Musk For PM

[life on mars]

Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” Electrek quoted one of Musk’s emails. “This is less than we ask of factory workers

[UNDERHILL1927]

Re: Musk For PM

Outdated, backward attitude, speaks before thinking, makes comments without any real evidence to back them up, perfect for Prime Minister.

[Canton Kev]

Re: Musk For PM

Proper cnut Elon Musk

[JamesWales]

Re: Musk For PM

40 hours is excessive but I would look for three days at least depending on the role

[delmbox]

Re: Musk For PM

Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” Electrek quoted one of Musk’s emails. “This is less than we ask of factory workers

Serious question - how does it harm you if people have changed their working patterns and work from home?

[cyril evans awaydays]

Re: Musk For PM

I can't get this horrible picture out of my head of Boris Johnson's torso in a fragrance ad.

[Feedback]

Re: Musk For PM

Serious question - how does it harm you if people have changed their working patterns and work from home?

Teams do not always work as effectively when people are based in different locations. Its not a hard and fast rule but I certainly prefer being in the office as we get more done when we are together.

[JamesWales]

Re: Musk For PM

Serious question - how does it harm you if people have changed their working patterns and work from home?

Appreciate this was directed elsewhere but for me;

1 - It makes doing my work harder. Things take longer. Simple conversations turn into emails. Harder to 'ask the room' at once. Feeling of invading someones home life. Generally, things take significantly longer and that impacts my work. This all depends on the nature of peoples work, but for me things are far less efficient now.

2 - I miss them as people and colleagues. This has a significantly detrimental impact on my mental wellbeing and on the long term potentially theirs too as people need to be able to engage with eachother. Without question friendships have been weakened and a once vibrant team spirit is now practically zero.

3 - Notwithstanding point 1, there is now far less collaboration, sharing ideas and learning from eachother. I think even if short term there are no differences, in the long term it's significant. I have personally developed far less in the last two years than any other period of my career because we are not having anything like as many conversations (formal and informal), sharing ideas, overhearing conversations etc etc etc.

Flexibility is good, but having people at home 100% of the time is very bad in my opinion, for all concerned. But for those three reasons above, even others choosing to WFH all the time has a significantly detrimental impact on my job and wellbeing. In short, I've gone from generally liking my job to at best tolerating it at worst hating it.

[cyril evans awaydays]

Re: Musk For PM

Appreciate this was directed elsewhere but for me;

Flexibility is good, but having people at home 100% of the time is very bad in my opinion, for all concerned. But for those three reasons above, even others choosing to WFH all the time has a significantly detrimental impact on my job and wellbeing. In short, I've gone from generally liking my job to at best tolerating it at worst hating it.

I sympathise with your view and the effect things had on your mental health.

I would say that during my working life I was much more comfortable working in the office than from home. Except when I had a discrete piece of work to complete that did not need a great input from others.

As you say it has its challenges as well though. You can easily become more fixated and driven by your work than is healthy for your wider life. Particularly when I was working on major time driven Programmes and Projects I got wrapped up in the energy of it. Typically lots of the people I worked with would be staying in hotels away from their homes. It was easy to drift into a couple of beers after work and sometimes longer.

When I got home, my partner's issues with her day and our kid's schooling seemed trivial compared with the "important" issues I was wrestling with and keeping me awake and motivated and became a source of friction.

I look back on those days with some pride from a work perspective but lots of regrets that my priorities were warped. If in that period I was working remotely I do wonder whether the balance of my life would have been different or if I would have ended up with a similar perspective to you on being denied access to a more energising work environment.

[TWGL1]

Re: Musk For PM

I’ve WFH for over 20 years , after previously being office based and I love it. It offers a great work life balance and flexibility for childcare ( as in pick ups from school etc)

I’ve never had a days sick in my working life either, and I think WFH (in general) helps with sickness absence.

There are downsides as in your work social life is almost non existent and collaborative interaction is not quite the same, however, for me I’ve got a fairly large circle of friends outside of the workplace.

I think if you have a separate office within your home it also helps as you can “close the door” at the end of the working day. That being said if you don’t have the room , I have been told by colleagues it can become lonely.

[Doucas]

Re: Musk For PM

I’ve WFH for over 20 years , after previously being office based and I love it. It offers a great work life balance and flexibility for childcare ( as in pick ups from school etc)

I’ve never had a days sick in my working life either, and I think WFH (in general) helps with sickness absence.

