2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies Two in five techies quit in the past year because their employer didn't offer requisite flexibility with respect to hours, location and the "intensity of work." The findings come from a survey of 26,000 plus staff that operate in 35 markets, including 2,548 respondents in tech, and fly in the face of more and more corporations …
Tech also attracts alot of people with neurodivergent qualities.
Such people don't actually get on well in face-to-face or communal environments, but having the team available to chat online, from their own safe space is more of a feeling of community to them.
As usual, bosses need to look past their own wants and viewpoints.
It does depend on the cat, but in general cats don't actually need attention all the time. If you stay in one place to work the key is to provide them a place nearby to sleep, or a 'fake laptop' if they like mirroring you by trying to sit on the laptop. After a little while they tend to settle down and enjoy being close.
I found putting a cat tree directly next to my desk where my most needy cat could see what I was doing but not disturb me was most effective.
The organisation wouldn't be paying you if it wasn't main more money from you than it's paying. They're not doing us favours by giving us jobs and then working us into hospital...
The extra productivity gained from a relaxed employee at home whose not had to commute and CAN relax for a while rather than putting up with
"I know you're on lunch but...." Or
"I know you're busy but can you quickly just do this?"More than pays for time with the pets
-- Oh, but I was only an IT security consultant for 20 years to UK government departments, agencies and their suppliers, so WTF do I know? --
Or to avoid any meaningful form of interaction with an actual human being.
There's other factors, too: Interruptions and disruption when in the office. It's the most common reason quoted for people not coming in, even on teams days or the fortnightly office day when everyone's supposed to come in.
I wish I had a nickel for every colleague who ever saw me in the office with headphones on and a death stare into the monitor, and rather than interpreting this to mean "fuck off", interpreted it to mean "please come talk to me about college football, cars, your vacation, or another subject in which I have no interest and which does not bear on our work."
Not to mention everyone who ever came up to my desk to tell me they just sent me an email. Thanks, I had no other way of knowing!
""a sense of community". That's the only thing that's missing really and it's hard to replicate."
In some jobs and companies, there's little sense of community in the office. If you have a manager that's counting keystrokes and likes to glare, you probably won't have a chat with your co-workers very often. There can be a culture of compartmentalization where you are discouraged from discussing your work with others so the vaunted "collaboration" factor doesn't exist. Perhaps you could get along just fine with your co-workers and do good things, but sitting close to them on the long bench that is your work station just gets you more and more annoyed with their personal habits, lack of musical taste that leaks through their headphones and, frankly, the smell. In companies that have adopted a "hotelling" office with few assigned work spaces, you may wind up not sitting next to the same people long enough to feel comfortable talking with them if you are on the introverted side.
I can only imagine what someone having the decency to use headphones would be like. There's only so much Maroon 5 I can take in one day (about zero, as it happens) before I end up grinding my teeth.
It's an awkward situation because I just can't concentrate with music playing, so my own headphones might be a relief from Heart FM but my output drops to near zero.
So I have to consider being that person that just puts ear plugs in or points out we don't have a PRS licence and asks for a radio ban.
Answers on a post card.
> Perhaps their speakers should have an accident
When noone is around, use an insulation resistance tester (e.g. megger) on the mini-jack plug. This will of course fry the the analogue front-end with no outward signs of damage. For bluetooth speakers, a couple of seconds in the office microwave would do the trick
That’s actually not a bad use of a nominally “in office” day, especially if the management justification for a mandatory “in” day is to build relationships and networks.
Years back I did a few years contract work for a company based in Sweden, I used to fly over to Stockholm regularly to spend some time in the office and the first time I went in I was absolutely gob-smacked to find that every week there was a day when the whole (small, maybe a dozen people) would get together to prepare and cook an actual meal from scratch in the kitchen area, set a table, sit down to eat together like family, and then clear away and wash up together, any management team members present would join in alongside. That could easily take up three hours in total but it was the best, most effective way of getting a team to communicate and build relationships I’ve ever seen…
WFH improves work/life balance. Particularly in tech jobs where you are either officially, or unofficially, on call. These employers that want you in the office to promote a 'family culture', are the same ones that put you on salary and then want you to donate 100s of hours of unpaid overtime every year. In addition to wanting you available to drop what you are doing (when you are not working), log in, and solve whatever crisis they think they have. Nothing like carrying your work laptop on your vacation to encourage a sense of community. And as soon as you stop, it's "what have you done for me lately?".
And as someone else pointed out, it improves my 'sense of community' when I don't have to spend my day dealing with the smelly stuff in the microwave (sorry, popcorn should be banned from offices), the people who choose to stand in the aisle in front of my desk and chat with each other about things I care nothing about, or who complain all day and put in minimum effort. None of which are on my team, because we were all in different regions of the country and meet via Teams or WebEx.
