My mate has just been told he is WFH for 3 days a week as standard now.

My brothers company have just dropped one of their offices, it really is interesting.

My tip for you all, invest in tech companies such as Palo Alto, they are the leaders in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), which is basically the future for WFM technologies. No more backhaul VPN to the HQ’s then off to the clouds for SAAS apps, you now go direct to the SAAS via the Palo Alto infrastructure which only requires an Internet connection to reach. All policy is centrally orchestrated from the cloud so tech teams can WFM too.

We use Okta. Absolute shitshow.

I’m hating working from home. My commute is only 10 minutes normally so no time gain for me not going in. We were told last week that our office won’t be open until Q4 at the earliest, which really put me on a downer. 2020 the year that wasn’t…

I’ve been set up to work from home since I started my current Job 4 years ago, or when ever it was. Defo took some getting used to, but once I got the hang of it, I have to say it whips ass. Or I guess I should say it used to, until I was forced to work from my actual house. Been heavily fighting the urge to make the 12 hour drive down the the in-law’s vacation house, and take up residence.

We’re not expecting to go back until 1 September at the earliest. Some have expressed a desire, we just had a company survey, that they wanted to return but to do so would mean temp checks, closed off kitchen areas, masks in the office. They swiftly changed their minds on that. The psychological effect of that is too much for me.

For me working with Bermuda, NY and, since Covid, SF means WFH has worked out fine. Although I’m working longer. Im more efficient as dont have the commute to handle.

Could I do it full time? Yes. Would I want to? No. Purely on the social aspect of seeing other people.

I’ll definitely be requesting an at least one day WFH arrangement as the joy of it means I spend some quality development time with the kids.

I’d take working from home all day. Things have been crazy busy for me since lockdown - probably the busiest I’ve ever been in terms of meetings and workload and even with the kids not at school and the childminder I’d still take this any day.

I am missing getting to go to the gym at lunch and listening to music on my commute but if things settled down I could find ways to do work out every day at home plus listen to some more music.

Office work as we knew it is dead. After staffing, premises costs have to be a business’s biggest outlay - once they realise they don’t need to pay the costs for the premises they will bin them off. I said this a few weeks ago on the other board- interesting to see Ed’s place considering this already. Viva la revolution.

That sounds like a great arrangement in my opinion Ed. I’d love that as an option but will never happen in the Higher Education sector.

    Old-Dutch Office work as we knew it is dead. After staffing, premises costs have to be a business’s biggest outlay - once they realise they don’t need to pay the costs for the premises they will bin them off. I said this a few weeks ago on the other board-

    1000% agree. They’ve now realized that they can squeeze people just as hard without having them under the magnifying glass.

      when i was interviewing for jobs a dozen years ago, before i started my own business, this was exactly my problem. i’m looking at senior ba positions, no direct reports, stakeholders all over the map, and they still wanted me in the office everyday. asking why we couldn’t do the position from home was akin to blasphemy. that was the end for me, glad i haven’t had to go back to that short-sighted corporate nonsense.

      You either produce or you dont. My role is reliant on others to bring me the business to sort out and close. Once that’s done, theres a whole process where I can be waiting around for others to confirm their understanding.

      There can be many dead periods in my year so its impossible to do time/motion type studies or snooping on productivity as this time of year is off the scale.

      Smallman1 Hate working from home, this groundhog day existence isn’t for me, struggling a little actually.

      Ed I imagine you love a bit of a float around the office, charming the dorises, mucking in with the lads. In at 9:30am, sitting down to work at 11am.

        Been a home worker (minimum 4 days out of 5) for about 7 years, and my wife even longer. Monday to Friday is the most normal part of the week for us.

        Hopeful that the enforced remote working arrangements of the past couple of months, and the likely much greater proportion of home working in future will mean that more of my colleagues will appreciate that it’s not a case of taking the piss, and taking it easy. Even though I’m always rated as one of the most productive high performing folks in my business, there are still the occasional snide remarks about how home working arrangements…

          My uncle works for the tech bit of the NHS (I forget what it’s called now). Apparently the bean counters have seen that 500 workers can remote work productively and so they’re now wondering why they’re paying for all the office space.

          It’s not going to be a good time to own large office buildings over the next 5 years.