Not 'Quiet Quitting' - Remote Workers Try 'Quiet Vacationing' (msn.com) 118
A new article in the Washington Post argues that a phenomenon called "Quiet vacationing" has "joined 'quiet quitting' and 'quiet firing' as the latest (and least poetic) scourge of the modern workplace.
"Also known as the hush trip, workcation, hush-cation, or bleisure travel — you get the idea — quiet vacationing refers to workers taking time off, even traveling, without notifying their employers." Taking advantage of work-from-anywhere technology, they are logging in from hotels, beaches and campgrounds, sometimes using virtual backgrounds and VPNs to cover their tracks.
Given the difficulty many employers already have trusting remote workers to be productive anywhere outside the office, you can bet they are not keen on the idea of their employees pretending to have their head in the game while their toes are in the sand. But employers also have legitimate legal reasons for keeping tabs on their employees' location when they're on the clock. "Evil HR Lady" Suzanne Lucas, writing in Inc. magazine, recently highlighted the many tax, employment, business-operation and security laws that focus on an employee's location. Workers secretly performing their jobs in other states or countries can trigger compliance headaches for their employers, Lucas notes, giving the hypothetical of an employee seeking workers' compensation after sustaining an injury while on unauthorized travel....
As with declines in birthrates, home purchases and demand for mined diamonds, the quiet-vacationing trend is being attributed primarily, though not exclusively, to millennial workers. But before launching into generational finger-pointing and stereotyping, it's worth taking a look at why they might feel the need to take their PTO on the DL. The U.S. Travel Association in a 2016 report proclaimed millennials to be a generation of "work martyrs," entering the workforce around the time average U.S. vacation usage began declining and mobile technology began enabling round-the-clock attachment to jobs... The work-vacation boundaries most premillennial workers took for granted growing up have gone the way of defined-benefit pensions and good tomatoes.
Inadequate paid leave is another driving force. The United States continues to be the only nation among its industrialized economic peers that does not guarantee paid vacation, sick leave or holidays for all workers, leaving such benefits to the discretion of employers. Workers with limited PTO — whether new to the workforce or stuck in lower-paying, low-benefit industries — generally want to keep as much paid leave banked as possible, especially if they may need it for unpredictable emergencies like illness or caretaking. If you can preserve those precious hours by packing your laptop alongside your flip-flops, why wouldn't you?
The article also mentions employers who begrudge vacation and employees who fear "becoming a target for future cost-cutting..."
"Also known as the hush trip, workcation, hush-cation, or bleisure travel — you get the idea — quiet vacationing refers to workers taking time off, even traveling, without notifying their employers." Taking advantage of work-from-anywhere technology, they are logging in from hotels, beaches and campgrounds, sometimes using virtual backgrounds and VPNs to cover their tracks.
Given the difficulty many employers already have trusting remote workers to be productive anywhere outside the office, you can bet they are not keen on the idea of their employees pretending to have their head in the game while their toes are in the sand. But employers also have legitimate legal reasons for keeping tabs on their employees' location when they're on the clock. "Evil HR Lady" Suzanne Lucas, writing in Inc. magazine, recently highlighted the many tax, employment, business-operation and security laws that focus on an employee's location. Workers secretly performing their jobs in other states or countries can trigger compliance headaches for their employers, Lucas notes, giving the hypothetical of an employee seeking workers' compensation after sustaining an injury while on unauthorized travel....
As with declines in birthrates, home purchases and demand for mined diamonds, the quiet-vacationing trend is being attributed primarily, though not exclusively, to millennial workers. But before launching into generational finger-pointing and stereotyping, it's worth taking a look at why they might feel the need to take their PTO on the DL. The U.S. Travel Association in a 2016 report proclaimed millennials to be a generation of "work martyrs," entering the workforce around the time average U.S. vacation usage began declining and mobile technology began enabling round-the-clock attachment to jobs... The work-vacation boundaries most premillennial workers took for granted growing up have gone the way of defined-benefit pensions and good tomatoes.
