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CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

forbes.com

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Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#31

Post by j4yav »

politelemon wrote: post #17
un1xl0ser wrote: post #5

The thing that I keep coming back to, is that if a company is taking an action, it should be about reducing friction to go to and making the office space a better place to work. If the company is taking an action that makes it less likely for people to come to the office or enjoy it, then it's pretty clear what they are doing.

> If the company is taking an action that makes it less likely for people to come to the office or enjoy it, then it's pretty clear what they are doing. Cheaper staff reduction without redundancy payments! Except for the intangible domain knowledge loss, but that won't appear on a finance spreadsheet.

And you get to target people with families who can’t move so easily, without explicitly targeting them, helping ensure whoever is left is really focused on the company mission and not any other less important aspects of their lives like being there for their kids or partner or whatever.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#32

Post by baq »

cdchn wrote: post #16
2c2c2c wrote: post #13

does anyone really find RTO surprising? I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. it's more obvious in roles where the work is less quantifiable, but even in engineering roles everyone hears stories the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut-- but that seems bad for different reasons

I know plenty of people who go into offices and blatantly don't work.

I guess the point is to not work only one job at a time

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#33

Post by obscene »

jimbob45 wrote: post #18
2c2c2c wrote: post #13

does anyone really find RTO surprising? I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. it's more obvious in roles where the work is less quantifiable, but even in engineering roles everyone hears stories the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut-- but that seems bad for different reasons

the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut The SWE industry almost universally practices Scrum which is already pretty great for metricizing and tracking work.

Do you have stats on scrum prevalence, or just anecdotal?

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#34

Post by everdrive »

2c2c2c wrote: post #13

does anyone really find RTO surprising? I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. it's more obvious in roles where the work is less quantifiable, but even in engineering roles everyone hears stories the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut-- but that seems bad for different reasons

Why not just fire them rather than force RTO?

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#36

Post by MattGaiser »

LiquidSky wrote: post #24
2c2c2c wrote: post #13

does anyone really find RTO surprising? I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. it's more obvious in roles where the work is less quantifiable, but even in engineering roles everyone hears stories the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut-- but that seems bad for different reasons

Except every study done since the pandemic has shown no effect on productivity from remote work, yet somehow every thread on this is filled with totally real stories about someone they know who doesn't work.

They are real. What they are missing is that said person wasn't working much before. They only noticed their lack of output when working remotely, as busyness was no longer visible.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#37

Post by cratermoon »

jimbob45 wrote: post #18
2c2c2c wrote: post #13

does anyone really find RTO surprising? I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. it's more obvious in roles where the work is less quantifiable, but even in engineering roles everyone hears stories the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut-- but that seems bad for different reasons

the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut The SWE industry almost universally practices Scrum which is already pretty great for metricizing and tracking work.

It's also pretty easy for management to turn into a useless exercise of checking boxes and moving cards around. That is to say, it doesn't track actual work done in a useful way.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#38

Post by spacemadness »

2c2c2c wrote: post #13

does anyone really find RTO surprising? I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. it's more obvious in roles where the work is less quantifiable, but even in engineering roles everyone hears stories the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut-- but that seems bad for different reasons

I only hear about this on HN and Blind and have never seen it. HN and Blind really want to prove that people working at home don’t work for whatever reason, probably as we have the managerial class performing their own PR.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#39

Post by s0rce »

crowcroft wrote: post #26

Is it possible for someone to 1. Be a really good 'in person' manager (able to foster a good in-office culture, motivate and coach people effectively in real time). 2. Be a really bad 'remote' manager. Not saying RTO mandates are a good idea, but to say it's masking poor management as a black and white statement lacks nuance.

Yes, similarly some people are less effective in remote teams compared to being part of an in person team.

Re: CEOs Are Using Return to Office Mandates to Mask Poor Management

#40

Post by thepasswordis »

cdchn wrote: post #16
2c2c2c wrote: post #13

does anyone really find RTO surprising? I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. it's more obvious in roles where the work is less quantifiable, but even in engineering roles everyone hears stories the alternative seems to be aggressively metricize and cut-- but that seems bad for different reasons

I know plenty of people who go into offices and blatantly don't work.

In fact, they spent a lot of their time on ~~slash dot~~ ~~Reddit~~ hacker news!
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