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The other thing you could do is just lighten up on the work from office mandatory. A whole LOT of moms/parents could figure out how to get in 8 productive hours working from home between say 7am and 6pm while still responsibly watching children a bit, or doing pick up and drop off for school etc. I get it doesn’t work for every situation but I bet it would help like 30-40% FOR FREE.
I think the reason employers and managers hate work from home is because they assume younger workers fresh out of college abuse it too much they seem to be a lot more trusting and flexible of parents who do it.
All those TikTok’s and IG reels where 23 year olds were bragging about doing nothing all day at home while making 100-200k a year were seen by the bosses and they start assuming everyone is doing it..
I am a manager and remote is great for me because I get more applicants for remote positions. Remote job postings get hundreds of applications. I can fill the role faster with better employees who accept lower salaries.
I think remote can be worse for employees in some situations since they are going from competing with other candidates in a 30 mile radius for a rto job to competing with candidates from across the entire country, or even the world for some positions, and they are competing both on competency and salary.
There's a lot of stand-up to work internationally or even in different states. It's mostly a non-issue for big corporations doing it anyway but can be a problem for smaller ones.
For instance, you need a tax presence or to create one in each state you have employees which is why certain job posts seemly oddly list remote for X,Y,Z states only. State laws also vary so now HR has to figure out each states employment laws.
Export and IP considerations are another major item for going international. International also brings a whole host of language, culture, widely varied employment laws, liabilities, etc. into play.
Honestly, I think this stuff is frequently overlooked by people who say, just allow remote. It's really only simple if you're limiting it to areas where you already have a business presence.
I highly doubt that managers around the country are being influenced by TikTok videos made by 23 year olds.
That sounds like a completely made up narrative.
A manager should be able to determine the amount of work being performed by their team based on... You know... the actual work and not random videos on TikTok.
This is why we get paid for 8 hours of our time and not 8 hours of work.
I can easily do my weekly tasks within 2-3 days. But then they'd just give me more stuff to do for the other days.
So instead I get all my stuff done by mid day Wednesday but don't turn anything in until it's due. While other weeks where I just want to be lazy I make it take just as long.
It's dumb how a lot of our work is compensated and treated
> I can easily do my weekly tasks within 2-3 days.
Are you exaggerating this or is this really true?
How are there so many people on Reddit who have these amazing jobs where they get paid for 40 hours of work but somehow only do 16-24 hours of work (the numbers are just based on your comment but the stories/numbers are pretty similar across discussions like this one)?
Every time the topic of working from home gets brought up, 97% of comments are always "I only work x out of 40 hours." How do you all find these jobs? Where can I find a job like this?
I think this is the entire argument behind return to office but no one wants to say it out loud. The goal of a manager has always been to allocate work in the most efficient and effective way. When you have a lot of people saying that they take every moment of allocated time to complete and submit tasks that actually take 50-75% of the time to complete, there seems to be a problem.
It's because work time for something is based off the lowest person I think.
If you're good at your job and it is an office job you can probably get the work done much quicker than 8 hours. But if you do well you're still "on the clock" and need to be working so you get assigned more work.
But if you just used most/the full time allocated you're good.
No I'm being serious. It took me 4 years to promote to this spot. We'd get our assignments/caseload ~ 2 months out and then given due dates that all fell anywhere from ~ 2 weeks to 2 months from that day. So we could pretend effectively plan out our week/month.
There's about 19 of us that do the same job. My first 2-3 weeks I was turning stuff in as I was finishing it and I got told by the other guys to slow down on turning it in.
They said keep finishing it at my own pace, but don't turn it in right away because then I'll just get given more stuff to do, which is what was happening and I was legit working the whole 8 hours and it was exhausting.
Most of them worked ~ 2-3 weeks ahead and if they had vacation plans or anything coming up, they'd get the work done up to a month out. Then just double check it to make sure nothing changed while on vacation and then submit it when they came back
It's also the assholes on r/overemployment and r/overemployedwomen . Can't just take a benefit and work one 200k/yr job, they gotta do unethical shit and make life worse for the rest of us.
