[rewma]

> why am I getting heavily down voted for discussing personal reasons why I enjoyed working in the office?

My guess is that there has been chatter on how discussions on WFO, specially in tech forums, are brigaded by shills to sell the illogical idea that getting back to the office is fantastic and awesome, and the hallmark of these shills is the fact that their arguments in favour of returning to office are simply unbelievable. And quite frankly you post reads like that.

I have to say that I found it very weird, and outright unbelievable, that someone was arguing that commutes were "far more effective for unwinding". To me that makes no sense at all, because when working from home you are free to pick whatever you'd like to do with that time, instead of being forced to sit in a car or public transportation and waste away your life while you endure traffic. I mean, if suffering commutes is something you enjoy then if you work from home nothing stops you from hopping into your preferred means of transportation and go anywhere you'd like. But you can also do any other thing. Is driving to/from the office during rush hour the most pleasurable and relaxing thing possible? I quite doubt it.

So why claim that being forced to do something is more effective at unwinding than actually pick whatever you'd like to do? It makes no sense.

[yojo]

I used to commute ~40 minutes each way by streetcar. I spent the time sardined in with the other unfortunate folk, one hand on a strap, the other on my Kindle. Every day I cursed SFs oversubscribed transit system.

Switching to WFH was way better. But I was reading a sci-fi book a week on the commute, after the shift I was lucky to get in four a year.

In theory I could set aside 80 minutes a day for personal reading, but in practice it feels incredibly selfish to not help with the family and housework.

Do I want to go back to muni hell? No. But I can understand how someone might have enjoyed their (non-car) commute. I will shoot myself before I ever go back to driving an hour each way on the 101 though.

[hnlmorg]

I commute by train. I'm lucky enough to be guaranteed a seat. And it is a very comfortable ride. That time can be spent meditating with my favourite music playing in my earphones. There isn't a rats chance in hell I'd get that same quality time at home with two noisy kids running rampant throughout the house.

Have you considered that perhaps people making comments like mine are not shills, they just have different personal circumstances that you hadn't encountered before?

[wdb]

I wish commute by train would work in London. I had to commute for years out of London (living in Zone 1) and most of the time I didn't had a place to sit. Trains are also crazy loud in this country, and not really reliable and quite expensive.

They charge pricing here that could get me a year country-wide travel first class card in Switzerland.

[hnlmorg]

Regarding London trains: it very much depends what line you go on and how far down that line you are as to whether you get a seat. The reliability and expense problems are very real though :(

[wdb]

I was taking the train from Paddington to Hays and Staines. Tube wise Central line is horrible. One reason to work from home lol

[hnlmorg]

By "train" I was thinking more the overground and national rail services rather than starting your journey from zone 1 of the underground. But I guess, technically, the underground is a "train" too

[tech2]

Assuming that your commute is around an hour means you're "only" paying £4k/annum (after tax) for that benefit. I agree there is a benefit to the commute (for me it was the walk/exercise), but I find it hard to rationalize otherwise and that's a willpower thing

[throwme159]

I doubt they have, given the way their post was written. Expecting tech people to have empathy is a bit much.

[devnulll]

> [...] found it very weird, and outright unbelievable, that someone was arguing that commutes were "far more effective for unwinding".

Ex (multi) FAANG engineering director here. I personally find that a 30 minute commute home is more effective for separating work and home than just the clock. The data published (by MSFT) shows employees are working more hours now than ever before.

Now, those pale in comparison to things like on-call rotations, email on Cell Phones, Slack & Team's notifications on mobile, etc. The Amazon practice of "DevOps SDEs are always on-call" that's spread across the industry makes disengaging from work in order to engage with family & friends generally impossible, even on vacation.

[wdb]

I like to go for a short walk after work to the local supermarket or walk to the local parks (like Hyde or Regent's Park)

[rewma]

> Ex (multi) FAANG engineer here. I personally agree that a 30 minute commute home is more effective for separating work and home than just the clock. The data published (by MSFT) shows employees are working more hours now than ever before.

