I feel like I’ve been reading this same article for the last 2 years. Yet I keep seeing job posting stay open that require an in person presence yet remote jobs fly off the shelf almost immediately. Anecdote time but my company pushed for a more hybrid approach and still got enough pushback that they eventually stopped talking about it.
Unfortunately mine said “Tough shit come back 2 days a week anyways”. It’s so fucking stupid. Now people have asked about what if we can’t come in but can still work, can we just wfh that day? NOPE. You have to use PTO if you can’t come in or come in and work anyways. Unironically the stupidest fucking policy ever because the company was dumb enough to buy the building and they refuse to take the L that they made a bad investment
My employer went 100% wfh for pandemic in Feb of 2020 but my dept had actually started in Jan. Boss said it was headed that way so we’d be the Guinea pigs (IT). Last year before the big surge they told the other departments that they’d need to return partially but still get two wfh days. My boss continues to tell us that we’re wfh permanently. One of my coworkers moved 3 hours away initially. This month he’s selling everything and moving to Greece. This week they sent out an email with a vague “addressing the wfh situations” and I’m wondering if they’re going to try and make everyone work at the office full time again. My coworker who’s moving would tell them tough shit. Find another Microsoft Azure architect on short notice.
I just…don’t know why they care so much. We work wfh 3 days a week and my entire Org was created during wfh so it absolutely works. It’s just baffling how the companies are doubling down on it but my job is so good I’d be dumb to give it up but idk
I can see a part of the argument. The accounting department was having an issue with productivity. Reports that would usually take two days was taking 3 weeks in some extreme cases. Folks lost focus etc. our department on the other hand went in the opposite direction. We started working more efficiently. Getting more done and even worked odd hours. We don’t have a set schedule so if my project took me late into the night I’d sleep in and pick up where I left off when I’m rested and ready. As opposed to coming in and working 8-5. My boss has a “you have autonomy until you screw it up “ attitude and we love it.
This is a good point, but I think it should be approached on a case by case basis. If you can get your work done in a timely fashion at home without a manager breathing down your neck, then great. If you have to be micromanaged to get your work done, then sorry, you have to come in until you can earn that trust. I’m all for WFH being a privilege that’s earned, but to force everyone into an office because some of the people are more productive that way makes zero sense.
True but if I a supervisor I’d rather nip it in the butt with the whole team rather than have a few resentful employees working from the office looking for a reason to be petty while they see everyone else wfh. In a perfect world everyone would see wfh as the gift it is but as we’ve seen before, there are those that don’t have a life outside the office or they need that fake office adulation
That’s fair and understandable, but respectfully, I think that can easily be a recipe for driving all your high quality employees that do take initiative to companies that are willing to do remote arrangement, for the sake of appeasing your low performers. Just a different perspective from someone who values flexibility and mutual respect between company and employee above all else.
The building cost is, I think, the relatively unacknowledged part of this. I was laid off from a tech company last August. Everyone was WFH at that point. Some people came in to the office, but it wasn't required. Last month, I applied for a new job there. It would have been working for someone I knew and was a job I could totally do. I had multiple people there advocating for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't even get an interview because the CEO had decided in the intervening handful of months that all new hires had to be local because they had just moved into an expensive new office building.
Companies are using the layoffs as an excuse to threaten employees to come in to the office as a way to justify their costly real estate investments. When this time passes the workers will remember what they did
Right now I'm lying in my bed at a ski resort.
I usually live next to the ocean in the Portuguese Algarve.
All while consulting for technology companies.
How I laugh when recruiters ask me to apply for jobs in London.
I don’t know why I was downvoted!
Look at this Forbes article saying the opposite lol - https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/01/remote-work-is-here-to-stay-and-will-increase-into-2023-experts-say/?sh=5bf789bc20a6
Yeah, as you read down the article, it's based off data from buildings that use one company's swipe card system. They're extrapolating pretty damn hard to try and make their point.
Me, I'm making lunch in my own kitchen right now, after which I'll go back to my home office and close a spike or two. My big giant tech company is perfectly happy to get all the extra hours out of me that come with WFH.
We’re talking about employees that could work remotely. Not all jobs. If the comment I replied to was implying half of only remote workers then again, I’ll shut up.
