Work in office or remote?

What kind of position do you prefer?

  • Work in office

    Votes: 8 16.7%

  • Work remote

    Votes: 18 37.5%

  • Hybrid office (more office., some remote)

    Votes: 9 18.8%

  • Hybrid remote (more remote, some office)

    Votes: 15 31.3%

  • Other (specify in comments)

    Votes: 1 2.1%
  • Total voters
    48
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One customer has gone back to hybrid work where they have to come in 3 times a week, but MON and FRI are @home.
However some of the more senior and stronger employees have moved out of state to work remotely 100%.

These employees who left the state either are too important to the organization or flippant about their jobs that they are given 100% @ home.
Most likely a combination of both.
 
I have noticed that on MON and FRI for this particular company, there are way less emails and phone calls.....meaning.
Everyone in that company is trying to get all their shit done in the middle of the week so they can make MON & FRI as light as possible.

Real work in the middle...pretend work at the edges.
 
I work for a major tech company and a few of my general observations:
  • During the pandemic, there was a huge focus on wellness. Companies prioritized this. Lots of "how do you feel?" conversations and random wellness benefits like extra money towards childcare, tons of $$$ on WFH office setups, etc.
  • As you can imagine, this helped and made employees want to work harder in the short-term. Once 2022 hit, employees expected the new work culture to be the norm. No punishment for lack of performance, no coaching conversations, etc. The market also dictated that with so many companies in hypergrowth mode - replacing a lost employee was very costly.
  • Companies have since realized that people that WFH aren't working. Some are even working a 2nd full-time job! Someone I know based in the OC was working for his company and also a company based in Boston. He'd wake up at 5am - do most of his work for Company 1 by 11am and then start working for Company 2 at 12pm and wrap up around 5pm. He quit one job because he was promoted to a higher role at Company 2. Crazy huh?
  • With the tightening of the market, companies are shifting into performance mode and cutting redundancy. They know that a lot of time is wasted by WFH employees.
 
usctrojancpa said:
Most of the clients that I've talked to have told me that their companies are now requiring them to come into the office at least 1-3 times a week but some are still working from home.
Click to expand...
how old are these clients? Unfortunately that has a huge factor. I do think WFH heavily depends on the role. With me being in tech, there is 0 reason to be in office unless the manager wants to micromanage and see what you're doing.

Everyone may have their own take on this but I strongly do believe that one hires employees that they should be trusting. If one doesn't trust them, why hire them? Why are they even in the team? The discussion really shouldn't be around where you work. I don't care where they are at as long as their commitments are completed in a timely fashion. I lead a group of 9 engineers and I can tell you 90% of the time WFH is not the issue, it's their work ethic.
 
zubs said:
You would not believe how fast & efficient my employees become when I tell them they can go home after all their shit is complete.
An 8 hour project becomes 2 hours!....like magic!
Click to expand...
that sounds more like poor planning. not an issue of where they work.
 
CalBears96 said:
My company has required full time in office since July 2021.
Click to expand...
Can you share what type of industry/work?

Blue collar type work can't be remote but most admin/customer support/software jobs can be remote. Even this IT guy who used to have to manage servers and equipment is all remote because his company moved all their hardware to Amazon and most of the users are remote too.
 
sleepy5136 said:
how old are these clients? Unfortunately that has a huge factor. I do think WFH heavily depends on the role. With me being in tech, there is 0 reason to be in office unless the manager wants to micromanage and see what you're doing.

Everyone may have their own take on this but I strongly do believe that one hires employees that they should be trusting. If one doesn't trust them, why hire them? Why are they even in the team? The discussion really shouldn't be around where you work. I don't care where they are at as long as their commitments are completed in a timely fashion. I lead a group of 9 engineers and I can tell you 90% of the time WFH is not the issue, it's their work ethic.
Click to expand...

Training and development, especially for new employees, is incredibly difficult in a fully remote environment. If I join a new company, there's no one I can tap on the shoulder and ask about an issue. Usually, nothing to do with actual technical knowledge - but more so with newbie-type questions.
  • "Who do I reach out to about this part of the project?"
  • "What's this product that my customer is asking about? I can't seem to find any information on it?"
  • "I'm getting an unknown error but can't seem to make heads/tail out of it? Can you take a look?"
  • "How do I get access to [x] system?"
These types of questions can certainly be answered via Slack or Email - but it takes time. The turnaround could be minutes or days - whereas a live conversation resolves an issue quickly. The most successful people at WFH are usually those with a lot of tribal knowledge and/or have jobs where they don't need to rely on collaboration.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
Can you share what type of industry/work?

Blue collar type work can't be remote but most admin/customer support/software jobs can be remote. Even this IT guy who used to have to manage servers and equipment is all remote because his company moved all their hardware to Amazon and most of the users are remote too.
Click to expand...
A major tech company.

