Are you going back to the office after the pandemic?

[Duchess of Stratosphear]

I will be forced to go back, but I'm hoping we can talk my employer into allowing more WFH when it snows and other times for sustainability (which they like to talk a lot about, but we'll see if they mean it). Parking and traffic are a nightmare in my small town and some of us working from home part of the time would alleviate that a bit. I've already told my boss I'm not risking life, limb, and auto driving in when it snows now that we know WFH can work.

[DadJokes]

It was announced yesterday that we will return to the office two days per week at the end of March.

I'm really going to miss working from home. 2020 was terrible for a lot of people, but it has probably been my best year personally, and working from home was a large part of that.

[JoJo]

My company moved to an open workspace in 2019.  One of the biggest challenges that they're trying to figure out at our office is how do you let so many work from home & office at the same time when there are lots of zoom meetings and only 7 "huddle" rooms to take phone calls and video meetings.  No one wants to try to do heads down working while there are a couple meetings going on around them.  Everyone has headsets so I guess they'd only have to hear that one person's end of the meeting but still super distracting. 

[Just Joe]

I don't mind being at work if the customers would all contact me from their home. I prefer working from home but an empty office was pretty good too while it lasted. Yep, I'm pretty introverted.

This isn't realistic even a little bit.

[Uturn]

I prefer to work in the office, but I really don't like to commute.  I have been working in the office 1 or 2 days per week just to get out of my house. Sometimes there are others in the office, sometimes not.

I am in an odd position where I don't have any peers in this office.  When I accepted this position almost 4 years ago, there was 5 engineers in this office.  Through normal attrition, engineers were replaced in an office in another state, and I am the sole remaining engineer.  So even if everyone was required to be in the office, I would still be remote.  My boss told me last month that post covid, he just wants me to make an appearance in the office 1 to 2 days per week. 

[Fi(re) on the Farm]

I'm working from home until they force me back in and then I'm going part time to take care of all the projects I was working on when we closed our office. As soon as that is all done and my time is used up I will be retiring!

[lost_in_the_endless_aisle]

Wow, I am surprised at how many people are/recently were still WFH. We went back to the office 10 months ago. No major outbreak at work but sporadically one person or another is quarantined either as a precaution or with confirmed covid. Zero deaths out of 1500 people at HQ. Maybe helps that we work out of an old television factory with 25' high ceiling though.

[Pigeon]

I didn’t vote. I am calendar year non-teaching faculty at a university. I have loved WFH this past year. It was not an option at all prior to that at all. I suspect they will make everyone go back in the fall with very little WFH, despite it working extremely well. Work got to be extraordinarily stressful this year because of budget cuts, but the lack of commuting and face to face meetings was blissful.

I am retiring as of March 31!

[MayDay]

We will largely go back but maintain the option to WFH when it makes sense. We are in engineering/manufacturing so there is a lot of stuff you have to be in person for- can't really figure out what's wrong with the machine or why a part failed a test without looking at it. We basically are going to allow people to wfh if their day allows it. But for many jobs if we had a failure at 10 am, you would need to drive in to investigate ASAP so folks will still need to live within a reasonable distance of the facilities. Still, that could allow folks more flexibility of exactly where they live (ie, a 1 hour commute may be acceptable of you only plan to go in once a week).

Some departments like customer service may stay all remote for folks who want it. Their entire job is taking phone calls. Same with IT, I haven't seen a single IT person in a year except for the few people who deal with hardware. So it's very department dependant.

The PP's points about open offices and a million Teams meetings is also interesting. We have a ton of manufacturing background noise so it's less of an issue for us. The bigger issue we are talking about is how to space people in cubes. Right now enough people are fully WFH that we are pretty spaced out. They don't want to have a full scale return until either virus is significantly lower, or most people have the vax. TBD how that goes.

Personally my ideal life is to wfh 2 days a week. I like the social interaction at work and I don't work efficiently when home FT. Additionally my team must be in person (they inspect physical parts, can't do that from home) so I feel bad staying home when they can't.

