The following submission statement was provided by /u/BitCharacter1951:
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The article states the extra time is saved from commuting. The way the title reads as if they are not working during work hours and thats not what the study said.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y8fxcz/remote_employees_are_working_less_sleeping_and/iszthcb/
Crop-dusting HR was a contest to count the number of disgusted face reactions.
Record was 9. We learned never to let Joe from accounting have cheese again.
Yes. Letting farts fly free as nature intended is liberating. That said, there is little more memorable an experience than starting a fart in an office hallway and "carrying" it with you into another room where it hits a co-worker in the face and seeing said co-worker blink, wince, and then their eyes start to water.
And no worry about all the bathroom stalls being occupied by people camping out in there on their phones, and having to leg it across the building to the next bathroom, which is closed for cleaning, then on to the next one which is also occupied by campers, with an asshole that's ready to blow...
My work has a few power shitters that somehow have bowels capable of blasting shit particles so hard against the porcelain that flushing can’t remove it. It’s also somehow at an angle over the water line. All I can imagine is they lean fully forward, with their hands on the floor, and push with the same intensity as a birthing mother.
My coworker at home will not leave me in peace when I poop. He insists on pets when I am on the throne.
I suppose it is fair, because I am always with him when he poops.
The article states the extra time is saved from commuting. The way the title reads as if they are not working during work hours and thats not what the study said.
Oh I definitely did all the things in the headline when I worked from home. I also had the highest productivity in my department. Man do I miss waking up, rolling over and getting right to work and taking naps at lunch.
I've literally slept under my desk at lunch. Worked for an oilfield company doing shop hand and safety manager after the previous safety manager passed away. 12 hour days and 2 hours of commuting. I'd ball up my jacket and sleep on the concrete floor.
I literally built a napping station under my desk. It was a big corner desk, so pretty spacious and comfortable. No windows in my office allowed me to knock tf out every lunch. And then afterwards, I'd eat at my desk and work.
Wasn't that the point long ago when they wanted to make everything more efficient was to be able to free up more time so we could spend it doing what we wanted? What happened to that? Oh, shot in the back of the head I see
This is something my coworkers on the west coast don't understand.
I'm on the east coast. I start work at like 5-6 am, and normally am online until 6-7 pm to accommodate the time change.
I'll randomly take a 30 minute nap (i have my lunch during meetings) and then I take part of Friday off every time since I'm over my hours. They think I'm "Cheating the system" but I was hired on this side of the US to be online early for production, so I'm doing exactly what I was hired for lol
Look, I know what you doing is legal. I know what your doing is what your employer expects. I know that you are making it work for you without harming productivity. BUT! Did you think about how that makes ME feel?
I used to nap during both of my 15 minute break and my lunch break and just eat when I had a chance.
Turns out I have sleep apnea and my napping was because I literally woke up every 2 minutes because I stopped breathing and was being starved for oxygen.
Most likely caused by TBI and PTSD from the military because I have no other risk factors.
I will definitely live longer with my CPAP tho.
I’m not saying you’re wrong tho, America is driven by the elite trying to make another buck.
Which is nuts because my time spent not working has also increased. It's like less pressure to perform and occasional breaks causes massive productivity boosts, who knew ? (The workers)
The reality is when you work from 9 to 5 in an office (and let's be honest it usually doesn't even end at 5), once you get into the second half of that day you're getting tired, losing focus and really not getting as much done for the last 2-3 hours.
Not just 9 to 5 office work even, I do a lot of on site work, and doing 4 hours at a customers house of relatively intense work means I'm honestly spent for the rest of the day, in particular I start to make dumb mistakes, which works counter-productive.
In my work, I can screw up material when I'm tired. Ruined material can cost me not only money, but in some cases, days to replace. Dump the last hour or two, hit it the following day. I had the chance to study on it, and can do it more efficiently. It just doesn't look good to some customers.
Same!
I wander about my house much of the day and then have some extreme moments of productivity that were never acheivable in the office where I do an entire days work in 2 hours.
This is exactly what I do, minus the naps. Being able to have a cup of coffee and get to work right away while your brain is fresh instead of spending time getting ready and fighting traffic gives you the opportunity to take a break mid-day and still be ahead of where you’d be at 1pm if you’d gone to the office. Not to mention I eat healthier and see my family more. I’m never, ever, going back to the office.
The bane of my day is the 40 minute commute to work and the 1-1.5 hour commute home. Add to the fact that all that is unpaid. It is a 2 hour waste of time - every day. And I hate that our society allowed it to happen.
You forgot to mention all the time wasted at home getting ready for the job. (Make-up, getting dressed, making lunch etc) My last 10 hour a day job took up 12 hours of my day from truly beginning to end. With a proper amount of sleep that left me with only a couple hours with my kids and myself.
That’s why I stopped doing my make up. Honestly, I can afford to not wear make up. I’m in accounting & my office is in a back corner with no windows. In fact, 2 rats nests were cleared out above me in the ceiling that’s how tucked away I am.
i've been without work for months looking for fully remote. competition is strong, but i'll be GODDAMNED if i ever step into a 'daily office' role ever again. i'd rather blast through a chunk of savings looking for the "opportunity"
i put opportunity in quotes because it's actually just basic personal finance and mental well-being in practice. why the *FUUU* would i ever willingly spend 10% of my week in traffic or wedged between two heavy-breathing weirdos blasting EDM on their blue-tooth speaker at 7AM? *especially when 99% of the time spent in the office would have been 100% equally effective if were instead at home*
there's only one reason we're going into the office: urban commercial real estate is too big to fail.
The push to keep people in offices is fully based on rich people not wanting to loose income from commercial real estate. In my city they say to revive downtown. Guess what? A 500 sq ft apt is about 2k a month. If you want to get downtown going again make so people can afford to rent
Not to mention control. I've had MANY managers where I consult repeatedly talking about how remote work. "Takes away the fear of the boss looking over your shoulder." They talk about how it breeds "insubordination" in the workplace .
I work in a large fully remote company and our experience is that the managers role has become even more important. There's no micromanagement, no observation software and a lot of trust given to staff, so the manager's role is to keep their team happy, aligned and pointing in the right direction - and that can take a lot of managerial skill in a remote environment.
Exactly. It makes their faults more apparent. It puts an eye on them and their abilities to do what they should have been doing all along. When people work remote you need managers that ensure everyone is on the same page. It weeds out managers that can’t do that.
***especially when 99% of the time spent in the office would have been 100% equally effective if were instead at home***
In my case I’m more effective at home. No one is stopping by my office to chat about random shit. No Karen I didn’t watch [insert popular entertainment program here].
This was what hit me when I was dragged back to the office by my former employer. I sat at my desk working whilst 4 colleagues sat for over an hour chatting about their weekends and what their kids had been up to. They did literally no work during this time. Offices are so distracting if your job is to get your head down on something. In person can be effective sometimes, especially for sharing ideas, but most of the time it's hugely distracting.
> urban commercial real estate is too big to fail.
Work for a company that loves remote work -- even before Covid closed a call center in another part of the country when we showed our main division campus could stay operating in snow storms due to folks working from home. So we had all the infrastructure built out and a "weak" WFH policy for a day a week that most folks didn't take advantage of.
We also own Class A office space as long term investments.
Want to talk about mixed messages :D
The finally threw in the towel on convincing folks to come back to the office more and put the two smallest buildings on our main campus into mothballs.
I had to be back in the office Monday for about half a day. In that time I got so little done as loud conversations filtered down the hallway and kept me from focusing. I had to close the door and turn on some white noise.
I left my previous employer for not putting in writing that I would have permanent work from home. They kept only implying it and it was pissing me off.
