My immediate superior defined my job. I was coasting along happily enough as a contractor billing n dollars an hour doing whatever was asked when she told me to take a permanent position. Now I'm the guy who looks at failing projects, works out why they're failing and turns them around. I don't get the high hourly rate anymore but these projects have annual budgets over 10 million so there's scope for reward in un****ing them. I work for money, nothing else, so the un****ing bonuses matter to me.

I find the important thing when taking over a project is to dump the deadwood and motivate the important players. I don't need any trouble with that, if a person works well wherever he or she is and doesn't want to be moved, I don't want to move them. All I care about is delivering the work, I'm good with personal eccentricity, strange working hours, all kinds of people and domestic circumstances,. We've rescued two large projects during covid, recurring savings of about $8m/yr, so I'd say we've worked effectively.

It is a great irritation to me when abstract considerations such as HR policies or a desire to see people in an office get in the way of delivering the project work. "Do a good job get paid lots of money" is my idea of an employment contract, not "look good at a desk 9-5 Monday to Friday, embrace our values and sing the company song on demand".

I guess I'm not a very corporate person and I shouldn't expect a long career in middle management.

In the current chapter of my employment history, my job is very much to ensure that contracts don't get f-ed up in the first place, though that has been to varying degrees the defining characteristic of most of my jobs. ... Some years ago someone at one of my employers in London didn't listen to my extremely explicit advice on what was wrong, how it would unravel, what the consequence would be, and who would inflict the pian. I was correct on all counts, and the pain inflicted was $80million!

Anyway I was told five years ago "review these contract files". "Review them for what?" I asked. "Just review them and approve them!" My manager snapped back.

I set about reviewing them, wrote myself some procedures, and drafted some standards, which resulted in me somehow setting corporate policy without any participation from the legal department, or the involvement of any the six managers I had over the following five years.

And I also decided that being told to "approve files" implied that I had the power to reject them too. So when a contract proposal landed on my desk that didn't meet the standards that I myself had set, I rejected it.

Occasionally someone has tried to call my bluff, but although my managers never really understood my job, they have always backed my decision. As one of my upstream colleagues told me once, everyone knows you're the person they have to get the file past.

It's a shame that "everyone" doesn't just do their d*mn job properly. It would make my job easier, though not as interesting.

Interesting Twitter thread below regarding WFH.

Twitter

Yes that sounds right. If there is a need to be "in office" because of certain factors of the job then that's how it should be and if employees who were all doing this prior to COVID are now complaining and want to stay out now then they need to accept they could be let go, but conversely forcing employees back to a building just because "we used to do it this way" but with no real reasoning behind the decision is plainly not in the interests of anyone. Working from home needs to be in the interests of everyone though, the firm, the employee and the customer.

Isn't it always in the interests of the firm, no need to provide a building, and the employee, no need to commute?

Yes if the building and its equipment as such is not necessary to provide a quality service then absolutely. However if the firm can no longer offer the same level of quality service to its clients then this surely becomes a problem and clients may decide to jump ship. I'm sure there are many examples of positive and negative WFH scenarios. My old boss used to work from home 20 years ago and she had pretty much her whole office duplicated at home and of course a mobile laptop and phone. She still used to spend too much time checking in with various employees about things getting done and when she was in she would complain that things didn't get done properly unless she was watching over people. I'm not sure in her case it was particularly beneficial, in fact probably more stressful except there was no commute!

but now the laptop and phone is the office. If you carry it to a building owned by the firm you're not doing anything differently, not interacting with people in any other way, than you would be at home or, for that matter, in Hawaii where one of my guys has been for a month.

The customer interface in most businesses is through a website of some form, banking, financial services, retail, don't need physical premises anymore so it's weird for the customers to be at home and the workers not.

Yes it is weird... and its how see it, voluntary lockdown! I find the days are long and solitary, and can be hard on me, with zero interaction with other people. No desire from me for this voluntary lockdown!

If only politicians could incorporate the same logic. Think of the money that could be saved. No need to have two residences, no need to take entourages all over the world and stay in expensive hotels, no need for POTUS to have to fly an entire convoy of vehicles to a summit to talk about reducing carbon.

