The future of work (from home)

[pip]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Yet somehow mass transit systems are expected to defy gravity and keep rolling along with no passengers.

At one end you have the “I want the transit system to keep running, even though I never use it” idealists, and at the other end: cold, hard reality—both are on a pretty big time collision course.

If what you say is true, your practice in the the burbs and you live there too. Ok no issues. So put your money where your mouth is and move to the city and have your practice downtown and take transit. Why the different expectations?

[dave8721]

I was sort of hybrid before (1 or 2 days a week wfh, and a lot of after hours wfh before anyway) now full wfh for who knows how long. The only part I miss about going into the office is the fact that it got me out of the house, not snacking...etc. Basically the health benefits. In theory I could exercise whenever I want now, I have a treadmill and peloton right behind me as I type this (my wifes) but no, I am sitting on the computer as usual. I did get a stand up desk at least.
I absolutely do not miss the commutes and the hassles of work/home life balance and how do we get the kids today, oh no a kid is sick today...what do we do with them...etc.
It has definitely been an adjustment. On one hand its easier to work (software, coding...etc) without people yapping all around me. I've never been good at concentrating in distracting environments. On the other hand, its way easier troubleshooting stuff with another person when they are physically right in front of you without all the hassle of sharing screens back and forth and stuff like that.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

however, with two young kids and all of the unrelenting bullshit of remote "learning" over the past 2 years, the notion of going back to a rigid 9-5 M-F office job now seems a little absurd.

if i had some level of confidence that remote "learning" was now officially in our rearview mirror, i'd start looking for a conventional "real" job outside the home, but with the way all of this stupid covid BS keeps creeping back at us every. single. fucking. time. i think it's "over", i feel sorta stuck in this in-between limbo.

Did anywhere go back to remote learning? I mean pretty much the only places that did it at all this year that I know of were Chicago and NYC. Didn't NY's new mayor make it pretty clear there not going to remote any more. I mean like 99% of the US went full time back to school like 1.5 years ago.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by dave8721

Did anywhere go back to remote learning? I mean pretty much the only places that did it at all this year that I know of were Chicago and NYC. Didn't NY's new mayor make it pretty clear there not going to remote any more. I mean like 99% of the US went full time back to school like 1.5 years ago.

New York hasn't had remote-only learning since last winter. I believe they did offer a remote option after so many kids did not return after the Christmas break.

Detroit schools went 100% remote following the Christmas break, and only just returned to in-person last week.

[SteveD]

I'm a Civil Engineer, but I work in a non-traditional field. I do commercial real estate Property Condition Assessments. I travel constantly, all over the country, visiting job sites, then returning to my home office to write the PCA reports about them. I've been working for myself since 2004. Prior to that, I had two decades of going in to an office working for other engineering companies.

COVID didn't change anything for me. There was a brief period right at the beginning of things, back in the Spring of 2020, when all the work stopped, and I was twiddling my thumbs for a couple months, but around summertime, in the June/July 2020 timeframe, the worked picked right back up and I've been non-stop busy since then.

I've got a flight to Kansas City this afternoon for a job site visit there tomorrow.

I never really enjoyed my work until I got to the point where I could work for myself. When I was working for other companies, I was always promoted into management, which I hated.

[hipster duck]

I joined my current company in summer 2020, so I've only worked with them since the pandemic began. We're currently all WFH, but we had the opportunity to go back into the office in the summer and fall. The procedures were strict: you had to sign an attestation form and take a picture of a negative rapid test that you took prior to each entry; you also had to book a hotdesk from an approved list of desks that were spaced apart. Once inside the office, you had to wear a mask everywhere except your desk and the lunchroom.

Despite this, I was very happy to go into work. I'm much more productive in an in-person office environment. I remember my coworker and I solved a problem on the whiteboard in 5 minutes that had been plaguing her for weeks. It was also refreshing to just have casual, over-the-shoulder conversations and to show results as I worked, rather than to have those brutal online meetings where everybody and their uncle is invited to solve a simple task.

On the other hand, I did appreciate the flexibility of a WFH environment. I have a toddler and we have another child on the way, so I basically have no personal time, and very little time to do many household errands. It was kind of refreshing, especially in the summer, to set my status to "busy", cancel any non-essential meetings and blow off work for hours to go on a bike ride, or cook dinner. My impression about WFH is that productivity is way down, but the essential things are still completed so managers look the other way. I have direct reports and I basically insinuated to them that I didn't care when they worked as long as they got their tasks done and didn't miss meetings scheduled by someone higher than me.

