Work From Home (WFH) Thread

[kehlis]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

This goes without saying (or should), but there's no 1 right solution for every type of industry. Some industries can easily work with a fully distributed workforce and permanent WFH, others can't, and most are somewhat in between. I think sweeping statements that you see all over (in print media, on TV, everywhere else) about how WFH is the future, or pre-COVID status quo will be back soon, or whatever, are all just reactionary. I've been in the workforce long enough to see a few work/office trends come and go, and none of them are ever the permanent revolution predicted.

All that having been said, this is obviously a new and unique situation, so how this all turns out is anyone's guess. I think most companies will settle on some kind of hybrid, but who knows?

The only thing that concerns me about people arguing vociferously for permanent WFH is that you have to be careful, because you may well convince the C-suite that you're entirely correct, and that your job can be done from anywhere. And once you've convinced them, how long before they come to the determination that "anywhere" can be Hyderabad or Bangladesh?

I think we'll see a heavy hybrid method for the next couple years but at some point we'll evolve back to where we were before.

There were a lot of jobs where working from home was allowed occasionally or when necessary so I don't think that will ever go away.


I will admit that I say that as a company who owns quite a few of our own buildings already so to justify the cost they will want people there.

For the companies who leased a majority of their spaces who see equal or better production from a work from home environment I could see a shift from them to safe the cost of physical environments.

[pietasterp]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

I think that's just the natural evolution of industry and economics. Outsourcing and offshoring of certain jobs very well could become the norm as they have for things like call-centers, but it will just push the local labor force into jobs that can't outsourced like that.

Also, while there might be some that can be pushed elsewhere today the vast majority of office jobs require a high level of effective communication in order to function properly. I don't mean this to be derogatory, but having to decipher heavily accented english from a Bangladesh citizen would be undesirable and inefficient for many businesses.

I totally agree with you, KSUowls, but there is no indication that I've seen that suggests that (most) companies care at all whether their customers can effectively communicate with their employees. One would think a job like customer service or tech support, which is essentially 100% communication skills, wouldn't ever be outsourced, but those were among the first to go overseas. Once you've decided that not being able to understand your telephone workforce is okay (provided you save 85% on labor costs), the sky's the limit for what other jobs you can send abroad...

I think we'll see a heavy hybrid method for the next couple years but at some point we'll evolve back to where we were before.

There were a lot of jobs where working from home was allowed occasionally or when necessary so I don't think that will ever go away.


I will admit that I say that as a company who owns quite a few of our own buildings already so to justify the cost they will want people there.

For the companies who leased a majority of their spaces who see equal or better production from a work from home environment I could see a shift from them to safe the cost of physical environments.

I would agree; this is what I think we'll settle on as well.

[Jr.]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

It would be quite the green initiative for companies to keep people working from home.

I remember during the major quarantine how clean the air seemed around Denver just in the 6 weeks where people weren't driving to work everyday. If you could cut the number of people driving to work by 50% across the country, that could make a major impact on carbon emissions.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Operation Sports mobile app

[Majingir]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

I'm surprised at the amount of companies who are not only having return to work, but seems like they're ditching WFH entirely.

I would've thought it would stick, or at least have a "casual friday" like day where you can come in if you want or just stay home and work.

Guess it depends on employers. It's funny hearing some responses to WFH basically being like "sure, people might be more productive at home, but they will also have more free time that we're paying them to do nothing". When to me, I dont think it should matter. If they get the days work done before the end of the day, and can't get started on the next days work ahead of time, go ahead and do whatever you want, you earned it.

Or if its really an issue, assuming its legally allowed, maybe offer 8 hour work in office shifts, or 7 hours WFH days.

[Hooe]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

Might also depend on the particular job. Some professions do benefit from in-person interactions, particularly more creative endeavors such as video game development or things requiring more hands-on relationship building such as major fundraising operations.