Inadequate paid leave is another driving force. The United States continues to be the only nation among its industrialized economic peers that does not guarantee paid vacation, sick leave or holidays for all workers, leaving such benefits to the discretion of employers. Workers with limited PTO — whether new to the workforce or stuck in lower-paying, low-benefit industries — generally want to keep as much paid leave banked as possible, especially if they may need it for unpredictable emergencies like illness or caretaking. If you can preserve those precious hours by packing your laptop alongside your flip-flops, why wouldn't you?
The article also mentions employers who begrudge vacation and employees who fear "becoming a target for future cost-cutting..."
This sounds awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:4, Informative)
Because it's illegal in some cases.
Working from another (cheaper to live in) country is illegal in many legislations, because of where taxes should (versus where they in fact are) applied.
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
But do the managers give a shit about those reasons? I bet most of those managers would be just as pissed if their workers were still in state, but would have trouble explaining the reason why.
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While I am tempted to agree, I only try to discuss objective implications.
In the company I work for, employees who work remotely can do so from anywhere in the country, and are generally* not allowed to work from abroad. If they want to work from abroad, depending on the length of that period, they must submit a request in advance, and it may or may not be granted, based on several different factors, such as project sensitivity, country they would work from, period of time, etc.
*Except for very short period
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I was talking about the managers who call working from elsewhere "quiet vacationing". I'm guessing that your managers instead call it "working".
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But do the managers give a shit about those reasons? I bet most of those managers would be just as pissed if their workers were still in state, but would have trouble explaining the reason why.
Managers might not know or care cuz they have other more important problems.
Imagine a world where you sign into your company VPN and must truthfully acknowledge, upon discipline up to & including termination without benefits, a banner that says you are remotely working from a certain location that could be your "home area".
Said banner and rules might be made aware to you, through a form of legal acknowledgement, before they are implemented. Failure to acknowledge might cost you your VPN privileges. If y
Re: This sounds awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have seen this brought up for state and national borders. Who's responsibility is it to correctly declare and prove residency? IME it is the employee who provides their employer with the proof for the employer for payroll (taxes, benefits, etc).
Easy Solution. (Score:2)
Provide remote employees with a company-owned, company-paid-for, company-controlled smartphone. Install location tracking apps on it as well as an authenticator app and the standard stuff they use for work (like Slack or whatever). This is not a replacement for their personal cell phone, it's their company phone. They now have two phones.
And they are required to use their company phone's authenticator app whenever they sign in to work. Also, frequently call them on that cell phone when you need to talk
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How is a cell phone, at no cost to you and that you can turn off during lunch and off-hours, worse than mandatory working in the office?
Your employer already knows your home address. So the location tracking on the phone isn't going to give away anything new. It's already normal for people to use their personal phones to run apps like Slack and authenticators (for work), so this provides an even better degree of separation from one's personal life.
What are you reacting to here? The removal of the option
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it will overwhelmingly solve this problem
I fail to understand why you think this is a "problem" that needs solving. If the work is getting done who gives a flying flip where they're doing it? It sounds like the same mindset which is against flexible schedules. Let me guess, you're against allowing your people to work from home unless it's an emergency as well, aren't you?
Re:Easy Solution. (Score:4)
Ah no, not at all. I have always been very pro remote work and even opposed to the hybrid work policy. You are being extremely judgmental and dead wrong.
This is quiet-vacationing is a problem because it motivates employers to more strongly demand hybrid work policies. That sucks. I like full time remote work.
If a company-provided cell phone that gives me a neat and clean separation of work-life boundaries (I don't have to put their company apps on my personal cell phone) is the way I get full work-from-home privileges, then I am all for it!
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OK, apparently I was being unfair, but I still don't get why this is a "problem" that needs solving. If I do the work from my home office and then go to the park the rest of the day in what way is that different than if I do it from the Airbnb in Cusco and then go explore the ruins the rest of the day?
When COVID19 reared its ugly head one of my coworkers was on vacation visiting family in west Africa. Since he had his work laptop with him and the offices were shut down he happily did his work from there f
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It's not a problem for the workers. It's a problem from employers who feel that this practice is distracting to you and robbing them of your productivity.
