WFO/WFH Trends among aB community in 2024

[bigpicture7]

This is a just-for-fun poll to see where aB forumers are these days in terms of Work from Office / Work from Home in early 2024.
It's been a while since we've done one of these and there's lots of related chatter in other threads, so figured we'd just take pulse.

Note: I certainly do not mean to imply that all aB'ers are office workers. So feel free to comment on other work location considerations in the thread below. I thought about making the poll more complex, but chose just to keep it a simple prompt about office-type work since that's a timely topic these days.

 

[Justbuildit]

Death to the home office. Give me a desk and interaction with colleagues or give me...well, whatever it was in 2020-2021.

 

[KCasiglio]

2 days in the office, though I'd hardly call it office centric. Even on in-person days I would say most of our communication is via virtual platforms due to the amount of coordination we do with outside entities. I'm also not much for water-cooler chit chat with people I'm not regularly interacting with and have a toddler I need to manage drop off and pick up of, so the home-centricity is wonderful for me.

 

[RandomWalk]

I am in the office-centric bucket. However, I would prefer that my employer defines flexibility on a timescale longer than a week. Ideally, I would have a 1-2 weeks in the office per quarter, which I can divvy up in coordination with my team.

I realize that most employers are probably defining things in per week due to IRS regulations and desiring to avoid having folks take a Boston salary while living in South Dakota.

 

[HenryAlan]

Death to the home office. Give me a desk and interaction with colleagues or give me...well, whatever it was in 2020-2021.

Yeah, I'm not a fan, but the lack of whatever it was we had before 2020-2021, renders it pointless for me to go in to the office. I still do it once or twice a week, just for disruption purposes, but every time I'm there, I look at all the empty desks and wonder why I bothered.

 

[bigpicture7]

Yeah just a quick note on poll semantics (which are never easy to get right): yes, some companies don't use a weekly timescale and have people in a few days per month. That case would be in the "~1 day per week" bucket here (I thought about posting it as "0.5 - 1 day per week" but then figured people might be confused by what the "0.5" meant). So here "Home-centric hybrid" just means that even though you're predominately working from home, you're still expected to go in with some regularity). I considered 2-3 days in-office to be office-centric because those employers are still choosing to maintain a non-trivial (physical) office hub; it wasn't meant to refer to the exact split of peoples' time.

 

[citydweller]

Just prior to working FT from home, I was in the office "IMing" with one of my colleagues. We were both in the office, 20 feet from each other, using instant messaging to communicate. And we both drove 1 hour+ to the office. Go figure. That was 3+ years ago. Never again will I step foot in the office.

 

[BosMaineiac]

Another great question is how many people commuted by transit pre covid but choose to drive in now? A lot of people in my office who live further out in the suburbs used to always take the commuter rail in. Now they drive 1-2 days a week and swallow the parking fees. It makes sense because everyone would always get the commuter rail passes for the 5-day a week shlep, which makes much more financial sense compared to driving and parking all week. I live in the city, but I think I would still take the train if I lived further out, as would many on this forum, I’m sure, but who knows. FWIW my office is right in the FiDi, a stones throw from SS

 

[Teban54]

Are people interested in stats of all or some workers in Boston at large (or maybe nationally), or do we want to limit this to this forums users?

 

[bigpicture7]

Are people interested in stats of all or some workers in Boston at large (or maybe nationally), or do we want to limit this to this forums users?

There is already a patchwork of threads on this very topic at various places on the forum. So the point here was to take current pulse of forum users (hence the specificity in the thread title), since having a sense of where authors are coming from when they discuss housing and commuting issues might be interesting/useful. An update on regional/national stats more broadly would be interesting too, but that wasn't the point of this poll. (unfortunately you can't embed a poll mid-thread, hence why this poll resides in a new one)

Here is a sampling of existing ones:
Evolving use of office and other space
Post-Covid Urbanism Discussion
Post-Covid Travel Patterns and Solutions

 

[KCasiglio]

Notable reflection of the demographics of the forum that no one has yet brought up that they work in a field incompatible with the possibility for work from home.

 

[Teban54]

Notable reflection of the demographics of the forum that no one has yet brought up that they work in a field incompatible with the possibility for work from home.

I mean, students exist...

 

[njlx]

I'm one that doesn't fit neatly into the options - both now and pre-covid, going into the office is for when I need to physically touch something, or once every week or two if I haven't been in recently and have a free day. "Office" work is done at home, but most of my time is spent on job sites around the city/state, either construction sites or live/corporate events.

My department is flexible for the "Office work"(we can do paperwork and take meetings from anywhere), but still have most of our days spent somewhere that is neither at home nor in the office. Our sales and accounting departments are flexible but Office Centric.

 

[BosMaineiac]

Notable reflection of the demographics of the forum that no one has yet brought up that they work in a field incompatible with the possibility for work from home.

How do you know that? Most designers are able to work entirely from home

 

[Stlin]

How do you know that? Most designers are able to work entirely from home

I think they're referring to folks whose work cannot be done from home. For example, a lab tech who has to be in the lab, a nurse who has to be in the hospital, a teacher who has to be at the school, a manufacturing guy who has to be on the shop floor. No mention of designers anywhere in the post you're replying to.

There's also those of us for whom "in-person" involves being somewhere else; I expect to have 60+ days working "on site" this year but that site could literally be anywhere in the world, and am entire WFH otherwise.

 

[KCasiglio]

How do you know that? Most designers are able to work entirely from home

Like Stlin said, I was noticing the lack of non office jobs. When I first joined this board I was a teacher/bartender. I just think it’s worth pointing out as something to keep in mind when we talk about the broader population; that we reflect a fairly homogenous and non-representative block of the broader population.

 

[bigeman312]

Like Stlin said, I was noticing the lack of non office jobs. When I first joined this board I was a teacher/bartender. I just think it’s worth pointing out as something to keep in mind when we talk about the broader population; that we reflect a fairly homogenous and non-representative block of the broader population.

I imagine this forum is disproportionately white, male, college educated, and left-leaning politically compared to the gen pop. That may just be projection on my part, but it’s my assumption unless shown otherwise.

 

[BosMaineiac]

Like Stlin said, I was noticing the lack of non office jobs. When I first joined this board I was a teacher/bartender. I just think it’s worth pointing out as something to keep in mind when we talk about the broader population; that we reflect a fairly homogenous and non-representative block of the broader population.

My bad, I misunderstood what you were saying reading it as the opposite of what you meant. Thanks for the clarification, although just because people on the board don’t specifically say what they do doesn’t mean they don’t work/learn in a field that requires you to be in-person.

 

[KCasiglio]

I imagine this forum is disproportionately white, male, college educated, and left-leaning politically compared to the gen pop. That may just be projection on my part, but it’s my assumption unless shown otherwise.

Guilty as charged!

My bad, I misunderstood what you were saying reading it as the opposite of what you meant. Thanks for the clarification, although just because people on the board don’t specifically say what they do doesn’t mean they don’t work/learn in a field that requires you to be in-person.

No, but the poll results currently are 34 “some level of remote” versus 5 “at least 4 days a week in person” when the general population is 80% fully in person. I was a teacher and bartender when I first joined the board, I’m sure there’s a couple people.

 

[BosMaineiac]

No, but the poll results currently are 34 “some level of remote” versus 5 “at least 4 days a week in person” when the general population is 80% fully in person. I was a teacher and bartender when I first joined the board, I’m sure there’s a couple people.

Yes, I agree, the demographics on this board certainly don’t reflect the actual demographics of Boston