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  • I think the biggest problem is that employers used to require that we do all the work we can do. The easiest way to achieve that is to observe that no one is slacking off. With Home Office there is suddenly a need to find out what is a reasonable workload. They seem to fear that they don't get occupy the employees 100% of the time and as usual on capitalism it is not enough when you produce enough bit when you produce all you can.

    • I find it odd and oppressive how important this detailed oversight and control seems to be to employers. Home Office compatible jobs are mostly computer and thus "brain work", and here productivity never has related linearly correlated with "time staring at monitor". In office there would be plenty of smell talk, coffee breaks, diddling with smartphones and other ways to relax in between. These breaks are an important part of the productivity cycle, giving the mind a chance to process ideas and problems. In other countries/cultures there's more reliance on the concept of good faith: I work at a company that uses home office contracts by default. I can go to the office if I want, but I don't have to. Last time I've been there is five years ago, long before COVID. The company does not track our computer activity ( illegal here anyway) or working hours at all. Obviously it is still my duty to task the hours I spent working for clients for billing reasons, but that's it. The bosses expect that we spend our time in a manner that is beneficial to the company. If one runs out of work, it is expected to notify one's boss so be take can be found and assigned. Of course they still keep an eye out for slackers, but the metric never is working hours or office hours, it's "what have you spent your time on and how has it benefitted the company?" This approach leads to us employees reciprocating the trust shown. This is the first job I never minded putting in extra hours at critical days, because I know I'll just plan on more off hours or even off days during calmer weeks, giving myself to balance the hours. And no, I don't have to get approval from my employer to do that, as it is expected I schedule my time offs in a manner that is least disruptive. This means I just ask a colleague working on the same or similar projects if he's gonna be there so clients have a point of contact in case of emergency. I don't think I ever can work for a conservative, controlling employer again after having enjoyed this level of mutual trust and maturity in the working environment. It's almost as if I'm self-employed, but with all the benefits of being salaried.

  • It's actually not that hard. If the assigned tasks are being fulfilled within set parameters there's really nothing to observe and keep track of. What they're worried about and what they can't monitor and observe is what the employees are doing outside of those tasks.

    My friend works from home he does all his work and in the down time he'll run errands, work out, and play pool at his local bar. Whatever. His work is fully completed and submitted and his performance views are top notch.

    And that's pretty much the only thing employers need to be worried about. How well the work is being completed.

    Fuck the office.

    • My friend works from home he does all his work and in the down time he'll run errands, work out, and play pool at his local bar. Whatever. His work is fully completed and submitted and his performance views are top notch.

      I had 2 people like that back when the pandemic started, the only "grown-ups" in the team - married and with children. They were doing some tasks manually but you could tell it's stressing them out because you could see them work until 8-9PM, sometimes even later. And you would constantly hear their kids in the background - probably a difficult adjustment to make at home in the beginning.

      So I had to sit them both down and sell them on the idea of automating everything. They liked it (they prefer automating things also), but mostly said they'd never have time for it, because of all the priority stuff they need to work on. So I asked them to work on automating the tasks in-between other, more important ones, and if they were ever getting bothered by management, send them to me and I'd run interference. We came up with a plan, we had milestones for ourselves, the whole thing.

      I had to lie in some meetings and claim we were working on what management wanted(and take a lot of shit for being late sometimes, or just flat out saying 'no' to requests, which didn't get me any fans either), but it was worth it in the end. A year and a half later, they were done. Instead of working together until 8PM, they were each working 2h per week by the end. The rest was their time to enjoy, I never asked how they spent it. Along the way, it was even visible how each automated task would clear their schedule even more.

      A few months in, they started being really great together and working as a team, completely covering when the other was missing, not needing their hand held with anything... Just awesome to work with them. 4-5 months after we started, they were no longer doing overtime - there was no need to, the tasks which took the longest were now a script. 8-9 months in, you'd have trouble catching them both at work at the same time - they'd cover one for the other, and tasks would still get done. Easy to say to upper mgmt "yeah, they've been doing this intensive activity which usually takes a lot of time" - no questions asked. They would never drop the ball, and in return I'd never bother them about how they got organized, I trusted them completely to deliver on time and take care of the hiccups. Beautiful stuff.