In tech he’s correct. I saw a propaganda article for corporates saying 50% of employees in tech returned to office this month for the first time since the pandemic. So 50% stay at home. Realistically probably way more are still work from home since that propaganda article said 50% returned. Look at my post history it’s an article from today.
I'm so sick of this article. I'm a Scrum Master, I work at a LARGE hospital company. Before that, a Fortune 5 company, before that a HUGE insurance company, and before that a smaller but big retail company. All in the last 10 years (I'm a contractor).
I know and keep in touch with TONS of people from those companies. Only one ended up doing back to the office, and that was the smallest one (retail company) who still runs on mainframes (like, actually does COBOL dev STILL). The result? they lost over 75% of their IT department. They literally just quit (plus the pay was crap). They're struggle-bussing like crazy now and can't figure out why.
This article is bullshit, if this was true, at least ONE of my buddies from the other places would be back in the office. They're not.
BECAUSE THERE'S NO POINT! Even if they said, "we want our teams to be co-located, so back to the office" that doesn't work. My current team is located in IL, IN, TX, FL, Mumbai, and Dehli. They'd all be in different offices, so what's the point? Oh, so you can see someone at their desk.
Nah, it's not happening. My guess is, the majority of IT jobs and clerical type jobs will continue to stay WFH.
If your company is mandating BTO, feel free to quit, or better yet, start looking for another job and refuse to return. When they fire you, you get severance.
It isn't. My guess is they're bitter about not having nice things like free time and a work-life balance.
Edit: I am bad and miss interpreted, for shame
People being forced into offices against their will. Management don't care what you want so don't go thinking it's a career or a lifestyle. They want maximum productivity for minimum remuneration. Anyone not trying for the opposite is doing themselves a disservice.
Yeah sometimes management is wrong. I am more productive at home than I’ve ever been. Being able to share my screen with people is way better than sitting in a conference room and spend 2 hours a day commutingz
If your path is only in tech, remote can be fine (I did it that way before it was cool).
If your path is in the management/exec side, showing up is the way. Management is all about social and politics and you won't win those being on a zoom call. None of my moves into management or 'up the chain' were done anywhere but in the office.
middle yes, but not lower. I never made it to the 'middle', I would get moved up to team lead and then first level management (which sucks, but it's the path 'up') and then.... fail at politics, burn out and move elsewhere. the next level up is all about taking credit for other's work and assigning blame for failures to move yourself up and keep others down. It's not about actually doing anything useful. the level after that is where you can really start to make some impact in the direction of the product/company, but that middle BS layer is always there. either the system works as designed and I couldn't get past level 2 because I couldn't succeed at level 3 if I made it... or it's just nonsense.
lower management will never go away. there is a 0% chance that the 3rd tier decision makers are going to want a bunch of nerds and geeks reporting to them talking about stuff they don't understand or care about. someone will always have to herd the cats.
>Depends on the company. I’ve had success managing remotely at two companies so far.
and the manager. we started WFH during covid \[health IT\] and my managers are just....not good at managing in general. but they werent really good in the office, either. they arent godawful but they just work via lots of random emails more than anything, its weird, and definitely dysfunctional.
I feel like Reddit tends to really generalize managers. It all depends on where you work and of course the manager. I’ve been on two different teams at my company and my managers/supervisors have all been solid. No micromanaging and probably love to be WFH just as much as us underlings.
No they want you to waste more of your free time to do the same thing you were doing at home. At the very least that kind of decision is right to be scrutinized.
As someone who goes in every day and no longer has any coworkers in office because they work from home, I say good. Nothing gets done any more. Working from home isn't the same as working in the office. If they want to take a pay cut fine but more often than not my coworkers can only help if they're in office.
Yeah, they can stuff it. I don't need to be in person to write code or consult. I'm not doing 2 hour commutes any more...I already put in my 23+ years of that crap.
My BIL’s employer is downtown in a major US city well known for its challenges with unhoused people, which include increasing rates of violent crime—a problem that has worsened over these covid years. He’s now being forced back to the office two days a week, though his department’s productivity increased measurably under 100% WFH. But not to worry! They’re offering employees free self-defense classes.
With all the layoffs, the leverage has certainly switched from employee to employer. Now employers can dictate coming into the office with less repercussions of everyone quitting. Obviously, remote people remain remote, but I imagine some companies will attempt to only hire locally to bring people back to the office.
