During my 25 years working full time for large engineering companies in the UK, if you'd polled me at almost any time during that period about whether such-and-such would make me consider leaving then I'd have always said yes on some scale from fairly likely to definitely. The grass always looked greener in other companies. I went for half a dozen interviews and got offers but each time I settled for the grass on this side. I bet it's much the same today. People talk a good fight, but when the mentally-rehearsed interview with boss comes round and instead of the carefully prepared arguments the only option is take it or leave it then many of those people will balance the cramped train ride with the arseache of finding a new job, moving house, school, friends, ... etc., and start bargaining for a desk with a windowsill.
Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home
Years after the pandemic reshaped working practices across the world, many staff are still resisting corporate efforts to get them to return to the office preferring instead to quit in favor of a more flexible employer. According to the responses from 5,395 randomly selected US adults, as part of Pew Research's Wave 157 of the …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 14:16 GMT Doctor Syntax
"instead of the carefully prepared arguments the only option is take it or leave it then many of those people will balance the cramped train ride with the arseache of finding a new job, moving house, school, friends"
The difference here is that you should no longer be comparing office job here with office job there but office job with working at home. In that case the only thing lost is the cramped train ride; house, friends, school remain the same. The choice then is take it or take it - for the boss.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:04 GMT Headley_Grange
"The difference here is that you should no longer be comparing office job here with office job there but office job with working at home. In that case the only thing lost is the cramped train ride; house, friends, school remain the same. The choice then is take it or take it - for the boss."
Only if you can find another job close to home. If your new job is 100 miles away then that two days per week in the office is going to be one hell of a commute. You might live in a place where jobs are thick on the ground or close enough to housing you can afford, but people who are taking cramped train rides to work aren't doing it because they like trains.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 16:02 GMT Steve Davies 3
re: Not once a month. Never again.
Sadly, a certain buffoon soon to regain power in the US has decreed that workers will return to the office from the 20th.
If you don't then be prepared to head
YOU''RE FIRED. Get the hell out of here NOW. MAGA.
I'm sure that if he could, he'd make Mar-a-Lardon the official POTUS Residency and to hell with DC. That way, he can play golf 365 days a year and not 300.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 10:46 GMT Cliffwilliams44
Re: re: Not once a month. Never again.
This is only in regard to government work force, not the private sector!
Most of these people are very unproductive even when they are in the office. There are billions of dollars of expensive real estate sitting empty! The alternative is to sell off the real estate, which the incoming administration is not adverse to doing! They are also very much interested in moving many of these government agencies out of Washington! If that means work from home in Oklahoma, then that's what it means.
Take your TDS meds, your brain is not processing information correctly!
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Friday 17th January 2025 02:17 GMT LBJsPNS
Re: re: Not once a month. Never again.
"Most of these people are very unproductive even when they are in the office. "
What a load of horseshit. I can only assume you've never worked with government employees before. I have on a lot of levels. They're some of the most dedicated people I've ver worked with for the most part. Are there a few bad ones. Yes, like in any other large organization. To tar them all with the same brush and claim they're unproductive is utter crap. Stop listening to sources that validate your alrady held opinions.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 20:39 GMT JClouseau
Seriously ?
I'm very happy with my current situation, we are asked to go to the office roughly twice a week, and (so far) those won't don't are not hunted down and punished.
Depending on how far it is and how you go it's a good balance : I'm perhaps of an older generation but I really like seeing my colleagues to chat face to face about work or (more usually) anything. Not to mention the beer-o'clock meeting at least once a week, doctor's orders. I made good friends at work.
Remote chats are just not my thing.
Also I fully agree with "some say younger staff can't get a feel for corporate culture and learn from older colleagues when at home.". I changed jobs during the pandemic, knew a bit about it already, knew most of the new colleagues and was "Teams-coached" by some of them, but it still was kind of a struggle to stay home alone with my thoughts and doubts. Much better when I could at last meet the team and customers in person.
I can't imagine a young person coming into their first job, especially in a large corporation, and having to discover everything through Teams meetings, remote trainings and other web based stuff. And this is not because I think they're not good or smart enough, most youngsters out there are smarter than I'll ever be. I just think we're all (still) humans and need direct human contact.
Perhaps we can just agree on the fact that "everybody back to the office, all the time" is indeed a quite daft demand in this century.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 11:38 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: Dementor
> And yes, you can do team-building exercises virtually, as well.
This raises the "possible bullshit alarm" here. I had too many "sporty event" "marketing event" like that and always expect either bullshit bingo or bullshit exercise as first.
"Possible" because there are sometimes exercises that work, to get better in-team communication by defining how to communicate.
For example: Use a sensible "Subject:" in you email: <Customer-Abbreviation> <Short what is it about, like AD (Active Directory), Firewall, User, Coffee> <Short detail>. Within the email don't assume everyone has to be able to read your mind, but don't write a novel. Don't assume the abbreviation in your group means the same in the other, so use in the first mentioning the full word(s). FW can be firewall, can be Feuerwehr, can be front ward, can be french wine, can be etc. AD can be Active Directory, can be alternative destination, can be another day etc...
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Thursday 16th January 2025 07:34 GMT PerlLaghu
"I made good friends at work."
I work to make the money to buy you things.... sorry, buy me things [Apologies to Lennon & McCartney, and Mr Sellers] - just because I work with a bunch of people, doesn't mean I need to like them, or be friends with them.
Consider this: how many do you meet outside work functions?
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Thursday 16th January 2025 10:33 GMT JClouseau
OK, but personally I would feel rather miserable if I woke up every morning thinking about working with a bunch of drones I don't care about and who don't care about me.
I didn't need to like the people I'm friends with, it just came naturally. I'm glad we can talk nonsense together and have some laughs to alleviate the stupidity of most of our processes, outsourcing, "best-shoring" and whatnot. The usual stuff in a modern global corporation.
Correct, I don't meet most of them outside work, but it happens sometimes (common music/concert interests comes to mind) and that's allright.
I don't need to meet all of them outside work to like them. There are different "grades" of friends out there. Call them "good grade acquaintances" if you prefer.
Most of us have to work for a living anyway, so better try to make the most out of it.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:44 GMT big_D
I had 2 new starters at the tail end of last year. It was good that they were in the office with me at times. I have no problems with them working in home office, but my employer limits it severely.
But, there were several times, as they were learning the ropes, where sitting in the same room and hearing them talk to users, where I could quickly stop them from making a gaff. For example, a user asking for access to a folder. One of the new guys started looking for the relevant security group to add the user to it, even though we had discussed it a week or so earlier, that they have to get the folder owner to request that the user gets access. Going over and giving him a gentle nudge in the right direction was a lot better than having to give him a bollocking, because he did it wrong and the user got access to something they shouldn't have, because we weren't in the same room.
All the training and learning things in theory, with nothing applied, it is easy to forget something and, when there is nobody there to overhear what you are doing, it is easy to make a misstep. I think there are a lot of benefits from having them in the office for at least some of the time during their induction and initial probation period. You also get a much better feel for how they react than you can over video camera.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 14:05 GMT MichaelGordon
Working in IT support, there's a lot I can do from home and a few things that I need to be physically present for, which seems to provide a reasonable balance. I was working from home 5 days a week at the height of the pandemic and hated it. Going into the office lets me meet other people and learn stuff I'd never otherwise hear about by running into random people in the corridors; it's generally better than sitting on my own at home unless I've got something in particular that I need to concentrate on.
