Start the Federal Govt slashing: Senate Investigation finds only 6% of federal employees work from office full time

[Sherlock Holmes]

The w

The work is not getting done... that's the point... and DOGE will uncover that... you choose to listen to the people who are working from home to judge their efficiency... that stupid...

If its yet to be "uncovered" how can you say "the work is not getting done"? Others have been complaining about the cost of the work, not that the work isn't being done.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Because it’s a job and requires some to work in a team and or train younger / newer workers.

That's what managers are for, enable their staff to be efficient and forcing everyone into an office is hardly a guarantee of success, look at Pan Am.

An office presence is important for some jobs sometimes but to claim its a universal necessity is beyond naive.

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

That's what managers are for, enable their staff to be efficient and forcing everyone into an office is hardly a guarantee of success, look at Pan Am.

An office presence is important for some jobs sometimes but to claim its a universal necessity is beyond naive.

Should be up to the business. Yes or no?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Should be up to the business. Yes or no?

Well it's mutual in the sense that some workers consider WFH very important and others might not. If I interviewed for a new role and the job demanded I be in an office 5 days a week then I'd have to consider whether it was a good deal, for example the pay and the environment.

Before Covid I worked in a low fenced cube in a big open floor office area. I did not have a private office. The noise and frequent interruptions and impromptu "meetings" of small groups in my area, made my productivity low sometimes, I'd even stay late from time to time just to get the quietness after most people left.

Can I work in that environment, sure I can but it's hard, hard to focus on complex problems and do deep thinking but if they paid a lot and I felt the money was worth the pain I might accept the job.

Here's some information on how damaging noisy environments are for this kind of intellectual work. Its from the book Peopleware by two industry experts. This was before Covid so is not "about" WFH but about the measurable cost of noise for people doing my kind of work:

These guys know their business and they talk about the huge costs that business incur when they don't care about noise, huge hidden costs that impact quality, timeliness, turnaround time and so on.

I passed this book around to several managers at my place, years before Covid to show that we could get some improvements if someone would reduce the density or provide some private office space for certain work at certain times that we could "lock ourselves away in" when very busy.

I did WFH perhaps a couple a days a month back then, informally and my boss said that was OK because it didn't get much attention so staff that MUST be in the office were unlikely to kick up a fuss. When I did that I could get HUGE amounts of work done.

When Covid came it solved the problem 100%, not only could I avoid the bedlam of a noisy office I didn't have to commute either, but I never sought to work from home, I actually was OK with driving in but having a very quite office that would have made my day back then.

But Covid came and I got not only serenity but no commute.

Software companies, good ones, know all this and that's why people at Microsoft, Google etc always got a private office each, they know that that generates maximum quality from their coders.

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

Well it's mutual in the sense that some workers consider WFH very important and others might not. If I interviewed for a new role and the job demanded I be in an office 5 days a week then I'd have to consider whether it was a good deal, for example the pay and the environment.

Before Covid I worked in a low fenced cube in a big open floor office area. I did not have a private office. The noise and frequent interruptions and impromptu "meetings" of small groups in my area, made my productivity low sometimes, I'd even stay late from time to time just to get the quietness after most people left.

Can I work in that environment, sure I can but it's hard, hard to focus on complex problems and do deep thinking but if they paid a lot and I felt the money was worth the pain I might accept the job.

Here's some information on how damaging noisy environments are for this kind of intellectual work. Its from the book Peopleware by two industry experts. This was before Covid so is not "about" WFH but about the measurable cost of noise for people doing my kind of work:

View attachment 1050814
These guys know their business and they talk about the huge costs that business incur when they don't care about noise, huge hidden costs that impact quality, timeliness, turnaround time and so on.

I passed this book around to several managers at my place, years before Covid to show that we could get some improvements if someone would reduce the density or provide some private office space for certain work at certain times that we could "lock ourselves away in" when very busy.

I did WFH perhaps a couple a days a month back then, informally and my boss said that was OK because it didn't get much attention so staff that MUST be in the office were unlikely to kick up a fuss. When I did that I could get HUGE amounts of work done.

When Covid came it solved the problem 100%, not only could I avoid the bedlam of a noisy office I didn't have to commute either, but I never sought to work from home, I actually was OK with driving in but having a very quite office that would have made my day back then.

But Covid came and I got not only serenity but no commute.

Software companies, good ones, know all this and that's why people at Microsoft, Google etc always got a private office each, they know that that generates maximum quality from their coders.

So then it is up to the business

 

[Mr. Friscus]

Does that apply to the President or can he work from home regardless of the expense of maintaining multiple offices for his use and having him and his staff commute by Air Force One?

