What Tech Workers Don't Understand They've Lost by WFH (opens in new tab)

I've felt that at the office too. Not sure it is related to WFH for me.

WFH is a change. I'm not surprised some people wary about it. I guess it is healthy. This article, however, really goes far making WFH feel sad. My video calls feel nothing like "speaking to muted mics and webcams, wondering whether anybody is listening at all". We trust each others. Ever lived an in-person meeting where everybody is sleeping because of boredom and a big lunch just before? This kind of thing is possible both remotely and in-person.

Thanks to WFH I've been able to spend quality time with friends and family lately, not having to worry about how I should be able to reach a specific geographic place at all time, and I'm enjoying my colleagues too. Granted, it might take specific personalities, but I seem to fit personally and my colleagues too. Some people are not ready/wired for this, like in my previous company, and that's fine too.

If you have no discipline and no motivation, remote work is not for you. You have to make efforts to have social interactions, get out of the house, draw a line in the sand between work and play. It's real easy once you get your ducks in a row.

WFH is a great, but like anything, if you misuse it and can't find ways to be productive and disciplined, you probably belong in an office under the supervision and comfort of someone (or something, such as cultural ethos) having that discipline for you.

At 9:30, I'll walk 20 feet to my office and start work for the day.

At noon, I'll take an hour with my wife and daughter, cook together, eat together, and get back to work at a little before 1.

At 5:30pm, my work day will end, and I'll cook my family a healthy dinner. It takes a longer, more effort, than ordering in or doing something cheap and easy but I have the time and it's worth it.

The focus of my life is my family, not my job. That is what work from home means to me. Any company that demands I change that focus isn't one I'm willing to work for.

While yes, there has been a move toward fully remote companies (this existed before Covid - e.g. Gitlab), I've never seen this as something that would be broadly adopted - this suits a certain niche, it's great that it exists, I think that niche should grow, but I can't see it ever approaching majority.

Leaving aside fully-remote working, the debate in most cases is about choice and autonomy. While many engineers had flexible working arrangements before Covid, many did not (and the vast majority of non-engineer office workers didn't either). Now these arrangements are the norm (despite managements fighting to remove them).

Personally, I much much prefer working from the office. I have a nice work setup at home now (after much tuning over the past few pandemic years), but it will never be ideal for me. If I were working for a fully remote company, I would need to rent shared space to avail of some of the mental health benefits outlined in this article, and it would still be far from ideal as my work neighbours would not be colleagues.

BUT... I absolutely would not be happy to give up the ability I currently have to stay home if/whenever I need to - it's enormously liberating and allows me to conduct my day-to-day life much more efficiently and happily.

I don't think anyone arguing for WFH is really advocating fully-remote for all (which seems to be this author's assumption?). They're advocating for worker autonomy.

Instead of slacking for 20 mins after intense work, I stand up, bring the dirty clothoes and put them in the washing machine. That simple act not only pull my mind away from thinking about work but also exercise my body. I save some time as well so it's a nice bonus on top. Now back at my computer, I can have a fresh look at what I was working on.

In office, I either surfing on my phone, watch YouTube for striking a conversation with whoever is in the canteen (this often takes a lot more time as you can't just say time's up, I need to work).

They have done the cost/benefit analysis and it’s significantly better to WFH in many scenarios.

One clear example is people that commute and have children they would otherwise miss seeing during weekdays.

Should social interaction with Bob at the office really be prioritised over being there for your child ?

I view one of the purposes of technology as saving us from having to make these terrible choices. I.e. Being able to provide for your family vs. Seeing your children for more than 2 days in a week.

There are just too many valid use-cases for Remote/WFH.

Framing it as “you’re not smart enough to realise what you’ve lost” is naive and misguided.

There is nothing novel in the article, I would argue most people already understand these points well.

The author is also terribly mistaken if he doesn't think people weren't browsing the web while in an office before, procrastinating on getting their work done there as well.

1) I was relocating from where I was to Seattle, and told that I will receive no relocation support because I was technically remote.

2) I was told after speaking to other people I know at other FAANG companies that my seat at the office was not guaranteed. Indeed when I checked with the recruiter and my new manager it turns out that the company does not guarantee you a seat in the office if you are a remote worker.

