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Reality is somewhere between the two. WFH is useful, occassionally; when I have a well defined problem to bludgeon my way through. But there's honestly no substitute for a meeting room, being able to read body language and a whiteboard. With a vaccine in the arm I'd be aiming back for 9 out of 10 days back in the office immediately.

When you operating in the territory of things that are harder to write down than explain in person; teleconferences are simply not good enough.

We've survived 9 months but the productivity hit is now becoming very real; compounded by certain cloud deployed applications misbehaving and exceptionally hard to diagnose without a few people round a screen to interpret.

The vaccine is currently an unknown quantity in terms of passing covid on to another person. Even if you've had the vaccine (which due to work, I have) then you must still wear a mask and distance. You can also still get Covid, although hopefully nowhere near as bad.

Things will not be back to normal until later this year. Probably September at the earliest. No-one should be complacent, especially if you've had the vaccine.

Things will not be back to normal until later this year.

That's what people thought last year too. Actually things will not be back to "normal" (pre-Covid "normal") for many years: Between the uncertainty concerning how the vaccine affects the transmission of the virus, and the fact that a lot of people will never get vaccinated (for technical or ideological reasons), the situation is unlikely to change for quite a while.

And that's assuming the best-case scenario, where the virus does not mutate into something even more dangerous (like, turning immune to the current vaccines, or way more infectious/mortal).

If you're a happy-go-lucky optimist, you can hope in a couple years Covid will be thought of like the annual flu, something which can be dangerous, but doesn't affect everyday life too much. If you're a pessimist, you will assume it will take a rather long time ( many years ) until humanity has either died or become reasonably resistant to Covid despite its mutations.

Things will not be back to normal until later this year. Probably September at the earliest. No-one should be complacent, especially if you've had the vaccine.

For added gravitas and efficacy, that statement needs to be said standing in front of two Union Jacks and with both thumbs up

And for added realism, a clown's hat should be worn...

...based on having spent the last eight years working from home full time, and having spent two years in a previous job doing the same full time as well. these days, we have more than enough tools to be able to work remotely 99% of the time - screen sharing, video conferencing, distributed code repositories, task management software, the works. in my experience, very occasional face-to-face meetings are all that is required if the time in them is used appropriately to plan ahead, and the necessary management mechanisms are put in place and actively utilised. if you can't write it down clearly, then that's a communication problem and face-to-face meetings are only masking that issue at best, or compounding it at worst when people feel that they have to be *seen* to understand it whether they do or not.

that said, it's not something that suits everybody (even to the point of depression in some people who need the social element that an office job can bring), and some businesses will find it difficult to make the switch either due to existing personnel or technology choices, or because the people who work there prefer a different working style, or because of the nature of the working environment (e.g. working for a university or school). there's nothing wrong with either option so long as it's an informed choice, after all. however, what's going on now isn't proper working from home because there are other people and children around in said homes, and it's still being seen as a short-term thing by most people so there hasn't been proper commitment to the necessary tools and processes to make it work in the long term by either the business or the employee. if a business commits to remote working from the off, then the office is a secondary thing that may be a useful thing to have available - and yes, some meetings might be quicker and easier face-to-face, especially when planning complicated changes. that said, a permanent office is a significant cost to a business, so unless there's a clear business cost benefit it's often cheaper to invest in better tools than to pay out for an office, especially for smaller startups.

"When you operating in the territory of things that are harder to write down than explain in person..."

Take a typing course? I don't know. I tend to use the same words with my mouth-hole as I do with my tappy-hands, but maybe I'm part of some elite group I didn't know about.

While I don't necessarily disagree in many cases, sometimes it is efficacious to adjust the words that are coming from your mouth-hole in response to a look of confusion, boredom, sublime understanding, etc. on the face of the person receiving your oral emissions.

It's not the writing of the words that is different from the mouth-hole version. It's he interpretation.

Many a disagreement that has been going on for far to long because a took b's written version the wrong way has been resolved by having them actually talk to each other.

When you operating in the territory of things that are harder to write down than explain in person; teleconferences are simply not good enough.

A question has to be why things are harder to write down than explain in person.

Perhaps you find the act of writing down too slow and so you lose your train of thought, something that can be overcome through understanding your thinking style and applying structure and practice (eg. see the Pyramid Principle).

Perhaps the problem requires you to walk someone through a set of diagrams/screens - in the case of diagrams, your style maybe to annotate as you explain. Yes, video means you can easily miss the visual cues as to whether the other person has or hasn't understood the point etc., so we just need to get used to asking and giving confirmatory feedback.

