How's work been?

Top_Shelf wrote:

Like, how did you come to conclusion it was Hans?

Pipe?
Accent?
Gray trenchcoat by Hugo Boss?
"That's a bingo!"?
Deaths head insignia on cap?
Carved swastika?

It was mostly the exaggerated German accent, the smug smile, and the hinting toward illegality as a quid pro quo. It pissed off a number of my German colleagues

Probably the swastika carved into the forehead?

He must have been eating strudel.

Work is having trouble making up its mind. At first, it was people leaders go in Tuesday and Wednesday (starting this past week) until Sept 7 when everyone would return to work on a hybrid schedule. Tues - Thur in the office, the other 2 days WFH.

Then it changed to people leaders only on Tuesdays.

Then it changed to "you guys are good and don't have to come into the office until everyone returns. We just needed you guys to help move desks and pack up people's items to move them to the new location".

Now the timeline was changed and we aren't going back until November. Our VP also said she was pushing to be 2 days in the office / 3 days WFH but not sure if that will happen by November.

Yeah our full open got pushed back indefinitely. But they still sent another rah rah email about all the great lunch and hallway talks people have had while being back to voluntary in the office the last 7 weeks. And a bunch of bullet points on building culture and benefits of in person work. Really disappointing.

They also talked about what to do if you got covid and how they will email everyone who badged in on those days and might have had contact.

And at the end they did finally say that they would allow people who are compromised or have other issues to stay home indefinitely but case by case. Personally I intend to WFH until my kids are vaccinated. At the rate that's going it might be 4 years until my youngest is 5 years old.

We'll see how reasonable they really are or if I need a new job in a few months.

Our office is apparently writing return-to-office policy by outrage. The process appears to be:
- sr mgmt unilaterally makes a decision that impacts everyone
- an email is sent out (generally last minute) informant people of the decision
- people point out ways in which that decision either isn’t practical, doesn’t work, or goes against our stated goals
- sr mgmt changes the decision
- rinse and repeat

It’s kind of silly, honestly. If I had to go into the office (I’m full time remote), I’d be a lot more practically upset. As it is, I’m mostly theoretically upset and fighting for my reports (that do go into the office).

I didn't know where else to put this, but this perfectly describes how I feel about the American cult of hustle culture.

That bit about LinkedIn. Nailed it!

A month ago I up and quit my daily legacy print newspaper gig that I'd had for more than 20 years. There were lots of little reasons, some Covid-related and some not, that added up to one big I'M OUTTA HERE AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.

(Which they didn't. There was no attempt to keep me on board. And I never heard a word from the paper's top editor. Not goodbye, good luck, get f*cked -- nothing. Weird. I shouldn't be surprised, as that sociopath of a manager was one of my top 10 (out of about 30 or so) reasons for leaving.)

After a month of freelance work -- writing, editing, PR, ghostwriting, journalism -- I'm happier and making more money than I have in a long damn time. I'm getting varied and interesting assignments. I'm working with a lot of smart people. Folks are contacting me to offer me work. And I feel something I haven't felt in years: valued. My screwed-up sense of professional worth is still sorting out exactly what that means and how I should feel about that.

Bottom line: 10/10, would recommend.

PS: Those COBRA expenses, tho, woof. I just cut a check to cover 2.5 months of health care costs (prorated July and all of Aug and Sept) and let's just say I can't way for the Exchange to open in November.

Enix,
That’s really cool. I’m happy to hear how well that’s going for you. Good luck with the medical insurance. I’m sure the anxiety that generates is substantial.

Cheers!

They had extended coronavirus open enrollment at healthcare.gov until August 15.

Might still be able to enroll because of life changing status? Should check it out.

Congrats on the change.

After being unemployed since July 2020, I am awaiting written terms for a job I am being offered! Now I can continue to post here un-ironically!

My job sent out a "tell us your vaccination status" email last week, which has me very concerned.

I've been working remotely for over a year now, and it's been fantastic. (NOTE: I totally acknowledge my immense priviledge here. I am insanely lucky in that, personally and professionally, the impacts of the pandemic have broadly improved my life.) Me and the rest of the web team have proven we can do the job just as competently from home as we could in the office. I've covered the pandemic, a contentious election and its aftermath, an insurrection, and a near-miss hurricane, all without leaving my home. And I've done it well.

But I am absolutely terrified of them calling us back full-time. Prior to the pandemic, I was looking at moving closer to work, because the commute was absolutely killing me. Getting from where I live to Manhattan meant that I literally had no life, no time for myself, nothing outside of work. I would have enough time to get up, go to work, come back, go immediately to bed, and repeat. And the turnaround was so small, I still wasn't getting eight hours of sleep most nights.

