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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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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.
You're assuming everyone has the same career/job, life experiences, and perspective that you do, as well as the same home office situation.
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.
Finally, chatGPT quantity of comment tends to be overlooked. You might want to try to make your point more succinctly.
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.
Unless the question is which is better from a productivity and a business perspective.
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.
Also, are you saying that all jobs are done exactly the same way?
But that's not the question being asked.
The question being asked is that can the work be done from home, sufficiently.
No it wasn't just your anecdote, it's just you were way too verbose.
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.
So its better to be direct and distinct, to get your point across. If that's your actual goal, that is.
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/
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.
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.
From the article:
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.
No, its not.
You keep moving the goal posts.
The comparison is done in relation to all other comments that are posted and their lenghts, not your one comment.
You passed the threshold of verboseness that would turn people off from continuing to read, regardless of the word count.
Also, different age groups can be reading these comments, not just adults.
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.
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.
Oh I've made points, you've just been ignoring them, causing me to have to repeat myself to make my point.
I want intellectually honest conversations with real human beings. I don't have to agree with them, but I don't want to be wasting my time either.
lol. No one said you didn't make a point. And I certainly did not ignore them. Only that you dedicated far more of your post to whining about post length.
I can see from some of your other responses in here, including to me, that this is your go-to. It's nothing more than an empty ad hominem to avoid actually addressing points. Sorry.
You are dancing around like crazy. Every point I bring up, instead of you discussing it, you move on to something else about me, trying to kill the messenger.
If you're being intellectually honest, and if you actually have read some of my other posts, you'd see it's definitely not an ad hominem, it's actually what I believe in, so I express it often.
I hate shills and bots, and corporations trying to redirect the narrative away from the truth to serve their own selfish needs, polluting the conversation.
And when I see shills doing that, by signaling via some of their tells, I call them on it.
Name the point I ignored. I'm happy to address the point.
Whether you believe it or not doesn't change the fact that it's, quite literally, an ad hominem. You might not realize it and it's just a defense mechanism to avoid facing the fact that you can't really defend your position. But it still is exactly that.
Correction: when you can't actually defend your position, you just throw that out so you don't actually have to defend your position.
Honestly, at this point, I'd have to just point you back up to my first reply to your comment. You've moved the goalposts several times from when we started discussing WFH for employees (and not companies).
You are using multiple argumentative techniques to not have to concede a point, and not being intellectually honest in this conversation. We've drifted FAR away from the original topic of WFH.
At this point, I'd rather not waste any more of my time on this, but just instead point you back to our first comments and have you take a look at the like/dislike ratios, they are telling (though I'm sure you're ignore/excuse those away as well).
When given an opportunity to make your point, you offer up nothing but vagueness. You see what you hate in yourself in me, but I assure you you are really just seeing yourself.
Also lol @ "like ratios" proving correctness.
Lol!
Whatever lets you sleep at night. Have a good day.
Given that companies, including ones that are KNOWN to be on the bleeding edge (FAANG) and even some whos entire product revolves around WFH (ie: Zoom, Google, etc) are pulling an RTO im not really sure why you are now trying to pigeon hole and pick apart their point, while at the same time saying its not succint. They dont really need to cite anything if folks have been paying attention.
I would agree with the OP here. As a working manager and Individual Contributor at my company, I was spending an inordinate amount of time managing people and their tasks that when in office are perfectly fine performers. But at home they were not. My company also doesnt allow you to just fire people not making goals, thats not how it works, it opens them up to lawsuits of all kinds and there are plenty of weak managers out there, including where i work. Theres an entire process and almost any company with more than a couple hundred employees will be this way too.
I do have folks that are (and were) FTR before COVID and even some of them have struggled because COVID caused their home dynamics to change. Suddenly they arent the only ones home now and other factors become distractions. And not all jobs can be scheduled, many are responsive in nature.
The reality is, on the whole, most adults these days don't seem to have the self discipline to WFH full time. Some do, and sometimes on sites/platforms like this one or HackerNews you may get an unusually higher concentrations of those rockstars that can handle it also discussing it. But for most, on the whole that doesn't seem to be the case.
One hell of a chatGPT strawman.
TBH a conversation with chatgpt is more engaging than one with you. So there is that. Since i guess insults are all you can resort to if bad faith arguments fail.
Not trying to insult you, trying to call you out for what you really are.
I’m sure it’s your total concern for AInlanguage models and not totally some contrived argument you can use to never be in the wrong. Too short and it’s not detailed enough and lazy.
Too long because someone takes the time to add context and it’s now chatgpt yadda yadda.
You should go back to Reddit with that juvenile logic.
That's one way to put it.
Considering how insultive you been in the last couple of replies, you might want to look in the mirror.
Also, you realize that there are "tells", right?
Purely anecdotal and subjective experience here, but my long-term productivity was improved by wfh. I have autism and ADHD, and certain accommodations that I need to be productive can only really happen at home. Asking for the lights to be dimmed or even to listen to music to keep from losing my mind during a 12- hour shift on no sleep was basically impossible (deemed unreasonable for the employer to allow), and I personally needed more than just that to keep up. I've had to leave multiple jobs due to cracking under the stress of the environment and being unable to focus long enough to actually work anymore. Since becoming 100% wfh, self-regulating is a no-brainer most days, and I can maintain productivity for longer stretches of time with shorter recovery periods for burnout. The working world is harsh for certain people, and it stops many neurodiverse groups from actually being able to contribute our parts to the ever-hungry capitalist hellscape we cling to for our livelihoods.
Sure, I understand that it's definitely true for some people. Which is why I said they were few and far between.
The part about remote work that has caused things to stagnate is that most companies still aren't setup to hire out of their own state. So it's not done much to open the gate to opportunities that are a great fit and can be done remotely, because I'm in the wrong state. And there's still an attitude of "what would somebody in that place possibly know about things here". The likelihood I will ever be domiciled in the same place as where my perfect job happens to be is super unlikely. This is 95% employers just discriminating based on location because they don't want to do paperwork or have an open mind and 5% not having the benefit of in-person collaboration.
There's definitely some real benefits to in person collaboration, but even when I'm in the office (a large majority of the time since I need to test on hardware) I mostly just send a slack message for 99% of things. If it's a really pressing need I'll go find them in person, but I could also just call people online.
Whiteboard sessions are better on a physical whiteboard, but I think everything else goes perfectly fine over chat or voice call.
Instead, I find motivation to be my biggest reason to come into the office. Sure, I still waste a lot of time on lemmy in the office, but I'm still more productive more often when I'm at my desk.
Completing the tasks so you can get your paycheck to pay your rent/mortgage doesn't do it for you?
j/k, kind of.
In all seriousness, lack of motivation can hit a human being anywhere, especially they're doing a task they don't like doing.
Agreed. I'm a supervisor of inspectors and it is a lot easier to have impromptu meeting and assign tasks in person when I can just look around the room. We did WFH during covid for about 2 years and it was definitely harder to monitor work being done and make sure everyone was on the same page.
I agree flexible is better than full wfh. On top of everything else you mentioned, going to work gets you outside, at least briefly, and gives you a chance to interact with people you don't already know.
So does grocery shopping.
Ah yes, arguing against all the real evidence because of your feelings, typical
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/
You're projecting. Typical.