What bullshit. From Richard Littlejohn:
My nephew recently applied for a vacancy at a City institution. He got the job, even though he was over-qualified, because he was the only applicant prepared to turn up at least three days a week.
Apparently, the new corporate sin is “presenteeism” — the insistence that employees actually go to the company office to do their job. Apparently, employees now have the “right” to tell the company when they’ll be most productive. What a load of crap.
Listen: I worked from home for over nine years (out of a working lifetime of over thirty) and even though I was as motivated as hell, I can tell you right now that I often goofed off. Oh, the excuses were good:
- the program I was running would take over two hours to run, so why not mow the lawn during that time?
- the meeting was being conducted online (by phone; we didn’t have Zoom or whatever back then), so I could get in the car and drive to the supermarket while listening in;
- I didn’t want to be disturbed while working on a project, and so working at home meant that people wouldn’t interrupt me by coming into my office;
- and so on.
The thing that’s common to all this nonsense is that people are conflating personal productivity with corporate productivity. In the first example above, sure: I could get something done that needed doing while waiting for the program to run — but what I should have been doing is other work-related stuff: responding to emails, planning the next project — you know, doing company business while on company time.
I don’t buy any of this WFH nonsense. If I were running a company, I would insist on 100% (5 days a week) office attendance, with work from home being allowed only on a case-by-case basis, and only at the employee’s manager’s discretion — his decision being final and absolute, not subject to appeal or revision.
“Oh but Kim, you’d never get anyone to work for you on that basis then.”
You know who would work for me under those conditions? Men and women of age greater than 55, with all the work experience (i.e. requiring little or no training) who all understand that work is work, and that work needs to be done in the appropriate environment. Not at home, where you can play video games while being on a Zoom call with a client.
I’d rather pay some old fart (or fartette) $45/hour and know that he’ll not only be there when and if I need him, but he’ll also understand the concept of loyalty and will stay with me for the next ten years; as opposed to paying some supercilious little twerp $35/hour for him to be goofing off 50% of the time at home, and who will quit in two months’ time because someone offered him $37.50, or his manager “offended” him.
And I don’t want to hear any protestations of innocence and indignation from Gen Z, either. I’ve been there and done that, I know how the game is played, and you won’t shame me by accusing me of “presenteeism” or some other spurious concocted offense.
Fuck you. You want the job, you work where and when your employer tells you to. Otherwise, feel free to pursue your precious career goals in the fast food industry, DoorDash, or as a “content creator” on your own website or OnlyFans. Get out of the way, and leave business to serious people.
I started working at 14 the minimum legal age in 1960 ( now 16 ) 40 hours a week, and stopped working in 2006 at 60 (I had enough years to get a full pension ). My last job I averaged about 40 to 45 work hours and yes they ad already problems to find young workers to replace us old farts.
As said to me by the CEO of a billion-dollar company, “If you work in the office your competition is Fred in the next cubicle; if you work from home your competition is Mohit in Bangalore.”
you’re absolutely right Quentin
in my job your competition if Mohit from Bangalore whether I work in the office OR at home.
I prefer working in the office, but the option to work remote gives me a larger selection of potential employers, and of course the option to work from home when needed (say on days I need to go to one of my recurring doctor’s appointments).
When I worked from home (circa 2000, dial-up days) I was much more productive than when I went to the office. My clients were remote anyway, so I was typically interfacing with them via email and/or telephone. I tended to work much longer hours due to the lack of a commute, and I tended to work harder because it was more difficult to get promoted and to demonstrate to the bosses that I wasn’t just goofing off.
Back then working from home was very rare. Mainstreaming it has meant that the slackers are ruining it for everybody.
Like most other things these days, the workforce now is in shambles. Best to find a small local company and work your ass off trying to make the owner believe he is more successful with you than without you.
And, have several income streams at the same time. You never know what tomorrow holds.
But then, I’ve been self employed since 1986…..
I’ve retired once, but gone back part time to something more worthwhile, where they respect, trust and value their staff and are really really flexible as to where and how you work. It’s nice to be able to do that or change days, if I want or need to.
I too left school at 16. Did long hours, thankless tasks, crappy jobs. As the song goes ‘I started off with nothing and still got most of it left’.
My barrier was women. Unlike me, who will (generally) help each other out, women in the workplace HATE other women getting even a sniff of success or progression. Never be better looking or more intelligent than your Boss, as they say, they will crucify you for it – I was neither and it was bad enough.
As for WFH? Until this job, fuggedabatit. SHE would WFH, drop of a hat (builders, repair men, yadda yadda) yet when I was asking for a genuine reason, such as needing to concentrate on constructing a report or working with multiple data streams, no chance. You don’t need to in your job, was the response. Translation – know your place, underling.
Bitter? Oh yeah. But every dog has its day and I’m having mine right now, so it’s all good.
