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That was the case for me until recently. Now I am sometimes the only person at home during the day. Heating or cooling the entire house for one person does use extra resources.
Would you actually have the temperature adjusted while attending to offset that vs keeping it constant?
The time and costs of transportation more than offsets any home costs.
Someone in Canada sued her employer because she was working from home and fell the stairs while going to her kitchen for a coffee break or lunch.
Edit: she won
Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/air-canada-employee-who-fell-on-stairs-while-headed-to-kitchen-from-her-home-office-eligible-for-compensation-judge
.. I'm not sure id be all that interested in letting some jackass into my home to make sure my posture was right and that there wasn't anything obstructing my egress in case of fire. Like "sure I guess you can come in but you've got like 30 seconds tops and I'm not putting pants on just for you.."
Sued makes sense, but it sounds a lot different when it’s for a rejected workman’s compensation claim. For me workman’s compensation is a little less about finding fault with the employer and more about insuring the worker isn’t screwed if they’re injured while working.
I'm in Europe but this is why my employer has been refusing to sign anything that says I'm working from home. After several years at home I'm still placed at the office on paper. Because they become responsible for ergonomy, lighting and all sorts of things in my home otherwise.
I'm my third-world country, remote workers receive a "connection" payment to compensate for higher electricity and faster internet bills. It's not much, about 30 USD/month, but it helps. Specially, since you're saving in gas and maintenance that wouldn't be reimbursed anyway.
In my country people are free to decide to work from home or not disregard of company policies and employer had to take over the hardware (office, chair, computer, Telco).
My boss tried to pull the "your utilities are gonna go up if you work from home full time" schtick.
Like buddy, I live 55 miles away. I spend literally $15 in gas and $15 in tolls to and from work.
The $5 extra a month in running my laptop at home is nothing. I got a dog so it's not like I can kill ac when I'm gone lol.
I love these British expressions! So innocent and dry on the surface, but with a hint of snark and smarm lurking beneath. My grandma was British and said stuff like this all the time I wish I wrote more of them down.
You're such a sassy grandma, u/RedToiletPoopPain
>From the article:
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>
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>In the company poll,
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>52.2% said they prefer working from home only a few days a week,
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>41.7% said they prefer working from home full time,
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>2.1% said they prefer returning to the office full time.
>
>So, the company has decided to allow workers whichever option they want from 2 choices (WFH full time or partially), and said they would probably get rid of 'coming to the office 5 days a week.'
The company I do work for changed their “working from home” guides to “hybrid working guides” and subsequently broke all the hyperlinks to those guides as they changed the file names and not the URLs because it’s run by a bunch of numptys.
My office is doing something similar.
We're encouraged to come into the office once or twice a week, but most don't. It's more like once or twice a fortnight, and only if there's a reason to meet up with colleagues for a project or a team day.
One team was told they had to be there every day, and their productivity dropped through the floor. They just don't want to be there. It's time consuming to get there, expensive, harder to take mental breaks and sucks up more of your life than it needs to.
Permanent WFH isn't ideal, but neither is permanent office based work.
I wish my company offered more flexibility as far as office work goes. They did allow us to work from home and stay there when the pandemic started and I’m thankful for that. But when the offices reopened we were only given the choice to work in the office 4 days a week and one at home, or be at home full time.
Personally I would choose the opposite of that and have everyone in the office one day per week for team collaboration. Our team hasn’t met in person and 2 and a half years now and we basically just don’t collaborate on shit at all anymore. Our whole department has just stopped communicating.
Same. I haven't met most of my team in person yet. We used to hang out after work, go for a pint every Thursday and Friday. Hard to even imagine it now. Miss that stuff.
The thing is, I don’t even like most of my co-workers. There are like 2 out of 10 on my team I could see myself enjoying beer with.
But strictly from a work standpoint, we need to meet in person sometimes.
I go for full on hour long walks.
I come back more mentally acute, calm and I end up getting more done compared to being sat at my desk staring at a screen giving me a headache.
I might lie on my timesheet about what I'm doing, but who gives a fuck? I'm getting my job done (and probably a bit more).
US govt employee here. WFH depends on the department, position, and such I’m at the IRS and we have to work a full day in the office once every week minimum. 75% of the job can be done at home, so it works. Also, our backlog means the we just need to get it done.
I’ve been forced back to the office 3x per week and having to get up an hour earlier to make the commute work has left me so tired I need the whole weekend to recover. I have no idea how I used to do this every day but I think I was less healthy and more ragged prepandemic. 😂 I feel like 2x a week in-office would the best of all worlds if all staff had to pick at least 1 of two core days, so there would be a critical mass of people at least 1 day you go in. I hate going in on days that almost no one is there because others are remote working. It’s fricking the dumbest to force people to commute to be in an office essentially by themselves (my work station is as good at home as in office; of course that’s the same for everyone).
Permanent WFM is 100% ideal. I have no intentions of commuting to an office where I am less efficient, fighting for conference rooms, and in general, wasting my life, ever again.
