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37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

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Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#71
post #38

The coding used by this survey is a joke. If 40% of an occupation says they work outdoors that's below 50% so it's bucketed into the work from home category on that criterion. I think if even 20% of a job is saying they work outdoors that's pretty strong evidence you're missing some information about what the other 80% are doing in their job that prevents it from being a work from home job. The net result of their se…

Couldn’t the job still be performed at home with the occasional on site? I’m thinking of a construction PM. The job could mainly be done at home other then when needed to meet GC on site. Seems like there is still WFH no?

Depends what you're using the WFH number for. If you want to extend it to an argument about being able to live substantially further from a job then needing to meet a GC on site some of the time is a dealbreaker. I think it's fair to say to call the job as a whole a WFH job it needs to be 100% remote. That's not to say non-WFH jobs can't have some remote time.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#72
post #28
post #8

Can Be != Should Be

Why not?

We are going to have a massive problem with taking on juniors, particularly younger people. Without many people visiting the office, there is a lack of banter, encouragement, confidence building. Imagine you were 16 and your introduction to the world of work was sitting in your own bedroom!

Honestly, I don't know how we deal with it unless we create a schedule where there has to be certain people in the office on certain days so that a junior can get the interaction and support which is as much of job training as anything they can do online.

So that's one example of when can do != should do

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#73
post #5

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why? I'm not a fan of the office because: 1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.

In addition to all of the social reasons others have listed, I'll list 2 technical reasons why an office is a more comfortable place for me to work:

I have 2 large monitors at my office desk (so when you include my laptop's screen, I have a total of 3 monitors; lots of screen space). Compared to no external monitors at home.

At the office, I have a gigabit connection to the LAN and file servers. At home, I have a VPN that is, while pretty good, not able to compete with 1GBe.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly — yet so many people can’t accept that ANYONE might want to work from an office. My assumption is that people who love WFH are generally suburbanites who can’t fathom getting to work involves anything other than sitting in traffic for two hours.

I hate cube and half cubes or like at my current job before covid I had an office that I shared with 2 other people.

At least you get a cube or half cube. My office is basically a really long desk with 4 people on one side and 4 people on the other (directly across from each other), with maybe 5 feet between you and the next person.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#75
post #56
post #5

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

If I lived in some parts of Europe, then yes, I would totally love to go back to the office. But in the United States? I can't afford to live close enough to the office for a short commute (4-5x as expensive) and transportation is garbage. Worst of all, there is nobody else there. Our teams are spread across 8 different countries in so many different time zones. I would have maybe 1-2 office mates from my department.…

I’m in the US, choose to live in the least expensive and smallest apartment near a large-ish city so that I can have a short and manageable commute to both work and the things I enjoy doing.

My transportation costs are essentially 0 — bicycle maintenance I can mostly do myself. My electric bill is $20-$50 a month. Sometimes $3 for a bus ticket. Plus no homeowner’s insurance, property taxes, maintenance, water/garbage bills (all included in rent).

My costs would be 4x-5x higher if I didn’t make the choices I do, simply because the style of living I prefer isn’t available outside of cities.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#76
post #5

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why? I'm not a fan of the office because: 1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.

Not the person you asked, but for me it’s the social aspect.

I can’t stand being on a camera, voice and text chat don’t really replace the in-person conversations for me.

Everything else is either the same or much worse working in person.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#78
post #18

But then the jig is up, no? I thought that was an amazing moment when recently the NYC mayor asked CEOs to "help get workers back to the office". It's not about the work, it's not about the city, it's about making sure real estate doesn't crash and those campaign contributions can keep coming.

Maybe the mayor also cares about local businesses that get their income from city workers as well as the transport networks which need all the money they can get. Maybe they care about the tourist buzz from a busy city or the saftey in numbers.

You don't always have to assume the worst of someone just because they are powerful.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#79
post #72
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

We are going to have a massive problem with taking on juniors, particularly younger people. Without many people visiting the office, there is a lack of banter, encouragement, confidence building. Imagine you were 16 and your introduction to the world of work was sitting in your own bedroom! Honestly, I don't know how we deal with it unless we create a schedule where there has to be certain people in the office on cer…

Yeah. I think it's good that we are exploring what WFH options look like and where they can work, but I think a part of that needs to be recognizing where they don't work, too.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#80
post #2

But execs want you to commute because their mindset is to make worker's life miserable, and working from home is seem like a privilege.

Not everyone loves WFH, you know.

And those people can deal. I dealt with their preferred work environment although I didn't love it.
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