Opinion Trump's stance on remote work - do Republicans really support this?

[Renard]

The commercial real estate market has been doing extremely poorly. It might be something dumb like Trump or his buddies have investments in it and don't want it to collapse. Or, considering Newsom also did it, it might just be that they're trying to prop up that part of the economy in general.

 

[Anewt]

Interesting example. So we are about to get by a cyclone. So got some mates whos work will be closed physically. So obviously day off. Got a mate who wotks for goverment. Who can work from home.. hes literally set up to. Who then was annoyed they expect him to work throughout if able ( if hes safe with power etc ) so he'll bail immediately and say he was unable to work and play pc.

He Did not understand me pointing out theres zero benifit to using work from home for companies with employees like him ( gov worker of course )

And he is one of the . " well with toliet breaks lunch . People gossiping. Its the same productivity" from work or home people.

 

[White Whale]

I can't work from home and had to show up during the pandemic. Government employees can show up to work and quit whining about it.

 

[Andy Capp]

It's stupid no matter what party wants to end work from home. I've never understood the argument against work from home. I've heard CEO's like Jamie Dimon complaints and they are not valid. Most CEO's and high corporate executives (i.e. Elon Musk) don't work from an office. They work wherever they can. The whole idea of having technology as advanced as it is and still being against work from home just does not make sense especially when you see the cost of things now and traffic in most cities.

Not only that, cities saw great reductions in atmospheric pollutants with everyone staying home. The health benefits from not sitting in traffic sucking up car exhaust alone ought to be sufficient argument in favour. Think of the savings in healthcare, money spent on gas, wear and tear on the vehicles, not to mention greater worker satisfaction.

I think they're trying to drive people who strongly favour working from home from their jobs as an excuse to cull the workforce and install loyalists.

 

[Oblivian]

First Trump is not "having remote workers return to work". He is telling office based workers that were temporary shifted to remote due to COVID that is long over and they need to return to the office.

It also doesn't sound like you have ever done much meaningful work. Yes things can be done remotely particularly low level grunt tasks, but there is huge value and productivity lost due to working from home.

Interpersonal relationships, collaboration, communication, proximity, etc are extremely important to successfully building complex, broad scope solutions.

Teams meetings don't come anywhere close to replicating hours/days spent in a conference room hashing out designs across every white boarded wall, the hallway chats, the coffee breaks, happy hours, etc. I can understand this may not make sense if all you know is the interwebs, but in real life this stuff matters.

Well we've found who he is appealing to. This has to be one of the dumbest takes that I've seen. First off, I own a company in the financial industry. I work with attorneys, accountants, business owners, city officials, investors, commercial lenders, etc. all across the board. Our escrow account sees millions through it ever month. I'll assure you what I do is "meaningful". I personally go into the office about 30 hours a week during normal hours, but work from home, work weekends, etc. depending on demand. My employees are hybrid as well. Particularly during slower times, by all means work from home. Most of our clientele communicates via email anyhow and we all have phones for text which is becoming pretty common as well in the business world.

I'd say most people in "meaningful" jobs find the idea of it being a necessity to be in office 9-5 Mon through Fri as archaic. We all have shit that is easier to get done when no one is around whether that's in office or from home. We all have things pop up after hours, etc. I'd actually view the opposite as you. Most of the lower level jobs (tellers, cashiers, factory line, etc.) are the ones required to have zero remote work. Almost any higher end job will have the ability to work remote some as well as leaving the office quite often.

I'm still leaning towards this appealing people who can't wrap their heads around remote work or people jealous of those who are in an industry that can work remotely.

 

[chardog]

Seems stupid to me. Easy way of cutting out a decent amount of pollution, lowers overheads for companies, gives people more time with their family.

Can't see a downside to it.

The downside is that a lot of folks don’t have the discipline for that type of work, and double the side work, and I’m guilty of this however I’ve been doing work from home since 2005, hence my ridiculous post count. Some folks need to get back to work, a blanket all would be silly…. But i do work with some developers that have kids and they cant finish projects on a timely manner, we live in different states so it wouldn’t ever work but if we had a local team, shit would be done faster for sure.

