Turning the AC or heating completely off when you're not at home is never recommended. To save power, you just let them run at temperatures a few degrees outside your comfort zone when your away, and it will still have enough thermal inertia to quickly get back to comfort levels when you're back without the risk of condensation/mold. Where I live, this is even written in my rental agreement, that when I leave home fo…
this is probably more due to pipes freezing
Nope, in EU pipes are very well insulated inside the walls. It's to prevent condensation and mold formation.
"...not about people like you." My wife, who spent much of her career in corporate HR, would often note: "People who want to work, will work wherever you put them. People who don't want to work will find a way not to work wherever you put them." The people who used WFH as a "2 year vacation" are the same people who will wander the office engaging in random conversations and scrolling Facebook the remainder of the day…
Cubicles, as opposed to an office with a door that closes mean someone is likely to walk by and see what you are wasting time doing. Once in a while everyone has 'compiling' time to waste, but eventually it gets obvious
Businesses should be measuring results before process. Not that process is unimportant, but especially with ICs, process can vary dramatically.
it's also a cultural thing. US commute is particularly bad, I work from home and been doing it on and off for the past 20 years. My commute has never been longer than 20 minutes total. I now live 5 minutes walk away from my office, I'm not going, but if I had to I would walk there and have a very nice breakfast in some bar on the road there. One thing that's always overlooked is how much WFH is selecting people who a…
> WFH is selecting people who already have a tendency to stay home and not socialize much at work. Doesn't engineering in general select for these personality traits?
This has been my observation over the last 20 years. I truly enjoy socializing and collaborating in person. I usually worked from home once or twice a week before the pandemic. It was a fantastic convenience as I lived an hour from my office. Once the pandemic hit we were fully remote. At first I thought, "see? we're more productive, this is truly better". As time wore on, I can see why a hybrid approach might be a better solution. I have never seen a more disengaged engineering staff. We gather weekly on Zoom for a general "shoot the breeze talk about tech" conversation and 95% of the cameras are off. Those folks are completely silent. That's their choice of course but it makes the work environment very lonely. I've tried to rile my team up to go into the office once in awhile for whiteboarding sessions/collaboration but they're simply not interested. So, perhaps your assumption is true. Engineers, for the most part, do not want to socialize, they simply want to do their work and get paid. The only problem I have here is, I feel our product suffers due to lack of collaboration.
"Emergency" WFH at my workplace have been slashed, everyone back in full since the start of the month. No reason publically given, been privately told "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up". I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I al…
> I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I also feel kind of personally insulted and victim of ham-handed collective punishment. Have you used these to go to your CEO directly re your WFH request? It's where I'd start.
Depending on how flat your organization is, this would be a job killer in many companies. Your CEO may grant you WFH, but all of the execs you report to will be aware of you going over their heads. Depending on how much political capital you have, this can be very risky.
> How long until climate change or expensive gasoline forces people to just stay home?? Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics.
>Yes, this is just the beginning of the end. I would even say this is the beginning of the end for cities as we know them. I think 80-90% of all white collar jobs will leave cities and suburbia. This will really change the dynamics. This is actually a super interesting subject I haven't considered. What is the tenability of cities without fossil fuels? I think we do know, it's really the cities that collapse. Farmers…
Unfortunately most missle silos in the US are located in the rural midwest.
"Emergency" WFH at my workplace have been slashed, everyone back in full since the start of the month. No reason publically given, been privately told "not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up". I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I al…
I think it is indefensible to bring people back to work in any workplace where mask wearing is needed at your desk. If you're admitting in that way that there is a risk in being in the office then you shouldn't be requiring them to be there!
With the obvious exception of essential jobs that cannot be done remotely, such as hands-on medical care.
it's also a cultural thing. US commute is particularly bad, I work from home and been doing it on and off for the past 20 years. My commute has never been longer than 20 minutes total. I now live 5 minutes walk away from my office, I'm not going, but if I had to I would walk there and have a very nice breakfast in some bar on the road there. One thing that's always overlooked is how much WFH is selecting people who a…
It'll be nice when the serf mentality of finding meaning in your job is finally gone from the world.
The late Studs Terkel showed us all - 50 years ago - how work was a search for both "daily meaning and daily bread". The speed and efficiency credo of the modern age has restricted independence and creativity almost out of existence for millions - but far from this being a serf mentality - this was foisted upon people by others.
According to consistent research, remote workers work more hours than their office-bound counterparts. Working at home is clearly more productive than working in an office, according to studies.
Please tell me you don't heat/cool your house 24/7. Other than that I can't agree with you more.
Some people don't have a choice, in Florida during the summer time if you aren't running your AC full-time the humidity and heat will ruin your home. It stays in the 80's even overnight (both temp. Fº and Relative Humidity %).
Sounds similar to the climate here in Buenos Aires, maybe slightly warmer. To my knowledge people generally don't keep AC's running when they're not around, in the summer. I've never heard of a building being ruined by environmental humidity.
I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both be…
when I visited NYC I got the feel for the battle for every square inch of room on every sidewalk, street, and building. Being able to like sit at a table to eat at a small place you picked up your food has got to be a huge cost in space just for that to exist.
Then I started thinking about all the massive skyscrapers that are just offices that people show up to for just 8 hours a day and then reallocate the space crisis to their residence elsewhere. It seems like a comical design choice almost.