The thing that got me more involved with my coworkers wasn't bullshit conversations around the coffee pot. It was instant messaging. If they want more sense of a community, they should encourage more group chats that aren't laser focused on work.
That's actually a good point: I used to work in a city, and to be honest, the commute was a pain so I would have preferred working from home.
Now, I'm in a rural office close enough to home to comfortably walk in, or cycle, and there's a lot of lovely trails around here that I can go out at lunch for a walk in the forest. Hence I prefer being in the office now.
Where as: Those who have a longer commute prefer to work from home due to the hassle of driving in.
Flip side: I found WFH made it harder to maintain a work-life balance as an expectation grew for us to start earlier and work later as we didn't have said commute (even if mine was sub 10 minutes if I drive). There's also this expectation that, if WFH that we're available in the evenings and over the weekends should anything crop up. There was even some management pressure to that effect in both questioning why someone wasn't available to immediately pick up an 'urgent' task, or by praising how many hours some put in outside of the normal work hours - passive aggressive bullying. But me, as I work in the office: Sorry, have to head into the office to do that so that invokes the lone worker policies... oops.
So there's good and bad to both approaches and currently the company I work for is technically hybrid, but the office side isn't enforced. Am seeing a lot more jobs for my side of tech are either hybrid or remote, too, so for those who prefer WFH: if their current employer starts pushing for office time, there's options.
"There's also this expectation that, if WFH that we're available in the evenings and over the weekends should anything crop up."
That's another breakdown of management not adjusting to remotely managing people. I expect from time to time there are important things that crop up outside of regular, well-defined hours. Fine, how about if those times cost something? Would a manager that has to swap time 2 for 1 find the situation so dire that somebody being called up gets to take that time off on a Friday afternoon of their choosing?I'd work long days to get the time back multiplied. The biggest reason will likely boil down to the manager not staying on top of what their superiors are expecting will be accomplished and passing the buck. This is why I kept a to-do list and call schedule that was updated daily. I sometimes needed to talk with people on other time zones and needed to make sure I reached them when they were in. I also find it easier to have nice boxes to tick off in priority order so I don't miss things. It's also wise to keep a work journal since once you get accused to not doing something you weren't told about, you have notes to back up your story. Funny how you stop getting called out when they know you aren't relying on memory of what you were doing on the 15th of last month.
Oop yeah the salary trap. A group I used to work in went salary with a 10 percent raise to get people on board. Right about the same time I made a lateral move to a different department where the work was what I actually understood. And, the three people who actually knew how everything worked (I was not one of them) all had new jobs with different companies within a week of the conversion.
The cause was the boss had been a tech and at one point had been the highest paid employee.
He was making more than the company president due to overtime. The hypocrite, who had bought and paid off a rather large ranch with a conbination of overtime and stolen company resources, often started meetings with "When I was a tech" which was a signal for he was cutting yet another on call perk in order to get more work for less pay. His final move was to convert the department to salary. Within 6 months, the group I left was destroyed They were expected to work their 8-5, then go home and continue working. There were several divorces and at least one person who was attending night school on the company dine wound up failing out because he was getting called every 5 minutes. Those poor saps were literally working 20 hour days, 7 days a week. Meanwhile I was still making 60 percent more than my base pay with overtime in the other group, and when I clocked out for the day I was unreachable.
In case anyone is wondering, the tech turned asshole was a tech during a time when each callout had a minimum 3 hours overtime pay. He was clocking 40-50 hours a day just in overtime. He would be called, given a ticket, dial in and reset a node, and draw 3 hours pay for 10 minutes total work. It was possible to make 18 hours of overtime per hour. And yes - that overtime policy before the dickhead took over was exactly why I transferred in to begin with. The thought of quadrupling my pay while working from home was a rather strong draw. Yes, I am bitter about the prick climbing to the top of the overtime ladder, then kicking it off the wall before the rest of us could climb it.
"Why on Earth would anyone allow themselves to be treated that way, to tolerate such demands or expectations?"
Fear of being sacked or passed over for promotion. The antidote is to make sure they need you more than you need them. Be a good employee and stack money away so you can tell them to take their job and shovel it with enough buffer to spend a couple of months looking for the new job and relocating if necessary.
"Why do I keep reading about ‘working 8 hours then going home and continuing to work or keep the laptop on’ or words to that effect?"
Thinking further, if there is a reward for hitting certain goals, maybe putting in some extra hours is not a bad thing. If your team gets to take an extra day or two off on the next bank holiday weekend if they hit some mark, that might be incentive to work extra hours. Maybe it's money, maybe it's something else that holds value for somebody.
If I'm working at home and there's no incentive from an employer, it's my own stuff that I'm going to file away and not tell them about.
"In case anyone is wondering, the tech turned asshole was a tech during a time when each callout had a minimum 3 hours overtime pay. He was clocking 40-50 hours a day just in overtime."
