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Ask Slashdot: Why Do We Still Commute? (citylab.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Over the last year, many companies have ended their liberal work-from-home policies. Firms like IBM, Honeywell, and Aetna joined a long list of others that have deemed it more profitable to force employees to commute to the city and work in a central office than give them the flexibility to work where they want. It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 1975, when personal computers were little more than glorified calculators for geeks and the Internet was an obscure project being developed by the United States government, Macrae, an influential journalist for The Economist who earned a reputation for clairvoyant prophesies -- including the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Japan -- made a radical prediction about how information technology would soon transform our lives. Macrae foretold the exact path and timeline that computers would take over the business world and then become a fixture of every American home. But he didn't stop there. The spread of this machine, he argued, would fundamentally change the economics of how most of us work. Once workers could communicate with their colleagues through instant messages and video chat, he reasoned, there would be little coherent purpose to trudge long distances to work side by side in centrally located office spaces.
We still commute because the Baby Boomer generation is still disproportionately represented in the C level positions. They grew up in an era where you had to physically see a worker to know they were actually working. If you did not see them, then they must be slacking. Even those who are somewhat technologically savvy grew up with that ingrained in how management worked. Even some of the early Gen-Xers, those in their early fifties now, picked up this attitude just because they started working in a time before computers were so pervasive.
I think you will see this change as the later Gen-Xers and millennials begin to take management positions, but with Gen-X likely being the first generation that will not be able to retire (in general) this may be a long time coming
Working at home is what has kept me at this job when I'd think of looking elsewhere. It's one of the main perks of the gig.
During my time at Big Blue (prior to working from home being acceptable) we tried convincing our manager to let everyone on our team to work from home with the exception of one person rotating through the team to come in and be available for things we couldn't do remotely (swap cables, rack equipment, etc.) We were told by our manager that he could go to his manager and present the idea, but that we had to keep in mind if we were saying that our job could be done from anywhere in the world that it would become obvious to upper management that it could be done from ANYWHERE in the world....
As it happened not long after I left they outsourced almost every job anyway. So kind of surprising they later allowed people to work from home and then reversed it again.
ever since audiobooks were invented, my commute has been the high point of my day.
I don't do audiobooks, but my car stereo is by far my best quality audio equipment, and the car is the only place I can listen to music at a decent volume without pissing someone off. I enjoy my (admittedly short 25 minute) commute, and I prefer leaving the house to work. I have a very clear mental distinction between work mode and relax mode, and the commute makes a nice transition between the two.
Oh no... it's the future.
Sure. Let's do that. You have never been in management, have you?
Let's say you have four workers. Let's say these employees work in the same department. Let's apply your idea. Here are the rules:
1) Any two employees will never do exactly the same job. You can' just fire the bad ones because then someone else needs to be trained to do that job.
2) Even if everyone is cross-trained to do everyone else's job employees will ALWAYS seek to specialized in order to invoke rule number 1.
3) If you manage to get everyone to document every aspect of their jobs so that everyone is performing the same way, then upper management will always seek to trim extra workers. If you as a manager have four workers doing the same thing AND those workers have vacation days that means you can operate with three workers. Need to justify keeping an employee? Invoke rule number 1.
4) It is in the best interest of every manager to expand his or her group and scope at every opportunity. If you have a $25k budget you need a $30k budget. If you have four workers you need six. You need a bigger budget and more people because... rule number 1.
As a manager, just keeping the budget and the people you have is a struggle. Firing a marginally underperforming worker constitutes insanity. Cross-training for efficiency is a form of suicide. Smart employees know this. Lazy employees know that the bare minimum they need to do is keep people from complaining to their boss's boss and they probably have a job for life.
I've seen this happen at HP, then again at Xerox. Many large companies starting doing this, particularly once Yahoo started doing it. It's usually combined with revamping the workspace into a "collborative" work environment (you know, the ones where they don't allow any offices or cube walls....one big open space so that everyone can collaborate.....what a load of shit that is).
The REAL reason they force folks back into the new office is:
A) they know people have come to love working from home, and many will not be able to handle a long commute after working from home for years, so they'll quit....which is much cheaper than laying them off (and paying severance) or even firing them (and potentially paying unemployment)
B) those folks who stay can now be squeezed into a smaller footprint because they've removed all the bulky cubes and offices, thus less real estate costs because they've reduced the amount of square footage they're occupying.
This is a finance exercise pure and simple.
In my experience, the Peter Principle is rooted in the culture of most companies. Promotions happen only by shifting people from production to management and the best and most productive workers are also often the worst manager.
We decided that we're better off by creating an "expert" promotion line for our technical workers where their promotion path keeps them in the technical area and away from management, their line leading to them shifting from everyday jobs to being the (now also official) go-to guys for problem or internal consultants.
That way we keep them in their technical line, can benefit from their advanced and often unique knowledge, keep them from turning from brilliant engineers to mediocre managers, and they have a career line ahead of them that isn't a dead end because they're "only" productive instead of managing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I prefer leaving the house to work. I have a very clear mental distinction between work mode and relax mode, and the commute makes a nice transition between the two.
I've known people with a similar attitude who solved it by adding a fake "commute" to their working from home. They'd get ready for work, hop in the car and drive around for 5-10 minutes. Or go pick up something from Starbucks. Something that was a similar "and now it is time to work" flag.
Err... why an audio book? If you cannot make your computer read any book to you, then you have to hand back your geek card.
Have you ever listened to a real audiobook, Anonymous Coward? They're presented by skilled actors who manage the accents and cadence of the book.
Listening to a computer-read audio book is like hearing a Cylon get directions from the Imperious Leader back in1978,