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Texas gov. Abbott has issued a directive to state agencies to end their work-from-home policies.  It's unclear at this time what it might mean for us, but it has been brought to our provost's attention, and they will "keep us updated."

If I lose my work-from-home-Fridays, I'm not gonna be happy.  

We had a push in like 2022, and then the firm we paid a couple million dollars to evaluate our efficiency said that workers were more efficient working from home, and we could save on office space.

So we are downsizing office space and going to hoteling for offices.

I go in twice a week, mainly because I'm no longer a "young" attorney, and I think it benefits the new associates, who can't work from home until they are 3 years in, to have face to face interaction.  But I do get way less done on those days.  When they did a survey about switching to hoteling with more flexible remote work options, the people who had the biggest issues were managing partners who are still old school enough to want to keep those corner offices they worked 40 years for, and moms, who didn't want to give up their personalized offices.

This was absolutely the prevailing trend in high tech and many other industries, pre-COVID.

Now a lot of people are doing a 180 on it.

I will say that for innovation, nothing beats in-person meetings, and usually in less formal settings.  Water-cooler talk, among other things.  There's just no substitute for it via Zoom/Teams.  Lot of studies about it amongst the MBA types.

So we are downsizing office space and going to hoteling for offices.

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I go in twice a week, mainly because I'm no longer a "young" attorney, and I think it benefits the new associates, who can't work from home until they are 3 years in, to have face to face interaction.  But I do get way less done on those days.  When they did a survey about switching to hoteling with more flexible remote work options, the people who had the biggest issues were managing partners who are still old school enough to want to keep those corner offices they worked 40 years for, and moms, who didn't want to give up their personalized offices.

I don't know exactly what my department would do if work-from-home were axed.  7 of us work from home on Fridays, and have desks Mon-Thurs.  3 of us work from home full time, and I have no idea where they would put them if they had to show up even one day between Monday and Thursday.  As it is, the 7 of us are shoved into an office with the ERP analysts, whose boss would already like us out of there because he needs to hire more people, except the university doesn't know where else to put us.  

As for productivity, my demarcating line doesn't run between working at home and going to an office.  It has more to do with my workload, and the urgency of it.  If I have a lot to do, and there are deadlines to be met, I'm pretty productive no matter where I am.  If I don't have as much to do, or the deadlines are vague and my bosses make it clear something is not much of a priority, I slack a lot more, no matter where I am.  However, mostly, nobody is coming to bother me at work, needing my help, the way younger attorneys probably do with you.  I have little doubt my boss is more productive on Fridays without us standing in his doorway asking for clarification on something.  We could bother him on Teams or with an email on Fridays, but mostly we don't.  

measles in 12 states???

As contagious as it is, I'm surprised it has yet to spread further really with travel.

I'm not sure measles is at all seasonal, but I'm no expert.  Contagion can be worse when folks are mostly inside.

I'm thankful that COVID went away