Me personally? I'm a mobile software engineer. My job does not require a physical office. If I have my way I am never doing a physical work commute ever again. The personal time I gain by not commuting is invaluable, and I also save a fair amount of money not buying gasoline, car maintenance, parking passes, metro fares, or whatever.

Any ethical discussion about workers coming back into the office must grapple with compensating returning workers for their lost free time spent commuting (particularly in major urban areas with heavy traffic and long commutes) and also reimbursing workers for costs assumed for securing transportation to and from the office, IMO. We've all learned over the past two years how much we can get done without an office (and generally we can do pretty well!), so companies need to put their money where their mouth is when they say that having people in the office is valuable. The onus is now on them to demonstrate that value. Otherwise companies are just asking people to do the same jobs for less money, and that's a nonstarter for me personally.

[kehlis]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

Most businesses won't come out and say it but I'm pretty confident the biggest factor for trying to push to back in office for a lot of companies is office space currently under lease or already owned.

I'm talking more about larger businesses, the company I work for recently built a huge new skyscraper downtown that has largely sat vacant for the last couple years and I can understand why it's annoying to see it sit vacant after the investment that went into it (it is 100% owned and not leased).

[Hooe]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

Most businesses won't come out and say it but I'm pretty confident the biggest factor for trying to push to back in office for a lot of companies is office space currently under lease or already owned.

I'm talking more about larger businesses, the company I work for recently built a huge new skyscraper downtown that has largely sat vacant for the last couple years and I can understand why it's annoying to see it sit vacant after the investment that went into it (it is 100% owned and not leased).

This doesn't shock me at all, as it's a similar case out here. Per several reports, as of November 2021 fully 25% of all office space in downtown Los Angeles sits vacant falling out from the pandemic lock-downs and the cultural shift to remote work. I'm sure the people who hold the deeds to those expensive buildings would really love to have companies with on-site staffs move back in and make rent payments lol.

[KSUowls]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

I'm surprised at the amount of companies who are not only having return to work, but seems like they're ditching WFH entirely.

I would've thought it would stick, or at least have a "casual friday" like day where you can come in if you want or just stay home and work.

Guess it depends on employers. It's funny hearing some responses to WFH basically being like "sure, people might be more productive at home, but they will also have more free time that we're paying them to do nothing". When to me, I dont think it should matter. If they get the days work done before the end of the day, and can't get started on the next days work ahead of time, go ahead and do whatever you want, you earned it.

Or if its really an issue, assuming its legally allowed, maybe offer 8 hour work in office shifts, or 7 hours WFH days.

Yeah I'm completely surprised by this as well. I look at how long it took companies to realize that office workers didn't need to come in with a suit and a tie, and it makes me think that businesses are a little slow to adapt to changing office life. However, I really thought that COVID would have been the catalyst to get companies out of antiquated routines like having non customer facing office workers in the office 5 days a week.

Me personally? I'm a mobile software engineer. My job does not require a physical office. If I have my way I am never doing a physical work commute ever again. The personal time I gain by not commuting is invaluable, and I also save a fair amount of money not buying gasoline, car maintenance, parking passes, metro fares, or whatever.

I did a littler exercise about a year or so ago when I was wrestling with the idea of taking a new job at a place that wasn't committed to WFH post pandemic. I put together a process map comparing every step of my transitioning from home to office in a daily commute life vs. where I'm at now in a totally WFH environment.

We always focus on the time spent in the car, which is both the bulk of it and sufficient enough for a reason to want to WFH imo, but I would encourage others to do this to really see how much of a time sink your commute is. I factored in things like leaving early to make sure that I'm not late if there are any traffic problems, the time it takes to walk from the parking deck to my office on the 12th floor (and back down in the evenings with the 5pm rush), and some smaller factors as well. I intentionally did not factor factor in how WFH allows me to eat breakfast/make coffee while I run downloads in the morning that tie up my computer, or other items like that where I'm saving time by combining tasks that I would otherwise have to do separately between work and home.