Your TDS got in the way on this one.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

So then it is up to the business

No, how I work is up to me not the business (unless it changes while I'm there). I would not look for or accept a job that has lots of noise, it's like asking someone to play basketball with a blindfold on, stupid, idiotic.

Face it, some kinds of work are best done from home and some are best done in an office. Morons like Musk (who clearly knows jack shit about how to manage software teams) should know this and stop pretending "everyone in the office" somehow magically provides the highest productivity.

The book I mentioned is one he clearly hasn't read.

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

No, how I work is up to me not the business (unless it changes while I'm there). I would not look for or accept a job that has lots of noise, it's like asking someone to play basketball with a blindfold on, stupid, idiotic.

So you may quit but the business decides what’s best. Most employees are at will. Yes or no?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

So you may quit but the business decides what’s best. Most employees are at will. Yes or no?

Yes they are at will and that works both ways or were you unaware of that?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

The authors run this business, they are respected experts on information worker productivity, lots of research and published papers about it. They do not argue that everybody should WFH, but they do establish a correlation between quality and noise and in some jobs only a dickhead would disregard this reality (like Musk)

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Would you be happy if you knew the surgeons doing surgery on you were working in a noisy room, with all kinds of disruptions, phones ringing etc or would you prefer they had an environment that they find the most conducive? free from noise, free from interruptions and distractions?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

This is my problem with Elon Skum, the fool thinks that "get everyone back to the office" is somehow the only thing that matters. It's a hammer and so everything he sees is a nail. I've studied Musk and his past and frankly he's a non entity that just happened to be right place, right time, he has no people management skills at all. He didn't start Tesla, did you know that?

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

Yes they are at will and that works both ways or were you unaware of that?

Of course. So they may quit as I said.

 

[Rambunctious]

If its yet to be "uncovered" how can you say "the work is not getting done"? Others have been complaining about the cost of the work, not that the work isn't being done.

The federal government seems to be efficient to you?....
Give me a break man...,.

 

[Rambunctious]

Precisely, so nothing to be gained by working in an office.

My friend worked from home during covid... and just to get an email question answered would sometimes take days when the person she needed to contact her normally would be in the office next to her...
Obviously you have never managed an office of any kind....

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

The federal government seems to be efficient to you?....
Give me a break man...,.

Define efficient in this context? You can't and if you can't measure something you can't hope to change it and say its improved.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

My friend worked from home during covid... and just to get an email question answered would sometimes take days when the person she needed to contact her normally would be in the office next to her...
Obviously you have never managed an office of any kind....

First thing I notice is "email" an absolutely terrible choice for communicating with peers to get answers to questions.

As for me you don't know anything about my management experience, I will say she needs a new manager though. Good managers don't just let people struggle with email, they LISTEN to their staff and help them and solve the problems that their staff can't solve on their own because of their limited authority.

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www.microsoft.com

Some business were not prepared for WFH and that's a whole different issue to claiming WFH isn't a viable option.

Musk is like Trump, he's just a boss not a leader and leadership is what's missing.

 

[Rambunctious]

Define efficient in this context? You can't and if you can't measure something you can't hope to change it and say its improved.

There are 36 Trillion reasons that you are wrong....

 

[Rambunctious]

First thing I notice is "email" an absolutely terrible choice for communicating with peers to get answers to questions.

Which is why working from home is not working.... there may be a few occupations where work from home can work but not to the numbers our federal government allows... we have completely empty buildings... man wake up...

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

There are 36 Trillion reasons that you are wrong....

So you have no idea what efficiency means with respect to federal agency workers, so how can you even comment on whether it's good or bad?

You and others here are clearly making assumptions and these are

1. Federal agencies are inefficient
2. That caused by staff working from home.
3. It's not caused by structural issues
4. It's not caused by poor leadership or defective long term strategy or poor morale across the organization.

Musk has decided that making all workers come into the office is the solution to this "inefficiency" problem before he's defined the problems, asked staff themselves if there are problems impacting them and so on.

He's proposing a "solution" before the problem itself has been identified and if you admire the "big boss kicking ass" style of management then you'll soon learn how naive that is. He does not have the skills to handle this responsibility, all he wants to do is cut expenditure and has no idea of the fallout.

But we know how this pans out, we need only look, he's the emperor's new clothes.

Has he increased profits? No, has he increased ad revenue? No, has he increased brand value? No, has he increased share price? No. He has cut costs though quite a lot BUT IT HAS NOT IMPROVED ANY OF THOSE METRICS he and he alone is responsible for the current state of Twitter which is looking to now be a failure, an also ran has been of a company.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

It's easy to cut costs if you also want to reduce value, any fool could do that:

Elon Musk has yet to reverse X's downward financial spiral

Plummeting ad revenue has hurt the platform formerly known as Twitter since the billionaire bought it two years ago.

www.deseret.com