Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56510574

by CraigJPerry • 5 years ago

140 186 5 years ago

bbc.co.uk

at some hazily defined point work anywhere, anytime becomes work everywhere, all the time.

cletus• 5 years ago

This reminds me of companies who have “unlimited” vacation days. If I can’t take the next 40 years off at full pay it’s not “unlimited”.

A more accurate description is probably “vacation days determined by whether your manager likes you”.

vidarh3• 5 years ago

I've turned offers down over that. I will not work for a company that claims "unlimited" vacation, unless they're at least prepared to specify a contractual floor.

beforeolives• 5 years ago

Unlimited vacation is such an obvious lie, I'm surprised so many people see it as a perk.

It's like claiming to have flat structure. Nope, there is still a hierarchy, just like there is still a limit to the "unlimited" vacation days you can take. You just took something explicit and made it implicit to the detriment of your company.

It's a red flag when I see either of these advertised as perks and it makes me less likely to work for the company.

dx03417• 5 years ago

I also don't like it and I believe it's not necessarily legal in all countries. Many European countries have a minimum amount of vacation days and companies need to make sure employees also take those (not all do but theres no enforcement unless someone complains). "Unlimited" without a floor might lead to more vacation days for some but likely to fewer days for most.

And if they were truly unlimited, why would anyone work part-time? You could just work full time and take 2 days off per week (plus vacations) at full salary. But I doubt many companies would accept that.

xvector4• 5 years ago

as mentioned earlier, setting boundaries is up to you

bryanrasmussen2• 5 years ago

My wife's sister once said my problem was that I couldn't say no.

Hendrikto2• 5 years ago

I really much appreciate this aspect of the pandemic. The "home office revolution" has long been possible, but still would not have happened for a long time without COVID.

sn_master2• 5 years ago

People with friends and family can't gauge how bad of a toll this has taken on lonely single guys like me. For most of them WFH been a Godsend. I really wish this ends or at least there remains enough places which require working from the office.

turbinerneiter• 5 years ago

Being home alone in a tiny apartment, the desk placed next to my bed - that's not the home office I want to spend all my time in.

With family and house, sure. But I literally don't have the real estate to make a nice home office.

Mixed mode works very well tough, I can go to the office if I want and stay home if I want, so I mostly spend 4 days in the office, 1 at home.

waynesonfire• 5 years ago

i'm optimistic here; you're not the only one and society will adapt to this new void if WFH persists. we are after all social and want to spend time with other people.

covid is still very much among us so don't expect much socializing until people feel safe to leave their basements.

Hendrikto2• 5 years ago

Obviously there are also numerous negative effects. That‘s why I qualified my statement like this.

To respond to the point you made: I am a young single guy loving on his own. Still, I do not mind the lockdown so much. Granted, I may not be very representative, but just another data point.

dkarp2• 5 years ago

Is all of that loneliness from WFH or can some be attributed to National lockdowns and limits on social interaction outside your household?

In a post Covid world, WFH could involve coworking spaces and cafes. I expect that industry will grow massively over the coming years as we migrate into a more distributed working style. It’s a new way of doing things things and it’s going to take time to adapt and replace the social side of the office.

rvanmil• 5 years ago

It will probably end with a better balance than right now. I used to enjoy working from home a couple days a week as focus days with minimal interruptions, but doing this all week with a lot happening inside the house at the same time (schools and daycare closed, spouse also wfh every day, grandparents in the house taking care of the kids, 3 different package delivery services at the door etc.) is not that great and I can't wait to work from the office again.

sago• 5 years ago

I'm wondering to what extent social working has to be within a company.

A fitness club I was part of a decade ago had this amazing 'cafe' space that was often used by folks with laptops and the odd bit of chat. It felt social. If work anywhere becomes the thing, is there is scope for work 'clubs'? Or without the fitness reason to be there at all, is it a nonstarter?

globular-toast• 5 years ago

Work isn't the only place you can socialise with people. You seem to have a deeper problem if you're using work to fill that void. Do you need help on finding alternative sources?