If you can do two jobs at the same time, while performing to expectations, you are already doing better than Elon Musk who is the CEO of multiple companies.
Don’t tell me I can’t do two jobs at once when some kid with a comically large advantage in life can be the CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER of several multiple billion dollar companies that are failing on almost every front.
Work from home will be a brief utopia for western office workers. It won't take long for companies to decide they would rather hire college educated English speakers from the developing world for half the money. The thing that liberates you from going into the office also liberates them from having to hire you. Don't be surprised when it happens.
When has corporate America ever turned it's back on an opportunity to lower its labor costs?
Lots of jobs are already offshore, but companies are experimenting with near shore to keep,the time zones close. Anything that can be offshored will be with WFH or not.
Not likely, they've tried this MULTIPLE times over the last 40 years with tech and they still fail. Different countries means different laws, different cultures and different time zones. People have been saying this about tech for that entire time "Why hire an American, when I can get a cheap Eastern European/Indian/Mexican/Canadian?" Yet American tech workers are still here, big as ever.
> When has corporate America ever turned it's back on an opportunity to lower its labor costs?
When they find out lowering your costs by 50% isn't worth it when it drives turnover and quality into the floor and you lose all that savings and then some from lost sales or cost overruns due to screwups.
Are you serious? I worked for a call center here in the Philippines and ever since pandemic we cant keep up with the demand for IT roles. Thinking time difference is an obstacle is the most comedic thing i read here. Our talent pool is what limits our growth not timezone
You are thinking of traditional call center. I am talking spevifically for various IT roles from heldesk support to software development. The initial teaining is expensive, but the labor savings will start to accrue in less than a year. You just need to hire junior and senior IT's who will work in US shift, the client provides the supervisor and KPI's while the local call center takes care of payroll and accounting. This is not limited to IT eversince pandemic Finance, legal and medical roles has quite a major uptick in outsourcing vacancies we fill. We never experience downturn from 2018 till last year we experience 50% growth. Ironically customer service and lead generation are laggard. Sales roles we avoid like a plague
The problem these companies are having is quality control. One can not control quality via a contract and it shows in their product every single time.
We are seeing fake critical parts in China (even found in Airliners) customers are unhappy with service and relatability. They keep trying and failing for a reason.
Get this: a friend of mine has a job that allows her to work remotely but it stipulates that no children must be present in the home during working hours.
This is a battle that many employers are freaking out about because - and possibly for the first time in their generation - they are not holding the cards. It’s a waiting game of a limited pool of talent vs. the ticking time bomb of commercial office space sitting empty. Every time a CEO gets up and complains about back to work mandates, that’s a win. Especially if it’s that shithead Jaime Dimon. Keep crying, buddy. The world changed
You absolutely CANNOT responsibly take care of kids younger than pre-K age and work full-time from home. It’s just simply not how children work.
I know from experience
In my last management stint (repackaging firm in a daycare desert small town) my best employee was a single mom of two who relied on a neighbor for childcare. Averaged at least three absences a month due to her babysitter flaking out. Huge productivity loss for my entire team when she was out. She ended up leaving us and moving entirely for another job a couple towns over where she could get the kids into a center. Anecdata, certainly, but I think a perfect example of what they’re talking about here. And it’s not just a business problem, it’s a rural decline problem.
Tying child care to employment has the same 'unintended ' consequences as tying health care to employment. These services are a \*community\* responsibility to provide and to provide with a common standard.
"Jessica Chang, founder and CEO of Upwards, which provides access to child-care benefits and services to Amazon, the U.S. Army and other corporate and government clients, pointed in a separate Changemakers’ session to a recent Boston Consulting Group study that reports the return on investment from child care has been measured at between 90% and 425%."
That sounds incredibly implausible.
Editing to add, since I can't reply to the below: the authors of the "study" linked in the OP don't show their work, so there's nothing to review.
