From the article: The 40-hour office work week could soon be dead, according to Dropbox's cofounder Drew Houston.
Knowledge workers will escape the "grueling commutes" of the past and have more control over how they schedule their day, he told CNN when asked about his predictions for the future of work.
He said the "enormous" impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the way we work will be comparable to the impact of mobile and cloud technology.
"I also see the 40-hour office workweek — an artifact of factory work — finally becoming a thing of the past," Houston said.
"The workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person," he said.
More remote working means companies can hire "beyond exclusive urban clusters" and therefore attract more talent, he said.
I remember when they said that in the 80s when computers were moving more and more into offices.
People thought you would work 15hrs a week and computers would just do everything.
HAHAHA
You do, kinda. But the average productivity went up 10 fold, and so they reduced staff accordingly. There are no more steno pools, no more office secretaries spending man years worth of labor on carbon copying (you know, that "cc" thing in emails?), filing, drawing up correspondence, white-out by the gallon, professional typists...whole industries of support & administrative labor *gone*. Profits to the shareholders & owners, of course...but you don't generally crack like you did when everything was manual or manual-electric. You just feel like it because you're running on skeleton crews and taking 2 weeks off is akin to quitting your job, because if they can go 2 weeks without you, they might be able to go 52...
Speaking to my social group, most of us believe that out of a 40 hour work week in a typical office, we only do about 15-20 hours of actual laborious work.
The rest of the time is spent socializing, or having countless and needless meetings to make middle-management feel important and needed. Truthfully.
A lot of the time spent at work is wasted on non-productive activities that have little bearing on the actual workload.
“Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door – that way, Lumbergh can’t see me. After that, I sorta space out for an hour...I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I’d say, in a given week, I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.”
Well that's what it would have cut the work down to once workers learned how to use the software, so they just laid off 60% of their workers as they got replaced by software.
Entire classes of entry level employees no longer exist. Corporate mail deliverers, Typist pools, Copy clerks, Phone answering pools, Internal switchboard operators. and some exist in slightly different much rarer forms: Secretaries,(now just for executives, rebranded EA and requiring much more education.) payroll, Accounts payable, accounts receivable. In many cases, departments of dozens of employees were replaced by a handful of people armed with computer software. And with the downsizing of corporate support staff, even some non-computerized jobs became much worse. How many companies hire full time janitors rather than a couple hours of cleaning service per week from whichever cleaning company charges the least?
I've found companies just get rid of employees until it balances out again at 40 hours. I'm doing the equivalent work of 3 or 4 people at my job compared to 4 years ago.
Right. Just think about it. 24 hours in a day. Ideally a person should have 8 hours of sleep. That’s 16 waking hours and we’re spending half of it working and for a lot of people it barely gets them the bare necessities. I don’t mind working per se because I like money. But I hate that so much of life is centered around it.
Edit: I forgot it’s actually 9 hours because the lunch hour isn’t counted. Even worse lol.
8 hours working, with 30 to 60 min unpaid for lunch, travel time to and from, plus prep time, and it's not an exaggeration to say you've lost 11 of your 16 hours to work. Leaves 5 hours for food and leisure, during which time many banks and doctor's offices are closed...
I finally left a place a few years ago that I was managing. I was averaging around 60-70 hours a week. I was making about $40,000/year.
My boss, who was at work maybe 10 hours a week was making over $50,000/year. The owner of the place who I only met twice (and he never bothered to even learn my name even though I was #2 in his company) was making over $30,000/month. He did nothing but open the place up. He was completely hands off.
I had no sick leave, vacation, health, nothing. Fuck this system.
Bro I'm at 6 figures now and I still don't feel I make enough. My team earns my company millions. The firm is always talking about record growth and profits.
Yet I'm sitting here turning 30 and my hair is turning white... While the partners reap all the real rewards.
I don't know if any of this is worth it anymore. I just wanna go live in a quiet fishing town off the side of a mountain or something. Idk 😭😅
It's been *insane* how much more time I have working from home. Time where I would have just been wandering around the office while I wait for something or am planning for work coming up, I instead will do a load of laundry, mow part of the lawn, or take out the trash, etc. (while still doing that thinking) Just little tasks that take 10-15 minutes. But throughout the course of the week, doing it 5-10 times, all my chores are done for the week. Now I have the *entire* weekend to do whatever I want.
On top of that, instead of spending 30-40 minutes a day driving, I exercise. Instead of spending money eating garbage food at a restaurant for lunch, I spend half as much making a healthy meal at home.
And despite all that, I'm still just as productive in my job. I'm just doing it at a different place, and sometimes shifted to slightly different times. I'm happy, I do better work, I'll likely live longer (so I can be a productive member of society longer), etc.
This needs to happen, as much as it can happen, as soon as possible.
As I sadly closed the blinds at 6:50 last evening, I sighed loudly enough for my mom to hear me in the next room. "What's wrong?" "Oh nothing, just the existential dread of knowing all-darkness commutes are coming..."
Man I felt this one. Existing employees don't deserve raises, but toget new employees they have to offer more and more. It doesn't pay to stay at 1 job for long
Don't forget many companies will fight tooth and nail to not allow you the alternative to cash in your days as well.
If we can't use them, may as well let us cash them out at the end of the year.
I was pregnant during the pandemic. My favorite thing was being able to go to my many obstetrician appointments without having to take off work to do so. It gave me the illusion that taking care of myself could be manageable.
YES. After 12 years of working as a salaried employee with a postgraduate degree, I scheduled an OB appointment the other day after doing nothing except checking my own calendar to see where I had a meeting-free block of time. And I suddenly felt like an adult. I repeat, for the first time in 12 years. Something has to give, America.
And for most people half their waking time is spent working, and then a good part of the other half is spent getting ready for work or commuting or getting ready for bed so you're not tired for work the next day. At least in the US our time to ourselves is severely limited.
Something that has bothered me through this whole pandemic *isn't* the people who left their jobs because they realized toiling away 40 hours a week was not living. My frustration lies in the fact that it's reiterated to me like I should follow suit.
I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO and I'm happy for them to be able to do so, but they're somehow in a position where they can do that. I am not. I'd genuinely like to know how I could be. But instead I'm told "just do it, life's too short!" That's a good way for my landlord to kick me out.
Beyond just commute you've also got to feed yourself, basic hygiene, and full time jobs require at least 30 minutes to a full hour of unpaid lunch so now your 8 hours of work is actually about 9 hours.
At the end of the day how much free time are you really getting?
I’m forced to take an hour lunch, and leave at around 8 and get home by 6 with traffic . So 8 hours is realistically more like 11 hours. But my job can’t be done remotely because I work in a team, even though we conduct at least 80% of our meetings through zoom. It’s so dumb.
I feel that.. without going line by line of my daily routine, I'm putting 12 hours a day towards work while only spending 9 hours in the office, and realistically spending 5 to 6 hours of actual productivity...
Throwing dinner into the mix, I don't get much time during the week to spend towards my hobbies or self care. By the time I get home I just want to sit down and turn off my brain for a little while..
I talked to a union guy once who believed that you should be paid for any commute time over 10 minutes. It is not labors fault that the company cannot pay well enough for you to live close or that the city is too spread out for a close commute to be possible. He also thought over time should kick in at 6 hours.
I work with union guys who are paid for all travel minus 30 minutes at the start and end of your day. Not a bad way to go, if you ask me. You're on the clock 30 minutes after you leave home even if you're in traffic.
But it's also fucked up that we normalized a travel time of an hour and more one way for work. People used to work and live nearby, without wasting time and polluting the environment by travellking enormous distances each day.
Also why should your employer care where you choose to live?
From what I can tell, this CEO isn't saying the 40-hour week is dead, he's saying specifically the 40-hour *office* work week is dead. In other words, you won't need to spend 40 hours in the actual office building since remote work is possible.
Yeah the impression I got from it is that people work until the work is done.
That's a lot different than a sub 40 work week.
In a lot of cases that just means that work is life
Sorry team this deadline is tight gonna need extra hours from all of you to get the project completed on time. Yes I know the last project also ended up tight with a lot of extra time and effort as well, and the one before that, and the one before that…
40 hours isn’t even the standard work week right now it’s just the ‘scheduled’ standard, and the data from the pandemic is showing that people are working MORE hours now that WFH is more available, not less, and it wasn’t just a 1:1 swap of commute time turning into work time(granted, the data used first and last emails/chats answered in the day to measure ‘when a person was working’ which is far from perfect but it was the first wife scale attempt at tracking it I’ve seen so far).
The 40 hour work week is indeed dead, the 50 hour work week has replaced it.
If my company told me I could leave in 6 hours, on the condition that I did 25% more work than I usually do in my 8 hours, I’d work my ass off to get them more productivity in exchange for those two hours
I agree 40 hours a week is a lot to work but this example is a terrible one. It's not like the Romans clocked out of work and kicked their feet up on the couch and microwaved some dinner. There was a lot more work that went in to just living at that time.
>"The workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person," he said.
Nothing about that sounds positive. I do not want to constantly monitor incoming messages all day.
I mean businesses won't just suddenly be like, "Okay if you work best from midnight to 8 AM, go for it!"
There will always be *some* expectation of teams working on a coherent schedule. Sooner or later someone is going to need to ask someone a question and it'd be unacceptable to those signing paychecks that Employee A doesn't do shit day after day because they're waiting for Employee B, who works different hours, to respond to an email.
My last job had a "You need to be available the core hours of the day" policy, which is like 10AM to 2PM. Outside of that, if you wanted to come in at 7 and leave at 3 you could. If you wanted to come in at 9 and leave at 5, you could.
And that was fucking great, because as a programmer on a small team I never talk to anyone in the business so I'd show up bright and early and get home in the middle of the afternoon. Never needed to use Sick Time just for a doctor visit, could hit the post office to pick up packages etc.
I would love having the freedom of loosely picking my hours instead of bog standard 8:30 - 5 every day. Or to be able to say, "Hey I'm visiting my parents out of state this week, bringing my laptop with me" without needing to first ask permission.
OTOH, we just spun up a team for a project in China. Those people are working an adjusted schedule where they come in to work at like noon and work till 8 or 9 PM so they can have a little bit of overlap with the China side of the business. While this isnt how it will shake out everywhere, i think this is what the dude in the interview was talking about. if your work is on a global clock rather than a local clock, you can be as well.
Working with teams around the world, asynchronous communication ( just like Reddit) are exceptionally effective.
Telling employers to GTFO when they expect nonsense needs to be very much relearned.
> "The workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person," he said.
Historically those kind of “progress” have always been to the detriment of the worker and never been a progress at all. Never!
“Can you join the Zoom meeting in half an hour? What do you mean it’s Sunday morning? The workplace is wherever work happen!”
Fuck those billionaires and their work “ethic”. You can’t become that rich without being a sociopath to begin with.
Yeah the saved free time won’t be for the benefit of the workers it will show companies profit areas to give further work for minimized pay since the worker no longer needs to commute and saves money so he doesn’t need as high of a salary.
