Without talking about WFH vs RTO, I have to comment about the “commute” and the attitudes towards it.
Every article discussing this issue imagines the commute to be a static, never changing situation as if it were a law of nature.
IOW, even the idea of maybe improving transportation, and housing, so that people can live close to where offices would be located and/or improve transportation options so your commute isn’t a 30 min drive if you’re lucky, but could also be a comfortable and safe bike ride, easy bus transportation in a dedicated lane, or clean and modern subways, isn’t even considered.
The real tragedy isn’t WFH vs RTO. The real tragedy is that Americans have built a country where stepping out of your home once a day is a miserable chore to be avoided at all costs if possible.
> The real tragedy is that Americans have built a country where stepping out of your home once a day is a miserable chore to be avoided at all costs if possible.
This is exactly it for me. The job I've held for many years is in Seattle's city limits and my family has lived in Seattle for even longer. I intentionally looked for a job here because I gave up driving years ago, as did my wife. My children have never learned to drive or have a license.
Meanwhile, many of my colleagues have moved to Auburn or Kent or Edmonds or Snohomish, insisting that it's not possible to raise a child in the city (my kids would beg to disagree) or seeking the "American Dream" of a standalone house. But every single one of them complained about the hours of their lives they were giving away in exchange for that.
I think it's fine to build transit to the suburbs. It doesn't have to be light rail, though there's a well-known rail bias, but we've proven that frequent express buses from regional centers can work. Commuting is a drag, that's why I don't do it.
(My employer also went to open plan spaces for technical and administrative staff before the pandemic. As we are a medical group, doctors still had their own doors, of course. Now, we have sold one office building and given up the lease on another. Technical and admin staff are fully remote but can use a company-paid WeWork account if we like. Medical staff are in the remaining office building and our patient care locations.)
>we've proven that frequent express buses from regional centers can work
Who's "we"? Seattle's express busses, at least outside the downtown core, have been a joke for a long time. Every half hour at absolute peak for ST routes like the 545/522 and stopping hours before bars and nightlife close so good luck getting home.
Admittedly they were better than the awful suburban alternatives - for a long time the fastest bus route from my eastside house to Microsoft was to take one express bus 45-60 minutes to downtown Seattle and another one 30-45 minutes east to Redmond because the other north/south connections are that bad. I wouldn't call that proof that they can work.
And of course that's ignoring the current light rail split. If you don't want to go somewhere directly on the light rail line (let's say South Lake Union, since we're commuting) you could previously take an bus from Woodinville, Kirkland, or Redmond into downtown Seattle and with a single transfer get where you want to go.
Post-light rail good luck. The 522 will drop you off in Northgate, where you can walk a few blocks to light rail, ride a few stops, walk a few more blocks, and catch another bus. 1h43min with 2 transfers at peak commuting hours or a 28min drive. If that's success I hope never to see failure.
I had a very different experience relaying on the buses, bicycle, and light rail as my primary transportation within Seattle. Seattle has very limited East/West travel options, but that is mostly because of geographic concerns. If you want to travel North/South it's much easier.
The dedicated bus lanes and app to tell you estimated arrival time based on location data were particularly good touches. I would consider Seattle bus system to be among the best in the states.
Edit: IMO the key to easy commuting in Seattle is to plan your life in a way that you minimize the number of times you have to cross a lake, canal, or bay.
I lived in Ballard for five years. If I drove to and from the office, even at rush hour, it was probably a 30-minute commute. It was 45-60 minutes by bus most days, and far less comfortable, because route 40 is one of the busiest on the network (or was at the time), and would often get stuck in traffic.
This is despite every-7-minute service and dedicated bus lanes.
Seattle might have some of the best bus service in the US, but bus transit is objectively worse than rail transit on a separated grade. (And on this point, one of Sound Transit's worst decisions was building at-grade light rail, which essentially turns Link into a streetcar for substantial portions of its route.)
Edit: I will admit that the express busses run frequently at peak commuting hours, but they still drop to half hourly or hourly in evenings such that if you're not commuting at peak hours they're painful to rely on.
https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/routes-schedules/5...
I bought a house on the C-line, which was great for awhile. Then Seattle decided enforcing fares was racist, that it was intolerant to kick off people smoking fentanyl on the bus, and it was still faster to drive to work, so I did that instead. :(
Minneapolis is dealing with similar non-enforcement issues on our light rail. As safety and harassment issues increased, common ridership has dropped which exacerbates the problems.
My 5 years in Seattle taught me that there's no faster way to commute than by car. I bought a house as close into the city as I could, but the only affordable place was Skyway, so that's where I ended up. My partner and I at the time were both in tech, and that's all we could afford. Anything closer in to where transit didn't suck, cost monumentally more money. Prices of homes near light rail was totally unaffordable. When we left Seattle, we would not have been able to afford the house at the price we sold it.
> The job I've held for many years is in Seattle's city limits and my family has lived in Seattle for even longer.
Curious about what your mortgage payment is, verses someone who buys it at current value. If it’s more than a few years, can be 2-3x more given property values and interest rate
Good for you! now can you imagine that there are others living in this country maybe in a different situation? I hate these comments that say "my life is great, i can't see what these people are whining about"
And I tend to dislike the opposite, comments that suggest that people living in one of the wealthiest and freest nation ever have no control or autonomy over their lives and just have to live out a miserable existence.
I constantly blows my mind that people living in the USA think that they're doing well; by most metrics the USA is a middle-of-the-pack country by current standards of living (including freedom).
Psychologically it's a huge deal to go from "we're the best in the world,in every way,end of discussion" to "sure ,other places are better at some things, and so we have room for improvement ."
