Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has doubled down on his company's stance on working from home and flexible working, that great pandemic debate. Following widespread WFH enforced by global COVID-19-related lockdowns, opinion is divided between those welcoming the new normal of work-where-you-like and those who see numbers coming …

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Warping from home

Oops, I wonder if that's a typo? Working from home is not as easy as working in the office in most circumstances but it saves the company all the money that was being spent to keep the office clean, warm or cool and decent. But if this is the way we're going will it fix the current issues that we are seeing? Will the government start promoting working from home in Rwanda as an excellent choice?

But the other side of this is that the Government is currently complaining about increases in worker pay and working from home will "fix" that for them, it might result in a lot of "working from home" jobs in the UK with workers employed by companies outside the UK because they are so cheap to employ - that could cause the unemployment rates to drop as fast as the wage rates. I am afraid that all of the current changes are going to suck badly.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Warping from home

With this attitude of government, when company realises that most of the workforce is remote, then why even stay in the UK when the business environment for SMEs have become hostile.

You could incorporate in much friendlier jurisdiction to save money and attract more talent.

Other thing is that they are upset by increasing wage pressure, but when big corporations note record profits, it's all fine. After all big corporation can afford to donate to the party or buy an expensive dinner with an official to smooth things out, and a worker often can't even afford a coffee in such a place.

[big_D]

Re: Warping from home

You still have to pay employee taxes in the jurisdiction they work in, or spend the majority of their time in.

My ex-employer used to hire a big chartered accountant firm to cover my tax return, because I spent more than half the year working abroad. I had to keep a diary of which days were spent in which country.

Incorporating in a tax paradise is one thing, they will save corporate tax, but they'll still need to pay employment taxes, NI, pensions etc. where their workers are based, but, yes, they can pick and choose, where they employ people.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Warping from home

Warping at home is what my clothier ancestors did. They and their families also carded, spun and wove at home. They may well have outsourced fulling

[Anonymous Coward]

as a cartoon once said ..

Silly Cnut* ...

I for one am pissing myself at the contortions *some* organisations are ending up in, trying to make what was "impossible" in 2019 (but clearly wasn't) "impossible" in 2022.

I hope that the single most powerful take home message of the past two years for employees is that they should never again allow employers to get away with using "impossible" to dismiss ideas they don't like. Because it's fucking amazing what suddenly becomes possible when your survival depends on it.

(Of course in the UK this New World Order isn't so skewed to the government paymasters. Quite aside from the developing fuel price crisis, the reduction in commuting means that the demonisation of rail workers has failed to engage.)

As with all things, a medium will be reached. I suspect 80% of those that can WFH permanently are going to end up in some sort of voluntary hybrid situation.

*I am well aware that this is a misunderstood fable.

[big_D]

Re: as a cartoon once said ..

It very much depends on where you live and how you live.

We (Germany) have very strict laws about home office. You have to have a dedicated work space and it needs to be up to health & safety standards. If you don't own a height adjustable desk and office chair, external, height adjustable monitor, and a keyboard & ergonomic mouse (working on a laptop with internal screen & keyboard isn't considered ergonomic for the workplace), then your employer has to provide them for you.

If you don't have a spare bedroom or part of your apartment you can dedicate to a business environment, you can't work from home.

Yes, you can still work on the couch and you can still use the laptop as a laptop, if you want, but the employer has to ensure you have the relevant equipment and space to work ergonomically, otherwise they will be liable for injuries & sickness caused by improper working conditions. If you decide to slouch on the couch and get RSI, that is your problem, as long as the employer has ensured you have a desk, chair, screen, keyboard & mouse available.

If you can't dedicate part of your home as a workspace, you can't work at home (i.e. you can't use your dining room table during the day and clear it away at night).

On the plus side, if you crawl out of bed and fall down the stairs on the way to your home office, that is considered a work accident, under German law. (Test case from 2021)

You can also claim Internet access pro-rata on your tax return (you get the VAT on the days you spent in home office back), instead of cents per kilometre travelled to work.

[Dimmer]

Re: as a cartoon once said ..

A decent Internet is the only requirement for us to work from home.

[Steve Button]

"opinion is divided"

I agree with this AC. We've shown it's possible, and some of us have been asking for this for 15 years or more.