It might help that my commute generally isn't miserable; I live closer to the centre of town than I work so my morning/evening journeys are generally in the opposite direction to most of the rush hour.
I do wonder what the bosses enforcing return to office think they're accomplishing; as far as I can see it's going to result in offices full of pissed-off people who hate their guts and will put in the bare minimum effort not to be fired.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 20:03 GMT ChoHag
Being a part of this generation myself I understand where you're coming from but "younger staff can't get a feel for corporate culture and learn" isn't going to last long with the incoming generation that has a phone surgically attached.
They may even be better at it. 90% of "corporate culture" is learning how to bullshit your way through a day while looking busy.
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Friday 17th January 2025 14:50 GMT Dave_A
The whole mentorship thing ignores geographic dispersion....
At least for some, you're working 'remotely from the office' because your in-office peers are in another time zone.....
Pretty much every large company I've worked for spread it's people out between offices before COVID.....
So we would always have someone (or many someones) on WebEx for any given meeting & any new employees would still be interfacing with their coworkers through IM & WebEx.
Even with everyone onsite.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 11:02 GMT mike@mpscan.org
No, you misunderstand.
In a couple of years 90% of jobs will be in office and you and your 45% will be competing for the scraps of those 10% that are fully remote.
The ones that are truly remote will be farmed out to near-shore people who have perfect English in the same skills that you do for half the price. If you wanna work remote 100 miles from the office I can hire somebody remote 7,500 miles from the office.
Have fun with that.
See you in the office, pumpkin.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 11:54 GMT Doctor Syntax
You misunderstand.
It is now possible to assemble teams of specialists across the world and put together a bigger pool of talent than could be achieved by depending on just those who live in commuting distance of some city or can be persuaded to move there.
An example would be my daughter's company. They are biomedical specialists with a world-wide remote-working team and world-wide clients. There is, reputedly, a branch office here in the UK, possibly little more than a mailbox. She's never seen it, doesn't need to. This is her third work-from-home job in the field. The second was supposed to have been office based but Covid came along just as she was about to start. By the time they decided on RTO she'd realised it was a bad commute and left.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:32 GMT prinz
Wrong - digital businesses will be digital
The need for expensive commercial real estate will dwindle for those businesses that operate in the digital world.
There is no business case for paying for commercial real estate, and all of its other attendant costs to maintain said real estate, to bring workers into an office, have them open their laptops, do their work, close their laptops and then go home. It is cheaper to move the cost burden to the employee - they pay for their own office, own heating/cooling, maintenance, etc. The company provides the laptop.
This does however require a different mindset for management. Instead of managing people, they need to be managing tasks and outcomes. This style of management puts more work on management, as they actually have to monitor the work of their staff.
Companies that pay extra for unnecessary commercial real estate to house digital workers will eventually be beaten by those that do not.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 15:03 GMT LVPC
Re: Wrong - digital businesses will be digital
>> Instead of managing people, they need to be managing tasks and outcomes.And
Problem is, they don't understand the tasks. Can't manage something you don't understand.
And now we're seeing the natural outcome of this, as businesses shed layers of management and MBAs can't get a job.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 15:48 GMT hoola
Re: Wrong - digital businesses will be digital
What is overlooked in all of this is that when working from home the employee needs to have an appropriate environment to work in.
Offices pretty much guaranteed that because the equipment was provided including all the not IT hardware such as desks and chairs. Full home working where the employee has a suitable environment with appropriate equipment tends to favour better paid positions so large houses and room for that space.
The next big fiasco approaching is people starting to take action for health issue dues to inappropriate working conditions. There are reasons that companies spend money on desks, chairs, monitors and so on. The responsibility of that working environment is with the employer. Now I am sure there are many ways with an email or two this can be turned on it's head and made the employees fault.
Just because someone is working from should not mean they are hunched over a laptop on their knees.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 21:18 GMT Mike Pellatt
Re: Wrong - digital businesses will be digital
"What is overlooked in all of this is that when working from home the employee needs to have an appropriate environment to work in.
Offices pretty much guaranteed that"
Oh, don't make me laugh. Every office I've worked in over the last 15 years had air handling that provided hot spots and cold spots. In modern builds and refurbs. So half the people on the floor wanted the temperature up and half wanted it down.
If that fundamental isn't right, you can forget all the rest that you list.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:57 GMT Rol
"Come back to bed darling"
"I can't, I'm busy with a customer"
"I'm really hating your new job. You sleep all day and work all night"
"I know darling, but once I qualify for my H1B1 we can move to America and live in the same time-zone as the customers"
"Best make it quick then, because I'm on the verge of leaving this miserable relationship"
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:33 GMT big_D
I did that for 15 years, although that was mainly 15 years working in client offices as opposed to offices owned by my employer...
The one big downside was, they did a reorganisation and, because I had risen in rank over the 15 years, they got rid of the sales person who had been finding me projects and I was expected to use the network I had built up within the company over the previous 15 years to get myself onto new projects. It was at that point I realised, I hardly knew anyone at the company. When they did a downsizing, I took voluntary redundancy and started over again in a new country...
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Thursday 16th January 2025 14:35 GMT John Robson
"Only if you can find another job close to home. If your new job is 100 miles away then that two days per week in the office is going to be one hell of a commute."
Not really - it sounds perfect for a slightly later train in, a night over with a friend/colleague/hotel, and an early train back.
No harm in working late and early those two days.
Been there, done that, got the T shirt.
But then I've also done a 140 mile commute on a daily basis, that was not fun (but i didn't really realise how not fun until I stopped).
There is vanishingly little reason to have to get to the office by 9am sharp if you're there a couple of days a week... unless of course you arrange meetings for 9 am.
I used to have a about a two hour trip to the office, so I'd set off just after 9 (having done some work at home), do some work in the changeover station cafe whilst waiting for the next train, then arrive at 11ish to have meetings etc. Those were day trips usually, so I'd go home on a busier train, but it was much more pleasant coming into work a little later - a brief cycle along the tow path to get from the station to the office was quite nice in the late morning.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:30 GMT big_D
It is swings and roundabouts. I like working in the office and I enjoy the 15 minute cycle ride out of town to the office. Before that, it was a 25 minute drive across the countryside to the old office, a time to relax and unwind...
If I had to go back to working in a big city, I'd take home office 100%.
On the other hand, my daughter's boyfriend has just taken a new job on with a company about 3 hours away. He has to go into the office twice a month, he is looking at doing 2 days each time (1 day down, stay overnight, drive back the next evening).
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 14:42 GMT Rob Daglish
I always feel that if you've gone as far as looking for other work, then your heart isn' in your current employment, and no bigger, better desk, pay rise, inducement, is likely to fix the reason you started looking, so isn't it better to just go for the new thing? No law says you have to stay there if you don't like it...
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:33 GMT Elongated Muskrat
Work is transactional. I provide a service to my employer, I get paid for it. I don't work because I love it, I work because I need to buy food and pay bills. I work to earn money to spend on things when I'm not working.
My company is owned by a US-based multinational. Why the fuck should my "heart be in it"? If my employer decided to try to force me into the office, the person making that decision would almost certainly know nothing about me, or the work that I do to earn money for them. They may well not even be in the same country as me, almost certainly not in the same city. Any such decision would not be based on whether it would make me more productive, or be of any tangible benefit to the business. If your heart is in that, then you are delusional.
