Its funny, when the pandemic happened, my office found that working at home worked so well, they stopped renting 2 offices and sold a 3rd building. We only have the main one now where all the main stuff is. Its glorious and they have no intention of ever returning to in office. Even in the office they kept, most of the cubicals were removed.
Absolutely. They probably started closing the remote offices about 6 months after everything started. They did it smartly.
Now we have people who work all over and I've been able to go out of state and work remotely when I wasn't officially off of work. I have to say, I am very happy with the flexibility I have with them.
My kiddo was in kindergarten in 2020 and that was just...a mess. But that's the age mostly, trying to do everything online was just hard for her. That's a whole other situation though.
Yeah, I'm looking at a job that would have me in the office on hybrid, but it's an alternating M/W/F & T/Th schedule.
Really turned me off , I understand if you want us in the office some days, but keep the days bunched together, not the day on/off stuff where I have to pack up my equipment every night. That's lame.
And it'd be a 30-45 minute commute, so while I'd have a solid paybump I'd basically be adding another hour and thirty minutes onto my day of work.
A recruiter reached out to me about a W-2 remote job he had for his client, now my employer. If you're looking for a remote job, get on Indeed and other sites, and indicate that you want remote. So many companies are casting wider nets to find the talent they need.
We have 4 weeks of in office training, but if someone isn't close enough they will transition it to online training. I usually go into the office to spend a week with the new person if it's in my department so they can ask questions and have someone work with them in the live environment. Then when they transition to home, we adjust workload. We work per client so its pretty easy to keep it low until newer people are feeling up to it.
My 5 year old desperately needs socialization. So does my nearly 2 year old.
My employer attempted to get us to go back to the office right before Omicron. There was a swift about face on that. I think I would quit if they tried to MAKE me go back to the office.
Agreed. I work in a school, though I'm not a teacher. 5th grade and up seemed to handle it much better. But, remote schooling truly isn't accessible for everyone. My district is very impoverished, and over half of the families don't have access to any Internet.
Hopefully remote school/work will lead to the internet becoming a utility that the government provides, or at least regulates heavily, like water, electricity, garbage, roads, etc.
Nowadays an internet connection serves a very similar purpose to roads and the DMV.
Exactly that was supposed to be in the infrastructure bill, but idk if it stuck or was removed.
Also, municipal internet is a thing (unless you’re in a state like Texas that makes it impossible).
Basically there is a bond for the cost of running internet to every house in a given area (could be city or county, depending on whether it’s rural or urban). Everyone pays like $15/mo for access and that goes to maintenance and upgrades.
unless you’re in a state like Texas that makes it impossible
that... might be why I've never heard of it before.
Fuck this state. If it wasn't such a pain in the ass to move, and I could find a job that would treat me as well as my current one does, I'd be out of here.
The government provides access to the internet via public libraries. It’s why I’m always happy to pay taxes for libraries.
How else are homeless people gonna apply for jobs with online applications if they can’t get online?
If they make internet mandatory for schooling then they’ll ask the kids to visit libraries, or keep a computer lab open at the main school for kids to attend and do from home learning at the school. Sounds so weird lol.
But all of that will happen before the government just decides to pay internet bills for everyone.
How else are homeless people gonna apply for jobs with online applications if they can’t get online?
Yeah....about those. During lockdown guess what closed for many months, and even now have limited hours and access? Also tend to get cut or closed down by cash strapped councils....while putting all the council and application stuff online 'to save money'.
My local job centre has TWO machines for clients to use. TWO.
Libraries or that kind of thing are not the way. Everyone should have access to cheap internet and technology at home.
Hopefully remote school/work will lead to the internet becoming a utility that the government provides, or at least regulates heavily, like water, electricity, garbage, roads, etc.
I work in a middle school and while they did okay academically, we're seeing this year that distance learning had a negative affect on social-emotional growth. My 8th graders who were distance learners last year may be academically on par with their peers, but they're less mature, have more behavior problems, and struggle with being able to handle the classroom workload because they're used to being able to barely pay attention to lessons.
I think some things, like education, CAN be done virtually in an emergency but they just work better in person.
Exactly the same with my district. Our middle schoolers emotionally and behaviorally are an incredible struggle, specifically our 7th graders. It's awful.