So, it's been a double-edged sword: on one hand, I think we have a more honest appraisal of work-life balance and a realization by a lot of people that we don't need to waste time in an office doing pointless busy work, but at the same time there's a realization that an office environment wasn't just the drudgery of a commute - it was a special place with camaraderie and a more collaborative environment in which to do work.

When things all go back to normal, my hope is that I work in the office three days a week, during which I'll get most of my work out of the way, and my WFH days are ones where I just answer Teams messages on my phone from wherever I happen to be.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by pip

If what you say is true, your practice in the the burbs and you live there too. Ok no issues. So put your money where your mouth is and move to the city and have your practice downtown and take transit. Why the different expectations?

^ Really just sidetracking the topic, and there is just so ignorance in this post that I won't even bother.

Point is, for a traditional downtown with centralized office employment to thrive, it needs people to arrive by train in large numbers.

When we abandon that, then we abandon it all. We don't have our cake and eat it to.

We can't have trains sit empty yet still run them at 5 minute headways at rush hour both directions forever without farebox revenue to support it. And what about the businesses downtown that have depended on foot traffic?

I am fine with ending that arrangement if you are. But then don't complain if downtowns become something different or less important than what you or many here have long celebrated them for being. And nobody should complain if plans to close stations or entire train lines begin to get discussed seriously--because it will happen.

[twister244]

I went fully remote in 2020 haven't looked back. My company is tech and has no intention to haul people back into any of our offices. I work with folks everywhere across the country. I hate working from home though, even though I enjoy working remotely. My remedy to this is I got a WeWork global access pass so I always have a place to go work and be around people regardless of whatever city I am in.

[MolsonExport]

I am back at the office nearly 100% of the time. I work in Academia, and a lot of what I do can be done remotely (witness virtual talks that I have given at conferences in about a dozen countries since covid has started, plus virtual seminars/lectures, a trillion or so virtual meetings, supervising grad students, editormanship and peer review article submission appraisals). But out of choice, I am now back at my office. I much prefer having some semblance of separation from worklife and homelife (especially after having my two kids doing remote learning for much of the past two years). I am also just more efficient in my office. We are finally back to in-person classes, however the absenteeism from students is skyhigh given their need to pre-screen before coming to class (any symptoms of any sort basically preclude them from campus).

working from home meant less productivity despite working longer hours. And the stress of having no work-life separation.

[mhays]

I find work/home separation easy despite full-time WFH (freelance consulting). I simply close my work laptop around 5:00 most days. I'll check for late emails etc. on my phone at some point.

The effects on transit demand and downtowns feel like another topic vs. most of this conversation. However I'll dive into that a little.

Based on limited data so far, it appears that the office market might be ok in the short term, as hybrid work modes can also mean spreading out fewer people in the same spaces. But what if they eventually tighten to the old worker densities again? Either way, downtowns might never have the same crush of office worker pedestrians/customers.

Transit lines that used to run Downtown every 6 minutes at rush hour and every 10 otherwise might find they're ok with 7-8 and 10. Rush hour will still be busy, just not as much. I've seen suggestions of 70% onsite per day vs. 90% before including PTO, which is a big drop what about the students, service workers, blue collars, etc.? We might be talking about a 5-10% drop in overall commuting.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I am back at the office nearly 100% of the time. I work in Academia, and a lot of what I do can be done remotely (witness virtual talks that I have given at conferences in about a dozen countries since covid has started, plus virtual seminars/lectures, a trillion or so virtual meetings, supervising grad students, editormanship and peer review article submission appraisals). But out of choice, I am now back at my office. I much prefer having some semblance of separation from worklife and homelife (especially after having my two kids doing remote learning for much of the past two years). I am also just more efficient in my office. We are finally back to in-person classes, however the absenteeism from students is skyhigh given their need to pre-screen before coming to class (any symptoms of any sort basically preclude them from campus).

working from home meant less productivity despite working longer hours. And the stress of having no work-life separation.

OMG giving virtual talks is the worst, I hate it. Like nobody is paying attention and you miss out on all the fun parts of going somewhere to give a colloquium or go to a conference.

[C.]

It's really going to be exciting seeing how all this plays out. I think the super commuter via plane or high speed rail will be as popular as ever. I know folks that have to be in the office 4 days a month (two days a pay period) when things return to normal. Their plan is to live in Philly or another city with lower cost of living and commute into DC, NYC, etc by train, plane, or busses when they have to. It will be interesting to see if these ideas pan out for the long term. It's going to change the character of a lot of cities.

[dchan]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

OMG giving virtual talks is the worst, I hate it. Like nobody is paying attention and you miss out on all the fun parts of going somewhere to give a colloquium or go to a conference.

