If Remote Work Lasts Two Years, Will Employees Ever Return to Offices? (livemint.com) 230
"With the latest wave of return-to-office delays from Covid-19, some companies are considering a new possibility: Offices may be closed for nearly two years," reports the Wall Street Journal.
"That is raising concerns among executives that the longer people stay at home, the harder or more disruptive it could be to eventually bring them back." Many employees developed new routines during the pandemic, swapping commuting for exercise or blocking hours for uninterrupted work. Even staffers who once bristled at doing their jobs outside of an office have come to embrace the flexibility and productivity of at-home life over the past 18 months, many say. Surveys have shown that enthusiasm for remote work has only increased as the pandemic has stretched on. "If you have a little blip, people go back to the old way. Well, this ain't a blip," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., whose company has benefited from the work-from-home boom. He predicts hybrid and remote work will remain the norm for months and years to come. "There is no going back...."
[W]hat many have concluded over time is that their companies can operate largely effectively while remote, executives and workers say... As more time passes until offices reopen, it could become difficult to convince existing employees to willingly upend their new lives and return to pre-pandemic schedules in offices, executives say.
Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Lyft have now all postponed the return to their U.S. workplaces until 2022.
"That is raising concerns among executives that the longer people stay at home, the harder or more disruptive it could be to eventually bring them back." Many employees developed new routines during the pandemic, swapping commuting for exercise or blocking hours for uninterrupted work. Even staffers who once bristled at doing their jobs outside of an office have come to embrace the flexibility and productivity of at-home life over the past 18 months, many say. Surveys have shown that enthusiasm for remote work has only increased as the pandemic has stretched on. "If you have a little blip, people go back to the old way. Well, this ain't a blip," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., whose company has benefited from the work-from-home boom. He predicts hybrid and remote work will remain the norm for months and years to come. "There is no going back...."
[W]hat many have concluded over time is that their companies can operate largely effectively while remote, executives and workers say... As more time passes until offices reopen, it could become difficult to convince existing employees to willingly upend their new lives and return to pre-pandemic schedules in offices, executives say.
Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Lyft have now all postponed the return to their U.S. workplaces until 2022.
No (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:No (Score:4, Funny)
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"Pick up your paycheck." You can't possibly mean that literally. I guess I'll have to check UrbanDictionary.com to see what that means.
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And only to pick up your paycheck, amiright?
Funny remark to make while businesses are increasing benefits instead of closing their doors.
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What is a check?
I think it is some ancient outdated mode of paying people. But I am not sure.
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"50 years old" is not ancient, and "outdated" depends on the object or method. Your comment is stupid.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when you take the slowly-boiling frog out of the pot. He doesn't want to go back in.
I live in a city where the roads are clogged with heavy traffic from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM and then again from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. A drive that takes about 20 minutes on a Sunday morning might take and hour longer on week days.
When I learned to drive rush hour was actually only about an hour long. It just got longer at a rate of 4.5 minutes/year *for forty years*.
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Once upon a time, a commute longer than 25 minutes we considered pushing it. And thought people who were doing 45 minute commutes were just nuts.
But in order to afford a house I had to live 35 miles from the office, and spend 1.5 hrs each way - half of that was on a train, the rest was made of up a short bus trip, walking and waiting for the bus or train. Having it broken up like that vs sitting a car stewing made it not so bad.
And quite correct, after a year of not having to roll out of bed at 5.30am is qu
Re: No (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s because the government lies about inflation, if you look at the PCE index instead of the CPI, once you detrend the data (I.g z-score in relation to the price of gold), the data says that you would have to be making a minimum of $250k just to match the buying power of a typical household from the early 1950s. Iâ(TM)m 42 and was making six figures and still have never been able to afford even a modest home. Even with an interest rate of like 3% that 400k starter home (this is what run of th
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This is what happens when you take the slowly-boiling frog out of the pot. He doesn't want to go back in.
I live in a city where the roads are clogged with heavy traffic from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM and then again from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. A drive that takes about 20 minutes on a Sunday morning might take and hour longer on week days.
When I learned to drive rush hour was actually only about an hour long. It just got longer at a rate of 4.5 minutes/year *for forty years*.
Indeed. The whole idea of "going to work" is fundamentally broken for any job that does not really require presence.
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Indeed. Fortunately, I will not have to go back to any office (having worked mostly remotely before anyways), but I would rather switch jobs than change to that wasteful, unpleasant work-mode.
