Peter wrote:
they are happy to live alone, or
they are happy to see a lot of their partner or
they get out periodically for social interaction, and
the work is suitable for doing at home
Most office work is, and an awful lot of people don’t necessarily want to socialise with their colleagues. Many people car commute, which is very poor quality expensive time, usually thoroughly unenjoyable, that is literally just lost and even worse is costing you money. If I drove to work, it would cost me around 5 hours per week (and about £25 per week just in fuel).
Having said that, I missed my commute during lockdown because I do it on a bicycle. I struggle to go for a bike ride just for the sake of going for a bike ride, but can find the motivation when I have a place to go, and an hour on the bike is probably the best quality thinking time you can get. I’ve solved enough problems on my bike, I joke I should put it down as working hours. Driving takes too much concentration to get any serious thinking done, but a combination of the physical exercise and never really getting any faster than about 20 mph makes time on the bike excellent thinking time: no one is bothering you with inane questions, you can feel the wind on your face – you’re getting some proper outdoors time. Steve Jobs wanted to call the Macintosh the “bicycle” back in the early 80s, saying computers are bicycles for the mind, but bicycles are bicycles for the mind :-) Not to mention the regular use of a bicycle helps to keep your flying medical and if you get transportation as a byproduct, it’s a win-win.
I change jobs in about a week’s time working for a distributed company, where everyone works in different places. I’d never work for them if they required in present work, because no one leaves the Isle of Man to live in Luton.
My wife has worked from home ever since we moved in together. She works in oil and gas, the company she works for is highly distributed and has managed to come out of each downturn in the industry stronger than its competitors. All of their software and IT people work remotely. The engineers of course have no option but to go into work, usually on a helicopter miles out to sea…
Silvaire wrote:
Nobody here would have any idea what you meant by a 50 hr Check,
Here’s the 50hr manual, in PDF form, from an aircraft company called Piper:
Yes, doubtless produced in 2008 as a potential money maker for maintaining fleet operated and European registered aircraft. However, as with manufacturer service bulletins it is intended to be advisory to the owner of the aircraft, it is not part of FAA regulations and not part of US maintenance practice. Similar to the kind of inspection car manufacturers suggest before you start your car every morning. In both of those cases, nobody in the US slavishly follows the manufacturer’s manual in this regard because it would be a bit silly, can be done by the owner on his own schedule anyway, and the 50 hr inspection concept has never become part of US aircraft maintenance culture. I knock out out my aircraft oil changes somewhere between 25 and 50 hrs, based on when I have a chance to do it, reminded by the color of the oil. The rest of the items that might be inspected frequently are the kind of thing I’m looking at all the time, as I pod and poke on my plane in the hangar. Taking your plane to the shop or following a likely incomplete checklist for that kind of stuff is not something people here would very often do, I’m thinking maybe Lexus driving Cirrus people might do it, credit card in hand, but I’ve never actually heard of anybody doing it, or discussing it, or anything else. Messing with the shop and transport would take longer than doing the work. As mentioned owners here would have no idea what a ‘50 hr check’ means other than being aware that 50 hrs is the typical interval between oil changes (which are not a “check” or inspection).
The obsessive approach taken in Europe, regimented by regulation and supported by maintenance companies taking money from you every 50 hrs (!) is not in place here. Manufacturers self serving documentation (in the rare cases where it exists for a “50 hr inspection”) is not used in a collaboration between government and their fee paying approved maintenance organzations to extract money by enforcing silly maintenance protocols.
In my organisation people are now starting to think about constructing the working week better – driving to an office to spend hours on Teams meetings is insane, but scheduling proper ring fenced time to do collaborative stuff works well. The offices are getting rebuilt as well – the long banks of open plan desks are going.
The seniors who want to see rows of people lined up staring at a screen are suddenly finding people deserting their teams for other more enlightened parts of the organisation as well; they won’t be around long I would predict.
Interestingly, there is also more bargaining around working hours as well. Seeing lots more people doing compressed hours 4 day weeks or 9 day fortnights, another big part of balancing the commute and life.