Anktionaer2• 5 years ago

I totally disagree, people go to work at least partly to get away from friends or family.

meheleventyone• 5 years ago

I don't think WFH during a pandemic is a good point of comparison to regular WFH. It'd be like me judging it by my current situation where we just upgraded our lockdown again very severely. I've got a 7 year old and a 4 year old playing Twister next to my desk right now at 0842! All the things I like doing during the day are closed or extremely restricted. I know this is going to suck! Some of my friends have been stuck at home trying to keep kids on remote learning going whilst working in open plan houses for over a year. This is just not a normal situation.

eecc• 5 years ago

There's a whole new world of opportunities for co-working, mixed-working out there and they'll explode after this pandemic is over.

I had to cancel my co-work subscription when no client would accept my proposal to work remote. When the world reopens I'll never go back.

In your case, imagine yourself pleasantly walking to your local co-working space or to any of the urban entertainment facilities that will inevitably proliferate in the effort to capture all the time freed from lousy daily commutes.

vertis• 5 years ago

It's more likely that we'll end up in a hybrid environment. Previous companies I've worked for already had clean-desk policies. No-one, not even the CEO had a fixed desk.

Teams were assigned areas so they knew where in the building to meet, but if you arrived late and all the desks were taken you simply went and found another area (or if you needed to hide to minimize disruptions).

In a hybrid-model this becomes even easier, because the hardest thing with the above model is keeping free capacity in a growing company.

TeMPOraL7• 5 years ago

It's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're always with your family. On the other hand, you're always with your family.

Fact of life is, many relationships have trouble finding balance between "me time" and "us time". Going to work is, for many, a way to catch a break from their home - with perfect plausible deniability, since it's socially approved and demanded externally.

Some people don't need it. I had a co-worker who would come super-early in the morning, so he could leave early and spend time with his kids. At work, we could see his kids were his whole world, and he was always happy. But at that same job, I also had a different co-worker who went out his way to find reasons to stay overtime - he dreaded coming back home. I don't keep in touch with them much, but I imagine the former one was super-happy about forced WFH, but the latter very much not.

Add to that, quite a lot of people in cities bought their apartments on the assumption that both partners are working 9/5 at the office and the kids are at school/daycare - this let them buy smaller places for less (or closer to work). Such apartments become living hell when all dwellers are present simultaneously for the entire day, and each is trying to do their work/school.

This is not to trade who has it worse - just pointing out that it's not smooth sailing for those of us with families either. There's a tight line between being happy to have people around, and hating their guts for it - this pandemic pushed a lot of us close to that border.

pdimitar4• 5 years ago

If I were you I'd take that as a sign that you shouldn't double down on work to give you a social life. If I were you I'd take this as a hint to put strict boundaries between work and personal life and try and have more of the latter.

adamhp4• 5 years ago

There is too much investment into office real estate for it to vanish. I think once things are back to "normal", you'll easily be able to find a normal office job. I would expect the majority of people are more in your camp than the 100% remote camp.

agumonkey• 5 years ago

It might really be a liberating moment for people (and economies, but let's care about people first). I don't know the future but I've seen way too much absurd friction in too many workplaces not to believe this can be a good step.

xvector4• 5 years ago

Crazy to think that if WeWork held out a bit longer they could have come out of this on top, as WFH becomes more common.

llampx6• 5 years ago

I think the jury is still out on that. It is still commercial real estate, and that has taken a massive hit since March 2020.

sn_master2• 5 years ago

How would that work in terms of taxes? The UK doesn't have taxes based on location like the US?

billynomates111• 5 years ago

I don't think they're saying work anywhere in the world. They're saying work anywhere within the UK, including HQ, local high street branches, at home, or a mixture of the above.

dkarp2• 5 years ago

By anywhere, I expect it means anywhere in the UK. The UK doesn’t have “state” taxes like the US, so it won’t matter where they are

ruaraidh• 5 years ago

This isn't quite true - Scotland's income tax rates are slightly different from the rest of the UK's, so residence inside or outside Scotland is relevant.

alibarber2• 5 years ago

Just like taxation regimes have scrambled to keep up with the fact that you can order something from abroad and have ambiguity of where the sales tax will be applied - this is the next big thing about to happen:

High skilled, (comparatively) rich, healthy knowledge workers will leave the place they reside, move somewhere like Dubai (no tax, few free public services - doesn't matter they're not going to need them) to work for a company based - on paper, somewhere similarly - meanwhile the sick, aging and destitute back in the old country depend on tax-funded public services that have lost their tax base.

