Transition back to...the office :(

[anothercog]

My Megacorp is expecting to bring people back in early June but I expect that will be pushed back. Also, our CEO has said she expects more flexibility in schedules when we do go back. I'm thinking I'll go in 3 days a week but I would prefer to start that at the end of the summer rather than the beginning. I still have been unable to get a vaccine appointment.

update, just got an e-mail that our return has been postponed to Sept 7th and the return will be "incremental."

I'm currently hiring and am open to WFH, though my preference would be close to one of our offices so they can be onsite when needed.

 

[Poopycat]

One big problem I see with working from home is for new employees. In traditional office setting the new employee has their coworkers to learn from and ask them questions while the new employee is learning the job and the company. No way that can happen if a new employee is at home. That resource is gone. It may be fine for existing employees to work from home that already know the job. But how are new employees going to get trained except for the in-person office?

Well, I relocated for a new job last June. The office was supposed to reopen on my first day of work..and then reopening was postponed. I have been working from my apartment for nearly 9 months now. I didn’t have any trouble figuring out what to do. I set up Zoom meetings to introduce myself and to learn about the company and my role. My boss was accessible and he assigned one of his directs to be my peer mentor so I’d have someone to go to for questions.

I have LOVED working remotely and I didn’t find it any more difficult to onboard than any in-person role has been. Several other new employees come on board every week so it can be done.
I am dreading the office reopening in September.

 

[Poopycat]

update, just got an e-mail that our return has been postponed to Sept 7th and the return will be "incremental."

I'm currently hiring and am open to WFH, though my preference would be close to one of our offices so they can be onsite when needed.

My company is saying the first wave of employees will return to the office in mid September. That will just be the senior leaders. I’d be in the next wave, most likely in mid October. Who knows when the rest of the employee population would return; probably November.

We have been told that there will be some flexibility, such as remote work once per week. But no option to work remotely on a permanent basis. The CEO is old and old-school, one of these guys who thinks you need to be physically at the office if you want to keep your job.

 

[big-papa]

Getting pressure and in the news folks have or are transitioning back to office work. Large setting cubicle office work...not single isolated offices.

What say you? Me, I want to stay away from the commute and office. Period.

Just passed the one year anniversary of working from home. We've all found our groove and, frankly, I prefer this. It doesn't help that the office building we work in has a centralized HVAC system, meaning I'm re-breathing the air not just of my coworkers, but of all of the other tenants.

Anyway, between attrition and downsizing, the number of people in our office is tiny compared to the total floorspace. And the organization we all belong to is definitely not expanding in our particular city/country. Got maybe another couple of years before the lease runs out, but as my last job attests, that doesn't prevent a shuttering if the company truly wants to.

Cheers

 

[HarveyS]

I can certainly agree that a great many people would prefer to work from home. And it is easy to see why people would prefer this.
In my little slice of the world, service has dropped considerably since the pandemic moved many to WFH. Calls go unanswered as "we are experience high call volume", simple billing questions cannot be addressed in a timely fashion, many Bank of America branches are just closed (yet Chase appears to be open), etc.
A few firms I do business with have maintained their level of service through the pandemic, i.e. Amazon, my attorney and (dare I admit it) American Express. Others have really decreased customer service. I can see why management wants to bring employees back.

 

[cathy63]

It'll be interesting to see how all these employees who want to work in the office one or two days per week feel about hot-desking. No employer is going to keep 60-80% more office space than it needs, so people who mainly WFH are going to lose their personal space in the office. In my last job before ER, our government client shifted to a hybrid mode with most people in-office 1 or 2 days per week. There were many complaints about having to reserve desks and keep personal items in lockers. Even sitting next to different people every time they were in the office was a huge change.

I also managed lots of people who were 100% WFH for the last 15 years or so of my career. Some people handle it fine, and are very productive right away, some just never get the hang of it. We were using Scrum to do software development though, so we could see pretty quickly when someone was struggling and not meeting daily goals on a regular basis.

 

[JustCurious]

Google is speeding up plans to get workers back to the office, their offices are reopening in April in a limited capacity and it is expected everyone will return to the office by September 1. If employees want to work remotely after September 1 for more than 14 days per year they will have to formally apply for it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/goo...reopening-and-puts-limits-on-remote-work.html

 

[kgtest]

Got word from our CEO that its imperitive people be vaccinated before we can operate in office in full capacity. No plans to get us vaccinated, just that its imperative if THEY want US to return that WE "SHOULD* be vaccinated.

I feel like for us, it might be on a department by department basis. Even pre-pandemic I was told when I transferred to a new department that I don't need to be in office all week...maybe 2 or 3 days a week. So the trend for me is more remote work, but I have worked remote days at all my jobs in the past decade.

