I recently switched jobs, and as part of my job interview process, I was pretty firm about only looking for companies that were working at least part of the week in the office. I just really thrive on in-person work.

Fast forward a few weeks... and I ended up taking a job with a startup that was fully remote. I loved their product, loved the founders, loved the team I had met; I figured I would make it work.

Two months in and I have hardly noticed that I'm not working in person. There's just such a huge difference when you're working at BigCo remotely and working at an eight-person startup. Particularly at my company, people just really give a shit and it shows. I feel genuinely connected to and engaged with my teammates. Makes remote work a lot better.

Out of curiosity, did your current housing situation provide the space for a comfortable and productive home office, or is this unexpected development putting pressure on your housing situation? (If you're part of a trend, that has implications for preferred housing layout and square footage. And, of course people in different housing situations should be expected to respond differently to fully-remote opportunities..)

(FWIW I'm single in a 600 sq ft apartment. I'm also a manager. My workspace needs for desk layout, equipment, and quiet are minimal compared to individual contributors, but I sometimes think of the perceived status implications when my humble abode appears on video, though I've reflected and don't really care..)

Edit to add regarding status implications: believe it or not, a candidate I was interviewing actually blurted out "You're a manager in tech! How come you don't have a nicer house?". That got into my head briefly, until I decided that I don't care.

Source: I did WFH for about 2 years before the pandemic in a 1 bedroom apartment that I shared with someone

I think I'll leave normal lighting for work, but then do a more playful color for hobbies, like purple or blue or red or something. I already have the light even, I just haven't been using it.

going into the phone isnt really a big deal, but I always felt setting up a physical trigger would be way smoother mentally

My motivation to try this is more for shifting to hobby mode and being productive when I go back after dinner, as I've been super unproductive after work lately.

First-time remote workers will often overthink their office, but seasoned remote workers don't really care. It's worth taking a minute to tidy up the room in your background, but nobody is going to be judging you for not having a dedicated home office.

> I'm also a manager. My workspace needs for desk layout, equipment, and quiet are minimal compared to individual contributors

At least in software, the space needs for everyone are fairly minimal. There are some creative solutions for monitor arms that can reduce the not-in-use footprint of a desk even further.

But a separate room I use for work helps me keep work separate from personal life when working from home. If I didn't have/couldn't afford that, I'd at least have a separate desk I use only for work. If not that either... it would be harder for me.

Of course, realize that there's a good chance there's nothing they can do about that.

eg https://www.amazon.com/Powerline-Ethernet-Adapter-Extender-T...

but in general, yes, I agree, I have had problems with network connectivity in my WFH setup that are very difficult to do something about, and which are very frustrating to all involved, it is a problem.

It is super awkward to imply your interviewer should have a wealthier zoom background, but its by far not the worst thing I've heard blurted out in an interview. Interviews are stressful, and people in this industry (myself included) are pretty awkward.

I need the buzz of a city around me. I lived in a tiny town in rural Ireland before and I was depressed and withering away. As I don't have a family I need more life around me than people who lock the front door at 6pm and settle down with the family for the night. Good for them but I don't work like that.

And yes I work remote 80% of the time, the office is 20 mins on the subway away but I prefer home. Especially since we moved to this horrible hotdesking setup at the office. If I could get away with it I'd never go :)

Not everyone's preferences and needs are the same.

Virtual backgrounds are popular in my workspace, and I think a more general solution to the issue. I'm not a huge fan of virtual backgrounds, they make things even more artificial, anyhow I would use them occasionally but for the fact that Google Meet does not support them in Firefox.

I care less about meetings but I also shoot some video so needed some sort of decent setting anyway.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/05/06/politics/toilet-flush-sup...

I would rather focus on the quality of someone's work than "status".

Also, you can't find a "neutral" wall or window in 600sq?!

Window is kinda bad since direct light makes cameras bad.

I've thought about moving back to the Bay, but I can get two to four times as much square feet at the same price, and I've been working mostly remote for almost 20 years.

My office is (part of) the living room and I like showing to my team mates my human side all the time: that's who I am, so, I'm very happy when the children climb on me during meetings.

Yeah, sometimes I have to deal with challenging situations, but overall, it's been going well.

People expectations world-wide adjusted with covid,I'm really glad because it fits my lifestyle.