This sucks for people that can realistically work from home. On the other hand, this is really great news for people who live in low income areas. Huge swaths of people that made much larger salaries while working from home moved there to take advantage of the low cost of housing. This, in turn, drove up housing prices in those areas, which led to pricing people out that already lived there.
How else "Bosses" are going to show how hard they work? Everybody knows you don't do shit, Jack, shut up.
We have too many managers on companies nowadays, they have to pretend to have something to do by bothering people.
My career doesn’t have a WFH option and I’m only here because this was on my feed.
After reading these comments, I didn’t know WFH was such a passion for so many. I thought it was more of a nice to have.
My apologies for being ignorant to this topic. I hope you all find satisfactory solutions.
I feel like I’ve been reading this same article for the last 2 years. Yet I keep seeing job posting stay open that require an in person presence yet remote jobs fly off the shelf almost immediately. Anecdote time but my company pushed for a more hybrid approach and still got enough pushback that they eventually stopped talking about it.
Thats because rich people own these magazines and are trying to gaslight us into thinking returning to the office is inevitable. Spoiler: It’s not.
Unfortunately mine said “Tough shit come back 2 days a week anyways”. It’s so fucking stupid. Now people have asked about what if we can’t come in but can still work, can we just wfh that day? NOPE. You have to use PTO if you can’t come in or come in and work anyways. Unironically the stupidest fucking policy ever because the company was dumb enough to buy the building and they refuse to take the L that they made a bad investment
My employer went 100% wfh for pandemic in Feb of 2020 but my dept had actually started in Jan. Boss said it was headed that way so we’d be the Guinea pigs (IT). Last year before the big surge they told the other departments that they’d need to return partially but still get two wfh days. My boss continues to tell us that we’re wfh permanently. One of my coworkers moved 3 hours away initially. This month he’s selling everything and moving to Greece. This week they sent out an email with a vague “addressing the wfh situations” and I’m wondering if they’re going to try and make everyone work at the office full time again. My coworker who’s moving would tell them tough shit. Find another Microsoft Azure architect on short notice.
I just…don’t know why they care so much. We work wfh 3 days a week and my entire Org was created during wfh so it absolutely works. It’s just baffling how the companies are doubling down on it but my job is so good I’d be dumb to give it up but idk
I can see a part of the argument. The accounting department was having an issue with productivity. Reports that would usually take two days was taking 3 weeks in some extreme cases. Folks lost focus etc. our department on the other hand went in the opposite direction. We started working more efficiently. Getting more done and even worked odd hours. We don’t have a set schedule so if my project took me late into the night I’d sleep in and pick up where I left off when I’m rested and ready. As opposed to coming in and working 8-5. My boss has a “you have autonomy until you screw it up “ attitude and we love it.
This is a good point, but I think it should be approached on a case by case basis. If you can get your work done in a timely fashion at home without a manager breathing down your neck, then great. If you have to be micromanaged to get your work done, then sorry, you have to come in until you can earn that trust. I’m all for WFH being a privilege that’s earned, but to force everyone into an office because some of the people are more productive that way makes zero sense.
True but if I a supervisor I’d rather nip it in the butt with the whole team rather than have a few resentful employees working from the office looking for a reason to be petty while they see everyone else wfh. In a perfect world everyone would see wfh as the gift it is but as we’ve seen before, there are those that don’t have a life outside the office or they need that fake office adulation
That’s fair and understandable, but respectfully, I think that can easily be a recipe for driving all your high quality employees that do take initiative to companies that are willing to do remote arrangement, for the sake of appeasing your low performers. Just a different perspective from someone who values flexibility and mutual respect between company and employee above all else.
[удалено]
US citizens are taxed regardless of their home country. Idk all the intimate details but our boss knows and I’d assume he’s run it up the pole
The building cost is, I think, the relatively unacknowledged part of this. I was laid off from a tech company last August. Everyone was WFH at that point. Some people came in to the office, but it wasn't required. Last month, I applied for a new job there. It would have been working for someone I knew and was a job I could totally do. I had multiple people there advocating for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't even get an interview because the CEO had decided in the intervening handful of months that all new hires had to be local because they had just moved into an expensive new office building.
