You have the younger crowd who live with parents, have their own room in a apartment somewhere. Happy to jump on work and then jump instantly to discord and whatever. Like my friend below my apartment.
Then you have the older crowd who have their own house, Kids, family pet or two. Have a spare room they can turn in to an office.
And then theres me, a 32 year old who has a single bedroom apartment who likes separation from work and personal. Having my work laptop at home has been stressful because its always felt like I am at work. Having to use my personal space for work doesn't bode well.
Luckly, my office is open and I can now go in everyday. Even when I am the only one in the office I feel more productive then being at home. WFH isn't for me.
Tip: You don’t have to actually have a separate room, all you have to do is trick your brain into feeling like it’s another room. Design two completely different lighting schemes for work and off-work, and connect the lights to a switch to change between them. Use two different chairs. Switch to another keyboard and mouse. Reposition your monitor. If you have an height-adjustable desk, change it.
Living in my 350sqft studio during the pandemic, I personally have tried a lot of these "tips," but haven't found much success. It turns out the brain is pretty good at building contextual clues related to its surroundings. Even if I'm sitting at my "play" desk (different chair, different room corner, different computer with its own keyboard/mouse/monitor), playing a game, with the lighting scheme completely different, I'm still _physically_ in the same place. I've still got the same noise from upstairs neighbors, same surroundings, same deco, same food options, same _temperature_ even (remember complaining about offices being too cold?). It's not enough to kick my brain out of "work" mode, and as a consequence, I'm always thinking about work in the back of my mind.
This is of course all separate from whether you can actually physically go offline from work, too. If a Slack ping at any time causes you to reopen your work laptop, even if you have different surroundings, you can't really fully escape "work mode." If you always wake up immediately into dealing with work, your bed becomes a "work area" too...
I have found myself missing the work commute more and more. Granted, I had a pretty nice one (15min train, 10min walk; not spending hours in traffic), but the biggest benefit I'm retroactively realizing was the clear separation between work and home. Working on finishing up a commit? Too bad, gotta run to catch a train, and then I'm no longer in work mode. Thinking about that bug the next morning? Maybe, but can still allow some personal time in the morning because not really "at work" until the physical commute in.
Not a viable means for myself. I can hide my laptop behind my bookcase, leave it outside in the courtyard. I don't have space for two different chairs. I have dual monitors, I even bought mounting poles for my monitors to make it a larger area. WFH just doesn't work for me.
Couldn't you just move to a larger and cheaper apartment since you don't have to live directly next to the office anymore? I don't understand, if the problem is your space, change your space. Maybe try that whole getting a pet thing. Even with the office as a social outlet I wouldn't want to live in a 1 bedroom apartment very long. Also consider using a separate computer for work and nonwork stuff, and turning the work computer off at a specific time. Once it's shut down, you're done for the day. You can give yourself permission to disconnect from work without forcing everyone into an office.
I feel like sometimes people miss that living close to an office usually comes with living close to other amenities like restaurants, grocery stores, etc that you could walk or bike to. So "Just move to a larger and cheaper apartment" is likely a complete change to the way a lot of people live.
I don't want to have to buy a larger house than I need just so I can supply my own office. We already have housing shortages, bigger houses isn't going to help that problem.
I feel like people who make comments like this have only experienced NYC/SF and the deep suburbs of those areas.
There are so many places around the world where you can live in a slightly smaller urban area, live down town, walk to everything, typically have a stronger local community and pay a fraction of what you do in a large metro for a bigger apartment.
I completely understand not wanting to move from a place with easy, walkable access to food + grocery + bar + etc, but there are a huge range of options for cities that you can easily afford a 2+ bedroom and be part of an active down town area.
> I feel like people who make comments like this have only experienced NYC/SF and the deep suburbs of those areas.
Agreed. I don't understand the false dichotomy of either ultra-dense NYC/SF or else having to drive 20 minutes to the nearest shop. That doesn't fit my experience at all.
I live in a small town (~10K people) surrounded mostly by forest and mountains, so relatively rural. This is in California.
But I can walk to just about anything I need (multiple supermarkets, pharmacies, hardware stores, many restaurants, movies, etc). On my bike I can easily get to the far side of town (about a mile away) for even more choices in restaurants and shops, breweries, pubs.
So it is entirely possible to have a house well outside a large city and yet have everything within walking distance.
> Couldn't you just move to a larger and cheaper apartment since you don't have to live directly next to the office anymore? I don't understand, if the problem is your space, change your space.
Will you fund all my costs to move apartments? Transport costs? Costs to and from my social activities? I like where I am. I shouldn't need to move because upcoming generations doesn't enjoy office life. I get it, I really do. Commuting to work sucks, transport sucks, meetings suck but to ignore those who do actually enjoy being in the office is sad. I hate webcam, zoom, teams. I need real face interaction. It's an outlet.