3) Remote onboarding is a horribly broken and disfunctional experience, I can only speak for the company I am with here your mileage may vary, most links don't work and things aren't really explained well, you end up waiting around most of the time and feel strange, like you are missing something.

It feels very much like being a second class citizen at a FAANG. The perks access clearly isn't there, and there is a lot of assumed knowledge, e.g. "Oh you didn't know you wouldn't be able to go into the office?". Not a fan. I've never felt less like a person and more like a battery.

We don't want to be your friends and hang out afterwards and get drinks.

I am a fantastically social person outside of work, I got to bars, go to concerts. That's where I've met my first real girlfriend, fun concert.

A fun concert that I voluntarily went to.

I absolutely hate company events, I hate this whole forced fun crap. I have other things I would rather do. If you actually would like to become my friend, we can hang out. But not at the office.

Real talk, if I found a job that would allow me to work remote from another country ( where I'm authorized to work), I would be open to working for as little as 60K a year.

That's more than enough to support me in most of the world.

But if instead you tell me I need to live in the bay, all of a sudden.

I need at least 300k total comp.

If I had a family, probably would not have missed the work folks as much, but spending time talking with other programmers every day in casual conversation is a learning experience you won't get just slacking people as part of work. Junior engineers can learn by doing, but being able to have impromptu whiteboard sessions to explain things in detail helps them move forward faster. Sure you could use Zoom, but it becomes just formal meetings instead of a 5 min quick lesson.

RTO vs WFH takes like this are silly and obvious. Yeah, there are downsides to WFH. Do people not realize this through their own introspection? At least for me it has been very obvious that there are negatives to WFH. Realizing this and knowing how to compensate/counteract makes it ok (or great).

- Block time or just go outside for a walk without a screen. If you were WFO this would be a coffee or lunch break. I know I had at least 2 a day. Minimum 30 mins. Not to mention walks to/from the bathroom, or meetings, and chats in between. I forgot how much BS we did in the office. It literally wasn't "butts in seats" from 9-5. No need to feel guilty about walking around the block or house several times a day.

- Close your laptop and stop answering messages when you're done working for the day. If this were WFO, you'd be missing your train and dinner with the family. Boss got a problem with that? Maybe he's a shit boss, maybe the company WLB is trash, or maybe you actually desire something more cushy and coast-able. As long as I am getting my work done and doing a good job, I will defend that boundary at any cost. If it doesn't work out, so be it.

- Feeling socially disconnected? Good! Use the time you aren't spending at lame social event venues to lean into the relationships you already have, or forge new ones via community forums and events. Text an old friend, make a plan to meet up, or plan a vacation.

- Take sick days for mental health. This is a crucial part of your health. Also take them for physical health. Back pain, headache, diarrhea. Just because you're at home doesn't mean these things can't wreck your focus. Don't be afraid to use that benefit.

Going to work in an office everyday isn't so bad when you live in a city, have no responsibilities, and have a <30 minute commute to work on public transit. Especially when you're 20-35 and maybe don't have a ton of friends outside of work. I get it. I moved to a new city for work at 25 and didn't know anyone there. The office is where I made friends and had most of my social interactions. But we still had a work from home policy that made sense for folks that needed it.

I don't mind that others want to work from the office. I mind that others want to drag me back into the office kicking and screaming, all the whole insisting it's "for my own good" when really it comes down to preference.

None of the points ring true for my life. Yes I feel less connected to coworkers, but that's just led me to being more conscious about getting my social interaction outside the office, which I view as healthier anyway. If your only friends are coworkers that's not a healthy situation.

Sure I sometimes procrastinate working by being on the internet (see this comment), but no worse than I did in the office. Rather I'm more productive because I don't have the constant noise of the office and people showing up and my workstation to distract me.

I don't doubt that some find that the lines between work and leisure are blurring, but there are solutions to that other than the office. A friend of mine put his work desk in his garage so he could get up and physically leave work. Another goes for a walk after work to simulate a "commute". Personally I've found it sufficient to maintain a strict separation between work and personal devices and shut off the work devices at the end of the work day.

If the office is right for you, you do you. But don't force it on me on the assumption that because it's the answer for you it must be for me as well.

