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Aurornis 3 hours ago [-]
…of a single company
> Researchers analyzed survey data from 7,704 employees at a large healthcare organization.
I’ve been remote and worked for remote companies for a long time. In my observation, the well-being is bimodal. The people who adapt well to remote thrive. There are a lot of people who think they’re going to love remote who ultimately flame out from the loneliness, isolation, lack of visual boundaries between work and home life, and lack of externally enforced routine.
It’s really sad when the latter happens because it’s almost always someone who was hired for their great work and abilities. Then over time they get drained and you can see that the remote work wasn’t what they expected.
It’s basically impossible to predict who will fall into each category at the interview stage, or at least I can’t do it. Prior remote work success (not just experience) is the best indicator but it’s hard to evaluate, too. Some of the most difficult remote hires I’ve worked with had past remote work experience, but it’s only after being hired that you learn they struggled at those companies too.
pixelready 27 minutes ago [-]
Another factor beyond individual suitability to remote work (which certainly varies person to person and even within a person’s lifetime due to lifestyle changes), is the work situation itself.
One thing I don’t see mentioned in these discussions much is that someone might be perfectly content WFH when given clear goals and autonomy to execute in a neutral political environment, but do a few unexplained mass layoffs, give muddy direction or tighten the leash with stricter policies or new monitoring software and watch paranoia and depression take root (this is true in-office as well but I think gets amplified over Slack due to a stronger prisoner’s dilemma effect).
Unfortunately due to the power differential, any disruption to output caused by these situations will still be blamed on the individual contributor.
Xirdus 2 hours ago [-]
I used to have a hybrid job. The company culture was oriented for 100% remote, because it was 100% remote until RTO happened. The office space felt like a coworking space where everybody was a remote worker who just happened to work on the same project in the same company. Nobody ever approached anybody, everything was over Slack. We did have meeting rooms but everybody preferred calling in from their desks. Even for the daily standup! Most miserable workplace experience of my life.
I interpret the study findings not as remote workers being happier, but on-site workers being less happy in remote-oriented companies than on-site workers in on-site-oriented companies.
harvey9 37 minutes ago [-]
it says a large healthcare org but does not say if that's a care provider where on-site jobs will be completely different from remote-compatible ones, or an insurer where most jobs could be done mostly on a PC.
jambalaya8 2 hours ago [-]
I get this. What we are missing out on now is being able to read the room and environment PROPERLY. Hybrid jobs won't do this well. WFH won't, above a certain percentage of people working from home, in general, usually.
naravara 1 hours ago [-]
I will say I dislike remote work in terms of how it serves me at work. But having a 100% remote job has made me far more able to maintain my house and be present for my children when they’re still very young. So if we were weighting overall life satisfaction that outweighs the extent to which it alienates me from my job.
Now maybe my employer has reason to dislike that I’m probably like 80% of the worker I would have been if we were in office, but the 80% has been enough to exceed expectations on my performance reviews so there doesn’t seem to be a problem.
JohnMakin 59 minutes ago [-]
> lack of visual boundaries between work and home life,
This was the major one for me, in addition to the other stuff you mentioned. The "always at work" feeling was reinforced by the management style of remote work being like, we expect you to be generally available to respond at any time in a 12 hour window, sometimes more (because everyone works their own schedules across multiple timezones). In an office this separation is clean, and if I'm responding to messages or working at home, it's generally accepted this is outside the norm and I'm perfectly free to just shut the laptop off until the next morning 99% of the time unless I am on-call. It's nice.
The first thing I did when I went back fully in-office was tear down my home office and turn it into a game room. I generally do not even use a computer in my home. Sometimes we have enforced WFH days due to various things or events, but I established the understanding with management that generally I will not be expected to work full days from home outside of emergencies and I take those days off.
I understand some people love it, and I have a good office environment which helps, but the downsides (general office annoyances, commuting, lunch expenses, clothing expenses, etc) way outweigh the downsides of working remote for me. I got severely depressed and burnt out very quickly.
hiAndrewQuinn 44 minutes ago [-]
>Prior remote work success (not just experience) is the best indicator but it’s hard to evaluate, too. Some of the most difficult remote hires I’ve worked with had past remote work experience, but it’s only after being hired that you learn they struggled at those companies too.
I often tell people that I'm unusually well suited to remote work because I've had a lot of practice. Starting in high school I was out more days than I was in owing to health problems, yet I still managed to knock out 11 AP classes because I got really serious about reading the textbook and actually studying on my own time. This was even before I discovered spaced repetition systems.
By the time I actually got to college I realized these techniques were not only more effective and enjoyable for me than sitting down in lectures, but that the vast majority of students never actually had to build these muscles to begin with. They really struggle when the courses get too big to cram into a class session, but it's not because they're dumb or anything - it's literally just an endurance sport they've never played.
I feel those same muscles are the ones I've been using in remote work, which I've had the good fortune to do my entire career in at least a 60% capacity and more often a 100% capacity. Remote work likely feels deeply unnatural at first, to people who aren't used to putting in focused sweat at a desk in their own room far beyond what traditional education typically requires.
I hope my own children develop this ability too, although I'm not really sure how to get them there.
coffeefirst 1 hours ago [-]
It’s also circumstantial.
Working remote during COVID sucked and felt unmoored.
Once I had a robust IRL social life and could go see some live music again, it was great.
It also depends if you live in tiny apartment or if you have a house with a dedicated space.
The same person can take to it depending on the circumstances.
jp57 22 minutes ago [-]
There is no mention of how many of the surveyed workers are even able to work remotely. A large healthcare organization is likely to employ many people who must be on-site in a hospital or clinic to even do their jobs, from doctors and nurses to orderlies, food service, and cleaning staff.
It is easy to imagine that the ER staff might report lower well-being than someone on the admin staff who works from home on their laptop all day.
soupfordummies 3 hours ago [-]
How do you know they're flaming out/struggling/etc because of remote work issues rather than other issues like company culture etc?
mercanlIl 2 hours ago [-]
I’ve talked with colleagues that have confirmed exactly what the parent comment is saying. They benefit from the external structure, routine, and separation of work/home life.
Some people just don’t want to work next to their gaming PC, completely unsupervised. Others live alone and don’t live near their friends and family. Both these groups (can) suffer from a fully remote environment.
toomuchtodo 2 hours ago [-]
I fully support coworking spaces for folks who need the in person socialization (especially in the context of entry level and juniors), but I will leave the labor force entirely before I ever go back into an office (~12 years remote, ~25 years in tech). I have a partner and kids, coworkers are not my friends (we simply share a paycheck provider and a body of shared work), but I understand other lives and the needs of others differs. Your social needs are not my needs. I get to eat lunch with my partner every day, see my kids more, no commute, etc.
jambalaya8 2 hours ago [-]
Either at the company or at home (though I mean working at a coffee shop sometimes isn't so bad). Coworking spaces might help
with socialization and some people need it but I am not sure how that benefits who you work for.
dijksterhuis 2 hours ago [-]
> Coworking spaces might help with socialization and some people need it but I am not sure how that benefits who you work for.
because, as someone else i replied to in the thread points out, miserable employees perform worse.
