[HN Gopher] 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-offi...
___________________________________________________________________
80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans
Author : pg_1234
Score : 117 points
Date : 2023-08-11 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >We will be one of those 20% companies
| lnsru wrote:
| My brilliant manager still has his home office day during team
| meeting. So the whole team sits with headsets on their desks and
| talks to the manager who's sitting at home. That's how return to
| the office plan works for the peasants. Good that I am leaving
| soon.
| [deleted]
| pengaru wrote:
| > Good that I am leaving soon.
|
| I get the impression the manager is thinking the same thing.
| kzrdude wrote:
| In that situation we would use a meeting room. The dynamic
| would make the manager feel like they are the outsider in that
| case, though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| They literally are the outsider in that case though
| wildrhythms wrote:
| You seem to think these managers have even a shred of self-
| awareness...
| sharts wrote:
| Rule #1 for effective management from any reputable ivy
| league executive MBA program is to have less self-awareness
| than any of your subordinates.
| ahi wrote:
| The passive aggressive fix for this is to meet in the
| conference room and put him on the big screen. In the before
| times I worked on teams with just 1 or 2 remote and this
| practice was (unintentionally) awful for them.
| justrealist wrote:
| Make sure to mutter whenever possible, and make all decisions
| via 1-1 asides.
|
| If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the room
| where it's visible but incomprehensible.
|
| And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza
| delivered right as the meeting starts.
| dmoy wrote:
| > If possible, have a whiteboard way at the back of the
| room where it's visible but incomprehensible.
|
| Bonus points if it's at a steep angle from the camera,
| making only one side of it slightly comprehensible, as the
| other side diminishes into unreadable scribbles
| dylan604 wrote:
| >And order food! Have some cookies, croissants, pizza
| delivered right as the meeting starts.
|
| as if the snacks one has in their own home are so
| undesirable that this is the compelling factor. such a good
| post left on such a weak point.
| justrealist wrote:
| The indignity of getting excluded from free cake is not
| an economic calculus.
|
| Lots of people could go to the grocery store and buy
| themselves a sheet cake. They don't.
| adamkf wrote:
| Here's the quote from the [actual
| whitepaper](https://envoy.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...) from Envoy that this
| article references:
|
| > 80% of executives say they would have approached their
| company's return-to-office strategy differently if they had
| access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.
|
| Envoy's not exactly an unbiased source here, since they sell
| software to collect this data.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Things like this are starting to feel like they are requesting
| for people to Quiet Quit and jump jobs.
| hackitup7 wrote:
| The problem that I've observed is that far too many bosses made
| their decisions about remote based on emotion, despite the fact
| that it is incredibly obviously a decision that should be made
| based on logic.
|
| Not saying that one answer was right or wrong. Just that it has
| shocked me to hear otherwise smart people using subjective
| emotional decision making on this topic, when it's so clearly
| just an economic / incentive decision.
| curo wrote:
| Fyi, CNBC (a news site) is citing a figure in a white paper by
| Envoy, an employee analytics platform, that leaders regret not
| having more employee analytics.
|
| > "73% workplace leaders believe that easier access to data would
| enable them to drive smarter decisions about their space,
| programs, and policies... "
|
| > "80% of executives say they would have approached their
| company's return-to-office strategy differently if they had
| access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.
|
| Here's the source:
|
| https://envoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Workplace_Data_...
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I was recently offered a long-term contract job that was double
| anything I would expect my salary to be. Why? Because the company
| instituted a policy of not hiring new remote employees. So the
| workaround to get the help they need is to hire contractors that
| aren't beholden to silly employee policies.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor
| in companies' decisions to change their RTO approach, says
| Kacher.
|
| I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know
| what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger
| generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent
| money on that you can't get back.
|
| The 'sunk cost fallacy' is the mistaken belief that you have to
| use a resource you have already spent money on (sunk cost into).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I'm not sure that the author, or the company executives, know
| what a sunk cost is. Just to clarify, since there is a younger
| generation on HN now, 'sunk cost' is something you have spent
| money on that you can't get back.
|
| Depending on how long your office lease runs - and many run
| 5-10 years - it _effectively is_ sunk cost because, short of a
| bankruptcy, you can 't get out of that super expensive office
| space that's now sitting 80%+ empty if you don't find some
| other sucker willing to sublet from you. Best case is you find
| someone with a sublease, but with a heavy discount so all
| you're getting from that is a bit lower running cost.
