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Return to office is ‘dead,’ Stanford economist says. Here’s why::The share of workers being called back to the office has flatlined, suggesting remote work is an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.
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My wife is a high school teacher. We returned to her classroom one evening after dinner this week so I could help her put together some shelves. After 30 minutes of assembly, I realized I needed to use the bathroom. She gave me her keys and pointed me towards the staff bathrooms. Whilst sitting on the porcelain throne, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I did a #2 in a public bathroom. I’ve been WFH since March of 2020 when COVID started, and while I’m sure I’ve crapped in a public restroom in the past 3+ years, it’s so infrequent that I can’t remember.
That’s not really the point though, more that I’ve actually been thinking about it all week and reflecting on what working in an office used to be like - crapping next to your coworkers, packing a lunch, trying to look busy when you just aren’t feeling it that day, the small talk, and everything else that result in me being absolutely drained by the time I got home. Seriously, sometimes I would just sit on the couch and stare at the wall for 30 minutes when I got home.
It took the greatest global event of the 21st century to shift us to WFH. We can’t let companies force us into backsliding into these out-dated work practices when all common sense says otherwise.
Tbh, I still stare at the wall for 30m after a busy day WFH sometimes. A bit of indecision on if I have energy to start this or that, but more just letting my brain cool.
I’m fairly introverted, but more social than many. Watercooler talk doesn’t really bother me unless it’s awkward and unescapable. So I have that going for me.
Edit - or sports or cars. I’ve worked on teams that only talked about those topics and it was like nails on a chalk board to me
So my employer has been pretty cool about the whole return to office thing. We all had collectively agreed that the vast majority of our jobs could be done remotely. Unless the position absolutely required a physical presence in the office, such as running cables or certain leadership positions, we all were given the option to be permanent work from home.
I don’t mind the office these days, but that’s because I live 9 minute walking distance from it.
I still work from home some days though, so I guess that says something.
The company I work for and the company I used to work for are doing return to office right now. Thankfully I’m not impacted because I live halfway across the country.
because I live halfway across the country.
best of luck.
It sadly hasn’t stopped a lot of companies to still do RTO
I appreciate it. Not to sound conceited, but I’m very secure in my position.
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It’s hard to say. Here’s a high res version I found, but it’s a stock image and usually they remove branding in those. https://iongroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/T5502_Blog-Featured-Image_1-2048x1114.png
The stands look very much like a few models of Dell i have at my work.
I know you guys are going to hate this, but I’m seeing a trend develop that no one is talking about. Work in our office is being divided up differently, jobs are morphing. There’s the work that can be done from home, and the work that can’t. Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
In my opinion hybrid is the way. Go in three days a week, do the things that require a physical presence, don’t worry about your job getting off shored.
My guy did you already forget all the manufacturing jobs that got off shored over the past few decades?
They’ve been trying to offshore for decades. They’re gonna keep trying. It’s little more than a dog whistle to tell you what kind of dysfunctional they are.
IMHO hybrid is the worse. Before Covid, when we worked in the office, I had my own desk, my parking space and all the meetings were held in meeting rooms. Now I have to be in the office 3 days a week and we have hot desk system, limited parking spaces and everyone is on a video call all the time. The office is now super loud and just not a nice place to work. There’s not enough desks for everyone because the company can hire more people without expanding office, Parking spaces are reserved using some appa and disappear in 10 seconds. Hybrid just add some much hassle without any real benefits. Just bring everyone to the office or let everyone work from home.
We only go in once/week and I do all my people catchups at that time + whiteboard brainstorming/planning etc.
It works out ok with flexible desks in that case.
If think it should be up to the team. If they think it’s useful to meet at the office they go be it weekly, monthly or quarterly. My commute is like 15 minutes so I don’t mind going to the office at all but the experiences is way worse now that it’s hybrid.
Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
guess what quality will be affected.
There’s amazing workforce in those countries. But also some very bad. And companies that try to sell you their cheap labor generally aren’t known for good QC
This (outsourcing) was already done 20 years ago in my industry. WFH changes nothing.
Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.
🥱 It’s 2023 dude, if they could offshore work they likely have already. Hell, in the last reduction in force at my company they fired a bunch of employees at our “third world country” office.
I’ve thought this occasionally, but at least in my job, we’ve had lots of “remote work” for years by dint of being in a different building than other people. If that was going to be outsourced, I think they would have tried by now. It’s really surprisingly hard to get effective consultants when they’re based in the same country, but as you go overseas, you quickly end up with paying simply for “check the box”, which probably is already mostly self service clicking and AI at the cutting edge (Amazon support “chat” anyone?). The problem is, you can tell an auditor you have function X, but in many cases that function becomes useless to others in the org.
IDK, I think there’s been multiple indicators we’re not currently on an offshoring swing.