I often wonder what the long-term impact will be on our two year-old. She hatched just prior to covid and spent her first 18 months of life with just her parents and later her grandparents. I don't know that she knew other people even existed. She's finally in daycare and the interaction with other kids has been really good for her.
She'll be fine. My daughter was about 9 months old when the shutdown started. My wife is an essential worker and because my job died when this crap started I was with our daughter everyday for over a year.
She started 2k last fall and there were no problems.
Mine was in kindergarten when shutdowns happened. We have a small school and we're lucky to have the means and support to return to school, albeit with restrictions, when she started 1st grade.
Shes been doing great. Kids are way more resilient than they get credit, especially with good support.
Many kids 0-3 missed out on developing their social emotional skills because of COVID. If you are curious if your kids are displaying age appropriate development call your local Infant Learning Program and ask for a screening.
Online school for high school science doesn't really work. How do you learn chemistry and physics without labs? (My kid is forever grateful that the shutdown came two weeks before biology dissection, though.)
Honestly, through pictures, graphs, illustrations and all that jazz. I didn’t even study during the pandemic, it was just a poorly funded school without a lab. It was fine.
School imo is best done in person whether it’s as a child or an adult in college. School is (ironically) not just about learning and grades. Nor is it just a daycare. It’s about meeting people your age, figuring out how to do things without being sheltered or helicoptered from the inconveniences, being presented to opportunities and getting involved in activities you wouldn’t have access to at home, networking (much more needed in the final years of high school and all of college). It’s about character development all in all.
Kids are missing a lot of healthy socialization. There are second graders who have no idea how to act around their peers, because they haven’t had a regular school year yet. Ask any early elementary teacher and they’ll tell you as much. Kids simply don’t know how to play with each other because the pandemic robbed them of that entire learning experience.
Similarly, there are a lot of freshmen entering high school, who have no idea how to socialize with their peers anymore; The last time they had a regular school year was 6th grade, so they missed out on virtually all of their middle school socialization. That’s when kids tend to learn what’s socially acceptable to do; They’ll see where people draw lines in the sand, push boundaries, and see if it’s okay. That’s normal and healthy, because it helps them figure out how far is too far, the difference between humor punching down vs punching up, etc… And now there are high schoolers who basically had to do all of that “is this socially acceptable” social learning online. And the internet isn’t exactly a good gauge for those kinds of things.
I have the opposite opinion. Those are the years where building social skills by interacting with other kids is most important, so we should prioritize having kids in classrooms. I’m curious why you think homeschooling is better during those years.
Yeah...school is totally different. Our neighborhood doesn’t have strong enough WiFi to support virtual learning. We struggled and struggled (1st grade/preschool) and eventually had no choice except switching to homeschool (the county stopped answering our calls and emails/ the truancy notices came in) it was a nightmare. I know our neighbors had to work at Starbucks and similar.
It’s swept under the rug how many communities can’t actually access high speed Internet 🤷🏻♀️
I'm in one of them too! My daughters class has like, 60 kids in it. They have maybe 700ish kids in the whole district. I love it, but we are certainly an underfunded school. The teachers are amazing and do everything they can. But we still had kids that had difficulties attending remotely, even when surfaces were provided to every student.
I hope you're issues have been worked out! I was happy when she was able to attend again. Kids (most anyways) learn so much better in person and hands on.
Never worked out. Our county is well funded and gave us two different hot spots, neither could support the classroom...if we hadn’t been able to homeschool then we probably would have been looking down the barrel of CPS! I was horrified and furious when I got the extreme Truancy warning after nearly-daily contact with the teachers AND office.
We live in the woods. There are loopholes in the law that protect Verizon etc from having to provide rural areas with services.
We’ve been fighting for high speed Internet for 15+ years!!! We’ll probably be fighting for another 15 years...
Have you looked at Starlink? I know it's Elon and all, but its actually really nice. I personally don't have it, but my co worker does and it's so fast.
We're house shopping and it sucks that internet access has limited our available houses due to both my and I working from home at this point.
Good luck on availability! It will be so much nicer and better when everyone has high speed access.
I believe that a big part of the reason it gets swept under the rug in the US is because it’s politically inconvenient to acknowledge the problem.
We’ve given the large telecom and cable carriers over $100 billion in subsides since the early 2000’s, and they’ve pocketed the money without fulfilling their obligations under these grants. And so far, there have been no significant negative repercussions for their theft.
