Working from Home.

[Rjk]

Exactly - it is a real incentive.

Manufacturing industries spend fortunes upgrading machinery to do the job faster. But, they also spend fortunes on inefficient and unrewarding work practices. Penalising people who do the work by giving them things that lazy sods didn't complete? Result - efficient worker slows down, inefficient worker carries on not giving a crap. Rewarding people for completing ahead of time? Efficient worker has more leisure time, is more likely to keep up the effort. Inefficient worker will say "I'll have a bit of that" and increase their effort.

In my experience there is a lot of resistance to this from the people at the top.

They have often risen to the top working in the old fashioned way of working, and don't feel comfortable letting go of the reigns.
Now many have been forced to during the pandemic it will be interesting whether there will be an attempt to pick those reigns back up and how the workforce will react to it.

I'm working mostly with people in China, Eastern Europe and the states at the moment, so it makes next to no difference whether I'm in the office or not, and I already have to keep unconventional hours.
Home working allows me to leave 30 minutes later when I have to pick the kids up to school, and get to work 30 minutes sooner after I drop them off. More time is available for work and I save on fuel costs.
My girlfriend doesn't work at all so the amount of sex during office hours has definitely increased (from 0) so I can't claim to always be 100 focussed on the job (so to speak), but I think all things considered it works out better for me and for the company I work for.
Some things are always better face to face though. Once things seem more stable from a covid point of view I think I'll be trying to spend 2 days in the office and 3 days at home per week.

[Allez Allez Allez]

In my experience there is a lot of resistance to this from the people at the top.

They have often risen to the top working in the old fashioned way of working, and don't feel comfortable letting go of the reigns.
Now many have been forced to during the pandemic it will be interesting whether there will be an attempt to pick those reigns back up and how the workforce will react to it.

I'm working mostly with people in China, Eastern Europe and the states at the moment, so it makes next to no difference whether I'm in the office or not, and I already have to keep unconventional hours.
Home working allows me to leave 30 minutes later when I have to pick the kids up to school, and get to work 30 minutes sooner after I drop them off. More time is available for work and I save on fuel costs.
My girlfriend doesn't work at all so the amount of sex during office hours has definitely increased (from 0) so I can't claim to always be 100 focussed on the job (so to speak), but I think all things considered it works out better for me and for the company I work for.
Some things are always better face to face though. Once things seem more stable from a covid point of view I think I'll be trying to spend 2 days in the office and 3 days at home per week.

Interesting, I've just interviewed an old colleague who got in touch with me looking for a role. She has been forced back into the office and no real justifications have been offered from her manager who is a classic micromanager. The assumption is that, if the manager can't see you, you're up to no good. It's that sort of pre-historic thinking that has spurred the OP into making a bit of an arse of himself talking, as he is, as a casual observer and not an actual player.

Undoubtedly there are things that are better face to face, and I have no engineering experience so I concede the percentages of time required to collaborate may be higher than in my line of work.

How often have we all finished early just because we have a dental appointment at 3:30 and that requires us to leave at 3pm, and it's not worth going back for half an hour? How often have we had workers, often women sadly, for whom the chore of picking up the kids has fallen to them and not their partner? One lady I work with has just gone back to full-time work purely because, after picking up her daughter, she can get back to work. She also does an hour late at evening. Prior to this, everything was office based and she had no option other than to go part-time. Like I say, this tends to unfairly fall on women so it has held her progress back.

The OP listed some suppositions on why home working is going to cause all our jobs to go to India, but hasn't offered anything other than a little thought that occurred to him that he simply had to put into writing. Sad to say, there are folks in boardrooms around the country with an equally silly outlook. Home working isn't for everyone, but clogging up roads for stuff that can be done in a building that costs a fortune in mortgage payments - completely non-sensical. A bit like the OP.

[Feedback]

In my experience there is a lot of resistance to this from the people at the top.

They have often risen to the top working in the old fashioned way of working, and don't feel comfortable letting go of the reigns.
Now many have been forced to during the pandemic it will be interesting whether there will be an attempt to pick those reigns back up and how the workforce will react to it.

I'm working mostly with people in China, Eastern Europe and the states at the moment, so it makes next to no difference whether I'm in the office or not, and I already have to keep unconventional hours.
Home working allows me to leave 30 minutes later when I have to pick the kids up to school, and get to work 30 minutes sooner after I drop them off. More time is available for work and I save on fuel costs.
My girlfriend doesn't work at all so the amount of sex during office hours has definitely increased (from 0) so I can't claim to always be 100 focussed on the job (so to speak), but I think all things considered it works out better for me and for the company I work for.
Some things are always better face to face though. Once things seem more stable from a covid point of view I think I'll be trying to spend 2 days in the office and 3 days at home per week.

are we supposed to believe an engineer has a girlfriend, never mind has sex on the regular?

[Rjk]

are we supposed to believe an engineer has a girlfriend, never mind has sex on the regular?

this coming from an accountant?