The generation raised post ww2 lived through the height of the cold War. American supremacy was built into every part of society. In many ways it was true. But America has stagnated in some ways and gone "full capitalism" in others,and so now (from outside) it seems that lead has slipped.
Acknowledging that you're "not the best" is a very sobering day ,a day collective America has yet to experience.
So internally in America messaging stays firm - we're the best at everything,all the time. Sometimes this is true (particularly if you add the phrase "if you can afford it")
Without getting political, you see this in the MAGA movement. There's a desire to return to the psychology of the 50s and 60s ,where we could legitimately feel like we're in front. Or at least if all the whiners would stop complaining,I could go back to believing we're perfect in every way.
Progressiveness implies change,and since we're perfect change can only be bad.
Of course this psychology is not universal.more than half the country believes change is required,and are Psychologically prepared for it. The other half are not yet ready to believe "we can do better ".
> So internally in America messaging stays firm - we're the best at everything,all the time. Sometimes this is true (particularly if you add the phrase "if you can afford it") Without getting political,you see this in the MAGA movement.
That doesn't make any sense. If everything was great there wouldn't be any need to "make America great again".
It makes sense if you see this from a psychological, rather than policy, point of view. MAGA _policies_ tend to be regressive (I mean that in a chronological sense, not pejoratively.) In other words a reversion to "make me feel the way I did growing up". Hot-button topics are things like immigration, racism (or more accurately, discussion of racism), education, abortion etc.
Psychologically MAGA appeals to the folk who want to "feel like we're perfect" - emphasis on "feel". It's hard to argue that America has every been "great" - for all Americans. But certainly there's a period where a large chunk of the population _felt_ great.
The current political movement is trying to re-create that feeling. Perhaps the slogan is more like "Make (some parts) of America Feel Great Again". MSPAFGA doesn't quite roll off the tongue though.
Again, I'm not trying to be political here, as much as understand the psychology of the era. MAGA is a sub-set of Americans, and I'm not suggesting that it represents the feelings of everyone in a specific party. But clearly there is some proportion of Americans who resonate with the message - absent any actual policy suggestions.
Even the slogan itself is a nostalgic callback. Reagan used it in his 1980 presidential campaign, though not in exactly that form, nor was it quite as much of a repetitive mantra.
I understand you're not trying to be political, but instead discussing the underlying psychology, and I'll endeavor to do the same.
I think focusing on these sorts of domestic social issues misses a huge part of the point. To borrow a phrase from another presidential campaign, "it's the economy, stupid". If there's a downturn and people are getting laid off from their jobs, or if there's inflation, people are going to feel like the country isn't doing well. Especially when you can tell a compelling narrative about how it's the fault of other countries. A huge part of the MAGA narrative was about China and Mexico ripping us off in unfair trade deals because the US government is terrible at negotiating, so we should elect a strong, tough negotiator.
And you can sort of extend this into foreign policy as well. Trump's foreign policy was scatterbrained from a policy perspective, but from a psychological perspective, there was a very consistent theme. Project strength. Don't look weak. Be a tough negotiator. Pull out of deals where we're getting screwed. Play hardball. The core of the MAGA message was about winning. It was a mantra, everything from "America doesn't win anymore" to "you're going to get tired of winning". Nostalgia is part of it, but so is power.
I also think people are nostalgic for the post-war era when the US produced the most steel, the most cars, the most oil, and everyone could get a middle class job and buy a house and a car or two, even on a single income. That nostalgia is almost universal and bipartisan. Some people emphasize stronger unions and lower income inequality, some people emphasize the role of foreign trade, some people emphasize both. It depends on what narrative you're telling and who you want to blame. But at this point, the nostalgia itself is old enough that it isn't directly personal for the majority of voters anymore.
I don't currently live in the USA, I live in Canada, but I have also lived in China, Morocco, France and travel quite a bit. The USA is absolutely one of the best countries in the world in terms of standard of living and freedom.
Can you imagine that there are people in this country who, (even though they are lucky enough to live where there is public transport) don't want to triple their commute time by using public transport?
You’d have to fix a lot more than housing and transportation. You’d also have to address crime, mental health, drugs, and public disorder. Living within walking distance of the office is nice. Having to dodge needles, human feces, psychotics, and periodic rioting is not.
I used to be an urbanist, too. Lived in Seattle and didn’t own a car for many years. But there are some real problems in our cities, and virtually no urbanists are serious about solving them. In fact, many will make fun of you for bringing them up. (Not that it’s easy to tell given the equal lack of progress on housing and transportation.)
Politics is a grotesque dance between the demagogues and the mob. A sane human being’s best interest is probably to just avoid being stepped on.
But it’s not all bad. The commute between the bedroom and the home office is pretty great.
My employer did this by splitting their headquarters into four physical offices. No need to convince people to go to a single suburb. In fact, the original downtown office is still there. For me this resulted in a seven minute drive to and from work, instead of a 60-90 minute bus ride each way. Meetings are via Zoom, just as they were during the pandemic.
> The real tragedy is that Americans have built a country
Hold up right there, the length of the commute is not a problem. A 5min walk also means 20min prep, absolute best case you spend 30min/day & 10h month on this.
And that is just one problem.
Tech is so frustrating. You have real solved problems and people resist tech and you have things like being forced to use apps for everything and people are ok with that.
There is the interruptions, inevitable social conflicts, mental health (and physical), and so much more. Even attending a meeting takes much more time and energy.
Even when i try to be lazy i end up working many times more when wfh than office. I am convinced managers are either stuck on old metrics or have no idea how to remotely manage their people for wfh to be an issue.
If I go to the office i will not work when i get home or in weekends (too tired) but since covid I've been working whenever to meet objectives.
Also, no more driving. Good for environment I thought!? And no more being pulled over by cops, accidents,etc...
