Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home (bloomberg.com) 363
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: With the coronavirus pandemic receding for every vaccine that reaches an arm, the push by some employers to get people back into offices is clashing with workers who've embraced remote work as the new normal. While companies from Google to Ford and Citigroup have promised greater flexibility, many chief executives have publicly extolled the importance of being in offices. Some have lamented the perils of remote work, saying it diminishes collaboration and company culture. JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon said at a recent conference that it doesn't work "for those who want to hustle." But legions of employees aren't so sure. If anything, the past year has proved that lots of work can be done from anywhere, sans lengthy commutes on crowded trains or highways. Some people have moved. Others have lingering worries about the virus and vaccine-hesitant colleagues.
It's still early to say how the post-pandemic work environment will look. Only about 28% of U.S. office workers are back at their buildings, according to an index of 10 metro areas compiled by security company Kastle Systems. Many employers are still being lenient with policies as the virus lingers, vaccinations continue to roll out and childcare situations remain erratic. But as office returns accelerate, some employees may want different options. A May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren't flexible about remote work. The generational difference is clear: Among millennials and Gen Z, that figure was 49%, according to the poll by Morning Consult on behalf of Bloomberg News. The lack of commutes and cost savings are the top benefits of remote work, according to a FlexJobs survey of 2,100 people released in April. More than a third of the respondents said they save at least $5,000 per year by working remotely.
It's still early to say how the post-pandemic work environment will look. Only about 28% of U.S. office workers are back at their buildings, according to an index of 10 metro areas compiled by security company Kastle Systems. Many employers are still being lenient with policies as the virus lingers, vaccinations continue to roll out and childcare situations remain erratic. But as office returns accelerate, some employees may want different options. A May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren't flexible about remote work. The generational difference is clear: Among millennials and Gen Z, that figure was 49%, according to the poll by Morning Consult on behalf of Bloomberg News. The lack of commutes and cost savings are the top benefits of remote work, according to a FlexJobs survey of 2,100 people released in April. More than a third of the respondents said they save at least $5,000 per year by working remotely.
Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
"Employees refuse to return to long commutes, decreased quality of life without pay raises."
You want your employees to come back in? Then pay them to do it, otherwise STFU. COVID proved for a lot of white collar industries that the job can be done from home, so if you now want folks back in the office then make it worth their while.
This article has the same kind of energy as all the restaurants posting whiny "NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE!111!1!" signs when they're offering to hire people in at $2.13/hour. Pay up or shut up.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, all the middle managers that erroneously believe they can measure work engagement with cursory floor monitoring, instead of monitoring productivity, and who cover for their own incompetence with endless meetings.
They YEARN to return to what is comfortable FOR THEM, but workers say NO. It makes them sad pandas, as they have to actually do their real jobs, without the passive ego boost of "inspecting the troops" from the safety of their office. (That is to say, walking to the window, looking into the cubefarm-esque open floor plan office dystopia, and being titillated by the experience of seeing everyone else with broken souls staring out through lifeless eyes as they toil for HIS yearly bonus, without compensation.)
Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just "measuring work engagement". It's micromanagement. It's more difficult to micromanage remote workers.
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Nonsense.
Middle managers are against remote workers, because it shows how fucking useless most of them are. Less meetings and more typing (emails etc) shows how they contribute basically nothing.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think it has anything to do with how often people bang.
More likely, management positions require "people skills", as you have to have them to interact with your subordinates. Management that is higher level, deals with people who have people skills-- (EG, hiring manager works with HR director, who works for the C level--- and all of those got there by playing the grab-ass game of networking, more than anything else.)
This leads to the situation where management does what is familiar and natural to them-- The top tier managers are people persons.
The more productive tech workers are introverts, with laser focus, who dislike distractions, and work best when left the fuck alone. However, the people persons do not feel comfortable with that-- (Throwing a project into a crowd of silent people, who pick up the project, and then say nothing at all about it while they work.) They want constant updates on the progress of the project, because their people-person bosses want those updates, because those people-person bosses all talk to each other at their golf games, about the status of their projects, during their "Networking" exercises. (For the passive ego boost.)
