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Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

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Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#481

Post by cableshaft »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #114
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 definitely agree about the socializing. I miss seeing friendly colleagues face to face and having lunch with them. It's not just that though. I started a new remote job during the pandemic and... I feel like I really don't have the same bond with these new colleagues that I had with my colleagues at my previous in-person job. I genuinely feel like we would collaborate better, and be a better team, if we could hang…

When I was at the office I'd take a 20-ish minute walking break around the office block almost every day.

I don't know what it is about remote work, but even though I know the physical activity would be good for me, I have a hell of a time motivating myself to taking a walk around the neighborhood before/during work that I work only from home. And we started 100% remote before the pandemic, so it's not pandemic-related.

I think there's a couple of reasons for that, for me. #1, I don't really feel the need to escape home, where I had to get out of the office, especially with all the open office noise. I can just 'escape' upstairs and do some dishes to put some distance from work. And #2, my role is now a lot more on-call than it used to be, and a few times I've taken the walk during work I've had to double back and hurry halfway through, because I always seem to pick the exact time something breaks.

Sucks. I don't have a good reason to be in worse shape because of the pandemic but I am.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#482

Post by cableshaft »

rapsey wrote: post #247
dv_dt wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is because Americans spend way to much time at work, so much time that it's difficult to find time to socialize out of work. People are social animals so they'll increase their interaction there (also lowering productivity in office). I think WFH coupled with reduced hour days or 4 day weeks would be a much better combo for high productivity in the office.

Americans also start work really late. 9 to 5 takes up the whole day. Where I am at most start at 7 or 8.

Plenty of places start at 8. I've worked at a couple. Sometimes got in trouble for being late too, since I struggle to get moving in the morning. I seem to work best when I get to start at 9:30 or 10am.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#483

Post by ghaff »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #475
ghaff wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2-3 days commuting per week, you still probably don't want a 2 hr. each way commute. Even 1 day per week that ends up being a day you sort of dread. That said a 1.5 to 2 hour commute once a week is doable but that still only gets you to a closer to nature location. It doesn't really give you the option to live in a different cheaper city if that's what you want--which is what many people (not myself) are looking for…

A 2 hour each way commute is definitely excessive. Luckily the distances here are not as great as for instance in the US, so my colleague who lives in a town perceived as "far away" from the city has a ~1 hour commute by car. For comparison, I live 6km away from work (well within good public transit coverage) and it takes me around 35 minutes by bus. As a downside to distances being generally shorter, we also don't h…

>It's either apartment living or close to nature

I actually agree with you. I grew up in what, at least at the time, would probably properly be called ex-urban and live somewhere similar today (on 5 acres next neighbors with a lot more land as well as conservation land but within a few miles of plenty of stores, etc.).

I've never had much interest in classical suburbia but I do like cities--at least to visit.

2 hours gets you way out of even most Northeastern US cities. I'm about 90 minutes to get into Boston at rush hour if I time it right and less in the evening. I've actually commuted into the city--I also have a pretty convenient commuter rail--for some days for about a year and a half. It wouldn't have been sustainable long-term though.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#484

Post by troydavis »

I'm a little disappointed at the percentage of comments which extrapolate personal anecdotes into societal behavior, and without addressing the data in this study - even to poke holes in the methodology, which is totally fair game (though IMO quite good, especially for what they had to work with).

The whole point of a 15,000-person survey like this is so that we're not all stuck guessing based on our own experiences. Obviously one can argue that what employers were telling employees they would do post-COVID as of October 2020 is not what employers will actually do (and give reasons why!), but it's still likely to be more accurate than any individual's speculation (including mine!).

In particular, the survey addressed 2 topics that a lot of comments seem to not incorporate:

1. At population, employer, and individual level, it's not either/or. The paper title doesn't do a good job of conveying this. All 3 entities seem open to everything on the continuum, based on their employees, work type, and so on.

Statements like "I promise that it won't stick for the broader society" imply a more binary outcome than the survey results predict (and maybe than anything predicts). The survey concludes that, of the roughly 50% of employees who can work from home, they'll average 2 days per week (or 23% of total hours worked). IOW, WFH doesn't need to move everyone all the time in order to have massive effects. Some people changing some of the time is enough.

2. Employer plans vs. employee desires. Lots of commenters state their preferences and then try to generalize from that, but.. the survey captured that too. To just skim those results, scroll to page 60 for employee-desired vs. employer-planned % of working days. Gist: if WFH is roughly the same productivity, employers plan ~22% of days and employees desire ~45% of days to be WFH. In all productivity cases, employees preferred a higher % of days to be WFH than employers.

Page 43 shows answers to the pay raise or cut employees would take in order to work from home 2-3 days per week.

It also breaks down the change in perception about WFH by demographic cohort on page 55. For example, those with no children and those with children at home both had significant improvements in their perception of WFH. Those with children had more improvement in perception than those without children. As the study wrote: "This 23 percent figure [post-COVID WFH as a % of full time days] is almost five times larger than in the pre-pandemic time use data, but still half as large as what workers want in a post-pandemic world."

