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Why Working from Home Will Stick

• droobles 6y ago
  Stuck for me! Dropped the W2 for an LLC and don't see myself looking back. Not advice, just what happened. Definitely not for everyone.
• throwaway1777 6y ago
  Obligatory comment: not everyone likes working from home. Personally I loved my old office and my commute wasn’t bad. I have an ideal wfh situation now and I would still rather go to the office. Maybe I’m weird.
  • BMorearty 6y ago
    I always liked going to the office. Get to hang out and chat with some fun people and make friendships in ways that I can’t do remotely.
  • skeeter2020 6y ago
    Nope, not weird; there are lots of us. I liked my 20 minute bicycle commute, liked going downtown, liked talking to my coworkers in rich, high-def face-to-face and liked big white boards.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • skohan 6y ago
    I would prefer a split honestly. I would be in about half-time if I could. Sometimes it's nice to work from home, but I miss my colleagues and the office environment.
  • baby 6y ago
    As long as people like you don’t force me to go to an office I think it’s fine.
• kumarvvr 6y ago
  Maybe its time to implement a system where WFH is for 4 days a week and on the 5th day, you (your team / managers / higherups) meet at some place, say a coffee shop / park.
  • ryandrake 6y ago
    The key problem at least for me, is living in the bay area. So that wouldn’t work. I’d be totally into “WFH for four weeks and fly back to the office for one week” though. That would be very nice!
    • skohan 6y ago
      I think system76 was doing something similar, but even on a longer cadence than 4 weeks. I like this setup also, as "the office" could also be a villa on the coast of portugal where the team goes for face time
  • baby 6y ago
    I’d rather do 4 day work week and full remote.
• sudeepj 6y ago
  I think WFH choice is a spectrum. At one end its "I will work remote only" and the other end its "I want to be physically present in office". And then there are in between like 80% wfh but 20% for important meetups/discussions. All this is fine but what happens when in a team of 5, 1 person prefers WFH all the time and 2 want in office and others in-between. Its really awkward to have meetings where majority team is in a room white-boarding and one guy/gal joining in remote. Also the person working from home will miss a lot of ad-hoc conversations/corridor talk. Offcourse all of the above does not matter if one's nature of job is not dependent on others to large extent and then that person can definitely wfh much more effectively.
  • halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
    I’m not sure if it’s me, but most “corridor talk” ends up being a complete waste of time and usually not related to what I’m directly working on. Will you miss fringe stuff that someone on some other team might be working on? Maybe. But it’s just my experience that those “random run-ins” with people is just trivial small talk and doesn’t really amount to anything substantial.
  • FpUser 6y ago
    >"Its really awkward to have meetings where majority team is in a room white-boarding and one guy/gal joining in remote" I've been participating in such meetings ( me being remote, sometime others as well ) for the last 20 years. I find it great time and mental energy saver. Way less bullshit. At least from my experience.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • skohan 6y ago
    It might not be "fair", but I believe in most cases, if one person chooses to be physically absent they will gradually be marginalized by the team. It's just human nature that you will care more about and think more about people you physically see and spend time with.
  • baby 6y ago
• bdefore 6y ago
  Anyone else have a pattern where a nice well researched article turns into 'save on pocket' click and never come back to it? This is a classic target of such for me.
  • throwaway6734 6y ago
    Yes.i have multiple chrome folders with bookmarked interesting articles (some of them with more folders inside).
  • opo 6y ago
    Like someone once said "I don't often bookmark a page, but when I do, I never look at it again."
• barry-cotter 6y ago
  > COVID-19 drove a mass social experiment in working from home (WFH). We survey more than 30,000 Americans over multiple waves to investigate whether WFH will stick, and why. Our data say that 20 percent of full workdays will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before. We develop evidence on five reasons for this large shift: better-than-expected WFH experiences, new investments in physical and human capital that enable WFH, greatly diminished stigma associated with WFH, lingering concerns about crowds and contagion risks, and a pandemic-driven surge in technological innovations that support WFH. We also use our survey data to project three consequences: First, employees will enjoy large benefits from greater remote work, especially those with higher earnings. Second, the shift to WFH will directly reduce spending in major city centers by at least 5-10 percent relative to the pre-pandemic situation. Third, our data on employer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 5 percent productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements. Only one-fifth of this productivity gain will show up in conventional productivity measures, because they do not capture the time savings from less commuting.
