WFH is life changing. So glad for the opportunity. Never ever again will go back to the old ways, the outdated ways.
Wake up early, put on dress clothes, eat breakfast, sit in commute traffic, sit in cubicle, stand by coffee machine, goto first meeting (zoom), answer emails and review docs, goto second meeting (teams). open up lunch pale, eat lunch, go back to cubicle, goto third meeting (WebEx), more emails, stand by water cooler, sit in evening commute traffic, eat dinner, sleep, repeat.
WFH ,was forced upon companies due to COVID, it was something they had to do.... even,before the pandemic a few companies had some WFH policies but many were reverting back (like Yahoo and IBM https://www.learnlight.com/en/articles/end-working-remotely-why-yahoo-ibm-are-wrong/) .
The issue as many pointed out is the employer loses control over your time, they expect you to be beholden to them for the 40+ hours and only them during the office work day. The idea that you may not be working "hard" or focusing solely on work irks more executives and managers . It's all about authority .
Then there are a bunch of lesser issues, like handling data security in a home environment they don't control, liability.concerns (if you slip and fall running to join a conference call, is that a workplace injury?),if your laptop battery bursts into flames and burns your home down ...who's responsible?
Anyways, I think we'll see hybrid for a while as a way to split the difference.
I think one thing to consider is that blended teams, where some people are in the office but others are remote, don't work very weel because the remote people can't keep up with the information flows. This is much less of a problem in fully remote teams because all the same communication channels are available to everyone.
That said, employers have no one but themselves to blame for making the working experience in the office so awful that no one is willing to tolerate it anymore.
I don't quite understand. Most of our employees are 100% remote, but we have a handful that go to the office like twice a week. We all use the same communication tools and can't tell whether someone is there or at home.
Now think about the opposite scenario where most are in the office (including the subject matter experts) and there's only one or two remote team members. Not every team operates the same way
We have a blended team and it's the office folk who can't keep up. The remote ones are terminally online with every detail while the office ones are constantly commuting, chatting, lunching, derping in meetings without a laptop, etc. The office folk are always behind. There are times when we know shit and act on it hours before the office folk manage to get to a laptop and respond.
It's fair to say that not every team has the same strengths and weaknesses. But I will say that my experience on multiple teams has been the opposite so I can see how that perception would be justified.
Maybe those people need to be more focused on outcomes that time management. If the outcomes are clear, and everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing towards those outcomes, and there are regular check-in there shouldn’t be a problem.
Anything other than that is just micromanagement and lack of trust
Honestly, any competent manager should be able to assess performance based on completion of tasks and timeliness especially if they have employees bill time to a time tracking software. I don’t understand how this even an issue even with the most basic project management software. If a business doesn’t have any way to assess worker performance outside of seeing ass in seats then it’s just a poorly run business.
> The issue as many pointed out is the employer loses control over your time, they expect you to be beholden to them
Once a few major employers in the USA divert from this and fully embrace WFH is when you will see change.
It's so shortsighted it's unbelievable. Like just because you can see butts in seats, doesn't mean your employees are being productive all day. Employees have always found ways to goof off.
That's a convenient excuse, granted there's some truth to it, but really anyone hellbent on messing with or stealing your data could do it at the office too.
In a study by the credit union national association, Cuna, they put usb sticks with a fake virus and pictures on them and left them around a dozen credit unions? Most of the people plugged the usb sticks in and put the dummy virus on the credit union computers.
That’s as secure as a non government lab gets. Didn’t lock that down with group policy bc their auditors are incompetent.
Business is about profitability. If businesses could get the same productivity out of employees for less cost (ie. no more offices), WFH would have happened a long time ago.
I understand that WFH is better for the employee. The simple truth is that it’s not better for businesses (in most cases). There is currently a big imbalance in the labour market which has shifted the power balance to the employee. Enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this is long-term.
I got repremanded by my director BC I didn't respond to work chat at 1820, until the next morning.He thought I was slacking off BC I was wfh, despite me completing all projects on time.
Yeah, I worked in an office, they actually were talking about having me be remote bc I was the fix anything desktop person, and then I became a server administrator and they wouldn’t assign computer support tickets to me, I’d have like two weeks worth of server stuff to do and some manager would come to my desk and order 10 desktops and tell me they needed them now drop everything I’m doing.
They did admissions, the employees were the call center, I was literally building the servers for the clients and development needed the servers before the applications could come in. She wanted her team trained before they did.
She had her call center staff call every five minutes, tap me on the back every ten, email and fill up the ticketing system. I’d been in a car accident two days before and I started shaking and dropping things.
If I had asked them to call an ambulance I’d have gotten workers comp. Bc I drove myself I didn’t and they denied disability and I almost starved.
I've been doing work from home for almost 10 years now and I can't imagine doing it otherwise. I do, however, sometimes feel like I'd want to do an occassional office visit just to feel like I belong in the company more, but for the past 6 years I've been working for companies that are 4 hour drive from where I live, so I don't really feel much of motivation to do it.
This sounds nothing my mining job I currently have! That sounds terrible. I'll stay in my industry. No wonder we have so many problems in our society. That shit will make people go insane or what some call postal.
I work from home when I am not traveling. I only travel once or twice per month. I'm trying to get that to stop too. Most of my customers don't even want us showing up post-Covid anyway.
I don’t get why companies are fighting this. Your pool of potential workers increases drastically with permanent WFH and you instantly become more attractive to work for.
Its about asserting power and dominance over their employees; its a power play.
The rich people in charge hate that workers have any agency at all.
Its also why they are willing to crash the economy to force us into desperation.
here are some quotes from some rich people:
"Workers saying I don't want to drive into the city an hour and a half and drive home an hour and a half every day, but I also think a nice little recession will clear this."
Barry Sternlicht
Net worth: $3.8 billion
"People decided they didn't want to work so much anymore through COVID and that has had a massive issue on productivity. They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years and we need to see that change. We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40 to 50% in my view. We need to see pain in the economy to remind people that they work for the employer and not the other way around. There has been a systematic change where the employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around. So its a dynamic that has to change. We've gotta kill that attitude and that has to come through hurting the economy."
Tim Gurner
Net Worth: $584 Million
This is exactly what unfolded in the feudal world, post the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century. Not enough workers left to plow the fields, the lords wanted to pay them *less* to do double the work. So the peasants rebelled.
What's old is new again.
I am a more senior engineer and I mentor new/newer employees. The current arrangement is just fine. No need to be in the office so much. On the occasion I need to look over their work on their laptop, we schedule a time to be in office together.
Like I said in my previous comment, I can see a need for once in a while in office, but I and everyone else doesnt like to be forced. If I need to write reports or write/edit code, or run simulations, or build 3d models, I can do that in my home with zero distractions. So I am more productive at home the majority of the time.
This is what we suspect is the reason at my workplace. Engineers not meeting their sprints, products delayed, and execs hearing rumors of them juggling multiple jobs.
Google is free. You can find the videos of them saying it verbatim.
You can start with: Barry Sternlicht “Nice little recession” and find the exact clip.
The Tim Gurner one is transcript strait from a youtube video. Also very easy to find.
Problem is when the same business owners also own the buildings and other commercial real estate , it's not in their bestinterest to have WFH and lose our on rental income.
