I have worked as a freelance for around 14 years, from home. My husband, a developer, always had told me that he couldn,t work without his colleagues around. Then the pandemic come and he had to work from home for more than two years. He loved it. No distractions, no commuting (I think that is the worst), better environment to concentrate in silence…he didn,t want to go back to an office. Like never ever.
But then the company he worked for said that everybody had to go back to the office because that is what’s the company wanted. My husband and the rest of his department got very angry. In three months, all the 10 people in it had gone to other remote works. The day my husband said he was leaving in three weeks was the last day of his immediate boss. So he gave notice to a higher boss, that had a big tantrum because he thought it was a workers plot.
It wasn,t, but seems that nobody has to be forced into the office if they can do better work elsewhere. Because they leave if they can. As a consequence they lost all their senior developers and two middle managers. My husband now is happy, works from home and travels to the office for meetings and things like that a two or three days every three months. He works for a big international company with people in remote in several countries. His prior company is struggling really hard to finde people to work for them. It is up to them: expert people on remote or junior people wanting experience to go remote later on other job.
Lol @ “he thought it was a worker’s plot.”
Capitalists are the fucking worst.
A true leopards ate my face moment.
expert people on remote or junior people wanting experience to go remote later on other job
This is what it’s shaping up to be. Also, junior people understand that there is no real loyalty on the part of the company - they will replace or lay off staff at a moment’s notice. And there is a real salary penalty for staying as studies have recently shown. (Also common sense and anecdotes from most everyone you know). Those junior people willing to be in the office will leave in a year or two for a WFH job elsewhere with a salary bump. If RTO /fulltime in the office companies want to keep them, they will have to compete salary-wise with WFH companies.
ETA: Here’s a very interesting article on the permanent shift to remote work.
In 2022, 34 percent of workers over age 15 reported working at home vs. 69 percent in the workplace, dipping slightly from the previous year. […] The pandemic spike in working from home was limited to college-educated workers, especially those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, about 54 percent of whom worked at home in 2022.
Thanks for sharing
I will never again accept a job that isn’t 100% remote. My main gig has about 50 devs, we all used to commute to the office everyday in a high COL city. My commute would sometimes take 90 minutes each way, and I only lived around 15 miles away. We’ve been 100% remote since March 2020 and our overall productivity has gone up by 20%, which isn’t surprising considering the commute alone sucked the life out of all of us.
Remember y’all, unionize your workplace so they can’t take away remote work from you
Yes. Do this.
Before the pandemic, my old company allowed us to remote work on occasion, but it was rare. With the pandemic we started to work from home regularly and it was a game changer. Little bit after the pandemic they forced us to go back to the office (also, in summer, in spain, to a office with broken AC), so I changed jobs.
Best decision I ever had. The company I work for now is US based, so obviously its remote only for me. There’s a big culture shift, both from being American and for being remote focused, but I think its fantastic. Never have been as productive in my life.
There’s a great difference between companies allowing remote and being remote oriented as well. Management has to fully buy into it and promote using remote tools, otherwise it won’t work.
Little bit after the pandemic they forced us to go back to the office (also, in summer, in spain, to a office with broken AC)
I don’t know what the relative humidity is like wherever in Spain you are, but if they had the windows open – and I assume that they could open and did, if the AC was offline and people were in there in the summer – and the humidity was low enough, could have thrown a portable evaporative cooler next to yourself. That can’t get things as cold as a sufficiently-powerful air conditioner, but it’s got a lot more punch than just a fan.
How was the adjustment in office/work culture between Spain and US for you?
Maybe I’m an ignorant American, but isn’t work culture much more relaxed in Spain than much of the US? “Siestas” and all that?
It is a thing to note about starting an IT business. Office space is an overhead you cannot afford. I was involved as a founder for a small custom dev and consulting company in the middle 2000s. We were about 10 and very distributed. Every Friday we would meet at a coffee shop with bottomless coffee 😉. Do our version of a standup and then get on with it for the week. Even then we managed with email and google chat and cell phones. The tooling is so much better today than then. So there is no reason to waste money on renting fancy spaces.
Also, no office rent.
