kevin_roche
Member
- Joined
- 26 Feb 2019
- Messages
- 930
Being single and living alone I find working from home really depressing. It can be days before I see anyone. I'm thinking of giving it up.
Being single and living alone I find working from home really depressing. It can be days before I see anyone. I'm thinking of giving it up.
Tell me about it. I'm onboarding two at the moment, though they're in the US and Manila offices so I wouldn't have met them anyway. But they would at least have met the rest of their respective teams.Onboarding new starters to our teams has been hugely difficult this year.
I'm in the same situation although I am certainly not thinking of giving it up. I've been WFH since mid September 2019 with the odd office trip here and there. It was fine when I was able to go out multiple evenings a week to participate in my hobbies as it allowed the social interaction that was much reduced by the WFH. Now that all everything is on indefinite hold its becoming tough going. I keep telling myself all my hobby related activities will restart eventually even if that isn't until 2021.Being single and living alone I find working from home really depressing. It can be days before I see anyone. I'm thinking of giving it up.
No "commute" to act as a firebreak.
One thing that I find consistently tricky about working from home is the lack of "switch off" time between shutting the laptop and home life - it's straight into keeping the kids happy with no mental break between the two, no matter how disciplined I am about ending the working day.
Only if the requisite skills can be found overseas at a price that makes it worthwhile to the employer.Those who argue they can work at home all the time are also effectively admitting their jobs can be outsourced abroad, so anyone who argues that could end up regretting it.
Only if the requisite skills can be found overseas at a price that makes it worthwhile to the employer.
That isn't really true though.Those who argue they can work at home all the time are also effectively admitting their jobs can be outsourced abroad, so anyone who argues that could end up regretting it.
And to back up my points above - after the initial outsourcing IT serge several years ago, it didn't take too long for companies to realise that it wasn't always a good idea and often caused more problems than what it solved. At least in my part of the industry, the current thinking is that your main teams will still be here, but with secondary or tertiary teams based abroad where the offshore teams are mainly used to support spikes in demand (where without the offshore team the company would either have to turn away some work, or hire contractors here for a much higher cost than any perm staff).I agree. In my part of the IT industry the correct skills and in-country availability at the right price are all important.
Those who argue they can work at home all the time are also effectively admitting their jobs can be outsourced abroad, so anyone who argues that could end up regretting it.
Those who argue they can work at home all the time are also effectively admitting their jobs can be outsourced abroad, so anyone who argues that could end up regretting it.
Having to have to travel to work is not an indication the same cannot be done either.
Those who argue they can work at home all the time are also effectively admitting their jobs can be outsourced abroad, so anyone who argues that could end up regretting it.
An executive at JPMorgan Chase & Co. gets unapologetic messages from colleagues on nights and weekends, including a notably demanding one on Easter Sunday. A web designer whose bedroom doubles as an office has to set an alarm to remind himself to eat during his non-stop workday. At Intel Corp., a vice president with four kids logs 13-hour days while attempting to juggle her parenting duties and her job.
Six weeks into a nationwide work-from-home experiment with no end in sight, whatever boundaries remained between work and life have almost entirely disappeared.
With many living a few steps from their offices, America’s always-on work culture has reached new heights. The 9-to-5 workday, or any semblance of it, seems like a relic of a bygone era. Long gone are the regretful formalities for calling or emailing at inappropriate times. Burnt-out employees feel like they have even less free time than when they wasted hours commuting.
This was published back in April before long-term WFH fatigue was even a thing. That said it's just as relevant now.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...n-covid-era-means-three-more-hours-on-the-job
The important part of this is "With many living a few steps from their offices, America’s always-on work culture has reached new heights." The same can't be said for all employers - certainly, it's a lot less so in many UK companies. As usual, many European companies are way ahead of us, with many companies enforcing a work/home balance through things like meeting requests outside of working hours being auto-rejected, Teams going to "No not disturb" at the end of the day or emails sent outside working hours not being delivered until the next morning.
I was talking to a colleague in the Netherlands on Teams yesterday evening, and he made no bones about the fact he was turning off his laptop with a cheery 'have a good evening, speak with you tomorrow'. Many of us aren't great at setting those sorts of boundaries, especially when working with colleagues five to eight hours west of us - their working days become an unwelcome extension of ours.
Not sure why. When you leave an office you switch your system off on your desk so I don't see why people don't do the same when at home - I do.I was talking to a colleague in the Netherlands on Teams yesterday evening, and he made no bones about the fact he was turning off his laptop with a cheery 'have a good evening, speak with you tomorrow'. Many of us aren't great at setting those sorts of boundaries, especially when working with colleagues five to eight hours west of us - their working days become an unwelcome extension of ours.
Not sure why. When you leave an office you switch your system off on your desk so I don't see why people don't do the same when at home - I do.
Not sure why. When you leave an office you switch your system off on your desk so I don't see why people don't do the same when at home - I do.