[NeverFade]

> Put simply: yes. I know a lot of people who enjoy socialization provided at the office

Find a co-working space.

> Heck, there at even people who like SF and city life on its own merits.

Remote work gives you the freedom to work from anywhere. That includes other cities. You can still live in SF if you want, or choose any of the other dozens of cities that provide more benefits for far cheaper costs.

[joshuamorton]

> Find a co-working space.

Alternatively, they can work for an employer who has an office and then they don't need to pay for access to a co-working space. Their choice to do so doesn't harm you, they simply value certain aspects of the job differently, much as people value vacation vs raw salary differently.

> That includes other cities. You can still live in SF if you want, or choose any of the other dozens of cities that provide more benefits for far cheaper costs.

Yes, but for the same reason as above, there are enough people who explicitly value the "conventional" office interaction that companies will continue to cater to it. It's often cheaper and more efficient for employees to do so.

I'll also as an aside mention that

> Engineers tend to be introverted.

Is in my experience false. The hn bubble is far more introverted, on average, than my coworkers at a major tech company are. If you are introverted, you may not spend a great amount of time with those people, but i don't think it's controversial to say that the majority of currently employed software engineers don't want to stay in their homes forever.

[NeverFade]

I believe you express an opinion that is shared by many people who are simply comforted and reassured by the status-quo. Additionally, you work for Google, which has been quite stringent about keeping all work on-site. You'd like to keep your job, so cognitive dissonance induces you to conclude - without much evidence - that this status quo is The Best of All Worlds.

Working full-time from the office is a condition that was created due to certain historical preconditions. In particular, it was a good fit for industrial work, and indeed the modern urban office environment is rooted in the industrial revolution.

It is not at all necessary in our modern world. If you want to live in a big city and commute to a shared workspace every day, you can do so. However, there are so many other options available, and I dare suggest you shouldn't declare them all inferior before trying them.

Overall, onsite office work binds you to exactly one option, remote work allows you a huge freedom of choice - and that is categorically a positive thing.

[joshuamorton]

> You'd like to keep your job, so cognitive dissonance induces you to conclude - without much evidence - that this status quo is The Best of All Worlds.

No, I'm just unhappy working from home, and greatly miss the office. You don't need to invent a conspiracy theory.

> It is not at all necessary in our modern world

I never said it was. I said that many employees find it preferable. I agree some do not. But you're solution seems to be to ban offices.

> Overall, onsite office work binds you to exactly one option, remote work allows you a huge freedom of choice - and that is categorically a positive thing.

But you're proposing not the option of remote work, but remote only. That does remove choice, the choice to work from my company's office in proximity to my coworkers. I value that.

> However, there are so many other options available, and I dare suggest you shouldn't declare them all inferior before trying them.

I don't think I have. Please stop putting words in my mouth and getting defensive about other people's preferences.

[NeverFade]

Your entire counter-argument against me rests on the strawman that I proposed "banning offices", and is therefore invalid.

I never suggested "banning offices" (how would that be achieved, exactly?). In fact I specifically presented a model in which voluntary offices / co-working spaces exist for those who want them.

[joshuamorton]

> In fact I specifically presented a model in which voluntary offices / co-working spaces exist for those who want them.

No, you presented "co-working spaces" as a particular form of alternative to offices. Those two things aren't the same, and from your prior comments, it does seem that you find offices to be bad, and want to replace them with co-working spaces. (co-working spaces, at least to my mind, resemble something where I might rent a space and work in proximity to other people, but we all have various employers)

Further, when I stated that I'd likely choose an employer who provided an office, you resorted to calling me naive and implying I have ulterior motives like trying to keep my job, seemingly suggesting that me commenting negatively about offices would cause Google to fire me.

I maintain that up until this post, everything you said supported a remote-only approach, instead of remote-optional, and that's flawed. If that's a misrepresentation of your actual opinion, than you're more than welcome to clarify it, but I'll reiterate that to many, a co-working space is less useful than a dedicated company office, and both are superior to work from home. Hacker News is not broadly representative of opinions on WFH. I realize that as someone who likes work from home you may not enjoy hearing those things, but they're true.

[NeverFade]

I mentioned that I expect most employers would still have physical offices in other comments in this thread, though perhaps not directly to you.

Co-working spaces are already used as "mini offices" by employers who hire remotely. One of my recent offers featured one. It's basically a light-weight, low-cost way for some employers to offer physical offices in many diverse locations. Of course, some co-working places are more about mixing different employers.

> you resorted to calling me naive and implying I have ulterior motives like trying to keep my job, seemingly suggesting that me commenting negatively about offices would cause Google to fire me.

No, what I meant by "cognitive dissonance" is that since you are happy working for an employer who doesn't and won't offer remote work, you would like to believe that this is the best fit for you as well. This is the meaning of cognitive dissonance.

> I maintain that up until this post, everything you said supported a remote-only approach, instead of remote-optional, and that's flawed.

I don't believe a "remote only approach" exists, because if an employer chooses to have a physical office, it's completely outlandish that anyone would try to prevent them from doing that. There's simply no basis, rhyme, or reason to try. Like what you gonna do, make offices illegal? :)

> Hacker News is not broadly representative of opinions on WFH. I realize that as someone who likes work from home you may not enjoy hearing those things, but they're true.

We'll see. I'm not very frequent participant on Hacker News, and I have many real-world friends in the tech industry. I can tell you that many of them preferred working remotely long before the pandemic. In fact it's been a common feature of senior engineers working for startups and small-medium sized companies for years now: they often can and do choose to work remotely, which is generally (though perhaps not universally) considered a major perk that they can afford to demand for sacrificing higher comp at the bigger companies.

Speaking of these bigger companies: they have formed the most major resistance to this trend so far, but we are now seeing some of them - Facebook, Salesforce, Twitter - joining in. We will see how it all plays out, but I'm sure you'll agree that 2020 wasn't a bad year for those who prefer to work remotely.

Finally, let me emphasize again that I'm not trying to force anyone to work remotely. Quite the opposite: I am just hoping for more options for all those who want them.

The meaning of my comments to you earlier was:

1. Even if your company goes remote, you will have options like co-working spaces at the very least.

2. You may be happier with some of these options. For example, working from a co-working space (i.e. a small satellite office) in the town where your family lives, which isn't available to you right now.

That is, I believe more distributed work model can bring more satisfaction to both those who want to work 100% from home, and those who prefer a more traditional office environment. It will certainly be better than the only option available with many big employers right now: move to one of very few tech hubs and work in a huge office.