If I had to drive there's no way I'd want to go back.

Even with my short commute: I have a huge desk, I can take power naps, my girlfriend cooks for me and brings me food during meetings, I can take a shower after scrum, and my productivity may actually be higher.

Also I can work from an armchair instead of an office chair.

>Also I can work from an armchair instead of an office chair.

I do move around the house, but for at least some of us, our backs thank us if we do a lot of our sitting in a good office chair.

I worked from a couch for a few years and only stopped due to the intense lower back pain it eventually caused me. Then I went and splurged on a high end office chair. It has improved my back, and my concentration and stamina at work greatly. Definitely one of my better investments.

Armchair and couch are good but should not be abused. Our bodies are not meant to be in the same position for prolonged time. Definitely a good office chair makes things better but the fact that you are still in the same position for too long is not healthy. What i'm getting at is that from time to time moving around, changing positions, moving to an armchair etc... is actually good for you. Being stuck on any one arrangement though especially if its not ideal (armchair again) is a recipe for disaster.

I just want a non-prescriptive approach. Ideally offices will become collaboration spaces, and largely there to foster and facilitate social interaction. Meaning more table tennis less desks.

Sounds awful. Table tennis is not collaboration, it’s a recreational activity. It’s also unbelievably disruptive to everyone around you and takes up space that could have been used for a meeting area. Attitudes like this make the office a worse space for collaboration, not better.

our office has meals area and a separate rec room with table tennis, pool table and an outdoor basketball half court. who on earth would have a table tennis table set up in an office or within earshot of where the work gets done?

For cost savings. They are common in offices in my country. I find it really distractive myself

Why would I drive somewhere to play table tennis with coworkers?

To break daily routine? I find it dull when I do exactly the same thing day after day.

Yeah but you can do something better than playing table tennis with the people who happen to work for the same company as you.

Take a dance class. Become a volunteer firefighter. Deliver meals to the elderly. Join a choir. Play darts down the pub. Join an ultimate frisbee team.

Lots of people like offices for the social connection. That’s cool, but if you can’t get that social connection outside an office it’s a problem you should do some work on.

You could as well live in mountains and meditate all day instead of working. I hope you agree that's all pretty subjective.

I’m not trying to make a statement about the relative subjective value of each activity. I’m trying to make the point that in order to build resilience and capacity into your social life it’s important to have a diversity of connections.

If your entire social world would be brought undone by losing a job, that’s a problem.

Oh man, this is so true. I hate when people bring coworkers to hobbies, because then their work drama shows up elsewhere. I had an RPG player call me in tears because another player had fired them and they didn't feel coming to RPG night anymore. My coworkers are good for the occasional beer and that's about all I'll ever ask of them.

it wouldn't be coworkers in a perfect world.

employer rents a desk/office in a larger facility (or multiple) and allows office working staff to travel less.

like a gym membership. sign up to one, use any of the same companies gyms. but with a desk or office, you can book ahead.

no central office with people commuting 40+ mins each way, less need for public transport, could also lower cost of renting an entire building/parking/insurance etc

I can work from home for the most part but would be nice to be able to take 10-15 minutes to walk or ride to an office and use the resources of an office. and play table tennis

Eh. An office has almost no facilities I don't have in my home office. And I don't like gyms; I'd rather walk outside.

i live in a country where suburbia has pretty average internet (compared to work) and uploading technical shit takes me significantly longer. I can work from home but a change in scenery for me is needed every so often and working from home messes with my being at home time, it feels like living and working in the same place (duh) which I can't do constantly. during the lock down I worked from home for the most part but each week would work from our holiday house, just because it's different.

My company has always had 2 WFH days a week. I found last summer, when we coukd briefly return to the office, that I would prefer 3/5 WFH. So my vote is... Both, but neither.

Actually, I would prefer a good mix too. Both models have their strengths and weaknesses, so mixing them should give us the chance to use them at their best.