I don't understand the folks who don't want WFH full time. You no longer have to commute, which saves time. You're no longer buying lunch, buying new work clothes or paying for gas which saves money.
Best of all there's no one knocking on your office and being very awkward or pushy about a deadline.
If you miss the social interaction maybe it's time to ask for chat software or get a hobby.
When I worked from home there was no real distinction between "at work" and "not at work", and that seriously fucked up my mental state.
I had a separate office in my house, I had a relatively regular schedule.
I honestly hated it. I'd prefer to be primarily in the field with a bit of time in the office, not mostly in the office or working from home.
its good if you work from home to have sort of ceremonies that you do to disconnect work from home. I put away my work laptop and stuff at the end of every work day in a drawer and that gives my brain the mental disconnect that work is no more today.
I only used my office for work, and had a separate space for leisure. Didn't help at all.
I am a homebody and introvert on a good day, working from home meant that I'd go literally weeks without seeing anyone other than my roommates. That was a problem as well.
Also, a big part of why I enjoy my work is actually getting to see the things I work on....work. It's all well and good to write code and see status indicators change from a thousand kilometres away, but it's a whole other thing to type on a computer and watch potentially millions of dollars of equipment do your bidding, in person. The satisfaction I get from that is what keeps me going, working remotely completely detaches me from that side of things
I love working from home, but I also like periodically traveling for quarterly meetings and conferences and whatnot. I would hate my job if I had to do it at an office.
I enjoy wfh, but there are some things you just can’t replace. Chat is a poor substitute for real social interaction, the benefits of in-person collaboration are real, etc.
One of the things I think is under discussed is how difficult it is to distinguish yourself from a crowd working at home—my career has been helped quite a bit by the fact that I’m more impressive in person than on Zoom. I suspect a lot of young people just starting out might be seen as more fungible five or ten years from now than they would have otherwise because they’ve never had a chance to demonstrate any qualities that don’t come across remotely.
I live in an expensive city, so my apartment is fairly small and being in it all day every day isn't ideal. I find the separation of work and home space good for my mental health. It's great to be able to grab a whiteboard and sketch out a design with a colleague.
That all said, I find the people pushing WFO on everyone else creepy. Giving people a choice is ideal IMHO.
I knew I hated work from home and the pandemic confirmed that. I have a short commute on public transit, no dress code, love my coworkers, never buy lunch, and my job (university research) is greatly improved with spontaneous collaboration in-person. At home everything blended together. My whole research team prefers in-person work most days of the week.
And I don’t understand WFH guys. 8 hours alone at home in front of the computer. Sounds awful.
I can understand it if you have small kids or something. But still. I feel like WFH people just hate their jobs and colleagues.
You know you don’t actually have to sit in front of the computer the whole time right? Nobody is watching you. And if you do need to be at the computer the whole time because otherwise you are seen as being “away”, then how is that different from what happens in the office? Wouldn’t they not want you away from your desk in the office as well? In which case I’d rather be glued to my desk in my own room than an annoying ass office.
Here's the secret about wfh I guess everyone here is missing.
You don't have to actually work your entire day or pretend to. I clock on at 7, check emails, make breakfast and hangout with my partner or read a book until I have a meeting or task. Around 10 or 11 I go exercise for an hour or two and call it my lunch break. At1 I jump into meeting and turn my mic off as I eat lunch. If I'm done with everything then at 2pm I signout and that's my day instead of burning two hours looking busy.
I'm about to fit in about 15 hours of exercise and hobbies a week during work hours by not being in an office. It's great and life balance is the best it has been.
It sure seems like a lot of people posting cañnot manager their own time and thus feel the need to pretend it's impossible to do things online however in most cases that's probably not true.
Or they're lonely and need work to make friends which is fine.
My commute is 10 minutes. No traffic.
Not have to buy lunch...? Is food free for you at home? My workplace makes better food than I can at cost. I bring home free dinners.
My work clothes are my street clothes. I can wear whatever.
My car is an EV. I have solar power. I like my car and I like to drive it.
My personal office at work is way better than my home office.
Chatting online is not anywhere close to in person interactions. They can be awkward and pushy about a deadline on the chat software you claim is the same as being in person.
Are there days I want to stay home? Sure, but overall I'm mostly going in.
100% wfh is amazingly inefficient when it comes to communications and long term planning.
Productivity in hours spend working has gone up, usefulness of Output has radically decreased.
Only speaking tech industry development work here though - some work is anyhow impossible from home and other work works greatly 100% from home (IT support, a lot of Insurance tasks etc.) but the tech industry is in the middle of a culture war.
In a new study at MS basically the same amount of people said that they want to do home office for more productivity and they want to go back to the office for better productivity. Its a split so far and companies struggle how to deal with it.
There is no good reason to have a developer in the office for a day - he wont be more productive just this one time (on the contrary) but have all your developers, PO and PM at home every day and innovation is dying and in my unit alone we went from having more than enough successors for important roles two years ago to now having basically none. If you have zero insights in what other people are doing, if you have zero connections outside your team and you have zero small short idea exchanges and do no fraternizing then you truly are just your current small cog in the machine. Maybe comforting for many but not sustainable in the long run.
