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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

#171

Post by lamontcg »

warning26 wrote: post #133
ben_w wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle it could be straight up targeted propaganda "making" the bosses do that. I have no idea if the reality is more that, or more the banal "nobody is organising anything like this and suggestions to the contrary are just conspiracy theories, the bosses genuinely believe what they're saying". I currently have a boss who appears to sincerely want people back in the office; he doesn't want to be the CEO of a 10…

I feel like often article-writers miss the fact of people like your boss: some people just legitimately like being in an office and there's no conspiracy to speak of. As someone who likes being in an office, I personally feel that everyone becoming permanent WFH basement gremlins is a bad thing overall. Human contact is a good thing , and my observations of people who are 100% WFH is that they almost never interact w…

> permanent WFH basement gremlins

Office life and commutes have so completely destroyed our ability to have outside social lives that the solution to not being able to socialize is to go back to the office. Brilliant.

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

#172

Post by FormerBandmate »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #137
warning26 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like often article-writers miss the fact of people like your boss: some people just legitimately like being in an office and there's no conspiracy to speak of. As someone who likes being in an office, I personally feel that everyone becoming permanent WFH basement gremlins is a bad thing overall. Human contact is a good thing , and my observations of people who are 100% WFH is that they almost never interact w…

> As someone who likes being in an office, I personally feel that everyone becoming permanent WFH basement gremlins is a bad thing overall Good thing that there are these things called friends , which usually aren’t forced on people like work colleagues are.

People make friends at work all the time, and usually that helps productivity and career success

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

#173

Post by throway2452 »

stanleydrew wrote: post #23

This isn't particularly well-argued. Just a lot of handwavy grievance about "elites" as though there's some kind of coordinated conspiracy.

> as though there's some kind of coordinated conspiracy.

I don't see how this is different from consensus among actors, or rather it looks the same.

The label or attribute conspiracy is a tool used to discredit findings or positive correlations.

I see now that you think elite is overloaded and programmed to have conspiracy relation. This is not true though according to m-w: "a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence".

If you pay attention to main stream media, you will see almost all forms of dissent attributed to conspiracy.

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

#174

Post by christkv »

camgunz wrote: post #127
chanakya wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are all sorts of problems with capitalism. But as Churchill said about democracy, it the worst form of economic organization except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.

Eh I would say Socialism as practiced in Western Europe and the Nordics is doing better. They're out doing the US in most important metrics, and they're trending more Socialist (though we'll see what intensifying climate migration and other climate change consequences bring).

Social democracy is not socialism. Please don’t confuse the two because they are still miles away from each other.

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

#175

Post by constantcrying »

camgunz wrote: post #127
chanakya wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are all sorts of problems with capitalism. But as Churchill said about democracy, it the worst form of economic organization except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.

Eh I would say Socialism as practiced in Western Europe and the Nordics is doing better. They're out doing the US in most important metrics, and they're trending more Socialist (though we'll see what intensifying climate migration and other climate change consequences bring).

All these countries are market economies with tax funded social services. Not "Socialist" under any meaning of that word.

>they're trending more Socialis

Indeed. More and more ridicolous taxes and less and less useful social investments.

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

#176

Post by unnouinceput »

Boxxed wrote: post #128

I'm not sure I can make the mental leap that CEOs are making decisions based on what's best for their landlords.

You can if you understand that the landlords are their friends and part of their network. They have common interests and move in the same circles.

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

#177

Post by Terr_ »

ben_w wrote: post #130
skwirl wrote: 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?

In principle it could be straight up targeted propaganda "making" the bosses do that. I have no idea if the reality is more that, or more the banal "nobody is organising anything like this and suggestions to the contrary are just conspiracy theories, the bosses genuinely believe what they're saying". I currently have a boss who appears to sincerely want people back in the office; he doesn't want to be the CEO of a 10…

> In principle it could be straight up targeted propaganda "making" the bosses do that.

More than "in principle", I would be very shocked if many someones were not at least trying very hard to make it happen.

If PR firms can push "suits are cool again" or "maybe chocolate is kinda healthy for you", then they can easily push stuff like "in-office work is better", or "executives like you don't like remote-work".

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

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

#178

Post by asdff »

ghaff wrote: post #89
SubiculumCode wrote: post #65

the real war against remote work is coming from middle management who can no longer hide under the 'I keep them in line' mantra. Corps have become bloated by too little competition (e.g. from mergers) or collusion, toxic departmental politics, etc. We could lose half of middle management and pay the lowest tier more AND be more producive and profitable in many corps.

My experience feels a lot like middle management has had to work harder to connect and coordinate people with remote because a lot of the sort of organic in-person connections that happened among people at a company isn't happening to the same degree any longer.

The issue with management (and a lot of jobs really) is that there is no ongoing training. You learn what you learn in school, you subscribe to the belief systems that seem good to you, and that is your dogma for your career. Being able to sit down and rethink your entire management approach requires careful studying of both what you are doing, and what the possibilities even are that you can do. How many managers you know do that, basically chose to become a life long learner in this space? If you know anyone like that, just tie your ship to theirs for the rest of your career if you can. Frankly most people don't care enough to be so self critical.

Remote working takes doing things a little bit differently. Its not more challenging, its just different than what people come to know which seems challenging because they are a greenhorn again in this respect. People have been working in distributed teams or decades now. Some people at this point have probably had entire careers from college to retirement on distributed teams. Its not a new thing, its not an uncharted unknown, its not rocket science. The managers claiming it is have simply given up on learning to manage.

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

#179

Post by flappyeagle »

lamontcg wrote: post #169
skwirl wrote: 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?

The big fortune 100 tech companies are also commercial real estate owners and landlords. Look at all the buildings that Amazon owns and subleases in Seattle. Those executives absolutely have an incentive to be pushing RTO because of their commercial real estate risk. They also have an outsized bullhorn and the industry tends to watch what they do and report over what they do, and they have PR budgets which can get ar…

[flagged]

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

#180

Post by maxbond »

praptak wrote: post #60
ikekkdcjkfke wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Google has full control by Brin and Page and still has RTO. This theory doesn't hold water.

Page and Brin are shareholders. A counterexample would be if a worker owned business like Igalia was doing RTO (I think they've always been remote & remain so, so they're not actually a good example for or against, just to illustrate).
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