      We kept this to ourselves until we left the project (just a few months after we were done), at which point I had them create a presentation for management, showing how they improved the situation (wanted them to show off their achievements, it's not often that we get to do it. And maybe also allow the people taking over to understand why this was so important and to continue using the automated way instead of the manual way). I specifically asked for a page with statistics, cause I wanted to make sure the point got across. They proudly had that slide showing how the workload went from 80-100 man hours per week to 4 man hours per week. Upper management saw it, I could see the guy's eyes light up at this. Unfortunately they never understood how to use it and how to apply it to future teams. I checked back this year, they're using the manual way. Their loss.

      Probably one of the best duos I've ever had the pleasure to work with. People with full lives and responsibilities, who got their work done, were reliable, were self-organizing, and the only thing they needed were some guidance and some backup when they were being pressured to finish some random donut's idea of "important tasks", and in return I could always sleep easy knowing that I don't need to worry about anything if it's in their responsibility, cause they will get it done. I appreciated them while working with them, and even more since not working with them.

    • When the pandemic hit and I knew I was going to be working from home, I feared that my productivity would plummet and I'd miss the office. I reassured myself that it would only be a couple of weeks and then everything would go ban to normal. (Boy, was I naive!)

      When I started working from home, though, I found that I loved it. I'm more productive without people chatting me up or managers looking over my shoulder.

      I'm even eating healthier. When I went into the office, I'd pack all the food I'd think I needed for the day. I'd always overpack and then, with the food sitting right there, I'd snack throughout the day. Now, I can take the time to prepare healthy meals in my kitchen for lunch and snacks, while close, aren't within arm's reach.

      I'm now permanently work from home and loving it. If I ever looked for another job, Work From Home would be a huge selling point. I'm not going to say I'd never go into another office, but if I had two job offers except one was work from home, I'd pick that one.

      • Dude it's amazing. I had my reservations as well. I did a lot of preparation ahead of time, but now I'm never going back.

    • It’s actually not that hard. If the assigned tasks are being fulfilled within set parameters there’s really nothing to observe and keep track of.

      Apologies for nitpicking, but they do need to track if the task is completed or not, especially when there's a chain of tasks that need to be completed in a certain order for the overall goal to be completed.

      Otherwise, yeah, I was coming here to post the same thing, you don't need to watch your workers while they're working, you just need to confirm that they finish the tasks you assign them. If they have blocks on their tasks they'll let their manager/lead know.

    • Yeah tracking task completion and quality of the tasks done is all I'd care about too.

      I'd even go as far as to set up a bounty board for one time tasks up for grabs. Each one comes with a payout according to how much additional work someone's gotta do to get it done, with big emergency items paying out vastly more than small time stuff that can be done at any time.

      Stuff related to achieving company stretch goals would be given the pay bonus but also some fun extras like extra PTO or a "gift card" for a grocery trip or some other necessity expense. Basically just cutting them a grain dole check since subsidizing major household expenses is a proven means of giving people the space for social advancement.

      It'd be my way of saying "I know you don't have to do this in your contract duties, so have a little incentive for the extra helping hand!"

  • Tell me you're an incompetent manager without telling me you're an incompetent manager.

  • Their No. 1 problem with it is how difficult it is to observe and monitor employees

    Um, no. Like others here have pointed out, the overwhelming majority of office workers have to turn in countable digital product of some sort for their job production. LOOK AT IT. Was it the quantity and quality required of them? Well, there you go.

    Also, what the hell are you on about, hypothetical boss? In today's technical age, so many bosses can just remote view a worker's screens (even when the workers don't know that it's happening in real time).