2 hours ago [-]
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
The most undeniable examples were when we worked at a company that had offices, but allowed people to work remote at their discretion.
The people who were burning out at home would become revived and re-energized when they came into the office for something and would stay that way for a week or two.
Then they would slide back into burnout and social problems (assuming benign interactions were hostile in Slack or that people were backstabbing the. was common) the longer they were away from the office.
Some people had the self-awareness to start bringing themselves back to the office for a few days each week and would directly admit they struggled to work from home.
It’s really not uncommon and readily acknowledged in every offline remote work environment I’ve been in. It’s only on social media where you run into claims that remote works well for everyone.
vector_spaces 1 hours ago [-]
Likewise online you run into claims that full remote or hybrid can't and doesn't work for anyone, and we all interpret observed dynamics at work to construct theories supportive of whichever configuration is our favorite (WFH/Hybrid/In Office) or as evidence the one we dislike is worse. In reality the situation is messy and complicated and heavily circumstantial, depending on team/company culture and dynamics and working styles.
For instance, I've observed dynamics like what you describe at various orgs, and what they had in common was a lack of psychological safety. If people are responding defensively to benign messages then it tends to mean they have a reason to expect hostile messages. Hostile messages are not a given.
One common way this arises: a company ostensibly offers flexible remote work, but in practice strongly prefers in-office work, and enforces this via social pressure. Remote work has a small social cost that accumulates each full day that one works remotely. These remote-oriented workers then have to periodically show up at the office primarily to ingratiate themselves to management and their peers. This is incredibly common, and might even be the default configuration for an org that permits flexible WFH.
I don't think this is intentionally malicious, BTW. It's simply what happens when you make a policy shift without considering your team culture as well so that both working styles are supported as first-class citizens.
jambalaya8 2 hours ago [-]
Thank you. This. The backstabbing and passive aggression are so much more trenchant.
2 hours ago [-]
tikhonj 1 hours ago [-]
Exactly the same thing happens with in-office work. I've certainly had that experience! But it's hard to talk about because in-person work is the "default", and it feels like if you have problems with that it's a sign of problems with you.
(Not to mention that, in both contexts, it's very hard to pull apart being remote vs in-office from other aspects of the work and culture.)
buddhistdude 59 minutes ago [-]
I just flamed out exactly as you describe. It's my second time also. If anyone has any tips for some kind of counseling or coaching or anything else, would be much appreciated.
mrsilencedogood 2 hours ago [-]
I absolutely detest this framing of remote vs onsite. What it really is is accommodated vs not-accommodated.
For some people, an office is an accommodation - they need that not-home space with other people in it. For others, a home office is an accommodation - a very convenient/local space with very few distractions.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that putting someone somewhere they do not feel accommodated is going to reduce performance.
I also really reject this boomer-esque idea that in-office helps underperformers underperform less. Instead I find it helps under-performers _appear_ to underperform less because they can chat up the boss and more visibly do performative stuff like showing up early or leaving late.
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
In my situation above we were accommodating people. They got to choose where they worked.
The problem I was talking about was with people who asked to work from home but struggled with it.
Some of them did start coming in to the office more when they realized what was happening. Many did not, believing that work from home was best for them.
dijksterhuis 1 hours ago [-]
> In my situation above we were accommodating people. They got to choose where they worked.
this sounds like the WFH people might be treated the same way as the in-office people. as in you're retaining an in-office culture but people can choose to WFH. that is not the same thing as being a remote working company. the culture is completely different in an org that successfully does remote working.
as a functional example on the social side, people booking in time to just hang out and chat. even if it's work chat but just more relaxed chat. build in some social element beyond just treating it as cogs in a 9-5 machine. add an extra 30 minutes to a team update call to just have a chat with everyone -- including folks in the office.
edit -- to be clear, managers need to be doing that ^
2 hours ago [-]
dijksterhuis 2 hours ago [-]
100% agreed. i flamed out while remote working at $LAST_JOB. it was a combination of a changing cultural dynamic, changing expectations of my role (which i wasn't comfortable with) and a lack of necessary staffing.
remote work was a blessing for me. but turned out the ceo didn't want us remote working.
i tried repeatedly to communicate what i needed to do my best with my boss and the ceo. but the ceo fought me on all of it.
foobarian 3 hours ago [-]
I am doing well with remote because I'm pathologically introverted and find that being around people is exhausting. I can imagine things being the other way around for extroverts and that is saddening.
steveBK123 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah this is the primary disconnect because management is more extroverted and so they hated remote / don't see why some want it.
sunaurus 45 minutes ago [-]
Honestly the lack of empathy about this topic from top management is extremely disturbing.
Nothing else in my career has ever changed my opinion about a CEO as quickly and drastically as hearing them completely dismiss it as noise, when hundreds of employees explain how negatively forced RTO affects their well-being and productivity.
b1gTekken 2 hours ago [-]
Some struggle regardless of remote or onsite because office job culture has become fucking stupid FOMO fueled social animal farm, not a meaningful economic contributor in real terms.
That never comes up though as the dogma must survive.
pydry 2 hours ago [-]
>There are a lot of people who think they’re going to love remote who ultimately flame out from the loneliness, isolation, lack of visual boundaries between work and home life
This used to be me but pair programming / in-call collaborative working solved 100% of all of those problems.
Even the work/life boundary was solved because as soon as I dropped off the call at the end of the day my brain immediately switched off work mode.
These days the first thing I do in a new team is try to suss out who else is a bit like this and try to work out a collaborative working pattern that works for all of us.
It's not just more fun it's almost unreasonably effective. People who work non collaboratively tend to make more mistakes, bugs and worse decisions.
tikhonj 28 minutes ago [-]
Too bad so many companies insist on top-down management practices that actively make this harder: planning and tracking work in individually owned tickets, individual stack-ranked performance evaluations, "productivity" metrics that don't account for collaboration or shared learning...
(This is something I've repeatedly noticed in discussions about getting people in-office, and about open office plans vs individual offices: the same managers who push these changes through in the name of "collaboration" create a bunch of other management processes that strongly disincentivize collaborative work.)
But in environments where I've been able to do this effectively, it's always been great, far better than going of totally on my own!
gusmally 2 hours ago [-]
Would love to hear more tips. This is me too, and I suspect some of my team members. I've been trying to build in more collaboration into tickets (e.g., an acceptance criteria that is "talk to the rest of the team about the decision you make on X aspect of implementation"), and I'm looking for more.