Current FAANG engineer here. I totally disagree, and the numbers support my case. My organization saw a jump in productivity when switching to WFO accompanied by a considerable increased in job satisfaction.

WFO, accompanied by flexible work hours, allowed everyone in my team to benefit from more personal time and also opportunities to research topics of interest, which already paid off in the product we developed.

[devnulll]

> Current FAANG engineer here. I totally disagree, and the numbers support my case. My organization saw a jump in productivity when switching to WFO accompanied by a considerable increased in job satisfaction.

You're moving the goalpost on this. For me, as someone else stated, the separation between home life and work life is a bit easier with a commute. That's not touching on productivity, overall job satisfaction, or anything else.

I'm not even talking tradeoffs here - there's no "I prefer to work from the office because XYZ". I prefer working from home, for a variety of reasons. However, I do recognize that in this one specific area - separation of work/home life, the commute was beneficial.

Were I to list 50 pros/cons of working from home (which I've done), the winner is WFH. That doesn't mean an absence of positive aspects to the "work from the office" column.

[rewma]

> You're moving the goalpost on this. For me, as someone else stated, the separation between home life and work life is a bit easier with a commute.

The point is that separation from home and work life does not require or mandate a commute or even getting back to the office. That position is indefensible. Being forced to endure something unsavoury against your best wishes ever single work day is not easier nor the only effective way to get some separation between your personal and work life. That's something you do, not something that's done to you.

Some people are quite happy with a home office, some people opt to work anywhere. I have a team member that works by the pool, and another team member who worked while travelling through Europe. If you are not forced to be present on a specific cubicle in a specific building for X hours a day then you have quite literally the whole world at your disposal, and your imagination is the only limit.

And you know what? That reflects on quality of life work/life balance, and overall job satisfaction. Your life matters and enjoying how you live it matters. That's the whole point of working, not a whimsical position where a post happened to be moved.

So no, being packed like sardines along with dozens of depressed and tired and often smelly fellow drones in a train or subway or bus, of being forced to endure traffic jams or road rages, is neither the only way to separate work from personal life, nor the most enjoyable or even effective at all. There are far better things to do in life, and you're free to pick them all.

[hnlmorg]

> That position is indefensible. Being forced to endure something unsavoury against your best wishes ever single work day is not easier nor the only effective way to get some separation between your personal and work life

The position that everyone should have to work from home even if they don't want to is also indefensible. What myself and others are saying when we argue the benefits we get from office work is that employees should have the freedom to chose the flexible working arrangement that works for them

There's a real tone on HN lately that everyone should work remotely and anyone who doesn't support that is against them and frankly I find that attitude to be just as toxic as the CEOs saying everyone should come back to the office.

Even yourself are saying all the reasons we like office work can be replicated when working from home -- maybe that's true on some level but it doesn't matter. If some of use want to come into the office then why can't we?

[hnlmorg]

I'm getting downvoted again but it's quite true.

Flexible working is the approach we should be striving for. Those who can work remotely can continue to do so. And those who want to come in to the office can do so. We shouldn't assume that remote work is a one size fits all and that's exactly what comments like the GPs does. Furthermore we should assume that those who do like office work are the unreasonable ones. We're not. We're still happy for you to work from home. We just don't personally want to do that every day ourselves.

This isn't just theoretical. I run 3 teams of engineers and push this rule onto them. Thus far it has been very successful.

[Ms-J]

Or how about driving back home in rush-hour traffic after working an entire eight hour day? Even worse!

Anyone advocating that people must return to the office are extreme lone-wolves. Or a CEO fronting as an employee.

[hellisothers]

I’d never call my old ride home nuts to butts on BART “unwinding” but it certainly created a coda between work and home. Now when I walk out of my office at home I’m still in problem solving “work talk” mode and it takes a bit to get out of it.