For what I paid for my spacious 3 bedroom house for my wife and I, I would have been lucky to find a 2 bedroom apartment close to the office.
Combine that with the constant disruptions to public transport here and it's very common for it to take 2 hours to get into work in the morning.
I would just quit if they mandated RTO, unless they're going to pay me enough to afford a similar standard of living close to the office I'm not interested at all.
According to a few claiming to be managers / business owners in another discussion those things don't provide business value. They pay top dollar for their people to deliver.
In my opinion, my ideal walkable/livable community is the university town. It has everything you need in walking distance. Most people who work in the community live in the community. Public transportation is well-used, to the point cars are often outright forbidden. Lots of greenspace, with good wifi through the whole town. Well managed library and IT infrastructure. Very inclusive and welcoming community, as they are arranged around the idea of incorporating new people into the community on a regular basis.
I'm one of those lifers that went to college and never left, now entering my 5th year as a professor. That's a lie -- I had 3 years in industry, and I just hated it. I mean, the people were okay, but "the real world" seems to be a euphemism for having to put up with the shitty systems and communities that everyone else has to.
But here's the thing (and sorry to rant for a minute), calling academia an "ivory tower" in contrast to the "real world" is an admission that we have to accept the shitty systems and communities past generations have built for us. Because with all of the craziness in the banking sector and tech sector lately, it's hard to convince me that academia is any more divorced from reality than other large industries out there that are trying to run the world. How is academia any more of an ivory tower than silicon valley? And aren't those silicon valley bankers and billionaires the ones who are trying to shape the world in their image, while crashing banks and laying off hundreds of thousands of people? To me, that is a dark tower, and one we should not be trying to emulate at a country scale; whereas my community, the places I walk, the people I work with every day, the relationships I build with them -- that's the real world. Or at least my world. /r
Yes academia is a bubble and unique, but at the same time, that's what allows it to be a place where you can have the things you say you want. Is it sustainable? You know, probably not, but at the same time many of these communities are over a century old. I know my University has plans for sustainable growth for the next 100 years. There's surely still work to do to make such communities more sustainable, less costly to manage, and larger and more widespread. But still, the university town is a model that proves we can at least build walkable communities in America. They definitely exist!
University towns are nice little "theme parks" for those who can afford them. In the real world we need things like ports, factories, and warehouses.
I will not attempt to defend the bizarre excesses of the tech industry. But over a long enough time scale, tech companies have to either turn a profit or disappear so there is at least some grounding in objective reality. Whereas academia faces no such pressures, and many instructors teaching courses have never even worked outside that environment.
> But over a long enough time scale, tech companies have to either turn a profit or disappear so there is at least some grounding in objective reality.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. The US Government subsidizes many industries, to the point where if those subsidies went away, those industries would not be profitable any longer (hence the subsidies). Yet, those industries, like say farming, are called the "real world" because they somehow I guess have a more objective interface with reality? It doesn't make sense.
Well here's some objective reality: as a society, as with food, we understand we have to teach people, and there's no profit in that. On the other side, students demand results, and we give them, and earn a reputation for delivering. Colleges that don't deliver go under, and new colleges are formed all the time, so it's not even accurate that there are no forcing functions or grounding in reality. That some universities have been around for a century or more is a testament to their success in the marketplace, not evidence they are immune from market forces.
And it's interesting that "profit" is always the measure used when one wants to prove that academia doesn't belong in this world. I mean, yeah, you're right. When you frame the world in terms of profit and loss, anything that makes a loss should just be done away with. Problem is then you end up in a world with no schools, hospitals, parks, community centers, museums, orchestras, art galleries, etc. In the real world, we need those things too.
Farm subsidies are generally stupid, but in the US at least most of those subsidies and price supports have been reduced or eliminated. Today the majority of farms receive zero subsidies. You're not going to get subsidized if you want to grow, let's say, pears or catfish.
I don't expect schools to turn a profit. It's fine for them to be a bit disconnected from the real world. The point is that we shouldn't take ivory-tower academics seriously when they speak outside their narrow fields of expertise.
The oldest universities tend to be the least subject to market forces. They obtain most of their revenue from grants, donations, and investment (endowment) gains. Relatively little comes from student tuition, and even that is mostly "other people's money". That's not necessarily a bad thing, but when a professor who has always worked in academia gives advice on urban planning I'm going to be highly skeptical.
> They obtain most of their revenue from grants, donations, and investment (endowment) gains.
All of which exhibit market-like forces. Grants are not gifts; universities must attract academics who then produce impactful research, which is then used to gain additional grants. When a professor invents something new or discovers something, the university that hired him/her gains in reputation. The more useful and interesting research a university produces, the more grant money they get. How is this process divorced from reality? Universities and scientists divorced from reality should not be able to make discoveries about it, so it's very important for people in academia to be tethered to the reality, despite what the popular wisdom says.
As for donations, where do they come from? Well they come from rich people, who have made a lot of profits. Earlier you said corporations prove their worth in the long run by earning profits. Wouldn't that apply to graduates of a university as well? Of course there's a lot that goes into the mix, but for those students who go on to be successful and then donate back to the university, aren't they doing so because they attribute their success to the university specifically? So it would seem to me that if a university wants donations, they should do a good job; and if they don't do a good job, they shouldn't expect donations. To me, that seems like a market force right there.
Finally, endowments seem to be the most tethered to reality, if we define reality as "the market". Earnings are invested directly into the rest of the system as with any other business. It's often said that Harvard is a hedge fund with a school as a side hustle. But then isn't Harvard just as attached to reality as any hedge fund?
> The point is that we shouldn't take ivory-tower academics seriously when they speak outside their narrow fields of expertise... when a professor who has always worked in academia gives advice on urban planning I'm going to be highly skeptical.
