2023 WFH Poll

[killramos]

WFH seems significantly more beneficial to employees than it does to employers.

People seem to have quite a blind spot to that detail.

You know what they say about people who like to have their cake and eat it too…

[Xtrema]

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The flip side is this can devolve into shooting the shit for 45 minutes.

Shooting the shit is good.

But I don't miss meaningless meetings where I am held hostage for 60mins for may be 5min of participation needed. Online, I can keep doing my things until my involvement is needed.

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I see no downsides.

Not sure using IBM as an example is a good thing lol.

I also see no down side. It's hard to integrate new people in the team without shooting the shit.

Not saying IBM did it right but seeing a lot of companies following them anyway.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

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WFH seems significantly more beneficial to employees than it does to employers.

People seem to have quite a blind spot to that detail.

You know what they say about people who like to have their cake and eat it too…

RE costs? Hardware costs, depending on the situation? Larger pool of employees without paying relocation costs?

[bigbadboss101]

Started a new contract second week of January. Went to the office to meet the client and we actually quite like the location and office. We are working from home FT. My wife prefers it if I am not home all the time :-)

[killramos]

Peanuts

[suntan]

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RE costs? Hardware costs, depending on the situation? Larger pool of employees without paying relocation costs?

Every shitty home router is an intrusion point. No, VPN doesn’t help. I’m always surprised how flippantly this extremely serious issue is dealt with.

[suntan]

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Shooting the shit is good.

But I don't miss meaningless meetings where I am held hostage for 60mins for may be 5min of participation needed. Online, I can keep doing my things until my involvement is needed.

I just tell other attendees I'm leaving.

I also see no down side. It's hard to integrate new people in the team without shooting the shit.

Not saying IBM did it right but seeing a lot of companies following them anyway.

It's the employees that bear the brunt in these situations.

[sabad66]

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Every shitty home router is an intrusion point. No, VPN doesn’t help. I’m always surprised how flippantly this extremely serious issue is dealt with.

Srs question - How do you figure that VPN doesn’t help? I’m not a networking guy but my layman understanding is that traffic is encrypted so even if someone is watching all packets, it’s basically gibberish/useless to them.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

For the time being, 2-3 days in the office per week. That's policy, but there's a handful of folks that decided to be full-time WFH because COVID is scary and nobody in management seems to give a shit. I usually go in whatever 2 days the wife needs to be in-office as we carpool but don't feel bad about skipping a day here or there.

[ShermanEF9]

My team has always been, and will always be WFH.

[Xtrema]

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Srs question - How do you figure that VPN doesn’t help? I’m not a networking guy but my layman understanding is that traffic is encrypted so even if someone is watching all packets, it’s basically gibberish/useless to them.

There is a brief time when you are home network and before VPN loaded that's vulnerable.

Same reason we give everyone 4G modem to work remotely instead connecting to hotel/starbucks wifi.

Once VPN established, there may be some services where VPN client may still allow to route thru your home network. For example, youtube and certain social media networks and Teams etc, so those traffic won't be wasting bandwidth.

[Xtrema]

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RE costs? Hardware costs, depending on the situation? Larger pool of employees without paying relocation costs?

RE cost isn't much in Calgary. I think Calgary still have the lowest office cost in the country due to vacancies.

If you throw furniture into RE, hardware won't be much different. If anything IT cost increased due to IT Sec and remote support cost increase to safely supporting WFH.

Larger pool of employee to pull from? Sure but I think it's working the opposite way. I think more Calgarians working on east coast job remotely than the other way around.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

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RE cost isn't much in Calgary. I think Calgary still have the lowest office cost in the country due to vacancies.

If you throw furniture into RE, hardware won't be much different. If anything IT cost increased due to IT Sec and remote support cost increase to safely supporting WFH.

Larger pool of employee to pull from? Sure but I think it's working the opposite way. I think more Calgarians working on east coast job remotely than the other way around.

That's my case. I'm a Calgary employee working for an EST company. I can't go into the office, because there isn't one. But I'm also not connecting to anything that I would need a VPN for anyways.

[spike98]

I WFH daily until 10am and on days where nothing critical going on. Its a real good hybrid solution as i get to have breakfast with the kids and run a quick errand on my way in if need be. I try to limit WFH outside of the morning as a lot of my work is more coherent when i am F2F with the folks i am meeting.

[gmc72]

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That's my case. I'm a Calgary employee working for an EST company. I can't go into the office, because there isn't one. But I'm also not connecting to anything that I would need a VPN for anyways.

I'm the exact same.

And no, it's not a government job.

[Xtrema]

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I'm the exact same.

And no, it's not a government job.

They are so short out there because anyone good are also working from home but for US companies instead of Canadian ones. WFH is causing a lot of brain drain.

[ExtraSlow]

So east coast canandians are smarter than Albertans I guess?

[dirtsniffer]

you know what grinds my gears. when people with a flexible work schedule commute on company time. I don't care that you checked your email at 8 before you left to commute for a half hour at 9. Be fucking available during business hours.

edit.
was just catching up on the thread and would you look at that

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I WFH daily until 10am and on days where nothing critical going on. Its a real good hybrid solution as i get to have breakfast with the kids and run a quick errand on my way in if need be. I try to limit WFH outside of the morning as a lot of my work is more coherent when i am F2F with the folks i am meeting.

[ThePenIsMightier]

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you know what grinds my gears. when people with a flexible work schedule commute on company time. I don't care that you checked your email at 8 before you left to commute for a half hour at 9. Be fucking available during business hours.

Holy fuck - I tried so hard to get a guy fired from my last job for doing that, and the prick Dept Head simply wouldn't do it.
The guy was milking that the company wouldn't pay for his electronic P.Eng stamp so he would "need to go to office to stamp" and his journey there was straight out of that cable guy from South Park. I fuckin swear he would stop for lunch, go bowling and have a siesta. He wouldn't even stay at work after stamping so it just added so so much time and was so glaringly obvious what he was doing.

So instead of firing him, they bought his e-stamp... Well done!

[Xtrema]

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So east coast canandians are smarter than Albertans I guess?

After my cousin in Calgary joined a Quebec tech company in the east 2 years ago, almost everyone quit and works for US companies that he's left holding the bag. lol.

Another cousin who work for IESO also faced massive quitting wave after management force them back to office in 2022. Again, most rather take contracts from US companies and stay at home.

So really depends where your talent pool is, WFH may actually increase cost because it's easier for top people to get top pay. Who knows if this will slowly balance out in 2023.