What do you think of ending Working from Home to support the economy?

[blackomen]

I'm always outraged when I see articles like this:

https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-hidden-trillion-dollar-office-economy-5800af06b007

The logic goes: People are working from home more and more these days due to the pandemic.  Because they're working from home, they're going out to eat less.  And because of that the restaurant industry is dying.  Therefore, we need to get people to stop working from home and go back into the office again.

Guess what, although I'm not enjoying the pandemic in general, I'm definitely enjoying working from home.  No more commutes and I'm saving a lot of time and gas and wear and tear on my car.

Prior to the pandemic, I rarely ate out when at the office anyways.  And even now, when I'm working from home and don't wish to cook, I still order food from Uber Eats, Grubhub, etc which continues to support the local restaurant industry.  Having me return to the office isn't gonna be much of an economic boost to the local restaurant industry and may end up lowering my productivity as well and possibly end up as a net loss for the economy.

[WhiteTrashCash]

So... we should make people less efficient to support industries that are very wasteful. How about no.

[jehovasfitness23]

Continue to destroy mental health & environment to give restaurants more biz? tough call there

[nereo]

There’s a lot of short-sighted analysis about how a particular industry is suffering, with the implication that it should be saved simply because it is large and employs a lot of people.

I remember a similar article about how electric cars could cause many local auto repair shops to go out of business because they need far less servicing and our currently network of service stations would be far too large if there was widespread adoption of electric vehicles.  The author concluded that we should limit EV adaptation to save car mechanics.

If you take a step back that suggestion is absurd and amounts to “we ought to keep inefficiencies alive because they employ a bunch of people”.  Ditto for this article, lamenting about the loss of ‘the office economy’. For decades we’ve been warned against the high cost of commuting (Trillions!).  By change (Covid) this has been curtailed somewhat.  Now people are saying “let’s go back to wasting more money!”

[blackomen]

There’s a lot of short-sighted analysis about how a particular industry is suffering, with the implication that it should be saved simply because it is large and employs a lot of people.

I remember a similar article about how electric cars could cause many local auto repair shops to go out of business because they need far less servicing and our currently network of service stations would be far too large if there was widespread adoption of electric vehicles.  The author concluded that we should limit EV adaptation to save car mechanics.

If you take a step back that suggestion is absurd and amounts to “we ought to keep inefficiencies alive because they employ a bunch of people”.  Ditto for this article, lamenting about the loss of ‘the office economy’. For decades we’ve been warned against the high cost of commuting (Trillions!).  By change (Covid) this has been curtailed somewhat.  Now people are saying “let’s go back to wasting more money!”

Is it just me or has the government been more of the “we ought to keep inefficiencies alive because they employ a bunch of people” mentality lately than in the past (say the 50s to the 80s)?

Many optimistic futurists say that in 30 years, we'll have nanobots everywhere that'll cure nearly all of the diseases we know today, increase life expectancy to 120+, and provide food out of thin air but I see this sort of wasteful outdated thinking as a major barrier to ever achieving technological greatness that'll enable a much better standard of living.

[seattlecyclone]

When people's ability to keep a roof over their head is dependent on their continued employment, then efficiencies that reduce employment are going to be a bad thing for a lot of people. Given that problem, you can try to prop up those jobs even though we know they don't really need to exist, you can change the system to make sure people can keep a roof over their head even if they aren't employed (UBI, etc.), or you can decide not to address the problem and let lots of people suffer.

That said, I think the death of the office has been overblown. Google, for example, still plans to reopen all of its offices after the pandemic. They say they will be experimenting with allowing people to work from home part of the time. We've been doing this 100% work-from-home thing long enough for these big companies to collect some real data on how fast teams are able to accomplish their work now compared to before. These companies spend billions of dollars on their offices. The fact that they still intend to do so even after trying the alternative for a while indicates that they have strong reason to believe the cost is worth it.

[NorthernMonkey]

I've been working with my employer to close offices and consolidate them as quickly as we can. We're going from a model where we provision 1 desk per employee, to one where we provision 0.6 desks per employee. I've got really no idea how things are going to shape out, but for me, doing to work back at my desk isnt possible. It's gone.

