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I hope work from home continues

ryanmercer.com

301–310 of 610 posts

Re: I hope work from home continues

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total, complete nonsense and lies. We have unemployment here - paid by the employer - and its substantial. I know several people who are even able to increase their savings while unemployed.

In the US, employers pay unemployment insurance premiums to the state. The state then pays unemployment benefits to qualifying individuals. Individuals who resign (quit) or are terminated for cause are not eligible for unemployment benefits. For example, an employer can slowly ratchet up requirements at work to the point where they can document an employee is not performing, terminate them, and the employee is not el…

An employer who fires a whistleblower for cause is begging for an NRLB lawsuit (constructive dismissal) for no benefit. The employeer doesn't benefit from blocking unemployment except if they try to fire a LOT of people.

Obviously Covid is an extreme special case at the division of unemployment

Re: I hope work from home continues

#302
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fine. Don’t make me come back to the office because you have undesirable accommodations.

I'm not sure this "you can't make me X" attitude is particularly helpful. The reality is that lots of people have undesirable accommodations, and whether you do or not a lot of people do and don't want to go back into the office. IMO this has to be a group conversation not an individualistic one. Full disclosure: I don't really want to return to 100% office requirement either. I'm really excited to see other humans a…

I believe my company is going to end up maintaining a small office with a set of open desks that people can come in an work at. At least for us, this seems like the right balance. We've grown in the pandemic, so keeping a smaller office lets the company save money. Hiring remotely expands our pool of candidates. At the same time, employees who benefit on the whole from remote work get to keep it, while employees who thrive on in-person interaction and a dedicated space outside their home get to keep it. It's a little tricky to set up blended in-person and remote meetings, but once that's in place, the office can be much more fluid.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#304
post #263

Those of you who think that remote-work-by-default would be a good thing, can I ask how your companies are handling career progression and collaboration, as well as mentorship of junior developers? Listen to Adam Savage [1] talk about his early career as a prop-maker. I just don't see how that sort of deep collaboration is possible remotely. As a recent graduate whose first full-time job has been full remote due to t…

Your concerns are valid. I think this is really an opportunity to get intentional about networking and learning within your company. Everyone else is presumably in the same boat, so if I was early in my career I would focus on becoming the best remote networker and learner possible. Most people will just go with the flow and not really adapt intentionally to the situation so in some ways you may be able to actually s…

I feel like making a career change to teaching as well. But the horror stories I hear about how hostile parents are towards teachers, and the fact that I'd take a pay-cut to about 1/3 of what I'm making have prevented me from considering it seriously.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t choose to not care. It's all a matter of priorities. If caring means you lose your job, yeah, you're not gonna care. And losing your job in the USA means: hunger, homelessness, no internet, less chance of being hired with unemployment record, assumption that you did something terrible, low/no medical, etc. For many, especially those whom can't save a nest egg of appreciable value (6 months out of work kin…

Total, complete nonsense and lies. We have unemployment here - paid by the employer - and its substantial. I know several people who are even able to increase their savings while unemployed.

Good luck with that. I was fired for having cancer while working remotely. The state EEOC said I might have a case for suing the business for wrongful termination but that it would be difficult to win. Unemployment was something like $250 a week when I had been making 4x that.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#306
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work for actually suggested getting rid of our office and going 100% remote for our group. We actually voted on whether to keep leasing it after Covid or not. We voted to keep it as we generally like our office and it's nice to have a place to meet face to face sometimes. Since we voted to keep it corporate has told us we have to come in at least 3 days a week after Covid. So for us it's less an issue o…

That's a good approach. I think a lot of companies are going to downsize their office space in the future. Having a company place to meet is a good idea. I predict there will be some variants of WeWork which will focus on this concept, basically providing rotating company spaces - possibly complete with branding and decorations which would be swapped out each morning for the "company of the day".

Branding can be done with screens. Logos can be done with screens. Fascinating idea, basically a pop-up company..

Re: I hope work from home continues

#308
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The companies mandating 100% office time are doing so because their particular executive teams are nuts about it. See Netflix.

To me it is a cost issue. Living within 5-day-a-week commuting distance to an office is expensive for the weighted majority of technology jobs. You are trading space/rent for facetime. That is fine, but the salaries for 5-day-a-week-from-office jobs need to compensate for this -- not just for execs, but also for normal workers. Living in a 1br was charming as a 25yo, and not so much for someone with a family. Driving…

No salary grading, at least within a country, is easier when you don't try to compete at the high end. And it's effectively what a lot of companies do anyway even if they don't say so publicly. If someone can get a job with one of the big tech employers in the Bay Area and they want to work there, a lot of companies won't even try to salary match.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clearify “don’t care”? Because here you simply report the company anonymously. You even have a person among the staff, who is extremely difficult to fire, that can do the reporting for you. Companies will be fined for this kind of environment and the office will be closed if things aren’t improved. You can’t choose to not care.

It depends on the country/connectedness of the execs with the said authority. In a non-corrupt place, sure report away. In a slightly corrupt, what if the regulator plays golf with an exec at your company? Or went to the same grade school? Etc. Fully corrupt is the easiest to explain.

Come on. Regulators who handle individual minor cases are low level finctioaries, not moustache twirling Rothschilds.

Re: I hope work from home continues

#310
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% remote. Some face to face is desirable, sure. Do it in core work hours, and don't assume I want to work outside those.

I think that was the idea. Most 100% remote places I know of that do retreats typically have them during the week. A weekend retreat would be reserved for an activity that would only happen on a weekend and has buy-in from the team. There seems to be a lot of resistance from remote workers about remote worker retreats happening outside of work hours. Is this actually a thing? I have never heard of it other than the w…

> There seems to be a lot of resistance from remote workers about remote worker retreats happening outside of work hours. Is this actually a thing? I have never heard of it other than the weekend caveat (weekend only event with team buy in) that I mentioned above.

The occasional event w/ buy-in definitely can work, but that wasn't how OP seemed to frame it. Maybe I misinterpreted, maybe he badly explained his idea, I don't know. But I'd have given anybody sh*t for trying to make me work outside of work hours, remote or not.

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