You can argue (to them) that it shouldn't matter, and they are likely to respond by requiring hybrid work policies or full-time-in-office policies to protect themselves against this. That struggle is unpleasant, and I would prefer to avoid it.
The cell phone option is a way to avoid that conflict. It verifies my location while not impinging on my life.
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I feel like I might need to elaborate on this.
I understand why people are saying that "quiet-vacationing" is a non-issue. IT shouldn't matter at all where someone works or how much they work. All that should matter is whether or not they are hitting their work goals. That's it. So, employers should not care, and this isn't a problem, and nothing needs to be done about it, everything is fine.
Well, I am not arguing against this. But I AM saying that employers will never accept it. Never. This argument
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Thanks for clarifying, I don't agree completely but close enough.
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Because it's illegal in some cases.
Since when does "illegal in some cases" mean a thing is blanket bad?
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Because it's illegal in some cases.
Since when does "illegal in some cases" mean a thing is blanket bad?
And that's assuming that "illegal" is "bad" in the first place, which I don't agree with but was accepting hypothetically.
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"Bad" is subjective.
Being lawful is not.
There are many, many laws (or parts thereof) which I think are "bad", but from someone else's point of view are "good", and vice-versa.
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The company I work for actively tracks *business* travel and notates the correlating amount of my salary and benefits for those localities on my W-2.
In practice this means the two days I spent in Florida (for our first in-person team meetings since 2019) will result in me filing a Florida income tax return both this year and (since my stock accrues over the next 5 years) four more years after this. :|
I don't love this, but I understand the why. That said, I'm not going to report my personal travel unless i
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been a thorn in the side of many mobile workers and has generated repeated attempts to change the law to something more practical. The latest attempt to standardize this was the Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act of 2021 [trackbill.com]
The main thrust of this bill is to limit the collection of state income taxes claimed by a state unless the wage earner is earning income for more than 30 days per year in that state. It reduces the tax and compliance burden on the taxpayer and on the employer.
I can see a state wanting to tax a professional athlete that earns $200K per game played in a state or a entertainer earning seven figures per performance, but the average IT worker attending a weekend conference shouldn't be burdened with taxes on the $900 they earn from a two day workshop.
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That's an employee problem. The employer is paying taxes to where the employee said he's working from and paying taxes there. If they're working in a cheaper country then that country needs to start figuring out how to tax those people. If your employer thinks you're working in Canlifornia, and paying federal and state wit
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It's a law problem.
If laws prohibit you from working from country A while paying taxes in country B, you are breaking the law.
Also, this has nothing to do with working from the office. It has to do with working from another country, rather than the country you should work in.
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That's why I said "it's illegal in some cases".
Maybe there's a problem when working from out-of-state, I don't know.
Re: This sounds awesome (Score:2)
Re: This sounds awesome (Score:2)
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and what happens if the boss calls someone on the booked time off to ask an question? the worker is the one risking jail time for not having that visa
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Aruba allows select nationalities including US to *work* locally for up to 3 months, no paperwork, just purchase a normal holiday package with hotel and return flight, and bring your passport. https://www.aruba.com/us/one-h... [aruba.com]
Taxes not really an Issue (Score:3)
Of course your employer may have no idea whether you have fulfilled all the legal requirements of such programs but then it is hardly their responsibility if you have not even told them that you are
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Of course your employer may have no idea whether you have fulfilled all the legal requirements of such programs but then it is hardly their responsibility if you have not even told them that you are travelling.
"I didn't know" is rarely a legal defense. The company may still have to pony up the dough--and possibly pay penalties on top of it. That's not going to thrill people...
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It's actually quite easy.
Working hours in your native timezone usually waste the vast majority of the day due to historically needing daylight to work outside in fields etc.
Being able to use some of the daylight hours for leisure and then work at night is great.
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people are soiling themselves because it appears that Gen Z isn't buying the "work hard and get rewarded" line that let them exploit so many workers until now.
