Working from home: I don't miss a single thing about going to the office

[sothereiwas]

1 hour ago, introverted1 said:

Nearly all companies are open plan now.  Cube farms rule ...

If only that were still true. 

The trend now seems to be no cubes at all when people talk open plan. The conversions I've been aware of where open plan was the battle cry were all cases of getting rid of cubes and going to something even more open, something like this:

https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/9/12/1410534162211/Open-plan-office-014.jpg

http://delaune.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/open-office-plan-1.jpg

How anyone imagines that people who are paid to think could perform at their best in a place like this is a mystery to me. Upper management and HR, who apparently spend most of their time in conference rooms and meetings anyway, seem to think it's great, but those of us who actually need to stay at our desks and work on a few tasks without distraction ... well good luck. 

I admit, the spaces look appealing. Until the full staff is added, and then it's a hellscape. 

[introverted1]

I wonder how many companies are going to realise as a result of covid that they don't need to spend money leasing (or buying) expensive office buildings.  They can retain a much smaller space for client meetings and the like, and eliminate many of the costs associated with physical office space. 

[introverted1]

1 hour ago, sothereiwas said:

If only that were still true.

Yeah, I should have qualified that every office I've been in since ~2010 has been a cube farm. But my understanding is that newer offices are completely open plan.  I understand the financial benefit to open plan, at least in theory:  less space for more people.  But productivity dives, especially among "thought" workers.  I work in IT and I need to dive deep into lots of small details.  It's so much harder to do when there are people all around, chattering about things both related and unrelated to work.

[sothereiwas]

1 hour ago, introverted1 said:

I wonder how many companies are going to realise as a result of covid that they don't need to spend money leasing (or buying) expensive office buildings.  They can retain a much smaller space for client meetings and the like, and eliminate many of the costs associated with physical office space. 

Mine has been talking this way. Due to the nature of the work some lab space is going to be required but the concept of assigned desks might be relaxed, with some desks being unassigned and used as flexible workspace, first come first served. There are some security issues as well but those had to be solved already ...

[Philosopher]

3 hours ago, introverted1 said:

Yeah, I should have qualified that every office I've been in since ~2010 has been a cube farm. But my understanding is that newer offices are completely open plan.  I understand the financial benefit to open plan, at least in theory:  less space for more people.  But productivity dives, especially among "thought" workers.  I work in IT and I need to dive deep into lots of small details.  It's so much harder to do when there are people all around, chattering about things both related and unrelated to work.

Hopefully this will spell the end of Open Plan offices. I have not seen one study saying they actually benefit work performance. All the stuff about how they increase collaboration is just a cover for the real reason they are so common, which is to reduce costs. 

[JustGettingBy]

On 7/7/2020 at 11:16 PM, thefooloftheyear said:

 

And that's the thing....If companies are paying people a lot of money to basically waste(some) of their time, then how long will that go on until they figure out they don't need to pay people as much when they are home??  Or maybe have less people and make sure they stay busier??  And think about how anyone would feel if they are paying someone a high salary only to know his/hers head isn't really into the work, with all of the distractions one can come up with while at home..??

 

Given how many studies have shown that the average worker is only productive for 15 hours out of the 40 hour work week, I'm surprised that companies haven't known that they've been paying people to waste time for several years.

[Philosopher]

5 hours ago, JustGettingBy said:

Given how many studies have shown that the average worker is only productive for 15 hours out of the 40 hour work week, I'm surprised that companies haven't known that they've been paying people to waste time for several years.

If companies at the end of this conclude that workers can work just effectively at home as in the office, then they may conclude that it does not matter where the employees are located.

Therefore there will be nothing stopping them from outsourcing much of their workforce to a county with much lower wages. This could spell bad news for developed countries. Developed countries having already lost much of their manufacturing jobs therefore could now be risking losing many of their professional jobs too.

[Ruby Slippers]

Wow. Via WSJ:

Google extends work from home for most of its 200,000 employees until at least July 2021, making the search-engine giant the first major U.S. corporation to formalize such an extended timetable in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

It's looking more and more like my dream to work from home permanently could come true 😊

[thefooloftheyear]

We had a bad storm rip through here a couple of days ago and there are still thousands without power.(as of this morning a whopping 500K!)....With no internet/power I wonder now about all the people who are working from home and cant do anything...This may be an issue no one really thought about....And with that type of outage its not going to be something that gets resolved in a day....In a large office situation there are usually big generators to keep things moving, or some people could then work remotely if the main office was without power....But now what?

Interested to hear from those working from home what their thoughts were about this..

TFY

Edited August 6, 2020 by thefooloftheyear

[sothereiwas]

No power means time to down the lab and pour a coffee. Maybe go out and do something fun, since work is off the table. 

