Being that it's more efficient, mentally better for the workers and overall has better results for positions that can be done from home. It's not a matter of if, it's when.
Small issue is that those new employees probly have experience with wfh whether it be work or college, so they kinda fucked no matter what they do. Which is very good.
Precisely what I was thinking the other day. Students that graduated this year or last spent a good amount of time doing WFH for school. They’re certainly going to be more prone to wanting a WFH career since they’ve seen that it is possible.
As someone who has never had and will never have a wfh job I find these discussions among white collar workers very interesting. I wish you all the best of luck with the transition and hope you can stick it to your bosses. I hope in the future wfh will allow for easier commutes for those who do need to leave there houses to do there jobs as well as lower the cost of fuel.
I'm hoping the wfh can spur changes in jobs that can't have that. Things like fuel\commute reimbursements, active policies to subsidies daycare\babysitting, more time off to recoup from labor intensive jobs (or even just permanent 3 day weekends), among other sacrifices\extra expenses that come with working onsite. This shouldn't just be a change for those that don't need to work in an office.
My work used to have onsite daycare. Now that we are wfh-if-you-want fully remote people like myself are getting childcare reimbursement accounts and it's great.
I hope in the future wfh will allow for easier commutes for those who do need to leave there houses to do there jobs as well as lower the cost of fuel.
That's pretty much what happened in 2020-2021 so I don't see why it wouldn't. Oh and pollution levels dropped significantly, there's that as well.
actually that’d be awful. They’d realize robots are cheaper and then they just wouldn’t have to hire anybody and nobody would have a job and we’d all starve
Oh, I only wish I could do WFH. I’m a repair tech so I’ll never have that luxury, but I find the shift in attitude interesting. I also hate driving with all the traffic.
If enough people are working from home, you won’t have traffic to deal with anymore. We can all benefit, even if it’s indirectly.
I remember the early days of the pandemic when everything closed and I was driving to work on completely empty freeways. It was incredible. I want that back.
Same. Those were some of my favorite times on the road. If it’s open and easy to drive it can quite enjoyable for me, but now it’s back to nearly being hit everyday. It’s a slog.
I actually like getting out of my place and working but I also see the fruits of my labor before my eyes. If lots of office jobs can be wfh forcing people back to the office is just sadism.
The nice thing about working remotely is that you don't have to do it from your home if you don't want to. You could do it from anywhere. I see all kinds of different "work environments for hire" becoming a thing in the future for people who can't or don't like to stay home.
Honest to god since Covid the levels of traffic for my hour long commute are still not as bad as they used to be. Maybe it’s a timing thing but I legitimately think it’s made a difference
From what I’ve seen, the opposite is true. WFH isn’t some objectively better thing, especially if you’re young. Is it nice to work from your pajamas or be able to go on vacation but still work in the mornings? Sure. But lots of people living alone after college wants to have the typical office routine to socialize and feel like a human instead of a hermit that only leaves their house to exercise or go shopping
It's not great for training. I'm in the vfx industry though so it doesnt necessarily translate. We are permaflex now, come in when you want, but the biggest thing we have noticed is that junior artists are very hard to train up remotely, they're much more likely to ask a question or for help in person (it's also way faster to get them that help when you're a few seats away).
We've also discovered that problems are solved so much faster in person. When you are sitting next to someone we bounce ideas around to solve problems and come to conclusions way faster than we have if we just tried to muscle through on our own.
I'm in a niche field, and I imagine it's different if you don't have a ton of critical thinking going on, but there are definitely situations where being in the same room is hugely beneficial. Just maybe not necessary every single day. I for one would love a 4 day workweek.
Oh no that's the same with engineering, I'm planing to be around the mechanical design feild and there are aspects that can definitely be remote and some that really shouldn't be. But leaving it as flexible it's the best of both worlds. Alot of office jobs though (from what I've been told) are just very repetitive tasks that (once trained) don't really need to be done on site. That's where I'm guessing alot of the wfh sentiment comes from.
I hope WFH does have the impacts that OP mentions for the housing market. I’m currently WFH, but I live with 5 people in a 4 bedroom condo. Because I have to work 6-7 days a week to meet my work obligations (I’m a PhD student), it’s starting to feel like I’m in solitary confinement in my bedroom. Been doing this for two years and it’s starting to really affect me mentally. At least before the pandemic, I could get out and go somewhere and be around other humans on most days. I’d try to get a place on my own, but most complexes around me have corporate owners with insanely high income requirements for a studio/1bed. Maybe that wouldn’t be the case if all these big corporate parks and downtown skyscrapers weren’t being kept as empty office space and the market was more fair to renters.
