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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.
so he can lord over us
makes him feel special so we all drive an hour to get here
yay
Our dormitories in the company towns are not ready yet. When they are, our commute will be four floors down from our cell to our cubicle.
The broadband connectivity will be awesome. And we'll be able to go outdoors into the courtyard every other Sunday.
I can't speak for others, but I for one enjoy slowly growing old one day at a time in a small tin box that slowly moves through stop-and-go traffic for hours at a time. All while considering merits of being dead over my current situation.
If I don't commute between the couch and the fridge, how will I eat?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I work in a company producing IoT, internet of things, devices that use RF.
The reason that I still commute is that I don't have access to RF test equipment or RF chambers at home. The equipment that I need to use to validate my software simply isn't practical to have at home. I suspect that anybody doing software development for the embedded device marketplace faces similar constraints.
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
Because the housing infrastructure of Silicon Valley is insufficient to support the Human workforce.
We go to an office because (a) you get better team collaboration that way and (b) management frequently, and somtimes with good reason, has doubts about whether a person is really working when not physically present.
I think pervasive, high quality, always-on video conferencing could address both of these problems, but that's not really (inexpensively, easily) available today.
...because, outside of some utopian fantasy, most work still requires either physically being present, or at least collaboration with a number of other people, and no amount of Skype, VR, or what have you can replace the communication bandwidth and efficacy of actually being there.
-Styopa
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.
One of the reasons I'm at my current job, my "commute" is about ten feet and pants are optional. Working at home alone does seem to result in a high level of work place sexual harassment however...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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.
Because sometimes a face-to-face meeting in front of a whiteboard is the best way to do things. Virtual whiteboards, like so many virtual things, are clunky and harder to use. Video conferencing is not so bad but still more inconvenient than when you can all be in the same room.
The company I work for allows _some_ WFH days, but you can tell they're not happy about it. The only reason they do it is because they're trying to remake themselves as "hip" and "with it" so they can attract Millenials. The company used to have a very liberal work-from-anywhere policy, but it turned out that a very large percentage of people abused it and never showed up to the office.
Management still doesn't believe people can be productive without sitting on top of one another in an open office setting. That's because of "collaboration" and "synergy" but IMO bad managers are still hanging on to the idea that you need to be present during working hours, or they can't trust you to produce on your own. In my case, they get plenty of out-of-hours work from me...just yesterday I left early to attend a school thing and worked on my stuff after everyone went to bed.
Personally, I like a mix. I'm not exactly an extrovert so commuting just to talk to colleagues doesn't have the same effect it would on a hyper-outgoing type-A management or marketing person. But, I can also see how someone who isn't as self-directed would just WFH as an excuse to slack. I think management is stuck in the old days when office work involved getting off the train, walking to your desk in a sea of hundreds of desks, and working on the piles of paperwork in your inbox until your shift was over.
In my case, I actually accept a lower salary so I don't have to commute crazy distances. I live "near" NYC but the train ride to the city is almost 90 minutes and driving is nearly out of the question. I've done it in the past, and will only do it again if I have no choice or really need the extra money.
Telecommuting is still not ideal. Even with a decent setup like FiOS, Skype, Slack, etc, there is something to be said about physical presence that the current system simply doesn't support.
I personally don't foresee the day of true telecommuting being the norm again until the infrastructure is much more robust and the tools allow for no distinction of presence and telepresence. That includes technologies like Halolens, backbones of all fiber, and redundant cloud services.
Just as an example, look at how horrible many shows TWiT.tv get when someone is trying to Skype in over WiFi from some Google or Facebook event. Sure, they conference is getting hosed, but they're just trying to have a single conversation. I certainly wouldn't want my Fortune 500's... fortune... resting on the, excuse my language, CRAP infrastructure that we have today.
I8-D
HVAC maintenance IS tech!!!
At least in my experience:
1. The IT infrastructure isn't there yet. I regularly deal with large files. Transferring those from home to the work server can take an hour. At work the same file transfer is a question of minutes. And I live in a major city in north america, for those who live in rural locations with limited broadband working at home is not a feasible option.
2. Office politics. My wife tried working from home full time after her maternity leave. Then she got passed for a promotion by a coworker who was at the office and developed a better relationship with the senior managers. Personal relationships matter in the workplace, and for that you need face-to-face interaction.
3. Not all work is done on a computer screen. Most of my work is done on a computer, but as an engineer I often deal with testing of mechanical system components which need to be done on-site. And I imagine for those working in the service sector, which are the majority of jobs in North America, there is no choice. You can't be a waiter from home, for example.
And almost no corporation puts effort into training for it. Every place I have ever worked never once made teaching how to manage people a priority for those they put into management roles. In retail it's doubly fucked because they expect management to do the same jobs as those on the floor on top of everything needed to manage the store.
I don't know if that's the way it's always been or not. Although I do kinda feel like it has been.
If managers were actually allowed and taught how to manage, I'd think they'd be able to tell the good workers from the poor ones. From there it would be reasonable to either manage people into working better or into leaving. But because managers aren't often left to manage their people they don't get to be reasonable about it. It's done by intuition and appearance more than results and effort.
Far better social interaction in an office than at your house. Plus you can actually separate your work from your home. I suppose if the team you work on sucks working from home might make sense, though.