 

[chardog]

On a much smaller scale, this is my wife's company. They bought a 7 story building downtown. The higher ups (not mid-level managers) are scapegoating this decision to "Trump is doing it", but I think it's really to save face about the building in addition to these fossils not understanding work from home. The mid-level manager are really the ones who should be selling it to them and explaining it, but they're failing. It's going to bite the company in the ass though. Most competition is still offering work from home. They did give a 7% raise, but that's not going to help the inconvenience of it.

Honestly, I don't know how people work for companies with strict standards anymore. My kids are in sports that start as early as 4:15. They are in school sports where you'd miss games. All of my employees pretty much make their own schedule around their life. If you hire good employees, this is not a difficult concept.

I agree with a lot of this, however i think the government hires a lot of crap employees or they turn to crap because of the work culture….. someone is dealing with the crap workers… the government probably.

Probably the overall effort to get the economy spinning.

I do have scenarios where wfh is a terrible thing…. Schools/tutors/therapy…. Not long ago, that was accepted, some still accepted.

 

[Oblivian]

I agree with a lot of this, however i think the government hires a lot of crap employees or they turn to crap because of the work culture….. someone is dealing with the crap workers… the government probably.

Probably the overall effort to get the economy spinning.

I do have scenarios where wfh is a terrible thing…. Schools/tutors/therapy…. Not long ago, that was accepted, some still accepted.

I've worked with government employees for years at the local level, but also at federal level. It has sucked LONG before remote work. I'd love to argue that I got better service on the federal level (federal tax liens, FSA, etc.) once some went remote, but it's hard to even tell. It's always been, and will likely always remain, horrible.

 

[cincymma79]

Obviously the only way to fight fraud and waste is to give all the power to a single guy with zero oversight.

He makes recommendations but if you squint your eyes and just make it up as you go along I see how you could get there after moving the goalpost enough

 

[Fedor>Cain]

I agree with a lot of this, however i think the government hires a lot of crap employees or they turn to crap because of the work culture….. someone is dealing with the crap workers… the government probably.

Probably the overall effort to get the economy spinning.

I do have scenarios where wfh is a terrible thing…. Schools/tutors/therapy…. Not long ago, that was accepted, some still accepted.

If you really believe in what you are saying...


...then how in the blue hell is taking away remote work, which is a pretty nice perk, going to attract better workers?

I can hear the recruiting pitch "we are looking for better employees, so we actively made this job worse and it already pays worse than the private sector. Surely you will consider employment with us!"

I'm in state government. Our agency actually generates a hefty profit. We get paid almost as much as the privator sector and have been fully remote since covid. If they take away remote, then I'm just going to a better paying job in the private sector, because why the fuck wouldn't I? Lol

"Yea, we could save money by not paying this massive building lease that we don't need and we've been more efficient since remote work started, so naturally let's go back to the office!"

 

[heloder]

I just find it odd that this is something people are cheering for, but I realize some people will back anything Trump says.

That's certainly part of it, but one thing you need to understand when it comes to conservative bumpkins in this country is that they have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything new and different, and it's really just as simple as that. They are terrified of change, and hate it more than almost anything. I live with these people. I work with these people. Whether it's smart watches, electric cars (don't even mention autonomous cars!), cashless payments, voting-by-mail, or working remotely. They do not abide by it.

 

[Darkavius]

I've never been able to work from home but other people at my work have been able to and it's funny how they all the sudden became much more difficult to get a hold of once they started working at home. I've had them tell me they are taking their kids to practice and can't get to things until later. We also have to reschedule our work out to a later date because they're required on site for some things and can't get to it because they're working from home. This happens on a weekly basis. They're supposed to actually come in when needed but they stick to their 4 day weekends.

I get people enjoying working from home but pretending like people are as or even more efficient at home is a crock of shit.

Why is it a crock of shit? If someone can get the work done at home quicker than they would in office then that should be rewarded. I could be wrong but isn't the whole goal of business to be efficient as possible especially if you are salary. It's funny because stories like what you said are often used but I would propose a counter story. I would say the least efficient ones are not the ones working from home but the people whose jobs are basically just being stuck on or creating meeting after meeting day in and day out.

