WSJ: Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

[Gwarm]

The best part of WFH is not being interrupted 10 times a day by colleagues who need you to explain something to them. Especially when it is something that you have documented and the person in question would rather you just tell them than read it.

I make a habit of not checking my IMs until I am finished with a task. It's one of the greatest benefits of working remotely to me. The "solution" in the office was to find a focus room when you needed to do this sort of work. The problem is almost all of my work requires focus, and the focus room setup was less workable than my desk.

 

[TitanicFall]

I think my productivity has been reduced mainly because of distractions. What that means for me is I get less work done in a typical 8 hour day, but to make up for that, I'm working longer days, so I'm tacking on an extra 1 hr or so as needed. It doesn't feel like I'm working more hours though because time is flying.

 

[Deleted member 8852]

People have roommates. People live in loud areas. People have unreliable utilities. People need multi-monitor setups.

WFH benefits the privileged. It is not great for younger workers or those who don't have $150K+ software engineering jobs.

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Plenty of people who wouldn't fall under your definition of "privileged" are just fine with WFH, framing the entire thing from a privilege point of view just because you don't like/can't WFH is meaningless.

 

[CatAssTrophy]

I already didn't like WFH due to:
-No room in my apt for a desk or setup, thus my entire dining table is covered in my equipment, forcing me to eat in my lap sitting at my couch
-No ergo equipment provided from work (i don't have room regardless)
-No separation between work and personal life
-Little to no communication between the majority of other employees, thus letting the connections we've fostered to wither
-Management thinks that because we're home we're suddenly somehow more efficient and productive because "we get to be at home" so their expectations are higher than they should be

I am liking it even less now though because I just got pulled over into a different group in the company to help them for a few months, and they are trying to train me. It is INCREDIBLY difficult to get trained in an area you're unfamiliar with from scratch while remote. Members of this group already have meetings and tasks they need to handle and it's way too easy for me to fall through the cracks. I can't just casually ask things or get updates, I have to "schedule something on the calendar" which may not be possible. In person a lot of this stuff would make way more sense, thus requiring less need for followups, but even so, I could just ask them in person.

I'm really really struggling, but I am going to continue assuming this is all temporary and that the company will let me come back to the office when things are better. We're told we can't come back until at least mid-September but only people that request (and are approved) will be allowed to come back AT ALL. Everyone else may be forced to be permanently WFH forever- which I simply cannot do unless they're going to solve all of the above issues.

 

[Deleted member 8901]

Definitely need a balance. I hate making / buying lunches and the commute to the office but sometimes it's just way faster to get something done in person. Not to mention having access to extremely reliable internet, standing desks, multi-monitor setups, and ergonomic chairs.

At home, I live in a 1 BR condo with a shallow desk that barely fits a single monitor and is located right by the kitchen / living room. My girlfriend also works from home right now so we basically alternate between who gets the monitor and who has to use their laptop on the kitchen island.

 

[Barnak]

WFH is fine(especially since I don't need to take the bus), but the huge problem with it is communication. You send emails to your boss hoping to get answers and you never get any because he gets spammed by them by everyone. You can't call him either because he is always on the phone due to meetings.

At the office, I could just get up my seat and ask him directly in person when I saw him at least.

 

[Pwnz]

The best part of WFH is not being interrupted 10 times a day by colleagues who need you to explain something to them. Especially when it is something that you have documented and the person in question would rather you just tell them than read it.

I make a habit of not checking my IMs until I am finished with a task. It's one of the greatest benefits of working remotely to me. The "solution" in the office was to find a focus room when you needed to do this sort of work. The problem is almost all of my work requires focus, and the focus room setup was less workable than my desk.

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Absolutely. I worked from home primarily before COVID-19 because I'm the tech lead to the software build CI/CD farm for the entire company and anything remotely tangentially related to build I'll get unsolicited walk by conversations. Even at home I have to block all teams chat and exclude my team.

Working remote unshackles highly performant technical talent. It's not my job to train the damn company. Just people I supervise.