Convincing yourself that you love working to make money for someone who essentially owns your job, and almost certainly doesn't do any work themselves beyond being an "investor" is an ugly joke, a product of peak capitalism.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 20:20 GMT JClouseau
Slightly off-topic, but I remember a few years ago when I did love my job and "heart" was still a thing I could remotely associate to my employer (also a large US corp. but this was a time where "local" entities had more power and latitude). It is indeed not the case anymore by far, and I'm not sure the main reason is the fact I'm turning into yet another disillusioned old geezer.
I like to think there are still jobs like that, somewhere... It's just that I don't have the guts to seriously look elsewhere ;-)
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Thursday 16th January 2025 14:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
I had a job where I was personally invested in doing the job and I ownership of issues and solutions. My reward was a salary about 50% of average whilst generally holding responsibility to C-suite levels.
I now work for a company where I am little more than a cog in the wheel, my involment in projects is minimal but I am paid double what I was before for less work/responsibility. I am not invested, I do my job to the best of my ability because I'd be embarrassed to do otherwise but I do not 'care' about my employer. We get asked every year in a survey about our loyalty to the company, my answer is always that my loyalty to the business matches the businesses loyalty to me. That is near zero unless our interests align, but no one is taking the piss.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 07:59 GMT Lord Elpuss
"Convincing yourself that you love working to make money for someone who essentially owns your job, and almost certainly doesn't do any work themselves beyond being an "investor" is an ugly joke, a product of peak capitalism."
That's a pretty depressing way of looking at it.
I love my job. Not all parts of it, but certainly enough that I don't see it as a chore; I even work through most public holidays and occasionally the odd empty weekend because I happen to be busy with a client or a project that I particularly enjoy. I like being creative, and my job gives me an outlet for that.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 18:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Exactly. I work to live. To provide things for me and my family. One of the main things being time. Once the day ends I switch off from work unless I am being paid overtime for a specific project. I am lucky enough to work for a good company with people I enjoy working with, but it is still just a job. A means to an end not an end in itself.
Seems some people live to work. Spend all their time slaving for an employer who doesn't care about them. I was naive enough to do this when I was younger and single. Then got let go and realised that loyalty to a company that has absolutely none to you is misguided.
Now my mantra is work to live, don't work for free.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 16:25 GMT doublelayer
That's not always the case. Sometimes, you're just looking to see if there is a better option out there. Not everyone is passionate about their work, and even though I can get really into work at times, I keep in mind that it is not supposed to be the central thing in my life. That means that I don't need to love everything about it to continue doing it, and I don't need to hate it to stop doing it. The external factors involved in the decision shouldn't be discounted.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 19:09 GMT Richard 12
And what triggers that?
An RTO mandate is absolutely certain to cause everyone to start looking for alternative employment.
It is also extremely likely that it's the best employees who will find an alternative and leave, because their competitors want to employ the best.
The company will then be left with the worst performing employees, and only be able to backfill from the dregs of others.
The implication is that companies who do this do not care about performance in the slightest, and simply wish to reduce headcount at any cost.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:41 GMT werdsmith
Never had any carefully prepared argument. When the time came I just found another job and quit.
No pointless messing about.
I have one job with a long commute. It was 40 miles each way by car. Never again. Even shifted to 7AM to 3:30PM to avoid traffic it was a waste of time and expensive use of fuel and vehicle wear and tear and some risk of road accidents for good measure.
Absolute madness, why would I? I lasted 10 months and quit for less salary but net gain when all the costs of commute were weighed in.
Criteria for a job is always life before money. Commutes are an awful way to live life.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 12:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
re : Commutes are an awful way to live life.
Especially if it involves
- Using the western part of the M25 or M3 or M4
- Standing for an hour on the train to Waterloo and then getting crushed on the 'Drain' or the Northern Line
Other parts of the country will have equally bad spots for commuting.
My last three jobs have all been WFH from Day 1 starting in 2009. I would go into the office once or twice a month. My current manager works from home in Durban, S. Africa. It was more than a year after I came on board before we met in person and that was in Chicago.
As I approach retirement, I am cutting back on my days worked. I'm down to a 4-day week, going to 3 in June before I hang up my coding sheet next November.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 21:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: re : Commutes are an awful way to live life.
You missed trying to get on the Jubbly to get from Waterloo to The Wharf. One of my colleagues some 6 or 7 years ago often waited 30 minutes before he could board there. I have no idea if Crossrail (I refuse to use the name the Johnson prat gave it) has relieved it. Doubtful as you need the Northern to get to it, so Hobson's Choice.
I went part-time on the way into retirement, too - half-time in my case. Turned out to be a mistake financially as I got a redundancy package in the altnet meltdown, so got half of what I could have, and tax-free to boot. Not so much of a mistake for my mental health, though.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 22:30 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: re : Commutes are an awful way to live life.
Since I just finished Alex Verus series last November you made me curious and I looked it up. A train three times a day, right? And as punctual as Deutsche Bahn? Was it always this bad, and is that the result of privatization too? The typical effect of privatization of infrastructure, i.e. narrow minded thinking in what brings in money. Where as seen in a broader view for the whole country the "lossy" lines or stations bring in way more money due to bringing infrastructure in a region increases the income for that region.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 09:36 GMT BartyFartsLast
And if that worked for you, that's fine, but ignoring the 46% of people who said they'd be unhappy enough to leave is a dick move.
Companies succeed or fail on the effectiveness of their staff and if 46% of them are pissed off enough to say they'd leave them that does not make for a happy workplace.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 16:17 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: I'm surprised RTO doesn't improve morale
I think you are confusing office-worker morale and office-owner morale
Looking out from my corner office over the masses of minions who are forced to endure a terrible commute to come into the office demonstrates the power of my awesome will.
I may only be divisional chief of paper clips for the East-North-Eastern region of Amalgamated Holdings (holdings) - but at least I can force 20 other people to be miserable
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Thursday 16th January 2025 08:43 GMT bombastic bob
Re: I'm surprised RTO doesn't improve morale
Sometimes it might work well to be part-time "in office", then bring laptop home and finish up there. Meeting times from 10AM to 3PM, do collabs, get questions answered, blah blah then go home at 3-3:30.
Both directions you avoid traffic and major crowds. You finish up by eating lunch late and continue into evening. I've done that in the past. Alternately stagger hours to avoid "rush hour" commutes. Usually works well if you can be flexible on occasion. Not so good for hourly wage-work though(but contract and salary work well this way).
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 14:00 GMT DrkShadow
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
... unless they're getting large tax breaks for dragging people to a down-town area, and also possess a great value of commercial real-estate (or leases) in that area.
We always notice that it's the large companies that put out these mandates - it seems rare that smaller companies are discussed, except when they're citing larger companies.
It's been my theory that the old companies will succumb to more efficient, more nimble companies as this goes on. It will take half a generation, though.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 14:06 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
"unless they're getting large tax breaks for dragging people to a down-town area"
The tax breaks should come from not dragging people to a down-town area. For that to happen there's a need to work out what to do with the down-town areas when people aren't being dragged in to work there.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:37 GMT Elongated Muskrat
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
Pull down the office blocks, put in some public transport infrastructure (great time to cut and cover metro tunnels) and build mixed-use residential, leisure and shops in their place.
Not, however, what seems to be happening in practice, which is converting unsuitable and crumbling post-war office buildings directly into low-quality "co-living" and student housing to glean the maximum profit.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 17:22 GMT keithpeter
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
UK Birmingham: some actually quite nice city centre office block conversions to residential (as well as plenty of medium rise newbuild). Way above what I can afford however. Depends how conversions are done.