Being a member of the same age group (well, maybe 2 years older) as K, it also occurs to me that in the near 40 years of working for private companies, most of those 8 hour work days lasted anywhere from 10 to 12 on a regular basis and were 24/7 when in the field 3-5000 miles from home base..
Being most appreciative of the paycheck and camaraderie that exists in most groups, I never complained, occasional grumbles excepted. Wife and kids might have been a bit miffed on occasion, but here again, a decent home, food and occasional vacations (maybe once every 3 years) was the norm.
What I am observing now is that my older kids (early 40’s) have the same work ethic as we old folks, my youngest (early 30’s) is a case study of aggressive pursuit of $$$, he works his ass off so long as the compensation meets his standards. Quits and moves to another job at the drop of a hat if better compensated. I figure he is going to be the one that retires at 50 with the ability to tell the world to FO. And so it goes.
Meh, it depends on both the job and the person. Some jobs are better suited for at home work (sales reps for instance), some are fine for it (CAD designers as example) amd others not at all (anything production or production support). The personality of the person matters too.
Good managers make individual decisions rather than blanket policies and it is what I strive for.
While I agree with most of your points, I’ll provide 2 counterpoints.
During the cough epidemic, I spent ~9 months WFH. During that time, I was able to do 90% of my normal workday crap in like 3 hrs, finishing up before lunch. Without the distraction of the office gossip, mindless hallway conversations, etc. I was able to focus and finish. Gave me a lot of extra personal time, assuming your mindset is that the company pays me for results, not for a certain number of hours on the clock. Again, depends on the job, but there it is.
Second, there is ZERO corporate loyalty to the employees these days. The concept of working long hours and busting your ass at work with the hopes of promotions, pay raises, and successful careers in now mostly foolishness. We are all one re-org away from being turned out on the streets. I know it’s a short-sighted concept, but getting the most cash for the least work on a week by week basis is a reality for a lot of people.
I’m only a few years away from retirement and I would hate to be young and starting out in this environment. My oldest is doing good money-wise, but he’s still just working one contract job after another with no long term employment prospects. He is in a technical field with multiple certificates, but one good industry downturn and all contracts are cancelled.
Our world has been taken from us. Our children are the ones who suffer.
Don,
Check out a book called “How Jack Welch Broke Capitalism” .. I suspect many of the themes discussed will ring loud and true for you.
Ima,
Thank you for the recommendation. Just reading the introduction explains things I’ve seen at my own company, as apparently, they are following Welchism.
Don,
I agree with both of your points.
Kim,
4 years ago it was determined that the state company I work for decided that work from home was the way going forward, with exceptions of mail-ops and scan/index folk. Our CEO has stated numerous times that work is getting done, and even a little bit more productivity than when in the office.
Al I know is I don’t have to commute into work, and the only thing I miss is the A/C in the office vs my home in the California’s Central Valley (where summer temps are regularly in the high 90s to los triple digits from June through October at times).
I used to be an oil refinery chemical engineer. In special situations we would have to work 12 hours/day, 7 days a week until the work was safely completed. It is essential to have a quiet, comfortable place to sleep, plenty of caffeine, and good food. When I was much younger I found that my limits were six or seven weeks, and experienced managers would, if possible, stand us down after about 45 days on this schedule. When this was done we were generally paid by the hour with overtime. Normally I was paid a salary and worked an average of 40 to 45 hours a week. Sometimes I was called in after normal hours or on weekends and my immediate supervisor would informally give me time off to compensate after things were normal. Current employment adds specify what is required, and with the internet and other communications improvements more flexibility is possible. If the boss says to come to the office or work inside the plant that is what I would do. The most unpleasant overtime work I had to do was in two refineries in Saudi Arabia
Both my stepsons (29/24) work from home (for the same company). One of them gets up at 6am to log in both their computers, and get their “random movement mouses” activated. It is now 11am and neither one of them are up yet. They will get up around noon, spend 15-20 minutes queuing up some projects and assigning some task hours to them, then eat breakfast. They’ll “work” until 2pm, then go to the gym for 4-5 hours to play basketball and workout, then go play video games until midnight with their friends. The oldest will, 2-3 times a month, drive up to New York for a long weekend (Th-Mo) to spend time with his girlfriend. No worries, lil’ bro will clock in for him and do some minor scrolling and “review”. They work for a national accounting and audit firm, whose biggest customer is, you guessed it, FEDCO. Their company is billing them out at $250-300/hour and paying them $45/hour to basically dick off 85% of the time, all on $B federal contracts.
I’m conflicted about AI making their virtual job non-existent, knowing if that happens, they’ll never leave home.
I work 3 days a week from 3pm-11pm as tech support for a Electronic Medical Record company. I don’t need the money, but I do enjoy problem solving and professional human interaction, something neither one of my cockblockers have the slightest interest in.
