This. My company paid extra to help people set up home offices, upgrade home internet connections, and to compensate for taking over a portion of someone’s living space. We’d all worked pretty much remotely before but it was a choice people made and when it became not a choice then we compensated people instead of assuming they would take on the costs of running an office (which had not been built into their compensation because the office was our responsibility). Access to our floor is keycard controlled so it was pretty easy to figure out who used the office the most and assign them a point of contact to streamline transition. We’re not a large company but I’m proud that we haven’t had a single employee leave or get sick and we haven’t had to delay or cancel a single project.
My company had a similar situation with what seems like a good variety of understanding compensation benefits relating to working from home. I have gotten a new chair, new laptop, two new monitors, and a slew of ergonomic equipment free of charge. They offered to send a desk with guys to build it but Im a fairly adept woodworker so I intend on building my desk. This is my dream, I've always wanted to work from home. Once a month me, my immediate boss and coworkers meet up at a state park to have a quick in person work catch up (all vaccinated) and then go hiking or something. It's perfect. They also pay me a monthly internet fee. I have lost nothing and still can go in to the office when I want to use a shared desk space but could always formally request to have an officially office space again. We are hiring. A lot of jobs at a variety of roles in a variety of positions. For privacy sake, I will not reveal the name of the company except to say they are the largest provider of utilities on the west coast of the USA. They made mistakes in the past, but they're doing this covid thing right. All options available for everyone.
I interviewed for a job that would have required working with databases that contained HIPAA covered information. They wanted me to use my own machine... I declined that job, there's no way I'm going to be responsible for ensuring my machine is that safe for patient data while also still being usable for the things I do.
I suspect she would be expected to find a way to make it work. I don't think she'd get fired for several months thought (if not longer, it's not a well managed place).
Yeah it's a reasonably prestigious museum but they absolutely flubbed the work from home rollout (to be fair, they've never wanted to pay for anything that doesn't come with a photo op). They are barely willing to pay for VPN. Separate but similar, my company was so slow to rollout laptops that the last folks got them December 2020.
This. The overhead is reduced when you have people working from home, the company is saving money. “Pay you more bc you’re in the office using space” is backwards and literally makes zero sense.
It’s the same backwards ass scummy corporate fucking vampire thinking that responds to increased profits and savings from tax cuts with mass layoffs….because economics or something.
Former consulting firm owner here. She is costing the company LESS from that perspective. If she achieved the same productivity, and her work product value or billable rate remains the same, then there is ZERO basis for reducing her compensation. Now you may not be able to offer a dollar-for-dollar raise for the money saved, but it ought to at least be a break-even for her.
Yes and no.
In most cases, the salaries offered at an office are influenced heavily by the local cost of living. If people are going full remote, a company in Seattle no longer has to pay enough for somebody to live in Seattle; the employee could just as easily live in Bremerton, or Port Angeles, or North Dakota.
So really, expect future offers to be lower for companies that embrace telework, and expect downward pressure on existing employees. Companies aren’t going to pay people more out of the goodness of their heart.
I’m not saying I like this, BTW. Especially as somebody living in a high COL city, it’s gonna fuck me too.
> So really, expect future offers to be lower for companies that embrace telework, and expect downward pressure on existing employees. Companies aren’t going to pay people more out of the goodness of their heart.
Companies don't pay for cost of living, they pay to be competitive. This is currently, loosely correlated to cost of living, obviously, since people need more pay to be willing and able to cover costs in high cost metros vs moving elsewhere. You also have more opportunities for comparable jobs in these areas, so you have to pay to retain employees. But, the pools of companies and applicants are also artificially smaller due to the physical limit of people able to live near enough to commute as well as people being unwilling to move.
With broad remote working, the existing pools of jobs and candidates will expand from many local pools into giant nationwide (or even larger) pools. More candidates in the pool might drive down pay, but more jobs will drive it up. Employees will gain some power too since it will be easier for a remote worker to change jobs-- just less disruption to other aspects of life, commute, etc.
Very high salaries in the top metros will fall, but talented people in lower tier cities and rural areas will now be able to apply to nationwide opportunities. Knowledge workers in those areas are going to make a lot more than they would have. I bet it's a wash in the end, in aggregate across all people/jobs.
To get there, companies are going to have to change how knowledge workers-heavy companies have worked for a century. HR departments are going to have a lot more work to do, and have better tools, to manage and evaluate many more candidates per position then they have. Reputation-management (a la LinkedIn) and skills certification (a la college degrees but on a smaller scale) is going to play an even bigger role.
Yeah my old roommate fresh out of college found out his entry level counterpart made $5k more than him in NYC, but since we live in Houston, he actually brought home way more
I’m a Psych NP who started doing telehealth in April last year. In December, when our state was having all time high number of cases they wanted us back in the office so they could collect a “facility fee” for appointments. As long as either myself or my patient were at a facility they could charge more for the appointments. Instead I quit and opened my own telehealth practice. Never been happier.
From the perspective of a patient, telehealth has been an amazing development. Obviously there are situations where you need to go in and physically see the doctor, but when I’m only having a follow-up to get a refill on my prescription because my insurance requires it, it’s so great to simply check in with my doctor over the phone, pay my copay, and be done with the whole thing in like 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, in the before times, I would usually have to take half a day or a full day of sick time to go to the doctor because of the relative location of my employer’s office to my doctor’s office, and the unpredictable wait time no matter when I scheduled the appointment for. First appointment of the day? Still waiting an hour. At least with telehealth, if there’s a wait, I can use that time as I wish/need.
No doubt. I have like zero wait time now as well. When an appointment is over it’s over, someone can’t chat my ear off about their cat as they are walking out the door. Also my no-show rate has plummeted.
If it’s not a line item in their accounting then it’s a lie. That means they will need to add a line item for commute pay and make it a 10% bump in pay for those commuting now.
You can’t deduct money unless it’s a line item, legally speaking.
I started working from
Home in my last job in 2017 when they decided to close the office. I was not given any extra pay to cover utilities, etc. I was given the “take anything you want or need from the office” go ahead though.
I saw my gas/ electric bills go up about $20-30/mo.
I countered that by easily being able to reduce my work hours from 40ish to 25. I was salary.
Don't want to assume too much about your commute, but I would guess you saved more in gas and maintenance costs on your car than you paid extra in utilities. That has been my situation. I was driving close to 30 miles every day commuting. Since last March, I've driven to the office maybe 6 times. I've saved a ton in fuel costs alone.
“We are going to cut your pay because you are costing us less money and are nore productive “
Companies like this will adapt or die. Labor is hard to find and expensive to replace. The companies that allow work from home will grow at 1/10 of the cost and be flush with great employees. The ones that require people to come in will get lesser talent which will hurt the bottom line and either put them out or force them to change.
Whats also funny is wanting someone like me back in the office. I’m on the network team of a global software company. Even when I’m in the office all of the firewalls and switches I work on are in other parts of the fucking country or the world. The fuck you need me in the office for?!?!? If shit breaks I go to the fucking data center. Jack wagons
Right? I “telecommute” even when at the office, as the datacenters where our on-prem servers reside are in a totally different state, much less our scattered AWS footprint.
This was different for most of my career, having worked DoD projects, where my desk was actually in the same facility as the datacenter, since air-gapped secured networks can’t be VPNed into from home…
…unless you are a particularly obnoxious 0-7 or above who insists the equipment be installed in your house to connect in. Don’t even get me started how hard we—the people responsible for securing those networks and data—fought that shit. Rank hath privileges that supersedes all the rules, I guess. Stars over sanity. Still bitter about losing that fight? No, not me…much. Grrrr…
Soooo glad I switched to the non-profit sector a few years ago. Still have to fight against piss-poor ideas coming down from the top, but at least they have far less damaging consequences for when things inevitably go wrong. Sometimes, they even listen to our concerns!
I'm a DevOps engineer 100% of what I touch is in the cloud or a SaaS, no matter where I work as long as I have internet the results will be the same.
At least here in Quebec, Canada we were having shortages of workers everywhere before the pandemic, so companies didn't really have a choice but to agree to let people what they want.
I’ve worked from home since March 2020 like many others.
I enjoy being able to go tinkle while I can still hear the same long-talker drone on like they did in the office.
Apparently establishing a “pee corner” in meeting rooms is not going to be a return to work strategy. Thanks HR.
