I guess this is a correct community to post about this? If not let me know.
My company finally is asking politely that we have to go to the office twice a week. Or else. That else is not yet defined, but obviously there will be consequences of not going to the office.
I have been at this company for 15 years, from junior dev to manager.
I did a daily commute of about 40 mins in the morning, 40 to an hour back, never gave a second thought about that. That was normal.
After pandemics, I found out all I have been missing on my kids growing up. My second kid is much more attached to me since she saw me daily, even if I was in my office room at home, she got to see me more often.
So I found out how much my life improved by doing working at home. Hell in the middle of this sentence my kid just showed me some thing she drew.
I stood my ground, I basically politely told HR that I am not going back. And actually my reasons make sense, I work with people in other countries, they don’t care where I am.
And it will affect my performance, driving to the office, moving all my equipment, and having people around trying to talk to me will take a toll.
So yeah, I am polishing my resume, because there is no turning back now. I will be shunted if I ask for a raise, they can easily say “hey but you are not coming to the office, how come you want a raise if you are not part of the team”, never mind that I do everything that is expected and more.
Just off my chest I guess, and anxious about the future.
If it’s at a medium to large company, IT policies control everything and you don’t get much control over your work device. This is a good tip, if it’s possible. My work prevents it so that they can push updates when they want to.
Recently, they took over browser settings so I couldn’t save passwords but so far I just work around that by manually adjusting the saved pw on a personal device.
IT can bug me, but they also have my empathy for the average employee they’re trying to protect the company from.
For most users it’s just isn’t checked in power settings as an option for the power menu.
But Group Policy can disable it, but I was able to get around that and re-enable it, in regedit. Luckily they don’t seem to repush the GP often, or maybe it’s an image setting that was only set during initial imaging.
