Can trader still work from home in 2021?

Many banks are very nice this year and allow their traders work from home for almost entire year with the same pay.

I heard some bank allow trader to trade at their home permanently so that means they can live in cheap suburb yet still get paid well.

Of course, bigger banks are being jerk again by calling its employee back to office so they can receive more tax credit from New York City government without caring much about lifes of their employees.

Do you support trader continue to work from home in 2021?

4 Comments
 

At some point there is value to having people physically around you.  I think there is a little bit of a mirage since banks did so well with market volatility in 2Q and is largely riding off that standout quarter.  I think as things progress, and as volatility stays low, it's going to be harder to make money, and eventually we'll get a management-based push back to the office.  Depending on how this vaccine pans out, I'm guessing 3Q at the earliest though.

This also isn't unheard of - a lot of my friends who work for oil majors have had to come in for the last two+ months just because management knows productivity is down when people WFH.  Once the P&L starts to falter, management will care more.  

 

I think the argument can go both ways. Saying that there is some “great benefit” to being physically near your colleagues just seems like a rationalization to get people back in the office so employers can stop feeling bad about unused office space. There was also a bbg article today about how RE firms are pressuring big NYC companies to bring their employees back so that businesses won’t die and tenants won’t miss rent payments. Anecdotally, it doesn’t seem like any of the actual employees want to go back, rather management and other external agents who will benefit from their return.

 

Definitely could be the case.  I definitely enjoy sleeping in and being able to spend more down time on my phone and stuff like that.  I imagine if I was in MO/BO, WFH has been an amazing development, probably at the cost of efficiency.  But since that's not that important in that role, it makes sense for rank and file people to not want to do it.

In my admittedly anecdotal experience (and talking to some guys in London, where they had around 50% ish percent of seats on the floor filled recently), the people who want to go back to work tend to either be (a) managers or (b) people who are trying to build/develop new process/software/business.  I think broadly, there is a positive (although not super strong) correlation between wanting to go in and general productivity/value-add of the person.

One other anecdote is that I was in the office with about 5-6 trading and sales guys earlier during the pandemic (normally our two rows have about 20-25 people), and everything was noticeably much smoother.  The environment also made it much more natural to talk about clients/trades/market views and stuff like that.  I do think the working in an office is better for overall productivity for the FO, but just like eating vegetables or going to work in the first place, most people don't like it.  It's more of balancing that want with output.  

I could see some sort of hybrid model where maybe only 1/3 of the original MO/BO space still exists (they get the option of working remotely, or can flex remote days often), while FO has to come in.  I'd be ok with that as long as all the back end processing wasn't affected.

 
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