I love working from home especially the not having to dash into the car and drive there amongst angry drivers
I’m very fortunate to have a job with a very small company (literally 4 people) where we get to set the rules.
It is funny to see the ingrained notion we (collective “we”) once had that working from home could never work. I started this job in 2018, and I often suggested we do a work from home day each week since we all had laptops. My bosses (co-owners of this company) always shot it down. “Oh we’d never get any work done!”
Then, of course, COVID. And while I certainly would rather COVID not have happened, it did convince them that working from actually works. And, of course, they loved it as well. So since 2020 I have not had to go back to the office. We still have office space for some minor things, and once in a blue moon we might gather there. But in six years I’ve probably spent six days in the office.
Heck, I’m fortunate enough to finally have convinced them we should take Friday’s off, too. We piloted that program two years ago over the summer, and it, of course, stuck because everyone likes that—though we actually just take every-other Friday off. But still. Hard to beat.
Sounds like a company that somehow has no boomers dragging it down.
Bosses are in their 50s, but they came from a giant corporation then decided to make their own business.
You guys hiring? How’s your benefits package?
Unfortunately no.
Benefits are actually kinda bad, honestly. We have insurance but insurance companies don’t want to give good insurance to really small businesses like this. No vision or dental.
extroverts can’t understand that not everyone is like them. more at 11
Extroverts can’t understand that not everone wants to listen to them yap. Updates at the hour.
Even if they do understand that, I’m not sure it matters. I’m an introvert so I know how easy it is to think of extroverts as annoying, overbearing sausages. However they have needs just like I do. Isolation genuinely harms them just like over stimulation harms me. I think it brings some realism to this topic if we remember that maybe they aren’t doing everything they’re doing just for the sake of shoving extroversion down your throat: maybe they are just trying to meet their own needs. It’s like the flip side of what introverts always say: don’t take it personally if I need to withdraw from you, I’m just meeting my own needs. Can you make the same allowance for them?
Sure, but they have the easier solution. They can socialize anywhere. Meanwhile, for us: income isn’t optional.
To say nothing of the ethics of using a captive audience to meet your ‘needs.’
Right? I often like being around people. I don’t want to do it in the fucking office
Yeah. COVID lockdown was my golden era.
I secretly despised people at my company that wanted to demolish remote working completely after COVID on the pretence that people are traumaticed by the solitude and need to get back on the horse 100%.
Eventually only max. 30% remote was allowed and became company norm.
Even then some of these pieces of shit actually forbid remote working from their subordinates.
Those subordinates then gave them absolutely garbage employee reviews and made their worklife hell. Now they are in some other company torturing some other poor souls.
It was everyone’s golden era. And then the owner class pressured the political class to memory hole the period so we forgot all the lessons we learned.
It’s why we need to bring unions back to forcibly make sure those lessons are applied.
These are the same people who create useless team building exercises.
As an extrovert, please let me work from home. It’ll save me a commute so I can spend more time with people I like
“I think flexibility is here to stay,” she said.
This is the problem with academics. They do a study, find something is logically better, then assume humans will act logically.
Unfortunately, most CEOs don’t give a shit if their employees are more happy, productive, and less likely to quit if they work remotely. They just want to feel like they have control over people’s lives, which is why we’re seeing more return to office initiatives.
The point of the study is to generate knowledge, not to set policy.
As the other reader says, the point of studies is to develop objective truth.
After one generation, this new objective truth starts getting ingrained in people’s minds. That’s usually because after one generation the people who held old beliefs are out of the scene and new young people who believe in obvious things come to be part of the scene.
That’s how society changes over time. Not people changing their minds, but new people with a different way of seeing the same things.
An old saying is change comes one funeral at a time.
They signed a 20-year lease 10 years ago so they feel like they have to use the building.
Source: wild assumptions, i know nothing about commercial real estate.
It’s more the canteen and coffee shops onsite I think.
