[HN Gopher] The future of work is not threatening your employees
___________________________________________________________________
The future of work is not threatening your employees
Author : RuffleGordon
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-05-07 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (warzel.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (warzel.substack.com)
| FFRefresh wrote:
| > "The original headline of the piece was itself an unsubtle
| threat: "As a CEO, I want my employees to understand the risks of
| not returning to work in the office." (Over email, Washington
| Post Opinion editor Fred Hiatt told me that Merrill did not write
| the headline. "I asked our team to change it early this morning
| to something I thought better captured the piece," he said.)"
|
| As an aside, this unethical practice in the media irks me. It's
| really despicable for the Washington Post to write a headline
| from the perspective of the CEO, which the CEO never said
| themselves.
|
| Does anyone know of any good _non-partisan_ orgs that attempt to
| quantify and track these unethical practices across the media
| landscape?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Wow, using an op-ed in _the Washington Post_ to threaten her
| employees ' careers? Where is this one in the How To Be A Great
| Leader manual? Wouldn't a private internal memo be at least
| marginally better than picking a fight publicly?
|
| Why are executives, regardless of industry, digging in and going
| to such great lengths to insist that physical presence in a
| purpose-built office building is the only possible way to work?
| FredPret wrote:
| My guess is that they are by-and-large older and not digital
| natives
| Muromec wrote:
| Well one thing -- it's much easier to sexually harass your
| employees and abuse whatever power you derive purpose-built
| hierarchy when you are all in the same building.
| oceanghost wrote:
| Control. Everything is always about control.
| GoToRO wrote:
| The future of work will be whatever is easier for the CEO. So
| easy for CEO, hard for everybody else is what we will get.
| zero_deg_kevin wrote:
| The future of work is whatever employees will tolerate. CEO's
| are less than worthless without competent people to boss
| around.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That only works as long as the demand is greater than supply.
| If that shifts then the employee will either require the
| means to reskill or they can accept the new future. Software
| development in America is in a unique place for that future.
| whack wrote:
| Unpopular opinion - is the CEO really threatening her employees?
| Or talking more abstractly about the downsides and ramifications
| of people deciding to work remotely? Ie, downsides that people
| would face at many/most companies, not just her own. I read the
| original article with a more charitable assumption, and the
| latter is how it came across to me.
|
| _" If you park in my driveway again, I will have your car
| towed"_ - very clear threat.
|
| _" If you go around parking in people's driveways, you run the
| risk of having your car towed"_ - maybe a threat, maybe not,
| depending on how the person says it
|
| _" I understand that you parked in my driveway yesterday,
| because of an emergency. No problem. But if you continue doing it
| regularly, please be aware that I might need to have your car
| towed, if I urgently need to use the driveway myself"_ - I
| suppose this is a threat too, but probably justifiable.
|
| Maybe others would consider this to be cynical, but I've always
| considered compensation and job stability to be directly
| correlated to the amount of value you provide as an employee. If
| an employer thinks that remote-working will reduce the amount of
| value I bring to the company, I would certainly expect that to
| have an impact on my career growth. If my manager tells me this
| directly, I would thank him for the upfront feedback. I would
| also consider working for a different company that has a
| different perspective on this topic... the exact same way I shop
| around for employers that offer the best work-life balance. But
| either way, there wouldn't be any hard feelings on my side, and
| I'm puzzled by the outrage around this article.
| autokad wrote:
| agree, I think tech employees should be weary of remote work.
| We'll probably see even harder interview process and less pay /
| benefits as a result.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Weary or wary?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Or as jay_kyburz suggests above, there will be even more
| contractors and less employees. The interview process is
| usually easier for contractors because it's not like you're
| vetting a new family member.
| variaga wrote:
| The Washingtonian's employees presumably know their CEO better
| than any of us do, and _their_ interpretation of the op-ed
| resulted in them _organizing a work stoppage the next day_.
|
| So maybe your reading is a bit too charitable, as it seems like
| all the employees heard the threat loud and clear.
