8 ms·

you can't put a price on the feeling I get when 5-530 hits, and I step outside my home office to see my family and start unwinding for the evening. No wasted ti

you can't put a price on the feeling I get when 5-530 hits, and I step outside my home office to see my family and start unwinding for the evening. No wasted time on commute and the options for places to live are endless. Not to mention I eat my own food on my lunch break. I miss some interaction/bonding with coworkers and certainly acknowledge that "hallway talk" helped clear up requirements but the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons. I will never go back to an office

kgwgk 5y ago
You can definitely put a price, or you would have never wasted time on commute, etc.
- ziftface 5y ago
  I think a lot of people hadn't seriously considered the option of working from home before. Now that a lot more people have done so, they are starting to weigh the pros and cons as the parent comment is doing.
  - kgwgk 5y ago
    Sure. And one of the cons of working from home may be lower pay/increased competition. So if they are told to go back to the office and they don't want to they may need to put a price on it.
codezero 5y ago
Ditto. I’ve been doing a lot of managery stuff during the pandemic and the main things I miss are the water cooler talk that greased a lot of wheels and filled in a lot of gaps, as well as helped new people onboard with many to many learning, but we will cope. What I would like, as a manager who had to do quarterly planning would be a week a month or a week per quarter for cross functional in office planning. It would help with a lot and probably be enough time in office to fill many of the real gaps being remote has left without being required full time.
- basisword 5y ago
  That required office time means everyone still needs to live within a short distance of the office though. For a lot of people that defeats some of the main benefits of remote.
  - Swizec 5y ago
    For a quarterly 1 week meeting the company can just fly everyone in who needs to be there. They already do this for board meetings so why not important plannings? Hell, put it in a fun location and call it a retreat.
    - basisword 5y ago
      I still think that’s a big ask. I’d bet that the group of people that want full remote also includes a large number of people who hate the idea of company retreats. I’d rather finish work at 5pm and have fun on my own terms than a week of proscribed company “fun”.
      - Swizec 5y ago
        Sure it’s a big ask but if the planning is important and you are important to the planning and it is deemed a sufficient quality of planning can only happen in person … business travel seems far too common to be worthless. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Nobody said anything about work activities after 5. You can go do whatever. But hanging out with coworkers when you’re all seeing each other for a rare or even first time seems like a pretty common whatever.
      - codezero 5y ago
        I mentioned in another thread, my company is planning to do this twice a year but the actual company mandate is to make any in person meeting or gathering accessible to remote people.
    - codezero 5y ago
      This is exactly what my company plans when it’s safe though only twice a year, and we will easily pay for leadership to do the same more frequently if needed. I planned to fly in where ever for that week, not commute every day.
hnlmorg 5y ago
It's a very personal decision though. For example, if I may offer up some counterarguments: > I step outside my home office to see my family and start unwinding for the evening. No wasted time on commute I find the commute (by train, I'm lucky enough to get a seat) far more effective for unwinding to be honest. And once I'm home, I'm far more engaged with the family due to having that buffer time between work and home. > the options for places to live are endless. That never actually stopped me before. Hence the commute > Not to mention I eat my own food on my lunch break. the biggest thing I miss about not commuting into London is the food. The variety, the quality, and above all, not having to cook it myself. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind cooking. But a lot of eateries do a lot better job of their signature meal than I could. That all said, I'm in no rush to go back. And when I do, it'll be a hybrid approach. Some days in and some days from home. edit: why am I getting heavily down voted for discussing personal reasons why I enjoyed working in the office? It's not like I'm telling you your opinions are wrong or that you should go back to the office. All I'm doing is voicing that there are some who do enjoy travelling into the city most days. Is it really that offensive a view point to read? Some people on here don't deserve to have moderation privileges.
- bboylen 5y ago
  So this shows why flexibility is important, so you can satisfy the different preferences of employees. From the article, it sounds like the CEO wanted to get rid of remote work all together.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    Indeed. I've seen some companies say they want people back in 100% of the time but I've seen others close their office and have all their employees work remotely 100% of the time. I feel both are toxic policies to place on your entire workforce and the best approach is flexibility because different employees will have different preferences and needs. Thankfully there are a good number of companies (in the UK at least) who are allowing their employees to make this decision themselves.
    - 5y ago
kiba 5y ago
The article isn't about remote work, but about Blue Origin's utter failure to thrive.
- rewma 5y ago
  From the article's summary: > The central sticking point, and cause cited by many people who recently left, was Smith’s strong push this year for all Blue Origin employees to return to the office. This is without a doubt about Blue Origin's call to return to office.
  - downrightmike 5y ago
    RTO is just so 20th century
BobbyJo 5y ago
> the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons The pros are mostly yours, and the cons are mostly your employers. The labor market is finally shifting to the laborers having the leverage :)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- shrimpx 5y ago
  Mostly in digitized white collar work.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jbhouse 5y ago
  "the cons are mostly your employers" I'm not sure I would even agree with this. I have a better monitor setup at home, a quieter place to work and think, and I'm spending less of my day in pointless conversations for the sake of politeness. My employer simply gets more out of me when I work from home AND turnover is reduced. I think the pros outweigh the cons for employers, even if they don't care at all about their employees and even if we weren't in a tight labor market
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    You're measuring the cons in terms of labor productivity, which I am no longer convinced is what is driving executive behavior. Frankly, I think that executives get a big ego boost seeing hundreds of workers working in an office of their design, and they miss that. I think that's why their arguments for returning to the office come across as ... strange and unpersuasive; they don't actually have a productivity based argument for returning to the office and they're trying to shoe horn one in anyways.
- gpm 5y ago
  > and the cons are mostly your employers. This sounds like nonsense to me. If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less and can demand less salary - the market might take a bit to adjust for that, but probably not long. It means that I'm going to be working for a less successful company, which is a lot less fun. Employers and employees are usually in a mostly cooperative relationship, this adversarial view of it just strikes me as wrong. (And no, before someone accuses me of being biased, I do not and have never run a company or anything like that)
pavlov 5y ago
I feel the opposite and would gladly go back to the office. It’s hard to keep working after five when the kids are home and making their usual racket. But it’s also hard to disconnect because the line between work and home is nonexistent. The free breakfast and lunch at the office were much better than anything I can make or buy myself. Talking to random coworkers during the breaks made me feel more like part of something. I didn’t even mind the “standing in a packed subway car” part that much. That’s just city life; I want more of it again.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I'm with you 100%. You would think CEOs would might notice the bump in productivity in awake workers? Spending 2-3 hours going to an office most people despise, and listening to that clueless middle manager yap must alienated a lot of workers? An alienated worker gets back in weird ways. I was thinking the genie is out of the bottle, and they will never bring us back, but no. They can't wait until they can bring us back though. (Maybe using Global Warming as an excuse to stay home? Not commuting must be better for the earth? It will be decades before we see 90% electric.)
shapefrog 5y ago
Sure, but your job isnt Astronaut and the "office" isnt meant to be Space rather than what used to be the guest bedroom and is now the "home office".
datavirtue 5y ago
This. I don't know any senior engineers who want to work in an office. They know that the second they go back it is going to suck one way or other. I watched office space last night and was reminded of all the little tics and annoyances of being in an office. I had some good times in the office, but they will remain just good memories.
SergeAx 5y ago
I don't know. When I changed work, first thing after passing a probation I rented a nice place 20 minutes by walk from the office (10 minutes by taxi in case of hurry or a bad weather). And I am totally okay with eating catered food. It is not haute cuisine, but it's free and readily available, so I may have two 15-minutes breaks instead of one hour lunch and call it a day half an hour earlier.

