I had a friend who made a point of "needing" to go into the office an average of one day every week during the pandemic. His logic was that, if his job could be done entirely from the comfort of his living room in the suburbs, eventually the bosses would realize that it could also be done entirely from the comfort of someone else's living room in the Philippines or India.
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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It's a valid point.
Most practical examples of out-sourcing has however failed to show any worthwhile savings, while working from home has shown remarkable increases in productivity.
Other time zones and that makes communication difficult, so no quick IM with "by the end of the day" as that means something different over there. Different culture and way of doing things, so have to spend a lot more effort in communication being very clear. Even then they're far away where it's a lot easier to hide stuff until the hole is very deep. Travel expenses going up very quickly for a little training for a new guy. It can be so fun to work with teams in a different continent.
Besides that, you also get what you paid for.
Hiring someone in India means that the person is gonna give you as much dedication as their wage will allow. If they produced top of the line stuff they would want close to top of the line compensation.
Perhaps true with office work (so many tales of people saying they got shit code from overseas developers) and such, but I think the savings were very real for manufacturing, at least for a period of time. Happy to be corrected if that's wrong.
Is it valid? If they could outsource they already would have. They already have with heavy industry.
While the work could be outsourced to foreign countries there is still some hurdles to overcome. Language barriers, cultural barriers, time zones, labor laws, the paperwork involved with taxes, worker reliability, the threat of scams (see N. Korea), etc. But hey, let them find out for themselves.
Quality issues alone are a major disincentive to outsourcing.
It was never a barrier to cost savings
His fears happened to me. I worked a fully remote job for 5 years and ended up getting a horrible boss who worked me insane hours and liked to remind me that he could replace me with someone in India for 1/10th my salary.
I left and got a hybrid job that is 2 days in office. It pays 50% more, has a free gym, free EV charging, 30 days of vacation, and better health insurance. And I have a niche specialty so they won't be able to replace me easily. Feels much more secure.
Fuck your ex boss. What a horrible person!
This makes no sense. What could possibly be in the office that's needed AND can't be purchased in the Philippines? Is your friend working for a government agency building military or spy equipment which can't be shipped overseas?
The moment boss man can do this, is the moment it will do it... your friend does not understand what game he is playing. It is rather sad for adult people to think like this but here we are.
Yup - the reason most folks "go in" is to be seen, rarely to get things done. The only genuine reason to go in is if you need to talk to a lot of people.
I go in so I can find people who will eat my baked goods.
I go in to eat said baked goods ❤️
I go in to eat all the pussy and dick I can find.
Where do you work? I'll start coming in too.
The only reason I go in is for the free food. It's pretty good. But I'd rather have my time commuting back.
I am wildly unproductive when I WFH. I literally cannot focus on work tasks when I have so many more interesting things available to me to do. I’ve tried everything to make myself focus but the best I can do is maybe 3/4 hours of the day interrupted by doom scrolling or messing around on my personal desktop. My coworkers all WFH as well and seem to have no issues getting their stuff done so I’d never argue that WFH is bad for everyone but for me personally it is. I need the structure of going in the office. Thankfully my job gives us the choice.
Get a different job.
For years I thought I just hated working. After I was injured at work and had some off time, I picked up a book called "Discover What You Are Best At" by Linda Gail. It helped me assess my strengths and pointed me to a job I actually enjoyed doing.
Don't leave us hanging. what was your job before and after?
It doesn't matter.
The point is that there are thousands of jobs out there that I never even considered.
Also, when I took the test I found that the job I was least suited for [clerk] was the one I'd always looked for because it seemed easy.
We don't know ourselves.
I'd like to do something outdoors but I can't find a job like that which pays enough and doesn't require a totally different education. I'm not even able to afford the things I want on the salary I have now.
Get the book. When I got it I'd never considered the career I got. There are jobs out there you never heard of.
I'm going to look it up. Thanks for the suggestion.
Good luck.
Have you tried taking your laptop to a library or coffee shop or something?
Sort of. I have to go on site to different locations we support sometimes and I will post up in a out of the way corner and do some work while I'm waiting on a local tech or something. Never had a issue concentrating then. It's kind of a pain to work off only one laptop screen though with what I'm usually doing.
I have the opposite problem. When I work at the office so much time is spent 'harmonizing' with the other workers, I get a lot less done on those days than if I had worked from home and was able to focus on my tasks.
But some people can also listen to heavy metal while working, whereas I prefer silence. 😁
I get the issues with doom scrolling, but the desktop issue is pretty easily fixed. I have my home office set up with a couple KVM switches so that I can't be on my work laptop and home desktop at the same time, because both systems use all the same peripherals. That at least makes it harder to justify switching over and being (more) unproductive during my shift.
Also, I have found it helps to have music or a podcast going in the background to help keep your focus on what you're supposed to be doing.
I work in corporate IT so my job is basically to sit there twiddling my thumbs and wait until something breaks. Then I remote onto the server to fix the issue. Which means I was basically working remotely anyway the server might have been in the same building as me but I was never physically going down there I was still remoting on so working from home isn't much different for me.
I'm much more productive now because I don't have people coming and asking me questions, for which answer is in the corporate knowledge base. Now they actually have to check it.
If you have ADHD WFH could be a lot more challenging. Without external structure or factors aid track of time it makes it super tough to work isolated like that.
Could definitely be a factor. I've not been diagnosed but I wouldn't be surprised to learn I have an attention deficit issue.
I'm so sorry for all these other replies you got to a simple explanation that you personally prefer working in the office. You do you mate!
Same here. Need a teammate, a working atmosphere. Don't necessarily have to work on the same thing, but i crave a person i know also working next to me.
So scumbag execs can collect bonus for reduced cost and jump ship with their golden parachutes.
And the people left behind have to deal with the shitstorm
Businesses were over-extended by low-interest rate loans, so this isn't a surprise.
That's not what happened in many orgs in California. If you didn't RTO, you were terminated.
Didnt make them quit, so..