And I agree with potsticker's observations.
 
potsticker said:
I work for a major tech company and a few of my general observations:
  • During the pandemic, there was a huge focus on wellness. Companies prioritized this. Lots of "how do you feel?" conversations and random wellness benefits like extra money towards childcare, tons of $$$ on WFH office setups, etc.
  • As you can imagine, this helped and made employees want to work harder in the short-term. Once 2022 hit, employees expected the new work culture to be the norm. No punishment for lack of performance, no coaching conversations, etc. The market also dictated that with so many companies in hypergrowth mode - replacing a lost employee was very costly.
  • Companies have since realized that people that WFH aren't working. Some are even working a 2nd full-time job! Someone I know based in the OC was working for his company and also a company based in Boston. He'd wake up at 5am - do most of his work for Company 1 by 11am and then start working for Company 2 at 12pm and wrap up around 5pm. He quit one job because he was promoted to a higher role at Company 2. Crazy huh?
  • With the tightening of the market, companies are shifting into performance mode and cutting redundancy. They know that a lot of time is wasted by WFH employees.
Click to expand...
With MSFT, AMZN, and GOOG laying off a combined 40,000 employees, workers don't really have a lot of leverage in forcing companies to let them WFH anymore, especially those at GOOG threatening to quit.
 
potsticker said:
Training and development, especially for new employees, is incredibly difficult in a fully remote environment. If I join a new company, there's no one I can tap on the shoulder and ask about an issue. Usually, nothing to do with actual technical knowledge - but more so with newbie-type questions.
  • "Who do I reach out to about this part of the project?"
  • "What's this product that my customer is asking about? I can't seem to find any information on it?"
  • "I'm getting an unknown error but can't seem to make heads/tail out of it? Can you take a look?"
  • "How do I get access to [x] system?"
These types of questions can certainly be answered via Slack or Email - but it takes time. The turnaround could be minutes or days - whereas a live conversation resolves an issue quickly. The most successful people at WFH are usually those with a lot of tribal knowledge and/or have jobs where they don't need to rely on collaboration.
Click to expand...
Training and onboarding people in office and WFH always takes time, it's not a WFH issue. The work environment may have an impact, but it's minimal. If you are taking days for a response, that's a communication issue, not a WFH issue. Or maybe an internal process issue?

Questions regarding product means the teams are not organized to document their crap because they are concerned about job security. That's an internal team problem, not a WFH issue.

People that tap on my shoulder for a quick question can be done via slack instead of being physically present. If it requires a discussion, you schedule a meeting. A meeting does not have to be in person. Though I do argue the value in in person meetings is the ability to white board things out. But other then that, no reason to be in office.

If you're running into an error and you can't figure it out, that's probably something that requires a meeting if someone can't type out the solution for you without it being paragraphs long. Again, not a WFH issue.
 
CalBears96 said:
With MSFT, AMZN, and GOOG laying off a combined 40,000 employees, workers don't really have a lot of leverage in forcing companies to let them WFH anymore, especially those at GOOG threatening to quit.
Click to expand...
You should change the phrasing of that to "Big tech employees have no leverage". That's the exact reason why I choose not to work in any big tech company. They literally control you and you have no say what so ever.
 
sleepy5136 said:
how old are these clients? Unfortunately that has a huge factor. I do think WFH heavily depends on the role. With me being in tech, there is 0 reason to be in office unless the manager wants to micromanage and see what you're doing.

Everyone may have their own take on this but I strongly do believe that one hires employees that they should be trusting. If one doesn't trust them, why hire them? Why are they even in the team? The discussion really shouldn't be around where you work. I don't care where they are at as long as their commitments are completed in a timely fashion. I lead a group of 9 engineers and I can tell you 90% of the time WFH is not the issue, it's their work ethic.
Click to expand...

Mostly 30s and 40s.
 
@potsticker

To add on to what @sleepy5136 said, we do this all the time because we have multiple locations. We've also had to teach/train offshore developers and that has no change for in-person interaction.

Teams or whatever video chat you use does wonders for conversations that need face time. There are quite a few people that I've built relationships via Teams and then when I finally meet them in person, it's like I already know them (because I do).

That's the key to remote... using the communication and collaboration tools to their fullest.

I just need a button to press to wake someone up from a nap. :)
 
irvinehomeowner said:
That's very interesting.

I wonder if it's hardware tech and not software. I have friends in software who require everyone to come in but that was more of their preference than an edict.
Click to expand...
Chip company. There aren't that many in Irvine, so you should be able to figure out which one it is. 😂
 
@CalBears96

Ahh yeah.... I know someone in similar industry and they were also mandated in-office. And his position actually can be done remote.

Do you think everyone should be in-office? I know that gets into a why do they get to be remote and we don't but that's been going on in any company that has outside salespeople. :)
 
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