News: 1619431207

I'd be interested to know where the commuting time has gone to?

My personal experience is that it is the employer, not the employee that has benefitted from the extra couple of hours that have been made available each day.

I got my extra time - an extra hour in bed every morning, and as soon as 6pm comes around, my laptop goes off and the rest of the day is mine.

I get up at the same time (don't need an alarm clock, I'm just awake at 05:30), but the lack of a commute allows me to have breakfast with my wife, before I meander down to the cellar to start work at 8.

That said, I find the 20 minute jaunt down country roads to my office fun...

And I put down tools at 16:30, as normal, unless there is an emergency. Company mobile phone and laptop get turned off and I go back up to the "real world".

Personally I've been going to the gym (home gym when real one closed), sleeping longer and spending more time with the family in those extra couple of hours.

We always have breakfast together, and I get to work feeling ready for the day... rather than drained and frustrated by the selfish c**t who would not shut up on the train about their problems on a very loud phone call, and felt the need to share it with the whole carriage. Or stuck waiting for "signal failure". Or crammed in for 1 1/2 hours with no seat, because previous train was cancelled.

So, yeah my "employer"* seriously benefits from all that, as I can focus more easily on the work as I'm not as stressed by all the daily commute and the crap that goes along with it.

*contractor, so client really.

Having said that, I'd be quite happy to put up with that commute for 2 days a week, just to get face time with my colleagues. But 5 days a week (or 4)? Really don't want to do that again. Perhaps for project kickoff, etc. but for the rest of the time, no thanks.

in many cases both, employer and employee, have benefited from W@H...

the employee benefits as noted by other responses... more rest time, more family time, being able to start work less stressed, etc...

the employer benefits by the employees being more productive and able to work their full shift due to the above...

I would imagine that the commuting time has mostly gone to working.

However, most of the people visiting the site are IT Professionals, with the remainder being made up with power users etc. In the UK before the pandemic to be in the top 25% of earners in the country you've got to be earning £35k. That is not difficult to do it IT; a quick look at adverts shows that even second line servicedesk jobs are currently being advertised with a starting salary of ~£30k.

My point with this is simply that most of the people reading this are likely to be financially better off than 75% of the population. We have desks and workstations at home that are usually better than the ones at work. Many other people (especially those poorer than us) don't, and may not even have a dining table to convert to a desk if they live in a small flat or accommodation shared with friends and family. (since even if there is one, if three people want it then somebody is going to lose out)

In short, if you take somebody out of an office with a powerful PC and duel or treble ~28" monitors, high speed printers and scanners and plop them working from home on their couch or bed with a 14-17" screen on their laptop connected to the office over a dodgy wifi connection connected to a crap internet connection that is being caned by other people then productivity will easily drop by over 20%, and the users know that because they aren't getting as much done as they'd usually do.

And in a pandemic with a possibility of getting a job paying as much as your current one being statistically indistinguishable from zero an awful lot of people are perfectly willing to put an extra hour in to make up for the loss of productivity from working from home to ensure that their job & employer remains viable.

Or, in some cases they may say f*** it and come back into the mostly deserted office because 1500 square feet per person space is rather better than the 15 sq/f they have at home and the office provides a better working environment.

My experiance of working from home was pretty positive; but then again it would be, wouldn't it? I also have a ~15 minute commute if I drive in. It's be about 2 hours via public transport, but that's why nobody with a choice uses public transport in the countryside.

mdava,

If only your employer benefitted and you hate them, start commuting again and get revenge.

Technically I got the extra. It's a big slice of time, too. It used to take me two hours each way to commute to central London. Flexi-time wouldn't help, as the trains are slower and more infrequent outside rush hour.

But I'm baffled about what I'm doing with my extra time. True, I sleep a bit later, but not four hours more. The sad fact is that structured time lasts longer.

But I'll fight tooth and nail against a return to the daily commute.

It's three days at home and two in the office by around double the amount that wanted it the other way around!

For those commuting by train this days in, days at home alternation is going to play havoc with the economics of season tickets.

Yes agreed. They are going to have to offer flexible tickets. Perhaps you buy a block of 10 and use them whenever you travel in, rather than buying an expensive monthly. I can't see demand getting back up to 2019 levels for a very long time, so they should have plenty of capacity.

