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The future of work is not threatening your employees

warzel.substack.com

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Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#21

Post by ineptech »

I have tried to gently help my corporate overlords to understand that wfh is something happening that they need to react to, not a decision they get to make. It is 100% not working. The convo goes like this:

Them: We understand the concerns, but we have decided that the return to the office will be mandatory.

Me: So those who are not comfortable returning to the office will be let go?

Them: No! Yo mean fired? Good heavens, no! No one will be let go. But they will have to return to the office.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#22

Post by oceanghost »

ryandrake wrote: post #6

Wow, using an op-ed in the Washington Post to threaten her employees' careers? Where is this one in the How To Be A Great Leader manual? Wouldn't a private internal memo be at least marginally better than picking a fight publicly? Why are executives, regardless of industry, digging in and going to such great lengths to insist that physical presence in a purpose-built office building is the only possible way to work?

Control. Everything is always about control.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#23

Post by evilduck »

Muromec wrote: post #13
davesque wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, really? A pandemic doesn't count?

One could argue that being shut off from in-person interaction is not as big of a challenge, as escaping a genocide or being drafted into an army to fight $ideology on the other side of the globe. Pandemic is sure bad, but not "half of all men in your country being killed in war" bad.

Does something really have to be equal to or greater than WWII in damage to qualify as a bad year or two? That's quite a high bar to set.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#27

Post by JoeAltmaier »

paleotrope wrote: post #7
davesque wrote: post #5

Seems like there are a lot of ways that employers are effectively blaming their employees for COVID. Some of the anecdotes in this article really resonated with me. It does feel "super shitty" when you feel as though you've been barely holding it together during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century and yet your employer seems to feel entitled to hold you to the usual stand…

"during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century" That seems a bit hyperbolic.

Only 3 millions dead worldwide in about a year - not as many as WWII's 50M in 6 or 8 years but on the order. So yes, one of the most difficult.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#28

Post by ModernMech »

Izkata wrote: post #11
davesque wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, really? A pandemic doesn't count?

"The previous century" includes the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, a bunch of nuclear war close calls, and 9/11. Also if you include the whole 20th century, WWI and the Spanish Flu. And those are just of the top of my head, I'm sure I've missed some. Personally, I'm not sure this pandemic qualifies as "one of the most difficult"...

In terms of death toll for my family, more people died in the last year due to Covid than all of those events combined. So yeah, I would put Covid right up there at the top.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#29

Post by username90 »

davesque wrote: post #14
foobarian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that should say "this century" because the 21st century has got nothing on the 20th.

Sorry, but I think I can objectively say that a year in which a global pandemic occurred that took millions of lives and completely upended normal life for the majority of people counts as one of the worst years since 1920. The fact that anyone would question that in this forum is, I think, extremely telling.

Are you just ignoring all the wars with more than a million casualties, all the famines with many millions of casualties etc, during the past 100 years? 2020 doesn't even make it to the top 10 possibly not even top 20. Maybe it was one of the worst for USA, but not if you take the world overall.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#30

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

davesque wrote: post #8
paleotrope wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century" That seems a bit hyperbolic.

Lol, really? A pandemic doesn't count?

I think the issue is that, as has been widely reported, the pandemic effects have been so vastly different from person to person.

I'll volunteer myself. I work for a tech company, stuff was hard for me originally when pretty much everything shut down (e.g. office, my gym, school where I took evening classes, etc.), but beyond that I don't have kids so I don't have to worry about home school, things actually opened up for the most part many months ago, I still have a good paying job, etc.

Compare that with someone that lost family to Covid, or who was working in the ICU throughout, or who was working in a grocery store and got sick, etc.

Yes, the pandemic has been a huge, gargantuan event, but I'm not about to pretend that my typing from home on my couch in my underwear is remotely comparable to a relative who had to worry about how to home school her kids while she worked in a hospital the past year.

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