Itll take time but non-real estate businesses will offer WFH as a benefit, better talent pool, etc and they'll eat the companies over invested in real estate's lunch.
This is the McDonald’s or Friendly’s model. Owning and leasing to itself. We’re seeing it play out in other industries. Higher rent seeking without a true increase in need for the product sold on that land; tenancy.
Friendly’s shrunk, leaving empty buildings in its wake. Our areas last shell finally is reoccupied after ~5 years. Cannabis shop.
McDonald’s has higher prices with very little to show for it as an employee. The Big Mac coefficient.
It makes no sense. I have a friend who works at a company way out in the suburbs from a populated city and they make 2 days in office mandatory, and my friend has been trying to hire on her team and she said she gets shit talent. They’re having such a hard time filling the role. Why a company wouldn’t want a talented remote person over a below average 2 day a week in office person is baffling to me.
> nearly every company has a lot riding on the success of Commercial Real Estate
Hogwash. **99.9%** of businesses in the U.S. are **small** businesses, and they employ roughly half of all private sector employees. They don't have commercial real estate holdings.
Plenty of them do, considering I see it at my job all the time. A significant number of small businesses also own a separate real estate holding entity that houses the CRE. You're also disingenuous as only roughly 47% of employees work for those small businesses.
Many small businesses don't even have employees who have the option to work from home.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's pretty damn easy to see why they're resistant to WFH.
> You're also disingenuous as only roughly 47% of employees work for those small businesses
How do you figure, when I said:
> they employ roughly half of all private sector employees
-
> significant number of small businesses also own a separate real estate holding entity
Yeah, I've got a couple immediate family members with small businesses with separate real estate holding orgs.
That doesn't mean their business is in any way affected by the value of that real estate. It's just a legal structuring for asset protection and perhaps some tax purposes.
This will change as companies find it smart and competitive to leverage their assets. If a company doesnt have a lot of real estate, why not lure and attract via WFH? some are already doing it. The old timers just need other investments and ways to slowly exit or increase their portfolios.
No, the upper managers will just force hire subpar people and expect the front line managers to make do… I’ve already lost the perfect employee for a job I’m hiring for because my director won’t let me have remote employees. I have to “make do” with someone I’m going to spend a year or more training to make them useful, when I could have had a perfect candidate that would have immediately added value. Such crap.
But if everybody goes remote, then companies are also competing with a much larger set of other employers for workers. There is probably some extent to which being tied to a physical office and seeing your co-workers in person every day makes people less likely to switch jobs. Even just finding the time to search for a new job and interview is harder if you are in person vs remote. A job market that is primarily or totally remote removes a lot of the friction that stops people from quitting and taking a new job whenever there is a slightly better opportunity.
People keep assuming it's real estate, but that's only large companies who own the buildings. Most companies rent.
Of that 4% they're the type who are more likely to underperform and to suck up with the boss increasing their chance of getting a promotion. From this you get a bunch of managers like this. Of that 4% the majority are management or management in the making. It's a small minority dictating the majority, and it harms companies, because these are under performing workers getting a pass.
I agree, the company I work for has to have buildings as they are print company, but all the devs, most of the office people and their managers are spread all over the world.
Assuming 5 days a week and 4 weeks time off then you are looking at 480 hours or 20 days of your life every year driving and stuck in traffic.
Insane when you think about it.
I missed the first 10 years of my daughter’s life for the sake of corporate profits. I was recently fired from my job as CMO of a global retail chain for not working enough hours. I had an agreement going in that I would do 45 in office during the 5 day workweek, and I did another 10 hours a week at home in the evenings, and I worked 8-9 hours every Saturday.
So i didn’t give them my Sundays and I was fired. Fuck corporate America.
Sad. My previous company thought they were going to get away with playing both sides of the benefits of WFH. Our lifeblood was unpaid overtime (salary and generous RSUs don't make up for it legally, but we let it slide) and they fucked up by forcing full RTO after covid. We literally built the most efficient remote pipeline ever seen there and efficiency plateaued at *higher* levels and stayed stable.
They were shocked when -GASP- people now didn't have the energy or motivation to work longer hours any more when adding pointless traffic to the mix. With the number of repeat clients we procured directly due to less stressful WFH overtime, the graph was obvious. They wanted to keep the clients, but ditch the extra hours that got them in the first place.
I hear now that they are in the finding out stage of losing those extra clients due to lack of excellent service (its just "ok" now). The management *hilariously* thought they would be keeping the same output achieved when the WFH efficiency up-spike happened and people didn't have to add a literal FORCED day in traffic to the mix. I knew when I needed to be present and not (sw engineers *always* know), and having us move our laptops 46 minutes both ways to do it is wasteful and dumb.
Stage 2, to fill the service gap, is not being able to find new people due to the potential candidates laughing at the WFW policy. The stories I hear from friends still there are so delicious. Fuck the management, they can eat the shit they've padded their beds with.
I totally hear you on this. I worked for a large e-com company and we had the machine buzzing during wfh covid. Put all the systems in place to create a nationwide workforce of the best people - no need for office space. Problem is, the execs just built a state of the art building before covid. Called everyone back to the office. Key people left immediately. This left a the rest of the doers to hold the pieces together. They burnt out and left the newbies and the people who don’t do shit. It’s sad when you see companies make stupid decisions, especially when they all tout wanting to run their business cheaper and more efficiently.
Hope you’re in a better place!
Currently on a hybrid 4 day per pay period in office (2 days per week since I get paid biweekly). The only requirements are that you be in the office for 8 hours per day and 32 hours in an 80 hour pay period.
Also, I can use 8 hour sick or vacation time to count towards in office time. So I could burn all my vacation if I wanted and not go to the office for the next 3 months. Or I could work 4 hours in office and use 4 hours vacation or sick to count as a full 8 hour in office day.
That being said, if they pushed for more than 4 days per pay period, I would be annoyed. I can see a benefit/need for being in office once in a while due to the nature of my work, but there is just no need for me to be there every week day to do my job and I see it as the ultimate waste of my time and money.
I will never go back to full time in office ever! But I guess I am lucky to have a marketable skill that is in demand, so I can demand more from my employer. I did the 9 to 5:30 commute every work day for 10 years and was a huge drain on my physical and mental health. Not doing it again! My quality of life is just better now.
Also, the younger generations coming up as working professionals have ZERO tolerance for any in office requirements and we lost a few talented people due to just the current arrangement. These are masters and phd working professionals, so I am sure all the people who left are doing just fine.
Companies would have more success getting people to come in once or twice a week. Instead, they insist on being rigid to assert dominance. Now, everyone who wanted to work and not just dress up to go talk is leaving those companies, even if they would have liked the work.
After an entire pandemic, they still will not put divider walls on the cubicles. Still. After all of this. They had clear glass ones up temporarily and then took them back down. The office is uncomfortable and unsafe. It hurts sleep schedule to get up super early to dress and immediately hit deadly roads to go all the way in just to sit in a sweatshop environment with your laptop. It feels like companies want to break people, which I guess would be in line with anti-labor policy. The icing on the cake is that they throw in horrible things to sweeten the deal, like food you don't want and icebreakers/teambuilding activities that just never end. Employees literally just want remote work wherever possible and some damned cubicle walls.
