“I left fintech to join a bank because WFH was so depressing”
If you don’t like working from home in the summer, you’re going to hate working from home in the winter. So says a technologist discussing the benefits of hanging out in the home office on forum website Blind. As this is the third year of working from home, it seems that some people are really getting a little overwhelmed by the whole experience.
“Working from home is slowly killing me,” reads one of the most popular recent blind posts, written by a software engineer at Amazon. “I’ve become lazy and antisocial. It feels like I wake up, go to the next room, work, log off, go back to the next room, rinse and repeat,” he adds. “I don’t feel like myself and feel very numb.”
The reactions suggest that the Amazon guy is not the only one sitting flat in a corner of his condominium. Many others also struggle with working from home. And they are not just software engineers venting in a forum.
“I was very lonely and miserable working from home,” says a CEO who works in technology at an American bank in London. “That was one of the reasons I left the fintech I was working for. I also didn’t like the lack of separation between home and work, and I missed the choice of lunch.”
As working from home falls out of fashion, financial services firms that require people to return to the office may have less of a downside than previously thought. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has long been in favor of keeping people on the bank’s premises, suggesting this week that working from home encourages unsavory behavior in what can be a culturally homogenous dessert. Citadel has people back in the office full-time, and founder Ken Griffin says working from home is a “serious mistake” for juniors. Goldman Sachs hypothetically has engineers at home part of the time, but Blind is full of Goldman engineers complaining about being told to show up.
Although the complainers are vocal, they may be a minority. Outside of banking too, there are signs that the pendulum is swinging back towards the office. Earlier this week, Apple told employees it will have them in the office three days a week starting September 5. Google has had employees back in its Bay Area office since April, and some Googlers say they chose to work there because of the office option.
Even where hybrid options are available, some choose to come full-time. A junior trader in New York at a crypto firm tells us he’s in the office five days a week, although he has the option to stay away. “As a junior, I go into the office because it’s easier for me to learn,” he says. “I like being in the office, and if I have a question about something, I can just turn around and ask someone instead of going through problems sharing my screen.”
A headhunter who works with quants and quant traders says she has spied a waning WFH enthusiasm among candidates she works with. “People ask a lot less about it now. It’s almost like people have forgotten covid and home working. Everyone is back in the office in trade – they like the idea of working from home, but they don’t talk about it as much.”
If the urge to work from home is already waning, it may wane further in the coming months. Bloomberg predicts that Londoners will return to heated offices as household energy bills rise. A technologist at Blind says that is not the only problem. WFH in winter can be even more insulating. “It gets worse in the winter, if you feel like this in the summer. In the winter it will be worse, he told the disgruntled Amazon engineer.Speaking from personal experience, it caused me to burn out last year and change jobs.”
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