There are some people who will come into work each day, but our current models forecast them to be about 10% of people. We recently opened up our largest office (1700 people) on a fully voluntary basis. We thought there might be about 170 people turn up, and we enabled 400 socially distanced desks for people to work at. Over all of december, the maximum number of people that turned up. 13. less than 1% of people

I initially thought that only provisioning 0.6 desks per person was crazy and would never work. I'm now thinking why did we bother building so many.

It costs anywhere from about $5000/yr/desk in a LCOL area, to $15k upwards in a major city. (no idea how much in the super expensive west coast US, Atlanta is the most expensive city where we have desks) There is a very great incentive to get them closed off.

[SunnyDays]

The “fact” that going to work at an office is at all related to eating in restaurants is the problem, right there.  There’s no reason for one to cause the other.

[American GenX]

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

In regard to the OP, this wasn't anecdotally about you.  Of course, not everyone going into the office is eating in restaurants.  That includes me - I normally just ate in the work cafeteria..

[jehovasfitness23]

 There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.

You get this stance from where?
My wife has gone from commuting nearly 3 hrs/day to WFH. She works longer hours and also finds less destractions than when at office.

I on other hand am probably about same or maybe slightly less efficient WFH, but nowhere near as bad as you make it.

[NorthernMonkey]

 There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.

You get this stance from where?
My wife has gone from commuting nearly 3 hrs/day to WFH. She works longer hours and also finds less destractions than when at office.

I on other hand am probably about same or maybe slightly less efficient WFH, but nowhere near as bad as you make it.

I look after a big (2000 people) telephone contact centre. We can prove with a frightening amount of data that people are more productive at home that in the office.

What is a lot harder is skilling people up. It something that wasnt a problem for 6 or 9 months, but as we're onboarding new hires, its starting to get tricky. We're going to need a drastic rethink on how we train up the new guys

[ender]

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

I definitely slack off more at home.

Because I don't get distracted so often, I can work 1/2 as much and accomplish the same value (or more).

It's great.

[blackomen]

 There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.

You get this stance from where?
My wife has gone from commuting nearly 3 hrs/day to WFH. She works longer hours and also finds less destractions than when at office.

I on other hand am probably about same or maybe slightly less efficient WFH, but nowhere near as bad as you make it.

For me, the distractions at home are positively offset by no longer being near this large cluster of middle aged women who spend the whole day cackling like crows in the cubicle area next to mine at the office.  I tried noise cancelling earphones and earlugs to no avail.  The biggest offender is a pretty big shot director or something at my company so I didn't feel comfortable asking her (or even asking my supervisor to ask her) to be quiet.  But now that I work from home, I no longer have to deal with this BS which easily cuts my productivity in 1/2 (since I'm a programmer and it's so important to be able to concentrate.)

[reeshau]

I am absolutely against make-work / protectionism of obsolete jobs.  However, I also realize that any transition will dislocate people, who will find themselves without the right skills, in the wrong location, or with investments which have been rendered worthless.  I am supportive of short-term measures to help them adjust to the new reality, and find a new direction.

Will WFH habits survive the pandemic?  To a degree, yes.  I think It's as much about "work from anywhere" (meaning LCOL locales) than just about commuting in a single city.  If so, that would cause more dislocation than just business-center restaurants.

[blackomen]

I am absolutely against make-work / protectionism of obsolete jobs.  However, I also realize that any transition will dislocate people, who will find themselves without the right skills, in the wrong location, or with investments which have been rendered worthless.  I am supportive of short-term measures to help them adjust to the new reality, and find a new direction.

Will WFH habits survive the pandemic?  To a degree, yes.  I think It's as much about "work from anywhere" (meaning LCOL locales) than just about commuting in a single city.  If so, that would cause more dislocation than just business-center restaurants.

IMO, the best perk of WFH is "work from anywhere" which is a godsend for 2 income families when one person is pursuing a career that isn't as WFH friendly.  My wife's planning on starting her professorship in the next year or so and most of her connections are on the West Coast so we might have to end up moving there back to a HCOL locale (although Dallas where we're at isn't exactly a LCOL locale either.)  Still, it beats me having to find another job  though I'm probably in one of the most WFH-friendly professions as a programmer.

That and also the fact that we totaled our 2001 Prius (with 230K miles) a month ago and we only got 1 car now..  ending WFH means I'd have to pony up for another car.

