If you work from home, how many hours do you actually work?

[Anonymous]

I'd say about 6 hours a day. I do school drop off and then try to squeeze in a workout most mornings. I have lots of meetings and calls throughout the day most days but if I have a break I do some quick house chores. then things wind down around 4 or 4:30 and I can do pick up if need be. I feel productive but also happy that I can get other things done so I highly prefer WFH.

[Anonymous]

I work pretty close to the full 8. Sometimes 9. Had an unusual 11 hour day Thursday due to a deadline (went back to work after kids were in bed). I am a fed, I don't count the unpaid 30 min for lunch even though i frequently work through it. I might take one or two 10-15 min breaks during the day, which I'd do in the office just charting as well.

I do work more at home than AT work, even though I don't actually devalue those in-office conversations some other people do, I think they help with relationships and informal news sharing. I miss them since I went remote, but I don't miss the 2 hour commute.

[Anonymous]

I just posted a thread about WFH and rethinking one’s retirement horizon. Unfortunately, the first poster decided I was a troll, the same OP as this thread, and got my thread deleted. Why?

Anyway, I’ll ask my question here because it’s to the same audience. If you work minimal time from home - about 3 hours a day or less - and you could mostly keep your WFH status, would it change your time horizon for retirement?

For me, it has. The combination of low effort, a regular professional salary, and the flexibility to work from various locations has me not seeing retirement as a huge improvement over work. I’m a federal worker, and though the pension is nice, it’s nowhere near my salary.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Some weeks 5 hours, some weeks 80.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just posted a thread about WFH and rethinking one’s retirement horizon. Unfortunately, the first poster decided I was a troll, the same OP as this thread, and got my thread deleted. Why?

Anyway, I’ll ask my question here because it’s to the same audience. If you work minimal time from home - about 3 hours a day or less - and you could mostly keep your WFH status, would it change your time horizon for retirement?

For me, it has. The combination of low effort, a regular professional salary, and the flexibility to work from various locations has me not seeing retirement as a huge improvement over work. I’m a federal worker, and though the pension is nice, it’s nowhere near my salary.

Thoughts?

I know quite a few people who worked the full day (8+), and made retirement decisions based on just the commuting aspect (e.g. retiring to avoid a major office move, or post-covid rto). I respect that. But as federal workers we don't have the flexibility to work from anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just posted a thread about WFH and rethinking one’s retirement horizon. Unfortunately, the first poster decided I was a troll, the same OP as this thread, and got my thread deleted. Why?

Anyway, I’ll ask my question here because it’s to the same audience. If you work minimal time from home - about 3 hours a day or less - and you could mostly keep your WFH status, would it change your time horizon for retirement?

For me, it has. The combination of low effort, a regular professional salary, and the flexibility to work from various locations has me not seeing retirement as a huge improvement over work. I’m a federal worker, and though the pension is nice, it’s nowhere near my salary.

Thoughts?

I know quite a few people who worked the full day (8+), and made retirement decisions based on just the commuting aspect (e.g. retiring to avoid a major office move, or post-covid rto). I respect that. But as federal workers we don't have the flexibility to work from anywhere.

Obviously, such workers would find retirement an improvement, but those are not the ones I’m talking about. I’m talking to those workers who have the circumstances I mentioned, and there are many of them, even in Corporate America. Haven’t you heard of “employee hoarding” where companies in some competitive industries hire workers just to keep them from the competition? There are many articles about these people doing next to nothing for their paycheck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just posted a thread about WFH and rethinking one’s retirement horizon. Unfortunately, the first poster decided I was a troll, the same OP as this thread, and got my thread deleted. Why?

Anyway, I’ll ask my question here because it’s to the same audience. If you work minimal time from home - about 3 hours a day or less - and you could mostly keep your WFH status, would it change your time horizon for retirement?

For me, it has. The combination of low effort, a regular professional salary, and the flexibility to work from various locations has me not seeing retirement as a huge improvement over work. I’m a federal worker, and though the pension is nice, it’s nowhere near my salary.

Thoughts?

I know quite a few people who worked the full day (8+), and made retirement decisions based on just the commuting aspect (e.g. retiring to avoid a major office move, or post-covid rto). I respect that. But as federal workers we don't have the flexibility to work from anywhere.

Obviously, such workers would find retirement an improvement, but those are not the ones I’m talking about. I’m talking to those workers who have the circumstances I mentioned, and there are many of them, even in Corporate America. Haven’t you heard of “employee hoarding” where companies in some competitive industries hire workers just to keep them from the competition? There are many articles about these people doing next to nothing for their paycheck.

Nah. I work in corp America. F500 firm. The unsaid knowledge everyone still knows is how few people there are above 60.

[Anonymous]

Then there’s the project manager at my until-now fully remote job who has decided that since a few of her reports have been unreachable and not meeting deadlines that we all need to come back to the office on a hybrid schedule.