That, obviously, makes a huge difference: I didn't need an office to work in, I just wanted one.

Isn't blurring the background, or using a virtual background, nearly universal now? (Around me, it is.)

https://support.google.com/meet/answer/10058482?hl=en&co=GEN...

Seven months later, I've gone to the office a total of 4 times, and two of those were because I had other appointments/errands nearby that day. I've surprised myself at how much I didn't miss the office environment.

As a side note: I think the reason you are going to find so much friction with this is for the first time in recent history "workers" (specifically software engineers) have incredible leverage over management. I honestly don't think we've seen this since the days of labor unions.

Think about it: software engineers have such an in-demand, ubiquitous skillset that they can command huge salaries, get incredible perks AND now they can say "I don't want to be constrained to a location". Don't like your job? Don't worry about it, get a pay raise and you don't even have to change your office (because it's your bedroom/study/den/whatever). Boss is being a dick? Move and get a raise. Don't like co-workers who talk to much? You don't even have a water cooler to gossip around!

Software engineers have so much power now it's ridiculous and it honestly pisses off a lot of people who spent their entire lives brown-nosing and grinding only to have a young hotshot come in and earn more than they ever did at their age. I mean if I could get $5 for the number of times I've had older people tell me that I'm being too greedy for demanding SWE comps because "I never earned that much at your age" I could buy a really nice house in the Bay Area.

Re: engineers having leverage I am keen to see if this changes in the coming months. With so many layoffs will come more competition for each open role. Do we hit a point where there are more unemployed software engineers VS open engineering roles? Time will tell. If we do hit that point employers may go back to having leverage to dictate office.

As an aside, I really dislike recruiters who deceive you during recruiting. Both my wife and I have had recruiters tell us a company was allowing fully remote or hybrid, just to find out the actual policy is 3,4 days a week in office.

Even for venture backed statups, the money doesn't flow around as much as before so eventually this big power developers have it's way too much and it will balance in the next few years.

Personally I have young kids and therefore prefer flexible times, fully remote etc.

Being in Europe, I think fully remote is getting embraced. It‘s the third company where I get US level salary plus all the benefits (30 days vacation, unlimited sick leave etc).

I see a strong trend from young families moving to the country side and paying off a house from one tech salary. At least in my circle.

I hope it stays.

Thus being said, I am a bit nervous moving away from tech hubs and having to hope this remote trend truly stays. What if there are no good remote jobs in a few years or I get laid off? Being in a tech hub still seems, somewhat, more secure to me.

I feel like there is definitely a little bit of job security in staying with a place that insists on local work only, but those places will become less attached to that position as they see industry peers successfully migrate away from it.

I've also been fully remote for 20 years now, and it just gets easier/better all the time...

But this is as an actual employee not as a contractor? Most of the US roles I've seen, that would consider EU ppl, the expect contractor arrangements where you deal with your own taxes.

They usually have a European/German office for the paper work, just pay much better but have to obviously comply to German labour laws. I am happy this works so well so far, but don't count on it being like this forever.

From what I heard from these two companies, that they stopped hiring SF engineers (because too expensive) and looked for other places in the US with the same timezone.

Or are you just working with a completely separate CET team, and there is no Pacific time interaction?

It was doable. Weird to go through the day and nobody is on Slack, and then after you wake up to 20+ new messages all over.

Email is in profile :)

Caveat: You have to know which company is legit and which is not. I am getting approached by 2-3 companies a week and found 2 (out of maybe 20-30?) which were legit.

Also I've found that submitting job applications through LinkedIn's 'easy apply' thing is rarely successful. It doesn't seem like recruiters often check that. I've had the most replies from going through the company job posting websites. I know it's a pain in the ass but shrug

Whenever I go looking for another gig, all those recruiters are hit up. IMO, having a recruiter helps you cut through a ton of BS like filling out job applications, recruiter takes care of all that for you.

So far in my career (10+ years), I've just applied to company job postings and that's worked out pretty well for me.

If you're a junior dev or working in a highly competitive industry though I would be much more careful not to upset recruiters too much. Not that you won't be able to get work, but you'll be making things considerably harder for yourself.

Recruiters don't expect you to reply to their emails btw - unless you're interested in the role they're recruiting for of course. I think it's polite to answer the phone if they call though. Normally it takes about 30 seconds to tell them you're not on the market, but will but will be in touch when you are. I think a lot of people can be quite rude to recruiters and they seem to appreciate the fact I'm polite to them and happy to have a quick chat.

