Work in office or remote?

What kind of position do you prefer?

  • Work in office

    Votes: 8 17.4%

  • Work remote

    Votes: 17 37.0%

  • Hybrid office (more office., some remote)

    Votes: 8 17.4%

  • Hybrid remote (more remote, some office)

    Votes: 15 32.6%

  • Other (specify in comments)

    Votes: 1 2.2%
  • Total voters
    46
…and another common sense, obvious at the time myth proves true in retrospect….🤷🏽‍♂️😂😂😂

The working-from-home illusion fades

It is not more productive than being in an office, after all

gradual reverse migration is under way, from Zoom to the conference room. Wall Street firms have been among the most forceful in summoning workers to their offices, but in recent months even many tech titans—Apple, Google, Meta and more—have demanded staff show up to the office at least three days a week. For work-from-home believers, it looks like the revenge of corporate curmudgeons. Didn’t a spate of studies during the covid-19 pandemic demonstrate that remote work was often more productive than toiling in the office?

Unfortunately for the believers, new research mostly runs counter to this, showing that offices, for all their flaws, remain essential. A good starting point is a working paper that received much attention when it was published in 2020 by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, then both doctoral students at Harvard University. They found an 8% increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer that had shifted from offices to homes. Far less noticed was a revised version of their paper, published in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The boost to efficiency had instead become a 4% decline.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/06/28/the-working-from-home-delusion-fades
 
It really does depend on the employee, position and type of work.

I'm probably working way more off hours than before but meetings are more productive because I can multi-task better on a remote call than when having to meet in person. It also makes calls with outsiders easier because share-screens are more helpful since it's now the norm rather than the exception.

From the people I talk to whose companies have gone largely remote, the cost savings in office space alone has allowed them to hire more people which really helped their workflows.

If I had a business like morekaos, an office location would be required because that type of clientele does like face-to-face but a large percentage can really be fully remote.
 
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irvinehomeowner said:
It really does depend on the employee, position and type of work.

I'm probably working way more off hours than before but meetings are more productive because I can multi-task better on a remote call than than when having to meet in person. It also makes calls with outsiders easier because share-screens are more helpful since it's now the norm rather than the exception.

From the people I talk to whose companies have gone largely remote, the cost savings in office space alone has allowed them to hire more people which really helped their workflows.

If I had a business like morekaos, an office location would be required because that type of clientele does like face-to-face but a large percentage can really be fully remote.
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The fact that big companies are reverting to hybrid/back to office means that either (1) there is no cost savings in office space OR (2) the inefficiency of remote isn't worth the costs savings in office space.
 
Big companies are run by old schoolers... of course they want behinds in the seats.

This was a struggle with our leadership... until they downsized their HQ office and realized how much that saved them.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
Big companies are run by old schoolers... of course they want behinds in the seats.

This was a struggle with our leadership... until they downsized their HQ office and realized how much that saved them.
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Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, (wow, that spelled MAGA) etc., disagree with you. These companies are out there to make money, so if the so-called cost savings in office space were worth it, they would have kept doing it. They pretty much said it, remote was not efficient.
 
Well... I consider those MEGA companies.

Companies with 2000 or less employees still have remote (according to who I talk to), but again... not all employees.

And companies like Meta aren't asking everyone to come back in, they have shrunk some office space, remote workers designated as remote can stay remote and others are going hybrid.

Anything tech or software related is going to have some percentage for remote... if for anything just the contactors and offshore/nearshore workers.

Don't be jelly. :)
 
I've been in the office 2x, 3 hours each this year. I tell those under me they have the option to go in or not, nothing mandatory. My direct manager has been in maybe 5-6x this year. I'm online longer working from home than when I was in the office.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
Well... I consider those MEGA companies.

Companies with 2000 or less employees still have remote (according to who I talk to), but again... not all employees.

And companies like Meta aren't asking everyone to come back in, they have shrunk some office space, remote workers designated as remote can stay remote and others are going hybrid.

Anything tech or software related is going to have some percentage for remote... if for anything just the contactors and offshore/nearshore workers.

Don't be jelly. :)
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I work in tech and we've been back in the office, full time, not hybrid, since 2021.

