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.
I was very productive in the office and now I'm slacking off every day WFH, so no.
"Offices across the U.S. are at an all-time occupancy low, and commercial real estate is starting to see an all-time high of almost 20% of unleased space, according to the Wall Street Journal. The reduction in real estate spend has enabled companies to reduce their operating expenses, thereby positively impacting their financial health. This poses the question: Are return-to-work mandates better for the workforce or…
I think there is something to this. We have a long term lease for what is now an empty floor at 799 Market in SF and our landlord will not let us buy our way out of the lease, even at 100% of remaining rent. There are about 120 seats on our floor and about 1000 in the building. I’ve heard only sixty people use the building in a given day. So the usage rate is much much lower than the occupancy rate, i.e. we count as occupants even with zero usage.
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?
I see RTO for all in the same light as when IBM required all their technical staff to wear full suits all day, even the ones crawling under desks. It's a relic of the past that will eventually die and everyone will be better for it.
C-Suite is a cost center. Only a small portion of established companies (not startups) have executives that make a clear revenue difference. First thing AI should replace is most of the C-Suite.
Unfortunately they make all the decisions so the first thing they replace with AI is going to be the workers.
"Offices across the U.S. are at an all-time occupancy low, and commercial real estate is starting to see an all-time high of almost 20% of unleased space, according to the Wall Street Journal. The reduction in real estate spend has enabled companies to reduce their operating expenses, thereby positively impacting their financial health. This poses the question: Are return-to-work mandates better for the workforce or…
Contracts are usually on the order of 10 years.
Right, there we go. Breaking these contracts is expensive I imagine.
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.
> The sad reality is that it’s not (at least for knowledge workers)… it kills productivity and the output is always lower quality. Is this actually a fact that you can prove, or simply a belief?
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.
Except no one can actually measure or confirm these apparent hordes of lazy slackers that are totally out there. Just legions of secret non-working people.
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 th…
How much of a TC cut did you have to take between Amazon and your current employer?
Almost any value is worth it. On your death bed you will never say I'm glad I spent those years of my life commuting for Amazon instead of everything else I could have been doing.
The absolute psychosis of management around RTO is truly baffling. It’s very telling that in the face of no evidence whatsoever of negative effects of remote work even after several years their reasons for demanding return have become increasingly abstract and now they’ve reached the “because I said so” phase.
I don’t get it. Isn’t remote a godsend for so many companies? Especially in our industry where half the orgs don’t even make any money. They get to save on rent, salaries. What am I missing here?!
What tools are needed for better remote management?
I read an advice column in the Washington Post a couple weeks ago [1] in which the person writing in was asking for advice about implementing RTO mandates. They work for a non-profit and found it hard to manage people remotely. Their complaints were: > 1. They have daily check-in meetings with everyone on the team to make up for the lack of impromptu chats in the office > 2. Collaboration is harder over email than in…
> 2. Stop using email. It's the worst format of online communication. Slack, MS Teams, etc.
The difficulty with this, is that work can spiral quickly into just spending the whole day responding to chat (slack/teams/etc) and no one ever gets any actual work done.