[SwordGuy]

We should absolutely organize our behavior to spread Covid even faster and kill or debilitate as many Americans as possible as quickly as possible.

Benefits:

Restaurants will make more money.
Funeral Homes and Cemeteries will make more money.
People will inherit their parents estates sooner.
Cost of housing in HCOL areas will drop as the population does.
Will strengthen social security because payments will drop significantly.
Greeting card industry will make more money on "Sorry for your loss" cards.
Medicare will save money on long term patient costs because they'll die earlier, plus the hospitals will be overloaded so they'll die in the hospital sooner.
Putin will be happy.

Really, the only downside I'm seeing is a lot more 6' deep holes in the ground, but they get filled back up again, so I guess it's not really that bad after all.


Edited to add that the above should be read as sarcasm, not a policy prescription.   Given that some Republicans have actually voiced some of those "benefits" as actual social benefits, I thought it best to make my opinion clear.

[OtherJen]

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

I definitely slack off more at home.

Because I don't get distracted so often, I can work 1/2 as much and accomplish the same value (or more).

It's great.

Same. I've been working from home for almost 8 years and get so much more done than I ever did in an office. Plus, no commuting, and I can do laundry and start dinner during my breaks.

It's personality dependent, though. I wrote my dissertation entirely at home because I couldn't focus as well in the lab. I don't work well if I have to tune out other people in the vicinity.

[kite]

Save the buggy whip manufacturers!
The great thing about capitalism is that it always wins.  People who adapted to the reality of Covid have continued to work, switching fields if necessary.  Dine-in restaurants aren’t coming back to cities at the same scale.  When commercial real-estate rents reset to something reasonable, businesses will be back, but not before then.  A few of the banks have already publicly expressed their desire to leave NYC and other pricey locations. If there was political negotiation room, they’d have already negotiated before making that pronouncement. 
In the meantime, swimming pool installers were booked well into 2021 before the middle of 2020’s summer.  Nearly every bathroom remodel for a client over the age of 50 involves removing a bathtub and making a very large (accessible) walk in shower.  All the fields that support ‘staycations’ and aging in place are going to do just fine for quite a while.   

[WhiteTrashCash]

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

I definitely slack off more at home.

Because I don't get distracted so often, I can work 1/2 as much and accomplish the same value (or more).

It's great.

Same. I've been working from home for almost 8 years and get so much more done than I ever did in an office. Plus, no commuting, and I can do laundry and start dinner during my breaks.

It's personality dependent, though. I wrote my dissertation entirely at home because I couldn't focus as well in the lab. I don't work well if I have to tune out other people in the vicinity.

My work hasn’t suffered at all from WFH. I like being able to get up a little later due to having no commute, wearing slippers during work, being able to have a coffee break midway through the day when I couldn’t before, etc. I’m being forced to return to the building to work on Jan. 11th, even though I haven’t been able to get the vaccine yet.

[Dave1442397]

The “fact” that going to work at an office is at all related to eating in restaurants is the problem, right there.  There’s no reason for one to cause the other.

Right? I don't get that either. The only time I've eaten at a restaurant during work hours in the past ten years is when they paid for a holiday lunch. I went to the company cafeteria once in 2019 because I forgot to bring my lunch that day, but that's it.

[nereo]

When people's ability to keep a roof over their head is dependent on their continued employment, then efficiencies that reduce employment are going to be a bad thing for a lot of people. Given that problem, you can try to prop up those jobs even though we know they don't really need to exist, you can change the system to make sure people can keep a roof over their head even if they aren't employed (UBI, etc.), or you can decide not to address the problem and let lots of people suffer.

To me, this seems to conflate two problems: 1) propping up inefficiencies in order to retain jobs, and 2) having a robust safety net that can reduce the hardships from replacing these inefficiencies.
 
In the US we are particularly bad with the latter, to our own detriment. It starts with our rather meager unemployment benefits, but snowballs into our complete lack of affordable retraining and job placement. If you lose your job at best you might get half your salary for a few months, and little/no support to learn a new trade or skill. Continuing education is prohibitively expensive for the unemployed, and few programs are designed to take ‘older’ workers (i.e. those over 35) and train & place them into a new career. 

So long as we have a crappy safety net, it makes [political] sense to retain dying occupations (coal anyone...?) at the expense of our own collective prosperity.