You can't state this as a fact. Lots of people are able to separate work and leisure when they work remotely. Over the past 25 years I've spent about 30% of my career being remote, and it works brilliantly for me.

If anything I think there's a lot of people who feel they're more able to divide work and leisure time when they work remotely. Prior to the pandemic some people definitely saw the office as a proxy for a social life, and wanted to have their colleagues around after hours in the bar or at barbecues or as friends to hang out with. Many, many people didn't want that at all though. People complain about office socials no end. There are some who just didn't want to socialise at all, some who had a healthy social life entirely separate to work, and some who maintained a balance. The idea that you need to leave your home and go to a different building for part of the day to be any of those is silly.

There is nothing about remote work that prevents you from doing exactly the same with your leisure time that you'd do after hours when you worked in an office. Nothing.

Yeah, no. The boundary was already destroyed by emails and other 'urgent' messages outside of regular hours, on top of the requirement that you get your bum on a seat within view of a manager for 8+ hours a day (the commute time is your problem).

There seem to have been a few 'WFH is bad for you' posts lately. Is this a concerted campaign?

I don't want to see my colleagues, sure I preferred in person meetings but that was only because it was a break from real work. I dislike meetings in general at all.

I want to go to work, do my job, get paid and then after that, that's my life, then I can be around the few people I have chosen to be around not forced interactions with people just because we share the same enviroment.

I came from work cultures with low boundaries related with personal interactions that sometimes I felt permanently in a state of acting.

No, I do not want drinks after work; I will go to the indoor climbing with my friends.

No, I do not want know about the last episode of <Hyped TV show in some streaming>; I will watch my soccer team playing.

No, I do not want to notice your smell if you bought the last Carolina Herrera or if you lack of hygiene and do not use deodorant and took 1h30m in the subway/bus to come to office; I just want to work in my porch breathing fresh and clean air.

The idea of having relationships in workplace is overestimated. Most of the time os just some tool for people show their Machiavellian traits and trying to drag you in office politics. Becky from legal has a new car? I do not care. Kevin from sales have some affair at work? Not interested.

6PM I just shutdown my computer and go to live my life.

The other thing is, every organization will have at least two potentially overlapping cliques (the more they overlap, the better the org): a select cadre of high achievers who fix difficult problems and mentor people into their group, and a 'mafia' who hold the power and make the decisions. In person, it's much easier to learn who they are and observe their activities and act accordingly. With remote, you're in the dark on any communication you're not specifically included on. PRs and bug reports can clue you in, but there might be a stellar admin/SRE who is knows how things really work that you'll never hear about. Stuff like that.

As a small (anecdotal) data point, I run an online store, when the pandemic hit we saw a massive change in browsing habits. Our store sells personalised items that can be quite time consuming for a customer to “play” with before purchasing. It used to be that about 2.30-3pm we would see significant spike in people on the site customising items, during that mid afternoon slump while at work. After people started working from home this vanished completely.

So my assumption, and it’s not that, is that people have become more disciplined when working from home. They are ensuring that they finish their work in the afternoon so that can jump back into home life.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t doing “8 hours” in front of their computers, and may be clocking off early. But I suspect the number of productive hours has increased.

I do NOT feel like my relationships with coworkers are any less friendly or social working from home.

Unfortunately, the office environment wasn't/isn't terrible by nature. It's terrible because it's not about work, it's about managers making life awful for people so they can feel a sense of power. And there's nothing preventing them from ruining wfh in the same way. We're already seeing mandatory webcam observation in student and low-status (eg customer support) roles.

Private offices to cubicles could be plausibly justified by cost, but cubicles to open office was entirely about making life worse. The panopticon will come for wfh too, probably even worse, if we do not fight it every inch.

All I learned from this post is the author is unable to reap the many benefits of WFH. And that's fine; it doesn't have to be awesome for everyone.

Of course, there are more opportunities to goof off at home... but _maybe_, if the work is still getting done in the hours people are working, the remaining work is performative and unnecessary and you can decide to either take on more meaningful work or examine your internalized guilt about Never Working Hard Enough.

Of course, it may be easier to concentrate when you're afraid of someone "catching" you not working... but _maybe_ if you're unable to work without fear, you ought to examine why that's the case and seek better sources of motivation.