On a slightly different tack; back in the 1980's (before cheap mobiles and easy access to email) I had a PA who made great use of ansa machines to the point where if you picked up a call from her, you often got the introduction: "this is for your ansa machine, not you..."

But yes, there are benefits to be derived from simply spending time together with other people in the same geographic location. For one company I worked for that meant having to visit a rather nice french chateau a couple of times a year.

Perhaps you find the act of writing down too slow and so you lose your train of thought, something that can be overcome through understanding your thinking style and applying structure and practice (eg. see the Pyramid Principle).

You are right, the principal problem is speed. Real world deadlines to get things done aren't compatible with the lengthy time out to do a slick presentation or a formal written report. Rolling goalposts don't help either - whether set internally or externally. Sure, the formal report will be there; but to explain it, to live with the consequences of it? Giving it to someone to read and saying there you go; it's just not the same.

The conversation is by far the most important aspect of my day to day work; either enabling others to do theirs, or getting my own objectives out the door. Teleconferencing or video calling covers most of that need. I find it breaks down the moment you need to make a sketch to explain an idea, which is probably half of all meetings. Pre-baked slides can help; but take time to prepare without overwhelming the audience in one step. Whereas a sketch and pen in hand you can much more quickly and easily gauge an audiences reaction and tailor accordingly.

Yes, virtual whiteboards are available but way more difficult to work with; mostly because of the trickiness in gauging reactions. While you're in your drawing application you're probably not looking at the videoconference screens.

The world does have bigger problems than my own needs for a whiteboard and indeed; when I was looking at the virus statistics before the government announced the first lockdown; my own (and others in the department's) conclusions were to close the office right now. I am absolutely an advocate of the current restrictions and indeed probably think they should have gone further pending getting a vaccine out. (Eat-out-to-help-out and spread the virus comes to mind...)

That still doesn't change my opinon that y work (and therefore anyone that uses my work) is compromised by the reduced communications that we're currently living with. Given "normal" freedom of movement, I would far rather be back in the office for communication reasons. Having boundaries between what is work and what is home is also important; those boundaries have very much been shattered by the current mess.

The option to WFH has been proven; but to mandate one or the other is just a fallacy. For the right kind of job (administrative production line) - no problem. For the wrong kind of job; the exchange of complex ideas; working in laboratories or with machine tools; clearly not viable. 9 months of restrictions to varying extents are now genuinely hampering my productivity; and therefore the companies productivity. Results may vary!

I'm the opposite, instead of losing 8-10 working hours per week on the commute to the client site I'm actually working so getting more done. Also less tired on Friday after not traveling until typically 9-10pm, so getting more done there. I'm probably never going back to more than 3/5 days in an office - and I'm not really sure that needs to be every week, so nearer 3/10 if possible.

It is horses for courses though. Some people work better in an office, some don't. Chances are the good companies will allow us to work as we like provided we deliver.

I'm not convinced that job performance of remote vs office is anything to do with personal preference.

Much more to do with the type of work. I've worked from home 100% for the last 17 years. 50:50 for the 5 years before that. It works for me as my work is mostly solitary. If I'm starting a new project and want to thrash out the details with a customer, there is no substitute for face to face.

If you're doing something creative in a team, you need to work with that team to get the blue sky stuff.

If I were 21 and just starting out, I'd make sure I was in the office every day early and working late to make sure my face was familiar to the powers that be. No way I'd believe that a Zoom call was a substitute to office networking. How would I substitute those accidental meetings that happen with people in separate teams/business areas?

>>If I were 21 and just starting out, I'd make sure I was in the office every day early and working late to make sure my face was familiar to the powers that be.

The problem is the powers that be are working from home.

Everyone trumpeting WFH this early are either in terribly small teams/companies, have already built rapport with the colleagues pre-pandemic, are individual contributors in their roles, or haven't actually found out if their employer/teams/customers are happy.

It might work in some cases - but it cannot be made a general statement at all. Maybe factory worker style of roles.

I'd expect someone championing 100% WFH to explain how they would manage it if they were on the other side - as the hiring manager or business owner, how they would build teams, support hires.

"I'm not convinced that job performance of remote vs office is anything to do with personal preference."

I disagree.

I work as a software developer, a job which is nominally pretty portable these days. I have a good working setup at home as well, with a dedicated room for an office. But I also have a set of tendencies and circumstances that make working from home (at least, full time) less preferable. I tend to get distracted easily, especially when tired (*cough*, I'm on El Reg). Having my own machine right next to my work one is a bit too much of a temptation sometimes. If you argue that this is a problem I have to solve, then you're right. I choose to solve it by moving to a place where I can more easily focus and am less likely to be distracted.

