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Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

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Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#391

Post by lwkl »

cdchn wrote: post #319
reaperman wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company has no obligation to keep an employee working in a remote context that the company doesn't favor anymore. Some people who were hired in as permanent remote, now are being demanded to sell their homes and move to cities they’ve never been to before. Companies have no obligation to keep any USA-based employee working (other countries may have different laws), but some reasonable severance payouts would be…

Who is doing this precisely? I've heard a lot of people bemoan that they moved during the pandemic and now are being required to return to the office but I haven't heard of any instances where previously remote employees-- remote from BEFORE the pandemic-- are being required to move to central office locations.

The person that wrote the blogpost was hired as remote worker and was required to move to an office after the pandemic.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#393

Post by dehrmann »

reaperman wrote: post #182
andrewmutz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to COVID, everyone understood that remote work was supported by some companies and not others. It was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. As a result, everyone peacefully self-selected into their preferred employment relationships. Companies got the type of workforce they wanted and workers chose the type of environment they wanted. It was great. Today, as some companies are…

> the company has no obligation to keep an employee working in a remote context that the company doesn't favor anymore. Some people who were hired in as permanent remote, now are being demanded to sell their homes and move to cities they’ve never been to before. Companies have no obligation to keep any USA-based employee working (other countries may have different laws), but some reasonable severance payouts would be…

> Some people who were hired in as permanent remote, now are being demanded to sell their homes and move to cities they’ve never been to before.

The standard advice is stay in the house at least five years. These people accepted permanent remote roles at companies that have been remote-friendly for only two years. The track record's not there; you can't reasonably assume that policy would continue indefinitely. It might, but it's clearly a risk.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#394

Post by hintymad »

Two9A wrote: post #3

This is one aspect of the RTO discussion that's sometimes missed: there are plenty of people in the tech sphere (myself included) who've been comfortably remote for much longer than those who were pushed into remote work by lockdowns and pandemic response. We're not about to give up a whole lifestyle we've built over (in some cases) decades, on the whim of whichever executive we happen to be serving under at the pres…

Teams big companies are already distributed across time zones, effectively forcing their employees working remotely. It's quite common for an org to have office in NYC, in Bay Area, in a tech hub in Europe, and in an Indian city. Meetings are conducted over video conference, and communication is mostly asynchronous in writing. I don't see how that is different from WFH. Of course, local office for employees to bond and having face-to-face discussion is really nice, but there are different ways to handle that.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#395

Post by potta_coffee »

mc32 wrote: post #75
x86x87 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not only about before pandemic remote workers. Once people enjoyed the flexibility they aren't going back.

Some or many people are just as productive working from home, but also many are not and are more productive in an office environment. There need to be better more reliable ways of measuring this and affording those who are able to be productive while remote the option. Those who aren’t as productive WFH don’t get the choice.

Productivity increased exponentially for many years in line with technological advances. We were supposed to have flying cars and personal robots by now. The least they can do is allow us to reap our meager earnings from our own hovels.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#396

Post by tgma »

fullshark wrote: post #382
tgma wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the problem if they get the tasks required of them done? At least in Software Engineering, tasks are rarely that clear-cut and specific. Yes, as a remote employee you will have enough data to justify "I did what was expected of me," and the employer have no specific performance concerns, but at the same time, I posit that you would have likely done more stuff that was not particularly written handed down to…

Then perhaps we should be more honest about what the concern is and the requirements of our jobs. Employers are paying for you to be on call for 8 hours a day (minimum) not just for your output. You need to be responsive and attentive as part of your job, not complying immediately can result in demerits.

I have a friend who was quick to respond to Slack messages as he napped close to his phone most of the time while WFH, but in between the responses he did very little work.

100% true story.