Wish MegaCorp would be more transparent about the decisioning process. I haven't heard of a committee or what they are discussing but maybe that is for the best right now.

After 100% remote work now for 15months, I am fine sticking with this for the next 120 months until I retire. If I had to go into the office 5 days a week without my own properly vented space... I would just keep looking to employers who don't require me to go in. Plenty of them these days. DW would like me to find some sort of office space though. Even with 3100 sq ft and multiple spots to do our office work, it seems to bug her being around me while she works lol.

 

[skyking1]

I am on an email list of a headhunter.

The company was trying to fill a principal engineer position.
The candidate they really wanted and offered the job to ended up accepting another job which allowed either full or partial WFH.
The headhunting company in the email mentioned that the company was now open to 2 days of WFH.

In my line of work I cannot do it 100% WFH.
Writing the software can be done from home, but debugging it requires being onsite with the hardware/equipment.

I registered on my state's vaccine website today.

My wife showed me some headhunter emails this morning that were good for a laugh. Because her title has "specialist" in it, they were explosives ordinance jobs at the nearby base.
It seems apt because her work does blow up from time to time.

 

[tulak]

I’m happy that my employer decided to offer hybrid/full remote for all employees. They still offer the choice to come back full time, but from what I can tell, it’s a small subset of employees choosing this option. Most employees are choosing to come back 2-3 times a week.

In addition to Google, Amazon is also expecting most employees to return to the office. Same for Microsoft. I know some employees can request remote/hybrid, but it’s a manager/org choice, not company wide policy.

As someone who has gone to the office daily for 20+ years, I’m enjoying wfh. I don’t plan to ever go back regularly if I can avoid it. I’ll still go in when it makes sense, maybe a couple times a month.

 

[foxfirev5]

OK, somebody has to strongly state this but I'm calling BS on this work from home stuff. Endless I'll contact my supervisor and we'll get back to you on top of the IRS being on virtual shutdown. When I reach the point that my job can be done for a fraction of the cost at a foreign location my reason to exist ceases. Harsh but true. And I hope my DK's wake up to this before it's to late.

 

[tulak]

It depends on the job. I can see going to the office 2-3 times a week as the norm for some office jobs. In tech, there’s little reason why this can’t work. And for some companies, there’s a financial benefit, since they’ll need less office space. The key is if they’re getting a level of productivity from their hybrid/remote employees that’s acceptable.

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out over the next few years.

 

[Lewis Clark]

The key is if they’re getting a level of productivity from their hybrid/remote employees that’s acceptable.

I've heard this argument frequently against the idea of working remotely. It assumes that people will be near-fully productive if they are physically in the workplace. However, some folks can be in the workplace for a full day and accomplish little.

 

[geeky_grrl]

I'm pretty sure my SO won't go back to the office when his megacorp requires it this fall. I'm not sure if that will be the final push to get him to retire or if he just will keep wfh and his boss will let it slide. I'm hoping for the former.

 

[RobbieB]

You do what they say or you go. Easy.

 

[USGrant1962]

OK, somebody has to strongly state this but I'm calling BS on this work from home stuff. Endless I'll contact my supervisor and we'll get back to you on top of the IRS being on virtual shutdown. When I reach the point that my job can be done for a fraction of the cost at a foreign location my reason to exist ceases. Harsh but true. And I hope my DK's wake up to this before it's to late.

This is a good point I hadn't really though about. Hmmm...

I'll need to remind DS that if his mechanical engineering job can be done from home, it can be done from India too.

 

[badatmath]

My megacorp issues vague threats reminding us we will go back but no dates. I think they don't want to give us too much notice esp in IT because they know people will look for other WFH jobs. I do not talk to people in my location - mostly people in other states. We are quite swamped so there is no time for chat. I am trying to meet the min age requirement to qualify for health ins in retirement or I'd be one leaving when they dragged us back. . .

 

[dak2018]

This is a good point I hadn't really though about. Hmmm...

I'll need to remind DS that if his mechanical engineering job can be done from home, it can be done from India too.

That is true if the requisite skills can be found in the foreign country and if the communications and cultural barriers can be overcome. In my former occupation, we found that certain tasks could be delegated to minimally skilled people - that work could be offshored but not without at least some difficulty. The higher level work could not be easily contracted out, and this was in a case where much of my team was working remotely, but was all US based.

My advice to people worried about job flow overseas is simple : If the work looks like something that a high school student could do, then it will be done offshore.

 

[KarenF]

One big problem I see with working from home is for new employees. In traditional office setting the new employee has their coworkers to learn from and ask them questions while the new employee is learning the job and the company. No way that can happen if a new employee is at home. That resource is gone. It may be fine for existing employees to work from home that already know the job. But how are new employees going to get trained except for the in-person office?

