Licence to chill? German spies want to start working from home

Germany’s intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), is finding it a little difficult to make new hires now that prospective employees’ home office expectations are greater than before the coronavirus pandemic.

Wannabe German spies demand home office set-up

Like many jobs that once required getting your hands a little dirty, or at least putting your shoes on, spying can now also be done from the comfort of one’s own home office. At least that’s what Germany’s wannabe spies are trying to convince their prospective employer of.  

The president of the BND, Bruno Kahl, has said that the organisation cannot meet prospective employees’ post-coronavirus expectations of flexible working-from-home options and reckon with its current spy shortage.

“We cannot offer certain conditions that are taken for granted today,” Kahl explained to Reuters. The president said that the organisation realises it is already asking a lot from the fresh new faces he hopes to hire. “Remote work is barely possible at the BND for security reasons, and not being able to take your cell phone to work is asking much from young people looking for a job”.

CIA wants to let spies work from home

Despite Kahl’s steadfast stance that working from home will not be possible for German spies any time in the near future, other intelligence giants of the world are trying a little harder to catch up with the times.

MI5 claims that spy's working hours can be fit flexibly around other personal commitments, and on its website, the CIA claims that while employees have “few chances to work from home or any other unsecured location [...] [The] CIA has been examining how to address workplace flexibility possibilities in [its] line of work”. 

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