I also see a value in being in the office and meeting the colleagues face to face. But I also like to have more free time and choose my neighborhood based on my own preferences and not based on where my work is.

I totally okay with traveling even longer distances for occasional meetings if I can otherwise be flexible and choose on my own. I hate the "being forced to come to the office" aspect.

For me there is a high chance that I might switch companies after the pandemic to retain the gained freedom I now have. Albeit "gained freedom" might be a bit much. Since I currently have to assume that it's "back to the office" again after the pandemic, I'm not yet as free as I could be with a true remote job.

Depends on your reason for wanting WFH. If you prefer your home office because it's quiet and effective, or if you have a really long commute, 2/5 or 3/5 is a good compromise. If you want to actually leave your expensive city and live in Montana, then these hybrid schemes don't help at all.

Same thing happen here and I like the hybrid model. I really did miss being around my coworkers so this helped but not every function of the office needs to be in person.

Needs a 3rd option on that poll.

I agree. I went from 0/5 days to 2/5 WFH , and I really enjoy the benefits of working from home, but I also enjoy bonding and collaborating with coworkers in person.

Do you want to go into the office, or do you want everyone else to go into the office?

One of the dynamics I expect you'll see coming out of this at companies that decide to offer a lot of flexibility is that the people who mostly want to come back into an office will get increasingly unhappy if a lot of their coworkers choose not to. (But I expect they'll be able to and will find other workplaces that are more butts in seats, which should be their response rather than try to change coworker behavior.)

I preferred it so much that I found myself a new role with a fully remote company. I’ll happily visit the office once lockdown eases, but the ‘forced experiment’ has proved to me that the upsides (live anywhere, zero commute saving time and money, more time with family, etc) vastly outweigh the downsides.

I think once people experience flexible/remote work minus lockdown, there’s no going back. Until then everyone sort of misses the office in a vague sense, because they miss the social aspect.

Some employers are desperate to prevent their employees from seeing this by making sure they go back into the office as quickly as possible, but the secret is out in my opinion.

I second this. I moved from a management role to an IC role (incredibly, better paid) and fully remote.

My family is scattered around the country. And I'm at a a time when I want to spend more time with my parents.

110%. I've never had any desire to work outside of my home whatsoever, and there wasn't a single day of office work in the past that I wouldn't rather have spent at home. I wish I could stress enough how much I hate commuting to an office, being around and hearing people, and being obligated to leave my home just to sit and type on a laptop like I could do at home.

I've absolutely loathed working from my makeshift bedroom office for over a year. I rent a townhouse with multiple roommates, and there simply isn't communal space to accommodate everyone setting up their own personal office.

My perspective is many of my older (and more financially established) peers have spare bedrooms converted to offices, which I imagine makes long term WFH more digestible.

I wonder if WFH/office skews around age, or other criterion. If so, what are the long term social implications of a dual WFH/Office option.

I expect WFH skews around homeownership (itself loosely correlated with age) and has a downturn depending on children in the household.

I'm barely 30 and a homeowner, and loved working from home. I didn't have to waste hours on a stressful commute. I have a comfy gaming chair, expansive multi-monitor setup, wraparound desk, and silent but fast desktop instead of an aging laptop and 3x5' desk, the kitchen is tons nicer than the break roome, I enjoyed quiet walks in the woods or throwing the frisbee for my dog during breaks...it did suck hearing my 3yo through the door beg me to come out and take one of those breaks with him, but at least I got to do so and have lunch with him, and he figured it out pretty quickly. And no inane interruptions from coworkers when I was deep in a technical problem!

I think the main long-term social implications are a move back out of the city towards more rural or maybe suburban living. Quarantine would have been hell in a crowded downtown apartment with roommates you barely like well enough to share a bathroom with, on my acreage and in my old house with a mortgage that's cheaper than downtown rent it was not just digestible but magnificent, I would quarantine again in a heartbeat.

What I'm seeing is a lean (at least in large companies) to offering more associate choice towards WFH/office going forward. If there are natural skews in terms of which populations will gravitate towards each option, what are the social consequences of that?

