Working From Home Megathread

hmmm

Infoanon wrote: »

Excellent article on the RTE website , 'here's why your boss really wants you back in the office ' by Prof Kevin Murphy, UL.

The article quashes the arguments put forward for returning to the office and questions 'performance management '.

A lot of truth in that. There's also though for many companies a simple conservatism - the management just assume that an office is where people go to work, even though they may actually be very decent people to work for.

What I'm seeing on the ground is hybrid, everywhere, with an increasing number of companies letting employees make the decision. It looked a few weeks ago that there would be at best a begrudging hybrid ("You have to be in the office on the following days"), but in recent weeks some very big companies have clearly come out to say they are maximising staff choice.

It's much easier for big companies with HR teams and on-staff psychologists and the like. It's also easy enough for nimble companies in high-tech areas. It must be a real dilemma for the mid-size SMEs in more traditional industries.

I'm expecting a good bit of drifting back to the office from the ultra-hybrid companies by staff who choose to do so, but things will never be the same again.

A Shaved Duck?

Infoanon wrote: »

There are embedded links in the article to back up the conclusions.

The conclusions are fairly much in line with other recent articles on WFH.

The links back up the article in the sense that they share the same opinion with little to prove the points. It's just to skewed to one viewpoint with no nuance at all for me.

Obviously a flexible and hybrid approach is most sensible I for one don't want to be back in the office full time.

Antares35

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

'Cos there are so many things you can be researching from home without using keystrokes or link clicks or reading pages of text.

Your paranoia knows no bounds. How do you get any work done when you clearly spend most of the time figuring out ways that employees can screw the system.

I'd hate to work in a job so soul destroying that my worth was reduced to how many clicks I made in a day. Thankfully my company is a progressive one that recognises that trust works both ways, and that in the end, it's the results that matter

Polar101

Antares35 wrote: »

I'd hate to work in a job so soul destroying that my worth was reduced to how many clicks I made in a day. Thankfully my company is a progressive one that recognises that trust works both ways, and that in the end, it's the results that matter

During the pandemic, my company got rid of all the "people managers" who didn't really do anything else except make reports on how their employees are doing. It's bad if you happened to be one of those people, but for everyone else - not so bad.

I can still do my job the same way as before, except there's fewer people asking me stupid questions.

Lillyfae

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

If you can "work smarter" and do the job with fewer keystrokes - great. But in that case, do expect to be assigned additional work to occupy you for the rest of your contracted time.

Do expect me to leave to become a consultant so every minute of extra work I do when compared to my colleagues is reflected in an hourly rate that is four times what I make now, as many have already done. The great resignation, anyone?

The nitpicking is honreal.

Quin_Dub

hmmm wrote: »

A lot of truth in that. There's also though for many companies a simple conservatism - the management just assume that an office is where people go to work, even though they may actually be very decent people to work for.

What I'm seeing on the ground is hybrid, everywhere, with an increasing number of companies letting employees make the decision. It looked a few weeks ago that there would be at best a begrudging hybrid ("You have to be in the office on the following days"), but in recent weeks some very big companies have clearly come out to say they are maximising staff choice.

It's much easier for big companies with HR teams and on-staff psychologists and the like. It's also easy enough for nimble companies in high-tech areas. It must be a real dilemma for the mid-size SMEs in more traditional industries.

I'm expecting a good bit of drifting back to the office from the ultra-hybrid companies by staff who choose to do so, but things will never be the same again.

There's no doubt about that - It's far easier for an organisation of thousands to shift to a hybrid WFH model than it is for a company of dozens or even a few hundred.

Not to say that it's impossible but economies of scale come into play along with a whole host of other complexities.

Infoanon

Infoanon wrote: »

Excellent article on the RTE website , 'here's why your boss really wants you back in the office ' by Prof Kevin Murphy, UL.

The article quashes the arguments put forward for returning to the office and questions 'performance management '.

I have always believed that the main reason that some employers want their minions in the office is simply because of the "I pay you to do what I want you to do" attitude that many of them have, they believe that as they're paying you they own you for that duration.

WFH weakens that link and they don't like it, and this article echoes that to a certain extent.

Infoanon

Quin_Dub wrote: »

There's no doubt about that - It's far easier for an organisation of thousands to shift to a hybrid WFH model than it is for a company of dozens or even a few hundred.