| nr2x wrote:
| Meaning exists in how language is interpreted by the intended
| audience, in this case, that audience identified this as a
| threat. No other interpretations are pertinent.
| burkaman wrote:
| First of all, the pandemic is still happening. Imagine telling
| your neighbor about the abstract dangers of parking in your
| driveway when they're currently doing so because their house
| blew up and they don't have anywhere else to park.
|
| Second, the CEO published this without talking to a single one
| of their employees about the issue. Why? "I am concerned about
| the unfortunately common office worker who wants to continue
| working at home and just go into the office on occasion." Can
| you imagine your colleague stating this publicly without ever
| speaking to you about it? It's incredibly disrespectful. Your
| neighbor is parked in your driveway out of necessity, and
| you're within earshot asking a friend "Can you believe these
| people who think they can park wherever they want? I hope they
| realize how easy it is to tow a car off your own property."
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Converting staff to contractor status sounds like a layoff,
| making said staff eligible for generous covid unemployment relief
| and fully subsidized cobra health insurance payments until
| September.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Is this a veiled threat or a Maquiavelic warning?
|
| I really can't tell, but the meat of the difference is that the
| warning would be about what other people will do, not himself.
| (So it makes sense to publish a warning on the media, but it
| makes much less rational sense to publish a threat. But there's
| no reason to be sure he is acting rationally.)
|
| Anyway, it's a very narcissistic comment. CEOs will do what the
| competition for labor allows them to do, the ones that do
| anything more will fail. There's a huge and complex society
| deciding those factors, he (or the ones he is warning about) does
| not get to choose.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I think one of the consequences of work from home culture will be
| less of an emphasis on how many hours you work, and more focus on
| what you produce, and how that can be monetized.
|
| What this means is that a good manager will farm work out all
| over the place finding the right mix of quality / quantity /
| price.
|
| People will not be paid salaries, they will be paid per unit of
| work.
|
| Rather than interviewing people to join your family, businesses
| will be running a continual review of work producs and more
| carefully measure that mix of quality / quantity / price. Each
| cycle letting go the least desirable contractors and giving new
| contractors a try.
|
| On-boarding new contractors will be streamlined, and how fast the
| contractor gets started will be the first quality control
| checkpoint.
| floren wrote:
| Well, that would certainly be what it took to finally make me
| buy a farm and leave tech forever, so maybe I should be on
| board!
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| The future is apparently going to be impossible for new grads
| and people who would thrive with mentorship.
| antisthenes wrote:
| It's already near impossible for people not from top tech
| schools.
|
| I don't know what generation you are, but for millenials, the
| 2008 crisis was a real doozy. Anecdotally, only maybe 20-30%
| of my cohort found stable, well paying full-time jobs in the
| 10-12 years since that recession.
|
| Many of them put their life plans on hold due to not being
| able afford things that a family generally requires.
|
| So the "future" is already here. And has been for about a
| decade.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I think you are in a hell of a bubble. I've worked at
| several large companies over the years and would have to
| say that many of the engineers i've worked with have all
| come from vastly different backgrounds. I've certainly
| worked with some people with very impressive academic
| credentials but the majority do not.. and that could mean
| an engineering degree from a run of the mill school, a
| degree in an unrelated field or no academic credentials at
| all.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| That's pretty much what the demonized CEO in the linked article
| is predicting, too.
| [deleted]
| ineptech wrote:
| I have tried to gently help my corporate overlords to understand
| that wfh is something happening that they need to react to, not a
| decision they get to make. It is 100% not working. The convo goes
| like this:
|
| Them: We understand the concerns, but we have decided that the
| return to the office will be mandatory.
|
| Me: So those who are not comfortable returning to the office will
| be let go?
|
| Them: No! Yo mean fired? Good heavens, no! No one will be let go.
| But they will have to return to the office.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Organize with similar minded employees so that everyone is on
| the same page when push comes to shove.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Kudos for the employees to be able to organize and shut down
| operations for the day. I hope that it's not only symbolic. What
| would it take for the CEO to get replaced?