Those collaborative conversations are so often fruitful in ways I don't expect.
dijksterhuis 2 hours ago [-]
"office hours". a dedicated afternoon where anyone from the company could drop in to a running call and just ask me anything about engineering. bug reports; features; questions; feedback; anything.
building in an extra 30 minutes on team catchup calls just to hang out at the end. usually end up talking about some work stuff, but in a more relaxed/social way.
demo/learning sessions. how to use databricks, how to do X, how X works, this cool thing we built.
albatross79 36 minutes ago [-]
Being able to work remotely is like being sentenced to prison and then finding a get-out-of-jail-free card.
I always strive to do my best at work and make a good impression. But I have absolutely 0 interest in the product, the mission, the culture, the personal or collective aspirations of owners, shareholders, leaders or "leadership", or who they are as people. I generally like my coworkers and we get along, but that's not worth a 2 hour round trip in the car, or using a public washroom, or eating in a cafeteria, or sitting uncomfortably at a desk all day, or listening to everyone's boring stories.
The best part though, is no team building nonsense, no company BBQs or pizza days, no casual Fridays, no boss dropping in for a one on one, no psychos trying to get the energy level up with a "LETS GOOOO TEAM!!"
Just doing a good job for good pay and being treated like an adult. I didn't know working could be like this when I was starting out.
MaxHoppersGhost 24 minutes ago [-]
I'm glad you work remote because to be candid you sound like a miserable person to be stuck in an office with.
albatross79 9 minutes ago [-]
It's like being taken hostage with people who are pretending to like it. Meanwhile some of them have personal lives so bad or they're so afraid of being alone that they genuinely do like it.
mootdentures 2 minutes ago [-]
Why so cynical? Some of my best friends and favorite people are people who I initially met as random coworkers.
small_model 9 minutes ago [-]
I agree 100%, you get paid to do your job, anything above this is charity to the shareholders/executives/managers. I work as a contractor so get paid for days I work, I've watched permanent staff who were perfect corporate bots get the boot while I stayed as I focused on the work.
gnarbarian 26 minutes ago [-]
and this is exactly why you will be seen as disposable and the first to go when layoffs happen.
personal relationships are very important, arguably more important that your raw performance.
sarchertech 19 minutes ago [-]
Unless you get caught up in a big layoff where the people you have relationships with have zero input.
albatross79 18 minutes ago [-]
I've never been the first to be let go. It turns out if you do valuable work, people notice that and want to keep you around. On the other hand, when I had jobs based on a personal connection, it was almost the opposite. I was treated almost like an imposter. The conventional wisdom on this is just stupid. No one is going to keep you on just because you're a good buddy. Being useful always comes first.
gnarbarian 1 minutes ago [-]
people aren't rational actors. given your work passes a basic functional bar, if you are well liked, your work will be valued. if you are not liked, people will pick your work apart. these mechanisms feed back on one another but your narrative leads me to believe you /have/ forged meaningful relationships and are more well liked than you realize.
They didn’t control for occupation, pay, managerial status etc.. An on-site physical job like nurse, facilities, or technician was compared to predominantly remote administrative jobs.
softwaredoug 2 hours ago [-]
Exactly. I support remote work, but purely as a question of science, it may not be a direct causal link between remote work -> happiness. There may be other factors at play.
1970-01-01 1 hours ago [-]
Thanks. The complete gap to measure at-home living conditions kicks this into a flawed study. It does not control for physical living conditions anywhere. For instance, if your home is just some hot and filthy room in a neighborhood with lots crime, you're RTO just to escape the horrible environment.
happytoexplain 3 hours ago [-]
There are a thousand factors, but one of the biggest and simplest is getting commute time back. Gaining even one hour a day is life-changing. Imagine gaining two hours.
e_i_pi_2 2 hours ago [-]
I know of a company where they want anyone within 90m to commute, so that's up to three hours lost in a day, making an 8 hour workday actually 11+ hours
DiggyJohnson 2 hours ago [-]
I’m always confused why the default commute time in these discussions is always 60 or 90 minutes one way. 60+ minute commutes are outliers and I don’t understand why a person would take a job that far away without being aware of the commute or moving closer to the work. Does that make sense? Most American commute 10-30 minutes. That’s the middle of the bell curve.
Aurornis 2 hours ago [-]
We’re in a weird period where a lot of jobs went fully remote around COVID, many weren’t prepared for it, and now they’re doing the opposite over-reaction and forcing everyone back.
A lot of the people I know who went remote after COVID took remote jobs at new companies (remember “the great resignation”?) or moved to a new house because they thought they were done with commuting. Then their companies said they wanted everyone back.
forestrywat 27 minutes ago [-]
Do you have a citation for that?
tikhonj 26 minutes ago [-]
I mean, in a lot of these cases people take those jobs because they're able to work remotely initially... and then get hit with an inflexible, top-down RTO mandate once they've settled into the role.
bluefirebrand 2 hours ago [-]
> 60+ minute commutes are outliers and I don’t understand why a person would take a job that far away without being aware of the commute or moving closer to the work
60+ minute commute times are very common where I live. If you are anywhere outside of the downtown area you either pay for parking (expensive) and have a shorter commute, or you use public transit (cheap) and have a long commute.
When I used to commute to an office it was easily an hour to an hour and a half each way every day. I hated it
ghaff 1 hours ago [-]
When I commuted semi-regularly into a downtown office, it was a good 90 minutes. Latterly, going into a newer company's customer briefing center was more like 2 hours each way. I had access to commuter rail which was more pleasant than driving so long as I didn't have an evening dinner/event. but it took about the same length of time.
One answer to the parent's question is that I owned/own a house which was a pretty manageable 25 minute suburban commute which I wasn't going to sell just because I got a new job. (Which didn't last that long anyway.)
cosmic_cheese 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, I get the sense that this varies a lot depending on area and economic strata.
In the poor rural area my hometown is located, 1-3h+ commutes aren't unusual, partially out of necessity (there aren't enough jobs nearby to sustain the population).
mikert89 2 hours ago [-]
Its not just the time, its the energy expended.
MaxHoppersGhost 22 minutes ago [-]
And money spent on a more expensive house closer to the office vs the same home in an affordable place. It's the main reason I can't go back to San Francisco, once you get used to a less than one million four bedroom house in a pleasant neighborhood you can't go back to living in a shoebox for twice the price, even if it's the most beautiful city in the world.
sublinear 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, definitely. Time management is a lot easier when it's all on your own terms apart from the required meetings.
