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Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

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Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#471

Post by Spivak »

sokoloff wrote: post #270
Spivak wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone that is advocating for forcing everyone to work from home but instead "office available for anyone who wants it." There's a mile wide difference between "my preference is to be vegetarian" where people will get out the stops to provide accommodations and "my preference is everyone must keep vegetarian."

There are definitely companies (and individuals) who are making the decision that "the benefits of RTO emerge from/rely upon our entire workforce being mostly in the office". I don't personally hold that view, but I know people (including individual contributors) who do and, depending on why you think in-office work is good, it's an entirely reasonable view for some people and some companies to take.

> the environmental benefits of vegetarianism emerge from/rely upon our entire population being mostly meatless.

I understand the argument, I still don't think it's valid. Companies are made up of heterogeneous individuals with not only different preferences on how to work, but different work styles, different flexibility needs, different energy cycles. One of my current teammates has Crohn's and is a fantastic programmer but there's no way he could work 8 hrs in an office. For myself, I have really bad ADHD and working in the office means I will be completely dependent on stimulants instead of being able to work around it most days.

You can't put the cat back in the bag that made the whole world collectively realize that for most jobs being in an office building wasn't the real requirement we all thought it was.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#472

Post by bee_rider »

mc32 wrote: post #75
x86x87 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not only about before pandemic remote workers. Once people enjoyed the flexibility they aren't going back.

Some or many people are just as productive working from home, but also many are not and are more productive in an office environment. There need to be better more reliable ways of measuring this and affording those who are able to be productive while remote the option. Those who aren’t as productive WFH don’t get the choice.

A level of productivity is part of the package that the employer buys from the employee. Some people might be less productive WFH, but if the WFH perk is important enough to them that it is a deal-breaker, then… that’s what’s for sale, the company can take it or leave it.

If you already have a set of employees, and you demand they all come in, you are selecting against people who know they can sustain their lifestyle by moving to another company.

Only problem with low enough productivity enough to be bumped down to becoming totally unemployable don’t get the choice. These also are the people who are most likely to follow an in-office mandate. It seems like a bad filter to apply.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#473

Post by lazide »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #412
lazide wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was always a risk at every company due to re-orgs, buyouts, or the whim of executives. Are employees right to be angry? Yeah. Do companies have the right to demand it? Yeah. Severance, etc. is always nice. In some cases it may even be required by contract or law, but that is rare. It seems like the knives are coming out now, and we’ll see who is left standing.

Give it time. The (RTO) companies are on the wrong side of history. Ideally these mandates are something the (employment) market will never forget. It will be interesting to see in the near future how many of the RTO execs at these companies will be whining about their struggles finding talent and/or having to pay a premium to attain and return the level of talent they need. Of course few, if any of these execs will…

Eh, people forget. Heard about Blackwater lately? Or was it Xe? Or Academi?

And they always complain about stuff like that, even when they aren’t playing games!

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#474

Post by bccdee »

lazide wrote: post #336
reaperman wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company has no obligation to keep an employee working in a remote context that the company doesn't favor anymore. Some people who were hired in as permanent remote, now are being demanded to sell their homes and move to cities they’ve never been to before. Companies have no obligation to keep any USA-based employee working (other countries may have different laws), but some reasonable severance payouts would be…

This was always a risk at every company due to re-orgs, buyouts, or the whim of executives. Are employees right to be angry? Yeah. Do companies have the right to demand it? Yeah. Severance, etc. is always nice. In some cases it may even be required by contract or law, but that is rare. It seems like the knives are coming out now, and we’ll see who is left standing.

Companies have a right to fuck their employees over in all sorts of ways. "It's not literally illegal for them to do this to you" is the absolute weakest defence that can be made for any behaviour.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#475

Post by spacemadness »

ramraj07 wrote: post #34

If I start a company tomorrow, this is what I would want to do: 1. Hire within a general metropolitan area (2 hour commute max). 2. WFH for 28 days a month. 3. 2 days a month the entire org convenes in a ballroom or something and works together, have some progress reports, happy hours and hackathons. In this model, everyone’s remote most of the time. Yet everyone gets FaceTime with each other IrL. Seed ideas and brai…

Critique is technically everyone isn’t happy since it’s not fully remote. In addition, I don’t really want to give up two entire days including my evenings to the company every month which is what “hackathon and happy hours” means to me.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#476

Post by superq »

garciasn wrote: post #304
macksd wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they are actually struggling to admit deeper problems with the company culture and processes that they don't know how to solve, and so they're trying RTO to see if it fixes things.

You give them entirely too much credit. They were told by others (primarily Wall Street) that they are to do this. It provides them with three things: 1. Real estate holding investment increases. 2. Control. 3. Silent layoffs. There's no reason for RTO. None. They're doing it to save money and regain control of their workforce.

I don't really have a horse in this race, but it's actually funny the way you worded that:

[three reasons for RTO] "There's no reason for RTO. None." [perhaps another]

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#477

Post by lazide »

snotrockets wrote: post #410
lazide wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s not in writing, it ‘never happened’ - and even then, make sure you have a copy they can’t get at and know your odds of a successful prosecution under the law (and your ability and willingness to see it through). Because sometimes that will be required.

Oh, they put it in writing. Then they wrote something else.

Sounds like it’s time for a folder.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#478

Post by KoolKat23 »

hattmall wrote: post #409
KoolKat23 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times change and so should companies. It's also not unreasonable for people to expect more from their job than a simple transaction. Before COVID, most places operated without tools such as Microsoft Teams and an assumption that remote work is untested and unproven to work in their setting. This is now not the case, and people are rightly questioning why a return is necessary. They've proven they can make it work and…

>They've proven they can make it work and that they know what works If that were the case there wouldn't be a push to return to the office. There is a difference between making it through an event like COVID vs making forward business progress. Certainly there's a place for remote work but the higher you go in management the more you see the holes remote work creates. Realistically, employees should push hard for ret…

As part of the social contract, reasonable employees would agree with it if there were a solid case for it but this doesn't seem to be so. They're being offered ambiguous one liners such as the "making forward business progress" devoid of substance and which contrasts to actual measurable such as turnover, profits and other tangible measures that indicate otherwise (showing that remote work works).

I truly hope the line between leave and work doesn't blur.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#479

Post by softwaredoug »

This IMO is about companies finding it easier to manage to mediocrity rather than managing towards excellence

They don't need innovation anymore. They need general competence to maintain a business model.

At the large scale company, a cryptography dept can live without an amazing expert. They'll hire some middling crypto people, and they'll generally be fine. These companies have some massive moat, and dethroning them from that moat would be a multi-generational effort.

So when he says "My Prediction"

> Every company that issued forced relocation ultimatums to their pre-pandemic remote workers will not only lose most (if not all) their top talent in the next year, but they will struggle to hire for at least the coming decade.

Their brands as big, stable companies will let them continue to hire boring, mediocre, but good-enough employees willing to relocate. That's my prediction.. Nothing big will really change.

Optimistically though the companies that need excellence over mediocrity are startups, and I'm hopeful it'll drive talent into that space to truly innovate beyond Amazon or whomever's latest TPS report

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#480

Post by mrweasel »

mgraczyk wrote: post #102
mertd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone have a workplace where it is really seamless, high resolution, and just works? Google. It was good even before the pandemic. We used to video call each other between buildings 100 feet apart instead of walking over.

I worked at Google for 4.5 years. If you are video calling into a meeting from MTV where other people in MTV are in person, you are probably not doing real work. It's not seamless and it's orders of magnitude less productive. Meetings take longer and rarely produce useful follow-ups if you're remote.

What's MTV... The "Music" TV station?
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