It feels like nine times out of ten "one of your competitors" means they are also a limited liability company, "your specific skills" means you know what a keyboard is, and "highly competitve salary" is $30k a year.

I have a very particular set of skills that I have acquired over a long career which are honed to a very narrow industry. I did have a genuine recruiter after me for a job which used a small subset of those skills, on 20% more than than I currently earn, but it was a second line support position rather than the various roles I play today. I couldn't face the prospect of working in such a confined environment.

External recruiters are generally pretty bad and will never get you the best rate you can get. Also you'll be able to negotiate more if your client doesn't have to pay 20% of your annual salary to the recruiter as a finder fee.

If you don't want to switch jobs right now, just reply to the recruiters that contact you and say "I'm happy with my current position." or something similar--short, to the point, professional, not dismissive.

The recruiter will keep your email in the system and follow up later. (Sometimes they'll follow up immediately, you can safely ignore immediate followups without explanation.) You can also follow up later and say that you're now interested.

You should also know the difference between internal and external recruiters. Internal recruiters tend to be easier to work with just because their incentives are more likely to be aligned with the company that they are hiring with--so if you have some recruiter emails saved in your inbox, start by contacting internal recruiters for companies that you would consider working for.

I’m not going to try to make a bet on where the lines will get drawn between remote and in person, but I expect hybrid work will become less common since it often ends up being then worst of all worlds (you pay for office space, limit your hiring pool, and decrease worker efficiency by encouraging repeated Covid exposure leading to both more short term leave due to sick employees and less effective employees in the long run due to long Covid, but you still have many of the organizational, communication and infrastructure challenges of a remote team)

PSA: this is wild speculation. There's no definition of what "long covid" is, and there's certainly no evidence that it is made worse by getting Covid more than once. If anything, the opposite is true: we know that repeat infections lead to fewer symptoms and milder illness.

Regardless, Covid is an endemic cold virus now, along with the other four circulating coronaviruses. It isn't going away. Everyone is going to get it multiple times in their lives, whether or not they work remote or in person.

The cognitive effects don’t seem to be entirely evenly distributed- the impact is bigger on older (40+) people, and I’ve heard (but not read the study) that people with ADHD are also much more likely to experience cognitive issues after covid.

Covid is also not yet endemic. We are still in the pandemic phase- there is not yet a regular and predictable load of infections or a reasonable model for the evolutionary trend of variants. In any case, endemic does not mean not dangerous, it just means predictable and well understood.

Calling it a cold virus is also just a rhetorical trick to downplay the severity. Yes, some colds are caused by other coronaviruses, but covid19 remains far more severe on average than any of the other common coronavirus infections that we lump in with common colds.

Finally, it’s probably true on our current trajectory that most people will be infected multiple times, even people that work from home. Given the evidence of compounding risks, it’s still better to prevent whatever vectors of infection that you can. It also gives people more flexibility in their own risk tolerance. I’m still avoiding bars and restaurants, but many of my coworkers aren’t. If we were in an office I’d be obliged to take on a much higher level of risk due to unavoidable exposure to higher risk people.

It's not a matter of "a bit inconsistent". There is no definition of "long covid". Literally anyone can claim they have it and not be wrong.

> but there’s evidence that both repeated infections do tend to be worse with the omicron variants (possibly due to t-cell exhaustion but I’m not sure if that’s the only factor)

No, there isn't, and "t-cell exhaustion" is not a thing. It's a phrase made up by pop scientists.

> I’ve seen at least one estimate that puts the impact of an asymptomatic Covid infection on the brain as being equivalent to 10 years of normal aging.

There are, sadly, a large number of irresponsible people making hysterical, pseudo-scientific claims with no data to back them up. This is a great example.

Even if it were possible to quantify "10 years of normal aging" on "the brain" (it isn't), the specific claim advanced here -- asymptomatic infection leading to accelerated 'normal aging' -- is not backed by any evidence.

Individual studies tend to look at different things, but most of the relevant studies give a particular definition. It generally involves symptoms 3,6, or 8 months after an acute infection, and some studies further limit the definition to a particular set of symptoms. Most control for the occurrence of those symptoms in the general population too.