You get to skip the commute and reap the benefits all day long. Even your diet improves. You can cook fresh or have delivered whatever you want. Your hygiene improves since nothing is preventing you from taking another shower or committing to more involved skincare. You clean your home more often. You're more likely to exercise throughout the day for natural stress relief. If you have any minor medical issues that need upkeep, you're already in the privacy of your own home.
This is not just a list of annoyances or frivolous luxuries for highly sensitive people. These are the basic building blocks for a better quality of life. These used to be the forever-deferred items at the bottom of my todo list stressing me out. Now they are integrated with my life and effortless. I'm no longer trapped in a cube and put on display. I can live like a human being and do whatever whenever wherever I want. My life is no longer oriented around running errands or physical presence.
jjice 2 hours ago [-]
I go into my company's Boston office with an hour and a half commute each way by train about once a month. Even doing that once a month sucks. I couldn't imagine doing that even three times a week. I regularly get LinkedIn messages from recruiters with hybrid offerings in Boston that pay less and will then suck an additional 9 hours a week out of my life. Biggest nope I can think of.
I'd have to get paid a lot more to sacrifice an additional 10 hours a week commuting. You can't just tack an additional ten hours worth of pay on, and even if the pay was excellent, I can't imagine this is something I can do long term. Losing three hours a day for a commute eats into so much social and sleep time.
ghaff 45 minutes ago [-]
I didn't have to do it every day and it wasn't for that long a period but I had sort of come to the conclusion that it wasn't sustainable, especially after the novelty of working in the city wore off. I live fairly far out but, even that aside, there's just a lot of traffic. Even coming in for something after work these days still takes me 90 minutes to get in and commuter rail is useless for an evening event.
Last sometimes commute (I traveled a lot) to a suburban office was much more manageable but the office shutdown at some point during COVID because of low use.
KludgeShySir 1 hours ago [-]
Wait, are you saying that human contact has no bearing on one's psychological well-being? Or are you saying that I'm being deliberately obtuse?
georgemcbay 2 hours ago [-]
Not having to plan my life around traffic patterns is the biggest advantage for me.
I enjoy working in the office at my current place of employment... nice office space, small company, everyone who works there is great and the office is only 15 minutes away if there is no traffic.
But I live in Southern California, so when there is traffic that 15 minute commute balloons to 45-60 minutes.
So I work from home most of the time. I still go in a couple of times a week (voluntarily, not required) but there are no expectations of a set schedule so it is very easy for me to avoid heavy traffic commute times.
panny 2 hours ago [-]
>one of the biggest and simplest is getting commute time back
Zoom out. Being full remote means I don't even need a car. I can live in a walkable city with passenger rail in a low cost of living location. I can reduce my living expense to just food and utilities with a paid off house and no automobiles.
jasondigitized 1 hours ago [-]
Commuting to work for people who don't absolutely need to commute to work may be the biggest cargo cult of them all.
scrapcode 3 hours ago [-]
I have been remote working for the past ~5 years or so. I had to RTO briefly for 3-4 weeks, which was about as long as it took me to find a position with a new org. I love the benefits at this stage in my life (young children, etc.) but I'm not sure the networking relationships I developed early on in my career "in the trenches" would be nearly as strong or beneficial as they have been had I started remote. I'm curious to see how that plays out over the long-term for folks that may start remote and attempt to stay that way throughout their entire careers.
TheCycoONE 2 hours ago [-]
So I was part of a very small company (<15 people) that was bought by a mid-sized company that otherwise had no presence in our country.
Leadership left and there was a few years where no one else in the office was in the same teams or reporting chains. The majority of people were in a single office in another company. I found it very difficult to participate and was left out of most decisions. Then covid hit and everything changed. With everyone working from home remote networking opportunities were built, I was an equal part of every discussion. Now I am in a large fortune 500 organization with a mix of working arrangements and I don't have any issues networking. I like to think we do a pretty good job with junior participation as well. The main thing I'm missing is the rumour mill and the pulse on what unrelated roles like sales/finance are saying on the ground.
scrapcode 1 hours ago [-]
That's great to hear. I guess what was in the forefront of my mind were how those relationships carry over after your time with that organization is through. There are a group of us that "started together" ~15 years ago that have had each others backs throughout the years in regard to opportunities and plenty of other life events outside of our starting organization. I was also in the military as well and it seems like those early relationships where we were peons (basic training, A-school, first deployment) are the ones that really stick. Maybe there's no correlation and that's just how it worked out for me. I have only worked for 2 organizations completely remotely. The first myself and my group worked very well together and got along great. After leaving, however, the only time I hear from them is when I reach out to see how everyone is doing.
sublinear 30 minutes ago [-]
Some people have been working remote for much longer than the past few years. They are doing fine.
Maybe it depends on the nature of your work, but I think remote working revealed to everyone how much office "networking" was always kinda delusional.
For sure, networking is important, but I have never found opportunities talking to the same people in my fishbowl. It was almost impossible to talk to the right people within the organization in person, and cornering them is not a great first impression. Reaching out to them on Teams is a whole different ball game, and one that I think more people are good at. Getting the right attention from the right people is also easier in large group chats.
Apart from that, working remote is not strictly at home. There's a whole wide world out there to meet people and find opportunity.
cactacea 3 hours ago [-]
No longer commuting from Shoreline to downtown Seattle and spending 2+ hours in a car each day certainly helped my sense of well-being.
DiggyJohnson 2 hours ago [-]
Did you ever consider downsizing or renting to be closer to work? I can’t imagine choosing to commute that far every day.
fg137 1 hours ago [-]
Most people don't "choose" to commute. They are forced to because of life constraints.
penguin_booze 16 minutes ago [-]
> For years, many employers have worried that work-from-home arrangements leave employees isolated, disconnected from coworkers and more likely to leave their jobs.
Aww! All this while, I didn't know RTO came from a place of genuine worry and care about your workers. There I was thinking, that RTO was more about control and domination. Forgive me master, for I knew not.
dayvid 1 hours ago [-]
I've been remote for ~6 years. I can't stand being in an office when I don't need to be there and looking busy. On top of that, commute savings are great. I work out of a coworking space a walking distance from where I live. I also had a child recently, and being able to pick him up easily after work is priceless. Forcing most tech talent to be in the same 2-3 cities is one of the worst things in recent history.
ozgung 3 hours ago [-]
>> "This suggests you let people work remotely if they want to work remotely,"
I can't believe people need studies to see that. All you need is some common sense.
