So much relates to commute. I'd probably meander in for a halfway decent office arrangement if it were less than a 30 minute walk and there were actually people I worked with there. But that hasn't been the case so I don't.
I wonder what WFH arrangements in Copenhagen or Amsterdam look like.
Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but the few folks I know in Copenhagen do WFH as hybrid - none of them are fully remote, coming into an easily commutable office 2-3 days a week or some variation of this.
Never forget this - if this were "real" inflation and not corporate fuckery then their profits would be down.
If it is just corporate profits the state and county sure piled on by increasing my property taxes 40% over the past 3 years. That's an extra $300 a month for me which is more than my car payment.
I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…
> packing and unpacking all your shit
This is often overlooked. Humans are weird about making spaces our "own." The emotional response to a blank desk versus the same desk, in the same place, surrounded by the same people but with some nonsense bauble--or houseplant you're torturing--that makes it your own is massive.
It shouldn't take me an hour and 30 minutes in congested, underbuilt roads to drive 20 miles into the office. Cities and their wealthy politically-connected commercial office building owners have had decades to fix this problem. No sympathy.
The problem is your office is 20 miles from your workplace.
20 miles is more than the entire length of Seattle. Heck it is more than the entire width of the Seattle Metro area (western most tip of Seattle heading straight east until it turns into farmland).
There should be sufficient housing stock such that people don't need to drive 20 miles to work!
I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…
I clicked in to this topic to make these exact same points, but you did a better job of it than I would have. My employer mandated a minimum number of days in-office per week and then implemented the flex desk system with all of the drawbacks that you outlined. In my company's case it's a little worse: There are, in fact, often no available open desks in my workgroup. Furthermore there's no enforcement or discipline…
With no specific location you should be sought at and more butts than desks nobody should expect to be able to find you anyway.
Weird thing is, you'd think Google+Meta would have enough pull to fix this in areas like SF Bay because they could literally build their own city and wreck the entire Bay Area economy...
They actually did try (Facebook has shuttles everywhere, and tried to rebuild the decommissioned passenger railway near US-84), but economic concerns like layoffs, etc. ended up taking priority. The main issue is it takes like 10-20 years of concerted effort in the US to approve/build a bridge, and nobody except the government is willing to wait that long. This is mostly a political problem.
Ignoring the shuttles which I don't think conclusively illustrate your point; Google has for years threatened to develop land into homes in San Jose so workers can choose to live closer, with the idea of doing exactly what OP suggests, but like so many Google projects, never seems to pan out:
Companies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work.
>Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work
I wonder how this would look like if Microsoft's stock were to be doing poorly. I seem to have noticed a strong correlation between companies being all for FWH and other perks, as long as "line goes UP", but the moment it stops going up, for factors unrelated to the workforces' performance, then they start tightening the screws on the workers: RTO, layoffs, etc.
Companies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work.
>Companies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work. This is what I find so funny. We accomplished more in the two years of full remote than any period before or since. Half the company now runs on software built during that time. But management refuses to acknowledge the fact, and mandated RTO. I am 100% convinced that a full remote team ca…
> But management refuses to acknowledge the fact, and mandated RTO.
That’s because while workers discovered they were working better at home, middle management discovered that they were useless and had nothing other to do than exert some control over workers lives.
They’re just afraid upper management may notice it.
I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…
So much relates to commute. I'd probably meander in for a halfway decent office arrangement if it were less than a 30 minute walk and there were actually people I worked with there. But that hasn't been the case so I don't.
Same. For me, the office is door to door 35 minutes, 20 of those walking, the other 15 on light railway. Any longer than that and I would really struggle. As it is, this arrangement works well for me. I tend to WFH one day out of ten, or if I have a reason to be at home such as a delivery or a tradesperson visiting.