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My employer administered questions regarding how many days per week the employees wanted to spend in-office versus WFH. Zero days per week in the office was no

My employer administered questions regarding how many days per week the employees wanted to spend in-office versus WFH. Zero days per week in the office was not presented as an option.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
How many days per week do you want to spend in the office versus work from home? (A) Seven in office (B) Six in office (C) Five in office, seven evenings plus two days WFH (D) Please replace me
- MR4D 5y ago
  (E) I have COVID and am going into the office to screw the company over. Will be interesting to see if this choice happens.
mrRandomGuy 5y ago
AKA "we spent way too much on the lease for you to just work from home pleb"
- serial_dev 5y ago
  I honestly think it comes down to this in the majority of the cases. "Look, we have a two-years contract where we pay X thousand dollars a month for 100 desks and we have on an average day 3 developers in our office. After one year of lockdowns, we know our developers work at least as well from home as from the office, but higher ups ask us why we pay so much for an empty building, so we will force you come back to the office as soon as we can, even if we don't save any money with that and most likely decrease our efficiency and employee satisfaction." I live in Germany and that's more or less what's happening at my company as we speak. Nobody complained about our performance or said they wished the company would enforce "work from office" rules, yet, they already try to slowly increase the days where we need to work from the office. In my opinion, once a month in the office is great for chatting and connecting with people, but when it comes to work output, it doesn't move the needle, it's actually a day lost to the business.
  - lanstin 5y ago
    Yeah I have been going in as requested but without my laptop. I am happy to chat but not going to pretend to do actual creative work.
  - jrs235 5y ago
    Sunk cost fallacy! Keep it empty and save on the variable electric and heating/cooling costs.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      There's another aspect here, too. Companies get tax breaks to put offices in certain locations, and those tax breaks are frequently based on having a certain percentage occupancy.
- tomohawk 5y ago
  In government situations, the space itself is at a premium (not what it costs). If your org has a certain amount of space for use, other orgs will try to steal it from you. The amount of space you control is an indication of how awesome your org is. There was this one org that had a few floors of a building for their use, but most of the desks sat empty most of the time. This came to the attention of a different org that was hard up for space. That had 2 people per desk at many desks. They got the "space manager" to take a look, but the target org got wind of what was going on and they called everyone to be in during that time. Those floors were overflowing with people when the space manager showed up.
- slumdev 5y ago
  I bet they wish they had leased! This employer owns many large campuses...

My employer administered questions regarding how many days per week the employees wanted to spend in-office versus WFH. Zero days per week in the office was not presented as an option.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago

How many days per week do you want to spend in the office versus work from home? (A) Seven in office (B) Six in office (C) Five in office, seven evenings plus two days WFH (D) Please replace me

MR4D 5y ago
(E) I have COVID and am going into the office to screw the company over. Will be interesting to see if this choice happens.

mrRandomGuy 5y ago

AKA "we spent way too much on the lease for you to just work from home pleb"

serial_dev 5y ago
I honestly think it comes down to this in the majority of the cases. "Look, we have a two-years contract where we pay X thousand dollars a month for 100 desks and we have on an average day 3 developers in our office. After one year of lockdowns, we know our developers work at least as well from home as from the office, but higher ups ask us why we pay so much for an empty building, so we will force you come back to the office as soon as we can, even if we don't save any money with that and most likely decrease our efficiency and employee satisfaction." I live in Germany and that's more or less what's happening at my company as we speak. Nobody complained about our performance or said they wished the company would enforce "work from office" rules, yet, they already try to slowly increase the days where we need to work from the office. In my opinion, once a month in the office is great for chatting and connecting with people, but when it comes to work output, it doesn't move the needle, it's actually a day lost to the business.
- lanstin 5y ago
  Yeah I have been going in as requested but without my laptop. I am happy to chat but not going to pretend to do actual creative work.
- jrs235 5y ago
  Sunk cost fallacy! Keep it empty and save on the variable electric and heating/cooling costs.
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    There's another aspect here, too. Companies get tax breaks to put offices in certain locations, and those tax breaks are frequently based on having a certain percentage occupancy.
tomohawk 5y ago
In government situations, the space itself is at a premium (not what it costs). If your org has a certain amount of space for use, other orgs will try to steal it from you. The amount of space you control is an indication of how awesome your org is. There was this one org that had a few floors of a building for their use, but most of the desks sat empty most of the time. This came to the attention of a different org that was hard up for space. That had 2 people per desk at many desks. They got the "space manager" to take a look, but the target org got wind of what was going on and they called everyone to be in during that time. Those floors were overflowing with people when the space manager showed up.
slumdev 5y ago
I bet they wish they had leased! This employer owns many large campuses...