I don't know what the solution is - but it's something I think needs to be considered. Conversely, people might want to move the other way (say to the nordics), but, I'd wager it being heavily skewed in the first direction.

llampx6• 5 years ago

I think only a fraction of people would move away from their home country just to gain some tax benefits. Doesn't seem like most people I talk to are interested in that.

uzakov3• 5 years ago

You raise great points. I think what countries would need to do is to lower taxes (potentially considered to be controversial by some) to attract talent from other countries and keep existing talent.

cosmodisk• 5 years ago

I doubt it's anywhere as in 'you can work from the beach in Thailand'. Going abroad means complying with the local tax regime and if spent enough time outside the UK, no taxes need to be paid there.

dx03417• 5 years ago

It's usually the 180 day rule. So unless you move abroad that shouldn't be an issue. But moving abroad has more issues here. Nationwide is a bank and customer data leaving the UK could cause regulatory headaches for them. So I'd be surprised if they let people work from anywhere in the world.

frabcus• 5 years ago

The other advantage of the UK being small and everyone working in country is you can therefore still meet up easily say every couple of weeks, or for smaller groups to work together for a short time.

I guess in the US people can fly for this too. Does anyone do "work anywhere but must be in the same state"?

dx03417• 5 years ago

No, Europe tends to have the same tax rates and rules per country. But in a way you can compare the EU and US here, moving countries within the EU also has tax consequences. But due to language barriers, that happens less often than people moving states in the US. And the UK isn't part of the EU anyway.

alexf95• 5 years ago

A mix of both home-office and going to the actual office is probably the way to go for most companies. Sometimes being in the office just isn't necessary and colleague interaction can be done by phone or chat/video apps.

However, going into full time home-office mode isn't great either since you would miss out on the random meetings/talks when you run into each other in the office.

midasuni4• 5 years ago

When people are at home and getting on with working you won’t get to run into them at the office.

benlumen• 5 years ago

Living up to the name.

f6v• 5 years ago

Meanwhile, here in Belgium, some companies force employees to come to the office despite government plea to allow remote work. Subjectively, there's been much less traffic on the streets in the beginning of the pandemic. Now, it seems like far too many people are still commuting every day.

reeeeee• 5 years ago

You are completely right, some employers just can't cope with the tiny bit of control they lose when their employers work from home. A friend of mine (who is also in IT) still has to do an hour and a half drive 3 times a week just so that a client can 'see' that he is working. There is no reason for him to go work there, other than inspection. We're in IT, all we need is a decent computer and a network connection.

All while WFH is obligated by the government.

dx03417• 5 years ago

It won't be for everyone but there has still been a huge revolution. Many businesses didn't even have laptops for employees before. Having the technical infrastructure makes it much easier to allow 1-2 days per week from home.

I've also seen WFH advertised much more in job ads. That in turn probably means that more candidates ask for partial WFH as part of their decision to join the company. In the end, that will drive change even if some managers object it.

scandox3• 5 years ago

Flexibility sounds good but what I have seen over the last year is that all boundaries in terms of when and where work begins and ends are being eroded. This started accidentally but it is now being actively exploited on an unprecedented scale.

quickthrower2• 5 years ago

At will employment is the problem. You should be able to switch off at a certain time and ignore work comms. But I think in US you’d be scared of being fired. In other countries like UK this has never been a concern, and WFH doesn’t change that.

scandox3• 5 years ago

I'm based in Ireland. I think your view is a bit one dimensional in terms of the employer-employee relationship. A lot of soft pressures exist for employees even when their actual employment is secure.

geden• 5 years ago

Yeah tell that to my teaching assistant wife who works at a Lincolnshire village primary school and is now 'always on' to the whims of the go getting headmistress 24/7.

She feels she can't practically ignore out of hours requests and she doesn't want to challenge the practice for fear of rocking the boat.

carmen_sandiego4• 5 years ago

The UK is basically 'at will' for the first two years. I've never worried about getting fired in that period. Just pick who you work for carefully and make yourself valuable.

xtracto2• 5 years ago

Agreed. Sone time ago I was in a meeting where my Head of HR was (US) talking with an auditor (US) about how amused the workers in Mexico are of the "at will" language of the US contract. Laughing because we do not have that here in Mecico. They had a good laugh about it.

