[dm8]

I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office. I enjoy the social aspects. And commute never bothered me, albeit max commute for me was 45 mins (in the bay area). The only downside that I always felt was parking situation. Lot of my friends feel the same about office work.

I believe going forward there will be companies (and employees) in 2 camps -- remote first and hybrid/full in-office. And both types of companies will thrive. There are some people who enjoy going to office. And there are some people who enjoy working from home. And these people self select themselves for their respective jobs. And that choice is a good thing

[PragmaticPulp]

> I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office.

In my experience, plenty of people enjoy working from the office. Many of us enjoy a mix of in-office and WFH.

The comments sections on these articles tend to receive a lot of projection from people who simply hate their jobs and view WFH as a partial antidote to that.

That, and a lot of comments from people who have absurdly long commute times. In the past I've had good success with mixed WFH/in-office schedules and very flexible schedules to allow people to reduce their overall commute burden. For those who can't or won't relocate closer to the office, full remote companies are always an option. For everyone else, I suspect we'll see a trend toward returning to office for the sheer efficiency and communication improvements.

[sersi]

> The comments sections on these articles tend to receive a lot of projection from people who simply hate their jobs and view WFH as a partial antidote to that.

I resent the implication that I like WFH because I hate my job. I love my job, I'm good at it and I'm a bit of a workaholic by most standards (but wouldn't if I didn't genuinely love it). However, over my career, I found that I'm much more productive when working from home and this is not only for solo work but also for team work.

I believe that remote work works better for a certain type of people, I am good at making friends both in and out of work but I find too many extended social interactions from being in the same place to be draining and that they sap my productivity so I'm pretty much the text book definition of an introvert. That doesn't stop me as a manager from doing one on ones, interacting with my employees and calling or using slack but it does mean that sometimes when I have work where I need to concentrate, it's helpful to be at home. I have noticed in the past though that it takes a certain type of person to work well from home especially for long periods of time.

For context, I work in a remote first company, we were remote before the pandemic and before that I worked as a consultant so I've been remote for the last 10 years.

[gfodor]

If a person says "a lot of people like X because they hate Y" they are not saying that if someone likes X it implies Y. When I catch myself inverting conditional probabilities into a frame that makes me feel attacked it usually means that I've got some other thing going on that has nothing to do with what the person said.

[sersi]

You are right, if one reads it very charitably but in my experience "a lot of people like X because they hate Y" is very often used as a writing device to make a point and denigrate X. In this case, no, it doesn't say that all people who work from home hate their jobs but it says that the probably of people working from home hating their jobs is higher without proof to further their argument. I've seen a lot of that on both sides of the fence in the WFH.

So, when Wework's CEO says that people who work from home are the least engaged, when I read in this thread that people who don't want to work from home must not like their family (paraphrasing), I take it to mean for what it is, an insult in order to push one's favoured view and I dislike this.

[kimbernator]

> The comments sections on these articles tend to receive a lot of projection from people who simply hate their jobs and view WFH as a partial antidote to that.

I would actually argue that this is backwards; I really like what I do for work, but I've found that the worst part of my job is dealing with office politics, constantly being interrupted, and (like you said) the commute/time commitment associated with being in the office.

At this point, it's an affront to be told that I can no longer do laundry during the day, finish chores in 10 minute periods between work, or spend the day with my family and/or in my private office in pajamas. Especially when it's just because a C-level somewhere in the branches of my company is feeling lonely and/or bored.

To say my love for remote work is a reflection of my job satisfaction is outright unfair; Life is simply better when I'm not subjected daily to the dreadful routine of going into the office.

[kiadimoondi]

That's a pretty unfair characterization of people who prefer to work remotely.

However, your last point about letting remote employees stay remote and letting people who prefer office-work to come into the office, I optimistically agree with. It works when everyone knows how to work with remote employees, and that the option is exactly that: an option. This last year and a half I hope has been helpful in getting everyone up to speed on that. It requires a cultural dedication, and assuming people have learned something from this remote experience, they'll carry that knowledge and flexibility with them going forward.

[amyjess]

Mixed WFH/office should be 100% voluntary or it isn't truly mixed.

If I can't decide, with zero notice to my employer, to spend a month living and working on the other side of the country, it's not mixed. Anything that requires I live in driving distance of my company's office is not mixed.

Mixed means the office is there if anyone wants to come in and work from the office, but if someone wants to spend every month living in a different state (or even a different country, but I understand there are tax issues with that) they can do that too.

Alternately, I would accept something like the way oil rigs work, where instead of "you work X days a week at the office", it's "you work X months of the year at the office". I might be able to tolerate working from the office 3 months out of every year in the office if I can spend the other 9 months as a digital nomad.

