02-12-2025, 09:03 AM
(02-11-2025, 10:31 AM)danbrotherston Wrote:(02-10-2025, 10:45 PM)tomh009 Wrote: You can give people that flexibility even if you are in the office or hybrid, too. Our company never had a problem with people flexing their time to go to appointments. In the post-COVID world, we even encourage people to work from home if they are showing symptoms of flu (or similar illness). I think that flexibility to deal with sick kids, plumber visits or Amazon deliveries makes a big difference to work satisfaction, no matter what model the company is utilizing.
But, I agree that much depends on the team in any case.
You cannot, by definition, give this flexibility to people who are "in the office" where "in the office" means you are required to be in the office during working hours. Even if you relax it to be "in the office during working hours when not otherwise completing an appointment". Most people have a non-trivial commute, picking my kid up from school and stay with her at home is not something I can do when I am 45 minutes away and expected to be in the office. Same for any appointments I might have in the city. Yes, in theory I can go to the office in the morning, come home at lunch and then go to my dentist appointment, then go back to the office after, and then work till 10 PM because I've spent almost 4 hours of my day travelling just because some manager believes that my physical presence in a building is somehow materially important to me typing code into a computer.
Yes, when I had a commute that was a 5 minute walk, I would do those things from work, but that isn't the case for most people...especially most people with kids.
And as to Kodra's point about workers acting badly...nothing would give me more motivation to fuck off and do the minimum possible than being treated in that way. Yes, I am biased...very strongly...against that kind of BS.
Canadians generally have the mentality that children don't belong in the centre of cities. As a result, there aren't many children in the centre of cities, and quite logically those areas have stopped catering to them, and the cycle reinforces itself.
People with children can choose to live in areas where they do not have 45 minute commutes. All sorts of things would be much better if they were doing that.
My personal experience, I live near the core of KW. I have young children. I've switched jobs while living in the same place, and because I'm in the core I've been able to take transit or walk to the new jobs. I'm a white collar professional, but that's who we're talking about here, anyway- blue collar folks whose places of employment might necessarily be very far from anywhere they're likely to live, they're not part of this debate about work from home, they just go to work.
Actually, I'd be sunk if my employer went fully remote because then I would need more space- not for my children, who don't take up that much, but for a home office.
This mentality, that "most people with kids" have long commutes, because they need to be out in the suburbs, is a problem, and it's also increasingly archaic. Canada's fertility rate is less than 1.3 now: a family with children is now very likely to have one or at most two. No need to get a big house out in the suburbs.