I was silently thought it was very interesting how they have been convinced that at will employment is a good thing... and thanking my government work laws which require any company to pay for 3 months compensation if they desire to fire me.

Anktionaer2• 5 years ago

Work ends when you say goodbye in the chat and switch off the vpn.

Hamuko• 5 years ago

I actually just keep my VPN running all-week long since I'm too lazy to authenticate every morning.

For me, work ends when I switch my monitor inputs to my personal computer.

dx03417• 5 years ago

That only works if you don't have the chat/emails on your phone and if you can just switch that off. There are enough companies that allow business phones for personal use (can be great to save costs) which means you always have your business phone with you. And on the phone no one sees if you're working before they call you.

xvector4• 5 years ago

Setting boundaries is your job, not your job’s job.

Almost everyone I know works normal hours or less even during WFH.

To be perfectly clear, this is true regardless of WFH. Your work will never set boundaries for you as they benefit from you working harder and longer.

dx03417• 5 years ago

I disagree. The company has a responsibility to set rules around when it's ok to call people. Especially for junior employees it's very hard to decline calls from their managers late in the evening.

This has become a bigger issue as all communication is via phone or computer. Before, a lot was via personal interaction which just wasn't possible once you left the office. Now, no one really knows if someone is working or has already called it a day at any given point.

scandox3• 5 years ago

Tech workers have a much stronger hand with their employers than many other groups. As a result I think we often don't see the kind of power imbalance that is going on and how hard it is to simply "do the rational thing" which seems so cut and dried to you.

The point I would make is that the WFH experience is very different for different groups. Like everything about the Pandemic it has had totally inequitable impacts on different people.

I'm in tech and I've had no issue, but many people I know are not and I've seen how it works out. Not everyone can just move to another job. Perhaps most people can't.

Firadeoclus• 5 years ago

Your work will never set boundaries for you as they benefit from you working harder and longer.

Some workplaces do set boundaries, and it is not universally true that "harder and longer" working brings benefits.

adamhp4• 5 years ago

This might be a blessing in disguise. Hopefully it will force us to really examine our work culture, and begin to challenge this notion that 40+ hours a week of our lives should be devoted to work (unless of course, you're working that many hours voluntarily on something you love).

vm646m80v4• 5 years ago

Company name checks out

mattuk89• 5 years ago

I like the mention of being able to work from your local branch. It may help keep more branches open if they're doubling up as workspaces for the "office" staff

Jonnax• 5 years ago

This will be great for those smaller towns which have been suffering a drain to the cities for decades.

tonyedgecombe• 5 years ago

Nationwide is based in one of those smaller towns (Swindon, pop approx 220,000).

dx03417• 5 years ago

Only mid-sized towns, really. At least currently, very rural areas often lack the infrastructure to allow several people in the household to use video streaming (calls for the parents, youtube etc for kids) simultaneously. Starlink could change that, let's see. But unless you get at least 50mbit/s to every household, remote work won't really be possible for many. And sadly, many countries are far from having 50mbit/s available in rural areas.

I personally love the Scottish Highlands but internet is unbearably slow anywhere but in a few major cities. Let's hope Starlink can meet demand of those areas.

ainiriand• 5 years ago

What about lte connections? I live 40km from Berlin and I get 5G. 4G would be quite decent too.

Gustomaximus• 5 years ago

I'm in this position. I run ADSL + NBN satellite.

Come school holidays I put all the TVs/iPads etc on one and the other for my work. Still a pain with slow internet but it limits it. ADSL is 3.5mb down and satellite is 30mb but latency is worse.

I'm looking at bonded networks currently to improve, plus when Starlink gets to me I think I'll keep a second connection as I heard there are a few dropouts and will be a while for the satellites to number enough to mitigate that.

Anyway, it's not ideal but it works ok and lets me live rural.

davb• 5 years ago

but internet is unbearably slow anywhere but in a few major cities

There's only one city in the Highlands - Inverness.

Kerrick• 5 years ago

I live just outside a small town (3,000 population), and I get 20mbit/s up and down via a local WISP that uses Ubiquiti PTMP hardware atop the local water tower. I pay $125/mo for the privilege, but it is enough for both me and my wife to work remotely with both of us nearly always on video calls.

raesene93• 5 years ago

So Anecdata for me. I live in the rural west highlands in a village of 200 people.

