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Funny - we have a weekly staff meeting with "cameras on" - we look like 24 guys just back from a hunting trip, (used to always be "business casual" in the office).
I’m retired, but my last job was a work at home position and I loved it. It was fun and easy. I had to quit unfortunately due to health reasons. If I was to go back to work I’d try to get that job again. But I’m not likely to work again.
LOTS OF JOBS CANNOT BE “DONE FROM HOME”.
“A survey from Zoom”
Yeah based on a survey from Zoom. :-)
No doubt there’s a significant happy factor
😂😂😂 they surveyed the slackers working at home and they swear they’re more productive at home! Honest!
Got a few guys that we have to occasionally call for technical assistance that are allowed to work from home “when needed”. Every time it’s kids laughing whooping it up, hollering, fighting, dogs barking in the background. Have to repeat what we tell them… Yeah, they’re way more productive. 🙄 They all have their own home offices too supposedly.
This is not true. My brother just retired as the CEO of a multi-national medical support company. When covid hit, they shut down a 10 story office building in the Houston area, and various other offices around the world and had everyone working online from home.
Since then, they determined that office personnel working from home are measurably less productive. But, the cost savings in not having to support the brick and mortar office structure made up for the loss in productivity. However, the real loser in all of it was the customer. They now have to wait longer for service as a result of the loss in productivity.
What are they actually producing that cannot be out sourced?
I predict the "Work from Home" crew will be the first layer of business crushed by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Industrial production will be the second layer.
When the Covid pandemic hit, and my organization was given the option to work from home, of course almost everyone hopped on the bandwagon, myself included. My situation was unique, however, in that I lived only 1.5 miles from the office, and if it wasn't for a fence being in the way (I worked at a military base), I could literally see my home from my office. I can still can!
What I did was that I went into the office every morning Mon-Thur for 2-3 hours, sometimes 4. I would then go home for the rest of the day. I had my IT set up at work of course, but I had an almost duplicate set up at home using some of my own gear. I could go home, log in, and continue working. It was great, and all my supervisor required of me wasa 8 hours in the office each week. He knew I would get the job done, and if that meant going back to the office I would. There are just some things you can't do remotely and I liked to actually talk to folks in person if possible.
When I contracted Covid, then developed Long Covid, that ability was even more useful because I had to spend more time at home because I didn't have the strength to work as I did before. Again, my supervisor was confident that I would get the job done no matter what time of the day or night I did it. I'm not bragging or boasting, just speaking fact. To this day they all wish I would come back to work. LOL
My point in all, is that people are committed to doing their job well, and not treat it as a "9-5" job that they really didn't like doing, then those kind of folks can be counted upon to do their work and do it well. The ones that don't, well, I feel those are the ones who could be squawking about coming back into the office.
Again, from experience, I saw many who abused the privilege of working from home. They instead were doing anything but working. I know of someone who worked on his rental properties instead of performing his duties as he was supposed to.
So, again, that's my two cents.
Work from home works out for some private sector jobs and companies where the techie or programmer works from home. Where there is discipline and accountability for your productivity.
HOWEVER, in most levels of Government (county, state, Federal) work from home is 70-100% scam/ Where there is little work done/ From what I can tell, Federal “workers” in Washington DC and the greater DC region are the biggest scammers. They sit on arse in DC suburbs most of the time, and get outrageous pay and pensions. Make useless Zoom meetings. Fire up their home printer occasionally, make a few phone calls, get Thai or Mexican takeout for lunch. Read and respond to some useless emails, too.
One excuse is that reporting to work in a Washington, DC Federal office building is too dangerous. Because commuting (from Virginia, for example) via the Washington DC Metro system is too dangerous. The shirkers do have a valid point there.
The title is misleading - “It’s official — nearly all of us are much more productive when we work from home.”
No.
Then a look at the source - “Techradar”. OK, now I see it.
They’re looking at folks who primarily sit at and use computers all day - a small subset of the workforce. They ignored the electricians, plumbers, concrete folks, brickmasons, trash pickup folks, farmers, lots of others without which a civilization cannot function.
An argument can also be made that civilization can function without computers. We did it for thousands of years.
I couldn’t work remote, even though about 10 to 25% of my work was computer work (varied). Had to get to the physical hardware to perform my duties, nevermind work closely with the system folks on occasion. Zoom just doesn’t cut it for that type of work. We tried for a bit, didn’t take long to dump it.
If I needed peace and quiet, I had a small building all to myself I could retreat to. No interruptions from the office slackers.
Yeah I had it good.
Automobiles can be manufactured much more easily by sending a bunch of one kind of part to different houses and then driving the car around to have the pieces added on. McDonalds can make hamburgers much more efficiently by hiring people to make them in their kitchens and rush them to people’s houses using door dash. Even door dash can be more efficient by calling uber eats to make their deliveries for them.
If you are using AI at home to do your work, you are a middle man and the middle man is the first one to be gotten rid of when the company doesn’t want to go out of business. If it does want to go out of business, the middle man goes at the same time as everyone else. Either way the middle man gets cut out.
BS. Depends on the individual. My wife works from home. I can’t. She had to fire 2 of her staff for not performing enough at home.
I would agree with that if only the government can build me a SCIF at my house and give me a secure network and comms. Not happening, so I’ll keep driving to base every day…
A survey from Zoom focusing on knowledge workers
Are you more productive working at home?
Of course I am!!!
Can you prove it?
well.......................................
Only control freak mgrs, chambers of commerce and local gubmints want people back in the office.
Hmmm...how to operate the backhoe and hand dig from home..