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Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

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Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#551

Post by albrewer »

makingstuffs wrote: post #66

People need to stop trying to make things return to the original office model. Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it. Nor do people want to spend £10+ a day on food and drinks which they have in their fridge, at home. Then there is also the social pressure of having to go…

> Employees have realised we are equally as effective working from home and simply do not want to waste 2+ UNPAID hours of every day travelling to a corporate building for the sake of it.

I looked into the employment laws long ago about commutes to and from your home to your workplace. In general, you can't be paid for the commute unless it's to an "unusual" location more than a certain distance from your assigned workplace. It's been a long time since I read up on this subject, so I have no idea where I got the info.

I wonder if WFH will affect these rules - if your originally assigned office was "remote" and now you're forced to go in to a physical location, it could be argued that your employer changed your office location and will have to reimburse you for any commute.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#553

Post by declan_roberts »

spookieboogie wrote: post #62

Nope. My previous employer tried this in ~2021 with the intention of demanding a full RTO as soon as they possibly could after decades of being a cubicle farm. I immediately left for a company that adapted to remote-first and never looked back My commute time has turned into workout and cooking time, (as expected I'm in the best shape of my life,) my only coworker is my spouse and best friend, I get to live closer to…

The employers will understand sooner or later that they've essentially lost leverage with people like you. Now that you're in a LCOL area, you can explore a lot of different jobs at different places. You don't need to make bay area salary to survive because you're not in the bay area.

Meanwhile startups who could never compete with FANG on pay are eager to swoop up talent at a discount.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#554

Post by whateverman23 »

bko wrote: post #374
steveBK123 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite story on this thread is that during the hybrid period, GS CEO threw a fit when out in the Hamptons because some analyst (fairly junior role almost at the bottom) had the balls to go introduce themselves during a workday lunch at a restaurant. He couldn't articulate a specific, valid complaint like "I was out at a client lunch and they were goofing off" or "I was on a vacation day while they were supposed…

Why are you pretending this analyst is the same or even should have the same affordances as the CEO? You might be shocked to find out the CEO even gets paid more! Most people come up through the ranks and you can bet the CEO was one time an analyst with a demanding boss. After decades of work he made it to boss. You see this everywhere where you move up the ranks and things get better. That's the apprentice deal for…

> I'm almost certain c suite often work a lot more and have higher demands than junior employees.

Lmao. I'm no where near C-Suite but I've also never worked as hard as I did as an intern/junior engineer. Moving up often means working less hard.

> I don't really see any other way around it apart from a dehumanizing process to treat everyone exactly the same regardless of capabilities

This post is about WFH, not treating everyone the same regardless of capabilities. Those are such different things that I'm convinced you must be arguing in bad faith.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#555

Post by lowbloodsugar »

AvAn12 wrote: post #9

Joel Spolesky has made this very point many times in the past: "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation." I work on a Data Sci team that moved to an open floor plan in 2018. What happened? Anyone who needed to work intensively on a project would work from home instead of in the office.

I think it was the Amazon CEO that said the "office" is great because you can just walk up to someone and ask them questions. Fuck no.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#556

Post by wonderwonder »

flandish wrote: post #215
steveBK123 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite story on this thread is that during the hybrid period, GS CEO threw a fit when out in the Hamptons because some analyst (fairly junior role almost at the bottom) had the balls to go introduce themselves during a workday lunch at a restaurant. He couldn't articulate a specific, valid complaint like "I was out at a client lunch and they were goofing off" or "I was on a vacation day while they were supposed…

This example is a stark reminder that the complaints are most often not about details but about class . The CEO was upset others were allowed to perform as if they were of the same class. It’s always class when one boils it down, imho.

Exactly! It's like Musk demanding everyone comes into the office while he is only in the office at individual companies 1 or 2 times a week. CEO of Tesla, a publicly traded company spends all his time in the privately held offices of Twitter. Can other of his company employees work multiple jobs including their own personal company?

If the answer is no then it's 100% a class thing

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#558

Post by agumonkey »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #30

People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by a nicer office. Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery. A nicer office…

I could see the coworking space take off a bit more, cause I have a colleague not far and we could walk/bike to a tiny cozy space to work on stuff out of sake of not staying at the same desk 24/7.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#559

Post by euniceee3 »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #348
steveBK123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend th…

If I had a small-medium company I would hand out money for renting coworking spaces. If enough people do this, coworking spaces will pop up more and more and compete to get the best deals. People who wants to WFH can pocket the difference and those who crave for socialization will have a place for such. A large company can probably do that with smaller offices or with setting up the coworking spaces themselves and re…

100% this. Remote first company and there are two offices. We get more done with in-person casual conversations than formal meetings. Our velocity from the office is significantly higher. I wish some of the other teams shared offices a few days per week.

The commute is not bad when they are localized due to the team members having worked together in the past.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#560

Post by whateverman23 »

AvAn12 wrote: post #9

Joel Spolesky has made this very point many times in the past: "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation." I work on a Data Sci team that moved to an open floor plan in 2018. What happened? Anyone who needed to work intensively on a project would work from home instead of in the office.

> "Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation."

Where does this come from? It's something that sounds right, but then I look back at my parent's office jobs and pop culture from 20+ years ago and it doesn't line up. Open office spaces have been extremely common for a very very long time, with private offices reserved for higher level people.

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