What's the Work From Home situation?

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bwin12

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I'm curious to know the WFH situation in the engineering world. Are companies back to normal operations- i.e. how they operated in January 2020? Does anyone have new policies in place for WFH?

I've read the articles online that companies are recanting on there WFH plans, I'm wondering if that's the case in this industry.
 
We are working in the office two days a week until the end of June, then back 4 days a week. We are going to try to WFH one day a week and see how that works out.
 
Been working at home since March 16, 2020 (Gov’t). Ohio is set to go back to business as usual on June 2nd, but the talk has been to keep working from home because we’re still producing well
 
We are mostly back in the office full time. I'm pretty sure I could WFH 1-2 days per week if I wanted to, but I enjoy the office environment and my commute is relatively short.

Ironically, I will probably push/choose to WFH 1-2 days a week in the near future simply because with the increased traffic from everyone going BACK to the office in our metro area, my commute is starting to increase and become more aggravating and I'd like a break once in a while.
 
State-level government here, we've been back to 50% in-office work since January. That's a minimum in-office time, though. We have so many vacancies that even if everyone was 100% in-office we would still be pretty sparse, so several of us just work in-office all the time now. I find that I am more effective at my job (division head) when I am here 100% of the time. Back when we were working from home I thought it was pretty efficient, and it was in terms of stuff that I can do on my own, and for meetings. It was perfect while I was on COVID incident management duties. But in my day job, having the perspective of being back in the office now, I think remote work has too many disadvantages. I'd say a solid 30% of my staff just can't handle it, and don't get any work done at all when working from home. Less than 30% seem to do pretty well with it, though. But the problem going forward is how to be "fair" in a way that would allow the good workers to continue WFH, but keep the irresponsible ones in the office.
 
We are mostly all back in the office, but the official return to workplace date is June 1. The biggest issue with WFH was that new staff were struggling without anyone to help them
We had three new guys start several months after we’d already gone telework full time...shoot, I’d only been there about two months when we were sent home. Still not as good as being in the office, but we’re making pretty good use of Zoom, Webex, and soon, Google Teams.
 
Full time WFH. Company has reopened offices with a mask mandate for "anchor" employees/employees not eligible for WFH status. Company has transitioned to primarily WFH for corporate employees, sold a lot of real estate and has invested a lot of money in systems/processes to continue working remotely at an international level.
 
Sounds like a lot of companies revised (or created) their policy. I'm in this weird inbetween:
- most of the office is back
- some people work from home when they want

I think some people were proficient at home and others were not.
 
Oh, and I was really surprised how much I liked working in the office again, even with a 35ish minute commute each way. In April I said I could care less about going back to the office ever again. Having the flexibility to be in the office when needed is very nice.
 
We can't work from the office until July 1. After that, pretty much everyone has the option to work from home forever. Over half the company has chosen that option, though they may come into the office from time to time as necessary.
 
In many cases you don't even have to live in the same state. And we're hiring engineers like crazy.
HMMMMMM. But I'm not really an engineer. I'm def more of a project manager, unfortunately. Got to stay with the government one more year before I can bounce due to contract nonsense. T_T
 
Partial return to office after July 6. for those that want to. I will probably go back one to two days a week. Depends on mask situation, if wear mask all the time then no. Especially since vaccines are not being mandated likely means masks required. My personal feeling no vaccine, then permanent WFH.

I am at central office of water/wastewater utility. Most of the staff at plants and field maintenance have been going in. And the 24 hour system monitoring.

I go in periodically couple times a month if I need to for field work or on site precons. Used a microfilm reader for first time since college a couple months ago. Kind of old school, sometimes print plans out and line them up to see overall project layout, even though use electronic plan review

WFH has given me some flexibility with personal stuff. If I need to duck for an hour or two to take family member to doctor, I can. Don't have to budget two plus hours for a one hour commute because of traffic idiocy.
 
We've been back in the office full time since about August last year. But there are also only 7 of us and we all have our own office.
 
We’re going back in (kind of mandated, it’s a bit unclear) 2x/week starting on June 14th. I’ve already been going back about 2 days a week for the past month or so. Not sure how long that’s going to last before it changes for one way or another! But I do actually like going back into the office for a few days a week. I get my bike commute back in, and can see my two direct coworkers because we’ve coordinated the days we’re going in.
 
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HMMMMMM. But I'm not really an engineer. I'm def more of a project manager, unfortunately. Got to stay with the government one more year before I can bounce due to contract nonsense. T_T
Hell, most of our PM's never worked in the office to begin with. PM's and contracts/subcontract managers I saw like once a year.
 
Hell, most of our PM's never worked in the office to begin with. PM's and contracts/subcontract managers I saw like once a year.
There is one PM at my job who oversees renovation projects at plants, might see him in central building twice a month. Has on site office too, more like a resident engineer
 

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