[elaine567]

On 7/17/2020 at 8:37 AM, Philosopher said:

If companies at the end of this conclude that workers can work just effectively at home as in the office, then they may conclude that it does not matter where the employees are located.

You are correct but seems the average worker is not too keen to return to the daily commute. 34% have not returned to work in the UK which differs markedly  from other European countries..
The home workers are saving thousands by not "wasting" money on travel and are not spending their excess cash on coffee and sandwiches, fancy restaurants and bars. 

Their lives have improved ten fold as they are not now spending hours every day commuting. Who really wants to run the gauntlet of public transport, when there is a deadly virus around?
I think it is a huge problem for an economy that seems to be based on coffee and sandwiches...how did we ever get to that?
A business "expert" guy  was on today talking about sacking them all, as in his opinion they need to get back to work so they can spend their cash on overpriced coffee and donuts...

[sothereiwas]

39 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

I think it is a huge problem for an economy that seems to be based on coffee and sandwiches...how did we ever get to that?

The number of people employed in tasks that are really core essentials are pretty few. We used to essentially almost all be farmers, and now we're mostly everything else but farmers. For a while a lot of us were factory workers, but now we're roboting that away. What's left is some farming, some factory, those who can do "knowledge work" do it, and the rest are trying to find a niche providing services or swapping pointless papers with each other to ensure they are all in compliance with whatever. 

My lawnmower guy will have a robust business until he retires. So will electricians and plumbers. But a lot of people do pretty useless work when you get right down to it. 

 

[QuietRiot]

2 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

The number of people employed in tasks that are really core essentials are pretty few. We used to essentially almost all be farmers, and now we're mostly everything else but farmers. For a while a lot of us were factory workers, but now we're roboting that away. What's left is some farming, some factory, those who can do "knowledge work" do it, and the rest are trying to find a niche providing services or swapping pointless papers with each other to ensure they are all in compliance with whatever. 

My lawnmower guy will have a robust business until he retires. So will electricians and plumbers. But a lot of people do pretty useless work when you get right down to it. 

 

You forgot to add alcohol. In Orlando, the mayor has deemed to keep the bars remained closed until a vaccine is produced....so...it's not looking too good for bar owners.

[elaine567]

1 hour ago, elaine567 said:

34% have not returned to work in the UK 

Sorry correction, only 34% have returned to work.

[Shining One]

6 hours ago, thefooloftheyear said:

Interested to hear from those working from home what their thoughts were about this..

I've had to deal with this several times due to hurricanes. Our corporate office gets shut down, but our data centers stay up. Battery backups are able to keep my home internet going for 10+ hours, which is plenty of time for me to get my generator going. I keep enough gas on hand to keep my essentials, including home office, running for several days. Before I had those set up, I would plug my laptop into my car to charge the battery and/or drive to somewhere that had power and worked from there.

[Ruby Slippers]

Great article on The Atlantic today called "The Workforce Is About to Change Dramatically: Three predictions for what the future might look like."

I've been too busy with work today to read it, but I skimmed it and loved reading this part. I am manifesting my dream life! 🤩

When the pandemic is over, one in six workers is projected to continue working from home or co-working at least two days a week, according to a recent survey by economists at Harvard Business School. Another survey of hiring managers by the global freelancing platform Upwork found that one-fifth of the workforce could be entirely remote after the pandemic.

Some high-up guy at an investment bank or similar company posted a list on LinkedIn of all the money he's saving every month on gas, tolls, lunches and coffee, clothes, and on and on - plus the 3+ hours of time and energy wasted every day commuting - and it was in the thousands of dollars. I loved to see this very "in the system" guy broadcasting that message.

This new age speaker I listen to has a theory that the working people of the world collectively manifested this situation to free ourselves from the soul-sucking drudgery of office life, and I agree completely. I've certainly been visualizing something much better for a long time. 

People have been awakening in so many ways in recent years, and I only see this continuing. I'm seeing more and more stories of very wealthy people leaving behind work that never meant anything to them except money, to pour themselves into humanitarian work that matters. People are figuring out that beyond a certain point, more money doesn't really add to your happiness, and we've all been so disconnected, following some twisted plan of the dark overlords. This is such a wonderful time in human history. Of course there are problems and there will be growing pains, but I think overwhelmingly it's positive and very exciting.

[mark clemson]

14 minutes ago, Ruby Slippers said:

This new age speaker I listen to has a theory that the working people of the world collectively manifested this situation to free ourselves from the soul-sucking drudgery of office life, and I agree completely. I've certainly been visualizing something much better for a long time.

I honestly find this idea somewhat bizarre. What about the body count involved, not to mention the loss of jobs? And (assuming validity to the concept of manifestation), I suppose the collective insanity of a certain portion of the american public manifested Trump to begin with?

