How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

Before pandemic I started working remotely and soon noticed that, like OP, working alone doesn't suit me.

I solved this by joining a co-working hub that offers offices to remote workers / entrepreneurs. My employer pays for the hub membership.

I drive to our offices around once a month, but rest of the time I sit in a room with an accountant and gym owner. They are fun to chat and go to lunch with but they don't interrupt me with work related things.

As a bonus I get to meet and hang with professionals in many different areas and I find that really satisfying.

If I change company I work for, I just get the new employer to pay for the office. If I need to move, I prefer cities that have this kind of co-working place.

This is quite doable, here in Finland at least and while it has some downsides, it has worked for me!

> These days it's hard to find an in office job, and even when you do, it feels like that would be s red flag anyway, since WFH is seen as a perk by most, or realistically I worry I'm going to go in to the office and be the only one there.

> Is it not as bad as I think? Are there places out there for weirdos like me?

Preferring in-office work is actually very common.

Take the news headlines and internet comments with a grain of salt. Even many of the big companies that have temporary WFH are still moving back toward in-office work.

The internet comments and anecdote-filled news articles would have you believe that office work is dead and everybody loves WFH, but my actual experience with companies suggests that a lot of people are realizing they aren’t cut out for WFH or they prefer being in the office. It’s just unpopular to say as much online these days because the people who do prefer WFH are sensitive about any suggestions that it isn’t universally superior.

Frankly, looking at job listings lately I still see far more office jobs than full remote jobs. If you’re looking for a normal office job it shouldn’t be hard to find. However, if you’ve been convinced that non-remote jobs are “red flags” by some of the recent internet hyperbole, this could be clouding your search.

Just want to say you are not alone. I too want to have a place to go. Whether it's a co-working space or an office for the company I work for, waking up and working in the same place every day is slowly driving me crazy.

The WFH people are probably the most vocal online (especially on Reddit as subreddits tend to create echo-chambers), so it feels as though _everyone_ wants to work from home, but ultimately I think/hope most people understand the social benefits of working in an office.

> Are there places out there for weirdos like me?

I think the discourse is heavily biased towards pro-remote. We've been working from offices for years, so the pro-remote crowd has been vocal for a while, whereas most pro-office people are only just beginning to realize that they even prefer an office, let alone how much.

But so basically I think it's a completely false notion that preferring remote work is the norm. That sense comes purely from noticing percent of talking.

FWIW I'd generally described myself as pretty introverted, in the sense of finding that social interaction is draining, but I'm considering moving across the country to be closer to my teammates.

I think there will be plenty of traditional “come to the office 200+ days a year” tech jobs once COVID is endemic. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if over half of tech jobs offer an in-office experience for employees who want it. For those companies that do, I’d expect over half of employees will choose 100+ days a year in office.

If you want a 5 days/week mandated in-office in Jan 2022, you’re going to have slim pickings. If you want that in Jan 2023, I sure hope that’s fairly common again (just for the implications on C19 endemic status, not because I want to go to an office).

Problem with this is that you don't want to just work in an office, but also have other people from the company work with you at the office. It's different from people who prefer WFH because they don't care if the other guys also work remote or not.

Anyway, at this point of the pandemic, I'd still not feel comfortable having lunch with coworkers in a closed space. I just prefer to have lunch myself alone, or at home, than risking getting infected.

I have accepted a (slightly) lower pay for a job where I can walk to the office (5-10 minutes) instead of being full remote and monthly fly-ins, or +1 hour of commute each way.

I have to say, this setup has set the bar pretty high. I manage to go the gym before work, have lunch outside with coworkers or have a beer after without being too tired from the commute or too isolated in my own apartment.

It helps a lot when you're living in the center of a city.

> Are those days just over?

Depending on your job function and industry. For tech, yes, those days are over for at least for another 5 to 10 years, is my guess. COVID has generally proven to both employers and employees that productivity doesn't drop that much. It will also weed out bad people managers who need to "see" people physically who need to "get a feel" as a management metric.

The only major factor that would swing the pendulum back into offices, is when future diseases get under control much more quickly - whether that's corona virus or the next version of it, H1N1, avian flu, MERS, covid-19, etc. When the population is smart enough to win those battles quickly, and that there's a company where in-person teams outperform remote teams by a large margin, that's when in-person will be back and the pendulum swing again.