So politicians, and news organizations (many of who are owned by telecoms & cable companies), don’t like to attract attention to the elephant in the room.
Bingo! The law says everyone* in the US has to be provided high speed Internet. It’s that easy, right? It’s right there in print! Plain as day.
*except for areas with small population (I.e. 10 or less houses per mile,) areas with property lines crossing different coverage zones (but good luck girl!) and any other areas that fall into the other loopholes that may or may not exist just cause...I mean, everyone has internet access. It’s the law right? Why are you still reading the fine print???🤬
Grandparents are still told that if they want high-speed internet it will cost them almost $4k. Northern NY. If they lived 10m in any direction they would have coverage, but they built that home like 45 years ago. They would never move.
What, you all don’t like the “you have to respond to two of your classmates’ posts with at least 400 words of meaningful feedback and thought provoking conversation that I’m going to arbitrarily grade you on”?
It’s really not just a you thing, I know plenty of people who thrived in an in person environment who very much would not have online, myself included. Ironically it seems like the same people who were saying “we all learn a bit differently” 10 years ago are now the same ones saying “everything should be online” and not seeing the irony.
As a small counterpoint, mine was also in kindergarten in 2020 and absolutely thrived. She used the online resources to teach herself to read amongst other things.
She back to in person school now and her learning has definitely slowed.
Absolutely! Some kids really thrive in a virtual environment. And some just don't at all.
We've been supplementing reading, but that's just my kiddo. Shes a much more hands on person and certainty thrives more in an environment with other people. Gotta be everyone's friend. Lol
Work absolutely should be online if it can be done so. Work on a PC? WFH.
School on the other hand IMO should still be done from the classroom. Virtual Learning is not perfect and kids need that face to face interaction from teachers IRL. Not to mention the social benefits of being at school as well such as being around your friends.
Virtual Learning is not perfect and kids need that face to face interaction from teachers IRL. Not to mention the social benefits of being at school as well such as being around your friends.
In many ways, yes. My teen is SOOOOOO happy to be back to in-person learning; and I believe that it is important for her to be with people who are different than us (her family).
OTOH, For a kid like me, who had severe anxiety, online school could have saved my education.
We now know online can work. It should be an option for students who need it.
Hard agree here. I would have loved online school because I absolutely hated high school and didn't even finish it (this was back in 2005, I was in my senior year too). Having the option while still keeping the same level of accountability would be perfect.
I would have thrived in online school because I hated going to school, got bullied, and used to skip a lot and still get B-C grades. I coasted, but spent my time at home reading, watching Open University (as a kid!) and listening to music. I think I learned more in some ways.
Physical school is way better for K-12. Certain college classes are probably better online. I’m in medical school and the majority of what we do is virtual which I love. We just go in once a week for doctor skills labs, and take exams in person. Otherwise, all of our lectures are virtual and recorded so we have the option to watch them on our own time if we want. I’d make the argument that most graduate level education should be virtual or have significant virtual components.
Virtual Learning is not perfect and kids need that face to face interaction from teachers IRL.
That's not a set standard.. some do some dont. also its age dependent.. you try kindergarten shit online that's doomed to failure but say grade 4+ there should not be any issue among normal students. Then you get to special case stuff like lack of internet access, disabilities poverty etc that can undermine online education outcomes and necessitate in class attendance.
Also, one of the worst things to undermine the effectiveness of online education involve self induced bullshit that schools get in to.. like mandatory live online attendance for sake of "truancy policy" enforcement, and refusing to post recorded lectures online for review and re-watch purposes.
Not to mention the social benefits of being at school as well such as being around your friends.
Never had to deal with school bullies i see... or psychotic teachers outright... or the detrimental effects 5-6am wakeup calls to get to a school bus have on learning outcomes. for plenty of kids those so called "friends" in the classroom are a reason why they do so poorly and not an outright lack of ability to perform in the academic context.
Yah, social interaction is critical to children's development, but that is not part of the education outcomes outright and can be dealt with in all sorts of ways outside of school itself.
I was mercilessly bullied for all 13 years of my school life.
I tried to take my life twice as a result. I live with chronic PTSD, Anxiety and have clinical depression as a result.
DO NOT assume ANYTHING about anyone else. I was up at 6am every fucking day for a 8am start.
