Work

[Tommy!]

I'd happily work from home 100%. People at work labour that "social" aspect to get us back in but I get that from finishing work at 5 and being in the pub by 5:15 to talk to people I like, not sitting for 8 hours in the company of 150 people who think I'm a cunt with fuck all to do than watch Up Pompeii on YouTube.

[Carbomb]

There are trade-offs. Running my own business is the best decision I ever made, hands down - I don't have to answer to anyone, least of all arsehole bosses, I keep my own hours (within reason, of course), there's no stressful commute, and I get to get up later. I wouldn't give any of that up now.

But the biggest problem I've had is that, since starting this job, barring Christmases, I haven't had a proper holiday in six years (and even a couple of Christmases, I found myself working). I've been burnt out a few times now, and it's rubbish. The pandemic really fucked me over in this regard - the business was on its way to becoming fully self-sustaining, making decent money, then I had a whole load of work wiped out in a week, and the industry took a couple of years to properly recover.

The other factor is that, if I want to take a holiday, I have to earn twice the amount necessary - once over to pay for the actual holiday, twice over to pay for the down time. Not the easiest of propositions.

I've been taking measures, like regularly giving myself four-day weekends once a month, giving me a chance to decompress, but also to have something to look forward to. I also learned more about my job in finer detail, so now I'm more able to work smart, and don't have to work as hard as I did at the beginning. Without a boss or manager with targets or criteria to hold me to, I can go about my work how I see fit, and it's worked out so much better for my mental health as well as my earning.

[SuperBacon]

One of the disadvantages is that you do genuinely lose some relationships/connections when working from home.

For example, my company has just under 40,000 employees, and there are 200 in my directorate alone. 

I work on a project that is funded by the EU (BLOODY BRUSSELS!!! 😤😤😤) and that funding ends in December. Now hopefully there will be another load of funding that comes along, but there may be the very real possibility that I will join another project/team, but I haven't made any of those natural small relationships with other departments (even though we "work" closely with each other) where people would go "Oh, I know a good worker, SuperBacon. He'd be perfect in that role!" and that's solely down to working from home. 

Now obviously my managers recommendation goes a long way, and my company loves to retain people and keep them so I'm not too concerned, but it is one aspect of it that is a slight negative.

Similar to others I don't actually mind going into the office. It's a £4 bus trip for me, Winchesters a lovely place and I stock up on noodles when I'm there, but I don't think I could do 5x days in the office again. 

WFH I get to take and pick up my youngest from school, spend more time with the kids and genuinely wind down from the second I stop working, which I love. My manager trusts us, and that is really refreshing as well. 

I've tried working in cafes a few times, but my anxiety doesn't allow me to relax and I never get anything down, and I've tried working in the local library (as it's part of my organisation) but that was just weird and I didn't like it. 

[Surf Digby]

12 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Did you weigh all this up before you started, and do you have to be in the office every day? Is there extra salary to make up for it?

Not well enough. I think I got a bit too excited at getting the job, and didn't property factor in how much I'd be spending.

There's no real salary increase to speak of. I left the previous job because it was becoming unbearable. 18 months of being told things will improve when they get more staff, but more and more people were leaving, and not many were joining (and some of them didn't last very long before walking out). Almost every day I was working 60-90 minutes after my shift ended to make sure everything was done, because I was covering two, sometimes three other people's workloads during the shift.

The new company seems nice enough, and in addition to the funeral, have said that if I need to take any time off to support my girlfriend in the lead up to it, that I can do. 

I don't think I was missing human interaction in general, as I get about a bit with the bands, more that I'm missing a lot of my old workmates from before lockdown, and being among a familiar crowd.

I think maybe hybrid working may be a better option, and ideally something closer to home, 'cos I feel a bit of a shit for not doing the school run anymore.

[SuperBacon]

I hope it works out for you pal.

[MungoChutney]

I love hybrid working. I'm seconded to a role that is almost entirely desk-based for the next couple of years so could easily work from home. But, I do enjoy going into an office a couple of days a week, ever since I got a move to an office that's only a 15 minute drive with light traffic. I enjoy getting in and seeing people in person while also being able to work from home if it suits family need. Luckily it looks like hybrid is about to be approved as the overarching policy from now on. 

[BomberPat]

18 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

I remember @Loki mentioning how the best way to work from home is to dress for the office and at the end of the day, go for a walk and when you get back, change out of your office clothes. I thought it was great advice to create the divide between work and home. 

Creating those breaks is really important. At the moment I'm working from home two or three days most weeks. We have a spare room that's become a de facto office, but my girlfriend's usually working in there if she's home because her job involves taking a lot more calls than mine, so I tend to do my work sat on the sofa. I haven't gone as far as having a change of clothes (as I basically just work in jeans and a T-shirt even in the office these days anyway), but I always get out for a walk at lunchtime, and again when I finish.

