Great news for disabled people. Gives us a much better chance at finding a job willing to hire us!
I started a new position in my company in February 2020, just weeks before the lock down. Since then I've been almost entirely working from home, coming into the office maybe 10 days over the past 4 years.
During that time I've been promoted, gotten a separate pay raise to a new band, helped onboard the entire rest of my team (two of whom are completely remote).
I've done nothing but prove over and over again that I am excelling at my job remotely.
They are still pushing for me to come back to a "hybrid" 3 day a week schedule. Madness.
I think hybrid has its place. But it's definitely not a one size fits all
There is work like construction, transportation, and customer service that can't really be remote.
I'm not sure if there's a good argument for work that can be done remotely to insist on both in person and remote work. It doubles the amount of workstation resources required, or compromises on at least one of them.
Maybe teams benefit from in-person communication? That's probably simpler for some that haven't found comparable online versions of whiteboarding tools or whatever. Good tools do exist, but feel people that haven't adapted to them by now, it'll take some real demand to make it happen. This might not be a characteristic of a highly effective team, though.
Most frequently, hybrid insistence seems do be more about justifying middle management, based on my highly unscientific observations.
And yet my company is forcing me back into the office, I've been resisting for over a year, and now they're threatening hr->path to firing for insubordination if I don't come in... I've been working remotely effectively since March 2020.
Started sending out applications to actual remote jobs, it just sucks, it was a good gig while it lasted.
I hope you get a better job, and they get a worse employee in return.
Good luck, remote job postings are a hellscape. I gave up and work "hybrid" which is I can occasionally take a wfh day but I'm expected in office 5 days a week.
I'm curious how this impacts decentralization in terms of population density.
You could cure traffic congestion, repopulate rural communities with less conservative folk, and generally improve overall life satisfaction if more jobs became remote and access to high speed internet in rural communities became more common.
Would arguably reduce housing costs on average?
At my previous job, I had a coworker who was hired on after the office decided work from home would be permanent. Everyone in the office was originally from northern Illinois since that's where the office was, but she lived in rural Iowa in a farm with her husband. She mentioned how she really wasn't able to get a job like this previously as she would have to commute long distance to the city. And of course she and her husband can't just pack up the farm and move it closer to her work. So you're absolutely right! Work from home could very well be the thing that saves small communities that have been largely going off.
Would arguably reduce housing costs on average?
(Canadian here with some knowledge of the industry)
It hasn't reduced prices on average, but it does flatten out the distribution across the country. I would say that for small towns the short-term effect has been overall negative, because it drives up housing prices in regions that historically have lower wages, and also ties up the construction industry and drives up prices there as well, so it becomes more difficult to both buy an existing house and build a new one. The real winners in the equation are the remote workers who are no longer tied to big cities and can use their "big city money" to buy pretty much whatever they want in a small town.
Long-term (after things have stabilized, maybe a decade, and assuming the "immigrants" stick around) it will be more positive, because the small towns' tax base and demographics will be rejuvenated. Short term infrastructure pains are real though.
Super insightful comment and makes complete sense, thank you.
In America I'm curious how it could impact the Electoral map (especially considering the effects of the Electoral College itself).
This come up sometimes and I can't speak for everyone, but I don't live in a city just because that's where work is. I live here because it's dense, walkable, has a lot of stuff happening every day, and many different people.
Moving out to a rural or suburban space is a huge downgrade on most metrics I care about.
I still want to work from home.
However, a lot of folks would love to work at a California based company, be paid California based wages, and then live in an Arkansas cost of living. You have a super valid point for your own standard of living, but there are plenty of workers willing to make that trade for the financial security.
Suddenly a percentage of the Arkansas population actually has a decent amount of income, you start getting some purchases and tax income in the area, now the ass end of Podunk, AK actually has a little bit of cash money to invest in their area. Rinse and repeat in a hundred thousand little drive-by towns across rural America. As long as it has internet connection someone can make a good living there, and that's a huge difference to what we've traditionally seen in those towns - that being, everyone is broke as shit, so there's no real upward mobility for anyone because there's no new money coming in. This is a huge step forward towards addressing that.
Interesting insight I've heard echoed before, thanks. Question: do you have kids or plan to have kids?
I've never lived in the downtown of a city before. I can only say I've lived the suburban life of a big city and a deeply rural countryside. For me, I like a bit of breathing room. I don't like the hussel of the city, nor how people tend to generally become less friendly as density rises. I miss the small-town feel or rural privacy. I certainly dislike the pollution (air, traffic, noise) and raising my kids in it. I'm not a party animal who likes the night life either. Even before kids.
I don't have kids but I'm close to someone who does. I play Legos with the kid and don't have to change diapers. It's great. We're in Brooklyn.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by breathing room. I'm not far from prospect Park.
The idea of privacy is kind of counter intuitive. In the city people see you but they don't typically care. It's like being invisible. But better, actually, because when you get in a bike accident then people do see you and help.
I don't know about less friendly. Differently friendly, maybe. I don't talk to people on the street or subway. I talk to people at bars or meetups or shows.
