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

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

#621

Post by gambiting »

tanjtanjtanj wrote: post #611
gambiting wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>And supposedly, layoffs aren’t legally allowed to be performance or merit-based! Where is that? Even in the EU where employee protections are very strong you can absolutely let go of someone because of poor performance, you just have to do the whole dance of giving them enough warnings, then a PIP, then you can terminate their employment as they are failing their contractual duties. It's not super simple but it is…

Then it's not a layoff at that point.

What's the difference?

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

#622

Post by mfitton »

wtarreau wrote: post #398
mfitton wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right about this, but there are companies that are putting distributed teams back into open offices just so that... they can sit in zoom meetings with their team. But now, they're less likely to have ad-hoc collaborations over Zoom because it's a pain in the neck to find a conference room and feels borderline disrespectful to one's neighbors to carry on a long call when they're trying to focus. It's al…

It's not necessarily the case, it happens that most of the people who come are happy to be in the same room for a meeting, but often they still have to endure one single distant coworker that preferred to stay home and selfishly forces all other ones to use the shitty tools. At work we've bought small PCs for the meeting rooms so that all those present can be in the same room, and have the rare distant ones participa…

It's true that it isn't always the case. We have no more than 2 people on the team at any given office, and are spread across 5 offices and a few full-time remote on a broader team of about 10.

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

#623

Post by renegade-otter »

midoridensha wrote: post #597
renegade-otter wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, l@@k: "Meta ditches open plan office structure to bring back cubicles" https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2023/02/21/meta-office-space...

What's old is new again. From your link: >Mark Zuckerberg’s firm says it is attempting to avoid returning to the cubicle culture of the 70s and 80s by introducing its own design. >The Cube helps to asorb sound instead of reflecting and echoing it around colleague’s workspaces. >Meta claims that its new design reduces sound levels by approximately 20 decibels. This is BS. Either Meta is actively lying, or they really…

I worked in cubicles up until 2011. Then I joined "trendy" startups. I only started hearing about open-plan offices around that time. In the 90s it wasn't even remotely a thing.

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

#624

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

gambiting wrote: post #621
tanjtanjtanj wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's not a layoff at that point.

What's the difference?

A layoff is a reduction in force, ie we need to lower headcount by 10% so bring me 10 names at this 100 person company. Firing someone for performance/attitude/don't-like-you-anymore reasons isn't a layoff.

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

#625

Post by gambiting »

tanjtanjtanj wrote: post #624
gambiting wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference?

A layoff is a reduction in force, ie we need to lower headcount by 10% so bring me 10 names at this 100 person company. Firing someone for performance/attitude/don't-like-you-anymore reasons isn't a layoff.

I don't think that's right. I know as a fact that when Facebook did their layoffs here in UK they got rid of their lowest performing employees, going through the proper multi-month process, but at the end of the day they got rid of a large percentage of their staff purely based on merit/performance. I literally don't see how that's not a layoff.

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

#626

Post by zuminator »

itronitron wrote: post #404
zuminator wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because utilizing a sunk cost isn't a fallacy. Believing that you should utilize a sunk cost isn't a fallacy, either. As you said earlier, it becomes a fallacy when your belief is mistaken , that is, when you continue to utilize or invest in the sunk costs despite the cognizable fact that doing so is a net detriment. But how can the author make a reasoned determination of whether or not these business decisions are d…

The sunk cost fallacy applies to more situations than just those that may incur additional investments, although that is how it is often explained. For example, suppose I have two desks that I can work at... Desk A is a rental that costs me $100 per month and I am locked into that contract for the next year. Desk B I've had for years and it cost me nothing as it was given to me by a neighbor when they moved into a re…

I will concede that in my comment I went a bit too far in saying that the sunk cost fallacy requires a "net detriment" since as you point out, there could be a situation where someone's sunk cost reasoning is not detrimental but still fallacious. Although I think in the devised scenario, your choice to use rental desk A would indeed be reasonable. The rental desk will incur all the wear and tear while the identically owned desk can be preserved in good condition or perhaps resold at a profit. While in such a scenario you might interpret your desire to use A as irrationally based on the sunk cost, I think it more likely that some inchoate awareness of the true benefits would come into play. How about that. You're so smart that even your dumb decisions end up being pretty smart.

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

#627

Post by frays »

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…

Fascinating and thought provoking "conspiracy". Thanks for sharing.

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

#628

Post by smsm42 »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #15

I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person. 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have…

I get their fears about people slacking off WFH, but if they think that I will slack off WFH, but would work like a miner's horse because they are "supervising" me, these poor bastards are so deluded it's not even funny. There's no way they could supervise anybody to that extent, purely on numbers even. Nah, if somebody is prone to slack off because they failed to motivate and engage him, that'd happen in the office in the same way.

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

#629

Post by wtarreau »

tekknik wrote: post #564
Pannoniae wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It often makes me sad to see how they can be absorbed by these non-sense activities instead of simply being proud of what they are." ....because "being proud of what you are" doesn't work when no one cares about what you do or who you are. Then, your options are two-fold: you either become an isolated loner who doesn't care about socialising, or you participate in those superficial activities in hope of human connec…

Third option, you focus on family. Not sure why this was left out.

because the phone was more important.

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

#630

Post by wtarreau »

tekknik wrote: post #563
wtarreau wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily the case, it happens that most of the people who come are happy to be in the same room for a meeting, but often they still have to endure one single distant coworker that preferred to stay home and selfishly forces all other ones to use the shitty tools. At work we've bought small PCs for the meeting rooms so that all those present can be in the same room, and have the rare distant ones participa…

> but often they still have to endure one single distant coworker that preferred to stay home and selfishly forces all other ones to use the shitty tools. How does this hateful comment reconcile with geographically distributed teams?

the same way some believe that forcing talented people to waste their time trying to use inappropriate communication tools will in the end disgust them so much they will give up trying to excel at what they used to.
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