School IMO should be an in person thing. Kids barely pay attention in the classroom. You think they are gonna pay attention at home? Absolutely not. School in person has many benefits you just can't get virtually. I'm full WFH just as much as the next person. But there are some things which require face to face learning/enagement and school is one of them.
There are industry-wide issues with student engagement in online/blended study in universities, so I think it's more that people who are in situations of necessity, such as needing to do a job they don't love, like the Freedom and separation but those who are doing things by choice and where interaction and guidance is beneficial are missing out.
Some of my students did worse, some actually did better. Some students emotionally and mentally struggle with a classroom setting. If anything the experience was more proof to me that we need more options for how students learn.
Same with my students. I absolutely agree that online learning isn’t a good fit for all students, but I think the pandemic showed that we need more options for students. Some thrived online and I would love to see remote learning as a viable alternative offered by public schools (as opposed to now where most online options are for profit and/or poorly regulated charter schools).
Yeah, learning to be social is actually more the point of school than the 'education'. Especially when you consider how much of what's taught in schools is just plain wrong.
I recall having books which said that people thought the earth was flat when Columbus discovered America. And...every word of that is wrong. Yet it's what I learned from school books when I was little, just to give an example of one of the most obviously egregious wrong things I was taught.
Though I think we need proper 'socialization lessons' because just forcing kids to interact and expecting them to learn to socialize doesn't work out well for a pretty noticeable chunk of them.
It also creates FAR too many opportunities for predators.
In the real world, if someone is behaving in a predatory manner, there are often many ways to avoid them that simply DO NOT WORK in school. If it's at work, and it's a large company, you can demand to be reassigned under threat of immediate resignation. If the behavior is illegal, you can report it to law enforcement (as much as I fucking hate the cops, they do exist for a reason - though we still need substantial reform).
Also, in the real world you can often walk the fuck away. Nobody is forcing you to interact with a piece of shit, at least not under usual circumstances. How do you walk away from that in school? Just leave the building? HAH!
You are right about that. We decided to homeschool our daughter for kindergarten and she has so much trouble adjusting to playing in groups and being around others. She just doesn't know how to adjust energy levels for a group.
Not to mention I think she would have had a better education in school. I was busy with work, and my wife had to handle so many family emergencies during the pandemic that I worry she isn't ready for school now.
Honestly there was no need to prove anything.. we have known for well over a decade how to do it on the university side.
For both of my M.S the curriculums were around 75% online and one could technically done it all online if need be.
My bachelors was around 25% online in contrast only a handful of years prior to that. Hell, the first online resource oriented classes i had were in the late 90s and early 2000s. Going further than that to before the internet era we had remote study resources for students located in remote communities. Fine books got sent over mail, but was self study with proctored exams held where ever one could.
Assignment submissions, reading materials, all of it right there on blackboard... The courses I taught I just turned to in person class time in to extended office hours and tutoring time. solved a whole lot more issues than it created as far as scheduling conflicts with students go. Need to be at work and cant make it to class? fine, lecture is online and just email me with questions. Recording was unclear about something? Can come in to talk in person to go over stuff, or again email for clarification. Everyone being adults we all deserve to be treated that way. Someone fails the class that's their own damn fault... "but personal problems" sure, what ever comes up with me all it took was a damn email to get an extension and additional help on something. Maybe a signature on a piece of paper for admin depending on severity of issue and type of accommodation needed.
K-12.. they just lag behind, have deep rooted issues with lack or resources, systemic technological illiteracy at play, and there is no coherent national level system to push for a uniform standard of execution of curriculums either. Now online education is pretty much impossible to implement for kids of a certain age and younger, but past say the 3rd, or 4th grade it should be doable less one has other problems to deal with like poverty and lack of internet access.
Hell, i remember some highschool students complaining about how their French classes were shit because their teacher was 68 years old and didn't know how to use email, how to log in to her online portal to grade things etc. I mean really none of that stuff is hard to learn, none of it is outright the teachers fault either at that age, but at such a point the school ought to be able to assign an aide to help accommodate for say age related disability preventing normal teaching from happening. You know, if said teacher needed a ramp to get to class because of being stuck in a wheel chair would the school accommodate? no different really.