[Brum centre's future probably has to include residential as the clean air zone has moved quite a large percentage of traffic out of the centre (where few live) to *just* outside the inner ring (where many live) which is marvellous].
HMOs: you need to speak to your councillor if a mainly residential/family area is getting a lot of HMO type conversions.
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Wednesday 22nd January 2025 14:26 GMT Elongated Muskrat
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
Talk to my councillors? That's a good one.
I do actually know one of our city councillors socially; she's not in my ward, though, and would probably agree with the sentiment here. However, my local councillors (and the majority of the council here) are now Green councillors. "What's the problem with that," you might say, "they're a left-leaning party who should be on board with that?". Yeah, the problem is that a whole bunch of them are the same councillors who used to be Liberal Democrats and got kicked out, so they just changed their rosettes. They're career local politicians with no interest in actually representing people's interests. Developers of these high-rise HMOs give the council money, the council is starved of money, so more get built. Same with the university here; they make a lot of money building high-rise dorms for overseas full-fee-paying students*, and some of that trickles to the council. Not enough, though. Blame Tory "austerity" a decade and a half ago for slashing council budgets by 40%.
*I have no problem with overseas students, but the way. Some of my very good friends at university were students from other European nations, and this was a valuable cultural exchange, Brexit scuppered this though, so we now have a lot of rich people from further overseas who are basically being used as cash cows, and who see a British university education as prestigious. There is a wider cultural gulf between a British person and a Chinese person or a Saudi than there is between someone from Spain or Poland, and this makes integration much harder for everyone involved, the foreign students included. The cultural mix is becoming noticeably less diverse as well, which leads to "ghettoisation".
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:03 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
"Pull down the office blocks, put in some public transport infrastructure (great time to cut and cover metro tunnels) and build mixed-use residential, leisure and shops in their place."
Stop it, you're making sense! Although I'm sure there are good residential conversions of existing buildings. We've energumens that it can't be done because of problems with services etc. And yet I've seen reports of Canary Wharf buildings being touted for conversion to biomedical labs which I'd expect to demand much more in the way of services.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 06:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
Some larger companies have global teams and divisions whose members have never all worked in the same office—the point is they’re all over the world, where the customers are. The office is wherever your laptop is. My boss is in another time zone, I’ve never met him in person. His boss is in a different country and his boss’s boss is on a different continent. This works just fine and the technology to make it happen is not exactly new.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 10:50 GMT Cliffwilliams44
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
Many of those leases are coming up for renewal in the next few years, especially in the US. Corps are not going to renew them. My employer had several come up and we did not! Many of our new hires for back office support are full time WFH now. We've literally cut the cost / employee by over 30%.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 16:33 GMT Jason Hindle
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
"We always notice that it's the large companies that put out these mandates - it seems rare that smaller companies are discussed, except when they're citing larger companies."
Correct. My smaller employer stopped paying for an office during lockdown. I'm sure we'll have something small and reasonably priced at some point, but there's no stomach for paying rent on something large enough to take the whole team at any given time.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:39 GMT ChoHag
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
> Because in the end it's cheaper for them to have people work from home.
In some cases cases it may not be.
When your employees are working from their own home you can't get away with cheap idiots and have to hire people who can do their job.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 05:28 GMT Chet Mannly
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
I truly think in some cases it's down to manager's egos. Many spent their whole lives dedicated to their work so they could feel important, so they could have their egos stroked by people constantly kissing up to them every time they stepped out of their office and walked the floor. You don't get that when your minions aren't in the office - you are suddenly just another face on a zoom call just like all the others...
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:18 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
Even worse for them - they might not even be needed.
That's middle management. At the very top is probably the fear that shareholders might start asking why they;re renting expensive empty offices. Or sharholders who also own offices they don't want to see lose tenants.
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Sunday 19th January 2025 04:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...
I think the wfh times demonstrated in many (!) cases that, indeed, middle management aren't needed at all. A simple fact which had long been obvious to we workerbees.
I remember being in a team-only (i.e. no managers) meeting early in the covid days, and several folks mentioned that maybe *this* time the big wheels will finally figure out what a useless lot of baggage their middle managers are. I confess, even I allowed myself some small hope it might happen.
And yet, in only the rarest of cases did anything actually change there. We should have remembered: the management class takes care of their own. At least, until it's politically advantageous to do otherwise.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 13:46 GMT Henry Hallan
Interchangeable Parts?
The whole back-to-office thing reeks of the management anti-pattern that "personnel" are "resources" - fungible, interchangeable parts that can be moved or ordered around without consequence.
The survey says that 1/3 are seriously considering quitting, which means that 5%-10% actually will. But quitting is easier for those whose talents are most in demand - the ones managers can least afford to lose.
Will managers realise this? Some will, most won't. But you can help them to realise it, especially if you are "top talent" yourself.
You might even get more money as well as more time with your family!
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Thursday 16th January 2025 12:36 GMT David Hicklin
Re: Interchangeable Parts?
> Will managers realise this? Some will, most won't. But you can help them to realise it, especially if you are "top talent" yourself.
Your manager might realise this all to well, unfortunately they are bound by the edict from up on high unless they have some degree of leeway.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 13:50 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
The mistake is to mandate it.
It does make sense to come into the office a few days a week. For me on average about a 15 minute drive to, and 15 minute back. And even I work from home Thu-Fri + most other days switch from office to home after midday-break (i.e. eat lunch at corp). I like seeing my coworkers face to face when possible.
For others it is a 2*45 minute ride, so they prefer about two or one day per week in the office. And others in my group are beyond 2* 75 minute ride, so they come to the office maybe about once a week or once every two weeks. Anybody further away are more rare to be seen in the office.
Why enforce a waste of resources? Long commutes don't increase productivity, that's just the reality.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 13:55 GMT Like a badger
Re: The mistake is to mandate it.
It isn't about productivity, it is about a burning angst amongst mediocre managers that when working from home their peons might not be doing the full 7.4 (or whatever) of make-work activities that we fill our days with in the office. If these managers were actually leaders, they'd understand their employees better, understand motivation, and also focus on what business outcomes they want rather than believing a high count of arses on seats is a business outcome.
I work hybrid, 2 days in, 3 at home, that works for me and my employer.
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Sunday 19th January 2025 04:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The mistake is to mandate it.
Or maybe don't promote/hire backfill managers, at least not right away; perhaps first just try making do with fewer managers.
A previous manager once told me: one of a manager's main jobs is to protect their group from other managers.
By observation and experience, I don't disagree. If we take that as a given, then maybe not having so many people who think their greatest skill is telling other people what to do, would be a good start at unwinding the vicious circle.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 13:57 GMT DrkShadow
"Learning in Person"
> There is also a feeling engineers work better when in-person, and some say younger staff can't get a feel for corporate culture and learn from older colleagues when at home.
I'm self-taught, like probably many here. I learned via forums, chats, instant-messages, and so on. I didn't learn in-person. There's no merit to this.
Further, when you're forcing unsocial/anti-social people to group together, and forcing introverts to socialize, it's a net-bad-thing. Managers only know what they are, and the people who want to be managers tend to be extroverted - and so everyone must be like them.
"It's easier to talk about it," I grew up with the internet, on IRC, and reading forums. When you talk about things, people put their mask on and actively hide what they're feeling, thinking, misunderstanding. To me: I see someone who's confident and clear, and job well done! I cannot pick up on verbal cues, like maybe others can. When it's in writing, I can backspace, I can edit, I can clarify, I can make a much, MUCH better communication - and I can see and feel the parts where someone's not understanding something, and I can pick up easily on what they're *not* doing/getting from the communication. You can't? Sounds like a personal problem -- shouldn't be forcing me to do something wrong because you can't. But hey, you're the boss, so badly's the way, right?