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Similar for me. The return to the office wasn’t the breaking point, but learning how to work well from home for a year gave me confidence that I could do so elsewhere, which opened up an industry of possibilities beyond the handful of places here in town, all of which pay below-market rates because the cost of living is so low here. First place I interviewed at was my top choice, and they offered me 50% more than I was making, with the same benefits and a similarly great corporate culture.
Christmas Day Truce (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm reminded of the Allied and German generals' response to the Christmas Day Truce in WWI. They realised that they as a class were in danger of losing control of the canon fodder, and therefore in danger of losing their own jobs and maybe even skins.
So they eventually positioned snipers to shoot their own men if they tried any more "free thinking" about who the actual enemy was - the blokes they played football with, or the fat cunts sitting in chateaux and ordering them to walk slowly towards machine guns across rough terrain.
I wonder what the modern version of the snipers will be.
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they eventually positioned snipers to shoot their own men
Citation needed.
Why would a sniper follow such an order? Snipers are humans, not robots.
In WW2, the Soviets used NKVD barrier troops, but they shot those retreating, not those going forward.
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That's easy. It's these mandatory covid jabs. The spike proteins they re-program your body to create causes blood clots.
Hey look! Someone just took 1/10th the facts and made a 1/2 truth. What a genius. :-(
Re:Christmas Day Truce (Score:5, Interesting)
The vaccine doesn't make any long-term changes to your cells. It does insert a new spike-building protein "program" that gets "run", but it's in strictly "short-term memory".
Essentially mRNA is the stuff that stores the "executive memos" from the DNA telling the cell what to do, and the vaccine sneaks some counterfeit memos into the cell's in-box. But those memos get shredded after they're read, so that the cell can focus on today's priorities rather than last week's. And as the number of vaccine-memos dwindles, so does the spike production, until it stops completely after the last memo is shredded, typically within a few weeks.
The only long-term reprogramming that happens is the same as with any vaccine or infection: Your adaptive immune system teaches itself how to deal with the invader.
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when they're all cowering in fear at home, socially distanced from everyone else, and only know what the TV and other controlled media tells them.
You think the vaccines send you back to 1995?
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"You think the vaccines send you back to 1995?"
They have to, Bill Gates' tiny chips in the vaccines work only with Windows 95.
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It's far easier to control the population when they're all cowering in fear at home, socially distanced from everyone else, and only know what the TV and other controlled media tells them.
Like you, the only news source I trust is the waitress at my local Applebees.
Re:Christmas Day Truce (Score:4)
The level of stupid some people aspire to is truly staggering. You are nice example of that.
Incidentally, you did notice that the level of spike-protein you get exposed to is much higher if you get COVID, right? And you _will_ get COVID unless vaccinated.
Not Going Back (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Millions of people are suffering from anxiety and depression because of social isolation. Where exactly do you want me to find friends out here in suburbia?
And how do you expect me to be productive with these rowdy kids running around?
Clearly the job market caters only to bachelors or something. Starting with the miserable pay that is nowhere near enough to pay the bills let alone raise a family.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
In fairness, it's hard to make friends as an adult (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic or not. Were your only pre-pandemic friends people in your office?
...especially when you have real responsibilities and come from a small family. When did you make most of your friends?...probably when you were in school or college...and a lot of that is because you had no choice. You HAD to be around those people. You didn't have the money to do whatever you wanted. After I got my first good-paying job, I could take my girlfriend out wherever. I could afford a nice setup for watching movies and playing video games. I could do anything I wanted...go anywhere, buy anything, pursue whatever interested me. Before then, my apt kinda sucked. I couldn't afford infinite games and the best graphics cards. I had less freedom of schedule. I had a very large group of people across many classes I had to be around and vice versa, so more opportunities to bond with more diverse people. Also, when you get a job, you're only forced to socialize with your team...people all working on the same project, probably with similar backgrounds.
Post-pandemic, I talk to most individuals outside my team maybe once a month. In the office, I'd see them daily and say hi and keep up with them, and have low-stakes conversations while waiting for coffee or a microwave to heat up our lunch or while eating. I could see someone is bored and strike up a conversation with no reason...and far more struck up meaningless conversations with me. Now, I need a reason to talk to a coworker and vice versa...which only happens for the first 5 min of a call for someone I had to talk to for some reason.
