WFH is dead and buried. Right to WFH bill is pointless

If it was all in system tracking the project(s) a manager would see the rollup at a glance.

At least if they would if they looked at the system. Often they don't.

Welcome to boards

no they are arguing with the 10% like myself who are not on board with the consensus here. The consensus here is still only a small section of the overall population given that the vast majority of the workforce do not work from home. Like alot internet forums it becomes an echo chamber.

I don't know where you are getting that from ? where did I mention my friends in a general discussion about WFH and the downsides, I think its more a case of don't like the message target the messenger. The same thing happened when Denis O Brien criticised WFH and the whole culture around it, he got slated not for his arguments on WFH but about everything else from Esat to being a tax exile.

"We all know WFH allows way more slacking off of work"

"long term it's not healthy even for the individual because it limits their social interactions"

"During COVID we heard that marriage break ups and divorce rose significantly afterwards as the pressure of being stuck together all day with no outlet caused friction."

"The default option for humans is laziness so if they don't have to do stuff they won't"

None of your above statements have any resonance with me. It seems to be your personal assessment of you/your friends situation.

Always find it odd when people argue the importance of the social side of their job. Do that not have meaningful relationships outside of work with people of their choosing?

Quite something when someone thinks "the office" mirrors real life when in fact is satire of dysfunctional office with an inept management.

It's different for people in their late thirties and forties working remote today who participated in such workplace realities for years prior to 2020. Yes, some people worked remote. Always been the case. But it was never widespread. And people in their twenties straight out of college social never had such setups.

Thats probably the key reason why employers want to end WFH or at least the fully remote variant because it doesn't foster transfer of knowledge. People in their 40s and 50s are conveniently forgetting how they learnt their own skills from older colleagues in the workplace. You hear of how young new hires during Covid were picking up few skills since the knowledge base of the companies were all at home and very difficult to pick up an important skill through a laptop screen especially if the old guy at home is not tech savvy.

Good point. Some people take quite a while to get up to speed with business logic/knowledge. That's definitely harder to do over Teams etc.

Disclosure; I'm fully remote, have been since well before Covid, most of the people I manage are in different countries.

That being said, formal instruction is definitely as easy to facilitate remotely as it ever was in person, but the quick off the cuff asking someone more experienced for a quick look at what you're working on definitely isn't in most companies I've had any dealings with. I think it is very noticeable in the standards of devs who have come out of uni in the remote era.

I'm a big proponent of remote working (certainly from a selfish perspective), but there is definitely an element of reduced information exchange between giving the person beside you a nudge versus sending a Teams message or meeting invitation.

There is a confluence of issues with this debate. There is a hysterical clinging to the idea that only the tasks matter as long as they do a prescribed set of tasks correctly; that's all that matters. There is a drift to a belief that the employer should be suiting the employee and not the other way around. Some workplaces have become very me-fein, so onboarding or whatever its isn't happening, unless it's a specific, stated task they have to do, a lot of it is cynicism because why bother.

A relative in their twenties went for their first graduate job, something which I would have thought would be very competitive, considering the career and how well it is paid its tech. They were telling us that a fair few dropped out when they realised it involved weekend work, including Sundays.

On the other hand, I know someone who can more or less do what they like, provided they do their work and do their two day in the office, so if they want to get a flight Friday afternoon, they work from 6am, or they can get an early flight back and start work in the afternoon. They dont moan about the two days in the office.

I always feel really sorry for people who talk about the importance of the social impact of going into the office. Have they no pals outside of work?

I think the most important thing is to allow flexibility and but also have a system where everyone in a company has equality when it comes to WFH flexibility and knows where they stand. Since Covid specific arrangements for certain employee leads to resentment and poor morale. I agree it is really bad for 20 somethings to work fully remote. Building up the softer skills of being able to interact with colleagues is important. The lazy worker will slack off WFH but companies should be able to identify through their metrics and address this. The 30, 40 something with kids needs more flexibility that the 20 something for example and doesn't need to be in the office as much to learn from other people. Maybe a system of remote days per years of service would work e.g 50 days - 1-2 years, 100 days - 3-5 years etc similar to extra holidays that some companies provide per years of service.

That's another version of only the tasks matter and avoiding the real issue, it's not about socialising with work colleagues nowadays days there isn't much of that anyway.

And its somewhere around 1 in 5 couples who meet in work. Used to be anyway.

Not going to meet anyone sat at home in your childhood bedroom.