kgwgk 5y ago

You can definitely put a price, or you would have never wasted time on commute, etc.

ziftface 5y ago
I think a lot of people hadn't seriously considered the option of working from home before. Now that a lot more people have done so, they are starting to weigh the pros and cons as the parent comment is doing.
- kgwgk 5y ago
  Sure. And one of the cons of working from home may be lower pay/increased competition. So if they are told to go back to the office and they don't want to they may need to put a price on it.

codezero 5y ago

Ditto. I’ve been doing a lot of managery stuff during the pandemic and the main things I miss are the water cooler talk that greased a lot of wheels and filled in a lot of gaps, as well as helped new people onboard with many to many learning, but we will cope. What I would like, as a manager who had to do quarterly planning would be a week a month or a week per quarter for cross functional in office planning. It would help with a lot and probably be enough time in office to fill many of the real gaps being remote has left without being required full time.

basisword 5y ago
That required office time means everyone still needs to live within a short distance of the office though. For a lot of people that defeats some of the main benefits of remote.
- Swizec 5y ago
  For a quarterly 1 week meeting the company can just fly everyone in who needs to be there. They already do this for board meetings so why not important plannings? Hell, put it in a fun location and call it a retreat.
  - basisword 5y ago
    I still think that’s a big ask. I’d bet that the group of people that want full remote also includes a large number of people who hate the idea of company retreats. I’d rather finish work at 5pm and have fun on my own terms than a week of proscribed company “fun”.
    - Swizec 5y ago
      Sure it’s a big ask but if the planning is important and you are important to the planning and it is deemed a sufficient quality of planning can only happen in person … business travel seems far too common to be worthless. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Nobody said anything about work activities after 5. You can go do whatever. But hanging out with coworkers when you’re all seeing each other for a rare or even first time seems like a pretty common whatever.
    - codezero 5y ago
      I mentioned in another thread, my company is planning to do this twice a year but the actual company mandate is to make any in person meeting or gathering accessible to remote people.
  - codezero 5y ago
    This is exactly what my company plans when it’s safe though only twice a year, and we will easily pay for leadership to do the same more frequently if needed. I planned to fly in where ever for that week, not commute every day.