A few reasons:
1. It's not quite as easy to keep trade secrets secret when employee-owned equipment in a residential area is involved. This extends to both the employer's trade secrets and those of its suppliers. Confidentiality is often cited as a reason that video game console makers didn't open up their platforms to individual developers working from home until a couple years ago.
2. Lab or manufacturing equipment may be too expensive for an individual to purchase.
3. Local, state, or federal zoning regulations require certain jobs to be performed in a commercially zoned area. Good luck running (say) a restaurant or a pharmacy out of your home.
4. Local zoning regulations make it difficult for a wired broadband ISP to lay cable or fiber. This has been the case for Seattle proper, where utility installation requires permission from a supermajority of landowners, and absentee landlords and vacant lots count as a no vote.
5. Distractions from other members of the household, such as demands to do housework. "I 'didn't know' you were on the clock. But could you get off the clock for one minute?" which turns into fifteen.
When I was younger I thought being able to work from home was a great perk. Now that I'm 20 years older and work at a place where I can choose to WFH pretty much whenever I want, I realize it's not so great.
I have a lot of distractions at home and I'm single. It's very easy to start wandering around the house, doing laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, petting the cats, watching something on Netflix, etc. When I'm at the office there's a more limited number of things to distract myself with. If the environment starts getting too loud with people talking I just put on my noise-cancelling headphones and zone out.
It's also a lot easier to troubleshoot a problem someone is having when I can just walk over to their desk and watch what they're doing. I suppose video chat would work, but it's a lot more cumbersome. I work for a start-up, so there's a lot of ad-hoc conversations between the different groups and decisions are made quickly. Chat works pretty well, but it's definitely inferior to a face-to-face conversation.
I'm fortunate to live in a large city with a great public transportation system. My current commute involves a 20 minute walk to a train station followed by a 15 minute ride and a two block walk to the office. I watch all of the cars queued up to enter the expressways in the evening and just shake my head. I had a 90 minute commute many years ago and it was a killer. I'd get done with work and then be pissed off that it's going to take me another hour and a half to get home; and I didn't have to drive. There is just no way that I'd ever live somewhere where my only option for a commute was driving. I have family in Sarasota and they have to drive everywhere. No thank you!
We only need two things before most white collar people leave the crowded and expensive cities and move to the countryside
You'll need a third thing: People will have to want to move to the countryside. A lot of people don't.
The reason people are moving to cities right now isn't that they're being forced as much as, that's where the stuff is. There are places to go and things to do. Some people actually like being part of civilization, rather than retreating to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
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.
No, this is not a pointy-haired boss point of view. I'm a professor working in a large international collaboration and while we do have regular phone/video meetings we also arrange to all meet in person a few times a year because being physically present increases both the communication bandwidth but also the ease of communication which means that things get discussed which would not if the only meetings were virtual.
Given that the cost of travel to these meetings means that we have less money for grad students, postdocs and equipment shows that the majority think that there is a clear benefit to these meetings and with the state of modern air travel there is no way you can accuse us of "just liking to take trips" - academic grants all require cheap, economy class travel (and even if they didn't most of us would because every dollar saved is more for people and equipment) so many of us now hate getting on a plane! We use virtual meetings where possible to reduce travel costs and avoid air travel but there are somethings for which you need a physical meeting.
I've been on highly-distributed teams (no two people co-located), and on teams with one or two far-flung elements, and everything in between. Working from home can work very well, if the team is focused and actively maintains contact, even on days when they don't feel like it, even when things aren't going well. But many workers simply don't work that way, in which case working from home can become a way to hide things and avoid things. Same can happen in an office environment, it's just a little harder at the margins.
Also, the team has to be committed to working from home, you can't just wave a wand on it, they need to be actively on top of broadly communicating things. Otherwise you end up with "in" groups and people get cut out of the loop and everyone gets upset. Again, that can totally happen in an office environment, too, but in my experience it's SO much easier to happen accidentally in a mixed group. Sometimes something will get ironed out over lunch or a quick bull session, and nobody thinks to send the minutes to the offsite people. If that happens too often, the offsite people will find themselves routinely behind the curve, finding out about decisions after they're already being implemented, which can really chip away at their morale.
Lastly, it's really really hard to successfully add new people to a team who work from home. Basically, they need good referrals from trusted sources, and the team needs to really focus on integrating the new person.
Just to be really really clear - I'm not saying work-from-home cannot work or anything like that. I did it for a decade before getting a "real" job, and I quite enjoyed it, it really worked for me. But there were significant downsides, some of which I didn't realize until I had the opportunity to work with similarly-qualified networks of co-located people. I'd be very nervous about joining a group which was trying to set ambitious goals and also having most members working from home.
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.
It is a relatively rare job that can effectively and economically conduct all it's communication through IM and video chat. For example I am a manager at a manufacturing company. Our employees do not sit in front of computers writing code all day. If I worked from home I would effectively have near zero communication with my staff because they are busy making products. While I could do some engineering from home, a large chunk of my job would be impossible to do off site. Good luck telecommuting to a hospital or a restaurant or a retail store or fitness center.
There are some cases where telecommuting works great. There are many more where it simply doesn't work at all or doesn't work well. Even jobs that are compatible with telecommuting (like writing code) often find considerable added value in being co-located in the same building. A lot of people lose significant productivity when they aren't in an office and there is a surprising amount of administrative burden to managing a remote team.
I can focus on conversation and shaking hands OR my work. Not both.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.