Question, what specifically is so horrible about being in the office?
I work remote so no judgment, I just don't know if I feel like my life was infinitely worse when I worked in an office.
Cycling around cities is fun. The gym with others was fun. Post work beers / dinner was fun. Making friends with colleagues was fun. Being able to study martial arts in the city is something I wanted to do, seems fun.
Cost of living near an office is absurd. Houses in all tech hubs in the US are completely blown out (NYC, Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc.) [1].
Average house price in Cupertino (not that you'd live directly in the same place) is 2.6+ million. $300-400,000 salary doesn't cut it anymore.
I wouldn't want to finance the average house on the average Apple salary [2] or a doctor's salary [3].
Realistically, to comfortably afford a 3 million house with 10% down assuming 3% financing (good luck getting that now), you'd need clear about $780,000 per year in cash [4].
I give this is a hurdle to working in an office, but it's not a problem with working in an office in and of itself.
If you could live in a 3 bedroom luxury apartment 10 minutes from your office in an area with nice cafes, restaurants, gyms and access to great public transport to airports etc, how would you feel then?
Totally agree. This is my personal barrier towards returning to an office in a "tech city." If I could live a reasonable distance and commute, I'd have no major objection to going to an office at least part time. However, affordability is a giant concern.
Rents will follow mortgage rates as well. I just did a quick lookup of 3 bedrooms around Apple's office in Cupertino and they are about $7,000 or so a month which means you're paying about $90,000 in cash a year in rent.
What if you live like that, and have 10 min commute. And then you change workplace, and their office is 70 minutes away, on the other side of the city. Or your city just sucks to cross even halfway (mine is) due to chokepoints and insane traffic.
Question, what specifically is so horrible about being in the office?
The problem isn't so much offices in general, but the particular one in question. Apple spent five billion dollars on a gargantuan vanity project that actually leaves their individual contributors worse off than they were before with respect to personal space, privacy, and the ability to work without constant interference and distraction from their coworkers.
Some teams revolted [1], and a few even got away with it, but most employees had no choice but to fall in line. When the pandemic came along, life suddenly got better for those people... an utterly-unprecedented phenomenon that a more enlightened management team would have taken like a dash of cold water to the face. Instead, Apple management has been trying to double down on their $5B sunk-cost fallacy by herding their workforce back into the industrial-scale circular feedlot where they belong.
Meanwhile, because of the shortage of housing within reasonable commuting distance of their new campus, even those earning well into six figures are going to have to spend 1-2 hours a day stuck in traffic or cooling their heels on a bus or train for the privilege of working for Apple. The execs can afford to live nearby, of course, so they DGAF about the needless time burden they're imposing. I would be incandescently pissed about this if I worked at Apple.
Being around a large group of bustling people, having to make small talk instead of scheduled meetings, no flexibility to the day, no home cooked meals, no spending time with the kids or family, no quick naps during lunch break, no working from national parks, no working from different countries, have to live close to major population centers that is expensive, commute, no quiet time to get work done etc.
For me it's quite simple: mom lives in one state in the south, dad lives in another near the centre of the country and my wife's family lives in the north.
We spend time visiting them for a couple of weeks at a time. They all are 70+, so it is that time when we want to take advantage of having them.
Even having to go to the office 1 day a week wouldn't make that possible, thus it is an instant disqualification for me.
"- On slow days when I am done I can get up and do something else." - for me this is the best, i go for a guilt free bike ride if i'm just not feeling it, where as in the office, i'm always wondering if i look like a slacker if i'm redditing for an hour to just chill.
What you say sounds fun when you are young, i know this because i lived that kind of life too but when you get older and have a family, you have to prioritize them. You can't live in a small apartment 5 mins from work, you would rather use the extra two hours you spend commuting to bond with your kids etc... In an ideal world with infinite money and infinite space, i would choose to live 5 mins away from my workplace, but seeing as how i'm not rich, i don't want to live my life like a serf. In the end, you can't have it all so for me (and many others) WFH gives me a choice.
Older more established higher paid people, or younger staff trying to build their career.
This is where I see a lot of remote work being in favor of people who already have a career and are on the path to retirement. If you're younger looking to get mentored and build networks, you're out of luck.
In an office, you spend 8-10+ hours to work a 3-hour day. You have to commute to the place. You're basically sick with the flu (but working due to social pressures) for half of February. Being visible from behind while working, as is typical in an open-plan environment, not only suggests low status but causes chronic inflammation that'll cause you to have health problems in your 30s that normally pop up in one's 60s.
Offices suck. The only reason the cattle are being called back into them is because a bunch of propertarian squidcunts convinced some corrupt mayors to say "it's time" even though COVID is still quite active (I'm recovering from it as I type this, and it sucks).
None of this was really my experience, I was maybe lucky enough to do it, but I just rented an apartment near my office and had a 10 minute ride to work.
I saved myself a lot of money and time even if I paid more rent than others with cars and suburban mortgages.
I just told my colleagues if I had my headphones on , not to disturb me unless urgent. I got a fair bit done in the startup I worked for, it sold for a lot of money a year ago so I guess it was productive enough.
I work remote so no judgment, I just don't know if I feel like my life was infinitely worse when I worked in an office.
Cycling around cities is fun. The gym with others was fun. Post work beers / dinner was fun. Making friends with colleagues was fun. Being able to study martial arts in the city is something I wanted to do, seems fun.