The actual deliverables are secondary to the ego boosts. (That is to say, they value the constant stream of progress updates, the feeling of inclusion and control over the process, et al, over the actual expediency or quality of the finished products.)
Since that is what they want, they select for that, and or-- engineer situations that force what they want.
Work from home breaks that control paradigm, and they hate it. They cannot invest the energy to address each employee directly, like you need with a well done virtual meeting--- They yearn for a return to "Get everyone into a giant room, so I can parade around and look important in front of everyone all at once." type setting, because it maximizes THEIR happiness. (And most importantly, their ability to placate their bosses.)
It is the same phenomenon that causes passive (unconsciously, unintentional) racial biases in office settings-- Managers hire what is most comfortable for them, rather than what is actually (as in, demonstrable, through actual deliverables) best.
Try to get away from the Idocracy trope. Think about it more in the terms of how human interactions actually work-- People like things that reinforce their internal biases, and managers are most certainly not an exception.
In the case of Work From Home-- the internal bias is "Work from home BAD-- Cannot assemble the troops, and feel important!" and "Work from home BAD-- Cannot treat workers as interchangable cogs, and must actually manage them in small groups, or on 1:1 levels!"
The pandemic force the managers to have to come out of that comfort zone, and they desire, very very strongly, to return to that comfort zone.
Employees are saying NO.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Informative)
They yearn for a return to "Get everyone into a giant room, so I can parade around and look important in front of everyone all at once." type setting, because it maximizes THEIR happiness. (And most importantly, their ability to placate their bosses.)
Exactly! The people calling for the return to office are mainly the managers, more senior => higher proportion. While the people who actually do the work, and being measured for job performance, mostly prefer to stay working from home. After a whole year of operating normally (obviously only for some type of work, YMMV), no one believes anymore that getting everybody in an office is in any way more effective, so managers are making up new excuses on the spot to try to force people to come to the office.
Companies that embraces remote working will gain a huge advantage over dinosaurs that insisted on everybody coming to office, both in terms of office rental costs, and the ability to hire and keep the best workers.
I, for one, if forced to go back to office, will switch to another job for the same (or even a bit less) pay that I can work mostly remotely. Going to the office one day a week would be acceptable, more is just wasting my time to stroke the ego of the bosses. The requirement for everyone going to office can be viewed as a clear warning sign of bosses with big ego that needed constant stroking.
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After the novelty of starbucks and meal delivery in theaters wears off the population centers really only offer the benefit of high speed internet. Starlink solves that. Now I can go have 80 acres in rural america for 1/10th the cost of a box like every other shiny modern city box dwelling in a rubber stamped neighborhood. The difference
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The UK government is demanding it too, pushing lots of scare stories to the media. Their pals own a lot of real estate and businesses that rely on the captive audience of office workers who don't have time to prepare lunch before their 2 hour commute into London.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly! The people calling for the return to office are mainly the managers, more senior => higher proportion.
That's actually not true -- it's the lower/middle management driving this.
The more senior the management, the more likely it is that _they_ work remotely, culminating in the executive level where they spend the majority of their time away from their corporate HQ, due to site visits, [prospective] customer visits, tradeshows, or whatnot.
FWIW, It's the same management mentality that leads to "all we need is a locked-down ultra-light windows laptop, and our work is all "collaboration" (ie meetings) so that's all every other employee needs to do their work"
They also probably fear for their job (Score:5, Insightful)
While true, they are also as intelligent as any other folk, and they can see the writing on the wall with work-at-home : you can thin out the "pyramid" and get ride of many of the intermediate manager "sheep herder" which are suddenly not needed anymore. The next "reorg" may well see them out of a job if they can't justifying sheep herding.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Managers don't trust people to work from home because most managers are such lazy fucks that if they work from home they don't do anything. They project this onto their employees.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:4, Interesting)
My boss' response to this was to create a lot of work to put in his work log. And that, of course, means he made a ton of pointless work for other people. And instead of not caring about our work logs, because they are pointless wastes of time, indicative of a management structure that can't handle remote work, he instead cross referenced our individual logs with his to make sure that we captured the pointless work he was creating so he had something to put on his log.