(one thing this pandemic made me want to do is to not take travel for granted... I want to see, if not the world, at least the rest of this country before I die, and I'll be damned if my employer gets in the way of that)

[_-david-_]

If you have a job where you have to deal with physical things (servers, printers, etc) then you have to be in the office at least some of the time. Somebody working on software may never need to be in the office. The person who works in software may be able to voluntarily choose to work from home or in the office but the other person may not be able to choose. This is still a mixed office in my view.

[greycol]

I bet there's also more than a few people who work at places where work surges up to or beyond a full day but other days there's not much to do. If they're not empowered to actually treat their salaried job as a salaried job working from home is a great way to side step that issue.

[intricatedetail]

People who love to work in the office often lack social skills to find friends outside of work and it is their substitute. What I mean that everyone is different.

[swiley]

45 minutes means an hour and a half of your life every day that you don't get paid for and have to just throw away. (not only that but spending it doing one of the more dangerous things you can do in the US: driving.)

That combined with the ridiculous housing costs in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone (especially more numerate people) would tolerate not working remotely.

[panopticon]

> makes me wonder why anyone (especially more numerate people) would tolerate not working remotely

Honest question: are there a substantial number of remote companies paying bay area FAANG salaries? You put in any decent time at these places and your total comp is at least $300-500k/yr.

You'd have to move somewhere really cheap for the math to work out in favor of that remote gig if you're leaving $100-300k on the table. Being in a place without state income tax moves the needle quite a bit, but you're still likely to come out behind.

Caveat emptor: lifestyle changes this math a lot.

[freyr]

Can you get a nice house in a good neighborhood near the office on $300k/year in the Bay Area these days? A lot of people in the Bay Area make a lot less.

There are just so many markets in the US where you’ll find a much nicer house in a better neighborhood for a fraction of the cost. If you already own a house in the Bay Area, you’re set. But otherwise, the paycheck begins to look a bit like an illusion.

[panopticon]

My question was about FAANG-level salaries specifically though. You're probably not going to be able to buy a house near the office on that salary, no. But renting is still a viable option.

To provide an anecdote: my wife and I moved to the Bay Area from Kansas City and housing as a portion of after-tax income increased from 16% to 24% renting a smaller single-family house with the same bedroom count (significantly smaller yard though), but my income is over 3x higher out here. I might not be building equity by owning a home, but I have invested most of the additional income and am way ahead of my salaried homeowning friends in the midwest on net worth. Plus we get to spend most of our weekends in the mountains.

tl;dr: It really depends on your income, lifestyle, and priorities whether it adds up in the end.

[freyr]

I’m mid-career, work at FANG, and that is close to my salary. Perhaps my situation isn’t the norm because I moved into FANG from a very specialized job and got downleveled. But the point is that even within FANG, not everyone is pulling in $400k+.

The 3x income seems meaningless if I’m reading correctly. You ended up with 2x for a smaller house and yard, which to be fair is a reasonable tradeoff.

[dm8]

> That combined with the ridiculous housing costs in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone (especially more numerate people) would tolerate not working remotely.

Maybe some people genuinely like living in the bay area. It is a beautiful place.

[swiley]

Is it twice-thrice as beautiful as the rest of the country though?

[ec109685]

Your job only has to pay for the cost of living delta between the two places to be financially worth it. That isn’t twice-thrice as much.

[ashtonkem]

Sure, and you can WFH in the bay area and enjoy the bits around your home rather than the inside of your car.

[door101]

> 45 minutes means an hour and a half of your life every day that you don't get paid for and have to just throw away. (not only that but spending it doing one of the more dangerous things you can do in the US: driving.)

I've never found commuting to be "thrown away", but I've never commuted by car. I can read, listen to a podcast, or just people watch on the train. Or when biking/walking to work, I get some exercise. Seems to me the problem isn't commuting, but car commuting.

[layoutIfNeeded]

>45 minutes means an hour and a half of your life every day that you don't get paid for and have to just throw away.

Wasted??? Listening to motivational podcasts while sitting in a traffic jam for 45 minutes is not wasted time! /s

[hashkb]

I used to enjoy a mix of going to the office and working from home. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It's nice to feel respected and trusted to make the decision myself, and if someone asked me to be somewhere I usually woukd; but being forced just doesn't work (for me).

[gscott]

This makes we wonder what happened to Google employees living in box trucks in the Google parking lot.

[odiroot]

> I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office.

I'm going to respond tongue-in-cheek: I also like working from office -- when it's empty or barely occupied, and I can control my whole environment and decide myself when to interrupt my work.

Getting away from a tight apartment, disturbing the routine a bit is nice.

[mxcrossr]

There is always some selection bias in this regard when reading the hacker news comments. If you spend time talking to people online, you’re probably a lot less interested in the social aspect of work.