Working From Home Megathread

Have to disagree. Office based/domestic arrangements, up until recently were the default, so while some people such as yourself worked from home prior to Covid, this arrangement was not predominant. That is changing, evolving, so that workers will not need to be physically present either in an office, or even country. As more and more companies overcome the inertia of office based thinking, employment opportunities will no longer be dependent on the geographic location of either the employer or employee. The time zone stuff is nonsense, lots of people here liaise with clients/employers in other time zones. And taxation is more an issue with people who worked in Ireland prior to Covid, live in another jurisdiction but continue to be employed by the Irish employer. Companies have been regularising taxation issues associated with outsourcing for decades. I am not talking about offshoring existing operations, though that will become a concern down the line, I am referring more about new hires and the global opportunities which employees now have with employers who do not require presence in an office. Registering employees for taxation in those countries is easier than sorting the tax issue with a current employee who wants to live abroad but continue their current pay and conditions.

People did all the same things in the office. You weren't aware of it there either.

Make sure to brush your teeth and swig a bit of mouthwash before work.

Companies absolutely do set up in "cheaper" countries, all the time. An acquaintance is being made redundant because the company they're working for (pharma) is relocating all of their back office staff to eastern Europe. Why? Staff being recruited there will be on 1/3 to 1/2 the wages that the staff in Ireland are currently on. The plan was announced pre-COVID, and they've been WFH since. The actual redundancy has been postponed a couple of times now, ironically, because they can't actually recruit the staff they need in Poland...

Dell had a couple of failed outsourcing, one was manufacturing the other was support.

They brought some stuff back to the US. But it was a while ago, then you had Trump etc. No idea what they do now.

Yeah, I used to buy a fair bit of Dell hardware back in the day, to the extent I was able to stick a "We get our tech support from Ireland, not outsourced" clause into contracts. They had outsourced support to India (IIRC), and frankly it was very poor. I think they ended up bringing a fair bit of it back to Ireland.

There is obviously a world of difference between level 1, follow-the-flowchart 'turn it off and back on again' call-centre customer service (tech or not), and actual software development, though.

Something that companies were doing long before COVID and WFH.

Have a look at the Paypal share price over the past 12 months. Tanking!

They have bigger problems and are scrambling for any growth. They issued a FY2022 guidance recently which was full of downgrades.

So the IDA are funding a building project, in a WFH world???

What's your point?

https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/companies/apple-to-expand-operations-in-cork-with-new-product-test-centre_arid-40858757.html

Not sure if this was posted already; Dunnes Stores have a 'Karl Herny' adjustable desk riser for €100. Price seems good & you have the advantage of buying it local so can return it easily if don't like it. I'm wondering will it take the weight of a monitor....

https://www.dunnesstores.com/p/well-by-karl-henry-adjustable-desk/5620100

Sums it up

Isn’t punctuality important in wfh too?