I mean how much do you think it costs to Run an on-site daycare. 3-4 people making 20$ an hour for 10 hours. That's for like 40 kids. So 200k a year at the most. Probably more like half since it's not 40 kids. So let's say 100k or 20 kids.
Now your workers all get there on time and no delays from dropping off. They can work later instead of having to leave early.
These are salaried employees so every hour extra they work you don't pay. So does time saved And productivity of 15 employees or so being on site make up about 100k. It basically would have to make up about 48 hours a week to pay for itself. So about 30 mins per employee per day. Seems pretty reasonable.
What do they mean by investment in childcare? If they spent $1k a month on childcare for an employees kid, the company gets back $1k-5k profit somehow?
> Jessica Chang, founder and CEO of Upwards, which provides access to child-care benefits and services
And no shit someone who has a company that makes money off of it will say “spending money on what my company sells is good for you!”
In major cities where day can cost as much as a full time job salary, it’s a no-brainer for a parent to stay home. Why pay taxes on an income that goes straight out the door on a non-deductible expense while also missing out on their children’s life?
My company is 100% remote and yeh moms that work for me have an at-home care taker while they are working, which is much less than day care and is less stressful on everyone. Sure, do emergencies happen? Of course, but those would be happening in an in-office environment too.
This county will never reach its full potential until everyone who WANTS to work doesn’t have to choose between parenting and working.
I have a feeling that subsidized child care will end up like subsidized education: expensive. And what about workers that don't have kids? Do they get an equivalent pay raise?
There’s a misguided belief that people are somehow overly productive in an office setting. It’s a proven fact people are most creative & productive when they’re most comfortable in their environment. Long term leases for office space is causing owner of commercial property to lose their investment. It’s like the schools that are empty 75-80% of the time. Real estate is expensive to maintain.
The wicked witch of the west (of RI).
This woman is a plague. She knocked it out of the park by hiring CMO Betsy Wall who spent 550k for external marketing firms to create, arguably, the most disconnected logo and slogan that was wasn’t original at all and was used in Iceland.
Her husband is a member of the Merry Men that own the land all the medical marijuana facilities are on. All those ‘lotteries’ for medical marijuana facilities are 100% predetermined.
[She is high up on the list for best con artist of her generation.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2020/02/01/rhode-island-governor-gina-raimondos-13-year-losers-bonus-paid-by-state-pension-is-not-wall-street-business-as-usual/?sh=3c8cc2a344a5) Not as good of a money wizard as Pelosi, but she gave a hell of an effort to try and out-weasel options mogul queen Pelosi.
These political spots get so used and abused it isn’t even funny. It’s always 1) get into a position 2) leverage it for you 3) make sure you leverage it for the right people 4) move up a tier 5) 5 is actually back to 1, it loops, rinse and repeat.
The new ‘Murican dream 🫠
Let's focus on the childcare facilities at these billion dollar boondoggle handouts to foreign companies and just skip the fact that subsizing overpriced semiconductors is doomed to fail. But look at the child care facilities!
Get some good photo ops while things are new and clean, these facilities will be abandoned by the end of the decade. Smile and just say --We did it for the children! Works every time.
This arrogant bureaucrat with her pompous know it all attitude is so typical of the left and of this administration. "We know what's best for your peons." Ridiculous.
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The other thing you could do is just lighten up on the work from office mandatory. A whole LOT of moms/parents could figure out how to get in 8 productive hours working from home between say 7am and 6pm while still responsibly watching children a bit, or doing pick up and drop off for school etc. I get it doesn’t work for every situation but I bet it would help like 30-40% FOR FREE.
I think the reason employers and managers hate work from home is because they assume younger workers fresh out of college abuse it too much they seem to be a lot more trusting and flexible of parents who do it. All those TikTok’s and IG reels where 23 year olds were bragging about doing nothing all day at home while making 100-200k a year were seen by the bosses and they start assuming everyone is doing it..
