<story><title>Ask HN: Why don&apos;t I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?</title><text>Saying the following feels like heresy and whenever I say it, fellow software engineers look at me as if I just asked them if there are GOTOs in Javascript.&lt;p&gt;I used to love going to the office. Discussing our team&amp;#x27;s  latest Python problems over a coffee. Looking over at their screen and then asking them why they look like they want to beat someone over the head with their keyboard repeatedly. Guessing people&amp;#x27;s emotions in a heated Retro from their body language. Grabbing dinner with a few colleagues after a long workshop meeting in the evening and then realizing that, aside from all the differences we might have about static typing in programming languages, we all like the same exotic progressive metal bands.&lt;p&gt;Many of these things that made my job much more than slaving at a digital conveyor belt seem to be gone these days. And the worst thing for me is that I feel few people relate. On the contrary, many are screaming in outrage if asked to come to the office even for a single day a week and threaten to quit.&lt;p&gt;To provide a bit of context, I have been working in the Berlin Tech Startup scene for almost a decade. I remember thinking after the first few weeks on my entry-level job that this couldn&amp;#x27;t possible be the horrible &amp;quot;working world&amp;quot; I have seen relatives complain about all their lives. It was fun, gratifying and stimulating to learn new things, meet new people and all the while be payed for doing so and building a career.&lt;p&gt;Now, I am fully aware that there&amp;#x27;s a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn&amp;#x27;t make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. But are those really the majority? I always saw tech as the field where a disproportionally large amount of people truly love what they do. Mostly, because it takes so much grit and persistence to get good at it that most people wouldn&amp;#x27;t succeed unless they see something in it beyond putting food on the table.&lt;p&gt;Have I been under some weird form of Stockholm Syndrom where I actually enjoyed something that was pure torture to most? Have a lot of people realized they don&amp;#x27;t actually like being among other people, apart from their closest friends and family?&lt;p&gt;And finally, I feel no one else is realizing that they are happily hacking away at the amazingly well-paid branch they&amp;#x27;re sitting on. As soon as a  company&amp;#x27;s IT department is practically fully remote, why should they page a German wage for someone who is a face on a screen, when they can pay a fraction for that same face broadcasted from a few hundred kilometers further east or south? German is hardly used in business context here anyway and lower-wage countries within ±3 hours timezones abound.&lt;p&gt;All in all, there is a gnawing feeling in me that Covid made a significant dent on the once fun (Berlin Startup) tech working culture for good. And worse, I suspect there is gonna be more consequences down the road for the tech job market at large that few people seem to see.&lt;p&gt;I know that &amp;quot;the office&amp;quot; is a bad place for a lot of people. There may be product managers that ignore the noise-cancelling headphone stop-sign and make you lose your stack of thoughts just to ask if the dev app URL is still the same it was yesterday. There can be bad managers and unpleasant situations all around. But shouldn&amp;#x27;t we rather work on fixing those things instead of making them bearable by just turning off a camera in a Zoom meeting?&lt;p&gt;From talking to friends, I feel this is a very controversial opinion to have and I don&amp;#x27;t really get why. Any help to make me understand would be greatly appreciated! And just to be clear, I absolutely do get that for some people (fresh parents, people living at home to take care of their parents etc.) remote work is a real blessing. I am just wondering if that is really the case for the majority or what it is that I&amp;#x27;m missing.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>samuel_backend</author><text>Honestly, I feel this is a bit of a black-and-white view that grossly oversimplifies things. And I am downright insulted by the last sentence to be frank.&lt;p&gt;Blaming shitty management on extroverted techies. Are you sure about that?</text></item><item><author>throwaway294566</author><text>&amp;gt; I always saw tech as the field where a disproportionally large amount of people truly love what they do.&lt;p&gt;You do confuse &amp;quot;loving what they do&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;being at the office&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;socializing during slack time&amp;quot;. I do love my job but I do hate socializing with people, which is definitely not my job. That is why I&amp;#x27;m working in IT, I don&amp;#x27;t have to socialize beyond the bare minimum to be successful. I think IT attracts introverts like me, and I do suspect we are the majority (but I have only anecdata for that).