5 ms·

In the UK. My company's dropped a lot of our office space, because we have no use for it any more - we've done very well in 2020 and 2021 full-remote. But meeti

In the UK. My company's dropped a lot of our office space, because we have no use for it any more - we've done very well in 2020 and 2021 full-remote. But meetings have their place, and some teams do better in the office, that's fine. So we renovated the space as largely for meetings of various sizes. So when techies were called into our shiny new meetings-office (which is very nice, actually - happy to come in ... maybe every couple of months), they were immediately asking "so commute time is work time, right?" and "who's paying for my train ticket?" The UK has absolutely proven that work from home is just fine and companies can still do super-well. The big push over here for going back to the office is not from the companies - it's from commercial landlords, putting puff pieces in the newspapers. The actual companies can do arithmetic just fine, and realise that offices on the scale they were are just a losing proposition.

decafninja 5y ago
I don't think the UK is really any special - for better or for worse, in this regard. It's probably company or even industry specific regardless of country. My old company (bank) has a huge UK presence. They are adamantly anti-WFH whether you're in the US or UK or Asia, etc. My understanding is most banks and other financial services companies are likewise, and aren't a large number of UK SWEs working in finance?
- bennyelv 5y ago
  I don’t think you can generalise like that. My experience in financial services from 2005-2013 (ish) was that in tech they were very progressive in terms of flexible working, remote first etc.
- davidgerard 5y ago
  There isn't the same sort of office puff pieces in the UK press that the NYT has been running incessantly - mostly they're the sort of article that you read and think "did a commercial rental building write this". I'd be interested in how those banks are actually handling 2020-2021 here in practice, however anti-WFH they were previously.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    Talking with my former coworkers, I know the bank I used to work at as well as others my ex-team have migrated to are still insisting they will be 100% work-from-office once things return to some sense of normalcy. This policy doesn't seem to be different between their US and UK locations. We had a townhall where the CTO first congratulated everyone for making 2020 a very productive year - with no loss of productivity from WFH. Then concluded by saying we would return to 100% work from office ASAP because it is scientifically proven by data that working from the office is more productive.
    - davidgerard 5y ago
      > once things return to some sense of normalcy This is absolutely not any time soon. > because it is scientifically proven by data that working from the office is more productive. lol, love to see that data

decafninja 5y ago

I don't think the UK is really any special - for better or for worse, in this regard. It's probably company or even industry specific regardless of country. My old company (bank) has a huge UK presence. They are adamantly anti-WFH whether you're in the US or UK or Asia, etc. My understanding is most banks and other financial services companies are likewise, and aren't a large number of UK SWEs working in finance?

bennyelv 5y ago
I don’t think you can generalise like that. My experience in financial services from 2005-2013 (ish) was that in tech they were very progressive in terms of flexible working, remote first etc.
davidgerard 5y ago
There isn't the same sort of office puff pieces in the UK press that the NYT has been running incessantly - mostly they're the sort of article that you read and think "did a commercial rental building write this". I'd be interested in how those banks are actually handling 2020-2021 here in practice, however anti-WFH they were previously.
- decafninja 5y ago
  Talking with my former coworkers, I know the bank I used to work at as well as others my ex-team have migrated to are still insisting they will be 100% work-from-office once things return to some sense of normalcy. This policy doesn't seem to be different between their US and UK locations. We had a townhall where the CTO first congratulated everyone for making 2020 a very productive year - with no loss of productivity from WFH. Then concluded by saying we would return to 100% work from office ASAP because it is scientifically proven by data that working from the office is more productive.
  - davidgerard 5y ago
    > once things return to some sense of normalcy This is absolutely not any time soon. > because it is scientifically proven by data that working from the office is more productive. lol, love to see that data