People who work from home spend their time ‘napping, doing DIY and having sex’
Sex is what you go to the office to find, isn’t it? Or at least other peoples’ homes?
People who work from home spend their time ‘napping, doing DIY and having sex’
Sex is what you go to the office to find, isn’t it? Or at least other peoples’ homes?
There doesn’t seem to be any stipulation who’s home you’re toiling in.
Think outside the box, please1
DIY sex?
Is this “anchored” in the hack’s own experience?
A close lady friend asked me a little while back if I still had sex on a regular basis, I replied “all the of the time, I just wish MrsBud would take part more often”.
As for DIY, I don’t charge a fat hourly rate so that I have to do chores myself.
Out of sheer curiosity, does the work get done?
Boganboy,
Broadly speaking, yes. All this dicking around just replaces all the dicking around people used to do in the office. Using Facebook when the boss isn’t around, filling your day with seminars and meetings where you can fall asleep, finding excuses to go to the other office because it’s full of totty to ogle (I knew a manager who did a ton of this).
Also, a lot of people have lengthened their days, make better use of their time. I will just get tired of coding at about 4pm, like f**k it, I’ll go cut the lawn. Then I have dinner, and then, I do another couple of hours later. You don’t do that in the office. You just sit there until 5:30 and then go home.
Thanks Western Bloke. Sounds like WFH should is going to permanently take over a lot of office jobs then.
And so it should, in jobs where it makes sense. I’ve been WFH for most of the last 20 years, and I’m far more productive at home that when I have to commute to an office. If I’m lucky, it’s less than an hour each way but that’s still 2 hours wasted every day. If I’m not lucky I might have to stay in hotels all week and commute weekly.
And once in an office, it’s far more disruptive when someone interrupts me for something trivial. It’s not just having to stop, deal with the whatever, and start working again. I have to reacquire the mental state of what I was working on; a 2 minute interruption could mean 2 hours of lost work.
For jobs that require talking to people, it’s probably not going to work. For those of us that do real work rather than just pointless meetings or HR, it’s a far better model.
What everyone has missed is that mothers would commute to a job and look after the kids and this really does affect their sleep patterns. When the lock down hit and people had to work from home, mothers were able to catch up on their sleep. hence, once the lock down was lifted a lot of mothers wanted to continue with the working from home thing. A lot of mothers do not want to go back to commuting. Does make me wonder who the mothers are having sex with during the day…..
I’d be very careful with this thinking, WFH’s. The majority of workers can’t work from home because work is where they do what they do. They’re also the majority of people get the things done, people need done. The WFH’s not nearly so much. You may think you justify WFH on the time saved commuting & all the other stuff. Those other people have to commute whether they like it or not & work when they’re told. They don’t get the option. People resent that sort of thing. You want to go open up a big fission in society, you want to think of the consequences.
” For those of us that do real work rather than just pointless meetings or HR, it’s a far better model.”
WFH works when the people doing it are conscientious types. When they aren’t its a licence to skive.
If I can WFH then someone else can do the same work from Chennai or Manila or Bucharest. That’s always been the big question mark for me.
“For those of us
thatwho say we do real work”Who knows?
12+ years ago, I WFH, as a regional manager for 12 charity care homes. I worked many more hours than my quite decent salary covered; but then I didn’t need the money. It was full-on – constant requests for expenditure approvals (even with a good delegation scheme), staffing emergencies, staffing appointments, investigations and disciplinaries, budget monitoring, deaths, policy implementation and enforcement, bed bugs/wasps/ants, liaising with relatives, huge regulatory requirements*,etc.
Women who took on the role never lasted long, unless they were empty-nesters. They imagined they could cope with the role while doing the school run (there and back) and then catch up when the sprogs were bathed/fed. For women with children, WFH is often a skive –particularly in the public sector.
*replacing a broken window in an internal door in a care home? First, read the voluminous HSE “guidance” (50+ pages). Second, ensure that the contractor will comply with the “guidance”. Third, let contract. Fourth, verify the contractor has complied with the “guidance” and specification. Fifth, sign off invoice and forward to HQ for payment. “Phew! Still we are covered against any complaints/claims/bad publicity”.
“If I can WFH then someone else can do the same work from Chennai or Manila or Bucharest. That’s always been the big question mark for me.”
In theory, yes. But the company may not even meet the (alleged) workers from Bombay or Calcutta. I wont be the only one here to have seen the practice (versus theory) of off-shore outsourcing. MMV of course, but in my experience, it’s not always pretty (re delivery), for all the claims of cost-cutting/value added.
WFH doesn’t (need to) mean never in the office. As WB/BiW say, the nature of the work matters and can easily steer improved output/productivity according to circumstances.
I’m a contractor. If my client is unhappy with the quality or quantity of my work, my contract doesn’t get renewed.
That’s a fair point. There are some talented software engineers in all of those places, I’ve worked with several from India (never from the Philippines or Romania, but not saying they don’t exist.) It’s up to me to convince potential clients that my work is worth my price. I’ve never had a problem doing so, so far.