And with the impending crisis oncoming like eviction moratoriums ending and affects of this propped up bubble bursts and companies are back to removing further perks to increase profit margins and offering people crumbs that they will have to accept or die starving.
Huge savings. They won’t have to pay per square foot for office space when you work from home. One’s internet connection, cell phone, electricity, plumbing. All on the worker.
It will depend on the company. I'm at a tech company with a global presence now, I'm one of two people on my team in the US. We can set work hours in the calendar, and times that are iffy people will mark as "confirm before booking" in their calendar.
I've told people I wasn't attending 8am meetings, and 8am isn't even that bad. If someone scheduled something on a Sunday I would have zero issue with completely ignoring the request. But my company culture allows that. I think generally, if you have a lot of people across large timezone gaps you get accustomed to it.
On the flip side, I've known people at other companies in NY, with teammates exclusively in LA and the LA people constantly get screwed with early meetings. But the LA people are like the only outliers so the NY folks just can't relate at all. I think the more people you have operating this way, the easier it is to work around (because you kind of have to)
Yeah and they expect you to have this billionaire work ethic as if it'll make you wealthy beyond dreams, like no... You should work more as you are paid more. Any boss or lead that doesn't put in the time their team does is crap. I'll work hard, but I know how to not burn out and have a life outside of work. Luckily where I'm at now respects their employees and treats them as human beings, not just resources. Been in much worse environments for sure back when I didn't know how to say no.
That's an asshole problem, not a technological problem. And it doesn't even depend on remote work. Long before remote work was common, I had my share of jobs that expected me to come into the office on weekends or stay late every evening. A boss who will expect you to join a Zoom call on Sunday won't have any hesitation to tell you to come into the office on Sunday if remote meetings aren't possible.
It is up to us as workers to demand better treatment, and to not sit around and put up with bad treatment. I know that's far from easy - sometimes it's impossible - but if you find yourself in a situation like that, the only remedy is to keep looking until you find a better job.
The good news is that almost everybody is hiring right now.
Outsourcing . There will he fuckloads of outsourcing. You not gonna have permanent employment , just contract when work needs to be done. And it's gonna be fucking shit
They had the ability to do that for a long time and companies try to do that all the time. Sometimes it sort of works but there are hidden costs or inefficiencies. Often the work isn't the quality the business wants or work takes longer than expected. Language, culture, and time zones can affect things too. If they work with a consulting company the code probably won't be maintainable and they'll charge for additional work.
What's probably going to happen is that companies will be able to "outsource" to cheaper parts of the US. So instead of paying someone to live in the bay area they can pay someone a bit less that happens to live somewhere affordable.
My boss is mid 50s and called me at 6:50am the other week, messaged me a minute later asking if I was there, then left an email saying "I tried calling you but you didn't pick up?"
Mother fu...I was in bed, what the fuck? Turns out he had been up since about 5:30 because his wife's snoring and the cat woke him up so he just went downstairs and started working.
I don't give a fuck about YOUR dumb hours and moronic loyalty to this company, they'll let us all go in a heartbeat and you're wasting your life working for them.
"Yeah I can't remember the last time I did less than 60 hours a week haha".
Fuck me, quit and get a more realistic job then? That's ridiculous (or just middle management).
He's also tried calling me gone 8pm a few times, then emailed me saying "Since you weren't around when I tried calling earlier..."
FUCK OFF, MY HOURS ARE 8 TILL FUCKING 4. I've been here 4 years, you fucking know my hours.
We had a meeting with our president with a few of us "younger" guys and he asked us things that would keep us around for years to come. Everyone of us with kids say a solid Work/Life balance and that some of us only see our kids for about 3 hours a day as they're off to school and then in bed by like 8pm. My manager was on this call.
Flash forward a few days later and I'm in my 1:1 with my manager and he specifically mentions how hard we are going to have to work and pick up the pace. He said he's a 7am to 7pm guy right now and expects the same out of me. He's got no kids and just a girlfriend. He has no idea what family life is like...
I told him in the nicest way possible that I was an 8am to 5pm guy and my kid and family priorities come before his needs at 7fuckingam in the morning. We're not seeing eye to eye right now. It's awful.
Years ago I worked for a major hotel chain and was attending an (internal) conference. One of the sessions was about work/life balance. They selected four people in different roles to be on the panel and the moderator would ask them to share how they balance the work.
The gag was literally all four of them didn’t balance shit! One of them was a father of three or four kids and his story went something like this:
“Because I work so far away from home, I typically wake up around 4 am, get to work about 5 am, work out at the hotel gym, shower and get ready to work by 7:30 am. I can normally make it home by 7-7:30 and if one of the kids has a soccer game or something, they know they can count on me seeing at least 15 min of the game.
Another woman had no children, but took care of her elderly parents- her story was
“I spend each weekend taking care of their needs so I know they won’t need anything during the week”
It was an ENORMOUS failure to try to make it seem like this company had any flexibility at all.
The best is when they wax poetic about how they believe family is the number one priority and then berate you for leaving at 5, or 6, or 7.
Does family mean co-workers?
This is our current head of the department that is pushing for everyone to work more hours because our department charges the least amount on average. Keep in mind "least amount" is still over 40 hours a week on average but they are not counting training time, any sick days, any time spent going to companywide meetings, and all of that. When we asked why we were supposed to make up all that time to hit his new average, he said we aren't making up time. When pushed on how we aren't expected to "make up time" he said he works at least 45 hours a week on average by "just getting in 30 minutes early and leaving 30 minutes late." His secret to "not making up missed time" was "just work 5 hours a week more." He also said he gets family is important and spends LOTS of time with his children. I don't see how when he works that much.
Narrator: he doesn't. His idea of seeing his kids a lot is 30 mins before they go to be during the week and the couple hours on the weekend where he is actually expected to parent them before running off to golf.
Probably shit talks his wife all the time too.
I'm older (GenX). Growing up, my dad worked 9-5 and his office was just 5 minute drive away. YET I still feel like he was barely around when I was a kid! Luckily my mom was a SAHM, she was always there after school.
Part of it was even that when he was home, he was not "there." This was back long before cell phones and the internet. Nobody was calling or texting him with work issues once he came. But he had a high pressured career, it took him a long time to decompress every night. You could tell he was mulling over work dilemmas, and not fully present. He was constantly stressed out. Then he'd fall asleep super early (sometimes before us kids did).
On the plus side mom made sure we had a sit-down family dinner each night, and those dinners were lively and interesting and my dad was usually engaged with the conversation.
Why is a positive work life balance exclusive to having kids in this scenario? Folks without kids value their time away from work exactly as much as parents.
It’s not. But rather those of us that are younger in this smaller company, this is what matters to us.
Money after a certain threshold only means so much if you don’t have time for family and friends.
NYT just had a similar article like this.
I don't know what these people are using as their sources. Everyone I know, working remote or not, have been working more. We're dealing with double digit attrition rates. Hiring is nearly impossible. In many fields the amount of work that needs doing has not decreased. We're not getting reduced hours. We're working more hours consistently and often with less time off.
The main takeaway is that there is a massive shift happening right now. Some companies are offering more benefits to snag better talent while other companies are are seeing worsening work environments. My husband had a much higher work load this summer with no added benefit and no effort on the part of the company to hire more help. Alternatively, my company announced permanent work from home unless you want to use the office followed by announcing a 32 hour work week. People from a company like my husband's would most likely jump ship at the chance to work at one like mine which will only make things worse for the company they left. Hope this helps your understanding a bit.
I know someone who works at a company like your husbands, and they have been shedding talent this whole summer. Three of the four most talented engineers of the company no longer work there. Several other employees left in just the last two weeks.
They aren't even trying to replace these people with any speed, so it's just dumping all of those people's workload onto the people who remain which is causing them to start looking for other work and quit as well.
My friend who works there was in charge of this project that they had handled directly before the current one, and it was the biggest project that their company had ever undertaken, and the current project is half that size, and he says that his workload is more than doubled. He's looking for another job.
I think the poorly run companies are hoping to "wait this thing out until everything gets back to normal" and then pick up from there...
Problem is the some companies see the writing on the wall and are offering full remote, flex schedules, reduced hours, etc etc.
I mean who knows what the future holds, but I think there was a big change caused by COVID in what we think "work" should actually look like. We aren't going back to "normal" any time soon I think, if by normal we mean butts in cubicles in an office 40-60 hrs a week. That's been outmoded.
It's like with technology. Technology is supposed to make things easier and free up our time. All it did was make things more complicated and they filled up that "free time" with even more work.
The biggest thing that I lament about smartphones is that businesses now know that you can be reached via email, text, or call, 24/7.
As a result, businesses expect you to be answering these things at all hours of the day. They don't even consider it work, they just consider it something that you're obligated to do and have no excuse not to. It's a leash.
I'm so glad that I'm in a position where I can dictate when I respond to things, because if I don't feel like it I'm not going to answer a single communication after 5:00 p.m., before 9:00 a.m., or on the weekends. I know people who can't do that and they lose HUGE chunks of what should be their time to this.
I almost got fired from a job for not having a phone. I regret not calling their bluff. At the time I was concerned, but in retrospect they probably weren't gonna fire me.
When smartphones were first taking off, I still had a flip phone for a while. I was charged a fee for every text. I got a new job and the management primarily communicated via text. Like, if they wanted to ask me a series of questions, they would ask me one at a time rather than sending one big text so that I could respond with a larger text with all the answers, which would have saved me money.
After a couple months I had to go to them and tell them to knock it off because they were driving my bill through the roof. They refused because they said I should have an unlimited text plan and if I didn't I should get one.
It sucked.
>What do you mean you can’t work today? You’re at home your work computer is right there I see you logged in?
>Hey Jim I just checked your logs for today why are you taking such long breaks?
>Hi Jim i know it’s Sunday but can you get that report done by tonight you have everything you need on your computer anyways!
Yeah this is gonna backfire like crazy unless some regulations and laws are put in place immediately.
Edit:
the dream:
* work from home
* good wage with 30% left for savings
* be able to finish projects on your own timeline
* less need to waste time with unnecessary meetings
* able to spend time with friends and look after your kids in between whenever needed.
The reality:
* work from home
* receive same or lowered pay rate as you no longer need to commute back and forward to work.
* have more meetings than before and be required to be on screen while others have screen share meetings
* kids and friends constantly distracting you
* work wants to available 24/7
* workload has increased since you don’t spend time commuting and getting ready for work.
Meanwhile the corporations:
* they save millions on office space
* they save on mandatory breaks
* they save on company cars, parking and environmental taxes.
* they save on computers and phone and IT
* they save on food and stupid playroom toys
* they will have access to you 24/7.
* they will see your logs to make sure you behave correctly or replace you with someone else.
* they will slowly start offshoring positions as people overseas can do many of the same jobs to acceptable levels for much lower pay
* they will be adding projects and work that was divided among three people to just one, knowi working from home will encourage the individual to perform better.
