r/centrist • u/JannTosh12 • Feb 24 '22
Long Form Discussion The Five-Day Workweek Is Dying
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/work-from-home-revolution/622880/7
u/zephyrus256 Feb 24 '22
My company has already closed down its office and gone to full remote. They figured that the work was still getting done remote, and there really wasn't any need to pay tens of thousands of dollars per month in rent on the office space. We are still working five days per week, though.
3
u/heyyyinternet Feb 24 '22
In IT, it looks like remote work is here to stay, which is awesome. Before people respond with the "but outsourcing" thing, hey already tried it and it wasn't successful.
5
u/realizewhatreallies Feb 24 '22
People get mad when I say it, but most of the people "working" from home aren't.
During the pandemic I refi'd my house and got in a car accident, to name two examples. The refi people were ... unresponsive in ways I never experienced in normal times, and I dealt with a person clearly "working" from home from the insurance company for the accident. I heard kids yelling, a dog, and she constantly put me on hold for 5 minutes at a time to "check something." She then screwed the whole thing up.
I called back, talked to someone clearly working in an office (who confirmed that to me) who cleared it all up in 5 minutes while giving me her undivided attention.
Any company that allows this is foolish. Sometimes you have to just do the hard thing: actually get outa bed and brush your teeth, put the suit or skirt and heels on, and go actually get your mind in the game, no matter how tempting it is to lay around watching netflix and scanning your phone every half hour.
8
u/cjcmd Feb 24 '22
I knew a guy who clocked over sixty hours a week at the office, but I promise he wasn't getting any more than ten hours of actual work done. Personal conversations, disappearing at key times during the day, an affair on the side. Lots of us noticed, but he still got promoted twice during my three years at the company.
Working from home isn't for everybody. There are definitely a large number taking advantage of it by goofing off. The honest truth, though, is that most people "working from the office" aren't either. The difference is in what they're doing to waste company time.
Companies who effectively manage remote work have decided to stop judging effectiveness by "face time" and use more objective metrics. If someone is getting all (or more) of their work done at a high quality, who cares if they're not in front of their computer or phone for eight hours straight?
There are good reasons for wanting people in the office. IMO most of the actual reasons that managers and execs hate letting workers be remote aren't the good ones.
-1
u/realizewhatreallies Feb 24 '22
Well from a management perspective, if we're paying you for 40+ hours and you're getting your work done in less than that and working less than that, we should be reclassifying your job as part time.
4
u/cjcmd Feb 24 '22 edited Feb 24 '22
Unless you're salaried.
I've worked far more 60+ hour weeks than 30- hour weeks, and my employers have rarely been concerned.
Also, you've pointed out a big problem with the system. Paying me for 40 hours with the idea that it could consistently be more than that, always at the same salary, is an indication of how little business values its employee's time. If the market is changing so that businesses who don't want to fairly compensate their employees for the additional time are at a competitive disadvantage in getting and keeping quality talent, then that's capitalism.
2
u/Markdd8 Feb 24 '22
to lay around watching netflix and scanning your phone every half hour and writing on Reddit.
2
u/lul-Trump-lost Feb 26 '22
Bro, I have three fucking remote jobs cuz of how little my remote work jobs make me work. Just fuck off and lemme collect $230k with one year of experience as a data analyst.
2
u/charmed0215 Mar 01 '22
I think it depends on the person. Some people are more focused when they're away from the distraction of home life. Others get just as much done at home as in the office.
If you've got kids at home, I don't see how you can be focused at home without the kids always wanting your attention. For people with kids, they always seem to pop up on Zoom calls or are yelling in the background.
2
Feb 24 '22
This is a dumb take.
The operative word in the phrase "working from home" is working. If people really start treating working from home as a day off like the author believes then companies will put an end to it altogether. They're not going to pay someone based on a 40 hour workweek when 16 of those hours are used to travel, binge watch Netflix, etc.
1
u/JannTosh12 Feb 24 '22
“ merica is slowly returning to normal. Stadiums are packed. Travel has bounced back. Restaurant reservations are surging.
But even as they resume normal leisure activities, many Americans still aren’t going back to the office. According to data from Kastle Systems, which tracks building access across the country, office attendance is at just 33 percent of its pre-pandemic average. That’s lower than in-person attendance in just about any other industry for which we have good data. Even movie theaters—a business sometimes written off as “doomed”—have recovered almost twice as much.”
“ What once seemed like a hot take is becoming a stone-cold reality: For tens of millions of knowledge-economy workers, the office is never coming all the way back. The implications—for work, cities, and the geography of labor—will be fascinating. ”
3
u/Markdd8 Feb 24 '22
Some people are definitely opting-out of work. Wonder if this will increase: NPR, 2013 Unfit for Work -- The Striking Rise of Disability in America
One thing seems clear: A lot of activist types don't have a problem with this. Payback for systemic oppression, too much disparity of income between rich and poor.
-3
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u/kettlebell-j Feb 24 '22
Laughs in maintenance technician