Developer this developer that. Fact is there are many other technical jobs that do not require full time programming a github repo. Always will be. Someone has to fix the crap you guys code.
It is what it is. We all made sacrifices during the pandemic. This had to happen in order to save lives. The only thing that matters is what we do going forward.
>It is what it is. We all made sacrifices during the pandemic. This had to happen in order to save lives.
Saving lives isn't the be-all and end-all of public policy. Normally public policy would look at the net effect in terms of quality-of-life-adjusted-life-years, and by that metric the lockdowns have had an overwhelmingly negative effect, since the lives they saved were mostly people already on death's door, while the lives they destroyed were young and middle-aged people.
I suggest we start by not trivializing ‘depression, eating disorders, neglect and emotional, physical or sexual abuse’ as simply ‘a sacrifice that had to happen in order to save lives’.
lot of companies in EU (especially D/A/CH) also have absolutely no plans to continue WFH. Despite covid restrictions going to be an issue also long term, they have (1 year later) still no strategy that incorporates or improves efficiency in WFH organization and workflows. Instead they all look forward to going back to a time that no longer exists.
So not the EU obviously but in the UK, or London at the very least, I don't know of a single white collar worker where much-increased WFH won't be the norm. I'm not just talking tech but banking, law and so on.
We do indeed seem to be far ahead of our European neighbours in this regard from what I'm seeing.
I agree, it will be the new norm. it's just that this insight hasn't arrived yet in many places (and Europe is generally lagging behind in doing things differently compared to how it was done the past hundreds of years). suppose it won't matter really since majority of companies won't survive the coming years anyway (for other reasons) so their short sightedness wrt WFH doesn't really matter :D
Yeah totally agree. The UK is much more enlightened and progressive than a lot of Europe on many things (unfashionable opinion, particularly for a "remainer" like me)
I'm from mainland Europe and have been living in the UK for more than a decade: bundling up all European countries under one 'Europe' umbrella isn't helping. There's insane variety between countries, cultures, and attitudes towards work. The UK in some aspects is ahead,while in others decades behind and the comparisons are often very difficult.
"I'm from mainland Europe and have been living in the UK for more than a decade: bundling up all European countries under one 'Europe' umbrella isn't helping"
Sure, Im not implying that Europe is homogenous, just that there are certain areas (eg WFH policies) where UK is an outlier. To this extent you can draw very general distinctions. Similarly you could draw distinctions between France or Italy vs the rest of Europe. Every country has its outlying traits.
never mind fashion trends, they come and go :) I think you're on point. Hopefully Britain will bounce back as a beacon of progressive ideas. It was always the voice of reason and brought balance to the dominating German/French axis of bureaucratic/pedantic authoritarian thought.
I work in the London (City of), and the company I work for (many thousands of employees) will be expected back in the office this year end. WFH has never been part of the company culture and, at most, people previously WFH 1 or 2 days over a 2 week period, and even that was exceptional.
> Are you not in IT? Remote is literally permanent now
Sadly, not for everyone. For the company I'm with, before covid we were allowed to spend up to three days out of the week remote as long as we came in for at least the two required days (Monday and Thursday). Then, right before covid, we were told that even this policy was going away and we had to be in the office four days out of the week and could remote on Wednesdays. That policy never took effect because covid hit right before the transition date, so now we're "remote until July 1st 2021, after which we'll reassess the threat and plan on everyone being in the office five days out of the week."
I've been so spoiled by WFH, I am not looking forward to going back to two hours of commuting per day.
While it's ironic, I think I understand why it's the case: there's a plethora of managers who can't really manage remotely the way they were used to in the office: by applying lots of pressure to those underneath them. It's much harder to show how big boss you are on zoom compared to an open space office,where 50 poor souls are scared to say anything back.
And most of them are redundant , was always wondering what most of the managers in our division actually did as we seemed to function better without them during WFH.
