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Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

reuters.com

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Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#51

Post by meheleventyone »

qz2 wrote: post #16
bobthepanda wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great if you have a house with lots of space. Personally as a single young adult I like living in the city with lots of amenities nearby. I would hate being forced to WFH, the same way some hated being forced to go into the office.

I thought the same for years and chased that dream. Eventually I found I ended up as a miserable isolationist to some degree. So roll on a number of years and I’ve got 5 people living in a tiny house in London. I sleep, eat, work and play in one room and have done for about 10 years now. It’s great and I wouldn’t swap it for anything. The important thing is that you find activities to do outside the house because it…

Same, we live in a fairly small (90sqm) house which we rebuilt a few years ago. Bedrooms and bathroom are downstairs and upstairs is open plan with high ceilings. My workspace is upstairs and it works out great. Kids going to school and my wife to work neatly bookends the day and I just switch on my own machine and off the companies to keep separation. I'm right in the heart of downtown Reykjavik so heading out to do stuff or take a break is straightforward.

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#52

Post by rightbyte »

theshrike79 wrote: post #45
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people (me included) the office is a very productive environment. Some things I am really interested in can be smashed out at home with no problems. But boring work is a chore unless I'm at the office where I can get my mind to say "you're at work, you're getting paid for this". I can do boring work well at work, whereas at home I wanna do anything just to get it out of my face. Not only that, for some peopl…

Managing a split remote/local team is one of the hardest things to do. Nigh-impossible I'd say.

On my prior gig we were in an office but communicated via Teams anyways since it was an open office and you could not talk without disturbing the 6 person wall-less booth. Communication from home is much easier since we just can call each other. But this is mainly due to bad office layout not wfh being better as a concept.

It is probably a good idea to have office days even with remote teams. Half a day every other week or what ever.

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#53

Post by netjiro »

carlmr wrote: post #4
quaintdev wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While saving money on fuel and avoiding pollution. If you can avoid pollution in India you can literally increase lifespan. The problem here in India, when I brought up "WFH is future", all the experienced manager above 10yrs were not happy with idea. Why? Probably because they are paying EMIs for hefty loans they took for buying flats. People like me who are relatively less experienced don't want to take that risk a…

I think the other issue is that middle managers see that people working from home barely interact with them, which means that their middle man role is visibly unnecessary. A recipe for getting scared.

> middle man role is visibly unnecessary

Yep. One way forward is to move "middle" to other leaf node tasks in organisation. I have restructured a bunch of organisations towards globally distributed remote work since early 2000s. Every time: Unless I have strong investors' support I _MUST_ find a way to get the "middle" excited to move away from traditional management and coordination tasks into other things. Often this is back tech or sales where they originated. If you do it right most are happy and you get great improvements in productivity, staff retention, decision making. Do it wrong and you get mired down or sabotaged.

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#54

Post by wastedhours »

nullsense wrote: post #30
Smithalicious wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then just don't do that

Solid advice mate. Why didn't I think of just not doing it? It's so simple it's almost genius. Just don't do it. Wish I'd thought if that sooner. It was staring me in the face the whole time. Just... Don't do it! Of course. Silly me. Silly me for continuing to do something day in day out that I obviously don't like or want to do, but could just opt not to but for some reason don't. I wonder why that is...

I don't quite get your flippance - you weren't doing it before, and are now doing it. What's changed? Why are you working extra hours at home when in the office you wouldn't have?

What's the externalities here? Why has 2 hours downtime turned into 2 hours more work, rather than 2 hours of downtime at home?

I admit the OP was blunt, but it's not a ridiculous question - where has the time gone?

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#55

Post by jbjohns »

theodric wrote: post #14
xwdv wrote: post #8

Personally I feel the push for the right to work from home without being treated as a second class citizen is more important and will do more for society than policies such as raising the minimum wage.

If you can work from home, you are now competing with the entire global labor force for your job. Expect your salary to go down as a result, since you are now much more replaceable.

You already have been for decades at this point. The high salaries seen in some places is not due exclusively to locality but the quality of the employee.

What I'm seeing is people from low cost locations which traditionally migrated as soon as they could to get western salaries are not getting those western salaries without having to leave. I would say if you were at the highest compensation level you may see a decrease but it will remain that the best command large salaries as now. The difference will probably be that some who were the best and underpaid will have an easier time getting reasonable compensation and some people who were taking advantage of locality factors will now approach a more reasonable salary for their actual contribution.