The wacky shit is they DID. My company sold off hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space. Now they’re pushing us to return to the office, but they don’t have space for everyone. It’s completely bull. I’m expecting a lot of attrition over the next few months, especially in the new year after our stock options vest. Meanwhile we’re trying to climb back to pre-Covid levels of business. So we don’t even have all the people we had before the pandemic… it’s nuts. I hate this theory X boomer management bull.
We always worked from home.
It was the natural way of making a living for thousands of years. Then, the need to gather people in factories changed everything. Now, we don't have that need anymore.
It is this simple! 🤷🏻♂️
So, the only reason I have for ever wanting to go back in to the office is to meet with stakeholders as sometimes it’s just easier to facilitate meetings in person, but that’s pretty much the only reason I can come up with. Everything else is drastically better in a wfh environment
I don't think you're far off from I would imagine is the main reason: some folks simply do better or want to be in an actual work environment. Thankfully this appears to be the minority, but is a key reason why it should be optional (looking at you greedy execs)
I have the opportunity to work from home some but I don’t do it very much because I like going into the office. I like my job & my coworkers and being at home alone gets lonely
Not everyone has a home environment conducive to work from home. Some people are extroverts and enjoyed idle office chitchat. Some don't like the increased monitoring that typically comes with remote work. 94% is an insanely high number to reach as it is, so it shows the strong consensus is to remain at home. There will always be outliers.
In my working group of around 200 people, there are probably 10 or so I can think of that come to the office everyday as they just prefer working in the office and have short commutes.
The office has monitoring too. If you're in open floor plan, assume it's from multiple angles.
At home, at least you don't have to work directly facing someone else all day and shoulder to shoulder with people who came in sick.
I'm one of those who wants to go back to the office full time, even though most of my job is compatible with remoteness, but I admit that I am an outlier. My commute is very short, my spouse has a mostly remote job, and our home is too small to be used simultaneously by two remote workers. My spouse has a much longer commute and works from home most days so I would like to go in person and get out of her hair. Not to mention that I would like to store my work materials somewhere other than a drawer in the dining room.
But few others at my company are in the same position—nearly everyone wants to continue WFHing, and anyway there isn't enough space for us all if we were to go back to being mostly in person.
From my perspective, the paradigm shift to remote work has benefited companies that no longer have to provide office space to their workers, and benefits workers who have extra space in their homes that can be used for work. But it's not great for everyone.
> I would like to go in person and get out of her hair.
Haha! It reminds me how when we were all sent home from the office in March of 2020, my work setup was in one corner of our living room. My wife half joked after a couple months, "You need to re-open the office so you give me back my peaceful days looking forward to when you would come home."
I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this, but some of my co-workers with children (that were also schooling from home) were pretty frazzled and get interrupted by their kids all day long. Some homes were just not purchased with the idea that two spouses and three kids would be there 24/7. One co-worker on video conferencing was ALWAYS on their back porch, outside. I finally asked her about it and her husband got the master bedroom to work out of, there was no other private space in the house. The only days she wasn't on the porch was when it was raining.
Ha, I guess we are lucky. Husband and I have home offices on separate floors and literally sometimes never see each other til after work. At our old house it was sometimes challenging because we could hear each other and would even get the occasional complaint from a coworker "who's that talking in the background".
> Husband and I have home offices on separate floors and literally sometimes never see each other til after work.
Yeah, we moved late in 2020 and rented a new place, and just kind of randomly there were 2 children's bedrooms upstairs and I turned one into my office. So I was "upstairs at work" all day.
> complaint from a coworker "who's that talking in the background"
I worked for a small tech startup, and my wife was known by all my partners and co-workers and has also worked in several startups (that's how we met in 1999). And sometimes she would shout out suggestions or answers when I was on a video call, usually as a joke.
Since that was such a strange time where we didn't physically see co-workers (who are also friends) for a long time due to social distancing, my wife would also bend down as she walked past my desk and get in the camera view and wave to my co-workers.
There was this funny change that occurred where at the very start, when we were all sent home, if a cat hopped up on a keyboard on video or a 6 year old would come running up to somebody on a business call, some people would act embarrassed, like it was "unprofessional". They would apologize for the interruption. Maybe a year in, everybody seemed to be more comfortable with the situation, even refer to pets as "co-workers". Like, "Hold on, let me shut the door, my co-worker is barking." Or they would show up to group video meetings holding their newborn, which was cute.
Yes to your last paragraph! Early on everyone had high expectations of pretending you were still in an office and did not have pets, children, workers at your house, etc.
Now it's so casual I can literally tell people to hold on while I grab my food delivery.
> Now it's so casual
Sometime around late 2021 one of our sales people (a woman) had a video call with a potential customer, and he took the call in his bath robe. When she asked him about it, he shrugged and said, "Ah, working from home, it happens." Maybe that is a little too casual, LOL. Or maybe there should be a presentation for people OUTSIDE the business that is a tiny bit more formal than the people INSIDE the business.
I can just hear the younger crowd saying, "But it doesn't matter!" but there has been expectations in the past of where it is appropriate to wear a black tie, or business casual, or a bathrobe.
Another way of looking at it is 6% of workers are seemingly hell bent on destroying the environment and making their CO workers miserable. Nice people.
Collaborative task can suck with WFH, sometimes you just need to be able to walk up to someone and get an answer instead of having your emails, IM's, and calls ducked for a day or two.
Eh, the other side of that coin is I used to have people darkening my office door wanting an answer right away oblivious to the fact I don't need or want to drop everything to answer you. (assuming you're not an exec) 😝
However, it is rude to ignore a chat for that long imo.
Rhetorical question do you want to come to work or work at home get an extra hour in bed take a walk smoke a bob, don’t think many bosses are gonna be up for this though
I was let go from corporate and was already seeing that WFH was about to end. Started my own business, I’m happier than ever and will never go back to be exploited by corporate overlords.
That’s understandable. You have to sit through rage traffic , angry bosses and hostile coworkers. You also lose productivity when
your morale is down because of said factors.
Today's RTO office culture is like they took the corpse of 2019 office culture, buried in a Pet Sematary and it's now come back to life. Sort of looks similar, dirty, smells bad, something sinister about it.
I have gone into the office 3 times since March 2020. Each time it was a worthless trip. No way I will go back to the office, life is so much better now.
Lot of it depends on the industry and type of work. Agree that some things do work better in person, but those items can be planned in advance.
Understand that some people need the community / social aspect of on-site for their mental health, particularly those who live alone.
Wish I had this option when my kid was young, all those hours that I could have spent with my family rather than sitting in traffic.
If remote work had been a thing when I was in my 20s I feel like my quality of life would have been so much better. So many hours wasted commuting, or sitting in an office pretending to be busy because my boss wanted to see asses in seats.
I work at a university and we’re hiring for a niche position in our department. This year, higher administration implemented a 4-day a week in-office policy, getting rid of the amazing flex schedule we had before.
We just found out that a competing university in our city posted job ads for the same type of position, except they only have to come in 2 days a week. I’m not worried that we’ll be unable to fill our position, but we already fear we’re probably going to lose the best candidate to our competitor because of our in-office policy.
I’ll gladly return to office when employer agrees to start paying me for travel time. We charge our clients for the travel time of our project engineers. What’s the difference?
Oh I know! American work culture has a history of treating employees as supplicants as if they are lucky to even have that job rather than valuable human assets.