Sure, I can of course agree we should listen to people according to the expertise they bring to the table. At the same time, we shouldn't discount their input on the basis they aren't practitioners, because the practicing city planners themselves and industry writ large haven't exactly proven they are competent stewards of our cities. Indeed, this story is about how they've failed us all on a wide scale. My point is that the "ivory tower" urban planners actually have a vision for a walkable, livable city, that has been modeled, deployed, and iterated for over 100 years. Maybe we could consider that it's not so divorced from reality, and go from there? It seems it's a complete nonstarter for people, for the reasons you've articulated, and I'm just not convinced.
I mean, people say the suburbs as an entire concept is not sustainable and divorced from reality. Yet we drove that model to the absolute extreme. It sure benefited corporations and big box stores outside of city centers, but what suffered were our communities, social relationships, and of course the environment. We built huge road systems to connect cities and suburbs. We manufacture expensive cars, sell them to people on credit, then expect them to use it to burn gas for hours just to get to and fro their work 5 times a week, all so they can hope to pay off the car one day!
This whole system is absurd but we accept it at face value it seems as "the real world" because it was very profitable for some people. And then we use the fact this industry was profitable to prove ipso facto is was worth it all along, as we wonder why we can't afford to commute to work.
Meanwhile, people building livable, walkable cities where designed for people are pie-in-the-sky idealists. You know, people we probably shouldn't listen to, because what could they possibly have to say? What could they know about city planning? I mean where are all the cars? Where's the Walmart? They call this a town?
I dunno - academia has almost priced itself out of practicality, drunk on "cheap" government loans without having to provide any concrete benefits for their services. The veneer is starting to crack.
I am laughing hysterically at this from my university town with four campuses spread out over a hilly landscape, tons of traffic and limited public transportation schedules that would triple commute time for most workers. Things are set up to work for the irregular schedules of students, not professionals (even academic professionals). When I lived 1 mile from my office in town, I would bike instead of use the bus, because the bus didn't run on a schedule that would correspond to any of the 3 largest employers in town, catering to the schedules of students and senior citizens who need to get to mid morning/mid afternoon classes or shopping instead.
I've seen university towns like you describe (or university areas of other towns), but that's not even close to universal, and many other university towns in my region are also very lacking in public transit.
WFH is still massive in countries that have all of this.
I live 15-25 minutes from Central London via tube or cycle, so do loads of my friends.
There are effectively zero in person companies despite this.
People just mostly prefer to wake up 5 minutes before they clock on and work in their pyjamas. I don't get it, but I've accepted at this point that I'm just not going to.
There’s another aspect of this, one which has been an issue for centuries and an extreme issue for decades: location.
Many cities formed as a result of useful geography. In the UK, at least, that reason is often water-based transport. These locations meant that large scale transport of goods was practical, as well as the ability to have all of the resources necessary to sustain large populations in those areas.
In the modern day, at least in the UK, cities are much less practical. Getting anywhere in them is a pain - road links are too busy, rail is extortionate and over-subscribed. And why are they so busy and expensive? Because everyone has to do it. Why? Because that’s where the high paying companies are. Why? Because the way it has always been done. Why? Because… the place has links to good waterways?
And what do you do when you get there? The same damn thing you’d do at home, but in a noisier and less comfortable environment. You can speak to the same people you could huddle with in Slack, except there’s no mute button. You’re bombarded with a brightly lit, white, open plan room, which could only ever have been popularised by people who don’t understand what a productive environment actually is.
Like many on here, because we have a certain affinity for the tech sector, I have ADHD. I am extremely productive when I’m in an environment that allows me to shut out everything else and focus on what I need to do. Working from home unleashed a level of productivity I wasn’t aware that I was capable of, and once you’ve got that buzz - you aren’t going to let go of it without resistance.
I'm literally smack dab inside of my city, but I still prefer WFH. My office was an "open" style hellscape that was a barely renovated parking garage, complete with harsh concrete and constant loud drilling work on said concrete, an HVAC system that was freezing in the fall and spring and never worked during the summer, High school cafeteria style """desks""", HVAC that meant you couldn't hear yourself think, meeting rooms that were annoying to use because we had a remote person on our team already, and coworkers constantly standing next to my desk having loud conversations with another person standing next to my desk.
Fuck anything that tries to portray WFH as some sort of laziness, or agoraphobia, or avoidance of travel. Home offices are expensive, mediocre, and mean I have to spend my personal fun time in exactly the same seat I work in, which is detrimental to my mental health.
But all of that is STILL better than the bullshit of working in what modern tech companies call "offices" because we were 5 years away from just being thrown into an empty gymnasium as our offices anyway, usually to just to penny pinch on the renovations of an office that costs ten times as much as it should because it's waterfront property that we never fucking needed as an ecommerce company!
Hikikomori vibes do make sense, but there’s a caveat: Work and social life are not the same thing.
Companies showed their ignorance of this when the political response to Covid switched to downplay mode and companies tried to lure people back with pizza and games. The cringe factor there is extreme.
I understand my colleagues. I empathise with them. I work with them effectively and in general I bear them. But like them? God no. They’re not my friends.
I am no hermit. I have a wife and kid, and would trade spending time with them them every morning and evening over any job on the planet. When I commuted I’d leave before they wake up and get home after my kid goes to sleep - that, to me, is the definition of an isolated existence.
> … all these pro-WFH arguments here at HN give me almost hikikomori vibes.
This doesn’t match my experience. I’m a teleworker with a family and the percentage of my life spent interacting with other human beings is much higher than when I was a single person commuting to the office every day, or even a person with a family commuting to the office every day.