| [deleted]
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Having never worked in a work-from-home company, just exactly
| what do the managers do?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The same thing that in-person managers are supposed to do.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Perhaps actually keep their team on the same page and
| trajectory, and actively working toward a common goal.
| davesque wrote:
| Seems like there are a lot of ways that employers are effectively
| blaming their employees for COVID. Some of the anecdotes in this
| article really resonated with me. It does feel "super shitty"
| when you feel as though you've been barely holding it together
| during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years
| of the previous century and yet your employer seems to feel
| entitled to hold you to the usual standards. The tech industry
| (well, the "business" industry really) lately seems just so
| utterly inhuman that I've seriously considered getting out of it
| for good and becoming something like a technological hermit. But
| I can't be a "business" hermit so I'm still trying to figure that
| one out.
|
| _Afterword:_ I feel like this post is a good litmus test for
| identifying which respondents are in the C suite lol.
| paleotrope wrote:
| "during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult
| years of the previous century"
|
| That seems a bit hyperbolic.
| davesque wrote:
| Lol, really? A pandemic doesn't count?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Compared to two world wars both of which lasting longer
| than a year and change?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think the issue is that, as has been widely reported, the
| pandemic effects have been so _vastly_ different from
| person to person.
|
| I'll volunteer myself. I work for a tech company, stuff was
| hard for me originally when pretty much everything shut
| down (e.g. office, my gym, school where I took evening
| classes, etc.), but beyond that I don't have kids so I
| don't have to worry about home school, things actually
| opened up for the most part many months ago, I still have a
| good paying job, etc.
|
| Compare that with someone that lost family to Covid, or who
| was working in the ICU throughout, or who was working in a
| grocery store and got sick, etc.
|
| Yes, the pandemic has been a huge, gargantuan event, but
| I'm not about to pretend that my typing from home on my
| couch in my underwear is remotely comparable to a relative
| who had to worry about how to home school her kids while
| she worked in a hospital the past year.
| foobarian wrote:
| Perhaps that should say "this century" because the 21st
| century has got nothing on the 20th.
| FredPret wrote:
| ...knock on wood!!
| davesque wrote:
| Sorry, but I think I can objectively say that a year in
| which a global pandemic occurred that took millions of
| lives and completely upended normal life for the majority
| of people counts as _one of_ the worst years since 1920.
| The fact that anyone would question that in this forum
| is, I think, extremely telling.
| username90 wrote:
| Are you just ignoring all the wars with more than a
| million casualties, all the famines with many millions of
| casualties etc, during the past 100 years? 2020 doesn't
| even make it to the top 10 possibly not even top 20.
| Maybe it was one of the worst for USA, but not if you
| take the world overall.
| kbelder wrote:
| I think that the last several decades... maybe the last
| 5-6 decades... have been so GOOD compared to what came
| before, and to the bulk of human history, that when a bad
| year comes around it's especially shocking. The window
| has shifted.
|
| I'm not arguing that 2020 wasn't a really bad year, but
| just that a hundred years ago this wouldn't have seemed
| such an outlier.
| Izkata wrote:
| "The previous century" includes the Great Depression, WWII,
| the Cold War, a bunch of nuclear war close calls, and 9/11.
| Also if you include the whole 20th century, WWI and the
| Spanish Flu.
|
| And those are just of the top of my head, I'm sure I've
| missed some.
|
| Personally, I'm not sure this pandemic qualifies as "one of
| the most difficult"...
| davesque wrote:
| It's almost as though you're responding to a different
| statement than the one that I made. What about what I
| said would have denied that any of those things you
| mentioned were not also terrible things that are among
| the worst things in the past century?
| ModernMech wrote:
| In terms of death toll for my family, more people died in
| the last year due to Covid than all of those events
| combined. So yeah, I would put Covid right up there at
| the top.
| Muromec wrote:
| One could argue that being shut off from in-person
| interaction is not as big of a challenge, as escaping a
| genocide or being drafted into an army to fight $ideology
| on the other side of the globe.
|
| Pandemic is sure bad, but not "half of all men in your
| country being killed in war" bad.
| LocalH wrote:
| One could also argue that the reduction of in-person
| interaction is in some ways _worse_ , if not as heinous,
| because of the long term harm that it will cause.
| evilduck wrote:
| Does something really have to be equal to or greater than
| WWII in damage to qualify as a bad year or two? That's
| quite a high bar to set.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| I had two family members die of COVID, moved house 3 times
| (including several months couch surfing) and burned out at
| work while having daily panic attacks due to being locked
| indoors and isolated for months alone.
|
| I don't think elements of this experience were uncommon.