They can see that work doesn't really reward you like it used to, there is no job security or loyalty. Getting found out and fired doesn't really matter because they are just assuming they might get laid off at random anyway, when this quarter's profits take a 0.1% dip.
Pensions are crap and property is unaffordable, so retirement is unlikely. And even if somehow that lot gets fixed, climate change is going to get much, much worse.
There's very little anyone can do about it, least of all Gen Z, so they make the best of a bad situation with stuff like this.
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds about right. Who would have thought that screwing over workers might backfire...
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Who would have thought that screwing over workers might backfire...
The people screwing over the workers don't really see any problems. Shit is still getting done, even if it is not as efficiently as they desire. As long as they can still yell at other people to do work for them, there are no real problems for them. The society that the 'poors' live in can crumble as much as it likes. The 'owners' might need to hire more security; but, that is all of the effect that this shit-show has on them.
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Some people are soiling themselves because it appears that Gen Z isn't buying the "work hard and get rewarded" line that let them exploit so many workers until now.
Who, exactly?
I've never encountered a company (that actually supported remote work in the first place) who gave a rip themselves where you did it. (I suppose a defense contractor might not want you doing it in Russia or China, but I think we can make allowances for that.)
Is this lady the one "soiling herself"?
“Evil HR Lady” Suzanne Lucas, writing in Inc. magazine, recently highlighted the many tax, employment, business-operation and security laws that focus on an employee’s location. Workers secretly performing their jobs in other states or countries can trigger compliance headaches for their employers, Lucas notes
Seems like no soiling, just reasonable concerns about government imposed requirements that are affected by where the employee works. I guess the cigar smoking top hat wearing villains here are in gov
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Read higher in the thread, there are several posters who consider this a "problem" that needs solving, although I'm at a loss to understand why. It sounds like the same mindset who was against working from home except in cases of disasters or other emergencies, again for no discernible reason. In other words, control freaks.
Last year my niece and her roommate went to Alaska for a week, she took her work laptop and her boss didn't even know she was gone. When she told him later he was fine with it, just asked her to let him know ahead of time so he wouldn't schedule any in-person meetings.
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Read higher in the thread, there are several posters who consider this a "problem" that needs solving, although I'm at a loss to understand why. It sounds like the same mindset who was against working from home except in cases of disasters or other emergencies, again for no discernible reason. In other words, control freaks.
This is exactly the reason. There's been a spate of anti-WFH stories of late being driven by the same people... Largely those with huge investments in office space.
Here's the problem, people slacked off in the office too. Loads of breaks, pointless meetings about the shade of grey of the office coffee mugs... It was just a lot less obvious and harder to spot because Terry Timewaster always seemed to be busy in meetings. Their Outlook calendar was always full even though everyone in the office knew they w
Re: This sounds awesome (Score:2)
How are the kids employer meant to pay your insurances if they don't know where you are? And your vacation insurance only covers while on vacation not when working. So yeah this work great until it doesn't, and not only are you breaking tax laws you are causing your employer to break insurance laws
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Are you aware of every local, state/provincial, and federal law in the place where you're vacationing?
Are you aware of every interstate and international treaty governing the work you're doing, and the rule regarding it's transmission across interstate and/or international borders?
What you think of as "just doing my job from somewhere else" may put the company you work for in the crosshairs for civil and/or criminal prosecution. It may make them liable for taxes and other obligations.
If you're allowed to w
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If you're allowed to work remote, are traveling, and doing all the work that's required, just tell your company. They can let you know what is and is not allowed based on the jurisdiction you're working from.
It is highly unlikely that your company has lawyers on staff who know what is allowed based on the jurisdiction you're working from.
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At Amazon we were told, "You can't bring your work laptop to this list of countries." That was about it.
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Got it.
You think that your convenience is exclusively more important than the legal system, the company you work for, the people you work with, and the people you produce a product or service for.
Is it legal where the company reports its base of operation and is legally liable? Lets assume yes or they'd be fired already.
Did you miss the whole "quiet" part of the narrative? The point is that the company DOESN'T KNOW that this is happening. If they did, yeah... the people would probably be fired already.