I would never ever want to subject my hypothetical kids to a suburban life. That's what I had. Couldn't do shit. Everything's too far away, and the roads are too dangerous to walk or bike on.
I was so jealous of the kids I knew that grew up in the city. They'd tell me about how they'd gone ice skating or to a punk show or to a board game shop, and I'd be like wow I can't do any of that. It's either just not here (music), or I can't get there because walking for miles/down a highway is dangerous.
All of this is written specifically from the experience of NYC and its suburbs. I haven't lived anywhere else long enough to speak to it.
It already reduces housing costs for those who move away from high cost of living areas. Also, access to high speed internet is already common in rural areas of the USA. It wasn't 10 years ago but we've made a lot of progress.
Wait a moment....
"Work from home is here to stay, US data shows"
"Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O"
Fuck you. Here's your upvote
We should fine companies who don't do work from home when they could be. It's safer for employees and better for the planet.
We're basically subsidizing this behavior with low taxes. It ought to be unaffordable to waste money on offices they don't need.
but think of the poor landlords not getting money for renting out office space /s
From someone who willingly goes into the office almost every day, it's still quite obvious that for the good of the world, the less people going in overall, the better. Better for the environment, disabled people, mental health, and I imagine better for housing markets (though I'm no economist).
Is it better for the feelings of rich people? Because that's what's important.
I think it’s really fucking sad that people get dressed in nice clothes every morning (with makeup for some), and commute 1-2 hours to eat a stale or costly lunch and maybe shit in a public toilet to 1) write Jira tickets, 2) sit on zoom meetings, or 3) white board some bullshit that will immediately become irrelevant in crunch time and then retreat home like zombies to repeat it all over again.
Have some dignity, work from home, unless your job actually requires physical presence (like nursing, teaching, mechanical etc.).
Edit if want to socialize, actually socialize instead of making it about work. Work is not socializing (for many), don’t force it.
You know what's more sad? Tons of people die in traffic accidents on their way to work. It's literally the most dangerous thing they do all day, and they do it for no reason.
Working at home is so much better than having to go to the office. I am so glad more people get to continue this fantastic life style.
WFH is supports the very policies that the government wants, less pollution less traffic more mental health. Unfortunately the business lobbies want us scurrying around like rats again because you know. Profits. Cats out of the bag now, no going back.
It's not even about profits. If companies don't have to pay for expensive office buildings they can save money. It's all the middle management realising their jobs are are unnecessary.
Business lobbies? Profits? This train of thought has derailed somewhere. WFH saves on real estate, increasing profits.
Not for office block owners, who are the ones whinging the very loudest :(
It is? Then why can't I find a single work from home job that isn't a fake listing?
Found one real job this year without any problems. Maybe look worldwide? You're not any longer bound to your city or your county when looking for 100% remote.
I had to shift this attitude myself when I started looking around this year. Was used to only look for jobs nearby to reduce commute... Bullshit. Opened up for worldwide (English is business language nearly everywhere) and now happily work remote 100%.
I wish you much success!
Thank fuck
It’s stable for now. My company has been getting people back into the office through several attempts. They haven’t given up, and they made sure to make that clear, just a work in progress.
The fuck it is lol - almost everyone I know, who works for a large corporation in a major metropolitan area is being forced back into a hybrid role. I went from completely wfh in March of 2020 to 4 days in office since the beginning of the year (NYC). I feel like there’s a sunk cost fallacy going on with the long 20-30 year leases a lot of these companies signed for in the 2010s
You gotta remember the tape delay on moves by big corps. Google/Microsoft/Apple/etc. all are suffering after their top talent left. So they're all slowly backpedaling their behavior.
Big Corpo always lags behind what the FAANGXRAGNAROCK tech companies do, so they'll likely realize the same problem has happened in another couple of quarters, mimic the behavior again, and silently backpedal.
I've already seen more job listings claiming "hybrid/remote" and even companies like AT&T and Verizon are offering remote-only technical roles on their job sites now.
Sure would be nice if these idiot companies didn't keep copying each other and just realized that, no, I don't want to sit in a shitty loud hot office all day. If you want me to be productive, let me work where I am. If some people like it, cool, let them!
They should all recognize this as a cool advantage to cut down on their commercial real estate offerings, or sublet some of the space they don't need. There's tons of money to be had and/or saved by making these adjustments.
I 💯 support work from home and understand it's benefits ... but at the same time, when I work from home I find myself way more depressed and less connected than when I go into the office. I enjoy my work and like my coworkers, which I know is not the case for everyone. I wish that affordable housing was pushed as a way to promote working in the office, rather than just banning WFH. It's nice to have the choice, people should be able to afford to live near their work.
Optionality is key, that's what I'm worried about losing in the next market downturn. Letting people work from home is great.
Forcing people to work from home to save on office real estate costs, preferences older and wealthier workers who don't need to build work relationships and can afford a home with an office.
I keep coming back to how it's beneficial for the corporate overlords financially to not have to have massive offices, overheads, and all those in office perks. This keeps me believing WFH is the future.
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