We have onboarded 2 people completely remotely during the pandemic. We talk on the phone multiple times a day, have written down our processes (good) and share our screens in Microsoft Teams a lot. We also have Webex and Teams meetings. It is hard work, but doable.

 

[Paulz]

My employer went through each position and identified key positions that must come into the office one day a week. To the others, not only are they 100% remote, but they are now allowed to move anywhere in the US as long as they adhere to the 0900-1500 east coast for 6 of their hours. Of the three buildings previously used, they have divested themselves of two already and are planning to only keep 1-2 floors of the last.

In my opinion, the past year has been illuminating. If you've done your job remotely and have been performing, the return to the office makes no sense. I agree it does make some aspects easier, but at what cost? For me, I'm going in one day a week for the next three years then am transitioning to 100% telework until my retirement.

 

[FIREarly]

Getting pressure and in the news folks have or are transitioning back to office work. Large setting cubicle office work...not single isolated offices.

What say you? Me, I want to stay away from the commute and office. Period.

Hope work does not ask me back for a while.

I'm getting my first vaccine shot tomorrow and, as exciting as that is, it is also one more reason to be closer to returning to the office

 

[goingtotravel]

I've been 100% WFH since 2013 and been managing a team located all across the country since about 2008. Now with our entire office of 200+ people at home for over a year we just use more tech to get our jobs done. Teams meetings teams calls, virtual rooms, MIRO boards to collaborate. We haven't missed a beat. We onboard new employees almost every month with no issues.

Right before COVID most of the staff only worked in one of two office locations two days a week max but many were remote hires scattered all across the country. It's true not all jobs can be done at home but for the jobs that can be done from home why not? It takes technical tools and the right attitude from management (not managers who believe people are only productive if they can see them).

In fact I'd argue we are working more hours from home than in the office with less time wasted with socializing, long lunches, etc. And really the folks that just wandered around the office socializing back when we were all face to face are probably about as productive at home now as they were in the office but those are issues that should be addressed no matter where they are assigned to work.

 

[BoldPelikan]

I work for a large public utility with both union and non-union staff. We office folks have been home for the past year, but union staff have been in the plants all along. Huge political pressure to bring everyone back. The process has already started for single occupancy office-dwellers, and we cubicle rats will be dragged back around June 1. CEO has said absolutely no telework or hybrid models going forward. I have zero interest in the commute, work clothes, office politics and many wasted hours. I've got a call in to my financial planner to see whether never returning is even remotely possible.. here's hoping!

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

That is true if the requisite skills can be found in the foreign country and if the communications and cultural barriers can be overcome. In my former occupation, we found that certain tasks could be delegated to minimally skilled people - that work could be offshored but not without at least some difficulty. The higher level work could not be easily contracted out, and this was in a case where much of my team was working remotely, but was all US based.

My advice to people worried about job flow overseas is simple : If the work looks like something that a high school student could do, then it will be done offshore.

I have personally seen thousand upon thousands of jobs off-shored, near-shored, and other hybrid operations. These jobs were not "high school student" but rather good salary IT jobs (i.e. learn to code).

Any remote job is at danger of having done in a place with lower labor costs. Those who think that it only applies to low level jobs are fooling themselves - it started there but has consistently been moving up the skills chain.

I would not be surprised to see this include currently very high paid positions (e.g. some doctors) - anything for which latency (due to speed of light limitations) isn't a limiting factor.

If I were 20 knowing what I know now and what I see coming, I would personally only look for skills that require on-site or local presence. (ETA: Fixed grammar. )

Signed,
Computer Science Professor

 

[USGrant1962]

I have personally seen thousand upon thousands of jobs off-shored, near-shored, and other hybrid operations. These jobs were not "high school student" but rather good salary IT jobs (i.e. learn to code).

Any remote job is at danger of having done in a place with lower labor costs. Those who think that it only applies to low level jobs are fooling themselves - it started there but has consistently been moving up the skills chain.

I would not be surprised to see this include currently very high paid positions (e.g. some doctors) - anything for which latency (due to speed of light limitations) isn't a limiting factor.

If I were 20 knowing what I know now and what I see coming, I would personally only look for skills that require on-site or local presence. (ETA: Fixed grammar. )

Signed,
Computer Science Professor

Yea, I didn't respond to DAK2018's comment about "high school student", but it is way way off the mark. The "high school student" jobs are the ones that are not off-shoreable, they face-to-face and hands-on service jobs.

Jobs that analyze, manage, or handle data are easily off-shoreable. Engineering design, accounting and finance, a lot of science jobs, and a lot of medical data/science jobs are vulnerable.

I worked for a very large global megacorp and we opened large engineering offices in India many years ago. In the 20th century this work was done in the USA.