Seriously, management has been the worst part of working from home for me. Our work logging has been asinine. Management reviewing work logs has been the worst. Either there's not enough detail or there's so much they don't understand it, and want to go down wormholes that they, in normal years, would never have known existed.
On our surveys about remote work I put, "Remote work has been awesome, I'm way more productive at home. Management has fallen on its face and is unable to support remote work. Please train your management to support remote workers better. They do not have that skill. You didn't ensure they had that skill before hiring them years ago, because it wasn't needed. It is now. Train them and/or hire people with experience supporting remote workers."
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At 8:00 AM we discover we need to make one change to section B of the proposal. Email, text, IM, and phone call the person responsible for section B. No response.
10:00 AM. Still no response from the person responsible for section B. What to do. I could do it myself (as the project lead) but I have other things to do, too. More emails and phone calls. Still n
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1) If your subordinate can't be reached by phone or email during work hours, they aren't working from home. Rather, they are not-working from home. If this happens with any regularity, it is cause for a negative performance review and/or for them specifically to need to work from the office. It doesn't reflect on the workers who do successfully work from home.
2) So you worked 6 hours unnecessarily. That comes out to what, about a week's commute in both directions? If this scenario happens less than once a w
Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Your scenario, while a good bit accurate, harps a bit too much on those with proper communication skills. While there is certainly such a thing as too much communication and there is certainly a need to leave people the hell alone to work I have also seen many a project falter or even fail because of poor communication.
In other words, catering exclusively to the anti-social is also not a good solution.
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The more productive tech workers are introverts, with laser focus, who dislike distractions, and work best when left the fuck alone. However, the people persons do not feel comfortable with that-- (Throwing a project into a crowd of silent people, who pick up the project, and then say nothing at all about it while they work.) They want constant updates on the progress of the project, because their people-person bosses want those updates
This is true, but mischaracterizes the situation as one that depends purely on personalities and preferences.
Those people persons in higher management actually need to know what the productive tech workers are doing. They need to know whether projects are stalled because they're blocked on interactions with other groups, or whether serious technical problems have cropped up that will significantly delay the project, or whether things are moving slowly because the people doing the work are mis-prioritizing
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Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
> Introverts versus extroverts. By far the majority are extroverts, which is logical, as extroverts will fuck much more than introverts and fucking makes babies, sometimes.
Some introverts find a life at home without family or colleagues quite sterile. And seeing an occasional attractive, personable, extroverted colleague or even passerby or waitperson can help solitary depression quite a lot.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just tiring, and by the end of the working day we need to be left alone for a bit to recharge.
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Good news, with WFH you can still see people, but on your own terms. Nothing stopping you meeting work colleagues in the couple of hours you save by not commuting, or for lunch if they live nearby. Or meet your friends from outside work, you have more time now. Go shopping or to a café, the ones you want to visit not just the ones near work.
That time and money wasted going into the office is yours now.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:4, Funny)
Suure....
How many times has the following conversation occurred: "Hey, let's meet for lunch". "Ok, sounds great!"
How many times has the lunch actually happened?
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as extroverts will fuck much more than introverts
Horseshit; if you want to attract a woman, the last thing you need to do is talk your way out of getting laid. STFU and remain - at least a little - mysterious.
*Then again, if you really scraping the bottom of the barrel, she might be impressed if the mere fact that you can even form a sentence.
Introverts, who tend to listen and not talk, an be quite good in situations where listening is key to success.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Introverts versus extroverts. By far the majority are extroverts, which is logical, as extroverts will fuck much more than introverts and fucking makes babies, sometimes.
In the words of Tim Minchin; "That's absolute bullshit"
The "alpha male" actually doesn't bed all the girls, and in modern society, even the girls who decide that they'd like got get boned by one just for the fun of it, at least once, have contraception available and most likely don't feel like having a family with that dude.