[Imma]

My parent told me their employer has actually just sold their office! It's in a fancy location in town and the RE market is very hot right now, so the decision makes sense. People will be expected to keep working from home and if they really need to go to the office, they can use a desk in their other office in the city. Everyone is expected to work from home unless going into office is necessary, so they only need that one small office now for all their employees.

[jehovasfitness23]

My parent told me their employer has actually just sold their office! It's in a fancy location in town and the RE market is very hot right now, so the decision makes sense. People will be expected to keep working from home and if they really need to go to the office, they can use a desk in their other office in the city. Everyone is expected to work from home unless going into office is necessary, so they only need that one small office now for all their employees.

Yeah, I can't imagine why a company that has bee WFH for a year now and overall been productive would want to keep paying crazy leases. The annual savings has to be quite huge. Thought I read somewhere that some companies pay about $2k/mo in office space just to have space for an employee.  A month x # of employees, yikes

[turketron]

I marked "my employer says everyone is WFH forever" as the best fit even though it's not entirely accurate - my company is deciding who will be classified as in-office vs. remote based on department and role, and my department has been designated fully remote. I can still go in on occasion if I want, but no one is going back until probably Q4 at the earliest so this is all subject to change anyway.

[GuitarStv]

Wow, I am surprised at how many people are/recently were still WFH. We went back to the office 10 months ago. No major outbreak at work but sporadically one person or another is quarantined either as a precaution or with confirmed covid. Zero deaths out of 1500 people at HQ. Maybe helps that we work out of an old television factory with 25' high ceiling though.

Many of us have jobs where physical presence in the office isn't required to be productive.  If that's the case for you, it would be pretty stupid to go to work.  You're just putting yourself and others at risk for no gain.

[lost_in_the_endless_aisle]

Wow, I am surprised at how many people are/recently were still WFH. We went back to the office 10 months ago. No major outbreak at work but sporadically one person or another is quarantined either as a precaution or with confirmed covid. Zero deaths out of 1500 people at HQ. Maybe helps that we work out of an old television factory with 25' high ceiling though.

Many of us have jobs where physical presence in the office isn't required to be productive.  If that's the case for you, it would be pretty stupid to go to work.  You're just putting yourself and others at risk for no gain.

However, going to the office is a condition of my employment and I did not feel like quitting my job. Could I theoretically do my job remotely? Yes, but in many cases, not as well. We hired a new department right before the shut-down a year ago and while it would be possible to run extant processed with trained people, that was not our situation. Now, average daily cases are down >90% in my state from the peak in November and I have more confidence the high ceilings/large volume of air (or generally high local humidity or who-knows-what other X-factor) means I am not terribly likely to get infected (or I already was).

Also, if I squint really hard at the age & health-dependent outcome data, I estimate that--if infected--my odds of dying are ~1/5,000. As far as endangering others go, I can easily interpret the general sentiment: here in MAGAstan no one is afraid of some dumb flu.

[scottish]

I've always worked hard to maintain a clear separation between my professional life and my personal life.

Working from home has largely broken that down.    Fortunately I have good e-mail/text habits so I don't respond to work stuff after hours.   But just working at home breaks that barrier down.

It's left me feeling very confused about what should be next.

[ericrugiero]

My employer is open to working from home when possible.  However, my direct boss isn't on board with that so I have only been allowed to do it 3 days during this whole pandemic.  The inconsistency is fairly annoying.  I'd like to have the option to work from home part time.  My job would require me to be on site some of the time anyway but some time working at home would be nice. 

[roomtempmayo]

For companies that have continued to function well and the workers have been 100% WFH, what is the justification your employers give for requiring workers to return to the office after the pandemic? 
Besides "that's the way we've always done it".

As an aside, I imagine that an old school manager whose primary skillset is "management by walking around," i.e. some combination of charisma and swagger, loses a lot of value in a remote world.  Butts in seats = job security. 

If WFH leads to management getting "right sized" or fearing it, there's going to be tremendous incentive for remaining managers to protect their positions.