| zuminator wrote:
| I'm not quite seeing your point. Are you saying the article's
| usage is inconsistent with the meaning of sunk cost? In some
| cases companies have multi-year leases for office space that is
| drastically underutilized due to WFH. Does that not count as a
| sunk cost in your opinion? It's true rent is paid on an ongoing
| prorated basis but to quote from Investopedia, "Sunk costs also
| cover certain expenses that are committed but yet to [be]
| paid." [0]
|
| Like I said, maybe I'm just missing the point you're making?
|
| [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp
|
| (edit: upon posting I see others have already raised this
| question)
| suprjami wrote:
| The sunk cost fallacy is that you should _continue_ spending
| money on something you 've already spent money on.
|
| Make a bad expensive investment but give it up and move on?
| That's fine.
|
| Make a bad expensive investment then keep pouring money into it
| because you've already spent so much and can't throw away all
| this money now? That's the sunk cost fallacy.
| [deleted]
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| I think a lot of weak tech leaders took their RTO clues from
| Elon. When Elon took over twitter he started a very successful
| anti-programmer propaganda campaign, calling us spoiled, overly
| pampered, overly paid, etc.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I had lunch, not too long ago, with a senior executive of a
| silicon valley tech company that was moaning about how much of a
| pain it was to get people to come into the office and how it felt
| like things would never return to the way they were. And I told
| them I actually knew of a way to get 100% of their employees to
| return to the office happily. When they asked what this magic
| bullet was I said, "Go back to offices, with doors."
|
| It isn't that complicated. Even if you have to work out of your
| bedroom when you are home you can close your door and focus, that
| just isn't the same in open plan office space.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Yes, if you want to return to office... I better have an
| office. Not a desk in a "modern open collaboration space" or
| what every they used to call them
| rabuse wrote:
| The "everything is loud as fuck and echoes" area is the term.
| Headphones required all hours.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I get to have lunch with my partner every day and see them when
| I take breaks working from home. That'll never happen at an
| office, and it's more valuable than any comp to me. I would not
| entertain on site even at 500k/year (legit offer from a high
| frequency trading firm in Chicago for an infosec cloud/iam
| engineer role). I can always make more money, and I only need
| so much to live well, but I have a finite amount of time and
| I'm spending the time I have left wisely.
|
| https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
| kneebonian wrote:
| Not going to lie spending some "quality time" with my wife
| during the middle of the work day has been pretty freaking
| awesome and a very hard perk to cap.
| rabuse wrote:
| I'm the same with this. Both and me my partner work remote,
| and we spend so much more quality time together, and are able
| to take breaks with each other. I can't see giving that up.
| cableshaft wrote:
| That might get more people back to the office, but still
| probably not the majority of them. I have a 1-2 hour commute
| each way to the office. I did it for three weeks while I was
| not staffed on a project, but as soon as I got staffed on
| another project I stopped going to the office.
|
| My commute sucks, the office environment is way inferior to my
| home, and the lack of flexibility sucks. The only thing I
| looked forward to while I was commuting was trying out a new
| restaurant in the big city for lunch. I was practically pulling
| my hair out of boredom the last two hours every day (had work I
| could and did somewhat do, but I could no longer focus on it
| because I was so sick of the office).
|
| Them giving me my own office at work wouldn't change anything.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| that would require folks moving back to the bay area. No way in
| hell I'd want to do that. That would require sacrificing my
| wife's career and our quality of life significantly.
| tester756 wrote:
| So, you found simple solution for very complicated dynamic and
| you actually believe you solved this problem?
|
| I don't care about offices with doors.
|
| Sure, they're better, but still it doesn't solve my issues - I
| care about commute - time and money, especially time.
|
| I've been commuting like 3h / day before WFH and I don't want
| to go back unless you pay me at least 2.5x
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Even if you pay me 2.5x. I don't want to. I like living out
| there. No traffic, no people around me. I walk outside an I'm
| in the desert. Solitude.
| samstave wrote:
| I am 1,000% with Chuck...
|
| My best, most productives were in offices with doors and one
| other space-mate and we both liked the door closed and the
| light off. I rebuilt Compaq 4U rackmount servers in the dark
| in that office. I loved it.
|
| -
|
| I hated Intel cubes - even though the cube was ~7' tall and
| the ceilings were ~13' - they still sucked.