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Thursday 16th January 2025 20:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I didn't learn in-person. There's no merit to this.
Perhaps the technical crowd that we grew up around is different from the IT groups that you grew up with. :-)
In my case, the whole groups - all the people doing the actual technical work - are as described, whereas it's just managers that keep citing being able to vibrate the air at someone's face about something that is contained entirely within a computer.
But you're right, blanket statements and all.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 14:20 GMT Nick.fox
My tech team is made up of people from across the uk and europe. It would be almost impossible for us to be in a single office on a regular basis. We are composed like this because of the talent available remotely. If we were limited to a london office, our pool of talent would be equally limited.
Having an office in a specific city and only employing people within a commutable distance seems bizarre in 2025.
teams + slack = a remote workforce of top talent
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:11 GMT Caver_Dave
Yes, my team at the moment is spread across 7 countries. I've worked with some of them for 6 years, and I don't expect to ever meet them in person!
I deal with the "best of the best" wherever they reside.
I do ask the purely practical questions of what timezone they are in and what days of the week they work, but other than that I do not do any DEIS or other HR crap!
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:30 GMT Doctor Syntax
"explain how a team of field engineers would work from home"
The key word here id from. The answer is because they work at customer sites. Our Leitz microscope service engineer would visit our customer site in Belfast from his home in Glasgow. Why would he need to travel via Luton (for those not in the UK Belfast is in N Ireland, a short air or ferry crossing across the Irish Sea from Glasgow which is in Scotland and both are a good distance from Luton which is in the S of England).
The same applies to field sales. Their salesman covering Belfast was also based in Glasgow.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 18:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
My father was a field engineer for many years covering the North of England and sometimes Scotland when covering for colleagues. The company office was in Shropshire. He would go there once or twice a year for company events. Otherwise he worked from home in Yorkshire. Field engineer positions are the easiest to work from home.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 12:51 GMT David Hicklin
> Ooh lots of downvotes! I
So you are fine with a 12 hour plane journey to your daily commute ?
I was also part of a multi-country team until my retirement and it can be made to work if there is a will. What we did do was to try and get together at least once a year in the most centrally located country (also with the most people) to have a team week.
For the rest we just connected to each other remotely from whichever continent we were on and it just worked
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Thursday 16th January 2025 17:52 GMT ChodeMonkey
Which thing? Annual meets or using Zoom/Teams/etc use?
If one's job involves collaborating within one's team (and others) and bringing people up to speed on new "stuff" then Teams/Zoom/etc is waaaaay less efficient/productive.
In the same way as trying to solve stuff on an email thread is even less efficient than a Zoom/Teams/etc call.
If team work is not a thing in one's day-to-day and one's "team" is just a collection of individuals working on unrelated products, projects or tasks, and the only thing in common is they report to the same manager and sit on the same weekly call telling everyone what they did: Fine, knock oneself out with WFH.
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Friday 17th January 2025 00:21 GMT Doctor Syntax
The bit where he said that connecting a multi-continent team remotely from whatever continent they were on just worked.
But "trying to solve stuff on an email thread is even less efficient than a Zoom/Teams/etc call." - you're getting into ROFLMAO territory. You do realise, don't you, that solving stuff on email threads in public is the exact way the Linux kernel development works? You can go and read the entire archive. And other FOSS projects. An entire operating system has been built the way you say doesn't work. And there's a strong argument that it's a better one then that built by people working in an office.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 21:27 GMT The commentard formerly known as Mister_C
re "Ooh lots of downvotes!"
I'm going to guess that you and BOTH of your friends were behind my downvotes.
I work from home. The TEAM I work with are based all around the country because interwebs. I met my boss AFTER I'd joined the company because being briefed on the company work policies tied in nicely with collecting my company laptop. We work as a team without using cameras for online meetings and we work just as efficiently as teams in the same office. We use technology to allow this in the same way as people use a mechanical crane to do the work that many people used to do with a rope or (technological advance) a rope fitted with block and tackle.
I can understand that many many jobs can't be done remotely. But there is no reason for me to take over an hour to commute 10 miles (fighting past two schools of parents demanding their right to 4x4 their spawn to school) to be in an office to that my boss can see my scowling face. And then another hour back with twats using their cars as battering rams to force their way through queues at roundabouts to be 15 seconds earlier home. I actually work a longer day than I used to when commuting and still have more time at home because I don't spend time sitting in a tin box. hashtab PRODUCTIVITY GAIN
TL;DR Commuting sucks. If there's a better way to work, do it.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 19:11 GMT ChodeMonkey
Sounds like your employer doesn't understand cost control other than, "cut! cut! cut!" I've worked for a number of companies where the "negotiated" corporate travel rates were 2-4X the price you could book online. And also authorised last minute travel that was totally unnecessary with just an iota of planning. Just very bad management.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 14:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
My employer started enforcing RTO about 18 months ago. Loads of folks were up in arms, loads of folks were going to leave, they weren't going to stand for having to work in an office. Then they started looking for companies that were 100% remote. Yeah right, bugger all of them, and the one's that that were found could afford to be really, really choosy about who they interviewed.
All the surveys talk about who doesn't like the idea of RTO, and who won't stand for it. I'd love to see the actual figure for how many do eventually leave.
The vast majority of employers are implementing some form of RTO - all that differs is the number of days. The chances of most folks completely avoiding any form of RTO are probably in the region of zero.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:36 GMT cookiecutter
Around a bunch of miserable people
Just what everyone wants.
Commuting, even in London adds 3 hours to my day, longer if there are issues. I get more ill & have to take more days off.
I get into the office & immediately am already pissed off. I have a bad leg which means I sometimes have to put my foot on the desk to help it...I'm tired off telling the "that isn't professional" people to fuck off.
Going into the office to spend all day in teams meetings is pointless, then meeting told to "keep it down" because we're all in open plan offices. Being disturbed every 10 minutes when someone mistakes you for support & gets pissed off when you tell them no, you can't help them.
And WOE BETIDE you if you ACTUALLY spend time talking to coworkers in the shitty kitchen....you should be working not taking! And if you pop out to go for a coffee because of the crap your average company provides?!
Oh why aren't you wearing a suit?! We're a no jeans office...the CEO likes people to wear ties...well tell the CEO to fuck off.
If your company doesn't want you to work from home, leave your laptop & work phone on the office...since they don't want you to work from home during work hours, they can all bugger off about working from home out of hours
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Thursday 16th January 2025 10:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Around a bunch of miserable people
My attitude entirely, I work for a household name multinat who are, so far, on the right side of this.
The pay isn't top tier (it's still damn good) but damn it's a nice place to work, no suits, ties etc, the management up to and including CEO, whilst I'm sure they can be brutally effective, are approachable and pleasant to be around.
Dickhead managers who come from other businesses don't last long if they insist on bringing toxic "rah rah company Uber alles" attitude with them.
They actually care about people because they recognise that staff morale is important to the success of the company.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 11:15 GMT Coastal cutie
Re: Around a bunch of miserable people
Much of this (apart from the suit) is currently playing out all across London in overcrowded Met Police buildings - with the addition of exploding toilets that can't cope with the increased volume due to the numbers forced back into the office for no good reason and in the face of all the evidence that shows it confers no advantage.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 15:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
My employer started to push RTO. Prior to that I tended to be in the office when I needed to be, as I had a short commute, but I could do most of my development at home. [As a firmware developer, I'd been sceptical about WFH but - having been forced by circumstance - I was surprised to find it was more productive, for me.