• Causality1 6y ago
  Those are all good reasons but there's one potential flaw: people, and companies, don't always behave rationally. I predict an awful lot of people are going to be going back to the office for no better reason than "the pandemic's over therefore we're going back to normal".
• dr-detroit 6y ago
  At my work they have already drawn the hard line come back in July or be replaced. Profits are up, government research funding was increased not cut, but we are facing a second year of no raises and a "hiring freeze" (tons of jobs get posted but always entry level). The Drumph Recession is sticking.
• kumarvvr 6y ago
  I really wish WFH sticks. Mainly because it reduces a lot of pollution and energy use.
  • skhameneh 6y ago
    Car parks are the worst, we'll see a lot of land go to much better use than a dry and void cement lot.
  • Stubb 6y ago
    It will stick if people refuse to go back to offices. I started working 100% from home nearly seven years ago and wouldn't take a job that involved commuting unless an astronomical amount of money was delivered up front. Simply no comparison in terms of quality of life.
    • powvans 6y ago
      I’ve worked remote for 12 years. There are drawbacks, but the quality of life improvement is huge. I appreciate your comment and the GP for tactfully expressing feelings similar to my own. Pollution from automobiles, the health impacts of long commutes, the economic and social costs of high paying jobs concentrating in relatively few places; it’s just sad to see how desperate everyone is to get back to the unhealthy normal.
    • baby 6y ago
      I was the same, and ended up accepting the 3h per day commute for lots of money. Never again. I'd rather be poor.
    • ryandrake 6y ago
      People are by and large not going to refuse. They say they are going to refuse, but when push comes to shove and their cushy FAANG job says “return to office or you are fired” they are not going to call the bluff. It’s easy to talk but not easy when you are faced with being handed your hat.
    • AuryGlenz 6y ago
      Before the pandemic hit my wife had been looking for a remote accounting job for about a year or so with no luck. We live in a rural area and don’t want to move, and there aren’t any real options in the area other than where she currently works. People can only say no if there are options for them.
• bostonsre 6y ago
  My company is planning on moving to 4 days in, one day optionally remote near the end of the summer. It sounds like google will return to the office as well [0]. I think its tough to define a permissive WFH policy when there are some individuals that don't work from home well and have had issues with productivity while working remotely this past year or so. I don't think there would be an easy/drama free way to require some individuals to come to the office more often while letting others come in less often without severely impacting morale for those that were required to come in. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/14/google-ceo-email-delays-return-to-sept-2021-no-permanent-remote-work.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/14/google-ceo-email-delays-retu...
  • zmmmmm 6y ago
    > when there are some individuals that don't work from home well The interesting question is, will this ultimately become an expectation and if you "don't work from home well" then that's equivalent to simply "not working well". There are individuals who don't work well in an office and they were previously just considered poor employees. Now the tables are turned ...
    • bostonsre 6y ago
      Yea, I could definitely see that becoming a new requirement. Wondering how you would go about trying to tease out how well someone works remotely versus in the office... Really early in my career, I recall being incredibly unmotivated after an acquisition by a private equity company and the subsequent cost cutting. Going to the office was just some check box that I needed to cross off in order to get a pay check. When I did work remotely, I found myself somehow being even less motivated and doing less work. If I had to identify key traits to figure out whether or not someone could work well remotely, I would probably try to understand their motivation level and their desire to grow, learn, and execute. But I guess that wouldn't be too far off from what I look for now when I interview.
  • baby 6y ago
    I don't believe that Google will do a return to the office, they have too many employees who would rather quit. Wait for it...
• baby 6y ago
  I know so many people in the bay who will quit if they are forced to return to work... There's no way people are going back to working at the office. I personally used to commute 3 hours every day to get to work from SF... I'm never doing this again, no matter how much you pay me.
  • Vadoff 6y ago
    Why did you do it before?
    • daenz 6y ago
      Not OP, but sometimes if something sounds like it sucks but I'm unsure exactly how much, I'll do it just to see how bad it is.
  • JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
    What are they going to go do instead? I feel like this is what everyone says to try and hope it stays that way. The whole world may not be able to work from home. All those people in the Bay may have a tough time with bills when they quit...