It sounds like it would have been far cheaper to hire another couple of people to work a late shift. I do see value in generous pay for being called to do work out of hours. It focuses management's mind on whether it's really so important that it can't wait until the next business day. Since upper management has probably done some budgeting, it can get noted when a department seems to have a spending problem.
There's no difference between a teams chat in the office and a teams chat at home. I am the only person on my team at the office I work at, on my shift, so no difference other than the 2 hours of commute time inficting expense and stress. Even my boss is more than a thousand miles away. No idea what he looks like.
"Even my boss is more than a thousand miles away. No idea what he looks like."
That's probably a mistake. At least once a year, a company should gather functional units together someplace for a day or three. Having a face to put with an email address does help with relationships. I had a very good friend I met online on the other side of the US. We got to meet up 4 times in the course of a dozen years which is more than I get to see friends from school. We would have been friends if we never met in person, but I believe it strengthened the bond. I miss the ol' BBS days
My employer has my place of work as my address, and and everyone in my team is non local, so getting to an office is not always easy. Likewise the clients. More often we are remote and again, within out company not many on a project can easily head into the same office.
I do miss meeting people or being in an area with others do a similar role as you often hear things and can help or even take a mental notes. Chatting is often done getting drinks - to which there are a lot of those and indeed, wasted time. A drinks run at home maybe to the kitchen or even from a flask - but quick
Of course, no travel so I will work longer at home as I do not spend at least 90mins a day travelling.
I used to think that for juniors it can be hard, especially when learning the ropes, but we have new intakes all the time and we have now got an internal academy going where they are expected to do some training themselves from a vendors training process, some additional training on topics we are setting that are specifically designed to test knowledge areas and also build up an overall project. The later stages involves them doing a lot of collaboration. All the while those of us who are involved are effectlively "on call" for this so if they are stuck, want to run something by us, we are there ready.
We are also now pretty good at working with their different skills levels and keeping them together on their academy journey - some may get more challenging challenges as a side shoot, others more help on specific areas. It is now working well for us, so I am now not so sure I believe that junioprs / graduates benefit as much as I did before
Younger people have lived a good part of their lives online and for them an online community is probably natural, while people in upper management belong to an earlier generation and can't get their heads around the concept.
When the next pandemic turns up - I believe there are serious efforts being made in the USA at the moment to allow a new dangerous virus to evolve - we'll be back working from home again anyway, so allowing WFH should be seen as precautionary rather than a privilege.
I have listened to RFK Jr in full. He's insane, and he's going to kill a lot of people.
Both of my parents were epidemiologists. I have seen the results of polio, measles, mumps, and, before it was stomped on, smallpox, running wild. This is a relatively mild case of measles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#/media/File:RougeoleDP.jpg and this is smallpox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#/media/File:Child_with_Smallpox_Bangladesh.jpg Wiki doesn't have a pic of the consequences for adult males who catch mumps; let's just say that it's highly probable that they're Darwined. Permanently.
Go right ahead. Be anti-vax. Take the consequences.
I am one of that earlier generation [1] and I am perfectly comfortable with most of my interactions being online (Teams manly). I am still doing full time electronics design and my home office is by far preferable to any open plan office (or juts about any corporate setting for that matter).
I do go into the local office once a week (most weeks) as it helps to catch up with the integration team and see what issues they may have been having. I regularly go to the main office (where the team I primarily work with are based), but as that is a couple of hundred miles or so, I go there for a week at a time.
For those of us who really need peace and quiet to do our best, WFH with the occasional office day is superb.
My management is relaxed about it - I am measured on results, not where I happened to be when I did the latest new / updated piece of electronics. Don't get me wrong, the company is fast paced (not that big with a lot of growth and large orders incoming) so we regularly get new starters. I can just as effectively mentor them in the ways of electronics in an online chat as being in person (which, contrary to popular opinion, really hasn't changed that much over the years [2]). The key to those online interactions is getting it right.
I hover between introvert and extrovert; when I am in the middle of actually designing something, someone coming along for a 'casual' conversation is the last thing I need.
1. I haven't paid employee NI for some years which will give you an idea of my age.
2. Many things have evolved, particularly in PCB layout and we now have functions contained within a few square mm that would previously have taken up a complete 3U board. The underlying principles really haven't changed, though. There are still times when I will use a circuit type from several decades ago as it is often still the best solution.. We do have far better tools for many things (CAD, for example, and IDEs for FPGA development).
"I am still doing full time electronics design and my home office is by far preferable to any open plan office "
When I was designing avionics, the lab at home was far better equipped than what they had at the office. I have always had a policy to avoid bringing my personal gear into the office. Perhaps I should have formed a test equipment rental company and had them hire it from me on short term contract. Since I still do some product development, my shop is even better equipped since that time as I've used time to find deals on tools and parts. Right now my main problem is getting all of the things I've been buying organized in places where it can be found quickly.