Don't get it. Even if remote is becoming more common, the vast majority of tech jobs out there are not 100% remote.

Note: a lot of companies are advertising themselves as "100% remote while corona lasts" though.

You’re not alone. My startup is specifically going against the trend and trying to hire in just two locations (Austin and SF), because our founding group feels the same as you. So far when we’ve been recruiting people we lead with “we have two offices and strongly prefer candidates work in one of them.” It either ends the conversation or is our #1 selling point.

I think over time the market will discover what percentage of people want remote and which percent want in-person, and then whatever that percentage is, the distribution of companies going remote or not will match.

Find a company whose product is primarily physical. I work at a robotics company and much of our staff never went remote.

My team is primarily remote but I’m actually hiring an on-site person for IT.

I suspect it depends on where you live. I live in Massachusetts, but because I live too far away from Boston, I need to primarily work remote. (And, oh, I'd much rather be in the office 80-90% of the time.)

Believe me, it's easier to get an in-person job than a remote job! Most positions that I see still want staff primarily in-house.

Do you live in the Bay Area, or in a generally high cost of living area? I suspect the push towards remote in those locations is actually cost-saving, and not a "perk." When I lived in the Bay Area, every job I worked involved working with a lot of remote people who lived in cheaper areas.

If you're willing to move, there's a LOT of on-site work in Massachusetts in and near Boston!

Strangely enough, I can't find a remote job (EU). Since the pandemic started I had about 10 solid offers BUT they did bait-and-switch to 1-2 days a week on-site, and I just find a PITA to move my family to get crumbs of remoteness. The ones I'm sure are fully remote tend to only like candidates who are 100% match, as the pool for remote is much bigger.

I'm in the same boat. I found that becoming a regular in a coffee shop and working from there kinda works for me. I take my breaks with the baristas, have chats with other regulars, and I have access to good coffee. Sure, it's not the same as having colleagues but there's still human contact and you meet interesting people from different industries. Alternatively, I was thinking of joining a co-working space but for now the coffee shop works well.

Do you live in/near a big city? If you do, there should be enough in-office jobs there.

I feel similarly about remote but with a couple of differences:

- I'm not extroverted all, I still vastly prefer office over remote.

- It's not about socialising, I find the work itself much better when I can meet my coworkers in person.

I don’t see any solution, just want to mention you are not a “weirdo”, and it is not weird to feel that way.

Could you find a large, fun coworking environment? The right place could quickly give you the same benefits.

I feel somewhat similar. Ironically before COVID I really wanted to go remote but was reluctant because it seemed few of the "good" jobs in my time zone were remote. They were lower pay/lower impact.

Now the job market appears to be reversed and the in person jobs are not the best. And, after a year and a half it seems evident that I don't really like remote work as much as I thought I would.

Per Scott Galloway's latest slide deck (it's on YouTube), he's convinced me the WFH push is an opportunity for those willing to work from work to lap the WFH crowd. Companies actually do still need people to work from the office/place of business. A worker willing to work at the office/business is thus at a competitive advantage to the much larger population of WFH-ers.

(However...I really would prefer a hybrid mode. But after having the economy jettison me in 2008/2009 it's definitely past time to exploit any competitive advantages for me...)

Join any of the companies attempting to force a return to office. When all of us who refuse this nonsense quit, the companies will be hungry to hire anyone.

HFT and finance are still mostly in-office. If you join as a front-office dev on a trading team, chances are you will not be remote much and people will be in the office trading.

For those saying there are many people working in office now (I've been remote for the last 2 years without an office to go into), are your offices requiring employees to wear masks in office? Are coworkers having lunch together?

There are definitely some things I miss about having the option to go into an office, but I think any enjoyment I may have derived from that in the past would be negated if myself and coworkers were masked at all times, and ate lunch separately.

I do think that's the responsible thing to do though. Unless working with a very small group of people, I imagine that would be the expectation for in-office workers now (especially with the Omicron variant spreading). Which makes me dislike the idea of working in-office even more.

For what it’s worth, you aren’t alone. Not every role in software is amenable to WFH. In fact most roles aren’t. Developers have it easy. They can do remote all day long… or at least they think they can but they still have to have high bandwidth interfaces with the rest of their team.

