Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?
There are so many variables involved that no two people have the same office or remote experience.<p>One big factor, I believe, is age.<p>The younger you are, the more your colleagues may also be social partners.  You&#x27;re fresh out of university (or close enough that you remember the lifestyle), and having other people to do things with is a common need.  But as you&#x27;re spending most of your time in an office, the pool of potential partners (even potentially romantic) is essentially the people you work; you see them most days.<p>Also, when you&#x27;re younger you tend to have fewer responsibilities.  Most of us, once we have kids, find that all of our free time has vanished.  And even if you spend 2-3 hours with your kid in the evening, you feel guilty that you&#x27;re not giving enough time to them.  That means you&#x27;ll accept fewer of the after-work activity offers from your colleagues.  That change will also affect the relationship dynamics with you and your colleagues, unless they all happen to be at about the same stage of life (in which case you may have playdates with them and everyone&#x27;s kids).<p>And once you get old and your kids are grown, you typically have a million things you&#x27;d like to do or get done; so extra time at the office or with colleagues is very low priority.<p>Another big factor is type of company.  Tech-first companies are probably more fun in general than &quot;normal&quot; companies.  I would rank the companies in this order of fun-ness based on my personal experience: 1. computer game development shop.  2. wealthy finance company with big tech investment.  3. any gig where you work with other consultants who travel and get huge travel allowances to spend :).  4. all the rest - &quot;typical companies&quot;.<p>In my almost 30 years of work, about half has been remote.  Aside from the gamedev shop and the finance shop, the other office experiences were boring or horrible.  Recently I got a very good offer from a bank to tech-lead a high profile project.  But the second I walked in the door to do the interview, I felt that dread.  Yeah the building was shiny, there were lots of glass walls, and I&#x27;m sure there was &quot;free coffee&quot;.  But there were also big open rooms, half height cubes, and a general feeling of The Office.  I had to turn it down.  And then I had to turn down the much-sweetened followup offer.  They were offended, the recruiter was baffled, and I was relieved.  I couldn&#x27;t explain that such an environment made me hate life even before I had spent a full day there.<p>Location, climate, and commute also are big factors.<p>A nice 20min bike commute in good weather is lovely (and healthy!).  But rainy windy cold weather means either an awful biking experience where you arrive sweaty and wet, or you fight everyone else with your car; or you take public transport and let two metros leave without you because you will not cram yourself in with everyone else who is dodging the weather.<p>Most people living and working in the US are stuck with cars as the only way to get to work.  Years of driving 30-60 minutes each way to and from work, in heavy traffic, very negatively affects most people.  You hate every motherf<i>cker on the road with you, and you need half an hour to get over the simmering rage upon arrival.  If you live in Texas, you also have to worry about that r</i>dneck in the pickup... does he have a gun?  If you take that little opportunity to get over, and it offends him, will he shoot you?  Crap like this happens, even if you&#x27;re driving politely.  Many of the people around you are (also) very angry about the situation.<p>And if you live fairly far from the equator, winters mean very short days.  You go into work while it&#x27;s dark, and you come out of work while it&#x27;s dark.  I&#x27;m a happy night owl, but I also do need sunlight.  You can&#x27;t get that sunlight when there&#x27;s barely any and you&#x27;re trapped in an office.  At least working from home, when that lucky moment of sun occurs, I can drop what I&#x27;m doing and go outside.<p>Freedom is the thing I value most about remote working now.  I work from wherever I want, whenever I want (to a degree of course).  If I want to dodge the crappy winter and work from an island in southeast Asia, I do.  I get a nice breakfast with excellent fresh fruits delivered to me each morning, I sip my coffee on the deck just before the beach and ocean, and I get a massage at lunch if I want.  I work a few hours here and there when my mind is ready, and I go enjoy life the rest of the time.<p>I&#x27;m not rich, and I earn a lot less than probably a lot of HN readers... for sure WAY less than the MAANG people.  But it&#x27;s enough to be happy and free and not burn money on overpriced housing and car gas to commute.<p>All that said, I do get that a lot of people _need_ a good amount of direct social contact more than they need the things I care about.  So an office environment is great for people who really need that.  But there certainly are those of us who need far less social, or get it outside the office and thus don&#x27;t need an office.<p>Lastly, the older I get and the more full my head is with ideas and who knows what else, the more difficult I find to get into the &quot;flow&quot;.  Being in an office, _if_ I&#x27;m fortunate to get into the flow, there&#x27;s a much greater chance that someone or something will break me out of that flow.  But working from home, I especially find that 10pm-2am is my best time.  The world around me is quiet, nobody is calling me or walking up to me, and I can do what I do.  Put me in an office with a 9-6 schedule and you&#x27;ll get about 30% productivity.  What a waste of my time and your money.