Asinine. I pray the US is able to eventually evolve past the 90s work culture.
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My boss tried to move us from 2-3 days. Went down like a lead ballon.
Now half the staff negotiated an exception and others don’t bother every week. Good luck with it.
I don’t know. I preferred the 90’s work place to today’s. Or maybe that’s just where I work!
Possibly. I hated where I worked in the 90's. Not so much where I worked, but whom I worked under. Gawd I hated my supervisor at the time, the classic Dilbert manager.😑 Bonus points for my manager looking like the Dilbert Manager.🤭
That is silly.
In my place we have mandates but flexibility. But I am often in office 4-5 days per week, far more than the senior folk pushing these return to office policies.
So their words don’t really resonate with me.
I only care that the work is done properly. The rest doesn’t matter.
A consulting company wants me to relocate for a new position at Apple's Cupertino office. I currently have a job where I am, 6 hours away necessitating a relocation. I have to make a choice to stay at my current government job, or relocate to the consulting gig.
There are pros and cons to both. My current job offers job security, lots of PTO, every other Friday off, and the work is boring but low pressure. Plus I already have a house here and it is chill to live in. Cons are, as stated, boring af, the MPs on base are the bane of my existence with constant terry stops, there's tons of red tape to do anything, the Admirals are as bad if not worse than CEOs, and while it is chill to live here, it is near absolutely nothing with LA bring 3 hours drive away. Plus the pay raises are abysmal.
The consulting job would pay more, but with no PTO, minimal sick leave, and little job security. I'm on the fence.
There are pros and cons to both. My current job offers job security, lots of PTO, every other Friday off, and the work is boring but low pressure. Plus I already have a house here and it is chill to live in. Cons are, as stated, boring af, the MPs on base are the bane of my existence with constant terry stops, there's tons of red tape to do anything, the Admirals are as bad if not worse than CEOs, and while it is chill to live here, it is near absolutely nothing with LA bring 3 hours drive away. Plus the pay raises are abysmal.
The consulting job would pay more, but with no PTO, minimal sick leave, and little job security. I'm on the fence.
Aye dios, I’d stay where I was at. “Chill AF”, “lots of flexibility”, “lots of PTO”, “low stress & easy/boring AF”, etc. are all great perks to deal with a dilbert manager. It lets you live your life and not have your job dictate you. Also, I would never uproot my entire life to step into a job with “little security”. That makes no rational sense to me especially as you have a house and all that would entail having to list it, pack, move to LA, pay on a new place while you’re paying on your old place trying to sell it and actually sell it - Woof.
Now if said manager has your head on the chopping block, that’s a different story but if you’re “doing well” hitting metrics etc, I’d be very critical of any prospect that requires you to uproot your entire life & liquidate a primary asset to move to LA (yuck). I mean that would have to be one helluva pay raise for the money math to add up.
It is going from 60 to 80 an hour with lots of room for raises. The government raises are pathetic. In addition to making us fight over them by throwing each other under the bus (Mr Smith didn't contribute enough, I deserve his share), even if you work a miracle, it barely beats inflation.
My manager is alright, but my current project is a fan of throwing me under said bus because I ultimately decide if a design will work or not and if I say no, they shoot the messenger. Hence why I started looking for new opportunities.
Me as well. I had some crappy bosses but overall it was fine traveling to work each day in the 90s/2000s. I do enjoy remote work but have had zero issues moving to a hybrid schedule that is one week in, one week out. It has for me anyways, illustrated how effective in-office time is. I truly value the opportunity to connect in person with my colleagues and has been extremely productive time for me as well as for them. Really it has nothing to do with employers treating workers as children or having to be watched by your employer. It’s about the mountain of data surrounding remote work productivity vs in office work that we now have. In office work is routinely more productive & accurately executed, so it makes sense to augment schedules to provide in office time while still providing the benefit of remote work and its flexibility.
It’s hard for me to understand the pushback on in office work other than folks would rather do their laundry while they work in their underwear lol. (I mean it’s what I do on my remote weeks haha
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I hear you. I have friends who work in govt with similar stories. Don’t stop looking. I understand the motive to find something new but I don’t think this is it. Too many cons. I’d keep looking but for something else. This role you describe sounds like they’re fishing for someone desperate and with zero responsibilities elsewhere. I still don’t think it is rational to make that jump into this role. There are lots of opportunities out there. You’re secure right now, so I’d keep looking for something more manageable.
