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> Before COVID-19 sent one-third of the global workforce home, the Melbourne property surveyor that employs drone operator Nicholas Coomber called its 180-stron
by majormajor 3y ago
> Before COVID-19 sent one-third of the global workforce home, the Melbourne property surveyor that employs drone operator Nicholas Coomber called its 180-strong staff into the office every day at 9 a.m. to hand out assignments.
> Now that they work from home, the surveyors travel straight to the field as early as 7.30 a.m., enabling Coomber to pick up his children from daycare earlier than before the pandemic.
The example here seems like a particularly stupid (from the company POV, even) place to put an in-office mandate. Clearly much of the actual work was never happening in the office anyway.
Overall what the article describes seems pretty similar to what's happening in a lot of companies in the US (and globally, as the article notes), though with more unions involved than in the US. Bosses are much more likely to want 5 days in the office than employees, negotiation over how many days, etc. A lot of work certainly doesn't need 5 days a week in office.
- jacobwilliamroy 3y agoI actually prefer going to work. Being out of the house for 5 days a week really helps to reduce the utility bill. Also I hate being at home. Nothing good ever happens there.
- mulletbum 3y agoInteresting, I and all of my neighbors disagree. Thankfully the whole conversation has nothing to do with one person.
- jacobwilliamroy 3y agoI just think it's important to remember that not everyone is rich enough to have a home environment that's as good or better than the one at work. And also consider that the company bears a lot of expenses by having people work on-site and I rarely see discussions of who is going to be paying those bills or how that's supposed to work.
- pessimizer 3y agoI don't think anyone is proposing forcing you to work from home.
- ktkoffroth 3y agoNo, but if many people are working from home (and socializing the costs of office space), then the company has less incentive to keep an office around at all, leaving people who prefer working from an office out of luck.
- l33t233372 3y ago> socializing the costs of office space Aren’t we talking about private businesses here?
- ktkoffroth 3y agoI don't mean "socializing the costs" in the sense that the public sector is paying for it, but the employees are. It's a common strategy to spread your externalities and costs among your customers, employees, and the general public (see: large multi-national banks and automakers getting bought out by governments).
- robryan 3y agoTo look at it another way, if the money saved from commuting is put into home office setup everyone should eventually have something decent.
- ryoshu 3y agoHave people not work on-site and the company can lower their bills.
- j-bos 3y agoI think the general tone is, feel free to go, but don't drag us along.
- jacobwilliamroy 3y agoWho was talking about you, specifically?
- yulker 3y agoAsk yourself the same
- majormajor 3y agoI want to be in the office some. Three years of trying to work on complex systems/problems/concepts purely over video calls is quite enough of that. But it doesn't need to be every day, and I also have non-work obligations that are often far easier to accomplish during the week if there's some flexible time.
- plagiarist 3y agoI feel the same, but I am still not going to do the commute ever again. It is much easier to do meals and start automated tasks (like a load of laundry) during a break. It is nice to have time in the evening to do things so I can actually use the weekends for myself.
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y ago> I hate being at home. Nothing good ever happens there. I'm truly sorry to hear that. :-\
- dougmwne 3y agoThe people who say this usually have a quick walk around the block to the office or a pleasant bike ride through a city park, not a 2 hour slog.
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoThe majority of people do not need two hours to get to work. In my city, a metro area of nearly three million, you are 20 to 30 minutes from anywhere.
- JohnFen 3y agoThis probably depends on where you live. I don't currently work in a large city, but the last time I did, I lived 5 miles as the crow flies from my workplace. The commute time averaged 90 minutes one-way if I drove, and 2 hours one-way if I took mass transit. On bad days, both of those travel times would double.
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoOf course it depends on where you live and I'm saying most people don't need 90 minutes to two hours to travel five miles to work as you claim.
- the_af 3y ago> The majority of people do not need two hours to get to work The majority of people where, exactly? Your comment doesn't seem context-aware.
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoOn planet Earth.
- the_af 3y agoOk, I'll bite. Where are the statistics supporting that? In my case (Buenos Aires, IT work) it used to be the case that people all over the city and surrounding areas had to commute to the city's "microcenter" (what we call the financial/historical district), resulting in typical commute times of 1 to 2 hours. Dreadful. So your statement doesn't ring true for us in Buenos Aires.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> Also I hate being at home. Nothing good ever happens there. It seems that you have some issues going on, no need to drag your colleagues into that.
