He is a software engineer in the Bay Area, I presume? I think he can afford to buy a big monitor (I use a 55” LG OLED TV which I have bought at discount for less than $1400. Compared to a shitty Dell at my workspace, it’s a bliss).
I, personally, hope to never return to the office. I was working mostly from home even before the pandemic, but now it’s official.
Well, it can happen. Mine has a slight (barely noticeable) burn-in from the time when Windows desktop was by some mistake left without turning the display off for two days in a row. Still works fine, everything is impressive. If you avoid such mistakes, I think it can work flawlessly for many years.
Even if we focus on the monitor/desk combination, the fact that they might have money for those does not mean that they have room for them (he mentions how he's lucky to have a desk).
I've worked from home for the last 14 years. I've only used Slack for the last 12 months and it sucks (well, how it is used sucks).
While I love the benefits of working from home, I do miss the things that working from an office gives you in the social aspect.
If i have a shitty monitor at the office i buy myself one and a keyboard and a mouse. A Kitchen Chef has his own personal tools (Knifes) too. I refuse to work with stuff that makes my workday a pain (just talking about the physical stuff, software stuff is something completely different as we know)
Most people when they say they miss the office they mean missing dragging everyone with them to the office. You were in the office weren't you? Stay there then and have all the space you want :D I for one will never go back to the office.
I do agree with your sentiment I think unfortunately the people who want to work from the office require everyone else to be there too - to make it the office.
I don't begrudge their attitude but hopefully there is just a split in companies between remote companies and on prem companies.
That's my impression too. People talking about the benefits of the office are actually complaining of not having everyone around (either to have social aspect or to what they call "casual collaboration" which reduces to being able to interrupt at any time.
Yes. I strongly suspect that most people who want to go "back to the office" are not really saying that they just want their office workstation back so they don't need to work in their bedroom or kitchen table (though some are). Rather, they want to be back with their colleagues and if their colleagues mostly aren't there, they're not really going to be satisfied.
The people that want to go back to the office are also the same people that were wasting everyone's time in the office. Middle managers, office365 consultants, project managers etc. Etc. Generally the people that had the bullshit jobs in the office, and had little contributions except the "social contribution".
I don't not want to go back to the office mainly because of those same people...
And my counter-anecdote is that I'm not seeing that at all. The people I see going back to the office are those who just didn't have good WFH situations (lack of space, family distractions, etc.)
I think it's offensive to call project management a "bullshit job". Maybe you've never had a good PM, but I have, and it's really invaluable. (I've also had bad PMs, but that's no different from bad dev colleagues...)
I doubt it. There are certainly people who would be perfectly happy with a private office in a Regus or WeWork co-working location so they're not stuck working on a kitchen table or their bed--especially if there are other people in a small apartment all day. (Or they just want home-work separation.)
But there's also a sizable contingent who wants to go back to pre-COVID office life.
Wife and I been working from home for months now. What a work-life balance game changer it is! We don't want to be back at the office. Even better, none of our working-from-home friends does.
Of course everyone has a different perspective but the majority of my circles enjoys the new arrangement.
Yes. This seems to be a very divisive issue, others prefer working from home, others prefer the office. Some are downright miserable in their home offices. I'm guessing some were also miserable at their work offices but didn't have a choice.
If this involuntary experiment has taught us anything, it's that people are very different in their preference. Hopefully people will be allowed a choice when the situation is over.
It's worth noting that a lot of people don't miss the office as much as they miss the social interaction with their co-workers. If a part of the people will return to the office and others prefer to stay home, the social interaction won't be there as it used to and there is a risk of splitting into two camps.
My company has said that WFH will be available to everyone once offices open again. I am very grateful for that.
I miss my coworkers too, but mostly the lunches and after work beers and coffee breaks. What I do not miss is the daily commute and actually trying to get work done in a distracting office environment.
Not sure I’m following his gripes with slack. Been remote for a couple years now with slack as my only tool for communications (with the exception of a handful of times I’ve used email or called my manager on the phone) and it’s been just fine for me.
You probably just haven't used anything better. Even email is better than Slack for work-related stuff. I greatly prefer Zulip, I've written up why here:
Your view is that email is better than slack. OP has experience with email and judges slack to be better. Neither are “right” or “wrong”
I find Slack is better than Skype For IM. I find zoom the best for face to face meetings and screen sharing (slack doesn’t seem to have a “share this window” option), but slack for starting a quick call and for asynchronous comms, and things like changes and alerts. Email for comms outside the company.
The fact that OP has used email doesn't mean that he's done work collaboration exclusively over email. Obviously some of the people who have done both might prefer Slack, but the difference is so large that I find it unlikely.
* Having someone clean my works space. My house gets dirtier now and I’m forever cleaning it, doing dishes.
* The distinction between the beginning and end of my work day.
* Having free space in my house.
* Off the cuff dinner and drinks with colleagues.
* No lag meetings and whiteboard sessions.
* Having intervals apart from my family actually felt healthy, although we have adapted to being around each other 24/7 I guess.
* When someone of greater rank than me in an inconvenient time zone wants to have a meeting with me involved, I have to attend. I’ve practically lost all my mornings from 6am - 9am, 3-4 days a week.
Things I like about fully distributed:
* Everyone is remote now so it’s forced us to treat everyone more equally, not just favouring those in the office.
* Less interaction with middle management, this might make it harder to get bonuses etc.
Disclaimer: I just lived in a city 5 minute bike ride from my office so I had a convenient setup, could go home and make lunch etc.
When I had an office I had slack, I had work from home, cafes, sometimes.
I’m confused about your dishes claim. You mention you go home for lunch anyway so dishes don’t seem terrible, otherwise it’s a plate and a knife to pop in the dishwasher.
When you were in an office and someone scheduled a 6am meeting what would you do?
For me in the office I have a cup that I put in the dishwasher at the end of the day. At home I have a better cup that I put in the office at the end of the day.
If you’re only 5 minutes from your colleagues why can’t you go for spontaneous pub etc (assuming it’s open in your locality) Or pop out for lunch?
Not sure about the OP, but people are now scheduling meetings earlier and later in the day in my company. Previously, I would never have 8am meetings as I would only get to the office by 930. People just knew not to schedule before then. But now, the big boss starts working and slacking at 730 and often schedules stuff for 8am. And we do video calls all the time, so have to be presentable for those meeting.
On the other hand, research schedules are all over the place and people invariably end up scheduling syncups at 6 or 6:30. Pre-pandemic, I would be at a local pub with coworkers at that time!
In your specific case the problem was exacerbated by WFH. But if your boss doesn’t have a problem with making people work from 7am to 6pm, the problem is the boss.
They could have at any time decided to do the same thing in the office, and many offices do work that way.