Also, my wife and her friends are neurotypical (I've got Asperger's). They used to hang out post-college. That shit stopped once they had kids. They used to hang out once a month. Now it's like 2-4x a year. My neighbors are of similar age...same thing happened. They'd have people over ALL the time, like every other weekend, blocking our driveway often...popped out a kid 5 years ago...now only their parents visit. They love going into the office to socialize with people who aren't relatives.
Boredom, relation, and necessity are the main source of friendships. When you're affluent enough not to NEED anything from anyone, it is a barrier to friendship. When you're busy, you have a lot of barriers for bonding...conflicting schedules, being tired when you're free, etc.
Have kids and a career...I think you'll find yourself more dependent on office friendships than you'd really like to be. You'll find it's hard to make new friends and your existing friends get busy just like you...and move all over the place. Maybe when my kids are older, I can make more friends...that happened to my parents and in-laws and a few older coworkers...but when your kids need you constantly...good luck making friends outside work.
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Re: WTF (Score:3)
I've been remote for almost 18 months now though i would go into the office occasionally for the hands- on part of my job. I miss the occasional banter in our work group and the joking around to lighten the mood. I'm an introvert but still miss those interactions.
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I'm pretty neurotypical, and I still don't want to socialise with my co-workers. None of them have the same interests as me. If I'm going to hang out with my friends, then its because I share common interests. I'm more than capable of communicating with my co-workers either face to face, via or via email.
I'm sick of being made to commute for hours when VPNs have been a thing for like a couple of decades, just so my sociopathic boss can see that I exist. It's as if he's got a goldfish memory or something. R
Lead by example, you undiagnosed aspie (Score:3, Interesting)
Says yet another /. antisocial aspie loner. Christ I'm sick of you neurofuckedup types in IT. Offices will so so much better when you miserable mushrooms stay at home on your own without having the rest of us having to look at your miserable surly faces or deal with your inability to communicate like humans rather than robots.
Yeah, you're really doing a great job communicating there, bud. If dealing with coworkers on the spectrum in IT has you this riled up, then you have some undiagnosed issues yourself. A neurotypical person would figure out the person is on the spectrum rather quickly and find ways to communicate effectively with them. If you can't deal with talented coworkers with high functioning autism, it's not because we're annoying, but because you're either really autistic yourself or you lack the IQ to think of mor
Find a decent church (Score:3)
As a committed Christian, I should regret the addition to our congregations of people whose only motive is to find a social club. OTOH we tend to find that once involved, some certainly find the faith real to them, especially if they meet people for whom it is transformative.
And of course there are churches for all sorts of beliefs, though 'atheist churches' do tend to be thin on the ground, though they are making a come back; they were a feature of 19th century atheism.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
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The UU church happily admits atheists.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
How about us people who suffered from anxiety and depression because of forced social situations like sitting next to a human at work?
2020 was the best year of my life. Not kidding.
Re: WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
For the same reason you have tortured us the rest of the time.
Payback is a bitch, bitch.
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You seem to have some anger management issues about neuro-non-typical people. Perhaps you should see a therapist
Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Millions of people are suffering from anxiety and depression because of social isolation. Where exactly do you want me to find friends out here in suburbia?
Well, quite. The general attitude of my team mostly reflects mine: "well, not commuting is nice, but I do miss in person interactions". The company I work at appears to have plans to re-open offices but clearly has no real idea about what return to work will look like, and it's largely being left to managers. I'm probably going to head in a few days a week in future: my commute is moderate, but mostly on foot, so while it annoys me it does make me get exercise. And I do miss the in person interactions. Zoom is draining as fuck, compared to even meetings and a full day of those was bad enough. I have to put so much effort into dragging my attention back and not surfing the web or coding when someone loses my attention.
Fundamentally we are all humans and even most introverts (I'm not one, but I know plenty oddly enough) do actually like some in person contact.
My guess it'll be a mixed bag in the end. Some people will come in more than others, especially those who live closer to the city centre who have less space and a shorter commute, and are probably more social. Others won't. Some might come in very rarely, if at all.
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Oh so you didn't vote to fuck over AmiMojo then, because he got fucked over by it. Or doesn't he count?
He could've applied for EU citizenship and gone to live in his beloved EU if he cared that much about it.
So no, he doesn't count. In so so many ways, he doesn't count.
Thankyou for fucking over the country.