[Luck12]

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

You're just wrong according to the people who've done studies on this (they produce more and do so more efficiently, they're happier too). 

People go to restaurants less often if WFH but they also save on commuting costs.  Some of those savings will go to increased consumption of leisure activities, vacation, home improvement, etc.   These things are best not analyzed linearly. 

[SKL-HOU]

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

In regard to the OP, this wasn't anecdotally about you.  Of course, not everyone going into the office is eating in restaurants.  That includes me - I normally just ate in the work cafeteria..

A true micromanager.

[maizefolk]

To me, this seems to conflate two problems: 1) propping up inefficiencies in order to retain jobs, and 2) having a robust safety net that can reduce the hardships from replacing these inefficiencies.
 
In the US we are particularly bad with the latter, to our own detriment. It starts with our rather meager unemployment benefits, but snowballs into our complete lack of affordable retraining and job placement. If you lose your job at best you might get half your salary for a few months, and little/no support to learn a new trade or skill. Continuing education is prohibitively expensive for the unemployed, and few programs are designed to take ‘older’ workers (i.e. those over 35) and train & place them into a new career. 

So long as we have a crappy safety net, it makes [political] sense to retain dying occupations (coal anyone...?) at the expense of our own collective prosperity.

Nereo, I agree unemployment benefits in the US are particularly bad.

But when it comes to retraining, are you aware of cases in any other countries that have a lot of success at job retraining and placement when industries go away?

My suspicion/fear is that the problem is not that we don't have good retraining and job placement programs in the USA but that training and replacement into equivalent paying jobs is a really hard or impossible thing to do, particularly for people in their 40s/50s/60s. Even for folks who qualify for TAA job retraining when their jobs go away, which is comparatively quite well funded, the outcomes seem to be pretty poor: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/27/512060753/episode-750-retraining-day

[TomTX]

There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.

Don't project your personal issues on the rest of us. My team's productivity is up since we went 100% WFH. 

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

So... we should make people less efficient to support industries that are very wasteful. How about no.

I entirely agree with "how about no", and this is why I'm also against stimulus measures generally.

If the economy needs to tank, let it tank.

Keep some money left over for genuine welfare (in the form of food stamps, emergency shelters, medical/health services and emergency payments based on declared need - no need for heavy examination, just require some form of proof eg. payslips, bank account statements or statutory declaration) - and let the economy otherwise sort itself out.

[blackomen]

There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.

Don't project your personal issues on the rest of us. My team's productivity is up since we went 100% WFH.

Well, I'm glad I'm NOT working for him

[effigy98]

Work from home has exposed a large number of people at my tech company who are not valuable. They have survived on drop in office chats and meetings for years. Some are very worried about their jobs and others have found excuses to not be engaged at all without using sick leave. There is talk of getting rid of people on the next round of layoffs that are in this camp.

Then there are people who are good, but they are extroverts and really you can tell they are depressed and not happy about the situation as work is a major part of their social life which is pretty much gone now. Going back to the office would be to help this group of people out which tend to be the younger and newer folks.

Then you have a group that are introverts and self starters who are completely thriving in this environment and enjoying the work situation a lot more and that is where I am and starting to rethink the RE part of FIRE as I can basically get my job done in 2 hours instead of 8 if I focused on it due to not having so many useless meetings, chats, and traffic. I'm sure that hurts my perception, but my work output is the same. The great thing about software is you can get more efficient and reduce your hours to do the same tasks over time. Working remotely allows you to step away when done with minimal repercussions. My company sounds like we are going to go to a flexible situation after the all clear to cater to all groups which is probably going to be great unless you are one of the exposed slackers who is discovered to not do much of anything.

[ender]

Work from home has exposed a large number of people at my tech company who are not valuable. They have survived on drop in office chats and meetings for years. Some are very worried about their jobs and others have found excuses to not be engaged at all without using sick leave. There is talk of getting rid of people on the next round of layoffs that are in this camp.

Then there are people who are good, but they are extroverts and really you can tell they are depressed and not happy about the situation as work is a major part of their social life which is pretty much gone now. Going back to the office would be to help this group of people out which tend to be the younger and newer folks.