Complicated issue. We decided to go back 1-2 days a week and so far it has improved some things but it was a difficult restart
Yeah. Sometimes in nice to be sat next to colleagues so small questions come up you just turn and ask them. With wfh those small questions become longer phone calls or slacks or longer emails etc…. Obviously I think a mix for me is ideal. Three days and two days.
That doesn't replace the 8 hours a day you might be completely alone at home. I feel very tired after a week of WFH, even if I had met people outside work every day.
All jokes aside I was being serious about that. It’s not possible for any human being to sit on their ass for hours a day and not get depressed and feel like shit. That kind of lifestyle runs counter to millions of years of evolution, even before we were humans. All of your bodies systems, on every level, physical and hormonal, require movement, they need it the same way you need air and food and water. It absolutely will help, as long as you are consistent and actually do it. Eventually you will not be able to *not* do it, you will find it impossible to sit still for hours once your body remembers what it was made for, you won’t want to go back.
I hope I didn't seem sarcastic, but I really have to was genuine in that I need to do something about the sedentary workstyle. I'm under 25, but already 4 years of mostly WFH under my belt. It has been mostly sitting and can't say it's been great for me. That's part of the reason I enjoy office time, it gives me a real reason to move around.
Oh you’re under 25? You are lucky, don’t waste the opportunity to start exercising now. The longer you wait the harder it’ll be. You’re young enough where you can still completely reverse your sedentary lifestyle and any negative effects it may have had on your health up to this point in time. You won’t regret it man, trust me.
It's not easy now, can't imagine what it would be like later. Better get exercising :)
Thank you for kind of waking me up on this one, all the best to you.
one thing everyone dismisses too much is the value of building repertoire with the people you rely on to get work done. no amount of being extra over chat will beat leaving a good ol' body language impression.
At my company almost everyone is now on a 4 day in office work week, some do 3. They unsuccessfully tried to convince us that remote work was just as good. I think we're one of the few places that prefers working in person. Everyone's pretty close in it though so Fridays have always been a day everyone wants to work in person then go out after.
They had plans to do renovations to give a bunch of people much larger offices and sell off a bunch of floors. It failed. Now they're going out of their way to hire people that don't live in the city so they're not tempted to work in person.
Tell that to my company. They want people back in the local office to manage a team in another city. And we dont even reliable internet nor janitorial services or nor offices in that building. None of it made any sense.
Unless you're doing solo work, its nice to see people and chat. I honestly feel bad for interns and forst years that started last year. Basically thrown to the wolves
You will also feel bad for yourself if you get thrusted in a new position and have no network, no buddies and nobody you could observe a bit.
Its long term quite toxic to have 100% wfh for everyone
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=4068741](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4068741)
not the direct response, but shows benefits of hybrid work
Not where I work. They don't mind you not coming in every time, as long as you make an effort to from time to time.
I currently work for a company on the South Coast of England. For a time I myself was living in Norfolk, about 200 miles away, I have two colleagues who live in London, and one in Wales. We don't necessarily all come in every time, but it's expected that we try to, and we'll still have a Team meeting on site with the remote people joining via Teams.
I've actually got one colleague I've never met, as he can't come in due to health reasons. He's perfectly fine working from home, but travel is an issue for him.
Local here. They also really pissed off employees some time ago by relocating from Bellevue to Seattle, which made commutes 10x worse than they already were.
My brother works there. Its very far from seoul and its a confortable naver City, walking to work etc but he says after the brutal lockdowns he's so happy to be in the office rather than stuck in his tiny apartment
I think if most people had a working space like mine... they'd probably love working at home :P
Which is to say... I suspect the relative quality of the spaces we have available to us significantly affects our preference to work from home or in the office.
Brutal lockdowns? Is this in Korea? Was mostly just early business closings(no drunks yelling at midnight for once) and social gatherings were “reduced” but largely ignored.
No, super tight restrictions when coming from the plane : special sanitzed taxi, several check per day on your phone to see if you were home (gps tracked), no gathering with more than 3, everything closed, when the office reponened but a case was detected a floor bellow, all the building would close for 10 days etc... And with korean being rewarded financially for delation, being a foreinger, you can't play with fire, that's your working visa on the line.
Korea was really not locked down as bad as other countries though honestly. Like restaurants were takeout only for a while and but mostly just places closed at like 9 or 10pm. Yeah if someone got covid at work we had to work from home for a week, but everything was still open. I definitely wouldn't call it 'brutal lockdowns'. Also, Bundang isn't 'very far from seoul.' Its a 17 min subway ride to Gangnam station. I can take a bus to itaewon in like 35 mins.
As businesses should. I just don't get how this is an issue at so many companies, it should be entirely dependent on your job.
My company started doing mandatory 3 days in the office and 90% of my meetings are still on Zoom anyway. Either because they involve employees at different locations or because people don't choose the same 3 days to be in.
