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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

#871

Post by lazide »

soco wrote: post #867
lazide wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one is already being fired or forced out due to broken promises, depending on their personal circumstances and how well documented such broken promises are it could be worthwhile suing them for it. You are quite correct that continuing on with the company (or in that corner of the industry) may - well, likely will be - impossible afterwards. Few things say 'burnt bridges' like a lawsuit. That said, being fired bec…

As I wondered in some other place: do you consider a promise made in a newsletter or an all-hands meeting a binding contract? Would a court consider it binding, or rather an information about the current course of the company? And changing that policy in the subsequent newsletter or all-hands, wouldn't nullify anyway whatever binding value the previous one had? (I'm not talking about employment contract changes, yes…

That would depend on the specifics. You’d want to discuss it with an attorney.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#872

Post by lazide »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #866
lazide wrote: post #862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I'm well aware. How many downturns have you lived through? It's rarely so easy when times get lean, but everyone has a different experience for sure!

Compromising in the short term to meet immediate needs isn't the same as forgetting. Once the tough times have passed, the memory rejuvenates and those who can do (i.e., leave).

Everyone leaves eventually, even if by retirement or death.

A great many people say they’ll leave ‘any day now’, or ‘after my next paycheck’ - but then somehow never do.

On the employer side, they care about output and costs, and the longer people stay (and keep producing) without need for raises or increased expenses, generally the lower their costs and the greater their output.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#873

Post by red-iron-pine »

TheKarateKid wrote: post #694
garciasn wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's not forget 4. Politicians You have several from major cities (NYC, SF, etc.) saying on the record that they are going to speak to CEO's and push for RTO so that downtowns, local businesses, and neighborhoods can go back to "normal."

This is a big one. Entire tax bases are effectively drying up because people aren't driving in or are moving away.

Not just income or payroll taxes, but also regular traffic simulating the local bars, cafes, gas stations & oil changers, dry cleaning, late night pizza, you name it. If these folks can't make their nut then they can't pay rent, and end up moving away or going out of business. Then the problem snowballs.

And then there are the other sources of cash, i.e. speeding tickets, parking fines, and jaywalking citations.

Arguably this is the 'invisible hand of the market' doing its thing, but it's hard to run a municipality if your year-by-year tax base could change dramatically.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#874

Post by OrangeMusic »

mshron wrote: post #255
shortcake27 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with every piece of commercial software I’ve used is the lag. Slack, Google Meet, Zoom… All have noticeable delay which make conversation unnatural and painful. I’ve been using FaceTime Audio to communicate with family on the other side of the world and it’s incredible. Zero latency and great audio quality. It’s an extremely underrated piece of tech. Not sure about FaceTime video as I’ve never used it, but I…

I can't speak for FaceTime, but I've found much better success with all of these platforms if everyone in the meeting is wearing headphones. A lot of the latency is from echo cancellation, and that turns off if there's no echo. At my last company, I let everyone on my team expense comfortable headphones with a boom mic, and it made a huge difference on Google Meet. I've found Zoom to be similar. I can't speak to Slac…

I may be wrong but I believe Bluetooth also adds significant latency. So wired headphones should improve that.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#875

Post by boston_clone »

The_Colonel wrote: post #635
bit_logic wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the #1 argument against WFH before COVID? It was fear of productivity drop, that the company simply can't function with WFH. Then COVID happened and companies worked fine for three years with WFH. At this point, it shouldn't be called RTO, it should be called STO (Switch To Office), because WFH is the default existing state. And the companies that want to STO, they admit there's NO DATA to support this: http…

> Then COVID happened and companies worked fine for three years with WFH. I don't think we have good data on that "worked fine" part. Personally I saw a significant degradation of our team performance during COVID remote. Some people slacked a lot (difficult to catch, though), many people worked hard (perhaps even harder than in office), but the bad communication reduced the overall team productivity a lot.

Isn't bad communication a management issue, not a team performance issue?