Then you have a group that are introverts and self starters who are completely thriving in this environment and enjoying the work situation a lot more and that is where I am and starting to rethink the RE part of FIRE as I can basically get my job done in 2 hours instead of 8 if I focused on it due to not having so many useless meetings, chats, and traffic. I'm sure that hurts my perception, but my work output is the same. The great thing about software is you can get more efficient and reduce your hours to do the same tasks over time. Working remotely allows you to step away when done with minimal repercussions. My company sounds like we are going to go to a flexible situation after the all clear to cater to all groups which is probably going to be great unless you are one of the exposed slackers who is discovered to not do much of anything.

One of the things covid also does is it amplifies the impact bad managers have too.

I just changed jobs (also in tech) and part of it is that my manager did not adapt well to remote at all and it brought out his weaknesses significantly. He didn't really change anything he did tactic wise and it resulted in his gaps as a leader being really pronounced.

One thing I like is that covid levels the playing field a lot for people as you say. It means competent managers now have to evaluate performance not based on "who sits in their seat the longest" or other variants on the standard "I'm the boss, you're my peon" approach which AmericanGenX seems to have so perfectly described.

Personally I think fully remote brings out the best or worst in someone as far as work abilities go. If you lean towards being mediocre as an employee/manager in the office you're going to be significantly worse in a remote context and vice versa. Extroverts suffer more, but realistically all the suffering extroverts had to deal with since covid started is basically the flip side of what introverts have had to deal with in office for their whole lives, so I'm a bit less sympathetic.

[Vashy]

Personally I think fully remote brings out the best or worst in someone as far as work abilities go. If you lean towards being mediocre as an employee/manager in the office you're going to be significantly worse in a remote context and vice versa. Extroverts suffer more, but realistically all the suffering extroverts had to deal with since covid started is basically the flip side of what introverts have had to deal with in office for their whole lives, so I'm a bit less sympathetic.

Hard same. My boss is a hard extrovert, I'm a hard introvert, and watching him chew the wallpaper in frustration for the past few months has been enlightening (and some sweet payback for the constant "if we talk loudly about football for an hour a day as a team, that's team building, right? RIGHT?!" stuff I had to put up with for five years). I sometimes joke we need to put extros all in one room so they can talk to their hearts' content and are out the way while the intros get their work done.

[American GenX]

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

You're just wrong according to the people who've done studies on this (they produce more and do so more efficiently, they're happier too). 

I'm right.  There are studies that show how much people slack off as well.  Are you one of them?  You sound a little defensive to me.  lol

There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.

Don't project your personal issues on the rest of us. My team's productivity is up since we went 100% WFH.

With that attitude, you sound a little defensive in the way you felt that you had to make a personal attack on me.  I'm guessing you are one of those people I was talking about.  lol

[jrhampt]

NO.  I think a lot of people have been less productive working from home during the pandemic because they’re trying to homeschool their kids at the same time.  Let’s not forget these aren’t optimal conditions.  A lot of other people are horrible workers with no self-motivation who already waste time in the office and even more so at home.  I’ve been fully work from home for about ten years though and have always gotten larger than average raises and bonuses because I get stuff done.  I am very efficient about it though (I’m a programmer and I automate everything), so like others in this thread I rarely have to work 40 hours a week to accomplish twice as much as your average unmotivated worker who is used to bullshitting in person all day with coworkers.

[ender]

With that attitude, you sound a little defensive in the way you felt that you had to make a personal attack on me.  I'm guessing you are one of those people I was talking about.  lol

If you make immensely judgmental and ignorant statements, you shouldn't be surprised if people react strongly.

NO.  I think a lot of people have been less productive working from home during the pandemic because they’re trying to homeschool their kids at the same time.  Let’s not forget these aren’t optimal conditions.  A lot of other people are horrible workers with no self-motivation who already waste time in the office and even more so at home.  I’ve been fully work from home for about ten years though and have always gotten larger than average raises and bonuses because I get stuff done.  I am very efficient about it though (I’m a programmer and I automate everything), so like others in this thread I rarely have to work 40 hours a week to accomplish twice as much as your average unmotivated worker who is used to bullshitting in person all day with coworkers.

+1 to all of this.

Any family with kids and both parents working has been through a hellish 9 months.

