There's a lot of celebrating about working from home and the convenience that brings, but there is no free lunch. A social trade off: now it is (the people who WFH) your responsibility to separate your work/family/life boundaries. I cant speak from experience (introvert, no family), but I think I understand people enough that many will be lulled by the convenience/comfort and not put enough effort into keeping those boundaries up. Expanding: your routine before the shutdown (gym, night classes, public talks, etc). Each of those now require two trips to participate (to and from), instead of hitting them up after (or during) work -> more effort to keep boundaries up.
Additionally, staying in the same place all day cuts out hundreds/thousands of opportunities (over a year) to meet people.
I disagree with people pushing for WFH to become the norm. As convenient as it is, I think it is a net negative to society/our social fabric. IMO, life is already too convenient. That being said, it may be possible for local (neighborhood/town) culture to bloom. It will be challenging in our hyper-political, 'can find people who agree with me anywhere in the world' environment.
There was an HN post with great discussion that I cannot find about the wiki article. Third place's were already in decline in the USA.
Lastly: This has been posted many times, but many of the employers costs could be transferred to the employee in a WFH environment.
EDIT: I should add, I've been working from home for > 5 years and live in a big city. I've watched my self discipline decline over the years (or maybe that's due to getting older, or being too comfortable). It's been very difficult to build a social network of friends.
Since working 100% remotely for a while now, I no longer spend the majority of my time on work. It's easily shrunk to my #3 time allocation behind spending time with loved ones + taking care of myself & my home. It's really tied for #3 with hobbies/personal projects.
It's kind of shocking how many years I could've been forced to spend in the office away from what's important. Cats have short enough lives as it is! And I only get this one with my wife :)
Due to this, boundaries are pretty easy. I just use a planner & make sure I stay on task. I fit it in whenever and just hit requirements for the week. Get paid & spend the majority of life on things that directly benefit me. Highly recommended.
I forgot to add - I am "available" 9-5. If I get pinged or emailed, I do respond. If something needs fixing or investigating, I'll jump in. Availability & the trust-building it brings allows you to get paid for existing.
I have a salaried job as a BigCo (not a FAANG or even a tech company) - If I were to work hourly (say, consulting/contracting) I don't think it would be too different. Pay would be more sporadic but also work requirements would be more in my control so it just trades off. Eventually I'll probably drop the BigCo job and get paid less but on my own terms as my finances allow.
I agree I'm in a position that allows for this. I had to get through school and cut my teeth in industry before I could get a position like this. But I knew I wanted it & pounced on the first company that would remotely hire junior me despite my lack of remote experience. Pretty much every career choice I've made was guided towards working remotely like this.
Pre-covid it was so trivial to find gatherings for shared interests (meetups, clubs, tournaments, rec sports, art walks, classes) that I think society would be fine if you stopped forcing people to associate with others that get paid by the same corporation. All the things I listed are a bigger signal of shared interests.
> There's a lot of celebrating about working from home and the convenience that brings, but there is no free lunch. A social trade off: now it is (the people who WFH) your responsibility to separate your work/family/life boundaries. I cant speak from experience (introvert, no family), but I think I understand people enough that many will be lulled by the convenience/comfort and not put enough effort into keeping those boundaries up. Expanding: your routine before the shutdown (gym, night classes, public talks, etc). Each of those now require two trips to participate (to and from), instead of hitting them up after (or during) work -> more effort to keep boundaries up.
I'm also an introvert and live alone, so I guess I don't have much to offer on this topic. all I can say is that setting these sorts of boundaries is something we already expect from college students, who conduct pretty much their entire life (work, sleep, socializing) on a fairly small patch of earth. in college, it's very tempting to let social time bleed into "work time" or (for some) to let work strangle their social life out of existence. but to graduate college at all proves that you have at least some ability to manage work/life balance without the aid of strong physical boundaries.
as far as third places go, I would expect WFH to be a major boon if it weren't happening in the midst of social distancing. I feel like I have much more energy to go out and do stuff after a day of working from home than I normally would after my thirty minute commute.
I did not find the boundary issue to be a problem for me since we switched to WFH. As a matter of fact I enjoy it immensely; even with the family at home I am able to reasonably focus on work (ANC headphones, closing doors, etc. help here). If there is a productivity hit the lack of commute makes up for it, and in exchange I get to spend more time with them.