> No, there isn't, and "t-cell exhaustion" is not a thing. It's a phrase made up by pop scientists.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-019-0221-9

https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2021/july/pe...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34288064/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7389156/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-021-00750-4

Anecdotally it's anti-science / conspiratorial types that tend to do these obscenely large link dumps with references to dense studies, and then pretend that they've read them all. I consider you and other proponents of the Long COVID theory to be in the same category; deploying gish gallop as a rhetorical tactic hurts your case more than it helps it, when encountered by skeptical people like me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

> In this Viewpoint article, 18 experts in the field tell us what exhaustion means to them, ranging from complete lack of effector function to altered functionality to prevent immunopathology, with potential differences between cancer and chronic infection.

Also, the final link explicitly rebuts your claim:

> However, because CD8+ T-cell exhaustion is not evident in patients with COVID-19, it is assumed that COVID-19-experienced individuals successfully develop functional CD8+ T-cell memory following vaccination. Recent studies have reported that a single dose of mRNA vaccine robustly induces spike-specific T-cell responses in COVID-19 convalescent individuals [131].

> whether the differentiation state and transcriptional profiles of functionally impaired CD8+ T cells in respiratory viral infections are similar to those of exhausted T cells is not clear.

> In addition, the differentiation dynamics of CD8+ T cells during the course of COVID-19, particularly whether SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells become exhausted, remain enigmatic.

Immune escape is the process where viruses basically evolve to either evade antibodies that your body has created, or do things to prevent your body from creating effective antibodies in the first place. This is a really common thing with a lot of viruses, including some other coronaviruses. We were pretty lucky that, until omicron, Covid didn’t have the greatest immune escape- but now it does. For whatever reason, omicron infection alone doesn’t give you great immunity against omicron variants or other variants. Having been vaccinated before your first omicron infection helps some, but not as much as it did with earlier variants.

Now, the thing about the immune system is that even when it can’t completely stop a virus, it can often help make it more mild over time. Unfortunately, for Covid, and especially for omicron, the opposite seems to be true. On average, reinfections are worse than earlier infections. Again, the vaccine seems to make this a little better, but not a lot.

The fact that reinfections are worse isn’t unknown in other diseases either. Antibody dependent enhancement is a known thing, and we know a lot of the effects of Covid seem to come from the immune system- so maybe ADE is the cause? It seems like that’s unlikely because the vaccine worked so well- but also, it seems like there are a bunch of other diseases that get worse for someone after they’ve had Covid. That would make it seem like whatever is happening to the immune system after an infection might be bigger than just Covid itself.

There are a bunch of ideas about why this might be- including reservoirs of virus lingering in the body, damage from Covid making it harder to fight off other infections, and the lockdown just generally making our immune systems a bit less effective for lack of use. One of the ideas for why this might be happening is this idea of “t-cell exhaustion” which, as I understand it, is basically just a kind of broad term for “t cells don’t seem to be working like they should and we don’t know why” with a few specific hypotheses about the possible mechanisms. I don’t think this is something that’s like, broadly accepted and well understood yet so much as it is a plausible non-specific idea for one way to explain some observed data.

At any rate, whatever is happening seems to be related to a natural Covid infection and either the spike protein encoded by the current vaccines isn’t enough to cause the immune system problems, or vaccination doesn’t produce enough of them over a long enough period of time to cause the problem.

I know that “ the data is weird” isn’t a very satisfying answer but it seems to be where we’re at.

The antibodies of the vaccines don't work anymore. That's the opposite of "It seems like that’s unlikely because the vaccine worked so well". Antibody effectiveness against omnicron is negligible a few months after vaccination. As far as I understand the T-cells are still being trained, which might prevent you going to a hospital. But for the first week, you are totally on your own.

In 2022, we're already at 76,776 flights cancelled and not even halfway through the year, so nearly the amount cancelled in 2018 and 2019 combined. I'm curious if there's anything different that's happening this year vs those other two that would account for such a stark increase in cancelled flights, likely due to an impacted labor force. Probably just people out with colds.

That's a leap. My understanding is that airlines are affected by the same thing every other employer is seeing -- they can't hire. It might be exacerbated by the fact that airlines reduced/eliminated their training pipeline. For example:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/15/us-pilot-shortage-forces-air...