I’m happy to say we’ve never had ‘cube farms’ where I work, virtually everybody above technician level (meaning e.g. several hundred people in my particular building) gets an office with a door. None of my direct reports have anything but a real office. I appreciate that very much, as mentioned.
18 day working months with mostly 9 hr days have been common in the US defense industry for a long time, to align with the government customer which encourages it to minimize the sense that they are slacking off and contractors aren’t. Productivity drops (few actually work nine hour days) but the relevant contracts allow the resulting extra labor cost to be passed along to the taxpayer. So contractor HR management likes it – they can attract people with the work schedule and it doesn’t cost the company a penny, government accounts payable people (doubtless working from home!) pay the bill. Responsible government in action, spending our money wisely. Oddly enough though, those on fixed price contracts don’t seem to take advantage of this great efficiency enhancing scheme 
Open plan was always horrible. The mere fact that everybody can hear your phone calls makes it stressful, plus the high background noise level.
Hot desking, all the rage in “progressively managed” companies, took it to new heights.
Paradoxically, quite communist-ideologist actually… everybody is just a cog in a huge machine, without even a personal desk and a chair.
Silvaire wrote:
Yes, doubtless produced in 2008 as a potential money maker for maintaining fleet operated and European registered aircraft. However, as with manufacturer service bulletins it is intended to be advisory to the owner of the aircraft, it is not part of FAA regulations and not part of US maintenance practice.
Oh, come on! You’re moving the goalpost. First you say that no one “here” knows what a 50 hr check is and that most aircraft we fly were manufactured in the USofA. Then when someone proves to you that a major manufacturer does indeed have 50 hr checks, you reply that they aren’t mandatory. Well, not being mandatory is not the same thing as no one knowing what it is. And you know what? 50 hr checks aren’t mandatory in Europe either! (For non-commercial ops.)
Peter wrote:
Paradoxically, quite communist-ideologist actually… everybody is just a cog in a huge machine, without even a personal desk and a chair.
I recall from reading Lepage’s “Tomorrow, capitalism” (a very long time ago) that he had to spend a lot of pages rationalising why companies are run as planned economies internally while at the same time saying that planned economies are bad.
Probably a different degree of capability to control people. It is quite a normal human tendency to want to control other people. If it wasn’t, it would be impossible to recruit into many professions (e.g. the police). Hence communism has been very popular, at times… The ideology strongly resonates with the desires of the controlling, lazy, incompetent, stupid (or clever+cynical e.g. Lenin), un-enterprising. But a company can control “its” people only within working hours. A totalitarian govt can control them 24/7, and to a much deeper level.
It is obvious that most people dislike their job. I think it’s always been thus, although one gets the feeling, from e.g. my visiting of companies over 40+ years, that the % has gone up during the “extreme de-personalisation” of the working environment (open plan, etc).
It is no wonder that CV19 has caused so many people, perhaps within 10 years of retirement, to re-evaluate their work-life balance, and either move to a low-paid low-stress job, or retire. Including many long-term flyers, too… another topic.
And CV19 is closely tied to WFH. Unfortunately the % of the workforce who actually can WFH is no higher before or after.
@Airborne_Again, what I said was that “few if any” here would know what a “50 hr check” is, that it isn’t part of FAA maintenance regulation, and that nobody I know has ever done one, either at a maintenance shop or themselves by some checklist. That is the literal truth, and I think it’s likely also true that documents like the Piper one were initiated something like 50 years after e.g. the Cherokee was certified and that nobody in the US actually noticed when Piper did so.
As with ‘Mandatory Service Bulletins’ issued by Piper or anybody else, these are in reality only advisory in nature and get exactly much attention as the individual owner thinks they should. In this case, that is apparently not much!
This regulated ‘50 hr check’ thing overseas is complete nonsense, like much of European maintenance regulation, ‘make work’ for maintenance companies enforced by their friends in government who get a cut of the action via fee and tax payments.