If you wouldn’t stay at your company if they required you to be in office 12 hours a day, why would you stay around if they require 12 hour WFH?
OP mentioned kids, which is a big complicating factor. We gave two and oof, the dishes thing is real. We are cooking more, and for more people every meal.
As to popping out to the pub with colleagues, again it's tough with the kids home. If I go out anywhere between 4-8 I'm basically sticking my wife with the toughest time of day. Also patio season is done here and you wouldn't catch me drinking indoors during the pandemic.
All of those are 100% true, but they are very specific to the pandemic (for most people for most of the year), not something relevant in the more generalized discussion of WFH.
This is very true! Either you take turns, who can go out and meet and have fun, or you spend the whole day with your family. I think a mix is most sustainable. Try to do ONE thing on your own per week and then cover your partners day out.
> When someone of greater rank than me in an inconvenient time zone wants to have a meeting with me involved, I have to attend. I’ve practically lost all my mornings from 6am - 9am, 3-4 days a week.
I don’t understand this situation. If this happens I reject the meeting invite, and later see it rescheduled (if my attendance was mandatory).
Yup, it doesn’t get rescheduled and you slowly lose influence and find yourself working on things you hate, getting bad reviews and eventually getting fired/leaving because you hate your job
Many people have to adapt to working across different timezones in their jobs. Obviously to the degree that something like that becomes a continuous pattern you need to decide if it's worth it to you to adapt to that schedule or not. There's nothing inherently "ridiculous" about it. For example I have a friend in Hawaii who has an agency with West Coast clients and she just adapts her waking schedule accordingly.
The difference is that now everyone is distributed, if someone "important" is in a different timezone, you can be singled out to attend a meeting because you're no longer "out of the office at 6am", you have no excuse not to be able to attend early meetings.
Also I just feel that it's becoming culturally more acceptable to attend/schedule meetings at weird times because everyone else accepts it.
If you're the nail that sticks out (by rejecting meetings), you get hammered.
Early morning and late night meetings sometimes happen because of timezones. And you deal with it. But you can be sure that, if I were regularly having to attend meetings from 6am-9am for good reasons, I'm also generally knocking off at 3pm.
I don't understand this either. This existed at our company before remote work because we have global offices. People who had early or late meetings may take them from home AND then still had to commute to the office. Otherwise they'd had to get up even earlier to commute first.
It seems like a pretty common scenario, at least to me. There’s a 1 hour meeting to present Project X Status to Executive Y. You are presenting for 20 minutes so are required. Exec Y’s schedule for the next month rules everything out besides next Tuesday at 6am. You can’t just decline and not show up. You just have to suck it up and wake up earlier that day.
This scenario is actually much easier in COVID-WFH because I can just roll out of the bed at 5:45am, run a comb through my hair and fire up the videoconference. When I worked from office it meant waking up at 3:30am, leaving my house at 4am, and getting into the office by 5:30am.
> Exec Y’s schedule for the next month rules everything out besides next Tuesday at 6am.
Eh? My schedule for the month rules out anything before 9am.
I guess we’re not going to have that meeting then unless Mr exec thinks it’s more important than something else on his schedule (which is healthy anyway, he shouldn’t have to wake up at 6 any more than you do.)
You're obviously, like most people on here, talking from a position of privilege. I don't blame you because I've been there.
You also might not be working for a properly distributed global team. Execs I work for are on the other side of the world.
I've said this before by the exec's at my company tell me they have to attend meetings at weird times, so I should have to as well.
Not everyone at the moment has the luxury to just put their job on the line by telling their manager to go stick it. I for example am not in my native country an I rely on my job to support my visa. If I lose my job right now, my visa is potentially lost at a time where finding another job might not be very straight forwards and where my home country isn't allowing citizens to return home yet.
It isn't all bad, I think distributed work culture is evolving and adapting, it's just right now there are certainly inconveniences for those pioneering it.
It's not that simple, my section managers answer to this (I tried it was), "I go to meetings at awkward hours, so what's you excuse?".
To be fair, this particular meeting I'm supposed to be at is once a fortnight, so I feel that I can't complain too much. Some people I know still commute an hour a day.
It does really inconvenience me in a way that I can't describe, I basically lose an hour of sleep on that day and it really screws me over for the rest of the day, compounding my stress.
>The distinction between the beginning and end of my work day.
Just log off at 5pm or 4pm or whenever you have done your contracted working hours.
I rarely end up in a meeting which goes over my usual working hours. But otherwise I just log off. I don't understand how someone can work longer hours unwillingly when it's entirely in your control.
I guess it depends on how your remote working is implemented. For me I remote in. For others it's a VPN. But either way, cut off all communication avenues until the next morning.
>When someone of greater rank than me in an inconvenient time zone wants to have a meeting with me involved, I have to attend. I’ve practically lost all my mornings from 6am - 9am, 3-4 days a week.
The mistake was attending this even once. Now you've shown a weakness in that you'll attend a terribly scheduled meeting. You need to bring this up, it's not fair to be in work at 6am if that was not the norm before COVID. If your days started at 9am in the office, your days start at 9am at home.
> I don't understand how someone can work longer hours unwillingly when it's entirely in your control.
I have that situation, but without the 'unwilling' part. In the office, I have often the situation "Gosh, I'd love to finish this, but if I don't catch the next train I have to wait another half hour for the next one", which automatically makes me stop work at fixed times.
Sure, I could also just stop at the same time at home, but ultimately I always end up working longer hours. Same in the morning; having to catch a train is really something that forces me to hit certain timings; when working from home, staying in bed just a little longer doesn't make me miss any trains.
It's a silly problem and could easily be overcome with enough willpower, but it requires the willpower where otherwise there are already external factors in place that soft-force me to start/stop work.
Relying on something like train timings to enforce your work life balance isn’t a reliable strategy.
What if the trains started running every 5 minutes? Or what if you moved a little closer and you could walk?
If you don’t want to use willpower to stop working you could add some structured activity (after COVID) like a workout class after work. Or you could generally just make more deliberate plans for you after work time.
Or my personal favorite. Start a hobby you like more than work.
If trains are infrequent enough (every 20-30 minutes or more) that it's worth planning around the schedule, it's generally unlikely that the frequency will be changed significantly in any 10-year period.
Maybe not every train, but an individual train route could easily significantly change in frequency for a few hours a day, or more likely the train schedule could get worse to the point where you can’t leave until later.
Or the office could move, you could move, your office could change the time of the last meeting of the day etc...
Relying on the granularity of the train schedule to enforce work life balance is brittle at best, and it’s a terrible argument against WFH.
I also work longer hours on average when working from home, but I don't really mind it.
The main reason is that I save easily 90 minutes of commute per day, so it's not bothersome to be available some of that time extra. And the second reason is that I take personal breaks randomly during the day, I'm not always 100% focused on my work, so I don't feel like being available a bit later is a stretch. Flexibility goes both ways.