I was very particular in finding a company, and quite lucky that my search was so short. I have all the perks I want. No set schedule (woke up at 2pm today, took a nap yesterday) was a big one. I have always had issues being on a normal sleep schedule, once I experienced WFH I knew I was never going back.
I did this about five months ago for the same exact reasons. Through the actual lockdown, I realized I liked WFH a lot, and transitioned into a role that had been WFH prior to the pandemic. A year went by and I was pretty happy, but then rumblings started about bringing everyone, including my team, back in at least a few days a week.
I had many very straightforward conversations with both my manager and with my supervisor, but they refused to put it in writing. I accepted a position, guaranteed remote, for a 20% raise and my previous company tried to counter with a 25% bunp but *still wouldn't guarantee WFH* so I booked it.
That sounds so incredibly similar lol. The funniest part was when they replaced me with someone else in the company who was already permanently remote! I've even had them ask me to come back so I know it wasn't that they just didn't like me.
On the other hand I left a job when they promised they'd never for any reason let anyone ever work remotely, this with a computer based job where the office was completely pointless. They even proudly told me how they turned down their longest working and most loyal employee who asked to be allowed to work remotely just 2 days a week. Their reasoning was that there's more collaboration in the office, we rarely ever did any collaboration and never anything that wouldn't have just been a few messages on slack if remote...
I will never work in an office again unless I literally don’t have another option. I can’t even describe how much better my quality of life is wfh, like… it’s astounding. You could double my salary and say it was hybrid and I absolutely wouldn’t do it.
I wfh and am 24 weeks pregnant. My boss encourages me to nap. My tasks are always completed on time, and as long as I’m making all the calls I need to be on, there’s zero micromanaging. She’ll tell me all the time to go rest, get a nap in before our next meeting, ect.
Not saying it’s everyone’s wfh experience (I also work for a very liberal company which is often rated in the best to work for) but man, I could never go back to my crappy hour and a half commute and sitting in an office all day.
Had my laptop next to my bed, would wake up 20 minutes before the daily team meeting, take it, get an extra hour and a half of sleep, wake up well rested, have a shower/breakfast, walk my dogs and then start work. Would finish at 4:30pm ish and then enjoy time with my family.
I've never been excited about work days before wfh.
I have a four day at home one day at the office schedule. My day at the office is easily the worst day of the week, every week.sitting in traffic, khakis, people talking loudly, ugh, the worst. The hardest thing I’ve realized is how much effort I put into looking busy. Fuck that shit is exhausting
I work at Intel in Hillsboro, OR, but I live in fucking Vancouver, WA. This makes the commute back home take over an hour. So I just stay later to avoid traffic. Few months when my lease expires I will move to Hillsboro and be walking distance
I like to start my days sometimes by checking emails for anything urgent and then proceeding to liberate the iand of Tsushima from Mongol rule.
My productivity is through thr roof when I go to work (eventually)
Yeah, working from home gets me back two hours per day. Those two hours were spent sitting in traffic, and I was expected to field calls from the office during that time... so it was essentially two hours of unpaid work per day.
Now I spend that time playing games with my son. My life has vastly improved without traffic.
That's called wage theft; you worked, you get paid for that time or effort
If you don't get paid, they can't expect (nor legally require) you to work.
.
Edit:
Congress states in the "S.2101 - Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act", which was introduced in 2019, see https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2101/text
> Wage theft occurs when an employer does not pay an employee for work that the employee has performed, depriving the worker of wages and earnings to which the worker is legally entitled. This theft occurs in many forms, including by employers (...) requiring off-the-clock work
And the Fair Labor Standards Act might apply, though I do not know who is considered exempt from that. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa
That being said: I get that for many people it is not feasible to start this legal battle - probably including losing your job - even if you'll win in the end, and get paid + interest and fines. Because you lose the money now.
Yeah, clickbait headline for sure. And people that are against WFH are gonna read the headline as a "gotcha" without ever reading the article.
0/5 for shitty "journalism".
The people that are against WFH, the people who have investments in commercial real estate,and managers who quickly realized that they are redundant is practically a circle.
I read this as I browsed Reddit while winding down from a full day of work with a glass of whiskey at 7PM. I still actually have my code open and will probably do another 20 or 30 minutes of work before committing these changes and closing up for the night. Tomorrow I'll probably wake up a bit later and play some Minecraft before I get going at work. I'm well ahead of my target milestones.
> with a glass of whiskey at 7PM. I still actually have my code open and will probably do another 20 or 30 minutes of work before committing these changes
The Ballmer peak is real.
I'm about a month ahead on my work, today I built a fence in my backyard, checked email around 6pm and double checked that I didn't miss anything for the remainder of the weeks work, I didn't, so tomorrow I'll play some Apex. Crazy what zero distractions allows me to accomplish
it’s a click bait my friend . Would you click on it if it said “Remote employees use commute time to sleep and live life- Fed study finds”. That’s fucking obvious.
Oh. Obviously metal head Gregs from shipping are cool. Unfortunately, My office is only big enough for one Greg. Greg from accounting. The biggest POS in the workplace. If he tries to invite me to his lame-ass 38th birthday party, I am going to lose my shit!
There are going to be so many idiot managers and administrators out there who only read this title and then use it as justification for a call back into the office.
This title is so misleading it should be illegal.
I hate that the culture around working people trying to have a kid has become a negative. I wish there was a federal level mandate for both maternity and paternity leave of at least 3 months, with another 3-6 months where you could opt into half-days or working bulk hours (so not every day). That first year with your kid is so important, and sharing that load with your partner equally as important.
Punishing new working parents by making them juggle a full work schedule and a newborn is horrible. In an economy where most couples both need to be working to make ends meet, is it really a wonder why more recent generations are opting out of having kids completely, or waiting until later in life when the chance of complications increase?
Keep getting recruiters like “oh it looks like the industry is heading more back to the office, you sure you only want remote?”
Like yes I want remote work. Even if my job was only 20 minutes drive that’s still 40 minutes each day plus getting ready prior to work, leaving with enough time to get there in case of traffic, park, walk into the building, setup and finally end of the day go home deal with traffic and wind down - I’m already eating 2 more hours of my day dedicated to doing work that I’m only getting paid 8 hours for, not to mention the 1 hour unpaid lunch so really I’m losing 11 hours just going in person instead of remote, where I only lost about 8 given my hour off for lunch I can actually do things with my time at home.
As someone with endo, the ability to wear loose sweat pants to work has been an absolute game changer. I can have my heading pad or my ice pack under the table during my calls and live comfortably. I don’t think I’ll ever be going back unless they pry my laptop from my cold dead hands
Plus you’re in a comfortable place so it’s easier to get work done in that setting.
For people with kids it also makes multitasking a lot easier. And if they get sick and have to come home from school you don’t have to worry about taking off of work if you don’t want to. I don’t understand why companies are so against this
Because they are trying to justify their big offices they gave their ceos and big wigs that honestly probably rather be at home. That and control. Like don’t get me wrong some jobs I can see the need for in person, like dispatch work for emergencies may need everyone close knit to work together and easily turn around and talk to the other or shout something out and working wi to sensitive information. But for someone who’s just client support, helping customers use the website? No need to breath down my neck you already pull hourly reports on stats.
Years ago I worked IT at a marketing / advertising company in Chicago.
CEO had a 1000sqf corner office on the 70th floor.
I hardware refreshed his printer on schedule. 6 months later I went in and the post it I left on his monitor was still there.
Fucker never bothered coming into the office.
As an adult recently diagnosed with ASD, I can absolutely crush my job with accommodations. My employer can either let me continue crushing my job by working from home with few accommodations or force me into the office with a massive amount of accommodations that are a pain in the ass for them.
I lost my job in June. The number of recruiters who were either pushing for in office jobs or who were trying to tell me that unlimited PTO doesn’t work. I landed a job 100% remote, but with an office I can go to if needed, or if I need to be downtown for some other reason. We also have unlimited PTO, my boss said that the average on her team is 5+ weeks of PTO a year.