The org I work for (large global corporate) have had a ‘soft’ mandate to be in the office 3 days per week. Most people do 2 which seems to work well enough, particularly as there’s only desk space for half the people assigned to the office.
They are now moving to a strict minimum of 3 days, no exceptions. Funny how they issued this order the week after the staff survey closed. They have weaponised RTO as a way to get people to leave.
There will be no support from HR. Managers (sorry I’m one :) ) will get zero support or answers to very reasonable questions like, there are not enough desks etc…..They were fully on the WFH bandwagon when they wanted to attract staff. But hey, it’s a corporate so what do you expect.
We had a similar edict recently, despite making a song and dance in the press about how WFH was revolutionary and our staff would be free to work from wherever they chose. For any questions, "speak to your line manager" - as a line manager, we looked around at each other in despair having had zero briefing or materials.
What's galling is that at least 1/3 of the community is exempt for some reason they put in place (maximum travel distance as the crow flies, having an office location that is a virtual "hub" will exempt you). We've been told it's to make us more effective and collaborative, yet my peer who lives 5 miles further west from me, is exempt and apparently capable of doing the same job as me, but remotely. Crucially, if I now move house to become his neighbour, I won't be exempt due to moving after the fact, so he'd wave to me from his window as I headed off to the office to join a Teams call with him.
"It seems like the staff need to get together and use the desk shortage to weaponis RTO on their own account."
If the company has reduced some office space, formal complaints about the lack of restrooms for the number of people can elevate it from a nuisance to a tribunal matter if the company doesn't immediately remedy the issue to meet legal requirements.
"There will be no support from HR. Managers (sorry I’m one :) ) will get zero support or answers to very reasonable questions like, there are not enough desks etc….."
Are you allowed to set hours for the people you manage? What constitutes a "day in the office"? If somebody could come in at 10am (after morning rush) and leave around 1-2pm, could you get away with that? Everybody could be set to come in on Monday from 10am to 2pm so they miss rush hour travel and the time can be used to compare notes, get the list of things needing to be done that week, submit progress reports and break off into small groups to discuss issues. Some people would come in Wed morning before/after rush hour and other in the afternoon so there's plenty of space for everybody.
It all depends on the work. An ad agency might be highly collaborative and need staff to be in an office most of the time. A design firm where work can take days or weeks of concerted effort, not as much. It might even be that certain team members will have different requirements depending on what they do and how long it takes.
*Every* place I worked since 1978 has had "flextime" as part of the job. Essentially, if you did your job and your manager had no issues with your work hours, you could come and go as you pleased. What this meant for me, was I could arrive betw 6:30 and 7:00 and leave between 15:00 and 16:00. I have done this my entire career, and nobody had a problem with it. Of course, when the situation required it, I would stay later, or even work a day of the weekend. But that was under 10x a year.
Management likes being in charge of things. Eventually, they'll find something besides "butts in seats" to obsess about. Then, things will get back to normal. Even though management doesn't like to admit it, workers have power.
"Good luck with the deadwood you'll be left with after the talent bails."
It's not always deadwood. Some people have family obligations that box them in. If they have a mortgage that's more than the market will pay for their home, they might not be able to relocate. It does change the mix quite a lot, though.
An RTO policy like Amazon simply means that everyone can aggressively quiet quit (potentially while looking for another job). That’s the outcome they didn’t ask for but are likely to get.
Get in for 9; leave at 5x. Leave your laptop at work. After all it’s company policy and you can not do work from home right. How light is your bag now? Don’t signup for BYOB MDM etc. you too can pretend to be what you thought a public sector worker is (public sector work is more Sisyphean)
And if you’re a mangler it’s potentially worse than that; going to the office means you can’t have privacy unless you goto one of the broom closets that they have available for privacy. Bad chairs, no screens etc. because sometimes managers do need to have difficult conversations outside of the hearing of team members. That is a HSE violation waiting to happen with bad backs and all that shit.
I really wouldn't have a problem (until I quit) just doing absolutely nothing when forced to come into an office that runs out of chairs, desks, and computers.
No I'm not going to come in early to make sure I have a spot. If I show up and don't have a space to work I'm perfectly happy to stand around 8 hours on the clock. I'd be happy to point out I have plenty of space at home to work from.
I musts say that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard though (these places with 'return to office' mandate without enough space for everyone they demand to come in.)
"I musts say that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard though (these places with 'return to office' mandate without enough space for everyone they demand to come in.)"
The execs making the demands have their own office with full private washrooms, assigned parking and catered meals. They just don't consider that during lockdowns the company downsized some of their space or may have increased staff afterwards but with so many working remotely, hadn't stopped to think if they have the space for everybody. If the firm always has people in office and staff needs to be added, it would be an obvious question to ask where they would fit in the office. I went through the same thing with my manufacturing company. It wasn't just that I needed another person, but they needed a workstation, tools/tooling to do a certain task and that sort of thing. Not only that, all of that needed to be in place before placing ads to fill the position.