> The pandemic exacerbated a pilot shortage by slowing down training, hiring and creating a wave of early retirements.

> Airlines offered pilots early retirements to cut labor bills during the depths of the pandemic.

> The process to become airline-qualified in the U.S. is lengthy and expensive, making the barrier to entry high.

> An EasyJet spokesperson attributed the increase in cancelled flights to "higher than usual staff sickness levels" due to a recent surge in COVID-19 cases across Europe.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airlines-face-mask-covid-rules-...

Keep in mind: these are two of the densest cities in the U.S., where people typically have less space for a home office and commutes are shorter vs an exurb type city. WFH is here to stay in my view, especially for employers in competitive recruiting spaces.

I'm not sure about that. People i know in NYC typically spend as much time commuting as in any other city I've known, if not more. It's a big city, and because of the nature of public transportation (or traffic) it takes a while to move across it.

NYC is also, of course, a place where office space is more expensive than most other places -- employer choices could be effecting this as much as employee choices.

But I don't disagree with your general conclusion, as a general sense of things. I don't think NYC and San Francisco are the especially driving examples though.

However, just last week I drove home from SF to Cupertino at 5pm and did it in 54 minutes (which is basically $min_time). Pre-pandemic that drive would have been 90+ minutes.

Anecdotally, I've gone into Boston a few times this year. My observation when I've driven in was that rush hour traffic was as bad as ever. But both the commuter rail and the subway were significantly less crowded than I would have expected.

Of course, schedule cutbacks make public transit less appealing. The commuter rail I usually take if going in for a weekday cut all the express trains and seemingly spaced the trains generally in a less commuter-centric schedule so it's less attractive than it used to be at the margins.

They haven't been hiring dispatchers, and overworking the ones they do.

For Parkmobile, we have been battling to hire in the past year's ultra competitive market. We still have a ton of hiring to do and are probably even looking to accelerate our recruiting. I would imagine there are a number of companies that for one reason or another aren't freezing hiring because of the economic climate.

I think we have been very productive since going remote but I do miss the camaraderie in the office and I believe our "culture" has taken a bit of a hit. There are less interactions outside of what is specifically scheduled on the calendar. This leads to more focus during the day but I am one who thinks great things come out of casual conversations with people in the office that I don't directly work with every day.

I reckon the UK sector in particular has finally locked on the realization that they can save boatloads of money by hiring outside London/Thames Valley, and the sky will not fall if IT folks are not lined up in big City offices like chickens in pens. Covid was a big game-changer.

One of my clients at a large bulge bracket said “if these people insist on not being in the office we may just outsource the job for a tenth of the comp”. I think more companies will take that view personally.

Our attrition is sub 5% over trailing twelve months. I get what works for us isn’t what will work for everyone else.

1. as a manager, I need to be able to manage people when I can't see them. I need to look at what they're outputting, what results they get, not just whether they're moistening a chair for enough hours in the day.

2. people aren't fungible. Or rather, if they are, then I've recruited the wrong people. If I could outsource the job for a tenth of the salary and get the same results, then I absolutely should do that immediately. If I'm paying 90% of this person's salary just so they can moisten a chair in the office, then I'm not doing my job right.

And because other people are realising that, their salary rates are increasing way over inflation. The Eastern Europeans are earning nearly western salaries. The African guy is doing very well (and better every year).

I genuinely believe remote work will change the world. For the better.

Sure you'll get junior/mid-grade ones (which honestly might be enough for you) but I don't think you are going to like what happens to your candidates in the coming years. Remote work is just such a perk that it is literally one of the make or break points for many software engineers. People will inevitably migrate to companies with the better perks and it is hard to beat coding with your own kitchen and bathroom 10 steps away.

You also kind of gave yourself away with the "if these people insist on not being in the office we may just outsource the job for a tenth of the comp" in the sense that your industry views developers as a cost center and not the reason the company is generating value. If you've ever outsourced you know the challenges of time zone, language barrier and quality are a hard one to beat. You might as well hired a half-way decent developer in the beginning, but hey at least you saved a buck so you got your quarterly bonus right?

Hah, they can go ahead and do that. In fact I encourage it because it makes me more money in the end. When the software falls apart due to shoddy practices, they'll learn a very hard lesson when coming back to reality and end up paying people like me double (at best) what they would've originally paid to fix the mess. My last company was in the finance space and this is precisely what happened. They ended up pouring millions of dollars into fixing the disaster from outsourcing. If you ask around, you'll find this is a very common story.