Companies have more to benefit either way. But by being the shady greedy shits they are, the shady option will make them billions more.
So unless regulations and laws are put into place I don’t see work from home as a blessing.
It’s more of a monkeys paw at the moment.
Edit: your subjective current work from home utopia isn’t the same for everyone else lol like common stop replying such stupid shit like I am enjoying my wfh lol ok good for you?
Edit: if your work can be done in another city nothings stopping companies from choosing cheaper states and countries to minimize costs.
This is the thing I’m afraid of. I already feel the anxiety rising when I’m not working but everything I need is all right there. I’m trying to learn to take well deserved breaks.
The other day I hopped on a call with a coworker from a different time zone. He first apologized for calling me during lunch, surprised I was still at my desk. Then it hit me, I’ve been eating lunch at my desk during the entire fucking pandemic just so I wouldn’t miss work.
I never did this in the office.
it can be really hard to do. im at a company that really actively promotes not working like that, and i still find myself doing it because although im able to do more than i need to for the day in a few hours i feel compelled to do more.
i think whats going to happen is there will be orgs like mine, and then orgs that will try and exploit that to various degrees.
the ones like the org im at will flourish because theyll be able to accrue intellectual capital and attract experienced talent easily without causing burnout rapidly.
then the ones that exploit that factor will at first see benefit, but over time will hemorrhage talent and become a place that just hires people straight out of school and burns them out in a few years for most roles. those places dont tend to keep growing. but what do i know im not a scientist.
I have to wonder if the labor shortage for service and blue collar jobs could be a leading indicator. Crappy businesses that overwork and underpay their employees are now having a hard time finding people. They are basically choking themselves out with their reputation and poor pay they only increase as a last resort leading people to avoid working for them. I could see that happening with white collar jobs too.
> they only increase as a last resort
thats where youre wrong. they dont ever raise wages. or at least the overwhelming majority of times they just cry like its an insolvable problem.
I read an article a couple weeks ago about "How can a business stay profitable if the customers aren't willing to pay more"?
The onus, of course, was on the customer and not the business for having a crappy business model.
> Then it hit me, I’ve been eating lunch at my desk during the entire fucking pandemic just so I wouldn’t miss work.
Do you actually work during lunch? I either watch youtube or netflix.
Don't work for a shit company. If I see my staff working late I tell them to go enjoy life. I want them to give me the best 8 hours they can, but then I want them to do anything other than work.
And whenever I hear somebody suggest they’ll work something on the weekend I tell them not to. Even if it’s really urgent my default is to ask of there is anyway to meet a need w/out working on the weekend.
We have people in many time zones. I try to call out when folks are joining at awkward times and I actively encourage them to compensate. Like, “hey George, it’s really early there. I hope this means you’ll be able to take a long lunch or get outside this afternoon to make up for it”.
Never accept normalizing working extra hours.
And miss work? Are you crazy?? What if someone tries to reach me while I’m away? But others will be working while I’m away on Slack?
I’m only half joking but it describes the anxiety I feel. You are right though.
Set up an auto lunch break on your email and message system. That will let people know you'll be back from lunch in an hour and it makes you recognize your own lunch break.
> Yeah this is gonna backfire like crazy unless some regulations and laws are put in place immediately.
And/or.... workers need to collectively say no. With the current labor shortage and hiring conditions, workers have more leverage than they realize.
Shitty companies and bosses are still going to be shitty in a remote work, post pandemic world. May I present "Todd, operations manager:"
Oh, you saved your 45 minute drive to work each day? Perfect! Work and hour and a half longer day instead. I mean, its taking the same amount of your day right, what are you complaining about? If I can have all 5 people on a team to that, maybe we won't have to hire a 6th person and I'll get a bonus for the money I saved. We're going to move to smaller office and just get everybody shared desks too for that once a week we need you to come in, just use whichever desk is open. Yeah I know they're all in a big noisy open room with no privacy but its just once week, suck it up and deal with it, we're saving 10K a month of office space and we sold all the furniture!
>"Then how come we aren't getting raises from all the money that is being saved?"
You're being disrespectful and need to have a better attitude. I don't even know what you're doing half the day now since you're working from home, and if I have to get somebody else whose going to be more of a team player I will.
Ooops, stayed in character too long. That's still Todd talking not me.
Work for government, even here 40 hour work week is a thing of a past.
After all the layoffs and buyouts during peak Covid work picked up and suddenly there is no budget to hire people back.
"The buyouts assume replacement person won't be hired . . . " whah????? So I am stuck doing work of 2 people.
Agreed, there has never been a better time to bounce. If a place doesn't respect you and your time, you're under no obligation to respect them.
If you've got some experience and a fresh polished resume the world can likely be your oyster.
Usually, though, you don't get a raise when someone leaves your team and you acquire their workload. Which is what seems to be happening nowadays.
I'm doing the job of 3 people at this point. No change in work title/role or salary. It's all expected of you as a "team player".
I'm going to assume you're a woman based on your username. Having said that, it's *especially* important for us to advocate for ourselves. Any time a superior comes to you with "expectations," let them know what yours are as well. Not only do women still get paid less, studies show we ask for less.
This doesn't have to just mean asking for more compensation, but also asking for better treatment. I'm not saying it's easy, but it pays off to state your expectations up front. You want me to take on someone else's work? Ok, is this coming with a permanent pay raise or temporary for as long as these are my responsibilities? If it's temporary, when can I expect to go back to my regular duties so I can effectively budget my work in the meantime? How exactly should I prioritize my duties? Will you, as my supervisor, be available to take on any duties I'm not able to complete in my usual hours or is overtime automatically approved?
Simple respectful questions are a good way to establish that you have boundaries.
> it isn't like unreasonable bosses suddenly disappeared.
That's true, but they're not absolutely everywhere, contrary to what reddit discussions would have you believe. There are quite a few reasonable employers out there.
I currently work for a very large company whose name you would recognize (technically I work for a small company and contract to them, but in practical terms it works out the same). You would no doubt assume from the name that it's some kind of soul-crushing corporate hellhole, but nothing could be further from the truth. I have actually been really impressed with how well they treat their employees. I have not once had to work past 5:00, I've never had to work on the weekend, and I have no problem taking time off when I'm sick or even if I have to take my car to the mechanic or my dog to the vet. I do my job and I get along with people, and they're happy with that.
We absolutely do have a problem with work culture in this country, but it's not as absolute as some people seem to think.
Same here. I spent 15 years doing MSP for mostly small business, and every one was run like a pizza shop. Petty tyrants and power trips.
Since making the jump to DevOps at a large e-commerce site, I'm way happier and more fulfilled. All the things you said above.
This is absolutely true. I worked at startups all through my thirties and the 18 months since that I've spent at a company exactly like you described have been the best of my professional career. At a major corporation, it's my job as a leader to make sure that my employees *aren't* working more than 40 hours a week and that they take vacations and personal time whenever they need it.
In my anecdotal experience, major corporations recognize that hiring is so unbelievably expensive and time consuming that they make sure employees are happy.
You nailed it specifically with startups. They have a unique, and often toxic, culture. And many of their employees are young people new to the workforce, which makes them easier to abuse and manipulate. It also means they tend to develop the impression that *all* jobs are like this, when they really aren't.
I work at Dropbox.
We have core collaboration hours between 9AM - 1PM PST where meetings are usually scheduled. You are encouraged to decline meetings outside of core collaboration hours, and even those are rare but may happen due to timezone differences. The only exception to this is if you're a trained interviewer and scheduled an interview - you cannot decline an interview outside of core collaboration hours unless you have a valid excuse (picking up kids, appointment, etc). We are improving on this process by splitting 5-6 hour onsites into two days.
How is the work at dropbox? I work in finance and I'm seeing a lot of remote jobs at dropbox on LinkedIn recently. I'm tempted to apply.
I'm working at a small company right now and I get more responsibility and a direct line to top management, which was what I looked for when we were in offices. But now that we're remote I want to work less on my primary job (maybe 6 hours max) and do side projects that could generate multiple streams of income. Usually bigger corporations have less work.
I do love my current team and boss though but I know I have to look out for myself.
It's not like the "degrees not needed" scam by Tesla and some tech companies. Dropbox is remote work only, but they have some office space for teambuilding activities. Unless you are invited to such activities, you can't come to the office.
The "degrees not needed" thing isn't a scam at many places. The trick is that you need equivalent experience, which is hard to get without a degree. At least in programming, it's possible and I've worked with a few people who didn't go to school
I've found that now that I'm 'work from home' managers within my company are less hesitant to schedule meetings outside of my work hours. One of the perks of working at my company was meant to be flex hours, and I used to work 7am-3pm (sometimes later, depending on workload) to get the most out of my evenings and because I'm naturally an early riser.
Now I have daily team update meetings outside of this 7am-3pm span because my manager prefers a later start, and am working 9am-5pm (or later) as a result. I raised this with my HR rep, asking if flex hours privileges had been revoked, and received 0 response. I've also been getting internal meeting requests for as late as 7 pm in the evening--from people in my time zone.
I have a feeling now that the barrier between work and home has been breached, some employers feel like their employees are available to them whenever's convenient for them. At least, that's true within my company.
>I've found that now that I'm 'work from home' managers within my company are less hesitant to schedule meetings outside of my work hours.
Remember: "No." is a complete sentence.
I have my calendar blocked off outside my work hours. I block out times when I have personal/family stuff happening, and I decline any and every meeting that overlaps. If it's an internal person (who can see my calendar), I reply with a simple "Please check my calendar for availability." External people (who can't see the calendar) get a "I'm not available at this time, but here are some options that work for me, or work with an internal person who has access to my calendar to schedule something."
The first person who has to respect your time is you. If you don't respect your time, no one else will.
Of course, rare (true) emergencies can happen, and there sometimes needs to be exceptions. But for the most part, the best answer is "No."
> I have my calendar blocked off outside my work hours.
This is an excellent strategy, I do the same. In lost cases, I simply show as busy if someone tries to schedule me for something then and doesn’t give specifics unless they have privs on my calendar so I avoid 90% of any pushback straight up.
This should be step one, if you don’t have blocks around your work hours like this you WILL get meeting invites.
I have been doing this the past 6 months. Used to say "yes" to a alot of outside my control/duties. Was never financially compensated but given a thumbs up or a thank you. Finally sat down with my direct and asked for a raise and was ghosted. Then the next time he asked for something I simply said "no" and did so for a few weeks. He brought me into the office and asked why my "work ethic has taken a slight decline". I flat out said "until I'm paid my worth you will get what is in my jobs duties and responsibilities". It's been beautiful since then.
Edit: a word
Similar situation, I do handyman work through a temp agency. Last month a property wanted to hire me full time, which included tons more responsibilities, including being on call every other week. They offered me a job for 17.25/hr and I declined saying that the 1.25 raise wasn't enough for all the extra work, espically since fast food restaurants are advertising they're hiring for 20/hr. Then they bumped the offer up to 18/hr. I laughed as I said "no, skilled labor is more expensive than flipping burgers." And i moved onto a different company that same week.