I have 900/100 FTTP and 4G connectivity is available anywhere in the village on EE. With lack of contention you can get 100Mbps down stream over 4G

I did have to pay for the FTTP install (FTTPoD) but when compared to the reduction in property prices it was easily offset.

Even without extra money for FTTPoD, the village has FTTC and a couple of cabinets so most get decent coverage, and the houses next to the exchange have straight FTTP.

epage• 5 years ago

What are good small towns to work remote from?

I consider "good to work remote from" to mean

- High speed internet

- Somewhat reasonable way to get to airport for office time (e.g. Michigan Flyer has bus service from East Landsing to the Detroit airport.

Personal bonuses

- Mountains, trees, and winter

- Low cost of living

marviel2• 5 years ago

Chattanooga, TN, but don't tell too many people :)

kzzzznot• 5 years ago

I expect employers should offer an additional allowance for extra space to work in at home or (post lockdown) coffee shop/coworking space fees.

dijit• 5 years ago

In Sweden (and I suspect the UK) there are tax exemptions for home offices.

There are some requirements, you can't use the room for anything except work, it must have a lockable door, etc;

There's some consideration too for broadband, though I don't speak Swedish well enough to be able to file this for myself.

donpott• 5 years ago

(and I suspect the UK)

Can confirm. Or rather, there are tax exemptions for working from home, as opposed to having a home office.

https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home

piva004• 5 years ago

There are tax exemptions but during corona Skatteverket has stated that most of those cases aren't eligible for 2020 [0] (answer to the question "Kan jag göra några avdrag med anledning av corona?"):

Du som under 2020 har jobbat hemma med anledning av pandemin kan som regel inte få avdrag för exempelvis arbetsrum, bredband, möbler eller kaffe, även om du har haft de kostnaderna för att du har jobbat hemma.

Translating:

Can I make deductions due to corona?
If you have worked from home in 2020 due to the pandemic, you cannot normally receive a deduction for, for example, workplaces, broadband internet, furniture or coffee, even if you absorbed the costs by working from home.

[0] https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/deklaration.4.2b543913a42...

RichieAHB• 5 years ago

I’d like to think that most employers that have spent the time and effort to make this work would have policies that cater for the cost of working from home, rather than just saying “you’re saving money on your commute, deal with it”; but this may be naive!

I know that at Spotify this is the case. When choosing to work from home you receive Wi-Fi allowance, as well as being allowed to expense a standing desk, monitor, desk lamp etc. You are also allowed to claim for coworking space fees, but only if you are > 50 miles from the office. Since working from home has begun all employees have been given a prepaid food card for lunch expenses, and after the pandemic this will be available to both home and office workers. The other benefit for a multinational like Spotify is you can work from any country that they are legally registered. I don’t know how other companies will approach this.

namdnay2• 5 years ago

ok, but then they can reduce by the equivalent travel savings :)

laurent922• 5 years ago

As an employer (given our revenue didn’t deflate), I’d be happy to do that, but the administrative hurdles is what annoys me.

Laws of France says I can offer an allowance, but only if I gather every single receipt and do a pro-rata of, for example, the additional electric consumption caused by WFH. The administrative overhead of admitting a dozen invoices per employee of $7 each is probably around $7 each (their time, my time, the accountant time, and the opportunity cost that we spend 10%, 15%, 25% time dealing administrative matters rather than interesting software work - making our work boring is a huge cost). If I give it as a bonus (and pay taxes like on a salary), god knows whether I’ll be required to keep paying the bonus when they come back to the office.

I’d rather the govt say “Allowance is $10 per day”, but it is considered unfair between those who have to purchase their own desk and chair, and those who had the Aeron chair provided by the employer. We’ve succeeded to negotiate our social framework so much that moving in any direction has an important cost.