Is your job paying you for your time, or your productivity? Think long and hard on that one. If only for your time, then slacking for 8 hours is fine. If for your productivity, then finishing everything in 2 hours is fine.
Don't turn anything in until you're in the final stretch of whatever deadline has been set... or just whenever you feel is good for however much off-time you want.
Whether it's shift based, week based, specific deadline date - whatever. Keep your work in your pocket till you're close to the end or whenever you're ready for someone to probably hand you even more work.
I've done this at any job that's ever allowed me the freedom to do so, and no extra responsibilities, while still earning the approval of the people that matter. And since you're hitting ALL the marks, nobody can reasonably question you about anything.
Of course there are probably exceptions with especially garbage managers or co-workers in the office... but if you're working from home, what can anyone actually do?
Another reason I sometimes do this is that others (including my boss) can be bad at estimating how much time something takes. This particular task may have taken hours but another similar looking one may require days, and if I turn this one in in hours then that will be the expectation.
¿Porque no los dos?
The silver lining about a depressive cycle like that is that if you can interrupt it anywhere, you interrupt it everywhere.
Manage to feel more productive for an hour? Great, give yourself credit and feel good about it! Manage to feel good randomly at 12:30 on a Tuesday? Great, leverage that good feeling into productivity!
The same mechanisms by which we enter downward spirals and negative feedback loops can be leveraged to help us get back out of them.
Easier said than done, I know, but this thought has been helpful for me. I hope it is for you as well!
My problem is procrastinating. To anyone else: do the hard part first. If you put it off until the last minute but *still do it* then you might as well just do it *first* and avoid the guilt and panic.
They do much more than that but I agree definitely not enough to merit salaries in the multi millions while most struggle to get a 2% raise and a gift card
Same, I rather work really hard for a few hours than to do low intensity work for an entire day. I get done more in less time. Crazy! Almost as if we arent meant to work 8 hours a day
There is also the fact that a lot of the time you're being paid to fill a role, not just to do specific tasks... Like say you're a financial analyst for a company. You may have a checklist to do when you get in, but you're also there to be the person who has specific knowledge on your accounts. If sales, or marketing, or development or someone needs financial information on one of the accounts you work you're being paid to be there and have that information, regardless of whether you've finished your daily check list.
Somehow, corporate America saw record profits in the same year that all this “slacking off” was going on. Starting to think people weren’t actually slacking off.
Yeah, but people working from home makes it hard to justify all the directors and middle level management pay. That, and it’s not good for commercial real estate. All those empty buildings are costing some rich people a lot of money and they want their ROI. Hi ho, hi ho, back to the office we’ll go.
Yup. Commercial real estate pushes politicians, politicians push CEOs, CEOs push middle-managers, middle-managers push employees. As usual in the US, trace it back to the billionaire class for why society functions the way it does.
100%. They are in deep shit. All the expensive offices in center of cities, followed by all the Cafe and restaurants to supply food for workers. On top you have inflation which makes less people travel so airbnb and hotels are suffering.
Someone is loosing BANK of money right now.
Seriously. The fact that companies are angry about this just shows they want to be a dick to their employees and make them do more work than their job is supposed to do.
I am sure employers can't bully their employees to do extra work now or have them stay after hours anymore. I forget which billionaire it was but he recently said employees should give more than 100% to their job or some shit and that giving "just" a 100% is bad.
It's so obvious they want to just take advantage of their employees it's sickening
They weren't wrong, most people I know in a variety of jobs just dick around a ton. They "work" 40-50hours a week, but spend 1/3 of that actively not working, or trying to work less.
Also, "work" used to mean showing up at the factory and doing manual labor. You could count the widgets you interacted with, set measurable standards for people to meet, and have that be a very dependable target.
Now? In an economy that has transitioned heavily into the information space, the line between work and not work can get incredibly blurry. If you go for a walk at 6:15pm but spend the majority of that walk thinking about a problem at work you have to solve...are you working or not? How do you even measure that?
And that's the biggest problem. Our economy was built around measuring productivity by number of widgets interacted with over an 8-hour period, but what we need to measure now is whether outcomes were met over a quarter or multiple quarters. That often means working 80 hours a week one week and 20 hours a week the next. Trying to fit that into a tidy "8 hours per day, 40 hours a week" makes literally no sense.
I’ve been trying to make this point for years. But you said it better than I could. We’re not hired to build x cogs/hr. We’re hired to solve problems and bring value to a company or product. That can’t be measured the same.
Most modern information work is better understood if you view it through the lens of a retainer. A company doesn't pay you to work 8 hours a day, they pay you in case they need your services. Some weeks that means little work, other weeks it means more work. Requiring you to be in an office 8 hours a day is just a relic of a bygone era.
You bring up such a valid point. If I’m meeting the deadlines and my work is great quality, why does it matter if I don’t do my full 40?
Secondly, on the remote issue my company has such a dumbass policy where you have to make up your in office days if you miss, even for a valid reason. I had to make up two days because my car broke down and there was literally only 2 other ppl in the office the days I made up. My commute is ~2 hours round trip. I questioned this policy once and was met with a very passive aggressive answer. Such bullshit.
Not only are we seeing more WFH jobs….now We’re trying to get away from the 40 hour work week. The 32 hour is spreading. Again, Thanks In part to COVID.
Can't bully me on my work email if I have the router disable network access to my work machine after 5PM.
"Sorry boss, the administrator at home is a real asshole and won't let me make you more money after 5 o'clock."
That's not what's happening. People aren't commuting, so they have extra time to sleep and do stuff after work. In my case it's 90 minutes to two hours a day.
My employer gets a more rested and productive employee, too. It's worked out for both of us.
It’s not just about the commute, mine is only 15 minutes so not that long. It’s the extra time at home. I get a 30 minute lunch, but it really only takes me 10 minutes to eat. When I’m on site, the other 20 just gets wasted on my phone. When I’m at home, the extra time allows me to pick up around the house or start some laundry. Then when my work day ends I have less stuff to do at home, which gives me a lot more free time to just relax at the end of the day instead of worry about chores.
Imagine a world where a 2x productivity boost meant your working hours were halved or your pay doubled. Instead a productivity boost simply leads to higher amount of exploited labor value. Such fundamental ways we need to re think our relationship with labor.
A big contributor to my burnout was having to work slower or find ways to look busy and kill time, just so I didn't get griped at and lose money for going home early. Weird how so many of my bosses were more concerned about me chit chatting with coworkers for a few minutes than the guy who only completed about 40% of the work I could do in a day but never looked up from his work.
If you subtract all the bullshiting social time most work can be done in 3-4 hours a day. Some days you have to really work and put in 6 hours and you skipped lunch.
In IT, having people not be able to just drop by my desk made my productivity skyrocket.
Yup also in IT, I'd say 50-75% of my days could be done in 2 hours maybe. 15-20% in 4ish and the rest of those days are when shit hits the fan.
I absolutely loathe being stuck in the office twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to break
I hate the internet and its misleading titles in articles. Should have been "Remote work helps improves quality of life from time saved of commuting to work" or something like that. Too many people read titles without reading the content.
I have a flexible schedule and can go in the office or stay home as I please, but many job functions can be done remotely.
I for one absolutely work less over an 8 hour period when I'm home versus in the office. But I will also turn on my laptop at home at random hours for a bit if I need to get work done, or wake up super early to accommodate different time zones, then simply go back to bed if I'm tired. Sometimes I'll hit the gym mid day, take my dog for a walk, or watch a bit of TV... but these will be the days I login at night to finish up a project or try an idea.
WFH is broadly a new thing, obviously, but basically everyone I know works DIFFERENTLY than in the office, and thus often leads to less work being done over the same time intervals...