Tell me, how is the UK getting record levels of investment being fucked? How is the UK being well ahead of the EU in vaccine rollout being fucked? How is the UK not suffering grenade attacks in multiple cities being fucked?
Please, you'll be bleating on about a fucking bus next.
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We aren't under a strict lockdown, in America at least. You can go shopping, restaurants, etc. You can have friends over to hang out, drink, watch stuff, play games, whatever you are in to. If you are suffering from social isolation in present conditions, it isn't because you aren't allowed back into the office, but because you lack social skills.
I can't impart social skills to you in a mere slashdot post, but there are many excellent self-help books on the topic (that is not sarcasm). Learn how to find
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All your problems are easily solved by renting a spot at a co-working office. Its not rocket science.
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Stuff and nonsense. I was never isolated in suburbia, knew my neighbors on each side, and others as well. You just have to get off the sidewalk (if there is a sidewalk).
I've been on a 4 day, all remote schedule for year (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to bounce around as a contractor. I was driving all over hell to get to whatever office I needed to be at in the Chicago area. Sometimes downtown, sometimes Northbrook or Downer's Grove or the forsaken backwater of Harvey. The drives were the worst part of everything.
I've been on a 4 day, 10 hour, almost full time telecommuting job for the last 10 years. There is no earthly way I would give this up. I've been able to care for my parents and to work "from home" all over the country when I've wanted. My job's most important physical location is a rack of servers in a datacenter. I don't even really understand why we have office space at this point; last time we had an in person meeting, we did it at the local coffee shop. Our phone system is all virtual at this point. The whole idea of an office just seems silly. It's just a place to get packages delivered, but it's also the biggest single expense of the company. Why bother?
Re:I've been on a 4 day, all remote schedule for y (Score:5, Interesting)
My company was paying $30,000 for 1/2 of a floor in downtown Seattle.
They paid that for the last 18 months without a single person in the office.
Work and productivity weren't impacted- on the contrary, most of our metrics went up after we got acclimated to working remotely. Everyone loved it.
Eventually upper management realized that they'd thrown away $540,000 renting a completely unused office space for NOTHING.
Eventually, after throwing more than half a million dollars down the toilet, they officially closed the office. No one objected. Not one person.
So yeah, unless the office is packed with lots of horny, slightly tipsy supermodels that have all been fully vaccinated, office work is not in my future.
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I work on a college campus and I'd still love to work from home....
Ha ha, NO (Score:5, Insightful)
"If Remote Work Lasts Two Years, Will Employees Ever Return to Offices?"
I won't.
As I've said repeatedly, I've set foot in my last office, period.
I suspect a *LOT* of other people feel the same way.
After you get used to sleeping in, taking breaks/naps/snacks as needed, and generally adapting to the more relaxed pace of working from home, the idea of going back into an office seems ludicrous.
Wake up, grab breakfast, shower & shave, get dressed, grab all your stuff, get into your car and fight the traffic and the weather, find a place to park (which you're probably paying $$$ for), and go into the building. Reverse the process at the end of the day.
I don't know about you, but that just sounds nutty to me after several years of working from home.
The ONLY reason office life was the norm for decades and decades is because there was no other choice.
Now we have a choice, and a whole lot of us like Option #2, "Work From Home."
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What was that about the latest gen not being able to find jobs? I am sure they are willing to lower their standards for $150K/year positions and just like this people will be a lot more forgiving about traffic.
I know that I am not losing my job over traffic; I don't want to be fired via email.
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Your attitude might change significantly if you suddenly find yourself w/o a job.
Nah, I'd probably just retire sooner and maybe screw around doing some consulting on the side.
But the fact is that the scenario you mention is very, very unlikely to happen. There has always been remote work, and now there's a hell of a lot more of it. It's not going away. In short, I'm not worried about being able to find remote work.
I am sure they are willing to lower their standards for $150K/year positions and just like this people will be a lot more forgiving about traffic.
Yeah well I don't care what they do or don't do. That's up to them. As for me, I've set foot in my last office.
I know that I am not losing my job over traffic; I don't want to be fired via email.
If that is your only choice then you have my condolences and I w
Re:Ha ha, NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Sleeping in? I wish I could. The start of the day stays the same. The most I get back is the time from a 15 minute commute. I know you love being at home, so retire at a young age if get rich. But I like the office better than my crappy condo. When I retire then hopefully it gets better.
