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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

#291

Post by buzziebee »

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…

Yeah this is a problem with specific employees, not with WFH. If people aren't adult enough to manage their own time and perform their duties without someone over their shoulder then that's a them problem.

I worked at a company which had a similar approach to the one being considered , i.e. force everyone in. Every decision there was based on the lowest common denominators. This meant that the really good high performing people all quit. It's a ghost town over there these days.

Set expectations, support people with meeting them, fire them if they continue taking the piss. Don't ruin it for all of you high performers because you can't be bothered going through the process to fire someone. You'll have better overall performance, satisfaction, and retention if you work to get the slackers either performing or out.

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

#292

Post by noam_compsci »

I’ll never understand why people think an office is important for any reason other than monitoring time at desk.

The office is a sea of noise cancelling headphones. Globalised workforces mean any meeting ends up on Zoom anyway. Random chit chat is usually frowned upon by management so “water cooler inspiration” is a unicorn - usually it’s just a distraction.

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

#293

Post by rightbyte »

itronitron wrote: post #241
suprjami wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sunk cost fallacy is that you should continue spending money on something you've already spent money on. Make a bad expensive investment but give it up and move on? That's fine. Make a bad expensive investment then keep pouring money into it because you've already spent so much and can't throw away all this money now? That's the sunk cost fallacy.

Not just money. Any resource, time, or mental effort applied to use something because of it's initial expense when a better alternative exists.

Then there is the sunk cost fallacy fallacy. Where you throw away investments since making another investment would have been better in hindsight.

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

#294

Post by gumballindie »

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…

> and work actually improved

Not just work but also profits (except of course where profits depend on people’s physical custom, such as restaurants, but that is no longer an issue). So basically a lot of these digital product and service companies are shooting themselves in the foot. Also not commuting meant fewer expenses meaning more disposable income. Essentially a free economic boost.

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

#295

Post by sillysaurusx »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #62
ChuckMcM wrote: post #39

I had lunch, not too long ago, with a senior executive of a silicon valley tech company that was moaning about how much of a pain it was to get people to come into the office and how it felt like things would never return to the way they were. And I told them I actually knew of a way to get 100% of their employees to return to the office happily. When they asked what this magic bullet was I said, "Go back to offices,…

I get to have lunch with my partner every day and see them when I take breaks working from home. That’ll never happen at an office, and it’s more valuable than any comp to me. I would not entertain on site even at 500k/year (legit offer from a high frequency trading firm in downtown Chicago for an infosec cloud/iam engineer role). I can always make more money, and I only need so much to live well, but I have a finite…

Hey, if you're somewhere near Chicago, we should meet up sometime. Long shot, but I'm down in Lake Saint Louis. (Rather far from Chicago, but I've been looking for an excuse to visit anyway.)

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

#296

Post by didibus »

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've also found it's all just a matter of processes.

For example, open source is often all online, and it creates innovation all the time. People bounce off ideas on forums, on issues, often with a high level of thought going into it all. Great exchanges can happen in written form.

But I think a lot of companies that went remote just had no clue how to organize processes, discussions, and decision making for a remote environment.

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

#297

Post by Joeri »

wonderwonder wrote: post #225
deaddodo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open offices are the literal reason (after commuting/traffic) that I no longer want to go into the office. My work doesn't require a ton of person:person engagement and it's much easier for me to just zone out in my own headspace to do it. When I was required in the office, I would just wear headphones to avoid distractions, but I would have to deal with 2-3hrs of driving/day on top of it. This meant that my employer…

Open offices are terrible. Management knows they are as well because Sr. leadership almost always have their own offices. The peons sit in the pit. Until the CEO is sitting next to everyone else they are all speaking lies when preaching the benefits of an open office. The only benefit is that its cheaper and they can keep an eye on you.

There is one model even worse: when leadership claims that they too sit in the open office like everyone else … only to take up a big meeting room all day as if it is their personal office, causing the actual meetings booked there to have to move to the middle of the open space, making everyone an unwilling meeting participant.

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

#298

Post by GhostWhisperer »

nicoburns wrote: post #103
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.

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.

lol

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

#299

Post by azmodeus »

petre wrote: post #256
philipov wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you know what's a bigger cost savings than open office? No office!

Actually, the employers should really pay us rent for WFH because they are using our own facilities to make profits.

In Germany you can tax deduct your rent for an office room with a door and a proportion of your utilities for the office

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

#300

Post by magicalhippo »

godelski wrote: post #240
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…

> Claiming that WFH is bad because you can't bounce ideas off other employees and get into the real world-changing "deep work" What is a bigger hindrance to this to me is an open office plan. Being distracted by watching everyone walk around, no one respecting my headphones being on, walking over to me for a "quick question" that disrupts my flow and ends up being 60 minutes of work which I get no credit for but they…

> a "quick question" that disrupts my flow and ends up being 60 minutes of work which I get no credit for but they do

I ask which project this is for and log my hour on that. At least my boss sees I'm not slacking, and if it happens a lot can take action. Perhaps the other person needs more guidance or maybe was a poor fit for that project.

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