Not to say that it's impossible but economies of scale come into play along with a whole host of other complexities.

I would suggest that ,in fact it's far easier for smaller companies to move to WFH/Hybrid as has been proven by the response to the pandemic.

The move to WFH proved far less complex and there are plenty of 'economies of scale ' irrespective of size.

Infoanon

Infoanon wrote: »

I would suggest that ,in fact it's far easier for smaller companies to move to WFH/Hybrid as has been proven by the response to the pandemic.

The move to WFH proved far less complex and there are plenty of 'economies of scale ' irrespective of size.

The only real obstacle for small companies is the IT required for remote working, many of the smallest companies simply didn't have the hardware in place to allow remote access.


Cloud computing eliminates that obstacle completely.

Thats me

Deleted User wrote: »

The only real obstacle for small companies is the IT required for remote working, many of the smallest companies simply didn't have the hardware in place to allow remote access.


Cloud computing eliminates that obstacle completely.

Can you provide real life example of how big these small companies are and which hardware they needed? I can imagine big or medium company would need upgrade their hardware to provide simultaneous VPN acces to their LAN to thousands or hundreds employees, but if the company is really small there should not be such hardware dependency.

Thats me

Thats me wrote: »

Can you provide real life example of how big these small companies are and which hardware they needed? I can imagine big or medium company would need upgrade their hardware to provide simultaneous VPN acces to their LAN to thousands or hundreds employees, but if the company is really small there should not be such hardware dependency.

A very small company may only have half a dozen PCs, one server & internet connection but no VPN.
At the very least they would have to provide some form of remote connectivity.
If they're lucky, they'll have a router that will provide a secure VPN or they will have to get one, then provide laptops or trust the remote employees home PCs

Mrs OBumble

[Deleted User] wrote: »

or trust the remote employees home PCs

Why should employees need to provide their own PCs?

Any employer should be providing all equipment needed to do the job.

Thats me

Deleted User wrote: »

A very small company may only have half a dozen PCs, one server & internet connection but no VPN.
At the very least they would have to provide some form of remote connectivity.
If they're lucky, they'll have a router that will provide a secure VPN or they will have to get one, then provide laptops or trust the remote employees home PCs

Any more or less modern CPU has hardware AES encryption acceleration built in to CPU - nothing prepending them from using OpenVPN to take advantage from this. The Wireguard would allow same or better performance even with not using hardware acceleration (to support old home laptops). If they do not trust home PC (i agree, such devices should not be trusted) - these still could be used for remote desktop access (x2go,xrdp, LTSM), so you have applications running on the server side and user receiving only image of theirs desktop and sending keystrokes back - this at least looks safer than share filesystem to non-trusted devices no difference is it cloud storage or not.

Thats me

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Why should employees need to provide their own PCs?

Any employer should be providing all equipment needed to do the job.

That is normal. Sometimes small IT companies even could operate in the somebody's garage..

Thats me

Thats me wrote: »

Any more or less modern CPU has hardware AES encryption acceleration built in to CPU - nothing prepending them from using OpenVPN to take advantage from this. The Wireguard would allow same or better performance even with not using hardware acceleration (to support old home laptops). If they do not trust home PC (i agree, such devices should not be trusted) - these still could be used for remote desktop access (x2go,xrdp, LTSM), so you have applications running on the server side and user receiving only image of theirs desktop and sending keystrokes back - this at least looks safer than share filesystem to non-trusted devices no difference is it cloud storage or not.

Yes I know all these are possible, but do the small business owners, they are not in the IT business.

That is the only point I am making, they may just need a little help to deploy a WFH solution.

Thats me

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes I know all these are possible, but do the small business owners, they are not in the IT business.

That is the only point I am making, they may just need a little help to deploy a WFH solution.

I think this is not related to WFH. Such companies simply unable to maintain their own infrastructure so their options are to use cloud or hiring part time expert and also spend on hardware maintenance. If not WFH would turn them to think about their IT infrastructure, hey would come to this any way, may be after major breach and/or data loss.

cadaliac

Thats me wrote: »

I think this is not related to WFH. Such companies simply unable to maintain their own infrastructure so their options are to use cloud or hiring part time expert and also spend on hardware maintenance. If not WFH would turn them to think about their IT infrastructure, hey would come to this any way, may be after major breach and/or data loss.