The fact that my contracts are generally renewed (it tends to be until the project I’m working on comes to an end) suggests that my clients know that the work I do for them is real enough.
“I’m a contractor. If my client is unhappy with the quality or quantity of my work, my contract doesn’t get renewed.”
So you’re self employed. You have a large vested interest in stuff getting done, whether WFH or in an office, because you don’t get paid otherwise. Employees, not so much. Especially ones ‘working’ for the State.
BiS, if I recall correctly, Elon Musk was quite vehement about getting people back into the office after the pandemic subsided.
Staff at Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla were told in no uncertain terms that they had to come back in to the office, if not, they could pretend to work somewhere else.
I think his point was that since a large proportion of staff were in roles that necessitated being on site, it was morally wrong to create a two tier system, where elites could work flexibly but proles had no choice.
The problem Jim, is everyone will say the same as those above. And will justify it in exactly the same way.
It’s hard enough managing people when they’re engaged in the production of something tangible. You pay them on output & they concentrate on their output at the expense of everybody else’s output. Pay them by time & the work expands to occupy the time available. (see Northcote Parkinson) But with desk jockeying a lot of the work tends to defined by the person doing it.
Theo: “replacing a broken window in an internal door in a care home? First, read the voluminous HSE “guidance” (50+ pages). Second, ensure that the contractor will comply with the “guidance”. Third, let contract. Fourth, verify the contractor has complied with the “guidance” and specification. Fifth, sign off invoice and forward to HQ for payment.”
I’m surprised you left the meeting off. Yep. Reckon a competent desk jockey could justify the hours of best part of a day on that.
Of course, if they’ve done similar before several times, have read the relevant passages in the book, know the contractor who did it last time, the whole lot could be done in 20 minutes.
WFH is not intrinsically good, it’s not intrinsically bad. It suites some people, is does not suite others. Some people can do it, for others their job is such that they can’t.
For this last in particular, is it always fair? No, but there you go.
My very well paid job allows me to be flexible, and I am. But before chinky flu, WFH was not an option, and I did the hours (and a lot more besides).
After redundancy ten years ago, my place if work was 90 miles from home and I stayed at a B&B during the week, which I did for just shy of 7 years until redundancy got me again.
Now I’m 70 miles away and “hybrid” (I don’t have to be but I choose to go in for two days). It’s an ideal situation really (particularly as I’m now the wrong side of 60 – only a few years left)
Anybody who has a go at me – on general principle – for WFH can kiss my arse. If you think it’s not fair you can kiss my arse again!
But that said, critics – specific and general – are correct as I see daily both sides.
Correct and conscientious (which I like to think I am and my employers seem to agree), responding almost immediately when contacted, and producing whatever quickly and efficiently.
And the the never seem to be theres (some of whom are only a few miles from base).
But those who have no choice but to come in are the same: the hard working and conscientious, and the workshy wasters.
Well, the genie is out of the bottle and it isn’t going back. Who knows where (and how) it will end?
As an old, stale, white male – that everyone else seems to want to consign to the dustbin of history – I just get on with things and watch with interest.
No need to consign me, I’ll happily get in it in a few years. Then the world is yours, you younger, amazing, awesome tide of history you.
Being self-employed isn’t a necessary condition for suiting WFH though, it’s the nature of the work not the nature of the employment. A wage slave doing the same sort of work would still have to show sufficient quality or quantity, it’s just harder to get rid of those that don’t.
The public sector ‘workers’ should mostly be made redundant anyway, whether they shirk from home or from an office. And it should be made far easier to fire someone for bad performance. That would sort out most of the rest of the WFH shirkers.
bloke in spain,
“You may think you justify WFH on the time saved commuting & all the other stuff. Those other people have to commute whether they like it or not & work when they’re told. They don’t get the option. People resent that sort of thing. You want to go open up a big fission in society, you want to think of the consequences.”
But those other people aren’t travelling far. Factories, call centres, warehouses that require physical presence are overwhelmingly in cheaper parts of the country. Most of the people in factories in Swindon live within 15 minutes, so either a £2 bus or whatever 3 miles of petrol is. People who do a longer commute are generally management types who opt to live in fancier places like Cirencester or Marlborough.
This even applies to offices. I did some work for a company in Wrexham, and the office was generally lively, even though they could work anywhere. Why? Because they all lived around Wrexham. Chester at a push. 15 minutes to work. And when it’s that short, people would rather be around other people than not. They’d rather sacrifice 30 minutes and a quid in petrol. It’s not about the office, it’s about the commute. People don’t want to spend 2 hours and £30 on travel.
This is all going to lead to salary adjustments, of course. If companies no longer need people living in Surrey and can hire Geordies instead, salaries are going to fall to Geordie levels. The losers in all of this are people who own properties in cities and the rail workers.
But those other people aren’t travelling far. Factories, call centres, warehouses that require physical presence are overwhelmingly in cheaper parts of the country. Most of the people in factories in Swindon live within 15 minutes, so either a £2 bus or whatever 3 miles of petrol is. People who do a longer commute are generally management types who opt to live in fancier places like Cirencester or Marlborough.
