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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

#581

Post by KoolKat23 »

colmmacc wrote: post #440
jedberg wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before COVID there were a ton of people who wanted to work remotely but couldn't because remote jobs were few and far between. COVID finally gave them what they always wanted, but now it's being taken away, and remote jobs are getting harder to find again. That's why there is resentment. There was resentment before too, but it was more below the radar because it was always shot down with "we work better in person" an…

I'm ready to believe that remote work can be more productive overall, and definitely more cost effective, but I always have a really hard time with the "I'm just as productive, if not more productive remotely" data and argument. It's really easy to believe that folks with an existing network of colleagues and relationship, as well as a decent amount of company of industry know how can be more productive remotely. Few…

Nobody is stopping you from having those interactions remotely. Encourage a culture whereby those people call you about these things, one where calls are not formal. Set up scenarios where they literally just sit on remote video call with you sharing your screen for half the day. Calls don't need to be formal, leave the camera on and leave the desk for a break.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#582

Post by joshchaney »

cdchn wrote: post #319
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…

Who is doing this precisely? I've heard a lot of people bemoan that they moved during the pandemic and now are being required to return to the office but I haven't heard of any instances where previously remote employees-- remote from BEFORE the pandemic-- are being required to move to central office locations.

This is exactly what happened to me. I worked from home for Wells Fargo for years prior to the pandemic. This year suddenly my status got changed and I was required to go into the office. First come first serve cubicles and none of my co-workers were even in the same state, let alone office. Years prior to the pandemic when I was in the office I had my own cubicle and could at least expect my chair would be the same and nobody had messed with the monitors on my desk. It's like working from an Internet cafe every day now.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#583

Post by chrisbolt »

mrweasel wrote: post #480
mgraczyk wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Mountain View

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#584

Post by lazide »

garciasn wrote: post #493
superq wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Yeah, I meant to say 'valid' reason, but it got dropped. It's been a day; my bad.

Valid is entirely up to the eye of the beholder. For them, they may be valid reasons even if you don’t like them.

It’s all about pros/cons and either sides approach.

One big one you didn’t list - it’s really hard to a manager to see what is actually happening when remote, which can let some serious problems fester.

Some (but not most!) employees may be burning out, or violating security or labor rules, or not following company policies, or whatever, and these would be trivial to detect in person, but nearly impossible to do so remotely. And almost definitely impossible to do anything about effectively while remote.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#585

Post by _puk »

lazide wrote: post #544
_puk wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally[0] your contract references a living policy document covering the softer areas. I see changes to these documents as similar to the change in T's & C's for any service I use; your continued use of the service denotes acceptance of the new terms. You're welcome to leave at any time. Not sure what you can litigate against. 0: anecdotal from the past 15 years

If they actually put in writing ‘Remote is forever’, then later try to fire you for refusing to return to the office - what judge in the world is going to rule in their favor? If course, they rarely actually say that. But some folks have definitely been dumb enough to do so. The issue with contract law is that most folks never put things in writing, so it’s a pain to litigate many claims, which makes it uneconomic to…

Granted. If you want something set in stone, add it to your contract.

If it's a general policy that "we are remote", but your contract wasn't updated to reflect that, then don't be surprised if it changes.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#586

Post by ajmurmann »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #501
Spooky23 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that simple - it’s a stupid control thing. When you have these top down mandates with measurements, now you’re introducing new surveillance and metrics that are both disruptive and counter-productive. I’m not a remote zealot - I probably average two days a week, sometimes half days. I live a 20 minute walk/5 minute drive from work in a central business district. I’m a senior leader with hundreds of employees…

>Personally, I’d prefer smaller offices with hotel space and generously equipped collaboration space. Doesn't everyone, you know, hate this kind of stuff? I know I do.

I had a lot of people excited about having a space where we could deliberately meet for collaboration. Even more so about bringing everyone into a shared space for a week. However, the collaboration spaces never worked out in practice because you were always missing someone and now had to call in to a Zoom meeting regardless. This lead to the thing quickly dying because there so little was real value from coming in. That might be a company culture thing one could correct though.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#587

Post by sdfghswe »

Tainnor wrote: post #559
sdfghswe wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing to suggest that they would have no social skills, or send creepy messages to their female co-workers either.

And the comment you replied to didn't say that they'd send inappropriate messages to female coworkers. It was about giving examples for reasonable ultimatums that contradict the point of the blog post.

> Sure thing buddy. Are we talking about an ultimatum not to send creepy as fuck text messages to female colleagues (...)

Why would anyone make an ultimatum not to send creepy text messages to female colleagues, if they're not sending creepy text messages to female colleagues?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#588

Post by Ferret7446 »

greedo wrote: post #299
grumblingdev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an assembly line Now imagine working on an assembly line on your feet all day versus your office day job. The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world. I personally hated going into the office, but the morale effect is real. I think the main thing is people cannot be trusted to honestly tell you if they work better from the office. It's a nicer life working from home bu…

The morale effect might be real for you, but for a large group of workers, their morale has improved since WFH. On my team of 24, only one chooses to work in the office...

Individual morale and team morale are separate. I have no doubt that their individual lives improved a lot (e.g., being able to freely do personal chores), at the expense of team morale (feeling like a part of a team at work).

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#589

Post by viraptor »

colmmacc wrote: post #440
jedberg wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before COVID there were a ton of people who wanted to work remotely but couldn't because remote jobs were few and far between. COVID finally gave them what they always wanted, but now it's being taken away, and remote jobs are getting harder to find again. That's why there is resentment. There was resentment before too, but it was more below the radar because it was always shot down with "we work better in person" an…

I'm ready to believe that remote work can be more productive overall, and definitely more cost effective, but I always have a really hard time with the "I'm just as productive, if not more productive remotely" data and argument. It's really easy to believe that folks with an existing network of colleagues and relationship, as well as a decent amount of company of industry know how can be more productive remotely. Few…

> how easily are they learning the small nuances that we picked up in hallway conversations, serendipitous meetings, and so on.

You adapt. The hallway conversations are not some natural world order either. Do you want juniors to pick up skills? When you're starting work on something interesting, post "I'm doing X in (conference link), feel free to join." in a channel. Invite people for a lunch call.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#590

Post by ck425 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #397
jedberg wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before COVID there were a ton of people who wanted to work remotely but couldn't because remote jobs were few and far between. COVID finally gave them what they always wanted, but now it's being taken away, and remote jobs are getting harder to find again. That's why there is resentment. There was resentment before too, but it was more below the radar because it was always shot down with "we work better in person" an…

It goes much deeper than that though. It isn't just "they wanted it and couldn't have it, then they got it and now they want to keep it:" A lot of people, myself included, did not understand even if we wanted work from home, how life changing it would be. How it's better for us as people, better for us as workers, better for our pocketbooks, better for our planet, better for our lives, just... better. It's ALL better…

There are a lot of us normal workers who dislike WFH and we're not parasites. It's perfectly valid to prefer WFH but it's also valid to prefer the office.
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