Working From Home Megathread

Thanks @dinneenp , I feel once I get into the swing of it, I would be fine with the self-motivation to work alone once I had my tasks to do. I would just get up, make a cuppa, turn on the laptop and get on with it. I'm happiest with a regular routine tbh. My living situation is fine, I am living at home, no kids running around, and I have the space to WFH if needed. As regards human interaction, I think I would be ok with being alone for the most part as I enjoy my own company and would just ensure I get social interaction outside the house (I do genuinely feel this is important, for me at least).

Now to just land one of those pesky job things! Anyone hiring?? 😉

This is the thing. As a big depeche mode fan a song lyric a find appropriate is "I dissolve in trust".

I'm not saying you don't have to keep an eye on employees or you make mistakes in hiring, but if you have a good team, more so if more senior, then do the work well and I don't care. I won't count hours let alone minutes.

Let hr have cake and keep stumm.

It's a fair question. It's also a fair question as to whether it is more efficient to heat the spare room in multiple households, many of which won't have zoned heating systems, for office hours every day, compared to heating a central office which is more likely to have modern, efficient control system and monitoring. Obviously, the commutes would have a significant impact too.

Fair point, but I think the research shows that the vast majority of carbon is emitted via the commutes versus very incremental increases for heating an additional room, which isn't even always necessary given our generally milder Winters.

That might be the case for small business but all the biggest MNCs in this country are keen to have employees in office.

It's a cultural dogma that they're not prepared to abandon. Costs don't come into it as the dogma is there's intangible benefits to bums on seats.

My place have such a hard on for office attendance, they've resorted to buying lunch for roughly 1k employees a day.

Crazy stuff, even buying the food at cost I presume that comes to €25k per week, well over €1m per year! That's really insane if it's just to motivate people to abandon remote work.

yes agreed, and Webex meetings work far more efficiently anyway

I was fully remote for 9 months or so until the start up i am working for got office space, we are now in 3 days a week (a mandated 3 days where everyone is in at the same time). The two days from home is handy and not having to commute every day is nice but how anyone can claim that having everyone working remote is as good as people being in an office together is beyond me, there is no comparison.

If you are working in a role at a certain level where you have specific tasks and maybe you dont care to progress beyond that maybe it works ok, but for anyone at a senior level working across different teams in person works so much better, and not one person in our company would argue any differently.

Why, exactly, do you think lots of companies which are strongly focussed on the bottom line want people back in the office? Do you think they WANT to spend money on free food etc?

I'm senior and Im essentially paid for my opinion. I can give that opinion (do my job) from the moon.

Your opinion doesn't change that fact.

That obviously depends on who you work most closely with and how many of them are in the same city, if you work with people most in the US and India i agree that being in the office wont confer any benefits.