34% of remote workers would quit rather than return to full-time office work

At any given point, half of workers are contemplating leaving.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;27&#x2F;47percent-of-workers-are-considering-quitting-their-jobs-right-now.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;27&#x2F;47percent-of-workers-are-con...</a><p>The typical office worker spends a half hour searching for new jobs at work every day.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inc.com&#x2F;melanie-curtin&#x2F;in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inc.com&#x2F;melanie-curtin&#x2F;in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver...</a><p>I’m not sure this is a revolution or just that plenty of people have no real attachment to their employer.

Give me a dedicated office with a door that can shut, allow me to commute during off-peak rush hours, and raise my pay or shorten my work hours for the same rate... then we will talk about coming back in.<p>Currently:<p>I have an dedicated office at home, I can shut my door and work when I need to be distraction free. I don&#x27;t have my head pinched by headphones for hours, and I can work in silence like I prefer. No coworkers interrupting me when I&#x27;m in the zone.<p>I&#x27;ve saved between 8-10 hours per week in not commuting. Worse, I&#x27;ve had bosses who enjoy flexing by having meetings promptly at 8am, where you have to leave extra early because you travel at peak rush hour.<p>I don&#x27;t have to keep up appearances when I&#x27;m done with my work for the day or moment. If I&#x27;m waiting for responses or reviews, I can veg out, watch Netflix or play a video game, while staying on top of my email and work load. I&#x27;ve also taken to getting some of my house work done during this time. Laundry, mowed grass, exercise, lots of little things that used to get stacked up on the weekend.<p>I never have to eat off my diet, or feign excuses for not wanting to eat another office provided carb loaded meal. I stock my own foods, and have a hot meal for lunch everyday.<p>Finally, I don&#x27;t have to smell the 2 smokers that spend a couple of hours smoking every single day nor do I have to sit next to someone with questionable personal hygeine. Yes Richard, you smell awful, and stink up half the office with your body odor and cigarettes.

I don&#x27;t believe it.<p>I do believe that 34% of polled workers <i>said</i> they would quit rather than return to the office, but I do not believe even a majority of them would actually go follow through on that threat. Especially if you filter out high paid&#x2F;high job-security developers and similar people who might have the financial security to do so.<p>People, particularly Americans, are shackled to their jobs for many reasons and most people are risk-averse.<p>Despite myself being pro-remote, I think that we will see a sizable return to office-centric work culture over the next few years. The office may (hopefully) end up looking or feeling a bit different as an outcome. All the stories about the &quot;end of the office&quot; are overblown.<p>Once it again becomes beneficial for your career and&#x2F;or social life to participate in office culture people will come crawling back. Not saying it&#x27;s a good thing, but it&#x27;s what will happen.

I personally would rather quit than stay remote indefinitely, I can tell you that.

I&#x27;ll bet 1&#x2F;3 also said they would walk away if they had to keep working remotely. If we&#x27;ve learned anything from this year, it&#x27;s that there is no consensus. Some people like to work in an office, some people like to work at home, and most people like the flexibility of doing both when they choose to.<p>I think offices are here to stay, but maybe in some cases they will change to be more like coworking spaces for just one company, where every desk is &quot;rented&quot;, to allow for hybrid situations where different teams can choose if they want to be remote or in person and which days they do that.

I feel like I&#x27;m in the minority here, but I am chomping at the bit to get back into the office.<p>I&#x27;m a Senior SWE. I&#x27;ve got ADHD. Work from home has been *<i>catastrophic*</i> for me. I don&#x27;t have the ability to focus. I have no space in my home where I can work distraction-free, and no ability to create a space separate from my family. From home I can slack off for an hour... or two... or days, and nobody notices because my projects don&#x27;t have deliverables that are measured in less than weeks. So I end up spending way too much time on non-work things and then berate myself for it afterwards. And then I do the same thing the next day.<p>Being in the office gives me an externally-imposed structure that I just don&#x27;t have the capability to impose on myself. I had the freedom to pick a few days here and there to WFH as needed, so I understand and can occasionally use the benefits. I also miss out on the serendipitous conversations. I know that a lot of people discount this as hand-waviness, but my team&#x27;s culture around texting is disruptive in a way that I used to avoid in person. I felt like I had a much better handle on things in the office.<p>My spouse runs her own company, and she has a free office, so I&#x27;ve been using that twice a week, and I make sure to medicate these days to make the most of them. But my output is still significantly lower than when I was in office. And I don&#x27;t want to move to every day medication for a variety of reasons.<p>I&#x27;ve read the comments suggesting that middle management thinks that their perceived impact is threatened in a work from home environment, but I am clearly not in that demographic. My work is either writing design docs and getting approval, leading a team to build these designs, or getting my hands dirty with the code itself.<p>I don&#x27;t care if other people work from home, as long as I&#x27;m not completely alone in the office. I just need the structure back.<p>I feel like a junky who just needs &quot;one more&quot; whiteboard fix.

For me, its all about the commute. Just do the math.<p>1-Hour commute time both ways: 21.8 Days a year you are spending commuting to&#x2F;from work.<p>3-fucking-weeks of time, poof, gone.<p>I&#x27;ll get my social interaction else where for 3 weeks of my life back. Thanks.