[PDXTabs]

For companies that have continued to function well and the workers have been 100% WFH, what is the justification your employers give for requiring workers to return to the office after the pandemic? 
Besides "that's the way we've always done it".

As an aside, I imagine that an old school manager whose primary skillset is "management by walking around," i.e. some combination of charisma and swagger, loses a lot of value in a remote world.  Butts in seats = job security. 

MBWA also has lots of benefits. Sometimes you can tease a problem statement out of a shy engineer sooner rather than later and get moving.

[the_hobbitish]

I've worked the whole time, but on an odd rotational schedule to limit people in the office. I've really enjoyed the essentially part-time status. The rumor mill predicts we're back full-time next month. I really don't know how I am going to handle sitting in a cube for 8 hours a day.

[GuitarStv]

Wow, I am surprised at how many people are/recently were still WFH. We went back to the office 10 months ago. No major outbreak at work but sporadically one person or another is quarantined either as a precaution or with confirmed covid. Zero deaths out of 1500 people at HQ. Maybe helps that we work out of an old television factory with 25' high ceiling though.

Many of us have jobs where physical presence in the office isn't required to be productive.  If that's the case for you, it would be pretty stupid to go to work.  You're just putting yourself and others at risk for no gain.

However, going to the office is a condition of my employment and I did not feel like quitting my job. Could I theoretically do my job remotely? Yes, but in many cases, not as well.  We hired a new department right before the shut-down a year ago and while it would be possible to run extant processed with trained people, that was not our situation. Now, average daily cases are down >90% in my state from the peak in November and I have more confidence the high ceilings/large volume of air (or generally high local humidity or who-knows-what other X-factor) means I am not terribly likely to get infected (or I already was).

Yeah . . . that's why I said the bolded part above.  We did a company wide analysis of our performance metrics six months after the majority of people at our work were full time at home, and management found that overall productivity had increased 18%.

Hiring an entire new department is a pretty unusual situation that you're in.

Also, if I squint really hard at the age & health-dependent outcome data, I estimate that--if infected--my odds of dying are ~1/5,000. As far as endangering others go, I can easily interpret the general sentiment: here in MAGAstan no one is afraid of some dumb flu.

I'm young and healthy.  Risk of dying hasn't really been my concern with covid.  The risk of transmitting the disease to others (even if they're people I disagree with who are acting in a stupid way) would make me feel pretty bad though.  Especially because they're likely to then go and infect others too.  I realize that a huge portion of the US simply gave up from the start, but in most other countries (with a few notable exceptions - Brazil for example) there has been at least some effort to pull together and protect each other.  It's sad that this concept is so strange to you.

Then there's also the personal risk of having long term symptoms like reduced lung capacity, fatigue, heart problems, etc.  Covid long-haulers appear to be possible across all age groups.  That would sure suck . . . and saying "I didn't die, just have this long term health problem" wouldn't be much consolation.

[nessness]

My boss just told us that it will be "at least several more months, depending on several factors" before we will be required to return to the office (we are currently allowed to but discouraged from going into the office). I wish they would give us some more specifics, but I'll take it.

[rosaz]

For companies that have continued to function well and the workers have been 100% WFH, what is the justification your employers give for requiring workers to return to the office after the pandemic? 
Besides "that's the way we've always done it".

Part of it may be that some employers won't be on the same page with their employees as to whether they've been functioning well... we definitely have team members who have been noticeably less effective WFH (not with kids at home, for what its worth) although I think some of them would disagree. And I'd say too that even what functions well in the relatively short-term may not work as well in the long-term. If (arguably) creativity and the building of team cohesion take a hit with remote teams, we can run off what we built in the office for a while before we feel the effect, but it may eventually catch up to us.

(To be clear, I know there are those who truly perform at least as well from home; I just think that number is much smaller than the number currently WFH.)

[lost_in_the_endless_aisle]

Wow, I am surprised at how many people are/recently were still WFH. We went back to the office 10 months ago. No major outbreak at work but sporadically one person or another is quarantined either as a precaution or with confirmed covid. Zero deaths out of 1500 people at HQ. Maybe helps that we work out of an old television factory with 25' high ceiling though.

