Working From Home Megathread

suicide_circus

Blanco100 wrote: »

Alot of bosses like the ego trip of being able to gather "their people" into a room for a meeting on a whim. Its not even a productivity thing, bosses like to see something tangible in the shape of everyone even saying hello in the morning, telling them they look fantastic etc....

yep i think its a power thing

beauf

suicide_circus wrote: »

yep i think its a power thing

Its bad management thing.

They don't track productivity so they have no metric other than seeing someone in a seat to gauge productivity.

haydoyo

.

eastie17

We've been told (major multinational) to work from home until June 1st!

caff

Been working from home since yesterday. One thing I have noticed is that the conference call providers haven't the capacity to cope. Their lines will randomly not ring due to the demand on their systems. Experienced this with 24meeting zoom and Microsoft teams numbers.

OU812

I work from home one day a week & normally it's grand. Bring the kids to school, back & online by 9.05. Childminder arrives with the kids at 3.00, I put on noise cancelling headphones & continue until 5.

Today however was chaos. Schoolwork needed to be done & supervised, wife was working from home also so I was trying to do mine at the table with the kids, while she was trying to do hers via VPN to her work computer on the home one.

I was planning on an attic conversion & shed later this year, I think I'm going to factor in putting in a (very small) office to work from as well where I can be here but still close the door & get stuff done.

I think work from home is going to become a more usual arrangement now, it suits me so I'll take advantage of it. Our office is getting O365 & teams in Q2, I've a decent wifi connection& a voip phone. We have MS surface hubs for conferencing & meetings, the team I run is mostly offshore & I interact with them through various digital methods anyway. I really don't need to be there at all, bar the occasional F2F with *my* supervisors.

Hodors Appletart

caff wrote: »

Been working from home since yesterday. One thing I have noticed is that the conference call providers haven't the capacity to cope. Their lines will randomly not ring due to the demand on their systems. Experienced this with 24meeting zoom and Microsoft teams numbers.

haven't noticed this with Zoom, and our whole place is WFH today, and for at least 2 weeks.

I had to go in to the (deserted) office today, they were stocking all th fridges with milk :eek:

I took home a few litres.

Rufeo

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

haven't noticed this with Zoom, and our whole place is WFH today, and for at least 2 weeks.

I had to go in to the (deserted) office today, they were stocking all th fridges with milk :eek:

I took home a few litres.

What eejit stocked the fridge, in light of the current situation. Seriously, the world's gone mad!

05eaftqbrs9jlh

caff wrote: »

Been working from home since yesterday. One thing I have noticed is that the conference call providers haven't the capacity to cope. Their lines will randomly not ring due to the demand on their systems. Experienced this with 24meeting zoom and Microsoft teams numbers.

The internet is appallingly stretched at the moment, having huge difficulty even just connecting and I'm in a city suburb which usually has great signal, equipped with fiber-optic cable, 5G etc

Hodors Appletart

there was me, one colleague and this person who was doing a fairly deep clean of the kitchen area, and also putting about 8 x 2 litres of milk into it.

I might go back over tomorrow and get the rest, I've just nowhere to put it.

I might go into cheesemaking

blessed are the cheesemakers.

DeanAustin

beauf wrote: »

Its bad management thing.

They don't track productivity so they have no metric other than seeing someone in a seat to gauge productivity.

If that was the sole reason, it would be very bad management.

Personally, I'm not a massive fan of working from home but I do allow my team do it whenever they need to. **** happens in life and I'm looking for outputs not 8 hours a day.

However, I think nothing beats face to face interaction to build a relationship with your team mates or the rest of the business. It's also easier for training/questions while communicating on email most of the time can lead to problems.

I also detest conference calls especially now people are moving away from phones which were annoying enough. Now someone on the call invariably sounds like they're underwater or generates an echo that sounds like they are shagging a robot.

Remote working exclusively, in my view, brings its own problems.

That said, I do think some managers don't allow it purely as a control thing.

caff

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

haven't noticed this with Zoom, and our whole place is WFH today, and for at least 2 weeks.

I had to go in to the (deserted) office today, they were stocking all th fridges with milk :eek:

I took home a few litres.

It was just the dial in phone number for zoom the Web application worked fine

JohnnyChimpo

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

there was me, one colleague and this person who was doing a fairly deep clean of the kitchen area, and also putting about 8 x 2 litres of milk into it.

I might go back over tomorrow and get the rest, I've just nowhere to put it.

I might go into cheesemaking

blessed are the cheesemakers.

Milk freezes grand

salonfire

Also noticed problems dialing into bridges.

Can the Internet infrastructure cope with all the extra load?

ironclaw

salonfire wrote: »

Also noticed problems dialing into bridges.

Can the Internet infrastructure cope with all the extra load?

