Remote work - still good?

Denverdave

Denverdave

Resident Ragamuffin
I have been reading a lot of articles in the past few months about the backlash against remote workers and allowing remote work. A lot of major cities have over 20% vacancy rates in office space. Some CEOs who promised workers their jobs would be 100% remote (and some of the workers relocated to cheaper cities) are reneging on those promises.

While I realize there are a lot of jobs where remote work is not possible/practical, for others it is a very viable choice.

I have working fully remote since the beginning of Covid. The company I was with then sent the workers home (except about a dozen that had to be in the building). A couple months later my job was outsourced and I got hired by a new company. My 'office' if I had one would be in Lakeland FL. That is a heck of a commute from Colorado. 80% of the employees I work closest with are not in FL either, they are all over the country. It works for us quite well. Since my job is supporting cloud software, working out of an office is completely unnecessary. At this point I would be very hesitant to ever work a 100% in office job unless it was that or not eating. A hybrid setup might be acceptable, but the flexibility remote work give me far outweighs any 'benefit' in office works would. It is way easier to 'get to work' at 7AM. I'm not using gas driving to and from work. Working late can happen any night just about, and will not effect my family time.

So - if you work remote - is it still working for you? Is your company happy with the remote worker situation at your company? Any changes to that planned?
 
My company has backed off quite a bit from the pro-remote fever of a couple years ago. Currently I have only been WFH on alternate Fridays (and the other Fridays are days off).
 
Hell yes, it's awesome and I have nearly zero interest in going back to the office on any regular cadence.

We're operating under an absence of direction; "do whatever works best for your team and individuals" is the current undocumented state of the situation.
 
we are both. completely depending on people's life schedules.
i'm at 100% in office and have been for a couple years. well, except for field work, obviously.
my co-worker (10 feet away) is in office 2-3 days a week and WFH the others. she has a 13 y.o. at home, off school for the summer, so she needs to be home for that several days a week.
the rest of us are in and out. mostly in.....but WFH when needed.
except for field work, i'm only working on one project at a time based in this office. most of my work is on projects all over the country. we're all 'servered' together, all over the world.

also, my "commute" is a whole half mile. so WFH or in office, it doesn't matter.
 
My wife's firm seems largely indifferent to it (huge global financial firm) where pretty much most work can be done remotely.

They were hot desking before COVID so it wasn't like they had a designated office space beforehand in the first place - often times my wife would turn up and her building would be full so she'd end up in a completely different location across town.

They did ask people to go into the office two days a week about a year or so ago to "help morale and get new staff into the company ethos" or other such blue sky mouth foaming but they had a booking system and unless you went to the trouble of working out where there was enough space for everyone to sit together, they all ended up sitting on different floors etc... any way so according to my wife it's not very closely observed.

She likes it just fine. I'm not sure if having the dog makes a difference.
 
I go in once a week to go to the pub :embarrassed: They asked us a couple of months ago to up our twice a month minumum in the office to 4 times a month. Went down like a bag of cat sick. Personally I don't find it a big ask but a lot of people have gotten _very_ used to be remote and as mentiobed several have moved house based on that. I can't see office jobs ever going back to fully onsite. Even the big finanacial corporates who are leading the charge back in will give up eventually when they lose enough talent because of it (or when they have divested themselves of their commerical real estate portfolios).

One thing though, now that I've been doing this for over 3 years I do find motiviation can be a problem. Some days its hard to be bothered and being at home makes that very easy. But it hardly inspires me to back to the office. :shrug:
 
My department kept to the rule of twice a week for being in office. We support our products and cannot be 100% remote at all times in order to provide adequate support for the North America region of a global company. It is easier to be in front of our product samples for product support or at least have a team mate in office to assist when needed so we do stagger our days in the office.

Other teams went to either 100% or one day a week in office until recently. Recently the higher ups are requesting twice a week for team building, comradery and cohesiveness. Some are objecting and are looking for other opportunities. FWIW, it is very difficult to train in my field completely remote. New hires need to have product in hand and have communications with others to be productive.
 
I was mostly remote during the pandemic, but I have been pretty much back to office everyday for the last year or so. They were doing a hybrid of 2-3 days a week onsite, but now they want us here at least 4 days/week to promote more collaboration. There have been some occasions where meeting face-to-face in a room and charting things out on a white board has been really useful to push some development along, but mostly I could do what I am doing in my office at work just as easily from home. I only live 10 minutes away, so it's not a big deal for me one way or the other.
 
