Edit: Changed to a non-plagerizing link
It’s also nice eating out of your own fridge, using your own toilet, and everything else.
Bidet, and that’s all I’ll say
Agreed, thanks COVID(I guess?)
A moist towelette, that’s all you’ll get
from a “managing people” standpoint it’s a little easier (at least in my field) too, because it becomes obvious when someone’s product is shit if I’m paying attention
also i really like shitting at home
I could tolerate going in to the office if I had my own bathroom.
Just gaining back all the commute time everyday is such a huge bonus for me. Nothing at an office can compare to that alone. And I get to add in a ton of other nice bonuses from being at home.
It may seem silly, but aside from commuting time the biggest advantage for me was being able to use my own bathroom. No bidets in the office washroom!
I both agree and disagree with the conclusions in the title…
I agree that for many people, they’re happier, and likely more productive, working from home.
I would also agree that for many different people, working from an office makes them happier/more productive.
It entirely depends on the job, who you are, and the work culture. Some places are toxic and working from home to get away from it is helpful for job satisfaction. I’ve known people who simply focus better when they’re at the office since they have a lot of distractions at home. I know for me, the opposite is true. at home, I’m in control and can limit exposure to distractions, and I can be more productive, more comfortable and overall less unhappy with my job.
IMO, this discussion is less about what companies want, whether work from home or hybrid, or in office … The main conclusion that we should be driving home is that different people need different environments to do their best work, and be happiest with their particular job. To put it simply: workers need to be able to choose.
Until we’re at the stage where employers care less about how, and where you do the work, and they care more about the work getting done… We’re going to keep going back and forth on this.
I like to work from home. That’s me.
I know people who prefer to work from an office. There’s plenty of people who feel they work best from the office.
There’s plenty of people that need to mix between home and office work.
Bluntly: as long as you can do the work from where you’re working, and how you’re working, the rest should be flexible. We’re (presumably) adults and professionals. If we’re given work and we’re being paid to do the work, then we will do the work. We don’t need to be constantly supervised by middle management like toddlers.
I like to work from home. That’s me.
And there is, as it turns out, a lot of people like that. Doesn’t actually mean everyone is like that. But it does mean that being given this option, we, as humanity and as workers, are happier.
Your reply reminds me that “I’m not pro-life or pro-choice, I just want people to be able to chose do they want to have an abortion or not”.That quote is funny because the statement is clearly indicating that they are pro-choice.
In business though, workers are not often given a choice. You either work from the office, work x days in office and y days from home (hybrid), or only work from home.
90% of the employers that I am aware of, give one of these, maybe two (usually in office and hybrid) as options; usually only one option (in office). A few wfh companies I’ve worked for do all wfh, which is great for me, but anyone who wants to work from an office, can’t.
By giving workers a real choice, you open the company up to a much larger pool of people who are willing/able to do the job. If they’re local to an office and want to be in office, cool, set it up. If they’re not but they prefer wfh, cool, set it up.
In my experience nearly zero employers provide flexible work options. It’s usually one of the three, and if you’re lucky, two of the three. It is exceedingly rare to be given all three choices.
I am more productive and less depressed working from site and if i work too much from home I get depressed and adhd kicks in and paralizes me.
I don’t see how it benefits everyone not to allow people to work from home at the same time.
This is me too. I love my home. I’ve lived here a long time and have made this my ideal little place on the planet.
I can be ridiculously hyperfocused and productive on my personal hobby projects at home. However, I cannot get jack shit done for work. I still like to work from home fairly often, but I go into the office on a regular basis. Fortunately, I live close to the office.
Add to this that your preference may change as your life does. Lifestage makes a big difference.
Tl:dr “Nah-uh, not me.”
Yes, but you have to consider the poor CEO’s and middle managers. They need to be able to strut around an office full of people and feel important. Plus there’s all that office space they leased for the next 30 years at a discount that they need to fill with workers to justify the expense!!
It cruel to only consider the happiness of the slave class while ignoring the plight of the ruling class. Don’t you people know that?!?!?
During the pandemic our office was inspected and structurally condemned, so we literally have nowhere to go back to, the building is now a car park. It’s great.
I wholeheartedly recommend black mould and a leaky roof to anyone that doesn’t want to go back, it might be hard to arrange but it definitely works.
The very fact that it is something that the workers want
Is WHY Employers want to halt it.
Too many Employers believe that anything the workers want is necessarily bad for Businesses … BECAUSE the workers want it
Working from home has been the default for the last few millenia. Who would have thought that it could make people happier?
We’ve had this capacity for several decades now, and it seems ridiculous that our culture has not fully embraced it with open arms. If that’s not a sign that “we the people” aren’t running the show, I don’t know what is. Freedom my ass.