When it comes to interstate--let alone interNATIONAL--law, there is no "let's assume yes". There is only "make absolutely sure!"
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That all reads like an indictment of the system.
How do you propose that it be changed, if not by pushing its boundaries? Politicians have little will to help those truly in need.
Perhaps you're secretly arguing for collective action?
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"Unbridled entitlement" describes the ownership class more than it does the workers.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Re: This sounds awesome (Score:2)
"working for literally one minute outside your designated work area is illegal and will make the company suffer legal repercussions" is total and complete bullshit. it's all scare talk from lawyers and HR.
but then again, the world, especially driven by EU regulations bullshit, is trying to make government bureaucracy part of everyday life. they want companies to be whistleblowers of their own clients. we're at the point where some industries are required to "KYC" and refuse selling if the client doesn't hav
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Are you flipping kidding me? My former employer had an in-person week of meetings for about 70 people from a dozen different countries and the gods only know how many states, it took longer to arrange the hotels and meeting rooms than anything else. (I sat at the table with the woman who had been in charge of it.) One of the departments involved was HR, another was Accounting, no one batted an eyelash because they were aware that it didn't frelling matter. It sounds like you make a lot of extra work for
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Nope, nope and nope.
Is the work getting done, is value being produced? Is it legal where the company reports its base of operation and is legally liable? Lets assume yes or they'd be fired already.
The huckster lawyers can do one. ( 'do one' == 'Go away and procreate with themselves' if you are not a member of the English cultural heritage)
If you visit a nation on a tourist visa which doesn't allow remote working, aka digital nomad, and you work then you're in breach of your visa and at best can be deported, at worst fined/imprisoned and then deported.
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
None of this is new. People have been going on foreign holidays for a long time, and companies have been contacting vacationing employees and asking them to do things. This also counts as work.
It's also not uncommon for companies to send people abroad for short work trips without the appropriate visas.
In most countries you are only liable for local taxation if you spend over a certain threshold of time there, and you're only considered to be working if you're actually employed and being paid there.
If you're working and being paid locally, then you're taking money from the local economy and potentially doing a job that a local could be doing. If you're working remotely then it's the opposite - you're earning money somewhere else and bringing some of it into the local economy. Countries have no reason to disrupt this activity because it's beneficial to them.
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Oh, good grief. Have you ever heard of that happening? Other than reporters who entered on a tourist visa and then wrote a report negative of the country they were visiting I haven't.
Re:This sounds awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it doesn't sound awesome at all. I have NO wish to ruin my otherwise perfectly good vacation, with occasional Teams meetings just to make the boss think I'm still working. When I'm on vacation, I want to unplug, to be completely *away* from work.
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No, it doesn't sound awesome at all. I have NO wish to ruin my otherwise perfectly good vacation, with occasional Teams meetings just to make the boss think I'm still working. When I'm on vacation, I want to unplug, to be completely *away* from work.
I think this is another issue with the woeful amount of holiday time Americans get. I think most people get 2 weeks (10 days) and that also includes absences for sickness.
Here in the UK I get a mandated 22 days personal leave and 8 days public holidays as an absolute minimum as well as paid time off for sickness (there are far more rules around this than I can cover in a single post but generally, just don't take the piss).
With 4+ weeks to take as I please, the idea of "quite vacationing" is utterly d
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Maybe that's my problem. I'm in the US, and my company gives us 20 days of PTO per year, plus 13 holidays. As you said, many US companies only offer 2 weeks the first year, but that usually goes up to 3 weeks within the first couple of years.
Still, while US companies do tend to be stingy with time off, I still don't want to be working while on "vacation."
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And why is this painted as a bad thing?
Because managers want control. It's not enough someone logs in as required and does their work, even if they're far more productive than expected. What matters is they aren't mired in the drudgery of having to come to the office, or staying in their home. If they're off enjoying themselves outside of business hours, they aren't in the proper mindset to do "Real Work" (TM), which requires the brain to marinate in misery and to continually be tormented by existence.
