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80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

cnbc.com

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Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#461

Post by dclowd9901 »

closeparen wrote: post #153

I have a new conspiracy theory on RTO in Big Tech. Much has been said about commercial real estate. But I think getting highly capable people to work hard for you is a difficult problem & something tech executives put a lot of thought into. If you don't pay people enough, someone else will. But if you pay them too much, they'll become financially independent. Mid six figures is an objectively life-changing amount of…

This is too “brilliant villain”. Too many chain links of logic to actually implement and make work.

I suspect it’s the far more evil banality of “we paid for this office space and it’s pretty awkward to explain to the board why we have this red line item for a ‘10 year lease - office space’ and nobody is in there, so let’s just force 100s of people to come back in against all common sense and metrics that show this is a bad idea.”

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#462

Post by cableshaft »

jonjon16 wrote: post #307

I think I’m in the majority when I say that I prefer WFH but honestly, working ONLY from home is not something I like. I can work for a week or two in remote but then gotta spend a day or two in office. Naturally, it depends on a number of variables, like personal character and the relationship with the other employees but in general I think most people fall in my category. Having the option for both is the best poss…

Maybe. For me personally, I'm glad I had the experience of what it was like to work in the office for two weeks when I was in between projects recently, because it helped reconfirm that yeah, I hate going to the office.

It was good to see people in person, but everything else was a pain in the ass, and the office is such a sterile and boring place (pretending it's not, with an arcade machine, shuffleboard, a small stack of board games, and a ping pong table -- none of which anyone ever uses), with lighting that seemed to suck the energy out of me.

I'm going to the quarterly party in two weeks (for the first time since I started working a couple of years ago), but I feel like I'm really forcing myself. It's just so inconvenient to head downtown from the far suburbs.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#463

Post by gorbachev »

throwaway14356 wrote: post #23
karaterobot wrote: post #10

> Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of in-office policies, while others said it’s been hard to make long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from now. In other words, the two most obvious objections to RTO turned out to be correct. That is, that when the leadership says that being in the office is more produc…

if people quit you have the evidence

Maybe.

Or the employer interprets higher than average turnover on other things, like greedy, disgruntled workers leaving for better pay, or some other completely unrelated thing to RTO policy changes.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#464

Post by datavirtue »

petre wrote: post #256
philipov wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you know what's a bigger cost savings than open office? No office!

Actually, the employers should really pay us rent for WFH because they are using our own facilities to make profits.

Why not just 1099 everyone at that point? Oh because then you can't bullshit people with career carrots and establish sunk costs and healthcare anxiety to retain people.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#465

Post by JackFr »

Can we stop promoting workplace consultant marketing masquerading as research to the front page?

No one reads the article. They see the headline and jump in make to make the same comments which might have been fresh and interesting on the first 20 return-to-office “research” pieces but now are simply tired and tiresome.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#466

Post by 7952 »

ekianjo wrote: post #191
Alupis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of nuance that isn't discussed in the WFH circles. I don't believe the cynical claims some offer of VC's losing out on real estate deals, or mid-level managers needing to boost their butts-in-seats numbers or whatever. For some, perhaps, but on average? What percentage of long-distance relationships work out long-term? Do you become more or less close with friends after they move out of town? Do you sti…

The social animal bullshit is a myth. You can see it around you everyday. People in public places everywhere spending time on their phones rather than talking to people around them

Phones and social networks are so heavily used because they are addictive.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#467

Post by datavirtue »

Natsu wrote: post #109
troupe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required anymore, they want everyone back in the office for...productivity. My guess is that most employers really have no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers are just reporting what makes them look good...and now we are ba…

> I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. In our case, we do have good, long-standing metrics: we measure how happy our customers say they are with our service. Since the whole point is to have happy, repeat customers and they have no reason to lie about being happy, we can trust this. That went up significantly a…

Yeah, thankfully they weren't trying to play Jack Welch by renting from themselves or some other distracting financial "strategy" involving your office space.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#468

Post by notnmeyer »

floucky wrote: post #320
throwaway892238 wrote: post #60

I decided I will never again work in an office, for the rest of my life. It's a lifestyle choice. I refuse to put up with the B.S. anymore. I'm lucky that I've had a long career and my skills are very much in demand, so I will always be able to find a remote job somewhere. People doing jobs with more qualified candidates in the pool will probably have a harder time, and that sucks. For them, I hope they can band toge…

Don't you think full remote is kind of selfish? I mean, I also love it, but what about new hires and junior? How are they going to learn and improve if each time they have a question, they need to post it on slack and just wait...

fully remote requires rethinking collaboration and working together to some extent.

if slack is the only way remote companies communicate, they’re doing it wrong imo.

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#469

Post by ryanmcbride »

dehrmann wrote: post #211
karaterobot wrote: post #10

> Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of in-office policies, while others said it’s been hard to make long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from now. In other words, the two most obvious objections to RTO turned out to be correct. That is, that when the leadership says that being in the office is more produc…

> the sunk cost of a commercial lease had more weight in the decision than the employees' opinions did That's not what they're saying. They're saying they don't know how to plan their commercial real estate footprint when they don't know if and when people will be in the office.

Which could easily be solved by doing what the company I work for did, just don't renew the office lease and go 100% remote

Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans

#470

Post by datavirtue »

logical_ferry wrote: post #371
yieldcrv wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve started talking about crystals to attract hot chicks that are already into crystals. Many are, or want to believe, just like researchers want to believe in a room temperature superconductor. The alpha is that pedantic and over-analytical guys dismiss crystal energy at the expense of their reproductive opportunities, and the way around it is literally just not doing that. One thing I quickly noticed is that the p…

Not sure I follow the logic.

It's because you are over-analyzing it.
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