senecacaptain

https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/wo...con-valley-ceo

bradthepilot

Remote work can work out great. But it doesn't work for everyone. I've had to insist that some people come into the office since their productivity fell off a cliff when they worked from home.

And many jobs can't be done remotely anyway. The most optimistic number I've seen is 30%.

rickair7777

This. If you're all doing the same thing, but separately (telemarketing boiler-room, phone customer support, data entry, etc) you can do that at home and sometimes at your own pace and schedule.

But for any organizations tackling more complicated problems such that coordination and teamwork is vital (the kinds of things they pay people more than $80K to do), the machine can't function if some cogs are spinning at their own pace, or on their own schedule. Also while team cohesiveness in an ESTABLISHED team can be maintained by remote means for some period of time (my wife's doing it now, and I did it for years in mil reserves), you cannot FORM a team or maintain it indefinitely without inter-personal connections.

Tech can also allow teams to respond more rapidly, especially to crisis, since you can reach out and touch folks after hours and on weekends/holidays. But we were already doing this, the "leash" was a thing before I quit my real job to fly decades ago.

I think a fair amount of the work which was suited to remote work was already being done remotely, and some of that was part-time/informal due to the natural invasiveness of tech into our lives.

Organizations which think they're going to go 100% virtual might get their lunch eaten by their competitors, although I'm sure there are niche applications where you could pull it off, perhaps even more efficiently, if and only if you have the right people. In an office environment, the bosses can impose teamwork and coordination on those who don't naturally gravitate to that, but for permanent remote work you need the right kind of work, the right kind of people, or both. Software engineering comes to mind.

AirBear

My brother handles auto claims for a major insurance company. He's been with them doing this for over 30 years. He was already working Monday's from home before the virus, and now works from home full time. He spent 45 minutes driving to work each way and now gives most of that 90 minutes back to his company. His old office has the lease renewal coming up later this year and he think's they won't bother to renew. It's cheaper just to book hotel meeting rooms when they need to do stuff in person.

senecacaptain

my neighbor is a senior management employee at a Fortune 500

his company is aggressively moving to remote work for "all positions that can" and is seeking to load shed real estate, office buildings, etc expenses.

also, employment vacancies that were typically local area only, are now basically open to "anyone in America" and their talent pool just got 10x bigger.

employees are happier, retention is up, the talent pool is bigger, and the company is saving money. employee productivity is up. it is about the work, not the location

stock price ? up

shareholders ? making money

happy happy

Skylarking

Depends on what your employer does. I worked in program management at an aerospace manufacturing firm for over 7 years. As nice as work from home would be, I don't think it's in the cards for my peeps back at the airplane factory. The factory is up and running in the morning, and so is everyone else. A conference call with production workers and managers just doesn't get the same results when they know you're at home in your pajamas. If you need help, or a problem solved, or your program is behind schedule you gotta show up and ask for help in person. It just works better.

jDSTJD

I don't think things will ever be the same for much of the work force's work environment and routine. I happen to work in one of the fields that requires most work to be done in an office environment in which I sit in front of a computer most of the day. My other time is spent in meetings or on the phone. My employer had already begun experimenting with remote working before the pandemic struck so the concept wasn't that foreign to me. However, since I have been an "office worker" my entire career, it took some getting used to because I was used to wearing mostly suits all the time, the hour long morning and afternoon hustle and bustle of commuting to/from the office everyday, getting that morning cup of coffee as soon as I stepped foot in the office and then settling into my chair at my desk for a day of emails, phone calls and meetings. I was actually uncomfortable with the idea of not doing that everyday...I felt like I was not "working" when I was at home. But when the pandemic struck and we were required to work from home, I had no choice but to get used to it. Now, after having worked this way for over two months...to HELL with going back to work as usual. I invested in creating a home office that I set up to be almost identical to my office downtown. I get to walk from my bed to the kitchen, poor a cup of coffee and sit down at my computer in my home office in my jammies and footies and do the same work I have been busting by tail to drive 2 hours a day to do. I no longer have to spend almost $60 a week for gas, sit in traffic on a hot Texas highway two hours a day, I save a ton of money by not having to shop for expensive clothes and other crap every week or so, can have my tv on in the background while I work all day, can run to the store or go have lunch with my kid or mom or whoever, take walks or exercise during the day, the list goes on. When I do have to go somewhere, there's no where near the amount of traffic there was in the past because so many people are working from home as well, which is good for the environment! Its awesome. I don't see how things will go back to the way they were now that Americans have gotten a taste of what life is like working from home. It's just an overall reduction in all of the stress that goes along with having to travel elsewhere to do work that you can do from home if you can configure your home technologically to do so. As discussed by others, for many working from home will not be a long-term reality, but I think allowing this form of employment will benefit all of us in terms of quality of life, mental health, financially, and in a host of other ways.

Anson Harris

Your perspective is valid, but one thing to keep in mind is how things change over time. When no one has any choice but to work at home, that's different than the future when people will once again have the option to work in person.

Right now in the middle of a pandemic, people are concerned for their jobs and doing their very best to remain productive remotely. No one wants to be perceived as the unproductive, expendable employee. Fast forward to when regular office work is again normal, and there will be complications with some remote workers. Not everyone is a model employee, and there will be a noticeable difference between those employees who get there at 8am, are visibly working throughout the day, and those who you never know where they are and what they are doing. Right now, when pretty much every one is working remotely, it all seems the same.

A huge part of business is won by the "sales call," even if you're not literally trying to get someone to fork over money and buy something. In a head to head competition, the in-person visit will win almost every time over the team that tries to close the deal via MS Teams. But when we all can't travel and are playing on the same field, remote work seems like it's good enough (and it is, when we're all doing it).

Edit: I had a guy come thorough my neighborhood door-to-door today (wearing a mask), pitching a Memorial Day weekend sale for his company's home service. Apparently a pandemic wasn't enough to make them switch to a phone/email campaign instead.

GeeWizDriver

Looking forward to the day when I can fly the jet sitting in my office, in my underwear, with a laptop, a joystick(okay, you smut-minded people), and an internet connection.....

LOL

senecacaptain

fully agree

cannot work remote: Big Mac and Whopper assemblers, factory workers, dental hygienists, and used car salesman

many jobs can. even those that "couldn't" have been pushed over to remote and the kinks are being worked out as we speak.

coders, software engineers, CPAs, attorneys, are doing some (or more) of their work day in remote mode

Zoom, Cisco, Microsoft Teams, is all over this and working feverishly to further develop remote work technology and solutions.