What you need, as I learned, is discipline, which is really hard to train. you basically have Work hard on small things one at a time until you build the habits you want.
It doesn't require willpower. Write a script that warns you 10-5 minutes before 5pm that your computer will be shutting down. Then again a minute before shutdown.
Then it shuts down.
Or write one that sends a message to your partner, friends or flatmates that you'll be done in a few and to put on a kettle.
Plan to have tea or what have you with your SO or flatmate at 5pm sharp. Set an alarm to take your dog out. I'm sure you can come up with other things.
Add things to your schedule that force you to leave, just like your train. Even if you're in a meeting drop a "Sorry folks, we'll have to pick this up tomorrow, I have personal obligations waiting on me" and you're out.
This isn't really what i meant, it's not necessarily that I'm working longer hours now (although I am).
I meant I miss the routine I used to have, go to the gym, come back home, make breakfast, shower, put on my "work clothes" then psychically go to my office, have coffee with colleagues and then sit at my desk, open my day planner and get started.
That was the queue to begin focusing. Of course I can try do this in my living room, but it just doesn't have the same effect for me personally.
I have meetings at awkward hours which kind of makes me feel like I'm kind of permanently attached to my work. Before hand, there was work time, and home time, work stayed at work, often including my work laptop.
Also this statement kind of bugged me: "I don't understand how someone can work longer hours unwillingly when it's entirely in your control.", if you have a job that allows you to 100% dictate your hours, never having to deal with unexpected problems, outages, personnel issues, then congratulations. It's not a reality for everyone.
>> * The distinction between the beginning and end of my work day.
>> * When someone of greater rank than me in an inconvenient time zone wants to have a meeting with me involved, I have to attend. I’ve practically lost all my mornings from 6am - 9am, 3-4 days a week.
You know your situation best obviously but to a random outsider this sounds like the (reeeeeeally) common issue of not being well practiced at saying no.
I really miss whiteboard sessions. I've gotten used to zoom meetings, I'm not overloaded with them, and with a proper structured agenda I've found they can be tolerable.
But nothing beats scribbling on a whiteboard with colleagues. We've tried Miro and other tools, but nothing quite has the same feel as those scribbled boxes and arrows on a whiteboard.
Likewise zoom meetings aren’t the same thing but replicate the original experience. Im not using any? but am using a wacom tablet for similar handwriting purposes but have to admit that it’s not realtime. If you can’t find something that you like at least you found a business idea
As for the ambient displays, I built those out in my own lab (in my house) this year. 40-50” 4k displays are ~$250 now. I converted both of my main computers to 3x displays (using computer monitors) and put up 3 of these super cheap 4k TVs with chromecast ultras on them.
I love having a few displays playing ambient information or live 24/7 video streams (eg of the Starships they’re building down in Boca Chica) in my lab.
Having a dedicated (large) room in your house to work is critical, IMO. I set mine up pre-pandemic because I always work from the places I am living, unless I’m directly (and temporarily) onsite with a client.
I've come to the conclusion that maybe us computer people are not truly smart. And we just like the comfort of thinking that we are.
Yes, we're good at logical thinking, implementing systems, reasoning about problems etc
This just makes us useful in the end or good at a certain way of thinking.
"Men of science may be simple tools of others, with no more idea what they are about than a hammer has of a house"
I believe this is true of software developers too - if we were truly smart we wouldn't be on the hamster wheel in a cage belonging to someone else
I recently switched jobs and the new company onboarded me remotely. It's difficult for someone who's new to get acquainted with the new job remotely.
Simple things like a small question regarding the codebase turns into a video call with a colleague where you first ping them on chat and ask them if they are free and then schedule the call. Even if the whole thing takes 10 minutes, it's too much compared to just turning sideways, asking them something if I was in office.
OTOH, I was much more comfortable working remotely in my previous job where I was already familiar with the code and the job on the whole.
My team currently does half hour coffee mornings and has an open office hour once every two weeks; often we're all just working silently through them, but everyone's on the same call throughout.
Is that something you can do - just sit on a call with your assigned mentor for most of the day?
It seems like a communication issue. Why would you need a video call to ask a question? Problem is that people are used to verbal communication and lack skills to convey a message in writing. When worked in remote first company it was a non issue, rarely had to go on a video call. We had social calls often, but work stuff easily worked out over text. It is also about culture - we had a codebase very well documented and if a starter had questions their task was to improve the documentation together with the dev assigned to onboarding.
It's not quite entirely about culture - I do think that a synchronous call with someone provides better opportunities to detect their unknown unknowns, because you get to see their thought process as they formulate the question. Obviously one can get by without it, but I think this is one of the places where the lack of serendipity actually does hit a little.
Once someone has fewer unknown unknowns, though, the act of asking a question by text can often be enough of a rubber duck that they don't need to hit "send" at all.
Now that you mention it, most of the video calls could have been replaced by a rubber duck.
We would do calls for junior devs so they could watch a senior working on a problem and ask questions then to learn their thought process. They found it helpful.
Before my current job I worked from home for 8 of 9 years. Right in the middle I worked in an office in a small start up. We were about 10 people squeezed into a space the size of my living room. I spent more time chatting with them over some form of messenger than I did in my remote jobs!
And no, I feel like I get more done, because I don't have someone just turning sideways and interupting me. While it may be quicker for you it may not be for the person got are interupting.
That may be the case for you, but for many people, their job requires them to communicate with a lot of people. For these kinds of jobs, being in the office is a lot more efficient.
If I was a regular developer, working on a single part of a larger application, I would have zero problems working from home. Once you're in a position where you have to coordinate work with several other people, things are very different.
I can imaging that people who manages large teams have a lot of problems dealing with that remotely.
I’ve been the principal engineer for my company, remotely for the past 4 years. I’ve never had a problem with it.
There are tradeoffs, but just the fact that nearly every single one of our conversations are documented and searchable is worth it alone.
You can’t just walk over to talk to someone anytime the notion strikes you, but you shouldn’t have been doing that anyway. I love to talk, and I love to think out loud. But every time I do that, I’m asking someone else to divert there attention to me.
Being remote allows people to turn off the majority of the interruptions and get work done when they need to.
And it forces me to spend more time thinking about my communications. Instead of just constantly walking over to people the moment an idea pops into my head.
I hope remote teams will start to invest more heavily in keeping up to date knowledge bases to help with exactly these kinds of issues. Tools like Confluence/Notion/whatever should really be solving this problem.
Video calls really grind productivity down to a halt. It's a strange phenomenon - when I have a call scheduled, it's really hard to get work done in a half hour neighborhood of the call.