 

[Deleted member 2226]

It's definitely a set of trade-offs. I imagine someone who drives in to work an hour or two has a much different calculus than someone with a short trip or who can take public transit and thus occupy their time, for instance. Some industries can remote work a ton of stuff with no issue, others can't, and then there's the issues of how difficult it can be to manage workers (for good or ill) remotely.

I am honestly starting to miss the structure and predictability of going into the office.

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Yeah, this is definitely one bit. I think for a ton of people work/leisure being easily divided and predictable as really helpful.

Like, if the choice was (arbitrarily) having 6 hour workdays or 4 hour workweeks versus working from home 40 hours, I'd pick the former options in a heartbeat.

 

[Random Painted Highway]

Responses really need industry, seniority and if young children are in the picture.

I'm nearing a 20 year lawyer with 2 kids under 10. It's been brutal.

I've had so many younger attorneys nearly in tears on the phone due to frustrations with learning how to do their job and deadlines. Ive had older attorneys nearly in tears and ready to quit due to juggling kids and work.

I have four depositions, each 4-6+ hrs, in the next two weeks that I'm conducting from home just hoping my 5 year old doesn't have too big of a meltdown that can be heard or breaks into the room. I've had federal hearings from home, adminstrative hearings and more. And technology doesn't always work flawlessly. Also, you can't read the body language of a judge through the telephone. Some of my cases are extremely important and impact people in this very forum, so it's not like I'm dealing with car crashes or things like that. This is hard, complex work. Wfh with kids here also means I am up working at or beyond midnight frequently and both weekend days. There is no off time really.

The ideal for me, which is what my office was going to do before the June Texas spike, was 2 office days a week, now I'm prohibited except to get my mail or stuff I need.

Set aside the kid factor. It takes a year+ to train up a new attorney in my office. A ton of that is walking up and down the halls getting advice on sometimes minute issues. You cant do that nearly as effectively when you have to call or text someone, including people you can't really contact at home but If you bump into them you can chat them up. You can't just sit in on a deposition if you have to have a zoom invite. You can't lurk in the gallery of a telephonic federal hearing. I feel really bad for our three people we hired late 2019 to present.

Every job is different, but full wfh is brutal at my office. We need to have impromptu small groups to workshop ideas and that just can't happen under these circumstances.

 

[JPLC]

I think many negatives regarding WFH during COVID-19 are less about WFH itself as a concept and more about being constantly stressed about the possibility of catching the virus just by simply going outside and being in proximity with people. If there was some kind of alternative scenario where many people had to rely on WFH for some reason but there also wasn't some kind of looming health risk regarding leaving their homes, I don't think the negative aspects of WFH would present as much. Stresses external to work have a big impact on work itself, but it seems that often gets ignored.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

I am honestly starting to miss the structure and predictability of going into the office.

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The structure is easier when you're not in a pandemic. You can more freely get out and get coffee or something to mix up the day

 

[Serpens007]

" "It was people being terrified of losing their jobs, and that fear-driven productivity is not sustainable," Mr. Bock said. "


Or, if you don't see the mean look of your boss, you'll relax.

 

[John Doe]

So this is the start of anti WFH propaganda.

 

[evrythngwastakn]

So this is the start of anti WFH propaganda.

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Christ forbid people have differing opinions.

the most important part of my job is working directly with kids and creating a rapport with them (high school teacher) so while some kids *crushed* wfh (the smart self motivated kids) most struggled tremendously and were anxious to go back even part time. I also hated having my kid around while trying to do Google Meets and such but I felt they went okay when students participated. Still, wfh just exacerbated the parts of the job I hate (constant emails, marking endless assignments, chasing after students to submit work etc) so overall it was a huge negative. I like seeing my kids each day. It's the reason I do the job.

that said, if we end up working at home for longer or part time employers should 100% have to bear some costs for internet/devices/supplies/equipment. They're no doubt saving shit tons of money by shifting it to employees.

 

[Timeaisis]

Training seems to be the most difficult thing with WFH. I have no idea how to do it effectively.

