Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this.
Now after a bunch of companies want their remote workers back at the office, every one of those companies are being almost propaganda machines which do not cite sound scientific studies but cite each other and interviews with higher ups in top companies that “remote workers are less productive”. This is further cementing the general public’s opinion on this matter.
And research that shows the opposite is buried deep within any search results.
Have you noticed this? Please share what you have observed. I’m going paranoid about this.
I work remotely at the moment since March 2020 and I’m over it, can’t stand it anymore. I’m single with no kids and work a LOT. I’ll frequently wake up, work twelve hours, go to bed, never leave the house. I’m looking for jobs in my field so I can at least get out of the house, go to an office and socialize a bit with colleagues and other office tenants, get lunch at outdoor cafes etc.
I also miss learning through osmosis from overhearing colleagues discussing technical concepts I’m unfamiliar with, and teaching others similarly about things I know that they don’t.
My experience working with other people all fully remotely is that it’s very difficult to coordinate as a group, and individually many people are terrible communicators. This is magnified by remote work. (Pet peeve: answer the phone and turn on your fucking camera, I want to know who I’m working 80 hours a week with ffs.)
All that said I totally agree that a lot of work can and should be done at home. A hybrid approach is difficult though unless everyone is at the office and WFH at the same time. Otherwise what’s the point of me being at the office while you are at home and vice versa. It’s very tricky and I’m not sure how to resolve.
Sounds like a YOU problem. Why should we, WFH productive advocates, have to pay for your sins? Get therapy if you need it.
“I need to get back into commuting, which involves time and money, just so Jane Doe doesn’t feel lonely, because they can’t socialise on their own”.
Is it possible for me to love WFH but also avoid it most of the time because my productivity is shit at home?
Having a nearby office with the option to work from home is the best of both worlds for me. I guess for those of you who do better working from home, you could take or leave the nearby office part!
Key difference is that you realize that different people work differently.
My workplace is full of talking heads in upper management who constantly repeat what boils down to, “I’m more productive in the office than at home, therefore everyone must be more productive at the office than at home, therefore we need to bring everyone back.”
Which is obviously horse shit.
I live alone, and working from home not only means no commute, no parking costs, comfy clothes, and all the conveniences of home…it also means having all my notes and documents at hand, not having to function from a random empty cubicle, no distraction from constant non-work-related chatter, no interruptions from coworkers walking by and deciding to talk, and when we’re in crunch time, it also means I’ll consider working OT to help speed things along! Working in the office means “don’t even bother asking me to work OT”.
I work harder, get distracted less, and somehow have better technology uptime from home, so it benefits my employer and I prefer it. All my meetings still have to be online because there’s rarely ever a time where all parties are in the office at the same time.
The only reason for me to come into the office is because someone 3+ grades above me said so.
A lot of people hate working from home. People with kids, who want to spend some time of the day in peace. People living in house shares with bad neighbours. People living with abusive partners or parents. People with mental issues who feel more comfortable with people around them. Don’t be an ignorant dick.
I’ve got small kids, so while I generally like WFH, there have been times where I absolutely just wanted to GTFO and go into the office. Our company did full WFH for awhile, then gradually phased us back in to the office, but for me the best schedule we had was where we were one week in-office, one week WFH, that was the absolute best and gave me the best of both worlds. Without kids though, I would probably prefer WFH a good portion of the time, just so I could have some freedom during lulls in the workload to catch up on home stuff.
I’m sort of like that - I LOOOOVE WFH, and do it all the time, but at the same time, I work for a brewery that is probably one of the few genuinely good and decent workplaces, and going to the office at the brewery is genuinely fun. Helps when you have cool coworkers, and can drink beer while you work (though that’s rough on productivity…)
Nobody hates optional WFH with no strings for doing so.
Personally, I love WFH. I love being home and by myself. Additionally, I may end up not leaving my house until the weekend and I love it since I despise driving. But I understand that would drive people insane. However, for me, I needed to recharge my introvert batteries over the weekend instead of seeing friends. Now I’m a social butterfly in my off time ☺️
Why? Just let people work wherever the fuck they want to, no reason to divide society. If anything, division is just a tool for companies to manipulate us into doing what they want us to
I think a lot of it is crappy control-freak managers, used to “managing by walking around”, who feel lost when all the peons are out and working remote.
The companies that let workers act on their own recognizance are most likely far more pleasant to work for, while the companies that have a million little rules and do things like forced RTO tend to be the ones with asshole bosses that are miserable workplaces.
It isn’t propaganda to look at the real-world ramifications of this.
- The hard drop in commercial real estate is going to end in a lot of big loans going unpaid. Might end in some bank failures.
- The drop in assessed value is going to hit cities hard in the pocket as they depend a lot on these property taxes from commercial properties to pay theirs bills (social programs, subsidized public transportation, police, fire, public housing, roads, etc).
- It will increase sprawl as more people can now live anywhere and push into wilderness areas and we lose more open space.
- A lot of small businesses depend on those dense commercial areas. You’ll see more contractors, restaurants, etc having to close and downtowns getting deserted like happened in the 70s as people fled to suburbs.
You see a lot of people saying “just turn them into residences!”. It is very difficult and expensive to turn buildings designed as open office spaces into residences.
Re: Sprawl. The world is actually rather empty. A lot of changes are going to happen in domino fashion.
Good points. Regarding point 2, I think we’re going to see cities shift to trying to attract people rather than corporations.
Attracting an employer is now a less reliable way to attract their staff to a community.
I suspect we will soon find that policies that attract great grocery stores into a walkable neighborhoods are more effective for cities than implementing lax corporate tax policies.
It’s about money. Large corporations get city tax breaks to build their headquarters. The government gets a lot of money from the employees that report to those offices. The catch is that those tax breaks usually require minimum occupancy of the building. If everyone works from home then the government doesn’t get all their road tolls, gas tax, parking fees, sales tax on food, speeding tickets, parking tickets, etc. Since the government isn’t getting their kickback they stop giving the company tax breaks. So basically millions of people are being forced to do stuff they don’t want to do, just so really rich entities can be richer.
I’ll be weird and say I absolutely prefer working in-office over from home in most cases. I prefer being able to build relationships with my coworkers, ask quick questions and give quick answers, and just actually being able to talk to people.
However, I don’t think everyone needs to be in the office. My line of work requires it but I think it’s dumb that companies are requiring them to go in when there’s no reason beyond “we rent the space so we have to use it.”
Also you’re correct in how the headlines changed and it’s really dumb, but it’s mostly about the fact that real estate owners are trying to force people to rent their spaces instead of selling them.
I think there’s a balance for most people. I don’t mind being in the office but I hate commuting there. If the office was down the end of my street then I’d go every day. Luckily I mostly work on my own work so I only need to talk to people occasionally.
I can agree with the commute. I started working here by getting up at 6:30 and then traffic would put me at work at 7:30 and on some days it was extra bad. I got a dog who liked to wake me up at 5 so I ended up shifting my whole schedule and now I’m up at 5, out the door by 5:30, and then at work by 6 which means I leave at 3. The commute isn’t as bad now but it’s definitely not for everyone.
My new “position” is product owner and team lead so I have to interact with my team all day long. It’s definitely easier to talk to the folks at my location than it is to talk to the ones in different states just because I can turn around and go “Hey , what was that requirement you had a question about?” So much easier.