Zolomon 3 hours ago [-]
If there were no previous study available, there would be no argument to enforce a policy to enable this. So I am thankful that someone made a study, now there is more ”data” to back the claim up.
angmarsbane 46 minutes ago [-]
I wish fully remote was something you could earn once you've spent X amount of years at a company. After 3 years, or 5 years, you know how the company works, you know the culture, you have an internal network etc. I think at that point, depending on your role you're more equipped to effectively manage fully remote work. Fully remote is so helpful for families who have to navigate daycare drop-off/pick-up times that don't align with work + commute hours. Gaining the ability to work fully remote after X amount of years with a company could help retain mid-level seniority in that phase of life.
k__ 16 minutes ago [-]
I'm working remote since 2014. I built my whole life on that premise, traveling through the country on a weekly basis.
I love the freedom.
bensyverson 1 hours ago [-]
I went from being fully in-person at a design firm (IDEO), working every day in a project room full of brilliant designers, to fully remote at the same company post-COVID. The remote period was a nonstop marathon of Zoom meetings, and I eventually left.
With that said, I'm grateful to have made the transition to remote working, because I got to be there for my daughter's early years.
Now I still work remote, but on my own terms, as an independent consultant. The difference is night and day.
What I learned is that remote vs hybrid vs in-office doesn't matter nearly as much as feeling engaged and effective in your role. If you feel that, it doesn't matter where you are.
SirFatty 3 hours ago [-]
Oh, I'm sure! And the highest concentration of weekday Costco shoppers.
bryanlarsen 3 hours ago [-]
And also likely the highest concentration of workers working after 9PM or before 6AM.
MaxHoppersGhost 20 minutes ago [-]
Those aren't the same workers though. There's a dichotomy of remote workers - some are screwing off during the day and some are working more hours than they should be since it can be hard to unplug from the desk (especially if it's a full remote cmpany with people across four plus timezones).
SirFatty 3 hours ago [-]
yeah, but not extra hours, just putting in the mandatory required. Friends, neighbors that work from home do the same. Heck, our AP clerk that works remote is processing transactions at 2a and is unreachable during normal business hours.
bluedino 3 hours ago [-]
The true workaholics are brining their laptops home to do this either way.
bryanlarsen 2 hours ago [-]
The true workaholics are a small minority, though. Office workers who do this are part of the small minority. OTOH, it's a regular occurrence for those who work remote: not because they're workaholics, but because they're putting in their eight.
gr2m 1 hours ago [-]
I've been working remotely for over 20 years. ProTip: working remote does not mean working from home. Surround yourself everyday with the people you want. Go to coworking spaces, coffee shops, parks. Find fellow remote workers and host coworking sessions and your places.
sbrother 1 hours ago [-]
I have a related question as someone who's been fully remote for about 12 years now, including all of my time in more senior/management roles: how does in person work even work for people who are in meetings all day every day?
My role (eng director) consists basically of 50-60 half hour meetings a week, back to back, with people all over the country/world. It wouldn't be tenable in an open office and it wouldn't even be tenable if I had to physically move across a campus in between meetings. Did people just work/manage across fewer projects and teams?
justonceokay 1 hours ago [-]
There were a lot less meetings cause you would just walk over and talk with someone. Of course that’s still a meeting but it meant that people generally had more free time to connect and often problems would be resolved in five minutes right away instead of waiting for a scheduled half hour meeting.
Not to mention the number of times that I would end up taking a “meeting” in my boss’s office while he was on a call that he wasn’t listening to
minraws 1 hours ago [-]
You are in office and then you hunt for a quite office room for every call, within the same campus you hope everyone gets to the same conference room which in bigger companies is infeasible so you are still remote aka face to face over a call... Haha.
That's how all engineering leaders I have worked with have worked.
bdbm 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe this is just because you can have more meetings being remote. If you were inside an office and had to mive between meetings, you would maybe scale down this (insane) number of meetings per week.
TSUTiger 1 hours ago [-]
Many projects, many teams. Eventually it all becomes tens of thousands of unread emails, a lot of "thanks, but I've gotta leave for my next meeting", and lots of multitasking.
QuercusMax 34 minutes ago [-]
When I was at Google it wasn't uncommon for a particular conference room to be "assigned" to a director or VP. From what I remember their calendars were always crazy full, too.
wilburx3 3 hours ago [-]
Been working remote for over 15 years. It is the best.
Covzire 3 hours ago [-]
About 10 years here, and I agree. At first I found myself missing the day to day interaction with co-workers, but after about 6 months I completely acclimated and can't imagine ever willingly going back to an office with bad privacy, commutes, coffee, smells and noise unless the need is extreme.
tschellenbach 1 hours ago [-]
It's fascinating how well the system recovers. If it works, companies that do remote work will outperform those that don't. And the reverse. If many companies all opt-in to remote work and output declines inflation will correct that.
margorczynski 2 hours ago [-]
Just the amount of time and life you waste for commute can be staggering. And of course all the other overhead that comes with going to and back from the office.
2 hours ago [-]
moezd 2 hours ago [-]
It depends on your personality: If you shine in meetings and love the hallway talk, you will suffer in remote work.
If you already juggle multiple dependencies in your life (small children and/or in school, elder care, other dependents and special situations, dual study), or simply have too many interests, hobbies and love to do more things outside your work, remote work just feels revolutionary, to the point you just resent going to the office.
theappsecguy 2 hours ago [-]
A big issue with non-remote is access to opportunities. A lot of organizations don't have offices everywhere, and I having to relocate every time there's a job change is absurd.
DiggyJohnson 2 hours ago [-]
For what it’s worth having to relocate for work if the new work isn’t local has been the norm for like 10000+ years. I’m not sure it’s absurd, but it is a trade off.
theappsecguy 2 hours ago [-]
It may have been the normal before we had the technology to remove that need. Obviously it may be the normal for certain types of work still, but I don't see why it needs to be that way for office work. This ends up greatly affecting housing markets too and making life more expensive for everyone.
Also worth noting: Frontiers in Psychology is a low-impact journal.
robotburrito 1 hours ago [-]
I find remote work makes it harder to draw boundaries. I don’t really have work hours anymore. Co workers are all over the world. Sub 7am meetings. Post 6pm meetings. I wonder if in the old days pre remote if you could just close that laptop and go home?
justonceokay 1 hours ago [-]
Absolutely. When I started working at Amazon in 2014 it had a reputation as a company with a very bad work life balance. On the other hand, all communication was done through email and conference call (no cameras). Most people who worked late also stayed late, so it was obvious if someone was being overloaded. We had physical pagers still, which were a kind of physical totem of on-call work that made it very obvious if you were expected to do work outside of business hours.
Compared to the situation today with Slack, AI, and remote culture, almost every company IMO has a much worse work life balance than Amazon did 15 years ago.