    It's creepy to spy, but if you really suspect someone's away from keyboard extendedly when they aren't supposed to be, you can literally just look in.

    "I can't monitor my employees" is such a weird complaint when counting is a thing and tech tools are out there designed to let you overview your workforce.

  • But the biggest disadvantage of remote work that employers cite is how difficult it is to observe and monitor employees

    I'm sure these employers hire external contractors. Do they insist on observing and monitoring those contractors? Are they going to insist their contracotr's employees be active on Teams at all times?

    I hate the idea that if working from home for an employer is somehow different from working as a freelancer from home.

    Pre-pandemic, bosses relied on desk visits and peer monitoring, which occurs when co-workers notice and comment on each other’s work, to keep employees on track in the office, and there is no clear replacement for them in a remote setting, Pollak explains.

    Again: If they hired a contractor, would they want to "drop by their desk" to comment on their work? Why do they insist on treating employees like Clients from Hell?

    “It’s hard to know which measure these software programs track even matters,” Pollak adds. “A lot of knowledge work is done in video meetings, or offline in phone calls, research and brainstorming, and it’s impossible to quantify all of that.”

    Yes, exactly. So stop trying to quantify it. Quantify the results of that knowledge work. A results-focused management style works best for remote work, not hovering over your peons waiting for them to make a mistake.

    “If the pandemic and ‘great resignation’ taught us anything, it’s that managers need to be intentional and engaged with employees to be truly effective,”

    Holy cow, managers need to talk to their workers! Thank The Invisible Hand this priestly Economist has brought this nugget of wisdom from the Ivory Tower.

    Also, I love that the image for this article is a bleak and soulless office. I don't know how people see this and still wonder why nobody wants to be there.

  • We can't tell you off for taking a moment to look at your phone or for wearing headphones unless you are in the office; this is how we justify our positions.. so despite the economic, environmental and quality of life improvements we are demanding you return so we can continue to justify our pay and position.

    Also fuck you, and get in your cubicle removed

  • Translated: Bosses don't know how to pretend to add any actual value to the workflow of their employees when they aren't constantly looming over them.

    • "And here's something else, Bob. I have eight different bosses right now."

      • Way back when I started out in IT, I had a job as Junior admin for the callcenter and two distribution centers of this multinational company.

        The call center and distribution center were in Belgium, the second distribution center was right across the border from the call center, in Germany.

        So, because I was stationed at the call center, the call center manager considered himself my boss and because I was stationed at the distribution center in Belgium, the distribution center manager in Belgium considered himself my boss and because I was stationed at the distribution center in Germany, the distribution center manager in Germany considered himself my boss.

        That makes 3.

        But, since I was stationed at the call center and trained to program the call center phonesystem, the European manager for the phone systems considered himself my boss.

        That makes 4.

        But since I was a Junior Admin, the Belgian AND German IT department managers considered themselves my boss.

        That makes 6.

        But since I worked for both Belgian and German locations, the European IT department director considered themselves my boss.

        That makes 7.

        But, because I was working there when HQ in the US was updating all IT infrastructure in Europe, the US IT manager and Internation IT directors considered themselves my boss.

        That makes 9.

        I was fired for taking tasks by hierarchy and not jumping to do what the manager of the German distribution center told me to do.

        And only reason this was possible is because, since I worked in both Belgian and German locations and had to travel to the UK and Spain for the network upgrades directed by the US IT department, I was actually internally in the company officially part of the consultants/sales department, because they were the only ones that had specific travel reimbursement structures, that would allow the company to reimburse me for my international travel.

        That makes 10.

        And the manager of that department? The German distribution center managers wife.

        I was so goddamn stressed working there I went from having a full head of hair to having a full bald head with some fluff on the sides.

        That's also when I swore to never work as an employee for a multinational or US company ever again.

        I have worked for many as a consultant, but always on my terms and stipulating in the contract there's one single person in that company that can assign tasks to me.

  • I spent about a year fully remote, and have been hybrid since the pandemic. I am happy!

317 comments