(these places with 'return to office' mandate without enough space for everyone they demand to come in.)"
Every day that RTW is universally enforced the staff should make sure that they have a grand party (Excuse me, "conference on workflow"). No work gets done, all processes stop.
"Sorry, when I can find a place to work, I'll start. Every desk is full, all the chairs are taken, and there isn't even an open plug to charge my laptop. Oh, and wireless speed here, when I did find a spot to work two days ago. was less than half that at my house, so I didn't get much done....." Rinse, repeat until lesson is learned.
"I musts say that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard though (these places with 'return to office' mandate without enough space for everyone they demand to come in.)"
The stupid thing would be that nobody in management counted the number of work spaces and compared that to the number of people they were demanding return. Same with parking spaces, restroom ratios, etc. They may not have looked at the current train schedules/fares to see what a reasonable start time needs to be if the offices are downtown and people will need to take public transportation (at the same time as everybody else working downtown).
"One thing which seems to be missing: the proportions of the 40% who quit with a better job lined up and those who just quit."
It might be cheaper to just quit if you've been working remotely and took the opportunity to buy a home in a nicer area with cheaper rents/mortgage. To get to the office might be a considerable trek with the motorways and trains going in that direction already stacked deep. Do you spend 4 hours a day commuting, rent a flat in town and go home on weekends or look for a job that could pay less, but not cost as much to get to? I've quit without a net to save the stress and relied on my skills to be able to find something else.
The problem is, it's the ones that have the in-demand skills that will leave. Because they're confident that they are marketable and won't be unemployed long. And they take their knowledge of the business with them. The ones that will stay either can't take the financial risk, or they're not competent and aren't really working. Kind of a reverse Darwin effect.
But if you're a shit manager you want the ones who are desperate because you don't realise it's easier to let the capable ones do the hard work while you take the credit. There's also much less risk of it all going tits up and making you look crap in the process.
@MacDiamond.
After a complete breakdown trying to do a 10 hour day (2 hours in traffic), plus being on call every other week, yet being expected in the next day even with 2 hours sleep, it got to much.
I had a new car, nice big flat, good money, but ultimately it meant nothing if every day I'm miserable, stressed and exhausted.
After the breakdown, it took a while, but I realised what was important.
I live in a little village, in a small but lovely rented flat, most of my furniture is second hand, as are many of my clothes, my car is old, but reliable and as for my job; I do my job, go home and it's done. I'm on 50% now of what I was on 5 years ago.
My house is full of art, I know loads of really interesting and creative people. When I can I go out to either live music or raves (yes I'm over 50), because music makes me feel alive. Most of this costs me next to nothing.
Financially, I'm probably the worst I've been since my late teens, but also the happiest I've been since then as well, and that's a trade I'm willing to make.
"I had a new car, nice big flat, good money, but ultimately it meant nothing if every day I'm miserable, stressed and exhausted."
The TV adverts are trying to convince you that making lots of money and buying lots of things is success. It's the same way Walmart and other big box stores try to instill that "value" = lowest price with no regards for quality. The trick is they don't come right out and boldly say these things. It's just a constant repetition of morning coffee = Starbucks rather than making your own at home for a small fraction of the price.
I don't make gobs of money, but I've paid off the house and car. I have a garden that's begging me to get started on this year's fruit and veg planting. No cable/sat TV, no media subscriptions. Nothing on auto-pay. I've forced myself into making buying things complicated so I stop and think first, do a few sums and see if I really need the thing. I ask myself if the purchase is "strategic". The second hand chest freezer was. A little old lady in town was selling one cheap in good condition and I wanted one so I could take advantage of sales at the grocery and preserve more from the garden. ROI is positive. Replacing lamps with LED bulbs as and when has saved money even when buying the high quality name-brand ones instead of the horrible Chinesium stuff that doesn't last any longer than tungsten filament lamps.
I'm not rich, but I do have more of what money can't buy in exchange.
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"Most of them should be fired as dead weight because they don't know how to manage remote staff. They're micromanaging jerks who need to have people on site so they can hover over them"
My (UK) experience has been that most of my many line managers have been sensible, fair, well adjusted people who can think but are also willing to tow the corporate line. The drive for RTO is not coming from middle managers, it is coming from the very top. Not people who do any proper line management, simply the greasy polers who have failed upwards. And these people read that the jerks running corporates like Amazon or Google are demanding 60 hour weeks, five days in the office, and think "wow, we need to do that to avoid getting left behind". As a middle manager, you have two choices, two the line, or find yourself sidelined or kicked out.
It is of course the same story with AI - everybody who can think knows it is a bubble of misplaced hope, but the senior leaders are desperate to keep up with the myth.