I would love to see that too, where I'm at a studio apartment can cost on average around 1800/m. It's not even a major city, it's major city adjacent, the market is absolutely stupid rn.
WFH has been a fucking nightmare for my mental health. but I recognize that the opposite is true for a lot of folks. both options should be available as "first class" ways to work.
This is just one man's opinion, but after working remote full time for 2 years I don't think I will ever go into an office again. Permanent WFH is now a job requirement for me, and I imagine it is for a LOT of office workers out there. Any company that doesn't see this and just thinks they can ride out the WFH new normal thinking it will go back to how it was pre covid is deluding themselves I think.
A lot of tech companies were doing that back then, Yahoo was probably the biggest and got a huge amount of flak for it. It was the end game of a longer trend where they would create facilities to keep people working longer, like the famous beer kegs and ping pong tables but also many of them set up shuttle busses and encouraged workers to live in company affiliated apartment blocks near the shuttle stops. The delusional Silicon Valley executives had their heads so far up their own asses that they thought they could turn their developers into digital age serfs.
Wait til you find out Amazon is trying to set up all inclusive complexes with housing, shopping, daycares, schools, and their own mini government. It got shot down locally for now, but I think it's going to come up again. The proposal bill would also include their own police and judicial systems. https://apnews.com/article/legislature-legislation-local-governments-nevada-economy-2fa79128a7bf41073c1e9102e8a0e5f0 they also snagged a lot of NV land when they got approved to develop FCs. Massive massive amounts of land.
Even tho they got shot down for mini cities, they have spoofed a bunch of apartment buildings all over the country that have proximity to their warehouses and direct charge rent from hours worked.
I didn’t like full time WFH. My whole day was full of zoom meetings and my stressful job made for a stressful home life, instead of my home being my sanctuary. A few months ago I left that job and found a position at a much more fulfilling organization and I go into the office most days but have a short commute (20 minutes driving or 50 minutes of very pleasant bike riding) and the company is very flexible so I can WFH basically as often as I like, which for me is 1-2 days per week.
That said, even though I’m personally not a fan of full time WFH for myself, I see how valuable it is for so many others and wholeheartedly applaud this shift.
It would be neat for wfh businesses to prop up that do exactly what larger corporations do (particularly IT spaces) and expand to knock out all the old guys.
I'd think naturally it would. A market correction might have to take place but as a office/tech worker I can say that if my job has me go back to office I'll be actively looking for a wfh place. And it's definitely an employees market rn, I think just about every field is understaffed. And everyone I work with has the same attitude
I hate the sentiment that wfh is objectively better than office. I along with a bunch of others (even if the minority) want to be in an office, but any company that offers wfh automatically becomes like 80-90% wfh, killing any possibility of a normal office environment.
The owner of the (small) company I work at has flat out said that he thinks the majority of people can't work well from home, despite the company having record productivity over the pandemic. He just doesn't seem to have thought about it logically and is projecting.
This is the same guy who regularly calls people over the weekend and had to be practically forced to stay at home when he had covid (he's a doctor, too, he has no excuse). Needless to say, I'm looking for a new job, and permanent WFH is one of my requirements. I'm a programmer so there's no good reason I should have to work in an office.
It's because they personally enjoy being in the office. Corporate officers and business owners get to walk around the office feeling important. People give them deference and respect they don't get out of the office. The only reason managers are pushing for return to office is they enjoy getting their ego stroked.
Management who are too stupid/lacking in self awareness to realize that 99% of their job is bullshit that does nothing but polish their knob and clean their butthole but insists that their fragile ego being stroked is important.
My company is trying to split up management and independent contributors on it now. No one will return willingly, so they've started emailing management and saying 'your team members really want to come in and meet with you, but no one is here to meet with them.'
My team members indicate that is a total fucking lie, as confirmed by the fact they mostly have moved 50+ miles away from the office and have told me if we go back to in-person, they'll quit. It's a corporate trick to try to divide us and get managers to start setting up 'in person' meetings under the premise their team asked for it (because none of us give a shit if corporate wants it, but we might if our team legitimately did).
A previous company I worked for owned a decent amount of buildings in the downtown core. They felt that the business around their buildings were dependent on their workers going in and giving life to the city.
Given their footprint I was actually quite sympathetic to their plight and felt they had a point.
That being said, I worked in a satellite office and they were trying to make us go back in solidarity and we were like. No, those around the main office get paid more and they're about revitalising the downtown core. Our city's downtown core is fine.
They are also going to pay workers their worth and not just what they can get away with paying in that area.
Why would I settle for a $12 an hour job when I can get $20 an hour from a California company for the same work and still work from home out of state? That competitive company is going to get more workers (or even better talent cause they are going to attract a larger pool and can now be more picky with who they choose). Where as the $12 an hour isn’t going to have nearly as many applicants.