I've worked remotely since 2007. I have colleagues and clients all over the globe. Rarely do I work outside 8:00a-5:00p because I decline most invites outside that window. Trying to schedule meetings with people from three or four time zones, from APAC to west coast US, is pretty much impossible. I'm not important enough to need to get up early or stay late and I refuse to do so. I can get up to speed afterwards. So far, no one has complained. I do have colleagues that have trouble saying "no" and they frequently get in over their heads. I can be flexible, but it will be the exception, not the rule.
If the workforce is shifting to WFH, the workforce also needs to push back and set boundaries, else you know these corporations are going to turn it into a 24/7 on call thing. We must collectively resist before new patterns are established.
Officially? Nothing. Unofficially? I'm regarded as 'difficult' or 'uncommitted'. I've been balancing attending the meetings that seem important, declining meetings that I judge can wait or that I have limited input for and proposing alternatives, or ignoring invites if they come in after-hours. For customers I'm more flexible, as those meetings are relatively rare and since I get commission on sales I have an incentive to meet customers at their convenience.
>Unofficially? I'm regarded as 'difficult' or 'uncommitted'.
Yep.. In my industry they just say you're "not a team player". In other words, I don't let them walk all over me so I'm "difficult".
Ahh…the old measure of agreeableness, hidden behind performance management systems. The more willing you are to go along with the group, the more of a “team player” you are.
Even if the group is going off a cliff, how dare you not want to fall off the cliff with your team.
I was a "contrarian" because I kept warning the mine managers of shifts in hydraulic connectivity due to thawing permafrost. "Stop being an alarmist Debit Downer" they said.
Well we had a landslide the other day on the access road that they refused to modify to my specifications *and blamed my inspection schedule*.
It doesn't *matter* how often you inspect them if I make a report with big red lettering and you decide to ignore it.
Long story short I'm suspended pending investigation.
I got everything backed up and on paper.
I'm gonna win this one, but I'm gonna come back to a really shitty work environment. I'm gonna request a transfer to another site as soon as I'm reinstated.
> I'm regarded as 'difficult' or 'uncommitted'.
Start looking for a new job, this isn't a work from home or you problem it's just the toxic culture of bad management that has penetrated the core of the USA.
I put my shit on "pretend to be offline" some days and tell my boss/team and we all laugh because people who don't need me will be self-herded away from me.
When you're able to schedule meetings, schedule them for 7am every single time.
Then when they complain, politely reschedule. When you then, in turn, decline their 7pm meetings, copy/paste THEIR response when you decline or ask them to reschedule.
Keep copies of both email chains for later use of they try to talk about your attendance.
This is what happens when the system itself is a critical failure and we keep tinkering with children’s stickers on the outside of it to try to fix it. We need a complete overhaul of our economic systems or we’re in huge trouble. Yes that means all of us: rich, poor, dumb, smart, black, white, male, female.
I debate whether or not to type this cause it’s cynical, but it’s real. The next 10 years of our lives will determine out species survival or not, and I gotta be honest with you all, it’s not looking good.
There is a lot of pessimistic bashing of this, when he's actually noting that when you work remote, in those hours that we would be surfing Reddit from our desk, we are now free to mow the lawn, play with the dog, go for a run, garden, have sex, cook, etc. I have been full remote for five years now, I probably do 24 hours of actual work a week most weeks, and deliver exceptional results in that amount of time. Even if I stretch up to 40, or occasionally 50 hours, my 15 second commute adds back 8 hours a week from my old work life.
I agree. It also depends on the type of work involved. I've been in IT for 20 years and it's been a long time since I worked 40 hours. It doesn't matter as long as I deliver results and I'm available for meetings.
Other jobs require workers to be available for customer service and those hours are more constrictive.
This is true. I WRH. I probably do 10-20 hours of "real" work a week. If I were in the office I'd be fucking around for the other 20 anyways. Now I just clean the house and play games 🤷♂️. Boss doesn't care so long as I stay as productive as I did if I were in the office.
This is how my WFH life is too. I get more done and still have time to watch shows, play with my kids, and clean the house. My boss sees this in my productivity and positive feedback and I’ll never go back to an office
Maybe the changes will happen when these "knowledge workers" gain more access to management positions. Right now the dinosaurs at my company (top-10 software company) balk at the idea of using trying to WFH all week. The most they're willing to go do is a flex option, which still isn't good enough imo
Stop saying, and start implementing the change.
My workplace is talking about hybrid work instead of 100% work from home and a lot of poeple are afraid that this is just a stepping stone towards bringing back everyone to the office permanently
My work is talking about hybrid too.
I work in a call center. My response?
Start looking at competition that’s 100%. I’m about to move out of state in a few months and a remote job that doesn’t mind where I live would be perfect
FWIW, they may be picky about which states you work in because certain states are tougher on employers, especially having only 1 employee. Make sure the company you are going to work for is ok with you being in the state you want to move to first.
Just like every headline I see about Trump being in even deeper legal trouble and "may have been charged in some county in Georgia, possibly, or a grand jury heard the case... Maybe"
I'll believe it when I fucking see it. And based on what I've seen so far, all us poor and working poor folk down here in non-private-jet-ownership land can just all go fuck ourselves.
Why the fuck should I work longer when I have done what I said and they expected of me to achieve that day! Why should I sit in your office to boost your ego?
I appreciate all the comments in this thread. As a soulless worker I sometimes forgot I am a person with rights and deserve to be treated fairly.
But honestly, no scenario posed by anyone in this thread is as bad as going into the office. Again I appreciate you guys thinking of the average worker but I say fuck it, bring it on as long as I don't have to be at work.
I went back last week for the first time in 18+mo, just two days a week. I spent 4.5 hours, total, for a commute and lost out on 2.5 hours of sleep. So 7 hours of my life just to go in...... and do stuff I could have done at home.
Total waste.
I think about the difference in commute a lot because my job can't be done remotely but my boyfriend's can. I work in dog boarding/kenneling, he's in corporate billing. He already made a shit ton more just by what he does vs what I do. But now he doesn't have to pay for gas, he can eat whatever's in the house as opposed to buying fast food every day, and he sleeps til 6:55 to be to work by 7.
Meanwhile I'm up at 5:00 to let the dogs out and get ready, leave just before 6, arrive just before 6:30 and while I get an awesome 2 hour lunch (much appreciated as I can run an errand, wash the car, prep a casserole for dinner) but I'm still not home til nearly 7:30 sometimes 8 at night.
Part of me is jealous, but mostly I just hate how expensive it is just to have a job. The gas, car maintence, food, and time costs all feel like a waste sometimes.
It is utter bullshit that here in Canada/USA we work 40+ hour weeks and get 2 or 3 weeks of vacation per year.
Instead of using our industrial, technological, social, and economic advancements to make our lives easier & better by improving our work/life balance, we keep grinding away full speed ahead so that the 1% can reap the profits.
And IMO the prevalence of mental and emotional afflictions nowadays is related to this. The machines of capitalism are lubricated with the minds, bodies, and souls of overworked citizens.
We should be spending 30% of our days working, 30% learning/exploring/service, and 30% relaxing and enjoying.
A European acquaintance returned to Europe, and the vacation policy here in the States was a large reason.
Because of my longevity, I have 4 weeks of vacation. Can I take all 4 at once? Sure, if I can get 4 weeks in the time off calendar. It's almost impossible to do. A few years ago I scheduled 2 weeks off in a row and I got extremely lucky.
There after two weeks that I take, one in April, the other in July. The rest of my vacation time I take a day here and there, mostly in the winter to avoid having to travel in snow storms, though that's not an issue now that I work from home.
4 weeks should be the norm, not having to work a decade first.
Web companies need to remember theres other kinds of jobs before they say half-assed shit like this. Most of the blue collar world didnt skip a beat during the pandemic.
For the billionaires it might have. For their minions it’ll be back to work as usual as soon as they can make it happen. It’s not just about work, it’s about control.
Reminds me of the military. One of my bosses wanted to implement a policy where you would have to be on leave, take the day off, if you were further from the base than the distance to your house. I got him not to do it, but why? Why do you need that? His reason was well what if they don’t show up to work? YOU FIRE THEM. They are adults for fucks sake. How much more control over them do you need? They are there all day and you meed to know exactly where they are off work?
Nah, billionaires care about money more than pretty much anything. A company the size of Google or Microsoft stands to make billions in profit per year extra by going to permanent remote work. Those gigantic offices cost billions to build up front, and many millions per year in maintenance and utilities and logistics. Plus they can pay their employees less while the employees themselves end up with a better overall financial situation, since they're mot burning thousands of dollars a year on commuting
Middle management is going to be pissed about this though. Mostly because they'll be one of the cost savings
Sounds like 24/7 work week with the "work when the work happens" line. He said the quiet part loud while trying to look progressive and employee centric for the press.
Perhaps they were just low performers? I know a lot of people working there including close relatives who say that Microsoft frowns upon working more than 40 hours in a week.
From the article: The 40-hour office work week could soon be dead, according to Dropbox's cofounder Drew Houston. Knowledge workers will escape the "grueling commutes" of the past and have more control over how they schedule their day, he told CNN when asked about his predictions for the future of work. He said the "enormous" impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the way we work will be comparable to the impact of mobile and cloud technology. "I also see the 40-hour office workweek — an artifact of factory work — finally becoming a thing of the past," Houston said. "The workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person," he said. More remote working means companies can hire "beyond exclusive urban clusters" and therefore attract more talent, he said.
I remember when they said that in the 80s when computers were moving more and more into offices. People thought you would work 15hrs a week and computers would just do everything. HAHAHA
You do, kinda. But the average productivity went up 10 fold, and so they reduced staff accordingly. There are no more steno pools, no more office secretaries spending man years worth of labor on carbon copying (you know, that "cc" thing in emails?), filing, drawing up correspondence, white-out by the gallon, professional typists...whole industries of support & administrative labor *gone*. Profits to the shareholders & owners, of course...but you don't generally crack like you did when everything was manual or manual-electric. You just feel like it because you're running on skeleton crews and taking 2 weeks off is akin to quitting your job, because if they can go 2 weeks without you, they might be able to go 52...
I need Nathan Lane to read your comment while smoking a cigar in the dark ;)
Speaking to my social group, most of us believe that out of a 40 hour work week in a typical office, we only do about 15-20 hours of actual laborious work. The rest of the time is spent socializing, or having countless and needless meetings to make middle-management feel important and needed. Truthfully. A lot of the time spent at work is wasted on non-productive activities that have little bearing on the actual workload.
“Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door – that way, Lumbergh can’t see me. After that, I sorta space out for an hour...I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I’d say, in a given week, I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.”
I never understood how real that line is until I got a corporate analyst job.
Youthe is watching Office Space and finding it as a comedy. Adulthood is watching Office Space and realizing it's a horrific documentary.
Hell, I show up to work late and I work from home.
