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The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

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Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#41
post #29

The "elites"? That's a funny term for people who own commercial real estate.

> The “elites”? That’s a funny term for people who own commercial real estate

You think commercial real estate isn’t disproportionately owned, directly or indirectly, by the narrow haut bourgeoisie?

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#42
post #24

How are "the elite" forcing companies that do not own real estate and who rent their office space to mandate RTO? How are they forcing these companies to renew their leases when they expire?

I have no proof but i would think share holder power?

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#43
post #15

This article makes no sense. I mean I'm all for a little elite run the world consipiracy theory but really, I'm supposed to think that a diffuse group of corporate leaders are upending companies so they can spend more on real estate going forward, for class solidarity reasons? The reason people running companies want to end or curtail remote work is because it's very fucking challenging to run a group of people remot…

It's bizarre to me how religious this conversation has become.

I'm not sure why people are behaving like it's either 100% remote or 100% in the office, and they are locked in a cage.

There are PLENTY of companies who have decided to become fully remote and remain that way indefinitely. If remote opportunities are important to you and your lifestyle, there are plenty of options for you.

Otherwise, I haven't heard of any company requiring 100% RTO all 5 days of a week. Everyone, even Apple, a company notorious for requiring in-office work, has relented and moved towards hybrid.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#44
post #31
post #18

I’ve been called back to the office a few days a week now. It took 4 trips back to realize the things I dealt guilty about while working remote were non issues. Saw 4 managers literally walking by their employees desks watching them work. To add insult to injury, there were 4 managers for 12 employees doing this.

Sounds about right, my manager enjoys tennis, frequent coffee breaks, one or two light meetings, and he activates with out of touch "ideas" in the last hour of the day. It's ridiculous.

I thought this type of stuff only existed in movies. Just curious, can you elaborate at all? I'm wondering if I'm just blind to this stuff assuming everyone else is nose-to-the-grindstone all day too.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#48
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds about right, my manager enjoys tennis, frequent coffee breaks, one or two light meetings, and he activates with out of touch "ideas" in the last hour of the day. It's ridiculous.

I thought this type of stuff only existed in movies. Just curious, can you elaborate at all? I'm wondering if I'm just blind to this stuff assuming everyone else is nose-to-the-grindstone all day too.

Yeah my manager is the busiest human being in North America.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#49
post #15

This article makes no sense. I mean I'm all for a little elite run the world consipiracy theory but really, I'm supposed to think that a diffuse group of corporate leaders are upending companies so they can spend more on real estate going forward, for class solidarity reasons? The reason people running companies want to end or curtail remote work is because it's very fucking challenging to run a group of people remot…

> it's very fucking challenging to run a group of people remotely.

It's very fucking hard to take a relatively random group of people who are used to working together in person, throw them behind screens with little more support than Slack and Zoom, and try to manage them remotely.

It's much easier to take a group of people used to pro-active written communication, "if it's not monitored then it doesn't exist", async-first, https://nohello.net/en/ , actual remote work culture, and manage them remotely.

See, management is about alignment, and alignment is about 80% culture and politics, very little about what actually needs to be done. If you hire people who culturally fit into remote work, you'll have an easier time managing them. If you hire the opposite, it'll be hell. And you can do about as much to change someone's (work) cultural predisposition as you could change someone's (personal identity) culture.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#50
post #15

This article makes no sense. I mean I'm all for a little elite run the world consipiracy theory but really, I'm supposed to think that a diffuse group of corporate leaders are upending companies so they can spend more on real estate going forward, for class solidarity reasons? The reason people running companies want to end or curtail remote work is because it's very fucking challenging to run a group of people remot…

The whole commercial real estate conspiracy schtick really gets old. There may well be cases where a company has made some commitments to some locale in exchange for tax breaks and remote work an upended that. But dumb as some people think corporate execs are, they almost certainly have heard of the sunk cost fallacy and, to my direct knowledge, a lot of companies are looking for ways to decrease their real estate footprint.

I also agree that 100% remote work is not this panacea that's always better than going into the office at least some of the time. If my team were local we'd be getting together semi-regularly--especially with travel/in-person meeting budgets tight. While it's not universal, a lot of younger people just out of school seem to struggle with the lack of in-person connections.

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