Remote Working DOOM

[LondonManc]

TL/DR:

On Wednesday last week, Google's Fiona Cicconi wrote to company employees. She announced that Google was bringing forward its timetable of moving people back into the office. As of 1 September, she said, employees wishing to work from home for more than 14 days would have to apply to do so.
Employees were also expected to "live within commuting distance" of offices.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56614285

Should bring the Devon and Cornwall house price rise back under control.

[PerfectStorm]

Big companies, toxic presenteeism and the attitude of “if you don’t want the job, there’s a queue of people who do”.

Always depressing to see in my bigger ‘name’ clients. The people I meet who aren’t robots drinking the company Kool Aid are few and far between.

Better off out.

[mallisarealperson]

Remember reading last year google forcing contractors to work onsite but letting employees work remote in the pandemic. Can't find the old news article, I tried google search for it

[Fraidycat]

Will help differentiate us from the perms for IR35.

[northernladuk]

Seems pretty reasonable to me. Things will be different but we are way off 100% remote working. I'm all for going in to the office a couple of times a week. Fridays were dead in most places I worked so Monday/Friday WFH and office mid week but still flexible seems to be a perfect halfway house.

We forget that there are a good percentage of people who do a job because they have to and have no interest in putting 100% in so will wag at any chance. Our productivity might stay the same but I can bet that's not true for a very large percentage. That and I do agree somethings can be done better in the office, plus mental health and social side of it.

No issues with this type of news at all.

[LondonManc]

Big companies, toxic presenteeism and the attitude of “if you don’t want the job, there’s a queue of people who do”.

Always depressing to see in my bigger ‘name’ clients. The people I meet who aren’t robots drinking the company Kool Aid are few and far between.

Better off out.

There's a big difference between presenteeism and actually finding out your staff perform better in the office. There are also those staff who are either too junior to not be supervised or simply do not have anywhere to comfortably work from home (a shock to most contractors).

The number of times we've had distractions in calls because of a kid, pet, delivery, other is ridiculous. A professional working day does not involve getting up in the middle of a meeting to answer your front door.

[dsc]

There's a big difference between presenteeism and actually finding out your staff perform better in the office. There are also those staff who are either too junior to not be supervised or simply do not have anywhere to comfortably work from home (a shock to most contractors).

The number of times we've had distractions in calls because of a kid, pet, delivery, other is ridiculous. A professional working day does not involve getting up in the middle of a meeting to answer your front door.

What is a professional working day?

Also, there's a difference between choosing to work from home and then having loads of distractions and being forced to work from home with kids also forced to go through home schooling and husband / wife also having to work from home.

[SussexSeagull]

With most of what i do I could be in the office a lot to start with but most of the actual work could be done at home so could eventually settle into two or three days a week in the office. Problem is most working environments haven't got the wit to accommodate a contractor who, in the main, knows what he is doing but will ask when he doesn't and will come in when they need to.

That all said it took me nearly 15 years before I did any serious WFH. Granted the technology wasn't up to it for many of those years but I still went to an office and asked a lot of stupid questions to get me to the position of being largely self sufficient.

[d000hg]

I thought Google, along with Facebook, had said last year that employees would be allowed to work from home indefinitely

[BlasterBates]

The productivity at our company went up. Fortunately productivity is easy to measure as basically it is how many hours we book to the customer and they have no idea where we work, so no-one really cares if we work at home or not. I can see though in companies where employees are a cost instead of a source of revenue that managers will get nervous without the comforting view of jackets resting on the back of chairs.