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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

#171

Post by eschneider »

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

How does that work for ICs? I'm genuinely asking. I've always been in a position where at some point I'm going to have to produce working software and it would be pretty obvious if I wasn't getting anything done.

Are people just shuffling JIRA tickets around and hoping nobody notices?

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

#172

Post by baq »

Kiro wrote: post #111
MattGaiser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was 4 years ago. Time to change jobs perhaps

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

#173

Post by andyjohnson0 »

programmertote wrote: post #81

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…

> I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate.

Unlikely. Nobody wants evidence that potentially contradicts The Edict.

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

#174

Post by q1w2 »

mataug wrote: post #165

> According to a recent research paper published by University of Pittsburgh, compelling evidence suggests that organizations are leveraging Return-To-Office mandates not to enhance firm value, but rather to reassert control and shift blame for poor performance onto employees. At the risk of sounding cyncial, this is to be expected. Management, especially C-suites have put themselves on a pedastal where they can do n…

I think different companies use return-to-office mandates differently, sometimes even within the same company.

One facet of this is companies using return-to-office mandates to simply do layoffs without having to pay severance.

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

#175

Post by StableAlkyne »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #91
programmertote wrote: post #81

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…

Anecdotally, I know a few other Amazon people who have decided to effectively quiet quit / just do their jobs and risk the pip because of senior management's lack of care.

> just do their jobs and risk the pip

Absolutely bonkers that doing the job you were hired to do can get you canned

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

#176

Post by ilaksh »

happytiger wrote: post #151

Return to office is part of the austerity doctrine. There is a concerted effort to rein in the newfound powers of workers, and bring back more traditional order to the worker / employer relationship. Plenty of CEOs and their ilk have been on the record talking about the need to rebalance the equation between workers and workplaces, pointing to the collapse in commercial real estate as one of the consequences of this…

I strongly suspect that we both have the continuing class war but also actual problems with debt and even real world resources availability. Which is not to say that those things would be as bad for the average person if not for class warfare, but poor management and just difficult situations do spread things more thinly.

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

#177

Post by q1w2 »

zooq_ai wrote: post #166
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.

That article was based on the dumbest study in the history of dumb studies. Stock Market returns during WFH vs Stock Market returns during RTO. (free money, zero-interest rates, meme-stock mania had nothing to do with it apparently) It's a click-bait article to attract gen-zers and HNers and it has worked like a charm

bingo. It's like measuring the effectiveness of my gardening by seeing how many vegetables I produce in the summer vs winter, and then blaming Santa Claus for poor performance.

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

#178

Post by hazmazlaz »

godelski wrote: post #159
programmertote wrote: post #81

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…

> started working at 9 am and log out at 5pm pronto. Isn't this 7-7.5 hrs? Are you not required to take at least a 30 minute break within that period? Or does Amazon pay for lunch? I thought 9-5 was a myth/thing of the past.

Required breaks are only for non-exempt roles (typically hourly FTEs with a set schedule).

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

#179

Post by vanviegen »

foma-roje wrote: post #155
programmertote wrote: post #81

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…

Even if they analysed slack+chime log activity. I guess they’ll explain it away with something like “working from office significantly reduces the need for online chatter”.

.. and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong.

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

#180

Post by eschneider »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #112
dpflan wrote: post #63

"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…

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.
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