My whole team is WFH and hired WFH. People moved across country to live here to WFH.
It makes a lot of sense for my kind of IT position. We don't need to be on site for anything. In fact, keeping our office space low would lead to way more savings than anything else.
In addition, it limits in office distraction, eliminates leasing expenses, utility expenses, and cleaning fees. Arguably, it's more cost effective to have employees work from home.
My manager hired only people who can work independently and without supervision. We all know what to do, communicate with each other if we have questions, and can manage ourselves.
I think it's well worth normalizing. In fact, my organization stands to lose an entire branch of highly qualified people if they force us back - as in everyone is protesting and organizing a strike. And we would lose many highly skilled workers who would leave for greener and WFH pastures.
Especially as we move towards automation and digital workplaces for many office jobs, a WFH norm would open up the downtown "office core" to repurposing.
Imagine combined use buildings with vertical farms, combined retail and residential, with some small offices still retained for whatever industries can't WFH or to accommodate those who prefer in office work.
It would solve, at least where I live, urban rot. It would also help address lack of housing, and shore up local food production from within the city centre itself.
Frankly, I think my organization is wasting money by keeping our real estate leasing contracts. It would honestly give my org more resources if they would just throw the whole in person idea away. However, it's run by Boomers and few are as cool as my boss.
I’ve pretty much worked from home for 12 years. When the pandemic hit, all my friends were feeling jailed at home and to me it was so natural 🤣😂🤣 I like it because I can manage my time however I want and certainly it feels great to be your own boss. I don’t have to deal with annoying envious co-workers, with a mandatory schedule. I get to do things I like as long as I meet my monthly company goals, I’m good
I’ve been working remotely since 2019. It’s been great, I love it! One of my goals is to become a digital nomad that works on a per project basis or by monthly retainer. Currently, I’m paid by the hour.
As for Elon Musk’s decision, I can see the pros and cons of that.
Pros: It will make things much easier to manage and things can operate with less room for error. Things will be much easier to monitor and everyone can be held to a higher professional standard. Meetings will be easier to hold and things can move at a faster pace. Team building and developing a company culture would be much easier.
Cons: Employee dissatisfaction—many people don’t enjoy working from an office. Everyone needs to commute. Anyone who is not in the vicinity of HQ will need to re-locate. This doesn’t reward company loyalty, this would be a strict policy for boosting efficiency but at the cost of laying off a lot of people. It sounds like things are going to be more stressful for anyone working at Twitter.
I can see where he’s coming from, but it’s still a cutthroat decision. It’s putting the company before the employees. It’s a polarizing decision that will upset many, but would be good for Twitter in terms of increased productivity in the long term.
It has two sides really.
the work life balance is usually better with working from home, as it removes the commute and you have time with kids, pets etc.
the downside for companies that rely on people for ideas, their brains, problem solving, is that it removes the coffee machine mind meld where major things happen, they remove the white board session where you get to speak freely and not try to talk at same time on a dial in Teams meeting.
WFH also removes Team from a company, we have people who started and until recently I had not met. Being part of a team is fairly critical for some people and also getting dressed down over a call is really impersonal for the individual.
For individuals it can be great, for companies it can be a nightmare, as you can really lose that sense of working for a company, that pride in being part of a team, this in turn can make holding on to staff harder in the long run, as there is no allegiance.
I am currently working from home today, however in the office rest of the week, we also set up a dog crèche so that employees can bring in their well behaved, fully vaccinated dogs, this has went down really well.
Opinion
27Opinion
Personally, in some areas of what I do, I'd rather work from home or do virtual meetings. In some aspects, I'd rather be in person.
Working for myself, I can work on my schedule. If it takes extra time to learn a new program, or because something is glitchy, I can kind of have a window to work.
I have worked at places where if you clocked out at 4:58, or weren't out the door by 5:02, they'd get on your case. I could never work on extra work for the company, or learn on my own (even unpaid) to improve. Most of the places I worked for, it was very stressful, because I'd be timed like crazy, and I'd do other people's jobs or help customers (the more important work, supposedly), and get in trouble for it; I think I'm much better making my own hours. This is why I'm better at being self employed.
But, I did really miss interacting with people. Easier to read a client's body language or get context seeing and hearing all of them, as opposed to just hearing them, or seeing the top half which is on delay or freezing up. I can work on sketches in person, as opposed to sketching, then scanning and sending, then waiting for it to come back, etc.
I worked from home during the pandemic and it brought me to severe depression. I was alone all day, my contact were only through email or phone and it was alienating since I couldn’t exit from home. I worked overtime everyday, I lost the sense of time and the joy of living… 1 year like this has been enough for me.