"Most of them should be fired as dead weight because they don't know how to manage remote staff. "
From the reasons being stated for RTO, that seems to be the case. If they could make a fair estimate of what an average worker can output per period (day, week, month) and check that what they are getting is close enough, metrics in place. The execs and upper level managers are often managing their reports remotely in larger companies. A regional manager needs to get around a string of stores on a regular basis, but can't be at each one every day and hover over the store manager or they'd never have the time to do the work they need to get done. They know what each store's numbers should look like and if there is room for improvement, which there may not be so demanding increased sales can be useless, but managing what's there for consistent return is what needs to be watched.
Whilst I have not left my company I am moving to a different business area because the one I am in now are just too restrictive when it comes to their location strategy about which teams are in which locations and exactly what days each week colleagues have to be in the office.
My new business area allows me to work from any office and is completely flexible about which days I select in order to meet the 40% office requirement.
"My new business area allows me to work from any office and is completely flexible about which days I select in order to meet the 40% office requirement."
Does the 40% requirement make any sense to YOU? If it doesn't, a change of company might be worth looking into if management will be remaining the same. If they can't be bothered to think and do math, that's not going to be good for you in the long term.
Well, not in the last year, but I certainly did quit a crappy corporate job because of that kind of thing and will never work for a giant evil corporation again.
It used to be that you could at least excuse it with 'well, it's stability', but no longer. Working for small businesses is so much better. Okay, there is the stability issue, and you have to make sure the owner isn't a twat first, or that would be replicating the corporate experience. I've been very happy working for small companies run by actual human beings.
"Working for small businesses is so much better. Okay, there is the stability issue, and you have to make sure the owner isn't a twat first, or that would be replicating the corporate experience."
You need to plan your finances to build a nice pot of F-You money so you have a reserve in case the company goes under, decides to move or the new boss just put over you is a complete twat.
I'm not rich by any stretch, but I do have a well stocked larder and the house and car are paid off. While I am self-employed now, it means that I can weather slow-downs just fine. I have been trying to flog off all of the extra things I don't need to own anymore and stack that in my reserves so I can comfortably be income free for well over a year with no problem. I could take on fewer jobs and still be fine for years on less income if I like.
"I think most people with a fully paid off mortgage would be broadly considered to be relatively "well off""
I made it a priority over cable TV and take away coffee. It's very easy to tell my house from the Taj Mahal. I don't have a flash car and I do my own cooking the vast majority of the time. I also made the decision that a paid off home was more of a value to me than a high balance retirement savings/IRA/etc. It means I have less cash stacked away, but I also have less monthly overhead.
A thing I found out that I hadn't considered was that the tax authority can take years to foreclose on a home should one stop paying their property tax where I am. The lot next door that I'd like to buy is 6 years in arrears and I'm waiting for it to be put up for auction. Not paying on a mortgage for 6 months might have the lender proceed with foreclosing on the property. If times got desperate, I'd have a time buffer much longer by owning my home outright.
Personal finance is something that wasn't taught when I was in school and I would be in an even better position if I had known half of what I know now and have been forced to learn the hard way. Prioritizing owning a home over other spending is something I consider key. Friends from my youth that got their foot on the property ladder early have all done very well for themselves.
I have to agree - my best jobs and my best experiences were with small companies where I knew, liked, and got along with the owners and managers of same. To be honest, interpersonal flareups were rare at all of the places I worked over the years, though I often heard tales of staff and contractors of the past who caused "issues".
Being a big fish in a small pond can be great for job satisfaction but crap for income and stress. You tend to get invested in the business and get stressed trying to do a good job or make changes you think are for the best. I did this for a long time, it was rewarding but also very stressful and not well paid.
I went the other way and now work for a big corporate, now I'm not invested, not stressed, somewhat bored but also well paid. If I get forced to RTO I will move on, I'm lucky to be in a high demand role and would likely get other work quite easily.
Reasons given: better innovation from in-person work, helping younger staff to learn the culture and the job better, and improving productivity.
Real reasons: The CEO doesn't want to give up their plush office in that trophy HQ they snatched up back when COVID had commercial property prices at rock bottom, the shareholders are grumbling about why the money being used to keep the lights on in a half-occupied building isn't going to them instead, and it's much harder to impose a culture of superiority and fear over the rank-and-file when you aren't there in person to loom over them at uncomfortable moments.
The Genie is out of the bottle.
There will probably be an exodus of the best to companys offering flexible working. Most people do work when at home and if your work is outcome based, what does it matter. Maybe the desperate need to have people in the office all the time is paranoid execs. Personally, I feel the best pattern is spending a portion of time in the office as face to face work and meetings helps communication and teamwork. I suspect some senior manages think the staff may not be listening to their pep talks and rah rah messages if online. Perish the thought! They don't understand that others just want to do a good job and be proud of it.