Sure it’s the same few people instead of the dozen or so in an office and the smattering when I went out at night. But those relationships with the fewer people I interact with now are a good deal stronger than those other cases.
I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the current norm of commuting in to an office or other workplace is anomalous in the history of humanity. People certainly had varied and meaningful personal relationships before this. The bulk of humanity weren’t essentially reclusive hermits prior to the start of the rat race.
There are certainly benefits and drawbacks to then as now, but people spoke in person with their neighbors, engaged in civic life, found community in their faith, etc. Many of these social outlets have been replaced in bulk for a lot of people by a work social life and a nightlife out at restaurants and bars where relationships may be many but more fleeting. And maybe some of our interpersonal skills have suffered for it. Certainly there are feuds and rivalries of historic proportion before office culture, but I think conflict management is developed more when there are difficult people in your communities that you just need to deal with — think of decades-long neighbors.
But I’m sure some of these are my own biases: I went from living in a city and commuting to work to living in a very rural area and mostly teleworking.
Do I miss the city? Yes, certainly: arts and entertainment events, cuisines of any kind in walking or public transportation distance, etc. Do I miss going into the office every day? Sometimes: I honestly do like some of my coworkers enough to be real friends with. Am I the American equivalent of a hikikomori? No: I have stronger personal relationships with both family, neighbors, and members of my community than ever before — and certainly than more so than when I commuted to an office every day.
I do listen to a lot fewer podcasts and new music without a commute though.
>Rattner writes that he thinks virtual commuters have “gone soft” and quotes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as stating that the remote option appeals to individuals who don’t want to “hustle” as much as they should.
Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss.
The marketplace is talking, are you listening? Nope.
Oh and Jamie Dimon, looking for some more bailouts? I guess by hustle you mean begging to CYA.
>Americans’ “work ethic” is lacking, Rattner says, especially in comparison to that of the Chinese, which he describes as “extraordinary.” (Rattner did not respond to a request, passed to him through the Times, to discuss his piece.)
You mean the workers that are practically forced labor? Good one. I'll bet you'd love to go back to the good ole slave days, huh? Maybe corporations shouldn't have given away all their IP to make a buck, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in with the supply chain. Keep up that hustle.
Nope, corporations got worse and worse, paid less and less compared to the cost of living, and people finally had enough. I think that's what's happening. The ones that allow work from home will have a much higher chance of survival than the ones that buy your rhetoric.
I'll bet people will be more willing to go back if they had their own offices instead of the travesty that is "open office." "Better for communication!" Ya right. Do that and maybe you'll get some bites.
> Honestly, Americans are getting hard. They were soft when they allowed themselves to be pushed around, jobs outsourced, sign 4 year non-competes and non-disparage agreements, and put up with crappy bosses with no cost of living increases, and sexually harassed in the office by their boss.
Couldn't agree more. It's almost comical how these owners and managers are resorting to juvenile, schoolyard bully tactics against workers who are finally standing up for themselves and demanding more.
"Aw, you won't eat that bug? It's because you're scared isn't it? Wow, I didn't know you were so such a scaredey-cat!"
"Aw, 2 hours a day is too much to commute? Sounds like you don't even wanna work. Wow, I didn't know you were so lazy!"
Yep, left my job a couple weeks ago primarily for that non sense, mandating going back 5 days a week 9-5 AND in an “open office” where I can’t focus 5 minutes straight..
A friend of mine I have worked with for 2+ decades used to love his long commute when he was married and had children in the house. When I asked him why he liked being in a car for over an hour each way, he said:
That's incredibly depressing. I feel like the better solution would be to have an honest conversation with your wife that you need some alone time rather than waste it sitting in traffic.
This one depends on the person. 30 min each way with an audio book or pod cast while driving on the high way - nearly no distractions, hopefully no checking of the phone alone time. Doesn’t seem that bad in that case.
Exactly. It doesn’t mean you hate your life or your wife or your kids, just that you enjoy the bit of time to decompress, prepare for the day, or just think.
Definitely want to be careful not to disparage women, because raising a family can be so difficult, but for a lot of families, this isn't an option.
As you said, this is incredibly sad. I don't know the answer or what peoples lives are actually like. I have witnessed friends wives have total meltdowns, because we were playing videogames when she wanted him to be cleaning their already spotless house for relatives... I honestly thought he was going to get stabbed.
Do it before you get home. Literally stop the car on the next street over or wherever, and just sit there for 10 minutes and decompress. Then drive the last block home, and be ready to go when you walk in the door.
> the remote option appeals to individuals who don’t want to “hustle” as much as they should. Americans’ “work ethic” is lacking
It's desperation. Americans are lacking the desperation necessary to endure unnatural commutes and spaces. What these 'people' want are more desperate workers.
Idk, I'm payed pretty well, but am still lazy as fuck. I see comments like this on hackernews, but I bet you're still all making 6 figures, or $150+ in SV.
I'm an outlier, a laborer turned foreman turned field engineer in construction who likes nerdy shit so as I've transitioned to more and more office stuff I found hacker news. :V
...I do make 6 figures, but I still wear steel toes to work?
I live in an above average COL area, but I would have to pay atleast 6x to have a similar sized home if I were to live within commuting distance from Manhattan or SF/Palo Alto. Not to mention the other expenses that would rise, with increased tax liability being about as significant as the child care number presented in the article.
Those of us that left the cities had the opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of dollars since 03/20. I'll look into commuting if the compensation exceeds the savings.
Then don’t look for a similar size home? Look for one that’s much smaller and fits your budget. Or don’t.
I also live in an above average COL area and rent the smallest apartment I could find for a monthly rent of about 1/750th the cost of the single family homes next door.
Unless you’re hella wealthy you can’t live in an expensive city and expect the same housing arrangement you’d get in the suburbs. The trade offs are worth it for some people and aren’t for others.