Extroverts work best in the office
true
they are by far the majority,
wrong. like many other such factors, the intro-extrovert spectrum follows a normal distribution. There's plenty of literature on that.
work will be adjusted to suit them
It used to, because they tend to be more vocal about their demands and there's a slightly higher percentage of them in management positions.
That's exactly what this whole discussion is about - will this still be true in the future, or do we finally see that for some people, the office environment is a hinderance to productivity?
Re:Media: BOUGHT AND PAID FOR (Score:4, Insightful)
So you figure that a nasty virus producing billions of copies of the spike protein in your body is harmless but the mere proximity of someone who had the spike protein in their body for a couple weeks a month ago is a threat?
You not showing for work is likely doing your employer a favor.
Re: Media: BOUGHT AND PAID FOR (Score:3, Insightful)
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There's no gene therapy involved in the COVID vaccine. It's mRNA - which is basically the memos sent from the nucleus to the cell to tell it what to do. The cell follows the memos, makes some spike proteins, and before long the cleanup crew shreds the memos just like it does those from the nucleus. There's absolutely no reason to believe your DNA is affected in any way.
Re:Media: BOUGHT AND PAID FOR (Score:5, Informative)
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The mRNA vaccines were able to be "designed" so quickly because they are only designing a small portion of the actual vaccine when designing the payload. It's like how we can create a new "rocket" by attaching a different warhead onto a rocket that's already designed, and now we can use it for a new purpose. Or developing a platformer on Roblox; it only takes a few days to build a whole "new platformer", because the framework of the game it runs on - Roblox - is already operational and available.
It's just c
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It's like saying the idea of "Cherry Coke" was developed in two days so therefore it can't be any good. Cherry Coke is only possible because Coke had been developed long before Cherry Coke was needed. Sure, we pushed through Cherry Coke as fast as we could. I mean, people were dying for lack of a Cherry Coke. But, we did our due diligence, we tested Cherry Coke on hundreds of thousands
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I see this problem all the time. We need to deliver to the Customer on June 1st, and so the developer assumes that his task can be done on May 31st. And the dev is baffled that he's not being praised for working over the weekend to get it done by May 31st. Testing needs a month, training needs to get on board, manufacturing needs to tweak the process, etc, so it turns out you need to be done a week before the project starts.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Even Better Alternative headline (Score:5, Interesting)
"Employees Claim They Will Consider Quitting Instead Of Giving Up Working From Home"
The headline as written is very misleading. The article had a small number of cases of someone quitting, but overall is based on surveys of employees claiming they will consider quitting. We are unlikely to know for a while if there was an exodus from companies forcing employees back into the office. I personally hope that will be the case, but this article certainly isn't backing up its claims.
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Kind of like the Lucky Strike, "I'd rather fight than quit" commercial.
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We are unlikely to know for a while if there was an exodus from companies
Unfilled job vacancies are at record highs. There is plenty of evidence that people aren't going back to work.
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Re:Even Better Alternative headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Not just considering it, I'm actively looking for jobs that are 99% remote. If my employer decides I need to be wasting my time commuting 5 days a week then I want to have options and switch quickly. There are plenty of jobs about right now too.
A lot of people are thinking long term. If they don't need to be in the office they can live anywhere. Cheaper houses in nicer places.
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A lot of people are thinking long term. If they don't need to be in the office they can live anywhere. Cheaper houses in nicer places.
This. I picked my current house to be within daily commute range of the city. If I had known a few years ago that I would commute, say, one or two days a week, I would have widened the circle and possibly found something similar a lot cheaper and in a nicer place.
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Not just considering it, I'm actively looking for jobs that are 99% remote.
And the other side is that companies who are a little more forward-thinking have realized that allowing remote work is a competitive advantage for them in the hiring game. I get lots of contacts by headhunters (who doesn't?), and that hasn't changed over the last year... but what has changed is that while my comment that I refuse to relocate from my rural Utah home used to end the conversation, it no longer does. Almost every single headhunter who has contacted me in the last several months has said that 10
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"Employees refuse to return to long commutes, decreased quality of life without pay raises."
Come talk to us when the actual numbers start rolling in. These are simply people who "claim" they'll quit. Yeah? Put your money where your mouth is.