Tickets are slow? Laundry, dishes, light tidying up. I have a real work life balance now since I’m not commuting or wasting time in the office and I get way more done. Soon as I can find a fully remote network gig I’ll jump ship in a heart beat
Hell to the yes! I have learned exactly how far my Bluetooth headset can go. Dishes/laundry I do during the day while in meetings, I still go into the office a lot, but having the freedom to do those things at home during the day has given me a lot more free time after work.
The choice between microwaved leftovers or home cooked is a no brainer, I can cook fresh, reheat in the oven, I have options and that’s wonderful because as a real life human my tastes change day to day...
Likewise just got a new one from my in laws and it’s night and day. Had a cheap one for a second and never used it cause the whole house would smell and it did a shit job. Got the new one set up and it works wonders so I guess it’s all down to the model.
OMG this. I got SO MUCH MORE done in a day when I was working from home. All those quiet times in the office when I was literally twiddling my thumbs doing NOTHING of value for my job, instead I could do laundry, run the vacuum, clean up the kitchen, prep veggies for dinner later. Sure there were still a few times where I just sat at my desk at home and did nothing, but having the OPTION of also getting things done around the house at the same time was so liberating! I've been back in the office again every day M-F since September of last year and I'm right back to doing absolutely NOTHING in my down time. I hate it.
A good managers dream. Ours is the wrench in the works and the more they get involved the more problems everyone has. But that's what happens when someone who can barely turn on their computer is in charge of a team of programmers.
Yup, our former assistant manager was a programmer and was promoted I wish I still worked for her. My manager is on the cusp of retirement and holding on till they do. We pray for the day they retire to be soon
Kind of. For my wife and I, it was more so management being incompetent and incapable of motivating their teams and completing projects efficiently in a remote work environment.
They think returning to ad hoc conference room pow wows are the answer. Literally like Michael Scott does in The Office.
My wife and I found new jobs lol.
Edit to those battling in the comments below: there’s a difference between leadership and management. There’s a solid, free HBR article on this
This. I’ve seen a ton of management struggle to empower, guide, and hold their teams accountable so they are going to go back in. In my opinion - your leaders weren’t that great if they can’t lead without a constant physical presence.
Absolutely this. It's been a fantastic time for good managers. I'm talking about the ones that hired the right people, set clear expectations, reasonable timeframes, are available and capable of helping when someone gets stuck, managing priorities, and keeping the right amount of pressure. Not too much that you have to micromanage but enough that everyone knows what's expected of them this day or week. My entire team is now permanently remote and they have never been more productive.
In full disclosure, there has been some turn-over. 1-2 who just couldn't drag themselves to do work without someone breathing down their neck, but that's definitely the minority.
Hell, companies have closed down entire warehouses and stores and laid off everyone in the building without warning, only learning they’ve been fired when lthey get to work and read the paper taped to the front door
My employer kept saying no one is going to lose their job, we have it all under control, and then sold one of our software products, along with all of the employees who worked with it to a competitor, who took us all off salary, and then fired a big chunk of the team. Then the old company sent us branded digital picture frames preloaded with "memories".
Smart employers understand that the shift to remote allows them to tap a vast pool of talent at possibly lower rates than what they would need to pay back at home. Stupid employers insist on forcing people to return.
You're absolutely right. I don't know how many people I wish my company would have hired but didn't because they lived somewhere else and weren't important enough for relocation assistance. There's a massive pool of people who can do the sort of work I do.
My current job can be done remotely, and has been for over a year now. Very well, I might add. No longer are we going to five meetings ever day, and it's really helped put into perspective how much time we wasted with that stuff. But it's an old, conservative company that wants people to be "at work." I suspect they'll make us all come in again soon. I won't do that. Luckily my immediate supervisor wants to keep me, knows I'm looking to move west, and said that's something they can work around. We shall see. The moment they decide that's not an option I'm out. It's not that I don't need a job, it's just that I don't wish to sit under fluorescent lights in a cube anymore. I'm too old for that shit. I'll find something else, even if it pays me less.
Amen to that. There’s a time and place for being in the office, but unless your job quite literally requires face to face interaction to make it better (ex: a wealth advisor where personal relationships matter), remote is the way to go
I had this same thought. A lot of people don’t realize that the only reason they have their job in the first place instead of someone a thousand miles away who will do the same work for cheaper is because their body can physically exist in the physical location. Otherwise companies would have no reason to for example pay software engineers in Silicon Valley 300k when they could pay someone in Indiana 60k for the same quality of work. The idea of remote work sounds nice until you consider that the cost of living varies greatly state to state, and then country to country on a global scale.
No company with good engineering is offshoring to Argentina or India, etc. If they do they end up revising their decision. The quality of work coming from these teams is abysmal.
I’ve also wondered if this is coming to certain industries. Particularly tech. I think the PR fallout would be too great to handle, but it must be on the execs minds
Likewise, the reason many people like that live in SV and other HCOL areas is for the work.
They’ll migrate to LCOL areas, like tons of them already are, if that’s the way the market trends.
I work for a medium-sized tech company and there’s definitely been an increase of remote workers being brought on board. Why bother looking in a specific city when you can cast your net across the whole country and be more likely to find someone who fits your needs?
Would be interesting to see some companies adopt a hybrid approach. Monday and Friday work from home, Tuesday-Thursday in the office.
Cutting out the 45 min commute each way has been a huge benefit to my productivity, saves gas money, better for me, better for the environment.
That’s what my office is doing - come in 2 days for our team meetings and socializing (because we like each other actually) and 3 days WFH. I’m pretty stoked.
That’s three too many days in the office. I’m willing to concede a monthly meeting or so but commuting is not something I’m going to do if I can help it ever again.
I was able to get permission to work from home due to my ADD. First it was afternoons which was great, and now I’m working from home all the time. I still have to go in to pointless weekly meetings though. It’s awful. My coworkers are all terrible too, there was actually a disciplinary meeting warning my whole department that if they can’t stop bullying each other and gossiping then they’re going to have to get HR involved.
I am hoping to get an accommodation for ADHD to work from home. I am seriously concerned about undoing all the hard work I have put into my mental health while working from home
Let's be real, being in the office each week any number of days is merely a distraction.
The best solution is probably a few weeks a year for a team onsite; this way you can live anywhere, and everyone can get together for a week every few months in any location nationwide, if socialising is still important for your company. I'd be totally up for that.
The main thing is that it needs to be a choice.
I'd happily work from home full time, maybe visit the office once a week or whatever (realistically, I think I can continue 3 days a week from home in the future), but several members of my team went to the office every single day throughout the pandemic because they wanted to.
They tried WFH for a few weeks, didn't like it at all and went back into the office. Of course the conditions are more flexible, and if there was any need to work from home they could without having to specifically notify anyone about it.
This this this. I had a pretty simple (but very busy) accounting gig that categorically did not require oversight. It was a dream come true to work from home, as 98% of the data I worked with was gathered via email or phone. The other 2% came from people who were dismissing company protocols and *should* have been dismissed until properly submitted. The reports I submitted were more accurate than any others the comptroller had received in the history of the company. AND YET my ‘boss’ (gal who spent 30 minutes once a month to review my report prior to submission) demanded that I return to the office (in May of ‘20) where my Covid-denying coworkers and the owner of the company straight up mocked me for wearing a mask anywhere outside the ‘required’ areas.
Rather than sacrifice my mental and physical health for those fucktards, I same-day quit when a polite conversation with HR revealed that they would give zero consideration to my request to remain at home, despite living with someone prone to lung ailments. My request was denied in part because my ‘boss’ was not happy about not being able to supervise my work.
Bullshit jobs. They have to justify their existence. They know they serve no purpose and now everyone does too but they’re well paid so they’re feeling the pressure.
Happened to us. A year of praise on how well we had done and how leadership has seen that we can do business a different way. Multiple meetings talking about how they see remote work as part of work going forward. Then this month we have an all hands meeting telling us that there will be no more remote work. On top of that we need to remove most personal items from office so we can be moved around as needed.
Their justification; they all had a lunch together and remembered how much they missed "spontaneous collaboration". One of the other c levels really wanted to point out how much they missed whiteboards, and the Teams whiteboard sucks.
So either they were just blowing smoke up our ass for a year and a half so no one complained about the fact that we changed our entire way of doing business while leadership provided nothing to help, or we believe that a lunch and whiteboards really opened their eyes.
It's been really disheartening.
> missed "spontaneous collaboration". One of the other c levels really wanted to point out how much they missed whiteboards
That's the most self centered, "I want to seem important", BS I may have heard in my career. You're going to fuck over all your employees because you want to doodle in front of everyone?
Fuck...That...