Second biggest problem is a two-way tie between team morale and productivity. Framing WFH as a one-size-fits all solution to every job is incredibly silly. It's effectiveness varies, like all things.

 

[Lumination]

I can 100% agree that while my productivity is overall the same (some losses here, some gains there), I feel like knowledge sharing and general osmosis is almost non-existent. If anything, I am hurting myself more in the short-term, which will transfer to long-term losses for the company.

 

[Timeaisis]

Another thing, after this is over, I definitely want the option to WFH a couple days a week. But I definitely want to be able to go into the office when I need to. I feel like I'm not growing as much in my career from home, maybe it just feels that way because I'm isolated.

 

[Mcfrank]

Christ forbid people have differing opinions.

the most important part of my job is working directly with kids and creating a rapport with them (high school teacher) so while some kids *crushed* wfh (the smart self motivated kids) most struggled tremendously and were anxious to go back even part time. I also hated having my kid around while trying to do Google Meets and such but I felt they went okay when students participated. Still, wfh just exacerbated the parts of the job I hate (constant emails, marking endless assignments, chasing after students to submit work etc) so overall it was a huge negative. I like seeing my kids each day. It's the reason I do the job.

that said, if we end up working at home for longer or part time employers should 100% have to bear some costs for internet/devices/supplies/equipment. They're no doubt saving shit tons of money by shifting it to employees.

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I don't think anyone is arguing that high schools should stay remote once we are past covid are they? People are typically talking about office work.

 

[Nero3000]

My vote is for a hybrid approach.

Working from home is fine but a bit boring. I work with clients on a day to day basis, usually in person. Trying to deliver work and read the room is difficult over webex/teams etc. Trying to manage project teams is also tough, things slow down and they can't just pull you over when they have an issue, and typically wait until the daily stand-up. Not to mention the complete drop in the social side (work socials, after work drinks, client entertainment etc.) At the moment, it's all the work without any of the perks.

As others have noted, you do miss the ad-hoc conversations and over hearing things that you can get involved in. Beforehand we did have the flexibility to work from home at our discretion - which for most people translated to 1 or 2 days a week. So i imagine we will go back to 2- days WFH - with an office environment which is based on more collaborative spaces than a sea of desks.

 

[Deleted member 46493]

I guess the problem with WFH discussions is that they're too personal. For example. I work less under WFH but do my job just fine. I'm probably not getting promoted or a big raise unless I get a new job so I'm comfortable not having a IRL presence in the company.

I am in NYC which is safer now so I go outside for coffee, errands, etc. during the day all the time. Seeing friends (responsibly) is common too. I live alone so it's quiet and I have space.

Everyone's situation is wildly different though, so it'd be wrong of me to say that we should WFH forever due to my experience.

However, at least in the tech space, there have been successful WFH-only companies for decades.

 

[Pwnz]

Christ forbid people have differing opinions.

the most important part of my job is working directly with kids and creating a rapport with them (high school teacher) so while some kids *crushed* wfh (the smart self motivated kids) most struggled tremendously and were anxious to go back even part time. I also hated having my kid around while trying to do Google Meets and such but I felt they went okay when students participated. Still, wfh just exacerbated the parts of the job I hate (constant emails, marking endless assignments, chasing after students to submit work etc) so overall it was a huge negative. I like seeing my kids each day. It's the reason I do the job.

that said, if we end up working at home for longer or part time employers should 100% have to bear some costs for internet/devices/supplies/equipment. They're no doubt saving shit tons of money by shifting it to employees.

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I don't think many people are advocating WFH only. That's unreasonable. Some people perform better in person, some job roles require an office/lab. That's fine.

I may come off as overly enthusiastic about WFH because in the software development industry there's very few reasons to work in office and in general there has been decades of open floor office design that's highly distractive to introverted people with ADD like me because it "encourages team collaboration" or whatever the fuck. Usually it means I can hear 3 teams worth of people chatting about the news, weather, and other nonsense. Then physical meetings there's a different PC/TV/Projector setup per meeting room with quirks to figure out. Remotely a Microsoft Team's meeting instantaneously starts for everyone without 10 minutes of figuring out the equipment and waiting for people and then going over time and having the next 1 hour slot knock to kick you out.

