alt Hacker News> WFH takes discipline
That is bizarre to me. I find the office takes far more discipline. Do people really get that distracted at home? What is so distracting?
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I don't have too much of a problem with it but there are some obstacles depending on your home life.
My wife is hybrid, and on the days she's working from home I have to be firm about boundaries or I'll get significantly less done than on the days where it's just me. If you have kids, or live with your parents, I imagine it presents similar challenges. My sister moved back in with my father in 2020 due to the pandemic, and he was bizarrely disruptive to her work despite _also_ being remote. I'm not saying offices don't have this problem too (many such stories of loud and obnoxious coworkers), but it can be harder to have these conversations with loved ones.
Lots of people live in distracting, annoying places. If I open my window, I will hear some idiot gun it off the line in their straight-piped car from the stoplight near my apartment, several times an hour. There is a constant din of tire noise from the nearby freeway. The firemen at the station down the block do their thing every now and then. If I close my window, it regularly reaches 78F+ in my apartment. I have been battling property management to fix my A/C for months now, and every HVAC technician they send does nothing to fix the problem. My old neighbors used to play shitty music during the day.
Especially in HCOL places with mega-offices where these RTO mandates often stem from, sometimes it really is just easier to work in an air-conditioned office where you can get free coffee, snacks, and maybe some quiet if you're lucky or can slink away to an unused meeting room.
I 100% agree with you though that, at least for me, the discipline of getting up early in the morning, being well groomed and presentable, and battling traffic both ways is greater for me than taking steps to make myself comfortable and productive at home.
During COVID, like everyone else, our company went to WFH. Conversely, when we had a round of redundancies some of the people that were perceived to be important or productive in the office, turned out to be nothing of the sort, and were surprisingly let go.
They talked. A lot. They worked... very little.
The discipline in the office is to do the work, not go to the 'water cooler' and chat to anyone that was there or organise frivolous meetings.
The 16 pings a minute. The 6 hours of meetings a day because people aren't getting the information they need organically each day. The "hey, can I call?"'s during what I thought would be my free half hour in the afternoon. This is definitely not what it was like in the office.
Unfortunately, I recognize this doesn't change unless an org goes 100% back onsite.
I have discipline problems but when I am on site, my days are more filled with bullshit, e.g. random conversation over projects that lead nowhere, background conversations on unrelated topics, explaining stuff that aren't worth it, coffee breaks etc.
So while I believe it helps in term of team cohesion and for this purpose, on site is better, in term of productiveness it's a net negative.
Office is an external discipline forced on you while WFH is an internal discipline no one watching over your shoulders, that's the difference.
For an undisciplined person anything can be distracting: birds chirping, picking up a delivery, cooking, a friend dropping by, daily chores like washing, organizing things, etc... it's an endless list really.