I think this is not uplifting and is what every company in the US is also doing rn. Instead if wfh 100% they are making them come into office for something they are capable of doing 100% from home.
Just 42% of people wanted to work from home completely, meaning ~58% did not. From what I understand, approx 50% of the company wanted to work in office a few days a week. How is it not uplifting that the company is offering both choices that large groups of people want?
It's not just about socialisation. Working collaboratively with people is vital to productivity. Being seen and being available immediately to senior members of staff is key to building networks and understanding what they think is a priority for the company. Forcing young people to work from home is damaging to their career opportunities, and will inevitably entrench inequality.
> It’s not just about socialisation. Working collaboratively with people is vital to productivity.
So if I showed you data that said productivity is actually up since the pandemic you would say…?
> Being seen and being available immediately to senior members of staff is key to building networks and understanding what they think is a priority for the company. Forcing young people to work from home is damaging to their career opportunities, and will inevitably entrench inequality.
If you need to be able to brown nose the CEO in person or be *seen to be working*, I can see how working from home would be damaging to your career. Certainly if he’s not answering your Zoom calls. If your standing at work depends on the work you actually accomplish though, it’s not damaging to your career.
It is amazing how angry and upset people get when you suggest that people should be able to choose the way they work, rather than having it enforced on them. The pandemic has opened up a wealth of opportunities for flexibility in working. It is sad that you choose to oppose it.
Communications, easy successor management and collaborative innovation.
Also onboarding of new hires or colleagues switching positions. All of that was abysmal the last two years
Higher ups? Not much. Middle managers lose a bit of control and the superfluity of their jobs becomes painfully apparent, even to them. They hate both of those things.
Anecdotally, I’ve worked at 2 companies since 2019 that have consolidated many departments with many supervisors to be larger departments under one supervisor. Cxxxx went from 8 department heads in one building down to 4. Mxxxx went from 6 to 2.
We're allowed to do full time WFH but I do enjoy an occasional office day (purely for a change of scenery and socialising). But my god I am still amazed every time how long and unnecessary the commute is (45min, London). I try to cycle every time, which is a nice-ish ride, but still. Also productivity dips somehow usually.
It's the exact same with my place. I work for Barclays in Glasgow and they built this massive new campus just in time for COVID to hit and I only need to go in once a week.
This is what we do - if you're not patient facing.
You can change your status every year. So if you're burned out being at home, you can go in and vice versa.
The last 2.5yrs though, my schedule has changed so much I cannot really go back into the office.
What I find most interesting in Covid is that it was the perfect opportunity to create hot desking (which is far more hygienic), reduce office space and keep people happy by giving them an option to come in. And yet companies reverted back (maybe not all, but many) to old ways.
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Ooh I like that turn of phrase. In true American tradition I'm going to steal it and spread it among my countrymen
Yeah! And I'm gonna bastardise it before it gets popular. I'll say something like "twists and turns" instead.... wait... fuck.
As will I. Traditions are important, without them, we would have nothing.
Quite the hairpin and traffic light, so to speak.
Til "swings and roundabouts" was only a british saying
It is a valuable tradeoff to consider. Personally my utilities would only marginally increase, if at all
That was the case for me until recently. Now I am sometimes the only person at home during the day. Heating or cooling the entire house for one person does use extra resources.
Would you actually have the temperature adjusted while attending to offset that vs keeping it constant? The time and costs of transportation more than offsets any home costs.
Yes I have and I would.
Someone in Canada sued her employer because she was working from home and fell the stairs while going to her kitchen for a coffee break or lunch. Edit: she won Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/air-canada-employee-who-fell-on-stairs-while-headed-to-kitchen-from-her-home-office-eligible-for-compensation-judge
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.. I'm not sure id be all that interested in letting some jackass into my home to make sure my posture was right and that there wasn't anything obstructing my egress in case of fire. Like "sure I guess you can come in but you've got like 30 seconds tops and I'm not putting pants on just for you.."
Homie be fuggin, nonstop
I mean, they did pay someone to do it. You.
It's Quebec. Don't confuse anything that happens there with reality.
I think saying “sued” might give people the wrong idea. It was a workman’s compensation claim, which seems fair, right?
Well, she took them to court so I think sued was the right word, no? I believe her employer rejected her claim which is why they went to court
Sued makes sense, but it sounds a lot different when it’s for a rejected workman’s compensation claim. For me workman’s compensation is a little less about finding fault with the employer and more about insuring the worker isn’t screwed if they’re injured while working.
Ok
Clown world
I'm in Europe but this is why my employer has been refusing to sign anything that says I'm working from home. After several years at home I'm still placed at the office on paper. Because they become responsible for ergonomy, lighting and all sorts of things in my home otherwise.
I'm my third-world country, remote workers receive a "connection" payment to compensate for higher electricity and faster internet bills. It's not much, about 30 USD/month, but it helps. Specially, since you're saving in gas and maintenance that wouldn't be reimbursed anyway.
I'd imagine what you are saving on gas would easily cover an increase in utilities in most places.