I’m really struggling how what your employer “gets” has to do with this.
Regardless, my point is that anyone who says, “I’d have to pay 6x as much for the same house near Manhattan as in Iowa” has a truly unrealistic view of living near Manhattan. You make do with less space than you’d “like” and get the benefits of living near Manhattan. If that tradeoff isn’t appealing to you, keep the remote job and stay in Iowa.
Moving to a central office location has real costs associated with it. If I were to live near Manhattan or SV I could spend 6x and get comparative housing, or I spend 2x and live somewhere smaller but adequate. I am in a position that I could do either of those things. I don't want to, because I think it's a bad use of my money. I understand the city has benefits. Been there, done that. I don't have an unrealistic view, I just have preferences, and a detailed understanding how different markets meet my preferences.
I’m not sure if you think you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me here.
I’m saying that it’s unrealistic to expect to pay $X in Manhattan and $X in Iowa and to get identical living arrangements. That’s it. If your employer is located in Manhattan and requires in-office work, your employer doesn’t care that you can’t afford the McMansion of your dreams in Midtown. You just need to make a choice that is realistic: move and get a smaller place and commute to the office or find a remote job and stay in Iowa.
My employer gets the same time in both locations, but in one I get a big house and the other one I get “the smallest apartment available” and ride the subway
Right and a big house isn’t a benefit to everyone and riding the subway isn’t the burn you think it is to everyone.
If you want to trade your time for money at a job that requires in-office work in Manhattan, either hope that job pays a ton of money so you can get a big place, accept a smaller place, or find a new job.
What these discussions always seem to forget is that WFH is you paying for your office space, i.e., a subsidy (versus the previous status quo) to your employer.
That's easy to forget for people in the US where land and housing is cheap, but I'm not convinced that it's so exciting in, e.g., Switzerland where residential land is scarce and expensive.
Long commutes are also a subsidy to your employer. If employers paid enough for a similar standard of living down the block from the office, that's what everyone would do.
Truth. Would employers be ok with long commutes if they had to subsidize the cost of the commute from the time and fuel/wear and tear cost? Suddenly under that hypothetical scenario WFH becomes a lot more attractive
It’s uncommon worldwide, but the majority of Japanese companies pay for employees’ regular daily commuting expenses in full [1]. Typically this is in the form of a commuter ticket that is good for journeys anywhere on the route between your home and work. Pretty handy if you want to break up your journey midway to run some errands or stop off at a cafe or restaurant.
Granted, this is something of a holdover from Japanese society in the late 20th century where lifetime employment was the norm, and nowadays this practice is becoming slightly less common. For instance, a specialist working for a Japanese company (like myself, a few years back), should expect to pay for their own transportation costs. Frankly, it was worth bearing the cost myself, though, as I did not need to reciprocate loyalty to the company in the same way my coworkers did by spending long hours at the office and participating in mandatory-ish social gatherings that lasted late into the night.
That mostly never happens. Even in the past when you had to travel, a lot of time is spent packing, going to the airport etc that's never accounted for as a part of your "work hours".
True, but that’s more of a slight against what is culturally billable as work time vs the reality of the intangibles of how much it costs to commute in the employee-employer relationship
Long commutes are mostly employees choosing to live further away from the office. I saw it often with my coworkers. They could have lived closer to the office. I got a place across the street from my office. Later we choose to move away because we wanted a bigger house.
If everyone moved within 3 miles of their office it would massively cleanup the traffic commute situation. But we build huge highways which subsidizes people who live far away from their offices.
Most of the time, if your employer is in town, housing there costs a lot more for a lot less (or the same) space. Many people cannot afford to double or triple (or more) their housing cost in order to live in town close to their work. Employers aren't willing to pay you more if you live closer to work in order to compensate you for this increase in costs. And then, there's no guarantee that this job you've arranged your life around will be permanent or career-long, so why do it? Why increase your rent or mortgage immensely to use more of the identical paycheck for a decreased standard of living with no guarantees of employment stability? And that's before we consider any other factors like where the better schools/less violent areas/etc. might be for raising children.
We knew a family in a close-in suburb of Washington, DC, about a mile outside the Beltway. Both parents worked for the EPA at White Oak, perhaps three miles from their house. Then the government reshuffled, and that part of the EPA ended up in Crystal City, Virginia, may twelve miles away, but a much longer commute.
This kind of thing happens to people a lot. My wife's then employer moved from downtown Washington to Rosslyn, Virginia--not a great difference in distance, but a worse commute. [Edit] I should add that this employer then moved back to Washington, DC. The Rosslyn location had the merit of being close to a Metro station, the new location was a mile or more from one.
I’m reminded of a previous house move. A two-bedroom flat 20 miles from work was £125k, and one within a mile, but otherwise similar, was about £350k. I could barely afford the first one.
> What these discussions always seem to forget is that WFH is you paying for your office space, i.e., a subsidy (versus the previous status quo) to your employer.
Another way to look at the same situation is an employer is bonusing 1+ hours of non-work life each day previously spent preparing for and then commuting by an employee when they work from home.
Whether or not this is a cost-effective transaction is a per-individual decision IMHO.
I save enough money in gas alone (let alone eating lunches out) to more than make up for this subsidy of me paying for my home office/electricity/Internet. And I also get to not freeze to death in a noisy open plan office all day. It's so much better it's not even a joke.
Office space is a computer desk, a decent chair, power, network, coffee. I expect I’ll always have that stuff at home, working or not. I even have a B&W laser (though only my gaming PC has a driver).