I know several startups/small companies in the 0-50 range that have had awesome outcomes - but nothing larger then that...Between time zones and cultural differences, it just doesn't seem to work for large groups.

There is plenty of foreign talent.

Sure, companies are not great at picking outsourcing firms, I think corruption and/or picking your mate's consultancy firms plays a role in that.

It often turns out that people who are empowered to write good software as a team are also empowered to research their market value.

Or vice versa

People who don't challenge if they're getting paid similarly as the previous workers also aren't asking if they're being provided with the correct technical detail or even building the "right" thing. (This can be true of hiring too little experience, hiring people and burning them out)

That's obviously an empty threat. If they could save 90% by outsourcing, they'd already have done it. The idea that the tech market rate is as high as it is because of good-hearted managers is absolutely laughable.

The question is if you ditched the costly New York city office and support staff would you be in a better position.

That may not matter to you because your company is part of your identity. Living in New York and going into the office is a million times better than doing it from home for most. I'm not sure life is the same elsewhere.

We are making exception for UA team given the circumstances. Our CTO is in NYC but we have a local leadership team.

The vast majority of companies are willing to hire remote, but a lot only within locations they have the legal means to do so (eg. Legal entity, contract with Deel or other company). It seemed during 2020/early 2021 people were saying it was going to be a "global job market", which in my understanding meant you could get a job in any country in the world, easy.

While it's true in my experience you can get a job in any country in the world, it's not that easy. A lot of companies do not want to hire outside areas they have a legal entity in, Eg. a company has an office in Paris, they'll hire remotely anywhere in France, but good luck if you're based in Spain.

Companies that will hire most anywhere are far and few between, and generally from what I've seen are smaller, startup/small business sized companies.

Take the above with a pinch of salt as that is purely my own experience, and could be bias based on what I was looking for.

Either individually contract, or via a 3rd party firm like Tata, or Infosys

Although I still have to go into the office occasionally to things that can't be done remotely, midway through the pandemic I had decided that I am going to work from home as much as I like from now on. And if this company doesn't let me, I'll switch jobs.

Earlier in this year, the CEO set a "back to the office" date of June 13th. I've been in occasionally since then and it's still basically a ghost town. So apparently most of my co-workers have the same idea as me.

There was no shortage of fully remote roles, in fact.. there were so many new ones popping up every day on LinkedIn that I was quite selective about what type of companies / projects I applied to (avoiding financial/health/crypto and anything else that felt dull or ethically questionable).

In my own personal experience... the "widespread hiring freeze" feels like little more than media sensationalism.

There is a voluntary office day now and I'll try to make it work. I hope it stays voluntary and does not become mandatory.

Personally I enjoy being in the office 2-3 days a week as long as the commute isn't too bad, but I'm seriously considering going full remote as it opens up a lot of life possibilities.

Then you need to remind your employer that your presence on the team is not "mandatory", but rather optional. In the form of the 2-week notice you give once you have found a much better job that also respects your health and sanity.

There seems to be a hard-core "WFH or nothing" contingent here that refuse to acknowledge that a great many people prefer and even thrive working in a typical office environment.

But I have seen arguments from the hardcore "Butts in chairs or nothing" contingent refusing to acknowledge that a great many people thrive outside a typical office environment and may be even more productive that way.

Now if I had your typical 1 hours each way driving commute.. no way I am going to the office

Unsure how it is out there - I've not jumped jobs because it's been great here so far.

I also don't really believe people claiming they are losing productivity in WFH, its most likely that they were never productive to begin with and its becoming magnified.

The latter group often expresses it emotional terms like : not having human interactions, missing out on watercooler talks, acknowledgement. Perhaps these emotions are being surfaced because there is nothing to hide behind anymore.

Now we're transitioning into a post-lockdown "new normal". Some companies and people are finding that full-remote is great: they've figured out how to make it work (hint: culture, trust, and communication are huge factors). Others, not so much.

I think the next few years are going to be interesting. My suspicion is companies that have figured out how to do remote well are going to absolutely crush it, and companies with a poor culture that go back to 100% in-office are going to have a bad time. (I'm currently at one of these companies and am actively looking for a new job.)