It takes me 2 1/2 hours to get to the office. I wouldn’t have been able to take the job if I had to go in all the time. I do like going in occasionally and have a bi weekly meeting with my manager and we find it’s more productive in person so I tend to go in once a fortnight and it’s nice to see colleagues in person when I do.
It works for me and my employer.
Making people goin to the office unnecessarily is surely limiting their market?
We had the email stating 3 days a week in the office last year. My manager, knowing that I'm 2 hours away from the office asked how I felt about it. Upon hearing (the expected answer) that I wasn't impressed about it he asked if there were any offices closer to home that I could use. I now spend 2 days a week in an office just over an hour from home and one day in the HQ just to meet the metrics that have been set. Still a waste of time and money as those 2 days I'm still remote from the main office and the rest of the team but at least I'm saving a couple of hours commute time those two days (until the higher ups realise and remove the satellite office from the list of approved office for attendance purposes)
My manager doesn't care where we work as long as the work gets done but it's out of his hands. He and I both think the RTO is a way to get people to leave as it's cheaper than redundancies...
There are a fair number of jobs that can be done remotely but its an awkward fact of life that most just can't. So what people are doing is unconsciously selecting the kind of work that can be done the way they want to do it as the only type of work that needs to be done. Its also potentially the easiest to replace (yes, I know that your particular role is unique and you're the only person on the world that can do it but you'd be surprised just how many of such roles I've seen disappear over the years).
Note that remote working isn't a new phenomenon, its been around for 30+ years in the UNIX world. Its like a lot of things that became mass market, its easy to think that because it became accessible and even fashionable relatively recently that its some kind of new phenomenon. So, like being grossly overpaid for a job, I'd enjoy it while you can, I'd also try to keep the party going for as long as possible but I'd also keep an eye out for the future. After all, not that many years ago it was fashionable for many companies to provide working environments that were not just a cross between a theme park and a shopping mall but had really 'flexible' working hours and you'd be surprised at just how quickly that went away once the accountants started looking for savings.
"There are a fair number of jobs that can be done remotely but its an awkward fact of life that most just can't. "
There is a bunch in the middle too. A bunch of jobs that can be done remotely seem to be the ones where people are traveling to a large city center and working in a high rise. That was necessary some years ago when communications weren't as good and far more expensive. An online meeting would cost gobs of money and take specialized kit. Now the capability is built into just about every new computer. My iMac and MBP had to be modified to not broadcast sound and video as I have no need for either. If hundreds of thousands of people didn't need to be stacked 100's of meters vertically in concrete and glass, in a few discrete locations, that could be a substantial savings in energy.
Lots of variables. Can you work from home or not? Do you want to be in the office or not? Is it easy to get another job or not?
If you are in a job that can easily be done remotely, you are in a high demand role and you don't want to be in the office then you are probably in a position to tell your employer to take a hike when they demand a RTO. If you are easily replacable then you probably have to do as told irrespective of your job being doable remotely.
Then you have the Amazon and Dells that are enforcing RTO in order to reduce headcount quickly on the cheap.
It's not the same for everyone or every situation.
Forcing RTO out of paranoia or to shake out the people you "don't want" (but maybe really need) is a good way to ensure that your in-office staff will just be sales droids, schmoozers, climbers etc. Which is fine if you can out-source the real work to Asia, but then you've basically got a hybrid environment anyway, just with the remote people being cheaper (for now) but less reliable.
It looks good on paper to manglers, Unfortunately it takes a while for the bill to come due, and often the perpetrators have moved on by that time.
The Ranstad Report presumably referenced in the article https://www.randstad.ca/employers/workplace-insights/talent-management/2025-workplace-trends-job-market-analysis/ is a bit light on detail.
I would be interested for the tech population what age,sex,education,marital status, mortgage etc v. likelihood of leaving,
Off the top of my head I world guess the older, better educated and financially stable would be in pole position in the sod off grand pricks.
I fled the office before the pandemic.
Trying to concentrate in an open plan office, with 4 people around you loudly speaking on the telephone is futile. I learned the full medical history of several co-workers and their family. To add to the distraction, the adjacent building was demolished in a noisy way.
But, I think in person contacts are very useful.
With new projects we tried to get the team together physically at least once, and everybody found this a real benefit.
Discussing poorly specified difficult problems with all the participants in one room with some white-boards worked much better than an online meeting.
In my experience, on average one day a week in the office was enough.
… so can someone in the developing world, who will work for a quarter of your salary.
I see this as the double edged sword - and yes, I work remotely and very much like it.
Given the choice of having to return to the office or be made redundant?
I don’t think I have the luxury of choosing anymore.
Tech sector jobs aren’t booming like they once were and firms are looking for savings.
Workers in Chennai, for example, can be 25% of their developed world counterparts and are taking on far more experienced positions than previously and international firms are lured by that cheap labour and compliant work ethic.
