Bosses are growing more desperate to get workers back to the office
economist.com
economist.com
My job is project management. I hate remote working. And that's because by the time something is big enough that someone feels like they need to notify me, my first options of mitigation have already passed. If I hear two engineers at the desk next to me discuss something, or if someone gives me a headsup because we happened to meet at the coffee machine, my job becomes so much easier. I much, much, much prefer a hybrid style where people spend 1-2 days a week doing focus work at home, and spend the other 2-4 days in the office doing collaborative or less focussed work.
It has nothing to do with me needing an 'in person audience because I'm narcissistic'.
That's a communication issue which managers believe is rooted from remote work. I'm on the other end of your example, and there's a reason why people aren't telling you problems immediately, perhaps reflect on that.
Inertia?
When I was doing contract field engineering work, I would charge 50% of my hourly rate for any travel in excess of 30 minutes. Surprisingly I actually received a greater share of clients at remote locations and ended up earning quite a bit for the drive times.
At the end of the day, the amount of money that can be allocated to workers is finite, so we have to choose some way of distributing that money. Doing that by how much you "worked" (ie. commuted) might seem superficially fair, but comes with other issues like encouraging people to live far away because they no longer bear the costs. I don't think most people are on board with subsidizing commutes.
>We should get more to work in an open plan office, for dealing with a shitty boss, or for a miserly vacation policy too. Unless there is a cost, they'll keep doing it.
You're free to do that by voting with your feet, and companies pay by having less applicants. If they're not "paying for it" (via higher wages or poorer quality candidates), then that probably indicates it's not a big factor for the average employee (ie. they might complain about it, but they won't give up a $300k job for it).
Agreed, and this method has been chosen in advance for us: employers squeeze as hard as they can, while we squeeze back as hard as we can. If billing for our commute is a strategy that will allow us to extract more wealth from ownership, we should do it. If not, we shouldn't. It has nothing to do with what makes more "sense" or what is "fair."
There is no policy decision to make here. I'm just describing reality.
If my employer required me to move to the city the company is mainly based out of, I'd ask for visa support and moving expenses, and if the living expenses were higher, a compensatory increase. If the terms aren't reasonable, then ya they can get fucked.
Upon hire though, yes that's part of the negotiation I suppose. If what they're offering to pay is only persuasive if you had no or a free commute, then you should ask for sufficiently more to make it worthwhile.
And Silicon Valley giants are famous for offering this. Proving that companies will provide if people want it enough.
Highly in demand labor sellers have even gotten weekly flights paid for. The only difference is most people are not that in demand, or do not produce work that make it economical to pay them that extra commuting premium.
If you haven't been hearing about this every day for the past three years, you may not know anyone outside of your class.
It makes it easier for us remote-forever companies to recruit!
My boss and most of my previous bosses don't care about 90% of this shit as long as I am actively engaged and get things done. Maybe I am just lucky.
I think it's more likely that anecdotes about reasonable bosses making reasonable demands in a reasonable way are so boring no one tells them. Most of my 'fun' anecdotes are from the 12 months I worked for a bad boss, rather than the 12 years I've worked for good bosses.
People often seem to get themselves in trouble when they fail to distinguish between work time and personal time. There's no way to get stressed out by late night emails when you don't check your work email at night, and there's no temptation to check your work email at night when the machine with the credentials is back in the office where it belongs.
That was one of the main things I liked about working 100% in the office. My work computer and all my work stayed at the office and it was basically impossible for me to 'just fix a thing' after having left the office.