|
| I've hated every open office. (fb being the worst)
|
| --
|
| The WAYMO campus should just be little auto-driving "cubicle
| pods" that roam around and find the magnettic connection to
| the person you want to talk to and you both agree to meet -
| and then on the SmartMAC (like tarmac) the little pods just
| route you to eachother and dock.
|
| Think Conways Game of Conferencing - and all the little pods
| can form SNAKE like elements, or TETRIS Rooms - gimme a big
| L!
| dt3ft wrote:
| Only this would make me consider going back to the office: a
| 5 hour workday, paid as 8. The 3 remaining hours would be
| compensating for the commute, which includes the time to get
| dressed. Commuting costs and food should be compensated as
| well.
|
| Nothing else. Even with the above, I would still prefer a
| hybrid or remote positions as long as I have a choice.
|
| Standing on a crowded train is not something I want to do
| every day (once a week is plenty), there is simply nothing
| the company can offer to make me reconsider.
| rabuse wrote:
| Not to mention the people who have children at home, and the
| massive savings of not having to pay for daycare. That's
| major.
| vladslav wrote:
| Can't agree more. I don't care about a personal cubicle with
| a door. But I care how much time I spend in traffic on my way
| to and back from the office.
| macintux wrote:
| I haven't had an office with a door in 20 years, but you're
| absolutely right. Somehow a white noise generator isn't quite
| the same.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| 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 no chance at
| becoming some big world changing venture. Lots of employers like
| to delude themselves that their company is some big important,
| cutting-edge enterprise that's making a real impact in the world.
| People just work because they need to. Claiming that WFH is bad
| because you can't bounce ideas off other employees and get into
| the real world-changing "deep work" is silly because that's just
| the employer overvaluing the importance of their company. Those
| companies do exist, but they're in the minority, and employers
| smart enough to have founded/run those kinds of companies usually
| are smart enough to see the merits of a hybrid policy.
| water9 wrote:
| Acting like all humans will work equally as hard when they are
| supervised vs unsupervised is completely naive
| fyrn_ wrote:
| That only makes sense if the employees in question don't
| produce anything measurable
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| It's also naive to assume that the work people do when
| supervised is always valuable and not optimizing for the
| appearance of work, rather than work itself.
| r00fus wrote:
| Thing is, I'm just as supervised at work, honestly (which is
| to say, not at all).
|
| I still have 1:1s with my manager, am still accountable for
| my targets and organizational goals, and generally do the
| same thing whether I'm WFH or in office.
|
| Office work has several advantages: 1) I like discussing in
| person with coworkers - sometimes coming up with
| fun/interesting ideas 2) office itself is more conducive to a
| particular type of work 3) I get some isolation from the
| family
|
| But that commute...
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by
| employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH
| employee
|
| Which is also a hilarious self-own on the part of the company
| because they:
|
| 1.) hired the person
|
| 2.) have such a shitty remote work structure that the same
| employee is somehow more productive in the office
|
| All of these companies that aren't remote first, or were forced
| into remote because of the pandemic have put in roughly 0%
| effort to make remote actually work.
|
| It's not like you can just pick up the office culture and move
| it to slack. You have to actually make an effort to build the
| process, tools, and workflows that allow employees to be
| effective remote workers.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Being in the office only works with others in the office, so
| it's a balancing act between this (likely minority) group that
| wants RTO and the group that excels when working in their own
| curated, controlled environment.
| sharts wrote:
| These very same employers will never take a pay cut for said
| "passion" that they have for their product (which they probably
| don't even use much either).
|
| They want to only pay others per keyboard keystroke but can't
| accept that often the most efficient/productive workers don't
| need to be busy. They spend a lot of their time thinking so
| that they can generate more impact with fewer keystrokes.
|
| Treat people like adults and, surprisingly, get adult results.
| Set strategic goals, not daily quotas for minutia work.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| There are two issues in the psychology of employers that keep
| them from doing this.
|
| 1. They care more about control than doing the right thing.
|
| 2. They don't get satisfaction from improvements that don't
| come directly from their doing
|
| Very stringent quotas, asinine team building activities, and
| of course, mandatory in-office policies construct a narrative
| for the company that no good thing that happens is from
| anywhere but the top-down. They can look at improvements in
| the bottom line and concoct a much more salient narrative
| that they were responsible for it; that their employees were
| nannied and hand-held to success. It's much more satisfying
| for an egomaniac to reckon with this conclusion than the
| still gratifying albeit less viscerally satisfying one that
| granting workers respect and independence will merit the best
| outcomes.