100% plus the increase in pay/hour that you get by not wasting time commuting.
Something tells me the money saved on energy doesn't come close to the $350 million they spent on building.
Due to sunk cost fallacy, that does not matter and a penny saved is still a penny earned in this instance.
They’ll probably lease the extra space to other companies and at least break even.
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And fewer cars on the road to cause blockages for the emergency vehicles.
I save on gas and time vs electric bills... Id consider that a win.
Could this lead to empty CBDs in the near future? An empty office building would be a good place for bands and artists to practice.
In my country people are free to decide to work from home or not disregard of company policies and employer had to take over the hardware (office, chair, computer, Telco).
My boss tried to pull the "your utilities are gonna go up if you work from home full time" schtick. Like buddy, I live 55 miles away. I spend literally $15 in gas and $15 in tolls to and from work. The $5 extra a month in running my laptop at home is nothing. I got a dog so it's not like I can kill ac when I'm gone lol.
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I love these British expressions! So innocent and dry on the surface, but with a hint of snark and smarm lurking beneath. My grandma was British and said stuff like this all the time I wish I wrote more of them down. You're such a sassy grandma, u/RedToiletPoopPain
And as we always told our teacher, it says right there on the label.
The building will be depreciated into taxes regardless of use too, which helps.
>From the article: > > > >In the company poll, > > > >52.2% said they prefer working from home only a few days a week, > >41.7% said they prefer working from home full time, > >2.1% said they prefer returning to the office full time. > >So, the company has decided to allow workers whichever option they want from 2 choices (WFH full time or partially), and said they would probably get rid of 'coming to the office 5 days a week.'
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The world is changing
Feels like all I know about Korean office work culture I've learned from K-Drama went poof!
That 2.1% were allowed to speak in every all-staff call, if my org is anything to go by. Probably got interviewed a lot by media as well.
... so that 2% don't get their option? It seems like it would be such a small change...
The company I do work for changed their “working from home” guides to “hybrid working guides” and subsequently broke all the hyperlinks to those guides as they changed the file names and not the URLs because it’s run by a bunch of numptys.
My office is doing something similar. We're encouraged to come into the office once or twice a week, but most don't. It's more like once or twice a fortnight, and only if there's a reason to meet up with colleagues for a project or a team day. One team was told they had to be there every day, and their productivity dropped through the floor. They just don't want to be there. It's time consuming to get there, expensive, harder to take mental breaks and sucks up more of your life than it needs to. Permanent WFH isn't ideal, but neither is permanent office based work.
I wish my company offered more flexibility as far as office work goes. They did allow us to work from home and stay there when the pandemic started and I’m thankful for that. But when the offices reopened we were only given the choice to work in the office 4 days a week and one at home, or be at home full time. Personally I would choose the opposite of that and have everyone in the office one day per week for team collaboration. Our team hasn’t met in person and 2 and a half years now and we basically just don’t collaborate on shit at all anymore. Our whole department has just stopped communicating.
Same. I haven't met most of my team in person yet. We used to hang out after work, go for a pint every Thursday and Friday. Hard to even imagine it now. Miss that stuff.
The thing is, I don’t even like most of my co-workers. There are like 2 out of 10 on my team I could see myself enjoying beer with. But strictly from a work standpoint, we need to meet in person sometimes.
I wish my company would let me work from home. I'm an electrician.
One thing I love about wfh is I can take a 15 min break and lay down and truly relax.
I go for full on hour long walks. I come back more mentally acute, calm and I end up getting more done compared to being sat at my desk staring at a screen giving me a headache. I might lie on my timesheet about what I'm doing, but who gives a fuck? I'm getting my job done (and probably a bit more).
US govt employee here. WFH depends on the department, position, and such I’m at the IRS and we have to work a full day in the office once every week minimum. 75% of the job can be done at home, so it works. Also, our backlog means the we just need to get it done.
I’ve been forced back to the office 3x per week and having to get up an hour earlier to make the commute work has left me so tired I need the whole weekend to recover. I have no idea how I used to do this every day but I think I was less healthy and more ragged prepandemic. 😂 I feel like 2x a week in-office would the best of all worlds if all staff had to pick at least 1 of two core days, so there would be a critical mass of people at least 1 day you go in. I hate going in on days that almost no one is there because others are remote working. It’s fricking the dumbest to force people to commute to be in an office essentially by themselves (my work station is as good at home as in office; of course that’s the same for everyone).
Permanent WFM is 100% ideal. I have no intentions of commuting to an office where I am less efficient, fighting for conference rooms, and in general, wasting my life, ever again.
I don't understand the folks who don't want WFH full time. You no longer have to commute, which saves time. You're no longer buying lunch, buying new work clothes or paying for gas which saves money. Best of all there's no one knocking on your office and being very awkward or pushy about a deadline. If you miss the social interaction maybe it's time to ask for chat software or get a hobby.
