I work on SW and HW. Most of the employees are spread across 4 timezones at 8 or more sites. Working from home is just another remote office. If we can work efficiently across 8 sites, then we can work efficiently across N.
Of course, it’s not particularly efficient. I spend a good chunk of my day waiting for responses in chats. Everyone is multitasking and on different schedules. But this is true with, or without, WFH.
Same here. We have been on the verge of running out of space from time to time in recent years.
I’m a programmer too. The people I work with are scattered across the USA and Europe. Even if we were at just two locations, having meetings where some people are in person and others are remote is less efficient than if everyone is logging in separately, because having some people together tends to lead to side conversations that cut out others.
Even when we went into headquarters, the environment was loud and annoying, and people tended to have headphones on to block out distractions. We would literally use instant messages to talk to the person next to us. So doing it from home doesn’t make any real difference for us.
I’ve spoken with 2 of my kids - one an aero engineer, the other a project manager - who used to report to workplaces where they grabbed a work station in a large room on a first-come basis. Always struck me as a hellish environment, which would make it more difficult to be productive than work at home.
(Both have changed jobs. Now the one works in a clean room - essentially a Faraday cage, and the other works from home 3 days a week and half days the other 2.)
There is value in being in the office, but a lot of our people still don’t want to do it, and some I see once in a blue moon. There isn’t currently enough monitors etc if everyone did come in, and the car park would be rammed. The other office in the building seems to be mostly empty, most of the time, apart from the odd salesman making calls.
Oh god. No, no and no.
At a previous job 34 years ago, it was a 7 days a week 24 hours a day place. We had these huge Intergraph workstations and digitizing boards. No seat ever, ever went cold.
You generally had ‘your’ workstation. And the cold or flu from whomever sat at it before. this was before COVID sanitizing practices became common.
So, we where all sleep deprived and sick. Calling in sick was very, very frowned on. After all, we are all sick. Suck it up.
They went out of business. Go figure.
So started my career in GIS. My workstation now is my own personally purchased computer, in a spare bedroom that is actually my own office, no bed in here.
Talked to someone who works at a bank, and she works at home 3 days a week. Said she does not mind coming into the office the other days, though.
I know someone who is a programmer and works 100% remotely, but the circumstances there seem highly atypical (for all I know).
What you really need are statistics, not anecdotes or opinions.
I work for a small manufacturing company. Office space 99% occupied (there are a couple of employees in the sales department who work from home or offsite), running two shifts on the production floor.
Anecdotes can also be simple facts.
Programmer here. Much more effective to work from home. I can work anytime I get an idea. I can work from anywhere. Two hours of my day is not wasted. My usual hours are 6am to 2pm now. But It really doesn’t matter at all.
Got a problem? Give me a call.
My wife is an appraiser for the same county government (well she just retired) but she did need to collaborate closer with her team mates. And of course as a property appraiser you have to actually visit the properties.
Much of my job and my departments job is to support what the assessor department does and also provide information to the public.
We’ve had that stuff online for ~20 years now. But maintenance is an ongoing thing.
That’s really unfortunate.
I’ve taken several online classes as an adult, through the the community college. Mine have, to be fair, been self-paced - assigments and tests with due dates, but no specific class times. And the learning experience is VERY different. I couldn’t have done well like that at all back in my college days.
A Zoom-led class might be different, but I maintain that there is a lot to be gained by in-person classes.
Yeah. It takes a mature, self-disciplined student to do well in an online-asynchronous format, and unfortunately, a lot of less-motivated ones have the idea that these classes are “easier,” which, if they’re well-designed, they shouldn’t be.