The biggest one for is, as mentioned in the article: casuasl collaboration. I mis being able to just walk over to a coworker. I’m just home every other week, which strikes a reasonable balance for me.
I always found the fact that I can be interrupted at any time in the office very annoying. When I was in the flow and then someone comes up with a question that makes me switch context, then that affected productivity badly. Other colleagues raised this too and in the end we adopted a rule that you either ask a question on Slack or schedule an appointment. After that we found we could get much more done. Some people didn't like this though and left, but with the remaining devs we had an awesome team.
That's a very real problem, sometimes you just need long periods of uninterrupted time to get a task done.
We solve this by having a special office, placed in a "remote" corner of the building. It's equipped with proper desks, monitors, chair and so on. You can go there if you need a few hours, or days, of dedicated time. If you're working on a specific project, we'll often move the team working on that project to a dedicate office. For your daily job, you just just stay at your normal desk in a semi-open office space, with plenty of meeting room and smaller rooms for calls or online meetings.
If you think about it, what you miss is the possibility to interrupt others at any time, which is not very considerate once you realise it.
Calling it "casual collaboration" is not honest, as that's not collaboration. The other person is not collaborating, just being interrupted to help you with something. the only thing I agree is that you lost the casual talks in the coffee break or kitchen, but that is not always about being more productive.
That makes me a little sad... Well not really, I'm the one who gets interrupted, but sure if allowing myself to be interrupted, in order to help my co-workers, makes me "the worst", then sure.
If a 10 minute interruption saves my co-workers hours of frustration, then I personally think it's worth it.
Don’t be sad. You’re fine. Some people don’t know when to keep their mouth shut. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to talk to your coworkers in person versus sending messages via Slack all day.
Still getting used to being with the missus 24/7. Blissful at first, now getting work done can be difficult. Sometimes it's interpreted as neglect or being aloof, IDK.
I miss missing her and making our time together that much more special.
People often consider it impolite, regardless of what you’re doing (I had to find more and more ways to work around it with my parents during lockdown because getting pulled out of flow when trying to do schoolwork was aggravating). explaining didn’t seem to help, they didn’t understand why I couldn’t just quickly do X.
While that is true if it's just some singular instance, when living with people (parents, spouses, kids, roommates) it is better to explain it once or twice and after that, just be impolite. Even for the simple reason that they are actually the impolite ones for not respecting your process.
That's great for people living/working with people who have a healthy respect for boundaries, but not everyone has that luxury. Boundary issues are rampant, especially in families.
Boundaries need to be enforced. That's hard to do if you shy too much from being perceived as impolite.
Everyone has a different level of conflict tolerance, of course. But letting someone know that they are being rude and disrespectful should be on the table.
I can relate to this. In hindsight the time apart was actually a net-positive for our relationship, even though we didn’t see it like that at the time.
In fact, absent maybe a "we're waiting for you in a meeting, where are you?" call, I generally don`t expect calls period and no one I work with would expect a chat message after 5 to be responded to until the next morning. (I frequently do glance at my email in the evening and may take care of something quick, but it's not an expectation.)
I simply can't afford enough space at home for a comfortable working environment in addition to enough space for the kids.
I'd have to move MUCH farther away from the city (think 1 hour of driving), to get a space where this would work, I've been looking into it for the last 3 months, but so is everyone else, meaning the price where there is broadband available is skyrocketing in my area.
In general the pandemic has decimated the quality of life I used to enjoy in my downtown office, and to get that back I have to rebuild my life from scratch, 2020 and the move to WFH has been terrible in that regard for our family.
Not great, not terrible. This means a year and a half. If it saves you 300 000 eur on purchase of your home, it paid for itself.
I am a Czech; property prices around Prague are hopping mad, but top German cities like Munich are just beyond belief. Buying a house in an expensive region means debt slavery till the end of your days.
Waiting to 2022 does not sound as bad in comparison. You can probably have a big, even though unkempt villa somewhere in Sachsen-Anhalt for the price of a garage in Munich.
For this reason I don't plan on buying in Germany unless I hit the proverbial lottery.
But rent slavery is not much better, having my entire extended family living in this High CoL environment makes moving hard on the kids aswell... Atm I have a hard time being happy with any of the combinations of tradeoffs we could make.
So the company was subsidising your lifestyle by paying for expensive real estate. They should be able to offer a pay rise if the same work is being done but they don’t need the office space.
The company still has to pay for the office space for three years, I know because I was part of negotiating that at end of 2019.
We're a small company with healthy finances, but the salary increase necessary to offset the higher rent requirements in this housing market, due to the heavy tax burden would amount to an increase in absolute numbers nearly a third of what we pay for in rent for the whole business, and that's just for me.
Seeing it from both sides is mind-boggling to say the least.
Interestingly, I don't know anybody who misses the office. We're all techies and designers and nobody complained. We do miss having a beer after work every now and then, but we don't miss the office itself at all.
Yeah that's my experience. We miss certain aspects of it like beer after work etc, but no way does that outweigh how bad the office was in other ways. The pointless commute, the constant distraction, the shared facilities etc. A win-win is rare in life; most things come with tradeoffs. This is no different.
I miss getting out of the house and having a 'clean' space where I can focus on work without any not-work people or not-work distractions around me.
I miss the separation between having a work desk with a work computer and a hobby desk with a hobby computer and being physically unable to interact with one while at the other due to them literally being several miles apart.
I miss the clear demarcation between Working and Not Working that the daily commute signified.
>I fundamentally do not think remote teams can ever be as productive as in-person teams.
Trade an anecdote for an anecdote.
We have found our dev team to be exactly as productive if not more since moving to work from home. A single instance of productive remote work invalidates this statement that it is literally impossible for remote work to be productive.
The OP's claim is slightly vague, but would most charitably be read as saying that if you compare all teams (as in the total of all teams around the world), they will perform better in-person than remote, and that this is unlikely to change.
You seem to be interpreting the OP as having said that each and every team is always better in-person. Your read is plausible, but HN guidelines say we should interpret charitably.
How many companies have a set up where people hotdesk nowhere near their team (sometimes in different buildings) and encourage all meetings online because there is not enough meeting space? I don’t know, but I know it’s not zero.
Anyway, taking conclusions over what happens to all teams, or the average, or any distribution is a pretty useless task¹. Your work environment won't influence all teams, just yours, so it shouldn't be fit to all.
1 - Unless you are talking about how to tell those teams apart and discover what environment each one fits better. That would be valuable.
I gave up trying to work from home and commute to the office as an essential worker, because the distractions were so frequent I was not getting much work done. I'm the only person in the office and it is night and day for my productivity.
At the end it is about finding a place without distractions. Not every home is prepared for that (and sometimes even impossible, due to kids, for example). But it is not the office per se which I claim that tend to be really disruptive in general.