[American GenX]

With that attitude, you sound a little defensive in the way you felt that you had to make a personal attack on me.  I'm guessing you are one of those people I was talking about.  lol

If you make immensely judgmental and ignorant statements, you shouldn't be surprised if people react strongly.

It was based on facts and not directed to anyone in particular, but I guess it's not surprising that those who see themselves in my words would react strongly.  But really, people should not make personal attacks or call someone ignorant just because they don't want to hear it.

[ender]

It was based on facts and not directed to anyone in particular, but I guess it's not surprising that those who see themselves in my words would react strongly.  But really, people should not make personal attacks or call someone ignorant just because they don't want to hear it.

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

What you wrote is judgmental and ignorant.

Unless, of course, you were intentionally trolling in which case 10/10 well played, you successfully trolled.

[American GenX]

NO.  I think a lot of people have been less productive working from home during the pandemic because they’re trying to homeschool their kids at the same time.  Let’s not forget these aren’t optimal conditions.  A lot of other people are horrible workers with no self-motivation who already waste time in the office and even more so at home. 

Yeah, that would describe most people.  Of course anyone replying here is proclaiming how much more productive they are at home.  Funny how that happens.  lol

[American GenX]

It was based on facts and not directed to anyone in particular, but I guess it's not surprising that those who see themselves in my words would react strongly.  But really, people should not make personal attacks or call someone ignorant just because they don't want to hear it.

I would like to see more people going back to the office as soon as possible.  There's plenty of slacking off in the office, but people are even worse when working from home.  If I had a business, I wouldn't want my staff working from home.  Now having said that, I've worked from home most days since the pandemic started, and it has been nice.

What you wrote is judgmental and ignorant.

Unless, of course, you were intentionally trolling in which case 10/10 well played, you successfully trolled.

I see you continue with personal attacks instead of just giving your own opinion in response.  I wonder who is really trolling here?  LOL

[ender]

I see you continue with personal attacks instead of just giving your own opinion in response.  I wonder who is really trolling here?  LOL

In the off chance you are actually serious and not blatantly trolling...

First, your implication is that people are intentionally slacking off in the office and moreso at home. Which is a baseless claim in the broader sense, but let's roll with it.

Why might people be "slacking off" as a result of Covid? Also I'll use, instead of "slacking off" the phrase "less effective" since "slacking off" is inherently a value judgment on your part.

Let's see... a large number of my colleagues went from two working parents to two parents + young children at home. Many lived in 1br apartments either by themselves or with partners. Imagine someone being less effective when:

• There's been a global pandemic (maybe you aren't impacted and have no impact on your effectiveness as a result)
• Almost all companies had only a few weeks to prepare for mass remote work, assuming they prepared at all
• Families with children had minimal time to line up childcare and have been managing parenting + teaching
• Many employees had no home office provisions and in some case, live in small apartments with their partners and had to scramble to figure out an arrangement
• Most companies did not previously have great remote/not in office culture around productivity, etc
• Change is inherently stressful. Externally imposed change is more stressful
• Many people's daily/weekly/monthly routines changed instantly
• Many people had massive disruption in their social support circles

That's just a sampling of factors that result in covid-remote being challenging to be as effective as before (there are more, but that's a good start).

But covid remote is not the same as what remote has been for the decade prior. Everyone I know who was working remotely even before covid has talked about the massive impact covid had on their effectiveness and it's pretty clear that changing to remote had nothing to do with it for them... since they already were.

What you wrote is ignorant because you miss the entire context of covid/instant remote and its effect on work effectiveness.

What you wrote is judgmental is because you seem to not care and ascribe "slacking off" as the cause, rather than, uh, well, I guess there's not a nice way to say this - having empathy or interest in understanding actual factors impacting remote work effectiveness. Instead, you jumped straight to a value judgment about motivations.

[effigy98]

Personally I think fully remote brings out the best or worst in someone as far as work abilities go. If you lean towards being mediocre as an employee/manager in the office you're going to be significantly worse in a remote context and vice versa. Extroverts suffer more, but realistically all the suffering extroverts had to deal with since covid started is basically the flip side of what introverts have had to deal with in office for their whole lives, so I'm a bit less sympathetic.

I totally agree with this and I personally do not like the idea of wasteful inefficiencies of the old and going back to the office... I just know I am outnumbered.