You make an interesting point. I think in the office, what you wrote is the unwritten rule and people understand it automatically. At home it needs to be explicitly written down and it appears the employer is particularly abusive if they say you are expected to sit down at your VC and leave video on. Just demanding RTO is much easier and better PR for the HR.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#397

Post by ToucanLoucan »

jedberg wrote: post #235
andrewmutz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to COVID, everyone understood that remote work was supported by some companies and not others. It was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. As a result, everyone peacefully self-selected into their preferred employment relationships. Companies got the type of workforce they wanted and workers chose the type of environment they wanted. It was great. Today, as some companies are…

Before COVID there were a ton of people who wanted to work remotely but couldn't because remote jobs were few and far between. COVID finally gave them what they always wanted, but now it's being taken away, and remote jobs are getting harder to find again. That's why there is resentment. There was resentment before too, but it was more below the radar because it was always shot down with "we work better in person" an…

It goes much deeper than that though. It isn't just "they wanted it and couldn't have it, then they got it and now they want to keep it:" A lot of people, myself included, did not understand even if we wanted work from home, how life changing it would be. How it's better for us as people, better for us as workers, better for our pocketbooks, better for our planet, better for our lives, just... better. It's ALL better.

Literally the only people losing in this arrangement are the same parasites who win at literally every other juncture in our society and just, I'm sick to DEATH of it. I will DIE on this hill. I hope the commercial real estate market fucking craters. I hope every company doing this RTO shit dies on the vine. I hope it sucks for every single person in the parasite class who loses more than 2 dollars on everything. I hope it crashes the price of real estate in big cities and makes them affordable again. I hope it makes my home worth less because homes shouldn't be a fucking investment vehicle in the first place.

To borrow the bugs bunny meme, I wish every landlord a very happy get a real job.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#398

Post by ghaff »

yanderekko wrote: post #171

I mean, yes it's bullshit to try to apply RTO policies on remote workers that were hired as remote workers. It's not even a "return" in that scenario, properly understood. And IANAL but I wonder if that could be considered a constructive dismissal that mandates severance rather than a "soft" one. That said, this article flirts with the often-made argument that RTO is some sort of way of boosting commercial property p…

In general, max unemployment in many/most states is pretty trivial compared to engineer salaries in general so, while maybe getting $500/mo for a while isn't trivial, it isn't a world of difference for people making $150K+/year.

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#399

Post by hagbarth »

andrewmutz wrote: post #149
Two9A wrote: post #3

This is one aspect of the RTO discussion that's sometimes missed: there are plenty of people in the tech sphere (myself included) who've been comfortably remote for much longer than those who were pushed into remote work by lockdowns and pandemic response. We're not about to give up a whole lifestyle we've built over (in some cases) decades, on the whim of whichever executive we happen to be serving under at the pres…

Prior to COVID, everyone understood that remote work was supported by some companies and not others. It was also a type of work that was preferred by some employees and not others. As a result, everyone peacefully self-selected into their preferred employment relationships. Companies got the type of workforce they wanted and workers chose the type of environment they wanted. It was great. Today, as some companies are…

Alright, but the post is about and pre-pandemic remote role getting swept up in rto - in what world does that make sense?

Re: Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It

#400

Post by thibran »

scottLobster wrote: post #76
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #11

There are so many “habits” left over from industrial work. On an assembly line everyone needed to be in sync but this generally isn’t true for most office work. You need to be present at the factory to do the work, hasn’t been true for office work for awhile now. Yet we still operate synchronously. Everyone commutes through traffic/crowded public transport and risk catching the latest novel virus, to arrive at work a…

Walking over and talking to someone is still far superior to any online communication. So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity. Perhaps if everyone working from home were constantly available to screen-share/video chat it wouldn't be as bad, but my experience with WFH is people get distracted by kids/pets/etc and half the time I wait h…

> So unless you have a job that requires minimal communication on a day-to-day basis, an office is superior for productivity.

Depends on the type of work you do. In my last job almost all communication was remote via video call (except a meeting with the CEO every two weeks). Commuting just to sit in front of a computer to talk to others made no sense -> I lost way too many hours of my life to driving needlessly around.

I'm all for meeting in person, if there is a clear benefit. Otherwise it's like with all the other bullshit, stop doing it!

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