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Since the beginning of the month we are "asked" to be in the Office once a week... Can't complain as it's a 80-90 minute drive. My Home Office is my Couch with my Laptops spread around to be placed on my lap as needed.
Who the f*** is General Failure, and why is he reading my harddisk?
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...the "office" (for legal purposes) is a shared working space in Austin, TX. Nobody goes there. I'm not even sure we're paying for a seat there. This was done, apparently, to "relocate" the company out of California to escape the severe level of taxation and regulation there. Literally everyone from the CEO on down works from home. There are about 50 of us total.
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...after a very long holiday and staying at home for 3 weeks.
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So one of the board directors has stated that he "expects" everyone to be in the office "at least" 3 days each week.
This is despite us having our most profitable and productive year ever during lockdown with no-one in the office.
Also despite that fact that if many of my team are in the office then they are not actually doing their jobs properly (off-site consultations and coaching) 
Ironically, I was in-office on Monday and said director was not!
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In my immediate family we have 1½ fully-functioning adults and only one driver (me). The rest are elderly or medically disabled. Three days out of five we have appointments with various doctors. This has become progressively more and more of a load. We were supposed to be back in the office a little over six months ago. The best I've managed is 4 consecutive days in the building  .
Fortunately my boss is understanding, and as long as I'm productive he doesn't mind. Truthfully I prefer working from home, because there are far fewer interruptions. At that, the breaks I do take don't tend to disrupt my train of thought. Those at work require me to switch from product A to product B, subsystem B.7, from a build 4 years old. It's ridiculously hard to keep context in your head working like that, especially when it happens over and over again throughout the day.
Software Zen: delete this;
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...and only because the non-IT people would be jealous otherwise. The IT people (including the bosses) all agree (apart from one weirdo) that productivity and worker happiness is better when working from home... but we are in a government organization so have to allow for the majority of people working here (i.e. non-IT), dammit!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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We decide what is best to work efficiently. If I were to work with someone, we can arrange to be in office that day.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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We've been in office 3 days a week for three months now. (Well, except for the guy who was remote for years before COVID.)
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What is this remote of which you speak? 
I never worked remotely. My office works on either air-gapped systems or limited-edition physical hardware and can't work remotely. We were on paid leave for about three months when all hell broke loose in the US back in spring 2020 while management was working out how to deal with it. Since then, back in the office in varying densities of workers; if you weren't in, you were on paid leave.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein
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I chose rejection but I'm not against partially working from the office. Like Tue/Thu in-office, rest of the time is flex, or something similar. I see no reason to accept a full-office work-week anymore. Employees have spoken and there's a glut of remote work available now if you have experience.
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There's a lot of absolutes being thrown around. All of us in tech are very fortunate to have the ability to work from home, unlike a lot of other jobs.
I love remote working for many reasons (less time wasted commuting, more family time, less money spent on gas, less wear/tear on the car, etc.) but companies should be flexible and let people choose how often they wish to be in the office. There are those who want to go in, and let them come in. I figure a 2-3 day remote days per week is sufficient for most people, and reasonable.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
-- Marcus Brigstocke, British Comedian
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It is what it is. None of the emotions apply for me.
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What then does?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I'm currently working from home. When the time comes to go back to work, I will. None of the answers were applicable.
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...as tech workers, most of us are lucky to have that flexibility, and so many people do not.
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Absolutely. Many instances where I could take my kid to games or outing with friends where I work from car or bench or wherever while they play.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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...at the end of last year we downsized from one that could seat 25-60 people to a smaller place with something like 2 or 3 offices and conference room or two for client meetings.
So there's not enough space left for anyone but the few people who can't or really don't want to work from home for some reason...
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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He might not score highly on the HR management scale but the supposition that working from home is less productive is almost certainly true
When I was working from home, before working elsewhere (retirement), the morning would start with an all hands blue jeans meeting. After some mind numbing boredom a smidgen of work would be done. Then in the afternoon it was time for the daily exercise, going out for a long walk. Curiously it was difficult to contact co-workers in the afternoon so I assumed they had gone out too!
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lucanor wrote: but the supposition that working from home is less productive is almost certainly true
I beg to differ! Many reasons, but keep in mind that I've spent 20+ years as a contractor working from home, so I know how to work from home and love it, though I totally get that some people prefer the office environment. I did enjoy the office we were in before the lockdown, but I not enough to wish we still had an office. And it's not even an option now, as the office was closed permanently a few months ago.
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I think it's a question of job description. For most employees the job was to work in an office as part of a team. To send them home and expect the team to be equally productive is just unrealistic.
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We are organised in 'Teams' but have individual workloads and pretty much 'siloed' jobs with little overlap - but management still want us back in the office for 'performance' reasons - none of which they can justify with any rational metrics.
I, on the other hand, have access to such metrics (which I developed at management request at the start of the lockdown, no less) which clearly show that performance actually improved steadily over the lockdown period while staff worked from home.
However, we're being pulled back in "to regain performance.."
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Leo56 wrote: I, on the other hand, have access to such metrics (which I developed at management request at the start of the lockdown, no less) which clearly show that performance actually improved steadily over the lockdown period while staff worked from home.
However, we're being pulled back in "to regain performance.."
@Leo56 - any chance you could share those metrics (de-identified)? I'm just a process engineer (i.e., not in a position to capitalize), but I could really use some information to sway my management to avoid that fate.  90% of my urgent priority work is single-task focus work. Yet they want me to do that in an environment with a 2 minute interrupt frequency.
... Manager offered to buy expensive noise-canceling headphones as a consolation--to take care of the noisy environment (which is human vocal noise). I somehow managed to avoid a hard facepalm ... (a) not how they work, (b) not going to keep people from directly interrupting me while I'm clearly focusing.
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Very sorry dead5ea (great name by the way!) but the metrics are based on a weekly compilation of process-related data over the last two years - exclusively admin-process type work in a team-based administration system.
At its most basic, it counts processes started against processes completed (per process type, of which there are several dozen) and presents them in a like-for-like graphical comparison (to enable rapid assimilation).
Sorry I can't help 
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My team has been WFH since March 2020, and 99% of the staff love it. My management up 3 levels is happy, as productivity is up. No one that's WFH in our office wants to go back.
In my case, my commute changed from 34 miles to 35 steps. I have a dedicated office and my wife (when she's home) leaves me alone to work -- we see each other when I take breaks. If I get a call at the end of my work day, it's no problem as I'm not worried about ugly traffic. The team communicates mostly via Teams chat and calls, and it's working. Everyone is happy and the morale is very high.
This week I'm back at an office for a major software roll-out. My day starts with a 45 minute commute, followed by 9-11 hours of "stuff", followed by another 45 minute commute with a bunch of suicidal maniacs on the road. Instead of simply logging off, I have to deal with a stressful commute.
Going forward, I'll be in the office 1 day every 2 weeks. I'm ok with that.
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Warn me when he is?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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