My only sympathy is for the newbies that are pretty much failing in this environment. This is the fault of management and has been for many years as they pretty much dumped this task on the engineers sharing offices without compensating their time for this (same amount of tasks are due).

I think another issue is people are lot less loyal to the company because people are not "real" and just an image over a video chat call. You will see more and more engineers working multiple jobs and not being fully engaged in your company, ESPECIALLY if you start cutting benefits and lower total compensation due to the economy excuses like they did at my company after 2008 for several years. That was extremely demoralizing and I could see people giving the finger to the man and working on their amazon business, working for multiple tech companies, or just playing video games most the day... Remote work could cause problems for companies that treat their employees like crap and want to monitor them closer to avoid people taking advantage of low moral and lack of loyalty.

[effigy98]

NO.  I think a lot of people have been less productive working from home during the pandemic because they’re trying to homeschool their kids at the same time.  Let’s not forget these aren’t optimal conditions.

I want to work remote with my kids in school. That is the only real problem for us and when that is no longer the case remote work will be almost perfect for me.

A lot of other people are horrible workers with no self-motivation who already waste time in the office and even more so at home. 

This is exactly what I see and remote work has exposed many of them. I think this is going to be the bulk of the first round of white collar layoffs.

I’ve been fully work from home for about ten years though and have always gotten larger than average raises and bonuses because I get stuff done.  I am very efficient about it though (I’m a programmer and I automate everything), so like others in this thread I rarely have to work 40 hours a week to accomplish twice as much as your average unmotivated worker who is used to bullshitting in person all day with coworkers.

This is the way it should be, as we get more efficient we should not be expected to work more then others that make the same as us. We should not be required to endure useless small talk all day from the slackers trying to hold onto the job without producing much of anything. I want to work, get the goal accomplished, then log off. I spend more time giving status and explaining things with non engineers then coding which is because we have so many stupid layers of non engineers. I am going to try to avoid that this year so I don't burn out. I need to do more writing in the task database. If they want status, they can look in the task database and stop asking me over and over again.

[maizefolk]

FWIW, my team's overall productivity was definitely up in 2020. Now only two people in that group have small children at home. One of whom is really struggled. The other had a rockstar year (but in fairness I should know this second person has a spouse who doesn't work and the first person's spouse also works full time).

Personally I feel like I worked significantly less hard in 2020 than in '19 or '18. However I'm currently working on my annual evaluation for 2020 and based purely on the concrete metrics I have to pull together each year for this annoying document, this was my most productive year since I started with my current employer. It's not even close.

[BikeFanatic]

I have heard from the boss, but have not seen the numbers myself, that our department has been very productive during the work from home period, 9 months+ SO I know that remote workers can be pretty productive in a general sense.

I think the decrease in pollution and the decrease in commuting is so benificial to the planet and to individuals as well. I think it is crazy to end WFH if you can keep production to a reasonable level. I have found that When I do drive the traffic is so reduced, a boon to most drivers.
The office was going to be moved to a new location and now poof they now do not have to rent extra space to house us ( and that was the plan renting more office space).

The pandemic has taught us so much can get done remotely with zoom or star leaf or whatever! I have had 3/4 of my nad my mothers Doctor appointments by Telemedicine either in zoom or on the phone, that saves the patient from traveling to the crowded hospital, and saves the Doctor from getting Covid, and saves time no waiting for the late patient to arrive.

I hope we never go back to the way it was.

[Sibley]

NO.  I think a lot of people have been less productive working from home during the pandemic because they’re trying to homeschool their kids at the same time.  Let’s not forget these aren’t optimal conditions.  A lot of other people are horrible workers with no self-motivation who already waste time in the office and even more so at home.  I’ve been fully work from home for about ten years though and have always gotten larger than average raises and bonuses because I get stuff done.  I am very efficient about it though (I’m a programmer and I automate everything), so like others in this thread I rarely have to work 40 hours a week to accomplish twice as much as your average unmotivated worker who is used to bullshitting in person all day with coworkers.

Not just parents trying to deal with kids. I worked on the couch for months. I got a desk and proper chair a few months ago, and I just bought a 2nd monitor. It is not ideal trying to work with one small monitor while physically uncomfortable. I've had coworkers switching between the kitchen table, the couch, and other less than ideal setups. It matters.

