Rise of remote work

[sapper83]

I wonder if the smarter move for your wife would be to abandon the IT thing and take in a half dozen kids. I hear childcare pays extremely well these days?

Does it come with grants to remodel after they destroy your place???

 

[nucular]

This thread s so enjoyably funny and predictable. A few points.

Not everyone is cut out to work from home. Some will not be productive, some need live work social interactions, some need the discipline of supervision, and many have no place to actually work from home. I doubt more than 25% of employees are more productive at home.

What we have here is an echo chamber of established employees that are the cream of the work from home crop, not the young new employees that need to be nurtured along or others I mentioned above. This thread is going to be very active as companies end work from home.

AI will be along shortly to do any of those jobs you guys are doing on a computer from home anyway…

I actually 100% agree with this. I like WFH just as much as the next guy but not everyone is cut out for it. And by not everyone, would venture up to half of those in my (IT) space even though 100% of those people will tell you how much more productive they are at home.

The reality here is that the IT worker has become a commodity and the more we try to buck the system, the more corporations will look elsewhere to fulfill that commodity. What is the difference between someone working fully remote in Boontown, IN vs someone fully remote in Mexico or the Dominican Republic? Not much of one especially for 95%+ of the work required in IT. We keep rebelling against the corporate overlords and that's where the jobs are going. Might not be your job but it will devastate the industry and it won't be good for America.

 

[Brian Ski]

I said that by sitting at a restaurant table and ordering food you are agreeing to participate in the system that waiters are paid by tips and that 15% of what you spend is for average service.

I am not a fan of tips at all. Pay the servers what they are worth and raise the food price to compensate. Now they are putting tips on everything. I went to Sonic the other day and there is a tip setup on the screen before you get the food. (If you don't tip do you get lousy food?) She dumped a shake on my after leaving a good tip. Accident, but still. She said no replacements and left. I paid a tip for that? She didn't even bring extra napkins. We had to go inside and get a bunch.

What about the cashier at a restaurant or the cook? They Never get a tip, just the waitress. What is next? Tips on the screens at Home Depot and Walmart?

I don't get tips at work. The lineman restoring power should have his hand out. Maybe the mailman should come to the door with his hand out. Kick a couple bucks or your bills might get delivered late. (Hmm this sounds familiar, give me a couple bucks so your car does not get damaged) Sorry for the rant... This tip thing is getting out of hand.

Waitress tips used to be 10%, then 15%, now it is 20%, for average service.

 

[miguel]

Does it come with grants to remodel after they destroy your place???

With six, there will be nothing left to remodel. Trust me...

 

[nucular]

I am not a fan of tips at all. Pay the servers what they are worth and raise the food price to compensate. Now they are putting tips on everything. I went to Sonic the other day and there is a tip setup on the screen before you get the food. (If you don't tip do you get lousy food?) She dumped a shake on my after leaving a good tip. Accident, but still. She said no replacements and left. I paid a tip for that? She didn't even bring extra napkins. We had to go inside and get a bunch.

What about the cashier at a restaurant or the cook? They Never get a tip, just the waitress. What is next? Tips on the screens at Home Depot and Walmart?

I don't get tips at work. The lineman restoring power should have his hand out. Maybe the mailman should come to the door with his hand out. Kick a couple bucks or your bills might get delivered late. (Hmm this sounds familiar, give me a couple bucks so your car does not get damaged) Sorry for the rant... This tip thing is getting out of hand.

Waitress tips used to be 10%, then 15%, now it is 20%, for average service.

The tip economy is stupid. I would gladly pay more to never have to tip again.

 

[sapper83]

I am not a fan of tips at all. Pay the servers what they are worth and raise the food price to compensate. Now they are putting tips on everything. I went to Sonic the other day and there is a tip setup on the screen before you get the food. (If you don't tip do you get lousy food?) She dumped a shake on my after leaving a good tip. Accident, but still. She said no replacements and left. I paid a tip for that? She didn't even bring extra napkins. We had to go inside and get a bunch.

What about the cashier at a restaurant or the cook? They Never get a tip, just the waitress. What is next? Tips on the screens at Home Depot and Walmart?

I don't get tips at work. The lineman restoring power should have his hand out. Maybe the mailman should come to the door with his hand out. Kick a couple bucks or your bills might get delivered late. (Hmm this sounds familiar, give me a couple bucks so your car does not get damaged) Sorry for the rant... This tip thing is getting out of hand.

Waitress tips used to be 10%, then 15%, now it is 20%, for average service.

Theres is a whole thread on it!. It was about taxes on tips. Check it out.

My company is making people come back to work or they get walking papers. They moved alot of the jobs to ohio also so that sucks for some

 

[WebSnyper]

I actually 100% agree with this. I like WFH just as much as the next guy but not everyone is cut out for it. And by not everyone, would venture up to half of those in my (IT) space even though 100% of those people will tell you how much more productive they are at home.