GreenLightGo 1 hours ago [-]
For me personally, life has basically been divided into before and after. I used to spend an extra two hours every day just getting to and from work, taking public transport, which honestly wasn’t exactly inspiring. Now working from home is a real pleasure, and life has become so much more enjoyable.
hamaluik 3 hours ago [-]
Since full remote I can spend 8 hours a day on work instead of 10 (an hour commute each way). Putting aside other benefits like easy and cheap lunches, way better desk ergonomics and equipment, and all the sundry other benefits, working remote allows me to have a life that I never could when I worked in an office because of those 2 hours a day.
It's nice to be face-to-face with people, but I don't need that every day (and frankly don't want it neither), but all the benefits in quality of life overwhelming favor remote work for me to the point I will put up with way more shenanigans just to keep this benefit.
atleastoptimal 1 hours ago [-]
Good work environment >> Remote work >>>> bad work environment.
However most companies who insist on full RTO are often the latter but claim they are the former.
philipallstar 2 hours ago [-]
This is partly self-selecting, though. For example, it could really be saying that introverts - more likely to select remote work - are also more likely to be happy on their own. Extraverts are more likely to be happy around other people, but also more likely to be unhappy because of the behaviour of other people.
Being forced to work in an office when you KNOW you can work remotely is the most soul crushing thing I have ever experienced. It feels a tiny little bit like a Serf not allowed to leave the land.
ACV001 3 hours ago [-]
yeah that's why the trend is now to call all back to the office so that you don't feel too well.
mancerayder 1 hours ago [-]
I'm four days a week in the office and almost all my meetings are on Zoom.
It's noisy, lunch is rarely below 20 dollars (no, I don't have time nor will I cook a big pot of 4 meals Sunday night), the lights are too bright, the commute is crowded and causes anxiety, and my housing costs are very high so the commute is less than 45m.
I hate RTO - and I'm in leadership. Anyone who's working from home and whining about it should be ashamed of the privilege. You're incredibly lucky.
Now maybe not so much if you're underpaid.
jimt1234 2 hours ago [-]
My F500 employer has on-site requirements. Colleagues and I sad-laugh because we all commute into the office, and spend most of the day on Zoom meetings with colleagues from other locations - you know, exactly the same thing we would do from home.
jknoepfler 1 hours ago [-]
Workers without 5-10 hours of unpaid commute time in their week are happier. Gee whiz.
That's time to run errands, learn a skill, exercise, sleep, read, do nothing... it's almost as though our time is valuable and we don't like wasting it.
webdood90 3 hours ago [-]
> at a large healthcare organization
Isn't there kind of an inherit bias here where on-site healthcare workers would have vastly different job requirements than remote workers?
francisofascii 3 hours ago [-]
Also, isn't the healthcare industry thriving? Layoffs might be less of a worry.
ardit33 2 hours ago [-]
Of course. When I went remote, I could work from Miami during the winter, and escape the NYC cold months. Going for a swim to your buildings roof pool after done with the day, was the best feeling ever.
Of course I am going to score higher in the well being department. :)
josefritzishere 2 hours ago [-]
The sample is not high quality, but the conclusion is pretty obvious. No thinking person can doubt that improving work/life balance, flexible hours, sleeping more, commuting less and comfy pants is going to lead to any other outcome.
ChrisArchitect 3 hours ago [-]
Related:
Remote work benefits are much bigger than a paycheck
Clearly easier for you, me, or anyone else to delude ourselves into thinking our tech or jobs are harmless. God knows I prefer and feel happier at a WFH job, but how is this different or better for us than filter bubbles, aside from the obvious perks that are nice? How comfortable should work be?
sam1234apter 2 hours ago [-]
would love to see productivity side of things
jjice 2 hours ago [-]
I'm also curious. I work remote about 95% of the time and my time spent in the office is by far my least productive. Way more ad hoc chats and longer lunches (both work related and not). I do enjoy the social aspect a lot, but man I get so much less actual work done. On occasion though, those chats lead to a really great idea for the product, so there's also that.
varispeed 2 hours ago [-]
From what I saw most people who "like" going to office are those suffering from domestic violence, having young children and wanting "time off" from parenting and in case of managers, the feeling of power over other human beings is not the same over Teams. Then you have narcissists and peeps/pervs who enjoy being in the middle of "action" and finally people who don't have any friends who hope they find them at a workplace. If you feel the need to go to office, book appointment with a therapist. Maybe you have an unresolved issue.
naniel 3 hours ago [-]
been remote for quite a while. and i love it. but i've got some friends who absolutely hate it, and really struggled with remote working during covid.
so. works for many people, but not for others
softwaredoug 3 hours ago [-]
This seems hard to prove a direct causal link.
Remote employees are also in demand enough to negotiate / find a role with remote work. They probably then are experienced, senior, and better compensated than their peers.
It could be that the underlying cause is being more in-demand in a position to negotiate remote work, not remote work by itself.
Where am I wrong?
pllbnk 3 hours ago [-]
Many companies that are offering remote work knowingly provide lower salaries. And many people agree because added flexibility has a price too.
BeetleB 3 hours ago [-]
This is a survey of 20,000 health care workers in one organization. I doubt that that many of them are senior.
ekjhgkejhgk 2 hours ago [-]
Proving a causal link between being remote not having to commute is easy.
> Researchers analyzed survey data from 7,704 employees at a large healthcare organization.
I’ve been remote and worked for remote companies for a long time. In my observation, the well-being is bimodal. The people who adapt well to remote thrive. There are a lot of people who think they’re going to love remote who ultimately flame out from the loneliness, isolation, lack of visual boundaries between work and home life, and lack of externally enforced routine.
It’s really sad when the latter happens because it’s almost always someone who was hired for their great work and abilities. Then over time they get drained and you can see that the remote work wasn’t what they expected.
It’s basically impossible to predict who will fall into each category at the interview stage, or at least I can’t do it. Prior remote work success (not just experience) is the best indicator but it’s hard to evaluate, too. Some of the most difficult remote hires I’ve worked with had past remote work experience, but it’s only after being hired that you learn they struggled at those companies too.
One thing I don’t see mentioned in these discussions much is that someone might be perfectly content WFH when given clear goals and autonomy to execute in a neutral political environment, but do a few unexplained mass layoffs, give muddy direction or tighten the leash with stricter policies or new monitoring software and watch paranoia and depression take root (this is true in-office as well but I think gets amplified over Slack due to a stronger prisoner’s dilemma effect).
Unfortunately due to the power differential, any disruption to output caused by these situations will still be blamed on the individual contributor.
I interpret the study findings not as remote workers being happier, but on-site workers being less happy in remote-oriented companies than on-site workers in on-site-oriented companies.
Now maybe my employer has reason to dislike that I’m probably like 80% of the worker I would have been if we were in office, but the 80% has been enough to exceed expectations on my performance reviews so there doesn’t seem to be a problem.
