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JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

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81–90 of 216 posts

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#81

I dislike RTO for one simple reason . I'm not at work to make friends, I'm not at work to chit chat. I'm not at work so we can talk about who won the last football game . I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to acquire goods and services. All this other crap, all these holiday parties, all of this let's dance in diversity videos, no that's not what I'm here for . Most of the time coming to the off…

> I imagine the entire point of RTO mandates is to keep cities sustainable.

The main important factor IMO is mentorship of junior talent. (I'm speaking for technical orgs)

Viewing the organization as a living organism where an employee is a "cell", then there are material benefits in the "cellular replication" of talent and rejuvenation of the next generation.

It can definitely be true that RTO is worse for an individual engineer but better for the health of the organization long-term. Both can be true.

In my experience, remote only companies tend to prefer a higher ratio of senior employees for this reason. It's plug-an-play.

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#82

I dislike RTO for one simple reason . I'm not at work to make friends, I'm not at work to chit chat. I'm not at work so we can talk about who won the last football game . I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to acquire goods and services. All this other crap, all these holiday parties, all of this let's dance in diversity videos, no that's not what I'm here for . Most of the time coming to the off…

It pains me to say this, but I find in-person discussions more productive than online ones. It's not just shooting the shit--for me, spontaneous social chats often lead to work-related brainstorming. Being in the office next to co-workers leads to more spontaneous discussions.

Yep. Also in person mentoring and spontaneous collaboration.

In person and remote both have advantages and will work better or worse for different people, organizations, or situations.

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#83

I dislike RTO for one simple reason . I'm not at work to make friends, I'm not at work to chit chat. I'm not at work so we can talk about who won the last football game . I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to acquire goods and services. All this other crap, all these holiday parties, all of this let's dance in diversity videos, no that's not what I'm here for . Most of the time coming to the off…

I think we’re all getting the reasons for RTO wrong. It’s not just executives liking a certain work environment or a way to hold employees accountable. It’s a core part of their business. If real estate in overpriced cities is worth a lot less, JPMC’s own property, its assets, and so on are all worth less. What happens to JPMC if people with loans decide to stop making payments and just default because their property is worth a lot less than the loan? To prevent this, they’re trying to strengthen the RTO trend.

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#85
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the I’ll replace you with an Indian routine that’s been going on for over 25 years years of my career.

The only new thing there is they'll threaten replace you with AI

Or Indian IIT grads with AI tools. For tis the sport to watch the engineers hoist by their collective petards.

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#86

Labor unions seem like the wrong model for organizing "knowledge workers." A professional association like the American Medical Association might be a better way to structure things. One difference is how they gain leverage. Labor unions seem to rely on the fact that they are the ones _right there_ who can work in a factory, clean a facility, etc. But capital sort of did an end run around some of that by literally pa…

Medical workers are shielded from outsourcing because the vast majority of people who need medical care aren't going to travel overseas to get it.

The threat of jobs being exported just means that members of the union or association have to embrace innovation like unions do in Germany rather than focus on job retention.

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#87
post #59

Workers need to tread carefully here. If you there's no need to be in the office, what's to stop corporate from replacing you with an Indian that costs 1/3rd as much? Push back too hard on RTO and you may not have a job at all in five years.

What stopped them from doing exactly this 20 years ago? Turns out the differentiating factor isn't salary but talent. They pay you $$$$ because they can't find equivalent talent in India. And the talent that does exist in India isn't going to work for peanuts.

You are woefully ignorant here. There are lots of cultural challenges (ex: IME young Indians jump jobs even more frequently than young Americans), the time zone coordination, corporate organization, matching client time zone & culture, etc. Talent is not an issue.

Even blind statistics are not in your favor.

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#88

https://archive.ph/PI7vb

thank you. Also, were you aware that 0xcafef00d is not included in the wikipedia article on hexspeak? is 0xCAFEFOOD used as a magic number in any systems? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American society doesn't want to accept that a lot of our problems happen because the parents aren't home. Michael Moore had an interesting scene in Bowling for Columbine where he showed a 6 year old shooter's mother had to work hours away daily and wasn't home. Mine and most of my friends parents always had to be outside of the house during our formative years. We had very robust economy in the 90s/2000s that pretty…

Wait - how can you say remote is comparable with in-office, then tell me a work from home mother is going to look after her 6-yr-old while doing her job and not split her attention & efforts?

Being near the child is important. Our economy was so insane that a new mother/father was not be able to spend the first few years with that child even though we had every means of allowing them to do so (for many workers, not all).

Being there to pickup the kid from school is important.

Getting lunch with your SO is important.

Being in your neighborhood is important.

Those two hours of sleep is important.

What nonsense perks can a company can offer me compared to things like that. I don't even know if you can pay me enough to go without that (If I have the means to get that, that's what I'll do).

Re: JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I go to work in exchange for currency, which is required to acquire goods and services Social currency is also a thing, which is much more difficult to gain in a remote setting - if not impossible. I don't go to work to socialize either, but I'm not naive enough to think that without an extremely established career and reputation at an org that I'll be promoted or employed strictly on merit. there is always some de…

There will always be some social-ness, but let’s be real that it’s out of fucking control right now. I’ve been doing this professionally for more than 20 years and “who you know not what you know” hasn’t run this badly amok in that entire time. The industry is very unsettled right now: credible (or at least loud) opinions on AI range from “fancy autocomplete nothingburger” to “programmers are obsolete starting now”,…

Megacorps being naturally risk-averse, and the lion's share of the rest of the capital being held by that banquet room, it's going to take one or a few scrappy startups hitting it big while also committing to WFH/etc to get the banquet to loosen the purse strings a bit and kick off a new wave of investment a la Web 2.0 post-dotcom-crash (which was coincidentally also post-oh-noes-outsourcing-1.0)

That plus a few years of new successes might get the megacorps to start hiring en masse and possibly see the value in WFH again, but it'll take a lot of these stars aligning to produce several new unicorns that can eat a few lunches to get there, which will probably take the rest of the 2020s and possibly part of the 2030s (based on the last time this happened, going from 1999 crash to the 2010/2011 renaissance)

If I was a betting man, I'd guess the first wave of new startups will be unifying a huge dataset of local info with AI into like the AirBNB-of-local-whatever personal concierge sort of thing, like OpenTable on steroids. but I'm frequently wrong, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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