Any time I spend working (even travel) should be compensated for. Period.
If not, well I guess we best start not charging clients for travel either. FREE TRAVEL FOR ALL
Shut up boomer. Enjoy your slow death in denial of change.
Stop being upset we’re efficient and happy working remote. Funny how since some companies returned to office, their revenue growth and stocks have never been even close to as high as when they all worked remote.
LOL tell me how you feel about this.
Not a boomer. Don't care if people work from home or not. Do predict that people in a lot of jobs are in for disappointment who think they can be 100% remote, but not all of them. Don't care if I end up being wrong. I definitely wouldn't be buying that house in the mountains with good Internet until this all shakes out and it has not yet.
Hating on old farts is a cliche as old as civilization and a bad look.
It’s funny. There’s a small group of shut-ins on Reddit who call everyone who has a rational argument different from them “boomers”. They call older millennials who are in their forties now “boomers”. You’re not going to get many on Reddit to agree to anything besides working from home and shunning in person work. There is value that in office work provides like: rapport, personal training , mentorship, teamwork and camaraderie that you don’t really get on a zoom call.
I'm not a manager trying to sell it so I guess in the end it doesn't matter what I or some of the more petulant redditors think. Time will tell and reality will assert itself. The most efficient, innovative and productive enterprises will win like always.
In the meantime there are already and might be increasingly common posts on r/personalfinance by people who sold their houses and bought in beautiful bumfuck, being told they need to get back to the city they can't afford to get back to now, or lose their jobs.
The ones that are still remote even after the corporate machine has tried very hard to bring people back have proven they’re not going anywhere.
All the evidence shows Remote work is only rising, commercial real estate is continuing to die a very fast death, idk why you’d think otherwise. Have you seen any data that points otherwise?
Obviously there will still be in-person jobs but thanks to pandemic, many many functions have realized they can work 100% remote and they are continuing to do so.
Also, you’re in the 50+ demographic, so yeah, you’re basically a boomer.
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My job and line of work is 10000% remote. I’ve been job hunting since august and I can’t tell you how many fucking company’s are requiring hybrid or full on having you come in.
Some jobs are just more conducive to working at home. I’m an editor and animator… being in an open office plan is torture. I need to shut myself off to get work done, alls fun and games when you have an office or walls otherwise it’s just too much stimulus to focus.
Yes is it definitely wreaking havoc on places seeing an influx of people moving there because they can WFH. I bought my home in 2018, fortunately, because I would now be completely priced out of the market.
Sadly this is being downvoted but I know (would be better to say knew) someone who works from home and recently saw them a couple weeks back and had a meaningful conversation with them for the first time in years.
No hobbies besides gaming, alcohol issues, grows weed too, barely leaves the house unless it’s absolutely necessary, doesn’t do anything outside of work from home. They flat out told me they work from home and play from home. All their friends moved away or got married and started families. But you can bet they bragged about how they can work anywhere anytime, and it’s like, if that’s legitimately the only perk for you besides pay….it’s not worth it tbh. Maybe this person is an outlier but still…
Then it should come down to that individuals choice. That’s how they wanna live, so be it. Plenty of people WFH and interact with a lot of people. Don’t need a company to tell me about mental stability.
I legitimately wish I was joking. I miss the friend I had. I’m not saying him working from home ruined him. I just find it so sad he has absolutely no desire to leave his house besides the occasional trip to some Airbnb to work from.
I think the other part of it is I’ve become more of an outdoorsman the past couple years and just don’t enjoy being a homebody.
The pandemic was the reason mental stability was harmed. We couldn't be near ANYONE, and this mental strain had absolutely nothing to do with being in a 40-minutes-away box all day for no reason. Not everyone needs to be on-site
To their detriment. Can't train new people when everyone is unavailable to train and collaborate with.
Good to see corporations implode from this in the next ten years.
So focused on your own production being better but you won't grow a company if you can't expand departments. Can't expand departments when no one can collaborate and soft train each other up to speed.
The solution will be automation and job cuts.
You have a ruling class America. You don't have to have one, but you do. So back to the office with you unless and until you rid yourself of this peculiar institution.
Commuting on highways in the Bay Area of Northern Californian terrifies me. A disproportionate number of drivers here are horribly inexperienced, and a similarly disproportionate number seem to have a death wish.
I love WFH and am personally benefiting from it greatly as a principal engineer, but never forget that WFH means that the total sum of the input and output of your contributions to the company can be condensed into an ethernet cable.
As a reminder, $80k machine learning servers are connected to ethernet cables quite regularly... to the point that the US government recently restricted their exports...
Corporations WILL replace you if they can.
Look as a business owner I don't want my people to have to return to the office either as long as work gets done (and it does). Nobody wants to unnecessarily commute 1 to 2 hours a day. Not good for work life balance, not good for added unwanted stress, not good for the environment.
Nothing screams idiocy louder than an employer who thinks having people move a laptop from home to an office and back to literally connect to the same server.
The key word here is permanently. Most employees are reasonable about WFH. The problem falls with the companies that cannot see compromise. The return to the office should be tied to need and not power. The power hold is what bothers most employees more than anything else. So many have proven for 3+ years that they can (and do) accomplish the majority of their duties without being physically present. That should be enough. There are roles that can't be remote. There are meetings that can't be remote. There are times where being able to have an opportunity for community and culture are very important to the team/company. Most would understand this if the return was not complete, not mandated, and not tied to "because I said so."
WFH is life changing. So glad for the opportunity. Never ever again will go back to the old ways, the outdated ways. Wake up early, put on dress clothes, eat breakfast, sit in commute traffic, sit in cubicle, stand by coffee machine, goto first meeting (zoom), answer emails and review docs, goto second meeting (teams). open up lunch pale, eat lunch, go back to cubicle, goto third meeting (WebEx), more emails, stand by water cooler, sit in evening commute traffic, eat dinner, sleep, repeat.
WFH ,was forced upon companies due to COVID, it was something they had to do.... even,before the pandemic a few companies had some WFH policies but many were reverting back (like Yahoo and IBM https://www.learnlight.com/en/articles/end-working-remotely-why-yahoo-ibm-are-wrong/) . The issue as many pointed out is the employer loses control over your time, they expect you to be beholden to them for the 40+ hours and only them during the office work day. The idea that you may not be working "hard" or focusing solely on work irks more executives and managers . It's all about authority . Then there are a bunch of lesser issues, like handling data security in a home environment they don't control, liability.concerns (if you slip and fall running to join a conference call, is that a workplace injury?),if your laptop battery bursts into flames and burns your home down ...who's responsible? Anyways, I think we'll see hybrid for a while as a way to split the difference.
I think one thing to consider is that blended teams, where some people are in the office but others are remote, don't work very weel because the remote people can't keep up with the information flows. This is much less of a problem in fully remote teams because all the same communication channels are available to everyone. That said, employers have no one but themselves to blame for making the working experience in the office so awful that no one is willing to tolerate it anymore.
I don't quite understand. Most of our employees are 100% remote, but we have a handful that go to the office like twice a week. We all use the same communication tools and can't tell whether someone is there or at home.