What don't you get about a non-IT small company? The point was being made that changes would have to be implemented and that the small non-IT company would have difficulty implementing (without cost).

WFH would cost a small company money to implement - also dependent on their current IT infrastructure set up.

Thats me

cadaliac wrote: »

What don't you get about a non-IT small company? The point was being made that changes would have to be implemented and that the small non-IT company would have difficulty implementing (without cost).

WFH would cost a small company money to implement - also dependent on their current IT infrastructure set up.

Sorry, i missing your idea. Business is all about costs. Small non-IT company either having external technical support for their infrastructure or having no infrastructure: even if the infrastructure initially was at place with no maintenance it will degrade.

IF small non-IT company does have external technical support - they could avoid expenses linked to complete changing their infrastructure by moving it into cloud.

IF small non-IT company does NOT have external technical support - they have the only option to go to the cloud regardless of WFH.

I think we have the latter case considered here and abovementioned small non-IT company just discovered its inability to maintain their infrastructure on theirs own, thanks to WFH, before they got into bigger problems.

Szero

Anyone think that Delta will cause the government to push back the September return to office target?

Work-from-home is a low priority 'restriction' that is much easier for the government to maintain.

I wonder if the government pushes this back to October and then we start to see a mild Winter wave if work-from-home government advice will stay in place longer then people expect.

Teyla Emmagan

My company have given up about 70% of our office space. We got an email last week saying that over 80% of employees wanted to WFH 3 to 5 days a week. So they've given up at least 2 leases in the City centre I know about. No news on anyone actually being asked to go back in yet either. Except for the few people who have been in throughout and who will have to stay in to keep the servers on of course. All change.

Our management spoke about the future of WFH today and it looks like they're following the majority of firms that are adopting a variety of hybrid models, which will be depend on the person's actual working requirements to determine the home/office split and that split will not be fixed for most roles. So for my job it could be between 0 -100% at home (or office if you prefer) during any particular week.

Other roles would be more rigid as in needing one or two days on site each week.
Like all companies, we have a split of people as to what their preferences are, there are some who like being in the office and many of them are in most days already, then there are others who haven't seen the office since last March

Szero

Szero wrote: »

Anyone think that Delta will cause the government to push back the September return to office target?

Work-from-home is a low priority 'restriction' that is much easier for the government to maintain.

I wonder if the government pushes this back to October and then we start to see a mild Winter wave if work-from-home government advice will stay in place longer then people expect.

I would say that there is a high likelihood that the advice will remain the same for longer, but the ending of WFH recommendations will be very muted.
As in, they'll simply stop telling people to WFH whenever possible, rather than announce that we should all go back in.

Dyr

Deleted User wrote: »

So for my job it could be between 0 -100% at home (or office if you prefer) during any particular week.

You're going to accept that you have no fixed location for work?

Hope they're making that worth your while

Dyr

Dyr wrote: »

You're going to accept that you have no fixed location for work?

Hope they're making that worth your while

I have several places on site where I can park a laptop and work away, so the desk isn't an issue.

Antares35

Dyr wrote: »

You're going to accept that you have no fixed location for work?

Hope they're making that worth your while

It isn't so much having no fixed location, as having two locations you are free to choose from. Home and office.

Not directly related to WFH but many are actually voting with their feet if the employer treats them badly.
So the message is loud and clear, the employees will go if the company tries to enforce the old 9-5 routine on them against their will.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210629-the-great-resignation-how-employers-drove-workers-to-quit

4 people share how being able to work remotely forever has changed their lives: ‘I don’t have to choose between work and family’

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/as-return-to-office-debates-rage-fully-remote-workers-embrace-freedom.html

limnam

Dyr wrote: »

You're going to accept that you have no fixed location for work?

Hope they're making that worth your while

Huh?

He has the option of a 100% fixed location.

Christ it's hard to make some people happy.

JP Liz V1

Can you refuse WFH, prefer in office?

_Kaiser_

Antares35 wrote: »

It isn't so much having no fixed location, as having two locations you are free to choose from. Home and office.

I'd say what'll happen is that people's primary place of work will be updated in their contract to reflect what's agreed with their managers/possible in their role, but it won't restrict them doing one or the other either

Me I'll be very happy if I can have "home" as my primary location as I will then go in as needed but that's it. TBH I get more done at home anyway most of the time.