> Once it's shut down, you're done for the day. You can give yourself permission to disconnect from work without forcing everyone into an office.
I disconnect by knowing that I can walk through my apartment door and be free from anything work related. Separation is how I disconnect. I like my own space, and it shouldn't need to be filled with work related objects. Otherwise my life will always be orientated around work knowing I have to have that one bit of space for a work laptop. That's not healthy.
> I shouldn't need to move because upcoming generations doesn't enjoy office life.
From what I've seen it's the younger people who mostly really want to get back into offices for the social aspect. Those of us who own houses in the country or suburbs are mostly fine with not driving into offices, not that I did it much pre-pandemic.
And I totally get the social aspect. With some trade events spinning back up I've really appreciated the opportunity to reconnect with people in person.
As someone who's lived in a _studio_ apartment in a high-rent city for a decade, you have good points, but a lot of this is easier said than done.
> move to a larger and cheaper apartment since you don't have to live directly next to the office anymore
In the Boston area, this basically comes down to "either live with space in the middle of nowhere isolated from anyone, or live in the city core but pay $$$$$$ for a tiny place" -- and especially if we are discussing working only from home (so limiting that potential avenue for socialization), moving away from any other social avenues can be daunting. Maybe this is less of a dilemma for someone who has a family, since then they can just socialize with SO/kids/etc.
> Maybe try that whole getting a pet thing.
If only 99% of landlords didn't disallow pets...
> Also consider using a separate computer for work and nonwork stuff, and turning the work computer off at a specific time. Once it's shut down, you're done for the day.
On the surface, these are valid points, but they contain a few assumptions that can be challenging. For example: that your company is okay with you being offline for _16 hours_ of the day. How does that work if you've got an on-call rotation, coworkers in other timezones, critical products with low bus factors, etc? For example, at 11pm ET it is 9:30am IST -- not being able to respond to pings/questions/PRs from coworkers on your team who are on the other side of the globe can be detrimental. There's also the physical aspect -- if you are in the same (350sqft, in my case) room 24 hours a day, and you use it for work for 12-14 hours every day, even when not working, it's easy for the mind to stay in "work mode" despite trying to shut off work computers, etc.
> You can give yourself permission to disconnect from work without forcing everyone into an office.
I know this is in response to the post itself, regarding Google (delaying) forcing people back to the office. However, there might be some middle ground here. I have been going into my office one day a week for a change of pace (and to have _some_ on/off time via my train commute) -- but it is a lot nicer when other teammates join me in-office, to get some semblance that I'm working with other human beings for a change. I'm totally not on board with _forcing_ anyone to go in, but it is nice to have the option to coordinate. I have found myself missing casual after-work beers on Fridays -- even pre-pandemic, not everyone joined (those with families would generally leave to get home early), but among those who _did_, it really helped build more camaraderie and made the company feel like it was staffed with _people_ rather than just anonymous cogs.
> For example: that your company is okay with you being offline for _16 hours_ of the day.
It is scary that this could be controversial?
Most jobs in the US are 40 hours per week or 8 hours per day. So yes, you absolutely should be offline (from work networks & apps anyway) for 16 hours a day on weekdays.
Sure if you have an on-call week that's an exception but you should be getting compensated in some way (on-call pay in larger companies, or the lure of those sweet options (probably worth nothing) in a startup).
At least at my office it's only the young people that are actually coming in to the office. It's cliché, but the subsidized snacks, ping pong, etc I think are bringing people back where as I haven't seen a single 'older' engineer back in the office yet.
Really? As an engineer, as much as I love my home setup, my lab at work is WAY better equipped.
Consequently, I'm much more productive when bringing up a board at work where my office is optimized for software and is nice and clean, my lab is optimized for hardware and is goopy and dirty at times, and I have lots of space for both.
But, then, we also don't believe in the "open office" idiocy, so we put people in their own spaces with a door they can close.
Way to bury the lede there! I think if companies like Google were to say, "Hey, we're going to start requiring people to come back into the office, and we do mean office in a literal sense. Here's your own office" -- we'd be having a very different type of conversation.
You have the younger crowd who live with parents, have their own room in a apartment somewhere. Happy to jump on work and then jump instantly to discord and whatever. Like my friend below my apartment.
Then you have the older crowd who have their own house, Kids, family pet or two. Have a spare room they can turn in to an office.
And then theres me, a 32 year old who has a single bedroom apartment who likes separation from work and personal. Having my work laptop at home has been stressful because its always felt like I am at work. Having to use my personal space for work doesn't bode well.
Luckly, my office is open and I can now go in everyday. Even when I am the only one in the office I feel more productive then being at home. WFH isn't for me.