Many of us have jobs where physical presence in the office isn't required to be productive.  If that's the case for you, it would be pretty stupid to go to work.  You're just putting yourself and others at risk for no gain.

However, going to the office is a condition of my employment and I did not feel like quitting my job. Could I theoretically do my job remotely? Yes, but in many cases, not as well.  We hired a new department right before the shut-down a year ago and while it would be possible to run extant processed with trained people, that was not our situation. Now, average daily cases are down >90% in my state from the peak in November and I have more confidence the high ceilings/large volume of air (or generally high local humidity or who-knows-what other X-factor) means I am not terribly likely to get infected (or I already was).

Yeah . . . that's why I said the bolded part above.  We did a company wide analysis of our performance metrics six months after the majority of people at our work were full time at home, and management found that overall productivity had increased 18%.

Hiring an entire new department is a pretty unusual situation that you're in.

Also, if I squint really hard at the age & health-dependent outcome data, I estimate that--if infected--my odds of dying are ~1/5,000. As far as endangering others go, I can easily interpret the general sentiment: here in MAGAstan no one is afraid of some dumb flu.

I'm young and healthy.  Risk of dying hasn't really been my concern with covid.  The risk of transmitting the disease to others (even if they're people I disagree with who are acting in a stupid way) would make me feel pretty bad though.  Especially because they're likely to then go and infect others too.  I realize that a huge portion of the US simply gave up from the start, but in most other countries (with a few notable exceptions - Brazil for example) there has been at least some effort to pull together and protect each other.  It's sad that this concept is so strange to you.

Then there's also the personal risk of having long term symptoms like reduced lung capacity, fatigue, heart problems, etc.  Covid long-haulers appear to be possible across all age groups.  That would sure suck . . . and saying "I didn't die, just have this long term health problem" wouldn't be much consolation.

I certainly don't want to get it (I used to have severe hypochondria) even if the risk is small. I would feel even worse transmitting it to someone else so I carefully monitor for any vague signs of becoming sick. Aside from 2 mandatory work dinners, I haven't been in an indoor restaurant in over a year and avoid other indoor situations with other people to the extent practicable. At work I am one of the only people who follows the mask policy at all times and I avoid the crowded cafeteria since I don't each lunch.

I understand the concept completely; my point about MAGAstan is that hardly anyone else here cares, so compared to myself, almost everyone is assuming higher risks for themselves and imposing higher risks on others. A lot of people here don't want to be vaccinated either. I have tried to get them to articulate why but they are incapable of giving one coherent reason. My best guess in understanding their ungrammatical grunts is something like "I'm not afraid of getting it so I won't bother".

[dcheesi]

For companies that have continued to function well and the workers have been 100% WFH, what is the justification your employers give for requiring workers to return to the office after the pandemic? 
Besides "that's the way we've always done it".

Our CEO has talked about "studies" that "prove" that WfH reduces productivity. Probably something he read in a business magazine, and who knows how long ago.

[ender]

I've always worked hard to maintain a clear separation between my professional life and my personal life.

Working from home has largely broken that down.    Fortunately I have good e-mail/text habits so I don't respond to work stuff after hours.   But just working at home breaks that barrier down.

It's left me feeling very confused about what should be next.

One thing I've done which has helped immensely (and I've told other people who have equally felt so) is to have a dedicated work area, where you only do work.

My work desk is used almost exclusively for work. Probably 99% of the time I'm on my desk it's for work. Very occasional video calls with friends because it's a standing deks.

If you can do this, it helps immensely. If your work area is the kitchen table/counter you will have a much harder time with this.

[roomtempmayo]

For companies that have continued to function well and the workers have been 100% WFH, what is the justification your employers give for requiring workers to return to the office after the pandemic? 
Besides "that's the way we've always done it".