My wife went 100% WHF at the start of the WuFlu unpleasantness in NYFC. Her entire department did. We live in NJ, where her bus commute times ate up between 2 and 3 hours and left her drained by the time she got home. She says her productivity increased by about 30% once the new routine became, well, routine, and her annual performance reviews back up that claim. Less socialization and less eating at restaurants = money saved. She loves it and her corporate overlords love it. Her job involves formatting printed and e-books for an international publisher and it’s a task ideally suited for remote work.
Me? I would never work in a corporate environment to begin with, nor would I last in one beyond the first BS meetings. Now I’m a mostly-retired self-employed author/publisher who loves doing S.F.A. At home.
There are tasks that must be done face-to-face.
And there are tasks that can be done remote or in an office.
Most “managers” don’t realize how few those face-to-face tasks are, at least for technical software work. Which I did for 45 years.
My most productive years were the 11 years (1996-2007) I worked from home. Some of that was as a team lead (5 subordinates) doing product development. For that, I actually had to go to the office about 2 days a week because of design meetings and actual personnel management. My team members usually got away with a half-day in the office a week.
When I switched industries, I found it ironic that I had to put on a tie, go to an office, and sit at my desk, where I’d spend all day remotely connected to database servers a mile away. All of which could be done from literally anywhere in the world. But my manager needed to see me at my desk, and only rarely allowed me to work from home.
My last job finally realized we could all work from home when covid hit, and I did that for a year until they fired me for not taking the jab.
Speaking of that last job, my competition wasn’t in Bangalore. Oh, they came from Bangalore, and Tientsin, and Hanoi, and Lagos, but they were here in the U.S. and driving wages down. I was at least 3 times better than any of them, but somehow they got all the promotions and the white males were held back.
Who wants to kill themselves for employers like that?
Kim I don’t think you’re wrong. I don’t love Corporations, but when employees get entitled its distasteful as well.
I work in the IT field (not uncommon) and in my over 35yr career I’ve seen 3-4 of these major pendulum swings. When I first started with HP bitd, if you were able to get Win95 running on your Grandma’s computer and sign into Compuserv you could get hired at HP, and at the time HP was very grandiose about how solicitous they were towards their employees. Well love you, WLB, free coffee & Donuts, don’t be afraid to speak up, etc.
The above all sounds good, but people grew entitled, they started telling HP basically how IT was going to do things, fucked off at work, and HP went along with it……until India, then the power swung from employees, to Corporation, and boy did the bloodbath start.
Lived through a couple of more of these, this is the latest instance where Employees have more bargaining power, but we’re close to or past the tipping point. You can only be some much of an asshole before something changes. With the upcoming advent of AI, a lot of people are going to realize their barganing power is built on sand.
dentists and others must “go to the office”
but the real killer is the commute
there’s no way I would have brought my dental office into my home
but, reviewing it all, I much would have preferred doing anything where I could’ve worked from home
if I had to commute 5/6 days/week/year in my next life, I’d want a “bumper car” like you see at the fair
“but he’ll also understand the concept of loyalty and will stay with me for the next ten years”
There are plenty of us who understand the concept of loyalty and would gladly stay with an employer for 10 years or longer.
The problem is that corporate America seems to barely understand ethics let alone loyalty. And no, loyalty isn’t paying me for the work I’ve done. First, that is required by law. Second, it is quite literally the least an employer can do.
In a day of massive layoffs, a job market that could only really be designed by a sadist, and a working world that has little to no interest in growing their own internal talent but demanding they be experts in pretty much everything even tangentially related to their jobs, the problem isn’t entirely worker loyalty. Much of the problem as I see it is a corporate world where employees are rarely much more than a line item on a budget document representing nothing more than a unit of work.
How am I supposed to be loyal when layoffs can come with absolutely no notice? How am I supposed to be loyal when severance is measured in weeks, when they know full well most job seekers these days are looking for work for months (friend of mine was out of work for 15 months)? How am I supposed to be loyal when my loyalty isn’t reciprocated at all?
Kim, you’re the kind of guy I’d love to work for. Problem is, in corporate America today, you’re about as rare as a ham sandwich at Mosque picnic.
It is a logical fallacy that in the office means more productive. Often the opposite is true. Being real time is still wasted in the office as well as home, just differently.
It’s a rose colored classes fantasy that “in your day” people were one hundred percent productive during all hours in the office.
Unfortunately these days there is no employer loyalty and promotions come more from moving jobs than “working your way up”.
Ten years ago, we had an open position for bench chemist. We had two candidates come in for an interview. Both of them essentially fresh out of school. A question I like to ask is, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
One person said, “I’d like to go back for my MBA and move into a management position.” The other one said, “I’d like to be considered an expert in one or two of the markets you serve.”
Guess which one we hired. Yeah, the one who wanted to become an expert in some of our markets.
Ten years on he’s still with us and has been moved around within the company in bigger and better positions in Production. In a few more years he’ll come back to R&D as either a manager or director.
I’ve long said I wish we could find 2 or 3 more just like him.
The work ethic is out there. You just have to dig for it.