Not everyone has the option to work from home. I had to go into the office for quite a lot of days that least 2 weeks, not because I wanted to, or because a boss wanted to see my face, but because it was necessary for the job. Not everyone is an IT cookie cutter goon who can do everything from a remote developing country. Some people need to be local, touch actual products, use actual labs, and so forth.
If your job can be done 100% remotely, then I guarantee you that they're thinking about how to give that job to someone with 1/4 your salary. In the age of outsourcing, employees really need to start increasing the value they add to a company by being local.
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I used to think like that but it turns out it's really not such a big deal. Maybe there is some guy in India who can do my job just as well, but even just the fact that I can get on a plane and be in the office in a day or two, or visit a client, all without needing a work visa counts fit for a lot.
Brexit made things a lot worse for people with British passports but at the moment our government makes it very difficult to get a UK visa so we are safe. EU passports are the ones to have though.
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If your job can be done 100% remotely, then I guarantee you that they're thinking about how to give that job to someone with 1/4 your salary.
Well they better fuckin' hurry because I'm nearing retirement and somehow I just don't see them being organized enough to make that happen in time.
Even if they wanted to, they couldn't. Some kinds of work are very difficult to outsource to a foreign country, and I happen to do one of those kinds of work. So yeah, I'm not sweating it. I'm much more likely to win the Lotto than to be replaced by a foreign worker.
If I really needed to I could go back to contracting but I plan to ride this FTE cruise ship all t
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Alternately - perhaps it's that the office culture that needs to change if they want to get workers back?
After all, there's no inherent reason you couldn't take beaks, get snacks, and even come to work unshaven, while working alongside your colleagues in a relatively relaxed environment more like a university study hall or grad lab. (Though just like the grad lab, please don't make your colleagues have to tell you to shower) There is something to be said for a separation of work and home.
What this last yea
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Alternately - perhaps it's that the office culture that needs to change if they want to get workers back?
I can only speak for myself, but there is no amount of culture that will get me back into an office. I honestly can't imagine what they could do to get me to *want* to come back. And there's a distinction between going back and wanting to go back there that I should point out...
1) They could get me to come back simply by paying me an insane shitload of money, which no employer in their right mind would ever do. I'm simply not worth the hilariously inflated rate I would ask for. So with that as a constraint,
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I've solved the problem of putting my hair back on my face: I never take it off. (I'm a man, but I hear women do the same: they don't shave their beards.
Office based employment will inevitably return (Score:2)
The reason is that remote meetings do not build teams, where cooperation between workers or sets of workers will outproduce a sea of remote workers. Also, learning career skills and mentoring is best done when being able to consult coworkers in a proximal location. Knowledge/service industries builds its capital on people, and that doesn't happen when the company is full of remote workers. Not everyone are effective autodidacts, even though a college degree is supposed to certify a rudimentary level of t
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The drive for ever-increasing productivity and the chilling effects of free conversation becoming a social policy minefield, pretty much led to the death of spontaneous, proximity-based collaboration at our company well before COVID came along.
It's funny to hear managers fantasize about the benefits of spending more time in the office, and realize that they are really imagining a return to how things were 20 years ago.
If, when, we return to being in the office (which was already part -time anyway), it will
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I agree that there are advantages to meeting people f2f. But there are other ways to accomplish that, whether one day/ week in the office, or meet at a restaurant or coffee shop or park bench. (I do expect some offices will require > 1 day/week; there will be variability.)
Re:Office based employment will inevitably return (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason is that remote meetings do not build teams, where cooperation between workers or sets of workers will outproduce a sea of remote workers.
Really?
So here's the funny thing, then. My fellow consultant lives on the other side of the US to me. We've worked closely together now for two companies and six years, with me being the technical consultant and her the finance functional consultant (so there is a natural synergy there). One of our clients literally said to their management team that they consider us "to be part of their workforce and essential to the company". To a person, our clients love us and the value we deliver (we've been informally referred to as the 'dynamic duo' by one client in a conversation we were not supposed to overhear).
We have also never met in person.
Sure, there have been some FaceTime calls and video Teams meetings, but in general we talk a lot and do screen sharing. I'm Facebook friends with her & her husband; likewise they with my wife.
I simply cannot conceive how our working relationship and the value we deliver to clients could be improved by us both being in the same office. Sure, our personal friendships may deepen, but in terms of value to client and value to our employer, being in an office would change nothing.