During lockdown, when I was living in a tiny flat, I'd be working all day on my laptop, then come 5pm I'd still be on the same laptop, sat in the same place, for the rest of the evening, I really struggled. Far too late into lockdown I bought myself a desk, and even though it was just in the same room, it still created a good mental break to know that once I'd stepped out from behind that desk, I wasn't working any more.

14 hours ago, Tommy! said:

I'd happily work from home 100%. People at work labour that "social" aspect to get us back in but I get that from finishing work at 5 and being in the pub by 5:15 to talk to people I like, not sitting for 8 hours in the company of 150 people who think I'm a cunt with fuck all to do than watch Up Pompeii on YouTube.

When I saw my Dad recently, he really pushed the "social" side of going to the office (he'd retired by the time lockdown happened, so has never worked from home), and I struggled to find a polite way of telling him that it's less of an issue when you actually have friends outside of work, which he didn't particularly have. I don't know if it's a generational thing, but I get enough social interaction outside of work with people I actually like, and the colleagues I get on with I'd gladly grab a drink with when we're not working anyway.

 

In my current job I'm split between two teams, and it's an awkward situation, because I'm the only person that applies to. I have two line managers, one of whom I've literally never met face-to-face, who is perfectly happy to do everything remotely and just trust that his team know what they're doing and get on with it, and one who micromanages everything, looks for every excuse to get people in the office, clearly hates the idea of people working from home, and holds meetings about meetings constantly. Exactly the opposite of the kind of boss I work well with. I've asked her before, given that her team is split across five or six different buildings on campus anyway, what the difference is between us all working in different offices and not seeing each other us all working from home and not seeing each other, and never gotten a clear answer. 

I'm lucky that I have a short commute - about 15-20 minutes on the bus or train, or a 45 minute walk if I'm feeling it - so the difference between on-site and WFH isn't that huge for me, but, especially if I moved to a job further afield, I don't think I could go back to full-time in the office. I just work differently at home, there's absolutely no reason my current job requires me to be in the office, or tied to a desk 9-5 at all, and working from home means that I'll get up and do the washing up or the hoovering when I need a break from my screen, so I get those kind of jobs done during the day, freeing up more of my own time later - I sometimes look back and wonder when I ever found time for that stuff before. 

I don't do it much, but there are days when I'll work in a café or a pub, and it's just nice to have that freedom. Sometimes I'll be booked on a wrestling show in Jersey on a Sunday, and if I wanted to, I could take my laptop with me and work remotely from there on the Monday to save me having to either take the day off or get the red-eye flight back. A few times I've had texts from a mate who's in London for the afternoon, and if I'm at home I've been able to drop everything, go and meet them, and just make sure I'm keeping an eye on emails on my phone, and pick up anything that needs doing once I get home in the evening. Again, it's just flexibility, and that's all I really want from a job at the moment. It's a bit depressing how one of the few positives of the pandemic was that it could have transformed how we approach work, yet there's a huge part of the management class that want to undo all of that and have us all chained to desks and phones for eight hours of a day, and cramming on to commuter trains again.

My current job has its umpteenth restructure coming up, too, currently going through consultation. Everyone's being assured that there's no job losses, but the org chart they've put out doesn't have as many jobs for the teams that replace mine as are working in the current structure. People on secondment to this team are being told, on paper, that they'll return to their substantive roles, but in most cases those roles don't exist any more. So I'm fully expecting to get moved into some other team, with yet another new manager, and who knows what their approach will be. It would be nice to go six months without one of these.

[King Coconut]

15 hours ago, Carbomb said:

giving me a chance to decompress

Are you a submariner?

[Carbomb]

3 minutes ago, King Coconut said:

Are you a submariner?

Yo no submarinero, soy capitán, soy capitán

[SuperBacon]

What a legend.

Reminder that it's the best Twitter/Facebook/YouTube account ever.

 

[Keith Houchen]

1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:

What a legend.

Reminder that it's the best Twitter/Facebook/YouTube account ever.

 

Fun fact, he was comic book writer Grant Morrisons dad. This is also wonderful 

 

[Carbomb]

That is fuggin' marvellous. I'm a big fan of Grant Morrison, and I'm glad to see the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree in terms of principles and values. 

[SuperBacon]

Got to muck about on this all morning at a construction focused college. Really enjoy my job on days like today

Wouldn't trust me in a real one though.

[Loki]

On 5/17/2023 at 2:24 PM, SuperBacon said:

What a legend.

Reminder that it's the best Twitter/Facebook/YouTube account ever.

 

Someone's having you on there, that's David Walliams doing a Scottish accent.

[Chest Rockwell]

On 5/18/2023 at 3:15 PM, SuperBacon said:

Got to muck about on this all morning at a construction focused college. Really enjoy my job on days like today

Wouldn't trust me in a real one though.

I can picture @waters44's dad behind the wheel of that rig. Dream gaming setup!

 

I find myself wanting to start looking for work for the first time in 5 years - far a good run but think it's time to move on. It's been a while so it's a little daunting.

Can anyone share any good resources to help? Looking for work in digital product management. Currently in banking but don't particularly care about being tied to the sector. Considering both contract/ short term or permanent.