8 ms·

WFH Policies – Based on anecdotal community feedback

156 points by sien 5y ago

throwaway743 5y ago
Good.
- hedora 5y ago
  Too many. I wonder if it's by choice.
  - 542458 5y ago
    Anecdotally, that’s about the number I’d expect to be going back full time among tech workers. Maybe even a bit low. Some people just don’t like working from home, or don’t have a home that’s easy to work out of, or are doing work that’s difficult to do remotely.
  - hkon 5y ago
    Come on. Have you never seen a person whose only skill is to show up at the office. Seems there is about 7.2% of them :)
    - hedora 5y ago
      Ahh, getting away with not showing up to the office would be a second skill. Makes sense. Thanks.
    - BigJono 5y ago
      There's 72% of them but 64.8% have found a way to adapt. You can still fiddle with Jira settings and schedule bullshit meetings online.
timpattinson 5y ago
Australian large corporate workplaces whose employees notified this site - a little bit less impressive than it sounds
jlawer 5y ago
Data set seems off as the sampling heavily biases to Tech, Law and consulting and away from Retail, Logistics and Primary Industries all of which are a higher proportion of the Australian workforce. Additionally companies such as Coles and Woolworths (Supermarket chains) are listed as 100% Remote, where as this is only going to be for a small proportion of their workforce. The change is happening, and I work for an energy company where they literally do not have the office space for 100% of staff to be back in the office (currently target 50%). So the change is happening, but I don’t think its as far along as this data states. I can say from a recruitment perspective there are many candidates who want a significant pay bump to go back to 100% office.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Note these numbers are specifically about returning to the office so it's expected numbers for workplaces like supermarkets and such will differ wildly from looking at where a typical employee in these sectors will be as the vast majority are not office workers.
  - jlawer 5y ago
    The companies behind the supermarkets have large back office complexes. The size of the back office tends to be proportional to the turnover of the companies. I’m Australia retail and primary industries make a substantial proportion of that.
- shrimp_emoji 5y ago
  >Retail, Logistics and Primary Industries all of which are a higher proportion of the Australian workforce Ah, yes, the main portion of workers-from-home.
  - jlawer 5y ago
    Santos, Shell, Woodside, Super Retail Group, AACo are all large companies with massive back office operations which aren’t listed. The fact they may have many more non-office workers doesn’t mean they don’t have large offices
rr808 5y ago
Anyone have good numbers across the whole workforce? Doctors/Nurses, Teachers, Factory Workers, Drivers, Hotel/Restaurant workers, Retail, Security, honestly being able to work from home is a minority of people.
- nuclearnice3 5y ago
  37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30802137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30802137 What is meant by "honestly" in your post?
  - gruez 5y ago
    >37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home And the second top level comment from that: >The coding used by this survey is a joke. If 40% of an occupation says they work outdoors that's below 50% so it's bucketed into the work from home category on that criterion. I think if even 20% of a job is saying they work outdoors that's pretty strong evidence you're missing some information about what the other 80% are doing in their job that prevents it from being a work from home job. The net result of their setup is obviously a vast overestimate so take the 37% number with a grain of salt.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    Pedantic comment. 37% is a minority of jobs.
    - nuclearnice3 5y ago
      Do you believe you are correcting an error where someone claimed otherwise?
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      How much of a minority matters though. There is a big social and economic difference between (number made up) 5% of jobs and 37% of jobs. Even if it never goes higher, that takes remote from a rare and exotic thing to a full third of the work force.
TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
Based on anecdotal community feedback. So they admit it's a load of dingos kindeys. Followed by this gem: Now that we have moved past the peak of COVID Bollocks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ggm 5y ago
  Kidneys and Bollocks, that's the four-n-twenty pie right there.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I think we’re well past the peak risk and peak fear of COVID for the majority of the population (ages 0-70 and able to be vaccinated). Whether we’re past the peak positive test result count is much less impactful on people’s attitude and proclivity to socialize.
McNutty 5y ago
