If Work From Home becomes a thing...

jrosen

uli84 wrote: »

Highly doubt anyone is as productive working from home as they are in the office, unless single and living on their own.

Current feedback from dh's company is that productivity for about 70% of their Irish workforce is down, roughly 15% averaging the same and the remainder being more productive.
The trend continues to their US offices.

Sunny Disposition

It's a bad time for working from home, because no one was ready for it and because there is no childcare.

GreeBo

Biker79 wrote: »

Probably not related to this thread, but I would say contractors and outsourced workers are more vulnerable to automation and less favourable WFH conditions.

I disagree totally.

Companies use contractors as they are much easier to hire and fire as and when you need them. When your resource demands are fluctuating its often cheaper to use contractors for 6 months rather than hire staff and be stuck with them.

KyussB

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

This is simply untrue. Simple as. And pretending to be knowledgeable in a field that you know nothing about negates all your (seriously ill-informed) points.

Leaving Citrix aside.... (Cloud-based? That alone was enough of a give-away. Citrix tends to be on-prem. If you cannot differentiate between remote connection and cloud-based VPCs then I do not know what you are doing in your job as "Work[ing] specifically with networking programming and security")

So sticking with VPN connections: Assuming that a remote worker's internal network is using RFC1918 (Guaranteed) and a company is also using RFC1918. Typically an end user would initiate trafficto corporate site and get their internal IP addressing NATted behind a single specifically-allocated RFC1918 IP address. How then does the company isolate its own internal RFC1918 IP address pool from the remote RFC1918 pool? You cannot initiate traffic to a one-to-many PAT and specify the translated destination.

Extreme examples: Maybe they are using Policy-Based IPSec VPN connections. Again, you need to isolate remote and local address pools simply to allow the traffic so there are no encryption domain overlaps. As you must know, Encryption Domain overlaps result in packets being dropped and not allowed over the tunnel. Again, NAT required.

Route-Based VPN? Same issues.

So everyone is entitled to their POV but you should not pretend to be knowledgeable in a field in order to spread misinformation. I do not know what your agenda is other than scaring people with "insider information". Even if your inaccurate comments above were accurate (They are not - any manager with a little knowledge can penetrate and sweep your entire network... Really?) as other have said, WHY?

Did you even read a single thing posted? I'm taking issue with corporate spyware being mandatorily installed on employee's devices - not with VPN connections or cloud-hosted OS's (though the latter does have some - but not as much - scope for issues).

You seem to be mistaking the role of a network admin, with that of a networking/security programmer. Hint: If it doesn't involve writing code, it's not programming.

KyussB

ELM327 wrote: »

You shouldnt (BAU) be using a personal device for work.
There's a bit of leeway during covid but outside of pandemic times if you wfh you do so on a secure device supplied by your company

Unless you're a contractor who has to pay to supply your own devices - which is the future for everyone working from home...

krissovo

A number of customers that I work with have Bring your own policies for user devices. I have a bring your own device option if I want for phone & laptop in my role. The process is simple you get an allowance every year and it's up to you to remain productive.

The bring your own policy also covers contractors and suppliers who need access to certain tools but they do not get the allowance.

ELM327

Strumms wrote: »

He sounds like a grade A pisshole himself.

When the work is assigned to people his only concerns should be that it’s completed accurately and in a timely fashion.

If I’m an employer and i today assign an employee ...

- online training class ( 2 hours long approximately )

- three training reports ( 3 hours long approximately )

- webinar call with myself and teammates ( 1 hour )

- sundry tasks, e-mail etc ( 1 hour )

7 hours work, one hour for lunch, that’s their 8 hour day. I’m not going to try nor would I be able to micromanage every minute of their day. An email when they clock in, same when they take lunch, when they return and a quick 2 minute phone call at 5 pm as they log off to recap the day... simple. You are dealing with professional adults.

Even that's too much IMO.
Once the work is done each day you dont need any check in.

uli84 wrote: »

Highly doubt anyone is as productive working from home as they are in the office, unless single and living on their own.

Myself and herself are both working from home.
She's rostered work and receives tasks delivered if shes logged in. No difference to productivity.

I'm salaried and I find I'm more likely to work 9-10-11+ hours at home vs 8.5 at work. Reason being I don't have 1.75 hours of commute (there and back, 45mins e/w). I'm much more productive at home.

