Companies are on the war path against remote work

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Commutes for work are terrible for the environment. Gee let's all make people consume massive amounts of fossil fuels and waste millions of hours per year to sit in traffic or take public transportation just so they can sit in office and do jobs that we have already shown can be done remotely.

What is the point of wasting so much fossil fuels and polluting the environment so much just so we can keep 20th century office culture alive?

Humans are really dumb. Too bad you wasted money on commercial real estate or decorating the office. There are risks in life, companies should get used to it.

*Car* commutes for work are terrible for the environment. Nobody is forcing you to commute by car. You could’ve lived in the district or close-in in a condo.

Sure. Because EVERYONE can afford that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Commutes for work are terrible for the environment. Gee let's all make people consume massive amounts of fossil fuels and waste millions of hours per year to sit in traffic or take public transportation just so they can sit in office and do jobs that we have already shown can be done remotely.

What is the point of wasting so much fossil fuels and polluting the environment so much just so we can keep 20th century office culture alive?

Humans are really dumb. Too bad you wasted money on commercial real estate or decorating the office. There are risks in life, companies should get used to it.

*Car* commutes for work are terrible for the environment. Nobody is forcing you to commute by car. You could’ve lived in the district or close-in in a condo.

Lol. How do you think they power subways, buses, and other forms of public transportation? Electricity magically comes from the sky? The largest source of electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. Buses consume fossil fuels. Even if they use natural gas to power a bus, they're still burning fossil fuels.

No commute beats any commutes for environmental impact every.single.time. That's not even considering the massive amounts of waste needed to supply water, heat, and cooling to gigantic buildings that aren't even needed anymore just so we can keep office culture alive.

Guys, there is research on this, even cited within this thread. Absolutely less cars on the road means less fossil fuel emissions *from cars.* But several other factors go into the total environmental impact of WFH versus onsite. Increased WFH will likely net out as a marginal benefit to the environment. But it isn't the slam dunk argument that ends the case that many are making it out to be.

WFH means less cars on the road. Period. People will always use cars to commute to an office. You can't make a WFH vs RTO by conveniently cutting out the impact of car commutes by throwing out pie in the sky ideas like 100% of workers will magically all live in a city and walk or bike to work everyday.

What a stupid argument. Global emissions dropped dramatically during COVID and at the peak of WFH. There's really no argument. WFH saves tremendous amounts of needless waste that we burn to power transportation and heating/cooling/electricity for needless office buildings.

I kinda feel like you didn't really read my post.... I agreed that less cars on the road means less emissions and I didn't say anything at all about workers "magically' doing anything.

There is research on the total impact on the environment of remote work.

(And it is hard for me to reconcile folks saying that people who want to go into the office can always go into the office, but then says that organizations will no longer have office buildings.)

DP - I don't think anyone is saying there will be no more offices. I'm a PP who is seeing a lot offices reconfigured and downsized to be used differently - more for meetings, group activities, fewer work stations for people to just come in. Where I work, there are some people who like to come in 2-3 days a week (it's very rare that anyone comes in Fridays, and very few people are in 4 days a week. Even our office managers switch off so they are either in 2 or 3 days depending on the week). But many of us do fine working most days from home, coming in only for big meetings or getting together for team retreats etc.

There are some jobs that lend themselves well to working remotely. But even pre pandemic, I worked for one of the major consulting firms and many people were on the road, selling and doing client work. They had to have a remote set up as people did calls from client spaces, from hotels, etc. And before that, I worked for an association. Our members were all over the country, so most of my day was spent on calls with members - not in person.

I can't think of a company with professional workers where every person works in the same area and all the clients/members/vendors you interact with are in the office with you. We will always need to be able to communicate with people not in our physical space. And now we are just adapting to that much more given the push from the pandemic.

PP you are responding to and I aree with everything you wrote. All of it.

Except when it comes to the specific issue of environmental impact. The PP I was responding to wrote, "WFH saves tremendous amounts of needless waste that we burn to power transportation and heating/cooling/electricity for needless office buildings."
The office buildings, even if reconfigured, will still be there in most cases. So that particular point doesn't track.

NP and I think there would be less space being used in a hybrid type of environment (i.e. fewer workspaces due to hoteling). Vacant space would not need to be heated/cooled or use lighting as, at least in the offices I've worked at, you could control climate by floor.

I guess the question is to what extent energy consumption to heat/cool a housing unit is less than or greater than the energy use for heating/cooling office space + energy consumption from commuting. Intuitively it seems like working from home would use less energy but you're also heating/cooling more square feet per person in a home than an office.

[Anonymous]

Op here. This has gone off the rails lol.

I think my point was to talk about the recent and sudden shift away from remote work.