 

[RadzPrower]

Our team is the same. We're split into two groups both being several states away and the group at my office would come in maybe two times a week at most so I really never seen them that much to begin with other then a morning coffee in the break room. We collaborate just fine with screen sharing. Our company was pretty forward thinking and let us take any office equipment home. So I have my 3 monitor setup with dock just as I would at the office.

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Same

Brought home my VoIP phone and my portrait monitor, so I've got my 3 monitors and a dedicated phone instead of a cell.

 

[WrenchNinja]

So this is the start of anti WFH propaganda.

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It's the WSJ so expected yeah.

 

[Tobor]

I don't think many people are advocating WFH only. That's unreasonable. Some people perform better in person, some job roles require an office/lab. That's fine.

I may come off as overly enthusiastic about WFH because in the software development industry there's very few reasons to work in office and in general there has been decades of open floor office design that's highly distractive to introverted people with ADD like me because it "encourages team collaboration" or whatever the fuck. Usually it means I can hear 3 teams worth of people chatting about the news, weather, and other nonsense. Then physical meetings there's a different PC/TV/Projector setup per meeting room with quirks to figure out. Remotely a Microsoft Team's meeting instantaneously starts for everyone without 10 minutes of figuring out the equipment and waiting for people and then going over time and having the next 1 hour slot knock to kick you out.

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Right, what is being advocated is personal choice. Anyone who wants to WFH and can do their job effectively at home should be allowed to. If you want to go back after the pandemic, by all means, go back.

 

[peteykirch]

I've absolutely loved working from home.

My company prior to the Pandemic maybe only had 2-3 people work remotely, now nearly every single person is working remotely.

I work in Payroll, so the company was very nervous to see if there would be a drop off in quality/production but if anything things have been better than they were inside the office.

I will say on my team the 3 older people had a much harder time working remotely than myself and my other coworker who is in their mid 20s, and me my early 30s.

I go into the office once a week on Wednesday when we do the bulk of our payroll processing, but that's pretty much to get some sort of human interaction.

My team has calls twice a day internally, and then 2 more calls with the otherside of the office as well so it's not like we are 100% isolated from each other. My company has no plans to reopen the office 100% in 2020, but they have no qualms with limited people who prefer to work in the office show up. I'm going to try to parlay this into a full remote position and hopefully move from NJ to NC.

 

[Fridaynightcatlady]

I prefer the hybrid approach, but I've enjoyed wfh

 

[PaperSparrow]

Had a meeting recently where a manager was smug about some people struggling with WFH. "Everyone always wanted it and now it wasn't what they expected, teehee."

No shit, being forced to stay inside their house all day during a pandemic with no option to meet in person isn't going to be fun. I say this as an introvert who has been doing great.

 

[Xpike]

Just make it optional to have to go to the office every day.
But I guess most bosses don't trust their employees enough to give them the choice

 

[Gwarm]

Christ forbid people have differing opinions.

the most important part of my job is working directly with kids and creating a rapport with them (high school teacher) so while some kids *crushed* wfh (the smart self motivated kids) most struggled tremendously and were anxious to go back even part time. I also hated having my kid around while trying to do Google Meets and such but I felt they went okay when students participated. Still, wfh just exacerbated the parts of the job I hate (constant emails, marking endless assignments, chasing after students to submit work etc) so overall it was a huge negative. I like seeing my kids each day. It's the reason I do the job.

that said, if we end up working at home for longer or part time employers should 100% have to bear some costs for internet/devices/supplies/equipment. They're no doubt saving shit tons of money by shifting it to employees.

Click to shrink...

I think there are pretty clearly different types of work. A job like yours requires hands on interaction and shouldn't be remote in most circumstances. You are dealing with an unfortunate circumstance and are being forced to manage. I totally get that.