If they call us back hybrid, I'm good with it, I can make that work. But if they bring us back full-time, it'll be absolutely devastating. I know it's weird to say, but the pandemic and WFH have provided me with some of the best work/life balance I've had since I was living with my parents, working a bullsh*t Starbucks job 10 minutes walk from their house.

I've had time to exercise, to eat better, to sleep better, to take better care of my health, to pursue a lifelong personal passion in all of the free time I've had. Moreover, as my parents are both elderly (my father moreso than my mother), the fact that I currently live just a few minutes away from them means I've been able to be there to help for lots of little things and for big emergencies, and I want to continue to be able to be there for them. I've become a better employee, and my morale at work is undoubtedly higher.

The issue really is just that commute. If my job was 30 minutes away via mass transit, no problem. But it's a whooooooooooooooole lot more than 30 minutes away (it's more than 90 minutes away), and if they want us back 5 days a week, it's an absolute, unmitigated disaster for me. I cannot even express how personally demoralizing it'd be.

The company has said they won't give us any guidance until after Labor Day, and, from a logical perspective, I'd think that with Delta flying around, they'd be smart and just push any consideration back until 2022. But if the things I've read recently point to anything, it's that companies are being a lot of things about back-to-the-office mandates, but "logical" isn't one. So we'll see.

This, to me, is exactly the stuff I explain to my management confidant(s) and let them play ball at the higher levels to take care of the situation. Might be your boss, or some other manager, or someone else who is your “champion” in the organization, but if you have someone who provides you with “air cover” in your role, this would be an ideal use of that relationship.

They may even have some idea of what is coming, and that information alone could be valuable.

Agreed -- if you have a boss or bosses you feel comfortable sharing your concerns with, best to give them a heads up now. If policies are still being developed, you sending a message up the chain that you want/need to continue being remote, or as remote as possible, can only help your chances of getting the outcome you want. Sort of the opposite of "better to ask forgiveness than permission," it's easier to get them to make a policy that fits with your needs than it is to have them set a policy first and ask them to accommodate you afterwards.

Or to let your boss figure out an accommodation for you, quietly.

Indeed. My boss has already told me I don't have to go back to the office ever as long as I'm on his team. Partially because my team is located in a different office to start with. There are 3 devs working on that product from our office while the main group of 20 or so others is at the other office.

But there's always the chance he gets promoted or they ask us to switch teams again in a year or two as parts of the roadmap get completed. So I'd prefer to have an official remote status or something.

Because the overall company keeps talking up back to office and how great it is. Ugh.

Indeed. My boss has already told me I don't have to go back to the office ever as long as I'm on his team. Partially because my team is located in a different office to start with. There are 3 devs working on that product from our office while the main group of 20 or so others is at the other office, across multiple teams.

But there's always the chance he gets promoted or they ask us to switch teams again in a year or two as parts of the roadmap get completed. So I'd prefer to have an official remote status or something.

Because the overall company keeps talking up back to office and how great it is. Ugh.

At the moment, I'm just putting out feelers to other employees and seeing if anyone's heard anything. Some parts of our company are going back full-time after Labor Day it looks like, but there's been no guidance as far as we go.

It does look like they're trying to make considerations for people dealing with eldercare issues, however, and considering my father's failing health, I may end up pushing that argument.

Prederick wrote:

...
I've been working remotely for over a year now, and it's been fantastic. (NOTE: I totally acknowledge my immense priviledge here. I am insanely lucky in that, personally and professionally, the impacts of the pandemic have broadly improved my life.) Me and the rest of the web team have proven we can do the job just as competently from home as we could in the office. I've covered the pandemic, a contentious election and its aftermath, an insurrection, and a near-miss hurricane, all without leaving my home. And I've done it well. ....

I won't lie: Having to come back to the office was one of the big reasons I quit. I was able to kick the can down that road through June (avoidance + vacation). Once July rolled around and my editor was asking me every three days when I was going to start coming into to work like everyone else, I knew something had to give, and this time it wasn't going to be me.

Like other folks said, talk to your key contacts and see if you can work out something now. I keep seeing reports of companies letting folks be in the office 1-2 days per week or one week in/one week out, depending. Good companies take care of their people, and I hope that's your situation.