A lot of people talk a lot of big shit but, when the chips are down, they act like little bitches.
I don't know how other states do it, but you don't get Unemployment in CA if you QUIT your job because you don't want to go in to work.
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Well the story provides an out.
Others have lingering worries about the virus and vaccine-hesitant colleagues.
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Re:Alternative headline (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how other states do it, but you don't get Unemployment in CA if you QUIT your job because you don't want to go in to work.
Who says these people will be unemployed?
It's very easy. Working from home is extremely beneficial for me. I'd say my employment has become about 10,000 pound per year more valuable to me. So if my company had a huge problem with people working from home and forced me to come in, every other company that doesn't becomes 10,000 pound per year more attractive. With that kind of maths, finding a different job is very easy.
Re: Alternative headline (Score:2)
These people cannot live on thin air alone. Sooner or later they have to find a job.
Of course they can hold out as long as possible in search of a better paying job. And switching jobs is often the easiest way to increase your income, so I am sure a general increase will occur.
But to suggest people will simply stay at home unless employers pay more is silly. What home? Who is paying your mortgage?
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Lol, they aren't refusing shit - they're just complaining. Some will find other jobs, others will just get shitcanned for not coming to work. Nobody owes you extra money for coming in to work like we have been since office jobs were first a thing.
So rather than pay up or shut up, I'd say show up or quit is more applicable. If companies find that to be a problem they will change their policies. Most probably won't need to.
This applies to me (Score:5, Interesting)
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My boss fully expects us to return to the office 5 days per week sometime this summer. I am never going back to the office, and will probably end up resigning. Life is too short to spend commuting.
Maybe better to change your bosses expectations. Bosses see things from their point of view. For example, how much does it cost the company to employ you, and how many hours a week do you work for that money? You see it from your point of view: How much do I have in my pocket, after spending money on transport, and how much time do I have to spend in total, do go to work, do the job, and come back home?
Explain to your boss how his expectation does benefit him very little, some people actually work more w
My company was always remote (Score:5, Interesting)
To attract the best people you need to not upend their lives and command them to jump on demand.
Re:My company was always remote (Score:5, Funny)
Darn. There goes the military.
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silly employers (Score:5, Insightful)
many should have learned they don't need a building any more; buildings are very expensive
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And now we know the real reason. [youtu.be]
Re:silly employers (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need to dump so much CO2 and pollution into the atmosphere just so we can all work in the same building either. Given that many countries have declared a climate emergency they should be looking at ways to make WFH permanent and the default option.
That's all OK (Score:3)
Re:That's all OK (Score:5, Insightful)
When everyone is on site, its a lot easier to walk to someone's office to ask a question or go fore help.
Guess whose productivity suffers when people are always coming to your office to ask something they can figure out themselves?
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Well that explains all those unproductive teachers in our schools. :-p
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Re:That's all OK (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone is doing work that shouldn't be interrupted, they can close their door.
What is this door you mention? I have only had a private office for a few months between 1992 and now. The rest of the time, it was either a cubicle farm, an open space or a team/unit office (4 to 16 people)...
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Re:That's all OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, a lot depends on how long it would take them to figure it out for themselves. If it's a few minutes they're wasting your time. If it's a few weeks then you probably should get around to answering that question in a day or so.
Sometimes the mere *intention* to put a question to someone answers it for you. You have to organize your thoughts to ask the question cogently, and to ask cogently is sometimes all that is needed to find the answer.
So having some framework in which you answer questions, even occasionally dumb ones, can be a good thing. Just so long as it's not open season every time something pops into someone's head.
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Old men in management have an outdated worldview (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Old men in management have an outdated worldvie (Score:4, Insightful)
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Funnily enough, all my previous "you must be in the office" managers were millennials, not boomers.
White-collar equivalent (Score:2)
This is just the white-collar equivalent to the wage-slave side "worker shortage." People are fed up with poor working conditions / pay / etc and are choosing to hold out for better. There aren't a shortage of workers--there is a shortage of desirable job offerings.
