No Stupid Questions

My ask is 4x salary for in office.

It's usually met with "Well, that's not going to happen.."

To which I reply "I know, right?"

It makes me wonder how many other people back out after hearing that the job is on-site. And it makes me wonder why this wasn't specified in the job description

They're trying not to get filtered by having it listed as on site up front, and banking on people saying "well, I'm already foot in the door i guess i could settle" once the interview process starts.

I've been remote for over a decade; not going to stop now.

I'd consider one, but it'd have to pay considerably more. Like, 50% or more above what I'd otherwise expect for a fully remote position, and it would have to be an easy commute.

In most cases it's adding 20-30% to the length of the work day when the commute is included, plus costs of transportation itself. Plus the general inconvenience and the fact that it's almost always going to mean a more toxic culture. But if the pay and benefits were absolutely fantastic, I'd consider it, at least short-term.

IT guy here, I absolutely hate working from home, I want separation between my work life and my home life.

I need that to change my brain from home mode to work mode.

From what I've heard, most people that are for in office work like having the separation between work and home.

That being said, I think most folks want remote work or at least remote hybrid. It just makes more sense especially for me. I live far from my office (140 mile drive roundtrip), and working 3 days a week from home has been a god send.

We had an IT person quit this year because we transitioned to fully remote after they closed down the office in December 2020. He couldn't handle working from home.

You're talking specifically about software based IT jobs.

Those of us who deal with the hardware have always been and will always be on-site and hands on.

I might get down voted, but even for software dev, not all jobs can be done remotely. Software may need to interact with hardware, which requires to be on site. I am all in for hybrid or remote work, but totally see why some jobs require to be "on site"

I don’t want to bring work into my home, plus I like meeting people. The only problem is the commute.

I work with a few who prefer the office over work from home. I think they need a way to escape the house/wife/kids and the office is the only quiet place they have to work.

My dad is the only human being I know that likes his on-site IT job, but that's probably because he's getting away from the miserable woman he married for a few hours a day.

My company went remote first in April 2020. Even if I left here, there's no way in hell I'm going back to an office.

I guess I'm rare in that I like working in an office. My house is for relaxing and enjoying my time, so the few times I did WFH I really just want to curl up on the couch instead of work.

Keep this in mind, some places raises will barely cover inflation.

Now factor in gas and, most importantly, time spent commuting.

All that on top of effectiveness in working with social interruptions, trips to the coffee machine, bathroom breaks, lunch, etc.

Any of these businesses that are pushing for on-site are locked into costs from renting space - guarantee it. I get wanting to do the occasional face showing or in person meetings, but they should be concise and few in number - if they’re an efficient shop. Plenty of new blood that get the value of hybrid/remote work.

I've been remote for the 3 years of work experience that I've had. I live in a city with piss poor public transportation and detest traffic, plus I enjoy waking up 10 minutes before having to clock in.

The pay and perks would have to be substantial for me to consider working on-site.

I really want fully on-site jobs. If i work at home then i never get mental separation of work and life, and so i feel like i can never actually live. It happened to me with all of my schooling and honestly with the distress it causes me, I'd be better off not living at all than working at home.

I've been fully onsite basically the whole time, including during the pandemic, for me it's been fine. Gets me out of my tiny studio apartment and keeps my work life at work. Also free A/C / heating at work.

The commute is also part of that decision making - for me the commute is a long walk outside to/from work every day. All that walking around outside sort of levels me out mentally & gets rid of any stress I had, not to mention the exercise.

About a third of the developers in my office choose to come into the office every day because they do not have a home office setup or they prefer to have that separation between work and home.

In my team, 2 out 15 people come to the office regularly, because they prefer the separation of work from free time.

I can definitely see some benefits from being on-site. You do occasionally just run into people, who can tell you really useful things for your job. And it's definitely harder to keep track of what my wider team is working on, since we've gone mostly remote.

But those benefits just as well evaporate when "on-site" becomes two or more locations. I'm not going to run into someone who's in a different office in a different city.
If I have to actively work together with people from different locations, I will also be wearing headphones all day, not able to socialize with the people around me. That makes it rather pointless to go into the office.

And yeah, just the flexibility of being at home is really useful. I can take a break from work to load my washing machine. I can sleep until 5 minutes before my first meeting. Or I can walk to the store in the morning, when it's still cool outside.
So yeah, personally, I certainly wouldn't go back to a fully on-site job, unless it's somehow the best job in the world in other ways.

I would rather not be employed. I hated everything about my in-office jobs. The clothes, the pointless small talk, the "quick sidebars" that end up being longer than a meeting but could've just been a text conversation. The only thing I miss was lunchtime banter and finding fellow nerds to infodump with.

The only argument I see in favour of office time is if your home situation doesn't allow you to focus - family, kids and so on, or if you deliberately want a physical separation and you don't have a dedicated office space at home.

I would any day. I need my work life and home life to be separate or I go nuts.

It really depends on where the office is in relation to your home.

Before covid and going WFH, the office was only 5 miles away on roads with no traffic. I would go back to this, no problem. Just enough to keep you on a schedule and get out of the house.

The biggest benefit of an office is that when you leave, you are gone until tomorrow.

When everyone is WFH, you never completely leave the office. I know boundaries, but in many cases, the lines can get a bit fuzzy.

My job I'm classified as remote. And I like it that way. Recently they have decided that a bunch of people even if remote will now have to come on site at least hybrid. For "collaboration". I even noted that in my employment contract I had in there that I was to work from home, to which HR said that they really don't care.

My last year-end review was stellar. Top marks, praises from multiple departments, even got a promotion.

But I happen to live to close to a location, so there's 'simply nothing that can be done'. So I've already started looking for different work.

Software developer here, WFH since March 2020, I don't want to go back to office. If I would apply for a new job, my first question would be "is this 99% remote?" because I don't mind once a month going there from like 10 to 2 to avoid trafic jam.