Any big sudden change will have winners and losers. Managers that have gotten by measuring butt in seat time and command and control can no longer rely on these skills, of course they would prefer to go back to the old way vs the much harder work of trying to figure out which team members are really providing the best results.
‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
11–20 of 140 posts
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#12It's kind of funny to me that for a long time the people in cities looked down on rural people and life and touted the benefits of living in close proximity. When COVID hit, we saw a mass exodus from the cities and now people don't want to return.
Most office workers didn’t have a choice before. The jobs are in the city. A handful of software companies were fully remote but most businesses are still stuck in the industrial model of work
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#13It's kind of funny to me that for a long time the people in cities looked down on rural people and life and touted the benefits of living in close proximity. When COVID hit, we saw a mass exodus from the cities and now people don't want to return.
Is that "mass exodus" really that sticky though? At least in NYC, rents are back up above what they were pre-pandemic. Nobody I know can find an apartment.
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#14It's kind of funny to me that for a long time the people in cities looked down on rural people and life and touted the benefits of living in close proximity. When COVID hit, we saw a mass exodus from the cities and now people don't want to return.
I stayed in my city and don't plan to leave. I'm not the only one, by far.
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#15And it's not my responsibility to foster in-office collaboration for the whole company either!
My current employer seems to believe that collaboration will magically happen when people get smooshed together in the office.
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#16I fear that state governments will start imposing taxes on businesses which hire remote employees, but I also feel that will just drive businesses out of those states and into the midwest/south
It really should be the other way; they ought to tax office space punitively in order to coerce people not to commute at all. Commuting is a major source of emissions, personal health ailments, and encourages human-hostile urban design.
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#17It's kind of funny to me that for a long time the people in cities looked down on rural people and life and touted the benefits of living in close proximity. When COVID hit, we saw a mass exodus from the cities and now people don't want to return.
Every clause of your post is false. There was not a mass exodus from cities during COVID.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/12/16/in-2020-f...
Urban people do not look down on rural people. It’s the opposite. Rural people are the most likely to hold negative opinions about people who live in other situations, and urban dwellers are the least likely.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/how-peo...
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#18It feels like RTO is quickly evaporating the leverage these big companies temporarily created with their mass layoffs. I think the plan was to create a poor labor market so they could demand RTO. Well, it looks like the majority of the industry is calling their bluff and refusing to go back to the office regardless of the threat of unemployment. The tech job market seems to be rejuvenating so I think if people couldn…
No one has any master plan here, everyone is winging it and trying not to screw up so much they get fired/replaced by the board, while still achieving their preferred outcome. The end result is this kind of limbo, where no one can trust the current status quo fully.
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#19Offices per se aren’t necessarily terrible. Commutes are terrible. Open floor plans are terrible. Companies don’t seem interested in fixing these things, though.
Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy
#20Just genuinely don't see the point in this debate anymore, like some companies will want you to show up, some will be fine with you working from home. If your company is asking you to show up, time to just get another job if that's important to you. Thankfully it's an easy solve because the people who like showing up are tired of video calls anyway.
Video calls have existed since before the Internet. They will continue to be a part of office life.