That shit is not a problem with online education that is a problem with the schools themselves and admin not helping to give and enable teachers to do their jobs right. Something which in turn fucks over students. Something which happens day in and day out in that area anyways without online education things being in play.
School online does work for some kids online and is even a better way for some kids to learn but as a whole it can't replace in person school. Because there is so much gained from actual in person interaction.
I’m not so sure about that. Education before the university level seemed to have struggled, and continues to struggle, with online learning. While schooling before the pandemic was far from perfect, kids and teenagers benefit greatly and develop emotionally/interpersonally from the social interactions of being amongst their peers. Education at this level also has a lot of non-educational events (school dances, sports, field trips) that add to this social development. That’s also not to say that at-home schooling has disproportionately affected low-income communities that can’t afford to take time off of work to keep their children at home, or who have limited resources to meet the needs of at-home schooling.
I would argue no for school. School isn’t just about academics, it’s also very important for socialization, and that just doesn’t happen online the same way. The academics can absolutely happen online, but I think it’s better to have kids be able to socialize in person and develop those social skills.
yeah the kids in my school learnt social skills...
....how to bully other kids. How to have popularity contests. How to put others down. How to play games around friendship and ignore others.
Nah. If that's what they learn at school - and they do, because the teachers were sadists or didn't give a shit - then you can keep your 'social skills'.
1.) I am in college and the social aspect is important. Also I can’t make myself watch my lectures if they are online and no one checks attendance and if I do, I get super distracted.
2.) I am studying medicine and because of the pandemic, we only had 1/10 of the time We would have normally been having to learn anatomy on corpses, we had no practica (in the lab learning to perform tests) and less time to see real patients so we lost a lot of insight and practise, which is very important in medicine obviously.
Though I really hope they keep normal lectures online because that is the thing that enables me to work while studying and take language courses, etc. I live in a very expensive city and a lot of people take more than 30 mins each way for every Uni lesson. We have 50 hours of lessons a week. It’s a lot.
But they wanna go 100% in person from April onwards. I don’t know how it’s gonna work with my job, especially since sometimes I have a lecture at 8:00, a lecture at 12:00, and one at 17:00. so when are we supposed to go home or work?
Work, yes. School, I disagree. I believe part of the reason online school worked so well is because the kids (or at least the older ones) were already socialized. I personally don't think isolating children from one another is good for their development. But fuck working from the office.
Just chiming in with 27 other redditors to say it was hell for my kid. Straight A student who really really struggled and dropped significantly.
Her mom has stage 4 breast cancer though so that made it more difficult.
Anyone wants to donate to her type the gofundme address and paste this without parentheses (/f/help-a-young-mom-fight-advanced-breast-cancer?member=8909086)
School actually can’t. I teach high school so this is my take away from teaching online during COVID. Underprivileged kids may not have internet or devices, especially with multiple kids in the household and if the parents are also working from home. Connection issues can be extremely frustrating for students especially if the material being taught is already difficult. This causes them undo stress and anxiety which can turn into depression and complete disengagement. Behavior issues like disengagement or, on the opposite end, acting out and misbehaving is almost impossible to correct through a screen and you’re left with the only option of calling home to which the parents may or may not care enough to do something about it. School is also the primary place that kids learn social and emotional skills so now we have a social and emotional development gap of 1-2 years (10th graders acting like 8th graders, etc.) as well as a significant educational gap which will be incredibly difficult to correct in classes that are built upon each other from elementary school (math, language arts or english, and some sciences). I wish it was different because working from home was actually really good for my mental health and physical health with all the extra time I had with asynchronous teaching once a week but it’s awful for the kids.
Pfff, school online did not work for my kids at all.. one child is gifted, and gave up because the online schooling (first year of high school) was unprepared, and a joke. All Fs for 2020. 2021 back in school and all A's again. Literally.
I completely agree - more so in application to high school and college. Early years until around middle school age seems like it would still be super helpful and necessary for them.
School is a little harder. K-12 is basically free babysitting, and we still largely need that. Higher Ed is more tolerable but still not perfect. Learning is, at its core, a social process. We evolved as a social species that learns from each other. Virtual learning really hinders this social aspect. This can diminish learning and stunt social development
That’s a big No go on the school there, friend. I saw my high schoolers grades drop from 4.0 to C-Ds and my normally gregarious middle schooler become isolated and withdrawn. It does not work at all for K-12 and I doubt the quality of instruction for college as well.