I know CA is expensive but that is a fantastic wage after tax imo. I mean 60 an hour. 40hr work week, 52wks - let’s assume taxes at 30% roughly, you’re banking 87k after taxes. That’s fantastic pay IMO and to have the perks you listed earlier, man I would think long and hard - nothing wrong with finding something new but be strategic about where you go. I would not sacrifice what you have now for 20more an hour with little security and almost assuredly more work.
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Well the thing of it is, with the mandatory health insurance, retirement contributions, and further CA deductions, it is closer to 50%. I'm not even joking. At 60, it should be 4800 per biweekly pay period. I get 2600. 55% percent of the before withholdings amount. That is NOT taking into account the rising prices of things like utilities, insurance, fuel, groceries, etc. While 20 may not be a lot, it would be an extra 1500 a month and I could rent out my house instead of selling it.
I’m the opposite. My days in the office are far less productive. Open office noise doesn’t help me concentrate one bit. Plus the constant interruptions from people too lazy to look something up for themselves or just want me to help them do their job.Me as well. I had some crappy bosses but overall it was fine traveling to work each day in the 90s/2000s. I do enjoy remote work but have had zero issues moving to a hybrid schedule that is one week in, one week out. It has for me anyways, illustrated how effective in-office time is. I truly value the opportunity to connect in person with my colleagues and has been extremely productive time for me as well as for them. Really it has nothing to do with employers treating workers as children or having to be watched by your employer. It’s about the mountain of data surrounding remote work productivity vs in office work that we now have. In office work is routinely more productive & accurately executed, so it makes sense to augment schedules to provide in office time while still providing the benefit of remote work and its flexibility.
It’s hard for me to understand the pushback on in office work other than folks would rather do their laundry while they work in their underwear lol. (I mean it’s what I do on my remote weeks haha
To be clear these are not my team that report to me but other departments.
Now I just go in once a week I get more done and absolutely loathe my in office day.
People who skive at work will do it at home or in the office. I’m the opposite. Always have stuff to do. I don’t have time to skive off. Just means the to do list piles up.
The noise is certainly the downside - I agree with that. When I need that concentration, I have my earbuds and if there is ALOT of discussion happening, my sound machine app does wonders lol. My work requires a lot of collaboration across multiple complex disciplines, so being in office and accessible to each other allows us to work faster together, answer questions, put pieces back together and move initiatives forward etc. Certainly we are still conferencing in between multiple sites, time zones and countries but the in office immediate access to each other (majority of the team) for the purpose of moving work forward is extremely effective for us. The productivity data at this point bores that out as well, so being a business that is focused on productive and accurate work (why they pay us after all), will undoubtedly react to said data that is now out there. It is a blessing really that they don't bring us back FT in office and do away with remote work. That is the evolution Im seeing in the workplace. In 1990, they would have done just that and if we didn't go, sayonara Roy, we don't need ya. Now, 30 years later, not only are there 100% remote exceptions that can be approved, outright hybrid environments are still offered years after covid lockdowns were lifted world wide ... essentially acknowledging the benefits of remote work to the employee to the detriment of the employer.'s book of business.
Again, I don't see the problem but I have the benefit of perspective as a person working FT+ since the 1990s. YMMV
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When in the office most people wear headphones. I have my Bose QC35’s on. Still doesn’t drown out one colleague who basically shouts on the phone all day (to other colleagues not customers).
So basically all collaboration is done via Teams or email. Regardless of where people are sat.
Then of course there is the commute. I really do t miss that 5 days a week. It’s about 45 minutes each way for me which isn’t terrible. But doing that everyday becomes a pain.
Truth is the benefits are less and less each year. No payrise or one that keeps hardly keeps up with inflation. So basically the WFH thing is the only benefit we get these days.
At 8:30am EDT today I’ll be in a 6 person group doing the 2025 TTC, triple trail challenge. 400-ish Mtb guys n gals having fun. 45 miles, 4 ish hours.
Afterwords food and fellowship , 2024 event
I trained for this, had injuries to overcome. Hoping no issues, body wise or bike wise.
This is in SE Michigan.
It’s a great event, and a key fundraiser for trail maintenance and improvements.
I’m 63, there’s people mid-teens to 70’s doing this.
Afterwords food and fellowship , 2024 event
I trained for this, had injuries to overcome. Hoping no issues, body wise or bike wise.