OTOH, all the train companies might go bust due to lack of demand.

"OTOH, all the train companies might go bust due to lack of demand."

Nope, the government changed the franchise set up so it is taking the hit on reduced traffic. The rail companies are coining it in on subsidies etc and being paid by the government to run empty trains. Have read of Private Eye.

Not really - when I was looking at them a season ticket made sense for anything over two days a week.

I used to get a weekly ticket every other week, and do a `Thursday/Tuesday" on a weekly ticket for less than the two days individually would have been.

The additional discounts for longer season tickets were mostly eaten up by things like weekends/bank holidays - so didn't make sense (to me, at the time)

"near-weekly suicide attempts by fellow Tube users."

Sheep on the line was one of British Snail's excuses in my commuting days. Less funny were the couple of occasions of sleepers on the line (wooden or possibly concrete, ties in USian-speak) somewhere around Ruislip.

Why were the sheep trying to sabotage the line ?

Is there some sort of Harrow liberation front ?

Are they deploying SOE (Special Ovine Executive) agents to attack the occupying forces ?

Harrow? Out in the Chilterns and beyond there are fields where these grey woolly things live.

Let's see.

Sitting at home in quiet office for a day of Webex calls with my geographically split team, starting and ending the day on time, no problems with calls at 0900. Nice view onto garden and I can get out for a walk in the country at lunch time. Lunch with my wife, varied and tasty options.

or

Sitting in an office with others around talking etc for a day of Webex calls with my geographically split team, fighting to get in on time and delaying leaving to avoid the car park getting out of the car park. Calls at 0900 not ideal as even if you get to the office on time you now need to get to your allocated, isolated desk (no personal desks now), get laptop plugged in and started, get everything working etc. View of a brick wall. Lunch - canteens shut down or limited options or need to book a place in the queue. May get out for a walk on-site with motorway overhead and other major arteries around as well. All this on top of the actual commute which isn't stress free and does require concentration.

I'll happily hand over my daily 90 mins commute to "the man" in return for sitting in the quiet home office, the pleasant family company and pets, a far better set of lunch options and while not perfect, a better view out my home window than the office that faces onto another office.

Plus other benefits working at home...

- Not having to stifle my farts!

- Watching "Brooklyn 99" during lunch break

- Drinking decent coffee I chose

- Working while wearing my Slayer t-shirt and yoga shorts

- Not having to smell the office health Nazi when they return from their lunch time 15 mile run smelling like stewed BO casserole!

- No ironing work clothes every weekend

- Stare out of window for inspiration without looks from co-workers

- Nipping off for a "bit of the other" at lunchtime with the missus!

The statement " ... expecting minions to re-embrace the daily commute " sums up the entire problem. It's a cultural assumption that position in the hierarchy is the fundamental indicator of worthiness of respect. Nobody is a "minion" if they have a useful function to perform in the organisation, and in reality the nearer the front line the more important a person generally is from day to day because they actually provide the service to customers. But the attitude (explicitly illustrated for decades by Dilbert) is firmly engrained - the extent that many managers refer to "managers and employees" as two distinct categories. I once asked a manager who said this "aren't managers employees then?". I didn't last long after that.

Given that the CBI considers every employee an idle, office stationary stealing, workshy layout, while all executive bosses are considered the backbone of the workforce and UK economy, it's no wonder they want us all back to work. The top management do nothing so they assume the rest of us don't either, so they want us where they can keep an eye on us, treating highly skilled and motivated adults like hyperactive children in a primary school.

I believe it was dear Boris who said, "We've all have enough time off due to COVID, time to get back to work.". Thanks Boris you arsehole, but it wasn't a fricking holiday! A lot of us have been putting in on average around an extra 10 hours a week or more on top of a 40 hour week working from home, to ensure projects complete on time to keep our companies afloat while the world goes to hell in a COVID covered handcart!

Yes, the whole "if you're not a critical/essential worker, then you've obviously been lounging around on furlough all this time, learning new languages, musical instruments, how to paint etc etc" way of thinking is something that really isn't helpful.