Through my career I've traveled to new countries and cities for work, each time the office helped me connect with people and make new friends, some of my best friends in fact. What does the future hold for me in this respect? It seems like a lonely place.
It can help to build a group of friends in the area and not depending on the coworkers. For that I would recommend groups for activities, gyms, workshops and local activities. It is difficult if you never did it before, but it is worth the effort. Besides, your social life will not depend on your particular job.
Obviously, with quarantines in place that almost impossible, so hang in there, it will become better.
I have the complete opposite experience. I miss very little from the office because my desk at home is bigger and cleaner, my monitors are better, it's quiet and private, and my productivity is through the roof.
If productivity is truly down then it just sounds like some work is different and has different needs. As for having a lower quality of life because you now live in a city for no reason, you have to adapt. Things have changed. Deal with it.
And never forget the grass is always greener on the other side.
I have too much pressure from my significant other. She can't look at me doing nothing (when I'm thinking or having my 15 minute rest between productive hours). Every single time I need to clean something up.
I started going to the store and cooking lunch during work hours.
Then I also get complaints about not doing the dishes while I'm working.
It was nice when the work and home were separated and I just did all my household chores on my non-work time. Now I'm constantly interrupted.
Not to assume anything, but you might need to discuss this with your SO rather than HN. I’m not saying that to be snarky but really, without communication you’ll end up not understanding each other. She may be dealing with stresses of her own, triggering overly controlling behaviour.
According to the MGTOW community, women require constant validation, often subconsciously.
So think of her nagging as not being able to realize and limit her need for validation from you.
You can look for related titles on Youtube with Red Pill and MGTOW in the titles that will help you to frame for yourself and how to explain to your wife that dysfunctional but common element of your relationship.
“Hey, I’m busy earning money. Because I’m sitting and thinking doesn’t mean I’m slacking off, and I’m also quite surprised to hear that from my significant other. You don’t know what I’m doing right now and you’re not my manager, so stop controlling and managing my work time. You’re distracting me from my work so please leave me alone. If you can’t look at me thinking and doing my work then please look the other way or go to the other room. Thanks, bye.”
I’m dramatizing, but set boundaries. There’s personal time and work time. When it’s work, it’s work.
I think it's fair to ask you to pull your weight with the housework but maybe try setting some standard boundaries e.g. between 8-5 or something, so there's no need for an interaction ('are you done working?'). If you're conveniently 'working' every time she asks that's not going to help.
Or you could ask her to do your work while you do the dishes/cook/etc.
My suggestion would be that no matter what you decide, propose the idea proactively. Don't wait until there's an ask on the table.
I largely echo sibling posts saying you should address this with her, but if available to you I might suggest speaking with a therapist first. Potentially starting a fight with someone you’re locked at home with is risky.
> I miss productivity! Our engineering productivity has fallen through the floor since COVID despite everyone working longer and harder; I fundamentally do not think remote teams can ever be as productive as in-person teams.
So far I haven't found this to be the case. Somewhat the opposite in fact, although here I'd credit our move from scrum/scrumban to Shape Up as much as working from home.
It's not perfect though. We see evidence of low-lying morale and mental health issues. Nobody's losing their minds, exactly, but plenty of people aren't really happy. Of course, there are many wider reasons why that might be the case. E.g., lockdown in particular seems to turn every day into a sort of mundane Groundhog Day, especially for people who live alone.
The balance point will be different for different people but, certainly, for me, 100% WFH is not the perfect balance (but then neither is 100% office). At least I know I can adapt to 100% WFH well enough when I have to though (unlike 100% office).
> Nobody's losing their minds, exactly, but plenty of people aren't really happy.
There seems to be a lot of newfound concern for the wellbeing of the employees. Interesting how this wasn't an issue before Covid hit, and nobody was asked "would you prefer to work from home rather than having to deal with constant distractions in the office? Would you like to not waste your life away on a useless commute? Are you happy?". Nah, it's only an issue now.
In talking with CIOs and others, as well as just personal interactions with financial institutions and the like, there are a lot of traditional practices and processes that were just "the way things were done." And even if some in authority wondered if they should experiment with this or that change, it probably seemed like a low priority and at least a little bit risky if it didn't work out. What's happened is a bunch of change has been forced. And some of those changes have indeed proven sub-optimal. But a lot have worked out, surprisingly to many, well.
I'm talking about my entire team, including me. These are people I know and work with on a daily basis. Part of knowing people is that you can tell when they're not quite themselves.
I've also polled my team on a semi-regular basis throughout the last 8 months on their preferences going forward, which is how I know I have a range of preferences across the spectrum of WFH versus working from the office. We've always had a flexible approach in this area because of team has always been distributed, but one of the silver linings of the COVID cloud will, I hope, be a more general acceptance of increased flexibility in working conditions for jobs where that's feasible.
Don't you dare put words into my mouth. Take it elsewhere.
I noticed a very strong current towards employee wellbeing emerge in companies where upper management wants everyone back in the office (for various reasons), and then used to justify why permanent remote work isn't an option. Cynicism is well-deserved.
Your mileage may vary, of course. Your perception on the team might be true, or it might be that people are afraid of saying how they feel for fear of being singled out. We're just sharing anecdotes.
Apologies: I was feeling a bit tired when I wrote the above so, again, sorry for the unjustifiably harsh tone.
Companies are a mixed bag. Some of them behave in ways that are deeply cynical. Plenty also don't, or at least most of the time try to avoid doing so.
I will say one of the reasons for more concern over employee welfare is that more employees, at all grades, are displaying signs that all is not well. It's simply a very unusual situation so, in some sense, the greater noise around welfare is to be expected.
With that being said, and despite my general disdain for cynicism (I live in Cambridge: there's a lot of people who want to play the "world weary cynic" role and it gets old), it does have to be acknowledged that despite the best intentions of employees and leaders at all levels, when push comes to shove a lot of "core values" and "culture" go out the window.
Especially when the choice is that or the company goes under, or that and a shareholder revolt, or you can see the writing on the wall and it's this terrible course of action now or a much worse course of action later. People will also of course choose to use wider market conditions as cover for action they've been planning or perhaps should have taken anyway.
All in all it's grim and, as such, it's one of the reasons that if I ever run a company we will have as few "values" as we can get away with, and we certainly won't be trumpeting our "culture" with any self-serving presentations.
It's similar to how the people who would say, "suck it up, buttercup" to people with mental illnesses, are now hand-wringing about mental illnesses exacerbated by measures against COVID. They don't really care, they just found an excuse that sounds good enough to them to rail against something they don't like.
