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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

#301

Post by ac26 »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #84
lolinder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Did they gather evidence from Elon's tweets or what are we talking about?

If there were actual concrete data on RTO being empirically better, the Corporate Real Estate world wouldn't have anything to worry about in the next 5 years.

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

#302

Post by throwaway2990 »

raydev wrote: post #285
throwaway2990 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All trash. A meeting in person is always shorter cos you don’t deal with audio issues a talking over each other and the mountain of other issues from remote calls. No amount of money in good hardware fixes this no matter what anyone claims.

Do you live in a region with poor internet, or do your coworkers? I've been fully immersed in Meet and Zoom calls for 6-7 years now, and all the issues that used to come up are now mostly gone as they were rooted in people not having the correct habits and setups.

lol. No amount of good internet fixes remote calls.

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

#303

Post by p_l »

joquarky wrote: post #293
p_l wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chances that they have actually gathered data are infinitesimally low. Now, CEOs following fashion trends, OTOH...

> following fashion trends The older I get, the more often I see cargo cults. Have they always been there and I just didn't notice?

Always has been.

Sometimes we just start to lose blinkers, sometimes they get sticker, and even both but in different areas :/

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

#304

Post by itbeho »

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.

Can you link to some of those studies? Could use some backup for a meeting I'm having next week at my work.

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

#305

Post by lolinder »

Joeboy wrote: post #287
lolinder wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no. We have tight deadlines that we're expected to hit and clear milestones for reaching those deadlines. If we miss them hundreds of people throughout the organization will know and ask why, and multi-million dollar sales contracts go out the window.

Ok, but unlike the person I was replying to you seem to be arguing against giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I'm arguing against shrugging and saying "it's because of remote work" when your project is falling apart. Give the benefit of the doubt when there is doubt, but once there's no doubt then build the structure you need to make progress.

Remote != Completely unstructured

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

#306

Post by Joeboy »

lolinder wrote: post #305
Joeboy wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but unlike the person I was replying to you seem to be arguing against giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I'm arguing against shrugging and saying "it's because of remote work" when your project is falling apart. Give the benefit of the doubt when there is doubt, but once there's no doubt then build the structure you need to make progress. Remote != Completely unstructured

> I'm arguing against shrugging and saying "it's because of remote work"

Have I at any point said that?

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

#307

Post by cebert »

2c2c2c wrote: post #236
tock wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know several people personally who just blatantly don't work. I'm confused. If you cant figure out people aren't working remotely then how do you figure out they aren't working in the office? Randomly check their screens? Check the check-in/out time?

It is significantly more likely your direct manager notices you being afk for 4 hours in an office vs at home. not complicated

Why aren’t they noticing output instead?

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

#308

Post by ryandrake »

godelski wrote: post #248
mesh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally salaried positions, at least in tech on west coast include lunch, breaks, etc...

Interesting. Maybe because I'm an intern at a big CA based tech company right now that's been pro WFH, but my timesheet will specify the regular and unpaid hours. It even puts the unpaid into a lunch category. But then again, my internship feels like a job and I'm a bit confused. I do all the work with no direction, just report to my manager weekly and no training. Every internship I've had just feels like every job…

I don't think it's unusual to have to fill out a timesheet for salaried jobs. Most of the places I've worked have required employees to do that ritual. And I say "ritual" because it's basically just writing "8" in the "hours" field for each day and signing it, regardless of how much you actually worked. I remember once getting a talking-to for writing anything but 8 into my time sheet.

I've also worked at a place where I had to physically clock in and clock out (even for breaks and trips to the bathroom), and it was a salaried software development job. Not unheard of at all.

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

#309

Post by tonystubblebine »

eschneider wrote: post #180
tonystubblebine wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sunk cost. Making people come into the office doesn't somehow make that cost go away, although it might make MGMT feel better about the bad decision.

This impulse isn't true for us (I'm the CEO) and so I've wondered why this accusation toward management is so common.

I suspect, but obviously don't know for sure, that merely making use of the real estate doesn't factor at all. It's more "come into the office because that's how I know how to manage people" and "somethings actually are hard to do remote."

We are productive remote for some things, but then get stuck on tricky issues that seem to get solved instantly when we are together. So we solved that by gathering twice a year at company retreats and having budget for more mini-gatherings. But our feeling is that going back to the office will never happen.

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

#310

Post by tonystubblebine »

pauldix wrote: post #189
tonystubblebine wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OMG we had half of the 4th floor of that building on sublease when the pandemic hit (and for 2 years prior). The week of the first lockdown in 2020 we were all set to sign a new long term lease for an entire upper floor and half of the one below. Lockdown happened and we told them "let's just hold off on this for a bit". They were, of course, disappointed and desperate to get us to sign. We held off, and it quickly b…

Lucky! I think it's just Airtable there with very light usage.
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