The work from home gravy train is coming to an end as things get back to normal. People will have to go back to working in an office. That’s what I did for 40 years. People should be happy to do that and finally go back to interacting with coworkers. Your opportunities for promotion will be greater if you work in an office vs work from home.
The other thing going on is that businesses will look for opportunities to cut benefits and costs. They know Biden will increase their taxes. So rough sledding ahead. Workers will be lucky to have a job.
People should be happy to do that and finally go back to interacting with coworkers. No, interacting with coworkers is a large risk. You can be accused of anything and have no recourse. How the hell do you figure out someone's pronoun?
Your opportunities for promotion will be greater if you work in an office vs work from home. Things have changed since you started your office work 40 years ago. Your best chance of promotion today is a promotion to a different company, especially if you have something "in your file" from a mentally ill coworker with a grudge. (see risks comment above)
The other thing going on is that businesses will look for opportunities to cut benefits and costs. They know Biden will increase their taxes. So rough sledding ahead. Workers will be lucky to have a job. ...and those who can work remotely from a lower cost of living area, who don't require an office, and can never cost the company legal fees from a workplace "human resources" lawsuit will have a HUGE advantage over someone currently in the office.
Why? There are many jobs today for which there is absolutely zero objective reason to be on-site. My group has worked remotely for the past 14 months, and we are in total agreement that productivity and customer service have remained consistently equal to, or even better than they were when we were all in the office every day. Some private companies that experimented, prior to the pandemic, with eliminating any requirement to be in the office found that productivity actually increased, citing in one example a 25% productivity increase.
There are certainly many jobs that absolutely require physical presence on-site. For example, I really don’t want the pilots on my next airline flight to work from home. But for all the others, we have to get beyond the late-1800s, industrial revolution, factory floor mentality. Micromanager types are perpetually stuck in that outdated mindset. They are always hyper-focused on having butts in seats, but can never tell you exactly why it matters. It just satisfies their personal need to see everything at all times, whether that makes any difference to the work product or not.
I think more in terms of hiring someone to paint my house, as an analogy. So long as they deliver a painted house for the price we agreed upon and by the deadline set, and do so without doing anything illegal or unethical in the process, that’s all I should care about. If instead I follow them around the whole time, and try to tell them that they are eating the wrong thing for lunch, or that I saw one of them playing a game on their phone, or that I didn’t “feel” that they were on-site often enough, then I’m just a neurotic micromanager who is obsessed with the unimportant, rather than what actually matters, which is what is produced.
All of that said, you do make an important point about missing out on promotional opportunities if you are never physically present. Networking is essential to promotion, and networking is pretty much impossible in the virtual world. I will agree with you on that.
The work from home gravy train is coming to an end as things get back to normal. People will have to go back to working in an office. That’s what I did for 40 years. People should be happy to do that and finally go back to interacting with coworkers. Your opportunities for promotion will be greater if you work in an office vs work from home.
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Yeah one can survive on $2000/ month adjunct pay in the Bay Area. Not.
Working 3 jobs now. One in LA (project) one in the Bay Area (adjunct) and one face-to-face (full-time/ 34 weeks a year) in London.
Would have to give up 2 jobs if I had to go to the office either in LA or the Bay Area