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The workers have spoken: They're staying home

computerworld.com

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Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#21

Post by 6LLvveMx2koXfwn »

bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

'And so the mandatory in-office days are, in practice, just the days that fully remote team members need to cut the hybrid members some slack for not being able to get anything done.' - can I have a Slack status message this long?

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#22

Post by phone8675309 »

bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

The company I work for took the pandemic to cancel the vending machines and coffee service that we had. They re-established the coffee service after about a month after their RTO mandate because people were refusing to come in. The vending machines are still gone.

If I want to get a snack, I have to end up walking fifteen minutes to a cafeteria in another building, get it, and then walk back. That cafeteria is also the cafeteria that most people eat lunch in, so half of my lunch break is gone just walking there and back.

No wonder why nobody wants to come back - I have better snacks, food, and coffee at home and it takes me less than five minutes to grab some.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#23

Post by ghaff »

bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

So much relates to commute. I'd probably meander in for a halfway decent office arrangement if it were less than a 30 minute walk and there were actually people I worked with there. But that hasn't been the case so I don't.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#25

Post by phone8675309 »

taylodl wrote: post #9
dfrey wrote: post #4

They have given us fuck all for raises during a period of rampant inflation and now they want to take away the one good thing that covid-19 did for workers.

A period of rampant corporate profits

Never forget this - if this were "real" inflation and not corporate fuckery then their profits would be down.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#26

Post by jcims »

bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

I'm full time remote and have been so for years. The two companies I've worked for since 2020 took the downtime to reconfigure most offices to high capacity open office floorplans. The background noise on zoom calls went from manageable before covid to blissfully low and has returned to cacaphonic new heights.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#27

Post by LiquidSky »

bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

>A couple years ago, I was eager for a return to office.

There's your first mistake.

You're right that recent trends have been bad, but offices have always been like this. There's a reason "this meeting could have been an email" has been a cliche for decades now and even before that the office was generally depicted as a place where you either pretend to work or desperately struggle to get work done in the face of endless pointless bullshit.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#28

Post by gedy »

nemomarx wrote: post #13
andrepd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>drive There is your problem. Personal automobiles aren't a feasible method of transportation past a certain population density.

I think they're right to complain that cities should be fixing that by building the public transportation more?

Or, heaven forbid, make living near office affordable.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#29

Post by kelseyfrog »

We'll be writing about why this is for years.

COVID gave people or in many cases made people re-evaluate what's important to them and many people concluded that their work-life balance placed too much importance on work. People had been thinking, what parts of their life were they willing to give up for work, but now the question of what parts of work are they willing to give up for their life is considered a valid, and possible decision.

This decision wasn't made in the abstract; WFH gave people real experience in what they would gain and lose by not going into the office, and what they would gain and lose by not commuting, and in many many cases, the tradeoff was worth it.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#30

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dfrey wrote: post #4

They have given us fuck all for raises during a period of rampant inflation and now they want to take away the one good thing that covid-19 did for workers.

Median incomes have outpaced inflation over the last several years.

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/05/wages-outpacing-inflation

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