34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

What used to be swivel in your chair and ask a colleague or going to whoever you need to speak to is now

* Send a Slack message/email and wait an arbitrary amount of time for a response.

* Organise a Skype/Teams/whatever call in a few hours time and feel guilty about it, as it feels rude to just ring someone as they could be occupied or busy.

I spend a stupid amount of time having blocked stories/tasks because I need to clarify some criteria/parts of it and the people I need to speak to are difficult to reach because they're busy/AFK.

Re: your last point:

1. That 34% would quit rather than return doesn’t mean the other 66% would prefer to, just that they might not quit over it.

2. It’s possible to employ both remote and on-site workers.

Some jobs have to be done in person, sure. But some jobs don't. Personally the extra two hours a day and reduced stress more than make up for the lack of face-to-face meeting time with my coworkers.

A friend of mine is in software sales. She doesn't need to physically be in an office ever. There are a lot of office jobs that can be done remotely.

If the work can be done outside of an office there is no reason for an employer to require it be done in an office.

It seems really weird after this last year to no respect for your employees preference on how they would like to do their work. "Hey Jim, I know you much prefer doing your job at home for reasons $x, $y, $z but I really like being able to walk over to your desk so either you come in or you're fired."

That's not saying the other 66% wants to go back to the office, only that they wouldn't quit their job over it.

And I don't think OP implied that the 66% who stated they wouldn't quit their jobs if forced to work on-site full time, be forced to work remotely. Half the people surveyed preferred a hybrid solution.

My employer is in an industry that thrived on in-person interactions (save for any field writers/photogs). They had no remote working policy prior to the pandemic for the bulk of the staff.

They have made a complete 180° change on that and acknowledged that there has been anything but a drop in productivity, and vast improvements in some areas. Remote working is going to be a first-class option going forward (at least looking that way for now). They closed two offices downtown Toronto; one at the Rogers building, and one in a heritage block on Queen E. They were landmark locations for highly visible brands centred around the city, lifestyle, society, and politics. (read: It was not a decision made lightly for the company)

Now, the company owns its own print operations and those, of course, stay on site. I'm in digital operations—we're now scattered around the GTHA. After I got sick last year I underwent a bit of a sea change in attitude: my partner and I bought a used car, packed up and moved to a beautiful heritage townhouse in a smaller, greener town from our sub-500 sq/ft shoebox-in-the-sky. I'll never move back into one of those, and rent for anything else has gone off the bloody rails.

There are a larger amount of remote opportunities than ever—I like my job and my employer, but I would consider switching if I was forced to move back into their remaining office in North York every day. As it is, I can make it in there by car in about an hour for the odd all-hands.

Also, I think the assumption that it only applies to jobs that can be done well from home is pretty much baked in already, otherwise it would be quite nonsensical to even ask.

And the phrase "full time" is also important. I very highly value the increased free time and reduced costs I've experienced over the last year, but do miss in-person meetings, casual proximity to colleagues, and social events. The ideal for me would be to work from home 2 or 3 days a week, and I'd favour that quite strongly in career decisions compared to either extreme. I doubt I'm alone in that.

What? Wouldn't you _rather_ be in a zoom call for something like that?

There is a set of SW jobs that maps well to remote - in fact, there’s huge overlap with jobs that can be successfully offshored or pushed out of house and jobs that are well suited to full-time remote. That’s been going on for two decades. The jobs that are left are not as “I can work from anywhere” as people want. Sure, you’re writing internal tools and every thing you do involves yourself and maybe one other person? Yeah.

Given the fact that forklift operators have been driving forklifts remotely during the pandemic, this is not hard to imagine at all: the present reality is that warehouses are being managed remotely. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54431056

In addition to this, there are now many companies in the warehouse robotics space, all of whom are more than happy to provide robots that automate most of the productive functions of warehouses. For example, there are automated guide vehicles (AGVs) that move inventory around the warehouse, automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) that manage inventory, store and retrieve goods on demand. In addition, there are collaborative robots or "cobots" that help the few employees you still actually need on site. Finally, there are articulated robot arms that pick, pack and palletize goods. Almost all of these can managed and operated remotely, all at a lower total cost than purely manual labor could achieve.

Given the fact that warehouses are the perfect example of how the working world is going permanently remote, I'm not sure how your marketing example is any better. If you want to bounce ideas off of another person in real-time, I don't understand why the same thing can't be done at a much lower cost on a call. After all, that's how everyone has been doing it for over a year now!

My SO and the rest of their team are doing absolutely fine fwiw.

> we can't force the other 66% to work remotely

Yes, I think it is not going to happen. But management can force quite a few more than those who are themselves willing to work from home, if it can save some money.

I suspect that ~0% of people currently working remotely due to the pandemic are managing warehouses.