"opinion is divided" though from The Reg seems a bit disingenuous. I'd say the vast majority of people are in favour of some sort of hybrid or full on WFH. Very few seem to want 5 days commute, but El Reg is implying there's some sort of split.

[Kane]

Re: "opinion is divided"

"Very few seem to want 5 days commute, but El Reg is implying there's some sort of split."

I think the split is amongst the bosses of these organisations as opposed to the workers themselves.

[big_D]

Re: "opinion is divided"

We've been doing 50% or 25% since the pandemic started. We are currently on 25%, but after the summer holidays are out of the way, we will probably be going back up to 75% on site.

I like both working from home and on-site, they both have advantages and disadvantages.

I can finish my coffee in the morning and walk down stairs and start working, in home office.

I have a nice (25KM) drive through the countryside to relax and get out of work mode on the way home from the office.

I can talk to my colleagues, when there is a problem. I can just call out and ask if anyone knows the answer. There is more of a barrier, when I have to pick up the phone or start a Teams call. You can also see, if they are busy, if a user calls up and wants to talk to one of them, otherwise you have to guess, why they didn't answer the phone.

I have to organise lunch, I can't just go up to the fridge and see what leftovers are still in there or if my wife is home, we can eat together. Likewise, I have a wide selection of teas and unlimited Apfelschörle. At work, water is free and I can get a coffee from the coffee machine in the main building, or I take my own tea in with me, but that is a more limited selection.

The dog barking every time somebody walks past the house can be irritating, especially if you are on a call.

To be really honest, I like the swapping back and forth between the two.

[NeilPost]

Re: "opinion is divided"

I was on the office - open plan- on Monday and fuck me it was SO NOISY compared to home. How does anyone get anything done.

I wanted to tell them all to shut the fuck up as it was highly disruptive, but the loudest was our VP of Operations !!

[the.spike]

I think the idea of trying to cut pay for people that want to WFH that were in the office is abhorrent. You're not paying me for my commuting time. You're paying to provide a service to you commensurate with my skill set. Did the skills you are paying me for suddenly become worth less? If there's some task or service I'm now not carrying out, then by all means call it out and we can discuss it. But by cutting my pay you're saying I'm worth less than when I was in the office.

I hope people vote with their feet. Which is ironic because if they do, they won't have to walk anywhere...

[MisterHappy]

Will they also cut the pay of the guy who lives just down the road from the office & walks in every day?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

>Did the skills you are paying me for suddenly become worth less?

Assuming you aren't the only person in the world with those skills - I'm paying you the minimum I can pay to get those skills.

If I demand that you are in SF or NY then I'm going to have to pay more, because there are fewer of you and you demand more money to live there.

If I'm able to put out bids for a programmer but I'm not demanding they live in SF vs the same skill set living Idaho - then I can save some money. Programmers are fungible, I don't care if you were previously in SF and moved to Idaho or were always there.

But if I can get somebody in Idaho for $100K rather than $300K in SF, why wouldn't I look for somebody in Estonia for $30k or Elbonia for $3K ?

[malfeasance]

Because ultimately you are paying for skills. The company is effectively leasing the knowledge that you have in order to do the job that they need doing.

If you want someone for 30k from Elbonia, by all means go and get them; but what's the opportunity cose to the business by doing that.

I don't believe that programmers are fungible, that's a whole load of nuance that would need quantifying before you can go down the "programmers are interchangeable cogs in a production line" (which is the ultimate expression of what you've said).

It's our own fault that we liken development/programming as though it were a production line; that's never truly been the case.

[LybsterRoy]

-- Because ultimately you are paying for skills. --

I think you're underestimating the quality of the potential staff in Elbonia.

--I don't believe that programmers are fungible, that's a whole load of nuance that would need quantifying before you can go down the "programmers are interchangeable cogs in a production line" (which is the ultimate expression of what you've said).--

I think you're sort of right, but you've obviously never worked on a production line -it takes time for the cogs to learn the skills appropriate for their new place of work, just as it does programmers.

[HereIAmJH]

Programmers are fungible,

And this is why so many businesses have shit software. "I just need a stack of coders, who cares if they have domain knowledge" I worked for a company that had big layoffs every year or so. It was like dealing with a company with Alzheimer's. All your business knowledge kept walking (or getting pushed) out the door. "Don't touch that app, Bob is the only one who knows how it works. And he left with the last Voluntary Separation."