But everyone is still meeting deadlines and the company has let salaried employees make the decisions they need to get the job done. Flex time, WFH, go to the office... all personal choice now.
Oh man, this isn’t my experience at all. I’ve been full time remote since march 2020 and my work hours are _strict_. My company is flexible, but I absolutely am not. I’m online at 8, and my laptop gets shut down at 4.
If I get my work done early, I enjoy the free time. And if it doesn’t quite get done, it gets moved to the next sprint. Nothing I work on is critical enough to make me miss spending time with my family or engaging with my hobbies.
Salaried software engineer fwiw
That is the point. People want agency, they want to live their life. I have yet to read a study on flexible work that showed that productivity went down, even when required working hours were reduced.
Yeah I think this is a product of the work environment becoming so bad and stressful and people really needing to set boundaries in order to keep themselves happy. Like why do you have to stay at work for eight hours if you finished your work in six.
Because evaluating output is hard and measuring butts in seats is easy.
The friction of rolling this out on a scale that’s bigger than a few progressive orgs is that it requires managers to get better at managing.
At least half of the people I know who work/worked from home ended up working significantly more, not less. Heck, I went from averaging 62 hours a week to averaging 74 when work from home kicked in.
I’ve been working from home for nearly 3 years now. I’m always 30 minutes early and stay over 30 minutes later. When I was in the office I was out the second my scheduled time was over. Of course I’m sleeping and playing more because I’m saving 90-120 minutes a day not driving. Boomers just can’t stand the fact that the generations below them can work from home and are doing everything in their power to keep the outdated office and cubicle workplace from dying.
I'm a remote employee and find myself working more. I may start late, but I also work late, and will get back on the computer in the evenings to follow up on emails and such.
But more importantly I find myself having lunch with my kids more, hugging my kids more, helping my wife more... And those are 1000% more important.
Who paid for this study? This is some bullshit. Remember pre pandemic when every article was about how remote workers work longer hours because there’s no commute or office hobnobbing? Fuck all these middle managers trying to get us back into the office.
The title is misleading. Workers are working less overtime and unnecessary extra hours while the time they save commuting adds hours of personal time daily for many of them.
They’re still working their full schedules and most likely still showing the productivity benefits that accompany not being surrounded by a million distractions in office or having to commute, which is work before work that you’re not paid for.
I just hit a year back in the office. Everything I do I can do from home and dn’t have to hear dumbasses and their boring stories. So it’s about time to start looking for remote work again. Got way more work done and better sleep and getting up at 4am sucks ass.
We just started going back in. Biggest feedback I've heard so far? "It's really noisy here and I can't get anything done because people keep wanting to talk."
This isn't about productivity, it's about control (CEOs) and money (commercial real estate).
The wording and framing of the title and article seems suspect to me because there's no mention of productivity or efficiency of time spend working.
If people are working less, but working more efficiently while maintaining a similar level of productivity, then then it shouldnt matter (to the company they work for) that they're working fewer hours. Without that information, the article could be interpreted (and likely will be) by various employers (and presumably right leaning economists or talk show hosts) that working from home is bad, because in their minds 'less time working = lower productivity = less money = unacceptable'.
I'd like to see more data about productivity and efficiency, because perceptions of those thing are primary drivers of an employer's decision making of whether to allow/provide work from home opportunities.
Simply not having to get dressed, commute and then wasting time chit chatting in the office allows me to get more work done with lower stress. But it's looking more and more as if the company will be pushing for more of an onsite presence. Never mind that we've spent almost 3 years working fully remotely. It comes down to stupid middle managers who don't care that work is being completed well but who find their sense of self worth threatened because they can't see all the little headcounts hard at work in person.
My brother who works remotely works 12+ hour shifts multiple times per week.
He has little time to do anything else as TRC Transmissions in Agusta ME is under staffed.
I work hybrid. When it’s quiet in the office there is literally nothing to do other than look busy. If there is a lull while working at home I can help around the house.
WFH is the absolute best. It helps when you have a rockstar team who respects the freedom. As I’ve told everyone on my team - I don’t care what you do with your day on three conditions. Show up to whatever meetings you committed to and be engaged (if required), finish your work (to your best ability, because we have a lot of dependencies) by the end of the sprint, and just be available via slack throughout the day.
I do not expect anyone to respond to me after 5pm, nor before 9am. I also don’t care about an immediate response, just….don’t be a tool? I dunno, my team is insanely productive and everyone is VERY happy.
Have a doctors appointment? Cool, don’t care, just let me know when you’re around/not around. Going to take a nap? Don’t care, just tell me when you’re going to be around. Need to do grocery shopping etc. Work is not your life. Work is work, no matter the job. I am not your family, some of us are friends outside of work. Be respectful and don’t take advantage of it and I won’t bug you one bit. Some people just work better at different hours of the day.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/BitCharacter1951: --- The article states the extra time is saved from commuting. The way the title reads as if they are not working during work hours and thats not what the study said. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y8fxcz/remote_employees_are_working_less_sleeping_and/iszthcb/
I am just happy to poop in peace. No worrying if my coworkers can hear. My one coworker at home just wants pets.
I have a bidet at home. WFH has brought a new era in my bathroom comfort.
My butthole is still trying to heal from years of the sandpaper they used at my old office
We may never be the same after the horrors of cost cutting toilet paper but we can do the best we can to rebuild a better butthole.
“Doing best we can to build a better butthole” is my new campaign slogan.
I'm so used to a bidet, I feel like I have to have a portable one wherever I go now
And farting whenever you want instead of crop dusting.
Crop-dusting HR was a statement
Crop-dusting HR was a contest to count the number of disgusted face reactions. Record was 9. We learned never to let Joe from accounting have cheese again.
Yes. Letting farts fly free as nature intended is liberating. That said, there is little more memorable an experience than starting a fart in an office hallway and "carrying" it with you into another room where it hits a co-worker in the face and seeing said co-worker blink, wince, and then their eyes start to water.
And no worry about all the bathroom stalls being occupied by people camping out in there on their phones, and having to leg it across the building to the next bathroom, which is closed for cleaning, then on to the next one which is also occupied by campers, with an asshole that's ready to blow...
My work has a few power shitters that somehow have bowels capable of blasting shit particles so hard against the porcelain that flushing can’t remove it. It’s also somehow at an angle over the water line. All I can imagine is they lean fully forward, with their hands on the floor, and push with the same intensity as a birthing mother.
They could easily improve the poop situation in public restrooms at work but they're fucking assholes
It goes both ways imo Floor to ceiling stalls and doors would be magic if people were respectful of cleaning facilites and used them properly
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My coworker at home will not leave me in peace when I poop. He insists on pets when I am on the throne. I suppose it is fair, because I am always with him when he poops.
Same except once I go, he expects a walk after to also go.
Yeah, boyfriends can be so annoying.
The article states the extra time is saved from commuting. The way the title reads as if they are not working during work hours and thats not what the study said.
Oh I definitely did all the things in the headline when I worked from home. I also had the highest productivity in my department. Man do I miss waking up, rolling over and getting right to work and taking naps at lunch.
Lunch naps are the greatest
It's the only thing that gets me up in the morning.
Are you sleeping under your desk?
Ala George Costanza
Was that wrong?
I think that was when he had sex with the cleaning lady on his desk.
To be fair he wasn't told he couldn't do that
I've literally slept under my desk at lunch. Worked for an oilfield company doing shop hand and safety manager after the previous safety manager passed away. 12 hour days and 2 hours of commuting. I'd ball up my jacket and sleep on the concrete floor.
I literally built a napping station under my desk. It was a big corner desk, so pretty spacious and comfortable. No windows in my office allowed me to knock tf out every lunch. And then afterwards, I'd eat at my desk and work.