Work in office was a thing because we didn't have great tools to communicate. Now that changed and I think office work is an unnecessary luxury. If people need face to face meeting, then maybe it is a sign they need to work on their communication skills? I find text communication more meaningful and productive that f2f where things easily get lost. If you need to escape family life, consider working from a cafe or rent a desk somewhere or maybe consider relationship therapy.
No, work in office was a thing because it's always been like that and change is difficult. It's not like remote work is a new idea, it's just that the idea of not visually seeing asses in seats was perceived as very radical.
My argument is that we didn't have Zoom or Slack 50 years ago, so gathering people in one place was a necessity. Now it's not and it indeed may feel radical, but the same could be told about people who used to walk everywhere and then faced the transportation revolution.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 312 ms ] threadI, personally, hope to never return to the office. I was working mostly from home even before the pandemic, but now it’s official.
I am also eyeing the same TV but I am worried about the issues popping up.
I've worked from home for the last 14 years. I've only used Slack for the last 12 months and it sucks (well, how it is used sucks).
While I love the benefits of working from home, I do miss the things that working from an office gives you in the social aspect.
I don't begrudge their attitude but hopefully there is just a split in companies between remote companies and on prem companies.
The people that want to go back to the office are also the same people that were wasting everyone's time in the office. Middle managers, office365 consultants, project managers etc. Etc. Generally the people that had the bullshit jobs in the office, and had little contributions except the "social contribution".
I don't not want to go back to the office mainly because of those same people...
And my counter-anecdote is that I'm not seeing that at all. The people I see going back to the office are those who just didn't have good WFH situations (lack of space, family distractions, etc.)
But there's also a sizable contingent who wants to go back to pre-COVID office life.
Of course everyone has a different perspective but the majority of my circles enjoys the new arrangement.
If this involuntary experiment has taught us anything, it's that people are very different in their preference. Hopefully people will be allowed a choice when the situation is over.
It's worth noting that a lot of people don't miss the office as much as they miss the social interaction with their co-workers. If a part of the people will return to the office and others prefer to stay home, the social interaction won't be there as it used to and there is a risk of splitting into two camps.
My company has said that WFH will be available to everyone once offices open again. I am very grateful for that.
I miss my coworkers too, but mostly the lunches and after work beers and coffee breaks. What I do not miss is the daily commute and actually trying to get work done in a distracting office environment.
https://www.stavros.io/posts/seven-tips-great-remote-culture...
I find Slack is better than Skype For IM. I find zoom the best for face to face meetings and screen sharing (slack doesn’t seem to have a “share this window” option), but slack for starting a quick call and for asynchronous comms, and things like changes and alerts. Email for comms outside the company.
Use whatever tool makes you work well.
* Having someone clean my works space. My house gets dirtier now and I’m forever cleaning it, doing dishes.
* The distinction between the beginning and end of my work day.
* Having free space in my house.
* Off the cuff dinner and drinks with colleagues.
* No lag meetings and whiteboard sessions.
* Having intervals apart from my family actually felt healthy, although we have adapted to being around each other 24/7 I guess.
* When someone of greater rank than me in an inconvenient time zone wants to have a meeting with me involved, I have to attend. I’ve practically lost all my mornings from 6am - 9am, 3-4 days a week.
Things I like about fully distributed:
* Everyone is remote now so it’s forced us to treat everyone more equally, not just favouring those in the office.
* Less interaction with middle management, this might make it harder to get bonuses etc.
Disclaimer: I just lived in a city 5 minute bike ride from my office so I had a convenient setup, could go home and make lunch etc.
When I had an office I had slack, I had work from home, cafes, sometimes.
When you were in an office and someone scheduled a 6am meeting what would you do?
For me in the office I have a cup that I put in the dishwasher at the end of the day. At home I have a better cup that I put in the office at the end of the day.
If you’re only 5 minutes from your colleagues why can’t you go for spontaneous pub etc (assuming it’s open in your locality) Or pop out for lunch?
On the other hand, research schedules are all over the place and people invariably end up scheduling syncups at 6 or 6:30. Pre-pandemic, I would be at a local pub with coworkers at that time!
They could have at any time decided to do the same thing in the office, and many offices do work that way.
If you wouldn’t stay at your company if they required you to be in office 12 hours a day, why would you stay around if they require 12 hour WFH?
As to popping out to the pub with colleagues, again it's tough with the kids home. If I go out anywhere between 4-8 I'm basically sticking my wife with the toughest time of day. Also patio season is done here and you wouldn't catch me drinking indoors during the pandemic.
I don’t understand this situation. If this happens I reject the meeting invite, and later see it rescheduled (if my attendance was mandatory).
Is there a different way this happens?
There is no way I wouldn't hate my job anyway if it was forcing me into ridiculous schedules like that...
Also I just feel that it's becoming culturally more acceptable to attend/schedule meetings at weird times because everyone else accepts it.
If you're the nail that sticks out (by rejecting meetings), you get hammered.
This scenario is actually much easier in COVID-WFH because I can just roll out of the bed at 5:45am, run a comb through my hair and fire up the videoconference. When I worked from office it meant waking up at 3:30am, leaving my house at 4am, and getting into the office by 5:30am.
Eh? My schedule for the month rules out anything before 9am.
I guess we’re not going to have that meeting then unless Mr exec thinks it’s more important than something else on his schedule (which is healthy anyway, he shouldn’t have to wake up at 6 any more than you do.)
You also might not be working for a properly distributed global team. Execs I work for are on the other side of the world.
I've said this before by the exec's at my company tell me they have to attend meetings at weird times, so I should have to as well.
Not everyone at the moment has the luxury to just put their job on the line by telling their manager to go stick it. I for example am not in my native country an I rely on my job to support my visa. If I lose my job right now, my visa is potentially lost at a time where finding another job might not be very straight forwards and where my home country isn't allowing citizens to return home yet.
It isn't all bad, I think distributed work culture is evolving and adapting, it's just right now there are certainly inconveniences for those pioneering it.
To be fair, this particular meeting I'm supposed to be at is once a fortnight, so I feel that I can't complain too much. Some people I know still commute an hour a day.
It does really inconvenience me in a way that I can't describe, I basically lose an hour of sleep on that day and it really screws me over for the rest of the day, compounding my stress.
Just log off at 5pm or 4pm or whenever you have done your contracted working hours.
I rarely end up in a meeting which goes over my usual working hours. But otherwise I just log off. I don't understand how someone can work longer hours unwillingly when it's entirely in your control.
I guess it depends on how your remote working is implemented. For me I remote in. For others it's a VPN. But either way, cut off all communication avenues until the next morning.
>When someone of greater rank than me in an inconvenient time zone wants to have a meeting with me involved, I have to attend. I’ve practically lost all my mornings from 6am - 9am, 3-4 days a week.