When the pandemic hit I was in a 500sqft studio across the street for the (soon to be) closed office. I actually did not own a desk or monitor or anything. I had to move when the lease was up to a bigger apartment. Now that I live with my partner, they need space for an office at home. Now we have ~1000sqft and live in a less dense neighborhood to compensate on cost.
I would prefer a smaller apartment (less to clean, less stuff, etc) in a high rise. But now I can’t afford that since I need 2 desks at home. Our employers didn’t pay us more and now there’s no office to go to if we didn’t want to work at home.
It is clear that the tax system does not work properly for work from home. All those office expenses are pre-tax for the employer but post-tax for the employee. Makes no sense, they are the same expenses for the same purpose.
This is also why I’ve been advocating for more companies to take the google approach to perks - instead of more salary, provide a good lunch. A $10 lunch to me costs $18 pre tax to the company via salary (in CA). But that also includes profit margin on the lunch provider, so might only cost the company $8 to provide.
This is also why I have advocated for a “net worth” tax (kinda like property tax but for all net worth) instead of income tax. If you spend money on an experience or disposable item (good for the economy) you aren’t taxed on that money.
There should be a tax form you can get from your employer that states you work primarily from home, and then home office items/broadband costs should be deductible on it.
Except nothing is deductible if you don't surpass the standard deduction, so unless you can find $12k of other various deductions, nothing is ever deductible for the individual player.
Office space is space - a dedicated room or at least a quiet, out-of-the-way section of one's home, where your concentration won't be interrupted by other family members, where you won't have anyone moving around in your video background during your meetings, and where your typing noise and bright monitor won't be keeping anyone from going to sleep.
In cities with small apartments, such space is a luxury. Often unaffordable luxury when you have children who also need space to sleep and play and do homework.
Meanwhile, you cannot achieve it in the modern open corporate office space … “where your concentration won't be interrupted by other workers, where you won't have anyone moving around in your video background during your meetings, and where your typing noise and bright monitor won't be keeping anyone from concentrating.”
The way this was "sold" at my workplace by the CEO reads exactly the same as whichever top executive I've been reading recently since this whole "back to the office push" started. A sad script fed to the masses to justify maintaining the status quo for as long as possible. Because people are seriously stupid.
I think we'll go though a period of adjustment before landing on a few different work arrangements: only office, only home, and some hybrid option in-between. Some companies are born remote and won't ever change. People will either suffer through an arrangement they don't like or quit and move to something that suits them better. I'm independent and most of my work is remote. That said, sometimes I like to take jobs where I'm in the office because it's a different dynamic and occasionally nice to be around other people. So, I'd be happy in a world of more choice on where I worked and the thought of one way to work for everyone is probably outdated.
I've started thinking about all work not in the office as distributed work.. .. instead of remote, work from home, virtual, etc.
Why? Distributed work seems to convey a higher standard of quality, thought, care in communicating well for the companies trying to do it.
While new employees generally do much better starting off at the office and then transitioning to distributed work (they have a chance to learn what the culture of "how we do it here" in person)
For those who insist on 100% wfh may be consenting to some employers accepting it and being ok to list the jobs 100% remote to the best value and performance globally, instead of the current pool.
Distributed work, that maybe is hybrid may be the best of both worlds.
Hybrid takes away the benefits of wfh while lowering the productivity of in office. Both parties must spend money on property. Visits to the office become non work days and more social visits. The ability to hire better developers disappears.
That might be, hybrid can work well for non developer roles.
Startups typically work better and faster in person too.
To be clear , I’ve worked remotely for the better part of 10-15 years. To help tip things towards the flexibility I like, I invest and make sure my own setup is much more productive than anything I’ll be provided.
The pandemic shift to egg was a non issue for me, I felt like the world came to me. Still, an in person component at one time or another has been indispensable to make things much easier - be it roll out, training, or upfront discovery. People are much more open to change or collaboration when you’ve got a foundation of some kind in person even if it’s team building.
Hybrid is when management wants onsite but doesn't want to risk it all yet. If they ever get the chance they'll add more days required in the office as time goes by.
This name is interesting. Distributed office locations already happen. Distributed groups could be employee choice, not just employer choice all the time. If several employees happen to live on the same side of a city and want to meet for part of the day in their favorite coffee shop or somewhere to brainstorm on a project together, that ought to count as "in office" time.
I'm not sure if my situation is a little different as I work for a government contractor. Our WFH situation is now a voluntary hybrid system. If you have a certain level of seniority, or time at the company, you can WFH. They only ask us to come into the office twice a month.
While I like working from home in general I tend to find it utterly boring, and go into the office at least one day a week. I find it easier to maintain relationships and stay up to date on projects by talking, and in person works best for me.
Perhaps it hasn't happened where you are but some businesses have been crying about the lack of foot traffic and so 1 thing the government can control is to ask government employees back the office.
The people telling us we need offices are always the ones who have meaningless jobs like a CEO. Their time in the office consists of saying hello to people and then going to lunch. If they wish to go home at any point, they just ask their chauffeur. It's just not really a fair comparison.
>"...Steven Rattner argued, in a piece called “Is Working From Home Really Working?,” that the increasing prevalence of remote work reflects a change not just in technological capacity and social circumstances but in the United States’ entire attitude toward labor—a change that is “not for the better,” he says, and that “threatens to do long-lasting damage to economic growth and prosperity.”
No shit Sherlock. Now please do show me where did I sign to work for "growth and prosperity"? I do not give a flying fuck about it. Never have. Never will. As for his likes the "prosperity" means rich fucktards buying more yachts and owning more of the world while the rest enjoys inflation eating into their money.
Once the passions cool and boards realize they could juice EPS by $0.02/share by closing the offices the debate will be over and those that can will be working from home. All data points to increased or equivalent productivity, and “office culture” is not a fiduciary duty, but maximizing shareholder value is.