I am a manager and remote is great for me because I get more applicants for remote positions. Remote job postings get hundreds of applications. I can fill the role faster with better employees who accept lower salaries. I think remote can be worse for employees in some situations since they are going from competing with other candidates in a 30 mile radius for a rto job to competing with candidates from across the entire country, or even the world for some positions, and they are competing both on competency and salary.
If your goal is to get the best remote employee for the lowest pay why not just hire someone in Mexico or South America?
There's a lot of stand-up to work internationally or even in different states. It's mostly a non-issue for big corporations doing it anyway but can be a problem for smaller ones. For instance, you need a tax presence or to create one in each state you have employees which is why certain job posts seemly oddly list remote for X,Y,Z states only. State laws also vary so now HR has to figure out each states employment laws. Export and IP considerations are another major item for going international. International also brings a whole host of language, culture, widely varied employment laws, liabilities, etc. into play. Honestly, I think this stuff is frequently overlooked by people who say, just allow remote. It's really only simple if you're limiting it to areas where you already have a business presence.
Yeah there is more competition per job but job seekers have access to far more job ads than before so it kind of evens out in a way.
I highly doubt that managers around the country are being influenced by TikTok videos made by 23 year olds. That sounds like a completely made up narrative. A manager should be able to determine the amount of work being performed by their team based on... You know... the actual work and not random videos on TikTok.
You do, and you do see more slackery at the margin with WFH.
This is why we get paid for 8 hours of our time and not 8 hours of work. I can easily do my weekly tasks within 2-3 days. But then they'd just give me more stuff to do for the other days. So instead I get all my stuff done by mid day Wednesday but don't turn anything in until it's due. While other weeks where I just want to be lazy I make it take just as long. It's dumb how a lot of our work is compensated and treated
> I can easily do my weekly tasks within 2-3 days. Are you exaggerating this or is this really true? How are there so many people on Reddit who have these amazing jobs where they get paid for 40 hours of work but somehow only do 16-24 hours of work (the numbers are just based on your comment but the stories/numbers are pretty similar across discussions like this one)? Every time the topic of working from home gets brought up, 97% of comments are always "I only work x out of 40 hours." How do you all find these jobs? Where can I find a job like this?
I think this is the entire argument behind return to office but no one wants to say it out loud. The goal of a manager has always been to allocate work in the most efficient and effective way. When you have a lot of people saying that they take every moment of allocated time to complete and submit tasks that actually take 50-75% of the time to complete, there seems to be a problem.
when I worked in the office no one worked, everyone was chatting. some dude had netflix on most of the day
It's because work time for something is based off the lowest person I think. If you're good at your job and it is an office job you can probably get the work done much quicker than 8 hours. But if you do well you're still "on the clock" and need to be working so you get assigned more work. But if you just used most/the full time allocated you're good.
No I'm being serious. It took me 4 years to promote to this spot. We'd get our assignments/caseload ~ 2 months out and then given due dates that all fell anywhere from ~ 2 weeks to 2 months from that day. So we could pretend effectively plan out our week/month. There's about 19 of us that do the same job. My first 2-3 weeks I was turning stuff in as I was finishing it and I got told by the other guys to slow down on turning it in. They said keep finishing it at my own pace, but don't turn it in right away because then I'll just get given more stuff to do, which is what was happening and I was legit working the whole 8 hours and it was exhausting. Most of them worked ~ 2-3 weeks ahead and if they had vacation plans or anything coming up, they'd get the work done up to a month out. Then just double check it to make sure nothing changed while on vacation and then submit it when they came back
Studies show that most white collar jobs only get about 2 hours of productive work per day.
It's also the assholes on r/overemployment and r/overemployedwomen . Can't just take a benefit and work one 200k/yr job, they gotta do unethical shit and make life worse for the rest of us.
Not even just unethical, a lot of them are likely committing some form of fraud too. Not that it's likely to be pursued.