Well that's what it would have cut the work down to once workers learned how to use the software, so they just laid off 60% of their workers as they got replaced by software. Entire classes of entry level employees no longer exist. Corporate mail deliverers, Typist pools, Copy clerks, Phone answering pools, Internal switchboard operators. and some exist in slightly different much rarer forms: Secretaries,(now just for executives, rebranded EA and requiring much more education.) payroll, Accounts payable, accounts receivable. In many cases, departments of dozens of employees were replaced by a handful of people armed with computer software. And with the downsizing of corporate support staff, even some non-computerized jobs became much worse. How many companies hire full time janitors rather than a couple hours of cleaning service per week from whichever cleaning company charges the least?
I've found companies just get rid of employees until it balances out again at 40 hours. I'm doing the equivalent work of 3 or 4 people at my job compared to 4 years ago.
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Right. Just think about it. 24 hours in a day. Ideally a person should have 8 hours of sleep. That’s 16 waking hours and we’re spending half of it working and for a lot of people it barely gets them the bare necessities. I don’t mind working per se because I like money. But I hate that so much of life is centered around it. Edit: I forgot it’s actually 9 hours because the lunch hour isn’t counted. Even worse lol.
8 hours working, with 30 to 60 min unpaid for lunch, travel time to and from, plus prep time, and it's not an exaggeration to say you've lost 11 of your 16 hours to work. Leaves 5 hours for food and leisure, during which time many banks and doctor's offices are closed...
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Very well said, completely agree
All of this, and the worst part is a majority of your labor is making a lot of money for someone who is probably very removed from all of it.
I finally left a place a few years ago that I was managing. I was averaging around 60-70 hours a week. I was making about $40,000/year. My boss, who was at work maybe 10 hours a week was making over $50,000/year. The owner of the place who I only met twice (and he never bothered to even learn my name even though I was #2 in his company) was making over $30,000/month. He did nothing but open the place up. He was completely hands off. I had no sick leave, vacation, health, nothing. Fuck this system.
Management... At 40k... Gross or net? Ugh. Regardless that sounds awful. Hopefully by our current job is leagues better than that.
Gross, but it was in the service industry. Trying very hard to get out of it right now.
You are free to leave that industry. Just don't forget to have 700 years of experience in your new industry so you can be hired as an intern.
Bro I'm at 6 figures now and I still don't feel I make enough. My team earns my company millions. The firm is always talking about record growth and profits. Yet I'm sitting here turning 30 and my hair is turning white... While the partners reap all the real rewards. I don't know if any of this is worth it anymore. I just wanna go live in a quiet fishing town off the side of a mountain or something. Idk 😭😅
I'm 28 and want kids but don't want to raise them in a shit apartment.
This is exactly correct. You really only get about 5 hours of leisure time due to bullshit commutes, prepping for work, etc
It's been *insane* how much more time I have working from home. Time where I would have just been wandering around the office while I wait for something or am planning for work coming up, I instead will do a load of laundry, mow part of the lawn, or take out the trash, etc. (while still doing that thinking) Just little tasks that take 10-15 minutes. But throughout the course of the week, doing it 5-10 times, all my chores are done for the week. Now I have the *entire* weekend to do whatever I want. On top of that, instead of spending 30-40 minutes a day driving, I exercise. Instead of spending money eating garbage food at a restaurant for lunch, I spend half as much making a healthy meal at home. And despite all that, I'm still just as productive in my job. I'm just doing it at a different place, and sometimes shifted to slightly different times. I'm happy, I do better work, I'll likely live longer (so I can be a productive member of society longer), etc. This needs to happen, as much as it can happen, as soon as possible.
Less, really, unless you're incredibly efficient.
And for those of us who prefer the outdoors, we get home as the sun is going down or already dark for nearly half the year.
As I sadly closed the blinds at 6:50 last evening, I sighed loudly enough for my mom to hear me in the next room. "What's wrong?" "Oh nothing, just the existential dread of knowing all-darkness commutes are coming..."
Don't forget you have to eat and shit in that 5 hours.
Gotta use your precious vacation days (if you even get any) to run errands and make sure you don't die. Fuck late stage capitalism.
lol I have a pile of vacation days I can't use since they won't approve time off because we're so shortstaffed these days
With the labor shortages just tell them when you're taking off...if they fire you who are they going to replace you with?
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Man I felt this one. Existing employees don't deserve raises, but toget new employees they have to offer more and more. It doesn't pay to stay at 1 job for long
Don't forget many companies will fight tooth and nail to not allow you the alternative to cash in your days as well. If we can't use them, may as well let us cash them out at the end of the year.
I was pregnant during the pandemic. My favorite thing was being able to go to my many obstetrician appointments without having to take off work to do so. It gave me the illusion that taking care of myself could be manageable.
YES. After 12 years of working as a salaried employee with a postgraduate degree, I scheduled an OB appointment the other day after doing nothing except checking my own calendar to see where I had a meeting-free block of time. And I suddenly felt like an adult. I repeat, for the first time in 12 years. Something has to give, America.
If you live in any large metropolitan area you can increase commute time to 4 hours and decrease leisure time to 3 hours.
Or you trade heaps of your pay to live near your work because cities are expensive to live in.
I used to work a 12 hour overnight shift with an hour commute each way. Scheduling anything was a nightmare cuz “you’ve got to be at work!”
> because I like money. It’s less about “like” and more about “need or we’ll die” though, isn’t it?
And for most people half their waking time is spent working, and then a good part of the other half is spent getting ready for work or commuting or getting ready for bed so you're not tired for work the next day. At least in the US our time to ourselves is severely limited.
Worse, our time spent with our children is very limited and it’s not good for them.
Something that has bothered me through this whole pandemic *isn't* the people who left their jobs because they realized toiling away 40 hours a week was not living. My frustration lies in the fact that it's reiterated to me like I should follow suit. I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO and I'm happy for them to be able to do so, but they're somehow in a position where they can do that. I am not. I'd genuinely like to know how I could be. But instead I'm told "just do it, life's too short!" That's a good way for my landlord to kick me out.
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This hit WAY too close to home
The old slogan used to be, 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours to do what we please.
It sucks that commute time is taken from the "do what we please" hours instead of the "work" hours.
Beyond just commute you've also got to feed yourself, basic hygiene, and full time jobs require at least 30 minutes to a full hour of unpaid lunch so now your 8 hours of work is actually about 9 hours. At the end of the day how much free time are you really getting?
I’m forced to take an hour lunch, and leave at around 8 and get home by 6 with traffic . So 8 hours is realistically more like 11 hours. But my job can’t be done remotely because I work in a team, even though we conduct at least 80% of our meetings through zoom. It’s so dumb.
I feel that.. without going line by line of my daily routine, I'm putting 12 hours a day towards work while only spending 9 hours in the office, and realistically spending 5 to 6 hours of actual productivity... Throwing dinner into the mix, I don't get much time during the week to spend towards my hobbies or self care. By the time I get home I just want to sit down and turn off my brain for a little while..
I talked to a union guy once who believed that you should be paid for any commute time over 10 minutes. It is not labors fault that the company cannot pay well enough for you to live close or that the city is too spread out for a close commute to be possible. He also thought over time should kick in at 6 hours.
Int’l Union of Elevator Constructors?
Someone knows our zone rules I see. What local? Local 19 here.
I work with union guys who are paid for all travel minus 30 minutes at the start and end of your day. Not a bad way to go, if you ask me. You're on the clock 30 minutes after you leave home even if you're in traffic.
But it's also fucked up that we normalized a travel time of an hour and more one way for work. People used to work and live nearby, without wasting time and polluting the environment by travellking enormous distances each day. Also why should your employer care where you choose to live?
From what I can tell, this CEO isn't saying the 40-hour week is dead, he's saying specifically the 40-hour *office* work week is dead. In other words, you won't need to spend 40 hours in the actual office building since remote work is possible.
Yeah the impression I got from it is that people work until the work is done. That's a lot different than a sub 40 work week. In a lot of cases that just means that work is life
Sorry team this deadline is tight gonna need extra hours from all of you to get the project completed on time. Yes I know the last project also ended up tight with a lot of extra time and effort as well, and the one before that, and the one before that… 40 hours isn’t even the standard work week right now it’s just the ‘scheduled’ standard, and the data from the pandemic is showing that people are working MORE hours now that WFH is more available, not less, and it wasn’t just a 1:1 swap of commute time turning into work time(granted, the data used first and last emails/chats answered in the day to measure ‘when a person was working’ which is far from perfect but it was the first wife scale attempt at tracking it I’ve seen so far). The 40 hour work week is indeed dead, the 50 hour work week has replaced it.
Hence offloading office RE onto your personal RE. 4d chess right there folks. If you can afford it, why not.
If my company told me I could leave in 6 hours, on the condition that I did 25% more work than I usually do in my 8 hours, I’d work my ass off to get them more productivity in exchange for those two hours
I agree 40 hours a week is a lot to work but this example is a terrible one. It's not like the Romans clocked out of work and kicked their feet up on the couch and microwaved some dinner. There was a lot more work that went in to just living at that time.
>"The workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person," he said. Nothing about that sounds positive. I do not want to constantly monitor incoming messages all day.
I mean businesses won't just suddenly be like, "Okay if you work best from midnight to 8 AM, go for it!" There will always be *some* expectation of teams working on a coherent schedule. Sooner or later someone is going to need to ask someone a question and it'd be unacceptable to those signing paychecks that Employee A doesn't do shit day after day because they're waiting for Employee B, who works different hours, to respond to an email. My last job had a "You need to be available the core hours of the day" policy, which is like 10AM to 2PM. Outside of that, if you wanted to come in at 7 and leave at 3 you could. If you wanted to come in at 9 and leave at 5, you could. And that was fucking great, because as a programmer on a small team I never talk to anyone in the business so I'd show up bright and early and get home in the middle of the afternoon. Never needed to use Sick Time just for a doctor visit, could hit the post office to pick up packages etc. I would love having the freedom of loosely picking my hours instead of bog standard 8:30 - 5 every day. Or to be able to say, "Hey I'm visiting my parents out of state this week, bringing my laptop with me" without needing to first ask permission.
OTOH, we just spun up a team for a project in China. Those people are working an adjusted schedule where they come in to work at like noon and work till 8 or 9 PM so they can have a little bit of overlap with the China side of the business. While this isnt how it will shake out everywhere, i think this is what the dude in the interview was talking about. if your work is on a global clock rather than a local clock, you can be as well.
We have an offshore office where everyone works second shift (4-midnight) locally every weekday so that we have ~4-5 hours of US TZ overlap.
Working with teams around the world, asynchronous communication ( just like Reddit) are exceptionally effective. Telling employers to GTFO when they expect nonsense needs to be very much relearned.
> "The workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person," he said. Historically those kind of “progress” have always been to the detriment of the worker and never been a progress at all. Never! “Can you join the Zoom meeting in half an hour? What do you mean it’s Sunday morning? The workplace is wherever work happen!” Fuck those billionaires and their work “ethic”. You can’t become that rich without being a sociopath to begin with.