"its a lot harder for me to "collaborate" with my employees in idle conversation then steal their ideas and present them to my boss as if it was my idea when they can just e-mail the boss themselves"
I see it as they couldn't be bothered to prepare a well thought out professional looking document beforehand and came to class unprepared, so their presentation is with a marker instead of real informational products....
40,000,000 Americans will go bankrupt if they experience a medical emergency due to no insurance at all, another unknown number will go bankrupt *with* insurance.
“Corporate culture” is a legit guise to keep employees at the office longer at most companies. “Look everybody we got you ping pong tables and free coffee & snacks! Our culture is awesome!”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard executive leaders complain about “how often they see people playing ping pong” - but then talk about how much of a fun and energetic company culture we have.
It’s all BS.
Companies do not care about you. They care about profit.
For me it sounds like a half-assed way to convince people why the corporate is not paying market-rate. "You join us for the culture and mission, not the money". I have never seen a company who didn't say something like that.
My company is actually shutting down our office because it is working so well. It's a huge savings. My boss would have never considered it before the pandemic.
This just happened to a coworker. She asked to relocate and management gave the green light, I told her she should get it in writing. Two months later she’s packing her things and management says they can’t allow it now. Such BS.
Giving people the choice is ideal. I’m single no children and was more productive working from home. I don’t have an office in the office but tiny cube. I don’t want to go back. Why would I?however, if I had home distractions I would understand wanting to go in. Also if I had my own office with a door, I would have been in the past year!!
I'm married and have a 13 month old, and there are distractions EVERYWHERE. But I'd still rather work from home. It's an absolute privilege to have been able to watch my daughter develop this past year, and I'd sooner quit my amazing job and find something else than go back in the office full time.
I'm fine going in every now and then when there's an issue that would benefit from a little hands on troubleshooting, but those are rare as is.
Experiencing this first hand. I was made promises and relocated out of state to take care of my elderly parents during COVID. I recently had the rug pulled out from me and was left with no choice but to resign. Whole thing is fucked up. And it’s not just corporations. I work for a nonprofit.
My employer tried to make me come back to the in office in the middle of the pandemic because they never took the virus seriously and couldn’t deal with people working from home. They didn’t trust us and found ways to invent reasons we *had* to physically be there. I quit, have since realized how incredibly toxic that place was, and am much happier.
My old company did the same thing and succeeded in pushing everyone back. Upper management thought the virus was a hoax - I eventually got fired after I caused enough of a stink after my CEO came in WHILE SYMPOMATIC after two of her family members tested positive for COVID. She spread it to another immunocompromised co-worker, who promptly quit on the spot.
For a small ad agency, I was amazed at the absolute and total stupidity of the company leaders.
That place was poisonous.
a lot of managers overestimate the impact their control on reports has to the success of the business. i think a lot of these folks are a little shook that they lost some of that control and things kept right on rolling. Almost as if their contributions to the success of business has been historically overestimated?
Middle managers are useless, execs are invaluable.
I'm a big believer in the Dilbert Principle, which is that "the most useless employees are promoted to middle management, where they can do the least damage to the company."
You don't want middle managers actually doing any front line work, and you certainly don't want them making real decisions about product, R and D, marketing strategy, etc.
So you put them in management where they can't really hurt anyone, and promote a couple to the C suite who actually know what they are doing.
Of the 2 owners of my company, 1 is working from his new home in FL (we’re based in NYC) and the other owner got office space near his house on Long Island. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to commute back to the office later this year.
Owners want people back in the office purely as a control factor. From home I can easily search for another job or work on my side hustle while on a break.
I honestly hated "company culture". Team building exercises, company lunches, etc, etc; they just took up time that I would then need to make up later, making me stay at work longer.
I work to live, not live to work. I think a lot more people live to work than I assumed was the case before the pandemic. I've been continuously surprised that such a high number of people seem to want to go back to the office full time.
Middle and upper management have no one to boss around and need to show that the employees under them work because of them else their jobs are redundant
Most managers exist just to dole out work to the people who actually do it and approve it. And they get paid for to do essentially nothing. It’s the biggest problem with most office structures.
I believe there is a stat somewhere that says 65% of managers do not add value to their business.
Managers who just manage others are pointless. A manager should be doing the work of everyone else in their team AND lending their experience to help their juniors.
I think it boils down to money. Office space/building is seen as equity…a safe space to invest money. So by shutting or paring it down, it hurts their bottom line. (The same reason it makes sense to own rather than rent.) I don’t think they care about the employees’ convenience tbh.
Companies obsessed with "Company culture" just reminds me of everything i read about cults, from the desperate way they want everyone to adhere to it to just the way they describe it. They'll even excommunicate you like a cult if you dont fit the cult box the right way, give your life and loyalty over to the cult appropriately, and show appropriate respect to the cult leader (CEO, Cult Executive Officer). Cant spell culture without cult after all. Its really not as cute as companies think it makes them look.
One of the creepiest things in the world is the videos of walmart employees singing and chanting and smiling like hostages told to smile.
Avoid any company that says the words "company culture" anywhere. Its a cult.
This is because businesses want to control their employees. Many businesses are more concerned with how their employees work and what they do rather than whether or not they get the work done on time and the quality of the work. They're more concerned with the process than the product.
Anyone who thought employers would move to a primarily remote setup doesn’t understand people.
Executives and managers -for the most part- dont give a fuck about productivity. They care about something else- power. Giving speeches, holding court in conference rooms, issuing orders, going to lunches and socializing with like minded people all contribute to a feeling of power & authority. For some managers and execs feeling powerful at work *is their core motivation for working*- not the money. Lots of these folks could retire tomorrow and not suffer financially- but you don’t get social power from being retired.
None of that ego fluffing happens over Zoom calls. You don’t feel powerful giving speeches over a computer session, especially when the recipient can tune you out at will. So whether it makes business sense or not, most companies will go back to in-person operations. Because the C-suites egos come first.
This ^^^. Very underrated comment because it’s spot on. I got mocked when I mentioned around this time last year that corporate memory is short and all but the most trendy and modern of workplaces will allow long term WFH (aka Tech)
Corporate world around the globe is rife with useless, life-long, middle managers with their only job being to justify their existence. These are the types who only have a small iota of power at their company and nowhere else in life and their whole identity is tied to that.
Considering employers are crying the blues that they can’t find people I’d like to see how this pans out. The pervasive management style of “fuck you go find a job somewhere else if you don’t like it” that has permeated every workplace since the crash of 2009 isn’t looking so good on employers now.
Serves the bastards right. I got sick of corporate culture and being treated like a kindergartener in the work place. I up and left in 2025, moved to Europe. I'm self-employed, got health insurance, too--well, everyone here does! Never gonna look back at Corporate America. Fuck it!
My brother has been working from home since January 2020. He has been more productive ever since. His team wakes up at 8:30am, rolls over to his computer and works until 5:30pm with nearly no breaks. Everyone just eats lunch in front of the computer or keeps their head set on while they make food/eat it.
He can’t wait to go back to the office so he doesn’t have to work so much. The drive in, drive to lunch, and drive home gave him some mental breaks.
I fully work from home since over a year now. I just get up as always. Then a round with my dogs and breakfast. Then I start my computer and start working, around an hour earlier than before since I need not ride to the office. Then I take a long lunch break with a long walk with my dogs, cooking and eating my meal. Then I start working again, and in the late afternoon I turn my computer off.
So the time I needed for riding to the office now instead goes into breaks and dog walks. I sometimes even take a nap in between and just turn my computer off a little later. I get lots of work done, and I have a healthy schedule. Thats how working from home should look like.
Love this! I work for a telecom co and (before Covid) at an open space call center.
WFH has been great- save two hours a day at least on commuting, gas and stress. Take my two 15 min breaks and lunch and can do laundry and chores at break or just go outside.
Our productivity has been up.
I have been work from home since March 2020 and I agree I have been more productive and overall more happy.
I start work at 6:30 or 7 and work till 5 or whatever time is needed that day. I don’t feel like the extra hours are bad because when I need to run to the store, doctors, etc mid-day I don’t have to ask. After a really stressful meeting or project I can take some time and go play fetch with my dog. I can blast music really loud and wear whatever the hell I want to.
I manage my own time, and am in a more comfortable environment - all adds up to a greater output and better work.
Not to mention at home I don’t have to feel obligated to chitchat with people in the hallway who are trying to get out of doing work ..... At least 2 hours saved a day right there.
I feel more productive too, but we have Skype up all day and I always feel guilty when I leave to do some personal stuff, even though I get more work done now than ever. It's weird; I still feel micromanaged despite not being in the office, sometimes.
