The Grand re-engineering of Ireland has begun in earnest with 5 years plan exploding out of Whole-Of-Government orifices all over the place. This naturally requires a United Ireland to achieve optimum agenda. now on the cards, the island united under a new Empire. Side stepping the irony.
First we had the super-duper 5 years x 2 double-plus-good-ultra-green plans announced last week
Now we have the official UTOPIA built from the war-like Nightmare announced today - hold onto your hats/iPhones. Youâre being walked eyes-wide-open locked-down into a brave, brave, brave new world.
âŚThough itâs not that surprising, when the current control paradigm is pretty shit in the first place and has outlived itâs use that most people have happily settled for a break, and jumped on the WFH bandwagon early on in 2020, the moment of surprise had this to itâs favour (Iâm sure the novelty has worn off for many in that initial enthusiastic group), but itâs really in preparation to shift to next level of shit paradigm, (see usage of FEAR + TERROR.) and you may not be invited to the final part.
Using a nightmare to sell the world an all or nothing Utopia, is a dead give away.
Representative (disembodied) Voice Calls out to underscore the sell:
ICTU General Secretary Patricia King said: Freeing up workers from their long commutes will ensure more time for family, friends, hobbies, sports and involvement in the wider community.
I canât really see whatâs wrong with any of that.
I appreciate that most things that emanate from the mouths of these people are negative in terms of their intent but I canât see the angle here.
Allowing people living in the commuter belt work from home permanently is a positive IMO.
Likewise, encouraging people who are locked out of the Dublin property market the ability to relocate to more affordable locales while retaining their employment is again a positive.
We shouldnât forget that much of what has been normalised from the Celtic Tiger onwards (old normal) was shit.
I massively disagree with WFH on one point alone, in terms of the experience you pick up, and picking older peoples brains in the office. Even allowing for professional qualifications, CPD and post grad etc, it would be impossible to do a lot of job without on the job training/mentorship that happens informally within an office environment.
I think WFH is great in theory, but the only people who will actually benefit are those in the 35+ cohort
But commuting daily to an office desk or cubicle isnât much of a life either.
Yet that was the old normal for many people.
There are opportunities to this for everyone, not just the usual suspects. As ever, they have just been quicker out of the blocks.
But try not to let them be the only ones to identify and monetise the opportunities for change that this thing has presented.
Know their playbook and reflect it back at them. Most of them are merely middle managers who worship hierarchy. Theyâre moths to the light themselves when prodded correctly.
The simple rule of business life is that most mangers are not very good. Its actually quite difficult to do well and as a result those who are seen by the typical manager to work in the office more often are those who are perceived to be doing most work. Those who spend time chatting and interacting around the office are more likely to be perceived positively than those who are rarely seen or keep to themselves. Skipping afternoon coffee or lunch in the lunchroom is very counterproductive in the long term. You have to be seen. And seen in a positive light.
This is human nature. This is how the world works. So in most office situations and in most jobs full time WFH is long term career suicide. Making an appearance almost every day for a few hours while also WFH is the best of both worlds. You get to avoid commute hours and get a lot of flexibility with your time but you still get all the office politics benefit of being seen on a daily basis and interacting with other people. Otherwise out of sight, out of mind, and guess who is most likely to get a negative appraisal, passed over for promotion or raise, or first out the door when there is a RIF.
Iâve seen this happen to too many people over the years. Including good friends. You may not be interested in office politics but office politics will always be interested in you.
One friend regularly put in 10 hour days, hit all his milestones early, even came up with a major new feature for a product which absolutely all of you in a certain industry sector will be familiar with. He only worked nights and rarely was seen in the office during day. Sometimes for months at a time. Same manager for years. Then a new manger came in. Had no idea what work my friend was doing. I warned my friend to change his work hours but he did nt. The manager never saw him around the office so my friend was top of the next years list of those fired. And of course the following year the manager is gone. My friend never found another job as perfectly suited to his skills. Just a small bit of office politics would have probably saved his job.
Those who realize that permanent WFH is not a good long term career move and return even part time to the office are those who will survive and prosper. Because human nature never changes. Especially with management types.
Ha ha I was about to post a kind of shorter versions.
WFH, deadly.
Shoulder tap.
Job gone.
No new Jobs
Why?
Well ya canât work in other peoples homes right?
Well maybe as a cleaner/trade but then really gonna take up the slack???
TBH this is globalist Bait and Switch. They have it all planned out.
Youâve already gotten a flavour,
essential vs non-essential
One day you perfect WFH job becomes, non-essential or something like that. It is more likely the ghost in the mciroshop will replace your jobs in a jiffy. No choice then but to exist on the UBI, currently weâre on the trial period.