This is in SE Michigan.
It’s a great event, and a key fundraiser for trail maintenance and improvements.
I’m 63, there’s people mid-teens to 70’s doing this.
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Good luck. Hope the weather is kind.At 8:30am EDT today I’ll be in a 6 person group doing the 2025 TTC, triple trail challenge. 400-ish Mtb guys n gals having fun. 45 miles, 4 ish hours.
Afterwords food and fellowship , 2024 event
I trained for this, had injuries to overcome. Hoping no issues, body wise or bike wise.
This is in SE Michigan.
It’s a great event, and a key fundraiser for trail maintenance and improvements.
I’m 63, there’s people mid-teens to 70’s doing this.
Thx, little nervous.
We’ve been in this long dry spell, way to dry!
No rain in 1 week+, rain not forecast for another week. This is SE Michigan.. just not “normal”.
Here is my mountain bike trail watering gauge, or dryness gauge.
Trail is Potawatomi (Poto), this tree at 6.5 mile has a water hole at the base of it, pretty accurate.
If there’s any water in that hole, the trail still got some moisture in it.
If it’s dry, the trail is dry. Well, the hole is dry and Poto is so sandy. It’s really bad. The whole southeast Michigan area is dry.
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As I had a car at my disposal this morning, I headed into the farmers' market, where eggs (free range, organic), cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, salad greens, carrots, onions, French onions, aubergines (eggplant), courgettes, (zucchini), a variety of chilli peppers, a variety of ordinary red peppers, herbs (basil, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme), and lots of garlic were all purchased (all grown organically by the person from whom I purchased them).
As was locally sourced organic honey, homemade apricot jam, cooking apples, and raspberries.
At the (organic, and environmentally aware) butcher's stall (they rear, raise, slaughter and age all of their own meat), I purchased organic chicken thighs (skin and bone attached), their own sausages, and some fillet of steak.
Oranges (which, obviously, are not grown locally), lemons and grapefruit were also bought.
Filthy showers - bucketing down from ominous, threatening, charcoal coloured skies, interspersed with brief bouts of brassy sunshine - meant that I didn't linger.
As was locally sourced organic honey, homemade apricot jam, cooking apples, and raspberries.
At the (organic, and environmentally aware) butcher's stall (they rear, raise, slaughter and age all of their own meat), I purchased organic chicken thighs (skin and bone attached), their own sausages, and some fillet of steak.
Oranges (which, obviously, are not grown locally), lemons and grapefruit were also bought.
Filthy showers - bucketing down from ominous, threatening, charcoal coloured skies, interspersed with brief bouts of brassy sunshine - meant that I didn't linger.
My advice would be to stay put for now.
This is because - to my mind - the downsides, or negatives, do not outweigh the (very limited) upside, or positives that you have sketched out.
Unless you utterly detest your current job, and the alternative position on offer is professionally challenging, irresistibly interesting and utterly absorbing (and may open doors or, offer a pathway, to rewarding positions in the future), the presumed advantages of the change (the only one that you have mentioned is financial), do not seem to me to compensate for the lack of job security, limited leave or time off, minimal sick leave, and distance from your current location and life (have you a partner or family? such a move will have an impact on them, and most partners/spouses these days, will have their own careers to consider which might militate against them wishing to make a move with you) should you change positions.
Job security doesn't have to equate to boredom or professional stagnation; it can give you the time - and security - to allow you to gain further qualifications in an area of interest to you to facilitate a better move in the future.
This is not how most people I know work remotely.........
It’s hard for me to understand the pushback on in office work other than folks would rather do their laundry while they work in their underwear lol. (I mean it’s what I do on my remote weeks haha
As @Apple fanboy observes, the commute is a major concern, and a huge factor when negotiating WFH and crafting some sort of work life balance.
Quite apart from the fact that the modern open plan office environment is the spawn of Satan, as it is noisy, disruptive, and utterly horrible - for serious research and writing I far prefer solitude and silence and have always far preferred an office of my own (a facility I enjoyed, for many - not all - of the years I worked as as an academic) - but that practice has long been eroded in the commercial world, for purely commercial reasons.
Nevertheless, for the sharing of office space to be tolerable, - let alone successful - one needs courtesy and consideration of the needs of others, two qualities currently in short supply in the world of work, and management never wished to acknowledge, let alone accept, quite how appalling the open place office work environment actually is for many of their staff, and quite how much a great many of the work force detested it, until confronted by the spectacle of a mass worker rebellion refusing to return to the office permanently when the pandemic ended.
