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80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

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Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#101

Post by faeriechangling »

vntx wrote: post #73
dylan604 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doe these threatening emails convey any kind of warning to prospective new employees? Not just in the WFH/RTO topic, but if they are this draconian in one area, would it not be safe to assume it would span other areas as well? Even if I was looking for a new job where the WFH issue didn't exist, I'd personally still be hesitant about working at a place managed by people doubling down like that

It would to me. Any employer who wouldn’t negotiate on something like this for a job that does not require being in-office is potentially toxic. Commuting can be expensive and even potentially dangerous. Car, insurance, gas, dangerous traffic, time wasted driving at least 2x a day. There’s also the potentially unproductive office environments: loud, annoying co-workers, constant interruptions, etc. RTO has costs, WFH…

The safety issues are what kills me. In a large enough office you will regularly have employees getting maimed and killed on their commutes. This is literally justified on the grounds of employee productivity as if employers just get to wash their hands of any culpability for safety so long as their employees die on their way to or from work instead of at work.

Employers literally demand blood sacrifice from their employees and wonder why their employees are either leaving or becoming non-complaint when they do this without accordingly raising wages.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#102

Post by syndicatedjelly »

itronitron wrote: post #14

>> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in companies’ decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher. I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent money on that you can't get back. The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to use…

This is massively pedantic

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#103

Post by nicoburns »

ahi wrote: post #22
lnsru wrote: post #13

My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and talks to the manager who’s sitting at home. That’s how return to the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving soon.

The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.

If you get decent enough video conferencing equipment (e.g. microphone/camera designed for this kind of setup) and have good internet connections then this can actually work pretty well.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#105

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway892238 wrote: post #60

I decided I will never again work in an office, for the rest of my life. It's a lifestyle choice. I refuse to put up with the B.S. anymore. I'm lucky that I've had a long career and my skills are very much in demand, so I will always be able to find a remote job somewhere. People doing jobs with more qualified candidates in the pool will probably have a harder time, and that sucks. For them, I hope they can band toge…

[deleted]

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#106

Post by itishappy »

water9 wrote: post #64
atleastoptimal wrote: post #15

I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have…

Acting like all humans will work equally as hard when they are supervised vs unsupervised is completely naïve

Completely agree!

I work way harder unsupervised.

It's probably also naïve to believe all humans respond to supervision the same way...

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#107

Post by deagle50 »

lnsru wrote: post #13

My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and talks to the manager who’s sitting at home. That’s how return to the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving soon.

If you're leaving, why not stay home like the manager? If you start a trend he'll have to explain himself.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#108

Post by anthomtb »

justrealist wrote: post #24
ahi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.

Make sure to mutter whenever possible, and make all decisions via 1-1 asides. If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room where it's visible but incomprehensible. And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts.

> Have some cookies, croissants, pizza delivered right as the meeting starts

I've been in the position of being the sole remote guy (technically in office but working from a satellite site) and this happened soooo many times. The meeting would start and a box of donuts would be on the table and I'd hear "sorry, we'll mail a leftover to you!" followed by uproarious laughter.

It almost made missing the 1-1 asides and whiteboard visuals worthwhile. Declining junk food in person is much more challenging than simply having it 1000 miles away and obviously out of reach.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#109

Post by Natsu »

troupe wrote: post #48
atleastoptimal wrote: post #15

I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have…

I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required anymore, they want everyone back in the office for...productivity. My guess is that most employers really have no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers are just reporting what makes them look good...and now we are ba…

> I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home.

In our case, we do have good, long-standing metrics: we measure how happy our customers say they are with our service. Since the whole point is to have happy, repeat customers and they have no reason to lie about being happy, we can trust this. That went up significantly and sustained itself during the pandemic.

While my employer did initially want to bring people back to the office, they relented after the push back and have been relatively soft and flexible about this, actually opening up a dialog to talk to everyone about what they need and want.

It doesn't hurt that they're looking at some significant cost savings by significantly downsizing our office footprint.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#110

Post by WillDaSilva »

throwaway72957 wrote: post #98
atleastoptimal wrote: post #15

I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have…

We have a generous hybrid work policy: you can WFH, but you may be required to attend on-site sessions and meetings, for example if we're doing architecture brainstorms or design reviews. We've not found this to work well over zoom. Overall, this works out to a day or two a month, but most people choose to come in at least 1 day a week for various reasons (mostly social). We casually observed there seemed to be a spl…

Why not have the managers of the underperforming employees be straightforward with them? Tell them that, as far as the manager/company is concerned, they're underperforming (no need to single out the WFH aspect here if you don't want to). They may deny that their performance while working from home is different from their performance in the office, but the manager can dismiss that. It's unpleasant, but better than resorting to surveillance software, and better than making things worse for everyone just to help out this minority who underperform while working from home.

Once they've been notified that they're underperforming, try to help them out. If they can't be helped, fire them with well-documented cause (their history of poor performance).

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