[Luck12]

I'm right.  There are studies that show how much people slack off as well.  Are you one of them?  You sound a little defensive to me.  lol

 

 First few google searches for working from home effect on productivity shows studies from Stanford Business, Harvard Business, and Rescue Time.  Don't know anything about Rescue Time, but Stanford and Harvard business schools aren't your labor loving economic left wing institutions, they are neo-liberal and pretty pro business.   The only links I saw even remotely not on my side said WFH is better in some ways and worse in others.  Weight of the evidence is on my side.  Sorry but you're not right at a minimum and likely very wrong. 

Also I'm FIRED haha so I have no dog in this fight, I just don't like when people post bullshit that's bereft of evidence. 

[marty998]

The pandemic has taught us so much can get done remotely with zoom or star leaf or whatever! I have had 3/4 of my nad my mothers Doctor appointments by Telemedicine either in zoom or on the phone, that saves the patient from traveling to the crowded hospital, and saves the Doctor from getting Covid, and saves time no waiting for the late patient to arrive.

I hope we never go back to the way it was.

I have a family member who just got hearing aids. She only had to go in for one short consultation. The hearing aids were posted out to her, and she provides feedback on them via an app to the provider.

The provider then adjusts them via the app and Bluetooth. No need for sitting in waiting rooms and doctors offices anymore, it’s amazing what can be done with just a phone these days.

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

I'm right.  There are studies that show how much people slack off as well.  Are you one of them?  You sound a little defensive to me.  lol

 

 First few google searches for working from home effect on productivity shows studies from Stanford Business, Harvard Business, and Rescue Time.  Don't know anything about Rescue Time, but Stanford and Harvard business schools aren't your labor loving economic left wing institutions, they are neo-liberal and pretty pro business.   The only links I saw even remotely not on my side said WFH is better in some ways and worse in others.  Weight of the evidence is on my side.  Sorry but you're not right at a minimum and likely very wrong. 

Also I'm FIRED haha so I have no dog in this fight, I just don't like when people post bullshit that's bereft of evidence.

I'm much more productive working from the office which I pay for (rent) myself, because it's got all my work stuff in one place, it's associated in my mind with being a pure work environment, it's quiet, it has colleagues nearby but also a lot of privacy, etc

At home I have a lot of distractions. Plus home to me means a lot more than just work so  I don't always get into the right mindset.

I can work from either place and I'm self-employed so the question of slacking off doesn't come into it.

One data point FWIW.

[John Galt incarnate!]

I'm always outraged when I see articles like this:

https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-hidden-trillion-dollar-office-economy-5800af06b007

The logic goes: People are working from home more and more these days due to the pandemic.  Because they're working from home, they're going out to eat less.  And because of that the restaurant industry is dying. 

Therefore, we need to get people to stop working from home and go back into the office again.

I oppose particular measures  aimed at  curbing WFH.

However, my consistent partiality in favor of WFH does not preclude my support of  current,  short-term policies  or supplemental ones to remediate the jolting disequilibrium of the demand shock caused by the rapidity and magnitude of the surge in WFH employment.

[John Galt incarnate!]

Personally I feel like I worked significantly less hard in 2020 than in '19 or '18. However I'm currently working on my annual evaluation for 2020 and based purely on the concrete metrics I have to pull together each year for this annoying document, this was my most productive year since I started with my current employer. It's not even close.

If I switched from "working at the office" to WFH and my performance metrics were equal to or better than when I  worked at the office I'd tell management: "I've demonstrated I can WFH  and meet all your requirements. I want to continue to WFH and if you don't let me I'm quitting."

[felixbf]

Here's the thing...

Over the last decade Tesla and other companies have stated the fossil fuel is killing the planet and it would take decades to replace fuel/diesel cars on the cheap and by then it would be to late.


1.Work from home has move the goal post from decades to a few years.
2.Many countries have shown proof of the pollution in the air clearing up and can now see things that were not possible before.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-covid19-air-pollution-enviroment-nature-lockdown
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-before-and-after-how-lockdown-has-changed-smog-filled-skylines-11976473

Restaurants, just need to adapt and invest in delivering services.

[I'm a red panda]

My working from home has not changed my use of restaurants at all. I still get food about once a month.

Nor has it shortened my commute, it has doubled it, as I still have to go to daycare, right by my office, then drive home.