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The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

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Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#61

Post by rednerrus »

addicted wrote: post #8
rednerrus wrote: post #2

The problems with voluntary layoffs like that is the most competent people are always the first ones to quit.

That may be a possibility with regular mass layoffs, because it indicates a company in trouble. However, that’s probably not the case for companies that were laying off people earlier this year despite making record profits (I think most people understood that many of the more profitable companies had overhired over the pandemic) and unlikely to be a driver in RTO driven “layoffs” since they’re not layoffs in the fir…

Or competent people who have grown comfortable working from home.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #20
linkjuice4all wrote: post #5

"My advice to the many CEOs tasked with this decision? Just own it." It would be nice if we could get this level of honesty from CEOs - but let's not pretend that firing people is the only driver for RTO. Some other motivations include: - We took a tax break that specifies some level of in-office time per employee and we already spent the money - We're getting pressured from local governments to bring customers into…

Is it crazy to think that working from an office is just more productive? Especially if you’re a big company and have a lot of new grads/inexperienced hires that are harder to train up remotely?

> Is it crazy to think that working from an office is just more productive?

For much work, yes, even moreso per hour the employee must dedicate to work (which, in working from office is substantially more than WFH for the same on-the-clock hours.)

> Especially if you’re a big company and have a lot of new grads/inexperienced hires that are harder to train up remotely?

Why would it be harder to train people up remotely, in general? Sure, there's cases whwre this is likely true, but they probably largely correspond to the same types of work that weren't remotable in the first place.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#63

Post by pj_mukh »

lapcat wrote: post #28

You can speculate about various external reasons, but I suspect the real explanation is less rational and more psychological, instinctive, primal: managers enjoy the physicality and immediacy of management. They love to survey their domain, as if a lord, to be able to watch their underlings, to stand over their shoulders or get in their face, force them to acknowledge and respond to you. With WFH, a lot of that is lo…

Another way of framing this without the fiefdom comparisons is that a lot of managers simply don't trust their employees. Weekly check-ins leave them with 4-5 days of fretting, not knowing if progress is happening.

Looking over at an employee and seeing them working is the worlds most common self-soothing mechanism. It really is as simple as that.

On the fringes, I'm sure there are a lot of creative collaborative environments with employees that have actual autonomy to act on such collaborations where RTO would move the needle, but I would speculate that very few of these environments actually exist even though everyone thinks they definitely have that environment (this is more at the executive level)

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#64

Post by gumballindie »

And that’s why folks office work is the factory work of yesterday. You are meant to sit at your assembly line and not complain. Corpo-communism have killed small businesses and moved everyone into offices just like cattle to a barn. Fight back with all you’ve got. The more good people they lose the lower the quality of their products the more clients switching back to small businesses.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#65

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #20
linkjuice4all wrote: post #5

"My advice to the many CEOs tasked with this decision? Just own it." It would be nice if we could get this level of honesty from CEOs - but let's not pretend that firing people is the only driver for RTO. Some other motivations include: - We took a tax break that specifies some level of in-office time per employee and we already spent the money - We're getting pressured from local governments to bring customers into…

Is it crazy to think that working from an office is just more productive? Especially if you’re a big company and have a lot of new grads/inexperienced hires that are harder to train up remotely?

> Is it crazy to think that working from an office is just more productive?

Not per se but this is an assertion that's being made by the people in powerful positions[0] without really being backed up. I hear at least as much "it just feels better" talk from pro-RTO managers as I do from pro-WFH contributors. Rather than think that working from an office is more productive, pro-RTO arguers want others to assume that it is. It's not an entirely unreasonable thought but the actual "thinking" is sidestepped in order to skip to the desired conclusion.

0: They make organizational decisions and can choose the terminate the employment of the persons who need to be employed for health insurance and income.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#66

Post by taylodl »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #42
taylodl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody likes an ass-kisser. That's the best career advice I can give you.

In my experience, ass-kissing leads to better career outcomes than the opposite. Not many people like being challenged. Life lessons from a too-blunt guy who just wants to work without the politics.

In my 40 year work experience, ass-kissing is good for the short-term, it fails for the long-term. Ever hear of the Peter Principle? That's what happens to ass-kissers. They're not liked and as such can't lead. Because they can't lead they will get promoted beyond their capability. I've seen this happen so many times over the course of my career I've lost count.

The people who tell people what they need to hear? They may not do as well in the short-term, in fact they often don't, but over the long haul they have the most success and make the best leaders.

Of course these are just overall trends, there are always exceptions.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#67

Post by Spoom »

enumjorge wrote: post #49
lapcat wrote: post #28

You can speculate about various external reasons, but I suspect the real explanation is less rational and more psychological, instinctive, primal: managers enjoy the physicality and immediacy of management. They love to survey their domain, as if a lord, to be able to watch their underlings, to stand over their shoulders or get in their face, force them to acknowledge and respond to you. With WFH, a lot of that is lo…

I've seen this attribution of RTO to "managers" before but it doesn't ring true in my experience. Managers is too broad of a group of people. Every manager I've had since the beginning of the pandemic has loved working from home and said they don't want to go back. If this [1] story from a few weeks ago is to be believed these directives are coming from the people at the top: executives, high level management, and in…

Frontline manager here. I trust my team and would be totally fine with any one of them working from home permanently. I know many other managers who feel the same. Anecdotal, of course, but in my experience the RTO mandate is generally coming from very high up the chain.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#68

Post by randomdata »

dijit wrote: post #46
MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any proof you’re more productive at home other than staying you don’t have to commute and can do laundry during the day? Edit: I’m not sure why I can’t reply to the guy below me but plenty of Google results about surveys that show WFH is less productive.

I dislike that you’re being downvoted, downvoting is not a disagree button. There’s a lot of studies that show that productivity is better at home for some individuals, I don’t think there has been a proper meta-study because there’s studies that prove whatever you want to believe right now. Even without citing any study, it does feel organic that it depends entirely on your job, your level of autonomy, your existing…

> downvoting is not a disagree button.

It's not anything other than a "something pressed a button" button. Offering nothing more than a poor man's analytics system, at best. No additional information can be obtained from it. But, that is still good information, as it tells that there is activity in the vicinity of the comment, which is why one comes here to post and not instead write in their private journal.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#69

Post by EEMac »

Counterpoints: social bonding in sharing a physical space, lots of nonverbal communication in face-to-face meetings.

Don't get me wrong, I love remote work. And Zoom meetings have made it way easier to pull together groups of people on different schedules. But there are significant benefits to being in-office too.

Re: The reason CEOs want workers to RTO is because they want you to quit

#70

Post by mrguyorama »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #20
linkjuice4all wrote: post #5

"My advice to the many CEOs tasked with this decision? Just own it." It would be nice if we could get this level of honesty from CEOs - but let's not pretend that firing people is the only driver for RTO. Some other motivations include: - We took a tax break that specifies some level of in-office time per employee and we already spent the money - We're getting pressured from local governments to bring customers into…

Is it crazy to think that working from an office is just more productive? Especially if you’re a big company and have a lot of new grads/inexperienced hires that are harder to train up remotely?

How much more productive? 2%? 50%? That matters. Making a lot of people miserable for an extra 2% productivity sure seems like the American way but maybe we should stop being okay with that.
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