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I’d suggest there’s been a creep for longer hours and more available out of office hours

completely agree with this - tech and management practices have allowed work to creep into personal time to a massive extent.

some of the expectations i've observed have been hard to believe - work a 60+ hour week and then make sure you get out for a photo op on some construction project most weekends. ok you are on holiday but if we have a problem just fly / drive back and deal with it. ok it's 4 am but this happening now and it's your problem.

fuck all that tbh. these jobs are well paid but nervous breakdowns aren't cheap either.

so yeah, if they are actually on holiday i'd question why they are on the call at all.

Shouldn’t the question be why are they being called not why are they on the call ;-)

You copulating with the exhaust?

This is the closest I got to an office romance, went out with and lived with a girl I met at my best mate's work drinks.

This. I'm naturally lazy, but when I have a task I just do it pretty quickly compared to others. I also have a lot of freedom to find things that need doing and just do it in the time I set.

Same. There's guys on site, stuck doing tunnelling for example one very fixed shift, plus overtime with absolutely no flexibility at all and there is sometimes a bit of resentment about what some office staff get away with.

there is sometimes a bit of resentment about what some office staff get away with

Isn't that always the way tho'?

bit of perspective:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1elg0267p6o

The 'office' or 'wfh' discussion/arguement has got to be one of the worst legacys of COVID.

Like almost everything these days, people on either side are never going to convince people on the other side, and anyone in the middle gets frowns from them both.

It seems like such an odd one for people to get into arguments over too. Some people prefer working in the office, some people from home, some like a bit of both. So, why not just let the workers choose and everyone wins?

My last place had a 2 day in office mandate after lockdowns lifted. Few people came in more than 2 days. So any time you were having a meeting, it was a bunch of people in a meeting room and a bunch on Zoom. The worst of both worlds!

And of course they were making a big thing about their green credentials, while unnecessarily asking people to commute into the office when they'd just spent the past 2 years doing the same job from home.

My current workplace thankfully is pretty flexible that way, some people are fully remote, some are in the office a few days a week. Nobody really cares as long as the work gets done. Thankfully the owners seem to be mature enough to not care about the office theatrics around appearing busy.

And of course they were making a big thing about their green credentials, while unnecessarily asking people to commute into the office when they'd just spent the past 2 years doing the same job from home.

My current employer is trying to calculate the carbon footprint of commuting compared to running the heating (or AC, they are North American) at home to show that commuting isn't that bad, perhaps.

why not just let the workers choose and everyone wins?

Bloody commie.

Is that actually what happened here? I didn't see anybody who prefers WFH saying nobody should work in the office, or that people who work in the office are some kind of grifter. I just saw one cunt having a "No empathy" January, and mostly people not even responding directly but just discussing details of the pros and cons of the various options and how it works for them.

Would be interesting to see the figures! Though for me it was 35 miles in a car followed by 5 on a bus.

They also had a competition where people could enter their best ideas for how the company could be more green. The top prize was a return trip to Tokyo...

New job starts on Monday, we haven’t discussed the office/WFH situation as I’m assuming it is going to be come into the office usually, and work from home when needed. This assumption may not last until Tuesday of course.

Hopefully the job lasts longer than that.

You can not accept it.

Exactly. I was once presented with a new contract which increased my notice period to 6mths from 3mths.

“I won’t be signing that”
“Oh! But we would owe you 6mths notice as well”
“Still no”
“How about a meagre pay rise, but only if you accept 6mths notice period?”
“Still still no”
“*surprisedpikachu*”

I ended up resigning 2 years later for a job that wouldn’t have waited 6 months for me to start. Which is what the whole exercise was designed to prevent.

What do you do instead?

I'm out in the community, the only admin I do these days is keeping track of invoices and superannuation. Unless I'm supporting my clients with theirs, much more fun than doing it for an organisation.

one cunt having a "No empathy" January

apologies if that was me - rough couple of days at work so probably not the best time time for me to be wading into an internet discussion on wfh.

peace and love to all, whatever your work based choices and circumstances :)

Given the AC is already running in the office id think from home still wins.

We have apprentices and graduates who's development as been stagnated due to WFH.

There is more to the discussion than " I can do my work at home" senior staff have performance objectives to develop other staff (it's also in the job descriptions)

Imo this is the biggest genuine issue with wfh for business.

Very anecdotal, but I was taking to someone working at a big accountancy firm and they commented on how covid and post-covid grads were visibly behind when it came to being able to bring them into client facing meetings.

However, this goes back to the point about taking an intelligent approach.

My last role was a product owner. Only the CPOs had what I would call real line management responsibility. And their reports were spread across a min of 2 counties and no junior staff. Users, stakeholders and tech teams spread across different countries, different offices within countries and different floors within offices.

So if you're a partner in a law firm, yes you need to be present with junior staff. In my case, it was close to irrelevant.

We have apprentices and graduates who's development as been stagnated due to WFH

And we (developers) have some who have come through strongly. Before COVID I'm sure there were at least some who found the office an intimidating place who were held back by that environment as well.

I WFH as it fits my life with 2 young kids. I liked it more when I was in a full office tho, for work and social reasons. I went to my office a couple of times thinking I might make it a regular thing but it was shit. <25% of desks filled but no empty dest with the a full compliment of cables to hook up my laptop. Barely even talked to anyone. Wasn't worth the >1.5h to get there.

I would like to work in an office full of nice people an easy commute away but I don't think it exists anymore so I will plug away at home untill I self sabotage, then go from there.