WFH was fine when it was the business putting IT on-call 24 hours a day. But employee's wanting to save a couple hours a day commuting, can't have that.

The reason hiring programmers from those other markets isn't a bargain is language and cultural barriers.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

But if programmers aren't fungible then if you were a C++ programmer at one company does that mean you can't do c++ at a new company in a different line of business?

Or if you were a SQL server admin you can't learn to be an Oracle admin?

[TimMaher]

Can we stop using “fungible”!

Economics first year:- This is about elasticity of demand and elasticity of supply.

[PC Paul]

There is more to it than recognising C++ code or SQL. There is a lot of domain knowledge about what the company is doing with them, how it interoperates with all the other systems they use, what the plans are for the next stages etc. Often a lot of that is held by the dev team NOT by the managers so swapping dev team members in and out quickly means you are always in the stage of finding out about stuff and inevitably losing some clarity on the way. It's much less efficient, it's just hidden by simplistic measures like headcount and words on CVS.

[LybsterRoy]

OK and just how does WFH fit in? Why does WFH work if the H is in the UK and not in India?

[TheMeerkat]

It only matters if you are considering to replace an existing employee with a new one.

If you just need a new employee, it does not matter and you go for the cheaper one with similar skill level.

[Doctor Syntax]

"does that mean you can't do c++ at a new company in a different line of business?"

One thing it does mean - you can do C++ with the accumulated domain knowledge in a competitor's company.

[LybsterRoy]

I'm astounded that the readers of this forum can downvote such questions. Obviously reality is overruled by desired narrative!

[LybsterRoy]

Question: how did the programmers obtain "domain knowledge" was it implanted as they joined the company or was it acquired over years?

Another question: what stops programmers working from a distant country for a fraction of your wage acquiring the same knowledge as someone working from home in the UK?

[elsergiovolador]

But if I can get somebody in Idaho for $100K rather than $300K in SF, why wouldn't I look for somebody in Estonia for $30k or Elbonia for $3K ?

I wonder how this is going to stack up with your insurance provider, that you decided to pay someone from gawd knows where $3k to work on company core systems, so that you can draw a higher dividend to pay for a new sportscar. If suddenly your company data shows up on dark web and you end up getting sued...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

So does that work the other way then?

If I'm employing someone in Belfast or Barnsley am I negligent for not moving my development to SF?

[knightperson]

Location no longer matters... unless we say it does

A few years ago, I was working support for a company that had recently done a "move to the Cloud" and touted the benefits of how location no longer mattered. I applied for a higher position that was currently in California, but was told that location actually DID matter because the manager of that team wanted his people all in the same place, despite the fact that he wasn't there himself, and I would have to move to take the job. I chose to keep my existing position as an office tech.

Some time later, it was announced that the company-wide support would be moved from Michigan, where it had been done well and economically for about as long as the company had existed, to greater Los Angeles where the cost of living is much higher, and somehow they would save money by doing this. The contradiction that much of that office's business was essentially customer support out-sourced TO Michigan because it was cheaper than most other places apparently didn't bother anybody involved in the decision-making.

Shortly after that announcement, I left, even though my position wasn't one of the ones being relocated.

[Pascal Monett]

Absolutely agreed.

You're paying for my work, not for having me come into the office.

My being in the office or not is now irrelevant. COVID proved that.

So you pay me and you skimp on the office. You still win, in the end.

[elsergiovolador]

Not if the office is a part of tax avoidance scheme...

[LybsterRoy]

OK - are you giving up your London weighting or allowance?

[NeilPost]

Most people don’t have a London Weighting. That’s an incorrect perception/falsehood.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since a town hall meeting at my beloved bigcorp where the two great corporate subjects of the day were mentioned one after another (can't get the staff and the lack of enthusiasm for returning to the office), I'm sure sure it's due to companies hemorrhaging staff and having great difficulty finding replacements, and thinking that making their employees drinking the kool aid at the office will be enough to make them loyal to the company.

But then again, if the pandemic showed anything, it showed that given half a chance they'll fire you at the drop of a hat if they need to so no employee is under any illusions about company loyalty and ra ra team building.

[Doctor Syntax]

"can't get the staff and the lack of enthusiasm for returning to the office"

Difficulty in putting two & two together. Must be brain fog due to long Covid.