To me, it’s like the teacher taking recess away from the whole class because a couple kids misbehave. It sucks since most of us have been very productive working from home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just posted a thread about WFH and rethinking one’s retirement horizon. Unfortunately, the first poster decided I was a troll, the same OP as this thread, and got my thread deleted. Why?

Anyway, I’ll ask my question here because it’s to the same audience. If you work minimal time from home - about 3 hours a day or less - and you could mostly keep your WFH status, would it change your time horizon for retirement?

For me, it has. The combination of low effort, a regular professional salary, and the flexibility to work from various locations has me not seeing retirement as a huge improvement over work. I’m a federal worker, and though the pension is nice, it’s nowhere near my salary.

Thoughts?

Late 40s so ideally 10 to 15 years away from retirement. But my problem with this is if you’re only working three hours a day and truly working like 10 to 2 and don’t have to check in at other times I think this would be OK. My challenge is in my work from home job I don’t typically need to work 40 hours a week, but I’m definitely always Available and if I’m going to be gone for a kid pick up or a doctor appointment I always put the notification on Slack so people know where I am and I’m always checking in.

Working for several more years where I don’t have control over my schedule doesn’t sound appealing to me if I don’t have to do it. If I was truly working 15 hours a week I might say yes but in my reality, I’m probably working actually 30 hours a week but checking in and available more.

Frankly, it would really stress me out if I was getting paid for a full-time professional job and truly only working three hours a day but that’s just me. I also think I would be bored as hell. I enjoy working out, cooking meals, squeezing in a 20 minute nap, etc. but if I had hours and hours of free time during the day yet still chained to a job I think I would go crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just posted a thread about WFH and rethinking one’s retirement horizon. Unfortunately, the first poster decided I was a troll, the same OP as this thread, and got my thread deleted. Why?

Anyway, I’ll ask my question here because it’s to the same audience. If you work minimal time from home - about 3 hours a day or less - and you could mostly keep your WFH status, would it change your time horizon for retirement?

For me, it has. The combination of low effort, a regular professional salary, and the flexibility to work from various locations has me not seeing retirement as a huge improvement over work. I’m a federal worker, and though the pension is nice, it’s nowhere near my salary.

Thoughts?

Late 40s so ideally 10 to 15 years away from retirement. But my problem with this is if you’re only working three hours a day and truly working like 10 to 2 and don’t have to check in at other times I think this would be OK. My challenge is in my work from home job I don’t typically need to work 40 hours a week, but I’m definitely always Available and if I’m going to be gone for a kid pick up or a doctor appointment I always put the notification on Slack so people know where I am and I’m always checking in.

Working for several more years where I don’t have control over my schedule doesn’t sound appealing to me if I don’t have to do it. If I was truly working 15 hours a week I might say yes but in my reality, I’m probably working actually 30 hours a week but checking in and available more.

Frankly, it would really stress me out if I was getting paid for a full-time professional job and truly only working three hours a day but that’s just me. I also think I would be bored as hell. I enjoy working out, cooking meals, squeezing in a 20 minute nap, etc. but if I had hours and hours of free time during the day yet still chained to a job I think I would go crazy.

This -at my job we have to be available for the full work day online, even if we’re not that busy. I wouldn’t feel like I was really enjoying the benefits of retirement if I was still online 40 hours per week.

[Anonymous]

I truly don’t work differently at home compared to the office. There’s slow days in the office as well! People forget this

There’s days where I will work nonstop at home and other days where I browse the news almost all day in the office while waiting for the next meeting. And vice versa. It depends on what’s on my plate

I do my best focused work at home. I do my best team-oriented work (meetings, strategy, brainstorming with others) in the office. I aim to maximize both strengths in each place, but doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I have a meeting on my wfh days and it’s a slog. And doing focused reading in the office is awful: too much noise

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just posted a thread about WFH and rethinking one’s retirement horizon. Unfortunately, the first poster decided I was a troll, the same OP as this thread, and got my thread deleted. Why?

Anyway, I’ll ask my question here because it’s to the same audience. If you work minimal time from home - about 3 hours a day or less - and you could mostly keep your WFH status, would it change your time horizon for retirement?

For me, it has. The combination of low effort, a regular professional salary, and the flexibility to work from various locations has me not seeing retirement as a huge improvement over work. I’m a federal worker, and though the pension is nice, it’s nowhere near my salary.

Thoughts?

My old all remote company the second largest category of leavers is “job abandonment”

No one ever retired. They basically did absolutely bare minimum or literally ghosted getting weeks, months even 1-3 years pay. Then they get off boarded we have two weeks pay in leu of notice plus two weeks severance per year then they file unemployment.

People going back to school or retiring why quit. I stopped working around August 2022, maybe 2-3 hours a week. I finally quit May 2023 and they asked me to stay. I easily could have milked it another year or two.

Why anyone would retire is beyond me in private. Wait for layoff