The mistake was attending this even once. Now you've shown a weakness in that you'll attend a terribly scheduled meeting. You need to bring this up, it's not fair to be in work at 6am if that was not the norm before COVID. If your days started at 9am in the office, your days start at 9am at home.
I have that situation, but without the 'unwilling' part. In the office, I have often the situation "Gosh, I'd love to finish this, but if I don't catch the next train I have to wait another half hour for the next one", which automatically makes me stop work at fixed times.
Sure, I could also just stop at the same time at home, but ultimately I always end up working longer hours. Same in the morning; having to catch a train is really something that forces me to hit certain timings; when working from home, staying in bed just a little longer doesn't make me miss any trains.
It's a silly problem and could easily be overcome with enough willpower, but it requires the willpower where otherwise there are already external factors in place that soft-force me to start/stop work.
What if the trains started running every 5 minutes? Or what if you moved a little closer and you could walk?
If you don’t want to use willpower to stop working you could add some structured activity (after COVID) like a workout class after work. Or you could generally just make more deliberate plans for you after work time.
Or my personal favorite. Start a hobby you like more than work.
Or the office could move, you could move, your office could change the time of the last meeting of the day etc...
Relying on the granularity of the train schedule to enforce work life balance is brittle at best, and it’s a terrible argument against WFH.
The main reason is that I save easily 90 minutes of commute per day, so it's not bothersome to be available some of that time extra. And the second reason is that I take personal breaks randomly during the day, I'm not always 100% focused on my work, so I don't feel like being available a bit later is a stretch. Flexibility goes both ways.
What you need, as I learned, is discipline, which is really hard to train. you basically have Work hard on small things one at a time until you build the habits you want.
On that topic, this is pretty interesting:
https://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need...
Then it shuts down.
Or write one that sends a message to your partner, friends or flatmates that you'll be done in a few and to put on a kettle. Plan to have tea or what have you with your SO or flatmate at 5pm sharp. Set an alarm to take your dog out. I'm sure you can come up with other things.
Add things to your schedule that force you to leave, just like your train. Even if you're in a meeting drop a "Sorry folks, we'll have to pick this up tomorrow, I have personal obligations waiting on me" and you're out.
I meant I miss the routine I used to have, go to the gym, come back home, make breakfast, shower, put on my "work clothes" then psychically go to my office, have coffee with colleagues and then sit at my desk, open my day planner and get started.
That was the queue to begin focusing. Of course I can try do this in my living room, but it just doesn't have the same effect for me personally.
I have meetings at awkward hours which kind of makes me feel like I'm kind of permanently attached to my work. Before hand, there was work time, and home time, work stayed at work, often including my work laptop.
Also this statement kind of bugged me: "I don't understand how someone can work longer hours unwillingly when it's entirely in your control.", if you have a job that allows you to 100% dictate your hours, never having to deal with unexpected problems, outages, personnel issues, then congratulations. It's not a reality for everyone.
>> * When someone of greater rank than me in an inconvenient time zone wants to have a meeting with me involved, I have to attend. I’ve practically lost all my mornings from 6am - 9am, 3-4 days a week.
You know your situation best obviously but to a random outsider this sounds like the (reeeeeeally) common issue of not being well practiced at saying no.
I really miss whiteboard sessions. I've gotten used to zoom meetings, I'm not overloaded with them, and with a proper structured agenda I've found they can be tolerable.
But nothing beats scribbling on a whiteboard with colleagues. We've tried Miro and other tools, but nothing quite has the same feel as those scribbled boxes and arrows on a whiteboard.
I love having a few displays playing ambient information or live 24/7 video streams (eg of the Starships they’re building down in Boca Chica) in my lab.
Having a dedicated (large) room in your house to work is critical, IMO. I set mine up pre-pandemic because I always work from the places I am living, unless I’m directly (and temporarily) onsite with a client.
And then you look around, what is all this work achieving?
What were we achieving when we worked in the office? Were we doing anything real at all?
Yes, we're good at logical thinking, implementing systems, reasoning about problems etc This just makes us useful in the end or good at a certain way of thinking.
"Men of science may be simple tools of others, with no more idea what they are about than a hammer has of a house"
I believe this is true of software developers too - if we were truly smart we wouldn't be on the hamster wheel in a cage belonging to someone else
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Simple things like a small question regarding the codebase turns into a video call with a colleague where you first ping them on chat and ask them if they are free and then schedule the call. Even if the whole thing takes 10 minutes, it's too much compared to just turning sideways, asking them something if I was in office.
OTOH, I was much more comfortable working remotely in my previous job where I was already familiar with the code and the job on the whole.
Is that something you can do - just sit on a call with your assigned mentor for most of the day?
Once someone has fewer unknown unknowns, though, the act of asking a question by text can often be enough of a rubber duck that they don't need to hit "send" at all.
If I was a regular developer, working on a single part of a larger application, I would have zero problems working from home. Once you're in a position where you have to coordinate work with several other people, things are very different.
I can imaging that people who manages large teams have a lot of problems dealing with that remotely.
There are tradeoffs, but just the fact that nearly every single one of our conversations are documented and searchable is worth it alone.
You can’t just walk over to talk to someone anytime the notion strikes you, but you shouldn’t have been doing that anyway. I love to talk, and I love to think out loud. But every time I do that, I’m asking someone else to divert there attention to me.
Being remote allows people to turn off the majority of the interruptions and get work done when they need to.
And it forces me to spend more time thinking about my communications. Instead of just constantly walking over to people the moment an idea pops into my head.
Video calls really grind productivity down to a halt. It's a strange phenomenon - when I have a call scheduled, it's really hard to get work done in a half hour neighborhood of the call.
We solve this by having a special office, placed in a "remote" corner of the building. It's equipped with proper desks, monitors, chair and so on. You can go there if you need a few hours, or days, of dedicated time. If you're working on a specific project, we'll often move the team working on that project to a dedicate office. For your daily job, you just just stay at your normal desk in a semi-open office space, with plenty of meeting room and smaller rooms for calls or online meetings.
Calling it "casual collaboration" is not honest, as that's not collaboration. The other person is not collaborating, just being interrupted to help you with something. the only thing I agree is that you lost the casual talks in the coffee break or kitchen, but that is not always about being more productive.
Most of those interruptions would have been avoided if you can just learn to use the search function in you mail client and Google.
If a 10 minute interruption saves my co-workers hours of frustration, then I personally think it's worth it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
The mentorship programs don't really work in my experience without actually being able to talk to them.
I miss missing her and making our time together that much more special.
While that is true if it's just some singular instance, when living with people (parents, spouses, kids, roommates) it is better to explain it once or twice and after that, just be impolite. Even for the simple reason that they are actually the impolite ones for not respecting your process.
Everyone has a different level of conflict tolerance, of course. But letting someone know that they are being rude and disrespectful should be on the table.