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| It's been a pretty rough year for DC residents to be fair.
| Between BLM protests, the gangs that drove to the city
| literally to fight with them, then a literal insurrection, I
| think it's possible that for this group, it's up there in
| terms of difficult years in the last 100. Oh, and then there
| was the pandemic on top of that.
| kbelder wrote:
| I was going to argue a bit about the scale of some of those
| issues, but then I saw that you said "for DC residents",
| and... yeah, I'll buy that.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I think that would vary by person and location. Some people
| have had a terrible time losing friends and family without
| the option to even say goodbye, which is genuinely awful.
| Then people who have lost their livelihood and even become
| homeless.
|
| On the other hand, I got the best job I've ever had and I
| don't even know a single person who got covid. Restricted
| travel has only been a minor inconvenience because I live in
| such an incredibly beautiful and temperate place. In the most
| selfish perspective, this seems like a great year for me.
| There are probably many like me, and also in between.
|
| All that is to say I don't think we can truly evaluate how
| difficult this has really been until we see the full
| consequence revealed in several years. Some people speculate
| that we will collectively bounce back in a roaring 20s kind
| of way, others suspect this has kneecapped our global economy
| and we haven't seen the worst yet.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Only 3 millions dead worldwide in about a year - not as many
| as WWII's 50M in 6 or 8 years but on the order. So yes, one
| of the most difficult.
| rconti wrote:
| I work in tech, and my company has bent over backwards to help
| us. Dozens of extra days off I'm having a hard time even using,
| an extra 4 days off a year (one per quarter) where the whole
| company is off, constantly reminding us ourselves and our
| families come first, and encouraging others to be understanding
| that our coworkers might be working unusual schedules as they
| juggle remote-learning kids, childcare, elder care, and other
| life priorities during such a difficult period.
|
| It's not everywhere, and maybe it's not even the norm, but
| surely other companies are supportive of their employees as
| well.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Wow, yeah, our company started emphatically asking us to take
| our days off piecemeal because we all went heads down in work
| and our days off became a financial liability. We spent the
| last year with benefits cut and idea that worry that we'd be
| having layoffs after the first round of furloughed employees
| weren't rehired.
|
| So some different realities for sure.
| rconti wrote:
| To be fair, there's a very real difference between
| companies that are thriving or at least doing as well as
| ever during the pandemic, and those that are _seriously_
| hurting. I don 't blame the latter for tightening purse
| strings, but one would hope they're at least not assholes
| about it.
| oceanghost wrote:
| > so utterly inhuman t I worked for a company once that moved
| offices-- literally, there was no workplace to go to for 2
| weeks (keep in mind this company made hardware).
|
| The C level management sends out a company wide e-mail saying
| "the move will not be tolerated as an excuse for missing
| deadlines."
|
| God I wish I had a copy of that e-mail.
| setr wrote:
| tbh that's probably not all that unfair -- whoever created
| the timelines should have already accounted for it, and if
| the timeline was created long enough ago (because the project
| is sufficiently long) before the move was known, there should
| be significantly more than two weeks buffer included for
| issues exactly like this. Of course, it's also that person
| who should inevitably be held accountable for the fuck-up
| (unless the move was sudden, in which case it's the fault of
| whoever initiated the move.. perhaps the C*O :)
|
| At least in my mind the only time its the fault of the
| employee himself only when they slip their own agreed-upon
| schedules, without warning or reason
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-07 23:02 UTC)