It will be interesting to see how corp world will change but for some, the cat is out of the bag. I haven't seen a couple of my co-workers in nearly two years.
[I realize the humor in the original post]
This week has been a good example. My wife came into contact with someone who had covid over the weekend and mentioned it to her boss. The result was she had to work from home from Tuesday on. For her, it is difficult to make that transition - too many files, too many paper items plus she has a really nice and large office. I decided to work from home for the rest of the week as well but I've always had to be able to work remotely. Plus, many people in my office [IT-programming] have always worked occasionally at home when pressed with a complicated issue that required quiet environment without other interaction.
Programmers will own the most expensive noise canceling headphones out of the whole office.
Here is how it works for me [as well as most of my department when we work from home].
-Wake up, have breakfast, take care of the dog and go upstairs to log in. My system at home is really nice and I have the entire upstairs. Three huge monitors, super fast laptop sitting to my left and when I really need to try something that my system that I have remoted into can't handle, I will test on my super powerful home workstations. The result is I will typically start working long before my scheduled time to be at the office is. 7:00-7:30 I am checking out how the system is doing [lots of failures lately], check out the reports and start working.
-Meetings are always remote, even when we are at the office. I miss that part because there is just something about seeing a face when you are at a meeting that helps. At the start, all meetings were audio/video. Now we all turn off our video. Plus, who really wants to see a bunch of nerds. Daily meeting every morning at 8:20 to discuss big changes.
-Communication is always ongoing through apps through our phone and computers. All phone calls have been pretty much always routed through our own cell phones. Heck, when I was at the office, my laptop, desktop, cell phone were all fighting with each other to see who should answer the phone. It was just easier to make sure that one device would be in control. Everyone, either while at the office or at home can have instant communication with anyone else at the company.
-When at home, there isn't a clock as much as stopping when hungry, quickly running a few errands during lunch. This week, I once drove to the dry cleaners and picked up lunch that my wife ordered. Gone maybe 15 minutes. Yesterday, I wanted to get out of the house so I drove to Walmart, picked up a couple of items and back home in 15 minutes. OK, it helps that there is a Walmart every mile where I live and all are ran where they know that headquarters could stop by on their way home to see how local stores are going [county is the headquarters for Walmart - live a couple of blocks where the first one was founded].
-My dog will insist on a break at 4 PM. Vocally, in almost a scary way. I think she is attempting to form human words for "You have been working too long and need to play with me". I will cave in to her requirement and try to sneak back upstairs to my office and work until the task that I was working on is done.
-There really isn't an off button when working from home. Work is always there. Perhaps that is from a long history of being on call and being required to be able to work on issues remotely.
-We have lost about 10 people in my fairly small department [30 people] over the past year and I actually keep up with those who have left. Nearly all who have left work only in the remote world, all are super smart people, and all are dedicated to their work. In fact, we are scheduled to all have dinner this upcoming weekend [most likely won't happen for me - 4 inches of snow while driving a MX-5 is not a good mix]. I have been accused of having an unhealthy work ethic but that is common in my field. There is a weird work shift in my field where about half will work at least partly at home. We are all accountable, we will all work really long hours.
We just enjoy working.
