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Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

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Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#101

Post by corobo »

timewasted wrote: post #75
Loughla wrote: post #5

Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope. It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.

I'm in a similar situation, except with a worse reason for requiring everyone to come back to the office. We were told that the optics of us not coming back to the office as the city is reopening could destroy the company. I can assure you that NO ONE is going to say "well I was going to spend money with these people but they're not in the office, so I'll go elsewhere". Further, we are being given less than 24 hours…

Name it, shame it. Not necessarily here but make sure places like Glassdoor know.

Nothing like a good public shaming to change a company's direction

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#102

Post by ghaff »

moksly wrote: post #91
claudeganon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner’s company just had their most profitable quarter in company history, when everyone but some bare bones staff was working at home, and they’re still debating whether or not to bring everyone back into the office. At a certain point you have to recognize that it’s not about being safe or rational. It’s about bosses making sure they can hold power over employees.

They probably realise a home based workforce needs fewer bosses.

Why do you think that? If anything, managers can help better connect a more distributed workforce. (And those connections are one of the definite downsides of everyone being remote.)

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#103

Post by marcosdumay »

notyourday wrote: post #45
Loughla wrote: post #5

Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope. It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.

Here's what I do not understand -- if the company had an open office floor plan , which is probably the case a very large if not the majority number of offices, bringing the workforce back into the office would require a massive expense as the state governments are requiring the social distancing / partitions. How are the companies going to accommodate that set of regulations with the current layouts? From a simply l…

> How are the companies going to accommodate that set of regulations with the current layouts?

Most likely, they won't. If they gave shit about this, they wouldn't push people into the office at all.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#104

Post by ryanSrich »

adjkant wrote: post #88
ryanSrich wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this with all seriousness, and I understand some people don't have this luxury, but if you do, please quit. These companies will continue to punish their employees if they are allowed to do so. The only way to create change is through leverage. This goes for anyone facing this decision. If you have the ability to quit, you should absolutely do it. Take a year off, find another company that doesn't support archa…

The things you describe are far from the charged language you're using, and also much of your description may not apply at all to the post you responded to. How does someone quitting their job because their work is playing a global pandemic step by step help any of the things you listed? This approach is a very logical decision and honestly complaining this loudly about that step is incredibly privileged in a time wh…

> This approach is a very logical decision and honestly complaining this loudly about that step is incredibly privileged in a time where many are facing layoffs and pay cuts.

I addressed the privilege in my post. It's in bad faith to bring it up as if I didn't, also gaslighting.

> How does someone quitting their job because their work is playing a global pandemic step by step help any of the things you listed?

Playing a global pandemic step by step is not the issue. The pandemic exists. As a business, you were forced to do away with your archaic work-location policies. To then go back on those is repugnant. Simply keep the change the pandemic forced.

> That's not to take a "be happy with what you get and lick the boot" approach at all, but many companies have quite nice policies in regards to how COVID-19 is being handled.

For jobs that can be done remote, anything less than the option to work 100% remote forever is corrupt.

> These companies should absolutely change their behavior, but again, this was true before the pandemic.

Every company that forces employees into an office has gross office politics. The power dynamic of the commute is a self-fulfilling prophecy for this very issue. Asses in seats are office politics.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#105

Post by cheez »

op03 wrote: post #67
Loughla wrote: post #5

Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope. It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.

Some folk make more money renting office space to their own companies than they do from the companies.

Good observation.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#106

Post by throwaway894345 »

claudeganon wrote: post #79
throwaway894345 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to agree, but I do wonder how we avoid people just adjusting their risk threshold to account for the welfare state. I know it seems to work in other places, but I'm not convinced that what works in Scandinavia (or wherever) will work in the US. It seems like the US has a lot of other problems that it needs to sort out in order to be in the same ballpark as these model countries with respect to successful…

Maybe if we had a functioning welfare state, the government would be encouraged to respond to a pandemic appropriately so as not to overwhelm its resources. Scandinavia seems to be doing better than the US at the moment. As it stands, it looks like the US is using its lack of a social floor to force people back to work under unsafe conditions, regardless of whether that’s rational or necessary, which will result in m…

This is true in the same way that if a homeless person had a million dollars he might not be homeless. The trick is how to get a functioning welfare state when your government is fundamentally broken.

Note that the even the CDC failed spectacularly at its primary job; its literal raison d'etre. You can criticize that the CDC lacked funding, but that is wrong[^1] and it misses the point: not being able to properly fund our agencies is itself evidence (if not proof) of government incompetence.

[^1]: Procuring masks and other PPE or even planning for a supply chain shortage is the cheapest, most impactful thing they could have done even without the benefit of hindsight (we knew from previous epidemics like SARS and MURS that the most likely epidemic would be respiratory in nature). Similarly, it's cheap enough to plan for standardized outbreak data collection and reporting (we should have known right away how many confirmed cases, deaths, recoveries, and tests we had in every locale). Similarly, we should have also had plans for scaling out testing capability. We also shouldn't have rolled our own (fallible, time consuming) tests if we were cash strapped--we should have used the WHO tests. Planning is relatively cheap and by all appearances the CDC didn't do it at all.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#107

Post by adjkant »

ryanSrich wrote: post #97
product50 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what bad behavior? providing a 6mo heads up that you don't need to come back is pretty reasonable. while you are at criticizing these companies, do know that a lot of smaller companies are requiring their employees to come to work in lots of places.

If a job can be done remotely, then it should be done remotely. Forcing your employees into an office so you can play up office politics and look good in front of your board is bad behavior. It's archaic, gross, and in the case of a pandemic, negligent.

The assumption that being non-remote is for office politics is writing off many other benefits. Even if you can go remote, building a remote culture takes time. Also, not everyone works well remote. Shifting a company to full-time remote isn't fair to those people either.

How is not bringing people into the office negligent? That's again the comment you are responding to - a company that sounds like they are trying to get back ASAP but only when it can be done safely, hence the month to month updates.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#108

Post by ardy42 »

gruez wrote: post #73
jmalicki wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So unlike a modern tech company, they sit farther apart and at least have barriers between their desks?

agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a 12" tall barrier make?

> agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a 12" tall barrier make?

It keeps your neighbor's shit from spilling over onto your desk, necessitating an awkward conversation (at the minimum). It also gives you a surface to attach taller, jury-rigged barriers, if you're so inclined.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#109

Post by momokoko »

Get ready for a wave of outsourcing of everything from tech to bpo like the US labor market has never seen in the coming 6 months.

Once employers go through the initial pain of setting up remote work, the more than 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%) cost savings will be irresistible. If you are not in government, healthcare, or other industry that does not have legal requirements to maintain a US presence and you work in an office, I would be saving every penny and working on a career change ASAP.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#110

Post by ardy42 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #82
gruez wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a 12" tall barrier make?

In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel distance of any particles that one exhales

> In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel distance of any particles that one exhales

Maybe a little bit, but I'd think you'd want barriers that are at least head-height if you wanted to to that.

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