My company has a relatively healthy PTO policy (compared to a lot of others around here). I accrue basically 35 days of PTO per year. In terms of 8 hour work days, I was spending about 33 of them in my car with a pretty average commute for the area (a little over an hour in total). Then, after adding in those extra steps that aren't normally factored in (using an ultra conservative 20 minutes a day), I was spending about 42 "work days" transitioning to and from work a year. And all of this is assuming that I use all 35 of my PTO days in a calendar year (we have rollover so that has basically never happened). I don't think I'll evert accept a job another job where my total days in office is greater than 1/week.

[LowerWolf]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

We've been told we're going back to the office in April.

Not coincidentally, I'm currently interviewing for a similar position with a company that will allow me to work remote full-time.

[pietasterp]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

Agree with all of the points made by everyone in this thread so far.

The origin of "the office" as a workplace standard probably has its roots mainly in the practical nature of having access to equipment/machinery that was not available to people in their home. Telephones dedicated to work, for example, a fax machine, then later a computer and reliable fast internet service - all of these things were not feasible in the home not so long ago. So an office did make sense as a central location where these things were available and accessible. Now that this is no longer the case for a lot of jobs, the use-case for an office is vastly reduced. Old habits/standards die hard, though, as we're all seeing.

I do think there are jobs that benefit from being in-person moreso than others, though, as I think most would agree. Jobs that are collaborative by nature and benefit from personal interaction (creative jobs, science-based jobs to some extent, just to name a few) cannot necessarily replicate the interaction via Zoom or whatever. I think it varies by job type, company, culture, etc.

Bottom line is there is no 1 right answer, but I think what we've seen over the past 2 years is that the options are much more varied than we have acknowledged to date.

[jeebs9]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

We've been told we're going back to the office in April.



Not coincidentally, I'm currently interviewing for a similar position with a company that will allow me to work remote full-time.

I'm in a very similar situation. My company has had zero policy in place for returning. But they are trying to force me to return 5 days a week to an empty office. I've already voiced my frustrations. But it's time to brush up on my interview skills at this point.

[KSUowls]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

Avoiding the political aspects of what is happening in Ukraine right now, I wonder if this might make some companies rethink their return to work strategy. Having millions of employees going into work whom could otherwise do their job from home creates unnecessary demand on oil supply. As gas prices continue to creep up (and supply potentially falls) then it's going to become more and more onerous for employees to get to and from work each day. For the employers, this could have far more adverse impacts on their business than paying the lease on an unused piece of real estate.

[pietasterp]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

Avoiding the political aspects of what is happening in Ukraine right now, I wonder if this might make some companies rethink their return to work strategy. Having millions of employees going into work whom could otherwise do their job from home creates unnecessary demand on oil supply. As gas prices continue to creep up (and supply potentially falls) then it's going to become more and more onerous for employees to get to and from work each day. For the employers, this could have far more adverse impacts on their business than paying the lease on an unused piece of real estate.

This is definitely a concern, I would imagine. I have recently heard some colleagues playing hardball about the commute when evaluating new job opportunities for this exact reason. And it is becoming more and more a legitimate issue - if you're looking at $70-80/week just to commute back-and-forth, that's starting to be noticeable in your wallet. And it's not like it's going to get better anytime soon.

[hardcor2]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

I'm so excited to be transitioning to a new career where I will be WFH. I'm starting March 28. To be going from third shift in a factory to WFH will be a complete life changer for me and my family. The company is fully committed to people working from wherever they can be the most productive, whether its in the office (some people like the structure and scheduled nature) or at home. I've been looking to transition to this new field for the last year almost and finally landed a job and I absolutely can not wait!

[roadman]

Re: Work From Home (WFH) Thread

My wife's large company is transitioning her, starting next week, to a hybrid situation for the rest of her employment at this company.

2 days in and 3 days WFH.

I think that is workable, including the recent spike in gas prices.