Absolutely on the other side of this. My wife and I are both 100% remote (except for some in person classes which we teach).<p>We ended up renting an office (a really nice coworking space in Phoenix called industrious, which we have kindof fallen in love with).<p>We pay for this out of our own pocket because it turns out that the amenities typical to an office are <i>really</i> nice. Our productivity is up substantially since we moved in here.<p>Here&#x27;s my prediction: the midpoint between work from home and going back to the office is going to be your employer paying for a coworking space like this for employees who want to be back in an office.

Headline doesn&#x27;t match the content. The content says that the respondents would &quot;look for a new job.&quot; The respondents did not say they would quit. Obviously, one can look for a new job while still working at a current employer, and <i>then</i> quit if the search is successful.

We talk a lot about the &quot;You can&#x27;t make me go back&quot; crowd, but I don&#x27;t think we give much thought to the &quot;Why do I have to bend over backwards to support a few fully remote co-workers&quot; crowd. Being fully remote works well (for some people) when the whole team is remote. My biggest fear is that hybrid environments can bring out the worst of both worlds.<p>I wonder how many people will quit if they&#x27;re forced to work with remote-only employees on a regular basis? If you&#x27;re having a meeting with 4 in-person co-workers and 2 remote co-workers, you have to make all sorts of accommodations for the remote folks that wouldn&#x27;t be necessary for a meeting with the same 6 people in-person. &quot;Can you repeat the question&quot; &#x2F; &quot;Can you share your [other] screen?&quot; &#x2F; &quot;Can we record this meeting?&quot; &#x2F; &quot;Can you hold the camera up to the whiteboard?&quot;.<p>Similarly, if you&#x27;re in the minority of remote folks on a hybrid team, you&#x27;ll be at a disadvantage. You&#x27;re likely forced to either miss out on some context&#x2F;discussions from not being present or not being able to hear, or become &quot;that person&quot; asking folks to repeat themselves or specially accommodate you in various ways. Not to mention missing out on face time with the boss[es boss], which can (rightly or wrongly) often factor in to promotion&#x2F;raise discussions.

Very interested in seeing the WTF happens with the housing market this year. Maybe a good indicator of truly how people feel about this vs random surveys.<p>- Huge amount of people fleeing to suburbs last year.<p>- Huge amount of people continuing to flee this year.<p>- Lots of buyer regrets on hugely marked up homes as things normalize.<p>- Bunch of workers getting called back into offices and people regretting commute times.<p>- Bunch of people quitting jobs and regretting their expensive purchases as they can&#x27;t find other competitive paying jobs that stay remote.<p>Etc..

Study is published by a staffing firm, who surveyed around 1000 people. It seems like the people who would respond to a staffing firm&#x27;s survey might not be fully representative of the broader working population.<p>I did not expect to enjoy working from home, but I thoroughly do. I feel like I can be <i>almost as</i> effective, but I sure wouldn&#x27;t quit over a return to the office. (And I sure wouldn&#x27;t be reachable by a staffing firm to be surveyed.)

I prefer working from the office. And people who code form their laptops from cafés, really? You would spend hours looking at a small 15&quot; screen, straining your neck and back, instead of comfortably using dual-monitor setup and a comfortable chair in the office? Or you like working at home, near your home fridge and playing active kids? Definitely not my cup of tea.

The worst part for me about working in the office is that my view is completely open. Zero privacy, distractions all day.<p>Cubicles look like the caricature of boring office work, I don’t know but for me it would be awesome. Have a little corner I can personalize, not to have to see my colleagues eyes staring right into my face all da6 because they happen to sit right in front of me and have a better posture. Can I get a rest please? I’ll admit I suffer from trauma related stress but regardless how is it good for anybody?<p>If we agree that separating work from personal time is important, why wouldn’t this apply AT work to separate focus, from socializing time?

I think the next lesson most companies will be learning is that hybrid can be the worst of both worlds. Remote employees will feel out-of-the-loop, in-office employees will feel like they have to jump through hoops to include their remote colleagues. In-office employees will feel like they can&#x27;t collaborate because of random WFH from a teammate. Remote employees will feel like they&#x27;re getting dragged into the office because a teammate scheduled an in-person meeting on a day they weren&#x27;t planning on going into the office.<p>It&#x27;s not impossible, but it is a lot harder to figure out than 100% of one or the other.

Anecdotally, my last employer irresponsibly forced most people to return to the office at the height of the 2nd wave. I opted to... not. And I picked up a WFH role instead with a much better salary. So far it&#x27;s been the best career choice I&#x27;ve ever made.

&gt;&gt; Just under half of all the surveyed WFH employees (49%) said they would prefer a hybrid work arrangement, dividing their time between the office and another location. Likewise, 26% said they want to remain fully remote, and 25% wanted to return to a full-time office situation<p>So the real (less attractive) headline is &quot;Typical Distribution in Demand&quot; with the sub title of majority prefer more flexibility over less. Not really much there...