    • LinuxBender 6y ago
      Not just existing bills, but health insurance paid individually is usually more expensive. That has been one of the few things keeping me at work. Companies have incredible purchasing power with insurance and this usually also bypasses insurance companies setting a rate based on a persons health history. This is one surprise some will get when they exit the workforce early. I've heard that there are some non profit groups that also have group purchasing power, like some religious groups. Maybe there are other big groups that do this as well. Anyone know of other big groups that can get the same discounts as corporations?
  • Swizec 6y ago
    > I personally used to commute 3 hours every day to get to work from SF Honest question: at that point why not move closer to work? Or get a job at any number of companies closer to home that are desperate for talent? The whole point of enduring SFBA rent is that there’s dozens of tech jobs at every corner.
• pedalpete 6y ago
  Anecdotal, but here in Australia (NSW anyway) we didn't have major lockdowns. Offices mostly shut, public transit was limited to 1/3 capacity, the city was empty, and everyone was saying "we'll never go back into the office". Our office is back to about 70% capacity. Traffic has returned in the morning. Public transit isn't as full as it used to be, but there are lines to get onto the busses in the morning where I live. Again, probably 70% of what it was before. That reduced 30% has made the commute in quite a bit quicker I'd say. Price for parking is equal to public transit (I can't say if it was like that before because I didn't have a car before covid). Sure, lots of offices won't return, but I think not as much as you expect. Our company is 3 mostly introverts. We'd likely be the first people to say "screw it, I don't want to be around people, I'd rather just wfh", but we're all really enjoying being back in the office. We know we're more productive this way too.
  • astrec 6y ago
    Also anecdotal, but down the road here in Melbourne we did have some major lockdowns. I'm the only person from my team in the office. It would be an exaggeration to claim this floor is at 15% of capacity. On the 2 days I week I come in I get my pick of seats on the train, whereas it was sardine standing room only previously. My go to cafe is gone. As are my second, third and forth gotos. I expect most offices will reduce their floor plans. Most white collar workers will WFH a yet to be determined proportion of their time.
• mLuby 6y ago
  Reminder that there are many forms of remote and in-office work (not just 2, 4, and 6): 1. work only possible in-office. (e.g. retail, hyper-secure jobs) 2. in-office 5 days a week (e.g. pre-pandemic office jobs) 3. in a remote office some weeks a year. (e.g. traveling consultants) 4. remote 1-4 days a week, in-office 1-4 days. (e.g. Google's hybrid pilot) 5. remote except for some weeks a year. (e.g. team visits or retreats) 6. WFH, shared work hours (e.g. working from the Americas) 7. remote async/time-zone independent (e.g. global digital nomad) (Please add any categories I missed.)
  • ItsMonkk 6y ago
    It's also possible for new forms to emerge throughout this. For instance, I can imagine that remote workers might attempt to move into a college campus amongst students, or if a college campus shut down for remote workers to move to it, and eventually for campuses that would be created for the sole purpose of hosting remote workers, that might be filled with 4+1's with more space for adults instead of dorm rooms. People who want a home could move close to campus instead of being on it. This would give the people that need to be outside of their home a place to be, would give adults a nice shared third space. It would be filled with remote people from many companies, not one company per campus. This is just one idea amongst many that are possible.
• naikrovek 6y ago
  Working from home will stick for some, in some regions, and it most definitely is not going to stick collectively. my employer has demanded that all US employees (over 30k of us) return to their respective office by the first week of August. no non-medical exceptions. and that is AFTER a full year of being told how successful we are holding the company together, and keeping the lights on for our customers, etc. "working from home will stick" my white butt.
• Balgair 6y ago
  Personal theory (with varying amounts of evidence): Companies that can make Work From Home (WFH) happen are ones that actually do something with their employees. Companies that are Asses in Seats (AIS) are companies that mostly do not have people that actually do something. This will vary by team and division in a company as well. Some managers that do not do as much 'real' work will want AIS more so than WFH, and it may change as projects come on and off the schedule. It's a spectrum. The reason is emotional. AIS managers and companies feel that if they can see the employees working, getting coffee, hear the typing, etc, then their knowledge that no one is actually doing anything is calmed down. Their monkey brain gets a bit more quiet as they have a bit more 'cover' for their boss. 'Look, see, all my people are doing something. I know it's not really anything, but my boss may think it really is something. Phew!' WFH managers know that their employees are really doing work and therefore aren't worried about the next promotion. Stuff actually does get done. It's not the full reason, by any means, but I feel it accounts for some of the discrepancy.