I guess this is a correct community to post about this? If not let me know.
My company finally is asking politely that we have to go to the office twice a week. Or else. That else is not yet defined, but obviously there will be consequences of not going to the office.
I have been at this company for 15 years, from junior dev to manager.
I did a daily commute of about 40 mins in the morning, 40 to an hour back, never gave a second thought about that. That was normal.
After pandemics, I found out all I have been missing on my kids growing up. My second kid is much more attached to me since she saw me daily, even if I was in my office room at home, she got to see me more often.
So I found out how much my life improved by doing working at home. Hell in the middle of this sentence my kid just showed me some thing she drew.
I stood my ground, I basically politely told HR that I am not going back. And actually my reasons make sense, I work with people in other countries, they don’t care where I am.
And it will affect my performance, driving to the office, moving all my equipment, and having people around trying to talk to me will take a toll.
So yeah, I am polishing my resume, because there is no turning back now. I will be shunted if I ask for a raise, they can easily say “hey but you are not coming to the office, how come you want a raise if you are not part of the team”, never mind that I do everything that is expected and more.
Just off my chest I guess, and anxious about the future.
My last job tried to do this. They didn’t even have enough desks for everyone. My entire team said “no thanks” and several people quit and they backtracked real fast. Now their stock is worth $2 when it used to be $40 a year ago lol
Just look for other jobs if you are standing your ground. Sometimes it takes a few losing a few people for them to realize they fucked up
Lol, served them well. This kind of story should be published more, to warn other companies from doing the same mistake.
Just tell them “so you’re telling me I should be looking for another job then?” 😂
You should definitely stop doing “more”, also.
That was a figure of speech haha.
I am old and experienced enough to work exactly the hours I am paid. I give my 100% on those hours, I am all in, and I always push back when they try to sneak a meet after my EOD, try to get some extra hours from me and so on.
Once it is clearly proven you can work remotely, a commute to the office should be viewed as a site visit with the travel time being on the clock and travel costs reimbursed. If they do that, then yeah sure I’ll listen to podcasts for an hour a day, anything else should be looked at as the pay cut it actually is. ((Travel time x hourly wage)+travel costs).
Yeah I thought about this, we (or I) never considered all the time wasted in commute.
In that case I should leave at 9 am, and return around 4:20 since I make 40 mins commute.
Either that or get paid the extra time, which honestly I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Or compensate it yourself. I have to come in the office twice a week, but I have to meet actual customers, so that’s fair. However, friday afternoon drinks start at 3 (until 8 or 9 usually), so that hansomly compensates for my 1 hour to and 1 hour back for that day. The other day’s commute I’ll compensate by starting late when I work from home. My employer doesn’t care about my hours as long as the work gets done.
This, for me, it’s essentially as good as it gets in the current landscape.
This might not be an answer but my worked also requested us come in 2 days a week. So I ride my bike in around 11am and back home about 1pm. WFH the rest of the hours. I’m all about malicious compliance.
I do this too and I actually like this arrangement. I can take a break in the day and bike or walk into work. Hang out for an hour or two and leave. That’s really the gain of going back to office; hanging out with your colleagues. I’m more productive at home.
Malicious compliance 😂
Heh heh.
My boss insisted that I come in for our 1:1s. 20 minutes later, I’m joining the standup remotely from home. He was like whoa man. I politely explained that I’m working where I can be most productive.
Things you never hear people say ‘I’m looking forward to a long commute and spending all day in an office’.
Why is this even a discussion point?Working from home has been such a game changer. It’s better for family life, it’s better for the environment, it’s efficient. Much of the anxiety around homeworking is the suspicion that people work less. The fact is, if your job sucks you are not doing it wherever it happens to be.
My commute to work is a 8 minute walk. I used to drive 30 minutes one way and was so exhausted after driving I would fall asleep after getting home.
Removing the commute time and mental demand from driving and replacing it with a walk home where I can unpack my thoughts has massively improved my personal life. I’m really lucky, the pay is bad for my position but the alternative is a 10k pay increase with 60-90 minutes driving a day (plus CA gas).
I manage people that make the same or slightly more than me, but they drive 30-60 min one way, so in the end I’m benefiting more.
Long drives can be extremely stressful, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not. My last job was extremely stressful but one thing that wasn’t adding to that was the ten minute bike ride each way. I never had to worry about traffic and being late because it was always ten minutes. Commuting is often under-rated as a quality of life factor. I think the most stress inducing bicycle commute by far was the day I ran over a squirrel.
What you will hear people say is that they’re happy to get out of the house, and see people in real life instead of through a screen.
I was negotiating the number of days down to one, coming from 3 in the proposal, for my entire team until 1 guy said he didn’t mind coming in more often. During the negotiations. With the boss. They clocked it at 2 days. They kept circling back to the guy saying there clearly are people who want to come in more often. I coulda slapped him then and there. WFH is optional. He could have come in any day he wanted, 5 days or whatever, he just didn’t want to sit there alone.
Oh, if he were on my team, “alone” would be the least of his worries.
Exactly. We want to decide when it is appropriate to attend the office. I personally dislike video con meetings, there is something about being in the company of people that improves communication and promotes a sense of well-being. On the other hand, the price of meeting people in person is feeling completely exhausted from waking at 5am and coming home at 8pm. That’s sustainable and actually desirable one day a week but there’s no way I could do this every day without making myself miserable. I count my blessings that I’m in a position to make this choice.