[Anonymous Coward]

C-suite believes making staff come to the office will increase staff loyalty therefore they will retain more staff and their recruitment problems will be reduced.

[LybsterRoy]

--I hope people vote with their feet.--

Yup, but as so many have pointed out and been upvoted - its the domain skill that's important NOT the programming skills. So you can only use your feet if the company you walk to does exactly the same as the one you're walking away from.

Oh yes, I never realised that people working in London doing the same job as people in Hull get paid the same, or that people working for an over profitable company with money slushing everywhere gets paid the same as someone in a company that's not doing so well.

[TheMeerkat]

In my experience domain knowledge is not that important for a programmer.

The difference between two systems in the same domain is so large that learning the domain is nothing compared to learning the system.

[NeilPost]

Agreed, though something like a London Weighting to a salary maybe harder to argue in this way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Charlie Brooker once said

"Doesn't it seem the cunts have been rolling 6s for too long ?"

Well, dear Regtards, this is your chance to roll a 6 back and fuck them. Fuck them all.

(Being the offspring of an immigrant, one of my defining memories as a child was of my father being chased out of a bank by the manager who was screaming that "you can't just close your account with us ....". Well you can and he did. Fuck you Nat West.)

[MisterHappy]

Happy to return to work if....

If my boss can tell me what it is that I "Need" to be in the office to do then I am happy to go back in. I have happily worked from home over the last 2.5 years without any issues, going in once or twice a month when I had to.

Some of my colleagues prefer working from home & others like to get out of the house and go into the office, there have never (so far) been a case that something urgent has come up and there has been nobody available on-site to look at it.

The last conversation about it was about Team building and 'sense of belonging' which pretty much translates to "I'm a crap manager & want to see you in the office so I know you are working".

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

At one company I remember management running in circles wanting to get people back to office.

Best they could come up with is that they somehow were losing the "human connection", which apparently is crucial to get the creative sparks going.

I mean if they need a human connection, they could get an escort or something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

Yep. The same sort of reasoning^Wexcuse that produced the "open workspace": "human connection", "collaboration", "imprompu conversations in the hallway", etc.

Ever heard of Slack/Teams/the effing phone or webcam?

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

I am happy I can WFH 3 days a week. OTH I wouldn't take a full WFH position. I do think that in-person informal discussions are necessary for a smooth workflow, especially when managerial arbitrations are involved.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

At my last client before retirement "informal discussions" in the office were top management toys out of the pram shouting matches. As there was a factory space next to the office and all development work centred on driving that working at home wouldn't have been practical.

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

My presence seems to have a soothing effect in that kind of situations. Perhaps due to my natural ability to interrupt the shouting match with a well-placed "OK, we've heard everyone's problems, what do we do to reach a solution ?". Silence usually ensues, which is my time to shine because at that point I usually have a few technical options I can tout :D .

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

I'm happy you raised the "Escort" argument. I am an ESB developper / tech lead for a pretty large financial institution (Top management speil is that we are either first or second, worldwide, in our domain). I identify as a Dev, not a coder. I can code, but that's only part of my work (almost secondary, as it happens). My work consists largely in architecture definition etc. In generic Teams meetings With 18+ people (Top management, clients, Financial managers, the whole lot) I can't raise tech issues without looking like a Grouch because all these people only think in terms of share value and there is an overwhelming auto-reinforcement bias towards the "Google does it, we want the same. Now" train of thought.

When I meet the same people around the coffee machine, ideas seem to flow much more naturally.

Am I an Escort ?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

Explain that you're not a Grouch, you're the grit that produces the pearl.

[The Bobster]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

Or the git that produces the perl?

[David Hicklin]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

"When I meet the same people around the coffee machine, ideas seem to flow much more naturally."

Your solution is to have a teams meeting with just the people you meet at the coffee machine - clearly the rest are just surplus to requirements

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

Unfortunately Teams has this useful "invite a participant" which means you start a friendly chat with one person and before you know it there are 25 angry manglement people involved. Who are rightfully angry to be forcibly pulled in a technical chat on a subject they don't know anything about, and who will then escalate to top management just to make the thing disappear. You can't pull that trick around the coffee machine.

[Dwarf]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

Pre-Pandemic, most office spaces were so cramped due to the cost per m2 of space in each city and that resulted in the quality of working life being low. This was before they went all funky and did the open ceiling and uncarpeted floor thing, which just vastly increased the amount of background noise.