Re:White-collar equivalent (Score:4, Insightful)
Dated attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of working 9-5 in a fixed location is simply out of date, and covid has just forced people to try alternatives. Many outdated employers and managers claimed remote working was not possible without ever trying it.
Needing to collaborate in person with colleagues is a niche. In a lot of cases, collaboration can be done online and if you're failing to do so this has a lot to do with not trying, not being used to it, or not having proper tools available. Linux for instance is developed by a large number of people collaborating online.
In many cases online collaboration is better if done properly. I lost track of the number of meetings we've had to discuss something, only to have a great idea after the meeting has finished. With an online collaboration, ideas can be added and discussed as you think of them. Because you can spread things out, people don't need to be dragged off their existing projects to attend a meeting, they can provide ideas as they have flashes of inspiration. You can also involve more people who may not be considered integral to the project, but still might have useful ideas.
People need to get used to the differences with online collaboration, and be supplied with adequate tooling. Once these conditions are met, online collaboration is often better or at least not any worse for a lot of people or cases.
For many jobs, having times when you can work undistracted is also very important. Having people around you in an open plan office is always distracting, having people who can come and disturb you at any time is a huge productivity killer. When i work from home i can concentrate and work efficiently, people can leave me messages and i will respond to them when i take a natural break from whatever work i'm doing. There are extremely few cases where people need something so urgently that it justifies disrupting what i'm currently working on.
There have also been trade-offs during covid. People forced to work from home because there's no alternative, but who are not prepared to do so. Someone who works from home full time will have a proper setup, ideally a separate room.
Someone who doesn't work from home might live in a very small apartment either because they don't expect to spend much time there or because it's all they could afford within commuting range of the office. If you have freedom to live anywhere, you can most likely get a bigger and better place.
Similarly childcare/school facilities have often been lost due to covid. While it's possible to work from home and look after kids, it's not ideal especially if the kids are also stuck at home bored or are young etc. Working from home and looking after kids was the better alternative to not working at all. After covid there's no reason the kids can't return to their normal childcare routine while you continue to work from home.
Taste of freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
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Damned straight. How many of us have had jobs where our bosses haul us in on our days off to some office somewhere for some useless meeting that could have been done online, on the phone, or in a memo, and then we have to go to our actual job site? In one case of mine, the entire time I was in the damned meeting I was having to step out to answer phone calls. It was utterly worthless. I'd bet all of us have experienced this kind of horseshit.
Of course the viability of working from home depends on the natur
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I find I tend to put in a bit more time than I am contracted for when I work from home. No need to rush out to beat the traffic, and if I'm at the computer doing some personal stuff and I have an idea for work I can do a bit of research or engineering then and there.
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Count me in (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'm seeing is (Score:5, Interesting)
There is one rather massive realignment going on though. the restaurant industry appears to have been full of overqualified employees who had better options. After getting a taste of what it's like to live without constantly being afraid of losing your home or not having enough for food they're now looking for better jobs. And a lot of them are finding them. Mississippi only had a 3% unemployment rate when they took away the extended unemployment. The extended unemployment really wasn't causing people to stop looking for work. What it did do is show people what it's like to live when you have enough money to make ends meet. As someone who spent several years working in restaurants when I could have got a much much better job, largely due to self-esteem issues, I can relate
Americans are used to being abused by our betters. But these months in the pandemic under lockdown have given us a sense of what it would be like to live in the kind of society where you don't just take all the abuse and shrug it off as "well that's life"
Other choices await, too... (Score:2)
My company will be allowing hybrid work, but if I choose hybrid over full-time in office, I will most likely lose my office, and have to hot-desk when in the office. Due to office space issues that were starting to arise just before shutdown.
I really like hybrid (I'm currently 2 days in, 3 days remote), but will have to seriously reconsider...
Millennials are killing offices! (Score:3)
Among millennials and Gen Z, that figure was 49%
Finally, something we can thank Millennials for killing!
Role play conversation with the boss (Score:2)
Boss: "everyone is moving back to the office June 1"
You: "I won't be doing that so lets talk about what my options are"
Decline to discuss reasons. It signal weakness
"I've already made my decision, all that's left is for you to make your decision."
