WFH or Working in the office?

Now that we are a few weeks out into this quarantine thing, what do you all think about WFH? Do you prefer the convenience to working from home or would you rather be back in the office? What do you all think about WFH being implemented permanently on a broader scale after COVID ends (getting rid of physical offices)?

 

Offices have better connections, more resources available and are also a space to promote social interaction. WFH can be useful at times, but I personally prefer the office. I also hate associating work with an environment where I want to relax in for long periods of time. I worked from home for 2 weeks after a minor surgery and hated it. Yes, I save time without commutes, but I have to spend time cooking and dealing with a shitty internet connection. WFH will never become the new standard overall. It may work for some freelancers (although that's why WeWork and similar companies took off - even freelancers like having an "office" environment). The only way I see regular WFH working for me is if I have a large enough house to have a physical office as a room with everything I would typically have (beast internet, great set up etc).

 

+1. I echo the comments by @The Phamaguy (minus the surgery part). Internet connection and office set up at home is not as good as at work. Three more reasons for preferring the office: (1) Zoom meetings feel awkward even with good internet connection. (2) I also miss the interactions with colleagues: Being able to walk down the hall to talk to someone about a question is not easily replaceable by call/Zoom. Face time does not matter much in my work but the face to face interactions before COVID-19 make the workplace feel more like a big family. Now I feel somewhat disconnected. (3) and this is a personal preference: As much as I dislike commute, mine was not bad and I don’t mind listening to music or being on the call while driving. It was a nice routine.

Regarding the prediction on whether WFH would continue, assuming the economy would be back to pre-COVID19, my guess is at least firms will take advantage of at least a part of the current setup and be more relaxed about work format.

 
Most Helpful

I think I should have the freedom to do what I want - days in the office when it's appropriate and days at home when it's appropriate.

Offices undoubtedly have their time and place and are more efficient and effective at certain things. But also, sometimes I don't need to put pants on to do busy work or go into the office and talk to people I half-like about sports and the weather.

Flexibility is my key take-away from all of this - not uniformity one way or another.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
thexfactor336:
Spot on. This time really just shows that those Fridays where you go into the office to reply to 3 emails, take an hour and a half lunch, and then surf the internet until taking off at 3pm are better served by WFH.

The "why am I even here?" followed by "I should have just left hours ago" days are the worst.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

Your proposal is interested. However, wouldn't coordinating meetings be difficult if days were completely flexible? Not sure how team oriented CRE is but how do you feel about remote teamwork generally? What about productivity at home compared to the office?

Array
 
quantgrunt:
However, wouldn't coordinating meetings be difficult if days were completely flexible? Not sure how team oriented CRE is but how do you feel about remote teamwork generally? What about productivity at home compared to the office?

No. A couple points:

  1. A lot of meetings are pointless and whatever content they're about could be more effectively and efficiently managed via email. I'd venture to guess 75% of the meetings I attend are pointless and 90% of the good ones last far too long past the purpose their serve. This applies to conference calls too and I'm sure will apply to Zoom soon enough. So right off the bat, fewer meetings is awesome. I'd love if the only meetings I attended were OACs.

  2. When you do need a meeting, you would either schedule it consistently (every other Tuesday at 10 AM) so people can plan around it or set the expectation that when meetings are needed, part of your ability to work flexibly means that you will be expected to attend in-person meetings that are scheduled. No "I came into the office 3 days already so I'm staying home today" nonsense.

  3. For remote teamwork, it depends on what the work is. If it can be done remotely, then sure. If it's more effective to do it in person, at CRE Development, LLC you would be expected to do it in person. That doesn't necessarily mean in the office, either, but the office would likely be the default place to meet.