Anyway, there seemed no basis for the RTO decision and I found that very frustrating. I left. I didn't go immediately - I wasn't going to jump into any job! I'd also accept that RTO wasn't the only factor - life is more complicated than that. However, RTO was a factor and it needn't have been. The separation between RTO change and my leaving was such that it won't have been seen as a correlation, although I did provide feedback about my reasons, including RTO.
I doubt that I'm unique. The lack of correlation makes it difficult to measure the actual effect of such policies.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 19:02 GMT rcxb
I'd love to see the actual figure for how many do eventually leave.
At 54 "high-tech and financial" firms on the S&P 500 index:
"employee turnover rates spiked by an average of 14% following the introduction of RTO mandates. Senior-level staff and highly skilled employees were the most affected"
https://www.techradar.com/pro/forcing-workers-to-return-to-the-office-has-led-to-firms-losing-their-best-employees-study-finds
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Thursday 16th January 2025 18:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yes. Only to be re-inflated (perhaps even grown beyond previous levels) in subsequent financial quarters, because bad management can't properly adjust headcount in either direction.
It's either "swing for the fences" hypergrowth, or "cut to the bone" reductions. Neither course being accurately informed by data or even common sense, most of the time.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 10:27 GMT Fr. Ted Crilly
Re: Just a thought
To which my first thought would be 'yes that's quite possible, second thought is then why haven't corporate already done it?
So you mr manager are just giving it the ruthless sounding flannel OR you are reducing shareholder value by keeping the onshore staff against business reason. And why would that be the case Mr Lumbergh...
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Friday 17th January 2025 12:36 GMT Elongated Muskrat
Re: Just a thought
Corporate have done it, and discovered the old adage that you get what you pay for. In my experience, off-shoring and on-shoring of jobs goes in cycles, the same as rounds of redundancies and hiring sprees. The view from 10,000 feet never learns about nuance, because it's invisible from that height.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 16:34 GMT doublelayer
Re: Just a thought
That is true, but the original point is still valid. Wherever the most talented people are, remote working makes it easier to hire people who are not willing to go to the office or to move to where the employer has offices. That means it is easier for someone, formerly hired because they would go to the office, to be replaced. I think people supporting remote working understand that in theory, and it's not like they get a choice about this, but it is one risk of that arrangement which is lower if an office is involved. Whether that skilled person is in India, Canada, or Italy, they can be hired by a company that's embraced global remote working. Even if they're restricting it to the same continent or country, the number of available workers makes it easier for them to try to search for someone with better skills or one with similar skills willing to work for less.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 08:06 GMT doublelayer
Re: Just a thought
And, depending on the employer, that can be relatively easy after all. An employer that is large enough may already have local offices. Sure, they originally only did local sales and a little basic support, but that's enough legal entity to hire programmers and IT. That is also something that can be built without a lot of effort; while they do incur more paperwork to do it, a lot of people manage to open a small business without it taking forever and those companies can as well.
However, there was a reason that I provided the same continent or same country as alternatives. If they are hiring in the same country, for example anywhere in the UK but not outside it, the amount of necessary paperwork goes down so much that the company often doesn't notice. Some countries will require different arrangements per region, but those differences tend to be smaller and, if the company doesn't want to manage it, there are plenty of companies with the experience who will do it for them. In the approach of staying within a continent or comparable region, you have to do a little more work but not as much. For example, a UK business could open an EU-based subsidiary, which would involve doing that work, and use that subsidiary to add people in that labor market. A US or Canada based business could add the other. For the cost of setting up one additional entity, they add a large pool of available workers who are in similar time zones and quite likely speak the same languages.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 10:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Just a thought
I'm employed in the UK not because its easy for me to get to the company offices - those are in London or Reading and the nearest is a 2-3 hours each way commute so I go rarely - but because its easy for me to get to customer offices. These can in anywhere in the UK, or more recently Northwest Europe. Its a lot easier for me to go to their offices than a colleague in India.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 16:31 GMT DrkShadow
Re: Just a thought
I honestly thought so, too -- if your job can be done remote, then it can be outsourced.
They tried that all throughout the 2000's though, and the results were terrible. Companies don't really seem to be going that route this time around. Maybe a little bit, maybe Costa Ricans and Brazilians as opposed to Indians, but it's not nearly as internationally-outsourced as I was originally expecting.
What I'm not sure we're at yet is: if your job can be done remote, then it can be done by someone in Oklahoma for 1/3 the pay. That doesn't seem to be holding up so much either, though, as the big tech co's still need significant experience - and man-power - and so they still have to compete rather strongly. Maybe the smaller IT shops can get away with that, but same thing: if those smaller IT shops train you into experience, you'll be poached (or at least have options).
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Thursday 16th January 2025 08:13 GMT doublelayer
Re: Just a thought
There are some people in India who have a lot more skills. Just because a lot of people thought they could outsource to any company with some people who had computer skills, defined as they've seen a computer before, doesn't mean that you can't find knowledgeable people there and hire them. All the first wave proved is that there are some people who want to save money so much that they don't bother testing whether the people they hired on the cheap had the skills they needed.
However, even if we assume that everyone in India with skills moved, or at least that it's too hard to find those who remain, you have the option of "outsourcing" to someone who lives in the same country. If your employer is based in London, and they used to make you come to the office in London to do your work but now don't need you to, then the person in Belfast who doesn't want to leave Belfast wasn't an option before but now is. They are also fluent English speakers. They'll work in the same time zone that you would, meaning no changes necessary to how this will be managed. They had similar educational opportunities that you did and may have done the same things. As with any employee change, there will be inertia as they are added and your experience of processes will take some time to reproduce, but you managed to learn that and so can the Belfast person.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 20:07 GMT HereIAmJH
Re: Just a thought
That depends on what your expertise is.
It really depends on what your employer feels they need. Do they need someone with 30 years of experience? And it depends on how technically competent the decision makers are. I have seen large corporations go through waves of layoffs, losing all the people with intimate knowledge of how the company works. And then hiring fresh people to replace them.
I've seen companies lay off developers working with language X and then hire people using language Y. The decision makers don't necessarily understand that the knowledge of their business is more valuable than the specific technical expertise of their staff. Imagine a business 'going open source' letting all their C# developers go and hiring Java developers. And then wondering why projects never meet user's expectations regarding business use cases.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 01:10 GMT thenitz
Re: Just a thought
It's 2025. India's been doing a lot of outsoucing since the '90s, on top of that there are many people of Indian origin who previously worked in the US and returned home. We need to admit that there are people in Bangalore with 30 years of experience in almost any domain you can imagine.
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Friday 17th January 2025 12:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Just a thought
We also need to admit that there is a working culture in India of staying in a job for 3 months to get the experience and then moving into another job elsewhere.
In the customer-facing world, there is a concept of "continuity of care," where you get to speak to the same person more than once. I often barely get the chance to learn the names of our staff in India before thy have either moved into another role, or to a new employer. I say this as someone who works for a company whose Indian operations are apparently a decent place to work, with good wages, compared to many.
What c-level execs often fail to comprehend is that a lot of what comprises many jobs consists of "intangibles" - domain knowledge that can't be written down easily, knowledge and experience that is so specific it is meaningless to others, and cultural aspects and behaviours that are just different in another country.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 00:53 GMT ChrisC
Re: Just a thought
The key part of that first sentence isn't the "without going into the office" bit, it's the "you can do your" bit...
