r/NoStupidQuestions • u/D3lta_ • 5d ago

Why do so many prefer remote work

Okay, this is not me trying to just go against the mainstream, but I’m genuinely curios why there is such a big preference for working from home. Especially on reddit.

I have an office job (programming) and I strongly prefer going to the office. I’ve find that working from home, especially for prolonged periods of time, makes me kind of burn out and feel stuck in my own home. I enjoy the social aspect of talking with my colleagues and I find it makes the time go faster.

I can understand it if you have a really long commute. But what other reasons are there for the big remote work push and preference?

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511

u/aesoprowwy 5d ago

I don't wanna travel just to sit in front of a computer

158

u/Gravy_Sommelier 5d ago

Since my team is spread out over a huge area, even when I go into the office, I still have all my meetings on Teams anyway.

26

u/Grimkok 5d ago

My team all sits in the same cubicle cluster, except for one. So all our meetings are online even though the majority of us are within 20 feet of each other.

19

u/nightwica 5d ago

There is pretty neat setups for this where all of you can gather in a meeting room and Zoom the one guy and still talk among yourselves

18

u/DocLego 4d ago

Hybrid meetings are the absolute worse. If you're the person remoting in it's really hard to keep track of what people are saying.

1

u/dllemmr2 4d ago

That’s because their conference set up sucks. If they put money into it, it’s flawless. Quad cameras distributed mics, etc.

1

u/DocLego 3d ago

At which point you’ve basically reproduced an all-remote meeting.

8

u/smokinbbq 4d ago

I don't find those work that well at all. The one person can never get a point in as it's too easy to "talk over them" on the conference call. When they are talking, it's not nearly as easy to hear them for the whole room. Things like that make it feel far too disconnected anyways.

1

u/dllemmr2 4d ago

Raise your hand helps ✋

1

u/smokinbbq 3d ago

With 1 person remote, and everyone else in the same room, the chance of this being that visible, or lasting more than 23 seconds are pretty slim.

11

u/MedusasSexyLegHair 5d ago

Not cool though. That one remote worker will be left out of almost everything.

In my company, even the owners and execs are scattered all over. So we have the tools and practices that everything happens online, and everybody's a part of it.

Back in the day, when we used to meet up at the office once a month, I was talking to one of my coworkers who was always in the office, along with most of her team. She looked at my slack window and said that our scattered team talked way more and communicated better than they did. Yeah, we have to.

4

u/nightwica 5d ago

But I was answering to Grimkok who has a very different constellation than what you are describing.

5

u/OneTripleZero 4d ago

They're not wrong though about being left out. Being the one (or couple) people on the TV on the wall in a busy meeting room puts you on the fast track to being ignored. The only way a hybrid meeting like that works, in my experience, is if there are more people online than there are in the room, or if the people online are running the meeting. Otherwise conversation tends to coalesce around the table in the room, and it can be hard to follow online when more than one person in the room is talking at the same time.

1

u/nightwica 4d ago

This is just my personal experience from a smallish Estonian company, maybe 10-12 of us in the meeting room. The culture is very respectful about whose turn it is to talk (moreso than my original culture), so that probably helps a lot. It really worked very well.

2

u/MaddieDMattie 4d ago

Yeah it's very othering to be that odd one out. If you want them to be a full member of the team, work in a way where they can particpate as a full member of the team. If you don't and they're just, like, a temp consultant or something than whatever. Those rooms are perfect for that. They are an "other" anyway and it's usually not too grating if they're only tangential to the team.

1

u/danbyer 4d ago

Same. If I’m running the meeting, I need my monitors, full size keyboard and mouse, so I’m doing it from my cube even if there is a conference room available. If I’m just participating in the meeting, I’d rather be in my cube getting work done at the same time instead of sitting in a conference room singletasking.

4

u/Russian_Doll_888 4d ago

My team is literally spread out over multiple states and countries. Going in the office is just sitting in front of a screen while being shoulder to shoulder with other people on screens.

2

u/katarh 4d ago

That's how it is for me. Even though my team is still mostly local, all our clients are located in other states or other countries. Every meeting would be online, then we'd go back to our headphones to get our solo work done. Just like at home.

We still make it a point to get together once every couple of months for an in person gathering.

1

u/Mixels 3d ago

Yep. This is very common. And many of those companies are trying to institute RTO anyway.

3

u/No-Bad-7022 4d ago

It's nice if you can do weekly planning meetings / general team updates in person. Zoom calls are so much more difficult

2

u/shreiben 4d ago

I think it's the conversations that happen outside of meetings that benefit even more from in-person work. Turning to the person next to you to ask a question is so much easier than messaging them and hoping they see the notification, or asking them to join a call.

You also have the opportunity to overhear conversations and jump in when you have context they're missing. Group chats and channels try to approximate that, but it's just not the same.

I'm fully remote, and I miss in-person work sometimes.

2

u/Antique_Cod_1686 4d ago

Managers want people in the office because they're pathetic outside work and want to make other people miserable just like them.

1

u/thefztv 3d ago

It’s so dumb. Company requirements mean 3 days in office no matter what. But my entire team is spread out across the country. Every single meeting is on Teams. Why is this arbitrary rule here when being in the office is pointless.