So no, there will be no summonsing to the office for us. But our productivity, as measured by billable hours, is through the roof.
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Anyone who has ever been part of an online gaming community knows this is a load of horseshit.
Tons and tons of people meet online playing a game, get to know each other over years, and eventually finally meet in person. And over those years they built guilds and plotted raids, saw empires rise and fall, built websites and ran forums, coded and modded, mapped and made models, wrote wikis together and a whole lot of other shit.
I've met a half dozen or more people in my life after years of productively working
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Have you ever been to a conference of basically any kind? I'm sure it's especially true at conferences centred around OSS, but comic conventions, art conventions, whatever?
What you see is a lot of people that have never met in real life meeting for the first time, and realizing that the bond they shared over the internet for years was absolutely real. They have fun and party for a few days and go home. It wasn't the meeting that bonded them, it was the shared goals or interests.
Linux has been maintained by
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We've integrated 3 new team members since home office working began. Never met them in person. They are now just as much a part of the team as the 3 other members that were part of the team before covid started.
Employers can see all the advantage they want, I hope they also see the advantage of a good part of their knowledge workers saying goodbye if forced back into an office.
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some people have lots of distractions at home, and some people like a mix. So why not just allow it all
Well, to be cynical, businesses only care what's best for them, and what they can get away with. I wasn't kidding about businesses concerned with team productivity & developing employees. But it will be up to the Googles and Teslas (and maybe Apple) to figure out what the new normal will be. Amazon and Facebook will make the dumbest decisions, and revert to a 5 day per week office environment.until they realize they're missing out on too much top line talent. Some units, the employees will interact
agree to compromize (Score:4, Insightful)
I think employers and workers should reach a compromise:
They can force you to go to the office, but they must pay your full hourly wage for the duration of the commute, rounded up to the nearest hour.
And if they don't send a driver to collect you in the morning, they pay for your vehicle, insurance and fuel as well.
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They cannot force me to go to an office. They can bribe me, but expect that to be in the 3-4 digits range per visit.
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This. I've always thought that time spent commuting to and from work should be paid time, or at least be factored into compensation -- though the idea of commuting to a cubicle to do any sort of work that can reasonably be done from a home office is (like so many things in our society) literally insane. Work is about performance, not time spent in a particular building. I left a job over a decade ago partly for that reason, and have worked at home ever since. When I do visit a client in-person for whate
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but they must pay your full hourly wage for the duration of the commute, rounded up to the nearest hour.
I've always thought, even since a young age that the commute time should be somehow compensated (at least partially). I mean, I can't get an electrician, plumber, or cable guy to come to my home without a $75 trip charge.
Remote working is the future and we should just stop pretending and embrace it.
Work from home benefits (Score:2)
Big Repurcussions (Score:5, Informative)
If people don’t return to the office, a whole lot of other things are going to break and I’m not sure they will ever recover. An obvious example is restaurants that rely on weekday lunch for a significant portion of their revenue. As it is, the labor shortage for restaurants might make most restaurants non-viable if it lasts another year.
We will go to two days mandatory in the office per week as our general rule, and people that work 100% remote will likely get a 10% pay cut due to the things they cannot do for the company (visiting client sites as a simple example). We will likely pay for group lunch out at least every other week to try to help local restaurants, but a number of them have eliminated lunch service already.
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And if those things break they break...
It is not our job to prop up portions of the economy that may no longer be viable if that means making people do something unnecessary and something they hate to do it. If there is enough office population to support those industries then so be it, if there isnt, then so be that too. Buggywhips and all that
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Yes, restaurants that rely on nearby workers coming in for lunch may go the same way as blacksmith shops and harness makers. Otoh, to the extent that there are advantages to f2f, I could see restaurants that cater to business meetings, whether one-on-one or larger groups, and maybe with private seating, room on the table to set up computers, guaranteed quiet, and so forth. They just wouldn't necessarily be in the same locations.
Now if you could have holographic video conferences, where the non-local peopl
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I went into the office last week for the first time in about a year. The business is moving to a different building at the end of next year and I needed to review the new building as part of finalizing the lease. This is in Washington, DC.
