Found you via Compound and Friends and like the blog!
If the concern over WFH is about office culture, businesses could go a long way in improving their culture by not hiring people who exemplify Dark Triad into management. I'm happy to meet my employer halfway: they can make sure not to hire insane people that make office life miserable on a daily basis, and I can come back into the office in some way.
I can tell you which one of us will be expected to budge first.
This piece did make me reflect on my own mentorship experiences. I'm currently in a senior role on a 90%-100% WFH team with a fair number of juniors. I've already started to mentor one of the juniors, simply because that's what I like to do. But I'll keep this in mind as the job continues, making sure to mentor folks who need that extra boost.
Hi Allison! Once again, a well written and compelling article! I especially liked how you hypothesize 4% may be the new inflation rate; I tend to agree because 2% does not keep up the reality that costs have to go up, naturally. Maybe the 2% goal created, as you so saliently stated “… the level of inflation matters less than its volatility or unpredictability.” is SO TRUE and matters most because people’s paychecks don’t increase like that unless you sell homes in California or are paid more than 250K a year? I feel like 100K a year is the new 50K a year!
Office: As a species, we have created the need to be so productive that we are losing sight of what matters most; our physical connection to friends and family! So yes, your argument for more office time and being with senior people is wise! Honestly, I think we need 6 hour work days and if we encourage hybrid solutions, that will reduce the impact on our environment with fewer cars on the road?
I disagree with most of your opinions on WFH and I figured I'd chime in and say why. You've probably heard these perspectives before but still. I'm a young worker (24) from a poor background. I've worked in a couple office environments pre-pandemic and during Covid went back to school for a degree in a professional field. This will be kind of a flow-of-thought response to some of your points I've seen.
- On your point of younger workers "needing" to go back to working in person: neither I, nor any of my friends and colleagues my age, care about "office culture". We work because we have to. We have friends, family, hobbies, activities, etc that we could be engaging in and actively want to leave work the minute our shifts are over. Office culture, pulling us off tasks to do teambuilding or having pointless meetings, feel like something that promotes inefficiency while still requiring 8+ hours out of our days. WFH lets us do more work, faster, and saves us money and time on commuting.
- Covid has begun the long overdue process of shifting the balance of power at least more generally toward the workers. The employers still hold the majority share, but WFH, the Great Resignation, and recent unionization drives at Starbucks, Amazon, etc have seen workers begin to assert their individual and collective power in a way unseen in decades. A natural part of this conversation is how to improve working conditions and improve workers' lives. Office culture seems to focus on making workers' lives at work more fun, but an unmentioned aspect is reducing the amount of a worker's life that work takes up. The historical labor movement didn't just fight for safer work, they fought for less work. 12+ hour days were the norm 200 years ago. The 8 hour day was a major demand of 100 years ago. Modern work has eroded the 8 hour day by including a half hour unpaid lunch, the traffic commute, and the expectation of overtime, crunch, and availability on off hours and weekends. We also are struggling to get access to things considered basic in other nations such as paid vacation time and paid maternity/paternity leave. It's no shocker to me that workers want to shorten the workday to 6 hours and the week to 4 days. We all have things we'd rather be doing. We don't want work to be the focal point of our lives.
Found you via Compound and Friends and like the blog!
If the concern over WFH is about office culture, businesses could go a long way in improving their culture by not hiring people who exemplify Dark Triad into management. I'm happy to meet my employer halfway: they can make sure not to hire insane people that make office life miserable on a daily basis, and I can come back into the office in some way.
I can tell you which one of us will be expected to budge first.
This piece did make me reflect on my own mentorship experiences. I'm currently in a senior role on a 90%-100% WFH team with a fair number of juniors. I've already started to mentor one of the juniors, simply because that's what I like to do. But I'll keep this in mind as the job continues, making sure to mentor folks who need that extra boost.
Hi Allison! Once again, a well written and compelling article! I especially liked how you hypothesize 4% may be the new inflation rate; I tend to agree because 2% does not keep up the reality that costs have to go up, naturally. Maybe the 2% goal created, as you so saliently stated “… the level of inflation matters less than its volatility or unpredictability.” is SO TRUE and matters most because people’s paychecks don’t increase like that unless you sell homes in California or are paid more than 250K a year? I feel like 100K a year is the new 50K a year!
Office: As a species, we have created the need to be so productive that we are losing sight of what matters most; our physical connection to friends and family! So yes, your argument for more office time and being with senior people is wise! Honestly, I think we need 6 hour work days and if we encourage hybrid solutions, that will reduce the impact on our environment with fewer cars on the road?
Again, love your Newsletters!
~ Phill from California
thank you!!!
I disagree with most of your opinions on WFH and I figured I'd chime in and say why. You've probably heard these perspectives before but still. I'm a young worker (24) from a poor background. I've worked in a couple office environments pre-pandemic and during Covid went back to school for a degree in a professional field. This will be kind of a flow-of-thought response to some of your points I've seen.
- On your point of younger workers "needing" to go back to working in person: neither I, nor any of my friends and colleagues my age, care about "office culture". We work because we have to. We have friends, family, hobbies, activities, etc that we could be engaging in and actively want to leave work the minute our shifts are over. Office culture, pulling us off tasks to do teambuilding or having pointless meetings, feel like something that promotes inefficiency while still requiring 8+ hours out of our days. WFH lets us do more work, faster, and saves us money and time on commuting.
- Covid has begun the long overdue process of shifting the balance of power at least more generally toward the workers. The employers still hold the majority share, but WFH, the Great Resignation, and recent unionization drives at Starbucks, Amazon, etc have seen workers begin to assert their individual and collective power in a way unseen in decades. A natural part of this conversation is how to improve working conditions and improve workers' lives. Office culture seems to focus on making workers' lives at work more fun, but an unmentioned aspect is reducing the amount of a worker's life that work takes up. The historical labor movement didn't just fight for safer work, they fought for less work. 12+ hour days were the norm 200 years ago. The 8 hour day was a major demand of 100 years ago. Modern work has eroded the 8 hour day by including a half hour unpaid lunch, the traffic commute, and the expectation of overtime, crunch, and availability on off hours and weekends. We also are struggling to get access to things considered basic in other nations such as paid vacation time and paid maternity/paternity leave. It's no shocker to me that workers want to shorten the workday to 6 hours and the week to 4 days. We all have things we'd rather be doing. We don't want work to be the focal point of our lives.