ELM327

KyussB wrote: »

Unless you're a contractor who has to pay to supply your own devices - which is the future for everyone working from home...

Our tax laws will not allow that.
Contract work is too tax advantageous to allow it to the great unwashed.

KyussB

Don't see how that is the case - contract work makes us all more like e.g. deliveroo drivers - easily disposable, with less benefits/rights.

It can be quite good if you've got a good gig going, a regular business you contract with - but now that WFH is becoming the norm, and employees are all going to be made contractors - those days of having a good gig as a contractor, may be limited...

krissovo

KyussB wrote: »

Don't see how that is the case - contract work makes us all more like e.g. deliveroo drivers - easily disposable, with less benefits/rights.

It can be quite good if you've got a good gig going, a regular business you contract with - but now that WFH is becoming the norm, and employees are all going to be made contractors - those days of having a good gig as a contractor, may be limited...

This is very cynical and will in no way become common practice due to working from home. It will not fit for skilled roles, most companies want to keep their talent workforce or they will fail. If you are a value to your company you are employee or as a contractor you are retained and regularly fired due to IR35 or similar rules.

Gig economy workers do the work because it fits their lifestyle at the time plus anyone can do it. There are almost no skills involved.

ELM327

ELM327 wrote: »

Our tax laws will not allow that.
Contract work is too tax advantageous to allow it to the great unwashed.

I suppose he's on about contract folk on poor terms........ €12/hour product builders and call centre workers etc etc .......... they'd not be able to benefit from much tax advantageous strategies.

(product builders won't be candidates for wfh of course

Interested Observer

KyussB wrote: »

Don't see how that is the case - contract work makes us all more like e.g. deliveroo drivers - easily disposable, with less benefits/rights.

It can be quite good if you've got a good gig going, a regular business you contract with - but now that WFH is becoming the norm, and employees are all going to be made contractors - those days of having a good gig as a contractor, may be limited...

This is about as ridiculous as your 'you will be spied on in your own home' notion.

Interested Observer

Interested Observer wrote: »

This is about as ridiculous as your 'you will be spied on in your own home' notion.

Yes, people here are really losing the run of themselves

Mrs OBumble

ELM327 wrote: »

If you treat your employees as children this is the type of thing to do.
People generally leave those jobs though, so there will be a high rate of attrition which brings with it cost.
That person should not be a manager.

I love the way you can make assessments like that without having a clue what industry this is, or what regulatory requirements apply.

In this case, the company actually has very high staff retention, most staff have been there for years. Some customers have contractual requirements around all phone calls being recorded (they're made thru the computers, absolutely not through home phones) and around identify validation for staff doing jobs. There are some legal requirements around when some phone calls can be made. The manager has to have evidence that these are all being met - actual evidence, not just motherhood-and-apple-pie statements about professional adults.

Also, all employers should have evidence that staff are working no more than 48 hours per week on average in any job, and that they have at least 11 hours between shifts. Whether you think this is micro-managing or not, it's a legal requirement.

Jim Root

Soo....how are office people dealing with talk of going back to the office; are you getting pressure? What target date is your company looking at reopening? I’m wondering about how my colleagues will react when asked to return,

bilbot79

Jim Root wrote: »

Soo....how are office people dealing with talk of going back to the office; are you getting pressure? What target date is your company looking at reopening? I’m wondering about how my colleagues will react when asked to return,

I'm hearing whisperings but I don't want to go back. I like it better at home

KyussB

Interested Observer wrote: »

This is about as ridiculous as your 'you will be spied on in your own home' notion.

You've had several posters here say straight out that employers/managers are looking at putting spyware on employees home devices, that they have direct experience of this...

What exactly are you going to do, if your employer tells you they'll only employ you as a contractor from here on?

All economists are talking about the biggest economic crisis in a century - are you just going to tell your employers they can stuff it, and then go jobless?

krissovo

Jim Root wrote: »

Soo....how are office people dealing with talk of going back to the office; are you getting pressure? What target date is your company looking at reopening? I’m wondering about how my colleagues will react when asked to return,

August is being pitched for about 15% of the staff in Cork and only those who do not have decent work from conditions. January they are looking at 35% to 50% and not much else is clear right now.

snoopboggybog

KyussB wrote: »

You've had several posters here say straight out that employers/managers are looking at putting spyware on employees home devices, that they have direct experience of this...

What exactly are you going to do, if your employer tells you they'll only employ you as a contractor from here on?

