[awslattery]

> unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home

WFH for 2012-2023 here.

With our first home purchase in 2018 being on the smaller size, and the introduction of our first child to the family in 2021, I started keeping an eye on nearby options.

In March of 2023, a perfect little spot opened up that could support me and another employee in the same town. Pitched it to our small company, and now I have a dedicated office that is a 4 minute walk away.

Cannot stress enough how impactful those few minutes are (or more, if I need to decompress more than normal) are for separation of concern between home life and work, especially with young children in the picture.

Still get to enjoy lunch with stay-at-home wife and kiddo almost everyday.

It also shares property with a great pizzeria and one of the best taproom/bottleshops in town, which is a great perk beyond my waistline and liver... looking forward to taking the new bike to the nearby bike trail when it isn't 110° everyday.

[red-iron-pine]

> Cannot stress enough how impactful those few minutes are (or more, if I need to decompress more than normal) are for separation of concern between home life and work, especially with young children in the picture.

been remote since 2015. absolutely agree with this, even though I'm still remote. the only way I'd go back to the office is if it's close to that experience -- a 5-10 min walk away.

living close to a coffee shops, gyms, and other amenities meant that I did a "morning commute" to get coffee most mornings -- more expensive than petrol, but still cheaper overall compared to driving. multiple choices, so could hit the local as well as chain shops.

a gym and grocery store being nearby also meant that I could so an "evening commute" and workout, snag groceries, run errands, etc.

having young kids makes it great too... most of the time. it's nice to be able to walk upstairs and play with the wee one.

[freetanga]

Nice, and I agree with you. In my line of work would not be so easy, as large corpos have a bunch of job safety and info sec standards, beyond internet connection.

Clean desk policy, no take-home printouts, clear whiteboards with confidencial information, etc…

I had a WFH employee who once burn himself at home while making coffee with his own coffee pot, and sue the company as he claimed was a job-related accident. We had to settle and pay him, or have Unions making a big fuzz.

There are all sort of people in the workplace, and policies try to accommodate not only CEO whims, but also to manage a crowd full of many different types of people.

[awslattery]

> In my line of work would not be so easy, as large corpos have a bunch of job safety and info sec standards, beyond internet connection.

Having worked DoD in the past, I can completely echo that it would be quite a challenge to explore something like this for many organizations.

> I had a WFH employee who once burn himself at home while making coffee with his own coffee pot, and sue the company as he claimed was a job-related accident. We had to settle and pay him, or have Unions making a big fuzz.

"This is why we can't have nice things," personified.

[lampshades]

What kind of space did you find and how did you pitch it? The other employee lived in the same town already?

I'd like to do this as well.

[awslattery]

> What kind of space did you find

It is a rather unique build done by a lawyer-turned-metalworks artist a little more than a decade ago. Multiple units with adjoining walls, each with a private patio, minisplits, and a rather raw aesthetic. Very high ceilings, plenty of outlets of various voltages/amperages available. Our neighbor makes bespoke cycling bags and such. Other tenants range from retail and services to private offices.

> and how did you pitch it?

The founder of the company lived here for many years, and paid for coworking access pre-COVID when it was still a startup (now general cloud/software consultancy for public health agencies and the like).

WFH and the vacation of many of our decent coworking spaces due to COVID took a toll on him, and moved to PHL about a year ago for a change of scenery / be closer to some of our larger clients.

With that context, it was pretty easy to pitch it as a physical "hub" for him when he visits family/friends, myself, and our other employee who lives in the same town. We still have a good physical location for our corporate entity, and the cost difference between 3x coworking offices at post-COVID rates was not too much for him to stomach.

> The other employee lived in the same town already?

Yes! We had become good acquaintances for a few years before COVID as he worked remotely for an organization in Ireland from the same coworking space.

When COVID hit, his team were among the first to be cut, and as his skills meant I would no longer be overextended between cloud and frontend, it was one of the easiest hires we've made to date.