Having lived in Australia, it’s incredible how administrative overhead impacts morale in a huge way. In France you are always late for some paperwork, never free of mind.

prepend2• 5 years ago

those who had the Aeron chair

I was always a “pay for your own telework stuff if you want to telework” kind of person, but after teleworking for a year in a crappy chair, I really wish my org would buy me decent office equipment. I took a chair and a desk for granted. And it seems like a good deal for orgs if employees all start buying their chairs and desks and whatnot.

xtracto2• 5 years ago

In my case I'm happy enough to not be paying $150 gas a month and a 1800 min driving commute a month (30 hr x $50 per hr is $1500) and $100 parking that I dont mind to continue paying for the internet I already had and the little extra electricity I use by WFH.

curiousgal• 5 years ago

Interns and junior employees will suffer because of this.

dx03417• 5 years ago

Absolutely. You learn so much more during the first years than just technical content. It's all about behavior at work, socializing, office politics etc. Sadly, anyone deciding if people should work remotely has already done that and is most likely in a position where they have a family and enough space at home for a nice office. Few people in upper management work out of a studio apartment in their first job.

alephnan• 5 years ago

Nationwide is on your side

kmlx• 5 years ago

i read a lot of studies about how productivity increases when working from home.

so i decided to superficially calculate this after a year of working from home for all of my very diverse clientele (fortune 500, small agencies, etc). i felt that a lot less work was being done, but i didn’t know how much. or why.

since i’m a coder at heart i looked at tickets/features and commits. something easy to measure.

what i found is a big productivity drop. in some cases there was 40% less work done from home than from the office. and this happened gradually over the course of a year.

and since i know people working for big corps in HK i’ve asked them to do the same. their company’s productivity increased slightly (5%<). they were never forced to work from home.

this is by no means a scientific study, but i was surprised at the huge drops i was seeing, and even more surprised at the continuous drop off across the time line.

did anyone else notice this, or are just my clients outliners?

what will wfh do to the productivity difference between asian countries and western ones? will this apparent productivity loss be offset somehow?

Arainach• 5 years ago

You're ignoring the variables that conflate. Plenty of people I know are burnt out, tired, and not as productive as they are at their peak. This isn't "WFH". This is WFH and quarantine and not being able to travel or take travelling vacations and worrying about your health and the health of everyone you care about and schooling at home and a pandemic and......you get the point. No data claiming a productivity drop during this pandemic can be isolated to WFH with any reliability.

I'm burnt out. My productivity has been garbage this month. The cause isn't WFH or even work in general - the cause is that it's been an utterly miserable year for the world and it's wearing me down. I'm tired of isolation and I'm tired of constant reminders in the world around me that I'm surrounded by idiots without empathy who would rather protest their right to put others in danger than take basic precautions to protect those around them, and I'm ABSOLUTELY tired of the fact that these people haven't learned or changed in an entire year.

guilhas• 5 years ago

Definitely down. Not sure if because the amount of distractions at home, kid, pet, things to tidy up... or if because people are taking this more like exceptional times, so it is OK to slack.

hnedeotes2• 5 years ago

you should add number of lines written for it to be scientific.

oblio4• 5 years ago

Let me introduce you to my friend, --funroll-loop: https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...

Well, that's just a fun detour, I meant manual loop unrolling: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/for-gotten-about-loops

odshoifsdhfs• 5 years ago

I have been working from home for about 10 years. I have been a top performer in most companies I worked with, promotions, etc.

My productivity is down this year a lot. And I mean a lot. This is not because of WFH but do to the situation we live in. I think I wrote like 50 lines of code this month. I just can't stand it anymore, being locked inside the house with a computer on. I was WFH pre-pandemic but travelled, surfed, played social sports, went to cafes, beach. I was productive but my life was balanced and nice. Lets not even talk about the home schooling period where I had to be a teacher and full time worker (like many parents).

Now? I hate my life. I just wake up with the desire for it to be night and go to bed and have the day behind me.

I actually think during this pandemic I would be more productive in an office, due to having some kind of normal, getting out of the house, see other people and talk with others. My gf just started a new job this week that required her to go to the office. You can't imagine how much I envy her right now. I wouldn't mind a 50 minute commute or whatnot, just for a sense of going back to normal.