I’m sure working from home is very useful for certain categories like informatics workers, motor disables, neo-parents and people who have elders or destitutes at home.
Working from home should be institutionalised for some categories and some necessities but I think it’s impossible to guarantee work from home for all since there’s less work control and generally can bring to less productivity.
Offices are a biggest fucking waste of time. I have to listen and pretend to be concerned about other people's private business. If I don't, I won't get their cooperation ; or more simply, they won't do their jobs unless you listen to their stupid bullshit. I listen to single moms complain about their teenage daughters, I listen to Dad's talk about coaching little league, I listen to the 25 year old female crossfit athlete talk all day on the phone about her upcoming competition. When she hangs up the phone, we are supposed to pretend to be interested. For fuck sake, I just came to the office to work. Please give me a private office, give me equal work and let me finish it in half the time that these other assholes take to do what I do.
If I could just stay home for the entirety of my career that would definitely be ideal, especially if I'm trying to settle down and have a family at the same time. The main downsides I see from working from home would definitely be the loneliness since it is pretty much impossible to build friendships casually through the screen if you're not actively trying. I wouldn't mind coming to work every now and then, especially since companies rely on some sense of unity, something that would be harder if everyone were working from home.
My team has all worked from home since the beginning of COVID. Before that many people in the company believed people would be less productive working from home, but what they have found is just the opposite. People are actually a little more productive. The theory is that they work longer hours because they don't have a commute, and some of that time they were spending commuting or getting ready for work is now spent working. It's also easier to hop on the computer and get something done during off hours than to got into the office to do it over the weekend. I know I get more done working from home.
Is not applicable to all jobs. But I think that working from home can increasingly improve some people's lives who have to drive and be stuck in the traffic and go through all that stress every morning to go to work and the pandemic taught us that a lot of jobs can be done from home. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're lazy.
Have done it for most of the last 2+ years.
The positives:
The 20 foot commute in slippers - huge time saver
The flexibility
Not having to fake it if there isn't enough work to do in a day
Zero dress code (our Zoom meetings don't use video)
Saving $$$ in gas money
Having the option to save money by eating lunch at home
No office distractions
The negatives:
Home distractions
Not having clearly defined separation between home and work lives
Not having company perks like gym, cafeteria
Occasional trouble contacting co-workers
Missing social aspect
Working from home is great in theory but if your job requires you to be 'on site' that is where it breaks down.
Not all jobs can be done from home be that physically as there are spanners to be heaved or hammers swung, or the boss saying you will be in the office.
If Musk is removing the work from home policy, it is probably because he thinks that the policy has led to an inefficient company and those still working from home will be given a choice, return to the office or find another job, and I'm willing to et the vast majority will return to the office because they know that they'd be hard pushed to find another job with the same T&C plus benefits they have now.
I like working from home as it is a short commute of course.
As for Musk he may be following a well established corporate strategy of encouraging people to leave without paying severance costs. If you shift offices across town or interstate some people will be inconvenienced and will leave the company.
In the case of Twitter after two years of working from home some employees won't want to go back to working at the office.
Id love to work from home. But I have a manual job so thats a no go.
And as it stands, if Elon sees a drop in productivity from people working from home, it makes sense to put the kibosh to it. Twitter probably isn't staffed by the most productive go getters, its probably full of lazy shits who will spend their work from hours pulling on themselves and watching youtube.
I'll bet he works from his HOME office a lot.. that said, I spend an hour and a half of pay every day just to go to work, that's a pain someone in his position can't understand.
Seems to me he's not too concerned with his employees aside from having power over them
Humans are meant to work together. This work from home gig economy won't last. It only causes shitty division
I didn't know about that. Why did he make that change?
Anyway, a job that I could do from home would be ideal for me, because I live far, far away from any big city, and travelling to and from work every day would be horrendous.
I've done it. No question it's less productive for most people than being in the office. I think one thing that businesses are only starting to figure out is that far beyond some jobs being "okay" to have work at home, many of them don't need to be done at all. So a LOT of people are going to be fired.
Makes sense for a guy who makes electric cars to "save the environment" to force employees back and forth to work despote there being other options increasing green house emissions
It the only way to run a farm at home. That's right I'm a farmer
Slack…plus all you people crowd my Bojangles near house 🏡. I’m fwckin TIRED of you people. Get back to the “office”
That is a really great idea but it needs to followed along with a strict schedule with fixed goals for fixed time... cuz getting distracted is super easy for u humans
Meh... it's aight. I really like having a physical separation between work and personal life. But I can get like 95% of the way to having that separation by clearly allotting time for work and play.
Would love to. It sounds way less stressful than dealing with crazy people everyday.
Most Helpful Opinions