Our place guarantees minimum revenue to the canteen.
The company has to pay extra if the staff aren’t there.
Then there’s all the other businesses in the area. I imagine they come under pressure from local government to bring workers back to save those businesses
I betcha a nickle that the fines paid to the canteen would be more than offset by the increase in profits due to worker productivity.
It’s like the time theft myth, the belief that workers will intrinsically slack unless you micromanage them. In fact the opposite is true, when workforces are allowed to chat with loved ones and surf the internet their productivity improves.
Curiously, when a company mandates that 15-minute breaks are taken and lunch is eaten during lunch break (even when workers are obsessive and want to work through breaks) then their productivity improves even more.
But the upper management of companies don’t actually want to manage in a way that data shows maximizes profits.
A couple of important caveats:
Still, Johnson said face-to-face interaction can play an important role in helping coworkers build relationships, especially if they are just starting out in their careers.
“Remote works better after you know people,” she said. “So there is still a benefit of having some face time.”
So, it does rather beg the question, what should one do if someone is joining an existing team?
Based on two decades of experience: As a general rule, there should be regular in-person team events (around two a year and just for fun). In addition, there should be joint training sessions (also around two a year). New staff members require a great deal of attention from their team, both at these events and when working remotely, particularly at the outset.
Also if there’s an option to go to the office, that works too. I’d like to have an office to go to once a month or less, just for the social, meet people irl, etc, but wouldn’t give up remote work for it.
In your experience, have any online social things worked well? We’re always looking out for stuff where I am.
Cooking together is brilliant: just yesterday we held our summer strategy meeting at a cookery school, where we cooked and enjoyed a three-course meal together. Basically, anything that encourages plenty of interaction and offers a completely different setting to the usual one is ideal.
That’s cool! I love a good shared project. But we are global so I need online stuff.
A former manager had team lunches every month. It wasn’t mandatory but it was a day that we could go in and team members would be there. It was also not a day taken up with general business update meetings and the like, so we could get work done.
The key is ensuring that people know when they can go in and see other people they know, not just the marketing team.
A step further it should be more than twice a year I would say once a quarter would be more preferable. There should also be one day a week everyone on the team should be expected to be in the office. Beyond that max 3 days a week none of this minimum bullshit.
If more are needed, just give it a try. We’ve learned that organising more than 3-4 a year is very time-consuming, particularly when it comes to scheduling them for the whole team.
it does rather beg the question
Nope. It just raises the question.
Which is bullshit, I joined and have worked for a remote only company for over a decade now and I’ve never met any of my coworkers, but I chat and have calls with them daily and we all have the office banter and even talk about outside work stuff as well. You don’t need to know people to magically work remote, that’s just an excuse to stuff people into a building together.
To the surprise of no one.
Capitalism as we know it, isn’t about effectiveness nor efficiency, it is primarily about power. So long as this remains the case, workers will continue to be abused for the amusement of the higher ups.
I feel like this is a pretty useless study, this is going to be entirely subjective what you prefer. Optionality gives a lot of upside, more than either extreme.
Personally I prefer being in the office, better for my focus, my likely (undergoing diagnosis) ADHD as fuck brain, but I also have dynamic work hours so I can simply avoid peak traffic.
That being said, if I was required to be in the office everyday at a set time e.g 9 to 5 I would fucking quit.
While i much prefer 100% remote, i won’t force anyone to do the same (the inverse doesn’t happen).
However, to me the real contributor to my well-being is motivation.I worked on site for 4 months before my remote work was approved and it was literally the most unfulfilling life I had
I would work 9 to 630, come home so tired that all I could do is throw something quick to eat and watch TV (didn’t process what I was watching) then later fall asleep and rinse and repeat
How anyone is able to do this lifestyle is a testament to humanity’s ability to adapt
Working culture is fucked up and needs to change
I was in the same boat for about a year. It was beyond fucked, and now with hindsight my wife and I call that period “the great fog”, because I was so absent even when I was home and “rested”.