Because MY being able to do MY job from home effectively proves only that I can do MY job effectively. Replace me with someone else, and there's a more than reasonable chance that, even if they tick all of the same technical competency boxes as I do, they'll struggle like crazy trying to replicate what I can do, because no-one else on the planet has my specific combination of technical ability *and* experience working with this particular employer, with their product range, their internal processes, their suppliers, customers etc. Basically, all of the *other* stuff you actually need to know in order to use your general technical abilities to any useful effect in a specific role, but which all too often goes unrecognised by manglement until the point you walk out the door for the last time and only then do they start to understand how valuable you genuinely were to the company.
So yes, some hard of thinking residents of the manglement suite might think that they can just replace their existing WFH'er workforce with a bunch of similarly remote workers in some cheaper part of the world. And as they'll sooner or later discover, just as many of their counterparts in other companies who've *already* tried this before have discovered to their cost, it really isn't as simple as that.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 18:54 GMT keithpeter
Re: Just a thought
'Tacit knowledge' is a phrase that might fit what you are saying above.
It is what gets lost when e.g. a whole factory is closed down. Difficult to codify by definition. I've been in the position of trying to recover or rediscover bits of tacit knowledge in the aftermath of redundancy/merger situations (not in IT).
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Thursday 16th January 2025 07:49 GMT Giles C
Re: Just a thought
The company I work for has a large team of network engineers in Bangalore more in Texas and in the Uk where I am.
I have to go in at least 2 days a week but depending on what I am working on this could be more - for example I can’t test wifi when sitting at home when the AP is rigged up in the office….
But then I am flexible, if I am needed on site a particular day then I will go in that day it depends on my workload.
But 5 days a week in the office would be 500 miles a week….. used to go in 5daya a week for another job but it was only 20 miles each way.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 11:03 GMT Jibberboy2000
Re: Just a thought
And have you ever worked with those individuals from Bangalore, nice people but zero skills, little talent, no logical thinking patterns, limited humour, no forward thinking, struggle to grasp concepts and … well I could go on.
I have been in work now for nearly 40 years, of course I have seen a lot changed in that time. But still every time Northern Europe has the talent pool, knowledge and skills that makes the rest of the developing world and The US of A look at best “adequate”. I have worked for some of the largest companies on the planet and some very small startups with a massive mix of diversity of colleagues from different nationalities, cultures and ethnicities, so I feel I have some valid experience to draw on to comment on this.
Your Boss is welcome to try and engage with some of those workers in Bangalore and see how that works for him. Unless you spec every single tiny detail of every single element on what IT project you are trying to do it’s doomed to fail. By which point it cost you way more and it’s also not possible to pivot.
I currently work for a very large consultancy, at one point we were paying only 1 person with of salary (their local rates) and getting 2.5 people, because the standards were so low and still the work was not being achieved in the expected manner nor cadence. Now of course people will comment and say change provider, sure that was done and the very same effect and outcome was experienced. Most US worker (from my experience) also don’t get it, details and quality are often missed and I alway feel everyone of them is trying to sell to you directly how good they are. I don’t need to be told how great you are, prove it!!
Out of all the cultures and nationalities the main one I shall avoid at all costs moving forward are folk native to Israel. Wow, they are like angry Americans who talk over the top of each other and definitely have little skills. Worked with this group of people for 3 completely different and unrelated companies and again from my experience happy to tar them with the same brush … avoid.
Well I am sure that will have raised some heckles here, outside of work situations and settings I am very sure a vast majority of the people I have encountered would be the nicest folk around. But probably because they have had to travel into crappy offices using poor quality transit systems into an office environment with others that they may well hate, makes them operate and interact in that way.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 11:26 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: Just a thought
> details and quality are often missed
The reason why I get raise(s). Being picky about the quality I deliver and get, look beyond what is specced to see possible problems, and how to work with those instead of only pointing the finger on those possible problems with the "not my responsibility" excuse.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 20:27 GMT ChoHag
Re: Just a thought
I work with some very competent engineers that live in India and Bangalore and the surrounding areas. That hasn't stopped my employer from hiring people in England or the USA when they're the ones whom paying them 6 figures will net the company 8.
Engineers in Bangalore are just as capable of looking up our salaries as we are theirs and being brown doesn't mean they don't know how to negotiate a good deal.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 14:39 GMT Roland6
Re: Counterpoint
>” How much is an annual travel card from x to London. ”
Need to factor in the cost of money, particularly if you are expected to fund it yourself…
As for time, need also to factor in human comforts, so if you need to leave home excessively early then need to factor in breakfast on the move…
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Thursday 16th January 2025 19:37 GMT Giles C
Re: Counterpoin
Hmm a few years ago from Peterborough to London the ticket was £8500 (I think).
So to earn enough to pay for it assume 50% tax and ni
You need £13000 extra to pay for the ticket.
Then add in the commute to the railway station £10 / day parking (no buses run early enough)
It is a 10 minute drive to the rail station, 1 hour commute to London + 40 mins from King’s Cross to wherever you are working on the tube
So another 4 hours per day.
I have a 100 mile round trip which takes about 2 hours in total and costs me 8 litres of diesel (so about £11).
If I earn £60k working in Cambridge I would need to earn £75k in London and I would be doing a 60 hour week which means I would be effectively working for 2/3rds of my hourly rate…
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 19:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Flexible working
No one else seems to have mentioned this in the comments but if you are in the UK and your employer is forcing RTO then take a quick look at flexible working laws. My own employer considered an partial RTO mandate but realised that everyone would just request flexible working and they have no reasonable ground to refuse it. So I'm still on 5 days a week WFH, with an office available if I want to sit on the motorway for 40 minutes. For once the power has swung to employees recently with flexible working rights. They have to have a damn good reason to say no.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 20:12 GMT DS999
I wonder if this could become an election issue eventually
If Trump and Musk and the other billionaire hangers-on Trump is collecting are collectively all-in on RTO mandates, that seems like a great political opportunity to tar them with that brush. Maybe it doesn't have an impact on plumbers and fry cooks who can't work from home, but for the vast number of jobs where that is an option having one political party effectively making "you have to be in the office" part of their platform leaves a pretty large attack surface.
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Wednesday 15th January 2025 22:38 GMT doublelayer
Re: I wonder if this could become an election issue eventually
I seriously doubt it. They're not going to ban remote working. At most, they're going to make the people who work for the government and the companies they own work from offices. That's far fewer people, and it's much easier to get someone angry about what you did to them than what you did to someone else. It's also worth considering how limited the remote working thing has been. On a site like this, it feels like pretty much everyone could at least try to work remotely because we're biased to a small number of jobs, nearly all quite connected to computers. Most people don't have that. Since you're hoping for or at least predicting a US effect here, consider the industry sector sizes in the US labor market. Information workers, that is most of us, is 1.8% of total employment. Some of the other sectors on that list could also try, but some of them, such as financial services, have had significantly stronger returns to offices, and some others, for example state government employees, are so variable that not all of the people categorized there will be able to. Remote working and attempts to end it are a much bigger part of our experiences than they are for most people.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 20:38 GMT DS999
Re: I wonder if this could become an election issue eventually
Of course they can't/won't ban remote working. But they can make it clear that it is politically unacceptable to allow remote working just like it is now politically unacceptable to have DEI measures. You did notice all the companies announcing they were dropping DEI in the past month or so, didn't you? Including just about every major tech company except Apple.