It’s very very hard to replace sitting with all your teammates and rapidly working through a problem. When everybody is remote everything has to be scheduled and calendared.

I dunno where I’m going with this ramble but I strongly suspect two years from now will look a lot like it did back in 2019. People will still WFH some days like they did in 2019 but all these companies trying to go hybrid or whatever will discover that it just doesn’t work.

In 3 days, the monthly HN "Who's Hiring" thread will have job postings where the vast majority will be for predominately in-person jobs.

If you have trouble beyond that, look at any big company not in tech, where they returned to the office in 2020.

I too prefer the office. I also interview people and and tend to look for people willing to come to the office at least once or twice a week. It makes a world of difference when you can ask someone a question across the desk as opposed to scheduling a call (or two, or three) and forcing everyone on the call to drop what they're doing. I get why people want to WFH, but I feel a couple of days in the office works wonders for efficiency; maybe one week wfh/one week at the office or any other combo would work, but it depends on the stage of the project. The more technical/business unknowns, the more it makes sense to work in the same space, imho.

I've been fully remote for 5 years. For me, life feels more like retirement now than it ever did in the office. Despite having full income.

I do various hobbies, take better care of my home, spend time with family and pets. Before the pandemic, I would go to events, happy hours, brunch, parks, etc all the time. Not to mention the extra time for side projects.

I'm loving the cushy life remote work has afforded me - things really change when you spend < 3 workdays a week intensely working. Your week becomes majority yours again.

So I guess my question is, why do you want your job to be such a big deal in your life?

I feel the exact same way as you. This wfh life is not for me. I think it's cruel to force it on young and single employees.

I'm having trouble finding a new job that has employees on site. I appreciate you posting this.

I've been working 100% remote for over 5 years and I feel like my skill set is becoming rusty because I'm no longer able to work directly with people and I'm also becoming even more of an introvert because I can't grab a coffee or a lunch or even a drive-by conversation with coworkers. I desperately want to return to an office environment and I feel like my home office has become a prison for me. There's no start or stop to my days and I feel like I'm working 100% of the time due to a lack of transition from work-life to home-life. I've been trying to work out of a local hackerspace, but because of the pandemic there aren't a lot of people that go work from there.

Even in-person jobs now have all the terrible aspects of remote work.

You go to an office full of strangers that you don’t work with, just to fight over a few private phone booths to take meetings at with your distributed team. There’s still a JIRA sprint board where you have to write bloviated stories for everything that you do. And then weekly, monthly and quarterly status updates. You still get hundreds of emails a day from automated management tools. You still have to live on Slack or Teams or whatever. Your day is still consumed by pointless 100-person meetings.

But now you’re stuck in an office. Woohoo.

There is no in-person work anymore for white-collar professionals. The good news is that blue-collar work now pays more, you get lots of people to talk to, as long as it’s about athletes or exes or politicians, and you don’t have to worry about getting fired for anything you do say.

I’ve considered the possibility of a strict office-only policy. As in, common hours, in-person only, no laptops, no phones, no remote meetings, no chat rooms, no management tools other than maybe GitHub, no social media, no non-work at work. I realize that you’d probably have to do on-site daycare, and today that implies liability.

I'd imagine that's an easy "swapsie" with someone equally skilled considering the demand for remote jobs.

I think you'd be overwelmed by offers.

Some people have to spend 1 hour in a vehicle to get to work, plus extra time to get ready for work. You can rather spend that same time with your family, or exercise, or learn something new, or sleep, or whatever.

Going to work every day is such an spectacularly awful way of spending resources just so that you can be in an office sitting in a workstation that is inferior to what you have at home.

Apply to work at Google. They have never embraced WFH and probably never will.

You're conflating remote work with WFH. You could remotely work in a shared office space that isn't your company's. You would gain some of the benefits you seek from that. Meanwhile, WFH is defined as working at your actual domicile and that's definitely not a socially engaging time.

Maybe you need more extroversion sources outside of 9-5. Places like gyms, classes, sports clubs, cycling clubs, hiking groups, hunting and fishing with others, I'm just spitballing some COVID-friendly solutions. It doesn't matter if you're bad or noob, just getting some shared time with others having fun, that's the rub.

I'm no extrovert but I love leaving my home every day after work, either to buy groceries, play music with friends at a folk jam, go for a hike, see family, see friends, anything to get out of the house, really.