Yeah, the virtual lectures and conferences were fun at the beginning of the pandemic because they were something new for me. Previously, I had been attending plenty of conferences related to Passive House and energy efficient building design in-person. Each in-person event felt substantial and unique, and you (mostly) paid attention to speakers because they engaged with the audience better. Plus, attendees didn't dick around as much because they either paid admission to attend, or the talk was free but the attendee still spent time, money, and effort to physically get there.

Since e-lectures or e-training on Zoom became widespread, it seems like we get events almost every day of the week. It's become too much. Plus, only maybe 1/5 speakers have a cogent and informative speaking style while presenting a carefully planned lecture. The majority of others slog through their presentations, often without the self-awareness that the audience doesn't care that much about the hordes of data points and other minutiae. And you might get a couple of speakers who are just downright terrible in any setting.

As a result, I often come into most lectures semi-interested and eager to learn more, but often lose interest within 5-10 minutes. They become repetitive after a while, and sitting through them starts to feel like a chore.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by C.

It's really going to be exciting seeing how all this plays out. I think the super commuter via plane or high speed rail will be as popular as ever. I know folks that have to be in the office 4 days a month (two days a pay period) when things return to normal. Their plan is to live in Philly or another city with lower cost of living and commute into DC, NYC, etc by train, plane, or busses when they have to. It will be interesting to see if these ideas pan out for the long term. It's going to change the character of a lot of cities.

If you only have to be in Manhattan (or DC) once a week, then you can easily do that while living in Philly and not even have to stay overnight in NYC (or DC). You may also be able to do that from Sacramento if your job is in the Bay Area. Boston and Seattle are the only other very high income cities where this would make sense, but neither seem to have a large lower cost city nearby to make this feasible.

I know of people who do things like commute into the Bay Area for a week per month and eat the cost of airfare and hotels. That's wild to me.

[mhays]

It doesn't have to be another big city. How about a smaller city that's a little outside of your daily commute range?

It still sounds like hell to have to travel 100 miles twice a week, but some people are doing it.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mhays

It doesn't have to be another big city. How about a smaller city that's a little outside of your daily commute range?

It still sounds like hell to have to travel 100 miles twice a week, but some people are doing it.

If the city is too small then those higher income people would just quickly drive up the cost of living. Philadelphia is kind of perfect for being large in its own right, substantially cheaper than NYC and DC, and very easy to get to NY or DC by rail. It's not ideal for a daily commute, but it's pretty easy to do single day trips to NY or DC from Philly.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

OMG giving virtual talks is the worst, I hate it. Like nobody is paying attention and you miss out on all the fun parts of going somewhere to give a colloquium or go to a conference.

word. The worst parts of a conference without any of the compensating amazing parts. Academic travel is by far, the best perk of the high pressure, research intensive academic position that I have (I hold an endowed research chair, which is great, but I've got to produce...).

[pip]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Really just sidetracking the topic, and there is just so ignorance in this post that I won't even bother.

Point is, for a traditional downtown with centralized office employment to thrive, it needs people to arrive by train in large numbers.

When we abandon that, then we abandon it all. We don't have our cake and eat it to.

We can't have trains sit empty yet still run them at 5 minute headways at rush hour both directions forever without farebox revenue to support it. And what about the businesses downtown that have depended on foot traffic?

I am fine with ending that arrangement if you are. But then don't complain if downtowns become something different or less important than what you or many here have long celebrated them for being. And nobody should complain if plans to close stations or entire train lines begin to get discussed seriously--because it will happen.

I said I enjoyed working from home and gave the reasons why. You went on about me wanting trains running frequently. I never mentioned one thing about trains running frequently, the only I said was I don't miss the over crowded trains for my commute. My life my choice and what I prefer is up to me not you.

Also you are "Do as I say but not as I do"

[Trae]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

OMG giving virtual talks is the worst, I hate it. Like nobody is paying attention and you miss out on all the fun parts of going somewhere to give a colloquium or go to a conference.

I miss this the most. Once I got my first promotion my position was one that had frequent travel throughout the western US with the occasional trip cross country. I would add a couple days of PTO on either end and just check places out. Only thing out of my pocket was hotel and food on those extra days off otherwise all paid for. They would just tell us not to go over a certain price point on concur which meant find the nicest hotel up to that price lol. That was so much fun.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

word. The worst parts of a conference without any of the compensating amazing parts. Academic travel is by far, the best perk of the high pressure, research intensive academic position that I have (I hold an endowed research chair, which is great, but I've got to produce...).

I'm sure you've brought it up, but where is your researched focused without doxxing yourself?