- Arrath 3y ago> The example here seems like a particularly stupid (from the company POV, even) place to put an in-office mandate. Doubly or triply so considering the travel times to their field sites, just look at the timeframe differences quoted for that office meeting vs when he leaves for the survey site otherwise. What an incredible gain in productivity!
- malux85 3y agoIf companies are going to force people to be in the office, then the government should mandate that commute time is included in office hours. That means if you want me in the office, I will leave my house at 9AM, if you want me to be close to the office, then increase my pay and I will move closer.
- majormajor 3y agoI have no objection to commuting counting as paid time - at the very least, the fact that in the US even things like mandatory security processes don't count is absurd - but for all of us "lucky" enough to be "exempt" in the US... blah.
- slashdev 3y agoMy dad worked the latter half of his career this way. He came in late and left early. But he was good enough / indispensable enough that he got away with it.
- sokoloff 3y agoSuppose I really like driving. Under such a policy, I might be inclined to move 4 hours one-way from the office and just listen to podcasts and drive around all day. (I don't actually want to do this, but when writing government policies, you have to consider that some people will be aggressively adversarial if it suits them.)
- randomdata 3y agoSo if, say, office hours are eight hours per day, you are incentivized to move four hours away?
- Varqu 3y agoThe right to work 100% from home is what really makes sense, because only then people can pick their place of living freely. This way, we could actually improve the housing situation across the country, because otherwise, it all concentrates in the biggest cities.
- andsoitis 3y ago> This way, we could actually improve the housing situation across the country, because otherwise, it all concentrates in the biggest cities. Less concentrated human habitation is not without cost…
- alaxsxaq 3y agoIndeed, as are concentrated forms of human habitation, and, your point is?
- LeifCarrotson 3y agoSubsequent to the agricultural revolution, big cities have been more economically efficient than suburban and rural areas. The productivity of cities massively subsidizes small towns and cul-de-sac neighborhoods. Hedonistically, everyone wants to live on a big lot on a low-traffic road... with friends, family, and work/shopping/services a short distance away. If everyone does have that kind of housing, then - quickly - no one will have it, because evetything will be too spread out; you need to drive a big, polluting car fast through someone else's low-traffic neighborhood to get to yours. The costs of concentrated habitation are less than the benefits - there's enough tax base and density to support roads and (emergency or mundane) services and businesses. The costs of distributed habitation are higher, and don't work if the entire nation switches to that kind of housing.
- coldtea 3y ago>big cities have been more economically efficient than suburban and rural areas. The productivity of cities massively subsidizes small towns and cul-de-sac neighborhoods. Environmentally and sustainably speaking, the "productivity" of big cities is zero. Cut from the outside, a city like New York would die in a few months when food dissapears, with people eating one another. Cut from urban centers, rural towns and villages will continue to be able to drink and feed themselves just fine. They only exist because the people living there are subsidized, for water, food, and other such essentials, from outside. Even factory production lives outside those cities. That's how they started actually, when the rural production because so larger, as to be able to sustain not just itself, but also a parasitic, mediating and administrating, urbal class. >If everyone does have that kind of housing, then - quickly - no one will have it, because evetything will be too spread out; you need to drive a big, polluting car fast through someone else's low-traffic neighborhood to get to yours. There's nothing inevitable about this, it's just how US suburbs were designed, to be car-centered. In decentralized suburbs with local walkable distance shops (walkable as a stronger condition as opposed to merely "a short distance away"), and with local jobs and more extended work from home, it doesn't matter if they "spread out", because you don't have to drive a "a big, polluting car fast through", as the need to go elsewhere is less frequent: work, socializing, shopping is nearby. Add a good public transportation service, and you don't even need a car.
- paul7986 3y agoBosses i can't imagine the majority want to work in an office themselves unless they own the company.
- ender341341 3y agoI've met a few who don't really like remote meetings so prefer to have their employees available to talk in person, even if they themselves aren't in the office full time. personally I wouldn't work from an office so would basically skip on applying to those places but that is the excuse I've heard most often More realistically many only know "asses in seats" as a metric for their employees working.
- coldtea 3y ago>Clearly much of the actual work was never happening in the office anyway. The same is true for most office jobs. It might appear to happen in the office, but that's because computers and desks are in the office.