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Re:Role play conversation with the boss (Score:4, Informative)
We are in a period of transition (Score:2)
There are two ways this can go:
Either those who refuse to go back to the office will find jobs that let them work from home, and companies that won't let employees do so will either change or die.
Or they will not find WFH jobs, their unemployment will run out, and they will either decide they are willing to work in the office, or they will end up homeless.
In the end, of course, it will be both, depending on the nature of the work and the willingness of both sides to compromise. Some jobs can't be done remot
I won't go back (Score:2)
And the opposite is happening too (Score:2)
My company decided to go fully remote. They've already lost hundreds due to people quitting because they want an office and hate working from home.
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On the bright side, it's a great way to weed out your least productive employees who think the office is a social club rather than a place to get work done. If they want to come to the office, it's highly unlikely they're doing it for productivity reasons.
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This is true - I've told work they can fire me (Score:3)
I've been working from home during the pandemic, and my productivity and quality of life have skyrocketed. I'm never going back (one day a week or as needed would be okay, I'm all about real efficiency and have no problem coming in if it's useful).
Work is now making noises about making everyone go back to work in July, because most of their workers are factory union grunts and they don't want to piss off the union by having non-union workers like me be not required to come in to work every day 9-5 like the people who are putting screws into holes.
I've privately told management this is ridiculous and I'm not coming back for no good reason. I'm not going to make a huge fuss, I'm just not going back to the plant and crippling my productivity and wellbeing for such a worthless reason, and they should just pretend I'm doing their stupid thing and ignore it.
I've also explicitly told them they're welcome to fire me, since the engineering job market is so hot I have several other offers for working at home and would have no trouble getting a new job immediately. I am absolutely serious about that, so we'll see if they blink.
Never going back! (Score:5, Interesting)
My employer saw revenue increase immediately during the first lockdown due to more billable hours and promptly cancelled the rent for most of our offices. Never going back!
Translation time (Score:3)
While companies from Google to Ford and Citigroup have promised greater flexibility, many chief executives have publicly extolled the importance of being in offices. Some have lamented the perils of remote work, saying it diminishes collaboration and company culture. JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon said at a recent conference that it doesn't work "for those who want to hustle
Translation:
We have invested millions in offices, equipment, cubicles, furniture, etc. and now we are going to use it whether the employees want to or not! Fuck the employees, they are OURS! We OWN them! They will do what we say because if they don't we won't be able to justify the capital expenses in the future which will effect the money we pay to the companies of the CEOs who help determine my pay and THAT may make MY PAY go down and THAT is UNACCEPTABLE!!
Saving Office Space (Score:3)
Pre-pandemic my company was having us work half from home and share a cubicle because our department was growing and running out of office space. When they sent us home for pandemic they decided pretty quickly that were not coming back just because they needed to office space for people who couldn't be remote as easy. Eventually they even started hiring out-of-state people that are fully remote. I won't say it doesn't have downsides and ideally I'd actually like to work a day or two a week onsite, but this works pretty well.
If I'm salaried... (Score:3)
Why does my employer insist I waste 2 hours a day commuting that would otherwise be used for working? So that you can "manage" me? MBAs, ask yourself this: how much, really, is management overhead reducing your margins? You're spending the equivalent of 50 vacation days a year of lost productivity per employee on the commute.
I'm a professional. I don't need to be micromanaged. Let me help you succeed. From home.
Sexual Harassment Could Plummet (Score:3)
Some folks are pointing out that it's mostly senior managers who want people back in the office to assuage their egos. It's kind of hard to argue with that, having seen what I've seen. But another effect of the work-from-home movement is that the sexual harassers out there will have a lot fewer targets. I suspect they'll be less inclined to harass that cute young intern over the internet since there will be records of the communication. In a few years, the data on sexual harassment might tell us that work-from-home resulted in a lot fewer incidents of harassment. I'm looking forward to it!
Sustainability Benefits (Score:4, Interesting)
Sustainability professional here. I work for a very large university we have been working toward this for a long time. We've been trying to boost remote work for decades and we've used this pandemic, the massive improvement in portable workstations, the fair pay movement, and a number of other factors to pounce.