There are downsides as in your work social life is almost non existent and collaborative interaction is not quite the same, however, for me I’ve got a fairly large circle of friends outside of the workplace.

I think if you have a separate office within your home it also helps as you can “close the door” at the end of the working day. That being said if you don’t have the room , I have been told by colleagues it can become lonely.

Great point, I WFH all the way through the pandemic, we were asked to come back a few days a week (which I don't mind to be honest) but was sick for the first time in about two and a half years within two days of coming back and had to take a couple of days off sick.

[Dorcus]

Re: Musk For PM

I think this issue should be purely down to personal preference. If you prefer to work in the office fine, if you prefer to work from home also fine. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. People should simply live and let live.

[JamesWales]

Re: Musk For PM

Interesting posts above. It really is different for all people, and I respect that. My issue is with 100% home working, not a mix, which vastly reduces the issues I talk about.

That said, within Cyril and TWGL1's posts, I think we see two more hidden issues:

Firstly the issue of working away. What I have found is that I am coming into work to more and more emails sent on a weekend. More and more people complaining of the blurring of home and work and being unable to, or pressurised to never switch off. When office based, sure you may stay til 6pm or something, but when you are home your time is typically yours.

TWGL1 rightly talks about flexibility and childcare. I have two kids, so this is critical. Flexible working is absolutely a positive. The idea of having to work from 8.45 to 5pm is very archaic, but you don’t need to work from home 100% of the time to benefit from that. People with kids coming in at 9.30 is great. The wider issue this raises is that many job, generally lower paid, do require being on site, and so with a more middle class office based workforce at home, they are left with declining transport services, fewer childcare facilities etc, and so a new inequality opens up in society. Again, this is emphasised by the luxury of having a home office – but that is a luxury to those who can afford. A shared office is a democratic space – everyone has access to the same environment irrespective of income. You send people home and you make some people live and work in vastly inferior spaces to those with more money.

Secondly, again, TWGL1 says he was office based, presumably earlier in his career – again, this is a concern of mine. A great worry is my kids leave uni and suddenly they are told to WFH in their small shared flat. It’s a radical change in socialisation and work environment that we all benefitted from and are now closing off to future generations.

Like I said, balance is good. The ability to work from home is good, but I genuinely believe that mass working from home will prove to be the single most damaging thing to the nations mental health we could do in the long term.

[TWGL1]

Re: Musk For PM

Interesting posts above. It really is different for all people, and I respect that. My issue is with 100% home working, not a mix, which vastly reduces the issues I talk about.

That said, within Cyril and TWGL1's posts, I think we see two more hidden issues:

Firstly the issue of working away. What I have found is that I am coming into work to more and more emails sent on a weekend. More and more people complaining of the blurring of home and work and being unable to, or pressurised to never switch off. When office based, sure you may stay til 6pm or something, but when you are home your time is typically yours.

TWGL1 rightly talks about flexibility and childcare. I have two kids, so this is critical. Flexible working is absolutely a positive. The idea of having to work from 8.45 to 5pm is very archaic, but you don’t need to work from home 100% of the time to benefit from that. People with kids coming in at 9.30 is great. The wider issue this raises is that many job, generally lower paid, do require being on site, and so with a more middle class office based workforce at home, they are left with declining transport services, fewer childcare facilities etc, and so a new inequality opens up in society. Again, this is emphasised by the luxury of having a home office – but that is a luxury to those who can afford. A shared office is a democratic space – everyone has access to the same environment irrespective of income. You send people home and you make some people live and work in vastly inferior spaces to those with more money.

Secondly, again, TWGL1 says he was office based, presumably earlier in his career – again, this is a concern of mine. A great worry is my kids leave uni and suddenly they are told to WFH in their small shared flat. It’s a radical change in socialisation and work environment that we all benefitted from and are now closing off to future generations.

Like I said, balance is good. The ability to work from home is good, but I genuinely believe that mass working from home will prove to be the single most damaging thing to the nations mental health we could do in the long term.

Regus offer this service as an alternative to working in the home ~

From a private office with a few desks, to an entire building, we provide the office environment businesses need to collaborate, innovate and grow. Find flexible serviced office space for rent from as little as a day, or stay for longer and personalize your space to suit the unique needs of your business.

This to me appears to be the way WFH is heading.

[JamesWales]

Re: Musk For PM

What I have long suspected. WFH a vehicle for widening inequalities

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10906439/Working-home-WIDENED-gap-Englands-rich-poor-think-thank-report-concludes.html