The reality here is that the IT worker has become a commodity and the more we try to buck the system, the more corporations will look elsewhere to fulfill that commodity. What is the difference between someone working fully remote in Boontown, IN vs someone fully remote in Mexico or the Dominican Republic? Not much of one especially for 95%+ of the work required in IT. We keep rebelling against the corporate overlords and that's where the jobs are going. Might not be your job but it will devastate the industry and it won't be good for America.

There's a difference and you know it when you work with them (lowest bidder outsourcers, etc).

 

[Ingomike]

I am not a fan of tips at all. Pay the servers what they are worth and raise the food price to compensate.

I can agree, but I expect a bunch of people to have a fit when sit-down restaurants prices go up significantly. The other issue will be we diners have no control of the payment to the server so with guaranteed payment what incentive does the server have?

Now they are putting tips on everything. I went to Sonic the other day and there is a tip setup on the screen before you get the food. (If you don't tip do you get lousy food?) She dumped a shake on my after leaving a good tip. Accident, but still. She said no replacements and left. I paid a tip for that? She didn't even bring extra napkins. We had to go inside and get a bunch.

What about the cashier at a restaurant or the cook? They Never get a tip, just the waitress. What is next? Tips on the screens at Home Depot and Walmart?

This is a bad vestige of wuwho flu. The credit card machine companies built the tip screens in and they are a part that many retailers do not want but it is built in to the software.

I don't get tips at work. The lineman restoring power should have his hand out. Maybe the mailman should come to the door with his hand out. Kick a couple bucks or your bills might get delivered late. (Hmm this sounds familiar, give me a couple bucks so your car does not get damaged) Sorry for the rant... This tip thing is getting out of hand.

Society long before you and I, decided to tip servers, it is even part of law in that they get paid a substandard wage because of the tipping model our forebearers set up. The lineman and the mailman get paid for their job, servers do not, they get $2.35 an hour.

Waitress tips used to be 10%, then 15%, now it is 20%, for average service.

Yep, tipflation is real. But tipping is the way those folks get paid and anyone that doesn’t tip appropriately for good restaurant service sucks…

 

[KLB]

I actually 100% agree with this. I like WFH just as much as the next guy but not everyone is cut out for it. And by not everyone, would venture up to half of those in my (IT) space even though 100% of those people will tell you how much more productive they are at home.

The reality here is that the IT worker has become a commodity and the more we try to buck the system, the more corporations will look elsewhere to fulfill that commodity. What is the difference between someone working fully remote in Boontown, IN vs someone fully remote in Mexico or the Dominican Republic? Not much of one especially for 95%+ of the work required in IT. We keep rebelling against the corporate overlords and that's where the jobs are going. Might not be your job but it will devastate the industry and it won't be good for America.

That ship has already sailed. My company outsourced accounts payable to India around 8 years ago. We use overseas contractors for some IT work, testing, some application development, some DBA off hours support, and for some engineering CAD services.

 

[KLB]

Waitress tips used to be 10%, then 15%, now it is 20%, for average service.

I was taught 10% was for sub-par service. 15% was average and 20% was for good. Outstanding could get even more depending upon circumstances. You want to see big tippers, go out with servers. They tip each other a lot.

 

[bigretic]

I guess my company is just full of extraordinary people then. Especially in IT, which requires a lot of collaboration. There are over 1,000 people on an average day doing it.

Possibly. It is just as possible that one person made the decision based upon their biases. We had a CIO that was against working from home. Sounded a lot like you actually. He was working to make people go back to the office. Thankfully he went to Germany to fix the parent company's IT and the new CIO had the exact opposite opinion.

Possibly. It's also possible your company is normal and has normal amount of productive and non-productive people and is still simply profitable, which negates any serious look into productivity review past a precursory glance. In my experience the larger the company, the less productive the individual employee tends to be.

I don't recall saying I was against WFH, rather that most people simply didn't do it well, but i'll expand my thoughts on it. I did work from home before it was cool 25 years ago. Having worked across many business lines there are definitely ones that can and do excel in it over others, IT being at the top for obvious reasons, but in other roles I find it to be the exception not majority. As a younger group of managers takes over, the ability here may (hopefully) change because they will have better skill and practical knowledge to manage remote workers. Too often in a hybrid setup I see remote workers left to their own of no fault of their own due to lack of effective management. That point alone I personally see as the biggest problem in the ultimate effectiveness of it. Total remote operations seem to work far better in my experience and part of it is also the foresight to toss out the mentality of productivity and embrace profitability alone. This is a tough switch if you still have people "in front of you". It is in fact one I find myself struggling with at times because there also still exist positions where "productivity" is tied to x per hour and there's no way around it.