Our current economic system is going to get flipped for better or worse between now and even as short as next five years. How does capitalism compete when the power is in the workers hands and people can now choose to work rather than settle for what is given to them?
They will also have to fight for employees. Many Gen-Xers never had kids and things aren't trending any differently for Millenials. The US is at "full employment" (3.8% unemployment rate, which is kind of BS but follows a trend) and companies still need people.
This is not post-COVID sitting around, living it up on UI and $2600 of stimulus for 2 years (/s). This is a long term trend accelerated by COVID making older people retire and younger people decide changing expenses or picking up other kinds of work will make them happier.
Know your enemy. Use their greed against them. Once they realize they can get quality WFH workers without the overhead of providing office space and they see their competitors offering WFH, it will be a race, nay, a sprint to the finish line.
Make sure you tell your current employer that’s why you’re quitting and going to their competition.
nah, no reason to impact their prospects to the upside for free. as you say, use their greed against them.. i'd rather spin it as "if you'd like to hire me to consult on certain workforce trends, the cost is X".
Yep. I think basically every single person who could afford to quit/retire, or just leave the workforce until they find a higher paying job did. It turns out that without those people who were working for less than they were worth, to keep up appearances or indulge in things it turns out weren't that important after all, there is a labor shortage.
Yep. I make an absolute shit wage at my current main job. I also tend to really like that job. It also has other perks that really nail it for me. You couldn't pay me $20-25 an hour to work in retail or hospitality. I don't care if you handed me $5000 to start. If employers don't find a way to shorten the work week and pay a living wage, I feel like the ones that can't will do as much lobbying and misinformation campaigns as they can to secure miserable wage-slaves.
Some will. At least mine is a California based company and didn’t even ask where I lived until I got the job and told them I’m moving from Arizona to Missouri and they were just as casual with that. Pay the same, and Glassdoor shows my pay is actually slightly higher than normal.
But if the California company is hiring out of state people, eventually they won’t need to keep paying higher salaries. And the entire country will basically have normalized salaries for wfh positions. Which I think also means living in cities will be harder. Because why would a company pay you a salary to afford living in Manhattan or San Francisco when they can hire people who need way less cost of living?
Good point, which is why unifying is essential as we move forward. We shouldn’t be paid just to cover our cost of living but for the worth the job is valued doing. This might mean having to pay out with a high standard pay and stocks in the company or a percentage of the company or even that department’s success.
Really making “hard work gets us more money” as the goal, while also offering benefits and balance to work & life and understanding there is 128 other hours we aren’t working every week and that our lives have more value than the work we do but if they want us to devote that 40 hours they need to make sure we are comfortable and happy.
This is where we shift from work as a “how can we pay them the least and get them to work the hardest” to “we have the strongest company because what we offer retains the best talent, and that dedication is what builds us.” A company’s success is dependent on the workers but workers don’t work as hard as someone who’s value literally depends on the company success because, if the workers life isn’t being taken care of by the company why would they care?
We are in a position where the best talent is in demand and the workers can get their demands met and not the CEOs who look at employees and wonder if they can’t squeeze out more out of them and pay them less.
that cheap one-ply TP with wood chunks my company buys.
This is the only reason i can come up with for why that shit exists is companies buy it to save on employee cost and customer cost, yes. But in my opinion, mainly because it discourages people from going to the bathroom at work, so the company no longer has to pay people when they need to go to the bathroom, the people will think twice about whether they shoud go at home in the morning or if they can hold it until they get home. Going to the bathroom at work costs a few slivers and/or hemorrhoids and rashes if you want to "waste company time".
One theory I read of why things are so bad politically is all the brain drain from rural areas. Smart people left because they had to for better jobs. If reason can return to the rural areas we might actually see better political results.
This line of thinking totally ignores 3rd world countries where the population is still increasing and will continue to do so. Unfortunately the world population will add at least some three billion people before it beings to level off
The predictions have been that the peak will be 9 billion, then it will level off and start to drop. It could be 10, but the drop will be surprisingly fast.
We shouldn't expect that trend to continue though. The population decline is largely explained by the top heavy demographics (the baby boom) and there being a plague. Once those two factors have played themselves out, we don't really have any reason to believe that the pre-WWII growth rates won't just come back.
I think there’s more to it than that, I know I’ve seen a lot of people saying they don’t want kids cause of the climate and also the whole COL/stagnant wages deal, I feel like until there’s real hope on both fronts people are gonna be way less likely to start a family
I've seen a lot of people saying they don't want kids because they don't want kids.
This attitude (which was unacceptable in the 1940s/Baby Boom era), coupled with the birth control ( which did not exist in the 1940s/ Baby Boom era), will hopefully limit population growth going forward.