There is still too much confusion to draw proper conclusions. What I mean is that a lot of people who say they dislike working from home actually dislike the pandemic, the lockdowns, the lack of human interaction, and the associated stress and drama. They might be perfectly happy to work from home in normal times. Also as a former hospitality worker, my sympathy for those whose jobs preclude WFH entirely.
- skwirl 5y ago
  It's also possible that a lot of people who say they like working from home actually just like not being exposed to COVID. You seem to think there's no rational reason anyone would want to work in person.
  - seb1204 5y ago
    I agree with both arguments. I have been working from home since March 2020. Maybe 30 days in the office since. I do like it most days, sometime life at home gets in the way of productivity but these days exist in the office too. I do also like to not be exposed or infected with Covid19 or sneezles. But at the same time I do want to stress that the amount of covid Australia had is still very very little to what other countries go through and it has affected me only minor. (Yes I do consider myself lucky on that part and know that others have been affected very much so).
  - BigJono 5y ago
    There's probably a lot of reasons for both points of view with different weighting for different people, and there's lot of middle ground between in office and remote too. Personally I actually like working in person, just not every day, and I don't like commuting. If I had it my way I'd be within walking distance of work and doing something like 2-3 days a week in the office. But as long as every business is still in the city and the trains are still shithouse then I'm on team full remote, even if that's not my "true" preference.
  - McNutty 5y ago
    Sigh. Every time a coconut with the 'you seem to think xyz' response based on a single brief comment with no mention of xyz
monkeycantype 5y ago
I work for an Australian company, where half of the ownership is a large company with massive exposure to commercial real estate. I find myself wondering if we are paying lip service to returning to the office, till everyone figures out what to do with the huge investment in real estate. Once the border becomes more permeable, perhaps the inner city apartment sales will pick up again and companies will become more open about plans to off load them
- downrightmike 5y ago
  I'd agree with the lip service, but there won't really be a final end to the commercial real estate because the sector has had a lot of problems for a long time and they haven't put effort into fixing it even post 2008. So it needs to implode to be fixed. The current players are just forcing status quo, but the world snuck up and digitalized. whoops.
- JellyYelly 5y ago
  > perhaps the inner city apartment sales will pick up again Did they ever slow down? In Sydney apartment prices in the CBD and surrounding suburbs went up over covid, despite the lockdowns.
sammalloy 5y ago
I’ve said this before, but I feel it needs to be said again: working from home should be one of our top priorities when it comes to climate mitigation strategies. In addition to helping individual workers use less energy for commuting for work, we should also be helping existing commercial real estate weather the cost to transitioning to remote work by converting their massive roofs, in areas where it is possible, to solar farms.
- hatware 5y ago
  I hate to get all soap-boxy, but this seems like the right time. Corporations are responsible for something like 70% of global emissions. It's nice that you want to help, and I do too. But bottom line, it has been an absolute failure of journalism and our regulatory bodies that the solution to climate change is somehow up to citizens driving and consuming less. Corporations can feed themselves regularly, but there are 730 million people on earth without access to clean water. Enough is enough!
  - forum_ghost 5y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10... seems it is mostly the fossil fuel industry. "The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities." A good chunk are even state-owned!
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Yeah it turns out oil companies produce emissions, news at 11. The problem with that study is that it puts all of the emissions on to the producer, when a consumer focused approach makes more sense.
  - d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago
    I heard Bitcoin will solve everything
newshorts 5y ago
Wtf USA, I’m moving to Australia
jen729w 5y ago
A data point from my world, which is in Canberra (our capital) government world where security says that if you’re doing admin work - basically you’re using your elevated privilege account - you must be in the office. 8 of the 9 people in our database support team left because they just didn’t want to do this. They easily found other jobs without this requirement. We basically can’t hire anyone else because when they learn that they must come to the office, they lose interest. And Canberra is fairly small and we don’t have a traffic problem worth mentioning. Getting to work is easy. People just don’t want to now that they know that they can work from home.