Of course, the fact that at least some work is performative and unnecessary makes managers and executives believe this untapped "productivity" is being stolen... but _maybe_ it ought to be pointed out that overworking people leads to lower productivity overall and there's a lot of empirical evidence to suggest that even 40 hours of work a week is too much.

Of course, cities are emptying out and this may be bad for local economies based on a captive class of office workers... but _maybe_ a local economy requiring millions of people to spend hours of their lives each day migrating away from their homes isn't exactly sustainable.

And on and on...

I work for companies based in New York City. We had to move 2.5 hours away from NYC to find a home that fit our budget. If the powers that be want to continue to allow the costs of education and housing to double every 9 and 15 years respectively, they'd better allow us to move where we can actually afford to live ~or~ pay us what we need to house, feed, clothe, and educate our children.

I DON'T miss the godawful commute by train, housing and rent so expensive I couldn't save anything, air-conditioned offices in which the aircon failed every summer, open plan offices where developers sat next to sales and colleagues constantly brought in new (howling) babies to show off, that guy who filled his "quiet moments" with endless monologues that always started "Hey did I ever tell you about that time when...", endless f**ing face-to-face team meetings with no outcomes... I could go on.

Now my office is set up just right, my network is great, I can have peace and quiet on demand, not ruin my hearing wearing headphones all day, and I can take my new dog out for walkies when it suits. I now do video meetings, and guess what: they're still useless :)

It works for me!

I just want to pick up on one point with a pro tip:

> At one point it got so bad that I had to cancel my subscription to The Athletic to stop myself reading it during official work hours.

Have separate work computers and personal computers or have separate operating system accounts.

You need to maintain separation between your work and personal life otherwise both are going to suffer.

Also, if you have a service you use for both (like Trello) have different logins, a work email and a personal one.

I've given this tip before and it was clear a lot of people haven't thought of it - I'm curious to see if this is more obvious to a tech audience.

I think that is the only benefit of working in the office. And I really do not how to replicate that in WFH environment.

I wish I could say I was more surprised by the items you raised, but I've noticed that there is certainly a large contingent of EVERY workforce that seems to suffer from an inability to take any kind of pride in themselves or their work, and unfortunately, those of us who ARE able to focus on work tasks during work hours have been trapped in the "butts in seats" paradigm for decades as a result of those individuals. I'm glad to see the market finally correcting itself.

There's not much of a reason to continue reading after this bit about the pandemic being "over" when COVID is still around and we have polio and monkeypox going around.

Full time WfH is where I've settled.

I find the flexibility suits me better - if I want to take a long lunch so I can cook in the middle of the day, I can. If I'm not being productive, I can do something else and come back later.

It gives me a lot more freedom to work in the way that suits me best, and for our company we've found it's actually more productive. We get more work done, without people doing more hours, and the fact it cuts out my commute is just the cherry on top.

We even have a little group setup of people I used to go to lunch with. We post crap from the internet etc.

Most of my team is in other states so even if I did go back to an office my work process wouldn't change.

but I would spend a fortune more in gas and going out to eat at lunch.

I checked the news and stuff at the office and do the same at home.

The big difference is the hour a day I get back and I have a little better attitude.

Ha. That's news to me. Here in QC, Canada our hospitals are still suffering a lot from overcrowding covid patients. Cases are on the rise again. It's far from over.

Make it a habit to shut off your work laptop and pack it away somewhere you feel compelled to open it on weekends. If you’re feeling alienated, set up a weekly lunch date with a friend or join a social group. Make it a habit to sign onto meetings early for a couple minutes of small-talk etc.

WFH can present some problems, but I’m not convinced they are unsolvable problems.

I am here to extract the cash required to have a safe and enjoyable life. Working on adtech and security tech is a means to an end.

People can be addressed and asked to enable them and they will.

I also have a few regular syncmeetings with a few critical colleagues which also helps a lot.

I will not go back to the office and I will not do the 2-3 days per week in the office dance.

    One of the advantages of office work is that being surrounded
    by colleagues pushes us to get our work done during office time. 

the panopticon is real

For starters, introverts and extroverts might feel very differently regarding WFH.

WFH is literally the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I would take a 50% pay cut with zero second thoughts if it were the only way to stay remote.