The post man is now the santa-shopping-mall thanks Amazon.
When the essential food measures come in (fuk you climate-change-denier) - What are you going to do? Youâll be arrested for growing
That may have applied previously but if practically everybody within an organisation is either working from home fulltime or in blended form, itâs unlikely to apply.
In terms of the thread topic, the Civil Serviceâs work canât be outsourced either so I donât think it is as is being suggested here. If anything it may be no more than an acknowledgement on the part of management that Dublin rents can be cut back on or in some cases avoided by going the WFH route.
It sounds like Iâve been doing the office politics thing for a lot more decades than you have. From both sides of the desk. Human nature is immutable. For managements types even more so. Whatever is happening now is a transient. It will return to the previous situation. Sooner rather than later.
Due to the nature of my work Iâve been doing hybrid WFH for almost last three decades. Sometimes I have not even been on the same continent let alone in the same state for parts of some projects. But with very few exceptions , when dealing with exceptionally competent management, almost all management needs baby-sitting from close quarters if the project is not to turn into a cluster-fuck. This can range from a few hours once or twice a week to almost full days onsite, for particularly bad management. And remember this is after all the projects with the most egregious terrible management has be declined. Usually at least two thirds. Either unrealistic expectations, unwilling to undo previous bad decisions, or unwilling to hear bad new up front. Saying No to stupid stuff is the single biggest way of reducing future grief. If they dont want to hear No then there is little hope of having a successful project.
The other part of the equation is pure WFH is very bad for most peoples long term mental health. So part of the equation of onsite/offsite mix is also just getting out of the home-office on a regular to interact with the other people in a work environment. Which is one of the reasons why pure offsite projects are almost never very satisfactory. You learn little, you lose opportunities to meet and get to know new people, and I have yet to meet anyone in my part of tech who took the pure WFH route who did not get in a long term rut and never progress career-wise. Its basically a dead end.
So to a lot of people new to WFH it might be great and wonderful. But even to people who are in very predicable jobs in large organization a pure WFH working schedule will slowly turn them crazy. Some people thrive of course, but they are very much the minority. Most people need human interaction in their job. Even in the most introverted self-contained jobs in the high tech business.
As for the civil service. This whole decentralization schtick has been tried for many decades. Always a disaster. What little productivity there is collapses. Competent people are lost and eventually only the time servers and shirkers are left. The very people who need to watched over with a beady eye by middle managers to make sure any work is done.
In Irelands case half the population are in Greater Dublin and almost two thirds within 90 mins of the Greater Dublin area so it makes perfect sense to keep most civil service jobs in the Greater Dublin region. In an Irish context decentalization is purely cute-hoor stroke politics by culchie politicians. Like sticking the Data Protection Office in an office over a Centra supermarket in Portarlington.
Only problem with that is lack of housing in Dublin. Itâs utterly unaffordable. Itâs what started me running down rabbit holes (of finance, banking, politics) to figure out the why of house prices being so illogicalâŚ
I would see the above as being exactly why the WFH thing is a positive.
I know people stuck in the 5 day commute from Portlaoise/Athlone/Cavan model. Itâs every bit as soul destroying and negative in mental health/nutritional terms as what you describe as the potentially negative impacts of WFH. I even know of one person who was commuting daily from Cork to Dublin by train in order to save on housing costs. If that type of Celtic Tiger wannabe London bullshit can be consigned to history on foot of the pandemic then itâs a good thing IMO.
Re the micro environment, my own experience since the beginning of this pandemic has been that a lot of the bluster and bullshit has been removed from the office environment. Iâve also observed that many of the bullshitters/middle management types have been the people whoâve been less able to adapt to WFH. These are often the type of people who need daily interactions, designed to do little more than reinforce hierarchy, for personal validation and that has been removed to a significant degree. People who actually get things done are observably more valuable within the current climate. That often means peons and genuinely proactive people. Bullshitters have less scope to do what they do best. Again, I view this as a positive.
Beyond that thereâs clearly no need for 2/3 of the Irish population to be travelling in and out of Dublin every day. IBEQ and the rest of the gougers and rent seekers can fuck off. Iâll happily make my own tea or coffee, cook my own food and spend more time with my own family and less listening to the type of blather that went on within an office environment.
By the way, while I oppose ongoing lockdown and further erosion of civil liberties, I have zero sympathy for the âentrepreneursâ whoâve been gouging me on everything from transport to lunches to pints to rent over the past 20 years. Theyâre no better. They just happen to be on the outside pissing in for a change. And they clearly donât like it.
Perhaps this is partly why there hasnât been that much sympathy for many of them. For years theyâve been doing to the rest of us what COVID is currently doing to them.
really 
