Bwahahaha!

I retired from practicing law and own a company that my son runs. I hope you are more productive than me.

Get off the interwebs and earn your salary. lol

(07-30-2024 08:32 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Bwahahaha!

I retired from practicing law and own a company that my son runs. I hope you are more productive than me.

Get off the interwebs and earn your salary. lol

I'm off today and heading for the casino to play poker in a bit.

(07-30-2024 08:25 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 08:08 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 07:56 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Everyone I know who works from home spends several hours a day screwing around, doing personal stuff, doing kid logistics, walking their dog, exercising or doing nothing. They'll all honestly admit to that. But if anyone suggest they work in an office, they freak.

It's a necessary evil but most people that work from home spend most of their time CYA justifying productivity for working from home. Reason they all spend time on company calls and training like SEI garbage. It's easy to see who is participating.

Sales is at least easier to evaluate benchmarks.

Man, you can screw around many hours a day from an office. Been there, seen that, done that. Do you seriously not know this? Never walked into someone's office and caught them social mediaing or playing Space Invaders?

Do I screw around sometimes working from home? Sure I do. Do I always make up the time? Absolutely. I have objectives I have to meet, sometimes completely unrealistic objectives, and if I don't meet them, no bonus or raise or, if it's bad enough, no job. When this happens I work way more than 40 hours.

You can't fit the entire population into one pigeonhole. Your prejudices are not my reality.

No offense meant.

See what I mean? People who work from home admit it but always go all mamma grizzly.

You might be a more happy employee, but you likely aren't as productive if what you do requires a team environment Just a fact. It's just cheaper. Your company makes a cost benefit analysis that the lost productivity and lack of communication and transient culture outweighs the other stuff. They know you frick off several hours a day.

Between zoom calls and team meetings and updates and all the other stuff to make up for not being together, people spend so much time doing that stuff now it's funny. For many, more of the job is this kind of remote box checking now than actually doing the core job. I can't tell you how many people I know who are on the clock while on family vacations. They know they are getting over. You do you.

Hybrids where you need to be in just a couple days a week to press flesh, proof of life and to be able to be evaluated in person make a lot of sense.

If companies require that, you are always feee to interview elsewhere.

Working in IT, I think the experience is different. I know for a fact that we did our own review of productivity and found out we've gained productivity and cut costs by sending people home. Like I said, no water cooler talk, meetings are direct without talking about the Reds or Bengals for half the meeting. We still go into the office 1 or 2 times a month, but it is more about team building than anything else.

Both my wife and I have been working IT from home for years.

Yeah, some days are slow. But, we have to have 24 hour access to do our jobs. We would be remoting in from home regardless.

The daily standups over Teams or Zoom have allowed us to know our co-workers. We have culture, office intrigue, rumors, feuds, all of it.

(07-30-2024 08:41 AM)Claw Wrote:  Both my wife and I have been working IT from home for years.

Yeah, some days are slow. But, we have to have 24 hour access to do our jobs. We would be remoting in from home regardless.

The daily standups over Teams or Zoom have allowed us to know our co-workers. We have culture, office intrigue, rumors, feuds, all of it.

Completely agree. But people outside of IT probably have an issue understanding it as they usually don't understand the job we do.

(07-30-2024 08:38 AM)mlb Wrote:  Working in IT, I think the experience is different. I know for a fact that we did our own review of productivity and found out we've gained productivity and cut costs by sending people home. Like I said, no water cooler talk, meetings are direct without talking about the Reds or Bengals for half the meeting. We still go into the office 1 or 2 times a month, but it is more about team building than anything else.

People often can't think outside their own box, Even very intelligent people like rath sometimes.

(07-30-2024 07:45 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 07:43 AM)fsquid Wrote:  I think at the end of the day, there is not simple answer

My point exactly.

I also think a large part of the equation is older management not knowing how to manage WFH employees. I don't care where my staff works from. We have project goals/timelines for implementation staff and metrics for call center staff. I don't physically need to watch anyone to know if they are doing their job or not.

