I liked working from home at first, but after so long it becomes harder and harder to leave your work at "work" when your workplace is also your home. Now I am back in the office and actually prefer it that way. I have the flexibility to work from home on weekends or when I need to be home for some reason, which is good enough for me.
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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You are just a rare exception. Don't push it on the rest of us
I'm just pointing out that not everyone thrives in a WFH environment and I think it shouldn't be a controversial take to admit that.
If you're working at home on weekends, it doesn't sound like you're leaving work at work.
I work in an industry that doesn't sleep, that doesn't mean I'm putting in more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis. But we need someone to be on-call over the weekends in case there is an emergency. And when I do, my boss lets us take additional time off later in the week to make up for it. You guys are making crazy assumptions based off nothing.
I liked working from home at first, but after so long it becomes harder and harder to leave your work at “work” when your workplace is also your home
That sounds like a "you" problem. I just hit the shutdown button on my laptop at 17:00 and close the lid, and boom I've left work and magically instantaneously transported to my home.
the flexibility to work from home on weekends
Work ... on .... weekends?
I think your problem is that you're a workaholic.
Its not a uniquely "me" problem, I've talked to plenty of other people who feel the same way as I do. I'm not talking about putting in extra time when I'm not supposed to be at work. I'm just talking about how it "feels" to constantly by in your workplace like that. I personally think it kinda sucks. I'm sure other people can deal with it fine, but I live in a small house where I don't really have a separate room like a basement office or something I can dedicate to being my workspace. I might feel differently about it if I had the space.
Also, I work in an industry that requires 24/7 coverage, we keep the Internet service running for hundreds of thousands of customers and businesses. I very very rarely put in more than 40 hours a week, but there are times where I need to be on call over the weekend in case there is an emergency. And when I do, I take time off later in the week to make up for it.
Simple solution is to have a designated home office work space, and work only there.
That works great if you have the space to do so. I live in a very small home by myself and I really don't have that kind of space around.
The only advantage to me being in the office is that I get free access to the gym.
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Every time this comes up i tell my personal and data driven experience as a middle manager in a company, and every time people trash me, but i keep saying it.
IT FUCKING DEPENDS!
From purely data point of view (note: this is from my place of work) workers whose work is purely executing more or less the same duties every day had their productivity have a nose dive when working long stretches from home. Also their works quality got worse. Its easy to reinforce bad habits whitout even noticing it, if the feedback comes from email and and not straight from the supervisor.
BUT with jobs like coders or artists where the job is more open ended instead of monotous labor there was no ill effects.
Then on the other side communication has gotten much slower with the people working from outside office. Where i used to just walk to the other room and ask something from my collegue i now need to message them in our internal and hope they notice it. Getting answers for questions have turned from 5 minute thing to 10-40 minute things.
Also from the point of more inventive things on my work we have lost a lot of changes to brainstorm ideas. No more throwing ideas around during lunch or coffee breaks
How about the workers' wellbeing? Is that ever considered?
Out of curiosity, can you describe, with a bit more detail, the kind of work that was repetitive and became worse?
Whatever it was the people doing it deserve a more brain-stimulating job. If things are repetetive in a desk job, chances are that a lot can be automated.
Customer service and sales support. The work is on the basic channels. Phone, email and chat and its pretty much allways some variation of few same questions or complaints.
Both customer satisfaction and work effiency started to get worse the longer the lockdown went.
By the way we dont have mandatory office days. Everybody can work from home if they want. The split is now pretty much 60/40 with bigger part working from the office. (I think big part is because it has kindergarden and its in place with good public transport) During summer when parents want to stay at home looking after the kids or when bank holidays make broken week most of the people stay home.
In the field of organizational psychology (which research like this is typically done by), the phrase "it depends" is used so often among scientists that it's a running gag at this point
middle managers are useless anyway
Getting answers for questions have turned from 5 minute thing to 10-40 minute things.
That's an administration problem. Sure people are busy, in meetings or at lunch. But if someone is always 40m away from answering a work slack/chat they're a candidate for replacement.
You understand wrong.
I message somebody --> they take ten minutes to answer, with question --> im doing something else, it takes me few minutes to finish or risking losing my tough then i answer --> maybe with good luck they answer right back, but most likely it takes few minutes again.
In the office i could have talked to the person and resolve the thing faster.
Easy fix.. slack message asking for a huddle and giving a brief synopsis of the issue, just what your opening remark would have been in person, but including how urgent this is. Person gets back to you as soon as it demands and they are able. If you're in the middle of something when they get back to you, that's just what you were doing to them by interrupting when they were busy already.
For us, we use slack huddles when there will be too much back and forth. 30 second audio call, supports screen sharing.
Yeah we use huddles too. But its not like it always clear when this things is going to be involved or not.
Hey, I have a question, you have time for a quick huddle?
Almost never does anyone say no.
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And the richies grab the scientists by the mouth and go, "Shutfuckup! Shutfuckup!".
Personally I take my time in the office and really hustle remotely. Want to make sure the metrics show its better for me to be home. Honestly though I would love to have an office I could walk to.