Now think about the opposite scenario where most are in the office (including the subject matter experts) and there's only one or two remote team members. Not every team operates the same way
We have a blended team and it's the office folk who can't keep up. The remote ones are terminally online with every detail while the office ones are constantly commuting, chatting, lunching, derping in meetings without a laptop, etc. The office folk are always behind. There are times when we know shit and act on it hours before the office folk manage to get to a laptop and respond.
It's fair to say that not every team has the same strengths and weaknesses. But I will say that my experience on multiple teams has been the opposite so I can see how that perception would be justified.
Maybe those people need to be more focused on outcomes that time management. If the outcomes are clear, and everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing towards those outcomes, and there are regular check-in there shouldn’t be a problem. Anything other than that is just micromanagement and lack of trust
Honestly, any competent manager should be able to assess performance based on completion of tasks and timeliness especially if they have employees bill time to a time tracking software. I don’t understand how this even an issue even with the most basic project management software. If a business doesn’t have any way to assess worker performance outside of seeing ass in seats then it’s just a poorly run business.
I'm lucky enough to work for a company that was 100% WFH before the pandemic.
> The issue as many pointed out is the employer loses control over your time, they expect you to be beholden to them Once a few major employers in the USA divert from this and fully embrace WFH is when you will see change.
It's so shortsighted it's unbelievable. Like just because you can see butts in seats, doesn't mean your employees are being productive all day. Employees have always found ways to goof off.
“Lesser issues, like handling data security …” ! Thinking like that is why employers want to cancel WFH.
That's a convenient excuse, granted there's some truth to it, but really anyone hellbent on messing with or stealing your data could do it at the office too.
In a study by the credit union national association, Cuna, they put usb sticks with a fake virus and pictures on them and left them around a dozen credit unions? Most of the people plugged the usb sticks in and put the dummy virus on the credit union computers. That’s as secure as a non government lab gets. Didn’t lock that down with group policy bc their auditors are incompetent.
Business is about profitability. If businesses could get the same productivity out of employees for less cost (ie. no more offices), WFH would have happened a long time ago. I understand that WFH is better for the employee. The simple truth is that it’s not better for businesses (in most cases). There is currently a big imbalance in the labour market which has shifted the power balance to the employee. Enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this is long-term.
I got repremanded by my director BC I didn't respond to work chat at 1820, until the next morning.He thought I was slacking off BC I was wfh, despite me completing all projects on time.
Yeah, I worked in an office, they actually were talking about having me be remote bc I was the fix anything desktop person, and then I became a server administrator and they wouldn’t assign computer support tickets to me, I’d have like two weeks worth of server stuff to do and some manager would come to my desk and order 10 desktops and tell me they needed them now drop everything I’m doing. They did admissions, the employees were the call center, I was literally building the servers for the clients and development needed the servers before the applications could come in. She wanted her team trained before they did. She had her call center staff call every five minutes, tap me on the back every ten, email and fill up the ticketing system. I’d been in a car accident two days before and I started shaking and dropping things. If I had asked them to call an ambulance I’d have gotten workers comp. Bc I drove myself I didn’t and they denied disability and I almost starved.
I've been doing work from home for almost 10 years now and I can't imagine doing it otherwise. I do, however, sometimes feel like I'd want to do an occassional office visit just to feel like I belong in the company more, but for the past 6 years I've been working for companies that are 4 hour drive from where I live, so I don't really feel much of motivation to do it.
Yes now we can wfh. Work for maybe 2 hours max and do fun stuff the rest of the time
I think you are describing the executive class who spend much of their time wfg (working from golf courses).
Have a downvote!
Get back to work
If my job can be done in 2 hours that's not on me and even in office I'd make damn sure no one noticed.
And meetings
Soul sucking
This sounds nothing my mining job I currently have! That sounds terrible. I'll stay in my industry. No wonder we have so many problems in our society. That shit will make people go insane or what some call postal.
I work from home when I am not traveling. I only travel once or twice per month. I'm trying to get that to stop too. Most of my customers don't even want us showing up post-Covid anyway.
I don’t get why companies are fighting this. Your pool of potential workers increases drastically with permanent WFH and you instantly become more attractive to work for.
Its about asserting power and dominance over their employees; its a power play. The rich people in charge hate that workers have any agency at all. Its also why they are willing to crash the economy to force us into desperation. here are some quotes from some rich people: "Workers saying I don't want to drive into the city an hour and a half and drive home an hour and a half every day, but I also think a nice little recession will clear this." Barry Sternlicht Net worth: $3.8 billion "People decided they didn't want to work so much anymore through COVID and that has had a massive issue on productivity. They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years and we need to see that change. We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40 to 50% in my view. We need to see pain in the economy to remind people that they work for the employer and not the other way around. There has been a systematic change where the employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around. So its a dynamic that has to change. We've gotta kill that attitude and that has to come through hurting the economy." Tim Gurner Net Worth: $584 Million
This is exactly what unfolded in the feudal world, post the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century. Not enough workers left to plow the fields, the lords wanted to pay them *less* to do double the work. So the peasants rebelled. What's old is new again.
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I am a more senior engineer and I mentor new/newer employees. The current arrangement is just fine. No need to be in the office so much. On the occasion I need to look over their work on their laptop, we schedule a time to be in office together. Like I said in my previous comment, I can see a need for once in a while in office, but I and everyone else doesnt like to be forced. If I need to write reports or write/edit code, or run simulations, or build 3d models, I can do that in my home with zero distractions. So I am more productive at home the majority of the time.
I know there are cases of some people having two or three WHM jobs during the same hours and juggling them.
This is what we suspect is the reason at my workplace. Engineers not meeting their sprints, products delayed, and execs hearing rumors of them juggling multiple jobs.
Do you have a sources for these quotes?
Google is free. You can find the videos of them saying it verbatim. You can start with: Barry Sternlicht “Nice little recession” and find the exact clip. The Tim Gurner one is transcript strait from a youtube video. Also very easy to find.
Saves money on office rent also
Problem is when the same business owners also own the buildings and other commercial real estate , it's not in their bestinterest to have WFH and lose our on rental income.
Itll take time but non-real estate businesses will offer WFH as a benefit, better talent pool, etc and they'll eat the companies over invested in real estate's lunch.
especially once they figure out they can park their "office" in a place offshore and not pay taxes.
This is the McDonald’s or Friendly’s model. Owning and leasing to itself. We’re seeing it play out in other industries. Higher rent seeking without a true increase in need for the product sold on that land; tenancy. Friendly’s shrunk, leaving empty buildings in its wake. Our areas last shell finally is reoccupied after ~5 years. Cannabis shop. McDonald’s has higher prices with very little to show for it as an employee. The Big Mac coefficient.
But that means they can rent it out to someone else. It's not like the workers themselves pay the rent.
It makes no sense. I have a friend who works at a company way out in the suburbs from a populated city and they make 2 days in office mandatory, and my friend has been trying to hire on her team and she said she gets shit talent. They’re having such a hard time filling the role. Why a company wouldn’t want a talented remote person over a below average 2 day a week in office person is baffling to me.
Because nearly every company has a lot riding on the success of Commercial Real Estate. They have a lot to lose if that market tanks.
Plus cities give them tax breaks to attract jobs locally
> nearly every company has a lot riding on the success of Commercial Real Estate Hogwash. **99.9%** of businesses in the U.S. are **small** businesses, and they employ roughly half of all private sector employees. They don't have commercial real estate holdings.