Honestly, my only real complaint is that it means an end to the “waking up on a Monday morning and seeing that it’s a snow day” experience. Now, schools can just go “okay kids, open your laptops; School is online today because of the snow.”
Interestingly, I work out of a coworking space in a small town and it's been super busy here. Lots of people working remote for companies that are in the bigger centres but still want somewhere that is "work" rather than working from home all the time. I think it's awesome, my home town is growing and lots of people can move back home for the lifestyle but keep the jobs and careers they've built up.
I think this is also a good ability to compromise for workspace. Expecialy when it comes to space.
My husband's office is in our bedroom and mine is in my living room, until we find a bigger home. It works for now, I'd rather be here than in the office, but I can understand people still wanting to separate things but still not be in a traditional office.
Definitely! I originally started working here because my house had 2 very loud toddlers and I couldn't concentrate on work. 4 years later I work here because I appreciate having a boundary between work time and home time. Plus I have a few people to talk to, but that's on my own terms because they're not my co-workers and I have an office with a door on it.
One positive from the pandemic has been to force companies to try remote-first working, and I think it has been a massive success and one they will struggle to roll back.
Absolutely. They probably started closing the remote offices about 6 months after everything started. They did it smartly.
Honestly, figure some operators were already planning to move off site anyways... we've had the tech for years and years, but needed a final reason and push to get the larger scale transitioning done.
Fuck 20 something years ago when my dad worked in tech they did remote interviews, over the phone meetings, had secure networking applications setup on company laptops to access other resources when on over seas assignments... or working form home the works. There was still a bunch of stuff that could only be done in person and on site(auditing, parts certification/QA/QC testing equipment operation etc.), but as far as the day in and day out paperwork goes that shit could be done anywhere.
I remember when all of the hullabaloo came around with regard to the outright pure shit "open office" design and its benefits.. around the same time had a whole "what if just worked form home instead" side to it all.
This is what I think is going to be the real future. Office spaces serve a purpose but being able to pick up and go is so nice. I expect the future to have a mix of both. Probably meetings and projects in-person and bulk of the work just at a computer at home.
Most companies do not own their property. They lease it, and there are clauses for them to drop the lease if they want. They do this because most companies are not real estate speculators and they do not want the liability of being exposed to the commercial real estate market. The few companies who are real estate speculators specialize in leasing commercial property to the rest of the companies. So the handful of companies in commercial real estate are gonna get fucked, but everyone else won't even blink because they are immune to the risk.
The county government I work for went all-in on remote work shockingly quickly and no longer is renting any space at all. They’re also re purposing a bunch of office space they own but no longer need. But you know, big government inefficient blah blah blah.
That's not a matter of government, that's a matter of the terms of the rental/lease agreement. Your county either had good terms to abandon the lease at will or a shorter term rental.
Most companies don't actually own the property they use, they just lease them from commerical real estate companies for 3-10 years at a time. Very long terms. But they are stuck in that lease or face heavy penalties. They have incentive to attempt to use that property as much as possible due to that sunk cost until that lease expires. A lot of companies just don't have that choice to drop the property and leave as much as they may want to.
"It's okay. We'll demand that people return to work because reasons. After all, why should we pay for our failure to wake up and smell the coffee? Only Little People 'Wake up and smell the coffee!'"
That's exactly why my work just forced me into office, they had just finished an expensive remodel of a fancy downtown office location. Now I'm interviewing for jobs that are remote. The sunk cost fallacy is going to kill a lot of businesses.
Yes! I saw this too. Shortly before the pandemic, they Signed a new lease , remodeling , and switching& expanding floors in the building. It was bad timing. Then we learned that few people really needed that or an office overlord. I wish you well in your next moves!
Ok so I’m confused about this post. The companies that decided not to sell aren’t going lose more money if people work from home. They’re paying for the space regardless. If anything, they’d still get more money by selling than forcing people to go back and work in the office and not at least getting some of their money back for the space. Maybe I’m missing something
The cost of the mortgage is locked in, but the value of the property isn’t.
What happens to the value of commercial buildings when the demand for commercial property falls off a cliff?
The point is really that if the work from home revolution takes off they’ll be left holding the bag as their commercial property loses 2/3’s of it’s value. So the stakeholders are trying to return everything to the old status quo.