I think what they meant by "anti-WFH propaganda" is relating to the growing case against it even in jobs which can literally be done 100% from home. A lot of tech support, coding, office drudgery type work really doesn't need an in-office component. I think it's good to have the office available for those who need or prefer it, but many people are thriving at home. It's been a great benefit to me, personally. That's why I get upset to see mainstream outlets pushing the narrative that being in the office is better, because it is just fuel for the entrenched group of thought that permeates throughout a lot of office environments.

 

[Deleted member 1476]

So this is the start of anti WFH propaganda.

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It's only the beginning.

 

[Lexad]

I am glad the article mentioned training. I started a new position at the height of the pandemic and learning my new job has been incredibly difficult. I have also been training the replacement in my old job and trying to get them to operate the stuff while I guide. Really difficult trying to point out where on the screen they should be looking.

it is also incredibly demoralizing and people are getting depressed. I wouldn't mind working virtually once a week but I miss my coworkers so much.

 

[Warszawa]

I'd be up for a significantly reduced office schedule - heck even a mid week 'Work From Home Wednesday' or something daft would be a great refresher. The only damning thing is being tied to a phone for my role, if I wasn't front line IT, I would happily go into a co-working space or a nice cafe to do my work locally.

Its the bloody commute and over priced train/underground fare in London that kills it for me. Only now just being able to start saving because so much of my work overheads have disappeared.

This isn't a work model that fits all so I could imagine schooling would be different.

But in a weird way to put in perspective all my favourite creatives, musicians, authors have effectively been doing 'work from home' for 100s of years lol. Apart from touring I'm sure Iggy Pop had to sit in his little beach house and write songs. Agin very odd comparison, very very very different work, but do you see how the inner personal life of these people is so different to drones toiling away in offices? Time to spare to study, think and when appropriate meet up with people and collaborate.

I would love a world like that, and not just in rich western countries, go examine how local communities work in smaller less developed countries, they may have hard lives in some sense, but they have richer community lives. So much of our community could be rebuilt after being decimated after the lop sided reverence toward internet consumerism, I would love a more local centred world.

I'm rambling teh' fuck on, but theres so much opportunity to reshape our lives and work. The genies out of the bottle. Corporate overloads need to accept the change and think of new ways of work.

 

[PIMPBYBLUD]

Hybrid approach is always the answer.

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This right here. No reasons why most companies can't use a hybrid approach for office workers.

 

[take_marsh]

I started a new job the monday following California's shutdown, so I didn't really get any training and not a foot in the office. I still only know maybe a half-dozen or so people in the company, and my job description can be difficult to nail down aside from being a jack-of-all-trades.

I think there's a good balance that can be had and should be offered. 2-3 days a week: work from home. You set yourself up a bunch of tasks and likely don't need a meeting to get a full day's shit done: go home and get it done, then back to the office for a day or two. I guess it also depends on the industry you're in too.

I imagine one benefit is the huge drop of workplace sexual harassment. Any conversation can be recorded when WFH. I speculate this and I really hope it is true, but I also bet this is just wishful thinking. Are there any articles on that yet?

 

[Coolluck]

I am glad the article mentioned training. I started a new position at the height of the pandemic and learning my new job has been incredibly difficult. I have also been training the replacement in my old job and trying to get them to operate the stuff while I guide. Really difficult trying to point out where on the screen they should be looking.

it is also incredibly demoralizing and people are getting depressed. I wouldn't mind working virtually once a week but I miss my coworkers so much.

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What program do y'all use? There's ones where you can see both cursors on screen so pointing to things shouldn't be an issue. Also being able to record the videos for reference so the new employee can learn with a guide without fully taking up your time can be a huge plus.

 

[Pau]

This is kind of how my internship was at the office full time. I think a lot of companies are just shit at on boarding.

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Really? Damn, that sucks. I've never had an internship before, so I just expected it being like getting a regular job. Guess it really depends on the company.

 

[Steven]

Right, what is being advocated is personal choice. Anyone who wants to WFH and can do their job effectively at home should be allowed to. If you want to go back after the pandemic, by all means, go back.

