in the office for a bit.

[Cookingboy]

>As for "career ambition", you can make plenty of money or a modest income from remote jobs. Beyond jobs, you can easily own an online business or some other digital capital through the same infrastructure. There is more to life and to work than a high salary. Greed is not a virtue.

>You don't have to sell your soul and most of the waking hours of your life to commute to an office, deal with the attached bullshit, and integrate yourself into the corporate machine.

I'm sorry but that came across as both condescending and judgmental. I know plenty of people chose the life they have here because they want to, not because they have to sell their soul or what not. There is a lot more perks from having a fulfilling job other than making a big paycheck, it ranges from working closely with amazing people to tackling challenging and fun problems.

I know for sure the reason I go to work these days isn't because of money, since I'm past the point where I care too much about it.

Finally there is absolutely nothing wrong with pursuing financial success. Having desire to "enjoy nature" and having desire to "have money" are both greed, just in different forms. I definitely do not consider myself morally superior just because I enjoy hiking...

>From the outside looking in, the mirage of SV corporate culture seems really fake and hollow. I do not want a hip fancy office full of zany perks and a weird cult.

I've been both inside and outside of SV (worked in Texas, Bay Area, and now in Seattle), and I have to say your understanding of SV culture is extremely superficial, likely augmented by the cherry-picking examples and sensationalized media portrayal.

[rainyMammoth]

your comment is dismissive.

I have been in Silicon Valley for 5+ years and I agree with his assessment. Culture here is fake and hollow. A lot of hypocrisy.

I have been swallowed by the corporate machine and endured the bullshit commute, bullshit office and bullshit tasks that made me busy the whole day without making me really rpoductive. Now that I'm working from home, I'm finally realizing what I missed out on.

My quality of life is levels higher than it used to be and I'm way more productive. This pandemic is an awakening for me. I will now refuse to go back to the office more than maybe one day a week and I'm ready to change job to do so.

I would bet that 90%+ of people got swallowed into the corporate machine without thinking too much simply about it because it is the easy and convenient thing to do. I was also saying that I was "fulfilled" with my job and that my goal was not to make money.

Going remote is not the norm and therefore it takes a bit of courage to jump into it.

[Cookingboy]

>I have been in Silicon Valley for 5+ years and I agree with his assessment. Culture here is fake and hollow. A lot of hypocrisy.

I've been in SV for more than twice as long as you have and have worked for companies ranging from YC startups to FAANG, I'll say using a blanket statement to describe the culture of SV is pretty silly.

Are there fakery, hollowness and hypocrisy? Absolutely. But there is also so much more to it.

[GordonS]

> You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web

I've been working from home for several years, but to be truely productive I need a separate working space with a good desk, good chair and multiple large monitors.

On occasion I've worked from an airport or a cafe, but the noise, seating position, table height, having to work on a small laptop screen etc just don't work for me. I would imagine this was the case for most people, and the image on sitting on a beach sipping pina coladas while making bank is an oversold pipe dream.

[riffraff]

I've also worked remotely for several years and while I work from my laptop I would still agree that working from a random location is not ideal.

Some cafes are ok, many airports are not, and anybody who ever tried to work in the sun knows how bad that can be :)

[nogabebop23]

plus, you know, a tiny little teeny part of the population might want to buy a house, start a family or make location-specific commitments that last more than 6 months.

[globular-toast]

> This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web.

I think this is what people are missing. If you have to go to work then the location of your work is one of the strongest factors in choosing where to live. For me, that means being no more than 30 minutes away from work by bicycle or public transport (I own a car but it's a luxury, not a necessity). If I could live anywhere then for a start I'd be somewhere where housing costs much less. I'd be somewhere near the kind of countryside that I enjoy like the Lake District, rather than the Fens which has some nice qualities but is mostly boring.

[cjrp]

> You don't have to stay at home, you just need internet access. This means you have the freedom to work from anywhere on the globe as long as you can access the web.

This sounds great, unless you have a mortgage on a house which needs paying regardless of whether you're living there, and children in school who can't be moved all the time. Although I'll admit that since my employer is looking at 100% remote, it opens the door to moving to a nicer/cheaper house outside of the office-commutable bubble.

Perhaps a compromise is using shared office space closer to home (short commute, separation of home/work life, social interaction while you're making a cup of tea).

[eloisant]

Kids have tons of vacations, much more than the typical office worker.

So you can travel for a month or 2 during their summer vacations in what would be like vacations for your kids and "working from a different place" for you.

That's also really convenient if you have family in a far away country, to be able to work from there a much longer time that you could have taken vacations.

[cjrp]

So you take the kids on vacation, and then work all day?

[paulryanrogers]

No, you work regular hours in transit or on site. Then enjoy the evenings and weekends with them in a new place. It's quite nice if you can swing it. (Kids not too young and non-working family to help.)

[nogabebop23]

what do your kids do while moomy or daddy needs quiet for several hours do focus on work?

>> Then enjoy the evenings and weekends with them in a new place

So pay all the costs and negatives of being away from home and get something similar to what you already have? No thanks.

[maehwasu]

> Although I'll admit that since my employer is looking at 100% remote, it opens the door to moving to a nicer/cheaper house outside of the office-commutable bubble.

This is the key part--many people desire a home they can build a life in, but limiting it to the commuting orbit of a few select cities really limits the possibilities of what that home can be.

The selection at a price point is worse, and the extra financial resources it consumes lower what the home can be.

This is before you get into being part of the captive tax base of a poorly-run city with little incentive to change...