[ENGNR]

Same! Tech job, my co-founder and I are only a 5 minute drive or bike ride from the office. It’s nice to get dressed and have that separation from home.

I feel like the commute is what people are actually feeling the worst, because it’s unpaid time that they just straight up lose. Being close to the office resolves it for us.

[redserk]

Unfortunately a new job, even 5-8 miles away, may turn a then-5 minute commute into a 45m-1hr commute in many metropolitan areas.

I think more management needs to realize that forcing in-person isn't inherently beneficial. There can be value in meeting up if it's appropriately planned, though.

My current management has been very accommodating with remote/hybrid. If there's a meeting where face-time is beneficial, people voluntarily come in -- but there's no pressure to do so. Generally, we find it easier to pop into the office for a day every few months to whiteboard things instead of dealing with Miro/Zoom. We have a mix of remote folks who live next to the office, some folks within a couple hour drive, and some who need to fly in.

A former job of mine used to fly people to the same location 4x a year for a week to hash out a quarterly plan and grab drinks. The whole agenda was laid out and not a minute felt wasted. While not everyone went 4x a year, everyone was given the opportunity to do so, and this helped alleviate friction.

Another job of mine had remote folks fly in every 3-4 months for a couple of days at a time. Some teams did it more frequently (1x/mo for a couple days) when critical projects were in the pipeline, but they'd return to normal afterwards.

[jart]

Oh tell me about it. I used to have no problem with a 2 hour commute taking metro-north because I could just unwind on the train, and I loved walking into majestic places like grand central station. But a 60 minute commute to travel 10 minutes in the bay area flipping destroyed me, because it was nothing but stop and go traffic the whole way.

[epolanski]

With good public transport and metros such low distanced would never take that long.

But Americans just can't give up the freedom of being stressed in their cars.

[redserk]

I'm a big supporter of public transit but this absolutism isn't grounded in reality.

A 5-10mi change in destination in almost every system that I'm aware of can add a tremendous amount of time to a commute.

[time0ut]

I don't have the discipline to stop working when I work from home. Being able to go into the office every day is a nice perk for me to help structure my day. If it was a longer drive, I'd probably feel differently.

[ultimafan]

I feel the exact opposite- I didn't have the discipline to keep working when I work from home- my productivity plummeted during COVID and skyrocketed when RTO was mandated again. At home I'm too easily distracted by errands, hobby projects in the garage, picking up a book to read "just a chapter" on a coffee break and realizing 2-3 hours have passed, and the like. In office I feel obligated to actually be productive from the combined shame of being seen as a slacker and less physical opportunities to goof off.

[mschuster91]

> In office I feel obligated to actually be productive from the combined shame of being seen as a slacker and less physical opportunities to goof off.

If anything, an office makes for more unproductivity than working remotely. No random people showing up at your desk with "can you help out real quick (LOL) here and there", no "hey we gotta wait for colleague XYZ before we head for lunch break", no coffee room talk...

[epolanski]

No no and no.

Stop thinking all people are the same.

Some people are just unproductive at home, some are more. That's life.

I know plenty of people that are absolutely unproductive at home, they just get distracted easily as the previous user.

And there's many people that just can't work without carrot and stick provided by people/bosses around them judging their daily routine.

Seriously stop thinking that every person works as you.

We are all different and reality is that WFH is tough for many people from many points of view, it's not for everyone.

[ultimafan]

That's true. I suppose if you are a person who has an iron will and good discipline the potential for productivity is much higher at home where you can lock in and just grind for a few hours with no interruptions. I am not that person and suspect many others aren't either, so there's that conflict between potential and real world outcomes where some people are just more productive in office even with all the distractions you mentioned than in an environment where you can actually focus in a flow state but have no surrounding social pressure to do so. I suspect management figures the same which is probably part of why RTO is being pushed so hard.

[generic92034]

In my eyes the individual differences here could mean that it would be better to leave the decisions about WFH or office work to the teams. The team manager should know who can perform well from where and they can react if an arrangement does not work out as expected.

[phito]

Wait you need discipline to... stop working?!

[epolanski]

I can relate.

I work (or at least spend the time at the PC even if I don't) around two hours more per day from home, while the office made me quit much sooner.

[skirmish]

I personally resorted to logging time I spend working in a spreadsheet to keep weekly hours under control. Otherwise I often spend evenings reading work-related papers then the next day I feel guilty of taking a longer lunch. No more, the spreadsheet averages it all out.

[time0ut]

Sadly, yes. I lose track of time and allow work to consume all my waking hours. Having to travel a little helps. I still fall into it if I need to work in the evening after I get home.

[mvanbaak]

Separate your work location from the house life. Best thing i did was putting a desk in the guestroom and turn it into a home office. If im there im working, if im in any other part of the house im not

[mschuster91]

> I feel like the commute is what people are actually feeling the worst, because it’s unpaid time that they just straight up lose.

There's also the associated side costs: getting ready to leave work (more for women, many feel socially obliged to put on makeup), extra clothes washing (personally, I don't like to wear clothes I had to travel in public transport with), having to schedule around errands like tradespeople coming in for repairs or picking up parcels from the post office, and for those with children all the shit associated with that, like picking up said children from daycare (whose opening times often conflict with expected work availability) or transporting them to school and after-school stuff like sports training... and finally, even though people like to deny even the most obvious (like in Munich, the current explosion of covid in wastewater tracking), there is still a pandemic raging on plus all the other "regular" bugs like influenza, RSV, measles and whatever else shit children catch at school, distribute to their parents, who then distribute it around work.

Had society actually learned anything from the two years of Covid dominance, in-presence work would be the exception not the norm, and people who have to perform in-presence work be compensated for their commute.