My other half also works from home and has a bad habit of not respecting that I'm working. I can get a number of phone calls asking for chores to be done (even though she's on the sofa downstairs), or a few random visits just because she's bored, all of which kill any focus or flow I might have had. Some days are better than others.

I tend to be one of the problem-solvers at work, including little things like "my keyboard won't work". Trying to diagnose something like that over phone or video call can really be an exercise in patience, but in person can be much more quickly diagnosed. Similarly with helping a team member with code, it is much easier just to slide over to the next desk and run your eye over the problem.

There are a whole host of benefits for working from home that other people have described, and I don't disagree with the vast majority of them. But for me, I find that I am normally more productive in the office and would prefer to work here most of the time. I completely believe it's down to personal preference and circumstance.

(Anon, because I'm sure that neither my employer nor my SO would enjoy reading some of what I've written here)

My other half also works from home and has a bad habit of not respecting that I'm working. I can get a number of phone calls asking for chores to be done (even though she's on the sofa downstairs), or a few random visits just because she's bored, all of which kill any focus or flow I might have had. Some days are better than others.

This is 100% true, and I'm suffering from this right now. On the other hand, in the office I would also have to deal with the distractions of "Hey Tom, do you have a minute?" followed by 30 minutes of something that has nothing to do with what I'm working on.

I thought remote working would suck particularly for new hires and onboarding people on to new teams, but (due to how long this has been going on) both things have happened without too much bother. Informal code reviews ("Can you see what's going wrong here?") seem to work fine over zoom meetings, remote pair programming is a skill to be mastered to be sure, but its actually what we used to do pre-lockdown anyway.

There are plenty of coding heavy companies who work remotely all the time - the most obvious one that springs to mind is Gitlab. I think it might depend on what sort of culture you had at work before lockdown as to how easily people have adjusted to it - we were a "2 days a week" WFH company pre-lockdown with teams split across 3 offices/timezones, so on a team of 8 people, meetings on most days would be zoom meetings anyway.

I do miss project days, where everyone is at least in THEIR office and we do planning in a VC room.

I'm the opposite, instead of losing 8-10 working hours per week on the commute to the client site I'm actually working so getting more done.

Considering how governments are all making their CO2 reduction policies and promises, you would think they would be heavily encouraging companied to promote WFH where possible to enable them to meet their targets.

WFH (for me anyway) is a win-win. I don't waste time sitting in traffic, I save money on fuel (increase in power and heating at home is not even close to costs of commute).

Companies stand to gain a lot of large proprotion WFH, as that is a lot less desks and associated power and heating/cooling needed.

Offices are not going to disappear, but would expect them to be a lot smaller and more hot desks/meeting rooms rather than traditional office space.

Some roles of course are less suitable for WFH and some people prefer to be in office.

It really depends on both the kind of job and job experience.

Young and inexperienced people do not seem to function well with WFH - their productivity when compared to an equivalent in-office counterpart is simply terrible. This is from actual observation. Maybe they get distracted easily, maybe they are poking in the dark, but that is what is happening.

It isn;t possible to make a general statement for that reason - that an employee can work 100% WFH so long as their work product is done - there is more to the role of an employee in an organisation.

I am pretty damn certain people who say their 100% WFH is great for the company are either senior/experienced employees or are only considering themselves (and not their team). I highly doubt anyone of them would say it is fine when they had just graduated.

For the employer both matter - they don't want to beholden to some cranky senior employee, and equally it is a bad idea to have skewed workplace demographics and the inability to build and drive workplace culture.

This would not just be about work output but also about how the employee supports the team. It also presumes everything that is measured is everything that needs to be measured. Some factors will take a long time to show and be exceedingly difficult to fix - such as work culture.

Depending on the role, I would actually be suspicious of companies with a WFH only paradigm across the board - it could mask on the job dysfunctions.

Whether WFH works is not just about employee "preference". 100% WFH is a massive field experiment at this time. You'd need to be a gambler to put all your chips in if you were the decision maker of any business.

I would expect companies to give team objectives to employees as a response. And I think, in general, it would very difficult to achieve this solely from WFH.

Sales people would never need to meet clients since the invention of the phone, if this idea were true.

Your team, customer and employer need to say that your 100% WFH works.

"Young and inexperienced people do not seem to function well with WFH"

In the next few years we're going to see graduates who have passed part of their education, either school or university/college remotely. It'll be interesting to see if this makes a difference.