All economists are talking about the biggest economic crisis in a century - are you just going to tell your employers they can stuff it, and then go jobless?

Your so clueless I don't even know where to begin. There is other people likes Mr's O Bumble who does not understand IT Infrastructure either. I'm going break this down into three sections for you so you finally understand.

Work Laptop.
Have you ever worked in a proper IT environment? In Infrastructure and Networks? Every user with a work laptop the company logs your internet history, your browsing time and websites visited, also your antivirus in a central system. This has been in place donkey years and every single decent company has this setup. All work laptops should be encrypted and generally connect via VPN into the companies infrastructure. I repeat they do monitor your home network. It works the same way as visiting a website. Does a website scan your home network???? Your connection is back to the cloud or office and to your laptop, similar to how websites work. Your work place isn't port scanning your home network. A company can legally access your file shares and email which is hosted on their servers.

Home Laptop
If a company wants you to install software and VPN on your own personal laptop then it is a crap company and the people working in IT should be fired or the people in charge don't want to spend money on IT. No company should be doing this or expect you to install software on a personal laptop to monitor you. I would leave a company if they asked me to do this or demand a laptop from them.

The Cloud
A lot of people now are using virtual desktops whether it be Citrix, Azure, AWS, or other cloud technologies. You can log into these fine from a personal device using secure authentication. While connected to the cloud and the virual machine the company will be logging your internet history on the virtual machine while connected to it along with other areas such as screen time from their own personal servers or others servers on the cloud. This in no way affects your home computer or logs any data from your home computer. You cannot copy files from the cloud to your home computer only to other computers in the cloud or corporate network.

Now please stop embarrassing yourself, its getting quite sad.

@MrsBumble - You keep talking about GDPR and other stuff and you have no clue about it. You seem to be looking for every reason for people not to work from home. Is it because you like bossing people around in the office or something. I really had to laugh at having camera's spying on people in the office ffs. Most be a terrible company to work in.

Sorry now but I absolutely hate people talking absolute rubbish and think their knowlegedble in an area when they don't have any clue whatsoever.

snoopboggybog

KyussB wrote: »

Unless you're a contractor who has to pay to supply your own devices - which is the future for everyone working from home...

More nonsense, nothing wrong with using your home laptop in certain circumstances as explained above. Nearly all contractors get a work laptop or login via a secure way like citrix, AWS, Azure etc.

Your really just embarrassing yourself.

snoopboggybog

KyussB wrote: »

Did you even read a single thing posted? I'm taking issue with corporate spyware being mandatorily installed on employee's devices - not with VPN connections or cloud-hosted OS's (though the latter does have some - but not as much - scope for issues).

You seem to be mistaking the role of a network admin, with that of a networking/security programmer. Hint: If it doesn't involve writing code, it's not programming.

Again calling you out with more utter drivel. If you actually work in IT the company is fecked. Nearly all decent company has proxies setup which monitors internet history, blocks malicious websites amongst many other things.

I've worked in quite a few IT companies and every single one of them has this.

I repeat it would be a very shady company if they have the VPN setup in a way to be scanning devices and open ports on your home network.

You swear this working from home is a new thing.

Interested Observer

KyussB wrote: »

You've had several posters here say straight out that employers/managers are looking at putting spyware on employees home devices, that they have direct experience of this...

What exactly are you going to do, if your employer tells you they'll only employ you as a contractor from here on?

All economists are talking about the biggest economic crisis in a century - are you just going to tell your employers they can stuff it, and then go jobless?

Yeah good question, what will I do. What will I do if they decide to fire me, or if they tell me I'll be making the coffee from now on or I'm being transferred to our new office in Bangladesh? I don't know what I'd do, because none of those things are going to happen, and the overwhelming likelihood is I'll never have to find out. Like a lot of people, whenever it's safe I'll go back to working in an office, my employment status won't change, nobody will be putting 'spyware' (seems to be what you call things like Citrix) on my personal devices, I'll continue to be a regular permanent employee. If anything different happens I'll let you know.

Jim Root

Jim Root wrote: »

Soo....how are office people dealing with talk of going back to the office; are you getting pressure? What target date is your company looking at reopening? I’m wondering about how my colleagues will react when asked to return,

30 people in my office, the EU HQ of a large MNC. Looking at getting back in late August and overwhelming majority want to return according to a poll last week. Contrast with the much larger Canary Wharf office, where only a small minority want to return. Public transport is probably a big factor....c. 2/3 of Dublin office cycles, scooters (is that a verb now?) or walks to work

Expecting 25% in on any particular day to start with. When those that can’t return in the first wave, or don’t want to, are taken into account, there will probably be a 50:50 split team arrangement. In for a week, out for a week.

