The future of remote and full-time WFH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once an office gives up the space, it is hard to go back. My office only has 20% of what we used to. I am not worried.

Vacant office space is abundant and cheap. Not hard to re-lease space and demand everyone back hot desking.

A recession where executives are looking to cut costs where ever they can is hardly the time to incur a new cost of leasing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will always be entry level data entry and call center work for work from home. These jobs can be easily tracked through key strokes and phone monitoring.

At a professional level you need to be in an office if you want to get promoted.

I make a bit over 200K and I'm fully remote, except for team and company retreats 4-5x a year. (I just posted, my company is one of those companies doing really well and attracting top talent and they can afford those get togethers).

I'm in my mid 40s. At this point, I'll never go back to working in an office regularly again. If the trend reverses in the coming years, I'm well set up with my network to do my own freelance consulting until I can retire.

I realize if you early 20s you might not have these choices, and some people like going in, so it all works out. But for me, I won't go back.

I’m independent contractor 1099 (22 yrs now) (310k+) and would never work as w-2 employee ever again. Now I will only work 100% remote and will not go into an office ever again. Coasting now..life is good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've got a guy on my team who we all know has a second full time job, but he does enough of the bare minimum we can't fire him. The ratio of those gaming the system because they don't havr to be somewhere in person seems to be about 4 to 1. Can't wait for the recession and we can cut the loose chains.

Seriously. All these people being defensive on this thread are clearly the ones doing minimal work and looking to justify it. Still no one has answered what a WFH admin does yet our company pays dozens of them $75-100k/year. To what?

Most admins in Fed government should be cut. I never understood what they did. Ordered a few pens. Talked on the phone all day. Scheduled some meetings and got half the details wrong. Gossiped. Seriously, it is a welfare program.

We have no admins at the agency I’m in now and I miss them. A bad one holds everything up and is terrible, but a good admin keeps things moving, does some editing, ensures more effective office communication, deals with time cards, and improves process across their unit. They also sometimes order supplies. But usually that wasn’t their job.

We got rid of most of our admins and now have one person for the whole division. She is AMAZING. She does a million little things well that like you said - keeps things moving and solves countless small problems that used to blow up into bigger issues. She also works from Tennessee most of the time.

Please tell her that.

[Anonymous]

WFH era is ending, its more hybrid and travel is back on.

[Anonymous]

so sorry managers are have more work to do with WFH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will always be entry level data entry and call center work for work from home. These jobs can be easily tracked through key strokes and phone monitoring.

At a professional level you need to be in an office if you want to get promoted.

I make a bit over 200K and I'm fully remote, except for team and company retreats 4-5x a year. (I just posted, my company is one of those companies doing really well and attracting top talent and they can afford those get togethers).

I'm in my mid 40s. At this point, I'll never go back to working in an office regularly again. If the trend reverses in the coming years, I'm well set up with my network to do my own freelance consulting until I can retire.

I realize if you early 20s you might not have these choices, and some people like going in, so it all works out. But for me, I won't go back.

I’m independent contractor 1099 (22 yrs now) (310k+) and would never work as w-2 employee ever again. Now I will only work 100% remote and will not go into an office ever again. Coasting now..life is good.

What do you do!??

[Anonymous]

Have worked remotely for years, so doubt it will change for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m beginning to think that this trend won’t last, especially for high-paying professional jobs, perhaps minus programmers. With a recession looming and increased evidence that many WFH staff are working the system, companies, particularly high-performing ones, seem ready to prune their staff. What do you think?

Programmers were already WFH pre-Covid. Also, explain the bolded statement.

You already know. The endless posts on DCUM (and social media) about people using office hours to watch movies, pick up kids, go to the gym, do laundry, make dinner, etc, etc, etc. You’re not one of those “but…but…we proved WFH is sooooo much more productive” jokers, are you?

The productivity numbers don't lie at my org, they are way up. Also, I haven't seen any posts anywhere that someone watched movies on work time. Did you make that up? My colleagues are always available as am I.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You post this every few months.

+1 this is a bitter and controlling pp who thinks they know others' schedules, breaks, and productivity, and has some kind of ax to grind.

I am not usually working from 4-56pm, but I am always on for 1-2 hours in the evening, every single day. Did you install cams in your neighbors' offices to see if this is the case for them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about admins, and various jobs in HR, etc.? Lots of these people don’t have quantifiable work product and could easily piss away whole chunks of days with no one noticing. Maybe we should just fire them all - fine with me.

Hr seems pretty quantifiable and noticeable especially on things like recruiting (since you have interview schedules) and benefits and payroll (did people get paid and signed up for benefits?)…

Payroll is outsourced most places and open enrollment happens once a year. Any time I have an HR question they take days to respond and are often wrong. What a WFH admin does I will never know. Any ideas?

Hello dinosaur. Did you want your admins in the typing pool so you can see them and creepily hover over them? Ours are busy all day running webinars, designing spreadsheets and project management to organize our crap, scheduling meetings, onboarding new employees, on and on. They are plenty busy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once an office gives up the space, it is hard to go back. My office only has 20% of what we used to. I am not worried.

Mmmm....companies don't just "give up office space". They usually have long-term leases that they cannot just walk away from, and often (not always) do not have the right to sublease.

You should be "worried" because nothing stays the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once an office gives up the space, it is hard to go back. My office only has 20% of what we used to. I am not worried.

Mmmm....companies don't just "give up office space". They usually have long-term leases that they cannot just walk away from, and often (not always) do not have the right to sublease.

You should be "worried" because nothing stays the same.

I am not the PP, but this is a silly blanket statement. Sure, many large companies have long term lease arrangements, but there are many many many small businesses that have shorter term sub leases or primary leases that expired during COVID. My office is one of them. We were sub tenants to a big law firm that was subleasing a ton of their space because they were already transitioning to a remote work option and needed a quarter of the space they had needed when they first signed the lease agreement years ago. Their lease agreement ran out during COVID, too, and they released the space.