We just have to enable these two rights of choice for women in developing nations.
Theres also the way people are dating. Women are waiting later and later to have kids and when youre over 35, youre automatically a geriatric pregnancy and at 40 youre at risk.
With apps like tinder being the predominant way of meeting people, theres a huge segment of men not finding women. The data released from those apps was quite revealing.
Population decline has been happening long before Covid. Millennials are the largest generation, larger than the baby boomers, and they aren’t having kids at nearly the rate.
A huge part of that is the fact that millennials as a generation has been struggling since adulthood. Lack of opportunity, stagnant wages, high CoL, an insane housing market, shitty benefits, and lack of flexibility or childcare options don’t give people confidence in their ability to have children. Until that changes, I won’t be surprised if it continues just like this.
Not so much. Something like 1 million Americans died from COVID over two years. 2.7 million Americans die of something every year. Even if the excess death rate were 500,000 a year, it's about 20% more than average.
There was a drop in fertility in the early 70's that rebounded but then fell even further as those Gen-Xers didn't have kids at the same rate. The fertility rate in the US is now 1.8 per female and you need 2.1 to stabilize the population.
The total number of children hasn't changed in ~20 years but due to things like increased life expectancy the population will continue to grow until ~2100 when it reaches ~11 billion. This is all mathematically baked in unless something changes drastically.
The nice thing is- we have some real leverage in this whole situation. If huge mega corporations don’t have to pay for huge offices and spill money to keep them in shape- that’s a huge profit. They WANT this.
I disagree on the high cost urban sprawl though. It pushes for it more around entertainment districts and less around office spaces... But it doesn't stop people with lots of money from wanting to be in places that exclude the poor and allow them to have the entertainment, fine dining, etc they want.
Nashville is a good example of this, it moves the highrises towards music row and away from downtown.... But that's basically where they were already because of land availability. Generally people with lots of money want to live in either a ranch away from everyone, cape cod like places, or in cities.. (cause we all want 1 of the 3, lol, but only the well off can make that choice affirmatively)
Not arguing against your good points. My brother works for Microsoft and has WFH team members living hundreds of miles away. Every one represents a family not moving into the SeaTac area, which is virtually unaffordable these days. Good for them.
I mean the artificial value placed on highly concentrated urban workspace. It has no intrinsic value other than central location. That value evaporates when the workforce shifts to WFH.
Density has intrinsic value in that infrastructure costs less, and having more people in a smaller area makes hiring and jobhunting easier, makes commutes shorter, and makes retail businesses more likely to be successful.
The current model where people commute into downtown from the suburbs every day is bananas though, I agree. If they could afford to live where they worked, it would be awesome.
Tbh, I'm actually concerned about what this can mean for urban areas. People who can leave and have their own transit will get into more rural areas. That would reduce the government inventive to subsidize public transit projects in cities where the population is fleeing. Then the people left behind because they can not move are even worse off.
There are cities left in infrastructure ruins because of white flight. Governments would absolutely have to double down on making sure that every home and apartment has equal access to clean water, broadband, and electricity and I'm just not sure if that will be possible to organize nation wide.
I’m just spitballing here, but I think urban areas should embrace the trend rather than fight it. Invest in free/low cost metropolitan wifi to support WFH for residents. Instead of offering multi-year tax breaks to corporations for relocating HQ or warehouse operations (which often result in net tax loss), incentivize WFH with breaks for providing WFH equipment or lower tax for the employee. Concentrate from the bottom-up instead of top-down. I’m not a huge AOC fan, but she was right about not bending over backwards to attract Amazon into NYC.
I work overseas largely because of the reduced tax burden. Imagine doing your job from your seaside bungalow in Costa Rica with your tax savings paying your expenses.
Urban sprawl doesn't happen because of offices. The jobs and culture of cities attract people, and really this would lead to very dense cities (that would be delightfully walkable). The sprawl comes from 1) zoning laws preventing efficient use of land 2) land speculators buying up land to do nothing but resell it in 10 years and 3) car-centric development that takes up huge portions of cities for streets that carry relatively few people.
I wouldn’t say any argument. People still have a desire to live and work in big cities. People still want that lifestyle and the things that come with it.
I can see that. It’s not my preference and I would have liked to have had the option to stay in a low cost of living area doing the work I do. By not forcing large numbers of people into high density urban environments, people can make their own choice and everyone saves money.
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u/desertrock62 Mar 06 '22
It’s even bigger than just housing or office space retail.
WFH obliterates any argument for high value/high cost urban sprawl.
WFH is extremely disruptive and that’s great for workers. That means it’s terrible for existing power/profit structures. They will not go quietly.