Oh, blah blah blah studies show blah blah bl
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Re: This sounds awesome (Score:2)
Because most jobs dont simply involve doing a set piece of work, chucking it over the fence and dropping the mic. Cooperation and collaboration at random times matter, not that the average IT aspie would understand that.
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By the way, when I was still working, I disliked working from home all the time. I only did it one or two times a week. I preferred going to the office and having personal interactions when discussing issues. And the people I worked with, HR and management were all decent people. From the sound of what others are saying about their work environment, I guess I was lucky.
Re: This sounds awesome (Score:2)
or you're making everything up. fuck the daily commute, the inane water cooler talk, and above all fuck YOU. seriously fuck you.
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Get help for your antisocial personality disorder. Seriously.
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Most laptops will be configured to connect to a VPN and reject all traffic from the local network. The network just becomes a carrier of encrypted traffic so it doesn't matter how insecure it is.
Re: This sounds awesome (Score:2)
Why doesn't a VPN cut it?
What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The negatives cited in the summary all sound either very hypothetical or niche cases.
Agreed. I read the linked article "It's time to make hush trips a fireable offense". I wish the HR author of that piece had instead said "here are legitimate reasons why people are actively interested in doing hush trips; let me spell out the ways in which we can HELP them, so making our job more appealing to them."
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lu... [inc.com]
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My manager was complaining to me about one of his directs that seems to work from all over the place, at one point he was pretty sure from Hawaii. He's logging in at all hours of the day and night, responding to messages at weird times.
I asked if he was getting his work done? Yup, he is. Is he missing any customer commitments? Nope, he's not. Are any other obligations getting missed? Nope, not those either.
My manager stopped complaining to me about it.
need more unions! and not gig work that removes (Score:2)
need more unions! and not gig work that removes min wage and makes it easy to have an army of workers on call at $0/hr.
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Indeed.
Consideration is a 2-way street (Score:2)
The negatives cited in the summary all sound either very hypothetical or niche cases. For the majority, if you are able to complete the work you're assigned, what does it matter where you are?
Communication is key in any relationship, professional or otherwise. Communicate with me what is going on in your life. Deadlines get missed all the time. If someone at work is causing the slippage (like a teammate asking for more of your time than you should give or servers going down), it's my job to get to the bottom of it. If you have personal stuff interfering, I need to know how much space to give and when I can expect you back. If you're telling me you're hard at work, but vacationing, it's just
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what does it matter where you are?
Within reason yes, but in some cases it absolutely matters for taxation purposes. It's not just legal to work wherever you want and get paid by someone wherever they are. We hit this recently, I did a lovely trip to Australia and worked from there. Got everything done. But also checked what the rules were and found out it was okay. I get back and find out it is now banned by company policy. Turns out someone in a different country with a different visa situation tried the same thing and the company got in d
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The negatives cited in the summary all sound either very hypothetical or niche cases. For the majority, if you are able to complete the work you're assigned, what does it matter where you are? Sounds like just another case of those wanting to micromanage their direct reports and justify their own job.
The tax reason isn't hypothetical, or niche. Of course, it's probably pretty easy to get away with it, but if you did get caught there could be serious tax law repercussions for the company and/or employee. States and countries really, really want to tax the work that is done within their borders, and they get quite serious about it.
Re: What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you work from home and trip and fall your employer covers that.
No. It's not that simple. Work-relatedness needs to be considered carefully on a case by case basis. Blanket statements like yours are best avoided. In California, for example:
https://www.dir.ca.gov/t8/1430... [ca.gov]
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If you work from home and trip and fall your employer covers that.
No. It's not that simple. Work-relatedness needs to be considered carefully on a case by case basis. Blanket statements like yours are best avoided. In California, for example:
It's not that simple but there is no reason it could be simpler: it depends on the kind of legislation enacted and how simple or complicated it makes things.
As example in my country, unless you work a very small amount of hours per week for your employer, your employer is required to cover both occupational and non-occupational accidents.
No! (Score:3)
Can we make anything a bit better for ourselves? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Can we make anything a bit better for ourselves without the boomers complaining? I live in a boring dull place. I have an option to travel and work, which means I'm more productive but I also rest better when I'm not on the clock. What's their problem?