I worked remote for 7 years. Only the last 2 were during Covid. The job I’m at now, I go into the office everyday but I don’t have to. I can work from home if I want. The reason I go in, is a) the office is 2 miles from my house and b) when I worked from home, it was hard for me to separate from work. I’d get bored in the evening and run downstairs and work. Now, I only work when I’m in the office and it’s given me better balance. I’m going to start working from home a little after we finish this big audit we’re about to go through and depending on my living situation, may go back to 100% from home some time next year.
 
The only remote workers we have are marketing and they've always been remote. No one else can do their job remotely. I probably could 80% of the time with the occasional drive in to meet a vendor or something.
If I worked remotely I'd never get anything done. I have 3 kids on summer vacation right now.
 
Modern Saint said:
My department kept to the rule of twice a week for being in office. We support our products and cannot be 100% remote at all times in order to provide adequate support for the North America region of a global company. It is easier to be in front of our product samples for product support or at least have a team mate in office to assist when needed so we do stagger our days in the office.

Other teams went to either 100% or one day a week in office until recently. Recently the higher ups are requesting twice a week for team building, comradery and cohesiveness. Some are objecting and are looking for other opportunities. FWIW, it is very difficult to train in my field completely remote. New hires need to have product in hand and have communications with others to be productive.
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I find the team building excuse a bunch of BS. Since I’ve gone back to working in an office, I haven’t noticed better cohesiveness, I’ve notice more resentment when people see how little some people work. My last job the entire company was remote and we had much better cohesiveness than some of my team at this job do.
 
MonkeyZero said:
The only remote workers we have are marketing and they've always been remote. No one else can do their job remotely. I probably could 80% of the time with the occasional drive in to meet a vendor or something.
If I worked remotely I'd never get anything done. I have 3 kids on summer vacation right now.
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I only have one kid at home, and she is 14. Meaning she wants as little non-necessary adult interaction as possible, so that is not a problem.
 
Chad said:
I find the team building excuse a bunch of BS. Since I’ve gone back to working in an office, I haven’t noticed better cohesiveness, I’ve notice more resentment when people see how little some people work. My last job the entire company was remote and we had much better cohesiveness than some of my team at this job do.
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Agreed - depending on what your job actually is. No teambuilding activity I have ever done has actually brought teams closer together. In fact the company I worked at that did this the most had the most rigid silos among the staff of any place I have worked.
 
MonkeyZero said:
The only remote workers we have are marketing and they've always been remote. No one else can do their job remotely. I probably could 80% of the time with the occasional drive in to meet a vendor or something.
If I worked remotely I'd never get anything done. I have 3 kids on summer vacation right now.
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When I was working from home, the kids/wife were tough at first. They’d see dad home and think he’s just goofing off. But after a few months they knew that when I was in my office, I was working.
 
My husband is a partner in a law firm that went almost 100% remote work during COVID. Over the last six months most of the partners and associates decided that they weren’t getting enough work done at home and started going back to the office voluntarily. But lots of other businesses in Denver are still fully remote so they’re going to move to a nicer, bigger office that won’t cost more because West Denver is full of shiny new office buildings that nobody ever moved into.
 
Chad said:
I find the team building excuse a bunch of BS. Since I’ve gone back to working in an office, I haven’t noticed better cohesiveness, I’ve notice more resentment when people see how little some people work. My last job the entire company was remote and we had much better cohesiveness than some of my team at this job do.
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Depends on the team. Worked for ours since we have so much product training and cross product support. For our team, we don't have as many silos. Unsure about other teams as I can only speak for Tech Product Support as we support each other. This way no one is thrown under the bus and we all support each other.
 
I'm enjoying being back on campus because it works better for teaching than remote learning does even though I've been doing that for years. My wife has been 100% remote since the beginning of the pandemic and her new job is HQ'd in Maryland so she might "go into the office" once or twice a year. She loves the remote working but I think would enjoy just a little bit of in person interaction on rare occasions. It works for some jobs and not for others.
 
I've been working remotely for 12 years and most of that time has been spent in a different state from my company's office. I've clearly demonstrated that it can work for my role, but I know they've pulled some other workers back into the office for at least a few days a week.
 
Our official motto right now is "Work from Work" SF

There are still people working remote if it suits them and the work they do.
 
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