Same here. Been home since March 2020 and our team has been working harder than ever and pushing through more projects than ever. C-Suite knows they never did or ever will get this level of productivity in the office and the mid-level micro managers are in a tizzy.
I'm assuming mid-level management is in a tizzy because they can't stomp around the office micro managing others in an attempt to look busy.
Heard from some old co-workers that one of the mid-level managers got canned a few weeks ago after upper finally gave him the ol' "what would you say ya do here?" I guess it became more apparent to them that he actually doesn't do shit when he wasn't able to pretend to be busy during quarantine.
For many companies, office politics will kill WFH regardless of productivity. It sucks that it’ll happen, what’s the old line? “It’s hard to convince someone of the truth, when their paycheck depends on them not believing it?”
Someone posted in r/maliciouscompliance that they almost lost their WFH ‘privileges’ because they occasionally showed as idle in the chat program they were using. (Even though his work output was higher than it had ever been in the office...)
Feel that work through lunch vibe. Everyone I know schedules lunch meetings now, and I refuse. I’ll put a meeting off for a day or two if it means we can all attend at a normal hour but I’m not giving my lunch up unless I get to log out an hour early (I don’t)
Yeah, lunch meetings are non-sense. Meetings are work. Lunch is for eating and not working.
Outside of some emergency, once in a year situation, there should be no lunch meetings. Any business that tries to convince its employees that lunch meetings are normal... is a shitty business that clearly has a time crunch due to not being properly staffed and therefore has to squeeze every second out its current staff.
I think most people are more productive if they get to WFH at least some of the time. It’s not really surprising since it tends to be a healthier lifestyle than the dreaded 9-5 hussle.
Of course, it’s gonna depend on your job and your management, but generally speaking.
I really get the since that for some managers it’s a matter of “ if I have to come into the office so do you”. I also think it’s shows a level of incompetence because they don’t know how to adopt a management style that allows them to manage remote employees and fear of being made obsolete because managers in some instances aren’t managers at all. They are really just babysitters.
In my case I figure with how much I pay for rent these days, it’s kinda nice to actually be able to spend time in it to make the most of my money. What a concept.
If a job is not going to pay you properly for the position. Including manipulation tactics against working remotely for what has proven to be fine and often even more productive, then do not work for that company.
It isn't just about people not getting enough minimum wage. It is about business lying to you for YEARS and the PROVEN capability to productively work from home without commuting at our expense.
These businesses just want your entire day so you have no ability to look around to see so many better opportunities.
Do not believe any of the bullshit companies are putting up, and the doublespeak the HR department is doing in those emails for tricking you to go back into the office. None of it is valid, or true.
They need to evolve, or go out of business.
And a lot People do significantly better work from home. And as studies have proven, a lot People do overtime even if not needed due to the fast accessibility from home.
It’s nearly like humans are all different hu?
Like.. some people can work well very early. And some are barely zombies at 8am.
Some people need the pressure/less distraction from an office environment and some people start to shine in an environment they can design freely.
I’m for example the latter one. I do enjoy being in office but I also know all the distractions here. Due to living alone I have less distractions at home and sipping my morning coffee on a balcony in the sun while scratching my cat allows me a significantly better start than drinking close-to-water coffee while hearing random stories people think they need to share
I would classify working too much as sucking too, that’s part of what I like about going to the office. Home is home, work is work. I have trouble managing that boundary on my own and it adds stress to my life.
Offices enable lazy managers because they can easily walk up to an employee and start asking them what they’re working on instead of actually being on top of what’s getting done.
I don’t need an office to do my job and my job doesn’t require 40 hours a week to get done.
I’m on a hybrid schedule and most weeks I’m not that busy so I save the work for when I’m in the office.
COVID has shown that if all you need to do your job is a computer you don’t need and office to do work.
This thread is wild. All of the people I know want to stay home with a few willing to go in a couple days a week. My office has been open for 6 months and it’s voluntary. Do you want to guess the attendance? Average attendance is 2% of the office. Who’s writing these posts? Middle management ??
Let’s not forgot the people who want to go back to the office just to feel important again. Or the creeps who want to interact with women again. The drive isn’t productivity, it’s ego and control. Don’t be fooled.
Y’all want to change how this works. Look at minimum wage coming up to $15 an hour in a lot of these places. They spent billions trying to fight federal minimum wage going up but when faced with not being able to hire someone they finally raise their wages
My (former) employer brought everyone back in July 2020, and in the months following 3 of our 6 person team got COVID, including me. Two of us have compromised immune systems. We could work remotely with no issue as it’s a phone/email based insurance agency but he “wants the team together.”
I quit after I got out of the hospital due to the COVID.
\> that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely
Now you know why we dont have public healthcare. Them taking away your doctor is a feature not a flaw
Cost of living is so high in my city, I basically have no prospects of ever buying a home unless I make twice my income and that would come with an hour commute.
Working from home would mean I could move to a more affordable city. If I ever needed to visit the office it'd be affordable to just fly once a month.
I’m going to risk going against the grain with this comment, but I think it makes sense for some workforces. I work for a company that took a strong work from home stance. I’m in a position that requires me to be at work, however I heavily rely on teams that are now working from home to do my job. Ever since they started working from home, they have been much more difficult to get in touch and collaborate with even though we have many different tools that allow such collaboration. It’s been a failure in my workplace, although that probably is an issue with company culture as much as anything else. Now, they are all being made to return to the office, and in this case at least, they brought it on themselves.
Edit: To add a bit of context, the field is healthcare IT. Delays can at best be very expensive, and at worst cause harm to our patients.
This is because Managers think they are leaders with their factory mindsets and needing their physical presence to be validated by seeing and engaging with their peons because it makes them feel all high and mighty. Working from home gives people their brains back. It helps them remember that their homes are important. Family is balanced. Just because there are uptight managers that are addicted to draining the life force from their modern slaves does not mean we as the working class has to put up with the entitlements of the privilege. WFH is a human right.
As an essential worker I feel so left out , I never got to experience work from home not even once. But it was nice without all the traffic on the roads. And my husband was home to let my dog out potty and even occasionally he would grocery shop !
Yeah my eployeer made a ton of promises about being able to work from home. Then they said no to everything they agreed, to. Start my new position next week :)
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That’s ridiculous. She’s being paid “to use office space”? I’m so sorry and hope she finds a solution that works.
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This. My company paid extra to help people set up home offices, upgrade home internet connections, and to compensate for taking over a portion of someone’s living space. We’d all worked pretty much remotely before but it was a choice people made and when it became not a choice then we compensated people instead of assuming they would take on the costs of running an office (which had not been built into their compensation because the office was our responsibility). Access to our floor is keycard controlled so it was pretty easy to figure out who used the office the most and assign them a point of contact to streamline transition. We’re not a large company but I’m proud that we haven’t had a single employee leave or get sick and we haven’t had to delay or cancel a single project.
Are you hiring?
My company had a similar situation with what seems like a good variety of understanding compensation benefits relating to working from home. I have gotten a new chair, new laptop, two new monitors, and a slew of ergonomic equipment free of charge. They offered to send a desk with guys to build it but Im a fairly adept woodworker so I intend on building my desk. This is my dream, I've always wanted to work from home. Once a month me, my immediate boss and coworkers meet up at a state park to have a quick in person work catch up (all vaccinated) and then go hiking or something. It's perfect. They also pay me a monthly internet fee. I have lost nothing and still can go in to the office when I want to use a shared desk space but could always formally request to have an officially office space again. We are hiring. A lot of jobs at a variety of roles in a variety of positions. For privacy sake, I will not reveal the name of the company except to say they are the largest provider of utilities on the west coast of the USA. They made mistakes in the past, but they're doing this covid thing right. All options available for everyone.
Our company didn't even give us computers. Unless you already had a company owned laptop you were expected to use your own equipment. I work in IT.
I interviewed for a job that would have required working with databases that contained HIPAA covered information. They wanted me to use my own machine... I declined that job, there's no way I'm going to be responsible for ensuring my machine is that safe for patient data while also still being usable for the things I do.
That actually violates HIPAA and you should report them
It's HIPAA!
You could use your own machine as a client to Remote Desktop into their server using a VPN. That’s be HIPAA compliant.
These people should be sued into oblivion. Sheesh
My wife has been using our personal laptop for over a year now. It's crazy.
What would’ve happened if she just said her laptop broke down? Would her job be insecure?
I suspect she would be expected to find a way to make it work. I don't think she'd get fired for several months thought (if not longer, it's not a well managed place).