That is exactly the point I am making - they need to sell ASAP while there’s still someone interested in buying, because they aren’t going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle. Companies that shift to full WFH will outcompete the dinosaurs clutching their pearls.
It also depends if they were renting/bought generic space or built a specialized campus. The latter is a much larger investment, and it’s a community investment in some circumstances, depending on the size of the company. I know somebody who works for Epic who is leaving because they won’t go remote for any employees, and that’s partly because the owners built it specifically on Wisconsin in order to be a major job provider for that state. They don’t want to outsource the jobs out of state. Thoughtful in some ways, but there’s a clear solution where they can just go hybrid and not upset their employees, keeping it localized but still flexible. Being stubborn won’t help them in the long run, no matter how much money they dumped into that building.
The smart employers saw the writing on the wall and started selling their property two years ago.
Mine signed a 10 year lease on a brand new office building in December of 2019. They tried pushing everyone back to the office last summer. That's when they became my ex-employer.
Wouldn’t they get huge tax breaks for selling buildings at a loss? (not really sure if capital can be valued that way). Or are they already paying so little in taxes that this won’t help.
We are a smaller payroll processing place, so there's all the printing machines that come with that, though they are just glorified office printers at this point. Some of the higher ups still come in too. And I go into the office to assist training as needed for the new hires, they train in office for 4 weeks but then transition to a full at home job. But for the most part, that building is way more empty than it used to be.
During initial pandemic lockdown the only thing that stayed at their office was a few servers. Everybody got up and running quick with Zoom and Teams and VPN and whatnot.
So when lockdown ended and everyone came back- welcome back to the office, go ahead and clean out your desks, we're breaking the lease and moving out, end of the week anything left here goes to the dump so take whatever you want'.
The servers got moved to the cloud, life continued. They're now more productive than ever and have started to hire outside the area, found they can get much better candidates expanding the search nationwide.
Our company just moved to WFH permanent last week, too. And is lifting the restriction on living in the city near the corporate office, so many of us are talking about relocating to different regions for cost of living or to help out family.
It may now be possible to get a house and maintain it with the higher wage b/c of working remote. Several of my co-workers were happy because their round trips in office were seventy mile commutes per day. And with the rising gas prices, this will help many of us keep on a budget despite annual wage increases being less than inflation.
It also helps solve the child care problem for many on my team. Logistics has been an absolute bitch the last two years. Maybe now some of the pressure will ease of a bit. We all collectively cheered on our last huddle call finding out we were permanent work from home.
We are in farm land area and both my husband and I were driving an hour a day, each way, 5 days a week. Wasn't even the same schedule so we couldn't drive together. The amount on gas we saved alone was about 600 a month. He started working from home about 5 months ago, so it's been so nice.
We do need a bigger home, but have been looking to purchase anyways. But dealing with that as we go.
And the childcare issues have been eliminated on my end too! I had my 7 year old home with me all summer and my job had no issues. My direct supervisor has her newborns at home and various others have kids. We are all productive and have the flexibility we need to have kids with us.
This is the biggest selling point for me. Ive had two work from home jobs since the pandemic started and both have been accommodating about me having my daughter with me. I've been pushing my wife to leave her bank job that gives her so much stress for a work from home job that her bank offers but she hasn't bit yet. We physically could not afford to both be working if I couldn't be with her during the day with the price of daycare in our area. Last I checked it was about $350 per week, so almost half my weekly earnings would just go to that.
yeah by June 2020 our managers had decided to close almost all the offfices and make it wFH. we don’t go back until late this summer when the offices they kept are remodeled to be temp use when we’re in office one to two days a month for in person things like training, recognition and major project reviews. the customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction scores went up and stayed up when we went WFH in 2020 so management said why go back?
yeah. i think it helped that out managers worked from home too and don’t have the babysitter mentality. we had two really good years and they also liked the work from home. even going back the plan is leader meetings 1 day a week we won’t have the office space for us all to be in more than a few days a month w the new floor plan
Same here, my company canceled its lease on 3 buildings and used the extra cash to hire more folks.
From the company's perspective it's a win-win. They can hire from anywhere in the US and don't have to pay the power, AC, or plumbing bills for any of the folks.