When Trump puts tariffs in place companies all over the place will be looking for exceptions, especially the huge number of companies that are dependent on imports from China - either because they have their manufacturing there or they import various parts or materials from there. Having that "power of the exception" will give Trump enormous leverage to get companies to do what he wants. Maybe he won't care enough about RTO to force them to do that, but it is pretty obvious companies are widely "complying in advance" by dropping DEI. They are following their end of the authoritarian playbook quite well, Trump isn't even in office and they are already bent over and spread for him.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 02:45 GMT Hazmoid
During covid shutdowns, I actually came to the office because there were 4 adults in my house trying to work remote. This resulted in internet bottlenecks (thank you Libs FTN NBN :( ) and I usually work in the office by myself, so there was no difference except I was not having to deal with the other adults in the home. Bonus was that when I came home, I could instantly switch off.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 07:57 GMT abs
Why mandate?
I was happily working from home most days and coming in a day or 2 a week on days of my choosing. For example, if a project involved working with a particular person then we would arrange to come on a day that they were in. Now I’ve been mandated by my manager to come in Wednesday and Friday. No compromises.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 07:58 GMT Confucious2
I took a job during Covid where the office was 90 miles away. I went in once a week.
I moved house and the office is now 110 miles away and I started going in once a fortnight.
My manager said my change in working practice had been noticed, but as it was working it wasn’t a problem.
It very much depends on the job. I’m in my 60s and know what I’m doing, but it must be difficult for youngsters who are still learning.
I’d hate to not go in at all (tried that with another role, it didn’t last long) but my job was mainly remote from the start.
For me, it’s meant I could move to a lovely village in the countryside rather than live in a town with good train connections to London.
Forcing people to go back for no reason is pointless, but, if people are more productive in the office that is a good reason.
No one size fits all.
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Friday 17th January 2025 01:37 GMT sedregj
Re: Bad management
"... and boomers who think the only real work is done down't pits."
Good effort but t'pits is not the same as t'pit. I'm a soft southern nancy boy or whatever the horny handed tillers of coal from a Yorkshire call centre call us but I know that the pits is not a pit. Also: "boomer" - that's a class of Russian sub.
I'd better explain. "The pits" is an en_GB_en_RP_rofl description for a situation that lies somewhere between a bit unpleasant and the deep dark depths of despair. "A pit" is the deep dark depths of despair wherefrom coal is dug out.
Down't is bollocks and would mean something like "dow not" which isn't properly en_GB_toss_bollocks_noddy daft enough, unless its Tuesday in which case its fine. That is how now't comes about - but that's another story: "Owt wi' now't tekken out"
There's a fairly famous, and elderly TV advert for Hovis bread in the UK - a "proudly" Yorkshire company. A young lad on his bike delivering bread on a really steep hill in sepia tinted nostalgia. That famously steep street is Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset. Dorset is not Yorkshire.
You are clearly a spy.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 09:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Fk commuting
I don't hate the office, I do hate commuting.
WFH the way I do (in office only once a month and tbh that's a box ticking exercise) has been an effective pay rise of about 10% gross. I'm not paying fuel, public transport, parking, wear and tear on vehicles etc. I also gain about 3hr a day or 60 -75hr a month back to myself, that's whole days of time back. Returning to the office would loose that effective bonus of time and money.
The business likes to tout it's eco credentials but somehow my emmissions don't matter when it's me commuting only business travel counts.
The local business has cut office space by about 75% saving millions on office rent. It's only the US headquarters demanding a return to the office and after a couple of years of foot stamping they have yet to come up with any compelling reasons. Other then they (the exec team) like being in the office and having people to talk to.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 13:09 GMT David Hicklin
Re: Fk commuting
> The business likes to tout it's eco credentials but somehow my emmissions don't matter when it's me commuting only business travel counts.
I can't remember where but I am sure that one of the articles on here (Reg) regarding "green credentials" has a category where the emissions of your workforce's commuting has to be taken into account
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Thursday 16th January 2025 12:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Common Sense
Productive = at home, productivity at home is off the chart compared to in the office because there are less distractions and I can crack on and get stuff done!
Effective = at office, those corridor conversations, getting a feeling for how things are going through human interaction/social queue's, meeting room use, bumping into people and having impromptu chats that inspire a new idea or initiative.
Common sense surely? Help people see the value in both and let them figure it out. If they can't then maybe you're hiring the wrong people to begin with. Also, take a look at your offices, they don't need to be the latest, high tech places with video games machines, pool tables and free food but, they certainly shouldn't be dark and dingy caves with broken furniture and stains on the carpet tiles. At least make them places people don't actively avoid and dislike.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 17:34 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Common Sense
To a large extent it's not the office (although a dark dingy cave might be than some open plan offices). It's getting there. The commuting radii of big cities should be regarded as unsustainable. That needs to be addressed and working at home is one means of doing so.
It's not unknown for cities to make themselves irrelevant. At one period of the middle ages, for instance, cities and towns such as York and Beverley were important textile manufacturing centres. They were undercut by the domestic industry that built up in the West Riding. Although they didn't disappear entirely they went through a period of contraction and downgrading of the urban organisation because nobody had the money to subsidise public services in the way they used to.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 17:38 GMT Jimmy2Cows
Re: bumping into people and having impromptu chats that inspire...
I for one call bollocks on this mythical "water cooler" notion. Has anyone actually seen it in action? Or is it just more managerial toss used to justify forcing people back to the office? Personal experience over the past 30-odd years says it's the latter.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 16:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Baby out with bathwater.
With WFH one of the biggest benefits is being able to select from a much wider group of people. I really don't think this has sunk in as I now see loads of part WFH roles in the City being advertised. You want us in 3 days a week? So if I'm outside commuting distance of the City I'm not applying, you lost that benefit.
The other type of advert I see (Government) is WFH but 3 days in the office - nearest to you! What is the point of me sitting in an office in Manchester when my work colleagues are in offices in London, Leeds, Glasgow and Exeter?
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Thursday 16th January 2025 17:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
I moved to Australia from the UK 16 years ago. Continued working for UK employer remotely for 18 months.
My current employer has always allowed flexible work so could work from home when I wanted to. As the NT was barely affected by COVID the office kept working as usual. The commute was painless so I had no issues going in. Sometimes face to face with colleagues is useful.
I have since moved 3000 km and am working permanently from home again. We currently have staff all over the country and one guy working from Greece.
Forcing people into the office for the sake of it is stupid.
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Thursday 16th January 2025 19:59 GMT Northern Lad
Employers are stuck with huge rents and rates in their rented posh offices and can't get out of the contract for years. Why pay for dead space, get bums on seats to justify the costs.
Managers need staff around them to feel in control. Let's not forget the micro-managers.
I'm lucky I'm in IT. I've worked on PCs all round the world from home in the UK since 2005, going into the office a few days when I wanted. Even after changing jobs, I still only go into the office once a week.
Am I and my colleagues productive? - extremely, in fact I work harder at home where I can focus than I do when I am in the office where I can be distracted by people who want to chat and catch up.
BUT. Going into the office can be beneficial. In the office I was able to raise a complex problem before several of the team I am in on the fly a day ago and 10 mins later it was sorted. Face to face can be greatly beneficial.
Just one point though. If companies are claiming Zero Carbon Emissions - Bollocks, if you are forcing people who drive cars, ride buses burning diesel to come to work then by default that company should incur the emloyees emissions their transport give off. IMOO