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‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

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Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#61

Post by eru »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #13
themaninthedark wrote: post #8

It'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.

Isn't not being able to find an apartment more of a function of rent control than anything else?

In eg Singapore rents are also up, but finding an apartment is just as easy (or hard) as ever. You just have to pay up.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#62

Post by po8tin »

davewritescode wrote: post #43

I think full time work in the office is 100% dead and buried. It's never coming back for people who have enough skills to leverage that kind of arrangement. I think the first place we need to start is there. Most of us are NEVER going back to 5 days a week in the office. However, most of the folks complaining about return to work I've noticed are senior people who have enough skills to perform their job and don't req…

“…however younger employees greatly benefit from in person learning and mentoring.”

Doesn’t require a permanent office. Temp cowork spaces or bundling working with a career mentor in the final stretch of college are two options I just thought of laying in bed while also thinking about making coffee.

More of the same is not an option for all the cost-benefit analysis that’s come up before.

Prior to world war industrialization, 90% of workers were independent. Post-war office life was a result of wartime solutions to logistics. A statistical outlier in human history.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#63

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

bluefishinit wrote: post #23
eru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the plan was to create a poor labor market so they could demand RTO. I highly doubt anyone had that plan. A single company doesn't much influence the total labour market. Or do you suggest they cooperated in smoke filled backrooms?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo... I've seen multiple CEOs gleefully plan for RTO and talk about the weak labor market together, so I'm surprised anyone would doubt this is happening.

I've seen multiple CEOs talk about how they're successful because of how they grind 16 hours and have amazing business acumen, rather than family connections or just plain luck.

Just because they say something doesn't make it true. Just because they want something doesn't mean they get it. If they did, we'd all be working 7 days a week, on site, for minimum wage (which would be lower). Even the places going RTO are mostly going hybrid.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#64

Post by eru »

fullshark wrote: post #34
coffeebeqn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It really is so outdated, this commitment where you spend 40 hours a week at your machine on the assembly line, pulling the right levers to produce products to sell. Some knowledge workers really are spending 90+ hours thinking about the various problems the company has and how to fix them. Of course some are lazy and just play politics to get ahead/avoid the axe. It's all so nebulous understanding who actually provi…

Luckily, the economy has companies of all shapes and sizes. So if the (supposed?) overhead of office politics gets too large at big organisations, they can be outcompeted by nimbler outfits.

If existing laws and regulations allow competition, that is. Some sectors are severely locked down.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#65

Post by supertrope »

dsm4ck wrote: post #11

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.

The bigger the organization the more bureaucratic it becomes. High quality performance coaching and just maintaining internal communication is hard to scale. Big organizations tend to fallback to easy to measure butts in seats and lines of code.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#66

Post by eru »

bluefishinit wrote: post #23
eru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the plan was to create a poor labor market so they could demand RTO. I highly doubt anyone had that plan. A single company doesn't much influence the total labour market. Or do you suggest they cooperated in smoke filled backrooms?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo... I've seen multiple CEOs gleefully plan for RTO and talk about the weak labor market together, so I'm surprised anyone would doubt this is happening.

Enough of them to make a difference to the labour market?

Even if ten CEOs get together, that's a drop in the ocean.

By the way, the link you provided is nine years old. It that the most relevant one you could find?

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#67

Post by burkaman »

osigurdson wrote: post #9
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers have leverage and are using it. You don’t have to understand it for workers to work towards having more agency over their working arrangements. The NLRB is likely about to reinstate the Joy Silk doctrine, which will make it even easier to organize. Workers who want flexible work arrangements as a right should lean into that. Public support for unions exceeds 70%, the highest amount in almost 60 years. So stra…

>> “you just have to do what your employer dictates or go elsewhere.” Isn't that pretty much exactly the case? No one in software is going to go to the trouble of unionizing.

There certainly isn't a mass unionization movement in software yet, but there are some recent cases, it isn't "no one". Most recently Grindr formed a union, and company leadership retaliated by telling all software engineers to move to Chicago within the next couple months or quit.

Alphabet and Kickstarter are other notable examples.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#68

Post by bluefishinit »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #63
bluefishinit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo... I've seen multiple CEOs gleefully plan for RTO and talk about the weak labor market together, so I'm surprised anyone would doubt this is happening.

I've seen multiple CEOs talk about how they're successful because of how they grind 16 hours and have amazing business acumen, rather than family connections or just plain luck. Just because they say something doesn't make it true. Just because they want something doesn't mean they get it. If they did, we'd all be working 7 days a week, on site, for minimum wage (which would be lower). Even the places going RTO are m…

> Just because they want something doesn't mean they get it.

I agree, which is why I said the push for RTO is not working in my original post.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#69

Post by bratbag »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #15

And 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.

Depending on your seniority, it may be your responsibility to foster collaboration for more junior members of your team. Conversely it may be their responsibility to ensure they are available to collaborate with you.

It doesn't happen magically, but it does happen spontaneously once people are close enough to talk without having to open a chat tool.

Thats why we stabilised on a happy 1-day-a-week in the office, and instead of using it as a dump day for meetings, its a day for people to work while near others.

And unsurprisingly mentoring and onboarding has drastically improved outcomes.

Re: ‘It’s Not My Responsibility’ to Save the Office Economy

#70

Post by jeffbee »

civilitty wrote: post #35
jeffbee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

The contempt rural people have for urban dwellers is palpable if you ever spend any substantial time with them. God forbid if you’re from California cause then you might as well be Satan’s spawn come to harvest their children for adrenochrome.

In cities, not one single person has ever felt the need to stop their vehicle, roll down their window, and shout a homophobic epithet at me. Outside of cities, this seems to happen regularly.

When a rural person comes to town, do the local urban people take a moment to shout something derogatory at them? If that happens I have never seen it.

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