Of course, there's a place for speculation and anecdotes. This paper - and hopefully soon, more studies like it - should let us evolve from speculating based on only our personal experience to thinking about its methodology and results.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#485

Post by vharuck »

chrisseaton wrote: post #392
vharuck wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home desk already has my desktop computer and my files. I don't want to split the desk space and drawers with work stuff. That's my space.

Maybe you do a different work to me... but what 'stuff' is there? Like most people I just work at a computer that'd be there anyway.

I may be a less usual case on this forum, but I really like printed references. The walls of my cube at the office had cheat sheets pinned up (boilerplate code I need once a blue moon, lookup tables for codes, a map with county names and FIPS codes). I've written notes on most of them. On the shelves, I'd have reference books. On the file drawers, pages of notes and printed journal articles (with more notes).

Having written this, I see this could be an impetus to get better at taking notes with software. But some remote jobs and people really benefit from keeping physical things close by.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#486

Post by cableshaft »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #146
irrational wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is the main reason I prefer remote working. I don’t like socializing. I’m there to work, not to chit chat. You’re not my friend, your a fellow worker. 2. Time to get a better manager who trusts you. 3. Commuting is a waste of time. I roll out of bed and immediately start working. The company loses on time I could be working by having me commute. 4. Yeah, I definitely can’t relate to this one.

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?

As much as I've liked the company of coworkers and been friendly with them, I've never had a coworker friendship 'stick' after they or I leave for very long.

The longest was a guy I used to meet up with at dog parks so our dogs could play together, or meet for a pint sometimes, and even that is looking like it's probably not going to stick.

The longest lasting friendships for me have been friends with a shared hobby. Like I have a lot of friends that are really into board games. Except for the pandemic it's been real easy to maintain those friendships, just organize a game night.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#487

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #459
wisty wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my experience, most people have just as much possibility of slacking off at the office than at home. We have colleagues to chat with, phones and even tablets with internet connectivity… The main difference between employees and contractors are incentives. The contractor's goal is to get paid the most over the longest period of time. They don't care about your company's bottom line, they care about theirs, and the…

> In my experience, most people have just as much possibility of slacking off at the office than at home.

I can confirm this because I've reached a point in my job where I am performing at most about 3 hours worth of actual work in any given week. This isn't because I'm so good at my job (I once was...) and things are running so smoothly (though they kinda are), it's because my current mental state prevents me from being motivated enough to do much of anything. Remarkably few people seem to have noticed and none have said anything about it.

When I was allowed to work from home because I had COVID (the entire IT department got it due to asinine butts-in-seats policy during a fucking pandemic), all that changed is that my stress level went down from not having to pretend to work most of the work day.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#488

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #175
ashtonkem wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 might be true for high earning, in demand programmers, finance types, or doctors, but I doubt it’s true for others, especially outside of large cities. People find a place to work and then stick with it, out of complacency or other properties. It’s why employers famously provide minimal raises, and you earn far more if you change employers. Employers are betting people will rather accept lower pay in exchange fo…

A good friend and current roommate of mine has spent his entire working life doing menial work. Kitchens and factories mostly. He changes jobs just as often as your average resume-driven-developer. Not for raises of course, those don't really exist in menial work, he just gets sick of one place's shit and moves on to a different place with a different set of bullshit to deal with, just for variety.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#489

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

tekkk wrote: post #321
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #190

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. Yeah well, as they say, life's a bitch and then you die. On the scale of things that are horrible prospects "not making friends at work" strikes me as something very privileged to be concerned about.

Jesus that's dark. Everybody needs community, there's nothing privileged about that. Through the ages we have bound ourselves to our profession and the people we work with and for in our community. Is that some far-fetched ideal to strive for? And I'm not meaning some buddy-buddy friends, but at least making good acquaintances. You can't really go much farther than that unless you have developed a good personal rappo…

> Everybody needs community, there's nothing privileged about that.

It is extremely privileged to expect your job to provide that. Most people do not have that many different jobs with different considerations to choose from, and when they do choose they do it based on more important and immediate needs like working conditions and compensation.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#490

Post by tjr225 »

joelbluminator wrote: post #354
shrimpx wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with all the points, except (1). If one has a hard time creating a social life outside of work, working remotely is terrible.

Are work friends actual friends? Seems to me in the vast majority of cases once a person switches jobs he switches his work friends as well...which happens about once in 3-5 years...

It depends on how you define "friend."

I don't require that my friends have any interest in me outside of the contexts they wish to be friends with me in, though, and so I do consider work friends actual friends.

Same thing with cycling friends, childrearing friends, and hanging out and drinking friends.

Why should a friend share extra time with me for some reason? In any case, the more time you spend with contextual friends the greater the likelihood you will meet a lifelong friend.

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