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Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

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Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#21

I have ADHD and am autistic so loud open floor plan offices are a challenge. I'm in the category of people most likely to benefit from remote. Honestly it's been a much bigger challenge trying to collaborate and connect with coworkers in the new world than trying to cope with an office. People often don't perceive you as an actual human if you've only ever been a video square to them. And quick collaboration just doe…

I do miss the old "whiteboard brainstorming session" sometimes

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#22

I have ADHD and am autistic so loud open floor plan offices are a challenge. I'm in the category of people most likely to benefit from remote. Honestly it's been a much bigger challenge trying to collaborate and connect with coworkers in the new world than trying to cope with an office. People often don't perceive you as an actual human if you've only ever been a video square to them. And quick collaboration just doe…

We do 3 days in person, 2 days from home. Seems like a good split.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#23

A lot of business executives fall into the demographic that heavily invests into commercial real estate, which is facing some substantial depreciation. Telling everyone they need to get back to the office would help to keep those prices up. To everyone else, they have no incentive to keep fighting traffic every day (and paying for it) to go to an uncomfortable place full of maybe awful people.

Yup, the biggest class of assets in SV are boring single family homes owned by multimillionaires. Once you take the proximity to offices out of the picture the SV property bubble pops. Make the drones come in a few days a week and the assets value keeps going up due to artificial scarcity.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#24
post #7

A lot of business executives fall into the demographic that heavily invests into commercial real estate, which is facing some substantial depreciation. Telling everyone they need to get back to the office would help to keep those prices up. To everyone else, they have no incentive to keep fighting traffic every day (and paying for it) to go to an uncomfortable place full of maybe awful people.

The drive to get people back into the office isn't due to any sunk cost on commercial real estate — it's a strategy to prevent workers from working multiple jobs simultaneously.

That's all well and good until you're the second job people are working.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#26
Offices or remote, nothing is perfect, it's a tradeoff.

And the habits and practices are far from settled at this point.

I think that most companies are doing remote wrong, too many meetings, not enough async communication, not enough written communication overall.

The open source world is a good example of the possible efficiency.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#27

So many CEOs will lay people off (or implement mandatory attrition policies) at any time. Employees have learned to look out for themselves and themselves alone. CEOs and productivity can go die.

> productivity can go die.

If someone on my team had that attitude I would hate to work with them. They would hold me and my projects back.

So I’m glad you’re not my colleague.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#28
post #20

A lot of business executives fall into the demographic that heavily invests into commercial real estate, which is facing some substantial depreciation. Telling everyone they need to get back to the office would help to keep those prices up. To everyone else, they have no incentive to keep fighting traffic every day (and paying for it) to go to an uncomfortable place full of maybe awful people.

The funny thing is that if they invested more and made offices into, you know, offices people would want to work there. Instead we have these open floor plan monstrosities for the hoi polloi and private offices for the masters of the universe. I have no idea what brain damage causes this but if you can't work efficiently in the space you give to your workers to work in how do you expect them to work? A more or less v…

> if you can't work efficiently in the space you give to your workers to work in how do you expect them to work?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that most CEOs and COOs use private offices as private, perpetual conference room space. I know my own executive manager has office space he barely uses because he's in conference rooms all day.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#29

A lot of business executives fall into the demographic that heavily invests into commercial real estate, which is facing some substantial depreciation. Telling everyone they need to get back to the office would help to keep those prices up. To everyone else, they have no incentive to keep fighting traffic every day (and paying for it) to go to an uncomfortable place full of maybe awful people.

The simplest reason is lack of effective communication, team bonding, and morale. People behave differently behind a screen even if incentivised by money. This becomes a problem at the scale of big companies. Eg - without body language, tone and context - everyone needs to be extra charitable to avoid miscommunication or distrust. This might cause people to be overly defensive in their approach to communicate.

I've said this in other places, but as a _manager_ it's much nicer to work in the office, in person. That gets more true the higher up the management chain you go. Managers spend most of their time in meetings. Meetings suck over video chat. This is the entire reason CEOs (and pretty much everyone between them and line employees) would rather everyone come back to work. It makes their workday more pleasant.

Re: Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay

#30
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH this sounds like a massive conspiracy theory that somehow gets continiously propagated. Your average small software company CEO doesn't give a crap while still forcing people to RTO.

all the small companies my friends work for in my neck of the woods stopped leasing office space

Indeed, which is why this real-estate conspiracy is downright bizarre.
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