Part of it may be that some employers won't be on the same page with their employees as to whether they've been functioning well... we definitely have team members who have been noticeably less effective WFH (not with kids at home, for what its worth) although I think some of them would disagree. And I'd say too that even what functions well in the relatively short-term may not work as well in the long-term. If (arguably) creativity and the building of team cohesion take a hit with remote teams, we can run off what we built in the office for a while before we feel the effect, but it may eventually catch up to us.

(To be clear, I know there are those who truly perform at least as well from home; I just think that number is much smaller than the number currently WFH.)

Yes, I saw a survey reported in the NYT today that 50% people currently WFH would like to stay WFH indefinitely.  I take that number to mean that 50% feel it works well for them personally, not necessarily that it works well for their employer.  I don't doubt that there are aligned incentives in some businesses, or even entire fields, but I'm not convinced it's the rule.

[scottish]

I've always worked hard to maintain a clear separation between my professional life and my personal life.

Working from home has largely broken that down.    Fortunately I have good e-mail/text habits so I don't respond to work stuff after hours.   But just working at home breaks that barrier down.

It's left me feeling very confused about what should be next.

One thing I've done which has helped immensely (and I've told other people who have equally felt so) is to have a dedicated work area, where you only do work.

My work desk is used almost exclusively for work. Probably 99% of the time I'm on my desk it's for work. Very occasional video calls with friends because it's a standing deks.

If you can do this, it helps immensely. If your work area is the kitchen table/counter you will have a much harder time with this.

I have a "clean desk" policy.   At approximately 0830 every morning I put my laptop on my desk, connect it up to the big monitor and start work.   At approximately 1630 every afternoon, the laptop goes off and I put it away for the next day.   No hint of work remains on the desk after quitting time.   Except for the spare cable to the monitor (which is too much trouble to disconnect every day), but it's tucked away.

[Plina]

I've always worked hard to maintain a clear separation between my professional life and my personal life.

Working from home has largely broken that down.    Fortunately I have good e-mail/text habits so I don't respond to work stuff after hours.   But just working at home breaks that barrier down.

It's left me feeling very confused about what should be next.

One thing I've done which has helped immensely (and I've told other people who have equally felt so) is to have a dedicated work area, where you only do work.

My work desk is used almost exclusively for work. Probably 99% of the time I'm on my desk it's for work. Very occasional video calls with friends because it's a standing deks.

If you can do this, it helps immensely. If your work area is the kitchen table/counter you will have a much harder time with this.

I have a "clean desk" policy.   At approximately 0830 every morning I put my laptop on my desk, connect it up to the big monitor and start work.   At approximately 1630 every afternoon, the laptop goes off and I put it away for the next day.   No hint of work remains on the desk after quitting time.   Except for the spare cable to the monitor (which is too much trouble to disconnect every day), but it's tucked away.

I also have a clean desk policy. I don’t have specific times though.

[jlcnuke]

I was WFH 2 days per week before Covid hit, though I also had travel regularly as part of my job. Now I've been full-time WFH for about a year with very rarely travel required (1 week per 3-5 months instead of ~50% of the time). The CEO has publicly expressed support for letting workers continue to work from home. My department manager, however, is apparently (from what I've heard from friends in management positions) pushing to get her entire department back in the office ASAP. Well, let me rephrase that, only her underlings. She and another manager who worked in a remote office no longer even have an office to go to near their home (the remote office was permanently shut down last year) so they only come to the corporate headquarters a few times per year and otherwise WFH full-time.

I'm about 3 years from my FIRE target at the current pace, and have passive income that covers more than 1/2 my expenses without needing to touch investments (will cover 80% of my expenses in a few years when the house is paid off). If they insist I come back to the office I'll probably counter with my resignation as I can't see myself going back to commuting in Atlanta traffic after this year of having so much more free time and such lower levels of stress simply by elimination that hassle from my life. I could get a job making 30% of my current salary locally, go become a diving instructor in some low cost area of the world, etc. and still reach my current FIRE target within 5 years or so without having to endure that soul-sucking waste of time that is commuting for the sake of commuting.

I may not yet have FIRE money, but I certainly have FU money and can then take my time choosing what option for the future appeals the most to me.