This was the major one for me, in addition to the other stuff you mentioned. The "always at work" feeling was reinforced by the management style of remote work being like, we expect you to be generally available to respond at any time in a 12 hour window, sometimes more (because everyone works their own schedules across multiple timezones). In an office this separation is clean, and if I'm responding to messages or working at home, it's generally accepted this is outside the norm and I'm perfectly free to just shut the laptop off until the next morning 99% of the time unless I am on-call. It's nice.
The first thing I did when I went back fully in-office was tear down my home office and turn it into a game room. I generally do not even use a computer in my home. Sometimes we have enforced WFH days due to various things or events, but I established the understanding with management that generally I will not be expected to work full days from home outside of emergencies and I take those days off.
I understand some people love it, and I have a good office environment which helps, but the downsides (general office annoyances, commuting, lunch expenses, clothing expenses, etc) way outweigh the downsides of working remote for me. I got severely depressed and burnt out very quickly.
I often tell people that I'm unusually well suited to remote work because I've had a lot of practice. Starting in high school I was out more days than I was in owing to health problems, yet I still managed to knock out 11 AP classes because I got really serious about reading the textbook and actually studying on my own time. This was even before I discovered spaced repetition systems.
By the time I actually got to college I realized these techniques were not only more effective and enjoyable for me than sitting down in lectures, but that the vast majority of students never actually had to build these muscles to begin with. They really struggle when the courses get too big to cram into a class session, but it's not because they're dumb or anything - it's literally just an endurance sport they've never played.
I feel those same muscles are the ones I've been using in remote work, which I've had the good fortune to do my entire career in at least a 60% capacity and more often a 100% capacity. Remote work likely feels deeply unnatural at first, to people who aren't used to putting in focused sweat at a desk in their own room far beyond what traditional education typically requires.
I hope my own children develop this ability too, although I'm not really sure how to get them there.
Working remote during COVID sucked and felt unmoored.
Once I had a robust IRL social life and could go see some live music again, it was great.
It also depends if you live in tiny apartment or if you have a house with a dedicated space.
The same person can take to it depending on the circumstances.
It is easy to imagine that the ER staff might report lower well-being than someone on the admin staff who works from home on their laptop all day.
Some people just don’t want to work next to their gaming PC, completely unsupervised. Others live alone and don’t live near their friends and family. Both these groups (can) suffer from a fully remote environment.
because, as someone else i replied to in the thread points out, miserable employees perform worse.
The people who were burning out at home would become revived and re-energized when they came into the office for something and would stay that way for a week or two.
Then they would slide back into burnout and social problems (assuming benign interactions were hostile in Slack or that people were backstabbing the. was common) the longer they were away from the office.
Some people had the self-awareness to start bringing themselves back to the office for a few days each week and would directly admit they struggled to work from home.
It’s really not uncommon and readily acknowledged in every offline remote work environment I’ve been in. It’s only on social media where you run into claims that remote works well for everyone.
For instance, I've observed dynamics like what you describe at various orgs, and what they had in common was a lack of psychological safety. If people are responding defensively to benign messages then it tends to mean they have a reason to expect hostile messages. Hostile messages are not a given.
One common way this arises: a company ostensibly offers flexible remote work, but in practice strongly prefers in-office work, and enforces this via social pressure. Remote work has a small social cost that accumulates each full day that one works remotely. These remote-oriented workers then have to periodically show up at the office primarily to ingratiate themselves to management and their peers. This is incredibly common, and might even be the default configuration for an org that permits flexible WFH.
I don't think this is intentionally malicious, BTW. It's simply what happens when you make a policy shift without considering your team culture as well so that both working styles are supported as first-class citizens.
(Not to mention that, in both contexts, it's very hard to pull apart being remote vs in-office from other aspects of the work and culture.)
Accommodated employees perform better. Non-accommodated employees perform worse.
For some people, an office is an accommodation - they need that not-home space with other people in it. For others, a home office is an accommodation - a very convenient/local space with very few distractions.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that putting someone somewhere they do not feel accommodated is going to reduce performance.
I also really reject this boomer-esque idea that in-office helps underperformers underperform less. Instead I find it helps under-performers _appear_ to underperform less because they can chat up the boss and more visibly do performative stuff like showing up early or leaving late.
The problem I was talking about was with people who asked to work from home but struggled with it.
Some of them did start coming in to the office more when they realized what was happening. Many did not, believing that work from home was best for them.
this sounds like the WFH people might be treated the same way as the in-office people. as in you're retaining an in-office culture but people can choose to WFH. that is not the same thing as being a remote working company. the culture is completely different in an org that successfully does remote working.
as a functional example on the social side, people booking in time to just hang out and chat. even if it's work chat but just more relaxed chat. build in some social element beyond just treating it as cogs in a 9-5 machine. add an extra 30 minutes to a team update call to just have a chat with everyone -- including folks in the office.
edit -- to be clear, managers need to be doing that ^
remote work was a blessing for me. but turned out the ceo didn't want us remote working.
i tried repeatedly to communicate what i needed to do my best with my boss and the ceo. but the ceo fought me on all of it.
Nothing else in my career has ever changed my opinion about a CEO as quickly and drastically as hearing them completely dismiss it as noise, when hundreds of employees explain how negatively forced RTO affects their well-being and productivity.
That never comes up though as the dogma must survive.
This used to be me but pair programming / in-call collaborative working solved 100% of all of those problems.
Even the work/life boundary was solved because as soon as I dropped off the call at the end of the day my brain immediately switched off work mode.
These days the first thing I do in a new team is try to suss out who else is a bit like this and try to work out a collaborative working pattern that works for all of us.
It's not just more fun it's almost unreasonably effective. People who work non collaboratively tend to make more mistakes, bugs and worse decisions.
(This is something I've repeatedly noticed in discussions about getting people in-office, and about open office plans vs individual offices: the same managers who push these changes through in the name of "collaboration" create a bunch of other management processes that strongly disincentivize collaborative work.)
But in environments where I've been able to do this effectively, it's always been great, far better than going of totally on my own!
Those collaborative conversations are so often fruitful in ways I don't expect.
building in an extra 30 minutes on team catchup calls just to hang out at the end. usually end up talking about some work stuff, but in a more relaxed/social way.
demo/learning sessions. how to use databricks, how to do X, how X works, this cool thing we built.
I always strive to do my best at work and make a good impression. But I have absolutely 0 interest in the product, the mission, the culture, the personal or collective aspirations of owners, shareholders, leaders or "leadership", or who they are as people. I generally like my coworkers and we get along, but that's not worth a 2 hour round trip in the car, or using a public washroom, or eating in a cafeteria, or sitting uncomfortably at a desk all day, or listening to everyone's boring stories.
