Covid did interesting thing to people. My kid was saying before COVID, there use to be a bunch of bratty kids at school, the “popular” ones that use to be very selective in who they would be caught dead talking with.
When school reopened and kids were allowed to go back, suddenly everyone is a lot nicer to each other. I guess a lot of the more social kids got a lesson of what it’s like to be left alone for a long time.
A lot of engineers are introverts so some actually do better working from home. Some communicate over slack way better than in person. Just like me, I suck at negotiating with a car dealer in person. I do everything over email or SMS.
But personally, I would prefer a hybrid model where I could go back to an office occasionally per week. I miss the company gym and foosball fridays.
But I don’t mind working from home because I can selectively tune out on the plethora of useless meetings we use to have. And actually, it’s better in some cases. There are some people that insist of holding meetings to talk about when to hold the next meetings because they lack any real skills beyond being a glorified secretary….but somehow they ended up in a “project management” role.
Just a quick check, 50 people in a meeting at roughly $100/hr per person for 1 hoursl costs the company $5000 for each of these useless meetings we use to have. Now, no one shows up for these anymore.
Also, at $6-7/gallon, not needing to go to work in person everyday is also good for the wallet and for the environment.
It also gives more flexibility to where people can live locally. For example, people can more readily live in Riverside county or Imperial County, even if their work location is in San Diego North county because in the worst case scenario, they don’t need to make a long commute to work everyday even in a hybrid mode.
They can buy better house at a better price than something near Sorrento Valley.
It also helps the company find people who is willing to do the lower paying hourly clerical jobs and helps those people keep more of their money by reducing commuting expense, which is a big part of their overall income. Someone further away can do these jobs remotely and not get eaten alive by long distance commute expenses everyday