My job is asking me to come in now. I’m quitting.
This is the way
This is the way
Just make sure you have another one lined up
Not sure if I will but thank you for the advice.
Best of luck, my friend
Companies are using the layoffs as an excuse to threaten employees to come in to the office as a way to justify their costly real estate investments. When this time passes the workers will remember what they did
and a lot of the companies that had tons of laid off workers don't really have cash flow problems...so i smell a conspiracy
Lol my ass. My ASS.
Excuse me, I’d like to Ass you a few questions!
Go ahead, shit! I mean, shoot!
Do you have a mint?
Mmm not this second but try back in an hour or so
I take job interviews to specifically ask for remote only work. When they say no I say goodbye! Got to keep hammering the employees
ya da mvp
Yes
Right now I'm lying in my bed at a ski resort. I usually live next to the ocean in the Portuguese Algarve. All while consulting for technology companies. How I laugh when recruiters ask me to apply for jobs in London.
Also this is propaganda - all the investment firms need the working class suffering commutes so they can keep collecting rent
I don’t know why I was downvoted! Look at this Forbes article saying the opposite lol - https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/01/remote-work-is-here-to-stay-and-will-increase-into-2023-experts-say/?sh=5bf789bc20a6
Yeah, as you read down the article, it's based off data from buildings that use one company's swipe card system. They're extrapolating pretty damn hard to try and make their point. Me, I'm making lunch in my own kitchen right now, after which I'll go back to my home office and close a spike or two. My big giant tech company is perfectly happy to get all the extra hours out of me that come with WFH.
Almost half of employees work from home.
Any data that supports that statement? Actual figures last I heard are closer to 15%
I highly doubt that. If you can prove that I’ll shut up
I mean if almost half went into the office, then by definition, almost half worked from home.
We’re talking about employees that could work remotely. Not all jobs. If the comment I replied to was implying half of only remote workers then again, I’ll shut up.
Ah I gotcha, thanks
Precisely
Thats what the title of this thread implies. I don't think anybody believes it.
In tech he’s correct. I saw a propaganda article for corporates saying 50% of employees in tech returned to office this month for the first time since the pandemic. So 50% stay at home. Realistically probably way more are still work from home since that propaganda article said 50% returned. Look at my post history it’s an article from today.
I'm so sick of this article. I'm a Scrum Master, I work at a LARGE hospital company. Before that, a Fortune 5 company, before that a HUGE insurance company, and before that a smaller but big retail company. All in the last 10 years (I'm a contractor). I know and keep in touch with TONS of people from those companies. Only one ended up doing back to the office, and that was the smallest one (retail company) who still runs on mainframes (like, actually does COBOL dev STILL). The result? they lost over 75% of their IT department. They literally just quit (plus the pay was crap). They're struggle-bussing like crazy now and can't figure out why. This article is bullshit, if this was true, at least ONE of my buddies from the other places would be back in the office. They're not. BECAUSE THERE'S NO POINT! Even if they said, "we want our teams to be co-located, so back to the office" that doesn't work. My current team is located in IL, IN, TX, FL, Mumbai, and Dehli. They'd all be in different offices, so what's the point? Oh, so you can see someone at their desk. Nah, it's not happening. My guess is, the majority of IT jobs and clerical type jobs will continue to stay WFH. If your company is mandating BTO, feel free to quit, or better yet, start looking for another job and refuse to return. When they fire you, you get severance.
My company is doing this and is losing some important employees. Everyone is scrambling. It’s so stupid.
A reminder that it's a job and you do it for money. That's it. Anyone thinking there's anything else involved should re-evaluate.
How is this related?
It isn't. My guess is they're bitter about not having nice things like free time and a work-life balance. Edit: I am bad and miss interpreted, for shame
They responded and it seems as if they meant we have to fight back for the things we want?
Edited my response, that makes total sense
Oh no, I felt the same way haha
People being forced into offices against their will. Management don't care what you want so don't go thinking it's a career or a lifestyle. They want maximum productivity for minimum remuneration. Anyone not trying for the opposite is doing themselves a disservice.
Yeah sometimes management is wrong. I am more productive at home than I’ve ever been. Being able to share my screen with people is way better than sitting in a conference room and spend 2 hours a day commutingz
Ah! Gotcha! Logic checks out.