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This is forever the only answer employees should be opting for.

No hybrid approaches, no "this or that", no splitting people into groups. The policy should be that employees can choose what works best for them. If a job can't be done from home at all, that's a separate discussion.

 

[John Doe]

I think there are pretty clearly different types of work. A job like yours requires hands on interaction and shouldn't be remote in most circumstances. You are dealing with an unfortunate circumstance and are being forced to manage. I totally get that.

I think what they meant by "anti-WFH propaganda" is relating to the growing case against it even in jobs which can literally be done 100% from home. A lot of tech support, coding, office drudgery type work really doesn't need an in-office component. I think it's good to have the office available for those who need or prefer it, but many people are thriving at home. It's been a great benefit to me, personally. That's why I get upset to see mainstream outlets pushing the narrative that being in the office is better, because it is just fuel for the entrenched group of thought that permeates throughout a lot of office environments.

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This is what I mean.

 

[impingu1984]

After now 5 months of 100% WFH I can say I actually agree with this... I've had a new start have just 2 days in the office and then we went WFH... He's doing great but it's not been as easy as it should be... Particularly in a technical role.... The main issue is getting him up to speed with our data schema....

Simple questions like where does X data live is easy to answer on a IM but in person you tend to do more passive coaching through nature conversation..

Same with projects ... Quick chats at a desk in the office about something are quite the same and tend to take longer virtually Vs at desks..

And finally the human element of missing the banter and interaction with others at work. Video calls don't capture than passive interaction you have with others in your workspace.

As with anything in life it's about the right balance... Looking to split WFH and office to 50/50 in the future for me..

 

[smileyforall220]

The biggest hurdel form me has been the complete lack of work/home split. It feels like there is no reprieve sometimes

 

[the lizard]

I can say that as somebody who received a promotion into a new role (and the first time I've been at this level of responsibility in my career) right around the start of WFH conditions, it's been very challenging and frustrating at times to try and navigate my way through the new role without the ability to informally ask my manager questions and interact with my (new) reports in person. I feel like I was on a really promising trajectory before this hit, and while I'm not totally off track, I do worry that my professional growth is going to be stunted to some degree and that I'll have some catching up to do whenever the pandemic ends. At that point, I'll be a strong advocate for working from home 2-3 days a week and being in office 2-3 days a week.

All of this, of course, to the backdrop of what appears to be the complete unraveling of the U.S., but that's a different topic...

Editing to agree with this post:

The biggest hurdel form me has been the complete lack of work/home split. It feels like there is no reprieve sometimes

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This has also been super tough. The cadence of my work is such that I'm sometimes idle during the day (but not enjoying leisure time by any means), so when a client request comes in late in the day, I feel obligated to address it, which cuts into my evening. It's a LOT easier to let your work/life fall out of balance when you're WFH all the time.

 

[Pyke Presco]

As someone who has been working from home since March 13th, (with no initial capability to do so) it has certainly been an awkward experience. I think we have gotten into the flow of things now, but that first month or so was a complete write off in terms of productivity, and getting someone new on boarded to the team is a work in progress that we definitely haven't figured out yet.

At the start we had 30 mins a day of remote access into the company server for a team of 3, which meant quickly getting your email downloaded, then logging off, drafting up responses and firing them off the following morning when you logged in again. No ability to access sensitive information off the network which slowed work down significantly. No access to the network and address book to access people's contact information if you wanted to call them to ask questions or arrange a meeting. So yeah, there was definitely a loss of productivity at the start for at least a month or so.

Now we have increased capacity for remote access (organization is 80000+ people and we had 6000 remote licenses at the start, now we're up to 40k+ and increasing, and many people are back at the offices around the country), everybody has a laptop for remote work if they need it (I had a desktop at the office that didn't come home with me and didn't get a laptop for a couple weeks), we have office 365 licenses for everyone in the organization for use on personal devices (brand new capability that didn't exist before the fiscal year on April 1st), etc. So we've adjusted and certainly improved what it was at the start of the situation, but we're still not at 100% compared to what was happening in the office before covid.

