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I'm curious what will happen where I work. Upper management has always hated working from home and part time work. I think eventually they'll go back to their s

by drpgq 6y ago

I'm curious what will happen where I work. Upper management has always hated working from home and part time work. I think eventually they'll go back to their set ways, but it will be some time in late 2021.

standardUser 6y ago
Our company's business happens to be booming during this pandemic, and we've handled a massive amount of unexpected growth very well and entirely without an office. I'd hope that would be sufficient proof of the efficacy of remote work. But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit depressing.
- bradlys 6y ago
  > But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit depressing. Same story with mine. (Minus the business booming - ours is fluttering along) I've brought this up to our management: "We work in a space where most people sit within arms distance of each other. How are you going to manage that aspect?" They said, "Oh, maybe we'll do a thing where half comes in one day and half comes in another. Like business one day, engineering another, etc." I responded, "But... the office isn't setup for hot swapping desks at all. So, you'd have half of some teams come in? You'd force us all in small meeting rooms again with very poor ventilation where we can't do social distancing? What's the point if half of engineering is at home and half isn't? We don't have many bathrooms so we'd have a lot of shared touch points. Same with kitchen - etc." As usual - they're not thinking past the initial words coming out of their mouth. It's utterly amazing how inept people are at all levels of the stack.
toss1 6y ago
Will they, though? Or, will they discover what IBM discovered decades ago, that work-from-home saves $$millions on otherwise unnecessary office space. They've long had both work-from-home, and a temp office setup where you sign up where you'll need an office that day, go to the location, get assigned a desk, and everything routes to that location/desk. I've had a fam member working for them from home for nearly 20yrs. Sure, managers may like the control of walking down the hall and standing over any employee when they feel like it. But I expect that they'll like even better not having to spend insane commercial real estate costs, hear every worker complain about traffic, only to see lower net productivity... (Edit: I'm assuming this must be a different IBM division from the one in which my family member works, which has see no change in her work-from-home status, even tho the article says 'IBM cancelled it'.)
- hpoe 6y ago
  You're assuming rational actors. If the company is big enough then management won't care. It doesn't come out of middle management's pocket to pay for the extra space and they enjoy the feeling of control they have being able to tell people where to be and when. As for upper management they are too busy playing political games to care about those more ephemeral issues. Ultimately the biggest takeaway from this WFH situation might just make it clearer which employers are worth a spit, and which ones genuinely don't care about their employees.
  - toss1 6y ago
    Yes, I've also read studies showing that WFH tends to make good managers (and their teams) perform better and lesser managers & their terms perform worse. So that may end up having something to do with it too - along your lines of thought, the worse managers will want to bring ppl back to the office to cover up their performance?

by drpgq 6y ago

standardUser 6y ago

Our company's business happens to be booming during this pandemic, and we've handled a massive amount of unexpected growth very well and entirely without an office. I'd hope that would be sufficient proof of the efficacy of remote work. But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit depressing.

bradlys 6y ago
> But our CEO hates remote work. Upper management is already talking about getting some people back in the office in a few weeks. It's a bit depressing. Same story with mine. (Minus the business booming - ours is fluttering along) I've brought this up to our management: "We work in a space where most people sit within arms distance of each other. How are you going to manage that aspect?" They said, "Oh, maybe we'll do a thing where half comes in one day and half comes in another. Like business one day, engineering another, etc." I responded, "But... the office isn't setup for hot swapping desks at all. So, you'd have half of some teams come in? You'd force us all in small meeting rooms again with very poor ventilation where we can't do social distancing? What's the point if half of engineering is at home and half isn't? We don't have many bathrooms so we'd have a lot of shared touch points. Same with kitchen - etc." As usual - they're not thinking past the initial words coming out of their mouth. It's utterly amazing how inept people are at all levels of the stack.

toss1 6y ago

Will they, though? Or, will they discover what IBM discovered decades ago, that work-from-home saves $$millions on otherwise unnecessary office space. They've long had both work-from-home, and a temp office setup where you sign up where you'll need an office that day, go to the location, get assigned a desk, and everything routes to that location/desk. I've had a fam member working for them from home for nearly 20yrs. Sure, managers may like the control of walking down the hall and standing over any employee when they feel like it. But I expect that they'll like even better not having to spend insane commercial real estate costs, hear every worker complain about traffic, only to see lower net productivity... (Edit: I'm assuming this must be a different IBM division from the one in which my family member works, which has see no change in her work-from-home status, even tho the article says 'IBM cancelled it'.)

hpoe 6y ago
You're assuming rational actors. If the company is big enough then management won't care. It doesn't come out of middle management's pocket to pay for the extra space and they enjoy the feeling of control they have being able to tell people where to be and when. As for upper management they are too busy playing political games to care about those more ephemeral issues. Ultimately the biggest takeaway from this WFH situation might just make it clearer which employers are worth a spit, and which ones genuinely don't care about their employees.
- toss1 6y ago
  Yes, I've also read studies showing that WFH tends to make good managers (and their teams) perform better and lesser managers & their terms perform worse. So that may end up having something to do with it too - along your lines of thought, the worse managers will want to bring ppl back to the office to cover up their performance?