During the COVID-19 panicdemic — no, that’s not a typographical error, but is spelled exactly the way I see it — employees who could work from home were told to do so. As it happened, my younger daughter, an IT/communications professional, worked from our farm. Fortunately, I had already installed an outdoor electric receptacle on the screened-in porch, and she did a lot of her work there.
A cup of raktajino — Klingon coffee — in a mug celebrating my status as a descendant of white, Christian, settler colonialists to start the morning.
And she was quite honest about the whole thing: she was just not as productive working at our home. With cats and dogs and chickens, with fine Kentucky spring and summer weather, there were simply too many distractions.
And it’s good for the employees as well . . . as long as they are not Jeffrey Toobin. A cup of coffee in the morning costs me 50¢, not $4.50 at Starbucks.
Logically, if most employees were as productive working from home as they are at the office, employers would love that. Having employees working at home means that employers could maintain smaller offices, have smaller parking lots, reduced janitorial services, reduced office ‘perks’ expenses, just a whole host of things. It only makes sense to require people who could work from home to come into the office if productivity is a real issue.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Meet the People Who Refused to Go Back to the Office and Lost Their Jobs
These people are coming to terms with the fact that they might never work from home again
by Callum Borchers | Wednesday, December 11, 2024 | 9:00 PM EST
If you’re reading this from your home office, it’s time to consider whether you’re prepared to lose your job over a return-to-office mandate.
Companies are finally getting serious about in-person requirements, after years of lax enforcement. Amazon.com will require employees to report to offices five days a week beginning Jan. 2. Several other major employers, including UPS, JPMorgan Chase and Boeing, also have called at least some of their workers back to the office for the full five.
Outright firings for RTO noncompliance appear to be rare, or at least handled quietly, but the specter is real. Publicis Media in October terminated several dozen employees who flouted in-office requirements, according to multiple reports. The company declined to comment. Starbucks has warned its office employees they could be fired if they don’t show up three days a week, starting next month.
Businesses including Roblox and Grindr have offered severance packages to employees who decline to show up as often as required, while others, like Snap, have laid off workers while citing in-office targets.
In conversations with more than a dozen people who’ve gone through RTO-related job losses or believe one could be imminent, they said that being shown the exit isn’t the worst part. Harder to swallow is the realization that they might never again score a remote or hybrid work arrangement as good as the one they had.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on city employers who are cutting back on work-at-home options:
Philadelphia’s shrinking remote workforce reflects recent moves by large employers to bring people back into offices more. Mayor Cherelle L. Parker this summer required city employees to begin reporting to the office five days a week. Comcast, Independence Blue Cross, and SEPTA have updated their policies post-pandemic, cutting back on remote work.
The two articles hit the same topic from different perspectives. The Journal article tells us about people who’ve lost their jobs because they wouldn’t or couldn’t return to the office:
In conversations with more than a dozen people who’ve gone through RTO-related job losses or believe one could be imminent, they said that being shown the exit isn’t the worst part. Harder to swallow is the realization that they might never again score a remote or hybrid work arrangement as good as the one they had.
The Inquirer, on the other hand celebrates independence:
Since graduating college in 2021, Emily O’Brien, 25, has never had a job that requires her to be in an office Monday through Friday.
A fully remote employee, she works out of her apartment in Logan Square in Philadelphia for a Boston-based communications agency, PAN.
“I can’t see myself working in a fully in-person job ever,” said O’Brien, noting that being a remote worker is core to her professional identity. It has allowed her to seek opportunities beyond the region.
It’s “core to her professional identity”?
A commenter styling himself Joseph V wrote on the Journal article:
W(ork from home) is here to stay and will grow in the future, once the boomer 60+ CEO farts retire. With AI coming and coming fast, there is little to no need to pay exhorbatent (sic) 100 to 150+ $ per square foot to do the same job from a different computer.
LOL! My response was:
He should change that to with AI coming and coming fast, there is little to no need to pay exorbitant salaries to human being to do the same job as a computer.
To have a job, to have somebody else willing to give you money, you have to provide something that somebody finds worth giving you money.
Don’t get suckered by the Fake AI hype. What they have now is a fancy auto-complete, and it turns out that (given enough data) it can even generate images and pop songs, but its essential nature remains the same. It can’t even reliably count, let alone solve math word problems. No thinking is happening, so it cannot be iterated into Real AI, because they are not in the same universe of things. If a laptop worker’s job cannot be reliably performed by a fancy auto-complete, then it is safe from being automated.
What these work from home fans seem not to realize is that if you’re an at-home worker, you might just as well be at-home in Bangalore, India, as in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. And that’s likely a heap cheaper for your employer…
Yes. Being able to be visible to management is a competitive advantage they should treasure, for two reasons. One is how much easier it is to build and manage relationships in person. The second is being able to be seen working, since if performance were easily objectively measured, then it would be hourly or even piecework. I have no sympathy for someone who already has citizenship and a salary, yet can’t figure out that being able to show up in the office is his one big advantage over foreigners that want his job.
How do you even manage anybody at all if there’s no physical presence?