I’ve Had it up to my Eyeballs With all the ‘Home Working Vs Office’ talk! … There, I Said it!

OK, rant time …

I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with all the ‘Home Working Vs Office’ talk! … There, I said it!

#Unpopularopinion #Offmychest

Almost everything I’ve read is unnuanced cr*p that has a polarising narrative because to get ‘attention’ you need to say something extreme. Have we lost the ability to have a balanced opinion? Maybe that’s a topic for another day…

I read (belatedly) an Article (https://tinyurl.com/y3rgylme) that I largely agreed with, for a change. I do think there is a pendulum effect, that we are gorging on the idea of remote working and companies that are doing 100% perm remote across their entire business will maybe regret this, at least in part.

I started this year believing that the future will be the extinction of the archetypical office where Flexi working would become the new norm – but the complete abandonment of offices wasn’t what I pictured.

The nuance I think is sometimes lost, for example, what is the effect complete remote working will have on employee competition? To illustrate the point, if you’re a software developer working in London, you won’t appreciate that your company is hiring mainly in the Midlands or the M1 corridor because it will eventually and inevitably lead to that being a preference in hiring practice (as I’m already seeing) because salary expectations are less and businesses get more bang for their buck (there is a reason we import from China the stuff we could make here!).

Exhibit A: Notions like this will become a thing of the past …

Conversely, places in the North or rural areas, or places that are a little more isolated, places like Newcastle and Mansfield etc will see this as a boon, it will allow for them to compete in a wider market where they will be far better compensated.

There are loads more to say, but I’d like to hear from people in the comments, I’d like to actually see what people think about the oft-ignored aspects or factors around the ‘Home Working Vs Office’ discussion – both from an employee/employer perspective …