- gbear605 5y ago
  Interestingly, that’s not a problem that the US government faces unless you’re doing work with confidential military secrets. I wonder why the different policies worked out like that.
- stirlo 5y ago
  Is this standard government admin or something involving sensitive information where this requirement may be valid? I assume the outcome will be no one wants to do this work as an employee and they’ll end up filling the holes with expensive contractors (who may even be made exempt from this requirement).
- tallytarik 5y ago
  At least they tried to spin it as security related. The word from most federal departments has been “hey, time to come back to the office because… that’s how it was before.” Compare to, for example, ACT Government, which announced months ago that they’re permanently moving to flexible working arrangements. It’ll be interesting to see over the next ~12 months how much federal government talent is lost as a result.
  - jen729w 5y ago
    It’s always been a requirement, it’s not new since Covid. But we were all just in the office all the time before. What’s new is that people realise there’s another way, and they want it.
ashtonkem 5y ago
From my limited vantage point in hiring, the overwhelming consensus among software engineering candidates is to remain remote. Even among those already in the same city as our home office.
taspeotis 5y ago
Australian here. I work four days a week from home and one day in the office as a “team day.” Seems to work for us as software developers. Team day is not mandatory but everyone makes an effort to rock up and socialise a bit. My wife is an optometrist and will continue to work from her practice 5 days a week.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  The crucial difference between your policy and a total WfH policy is the ability to recruit anyone from a ~50-mile radius versus anyone from the Australian continent. The quality of applicants you get from a total WfH policy will dwarf whatever benefits you get from one in-person day.
  - hedora 5y ago
    Also, you could probably fly people around for in person events for less than the cost of the office space. Tropical island, maybe?
    - pjgalbraith 5y ago
      Absolutely. I'm based in Australia and that's exactly what the fully remote company I work for does, they fly the team over every few months... minus the tropical island.
StopHammoTime 5y ago
The ironic part of this in my experience is that the employers that want you in the office 100% are also the ones willing to pay less. Problem solved, I’ll earn more from a company that treats employees with respect and the other companies will go out of business. Labour shortage in Australia is real right now, so it’s literally going to be impossible for these places to hire soon.
- Underphil 5y ago
  Is that strictly true? I mean it makes sense that the average fast food worker (who must be present) makes less than a software engineer (who may not need to be present), but does that translate across the whole job market?
  - TempestSA 5y ago
    For software engineering, anecdotally the companies pushing for 100% in office are the more traditional enterprise organisations, that haven't embraced technology and agile practices. While remuneration might be similar, there is a lot of red tape and working people willing to put up with bureaucracy are generally not as passionate and therefore try and palm off work or engage in politics. I agree in principle that 100% in office roles are a red flag and not worth the hassle.
    - SauciestGNU 5y ago
      Yeah at my current company it's at leadership discretion. My group is permanent remote, but some of my companion groups are being forced back to the office. Our pay across the board is dogshit though, and we're bleeding devs but the company won't let management pay what's needed to retain people. On that note, if anyone's looking for a senior/staff full stack swe with 5 years of react plus a whole bunch of other stuff, let me know. Please.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  Gotta pay for that office and lots of middle management to keep close tabs on everyone.
bumblebritches5 5y ago
r00tanon 5y ago
I'm reminded of this old Apple video "Apple Knowledge Navigator" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJsITGzXd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJsITGzXd0
neonate 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20220325234827/https://theaussiecorporate.com/wfhpolicies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220325234827/https://theaussie...
kkfx 5y ago
I suggest a different anecdotal study: asking how WFH is done. I mean, on one side how the worker's home is organized (dedicated room, with proper furniture etc vs a craptop in the bathroom) on the other how the company organize the remote part (VDI vs real remote collaboration, for instance). That's IMVHO and without tangible proof give the best feedback witch is: IF the worker have a good place (and a calm family situation) AND the company is organized for real remote work nearly 100% want to be remote. If not...