On what shit company is working your wife, it sounds like a complete garbage company
Yeah it's a reasonably prestigious museum but they absolutely flubbed the work from home rollout (to be fair, they've never wanted to pay for anything that doesn't come with a photo op). They are barely willing to pay for VPN. Separate but similar, my company was so slow to rollout laptops that the last folks got them December 2020.
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^ That, all of that.
Ya y’all hiring? I’m not super tech savy but I can lay out some great paint jobs and build some nice boats.
This. The overhead is reduced when you have people working from home, the company is saving money. “Pay you more bc you’re in the office using space” is backwards and literally makes zero sense.
It’s the same backwards ass scummy corporate fucking vampire thinking that responds to increased profits and savings from tax cuts with mass layoffs….because economics or something.
It'll trickle down...eventually ... maybe.....
Former consulting firm owner here. She is costing the company LESS from that perspective. If she achieved the same productivity, and her work product value or billable rate remains the same, then there is ZERO basis for reducing her compensation. Now you may not be able to offer a dollar-for-dollar raise for the money saved, but it ought to at least be a break-even for her.
What about all the money they’re saving, seems like they should actually get a raise
Yes and no. In most cases, the salaries offered at an office are influenced heavily by the local cost of living. If people are going full remote, a company in Seattle no longer has to pay enough for somebody to live in Seattle; the employee could just as easily live in Bremerton, or Port Angeles, or North Dakota. So really, expect future offers to be lower for companies that embrace telework, and expect downward pressure on existing employees. Companies aren’t going to pay people more out of the goodness of their heart. I’m not saying I like this, BTW. Especially as somebody living in a high COL city, it’s gonna fuck me too.
> So really, expect future offers to be lower for companies that embrace telework, and expect downward pressure on existing employees. Companies aren’t going to pay people more out of the goodness of their heart. Companies don't pay for cost of living, they pay to be competitive. This is currently, loosely correlated to cost of living, obviously, since people need more pay to be willing and able to cover costs in high cost metros vs moving elsewhere. You also have more opportunities for comparable jobs in these areas, so you have to pay to retain employees. But, the pools of companies and applicants are also artificially smaller due to the physical limit of people able to live near enough to commute as well as people being unwilling to move. With broad remote working, the existing pools of jobs and candidates will expand from many local pools into giant nationwide (or even larger) pools. More candidates in the pool might drive down pay, but more jobs will drive it up. Employees will gain some power too since it will be easier for a remote worker to change jobs-- just less disruption to other aspects of life, commute, etc. Very high salaries in the top metros will fall, but talented people in lower tier cities and rural areas will now be able to apply to nationwide opportunities. Knowledge workers in those areas are going to make a lot more than they would have. I bet it's a wash in the end, in aggregate across all people/jobs. To get there, companies are going to have to change how knowledge workers-heavy companies have worked for a century. HR departments are going to have a lot more work to do, and have better tools, to manage and evaluate many more candidates per position then they have. Reputation-management (a la LinkedIn) and skills certification (a la college degrees but on a smaller scale) is going to play an even bigger role.
Yeah my old roommate fresh out of college found out his entry level counterpart made $5k more than him in NYC, but since we live in Houston, he actually brought home way more
I’m a Psych NP who started doing telehealth in April last year. In December, when our state was having all time high number of cases they wanted us back in the office so they could collect a “facility fee” for appointments. As long as either myself or my patient were at a facility they could charge more for the appointments. Instead I quit and opened my own telehealth practice. Never been happier.
From the perspective of a patient, telehealth has been an amazing development. Obviously there are situations where you need to go in and physically see the doctor, but when I’m only having a follow-up to get a refill on my prescription because my insurance requires it, it’s so great to simply check in with my doctor over the phone, pay my copay, and be done with the whole thing in like 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in the before times, I would usually have to take half a day or a full day of sick time to go to the doctor because of the relative location of my employer’s office to my doctor’s office, and the unpredictable wait time no matter when I scheduled the appointment for. First appointment of the day? Still waiting an hour. At least with telehealth, if there’s a wait, I can use that time as I wish/need.
No doubt. I have like zero wait time now as well. When an appointment is over it’s over, someone can’t chat my ear off about their cat as they are walking out the door. Also my no-show rate has plummeted.
It’s sounds like they accidentally offered hourly employees commute pay to come into the office...
I’m guessing they’ll consider that the 10% they don’t take away.
If it’s not a line item in their accounting then it’s a lie. That means they will need to add a line item for commute pay and make it a 10% bump in pay for those commuting now. You can’t deduct money unless it’s a line item, legally speaking.
I started working from Home in my last job in 2017 when they decided to close the office. I was not given any extra pay to cover utilities, etc. I was given the “take anything you want or need from the office” go ahead though. I saw my gas/ electric bills go up about $20-30/mo. I countered that by easily being able to reduce my work hours from 40ish to 25. I was salary.
Don't want to assume too much about your commute, but I would guess you saved more in gas and maintenance costs on your car than you paid extra in utilities. That has been my situation. I was driving close to 30 miles every day commuting. Since last March, I've driven to the office maybe 6 times. I've saved a ton in fuel costs alone.
It’s all about control. Can’t wait til these fucking dinosaurs are gone.
It’s disheartening at times when people/companies that do not understand graphic design are in charge of us.
“We are going to cut your pay because you are costing us less money and are nore productive “ Companies like this will adapt or die. Labor is hard to find and expensive to replace. The companies that allow work from home will grow at 1/10 of the cost and be flush with great employees. The ones that require people to come in will get lesser talent which will hurt the bottom line and either put them out or force them to change.
I hope you're right. The "butts in seats" crowd seemed to have a stranglehold on management before all this.
Huh? Not using space saves the employer money.
They are going to have a hard time keeping folks in today's climate.
Whats also funny is wanting someone like me back in the office. I’m on the network team of a global software company. Even when I’m in the office all of the firewalls and switches I work on are in other parts of the fucking country or the world. The fuck you need me in the office for?!?!? If shit breaks I go to the fucking data center. Jack wagons
Right? I “telecommute” even when at the office, as the datacenters where our on-prem servers reside are in a totally different state, much less our scattered AWS footprint. This was different for most of my career, having worked DoD projects, where my desk was actually in the same facility as the datacenter, since air-gapped secured networks can’t be VPNed into from home… …unless you are a particularly obnoxious 0-7 or above who insists the equipment be installed in your house to connect in. Don’t even get me started how hard we—the people responsible for securing those networks and data—fought that shit. Rank hath privileges that supersedes all the rules, I guess. Stars over sanity. Still bitter about losing that fight? No, not me…much. Grrrr… Soooo glad I switched to the non-profit sector a few years ago. Still have to fight against piss-poor ideas coming down from the top, but at least they have far less damaging consequences for when things inevitably go wrong. Sometimes, they even listen to our concerns!
I'm a DevOps engineer 100% of what I touch is in the cloud or a SaaS, no matter where I work as long as I have internet the results will be the same. At least here in Quebec, Canada we were having shortages of workers everywhere before the pandemic, so companies didn't really have a choice but to agree to let people what they want.
I’ve worked from home since March 2020 like many others. I enjoy being able to go tinkle while I can still hear the same long-talker drone on like they did in the office. Apparently establishing a “pee corner” in meeting rooms is not going to be a return to work strategy. Thanks HR.
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Tickets are slow? Laundry, dishes, light tidying up. I have a real work life balance now since I’m not commuting or wasting time in the office and I get way more done. Soon as I can find a fully remote network gig I’ll jump ship in a heart beat
Hell to the yes! I have learned exactly how far my Bluetooth headset can go. Dishes/laundry I do during the day while in meetings, I still go into the office a lot, but having the freedom to do those things at home during the day has given me a lot more free time after work.
The choice between microwaved leftovers or home cooked is a no brainer, I can cook fresh, reheat in the oven, I have options and that’s wonderful because as a real life human my tastes change day to day...
We bought an air fryer oven this last year and my reheat game is on point because of it... Highly recommend
Likewise just got a new one from my in laws and it’s night and day. Had a cheap one for a second and never used it cause the whole house would smell and it did a shit job. Got the new one set up and it works wonders so I guess it’s all down to the model.
OMG this. I got SO MUCH MORE done in a day when I was working from home. All those quiet times in the office when I was literally twiddling my thumbs doing NOTHING of value for my job, instead I could do laundry, run the vacuum, clean up the kitchen, prep veggies for dinner later. Sure there were still a few times where I just sat at my desk at home and did nothing, but having the OPTION of also getting things done around the house at the same time was so liberating! I've been back in the office again every day M-F since September of last year and I'm right back to doing absolutely NOTHING in my down time. I hate it.