Once things get back to something approximating normality and we start socialising for real again, I can imagine some of the conversations are going to get a bit frosty when you get some people going "wasn't this past year just amazing, I learned Mandarin, Spanish Guitar and put together an illustrated history of the local area in watercolours, what did you get up to in your time off?" only to be faced with a response along the lines of "Time off, sorry, remind me again what that is?" Only probably somewhat less politely worded.

another study from the institute for the bleeding obvious

I think that 2020 has brilliantly demonstrated that a lot of people can work remotely.

As a freelance programmer consultant, I have been lucky in that 2020 did not event dent my yearly revenue. I know that there are a lot of people who have suffered. My daughter is a professional seamstress and she is sick of not having a proper work proposal since March 2020. I, on the other hand, have only had one customer demand that I come on-site since January 2020, and I have been lucky enough to get two additional customers during lockdown.

At this point in time, I have no less than 3 laptops specifically configured to access their particular networks, and my other customers I work with offline, sending them what they need when I'm done.

Work remotely ? If you're a programmer, it's a cinch - thanks to knowledgable network admins, obviously.

"thanks to knowledgable network admins, obviously"

The forgotten heroes of the pandemic. They rarely get noticed because most of the time, everything "Just Works(tm). When WFH started, there were some hiccups, but again, everything mostly "Just worked(tm)" again. 1st line, and maybe 2nd line support are the visible heroes to the users, and often not seen as heroes, but someone to moan to to when things don't "Just Work(tm)", often because it's the users home WiFi or internet connection, which 1st line now have to "support" as best they can.

Exactly!

While our company did have the plans already banging around, and I do remember a ton of things about group policies and servers and access needed, the ETA was along the lines of "when we get around to it, a.k.a. the heat death of the universe". Things got busy quickly, and two or so weeks later things Just Worked As Expected[TM]. Brillliant job by the gals'n'guys!

Yeah there are several hickups every now and again. But it is more like "oh, look, it's not working at the moment, let's check in five minutes" rather than "oh, look, it is working for a change", and not too often, to be honest.

We had to go back into the office when the corporate sysadmins discovered the trick we were using to work from home on our non-approved Linux machines hooked into the corporate network with an unofficial VPN.

Since the official VPN uses RSA keys which are only approved on corporate laptops which are only issued to approved salespeople who are the only ones approved to be working outside the office.

Time to get out whilst there's a company to get out from if that's their grasp of what's happening around them.

A company I work for ,

is just implementing hot desk system, ( as ever late to the party )

the question every one is asking, is how are they going to CV19 clean each desk so its safe for a different person ?

"...how are they going to CV19 clean..."

"they" will provide a tub of alcohol wipes and leave you to it. Hand sanny if you're lucky.

I've seen references to cleaning companies using some kind of mist on desks, but I've no idea how effective it is. And many offices are distinctly relaxed about hygiene.

In the last place where I worked on-site, the mice all had tails. The keyboards were so old that the captions had worn off some of the keys, and so filthy that you could tell what your predecessor had for lunch five years ago by turning them upside down. It's said that an average keyboard harbours more germs than a lavatory seat; I reckon these had more than Porton Down.

"And many offices are distinctly relaxed about hygiene."

And then there's the places which have appointed a "COVID monitor" who likely gets paid extra to invent and implement all the new procedures. As things are looking better and all the processes are in place, said Covid monitor doesn't really have much to do now to justify the extra pay and responsibility. S/He is now creating new procedures and rules to justify the extra pay and making life harder in a situation where the risks are decreasing.

> is how are they going to CV19 clean each desk so its safe for a different person ?

BOFH solution = flamethrower. Why do you think it's called 'hot' desking ?

" risking your life on British roads from the saddle of a bike "

Cyclists? On the road?

I didn't know we renamed the pavement?

Get a mountain bike and ride over the top those shiny metal humps installed in the no-parking/bus/cycle lane.

The solution, in my opinion is :

Give people interesting problems to solve

Respect work/life balance

Provide transferable skills training (i.e. technical skills that are useful in other jobs, not company values sessions)

Pay employees well

In other words, train your employees in such a way as to equip them to look for another job, but treat them well enough so they stay.

