It's your position that remote work is an unvarnished success though? No notes? Personally, I feel that remote-only in 2026 is mainly a cost-savings scheme, and probably functions to make the ground much more fertile for replacing knowledge workers (us) with AI agents.

In a physical space, humans have built-in advantages over bots. Operating exclusively or primarily over IP levels the playing field, nullifying our advantages of expressive nonverbal communication, and makes 100% of our output accessible to agents.

And it minimizes our contact with each other. I know you can DM people on Slack to gossip about the boss, but do you? Figuring everything is logged, you'd have to create and nurture alternative private channels like texting, and doing that at scale carries at least some implication of subterfuge that limits participation, in a way that chatting around a table at the sandwich shop just doesn't.

All of us really do appreciate the savings on gas money and (in theory) the time savings, though I bet most people have given over some of that time savings to work tasks. I'm not saying it doesn't have benefits. But I don't think the companies still embracing remote work are doing it out of philanthropy, and I don't think it's necessarily good for us workers.

▲

tyrust a day ago | parent | next [-]

You might have a bit of an argument here, but I think there are two major problems.

First, bullshitting in meatspace isn't much of an advantage. To the extent that it is, there is always video calling. What matters for agent training is going to be the output from said bullshitting. You're not really maintaining any moat by going to the office.

And then on the other side, going to the office pretty much sucks. Unless you live close to the office, you're probably looking at least an hour on either side of your day commutting. Using that saved time to work extra at home is an obvious tactical error that I hope people aren't making. I sure as hell don't.

▲

xp84 a day ago | parent [-]

> Unless you live close to the office, you're probably looking at least an hour on either side of your day commutting

That's a choice though. I just lived where I worked. I can see the argument when you're talking about low-paid work, but if you are a software engineer, you can probably afford to not spend an hour commuting.

> going to the office pretty much sucks.

This is a highly personal thing though. For me, having children home in the afternoon drastically dampens my productivity, and the benefits from being there extend to greater awareness of what other people are working on, and decreased perceived barrier to collaboration. When you see another developer in the kitchen just sipping coffee or waiting for an elevator, you don't feel like you're interrupting to ask him how he got past a certain issue, or in telling him about a new tool that you just tried. You can post those thoughts in a public channel! But the person who "needs" to see it might not see it, and sending a DM is kind of a demand such that many people won't do it unless absolutely necessary.

Text is for many people just not superior to communicating in person. Slack is a simulacrum of in-person communication, not the platonic ideal.

▲

preg_match 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While you can lower your commute by living closer to work, you should understand that what you’re doing is taking a drastic pay cut for the pleasure of in-office work.

In-office work might be worth it, maybe. Is it worth 20,000 dollars a year of your money? Probably not.

At that point, it’s probably still cheaper to rent a wework or something.

▲

Apocryphon a day ago | parent | prev [-]

What general area did you live and work in? Was it actually Silicon Valley or a tech hub?

With remote work, you don’t have to work at home. Many simply work at a co-working space or similar environment that isn’t the actual office.

The colocated collaboration you’re talking about is also highly variable. It’s possible to be on a team where you’re working on projects that actually primarily involve others from other teams not in the same physical offices, or even the same company. So you’re describing benefits that are also highly personal, not a universal good. Software is an industry that would seem to have outgrown in-person communication.

	▲	xp84 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Worked in San Francisco. Lived a 20-minute walk away from work, in a 1-bedroom apartment. My mortgage + HOA cost about 16% of my gross pay. This is in the mid-2010s. I have done coworking, most recently for about 2 years of full-time at WeWork. Coworking is, depending on how busy the venue, just a quieter version of the home office, or, like working in a shared workspace at a very large university that you just transferred into: There are dozens of people around, but you don't know any of them, and they're all busy doing their own thing. You have no non-recreational business even talking to anyone. You can make a point of trying to chat people up around lunchtime, but you're starting from scratch, and also, as a 'stranger' subject to people wondering if you're talking to them with a motive to either sell them something or flirt with them. This is no substitute for social contact, except for the most extraverted who truly LOVE talking to new people. > It’s possible to be on a team where you’re working on projects that actually primarily involve others from other teams not in the same physical offices, I did this when working in person, a decade ago. Yes, we had zooms often. But also we travelled and met those people periodically. I learned important things from observing them using the software that I wouldn't have otherwise. I would not have scheduled zoom meetings for each of them to share their screen while they worked in the software. That would have felt burdensome. Today, most companies won't approve any travel for engineers, product managers, etc. Maybe for sales guys to take people to steak dinners. But they assume that for us, Zoom is an equal substitute. > Software is an industry that would seem to have outgrown in-person communication This is an idea that makes no sense at all to me. Look, I totally respect that some people really dislike all or most of these things: in-person talking, small talk, reading (or being aware of your own) body language and tone, wearing pants and shoes all day, being away from family, commuting... Maybe fully remote work is totally best for you! I'm just saying that it's not best for everyone, it's not an automatic 'most efficient choice,' it's not automatically best for morale, it's not best for all families. And to top it off, while businesses pushing RTO seem like the ones being cynical, it shouldn't be hard to see that the other businesses that are refusing to have a physical office today have their own cynical reasons that aren't for the workers' benefit.

▲

a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

lo0dot0 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I have to clock in and clock out. I can't clock in when I am commuting. I don't give over time savings to work tasks, Why would I. The time was my own time.