I personally personally WFH in the mornings then drive into the office in the afternoon to handle any physical inventory duties. Key factor being it takes me 25 minutes to drive in the afternoon and generally 1.5 hours during rush hour. That's a whole hour of time I could be working wasted sitting in traffic.

(07-30-2024 08:42 AM)mlb Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 08:41 AM)Claw Wrote:  Both my wife and I have been working IT from home for years.

Yeah, some days are slow. But, we have to have 24 hour access to do our jobs. We would be remoting in from home regardless.

The daily standups over Teams or Zoom have allowed us to know our co-workers. We have culture, office intrigue, rumors, feuds, all of it.

Completely agree. But people outside of IT probably have an issue understanding it as they usually don't understand the job we do.

What has changed is corporate fear about where their systems are. COVID was the greatest thing in the world for pushing conversion to the cloud. Once something is in the cloud all the remote folks can get to it and no one has to come into the computer room to do things.

(07-30-2024 07:43 AM)fsquid Wrote:  I work for a Fortune 300 company in the engineering/architecture space. Our transportation group was the first to mandate coming back to the office and the result is we lost our most seasoned people because they'd go to other companies who were willing to let them work remote.

I think at the end of the day, there is not simple answer

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

It is still being used as a competitive tool to retain and attract people, but more and more companies are realizing that culture and presence are far more critical than they thought.

The unintended consequence of that hiring practice is now starting to manifest.

Calling employees back to the office who have been there since pre-covid is hard enough. A lot of people have moved to a new job and were hired as a "hybrid" so they think that is their permanent status and they have a case for that.

Now what do you do as the employer? The employee has you by the balz and unless you can legitimately make a case for underperformance, you are stuck. In my state, if you let someone go for almost anything other than a pure performance issue, you are getting sued if you let them go and replace the same position within 12 months.

(07-30-2024 08:51 AM)bobdizole Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 07:45 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 07:43 AM)fsquid Wrote:  I think at the end of the day, there is not simple answer

My point exactly.

I also think a large part of the equation is older management not knowing how to manage WFH employees. I don't care where my staff works from. We have project goals/timelines for implementation staff and metrics for call center staff. I don't physically need to watch anyone to know if they are doing their job or not.

I personally personally WFH in the mornings then drive into the office in the afternoon to handle any physical inventory duties. Key factor being it takes me 25 minutes to drive in the afternoon and generally 1.5 hours during rush hour. That's a whole hour of time I could be working wasted sitting in traffic.

This (in bold above) is also a huge problem. If you have 20 or 30 people working for you remotely, it is difficult to monitor that many.

It is very easy to say - if they are getting their work done, what is there to complain about. That may be true, but it also accentuates how long it takes to get your actual job done. I can attest that the few times I have worked from home, I have found myself, that I was able to get my 8 hour day completed in 5 or 6 hours.

Sure the work is done, but I am getting paid for 8 hours....

I am not advocating for either side, I just can see the argument from both sides and it is super complicated, never mind that every situation is very different. It is human nature to want what someone else has regardless of whether you should have it or not. Oh, they get to WFH, why can't I....

I know I'm in the minority, but I was in the office 9-5 every day during Covid, just like the 20+ years previously and every day since. I enjoy it and couldn't/wouldn't work from home, even though I can if I wanted.

(07-30-2024 09:52 AM)Eldonabe Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 08:51 AM)bobdizole Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 07:45 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  

(07-30-2024 07:43 AM)fsquid Wrote:  I think at the end of the day, there is not simple answer

My point exactly.

I also think a large part of the equation is older management not knowing how to manage WFH employees. I don't care where my staff works from. We have project goals/timelines for implementation staff and metrics for call center staff. I don't physically need to watch anyone to know if they are doing their job or not.

I personally personally WFH in the mornings then drive into the office in the afternoon to handle any physical inventory duties. Key factor being it takes me 25 minutes to drive in the afternoon and generally 1.5 hours during rush hour. That's a whole hour of time I could be working wasted sitting in traffic.