  4. As far as productivity at home vs. the office, I think this varies too much from person to person and job to job for people to make the blanket statements that they have on this forum. It is a personal choice to get distracted by TV, the internet, pets, etc. at home just like it is a personal choice to get distracted by bullshitting with coworkers, the internet, etc. at the office. Those distractions aren't inherently wrong at either location either - it helps to take a break from time to time, refocus, and then get back to it. Should it matter if you take that break via Netflix or arguing college sports with your coworkers? Frankly, I think most people dramatically overstate how productive they are at the office because they feel like they're "working" since they're sitting in their cube.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

No commute. No dress clothes. Can sleep in later. High speed wifi. Nobody swinging by my desk interrupting me. Can blast music on my speakers instead of headphones. Can chill outside like today where's it gorgeous out. Can cut the grass in between phone calls. Just way more flexibility of not being downtown.

 
Investment Manager in AM - Equities:
I prefer wfm

yeah I’ve done work from miami (wfm) a couple times - miami is great - fist pumping on south beach yeahhhhhh

 

I prefer being in the office, but I think my company will now be more lenient to allow people to work remotely for a day or two, since productivity and flow has been fairly consistent. I do, however, miss being in a professional environment where there are things happening and people talking shop. I would never go all in on the home office.

I don't know... Yeah. Almost definitely yes.
 

I prefer the office, especially since my commute was 30 mins and I typically wear jeans anyway.

Although I got all my systems, Bloomberg and screen set up at home, I miss the quick bouncing around of ideas and interesting discussions in the office. Not meeting people face to face is also a pain for extroverts.

And, although what CRE said about pointless meetings is true, now I have at least one or two pointless calls everyday where colleagues talk about updates, ideas, what they're working on etc. Stuff that we used to deal with by getting up from your desk and mentioning it to colleagues.

Not to mention call conferences or Zoom always seem to break down. I've have some funny ones: DB strategist speaking on a low battery phone from his boiler cupboard and UBS presenting for more than 15 mins with no sound on either presentation or phone, then some French person randomly talking throughout.

 

I’ve been doing about 3 days WFH and 2 days at the (empty) office. I’m more productive at the office but some days I don’t need to be moving at 100MPH and that’s where I feel like WFH works well.

Granted, I have been loving being the only one on my desk in the office so honestly I might start going more since there is more food and TP at the office than my apartment.

 

I would rather be in the office. Commuting sucks, but I always had a podcast in my headphones. I live in a small apartment and it sucks working from home. Plus I get distracted a lot so I need the office. I think when this is over WFH will be an option with most jobs.

Greed is Good!
 

I prefer working in the office. Most of my job right now entails extracting data with SQL from like 5 different servers and presenting it in a nice format for decision makers. When you are remote that connection is significantly slower and sometimes I am disconnected for no apparent reason (can reconnect immediately and just restart). Specially in a time like this when my boss will be on the phone with her boss and they need a very specific figure that no one has ever asked for before because they were never relevant before this crisis and I need to have it in 5 minutes because there is a real time conversation going on, having all of your systems work at like 30% normal speed and reliability is just frustrating. The same goes for when the data is in some excel file in the shared directories and it just loads insanely slow.

I suppose that if you are like a software dev or database guy doing normal reports then this is is not as frustrating but when your job is to assist the decision makers in real time it is just insane to deal with technical issues. And the fact that IT took like an entire day to tell me that I need extra port information to connect to my servers when working remotely does not improve my perception of them.

 

Definitely prefer wfh for me. I'm easily as productive if not more at home than I am in the office, and I can watch Netflix on short breaks instead of being forced to stay in my seat and browse the internet at work.

I have a set up at work where my boss is literally facing me and can see every move I make. Sounds a little ridiculous but this actually impedes my productivity and adds a little stress. Is he looking at me when I check my phone for a minute or two? Who knows...

Side note but my one irritation with wfh isn't so much about wfh but that I've noticed most/all calls that would normally be conference calls in the office are turning into video Zoom calls, which means I actually have to look presentable nearly every day. A little frustrating.

 

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Greed is Good!
 

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