> or bounce ideas off each other in real time at a marketing agency

I’m...not having trouble imagining that. I imagine it would take a bit of getting used to using online collaboration tools for that, which would — even with the tech being ready — stop any agency from voluntarily making the transition if they weren’t forced to by exigent circumstances, but I don’t have trouble seeing it working well once the initial transition period was cleared.

> Not to mention, 34% is a minority...

But probably not equally distributed across all job types and employers; there’s probably employers where there are entire functions where that’s near 100%.

And, actually, in work we often force the vast majority to work in particular conditions because a minority that has disproportionate influence prefers it. Which is actually why even where there is overwhelming support from employees for remote work and greater productivity, managers addicted to practices incompatible with remote work will bring employees back to work.

Without further information i do not understand how this can be disambiguated.

Myself, after a year of remote, i see pros/cons, but the overall situation of a pandemic is just soul crushing.

I'd say if you have somewhere to run, run.

If your office experience was blah, or you had a long commute, you likely realized a lot of utility and benefit having your employer forced to support remote work.

After graduation I probably knew dozens of people who moved to Manhattan or nearby. I'm not sure more than one couple I know is still there.

In that case if you want in-person interaction with like-minded people, or to attend specific facilities, you need a big enough population that the relevant small percentage of people becomes a significant community.

I socialize by going to conventions, events, clubs, parties; with people I want to be around.

I stopped building my social life through work `n` companies ago; I'm way more productive at home and my setup is way nicer; I have onboarded many engineers in person and remotely and find onboarding remotely to be much easier and less of a drain.

This only confirms the line that my coworkers and I are noticing as folks make their decisions as to return to the office or not. The older (married and (some) with children) engineers are staunchly in the WFH camp, while the greener hands are enthused about working from the office.

they have and I didn't care, because I don't need to leave my home to enjoy my life. If anything a fully remote world would be even better because then I can go live in the countryside and have my own land without having to see other humans

> do you have a small apartment and/or your spouse working at the same time in the same space

yep, and we get along great. I love spending all day with my partner and we've never been happier individually or as a couple

> young kids?

I choose not to have kids specifically so I don't feel like I have to get away from my own home and family to feel sane.

I've gotten the impression that the lockdown, pandemic world has been a brief breath of fresh air for the hermits, introverts, misanthropes of the world, and a taste for extroverts of how miserable it is for many of us to adapt to a world that doesn't accommodate our personalities and social preferences

I can't tell you how many times I'm heard a team mate mention something that they're working on that I have direct knowledge about and I've been able to cut a week of time off their project. And vice-versa, they've helped me.

I usually don't care about exactly what they're doing or how far along they are. If I need that information I join that group's regular sync, or check the bug status, or ping them and ask.

It's more about knowledge that a project actually exists. I have about 5 projects that I'm actively leading and another 10 or so that have been backlogged or deferred. There are about 50 people at my level in the department, so I assume there are at least 200 active projects, and I can't handle that firehose. Actually, I'm positive that there are at least 200 projects of various sizes ongoing, and I may be low by a full order of magnitude.

But when a question comes through my team, the fact that we can overhear what's going on and tune in or tune out can make or a break a project.

I'm glad you think that people who choose to listen to podcasts during transportation experiences are timidly complying with the world though, seems accurate.

But the way I see it is that you have two choices: you can change the situation or you can change your outlook on it. Sometimes you can do the first one, but it doesn't always work out. At this point you should look to do the second one. If you don't do either, well I guess you can wait for a covid situation to do the changing for you.

Also, cycling absolutely increases the risk of accidents...doing almost anything at night increases the risk of something going wrong. I don't see how that point plays into anything. If my ride home is 30 minutes and I need to stay focused not to crash, then I ride attentively and consider it a workout. Yay I just worked out 22 extra days a year.

And I would much rather have the time and socialize at events and places that aren't related to a work function. In that case, me leaving a job for whatever reason doesn't automatically remove my "friends". (And no, I don't think many are actual friends at a workplace. Politics and decorum are definitely a thing.)

1) Having to wear a mask for 8 hours a day. I couldn't breathe properly. Also, generally poorer ventilation compared to my apartment -- I sit beside a window.

2) Couldn't freely engage in meetings -- especially the technical ones. I was the only engineer there and I could feel how flabbergasted people were of what I was saying.

3) Constant dread of hunger; at home I always had snacks, fridge nearby, but at wework I had to either responsibly pack the lunch/snacks or routinely go out the convenience store.

4) Exhaustion from the environment stimulus. What I mean is, my mind is always subconsciously scanning the room (cleaning lady, elevators, telephone ring, coworker A-Z). At the end of each day I was mentally tired which led me to skip my gym workouts. Now that I'm back home, I have been back to regularly hitting the gym.

5) No large screen monitor; context switching for screen real estate is also exhausting.

Overall I think my experience at my employer could be different since point 2, 3, 5 would be mute.