My youngest daughter is the CFO of a mortgage company in Denver.  We were talking this afternoon on the phone and she told me she is working from home three days a week; Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.  She goes into the office on Mondays and Fridays.  She told me her employees also work from home and how well it works out.  Then she said it won't be long before everybody is working at home, it's the coming thing.

I told her it might be for a small percentage of employees; those who do office work.  But the vast majority of people cannot work from home.  Here's a partial list:

Bus and taxicab drivers.  Law enforcement and lawyers.  Construction workers and heavy equipment operators.  Janitors and hotel maids.  Truck drivers and locomotive engineers.  Engineers and technicians.  Fishermen and farmers.   Actors and actresses.  Garbage collectors and street sweepers.   Gas station attendants.  Store clerks.  Repairmen of all types.  Airplane pilots.  Soldiers and sailors.  Doctors and nurses.  Coal miners and oil drillers.  Railroad track inspectors and repairmen.  Highway maintenance.  Bar tenders, waiters and waitresses.  Ambulance drivers.  Supermarket checkout cashiers and stockers.   House painters and roof repairmen.  And the list goes on and on and on and on.

If you want to work from home get an office job and be one of the few.

Noel 

 

 

 

 

 

I would not want to work from home (and thankfully it is utterly impossible for me to do so given my occupation). When my day at work is done, I drop everything and go home and never even think about work. I feel many people tend to make work their lifestyle and to a certain extent I was like that as well up until my first kid was born and made me see that there are way more important things in life. 

I’m retired but I would have hated working from home. No office banter or chatting about last night’s football matches. Being with other people is entirely natural and for those who live alone I can’t imagine a more miserable existence.

Owners of office buildings may not be able to justify the rent or overall costs if enough people don’t work there. A hub may be lost forever. Then what happens to new staff? How do they learn their job? Zoom calls? Yuck!!!

Of course, everyone's work situation is different.
From a less self-centred perspective, around London (England), there is the £5000 Club,
an unofficial entity of people who pay £5000 or more for a railway season ticket to travel to and from work.
Very few, if any, are paid for the time taken to travel.
The same people, away from home for say 50 hours a week and working for 48 weeks of the year, may well have child care costs
of perhaps £12000.
All of this has to be paid for out of their net income.
It does not take long to work out that for these people, to work from home would represent a £17000 increase in their disposable
income.
This is before taking off the wasted and unpaid time spent during that commute and takes no account of the cost of getting to and from
the railway station.
The case for working from home for someone whose job fits into these kinds of parameters must be overwhelming.

Taking a wider view, the benefits to the environment of fewer people travelling are enormous and the benefits to those who have to travel to work
are that the already creaking infrastructure around large cities will be much less used and therefore a less unpleasant experience.
 

Being able to cook at home everyday, go for a run after lunch and have an ice-cream with my kids at 14:30 is just much more important to me than chit chatting with work colleagues. I was also able to move to the countryside while still working for multi-billion Euro companies.

Happy to ditch any job offers that won't allow me to have this healthier, happier and more sustainable lifestyle...

Edited September 11, 20223 yr by GCBraun

Someone used the term "sustainable lifestyle", and that's a big part of this move to get as many people as possible working from home.  It's part of the transition to a resource-limited future, the resource-limited part being imposed purposefully by those in charge right now.  Why would you need a car if you can work from home and have your groceries delivered?

Don't get me wrong, it used to irk me when I watched groups of employees jet off to a conference or meeting across the country or in another country several times a year when they could have just as well attended virtually via any one of several software applications.  It's an unnecessary waste of time, money, and resources.

Not going to the office, though, is a bit different.  Employees generally need supervision, and when they're home in their pajamas it's kind of hard to know what they're up to.  Someone mentioned the cost of child care and how being able to stay home removed that cost burden, but how can someone who's supposed to be working simultaneously care for their kids and be just as productive?  I'd really be surprised if people are as productive working from home as they'd be in an office where there are other employees, supervisors, and managers around.

Anyway, I'm sure there are some professions where working from home is viable and doesn't negatively impact productivity, but for the majority of jobs it either isn't possible or isn't optimal.

Dave

7 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

Someone used the term "sustainable lifestyle", and that's a big part of this move to get as many people as possible working from home.  It's part of the transition to a resource-limited future, the resource-limited part being imposed purposefully by those in charge right now.  Why would you need a car if you can work from home and have your groceries delivered?