" If you can work remotely…
… so can someone in the developing world, who will work for a quarter of your salary."
That's often not the case. A person in Bangladesh has no comprehension of the European or US markets and what consumers will find appealing and acceptable. While 1/4 of a first world salary would be amazing riches, they won't be offered that much and a company won't get even that much in return.
Ever had a tech/customer support call obviously being handled by somebody in a different country? How painful do you remember it being? I've had a police officer I know tell me that a lot of the accidents that involve first generation immigrants might stem from them not having been even a passenger in a car until they were adults. Their perception hadn't been trained from a young age to handle the speed. They get overwhelmed by events that they can't process quickly enough even though they can pass the written test and do just fine driving an examiner around for a few minutes on city streets.
‘First generation’ immigrants and traffic, eh? Bullshit. As someone who has been in Nairobi and Kingston and Port of Spain traffic, I say unto thee that the average East African from Kenya or Tanzania or the average Caribbean migrant from Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, etc., has seen a lot more serious traffic than the average Briton on living in London. There’s a reason why some call Port of Spain ‘Port of Pain’. I still have nightmares about traffic on the Churchill-Roosevelt… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%E2%80%93Roosevelt_Highway (Wiki says that it's 'often heavily congested'. No fucking kidding.) Even those who spent most of their lives in Deep Rural Kenya (that’s my early years) damn well know about traffic. It ain’t like in the movies or tv, boys’n’girls.
"has seen a lot more serious traffic than the average Briton on living in London."
Not congestion, speed. I have been to some of those places where lane discipline and courtesy are, pardon the phrase, foreign concepts. Driving on the wrong side of the road because there's space is considered normal and there's no taking turns at an intersection. I've never driven in those places as the rules are too arbitrary for me and I'd not do very well. I do have perception and reaction times that are good enough for much higher motorway speeds and that's the point. The complexity of every driver for themselves is different.
Years ago 40 of us had full WFH contracts when we joined (UK based)
Out of nowhere the mandate to work from your nearest office came through.
We all said - not happening - then we were invited to find another employer by our Canadian employer.
Given some of us were 80 miles from the nearest office, we took the opportunity to look elsewhere.
How many of us took that offer/opportunity to find elsewhere? All of us!! In 6 weeks, they'd lost their entire team of techies, and desperately hired contractors to fill the void.
Where were these contractors? Bangalore!! How much knowledge of the business did they have, or the industry the business was in? Absolutely none at all.
"How many of us took that offer/opportunity to find elsewhere? All of us!! In 6 weeks, they'd lost their entire team of techies, and desperately hired contractors to fill the void."
Odd that they thought they could get away with that without putting out any feelers first. Did their being in Canada blind them to the realities of an 80 mile commute each way in the UK? Even if it were a clear shot to drive, that's still a fair amount of coin in petrol every month along with a lot of time on the road which could be a lot of B roads depending on the route. If the jobs were already being covered, what was the rationale for sending everybody to an office? Obviously, you were already being remotely managed from a few thousand miles away at some level.
Perhaps they figured they'd lose about 10% and they were willing to live with that, but nobody planned what they'd have to do if it were more, up to what happened. How is somebody in Bangalore going to do well thrown into a service role supporting things in the UK? (Making an assumption here).
Complete work from home should be made as it completely eliminates stress due to relocation,commute to office, increased cost of living in Metros, pollution, Health & Education burden.I am starting to going to office from last month in Hybrid Model but I felt disconnected and isolated in office even though there were good number of Employees in the office between 11 to 5 due to partial work from option.We are in a team belonging to different office locations and again we are supposed to conduct hour long meetings in teams only.So called Collaboration, Motivation,Team building etc etc are some fancy words.If you start going to office regularly just for the sake of Swipe in and out timings for the same work you can do in Remote setting it is meaning less and only you to office and do the work,come home eat and sleep.
I have decided something which everyone wants to do but due Running EMIs and pathetic appraisals it's quite difficult.
Still I am planning something in Summer which allows me to work from office for 10 days and apply leave for 2 days and work remotely the remaining days.
"Complete work from home should be made as it completely eliminates stress due to relocation,commute to office, increased cost of living in Metros, pollution, Health & Education burden"
In WWII, the Japanese were such a big PIA for the US as so much of their production was done at people's homes with a mill/lathe in a garden shed. I think they figured that out after a big fire bombing (Tokyo?) and BDA/intelligence noticed machine tools sticking out of the ashes all over the place. Runners would drop off bits from one place and pick up bits that had been processed. If an assembly plant was bombed, the component supply chain was still intact. It's generally customary to not target civilians and residential areas (apparently not for Russia, but I digress). In the not too distant past, whole families would work at a trade doing piece work from home. With the industrial revolution, most of that went away, but I wonder if there's still a good place for some of that.