So yeah, I think you are doing a very unscientific 'study' based on the current situation the world if going through.

nonameiguess2• 5 years ago

You're close to the right idea, but "easy to measure" is exactly the problem here. Tickets close is not a meaningful measure of productivity. It's better than commits, though. I've been pushing commits far less frequently since working from home, but it isn't because I'm actually pushing less code. It's because I no longer need to push to a central Git server in order to share with myself between a company-issued laptop I use when I am contributing from home and my office desktop when I'm in the office. I only have code in one place, and I only need to commit and push when I'm confident it's actually working, not as an adhoc sharing mechanism between devices that can't share storage.

Ultimately, the only metric that matters is company value and that has gone through the roof for virtually every company out there in spite of the pandemic. Unfortunately, that seems largely due to central bank action, not because their products have gotten any better, so that confounds any attempt to reduce the causes of value changes to anything you can easily measure at the individual employee level.

piva004• 5 years ago

What you failed to account for is that we are all working from home during a global health crisis.

I never felt burnt out before, but I do now. I haven't worked much more than if I was in the office, but conflating not having an office space for the usual water cooler discussions that helped shape architectures, having to schedule any kind of small conversation, be ready in your seat, etc. Having to be on during the expected office hours but from home, with no contrasts in life apart from the occasional walk, biking outside.

The drop is not necessarily due to working from home, more due to: working at home, during a crisis, while trying to build up completely new processes for working remotely, adjusting team spirit for that, adjusting means of communication to not be overwhelming (how many of us haven't already experienced Zoom/videocalls fatigue and started to give up on them? I know I have).

We are all mostly just at home, trying to work, I would hate to see this kind of data being misused to state that working from home is less productive. Working during a pandemic while loved ones are dying or in danger is less productive.

ProZsolt• 5 years ago

I loved working from home pre-pandemic.

But currently I'm burned out. Living a groundhog day esque life. Getting up, sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours for work, sitting in front of a TV or a computer for 4-6 hours for "fun", go to sleep, repeat.

I'm trying to spend a few hour outside a day, but I have already seen every street in the 5 miles radius of my home at least twice.

I haven't been on a real vacation in the previous one and a half years. Taking PTO for sitting home is not relaxing.

aseerdbnarng• 5 years ago

I have two comments on this:

a) I feel sympathy for the young, single-types who benefit most from working in a busy environment. The WFH change is wonderful for the older types a bit fed up with long-commutes and open plan offices. I hope the hybrid approach allows us to treat the office like an old-school marketday where once or twice a week, everyone is there and the goal is to be as social as possible. The softer skills of work arent easily passed on via a Zoom call

b) The world has had to quickly adapt to WFH, and I suspect much of the dislike some people have experienced with WFH is due to things that arent fit for this purpose. Many of my colleagues live in small London flats with both parents trying to hold simultaneous zoom-calls and with schools being shutdown, having to manage their children while also doing their jobs. As WFH (hopefully) sticks, these problems iron themselves out

piva004• 5 years ago

On your b. topic, that's what my company has been pretty clear about: we aren't working from home, we are at home, during a global crisis, trying to work.

It's not the experience I had before, around 2010-2011, working completely remote/from home for 2 years with processes and companies adapted to that. Being able to take 2 hours during an afternoon to meet people for a coffee somewhere, or go to the gym.

We are just trying to work from home now, not really living through a proper experience of that with all its benefits.

TeMPOraL7• 5 years ago

On your b. topic, that's what my company has been pretty clear about: we aren't working from home, we are at home, during a global crisis, trying to work.

Mine was too, and I really appreciated that they made a point of it. Lowered expectations led to lowered stress, people did their best without fear of negative consequences for decline in productivity - and, as it turned out after management reviewed the issue few months later, productivity did not suffer.

adamhp4• 5 years ago

For (a) can we do barbecues and cookouts and happy hours instead? We can bring whiteboards if needed but I really don't want to spend even 2 hours a week commuting again.

fatnoah• 5 years ago

I feel sympathy for the young, single-types who benefit most from working in a busy environment

In my own company of almost 50k people, the ones clamoring the loudest for offices to open are, by far, those with kids at home.

rkangel• 5 years ago

Is there a risk of wide adoption of home working becoming discriminatory against people with low incomes?

I am lucky enough to have a 4 bedroom house that I share with just my fiancée. This means that I have space to have a nice office, that is separate from whatever else is going on in the house. This is not a luxury that everybody has. In most cases it will be because they can't afford it, but in some cases it will be because they prefer to or need to live in a big city where it is affordable to very few.