There are countless people, mostly higher ups, who all they do is sit on meetings day in and day out. When something needs to get done you end up going to someone else to get said resource, or even better those people who hold meetings to go over the same things you have talked about over and over again.

 

[Cartiac]

That's certainly part of it, but one thing you need to understand when it comes to conservative bumpkins in this country is that they have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything new and different, and it's really just as simple as that. They are terrified of change, and hate it more than almost anything. I live with these people. I work with these people. Whether it's smart watches, electric cars (don't even mention autonomous cars!), cashless payments, voting-by-mail, or working remotely. They do not abide by it.

Says the people freaking the fuck out because Trump and Elon are changing everything

 

[Hellowhosthat]

The commercial real estate market has been doing extremely poorly. It might be something dumb like Trump or his buddies have investments in it and don't want it to collapse. Or, considering Newsom also did it, it might just be that they're trying to prop up that part of the economy in general.

Yep and of course these cunts won't just allow the office space to be converted into housing

 

[Andy Capp]

I got no dog in the fight on Trump's opinion on this, but I prefer hybrid. I go into the office 2 days a week and that is ideal. As good as WFH is there are actual drawbacks at some point. I prefer to have at least some face time with my colleagues and a change of scenery is nice every so often. 5 days a week in office can be a slog, but doing it every so often is actually a pick me up for me.

Sure, depending upon your job as well, it can make sense for some to get together with co-workers for any number of reasons. But if, let's say, your job mostly entails phone calls and emails, that might be a big waste of time.

 

[Darkavius]

I can hear the recruiting pitch "we are looking for better employees, so we actively made this job worse and it already pays worse than the private sector. Surely you will consider employment with us!"

I'm in state government. Our agency actually generates a hefty profit. We get paid almost as much as the privator sector and have been fully remote since covid. If they take away remote, then I'm just going to a better paying job in the private sector, because why the fuck wouldn't I? Lol

"Yea, we could save money by not paying this massive building lease that we don't need and we've been more efficient since remote work started, so naturally let's go back to the office!"

Thank you. I think some people don't realize just how bad the pay is in many government jobs. I worked with the state for 5 years and the pay was bad. Also, in some cases you are not getting a weekly or bi-weekly check. You get paid once a month. The response is "Get another job." That's fine but eventually someone has to do this job and the pay will not get better so give them some perks.

 

[chardog]

If you really believe in what you are saying...


...then how in the blue hell is taking away remote work, which is a pretty nice perk, going to attract better workers?

I can hear the recruiting pitch "we are looking for better employees, so we actively made this job worse and it already pays worse than the private sector. Surely you will consider employment with us!"

I'm in state government. Our agency actually generates a hefty profit. We get paid almost as much as the privator sector and have been fully remote since covid. If they take away remote, then I'm just going to a better paying job in the private sector, because why the fuck wouldn't I? Lol

"Yea, we could save money by not paying this massive building lease that we don't need and we've been more efficient since remote work started, so naturally let's go back to the office!"

Job Security

until now at least

 

[heloder]

Says the people freaking the fuck out because Trump and Elon are changing everything

What Trump and Elon are doing isn't "new". It's just dismantling all the progress that has been made to our society over the last 100 years.

Tariffs, isolationism, massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and cutting regulations are not new ideas. They're just failed ideas. We tried them a century ago. They led to us having recessions, depressions, and catastrophic world wars. And those are just four of the many, many horrible ideas they plan on implementing.

Some of us have actually read a history book, so we know these things.

 

[Andy Capp]

ITT I note there are a lot of anecdotes, but a complete absence of any empirical data showing government work from home employees are less productive than they were when they were fully in-office (prior to the pandemic in other words).

I welcome anyone to attempt to correct that obvious defect in the argument of the return to work supporters.

 

[Cartiac]

What Trump and Elon are doing isn't "new". It's just dismantling all the progress that has been made to our society over the last 100 years.

Tariffs, isolationism, massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and cutting regulations are not new ideas. They're just failed ideas. We tried them a century ago. They led to us having recessions, depressions, and catastrophic world wars. And those are just four of the many, many horrible ideas they plan on implementing.

Some of us have actually read a history book, so we know these things.

Yup, you are scared AF because things are changing. Keep clinging to those history books Mr Progressive.