We're reducing the space we lease by about 60%, and IMHO we should reduce it even more. We'll see. The design of the space will focus much more on team workspace, reducing individual office/cube space down to the barest minimum. Those will be all allocated as hot desk, wit
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Property owners will be fine long-term; types of tenants that had been squeezed out will come back. I’ve wanted to get a light industrial unit for a while, but as a $5/sq ft “creative office” it makes no sense but it does as a $1/sq ft “warehouse.” Property values will be slow to decline because the prospects of that space returning to a $5/sf+inflation value will fade slowly.
People that think the same of restaurants miss out on the various roles they play in our society at v
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People that think the same of local theaters miss out on the various roles they play in our society at various points in peoplesâ(TM) lives. Cinemas, TV and streaming is no substitution for that; the same is true for a number of other types of businesses in different ways. The functional aspect might be replaced, but the cultural portion is much harder.
And so what?
Re:Big Repurcussions (Score:5, Insightful)
"if I owned a building in DC or another major city, I'd be worried about cutthroat competition coming for tenants"
If I owned a building in a major city, I'd look at conversion to residential. While some people are fleeing to the hinterlands, others are enjoying not having to travel two hours every day for their job and now want to stop traveling two hours every time they want to go to the grocery store.
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There are a couple issues with that though; when people work from home they do not go out for lunch the same way as in the office. Most restaurants cannot survive on dinner alone— lunch might not be high profit, but it is consistent. I think of the restaurant downstairs from my office as an example— they do great dinner business, but lunch is essentially paid prep time and covers the manager’s time working behind the bar for what work needs to be done. At times of the year lunch is a money
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I feel bad for those businesses that had a model that relied on people making their way to the same part of town every day and being stranded away from their homes where the workers normally make their food, but times change. But the thing that might happen is restaurants nearer to where I live might get more business when I feel like I want to step out. Or my bike mechanic will get more business because I'm riding my bike for leisure more and I need more work done. Or sandwich delivery companies will do ev
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I would previously see places downtown that are only open for breakfast and lunch and places in the suburbs that are only open for dinner. The environment seems ripe for consolidation into fewer locations that are open longer hours for the same amount of service with less overhead.
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Been buying any buggy whips recently?
We as technologists do not need it (Score:2)
But other positions do.
For most people, what will happen is that we will retun to mixed mode working.
I predict somethingo along of 2 days of office precense, and 3 days of remote (or vice versa).
the precesnse days will be 1 full and 2 half days.
Of course, some change intolerant companies will insist on 5 days presence.
Also, the US is not the world. In parts of the world where conectivity is not good, or where local customs go against WfH , expect to see things like full on precense, to 4 days of precense an
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It's not a fear of long weekends, it's a fact. I've been at several companies where the "start the weekend early" was an open and poorly kept secret. For sure in Silicon Valley the weekend traffic jams start at 2pm. A LOT of workers really don't have much added value and can get away with a lot of slacking.
My employer is targeting 2 days/week (Score:3)
My employer has set a target of 2 days/week of in-office presence, but it's a long term goal there's no pressure to achieve it at this time.
So for me their long-term goal is the same as what I was doing before Covid. I went in to the office occasionally, even though my current one is 15 minutes from my house. What is different is they are accepting it as a general practice for all employees now.
People in my neighborhood typically commute 1 - 1.5 hours each way to get to their office in the city. I did the same for many years. I hope to never do it again.
We get to see how powerful banks are (Score:4, Interesting)
The prospect of the commercial property sector going tits up as a result of massive cuts to the numbers working in offices should be scaring banks and stock holders of the owners of the buildings. So they will be kicking the people they lend to to try to get them to get people back into the offices... Watch for the propaganda about how important time in the office is (see above!)
However there is a serious point here; vast amounts of debt owned by the firms you invest in is mortgaged on office buildings. If those debts go bad, it will be messy, and have knock on effects into the rest of economy.
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The world moves forward, also "metaverse". (Score:2)
Depends on the employers (Score:2)
Either remote work will be a common norm or coveted benefit depending on how many employers are ok with it.
My work is trying to say they are going to be adamant about 3 days/week whet they let people in. When asked 'what if you don't want to do that?' and the answer was 'you'll be welcome to come in 5 days/week', which is an even more infuriating answer than 'no'. The general sentiment is that when that comes to pass if there are offers elsewhere for remote work to be had, people will be running for those o
God I hope not (Score:2)
At this point I think we should pass a law mandating work from home where possible and enforce it with an independent body. It's okay to make the kind of society you want to have. We don't all just have to bow before the job creators and pray that they deign to allow us to live. Somewhere along the line we just started to
Remote work might lead to offshoring... (Score:2)
An acquaintance of mine worked at a company which completely offshored their dev team. The manager's rationale? "If I see pixels on a computer screen in a Zoom meeting, those pixels don't have to be from the local area. They can be from anywhere in the world, so it is far cheaper for me to have the pictures of working people be from a 'world class' offshoring company than it is to have them be from full time employees that cost me a lot more."