The main downside of WFH, especially for introverts, and which I don't think is being noticed yet, is the workplace social network / face-to-face bandwidth. The former has been established through working at the office until this March, and we are now coasting on those connections. Who to ask for help with X, which people to get together to socialize a project, etc. I would hate to be a new hire in this environment; there is so much less social contact and less rapport building.
Then, there are instances of when you need to tackle a hard problem with several people in a group, and focus. Usually we would do this in a closed conference room with a whiteboard. The f2f bandwidth is hard to match here.
For the above two reasons I think companies that restart office work (even if a year from now) will be more competitive, and the "WFH Spring" won't last.
I've worked from home for quite a long time and building a social network is a hard aspect of it. Doing it during a pandemic is hard, but I made it a point to go do something almost every day when I started working from home. It made a huge difference.
In my opinion it's great. Often times our coworkers are people we're forced to socialize with because we don't really have a choice. Working from home brings that choice back, but it does mean that there's some groundwork to lay down.
I agree with what you're saying, there are a lot of Pros and Cons. I've balanced the socializing with getting to know my neighbors more and spent time with my family. EDIT(again): Third place is awesome and necessary. I've tried to supplement work friends with neighborhood, but have benefited from D&D and volunteering with youth for what I need from Third Place.
I've seen the idea that cost is pushed from employer to employee. But I'd argue this is actually a mutually beneficial cost savings.
I don't have to drive. I can get cheaper car insurance. If I was completely remote I could honestly get rid of one of my two cars (wife and me).
I can look into tax benefits such as deducting part of the house as an office if it's not single purpose.
I do experience more usage on my house. I do have to work in a non-optimal area (in my case a shed), but if I value my time more I also save 1-1.5 hours a day.
That was all cost I was paying. So it's a mutually shared cost exchange.
Also many companies have had to quickly invest heavily in their VPNs and other remote technologies, while still being stuck in a lease for large offices which may even be required (by law) to be cooled although there is only one or two people there.
It's fair to say that this change has had pros/cons for many people. Some heavily weighed towards one side or the other. This goes for companies too. Non-tech companies who have done business the same way since the age of remote are HURTING. Sales are down, they don't know how to sell when their people can't hop on a jet and go talk to clients in person. Etc.
That long rant was me saying, I don't think we can simply say, companies have pushed the costs down to employees. I've seen a ton of benefit from my company being remote full time right now. Whereas I know other people who's companies are not in lock down and are forcing employees back to the office with little to no appropriate social distancing in place.
Weighing all of those pros and cons I'm so happy to be at a company which is understanding enough to let me WFH until my kids can go back to school (not google but similar policy).
I don't think you can apply your opinion of "life is already to convenient" to this situation. Life could never be too convenient as long as it doesn't contribute negatively to overall well being of the individual or society. I think that saying "I want things to be this way because of the way I feel regardless of it being a positive for society" is not a good way to go about this. Unless you can show via a study or and lots of scientific support one can't surmise that all of society should conform to one's on personal opinion because of "I think". If it's not working for you -personally- then the onus is on you to change that by finding an employer who wants you to work in the office or convincing your current employer that it would be better for -you-.
I have never heard of third place before. Its a really cool idea. Its something that I have missing from my own life but I can really see the value. Do you think that you have a small social network of friends due to a lack of third place in your life?
Let me know if you find the HN article on the decline
Additionally, staying in the same place all day cuts out hundreds/thousands of opportunities (over a year) to meet people.
I disagree with people pushing for WFH to become the norm. As convenient as it is, I think it is a net negative to society/our social fabric. IMO, life is already too convenient. That being said, it may be possible for local (neighborhood/town) culture to bloom. It will be challenging in our hyper-political, 'can find people who agree with me anywhere in the world' environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
There was an HN post with great discussion that I cannot find about the wiki article. Third place's were already in decline in the USA.
Lastly: This has been posted many times, but many of the employers costs could be transferred to the employee in a WFH environment.
EDIT: I should add, I've been working from home for > 5 years and live in a big city. I've watched my self discipline decline over the years (or maybe that's due to getting older, or being too comfortable). It's been very difficult to build a social network of friends.