My spouse and I were previously fully remote and things have really changed just in the last couple of weeks. We are both looking for new jobs and the remote listings have evaporated.

I was wanting to discuss recent developments on this front and what people are noticing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was expected to not miss a beat when the world collapsed because of a global pandemic. I didn't miss a beat. I worked my ass off, despite having elementary school children distance learning on the computer and home full time.

Therefore, you will have to drag full time WFH out of my cold dead hands.

And BTW, I live in the city, so you can STFU with your "you made a choice to live a bazillion miles outside of the city." I live here. In a small townhouse. But the hypocrisy of employers is unbelievable, and I will fight this to the death.

Neat. You vastly overestimate your own power. And your penchant for melodrama is laughable.

Nope. I don’t. I’m an excellent, very profitable employee. Check back with me in 5 years. I’ll say hi from my couch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. This has gone off the rails lol.

I think my point was to talk about the recent and sudden shift away from remote work.

My spouse and I were previously fully remote and things have really changed just in the last couple of weeks. We are both looking for new jobs and the remote listings have evaporated.

I was wanting to discuss recent developments on this front and what people are noticing.

I think investors are pushing RTO because of the demise of commercial real estate. I think that the talking heads are hearing from those with investments in commercial RE that any more of a shift to WFH will be catastrophic. It's like almost everything in this country, no one wants to be hurt by progress. It just keeps being pushed down the line. Hybrid will be the compromise for most. Some will fall more towards WFH and other FT RTO.
I didn't have any interaction with my supervisors or higher-ups in the office but I know that is rare. My supervisors are all WFH and one was even located on the West Coast. Higher-ups are in meetings every day or on vacation- literally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Commutes for work are terrible for the environment. Gee let's all make people consume massive amounts of fossil fuels and waste millions of hours per year to sit in traffic or take public transportation just so they can sit in office and do jobs that we have already shown can be done remotely.

What is the point of wasting so much fossil fuels and polluting the environment so much just so we can keep 20th century office culture alive?

Humans are really dumb. Too bad you wasted money on commercial real estate or decorating the office. There are risks in life, companies should get used to it.

*Car* commutes for work are terrible for the environment. Nobody is forcing you to commute by car. You could’ve lived in the district or close-in in a condo.

Do you think all offices are on a metro line? Do you think everyone who works in an office in the DMV is in DC?
How very small minded of you.

[Anonymous]

I'm on a townhall right now for my department, as they "request" that we start coming in three days per week.
Someone just asked what they're going to do about the people who may quit/retire with this new issue.
They agree that a lot of people may retire due to this, and they basically said "yup, we're going to try and hire more people"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here. This has gone off the rails lol.

I think my point was to talk about the recent and sudden shift away from remote work.

My spouse and I were previously fully remote and things have really changed just in the last couple of weeks. We are both looking for new jobs and the remote listings have evaporated.

I was wanting to discuss recent developments on this front and what people are noticing.

It went off the rails because your subject line seems inflammatory. Warpath? No, a lot of us are not seeing that… I’m one of the posters who mentioned no one in my circle are back more than three days a week and most are closer to one or two or fully remote. Tons of offices are downsizing, not getting rid of space entirely, but reconfiguring for more group work, and less individuals at their laptops.

This seems to be the trend. I agree probably the hundred percent remote options are down across the country, but the flexibility and hybrid model is here to stay.

[Anonymous]

Has everyone not heard the news yet that the pandemic is over? Get your butts off the couch and get back to work like the rest of the world already and stop complaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. This has gone off the rails lol.

I think my point was to talk about the recent and sudden shift away from remote work.

My spouse and I were previously fully remote and things have really changed just in the last couple of weeks. We are both looking for new jobs and the remote listings have evaporated.

I was wanting to discuss recent developments on this front and what people are noticing.

It went off the rails because your subject line seems inflammatory. Warpath? No, a lot of us are not seeing that… I’m one of the posters who mentioned no one in my circle are back more than three days a week and most are closer to one or two or fully remote. Tons of offices are downsizing, not getting rid of space entirely, but reconfiguring for more group work, and less individuals at their laptops.

This seems to be the trend. I agree probably the hundred percent remote options are down across the country, but the flexibility and hybrid model is here to stay.

Op here. I definitely should not have used that word. I learned from a PP that it is offensive, aside from being too inflammatory in this context.

The thing is-even a few weeks ago I would have described things the way you are. But in my world, it’s like it suddenly took a turn just recently and hybrid with in office 3 full days a week has now become the absolute bare minimum for many of my colleagues (including the expectation that it’s no longer ok to leave work at 3:30 to do kid pick up and then work from home until 6ish, nor is it ok to log on from 7-8 at home, drop kids at school from 8-9, then show up to office at 9).