Some articles have pointed out that the major driver (from executives) to return to office is simply underperforming real estate investments. In short, the attrition, decreases in performance and morale, and environmental impacts are simply not worth the massive losses that would be incurred from the innumerable empty office parks.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#876

Post by runako »

navane wrote: post #863
Ferret7446 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - worse for the person being asked, who was interrupted Generally, only in terms of personal output. I find that the organization benefits overall. Of course, this is problematic when performance/compensation is tied strictly to personal output, but that is a separate discussion > - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed except that they were OOO th…

>> - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed except that they were OOO that moment. > Which is why working at the office is important. What about the guy who just walked over to someone else, now both parties were absent in eachothers conversation. This is actually a good example of: Falls flat if everyone starts doing it. So many times I walk up to so…

You highlight another reason people are unavailable for synchronous conversations: they are in other meetings! The strength of writing is that it spans location as well as time. I find it odd that thousands of years after its creation, leaning on the written word can still be a competitive advantage.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#877

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

cultureswitch wrote: post #746
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so rare to see anyone admit the truth on this topic. That’s how I know it’s BS on both sides. No one has ever admitted they exploit it - but we all know it happens.

One could also argue that dedicating 100% of your scheduled work time to the service of an employer down to regulated pee breaks is exploitation and should not be how employment contracts are legally written or generally understood. Besides, it is absolutely not clear that home workers "waste" more time than office workers. The number one reason people who prefer the office cite as a reason for preferring the office…

Then take a job that you agree with. No one is forcing you into slavery.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#878

Post by Obscurity4340 »

paulddraper wrote: post #166
strict9 wrote: post #26

>If I had to give only one bit of advice to anyone ever faced with an ultimatum from someone with power over them (be it an employer or abusive romantic partner), it would be: >Ultimately, never choose the one giving you an ultimatum. This is such great advice. When you are given an ultimatum it is very revealing. Pretend to comply as the author advises, then find something else. Your sense of self-worth is more valu…

That's just...weird advice. "Honey, playing WoW 12 hours a day is a dealbreaker for me." "You must enter your information into our new HR system."

I just assumed they were a well-oiled ~~corporate~~ [strikethroughed] marital unit

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#879

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

kortex wrote: post #456
kaibee wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Audio calls also still suck. Commercials in the 90s advertised "crystal clear audio quality" - they stopped talking about it but it never materialised. So this is a funny one because its definitely solvable but it's kind of a classic principal agent problem. There's a number of things that are going into 'clear audio quality'. 1. Receiver's audio output quality - This is rarely if ever the problem. People usually u…

I dabble in live audio. There's a huge amount that still could be done in the audio input space. Mic quality could be greatly increased for not much money, but most manufacturers stuff the cheapest component then can find into any headset You do see high quality mics and signal conditioning on the higher end systems, usually north of $250. And even then, it feels like that's a knock-on of paying for more headphone qu…

This is all overkill, solvable with the cheapest trash <10EUR pre-covid, setting up Mumble, and using push-to-talk. With moderation this even works for a few hundred people. Otherwise it's perfectly usable for about up to two dozen people, which should suffice for most meetings?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#880

Post by unnouinceput »

myroon5 wrote: post #870
unnouinceput wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mackenzie did NOT worked for him. She worked in same floor for different department. She fell in love with his laugh, because she would heard him laugh in the meetings in the meeting room taking place near her office. That's when she noticed him. Do watch her interviews, they are free on youtube. She's the one that pursued him, if you want to talk about a strong woman and showing initiative. The idiot downgraded, sho…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacKenzie_Scott#Personal_life claimed "She met him while working as his administrative assistant at D.E. Shaw in 1992" Regardless if she was his assistant or another executive's assistant, there's clearly a power dynamic between a senior vice-president and an assistant

Form the source of the wikipedia you quoted above:

"MacKenzie Tuttle, an aspiring novelist, met her husband at D. E. Shaw, a New York hedge fund where Mr. Bezos, a computer scientist by training, had become a senior vice president.

She told Vogue that she took the position of administrative assistant to pay the bills while she worked on her novels, but she soon found herself enamored with the laugh of the man who worked in the next office over. As Ms. Bezos put it in a 2013 interview with Charlie Rose: “It was love at first listen.”

SHE pursued him, and the wikipedia is wrong in saying that she worked for him. Nowhere in the article says that. As I was saying before, she was working in the same floor, but not for him. There was never a power dynamic there, just a woman who fell in love with a man.

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