> We've known for all of history that sitting inside for extended periods, allowing yourself to atrophy, not socializing with others, self-indulgence, and neglecting your spiritual and mental health are bad for you.
This, IMO, is why WFH is a bad thing and should be avoided.
Because you have common sense; so many of these commenters seem to think that it’s somehow everyone else’s fault they chose to live in a place where everything is a 3 hour drive away.
Yeah, that works at best only as long as you're single; once you live together with a partner, it's highly likely one of you will be getting a long commute.
In a proper metro area, where jobs and housing are concentrated, this isn't such an issue, as there’s a high probability both your and your partner’s jobs would be quickly commutable.
Sadly, America’s backwards zoning policies have led to a situation where nothing is typically near anything else. But hey, at least people can have huge front yards that they never ever, use for anything! That’s something!
There's another problem, that's hitting Europe right now: approximately no one can actually afford to move to "a proper metro area", at least not when it comes to larger cities. Even on a dev salary, when you move to a place you can afford that offers basic comforts to family (i.e. not renting out single rooms shared with others), your commute is now back to ~1h each way. But at least you and your partner are traveling in the same direction, so there's that.
It's much easier for people who already own a place in the city.
I have no real opinion on whether or not WFH is better, but I feel compelled to point out that only a very small minority of people are working that far away from home.
In LA where I live, it’s the opposite. There are 14 million people in metro LA area. A 2h daily commute is on the average side. Some of my colleagues would drive north of 3h. Per day. 5 days a week. About 660 hours per year. Spent in a car, constantly endangered, paying for gas, polluting their own biosphere to the point of guaranteed impact on lifespan.
No thank you.
It would blow my mind to see people in Bentleys on my commute. Hard for me to imagine having enough money for such a car and not deciding to avoid the inhumane agony of forced commute.
Ok, 3 is not typical. There is a behavioral reason for this. Like in most economic considerations, there's a tradeoff, where humans will tolerate a certain amount of time travel, for the money. So this tends to be stretched out to the maxima, over time.
Given driving time and train time, it's easily 2 hours of a commute in any of the top 20 metros for the majority of the population. From personal experience: Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Orange County (just Santa Ana to Irvine!), or the rest of the inland empire was all 1.5 or more, each way. Ofc there will be less general cases around the nation, where you might characterize a "very small minority" opposed to what I would believe was 1/3 of the nation doing 2 hours total before WFH was popularized. Some people (including people we each know) still make these commutes.
I chose to live next to a lovely forest and get to enjoy a walk when ever I like during my workday. When working from an office I was stuck 2 hours each way in an underground tunnel, and then in a tiny box office, preconceptions are a funny thing.
Maybe if it becomes normalized for companies to have several small, localized offices that enable employees to live in lower cost areas while still being within a short drive (or preferably, walk/bike) of home rather than demand that everybody comes into the mothership without paying well enough across the board (not just devs) to make it not prohibitively expensive to live reasonably close by.
In short, as long as hour+ driving commutes are commonplace, WFH shouldn’t be going anywhere.
The main reason most companies used to have offices in large metros is not because they were expensive, but because they offer great access to workers. This became even more important as women's labor participation went up, as moving for one job is stressful, but moving when you have two earners is a real problem.
The main advantage for a company of WFH is opening up the pool of workers even more: I've worked at teams that might as well been UN sumits if you look at just nationalities and locations.
Small, localized offices in lower cost areas do not provide any significant social advantage over home if you don't find at least a handful of people you work with in said office. But if the company is very distributed, this isn't going to happen. So then you have to try to hire people living hear those, lower cost of living offices, which shrinks the available pool again. And if those places had a lot of highly paid workers, they stop being low cost of living anyway.
The only road to shorter commutes (once having an office is taken as mandatory) is massive density and public transport. It doesn't guarantee it, but then there are more people that are technically close enough to the office so that if they worked there, they'd have a short commute. Compare, say, LA and Madrid. LA is bigger, but the number of people that can get to a random point in downtown LA in 30 minutes is far lower than in Madrid.
I always thought that as women's labour force participation went up, working hours should have fallen. If you have double the workforce, surely people can reduce their hours?
My main reason is that it is better for families, and it would be kids spend more time with their parents (in the UK it is now common for kids to have breakfast at school, and be picked from after school childcare every day).
With regard to this problem, it would also make commuting a lot easier. The biggest problem I have found with commuting is the crowding at peak times: it makes things slower and less comfortable, and means you cannot get work done on a train, etc. If you had shorter and more flexible working hours people could avoid peak times.
The variety in vocal distances in my home office are much greater. I have a nice sunny window to look out into the distance, and the outdoors are 10 steps away which I indulge in at least every couple hours.
Ongoing, low-key exposure to pathogens is usually good for you, as it helps you keep immunity. Conversely, quarantining yourself is not a healthy way to live.
I have exposure to people through my family and other close friends, why do I need to swap germs with my coworkers and their kids and their classmates?
The take away should probably be that while indoors for long periods, you should sit with a window nearby and within view, so you can focus on far away objects periodically. (I've heard 15 second every fifteen minutes or 20 every 20 as rules of thumb.) And maybe take walks outside more often.
Do you have less opportunity to sit next to a window you can look out of periodically, when working from home? I'd think not. Less time to take walks outdoors? Nope. For many people, offices are going to be more of a detriment than a help.
This, IMO, is why WFH is a bad thing and should be avoided.