To struggle to see the appeal of full time remote working?

Yes - the idea that I’m against younger workers because I think days in the office are beneficial, as has been suggested, is hilarious!! It’s older workers who want to be more at home and of course that’s understandable too.

And the idea of working in the crappy rental I was in when I first started work after graduating would have been awful.

I love it.
I have dogs and horses so being fully remote with flexible hours means I have plenty of time for them, plus they keep me company and get me out of the house. Plenty of local friends for my social life.

We have a lively Teams chat which we natter a bit in, similar to office chat.
I’m a huge introvert and find it much less draining.

You misunderstand me. It’s not about a manger micromanaging. It’s about a manager being able to pick up cues from a new starter that perhaps they haven’t understood something or are struggling, and that can happen simply by walking past their desk on the way to the loo.

I absolutely support younger workers, which is why I’m against fully WFH. But for office working to work, you need a decent number of people in- and you need experienced and senior workers in. if only the newer or younger staff go in because the rest have cosily got their feet under the dining room table, that’s going to cause division and siloing.

I hated WFH. I think it started from a traumatic time during Covid where we were all forced.
I hated rolling out of bed, starting work still in my dressing gown, being stuck in my spare bedroom, having a shower around 11am, not leaving the house all day, no interaction with anyone, feeling like work is always looming... I’m now 100% office based. Even though traffic is annoying,
especially now it’s getting into winter but I will never WFH again.
I enjoy getting up, getting ready and being out of the house. When I come home, I can purely relax without feeling like my house is work. My home is chaotic enough with kids, I enjoy getting out of it for work!!

For those of you who work fully remote, are you often in meetings when half or more of the attendees are all in the same office? How do you find that?

Ive wfh for probably 12 years now, i could never give it up, I have autism and I love being able to have the heating and noise (either music or silence) exactly how I want, less office politics. No commute and I love having my spare time to do home stuff, be that putting a wash on at lunchtime or home cooked lunch or a quick lunchtime bath to ease my back pain.

I prefer hybrid but has done full WFH (including pre pandemic where it wasn’t a thing and everyone else was in an office, that was tough). The things I found that help:
If you have time give yourself a “commute” by having a walk in the morning.
Make sure you have a lunch break, go out for a bit, watch TV, whatever…just don’t be in the room you work in.
Have things that are only for work, eg the mug and water bottle you use.

I really want a dog but can’t have one because nobody is at home in the day. I’d absolutely love a work from home job so I could have a dog. I’d also stress less having to rush from school pickup to the office and back to school again and have to battle for parking at both school and work.

WFH full time and love it, no office politics or people with annoying habits

Not all work is communal. even when I was at the beginning of my career, learning involved having a meeting with a senior person and then being sent off to work solo for hours or even days without another interaction. The work was extremely detail oriented and required focus.

This is true for my trainees now. I give them instructions and they are always welcome to come ask questions, but there is rarely value in sitting together for more than a few minutes. The questions are likely to be highly technical and require sharing a screen, which is easier to do if we aren’t in the same office anyway.

mid level people tend to send questions that have to be investigated.

I'm fully flexible, I manage my own diary. I WFH most days but also travel UK wide for business meetings and a day or so in the office here and there. I moan when I have to travel, and I moan when I have too many days at home 🤣🤣 hybrid is best, I love the interaction with my colleagues but don't get much actual work done when I'm in the office. I like my WFH days where I trundle to my home office in my trackies (best commute ever!) and can squeeze in a gym session, but I also like putting on my heels for a head office day 🤷🏻‍♀️

The funniest thing about the office days I go to is that they're not even used to their fullest potential anyway, which makes it clear it's just for the chatty gossipers to catch up on things and maybe some work will happen in between. Recently at my work, there was a support ticket (I work in software) for a script to be written in a way that hasn't been done for years (so there's been no direct need to learn). My line manager, in person, pestered me to take the ticket because they hadn't got a clue where to begin with it and they worried that nobody else was showing an interest. Delegation = yep, that's what managers do.

Someone sat next to me leaned across and said "If they really want to make use of these in-person days, they could do a coding session that involves everyone here, you know that 'collaboration' they want. That support ticket would be complete in a couple of days and everyone will walk away with some more knowledge." We both agreed.

There was even a time when a couple of outside contractors showed up to be part of it. I'd just returned from having had an investigative hysteroscopy for recurrent miscarriage, and there were these people sat across from me talking about their kids. Loudly. Tuning it out wasn't an option, so many unsavoury thoughts ran through my head, but I never once vocalised any of them. So I did what I've done for a number of years and stewed in my own misery.

Is anyone familiar with a YouTuber called Tom Scryleus? He's Swedish, he's highly introverted and is a consultant at a large company in Sweden. He described what it's like for an introvert to be in an office.

Paraphrasing:

"Imagine climbing into bed and trying to fall asleep in a nightclub while it's in session. You will get to sleep eventually, maybe, but you will be totally exhausted. You will feel broken and damaged. Now imagine doing that for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, all year round with a few days off here and there. It's sensory hell."