It was like I was living as a ghost, unable to perceive much beyond the feeling of fatigue.
The assholes at HR were doing everything they could to make the process harder. And even more insulting the company had the entire workforce remote for building maintenance they chose to do on a building they didn’t even own.
So it’s OK to work from home when the business needs us to do so, but not when our disability needs us to do so? Hypocritical motherfuckers had no line they wouldn’t cross.
My company was perfect except for their strict stance on in-office hours (I broke them routinely)
I recently quit my job and just as of the last few days I finally feel reset, or close to
mental peace, clear mind, a lot of energy and wit slowly coming back
I’m all for as much remote work as possible, but I would love a study to include commute length and mode of transport. When I lived a 20 min walk from my office it was great and didn’t mind being at the office full time.
I moved away and it’s now a 30 min car drive which I really hate, a 1 hr bus journey, or 45 min bike ride.
I wouldn’t mind the bus journey so much, as I can read a book on my way, but the unreliability makes it feel so much worse.
And despite being longer than the drive, I much prefer to cycle into work, and I’ll usually do extra days in the office during the summer as an “excuse” to be on the bike.
I‘ve read a study somewhere that compared car and bike commutes. I turned out that people were much happier riding bike and have real life interactions with people at the streets than sitting alone in an iron box and drive a car.
Despite this, having the same times as you, I enjoy riding bike more because the commute time is always the same. Nobody can stop you on a bike. No traffic jams, no accidents that blocks a road, no rush hour stress.
I enjoy riding bike more because the commute time is always the same. Nobody can stop you on a bike. No traffic jams, no accidents that blocks a road, no rush hour stress.
At a previous job, I used to commute on the Atlanta Beltline Eastside Trail. Because Atlanta is so starved for bike and pedestrian infrastructure, it was actually popular enough that it managed to slow me down with foot traffic sometimes. (And that was on weekday afternoons; it’s even busier on the weekend.)
Still infinitely better than driving, of course.
Pedestrians in the US? Are you kidding?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-yz0KhZJHI
Not my video and I don’t know what day of the week it was filmed, but it’s pretty representative of ‘medium’ weekday afternoon traffic (even though the video title calls it “heavy”). Like I said in my previous comment, weekends are worse.
(I don’t endorse trying to ride as aggressively as they’re doing in the video, BTW.)
Nice one. Love to see it.
However, as European it feels sort of standard traffic mx. In our city centers are many pedestrians and bikers.
If you want to get the real feeling, try a bike highway in the Netherlands. Never did it myself. It’s still on my bucket list https://youtu.be/ynwMN3Z9Og8?is=oK8XCSuHsf6hgP1n They even have bike traffic jams sometimes ;-D
I’m literally one of the mods of !fuckcars, which is to say, I am painfully aware of how much better Europe in general, and the Netherlands in particular, is at this stuff.
The difference with Atlanta is that path is kinda the only one like that we have in the entire metro area. We have other trails in a network that’s gradually becoming more connected, but that’s the only part of it that’s more-or-less fully built out with pedestrian-oriented surrounding architecture, which makes it far more popular than any of the others.
Other trails look more like:
Beltline Southside Trail
Stone Mountain Trail
Silver Comet Trail
Don’t get me wrong: they’re nice, in their own way. But they don’t have nearly the appeal or ridership of the only trail with proper urbanism.
If they would get rid of these terrible open plan offices, where people can hear the silent fart you try to squeeze out gently, and go back to offices where you at least would have a smidgen of privacy, this would improve office attendance.
While some part of me misses my fortress cubicle and undershelf lamp, complete with pillar obstructing the window so I had just two vertical slits…
I still only did good work there when I was alone in the office, usually before or after most people’s office hours.
Once enough people showed up it just became a daily social event ritual. This was well before covid.
Surprise surprise