"Young and inexperienced people do not seem to function well with WFH"

In the next few years ... It'll be interesting to see if this makes a difference.

Agree with all of the above, I've got my fingers crossed that all the time my son is spending building and running his Overwatch team - consisting of people who he has met via online gaming, will pay off when his turn comes to go to Uni and join the working world. Although I would be happier if he spent a little more time focused on his GCSE's...

I've been lucky, my team was split in half, and half work in the office one day, the other half at home, and switch every other day. It's not a bad balance! Once in a while things go your way!

Offices are cold, draughty, noisy, uncomfortable places with bad lighting.

In multiple occupancy tower blocks with shared toilet and kitchen facilities they are an absolute nightmare.

Coworkers believe that their problem is more important than anyone else's and that if they can see you then it's only right that they interrupt you.

I'll give you my WFH when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Now think about a couple with a young baby. Both working from home in a 2 bed flat. How much work can they hope to do?

So much depends upon personal circumstance that it's not possible to generalise.

Maybe if they are WFH they could move from their 2 bed flat to somewhere where they could get more space for the same money.

>How much work can they hope to do?

A lot more than you think!

Unfortunately, their real problem is getting decent downtime/respite. Under pre-CoViD circumstances, the baby would have been able to spend time at nursery, grandparents, neighbours, nanny etc. Also it was easier for either parent to leave the house for a while. Giving both parents (but more specifically the mother) time to relax, catch up on sleep etc.

Totally agree. I used to sit next to a dickhead who would never stop talking crap even after being told to shut up. I could never get anything done. WFH FTW - I get loads more accomplished.

Oh, I thought the punchline was going to be "...so I went back to the office and left my husband at home." I can imagine certain people not all that far from where I'm typing this expressing similar sentiments.

The scourge of the office. I hate it. I could do 4 office visits a year and that would be enough. I’ve been working remotely now for three years and in that time my productivity has increased and my days off due to mental health (anxiety) have plummeted to near zero. Plus as with many tech people, once my brain is on a roll I just want to go with it. That can’t happen when you need to catch the last train home.

One of my teammates has an aggressive degenerative bone disease that has, over a limited time span, transformed him from a reasonably athletic man to one who is wheelchair bound.

He says that when contributing in a WFH status, he feels "whole" again. Clients and staff see his contributions, not his disability.

This is a small silver lining, but at this point we need whatever victories we can find.

Another affirmation of the positive effects of lockdown:

Yesterday we caught up with a friend of my daughter's, the friend was diagnosed with ME at junior school they are now doing A levels. Their parents say that lockdown has really changed the attitude of schools.

Previously they had to fight to get schools to take both their daughter's illness seriously and to actually provide an equivalent education, resulting in her falling behind. Since lockdown, with everyone being home schooled, she has had equal standing to everyone, in fact because she has been doing home schooling for some years she is in some respects ahead of her classmates (and teachers), demonstrating that with equal access to lessons she can do as well as those who could normally attend everyday.

... I could really do without the 'work' part.

... I could really do without the 'work' part.

Been there, done that, but it soon gets boring. After 55 years I am still programming, though only a couple of hours a day, it helps keep me from rotting away.

Once we have a high level of herd immunity, and the lockdowns end, we will see a return to working from the office as normal. There's simply far too many managers that require staff visibility and interaction in order to justify their own existence. If people can truly work from home without oversight or being micromanaged, then there's no need for all those managers.

some of us get micromanaged from home too :(

But not necessarily from work.

The only things I can think of are being able to physically see if someone is busy and get a commitment there and then as to when they're available, and office chat/occasional lunchtime drinks.

Otherwise the two hour plus a day commute, the expense, and inability to sort your house at lunchtime can frankly get in the bin. I'm as efficient, if not more so working from home, the things that sap motivation are directly related to the pandemic so if I was forced back into the office it would only make things worse.

I'm just grateful I've got a small home office, and that all the equipment I need to do my job could be moved to my house early on. The move of everyone in the company to laptops, and using Skype instead of voip phones some time ago made moving hundreds of people to wfh much smoother.

I'll be signing myself up for permanent WFH at the first possible opportunity.

We sell products to help micro manage your staff. We are leading by example by making sure you can also justify having so many managers doing nothing but going to pointless meetings.

Ah, so you've used Workday then.

Speaking as one who has been forced to endure it for the last few years for various bi-annual review and HR-side stuff, all I can say is if you haven't used it, cherish and defend the fact...

