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Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

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Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#231

Post by dagmx »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #68
Taek wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure you account for the value of time saved. Time is precious and there's never enough, if I can find a way to add 40 more minutes to my day I'm going to value that immensely.

Don't use it for additional time spent working uncompensated! Your commute wasn't paid for (typically), so don't give that time away to someone else for free now that you're saving it.

Personally, having a long bay area commute, i now use that time instead to sleep in AND go for longer walks with my dog, that we’d usually reserve for the weekends

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#232

Post by veggieburglar »

t3rabytes wrote: post #219
veggieburglar wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What spot are you looking at? Asking as a mountain biker. Itching to get out on a road trip once it’s possible.

Brevard, NC. All of my family is from there and lives there and the trails are good, hard to say no to. Helluva road trip for you from CA tho.

Yeah Pisgah and DuPont are awesome. Lots of miles of fun out there.

It’s also not inconceivable.... especially now that both my MTB buddy (and best friend) and I are both unemployed.

One of the reasons I live where I do is access to the Santa Cruz Mountains, but that’s all closed down at the moment.

Edit- there’s probably Gucci dirt out there right now too!

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#233

Post by ghaff »

grindgrind wrote: post #223
gspr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for the long commutes, I'm from a big european city and I still have almost a one hour commute to work. Granted, it's public transit so I can use the time somewhat (netflix on my phone, ebooks or whatever) but it's still two hours that I could otherwise use at the gym, having beers with friends or watching a movie. Yeah true. I was thinking more of the American-style car commute. While I agree that time spent co…

A commute is a commute, at least in your car you are not jammed in with a bunch of people. You can also throw in a podcast, your own music, climate controlled to your liking. I would rather commute in a car than on a bus or train.

I worked in downtown Boston for a bit over a year. Taking the train in was better than driving assuming I was going in and out during commuting hours when trains were fairly frequent. But it was still driving 10 minutes to catch a 6:30AM train and taking 90 minutes to get to my office including a short walk. 4 hours of commuting, even if very little of it was driving, was not something I could have sustained longer term even given that I traveled or worked from home a decent chunk of the time.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#234

Post by totalZero »

gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

Would you feel the same if you had a dedicated office, or if you had a videoconference meeting to start the day? That way the feng shui and social pressure would still be there, but you don't lose part of your day (and income) in commuting to and fro.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#235

Post by bart_spoon »

shric wrote: post #141
deevolution wrote: post #100

I think alot of people will want to go back because they've now associated working remotely with being in an isolated jail cell. Also I'm sure couples and people with kids are ready to jump out their windows. I wont be going back to the office for a number of reasons, however, and I think everyone should boycott the office as well. Weather you want to work in the office or not should ultimately be the employees choic…

Not everyone has all these downsides when working in an office. 1. I walk to work. 2. It's a 25 minute walk each way. I don't consider it lost time, Agree with 3 and 4. 5. I can and do go to the gym whenever I want. Typically at 2 or 3pm to avoid the lunch crowd.

I don't have data, but I would feel pretty confident that the vast majority of Americans don't share your experience. The number of people who can walk to work within 25 minutes is likely miniscule, and therefore requires some amount of time in traffic, often substantial. And virtually every other point follows from that fact.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#236

Post by ghaff »

MivLives wrote: post #82
drewg123 wrote: post #54

I've worked from home since 2001, except for a brief 2 year stint at Google. I think I'm far more productive at home because I have: - An office, with a door I can close This was going to be a big list, but I actually think that just about sums it up. The cube environment at Google was utterly intolerable, and made it hard to concentrate. It didn't help that the guys in another group next to us had a game where they…

What I wouldn't give for a cube. To my left and right in our open office are engineers who are normally quiet. The row in front of are all business strategy people. They never stop talking. They're on the phone, they're having meetings, they're casually chatting. There's nothing at all to block the sound or the sight of them grouping up in 2s and 6s at each others desk. One even has a rare sight in the office, a desk…

Companies need to try to separate functions as much as possible. It's reasonable for people to find an empty office or conference room for occasional impromptu meetings or calls. But some jobs--recruiting, biz dev, etc.--basically live on the phone. It's not realistic for them either to shut up or find a room every time they're on a call.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#237

Post by bart_spoon »

therealvayne wrote: post #7

Don’t people miss social interaction? I don’t understand how these articles are written. As a single man living on my own, this lockdown has made it pretty lonely.

For me, I enjoy social interaction with people I actually choose to be with. That's family and friends. Colleagues are nice, but if the only reason I'm interacting with someone is because we are getting paid to be in the same place at the same time, its not something I'm particularly missing.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#238

Post by sologoub »

gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

So what will you do when you inevitably retire?

We’ve spent our lives making work the center (US probably more so than EU). What you are describing can read as “I can’t bare WFH” or it can be “the pandemic severed me from my social circle, that happened to be at work”.

For me, at some point I realized that work friends replaced most of my social circle, but when I changed companies, I lost touch with most of them. This felt disturbing when I realized that and I have since made the effort to cultivate the friendships and keep in touch better. This had the side-effect of no longer relying on the office for friendship/social contact outside of family/SO.

I really don’t think we are talking about adapting to WFH, as much as we are seeing the effects of social structures that have emerged from concentrating people in offices. These have some overlap with work (promotion politics in most places?), but are largely orthogonal to the actual work at hand.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#239

Post by stronglikedan »

dbingham wrote: post #160
gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

Extrovert / introvert. You're clearly more towards the extrovert part of the spectrum. Please try to have empathy for people on the introverted part of the spectrum who cannot fathom being forced into an office with tons of people distracting them all day every day. Heretofore they (save for a lucky few like me) have been forced to not just fathom it, but live it. The "half" of Americans mentioned in the article prob…

I'm a well established introvert, and I feel the same as OP. It doesn't have anything to do with extroversion/introversion. It has everything to do with simply feeling bad because we recognize that we're not nearly as productive at home. Some people just aren't, and likely never will be, and that's okay. I consider myself lucky to be able to (a) recognize it, (b) care about it, and (c) have the option to go back to work.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#240

Post by bart_spoon »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #161

Many people are blaming the commute, but I've been working from home for almost 6 years, and I actually miss the commute. Especially the bus, but the train was nice too when I had to switch. It was a nice buffer of being able to read or think quietly to myself. The start and end of my day were absolute. Whatever I didn't get done would have to wait, and I wouldn't start until I got there. Along with the social intera…

I think the difference is that for you, many of those same things can be accomplished by choice. You can still have an absolute start and end to your workday, you just have to be proactive about it. You can still take the same amount of time to read or think to yourself. Perhaps the requirement of a commute makes doing those things easier, but its entirely possible to do the same thing by simply being more mindful about it.

For those who hate their commute, being forced into the office every day doesn't offer the same latitude for adjustments to their personal lives. And many of those things you enjoyed are only possible via public transportation. Given the woeful state of public transportation in much of the US, many commuting are doing so in cars, which don't afford the same opportunities for peaceful self-reflection and unwinding.

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