[Tyga11]

If not, why? Do you think people are less productive?

[dreamingat30fps]

Well it would depend on the job wouldn't it? Haven't seen too many remote plumbers around here. It also depends on the person. As someone who has worked part time and full time remote I don't think it would make you less productive necessarily (again depends on person and job) but I also don't think it makes you more productive for the most part.

[bagekko]

I think 100% remote is not good for a person, society, company, etc.

People already don't get out enough and interact with humans in person.

Anyone maybe 20-30 it's really bad because they will never learn how to properly interact with coworkers and build business relationships.

It can be a positive or negative on productivity, depends on many factors.

Just like social media, forums, etc... many people tend to be a-holes or more pita to deal with fully remote, especially if you have never met in person.

Accountability seems to be greatly reduced for remote workers.

For 2 decades many bosses expectations of you when not in the office has increasingly crossed bounds, some bosses made it worse remote.

Impact on many cities economy, businesses that need workers in the office. Also with less people around in some cities it's turning them in dumps with so many homeless people. Many cities I have visited past 3 years are so gross and sketchy it's depressing.

[fraschusa]

Yep, we have a 100% flexible work environment, and it works well. Not just remote, but really remote, like folks moved to different countries. It works well because we are a smaller company, and almost all of the work is possible remotely. What I found is that the gang does get bored being remote and wants to come into the office, so we picked one day, and folks come in when it works for them, or they want to come in the office, and they do just fine arranging it themselves, and everyone seems to like the face to face interactions. I actually find those days less productive because everyone enjoys being together. The part where people are in different countries sometimes creates a bit of a challenge, but none that can't be solved. I was the 'office man' for >20 years but have always supported hybrid/remote work for obvious reasons but agree with an earlier statement, it's not for everyone, but many appreciate the flexibility.

[c1pher]

I prefer a hybrid approach. This gives people more time back and flexibility but you cannot discount all the human interaction and camaraderie built by face to face communication. I am not nearly as productive working in the office, but I think a lot of it has to do with not seeing everyone all the time (saying hi, catching up etc vs real work). But there are other things that simply would not be discussed or decided on when you work remotely.

[Alfisti]

It does depend on the job. I am in sales/account management and I have absolutely zero need to be in office. My commute would be short but even then i'd lose a solid hour a day going back and forth, i get less done in office due to all the shit chat and I am at my desk at 8.15 at home, no way i am doing that in office.

On a personal front, I save $12K yr on after school care and can get dinner started on time for baseball/soccer duties with the kids.

On a much broader note, before the pandemic I used o tell the wife, if i was Mayor or PM or whatever I'd save the planet by offering incentives to both the employer and employee to WFH and save the commute. Id also save BILLIONS on new roads and transit in the short term and billions upon billions in long term maintenance of said infrastructure that is mostly built for the two commutes a day.

We're banning plastic bags but churning out monumental amounts of emissions building and maintaining new roads and transit. Absolutely insane.

[vreihen16]

Funny story. I was in the HR director's office of my employer three weeks before COVIDgeddon, and asked my annual question about whether the employees would *ever* be offered a WFH option? The HR director said that it would NEVER happen, period. Three weeks later, we in the IT department were scrounging the junk computer piles and scrambling to set up VPN/remote access so that all functions/services could be performed remotely as COVID lockdown began.

When everyone else returned to their offices after the lockdown, four colleagues and I found ourselves still being WFH because our employer sold the building where our offices were located. Ironically, today is my first day back into a permanent office in another building. My colleagues will be following after the July 4th holiday.

In terms of productivity, I found that it took 50% longer to do anything when I was WFH.

The bad thing with WFH that my wife's employer pointed out is that WFH is one tiny step away from outsource to India. Her employer hired four remote workers from India when the local employees quit rather than being forced to work in their offices again.....

[Alfisti]

[QUOTE=vreihen16;30256133

The bad thing with WFH that my wife's employer pointed out is that WFH is one tiny step away from outsource to India. Her employer hired four remote workers from India when the local employees quit rather than being forced to work in their offices again.....[/QUOTE]

Yeah I know three companies that tried that, including ours, and they all fired them in the last 6 months because their communication is horrible. Even if their english is fine you cannot beat the habits out of them with a stick.

One thing they RELENTLESSLY do is reply needlessly to every email. So client says i need XYZ, this task takes 15 minutes, so instead of just doing the bloody task they respond to say thank you, greetings of the day, i will do said task. Then the client responds with a thanks and just an email train of shit.

If foreign office workers worked they would have been more widely utilised before the pandemic.

[Theruleslawyer]

I'd lose a solid 1-2hrs a day getting ready and going in to talk to people on Zoom, which I can do from home. It would cost me more in transport costs and clothes that I only would wear to work. Work won't provide me with nearly as nice environment as I have at home. Unless we're going back to offices that have a door that closes, its a non starter. WFH is 100% better for the environment and long term would allow a lot of land to be redeveloped into something more useful than office parks.

Its not my job to protect the company's commercial real estate values. I don't care if the extroverts want someone to distract all day. If you want to escape your kids or bad marriage, that's a you problem.