At one time that was true. When I first worked in the City, The senior partner commuted in from Norwich. The post boy from Hackney. You seen the prices of property in Hackney, now? These days, people live where they can afford & work where they can get a job. So what you’re saying is management needs special assistance because it chooses to live in pretty villages in Berkshire. With respect FO.
It’s one of the greatest problems of the UK. It as a vastly over populated, over paid, administrative class with the intellect of pond life. A tail which has been vigorously wagging the dog for far too long. But the country’s not unique in that.
Take Theo’s “replacing a broken window in an internal door in a care home?” What’s the actual important activity here? Mending the window in the door? One suspects, confronted by the door. Theo could do little more than gape & make his excuses. But he’s likely being paid more for the admin on the repair than the guy who actually did it.
NBER reported a 12% drop in productivity for WFH compared to WFO. I have no doubt that there is a small percentage of Lone Wolves who do their best work left strictly alone. A desert island with only one palm tree would do fine as long as it has internet. The rest of us being human need social interaction and you don’t get that with home schooling and WFH. The close similarity between WFH and WTF should make that clear.
In my time as a startup and turnaround consultant I observed that the small WFH businesses that succeeded 1. Worked out of a premises not directly accessible from the home, such as a converted garage. 2. Taking on an assistant and becoming a physical team made an immediate difference to progress through the Must Do list. It is no secret that we all perform better when observed.
BIS,
“At one time that was true. When I first worked in the City, The senior partner commuted in from Norwich. The post boy from Hackney. You seen the prices of property in Hackney, now? These days, people live where they can afford & work where they can get a job. So what you’re saying is management needs special assistance because it chooses to live in pretty villages in Berkshire. With respect FO.”
What? I didn’t say that at all. I just said how it is. I’m not calling for any special assistance for anyone.
if you can’t afford your job living in Hackney, skill up to earn more or leave. I know lots of IT blokes who are working out where to move. They found someone who is doing WFH, so why spend London money? Why not be somewhere that is fine for a once-a-week trip like Swindon or Wellingborough?
“…if they’ve done similar before several times, have read the relevant passages in the book, know the contractor who did it last time, the whole lot could be done in 20 minutes.”
The work (with travel time) would be c.90 minutes (minimum). And if the contractor who knows the “guidance” is unavailable, then another contractor unfamiliar with the “guidance” will charge (not that unreasonably) c2 hours just for reading it. And HSE updates its “guidance” without warning…
I support sensible regulations to protect the vulnerable elderly; but the current framework makes many care homes barely profitable.
Theo, we used to do work like this. And have all the bumf. That & building regs which is ten times the size, plus a lot of other stuff. The contractor may know more about it than you do. And I know exactly how long it takes to replace a window. I’ve done enough. If we’d been there before, we’d likely have a record of the size of the glass & arrive with it pre-cut. If it was a stock size door, we’d know it anyway. In the specs.
As for the travel time, you think you’re they’re only client? It might be ten minutes from the previous job.
If you don’t know all this, you’re not a very good administrator.
Why not be somewhere that is fine for a once-a-week trip like Swindon or Wellingborough?
A possible reason is so many people have been taking the piss. Like 3/4 of the Civil Service.
@bloke in spain – “You want to go open up a big fission in society, you want to think of the consequences.”
By that logic we should do office work outdoors while generating our power on treadmills, to avoid a fission in society between those who must work strenuously outdoors in all weathers compared to those who have a nice sit-down office job in heated and air-conditioned offices.
@…, August 11, 2023 at 4:56 pm
That’s fine if you have the freedom to employ whoever you like. Then you stick to the expensive guy who knows his stuff and it all works. But once the organisation is big enough, senior people impose requirements to keep costs down by employing the cheapest contractor, and in-house supervision expands hugely (which does not included in the cost).
Charles. At one time the manager of a place like this would have “owned” it. Would have been responsible for arranging for the repair & the paperwork & that everything was done in the correct manner. Would have had the relationship with repairer who he/she used because price/efficiency/competency. Things being decided & done where the information quality is highest. But desk jockeys knew better. Now it costs 3 times as much & the outcome….?
to avoid a fission in society between those who must work strenuously outdoors in all weathers compared to those who have a nice sit-down office job in heated and air-conditioned offices.
You think there isn’t a fission?
“What this company makes? Oh, that’s done in that building somewhere over there by the grubby little men eat in the works canteen”. What do we make, anyway?”
I know a lovely young lass who has just chucked in a successful & remunerative deskbound career to go work in a hospital.
Since COVID, she was made to work exclusively from home. The company she worked for found that it was advantageous not to have to rent office space and made WFH the default .
Which is great for some people – but not for others. Staring at the same four walls for the 8 hour working day was something she found very isolating. I think for a majority of young people, there is an awful lot of beneficial and serendipitous social interaction that you are going to miss out on WFH.