I don’t get it, apart from companies wanting to cover their corporate real estate investments.
All of my work is on a computer
All of my colleagues’ work is on computer.
So why the fuck would I want to meet in person to address a problem? So one of us can literally breathe down the other’s neck looking at the same screen?
GTFO.
You just said it in your first sentence. It’s not rocket surgery, your literal meat existence will be used for passive profit.
For their greedy brains, this is literally about control and surveillance. They can’t make sure that you are working the full company time and even overtime while at home in your comfort and pyjamas.
What’s wild about that is that I am working outside business hours when I wfh. I’m showing up earlier, staying later, doing little quick things when i think of them rather than putting them off until the next day in the office, and I’m taking a lot less PTO because there’s a pretty wide gulf between “too sick to get fully dressed, drive for 45 minutes and face actual human beings in person” and “too sick to accomplish anything if I’m left alone and allowed to take breaks when i need them”. But you’re right, there is a certain school of management that teaches that employees are an enemy who want nothing more than to steal from the company by being paid to do nothing, that a manager’s primary job is to catch and punish these slackers, and that a lack of evidence of employees slacking off is proof that they’re lazy and smart enough to hide it. Fortunately for me I now have a boss who knows that I do this work because I like it and that the team and the work will benefit most from me being left alone to do it and occasionally helped with blockers as they come up.
You actually touched on something that really pisses me off about my 100% work from home job.
It’s the fact that my boss can somehow justify that you roll yourself out of bed and log in. He literally uses the phrase sometimes “too sick to log in?” As a means of discouragement from calling out sick, or at the very least get some productivity out of you while you’re sick.
Name a job that would try this shit in real life? When you’ve called out you’ve called out, it doesn’t mean reduced workload because you’re sick ffs.
They are paying those investments prices if people are in the office or not. At least if people are WFH and used to it, you can downsize your office if and when the need arises.
Or
Are you just shilling against yourself in a game of 4D chess where they can now save money on realestate by forcing you to use your own home for their profit. The best part, you now think it was your idea. A sucker born every day.
Fuck work. It has no place in my home and family, I won’t use my home for their profit. I’ll catch the train into work just to keep it out of my life and the two separated as far as possible.
This is an interesting idea. I am 100% work from home and I can tell you all that it’s not all roses.
I have zero work friends, hell I’ve never met over 75% of them in real life. There is very little room for networking and skills building because I’m in my spare bedroom all the time. I’m glad I’m a little older but if I weren’t this would be a career killer in some regards.
I have to think about what I’m going to eat every single day (no running off for lunch) and I’m expected to be on camera during our meetings.
I have zero commute, but that just means I hardly get a chance to ride my motorcycle anymore.
I’ve gone over my internet cap once, and because we’re at home, the AC or the heat or whatever needs to be ran 100% of the time I’m telling you it’s not all roses.
When I worked for Bell, they had just ended their WFH policy. I was required to be in the office every day. The rest of my team was still under the policy according to their contract, including my boss who was a 10 minute walk from the office, so they all worked from home. And most of my meetings involved teams in 3 different cities, not to mention the fact that it was Bell, so all meetings were over the phone with a screen sharing app. There were some other people that worked in the office, but they worked with different teams so I didn’t interact with them beyond saying “hi” in the break room as I was getting coffee. But it was apparently very important that I be in the office.
Some days I really appreciate the fact that I left IT.
Got laid off from Bell and couldn’t find another IT job before EI ran out, so I applied to be a mail carrier. Been doing that ever since. I did apply to a few IT jobs after I started doing mail, but it wasn’t long that I realized I could make more where I was and I really didn’t miss It all that much. It’s a little frustrating when I hit bugs in the software we use, because I could write the bug report in full detail but I have no access to submit it. But then I get done at 1pm on a Friday and I remember why I left that world.
The company I work at has a couple of buildings spread out over a larger campus. Before COVID, you’d just go over to the other building for meetings. Now nobody can be arsed to walk across any more. But we still have to come in because face to face communication is sooo important!
Teams room technician here. Just wanna say= fuck teams. For the love of god, use any implementation of video conferencing besides teams.
One small detail that encapsulates all that’s wrong with teams= the software that runs the room-scale experience frequently refers to itself as ‘skype for business’, even in current, official documentation from Microsoft. Hell, the (well known) default password for the system is the acronym ‘sfb’.
Please. If you’re spec’ing new software for video conferencing, use anything but teams.
WebEx room systems are great, easy to configure and great service to use, great for ver large conferences (think 1000-5000 or more) and it integrates with Teams meetings as well. That said, Zoom integration is terrible, they need to work on advanced conferencing features such as translator audio channels, echo and noise canceling is utter trash for the app, breakout rooms limited list goes on.
I’ve heard good stuff about WebEx! How does the desktop app perform, from your experience?
The good
- webinars, they coined the term, unmatched especially at very large scale.
- New app with integrated meetings app is much better.
- Chat and spaces are good,
- routing content to SharePoint is great integration for document management and collaboration to protect documents and important content without worrying staff with process
- Admin troubleshooting is unmatched when someone complains about an issue it makes it very easy to identify what happened. something teams is absolutely atrocious at (we run both)
- Outlook integration is great which integrates with room systems and booking room panels
- adhoc meetings from panels outside rooms show in room calendars and all sync which is a nice feature
The bad
- Events need better integration
- Echo and noise cancellation is poor, get headphones they are a must, mic pickup fades in and out all the time on speakers on various devices or use a room system
- Conference translator audio channels don’t seem to exist for large multicultural conferences. +1 for Zoom
- video could be crisper, costs money to go 1080p and above
Want
- space conferences could be better (not to be confused with meetings/events) with a discord like voice+video+sharing like experience for spaces instead of just bulk calling all members…(would help bring people together more when working remotely) people could just join “live spaces” dropping in and out
We were “encouraged” by our CEO to go back to office and “collaborate”. So my rule is now 2 days per week in the office (sometimes 1, sometimes 3, I’m flexible), but when I’m there, no calls/meetinga as much as possible. I’m socialising, shooting the shit, drinking coffee, playing ping pong with my peers. Realistically this works about half thr time, the other half we are organically ending up doing some work, discussing that thing we always wanted to but it never fits in a formal meeting slot, coming up with ideas how to solve a problem we didn’t even realise we had until it came up during coffe or smth… At the beginning my boss complained a bit and I just told him I’m collaborating. He let it go!
So, BTO has a (limited) point, there is value to be there in person sometimes…