And, personally, I cannot want to get back to my big standing desk, multiple screens, bright office, and loads of storage space. Compared with my cramped, corner of the living room, WFH arrangement

Mrs OBumble

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

I had a conversation just yesterday with a manager who is concerned about how he knows his employees are working when they should be working.

In this case, I was able to suggest using an existing call tracking tool, but sooner or later he will get to thinking "how do I know it was Fred, not just someone logged in as him, who placed those calls".

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

I love the way you can make assessments like that without having a clue what industry this is, or what regulatory requirements apply.

In this case, the company actually has very high staff retention, most staff have been there for years. Some customers have contractual requirements around all phone calls being recorded (they're made thru the computers, absolutely not through home phones) and around identify validation for staff doing jobs. There are some legal requirements around when some phone calls can be made. The manager has to have evidence that these are all being met - actual evidence, not just motherhood-and-apple-pie statements about professional adults.

Also, all employers should have evidence that staff are working no more than 48 hours per week on average in any job, and that they have at least 11 hours between shifts. Whether you think this is micro-managing or not, it's a legal requirement.

I'd suggest you try to be less leading & vague .... Your first post quoted wasn't at all in the spirit of the second.

First suggested a big brother bean counter micro manager and you must have been aware of that..... Almost something beginning with T

Lots of senior folk are on calls to the US late into the evening and back on Irish 8 to 5 the following morning..... How does that fit into your 'between shifts' spiel? It doesn't and it's not going to.

mariaalice

How could you monitor work that can't really be quantified by how long someone is logged on to their computer? what if it's more nebulous than that.

If working from home is the next big thing and it look like its haveing its moment, all the issues from GDPR to equipment etc will be sorted because there is a will to do so, you can be sure someone is busily getting HR and legal advice and writhing new policies for this.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1237300.The_Shock_Doctrine

For the idea that massive quick shocks to the system can be used to bring change about quickly, working from home might have slowly been gaining momentum before COVID 19 but now its happening almost overnight.

mariaalice

mariaalice wrote: »

How could you monitor work that can't really be quantified by how long someone is logged on to their computer? what if it's more nebulous than that..............

It seems to be be a prevalent thought that no actual skilled or senior folk can wfh ......... only folk furiously playing with excel and word all day to hit their target of 257 pieces of mundane completed sh1te can work from home

mariaalice

Augeo wrote: »

It seems to be be a prevalent thought that no actual skilled or senior folk can wfh ......... only folk furiously playing with excel and word all day to hit their target of 257 pieces of mundane completed sh1te can work from home

Lots of skilled or senior people are working from home at the moment and getting on fine there is a little bit of an obsession with monitoring. It is a bit of delicate balance though for anyone not senior or anyone young maybe a huddle at 9am evey moring just to make sure they are up washed, dressed and at their computer at 9am.

mayo londoner

Jim Root wrote: »

Soo....how are office people dealing with talk of going back to the office; are you getting pressure? What target date is your company looking at reopening? I’m wondering about how my colleagues will react when asked to return,

29th June we are being told, and not exactly any choice in the mater, dreading it.

mariaalice

mayo londoner wrote: »

29th June we are being told, and not exactly any choice in the mater, dreading it.

If you are just as productive at home could you ask for working at home at least a few days a week?.

TheIrishGrover

Jim Root wrote: »

Soo....how are office people dealing with talk of going back to the office; are you getting pressure? What target date is your company looking at reopening? I’m wondering about how my colleagues will react when asked to return,

Thank you... To get away from the "Your company is spying on you using your webcam/Alexa/drones 'expert analysis' ".

Our company is looking at mid September to start rolling it out but our manager told our team that we can WFH until end of year if we wish.

It's a tough call. I Worked From Home 2 days a week anyway before Covid and was thinking of reducing that to 1 day and 2 days every second week as I was finding it a bit isolating. But I really don't fancy sitting on a train for an hour in each direction with everyone in masks to come into an office only 1/4 full. I think that would be MUCH more depressing. so I think I'll wait until things go back to as normal as possible.