| kneebonian wrote:
| > 90% of jobs aren't people's "passions"
|
| I'd also like to add that even if you are in a field and doing
| work you are "passionate" about you'll spend between 25-75% of
| your time doing boring administrative bull hockey that no one
| is passionate about. Whether it's feeling out a time sheet, or
| watching HR videos on harassing coworkers.
| troupe wrote:
| 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 back to where managers will look better with lots of
| people running around the office.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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
|
| Whatever management's current whim is represents not only a
| reasonable but the only effective way to serve shareholder
| interests, amd to do anything differently would be a
| irresponsible and anyone disagreeing is objectively working
| against the interest of the firm, and any prior contrary
| statements about what is best for the firm are nonoperational
| and any reference to them is a bad faith distraction.
|
| Oceania, Inc., has always been at war with EastAsia, LLC.
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Management and entrepreneurism is incredibly cult-like and I
| find it increasingly difficult to quietly sit through all
| their ridiculous sermons.
| mkl95 wrote:
| > 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
| back to where managers will look better with lots of people
| running around the office.
|
| My guess is that CEOs and VCs have some obscure reason to
| force people back into the office. Perhaps related to real
| estate, especially considering how hard to sell it is and how
| much higher the interest rates are. Middle management will
| typically eat up whatever narrative C-level feeds them.
| rabuse wrote:
| I honestly think it's mostly a huge ego boost to flex with.
| "Look at how GIANT our new billion dollar HQ is, and look
| at all of these people working for ME!"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Even if your firm isn't exposed to real estate, its
| probable that a lot if its shareholders are and are
| interested in ending the slump in commercial real estate.
|
| Plus, while the overall employment situation is strong, the
| tech downsizing wave may not be over and if you can get
| people to self-select out, you can maybe avoid having to
| officially have layoffs.
| mkl95 wrote:
| > Lots of employers like to delude themselves that their
| company is some big important, cutting-edge enterprise that's
| making a real impact in the world.
|
| Pretty much. The only time I've considered going back to in-
| person work since the pandemic was for a FAANG. If you think
| your employees want to go back to the office, you are either a
| big tech company or you are deluded
| ecshafer wrote:
| "Hybrid" is just in office work with a fancy name. A company I
| worked for pushed heavy for RTO and said "Its part time
| Hybrid". But we already had 1+ days (at managers discretion)
| WFH a week before covid hit. Hybrid was In office Tuesday
| through Thursday with remote Monday and Friday. This was
| actually less flexible than 1 or maybe more as you need it WFH
| that we had it prior.
| system16 wrote:
| My company forced a three day a week hybrid, despite major
| pushback from the employees and a lot of resignations after it
| was implemented. They're now trying to nudge people to come in
| every day.
|
| On Mondays and Fridays the CEO comes in, pacing around, unamused
| the big fancy space is sitting empty.
|
| All the executives want to force full time RTO but of course they
| come in late (if at all) or leave early whenever they want as
| nobody monitors their schedule. Rules for thee and not for me.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Not necessarily saying this is invalid, but this is a submarine
| article: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| darth_avocado wrote:
| They're not regretting the decisions. They're regretting the fact
| their poor decision making capabilities are on full display.
|
| Most of these "bosses" would still be caught doubling down on the
| RTO narrative and threatening people to show up to work.
|
| Bosses with Elon style of management, please take a warning. A
| weekly email threatening to fire people if they don't show up in
| the office 5 days a week only works the first three times you
| send it. After a while, half the people leave and the other half
| don't show up to work anyway daring you to fire them all the
| while laughing at how ridiculous you sound.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Doe these threatening emails convey any kind of warning to
| prospective new employees? Not just in the WFH/RTO topic, but
| if they are this draconian in one area, would it not be safe to
| assume it would span other areas as well?
|
| Even if I was looking for a new job where the WFH issue didn't
| exist, I'd personally still be hesitant about working at a
| place managed by people doubling down like that
| vntx wrote:
| It would to me. Any employer who wouldn't negotiate on
| something like this for a job that does not require being in-
| office is potentially toxic.
|
| Commuting can be expensive and even potentially dangerous.
| Car, insurance, gas, dangerous traffic, time wasted driving
| at least 2x a day.
|
| There's also the potentially unproductive office
| environments: loud, annoying co-workers, constant
| interruptions, etc.