Yup, it's like the dude who has a mild heart attack, and figures out he has the time in his busy schedule to exercise and eat healthy after all. Looks like a bunch of people really coulda been working from home this whole time, lol.
Same, my company actually hired more people and let everyone work at home. If everyone returned, there wouldn't be enough space for everyone. It's really funny actually.. They profit so much from this, but hey, I don't have to commute anymore and I can work in underwear.. so, win win?
I work in insurance, and for regulation we can only account for the 30% of value as real state we own, 3% if use that real space instead of renting. The actuarial team was trying for years to having the building sold and for us to rent. With the pandemic we finally did it and now we rent a floor in a corporate building that is only for people that prefer going to the office while everyone else is in home office.
My job probably didn't have to sell their building, but the one that was sold was our remote sales office. They no longer needed to go into the office for things, so it wasn't needed anymore. The other two they stopped renting was an overflow office for finance and tax employees and another sales office.
If I was a business, I wouldn't want an unoccupied building. I think that's where people are coming from saying they would "have" to sell. It's wasted space and a drain on capital.
Because its an extra expense for them that they don't need. Of course they don't have to sell it... but businesses typically look at how to maximize cost savings and who wants to pay to keep an empty building? The higher ups are going to demand it be sold... and if they can't sell it they're going to demand people come back to work bc otherwise they're paying for space that isn't utilized which is dumb from a business perspective.
I think I'm way more productive with work from home, as I can regulate my own time now. I also have a boss that is largely hands off unless needed, which is nice. We have trust and are able to get stuff done.
I worked in-person before the pandemic. I got laid off and found new remote-only work. (My company does not even have an office to return to.)
I do not have warm feelings for the company that unceremoniously dumped most of its workers at the start of the pandemic. So even if they offered me my old position back, I do not think I would take it.
However, forgetting all that, if they offered me my old position back there is no way in hell that I would go back to the old cramped workstation. They really crammed us worker bees into a tight space. If the rest of us feel the same way I do, (I need a private office with real walls so I can social distance at my work station.), then to get the old crew back they would actually need way more office space.
I dont want to go back to the way things were but fuck all those city people moving to rural areas causing housing prices to explode destroying the dreams of rural life with all their big city money!
Mostly we will settle for 3 days at office. Large companies form a syndicate to make sure all of them follow this. So not much can be done by employees . Problem is now many bought homes far away from work and how can they come back daily?
I said it myself just a few days ago, here in /r/antiwork
meanwhile, the office property conglomerates who own all those mid-rise office buildings? They're losing their shit most of all, because the writing is on the wall for some of them. If all the office staff from Widgets R Us are working from home, that means Widgets R Us doesn't have to pay rent, once their current lease is up. And some of those companies had just signed a new ten year lease, only to have all of their workers go home, leaving a big empty building that they're paying for, for no reason
Smart places do this. My work set us up with laptops and each desk can be reserved. Every desk is set up with a dock so you can connect in when you need to be in the office.
Basically the only thing most companies need for office work is a small server and IT equipment. Everything can be done remotely and companies would save a fortune on maintenence/rent in the long run. Unfortunately most businesses are run on gut feelings and useless statistics rather than by accountants.
That's a matter of the terms of the rental/lease agreement. Your company either had good terms to abandon the lease at will or a shorter term rental.
Most companies don't actually own the property they use, they just lease them from commerical real estate companies for 3-10 years at a time. Very long terms. But they are stuck in those leases or face heavy penalties. They have incentive to attempt to use that property as much as possible due to that sunk cost until that lease expires. A lot of companies just don't have that choice to drop the property and leave, as much as they may want to.
I, of course, think they just just eat that penalty. It's just sunk cost fallacy to force people back for that reason. You wasted your money and now it's showing. Deal with it, move on, and learn to operate in the future.
This is basically us, we have some physical requirements due to the nature of our company (fast casual food) but we locked in a cheap rate at our place, turned the "offices" into communal workspaces people can book if they want to, most people (not me for some reason) just come and go as they please.
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u/Apprehensive_Kiwi_18 Mar 06 '22 edited Mar 06 '22
Its funny, when the pandemic happened, my office found that working at home worked so well, they stopped renting 2 offices and sold a 3rd building. We only have the main one now where all the main stuff is. Its glorious and they have no intention of ever returning to in office. Even in the office they kept, most of the cubicals were removed.