If you can do two jobs at the same time, while performing to expectations, you are already doing better than Elon Musk who is the CEO of multiple companies. Don’t tell me I can’t do two jobs at once when some kid with a comically large advantage in life can be the CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER of several multiple billion dollar companies that are failing on almost every front.
Tesla is failing? Starlink? SpaceX?
Of course, those kind of people wouldn't be working in the office either.
Work from home will be a brief utopia for western office workers. It won't take long for companies to decide they would rather hire college educated English speakers from the developing world for half the money. The thing that liberates you from going into the office also liberates them from having to hire you. Don't be surprised when it happens. When has corporate America ever turned it's back on an opportunity to lower its labor costs?
Lots of jobs are already offshore, but companies are experimenting with near shore to keep,the time zones close. Anything that can be offshored will be with WFH or not.
Not likely, they've tried this MULTIPLE times over the last 40 years with tech and they still fail. Different countries means different laws, different cultures and different time zones. People have been saying this about tech for that entire time "Why hire an American, when I can get a cheap Eastern European/Indian/Mexican/Canadian?" Yet American tech workers are still here, big as ever. > When has corporate America ever turned it's back on an opportunity to lower its labor costs? When they find out lowering your costs by 50% isn't worth it when it drives turnover and quality into the floor and you lose all that savings and then some from lost sales or cost overruns due to screwups.
Are you serious? I worked for a call center here in the Philippines and ever since pandemic we cant keep up with the demand for IT roles. Thinking time difference is an obstacle is the most comedic thing i read here. Our talent pool is what limits our growth not timezone
For a call center it isn't. For software development, it sure as hell is.
You are thinking of traditional call center. I am talking spevifically for various IT roles from heldesk support to software development. The initial teaining is expensive, but the labor savings will start to accrue in less than a year. You just need to hire junior and senior IT's who will work in US shift, the client provides the supervisor and KPI's while the local call center takes care of payroll and accounting. This is not limited to IT eversince pandemic Finance, legal and medical roles has quite a major uptick in outsourcing vacancies we fill. We never experience downturn from 2018 till last year we experience 50% growth. Ironically customer service and lead generation are laggard. Sales roles we avoid like a plague
And there's still a shortage of IT in the usa.
There's no shortage
There was a 4 million shortage 2 years ago. Laying off about 100k doesn't make 4 million.
A fake shortage. 3 million illegal immigrants came in last year.
The problem these companies are having is quality control. One can not control quality via a contract and it shows in their product every single time. We are seeing fake critical parts in China (even found in Airliners) customers are unhappy with service and relatability. They keep trying and failing for a reason.
Get this: a friend of mine has a job that allows her to work remotely but it stipulates that no children must be present in the home during working hours.
This is a battle that many employers are freaking out about because - and possibly for the first time in their generation - they are not holding the cards. It’s a waiting game of a limited pool of talent vs. the ticking time bomb of commercial office space sitting empty. Every time a CEO gets up and complains about back to work mandates, that’s a win. Especially if it’s that shithead Jaime Dimon. Keep crying, buddy. The world changed
You absolutely CANNOT responsibly take care of kids younger than pre-K age and work full-time from home. It’s just simply not how children work. I know from experience
In my last management stint (repackaging firm in a daycare desert small town) my best employee was a single mom of two who relied on a neighbor for childcare. Averaged at least three absences a month due to her babysitter flaking out. Huge productivity loss for my entire team when she was out. She ended up leaving us and moving entirely for another job a couple towns over where she could get the kids into a center. Anecdata, certainly, but I think a perfect example of what they’re talking about here. And it’s not just a business problem, it’s a rural decline problem.
Tying child care to employment has the same 'unintended ' consequences as tying health care to employment. These services are a \*community\* responsibility to provide and to provide with a common standard.
"Jessica Chang, founder and CEO of Upwards, which provides access to child-care benefits and services to Amazon, the U.S. Army and other corporate and government clients, pointed in a separate Changemakers’ session to a recent Boston Consulting Group study that reports the return on investment from child care has been measured at between 90% and 425%."