The best part though, is no team building nonsense, no company BBQs or pizza days, no casual Fridays, no boss dropping in for a one on one, no psychos trying to get the energy level up with a "LETS GOOOO TEAM!!"
Just doing a good job for good pay and being treated like an adult. I didn't know working could be like this when I was starting out.
personal relationships are very important, arguably more important that your raw performance.
They didn’t control for occupation, pay, managerial status etc.. An on-site physical job like nurse, facilities, or technician was compared to predominantly remote administrative jobs.
A lot of the people I know who went remote after COVID took remote jobs at new companies (remember “the great resignation”?) or moved to a new house because they thought they were done with commuting. Then their companies said they wanted everyone back.
60+ minute commute times are very common where I live. If you are anywhere outside of the downtown area you either pay for parking (expensive) and have a shorter commute, or you use public transit (cheap) and have a long commute.
When I used to commute to an office it was easily an hour to an hour and a half each way every day. I hated it
One answer to the parent's question is that I owned/own a house which was a pretty manageable 25 minute suburban commute which I wasn't going to sell just because I got a new job. (Which didn't last that long anyway.)
In the poor rural area my hometown is located, 1-3h+ commutes aren't unusual, partially out of necessity (there aren't enough jobs nearby to sustain the population).
You get to skip the commute and reap the benefits all day long. Even your diet improves. You can cook fresh or have delivered whatever you want. Your hygiene improves since nothing is preventing you from taking another shower or committing to more involved skincare. You clean your home more often. You're more likely to exercise throughout the day for natural stress relief. If you have any minor medical issues that need upkeep, you're already in the privacy of your own home.
This is not just a list of annoyances or frivolous luxuries for highly sensitive people. These are the basic building blocks for a better quality of life. These used to be the forever-deferred items at the bottom of my todo list stressing me out. Now they are integrated with my life and effortless. I'm no longer trapped in a cube and put on display. I can live like a human being and do whatever whenever wherever I want. My life is no longer oriented around running errands or physical presence.
I'd have to get paid a lot more to sacrifice an additional 10 hours a week commuting. You can't just tack an additional ten hours worth of pay on, and even if the pay was excellent, I can't imagine this is something I can do long term. Losing three hours a day for a commute eats into so much social and sleep time.
Last sometimes commute (I traveled a lot) to a suburban office was much more manageable but the office shutdown at some point during COVID because of low use.
I enjoy working in the office at my current place of employment... nice office space, small company, everyone who works there is great and the office is only 15 minutes away if there is no traffic.
But I live in Southern California, so when there is traffic that 15 minute commute balloons to 45-60 minutes.
So I work from home most of the time. I still go in a couple of times a week (voluntarily, not required) but there are no expectations of a set schedule so it is very easy for me to avoid heavy traffic commute times.
Zoom out. Being full remote means I don't even need a car. I can live in a walkable city with passenger rail in a low cost of living location. I can reduce my living expense to just food and utilities with a paid off house and no automobiles.
Leadership left and there was a few years where no one else in the office was in the same teams or reporting chains. The majority of people were in a single office in another company. I found it very difficult to participate and was left out of most decisions. Then covid hit and everything changed. With everyone working from home remote networking opportunities were built, I was an equal part of every discussion. Now I am in a large fortune 500 organization with a mix of working arrangements and I don't have any issues networking. I like to think we do a pretty good job with junior participation as well. The main thing I'm missing is the rumour mill and the pulse on what unrelated roles like sales/finance are saying on the ground.
Maybe it depends on the nature of your work, but I think remote working revealed to everyone how much office "networking" was always kinda delusional.
For sure, networking is important, but I have never found opportunities talking to the same people in my fishbowl. It was almost impossible to talk to the right people within the organization in person, and cornering them is not a great first impression. Reaching out to them on Teams is a whole different ball game, and one that I think more people are good at. Getting the right attention from the right people is also easier in large group chats.
Apart from that, working remote is not strictly at home. There's a whole wide world out there to meet people and find opportunity.
Aww! All this while, I didn't know RTO came from a place of genuine worry and care about your workers. There I was thinking, that RTO was more about control and domination. Forgive me master, for I knew not.
I can't believe people need studies to see that. All you need is some common sense.
I love the freedom.
With that said, I'm grateful to have made the transition to remote working, because I got to be there for my daughter's early years.
Now I still work remote, but on my own terms, as an independent consultant. The difference is night and day.
What I learned is that remote vs hybrid vs in-office doesn't matter nearly as much as feeling engaged and effective in your role. If you feel that, it doesn't matter where you are.
My role (eng director) consists basically of 50-60 half hour meetings a week, back to back, with people all over the country/world. It wouldn't be tenable in an open office and it wouldn't even be tenable if I had to physically move across a campus in between meetings. Did people just work/manage across fewer projects and teams?
Not to mention the number of times that I would end up taking a “meeting” in my boss’s office while he was on a call that he wasn’t listening to
That's how all engineering leaders I have worked with have worked.
If you already juggle multiple dependencies in your life (small children and/or in school, elder care, other dependents and special situations, dual study), or simply have too many interests, hobbies and love to do more things outside your work, remote work just feels revolutionary, to the point you just resent going to the office.
Also worth noting: Frontiers in Psychology is a low-impact journal.
Compared to the situation today with Slack, AI, and remote culture, almost every company IMO has a much worse work life balance than Amazon did 15 years ago.
It's nice to be face-to-face with people, but I don't need that every day (and frankly don't want it neither), but all the benefits in quality of life overwhelming favor remote work for me to the point I will put up with way more shenanigans just to keep this benefit.
However most companies who insist on full RTO are often the latter but claim they are the former.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
It's noisy, lunch is rarely below 20 dollars (no, I don't have time nor will I cook a big pot of 4 meals Sunday night), the lights are too bright, the commute is crowded and causes anxiety, and my housing costs are very high so the commute is less than 45m.
I hate RTO - and I'm in leadership. Anyone who's working from home and whining about it should be ashamed of the privilege. You're incredibly lucky.
Now maybe not so much if you're underpaid.
That's time to run errands, learn a skill, exercise, sleep, read, do nothing... it's almost as though our time is valuable and we don't like wasting it.
Isn't there kind of an inherit bias here where on-site healthcare workers would have vastly different job requirements than remote workers?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFZpJ9mWwAEfdhv?format=jpg&name=...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HIjqR2aWMAErm9E?format=jpg&name=...
Of course I am going to score higher in the well being department. :)
Remote work benefits are much bigger than a paycheck
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49346149
so. works for many people, but not for others
Remote employees are also in demand enough to negotiate / find a role with remote work. They probably then are experienced, senior, and better compensated than their peers.
It could be that the underlying cause is being more in-demand in a position to negotiate remote work, not remote work by itself.
Where am I wrong?