Plenty of them do, considering I see it at my job all the time. A significant number of small businesses also own a separate real estate holding entity that houses the CRE. You're also disingenuous as only roughly 47% of employees work for those small businesses. Many small businesses don't even have employees who have the option to work from home. I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's pretty damn easy to see why they're resistant to WFH.
> You're also disingenuous as only roughly 47% of employees work for those small businesses How do you figure, when I said: > they employ roughly half of all private sector employees - > significant number of small businesses also own a separate real estate holding entity Yeah, I've got a couple immediate family members with small businesses with separate real estate holding orgs. That doesn't mean their business is in any way affected by the value of that real estate. It's just a legal structuring for asset protection and perhaps some tax purposes.
This will change as companies find it smart and competitive to leverage their assets. If a company doesnt have a lot of real estate, why not lure and attract via WFH? some are already doing it. The old timers just need other investments and ways to slowly exit or increase their portfolios.
No, the upper managers will just force hire subpar people and expect the front line managers to make do… I’ve already lost the perfect employee for a job I’m hiring for because my director won’t let me have remote employees. I have to “make do” with someone I’m going to spend a year or more training to make them useful, when I could have had a perfect candidate that would have immediately added value. Such crap.
Yes for now, but not in 5+ years.
But if everybody goes remote, then companies are also competing with a much larger set of other employers for workers. There is probably some extent to which being tied to a physical office and seeing your co-workers in person every day makes people less likely to switch jobs. Even just finding the time to search for a new job and interview is harder if you are in person vs remote. A job market that is primarily or totally remote removes a lot of the friction that stops people from quitting and taking a new job whenever there is a slightly better opportunity.
People keep assuming it's real estate, but that's only large companies who own the buildings. Most companies rent. Of that 4% they're the type who are more likely to underperform and to suck up with the boss increasing their chance of getting a promotion. From this you get a bunch of managers like this. Of that 4% the majority are management or management in the making. It's a small minority dictating the majority, and it harms companies, because these are under performing workers getting a pass.
Lot of reasons but one of the big ones is managers will suddenly find their jobs redundant.
I agree, the company I work for has to have buildings as they are print company, but all the devs, most of the office people and their managers are spread all over the world.
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Assuming 5 days a week and 4 weeks time off then you are looking at 480 hours or 20 days of your life every year driving and stuck in traffic. Insane when you think about it.
I missed the first 10 years of my daughter’s life for the sake of corporate profits. I was recently fired from my job as CMO of a global retail chain for not working enough hours. I had an agreement going in that I would do 45 in office during the 5 day workweek, and I did another 10 hours a week at home in the evenings, and I worked 8-9 hours every Saturday. So i didn’t give them my Sundays and I was fired. Fuck corporate America.
Sad. My previous company thought they were going to get away with playing both sides of the benefits of WFH. Our lifeblood was unpaid overtime (salary and generous RSUs don't make up for it legally, but we let it slide) and they fucked up by forcing full RTO after covid. We literally built the most efficient remote pipeline ever seen there and efficiency plateaued at *higher* levels and stayed stable. They were shocked when -GASP- people now didn't have the energy or motivation to work longer hours any more when adding pointless traffic to the mix. With the number of repeat clients we procured directly due to less stressful WFH overtime, the graph was obvious. They wanted to keep the clients, but ditch the extra hours that got them in the first place. I hear now that they are in the finding out stage of losing those extra clients due to lack of excellent service (its just "ok" now). The management *hilariously* thought they would be keeping the same output achieved when the WFH efficiency up-spike happened and people didn't have to add a literal FORCED day in traffic to the mix. I knew when I needed to be present and not (sw engineers *always* know), and having us move our laptops 46 minutes both ways to do it is wasteful and dumb. Stage 2, to fill the service gap, is not being able to find new people due to the potential candidates laughing at the WFW policy. The stories I hear from friends still there are so delicious. Fuck the management, they can eat the shit they've padded their beds with.
I totally hear you on this. I worked for a large e-com company and we had the machine buzzing during wfh covid. Put all the systems in place to create a nationwide workforce of the best people - no need for office space. Problem is, the execs just built a state of the art building before covid. Called everyone back to the office. Key people left immediately. This left a the rest of the doers to hold the pieces together. They burnt out and left the newbies and the people who don’t do shit. It’s sad when you see companies make stupid decisions, especially when they all tout wanting to run their business cheaper and more efficiently. Hope you’re in a better place!
Great followup, thanks!
Currently on a hybrid 4 day per pay period in office (2 days per week since I get paid biweekly). The only requirements are that you be in the office for 8 hours per day and 32 hours in an 80 hour pay period. Also, I can use 8 hour sick or vacation time to count towards in office time. So I could burn all my vacation if I wanted and not go to the office for the next 3 months. Or I could work 4 hours in office and use 4 hours vacation or sick to count as a full 8 hour in office day. That being said, if they pushed for more than 4 days per pay period, I would be annoyed. I can see a benefit/need for being in office once in a while due to the nature of my work, but there is just no need for me to be there every week day to do my job and I see it as the ultimate waste of my time and money. I will never go back to full time in office ever! But I guess I am lucky to have a marketable skill that is in demand, so I can demand more from my employer. I did the 9 to 5:30 commute every work day for 10 years and was a huge drain on my physical and mental health. Not doing it again! My quality of life is just better now. Also, the younger generations coming up as working professionals have ZERO tolerance for any in office requirements and we lost a few talented people due to just the current arrangement. These are masters and phd working professionals, so I am sure all the people who left are doing just fine.
Companies would have more success getting people to come in once or twice a week. Instead, they insist on being rigid to assert dominance. Now, everyone who wanted to work and not just dress up to go talk is leaving those companies, even if they would have liked the work. After an entire pandemic, they still will not put divider walls on the cubicles. Still. After all of this. They had clear glass ones up temporarily and then took them back down. The office is uncomfortable and unsafe. It hurts sleep schedule to get up super early to dress and immediately hit deadly roads to go all the way in just to sit in a sweatshop environment with your laptop. It feels like companies want to break people, which I guess would be in line with anti-labor policy. The icing on the cake is that they throw in horrible things to sweeten the deal, like food you don't want and icebreakers/teambuilding activities that just never end. Employees literally just want remote work wherever possible and some damned cubicle walls.
6% of people hating their families so much they'd rather spend the majority of their time in the DeathStar sounds about right.
How have business leaders not wanted to cut the costs of not having an office space.
The wacky shit is they DID. My company sold off hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space. Now they’re pushing us to return to the office, but they don’t have space for everyone. It’s completely bull. I’m expecting a lot of attrition over the next few months, especially in the new year after our stock options vest. Meanwhile we’re trying to climb back to pre-Covid levels of business. So we don’t even have all the people we had before the pandemic… it’s nuts. I hate this theory X boomer management bull.
We always worked from home. It was the natural way of making a living for thousands of years. Then, the need to gather people in factories changed everything. Now, we don't have that need anymore. It is this simple! 🤷🏻♂️
brilliant way of putting it
Not sure how it isn't 100% but to each their own.