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I know that &amp;quot;the office&amp;quot; is a bad place for a lot of people. [...] But shouldn&amp;#x27;t we rather work on fixing those things instead of making them bearable by just turning off a camera in a Zoom meeting?&lt;p&gt;Things have gotten worse and worse around the office. Small one- or few-person offices gave way to cubicles, which gave way to open-plan offices, which gave way to open-plan seat-lottery not-even-your-own-desk offices. No amount of pushback changed this direction in the slightest. Meanwhile noise and interruptions got worse and worse, where in my private office people knocked politely before entering or were kept out by the DND sign, nowadays the seat lottery puts me next to a loudmouthed marketing phone-drone, who when not screaming into the mic drones on about his awesome sales statistics and his new yacht. At least the boss can&amp;#x27;t easily walk over anymore and breathe down my neck because the seat lottery put him somewhere else usually. Any and all things that have been tried to fix this are band-aids and lip-service. It only got worse and worse.&lt;p&gt;WFH is great, finally a step in the right direction. I do have no sympathy for the extroverts, because they got us into the aforementioned mess.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mirchibajji</author><text>Sorry you see it this way. I agree with a lot of what the parent said. The post started the black-and-white framing - the current situation is bad, and we need to fix it.&lt;p&gt;A popular three wishes joke goes: &amp;quot;Three men are stranded on a desert island, when a bottle washes up on the shore. When they uncork the bottle, a genie appears and offers three wishes. The first wishes to be taken to Paris. The genie snaps his fingers, and the man suddenly finds himself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. The second man wishes that he were in Hollywood, and with a snap of the genie&amp;#x27;s fingers, he finds himself on a Tinseltown movie set. The third man, now alone on the island, looks around and says, &amp;quot;I wish my friends were back.&amp;quot;[1]&lt;p&gt;If you looking for different points of view, I would urge you to look past the trigger words.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Three_wishes_joke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Three_wishes_joke&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Why don&apos;t I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?</title><text>Saying the following feels like heresy and whenever I say it, fellow software engineers look at me as if I just asked them if there are GOTOs in Javascript.&lt;p&gt;I used to love going to the office. Discussing our team&amp;#x27;s  latest Python problems over a coffee. Looking over at their screen and then asking them why they look like they want to beat someone over the head with their keyboard repeatedly. Guessing people&amp;#x27;s emotions in a heated Retro from their body language. Grabbing dinner with a few colleagues after a long workshop meeting in the evening and then realizing that, aside from all the differences we might have about static typing in programming languages, we all like the same exotic progressive metal bands.&lt;p&gt;Many of these things that made my job much more than slaving at a digital conveyor belt seem to be gone these days. And the worst thing for me is that I feel few people relate. On the contrary, many are screaming in outrage if asked to come to the office even for a single day a week and threaten to quit.&lt;p&gt;To provide a bit of context, I have been working in the Berlin Tech Startup scene for almost a decade. I remember thinking after the first few weeks on my entry-level job that this couldn&amp;#x27;t possible be the horrible &amp;quot;working world&amp;quot; I have seen relatives complain about all their lives. It was fun, gratifying and stimulating to learn new things, meet new people and all the while be payed for doing so and building a career.&lt;p&gt;Now, I am fully aware that there&amp;#x27;s a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn&amp;#x27;t make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. But are those really the majority? I always saw tech as the field where a disproportionally large amount of people truly love what they do. Mostly, because it takes so much grit and persistence to get good at it that most people wouldn&amp;#x27;t succeed unless they see something in it beyond putting food on the table.&lt;p&gt;Have I been under some weird form of Stockholm Syndrom where I actually enjoyed something that was pure torture to most? Have a lot of people realized they don&amp;#x27;t actually like being among other people, apart from their closest friends and family?&lt;p&gt;And finally, I feel no one else is realizing that they are happily hacking away at the amazingly well-paid branch they&amp;#x27;re sitting on. As soon as a  company&amp;#x27;s IT department is practically fully remote, why should they page a German wage for someone who is a face on a screen, when they can pay a fraction for that same face broadcasted from a few hundred kilometers further east or south? German is hardly used in business context here anyway and lower-wage countries within ±3 hours timezones abound.