For example, if we're thinking about age, what does a team look like after a year when only the junior level staff have been coming in to the office? It seems like that could have significant effects on team-building, and leadership relationships.

(I'm admittedly biased towards in office work. I personally feel both more productive, and happier when I have segmented spaces for work and home life.)

The big issue for me has been lack of travel to events, etc. and almost complete lack of social activities (have had some small outdoors get togethers).

But even though I'm just 30 minutes from an office, I didn't even have a desk there any longer even pre-pandemic. The teams I work on are highly distributed anyway. No reason for me to drive 30 minutes into an office.

Well, post lockdown you’ll have a lot more options including nice coworking spaces.

Yeah, I expect for a lot of urban folk in expensive areas, a co-working space may well be a better option than upsizing so that they have a dedicated office--unless they also prefer that additional space for other reasons.

I think even relatively suburban areas will be able to support a coworking space or two, but it remains to be seen.

Best would be to have a quarterly or so meet up of the team. A lot of teams are geographical distributed anyway.

Fly to a location for a long weekend with activities some team building, get a big hotel block.

That would cost less than a seat in many of these nyc offices.

Yes but that long weekend should happen between Monday and Friday.

Definitely. I even resent events (whether team meetings or conferences) that force me to travel on Sunday. I sometimes choose to extend a work trip over a weekend but it's my choice.

I do agree with the basic point. The team I work with is scattered across about 10 timezones. On a given day I'm probably talking with some combination of remote people and people normally in about 5 different offices. As someone who has been remote, the main pain point over the past year has been the lack of my usual travel to many events as well as team off-sites (which usually aren't primarily fun and games but do involve socializing). I normally travel about 1/3 of the year.

Assuming the wife and kids will be paid for this sounds amazing. Otherwise it’s daddy or mommy taking a vacation without the family and that never goes well.

My weekends are not work time. I do sometimes end up at events/associated travel that spans weekends in which case I take unofficial comp time. But if you, as employer, deliberately schedules a team get-together over a weekend because "it will be fun," you are an asshole.

For sure. This was how we did it at GitLab, and it was the perfect balance.

You shouldn't show the pie chart before people have voted. This skews things. Show it after.

There is no one in my household who wants to return to an office. Even my youngest is begging us to allow him to attend a Remote Uni so he doesn't have to commute. I will gladly give my commute time savings to my employer in extra hours worked. Financially it's a no brainier, can get rid of one of our vehicles, pay less in insurance and gas, better for the environment, less office politics, less distractions, more comfortable environment, healthier food options, etc.

I do understand there are folks who live in a shoe box apartment, have no family or responsibilities, lonely, have little else going on in their lives and basically "The Office" is the only thing they got. These people should be allowed to return but lets not drag the rest of us in with you.

I want to be able to go to the office when I want and I want to be able to work when I want

Two thoughts (I didn't vote because home == office for me):

1) The list of companies is pretty odd. It has Apple but no Facebook, Google, Netflix, etc. Is there actually a large population of HN that works at e.g. all these financial institutions, oil companies, and places like Walmart/IKEA?

2) I think the votes would be a lot more valuable if they were broken up by job role. IME devs I talk to seem split somewhere 40/60-60/40 on whether they want to return to an office (to some extent) soon, but other roles (specifically managers and admin) overwhelmingly want to go back (again, IME). Grouping everyone across all roles might be too broad of a scope to have a meaningful poll result.

Thank you so much for the feedback. I will definitely fix it in the next iteration. I spent only 30 minutes trying to get something to work.

If you're making a better version, make sure each choice has to be explicitly selected. Accidental clicks and suggestion will mess up your results.

I mostly like working remotely, but I do think that tech people overestimate the desire of the average person to work online.

Most people like being social, hate Zoom meetings, don’t have a private office at home. Many use the workplace as a place to go to get away from an undesirable living situation (small apartment) or in the case of schooling: a lot of students rely on schools for basic social services. Not everything can be replicated via a computer screen, nor should it.

