Interns and junior employees will suffer because of this.
Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
71–80 of 200 posts
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s…
What about lte connections? I live 40km from Berlin and I get 5G. 4G would be quite decent too.
40km from Berlin isn't really rural though. Try going 100km further. I recently drove through rural Brandenburg & Saxony close to the border to Poland. Some villages had 2G, I also encountered (tiny) villages with basically no mobile connection at all. I can understand why people are forced to leave for bigger cities if you cannot even get reliable 4G or decent internet at home.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#73This will be great for those smaller towns which have been suffering a drain to the cities for decades.
Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s…
I'm in this position. I run ADSL + NBN satellite.
Come school holidays I put all the TVs/iPads etc on one and the other for my work. Still a pain with slow internet but it limits it. ADSL is 3.5mb down and satellite is 30mb but latency is worse.
I'm looking at bonded networks currently to improve, plus when Starlink gets to me I think I'll keep a second connection as I heard there are a few dropouts and will be a while for the satellites to number enough to mitigate that.
Anyway, it's not ideal but it works ok and lets me live rural.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I “worked from home” for several years before covid, but I never worked exclusively at home until covid. I’d usually spend a few hours of a few days a week at a coffee shop, library or park, and not being able to do that during covid has definitely made remote work feel more isolating.
While there‘s truth to that, it doesn‘t bring home my own issue with WFH: It might be okay to much better for individual contributors, but it‘s harsh for me as a manager. Zoom (fatigue) meetings all day, staring at the screen instead of real people and any form of "managing by walking around" and watercooler chats are gone. This might not make a difference if my job was a corporate mess and sucked before already, but…
I started a job as a manager during the pandemic, with everyone working from home. It sucked. On top of the usual difficulties with onboarding remotely, I had to deal with getting to know everyone around me in a 360 degree sphere, and forming relationships when most people had already been able to get to know each other in person.
Can not wait to get back to being able to meet people in person, even if remote and WFH is allowed and accepted in the future, which I think it will be for all but the most dinosaur of companies.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I “worked from home” for several years before covid, but I never worked exclusively at home until covid. I’d usually spend a few hours of a few days a week at a coffee shop, library or park, and not being able to do that during covid has definitely made remote work feel more isolating.
How are you not able to spend time at a park?
Sitting in a park alone was illegal for a couple of months in the U.K.
In other countries it got even more strict - 1 hour exercise and you had to pre register on a form.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s…
What about lte connections? I live 40km from Berlin and I get 5G. 4G would be quite decent too.
Mobile data in Germany is very, very, very expensive. An hour of video meeting consumes around 1GB (I think, probably even more), you can not keep up with the cost, I think.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s…
What about lte connections? I live 40km from Berlin and I get 5G. 4G would be quite decent too.
that's far from universal.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#78How would that work in terms of taxes? The UK doesn't have taxes based on location like the US?
No, Europe tends to have the same tax rates and rules per country. But in a way you can compare the EU and US here, moving countries within the EU also has tax consequences. But due to language barriers, that happens less often than people moving states in the US. And the UK isn't part of the EU anyway.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#79This will be great for those smaller towns which have been suffering a drain to the cities for decades.
Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s…
> but internet is unbearably slow anywhere but in a few major cities
There's only one city in the Highlands - Inverness.
Re: Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'
#80I really much appreciate this aspect of the pandemic. The "home office revolution" has long been possible, but still would not have happened for a long time without COVID.
Crazy to think that if WeWork held out a bit longer they could have come out of this on top, as WFH becomes more common.