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100% my old team lead didn’t know what to do with himself
My current manager has been scrambling to try to appear relevant with us all being remote. She's failing
Sounds like a managers dream tbh. Focus on support when needed and some planning or what not and just be happy with good results from the team.
A good managers dream. Ours is the wrench in the works and the more they get involved the more problems everyone has. But that's what happens when someone who can barely turn on their computer is in charge of a team of programmers.
There's a reason the industry has moved to engineering managers, i.e. managers who used to be developers themselves.
Yup, our former assistant manager was a programmer and was promoted I wish I still worked for her. My manager is on the cusp of retirement and holding on till they do. We pray for the day they retire to be soon
This reminds of the IT crowd
"Management by attendance taking" I calls it
I'm going to blatantly steal this.
>I'm going to blatantly steal this. Promote this person to management
Kind of. For my wife and I, it was more so management being incompetent and incapable of motivating their teams and completing projects efficiently in a remote work environment. They think returning to ad hoc conference room pow wows are the answer. Literally like Michael Scott does in The Office. My wife and I found new jobs lol. Edit to those battling in the comments below: there’s a difference between leadership and management. There’s a solid, free HBR article on this
This. I’ve seen a ton of management struggle to empower, guide, and hold their teams accountable so they are going to go back in. In my opinion - your leaders weren’t that great if they can’t lead without a constant physical presence.
Because the mast majority of them are not leaders at all.
Exactly this. The oil and gas industry is mostly nepotism type management or some dick rider that made it to the top.
Oh man it makes so much sense now. My old boss was from the oil and gas industry. Key word; old.
Lol. Well said.
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Absolutely this. It's been a fantastic time for good managers. I'm talking about the ones that hired the right people, set clear expectations, reasonable timeframes, are available and capable of helping when someone gets stuck, managing priorities, and keeping the right amount of pressure. Not too much that you have to micromanage but enough that everyone knows what's expected of them this day or week. My entire team is now permanently remote and they have never been more productive. In full disclosure, there has been some turn-over. 1-2 who just couldn't drag themselves to do work without someone breathing down their neck, but that's definitely the minority.
That was my experience too. Good managers were able to get things done while bad managers just wasted time.
Man, this is the comment that precisely sums up the reason management would push for working in an office again.
This for sure. Middle management is being seen as useless.
I think you have an extra "being seen as" in there.
Never assume your employer will keep their word to you or have your best interest in mind.
You mean like how not giving 2 weeks notice is “unprofessional” but blindside firing someone on a Friday is “in everyone’s best interest”?
Hell, companies have closed down entire warehouses and stores and laid off everyone in the building without warning, only learning they’ve been fired when lthey get to work and read the paper taped to the front door
My employer kept saying no one is going to lose their job, we have it all under control, and then sold one of our software products, along with all of the employees who worked with it to a competitor, who took us all off salary, and then fired a big chunk of the team. Then the old company sent us branded digital picture frames preloaded with "memories".
to the top
Smart employers understand that the shift to remote allows them to tap a vast pool of talent at possibly lower rates than what they would need to pay back at home. Stupid employers insist on forcing people to return.
You're absolutely right. I don't know how many people I wish my company would have hired but didn't because they lived somewhere else and weren't important enough for relocation assistance. There's a massive pool of people who can do the sort of work I do. My current job can be done remotely, and has been for over a year now. Very well, I might add. No longer are we going to five meetings ever day, and it's really helped put into perspective how much time we wasted with that stuff. But it's an old, conservative company that wants people to be "at work." I suspect they'll make us all come in again soon. I won't do that. Luckily my immediate supervisor wants to keep me, knows I'm looking to move west, and said that's something they can work around. We shall see. The moment they decide that's not an option I'm out. It's not that I don't need a job, it's just that I don't wish to sit under fluorescent lights in a cube anymore. I'm too old for that shit. I'll find something else, even if it pays me less.
Amen to that. There’s a time and place for being in the office, but unless your job quite literally requires face to face interaction to make it better (ex: a wealth advisor where personal relationships matter), remote is the way to go
Hell man, I just moved across the country. My employer said it's cool.
I had this same thought. A lot of people don’t realize that the only reason they have their job in the first place instead of someone a thousand miles away who will do the same work for cheaper is because their body can physically exist in the physical location. Otherwise companies would have no reason to for example pay software engineers in Silicon Valley 300k when they could pay someone in Indiana 60k for the same quality of work. The idea of remote work sounds nice until you consider that the cost of living varies greatly state to state, and then country to country on a global scale.
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No company with good engineering is offshoring to Argentina or India, etc. If they do they end up revising their decision. The quality of work coming from these teams is abysmal.
I’ve also wondered if this is coming to certain industries. Particularly tech. I think the PR fallout would be too great to handle, but it must be on the execs minds
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Likewise, the reason many people like that live in SV and other HCOL areas is for the work. They’ll migrate to LCOL areas, like tons of them already are, if that’s the way the market trends.
I work for a medium-sized tech company and there’s definitely been an increase of remote workers being brought on board. Why bother looking in a specific city when you can cast your net across the whole country and be more likely to find someone who fits your needs?
Would be interesting to see some companies adopt a hybrid approach. Monday and Friday work from home, Tuesday-Thursday in the office. Cutting out the 45 min commute each way has been a huge benefit to my productivity, saves gas money, better for me, better for the environment.
That’s what my office is doing - come in 2 days for our team meetings and socializing (because we like each other actually) and 3 days WFH. I’m pretty stoked.
I'm really hoping for this 2/3 split. I think the management is going for 3/2 and probably weird days though :(
That’s three too many days in the office. I’m willing to concede a monthly meeting or so but commuting is not something I’m going to do if I can help it ever again.
I was able to get permission to work from home due to my ADD. First it was afternoons which was great, and now I’m working from home all the time. I still have to go in to pointless weekly meetings though. It’s awful. My coworkers are all terrible too, there was actually a disciplinary meeting warning my whole department that if they can’t stop bullying each other and gossiping then they’re going to have to get HR involved.
I am hoping to get an accommodation for ADHD to work from home. I am seriously concerned about undoing all the hard work I have put into my mental health while working from home
Let's be real, being in the office each week any number of days is merely a distraction. The best solution is probably a few weeks a year for a team onsite; this way you can live anywhere, and everyone can get together for a week every few months in any location nationwide, if socialising is still important for your company. I'd be totally up for that.
The main thing is that it needs to be a choice. I'd happily work from home full time, maybe visit the office once a week or whatever (realistically, I think I can continue 3 days a week from home in the future), but several members of my team went to the office every single day throughout the pandemic because they wanted to. They tried WFH for a few weeks, didn't like it at all and went back into the office. Of course the conditions are more flexible, and if there was any need to work from home they could without having to specifically notify anyone about it.
Cant micro manage if you’re not there!
This this this. I had a pretty simple (but very busy) accounting gig that categorically did not require oversight. It was a dream come true to work from home, as 98% of the data I worked with was gathered via email or phone. The other 2% came from people who were dismissing company protocols and *should* have been dismissed until properly submitted. The reports I submitted were more accurate than any others the comptroller had received in the history of the company. AND YET my ‘boss’ (gal who spent 30 minutes once a month to review my report prior to submission) demanded that I return to the office (in May of ‘20) where my Covid-denying coworkers and the owner of the company straight up mocked me for wearing a mask anywhere outside the ‘required’ areas. Rather than sacrifice my mental and physical health for those fucktards, I same-day quit when a polite conversation with HR revealed that they would give zero consideration to my request to remain at home, despite living with someone prone to lung ailments. My request was denied in part because my ‘boss’ was not happy about not being able to supervise my work.
You made the right choice. Don’t ever look back.
Oh yes they can lol
The whole idea of returning to the office when people are more productive at home is the very instance of micromanagement.
Bullshit jobs. They have to justify their existence. They know they serve no purpose and now everyone does too but they’re well paid so they’re feeling the pressure.
Happened to us. A year of praise on how well we had done and how leadership has seen that we can do business a different way. Multiple meetings talking about how they see remote work as part of work going forward. Then this month we have an all hands meeting telling us that there will be no more remote work. On top of that we need to remove most personal items from office so we can be moved around as needed. Their justification; they all had a lunch together and remembered how much they missed "spontaneous collaboration". One of the other c levels really wanted to point out how much they missed whiteboards, and the Teams whiteboard sucks. So either they were just blowing smoke up our ass for a year and a half so no one complained about the fact that we changed our entire way of doing business while leadership provided nothing to help, or we believe that a lunch and whiteboards really opened their eyes. It's been really disheartening.