That sounds like people living to work. Maybe these "average" people need to organize.

Or maybe we can let people decide for themselves what they value?

If I could work from the office without going there, I'd be sold.

Although this is probably obvious to most people I like to be clear:

Working from home is great for employees. It seems likely that a solid majority of employees prefer WFH. But this is in the same vein as most employees would prefer to be paid without working anywhere full stop.

Employees are paid, in a large part, to do what their employers think is profitable. If there is a disagreement, the employee's opinion isn't really the guiding star. The question on WFH/Work from Work isn't what the employees prefer, it is almost strictly going to be about what employers think is more valuable.

You highlighted two important points.

>most employees would prefer to be paid without working anywhere full stop.

This is true but we should ask why?

> If there is a disagreement, the employees opinion isn't really the guiding star.

This second point is deeply related to the first. If employees actually owned part of the business like the owners, or to put it another way, there is no employee/employer separation, then it's clear they would want to work since they A) own part of the business and B) have say over the business.

There is the concept of Democracy at Work by Richard Wolf as a solution to the two problems you mentioned.

As an aside, as someone who owns part of a business, I can say that I also prefer work-from-home.

> If employees actually owned part of the business like the owners, or to put it another way, there is no employee/employer separation, then it's clear they would want to work since they A) own part of the business and B) have say over the business.

Just label the employee "contractor" and the employer "client", and you end up with the exact same picture: the contractor would like to be paid by the client without doing any work. The client would like to pay nothing while having all the work done. They meet in the middle somewhere.

For subsistence farmers, that might look differently, but mostly it's just an internalized split between wanting the fruits and not wanting the labor.

How much of the business do you need to own? A tenth of a percent isn’t much motivation.

Sounds like we’d need even splits?

> A tenth of a percent isn’t much motivation.

Depends on the size of the company.

Maybe, but it’s also not an indentured servant program. Companies with better cultures are already actively recruiting people from the ones that want to force everyone back into the office full time as soon as possible, so they can chain them to their desk and watch them work.

To me it seems like this will result in these places becoming worse and worse until they collapse under their own weight.

Most employers are also employees. What a given middle manager thinks may not be the same as what their manager thinks, or their employees think.

Corporations may be legal 'person', but they don't have individual thoughts

No. Corporations are not legal persons. They have certain legal rights, and don't have others, that align with the legal rights that people have. Some of those (freedom of speech->freedom to make donations) are more controversial than others (sign a contract).

None of those things are done by a corporation, they're done by employees of the corporation - be it the janitor or the CEO.

When a corporation signs a contract, it's a contract with the corporation not with the CFO or whoever, i.e. it doesn't follow the CFO if they take a new job. Similarly, a press release is a statement by the company, not whichever PR person wrote it or the lawyer who approved it.

It's irellevent. The corporation doesn't decide to sign a contract, or to tell people to work from office or work from home, employees of the corporation decide to to that act.

I want the option without anyone being judged. It’s completely fine and nobody will question where you work as long as your productive. People that love the office want others to do so as well.

Yeah. But I've been remote for 5 years.

I do miss in-the-office work, but given the trade-offs involved I'm okay being remote. No commute is great.

The hard part with COVID isn't the remoteness, but the lack of other stuff. I'm used to doing my 9-5... and then GTFO of the house and hit a bar / gym / event / quilting circle / whatever.

Those "3rd spaces" will return after COVID, and remote will be okay then as well.

We are headed back into the office next week and I'm ambivalent. The commute isn't bad and I listen to audiobooks. My husband never left his office so he goes to work and I'm just..bored most of the day. I miss the office banter and interactions, good and bad, because out here working from home as I am on my last day, I don't feel a sense of community and connection with my coworkers.

I'm already a full remote worker, but if I had to go back to the office, I'd definitely look for another job if my current job didn't permit it.