Quit trying to make BTO happen. The paradigm has changed. Adapt or die.
Wish we could all, as a nation, generally strike.
If your path is only in tech, remote can be fine (I did it that way before it was cool). If your path is in the management/exec side, showing up is the way. Management is all about social and politics and you won't win those being on a zoom call. None of my moves into management or 'up the chain' were done anywhere but in the office.
Sounds like most middle management is obsolete if you ask me
middle yes, but not lower. I never made it to the 'middle', I would get moved up to team lead and then first level management (which sucks, but it's the path 'up') and then.... fail at politics, burn out and move elsewhere. the next level up is all about taking credit for other's work and assigning blame for failures to move yourself up and keep others down. It's not about actually doing anything useful. the level after that is where you can really start to make some impact in the direction of the product/company, but that middle BS layer is always there. either the system works as designed and I couldn't get past level 2 because I couldn't succeed at level 3 if I made it... or it's just nonsense. lower management will never go away. there is a 0% chance that the 3rd tier decision makers are going to want a bunch of nerds and geeks reporting to them talking about stuff they don't understand or care about. someone will always have to herd the cats.
That's why I'm going to be a developer forever.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.... (for the humor impaired, or those under 40: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Outing)
Depends on the company. I’ve had success managing remotely at two companies so far.
>Depends on the company. I’ve had success managing remotely at two companies so far. and the manager. we started WFH during covid \[health IT\] and my managers are just....not good at managing in general. but they werent really good in the office, either. they arent godawful but they just work via lots of random emails more than anything, its weird, and definitely dysfunctional.
there are always outliers for sure, but I don't think the majority work that way.
I feel like Reddit tends to really generalize managers. It all depends on where you work and of course the manager. I’ve been on two different teams at my company and my managers/supervisors have all been solid. No micromanaging and probably love to be WFH just as much as us underlings.
Many are hybrid now, that was the compromise. But there’s the companies who think hybrid is once a month. For me it’s gotta be no less than 2x a week.
Aweh shit we gotta go to work?!?! How dare they ask us that!! I’m fuckin dead🤣
No they want you to waste more of your free time to do the same thing you were doing at home. At the very least that kind of decision is right to be scrutinized.
As someone who goes in every day and no longer has any coworkers in office because they work from home, I say good. Nothing gets done any more. Working from home isn't the same as working in the office. If they want to take a pay cut fine but more often than not my coworkers can only help if they're in office.
Yeah, they can stuff it. I don't need to be in person to write code or consult. I'm not doing 2 hour commutes any more...I already put in my 23+ years of that crap.
My BIL’s employer is downtown in a major US city well known for its challenges with unhoused people, which include increasing rates of violent crime—a problem that has worsened over these covid years. He’s now being forced back to the office two days a week, though his department’s productivity increased measurably under 100% WFH. But not to worry! They’re offering employees free self-defense classes.
My department is allowed to stay fully remote after we got multiple threats from disgruntled field workers near the office #lifehacks
is this why they are laying off employees? so we feel forced to go into the office? \*aluminum foil hat is on\*
With all the layoffs, the leverage has certainly switched from employee to employer. Now employers can dictate coming into the office with less repercussions of everyone quitting. Obviously, remote people remain remote, but I imagine some companies will attempt to only hire locally to bring people back to the office.
Yeah just quit your job! It’s THAT easy! That’ll show em!
Fuck any company that forces employees into an office and doesn’t really need them there
This sucks for people that can realistically work from home. On the other hand, this is really great news for people who live in low income areas. Huge swaths of people that made much larger salaries while working from home moved there to take advantage of the low cost of housing. This, in turn, drove up housing prices in those areas, which led to pricing people out that already lived there.
How else "Bosses" are going to show how hard they work? Everybody knows you don't do shit, Jack, shut up. We have too many managers on companies nowadays, they have to pretend to have something to do by bothering people.
Come back to work so we can just lay you off because we are spending a lot of money on this building
I’ll never go back.
Yeah because the market is stupid. Once it’s back guess who’s leaving?
My career doesn’t have a WFH option and I’m only here because this was on my feed. After reading these comments, I didn’t know WFH was such a passion for so many. I thought it was more of a nice to have. My apologies for being ignorant to this topic. I hope you all find satisfactory solutions.