156 points by sien 5y ago

throwaway743 5y ago

Good.

hedora 5y ago
Too many. I wonder if it's by choice.
- 542458 5y ago
  Anecdotally, that’s about the number I’d expect to be going back full time among tech workers. Maybe even a bit low. Some people just don’t like working from home, or don’t have a home that’s easy to work out of, or are doing work that’s difficult to do remotely.
- hkon 5y ago
  Come on. Have you never seen a person whose only skill is to show up at the office. Seems there is about 7.2% of them :)
  - hedora 5y ago
    Ahh, getting away with not showing up to the office would be a second skill. Makes sense. Thanks.
  - BigJono 5y ago
    There's 72% of them but 64.8% have found a way to adapt. You can still fiddle with Jira settings and schedule bullshit meetings online.

timpattinson 5y ago

Australian large corporate workplaces whose employees notified this site - a little bit less impressive than it sounds

jlawer 5y ago

Data set seems off as the sampling heavily biases to Tech, Law and consulting and away from Retail, Logistics and Primary Industries all of which are a higher proportion of the Australian workforce. Additionally companies such as Coles and Woolworths (Supermarket chains) are listed as 100% Remote, where as this is only going to be for a small proportion of their workforce. The change is happening, and I work for an energy company where they literally do not have the office space for 100% of staff to be back in the office (currently target 50%). So the change is happening, but I don’t think its as far along as this data states. I can say from a recruitment perspective there are many candidates who want a significant pay bump to go back to 100% office.

zamadatix 5y ago
Note these numbers are specifically about returning to the office so it's expected numbers for workplaces like supermarkets and such will differ wildly from looking at where a typical employee in these sectors will be as the vast majority are not office workers.
- jlawer 5y ago
  The companies behind the supermarkets have large back office complexes. The size of the back office tends to be proportional to the turnover of the companies. I’m Australia retail and primary industries make a substantial proportion of that.
shrimp_emoji 5y ago
>Retail, Logistics and Primary Industries all of which are a higher proportion of the Australian workforce Ah, yes, the main portion of workers-from-home.
- jlawer 5y ago
  Santos, Shell, Woodside, Super Retail Group, AACo are all large companies with massive back office operations which aren’t listed. The fact they may have many more non-office workers doesn’t mean they don’t have large offices

rr808 5y ago

Anyone have good numbers across the whole workforce? Doctors/Nurses, Teachers, Factory Workers, Drivers, Hotel/Restaurant workers, Retail, Security, honestly being able to work from home is a minority of people.

nuclearnice3 5y ago
37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30802137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30802137 What is meant by "honestly" in your post?
- gruez 5y ago
  >37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home And the second top level comment from that: >The coding used by this survey is a joke. If 40% of an occupation says they work outdoors that's below 50% so it's bucketed into the work from home category on that criterion. I think if even 20% of a job is saying they work outdoors that's pretty strong evidence you're missing some information about what the other 80% are doing in their job that prevents it from being a work from home job. The net result of their setup is obviously a vast overestimate so take the 37% number with a grain of salt.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  Pedantic comment. 37% is a minority of jobs.
  - nuclearnice3 5y ago
    Do you believe you are correcting an error where someone claimed otherwise?
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    How much of a minority matters though. There is a big social and economic difference between (number made up) 5% of jobs and 37% of jobs. Even if it never goes higher, that takes remote from a rare and exotic thing to a full third of the work force.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago

Based on anecdotal community feedback. So they admit it's a load of dingos kindeys. Followed by this gem: Now that we have moved past the peak of COVID Bollocks.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ggm 5y ago
Kidneys and Bollocks, that's the four-n-twenty pie right there.
sokoloff 5y ago
I think we’re well past the peak risk and peak fear of COVID for the majority of the population (ages 0-70 and able to be vaccinated). Whether we’re past the peak positive test result count is much less impactful on people’s attitude and proclivity to socialize.