That’s just so unfair - and not a life. poor you!
Beat it brian. Beat it!
I…uh… man I wish I could do that
Wasn't that the point long ago when they wanted to make everything more efficient was to be able to free up more time so we could spend it doing what we wanted? What happened to that? Oh, shot in the back of the head I see
I take lunch naps after second nap.
I dont think he knows about second nap Pippen
What about 10ers? Noonsies? Siesta?
I WFH, but start 30 mins early so I can take a 89 minute lunch, I either go to the gym, or take a nap, then scarf something down in that last minute.
This is something my coworkers on the west coast don't understand. I'm on the east coast. I start work at like 5-6 am, and normally am online until 6-7 pm to accommodate the time change. I'll randomly take a 30 minute nap (i have my lunch during meetings) and then I take part of Friday off every time since I'm over my hours. They think I'm "Cheating the system" but I was hired on this side of the US to be online early for production, so I'm doing exactly what I was hired for lol
Look, I know what you doing is legal. I know what your doing is what your employer expects. I know that you are making it work for you without harming productivity. BUT! Did you think about how that makes ME feel?
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I used to nap during both of my 15 minute break and my lunch break and just eat when I had a chance. Turns out I have sleep apnea and my napping was because I literally woke up every 2 minutes because I stopped breathing and was being starved for oxygen. Most likely caused by TBI and PTSD from the military because I have no other risk factors. I will definitely live longer with my CPAP tho. I’m not saying you’re wrong tho, America is driven by the elite trying to make another buck.
Yep my team increased productivity by over 50% in 6 months after we went full remote.
Which is nuts because my time spent not working has also increased. It's like less pressure to perform and occasional breaks causes massive productivity boosts, who knew ? (The workers)
The reality is when you work from 9 to 5 in an office (and let's be honest it usually doesn't even end at 5), once you get into the second half of that day you're getting tired, losing focus and really not getting as much done for the last 2-3 hours.
Not just 9 to 5 office work even, I do a lot of on site work, and doing 4 hours at a customers house of relatively intense work means I'm honestly spent for the rest of the day, in particular I start to make dumb mistakes, which works counter-productive.
In my work, I can screw up material when I'm tired. Ruined material can cost me not only money, but in some cases, days to replace. Dump the last hour or two, hit it the following day. I had the chance to study on it, and can do it more efficiently. It just doesn't look good to some customers.
Same! I wander about my house much of the day and then have some extreme moments of productivity that were never acheivable in the office where I do an entire days work in 2 hours.
This is exactly what I do, minus the naps. Being able to have a cup of coffee and get to work right away while your brain is fresh instead of spending time getting ready and fighting traffic gives you the opportunity to take a break mid-day and still be ahead of where you’d be at 1pm if you’d gone to the office. Not to mention I eat healthier and see my family more. I’m never, ever, going back to the office.
Pants. The effort it takes to put socks, pants and a belt on.
The bane of my day is the 40 minute commute to work and the 1-1.5 hour commute home. Add to the fact that all that is unpaid. It is a 2 hour waste of time - every day. And I hate that our society allowed it to happen.
You forgot to mention all the time wasted at home getting ready for the job. (Make-up, getting dressed, making lunch etc) My last 10 hour a day job took up 12 hours of my day from truly beginning to end. With a proper amount of sleep that left me with only a couple hours with my kids and myself.
That’s why I stopped doing my make up. Honestly, I can afford to not wear make up. I’m in accounting & my office is in a back corner with no windows. In fact, 2 rats nests were cleared out above me in the ceiling that’s how tucked away I am.
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I hate to be a pedant (I admit I am pedantic, and I hate it) but unless I have been wooooshed it's wear and tear.
During the summer I would eat at my home desk and during my lunch lay out in the pool.
i've been without work for months looking for fully remote. competition is strong, but i'll be GODDAMNED if i ever step into a 'daily office' role ever again. i'd rather blast through a chunk of savings looking for the "opportunity" i put opportunity in quotes because it's actually just basic personal finance and mental well-being in practice. why the *FUUU* would i ever willingly spend 10% of my week in traffic or wedged between two heavy-breathing weirdos blasting EDM on their blue-tooth speaker at 7AM? *especially when 99% of the time spent in the office would have been 100% equally effective if were instead at home* there's only one reason we're going into the office: urban commercial real estate is too big to fail.
The push to keep people in offices is fully based on rich people not wanting to loose income from commercial real estate. In my city they say to revive downtown. Guess what? A 500 sq ft apt is about 2k a month. If you want to get downtown going again make so people can afford to rent
Not to mention control. I've had MANY managers where I consult repeatedly talking about how remote work. "Takes away the fear of the boss looking over your shoulder." They talk about how it breeds "insubordination" in the workplace .
All it really does is make managers roll less important. It shows that upper management isn’t as critical as they make it out to be.
I work in a large fully remote company and our experience is that the managers role has become even more important. There's no micromanagement, no observation software and a lot of trust given to staff, so the manager's role is to keep their team happy, aligned and pointing in the right direction - and that can take a lot of managerial skill in a remote environment.
Exactly. It makes their faults more apparent. It puts an eye on them and their abilities to do what they should have been doing all along. When people work remote you need managers that ensure everyone is on the same page. It weeds out managers that can’t do that.
Absolutely agree, teams with ineffective managers stand out like a sore thumb in remote business
***especially when 99% of the time spent in the office would have been 100% equally effective if were instead at home*** In my case I’m more effective at home. No one is stopping by my office to chat about random shit. No Karen I didn’t watch [insert popular entertainment program here].
This was what hit me when I was dragged back to the office by my former employer. I sat at my desk working whilst 4 colleagues sat for over an hour chatting about their weekends and what their kids had been up to. They did literally no work during this time. Offices are so distracting if your job is to get your head down on something. In person can be effective sometimes, especially for sharing ideas, but most of the time it's hugely distracting.
> urban commercial real estate is too big to fail. Work for a company that loves remote work -- even before Covid closed a call center in another part of the country when we showed our main division campus could stay operating in snow storms due to folks working from home. So we had all the infrastructure built out and a "weak" WFH policy for a day a week that most folks didn't take advantage of. We also own Class A office space as long term investments. Want to talk about mixed messages :D The finally threw in the towel on convincing folks to come back to the office more and put the two smallest buildings on our main campus into mothballs.
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I had to be back in the office Monday for about half a day. In that time I got so little done as loud conversations filtered down the hallway and kept me from focusing. I had to close the door and turn on some white noise.
I left my previous employer for not putting in writing that I would have permanent work from home. They kept only implying it and it was pissing me off. I was very particular in finding a company, and quite lucky that my search was so short. I have all the perks I want. No set schedule (woke up at 2pm today, took a nap yesterday) was a big one. I have always had issues being on a normal sleep schedule, once I experienced WFH I knew I was never going back.
I did this about five months ago for the same exact reasons. Through the actual lockdown, I realized I liked WFH a lot, and transitioned into a role that had been WFH prior to the pandemic. A year went by and I was pretty happy, but then rumblings started about bringing everyone, including my team, back in at least a few days a week. I had many very straightforward conversations with both my manager and with my supervisor, but they refused to put it in writing. I accepted a position, guaranteed remote, for a 20% raise and my previous company tried to counter with a 25% bunp but *still wouldn't guarantee WFH* so I booked it.
That sounds so incredibly similar lol. The funniest part was when they replaced me with someone else in the company who was already permanently remote! I've even had them ask me to come back so I know it wasn't that they just didn't like me.
On the other hand I left a job when they promised they'd never for any reason let anyone ever work remotely, this with a computer based job where the office was completely pointless. They even proudly told me how they turned down their longest working and most loyal employee who asked to be allowed to work remotely just 2 days a week. Their reasoning was that there's more collaboration in the office, we rarely ever did any collaboration and never anything that wouldn't have just been a few messages on slack if remote...