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#56

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

shock wrote: post #50
DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for writing this out as you've really hit the nail on the head. I manage a medium sized team and I can tell you some people are totally cool with just being a worker bee. I wish more of the conversation around WFH focused on how everyone is different, one size fits all rarely works, and if you do want to "get ahead" you'll need to put in face time. Period. Humans are social and want connection. Meritocracies a…

> I wish more of the conversation around WFH focused on how everyone is different, one size fits all rarely works and then > if you do want to "get ahead" you'll need to put in face time. Period. You've just prescribed a one-size-fits-all solution, in the same phrase as saying that it doesn't work. How are you resolving the cognitive dissonance?

Thanks for pointing that out. It was two different points. The first point was that some people don't want to climb the ladder and so should be happy/content with doing their job "working to live, not living to work" kind of idea.

The second point I was trying to say was that if you only WFH, the same type of career opportunities that come from mastering soft-skills that build rapport will be unavailable. And where I was trying to go was to call out people who whine about this.

I agree I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#57

Post by jbjohns »

Some additional things to consider:

1) Remote work does not necessarily mean WFH. It means work where is most effective for you instead of going to some office. These days there are many different kinds of solutions for having office space if you want/need it. It also becomes more of a commodity that you can simply use when needed (e.g. a final push before release, a workshop preparing for a big new project, etc.).

2) Companies who recognise this and get rid of their local offices may experience a cost advantage because having offices costs more than just the building. There are a lot of utility costs involved, you need people who manage the facilities, etc., etc.

3) If we're really serious about the environment, avoiding people having to commute to work should be a serious goal. Companies tend to talk about reducing how much they fly around but what is the Co2 footprint of flying in total compared to commuting?

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#58

Post by terramex »

jbjohns wrote: post #57

Some additional things to consider: 1) Remote work does not necessarily mean WFH. It means work where is most effective for you instead of going to some office. These days there are many different kinds of solutions for having office space if you want/need it. It also becomes more of a commodity that you can simply use when needed (e.g. a final push before release, a workshop preparing for a big new project, etc.). 2…

I think autocorrect changed "WFH" (work from home) to "WTF" in your comment.

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#59

Post by disiplus »

jbjohns wrote: post #55
theodric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can work from home, you are now competing with the entire global labor force for your job. Expect your salary to go down as a result, since you are now much more replaceable.

You already have been for decades at this point. The high salaries seen in some places is not due exclusively to locality but the quality of the employee. What I'm seeing is people from low cost locations which traditionally migrated as soon as they could to get western salaries are not getting those western salaries without having to leave. I would say if you were at the highest compensation level you may see a decr…

it's both, but location plays a bit role, just go to the gitlab salary calculator and try to enter london and another east europe city.

even for the same level role and expertise and assumed same productivity the east europe one will get a smaller compensation, thus costing the company less.

Re: Permanently remote workers seen doubling in 2021 due to pandemic productivity

#60

Post by Philip-J-Fry »

DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #42
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people (me included) the office is a very productive environment. Some things I am really interested in can be smashed out at home with no problems. But boring work is a chore unless I'm at the office where I can get my mind to say "you're at work, you're getting paid for this". I can do boring work well at work, whereas at home I wanna do anything just to get it out of my face. Not only that, for some peopl…

Thanks for writing this out as you've really hit the nail on the head. I manage a medium sized team and I can tell you some people are totally cool with just being a worker bee. I wish more of the conversation around WFH focused on how everyone is different, one size fits all rarely works, and if you do want to "get ahead" you'll need to put in face time. Period. Humans are social and want connection. Meritocracies a…

Yeah, the only thing I personally wanted from this huge WFH push was just the option of flexible working. Before the pandemic I never even had the option. Now I do have the option, and that's great.

I'm never going to push for everyone working from home, or everyone working from the office. It should be flexible, it should be easy to make that choice when it suits you.

Some weeks I'll go into work every day, some weeks I'll have a few days work from home. That's how I want to work. I still put in the face time, I still get to see most people. I just get to have a more relaxing time working from home now and then.

I could never be a fully remote worker right now. But I'd always advocate for more flexibility. And I'll be honest, I like seeing my work colleagues, we have a laugh, and I'd miss that in a permanent work from home setting.

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