If you're afraid of the social benefits being lost it gives you a whole lot more time and energy to hang out with people you actually like. Go see friends mid-week. Plan a game night. whatever. Join a professional association if you want networking. Forcing these things through on-site work is a really inefficient way to do it.

[minn19]

As others have said, it depends on the job. My wife does hybrid now and like another mentioned, it makes zero sense for her. She has nobody in her area that is on her team. So she goes to an office and opens her laptop to talk to her team on zoom. It is a waste of resources for the business and her/us personally.

There is going to be a massive change coming soon whether some like it or not. You can see a lot of the old school thinking in this thread, but the traditional office is going to go away except for those that truly need to go in to in. People will eventually adapt as they have in the past when there is a big change in how people work.

There will be good practical things to the change. Hopefully traffic and the corresponding emissions goes down with less people commuting. Less demand/dependence on oil will decrease prices. Eventually the unused office buildings will be converted to apartments helping ease housing shortages etc. I see a lot of good things that can happen with the change.

[nyalpine90]

i been working from home since covid.
there are advantages and disadvantages working from home.
the boss was happy with results of how much was done from home and
made it permanent .
WFH i was able to plan that if we bought a house I would be able to drop and pick up the kids from school. If i had to go back to the office, I wouldn't been able to do this.
I would be in Brooklyn still.

i dont miss traffic.
i do miss being able to wind down from work, clear my mind.
WFH sometimes i feel like my mind is still working mode lol

[unluky]

Nope - I think a small subset of people can handle the freedom. My sister is one - she has a job that is task oriented so she has X to get done each week and they can easily see when she does or does not. Perfect for WFH. But she has lots of coworkers who are available when they should be, they want to argue about the few meetings a year they have to show up for in person. They just get used to being at home and doing what they want and want to pull together less and less when they need help. Even people she used to work in the office with and were great workers.

I think it is work creep for those that are not truly motivated - which I'd guess to be the majority.

If they could handle it? Hell yeah - saves money and makes employee work/life balance better. But many can't and ruin it for those that can. I have many coworkers who have to be chased as it is - I can't imagine them with no eyes on them.

I'm also a hands on person - I don't think I'd like a 100% remote existence. At my last job I was in the office 50-60 hours a week because I loved what I did. The guy they replaced me with is 100% remote and they hate that he never understands the products or what they are doing. I like having my hands in the pie even though I don't actually make it.

[minn19]

Originally Posted by unluky

Nope - I think a small subset of people can handle the freedom. My sister is one - she has a job that is task oriented so she has X to get done each week and they can easily see when she does or does not. Perfect for WFH. But she has lots of coworkers who are available when they should be, they want to argue about the few meetings a year they have to show up for in person. They just get used to being at home and doing what they want and want to pull together less and less when they need help. Even people she used to work in the office with and were great workers.

I think it is work creep for those that are not truly motivated - which I'd guess to be the majority.

If they could handle it? Hell yeah - saves money and makes employee work/life balance better. But many can't and ruin it for those that can. I have many coworkers who have to be chased as it is - I can't imagine them with no eyes on them.

I'm also a hands on person - I don't think I'd like a 100% remote existence. At my last job I was in the office 50-60 hours a week because I loved what I did. The guy they replaced me with is 100% remote and they hate that he never understands the products or what they are doing. I like having my hands in the pie even though I don't actually make it.

I don’t think this is related to work from home IMO. Terrible employees exist/existed in the office as well. The geography of where they work (home or office) doesn’t change that.

[///d]

I support it to a point, but it really depends on the policies in place to make it effective. I work in IT with 50/50 office/home, and my departments telework schedule ensures that we always have at least two people in the office every day. It's a good balance I think. Other departments telework more than they are in the office, and it never fails when they do finally come in they spend all day standing around talking and catching up with each others personal lives.

Pros:
- Saves me money not having to commute 40 miles every day
- Less distractions from drive-by questions and coworkers that just want to talk to everyone and not work
- I can blast music and hyper-focus on what I need to do
- I don't like people

Cons:
- Not everyone can stay focused on work when remote
- Connection speeds suck (for us)
- Some folks refuse to answer phone calls, emails, messages and I can't just go to their desk and force em to do whatever needs to get done
- we have connectivity requirements that have to be met for network security purposes, and when people telework too much it makes keeping their systems current more difficult

[chicagob5]

Originally Posted by minn19

I don’t think this is related to work from home IMO. Terrible employees exist/existed in the office as well. The geography of where they work (home or office) doesn’t change that.

Agree 100% - these are the people that spend more time socializing around the "watercooler" than actually doing work when in office. The difference is, when remote, you can just ignore their messages and focus on your work vs having to deal with them in person.

I'm 100% in favor of remote work where it makes sense. I myself work in tech and was only going into the office 1 - 2 days a week before COVID. I tend to be more introverted than most and I thrive in a remote environment, so much so that I will not/have not considered any position that requires days in office and plan to continue that for the rest of my career.

The boomers can enjoy their mandatory fun office cake parties or whatever nonsense they come up with now adays in the name of team building.

