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10 years ago when the company I worked for made the switch to 90+% of it's employees working from home most of my coworker's loved the idea, many of them moved away over the years to cheaper COL cities and towns over the years while other employees(A minority) got mad and quit over the next several months even though our pay did not drop and we were doing the exact same jobs, the only people to lose their jobs were 2/3 of middle management(glorified overseers) those people who were paid to walk around looking over our shoulders. The company has actually grown since then, more clients and more employee's and more profits, even though the main office was an actual office building in Dallas now it's located in a stripmall in Arlington and the office is about the size of a Walgreen's with only 5 people working out of it day to day(the owner and those just under him and his secretary).
But what I want to know is what is so bad about working remotely for some people? I love not having to drive to work and be constantly interrupted while doing my job it allows me to hyperfocus and so I do a better job, and not be taken off track by a boss poking his head in with things that "just popped up" or "just thought of".
I couldn't work from home; there are just too many distractions and too many opportunities not to work.
We sent a lot of people off to WFH, a lot of whom apparently got paid to take extended vacations and only check their email a couple of times a week. I can see it working with the right structure and the right job.
Having experienced working from home the past year and a half, I would love to have a 100% work from home job.
I've never been a people person so prefer being by myself with no distractions. So long as I have work to do, I have no problems self motivating myself. If there's no work to do makes no difference to me being in the office or at home.
One really great thing about remote is having meetings on zoom. I have a terrible fear of public speaking, but I don't have that same fear having to speak virtually to the audience.
Simply put, I'm more productive in the office (and there's a lot of my work that I can't do at home) and I do enjoy other people's company. Granted, there are times when I need a nice, long break, but I found that spending two weeks in a row home (we'd work one week in the office followed by two weeks at home during the worst part of COVID) was too much for me.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I would prefer working from the office if it were not for the afternoon commute home. I start early enough in the morning to get there in 25 minutes, before any traffic, but in the afternoon, especially in summer tourist season the Seattle traffic just getting from the office to the freeway sucks. Why do I like the office?
In normal times it's nice to see others in person when needed, have access to files and maps when needed, my big dual monitors, and my window office overlooking Elliot Bay, with views of West Seattle, Mt. Rainier, and the Olympic mountains. At home my "office" has only views of a big fir tree outside.
10 years ago when the company I worked for made the switch to 90+% of it's employees working from home most of my coworker's loved the idea, many of them moved away over the years to cheaper COL cities and towns over the years while other employees(A minority) got mad and quit over the next several months even though our pay did not drop and we were doing the exact same jobs, the only people to lose their jobs were 2/3 of middle management(glorified overseers) those people who were paid to walk around looking over our shoulders. The company has actually grown since then, more clients and more employee's and more profits, even though the main office was an actual office building in Dallas now it's located in a stripmall in Arlington and the office is about the size of a Walgreen's with only 5 people working out of it day to day(the owner and those just under him and his secretary).
But what I want to know is what is so bad about working remotely for some people? I love not having to drive to work and be constantly interrupted while doing my job it allows me to hyperfocus and so I do a better job, and not be taken off track by a boss poking his head in with things that "just popped up" or "just thought of".
I don't think it's a black and white thing. I do find being able to go in every so often is nice. To have that social aspect and sometimes, a 2-3 min face to face discussion can replace a longer phone/video call. As they say, the majority of communication is non-verbal.
To say I "prefer" it over from WFH is a bit much though. I certainly prefer WFH over onsite. That is to say, if I were forced to one or the other and that's it, it would certainly be WFH.
I started going back to the office voluntarily because after 18 months "working from home" was becoming "living at the office." I now feel more relaxed at home.
Like many others, I enjoy the company of my colleagues, but the big plus of working in the office for me is that the office is a place where my work happens that is separate from my home. While the lack of commute and parking issues has been nice, it's also nice to walk out of the office and leave work behind at the end of the day.
be constantly interrupted while doing my job it allows me to hyperfocus and so I do a better job, and not be taken off track by a boss poking his head in with things that "just popped up" or "just thought of".
And to this point, I haven't found that working from home has allowed for fewer distractions at all--there have been many more zoom meetings, slack conversations, email chains, etc. that pop up throughout the workday than I ever had in person in the office.
Last edited by fleetiebelle; 08-13-2021 at 10:38 AM..
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