If modern office life was not so grotesquely awful, I daresay the marked reluctance to return to the office on a full time basis once the pandemic ended would not have been quite so pronounced.
But, during the pandemic, people learned to live differently, and realised - especially with advances in tech and modern means of communication that facilitate meetings where one does not need to be present - that alternatives to an open plan office work environment preceded by the torture of an endless and uncomfortable commute (which served to make the work day not the proverbial 9-5, but, rather, something resembling 07.00-19.00/20.00) actually existed and that they intended to avail of this hybrid professional environment in the future.
The other reason for reluctance to return full-time to the office is the amount of time lost daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, to commuting. My brother commutes over an hour each way (meaning that mere travel takes him well over two hours a day) to work.
Thus, to have any quality of life at all, any kind of a work life balance, especially in a world where some of your peers are dropping dead from heart attacks and cancer (and that does cause people to give serious thought to personal and professional priorities), demands that one be physically present during the entire working week are challenged much more frequently. These days, my brother (who works as a solicitor for the government) is physically present - as he fully understands that he needs to be, some sensitive material cannot be removed from the office, clients need to be met, court appearances need to be made, and so on - appears in the office two to three days a week, works from home two to three days a week, and is on stand-by, or call, one week-end per month in case of an emergency.
We had some remote working prior to Covid. Obviously many staff were furloughed and had a very different experience than those of us who were working full time (and covering colleagues not working).
But in essence the benefits of being in an office (collaboration, camaraderie and friendship) are long gone in the modern workplace (or at least mine).
I would move to 100% remote in a heartbeat.
When some staff are literally struggling to meet their living costs on top of their commute costs, it’s no wonder they resent coming in.
With the cost of living most people were better off several years back. Even if they have been promoted or taken on more responsibilities since.
There are those who abuse wfh. But they are the same people who will shirk responsibility wherever they work. In my experience usually younger coworkers.
But in essence the benefits of being in an office (collaboration, camaraderie and friendship) are long gone in the modern workplace (or at least mine).
I would move to 100% remote in a heartbeat.
When some staff are literally struggling to meet their living costs on top of their commute costs, it’s no wonder they resent coming in.
With the cost of living most people were better off several years back. Even if they have been promoted or taken on more responsibilities since.
There are those who abuse wfh. But they are the same people who will shirk responsibility wherever they work. In my experience usually younger coworkers.
Agree completely.
And the thing is that commute costs aren't just financial, it is also the sacrifice of time, hours and hours and hours per week that eat into your quality of life.
Employers (and the boss class generally) never acknowledged, or accepted, just how awful many (if not most) workers, or employees, found the experience of working in open plan offices, and that's before one even gets into the contentious - and deeply disliked - topic of "hot-desking", and this is one of the reasons that staff resisted returning to the office full time when the pandemic ended.
If the experience of the modern work environment, open plan offices and all, was less ghastly, the resistance to returning full time to the office would have been less robust.
And I must say that I always found the nonsense about collaboration, and camaraderie - stuff promoted by bosses and faithfully echoed and parroted by management - vastly over sold in the context of working in an open plan office.
It is perfectly possible - and better, to my mind - to have pretty impressive collaboration and camaraderie in a work environment - when staff have their own space, and office, or professional friendships are all the better for it.
Two weeks ago, I was able to wander around in a tshirt, but - once September crept in, evenings did require a light weight woollen pullover.
Last week saw the appearance of mid-weight woollen sweaters, and today, - with brutal showers - I decided to forego my (aged, but still excellent) trench coat raincoat, and retrieve my Barbour coat, a garment that has not been needed since around Easter, a superb jacket that I have had for well over a decade, invaluable in wet autumnal weather.
Unfortunately, once my Barbour jacket is retrieved, it tends to be worn regularly for the better part of the following six months........
Last week saw the appearance of mid-weight woollen sweaters, and today, - with brutal showers - I decided to forego my (aged, but still excellent) trench coat raincoat, and retrieve my Barbour coat, a garment that has not been needed since around Easter, a superb jacket that I have had for well over a decade, invaluable in wet autumnal weather.
Unfortunately, once my Barbour jacket is retrieved, it tends to be worn regularly for the better part of the following six months........