The fact that many companies are generally going to keep with WfH for many employees, just shows that for all those years they were effectively wrong in their views that the only way is in an office.

I wonder what else they are wrong about... It just shows that the majority of the population really *can* be wrong.

Who knows, the statement "the only way is Microsoft" might also one day be found out to be wrong. How far does it go? Perhaps if more were to try out i.e working directly from the command line, they might actually start to feel that it is a more efficient workflow for many tasks and that these big GUI systems are "wrong". We all need to look outside the box more and unfortunately often pandemics and wars are currently the main driving factors for us to do so.

Hmmm. I've just been working through a history mini-project having stumbled across the fact that the records in a published set of documents aren't entirely in order. The working set of applications: Okular to read the publication where the dates are given with respect to saints' days; browser to check the saints' days in Wikipedia where necessary, LO Calc to record page numbers against the dates looked up from the calendar; terminal open at command line to run cal to get the calendar. Three GUI & one CLI. It's not one or the other, it's just the best tool for the job.

And now I've done that I can get back to the real project, extracting selected items and being able to get them in the correct chronological order for which the tool set is remarkable similar.

>Three GUI & one CLI.

This is where working in an 'Office' can be beneficial, namely the ability to grab additional tech (eg. screens) to do work on. the downside is that typically you have to return said tech before you've really finished with it...

Given that the UK is once again in Lockdown with only essential travel permitted and people supposedly working from home whenever possible again, why are the roads almost as busy as before anyone had even heard of this thing called Covid-19? Even the excuse that more shops are allowed to open this time doesn't hold water - unless the shops are full of staff standing around doing nothing most of the day but no customers.

And some people wonder why we haven't got rid of it yet...

[1]You know people actually measure this stuff ?

Headlines: Driving down 31%, Public transport down 64%, Walking down 31% - all compared to a Friday in Jan 2020.

Not as much decrease as in Lockdown 1, more than in Lockdown 2.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55626008

I love WFH. I have not had any trouble with working with colleagues or having discussions with them. A colleague of mine has moved to the other end of the country and it works fine. A relative of mine has moved to Portugal so as to still be an EU resident. They are enjoying the wfp (working from Porto) but the lockdown and curfews less so.

I can see myself going in for one day a month or so for a catch up and pub session but that is all except in exceptional cases.

FWIW I am a systems administrator. It might be different if I still had to stroke hardware but even if I did that is well off site now anyway and getting to the DC from home would be no more difficult than from the orifice. In time I hope to work from the boat and then sail afterwards.

It depends a lot on the job experience. What I've found in particular is that training somebody who's new on the job is a lot more difficult when you are not in the same room.

There are always some things that work better face to face - but they are rarely the 'meat' of what you are meant to be working on, but meta-work (i.e., meetings to plan work or discuss work). That's because a screen-share Teams/Zoom meeting is not an adequate replacement in these situations.

So I think people need to come into the office one day a week to handle these meetings, have a team lunch, and do other 'non meat' work that can benefit from the focus that being with the other people can bring. The team should decide on the day of the week that works for them all, and stick to it. If your work has more meetings then maybe another day or two. Especially when combined with a policy of 'when you are WfH you should not have these meetings, so you have all day to concentrate'.

Another reason to come in is if you are a new joiner (or changing team within an employment) - it helps with bringing someone up to speed if they can ask easy questions without the rigmarole of a calls and screen share and hoping that the other person is able to handle the query ("busy? does that mean busy busy or what?").

For new starters, it just takes more rigour and planning. Pair working for at least 4 hours each day, planned reading and meetings for the rest of the time, reducing the amount of pair time and increasing the amount of work that they can take on themselves.

It might take a little while but everyone will be back in the office if and when this mess clears up. WFH is unsustainable.

" WFH is unsustainable."

For who? The companies? The like of Fujitsu and Dell don't think so. The employees? Judging by the responses on this thread a lot of people seem to enjoy it and there are not many stories of workers clamouring to get back in to the office.

Ah! I know who this is pissing off. Middle management. Who see that their very existence is threatened. Maybe the day of the PHB is coming to an end after all

Unsustainable? The present (apart from the current unpleasantness) model of the huge agglomeration of work places drawing in commuters from a thousand square miles or so is utterly unsustainable. This might be enough to start it toppling.

The ultimate solution could be WAT ("at" and "from" are two quite different propositions). It could be some form of dispersed office system - multiple small offices housing a few employees living locally. It could be rent-a-desk in local shared office spaces. It could, and probably will, be a mixture.

Whatever it is the big city has reached its unsustainable limits. Its end must be in sight.