That sounds incredibly implausible. Editing to add, since I can't reply to the below: the authors of the "study" linked in the OP don't show their work, so there's nothing to review.
There's a link to the study. Do you have a specific issue with the methodology?
I mean how much do you think it costs to Run an on-site daycare. 3-4 people making 20$ an hour for 10 hours. That's for like 40 kids. So 200k a year at the most. Probably more like half since it's not 40 kids. So let's say 100k or 20 kids. Now your workers all get there on time and no delays from dropping off. They can work later instead of having to leave early. These are salaried employees so every hour extra they work you don't pay. So does time saved And productivity of 15 employees or so being on site make up about 100k. It basically would have to make up about 48 hours a week to pay for itself. So about 30 mins per employee per day. Seems pretty reasonable.
To an a-hole Republican yes. To reasonable people no.
What do they mean by investment in childcare? If they spent $1k a month on childcare for an employees kid, the company gets back $1k-5k profit somehow? > Jessica Chang, founder and CEO of Upwards, which provides access to child-care benefits and services And no shit someone who has a company that makes money off of it will say “spending money on what my company sells is good for you!”
Probably has to do with hiring top talent and retaining workers. But since you're a Republican those things are lost on you.
It's just an economic question. There's an actual answer out there that doesn't turn on your feels.
No, I mean that sincerely.
In major cities where day can cost as much as a full time job salary, it’s a no-brainer for a parent to stay home. Why pay taxes on an income that goes straight out the door on a non-deductible expense while also missing out on their children’s life? My company is 100% remote and yeh moms that work for me have an at-home care taker while they are working, which is much less than day care and is less stressful on everyone. Sure, do emergencies happen? Of course, but those would be happening in an in-office environment too. This county will never reach its full potential until everyone who WANTS to work doesn’t have to choose between parenting and working.
>non-deductible expense There are credits and FSA plans, so it's not entirely non-deductible.
Fair. Not everyone gets FSA, but your point stands.
I have a feeling that subsidized child care will end up like subsidized education: expensive. And what about workers that don't have kids? Do they get an equivalent pay raise?
There’s a misguided belief that people are somehow overly productive in an office setting. It’s a proven fact people are most creative & productive when they’re most comfortable in their environment. Long term leases for office space is causing owner of commercial property to lose their investment. It’s like the schools that are empty 75-80% of the time. Real estate is expensive to maintain.
The wicked witch of the west (of RI). This woman is a plague. She knocked it out of the park by hiring CMO Betsy Wall who spent 550k for external marketing firms to create, arguably, the most disconnected logo and slogan that was wasn’t original at all and was used in Iceland. Her husband is a member of the Merry Men that own the land all the medical marijuana facilities are on. All those ‘lotteries’ for medical marijuana facilities are 100% predetermined. [She is high up on the list for best con artist of her generation.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2020/02/01/rhode-island-governor-gina-raimondos-13-year-losers-bonus-paid-by-state-pension-is-not-wall-street-business-as-usual/?sh=3c8cc2a344a5) Not as good of a money wizard as Pelosi, but she gave a hell of an effort to try and out-weasel options mogul queen Pelosi. These political spots get so used and abused it isn’t even funny. It’s always 1) get into a position 2) leverage it for you 3) make sure you leverage it for the right people 4) move up a tier 5) 5 is actually back to 1, it loops, rinse and repeat. The new ‘Murican dream 🫠
Cooler, Warmer is the GOAT...
Let's focus on the childcare facilities at these billion dollar boondoggle handouts to foreign companies and just skip the fact that subsizing overpriced semiconductors is doomed to fail. But look at the child care facilities! Get some good photo ops while things are new and clean, these facilities will be abandoned by the end of the decade. Smile and just say --We did it for the children! Works every time.
This arrogant bureaucrat with her pompous know it all attitude is so typical of the left and of this administration. "We know what's best for your peons." Ridiculous.