> Nobody likes to do video call hangouts/drinks, but many of us enjoy it in person.

Disagree, I don't mind in-person but I don't mind virtual at all.

> If we're lucky, we're confronted with the images (including our own) of several different people all on one screen. If we're unlucky everyone has their camera off, and we speak into a void of muted mics and turned off cameras hoping that someone is actually listening to us.

And similarly wearing blindfolds at a bar isn't fun. Come on, you can twist the settings to make in-person better and I'll agree virtual is still a good bit away from 1-to-1 in-person but it's not anywhere near as bad as this guy makes it out to be.

> Video calls add friction to human interactions. The most jarring experience of this for instance is telling a joke while people have their microphones on mute. No matter how funny the joke is the response feels like an awkward silence.

I've spent hundreds of hours in video calls since 2020 and I think this has happened 1 time max and it was even funnier after people unmuted. I'm really finding it hard to take this guy seriously.

> In a previous role, one Microsoft Teams update led to calls exceeding 10 minutes turning the fans on my 2 year old Macbook Pro to their highest setting. I'm still curious to know what Microsoft Teams would have been processing in the background of those meetings.

And the point is? No really? Do fans bother people that much? Are they not using headsets and/or earbuds? I sit in a room with 3 desktops, a Synology, an my MBP (sometimes 2), fans have never bothered me once. Also Teams is hot garbage, news at 11.

> Reasearch by Gartner has shown that remote new joiners have a diminished sense of beloging to their organisation. Remote working is making it too easy to stay in our bubbles rather than to engage with our colleagues.

I joined my company fully remote in late 2019. The pandemic actually improved a number of things about working remote and brought me closer to my coworkers on the whole. You have to make an effort, setup a "catch up" zoom call with people to see how they are doing, what's new in their lives, the same way you would walk over in an office and talk to someone. Sure it might take an extra step but I've not found it taxing in the least, also your conversation is completely private and there is no chance of someone overhearing and butting in, something I experienced more than a few times when working in-person.

> Knowing our colleagues on a more personal level makes it easier to communicate and solve problems, making work much more rewarding.

I agree with this but being remote doesn't make this impossible to accomplish by a long shot. I'm able to form bonds just fine over zoom.

> At my current company many colleagues have been poached by someone who used to work with them and is now managing a team at a different company. This poacher who has enticed a lot of the Data Science & Data Engineering talent has been offering their former colleagues jobs without interviews. It's because of the meaningful relationships that my colleagues have established with this poacher while working in person before the pandemic that they have been offered this opportunity.

Again, far from impossible even over zoom. I've helped get 2 ex-coworkers hired at my current company and if I ever went elsewhere I'd at least try poaching a few people I met at my current job because again, you can form bonds just fine over zoom/chat.

> The lines between work time and home time have become much more blurry with WFH. It is not just us either: a study of real-time data from millions of GitHub users found that work was often being re-allocated from the traditional 9-6pm weekday hours to evenings and even weekends. Life is losing the punctuation points between work and leisure that we have enjoyed in the past.

Gasp! People are picking when they work instead of being forced in an outdated mold? The horror! Spare me, this isn't an issue on it's own. It's important that people have a good work/life balance but that looks different for everyone and assuming we all do best in a one-size-fits-all 9-5 is absurd. I personally choose to end my day at 5pm but as long as the requests are infrequent and minor I have no issue jumping on for a quick zoom if I'm free or kicking off a deploy if it's requested. My job is in CA, I live in KY, 3 hours different but they've been extremely respectful of my "5pm" and in turn I'm happy to occasionally help out past that time. In fact, I'm almost positive I worked past 5pm or in the evenings more at my last in-person job.

I'm not even going to touch on these "focussing as a service" things. If they work for you great, not everyone needs them and pretending it sees widespread usage needs some data to back it up.

All in all I find most of these examples to not have only a passing resemblance to reality. Some of the examples are more realistic than others but the outlandish examples make it hard to take them seriously (again, fans?). If you want to work from an office go work from an office, with so many companies wanting a return to the office you shouldn't have a problem. I can't help but feeling like this guy didn't care at all about people who preferred WFH or were asking for it prior to 2020. I have no issue with people who want to go back to the office, just don't try to force me back.