I agree

When we had lockdown, I thought I would love WFH. Turns out, I absolutely hated it.

I can see the appeal of WFH one day a week to get some real focus to do a list of tasks but I need people to talk to in a real life setting.

I guess some people like WFH full time because it suits their personality/life style. What suits one won’t necessarily suit another.

Hybrid working ( 3 days at home and two outside the home ) is the ideal imho

I truly love WFH but I'm an introvert and live near lots of major A roads and motorways so rush hour traffic is shocking and commuting anywhere in a 10 mile radius from home is a complete nightmare.

WFH is a blessing for me, it suits my personality and job. My role is stand alone with little interaction with colleagues other than the odd message/ email back and forth. I moved my desk so I'm not facing a wall, and I get natural light, more than I did when we had an office. I have my podcasts playing all day, they are interesting and funny background chatter.

There are lots of people I know that it definitely wouldn't suit, their jobs or personality need face/face interaction.

I think it depends on the job role, the person, the stage of career.

It suits some personalities - and those with the space at home or in a nearby cafe or similar to be able to work with sufficient seclusion from others if discussing confidential info (some of the things I've overheard on commuter trains!) and sufficient networks bandwidth.

It simply doesn't work for all roles. I can WFH but only with planning - there are a lot of tasks I can only do in the office, and indeed, not all areas of the office, for security reasons, do I need to make sure any of those are postponable or covered by others if I WFH.

I think if you have a new person in a team, it can be helpful for relationship building and knowledge sharing to be physically together to start with. Having said that, I've successfully built relationships with overseas colleagues I've never met in person over the years, and sharing screens can get over a lot of the "let me show you how to do this" issues.

Several years back, I wrote my car off, and was stuck WFH for 3 weeks until I bought a replacement. It was not good for my mental health, but at the time I was living rurally and the lack of car meant I also wasn't getting to my evening classes or swimming pool in the next time, so living alone, I felt extremely isolated, as i was not able to see anyone much at all. During covid, in contrast, everyone was in the same boat, and making an effort to check in with each other, so I didn't feel alone in the same way.

Fully agree - you learn so much by osmosis in an office environment that really can’t be replaced on Teams.

Also agree WFH suits older employees and those that have been there for a while. My manager by his own admission is lazy and likes to stay at home because he’s close to retirement. My team also haven’t had to train anyone new in a long, long time so the processes just aren’t there. It’s so difficult for me coming into a job like that. I end up sitting at home twiddling my thumbs while he finds work for me to do.

Yeah I hate it. Just gone back into the office after FT WFH for a few months for health reasons. I'm so much happier back at the office even though not many people are there. I have one colleague on my bank of desks and love having her there to talk to throughout the day. I wasn't talking to anyone all day before outside of my husband and kids. She seems to feel the same because she's in the office way more now I'm there. I think there's an effect where it's less appealing to come into the office if there aren't many people there. Then when people come in there aren't many people there so they don't come in again. And so on. I think a lot of people would enjoy being back in the office if everyone came in, like the old days. I definitely preferred that.

That's exactly what I did. Bliss.

It isn’t for everyone. I work fully from home and I thrive in it, but I am a homebody and love the convenience.

Maybe that’s how you learn best but not necessarily how everyone learns best?

I think this is quite an antiquated view. If a manager needs to sit and watch their staff to know how they are performing then they aren’t a very good manager, sounds a bit like micromanaging. Trusting employees will make them perform better than watching their every move. And if they can’t be trusted then they shouldn’t work there!

Yes, I agree, a company should ensure that their employees have the right set up to work from home. My company provide things to ensure you have the right set up. Also this is why I say that hybrid should exist for those who want or need to go into an office.

I think WFH full time suits anyone who works best that way provided their manager / company provides the support needed.

It sounds like you have a lack of trust in (and maybe a little bit of bias against) the ‘young’ ones. It’ll be the way the young ones work in future when the ‘older’ ones who are stuck in their ways have retired.

This generalisation about younger workers completely leaves out all the ones who aren't able to work much/at all in person. The fact is that for some, remote work is what lets them get the job in the first place, and some of these people are young.

The problem with people already established in their careers discussing this issue is that they too often conflate their own experiences when they were a young worker with young people per se. They're not the same thing at all. And you're doing it in your first paragraph too. As if anyone could possibly understand how training works in every role and sector.

I think hybrid is best, I'm 2 days in the office and 3 at home. I find that a good balance.

That simply doesn’t replace learning via sitting with your team and listening to what’s going on. Your manager can’t pick up on things by simply observing their team working. It’s also how you get to know others in the organisation, even if they’re not people you deal with. It’s such a siloed experience.

And of course it depends on people having somewhere decent to work at home. Not everyone has a spare room etc. Many youngsters are in small bedrooms in shared bourses. One of our young guys was using his ironing board as a desk during Covid! Not everyone can afford to kit out a home working space.

WFH full time completely suits older workers with the experience and wherewithal to make it work for them.