Working From Home Megathread

Difficult to predict more than 3-4 months out but I would be very surprised if WFH restrictions are lifted this side of May the way things are going. Return to office will only be allowed once the covid situation is back under control which seems a long way off right now.

This dramatically reduces the carbon footprint of those calls too.

Yeah and the 70% vaccine efficacy only refers to the *first month* after you have got the Pfizer booster. The efficacy might wane again after the first month.

This only adds risk to indoor gatherings like indoor offices for the foreseeable future.

Maybe getting the Omicron specific vaccine, which Pfizer say could start to be distributed from March, might be the pre-requisite to returning to gatherings in indoor offices. But giving the Omicron specific vaccine to everyone over 16 will take months.

It at least gives some sort of approximation of meeting in person which people mostly can't do at the moment , so yes it is important. Facial cues are very important.

Not destroying our planet with huge data centres hogging all the available power is kinda important too.

Video on by default for all users for all meetings is wasteful.

I have to say that evenings seem so much longer and full of potential when you are working from home. I seem to have time to get loads done including fitness stuff. I guess I am way less tired too.

My company told us 2 months ago that everyone can work from home until the end of June (end of school year). The don't even intend starting the discussion on hybrid until May but I am 95% convinced that they will offer 100% WFH as a long-term option. Otherwise people will walk. Several people have moved far away from the office and have no intention of commuting.

I'm not sure that it isn't well founded. A lot of companies have had a huge paradigm shift forced on them by the pandemic, but so far many have adapted reasonable well, and some have seen an opportunity to reduce outgoings by downsizing their office space footprint. Great, good luck to them, but many would also love to get the drones all back under the one roof.

As for your claim that remote workers are being exploited, well it certainly doesn't feel that way to me. Not only has my quality of life improved, but I'm better off financially - to the tune of a lot more than the extra heat and light costs and I have the savings to prove it. Now, if my employer suddenly says "Hey Storker, have some extra cash to offset your increased heat and light expenses", sure I'll take it. But demanding it? No way.

In the real world it comes down to a risk vs reward assessment; the possible reward of a small amount of cash versus the risk of losing the most positive change in working conditions I have experienced in my entire working lifetime, because the employer suddenly decides it's not worth the hassle of paying/administering the utility contributions. And years of dealing with upper-management bullshit has convinced me that this is a much more likely scenario than you imagine. If the employer is hell-bent on downsizing the premises, then perhaps they might go along, but it's a gamble, and the potential loss to the the employee who likes working from home massively outweighs the small amount of difference to heating and lighting bills.

If this is exploitation, bring it on.

Do you think you'll get extra cash for space, light and heat without actually asking for it?

Which part of "I don't care about it" are you having trouble understanding?

This has got to be the dumbest comment i've ever read on the internet.

20 people hop in their car, drive to an office, sit face to face for a few mins and drive home. Thats after they have their shower, do makeup, get into their fancy clothes so they "Look good", get a takeaway coffee in a non recyclable cup, heat and light an office.

= using a bit of server bandwidth. LOL.

Christ.