Obviously this can only count jobs that say they are remote, I've seen many complaints about remote jobs that turn out to require significant time in an office location.
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Personally I'd prefer not to WFH mostly. While it is very useful to be able to (I have for a day or two here & there for years, and over the last year for a few days at a time while looking after ill parents and a terminal pet) but I hate it full time. Partly it is because I don't have room for a dedicated office and I don't like my work and personal space to mix to readily, and partly it is the contact thing (I'm uncomfortable on phones and video calls, always have been, and some people don't seem to be willing to mail or IM me instead when that would be most efficient by far), and partly I find myself getting more and more distractable the longer I'm working away (this may be largely due to the matter of having no space for a dedicated office space).
I'd rather leave tech than work full time remote, so you might find me stacking shelves in a few years!
We are officially hybrid, but for two or three days of any given week there are only a few people in the office, often not people I'm working directly with, so I'm effectively remote just in an office not at home, so some of the bad parts of both options. I'm not sure if this is any better, and I'm seriously contemplating what my future options may be – those shelves that need stacking are looking oddly attractive, or more practically perhaps retraining as an accountant or something.
Or maybe this is just the midlife crisis rambling!
Or maybe, as I've been accused of a few times, I'm a corporate shill here to extol the virtues of office space.
> Obviously this can only count jobs that say they are remote, I've seen many complaints about remote jobs that turn out to require significant time in an office location.
This happened to me.
The company wanted to fly people to offices any time something important or urgent came up. It led to ridiculous situations where something urgent broke, and instead of sitting at our computers and working on it we'd be scrambling through airports and sitting on airplanes for a day, getting rental cars, checking in to hotels, and then driving to an office the next morning for a meeting.
Then we'd end up working the problem in transit anyway. Solving problems from a cramped airplane seat from spotty in-cabin WiFi instead of home with my big monitor, reliable internet, and camera for video conferencing.
The company also had a mix of empty-nesters and young single people in charge of company events. They wanted to put together quarterly on-site meetups where everyone was supposed to travel and stay in hotels and do team-building exercises. I pointed out that having to travel 4 weeks out of the year was equivalent to a job with an 8% travel requirement, which they scoffed at because it was for "fun" activities.
That job was "remote" but ended up having 20% travel time.
> travel requirement, which they scoffed at because it was for "fun" activities
I'm lucky enough to live close to where I work, so the commute isn't a massive problem, which may colour my view of remote work a bit.
I'm a sort of middle-aged empty-nester (though this nest was never full unless you count cats and the occasional lodger), but I've got a set of hobbies and some social life, so doing “fun” things because work tells me to is still work - I'm not going to count it as free time. Any “fun” outside my normal working time is time you can bet I'm going to claw back elsewhere.
I like many of the people I work with. Well, some of them at least. A couple of them I even mix with outside the office. But being told to do something fun often feels more like work than, well, work! I can see it being even extra effort to smile through when significant travel is involved.
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Personally I'd prefer not to WFH mostly. While it is very useful to be able to (I have for a day or two here & there for years, and over the last year for a few days at a time while looking after ill parents and a terminal pet) but I hate it full time. Partly it is because I don't have room for a dedicated office and I don't like my work and personal space to mix to readily, and partly it is the contact thing (I'm uncomfortable on phones and video calls, always have been, and some people don't seem to be willing to mail or IM me instead when that would be most efficient by far), and partly I find myself getting more and more distractable the longer I'm working away (this may be largely due to the matter of having no space for a dedicated office space).
I'd rather leave tech than work full time remote, so you might find me stacking shelves in a few years!
We are officially hybrid, but for two or three days of any given week there are only a few people in the office, often not people I'm working directly with, so I'm effectively remote just in an office not at home, so some of the bad parts of both options. I'm not sure if this is any better, and I'm seriously contemplating what my future options may be – those shelves that need stacking are looking oddly attractive, or more practically perhaps retraining as an accountant or something.
Or maybe this is just the midlife crisis rambling!
Or maybe, as I've been accused of a few times, I'm a corporate shill here to extol the virtues of office space.