McNutty 5y ago

There is still too much confusion to draw proper conclusions. What I mean is that a lot of people who say they dislike working from home actually dislike the pandemic, the lockdowns, the lack of human interaction, and the associated stress and drama. They might be perfectly happy to work from home in normal times. Also as a former hospitality worker, my sympathy for those whose jobs preclude WFH entirely.

skwirl 5y ago
It's also possible that a lot of people who say they like working from home actually just like not being exposed to COVID. You seem to think there's no rational reason anyone would want to work in person.
- seb1204 5y ago
  I agree with both arguments. I have been working from home since March 2020. Maybe 30 days in the office since. I do like it most days, sometime life at home gets in the way of productivity but these days exist in the office too. I do also like to not be exposed or infected with Covid19 or sneezles. But at the same time I do want to stress that the amount of covid Australia had is still very very little to what other countries go through and it has affected me only minor. (Yes I do consider myself lucky on that part and know that others have been affected very much so).
- BigJono 5y ago
  There's probably a lot of reasons for both points of view with different weighting for different people, and there's lot of middle ground between in office and remote too. Personally I actually like working in person, just not every day, and I don't like commuting. If I had it my way I'd be within walking distance of work and doing something like 2-3 days a week in the office. But as long as every business is still in the city and the trains are still shithouse then I'm on team full remote, even if that's not my "true" preference.
- McNutty 5y ago
  Sigh. Every time a coconut with the 'you seem to think xyz' response based on a single brief comment with no mention of xyz

monkeycantype 5y ago

I work for an Australian company, where half of the ownership is a large company with massive exposure to commercial real estate. I find myself wondering if we are paying lip service to returning to the office, till everyone figures out what to do with the huge investment in real estate. Once the border becomes more permeable, perhaps the inner city apartment sales will pick up again and companies will become more open about plans to off load them

downrightmike 5y ago
I'd agree with the lip service, but there won't really be a final end to the commercial real estate because the sector has had a lot of problems for a long time and they haven't put effort into fixing it even post 2008. So it needs to implode to be fixed. The current players are just forcing status quo, but the world snuck up and digitalized. whoops.
JellyYelly 5y ago
> perhaps the inner city apartment sales will pick up again Did they ever slow down? In Sydney apartment prices in the CBD and surrounding suburbs went up over covid, despite the lockdowns.

sammalloy 5y ago

I’ve said this before, but I feel it needs to be said again: working from home should be one of our top priorities when it comes to climate mitigation strategies. In addition to helping individual workers use less energy for commuting for work, we should also be helping existing commercial real estate weather the cost to transitioning to remote work by converting their massive roofs, in areas where it is possible, to solar farms.

hatware 5y ago
I hate to get all soap-boxy, but this seems like the right time. Corporations are responsible for something like 70% of global emissions. It's nice that you want to help, and I do too. But bottom line, it has been an absolute failure of journalism and our regulatory bodies that the solution to climate change is somehow up to citizens driving and consuming less. Corporations can feed themselves regularly, but there are 730 million people on earth without access to clean water. Enough is enough!
- forum_ghost 5y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10... seems it is mostly the fossil fuel industry. "The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities." A good chunk are even state-owned!
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Yeah it turns out oil companies produce emissions, news at 11. The problem with that study is that it puts all of the emissions on to the producer, when a consumer focused approach makes more sense.
- d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago
  I heard Bitcoin will solve everything

newshorts 5y ago

Wtf USA, I’m moving to Australia

jen729w 5y ago

A data point from my world, which is in Canberra (our capital) government world where security says that if you’re doing admin work - basically you’re using your elevated privilege account - you must be in the office. 8 of the 9 people in our database support team left because they just didn’t want to do this. They easily found other jobs without this requirement. We basically can’t hire anyone else because when they learn that they must come to the office, they lose interest. And Canberra is fairly small and we don’t have a traffic problem worth mentioning. Getting to work is easy. People just don’t want to now that they know that they can work from home.