 

[wtburnette]

It is in fact one I find myself struggling with at times because there also still exist positions where "productivity" is tied to x per hour and there's no way around it.

That's where I'm lucky. My manager understands that in our role, productivity is x amount of assessments done in a month and meeting internal team SLAs. As long as you hit the correct numbers and document things appropriately, you're GTG. There are plenty of positions similar to mine where this would work and be effective, yet managers still tie people to hours worked for no good reason.

 

[KLB]

Possibly. It's also possible your company is normal and has normal amount of productive and non-productive people and is still simply profitable, which negates any serious look into productivity review past a precursory glance. In my experience the larger the company, the less productive the individual employee tends to be.

I don't recall saying I was against WFH, rather that most people simply didn't do it well, but i'll expand my thoughts on it. I did work from home before it was cool 25 years ago. Having worked across many business lines there are definitely ones that can and do excel in it over others, IT being at the top for obvious reasons, but in other roles I find it to be the exception not majority. As a younger group of managers takes over, the ability here may (hopefully) change because they will have better skill and practical knowledge to manage remote workers. Too often in a hybrid setup I see remote workers left to their own of no fault of their own due to lack of effective management. That point alone I personally see as the biggest problem in the ultimate effectiveness of it. Total remote operations seem to work far better in my experience and part of it is also the foresight to toss out the mentality of productivity and embrace profitability alone. This is a tough switch if you still have people "in front of you". It is in fact one I find myself struggling with at times because there also still exist positions where "productivity" is tied to x per hour and there's no way around it.

Very few people working from home for my company are making the company money. We are all overhead, IT, Finance, HR, Legal, etc. I work for a manufacturer. The people running the lines can't work from home.

Productivity in the case of our IT department is completing the projects that were promised the business. Those promises have been kept and then some. That makes everyone happy.

 

[510picker]

I am a designer for an engineering firm and have been working from home since the pandemic. The higher-ups seem quite please with our productivity and have no plans to make us return to the office. I hope it stays that way because I don't miss commuting.

 

[Brian Ski]

Yep, tipflation is real. But tipping is the way those folks get paid and anyone that doesn’t tip appropriately for good restaurant service sucks…

Still not happy about having to give a tip before getting service. It is like extortion. A lot of deliver places are like that and fast food places are going that way. No guarantee you will get any decent service after giving a tip of any size. I guess part of leaning toward a cashless society.

 

[nucular]

There's a difference and you know it when you work with them (lowest bidder outsourcers, etc).

It depends. I think on-shore people are still better because they get the culture, communication is generally easier, etc but some of these off-shore and near-shore places are catching up - Romania, Ukraine, Mexico. A lot of those folks are "good enough" and while not as cheap as India, still much cheaper than Americans.

 

[WebSnyper]

It depends. I think on-shore people are still better because they get the culture, communication is generally easier, etc but some of these off-shore and near-shore places are catching up - Romania, Ukraine, Mexico. A lot of those folks are "good enough" and while not as cheap as India, still much cheaper than Americans.

This is true. I have seen in some cases folks from these other countries are used as a middle tier. There is some level of very scaled down on shore (US based) support, then a middle tier of folks from countries you mentioned and then a larger contingent in India that all sort of work together.

There are also companies forgoing outsourcing and setting up their own departments in India and paying them more and getting more experienced folks in India that are better than the lowest bidder outsourcers can retain. It comes at a higher price to keep them from job jumping every 20 minutes, but is a way to reduce costs but retain some quality.

This also provides some opportunities for US people in "fly over" states to work for companies that had been employing people on the more expensive coasts.

That said, I think there will always be some room for folks in the US to work remote jobs and not be tied to an office.

 

[Ingomike]

Still not happy about having to give a tip before getting service. It is like extortion. A lot of deliver places are like that and fast food places are going that way. No guarantee you will get any decent service after giving a tip of any size. I guess part of leaning toward a cashless society.

100% agreed! I usually tip cash. Rarely tip fast food. Picking up a to go order recently I just asked, do you get paid $2.65? She said no, I did no tip. She was an employee not a server.

 

[wtburnette]

Two things. First, stop eating fast food. That will kill you. Two, WTF. You're telling me fast food workers expect tips now? Glad I don't eat that garbage.

 

[BiscuitsandGravy]

I am a designer for an engineering firm and have been working from home since the pandemic. The higher-ups seem quite please with our productivity and have no plans to make us return to the office. I hope it stays that way because I don't miss commuting.

Same here. Our IT group went to WFH spring 2020 and haven't looked back. The Co. did not renew some office leases either- win-win. I do not miss commuting. Problem I have now is not running my cars enough.