Been working remote for over 15 years. It is the best.

Oh, I'm sure! And the highest concentration of weekday Costco shoppers.

No longer commuting from Shoreline to downtown Seattle and spending 2+ hours in a car each day certainly helped my sense of well-being.

> at a large healthcare organization

Isn't there kind of an inherit bias here where on-site healthcare workers would have vastly different job requirements than remote workers?

There are a thousand factors, but one of the biggest and simplest is getting commute time back. Gaining even one hour a day is life-changing. Imagine gaining two hours.

…of a single company

> Researchers analyzed survey data from 7,704 employees at a large healthcare organization.

I’ve been remote and worked for remote companies for a long time. In my observation, the well-being is bimodal. The people who adapt well to remote thrive. There are a lot of people who think they’re going to love remote who ultimately flame out from the loneliness, isolation, lack of visual boundaries between work and home life, and lack of externally enforced routine.

It’s really sad when the latter happens because it’s almost always someone who was hired for their great work and abilities. Then over time they get drained and you can see that the remote work wasn’t what they expected.

It’s basically impossible to predict who will fall into each category at the interview stage, or at least I can’t do it. Prior remote work success (not just experience) is the best indicator but it’s hard to evaluate, too. Some of the most difficult remote hires I’ve worked with had past remote work experience, but it’s only after being hired that you learn they struggled at those companies too.

This seems hard to prove a direct causal link.

Remote employees are also in demand enough to negotiate / find a role with remote work. They probably then are experienced, senior, and better compensated than their peers.

It could be that the underlying cause is being more in-demand in a position to negotiate remote work, not remote work by itself.

Where am I wrong?

Related:

Remote work benefits are much bigger than a paycheck

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49346149

Since full remote I can spend 8 hours a day on work instead of 10 (an hour commute each way). Putting aside other benefits like easy and cheap lunches, way better desk ergonomics and equipment, and all the sundry other benefits, working remote allows me to have a life that I never could when I worked in an office because of those 2 hours a day.

It's nice to be face-to-face with people, but I don't need that every day (and frankly don't want it neither), but all the benefits in quality of life overwhelming favor remote work for me to the point I will put up with way more shenanigans just to keep this benefit.

>> "This suggests you let people work remotely if they want to work remotely,"

I can't believe people need studies to see that. All you need is some common sense.

been remote for quite a while. and i love it. but i've got some friends who absolutely hate it, and really struggled with remote working during covid.

so. works for many people, but not for others

I have been remote working for the past ~5 years or so. I had to RTO briefly for 3-4 weeks, which was about as long as it took me to find a position with a new org. I love the benefits at this stage in my life (young children, etc.) but I'm not sure the networking relationships I developed early on in my career "in the trenches" would be nearly as strong or beneficial as they have been had I started remote. I'm curious to see how that plays out over the long-term for folks that may start remote and attempt to stay that way throughout their entire careers.

yeah that's why the trend is now to call all back to the office so that you don't feel too well.

My F500 employer has on-site requirements. Colleagues and I sad-laugh because we all commute into the office, and spend most of the day on Zoom meetings with colleagues from other locations - you know, exactly the same thing we would do from home.

The sample is not high quality, but the conclusion is pretty obvious. No thinking person can doubt that improving work/life balance, flexible hours, sleeping more, commuting less and comfy pants is going to lead to any other outcome.

Here is the actual study: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

They didn’t control for occupation, pay, managerial status etc.. An on-site physical job like nurse, facilities, or technician was compared to predominantly remote administrative jobs.

This is partly self-selecting, though. For example, it could really be saying that introverts - more likely to select remote work - are also more likely to be happy on their own. Extraverts are more likely to be happy around other people, but also more likely to be unhappy because of the behaviour of other people.

Just the amount of time and life you waste for commute can be staggering. And of course all the other overhead that comes with going to and back from the office.