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The return-to-the-office trend backfires

thehill.com

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Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#11

Post by wrs »

isahers wrote: post #5

This is interesting because it does not jibe at all with the people I know and how productive they are. The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. I'd imagine there are some confounding variables here. I wonder if a lot of those hybrid companies driving high revenue growth are just profit machines…

I think you may be confusing work with "work". It's easy to find yourself spending 40 hours in an office and accomplishing 6 hours of actual work, and conversely it's easy to spend 25 hours at home and do 20 hours of actual work.

This obviously depends on what the work is. People whose job is to focus on building things for hours at a time have very different optimal work environment from people who meet with and coordinate other people in short bursts. So no one-size-fits-all top-down policy can be effective; local flexibility is required.

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#12

Post by xnx »

isahers wrote: post #5

This is interesting because it does not jibe at all with the people I know and how productive they are. The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. I'd imagine there are some confounding variables here. I wonder if a lot of those hybrid companies driving high revenue growth are just profit machines…

> don't really rely on employees being productive to grow (i.e. Google)

How do you think Google grows? They invented PageRank and have been on a set trajectory since?

Google didn't catch up to and surpass OpenAI by doing nothing.

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#13

Post by imcrs »

RTO is about controlling labor, nothing else. Everything else is a smoke screen. Ask yourself the following questions and you'll understand what happened:

- why did RTO happen seemingly right after salaries jumped and labor became scarce?

- why did RTO happen virtually in lockstep across all of white collar employment?

- why did RTO happen despite no evidence that productivity had anything to do with it? (and in fact, lots of evidence that it made employees more productive!)

- why did RTO happen at the same time that critical equity/diversity viewpoints were increasingly being discussed at work?

- why did RTO happen at the same time that outsourcing ramped up? If businesses are so opposed to remote work, why are they outsourcing so aggressively?

It's not about AI. It's not about CRE. It's not about "synergy" in person. It's about disciplining labor. Businesses will happily tank productivity to prevent the power balance from tipping towards the employee.

In that 2020-2023 period, people started talking seriously about how much value they bring to the table. They started making demands of their employers (especially around diversity, equity, inclusion). They started interviewing at multiple places, seeing their worth, demanding more, and giving only as much effort as strictly required to get the job done. The sudden, overnight, incredibly strong reaction to this period, the hard right turn, that is the whip cracking down on labor.

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#14

Post by croes »

isahers wrote: post #5

This is interesting because it does not jibe at all with the people I know and how productive they are. The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. I'd imagine there are some confounding variables here. I wonder if a lot of those hybrid companies driving high revenue growth are just profit machines…

Do they work or is that just their at the office?

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#15

Post by thewebguyd »

isahers wrote: post #5

This is interesting because it does not jibe at all with the people I know and how productive they are. The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. I'd imagine there are some confounding variables here. I wonder if a lot of those hybrid companies driving high revenue growth are just profit machines…

> The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that.

But are they actually more productive, or are they just spending additional hours "looking busy"?

When I worked in office I "worked" 40 hours/week because I had to. Most of that wasn't actually work, maybe about 20-30 hours of actual work, sometimes less. Working from home I have no pressure to pretend to work, there's no "butt-in-chair" requirements. I get slightly more done from home, and exchange I don't have to waste 10-15 hours/week at my desk for no reason other than to make some manager feel good about having butts in chairs.

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#16

Post by angiolillo »

matchbok3 wrote: post #10
CivBase wrote: post #4

For something to "backfire" you first have to account for why it was done. This article assumes performance and retention are the only considerations. It does not account for things like commercial real estate value, a buesiness's ability to monitor and control its employees, or excuses for layoffs.

What do you mean by "monitor and control"? Should an employer not be able to see what their employees are doing at work? What is an "excuse" for a layoff, exactly?

> What is an "excuse" for a layoff, exactly?

By "excuses for layoffs" I suspect what they meant was that there was an pre-existing desire to reduce headcount and RTO was used under the expectation that some percentage of employees would quit voluntarily so that the company can avoid going through the relatively more costly process of laying them off.

Of course the downside of this approach is that the company has less control over which employees leave, which may result in them losing the employees who have the best alternatives.

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#17

Post by ventana »

The article has so many "it's this, not that" contradictions – I counted seven! – that I seriously consider it to be written with a lot of assistance from LLMs.

One thing not mentioned in the article is that now that many software engineers are back to their offices, we get the regular fall / spring viral infections spreading out between employees who feel obliged to go to the office even if they have mild cold symptoms. If RTO is about productivity, I wonder if anyone has accounted the productivity drop caused by viruses in workspace.

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#18

Post by thewebguyd »

imcrs wrote: post #13

RTO is about controlling labor, nothing else. Everything else is a smoke screen. Ask yourself the following questions and you'll understand what happened: - why did RTO happen seemingly right after salaries jumped and labor became scarce? - why did RTO happen virtually in lockstep across all of white collar employment? - why did RTO happen despite no evidence that productivity had anything to do with it? (and in fact…

Correct. Workers were starting to get power, people had seen through the fog at what was actually happening and were acting out against it. Agency is a direct threat to the owner class.

Re: The return-to-the-office trend backfires

#20

Post by CivBase »

matchbok3 wrote: post #10
CivBase wrote: post #4

For something to "backfire" you first have to account for why it was done. This article assumes performance and retention are the only considerations. It does not account for things like commercial real estate value, a buesiness's ability to monitor and control its employees, or excuses for layoffs.

What do you mean by "monitor and control"? Should an employer not be able to see what their employees are doing at work? What is an "excuse" for a layoff, exactly?

> What do you mean by "monitor and control"? Should an employer not be able to see what their employees are doing at work?

I don't see any reason to get into a discussion about how much an employer should or shouldn't be able to monitor and control their employees. Some businesses are simply more trusting of their employees and allow a great deal of independence, while others aren't. Those that aren't will naturally face greater barriers to monitoring and controlling employees who are working remotely.

> What is an "excuse" for a layoff, exactly?

It's no secret that when the return-to-office movement began, many businesses used it as a means of achieving a headcount reduction. Employees who could not (or would not) return to the office were let go. Parting ways with difficult employees looks much better to investors than layoffs.

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