EatATaco
I know it won’t be popular, but I don’t possibly see how remote work is better for work itself.
I was WFH for about 10 years. I had my first child, needed to parental leave (from a very small company), and they gave it to me. But I offered to “WFH” when the baby was napping and stuff so if they needed me for things I could make it work. Even after the time was up, things were still going well, and my commute was long, so they agreed to allowing me to WFH a few days a week. Eventually we moved because of my wife’s job and then the pandemic, and I told them they either had to fire me or allow me to WFH 100%. They agreed to the latter.
It was a god send, without a doubt. The flexibility I had while my wife was busying with medical school/residency/fellowship was amazing. Being able to run out the door in the middle of the day for stuff was fantastic. And not having to commute is a thing of beauty.
However, after a couple of years, I realized how damaging it was to my productivity. No more ad hoc meetings where we grabbed a couple of engineers and sat down and quickly brainstormed something. It’s much harder to reach out to someone over the internet than it is to just turn around and ask something. My career also started to stagnate.
When we finally settled down, I decided that I would focus on my career and pursue a new job. The new job is hybrid and, also amazingly, is only about a 15 minutes bike from my house. I don’t know how I would have been able to start a new job without being in person. It’s so much easier to just ask someone a question than it is. The collaboration we have is also much better than the previous 8 or so years I was fully WFH.
And as this article points out, it’s the flexibility that I think is the best thing. No one bats an eye if you say you need an extra day at home that week. Or you need to go home because the plumber is coming. Or you’re stepping out for a couple of hours for the doctor. This seems to be a permanent fixture at my new job.
Now, as I said, this is purely from a work perspective. Individually speaking, staying home is way better, especially if you have a shitty commute. I get that and would never say anyone should go back into the office. But I think the number of people who are actually way more productive at home are few and far between, the rest just really like the set up so they’ll pretend it is way better for work, or even convince themselves it is way better. But the more and more the numbers come in, the more and more it’s clear that generally speaking people are less productive with remote work.
It’s going to end for most, and it’s probably best to think about what best suits the needs to the individual and the business rather than clinging to the idea that it is superior in all ways.
It will never cease to amaze me the mental gymnastics his supporters will go through to justify still supporting him, despite his numerous blatant abuses of classified and sensitive information, just years after regularly chanting that his opponent should be jailed when there was no evidence she had violated any law.
You’re assuming everyone has the same career/job, life experiences, and perspective that you do, as well as the same home office situation.
I would argue the opposite. It’s the numbers that tell me it isn’t working well. My personal experience just backs that up. All of the people claiming that it’s been good for them, if they aren’t blowing smoke or deluding themselves, are the ones thinking their individual experience is the same as others.
At the end of the day, they don’t have to be more productive, they just have to be productive enough to complete the tasks their boss gives them to do well.
Unless the question is which is better from a productivity and a business perspective.
Finally, chatGPT quantity of comment tends to be overlooked. You might want to try to make your point more succinctly.
I guess I could have done without my personal anecdote, but this is what leads to unnuanced and thoughtless positions. Like the current top level comment.
Citation required.
https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/remote-workers-less-productive-research/ https://www.npr.org/2023/08/04/1192246138/the-evidence-on-remote-work-is-changing https://time.com/6294640/remote-work-winning/
The question being asked is that can the work be done from home, sufficiently.
It’s unlikely that many companies are going to be okay with their labor costs going up 10-20% due to less productive workers, so it is effectively the question being asked.
Also, that’s usually a technique used by those who want to redirect the narrative, by throwing over verbose amounts of text out there, so that people turn away from the conversation being talked about.
We’re talking around 550 words here, taking less than 2 minutes to read for the typical adult. The idea that this was done with ulterior motive to overwhelm people with words cracks me up.
I think Corporate America can handle up to 10% productivity hit for the welfare and happiness of their employees. The work will still get done.
Ultimately I agree. I explicitly said that we need to stop pretending that it’s better in all ways, and that we need to have an honest discussion to balance the needs of the individual with productivity.
You keep moving the goal posts.
Disagreed.
Also I love how you spent more time complaining about the length of my post than actually making a point.
If you want thoughtless black and white sound bites, I’m probably not the type of person you want to be having discussions with.