When I used to go to the office, most of the people I came into contact with were people that either [1] I didn't actually work with, and nodding as I pass them in a hallway, or standing by the coffee machine next to them, didn't add any value to my mental well being, or [2] were not colleagues but other people such as bus passengers or people on the street, etc, who I would prefer not to have come into contact with at all anyway.

"Don't you want to go back to the office so you can drink with colleagues and have lots of affairs?" an ex-wife asked me, pointedly. Alas, we're being offered return to office, not return to 1980s. I'm in the same boat as Pulaski now, water cooler acquaintances with whom I share no cultural points of reference, I've no need to see them.

I choose to work a hybrid pattern, generally Monday & Friday WFH and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in the office. For me, this breaks the week up nicely, and my commute to work is a very pleasant 30 minute walk through the park. If I had a ghastly commute I would feel very differently.

As work travel restrictions have relaxed, I've enjoyed the opportunity to visit colleagues down in the London office for a few days away - aaah, who doesn't like combining work with a nice jolly and hotels & restaurants on expenses! - and soon will be able to visit our European sites again.

We have proven that we can deliver multi-billion projects via remote working so there is no suggestion that people might be slacking from home, because they're not. As others have said, for many, WFH makes them more productive. If employers want people in offices, they're going to have to attract them back - flexible hours, the good biscuits or whatever - otherwise they will lose good people who just don't want (need) to commute.

Oh - masks,

Last week we had a road trip down to England to visit the kids at their universities. Mask wearing was, I reckon, less than 1%. Virtually non-existent. Here in Scotland it's still very high in indoor public spaces.

In your case I can see why it doesn't make any difference if you are in or not. It does all depend on the job you do and the company's structure. I work in engineering and there has always been a need to communicate closely with your colleagues, as you working on something that will directly affect their work and vice a versa, there is only so much you can explain over a shared screen, it becomes exhausting after a while trying to navigate back and forth between multiple drawings on the screen and trying to explain why or how you want to design something.

Added to that I have always got along well with the people I work with that do the same job as me. Its where most of my close friends have originated from to this day, UK and Canada. So to suddenly have the interaction cut off has been hard going for me personally. As I said though I could live with a hybrid arrangement going forward. Monday and Friday at home and Tues Wed Thurs in office, I think that compromise would satisfy all needs for everyone.

I think I've posted this before, but the pandemic and working from home was a levelling experience for me. My employer has an office here, with around 150 people based here. Most of the people I work with (I'd use the term stakeholders but I know it would irritate dbd....) however are not based here but rather in London, DC, Saskatoon, Toulouse, Perth and other far flung places. With youngish kids, I'd found the flexibility of working from home outweighed the need to be in an office to talk to people on teams etc. and got used to being the one on teams when everyone else was in a meeting room in London. With Covid, we all were remote, all equal!

We've proved that can work very effectively and our working model has thus changed pretty much everywhere. People are no longer required to work in the office M-F with a few exceptions, so most work a hybrid model, from home part of the week, in the office a day or two. Different teams set different rules - my colleagues in London for example have to be in once a week for a team meeting. It seems to be working for most, particularly those with extended commutes. As an aside, in London, the division seems to be between those who can walk or cycle to the office, so are happy to go in frequently and those who have to spend hours on trains and tubes and would rather not inhale everyone else's omicron breath.

Here in St John's, I had cause to go into the office yesterday and there were.....three people there. I think our need for a building to house 150 people has passed. I do believe its useful to get together with colleagues every now and then & see the benefit of going to an office. Personally, whats more significant is when we allow international travel again so I can make a quarterly trip to UK to meet the rest of my team and other colleagues. Our CFO is happy that we're not spending so many travel dollars so that's not yet possible.

By the way on masking, all restrictions were dropped last Monday here in Nfld. Mask use in stores, however, remains high - >75% in my experience. Schools are keeping masks until Easter at least and you still have to mask in any healthcare facility. I'm still masking because, apart from the rampant nature of omicron, I'm recovering from surgery and that would only be complicated by a dose of covid.