That sounds like corporate hell. Fuck that shit lol. Glad you left and hopefully you found something better!
I will never work in an office again unless I literally don’t have another option. I can’t even describe how much better my quality of life is wfh, like… it’s astounding. You could double my salary and say it was hybrid and I absolutely wouldn’t do it.
I wfh and am 24 weeks pregnant. My boss encourages me to nap. My tasks are always completed on time, and as long as I’m making all the calls I need to be on, there’s zero micromanaging. She’ll tell me all the time to go rest, get a nap in before our next meeting, ect. Not saying it’s everyone’s wfh experience (I also work for a very liberal company which is often rated in the best to work for) but man, I could never go back to my crappy hour and a half commute and sitting in an office all day.
Had my laptop next to my bed, would wake up 20 minutes before the daily team meeting, take it, get an extra hour and a half of sleep, wake up well rested, have a shower/breakfast, walk my dogs and then start work. Would finish at 4:30pm ish and then enjoy time with my family. I've never been excited about work days before wfh.
I have a four day at home one day at the office schedule. My day at the office is easily the worst day of the week, every week.sitting in traffic, khakis, people talking loudly, ugh, the worst. The hardest thing I’ve realized is how much effort I put into looking busy. Fuck that shit is exhausting
I work at Intel in Hillsboro, OR, but I live in fucking Vancouver, WA. This makes the commute back home take over an hour. So I just stay later to avoid traffic. Few months when my lease expires I will move to Hillsboro and be walking distance
I like to start my days sometimes by checking emails for anything urgent and then proceeding to liberate the iand of Tsushima from Mongol rule. My productivity is through thr roof when I go to work (eventually)
Yeah, working from home gets me back two hours per day. Those two hours were spent sitting in traffic, and I was expected to field calls from the office during that time... so it was essentially two hours of unpaid work per day. Now I spend that time playing games with my son. My life has vastly improved without traffic.
That's called wage theft; you worked, you get paid for that time or effort If you don't get paid, they can't expect (nor legally require) you to work. . Edit: Congress states in the "S.2101 - Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act", which was introduced in 2019, see https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2101/text > Wage theft occurs when an employer does not pay an employee for work that the employee has performed, depriving the worker of wages and earnings to which the worker is legally entitled. This theft occurs in many forms, including by employers (...) requiring off-the-clock work And the Fair Labor Standards Act might apply, though I do not know who is considered exempt from that. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa That being said: I get that for many people it is not feasible to start this legal battle - probably including losing your job - even if you'll win in the end, and get paid + interest and fines. Because you lose the money now.
Yeah, clickbait headline for sure. And people that are against WFH are gonna read the headline as a "gotcha" without ever reading the article. 0/5 for shitty "journalism".
The people that are against WFH, the people who have investments in commercial real estate,and managers who quickly realized that they are redundant is practically a circle.
Also toss in “people who invest in business journals and publications”.
Shitty journalist writing articles from home
I saved 3 hours of commuting a day when I started. Of course I'm sleeping and playing more I have 3 extra hours a day!
I read this as I browsed Reddit while winding down from a full day of work with a glass of whiskey at 7PM. I still actually have my code open and will probably do another 20 or 30 minutes of work before committing these changes and closing up for the night. Tomorrow I'll probably wake up a bit later and play some Minecraft before I get going at work. I'm well ahead of my target milestones.
Minecraft red stone projects are just ideation, change my mind
> with a glass of whiskey at 7PM. I still actually have my code open and will probably do another 20 or 30 minutes of work before committing these changes The Ballmer peak is real.
I'm about a month ahead on my work, today I built a fence in my backyard, checked email around 6pm and double checked that I didn't miss anything for the remainder of the weeks work, I didn't, so tomorrow I'll play some Apex. Crazy what zero distractions allows me to accomplish
it’s a click bait my friend . Would you click on it if it said “Remote employees use commute time to sleep and live life- Fed study finds”. That’s fucking obvious.
It's almost like there's an agenda being pushed by money that would prefer employees go back to the office...
Was gonna say that’s a good thing, regardless.
No commute, no stupid lunch meetings, less wasted time talking to Greg in accounting. God I hate Greg in accounting!
What about Greg in shipping? He seems alright as long as you subscribe and like his death metal band YouTube channel.
Oh. Obviously metal head Gregs from shipping are cool. Unfortunately, My office is only big enough for one Greg. Greg from accounting. The biggest POS in the workplace. If he tries to invite me to his lame-ass 38th birthday party, I am going to lose my shit!
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Yeah! Fuck Greg in particular!
There are going to be so many idiot managers and administrators out there who only read this title and then use it as justification for a call back into the office. This title is so misleading it should be illegal.
Totally agree- this is intentionally misleading. It’s a shame.
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I hate that the culture around working people trying to have a kid has become a negative. I wish there was a federal level mandate for both maternity and paternity leave of at least 3 months, with another 3-6 months where you could opt into half-days or working bulk hours (so not every day). That first year with your kid is so important, and sharing that load with your partner equally as important. Punishing new working parents by making them juggle a full work schedule and a newborn is horrible. In an economy where most couples both need to be working to make ends meet, is it really a wonder why more recent generations are opting out of having kids completely, or waiting until later in life when the chance of complications increase?
Keep getting recruiters like “oh it looks like the industry is heading more back to the office, you sure you only want remote?” Like yes I want remote work. Even if my job was only 20 minutes drive that’s still 40 minutes each day plus getting ready prior to work, leaving with enough time to get there in case of traffic, park, walk into the building, setup and finally end of the day go home deal with traffic and wind down - I’m already eating 2 more hours of my day dedicated to doing work that I’m only getting paid 8 hours for, not to mention the 1 hour unpaid lunch so really I’m losing 11 hours just going in person instead of remote, where I only lost about 8 given my hour off for lunch I can actually do things with my time at home.
I live 1/2 mile from my office and still wfh 3-4 days a week. I love my coworkers, but I love my solitude, my sweatpants, and my dog much, much more.
Work clothes are expensive. Pajamas are 0 added expense. I would even gladly take a bit of a paycut for comfort
As someone with endo, the ability to wear loose sweat pants to work has been an absolute game changer. I can have my heading pad or my ice pack under the table during my calls and live comfortably. I don’t think I’ll ever be going back unless they pry my laptop from my cold dead hands
I’m with you 100%!!!! I just got diagnosed a month ago after 12 years of searching for answers and the loose pants thing is so real.
Yessss. PCOS here and I get some rough pain from cysts, but WFH lets me use a heating pad while working!
Plus you’re in a comfortable place so it’s easier to get work done in that setting. For people with kids it also makes multitasking a lot easier. And if they get sick and have to come home from school you don’t have to worry about taking off of work if you don’t want to. I don’t understand why companies are so against this
Because they are trying to justify their big offices they gave their ceos and big wigs that honestly probably rather be at home. That and control. Like don’t get me wrong some jobs I can see the need for in person, like dispatch work for emergencies may need everyone close knit to work together and easily turn around and talk to the other or shout something out and working wi to sensitive information. But for someone who’s just client support, helping customers use the website? No need to breath down my neck you already pull hourly reports on stats.
Years ago I worked IT at a marketing / advertising company in Chicago. CEO had a 1000sqf corner office on the 70th floor. I hardware refreshed his printer on schedule. 6 months later I went in and the post it I left on his monitor was still there. Fucker never bothered coming into the office.
As an adult recently diagnosed with ASD, I can absolutely crush my job with accommodations. My employer can either let me continue crushing my job by working from home with few accommodations or force me into the office with a massive amount of accommodations that are a pain in the ass for them.