Good point: to a board that sees everything through a lense of shareholder value, cost savings from closing an office are quantifiable but "increased productivity and innovation" from RTO is not.
More importantly boards have a legal obligation to see everything through shareholder value. The fact is there’s plenty of evidence of increased productivity and innovation from letting workers work the way they work best. What’s at issue is senior executives want everyone to value the things that brought them their own success, some nebulous idea of “office culture” and “hustle” and whatever other malarkey that boils down to “work the way I like not the way you like because I’m in charge.” RTO has nothing to do with profit, value, productivity, or any of that. It’s an ideological issue, and boards don’t work on behalf of ideology. In fact in many ways their purpose is to control for ideology interfering with profit and shareholder value creation.
Most managers I have observed do not give this topic that depth of thought. The dominate mindset has been, "if I (the manager) do not see you in a seat when and where I expect, then you are not working."
If employees work from home, these types of managers feel emasculated.
This post of yours Zetice is absolutely hilarious. You are actually writing that an office worker, able to string along proper prose, with a wife who is also working, should consider themselves too poor to consider having children?
What society do you want to be living in? Are you sure you would have been lucky enough to get anywhere, well first to even get to being born, in such a society?
Personal responsibility is a foundational part of life in any society. But a lot of voices, particularly in America, worship it religiously (and often hypocritically), and use the phrase as an oversimplified dismissal of other people's problems.
Regardless, not the author nor commenters do imply the answer is "nowhere". On the other hand, your post implied an answer somewhat far toward the opposite end of the spectrum.
To be clear, no argument is being made that people should not consider pragmatic parameters when deciding to have children. However, they should not have to meet such a high bar, as you are implying by your attitude on this specific case (the author's case).
What is an acceptable bar, then? I'm open to the flexibility, I'm just not hearing any from other folks here, all of whom seem to think any two people at any time can decide to have as many children as they desire, with zero resulting responsibility for that decision.
> I just can't muster up the empathy he seems to be expecting.
He isn't expecting empathy for having kids.
He's making an equation that says:
The cost of child care is so high that if you work from home and handle your children with flexible working hours, it is hard for him to find a job that requires him to be in the office and will compensate him the cost of child care he cannot perform himself.
So even if in-office jobs paid more, it would unlikely be worth it to him.
What he doesn't explicitly say is: He's got an incredible privilege. Not everyone has a skill or a negotiation ability that lets you pick a remote job always. So not only does he save the $40k per year in child care, he probably earns quite well on his remote job, compared to the national average who does need to show up at the office.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it's very possible the answer to the question of, "Why is my life so difficult?" to be, "Ten years ago you made a really bad choice for you and there's no real way around that."
That choice, for may, could be the choice to have children, deciding to stay in a HCOL area, going to college (specifically taking out loans to do so) etc.
SVB made "safe" bets on 10 yr T notes and it ended up being wrong. Individuals making "safe" bets on getting married, going to college, having kids, may also be making bad life choices for them. I think at least we should have that conversation...
Author does not say his life is difficult because of kids.
Author says working in office has too high alternative cost because of kids. But it could have been any reason: that time spent flexibly could have gone towards any goal.
Using kids tuition is just a flex. Once you can afford to insist on working remote (assuming you want to), you can earn more money because you get 5-15 hours back every week from not commuting and lunch breaking every day.
> we should discuss the possibility that choosing to have kids are the ultimate cause of OPs issues
That doesn’t make sense.
Considering OP’s efforts, having kids is presumably an objective in this person’s life. If he wasn’t breathing, he wouldn’t have these problems, so why not discuss the possibility that the ultimate cause of OP’s problems is that he’s breathing?
People who don’t have kids won’t have the specific problem of paying for their kids’ expenses and being as constrained for time during working hours.
But for those, this conversation does not apply.
You can make a different argument that working in office prevents you from exceeding being a wage space, because you can’t run a side business or live on a beach as you always wanted.
The essence of the article is the alternative code of working in an office, you seem to make it about whether one should have kids, as if the cost was a deciding factor for those who consider to have kids at all. Which it supposedly is for some, but not all.
yet aging countries are toying with the idea of subsidizing childcare? choosing to have children shouldn't be so heavily penalized, especially since it's a biological and (cultural, in many cases) imperative
I don't want children, but I understand that societal systems correctly value children (both emotionally and shrewdly) more than other costly choices, like hobbies or professional ambitions. I happily pay the portion of my taxes that go to supporting children and child-having (directly or indirectly).
So you think literally anyone, at any time, should be supported by their society to have any number of kids, regardless of their financial or social situation?
I really don't understand what the value of this blank check for having children regardless of circumstances provides...
>So you think literally anyone, at any time, should be supported by their society to have any number of kids, regardless of their financial or social situation?
At no point did they say anything even CLOSE to that you disingenuous butthead. Don't put words in people's mouths.
That's clearly trying to act like they said something, not you asking a genuine question. If you want to actually ask someone a question, find a way to word it that isn't so presumptuous and strawman-y
Nope, I genuinely wanted to know if that's what they thought, and frankly am not interested in your socialization tips, especially considering the only thing you've contributed here is antagonistic browbeating of a stranger.
Every article discussing this issue imagines the commute to be a static, never changing situation as if it were a law of nature.
IOW, even the idea of maybe improving transportation, and housing, so that people can live close to where offices would be located and/or improve transportation options so your commute isn’t a 30 min drive if you’re lucky, but could also be a comfortable and safe bike ride, easy bus transportation in a dedicated lane, or clean and modern subways, isn’t even considered.
The real tragedy isn’t WFH vs RTO. The real tragedy is that Americans have built a country where stepping out of your home once a day is a miserable chore to be avoided at all costs if possible.