They know this. They don’t care, they want your asses in their office buildings that they’re using as passive assets. Those assets lose value if there’s no demand for office buildings. Simple as
It’s not just that. Employers think you’re “getting away” with…something…if you can manage to be productive while having something which advantages you.
For one example, several firms - including Microsoft - have conducted experiments where they move an office to a 4 day, 32 hour week while paying people the same. They unfailingly found that productivity either stayed the same or went up. So, at the end of the experiment they…went back to a 5 day week. Because otherwise people are just getting an extra day off, aren’t they? When they “should” be working.
Even if productivity went up and it was better for the company and for the workers, it was still ultimately seen as a bad thing because the workers were better off.
Another example: at a previous job I had we got an hour’s break over the course of the day. 15 minutes 2 hours after start, 30 minutes 4 hours after start, and another 15 minutes 6 hours after start. On a Friday, however, the workday was 7 hours rather than 8. This meant that an hour before leaving people would have a 15 minute break, and then it wasn’t worth actually starting anything because before you’d have a chance to get into it you’d be getting ready to go home. So the workers went to management and said “let’s work through the last break on a Friday and go home 15 minutes early instead”. Management agreed, productivity went up, and everybody was happy at getting off an extra 15 minutes early.
Then the old upper manager was fired and a new one took their place, and this arrangement was deemed to be “getting away with it”. Taking a final break & going home later was mandated. Suddenly none of the management who had agreed it had anything to do with the initial decision and they’d always thought it was a bad idea.
So the workers were unhappy because they had a longer workday, less work got done because everybody was unproductive after break, and the company was getting less value for money becuse they were paying people the same amount for less work. But they thought it was a better situation because people were physically in the building for an extra 15 minutes, and therefore not “getting away with it”.
There’s very often a mindset in management that employees are naughty children, and that strict rules must be good just because they’re rules, rather than because they actually lead to better outcomes for the company.
I work from home and never want to go back, but I don’t use the time I used to commute to work. I usually sleep until my dog gets me up and roll into my first meeting
Sleeping for an extra 60-90 minutes is using the time.
Idk about you but waking up at least semi naturally really does boost my productivity for the day
I have about a 2 to 4 hour period where I can get deep work done. Starting around 10am usually. Sadly I’m in meetings daily until noon so by the time I have cycles my brain is already nearly burned out. I got a recent ADHD diagnosis so that and my meds probably are related.
I got diagnosed with ADHD about a year ago and started meds soon after. There’s definitely a learning curve to managing productivity after you finally gain the ability that most other people already had as kids. I’m still learning, but it does get better if you’re intentional about figuring out how you can get things done.
I remember what life was like before COVID/being in the office full time. I used to travel to work for an hour and a half on the M25 motorway, and for that I had to wake up stupidly early hours.
I’m genuinely surprised I never got into a car accident considering how lacking in sleep I was. And that was every day, 5 days a week.
Now I work from home in most days, can’t say I miss it.
I’ve been productive even when I’ve looked like shit in public transit. I’d prefer to work from home though if it was possible for me
Maybe “productive” means “occupying the space someone pays rent for”.
I start a new remote job on Monday. It’s been a while since I was laid off. Just about 7 months. But I was lucky to find a firm looking specifically for a remote engineer in the specific support territory. Bingo!
I get to be in sweats all day and look like holy hell. I can get up and wander the house on a whim. Drink coffee, snack.
I’m way more motivated to do actual work than if I was forced out of bed at an ungodly hour just so I can sit and traffic and go somewhere terrible for eight hours then do it all again the next day until I die…
I go into work one day a week. Guess which day I don’t get much of anything done…
I would go to the office if they provided office cocaine like they did back in the day. I would be hella productive then.
Really it depends on the individuals and what their home and office environments are like. I work from home 95% of the time and much prefer it over being in the office, but if I lived in a house share with housemates or had very little space then I’d probably feel more productive in the office.
One thing I do miss about commuting is the return journey. It was nice to have a gap to decompress from work before getting home, now it’s straight off calls and 10 seconds later I’m dealing with a trillion questions from the kids and immediately start cooking dinner.
London Tube, maybe the Green Line that goes the Heathrow?!
Using the Tube at rush hour was so bad I switched to cycling for my commute (which turned out to take the same time whilst being far more pleasant), this before before cycling in London was fashionable so when I started doing it there weren’t all that many of us and drivers weren’t yet used to cyclists so you had to be extra careful with things like being on their blindspot near places were they might turn.
Also some of the Tube lines in London are old and hence the tunnels are less high, so the tube trains that run there (like this one) have lower ceilings and feel extra opprossive.
Mind you, using the Tube is still a superior experience to driving since you can actually bring a book and distract yourself by reading in the Tube.
Definitelly not the thing I miss about London.
oh man, I had word for word the same experience. The number of times I’d turn up to work with bloodied knuckles because I was filtering between two buses at the wrong speed like a suicidal maniac.
“Keep up with traffic, or pull over” were the two tenets I lived by. The sheer rush of adrenaline of getting to work alive, nothing beats it.
Now it’s all cycle lanes, and even those lanes have queues and though it’s still miles faster than car/tube/bus, it’s not as satisfying as those early wild west days of flying over a car bonnet
My commute is 20 minutes of curvy back roads. No traffic. Some farms and livestock, some forest. The roads get too much heavy truck use to be safe for cycling, but it’s a really nice drive.