|
| RTO has costs, WFH has benefits and employers who don't
| recognize that should be shunned. If the reason they require
| you to come back is because they wisely rented office space
| and didn't even consult the employees on whether the workers
| would return, that should tell you how much you can trust
| management and how much they value you as an employee.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You're not wrong, but it's not that obvious to people. Most
| people look at this from a perspective of "ohh I'm okay with
| RTO so I don't care" or "ohh I like RTO and people should
| stop complaining and being so entitled". What they fail to
| realize is that soon it will be your paid parental leave cut
| down to two weeks or medical plans moved to cheaper options
| with less coverage, what are you going to do then?
| [deleted]
| sharts wrote:
| Not only that but those that stay are the "yes" men/women who
| are either bootlickers or accept that they aren't valued much
| and thus will put in minimal genuine effort and just comply
| with stupid directives to the letter.
|
| In the end you just don't get that diversity of thought through
| disagreement/evolution/personal ownership that you otherwise
| get when people feel comfortable enough to genuinely show up
| and be mission-driven.
| [deleted]
| bediger4000 wrote:
| They regret boiling the frog too fast
| mydriasis wrote:
| > The sunk cost of unused office space has been a major factor in
| companies' decisions to change their RTO approach, says Kacher.
|
| > In New York City, office space costs, on average, about $16,000
| a year per employee, the New York Times reports.
|
| Oof.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| And yet, believe it or not, they still want to beat the RTO
| drum.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I knew from the start that this was a major reason so many
| companies want RTO, no executive wants to look like a fool in
| front of their board for wasting millions or more on office
| space. Even more so when you have bigger companies that have
| billions invested in real estate across major cities
| WWLink wrote:
| That's an unfortunate thing with how businesses operate. They
| shouldn't have to look like a fool in front of their board.
| Executives are not psychics. I get that their job is to
| foresee things like that, but sometimes you just.. can't.
|
| Having everyone work in the office all the time was an
| accepted norm that everyone was ok with. Nobody (really) saw
| this coming and if they did, everyone would've thought they
| were nuts. If the CEO decided "hey let's try WFH!" they
| probably would've been removed by the board. So it's pretty
| unfair for the board to be like "this guy's an idiot for not
| trying WFH in the past!"
|
| They could play it off as "wow turns out we were wrong about
| WFH, this is going to be great in the long term! Right now
| here's how we might use that extra space" - they could detail
| things like improving retention by bringing back private
| offices for people who want to work in the office, subletting
| the space, and other things.
| paulmd wrote:
| > they could detail things like improving retention by ...
| subletting the space
|
| nope, that's actually _the root of the problem_ , nobody
| else wants to be in the office either so the commercial
| real-estate market is in slow-motion meltdown for the last
| 3 years. even if you fervently believe that WFH is the
| better path, you simply cannot exit your commercial real-
| estate investments right now without locking in big losses.
|
| at the landlord level the game is to simply let the office
| space go vacant rather than write down the notional value
| of the property (which is going to be based on X years of
| rents, and if you lock in a lower rent value you just
| dropped the value of your investment). But at the tenant
| level if you want out, it's not like you can just find
| someone else to sublet your space either, because the
| building is full of unoccupied offices already. Nobody
| wants to sign a deal that realizes the losses that exist on
| paper.
|
| So instead the move is to force everyone back to the office
| so it looks like there's value being generated from the
| property, as opposed to a white elephant standing empty,
| which is effectively what it is. And yeah, middle managers
| and CEOs have every incentive to push for people back in
| the office from their own ends too... the feeling of
| power/control and the facilitation of their own
| communication-focused work as opposed to the output-
| oriented work of the actual ICs.
|
| --
|
| Anecdotally, my current employer has had some weird
| communication mis-steps where my manager clumsily relayed
| some "we really want everyone to be at the all-hands this
| month, in-person if you can!" and it came off as more of a
| "more layoffs incoming" tone when actually the problem was
| more that this was boardroom politics around being seen to
| be using the expensive building we just bought a couple
| months before the pandemic started. And this is a company
| that is all-in on remote work already, we have people
| everywhere (I and another coworker are at least 4 hours
| from the closest satellite office) and we're nearshoring
| some junior roles etc. We will never get everyone into an
| office because that's not the strategy, but even we are not
| immune to the "we bought the building and can't exit"
| politics.
|
| Last employer, same thing, but they _are_ going all-in on
| forcing everyone back to office... despite having hired a
| bunch of people remote during covid for a project. Since
| the project crashed I guess they dropped all the
| contractors and are hiring from a bodyshop, and I guess
| maybe they 're doing local hiring for that. But between IC
| turnover due to the project being a shitshow, and heads
| rolling in the team leads due to the project failure, and
| dropping all the people they hired on remote since COVID...
