Open office layouts can be hard to deal with for me, even if everything else (chair, desk, computer, etc) are good. It varies from day to day but there are days where it's practically impossible to think due to coworkers buzzing around like bees, popping in and out of peripheral vision. When that happens, putting on ANC headphones is like trying to patch a basketball-sized hole in a boat with a piece of chewing gum.

Working from home there are still days when focusing is difficult, but nothing as frustrating as that.

Offices don't even supply offices anymore and haven't for decades. They're clearly not fit for purpose.

There's a reason why 10x engineers inevitably work evenings and weekends, and, if they have any social acumen, manage to get themselves excused from most workday time wasting rituals, including showing up at the office.

> Add on top of that having a house with a nice garden

Do you mean "garden" in the American sense (an area for growing food and/or decorative plants), or in the British sense (what American's would call a "lawn" or "yard")?

OT but I'm British and this is the first I've heard of a garden meaning anything other than an area for growing food and/or decorative plants.

Really? What's your word?

The Irish I talk to all call their private patch of green adjacent their house a 'garden' even if it contains only grass with optional tree. I had assumed they got the word from you guys.

I think the confusion here is from you presenting a "yard" as an alternative, when a yard in UK/Ireland would be a space that's mostly or entirely paved or has some other artifical surface

Backyard.

Nah.

Prefer the DIY version where I have to put the work in myself.

I can appreciate professionally managed green spaces, and do enjoy them, but they have nothing on the space that I myself get to experiment with.

The garden I crafted myself at home is better than any arboretum. For me. It's also nice and private.

Tell me you're not a gardener without telling me you're not a gardener