A lot of great companies were remote focused for a very long time before the pandemic. ArsTechnica, StackOverflow, … - they have a physical office space, but it’s mostly for legal & admin purposes and to let externals tour at least something.
My employer recently announced plans to lay off much of their Finance department and outsource their work to a remote team based in Delhi. Basically means I’ll be made redundant within the next 6 months.
Why are they doing this? Because they’re having problems attracting and retaining staff.
This may be a shocker, but nobody wants to come into the office three days a week, work in an incredibly stressful high-volume transactional finance role, deal with shoddy systems which frequently crash, end up shackled to a lengthy notice period, and have 30% of their calendar year blocked for taking annual leave - all on low pay that isn’t competitive.
I work in Purchase Ledger and my team alone has suffered from a 95% employee turnover rate. The only reason I haven’t walked yet is because the severance package is actually quite generous.
It’s a free incentive to attract people who would otherwise go with a higher paying position. No-brainer for smaller companies IMO.
In my last year of uni now but I’d love to get remote work in the future. I’ve seen it totally change my mother’s lifestyle.
After I graduated college I looked for specific remote work. With a remote job I was able to move halfway across the country and start fresh in a place I love
Absolutely the dream! I’ll never afford a house in my hometown nowadays.
I got a taste of it during a temp thing during the pandemic. It significantly improved my life. I got to see my kids more. Got to save a bunch of money not having to commute. I hope I can get back to something remote again in the future.
That’s the dream! Don’t have kids yet but when I do I want to be around as much as possible. Plus, I don’t want to be stuck to the insane cost of living major cities have.
It’s totally changed mine. Like many folks covid pushed us remote in 2020. Started getting back to the office vibes and changed jobs ~6 weeks ago to a fully-remote position making 50% more. It was a hard choice, I had been at my previous company for almost 2 decades. The roles are out there! Best of luck mate!!
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Their job is to take phone calls, they can do it just fine from home, but you’re still saying
" the kind of job where collaborating with your peers in person works better." ?
Are you sure that’s true and not just how you feel? because with slack, teams, etc you can chat, call, video call and post shared docs easily. Also it sounds like you manage a call center. One of them most WFH jobs ever.You make a lot of asumptions about him to bring point to your side.
I’ve seen a lot of small call centers that could only partially be “from home” (usually people rotate).
Also call center is so wastly wide term.
I’ve seen beautiful small call centers (usually in smaller companies delivering product).
Those assumptions are being made because there are several red flags in the post.
“I need them to be in the office to work” suggests this is not their choice, it is the employer’s choice and they have no real option to freely choose, despite being completely able to with their work call app /meeting rooms with cameras and mics etc.
They have an option only if they have a good reason like their having to watch their kids, this also suggests they cannot just freely choose to. They are required to provide a reason beyond basic convenience to work from home.
“They have no complaints” suggests they aren’t being given the option and need to provide a reason or contest an argument with them about WFH being easier on everyone.
The suggestion that “they are paid pretty well” indicates this has some bearing on working from home vs the office, but to me this reads as “this is compensation so we can have them come into the office”.
Whether they are paid well shouldn’t even come into question - can they work from home or not?
Tell them they can work from home full time and come into the office whenever they want. Do they come in or do they stay at home?
Can they not collaborate over slack/teams/chat/video call and post shared docs like we were forced to do during covid time?
If they legitimately cannot, fine - go into the office. But we have to get rid of this paranoia that employees need to be in the office unless there is a very specific in-person absolute requirement to be there.
Collaboration/camaraderie is a known common excuse managers use that often doesn’t make sense.
Yeah it’s not their choice because that was presented to them fairly at their interview and they agreed to the terms. We also pay them a generous salary because of this fact. You sir are the one who have made all the false assumptions here. Shame on you. I try my best to treat my staff fairly and treat everyone with respect. I get it, there are a ton of bosses who need to get ran through but I strive to be the example other should lead by.
Worst yet, you didn’t even have the courage to come directly engage me with these accusations, You attacked another user without even getting my input on the situation. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself next time if you’re really going after the right man. Once you lynch someone you can’t take that back, so you better be sure they absolutely were guilty of what you are accusing.
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