I fucking wish my country had better public transport dude.
Nothing more soul-crushing than waking up early as fuck, dragging my half-awake ass to the bus stop full of people and getting smushed in a bus for 2h. I was walking into the office ready to punch the first mf that bothered me about anything, which wasn’t really fair because it wasn’t their fault(but they also sucked ass so they almost fucking deserved it).All in all the only thing I want from my governors is better public transport, yet lately they’re taking measures that actively worsen it, somehow
Gotta keep that inner city property value inflated enough to keep the boomers in a prestige class somehow.
(This is the actual reason the governor of NY and a bunch of city higher ups made shady deals with CEOs to keep the property value up)
Also gotta incentivize illegal banking through social pressure and less online monitoring some how.
(This is also true work from home during covid almost completely stopped bank fraud and the banks competing sold the fraud as an advantage from the companies that kept employees at home)
You post a half full metro car as an example of misery? LMAO
Then firstworlders ask why people from the rest of the world make fun of them.
People are not allowed to dislike their station in life because someone else has it ‘worse’ somewhere else?
I mean, it’s rather gauche. Plenty here are happy to make fun of, say, rich people’s problems with social relationships, white people’s problems feeling comfortable talking about race, or men’s dating problems. And yet the disparity in privilege between these people and the average lemming is trounced by the disparity between a peasant farmer in a developing nation and the average lemming.
It seems the problems of the privileged are only reasonable to talk about when those problems relate to being a potentially-remote office worker in a developed nation. Strange that this is a disproportionately represented population here on Lemmy…
Nah this is just whataboutism. We all agree that the highest severity issues are access to heathcare/nutrition/sanitation/education in developing countries or among the homeless etc. That doesn’t mean we are suddenly not allowed to talk about anything else.
Do you do this in real life?
Colleague: “hey did you catch the game this weekend, boy I hate being a jets fan”
Blarghly: “that’s rather gauche, don’t you know there’s major food insecurity in sudan”
It has the intellectual weight of a parent trying to cajole their toddler into eating.
Because is a privilege, and you should at least aknowledge or respect that it is.
No no, you don’t understand. They are being forced at gunpoint to commute to air conditioned office jobs where they fuck off for hours every day by complaining about their jobs on Lemmy. It truly is the worst existance. If only they could escape that farm potatos in Kamchatka!
Well, guess you can’t complain about your job either because there are those who mine coal by hand deep under dangerous rock and septic tank divers without helmets.
Guys I have this theory that a level of discomfort below “currently getting guts eaten by bird” exists, not sure on the specifics yet.
I’ll get downvoted to hell but I’m more productive at the office than at home. When you work at the office you need to dress up, take proper care of yourself, walk around and step by a cafe. All this starts the day positively and more prone to be mentally active.
Instead at home I personally feel more sluggish: I am with my pajamas on, wake up 10 minutes before clock in and stay alone the whole time.
No one’s stopping you. It’s only a problem when this is forced on people. Some of us don’t need to go to work for any of that.
Yeah never said it should be forced on people 👍 I just like how it is for me
I wake up earlier take a long shit/shower and get ready for the day before working at home in a clean environemnt, feels great
Get extra sleep, longer shower, more time to use the bathroom (usually dont have to go til im awake for a bit)
I should start blasting music tho, edm on my drive wakes me up and gives me hella dopamine, just don’t feel like I need it as much if I’m not traveling
Yeah I know that each one has their own. I’d hate to go to work sitting in a traffic jam for example
I wake up every morning, shower, shave, trim my beard, put on clean clothes… I look good. Then I park my ass in my home office. I don’t feel right starting my day in pyjamas, never have… even on weekends.
I think it depends a lot on a person’s personality.
Myself I find it much harder to have the discipline to do that when working from home, plus it’s far easier to get distracted at home, so I chose to work from a coworking space which is about 15m walk from home.
Also, from the Covid days I found out I that for my own sanity I need to go out if only not to be inside all the time, which I get to do regularly with my current setup.
So as I see it you’re both right and as somebody else says, it’s only a problem when this forced on people.
When you work at the office you need to dress up, take proper care of yourself, walk around and step by a cafe.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that paid well enough for me to do any of that tho
I’m more productive at the office than at home.
And that’s ok, you do you. I prefer to work from home but that’s my personal choice and i don’t push it onto others.
The thing is, no one is telling you No! You should work from home!
Yet a lot of management are telling workers No! You should work at the office!Yes I totally get it and I find it so weird
Same for me, having to go outside, touch some grass and get some vitamine D on the way to work makes wonders both for my mental health and for my productivity.
I bet 80% of people who always cry about this commutes by car into an office in an office park in the middle of nowhere.
It’s that the complaints come out on Lemmy, or on Reddit, or elsewhere that’s extremely online.
I found lockdown quite enjoyable. My partner had grinding depression due to not having the stimulation and connection and support of being physically present with people, including at work.
That experience is common, but not amongst the vocal online lot!
I bet 80% of people who always cry about this commutes by car into an office in an office park in the middle of nowhere.
It was that or work at a gas station for 1/3 the pay. I’m just asking for a choice.