On my campus alone, they're telling everyone who can work remotely for 20%+ of their duties to PLEASE consider doing so. It used to be that middle managers were the big hurdle ("If I can't see them, how can I be sure they're working?"), but they're being completely overridden. We have the proof in the last FIFTEEN MONTHS that work can get done while not in the office. Many are reporting productivity boosts and others say that there's been a small productivity decline, but primarily due to having a house full of people (which will change with schools re-opening).
We were quite successful in convincing the university of the benefits:
1. Improved employee morale & rentention
2. Improved recruitment prospects
3. Improved transition between retiring professionals and interim staff
4. Use of shared/scheduled use offices to reduce off-campus office rental footprint
5. Reduced commuter emissions & parking demand (thus saving the 10's of millions of dollars it costs to build a new parking structure)
6. And on and on...
It's an absolute no-brainer for many organizations.
Eventually the market will speak (Score:3)
The market will speak in other ways too...right now it is a royal pain to try and get things done with companies that are remote. If they're clients, that's one thing. But I will gladly pay more to a company where everyone isn't working from home when I am the client.
Some companies get remote work right, but it doesn't come naturally and it takes constant effort. Many companies fail at this and I can't afford to inherit their failure.
Eroding Inequality of Bargaining Power (Score:3)
A May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren't flexible about remote work.
I personally cannot wait to go back to the office. The commute sucks, but we only go 3 times a weeks (two days we work from home). It sucks to be at home (not by choice.) And some jobs in engineering and development do require direct interaction. Creativity, in particular the creation of high-value-added serviceable products, that's not something you can conduct via zoom forever.
However, most jobs that have been done remotely in the last 14 months, they have proven they can be done. And management is scared shitless because now they need to ... manage. Like, do not just lording over people, but do real management, management of expectations, management of productivity, etc.
Which leads people to this realization:
One of the very few good things that appear to be coming off this tragic pandemic is that blue, pink and white collar workers are realizing their worth and their capability to bargain.
This is something that many (not all) software/IT professionals know and leverage. Now, this trend is expanding, especially among non-IT knowledge workers.
Barring an economic remission caused by yet another pandemic wave (still possible), the economy will inevitably open with pent-up demand blowing up by the seams (TINA, "there is no alternative" but to go up.) And workers now it.
Moreover, people were forced to work in deadly conditions or being forced to work from home and are like "you want me to go back to the commute and all that shit without compensating me? Fuck you pay me."
If companies want their employees to go back, well, entice them. Pay them. Compensate them.
We have been scared, traumatized and hassled for the last 14 months (granted, some covidiots made light of the pandemic, but most people did take this shit seriously.)
Companies struggled to retain them, to avoid talent loss, and employees know this. So for the first time in a long time, workers have breached and reduced some inequality of bargaining power affecting employment and employment negotiations.
Employment is supposed to be a two-way negotiation between employee and employer. It is not a fucking favor from the lord to the peasant, and people work for more than just a salary. Just as employers have a right to have their own preferences, so do employees and job candidates.
It is the right of a person to have a preference on how to work, for whom and for how much. And if that person has leverage to push for those preferences, then it is his/her right to use them.
Companies need to provide incentives to retain their workers (especially in a knowledge economy) instead of bemoaning that "they don't want to work.") Employers have been getting away with that shit for far too long.
People need to grasp this chance and hold it, capitalize on it and use it as a catalyst to make some changes in society (before companies take that chance away, never to give it back until the next catastrophe comes punching us in our collective dick.)
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Some workers are bad apples, and that's why we lots of us can't have nice things.
Some managers are incapable of doing their jobs properly, and that's the real reason why we can't have nice things.
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Like how the countless thousands of people who publicly threatened to move to Canada in 2020 if Trump was elected? Oh, wait... no, that didn't happen.
Whether you feel like you need any kind of bond with other people to be productive is irrelevant, humans are biologically wired to be social creatures and we will inherently cooperate betterr with people that we know and recognize than those that we do not.
Your own bel