Due to how isolating our culture and urban planning has become, a lot of people have started using their work as a replacement for their social life. Without it they realize just how caged they are under this system, so they refuse it. They think being given more free time and the ability to do work from the comfort of their own home is a bad thing because it takes away their social outlet.
People have to do what’s best for them. If they need to commute to a job to have a social life, let them. This is absolutely not a reason to force other people to do it.
Of course it isn’t but you are the one who said that it was ridiculous that we haven’t embraced it.
It isn’t ridiculous. It’s actually pretty expected of the society we have built to be against it. There are perfectly explainable reasons why we have yet to embrace it.
I don’t say this to tell you it shouldn’t change. I’m saying this to specifically highlight the things we need to change so that no one will be forced into doing it.
People do need to do what’s best, so we should probably fix things so that being forced to use office work as a replacement for a social life isn’t the best option people have available to them.
I know a few boomers who are against it. They think that online work is not real work and that people who work remote are lazy bums who should get a “real job”. They’re the same type of people who went insane during the lockdowns instead of enjoying the free vacation.
Boomer here, software developer, I started fighting the telecommuting battle with managers in the early 90s. They’d say, “We need you here.” I’d ask, “Why? I can dial in. You have contractors in India you’ve never even met, and that works out fine.” “That’s different.” “How?” They never could come up with valid reasons why we really needed to physically be there, and would generally shut down the conversation with like, “Well, I can see we don’t agree on this.” Correct, and 30 years later they’re still making the same ludicrous arguments.
In my experience, after a little back and forth they realize they can’t win this on facts and just pull rank.
Yeah my boomer dad (materials scientist in the civilian nuclear sector) disagrees. He’s been working from home (and from vacations sometimes…) at least a few days a week for quite a while now, and his old boss was apparently saying that they were going to need to hire 3 people to replace him when he eventually retires.
FWIW I also know some elder millennials who are against it, but I’ve seen how they run their business and let’s just say I wouldn’t take advice from them.
As someone who worked from home for almost a decade before being pulled into the office, I regularly got flack from my peers for it as well as older boomer types. IME, people who are forced into the office frequently feel a sense of “fairness” where they want everyone else to come in as well.
“If I have to be miserable, you should too”
No shit.
The return to office mandate is such an annoyance. I hope companies who did it suffer because of it.
One of the top tech companies in my country mandated a return to office because the boss couldn’t stand that people were working from Bali instead of chatting with him at the office coffee machines in the cold Estonian winter.
Friend who works there says it’s up to the team leads and few want to enforce it and risk losing people. But the CEO got his article in the newspapers saying software engineers are all lazy entitled pieces of shit, which was his real goal. He hates paying people, but the company only gets top talent because of their salaries. Nobody goes there for “innovation” anymore now that it’s an established company.
how will landlords who own all the buildings in business districts get paid, then? do you want their properties to stay empty? do you just want them to starve?
Just an FYI, most commercial real estate is owned by massive corporations because they’re the only ones with enough money to build and own skyscrapers. Most mom and pop landlords are residential and they own 4 units or less. It’s very rare for an average, even a wealthy average person to own more than a couple of commercial properties that they rent out. Corporate landlords are very much a big reason why WFH isn’t the standard.
Plagiarizing. It’s spelled plagiarizing.
And yet we all still understood it somehow
eauquay
Even better is if we all got a monthly allowance and not have to work full time. 😆
Naive to think that those who set the prices won’t just adjust the baseline to absorb the entirety of your monthly allowance.
Better to just establish a system of community property that equitably shares and distributes necessities and the means of producing goods or providing services without the need to satisfy an arbitrary profit incentive of some private individual who will put their greed over your needs out of a sense of entitlement gained from their private ownership over such means.
This is what bombing those buildings in Fight Club was truly about!
Must be banned!!! How dare Americans have a tiny bit of happiness. We must crush this before it gets out of control.
In Australia, at the last election, one of the policies of the party who lost was to cut WFH. They lost big time.
Not that shocking. Hell, there are millions of Americans who would kill just to work indoors. Office work is the envy of every farm and trade worker with aching feet and knees and various injuries they have to nurse while they labor. Working at home??? It’s absolute luxury.
Office work is the envy of every farm and trade worker
This isn’t exactly true. There are, believe it or not, people who prefer to work outdoors and do heavy labor. Especially farm work. Some people aren’t really suited for office work. (pun intended)
A bit disingenuous to skip the part where their bodies are falling apart and they’re in constant pain.
This makes the false assumption that office workers don’t incur work related repetitive task injuries. Every lower class job, whether in an office or a field, comes with its own bodily injury index.
Yeah you cut off half of what I said and then argued with a different statement