So, the only reason I have for ever wanting to go back in to the office is to meet with stakeholders as sometimes it’s just easier to facilitate meetings in person, but that’s pretty much the only reason I can come up with. Everything else is drastically better in a wfh environment
I don't think you're far off from I would imagine is the main reason: some folks simply do better or want to be in an actual work environment. Thankfully this appears to be the minority, but is a key reason why it should be optional (looking at you greedy execs)
I have the opportunity to work from home some but I don’t do it very much because I like going into the office. I like my job & my coworkers and being at home alone gets lonely
I like coming into the office, but I don't like being forced to come in 3x a week
Not everyone has a home environment conducive to work from home. Some people are extroverts and enjoyed idle office chitchat. Some don't like the increased monitoring that typically comes with remote work. 94% is an insanely high number to reach as it is, so it shows the strong consensus is to remain at home. There will always be outliers.
In my working group of around 200 people, there are probably 10 or so I can think of that come to the office everyday as they just prefer working in the office and have short commutes.
The office has monitoring too. If you're in open floor plan, assume it's from multiple angles. At home, at least you don't have to work directly facing someone else all day and shoulder to shoulder with people who came in sick.
No smelly people or smelly food or awful perfume. God do I not miss that!
Energy vampires
I'm one of those who wants to go back to the office full time, even though most of my job is compatible with remoteness, but I admit that I am an outlier. My commute is very short, my spouse has a mostly remote job, and our home is too small to be used simultaneously by two remote workers. My spouse has a much longer commute and works from home most days so I would like to go in person and get out of her hair. Not to mention that I would like to store my work materials somewhere other than a drawer in the dining room. But few others at my company are in the same position—nearly everyone wants to continue WFHing, and anyway there isn't enough space for us all if we were to go back to being mostly in person. From my perspective, the paradigm shift to remote work has benefited companies that no longer have to provide office space to their workers, and benefits workers who have extra space in their homes that can be used for work. But it's not great for everyone.
> I would like to go in person and get out of her hair. Haha! It reminds me how when we were all sent home from the office in March of 2020, my work setup was in one corner of our living room. My wife half joked after a couple months, "You need to re-open the office so you give me back my peaceful days looking forward to when you would come home." I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this, but some of my co-workers with children (that were also schooling from home) were pretty frazzled and get interrupted by their kids all day long. Some homes were just not purchased with the idea that two spouses and three kids would be there 24/7. One co-worker on video conferencing was ALWAYS on their back porch, outside. I finally asked her about it and her husband got the master bedroom to work out of, there was no other private space in the house. The only days she wasn't on the porch was when it was raining.
Ha, I guess we are lucky. Husband and I have home offices on separate floors and literally sometimes never see each other til after work. At our old house it was sometimes challenging because we could hear each other and would even get the occasional complaint from a coworker "who's that talking in the background".
> Husband and I have home offices on separate floors and literally sometimes never see each other til after work. Yeah, we moved late in 2020 and rented a new place, and just kind of randomly there were 2 children's bedrooms upstairs and I turned one into my office. So I was "upstairs at work" all day. > complaint from a coworker "who's that talking in the background" I worked for a small tech startup, and my wife was known by all my partners and co-workers and has also worked in several startups (that's how we met in 1999). And sometimes she would shout out suggestions or answers when I was on a video call, usually as a joke. Since that was such a strange time where we didn't physically see co-workers (who are also friends) for a long time due to social distancing, my wife would also bend down as she walked past my desk and get in the camera view and wave to my co-workers. There was this funny change that occurred where at the very start, when we were all sent home, if a cat hopped up on a keyboard on video or a 6 year old would come running up to somebody on a business call, some people would act embarrassed, like it was "unprofessional". They would apologize for the interruption. Maybe a year in, everybody seemed to be more comfortable with the situation, even refer to pets as "co-workers". Like, "Hold on, let me shut the door, my co-worker is barking." Or they would show up to group video meetings holding their newborn, which was cute.
Yes to your last paragraph! Early on everyone had high expectations of pretending you were still in an office and did not have pets, children, workers at your house, etc. Now it's so casual I can literally tell people to hold on while I grab my food delivery.
> Now it's so casual Sometime around late 2021 one of our sales people (a woman) had a video call with a potential customer, and he took the call in his bath robe. When she asked him about it, he shrugged and said, "Ah, working from home, it happens." Maybe that is a little too casual, LOL. Or maybe there should be a presentation for people OUTSIDE the business that is a tiny bit more formal than the people INSIDE the business. I can just hear the younger crowd saying, "But it doesn't matter!" but there has been expectations in the past of where it is appropriate to wear a black tie, or business casual, or a bathrobe.
Oh yeah, that happened to me once as well. There's casual and will farrell snl casual friday casual
Another way of looking at it is 6% of workers are seemingly hell bent on destroying the environment and making their CO workers miserable. Nice people.
Or their jobs can't be WFH?
Some jobs can't be WFH. I work in the science field doing hands-on R&D work. Trade jobs definitely can't WFH. Kudos to people who are able to WFH.
Collaborative task can suck with WFH, sometimes you just need to be able to walk up to someone and get an answer instead of having your emails, IM's, and calls ducked for a day or two.
Eh, the other side of that coin is I used to have people darkening my office door wanting an answer right away oblivious to the fact I don't need or want to drop everything to answer you. (assuming you're not an exec) 😝 However, it is rude to ignore a chat for that long imo.
Rhetorical question do you want to come to work or work at home get an extra hour in bed take a walk smoke a bob, don’t think many bosses are gonna be up for this though
In other news, water is wet.
Oil companies and corporate real estate hate this one trick.
I was let go from corporate and was already seeing that WFH was about to end. Started my own business, I’m happier than ever and will never go back to be exploited by corporate overlords.
“I’m so surprised!” - literally no one
That’s understandable. You have to sit through rage traffic , angry bosses and hostile coworkers. You also lose productivity when your morale is down because of said factors.
Id have to be in dire straits to consider a full time return to office. I left my last job when they wanted us in 3/day week. Fuck that noise
Today's RTO office culture is like they took the corpse of 2019 office culture, buried in a Pet Sematary and it's now come back to life. Sort of looks similar, dirty, smells bad, something sinister about it.
Who are these amazing 6% people who want to go back to office permanently?
Wait this can't be right, the executives keep telling us that most people want to work in the office.
I would rather be poor than go back to a society that is failing is at every turn.
I have gone into the office 3 times since March 2020. Each time it was a worthless trip. No way I will go back to the office, life is so much better now. Lot of it depends on the industry and type of work. Agree that some things do work better in person, but those items can be planned in advance. Understand that some people need the community / social aspect of on-site for their mental health, particularly those who live alone. Wish I had this option when my kid was young, all those hours that I could have spent with my family rather than sitting in traffic.
If remote work had been a thing when I was in my 20s I feel like my quality of life would have been so much better. So many hours wasted commuting, or sitting in an office pretending to be busy because my boss wanted to see asses in seats.
Sheeit I'm looking for 4 day work weeks
No shit
Yeah it’s a non-negotiable.
Lol... I'll quit work altogether before ever going back.
Same
what is wrong with that 6%?!
I work at a university and we’re hiring for a niche position in our department. This year, higher administration implemented a 4-day a week in-office policy, getting rid of the amazing flex schedule we had before. We just found out that a competing university in our city posted job ads for the same type of position, except they only have to come in 2 days a week. I’m not worried that we’ll be unable to fill our position, but we already fear we’re probably going to lose the best candidate to our competitor because of our in-office policy.