[Theruleslawyer]

Originally Posted by minn19

I don’t think this is related to work from home IMO. Terrible employees exist/existed in the office as well. The geography of where they work (home or office) doesn’t change that.

This has more to do with managers not wanting to think about how to measure output. If they are getting work done I don't care if it takes them 2hrs or 8hrs. If your metric is seat time, it just means bad employees have to pretend to work. Good employees are punished. If anything wfh would force review on meaningful metrics and lead to more equitable reviews.

[wtwo3]

I don't think I can ever go back to the office. I absolutely LOVE being 100% remote. The flexibility it offers my personal life is unmatched. It's much easier for me to do a mid-day workout as well in the comfort of my own home. I even have a new under desk treadmill to get some steps in so I'm not sitting on my ass all day. I don't think I'm any more or less productive, I'd say my productivity from home is roughly the same as when I was in the office. But quality of life has increased so much.

My evenings are much more relaxed as well since I'm not worried about feeling exhausted at work the next day if I stay up too late or having to get up early and brave the commute. If I'm feeling crappy, I can take a quick power nap in the comfort of my own bed and get back to work feeling much better.

[dreamingat30fps]

Another factor I think is that remote work is now a "normal" thing. Like when I first started working from home I would get 2 days a week from home and it was super weird. I would go out during the day and everything would be empty. It was awesome and I think the specialness of it made people (at least me) work hard to ensure they didn't lose it.

Now since it's more normalized I think people take it for granted.

That being said I think it's harder to be more productive from home. There are so many distractions and other things to do (at least for me). Now if you have a job where you have to be "online" or doing a task from 9-5 then maybe not so much. However like my job did not require that. I found that I ended up fucking around most of the day on my wfh days, but then I would work extra on my days in the office and make extra widgets to deliver on my wfh days. In fact I remember if I would normally deliver a widget a day I would make sure to deliver 2 on the wfh days just to show how much more "productive" I was.

[///d]

Originally Posted by Theruleslawyer

If they are getting work done I don't care if it takes them 2hrs or 8hrs. If your metric is seat time, it just means bad employees have to pretend to work. Good employees are punished.

This!

I've worked places that say if you're hours are 0700-1500, then you will work 0700-1500. You need to be logged in and at your desk at 0700 and working, so better show up early to get your coffee ready. Then I've worked places that say your hours are 0700-1500, but if you need a few minutes in the morning to take care of something go ahead, if you got everything done by 1400 and nothing else is pressing go home and enjoy your day, spend time with the family. Thats the environment I want to work in, thats where people work hard to get things accomplished because theres always a reward at the end. Forcing me to sit at my desk for the last hour of the day with literally nothing to do doesn't create a work environment I enjoy working at.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by Alfisti

Yeah I know three companies that tried that, including ours, and they all fired them in the last 6 months because their communication is horrible. Even if their english is fine you cannot beat the habits out of them with a stick.

The group that was outsourced to India does basic data entry into a proprietary system. One step below OCR, entering hand-written data from pages of papers scanned and sent to them. Their industry requires hand-written documentation. Four people overseas, and a few hours per day for someone local to check their work every day (same as if the data entry was done locally). No need to ever talk or communicate with them, except for pointing out the rare mistake so they don't do the same thing wrong twice. It works for them.....

[TheWatchGuy]

All depends on the person. Some people are just fine working remote and are easy to communicate with when they are remote. and others seem to use the "freedom" of not being in the office to run errands and shit during the day and arent readily available. It takes a disciplined person to be able to work remotely and be efficient.

myself, I am not a good remote worker. Its not that i dont do the work, but i like to be able to walk down to a coworker or my boss's office and chat about work and bounce ideas off them. Having to call someone everytime i want to discuss something, and then maybe they answer or they dont and then i get on to the next task, is just super inefficient for me. I also find that i dont have a good end of the day. I'll end up working all night, cause my laptop is there and set up and easily accessible.

And i'm an even worse remote working boss. Im busy, and if im in the middle of something, i wont answer an employees call and will forget to call them back. If im in the office, they can come chat.

end of the day, i can see why employers are making people come in to the office. you may have a handful of people on your team that are doing just fine, but it only takes one or two people to be slacking off that can ruin what you are doing. getting them in the office, rather than letting your team suffer, is a small trade off imo.

[M_Six]

My former job was helping professors and instructors develop and troubleshoot online courses. 99.9% of what we did was online. I rarely had to set foot in a classroom or someone's office. So in my case, 100% online was very doable. I also had to support online courses that ran 24/7 or had evening test schedules, so I often had to work online at night anyway.

We worked from home for about 16 weeks in the spring of 2020, but were required to return to our offices in July 2020, well before the pandemic was over. I locked myself in my office and only dealt with people on the phone or online. So the only thing that changed by my being in the office was the chair I was sitting in. And at that point, since I was required to be in the office all day, I could have easily signed off at the end of the day and refused to deal with any issues after I left the office. I didn't do that because it would have adversely affected the students. But that was the ridiculous situation we were put in by the administration. It was a driving factor in my early retirement.

There are plenty of other jobs at the university that could be 100% online and then there are jobs that can't possibly be done remotely. So like everyone else here is saying, it depends on the job.