You admit to living in a dull boring place.
So what is YOUR problem ... when it sounds like you could easily get out of there?
Re:Can we make anything a bit better for ourselves (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we make anything a bit better for ourselves without the boomers complaining?
You could start by learning some math. Actual "boomers" are in their 70s ... I doubt that you encounter very many of them at work.
Warning first, then firing (Score:3)
quiet vacationing refers to workers taking time off, even traveling, without notifying their employers."
I will be in the minority, but if you are working remotely and take off without notifying me, the first time is a warning. The second time is a firing. If you can't be bothered to have the courtesty to let me know when you want time off and instead take off when you feel like it, don't expect me to have sympathy or consideration for you. Everyone who has worked for me knows I am very lenient and don't micromanage my teams. I expect them to their job without me looking over their shoulder every five minutes. I keep them informed when things are coming down the pipe and expect the same thing from them. You want leave, give me a heads up.
And it's not just about courtesy. It's about knowing who's around on what days so I'm not assigning work to someone who isn't there and ensuring we have enough staffing.
For all the whining millennials and Z do about having to work, they sure do go out of there way to make things as difficult as possible.
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Why does it matter where I work? I'm not taking time off, I work in a location that is more to my liking.
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Why does it matter where I work? I'm not taking time off, I work in a location that is more to my liking.
If there is no time off it has nothing to do with "vacationing". Working from Hawaii or whatever is still working...
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This is "form over function" all over again. People that want results will always prefer function. The others not so much.
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Why does it matter where I work?
About the only reason it matters would have to do with taxes, which is a legitimate complaint.
Suppose I live in New Hampshire but the company I work for is in Massachusetts and I take a two month "workcation" to California. Now I don't owe New Hampshire any income tax (they don't have one), but do I owe California for those two months? I believe states have certain rules for how long you can "visit" before you are considered "residing." I would imagine each state is different.
So some if this would depend
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, is it really a vacation if I am still accomplishing all my work duties on time? If you are remote, it doesn't really matter where you physically are. In fact, I would say that you aren't actually on vacation if you worked the entire week. You simply are not at home but who cares?
So as others have pointed out, this article is REALLY dumb and makes no sense. You didn't really take a vacation on the down-low if you were still working the entire time. You are just remote working from a location that's not
Re: (Score:2)
You are starting to look more like a contractor and less like an employee. That might be fine with some employees as well as some employers. But the tax and regulation bureaucracies are going to shit themselves. And your employer may not want to take the heat for that.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a good point but then if I have a VPN setup at my home and I just connect to it before connecting to the office, does anyone even know I'm not working at home? Seems to me, if your job can be done 100% remote, then your location doesn't matter. They can use your home address for tax purposes. If you truly are a nomad with no home address (nearly none of us, let's be honest) then you would need to some how "get" an address for tax purposes or as you say, you may be more an independent contractor.
I ima
The problem being? (Score:2, Funny)
Why does it matter where I ignore the droning narcissist in the "meeting"?
If you can WFHome you can WFHotel (Score:2)
Do the work you're paid to do, that's the contract. All the rest is stupid exercising of power for the sake of it.
An employee that has a nice relaxing evening by the hotel pool somewhere they find 'exotic' is going to be fresher for a shift the next day. Any work that can be done from home should be mandatory to do from home. It saves on office space, it saves on energy (usually fossil fuels) for a commute.
But because some PHB is uneasy about your productivity if they can't peek into your cubicle at any
You live only this life (Score:4, Interesting)
and every second on earth is actually really valuable, in fact, you're selling your time to the lowest bidder, not a good thing, and when you're old, you're gonna realize this. You don't want to realize it when you're that old, you want to get that idea now - so you can live your life to the fullest.
If you need money, there are various traditional ways to do it, you can sell your time. When you sell your time, you're essentially building products of value much more valuable than your time, that's why you're needed.