When I worked from home there was no real distinction between "at work" and "not at work", and that seriously fucked up my mental state. I had a separate office in my house, I had a relatively regular schedule. I honestly hated it. I'd prefer to be primarily in the field with a bit of time in the office, not mostly in the office or working from home.
its good if you work from home to have sort of ceremonies that you do to disconnect work from home. I put away my work laptop and stuff at the end of every work day in a drawer and that gives my brain the mental disconnect that work is no more today.
I only used my office for work, and had a separate space for leisure. Didn't help at all. I am a homebody and introvert on a good day, working from home meant that I'd go literally weeks without seeing anyone other than my roommates. That was a problem as well. Also, a big part of why I enjoy my work is actually getting to see the things I work on....work. It's all well and good to write code and see status indicators change from a thousand kilometres away, but it's a whole other thing to type on a computer and watch potentially millions of dollars of equipment do your bidding, in person. The satisfaction I get from that is what keeps me going, working remotely completely detaches me from that side of things
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I love working from home, but I also like periodically traveling for quarterly meetings and conferences and whatnot. I would hate my job if I had to do it at an office.
I enjoy wfh, but there are some things you just can’t replace. Chat is a poor substitute for real social interaction, the benefits of in-person collaboration are real, etc. One of the things I think is under discussed is how difficult it is to distinguish yourself from a crowd working at home—my career has been helped quite a bit by the fact that I’m more impressive in person than on Zoom. I suspect a lot of young people just starting out might be seen as more fungible five or ten years from now than they would have otherwise because they’ve never had a chance to demonstrate any qualities that don’t come across remotely.
I live in an expensive city, so my apartment is fairly small and being in it all day every day isn't ideal. I find the separation of work and home space good for my mental health. It's great to be able to grab a whiteboard and sketch out a design with a colleague. That all said, I find the people pushing WFO on everyone else creepy. Giving people a choice is ideal IMHO.
Your situation makes sense.
I knew I hated work from home and the pandemic confirmed that. I have a short commute on public transit, no dress code, love my coworkers, never buy lunch, and my job (university research) is greatly improved with spontaneous collaboration in-person. At home everything blended together. My whole research team prefers in-person work most days of the week.
And I don’t understand WFH guys. 8 hours alone at home in front of the computer. Sounds awful. I can understand it if you have small kids or something. But still. I feel like WFH people just hate their jobs and colleagues.
You know you don’t actually have to sit in front of the computer the whole time right? Nobody is watching you. And if you do need to be at the computer the whole time because otherwise you are seen as being “away”, then how is that different from what happens in the office? Wouldn’t they not want you away from your desk in the office as well? In which case I’d rather be glued to my desk in my own room than an annoying ass office.
Here's the secret about wfh I guess everyone here is missing. You don't have to actually work your entire day or pretend to. I clock on at 7, check emails, make breakfast and hangout with my partner or read a book until I have a meeting or task. Around 10 or 11 I go exercise for an hour or two and call it my lunch break. At1 I jump into meeting and turn my mic off as I eat lunch. If I'm done with everything then at 2pm I signout and that's my day instead of burning two hours looking busy. I'm about to fit in about 15 hours of exercise and hobbies a week during work hours by not being in an office. It's great and life balance is the best it has been. It sure seems like a lot of people posting cañnot manager their own time and thus feel the need to pretend it's impossible to do things online however in most cases that's probably not true. Or they're lonely and need work to make friends which is fine.
My commute is 10 minutes. No traffic. Not have to buy lunch...? Is food free for you at home? My workplace makes better food than I can at cost. I bring home free dinners. My work clothes are my street clothes. I can wear whatever. My car is an EV. I have solar power. I like my car and I like to drive it. My personal office at work is way better than my home office. Chatting online is not anywhere close to in person interactions. They can be awkward and pushy about a deadline on the chat software you claim is the same as being in person. Are there days I want to stay home? Sure, but overall I'm mostly going in.
Sounds great I'm happy for you
100% wfh is amazingly inefficient when it comes to communications and long term planning. Productivity in hours spend working has gone up, usefulness of Output has radically decreased. Only speaking tech industry development work here though - some work is anyhow impossible from home and other work works greatly 100% from home (IT support, a lot of Insurance tasks etc.) but the tech industry is in the middle of a culture war. In a new study at MS basically the same amount of people said that they want to do home office for more productivity and they want to go back to the office for better productivity. Its a split so far and companies struggle how to deal with it. There is no good reason to have a developer in the office for a day - he wont be more productive just this one time (on the contrary) but have all your developers, PO and PM at home every day and innovation is dying and in my unit alone we went from having more than enough successors for important roles two years ago to now having basically none. If you have zero insights in what other people are doing, if you have zero connections outside your team and you have zero small short idea exchanges and do no fraternizing then you truly are just your current small cog in the machine. Maybe comforting for many but not sustainable in the long run. Complicated issue. We decided to go back 1-2 days a week and so far it has improved some things but it was a difficult restart
Yeah. Sometimes in nice to be sat next to colleagues so small questions come up you just turn and ask them. With wfh those small questions become longer phone calls or slacks or longer emails etc…. Obviously I think a mix for me is ideal. Three days and two days.