Yes, the issue is more so how the provider of the bridge (or any application) has set up their infrastructure. From experience, most providers don't properly test or plan for these types of events, and they often fail spectacularly as a result.

ChikiChiki

Just had to panic get a desk in this evening and hoping to get some monitors off the company during the week for my room.

Was sitting at the kitchen table 2 days. **** me the housemate is sound but could talk for Ireland. Made it very difficult. Housemate is in construction and cracking up already as extremely extraverted and needs to be chatting.

Conferencing held up well. I dialled into the bridges and when in dialled the bridge into my personal phone.

In an ideal world I would have had a phone etc but the whole thing has blindsided even the most well planned entities.

_Kaiser_

caff wrote: »

It was just the dial in phone number for zoom the Web application worked fine

Had the same issue today myself with Zoom dial in. Desktop/web app was fine though.

Teams was also acting up most of the day but MSFT acknowledged the issues. Was back to normal late afternoon.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

With more and more managers now being forced to allow staff to wfh I wonder will this become the new normal.

The benefits will surely become obvious. Less office space required, fewer cars on the road, more people willing to live further distances from cities so less pressure on housing.

For workers there will be less tiring commutes, and more free time for family and for community involvement.

Or will resistent managers just revert to their focus on presenteeism?

Ninthlife

BellaBella wrote: »

With more and more managers now being forced to allow staff to wfh I wonder will this become the new normal.

The benefits will surely become obvious. Less office space required, fewer cars on the road, more people willing to live further distances from cities so less pressure on housing.

For workers there will be less tiring commutes, and more free time for family and for community involvement.

Or will resistent managers just revert to their focus on presenteeism?

It makes sense and I hope it will spell an end to alot of peoples long commutes especially if there are positive signs of productivity etc.

I think alot of things in the world are going to change after all of this.

The World as we know it and how we live may never be the same again

Wanderer78

Wouldn't surprise me if everything went back to normal after this, I'd imagine productivity would be slightly lower with majority working from home

Dots1982

Will Home internet networks hold up?

SeaFields

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Wouldn't surprise me if everything went back to normal after this, I'd imagine productivity would be slightly lower with majority working from home

Yep. I suppose it's not normal working from home scenarios. All the kids are off so lots will be trying to mind kids and get some work done. I'll be in that boat so I know well I'll only get a fraction of my normal work done.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Wouldn't surprise me if everything went back to normal after this, I'd imagine productivity would be slightly lower with majority working from home

I think it's the opposite. There's a lot of distractions in an office that can slow down productivity. Also meetings drag on longer than Skype meetings which tend to be more focused with less idle chit chat. In addition, because there's no pressure to 'look busy' when you're not, there's more incentive to get your work done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Jim Root

What this will show is which roles are actually important and which are superfluous. Cronic pointless meeting organisers may soon find themselves dispensable.

Wanderer78

BellaBella wrote:

I think it's the opposite. There's a lot of distractions in an office that can slow down productivity. Also meetings drag on longer than Skype meetings which tend to be more focused with less idle chit chat. In addition, because there's no pressure to 'look busy' when you're not, there's more incentive to get your work done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Understandable logic and makes sense, but us humans tend to make decisions not based on such logic at times, some work places will change, but some may not

AlphabetCards

Over here in my uni some phd students, researchers and lecturers are given free reign over their attendance, and it works quite well for most. I actually do more hours in work - if I start at 9 I leave at 5... but if I get up, lounge around until 10am, get into uni for 12 midday, I often won't leave until 11pm and that will be a fully productive day.

For admin staff however, these take the piss and it is nigh on impossible to get a hold of them. All future contracts wont have a WFH pass included.

Cosmo Kramer

Dots1982 wrote: »

Will Home internet networks hold up?

It shouldn't be an issue. Most of the pressure tends to be on the network in the evening time, when people are at home streaming Netflix and gaming etc.

Working from home tends to actually put less pressure on capacity because you are often just typing or sending emails rather than using video, albeit there will be some need for teleconferencing etc.

I have worked from home a day a week for two years and it has made a huge difference to my work/life balance, and that's with only a 30 minute commute to the office. I'm sure it would make an even bigger difference to those with longer commutes.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

If someone who's supposed to be working from home is inaccessible or not producing the goods then their right to wfh should brme removed. Penalising everyone and removing a facility that can motivate a lot of people, cut down on overheads and is good for the environment is a bit short sighted.

Aglomerado

I've done 2 days working from home and so far I feel I'm getting lots done without normal office distractions. I'm not even checking Boards!
I'm a civil servant in a technical role. I have staff working remotely too, management stuff is the hardest to do remotely, I prefer face to face contact.

EmmetSpiceland

When the work gets done it’ll hopefully change the minds of the office “dinosaurs” who resisted the move due to a mistrust of younger staff members.