But this approach has its merits, for example you're not liable for the companys failures, you don't have to invest anything else than knowledge and time. If you were to produce the product itself, then it would cost considerable investment on your part, but on the other hand you reap all the profits.
Then there is this concept of time and what to do with it. You're born on this planet, excited about everything around you, but you soon learn to fall into place, into an template chosen for you, and as a kid and young adult you're eager to please. Then there's the things you WANT to do VS the things you HAVE to do in comparison, you know...because you want to eat and have a roof over your head, these things are the basic.
Once you get past your basic needs, the interesting part of your life can begin, this is where you explore things beyond what everyone expects or wants from you. It now becomes all about what YOU want, not what the world expects from you.
Read all of the above, look at your life as if it was one long tape (youtube video) of your entire life, pick the 3 best moments of your life so far, and forget about the mistakes, just focus on your 3 best moments. Those moments can be used to define the real you.
F@#$ Employers if they're unhappy (Score:2)
Either you're happy with my work results or you're not. It doesn't matter where I'm doing it from except for your control freak tendencies and your need to pretend that you are actually doing anything useful as a manager. I am not doing anything classified, so that's not an issue. And my personal IT Security is better than that of the last 3 companies I've worked for, who piled on the dumb shit with no idea what it actually did.
So - am I getting the job done or not? (I am).
Is the side of a road a "quiet vacation"? (Score:2)
If a company is managed so badly (Score:2)
that it can't tell if they are working or not, the company deserves such "quiet vacationers."
I've had one of these (Score:2)
I had a new programmer who started wanting to shift his hours, stopped showing up for meetings, and most telling, in three weeks, never completed a single ticket. I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first, then laid out some specific expectations, and finally fired him. After that termination call, HR told me "you did your job, he was not surprised."
The thing is, if you are paying attention, these things are not hard to spot.
The Diamond Link Was Interesting (Score:2)
The link about diamonds in the summary [yahoo.com] takes up to an article about how millenials are abandoning mined gem diamonds for lab grown diamonds. The article is interesting and fairly informative, and contains (to me) the surprising claim that people over 50 think lab grown diamonds aren't really diamonds. I suppose that may be true, although I can only account for that by assuming that they don't know that real lab grown diamonds even exist.
It contains some useful demythologization about diamonds, like pointing
Re: (Score:2)
But the lab grown industry organizes itself in a cartel-like manner too, so that the price of lab diamonds is also stable and fixed in real terms, but at a lower price point.
That is really frustrating to me.
An apt description of Federal employees (Score:2)
productive? (Score:2)
Well, if they are getting their work done, so what? If not, they lose. Unless the job doesn't actually do anything, or, as in most cases, can actually be done in 30 mins per day.
quiet working (Score:2)
I sometimes do remote work on the weekends when nobody is looking.
Lazy commenter (Score:5, Informative)
You should probably do your own legwork before you call someone lazy.
Here ya go: A lazy blogger crapped out a story without doing any real background work.
The author was a Washington Post staff writer, not a blogger. Every claim the author made was supported, in fact she has 19 links in the article.
Want evidence of this purported trend? Sorry, she doesn't give any.
She links to an article in Newsweek, which in turn referenced a study conducted by the Harris Poll:
What anecdotes from the HR side of things? Nope, she doesn't appear to have spoken to anyone.
She quoted from an article published in Inc. Magazine, written by an HR specialist.
Interviews with workers doing this? Nope, bupkis. She appears to have - at most - done a Google search beforehand, that's about it.
I don't think quoting a random worker would have added much value. She certainly did do her homework.
Also, the terms "workcation" and "bleisure travel" have been around quite a while and have nothing to do with this pretend topic. Both are actually about people who are supposed to be on vacation but end up spending a good chuck of it dealing with work matters - kinda the opposite of what the blogger wants them to mean.
My guess is the blogger was trying to invent a term that might get her 15 seconds of notoriety.
She links to articles where each term was used in the same context.
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is the blogger was trying to invent a term that might get her 15 seconds of notoriety.
Or a large corp with lots of empty office space on its spreadsheet found a low-cost way to stir the pot.