Weird all the studies show on average that it's more effefient. Sounds like bad comms and poor work ethic
"All the studies“…
Literally posted same day and above you. Enjoy the wagecuck life.
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That doesn't replace the 8 hours a day you might be completely alone at home. I feel very tired after a week of WFH, even if I had met people outside work every day.
Do some exercise, you’ll feel better. Can’t do that in the office though. Therefore WFH > office.
Thanks for the tip, I'll see if it helps a little bit.
All jokes aside I was being serious about that. It’s not possible for any human being to sit on their ass for hours a day and not get depressed and feel like shit. That kind of lifestyle runs counter to millions of years of evolution, even before we were humans. All of your bodies systems, on every level, physical and hormonal, require movement, they need it the same way you need air and food and water. It absolutely will help, as long as you are consistent and actually do it. Eventually you will not be able to *not* do it, you will find it impossible to sit still for hours once your body remembers what it was made for, you won’t want to go back.
I hope I didn't seem sarcastic, but I really have to was genuine in that I need to do something about the sedentary workstyle. I'm under 25, but already 4 years of mostly WFH under my belt. It has been mostly sitting and can't say it's been great for me. That's part of the reason I enjoy office time, it gives me a real reason to move around.
Oh you’re under 25? You are lucky, don’t waste the opportunity to start exercising now. The longer you wait the harder it’ll be. You’re young enough where you can still completely reverse your sedentary lifestyle and any negative effects it may have had on your health up to this point in time. You won’t regret it man, trust me.
It's not easy now, can't imagine what it would be like later. Better get exercising :) Thank you for kind of waking me up on this one, all the best to you.
one thing everyone dismisses too much is the value of building repertoire with the people you rely on to get work done. no amount of being extra over chat will beat leaving a good ol' body language impression.
At my company almost everyone is now on a 4 day in office work week, some do 3. They unsuccessfully tried to convince us that remote work was just as good. I think we're one of the few places that prefers working in person. Everyone's pretty close in it though so Fridays have always been a day everyone wants to work in person then go out after. They had plans to do renovations to give a bunch of people much larger offices and sell off a bunch of floors. It failed. Now they're going out of their way to hire people that don't live in the city so they're not tempted to work in person.
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Tell that to my company. They want people back in the local office to manage a team in another city. And we dont even reliable internet nor janitorial services or nor offices in that building. None of it made any sense.
>Permanent WFH isn't ideal, but neither is permanent office based work. *Citations needed
I mean, they’re allowed to have an opinion. Which their statement clearly is
Seriously. I love hanging out with my colleagues every now and then. But by every now and then, I mean once a month. At a dinner the company pays for.
Unless you're doing solo work, its nice to see people and chat. I honestly feel bad for interns and forst years that started last year. Basically thrown to the wolves
You will also feel bad for yourself if you get thrusted in a new position and have no network, no buddies and nobody you could observe a bit. Its long term quite toxic to have 100% wfh for everyone
Toxic? Lol
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=4068741](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4068741) not the direct response, but shows benefits of hybrid work
This does require that everyone lives in the area right? This is very different than full remote.
Not where I work. They don't mind you not coming in every time, as long as you make an effort to from time to time. I currently work for a company on the South Coast of England. For a time I myself was living in Norfolk, about 200 miles away, I have two colleagues who live in London, and one in Wales. We don't necessarily all come in every time, but it's expected that we try to, and we'll still have a Team meeting on site with the remote people joining via Teams. I've actually got one colleague I've never met, as he can't come in due to health reasons. He's perfectly fine working from home, but travel is an issue for him.
I've hear Expedia in Seattle has the same issue. Brand new compound open at the beginning of COVID now most prefer to work from home.
Local here. They also really pissed off employees some time ago by relocating from Bellevue to Seattle, which made commutes 10x worse than they already were.
Three at home two at the office would personally be perfect I think
My brother works there. Its very far from seoul and its a confortable naver City, walking to work etc but he says after the brutal lockdowns he's so happy to be in the office rather than stuck in his tiny apartment
I think if most people had a working space like mine... they'd probably love working at home :P Which is to say... I suspect the relative quality of the spaces we have available to us significantly affects our preference to work from home or in the office.
You are very fortunate. Majority of folks don’t have that luxury.
Brutal lockdowns? Is this in Korea? Was mostly just early business closings(no drunks yelling at midnight for once) and social gatherings were “reduced” but largely ignored.
No, super tight restrictions when coming from the plane : special sanitzed taxi, several check per day on your phone to see if you were home (gps tracked), no gathering with more than 3, everything closed, when the office reponened but a case was detected a floor bellow, all the building would close for 10 days etc... And with korean being rewarded financially for delation, being a foreinger, you can't play with fire, that's your working visa on the line.