Then they converted many meeting rooms into collaboration spaces, so you just had lots of conference calls going on and people turning up at desks and perching on desks whilst they talked. This increased the background noise again as everyone tried to compete to be heard. In short, we created a really poor working environment for everyone.

Working in an office with your headphones in to drown out the background noise makes you far less productive than working at home in a nice comfy office or at the kitchen table where you don't have to start each day by removing the junk left on the desk by yesterdays inhabitant that hopes to grab the desk again tomorrow. Nor do you need to do all the hoteling to book a car parking space, meeting room and a desk.

Companies should be paying employees to have their own kit at home, for the better quality broadband service and because their heating will be on for longer during the winter months.

Personally, I find that I'm much more productive at home, since I can focus on the deliverable and not have so many interruptions, I can also meet with people in seconds anywhere in the world via a simple video conf. call on whatever tech stack the company is using.

There's also the environmental aspect of not needing to get transported to some other desk and back each day so for those that actually need to go somewhere for their job, then the roads, trains and underground networks are less busy so everyone gets a better quality of life and the amount of infrastructure projects can be reduced.

Then there is the increase in personal time, no commute means a better quality of life as I can spend some time with the family and have far greater options for when I walk the dog or go to the gym, before, during or after the work day, since I can work more flexibly on time as I'm no longer racing for a train at a specific time each day.

Roll the clock forwards a couple of years and I expect that those that are forcing for the return to the office have either got real problems recruiting or they will have gone bust due to the far higher operating costs compared to their competitors.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

In short, we created a really poor working environment for everyone.

I remember working in one office for a bit, where most of workers were so depressed they stopped caring about their personal hygiene. It was in the summer and the smell in the office was unbearable.

The management sent a memo to everyone saying that employees are required to take a shower before coming to work and wear clean clothes.

It improved for a couple of days and then gone back to where it was.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

If "take a shower" is a work requirement, then you're better plan on paying me for the time that shower takes.

Don't want to pay? Then I'll shower when I feel like it.

[Falmari]

Re: Happy to return to work if....

@Dwarf “Companies should be paying employees to have their own kit at home, for the better quality broadband service”

Why would the employee’s home broadband service necessarily be better quality?

Now in my case I do have a better download speed as I have the top tier my ISP provides but most of my colleagues do not. But when I am on my work laptop working from home, I have the same download speed as when I was in the office. Because I am on a VPN to the datacenter in the same building as my office*.

So, when I access a server working from home the difference is I first go through my ISP to connect to the work network rather than just being on the network. So there is no better quality.

*That is no longer the case as my company closed our office moved the servers to another of their datacenters and said we all work from home now. Not that the download speed is any different to before on VPN to that datacenter.

[elawyn]

I've worked quite happily from home for the last ten years, only gone in a handful of times to get a new laptop and once for a meeting. The difference is that I am getting towards the end of my working career as a database designer and have many decades of experience behind me. If manglement told me I had to come back to office working I'd simply quit and file for retirement.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

I suspect there are going to be a lot of retirement-consultant

Contracting full time and having to hussle for every new client is hard work. But if I'm senior enough that I can retire and I'm just "open to offers" that looks a lot more appealing - working from home and contracting suddenly don't look that different.

I suspect a lot of senior devs/dbas/bofhs are considering this - because they don't want to go back into the office, or their house is now so valuable they can just sell and move somewhere cheaper.

[elsergiovolador]

Office

Working from home is not always possible, especially when you are not living alone. Some people are struggling with boundaries if they know you are at home within a shouting range and then there is always something you are needed to help with, especially when you are in the middle of thinking about a complex algorithm.

Still this is miles better than being in an open plan office with dozens of people who also think they can "pick your brain for a second".

Before IR35 changes you could rent yourself an office near your home and have best of both worlds - work at home when you feel like it and have secure space where nobody is going to disturb you. Now that most clients insist on woking in-scope, it means you can no longer claim your company office as a business expense, which makes it a whole lot more expensive. The UK really wants to crush small business and force people to become employees of big corporations.

[usbac]

Re: Office

The US government has been on the same plan of crushing small business for a while now too.

It's what you get when both of our governments are bought and paid for by big business. They only exist to server their corporate masters now...

[very angry man]

Re: Office

I regret that I only have one vote to give for this great statement!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just think for a moment, the less you work, fewer rich and powerful people are created.

