re: Has anyone’s workplace switched to WFH permanently?

if they asked me to WFH permanently i'd fight it hard. frick that

Mine hasn't come out and said it's permanent but the plan they've rolled out is an incredibly slow return to office. My understanding is that our workforce has hummed along just fine working from home so leaders are in no rush.

As a company we had an introduction to WFH in 2016 from the flood so that probably helped us be ready and prepared.

I work for a big company with owned office spaces all over the south. Everyone is work from home until August, with the likelihood that we move to a permanent hybrid model. I'm honestly pretty pumped about it. The less time I have to sit in Atlanta traffic, the better.

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the wife who thinks that because I'm home, I should be available to do whatever she needs or go wherever at the drop of a hat.

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this!

Shared offices/ work space suck. So anyone excited about needs to try it first. Going into a desk that is empty and doesn’t have your items you like exactly where you like them and no personal belongings sucks. I’ve done it and don’t like it. Now downsizing offices to just a small cubicle is different.

Given that, there’s absolutely no way you can tell me WFH is better every day. I could see something like WFH 2 days a week and office 3 days a week for comradary, meetings, training, and otherwise just being together.

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thats 10% less people downtown (restaurants, parking garages, etc)

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Commercial real estate is going to be absolutely wild for the next few years

I am a remote employee living in Louisiana but my homebase is in Los Angeles and a call center in San Antonio, all of which are WFH except for production since March. I can easily see a switch permanently coming- how much $$ would they save not paying utilities/rent/etc.. No drop in productivity at this point, I might even note the opposite.

Other question is will big companies start pulling back on travel and other discretionary spending- we have a huge free cash flow influx and will get a bonus off of this. I think times aren't changing but have changed.

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do think you lose a sense of camaraderie without the office.

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Maybe it’ll make people cement their neighborhood ties again. Since the 80s neighborhood gatherings have taken a backseat to office gatherings and travel parties. Maybe this is what we need to bring community togetherness back.

My grandparents and my wife’s grandparents knew every person on their block and many people in their neighborhoods.

My parents couldn’t tell you the name of the guy across the street.

There has to be a balance somewhere. Humans aren’t meant to sit scheduled in an office 8-5 everyday. But we do need to separate work from home life too.

We also need to rebalance work life and expectations in general. Thanks to cars, cell phones, and the internet most of us can individually accomplish in one day of work what used to take an office staff a week. And yet we work more hours. We need a re-balancing of what’s considered the normal work day.

I worked 2 weeks from home last month and I about went crazy on day 5 or 6

I'm already a recluse so when I go to the office, that's my social interaction time, so I was ready to come back in.

The 1 plus I will say is this. My start time was 730am but because I was at home in my computer/game room - I was waking up about 6am, brushing my teeth and starting work around 615-630am. I would just pull up youtube on my 3rd screen and listen to music while doing spreadsheets and answering customer emails.

Mine did about five years ago.

I love it