With that being said, I am one of the most productive members of my team and I am completely unable to WFH.

I hate meetings. I don't often engage in water-cooler chat. I wish I had the option to occupy an office full-time. I am an introvert.

Being at home simultaneously relaxes me and stresses me out since it constantly reminds me of chores and home maintenance tasks that need to get done. Furthermore, my three young children seem to be constantly starved for my attention, so hiding behind a closed door leads to many disruptions and tears.

Hell, I'm not even able to WFH on non-work-related tasks I enjoy!

There are people that need people around to work. Perhaps it can be once a week, once a month, etc., but some workers actually need people. It's inhumane for some people. Stigmatizing them as unproductive without any other facts is just black and white thinking that does not advance the conversation.

Often such comments frame their productivity in terms of impromptu discussions, or over-staffed meetings. I suspect they're the sort of people who feel jointly productive so long as they're engaged with the productive people during the process. Y'know, the sort destined for middle management. ;)

I'll take their company over that of an office any time. At least my kids respect me enough not to interrupt be when I've got headphones on and am working; something I can't say for any office I've ever worked in.

Every situation is different.

My eldest has moderate autism. I had to remind him last Saturday 165 times (I counted) to not touch a delicate trinket my partner has on display. I eventually chose to put it away.

No amount of "respect" or reinforcement will fix this. His wiring is all screwed up.

Nothing within reach of children is of any value in my home. I liken having children in my home to living with rising flood waters, which destroy everything in their reach.

If I don't try, he'll never learn. He's already fighting uphill. I'm not going to disable him further by raising him in an environment which presents no challenges of its own.

I have severely autistic family members, so I'm not unfamiliar with the challenges. Stubbornly butting heads with them never achieves much headway.

I've seen no data that'd indicate a meaningful shift yet. I've also seen no shifts from recruiters reaching out to me about in-person roles. All recruiters reaching out highlight that the positions they're looking to fill are fully remote. (I receive anywhere from two to ten outreach messages per day)

That said, my experience doesn't mean that there isn't or won't be a shift, but I haven't found or observed any evidence yet. I believe there is still an abundance of work for engineers wanting to work remotely right now. The remote opportunities are far, far better than any time previous to 2020.

I'm not particularly fond of wfh, and prefer a vibrant office setting, but I realised that I would have a hard time finding a place where in-person work would be the norm. So now I settled for a job where there is still an office, but most developers never go (my boss is at least there 1-2 times a week). I also don't go every day (it's a bit far), and since not a lot of people are there maybe I'll go even less, although I do find that I can work better from there.

It's not ideal, but for now I'm trying to make it work. I certainly like the flexibility and I don't think anyone would want to go back to a fully Mo-Fri in the office kind of setup (me neither), but I do wonder if we'll see a reverse of the trend in a couple of years where a nice office and a good in-person atmosphere will be advertised as a perk, too.

We'll see. 2 years of pandemic is not necessarily enough for everyone to make up their minds on their preferred mode of working. And while I know that "wfh or I'll quit" kind of people are very vocal, I also know a number of people who enjoy going to the office regularly. Ideally, in some years, wfh people will apply to wfh companies and in-person people will apply to in-person companies (with some flexibility around wfh, of course), and everyone can find something that works for them.

Because the details of interactions matter a lot and it's also important for companies to have firm policies. The most basic one being that you communicate effectively, appropriately using the tools available.

Within say 1-4 years, we should expect VR/AR to become much more like physical attendance. There will be 3D realistic rendering of faces, eye tracking and eye contact, 3d positional audio, and as I said, much more comfortable gear unlike the sweaty huge headsets.

So it's actually going to turn into a new battle to avoid bosses breathing down your _virtual_ neck. What the conversation should be is about the full range of types of presence and synchronous or asynchronous collaboration and work product distribution.

I think we will end up with more effective management and organizations because of a greater range of possible arrangements and more pressure towards actually measuring effectiveness based on work product. Managers that aren't qualified to judge intermediary work products will be eliminated or at least less common.

But we will see a lot of the types of office interactions that were supposedly only available in person start to become common in remote work using AR/VR.

As a community organizer, I talk to a lot of people - nobody said that their management is forcing anything yet. My own experience is that management doesn't care in most situations, as long as the work gets done. And it does right now.

