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Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

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Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it is. The high performers work better, but half of the rest workers are doing nothing. I’m aware of people getting canned for stuff like outsourcing themselves, accidentally having sex on an open mic, illegally exporting computers to countries with export controls, etc since COVID. Work at home is great for people with tangible outputs. I don’t want my salesmen fucking around in the office. But many wo…

I would think the fact high performers work better remote though is what will be a competitive advantage for a 100% remote company at some point in the future. I am way more productive remote and it isn't even close. While I do like the social aspect of the office, it is such overkill. To me post-COVID, the whole country is open for business. I want to join a company that values high productive remote workers and see…

Lol, this is exactly the strategy of the business I’m running. We started in March, have a team of 10, and are remote first in our DNA. It’s so much easier to hire that you can build a team of top performers fairly easily and evaluate them based on output.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee that 29% of employees will not quit their jobs if forced to go back; that number is way to high.

Given if the alternative is that they can get a remote job elsewhere easily, why not?

I had been working remotely for a startup based in the bay area for a couple of years prior to the pandemic and living in a low COL area for a year of that experience.

I promise you it is much harder to find remote work than otherwise; even during a pandemic. I ended up relocating back to a high COL area because of this difficulty(among a few other things).

Once you realize you have to take a 50% pay cut to work anywhere else(or find another high paying remote job- good luck, everyone else wants one too!) remote work becomes a very tight, and scary leash.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#494
So, let's say after COVID, people start getting back to their cubicles and continue to crank out office hours just as before. Except you, you continue working from home (after some convincing arguments to your boss/management that you are just as effective WFH). How long will you last? Do you coworkers get jealous (although that could have done the same).

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#495
post #437

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I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me. If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen i…

The office you describe sounds like a crap office. Comparing a crap office to remote (where it's largely as good or as bad as your decide) isn't really fair. I've previously always worked in lovely offices, with lots of light and quiet spaces, at places where adhoc working from home was common and acceptable (even if we were still office first). Compared to that remote working sucks for me, particularly for the reaso…

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Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#496
Hm. While work-from-home can be very productive, there's a bias when you mix work-at-office and work-from-home. The remote folks are left out of things happening in the office. Folks not aware of this, and thus doing nothing to mitigate it, will quickly conclude the remote workers must come back to the office. Rather than work on a hybrid model. Because that's easier.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#497
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your company is purely remote Pure remote companies are likely to be rare. But we may see a proliferation of hybrid companies that maintain office spaces but allow certain roles to work remotely most of the time. I think your analysis here is one-sided and is ignoring all the major problems with 100%-work-in-office cultures. Housing costs are absolutely out of control in major urban centers, and newcomers are sa…

The commenter wasn’t talking about all people having to work at the office all of the time, merely that fully remote was not good and not favoured by young engineers. And he was spot on. I’m a young engineer in my 20s and if I don’t get in-person training soon (I started over a year ago and haven’t gotten any since we’ve been remote the entire time), I’m going to quit and go elsewhere. This is in spite of working in…

You’re unlikely to find in-person training anywhere right now, so that would likely be a fool’s errand.

You need to speak with your manager about this. There’s a lot of social contact and training that can be created without being in the office. If you haven’t spoken up and are just stewing about it at home, your team may be oblivious you feel this way.

There’s also no reason to assume you’d have gotten more training in the office. Many teams simply do not invest enough in training and onboarding new engineers. It sounds like you’re new to the industry and possibly haven’t realized this is common yet. The good news is communication can often resolve this to some degree if not fully.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#498
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, man. Young You sounds like a very different person to Young Me. If my first employer had told young 20-something Me "I'm afraid we're not going to let you come in and sit in this felt cube every day after all. Instead we're going to ask that you fly to Thailand and work from a laptop on the beach from here on out.", I would not have reacted by explaining how work is a social thing that needs to happen i…

You didn't get what OP is saying. The point is not that nobody wants remote work. The point is that today the office is an important part of our social life, and as long as we don't find a replacement people will be willing to go back to the office. Not all the people would want that, not going every day at the office either. But having an office so that you can socialize is today required by a lot of people to be ha…

> and as long as we don't find a replacement people will be willing to go back to the office

Isn't it about time we found a replacement? Why should the thing that gives us a social life, the thing that gives us money, and the thing that gives us a sense of fulfillment all have to be provided by an employer?

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#499

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.…

I get the impression that these headlines are often treated as a writing prompt by commenters, independent of the linked content.

Thanks for the quality analysis.

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