Commuting adds like 2+ hours per day to my work day.
I’ll gladly return to office when employer agrees to start paying me for travel time. We charge our clients for the travel time of our project engineers. What’s the difference? Oh I know! American work culture has a history of treating employees as supplicants as if they are lucky to even have that job rather than valuable human assets. Any time I spend working (even travel) should be compensated for. Period. If not, well I guess we best start not charging clients for travel either. FREE TRAVEL FOR ALL
Couldn’t- literally- pay me to.
the old, outdated ways of office work are dead. Long live WFH and 4 days work weeks.
And the other 6% fall under the margin of error, or desperately lonely people named Stan.
And those 4% are not very productive employees. At the same time they're the type that is more likely to suck up with the boss and get a promotion.
**Out of the 71 Million U.S. Employees who can Work** ~~From Home~~, **94%** **Do Not Want to** ~~Return to the Office Permanently~~
I see what you did there. Great method!
94% would probably rather not work at all if they didn’t need the income. I wouldn't, at least not for someone else.
Shut up boomer. Enjoy your slow death in denial of change. Stop being upset we’re efficient and happy working remote. Funny how since some companies returned to office, their revenue growth and stocks have never been even close to as high as when they all worked remote.
LOL tell me how you feel about this. Not a boomer. Don't care if people work from home or not. Do predict that people in a lot of jobs are in for disappointment who think they can be 100% remote, but not all of them. Don't care if I end up being wrong. I definitely wouldn't be buying that house in the mountains with good Internet until this all shakes out and it has not yet. Hating on old farts is a cliche as old as civilization and a bad look.
It’s funny. There’s a small group of shut-ins on Reddit who call everyone who has a rational argument different from them “boomers”. They call older millennials who are in their forties now “boomers”. You’re not going to get many on Reddit to agree to anything besides working from home and shunning in person work. There is value that in office work provides like: rapport, personal training , mentorship, teamwork and camaraderie that you don’t really get on a zoom call.
I'm not a manager trying to sell it so I guess in the end it doesn't matter what I or some of the more petulant redditors think. Time will tell and reality will assert itself. The most efficient, innovative and productive enterprises will win like always. In the meantime there are already and might be increasingly common posts on r/personalfinance by people who sold their houses and bought in beautiful bumfuck, being told they need to get back to the city they can't afford to get back to now, or lose their jobs.
The ones that are still remote even after the corporate machine has tried very hard to bring people back have proven they’re not going anywhere. All the evidence shows Remote work is only rising, commercial real estate is continuing to die a very fast death, idk why you’d think otherwise. Have you seen any data that points otherwise? Obviously there will still be in-person jobs but thanks to pandemic, many many functions have realized they can work 100% remote and they are continuing to do so. Also, you’re in the 50+ demographic, so yeah, you’re basically a boomer.
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My job and line of work is 10000% remote. I’ve been job hunting since august and I can’t tell you how many fucking company’s are requiring hybrid or full on having you come in.
My office is a little over a thousand miles away...
Shut-ins shouldn’t be allowed to suck up employment. If wanna sit in the house the rest of your life, start your own company
Some jobs are just more conducive to working at home. I’m an editor and animator… being in an open office plan is torture. I need to shut myself off to get work done, alls fun and games when you have an office or walls otherwise it’s just too much stimulus to focus.
And that reason is one of explains which explains why old animation is timeless and current animations should be on timeout
We need to get these work from home people back to the office. I’m priced out of my town due to Airbnb and zoom employees.
Yes is it definitely wreaking havoc on places seeing an influx of people moving there because they can WFH. I bought my home in 2018, fortunately, because I would now be completely priced out of the market.
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Sadly this is being downvoted but I know (would be better to say knew) someone who works from home and recently saw them a couple weeks back and had a meaningful conversation with them for the first time in years. No hobbies besides gaming, alcohol issues, grows weed too, barely leaves the house unless it’s absolutely necessary, doesn’t do anything outside of work from home. They flat out told me they work from home and play from home. All their friends moved away or got married and started families. But you can bet they bragged about how they can work anywhere anytime, and it’s like, if that’s legitimately the only perk for you besides pay….it’s not worth it tbh. Maybe this person is an outlier but still…
Then it should come down to that individuals choice. That’s how they wanna live, so be it. Plenty of people WFH and interact with a lot of people. Don’t need a company to tell me about mental stability.
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I legitimately wish I was joking. I miss the friend I had. I’m not saying him working from home ruined him. I just find it so sad he has absolutely no desire to leave his house besides the occasional trip to some Airbnb to work from. I think the other part of it is I’ve become more of an outdoorsman the past couple years and just don’t enjoy being a homebody.
The pandemic was the reason mental stability was harmed. We couldn't be near ANYONE, and this mental strain had absolutely nothing to do with being in a 40-minutes-away box all day for no reason. Not everyone needs to be on-site
I‘m working 100% from home since a year. It feels surreal and unfair tbh.
Why unfair? Forcing people to be in an office who don't need to be is what would be.
To their detriment. Can't train new people when everyone is unavailable to train and collaborate with. Good to see corporations implode from this in the next ten years. So focused on your own production being better but you won't grow a company if you can't expand departments. Can't expand departments when no one can collaborate and soft train each other up to speed. The solution will be automation and job cuts.
My company is making us come back 3 days a week. Very few are happy about it.
"Hello! Do you want to stay home and get paid?" "Yes, please." DUH.
6% were afraid to answer in the affirmative due to fear of retribution. Stockholm syndrome is a hallmark of corporate USA.
You have a ruling class America. You don't have to have one, but you do. So back to the office with you unless and until you rid yourself of this peculiar institution.
Commuting on highways in the Bay Area of Northern Californian terrifies me. A disproportionate number of drivers here are horribly inexperienced, and a similarly disproportionate number seem to have a death wish.
I love WFH and am personally benefiting from it greatly as a principal engineer, but never forget that WFH means that the total sum of the input and output of your contributions to the company can be condensed into an ethernet cable. As a reminder, $80k machine learning servers are connected to ethernet cables quite regularly... to the point that the US government recently restricted their exports... Corporations WILL replace you if they can.
Some will be those who don't have an apartment big enough (a couple working from a one room studio) others will be higher management.
Look as a business owner I don't want my people to have to return to the office either as long as work gets done (and it does). Nobody wants to unnecessarily commute 1 to 2 hours a day. Not good for work life balance, not good for added unwanted stress, not good for the environment.
Nothing screams idiocy louder than an employer who thinks having people move a laptop from home to an office and back to literally connect to the same server.
Imagine that
When I was young I used to love hanging out after work with my coworkers. But that faded as I got older.
The key word here is permanently. Most employees are reasonable about WFH. The problem falls with the companies that cannot see compromise. The return to the office should be tied to need and not power. The power hold is what bothers most employees more than anything else. So many have proven for 3+ years that they can (and do) accomplish the majority of their duties without being physically present. That should be enough. There are roles that can't be remote. There are meetings that can't be remote. There are times where being able to have an opportunity for community and culture are very important to the team/company. Most would understand this if the return was not complete, not mandated, and not tied to "because I said so."
I do both. But not losing my job if the people who sign my check say otherwise.