One can only get so far with eye contact. They say the window to one's soul is through their genitals.
Principal Financial-Remote work
- Thread starter pfgemployee
- Start date
Man, I have to do my 4 minute (each way!) drive every day. It sucks. Good thing I get free soda in the office or it wouldn't be worth it.
I felt bad for "Local Bites" downtown when half the town went to work from home, knew a couple of the owners pretty well from going there so often over the years. I no longer work DT so curious if they are still afloat.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
This thread is taking a turn I never would have expected.
I assume these perverts work from home.
I assume these perverts work from home.
If I only need to do 5 hours of work on a day if I’m working from home I will get it done in 5 hours. I may then do some other stuff.
If I'm in the office I will screw around a fair amount and take 8 hours to get the work done. I’m not going to just magically come up with 3 more hours of work that I wasn’t already getting done. If I’m really struggling to stretch it out I may find something stupid and totally unrelated to my job duties to occupy myself.
Lol, it's the offseason and I'm recovering from a yet another stroke so not thinking worth ****, how could you not have expected the worst
The REAL root cause, imho, isn't even productivity per se. It's the difficulties inherent in managing people, and the challenge of deciding "did that person do their expected share today or not?". And it's hard to tell if the expectation was fair, and its hard to tell the effort level too.
How to tell if someone who is getting stuff done, could get MORE done? Or do something more complex instead? How to tell who is slacking off, vs who is working hard but just maybe slower? How to set a deadline goal for a project that is "just right" as opposed to being unrealistic? That's very difficult to be objective in the best of circumstances. Unless you have people doing piecework, which isn't really what we're talking about here.
Example:
had an employee at my pervious employer, let's call it Cockwell Rollins. She was super highly rated at her job, but wanted more challenge. So I hired her to do a more complex job. She was totally worthless. She was a lot less capable than expected, but worse, spent most of the day watching netflix on her phone. Turns out her prior role was a small specialty sliver of work, and no one understood it but her. So it only took her a couple hours a day tops to get it done. But it was always done right, and the customer was happy. And she thought faffing around most of the day was normal. Her managers (the management role was rotational, so no one was ever there more than 12 months) never understood how little she had to do. They thought she was great. Bet her coworkers knew better though. Very typical of large corporations, imho.
Companies are unconsciously aware of how bad they (and their managers) are at this. So they do things like make everyone come in to the office all the time thinking that will help. And it might, a little.
I went full remote in Sept 2020. First job was about 50% travel. I changed to a different WFH job a year ago. This one is significantly less travel.
I'm with you: I feel less productive at home. Mainly because of my young children. Any trip downstairs for a snack or drink turns into helping out with kids. They also only respect my closed office door about half the time. When I worked in an office, I was good about staying focused and saving personal conversations for times when things were slower.
Don't get me wrong; I love being able to help my wife out in small doses throughout the day. It works well at this stage in life, but I am certainly less productive than I was in the office.
I definitely miss the comradery of the office. I used to love randomly grabbing lunch with a coworker on a nice day. I work in a very small company now and will go days without talking to anyone at work.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
Lol, it's the offseason and I'm recovering from a yet another stroke so not thinking worth ****, how could you not have expected the worst
You have a point. I could have, nay, should have known better.
I don’t think WFH is effective if there are young kids around or TV’s are on. I think there needs to be parameters but if those are met it’s not an issue.
I’m a pretty sociable guy in most instances but I can’t remember grabbing lunch with a coworker in the last 10 years. When I’m at work, I don’t want to be there and I’ve always just had the mentality that work is for working.
still a good market for employees.
not sure what you do but you could always start your own business and go off on your own
Just to give an example....
"My team and leader are scattered across the country. I'm the only one that lives in the Des Moines metro. So in November, I'll be expected to drive into the office to collaborate by myself with my teammates via Teams working from home"
"My team and leader are scattered across the country. I'm the only one that lives in the Des Moines metro. So in November, I'll be expected to drive into the office to collaborate by myself with my teammates via Teams working from home"
I have no idea what company you are referring to.
And your point regarding managers is spot on. Too many managers are promoted past their capabilities and hence become anchors on performance rather than helping.