What's that Mr. Fluffle? Companies want to employ on the cheap and tie employees to them? You don't say.

I'm not loving the pandemic, but I am enjoying working from home. An hour and a half extra lie in every day, starting later than before, ending later meaning I have time to catch up with tasks and people at the end of the day when they're more available. That still means that when I'm closing my laptop, I'd probably only just be getting on a train home if commuting.

...my job is on the road, visiting sights all over the place every day and the only significant change was the wonderfully quiet, almost empty roads. Recently, things have got back to almost pre-pandemic "normal". Rush hour is back. School run is back. Queues in all the usual places are back. For now, at least, the main trunk routes are still a little quieter outside of rush hour times and rush hour itself seems to start a little later and end sooner.

In that one respect, I'm already missing lockdown :-)

(With respect, of course, to those who suffered bereavements, illness and/or loss of earnings)

I hate my job. I'm over a year in to it. Started when the pandemic hit. Scrabbling to get laptops out, dealing with a coworker who gets away with murder and has probably spent the last year gaming most of the time instead of working. Me, who is more senior, where has the commute time gone? Sat doing overtime with a boss who doesn't know when to stop working.

I don't know where I went wrong in my career but I've had it up to my neck. Had to work through the entire pandemic in the office for a few days a week every week. I'm burnt out. I've had enough. I'd rather just stay in bed in the morning and not face the work. I realise that makes me sound depressed, I more than likely am. I've turned down more IT jobs with more money because they were with bigger soulless companies that probably gave less of a shit than the place I'm at now.

Im good at what I do. Completely underpaid and undervalued because IT people generally are. Some people can bluff IT and support, some people are actually good at it and get walked all over regardless. I'm one of the latter.

Time to go contracting IMHO.

I wish I could take that risk. I will remain a wage slave whilst I have no savings and a family I need to feed. I imagine there's a lot of people in my situation.

My employer hit a break point in the lease for our main development office a little while ago..

And guess what?

They didn’t renew. And (while they are at some point, probably) going to be getting us a much smaller facility configured mostly as collaborative space so that we can get together and point at whiteboards, look over each other’s shoulders, and thrash stuff out collectively as and when appropriate/necessary, they aren’t going to be replacing it.

I doubt that this is a unique scenario...

We're having all sort of embarrassing discussions on how many days we must work in the office versus WFH yet nobody dares to answer this question. Tired of working from your basement or on a kitchen counter ? Fine, you may come in the office. Sick and tired of commuting ? It's OK, WFH as long as you want.

I did my best to explain this where I work with no success. Since in hybrid mode about a half of the team will be at home, we will still be using Teams/Webex/Zoom/Slack etc. to communicate so there will be no difference between WFHome and WFOffice. Now speaking of the idea of hot desk and open spaces. Open spaces when everybody around you is wearing headsets will make it feel like you're in a giant call center. Is this the new work environment they want us to experience ?

I've never taken a job that was more than about 15/20 minutes from home. When moving house one of the first considerations has always been one ride public transport and reasonable distance to work. You don't have to go that far back in time for the majority of the workforce to live within walking distance of their workplace. The big commute is something we've done to ourselves. For excellent and well founded reasons no doubt, but still fundamentally self inflicted.

When you consider the waste of energy, time and everything else that long distance commuting represents, maybe its something that has to change?

I don't know where you work but a great proportion of jobs are in cities so large that they require a few thousand square miles of commuter belt to house the workers. Property within 15/20 miles of work is likely to be hideously expensive and it's only practical to supply a small percentage of that space with single ride public transport so that property in that percentage is also likely to be hideously expensive..

Yes, "we" as a society have done this to ourselves. "We" as a collection of individuals haven't. It's been an article of planning policy for all my working life and earlier to separate workplaces and homes. It was done in the name of getting rid of slums surrounding factories. No thought was given as to how the gap between the two was to be bridged; hand-waving assisted public transport was probably envisaged.

It was stupid. It is stupid. Will you ever get the planners to admit it was stupid? Not until the whole lot collapses in a heap. Hopefully the present situation might give it the push it needs but if the "come back to the office" movement succeeds we're going to have to wait for an even bigger failure.