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.
Working from home has been the default for the last few millenia. Who would have thought that it could make people happier?
Work, and society in general, isn’t meant to make us happier.
It fuckin should be. We are all here for a blink of an eye on a spinning rock next to uncontrollable chaos. Let us enjoy the ride and quit squabbling over which idol is right or who has the most manufactured wealth.
Correct. I am merely relaying my observations.
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”.Add to this that your preference may change as your life does. Lifestage makes a big difference.
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.
Tl:dr “Nah-uh, not me.”
Maybe for most people. I start getting a little too suicidey when I spend too many days working from home.
That sounds like you are using work as a replacement for whatever it is missing in your personal life. Nothing stopping you from going to do things outside of work hours.
I loved working most days until 12 or 1 in the office, coming home and refocusing on “my” part of my workday. Just enough office, not too much. Sadly now I am glued into a windowless room with a camera on me. Major dissatisfaction, huh.
Yeah I actually do that at my current job. WFH the first hour or so, leave after traffic is down, work from the office until 2ish and leave before afternoon traffic starts up, then wrap things up at home while I prep to workout. That flexibility is one of the only reasons I’m not looking to move unless there’s a huge raise in it for me. The job sucks otherwise.
Haha! Now if only the point of work was to make you happy! If research showed it made your boss wealthier then everyone would be WFH tomorrow!
It DOES make them wealthier. Since productivity isn’t lost while employees WFH, that means that they get the same results while saving money from having costs associated with office space like rent, utilities, furnishing, and maintenance. The reason why they don’t do it is because the rich hate it is because office real estate is a business worth billions and they’re all invested in it. They’re so greedy and out of touch, they’d make up any lie to demonize WFH.
It also makes employees wealthier… Think of all the money you flush down the drain making your car move from home to the office and back again… Just that alone is easily thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per year, depending on your vehicle and type of fuel, efficiency, etc.
Everyone wins except the real estate owners and their stakeholders, which, as you astutely pointed out, are the business owners. Rent is a way for them to essentially launder money into their own pockets. They legitimately pay their office rent, and a chunk of that comes back to them in dividends from the land owning company.
It’s a club, and you ain’t in it.
The capitalist club.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
A moist towelette, that’s all you’ll get
Agreed, thanks COVID(I guess?)
I could tolerate going in to the office if I had my own bathroom.
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
Even better is if we all got a monthly allowance and not have to work full time. 😆
Of course it does!
When I get a complaint email I can yell at Myles to go fuck himself with a toilet brush, all whole sitting in my favourite chair and Myles will still wish me a good evening at the end of the work day.
What’s not to like?This popped into my head…
That’s why they want to put a stop to it. You’re not allowed to be happy.
yah, because I’m not working lol
I work longer hours at home pretty often. At 5 I leave office to make sure my 1.25-1.5 hour drive gets me home at a decent time, and to make sure I miss the worst traffic which I feel happens between 5:30 and 6.
At home I can just keep working, load up a game on my other monitor but keep working open too,and switch between doing some minor game stuff and back to work. I have a game up now at 7 and wrapped up my notes quite comfortably.
I’m also more alert at home because I sleep in more, getting about an hour more sleep.
I thought we were social beings… With that said, ofc I would be happier with remote work only.
We are social, and being close to other people you know while being told to shut up and work is a bit grating. Bonus points if they also say it’s because we’re family and building community.
Oh and also btw you’re disowned from the family the moment we deem there’s a slight financial upside
Spending hours to commute to be around people you don’t choose isn’t necessarily a particularly social experience
A hard truth is that if you see an executive pushing return to office, you know one of two things about them. One of the following is true.
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They are terrible at finance and don’t understand the sunk-cost fallacy. They have to keep using that building they bought; they’ve spent so much on it and simply can’t bring themselves to sell it.
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They’re a sexual molester. They’re someone that uses the power of their position to coerce sex out of their employees. Fucking their employees is their primary motivation for not retiring early right now. You can’t coerce your secretary to give you a blowjob over Zoom.
That’s really it. They’re either bad at business or they’re a sexual predator. If you see an executive pushing return to office, be sure to ask them which one of these they are. Because they’re definitely one or the other.
- Tradition.
- Belief that work-from-home is less efficient.
Those are both covered under ‘bad at business’.
As well as being a sexual monster. A lot of tradition is built around reinforcement of sexist gender roles.
So
- They’re morons and terrible at business.
- Remote didn’t work as well for the company.
- Remote didn’t work as well for any number of people at that company.
Found the executive.
We have work from home, i have gone to the office twice this year. But it is true it didn’t work for everyone. Some left because of isolation factor, some fired because without anyone watching they just could not self motivate. In some case in-office meetings are way more productive, and you get those moments when a coworker overhears your convo and chimes in with something relevent that you would never have connection on in WFH
While there are a few that work better in an office, the overwhelming majority work better at home. Why should we force everyone to suffer for the handful of folks who can’t self-motivate at home? We don’t bend over backwards to cater to people who say, have auditory issues that make working in a crowded open-plan office debilitating. We tell those folks to go die in a fire if they can’t handle an office environment. Plenty of people can’t work in an office, but that was never been seen as an argument to get rid of offices.
Honestly I think your first point is just a subset of something larger and even more basic - “we’ve always done it this way. Change is scawwy. Different bad. Are you implying I was wrong before?” Etc.
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