| I think they basically turned over the entire team that
| existed pre-covid minus like three people. So they are
| starting from (almost) scratch anyway.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It was not a norm, until ubiquitous high speed networking
| and computing there was no choice but to be in the same
| place to work together.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| The smarter ones would find some way to reduce their cost on
| office spaces.
| jurassic wrote:
| I like that for the present moment there are a diversity of
| approaches and people can somewhat self-select into a work
| culture that fits their preferences and needs. If you make abrupt
| changes I don't like, rest assured I will be using my new time
| commuting on the train to prospect new job opportunities. But
| good for those who want and prefer an in-office culture.
| Voluntary association is a wonderful thing.
|
| I mainly reserve scorn for companies issuing abrupt ultimatums to
| employees they hired remotely that they must relocate long
| distances or be fired. Nobody established in an area with a
| partner that also works, potentially has family nearby or kids in
| school is going to accept that. That move signals a toxic brew of
| tyranny and cowardice from execs who don't want to take
| responsibility for doing a real layoff. Grindr, looking at you
| this week.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Return to office is a massive sink cost fallacy and effort for
| executives to save face after strangling their companies
| profitability by signing long unnecessary leases. Rather than
| shrugging at what COVID wrought and going "meh, act of god, this
| unused office space is a write-off" fart huffing executives want
| to bend reality to their will by declaring work from home a huge
| problem and return to office the only way to save their
| companies.
|
| In doing so, they replace an understandable situation in which
| the were blindsided by an extremely low probability act of god,
| with an intentional hoisting upon their own petards. It's
| incredible to me how many people have OPENLY cited how much
| they're paying for office space as a reason for their return to
| office policies.
|
| The US government accountability office framed unused office
| space as an environmental and financial problem. Not the office
| space itself but the fact it was unused is clearly the problem.
| So of course the solution is to have your workers burn a whack of
| oil during an oil shortage, burning through their own money, to
| "save" the environment and government finances by making them
| commute to these offices so they can't be say converted to
| residential housing or something useful. The true costs of such
| idiocy are hidden by shoving a large portion of the costs onto
| the workforce who are expected to ask for no additional
| compensation for the extra unpaid work and uncompensated expenses
| they're taking on.
|
| This doesn't actually work because workers actually vote with
| their feet and do punish their employers for such chicanery. Or
| they simply don't comply with policy knowing that nobody is
| either paying attention or has the guts/inclination to actually
| fire them. How much do you really expect people to do purely
| performative labour that COSTS them money when non-compliance or
| finding a different job can make such a difference in their
| financial well being and quality of life?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > and say they would have approached their plans differently if
| they had a better understanding of what their employees wanted
|
| The poor employers. If only there was some way they could have
| gained that understanding. Without actually listening to
| employees and taking them seriously, of course. Don't let's be
| silly now.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > 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 productive, they are speaking from desire
| rather than evidence, and that the sunk cost of a commercial
| lease had more weight in the decision than the employees'
| opinions did. Two things they could have avoided with one minute
| of reflection.
|
| On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised that 80% of
| executives were willing to admit they could have done a better
| job. I'd expect most of them to say it went flawlessly, in a
| voice which echoed off the cubicle walls of a nearly empty
| office.
| ilc wrote:
| What they say in an anon survey, and what they say to their
| employees may be very different things.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| if people quit you have the evidence
| judge2020 wrote:
| Most employers instituting hybrid or RTO will have a way to
| apply for an exception, which is just a filter to keep high
| value employees (by approving their fully remote requests)
| while cutting employees without needing to write severance
| checks - a "soft layoff" if you will.
| pg_1234 wrote:
| basically because they picked a fight and lost
|
| no actual remorse
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > basically because they picked a fight and lost
|
| Did they lose?
|
| Pretty sure the prevailing sentiment among the C-level has
| effectively become "Get back to your cube and shut up because
| we said so, or little Timmy won't be getting his braces." here
| in the US.
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| 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 together as a union and force companies to hire
| them remote. There is no excuse anymore about it not working,
| because the whole planet did it through a friggin' pandemic, and
| work actually improved. We just have to stick to our guns,
| because the suits will continue to try to ruin our lives as long
| as it benefits them.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-11 23:00 UTC)