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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

#241

Post by rsanek »

jedberg wrote: post #211
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > I wonder if Amazon would check the Slack+Chime logs to see how the activity drops before and after RTO mandate. > They already have and they found that productivity was way down. They don't care. They made this decision from the gut, despite claiming to be a data driven company. When anyone called Andy on it he just said "sometimes we make decisions that we know are right" blah blah. Respectfully, do you know thi…

Because in a meeting with the CEO (which was publicly leaked so this isn't internal information I got it from outside sources myself I wasn't in the meeting) someone called out that the data doesn't support this decision and that was his response. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re...

I don't see any claims in that article about productivity going up or down after the mandate, however? Just that data was not used to inform the decision in the first place.

Would love to hear knowledge of internal data on this either way but it sounds like we're still just guessing.

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

#242

Post by DiggyJohnson »

cajuncosier wrote: post #52
cdchn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of people who go into offices and blatantly don't work.

Yeah... CEOs. Most of them don't work.

This is unhelpful and low-effort and not in alignment with out guidelines. There's almost never a reason to submit a one line snark comment.

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

#243

Post by DiggyJohnson »

cdchn wrote: post #16
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

I know plenty of people who go into offices and blatantly don't work.

It's obviously an issue of ratio and degree. You're just saying anything that comes to mind to support your position instead of recognizing any nuance.

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

#244

Post by DiggyJohnson »

_teyd wrote: post #125
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mangement had several years to collect data. Maybe they checked the numbers and found that, yes, people on average are less productive when working from home. Is that surprising or unexpected somehow?

If they checked the numbers and it showed that they’d be shouting from the rooftops, not trying to prevent anyone from discussing it.

Why would they? On what other issue do we expect transparency in the internal metrics of large corporations?

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

#245

Post by DiggyJohnson »

Joeboy wrote: post #143
lolinder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it takes being in person for your management to tell that someone is not doing anything and PIP/fire them, then I'd certainly call that poor management. You shouldn't have to look over my shoulder to know that I'm doing my job.

How specifically would I know that? Last time I gave somebody the benefit of the doubt I ended up doing their work myself over Christmas. I'm interested to know what I should've done to avoid that.

I'm sorry about your Christmas, but that seems like a poor reason to never give the benefit of the doubt going forwards. Situations are situational.

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

#246

Post by Spivak »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #79
Spivak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah being in office doesn't make it any less difficult to scroll through Reddit.

Yes it does. Working in the office necessarily forces you to structure your work in time and space.

You do know you're just parroting RTO thought leadership propaganda, right? The phrasing of structuring your work "in time and space" is rather unique and comes most recently from business thinkfluencers trying sell RTO as "new paradigm at the workplace."

The real point underpinning the CEO ball fondling is strategies for creating structure for people that need it originally assembled for students working async and remote. Moving between spaces can create structure, putting on a "uniform" creates structure, having blocks of time planned out ahead creates structure, having small incremental goals creates structure, having blocks of work with regular check-ins (cards/standup) creates structure. Like it's just your standard ADHD time/focus management but pretending that these two specific things are best for everyone.

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

#247

Post by ryanSrich »

potatolicious wrote: post #239
ryanSrich wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a PR-friendly way to do layoffs. Force people back into the office knowing 30%+ are going to quit.

Yeah, sometimes these are soft-layoffs, but even under that logic it's a bad idea: your best employees are the ones who have the most options outside of your company. If you do a traditional layoff you get to decide who stays and who goes and have at least the chance to try and retain your top players. If you do a soft-layoff someone else does the choosing, and the more employable the employee is on the outside the m…

> your best employees are the ones who have the most options outside of your company

Aren't these employees the most likely to get exceptions though?

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

#248

Post by godelski »

mesh wrote: post #233
godelski wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Generally salaried positions, at least in tech on west coast include lunch, breaks, etc...

Interesting. Maybe because I'm an intern at a big CA based tech company right now that's been pro WFH, but my timesheet will specify the regular and unpaid hours. It even puts the unpaid into a lunch category.

But then again, my internship feels like a job and I'm a bit confused. I do all the work with no direction, just report to my manager weekly and no training. Every internship I've had just feels like every job I've had except I don't get the equity and 401k that normal employees do. I've also always had to fill out a timesheet for every salaried position I've had, which seems a bit odd too. It's at least be quicker to fill out a checkbox lol.

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

#249

Post by mardifoufs »

w4 wrote: post #210
monknomo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind, and to a lesser degree HN, seem to actively dislike IC-type workers, if not the work itself. I feel like this is a cultural shift for hn, and I'm curious about where it comes from

> I feel like this is a cultural shift for hn, and I'm curious about where it comes from My gut feeling - without data to back it up - is that HN has shifted from a forum mostly for founders and hackers to a forum mostly for FAANG employees who would have gone into finance or consulting in the 2000s. This mirrors the shift in the tech industry at large.

Why do you think founders would prefer WFH? All the data seems to point to even small start ups pushing for rto

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

#250

Post by DiggyJohnson »

MattGaiser wrote: post #36
LiquidSky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except every study done since the pandemic has shown no effect on productivity from remote work, yet somehow every thread on this is filled with totally real stories about someone they know who doesn't work.

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.

That's not at all my experience. I was and am much more productive in the office, and it has a lot to do with changing my environment to a place of work. In order of my productive environments: the office (decent private cubicles, not open concept) > coffeeshop > table at the park > home office.

Why is it so hard to believe that people like me exist? And no, it's not because I like to bug my coworkers or that I haven't considered improving my tooling or home office. At this point in my career, with my personality and demeanor, I get a lot of work done at the office, without the misery of trying to force myself to focus and be productive like I do when I'm at home.

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