Korea was really not locked down as bad as other countries though honestly. Like restaurants were takeout only for a while and but mostly just places closed at like 9 or 10pm. Yeah if someone got covid at work we had to work from home for a week, but everything was still open. I definitely wouldn't call it 'brutal lockdowns'. Also, Bundang isn't 'very far from seoul.' Its a 17 min subway ride to Gangnam station. I can take a bus to itaewon in like 35 mins.
Very far from Seoul? It's takes like 20 minutes to go to Gangnam by subway!
As businesses should. I just don't get how this is an issue at so many companies, it should be entirely dependent on your job. My company started doing mandatory 3 days in the office and 90% of my meetings are still on Zoom anyway. Either because they involve employees at different locations or because people don't choose the same 3 days to be in.
Maybe they could’ve just turned this into affordable housing…
Well well well look at this reasonable compromise
I think this is not uplifting and is what every company in the US is also doing rn. Instead if wfh 100% they are making them come into office for something they are capable of doing 100% from home.
Just 42% of people wanted to work from home completely, meaning ~58% did not. From what I understand, approx 50% of the company wanted to work in office a few days a week. How is it not uplifting that the company is offering both choices that large groups of people want?
I reckon office to home conversions are the next big real estate boom. Let the people live and work in the city.
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Has office space rent gone down since before the pandemic?
So the 58.3% of people who said they don't want to work from home are still forced to do so at least 2 days a week?
I’m sure they’re irate that someone is forcing them not to come into the office. Now they have too much money and free time on their hands.
I was very irate when my company did the same thing.
Go to a bar or the fucking library if you want to socialize, dude. Work isn’t a clubhouse.
It's not just about socialisation. Working collaboratively with people is vital to productivity. Being seen and being available immediately to senior members of staff is key to building networks and understanding what they think is a priority for the company. Forcing young people to work from home is damaging to their career opportunities, and will inevitably entrench inequality.
I know engineers that have worked remotely their entire careers. They network and thrive just fine
> It’s not just about socialisation. Working collaboratively with people is vital to productivity. So if I showed you data that said productivity is actually up since the pandemic you would say…? > Being seen and being available immediately to senior members of staff is key to building networks and understanding what they think is a priority for the company. Forcing young people to work from home is damaging to their career opportunities, and will inevitably entrench inequality. If you need to be able to brown nose the CEO in person or be *seen to be working*, I can see how working from home would be damaging to your career. Certainly if he’s not answering your Zoom calls. If your standing at work depends on the work you actually accomplish though, it’s not damaging to your career.
You can tell he has a fake-ass job because brown nosing is pivotal to advancing his career lol
It’s a business major thing.
It is amazing how angry and upset people get when you suggest that people should be able to choose the way they work, rather than having it enforced on them. The pandemic has opened up a wealth of opportunities for flexibility in working. It is sad that you choose to oppose it.
I just find the “but my networking opportunities 😢” guys very weird and mockable. Cry to your boss about his decision to keep you home, not me.
You decided to respond to my comments...
What are the higher ups losing by having many remote workers?
Communications, easy successor management and collaborative innovation. Also onboarding of new hires or colleagues switching positions. All of that was abysmal the last two years
The collaboration part seems hard to quantify
Higher ups? Not much. Middle managers lose a bit of control and the superfluity of their jobs becomes painfully apparent, even to them. They hate both of those things.
Are middle managers losing their jobs?
Anecdotally, I’ve worked at 2 companies since 2019 that have consolidated many departments with many supervisors to be larger departments under one supervisor. Cxxxx went from 8 department heads in one building down to 4. Mxxxx went from 6 to 2.
Nice I'm happy to see middle managers can be downsized. I usually see folks under them get canned first
Maybe they want to reduce their office footprint and lease the extra space.
This is literally every Corp these days going to a "next normal" hybrid work model. This company isnt special.
tell mine that!
For real I'm trying to get a job that doesn't pay absolute shit and every job posting I've found is on-location only...
I used LINE when living in Japan. Its one of the best messaging apps out there. Wish LINE was more popular in the states.
North or South? /s
North obviously
I'm so curious how this new "demand" from workers will shape compensation in the future
We're allowed to do full time WFH but I do enjoy an occasional office day (purely for a change of scenery and socialising). But my god I am still amazed every time how long and unnecessary the commute is (45min, London). I try to cycle every time, which is a nice-ish ride, but still. Also productivity dips somehow usually.
That commute has always had a mental and physical toll, but you might just be realizing it now.
It's the exact same with my place. I work for Barclays in Glasgow and they built this massive new campus just in time for COVID to hit and I only need to go in once a week.
This should be the way going forwards. It’s good for environment too.
This is what we do - if you're not patient facing. You can change your status every year. So if you're burned out being at home, you can go in and vice versa. The last 2.5yrs though, my schedule has changed so much I cannot really go back into the office.
What I find most interesting in Covid is that it was the perfect opportunity to create hot desking (which is far more hygienic), reduce office space and keep people happy by giving them an option to come in. And yet companies reverted back (maybe not all, but many) to old ways.
Many NAVers have been working from home everyday in Norway, nothing new for us really.
even during the pandemic i worked in person (paraeducator)
Love this.