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Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

nbloom.people.stanford.edu

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Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#301

Post by toomanybeersies »

chrisseaton wrote: post #28
WalterGR wrote: post #3

I haven’t read all 63 pages, but I’m surprised that the abstract doesn’t mention: All the $$$ that businesses get to save by eliminating or reducing office real estate, including $$$ saved by pushing some of those costs onto employees.

What costs? Even people who work from an office still usually have a home study or office for doing their bills or whatever. Do you mean electricity costs to run your laptop? What does that add up to?

What costs?

* Heating and cooling

* Buying furniture and furnishings that are missing, or to replace worn out or unsuitable for full time work e.g. lights, computer chairs, headphones, monitors

* General office consumables, e.g. coffee, milk, pens, paper

The Australian Tax Office reckons (for tax purposes) this costs around 80 cents (AUD) per hour, or AU$1,500 per year.

Also, most people don't have a separate study or spare room they can use as a home office [1].

[1] https://news.stanford.edu/2020/06/29/snapshot-new-working-ho...

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#302

Post by apahwa »

anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

this is spoken like it is true for everyone, which is not accurate. I would have loved to be fully remote in my early 20s, free to travel and not focus purely on work. sure it was great for my career, but work isn't living.

sure, a ton of people hate working from home. some personalities and roles require in-person interaction. most people never considered wfh when choosing their apartment or house and don't have good setups. meanwhile, there are also a ton of people, like me, who have always _hated_ going into the office. being constantly distracted by coworkers, dealing with long commutes, and putting up with uncomfortable and loud offices.

yes, people need social interaction, but that doesn't have to come from coworkers. it is a very SF mindset to build your entire life around your work.. being in the office all day and most of your "friends" are coworkers.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#303

Post by Aeolun »

kmonsen wrote: post #278
cco wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Key positives for a company are reduced cost of office space and ability to draw upon a wider, cheaper pool of potential workers...[real dollar values] >Key negatives are reduced productivity due to lack of supervision, difficulty of face-to-face meetings with clients, difficulty of training younger staff.[hard to measure] Just throwing this experience of mine out there, when faced with actual dollar figures and har…

Yeah, then why not fire everyone? Reduce salaries to 0, all the work is hard to measure. Or why have we all not been remote for a long time, instead of squeezed into high cost locations? When it comes to their core business companies have a decent belief in what it looks like.

> Yeah, then why not fire everyone?

That would make the ones doing the firing redundant too. You want as many employees as possible as cheap as possible.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#304

Post by the_gipsy »

wisty wrote: post #118
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29

I've been 100% remote and run remote teams since 2014 and I promise that it won't stick for the broader society. Here's why: 1. Socializing is the primary activity that happens at work for the vast majority of workers. The gal or guy coming by your desk to "check in" or "see how your weekend was" etc... is literally where they find their social outlets and personal connections. 2. Managers like to be able to watch th…

I think it's worth looking into "theory of the firm" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm Why should employees even exist? Shouldn't firms just sack everyone, then hire contractors? I often hear advocates of remote work talk about "presenteeism" and how managers need to just focus more on outputs. This is fine, but if they can do that why not sack everyone and just hire contractors and pay for the outpu…

> if you're otherwise stuck in an office reading email to look busy, but not if you're at home and you can turn on the TV or walk the dog.

The opposite

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#305

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #300
anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent. A lot of the things you say make sense, but this sounds ridiculous to me. Why would you only want young talent? How about older talent? Skill isn’t age specific.

[deleted]

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#306

Post by ithkuil »

kmonsen wrote: post #278
cco wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Key positives for a company are reduced cost of office space and ability to draw upon a wider, cheaper pool of potential workers...[real dollar values] >Key negatives are reduced productivity due to lack of supervision, difficulty of face-to-face meetings with clients, difficulty of training younger staff.[hard to measure] Just throwing this experience of mine out there, when faced with actual dollar figures and har…

Yeah, then why not fire everyone? Reduce salaries to 0, all the work is hard to measure. Or why have we all not been remote for a long time, instead of squeezed into high cost locations? When it comes to their core business companies have a decent belief in what it looks like.

> Or why have we all not been remote for a long time, instead of squeezed into high cost locations?

Playing a little bit the devil's advocate here:

Risk aversion and general tendency to apply gradual changes.

Would you bet your company to run an experiment almost no one else is trying? Perhaps letting your workers work from home works perhaps you'll miss all deadlines and generate all kinds of drama.

An external factors kicked in and everyone was in the same experiment. Things were messy but not completely unmanageable. Some were even surprised things kept working as well as they did.

Now, the big question is: will this take a toll on people? Will companies that choose to continue with this work style be put in disadvantage as other companies switch back to on-prem?

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#307

Post by _Understated_ »

For me, the issue is not black and white: it's not "we're all gonna work from home" / "we're all gonna work from the office"... it's being given the choice based on my circumstances.

If I was king of the world I'd tell businesses (where feasible - warehouses still need people to be onsite, small businesses may not have the money for the tools for example) that they need to be able to offer home working for those that want/need it and office working for those that want/need it.

With that comes the correct tools and equipment, e.g. video conferencing, desktop sharing, telepresence, laptops, whatever.

I have been working remotely for several years with only occasional visits to an office and it works for me. I would hate to have to travel every day to an office but I like the occasional visit.

I get enough interaction with my family and friends (current COVID restrictions not withstanding ofc) but I have a separate room upstairs where I work so I don't have to sit in the kitchen.

It's horses for courses imo... the future needs to be flexibility-based.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#308

Post by threatofrain »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #252
rapsey wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There for sure will not be that many remote jobs.

If it's evident that being remote is just as effective or more why wouldn't most companies start catching the eyes of their potential candidates with that?

That's what it would take for work-from-home to organically catch on. Either the delta is obvious or it isn't.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#309

Post by jjav »

ashtonkem wrote: post #158
calvinmorrison wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For something you're going to spend your life doing, it's a horrible prospect to not expect to make friends at work. As a child did you spend 12 years not making friends in school, since school is for learning and not socialization?

The average Millenial worker will job hop every 1-3 years. While it’s good to be friendly with your colleagues, you also shouldn’t build friend networks that get broken and reformed with such regularity.

That's precisely why you want to make friends at every shop, since you'll all be rotating jobs and running into the same people in future jobs, sometimes hiring them sometimes being hired by them.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#310

Post by anonytrary »

Aeolun wrote: post #300
anonytrary wrote: post #292

This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…

> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent. A lot of the things you say make sense, but this sounds ridiculous to me. Why would you only want young talent? How about older talent? Skill isn’t age specific.

I think we are misunderstanding. I never implied you don't need both. I just implied that you will most likely not have the latter. You need both, obviously.
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