Things went from being pretty flexy for me and most of my friends, to now suddenly things we’ve been doing for years are now being scrutinized much more intensely.

And before you say it’s because of layoffs-it’s simply not the case. No layoffs in our companies and none are expected anytime soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. This has gone off the rails lol.

I think my point was to talk about the recent and sudden shift away from remote work.

My spouse and I were previously fully remote and things have really changed just in the last couple of weeks. We are both looking for new jobs and the remote listings have evaporated.

I was wanting to discuss recent developments on this front and what people are noticing.

It went off the rails because your subject line seems inflammatory. Warpath? No, a lot of us are not seeing that… I’m one of the posters who mentioned no one in my circle are back more than three days a week and most are closer to one or two or fully remote. Tons of offices are downsizing, not getting rid of space entirely, but reconfiguring for more group work, and less individuals at their laptops.

This seems to be the trend. I agree probably the hundred percent remote options are down across the country, but the flexibility and hybrid model is here to stay.

Op here. I definitely should not have used that word. I learned from a PP that it is offensive, aside from being too inflammatory in this context.

The thing is-even a few weeks ago I would have described things the way you are. But in my world, it’s like it suddenly took a turn just recently and hybrid with in office 3 full days a week has now become the absolute bare minimum for many of my colleagues (including the expectation that it’s no longer ok to leave work at 3:30 to do kid pick up and then work from home until 6ish, nor is it ok to log on from 7-8 at home, drop kids at school from 8-9, then show up to office at 9).

Things went from being pretty flexy for me and most of my friends, to now suddenly things we’ve been doing for years are now being scrutinized much more intensely.

And before you say it’s because of layoffs-it’s simply not the case. No layoffs in our companies and none are expected anytime soon.

OP, I"m seeing that too. Literally within the last month. Not sure what caused the change or where it's headed.

[Anonymous]

The entire banking crisis in regional banks is unfolding due to commercial loans. As leases expire will be defaults at an epic level

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. This has gone off the rails lol.

I think my point was to talk about the recent and sudden shift away from remote work.

My spouse and I were previously fully remote and things have really changed just in the last couple of weeks. We are both looking for new jobs and the remote listings have evaporated.

I was wanting to discuss recent developments on this front and what people are noticing.

It went off the rails because your subject line seems inflammatory. Warpath? No, a lot of us are not seeing that… I’m one of the posters who mentioned no one in my circle are back more than three days a week and most are closer to one or two or fully remote. Tons of offices are downsizing, not getting rid of space entirely, but reconfiguring for more group work, and less individuals at their laptops.

This seems to be the trend. I agree probably the hundred percent remote options are down across the country, but the flexibility and hybrid model is here to stay.

Op here. I definitely should not have used that word. I learned from a PP that it is offensive, aside from being too inflammatory in this context.

The thing is-even a few weeks ago I would have described things the way you are. But in my world, it’s like it suddenly took a turn just recently and hybrid with in office 3 full days a week has now become the absolute bare minimum for many of my colleagues (including the expectation that it’s no longer ok to leave work at 3:30 to do kid pick up and then work from home until 6ish, nor is it ok to log on from 7-8 at home, drop kids at school from 8-9, then show up to office at 9).

Things went from being pretty flexy for me and most of my friends, to now suddenly things we’ve been doing for years are now being scrutinized much more intensely.

And before you say it’s because of layoffs-it’s simply not the case. No layoffs in our companies and none are expected anytime soon.

NP and you say no layoffs nor are any expected but you'd have to be pretty high up to know the financial performance of your business unit. It may very well be that they are tightening up working conditions in order to prompt people to quit to avoid having to do layoffs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Commutes for work are terrible for the environment. Gee let's all make people consume massive amounts of fossil fuels and waste millions of hours per year to sit in traffic or take public transportation just so they can sit in office and do jobs that we have already shown can be done remotely.

What is the point of wasting so much fossil fuels and polluting the environment so much just so we can keep 20th century office culture alive?

Humans are really dumb. Too bad you wasted money on commercial real estate or decorating the office. There are risks in life, companies should get used to it.

+1 Our agency adopted WFH before the pandemic as part of a commitment to improving air quality in our state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my neighbor in Potomac who is WFH sitting in a 7,000 sf house with central air and pool running all day is saving the environment?

She only worked in Rockville.

I had an equal size house and awhile lived alone and I used to literally turn AC to 80 and heat to 50 when at work. I was gone 11 hours a day. I worked 6 miles away.

My entire block of big homes have AC running 24/7 since 2020.

Somehow it's not surprising you live in Potomac, striving and trying to keep up with the Jones.