The Argument against work from home

a reply to: JAGStorm

I hate when someone takes my lunch when I work at home.

The Argument against work from home

Any argument against is null and void .
Veteran of "Work Location : Home Office" for well over a decade .

a reply to: dandandat2

Having a work force that works from home is tremendously less efficient than having that same work force being co-located. And there are other issues that arise as well.

Completely depends on the industry.
For some people 100% of their coworkers/bosses/customers might not even be in the same state.

The only thing I will say is that there can be distractions at home that don’t happen in the office like dogs barking or kids crying.

a reply to: frogs453

I noticed when we first WFH that it was mostly men complaining about WFH.

Being stuck at home 24/7 with the wife and kids does put more pressure on the relationship. Absence does make the heart grow fonder.

a reply to: JAGStorm

I do it and love it, my pets love it.. my colleagues hate it .
But you cant brownnose and work from home.

screw em, im never going back.

Companies that require everyone to be in-office will slowly die off.

New startups will not see the need for the overhead of an office and will be able to do business at a lower cost having never had to invest huge amounts into office space.

They will also draw good talent, and some of that talent will be willing to work for less money in exchange for WFH.

i've been working from home since 2011
no stress from traffic,
no need to wake early,
can watch tv/youtube/browsing anytime i want
can sleep, etc

but when covid strike and everyone must WFH,
i immediately layoff 50% of the employee,
the remaning 50% got 50% salary reduction. (50% of the 50% resigned since they hate salary reduction).
i can really tell you, in my case, they're NOT WORKING LIKE they were in the office.

it tooks ages for the email to get replied, ages to read the whatsapp. even they ask for "COMMUNICATION EXPENSE" to
cover their extra internet.

fast forward to now, we survive covid, it's been light on us since our expense 80% is salary expense.
and my good friend, who is reluctant to reduce salary/employee now is struggling really really hard to survive.
their cfo just resigned, cmo resigned, hr resigned...those people don't care that they got big help during the lockdown when he's still paying the salary. finance is the first to flee the boat when the storm come.

now gov try to implement WFH again on the premise of bad air condition, and the traffic is so bad already. wth.

i guess that make me evil. who cares ?

originally posted by: EmmanuelGoldstein
I work from home, and it's not what most people would think. You never clock out. I'm at my desk sometimes 16 hours a day. If I'm lucky, and I can bill 8-10 hours. Not productive? Over productive and basically always working.

originally posted by: dandandat2
Burn out ... unintended consequences of work from home post covid.

To add a little more meat to this argument;

I explained in an earlier post that I manage a group of engineers who are allowed to work a hybrid schedule. They get to decide for themselves if and when they get to work from home.

At the behest of corporate, during our monthly functional meetings I will some times ask the group how they like the hybrid schedule and they will all profess to love it for all the same reasons sighted in this thread.

What they don't know is that they are not all working from home at the same level of productivity. Some are like EmmanuelGoldstein, over productive, working more hours in a day/week then they use to and not able to bill the extra hours. Others are less productive then they use to be. The first group compensating for the second.

Since no one is really measuring the productivity of their co-workers they all assume they are working at the same level. So when they are asked the question if they like the hybrid schedule the first group doesn't know they are shouldering a lot of the burden to make hybrid work.

As someone who needs to curated the team; burn out of the first group is a real problem I need to worry about. But my options for dealing with the second group are limited. I can't fire people unless there is a really good reason too, and performance reviews are far between. Also talking negatively about the hybrid schedule is a bit taboo since everyone likes it, including the first group who are being over worked by the second group.

I started working from home almost a year ago after decades of being onsite.
I love being able to grab my morning coffee and getting the office in record time (12 seconds)

I find myself putting in longer hours and getting more quality work done. All meetings are view Teams or Zoom so I just throw on a hat and a clean shirt and its on.

I think company's that are instituting a RTO policy are going to FAFO real real quick.

It's totally about control and generations of conditioning that only onsite employees are good employees

I work outside of the home, but would give anything to work from home instead! So howabout I find a work from home job and get back with you about how productive i am?!