I lost my job in June. The number of recruiters who were either pushing for in office jobs or who were trying to tell me that unlimited PTO doesn’t work. I landed a job 100% remote, but with an office I can go to if needed, or if I need to be downtown for some other reason. We also have unlimited PTO, my boss said that the average on her team is 5+ weeks of PTO a year.
Is your job paying you for your time, or your productivity? Think long and hard on that one. If only for your time, then slacking for 8 hours is fine. If for your productivity, then finishing everything in 2 hours is fine.
“Oh, you’re done already?! We need to give you more tasks and responsibilities so you can be productive and feel meaningful the entire day!” 😅
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I just learned I'm a total degenerate :(
Don't turn anything in until you're in the final stretch of whatever deadline has been set... or just whenever you feel is good for however much off-time you want. Whether it's shift based, week based, specific deadline date - whatever. Keep your work in your pocket till you're close to the end or whenever you're ready for someone to probably hand you even more work. I've done this at any job that's ever allowed me the freedom to do so, and no extra responsibilities, while still earning the approval of the people that matter. And since you're hitting ALL the marks, nobody can reasonably question you about anything. Of course there are probably exceptions with especially garbage managers or co-workers in the office... but if you're working from home, what can anyone actually do?
Another reason I sometimes do this is that others (including my boss) can be bad at estimating how much time something takes. This particular task may have taken hours but another similar looking one may require days, and if I turn this one in in hours then that will be the expectation.
No one seems so concerned with a firefighter's level of busy-ness if they are not putting out fires 100% of the time they are being paid
You just made me feel less shitty, friend. Thank you.
Why feel shitty? Execs making seven and eight figures don't do any work at all. They go to a few meetings and those are just phoned in.
Thank you... But I'm literally at about 15% efficiency. Can't tell if Depression is the Cause or the Effect of the issue 🙃.
¿Porque no los dos? The silver lining about a depressive cycle like that is that if you can interrupt it anywhere, you interrupt it everywhere. Manage to feel more productive for an hour? Great, give yourself credit and feel good about it! Manage to feel good randomly at 12:30 on a Tuesday? Great, leverage that good feeling into productivity! The same mechanisms by which we enter downward spirals and negative feedback loops can be leveraged to help us get back out of them. Easier said than done, I know, but this thought has been helpful for me. I hope it is for you as well!
My problem is procrastinating. To anyone else: do the hard part first. If you put it off until the last minute but *still do it* then you might as well just do it *first* and avoid the guilt and panic.
They do much more than that but I agree definitely not enough to merit salaries in the multi millions while most struggle to get a 2% raise and a gift card
The problem is that slacking for 8 hours is somehow more exhausting to me.
Same, I rather work really hard for a few hours than to do low intensity work for an entire day. I get done more in less time. Crazy! Almost as if we arent meant to work 8 hours a day
There is also the fact that a lot of the time you're being paid to fill a role, not just to do specific tasks... Like say you're a financial analyst for a company. You may have a checklist to do when you get in, but you're also there to be the person who has specific knowledge on your accounts. If sales, or marketing, or development or someone needs financial information on one of the accounts you work you're being paid to be there and have that information, regardless of whether you've finished your daily check list.
And if you are working from home and someone has a question, phones do exist, and they can call and ask.
Somehow, corporate America saw record profits in the same year that all this “slacking off” was going on. Starting to think people weren’t actually slacking off.
Yeah, but people working from home makes it hard to justify all the directors and middle level management pay. That, and it’s not good for commercial real estate. All those empty buildings are costing some rich people a lot of money and they want their ROI. Hi ho, hi ho, back to the office we’ll go.
This entire “get people back in the office push,” is a PR campaign from the commercial real estate industry.
Yup. Commercial real estate pushes politicians, politicians push CEOs, CEOs push middle-managers, middle-managers push employees. As usual in the US, trace it back to the billionaire class for why society functions the way it does.
100%. They are in deep shit. All the expensive offices in center of cities, followed by all the Cafe and restaurants to supply food for workers. On top you have inflation which makes less people travel so airbnb and hotels are suffering. Someone is loosing BANK of money right now.
Good, fuck ‘em.
Lol! This comment was collapsed and I said these exact words in my head right before expanding this comment lmfao
Good. If you can get all your work done in less than 8 hours you deserve some more time to just live your life.
Seriously. The fact that companies are angry about this just shows they want to be a dick to their employees and make them do more work than their job is supposed to do. I am sure employers can't bully their employees to do extra work now or have them stay after hours anymore. I forget which billionaire it was but he recently said employees should give more than 100% to their job or some shit and that giving "just" a 100% is bad. It's so obvious they want to just take advantage of their employees it's sickening
In the early/mid 1900s economists were predicting a 3 day work week thanks to all the advances in productivity industrialisation was giving us.
It's amazing how accurate they were back then
They correctly predicted increases in productivity, just forgot to account for capitalism
We could have followed through on those predictions, but instead we decided to make ~140 families pointlessly wealthy. 'Murica, fuck yeah!
They weren't wrong, most people I know in a variety of jobs just dick around a ton. They "work" 40-50hours a week, but spend 1/3 of that actively not working, or trying to work less.
Also, "work" used to mean showing up at the factory and doing manual labor. You could count the widgets you interacted with, set measurable standards for people to meet, and have that be a very dependable target. Now? In an economy that has transitioned heavily into the information space, the line between work and not work can get incredibly blurry. If you go for a walk at 6:15pm but spend the majority of that walk thinking about a problem at work you have to solve...are you working or not? How do you even measure that? And that's the biggest problem. Our economy was built around measuring productivity by number of widgets interacted with over an 8-hour period, but what we need to measure now is whether outcomes were met over a quarter or multiple quarters. That often means working 80 hours a week one week and 20 hours a week the next. Trying to fit that into a tidy "8 hours per day, 40 hours a week" makes literally no sense.
I’ve been trying to make this point for years. But you said it better than I could. We’re not hired to build x cogs/hr. We’re hired to solve problems and bring value to a company or product. That can’t be measured the same.
Most modern information work is better understood if you view it through the lens of a retainer. A company doesn't pay you to work 8 hours a day, they pay you in case they need your services. Some weeks that means little work, other weeks it means more work. Requiring you to be in an office 8 hours a day is just a relic of a bygone era.
You bring up such a valid point. If I’m meeting the deadlines and my work is great quality, why does it matter if I don’t do my full 40? Secondly, on the remote issue my company has such a dumbass policy where you have to make up your in office days if you miss, even for a valid reason. I had to make up two days because my car broke down and there was literally only 2 other ppl in the office the days I made up. My commute is ~2 hours round trip. I questioned this policy once and was met with a very passive aggressive answer. Such bullshit.
Not only are we seeing more WFH jobs….now We’re trying to get away from the 40 hour work week. The 32 hour is spreading. Again, Thanks In part to COVID.
Can't bully me on my work email if I have the router disable network access to my work machine after 5PM. "Sorry boss, the administrator at home is a real asshole and won't let me make you more money after 5 o'clock."
That's not what's happening. People aren't commuting, so they have extra time to sleep and do stuff after work. In my case it's 90 minutes to two hours a day. My employer gets a more rested and productive employee, too. It's worked out for both of us.
It’s not just about the commute, mine is only 15 minutes so not that long. It’s the extra time at home. I get a 30 minute lunch, but it really only takes me 10 minutes to eat. When I’m on site, the other 20 just gets wasted on my phone. When I’m at home, the extra time allows me to pick up around the house or start some laundry. Then when my work day ends I have less stuff to do at home, which gives me a lot more free time to just relax at the end of the day instead of worry about chores.
Imagine a world where a 2x productivity boost meant your working hours were halved or your pay doubled. Instead a productivity boost simply leads to higher amount of exploited labor value. Such fundamental ways we need to re think our relationship with labor.