My worry about full time WfH is that it will lead to another r
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An acquaintance of mine worked at a company which completely offshored their dev team. The manager's rationale? "If I see pixels on a computer screen in a Zoom meeting, those pixels don't have to be from the local area. They can be from anywhere in the world, so it is far cheaper for me to have the pictures of working people be from a 'world class' offshoring company than it is to have them be from full time employees that cost me a lot more."
My worry about full time WfH is that it will lead to another round of outsourcing/offshoring across the board, especially with the ease a company can have a VDI and a cloud based infrastructure, so people don't have to be anywhere near the main office, and never have to physically come by.
I agree with your concern.
We'll just have to make sure we're the best
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Offshoring and outsourcing to cheap locations has been tried many times before with limited success.
If it was viable before the pandemic it would have happened because people keep trying it.
The main problem is hiring someone with a clue. It's a seller's market right now.
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If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys.
Just remember when you are "buying" an offshore team -- they don't really work for you, instead they work for the intermediate company you're hiring them from, and their goals are not aligned with you as a client.
They have little interest for example in solving your problem quickly and instead will steer you (with the necessary techno babble) towards lengthier solutions. They also don't have any interest in creating a future proof and maintainable solution.
You could p
Who cares? (Score:2)
Besides sandwich companies and plate of the day chains.
Your job... (Score:2)
Productivity is up - but the micromanagement... (Score:2)
...is completely gone.
I'll possibly never work at the office again.
I have:
1) Hour extra life, no more commuting, this has increased the quality of my life tremendeously.
2) Less costs. Both for the company and me.
3) Using Teams and Skype (now a part of Teams) works amazingly well, we have virtual meetings and there are more people in the meetings now than ever before, and we get to watch documents and stuff we need without the constant waste of papers and having to look things up, they're right there when we
Investment advice (Score:2)
Make sure your portfolio doesn't include any office real estate.
Well, they can also just be fired. (Score:2)
What a stupid question.
If you're not even socially competent enough to interact with actual humans in front of you, and hide at home, no company that isn't a shark tank full of similar sociopaths/psychopaths will ever hire you.
And such a company has no chance against a company where people socialize... you know, like actual freaking human beings.
But no surprise that remote work is popular among the most socially inept sociopaths on the planet: Silicon Valley Slashdotters.
Posting from their mom's basement, a
I'm happy with the change. (Score:2)
Us introverts will thrive (Score:2)
and techies tend to be 'the type that avoids socializing'. Yet for extroverts and young people needing an informal mentor, it's going to be harder.
There's a fascinating set of social science experiments going on which would NEVER have got ethics clearance, but will be amazing to unpack in the medium term.
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I don't get it. If the work is getting done all the same, why do they care if it's in the office or not? If anything, they should be happy: it's a chance to lower expenses.
Because, for big companies who measure their greatness by the size of their skyscrapers or sprawling parking lot, there is a real cost to empty buildings: the cost of an empty building. These big companies generally have real estate managers (of some description) whispering in the ear of the CEO / CFO the cost of having all these buildings empty. Since recommending permanent remote work would put the real estate manager out of a job, why do YOU think there is a post to get people back into the office?
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My guess is that it must have to do with the ego of some people who know that their presentations are boring as all hell and who also know that if they allow you to be "present" to their mandatory presentations virtually, that you'll simply turn them on and do some actual work while pretending to be there.
Which is, by the way, also one of the reasons why productivity soared during the past months. People could actually get some work done in meetings.
Of course, those narcissists who thrive on wasting everyon
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My guess is that we are still primarily coasting, on knowledge and relationships build prior to WFH;
See my comment above. The most productive I've been in my life is working with a consultant whom I've never met in person. Building remote working relationships is quite possible.
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No worries, when Delta covid slaughters the massive chunk of USA that were dumb-asses and didn't vaccinate there will be another lockdown even tighter than the first. You can already see the curves going up, just wait till dry winter air hits.