&lt;p&gt;All in all, there is a gnawing feeling in me that Covid made a significant dent on the once fun (Berlin Startup) tech working culture for good. And worse, I suspect there is gonna be more consequences down the road for the tech job market at large that few people seem to see.&lt;p&gt;I know that &amp;quot;the office&amp;quot; is a bad place for a lot of people. There may be product managers that ignore the noise-cancelling headphone stop-sign and make you lose your stack of thoughts just to ask if the dev app URL is still the same it was yesterday. There can be bad managers and unpleasant situations all around. But shouldn&amp;#x27;t we rather work on fixing those things instead of making them bearable by just turning off a camera in a Zoom meeting?&lt;p&gt;From talking to friends, I feel this is a very controversial opinion to have and I don&amp;#x27;t really get why. Any help to make me understand would be greatly appreciated! And just to be clear, I absolutely do get that for some people (fresh parents, people living at home to take care of their parents etc.) remote work is a real blessing. I am just wondering if that is really the case for the majority or what it is that I&amp;#x27;m missing.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>samuel_backend</author><text>Honestly, I feel this is a bit of a black-and-white view that grossly oversimplifies things. And I am downright insulted by the last sentence to be frank.&lt;p&gt;Blaming shitty management on extroverted techies. Are you sure about that?</text></item><item><author>throwaway294566</author><text>&amp;gt; I always saw tech as the field where a disproportionally large amount of people truly love what they do.&lt;p&gt;You do confuse &amp;quot;loving what they do&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;being at the office&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;socializing during slack time&amp;quot;. I do love my job but I do hate socializing with people, which is definitely not my job. That is why I&amp;#x27;m working in IT, I don&amp;#x27;t have to socialize beyond the bare minimum to be successful. I think IT attracts introverts like me, and I do suspect we are the majority (but I have only anecdata for that).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I know that &amp;quot;the office&amp;quot; is a bad place for a lot of people. [...] But shouldn&amp;#x27;t we rather work on fixing those things instead of making them bearable by just turning off a camera in a Zoom meeting?&lt;p&gt;Things have gotten worse and worse around the office. Small one- or few-person offices gave way to cubicles, which gave way to open-plan offices, which gave way to open-plan seat-lottery not-even-your-own-desk offices. No amount of pushback changed this direction in the slightest. Meanwhile noise and interruptions got worse and worse, where in my private office people knocked politely before entering or were kept out by the DND sign, nowadays the seat lottery puts me next to a loudmouthed marketing phone-drone, who when not screaming into the mic drones on about his awesome sales statistics and his new yacht. At least the boss can&amp;#x27;t easily walk over anymore and breathe down my neck because the seat lottery put him somewhere else usually. Any and all things that have been tried to fix this are band-aids and lip-service. It only got worse and worse.&lt;p&gt;WFH is great, finally a step in the right direction. I do have no sympathy for the extroverts, because they got us into the aforementioned mess.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway294566</author><text>Yes, I am sure that extroverts are to blame. But not only extroverted techies. Management is almost 100% extroverts. Extroverted techies went along, repeating the party line of &amp;quot;watercooler talk makes us cooperate more&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;I like the new open floorplan, so social&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;interruptions aren&amp;#x27;t that bad, learn to multitask and get some headphones&amp;quot;. For examples, just read some HN about open floorplans. The introverted techs, being introverts, were less heard and mostly had no say anyways. Extroverted management and techs lacked any interest and necessary empathy to understand them. Whats more, snark and derision for the introverts, not only behind closed doors. HR and management slides praised the new culture of constant social interaction and suggested the rest should just socialize more and learn to multitask and be outgoing. Be more extroverted like us, less like you. Same from the extroverted techies, e.g. here on HN. Introverts just weren&amp;#x27;t accepted and were not heard.&lt;p&gt;So yes, I think snark is warranted and the last sentence is fair play. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, where extroverts don&amp;#x27;t like WFH, I do only treat extroverts with the same contempt I was treated with.</text></comment>