And for the record, I'm not even one bit jelly. I WANT to get back to the office, so I could get 50% off lunch/dinner AND my wife's dinner PLUS my son's lunch and dinner when he's home from college. My wife works from home twice a week, but otherwise she has long commute so it's difficult for her to cook. Did I mention free Starbucks coffee and 50% off pastry? 😂
 
Nice, great perks right there!

I know a lot of people who choose to go in without any of those perks, can’t be productive at home, kids, wife, even single folks.

Friend of mine goes in specifically for the gym, sometimes not even bothering going in the office for work. Lol

I haven’t had to go in before Covid, before kids, for almost 2 decades, and I feel like I can adapt and be productive either ways but always prefer to have the option.
 
Just because you're at work... doesn't mean you are "working".

At least remote, you don't waste time commuting, dressing for work, or chatting at the water cooler.

I don't think anyone can say remote or in office is the most productive because of the factors I mentioned above.

I do think remote is better for life balance but that's my opiniion.
 
I go to the office voluntarily but it doesn’t hurt I get free food, coffee, snacks and massages.

However I keep finding myself on teams from the bay area. I will maintain the idea that despite the friction of being “remote”, distributed teams are the way of the future
 
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AW said:
Nice, great perks right there!

I know a lot of people who choose to go in without any of those perks, can’t be productive at home, kids, wife, even single folks.

Friend of mine goes in specifically for the gym, sometimes not even bothering going in the office for work. Lol

I haven’t had to go in before Covid, before kids, for almost 2 decades, and I feel like I can adapt and be productive either ways but always prefer to have the option.
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I forgot to mention that we also have a gym at work, which I use every day after work. :giggle:
 
CalBears96 said:
I forgot to mention that we also have a gym at work, which I use every day after work. :giggle:
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But some companies have cut alot of perks, like Meta and the mega companies own huge campuses so remote is not saving them when they've got so many empty offices.

Free starbucks, food, gym and massages would not do it for me if I had to sit in traffic for an hour or two or added time to pick up my kids from daycare.
 
CalBears96 said:
Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, (wow, that spelled MAGA) etc., disagree with you. These companies are out there to make money, so if the so-called cost savings in office space were worth it, they would have kept doing it. They pretty much said it, remote was not efficient.
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They disagree because they spent billions of dollars in their office spaces/campuses prior to covid. Not because WFH is not efficient.

If you invested billions of dollars prior to covid in your own business, are you going to let the office space go empty? Think about it.
 
It also depends on the stage if your life. That seems to shape people’s perspectives. I think calbears kids are college bound. I have kids in elementary. If it was just me and my wife I wouldn’t care too much about going in to the office since I wouldn’t have to pick up kids, cook them dinner, take to whatever activities they are doing during the week, etc. companies are generally ran by people in their 50s whose kids are in high school. Also, the CEOs who make these decisions are generally worth millions and get paid millions so their spouses don’t work. Most of them are workaholics so being in the office isn’t an issue for them.
 
I also think remote is cheaper overall... at least for the employee.

You don't need to spend money on work clothes, dry cleaning, gas, food (for those of us not as fortunate as CalBear) and let's be honest... day care for those with younger kids.

Remote is also less mileage on our vehicles. At one point in time... we shared a car which was a huge savings in car payments and insurance.

Our dog also likes that I'm home all day too. :)
 
Of course it's cheaper for the employees, but that's the point. The point is, what is better for the employers. And based on what the big corporations are doing, remote is not better for them. That's why, as unpopular as it as been shown, they're forcing their employees back to the office, at the least in hybrid mode. Full remote is out of the question.

You keep saying that you can work just as efficiently remote. That may be true for you, and even for some of the people you talk to. However, I will bet everything I have that MOST people don't work as efficiently remote. Most people are just not self motivated by nature. Most people are satisfied with a "passing" grade. So having a chance to work remote, they will bring this "passing" grade down to the lowest limit possible.
 
my colleagues and I probably go to office once a month by choice to see each other. I end up getting nowhere close to how much I get done at home. I end up chatting with them and our lunches are longer than my lunch at home. so yes, I am more efficient at home. I would say that if there are datapoints that show one is not efficient or is slacking off while WFH they should be required to go to office for obvious reasons.
 
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