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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

#81

Post by programmertote »

I left Amazon a month ago (voluntarily) for a fully remote role because they asked me to move to Seattle/Arlington. When I joined them, I was already in a different state because of my wife's work. So I told them, I cannot join if they don't give me remote exception; it took them ~4-5 weeks to get the sign off for remote exception from the VP. I took the job and 9 months in, Jassy decided to force everyone back to the office.

A few of my coworkers (3 out of ~15 people team) have/had left when RTO mandate was announced, and I know at least 4 people are thinking of leaving as soon as they have a chance. Since the RTO, a lot of my colleagues have started working at 9 am and log out at 5pm pronto. Before RTO, they would be working until 6-7 pm and will be logging in around 8 am. Sometimes, coworkers would even log in late because they were commuting. I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate. Based on my observation, I would bet that the activity/productivity drops significantly more.

Glad I left Amazon. I have been programming for 15+ years (have been in a managerial role for 6+ years), and I firmly believe I am (and my team are) more productive working remotely. I will never work for a non-remote companies even if they are big names.

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

#82

Post by gardenhedge »

para_parolu wrote: post #61
phpisthebest wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more the environment for some people. Working from home, really does IMO require a Home Office, a space dedicated for work. I know many people that are more productive at home, all of them have a home office. I know many people that are not productive at home, none of them have a home office, instead are using some Shared Space, like a corner of the living room, the kitchen table, etc. If you do not hav…

My office is filled with distractions. I sit in open space with tens of people around me. They talk, drink coffee, eat food. Some of them also have pets.

I used to sit near a printer which brought footfall, conversation noise and printer noise all day long. Good riddance to being stuck in an office.

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

#83

Post by Spivak »

MattGaiser wrote: post #64
LiquidSky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, sure, but in reality it's just that most managers are bad at their job. Knowing what your team is doing, knowing how to set priorities, knowing how to organize projects, making sure targets are being effectively met, etc. requires actual work. It's much, much easier to count butts in seats and glance at badge swipe times and pretend like you're managing your team that way.

> Knowing what your team is doing, This one anecdotally seems to have been the biggest issue for some managers. Unless they are overhearing things (literally), they don't know what is happening.

Which is silly. I have worked in infra my whole career and just one of my job duties is to know what every single team is working on and shipping to provide operations guidance/support and to anticipate and be ready for risky changes.

It's so much easier now that we're remote-first. I'm in all their Slack channels, I can see and search every conversation the team has and I can teleport into all their stand-ups and read the transcript after if I miss it.

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

#84

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

lolinder wrote: post #25
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

If it takes being in person for your management to tell that someone is not doing anything and PIP/fire them, then I'd certainly call that poor management. You shouldn't have to look over my shoulder to know that I'm doing my job.

The mangement had several years to collect data. Maybe they checked the numbers and found that, yes, people on average are less productive when working from home.

Is that surprising or unexpected somehow?

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

#85

Post by nlitened »

hackernewds wrote: post #49
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.

perhaps the answer is not necessary, since either way the solution there is to hire managers that fit the company's design and IC's strengths vs accommodating managers with weaknesses such as being a "bad remote" managers

I think the analogy could be as follows: arguably most software companies could be powered by a dozen of really talented senior Common Lisp programmers. However when choosing a software stack for a company you have to consider how easy it is to hire and retain such developers vs hiring hundreds of average Java or Python or Rust programmers.

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

#86

Post by TylerE »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #73

If you don't want RTO just leave and work somewhere where remote is the culture. I just don't get this whole thing where you're still trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Just better for everyone if the in office people work in office and the remote people go to remote companies.

The problem is a lot of these proper were told a couple years ago that remote, or at least optional hybrid, WAS the culture.

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

#87

Post by mrweasel »

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

> does anyone really find RTO surprising?

Yes, because if you can avoid it, it makes a lot of financial sense to not have office space, cafeteria, coffee, parking space, electric bills, water, cleaning and heating. You can save ton of money by asking everyone to stay at home.

Then there's the flexibility. Our customers got a lot more flexibility when we where all at home everyday. If we had some afternoon migration, install or upgrade and it ran a little long, then no problem, I'm already home, so an additional 30 minutes doesn't matter much.

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

#88

Post by spandrew »

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.

Being a good manager starts with a desire to experiment and constantly change processes to improve your team's happiness and productivity. So the 'good' manager should be able to make both work?

With RTO, however, there is A LOT more wasted time. With all that extra time walking to meetings, water cooler conversations, and the busywork of running an office I can definitely see how bad managers and employees can hide more.

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

#89

Post by luch »

melenaboija wrote: post #60
alberth wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% Also, the tools a manager needs for 'remote management' is very different than what's needed for in-person. It's also very possible managers are not given the tools needed to manage a remote workforce.

What tools are needed for better remote management?

a videoconfering system that is reliable and easy to use is essential to remote management. You need to have as little friction as possible to propose a 1-1 or a 15 min roundtable to quickly brainstorm something orally.

Then you need remote "telemetry", meaning access either to chat messages, email, tickets, etc. and a way to process it at scale (without reading everything) in order to defuse sticky situations based on partial infos or misunderstandings. Such tools can be panopticon-y so you need to explicitly specify which convos "spaces" are private and which are subject to management interference.

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

#90

Post by dghlsakjg »

hashtag-til wrote: post #15
bolvyk wrote: post #6

People really want to push remote work as being great for businesses. The sad reality is that it’s not (at least for knowledge workers)… it kills productivity and the output is always lower quality.

In the same "methinks" kind of vibe of OP: you can be physically in the office, and mentally somewhere else completely. If you don't want to be productive, you can make that happen anywhere.

This was totally my experience. I’ve had office environments where no real work got done until after lunch for a lot of people.
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