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Here's my take on WFH in general, I've been WFH for over 22 years so I have a little perspective. One thing we learned from Covid is that remote learning has p

Here's my take on WFH in general, I've been WFH for over 22 years so I have a little perspective. One thing we learned from Covid is that remote learning has pretty poor results, ask any school teacher and they will tell you that their students lost a step or two during the lock down. Why do I bring up learning, because that's what is expected of all entry level employees their job is to learn the job and it's very hard to do via zoom calls. Even seasoned workers need to learn the new job and pre-WFH the general consensus was that it two 6 months for a new employee to be useful, I would venture to guess that time has now doubled and that is really expensive. Finally since the senior people are also WFH they have a lot less interaction with the new people and because of this a lot of their institutional knowledge is not being passed down as in the past. This used to be pretty informal, seniors would invite juniors to join them for lunch and now this informal mentoring is gone. Last thing as others have mentioned, because their is no longer a location requirement it's opened up lots of work but it's also increase the pool of available workers and for those of us who live in expensive countries we have a massive disadvantage, why hire someone for 100K when you can hire someone for 20K. I deal with this internally every day where I have to meet or beat or offshore teams to do the same service, what makes you ten times better than the guy charging ten times less.

necovek 3y ago
I think you are right on average about learning, but I am sure you have learned a lot from your colleagues in 22 years of WFH: I sure did in my 15+ years. I think the main difference is between fully remote companies and semi-remote, semi-colocated employees: this is probably the worst of all worlds (depending on the distribution of people who are remote and who's in office). Having recently moved into an office, the one thing I hate the most is lack of a personal office (open space, urgh): moving away from my desk and back the whole day for any calls with people outside the office. I might as well take one of those "phone booths" to myself.
- screwturner68 3y ago
  I do consulting so I often go to customer's offices but I haven't seen one of my companies offices in about 6 years, I enjoy a little office time every now and then. That said, the "open office" and the hot desking is a nightmare, no wonder people want to work from home it's like working at the airport. I'm going to add one more thing and that is that (at least in my 20's and early 30's) work was very social, lots of friendships were fostered over beers after work. I know statistically 1/3 of all people meet their mate at work so socially not going to work is really a bad thing -maybe that's why every 20 something is so lonely and hate their jobs so much, it's all work and it didn't used to be that way/
moneywoes 3y ago
How do you show that value Over off shore candidates?
- screwturner68 3y ago
  Mostly I do it by getting the job done significantly faster. I help with our bidding and usually the off shore team bids want 3-4 times as many hours as I would take. I just had one project on my desk this week and they said it was going to take 4 months and I came back and said I could do it with 2 weeks of prep and two long weekends onsite. My company is very much opposed to doing onsite work but it's often cheaper to send me onsite than it is for me to build and configure my equipment at my house and have it shipped so I have the benefit of "touch". It's a constant fight but I have 7 years left so I might make it across the finish line but I'd guess the odds are 50/50

necovek 3y ago

I think you are right on average about learning, but I am sure you have learned a lot from your colleagues in 22 years of WFH: I sure did in my 15+ years. I think the main difference is between fully remote companies and semi-remote, semi-colocated employees: this is probably the worst of all worlds (depending on the distribution of people who are remote and who's in office). Having recently moved into an office, the one thing I hate the most is lack of a personal office (open space, urgh): moving away from my desk and back the whole day for any calls with people outside the office. I might as well take one of those "phone booths" to myself.

screwturner68 3y ago
I do consulting so I often go to customer's offices but I haven't seen one of my companies offices in about 6 years, I enjoy a little office time every now and then. That said, the "open office" and the hot desking is a nightmare, no wonder people want to work from home it's like working at the airport. I'm going to add one more thing and that is that (at least in my 20's and early 30's) work was very social, lots of friendships were fostered over beers after work. I know statistically 1/3 of all people meet their mate at work so socially not going to work is really a bad thing -maybe that's why every 20 something is so lonely and hate their jobs so much, it's all work and it didn't used to be that way/

moneywoes 3y ago

How do you show that value Over off shore candidates?

screwturner68 3y ago
Mostly I do it by getting the job done significantly faster. I help with our bidding and usually the off shore team bids want 3-4 times as many hours as I would take. I just had one project on my desk this week and they said it was going to take 4 months and I came back and said I could do it with 2 weeks of prep and two long weekends onsite. My company is very much opposed to doing onsite work but it's often cheaper to send me onsite than it is for me to build and configure my equipment at my house and have it shipped so I have the benefit of "touch". It's a constant fight but I have 7 years left so I might make it across the finish line but I'd guess the odds are 50/50