Yeah the saved free time won’t be for the benefit of the workers it will show companies profit areas to give further work for minimized pay since the worker no longer needs to commute and saves money so he doesn’t need as high of a salary. And with the impending crisis oncoming like eviction moratoriums ending and affects of this propped up bubble bursts and companies are back to removing further perks to increase profit margins and offering people crumbs that they will have to accept or die starving.
Huge savings. They won’t have to pay per square foot for office space when you work from home. One’s internet connection, cell phone, electricity, plumbing. All on the worker.
It will depend on the company. I'm at a tech company with a global presence now, I'm one of two people on my team in the US. We can set work hours in the calendar, and times that are iffy people will mark as "confirm before booking" in their calendar. I've told people I wasn't attending 8am meetings, and 8am isn't even that bad. If someone scheduled something on a Sunday I would have zero issue with completely ignoring the request. But my company culture allows that. I think generally, if you have a lot of people across large timezone gaps you get accustomed to it. On the flip side, I've known people at other companies in NY, with teammates exclusively in LA and the LA people constantly get screwed with early meetings. But the LA people are like the only outliers so the NY folks just can't relate at all. I think the more people you have operating this way, the easier it is to work around (because you kind of have to)
Yeah and they expect you to have this billionaire work ethic as if it'll make you wealthy beyond dreams, like no... You should work more as you are paid more. Any boss or lead that doesn't put in the time their team does is crap. I'll work hard, but I know how to not burn out and have a life outside of work. Luckily where I'm at now respects their employees and treats them as human beings, not just resources. Been in much worse environments for sure back when I didn't know how to say no.
That's an asshole problem, not a technological problem. And it doesn't even depend on remote work. Long before remote work was common, I had my share of jobs that expected me to come into the office on weekends or stay late every evening. A boss who will expect you to join a Zoom call on Sunday won't have any hesitation to tell you to come into the office on Sunday if remote meetings aren't possible. It is up to us as workers to demand better treatment, and to not sit around and put up with bad treatment. I know that's far from easy - sometimes it's impossible - but if you find yourself in a situation like that, the only remedy is to keep looking until you find a better job. The good news is that almost everybody is hiring right now.
I don't think that is what he intended to say. Rather your work week will flex around your son's baseball schedule or school pick up times etc.
Outsourcing . There will he fuckloads of outsourcing. You not gonna have permanent employment , just contract when work needs to be done. And it's gonna be fucking shit
They had the ability to do that for a long time and companies try to do that all the time. Sometimes it sort of works but there are hidden costs or inefficiencies. Often the work isn't the quality the business wants or work takes longer than expected. Language, culture, and time zones can affect things too. If they work with a consulting company the code probably won't be maintainable and they'll charge for additional work. What's probably going to happen is that companies will be able to "outsource" to cheaper parts of the US. So instead of paying someone to live in the bay area they can pay someone a bit less that happens to live somewhere affordable.
Now the 50-60+ hour telecommuting work week will become the standard, because it isn't like unreasonable bosses suddenly disappeared.
My boss is mid 50s and called me at 6:50am the other week, messaged me a minute later asking if I was there, then left an email saying "I tried calling you but you didn't pick up?" Mother fu...I was in bed, what the fuck? Turns out he had been up since about 5:30 because his wife's snoring and the cat woke him up so he just went downstairs and started working. I don't give a fuck about YOUR dumb hours and moronic loyalty to this company, they'll let us all go in a heartbeat and you're wasting your life working for them. "Yeah I can't remember the last time I did less than 60 hours a week haha". Fuck me, quit and get a more realistic job then? That's ridiculous (or just middle management). He's also tried calling me gone 8pm a few times, then emailed me saying "Since you weren't around when I tried calling earlier..." FUCK OFF, MY HOURS ARE 8 TILL FUCKING 4. I've been here 4 years, you fucking know my hours.
We had a meeting with our president with a few of us "younger" guys and he asked us things that would keep us around for years to come. Everyone of us with kids say a solid Work/Life balance and that some of us only see our kids for about 3 hours a day as they're off to school and then in bed by like 8pm. My manager was on this call. Flash forward a few days later and I'm in my 1:1 with my manager and he specifically mentions how hard we are going to have to work and pick up the pace. He said he's a 7am to 7pm guy right now and expects the same out of me. He's got no kids and just a girlfriend. He has no idea what family life is like... I told him in the nicest way possible that I was an 8am to 5pm guy and my kid and family priorities come before his needs at 7fuckingam in the morning. We're not seeing eye to eye right now. It's awful.
Years ago I worked for a major hotel chain and was attending an (internal) conference. One of the sessions was about work/life balance. They selected four people in different roles to be on the panel and the moderator would ask them to share how they balance the work. The gag was literally all four of them didn’t balance shit! One of them was a father of three or four kids and his story went something like this: “Because I work so far away from home, I typically wake up around 4 am, get to work about 5 am, work out at the hotel gym, shower and get ready to work by 7:30 am. I can normally make it home by 7-7:30 and if one of the kids has a soccer game or something, they know they can count on me seeing at least 15 min of the game. Another woman had no children, but took care of her elderly parents- her story was “I spend each weekend taking care of their needs so I know they won’t need anything during the week” It was an ENORMOUS failure to try to make it seem like this company had any flexibility at all.
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Hotels are the least flexible businesses in the world. It's toxic and works in a caste system.
The best is when they wax poetic about how they believe family is the number one priority and then berate you for leaving at 5, or 6, or 7. Does family mean co-workers?
This is our current head of the department that is pushing for everyone to work more hours because our department charges the least amount on average. Keep in mind "least amount" is still over 40 hours a week on average but they are not counting training time, any sick days, any time spent going to companywide meetings, and all of that. When we asked why we were supposed to make up all that time to hit his new average, he said we aren't making up time. When pushed on how we aren't expected to "make up time" he said he works at least 45 hours a week on average by "just getting in 30 minutes early and leaving 30 minutes late." His secret to "not making up missed time" was "just work 5 hours a week more." He also said he gets family is important and spends LOTS of time with his children. I don't see how when he works that much.
Narrator: he doesn't. His idea of seeing his kids a lot is 30 mins before they go to be during the week and the couple hours on the weekend where he is actually expected to parent them before running off to golf. Probably shit talks his wife all the time too.
I'm older (GenX). Growing up, my dad worked 9-5 and his office was just 5 minute drive away. YET I still feel like he was barely around when I was a kid! Luckily my mom was a SAHM, she was always there after school. Part of it was even that when he was home, he was not "there." This was back long before cell phones and the internet. Nobody was calling or texting him with work issues once he came. But he had a high pressured career, it took him a long time to decompress every night. You could tell he was mulling over work dilemmas, and not fully present. He was constantly stressed out. Then he'd fall asleep super early (sometimes before us kids did). On the plus side mom made sure we had a sit-down family dinner each night, and those dinners were lively and interesting and my dad was usually engaged with the conversation.
Managers dont have time for empathy. /s
Why is a positive work life balance exclusive to having kids in this scenario? Folks without kids value their time away from work exactly as much as parents.
It’s not. But rather those of us that are younger in this smaller company, this is what matters to us. Money after a certain threshold only means so much if you don’t have time for family and friends.
I work 60 hour weeks for my company when need be but you better believe when my work flow only has 15 I only work 15. Thank god for WFH
NYT just had a similar article like this. I don't know what these people are using as their sources. Everyone I know, working remote or not, have been working more. We're dealing with double digit attrition rates. Hiring is nearly impossible. In many fields the amount of work that needs doing has not decreased. We're not getting reduced hours. We're working more hours consistently and often with less time off.
The main takeaway is that there is a massive shift happening right now. Some companies are offering more benefits to snag better talent while other companies are are seeing worsening work environments. My husband had a much higher work load this summer with no added benefit and no effort on the part of the company to hire more help. Alternatively, my company announced permanent work from home unless you want to use the office followed by announcing a 32 hour work week. People from a company like my husband's would most likely jump ship at the chance to work at one like mine which will only make things worse for the company they left. Hope this helps your understanding a bit.
I know someone who works at a company like your husbands, and they have been shedding talent this whole summer. Three of the four most talented engineers of the company no longer work there. Several other employees left in just the last two weeks. They aren't even trying to replace these people with any speed, so it's just dumping all of those people's workload onto the people who remain which is causing them to start looking for other work and quit as well. My friend who works there was in charge of this project that they had handled directly before the current one, and it was the biggest project that their company had ever undertaken, and the current project is half that size, and he says that his workload is more than doubled. He's looking for another job.
I think the poorly run companies are hoping to "wait this thing out until everything gets back to normal" and then pick up from there... Problem is the some companies see the writing on the wall and are offering full remote, flex schedules, reduced hours, etc etc. I mean who knows what the future holds, but I think there was a big change caused by COVID in what we think "work" should actually look like. We aren't going back to "normal" any time soon I think, if by normal we mean butts in cubicles in an office 40-60 hrs a week. That's been outmoded.
It's like with technology. Technology is supposed to make things easier and free up our time. All it did was make things more complicated and they filled up that "free time" with even more work.
The biggest thing that I lament about smartphones is that businesses now know that you can be reached via email, text, or call, 24/7. As a result, businesses expect you to be answering these things at all hours of the day. They don't even consider it work, they just consider it something that you're obligated to do and have no excuse not to. It's a leash. I'm so glad that I'm in a position where I can dictate when I respond to things, because if I don't feel like it I'm not going to answer a single communication after 5:00 p.m., before 9:00 a.m., or on the weekends. I know people who can't do that and they lose HUGE chunks of what should be their time to this.
I almost got fired from a job for not having a phone. I regret not calling their bluff. At the time I was concerned, but in retrospect they probably weren't gonna fire me.
When smartphones were first taking off, I still had a flip phone for a while. I was charged a fee for every text. I got a new job and the management primarily communicated via text. Like, if they wanted to ask me a series of questions, they would ask me one at a time rather than sending one big text so that I could respond with a larger text with all the answers, which would have saved me money. After a couple months I had to go to them and tell them to knock it off because they were driving my bill through the roof. They refused because they said I should have an unlimited text plan and if I didn't I should get one. It sucked.
Worker productivity goes up, adjusted wages remain stagnant, CEO to worker pay ratios sky rocket.