hnlmorg 5y ago

It's a very personal decision though. For example, if I may offer up some counterarguments: > I step outside my home office to see my family and start unwinding for the evening. No wasted time on commute I find the commute (by train, I'm lucky enough to get a seat) far more effective for unwinding to be honest. And once I'm home, I'm far more engaged with the family due to having that buffer time between work and home. > the options for places to live are endless. That never actually stopped me before. Hence the commute > Not to mention I eat my own food on my lunch break. the biggest thing I miss about not commuting into London is the food. The variety, the quality, and above all, not having to cook it myself. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind cooking. But a lot of eateries do a lot better job of their signature meal than I could. That all said, I'm in no rush to go back. And when I do, it'll be a hybrid approach. Some days in and some days from home. edit: why am I getting heavily down voted for discussing personal reasons why I enjoyed working in the office? It's not like I'm telling you your opinions are wrong or that you should go back to the office. All I'm doing is voicing that there are some who do enjoy travelling into the city most days. Is it really that offensive a view point to read? Some people on here don't deserve to have moderation privileges.

bboylen 5y ago
So this shows why flexibility is important, so you can satisfy the different preferences of employees. From the article, it sounds like the CEO wanted to get rid of remote work all together.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  Indeed. I've seen some companies say they want people back in 100% of the time but I've seen others close their office and have all their employees work remotely 100% of the time. I feel both are toxic policies to place on your entire workforce and the best approach is flexibility because different employees will have different preferences and needs. Thankfully there are a good number of companies (in the UK at least) who are allowing their employees to make this decision themselves.
  - 5y ago

kiba 5y ago

The article isn't about remote work, but about Blue Origin's utter failure to thrive.

rewma 5y ago
From the article's summary: > The central sticking point, and cause cited by many people who recently left, was Smith’s strong push this year for all Blue Origin employees to return to the office. This is without a doubt about Blue Origin's call to return to office.
- downrightmike 5y ago
  RTO is just so 20th century

BobbyJo 5y ago

> the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons The pros are mostly yours, and the cons are mostly your employers. The labor market is finally shifting to the laborers having the leverage :)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shrimpx 5y ago
Mostly in digitized white collar work.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jbhouse 5y ago
"the cons are mostly your employers" I'm not sure I would even agree with this. I have a better monitor setup at home, a quieter place to work and think, and I'm spending less of my day in pointless conversations for the sake of politeness. My employer simply gets more out of me when I work from home AND turnover is reduced. I think the pros outweigh the cons for employers, even if they don't care at all about their employees and even if we weren't in a tight labor market
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  You're measuring the cons in terms of labor productivity, which I am no longer convinced is what is driving executive behavior. Frankly, I think that executives get a big ego boost seeing hundreds of workers working in an office of their design, and they miss that. I think that's why their arguments for returning to the office come across as ... strange and unpersuasive; they don't actually have a productivity based argument for returning to the office and they're trying to shoe horn one in anyways.
gpm 5y ago
> and the cons are mostly your employers. This sounds like nonsense to me. If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less and can demand less salary - the market might take a bit to adjust for that, but probably not long. It means that I'm going to be working for a less successful company, which is a lot less fun. Employers and employees are usually in a mostly cooperative relationship, this adversarial view of it just strikes me as wrong. (And no, before someone accuses me of being biased, I do not and have never run a company or anything like that)

pavlov 5y ago

I feel the opposite and would gladly go back to the office. It’s hard to keep working after five when the kids are home and making their usual racket. But it’s also hard to disconnect because the line between work and home is nonexistent. The free breakfast and lunch at the office were much better than anything I can make or buy myself. Talking to random coworkers during the breaks made me feel more like part of something. I didn’t even mind the “standing in a packed subway car” part that much. That’s just city life; I want more of it again.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

I'm with you 100%. You would think CEOs would might notice the bump in productivity in awake workers? Spending 2-3 hours going to an office most people despise, and listening to that clueless middle manager yap must alienated a lot of workers? An alienated worker gets back in weird ways. I was thinking the genie is out of the bottle, and they will never bring us back, but no. They can't wait until they can bring us back though. (Maybe using Global Warming as an excuse to stay home? Not commuting must be better for the earth? It will be decades before we see 90% electric.)

shapefrog 5y ago

Sure, but your job isnt Astronaut and the "office" isnt meant to be Space rather than what used to be the guest bedroom and is now the "home office".

datavirtue 5y ago

This. I don't know any senior engineers who want to work in an office. They know that the second they go back it is going to suck one way or other. I watched office space last night and was reminded of all the little tics and annoyances of being in an office. I had some good times in the office, but they will remain just good memories.

SergeAx 5y ago

I don't know. When I changed work, first thing after passing a probation I rented a nice place 20 minutes by walk from the office (10 minutes by taxi in case of hurry or a bad weather). And I am totally okay with eating catered food. It is not haute cuisine, but it's free and readily available, so I may have two 15-minutes breaks instead of one hour lunch and call it a day half an hour earlier.