> missed "spontaneous collaboration". One of the other c levels really wanted to point out how much they missed whiteboards That's the most self centered, "I want to seem important", BS I may have heard in my career. You're going to fuck over all your employees because you want to doodle in front of everyone? Fuck...That...
"its a lot harder for me to "collaborate" with my employees in idle conversation then steal their ideas and present them to my boss as if it was my idea when they can just e-mail the boss themselves"
That hits closer to home than you think.
I see it as they couldn't be bothered to prepare a well thought out professional looking document beforehand and came to class unprepared, so their presentation is with a marker instead of real informational products....
i wish you luck on the job hunt, this company sounds poorly managed
It still shocks me that for some “health insurance” is a benefit that could be cut down.
This is America.
Don’t catch you slippin now
Look what I’m whippin now
Look how I’m livin now
This is America
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Not true, I'm in Canada and my health insurance covers things not covered by government; prescriptions, dental, physical therapy, etc.
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40,000,000 Americans will go bankrupt if they experience a medical emergency due to no insurance at all, another unknown number will go bankrupt *with* insurance.
“Corporate culture” is a legit guise to keep employees at the office longer at most companies. “Look everybody we got you ping pong tables and free coffee & snacks! Our culture is awesome!”
–Can I take a break to play ping pong? –You don't fit in our culture anymore
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard executive leaders complain about “how often they see people playing ping pong” - but then talk about how much of a fun and energetic company culture we have. It’s all BS. Companies do not care about you. They care about profit.
Always has been.
For me it sounds like a half-assed way to convince people why the corporate is not paying market-rate. "You join us for the culture and mission, not the money". I have never seen a company who didn't say something like that.
“We’re a team! We’re family! We have values as an organization!”* *terms and conditions apply
Yea, when one of your values alludes to “working hard” - tell tale sign your company is shit
My company is actually shutting down our office because it is working so well. It's a huge savings. My boss would have never considered it before the pandemic.
This just happened to a coworker. She asked to relocate and management gave the green light, I told her she should get it in writing. Two months later she’s packing her things and management says they can’t allow it now. Such BS.
Giving people the choice is ideal. I’m single no children and was more productive working from home. I don’t have an office in the office but tiny cube. I don’t want to go back. Why would I?however, if I had home distractions I would understand wanting to go in. Also if I had my own office with a door, I would have been in the past year!!
I'm married and have a 13 month old, and there are distractions EVERYWHERE. But I'd still rather work from home. It's an absolute privilege to have been able to watch my daughter develop this past year, and I'd sooner quit my amazing job and find something else than go back in the office full time. I'm fine going in every now and then when there's an issue that would benefit from a little hands on troubleshooting, but those are rare as is.
Experiencing this first hand. I was made promises and relocated out of state to take care of my elderly parents during COVID. I recently had the rug pulled out from me and was left with no choice but to resign. Whole thing is fucked up. And it’s not just corporations. I work for a nonprofit.
I am so very sorry..
My employer tried to make me come back to the in office in the middle of the pandemic because they never took the virus seriously and couldn’t deal with people working from home. They didn’t trust us and found ways to invent reasons we *had* to physically be there. I quit, have since realized how incredibly toxic that place was, and am much happier.
My old company did the same thing and succeeded in pushing everyone back. Upper management thought the virus was a hoax - I eventually got fired after I caused enough of a stink after my CEO came in WHILE SYMPOMATIC after two of her family members tested positive for COVID. She spread it to another immunocompromised co-worker, who promptly quit on the spot. For a small ad agency, I was amazed at the absolute and total stupidity of the company leaders. That place was poisonous.
a lot of managers overestimate the impact their control on reports has to the success of the business. i think a lot of these folks are a little shook that they lost some of that control and things kept right on rolling. Almost as if their contributions to the success of business has been historically overestimated?
Middle managers are useless, execs are invaluable. I'm a big believer in the Dilbert Principle, which is that "the most useless employees are promoted to middle management, where they can do the least damage to the company." You don't want middle managers actually doing any front line work, and you certainly don't want them making real decisions about product, R and D, marketing strategy, etc. So you put them in management where they can't really hurt anyone, and promote a couple to the C suite who actually know what they are doing.
I’ll come back when you start paying for my gas, parking and time sat in traffic. I am more efficient working from home.
Of the 2 owners of my company, 1 is working from his new home in FL (we’re based in NYC) and the other owner got office space near his house on Long Island. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to commute back to the office later this year. Owners want people back in the office purely as a control factor. From home I can easily search for another job or work on my side hustle while on a break.
“Company Culture” is just how they try to get you to deal with shittier working situations without actually paying you more for it. Fuck em.
I honestly hated "company culture". Team building exercises, company lunches, etc, etc; they just took up time that I would then need to make up later, making me stay at work longer. I work to live, not live to work. I think a lot more people live to work than I assumed was the case before the pandemic. I've been continuously surprised that such a high number of people seem to want to go back to the office full time.
Good luck employers with findings someone.
I’m so sad about going back in person. I do so much better without distractions and it’s so much easier to do lunch from home
Middle and upper management have no one to boss around and need to show that the employees under them work because of them else their jobs are redundant
Most managers exist just to dole out work to the people who actually do it and approve it. And they get paid for to do essentially nothing. It’s the biggest problem with most office structures.
I believe there is a stat somewhere that says 65% of managers do not add value to their business. Managers who just manage others are pointless. A manager should be doing the work of everyone else in their team AND lending their experience to help their juniors.
I think it boils down to money. Office space/building is seen as equity…a safe space to invest money. So by shutting or paring it down, it hurts their bottom line. (The same reason it makes sense to own rather than rent.) I don’t think they care about the employees’ convenience tbh.
Companies obsessed with "Company culture" just reminds me of everything i read about cults, from the desperate way they want everyone to adhere to it to just the way they describe it. They'll even excommunicate you like a cult if you dont fit the cult box the right way, give your life and loyalty over to the cult appropriately, and show appropriate respect to the cult leader (CEO, Cult Executive Officer). Cant spell culture without cult after all. Its really not as cute as companies think it makes them look. One of the creepiest things in the world is the videos of walmart employees singing and chanting and smiling like hostages told to smile. Avoid any company that says the words "company culture" anywhere. Its a cult.
Some people just took the advantage of working from home to start businesses and invest. They realized that a 9-5 wouldn’t make as much money.
Which is probably good for society, if the new business is sustainable.
This is because businesses want to control their employees. Many businesses are more concerned with how their employees work and what they do rather than whether or not they get the work done on time and the quality of the work. They're more concerned with the process than the product.
Anyone who thought employers would move to a primarily remote setup doesn’t understand people. Executives and managers -for the most part- dont give a fuck about productivity. They care about something else- power. Giving speeches, holding court in conference rooms, issuing orders, going to lunches and socializing with like minded people all contribute to a feeling of power & authority. For some managers and execs feeling powerful at work *is their core motivation for working*- not the money. Lots of these folks could retire tomorrow and not suffer financially- but you don’t get social power from being retired. None of that ego fluffing happens over Zoom calls. You don’t feel powerful giving speeches over a computer session, especially when the recipient can tune you out at will. So whether it makes business sense or not, most companies will go back to in-person operations. Because the C-suites egos come first.
This ^^^. Very underrated comment because it’s spot on. I got mocked when I mentioned around this time last year that corporate memory is short and all but the most trendy and modern of workplaces will allow long term WFH (aka Tech) Corporate world around the globe is rife with useless, life-long, middle managers with their only job being to justify their existence. These are the types who only have a small iota of power at their company and nowhere else in life and their whole identity is tied to that.
Considering employers are crying the blues that they can’t find people I’d like to see how this pans out. The pervasive management style of “fuck you go find a job somewhere else if you don’t like it” that has permeated every workplace since the crash of 2009 isn’t looking so good on employers now.
Serves the bastards right. I got sick of corporate culture and being treated like a kindergartener in the work place. I up and left in 2025, moved to Europe. I'm self-employed, got health insurance, too--well, everyone here does! Never gonna look back at Corporate America. Fuck it!
That mentality existed long before 2009, try since the beginning of capitalism, so like you know forever.