Do you think we have unlimited resources in this planet? I still have a car and buy my own groceries, but I don't need to spend almost two hours commuting everyday. That has nothing to do with a transition imposed by "those in charge" or similar conspiracy theories, but rather trying to use the resources we have in a more efficient manner.

8 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

 I'd really be surprised if people are as productive working from home as they'd be in an office where there are other employees, supervisors, and managers around.

So, it is all about control in the end. As a productive and skilled professional, I expect trust from my superiors. If that is not given, I am fortunate enough to be able to leave and try my luck somewhere else.

I hate working anywhere.

I've been retired for almost 30 years now and because of arthritic feet mostly housebound.  While I never did work from home I don't think I would prefer it to commuting to my workplace 5 mornings a week.  In any case I would be one of the millions whose job required a presence in the workplace.

So few people are able to work from home using resources for commuting is not really an issue.  Millions of people (and I was one of them) required more than a computer and a pad and a pencil.  It would have required a lab with a VOM, signal generator, oscilloscope, function generator and a variable power supply on the bench.  A wirewrap girl to wire the experimental circuit board from the schematic I had drawn.  A trip down the hall to the parts room the get the chips and resistors and capacitors I needed.

Millions more are required to be in the work place than office workers who need only a computer and a pad and pencil.  I would guess a ration of 10 to1 of those who are required to be in the workplace than those who can work at home.

Then there is the social factor.  When I was working some of my off duty friends were also co-workers of mine.  Sometimes would meet after work for beer and banter a bit.  Spend weekends with them on a camping trip.  And coffee break gossip and the clutch around the water cooler talking about Sunday's football games.

No, working from home, especially if you're single, can be a lonely place.  People need people.

Noel

W-O-R-K is a nasty 4 letter word and should be added to the site's word filter! 👌

 

15 minutes ago, FBW737 said:

I hate working anywhere.

How sad! 

I can say I never had a job I didn't like.  I enjoyed my work and going to work every morning.  I looked forward to it.  Work whether as an electronic technician/engineer, Air Force weather forecaster or seismic technician or bomb loader or EOD specialist, I like it all. I got drive an experimental rail car almost 200 MPH.  I was able to design electronic circuits and shared two patents with my employer.

I even volunteered to work several days a week at our wildlife refuge without pay just because I like the work and I liked the people I worked with.

I cannot imagine a life without work.  I think I would hate not having some worth; something of value to contribute.

Noel

I like to go in the office once a week to catch up with everybody.  But prefer working at home.  Also I travel quite a bit.  It's incredible how things have changed.  20 years ago I wore a suit and tie in the office 5 days a week.  We were atleast partially judged by hours worked.  These days it's not uncommon to wear jeans and an untucked polo every day to work if we are not seeing a client.  

44 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

Not going to the office, though, is a bit different.  Employees generally need supervision

Purely for example, my working life has been largely made up of jobs that involved both working alone and without supervision,
that being the nature of the jobs in question.
On a purely person level, I do not respond well to heavy-handed management and work far better on my own.
Clear instruction of what needs to be achieved, followed by leaving me alone to achieve that, is the best way to manage me.

Your jaundiced view of employees may well be justified by your own experience, but for millions of "workers", the benefits of working
at home are already so large that they are not going to do anything that might jeopardise the opportunity to do so.

A simple way of combining child care with working at home is to extend the day to allow time for both.
Your picture of Mummy or Daddy sitting at a keyboard while little Johnny jumps up and down demanding attention is not the only scenario.
If someone who is working at home is set realistic targets and consistently achieves them, overbearing management interference
is not required and "productivity" will not be adversely affected.

Times have changed and seeking to impose Dickension management techniques onto the modern worker is, as GCBraun says, far
more likely to lead to the loss of a valuable asset to the company than to enhance that asset's "productivity".

It is blindingly obvious that those who need close supervision will not be suited to working at home, any more than those who need tools
and equipment or a factory floor will be.
 

1 hour ago, GCBraun said:

but I don't need to spend almost two hours commuting everyday.

If you really care about resources and sustainability, then you should live a lot closer to your workplace.

I lived 3km from where I worked.

Dave