Management has been trying to rapidly evolve things to enable us to better work from home, but it's a growing process and they definitely don't expect the same level of productivity as we had at the office. Parents had to adopt home schooling on like one day's notice on top of remote work without capability. They have to work in a shared environment that is not dedicated to work (kids yelling and TVs in the background, pets barking, family coming into the office to ask a question while in a video chat or to make them a snack because they're hungry, and so on). People are repurposing their kitchen table or their couch and coffee table into a work station because that's all their bachelor apartment allows for a workspace. It's certainly not a one size fits all solution that work from home is right for everyone, and it doesn't surprise me that some places are seeing lost productivity.

We reopened our office building yesterday for general use if people want to go back, and there was definitely some folks that immediately took advantage of the opportunity. I am changing jobs in 2 weeks and relocating across the country, so no idea what the situation is once I get out there on 15 August, but I certainly am not keen on learning everything remotely for a new role I have never done before. I've been turning my current role over to my relief for the last week, and it's certainly much more difficult handling things remotely, whereas in the office he could just pull up a chair at the same computer and watch over my shoulder as we went over stuff. A phone call or ms teams chat on your personal computer (not the company one, which has all that functionality disabled for security reasons) means there's a lot of "open the start menu. Ok, now right click the third icon on your start menu by default, which should be all you have right now, and you should see this menu. Nope, I don't know what you opened; it should have been a blue folder with an explorer icon on it. Oh you're on Windows 10? My laptop is still on 8.1. I don't know what that OS looks like or where to find things..."

So yeah, my employer is trying, but there's definitely some growing pains still being experienced and they absolutely do not expect things to run as smoothly as they used to. As long as management understands that kind of adjustment, it's fine, but not every organization or situation or individual manager will take the same approach to this stuff.

 

[ostrichKing]

I do not think businesses are going to pass up the savings of reducing office spaces. Hybrid will be the way forward...anyone who goes back to how things were will risk retention issues. People have gotten a taste of this and will not go back to how things were.

 

[samoyed]

I think the new normal will involve business supplying equipment for home offices. There will be a painful transition period as real estate pivots away from commercial to residential, hopefully lowering the housing shortage, which will make home offices more viable in cramped urban locations.

 

[Septimus Prime]

No offence to people that can't hack working from home or don't like it, but if you have trouble working remotely then that should be something your manager that you report to should have to work with you on from a development perspective because to me that's something that requires personal/skill development to be successful in a modern workplace.

Maybe a hot take but it's how I feel. The need to be in an office to be productive seems like a crutch.

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This is a really myopic take, as not everyone has the same life circumstance.

 

[PanzerKraken]

So this is the start of anti WFH propaganda.

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WFH was never going to be the answer for everyone, lot of jobs and projects just need human interaction and WFH doesn't fit for everything.

 

[Yinyangfooey]

No CEO should be surprised that the early productivity gains companies witnessed as remote work took hold have peaked and leveled off

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well wages have peaked and leveled off too so shut the fuck up lol

 

[Damaniel]

I like working from home a lot, and I really don't miss the commute, but I can see the benefit of in person meetings in an office a couple days a week. If the norm ended up becoming something like work 3 days a week from home, work in the office the other 2 days, that would strike a good balance for me. I'm not sure how things will shake out long term, but I'll likely be working from home for the rest of the year, and I can already tell that there's going to be some reluctance among my coworkers to go back to a 5 days a week in the office setup.

 

[eyeball_kid]

If you want us to come back to an office, get rid of open plan offices. Period. I'm much more productive than I ever was working in a giant sea of distractions.

 

[John Doe]

WFH was never going to be the answer for everyone, lot of jobs and projects just need human interaction and WFH doesn't fit for everything.

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I never said anything of the sort. I'm just pointing out that this article doesn't present a balanced view of WFH. You have people in this very thread saying WFH has worked for them. Yet the article doesn't talk about that perspective. Nor the perspective of the same young workers that they claim are suffering.