I&#x27;m having a hard time understanding the justification for returning to the office. My only answer is &quot;power play&quot; and to justify existing capital investments in office space. If Salesforce, a 49,000 employee company can go remote-first, most other companies can as well.

I&#x27;m 100% convinced people who do not like remote work are not doing it correctly, or their company is not providing them with the tools and culture to do it correctly. Remote work done correctly is the best option for 99.9% of all jobs that exist.

The study was done by Robert Half, a recruitment company that is extremely old school and works with mostly antiquated companies. This is simply confirmation that many of those companies are behind the curve in their culture and mindset.

I left in 2013.<p>Because of offices, but later I figured that working 8h and starting before 12 wasn&#x27;t in my interest either.<p>Now, that I work as a freelancer for 7 years, I don&#x27;t think I can go back anymore.<p>Employment feels like serfdom to me.

I&#x27;m one of these workers. We decided to pack up and move from the bay area to a &quot;tier 2&quot; city pretty early in the pandemic and there&#x27;s no way I&#x27;m going back. My only regret is not moving earlier.<p>We sold our home we purchased in 2017 and were able to buy a very nice home here in cash, nearly 40% of the total cost coming from equity in that sale. Without a mortgage the budget calculus changes significantly.

This headline is clickbait. Read the actual survey. The actual survey says that 1&#x2F;3 said <i>they would start looking for a new job</i> if they were no longer allowed to work remotely. But then 49% said they would be happy with a hybrid environment, where they only had to come in some of the time.

Study finds that 34% of humans are strongly introverted.

There are advantages and disadvantages when it comes to remote work, but to be honest I don&#x27;t really miss the office after I started to use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;myfocusspace.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;myfocusspace.com</a> which matches me with accountability buddies for 1 hour session of focused work and then we have 10 minutes at the end to network. This helps me with the variety I had when working from the office. Nonetheless, I think working remotely will stick with us for a long time.

This is great. Outbreak of COVID-19 had definitely made remote work popular. Many companies have realised the remote work is possible without productivity being affected.<p>But with remote work there&#x27;s going to be a lot of competition for jobs.<p>If you&#x27;re a Software Developer here&#x27;s a great course which helps you in your interview preparation.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gumroad.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;46068851" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gumroad.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;46068851</a><p>I recently bought this course and have got offers from 4 Unicorns in India!<p>Since I loved this course, just wanted to share it with others in this community :)

34% of workers have been doing 34% of their job they&#x27;ve always hated and don&#x27;t want to go back to 100%.<p>Let them quit. Hopefully they find something that gives them more enjoyment.

Talk is cheap

This sounds like a once in a lifetime industrial swamp-draining opportunity.. what do you suppose the correspondence is between folk having a hard time turning up in one location in the morning, and folk with a variety of other square peg&#x2F;round hole work ethic &#x27;features&#x27;.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, in this scenario I&#x27;d most likely be a drainee, just pointing out the thought must have crossed the minds of a more than a few managers.

I&#x27;ve been thinking about this too. I appreciate the benefits of the office, but I&#x27;m more productive than ever now that I can control my environment, commute, and schedule. If I have to go into work, that&#x27;s about two hours of commuting each day. Where are those hours going to come from? I sure as hell don&#x27;t want them coming out of my personal time, which always feels too full as it is.

I envision a hybrid work environment. I would invest in off-site and event planning companies. Maybe even create a business that facilitates the entire planning process for companies. Every month or 2 everyone would fly out to a particular place - everyone could get some face time in, team-building activities, and then go back to WFH for the rest of the time.

I wasn&#x27;t included in this survey. Make that 34.001%.<p>&gt; Above all, that means freedom to set their own office hours.<p>This only works if every person on a team can work independently.<p>&gt; That includes, for example, not needing to make chit-chat with co-workers.<p>I&#x27;ve fallen in love with being able to hear myself think. (Also my espresso machine and my standing desk.)

I feel like kinda sorry for people who have to work 8 hours from an office they don&#x27;t control. I sympathize with those who voluntarily do that, but i think it should be a sort of labour right to work flexibly when possible

Lower than I&#x27;d like to see it. I think a lot of companies will justify forced commute because of this. 34% isn&#x27;t even a majority.

I&#x27;m certainly not looking forward to go back to an office. Not sure about that 34%, seems pretty high, but I can believe this

In my country most of the workforce that went remote during the pandemic is back at work. Seems WFH is more of a fad in the West.

On the contrary, I&#x27;d give a rib to go back to the office. I&#x27;m completely fine doing just 2 remote days.

34% should probably be 33.333...% or one third. In other words I doubt they know the accuracy of this number any more than roughly estimating it to about a third. Which if is the case makes the argument less convincing that we&#x27;re seeing a completely new phenomenon as it pertains to remote workers.

Until the time comes to quit.<p>When you live paycheck to paycheck, it isn&#x27;t an easy decision...

My guess that number will change when supplement checks stop coming.

If you don&#x27;t have little kids, remote is so nice.

When can we talk about a 6 hour work day?

i will leave if i HAVE to go to office more than 1 day a week.

I would take half my salary if I had to to WFH full time. Luckily I don&#x27;t have to!