If you're in that situation working from home is going to be a less pleasant, less attractive option. If a large portion of workplaces become remote-first are you going to be at a disadvantage if you prefer an office?

We're not there yet - there aren't many remote first companies, and most companies offer the option but I worry that what for a lot of us is a blessing will become a curse to some.

em-bee2• 5 years ago

that's a very good point. i could not get any work done if i didn't have a separate room. it's a small one (4-5sqm) but that's enough.

however that's the thing. most apartments i looked at in one particular city didn't have any small rooms. in order to get four bedrooms (one to be converted to an office) i could not find anything smaller than 150sqm. a friend of a relative has a 100sqm apartment with 5 rooms. two of them are mere closets with a window, but that's the perfect size for a home office.

another issue is tax relief. if you don't have your office in a separate room, you can't write off the full cost for that office as a work expense (which would be subtracted from your income, so you pay less income taxes). if your office is a desk in the living room, then you only get to write off half of the cost for that desk (or less) just because the room is also used for other purposes, and your kids, god forbid might use your desk for other activities when you are not working.

londons_explore2• 5 years ago

I bet they'll walk back this advice when employees start moving outside the UK and start living across the world, and suddenly Nationwide has the laws and bureaucracies of hundreds of countries to deal with...

"Hi HR, you need to pay be the 8 years maternity pay you owe me because I live in Svalbard and the local laws require all employers pay that".

411111111111111• 5 years ago

That would be an issue, but thankfully isn't necessarily the case.

you're usually bound by the locality where the contract is signed, so you dont suddenly gain rights just by moving abroad until the employer actually creates a new contract. for that to happen, the employer would have to create a legal entity in that legal region.

do note however, that some nations dont allow you to work while on their soil, unless you specifically get a visa permitting it.

londons_explore2• 5 years ago

A nation who has laws as you suggest opens their population up to remote slave labor. Ie. Some foreign company encourages citizens to work for less than minimum wage, paying no employment taxes, in conditions that would otherwise be illegal. That in turn also hurts local employers competing for the same labor pool.

Therefore I believe all nations will decide that work done on their soil must follow their employment laws, even if done for a foreign company.

There is precident for that interpretation pre-pandemic in many western countries.

sensitive-ears• 5 years ago

This may or may not be true in all locales, but one issue described to me is that having a legal entity in one jurisdiction with employees in another jurisdiction can expose the company to be also tax liable in the workers jurisdiction

prepend2• 5 years ago

This is not true in the US as state laws apply for where the employee conducts the work, not the location of the employer.

The employer will need to withhold taxes for the state of the employee as well.

This is frequently hard to detect with everyone teleworking, but rest assured that HR is getting a call if someone works in a state with maternity leave laws requiring it.

While not generally applicable for digital jobs that telework, I think the most obvious would be minimum wage. If I live in Seattle and telework to a job in Alabama that pays only $11, that’s a liability for the employer.

Of course, I think that if an employee was teleworking from a location without approval that’s likely grounds for dismissal.

nonameiguess2• 5 years ago

Something I haven't seen brought up much, probably because most of the people commenting on these posts aren't disabled, is the positive impact on disabled people. I have spine problems that effectively prevent me from being able to commute. I was able to get around that in the past by taking trains I could stand/sit on, but that required me to both live and work within walking distance of a train station, which in the US is not very many places. Then I was able to get around it when my wife started working at the same site because I could just carpool with her and be reclined the whole time.

But nothing truly freed me like the ability to work from bed. The possibility of a bad flareup or injury always haunted me because in the past it has meant possibly months of missed time while I go on disability or even having to change jobs. Now it means nothing. I mean, something because I'll be in more pain and miserable, but I can at least keep working.

em-bee2• 5 years ago

i do hope that you are still taking a break when the pain flares up but i can totally see the difference to being out of commission for a week just because it's to painful to get in a car, when you could otherwise work, as long as you can sit comfortably and lie down for breaks, or whatever it is you need to do to get relief.

not to mention the difficulty of finding work that will accommodate your needs, since, even if it's required by law to not discriminate, some companies still find an excuse to not hire, or are making it difficult to get your workplace adjusted to your requirements.

Nationwide tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere'

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