Last point, ask your HR or managers to set up in person events. We meet IRL about once a month and it's just right for my job.

I'll give you an anecdote for my company (we're a software firm with developers, support staff, and sales reps):

We offered hybrid and remote options to all of our employees once lockdowns ended. All of them (except for one) wanted to come back full-time, with some notable exceptions for hybrid. Some employees have kids so they went hybrid, but once schools reopened they all went back full-time in the office. The lone person was extremely freaked out about COVID and still wants to do full-remote, and he's now working hybrid where when he's in the office he's in an isolated room away from us.

All of them disliked the lack of communication while remote. We implemented Teams, had our daily/weekly standups over video chat, and talked a lot using remote tools. But that significantly slowed things down and it was hard to figure out what people were doing.

Remote does have a place, but I think hybrid is the way to go.

> These days it's hard to find an in office job

I’m not sure that’s true; most companies do plan to re-open their offices if they’re not already open.

It probably is harder to find an in office job that is in-office today. Virtually impossible in some places, depending on government guidelines. But generally the intent is to go back.

I’m in the same boat; can’t stand working from home, and wouldn’t take a remote job. I had eight days back in the office this year, after which the government advised offices to close again… (Ireland has been particularly aggressive about this). During the brief window we were allowed (though not required) to go in, lots of people do.

I do hope and expect to be back in the office properly in 2022, though.

My impression is that the average person would prefer part in office, part WFH. I’m an outlier, strongly preferring all in office. I think full WFH may also be outliers; most polls seem to have flexible as the preferred option.

Yes there are jobs that require you to be onsite but you might have to consider switching and I am hiring though for a relatively junior role. I work in the molecular diagnostic industry( COVID test) and you absolutely have to be at work if you want to interact with hardware. There are plenty of other companies out there in the medical/ biomedical/ space(astranis)/ auto( Tesla/Ford) that require you to be present at least 50% of your time( hybrid). I can help you guide you in that regards if you would like. This is assuming your are a software engineer employed here in the us. All other cross functions(Marcom, accounting) is still remote. Also if you are in the Silicon Valley checkout Apple. Seems like they are hell bent on getting everyone back in to the office, though you won’t be shooting the Breeze at work, won’t have time to even breath.

It's really depend on where you live and want to work. I suppose that even in the US you'll find a vast difference between companies in different regions. There are many companies that are going hybrid and allow to workers to choose how much time to spend in the office. I'm sure it will be very useful to you.

Join a company that is intentionally in-office. I work at Dexterity Capital. We have an intentionally in-office culture with our offices in Seattle and San Francisco.

If you’re in San Francisco, we work down by the Salesforce tower. If you’d like to grab a coffee or say hi, e-mail me (address in profile).

Tim Cook, is that you?

Seriously, as an extrovert, have you actually talked to any of your fellow extroverts? All of them want to be in the office at least part time. You’re in good company.

However, many people want full remote. And we all want more flexibility than FAANG is currently willing to provide.

(shameless plug) I work at Yieldstreet. Our company is filled with people just like yourself. Our policy is 3 days a week from the office and 2 days remote, so obviously we tend to attract people who like working in an office - in person collaboration, grabbing lunch, etc.

We have engineering offices in NYC, Miami, Boston, Malta, and Brazil (Porto Alegre and Florianópolis). Many open engineering roles (recently raised a $150 million Series C) https://www.yieldstreet.com/careers/

We pulled together several lists of recently posted roles at mid size tech cos. While many of these (most?) include remote option - my guess is reaching out to the team to see if folks have an in person option could be a good signal on being serious about to role etc. For companies that are building their culture around remote they may be turned off by such a questions but you aren't looking for those anyway.

https://www.kiter.app/lists

Anything requiring a security clearance

That's strange, because what I've seen all the time is companies don't prefer remote. Both big ones and startups. I thought I am the minority to want forever remote.

You'll likely have to adapt. Personally, I'd withdraw from a position search that required in-office work with no option for working remotely. I find co-worker distractions detrimental. The water cooler is grossly overrated. And I certainly don't want to spend my lunch hour talking about work or trying to make small talk when I really just need a few minutes to recharge for getting through the rest of the day.

