It is not cut and dry. I think we need to find the balance between "no/hardly work from home" vs "never come in office". Employers have to be flexible about letting employees work from home whenever needed. When I was an employee, I wanted flexibility to sometimes do that when needed. I usually wanted to go to office because I like getting out of the house. I get that some people love working from home 100% but I am a big proponent of finding a balance and not going extreme one way or the other.
A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
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Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#22Weird sentiment in this thread. Regardless of the survey i have only seen positive reactions to working remote, and hope remote is here to stay.
Online discussions quickly fall into the Obligatory Contrarian trap when there's little else to latch on to.
So in every one of these threads, HN is all of a sudden nostalgic for two hours a day commuting, shelling out-of-pocket for parking, eating junk food for lunch every day...
Offices cost money. This is why WFH isn't going away. Even people who are required to go into the office periodically might find themselves sharing temp space with others who use the same (reduced) space on alternating days.
As you can tell from this comment, I love WFH and will never go back....and it doesn't look like I'll have to. While the poor office dwellers are sitting in their cars, I'm enjoying a nice morning run.
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#23Full remote is not the future, I'm sure that most people don't want to work remotely full time, it will most likely be 2days/week at home type of thing.
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#24This article misinterpreted the survey. 91% of people don't want to work from home, 91% want it as an option, and that's only people who are currently working from home who used to not. 57% seems more accurate: "But once the crisis is over, most (57%) of those who were working before the outbreak and who intend to stay part of the workforce say they want to be able to continue working from home." Actual survey result…
To me the concern here is that if a company offers working remotely as an option, remote workers will always be second-class citizens. (The bad habit of Slack DMs instead of conversations in a public channel is already pretty entrenched.) People that work in the office will have casual conversations that exclude people working remotely, and the remote workers will always be a little behind. I think for that reason th…
I'm not sure I'd want all-or-nothing to be the norm. I was a full-time remote worker before the pandemic, but I think one of the reasons it worked so well for me is because I had been able to build up a lot of the working relationships I have now in person. I made the decision to go remote because it was just going to work better for me, and I was fully aware that I would have to work at not being forgotten by the people in the office. There are ways to deal with it: you need to overcommunicate, make conscious efforts to get in on "office gossip" (the non-toxic kind), etc. An occcasional office visit or retreat makes a big difference.
Some of the people I've enjoyed working with the most have really struggled with the 100% remote dynamic during the pandemic. They have different personalities which have made it hard for them to be stuck at home, but those personalities make them great team members too. I'm not sure I'd want to just never work with people like that again.
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#25Weird sentiment in this thread. Regardless of the survey i have only seen positive reactions to working remote, and hope remote is here to stay.
No amount of "camaraderie" or "social interaction" is worth the soul killing experience of commuting to and from work >200 times a year.
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#26Simply put, if my employer told me I needed to be in the office more than 5 days per month, I would find a new employer.
I'm more productive than ever. I'm happier than ever. I'm eating healthier. I sleep better. My marriage is stronger. My finances are kicking ass.
I won't give this up.
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me the concern here is that if a company offers working remotely as an option, remote workers will always be second-class citizens. (The bad habit of Slack DMs instead of conversations in a public channel is already pretty entrenched.) People that work in the office will have casual conversations that exclude people working remotely, and the remote workers will always be a little behind. I think for that reason th…
I think all or nothing is not realistic for most companies unless the CEOs are very progressive and just deeply believe in it. A decent workaround is to have entirely remote teams and entirely in-office teams. That way people can be on teams where they feel like being remote is not a detriment to their careers (because ALL discussion takes place online) and people who prefer working in-person don't have to force ever…
At my company we’ve always had teams that appeared “all remote”. They just were teams not stationed in the HQ and they were clearly less important (or that was the vibe) and they were usually in a low COL country instead.
The mix definitely will make a cohort of “second class citizens”
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me the concern here is that if a company offers working remotely as an option, remote workers will always be second-class citizens. (The bad habit of Slack DMs instead of conversations in a public channel is already pretty entrenched.) People that work in the office will have casual conversations that exclude people working remotely, and the remote workers will always be a little behind. I think for that reason th…
I'm not sure I'd want all-or-nothing to be the norm. I was a full-time remote worker before the pandemic, but I think one of the reasons it worked so well for me is because I had been able to build up a lot of the working relationships I have now in person. I made the decision to go remote because it was just going to work better for me, and I was fully aware that I would have to work at not being forgotten by the pe…
> is because I had been able to build up a lot of the working relationships I have now in person
I’ve been remote only for a decade, and built those same relationships while doing so.
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#29I suspect a lot of the "we're all going to be remote from now on" sentiment is overblown. It seems to me more likely that there will be a few more remote friendly companies, and a very few more remote-only companies after the dust settles, but the real shift will be for most "office based" workers will be the expectation of partially working from home. There is a big difference between "never going to an office again…
I think it'll potentially shift radically for some industries. Tech and other knowledge worker industry adapts more easily to this sort of thing than most, and tech in particular probably will pivot for a large segment for sake of not having to pay rent.
What I expect to really take off, though, is things like managed IT you do from home for some manufacturing company somewhere--small groups embedded or servicing larger companies that can be hired and spun up more cheaply from elsewhere in the country.
Basically, everything that people said would happen (but didn't work out) with globalization in knowledge worker industry, I personally expect to actually happen and work out with "domestication" of it to include a large segment of remote workers. The business considerations are mostly the same, minus the cultural, governmental, and time zone barriers that prevented it from working.
Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely
#30I suspect a lot of the "we're all going to be remote from now on" sentiment is overblown. It seems to me more likely that there will be a few more remote friendly companies, and a very few more remote-only companies after the dust settles, but the real shift will be for most "office based" workers will be the expectation of partially working from home. There is a big difference between "never going to an office again…
The whole landscape probably shifts a bit. More people fully remote. More WFH more days per week than they did before. And so forth. But, yes, I don't expect many companies who currently have an office(s) to close them down. Maybe reconfigure, shut down expansion plans, hotel as needed, etc.
Won't really affect me as I was fully remote before this (in spite of being commuting distance from a company office). But I definitely know people who have moved out of the area.