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(1) IME with WFH vs. on-site working, employers who permit WFH have a tendency (not all of them of course, but a non-trivial amount nonetheless) to have expectations of having the WFH employee be virtually on-call, 24x7x365. It blurs the boundaries between work life and home life in a huge -- and frequently very negative -- way, and the employers largely don't care about your health or well-being, or your family's needs, they are looking to "squeeze blood from a stone", so to speak. Also the "give 'em [the employer] an inch, and they'll take a mile" is another apt analogy. The logic goes kind of like this: since WFH employees don't have a commute, the (unwritten) expectation can many times be that the 2-hour, round-trip commute the on-site employee had? WFH employees are now magically expected to spend those 2 additional hours that they would have needed to commute, doing extra, often uncompensated work. Do you like to receive e-mails at all hours of the day, including 9:00 PM, 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM, and even 12:00 AM - 2:00 AM? Do you like to have an (unwritten) employer expectation of having to work a ton of hours, off-the-clock without pay and including long-hour weekends, that you likely wouldn't have had, if you were an on-site employee? It's safe to say that you can realistically expect all of the above and more, if you are a WFH employee.
(2) I read an article just yesterday that said that companies and employers have just recently come to the realization that WFH employees can be completely and totally outsourced to countries that pay minimal wages that American employees simply can't compete with. Imagine a company hiring a ton of WFH employees, but instead of hiring American, they hire all from low-wage counties like China, India, etc. In fact, the most troubling conclusion of the online article was that within a decade, many American WFH employees can expect a lot of their positions to be permanently outsourced to countries that intentionally pay low-wage, to gain an unfair advantage over the American worker who has a substantially higher cost of living that the have to meet that requires higher wages...
1) The commute is on the reliable public transportation with no driving. Driving to work every day is big NO for me. This is essentially the commute I have now...
2) The office is in a pleasant location, preferably in the city with things to do during lunch and after work.
3) Office itself in not too crowded with decent amenities...
But of course the ideal situation is hybrid. 2-3 days in the office, 2-3 days WFH...
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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If my job went 100%, I'd be out of a job. It defies the very essence of the type of work I do. So, I'd rather not be out of work entirely, so, 100% at work.
1) The commute is on the reliable public transportation with no driving. Driving to work every day is big NO for me. This is essentially the commute I have now...
2) The office is in a pleasant location, preferably in the city with things to do during lunch and after work.
3) Office itself in not too crowded with decent amenities...
But of course the ideal situation is hybrid. 2-3 days in the office, 2-3 days WFH...
I was 100% WFH for 2 years during COVID and now we're forced to go into the office 2 days per week. I'm grumpy now, I'm not exercising as much, I have hardly any free time at all on my office days, the people I work with obviously don't want to be there, and I have to put up with a stressful commute.
Hybrid sucks! I was so happy WFH all the time. I had a lot of free time and was very relaxed. My stress level was at about a 2. Now that we're hybrid, it's at about an 8. I can't think of a single thing that I missed about working in an office.
(1) IME with WFH vs. on-site working, employers who permit WFH have a tendency (not all of them of course, but a non-trivial amount nonetheless) to have expectations of having the WFH employee be virtually on-call, 24x7x365. It blurs the boundaries between work life and home life in a huge -- and frequently very negative -- way, and the employers largely don't care about your health or well-being, or your family's needs, they are looking to "squeeze blood from a stone", so to speak. Also the "give 'em [the employer] an inch, and they'll take a mile" is another apt analogy. The logic goes kind of like this: since WFH employees don't have a commute, the (unwritten) expectation can many times be that the 2-hour, round-trip commute the on-site employee had? WFH employees are now magically expected to spend those 2 additional hours that they would have needed to commute, doing extra, often uncompensated work. Do you like to receive e-mails at all hours of the day, including 9:00 PM, 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM, and even 12:00 AM - 2:00 AM? Do you like to have an (unwritten) employer expectation of having to work a ton of hours, off-the-clock without pay and including long-hour weekends, that you likely wouldn't have had, if you were an on-site employee? It's safe to say that you can realistically expect all of the above and more, if you are a WFH employee.
I can see how that could apply in some companies. At mine, though, the hours are the hours, and there is zero collaboration or contact after hours, on weekends, on days off, etc. One day recently, the boss called me at 4:45 pm to talk about changing some process, and when he realized it was 5:02, he abruptly said, "oh, I didn't realize it was so late. I'll talk to you about this tomorrow, have a good night, bye!" I will say I work for a great company, though, and I don't think this is the usual way things are handled in many places, unfortunately.
I was 100% WFH for 2 years during COVID and now we're forced to go into the office 2 days per week. I'm grumpy now, I'm not exercising as much, ...
During much of our Corona shutdown, the gyms were all closed. For a few months, even the chin-up bar at the public park was cordoned off. Exercise consisted of doing push-ups on the floor of my apartment. Some of us are STILL trying to recover our pre-corona strength... and these are people who, to their knowledge, had never caught the virus.
The corona shutdowns, at least in those places that were most aggressive about levying restrictions, were a kind of WFH for all aspects of life... dine from home, drink from home, exercise from home, shop from home, socialize from home. They were OK, or at least tolerable, for people who have intentionally built-out the infrastructure and logistics to be "from home". My attitude to "home" was that of the main character in the novel and book, "Up in the Air". I haven't been adept at doing "home", since I was a freshman in college. Since then, I was either in campus, at the workplace, in my laboratory, or traveling. "home" might as well be a tent under a bridge.
Given the option, I'd just as well cancel my apartment lease and sleep in a dormitory in the basement of our company's building. Shower at the local LA Fitness. "Dine" at the curbside taco trucks. Instead of WFH, it would be HFW (home from work). Let the company deduct the rent from my paycheck.
It's like asking if I want a woman with big boobs or little boobs and that's the only criteria for picking a woman.
Well ... I go BIG!
So does working from home = big boobs, or is it the opposite?
And for the record, my boyfriend agrees.
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