I get looking for the silver lining, but this is a pandemic we're talking about.

[Ruby Slippers]

I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but manifesting dreams isn't a perfect science. Light and dark / good and bad are intertwined in a kind of spiral. Progress is almost always two steps forward, one step back. 

I think the people chose Trump because his opponent was so obviously one of the dark overlords we're all well beyond sick and tired of. Even with all the lipstick on that "pig," most people could see right through it. As always, they chose the lesser of two evils.

[sothereiwas]

Strictly speaking that sounds exactly like horse-pucky to me, however ...

I also don't believe in karma, but I do believe people reap what they sow, which is functionally a lot like karma without the mystical livelihood making opportunities quite as firmly attached. So I could see that it's possible that a lot of people being able to WFH, and wanting to WFH, and systems being in place to enable WFH, were able to capitalize on a situation to make more WFH happen, and so on. Sure. 

But cause a virus? nah. 

[Ruby Slippers]

I don't think people have been focusing on anything like that. They've been focusing on: God, please get me out of this office and commute that are draining 50% of my waking life and energy.

As for the power of visualization and dreaming, almost every highly successful person, such as many star athletes, talk about how they've been obsessively fixated on their visions of success from a very young age. MMA fighter Conor McGregor has a great video on YouTube about this, along with many other well-known athletes, about how from a very young age, he was visualizing in vivid detail all his many staggering successes that came to be.

I've been practicing this with a good amount of focus for a few years, much longer not quite so actively, and it absolutely works like a charm. There's a method, and pitfalls to avoid, but it's not that hard to become pretty good at it.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Ruby Slippers

[Ruby Slippers]

Just got my car insurance policy renewal - premium is dropping by $221 over 6 months. Sweet.

[nospam99]

Just wondering if all the 'work from home' crowd was around in the Great Western Job Extinction (my term - it was never labeled as such in the media) of the 90s. I was. 'White collar jobs' in fields like IT, project management, supply chain, procurement, and accounting were moved wholesale from the US and the EU to China, India, Belarus, Vietnam, Philippines, Mexico, and South and Central America. The 'global resources' doing the moved work were largely incompetent and did great damage to projects. But the executives and upper and middle management making the strategic decisions to move those jobs had no understanding of the work or the damage. All they knew was they could hire three Indians for what it cost them to hire someone like me and they regarded that as a no-brainer win. My thought is that any 'remote workforce' paradigm shift will just result in even more jobs leaving the West.

[Ruby Slippers]

7 hours ago, thefooloftheyear said:

We had a bad storm rip through here a couple of days ago and there are still thousands without power.(as of this morning a whopping 500K!)

Interested to hear from those working from home what their thoughts were about this..

Most workers who rely on an internet connection to work from home are brain/computer-based, and typically don't have to go to the office during natural disasters, anyway, as those outages have widespread effects. I'm sure power and internet companies will become more incentivized to get up and running again quickly during such events, with so many companies relying on remote workers. 

If it became a serious issue, I imagine more people would invest in home generators, which according to a quick search are pretty affordable. Most people spend more in a month on commuting/office work expenses than they would on a generator that would last for many years.

[thefooloftheyear]

2 minutes ago, Ruby Slippers said:

Most workers who rely on an internet connection to work from home are brain/computer-based, and typically don't have to go to the office during natural disasters, anyway, as those outages have widespread effects. I'm sure power and internet companies will become more incentivized to get up and running again quickly during such events, with so many companies relying on remote workers. 

If it became a serious issue, I imagine more people would invest in home generators, which according to a quick search are pretty affordable. Most people spend more in a month on commuting/office work expenses than they would on a generator that would last for many years.

15K plus for a whole house generator...They aren't cheap...

TFY

[Ruby Slippers]

6 minutes ago, nospam99 said:

My thought is that any 'remote workforce' paradigm shift will just result in even more jobs leaving the West.

My feeling is that the economy is dynamic enough to roll with the changes. Just in the U.S., there's so much wealth, and people are willing to spend a lot money on things and services they want. New businesses are emerging to meet new needs and desires. 

If I had to right now, I'd figure out where the needs are and start an awesome new business, and I'm sure I'm not alone - a business that not only serves the customers well, but provides excellent jobs to people who need them, treats them well so they're empowered to do great work. So many companies undervalue their workers that this wouldn't be that hard to do. 

People are aging and more disconnected from their families than ever. I see massive potential in home health care and related services for these aging people with a lot of money saved up but nobody to help them in a quality way. Those services are now mostly in the grip of the big evil health insurance and big pharma industries, but all it takes is a small, determined group of people who do it better to disrupt those crooked industries. I'm sure there are dozens of similar opportunities.