I’d like to see any business become the monstrosities we see today, without help.

You get, what you allow

[AmyInNH]

"You get, what you allow"

Which is very fundamental to businesses' policies thrashing their workforce.

Peak age for an engineer in Silicon Valley is 30 years old. That's just about the time someone recognizes the company standard for every project is "crisis" and requires constant extreme overtime, and they've been duped for years to give up having any personal life. Got a problem with that? Here's your pink slip and directions to the unemployment line.

Business is now enslaved to the delusional concept of ever more production by ever fewer at ever cheaper wages for perpetual rate of profit growth. Hence our perpetual "labor shortage" to justify migrant influx to fuel the decline of Living Wage. "But, but, but you're picking on migrants when it's corporate greed!" Yes, it is corporate greed. How does feeding the omnivorous fix anything?

As globalism goes into meltdown, this bizarre hope that the major breaks in ecology, economies, etc. is such a loud signal to change directions, that surely they will - but there is no sign of that. The politicians are beholden to this year's addition of zeros to the billionaires' net worth. And given their freeskate on taxes and their transfer of other business expenses onto the public dime, they've just about no "net" to their worth.

[springsmarty]

I took a new position at a company in 2020. My entire team was built out during COVID. Because of COVID, we did not restrict hiring to candidates who lived near an office. Right now, 80% of the team lives more than several hours from one of our offices. A return to work mandate would be impossible without relocating most of the team.

[rnturn]

> A return to work mandate would be impossible without relocating most of the team.

Like that'll ever happen. Recall IBM's move that closed a lot of regional offices and mandated people move to certain cities in order to keep their jobs. Did any of them get moved on the IBM's dime?

And with the two-earner family being the norm nowadays, it's the height of arrogance for a company to tell an employee that their spouse has kill the career path they were on and go job hunting in a new city.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as much a coward, but...

I actually enjoy working from work, mostly for the sheer appearence of being there, the concept of being able just walk up to a colleague and converse face to face, and of course, the espresso machine.

When I work from work, I actually put in up to a good four hours out of eight, while showing up late, taking long lunches and going home early.

This year I was told to work two days a week from home, on which days I do no work at all, resulting in a four day weekend every week. Sure, I do answer phone calls, but I feel that those calls intrude on my personal time...

On the plus side, if we all work from home, we can get rid of every small service business from the inner cities, where workers used to spend money in the pre-historic times, when workers used to go to work. Probably public transport can be done away with at the same time.

On the social side, think of all the time we can save by not having to go to a pub every night after work for a pint...

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Not as much a coward, but...

think of all the time we can save by not having to go to a pub every night after work for a pint...

Ah the stench of piss, sweat and beer breath while trying to figure out what someone is trying to say to you through all the noise of other people trying to do the same.

I take a Zoom call any time over going to a pub. It ticks all the boxes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not as much a coward, but...

Yeah, the one-day-at-work a week has turned into a big party, where people just shoot the breeze and socialize all day and get nothing done.

Anon for obv reasons.

[PC Paul]

Re: Not as much a coward, but...

You may be an example of someone who SHOULD be working in an office, some people just aren't suited to working at home. But then again if you only work half the day at work and none in your two days at home I wonder how much the job actually needs doing at all?

Personally I've been WFH since the start with maybe a dozen trips to the office in 2.5 years and I've found that I work more more intensely than in the office with fewer interruptions. I always worked with remote teams a lot anyway though, so I didn't really have to be in the office anyway before this.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Not as much a coward, but...

You are Wally and I claim my £5. But why no mention of stealing office supplies?

[TheMeerkat]

Re: Not as much a coward, but...

I have better coffee at home than at the office, even if I have to pay for it myself at home.

[AmyInNH]

Re: Not as much a coward, but...

Clearly your company has no concept of deliverables from staff, and tracking those.

[staringatclouds]

Extra time

My partner is an accountant & currently is dealing with the auditors

Over the weekend she put in an extra 18 hours to ensure the work that should have been done, but wasn't because of auditor interruptions, was done

Good luck getting that sort of work, if she has to go in to an office to do it

[Potemkine!]

Did those anti-WFH companies ever heard about flexibility? Agility? Do they just realise that a happy worker works better?

IT people are a scarce resource. Those companies should be careful about that.