Be extremely anxious. These companies are looking for those that bend the knee. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been with them one year or fourty. If they find a reason to make you the example they will certainly do it especially if you’re in the tech sector.
I applaud you standing your ground but my advice is to actually find a job or two that suites your situation and apply to it. Having options and offers is better.
The upper management at my work is pushing for 3 days a week, but as of now it’s completely optional. They keep acting like hybrid work is the best of both worlds, but I honestly feel like hybrid work is the worst of both worlds. Moving all of my equipment is so disruptive to my workflow. And now I get all of the drawbacks of needing to commute with the added drawback of needed to move all of my equipment every day that I go in. My laptop will die if it isn’t plugged in for 2 hours, even when asleep, so if I just leave it in my backpack between work days that I go into the office, it will die and I will need to re-open all my applications, which is very time consuming with how slow my laptop is.
My manager decided that our team will have one weekly optional in-office day, so for those of us who want to come in, we can on the same day others want to. We all have lunch together on those days, and we usually leave early - around 3:30 PM. It has actually been really nice to see people’s faces. It’s just understood that we hardly get any actual work done those days, and it’s more for “”“team building”“”
You need to stop using sleep mode and start using hibernation.
Sleep uses the battery, hibernation turns everything off, but saves what you had open, etc to the hard drive. Just like sleep but no battery loss, will take a few more seconds to start back up.
If it’s at a medium to large company, IT policies control everything and you don’t get much control over your work device. This is a good tip, if it’s possible. My work prevents it so that they can push updates when they want to.
Recently, they took over browser settings so I couldn’t save passwords but so far I just work around that by manually adjusting the saved pw on a personal device.
IT can bug me, but they also have my empathy for the average employee they’re trying to protect the company from.
For most users it’s just isn’t checked in power settings as an option for the power menu.
But Group Policy can disable it, but I was able to get around that and re-enable it, in regedit. Luckily they don’t seem to repush the GP often, or maybe it’s an image setting that was only set during initial imaging.
Can’t regedit without admin privs though :c
Moving equipment is one of my main issues, only second to commuting.
We don’t have fixed desks, we have to sign up in an app and choose an available space.
So I can’t have my desk the way I want, which is very specific as I have my keyboard, mouse, second keyboard, and also 2 external monitors, in the office there is only 1.
And yeah, if I have to, I would accept like going once every 2 weeks, on a friday, with the assumption that it is going to be a slow day for me and my client should be notified of this.
What is that called again, hotdesk? Abso fucking lute nightmare. It’s like taking an open office and making it even shittier. It’s a net NEGATIVE on CuLtUrE, since it makes everyone feel like they don’t have their own place in the office to be comfy with coworkers.
There are two reasons they want people back in the office: control and real estate. Managers maintain power by controlling and manipulating people. That’s harder to do if you’re not present. Corporations have huge investments in real estate and don’t want to see these drop in value. None of these reasons convey any benefit to the employee.
Good on you for quitting.
I would HIGHLY advise though, ensuring you have another job lined up before quitting. Lined up as in, you have the paperwork signed. It’s common these days to go months without any work. I’ve been at it for a few years myself, and I’m a tech lead.
You’ve been looking for work for a few years as a tech lead?
Yup, but I’m switching things up. (just check my casual conversations post I just posted).
We need to start a remote workers union.
You did the right thing my dude. If it makes you feel any better, today I left from work 30 minutes earlier to get my children from day care, a thing I have agreed with my manager to do during this month because I have no one else to do it and he agreed since I have a lot of overtime owed to me. The thing is that today the GM and the SM of the organization were here and I was in the meeting room with them. When the time came I just said, “well If you excuse me, I have to go get the kids”, shaked hands with the GM and left. I remember everyone in the room looking at me the way you would imagine. Anyway. We have good unions in my country and it was all legal. I’m giving 100% everyday, not an inch higher. Apparently, I might not be promotion melaterial, but my kids are on top of everything else and worth every second I can spare for them.
I’m on the otherside of the coin. I was remote like many during covid then recently took a job where I have a 40min commute 2 days a week. I wasn’t happy about that to start and thought I wanted full time remote. I’m 4 months in now and I love it. To me it feels like the best of both worlds. My drive isn’t a hard 40 min and I get through podcasts and calls to friends/family. I just bring my laptop and dock at home or office which is easy. It has been great seeing and meeting people. I try to structure my days so I get meetings in person and focus work done on WFH days. Not for everyone but some, like me, might be surprised that they like a blend more than they think.
Remote definitely is not for everyone! I would just like the freedom to come and go as I choose, but I guess that’s not economical from an overhead perspective.
I found it pretty economical. I’ve run drop-in visitor desks for my teams, and the math is pretty simple. Fewer desks costs the organization less money.
I suspect that the economics troubles are when the boss’ brother-in-law’s office rental agreement doesn’t get renewed next year.
If you used to meet people in person at the office, be prepared for a fight. But I personally think a reasonable company should allow you to go full remote. My company and did and my team is all on site.
That being said you’re doing the right thing. Look for another job that will let you go full remote. You have the experience, now shop your talent around. Who knows you might also get a nice pay raise as well.
They are only hurting themselves. Remote workers are more productive and they are going to lose you to a remote company. The only people wanting to go back are those who waste time at the water cooler and had no life of their own.
Good for you! Children are only children once, jobs will always be jobs. I definitely am not going back to the office & will freelance if I have to. (software)
