My wife’s work is making people come back in office, and she’s above the 50-mile limit they set. (Not only that, she’s worked from home for 10 years now). She brought that up, and they said they were looking into possibly expanding it out. She told her boss if that happens, she’s gone, and they lose someone with almost 19 years of experience who literally writes their training manuals on how to do what she does, lol.
The shear stupidity of these people is astonishing. If I ran a company, it would be nothing but WFH, and I would poach so many good workers, lol.
But how will you make sure their every waking moment is devoted to work? Gotta invest in some ridiculous office space and middle managers to crack the whip.
That’s the thing - if I’m being forced to come into an office when my work doesn’t require it, I am 100% a clock watcher, and outside my scheduled work hours, I an unavailable. You sent me an email at 5:01 PM on Friday? I’ll read it at 8:00 AM on Monday.
Take away my flexibility, and I take away yours.
That’s a really small bubble. My employer has a 125km range before we can request an exemption to the 2-day-a-week policy.
Hopefully things don’t change for your wife!
*sheer fyi
Shear is a verb
if that happens, she’s gone, and they lose someone with almost 19 years of experience who literally writes their training manuals on how to do what she does, lol.
She openly told her boss that if they tell her to come into the office she will willingly quit the job and forfeit unemployment so they can downsize that headcount and spread around the work to other employees?
Gotta play 3D chess, don’t show them your hand. They now have an easy way to fire her on demand without cause and without having a mark on their employment numbers.
Have to go with the angle of: if you make me move you need to pay my relocation costs because you have asked me to move. After all, this isn’t new and they have known your home address for 10 years. Make them cover the increased cost or they get to pay unemployment for laying you off. That’s the only real angle you probably have anyway that gives them a cost.
After seeing the headline, I thought it would be people moving farther away to be outside of the RTO radius. Instead its people moving closer to work because they are cities/states away with WFH.
A lot of companies (Amazon) don’t have a radius. It’s RTO or nothing.
“My sellers both work at the same company, which told them they have to be in the office three days a week or they’ll lose their jobs. They have six months to make the move. They’ll probably have to take a $100,000 loss on their home,” Pendleton said.
Pretty sure I would rent out the home instead of taking a $100,000 loss? Rent something to live in where you’re moving to until it’s more favorable to sell.
Six months is plenty of time to find a new job these days.
Right?
Rent to own is also an option.
That assumes you can get a back to ground be you two mortgages though.
This is an excellent opportunity for corporations to buy up homes.
The rich will only get richer until we stand up.
Yeah, that’s nuts. Also, as a couple you both probably shouldn’t be working for the same company from a risk reduction POV.
In a lot of these WFH communities, the rental market softened with the rest of the housing market, so you might not have renters or have to take a hit on the rent. Also, being a landlord more than a commute-able distance away from your property sounds like asking for trouble, unless you hire a property manager, but that’s another hit to your income.
Even if the market in some of these more remote areas softened a bit, I think taking a $100,000 hit over one year is crazy, though. Even if you lose $100 or $200 per month renting it out, that’s a long ways from $100,000. Meanwhile, you’re paying off the mortgage and building equity.
I know lots of companies are handling the wfh and return to office situation poorly. But to provide a counterpoint, at the start of covid, I led all the engineering teams in a large organization with dozens of sites. When we went to wfh we made it clear that we were authorizing remote work with the contingent that the team could be called in as needed, not to move outside of the area, and not to travel more than two hours away when on call (1 week every two months) etc. Sometimes things break bad enough you need the team’s to be physically present at a location, or doing major border device work, etc.
Either the organizations didn’t message properly, or a lot of people moved despite being told that the wfh wasn’t a permanent remote work accommodation. I’m all for remote work and hybrid, etc, but on a personal level buying a house outside your commute range while knowing you might get called in someday and being brown to your job… just poor decision making.
Fwiw, I approved permanent remote with for all my staff who didn’t have any physical responsibilities. For those whose jobs involved any physical infrastructure, the best a could do was hybrid with no minimum number of days in office, just come in as required for the work.
Either the organizations didn’t message properly, or a lot of people moved despite being told that the wfh wasn’t a permanent remote work accommodation.
A lot of employers straight up lied. In some situations, management said employees would be permanent WFH but they didn’t have that authority. In other situations, employers changed their mind and the employees have no recourse other than trying to call the employers bluff.
Yours is a sane and reasonable approach. Sometimes you need to drive down to the datacenter and push a button, or there’s special equipment you need that is cheaper to have in one place. These jobs should be in person when necessary.
Pushing people to commute outside of this framework puts unnecessary strain on transportation networks and useless emissions in the environment.
At my previous role, I ALWAYS wanted to be onsite at the datacenter if I was doing upgrades of critical systems. I’d sit in the lobby where it was quiet instead of on the datacenter floor but there was comfort knowing that if a button needed pushed I didn’t have to drive 30 minutes to do it.
Crash the housing market to save the office building market
tbf, this is probably suburban / rural areas to move back into urban areas that are already having crises. Won’t fix any of the housing markets in high population centers.
I left after 6 months. Things changed over Covid, I changed over Covid. There’s no going back now. Not now, not ever.
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