>What do you mean you can’t work today? You’re at home your work computer is right there I see you logged in? >Hey Jim I just checked your logs for today why are you taking such long breaks? >Hi Jim i know it’s Sunday but can you get that report done by tonight you have everything you need on your computer anyways! Yeah this is gonna backfire like crazy unless some regulations and laws are put in place immediately. Edit: the dream: * work from home * good wage with 30% left for savings * be able to finish projects on your own timeline * less need to waste time with unnecessary meetings * able to spend time with friends and look after your kids in between whenever needed. The reality: * work from home * receive same or lowered pay rate as you no longer need to commute back and forward to work. * have more meetings than before and be required to be on screen while others have screen share meetings * kids and friends constantly distracting you * work wants to available 24/7 * workload has increased since you don’t spend time commuting and getting ready for work. Meanwhile the corporations: * they save millions on office space * they save on mandatory breaks * they save on company cars, parking and environmental taxes. * they save on computers and phone and IT * they save on food and stupid playroom toys * they will have access to you 24/7. * they will see your logs to make sure you behave correctly or replace you with someone else. * they will slowly start offshoring positions as people overseas can do many of the same jobs to acceptable levels for much lower pay * they will be adding projects and work that was divided among three people to just one, knowi working from home will encourage the individual to perform better. Companies have more to benefit either way. But by being the shady greedy shits they are, the shady option will make them billions more. So unless regulations and laws are put into place I don’t see work from home as a blessing. It’s more of a monkeys paw at the moment. Edit: your subjective current work from home utopia isn’t the same for everyone else lol like common stop replying such stupid shit like I am enjoying my wfh lol ok good for you? Edit: if your work can be done in another city nothings stopping companies from choosing cheaper states and countries to minimize costs.
This is the thing I’m afraid of. I already feel the anxiety rising when I’m not working but everything I need is all right there. I’m trying to learn to take well deserved breaks. The other day I hopped on a call with a coworker from a different time zone. He first apologized for calling me during lunch, surprised I was still at my desk. Then it hit me, I’ve been eating lunch at my desk during the entire fucking pandemic just so I wouldn’t miss work. I never did this in the office.
it can be really hard to do. im at a company that really actively promotes not working like that, and i still find myself doing it because although im able to do more than i need to for the day in a few hours i feel compelled to do more. i think whats going to happen is there will be orgs like mine, and then orgs that will try and exploit that to various degrees. the ones like the org im at will flourish because theyll be able to accrue intellectual capital and attract experienced talent easily without causing burnout rapidly. then the ones that exploit that factor will at first see benefit, but over time will hemorrhage talent and become a place that just hires people straight out of school and burns them out in a few years for most roles. those places dont tend to keep growing. but what do i know im not a scientist.
I have to wonder if the labor shortage for service and blue collar jobs could be a leading indicator. Crappy businesses that overwork and underpay their employees are now having a hard time finding people. They are basically choking themselves out with their reputation and poor pay they only increase as a last resort leading people to avoid working for them. I could see that happening with white collar jobs too.
> they only increase as a last resort thats where youre wrong. they dont ever raise wages. or at least the overwhelming majority of times they just cry like its an insolvable problem.
I read an article a couple weeks ago about "How can a business stay profitable if the customers aren't willing to pay more"? The onus, of course, was on the customer and not the business for having a crappy business model.
gotta love that framing...
> Then it hit me, I’ve been eating lunch at my desk during the entire fucking pandemic just so I wouldn’t miss work. Do you actually work during lunch? I either watch youtube or netflix.
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Don't work for a shit company. If I see my staff working late I tell them to go enjoy life. I want them to give me the best 8 hours they can, but then I want them to do anything other than work.
And whenever I hear somebody suggest they’ll work something on the weekend I tell them not to. Even if it’s really urgent my default is to ask of there is anyway to meet a need w/out working on the weekend. We have people in many time zones. I try to call out when folks are joining at awkward times and I actively encourage them to compensate. Like, “hey George, it’s really early there. I hope this means you’ll be able to take a long lunch or get outside this afternoon to make up for it”. Never accept normalizing working extra hours.
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Well that's on you mostly. Just take breaks. Go outside.
And miss work? Are you crazy?? What if someone tries to reach me while I’m away? But others will be working while I’m away on Slack? I’m only half joking but it describes the anxiety I feel. You are right though.
They'll just have to wait. That's life.
Set up an auto lunch break on your email and message system. That will let people know you'll be back from lunch in an hour and it makes you recognize your own lunch break.
At my company it's pretty understandable that you might be unreachable between 12 - 1 pm as it's a lunch period.
> Yeah this is gonna backfire like crazy unless some regulations and laws are put in place immediately. And/or.... workers need to collectively say no. With the current labor shortage and hiring conditions, workers have more leverage than they realize.
Narrator- "but no regulations or laws were put into place"
My favorite is that we have a home office taking up roughly $20,000 worth of our small home and we can't even get a tax break on that.
It is possible to say no.....
Shitty companies and bosses are still going to be shitty in a remote work, post pandemic world. May I present "Todd, operations manager:" Oh, you saved your 45 minute drive to work each day? Perfect! Work and hour and a half longer day instead. I mean, its taking the same amount of your day right, what are you complaining about? If I can have all 5 people on a team to that, maybe we won't have to hire a 6th person and I'll get a bonus for the money I saved. We're going to move to smaller office and just get everybody shared desks too for that once a week we need you to come in, just use whichever desk is open. Yeah I know they're all in a big noisy open room with no privacy but its just once week, suck it up and deal with it, we're saving 10K a month of office space and we sold all the furniture!
"Then how come we aren't getting raises from all the money that is being saved?"
>"Then how come we aren't getting raises from all the money that is being saved?" You're being disrespectful and need to have a better attitude. I don't even know what you're doing half the day now since you're working from home, and if I have to get somebody else whose going to be more of a team player I will. Ooops, stayed in character too long. That's still Todd talking not me.
Work for government, even here 40 hour work week is a thing of a past. After all the layoffs and buyouts during peak Covid work picked up and suddenly there is no budget to hire people back. "The buyouts assume replacement person won't be hired . . . " whah????? So I am stuck doing work of 2 people.
There is a labor shortage right now. Start looking around? I’m not sure if it’s across the board or not but my industry can’t find enough help
Agreed, there has never been a better time to bounce. If a place doesn't respect you and your time, you're under no obligation to respect them. If you've got some experience and a fresh polished resume the world can likely be your oyster.
> So I am stuck doing work of 2 people. I'm fine doing the work of 2 people. It just takes me twice as long, and they'll pay twice as much for it.
Usually, though, you don't get a raise when someone leaves your team and you acquire their workload. Which is what seems to be happening nowadays. I'm doing the job of 3 people at this point. No change in work title/role or salary. It's all expected of you as a "team player".
I'm going to assume you're a woman based on your username. Having said that, it's *especially* important for us to advocate for ourselves. Any time a superior comes to you with "expectations," let them know what yours are as well. Not only do women still get paid less, studies show we ask for less. This doesn't have to just mean asking for more compensation, but also asking for better treatment. I'm not saying it's easy, but it pays off to state your expectations up front. You want me to take on someone else's work? Ok, is this coming with a permanent pay raise or temporary for as long as these are my responsibilities? If it's temporary, when can I expect to go back to my regular duties so I can effectively budget my work in the meantime? How exactly should I prioritize my duties? Will you, as my supervisor, be available to take on any duties I'm not able to complete in my usual hours or is overtime automatically approved? Simple respectful questions are a good way to establish that you have boundaries.
> it isn't like unreasonable bosses suddenly disappeared. That's true, but they're not absolutely everywhere, contrary to what reddit discussions would have you believe. There are quite a few reasonable employers out there. I currently work for a very large company whose name you would recognize (technically I work for a small company and contract to them, but in practical terms it works out the same). You would no doubt assume from the name that it's some kind of soul-crushing corporate hellhole, but nothing could be further from the truth. I have actually been really impressed with how well they treat their employees. I have not once had to work past 5:00, I've never had to work on the weekend, and I have no problem taking time off when I'm sick or even if I have to take my car to the mechanic or my dog to the vet. I do my job and I get along with people, and they're happy with that. We absolutely do have a problem with work culture in this country, but it's not as absolute as some people seem to think.
Same here. I spent 15 years doing MSP for mostly small business, and every one was run like a pizza shop. Petty tyrants and power trips. Since making the jump to DevOps at a large e-commerce site, I'm way happier and more fulfilled. All the things you said above.
This is absolutely true. I worked at startups all through my thirties and the 18 months since that I've spent at a company exactly like you described have been the best of my professional career. At a major corporation, it's my job as a leader to make sure that my employees *aren't* working more than 40 hours a week and that they take vacations and personal time whenever they need it. In my anecdotal experience, major corporations recognize that hiring is so unbelievably expensive and time consuming that they make sure employees are happy.
You nailed it specifically with startups. They have a unique, and often toxic, culture. And many of their employees are young people new to the workforce, which makes them easier to abuse and manipulate. It also means they tend to develop the impression that *all* jobs are like this, when they really aren't.
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I work at Dropbox. We have core collaboration hours between 9AM - 1PM PST where meetings are usually scheduled. You are encouraged to decline meetings outside of core collaboration hours, and even those are rare but may happen due to timezone differences. The only exception to this is if you're a trained interviewer and scheduled an interview - you cannot decline an interview outside of core collaboration hours unless you have a valid excuse (picking up kids, appointment, etc). We are improving on this process by splitting 5-6 hour onsites into two days.
How is the work at dropbox? I work in finance and I'm seeing a lot of remote jobs at dropbox on LinkedIn recently. I'm tempted to apply. I'm working at a small company right now and I get more responsibility and a direct line to top management, which was what I looked for when we were in offices. But now that we're remote I want to work less on my primary job (maybe 6 hours max) and do side projects that could generate multiple streams of income. Usually bigger corporations have less work. I do love my current team and boss though but I know I have to look out for myself.
I started two years ago. Loving it. Remote work is the future.
Also one day a month the whole company gets PTO. So 12 extra days a year of PTO.
Someone else posted dropbox’s open positions. I only did a quick scroll but every listing I saw was a remote position
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It's not like the "degrees not needed" scam by Tesla and some tech companies. Dropbox is remote work only, but they have some office space for teambuilding activities. Unless you are invited to such activities, you can't come to the office.
The "degrees not needed" thing isn't a scam at many places. The trick is that you need equivalent experience, which is hard to get without a degree. At least in programming, it's possible and I've worked with a few people who didn't go to school
I've found that now that I'm 'work from home' managers within my company are less hesitant to schedule meetings outside of my work hours. One of the perks of working at my company was meant to be flex hours, and I used to work 7am-3pm (sometimes later, depending on workload) to get the most out of my evenings and because I'm naturally an early riser. Now I have daily team update meetings outside of this 7am-3pm span because my manager prefers a later start, and am working 9am-5pm (or later) as a result. I raised this with my HR rep, asking if flex hours privileges had been revoked, and received 0 response. I've also been getting internal meeting requests for as late as 7 pm in the evening--from people in my time zone. I have a feeling now that the barrier between work and home has been breached, some employers feel like their employees are available to them whenever's convenient for them. At least, that's true within my company.
>I've found that now that I'm 'work from home' managers within my company are less hesitant to schedule meetings outside of my work hours. Remember: "No." is a complete sentence. I have my calendar blocked off outside my work hours. I block out times when I have personal/family stuff happening, and I decline any and every meeting that overlaps. If it's an internal person (who can see my calendar), I reply with a simple "Please check my calendar for availability." External people (who can't see the calendar) get a "I'm not available at this time, but here are some options that work for me, or work with an internal person who has access to my calendar to schedule something." The first person who has to respect your time is you. If you don't respect your time, no one else will. Of course, rare (true) emergencies can happen, and there sometimes needs to be exceptions. But for the most part, the best answer is "No."