gbear605 5y ago
Interestingly, that’s not a problem that the US government faces unless you’re doing work with confidential military secrets. I wonder why the different policies worked out like that.
stirlo 5y ago
Is this standard government admin or something involving sensitive information where this requirement may be valid? I assume the outcome will be no one wants to do this work as an employee and they’ll end up filling the holes with expensive contractors (who may even be made exempt from this requirement).
tallytarik 5y ago
At least they tried to spin it as security related. The word from most federal departments has been “hey, time to come back to the office because… that’s how it was before.” Compare to, for example, ACT Government, which announced months ago that they’re permanently moving to flexible working arrangements. It’ll be interesting to see over the next ~12 months how much federal government talent is lost as a result.
- jen729w 5y ago
  It’s always been a requirement, it’s not new since Covid. But we were all just in the office all the time before. What’s new is that people realise there’s another way, and they want it.

ashtonkem 5y ago

From my limited vantage point in hiring, the overwhelming consensus among software engineering candidates is to remain remote. Even among those already in the same city as our home office.

taspeotis 5y ago

Australian here. I work four days a week from home and one day in the office as a “team day.” Seems to work for us as software developers. Team day is not mandatory but everyone makes an effort to rock up and socialise a bit. My wife is an optometrist and will continue to work from her practice 5 days a week.

jimbob45 5y ago
The crucial difference between your policy and a total WfH policy is the ability to recruit anyone from a ~50-mile radius versus anyone from the Australian continent. The quality of applicants you get from a total WfH policy will dwarf whatever benefits you get from one in-person day.
- hedora 5y ago
  Also, you could probably fly people around for in person events for less than the cost of the office space. Tropical island, maybe?
  - pjgalbraith 5y ago
    Absolutely. I'm based in Australia and that's exactly what the fully remote company I work for does, they fly the team over every few months... minus the tropical island.

StopHammoTime 5y ago

The ironic part of this in my experience is that the employers that want you in the office 100% are also the ones willing to pay less. Problem solved, I’ll earn more from a company that treats employees with respect and the other companies will go out of business. Labour shortage in Australia is real right now, so it’s literally going to be impossible for these places to hire soon.

Underphil 5y ago
Is that strictly true? I mean it makes sense that the average fast food worker (who must be present) makes less than a software engineer (who may not need to be present), but does that translate across the whole job market?
- TempestSA 5y ago
  For software engineering, anecdotally the companies pushing for 100% in office are the more traditional enterprise organisations, that haven't embraced technology and agile practices. While remuneration might be similar, there is a lot of red tape and working people willing to put up with bureaucracy are generally not as passionate and therefore try and palm off work or engage in politics. I agree in principle that 100% in office roles are a red flag and not worth the hassle.
  - SauciestGNU 5y ago
    Yeah at my current company it's at leadership discretion. My group is permanent remote, but some of my companion groups are being forced back to the office. Our pay across the board is dogshit though, and we're bleeding devs but the company won't let management pay what's needed to retain people. On that note, if anyone's looking for a senior/staff full stack swe with 5 years of react plus a whole bunch of other stuff, let me know. Please.
pcthrowaway 5y ago
Gotta pay for that office and lots of middle management to keep close tabs on everyone.

bumblebritches5 5y ago

r00tanon 5y ago

I'm reminded of this old Apple video "Apple Knowledge Navigator" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJsITGzXd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJsITGzXd0

neonate 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220325234827/https://theaussiecorporate.com/wfhpolicies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220325234827/https://theaussie...

kkfx 5y ago

I suggest a different anecdotal study: asking how WFH is done. I mean, on one side how the worker's home is organized (dedicated room, with proper furniture etc vs a craptop in the bathroom) on the other how the company organize the remote part (VDI vs real remote collaboration, for instance). That's IMVHO and without tangible proof give the best feedback witch is: IF the worker have a good place (and a calm family situation) AND the company is organized for real remote work nearly 100% want to be remote. If not...