I'd have to move MUCH farther away from the city (think 1 hour of driving), to get a space where this would work, I've been looking into it for the last 3 months, but so is everyone else, meaning the price where there is broadband available is skyrocketing in my area.
In general the pandemic has decimated the quality of life I used to enjoy in my downtown office, and to get that back I have to rebuild my life from scratch, 2020 and the move to WFH has been terrible in that regard for our family.
I am a Czech; property prices around Prague are hopping mad, but top German cities like Munich are just beyond belief. Buying a house in an expensive region means debt slavery till the end of your days.
Waiting to 2022 does not sound as bad in comparison. You can probably have a big, even though unkempt villa somewhere in Sachsen-Anhalt for the price of a garage in Munich.
But rent slavery is not much better, having my entire extended family living in this High CoL environment makes moving hard on the kids aswell... Atm I have a hard time being happy with any of the combinations of tradeoffs we could make.
We're a small company with healthy finances, but the salary increase necessary to offset the higher rent requirements in this housing market, due to the heavy tax burden would amount to an increase in absolute numbers nearly a third of what we pay for in rent for the whole business, and that's just for me.
Seeing it from both sides is mind-boggling to say the least.
- air conditioning
- coffee corner chats
- lunch with colleagues
- strong separation between work time and free time
All amenities and none of the negatives.
I miss the separation between having a work desk with a work computer and a hobby desk with a hobby computer and being physically unable to interact with one while at the other due to them literally being several miles apart.
I miss the clear demarcation between Working and Not Working that the daily commute signified.
Trade an anecdote for an anecdote.
We have found our dev team to be exactly as productive if not more since moving to work from home. A single instance of productive remote work invalidates this statement that it is literally impossible for remote work to be productive.
You seem to be interpreting the OP as having said that each and every team is always better in-person. Your read is plausible, but HN guidelines say we should interpret charitably.
How many companies have a set up where people hotdesk nowhere near their team (sometimes in different buildings) and encourage all meetings online because there is not enough meeting space? I don’t know, but I know it’s not zero.
1 - Unless you are talking about how to tell those teams apart and discover what environment each one fits better. That would be valuable.
Obviously, with quarantines in place that almost impossible, so hang in there, it will become better.
If productivity is truly down then it just sounds like some work is different and has different needs. As for having a lower quality of life because you now live in a city for no reason, you have to adapt. Things have changed. Deal with it.
And never forget the grass is always greener on the other side.
Also no one can tap me on the shoulder :)
I started going to the store and cooking lunch during work hours.
Then I also get complaints about not doing the dishes while I'm working.
It was nice when the work and home were separated and I just did all my household chores on my non-work time. Now I'm constantly interrupted.
So think of her nagging as not being able to realize and limit her need for validation from you.
You can look for related titles on Youtube with Red Pill and MGTOW in the titles that will help you to frame for yourself and how to explain to your wife that dysfunctional but common element of your relationship.
“Hey, I’m busy earning money. Because I’m sitting and thinking doesn’t mean I’m slacking off, and I’m also quite surprised to hear that from my significant other. You don’t know what I’m doing right now and you’re not my manager, so stop controlling and managing my work time. You’re distracting me from my work so please leave me alone. If you can’t look at me thinking and doing my work then please look the other way or go to the other room. Thanks, bye.”
I’m dramatizing, but set boundaries. There’s personal time and work time. When it’s work, it’s work.
That's a long road.
I think it's fair to ask you to pull your weight with the housework but maybe try setting some standard boundaries e.g. between 8-5 or something, so there's no need for an interaction ('are you done working?'). If you're conveniently 'working' every time she asks that's not going to help.
Or you could ask her to do your work while you do the dishes/cook/etc.
My suggestion would be that no matter what you decide, propose the idea proactively. Don't wait until there's an ask on the table.
Ehm... how should I put it... I think your issue is not the separation of work and home per se, rather the separation of you and your SO.
So far I haven't found this to be the case. Somewhat the opposite in fact, although here I'd credit our move from scrum/scrumban to Shape Up as much as working from home.
It's not perfect though. We see evidence of low-lying morale and mental health issues. Nobody's losing their minds, exactly, but plenty of people aren't really happy. Of course, there are many wider reasons why that might be the case. E.g., lockdown in particular seems to turn every day into a sort of mundane Groundhog Day, especially for people who live alone.
The balance point will be different for different people but, certainly, for me, 100% WFH is not the perfect balance (but then neither is 100% office). At least I know I can adapt to 100% WFH well enough when I have to though (unlike 100% office).
There seems to be a lot of newfound concern for the wellbeing of the employees. Interesting how this wasn't an issue before Covid hit, and nobody was asked "would you prefer to work from home rather than having to deal with constant distractions in the office? Would you like to not waste your life away on a useless commute? Are you happy?". Nah, it's only an issue now.
I'm talking about my entire team, including me. These are people I know and work with on a daily basis. Part of knowing people is that you can tell when they're not quite themselves.
I've also polled my team on a semi-regular basis throughout the last 8 months on their preferences going forward, which is how I know I have a range of preferences across the spectrum of WFH versus working from the office. We've always had a flexible approach in this area because of team has always been distributed, but one of the silver linings of the COVID cloud will, I hope, be a more general acceptance of increased flexibility in working conditions for jobs where that's feasible.
Don't you dare put words into my mouth. Take it elsewhere.
Your mileage may vary, of course. Your perception on the team might be true, or it might be that people are afraid of saying how they feel for fear of being singled out. We're just sharing anecdotes.
Companies are a mixed bag. Some of them behave in ways that are deeply cynical. Plenty also don't, or at least most of the time try to avoid doing so.
I will say one of the reasons for more concern over employee welfare is that more employees, at all grades, are displaying signs that all is not well. It's simply a very unusual situation so, in some sense, the greater noise around welfare is to be expected.
With that being said, and despite my general disdain for cynicism (I live in Cambridge: there's a lot of people who want to play the "world weary cynic" role and it gets old), it does have to be acknowledged that despite the best intentions of employees and leaders at all levels, when push comes to shove a lot of "core values" and "culture" go out the window.
Especially when the choice is that or the company goes under, or that and a shareholder revolt, or you can see the writing on the wall and it's this terrible course of action now or a much worse course of action later. People will also of course choose to use wider market conditions as cover for action they've been planning or perhaps should have taken anyway.
All in all it's grim and, as such, it's one of the reasons that if I ever run a company we will have as few "values" as we can get away with, and we certainly won't be trumpeting our "culture" with any self-serving presentations.
It's similar to how the people who would say, "suck it up, buttercup" to people with mental illnesses, are now hand-wringing about mental illnesses exacerbated by measures against COVID. They don't really care, they just found an excuse that sounds good enough to them to rail against something they don't like.