I'd love to say I followed my own advice here. But my editor has absolutely no pull, and her boss is the sociopath who generally ignored me for the last several months of my tenure, so I figured my chances of working out a WFH deal were nil. I guess the takeaway from my experience is be prepared to find another job if these things (WFH, work/life balance, no commute) are more important. The journalism biz (I think that's what you do) ain't what it used to be in a lot of places these days (hope your experience has been different!). I put up with ~15 years of no raises, pay cuts, furloughs, layoffs, cutbacks, page and section shrinkage, talent drain and change in corporate ownership (twice) just so I could do journalism. No more.

I've made my peace and moved on. It turns out that work-life balance and all of those associated perks are more important to me after all.

Good luck. Let us know how it turns out.

Prederick wrote:

The issue really is just that commute. If my job was 30 minutes away via mass transit, no problem. But it's a whooooooooooooooole lot more than 30 minutes away (it's more than 90 minutes away), and if they want us back 5 days a week, it's an absolute, unmitigated disaster for me. I cannot even express how personally demoralizing it'd be.

When you've been doing those long commutes for so long you don't know any better at the time. It's just how it is.

For around 10 years I was commuting close to 3hrs a day (thankfully majority of it on a train). Then got another job where my commute went down a little less than an hour a day. Initially I didn't know what to do with my self with the extra two hours. But then started biking after work, doing actual cooking rather than fast food or restaurants, taking a nap for 30 minutes, and of course gaming. It made such a difference in quality of life.

I can't see doing another long commute any more unless I was really desperate. And now with WFH where my commute is walking down the hallway to my office long commutes seem even more insane.

Hopefully can keep this WFH thing going till I retire in 15 years.

Crawley wrote:

When you've been doing those long commutes for so long you don't know any better at the time. It's just how it is.

Yup. Prior to the pandemic, my TOTAL commute time (including getting to the office, waiting for the bus, etc.) was around 5 hours a day. If there was no traffic.

WFH has absolutely caused me to look back at all of that and be like "What the f**k was I doing?"

I just got a 100% remote contract with Boston U.
I am so excited! I start Monday.

The recruiter was awkward dancing around the vaccination question. I waited for a pause and said, "I'm fully vaccinated." And then just let it lie.

It is so strange because you'd better believe I am damn proud of it.

Prederick wrote:

my TOTAL commute time (including getting to the office, waiting for the bus, etc.) was around 5 hours a day. If there was no traffic.

That is insane. I did 3hrs a day for a year and I was done.

Would applying to a new job really make my life better or would it be the same stuff but with different scenery? I have a feeling a bunch of our crap is going to be everywhere to some extent. I would apply to State government jobs but I know how stable the funding has been in the last few years.

Federal is stable.

Started at a new place at the end of May! I had to figure out if I didn't want to go back to the office, or if I just didn't want to go back to that office. (Turns out, it's a little of both, but the new place is letting me WFH some--so long as I'm still able to handle on-site support in a pinch.) New job is another gig helping a small finance company mature/stabilize/comply with their IT--more or less what I did at the last place (at least once I moved over into IT in 2013).

A few key differences I noticed so far:

  • Whereas the old place was looking to force everyone back into the office, and could bend enough to let people WFH a couple days per week if the individual threw enough of a fit, the new place ultimately has the same offer, but new place phrased it instead as "We want to trust and empower everyone to be able to work from home at least two days each week."
  • We do monthly all-hands lunches. Each one is usually something like a member of senior leadership talking about who they are and where they come from, or what charity they chose for the company to donate to. (There's a company donation program, which I like, too.) But the first monthly, hot on the heels of the local Basecamp "nobody is allowed to talk about politics" mess, was about how we are reinvesting in DEI issues and putting real money and time into establishing a better pipeline for BIPOC candidates. At the old place, folks often wanted to do the right thing, but it was always couched in secrecy or finding an excuse to do it.
  • I walked into the beginning stages of a website refresh, and my first meeting about it with the CEO, he stopped me and said we needed to expand the scope and budget, because it was time we rebranded as specifically caring about DEI and ESG issues as our key brand differentiator.
  • My old boss wanted to be a good manager, and knew how to be a good manager, but was too busy dealing with C-suite to be that manager. New boss actively carves out time regularly to invest in me, position me to succeed, and drop in to lend a hand when things are hairy.

So I like these folks. Also, it was like a 20% pay bump.

And, since I promised myself to step away from GWJ a couple years ago until I finally got a new job ... I get to come back here again!

Holy cats!! Welcome back, wordsmythe!

Seriously, good to see you again Wordy!

That's wonderful news! Happy to see your return!