I suggest looking at more traditional work environments that hire tech roles such as banking, they’re conservative and more likely to be pro-office. I have a friend who works on the C# UI of a coffee machine for Costa Coffee in the UK and that’s an in-person role because they need to interface with hardware.

Come to France, companies hate remote work. You have to negotiate pretty hard to work remotely 2/5 days a week

I interviewed with quite a few companies in the SF Bay Area for firmware and embedded software engineer positions since August. Most of them require onsite from 3 to 4 days a week. I think you can definitely work onsite software jobs in firmware and embedded positions.

If you are in the US and willing to relocate, the national labs are not remote. Other government jobs too.

I hope we’ll eventually be able to find a hybrid approach, where some teams at a company can be fully remote and others can require presence in the office. As long as this is all communicated up front, I think it would cater to folks with different preferences.

There are still jobs that require physical presence. Find an IoT/Electronics company or any hardware company which provides that.

Also, try to join the local library and start working from there. You will meet a lot of people and you will not feel alone or anything like that.

LinkedIn has made the process of finding an on-site position more difficult.

They will list a position as being local to your search, but when you view the listing, it will actually be for a remote job. There is no way to really search for on-site jobs in LinkedIn.

Right there with you (although I’m introverted). WFH has sapped me of all work motivation and has definitely had a negative impact on my mental health. I have flippantly considered changing careers but that may be a bit drastic…

It doesn’t really suit me either, but the long term massive benefits of earning a big city salary, without having to live in a big city, seem to be the solution to the urbanisation that’s been forced upon us in recent decades

Are you willing to relocate?

As someone who loves remote working, the fact that this question exists makes me incredibly happy. Also as someone who enjoys not starving while all in-person locations close.

There are plenty of jobs in the service industry that don't make sense to do remote.

Might make sense to look there, because you can't be forced to work remote ever.

Are you a software developer? I'm in an engineering role that requires lab work and work mostly onsite from the office/lab/factory.

Aren't there numerous companies trying to force a return to the office? Filtering by "Remote" on LinkedIn wipes out a lot of positions.

You can’t...because it’s almost 2022 already. :-D

Many banking jobs have been vocal about trying to keep offices open despite Covid. I’d expect adjacent industries to be similar

The last two satisfying jobs I got were acquired by going to see the CIO/head of department with no prior engagement.

Go into nursing

It really depends on the country, trend of number of corona cases and progress of vaccinations

if you are in the US, we already start to see some of the big corps (not only FAANG) start to talk about return to office and sanctions vs non vaccinated workers (probably "prep work" for return to office)

optimistic POV - more and more companies will open their offices on non-mandatory basis in H1. Every new variant and every new case in some office will delays/pause this but it will happen

Try at companies developing military devices. You can’t do this from home (I hope).

Don't worry, most of the adds that say 100% remote aren't remote at all.

Hey there, I was like you - a few months ago, found a great job at a start-up in Seattle (Fremont) that really prioritizes the in-office work community, while still allowing flexibility. For example, I haven’t seen two of the engineers in basically a month.

How did I do it? I was up-front with recruiters and HR - I am looking for a place that prioritizes having a vibrant, in-person work community. I filtered until I found a few places, interviewed, got an offer. It exists. If you live in Seattle (or are considering moving) send me an email at mikhael@hey.com - we are hiring, I think (though we did just hire like 4 engineers).

I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am much more productive in the office, and enjoy myself much more. Homo sapiens are social creatures.

So funny to read this. I'm thrilled that I have more free time and have been able to meet so many more people outside of work. The last thing I want is to feel more tied to my employer.

Become a medical worker.

You're definitely not the only one! We [1] have been in-person in San Francisco predominantly, at first due to visa sponsorship rules, but also due to the energy you get at a fast moving early stage startup, allowing us to scale super fast. We've had to constantly evaluate whether we are making the right decision, especially as we say no to really talented people who are remote, but some of our early engineers put their foot down and let us know that they chose us /because/ we were in person. And time and again we've seen that there's plenty of people like you who want to be around people and feel connected to everything happening, especially those who are looking at series A/B startups. Frankly, it also just seems that you need to be a lot more rigid, focusing on specs, structure, documentation, when remote-first and that is not as fun when hacking. We of course are flexible about work from home, or traveling to see family or be in other places, but last time I was with family I definitely noticed that working over zoom and slack was way more exhausting.

[1] https://parafin.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/buildparafin