This (in bold above) is also a huge problem. If you have 20 or 30 people working for you remotely, it is difficult to monitor that many.

It is very easy to say - if they are getting their work done, what is there to complain about. That may be true, but it also accentuates how long it takes to get your actual job done. I can attest that the few times I have worked from home, I have found myself, that I was able to get my 8 hour day completed in 5 or 6 hours.

Sure the work is done, but I am getting paid for 8 hours....

I am not advocating for either side, I just can see the argument from both sides and it is super complicated, never mind that every situation is very different. It is human nature to want what someone else has regardless of whether you should have it or not. Oh, they get to WFH, why can't I....

it's management's job to provide the work to be done. I think the eye opening thing for employers has been that when you give an employee a project and stand over their shoulder to make sure they are working 8 hours a day, not suprisingly it takes them 8 hours to complete it. If you give them a project and don't monitor them they are going to complete it as fast as possible.

Personally, my people aren't working a factory line where the work never ends. Outside of our help desk, who I monitor for TPC and missed calls, if they complete their projects and I don't assign them more work that's on me and I have to answer to the C-level people why time-spent reports don't add up to 40 hours.

In my organization, during covid we started really looking at numbers and discovered some serious waste based on often/long "full-time" employees were logged in to complete tasks and led to some full times being made part time or positions merged. We came out of covid leaner and more efficient even with 90% WFH.

(07-30-2024 12:07 AM)banker Wrote:  Why do workers believe they have to right to work from home if they want? It’s horrible for the business on many levels.

There are some positions in business such as sales and computer work where the brick and mortar don’t have to be the place of work,

My people know it’s all about results. When I see work not getting done whether you are at work home or on the road you probably won’t last long.

Hourly employees need heavy supervision so yes keep them in house

Salaried employees usually don’t because bonuses are on the line

(07-30-2024 12:07 AM)banker Wrote:  Why do workers believe they have to right to work from home if they want? It’s horrible for the business on many levels.

They don't have the "right" unless it was specifically written in their employment contract, but all of them have the right to leave. From the article it sounds like that's what a lot of these companies wanted, but for some absolutely retarded reason it doesn't seem like they spent even a second thinking about the consequences of doing that instead of just having layoffs. You have no control over how many people would leave over that, might be less than you need or could be way too many. You have no control over if entire departments quit vs having an even spread among departments, and no control if critical to function departments have mass turnover vs ones that aren't that important. You have no control over if the people who leave are ones who are truly essential vs the types you'd want to lay off (and in most cases the ones quickest to leave are the most valuable ones with the best alternative options.

Not really sure the desire to want to bootlick for companies like Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, etc, but go off! I was reading about Dell saying to employees if you want to be eligible for promotions in the future you have to come back into the office, and the vast majority of their employees told them no thanks. Reason is very obvious, internal promotions and raises are both pretty rare and never keep up with just going out on the open market so why bother worrying? Nothing is stopping these companies from offering positive incentives from coming back in, if it's actually that important, but fat chance that happens.

Man, I wanted so much to work from home but the aircraft didn't want to land on the street next to my house. No runway lights at all either.

People in my job have worked from home for decades. I'm a professor, and pre-COVID the norm was 2-3 days a week for teaching, and come in on Fridays for research presentations or admin meetings. So during the school year it was 1-2 days a week from home, and in the summer and on breaks it was 4 days a week from home.

But COVID still changed expectations dramatically. At nearly every school, it elevated online classes on-par with in-person classes. So the faculty who really believe in online classes stopped coming to work during the week. The lazy tenured faculty (there's at least some of them at every college) took note of the lack of punishment, and followed them out the door. Very quickly, they stopped coming to Friday research presentations or admin meetings, too. They're NEVER in the office, except for 2-3 times a semester when we have semi-mandatory department meetings.

(this is not a knock on my school, as mine has handled it better than most)

It's a lot less of a teamwork environment when you never see your coworkers.

And it's very difficult for students to get in touch with faculty when in the middle of the week they can go down a faculty hallway with 10 doors and none of them is open.