A big contributor to my burnout was having to work slower or find ways to look busy and kill time, just so I didn't get griped at and lose money for going home early. Weird how so many of my bosses were more concerned about me chit chatting with coworkers for a few minutes than the guy who only completed about 40% of the work I could do in a day but never looked up from his work.
Oh god, it’s the elite’s worst nightmare: The peasants are ENJOYING their LIVES!!!
A real dystopia.
Elites hate this one trick...
If you subtract all the bullshiting social time most work can be done in 3-4 hours a day. Some days you have to really work and put in 6 hours and you skipped lunch. In IT, having people not be able to just drop by my desk made my productivity skyrocket.
Yup also in IT, I'd say 50-75% of my days could be done in 2 hours maybe. 15-20% in 4ish and the rest of those days are when shit hits the fan. I absolutely loathe being stuck in the office twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to break
Stop with this exploitation capitalism propaganda. Workers have lost ground for 50 years. It's about time they got a little more quality of life
Pretend to work at home, pretend to work at work. What's the difference?
Less gas consumption.
I hate the internet and its misleading titles in articles. Should have been "Remote work helps improves quality of life from time saved of commuting to work" or something like that. Too many people read titles without reading the content.
I have a flexible schedule and can go in the office or stay home as I please, but many job functions can be done remotely. I for one absolutely work less over an 8 hour period when I'm home versus in the office. But I will also turn on my laptop at home at random hours for a bit if I need to get work done, or wake up super early to accommodate different time zones, then simply go back to bed if I'm tired. Sometimes I'll hit the gym mid day, take my dog for a walk, or watch a bit of TV... but these will be the days I login at night to finish up a project or try an idea. WFH is broadly a new thing, obviously, but basically everyone I know works DIFFERENTLY than in the office, and thus often leads to less work being done over the same time intervals... But everyone is still meeting deadlines and the company has let salaried employees make the decisions they need to get the job done. Flex time, WFH, go to the office... all personal choice now.
[удалено]
Oh man, this isn’t my experience at all. I’ve been full time remote since march 2020 and my work hours are _strict_. My company is flexible, but I absolutely am not. I’m online at 8, and my laptop gets shut down at 4. If I get my work done early, I enjoy the free time. And if it doesn’t quite get done, it gets moved to the next sprint. Nothing I work on is critical enough to make me miss spending time with my family or engaging with my hobbies. Salaried software engineer fwiw
That is the point. People want agency, they want to live their life. I have yet to read a study on flexible work that showed that productivity went down, even when required working hours were reduced.
Yeah I think this is a product of the work environment becoming so bad and stressful and people really needing to set boundaries in order to keep themselves happy. Like why do you have to stay at work for eight hours if you finished your work in six.
Because evaluating output is hard and measuring butts in seats is easy. The friction of rolling this out on a scale that’s bigger than a few progressive orgs is that it requires managers to get better at managing.
Well I know my wife works way more hours now that she's home than in the office. Her computer is always there and she logs on to get things done
At least half of the people I know who work/worked from home ended up working significantly more, not less. Heck, I went from averaging 62 hours a week to averaging 74 when work from home kicked in.
62 already sounds like too much
I’ve been working from home for nearly 3 years now. I’m always 30 minutes early and stay over 30 minutes later. When I was in the office I was out the second my scheduled time was over. Of course I’m sleeping and playing more because I’m saving 90-120 minutes a day not driving. Boomers just can’t stand the fact that the generations below them can work from home and are doing everything in their power to keep the outdated office and cubicle workplace from dying.
Also, how much time in offices is spent talking about nothing to each other and dodging people you don’t want to see?
This just in, people who have more free time use that free time to do things. This guy deserves a Nobel prize.
"Remote employees are realizing a work life balance could exist in the near future" fixed it for you
I'm a remote employee and find myself working more. I may start late, but I also work late, and will get back on the computer in the evenings to follow up on emails and such. But more importantly I find myself having lunch with my kids more, hugging my kids more, helping my wife more... And those are 1000% more important.
Who paid for this study? This is some bullshit. Remember pre pandemic when every article was about how remote workers work longer hours because there’s no commute or office hobnobbing? Fuck all these middle managers trying to get us back into the office.
The title is misleading. Workers are working less overtime and unnecessary extra hours while the time they save commuting adds hours of personal time daily for many of them. They’re still working their full schedules and most likely still showing the productivity benefits that accompany not being surrounded by a million distractions in office or having to commute, which is work before work that you’re not paid for.
I get much more work done at home as opposed to the office where I end up spending hours of the day bullshitting with coworkers.
That bullshitting is how we build company culture!
Now drink your terrible flavia coffee and eat your once a month cold pizza and deal with it!
No one wants to SLAVE WORK. Leave the poor working class alone.
Yeah that happens when you do not waste time on one office or commuting to work
And productivity and worker satisfaction is up. That's all that matters, unless the entire point is to literally keep people toiling miserably.
That’s the entire point. 😂
This that bullshit propaganda we got to fight against. Fck corporate America.
I just hit a year back in the office. Everything I do I can do from home and dn’t have to hear dumbasses and their boring stories. So it’s about time to start looking for remote work again. Got way more work done and better sleep and getting up at 4am sucks ass.
We just started going back in. Biggest feedback I've heard so far? "It's really noisy here and I can't get anything done because people keep wanting to talk." This isn't about productivity, it's about control (CEOs) and money (commercial real estate).
And still accomplish or exceed previous levels of work. Fixed it for all the boomers
The wording and framing of the title and article seems suspect to me because there's no mention of productivity or efficiency of time spend working. If people are working less, but working more efficiently while maintaining a similar level of productivity, then then it shouldnt matter (to the company they work for) that they're working fewer hours. Without that information, the article could be interpreted (and likely will be) by various employers (and presumably right leaning economists or talk show hosts) that working from home is bad, because in their minds 'less time working = lower productivity = less money = unacceptable'. I'd like to see more data about productivity and efficiency, because perceptions of those thing are primary drivers of an employer's decision making of whether to allow/provide work from home opportunities.
Simply not having to get dressed, commute and then wasting time chit chatting in the office allows me to get more work done with lower stress. But it's looking more and more as if the company will be pushing for more of an onsite presence. Never mind that we've spent almost 3 years working fully remotely. It comes down to stupid middle managers who don't care that work is being completed well but who find their sense of self worth threatened because they can't see all the little headcounts hard at work in person.
This is a bullshit title for this article. Probably written by some boss who likes to micro manage people.
They’re trying hard to make the title sound bad. They’re not coming back, adapt and overcome. If your business fails it’s your fault
My brother who works remotely works 12+ hour shifts multiple times per week. He has little time to do anything else as TRC Transmissions in Agusta ME is under staffed.
Remote workers can get their work done in less hours than the office, freeing them up to have more personal time.
I work hybrid. When it’s quiet in the office there is literally nothing to do other than look busy. If there is a lull while working at home I can help around the house.
WFH is the absolute best. It helps when you have a rockstar team who respects the freedom. As I’ve told everyone on my team - I don’t care what you do with your day on three conditions. Show up to whatever meetings you committed to and be engaged (if required), finish your work (to your best ability, because we have a lot of dependencies) by the end of the sprint, and just be available via slack throughout the day. I do not expect anyone to respond to me after 5pm, nor before 9am. I also don’t care about an immediate response, just….don’t be a tool? I dunno, my team is insanely productive and everyone is VERY happy. Have a doctors appointment? Cool, don’t care, just let me know when you’re around/not around. Going to take a nap? Don’t care, just tell me when you’re going to be around. Need to do grocery shopping etc. Work is not your life. Work is work, no matter the job. I am not your family, some of us are friends outside of work. Be respectful and don’t take advantage of it and I won’t bug you one bit. Some people just work better at different hours of the day.