There are plenty of companies looking for remote employees, more than before nowadays. Worst case scenario I'd sacrifice part of my salary if necessary, but in no way I'd go back to commuting every day and deal with all the bullshit of open plan offices.

Best part about WFH is the afternoon nap. That's my biggest gripe against going back to the office.

I remember times back at the office where I was so sleepy I was just waiting for the day to end so I could go home and take a nap. Then I'd finish my work sometime in the evening.

It's easy for CEOs to want to go back to the office because they don't have to be there and usually aren't.

No way. I leave 110km from my office now, in a beautiful village with rain forest and waterfalls. No way I'm getting back to the city unless I have to.

My company's going to be going with a hybrid model, which is exactly what I want. I hate purely working from home, but I definitely would pretty much every Monday and Friday.

I was going to say this, going to the office on mondays and fridays seems neat

TBH, I'd be the complete opposite if I went into an office. Checking out early on Fridays is pretty common in a lot of places.

Well, I’ve been working from home for the past 5 years, so I’m not sure if my opinion counts.

why isn't there a third answer? WFH is great, but I don't want to do it every day.

That's not how you do a poll though. The respondents are self-selected from a very small subset of the WFH population (readers of this site). In any case, "I wanted an option poll showing that..." is not a great way to get an objective result.

Please don't preselect the "WFH" option. This skews your poll as you made a choice for the user. :)

Where did you get the list of companies from?

Same question. It feels very incomplete. It's even missing some of the Fortune 100, and lots of anything past the first 100.

Just as before the pandemic, I would prefer to have the choice. As long as the work is fully digital and a computer is the only tool I need for work, communication, and collaboration, if I want to work from home for a day, a week, a month or a year it should be my choice and not an allowance or an exception or a favour or anything.

A remote-only job can become very isolating. On the other hand, mandatory office presence is forced socialization. Most of the times humans accept it as a cost of living but there are many cases where it creates unneeded stress and reduces productivity.

If one is unsociable and surrounded by sociable people this can be perceived as pressure, under threat of becoming an outcast, tensions build on either side, resulting in burnout.

If one is sociable and surrounded by unsociable people (my case at my last job) it becomes very draining to have to spend 8h a day with people who do not reciprocate the energy, frustrations build on either side also resulting in burnout.

If ones sociability is incompatible with others in terms of language/views/manners/etc., then the group splits into subgroups, each subgroup gossiping about the others.

If the group is all around compatible (my second to last job), there are some options:

It either becomes a very fun place to work at where each members frustrations are being dampened by the enthusiasm of colleagues, and tensions between members are being dampened by the other members. The social agreement that rules the place is like "we are all in this together".

Or it becomes a very peaceful, efficient but cold place where work is leanly getting done ruled by an implicit agreement like an armistice, "I won't bother or disturb you and you won't bother or disturb me".

Allowing unrestricted work from home means an acknowledgement that work and socialization are separate and each employee has freedom of association. If a group clicks together, great, they can be like the legendary dream team of VmWare. If they don't, then it's just a professional relationship, and it's best to keep it that way and for digitalized professions, there is no need for this to include physical proximity.

This is not a rant against offices. Separating work and leisure space is very important. It is a rant against centralised offices. People who are sociable and get along are better served by a shared working space like a company office, a nearby coworking space, rotating work parties or some other form of shared space. People who treat the job as just a means to an end for a salary and as soon as the shift ends there is nothing they would rather do than go home are better served by rented work pods/cubicles at neighbourhood office buildings.

What makes a team efficient is compatibility, not a certain style of office. The default should be being professional and remote work is perfect for that. It's easier to be professional online. If there is room for socializing, great, but forcing this is counterproductive as a business. Some people only want a quiet cubicle. Great, for those people you save money on teambuildings and events and other stuff. Some people want an open-space office and plants and nerf-guns and group playlists and negociating complomises and team events. Great, with these people you save on floorspace and soundproofing. Just don't force them to mix.