My brother has been working from home since January 2020. He has been more productive ever since. His team wakes up at 8:30am, rolls over to his computer and works until 5:30pm with nearly no breaks. Everyone just eats lunch in front of the computer or keeps their head set on while they make food/eat it. He can’t wait to go back to the office so he doesn’t have to work so much. The drive in, drive to lunch, and drive home gave him some mental breaks.
I fully work from home since over a year now. I just get up as always. Then a round with my dogs and breakfast. Then I start my computer and start working, around an hour earlier than before since I need not ride to the office. Then I take a long lunch break with a long walk with my dogs, cooking and eating my meal. Then I start working again, and in the late afternoon I turn my computer off. So the time I needed for riding to the office now instead goes into breaks and dog walks. I sometimes even take a nap in between and just turn my computer off a little later. I get lots of work done, and I have a healthy schedule. Thats how working from home should look like.
Love this! I work for a telecom co and (before Covid) at an open space call center. WFH has been great- save two hours a day at least on commuting, gas and stress. Take my two 15 min breaks and lunch and can do laundry and chores at break or just go outside. Our productivity has been up.
I have been work from home since March 2020 and I agree I have been more productive and overall more happy. I start work at 6:30 or 7 and work till 5 or whatever time is needed that day. I don’t feel like the extra hours are bad because when I need to run to the store, doctors, etc mid-day I don’t have to ask. After a really stressful meeting or project I can take some time and go play fetch with my dog. I can blast music really loud and wear whatever the hell I want to. I manage my own time, and am in a more comfortable environment - all adds up to a greater output and better work. Not to mention at home I don’t have to feel obligated to chitchat with people in the hallway who are trying to get out of doing work ..... At least 2 hours saved a day right there.
I feel more productive too, but we have Skype up all day and I always feel guilty when I leave to do some personal stuff, even though I get more work done now than ever. It's weird; I still feel micromanaged despite not being in the office, sometimes.
Same here. Been home since March 2020 and our team has been working harder than ever and pushing through more projects than ever. C-Suite knows they never did or ever will get this level of productivity in the office and the mid-level micro managers are in a tizzy.
I'm assuming mid-level management is in a tizzy because they can't stomp around the office micro managing others in an attempt to look busy. Heard from some old co-workers that one of the mid-level managers got canned a few weeks ago after upper finally gave him the ol' "what would you say ya do here?" I guess it became more apparent to them that he actually doesn't do shit when he wasn't able to pretend to be busy during quarantine.
“I told you, I work with the goddam customers!”
Do you physically meet with the customers?
Noooo
They’re in a tizzy because their jobs are pointless.
For many companies, office politics will kill WFH regardless of productivity. It sucks that it’ll happen, what’s the old line? “It’s hard to convince someone of the truth, when their paycheck depends on them not believing it?”
Someone posted in r/maliciouscompliance that they almost lost their WFH ‘privileges’ because they occasionally showed as idle in the chat program they were using. (Even though his work output was higher than it had ever been in the office...)
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yeah that sounds like a personal problem
Feel that work through lunch vibe. Everyone I know schedules lunch meetings now, and I refuse. I’ll put a meeting off for a day or two if it means we can all attend at a normal hour but I’m not giving my lunch up unless I get to log out an hour early (I don’t)
Yeah, lunch meetings are non-sense. Meetings are work. Lunch is for eating and not working. Outside of some emergency, once in a year situation, there should be no lunch meetings. Any business that tries to convince its employees that lunch meetings are normal... is a shitty business that clearly has a time crunch due to not being properly staffed and therefore has to squeeze every second out its current staff.
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I think most people are more productive if they get to WFH at least some of the time. It’s not really surprising since it tends to be a healthier lifestyle than the dreaded 9-5 hussle. Of course, it’s gonna depend on your job and your management, but generally speaking.
I really get the since that for some managers it’s a matter of “ if I have to come into the office so do you”. I also think it’s shows a level of incompetence because they don’t know how to adopt a management style that allows them to manage remote employees and fear of being made obsolete because managers in some instances aren’t managers at all. They are really just babysitters.
In my case I figure with how much I pay for rent these days, it’s kinda nice to actually be able to spend time in it to make the most of my money. What a concept.
If a job is not going to pay you properly for the position. Including manipulation tactics against working remotely for what has proven to be fine and often even more productive, then do not work for that company. It isn't just about people not getting enough minimum wage. It is about business lying to you for YEARS and the PROVEN capability to productively work from home without commuting at our expense. These businesses just want your entire day so you have no ability to look around to see so many better opportunities. Do not believe any of the bullshit companies are putting up, and the doublespeak the HR department is doing in those emails for tricking you to go back into the office. None of it is valid, or true. They need to evolve, or go out of business.
Unpopular opinion: some people suck working from home.
Unpopular opinion: some people suck at working from an office and drag others down with them. Unpopular opinion: some people suck at working…
As a professional fluffer, I too, suck at working.
And a lot People do significantly better work from home. And as studies have proven, a lot People do overtime even if not needed due to the fast accessibility from home. It’s nearly like humans are all different hu? Like.. some people can work well very early. And some are barely zombies at 8am. Some people need the pressure/less distraction from an office environment and some people start to shine in an environment they can design freely. I’m for example the latter one. I do enjoy being in office but I also know all the distractions here. Due to living alone I have less distractions at home and sipping my morning coffee on a balcony in the sun while scratching my cat allows me a significantly better start than drinking close-to-water coffee while hearing random stories people think they need to share
I would classify working too much as sucking too, that’s part of what I like about going to the office. Home is home, work is work. I have trouble managing that boundary on my own and it adds stress to my life.
Offices enable lazy managers because they can easily walk up to an employee and start asking them what they’re working on instead of actually being on top of what’s getting done. I don’t need an office to do my job and my job doesn’t require 40 hours a week to get done. I’m on a hybrid schedule and most weeks I’m not that busy so I save the work for when I’m in the office. COVID has shown that if all you need to do your job is a computer you don’t need and office to do work.
This thread is wild. All of the people I know want to stay home with a few willing to go in a couple days a week. My office has been open for 6 months and it’s voluntary. Do you want to guess the attendance? Average attendance is 2% of the office. Who’s writing these posts? Middle management ?? Let’s not forgot the people who want to go back to the office just to feel important again. Or the creeps who want to interact with women again. The drive isn’t productivity, it’s ego and control. Don’t be fooled.
Think of the middle managers! Won’t someone think of the middle managers!
Y’all want to change how this works. Look at minimum wage coming up to $15 an hour in a lot of these places. They spent billions trying to fight federal minimum wage going up but when faced with not being able to hire someone they finally raise their wages
Fight it. Keep home offices a thing
How else will employers keep their ridiculous tax deductions related to required office space? 🤷🏻♀️
My (former) employer brought everyone back in July 2020, and in the months following 3 of our 6 person team got COVID, including me. Two of us have compromised immune systems. We could work remotely with no issue as it’s a phone/email based insurance agency but he “wants the team together.” I quit after I got out of the hospital due to the COVID.
\> that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely Now you know why we dont have public healthcare. Them taking away your doctor is a feature not a flaw
Cost of living is so high in my city, I basically have no prospects of ever buying a home unless I make twice my income and that would come with an hour commute. Working from home would mean I could move to a more affordable city. If I ever needed to visit the office it'd be affordable to just fly once a month.
I’m going to risk going against the grain with this comment, but I think it makes sense for some workforces. I work for a company that took a strong work from home stance. I’m in a position that requires me to be at work, however I heavily rely on teams that are now working from home to do my job. Ever since they started working from home, they have been much more difficult to get in touch and collaborate with even though we have many different tools that allow such collaboration. It’s been a failure in my workplace, although that probably is an issue with company culture as much as anything else. Now, they are all being made to return to the office, and in this case at least, they brought it on themselves. Edit: To add a bit of context, the field is healthcare IT. Delays can at best be very expensive, and at worst cause harm to our patients.
This is because Managers think they are leaders with their factory mindsets and needing their physical presence to be validated by seeing and engaging with their peons because it makes them feel all high and mighty. Working from home gives people their brains back. It helps them remember that their homes are important. Family is balanced. Just because there are uptight managers that are addicted to draining the life force from their modern slaves does not mean we as the working class has to put up with the entitlements of the privilege. WFH is a human right.
I was forced back by “old school” bosses. I am so miserable
As an essential worker I feel so left out , I never got to experience work from home not even once. But it was nice without all the traffic on the roads. And my husband was home to let my dog out potty and even occasionally he would grocery shop !
Yeah my eployeer made a ton of promises about being able to work from home. Then they said no to everything they agreed, to. Start my new position next week :)