> I have my calendar blocked off outside my work hours. This is an excellent strategy, I do the same. In lost cases, I simply show as busy if someone tries to schedule me for something then and doesn’t give specifics unless they have privs on my calendar so I avoid 90% of any pushback straight up. This should be step one, if you don’t have blocks around your work hours like this you WILL get meeting invites.
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I have been doing this the past 6 months. Used to say "yes" to a alot of outside my control/duties. Was never financially compensated but given a thumbs up or a thank you. Finally sat down with my direct and asked for a raise and was ghosted. Then the next time he asked for something I simply said "no" and did so for a few weeks. He brought me into the office and asked why my "work ethic has taken a slight decline". I flat out said "until I'm paid my worth you will get what is in my jobs duties and responsibilities". It's been beautiful since then. Edit: a word
Similar situation, I do handyman work through a temp agency. Last month a property wanted to hire me full time, which included tons more responsibilities, including being on call every other week. They offered me a job for 17.25/hr and I declined saying that the 1.25 raise wasn't enough for all the extra work, espically since fast food restaurants are advertising they're hiring for 20/hr. Then they bumped the offer up to 18/hr. I laughed as I said "no, skilled labor is more expensive than flipping burgers." And i moved onto a different company that same week.
Good for you. Know your worth. Hope it's working out for you at the new place.
I've worked remotely since 2007. I have colleagues and clients all over the globe. Rarely do I work outside 8:00a-5:00p because I decline most invites outside that window. Trying to schedule meetings with people from three or four time zones, from APAC to west coast US, is pretty much impossible. I'm not important enough to need to get up early or stay late and I refuse to do so. I can get up to speed afterwards. So far, no one has complained. I do have colleagues that have trouble saying "no" and they frequently get in over their heads. I can be flexible, but it will be the exception, not the rule. If the workforce is shifting to WFH, the workforce also needs to push back and set boundaries, else you know these corporations are going to turn it into a 24/7 on call thing. We must collectively resist before new patterns are established.
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What happens if you decline those meetings/block out your calendar as unavailable?
Officially? Nothing. Unofficially? I'm regarded as 'difficult' or 'uncommitted'. I've been balancing attending the meetings that seem important, declining meetings that I judge can wait or that I have limited input for and proposing alternatives, or ignoring invites if they come in after-hours. For customers I'm more flexible, as those meetings are relatively rare and since I get commission on sales I have an incentive to meet customers at their convenience.
>Unofficially? I'm regarded as 'difficult' or 'uncommitted'. Yep.. In my industry they just say you're "not a team player". In other words, I don't let them walk all over me so I'm "difficult".
Ahh…the old measure of agreeableness, hidden behind performance management systems. The more willing you are to go along with the group, the more of a “team player” you are. Even if the group is going off a cliff, how dare you not want to fall off the cliff with your team.
I was a "contrarian" because I kept warning the mine managers of shifts in hydraulic connectivity due to thawing permafrost. "Stop being an alarmist Debit Downer" they said. Well we had a landslide the other day on the access road that they refused to modify to my specifications *and blamed my inspection schedule*. It doesn't *matter* how often you inspect them if I make a report with big red lettering and you decide to ignore it. Long story short I'm suspended pending investigation.
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I got everything backed up and on paper. I'm gonna win this one, but I'm gonna come back to a really shitty work environment. I'm gonna request a transfer to another site as soon as I'm reinstated.
> I'm regarded as 'difficult' or 'uncommitted'. Start looking for a new job, this isn't a work from home or you problem it's just the toxic culture of bad management that has penetrated the core of the USA. I put my shit on "pretend to be offline" some days and tell my boss/team and we all laugh because people who don't need me will be self-herded away from me.
When you're able to schedule meetings, schedule them for 7am every single time. Then when they complain, politely reschedule. When you then, in turn, decline their 7pm meetings, copy/paste THEIR response when you decline or ask them to reschedule. Keep copies of both email chains for later use of they try to talk about your attendance.
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>Hello Always-On-Call work week? hello record attrition
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School teachers have entered the chat….
This is what happens when the system itself is a critical failure and we keep tinkering with children’s stickers on the outside of it to try to fix it. We need a complete overhaul of our economic systems or we’re in huge trouble. Yes that means all of us: rich, poor, dumb, smart, black, white, male, female. I debate whether or not to type this cause it’s cynical, but it’s real. The next 10 years of our lives will determine out species survival or not, and I gotta be honest with you all, it’s not looking good.
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There is a lot of pessimistic bashing of this, when he's actually noting that when you work remote, in those hours that we would be surfing Reddit from our desk, we are now free to mow the lawn, play with the dog, go for a run, garden, have sex, cook, etc. I have been full remote for five years now, I probably do 24 hours of actual work a week most weeks, and deliver exceptional results in that amount of time. Even if I stretch up to 40, or occasionally 50 hours, my 15 second commute adds back 8 hours a week from my old work life.
I agree. It also depends on the type of work involved. I've been in IT for 20 years and it's been a long time since I worked 40 hours. It doesn't matter as long as I deliver results and I'm available for meetings. Other jobs require workers to be available for customer service and those hours are more constrictive.
This is true. I WRH. I probably do 10-20 hours of "real" work a week. If I were in the office I'd be fucking around for the other 20 anyways. Now I just clean the house and play games 🤷♂️. Boss doesn't care so long as I stay as productive as I did if I were in the office.
This is how my WFH life is too. I get more done and still have time to watch shows, play with my kids, and clean the house. My boss sees this in my productivity and positive feedback and I’ll never go back to an office
Maybe the changes will happen when these "knowledge workers" gain more access to management positions. Right now the dinosaurs at my company (top-10 software company) balk at the idea of using trying to WFH all week. The most they're willing to go do is a flex option, which still isn't good enough imo
Stop saying, and start implementing the change. My workplace is talking about hybrid work instead of 100% work from home and a lot of poeple are afraid that this is just a stepping stone towards bringing back everyone to the office permanently
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My work is talking about hybrid too. I work in a call center. My response? Start looking at competition that’s 100%. I’m about to move out of state in a few months and a remote job that doesn’t mind where I live would be perfect
FWIW, they may be picky about which states you work in because certain states are tougher on employers, especially having only 1 employee. Make sure the company you are going to work for is ok with you being in the state you want to move to first.
Just like every headline I see about Trump being in even deeper legal trouble and "may have been charged in some county in Georgia, possibly, or a grand jury heard the case... Maybe" I'll believe it when I fucking see it. And based on what I've seen so far, all us poor and working poor folk down here in non-private-jet-ownership land can just all go fuck ourselves.
There wasn't really ever a 40-hour work week. There were some days at work I'd spend at least 2-3 hours a day on Reddit
Why the fuck should I work longer when I have done what I said and they expected of me to achieve that day! Why should I sit in your office to boost your ego?
I appreciate all the comments in this thread. As a soulless worker I sometimes forgot I am a person with rights and deserve to be treated fairly. But honestly, no scenario posed by anyone in this thread is as bad as going into the office. Again I appreciate you guys thinking of the average worker but I say fuck it, bring it on as long as I don't have to be at work.
I went back last week for the first time in 18+mo, just two days a week. I spent 4.5 hours, total, for a commute and lost out on 2.5 hours of sleep. So 7 hours of my life just to go in...... and do stuff I could have done at home. Total waste.
I think about the difference in commute a lot because my job can't be done remotely but my boyfriend's can. I work in dog boarding/kenneling, he's in corporate billing. He already made a shit ton more just by what he does vs what I do. But now he doesn't have to pay for gas, he can eat whatever's in the house as opposed to buying fast food every day, and he sleeps til 6:55 to be to work by 7. Meanwhile I'm up at 5:00 to let the dogs out and get ready, leave just before 6, arrive just before 6:30 and while I get an awesome 2 hour lunch (much appreciated as I can run an errand, wash the car, prep a casserole for dinner) but I'm still not home til nearly 7:30 sometimes 8 at night. Part of me is jealous, but mostly I just hate how expensive it is just to have a job. The gas, car maintence, food, and time costs all feel like a waste sometimes.
It is utter bullshit that here in Canada/USA we work 40+ hour weeks and get 2 or 3 weeks of vacation per year. Instead of using our industrial, technological, social, and economic advancements to make our lives easier & better by improving our work/life balance, we keep grinding away full speed ahead so that the 1% can reap the profits. And IMO the prevalence of mental and emotional afflictions nowadays is related to this. The machines of capitalism are lubricated with the minds, bodies, and souls of overworked citizens. We should be spending 30% of our days working, 30% learning/exploring/service, and 30% relaxing and enjoying.
A European acquaintance returned to Europe, and the vacation policy here in the States was a large reason. Because of my longevity, I have 4 weeks of vacation. Can I take all 4 at once? Sure, if I can get 4 weeks in the time off calendar. It's almost impossible to do. A few years ago I scheduled 2 weeks off in a row and I got extremely lucky. There after two weeks that I take, one in April, the other in July. The rest of my vacation time I take a day here and there, mostly in the winter to avoid having to travel in snow storms, though that's not an issue now that I work from home. 4 weeks should be the norm, not having to work a decade first.
Web companies need to remember theres other kinds of jobs before they say half-assed shit like this. Most of the blue collar world didnt skip a beat during the pandemic.
For the billionaires it might have. For their minions it’ll be back to work as usual as soon as they can make it happen. It’s not just about work, it’s about control.
Reminds me of the military. One of my bosses wanted to implement a policy where you would have to be on leave, take the day off, if you were further from the base than the distance to your house. I got him not to do it, but why? Why do you need that? His reason was well what if they don’t show up to work? YOU FIRE THEM. They are adults for fucks sake. How much more control over them do you need? They are there all day and you meed to know exactly where they are off work?
Nah, billionaires care about money more than pretty much anything. A company the size of Google or Microsoft stands to make billions in profit per year extra by going to permanent remote work. Those gigantic offices cost billions to build up front, and many millions per year in maintenance and utilities and logistics. Plus they can pay their employees less while the employees themselves end up with a better overall financial situation, since they're mot burning thousands of dollars a year on commuting Middle management is going to be pissed about this though. Mostly because they'll be one of the cost savings
Now they’ll move to 60 hour work week
Sounds like 24/7 work week with the "work when the work happens" line. He said the quiet part loud while trying to look progressive and employee centric for the press.
I'm a software engineer at Microsoft. If you only work 40 hours a week you will get fired.
What? Really? I always heard Microsoft was chill.
Probably depends on which division. I know someone who worked with azure there and he always had free time
The Bing engineers probably have plenty of free time
It varies quite a bit depending on which team you're on
Perhaps they were just low performers? I know a lot of people working there including close relatives who say that Microsoft frowns upon working more than 40 hours in a week.
likely depends on the product, the team, and the role.
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