Reading online about it, I feel like most of the people who complain about this problem are in the USA, and that there's some kind of struggle between employees and their managers. Never felt this in my career so far, so can't really relate...

This also means only working at small companies and never changing your problem domain or trying to work on something new. Doesn't sound that great.

Like it or not, the software labor market is now nationwide, and remote is the rule rather than the exception. I don't know how long that will last, as I see very obvious negatives to remote for creative work, but for now that's how it is.

I've got this situation in Seattle, but can luckily work remotely whenever. Unlimited PTO. Great business, on the up and up - coming into the office helps us get stuff done, and build camraderie but we have multiple people who are fully remote as well.

Find a place that respects what you are looking for, it's out there - don't give up.

I'm not sure if other people (particularly here on HN) can even relate to this, but working is a lot like everything else in life for me. I'd rather see my therapist in person than over Zoom. I would rather hang out with my friends than FaceTime them. And I would rather be in an office with people than Slacking and Zooming. I like being able to pull someone into a meeting room with a drawing board and explain ideas. I love small talk. These are things that are not easily replicable via telephony.

Some companies do the 'one day per week in office", or "we have an office space you can use if you want to" but this doesn't solve my problem either. What I want only works if everyone else is cooperating. In the meantime, I have found that working remotely or alone in a big office building, which I do most days, is making me unhappy. But there just aren't any other options.

Had the original company stayed in contact, or it was common practice to stay in contact wether it's a hire or no hire, the hiring companies wouldn't have to deal with the extra competition created by no contact.

I would say no - it's not part of the "process". Every company swears they are against ghosting (and are "shocked" when it gets publicly exposed), but they all keep doing it anyway. It's a reflection of the cynical, emotionally immature nature of this industry.

Or any of the other tokens of gratuitous unpleasantness, carelessness and plain one-sided-ness that these companies routinely rub in our faces, as if we're desperate to work for them.

It just depends how much FY money you're sitting on at the moment. Like anything else in this industry.

Milliennials now being in positions of power are 100% to blame for this. They see no difference between the conversation with a job candidate and that of the girl you fucked last week.

Only those truly needed on-site (or want to be) are there currently. Remote is alive and well but you can smell it's trending back towards the option rather than the default.

Talk has started about returning to the office for a portion of the week. It's not being enforced yet but it seems to be trending that way.

I'm a little frustrated by it. Our handling isn't a return to normal, it's an overshoot.

I've been remote for years before the pandemic - it was known, my whole team is in another state.

But, now that the pandemic is over, anyone not > 50 miles away from the office has been encouraged to get an exception. The implication being, you will return eventually

Prior to the WFH spree I never needed this, but now I do - apparently. It could be good record keeping, it could be pressure to get rid of the non-believers.

I am starting to look for alternate setups to the traditional laptop for faculty. We used a webcam that had a flexible stand for the beadwork class to show the actual work up close. Testing a multi-camera setup with Blackmagic Design STEM mini with larger screen (TV of some type) and better cameras with document camera (think old overhead) and maybe a flexible close-up camera for craft work. I am firmly convinced that laptops are a poor meeting experience for presenters.

Also in my mind, companies that are either smaller or have a good idea of what they need their people to do are the ones that are going to be able to thrive and provide full-remote work.

BigCo's are probably going to continue to push for in-person as they are unable to determine what they need from their people so they will substitute face time and meetings to make themselves feel like progress is made.

Random thought: for me, hybrid work as a mostly-remote person was hardest when you had more than one person in a meeting room and the rest were remote.

A non trivial amount of BigCo roles and expenses are simply unnecessary when the physical office no longer exists.

And all those people in those roles will advocate strongly for in office work in order to defend their jobs.

Not that it relates directly to tech jobs, but now that a work-from-home model has proven to be functional it seems like it should become more and more prevalent across the board.

Driving 1 minute in the US costs at least $0.60 in nominal dollars, and including non monetary costs/benefits, I can imagine it being quite a difference, more noticeable for lower paying jobs.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=60&date=all&q=r...

Edit: filtered link to category "Jobs"

Put me in a room with a few other folks, some whiteboards and some laptops and magic happens. Hanging around the house and chatting on zoom+slack is boring, pathetic and produces no magic.

Definitely trending to office. Remote as exception.

Companies that had covid full remote, then hybrid, will move to 1 day remote over time - maybe less.