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Yeah, just suck it up and be happy that your job wasn't outsourced. Even if you have a miserable commute and the office environment is unpleasant.
I don't know if you realize it, but people only live one time. Most of us do what we can to live that life as happy and content as possible. If people can avoid doing pointless things that make them unhappy like going to an office daily when it's not needed, why put up with it?
Don't. Find another job that caters to your wants.
If your job can be done from anywhere but the office, it will not be a surprise when you are told YOUR job has been outsourced.
Don't. Find another job that caters to your wants.
If your job can be done from anywhere but the office, it will not be a surprise when you are told YOUR job has been outsourced.
Most office work can be done remotely. The problem with outsourcing to other countries is quality control. Sure, labor may be cheaper in India, but the quality may suck. Jobs that get outsourced to other countries tend to be simple jobs that don't require much thought.
Plenty of people are miserable WFH. Stir crazy, cabin fever, isolation, loneliness, no networking, house arrest, etc. are all cons that WFH people have mentioned.
If you have a miserable commute and unpleasant work environment, leave. Pretty simply solution.
Oh, except the next job will also require you to show up to work, and until millions of people decide not to show up to work, employers have ZERO incentive to allow WFH.
Supply and demand 101.
Except this doesn't seem to be driven by normal "supply and demand." The "supply wants to work from home and the "demand" is to work in the office.
Of course, he was speaking to the downtown business association and downtown business is just 56% of what it was prior to WFH. Sounds like there's too much supply in the downtown business and not enough demand for them. So the solution is to "demand" workers come to the downtown office to increase the "demand" for downtown business and office space to match the "supply."
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I don't think it's really all about "control" or even "collaboration, but just money. When a company has spent several million dollars buying and renovating a big office building, then buying furniture, office equipment, and safety equipment, it's a waste to have it sitting empty. Then there is the high cost of heating and cooling, when you have something like 6,000 sf on 2-3 floors it has to be heated and cooled even of there are only 6 of the previous 400 people in it. You might suggest that they just sell it, but no one is buying office buildings now. In Seattle for example, office vacancy is at 14% now, that's 232.2M+ s.f.
I don't think it's really all about "control" or even "collaboration, but just money. When a company has spent several million dollars buying and renovating a big office building, then buying furniture, office equipment, and safety equipment, it's a waste to have it sitting empty. Then there is the high cost of heating and cooling, when you have something like 6,000 sf on 2-3 floors it has to be heated and cooled even of there are only 6 of the previous 400 people in it. You might suggest that they just sell it, but no one is buying office buildings now. In Seattle for example, office vacancy is at 14% now, that's 232.2M+ s.f.
I've thought this as well but why wouldn't a savvy CEO just say "screw it, let's stop the lease or sell the office space" instead? Seems a more logical use of time/money than to require folks to trudge into an office to sit by themselves in offices/cubes which they'd be doing from home anyway.
I've thought this as well but why wouldn't a savvy CEO just say "screw it, let's stop the lease or sell the office space" instead? Seems a more logical use of time/money than to require folks to trudge into an office to sit by themselves in offices/cubes which they'd be doing from home anyway.
Leases aren't that simple (or cheap) to get out of, and the CRE market for sales is in the toilet.
You are, and perhaps a certain percentage of people are, but the majority of workers are not self-starters and they are not suited to work unsupervised for months at a time.
Any job I've worked at, there were people who only worked if someone was watching them. I've been to several different colleges and every class had a large percentage of students who would not start their term papers or study for a test until the night before because in college, no one supervises you to se that you are getting your work done.
If having all the workers work from home was getting more work done and done better, then businesses would send all their workers home to work from there.
Well, that's a case of a few bad apples spoiling the entire basket. Also, not my problem. But I get it; it's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to have squishy/flexible rules for an entire organization when some are definitely going to take advantage of it. But giving local managers more autonomy and flexibility in managing their people, like before the pandemic, would be a good first step.
I tend to agree with those who mention middle management needing a tangible, visible reason to exist. The pandemic largely showed that too much middle management was redundant and unnecessary. The company I work for is so middle-management heavy it's ridiculous. My company has also taken to checking badge swipes.
I think that part of it is that many managers have spent decades suffering through long commutes and putting up with office politics, so they feel like the newer people shouldn't get an easy ride. In their minds, the working experience should be miserable because that's how it has always been for them.
I think that part of it is that many managers have spent decades suffering through long commutes and putting up with office politics, so they feel like the newer people shouldn't get an easy ride. In their minds, the working experience should be miserable because that's how it has always been for them.
Good post! That attitude effectively means the problems of long commutes and office politics will never go away and the human condition will never improve. By that logic everyone must needlessly suffer through poor conditions because the prior generation(s) suffered through those conditions? What would be the point of living if society prevents us from improving our lot in life?
What I'm seeing in my workplace is that the staff who have jobs that require them to be at a certain location at a certain time, like the receptionists and the customer service and mailroom folks, are resentful of those of us who have task-based jobs. I can do my job from anywhere with an internet connection, but we're being asked to go in more for optics. The issue isn't too much rented office space, but that there's not enough office space, so we're being crammed into open offices that didn't used to be shared. The incentives for having to do zoom calls wearing headphones in an office when I could be at home aren't great.
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